Secret Family Recipes

"I stirred it with my finger."

That was my grandfather's standard response to, "How'd you make this taste so good?"

Pawpaw was a character, the scene stealing kind. The one that upstages the leading man just with the twinkle in his blue eyes.

He had a few stages he perfomed on, like the back of the chapel after Sunday services where he spun yarns for his friends. Or holding forth to his grandchildren from the comfort of his favorite armchair, cushioned in 1970's era putrid green velvet upholstery, a lazy dachshund on his lap.

But the big show? That was in the kitchen. He threw one dish towel over his shoulder, tucked another in his belt, and he set about making magic and sprinkling it with stories.

I spent every spare penny I had from my part time job in college to spend one week each spring with him in Louisiana. I sat at the breakfast bar while he puttered at the kitchen island, one minute showing me how to add rice to water without measuring it, the next telling me about how he made his ship's captain a turtle soup when he served in the Navy in the South Pacific during World War II.

I watched him like a hawk, asking questions all along the way. "How much file are you putting in the gumbo?"

He shrugged and held out a palmful of the finely ground sassfrass leaves. "This much."

All of his measurements were like that. Touch rice with the tip of your middle finger and add water until it reaches the joint of your first knuckle. That's how much it needs. Roux should be cooked until it's the color of an old brown penny. There's no so such thing as too much onion in a jambalaya.

Once I convinced him to let me try making a jambalaya while he supervised. He restrained himself from yanking his favorite wooden spatula from my hand and doing it himself, but it was a near thing. Especially when I grabbed a teaspoon to measure out the pepper.


"What are you doing?" he asked. "Hold out your hand." And he dumped a bunch of pepper in it. "Now pour that into the teaspoon." I did. It was exactly enough to fill it. "That's how you measure when you cook Cajun," he said. "It's done when your eyes, nose and tongue say it is, not the recipe."

I can do it now, but it sure makes it hard to share a recipe with a friend. "How much red pepper do I add?" I don't know. However much it needs.

No matter how many times I watched him and wrote down exactly what he said and did, my gumbo never did come out the same. "Pawpaw, mine's not as good as yours," I would complain in one of my many phone calls to him.

His raspy chuckle would come over the line. "That's because I have to stir it with my finger."

Maybe that's the trick. Or maybe it was a Spanish language movie that revealed the truth. I remember watching Like Water for Chocolate in college, sitting on my sofa in stunned silence as the credits rolled, gripped in an epiphany. It was not the spices or the cooking time or any secret ingredients thrown in when my back was turned.

It was a bit of Cajun voodoo he magicked on his creations that somehow infused each dish with a little bit of him.

I guess he told the truth about his magic ingredient. I know what it means when I say, "I stirred it with my finger." It means, "I made it extra special because I love you."

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