On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:39:11 -0400, "Kswck" >
wrote:

>Parent, other family member, friend? Or did you have to learn on your own?
>
>Mom boiled every veggie to death. Figure ALL pork must be cooked in a fry
>pan covered with mustard and sauerkraut, till it's dead, beef so rare it
>would moo and chicken ONLY in a pressure cooker, or Shake-N-Bake.
>(Don't get me started on her soups-she believed food was to keep you
>alive...taste? 'You want that too? Why?').
>
>Learned on my own.
>
I've tried to think of a good, simple answer to this, but it's not
simple.

My grandmother was a very good South Louisiana small town cook. Not
Creole or Cajun, but influenced that way by the surrounding culture.
And she doted on me (first grandchild), baking blackberry cobblers on
days I brought enough berries home. She'd make homemade French fries
for us at dinner time in an un-air conditioned kitchen in July. She
never made really fancy food, but her cornbread dressing was well
loved by the whole clan. And her dark roux gravy was fine. Once a
week during the summer we'd go fishing and fry up a mess of bream for
lunch when we got home from a morning on False River. And my
grandparents had a small, but productive vegetable garden which
provided us with a lot of very good fresh produce.

My mother grew into cooking. She was very young when I was born --
hadn't been making a home very long at all when I arrived. It was the
1950s and convenience foods were becoming more and more common. We
ate our share of it early on because money was tight. But there was
also always an odd spirit of adventure around our food that my
father's macho ways contributed to: he was a sportsman then -- a
hunter, a fisherman. So mom cooked dove breasts, crappie, bass,
catfish, and (once in a while) frog legs. When I got old enough I'd
hunt and fish and go "frogging" with him. I always liked to eat those
things. A dove breast is a wonderful thing to eat. And mom cooked
them well, though she wasn't averse to smothering dove breasts in
cream of mushroom soup now and again.

Also mom's Louisiana heritage led to our having a gumbo or an etouffee
or a shrimp Creole considerably more often than our Texas neighbors
after we moved to suburban north Dallas. And since she'd studied
French in college, we'd have the occasional boeuf bourguinonne or some
such Gallic dish.

Eventually money wasn't as tight, and mom got more adventurous in the
kitchen. By the time I asked D to marry me mom was a very good cook.
When I took D to meet the family, mom made an appetizer of button
mushrooms stuffed with lump crab meat in a buerre blanc, for example.
Funny, 35 years later I remember that appetizer.

Dad was the typical barbecue/charcoal grill guy cook. He made a brick
pit on our suburban patio and cooked chickens with a
catsup/mustard/molasses/Worcestershire/lemon juice sauce. Or burgers.
Or sometimes steak.

I was the one who cooked in the apartments I lived in during college
when it was just guys. I tried to imitate mom and her mom, but didn't
know as much as I thought I did. My first attempt at gravy was
ridiculous. I didn't understand about the roux.

What my grandmother and mom taught me wasn't how to cook, but how to
appreciate cooking and good food. And I don't think I'm exaggerating
to say they taught me that cooking for people is an expression of
affection. Sometimes even love.

The first cooking I felt I was good at was grilling. You know, the
guy thing. Then smoking. Eventually I got better at cooking inside
the house, too. I learned on my own, but I was made to do so by the
food culture I was born to.
--

modom
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