Role as Gourmet Cook Leaves a Sour Taste for Readers

I am disappointed in the response to my column about preparing a gourmet dinner for my wife and me.

I had hoped at least to be commended for trying, but I find myself harshly criticized for my choice of a recipe, my dependence on my wife for assistance, my uncertainty about what to do with the dishes and the dirty frying pan, and even for a lapse of memory.

The lapse of memory is the easiest to dispense with. In giving the menu, I wrote, accurately, that the main ingredient was to be lamb chops. Later, however, I said that “all I had to buy was the pork chops.”

Now even though I could not tell lamb chops from pork chops in the market, I ought to be able to tell one from the other when they are merely words. This error, I believe, reflects more on my incompetence as a cook than as a writer.

In any case, it is not nearly as gross as an error I committed later in writing about UFOs. It came to light when my wife and I were having breakfast. That is to say I was leaning over the electric range drinking decaf and reading Metro and she was leaning over the sink drinking decaf and reading View.

She said, “You made a double negative.”

“What was it?” I said, knowing not to argue with her about grammar.

“You said, ‘And who can deny that some unearthly civilization is not advanced enough to seek us out?”’

I am given to negative statements, and am always in danger of unwittingly doubling up on them. What I meant to say, of course, was “And who can deny that some unearthly civilization is advanced enough to seek us out?”

But I was playing the devil’s advocate. In fact, I do deny that some unearthly civilization is advanced enough to seek us out. In writing that sentence I unconsciously expressed my own convictions, that no unearthly civilization is advanced enough to seek us out. What I should have written was “And who can not deny that some unearthly civilization is not advanced enough to seek us out?” But in the end it don’t make no difference.

As I say, I was taken aback by some readers’ comments on my cooking.

“Surely you were jesting about making such a big deal about cooking dinner for your wife,” wrote Florence Glick of Pasadena. “I am glad she got out the oregano, pepper, sour cream and olive oil for you. How helpless can you be?”

That is easily explained. My wife knows where those things are. I don’t. Why should I go hunting for them when she could find them in a jiffy? Besides, my purpose in cooking the dinner was not to show that I could do it without her help, but that we could work together .

“After your dinner,” Glick goes on, “you asked your wife, ‘What should I do with the plates?’ Had it been me I would have broken them on your head.”

And thus, of course, ruined the point of the whole experiment. What I was seeking to do was not to dominate, but to establish a level of cooperation. In asking what I should do with the plates, I was not trying to get out of washing them, but merely asking for guidance in the procedure.

“If that wasn’t bad enough,” Glick continues, “you didn’t know what to do with the frying pan so you left it for her to wash. Give me strength.”

I did not leave the frying pan for my wife to wash. I just left it. What happened to it I don’t know.

My critics were not all women. Irving Kellogg of Beverly Hills castigated me for what he considered disloyalty to his sex. “Fie on you, Mr. Smith. You are a renegade, and such other words as mean that you have betrayed your maleness. . . .”

It is exactly that attitude that I was trying to escape. I challenge Mr. Kellogg to put on an apron and try taking on the culinary responsibilities himself. I warn him, however, against attempting to serve gjetost with his meat, whether lamb chops or pork chops. As several readers have warned me, too late, gjetost is a Norwegian goat cheese. It is about the color of caramel and the consistency (in its viscous form) of peanut butter.

“Please don’t put gjetost sauce on lamb chops or anything else,” warns Joan (Dusty) Bouchelle of Mission Viejo. “It takes a great deal of getting used to if you didn’t happen to grow up with it. I’m sure the author of your wife’s cookbook meant well, or maybe just meant to come up with something different, but don’t be hornswoggled.”

Well, it’s too late. We had the gjetost sauce. It tasted something like butterscotch yogurt. I can’t say it was good with the lamb chops, but then I’m not even sure they were lamb chops.