The Little Blue Pan
With the old dishes through which I try to tell a story and connect places and people, there always comes that urge to prepare or serve everything in the same kind of pans, pots, plates and bottles they once used. To try eating from those old plates, with that old cutlery, to salt the food from those old salt shakers. Every little detail tries to summon the events, the places, and the people who once were.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with that feeling when you try to recreate a dish from long ago and somehow it just won’t come out the same. It looks right, you follow every step you remember or were told, yet something is always missing. That’s exactly how it is for me with chicken from the pot — no matter what I do, it will never be like the one my grandmother made.
Most of the time, it’s not because you don’t know how to cook it or understand the recipe. It’s because what’s missing is that time, those people, those pots, that cutlery, those cloths. That’s why, when I gather my family and friends, I try to serve some of the dishes on those kinds of plates, over those old tablecloths.
I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who knew how to save such things, care for them properly, and who now share them with me generously and tell their stories.
One “ordinary” little blue pan, made in the late sixties, might look unimpressive to some. It doesn’t have all the features we brag about today: even heat distribution, non-stick coating, a perfect rim, a handle that won’t get hot. But that little pan awakens so many beautiful stories and memories that, just like Aladdin’s lamp, it only needs a gentle nudge to wake up.
Except you don’t rub this one — you grease it with oil, dress it in pork fat, and stain it with the juices of tomatoes.
So if you ever can, before you start cooking your favourite dish, take a look into your pantries, attics, basements, sheds. There’s surely a pot, a pan, or a salt shaker that has a story to tell. It only needs a reason and a bit of flavour to loosen its tongue again.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with that feeling when you try to recreate a dish from long ago and somehow it just won’t come out the same. It looks right, you follow every step you remember or were told, yet something is always missing. That’s exactly how it is for me with chicken from the pot — no matter what I do, it will never be like the one my grandmother made.
Most of the time, it’s not because you don’t know how to cook it or understand the recipe. It’s because what’s missing is that time, those people, those pots, that cutlery, those cloths. That’s why, when I gather my family and friends, I try to serve some of the dishes on those kinds of plates, over those old tablecloths.
I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who knew how to save such things, care for them properly, and who now share them with me generously and tell their stories.
One “ordinary” little blue pan, made in the late sixties, might look unimpressive to some. It doesn’t have all the features we brag about today: even heat distribution, non-stick coating, a perfect rim, a handle that won’t get hot. But that little pan awakens so many beautiful stories and memories that, just like Aladdin’s lamp, it only needs a gentle nudge to wake up.
Except you don’t rub this one — you grease it with oil, dress it in pork fat, and stain it with the juices of tomatoes.
So if you ever can, before you start cooking your favourite dish, take a look into your pantries, attics, basements, sheds. There’s surely a pot, a pan, or a salt shaker that has a story to tell. It only needs a reason and a bit of flavour to loosen its tongue again.