One-dish pony

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Every winter I used to look forward to the week my friend Doug, a sculptor, would decide it was time to cook his yearly sauerbraten. It’s a dish that needs chilly weather, preferably raining outside, and a fire in the fireplace. He’d make a special trip to the butcher, marinate the beef for a couple of days in vinegar and spices, and then braise the meat slowly until it was beautifully tender. And he always made a point of serving it with all the fixings, including braised red cabbage and potato pancakes. This was his one dish, but it was a great one, unusual and festive.

When my Italian friend Marta came to this country for the first time, she traveled all over the U.S., staying with friends of friends in each place and always offering to make her risotto while she was there. This was back in the days when risotto still seemed incredibly exotic and difficult. She brought her special arborio rice and some dried porcini with her from Italy. Everybody was thrilled to have her cook. Never mind that her risotto was like cement, or that she wasn’t a particularly good cook. She was Italian. It was risotto.

My husband, Fred, at one time worked all over the world as a photographer, and to thank friends who loaned him a couch or a guest room, he would always cook his one specialty: fried chicken. Here in the States, he soaked the bird in buttermilk and Tabasco, floured it by shaking the pieces in a brown paper bag, and fried it in lard. It was a great party trick, but in other countries sometimes difficult to pull off. The chickens were different. Sometimes the lard burned. Or he couldn’t find buttermilk. Or Tabasco. And yet , by improvising, he managed to make a pretty good version of this all-American dish whether he was in Yemen or Buenos Aires, Japan or Italy.

In all these examples, it’s the anticipation and the ceremony of making the dish that makes it so special. None of these people were expert cooks, but they’d adopted one dish as their signature. Practice, as they say, makes perfect, whether it’s paella, feijoada or Peking duck. Or even an omelet, like the beautiful one an 11-year-old boy wrapped in a long white apron made for us in the bled — the boonies — of France.

— S. Irene Virbila