I keep finding myself in the kitchen. Standing at the counter, itching to cook, but unsure of where to go.
I feel a beginner again.
Maybe it is the new stove. The new apartment. The new view. The new city. Or maybe it is the opposite. The familiar smells. The familiar fears. The familiar cravings.
Whatever is causing it, the kitchen is calling out to me again. There have been many points since I came to cooking the first time when preparing food has offered me a way out of sticky situations. It’s something I’ve written about over and over again. Or, at least it feels like I keep writing about it, in pursuit of the answer: Why do I cook? Other than that I am hungry. Seeking to answer this question raises many more and directs me to my bookshelves and recipes and to my journal. It is a question full of possibility.
Today at 9 am, we went on a spontaneous errand to the secondhand store. We are in search of just about everything one could be in search of: light fixtures, shelving, pegs for our coats, a doormat. So, when the opportunity arose to scour over other people’s discarded goods, we brewed a cup of coffee, poured it deftly into the free plastic mug Josef got at the Uni’s career fair and shrugged on our water-resistant coats. It is another blustery, cold, miserable day in Berlin. I suppose that’s what February is like in most places (aside from California).
Our journey was unsuccessful, and on the way home to our bare apartment, walking in the rain by myself, I decide to stop off for bread at the bakery across the street. I mixed up a starter last night and am waiting, somewhat patiently, to see if it will work out. The waiting is familiar. I am waiting, somewhat patiently, to see if many things will work out. I imagine I will wait a long time before I know the answer to whether things have worked out or not. That is, if there is to be a definitive answer. The flours are different than at home and the color of the thick paste I mixed together late last night is a blue-greyish. I have my doubts.
I search my memory for the mineral rich smell of our old starter. I briefly wonder if it’s still alive in San Francisco, where we left it. I briefly wonder when I will get to go home again and then shove these thoughts aside, as I request a loaf of Spreekruste. When I get it home, the bread will taste grey like the starter I mixed up. I impulsively buy a Laugenzopf (braided pretzel) as I’m about to pay. I eat a lot of pretzels these days. They’re usually about 1 Euro and anytime I get a gnawing hunger when I’m out in the world, I snag one. I just can’t get enough of them. I love the salty, butter flavor at the edges of my tongue and the chewy dough. I love the way my teeth push the dark skin and it gives way, squeaking. I love eating them in the same way each time, working my way from the tips of each tangle to the arches and around to where the sides meet. A maze I always know how to find my way out of.
When I get home from my unexpected brezel errand, I set it on a plate and slice a thick wedge of butter to go alongside. Then I remember we have apricot jam in the fridge and I spoon some of that out, too. Homesick. Looking for summer somewhere, anywhere.
A few weeks ago, I managed to find a complete set of dishes for free on Berlin’s version of craigslist, eBay-kleinanzeigen. I have selected one of the dainty breakfast plates from the collection for my bread. They are old-fashioned English porcelain, a release named “Avon Cottage” by Wedgewood. I’ve been enjoying watching the delicate pastoral scenes dress up even the most simple of meals. The dishes make me crave the countryside, bread and butter. They make me crave silence and solitude and cups of tea in the afternoon accompanied by sugary breads. Perhaps the plates have inspired my cooking.
Or, maybe the new books I’ve stumbled across are inviting me back into the kitchen. Josef found a copy in English of the Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen of Ballymaloe on the street last week and brought it home to me as a gift. I’ve been reading it before bed each night. Dreaming of elderflower cordials, bottled strawberries, smoked haddock, butchering pigs, foraging for nettles, fermenting cabbages, infusing olive oils, peeling shrimp and carving foul. I’ve been dreaming of life beyond the supermarkets and these four walls and my stretched-too-thin wallet. Maybe these dreams are why the kitchen calls.
On the train each morning and evening coming home this week, I read Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson and am elated to see someone bringing the recipe into a realm that has long ignored it. I am excited to think about the recipes in translation, about my relationship to the books I read and love, and to the recipes I follow. I am eager to answer questions, to ask new ones. To cook the sauce and ask of it a little something more than a meal. Maybe this odyssey has inspired my own. A return home.
Maybe it is the fact that the only cookbook downloaded on my new computer is The Art of Simple Food, which was coincidentally my first cookbook and which I coincidentally started cooking from the first time I lived in this city. I will cook from it again, start to finish, as I did then. I will remember the surprise at tasting vinegar and salt and vinegar and salt until they reach an understanding with one another. I will remember the slight annoyance as Alice Waters dismisses the food I grew up on and instructs us how to pack our children’s lunches. I will ask myself, why this book? There are many others.
Maybe what calls me back to my knives, is the feeling of repose. I suspect a bloody battle on the horizon and I know I will need my wits about me. I will need a belly full of sustenance and the staying power to carry on, carry on, carry on. I will need my knife skills. I will need my determination. I will need my ability to accept, a ruined dish, a less-than-ideal ingredient, a loss.
“I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me” promise the lyrics as the pretzel turns in my stomach. I finished breakfast and I am waxing the floor. This album has taught me many things about loss, acceptance, ruin. I play it often when I am home alone doing chores. Today, I sob as I sing along, my hands clothed in green rubber gloves, alien to me as I watch them push the wax into the laminate flooring. I give into the helplessness, stop waxing for a moment, curl up on my knees, shaking. And then I continue.
Perhaps the kitchen reminds me of my power. Of my consistency. Of my reliability. The kitchen is calling because I’m feeling like myself again. And so I finish the floor and rinse the plate of crumbs and sticky jam. I put my hair back and chop an onion.
I know that pattern. Great find. Cook, Clea, cook!
I love your writing, thank you for sharing🫶🏽