Life From Scratch

by Sasha Martin

  As Mom gathered her box of kitchen tools from the hall, I stood by my bed, watching her move through this space that was at once so familiar, and yet so foreign.

  Those first few nights I tossed and turned, my body too long for the mattress. I awoke several times to find myself staring through the moonlight at the space Michael’s bed had once occupied, watching the shadows dance on the wall and wondering through the clouded veil of fatigue if any of them were his. When the emotional noise became too great, I left Mom a note and escaped to John’s parents’ place on Cape Cod for the weekend, slipping into a blur of salt water and lattes.

  When I crept back into the apartment a few days later, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in a thick, chenille robe. The deep burgundy stood out in sharp relief against the white streaks in her hair.

  “He’s not your family, you know,” she said, lifting her small chin slightly.

  “He took me to find you! He was there for me when no one else—”

  “Nonsense!” Her sharp tone stopped me in my tracks. “What about Connor, Tim, and Grace? What about me?”

  “You think you can just claim to be my family, after all this time?” I hated the words as they came out, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’ve done pretty well without you all these years, you know.”

  “That’s nice, Alex—really nice. Is that how you talked to Patricia and Pierre?”

  We both knew the answer to that question. Suddenly, I could no longer take her calling me by that.

  “Damn it! My name is Sasha.”

  “The summer’s going to be over before you know it,” she said, pointing her finger at me. “You might never get this opportunity again, Sasha.”

  The victory felt small. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I gasped. “Is that a threat?”

  “No one knows what the future holds. I could drop dead tomorrow.”

  Now I was at a boil.

  “Speaking of dead, why did you send me a picture of Michael in his coffin back in Paris?” Old grief stirred my rage. “That was disgusting.”

  She sat back. “All the old Italian families honored their dead with beautiful photos of them laid out in their coffins. My grandmother slept with a photo of her dead mother across from her bed until the day she died!”

  I grimaced at the thought. “This isn’t the 1800s, Mom. What the hell were you thinking? In case you were wondering, I threw the card out.”

  Now it was her turn to grimace. “Wait a minute—that’s my son you’re talking about. I was honoring him. I thought they did a beautiful job. Since you weren’t able to be at the funeral, I thought you’d appreciate the gesture.” Her shoulders shook with anger. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t need this abuse. Not from you.”

  She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a large white teacup to which she added two mint tea bags, a spoonful of honey, and hot water. Then she slid it toward the empty seat across from her.

  “Come on. Please. Let’s talk about something else.”

  I stared at the greening water, conflicted. I wanted to yell. Or run to John. But if I wanted a mother, it seemed like the only thing to do was to respect her wishes. I sank into the chair and cradled the hot teacup in my hands.

  In those few short weeks before my sophomore year, Mom moved smoothly from touring restaurants in the North End to a frenzy of home cooking, reaping the recipes of my Italian and Hungarian relatives. She served them up to me with methodical precision. The two of us holed up in the apartment around that old gas stove flanked by gallon jugs of apple cider vinegar and olive oil.

  Mom was up no later than 5 a.m. making breakfast. Scrambled eggs were her favorite. She ushered me from the table to demonstrate how to whisk the eggs with heavy cream until they were pale but not frothy, just as she’d learned from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Then she’d cook them over a double boiler into soft, wet curds. The whole spectacle took 15 minutes. I wasn’t convinced the extra labor or dirty dishes were worth the trouble.

  Mom encouraged me to start a recipe journal. I picked out a heavy-duty, spiral-bound sketch pad with a moss green cover and spent many hot afternoons at her worn kitchen table with glue and scissors. I filled the pages with recipes I loved and recipes I was curious about. When she clipped articles about the dangers of aspartame, the importance of salt, and how to make the best use of MSG, I added them.

