Jean Madigan, Queen Serena, shares ...
"Oh no!" Quince exclaimed, clapping a pudgy hand to his forehead. The pungent odor of molasses permeated the air.He walked to the oven and flung opened the door to check on his baked beans. Careful inspection revealed that they were almost done, but just to make sure, Quince grabbed a wooden spoon, dipped it into the mixture and scooped out a tiny portion.A smile wreathed his face. He stirred them with another spoon and noted with satisfaction that they were the right consistency. He breathed a sigh of relief; his culinary reputation was intact.
The recipe made him famous in St. Paul and was deceptive in its simplicity. All he did was take four big cans of prepared baked beans, add a cup of molasses, a smidgen of catsup, some brown sugar, and an eighth of a tablespoon of lemon juice, and put the mixture in a big casserole dish. Then he set the oven temperature to two hundred and fifty degrees for thirty minutes. The result was a delight. "They don’t need to know that I didn’t soak Great Northern beans overnight and make this dish from scratch.”
Quince’s sharp brown eyes darted over the attractive food display. Besides the beans, he’d prepared deviled eggs mixed with canned ham and sprinkled with paprika, potato salad topped with his secret dressin, barbequed chicken, overnight fruit salad, and pineapple upside down cake decorated with maraschino cherries stuck to the cake with toothpicks to a thin layer of glazed cake.
He glanced at his watch and swore. The staff should have been sitting down already and enjoying the sumptuous feast he had prepared. Quince allowed that some last minute affair had held them up. There was always some dumb dog and pony show that they just had to attend. They rarely had the opportunity to meet socially; it only happened when someone got a job at a different hospital and a celebration ensued. Why did they have to be late today, he fumed, walking through the hospital kitchen, slamming cupboard doors and fussing over the beans. He put on a pair of oven mitts and lifted them out of the oven, setting them on a hotpad in the middle of the table. He sat down on a chair.
Quince thought about his reputation as a gourmet cook. It earned him the position atNorthern Hospital as chief cook. Heaven knew he enjoyed every morsel of food he put into his mouth. Quince would go into ecstasy over the fare offered at The Boston Sea Party and became delirious with joy at the prospect of cutting into medium prime rib at Tinucci’s. Ah, when he closed his eyes, it seemed like only yesterday that he was cutting into it. Here was paradise! Yes, he thought, that meal was perfection, it was fantastic. The baked potato, which he pronounced
"padaydo,"" was cooked just right. He liked the way the butter made little rivulets in the white meat of it.
Then his mind switched to the dessert. Tinucci’s served strawberry shortcake that day. He remembered that he wanted to dip his finger into the snow white whipped cream.
Slamming doors jolted him back to the present and Quince sprang to his feet. He heard the counseling staff joking and laughing as they exited their meeting room and burst through the dining room door.
" Quince, old boy, lemme at them beans; I’m starved," said Bill, the senior counselor. "I’m starved!" He rubbed his palms together.
Quince watched them file into the dining room and sit down. Mary Ellers, the family counselor, took a deviled egg, mashed it up and put it on top of her helping of potato salad. Quince grimaced. "Why do you do that, Mary? I went to a lot of trouble to make those eggs look perfect."
She looked at him and said, "Big deal!" Quince slunk to a corner of the dining room and sat down. He’d garnished those perfect eggs with paprika and bacon bits and she had to go and spoil hers. She never noticed or commented on how smooth he’d made the filling.
He grumbled. "Some people have no appreciation of good cooking." No one looked his way. They busily filled their plates. The new intern counselor, Larry, walked up behind Quince and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Quince, your barbequed chicken was delightful. I’d love to have the recipe for my wife. How did you make that coating?”
Quince turned around with a beaming smile on his
broad face. He confided to Larry, "It’s all in the spices, m’boy, all in the spices. I’m glad you appreciate the intricacies of my cooking, not like some of these other animals here," he glowered, "but I won’t give you the recipe. The ingredients and their amounts are a matter of culinary judgment."
Larry nodded his head. "I understand, Quince," and he started walking away. Quince grabbed his sleeve.
"Hold on, Larry. Tell you what. I’ll fix you another dinner this Sunday at my home. We’ll have ham this time and I’ll add raisin sauce for an extra fillip. You know, the golden plump kind."
"Why thank you, Quince, that’s mighty nice of you. We’ll be there. Don’t go to all that trouble, though."
The older man looked at Larry and said, "Never you mind, Larry, it’s my pleasure." They shook hands and Larry
left.
Quince already had a plan in his mind, about how to prepare the meal for Larry and his wife. Thinking about the raisins he would use for the sauce on the ham, Quince thought about the feel of them in his mouth. They were so soft and juicy, he felt almost sacrilegious about biting into their flesh. Truth be known, Quince would rather eat and cook than do anything else. When it came time for him to die, it would happen in the middle of some restaurant like Pracna On The Main, and he would probably be finishing off a four course dinner.
When Quince did something, he went all the way!
© 2001 Jean Madigan
