At lunchtime, our kitchen was like a mini restaurant: my grandmother and mother had to cook for as many as 25 people - extended family plus 10 employees. We ate a lot of cabbage and a lot of potatoes.
If you think about feudal China during times of the emperors, food was a very elevated art form and you had to be really skilled.
I was raised cooking my grandmother's food, my mom's recipes.
My mom, who left Iran in 1976, steeped us in the smells, tastes, and traditions of Persian cuisine.
My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat.
I came from the old world of gastronomy. Many years ago I walked into the kitchens of the Hotel St George and I feel very fortunate that I worked for chefs that were behind their stoves. I saw that world of gastronomy. I can sit here today and say that I saw the golden age of gastronomy. It's gone, it's gone. It's never going to have that anymore, once the accountants get involved the romance fades. That's the reality.
Macaroni and cheese was my mother's special dish. She'd also make jambalaya and dirty rice and bake a ham that would be incredible. And greens. But if you were looking for vegetables and healthy things, there weren't a lot of those.
Now Momma's done away with the old black kettle she used to cook in when I was just littleAnd the door ain't sprung on her electric rangeThat little old farm and home we had it ain't there no more and that's too badFolks are doing away with the simple things.
I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceiling - which is actually a dream come true for most Cubans. It was a nightmare to clean.
The traditional roots of Scandinavian cuisine are not that spectacular, to say the least. When we write about the traditions that we are inspired by, it's more techniques like smoking, preserving. Many of them are not made to make food delicious; they're just around so that you can make food last through the winter. There isn't a great deal of tradition to tap into.
I think it's important to recall... what you remember your grandmother making, where you're from and the foods you enjoyed as a child yourself, and pass that information off to your kids.
The Swedes prepare their food through curing, smoking, pickling and boiling. Pickling food contains digestive-system-friendly probiotics, and while boiling may not be the tastiest, it's effective without adding fat!
Everyone's past is locked up in their recipes - the past of an individual and the past of a nation as well.
My mother did not have a toaster oven and would toast bread in the oven, which I thought was stupid. They didn't do cars and electricity, that kind of stuff.
Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.
My mom is Asian and loves all of the throwaway parts of the animal, so she actually thanks me for saving her the neck and other parts.
I figure it's almost like a balance. We're eating these wonderful collard greens and turnip greens which are so medicinally good for you and, OK, so what if it has a little ham hock in it?
Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.
I always knew that food and wine were vital, with my mother being Italian and a good cook.
Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.
I've always been very open about how my mother taught me to cook and how I'm delighted to share my family's recipes.
My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.
Baking can be done with a few simple ingredients, so it's about simplicity and nostalgia - people are reminded of their childhood.
Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.
My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).