  Recipe by recipe, the food gradually became less Julia Child and more like that of my childhood. Like farmers in late August, we toiled with increasing intensity; from dawn until sunset, cooking was our only activity. In the morning Mom fried stacks of the homemade crepes I’d remembered so fondly, rolling them with plain yogurt, raspberry jam, and heaps of banana, strawberry, or pear.

  For lunch, we enjoyed room-temperature slices of torta di riso, the savory rice casserole enriched with rendered bacon and a sprinkling of parsley. For dinner, we’d pluck the petals from Grammie’s stuffed artichokes until we, too, were glutted.

  When Mom prepped the artichokes, she didn’t snip off the prickly tips of the petals, nor did she bother to trim the stem. She just hacked off the tops, stuffed the crevices with an eggy slump of Parmesan, bread crumbs, and garlic, and then steamed them until the fresh green turned muddy. As we dipped the petals in melted butter and lemon juice, the thorns jabbed my fingertips.

  “Pricking our fingers,” Mom said, “is a small price to pay if it means we get to the heart sooner.”

  Stuffed Artichokes

  Mom got this recipe from her mother, who surely got it from her mother. Mom never actually wrote it down, so this version is the result of fastidious note taking while watching her work. The stuffing can be heaped rather decadently onto two globe artichokes, or spread more elegantly over four smaller artichokes. I prefer the former, as it makes a complete meal.

  Artichokes cook best when there’s room around them for the steam; a large oval pot (like an oblong Dutch oven) can hold two artichokes with room. In a pinch, multiple small pots can be used.

  2 to 4 artichokes

  For the stuffing:

  3 large eggs

  ¾ cup Italian bread crumbs

  A handful parsley, coarsely chopped (¼ cup)

  ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan (heaping is best)

  1 large clove garlic, crushed

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ¾ cup milk

  Salt and pepper

  Finishing touches:

  Paprika or parsley for color

  Melted butter with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice for dipping

  First, prepare the artichokes. Lay the artichokes on their side and use a sharp chef’s knife to cut off the top 1½ inches. Trim the stems so they will stand up straight (and fit in the pot), and pluck off one layer of the outer petals (they’re tough).

  In a medium bowl, stir all the stuffing ingredients together. Pull the artichoke open slightly and spoon the filling on top and into the crevices behind the petals. Steam for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the petals are tender and pull easily from the artichoke (cooking time will increase dramatically if the artichokes are pressed up against each other when steaming). About halfway through cooking, check the level of water in the pot and replenish as necessary. Serve hot, garnished with a sprinkling of paprika or parsley.

  To eat: Pluck off each petal, dip into melted butter and lemon juice. Use your bottom teeth to scrape the fleshy bit that connects to the artichoke base, and then discard the petal. When down to the petals as tiny as fairy wings, pull them away to reveal the hairy “choke.” Use a spoon to scrape it away and reveal the heart—the most tender and flavorful bit.

  Enough for 2 to 4

  “Did you cook like this even when I was in Europe?” I asked Mom on my last night in Jamaica Plain before I returned to Wesleyan.

  She shook her head and laughed.

  “I weighed 89 pounds when you were in Europe. I lived off a Hostess CupCake a day.”

  Her voice softened. “I didn’t have anyone to cook f
or. I wasn’t very hungry.”

  “What did you do while I was gone?” The question felt brazen, but neither of us had made a move to talk about the past since our last blowup about the card. We were running out of time.

  “Nothing.” she shrugged. Her arms tossed indifferently, but her eyes begged to be left alone.

  I waited.

  She sat back and shook her right hand in the air, more Italian than ever. “I woke up, did data entry at the Trial Court for eight hours straight, came home, slept. After two years I worked my way up to the clerk magistrate’s office. On the weekends I made pot holders from boiled sweaters—filled half a dozen crates with them. That was my life. You kids were gone. Michael was …”

  Her face crumpled slightly before she recovered: “Sasha, I just want to forget that part of my life. I feel like I was dead all those years.”

  “You must have had a boyfriend … something?”

