In the Kitchen with “The Unofficial Simpsons Cookbook”

When I was growing up in Israel, in the nineteen-eighties, my family would travel intermittently to America, thanks to my scientist father’s job, which brought us back and forth. Every time I returned home, the thing I’d long for most was the food that I had left behind in the States. Western fast food came to Israel relatively late (it wasn’t until the early nineties that McDonald’s opened its first outpost in the country), and much of the available fare, if only by dint of Israel’s smallness, was local and fresh. That might sound like a good thing, but, as a finicky child, I much preferred the prefab cuisine that, in my view, was part of the utopian American promise. I wanted food fast, frozen, and processed, its chemically jacked-up flavor as predictable as clockwork: a burger topped with exactly three pickle slices and a single spritz of ketchup; Oreos, their vanilla cream evenly sandwiched and so sweet it made my teeth hurt; bright-yellow Lay’s potato chips, whose saltiness left my tongue tingling. I wanted Eggo waffles, patterned plaid, and a perfectly round pizza adorned with perfectly round pepperoni disks, and completely uniform tacos, and sweet-and-sour pork dipped in syrup so red that it looked plastic. I wanted the sort of food in which the hand of any one individual cook—not to mention the provenance of the cuisine or the complexity of the ingredients—would be obscured by a standardized shape and an explosion of homogeneous flavor, announcing, on first bite, what it was, exactly, that I was eating. I wanted, in other words, cartoon food.

Now that I’m in my forties, and have lived in America full time for nearly two decades, I’ve embraced eating the fresh, the various, the messy, the irregular. And yet something in me lit up when I encountered “The Unofficial Simpsons Cookbook,” a newly released book of recipes inspired by the long-running animated Fox series, and written by Laurel Randolph, a food writer and “Simpsons” fan. Here was, quite literally, cartoon cuisine: the book included seventy recipes based on dishes that have been portrayed in the show, from Krusty Burgers to Agnes Skinner’s Preserves to Bart’s “Supoib” Manhattan.

Any connoisseur of cartoon food knows that it doesn’t get much better than the food depicted in “The Simpsons.” When I was a kid, I’d often felt enticed by the clean lines and vivid colors used to illustrate the various dishes and snacks enjoyed by the characters. Watching Chief Wiggum and his crew of Springfield policemen scarf down doughnuts—their fuchsia icing dappled with a smattering of colorful sprinkles—I found myself thinking, Now that’s what doughnuts should look like! The same went for the Springfield Elementary cafeteria tater tots, as uniform as squat soldiers, or a pile of hot dogs, tucked snugly in their buns, with a perfect squiggly line of yellow mustard drawn along their length. Even produce is given this standardized treatment on the show. Just the other day, my ten-year-old daughter and I were watching a Season 10 episode in which Homer, the family’s tubby paterfamilias, plucks a corncob from a field and eats it raw. “Pesticides,” he murmurs, chomping energetically. “Carbamate, if I’m not mistaken.” This, of course, is a joke about the toxicity of America’s agrochemically treated food, and Homer’s embrace of it. Still, I understood him: with its even, golden kernels, that corn looked undeniably tasty.

Was it really possible, as Randolph promises in her introduction, to “enjoy the show’s iconic dishes in the comfort of [my] own home”? The cookbook is divided into sections, including major meals, snacks, desserts, and drinks, and the dishes range from the fairly practical (Monkey Paw Turkey Sandwiches) to the eccentric (Hot Fudge Sundaes with Tequila Ice Cream) to the truly nuts (Krusty Partly Gelatinated Nondairy Gum-Based Beverages, whatever that might be). I briefly wondered whether the book was made for actual cooking, or whether it was intended, first and foremost, for fans to thumb through and recall their favorite “Simpsons” moments. Eventually, I decided that the two weren’t mutually exclusive. After all, is there a greater act of devotion than crafting something in the image of your beloved? “I wouldn’t necessarily cook from this particular book,” my colleague Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker’s restaurant critic, told me. (Hannah likes “The Simpsons,” though perhaps a hair less than I do.) “I would cook from ‘The Sopranos’ cookbook, though, because I’m a ‘Sopranos’ superfan.”

I still had one concern. Could my long-held desire for cartoon food be satisfied by my own real-life bumbling in the kitchen? Randolph’s instructions were methodical and straightforward, which I appreciated, but this also made them incongruous with the origin stories of the dishes. In a recipe for fried-fish sandwiches—based on a Season 7 episode in which Homer, in a harebrained scheme, attempts to gain enough weight to be considered disabled—Randolph reminds us, diligently, that “the tartar sauce can be made ahead of time,” as it “will keep for up to 3 days in the refrigerator.” Even the most ridiculous dishes, in Randolph’s rendering, seemed relatively easy to make, such as Lisa’s Chocolate-Cherry Experiment Cupcakes, which she originally prepares, in Season 4, as a lure to gauge who is smarter, her brother Bart or a hamster.

I started off easy, with the I Love You Breakfast recipe, adapted from a Season 4 episode in which Marge makes Homer breakfast on Valentine’s Day. (“And this is for my huggy-bug, in honor of this special day,” she says, serving her husband strips of bacon that spell out “I LOVE YOU,” with two round sunny-side-up eggs in place of the “O”s.) Even by my standards, the recipe was extremely remedial. (Indeed, no one let me forget it: “It’s just bacon cut into letters,” my daughter said. “Did your daughter make this?” my editor asked, when I texted her a picture of the dish. “You cook like Homer,” my husband noted, a little meanly.) But would it give rise to true cartoon food? As I sliced the bacon into pieces (“Cut 4 slices bacon into halves and 2 slices bacon into quarters,” Randolph instructs), it crumbled under my knife, creating loping, crooked letters. My eggs, too, were far from forming perfect “O”s, and, with all the food crowded in a too-small pan—the largest I had—the sentence read less like a declaration of affection and more like a ransom note. The flavors, however, weren’t too bad: the meat was extremely salty and oily, and so were the eggs. Both were also nicely crispy.

Emboldened by my relative success, a couple of days later I tackled a slightly more ambitious project: Bart’s America Balls, in which ground beef or pork is rolled into spheres, broiled or pan-fried, and simmered in barbecue sauce. The balls appear in Season 9, when Bart makes them for Principal Skinner’s anniversary party. “These are in honor of his Army days!” Bart says, gesturing to the balls, each one adorned with a small American flag. It took me about twenty-five minutes to prepare Randolph’s version of the dish, and when I was done I bit cautiously into one of the meaty, glazed treats. I was pleasantly surprised: they were tangy, with the subtle kick of Worcestershire sauce! I ate a few more, as did my daughter and my husband.

Randolph took at least one liberty with this particular recipe. In the show, Bart’s America Balls are made out of dog food. (Why? Marge asks her son. “My theory is, Skinner likes dog food,” he replies, as Homer, unbothered by the revelation, greedily stuffs the America Balls in his mouth.) Sometimes, real life is preferable to a cartoon, after all.

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