I Made Rachel's English Trifle and Forced My Entire Family to Eat Information technology

Now is the wintertime of our Friends content. The testify turns 25 this month, and because of the strange significance that our culture has attached to multiples of five, the internet has spent the past few weeks rehashing the series: debating whether Friends is Actually Bad, continuing past while Meghan Trainor inexplicably rerecords the theme song, listing "ways to celebrate" the show'southward legacy.

When my editor asked us if we had any ideas about how to cover Friends' ceremony, I was briefly reminded of the chaotic meaninglessness of the universe. Everything almost Friends had already been said, and would exist said again, perhaps in 5 more years, so once again five more years after that. What did I, a adult female named Rachel who has never once escaped her own hymeneals, have to add to the Möbius strip of the Friends soapbox?

Suddenly, I knew. It striking me like a couch tumbling down a flight of narrow stairs. I would brand Rachel'southward fucked-up English trifle and forcefulness-feed information technology to the people I loved. Why, you ask? The better question: Why not? Had it been done before, you inquire? Admittedly, perhaps thousands of times. So why would I practise information technology again? Perhaps I wanted to discover if there was an inherent meaning in the act of repetition. Perhaps I wanted to know if I, an abysmal chef whose profound culinary failures are well documented, could succeed at cooking a meal if it was supposed to be bad on purpose. Possibly, every bit someone who made biscuits literally one time and drew the ire of the unabridged beige internet, I idea it was important that I ingratiate myself to some other corner of the internet: the poorly made trifle cyberspace. Perhaps I wanted to know if my family unit loved me enough to eat whipped cream with meat in it.

In the Friends episode in question, entitled "The One Where Ross Got High," Monica nervously charges Rachel with the task of making dessert for Thanksgiving dinner. Rachel, a flighty bitch similar me who cannot follow a recipe for more than than three minutes without condign distracted past the pointless minutiae of her life, advisedly prepares a traditional English language trifle in an endeavour to prove to her friends and herself that she does not suck at everything.

Rachel well-nigh succeeds, but ultimately, she is felled by a mysterious incident wherein the pages of her cookbook go glued together. Unwittingly, she mixes upward the recipes for an English language trifle and a shepherd's pie. Her friends, who do non want to discourage her fledgling culinary cocky-expression, swallow information technology anyway in a beautiful articulation of platonic love.

I decided that, for my own version of Rachel's trifle, I would not follow an internet-derived recipe, just rather exclusively follow her verbal instructions: "Information technology's a trifle. It'south got all of these layers. First in that location's a layer of ladyfingers, and then a layer of jam, then custard, which I made from scratch, then raspberries, more than ladyfingers, then beefiness sauteed with peas and onions, then a little more than custard, and and so bananas, and then I just put some whipped foam on elevation!" I did, still, take to find an internet recipe for "custard from scratch," then I looked for the simplest one and found this version at The Kitchn.

Considering I was going home to Chicago for a funeral around the time this assignment was due, I decided I would farther traumatize my family by cooking this trifle immediately after said funeral and forcing them to eat it. Because they have spent 3 decades reluctantly acquiescing to these sorts of deranged ideas, they agreed with no further questions; the simply objection came from my dad, who didn't believe I would exist capable of making bespoke custard. "I've got news for you: Yous're non going to make custard from scratch," he said. But I was adamant to show him wrong, especially in the face of decease.

The night before the funeral, we stopped at my parents' best friends' house for a drink, which turned into 12 drinks and a rousing discussion about the afterlife. Several glasses of wine in, I briefly mentioned the recipe I'd be attempting the next mean solar day, and Donna, a delightful Italian woman whose home is a treasure trove of carbohydrates, reached into a chiffonier and handed me a classic trifle bowl, approximately 50 lady fingers, and two containers of whipping foam. Stunned, I insisted she come over the next twenty-four hours to taste the meaty fruits of my labor. The side by side day, after the funeral, I headed to the suburban grocery shop and purchased the residue of the ingredients.

The raw materials. Photo: Rachel Handler

Back in my family's ancestral suburban home, I began whipping up the custard. My boyfriend left the kitchen immediately, frightened. I fucked upward the custard just equally apace. The recipe called for three egg yolks and whole milk, heated separately and combined at the final possible minute and so that the eggs didn't overcook. Distracted past the complex mechanics of the human lifecycle — and the whipped foam containers, which claimed to require scissors but did not naturally lend themselves to a scissor excision — I combined the milk and eggs correct away and constitute myself staring plaintively at a xanthous glop that would not thicken. I decided to let it simmer for awhile in hopes that it would detect its way to its true course.

Next, I prepared the beef. I chopped an onion haphazardly, tossed it into a sizzling pan of olive oil, screamed at the scalding hot spray that resulted, calmed myself downward, then threw a shit ton of basis beef on top of information technology all. As I mushed the beefiness around with a giant spoon, bustling the Star is Built-in soundtrack to myself, my dad, a consummate chef who has been known to spend eight hours making a single pot of spaghetti sauce, stopped by. He gently placed his hands on both sides of his face in an expression of bone-deep horror and disgust.

