Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

Author:Laurie Colwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497673809
Publisher: Open Road Media

How to Avoid Grilling

Unlike most citizens of these United States of America, I do not grill. There is no hibachi in my garden or anything else like it. When I moved into my garden apartment I was given a fancy barbecue, and as far as I know it is still in the cellar collecting dust and mold spores.

Grilling is like sunbathing. Everyone knows it is bad for you but no one ever stops doing it. Since I do not like the taste of lighter fluid, I do not have to worry that a grilled steak is the equivalent of seven hundred cigarettes.

Of course this implies that I do not like to eat al fresco. No sane person does, I feel. When it is nice enough for people to eat outside, it is also nice enough for mosquitoes, horse and deer flies, as well as wasps and yellowjackets. I don’t much like sand in my food and thus while I will endure a beach picnic I never look forward to them.

My idea of bliss is a screened-in porch from which you can watch the sun go down, or come up. You can sit in temperate shade and not fry your brains while you eat. You are protected from flying critters, sandstorms and rain and you can still enjoy a nice cool breeze.

One year my husband and I rented a lake cottage—a rustic cabin set in a pine grove just a stroll from a weed-choked lake. With this cottage came a war canoe and a screened-in porch. The motto of the owners seemed to have been: “It’s broken! Let’s take it to the lake!”

The dining room table was on a definite slant and the plates were vintage 1950s Melmac. The stove was lit by one of those gizmos that ignite a spark next to one of the burners and was of great fascination to me. Near the corner cupboards lived an army of mice who left evidence of their existence all over the cups and saucers. Anything left around was carried away—quite a tidy little ecosystem. One evening we were visited by a dog who howled constantly as the sound of mouse rattling drove him into a frenzy.

Nevertheless, we ate on the screened-in porch all the time and with great success. Friends with beautiful houses came to our broken-down lake cottage to eat on that crummy porch and watch the sun set over the lake. All around us were grills: we could smell them, but we never so much as fingered a charcoal briquette.

Having said this, I admit to loving grilled food—that is, something that has been exposed to a flame. On a regular old stove this is called broiling. English stoves have a special rack (a salamander) with a separate flame under which you can grill a chop or brown the top of a gratin. There is no better way to cook fish, steak or chops.

I have avoided grilling by broiling, and I have never had to bother myself about getting in a supply of mesquite or apple wood, or old thyme twigs.

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