Cooking as Fast as I Can (3 page)

Which was a lie. It had happened many times.

The truth would come out, but not for thirty-five years, six months before my dad passed away. As betrayed as I felt that day, I could never be truly angry at him. He was and would
always be my hero. Decades later I would find out what a part of me had always suspected, that he simply couldn't handle what he had seen. He wasn't disgusted by me, as I had always thought, but rather shocked, confused, and embarrassed. Perhaps AH and I were playing doctor or experimenting. It was the seventies. Who knew what kids were up to then? Parents weren't involved in their kids' lives the way we are now. They lacked information. They lacked the tools of communication. But finally I would hear the words that gave me the strength to begin to heal: “Cathy, I wish I had protected you. I'm so sorry, baby.”

But that day, I felt utterly alone. After my mom tried to soothe it away, I walked through the screen door, through the living room, in my bathing suit, clutching the towel around me, the soles of my feet burned. As I passed, the adults just said, “Hey,” as if it were any lazy summer afternoon.

When I examine what drives me, this childhood trauma floats to the surface. I've learned that while I'm blessed with people in my life whom I love and who love me, I walk through this world alone, that I'm the only one responsible for taking care of myself. On that day so long ago, this thought began to take form: my parents can't protect me, my brothers can't protect me, and my friends can't, either. I put on my own armor.

I refuse to give AH any credit for the good things in my life. But one of the reasons I am able to be fearless, to work hard and stay determined over weeks, months, and years, is my refusal to be done in by shame and guilt. After it was behind me, in the weeks and months that followed the day my dad stumbled into that room and stopped it, an attitude rose up in me: “Just watch what I'm going to do now.”

two

I
n grade school I developed an affection for tea parties. My mom patiently brewed decaf tea and helped me assemble the mixture for the cookies. I'd make them myself, pressing the thick, chilly dough through a cookie press that I'd discovered in one of the kitchen drawers. The press had interchangeable disks—shamrocks, stars, and hearts—and I'd make cookies in all the shapes. Then I'd put on my dress and gloves and set the table with my plastic tea service and small yellow cookies and see who I could con into sitting in one of my little-kid chairs.

I graduated from tea parties to an Easy-Bake Oven and decided I needed to expand my customer base beyond my family. I resolved to hold bake sales on the weekend, and was quite the marketer. I'd ride my bike around the neighborhood announcing my sale, then start production, one vanilla cake with chocolate frosting after the next. I set my price at five cents a cake. My sole customer was a boy from the neighborhood, Mark, who showed up with a pocketful of nickels. He put a nickel on my table and I slid him a piece of cake on a paper plate. He ate the cake, and then put down another nickel, and I slid him another. He may have been my only customer, but he was a very satisfied one.

I would one day discover the principles of opening your
own restaurant were pretty much the same: take care to create an excellent, consistent menu and treat your customers well.

My parents loved and cooked fusion food long before anyone had ever heard of it: Greek and southern.

My dad was born two months after his family arrived in Greenville, Mississippi, from Skopelos, Greece. A small, verdant island in the northern Aegean, it was founded, according to Greek mythology, by Staphylus, one of the sons of Dionysus, god of wine and the grape harvest. From my dad's side of the family came recipes for my favorite dish—now and forever—
kota kapama
, chicken cooked slowly in onions, garlic, cinnamon, and tomato paste. Served with buttery long macaroni, or over rice or orzo, this dish is the ultimate comfort food, at once savory and sophisticated and homey. My dad's family also brought
horiatiki
, tomato, cucumber, and feta salad, with a tangy vinaigrette made with red wine vinegar and fresh olive oil; a hearty
spanakopita
, a flaky savory pastry made with loads of fresh spinach, dill, and fresh parsley;
moussaka
, baked eggplant with meat and béchamel sauce made with
kefalotyri
, a salty goat cheese beloved in Greece; and
galaktoboureko
, a dessert made with delicate layers of phyllo dough and creamy vanilla custard, and topped with a hot lemon sauce—it's like crème brûlée baked in its own pastry crust.

Glistening dark-purple kalamatas were the preferred olive, feta the preferred cheese. You couldn't buy these ingredients in Mississippi in the late 1960s. You couldn't buy Greek olive oil. My dad had them shipped from Chicago.

