Though I’m getting older, my favorite dishes never do. When I reach for the tattered recipe cards and read my grandmother’s faded script, I hear her telling me to “tie back my hair and wash my hands, for pity sake.” And as the kitchen fills with warm roasting, sizzling and simmering scents, though I’m by myself I’m never truly alone.
Let’s be clear, I don’t want to go back in time. I just want to conjure the sense of my grandmother and other cooks I’ve learned from and loved. However, the actual recipes might not be as delicious now as they were then — our palates evolve and ingredients change over time. As a child, I craved my mother’s mac and cheese, but I’m not going to use processed cheese on good pasta or stir condensed milk into my soup. Those pantry staples that served her generation have seen their days.
I’m also not a professional chef. Rather, I’ve been a home cook for nearly 50 years, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of that. I still love every slow turn of a wooden spoon, the scent of sizzling onions, the whack and thump of kneading dough. I haven’t mastered many culinary techniques; I just get satisfaction from doing the most basic dish meticulously and well. It’s good to slow down, engage my senses and relax my mind after a busy day at the screen. That might mean chopping herbs or lemons by hand, not with the food processor, so I can breathe in their bright smells.
When re-creating well-loved meals, perfection is not the ideal. The wobbly pie crust whispers of foraging summer berries, the delightfully crisp sugar cookies were an accident because I forgot to add baking soda to the mix. These are recipes with stories to tell.