It’s Sunday morning. My lukewarm coffee is sitting half-finished on the dining table. The house is empty and quiet besides the occasional whir of the refrigerator and my own breath. There is no podcast or music playing and even the neighbour’s daughter is uncharacteristically quiet for a day that is promising sunshine.
I’m not sure if I’ve been sipping my coffee between cleaning or cleaning between coffee sips but that task is now also finished, so here I am. The kitchen is clean, ridded of grease splatter and errant crumbs, the cast iron is re-seasoned and the knives steeled and oiled.
The kitchen has been quiet of late. No sourdough, no excessive baking or complicated meals. It’s been batched soups, chilli oil eggs on toast, slow-cooked lamb shanks & quinoa. Food has been functional, simple. Still delicious but I’ve been in shortcut mode. I’ve been cooking quickly - which is to say sometimes slow-cooking is the quickest cooking you can do.
I am ‘catching up’, something that feels never quite complete and so I am disciplining myself not to escape into the kitchen - I know it will only prolong the pain of catching up on all the other things. Laundry, email, work then the kitchen. A shift in priorities that I hope will only last a short stretch - the kitchen is a place of comfort for me but I do not want to be too comfortable too long in the space between.
I feel some relief in prizing my efficiency in this space. Using my knives for maximum effectiveness means mirepoix is a fleeting job - that even dice of onion, celery and carrot that forms the basis of nearly every autumnal and winter slow pot. I have been digging into those skills in these days. Reducing pots, reducing cleanup, reducing time. A five minute mirepoix, a quick bloom of spices before adding stock to a joint of meat waiting to be bathed for a few hours.
In my usual rhythm, on a slow Saturday I would usually turn to whole spices, pulling them in increments from glass jars and packets. I would assess their freshness and then toast them slowly in a pan until fragrant before grinding them to powder. Afterward I might add fresh garlic and ginger with oil to make a paste or use it as a dry rub. My favourite Northern Thai dish, Khao Soi, demands firing the spice and chilli in a foil pouch over direct heat, creating a unique smokiness and depth of aroma before taking it to mortar and pestle. In my Murgh Makhani recipe, I would make the Tandoori paste to slather on chicken and build layers of flavour from there - turning the dish to an infamous ‘All-Day Butter Chicken.’ I have even been known to rummage for long stretches in the spice aisles of smaller Indian markets searching out the regional variations of Garam Masala spice blends, that you’ll never find in a commercial supermarket.
If centuries of North Indian saifa and maharaj recognised the efficiency of using garam masala, the base blend of spices that influence so much of North Indian food - so can I. So in these weeks where I haven’t been so present in my kitchen - I have been diving into the deep collection of spice blends that live in my pantry. Cooking by smell, which has also been a useful way of measuring my Covid-19 recovery.
Biryani masala blends, aromatic Malaysian blends, sweet, smoky and spicy rubs for beef and dried Italian herb blends. My ritual has been going to the pantry, opening jars and letting the aroma comfort me as much as the meal will nourish me.
I have to bloom the spices still (unless I’m using them as a rub) - adding them to warm cooking fat, usually with onions and garlic until they are toasted and starting to release more aroma. It’s not entirely hands off cooking because you still must season as you go - but in this small way, I am relaxing just a little. Today and all this week, I can be quick in the kitchen. I can create a little breathing space for myself.
There is more to it still, if I am honest. When I worked in café kitchens through university days, I loved the deep clean and reset at the end of the shift and the end of the week. I am in a deep clean of my own making. Now that my father has passed, while there is nothing physical to sort through or rearrange - there is deep cleaning and reorganising of thoughts and narratives inside my mind. I realised this parallel this morning while I was tidying my spice jars and re-seasoning the cast iron pan for another week.
My clothes have been slowly growing looser of late, perhaps some outer reflection of the shadow I’ve lost. There are as many layers of flavour and complexity to my grief and relationship with my father as there are in my spice jars. But they are not as easily arranged or simple to apply. There is a relationship between it all though - my desire to bloom back to full volume and full flavour coming quickly after the realisation that I have been holding back. Every time I season my cast iron or encourage my housemate to use the right amount of fat in the pan - I remember that protective layer and work good fat can do. Keeping things juicy, tender and flavourful. Too many layers and you lose the balance.
Perhaps, now that I no longer have to hold the complexities of that grief in present tense, I have permission to lose those unnecessary layers of protection. That is where my attention has been, deep cleaning the corners of the mind. Undoing things, finishing undone things. Resetting and organising the spice blends. Making use of time and space. Cleaning the grease traps and making it simple again, like chilli eggs on toast. You can short-cut flavour but you cannot short-cut transformation.
Friend, that is what is happening. My father’s death gives me permission to no longer hold in silence for the sake of honour, what profound things I have discovered about how our relationship affected me.
I have been writing a story about how we process emotion and experience through flavour. Anger, sadness, apology - they taste spicy, bitter, tart and creamy in their own ways. Much like cleaning and resetting the kitchen smells like citrus and orange oil - grief demanded chicken soup, sweet basil and pickles. Waking up after grief has tasted like chilli oil, sichuan pepper, star anise and coriander. I am craving vibrancy like lemongrass and fresh garlic so maybe the spice blend to turn to after death is one that screams life - my life out from the shadow of what has been. Fewer layers of protection, more quickness and heat out of my sparky little heart. A clean kitchen and a mindful full of clarity.
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Sunday Kitchen Letter is a collection of essays about food, kitchen rituals and sharing hospitality, but I also write about more personal matters too. Here’s a link to my latest Lost & Found essay.