How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [66]
I wondered if my mother had ever eaten nattō. If she had, she had never mentioned it, nor bought it. She only made Japanese food at New Year’s—sushi and all kinds of pickled foods she set out in lacquered boxes. But she wouldn’t show me how to cook.
I had loved to be in the kitchen with her, on a stool by the island, watching her chop up onions or frying potatoes on the stovetop, her hair held back with a bandanna. “Always cover head. If you go restaurant,” she pronounced, holding her small knife aloft, the same knife she used to cut everything from vegetables to large roasts, “and people no have hairnet, get out.”
There was one cookie in particular Mom made that I loved, a tiny raisin-filled tart. When I was eleven, I asked her to teach me how to make it.
Mom had sighed. Dad, from his easy chair in the adjoining family room, tsked. “It’ll be good for her. Go ahead.”
“Read ingredients, get out everything first,” Mom told me. She put her apron on, and I tied my little apron with Dutch flower girls embroidered on it around my waist. “First, wash hand.”
I did as she said, then pulled out the flour, the sugar, the raisins, the baking soda.
Mom cleaned the countertops where we’d roll out the dough.
“I can do that,” I said.
She handed the cloth to me and observed. “Don’t forget corner. Spray there.”
I scrubbed harder, knowing that if I missed any spot on the yellow Formica, she would see.
“Can I measure?” I noticed the look of displeasure, but she nodded. Nervously, I measured two cups of flour.
“Scrape! Scrape!” Mom cried, as though I were running into traffic. I scraped the top. “Must be even. Smooth.”
My hands quaked. I spilled the flour on the floor.
“Now see what happen you not careful? Not old enough. Sit.” Mom got out the broom. “Easier do myself.”
“Honey,” Dad said, not looking up, “she’s just a kid.”
“You teach, then. Your kid, too.” She swept up the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice.
She nodded. I felt her disappointment in my pores. “You play. I make cookie. You eat, okay? That your job.” She dismissed me from the kitchen.
That was the last time I asked her to teach me how to make anything. I wanted to know how she made her spaghetti, her fried chicken, her sushi, and especially her pizza. I waited for her to offer, but she never did.
When Craig and I got married, his mother asked what I wanted for a wedding gift. I asked for cookware: All-Clad pans, baking dishes, a bright green enameled Le Creuset Dutch oven. Then I got some cookbooks and taught myself how to cook.
Even this would not impress my mother. A few years ago, as part of dinner, I made my parents baked Brie in phyllo dough. “Ai! Sour,” Mom said. Dad did not comment, but put his fork down. Now if they came to dinner, I made the simplest of meals or ordered takeout. It was too hard to please them. Helena was the only one who knew of my secret Julia Child experiments, the one who watched me cook now, and whom I taught how to cook.
My mother once had similar aspirations. Usually, she presented us with the meat and potatoes Dad liked. But sometimes I saw her leafing through her big green cookbook, looking at recipes, marking the ones she wanted to try, cutting out interesting ones from the newspaper’s food section. Coq au vin.
“Where are we going to get an old rooster?” Dad couldn’t believe she wanted to cook coq au vin. “And I can’t have wine.”
“Alcohol cook away!” Mom tossed the recipe down, dejected. “Use chicken. Same thing.” She smiled. “Maybe raise chicken backyard, huh?”
“The coyotes will get them.” Dad laughed. “How about chicken and grape juice?”
My mother made coq au vin with chicken and grape juice that she soured with vinegar as a wine substitute. It tasted, if not like the original, then passable as another dish entirely. My father was delighted. “Best chicken ever!”
I wondered why she had not continued to try new recipes. Perhaps it was her heart; perhaps she had simply lost interest. But I still wished she would teach me how to make her signature dishes, the way only she made them. Even the chicken