Cooking - Rachel Debaere

I used to love to cook, then I hated it, then I loved it, then I hated it. Now, I am learning to love it again. All this love and hate can be scientifically correlated with my emotional status, otherwise known as the what-is-being-demanded-of-me at-any-given-moment spectrum.

As a two-year-old, I used to sit happily on the brown linoleum kitchen floor of my mother’s kitchen, stirring air in the copper-bottomed Revereware saucepan. I used a wooden spoon and would occasionally raise the air-filled spoon to my lips, blow, so I wouldn’t burn my tongue and then taste my delicious concoction – usually a soup or flan. I never ran out of ingredients and had all the time in the world to make as many dishes as I wished.

As I grew older, say about seven, while my friends played outside on the teeter totter where I wanted to be, I was in the kitchen training. I washed lettuce and peeled carrots. If there was dirt left on a piece of lettuce or it wasn’t dry enough because I hadn’t properly and delicately patted the leaves as thoroughly as I should have, all the while not using too many paper towels, I would have to do it all over again. That was the best way to learn. I learned to beat eggs till they were light yellow, heat milk without letting it boil, and clean the chicken after first removing the gizzard, liver and heart from the bloody paper sack tucked into its belly. My small hands were the perfect size for doing this. As I got a bit older, I was allowed to use sharp knives. While the neighborhood kids were in the backyard playing softball, my mother instructed me in removing fat from the lamb chops, not too much however, because fat gave the meat its flavor and tenderness. I became pro at washing and cutting green beans, one bean at a time. Doing them individually ensured each one was clean and stringless. I learned to set the table, clean the pots and pans, sponge down the counters, remove scrapings and peels from the sink and, after dinner, clear the table and wash the dishes. By then, it was too dark to go outside, except to take the garbage out.

When I got married, I was a skilled bride. My husband, who had grown up in a Swiss household where his mother refused to allow her sons in the kitchen, didn’t know how to make pancakes, toast or scrambled eggs – any eggs really. He said he knew how pour cereal and to boil water, but the first time I saw him boil water, he turned on the wrong burner. His mom had never allowed the boys to clear their plates from the table either and had never permitted them to place their dirty dishes in the dishwasher. It made her too nervous, she said. She didn’t want her plates, cups and saucers getting chipped, and, besides, it was not a man’s place to do any of these domestic tasks. It was his place to remain seated at the table for the duration of the meal, while she practically never even sat down.

Happily moved out of my childhood home and in an apartment with my husband, I was delighted to create new meals for him – dishes he had never experienced, soups I had made and seen made in my mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens; stews improvised with eastern spices; and paellas, salads and soufflés from a variety of cookbooks – The New York Times Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking, The Silver Palate and Julia Child’s, The Art of French Cooking. I made couscous, simmering sweet apricots and prunes with carrots, onions and chicken drenched in savory broth. I made lamb tagines and saffron rice, flan with glazed caramel, and fava bean soup. It was no problem to pick up the ingredients from the local grocer on Solano Avenue on my way home from work. Here in my own home, I could add as much cayenne as I wanted, overcook my eggs, undercook the carrots. I never burned the green beans and I didn’t have to make any hated zucchini tarts, tongue and potatoes, liver with onions, or brains with lemon sauce. I could create the menu, invent the dish and clean-up on my own schedule.

When my husband and I moved to New York, the times and sizes of Manhattan kitchens were such that cooking for friends wasn’t what was done. Going out to restaurants was the Yuppie way. We ate Indian, Thai, Japanese, French, Cuban, Jewish (not my kind of Sephardic Jewish but rather Ashkenazi dishes like gefilte fish, matzah ball soup and brisket), Brazilian and my favorite – Ethiopian.

The big joke at the time was, “You’re going to the Blue Nile? Do they have any food there tonight?” Well, in fact, they did, and it was delicious. We went there almost every week and ate at low, round tables, using our hands to tear sumptuous pieces of spongy bread for scooping lentils and lamb that had been baked in searing ovens with fabulously unidentifiable herbs. Needless to say, I got out of the habit of cooking and almost out of the habit of using utensils. And I didn’t mind in the least not having to shop at those miniscule grocery stores with the narrow aisles that could barely fit one shopping cart at a time. Not to mention not having to walk home without heavy plastic bags that would leave red marks on my palms for hours.

By the time we moved to the suburbs outside of New York, I had three little people to feed in addition to my still virgin-in-the-kitchen husband. The kitchen was bigger, and I was back to cooking, this time it was for my amazingly happy and picky children. While they, two boys and a girl, sat on the floor stirring air with wooden spoons in a soup pot, I would make their meals.
But, now it was different. When I made chicken, it had to be speck-less for Michael. I figured out that I could make it simmered in a broth or baked in a sauce. Then, if I washed one piece, removing every speck of herb or, in the case of the barbecue sauce, if I used a really sharp knife and peeled the outer part, it would be as white as any piece of Wonder bread, and Michael would eat it.

At lunch, Jeremy needed the peanut butter on the top piece of bread with the jelly on the bottom piece only. I could choose between strawberry and blueberry jelly (Thank God, he was flexible.), not jam though, because jam was lumpy. Jelly was smooth. Smooth was good. And as long as the bread didn’t have “things” in it, i.e. grains, I would be fine. I was actually lucky there, because un-lumpy wheat bread was OK. Jeremy didn’t know that white bread even existed. When I mixed up the top and bottom slices, I quickly learned to flip the entire sandwich over, and then all would be well.

Rebecca, a barking, panting, lick-your-leg dog for the majority of her waking hours, was flexible in terms of what she ate, as long as it was served on the floor in a bowl so she could be on all fours and slurp the food, no hands. Often, she had imaginary friends who were hungry and since they were people and not dogs, I had to set a place for them at the table. “Sister,” and that was her name, liked the Beatrix Potter plate. “Amiga” liked the Big Bird plate. I never could tell where they were sitting since they were identically imaginary and so I’d get in trouble for mixing them up and putting the wrong plate in front of the wrong friend. Not to mention the clean-up. A little girl’s nose and mouth are not intended for handless eating.

As teenagers, the kids lightened up, except Michael. The new problem, though, was that they all had different schedules, so meals became more “on the go.” When making food that way, it was easier to fix something short order style, different for each, naturally. I was always in the kitchen though. Michael was, by choice of course, on a pretty strict white food diet – pasta with butter and salt only; pizza, no cheese, no sauce; potatoes, without a doubt, peeled. I didn’t call this cooking, not the happy way I cooked on the kitchen floor as a child before I became a slave to my mother, not the happy way I cooked as a young bride before I became a slave to my children’s taste buds.

Now, I am left with just Rebecca. My husband commutes to London and is home about only about thirty percent of the time. Jeremy is in his last year of college, out of state, where he has an apartment and cooks for himself, and Michael just left on Saturday for his first year of college. He will be eating cafeteria food as part of his dorm’s meal plan. That’s his deal now. So, that first Sunday night, as dinnertime approached, I looked at Rebecca, now seventeen, no longer a dog, with plenty of real friends, and a voracious, flexible appetite. She looked back at me, and, at the very same time, we smiled as we realized we were now free. It was like a hundred thousand cubic foot, sub-zero refrigerator door was magically opening, all by itself. Inside, for miles, we could see possibility, lots and lots of possibility. Time to get cooking.