46
PARTISAN REVIEW
he was home for dinner and he had Sundays off. The other nights
he and Kay would catch a bite together in the theatrical district;
they had found a little Italian place with an eighty-five cent din–
ner that was terribly good and quick. On the nights he was home,
they would take turns cooking, with Kay doing simple dishes that she
could prepare after work or John making one of his specialties–
Italian spaghetti or meat-balls cooked in salt in a hot skillet or a
quick-and-easy meat loaf his mother had taught him: one part beef,
one part pork, one part veal; add sliced onions and pour over a can
of Campbell's tomato soup. Kay, not to be outdone-she said, laugh–
ing-had written
her
mother for some of her cook's dishes-veal
kidneys done with cooking sherry and mushrooms, a marvelous jellied
salad of lime jello, shrimps, mayonnaise and alligator pear, which
could be fixed the night before in ramekins and then unmolded on
lettuce-cups. (How fortunate, thought Dottie, with a quick, anxious
look at the unperturbed John, that he did not seem to mind the little
social differences in their backgrounds; another man might have
flushed at Kay's tactless candor.) On Sundays, they planned to en–
tertain, either at a late breakfast of chipped beef or corned-beef hash,
or at a casserole supper. They had found a new cookbook that had
a whole section devoted to casserole dishes, which were
the
thing now,
they maintained; nobody today wanted to eat the old heavy course–
dinners of the Boston Cooking School type. What people liked was
just one dish and a crisp salad with garlic and French dressing; no
dessert. The trouble with American cooking was the dearth of im–
agination in it and the terrible fear of innards and garlic. John put
garlic in everything, and everybody loved his cooking. What made
a dish was the seasonings and you had to have the courage to be ex–
perimental. When he fixed chipped beef, for instance, he put in
mustard and Worcestershire sauce and grated cheese and green pepper
and an egg, and you would never have known it was the same dish
as the old milky chipped beef that you got at college and sometimes
at home on Sunday mornings. Kay fished in her bag for a recipe
that she had cut out of the food column in the paper. "What do
you think of that?" she demanded, passing it to Dottie. "I'm thinking
of serving it next week to John'S boss when he comes to dinner. I
love the recipes in the
Tribune)'
I wouldn't
think
of getting the
Times
now." "The
Tribune)s
typography has it all over the
Times)/)
John
explained in an aside to Dottie.
