The ghost in the kitchen
My mother was an incredible cook.
After her first marriage, which was childless and only lasted a year, she moved to Wales for a year to train as a chef. I never got to ask her about that experience.
Some of my earliest and fondest memories are in the kitchen with her. Making mincemeat out of fruit and suet (not actual meat) during October half terms, ready to be turned into mince pies and Christmas pudding in December. Licking the cake mix from the spatula as she made her amazing birthday cakes for us — My Little Pony and butterflies for me, a football pitch and Ghostbusters for my brother. Picking blackberries in September for blackberry and apple crumble.
When we went to university, she packed us off with a basic set of saucepans and other kitchen essentials, along with homespun advice and student cookbooks. She instilled in us the importance of being able to feed ourselves and equipped us with the skills to do so. Christmas and birthday presents usually included recipe books and kitchen gadgets.
My mum never became a chef, but she never lost her passion for cooking. She had cookbooks and subscriptions to cooking magazines coming out of her ears. She would even post recipe cards to me in Spain.
When I became vegetarian ten years ago, it gave her an excuse to add a new string to her bow. She would pore over vegetarian recipes and inform me with a mix of excitement and pride about the alternative dishes she’d be serving me on my next visit.
I flew to England two days after she died with my partner, Max, who spent the whole month we were there cooking obsessively. Thank goodness he was there because I don’t think I would have eaten anything without him.
My mum’s kitchen was bursting with every piece of cooking equipment imaginable, the cupboards overflowing with everything from a special egg-poaching pan to a ceramic dish for making homemade baguettes. And Le Creuset everything, from casserole dishes to coffee mugs.
My childhood bedroom is above her kitchen, and one morning, I woke to the sound of her pottering around, as she always did, before realising it must be the ghost in the kitchen.
I inherited my mum’s love of cooking, but being vegetarian, I developed my own repertoire of recipes. Another example of how we were similar yet different. But my passion for cooking seems to have died along with her. It’s been over ten months, and I still can’t find the motivation to cook. Maybe it reminds me too much of her. Maybe it feels meaningless now she’s not there to share my recipes with. Last summer, I taught her how to make stuffed courgette flowers — a typical Roman dish from my time spent in Rome. She never got the chance to make them.
Sometimes, when I call my father and see him in her kitchen, still surrounded by her things, for a fleeting moment, I catch a glimpse of the ghost in the kitchen, and I wonder if my love of cooking will ever come back.
