Brain, Food
A home cook recounts what happened when she brought a radio into the kitchen. By Trisha Coffman Photography by Art Holeman
f there was ever a time when cake seemed superfluous, this would have been it. The cake, for my daughter’s tenth birthday, was indulgent even for cake: layer upon buttery layer of crêpes, each slathered with a chocolate crème pâtissière, a custard-type filling that entailed the proper beating of egg whites in addition to that single step that signals the seriousness of the pastry task at hand: the ice bath. As I lovingly swirled scant one-quarter cupfuls of batter in my crêpe pan, trying to turn out 20 presentable—not merely edible—crêpes, author Diane Ackerman was discussing the Holocaust on National Public Radio’s Science Friday. My eye was on the pan and my hand was on the spatula, gently tucking it under delicate crêpe edges. But my ears were taking in details about concentration camp victims, and their rationed 184 calories a day. There I was, my egg and cream and chocolate custard chilling in the refrigerator, constructing what was possibly the highest-calorie confection ever to grace my kitchen counter, listening to tales of starvation and typhus, of war and courage. And here I’d thought I was being courageous, the abandon with which I was using butter. Desperate for a slot in my day that would accommodate some quality time with the folks in public radio, I’d brought my radio into the kitchen. It was a sort of experiment: Was I capable of performing the mental splits, of actively listening to and processing the information I heard, while at the same time following a recipe? Would I emerge better informed, or would all the talk fade into the background? As with the crêpe cake-making experience, I was finding that the two 36
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