The Intimate Pleasures of Home Cooking

When cooking is just an expression of love

Prep work for Malabar Chicken Recipe

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I got interested in cooking. It was probably in my early teens. I always used to watch my mom cook. And soon, I wanted to learn to cook. Thankfully, my family didn’t have the typical Indian notions of “cooking is not a man’s job” — a notion that survives despite many celebrity chefs being men. Maybe they mean home cooking — a thankless job, done day after day, without pay — isn’t for men. In any case, one time when my maternal grandmother was visiting, I asked her to teach me (she was a fabulous cook, and I hate myself that I never really learned that much from her, just the basics), and that started my culinary journey.

In a few years, I could cook for myself, and indeed when I started working, and moved into my own place (rental, yeah), I would cook my evening meals — just for myself — almost every day. Even if it meant a simple fare of daal, rice, and a sabzi. Rather than seeing it as an effort, I saw it as an outlet, as a welcome break from — what already had started to feel like — the drudgery of working in IT.

In due time, I fell in love and got married. But I never stopped cooking. I would cook the recurring breakfast dishes, lunches, and dinners whenever time permitted, experimenting with different cuisines, learning new dishes, and making them for the family, friends, and guests. I have been cooking food almost daily for close to three decades.

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I don’t claim to be a great cook. In fact, being a man who cooks in a society where most men prefer not to, one gets way more compliments than one deserves. I know many home cooks (mostly women, but some men, too) who are excellent home cooks. I feel many of them can cook better food than I can, without the need to talk about it on social media. But none of that matters, really. I cook because I enjoy cooking. It makes me happy.

But, maybe because I’m a man who can cook decent meals, I get questions like: “Why don’t you open up a restaurant?”, “Why don’t you open up a bakery” (Did I tell you I love baking?). And, this is not a flex. Believe me, I know where I stand as a cook. I am not anywhere near that level, the love and adoration of people in my life notwithstanding. Plus, I’m a terribly slow cook. I’d not last in the business for a day. To add to that, I can’t even work that hard every day. I have small bursts of energy and long phases of lethargy.

It’s hard to explain this to people — why one doesn’t need to want to be a professional cook, just because one can cook well. So I try to tell people that one should never do something one really really likes to do for money, for one will soon start hating it. It’s not exactly true. And it confuses people, predictably. Which is why, when I was listening to Laurie Woolever on this episode of Special Sauce with Ed Levine, I was like: this, this, this! (Yes, too much social media, I know).

Ed: How do you feel about cooking and eating?

Laurie: Well I love cooking … now I think I love cooking the way that I’ve always loved cooking, and the, sort of, erroneous reason why I got into cooking school is … you know I love standing in my own kitchen, listening to music, you know, or an audiobook, or a podcast, cooking something for myself, and a small group of people, and maybe seating and eating it with them, cooking for my son, you know that, sort of hands on, from beginning to end process, that’s what I love. I did not love restaurant cooking, or professional cooking. I could tolerate catering and private cooking, and that kind of thing, more so, but I still was like when does this job get over so that I can get home, so I do love food, I do love reading cookbooks, and i do love satisfaction of every part, every step in the process, but as far as being a chef, or a restaurant cook, that was not where my heart ever was at.

Emphasis (in bold) mine. I never went to a cooking school. I would never dabble with cooking professionally. So it’s not the same. But

Laurie Woolever

captures something here that I identify with completely. The intimate joy of cooking for oneself and those close to you. Cooking as a meditation. Cooking as an escape from the drudgery of professional life. Cooking as a way to bring a smile to the face of someone you love. Cooking as instant gratification. Cooking as a ritual of communion. Cooking as a means to sustain an intimate community.

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That brings me to another recent Special Sauce episode, where I learned about Pableaux Johnson, writer/photographer from New Orleans, who kept a tradition of Monday night “dinner table” where a handful of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers who were visiting the town, were invited — a different set of people everytime, so that peopled mingled and made new friends — for a simple dinner of red beans, rice, and corn bread, an unchanging menu, with changing people. Food here was a community builder - a simple, homemade food, made week after week, honoring a local New Orleans tradition. An old tradition starts a new tradition.

Pableaux Johnson has a table. It’s a big wooden hulk of a table the New Orleans photographer inherited from his grandmother. Over the many years he’s had the table, Pableaux has fed anyone gathered around it every Monday night – whether he knows them or not. On the menu: red beans and rice, corn bread, and whiskey for dessert. However, it’s never the same group of people twice. Instead, the table attracts a rotating ensemble of friends and friends of friends.

From It’s not a dinner party, it’s just supper

Pableaux may be an outlier. But we have all had, I believe (and I seriously hope), home cooks — mostly women, but sometimes men — who had a seat at the table open for us when we needed it most. Growing up in a joint family, I’ve seen my mom entertain people on short notice, putting food on the table for untimely/surprise guests. When our relatives came for a visit (which could mean days or weeks), she’d cook different things for different people, remembering their preferences, and serving with love. After I got married, my wife was trying to complete her professional degree, and I was trying to settle down into a corporate job, and on some evenings when we were tired, we had a seat at a kitchen table with home-cooked food. This was at my wife’s mami’s (maternal uncle’s wife) place. Her’s was a family of limited means, but a simple homemade food of amti-bhaat (Maharashtrian-style daal and rice) and sabzi will be on offer, with a side of homemade pickle. I remember those dinners two decades later. Their taste, but more so, the love with which they were served. We had other relatives, some closer by relation, but that seat was offered with such love that we felt at home. I hope I will be that person to someone someday.

Cooking is my love language. It is the love language of many home cooks. You can’t write some books in that language. But with it, you can converse with those you love. It’s high time we recognized home cooking as a separate path from professional cooking, not a step on the way to a destination. It could be a destination for many. It is a destination for many. It’s home where one could settle down, and feel like one belongs. Where one feel whole.