My dad clumsily peeled the skins off a few garlic cloves and then looked up at me with an expression I didn’t recognize. He looked like a little boy.
“I’m nervous cooking for you,” he said.
I smiled at the slight power shift from the man whose passion in the kitchen inspired my career– and intimidated the hell out of me.
“Naw, Pop, you’re just using cloves closest to the center of the bulb. The skins are thinner, especially if they’ve been around a week or two. I had the same problem the other day in my kitchen.”
He steadied his hands, deftly chopped the garlic and tossed it into the pan of onions and chili flakes sauteing on the stove. He pulled the can opener from a drawer and opened some DOP San Marzano tomatoes. He was preparing a simple arrabiatta sauce.
I fished the garlic that I was blanching out of a small pot of boiling water and washed some basil for the pesto.
A sizeable t-bone steak rested in butcher paper on the marble counter, seasoned and coming to temperature before getting tossed on the grill outside.
I’m quite sure it’s in the genes. I know I got the ice cream-loving gene from my dad who got the gene from his mom. It’s that gene that forces me to direct my husband miles out of our way just to visit an ice cream store that makes their own ice cream. That same gene has been known to cause cravings that send me to bed with a spoon and a pint of my favorite frozen cream. I can eat ice cream morning, noon and night and never get enough. I can’t help it – it’s in my genes.
As with so many foods in our lives, dishes served when we are young put strong imprints on our adult palates. Most nights when my father came home from work, he would settle into his leather recliner and watch wrestling on TV. While my sister and I set the table, my mother would serve him an appetizer plate and his cocktail of choice, a 7&7 (Seagrams & 7-Up).
I have an image of my father wearing a blue and white canvas pin-stripe apron over his clothes that my mother gave him (with good reason), standing over the barbecue in our backyard alternately spraying charcoal fluid (with big effect) on the briquettes and a few moments later spraying, using his thumb as a spray cap, a large bottle of Canada Dry Soda Water filled (and refilled) with water from the hose onto the resulting flames from the barbecue that were threatening to ruin his perfect barbecued ribs. They were perfect which is sort of surprising since my father couldn’t really cook at all. Scrambled eggs and burnt bacon is about all I remember from his repertoire except for the night he exploded a can of baked beans since he’d decided it was okay to heat them in the can (unopened) which he’d placed in a large pot of boiling water and, I think, forgotten about them. Tip: don’t try that at home.