THE POWER OF FOOD
Bonding over Bourdain
The other night, I genuinely screamed, scaring my husband and shocking my little girl. “What!? What is it?” “Anthony Bourdain killed himself !” I shouted.
“Who is Anthony Bourdain?” asked my Israeli man.
The truth? I don’t really know. He is a cooking saint I heard about through my mother. One of the many kings and queens of the kitchen she has revered. And like a lapsed Catholic, or a Jew who has laughed at, or spit on, or sat in awe and in ignorance of the great holy books, I never read Anthony Bourdain. Whatever he wrote about the kitchen ... well, it remains confidential as far as I’m concerned.
But when I read the news, I felt like I had to call my mother right away to tell her I was sorry. She didn’t seem as upset about it as I did. I think it’s because she knows where she stands with him. She has read all his books. She is confident in their relationship.
For me, he’s a man I never got to know. Just like I never got to know all the many people who write the books that are piled high in my mother’s bedroom. Hundreds of cookbooks threatening to weigh down the floor of this small, simple, carpet-tocarpet room nestled in the heart of Chomedey, Laval, where my mother has lived for more than 20 years.
If there’s one thing my mother really knows how to do well — it’s cook. And she’s even better at collecting cookbooks. Growing up, she bought all the sexy magazines: Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Saveur, Gourmet. She had binders and binders of recipes culled from these paragons of food porn, and from the New York Times, and the Montreal Gazette and wherever else one might find a recipe. Twenty hard, blue binders with typed-up recipes and pictures of the desired dish taped above each carefully curated culinary instruction poem.
And the woman can cook. And the woman can eat. And I’ve spent so much of my life worrying that she would die from her love of food. And also so many times being comforted by her food. And many, many more times just wishing I had half her skill and knowledge of how to make things. Simple things. And complicated things. Quiches and soups and stir-fries and cakes and simple salads and poached salmon. I always wanted to know how to poach a salmon.
And today, I have my own kid and food is a sadness, a joy, and it is our sustenance. It is a substance that brings me to my knees. I think about food and I feel afraid. Will I ever climb that hill that brings me to a place where I am able to make simple, yummy dishes on a regular basis?
So many times I’ve wanted to learn from my mother how to cook, but somehow there never seemed to be much time, or the right environment. And now that I’ve moved to another continent, I don’t even get to taste her food anymore.
A little more than 20 years ago, my mother had to leave our apartment in Montreal. I won’t go into the details, but she moved in with my aunt and uncle in Chomedey.
All the things and furniture and stuff of her many years of life, stuff that she bought, that was given to her, that was left over from her marriage to my father — all of it had to now fit into one bedroom. She no longer had her own kitchen or her own art on the walls of the house. She had the essential basics: bed, TV, clothes, photos and 600 cookbooks. The Great Wall of Recipe Books. Chinese, Italian, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, Balkan, Iraqi, food histories, food travelogues, intimate food diaries. Cake bibles and chocolate catalogues.They say the Inuit have a hundred words just for snow. My mother’s collection has a hundred recipes just for brownies. She has books with names like the Culinary Encyclopedia of Historical Techniques for Frying an Egg.
I have this fantasy that underneath my mediocre soups and my semi-edible stir-fries lies a talented cook. A genetic inheritance I have yet to claim. My mother might not have any money to give me, but she could pass on her culinary know-how. With just a few lessons from Ma, I will be poaching, souffleing, stir-frying and spicing like a regular Julia Child.
After more than 20 years of life in the room with the Great Wall of Cookbooks, my mother will be hitting the road once again. By the time she turns 72 this summer, she will be moving out of Chomedey to an old-age residence in Montreal. It’s a big change and I am so excited for her. But what will happen to all the cookbooks? Will they fit?
When I called my mother to commiserate about the news of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, she said, “Tamara, at some point, we all have to pay the piper. If your worries are about money, then count yourself lucky. Even when people’s lives look perfect, there is just no way to know what pain they are going through.”
She said she wouldn’t want to trade her problems in for anyone else’s. To me, my mother is a cooking inspiration just as worthy of stardom as Anthony Bourdain. She has less money, less education, fewer TV shows. But she knows how to cook and has an incredible sense of the world and of people because of her obsessive interest in all things edible.
I pray for Anthony Bourdain’s family. I pray that my mother is OK in her new home. That she can keep all her hundreds of cookbooks. And selfishly, I pray that one day I too will learn to cook like my mother and like Anthony Bourdain, may he rest in peace.
Tamara Kramer is a Montrealer who now lives in Israel. You can read her blog at kotelmotel.wordpress.com.