Strongly Worded

What's Cookin'

In my family, we shared an evening meal every weeknight. I have huge admiration for my mom, who served (primarily) homecooked meals on such a regular basis, even despite our lack of appreciation. She'd make our favorite meals on our birthdays, and buy treats we noticed on TV or ate at friends' houses. I never thought much about this--never thought it was anything remarkable, until I mentioned it offhandedly to my Guy, who was stunned. During what he calls his "loathsome" childhood, dinner was procured by a harried parent on the way home from work, deposited on the kitchen counter, and divvied up, to be eaten by each family member in discrete corners of the house. Nobody ever cooked anything for anyone.

This may explain why my Guy doesn't eat very much, and very rarely cooks (although he is actually very competent when he actually does it). It also makes me incredibly sad, because I consider sharing a meal a very loving and nurturing experience, and even though I may not have time to make a homecooked meal for my future family the way my mom did, I definitely want to do it as often as possible.

So I am making dinner for us tonight, and I think I will make this very simple chicken dish my Guy sampled once and loved. When I suggested this yesterday, he was delighted. "You're such a good cook," he said.

This fills me with joy. First, because getting praise from someone as brilliant and accomplished as my Guy makes me feel good (and don't even get into that whole "Dori, you're smart and accomplished too" thing, because whatever unique value I bring to this relationship, it's not brilliance or accomplishment). And second, because, as I read somewhere once, cooking is the only art that nurtures. It's not just creating something delicious (and hopefully visually appealing), but also about fortifying someone physically, which is hard to do in any other way. Knowing and catering (ha) to someone's tastes is also a wonderful way to care for him or her. I first understood this in high school, when I made this very gooey dessert for my boyfriend, and he loved it so much it became a staple of our celebrations.

There is also something proprietary about cooking for others. While it's easy to share or adapt recipes, a dish tastes different when it's prepared by different people. Nobody can touch my aunt's potato salad (not even my mom, with their shared DNA and recipe). My friend A's salads (with their minced dried apricots), are unreplicable, and A.P. makes this artichoke-lemon pasta sauce (a key element of his seduction technique), that is peerless.

I'm hoping I can come up with a signature dish like these, because it is so fun to feed my friends and loved ones. I can't wait to go home and fire up the oven.

Posted by Dori at 2:30 PM