My father loved to cook a little but
gender roles made him the breadwinner
and not the bread baker.
My mother was a pre-feminist gal
refusing to teach her son to cook
unlike his sisters with someday
husbands and families to feed
I watched secretly –
absorbed the gist anyway.
On going to university
and facing the inevitability
of student self-sufficiency
they gave me a carbon steel Sabatier
a knife that sharpens beautifully
but must be cleaned immediately
else it soon goes rusty
I have worn it down every day of fifty-one years
– two food businesses and cooking daily
– now so thin it pares perfectly.
They also gave two books of recipes
The Paupers Cookbook and Catherine Whitehorn’s
classic Cooking in a Bedsit
sectioned One Ring, Two Rings and slimly
a Cooker for the very lucky…
I read and dutifully cooked a few
but though a lifelong love was born
yet who with a world of food to explore
would base their style on paucity
I added a book on Chinese cookery
whole, diced, steamed and stir fried
bought a wok and never looked back
spiced it up with the Penguin Indian cookery
And last but by no means least
found Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David
Seduced by the sensual celebratory
rather than precisely noted quantities
Elizabeth David liberated me
as well as, I later learned
the married man she ran off with
travelling Europe and living on a boat
My mother would not have approved
To these three parents chosen
Chinese, Indian and Mediterranean
I must mention the American professor
of studies West African
she taught my roomie and I
Palaver Sauce and Jollof Rice
suffered our inept experiments with nicety
so when I moved near Brixton Market
I fell into a world of ingredients
from bitter, Cypriot, taste-acquired
lemon and coriander brined olives.
to stinky, dried, West African fish in baskets
– I never came up for air
My culinary philosophy –
read recipes with a pinch of salt
absorb, ferment, reuse, infuse
resist encouragement to cull your larder
treat every meal as an adventure
feed strangers, friends and family
and you will never lose.
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in Poetics invites us to explore the senses in Food Poetry.
I should add, to contextualise the above poem, that my Mother’s maiden name was Cook and my partner’s Mother’s maiden name was Larder – go figure…
We have very similar culinary heritages – sharing the same cookbooks. My husband was not taught to cook by his mother. When he moved into my student flat, we girls scribbled down the instructions for Shepherds Pie and left hiim to it. He ran to us in panic when the very cheap mince went grey as he fried it!
LOL
I used to do the cooking at the start of our marriage, but as I always got home later than he did, my husband decided to take over, and he has turned into the most fantastic cook. My father on the other hand, could just about manage toast and a cup of tea! I admire your Chinese cookery – I could never quite manage it as well as Indian, but Mediterranean food is our staple. By the way, my daughter’s married to a Cook.
I didn’t know you liked cooking! That’s so cool, Andrew! 🥰 This is a heartfelt, epic poem that deserves countless readings. I smiled at “I watched secretly –absorbed the gist anyway.”
Thank you so much for writing to the prompt. You made my day! 🩷🩷
Aww thanks, Sanaa! Yes – I managed a restaurant for a time and eventually opened one briefly, but it is a high-risk business unless you have loads of money and/or a large family to pitch in in the early days – still – I loved every minute of it…
I didn’t know of your cooking and restaurant business either, Andrew. I grew up cooking with the “shit arein” method–a Yiddish word for a little of this and that. I love to eat all sorts of foods–including Indian, Chinese, and Mediterranean. My husband doesn’t cook, but he eats anything I make.
My dad only knew how to make sandwiches, but he learned how to cook a bit after my parents divorced. I remember him calling me once because he had roasted a chicken, but he didn’t know to remove the bag of gizzards inside. . .
Oh, I can tell you are a true food lover and cook, Andrew! I love that you still have that knife and use it after all these years! What a treasure!
A man and his tools, Dwight! I might add a photo to the post…
A poetry memoir, infused with the best of taste, found emotions..
Thank you Ain – poetry memoir is a good description…
I love the rhythm of this, Andrew, the consonance and assonance, and the way the story unfolds, like following a recipe. I never had recipe books when I left home as we were all cooks in my family, and I didn’t have any problems with cooking. But later I acquired all of Elizabeth David. Could never really be bothered with any of the others.
Thank you very much for that analysis, Jane – I remember when I started writing poetry seriously (there had previously been but a handful) a mere year ago, a lot of them were free verse, as is the modern way, and I really struggled with the question of whether they were “proper” poems, but with time, I feel I have added a whole arsenal of poetic tools…
So glad you included a photo of the famous knife. I really enjoyed reading this.
My husband was never taught to cook, but when he got interested, he cooked some fabulous meals.
Thanks, Sarah – cooking is definitely not innately gendered but more men do it professionally because more women are at home doing it for their families. I suspect though, that there is an innate difference between chef-ing and cooking and it would be interesting to discuss with women chefs…