The Good Cookie

With so many celebrity chefs on television these days, it seems that there are as many ways to measure the skill of an individual as there are channels on the tube itself. Infinite.

But to my mind, there is one supreme test of culinary skill. While it can be done quickly, it doesn't have to be done in exactly thirty minutes. While it can be eclectic, it doesn't have to be quirky or even inventive. And while style can count, it is taste and texture that really measures the skill of the preparer.

I'm talking about cookies.

To be sure, I am biased. According to Lynda, who rarely seemed to remember things as trivial as this, my first word was cookie. I have no reason to doubt her because I happen to really like cookies. In fact, they are my favorite sweet.

Not just favorite dessert, but favorite sweet. I'd much prefer a good cookie to a candy bar, for sure. A good cookie is better than a good cake or a pie. Actually, a good cookie is both a cake and a pie. And that's why it is so hard to make a good cookie. The baker has to really know their stuff to make a really good cookie.

An amateur baker can fake a cake, or a pan of brownies, but they can't fake a cookie. Even the 'slice-n-bake' stuff, while it allows the faker-baker to get a lot closer than 'store-bought' cookies, just cannot even approach the real thing.

The real thing, for me, is a scratch-made cookie. It is neither too sweet nor too salty. It is neither too thick nor too thin. It is neither too crunchy nor too soft. It must be all these things at once. A cake has to be airy. Bread has to have texture. Cookies have to have both.

Chefs, like doctors, have an informal hierarchy in their world. For example, while all doctors are M.D.s the surgeons hold themselves to be at the top of the doctor ladder. The anesthesiologists, on the other hand, while no less doctors, place themselves lower on that invisible ladder.

In the kitchen, it is the line cook that thinks he holds the top spot, while the pastry chef is supposed to operate somewhere below the line. Often they work off to the side or at completely different times than the rest of the cooks in the kitchen.

To the doctors in the operating room, or the chefs in the kitchen, this hierarchy may make some sort of sense, but to those of us on the outside--the real subjects of this exercise--the perception is really the reverse.

In the operating room, the last person the patient sees is the anesthesiologist, on whose skill and touch they must rely in order to survive the surgeon's ordeal without pain. The surgeon claims the credit but the patient is silently thankful for the ego-less skill of the 'other' doctor in the room.

In the dining room, often the last food the patron will eat is from the pastry chef's hand, and thus on whom the outcome of the meal is ultimately resting. How ironic is it then, when he Chef comes out to take credit even as the diners are scraping up crumbs--not of the entree, but the dessert?

Given the importance of the pastry chef, you'd think there would be a better measure of their skill than the humble cookie, but there is not. Not for me anyway. When it comes to the dessert course, I can tell more about the skill of the chef back there not by the flavor or texture of the marscapone-toasted-cashew-chili-pepper-rubbed ice cream, but by the flavor and texture of the cookie that is often simply and casually tossed into the glass or onto the plate as an mere afterthought.

The cookie is no mere afterthought. I think that it is the supreme measure of a chef's passion and skill. I think that Chefs ought to first master the art of the cookie before they are allowed anywhere near the line.

On the Responsibility of Doctors

There is a story getting a lot of attention in the media these days about a woman in California who gave birth to octuplets earlier this year. That in itself would be newsworthy enough, but the fact that the mother already had six children, two of whom are disabled and require special care, is unemployed, unmarried and living with her mother in a house that is about to be repossessed has made the story the subject of numerous dinner conversations, ours included.

In thinking about it more I have come to wonder not so much what the mother "was thinking," for I believe that the mother's right to choose means that the mother may choose to have her children. No, what I'm wondering is: what in fact were the doctors thinking? Now, this is not to say that I think the doctors should have counseled the mother to remove some of the embryos nor that they should have done so against her will as many have suggested.

What I do find hard to understand is what the doctors thought would happen after they delivered all eight babies. Naturally, they spent a great deal of time thinking about and planning for the deliveries, since that required so many coordinated efforts from so many professionals to actually accomplish safely. For them, it was a very 'cool' assignment; a challenge to their skills.

But I have to wonder, did any one of those skilled professional stop to consider--and therefore, plan for--the circumstances into which these eight babies would be delivered? I mean, did anyone give any thought to what would happen to them after they were released from the hospital?

Well, now the doctors are thinking about it. They say that they cannot in good conscience release the infants to the mother's care because they--rightly, alas--fear for the babies health and safety. Well, ok, why didn't we--erm, they, the docotrs--think of this before? Whose responsibility is it to think of such matters?

The mother, of course, had--and still does, by the way--a very key responsibility here. Not just to take care of her children, but to inform her caregivers of the environment into which she was obliged to take them. Perhaps she did this. However, even if she didn't, I still think it is incumbent on the doctors to do more than arrange for the safe delivery of the children.

Now it can be argued, that this--what happens when the patient goes home--is not the responsibility of doctors. Doctors cannot be held accountable for what their patients do after they leave their immediate presence and care.

Or can they? If, say, a patient who has received a heart transplant is not monitored closely after he leaves the hospital, he's very likely to have complications and die. So, the physician naturally takes responsibility to inform the patient of the special needs that the operation will impose on him and even help him to meet those needs. Things like medical equipment, nursing care and medicines are all administered at home or in a rehabilitation setting under the doctor's supervision.

Why has this multiple pregnancy failed to rise to the same level of attention as, say, the heart transplant patient? I suppose that it can be argued that both measures are extraordinary, but by the same token, it can be argued that those measures are justified as necessary; required by extraordinary circumstances.

This is my key point. Of all the people involved with this case, the doctors knew just how extraordinary this situation was. They were not only the best informed participants in the process, but they were also in the best position to make decisions that would have been the the patients best interest. They could have, and should have done this long before it became front page news and they had to announce measures that will effectively punish the mother instead of help her.

After all, with some planning and coordination, money could have been raised to pay the mother's mortgage, sponsors could have been lined up to renovate the house and provide the equipment and supplies necessary to raise eight--or right, fourteen--children at once, and caregivers could have been arranged; all this long ago, certainly well before the proverbial diaper hit the fan. Now the doctors are trapped--hoisted by their own petard, as it were--protecting the children at the expense of the mother, whom they previously 'helped'.

Makes me wonder what the doctors have in mind this time. Oh wait, I know. Nothing.