How to Ruin Dinner in Two Countries
Oceans Apart, Salt and Sugar Later, Still Learning How to Cook
I never liked the smell of food. Not raw meat, not simmering spices, not even the sweetness of dessert cooking down on a stove. To this day, I still don't. Strange thing to admit for a woman who now feeds people for a living, in a manner of speaking, but the truth is, I came to the kitchen as a stranger, armed only with headphones and a stubborn kind of hope.
Three weeks into marriage, hubby caught the flu. I had never cooked before, we'd always had help, the kind of household where soup simply appeared when you needed it. But this was America now, just us. I decided to make him chicken broth, something warm, something wifely. In his kitchen, salt and sugar sat in identical containers, fine and white and indistinguishable to someone who'd never learned to taste as she cooked, only to guess. I guessed wrong.
He took a spoonful. Paused. "It's probably my taste buds," he said kindly, sick and gracious. He tried a second spoonful anyway, to be sure. I watched his face confirm what I already feared, the soup was unmistakably, catastrophically sweet. I remember thinking, with the particular drama of a new bride, is my marriage over because of a bowl of soup. He just smiled. He always just smiled.
Barely a year later, we were in Lahore, and hubby decided to invite his friends over. I decided, against all evidence, that I was going to cook them kababs. I'd read that raw papaya tenderizes meat, so I leaned on calculation the way I always did when instinct failed me. More papaya, I reasoned, more tender. I put my headphones on, let the music carry me somewhere the smell of raw meat couldn't reach, danced through the marinating like Shakira on a Tuesday, hips moving to a rhythm that had nothing to do with dinner, on the charcoal pit I'd grown up watching.
The kababs went bitter. Devastatingly, unmistakably bitter, the papaya turning generous into cruel. What was supposed to be a rich, non-vegetarian feast for his friends became cucumber and tomato salad, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, and lemonade. A dinner reduced to its simplest, most edible parts. We laughed about it that night, all of us, the kababs sitting untouched and smug on their plate like they knew exactly what they'd done.
Thirty two years later, I cook. I trust my smell now, even though I still don't love it. I follow instinct instead of only calculation, dancing to the same beat that once distracted me from the kitchen, except now it moves with me instead of away from me.
Two countries, endless recipe disasters, taught me the same lesson: that you can begin as a stranger to something and still, given enough sweet soup and bitter kababs, learn to belong to it. But what remains a success is just laughing through it all.
Always being Cheeky, always being my own Dame Amore.
