MOM CONFIDENTIAL

The most powerful word in any language has got to be the three-letter one: mom. It’s the one concept that unites all of us in this universe— albeit in different ways. A few years back, I attended a focus group for a greeting card company to better understand how people viewed their mothers. There were around twenty pieces of white paper with the word MOM printed on them, each using a completely different font to represent the kind of mom they had. There was script for the fancy mom, upper case sans-serif for the strict mom, hand written for the casual mom and bold and short for the angry mom, amongst many others. People were asked to choose a font for their mom and write down three dimensions that best represented her. I was fascinated by the simplicity of this exercise yet baffled by how difficult it was for people to choose a MOM and the accompanying words. The other surprise was that not one of the respondents brought up the ‘F‘ word—food. Impossible!  I thought.

It really got me thinking about what typeface my mom would be because she is a dynamic and complex individual. I decided that she is a combination of intelligence, compassion and beauty— all served up on top of a Tarte Tatin with a dollop of crème fraîche.

Growing up, mom was a huge influence on me in many ways, but especially in the kitchen. While my sister, the culinary philistine wasted her youth at the hairdresser; I served hard labor as mom’s sous-chef doing odd jobs and the grunt work. I developed a broad understanding of different foods, their origins and their meaning to life not just in her kitchen but through our travels— not to mention the finer side of entertaining. I watched her make Cigarette Russe piped with crème Chantilly, Coq Au Vin the long way—marinated in Bordeaux for two days—and I watched her make entire Lebanese meals with the required Humus and Tabboulé. This, in addition to all the other recipes handed down to her by her mother like a Tomato Salsa Paste that is placed under the sun to become sun dried, or a rich and tangy Apricot Jam that I consumed with salted butter on a baguette throughout my childhood.

My mom plans seasonal dinner parties, where up to two months in advance she begins the joy of curating a menu. For her, this means searching for interesting new recipes and ingredients. The pleasures of discovery are simply delicious to her like a best-kept secret, so when people ask for her recipes, she hates to give them out. After all, who wants to eat their own recipes at someone else’s party? Only when hard pressed, will she fork over her recette. Rumor has it that not all ingredients always make it on the list. 

I have cajoled my mom into transcribing her recipes for Poetry of Food. And yes, she has promised me that all ingredients will be present and accounted for. 

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Painting by Grant Innes