Kitchen Alchemy

My maternal grandmother grew up in a Polish-speaking community in New Jersey. She told me that when she was young, her family was so poor that sometimes the only meat they had to eat were squirrels that her older brothers hunted and brought home. Her mother turned whatever she had into delicious soups and stews. My grandmother told me that was the “old way” of cooking- taking whatever you had and melding it into something palatable.

My first memory of my grandmother’s kitchen prowess came in the form of a soft-boiled egg. I watched her boil the water, add the egg, and time it so the yolk was perfectly runny but the white was cooked. She toasted a piece of bread, buttered it, and methodically cut it into strips. She slowly cracked the top of the egg with a spoon, careful not to get shells in the rich yolk. She then poured the egg’s contents into a mug for me. I dipped the toast slices into the egg, soaking up the savory yolk. I thought it was the most wonderful meal I’d ever eaten.

It wasn’t the egg or the toast or the butter that was special to me, but the way my grandmother lost herself in the process. She turned simple ingredients into something spectacular. My entire childhood was filled with her creations: traditional Polish stuffed cabbage, beef tips in gravy over egg noodles, pumpkin muffins, bruschetta, zucchini bread, and homemade pickles. And just like her mother, she made the most delectable soups and stews out of beans, lentils, peas, potatoes, leeks; always with a hambone thrown in for flavor. They were never the same, always made completely from scratch, and absolutely delicious.

As a child, cooking never really interested me much beyond making Easy Mac and Ramen Noodles. However, after years of digestive issues, at twenty years old, I learned that I had a non-Celiac gluten sensitivity. At first, I taught myself how to cook out of necessity. Oftentimes, gluten free meals were hard to come by on a college campus. However, when I graduated, I realized that my digestive health problems extended beyond gluten. I did a careful elimination diet and learned that a myriad of foods set off my intestines. I quickly jumped into the world of paleo/allergen-free baking.

At first, I would find healthy recipes to make for myself. When I moved into a house full of other recent college grads, I started baking for them too. Paleo baking for non-paleo people is always difficult. You have to make cookies, breads, and muffins from strange ingredients like almond flour and coconut milk, and you have to make them taste like “normal" baked goods. I fell into weekly baking, and I found and tested recipes that my friends actually enjoyed.

I genuinely looked forward to coming home from work and taking over the kitchen. As a child, I had watched my grandmother artfully make me something as simple as a soft-boiled egg. As an adult, I started to understand what it’s like to hand yourself over to a process like cooking or baking. Unplugging from the world, using your hands, making something out of nothing- it was meditative in nature. Every night I could be found over the stove or oven, peacefully concocting whatever foods I was craving.

Ten years after discovering my food sensitivities, I make my own meals from scratch every day. Not only that, but I’m slowly mastering the art of baking for “gluten eaters”. After religiously watching every season of “The Great British Baking Show", I realized that as much as I enjoy allergen-free baking, I’m very limited with the things I can make. There’s only so much you can do with nut flours. I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and bake “real” baked goods, even if I’m not able to enjoy them myself.

The first things I tried to bake were easy enough- Tollhouse cookies from scratch, sugar cookies at Christmas with royal icing, and cake pops. Lately, I’ve moved on to harder baked goods. I made a lemon meringue pie at my boyfriend’s request last year. It was the first time I ever tried to temper egg yolks and I was terrified of curdling them. I think I watched a tutorial video five or six times before I attempted it myself. I mastered the lemon curd on the first try, with lemons from my garden. Now I relish in making any sort of custard, not only because I enjoy the challenge, but because all of that whisking is also a good arm workout. I made French fruit tarts with vanilla custard and rough puff pastry that my family and friends have now requested on multiple occasions.

People often ask me why I bake foods that I can’t partake in, and the answer is simple- I love the process. I enjoy using my hands and going step by step. Every time I arrive in my kitchen to bake, I enter a sort of “flow state”. I concentrate deeply on the task at hand, and emerge out of the other side having created something. Even if that something isn’t perfect, meticulously practicing a craft is relaxing and rewarding.

Beyond the actual process of creating, I love watching people enjoy my food. I truly believe we inherit ancestral traits from the people who came before us in our family lines. I watched my grandmother cook and bake delicious meals, but I also watched her enjoy the act of feeding people. The nicest compliment my grandmother ever doled out was calling someone a “good eater”. My grandmother was a hard woman. Serving people the food she cooked was her way of showing her love. Cooking softened her thorny exterior. She may not have always had something nice to say, but she always had something tasty to feed you.

Nowadays, I’ve set a precedent of showing up to gatherings with baked goods. People expect them now, and I try my best to deliver. My boyfriend recently pondered why people rave over my baked goods. He surmised that maybe it’s because I chose the best quality ingredients. I told him maybe, but I think it goes beyond ingredients. It’s something else entirely. I think it’s the magic of bringing something into existence, and sharing your creations with others.

When I was a kid, I secretly thought my grandmother was a witch. She was as intuitive as she was creative. Cooking and baking are alchemical in nature, and when you zone in on the process, it truly does become an almost magical event. I’d like to think that I have a little of my grandmother’s “kitchen witch” spirit. I practice the craft of kitchen alchemy every single day, and it brings me a deep sense of fulfillment- both literally and figuratively.