When a Boy Learns About Cooking

The transformation of any ingredient into a new taste is metamorphosis. Herbs, grains, muscle, fruits, even exoskeleton do not end their existence with the harvest. When homo erectus discovered fire, cooking by fire started about 1.5 million years ago. Ötzi the Iceman found in the Alps in 1991 had eaten grain, herbs and deer meat. More than 5,300 years ago, Ötzi may had even made bread by cooking einkorn wheat over fire.

.. I started watching my mom prepare food when I was a few years old. She would make me stand on a stool next to her in the kitchen and talk to me about food. Not only she was able to keep an eye on me, but taught me lessons that may have shaped many of my habits.

First, all ingredients have a story to tell but only when allowed to share it with other ingredients. “Chick peas have little to offer by themselves” she used to say “but put tahini, olive oil, garlic and salt, and the peas get a new life.” Indeed, a story needs many tellers, many actors and a creative story teller to put them together in a unique way.

Second, be frugal. After almost 60 years I remember my mom looking at the left over cuttings of meat and vegetables and thinking “how I can use them in a new dish?” Nothing went to waste while cooking, and nothing went to waste when served on the table.

The third lesson that affected my behavior over the lucky life I have had was that of believing and celebrating seasonality. Indeed, lamb was a dish for spring, beans for summer, fish most of the year and fruits rarely in winter. Born on the Mediterranean, cooking creativity was dictated by the seasonality of the ingredients’ availability. Which meant that jams, preserves and canned food were an art inherited from ancient civilizations that started with the storage of millet and the drying of meats.

These three lessons -- co-existence of ingredients for a new taste story telling; frugality; and, the respect of seasonality have made me a more flexible person during my life on multiple continents, my professional work in a couple of dozen countries, and the acceptance of all new modes of thinking and expression as the essence of creativity.

As I get closer to the sunset of my days, celebrating seasonality becomes more important. Not the seasonality of ingredients but the seasonality of our body and mind. To accept the change of seasons and what they bring to our energy, expectations and promises we once made is the secret spice in the recipe of new tastes we need to discover.

… Interestingly, I always remind myself (and some others when they are in a mood to listen) that agriculture started to grow hops for brewing beer! Indeed, the water was often polluted and dangerous to drink when communities took shape. Beer was drank instead of water, in lieu of water and as a wholesome drink. So civilization owns a lot to beer!

Finally, frugality and creativity also mean that observing and understanding natural processes may cut down on our interference with ingredients storytelling. For example, the South American fish dish ceviche uses the acid in lime and lemon to actually cook the fish. There is no heat or fire used.

Similarly, it has been discovered that early humans drank the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes during when the grapes ripe in the Fall, eliminating the need for fermentation (of course there were no large volumes of alcoholic drinks exported during the Paleolithic…)

… Today, I thought about my mother and how she shaped parts of my life by making me stay on a stool next to her when she was cooking.

And I felt grateful, once again.

July 1, 2019