After 30 years of shacking up, Jeff and Gail got married.

In Hanalei bay, on Kauai, Hawaii, in the lee of Bali Hai they spent six weeks snorkeling and snuggling. It was indeed their own special island.

Each morning before the suns rays reached the blue sea floor they trundled down to the market to buy a tranche of ahi or kampachi caught that very morning. After a morning in the water they prepared a lunch of sashimi (dipped in soy sauce and freshly grated wasabi) with slices of avocado, papaya, star fruit, or mango (the Haden variety, with pulp that is not stringy).

Richly dark greens like collard or rainbow chard filled the markets. Oddly enough, however, because the climate is so temperate, tomatoes do not ripen to full flavor there.

On Kauai they sell a pungent and tangy feta-style goat cheese that pairs well with fresh cilantro and crunchy crackers.

But what was the potion impelling them to bind the ties of wedlock? What was their passion fruit?

It was the rum smoothie.

Gails Honeymoon Smoothie

dark rum
young ginger, grated
pineapple
guava
mango
splash of orange soda
dollop of lychee-flavored yogurt
coconut water (crack the nut with a hammer)
ice

Drink before dinner. Watch the stars come out.

Having lived happily ever after, having spent a honeymoon in paradise, and having gotten married, in that order, pretty soon now, yes, any minute Jeffrey is going to propose to Gail (or will it be vice versa?). Accordingly, the next logical step in their backward romance will be that unforgettable first blush of mutual infatuation. Who could not be envious?

When Lorna went into surgery for the second time in as many weeks, Mrs. Henry knew she had to prepare something delicious and nutritious, something to awaken an appetite numbed by anesthesia, an instant elixir to restore every weary faculty.

Like an Olympic competitor, Mrs. Henry dug deep.

From her mental recipe box she plucked a classic French veal stock equally serviceable as a demi-glace for vegetable dishes or as the secret flavor ingredient to any meat sauce or ragout.

Auguste Escoffier invented the versatile veal stock. Neither sweet nor salty, neither bitter nor sour, veal stock adds flavor and body to nearly any preparation. My Phuong makes this stock and freezes it in ice cube trays. She adds a single cube as a final touch to french beans or mushrooms. The results are sensational.

Lorna drank two cups spoonlessly and pronounced it worth living for.

Mrs. Henrys veal stock

2 veal shank bones (quartered by the butcher)
2 stalks of celery
1 onion, quartered
1 turnip, quartered
1 bunch parsley
1 handful of baby carrots
crushed peppercorns

Roast the bones at 425 until golden brown, about 35 minutes. In 3-quart or larger pot cover with water, add ingredients and simmer for at least 4 hours. Let cool. Remove bones and pour stock through sieve. Refrigerate. When cool, skim fat. Reheat to liquid state and pour cheesecloth strainer (or fine sieve). Add salt.

Any veal bones will do nicely. Michael Ruhlman suggests veal breast, and his recipes are highly reliable.

You may roast the root vegetables, as well, but not for as long as the meat. Leeks work very well, too, as does fresh thyme, neither of which were available this time.

The extra step of refrigerating to remove fat ensures a lean, light broth. If you want a richer demi-glace for braising, however, skip this step.

The Doper moved out. For 25 years he sat slumped in the same sunken upholstered chair watching TV, smoking joints and eating take-out. On sunny days he crept out onto the fire escape and talked on the telephone, prattling in a harsh outerborough accent.

At home, Doper never wore clothes.

Hearing the call of the Age of Aquarius, he was a naturalist who went back to the land, which for him meant the Upper West Side between 72nd Street and 96th Street.

During the quarter century he shared the backyard airspace with this hirsute old hippie, Mr. Henry never learned his real name.

Mr. Henry spoke directly to him only once. On a bright and cheerful morning Mr. Henry stepped out onto his tiny porch and was assaulted by the sight of natural man scratching his furry self.

Couldnt you put something on? Mr. Henry asked rhetorically. Doper did not speak. Furrowing his giant uni-brow, he shrank back inside the dark apartment.

Doper did not go to work in any conventional sense. Once in a while he was spotted rifling corner trash cans for books and knicknacks that he displayed for sale on the sidewalk in front of Arties Delicatessen on Broadway and 83rd Street. Until ten years ago, every six months or so his aged parents came to straighten up his grotty apartment.

Perhaps because Doper always traveled by bicycle, he managed to maintain an enviably sleek physique despite being in his middle 60s. Did he subsist exclusively on marijuana, Chinese take-out, and paper bags of birdseed? Will we soon be seeing The Doper Diet at Barnes & Noble?

Perhaps he simply couldnt stand the yuppification of Broadway.

At the corner of 77th Street a new restaurant is about to open, The West Branch, an offshoot of Tom Valentis Ouest which for years has been the only place in this neighborhood to get a really fine restaurant meal.
The West Branch will provide room service to the sleekly renovated hotel On the Ave.

Whats more, next to The West Branch will be a new Fatty Crab, an uptown offshoot of the downtown place famous for Singaporean street food and for not accepting reservations.

Instantly 77th and Broadway, a corner where store after store has foundered, is becoming a destination location for people with appetite and cash.

The Doper moves on.

For three days Mr. Henry stared at three little eggplants lying wistfully in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. On a hot afternoon in the Citarella market they were beautiful, purple and plump, the most attractive vegetables on display. He bought them without a care and without a plan. Then he faced a moment of decision.

