I remember once they were going to Sicily for a long time. Evelyn gave Mother a whole bunch of spices etc.
The next day, I noticed it was all in the trash. Mother who was a great cook had no idea how to use them. Mother cooked Southern. It was the only way she knew how to cook.
Yes!
See, that’s the thing-people learn how to cook, and they are great at it, but...sometimes, they do it like nobody else, and often, without all the spice-related pomp and circumstance...:)
Funny. It is a common experience in my family to try to cook some of my mother’s recipes, but...they never seem to come out the way my mother made them.
I had three recipes I pinned her to the wall on...I made her show me, and I watched her like a hawk and took copious notes! Those were her Portugese Kale, Potato, and Chorizo soup, her Beef Stew, and her Apple Pie.
I am expert at all those, but I’ll be damned if I can replicate anything else of hers.
She used to do a pork roast where she trimmed off the fat, ground it up in a blender mixed with some spices and herbs, rosemary, and garlic in it, then smeared the paste concoction on the outside of it before roasted it.
My God. When that thing would come out golden brown, somehow that gooey paste she put on had turned to a crispy shell with moist roast pork inside. Unbelievable.
Damn. I wish I had made her do that one too. I just cannot get it to taste or feel the same! The outside is kind of...mushy, no matter how hard I try or how long I roast it.