The first thing my father taught me to cook
I was seven, maybe eight.
There were disputes in the family around that time. For a while it was him, me and my younger sister, doing life together.
The first meal we made was matooke with pumpkin seed sauce.
The seeds get dried first. Then roasted. Then ground down until they turn into a paste. That is the sauce. There is not much else in it.
I have learned the five mother sauces since then, because somebody always asks you for them in an interview. Espagnole, velouté, the whole list. The first sauce I ever made had one ingredient in it.
I do not think he was teaching me to cook. I think he was feeding us and I was standing there.
Years later I do this for a living.
