Mum's the word

As this is my very first entry on my blog, I feel it fitting to dedicate this entry to the person who first taught me to cook: my mum.

I’d like to say that I have a different story from everyone else to tell, but I don’t.

You see, I was scouring the shelves of the cookery section in my local bookstore the other day, and realised that there are so many cook books dedicated to mothers and grandmothers. Each one has an anecdote or two about learning to cook while watching mother peel onions, or grandma kneading dough, or helping out in the family restaurant. And it struck me that everyone who has the appreciation for food and loves to cook all have a similar experience. And everyone is trying to capture a Kodak moment on the pages of these books, forever immortalising the memory of their loved ones and their recipes, with an almost certain fear that we will forget. Maybe we will, or maybe it is just that in a day and age of frozen meals and TV dinners and instant this-and-that, we have become less interested to ask our mothers for recipes, or to even pass it down to our own children. Maybe it is this fear that family food secrets will one day disappear that has driven people to write books or blogs about mum’s recipes. I completely empathise; I am one of those people.

Having said that, I am not about to start writing the recipe for best chicken stew, or perfect pigs’ trotters according to mum. I would however like to say that if it wasn’t because of her I wouldn’t have learnt how to hold a knife properly (I am left-handed, these things can be potentially fatal), or learn the art of “agaration” which is simply cooking by feeling, or how to achieve a perfectly smooth steamed egg. Lord knows how many times my mum had to pick up calls at odd hours (I am 7 hours apart from home) to entertain my questions on why my sauce didn’t turn out well, or how to boil soup or braise mushrooms. Her response has always been similar: “Girl ah, didn’t I tell you to write it down last time?” Yes ma, you did.

The point is my mum has made me into the cook that I am today. Likewise with all of us, we cook and eat the way we do today because of the matriarchs in our lives. I have bonded with my mum all these years over the preparation of countless dinners, telling her about school, life, boyfriends. The first time I told my mum I loved her was in the kitchen, peeling onions (perfect to hide the emotional tears that followed; blame the onion). Now I tell her as often as I can.

Maybe this is my Kodak moment but I daresay I’d be hard-pressed to find a better one. Ma, thanks for the cooking lessons, this one is for you.