Mussels cooked in a saffron coconut stew, shrimp fritters with just the right crispness, chicken kebabs laced with brandy -- these are dishes I tell my dad about all the time. They are my passion, my creations as a food writer. He often advises me on the recipes, telling me what to add, what to change, what to increase and what to substitute. I listen, because my dad is one of the best home cooks I know.
Strangely, I rarely cook for my parents. It isn't because I am afraid to, feel that they won't like my dishes, that they will complain or that my dishes won't be up to their standards. That isn't it at all.I left home when I was 17 and wandered the world: college, marriage, babies, careers. I grew up in the Middle East, my parents settled in India, and I settled in the U.S. When I visited them, I just wanted them to cook for me. I longed for my mother's crisp fried okra, my dad's cardamom-scented oatmeal, or the best dish -- having both of them in the kitchen discussing and making a mutton curry. I love that they have been married for more than 40 years and possibly making that same curry for that long, and yet they always discuss how to make it and what to do.Rarely, I will volunteer to cook my creations for them. I tell them about my food, they cook from my cookbooks, but when I am there with them in their home, I don't cook for them. I was raised on their food -- it is the memory and the home of my childhood. While they may miss my chicken kebabs, I know they don't long for it as I do for my father's butter chicken.I cook for my own children in the hope that I create similar memories. I cook for my kids in the hope that when they go off into the big wide world, the memory of their mother's chicken curry, the scent of her caramelized onions with garlic, the whiff of her cinnamon-scented rice pudding will tug at their heart and bring them back home -- just like my parents' cooking does for me!
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Strangely, I rarely cook for my parents. It isn't because I am afraid to, feel that they won't like my dishes, that they will complain or that my dishes won't be up to their standards. That isn't it at all.I left home when I was 17 and wandered the world: college, marriage, babies, careers. I grew up in the Middle East, my parents settled in India, and I settled in the U.S. When I visited them, I just wanted them to cook for me. I longed for my mother's crisp fried okra, my dad's cardamom-scented oatmeal, or the best dish -- having both of them in the kitchen discussing and making a mutton curry. I love that they have been married for more than 40 years and possibly making that same curry for that long, and yet they always discuss how to make it and what to do.Rarely, I will volunteer to cook my creations for them. I tell them about my food, they cook from my cookbooks, but when I am there with them in their home, I don't cook for them. I was raised on their food -- it is the memory and the home of my childhood. While they may miss my chicken kebabs, I know they don't long for it as I do for my father's butter chicken.I cook for my own children in the hope that I create similar memories. I cook for my kids in the hope that when they go off into the big wide world, the memory of their mother's chicken curry, the scent of her caramelized onions with garlic, the whiff of her cinnamon-scented rice pudding will tug at their heart and bring them back home -- just like my parents' cooking does for me!