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Where I come from... at the table
Jul. 31st, 2010 02:03 pmFrom my Mother I learned how to be patient with food. The joy in a recipe that might take a few days to put together. She would bake a lot of bread (especially for the county fair) and taught me how to observe food in the making. If you are doing such and such, look for this and you know it will be ready." It took me awhile to learn patience and learning to submit to the rules of chemistry when it came to food. I always say the first ten years or so I was cooking, it was hit and miss. (I started at the stove when I was about five or six.) There were a lot of heavy cakes, so-so cookies and recipes that tasted okay but weren't pretty to look at. Being a high-strung child I also had a habit of having complete and utter breakdowns when things didn't turn out the way I wanted. Right about now if my Mother is reading this, she is sighing and laughing. She did a lot of calming me down. "It's. okay. I PROMISE. Oh for God's sake, calm the hell down. It is just a god-damned cake." Eventually I got there. My Mom doesn't do a ton of cooking anymore. She does make dinner and obviously she isn't starving but she doesn't go all out like she did when we were kids. She still likes to eat and whenever she comes over I like to put together something good for her and I always send her home with food. She also taught me how to eat This is a woman who is just at home with totino pizza rolls as she is with a tasting menu. She is the one who would tell me stories about some dish she had that had different notes and flavors. She has also been the one to quietly encourage me. When I was living at home she would say, "oh this looks good. you should make that for dinner." So I would. Talk about confidence in someone.
My Father being a chef wasn't so much about taking time. He was home two nights a week for dinner since he did dinner service. Like most chefs he was more about banging it out in a timely fashion. You will see this in most restaurant cooks. He also preferred a more traditional sort of fare when he was home for dinner. My Mother when left to her own devices with young kids kept it pretty simple. After all she had my brother Tom who did not eat dinner for several years (unless it was fried chicken) and me with my range of food phobias. I still like her pork fried rice the best. But Monday and Tuesday night it was all about the meat and potatoes. While I don't really miss my Father I sometimes miss certain dishes he made. He made terrific gazpacho. I have a very distinct memory of him giving me a bowl of that and some bread after I had come home from a ballet class and I was very tired and hot. I can taste the onions and cucumbers and spicy tomatoes. He also made the best menudo. My Mom says she misses that too. I had a real limited menu of meat I would eat as a kid since much of it gicked me out or made me sick to my stomach but I loved the honey-combed texture of the tripe and the soft flavor of the hominy. That stuff was the best. True peasant food. I learned to like offal very early on. It is very odd but the last few years of my parents' marriage my Father's cooking skills kind of fell apart. He wasn't cooking professionally for the most part and when he would cook dinner it was always just off. It was often poorly put together and then he would get pissed when no one wanted it. I have always believed that how you are feeling can affect your cooking. Obviously whatever was taking over his personality did something bad. At the time I was becoming more confident and I was cooking dinner more often. I remembered something the other day that made me laugh. (it is kind of a macabre thing) The day that my Father and I stopped speaking to one another -the fight began over the subject of food. He had picked me up and was taking me home. I think from work or class. By this point my parents had filed for divorce (I believe, or my Mother was in the process of finishing up the paperwork and he wasn't living at home anymore) so obviously things were pretty tense. My Mother had to work and he was going to make dinner for my siblings. I asked him what he was going to make and he said spaghetti and sauce. His spaghetti and sauce had become absolutely atrocious. My siblings didn't like it. I hated the scent of it. I told him, "why are you doing that? no one likes it." It set him off. We began to argue the whole way home. I slammed the door of the car and went to go inside. It was then that he grabbed me by the neck and began to hurl abuse and threaten to really hurt me. I got inside and locked the door. He left with the car. I was done with him as my Father and as a human. Later that night in the parking lot of the local grocery store I was with my Mom and my Father was there as well. (small town y'all!) I began to yell at him in the parking lot and told him that he was dead to me and that I had no Father. Slightly dramatic. My Mother backed me up. Everyone was so exhausted by all of it then.
