There are two different sides to Lillian Hellman. One is the celebrated playwright, the Joan of Arc of the McCarthy hearings, and the long-time partner of author Dashiell Hammett. She was also an epicurean very nearly on the level of food writer M.F.K. Fisher. We idolize that Lillian.

The second Lillian, before she died in 1984, was a notable grump who often wore a “Want a punch in the nose?” scowl on her face. She limped into her summer town, Vineyard Haven, with the aid of a nurse (perhaps the third or fourth to be fired that week) and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, wreathing her starkly lined face in perpetual smoke. She was the patient who flung hospital trays across the room and a contentious friend who, according to the late author Bill Styron, could argue endlessly about how to thin-slice a Smithfield ham. She was also the summer resident so flinty that, before her burial, the gravedigger reportedly struck a boulder with his backhoe and muttered, “Just like her!” In short, this Lillian, as they say in polite circles, was difficult.

A few months ago, as I was sorting through my cookbooks, I came across Lillian’s, co-written with her long-term best buddy, Peter Feibleman. It’s called Eating Together: Recollections and Recipes (Little/Brown, 1984). Should I save this cookbook with crimped pages and sauce stains? I hadn’t consulted it in years.

Inspired by writer Julie Powell, who cooked – and blogged about – a year’s worth of recipes by Julia Child, I decided to spend a weekend preparing meals from Eating Together. The goal was two-fold: to determine if this cookbook was indeed a masterpiece of foodie lit worth keeping, and to see if I could finally put to rest my long-standing image of the Wicked Witch of West Chop.

The cookbook’s cover sparkles with whimsy. Lillian probably would’ve hated it: a watercolor image of a wrought-iron table and two chairs in a Frenchy sort of garden, done in greens and yellows and apricot. What I chiefly remembered from that cookbook was Lillian’s strict advice about baking potatoes for an hour, then crushing them in your fist with a pot holder, to allow the steam to escape at a number of openings. Cutting into them ruined the flavor, she maintained.

My experiment started Friday night, when I prepared Shrimp Remoulade with a couple of minor adaptations. I’d left fresh parsley off my shopping list, so I substituted dried, plus I nixed the bed of lettuce and instead used rice to make this concoction a meal in one. The re-jiggering of the recipe set off an imagined Lillian barb in my head, along the lines of her signature patter described by Feibleman in his biography, Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman (William Morrow, 1988). A raspy “This is rat dreck!” was not the voice of Lillian Hellman I wished to have pinging around my brain.

Let me mention here that my brand-new husband, Jack Shea, was predisposed not to enjoy Lillian’s Shrimp Remoulade. He’d been a finicky eater in the style of a little kid. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ice cream, and no greens whatsoever had kept him happy all through his recent bachelor years. Another problem: I’d been plying him lately with Lillian stories culled from Feibleman’s tell-all bio.

Jack learned how Lillian’s world-famous home-grown horseradish had been planted over her cesspool and had flourished in a perfect green circle. Jack looked alarmed when I described Lillian’s consigliere role with a bicoastal couple preparing to uncouple. The wife called Lillian to say her husband had offered her the Beverly Hills mansion, five million dollars, and half a million a year for child support. Lillian told her to hold out for more: “He’s a very rich man and you’ve given him thirteen years of your life.” Shortly thereafter, the husband phoned in a rage that his wife had rejected his offer. Lillian purred, “That ungrateful [expletive]!”

Well, Jack loved the shrimp so much that he kept up a stream of mmms and greats. That Lillian! Caustic as she could be, she had also been, by all accounts, a sexy lady and a dazzling flirt, and here she was seducing my husband from beyond.

The next night, Saturday, we attended a potluck dinner in Chilmark. “Potluck?!” Lillian sneered in my brain. But Lillian’s recipe, Chicken Hash, served in a casserole dish, had “potluck” written all over it. Lillian insists that the recipe be prepared at the last minute, but on this evening, her hash got cooked at home before it joined the table of meatballs, salads, and pasta dishes. I imagined the playwright spinning in her nearby grave (somehow the Tisbury householder had snagged a burial plot in Chilmark). Not to worry though. None was left, which is a clear-cut “bravo!” in potluck-speak.

On Sunday night, Jack and I had Lillian’s Endive, Beets, and Walnut Salad, and her Mushroom Bisque, along with her crush-like-a-beer-can baked potatoes. Jack was again transported. Suddenly I found myself a bit jealous of Lillian Hellman and realized that big personalities can have life beyond the grave.

The cookbook now lies atop our “Keep” pile. If you can find an old copy, by all means bring it home and fire up the stove. Just don’t stop by her former house for a handful of horseradish.