The Country Boy’s Brownies

The more time I spend away from home, I find, the more time I spend thinking about my childhood, more specifically, the way my mother raised us. I see children in public places, screaming their heads off or demanding things in a tone that I find horrid, and I think to myself (or often say aloud to whatever audience I have at the time), “No way we would have gotten away with that in my house.”

My mother was loving, but stern. You have to be when you’ve got four toddlers in the house at once. My mother instilled fear when she had to; her “look” is one that my sisters and I often imitate for fun now, but when you’re six and you get it in the aisle of a supermarket, you’re quick to stop whatever it is you’re doing.. even if you’re not exactly sure what it is that you’ve done. Whatever her methods, they worked: she raised four fairly normal adults, which is more than I can say for a lot of people, and what’s more, we’ve all managed to carve out our own, close, personal relationship with her. I’ll give my mother this: she was hard on us as kids, but once we entered adulthood, she sat back, her work done, and let us grow to be our own people. Which is why, when she was here a week ago, we were able to have conversations about everything and nothing over endless bottles of wine.

One thing that my mother had no tolerance for, though, was complaining. In retrospect, it makes sense: when I see kids whining or crying in public, my mother’s mantras flash through my head: “Is there blood on you? Then you’re fine.”

Maybe it seems harsh, but for me, it was reality, and I’m better for it. It has, however, given me a sense of independence and autonomy that shocks a lot of people, and I have a pain threshold that makes me think that childbirth will probably be a walk in the park. I don’t get sick, and when I do, I tend to shake it off. It takes a lot to get me to admit that I might need to see a doctor. I once had strep for a week and finally fainted before deciding I might need to find someone to put me on antibiotics, and even then, I wrapped myself up in all of my warmest clothes, climbed into a cab and had him drop me off at the nearest hospital. I’ve never really needed anyone to take care of me; I learned at an early age how to take care of myself, much to my own demise on occasion. Case in point: when I had my first anaphylactic reaction to buckwheat, my friends had to call my mother, who found me talking to myself in a strange daze and chugging liters of water in an Upper East Side bodega bathroom.

With the rare exception of delirium, I’ve never needed to be taken care of, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be. Every once in awhile, I wish someone would just guess what I needed, instead of making me break down and ask. I used to think that it would happen someday, but the older I got, the more I realized that that’s something you get when you’re seven, and then it’s gone.

Obviously, when I came to that conclusion, I hadn’t met the Country Boy yet.

The Country Boy has this strange sixth sense when it comes to me. He’s been known to appear at my desk with the cup of coffee I wanted but was too lazy to make. I sometimes home home, dreading the load of laundry I have to do, to find it done. When I climb into bed and silently wish that he would adjust to my irritatingly early bedtime, I hear him say goodbye to his friends on TeamSpeak and shut down his computer to play on his DS while I quietly read my book.

But more than anything, he knows just the way to make me feel taken care of without making me feel powerless. “Lock yourself in tonight,” he said as he left for home the other evening, leaving me alone in the apartment for two days. “I’ll be fine…” I said, waving it off, but I secretly loved it.

The other thing I always wished someone would do for me was cook, but when you teach yourself to cook at 18, it takes a lot for someone to get into the kitchen and make a mess to hopefully create something edible. “But you do it so well…” has always been the response I’ve gotten from boyfriends in the past, and true to form, when I don’t feel like cooking, the Country Boy suggests ordering sushi (not that I’m complaining).

He has, however, appropriated one of my more lauded recipes and made it his own: my famous brownies, requested by everyone who’s ever tried one, are now the Country Boy’s brownies. They’re the only thing he makes, but at least once a month, I come home to the smell of chocolate and butter, to brownies cooling on the cutting board. It may not be dinner, but sometimes, after a long day at school and an even longer ride home, a little bit of dark chocolate is just the thing I need.

The Country Boy’s Brownies

225 g. butter
125 g. dark chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant espresso powder
4 eggs
1 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Cut the butter into cubes and break the chocolate into chunks in a medium, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium, stirring occasionally, until the butter and chocolate are melted together. Add the sugars, salt and espresso powder and stir until well combined. Add the eggs one-by-one, stirring as you add them. Add the flour and stir just until there are no streaks.

Divide the batter between two loaf pans and bake for 15-20 minutes, until the top is just set. Remove and cool 5-10 minutes in the pan, then turn out and finish cooling on a board.