Elizabeth David Is a Pain. Plus, a Rabbit and a Bath.

Okay, here's where I piss off every serious cook and foodie in the country: I don't like Elizabeth David's recipes.

There. Commence throwing your fancy, heirloom, organic tomatoes and rotten free-range, humane eggs. I think her cookbooks are irritating and the recipes are ridiculous.

I say this, however, after making all of one of her recipes. And that only to please the MiL.

See, the MiL bought a bunch of eggplants at the farmers market awhile ago. And she mentioned that before I froze them or whatever, she wanted to try making a recipe in Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking book. But the MiL hasn't had a chance to make it, since it requires an hour in the oven, so I decided to make it for her. I mean, this is the woman who will make any ridiculous cake I request and has regularly baked things for me that she won't even eat, so I figured the least I could do was make her some eggplant.

Eggplant for cake. Fair trade, right?

ANYWAY.

Here's the exact recipe for Aubergines en Gigot:

In each whole, unpeeled aubergine, make two rows of small incisions; into these put alternatively small pieces of bacon and cloves of garlic which have been rolled in salt, pepper and herbs, either marjoram or basil.

Put the aubergines in a roasting dish with a little oil poured over them, cover the dish and roast them in a slow oven for about 1 hour.

That's it. I mean, how easy is that, right? Except for the fact that . . . wait. A WHOLE eggplant? Whatever, I cut the stem off at least, because that's not even edible, okay, Ms. David?

Also, two rows? What's a row? Long ways? Around the whole thing? I did two rows around the circumference of eggplant.

Next, whole garlic cloves? How small were your cloves, Ms. David? Because short of hacking a fairly large hole in the side of each eggplant, there is no way a whole clove is going to be inserted in a "small incision."

I sliced the garlic cloves into smaller pieces. Then I rolled them in the salt, pepper, and basil, as instructed, all of which came right off as I attempted to force the pieces into those small incisions.

The pieces of bacon wouldn't even go into the small incisions, so I ended up hacking pretty big holes in the eggplant anyway.

There was cussing, I will admit.

Last, what the hell is a "slow oven"? At this point, sick of Elizabeth David and her stupid recipe, I just set the oven at 300 degrees and trusted to luck.

It tasted like . . . eggplant. But the MiL pronounced it delicious, so that's all that matters.

Next! The rabbit! Nothing to do with Elizabeth David. Though come to think of it, she might have some recipes for rabbit in that handy cookbook of hers, but I'm not going to bother looking.

ANYWAY AGAIN.

Last night as Cubby was splashing around in his bath and I was reading an old National Geographic Magazine article about Sherpas in Nepal (so sue me for being a negligent parent for not kneeling next to the tub and making boat noises for twenty minutes), A. burst into the bathroom waving a dead rabbit by the feet.

"Look, Cubby!" he said. "Look what Daddy shot!"

Cubby looked up, grinned, correctly announced, "Ra,"and then went back to drinking his bath water from his plastic alligator mug.

Not even two years old and already unimpressed by dead wildlife. A child of Blackrock, without doubt.