Food, Family and Memory

As any good Cajun cook will tell you, "First you make a roux." But what, you might ask, is a roux?.

Even with the proliferation over the last couple of decades of Cajun chefs, Cajun restaurants and Cajun cookbooks, blackened this and blackened that (what ever that means); most non- Cajun aficionados of South Louisiana’s cuisine can’t explain a roux either.

But I was in luck Sunday when an actual real life Cajun from Kraemer Louisiana, my best pal Keith, showed up at my kitchen door in Silver Lake. "I heard ya'll needed some help with a roux."

As my fellow Louisianaian explains, the gumbo starts with the cast iron skillet, not the roux. If you don’t have a thick skillet the heat won’t distribute properly and the roux will be either over or under cooked. With that in mind, I turn the fire on high and pour one cup of canola oil in the skillet along with one piece of bacon. The bacon adds a subtle flavor and also serves somewhat like a canary in a coal mine. If the bacon cooks too fast the fire’s too hot (I said kinda like a canary in a coal mine).

If you’ve never read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “The Last American Man”, I suggest you pick it up this Fourth for a bit of quirky, patriotic fun.  It chronicles the true story of a modern day hero who lives in a teepee in the Appalachian Mountains, eating only what he himself picks, raises or kills.  The guy is an egomaniac and a genius, and the writing, especially when detailing how he forages in the woods, is funny and sensitive and page-turningly good.     

The only problem with that book is the title.  He’s not the last American man. My mother is.

She spends every summer, and most of every fall, wading through rivers with a fly-fishing rod, and hiking giant, shale-covered mountains to sleep under the stars.  She’s had staring contests with bears and cougars, weathered lightning storms under scraggly trees, and once hiked three miles back to her truck with a broken tailbone.   

My sister and I were raised in a house with two working parents. When we were younger, our father worked nights while our mother worked days. This schedule left our dad on dinner duty. Luckily, having been raised by a working mother himself, our father already had cooking skills in place. My mother, who didn’t know the difference between olive oil and Karo syrup, wrote a note to my dad’s mom thanking her for teaching him how to cook. My mother claims it was Gloria Steinem’s influence that led her to delegate my dad to kitchen duty, but really it was because he was the only one who knew how to “wear the apron” in the house.

Despite our mother’s feminist take on women in the kitchen, my sister and I happily cook at our stoves, bare-feet and all. I’ll whip up lunches and dinners for friends and family, but Alexandra goes beyond, preparing dinner for her new husband nearly every night. I recently had the opportunity to witness this firsthand when I invited myself (last minute) to their Upper West Side apartment for dinner. When I entered, Alexandra called out from her galley kitchen, “I’m making fish tacos. Go sit down at the table.” I went into the dining room and saw their new table was set with their brand new “everyday” dishware I had purchased for them off their wedding registry. My brother-in-law entered a few moments later and, in between work calls, began to pour a buttery, slightly sweet white wine to accompany the spicy fish tacos.

My daughter Celeste recently returned from a semester abroad in Dakar, Senegal.

She spent several months in the West African city perfecting her French, learning Wolof, the unofficial language, and studying West African culture, art and Islam. One of the biggest adjustments for her was the custom of eating out of a communal bowl….with toddlers no less! Boy, I wouldn’t want to share the plate with my own family, and we’ve been exchanging the same germs for decades.

So, what did Celeste miss most after months of mutton and rice en famille? Bacon, avocados, pie, eggs from her back yard AND Mexican food.