There is no doubt in my mind that my mom is the best cook I know in my life because she is very passionate about cooking for family members and her friends and feels happy when someone eats a lot of her delicious food. She can cook many different cuisines such as Chinese, Thai, Burmese, and Indian. She always cooks healthy, tasty, fresh, and low-calorie foods to control the ingredients to be more natural, and creates new recipes to satisfy the whole family. She has been cooking for many years and is very skillful at cooking for ceremonies inviting many guests to honor the people, so she can prepare food quickly and knows how many meals will be enough for guests. The reason why her food is so special is that she uses a different cooking approach to various dishes and creates her distinct taste. After cooking new recipes, she writes down all the ingredients in her book to pass down from generation to generation without changing the food’s taste.
The greatest cook in my family is definitely my mother. She grew up surrounded in cooking and food like how she raised me and learned all kinds of generational recipes her mother taught to her and her sisters which brings that homemade style that no else has in their cooking. In family gathering events or during the festival season, like Ramadan, it’s a time where everyone comes together and food is our family’s way to bring us all together and connect each and one of us.
This brings me not just closer to my family but my culture within self, by getting to experience the traditional foods from Bangladesh. For example, all the types of curry you can imagine like the homemade traditional chicken and beef curry which have this distinct taste my family makes that can’t compare to any other families. Also the Bangladeshi snacks and desserts that anyone in the family can make together, like jhalmuri, kalojam, jilapi, and my personal fav is pua pitha. So many of our family friends from Bangladesh that are living in the U.S. or across the state have come down to my house to experience my family’s cooking first hand.
— Emily, Hoggard High School In Wilmington NC
Now this was a hard question to answer because fortunately my family can cook very well but I must say the trophy goes to my grandma; her name is Sylvia Haven, born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in New York City. She is the best cook I’ve ever met. I love all of her dishes from a classic pound cake to her sautéed shrimp and fettuccine Alfredo meal (my favorite).
In “What My Mother’s Cooking Taught Me” The writer says, “There was nothing special in her arsenal: Her kitchen, which was not kosher, was equipped with everyday cast-iron and Farberware cookware, a well-worn wooden chopping bowl and mezzaluna, a glass double boiler, an enameled oval blue-and-white-speckled roaster, and a pressure cooker.” It surprised me how much I can relate to the statement because my grandma didn’t go to culinary school nor neither does she have fancy techniques. But whatever she made always turned out to be the best. My theory is that since she lived in Chicago, Georgia and New York, three of the most influential food places in America, her cooking is different from others. Plus, in every meal she makes, she adds love, making the food taste 100% better. So I say this now out of my almost 17 years of living I’ve never tasted anything better than my grandma‘s food.
Our Favorite Recipes
Nothing beats my grandmother’s kale shrimp wontons. They slip teasingly around the plate on their slinky, tender bellies, escaping with a flourish if you’re not absolutely precise with your chopsticks, yielding only to the most delicate pounce (or in Dad’s case, an impertinent fork stab). The first bite unleashes a rush of hot, sour juice, like a promise fulfilled; the second crowds your mouth with sesame oil and oyster sauce, salt and pepper, some interloping pork, all jostling like fans in a mosh pit, though the ocean-fresh shrimp and still slightly sharp kale steal the show. You can’t get them in a restaurant, because her wontons tell the story of her journey; from Nanjing to San Francisco, centuries of tradition sharing the scene with upstart California produce. I’m not sure cooking is in her DNA, but her DNA is in her cooking.
The cooking DNA runs deep in my family, but I’d have to say my favorite cook is my dad … Growing up, he cooked so many things and tried new recipes constantly. However, the one thing he always fell back on was Cambodian and Chinese cooking. Passed down from his mother, he always tried his best to replicate her recipes …
