Whose Palate is it Anyway?

"My God...I have to do something about this refrigerator!" I declared this evening, after going to retrieve a beer for me and Chas.

"Yeah, I noticed that. Actually, I barely even recognize my refrigerator any longer...it actually kind of scares the shit out of me...but I think that's a good thing," he opined.

Here's the main problem: I love to cook.

And no, not "love to cook" in some vague, new-woman-meets-old-nonna sense of the word...and certainly not as in "I love to cook because I want that man," as I saw in Glamour magazine this month with a list of recipes that are guaranteed to please men but make no gastronomical sense whatsoever (no disrespect to Glamour, they have kicked Cosmopolitan's ass way out of the ball field), but I love to cook in the sense that it is my therapy. It is one of the four things (writing, yoga, and gardening would be the others) where I can totally let my soul free and not think for a few hours. I can lose myself, and constantly do, in a new recipe or an old classic. I don't notice time, whatever thoughts have been racing around in my head like a non-stop bad songs cease to play, and it's just me and my soul having a conversation over a cutting board, a saute pan, or in the grocery store picking out ingredients. It's just my time with me...that's why I love to cook.

I come by it pretty naturally, being the daughter of a first-generation Italian. For Italians, cooking is sort of like what meditation is for Buddhists: it centers your spirit, it calms your mind, it allows you a creative outlet while, at the same time, gives you the opportunity to show someone (or a lot of 'someones') how much you love and cherish them by feeding them well.

It wasn't always this way growing up, mind you, as I was raised, in part, by my German grandmother. Granted, I respect the Germans on a wide array of subjects...from car engineering to beer...but Germans don't inherently find peace in cooking the way the Italians and the French do (I have never been to Spain but I assume it is the same). Granted too, some of the best food I have ever had was in Austria and Hungary (a former Austrian Empire country) but the biggest appreciation of food I have ever seen has been in France and in Italy.

My grandmother, 100% German, would cook a roast until you could bludgeon someone to death with it...and sometimes she tried. Until I was about 12, I never knew that bacon was not supposed to be served charred and blackened, and, most importantly, that a pork loin was not supposed to make the same sound as a potato chip when biting into it.

I learned these things later in life...when I was about 18 and cooking and eating on my own for the first time...and, honestly, I learned them from my mother.

Having been raised on burnt and charred food for many years, I always found my mother's embrace of fresh ingredients and simple recipes to be disgusting. For me, everything was undercooked.

"What to you mean the pasta should be soft? This pork loin is rare? Why isn't the steak black and crispy like Grandma makes it?" I would demand.

Then, eventually, I learned how to cook.

And no, it wasn't in my mother's kitchen.

Italian women, despite all the wonderful promotional items to the contrary, rarely share kitchens with their next-of-kin. Sure, my mother's mother had patience for me in her kitchen but put me and my mother in the same kitchen and you get a fight of colossal proportions.

"You're REALLY going to use sea salt in the soup instead of kosher salt? Really?" she'll ask.

"Why don't you dice the garlic this way? It saves time and no one wants a big chunk of garlic?" I'll say.

"You were raised on burnt bacon and charred pig's penises...what do you know?" she'll throw back.

Naturally, or at least mostly, it is all in good fun.

Because cooking for my mom is the same as it is for me: soul therapy.

We have different styles of course (she has been cooking long enough to instinctively know what ingredients will work together while I have embraced a level of precision in measuring and incorporating different spices that defies rustic cooking but ends up making beautiful music...).

But we can't share the same kitchen.

Never.

But she loves my potato soup and Hungarian goulash and I love...well, just about everything she makes.

So my first move, upon leaving Africa and coming to live with Chas, was to take over his kitchen.

I was shy at first, given that the man had only known me for a month and had decided that he loved me enough after a handful of dates to take a wager on a relationship, so I didn't invade his kitchen.

Yet as he watched me maneuver around old spices and cans upon cans of Chunky Soup, he declared something that made my soul sing:

"Alright, look, you obviously are not comfortable in that kitchen. I don't know the first thing about cooking so you take out of there anything you don't like and put back in anything you like as well. I can't cook but I can build you shelves, rearrange cabinet space, do whatever you need...but you obviously need this, so let's do it."

In three days, I had a completely new kitchen.

Then I started cooking...for real.

I cooked for about fourteen nights straight.

"You sure you're OK with this? I feel like I am torturing you with hard labor," Chas said.

"What do you like better? The shrimp fricassee or the chicken Parmesan?" I would reply.

"Baby, I honestly don't know...I have never had this before. I am used to eating soup or sandwiches or making something simple in my wok...I just don't know how to judge...it's really all good," he said.

At this I would get pissed...

"Can I still cook? Do I still have the skill? Does he like what I am making him? WHY doesn't he know what's good or bad?" my mind would hurtle through.

I would take these concerns to my mother.

"Hey, my ex-husband, your stepfather, would ask for ham and cheese sandwiches every night with the crusts cut off when I had spent hours perfecting a complicated bolognese. Most guys don't know this stuff, intuitively, so you need to teach him to have a palate..." she suggested.

(My mother and I may not be able to share a kitchen but we are on the phone about five times a week sharing recipes and techniques...that's how it goes in an Italian family).

How do you teach someone to have a palate?

How do you teach someone that bacon fried to the point of incineration is NOT good and a moist pork loin is better?

"I don't know how to do that," I told my mother, despondent.

"Well, you learned, didn't you? And now you can cook so well that it is a pleasure to eat your food," she said.

I was floored.

A pleasure to eat my food?

REALLY?

So Chas and I were in the grocery store last night when I had a bit of a meltdown.

I was intent on making an Asian noodle soup that called for Bok Choy but there was not Bok Choy to be had in New Jersey. Then there were no Shiitake mushrooms. Then there was no lemon grass.

Usually, this all makes Chas's head spin but he did something I have never seen...he asked...

"Baby, don't you think you can improvise?"

No, I assured him.

"Well, then make something else," he suggested.

I continued to fume for another few minutes and then said, "Do you want Pasta e Fagioli or Shepherd's Pie?" (fully expecting him not to know what I was talking about).

"Shepherd's Pie. Just not the one with that herb you put in it the last time. Maybe something more classic," he suggested. (I veered from my own tried and true Shepherd's Pie recipe last month and it was gross...I didn't think he'd noticed).

So we came home, I made my own mixed-up version of Shepherd's Pie, he loved it, and ate the leftovers for breakfast the next day.

Tonight we stopped in at our favorite Happy Hour joint and he ordered the jalapeno poppers.

"Not enough salt...something is off here," he said.

I wanted to jump for joy but came home and, instead, called my mother.

"I told you...he will develop a palate if you are cooking for him full-time. He's a smart guy and he will master this one too. So just keep cooking and don't compromise like I did and serve someone ham and cheese sandwiches or hot dogs when they need to learn how to eat right, there's no reason you can't share the same passion," she said.

"He used to keep paper plates in his freezer," Bonnie, his former landlord, said a few months ago.

Tonight Chas carefully takes out my frozen tubs of chicken, beef and seafood stock as he tries to get at a beer he had put in to cool an hour before. He maneuvers around the frozen lasagna and chafes at my suggestion that we give some of the food to our neighbors.

"You made that for me," he says.

"We can make more food for the neighbors and we can give that to them. But I love your lasagna. That's mine."

Then:

"Oh, and this, this we can give to the neighbors."

It was my failed Shepherd's Pie.

I love to cook. And I think I am finally with someone who appreciates it.

Feels good.

Tomorrow, I am making him charred pig's assholes in a browned butter.

Just kidding.