The quiet battle between fathers and their newly adult sons, as they jostle for position, can be fought on many fronts. For a long while the conflict between myself and Ed played out over that most contentious and ancient of territories: yes, salad. I would serve up a beautiful bowl of leaves with a bright dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar and salt. He would try a forkful and stop. I would strive to make it better. He would decline even to try it.
Eventually one night, over the dinner table, I said: “You think my salad game is weak, don’t you?” These are the conversations we have in our house. We talk only about the important things. “No,” he said. “I just think you make salad the way you like it.”
A few days later I was at the stove making dinner. It was a recipe I’d seen on Instagram; something involving chicken thighs, seared in a pan which is then deglazed with soy sauce, gochujang and honey. All recipes on Instagram involve chicken thighs and a bubbling honey-soy sauce. (Apart from the recipes involving an industrial smoker, half a cow, and a man with a beard and rubber gloves.)
My wife watched me cook.
“Aren’t we lucky,” Pat said. “To have you cooking for us like this.”
I smiled and nodded, even as the realisation struck me. Ed was right. My family wasn’t lucky. They were just there. I wasn’t cooking for anyone else. I was cooking for myself.
This plays against the conventional, hug-me-squeeze-me, kitchen narrative. Those of us who cook for family and friends are assumed to do so out of a surfeit of love. Temperamentally, I am ill-disposed towards this kind of talk. I regard it as emotionally incontinent.
Personally, I don’t want someone to cook for me with love. I want them to cook for me with technique and excruciating good taste. But that night I realised a certain amount of love was involved, just not of the kind everyone else meant. The person that we home cooks really love is ourselves. It’s an act of self-love which, obviously, is the very best kind.
Of course, we do need other people, but only for reasons of volume. A lot has been said over the years about the virtues of cooking for one. It is all correct. There really is profound pleasure to be taken from knowing that the bijou portion bubbling away in the pan is just for you; that you need not consider anyone else’s tastes when it comes to, say, chilli heat or the volume of dairy fats involved.
But there are many dishes that don’t work quite as well on a small scale: think curries and stews, roasts and broths, pies, meringues and steamed puddings. Sure, all of them can be made small. But they really are so much better made big. Which means you need mouths to feed. Hooray then for my family. I wake each morning thinking about what I might like to cook for myself that evening, and which everyone else will happen to get to eat.
But I am still a parent, desperate for the approval of my children. I am aware that Ed has a thing for balsamic vinegar; that he likes the overt sweetness that I find cloying. Still, I can work with that, if it produces the desired result.
One night I use the dirty brown stain of balsamic to dress the salad. I watch him as he eats. So? He says: “It’s fine.” Is that so? It’s fine? From now on he can have what he’s given. Which, as it happens, will be exactly what I want to eat.
