How food should taste was strongly shaped by my mom’s cooking (and baking). She was a very good cook and baker and always prepared nutritionally balanced as well as tasty meals (she was educated as a dietician). Her primary culinary influence was Polish cooking (not terribly surprising given that she was born, raised, and educated there).

While I am able to cook various styles of cuisine, I have never been able to make the traditional (or staple) food taste the way my mom did (as in any country, there are regional differences in the way Polish food is prepared – a lot of Polish food uses caraway seed – which my mother did not). Since my mom is dead, I am unable to ask her how she prepared her food; mind you, over the years, her cooking became less Polish in style and more (like mine) polyglot in style.

Having a lot more free time in Madrid (and somewhat limited range of ingredients), I’ve had to adapt my style of cooking a bit. One of the happy consequences of that is that I have been able to reproduce meat dishes that taste a lot like the ones my mom used to make. It seems the “secret” missing ingredient has been bay (laurel) leaf. While browning the meat, onions, garlic, salt and pepper are essential ingredients in preparing the food, it is the bay leaf that provides the flavour that has eluded me so long.

[rr : this was pre-recorded since I am on holiday]

Comments

jassy

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you should try cooking adobo--it uses bay leaf too i guess:)

adobo is made up of pork, soy sauce, and vinegar, with black pepper (powdered) and bay leaf :)

Tuesday 10 August 2010, 09:19

richard

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I had to look up recipes for Filino adobo - they are quite different from Peruvian adobo. Maybe I will try cooking one.

Do you have any favourite recipe to share?

Sunday 29 August 2010, 04:18

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