Week 6: Broccoli Cheese Spoon Bread

Like many food-obsessed people, I often read cookbooks cover to cover like a novel. I check them out of the library, not to find recipes, but to feel inspired by the idea of finding the recipe that will one day become "the one" that my friends and family remember me for. Surely it's in my genes––my great-grandmother passed down her homemade chocolate pie; my grandmother is known for her biscuits and tomato gravy; my mother practically invented peanut butter balls and veggie casserole. It's become like a drug, this momentary burst of inspiration that comes from finding a simple recipe with a beautiful photo that I am convinced will be toted to pot luck dinners for years to come. Indeed, this heady feeling has kept me coming back to one particular cookbook for more than a decade. Each time I turn to the now-worn page I wonder, could the Broccoli Cheese Spoon Bread be "it?" Easily one of the prettiest dishes in the book, I have pulled this crisp-on-the-outside-soft-in-the-middle bread out of the oven a thousand times in my mind's eye. In my vision, I watch as my family gobbles it up and looks at me appreciatively with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. So, as though fulfilling a prophecy, I chopped this week's gigantic head of broccoli and followed the instructions. I popped the bread into the oven and was elated to find that 40 minutes later it was as beautiful as the book promised. With sheer exuberance, I gathered my family around the table...

I'm not sure if the decade long build-up of this recipe meant it was doomed to fail or if it was just plain bland, but my excitement turned to disappointment with the first bite. I could've added a pound of salt and this dish would still have been missing something vital. I can't tell you what and since I have already written "do not make again" in the margins of the page, I have no intention of experimenting to find out. But it wasn't a complete bust––the kids ate the bits with the cheese and the hubby and I finished the rest out of guilt and a sense of duty to our CSA broccoli. In the end, the spoon bread did technically nourish us, but its beauty (like so many beautiful things) lacked the substance and character needed to carry on a lifelong love affair. And like so many others who have been disappointed by beauty, I am left to continue my search for "the one."