I have been thinking about all the recipes of everyone I know and it is so funny and interesting the way their personalities play into everything so well and say so much.
Like my Dad is so unassuming - until you know him and then - surprise! Under the surface - glittering and colorful and baroque - just like his vegetable soup. Such an unassuming classic - but in the hands of my Dad - an event people wait for! I call it, "Dad's Baroque Vegetable soup."
My Mother, definitely "Lamb with mint sauce." So-o-o-o rarified and neat and ultimately delicious. No messes in the kitchen when she cooks.
My relationship with my mother was, um, complicated. She was a kid herself in many ways, having been neglected by her own beautiful but narcissistic mother. She pretty much raised herself and from my jaundiced teenage perspective, my mother was a disgrace. She wanted romance and adventure and was frustrated by the mundane tomb of her obligations. Never mind the fact that she’d been a parent since the age of 19 with 4 kids.
My mother was born and raised in Houston, which is the most “Southern” of Texas cities. Even her accent had the added rich drawl of her boarding school in Atlanta. That is why, when I think of my mother, I feel Southern. We had southern cooks and when we were not eating at the local Mexican café in Toluca Lake (California – not Mexico) memory dictates that we dined on chicken fried whatever! Chicken, of course, but also pork chops, steaks, fish, and shrimp – virtually everything (except our greens) would be chicken-fried.