Mothers who cook know how to do at least fifty things with a can of tuna.
They’re always there with the straight talk when a 40 year old child phones home for advice on how to roast a leg of lamb. Years of cooking stains tenderize the index cards with her handwritten recipes for cabbage soup and manicotti. One whiff of Mom’s beef stew, and you’re tied again to her apron strings.
The day she told you how to make green tomato pickle, she told you how her mother used to make it. And then she told you about the first time she disagreed with her mother. A Mother’s recipe is more than a sum of its ingredients.
It’s a time capsule of family stories, and pots and pans and ways of cutting and mixing that makes the gumbo taste just right. So, after you’ve had your fill of braised rattlesnake infused with a mango sauce and garnished with albino truffles, there’s always Mom’s dependable, delectable meatloaf and chicken liver.
Cooking with Mom, in this hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Grace Young, food editor at “Home” magazine, and author of “The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing,” Teresa Barrenechea, author of “The Basque Table” and proprietor of the restaurant “Marichu” in New York City, and food writer and cook Lora Brody, author of “Cooking with Memories.”