Smelt Cakes

It’s quiet here. The phones are dead and the techs seem to be running themselves for a change. In an effort to focus on the good memories of my wife, I have thought back to the incident of the Smelt Cakes.

Soon after Mags and I started dating, we developed a tradition with another couple of having each other over for diner one night a week. We would take turns hosting, and on the first night it was our turn, Mags decided that she was going to show off. The result was one of the few truly disastrous meals I can ever remember her producing.

She pulled out all of the stops, digging into her cookbooks to produce the most elegant diner she could. As the primary recipient of this effort to impress, I was kept in the dark as to the preparations. Finally, Wednesday rolled around and I went over to her place after work.

My attempts to help out got me firmly shooed out of the kitchen, thus establishing a long-standing tradition between us. We are both fairly good cooks (strike that, I’m a good cook, she is excellent) but we cannot be in the same kitchen at the same time. The conflict that inevitably results is not a pretty sight.

So I set the table, and then entertained John and Abbie while Mags put the finishing touches on diner. Finally, the meal was ready and we were summoned to the dining room. The table was beautiful, and the food smelled wonderful, so we all sat down to eat.

Taking up my glass of sparkling grape juice, I offered a toast to the chef, took a drink, and promptly spat the contents back into the glass. All of us are in recovery, and instead of sparkling grape juice, Mags had picked up a bottle of so-called Nonalcoholic Wine. (Which still has an alcohol content. So much for truth in advertising.) The fumes from the alcohol had hit my nasal passages, and I want points for only spitting it out (and hitting the glass, I might add), and not spewing the contents of my stomach.

The offending beverage was quickly removed and substitutes were brought to the table. The Mags revealed what she had been working on, Smelt a la Benedictine.

Smelt.

Fish.

An incident in my childhood involving a perch bone had left me with a deep and abiding loathing of fish and all things fishy. I cannot stand to eat fish of any description. Shellfish are all right, apart from their tendency to make me gassy enough to clear out a cow-barn, but fish of any description are totally off limits. Here I was, looking down at an admittedly beautiful fish dish that my new girlfriend had just worked long and hard to prepare for me. So, I, who was one of Uncle Sams Misguided Children, did one of the bravest things I have ever done in my life: I picked up one of the delicate pastry shells and bit deeply into it.

The smell of the fish and the fishy taste struck me like a fist. I fought down an urge to gag that was even stronger than the one the alcohol had produced. Trying, not terribly successfully, to not let the waves of nausea that were washing over me show on my face. I chewed the offending morsel. And chewed. And chewed. Then I realized, I had forgotten how to swallow.

Looking at the face of my new girlfriend, I realized that my inner turmoil was leaking out into my expression. Steeling myself, I managed to nerve myself into swallowing the bite and managed to choke out, “It’s delicious, Honey.”

Mags picked up hers and then said one of the most chilling things I have ever heard her utter, “Oh, Dear, I think the Smelt is off.”

Abbie, ever the gourmand, had just finished her second and was reaching for her third. She actually turned green, and she and I raced each other for the bathroom. I would like to say that my manners won out, but the pure fact of the matter is that she was faster than I was. So, she got the toilet and I had to make due with the trashcan.

There have been a few memorably bad meals since then. The Meat Lump incident and the time the sauce was made with spoiled cream come to mind. Still, nothing has yet (or hopefully ever will) match the Smelt Cakes.