Summer is a languorous time of year, a time when there is time to spare, a time for experimentation with short pants and odd vegetable preparations.

Mr. Henry makes a mean Moroccan zaalouk, a fine Lebanese babaganoush, a veritable ratatouille, and a convincing caponata. Although these are not difficult dishes, to roast them requires firing up the oven for a good 45 minutes, or in the case of the ratatouille and its Sicilian cousin caponata, preparing the other ingredients takes at least as long. Eggplant parmesan is even more of a chore. All are best avoided on hot summer afternoons when you dont want to heat up the house.

Long ago he made a lightly-battered fried eggplant by first soaking eggplant slices in milk to combat the eggplants natural bitterness. Now that Mrs. Henry installed her fancy convection oven, what would happen if he simply soaked eggplant slices and then blasted them in the convection oven? Would he get a mushy eggplant ragout that fell apart on the spatula? Would he get an eggplant rigor mortis permanently fused to the pan?

In this perilous world, boldness and cunning have their rewards. Milk may not be an ingredient that leaps to mind when considering the eggplant. In Consider the Oyster, however, the peerless M.F.K. Fisher (John Updike called her our poet of the appetites.) lists a dozen recipes for oyster stew (which is not really a stew at all, but that is another discussion). All but one recipe contain milk, and lots of it.

What about buttermilk Such a pairing could be interesting. But where to look for spices and flavor ideas? Both buttermilk and eggplant are found in Middle Eastern cuisine. Given that eggplant has been central to Jewish cuisine, perhaps Claudia Roden in her masterful The Book of Jewish Food might have an answer.

Turkic peoples, Iranians, and Indians often use a spiced yogurt dressing but, alas, Claudia does not include recipes containing both eggplant and buttermilk.

Not dissuaded by the absence of traditional recipes, Mr. Henry seized his chance. After all, we live in the New World. Marinating for several hours in buttermilk and a bit of nutmeg, eggplant slices were cooked two ways: half were fried in olive oil, half were baked. Slowly fried in olive oil, slices emerged crispy and perfectly ready to eat. After 15 minutes the baked slices received a topping of grated parmesan and bread crumbs and then went back in the oven for another 25.

Curiously, although the baked slices were good, not mushy, fried slices came out better. They had that desirable crunchy exterior and soft interior. As Kit Pollard remarked in an inspired moment on her blog Mango & Ginger, they remind one of soft shell crab. Indeed, the eggplant is a mysterious playmate.

In the end, however, neither preparation with buttermilk exceeded the pleasure of a first class caponata enjoyed with a Rosso di Montalcino. Perhaps our Old World ancestors knew something after all.

Many years ago when Mr. Henry first approached a stove with motive and intent, he did not have the confidence he has today. Sweat collected on his furrowed young brow. From the start, however, he felt rookie confidence in tackling the grilled cheese sandwich.

There was the bread, of course, and the cheese, as well as a bit of butter in the pan. Through arduous trial and error young Mr. Henry honed his technique. Unguided and alone he discovered that to achieve even browning one must depress the sandwich lightly so that runny cheese not ooze embarrassingly out the sides. This required finesse with the spatula, a delicate up-and-down, chip-and-putt touch like Greg Normans, a touch you are born with, not a touch you can learn.

More important, he found from the beginning that cooking suited his innate talents. He likes to be in control of his own destiny, and he likes to eat. From his success with the grilled cheese sandwich, he strode on ahead to new challenges.

In short order, as it were, he became master of the scrambled egg, too. (Or so he supposed. Now he knows better. Truly velvety scrambled eggs must be cooked slowly over mild heat. After the eggs begin to clump you add a touch of milk or cream to retard the process.)

When faced with more complicated fabrications like soups or stews, however, he wilted. For help he stole peaks at Fannie Farmer or Joy of Cooking, furtive scans in the corner lest a big sister discover him in feminine occupations thereby obtaining premium ammunition for teasing.

In the Henry household, real men did not cook. Mother Henry herself only cooked under duress. Genuine slow cooking gravies, stews, cakes was conducted uniquely by women in household employ who closely monitored and roundly discouraged children in their kitchen. That is, cooks shooed kids out the back door.

While the skill of cooking held commercial value, the act itself was looked upon as drudgery. Since maids did not come on Sunday, traditional Sunday dinner slumbered in the freezer, R.I.P. And to think those little prison-issue aluminum trays once held genuine excitement. Ah, yesterday.

Now for Mr. Henry cooking has become a form of recreation and relaxation, a task that fully occupies the mind and the hand, a task concluding in a treat for the cook and his tablemates. Since he works more and more from home, and since he shops for food on foot, the burden of driving the car has transformed into something similar, too, a pleasure and a pastime.

In a completely unforeseen cultural development, TV cooking shows have become the teen-age rage. Once the daily grind of servants, cooking has entered the pantheon of applied arts.

If you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, today taking the heat has become cool.

Who saw this coming? What does this seismic cultural event portend?

Todays kitchen is the focal point of the house, its beating heart. Traveling salesman know that if you can get the client into her kitchen, you can close the deal. Someone who allows you into their kitchen has allowed you into their family.

Interior design today usually favors an open plan with no wall between kitchen and living area. The shift in Americas approach to cooking has changed not only living patterns but architecture, as well. Mom standing at the stove in a kitchen cubicle has become Dad standing at the stove in the center of the house.

This happy arrangement leaves Mom free to pursue her destiny free to discipline the children and pay the mortgage.