My mom was an air force brat who grew up on bases across the country, in Tokyo, and in Honolulu. She cooked sweet-
and-sour pork, lasagna, enchiladas, and beef stroganoff. She loved to steam artichokes, and following a classic southern impulse, added homemade mustard and bourbon to her pork roasts. Out of her kitchen on Swan Lake Drive came grits and feta, spring onion, fennel and potato soup, and southern-style greens finished with Greek olive oil.

To get our pure, undiluted southern fix we visited Aunt Inez and Uncle George, my dad's half brother. They lived in Greenville, a hundred miles due northwest from Jackson. Uncle George was a furniture salesman, and as far as I could tell, Aunt Inez spent her days raising her kids, smoking, and cooking—in that order. I loved visiting them because Greenville felt like the deep, mysterious South in a way Jackson—the state's largest city and its capital, with its nationally ranked colleges and universities, museums, recording studios, and fine-dining restaurants—never quite did. Greenville is in the Mississippi Delta, what some people call “the most southern place on earth.” Aunt Inez would create a real southern spread: creamed corn, mounds of fried chicken, and turnip greens. Even though her cooking was as Deep South as you could get, she had absorbed a few Greek influences from being married to George. Her biscuits and feta was top-notch.

We made the hundred-plus-mile drive several times a year, up Highway 49, through Yazoo City and Indianola, or up Highway 61 and the heart of the Delta. My dad drove the blue, wood-paneled station wagon, my mother in the passenger seat, me in the backseat in the middle between Mike and Chris. We passed miles of cotton fields and the cottonseed oil processing plants that smelled like freshly baked bread. “Let's stop at the bakery!” I'd say when I was small, certain that what I was smelling was a tray of biscuits fresh from the oven. My dad tried to explain that it was only the odor of cottonseed oil,
but I refused to believe him. “Let's stop for some bread!” I'd say, stubborn like I was.

In Greenville, Aunt Inez would greet us with a plate of hot tamales. She bought them around the corner from an African American man who'd sold them from a stand for fifty years. He steamed them right there, wrapped them in newspaper, and tied the package with twine. I remember the warmth of the tamale in my hand, the softness of the
masa
(corn dough), the spicy pork or beef inside.

After Dad popped a few tamales into his mouth, he and Uncle George would grab their cane fishing poles and vanish, leaving my mom and Aunt Inez to deal with my brothers and me and our three cousins: Sharon, Brenda, and Pete. Our moms tossed us out of the house, and we would entertain ourselves running around until we fell down. Then we would climb one of the ancient magnolia trees whose thick branches reached over the street behind their house and throw seed pods, big as hand grenades, at passing cars. Once we found an empty red purse in the back of Brenda's closet and set about tricking passing motorists. We tied the purse to a fishing reel and slung it out into the middle of the road, the clear fishing line invisible. You can bet every car that came along stopped to check it out. We hid in the underbrush, watching as the driver climbed out of his car, and just as he reached down to pick up the purse, whoever's turn it was to hold the rod would reel in the purse. We'd scoop up the purse and then run away, cackling like maniacs.

In the home kitchens of my youth everyone cooked from scratch. No one used cake mixes, Hamburger Helper, or even Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. My mom, busy as she was with
her full-time nursing job, made her own pizza dough and piecrusts. Her mother, Grandmom Alma, turned out beautiful cheesecakes and pies until she was well into her nineties. When we would visit Alma in Texas, she spent the day before our departure making deviled ham and date bars dusted with powdered sugar for our trip home. Neither my mom nor my grandmom believed in fast food, which was the definition of good money after bad. They were ahead of their time, both absolutely confident that they could easily whip up something better tasting, more nourishing, and less expensive.

Historically, in Jackson, the Greeks were the restaurant people. Along with the Italians they brought fine dining to the area. By the end of the sixties, all but two of the fine-dining establishments in Jackson were owned by Greeks. The Elite was owned by the Zoboukas, and the Dennery clan owned and ran Dennery's. The Mayflower was opened in 1935 by the Kountouris and Gouras families, and is still owned by a Kountouris. It's the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Jackson, famous for its spicy, garlicky Comeback Sauce that keeps you coming back for more.