"Ruth Reichl - Tender at the Bone V1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichl Ruth)

Preheat oven to 3 50░.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until apples are tender.

Serve warm with hard sauce.

Serves 5,


HARD SAUCE
3/4 cup unsalted butter at Dash of salt
room temperature 2 teaspoons vanilla

11/4 cups sugar


Cream the butter until soft. Gradually add sugar and salt until creamy and light. Add vanilla and chill.

Makes about 1 cup.



Х When I was six my parents went to Europe for a month. As usual, it was my mother's idea, I think that even then I knew that my father was not eager to leave me for such a long time, but that he didn't know how to say so to my mother. Especially when she had gone to the trouble of arranging for the Sol Hurok of Cleveland to come and care for me.
That was her mother, the impresario. "You'll have a wonderful time with Nanny" Mom assured me, taking me around the apartment and pointing out all the signed pictures of my grandmother's famous friends. "You'll meet Menuhin and Rubinstein!"
But the music bored me and I bored Nanny. Three days after my parents left she called Aunt Birdie.
This did not make me miserable. I had Aunt Birdie, I had Alice. And I had a whole month to try and solve the mystery of Hortense. Why wouldn't anyone talk about my father's first wife?
Aunt Birdie lived in Washington Heights, a neighborhood that had, she said, "gone downhill." What that meant was that the streets were strewn with trash and broken glass and half the time the elevator didn't work. Aunt Birdie seemed oblivious to all of that; she and Uncle Perry had moved to the neighborhood a million years ago when it was fashionable. Then the stock market crashed and they got stuck. She stayed on, even after Uncle Perry died, surrounded by the beautiful objects of better times. The neighborhood was a slum but the apartment was splendid, filled with dark mahogany chests, soft old sofas, and a jumble of drawings and paintings. It was always spotless. This was because Alice angrily chased every speck of dust as if it were an invader,
"I think Alice was the first Negro my mother ever hired," said Aunt Birdie. "A lot of colored people came north after the Civil War, but in those days my mother hired Irish girls right off the boats. Sometimes she would take me down to the docks when she looking for maids. I liked that. When Uncle Perry asked me to marrY him my mother said she would train a maid. Naturally I expected anothel' irish girl. I was so surprised when Alice appeared."
"i remember your face," said Alice. "You opened the door and you jumped back a step when you saw me. I thought my job was ended before it could start."
"Well I did try to fire you," said Aunt Birdie. "Once."
"I remember," said Alice with a certain asperity "But I wouldn't let you." She turned to me and I watched the strong lines that etched deeply into each side of her face move farther apart as her mouth turned down; suddenly she looked just like the drawing on the wall above her head. "It was right after the crash. Your Uncle Perry came home one night looking really beat and I knew that it had happened to him. It was happening all around us, good men getting up rich and going to bed poor. He called your Aunt Birdie into the living room and she went out and closed the door. When she came back I could see that she had been crying."
"Where was Hortense?" I asked.
"I told her," said Aunt Birdie, picking up the narrative, "that we were going to be really poor. That we had nothing left. And that we couldn't afford to keep her anymore."
"And 1 told her," said Alice, "that I was not leaving. She was not going to get rid of me so easily!"
"'But Alice,' I said," said Aunt Birdie, "'we have no money Nothing.' And do you know what Alice said?"
I looked at Alice.
"I said, 'You just pay me what you can. I know you'll be fair.'"
"And do you know what she did next?" asked Aunt Birdie. "Made a batch of apple dumplings with hard sauce," I said. Because that is what Alice always did when an occasion called for a response but she wasn't quite sure what it should be.
Alice would have snickered derisively at the notion, but she was the first person I ever met who understood the power of cooking. She was a great cook, but she cooked more for herself than for other people, not because she was hungry but because she was comforted by the rituals of the kitchen.
It never occurred to her that others might feel differently and I was grown before I realized that not every six-year-old would consider it a treat to spend entire afternoons in the kitchen.
Most mornings I spent in Aunt Birdie's big, perfectly ordered closet trying on one navy blue dress after another. By the time I was six her size two shoes actually fit me. Afterward I might walk around the apartment examining the etchings, watercolors, and drawings on the walls. They were all so familiar: Alice, Aunt Birdie, the silver teapot in the living room. But inevitably there came a time when Aunt Birdie sighed and said, "Why don't you go see what Alice is doing?"
Alice and Aunt Birdie had the easy relationship of two people who have been deeply disappointed by life, but not by each other. An accident of fate had thrown them together for the better part of sixty years but they had given it so little thought that Alice looked surprised when I asked if she liked Aunt Birdie.
She was mixing spices to make meat loaf but she stopped in mid-motion, like a rabbit when it sees a car, Her eyes opened wide. She picked up the meat, gave it a good pat, and then nodded her head. "Yes," she said, "I do." She sounded surprised.
That night as Alice and Aunt Birdie were setting the table for dinner Alice said, quite casually, "It's not so easy caring for a six-year-old when you're in your eighties." She gave Aunt Birdie a sidelong glance and said, "I think I'll just go home and get a few things. I'm going to stay here until Ruthie leaves."
"Wait until after dinner," Aunt Birdie replied, setting a third place at the table. Alice and I had spent a lot of time in the kitchen together, but that was the first time we ever sat down to share a meal.
When we had finished eating, Aunt Birdie and I did the dishes while Alice went to get her clothing. Then Aunt Birdie let me stay
to watch The Honeymooners. 1 was still awake when Alice slid into the bed next to mine.
"Did you live here when Hortense was little?" I asked.
"Shh," she said. "Go to sleep."
In the morning we slipped out quietly trying hard not to wake Aunt Birdie. We walked down 168th Street to Broadway where Alice moved regally through the stores, pinching fruit and asking questions. Alice wanted to know about everything she bought. "Where did it come from?" she asked. "When did it come in?" Trolling in her wake I began to see the status conferred by caring about food.