The Indian in the Cupboard
GRILLED ROAST BEEF
Long before Toy Story came out it was common knowledge around the Nicoletti household that our toys came to life when we left the room. Looking back, I have a sneaking suspicion that my mom’s stories about the secret life of her Papa Bear might have been a ruse to get us to take better care of our toys—which, admittedly, worked like a charm. Papa Bear was my mom’s favorite stuffed animal when she was a child, and he was a legend in our house. She had seemingly endless stories about catching him moving around when she was pretending not to look—scratching his ears or snuggling farther under the blanket. He had been loved to the point of being completely furless, one shiny black eye hanging precariously from a thread, giving him an adorably deranged smirk. My sisters and I took turns sleeping with him, and we always made sure he was somewhere comfortable before we left for school. We even memorized the position we left him in, so that we could spot if he had moved while we were gone.
There was never any question in our minds that all of our toys had a rich secret life. We wondered constantly what their personalities were really like, which ones were fighting, and which ones were in love. Every day before school my older sister, Ande, would announce to all of the toys in our room that although we were leaving and would be back later, they didn’t have to stop doing what they were doing when we got home. They were safe, she told them, and we would never tell anyone that they were really alive. After school we would creep up to our bedroom as quietly as possible and fling open the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the world of our imagining, but it was always frustratingly out of reach. I still remember the fear in my friend Hannah’s eyes when I told her excitedly that her favorite teddy bear was in fact alive. And it must be said that the thought of some of our toys coming to life—particularly our troll dolls and a large alien figurine that my dad called “the it”—was unsettling. There were nights that I lay awake, convinced that I heard the trolls shuffling around, plotting revenge for that time I put them all in tiny toilet-paper diapers.
Some of the most popular and enduring children’s movies and books of all time feature toys coming to life—from Toy Story to Corduroy to The Velveteen Rabbit—proof that my sisters and I weren’t the only kids who harbored this fantasy. Of all the books in this vein, Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard was by far my favorite. My mom and her twin sister read it to my cousin Cam and me the summer before second grade, and to this day it remains one of my most vividly remembered reading experiences. To me, the most thrilling element of the book was the fact that Omri, the protagonist, got to live out every imaginative child’s fantasy—the one that we played out over and over again when we sat our stuffed animals at the breakfast table, or forced cake into their fur mouths at tea parties and bedroom-floor picnics—the fantasy of getting to feed your most beloved toys.
Much of the book’s beginning is centered on Omri’s quest to meet Little Bear’s digestive demands. At first he is flummoxed by what to feed the toy he has brought to life: “What did Indians eat?” he asks himself. “Meat, chiefly, he supposed, deer meat, rabbits, the sort of animals they could shoot on their land.” Unfortunately for Omri, his British cabinets are filled only with “biscuits, jam, peanut butter, that sort of thing.” When he finds a can of corn, he’s relieved, having learned in school that Native Americans grew and harvested corn. The canned corn is far from what Little Bear is used to. He’s so tiny he has to hold one single kernel with both hands. He is skeptical at first, “turning the corn around in both hands, for it was half as big as his head.” Eventually, though, “he smelled it. A great grin spread over his face. He nibbled it. The grin grew wider.”
Little Bear’s biggest demand is for meat to cook, and Omri comes up with the genius idea of building him a meat-spit from his Erector set. Little Bear isn’t used to using a spit, but “he soon got the hang of it. The chunk of steak turned and turned in the flame, and soon lost its raw red look and began to go gray and then brown,” and before you know it the bedroom is filled with “the good juicy smell of roasting beef.”
Cam and I were awed by that meat-spit, and we begged our parents to let us build one of our own over one of the enormous bonfires we frequently had in the summer. The closest we got, though, was watching our moms prepare roast beef for our enormous family. Because the summers were oppressively hot and our house wasn’t air conditioned, our moms always cooked the roast on the grill out back. Cam and I would pull up chairs next to the grill and watch as they seared it off, thrilled every time the fat dripped and caused the flames to flare up. While we waited for the roast to cook, we peeled back ears of sweet summer corn, rubbing off the silk and checking for worms, and we talked about Omri and Little Bear and the cowboy Boone. When the roast came off the grill to rest, the corncobs went on, wrapped back up in their husks. On these nights we sat down to eat feeling exultantly close to Omri, Little Bear and his wife, Bright Stars, and Boone, as though we had made something of our own come alive.
THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD
Grilled Roast Beef
Serves 6 to 8
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon coarsely cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper (optional)
Finely chopped leaves of 2 rosemary sprigs
4 garlic cloves, pressed through a garlic press
1 (3-to 4-pound)boneless strip loin roast, fat trimmed to ¼ inch
Mash together the oil, salt, black pepper, red pepper (if using), rosemary, and garlic, rubbing the mixture together with your fingers to distribute the ingredients throughout. Rub the mixture all over the roast and let it sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes. (For best results, wrap the seasoned roast and refrigerate it overnight; just be sure you allow it to come back to room temperature before cooking the next day.)
When the roast is ready and the grill is hot, place the roast on the hottest part of the grill, close the lid, and sear until a good crust starts to form and the meat releases from the grate easily, 5 to 8 minutes per side. (If you have a standard charcoal grill, make one side of the grill hotter by piling more coals on that side, and sear the meat on that side.)
Once the meat is seared, turn the heat down to let the beef roast, fat-side up. (If you have a three-burner grill, place the roast in the middle and turn that middle burner off. If you have a four-burner grill, turn the middle two off and place the roast there. If you have a charcoal grill, simply move the roast to the cooler side of the grill.) Place a cabled instant-read thermometer into the thickest portion of the roast and close the lid. If there is a thermometer on your grill telling you the grill’s temperature, it should be between 300°F and 350°F.
Let the roast cook until the instant-read thermometer reads 125°F to 130°F for medium-rare, 30 to 40 minutes.
Remove the roast and let it sit for at least 10 minutes before carving it against the grain and serving.