Recently, my eldest messaged me a photograph from the kitchen of his student house. It was of a bowl of ramen. There were the curling noodles, like cross-stitch, bobbing in a broth the colour of copper coins. There were the sliced spring onions and halved boiled egg, the yolk still running, the outside of the white fully bronzed from its long rest in a soy-based marinade. There was no commentary; no “Look what I made” or “Fancy some?”. There didn’t need to be.
It was a father-son thing. The two of us have eaten so much ramen together over the years, argued over the finer details of what makes a good one and laughed uproariously at the bad, that he knew I’d get it. He’d made his own ramen and he wanted me to see it. Obviously, I celebrated my glorious parenting skills. I had passed on the baton of fatherly enthusiasm. I’d given him both a love of the good stuff and a desire to make it for himself. Go me.
But while I looked forward, I also looked back. I would never have shown my late father pictures of my cooking. Or, if I had, Des would have greeted it with a puzzled, knotted brow, as he scrambled for the right thing to say. When he died, almost exactly five years ago, I wrote about how Des had time for a good salt beef sandwich or well-made fish and chips, but otherwise shared none of my greedy interests. I concluded this was probably a good thing. It gave me a little perspective.
What I didn’t mention then, shadowed by intense grief, was his complete failure as a cook. It drove me completely nuts, but back then I really didn’t want to be critical. It seemed at odds with a man who had been so ahead of his time. My mother had been the lead earner in our house and he had supported her, rather than the other way around. He had been fully involved in every detail of our upbringing.
And yet, at the stove he was a disaster. If my mother was working and dinner duties ever fell to Des, I knew he’d be cracking out the wurst, a salty, blunt kosher beef salami, rendered a disturbing pink courtesy of God knows what, which despite our lack of religious observance, was always in the fridge. This, he would slice into thick rounds and fry. It would be served with a rubbery omelette made crimson from the leaking processed meat. It was terrible; a meal wasted. I couldn’t help but feel my father was negligent in not having equipped himself with the necessary culinary skills.
But as my own son has reached the age where he could start pinging food pics at me, I realise how unfair this was. Des was the product of a particularly feckless man – my grandfather – who wasn’t exactly on point when it came to the fathering business. Certainly, he was disdainful of men cooking or, indeed, basic expressions of love. To simply get into adulthood more or less in one piece was an achievement for my dad. Expecting souffle recipes or an intimate knowledge of roasting times as well would be unreasonable.
My child, meanwhile, has had a privileged upbringing boasting lots of space in which to share the joy over the perfect bowl of ramen. Frankly, it would be surprising if my boy wasn’t pinging me images of steaming noodle bowls, just as my own dad’s lack of skills was also unsurprising. It would be convenient if I now announced that, this Father’s Day, to remember him, I’ll be knocking up a plate of wurst and eggs. I won’t. It really is an awful dish. But as a dad myself, I think I finally understand Des a little bit more.
