A memory of dad’s cooking
My Dad is not the greatest cook in the world. No one will ever mistake him for Thierry Marx or Heston Blumenthal. The best place for him to be when meals are being prepared, is in front of the grill. In “man land” as he calls it. My Dad is from Montana. Big sky country. For him, a great meal is steak and lobster but no matter how long he has lived in California, he will forever be a steak and potatoes guy.
Growing up, my dad did not cook dinner. Not in its entirety, anyway, the most he would do is the aforementioned grilling of steaks, hot dogs, and the like. The grill is where the “man” should be. My mother just let him do it. She was just grateful for the help of preparing meals for a family of 5. I know now that I am older that my parents didn’t really appreciate cooking. It was just something that had to be done. They had to get three kids fed, and to bed at a decent hour. Even though that hour was usually late, as it took a bit of time in the evening for my mom to get motivated to cook after a long day at work. We never told Dad, but Mom was a better grill cook. Her food was always less burned, more evenly cooked, and better seasoned than my dad’s.
There was this one time, though, my dad turned out the most perfect, beautifully seasoned, and crispy home fries. . It was as if he was imbued with some sort of divine chefly spirit. Never before, or since, has he cooked something so delicious.
I know what you’re thinking. “Home fries?” “You mean sauteed, diced potatoes?”
Yeah, sauteed diced potatoes. Something so incredibly simple that anybody with a flat piece of steel and a fire could make happen, and make good. Something that even after all my years as a professional cook and chef, every time I think about making them for my family or staff, I think of this one night. This one time. When astonishingly, my dad, nailed it.
It all started as every night before dinner does. The sun goes down, and my dad got cooking. I’m not sure why, but in my memory, my mom is not home. Just Dad, trying his best to cook for three kids before he sent them to bed. I was watching TV in the living room and as I turned around, I saw Dad standing at the kitchen stove. It was odd.
All my life to that point, the closest my dad got to the stove was the drawer next to it, to grab some utensil. I’d never even seen him turn it on. Did he know how? Apparently, yes, he did. He knew not only how to turn it on, but how to use the fire of the burner to heat up a pan and cook stuff. In my memory also, the potatoes are perfectly diced, but that must be some sort of detail that my brain filled in. Seeing his knife skills even now, all these years later, I know that those potatoes were probably all different sizes and shapes. Some jagged and pointy. Some, I’ll wager, were probably round. No matter the shape or size of those potatoes, there he was, throwing caution to the wind, sautéing those pieces of potato like he had been working the breakfast shift of some busy diner in another life. Taken over by the reincarnated spirit of his former self.
Then, it was time to eat. We were called to the table and served these home fries (A term I had never heard before). I don’t remember what else we were served with these perfect cubes of golden goodness, but it doesn’t really matter. For me, the potatoes were the star of the show. They had a thin, glass-like crispiness on the outside that gave way to a soft, fluffy, warm interior. Every textural sensation that makes even a good fried potato worth its salt my dad had done the same thing in a nonstick sauté pan with minimal fat. They were perfectly seasoned with just the right amount of salt and pepper that made me want to keep devouring them piece by piece.
I still don’t know how he did it. With all my training and experience, my home fries have never been as good as his were that one time he cooked them for us. I don’t remember another time he ever made that dish. Maybe he retired from the home fry cooking game unchallenged and undefeated. Did he even know how well he did? If I asked him to make them again, would he be able to do so? Its entirely possible that the myth of that fateful night that I have built up in my head could never truly compare to anything based in reality. I do know, however, the memory of those home fries, the likes of which could rival Heston Blumenthal’s triple cooked chips, are my measure of potato perfection.