I love to eat good food. "Good" is a relative term I realize but I mean: food prepared with quality ingredients by someone that knows what they're doing. Even more so, I love to be the one responsible for the "good" food. In the vast realm of world cuisine my first and true love will always be Italian. I have two years as a Mormon missionary in northwest Italy to thank for that.
The first thing you learn, when as a culturally clueless 19-year-old in a whole different country, is that the American version of that country is usually a horrible pastiche of broad stereotypes. The cheese is a great example. I remember just months before I left going to The Olive Garden and marveling that a waiter grated parmesan cheese right on my pasta there at the table! Oh the pageantry of it all! (I have no idea if they used the authentic stuff.) Yes, in Italy they sprinkle aged cheese (often Parmigianino Reggiano, Gran Padano, or Pecorino Romano) on their pasta but it's done without the fanfare. It's more like adding a little salt to season your food. (It was early in my stay that my soon to be life-long hatred of The Olive Garden and its ubiquitous mediocrity was seeded.)
As missionaries, living somewhat independently, we we're responsible for preparing our own meals. Would you believe that the cheapest and easiest food to make in Italy was pasta? I wasn't very good at it. I made a lot of bad sauce and some other horrible travesties that are best left unknown. But amongst the many wonderful things I took away from my two year mission in Italy was an intense curiosity into how food came together.
It really wasn't until I got back to America that it started gelling for me. All the lessons I had learned in my many kitchen failures (and few successes) led me to the realization that I could not only cook but that I loved doing it.
In the post-mission years I grew in confidence and skill and eventually hit a culinary plateau. I would occasionally experiment with new recipes but largely stuck with the 9-10 Italian recipes I knew really well. There were a good 2-3 years where I made and ate my own marinara sauce almost every day. (The side benefit of that is I now make a FANTASTIC marinara sauce.)
Then I met a lovely young woman who was a good cook in her own right but loved it more when I cooked for her. From this I learned an important lesson, the culinary arts becomes even more fun when you have someone ELSE to share them with. The possibilities of someone to share my journey into world cuisine spurred me onward and forward. But for all my experiments and restless search to conquer the cuisines of the world there are few things I enjoy more than a big plate of spaghetti marinara or eggplant parmesan. Despite being raised in white suburban America on peanut butter sandwiches, Kool-Aid, and Kraft Mac n' Cheese, Italian is my food comfort zone.
For Father's Day this year, at my request, Amy made me eggplant parmesan. This is a meal that is dear to me. It was the first homemade meal I had in Italy, made by a real Italian mamma. I remember my first delicious bite. I had never eaten eggplant before let alone something like eggplant parmesan with its sumptuous layers of tomato, fried eggplant, and cheese. It was incredibly delicious and I can probably count that as the moment my eyes were opened to what really good Italian food should be.
Now, I didn't necessarily give Amy the whole back story but she knew it was a meal important to me. Never one to shirk a solid challenge, she found a good recipe and forged ahead. Luckily, she did a fantastic job. It was delicious and tasted wonderfully authentic.
What I haven't told her until now is that she is the only other person, besides me and that wonderful Italian mamma that has ever made eggplant parmesan for me. That may not mean anything to anyone else but it means a lot to me. It's a recipe I'm particular about and asking her to make it indicates a level of culinary trust I have in very few other people. I can't say I had planned it this way but maybe it's an old fashioned conceit on my part. Eggplant parm tastes best when it's made at home for someone you care about. It's even better when a mamma makes it for you.
