Excerpted from Chapter One: Personal Best
I was well into my 30s when, by fluke, I became a food writer. Happily, this career has turned out to be my natural niche. As with most things, it all dates back to childhood.
Some people recall clearly where they were, who was with them or what they were wearing at key moments in their lives. For me, it's all about the food. I come by this affinity honestly.
Mine was a rootless, often chaotic, never-dull family in which mealtime was one of the few sure things. What made our repasts particularly memorable was the delicious food, which I learned to appreciate from an early age. On those rare occasions when it was accompanied by good vibes, all was well in my otherwise shaky world.
My father, Mel Schachter, a medical researcher and university physiology professor, was a brilliant, inwardly tender, but volatile man brimming with feelings he had trouble controlling. The primary emotion, unfortunately, was rage, the result of growing up in a rough, often cruel, working class family of Russian Jewish immigrants in The Main neighbourhood of Montreal.
My mother, Ruth, is a biologist who spent many years teaching high school. Calm and collected on the surface, she bears emotional scars from fleeing the Holocaust as a Jewish teenager in Latvia, where all her extended family was killed. Her cultured refinement and lack of emotion belie the pain of survivor guilt and the struggles of being a refugee. Hers was an odd, striking contrast to my dad's persona and left the children in our family to negotiate a confusing, sometimes scary familial minefield.
For me, food was a soothing pleasure. Dinner was always at 6 P.M. and my mother, a fantastic self-taught cook with an eclectic, mostly European, repertoire, would produce a delicious spread complete with healthy components: a big salad, for which I always made the vinaigrette, and glasses of milk for me and my two younger brothers.
My father, whose best quality was a razor-sharp sense of humour, could be extremely funny when in the mood and often brandished his somewhat cynical wit at the table. He loved to eat and was accomplished in the kitchen, having put himself through medical school at McGill by working as a short-order cook. One of my favourite memories is of clambering into the car with him on weekends to visit Zlotnik's, a popular Jewish deli in our North London suburb, to pick up bagels, cream cheese, lox and other ingredients from his youth.
Occasionally, he would drive us to an eatery in Golders Green that specialized in his beloved childhood staple, smoked meat or salt beef as it was called in England in those days. But Melly, as Mum called him, really came to life on the Sunday mornings he decided to cook. He would grandiosely clear the kitchen, carefully line up ingredients and, with much fanfare, meticulously produce his amazing French toast, immaculate salami and eggs or, my favourite, a perfect toasted bacon sandwich.
The bill of fare in our home may have been comforting and delectable to me. However, it stood out like a sore thumb in an almost totally Anglo milieu in which my friends had never seen, let alone tasted, schnitzel, rye bread, salami or plum kuchen. I, in turn, rebelled against my mother's gourmet ways and yearned for British staples like Toad-in-the-Hole, the currant-studded steamed pudding Spotted Dick and -- yes, believe it -- Spam fritters, all highlights of my school's daily hot lunch. However, even these paled beside the luxurious array of dishes my mother would prepare for my happiest times at home: dinner parties at which my parents were quintessential hosts.
As a teenager, I loved to chit-chat with my parents' actor friends, mingle with my dad's handsome graduate students, and even hobnob with famous colleagues, like Andrew Huxley and Miriam Rothschild, at our convivial soirees. My ruse of moving among the crowd offering wine, holding a tray of hors d'oeuvres and offering coffee in small cups, honed the entertaining skills I'm glad to possess today.
Food looms large in many pivotal moments of my life. Some involve memories that are particularly sweet. Take the tale of my erstwhile nanny, Evelyn Smail. My parents had often talked about the teenage girl from a St. Lawrence Valley farm who looked after me when I was a baby in Montreal. You can imagine my surprise -- and joy -- when she contacted me in 1998 after seeing me talk about my most recent cookbook on TV. A few weeks later, I was at the front door of her lace-curtained farmhouse surrounded by cornfields. After 50 years, it was a beautiful reunion for us both, filled with laughs and a few tears. That day, we went to the local orchard and picked raspberries. The next morning, we baked her famous Raspberry Cream Pie.
I took a trip further back in time when I unearthed the story of Joe Martinson, a distant relative on my mother's side and a coffee merchant in New York's Greenwich Village in the early l900s. He started small, with a wagon for selling the beans he roasted in his mother's oven, but soon became a huge success. Martinson Coffee is still a popular brand in parts of the U.S. What's more, he's the source, so the story goes, of the well-known phrase "cup of Joe."
My daughter Ruthie pops up in many a column. A regular taster of my cooking and baking, with an impeccable palate, she loves to cook, especially the healthy Wheat Berry Salad on page 244, which she likes to make for a tasty, nutritious high-school lunch. Ruthie's interest in food inspired an annual potluck party that started on a whim and became a huge hit. About a dozen of her girlfriends gathered at our house one civic holiday, a dish of homemade food in hand. I'll never forget the heartwarming sight: a bevy of gorgeous, smiling teenagers of every size, shape and colour seated around our long kitchen table laden with Asian noodles, Indian samosas, Caribbean fruit salad and a Vietnamese jellied dessert. A lovely reflection of cosmopolitan Toronto's delicious diversity. And you guessed it, it's a column.
