The Unlikely Chef
By JAMI ATTENBERG
Published: April 26, 2013 29 Comments
My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently my mother never learned how to cook particularly well. Certainly she had cousins and aunts who passed on bits of knowledge here and there, and she was taught to cook as part of her public education. Water, she could boil. Recipes, she could follow. But with a single father raising two young girls, my mother lost some skills along the way.
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Therefore, I did not learn to cook, either. Instead I have become a superior dinner guest. I am wonderful to have at your side while you cook, particularly if you give me a glass of wine, and also to have sit at your table, because I will appreciate your food in a deep, emotional and highly verbal way, perhaps, in small part, because I did not get to experience that kind of cooking growing up.
Cooking skills aside, my mother is an exceptional nurturer. Two years ago, she flew to New York from Chicago to care for me while I recovered from a minor operation. The surgery went smoothly, and the painkillers were a delight. Later, at my apartment, I handed her a grocery list of comfort foods. Included on that list was Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.
“I should make you some chicken noodle soup instead,” she said.
“Mom, you have never made me chicken noodle soup in your life — except from a can,” I said.
“That’s not true,” she said.
“It is absolutely true,” I said.
We discussed this a moment longer. Soon, a cellphone surfaced from a purse, and my father’s voice came through on the end of the line.
“Didn’t I make chicken noodle soup when they were kids?” my mother asked.
“Let me talk to him,” I said.
“Your mother did many wonderful things for you,” my father said. “She encouraged your love of books; she taught you to believe you could be anything you wanted in life.”
“I know she did!” I said. “I’m not saying she wasn’t a great mom. But there was no chicken noodle soup, right?”
“I do not recall any chicken noodle soup,” my father said.
I shook my head at my mother. “Dad says no.”
“Well, now I’m definitely going to make you some soup,” said my mother, who loves a well-thrown gauntlet.
“Tell her to be sure to ask for help at the grocery store,” my father said.
I e-mailed my friend Kate, who is a wonderful chef. I wrote that my mom was going to make some chicken noodle soup and that perhaps this was dangerous terrain. “Send us a recipe,” I said. “But make it airtight.”
She sent a recipe, and off my mother went to the grocery store in search of decent chicken thighs. Meanwhile, the painkillers were wearing off. That soup better be good, I thought.
Three hours and a dozen e-mails with Kate later, my mother had successfully made the chicken broth.
There were some arguments along the way. She bought low-sodium stock, for example, and I forced her to salt it. “I’m recovering from surgery,” I said. “Let me have my salt!” But it looked good, and it smelled good. It was definitely chicken soup, and it was made with love.
All we needed were the noodles.
I watched as my mother emptied an entire one-pound bag of noodles into the soup. Something clicked in my head. At that exact moment, Kate sent me an e-mail. Subject line: Noodles. “I forgot to say how many,” she wrote. “Did she put in the whole package? Really, it should be like . . . a cup.”
“She put them all in,” I wrote back.
“But the noodles are the best part,” my mother said.
“The broth is just an excuse for the noodles,” Kate agreed. “But still. . . .”
We watched in horror as the noodles sucked up all the soup. We tried to add more water, but it was too late. My mother and I stood in the kitchen, frantically spooning the remaining broth into our bowls.
“It’s my fault!” wrote Kate.
“It’s my fault!” said my mother.
Aha, the final ingredient: Guilt.
But let me tell you, that one bowl of chicken noodle soup was delicious. We did not think about the vat of soup-soaked noodles sitting in the kitchen while we ate, nor did we think about the imperfections of life. I was my mother’s best dinner guest, and she was my favorite chef.
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