MY OWN MADELEINE

 

After the wonderful cream of crab soup I slurped up so voraciously at the Lemon Leaf Café in Chestertown last week and after JR, the owner and a friend, told me the recipe began as an old family one, I searched to see if I could find an authentic recipe for cream of crab soup in one of my many cookbooks, to establish a starting point for my own creative version. Surprisingly, I didn’t have much success; most recipes were for “authentic” Maryland crab soup, but all gussied up with unusual ingredients and none of the creamed variety. But the search finally took me to a cookbook produced by the WSCS (Women’s Society of Christian Service) of the Unity-Washington Methodist Church in Hurlock, Maryland. It’s an old cookbook, one of my first, spiral-bound with some of the spirals missing and with a green cardboard cover, smeared with the dried remnants of ingredients used long ago. Probably created as a fund raiser for the WSCS, I thought it the perfect place to find what I was seeking. But, alas; there was no recipe for cream of crab soup. However, in perusing the seafood section I discovered a recipe for tuna noodle casserole, like Ribbon Salad from Mrs. Ira Brinsfield, or Apricot Bread from Mary Payne, attributed to Mrs. W. V. Smith. Like Proust with his madeleine, dipped in tea and instantly returned to his “things past,” I was immediately thrust back into 1962, when I came to Baltimore from the Eastern Shore to work as a designer/salesman in the Designer Gallery of The Bagby Furniture Company. I remembered all my fellow-salespeople: John, tall and thin, with glasses always sliding down his nose, a man very good with our dealer customers; Courtney, the somehow wayward – we never learned how - brother of the owner of the firm, a man who liked to tell off-color jokes and who blew his nose on a giant white handkerchief he always produced from his pants pocket. There was also Miss Willey, a proper old-maid-school-teacher type, with an incredibly correct posture and beautiful handwriting, who taught me how to make a white sauce and to remember to always wash the remnants of egg off my plates with cold water; hot water would only cook the eggs. And Schaffer (as we all called her), with the heavy make-up, the dyed black hair, glued-on fingernails and five-inch heels. Like Giada on the cooking channel, Shaffer was Bagby’s sex appeal. She always wore a tight skirt and had great legs. And the owner’s son, Hugh, who was so large we called him Huge (behind his back, of course), a buffoon of a man, just smart enough to be surprisingly dangerous. And I remembered the designer customers who brought their clients to me: Debby Goodman, who always said, “fine; how are you?” before I’d even asked her how she was; Emma Samuels, who lived in Temple Gardens and was married to a judge; Gert Rocklin, with red hair and always perfectly groomed; and Florine Macks who often absent-mindedly snapped her girdle to let a little air onto her thighs. I loved them all. And I sold them, and their clients, a lot of furniture.

            Seeing the recipe also reminded me of my earliest attempts at cooking, making the dish in my first apartment in Baltimore, a third floor walk-up in the 900 block of Calvert Street where, spurred on by my latent talent for design, I installed cork walls, Roman shades, felt-covered bookshelves, and a bar in the kitchen made from unfinished bookcases bolted together and covered with blue burlap. The top surface was laid with imperfect pieces of white marble originally destined for occasional tables at Bagby but damaged in transit. It was also where I enjoyed, and mourned, my first great love affair in a spectacular whirl of light and color and sound, joy and tears, like none since then.  

            Reading the recipe, I was so attracted to it that I checked my pantry to see if I had all the ingredients and, except for the cream of mushroom soup, the potato chips and the small can of LeSeur peas, things I would never normally eat now, I had everything I needed. So after a trip to Eddie’s where I procured these essentials, I created the casserole, complete with slabs of cheddar cheese layered on top and some more, shredded and mixed with the crumbled potato chips. Although I only made half a recipe, there was still far too much for one meal so I filled two casserole dishes, baked one and put the other in the freezer. The casserole dishes themselves – three in various depths, all nested together, white and tan, with star designs on the outside, probably from Pyrex – came from my brother and sister-in-law as a gift when I moved to Baltimore. I haven’t used them in years, but never had the urge to toss them out. They’ve moved with me from Calvert Street to University Parkway to Park Purchase to Maine to Saint Martin’s Lane, back to Park Purchase on now on to The Fitz. They’re almost as well traveled as I am.

I enjoyed my portion of tuna noodle casserole at my dining room table, which started life as an old, round, oak, farm table, given to me by my sister and brother-in-law as a start-up for my new digs on Calvert Street. I remembered laboriously sanding down the top and staining it with thinned white paint in an attempt to make it look like pickled oak. Some years later, after Calvert Street, when I decided to put the green marble on its top, I had to reinforce the base to hold the added weight. Wouldn’t Barb and Wayne – if they were still with us – be surprised that such a modest $15.00 item is now having its glamorous Cinderella moment?

Like Swann, in Proust’s epic saga, I left something sweet and tender irrevocably behind in that first love affair on Calvert Street, something I never recovered. Perhaps it was my awakening to the freedom of sexual self-awareness, which once dawned, can never be re-experienced. Or maybe it was my innocence, then lost and never recovered. Life now seems faster and much more complicated. The Bagby Furniture Company building, once bordered by decrepit and largely abandoned railroad sheds, now has a resurrected life as an office complex, firmly planted between old Little Italy and the new and fashionable Harbor East. Like the nearby President Street Station, where Lincoln arrived on his way to becoming president, the Bagby building seems an anachronism, slightly out of place, old but nestled now among the new. Its modest shipping dock where I once parked my car now houses the glamorous Fleet Street Kitchen, where today I might enjoy a seared tuna salad or tuna tartar. How much my life has been altered, by, well, life. But some things never change. The tuna noodle casserole was just as good as I remembered it. Mrs. W. V. Smith lives on through her simple recipe. She would be so proud.

 

 

Phil Cooper

February 2014