  “There was nothing!” She paused and then shook her head. “I didn’t talk to anyone after Michael died. Not Connor, Tim, or Grace—no one. I don’t think I said his name for seven years. The whole thing just … blew me away.”

  “You didn’t say his name for seven years?” I didn’t even try to mask the sarcasm. “I find that hard to believe.”

  She stared at a stray crumb on the table. “Well, there was one person I talked to …”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “What is this, an interrogation? Come on, Sasha, this is our last night together for who knows how long. Can we just enjoy it without bringing up all that junk?”

  I looked at her in disbelief. “I don’t even know why you bother. You say you want me to consider you family, and then you shut down like this? How am I supposed to trust you?”

  She looked at me unblinking.

  “OK, then answer me this—why did you give up Michael and me? There had to be another way—something else you could have done?”

  She slumped down into her chair again. “I had no choice, Sasha. The only way for you to have a normal life was to get you out of the Boston court system. Those social workers were like … vultures, circling our lives. They weren’t going to stop.”

  As she spoke, darkness crept into her eyes. Her face changed until suddenly her expression looked so familiar that it took my breath away. She looked exactly as she had the day she announced we were moving in with the Dumonts.

  If Mom really had no life except for work, it meant she’d spent the last decade living on nickels and dimes, scrimping and saving. A new realization hit me: Using some of her savings to get the loft in the North End was the same sort of lavish gift newly divorced parents get their kid. She couldn’t sustain it on her salary, so she’d used the awkward kitchen as an excuse to cancel the lease.

  I wanted to reach across the table and clasp her hand. To say I understood. But there were too many questions left unanswered.

  “You know, Patricia and Pierre saved our lives, Sasha. They got you kids out of that mess.” She looked down and shook her head. “They did … what I couldn’t.”

  We were silent a moment.

  “But you didn’t even write, Mom. Not for years.”

  She sat a little straighter. “You were never going to connect with the Dumonts if I kept butting in. I had to create some … space. You have no idea what I went through, losing you kids.”

  The morning of my departure, I found a few blanket-stitched pot holders and a greeting card propped up on the bedside table. The lithograph on the front depicted a formal dining table spread with a white-and-green cloth and set for a formal tea. Five tidy place settings were set under five vases filled with irises and wild ferns. Curiously, there were only two chairs, both empty.

  Inside was the recipe for my grandmother’s torta di riso, carefully penned in blue, green, and purple ink. Mom’s handwriting was neat, legible, determined. It was a slip of paper, but to me it had all the trappings of a family heirloom. I pasted it in the book.

  That was it. The summer was over.

  Mom dropped me off at Wesleyan. Sophomore year was upon me. I felt a disappointment when the summer ended. I’d been able to spend time with Mom and had even answered a few questions, but they only seemed to complicate my understanding of my childhood. And I’d never mustered the courage to ask about my dad.

  Still, I did know a heck of a lot more about my culinary heritage and food in general. Those recipes—and even the restaurant outings before them—made the reunion bearable. Mom and I had shared a project, something to take the focus off the intensity of coming back together after so many years. Perhaps that had been Mom’s intent all along.

  As she still likes to say, “You can’t put the cart before the horse.”

  Torta di Riso

  This is a simple recipe that makes use of leftover rice—both practical and economical. Mom made torta di riso often, taking chilled squares along for our frequent walks in Boston’s Blue Hills or drives up to Cape Cod, where we camped most summers. The traditional recipe uses salt pork, but I like the smoke and relative leanness of bacon. Sometimes I omit the meat altogether, opting instead for the clean taste of olive oil. As far as the parsley, anywhere from a sprinkling to a ¼ cup chopped is delicious. Tip: ¾ cup of uncooked white rice will make just over 3 cups cooked.

