My mom is a good cook. I never appreciated this fact when I was growing up. I’m sure all kids take their parents’ skills for granted. How would you know without a frame of reference? Besides, the grass is always greener on the other side. I always remember envying my friends’ sack lunches while I reluctantly munched on my mother’s strange, leftover dinner sandwich creations (tonkatsu or potato salad sandwich anyone?). In hindsight, they were actually really delicious. Also–what a little ingrate I was! I was lucky enough to have a nice, homemade lunch prepared to fill my belly every day and not a word of thanks passed from my lips or any thoughts of my life of privilege in comparison to other kids who probably had no choice to but to go hungry.
Lack of gratitude aside, I really didn’t have much interest in the food my mother made back then or food in general. I have an interest in her food now, but not in the way of making it–just taking photos and then devouring it. I blame this on my mother’s lack of patience with me in the kitchen as a child. To be fair, I probably was a horrible little assistant.
Most of my memories of the kitchen involve her scolding me for not being fast enough or doing something the wrong way. I remember preparing to have guests for Thanksgiving dinners and always being relegated to dish duty (Yes, we celebrated Thanksgiving. Yes, we made traditional American dishes. No, my mother did not make sushi or teriyaki chicken for Thanksgiving). My sister easily took on the role of sous chef. She moved seamlessly throughout the kitchen, effortlessly putting the proper ingredients together in a way that actually helped moved the process along, thus pleasing my mother greatly. I was clumsy: I was constantly afraid of making a mistake in the process, which slowed me down quite a bit. Even to this day, on the rare occasion that I do make a dish on my own, I will constantly read and re-read simple directions on the recipe to quintuple check that I’m doing it right–and I still manage to somehow screw things up occasionally (Why is my banana bread burnt after just 15 minutes?! Oh, because I had the oven set to broil.).
Dish duty wasn’t the best, but I didn’t get reprimanded as much as when I was on cooking duty. My mother has a particular way of doing them, but once I got the general rules down, she pretty much left me alone. As long as they were clean in the end, no one could really complain. My mother would even praise me for my dish washing skills (“You’re so fast, Jackie! So efficient! You really have a knack for washing dishes!”). Looking back, I realize I don’t really have a natural gift for dish washing. The encouragement for such a mundane skill was only because she hates doing dishes herself, and it was all likely part of a ploy to get me to continue doing the chore. Smart woman.
Back to the food: Now that I’ve gotten through a decade of adulting, I’m starting to care a bit more about the food I don’t know how to make. Perhaps it was my time living in Japan that really opened my eyes. Whenever I’d eat some traditional Japanese dish that came with my school lunch, the other teachers would always try to make conversation with me: “Have you ever eaten (fill in some Japanese dish here)?” I would mostly nod yes. The tastes were familiar to me because my mother had made the dishes for me at one point or another. However, I could not always name the dishes, and I definitely could not even begin to tell you how any of them were made.
It’s a wonder how I survived a year of living in Japan on my own. People have asked me what I cooked every day. I…can’t…really remember. The honest answer, which I’m ashamed to admit, is that I mostly went out to eat (100 yen kaitenzushi ftw!). I also stocked up on pasta sauce/noodles, microwaveable single serving packs of rice (because Japanese rice cookers are ridiculously expensive), instant miso soup packets. A lot of times, I would hit up the grocery store after school to get their reduced-priced dishes/sides. I tried to think of simple meals my mom would make, and I couldn’t really remember…and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway since (a) I probably didn’t know what it was called, (b) I didn’t know how to make it, (c) I couldn’t always read the product labels at the stores even if I did know what ingredients to get, (d) my apartment had what was basically a play kitchen with no counterspace, and (e) I really would rather sleep than cook.
Anyway, as I get older, I start to worry that I’m missing out on a wealth of culinary information by not having my mom show me how to make these dishes I grew up eating. Sure, I can turn to Pinterest for some amazing how-tos, but that’s mostly white people stuff. What about my heritage? Who will teach me when she’s gone? I suppose I can do what my mother has been doing lately and just get on YouTube, but it’s probably time that I finally embrace cooking–at least for the sake of cultural preservation.
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Here are a few recent dishes (Japanese and non) my mom has made that I’ve taken pictures of, except for the last one. Proud to say I made those pizzas myself!
Salmon Sashimi with Daikon Sprouts
From top left to right: Miso soup with tofu and green onions, tofu topped with ginger shreds and ponzu, kara-age (Japanese fried chicken), rice with sesame seeds and shiso
Miniature watermelon slices (my mom didn’t make the watermelon, but she did slice it!)
Chicken pot pie with paprika sauce filling
Left: BBQ chicken pizza; Right: Margherita pizza with basil, tomato and zucchini slices
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