by Dot Logsdon
Most of us cookbook browsers, site
searchers, recipe clippers, in short, lovers of cooking at whatever
level, are products of a multitude of influences. My age group–those
growing up in the fifties and sixties–were aware of the family
culinary roots, both national and regional, but probably ate a wide
variety of "American" food at home, in school, or when visiting
friends.
My mother’s grandparents came
from Sicily, and certainly Mama and her mother paid kitchen homage to
that background. That side of the family is from Louisiana, so the Louisiana
and deep South way of eating and looking at food was also very pervasive.
And, really, what most Americans consider ‘Louisiana cuisine’
owes a great deal to its Italian settlers. We enjoyed fried chicken,
great spaghetti sauce and meatballs, rice at every meal, and venerated
fresh vegetables. However, we didn’t turn up our noses at Watergate
salad, or at my dad’s Saturday favorite: sauerkraut and hot dogs.
My paternal grandmother died very
young, so except for Daddy’s reminiscences of her pie-making or
his admiration of her ability as a Depression-era cook, we had no clear
picture of his early food imprinting. What a shame–his mother came
from New England, but Daddy’s family spent years in Mississippi
and Alabama. That would be fusion!
The food influences of which we
may be unaware would be those learned or by our mothers and grandmothers
when they were young cooks. In other words, the same sorts of things
that creep into our personal cooking repertoires, but from an earlier
era. People who like to cook are always looking around for new recipes
or ways of doing things. My grandmother once told me that dirty rice,
that scrumptious Louisiana staple, was a relatively new dish–it
was only introduced after World War II. She got it from a newspaper
recipe. Hearing this certainly alerted me to the fact that grandmothers
aren’t born cooking, they had to seek and learn, just like we do.
Her recipe collection included some items of her invention and some
copied from other people, but also recipes and hints clipped from newspapers
or from the backs of packages. She told me that her mother was indifferent
to cooking, and that she herself learned by doing. However she managed
it, she loved to cook, and her cooking and baking was varied and always
delicious.
My mother said she didn’t cook
until she got married, so also learned by doing. Mama’s kitchen
talents encompass family favorites, American standards, exotica that
crept in during her years as an Air Force wife, plus all the things
she absorbed by listening, reading, and generally always wanting to
know more and to grow as a cook. She has her specialties for which we
all clamor, but can always come up with something new.
Both my grandmother and mother were
quick to acknowledge my godmother's prowess as a cook. This was my grandmother's
sister-in-law, from a French family in New Roads, Louisiana. To this
day, I can almost smell her dark, cool house. When I was driving across
half the continent to attend Nan-nan's funeral, I got a fresh wave of
grief when I realized I'd never taste her crawfish bisque again. So,
even though we’re hearing more and more about fusions of cuisines,
and certainly fall with glee upon new-to-us ingredients such as lemon
grass or chipotle chiles, we need to acknowledge how much we were incorporating
fusion before it became a culinary term. My baby sister grew up in Oklahoma,
and has lived in California almost all her adult life. No way she’s
not a fusion cook. My other sister has written a cooking column for
her local paper, and is a fiend for cookbooks. She spent half her married
life in Colorado and now lives in south Texas. Strangely, her cooking
reminds me a great deal of my mother’s.
My own daily cooking is fusion almost
by default. I like to think that I inherited some of the kitchen talent
of my mother and grandmother, along with recipes and an interest in
food and cooking. However, because I live in Oaxaca, how I cook is enormously
influenced by my love of Mexican food and my access to superb ingredients.
Admittedly, at times those superb ingredients aren’t the exact
ones I need, but I enjoy using my imagination to get the results I want.
Rather immodestly, I can say that
I have mastered some regional classics, plus I know how to turn out
food that would be considered correctly Mexican using just what’s
on hand. However, there’s my half century of knowledge of another
cuisine and my personal tastes at work, too. The cassata recipe came
about after I couldn’t find "regular" candied fruit,
coupled with the disaster of the filling (made with blenderized cottage
cheese instead of ricotta) turning out as a goopy liquid. The nopal
and potatoes seemed a natural team to me. The method of cooking the
nopal is the one I use whenever I make classic ensalada de nopalitos,
and it’s a huge hit with the locals.
About Dot:
"I am a recently retired librarian, and live in Oaxaca. The great
cooks in my family were an inspiration, and I’ve always enjoyed
cooking. Part of the reason for moving to Mexico was to be able to immerse
myself in its very rich cooking culture."
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