Mother Tongue: Flavours of a Second Generation

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Never feeling fully on the inside of either culture, I found myself habitually ousted by both: overly ‘Foreign-Chutnified-Brit’ on the one hand and overly ‘White-Washed-Coconut-Indian’ on the other. Through a collection of well-crafted items, the company has established an enduring and seasonless style with the flexibility to refine over time. Years later, after my divorce, in my late thirties and back living alone, my mother gave me a new copy of the Edmonds cookbook. At root the approach amounts to little more than adding extra ingredients to established combinations.

Ha, that’s similar to the method I use for checking if the toaster oven has heated something enough: stick a fork in it for a couple seconds and then touch it lightly to my tongue. Although dadima’s literally means grandmother’s – the brand represents sharing wisdom and connecting generations. I’ve tried to like them but alas I do not but I love the idea of a vegetable forward burrito without 90% rice.In November 2009, Achatz and his Alinea team designed the menu for Ikarus, a restaurant in Salzburg, Austria which brings in a top chef from a different restaurant each month to design the menu for that month and train the staff. All our friends and neighbours were from different parts of India, so while the food we ate at home was Punjabi, I grew up eating food from Bengal, Kerala, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In his debut cookbook, Mother Tongue, Loyal makes new versions of some of the most-loved recipes of his childhood. Mother Tongue' is the first book from Akiko Kurematsu; a project exploring generations of Japanese family and homecooking.

VD: Cooking with Tata is different now from when I was 10 years old in Puerto Rico, which is when she really started to teach me some things that I still use now. In her temperate, nostalgic descriptions of farming's seasons and tasks ("Haying," "Laundry," "Country Social Clubs," Saturday Night in Town," "Auctions"), Birkby recreates the day-to-day textures of an era as foreign to most Americans' present lives as a distant star. This includes two separate souring agents, amchoor (god, how Loyal loves amchoor), and tamarind; three citrus elements, lemon zest, kaffir lime, and lemongrass; coconut milk and grated coconut; shallots and garlic; six different curry spices _and_ curry powder. The book contains nostalgic childhood memories of meals with family, and around 50 recipes from how to cook perfectly fluffy rice in a pot, staples like miso-soup and salads, to stand-alone dishes like okonomiyaki and soba. I always appreciate Deb’s flexibility in her recipes, and enjoy reading the comments and tweaks from readers.

This playful, creative attitude to flavour is a hallmark of Mother Tongue where Loyal takes baseline flavour combinations—for example, the classic Italian sauce of tomato, garlic and basil—and adds intercultural flavour notes; perhaps some cumin, or tamarind, turning the dish into something Italian with a distinct Indian accent. I substituted an Irish cheddar for jack – because I wanted the sharpness and the cheese was on sale!

As in the style of the Alinea cookbook, both books provide the exact recipes used during the Paris 1906 and Tour of Thailand menus, without making adjustments for the average home cook. An accessible introduction to Japanese home cooking, most recipes are vegetarian with vegan options, and apart from a few fish options Mother Tongue does not include recipes using meat.Vokes, Blair and Haraf at University of Chicago, did not require radical invasive surgery on Achatz' tongue. In October 2006, Gourmet magazine named Alinea the best restaurant in America in its feature on "America's Top 50 Restaurants". My culinary palate is rooted to my mother’s tongue, and hers to her mother before her; an intergenerational lineage of love that crosses continents, connecting the past to the present through taste.