Mothering Sunday is upon us which means only one thing: all over the country people who have never before cooked a major meal are locked in kitchens attempting to express love and gratitude to their matriarch through the medium of traumatised ingredients. Cue oil-smeared cookbooks, bleeding fingers and gastronomic ambitions hastily reassessed. Feel for them: these are going to be the longest hours of their young lives so far.
My own mother disapproved of the concept of Mothering Sunday. Partly I think this was out of bloody mindedness; she hated being part of the herd. That said, I understood her argument. She thought it was simply a way for greetings card companies to build revenue in the name of a false premise: that you should show special devotion to your mum on one day of the year. She felt she should get it every bloody day. Bring on the chocolates and the hugs. Fair enough, though I must confess it was a tough lecture to receive when, aged six, I presented her with the card I’d made at school. I’d drawn flowers on it and everything.
Even so, like many of the newbie cooks slaving away right now, I too once had to cook for my mother for the first time. I was at university and she was coming to visit me. I planned a menu. There would be poached salmon with homemade mayonnaise – a rookie mistake; why bother when Hellmann’s does it so much better? – followed by beef in red wine. It was a dire meal. The notion of cooking off the alcohol had escaped me. It was that rare beef dish, one that could have been flambéed without the addition of extra booze.
Of course the response to this story is that it’s the thought that counts; that the authentic emotions will have been obvious with every mouthful. I’m not so sure. I’ve always been suspicious of the peculiarly American mantra that as long as you cook with love everything will be fine. It is emotional incontinence and the sort of language that brings out the worst in me. Told by a cook I was judging on an American TV show that the dish I was tasting had been “cooked with love”, I responded that if I wanted to be interfered with in that special adult way I’d call my wife; from them I wanted good taste and technique. My comments didn’t make the cut.
The fact is that in the kitchens of those first-time cooks marking Mother’s Day the overwhelming emotions will not be love or devotion. They will be fear, anxiety and desperation, with a soupçon of disappointment. But here’s the thing: that’s OK. No, the meal you cook may not be the thrilling gastronomic delight you were hoping for. Indeed, like the first proper meal I cooked for my mother, it may only be on nodding terms with edible. But what matters is that you tried.
Too often we are sold a lie about cooking. We are told that it’s easy and simple and is the work of 20 minutes or less. But it isn’t. It’s the work of a lifetime. It takes knowledge and confidence, and that comes with experience. You have to start somewhere. You have to experiment on someone and who better than your mum? If she’s worth all that effort believe me, she’ll understand, as mine did, even if the result really is crap. Happy Mother’s Day.
