Food Memories: Tiny and Almost Impalpable is the Essence of Memory

Catherine comes from a long line of strong, talented and visionary women and is the co-creator of this blog.

Tiny and Almost Impalpable is the Essence of Memory

July 22, 2012

As far as I can remember, my first thought upon waking every morning is “what shall I make for dinner today.”  I have always cooked for family, friends, holidays, social events and large gatherings of people.  Cooking was therapy and contact sport rolled into one.   Cooking was self-identity.  However, it was only recently that I understood the centrality of food in my life. 

During a rather dark time in my life, I was working in New York City and commuting home on weekends.  One snowy Friday night, I struck up a conversation with the taxi driver who was taking me home.   The driver asked what I plan to do for the weekend and I said:  read, drink tea and maybe make a large pot of chicken soup.  He then gave me his chicken soup recipe.  It sounded absolutely delectable.  So, I said:  Do you love to cook; and he said “yes” and that he used to own a restaurant.  At which point I remarked:  Oh, business must be slow; you are moonlighting, driving a taxi.  “No,” he said, “the restaurant was doing really well.  Customers loved my cooking.  But, after a while I just realized that I don’t enjoy cooking for people I don’t know and love.  Eventually, I started to dread cooking.  That’s when I decided to give up the restaurant, so I can keep my love of cooking.”

This was my “Madeleine” moment.  A moment best depicted by Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, when the smell and taste of a madeleine dipped in a cup of tea triggered a flood (6 volumes and over 3,000 pages) of forgotten childhood memories (http://www.geoffwilkins.net/proust/).  Growing up, I spent every school vacation with my grandparents – more specifically, in my grandmother’s kitchen.   My grandmother came from Shaoxing, China, not far south of Shanghai.  She cooked with fresh ingredients, deftly seasoned with just a touch of soy, sugar, sesame oil and family lore:  How she married my grandfather (He was the only man willing to marry a girl with big feet); how she and my mother escaped Japanese occupation (Your mother carried the family bedding that was bigger than she); and how she gave birth to ten children and only three daughters lived to adulthood.

Recalling each story, I can still taste her river shrimp with petite peas -- little jade pearls, so slippery to a child’s chopsticks, safely nestled against the pink succulence of the tiny shrimps, and all are enveloped in the comfort of silky egg white pillows.  Each ingredient, each color and each flavor is so alive that they shimmered like so many dew drops in morning sun.  Later, I learned to make pastas and dumplings from my mother, who never shied away from bold flavors or dishes that depended on perfect timing and technique for their success.   Every holiday, major or minor, secular or sacred, is reason enough to put on a large feast for her students or anyone who did not have family nearby.  Eventually, I was given the exclusive right to make pies and stuff turkeys for my mother’s holiday repasts. 

These days, I cook only simple foods for those I love.  No more big parties or showing off at social events.  No chasing after food feds.  I cook by thinking about the enjoyment I am to receive from my dinner companions, instead of the requirements set out in recipes.  I make my mother’s Zhajiang Mien (noodles with brown meat sauce) when my sister visits from Australia.  And, my college-aged son makes pumpkin pies for me for Thanksgiving – a dish he learned in first grade and, even since, has declared with great conviction his unwavering refusal to divulge the secret ingredient, notwithstanding that neither he nor I ever used a recipe for pumpkin pie.   

What I learned from the taxi driver – and Proust – is that cooking for family and friends is an act of love.  And, I would add, each time they eat the food we make, they reciprocate.  I have lost count of the “compliments” from my father after eating, with great showing of gusto, the eggs I made with ketchup, the soups I made with ketchup, the rice with ketchup, and the roast with ketchup….. No matter, each small, quotidian dish of food served and consumed adds to and strengthens the bond we have with each other.  This is why I am always touched by Proust’s realization that, “the smell and taste of things ….. tiny and almost impalpable [are] the essence of the immense architecture of memory.”  Because even after memories of many novel and exciting experiences have faded in our mind, there is the taste and smell of food that stand ready to remind us of the things we treasure the most.