I will admit fully and freely that, as a child, I very much took for granted that my mother is quite a brilliant chef. Not only were her recipes delicious and diverse (I don’t remember ever having the same thing twice in one week—a feat in itself), but everything always came out at exactly the same time. I didn’t realize the vast skill and planning this took until, when I was a teenager, she went out of town briefly and I tried to make my dad dinner. The chicken was burned on the outside, frozen in the middle, the peas were soggy, and I don’t even want to think about the rice. The only thing I could think to do was tearfully yell at my dad (who, good man that he is, took the unwarranted abuse with great grace) and then make tuna melts.
My continued culinary learning curve generally depended upon having a very patient dining companion—patient not only with the more or less edible product of my endeavors, but also with my hysterics throughout the cooking process. My roommate in Italy was one such companion. She would look on calmly as I perched on a footstool (the counters were remarkably high in our tiny kitchen), frantically trying to whisk a sauce into submission and yelling at the stubborn lumps. There was much rejoicing when I finally hit upon a successful recipe: Dijon and Balsamic vinegar marinated chicken. I also found out that one cannot go wrong with basil, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella. Like I said, it was a learning curve.
Once I had mastered a few simple meals, I realized the next major step in my cooking career would be the mastery of our most sacred family recipes, the ones that invariably meant home. I knew that at some point, somewhere between my basic sustenance and my mother’s mastery, food became more than what you chew and swallow for nourishment. It became a ritual, a two-way comfort mechanism. There were things I could not take with me, like the way my house smells or the feel of the back-porch floorboards on my feet, but I could take the recipes with me and try to make a new home with them.
A week after starting my first job, I told my sister over the phone that I was completely lost. Having vast experience with being far from home for work, she told me that whenever she is settling into a new place, the first thing she does is make her steel-cut oatmeal. The food and the ritual of preparation are comforting in their familiarity, their predictability. She asked me what thing meant home to me.
“Meatloaf,” I sniffled into the phone.
“Then make meatloaf.”
So I did. The act of pouring, squishing, and patting was the same as it always had been, and the homesickness got a little better.
Months later, I made my first batch of pilaf in my new apartment. I had inherited my grandmother’s pots and pans, and making her recipe, the staple carbohydrate of my childhood, was a little unnerving. The recipe involves the very strict admonition NOT TO PEEK, and I waited with no small amount of anxiety without touching the lid. When the required time had passed and I uncovered the pan, I think I actually wept a little bit because it looked exactly right. It tasted even better.
Recently I undertook an even bigger task: my mom’s clam chowder. My sweetheart had told me he absolutely loved chowder, so in preparation for his visit, I gathered the requisite ingredients (did you know they sell bottled clam juice? Like, the juice of clams?) and got down to business. My mother was on-call that night, and was not surprised that when the phone rang (several times) it was me on the other end, screaming things like, “OH GOD, IS THE BACON SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE THAT?” (Incidentally, it is the bacon that makes the chowder.) Mom knew the recipe, and the unwritten modifications, by heart, and coached me through valiantly. Unfortunately for my nerves, the recipe doesn’t look like much until you add the final ingredient: the half and half.
But when I did, I swear it was like transubstantiation in a Dutch oven pot.
Where but a moment ago there had been a dubious-looking pile of glop, some miracle had occurred and I was staring into a pot of my mom’s clam chowder. When I tasted it, I actually whooped with joy and began dancing around my kitchen like an idiot. Next stop: Italian wedding soup.
Some of the more scientifically-minded people out there may point out that a recipe is a recipe for a reason: you follow the same instructions and you will get the same results. Not being scientifically-minded myself, I find that to be a precise load of hooey, because in the kitchens of my mother and my grandmothers, there was a lot more going on than just the combination of ingredients. Our lives happened in those kitchens. There were inevitably children of varying ages and dispositions tromping in and out, dogs underfoot, and probably three or more conversations happening simultaneously. “Well-tamed chaos” may seem like an oxymoron, but to me that’s the perfect description of home. And in the midst of that chaos, there was always incredible food.
So maybe that’s why I have a desperate need for my recipes to come out. If I can make something good from the chaos, then the chaos will have been worth it. My long-distance friends have become used to sudden screams and crashes of pots and pans over the phone—they know that just means I’m in the kitchen. I’m willing to be a mess, but from the mess, so help me God there had better emerge something meaningful. Extrapolate that outwards, and you get the idea.
I have learned the hard way that there is no point at which the universe presents you with a certificate of adulthood, ala the Wizard of Oz handing out hearts and diplomas and medals of valor. I make meaning in my life where I found meaning in my childhood: in cooking, in comforting, and in being a chaotic and social creature.
Fortunately, ‘tis the season for all of those things:
I am immensely proud of the fact that yesterday I picked up my first ever solo Christmas tree: a marvelously plump, six foot tall Balsam, which I have named Noël. And I mean I literally picked it up. And carried three city blocks in high-heeled boots to the T. When I got home, I immediately put on the two definitive (if odd-couple) Christmas albums of my childhood: Nat King Cole and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s respective carols. Shortly, my DVD of “White Christmas” will arrive via UPS.
And next week, I will make the traditional family Christmas cookies, because the whole shebang just wouldn’t be the same without them.