The ground beef and not-custard. Photo: Rachel Handler

"This is not how you cook ground beef," he said, taking the spoon out of my hands and breaking the beef into small chunks with a pair of forks. He surveyed the rest of the scene before him: the non-custard burbling and distended, the half-empty container of jelly, the scattered purse of frozen peas. "I take to call the EPA to brand sure that this won't harm the environs when we throw it away," he said.

The beef taken intendance of, I moved on to the whipping cream. I poured both containers into a bowl, grabbed the same whisk I'd been using for the custard, and began to churn. I felt similar a competent, hearty woman of the olden days, happily waiting for my xiv children to return from a hunting trip with their father and nowadays me with the pelt of a beautiful, quondam fox who was prepare to die that I would wrap around my caput and wearable to the market. My dad came back and stared at me. "This is going to have 60 years," he said, and handed me an electric mixer. "A troubling regret in my life is that I failed to pass this skill set onto you lot."

Using the mixer turned out to exist a meditative experience. I plant myself getting lost in the circles of whipped foam, wondering again whether I was a Monica or a Rachel. I love to make clean and force all of my friends to come over to my house all of the fourth dimension — a classic Monica — just I am also deeply incompetent at almost everything, which is a authentication of Rachel'due south character. If I couldn't figure out which Friends grapheme I was after 20-plus years of pondering it, did that mean I was doomed to a life of slippery self-awareness? Or was the idea that each person could be slotted frictionlessly into a fictional graphic symbol … concur that thought. My dad, who was struggling to brand a normal dinner effectually the wasteland of my trifle ingredients, again interrupted my reverie. "I experience like 1 of the observers at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory," he mused. "You put on protective habiliment and stand a few miles away, undercover, on the off chance that things get desperately. And when they do, yous don't die correct away. Yous do die, though. But it will exist some time before you die."

Finally, it was time to combine all of the layers. I checked the custard again. It was half solid, which seemed acceptable; weren't nosotros all, at any given fourth dimension, just half solid? I carefully scooped the jam on top of the starting time layer of ladyfingers, and so poured the custard on top of both. It seeped gently into the corners of the trifle pan. I piled a bunch of raspberries and ladyfingers on top of each other, so dumped the entire pan of beefiness sauteed with peas and onions onto everything. I poured in more custard, obscuring the beef, then added some bananas and topped it all off with whipped cream. I felt like the dear kid of Julia Kid and Jackson Pollock.

The structure. Photo: Rachel Handler

"You lot're a balabusta," said my dad, who had now been waiting 90 minutes to use his ain burners to make dinner for his family. "You await so serene." My beau returned from his self-imposed exile and suggested I summit the whipped cream with additional bananas and raspberries. I did, and it looked gorgeous and extremely professional person. The iii of us stared proudly at my creation, forgetting for the moment that there was ground beefiness inside of information technology.

The trifle. Photograph: Rachel Handler

Subsequently that night, after a delicious meal of salmon and spaghetti, I presented the trifle to my family, along with Donna and her married man Dan, both of whom were non bound by contract of claret to gustatory modality my toxic dessert and whose motives remain therefore unknown. "Do nosotros actually have to do this?" asked my 16-twelvemonth-old sister, who was born into a post-Friends earth and therefore is not equally easily persuaded into doing self-destructive things for fun. My mom wordlessly handed me a pile of newspaper plates that read "Merry Christmas," and I scooped out eight servings of beefiness trifle.

I went first, making sure to get a spoonful of each layer into my mouth. To my sophisticated palate, it tasted … good? Sort of like Thanksgiving itself: sweet, salty, rife with controversy and destruction. "I can't believe you just fully did that," said my sister. My family members stared at each other, sending silent messages of support. I implored everyone to follow my pb, and one by one, they bravely dipped their spoons into the meaty whipped cream.

Donna was the first to speak. "I feel like this is adept?" she said. "What is this sauce? Cranberry sauce?" She dipped her spoon dorsum into the trifle, grinning. My sister looked at both of united states, open-mouthed. "You guys are sociopaths," she said.

My dad went next. "This dish is so bad in then many ways," he said, later three silent minutes in which he held his head in his hands. "I am only eating it out of respect for you lot." Dan was a scrap gentler: "I want to say … it's not horrible."

My swain brilliantly managed to avoid commentary considering he offered to film the entire exchange. My mom, who had at this signal fabricated 14 different faces while looking at her plate, pushed a chunk of meat out of the fashion of her custard. "If I had non eaten in several days, I would devour this," she said. "Simply correct now … it's not doing information technology for me."

My sister stared at us all like nosotros were out of our minds. "Information technology's atrocious," she said. "Rachel. Look at this. Look at this!"

I ate my entire plate.

Later, I felt extremely ill, but as well like I had learned something important about life. Life, I decided, was like an English beef trifle. Some days are salty, some days are sweet. Some days are salty and sugariness! (To paraphrase my high-school rabbi.) Some days are whipped cream, and some days are beef with whipped cream. Some days are peas, and some days are peas encased in liquid custard. But if you have the right people around you, they volition swallow those peas with you lot, even if they actually don't desire to and you aren't offering them financial compensation. And later, when yous all feel disgusting, you will connect on that indicate every bit well.

So: Why did I brand Rachel's fucked upwardly trifle? Why make anything? Why dear anything? What price, dignity? What custard, beef?

I Made Rachel's English Trifle and Got My Family to Eat It