Sometimes, memories can illuminate the best flavor
that we can never re-create no matter how much we try.
One of those was my mother's pound cake tasted by my sister at a Christmas Eve in 1960's. My sister tried to re-create the same flavor after she grew up and married with three children. She tried it with all those rich and gourmet ingredients that she could buy in 1990's but always failed.
It was because the taste she remembered was consisted of her mother's big proud smile when she opened the rectangular box in front of her family after the dinner (I was a baby so don't remember it), a vivid contrast between my sister's feelings of being betrayed by her mother not providing a typical Christmas cake which should be decorated by Santa Clause & reindeer in a square box and completely unexpected flavor coming from a bumpy British style pound cake with lots of dried fruits and nuts which looked like a confectionery box distributed at a funeral, and a simplicity of those days with much less technologies than nowadays which enhance people's five sense sharper.
She ate the whole cake even the last crumbs.
Those three ingredients - my mother's big smile, vivid contrast, a simplicity of the time- were short in my sister's recipe.
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| Japanese traditional European influenced Christmas cake made by rich butter cream |
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| Amazing simple bumpy pound cake with lots of nuts and dried fruits |
Another one was a canned coffee that I drank while reading Japanese comic books at a bookstore on my way home after a summer short course to prepare for college entrance exams in a small city, Aomori in Japan. (a summer of 1979?) It only cost 80 cents from a vendor machine but tasted much better in my memory than a Turkish coffee with jaggery sugar and cardamon spice that I learned to make 25 years later.
It was because I was reading a funny comic book holding back my laughter in a quiet bookstore, and enjoying every sip of the coffee which was filled with lots of milk and sugar. My body knew that all those unhealthy ingredients in the coffee would be evaporated into me holding laughter and energy.
In time, I grew to be a catcher in my memories visualizing a scene of my favorite novel "A catcher in rye".
...standing on the edge of my memories' cliff trying to catch good moments and feelings when those are going over the memories' cliff.....
I know those memories are eternally engraved in my unconscious level but I have to pull those to my conscious level so that those can save my life at a crucial time when I feel like I want to give up everything and fade away from a reality.
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Due to those simple ingredients I held in my conscious level, I was able to enjoy every moments with my 89 years old mother in law when I went to see her for a Christmas dinner at a nursing home in Kansas, Missouri.
I was even able to laugh out at a Christmas dinner table when I found out a professional caretaker of my mother in law had been believing all these years that I was a truck driver and romantically involved with many men at one time (maybe boyfriends at every cities?).
This time, I did not hold back my laughter but laughed out, and said to her,
" Oh really? Do I look like a truck driver and being involved with multiple men romantically at one time?
It is impossible since I am still in love with her son who passed away four years ago and it may last another 500 years."
Turkish Coffee with cardamon
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Ingredients:
- Extremely fine grind coffee beans such as Espresso, French Roast or Columbia
- 1/2 or less teaspoon ground cardamon
- Sugar (optional)
Making:
- Add water and coffee beans into a sauce pan
- Add cardamon and sugar
- Once all the ingredients are completely dissolved, brew over a medium heat
- First boil - as soon as it starts to boil, remove the sauce pan from the heat and let the froth down.
- Repeat this two more times since the three boils create a better taste
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