My (earnest, irate) thoughts

One of my favorite meals to prepare used to be chicken Bryan, a Carraba’s recipe that involves chicken breasts heavily salted and peppered, with minced onions, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes simmered in lemon juice and white wine (gasp!), with crumbled goat cheese on top.

Anyhow, when I married Yusuf, I was disappointed not to cook with alcohol anymore. Lots of recipes call for a half-cup of beer or wine; I asked if it was OK to keep ‘wine, just for cooking with’ in the house. He said no. I said, ‘but it all cooks off.’ He said no. He had never had alcohol, never in his 32 years. For him it was always a non-issue; he had no desire to take a break from reality, no matter how harsh it gets. And since he didn’t want to drink it, he didn’t want to do anything close to it, either (like cook with it). We each have a weak side, where evil whispers works ‘best’ — but for Yusuf, alcohol wasn’t it.

I gave up drinking slightly before I became Muslim (the ix-nay on alcohol and necessity of the headscarf were the two main deterrents to my nafs) after reading a lot about the well-documented harms of alcohol, and the benefits of a diet lacking in alcohol. As I’ve mentioned before, the antioxidants in red wine — often given as a ‘benefit’ of light to moderate imbibing — are less than the antioxidants in blueberries, artichokes, blackberries, strawberries, apples, plums, pecans or pinto beans. So yeah, there’s more than one way to neutralize those free radicals. And no one ever got a blueberry hangover.

That was two years ago. But recently I wanted to take Yusuf to the Melting Pot, a fondue place that I had enjoyed since high school. There’s cheese fondue started off with beer or white wine, and a broth to cook meat, seafood and vegetables in, and finally a chocolate fondue, often flambéd with a little liquor. Frankly, I had a few concerns — would this place be able to accommodate us?

And yes, yes they could. We even got a waiter who had waited on a gaggle of Muslim ladies the night before, so he knew just what we needed — the spinach-and-artichoke cheese fondue (started off with vegetable broth), the Seafood Trio with broth (we’re going to try The Vegetarian next time) and a chocolate fondue (with no table-side flambé). But even with all his knowledge, our waiter still tried at the very last minute to give us a show with the alcohol flambé, saying, ‘It’ll all cook off anyway’. ‘No!’ we screeched together. He was disappointed, I think, not to get to play with fire.

Anyhow, before you start thinking, “Wow, talk about missing the forest for the trees, obeying the letter of the law — they are getting so hung up on the particulars. There’s a huge gap between drinking it and cooking with it” you should know this: It is perhaps the greatest culinary myth of our time that alcohol burns off, or cooks out, within a few seconds or minutes of heat being added: Research proves that the alcohol does not all cook out.