It’s a well-worn adage that nothing ever tastes quite like mom’s cooking. With just the smell of mom’s spaghetti sauce, I shrug off the years and return once more to our townhouse in Dublin, eating heaps of pasta slathered with red sauce and liberally carpeted with freshly-shaved Romano (‘cause we fancy). Perhaps we’re in the dining room, which is really nothing more than an extension of our little galley kitchen, sitting around the metallic-flecked white formicatable in our worn vinyl chairs. More likely, we’re eating at aluminum folding trays in the living room watching Are You Being Served? on PBS, a ritual my parents would continue for well over 20 years.
I’ve created new memories out of new meals, of course, dishes that I’ve discovered or that come from my wife’s family, or that came from a restaurant we decided to love. Caitlin’s beef stew, which is new every time, always has a rich aroma of beef and tomato and herbs and caramelized onions. Just this past weekend I made some roasted root vegetables for the first time in a few years. Yet the scent was just as powerful as when I made them for the first time, almost eight years ago in New York. The sweetness of the onions and the carrots and parsnips mingles with liberal amounts of thyme and rosemary, balanced by the starch of red potatoes; I was back in our Washington Heights apartment, looking out the kitchen window at the Sunoco a few blocks north as I chopped and oiled and seasoned and roasted.
But no matter how much we come to love the smell our new cuisine, it still can’t quite match the emotional connection of the meals from your childhood. This week, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite meals from my youth, and give you what recipes I can as we go. I can do this for two reasons. First, most of them are incredibly simple. But second, and most important, is that thanks to my mother’s innate cooking skills, there were never really any recipes to speak of. She would pull out ingredients, mix and stir and pour and dash and pinch and blend and taste and season, and thirty minutes later we were eating. So when I say “recipe,” what I really mean is ”parameter.” I can at least give you the flavor, and if it doesn’t taste right, it’s because you’re not my mom. And that’s okay, really.
As I mentioned before, I love my mom’s spaghetti sauce. It’s a rather bright sauce, with the acidity of the tomatoes front and forward, mostly because she doesn’t really do much to cut it. To properly set your expectations, it’s not a traditional Italian sauce by any means. The classic spice trio of oregano, thyme, and basil do not make an appearance. It’s not that my family has anything against those spices; they show up in many other meals my mom cooked. But not in spaghetti sauce.
Most of my mom’s cooking emphasizes simplicity, in the best way. Her spaghetti sauce is a prime example. Brown a pound or so of ground beef, then add it to a stock pot with tomato sauce and tomato paste, then season liberally with garlic powder. Then simmer for…I don’t know. Thirty minutes? Honestly, you can cook it as long as you like. Extra time doesn’t hurt it. For me, the beef provides most of the counterbalance to the tomatoes. But what makes the sauce my mom’s is the garlic. It’s very garlicky. It’s garlic-forward. The garlic grabs you by the cheeks and kisses you squarely on the mouth. The garlic owns you. You are garlic’s now. You have no other master than garlic.
Between my mom’s spaghetti sauce and her meatloaf, it’s no wonder I’m such a slave to garlic. Like the spaghetti sauce, her meatloaf isn’t what most people picture. For most, meatloaf refers to ground beef mixed with vegetables like peas and grated carrots and chopped onions, shaped into a loaf, covered with ketchup, and baked until mostly solid. It’s simple, basic Americana, and like most things American these days, there’s not much room for middle ground: you either love it or you hate it.
As I said, my mom embraced simplicity and, in her way, a purity of flavor and texture. For her, these meatloaves were an olio of spare bits, and while that may have served a purpose at one time, we now have the luxury of picking and choosing what to add to our meatloaves—or what to not add. Never once did we have meatloaf with bits of vegetable matter disseminated throughout. When mom said meatloaf, that was exactly what you were getting: a loaf of meat.
The process for making meatloaf was rather straightforward. You take your ground beef, add an egg or two with a dusting of breadcrumbs as a binder, and—naturally—a lot of garlic powder. Form it into a loaf, place it in the black Granite Ware roasting pan, cover, and bake for…I don’t know. Thirty minutes?
When it comes out of the oven, it doesn’t look like anything special. It’s a gray loaf of meat, and since it was covered, it was steamed more than roasted. There are gray veins of webbing where the egg has performed its binding role, and beyond that…well, what do you want? It’s meat. You slice it with a bread knife, put the slice on your plate next to the mashed potatoes and canned green beans, and pour out some A1 to dip your meat. It’s glorious.
While I love her meatloaf, where it really shines is as a leftover. The next day, you cut a couple thin slices, no more than about ¼”, and you place the unheated slices on some bread. Add a liberal amount of yellow mustard, put the hat on the sandwich, and enjoy. I’m not going to say it’s a joy without a price—be sure to have antacids handy—but it’s definitely one of my favorite meals.
Tuna casserole was a dish I really enjoyed as a kid, although we stopped eating it as much as I got older and my father became more concerned about his health, especially his cholesterol. As is the case with most casseroles, mom’s tuna casserole was not exactly health food. You start with some egg noodles (the wider the better), boil ‘em up, drain ‘em, then mix them with a can or two of cream of mushroom soup and a can of tuna that you’ve been heating on the stove. You take this mixture and pour it into an 8×8 casserole dish, cover, and bake for…I don’t know. Thirty minutes?