  6 slices bacon, chopped

  1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for baking dish

  1 onion, chopped

  3 cups leftover, refrigerated white rice

  ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  6 eggs, lightly beaten

  A little parsley, chopped

  Salt and pepper

  Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  Sauté the bacon in olive oil over medium heat until the fat begins to render. Add the onion and lightly brown. Set aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, add the cooked rice, Parmesan, eggs, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper to a large bowl. Stir together with the cooled onion mixture. Pour into a lightly oiled 2-quart baking dish (such as an 8 × 8-inch). Bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Cool 15 minutes before cutting into neat squares or diamonds.

  Excellent served at room temperature or cold for a picnic lunch.

  Enough for 6 to 8

  CHAPTER 14

  Sizing Things Up

  LESS THAN A MONTH into the school year, Mom took a job as a live-in baker for a small order of nuns in Newton, on the outskirts of Boston. They needed someone to make their daily batches of bread: sandwich loaves, baguettes, the occasional raisin loaf. When the abbess gave my mother the job, she also gave her the key to a small room on the fourth floor of the convent, barely bigger than the twin bed inside. The communal showers were down the hall.

  Mom moved in without hesitation, finally severing ties with our old apartment in Jamaica Plain. Looking back, I think she had kept that apartment on the off chance I would come looking for her. Now she was as ready as I was to get away from it.

  Knowing I would never again step foot inside those apartment walls, I put the past out of mind and turned my attention to school. That’s not to say Mom didn’t focus on me. The seven years of self-induced isolation since Michael’s death seemed to make her ravenous for my time.

  Every other week she’d send me a package, often including a few spices like dried Japanese chili peppers or half-sharp paprika, “just for fun.” She called my dorm room several times a day, starting as early as 5 a.m., to discuss such issues as the merits of trenchers, the hardened planks of bread used for plates during the Middle Ages. When I hosted an Arthurian Cooking Tutorial, she mailed me pages of research photocopied from books in the culinary collections at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, then called at dawn to talk through the pages.

  I always answered those calls with my arm draped across my still shut eyes. “WHY ARE YOU CALLING SO EARLY?”

  “Aren’t you awake?” she’d laugh, “I’ve been up for hours—I can’t sleep past 2 a.m.”

  Her efforts did
not go unnoticed, but since Mom had shut down any real conversation about the past, her intense focus on me felt a bit disingenuous. Next, she started just “showing up,” regularly driving the three hours from Boston to my dorm unannounced. It felt like she was trying to get something from me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  Once Mom drove all the way to Connecticut with a bouquet of sunflowers and pureed carrot ginger soup, surprising me mere hours after I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled. With this simple, selfless act, I recognized a show of pure maternal instinct, much more potent than any stalled conversation we’d had. It filled my heart. But I still needed her to talk to me, to explain her choices. Until she did, I was afraid to trust her affections.

  I made a habit of spending my holidays with John’s family or my three half siblings in New Jersey. I even spent a week or two with each of the Dumont girls, trying to maintain our bond. There just wasn’t a lot of time for Mom. I built a wall around our relationship—less to control her than to protect myself—though from what, I wasn’t sure. The intensity of her attention was the opposite of the way Patricia and Pierre had encouraged my independence.

  Even though I kept Mom at arm’s length, my Russian roommate Katya and I had no trouble finding uses for the spices she sent. We made apple bread, apple fritters, and applesauce, all with the requisite shake of Mom’s cinnamon, still labeled “sin.” More than once, I found myself wishing I knew how to make Mom’s famous apple pie that Michael and I loved so much. But each fall I forgot to ask her.

  By the time I was a senior, I realized that Mom had been right when she said that I might never get the chance to spend so much time with her again. That summer after my freshman year was the first and last time in my adult life that we spent three straight months together.

  I’d been dating John for almost four years when his mother leaned over to me at dinner one night at an Olive Garden and grabbed my hand. With John and his father, we’d just finished off a family-sized platter of spaghetti and meatballs, John’s favorite, and were now enjoying tiramisu and wild berry Bellinis.