"Can you cook Persian food?” a friend asked me not so long ago. “A little bit,” I answered. “Can you cook Ghormeh sabzi?” she continued “Not really, I’ve never tried”. “Can you try? I’d like to surprise my husband, this is his favorite dish ever, and me, I can't cook it for my life”
"Why don’t you finish your plate?” asked Batia reproachfully, “Don’t you like it?” She added in a heavy Hungarian accent. “I love it Batia, but I’m full,” I answered. “Eat up, you always must finish your plate”.
One of the first apartments that I lived in when I was a student was in a neighborhood filled with brick and mortar stores.
There are these days when I’m staring at the refrigerator, thinking what to make for dinner. I look at the ingredients and they don’t really go with the chicken breast my better half defrosted in the morning. “What would you like to for dinner?”
"Why don’t you make mafrum?” asked my better half with this voice that she keeps for the things she really, really wants. “Mafrum? Now? In the middle of the summer?” I tried to evade her question. “First of all, you promised a long time ago that you’ll make it for me, and never did".
"What are you going to make?” asked my better half when I was wondering what to bring to an afternoon gathering with friends. “I don’t really know” I answered. When I run out of ideas what to cook, I go shopping.
"I will cook for Passover Seder” I told mom a couple of weeks before the holiday. “You don’t have to make anything.” “How would you cook? You know the problem.” “Don’t worry, I’ll cook at your house.” “And what about shopping, where would you buy the ingredients?” mom kept asking,
One of my most vivid memory from my childhood kitchen is the huge number of pots and pans cooking simultaneously on the stove. In a kitchen of nearly 80 square feet, that also had a dining table, in any given moment there were at least 3-4 dishes cooking, and usually one or two were baked in the oven.