Lucky Peach, 2017
Yes, @luckypeach has joined that great literary castle in the sky. But, I was lucky enough to have written for them. It was my first writing gig ever, and I came out the gates swinging for Lucky Peach during my rookie season. We worshipped the magazine in culinary school, separating ourselves as “high brow” serious types from the rubes who watched basic network tv. But, it was also because Anthony Bourdain was associated with the mag and he’d never lead us astray. I miss him and I miss LP and all of its obscure insanities that sometimes even went over my head. But I always got the feeling, when reading it, that it must have been a similar feeling when my mom’s generation read Crumb’s zines. So it was only befitting that my LP piece was about my mom.
We’ll hear from kids about their favorite things their moms cook, and
we’ll hear from moms themselves about those dishes, in interviews conducted by
their kids. Since May is MOM month, we’ll feature a mom a day for the entire
month. After that, you can expect to find WE LOVE MOM here on the website every
Friday. —Rachel Khong
I am an only child, raised by a single parent. I grew up in the barrio of South
Sacramento—a wrought-iron laced neighborhood where evenings smell like
roasted chilies and charred tortillas. When I was small enough to fit under the
Kmart shopping carts we’d push home from a day of accumulating first-of-the-month provisions, my mom would stop along fences to pinch leaves of
spearmint and pluck sprigs of rosemary. She’d knock black walnuts, almonds,
persimmons, and figs from their limbs in the ghost gardens. She was an urban
forager before the hipsters labeled it.
In 1953 my mother was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Vega Baja is equal
parts rural and town, with narrow streets sandwiched between cotton-candy-colored Spanish colonials. In the late 1950s, my grandparents left PR and
headed for a neighborhood in Sacramento less than a mile from where my
mom currently lives. They worked in the fields harvesting seasonal produce.
Eventually, my grandpa started his own gardening business, my nana gave
birth to seven more children, and a 1957 tropical turquoise Bel Air sat in the
driveway. It was a traditional and devout Catholic family, where my grandpa
worked and my nana took care of the house. Working with a strict budget,
nana often fed nine people with just one whole chicken. If you were late, your
chicken ration was forfeited. But you were always guaranteed rice and beans.
They always sat at the kitchen table. My grandpa would eat first, the children
second, my nana last. Every special occasion saw a homemade pineapple
upsidedown 7Up cake. The recipe was attained by an Italian neighbor, and it
was my mother’s favorite.
My mother worked at what is now known as Blue Diamond. It was a factory
job where she sorted nuts on an assembly line for almost twenty years. Then
she worked at UCD Med Center, dragging herself through twelve hour shifts
as a unit coordinator. On weekends, she’d make Bisquick pancakes, bacon, and
eggs. She’d cook the eggs in the bacon grease until the eggs puffed up like a
soufflé, the edges brown and crispy. She’d also cook boiled yucca, yautia,
bacalaítos, arroz con gandules, carne guisada, and fried chicken with white rice.
But, I mostly loved her pumpkin fritters. She’d only make them around
Halloween, drying out the seeds in the sun and then roasting them in the
oven, using the leftover flesh from my jacko’lanterns for fritters. She’d add
vanilla, cinnamon, salt, eggs, and flour, mix and fry. She and I would sit in the
corner of the kitchen, in our onebedroom casita, and consume them piping
hot.
My mother is calm. She cooks calmly; she solves her problems calmly; her
food is calm. She is the oracle. These days she only makes two things from
back in the day: smothered mushroom chicken and Christmas balls.
Smothered mushroom chicken is one of the simplest things to make, yet I can
never get mine to taste the same as hers, even though I have watched her
make it. I am not the oracle. I am not calm. It’s a dish that’s umami-heavy: it’s
meaty, it’s earthy, it’s dark. My mother and I are polar opposites. It’s been
said my personality matches my deadbeat father. Where my mother is calm,
patient, and approachable, I am skittish and make babies cry. We both have
the ability to wrangle stray cats into our lap, turn the bullshit detector up to
eleven, and offer people advice with a warning. (“You want the nice version or
the honest version?”) We both love nature, are artists, and we’re both
romantics. While my mother had dreams of traveling to Europe, being an
exhibiting artist, and going to college, I actually did all of those things.
I went home and asked my mom to make mushroom chicken. We sat down to
eat afterwards, and when I bit into the forkful, the crust of the chicken was so
crispy it shattered under the pressure of my teeth. My mom looked up at me
and said, “Hear it?” —Illyanna Maisonet
RECIPE: Carmen Maisonet’s Smothered Mushroom Chicken
(http://www.luckypeach.com/recipes/carmenmaisonetssmotheredmushroomchicken)
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