Thoughts on cooking & family

I ran across an article, written by Nancy Harmon Jenkins in "Saveur", February 2009.

"Real home cooking is like fine art: it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it...(it) stresses finesse over fancy techniques. It calls for ingredients at hand, like the fresh and dried chiles that Mexican home cooks swear by or the salt-cured anchovies that southern Italians can't do without. Simplicity is a hallmark of home cooking, and so is adaptability: if a dish calls for six cloves of garlic and you only have one, if the recipe requires a tablespoon of tomato paste and you're all out, if you're supposed to use lemon juice but you've only got oranges, you cook anyway, and you end up making something good. In the end...home cooking is: a link, a continuum from one generation to the next, a flow of knowledge and love that strengthens and nourishes everyone it touches."



I love this piece because that's what I want people to know--cooking isn't hard, recipes can always be adapted and love really is a secret ingredient. I had a friend tell me (and I know she doesn't really consider herself a cook) that she had made the tilapia with roasted tomato sauce that I posted a few weeks back, but since she didn't have certain ingredients on hand, she adapted the recipe by using what she did have and the dish turned out fine. I sometimes hesitate to pass recipes along only because I cook from ingredients and I don't have specific quantities.



As for the "continuum", well, I've been privileged to be the keeper of my paternal great-grandma's, my dad's and my maternal grandma's personal recipe collections, as well as a handful of my paternal grandma's Christmas cookie recipes. I have secret family recipes now! And my siblings have all called me at one time or another to ask me for help with recipes and I cherish being able to share what I know with people I love. Feeding others is my gift, my act of love, my gesture of comfort; it's my connection to my past, my legacy from my family and my path to the future as there is nothing that unites people more than a home-cooked meal.



Eat well,
Holly

~~The picture is a page from my great-grandma's personal cookbook; she wrote her recipes in a spiral-bound notebook and some of the pages are nearly illegible due to grease and food splatters.