Food for Thought

Disclaimer: I am not claiming to be Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver. Though today I see no reason to claim otherwise to myself at least.

Six potatoes. Peel them. The smell is almost nothing: wet starch, cold water, the faint mineral smell of something taken from underground. Cut them, drop them into boiling water, and slowly the kitchen begins to smell warm. Not yet of food exactly. Of something becoming food.

When they are soft, drain them. Milk. Salt. Black pepper. Mash them in a bowl until they stop being six separate potatoes and become one pale, fluffy thing. Steam rises from them. They smell soft. Leave them there for a bit, they ain’t going nowhere.

Then everything else begins.

Three or four large mushrooms, sliced. Six onions, peeled and cut. Four cloves of garlic. Three colours of pepper, red, green and yellow. Carrots grated into orange threads. And the green vegetable whose name, absurdly, I cannot remember while cooking it, chopped into pieces and thrown into the wok.

The onions go first.

This is when the kitchen changes.

Raw onion is sharp, almost hostile. Heat makes it sweet. Then the garlic hits the pan and suddenly whatever you were thinking about ten minutes earlier has temporarily lost its importance in the grand scheme of things.

Mushrooms darken.

Peppers soften.

The nameless green vegetables begin to collapse slightly into everything around them.

It’s spinach, you fool, the packet reminds you.

Carrot disappears almost immediately, leaving sweetness behind.

Then the pork mince.

Cold and pink at first, sitting awkwardly on top of the vegetables. Break it apart. Turn it. Let it hit the bottom of the wok. The smell changes again: heavier now, fatty, browned, savoury. Something substantial has entered.

Salt.

Pepper.

Oregano crushed between the fingers.

That may be the best moment.

Oregano barely exists until it is disturbed. Rub it and suddenly the smell is everywhere: dry hills, heat, Mediterranean kitchens, pizza, tomato, something ancient and ridiculously familiar.

Then the bottled tomato sauce from Lidl.

Red poured into brown and green.

Everything becomes sauce.

It boils first, aggressively, little bubbles breaking the surface and throwing tiny flecks of tomato against the side of the wok. Then the heat comes down.

Dollops of strawberry jam, more salt.

Simmer.

Forty minutes.

The smells cease being separate. You can no longer easily find the onion, mushroom, pork, garlic, carrot or oregano. They have surrendered themselves to one another.

The kitchen smells of dinner.

That is a particular smell.

Not an ingredient.

An event.

Something made.

Every few minutes I lift the lid and the steam comes straight into my face. Tomato first. Then oregano. Pork. Garlic somewhere underneath. Pepper. Sweet onion.

Taste.

More pepper.

Perhaps salt.

Stir.

Put the lid back.

The potatoes are waiting in their bowl, fluffy and quiet.

Then onto the plate.

Mashed potato first. A soft white mound.

Beside it, or over it, the pork and vegetables, dark red now after forty minutes together.

The potato absorbs some of the sauce immediately.

A fork through both.

Soft potato.

Small pieces of pork.

The sweetness of onion and carrot.

Mushroom.

Garlic.

Oregano.

Pepper.

Tomato.

Nothing sophisticated.

Nothing requiring interpretation.

Utterly delicious.

And before a single mouthful, I already knew it would be.

Because for nearly an hour the whole house had been telling me.