A Fire for Father's Day

The foods that fill most of our memories are very often from our mothers and aunts and grandmothers, like the ones in this book-

- my Grandmother Marcella's hand - written recipe notebook. Classic to our family but very much of an era are semi-savory jello salads and creamed dried beef on toast. Like in many families I suppose, the contribution of fathers and grandfathers and uncles has been more... elemental. They oversee meat and liquor. Quite a pairing, representing the spectrum of masculinity from the primal to the genteel.

Liquor's volatility calls for rigid decorum. Legendary in the family is the cocktail hour in our rooms at the White Elephant in Nantucket, sometime during the 1970's. You can get a cocktail at the White Elephant, but that is not how my grandfather did things. Instead, at much greater expense, to say nothing of trouble, he bought bottles of gin, bourbon, and scotch, lemons, limes, sugar cubes, superfine granulated sugar, angostura bitters, maraschino cherries (for my Shirley Temple), olives, cocktail onions, and mixers. He was meticulous- in this and in all things, he was always relaxed, never casual. 

No one in the family has matched my grandfather in form, but certainly in intent- you won't see a empty glass on my father's watch. Form, in his case, has been replaced by whimsy. When I was little we got really good at aging wine bottles. He had been visiting some great cellars of collectors in Belgium, and we tried to get the look, if not the taste, back home at the farmhouse table in our raw loft in TriBeCa. Convincing old dirt is not just the look but the texture- I found that a solution of one part oil to two parts corn syrup could be applied lightly then rubbed nearly off for the combination of dirt from potted plants and ashes from burned up paper napkins could be dusted on. Whiskey is easier- soy sauce and water- this made his mother very cross, and now makes his sister cross (Meri- upper right on the cookbook cover). He does invent an excellent (real) cocktail, but that will be an inspiration of the moment.

He really excels at the more primal end of the spectrum. He can grill a steak as well as anyone, but it ends up being more about the fire than the meat. He has hauled great boulders to make a pit for fire in the center of the deck. It's not so much a fire for grilling or even for roasting things on sticks. So the fire pit- ostensibly for cooking- has been supplemented with a simple Weber-style grill for the actual cooking. The pit is for making a great blaze of a thing that throws sparks up towards the stars, a fire for telling stories, or talking about physics, or painting- a fire, in short, that is more substantial than any meat, for a meal that last long into the night