Mistakes? Delish.
Joe is learning how to cook. He gets intimidated by recipes with many ingredients, so he is focusing on simple, one-pot dinners. Still, it is challenging for him in a way that I have a hard time understanding. I have been cooking for myself almost every night for almost a decade. I can sense the kitchen timer will beep, a moment before it does. I can cut an onion in a way that makes sense for any given meal, without seeking reassurance. I can only barely remember a time before I was fluent in the language of the kitchen. Sometimes I suspect Joe thinks I was born knowing how to cook. But nobody's born knowing how to nourish themselves, or others. That’s a beautiful, learned skill.
Growing up, my two kitchen chores were to trim the bottoms of button mushrooms, and husk corn. Both tasks I could perform at the dining room table, so that my mom could work alone, and everything would be just so. The summer before college, my best friend’s mom taught me how to scramble an egg and boil rice. I promptly forgot both, but I remember thinking, I’ll never really need to know these things. Like math.
I wish I could remember the first meal I made on my own. I wish Joe could taste it, to taste how bad it must have been. Maybe just as telling is a memory I have, of being 17, and watching my roommate assemble a ham sandwich. I watched and thought, wow, she really knows what she’s doing.
I was a beginner once. Walking through the grocery aisles like an imposter, praying that a snack could fuel my day. Never had the patience for a recipe, or a potato. I lived off of food that I begged for from wealthier, or more knowledgeable friends. Like the friend who cooked with a cast iron, as if she was living in another century. Or the friend who put every single spice he had into every meal he made.
For me, it was a battle with loneliness and productivity. I was a teenager living in New York City. I wanted to eat oranges and smoke cigarettes, sit outside on a park bench and write all night. The idea of spending even half an hour alone in my kitchen, 14 floors above St. Marks Place, was unfathomable.
But when I had 13 dollars in my bank account, I had no choice. I learned to cook lentils the hard way. Every now and then, I bit into a rock, until I found out you have to sort, rinse, and search for debris. I chopped squash with a tiny paring knife. My mushrooms were soggy. My rice was always both dry and wet. I cooked with the goo from cans of beans. I had tubs of leftovers that I didn’t want to eat, but had to. I was a terrible cook. The food I made was so terrible that I blocked most of it from my memory.
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Joe made dinner last night. He asked me if he cut the sweet potatoes into too large chunks. He had, but I didn’t say anything. He asked the same thing of the garlic and the ginger. Again, yes, they could have been smaller, but how’s he gonna know unless he makes the mistake for himself?
He made a delicious dinner, a sweet potato and chickpea korma. I was delighted that it was edible, that it tasted really good. He far and away surpassed my expectations, because as I said, I know how bad food can be. We sat down to eat, and he was giddy with pride. He licked the sauce and said, “this is the best thing I’ve ever made!” Halfway through the meal, he went silent. I asked, “what’s wrong?” He took a bite, and looked up thoughtfully. A look I know so well, his search for words. He finally said, “I think there’s too much sweet potato, I take a bite and it’s all sweet potato.”
I smiled and nodded in agreement.
Joe asked, “how come you let me undercook the onions?”
I shrugged mischievously.
When our bowls were empty, I got up for seconds, and Joe stayed in his seat. Most nights, the opposite happens. My guess is he was full from the potatoes, and from memorizing what went wrong.
I called to him as I stood over the room-temp korma: “Is it good to know that, mistakes and all, it’s not for show that I’m about to lick this pot clean?”
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Sometimes I think the kitchen is the most essential place to practice mistakes. When you practice making mistakes, you practice recovering from them. You practice resilience. You develop a supernatural ability to eat food you would rather throw out. Like how when I was very little, my grandfather took me sledding in a toboggan and said, “the most important thing is knowing how to jump out before you crash.” Or how when my dad taught me to bike, he said, “what I really need to teach you is how to fall.” I need to teach Joe how to oversalt, undersalt, and everything in between. Through contrast, find the centerpiece of what he craves. I need to let him know that he will never disappoint me. That I am grateful, most of all, for his love and effort.