When I am missing home or feeling nostalgic, I flip through the pages of Cooking by Hand. Reading my father’s narrative voice reminds me of the many times we explored food together when I was young and the things he passed to me along the way. When I am feeling really inconsolable, I flip to page sixty-four. If you haven’t read his chapter, Letter to My Newborn Son, it describes one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.
In the letter, he explains that in honor of my birth, our friends in Italy, Francesco and Maura, built six beautiful wooden casks, Antonio’s batteria, they called it, for making aceto balsamico. These casks are similar to wine barrels but a bit smaller - the smallest just larger than my head, each slightly larger than the last. He says that if I were to climb to the top floor of their home, I would find barrels just like mine but with Francesco’s sons’ names, Roberto and Matteo, burned into their wooden faces. Just next to Roberto and Matteo’s casks, I would find those that Francesco’s father filled for him when he was born. The legacy of this juice grows and becomes as its creators age. With every year comes new memories, experiences, and flavors; each year bottled, savored, and consumed. As my dad wrote to me, “balsamico is a way of perpetuating the memory of family descendants and future generations - a living symbol rather than a static reminder, a gift given forward growing ever more valuable as it grows older.” Balsamico is the only flavor in my life that reminds me of who I am.
A character-defining flavor is something rare today. Awash in a sea of online recipes and the constantly evolving world of restaurant dining, flavors can push into uncharted territory. New and exciting, these ideas inspire me to cook and to grow my food vocabulary. They can, unfortunately, also distract me from the intimate tradition food can be. In my experience, the wide and often overwhelming world of food must be grounded in and supported by a language of food - familiar flavors, memories, and dishes - that is personal and specific. A language that was used, consciously or not, by our family and friends to love and care for us. The flavor of my balsamic vinegar celebrates the feeling of grapes crushed beneath my toes, the comfort of a weekend spent between the Sonoma vines, and the loving company of the people with which it was created. When exercised properly, this language gives us the foundation and confidence in food that allows us to explore successfully.
What I am attempting to describe is a way of experiencing food that transcends hobby, flavor, cooking, or eating. Notice! is an avenue for sharing this way of experiencing. It is an attempt to help you focus your lens. To generate a conscious experiencing of food, generating novel opinions and ideas, and an evolving language that can be shared with those we love. When we live through food this way, we give those around us a gift of tradition. Meals that leave us with more than an empty plate.
“By the time you are old enough to read this, the vinegar that I will soon start for you will have aged enough to draw. In it you will taste the years it has marked since you were born. It will grow sappy as you move into your teens, then deepen and thicken as you become a man. In your twenties, its dark obscurity will mirror the complexities of life that dawn on you; in middle age balsamico may help you remember who you are and with whom you have belonged. When you grow old, it will be the nectar that you have waited all your life to sip. Like you, it will have become everything it has ever been for better or worse, an embrace of the “sweet and sour” that is life. Let this serve as your introduction, words that will become our work together for as long as we both remember and promise not to forget.”
-your father
I hope that your experience of food can be as precious to you as mine is to me, and that you too notice the significance of cooking and sharing with others. While there are many languages of love, I hope that cooking is one for you. I hope that the passing of time can be marked in some way by the food you share with others. I hope that you too will appreciate a flavor that reminds you of who you are. Finally, I hope that Notice! may help you along your path of experiencing food, much like my Dad has helped me. A path for which I am thankful in ways that will remain for as long as we remember, and promise not to forget.
inspiring and heart felt. will definitely start this tradition for my family one day