#52 Ancestors 2021 Week 5 - In the Kitchen
My mother was not a good
cook. She often said that Dad taught her to cook on their honeymoon, but
his repertoire was limited so I wonder what they ate? Fish probably, as they were at Brunswick
Heads. He loved fish and she didn’t much
like it but would have eaten it anyway. And apparently her first
landlady, at the tiny flat she and Dad lived in during the first year of their
marriage, taught her to make custard.
Despite this, she did a few
things well. Roast lamb with all the
baked vegetables for Sunday lunch. Monte
Carlo biscuits. Enough to fill an ice-cream container for us to take back to
University in our luggage after the holidays.
Pavlova on special occasions like afternoon tea parties for the wives of
Dad’s staff members. If you were very
lucky, there might be a spoonful left over to share.
Frankly I’m amazed that she
managed to put a meal on the table every night especially during the years when
there were three pre-school children plus one at school and a husband and
father who came home and expected dinner to be ready.
To be fair, Dad often did Sunday
night dinner, which was always a laid-back affair. He was good at pancakes and scrambled eggs
and leftover roast lamb and veg on toast.
And his signature dish was a concoction known as “onion, onion and
tomatoes”, which I remember eating a few times when Mum was in hospital having
babies.*
Neither of my grandmothers was
much of a cook either. When I think about it, I realise that they had a
limited range of ingredients. There was always lots of meat - especially
lamb - in Australia, and steak and sausages were staples. They were always
served very well done. There wasn't much pork and it was always fatty.
Chickens were for special occasions and came out of the backyard - yours or the
neighbour's. Someone had to chop its head off and pluck it. Rabbit could
be shot and fish could be caught and they both needed to be prepared by the
cook.
My paternal grandfather had an
enviable vegetable garden when I was a child, but that range was limited too.
Tomatoes, carrots, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers. No zucchini, no broccoli,
no garlic, no capsicum, no herbs. Beetroot and asparagus came out of
tins. Lettuce was always iceberg.
Typically of her generation, my
grandmother always managed to destroy these fresh vegetables by cooking them to
death. I remember the beans being boiled for ages and emerging grey and
mushy. I don't remember cauliflower but it would have been cooked to a
sludge too. She was good at jam making, and pastry.
All of us children remember her
sago pudding. We would get a finger-wagging
lecture from Mum before we arrived at my grandmother’s house. We had to eat everything that was put in
front of us, and no complaints. That
included sago pudding, which we dreaded!
Funny, I quite like sago now.
Josie, Mum's mother, prided
herself on her damper, which had allegedly won a Blue Ribbon at the local show
at some time in the past. I don't recall ever eating it.
What I do remember of our visits
to her house in her later years was Mum’s surreptitious cleaning of her
pantry. “Don’t eat the Vegemite,” she
would warn us. “It’s 6 years past its
use-by date.” (Vegemite is possibly
indestructible so that probably didn’t matter.)
Mum and her sister, who was often visiting at the same time, would
conspire to get their mother out of the house – their husbands would be
enlisted to take her to the cemetery for a visit – and then they would
frantically clean everything in sight, throwing out old food from the fridge
and pantry and replacing old jars with new ones.
My generation came of age at a
time of abundance and multi-culturalism.
We have access to exotic ingredients from all over the world, and cook books
and television cooking shows to teach us how to use them. And if we still don’t
feel like cooking, there is always the take-away.
*I make it myself now as Sunday
night comfort food. Very gently sauteed
onion rings in butter with chopped tomato added and then stewed gently until
the whole thing is like thick soup. Delicious
on toast, with cracked black pepper.
