Kitchen Alchemy
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved the idea of learning to cook. Her mother's small and ill-equipped kitchen was a place of magic, surely, for such unappealing or ordinary individual ingredients could only be transformed by Alchemy into something so delightful...
My mother professed to be a quite ordinary cook, but to me, it seemed the wonderous dishes miraculously appeared from her cheap set of few saucepans, haphazard drawer of utensils, and sadly small cooktop and oven. Her pikelets and pancakes were perfectly round and evenly golden on both sides. Her meatloaf had a slight crunch to the outside, and the inside was tasty. My sister and I used to vie with our father for the end pieces, so there was more of the crispy outside to eat. Her ANZAC biscuits with peanuts - which the recipes never called for, but she added anyway - are thus far completely unable to be duplicated. I recall always asking her to show me how, but our kitchen was tiny, badly-designed, and had little room for a child to sit without being underfoot. So for hours I would stand behind the divider between the kitchen and the dining room and watch as she made ordinary food; casseroles for dinner, pikelets for morning tea with the other tennis ladies, homemade potato salad for picnics with the extended family, and my favourite; mum's cream cheese tart. Like a cheesecake only less firm, more creamy, and hint of cinnamon and nutmeg.
Unfortuantely, Mum also had very little patience with teaching the art of cooking. She preferred to get in and get it done so she could get out of the kitchen, rather than explain steps, and the whys and wherefores, and let her kitchen get untidy from the efforts of a child to duplicate the process.
Still, from somewhere came a desire. Maybe from my aunt - my father's sister - a classic, oldtime "country cook", even though she lived in the city. I spent several weeks of the year visiting her with my cousin, and although in later days her old Early Kooka (zoom in on the pic at this link to see what one looks like) was passed over in favour of newer appliances, it still remained in the kitchen and was used occasionally. But from her kitchen came lusciously thick pea and ham soup, lamb shanks with the meat almost falling from the bone, and lemon meringue pies better than any I've tasted since.
That could be nostaligia talking, but it seems that the lemon filling is never lemony enough, the meringue never mallowy enough, or high enough, and the base never firm enough...
Wherever it came from, it was enough.
But for so many years now I've not enjoyed cooking. How is meant to be enjoyed, when the cook is left alone in the kitchen every step of the way, while those around are sitting in the living room bickering and snarling at each other? How is it meant to be savoured when the meal is eaten with barely a comment of gratitude for effort, maybe a quickly muttered, "Thanks for dinner" before departing the table quickly, desperate to continiue watching some television programme? It's impossible for me to enjoy when I know that I will be left alone again in the kitchen to clean up until it's done, despite my asking for help on that score.
Now, I think I need to discover again what makes it wonderful, and such a joy.
I need to do it for me, and anyone else can simply enjoy the fruits of a well-loved hobby.
As long as someone else does the dishes.
