I asked my 11-year-old daughter, the other day, to name one thing that her father was better at, more accomplished at, generally more talented at than her mother. She knitted her brow in serious concentration for a minute or two, before giving her thoughtful, carefully considered answer. "Daddy, I think you're better at eating doughnuts."
My daughter's right, of course. Mrs. Platt is a sunny, positive person (she's from a family of eternally sunny, positive Midwesterners), while I tend toward worry, pessimism and gloom (I'm a writer who grew up on the gloomy East Coast). Being an architect, she is practical, optimistic and terminally well organized, while I tend to be distracted, disheveled and a mess. My wife is beautiful, slim and energetic. I'm slothful, slow-moving and round as a blimp, thanks to the unrelenting stream of sauce-drenched pastas, fine wines and, yes, doughnuts that I consume night after night, month after month and year after year as a professional restaurant critic in New York City.
Is this a bad thing? Of course not. In fact, I would argue that in any healthy, honest long-term relationship, it's the natural state of affairs. I come from a long line of lucky slobs who have managed, by hook or by crook, to marry above their station. My grandfather married the very witty and cultivated daughter of a Park Avenue lawyer, and my father married a woman (that would be my mother) who was, by his own happy admission, smarter than he was, more sophisticated (she came from Manhattan, he from the suburbs) and far more beautiful, too. We Platt men know in our bones that survival over the long haul, in life and in marriage, isn't about harmonious compatibility. It's about balance, and the perfectly balanced marriage is one where the champion alpha wife outshines her shambling omega husband in almost every possible way.
Until recently, there were still one or two things that I did pretty well, compared with my alpha wife. I gave rambling toasts at weddings better than she did, and because it's my job to eat, I've also, historically, been the better cook. But recently she's begun to encroach on this territory too. My wife enjoys cooking, and sometimes she likes to try a new recipe in the morning when she knows she won't have time to make dinner after work. This means our apartment is often filled, when I come back from my morning workout, with the enticing smells of fresh baked pies and gently bubbling soups and stews.
The other day she cooked a bread pudding in the morning, and left it to cool on the stove, for dinner. This comforting confection was made in the French style, with torn bits of croissant instead of bread, and it was pooled in a sweet stew of raisins, egg yolks and cream. And I was left strict written instructions not to touch it. Because I work from home, I had a taste in the morning, to make sure it was done. Then I had another slice at lunch. Then at tea, when the girls returned from school, I couldn't help myself. I sat down with my daughters, and we did what Daddy does best. We ate what was left of this delicious dessert in one happy sitting.
A French winemaker whose little-known 2003 vintage was catapulted to oenological stardom by a Japanese television cartoon has withdrawn the bottles from international sales in an attempt to prevent it from becoming the preserve of wealthy speculators.
