Welcome to my kitchen

Mom and I at our kitchen table

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
Laurie Colwin, author

When you cook, who cooks with you? What do your recipes say about your heritage? Your past?

When I cook, I’m with my mother, who lived most of her life in Milwaukee, who learned cooking from her own mother, a German/Dutch-American housewife from Northern Wisconsin — who I never even had the chance to meet.

I also cook with my mother-in-law, who was born, raised and still lives near Mumbai, India. When she first came to visit the United States, we spent much of our time chatting in the kitchen — a place in which we both felt comfortable, and in which we could share our own cultures with one another. She tried her best to teach me the basics of Indian cooking, from making a proper jeera rice (which I think I’ve mastered) to rolling perfect roti (not so much).

The recipes in our heads and hearts say so much about where we were, at a certain moment in our lives. Like postcards or souvenirs, I’ve tended to pick up bits of cooking from every place I’ve been, and from everyone I’ve met – and it all comes together in my kitchen.

Maybe a lot of it began my sophomore year of college, when I studied abroad in Argentina. I learned to love dulce de leche and red wine. I also have fond memories of cooking gnocchi and Knorr-brand “salsa rosa,” and eating it with my roommate, Serena, for dinner. Eight years later, each time I eat that meal, I’m brought back to our upstairs room in Buenos Aires, where, dealing with yet another blackout, we shoved candles into our imported Jiff Peanut Butter jars to create makeshift candle sticks.

My senior year at the University of Wisconsin, I became friends with a man from Saudi Arabia. He taught me how to make his version of chai, using “Chai Al-Wazah” brand tea bags,, cardamom seeds, cloves and evaporated milk. When I drink it, I’m brought back there, to my last year of school – a time I knew was too good to last for long…

Cooking, as a hobby, isn’t isn’t simply an obsession with new foods or tastes. It’s about relationships, and its about cultures and experiences. I love learning about the history of different foods, and recipes — how they evolved and what they signify in other parts of the world.

That’s what this blog is all about – what our food says about us, as individual people and as a a culture. What it says about where we’ve been, and where we are going. In my kitchen, it often means combining some of the Milwaukee cooking of my youth with my Indian husband’s cooking.

If one dish could symbolize this all, it would by my favorite childhood comfort food – Macaroni and Cheese.

I was in my teens before I ever tasted Kraft in a box. Why would I bother, when I could eat my mom’s home-made, three-cheese version? Served with frozen peas. Every. Time.

A bowl of my favorite comfort food

It’s soft, moist, salty, with little bits of cottage cheese interspersed, and, the best part is the browned crunchy sides and top – good enough to rip off with your hands and eat like a snack chip.

 

Andrea’s Chipotle-Cumin-Wisconsin- Mac ‘n Cheese

1 lb. Cheddar cheese (If you can find the Sargento brand chipotle-cheddar, it works great, and you don’t have to add any additional chipotle peppers)

1 lb. low-fat cottage cheese

8 oz. low-fat sour cream

2 eggs

1 lb. cooked macaroni

1-2 chipotle peppers

2 tbsp. cumin seeds

Place cooked macaroni in a large mixing bowl. Crack two eggs in it and mix well. Put in the shredded cheese, cottage cheese and sour cream and mix again. Put in some salt and pepper. Then, in a saucepan, heat a bit of olive oil. When oil is hot, add cumin seeds and cook until they turn dark brown. Turn off heat and cool (place them on a paper towel to absorb oil, if they appear too oily). Add them to the mixture.