Readers may recall from my last installment that I narrowly escaped being disemboweled by my clown partner Steve Smith (aka TJ Tatters) when he discovered I couldn't drive the motorhome we were living in as advance clowns for the Blue Unit of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus -- The Greatest Show on Earth. Temporizing like mad, I had promised that instead of sharing the driving chores I would undertake to cook such succulent meals for us that the late Escoffier would turn slowly in his grave, basting in a juice of supreme jealousy.
My first assignment, at Smith's insistence, was fried chicken with mashed potatoes.
A simple request, you may say -- except for a gnat in the ointment. I didn't know how to open a can of pork and beans, let alone attempt to fricassee a fowl and homogenize spuds. As a child I was only allowed into the kitchen during clearly delineated feeding periods. My presence there at any other time was deemed mutiny, and treated accordingly.
Of course today I am considered a five-star chef; my pickled herring souffle having won the Grand Prix at the Lichtenstein Shinola Runoffs -- but back in 1973, when this saga takes place, I was a babe in the culinary woods.
So I would have to bluff my way through this first meal together, as well as many others to come.
And I did a creditable job of it, if I do say so myself. Remembering my mother's methods (and curse words) as she toiled over a volcanic Kenmore, I emulated her every move and technique, as far as I could remember. I dredged the chicken pieces in flour spiced with paprika and garlic salt, slid them into a frying pan full of hot oil, and managed to extract them before they carbonized. That the spattering oil left me pockmarked like a smallpox victim is neither here nor there -- all geniuses must suffer for their art.
The mashed potatoes proved more challenging. Not that I didn't already know, in a vague sort of way, the alchemy of the thing -- you boil up a bunch of potatoes, then mash them together with lots of milk and butter and salt. But I came a cropper during that first attempt by adding way too much milk and butter, winding up with an appetizing pot of vichyssoise and not mashed patooties.
Smith took it like a good sport. He devoured the chicken and said kind things about the potato soup while slurping it down lustily. It was then that I learned something of his home life as a child. His mother was not inclined to cook, and when she did the results were not gratifying. Smith said that her mainstay for dinner was something called a potato chip casserole -- basically crushed potato chips with cream of mushroom soup poured over it and then covered with Velveeta and popped in the oven until the whole thing started to bubble slowly like the La Brea Tar Pits. His breakfast during his grade school years was usually Oreos washed down with a bottle of Coke.
And so, glory be, I discovered that Smith's taste buds were so attenuated by the lousy or non-existent home cooking of his youth that I could throw a slab of raw bacon on a plate, covered in ketchup, and he would gamely try to gnaw his way through it.
The other miracle to occur was the advent of the Crock Pot. I picked up one of those babies at a JC Penny's the first time I laid eyes on it, and used nothing else for our meals for the rest of that season. Just toss in a hunk of meat, some potatoes and carrots, add a cup of water, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and six hours later there was dinner waiting for us after a hard day of buffoonery. It worked like a charm -- except when I tried it with a large quivering piece of liver. That abomination came out grey and rubbery, like the namesake of the horror movie "Donovan's Brain." That night we dined with the Colonel at a strip mall across from the trailer park where we had parked the motorhome.
By the end of that season I was a dab hand at slow cooker meals, and Smith, who had begun the season as gaunt as a scarecrow, had filled out like a zeppelin ready to cross the Baltic.
My coffers now filled with circus gelt, I bid Smith an affectionate adieu and proceeded to get the nod from Salt Lake for my two year mission, in, of all places, Thailand -- where I never had to cook my own food, not even once. All the missionaries were supplied with a maid who did the housework, laundry, and especially the cooking. So I let my cooking skills atrophy while I reveled in tom yum and bami mu daeng.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna take my slow cooker down to AAA Trading & Pawn on Center Street here in Provo to see if I can get enough coin for a portion of kai yang served on a banana leaf at the local Siamese eatery . . .
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