Last night I was bored.  I went into my mom’s room, flopped down on the bed and picked up the nearest book to peruse.  While not necessarily age-appropriate for me, that book happened to be I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman, by Nora Ephron.

After skimming the first few sections about her aging neck and an oddly detailed riff on how she hates purses I was thinking, “this book’s not really for me, but give me twenty years and I’ll probably be standing in line for her autograph.” Then my eye caught a glimpse of the word ‘food.’  Now that interests me. I flipped back a couple pages to read what she had to say on the matter.  She talked a lot about her dear friend, cookbook author, Lee Bailey and how at his dinner parties he would often serve simple dishes like pork chops, grits, collard greens, cooked to absolute perfection.  But then (to her great surprise) something like a dish of baked crab apples.  She went on to say,

“The most important thing I learned from Lee was something I call the Rule of Four.  Most people serve three things for dinner – some sort of meat, some sort of starch, and some sort of vegetable – but Lee always served four.  And the fourth thing was always something like crab apples.  A casserole of lima beans and pears cooked for hours with brown sugar and molasses.  Peaches with cayenne pepper.  Sliced tomatoes with honey.  Whatever it was, that fourth things seemed to have an almost magical effect on the eating process.  You never got tired of the food because there was always another taste on the plate that seemed simultaneously to match it and contradict it . . . . ”

I learned a lot from that one page. Sometimes we think that in order to make a meal interesting, we have to make something completely different.  A four-course Indian meal for friends, bouillabaisse from scratch, or homemade croissants for brunch.  But even though its fun to experiment, there is real value in cooking what you know and doing it well.

Lee Bailey’s suggestion to make a fourth dish is inspired.  A semi-experimental, but jazzy addition to a simple supper.  A conversation piece of sorts, a dish that brings everything together – like an interesting artifact from a trip abroad, a really attractive flower arrangement or a piece of fascinating artwork.

If people don’t ‘get it’ or appreciate it, you’ve still got old faithful to rely on and something to laugh about with your family or guests.  But if it’s a success, you look like an inspired culinary genius.  It doesn’t have to be as weird and wild as pears and lima beans, but something that brings a meal together and makes people say, “well I would never have thought to make that, but it certainly makes the dish!”

(Apparently, Lee Bailey never served fish to his guests.  But, we do.  So here is a recipe for a citrus radish salsa to serve with fish or chicken.)