I got a real lucky roll of the dice with family. My clan isn't the most mainstream but we're smart enough to have chosen our oddities and usually take pride in them. One thing most of the people in my family like to do is eat and thanks to previous generations we have certain expectations about the food. My father's mother didn't know curry from Chinese 5 Spice, but her
coconut cake was legendary.
I suppose
Grandma Bessie is the best place to start with my food history. She was a high energy lady, even by the time I came around, which turned itself into fresh food everyday and a bottomless cake on top of the fridge. My grandpa Carl had a garbage disposal for a stomach and would gladly finish off whatever was on the table, as long as there was a piece of cake to wash it down with.
One of the things my grandma was best at was fried chicken. It's my father's favorite food to this day and I have no question why. She taught me how to make pancakes at a much younger age than most reasonable people would let a kid play with a griddle. One of the things she could do literally almost blind was
chicken and dumplings from scratch that were easily the best I've had. I've never tried to make them myself, but my uncle Tom does a faithful recreation so they haven't been completely lost. She also did a few specific candies that are good but mostly for nostalgia reasons. Her previously mentioned bottomless cake pan is worth looking into at some point. She left behind a tall stack of recipe cards, I'm sure there are tons of cakes if I ever get the inclination to look for them.
My grandma Margaret spent a big chunk of her adult life feeding a family of four, but as far as I could tell all she ever ate was bacon. Her house smelled like salted pork every time I ever walked in it, a smell that is probably more welcoming to me now than any heart doctor would advise. The one dish she will always be remembered for was her macaroni and cheese. As standard a dish as it is, my grandma turned mac 'n cheese into an art form that could compete with any truffle laden nonsense you can come up with. My sister Rachel has managed to come up with a great replica, at least partially because she's not shy with the celery seed.
My mom's father Art talked a big game when it came to his cooking, but I never saw him prepare anything more complicated than instant coffee. He dropped out of school and left home at a ridiculous age, something like fourth grade, and ended up a baker's apprentice for at least part of his teenage years. He joined the Navy during World War II and became a cook on a mine sweeper in the south Pacific. He used to talk about his small floating kitchen filled with 40-gallon cooking pots the way other peoples grandpas must have talked about taking the beach at Normandy. His war was with a boat full of young stomachs that kept emptying themselves. At least he didn't have to deal with that end of the spectrum.
By age 25 Art had more cooking experience than most people get in their entire life, but as I said I don't think I ever saw him cook. It was most likely the same as his feelings about fireworks, he saw enough during the war to last him a lifetime.
Which brings me to the most direct influence on my cooking: my Mom!
It was important to my mom that her kids learn how to take care of themselves, which meant dishes, ironing and cooking, among other things. She was always willing to slow down and show us what she was making, even including my sister and I in whatever job needed to be done, as long as it didn't include knives or heat. We were some mixing little sumbitches though.
My mom has a lot of skills in the kitchen but her hand with classic Americana can not be touched. Funeral potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken squares, pumpkin pies. This sausage and potato thing she made up, Tex-Mex burritos. Tasty, quick and cheap, these are the dishes I make when I want to eat well but don't want to think about it. The phrase 'comfort food' is like every other cliche: it seems trite until it happens to you and then the phrase is never big enough to cover the emotion.
My dad makes this list somewhere, but his sphere of influence is very specific. My dad only cooks a few times a year, but when he does it makes an impression. Sometime in the mid-80's he got a round, stand-up smoker and started making a turkey and ham for holiday meals. Thanksgiving and xmas every year you could count on finding dad in the kitchen at 6 in the morning tooth picking cherries to a turkey. This is man stuff, big chunks of raw meat, ten hours of stoking an open flame. He got me an electric smoker a couple of years back and while it's been a challenge making the thing work in my little east coast apartments, it's worth it every time.
Last on the big list is my dad's brother Tom. Tom has had an enormous influence on my life, especially considering we haven't lived within a thousand miles of each other for more than a couple years. He introduced me to Miles Davis and Public Enemy within the same era of my youth, which happened to be shortly before I stumbled onto an incredible stash of 60's politics and philosophy books he left behind in my grandparent's attic when he moved out. My parents made me smart and capable, but Tom made me want to be an intellectual, just like years later he would make me want to expand my cooking to Indian and Chinese. This is a man who actively thinks about BIG IDEAS like physics and geologic time. What's a little vindaloo compared to black holes?
So cooking has been a part of my life from the very beginning. It wasn't hard for me to conceive of following a recipe because I had been reading them to my mom out of cookbooks from the time I could sound out the word onion. I started my first job at a fast food joint three days after I became legal age to work and didn't do much else until college. I continued to work in restaurants on and off until moving to New York, by which time I'd tired of smelling like french fries enough to take a job at the Gap just to stay out of food service. Not too long after retiring from cooking as a job I remembered why I fell into it in the first place and have been on a roll ever since.
I'm not sure what the value is of recalling a life through the food you eat, but it seems as worthwhile a barometer as anything else I can think of. Most of my food memories have as much to do with the people who were sharing the meal as the meal itself and, different than big events like vacations or weddings, eating happens everyday. If you can figure out how to do it right you end up with something to look forward to all the time. What else could you possibly want out of life?
Can somebody please pass the bacon?
This is the pie my mom liked the best of her Grandma Bodam's pies. My sister recently gave the recipe a try. It was really sweet and yummy. I'm ready for another taste test!