After my Father was gone for good (and he soon slipped out of the lives of my siblings) it was just my siblings and my Mother and I. I was living at home off and on and I ended up taking over much of the cooking when it came to dinner. It was then I think I truly blossomed in the kitchen. I have found some journals from that period and there are all these recorded thoughts on stuff I had made, recipes I had made up or found. My Mother kept up with her quiet encouragement. We would go to the farmers market and I would see something attractive and she would buy it and tell me to make something with it. She would see books on the subject of cooking or food writing and pass them onto me. I suppose some of my own confidence was born out of not having to deal with my Father -who was always quick to take credit for anything anyone ever did. We as a family had gotten rid of this enormous stressful presence in our lives and so we kind of held tight together and took care of one another and this is how I knew how to take care of people. It saved me too.
A strange thought to realize I have been cooking for twenty-five years. I wonder what I should do with the next twenty-five...
My Father being a chef wasn't so much about taking time. He was home two nights a week for dinner since he did dinner service. Like most chefs he was more about banging it out in a timely fashion. You will see this in most restaurant cooks. He also preferred a more traditional sort of fare when he was home for dinner. My Mother when left to her own devices with young kids kept it pretty simple. After all she had my brother Tom who did not eat dinner for several years (unless it was fried chicken) and me with my range of food phobias. I still like her pork fried rice the best. But Monday and Tuesday night it was all about the meat and potatoes. While I don't really miss my Father I sometimes miss certain dishes he made. He made terrific gazpacho. I have a very distinct memory of him giving me a bowl of that and some bread after I had come home from a ballet class and I was very tired and hot. I can taste the onions and cucumbers and spicy tomatoes. He also made the best menudo. My Mom says she misses that too. I had a real limited menu of meat I would eat as a kid since much of it gicked me out or made me sick to my stomach but I loved the honey-combed texture of the tripe and the soft flavor of the hominy. That stuff was the best. True peasant food. I learned to like offal very early on. It is very odd but the last few years of my parents' marriage my Father's cooking skills kind of fell apart. He wasn't cooking professionally for the most part and when he would cook dinner it was always just off. It was often poorly put together and then he would get pissed when no one wanted it. I have always believed that how you are feeling can affect your cooking. Obviously whatever was taking over his personality did something bad. At the time I was becoming more confident and I was cooking dinner more often. I remembered something the other day that made me laugh. (it is kind of a macabre thing) The day that my Father and I stopped speaking to one another -the fight began over the subject of food. He had picked me up and was taking me home. I think from work or class. By this point my parents had filed for divorce (I believe, or my Mother was in the process of finishing up the paperwork and he wasn't living at home anymore) so obviously things were pretty tense. My Mother had to work and he was going to make dinner for my siblings. I asked him what he was going to make and he said spaghetti and sauce. His spaghetti and sauce had become absolutely atrocious. My siblings didn't like it. I hated the scent of it. I told him, "why are you doing that? no one likes it." It set him off. We began to argue the whole way home. I slammed the door of the car and went to go inside. It was then that he grabbed me by the neck and began to hurl abuse and threaten to really hurt me. I got inside and locked the door. He left with the car. I was done with him as my Father and as a human. Later that night in the parking lot of the local grocery store I was with my Mom and my Father was there as well. (small town y'all!) I began to yell at him in the parking lot and told him that he was dead to me and that I had no Father. Slightly dramatic. My Mother backed me up. Everyone was so exhausted by all of it then.
After my Father was gone for good (and he soon slipped out of the lives of my siblings) it was just my siblings and my Mother and I. I was living at home off and on and I ended up taking over much of the cooking when it came to dinner. It was then I think I truly blossomed in the kitchen. I have found some journals from that period and there are all these recorded thoughts on stuff I had made, recipes I had made up or found. My Mother kept up with her quiet encouragement. We would go to the farmers market and I would see something attractive and she would buy it and tell me to make something with it. She would see books on the subject of cooking or food writing and pass them onto me. I suppose some of my own confidence was born out of not having to deal with my Father -who was always quick to take credit for anything anyone ever did. We as a family had gotten rid of this enormous stressful presence in our lives and so we kind of held tight together and took care of one another and this is how I knew how to take care of people. It saved me too.
A strange thought to realize I have been cooking for twenty-five years. I wonder what I should do with the next twenty-five...
