Memories of our Mothers in the Kitchen

Some of you may have read Michael Pollan's New York Times article, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. It's both entertaining and informative and most definitely worth the read.

When Pollan recalls how his mother's cooking was inspired by watching Julia Child on TV, I recalled how I was inspired watching my mother cook.

In rural Australia, we didn't have TV until I was 8-years old and then I don't recall Julia Child's, The French Chef or for that matter, any other cooking show streaming into our living room once the TV did arrive.

I do recall my mother driving the 4-hour round trip to Melbourne, a big city, but by no means a huge city back in the 60's and 70's, to take various cooking classes, and this, despite the fact that she had gone to Emily McPherson's School for Girls where she had majored in home economics and fashion design.

Nevertheless, she took her above-average skill in the kitchen and improved upon it with Italian, French, and eventually Cantonese cooking classes with the Australian-Chinese chef Elizabeth Chong.

Never mind our favorites: Robert Carrier's Italian Lamb Stew and perfectly light, balloon-like cheese souffle and that French delight Cherry Clafoutis, my mother set them aside in favor of her wok.

For my father's 55th birthday, my mother invited 50-plus guests. The night of the party, I recall her--dressed in plunging black evening culottes and dare I say, a cigarette between her fingers--flipping perfectly diced, chopped and cubed food in and out of two woks with extraordinary ease and dexterity while guests gathered about to watch.

She was a show-woman in the kitchen, and Cantonese cooking was the perfect stage.

After the success of my father's birthday-party Cantonese banquet, word spread and local women came clamoring, asking that my mother teach them about the mysteries of Cantonese food and cooking.

Thereafter, I recall coming home from school mid-week to a kitchen full of excited women, standing around watching my mother, holding fort, doing her thing with a Chinese chopper and her woks.

She never quite gave up her love of Cantonese cooking, but when she and my father went to Europe and then Scandinavia in the 70's, her fascination with traditional Swedish breakfast fare usurped for a time, her wok obsession.

I can't say I minded; heading off to school on a belly full of rye flat bread stacked with cheese, ham and jam was far more interesting than Rice Bubbles and milk.

And then of course in the late 70's there was the Greek Period, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. That was inspired by Helen, the South African, Greek exchange student who came to live with us.

My mother's folder of Cantonese recipes and all her recipe books with their notes in the margins have been passed to me from my sister who collected them from my mother's kitchen when she died.

I haven't looked at the books or her notes, because I don't tend to use recipes. And besides, I have a storehouse of vivid memories detailing what and how she cooked because I followed her about, learning by watching and listening, and by being given chores to do to help her create her extraordinary range of gourmet masterpieces, and the simple family meals we ate most evenings.

Perhaps this is why I have little interest in watching the Food Network; nothing can replace the gift of having stood by as a young kid, teenager and young adult, watching the real thing in action: my mother navigate our kitchen with the skill and dazzle of a celebrity chef.

There's a generation of women out there, who like me, have mothers who are the great unsung Julia Child's of the post-war era. Mother's who had natural talent in the kitchen because they learned it from their mothers who learned it from their mothers.

Then somewhere along the way, that skill wasn't passed down any longer. The hectic pace of life got in the way. Women went out of the house to work and lost the time needed to teach their daughters and their sons how to shop for groceries, and then once home, how to prepare those groceries with love and joy.

Yet, as Pollan says in his article, "cooking matters - a lot."

And if Americans are going to undo the damage inflicted by consuming industrially prepared food, then the plan is simple: "Cook it yourself."