Food, Family, and Memory

The Egg Came First

Both of my parents worked, and both of my parents cooked. My mother cooked our nightly dinner, cooked elaborately for dinner parties, and cooked traditionally for holidays; my father had a small selection of specialties which he prepared brilliantly, but from which it was unwise for him to stray. Just as he could play “Waltzing Matilda”on the piano with great panache (but nothing else, because he didn’t read music and had never had a piano lesson in his life) he prepared omelets, souffles and quiches that were enviable in their perfection and deliciousness. He also had a way with bread pudding and rice pudding. Outside this egg-y arena he cooked with rather less flair, tending to make meatloaf stuffed with random and vaguely repellant leftovers, lunches featuring Devilled Ham sandwiches with mayonnaise, and his 1970s specialty of pork chops with Risotto a la Milanese. This last item he made quite nicely, but so often that my brother and I dreaded our mother’s departure for a conference, knowing that we would, at least twice, be served the ubiquitous pork and risotto duo when we really craved macaroni and cheese or fried chicken.

A Fork By Any Other Name

A fork by any other name would still be a fork. Unless you called it your hands. Then the fork is rendered moot. Hands are more versatile than forks. They posses a way cooler gadget. The opposable thumb (come-up of all evolutionary come-ups) possesses some remarkable moves.

Unfortunately we don’t often get to put those moves into practice with familiar western cuisine. But why rely on some intermediary device to enjoy that most intimate sensation of eating? Some form of artifice, really, when we consider that we already have what it takes.

My earliest inclinations were to forgo tools and bound the gulf between food and eating (associations begin firing at Lacan’s l’hommelette, a slippery slope). My favorite foods (burritos, sushi) can technically and efficiently be eaten with one’s hands. Still, my lifetime eating career has been dominated by silverware.

Until my wife introduced me to her native cuisine. Nepali food predates industrial metal forgery and globalization. Silverware was not a concern when the recipes took shape, nor is it a concern today when they’re served.

The Seven Fishes

anchovies-goldfish-and-shannon-in-the-background-300x270 Last year, we had friends and family over to celebrate La Vigilia, which is a traditional Christmas Eve feast that had its beginnings in the south of Italy. It celebrates the wait for the birth of baby Jesus. Vigilia – the wait. Traditionally the meal is comprised of seven fish dishes – including shellfish, of course – and it can be one of the great feasts of the year. It can be a blowout, actually, un cenone, which means a very large and very long dinner.

We decided to go another way. Yes, we would do the seven fishes but we would take it easy on ourselves – just three courses instead of seven – plus dessert at the end, of course — and we split up the work load between four cooks: myself, the eminent Don Michele di Sicilia, our daughter, Alison and her beau, Shannon. So it was a kind of BYOF – bring your own fishes.

We had twelve people for dinner. We started with one of my favorite appetizers – anchovies on sweet-buttered bread. That’s it – as simple as you can get, but the combination of the briny fish and the sweet butter is one of the great single bites of all time.

Norwegian Cauliflower Soup

cauliflowersoup When I was a young girl, my mother and father packed up the rented mini van and took us four children and usually a few friends for my older brother and sister, my widowed, Aunt Else, on the ferry from England to Norway. We stayed at an idyllic hotel called The Strand Hotel for two weeks every August.

We spent our days fishing for our lunch in a little wooden boat and cooked our catch on a remote island, over a fire, made from collected twigs and dried seaweed.

My parents always said we were too many to feed every meal in a restaurant, and so when supper time came, the prepared hotel feast was always a relief and absolutely delicious after a somewhat usually chilly, but fun day catching fish and swimming in the sea that never dared to go above 65 degrees.

Supper always began with soup. My favorite was the cauliflower... Usually a tasteless soup, but this one was utterly scrumptious. Here is my own, very simple recipe, my comfort food.

Two Cents Plain

In Margate, New Jersey, there is an ice cream shop that time forgot. It is called Two Cents Plain and it has little white wire chairs with red and white striped seats, red and white wallpaper festooned with whimsical line drawings of flappers in long necklaces and gents in boaters, and a jar on the counter where customers can deposit tip money for the scoopers’ college funds. It looks just the same today as it did in 1979, when I had my fifth birthday party there.

We had the whole place to ourselves that day! What a thrill for a five-year-old. More thrilling still were the ice cream “clowns” (still on the menu) which were presented thusly: a scoop of ice cream on a plate, and a sugar cone inverted on top as a hat, point side up, and a face drawn on the scoop of ice cream with Red Hots. I had asked for a baby sister for my birthday that year and instead was presented with a baby brother, and the ice cream clowns went a long way towards placating me.

Food, Family and Memory