Of course, this dish is another instance of my mom’s insistence on simplicity. For most people I know, tuna casserole isn’t tuna casserole without a layer of crushed potato chips on top to add crunch and flavor. Not so with my mom. She was appalled by this addition, as though adding potato chips was an inauthentic flourish to a dish made from canned soup, canned tuna, and store-brand noodles. But I’m with her on this one. The chips don’t actually add all that much, either as flavor or texture. I wanted my casserole to taste or feel like potato chips, I’d just eat potato chips.
There were a couple dishes that my dad didn’t really care for, which meant we only made them when he was out of town. For example, nachos. You might be saying to yourself, who doesn’t love nachos? I really wish I had an answer other than “my dad.” These weren’t fancy nachos, either. Some ground beef cooked with a packet of Old El Paso taco seasoning, then spread over round tortilla chips and covered with olives and shredded cheese, microwaved to melt the cheese, then topped with salsa and sour cream. I mean, they were messy, as nachos are wont to be, but they were also delicious. Was it the mess, dad? Is that what it was? Tell me!
But to touch on that theme of simplicity yet again, my mom and I really looked forward to a dinner of hamburger, macaroni, and diced tomatoes. When I describe it to people, most of them will nod and say, “Oh! You mean goulash!” And I have to patiently explain to them that no, I don’t mean goulash. The first time I made it for Caitlin, she looked at the pan and said, “Yeah. That’s not goulash.” To me, goulash sounds like stew. It sounds like a dish that involves a time-consuming melding of flavors, a heavily-spiced Eastern European entrée brought over from the shtetl. It sounds like beets.
This dish is quite simply boiled macaroni dumped into a skillet with browned ground beef, then mixed with a 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes. You don’t even heat the mixture, once you’ve browned the meat and boiled the noodles. It’s three ingredients, with no spices aside from the salt in the pasta water. These days I’ll top my serving with some Frank’s Red Hot, but other than that, it’s utter simplicity. What I’ve always loved about this dish is how pretty I think it looks. The stark white macaroni against the dark brown meat makes a striking background for the brilliant red of the tomatoes. The white and the red together just pop. It’s beautiful.
One more dish to mention, another that I love for its utter simplicity as well as the memories that it inspires. It’s buttered noodles. That’s it. Nothing fancy. We’d make some spaghetti or some macaroni, drain it, put it back in the pot, and add some butter.* Then we’d season the pasta to our heart’s content. This was the era of Mrs. Dash, and we Mrs. Dash-ed the hell out of that pasta. We’d tip the shaker over with a heavy hand, then add the store-brand “sprinkle cheese,” purportedly parmesan, and whatever other spices we felt like adding. So obviously, garlic powder.
* Well, it was actually Country Crock. At the time, butter was considered the root of all American health problems, while the trans-fat laden alternatives were treated like health food. To be fair, the margarine did add an appealing saltiness without the heaviness of butter. Worth the tradeoff, though? Well, yeah. It was.
I appreciated the strong flavors this meal would have, but I also understood the reason for it. When we first had this for dinner, we were struggling. I was a kid, so I wasn’t privy to the issues. But like many families, there were ebbs and flows in the family finances, and I remember this was one of the ebbs. So we tried something new, and while I was initially skeptical, I did my best to hide my disappointment. But when I tried it, I discovered I had a new favorite meal, and while I didn’t realize that it would take a place among the pantheon of foods I would later write a blog post about, it was a pretty good indication that whatever happened, we’d be okay.
There are a few foods I absolutely detested. Sauerkraut, for instance. Apparently it was all my mother wanted to eat when she was pregnant with me; I must have OD’ed (Apostrophe?) in the womb, because I can’t stand the stuff. The texture, the taste, the smell…it’s all bad. New Year’s Day was especially hard, as it was a tradition in my house to have pot roast and sauerkraut for good luck in the coming year. Most years I decided to chance it.
Nothing, though, compares to Brussels sprouts. It was the first food I ever said “no” to. I’m pretty sure I was five (and fat). The first time my parents told me I couldn’t leave the table until I ate my Brussels sprouts, I put one in my mouth, bit down, and vomited all over the table. Again, the texture, taste, and smell are all wrong; whoever told us this skunky, watery leaf ball was food must be having a good laugh somewhere.
Come to think of it, most of the foods I don’t like are cabbage. Like, almost all. And I’m not a huge fan of broccoli or cauliflower either. In fact, the whole family of cruciferous vegetables can take a long walk off a short pier.
Writing about all these foods (except those cruciferous bastards) makes me a little homesick. For the most part, I still haven’t mastered my mother’s “recipes,” mostly because I haven’t tried nearly enough. But as I said, new recipes and foods continue to spring up, and I keep making new associations. For instance, I don’t know that I’ll ever have burnt ends again without comparing them to the plate we got from MOJO BBQ at our wedding reception. Juicy, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth bits, seasoned and smoked to perfection. Of course, the wonderful flavor is only heightened by its association with one of the happiest days of my life.
Perhaps it’s not the healthiest thing in the world to invest so much emotion into food. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said “Screw it, I’ve had a bad day” and gone to town on a bag of chips, I’d…well, I’d have several dollars, I’ll tell you what. But still, to be able to smell garlic and be transported back in time and space is an amazing thing. It’s time travel. It’s magic.
It’s home.
MetaFrizzics 