the intimacy of the kitchen

why cooking a rogan josh is more intimate than shower sex with a josh

Cooking

I didn’t start to properly cook until last year. Sure, I made myself lunches and the odd quick dish for subsistence but I never really took up space in the kitchen nor claimed it as my own. My mannerisms in one reminded me of when I first joined a gym. Adamant I did not belong in this foreign domain but still wanted to be involved so I would skirt the corners of the premises and observe what the ‘professionals’ (everybody else) were doing, leaving promptly if they noticed my frequent glances.

My whole life others have cooked for me. I am the youngest sibling, so whenever my mother or father abstained, the responsibility passed onto my older sister, never reaching me even after she moved out as my parents both remarried enlisting more cooks into our inner circle. Then it was my turn to attend university. A personal chef in tow. I kid but actually. My first boyfriend was a really good cook. Maybe this was something I unconsciously sought after, having always been the indulgent eater and everybody else around me, an apparent culinary talent. I demanded some form of independence however, already feeling it was compromised by not moving away entirely alone, I cooked chicken our first night and gave us both food poisoning on top of the existing freshers flu so he made every meal for me from there on after. Leaving tin-foiled plates of my favourite dishes in the kitchen during our fairly amicable break-up incase I perished, or poisoned myself again.

I am surprised my placidness lasted so long as I hate relying and depending on others and so desperately wanted to champion a kitchen. I grew up watching Saturday Kitchen and reading Nigella Lawson cookbooks. My favourite of hers being ‘How To Eat’ and Jessie Ware’s ‘omelette’ but I felt like a fraud reading all these food memoirs as a stranger to cooking for comfort.

I am exposed to a variety of cooking styles. From my Grandmother’s traditionalist Delilah Smith style cooking of dumplings and sweet figgy pudding to my mother’s Kenyan staples of Ugali and Tulapia fish. My dad makes an incredible sticky pork and rice dish he recreated from Vietnam and fluffy Sunday morning pancakes and married an Italian who makes tantalising pastas and the world’s best tiramisu. I recall my parent’s dating history best through food. I was so young when they split so only remember various exes through what they fed me as a child. My dad’s first girlfriend after my mother is where my love for Banoffee pie comes from, I can remember my dad’s ex-fiance’s parents’ curries with puri and mango pulp vividly but not their names. I have a sweet tooth that can be accredited to my mother’s ex-boyfriend who hoped to buy our affection through sugared treats. Dessert not being a thing in our African household before him.

Apparently the science behind this is the Olfactory Bulb, which processes flavour, is located between the Amygdala and Hippocampus which process emotions and episodic memory. So there are neurological links between the three. This can explain why we have certain foods that we consider comfort food, a misconception being they cause pleasure due to typically being highly calorific. This theorises that they are comforting due to being attached to memory. One strong part of my Kenyan ancestry is the food, my mother never stopped cooking it when she moved here and it connects us still to that part of our background. The kitchen has a different feel when I know she is making Chapatis or Mandazis. It feels extra homey and familiar. I went to a panel show the other day: Otalengi’s Comfort Tour live at The Barbican and their discussion also touched on what makes comfort food, well, comforting. I was born in England and have no prominent memories of Kenya, yet it is my ultimate comfort food. There’s a study from 2011 (Gabriel, Troisi) that looks at nonhuman stimuli on emotions and shows comfort food as a form of classical conditioning. So my mother feeding me Kenyan food in childhood means I associate it with feelings of care and looked after which is why it acts as a comfort food in my adult life.

I have constantly been surrounded by good food and inspiration, so it is too easy to just sit back and admire their craft. Plus, I loathe being bad at a hobby. The amateur stage. I want to immediately be intermediate. But something starting a substack has taught me is that it’s okay to sit in your shit for a bit. You learn new tricks on the way and I can give myself credit for being a decent baker but it’s like when I was younger and joined a ‘Street-Jazz’ dance class that I became fairly good in so I declared my next goal was to play Oddette in Swan Lake. I doubt a requirement for the role was being able to hold a headstand. The effort is there, it’s just not quite the same.

I suppose I lied when I said I never cooked. School makes you take ‘Food Tech’ lessons. When I speak on the intimacy of a kitchen, these are not the kitchens I am referring to. The grey starkness of one was the worst place to be if you had it first or last period. I often missed my bus home because preparing and baking a parfait in our allocated 30 minutes was ambitious. We were actually only allowed to cook like twice a term. Often less than this because somebody would talk back in class and more theory lessons filled with learning the colours of the food plate and how to avoid obesity was our collective punishment. Our teacher had a strange fixation on scones. So when the time came that we were allowed a practical lesson. It was either a fruit scone, a cheese scone, a classic scone, a sugar scone, a raspberry and white chocolate scone, I don’t know, the list never expired and I have not made a scone since. Safe to say my secondary school experience of Food Technology instilled me with no additional abilities to cook.

One doesn’t just cook with anybody. If you do you’re brave. As mentioned I am not a seasoned cook and it’s been heavily proved I am a Type B friend but even I am picky. So around a six month mark of dating somebody, any sooner there’s risk that it’s an instant killer to whatever you have going on because you don’t like them enough to sacrifice your solitude, I do a test where we cook a main and a dessert together. Doesn’t sound too threatening. I’m a majorly indecisive individual so choosing what to cook is the first challenge. I also hate people in my space in general but after conversing with most cookers who don’t mind, they agreed that the kitchen is sensitive territory. But, it somehow works when you’re cooking with the right person. I think taking the time to perfect a marinade by tasting, exercising good communication, adding this, adding that, is hot. You both need similar approaches but not the exact same technique. You can’t have a free-wheeler and a religious recipe-follower collaborate, it falls apart. I like somebody to offer tips, a little sugar to caramelise the onions but don’t tell me what to do, no imperatives allowed. I don’t need some guy in a quarter zip named Angus to mansplain the different cuts of steak to me. I like mess but don’t create chaos. I like my waist touched but not when the pan’s spitting, I become overstimulated. You see how it’s a very careful sequence for the experience to be enjoyable. I am not going to throw flour at you because I need it for the batter and I have lost the charger for the hoover. No Lady and the Tramp spaghetti sucking when we eat, I read an article once that said this type of facial motion encouraged ‘smoker lip’ wrinkles.

It’s like showering together. Why are guys obsessed with intruding the tranquility of a shower. I fucking hate it. For one, they block my stream of water. I have yet to date somebody smaller than me (I am 5’2) so you are taking up all the space, it’s greedy. I have back eczema so don’t like the water to run down my spine if I face the other way. The shower is a strategic mission. It’s not romantic to see the way I squat to shave. It’s not sexy when you have curly hair so you can’t see your skin when you decide to run a tangle teezer through it because it just shed three layers. I need to exfoliate with my mitt, so don’t touch me. I like to brush my teeth in the shower and your in the spit zone. I don’t wanna have sex when I’m wet, like actually physically saturated. The logistics are just awkward. This is it how it can feel when you are making a dinner with the wrong person. So maybe evaluate your relationship if you are aware you cannot stand their presence in the kitchen.

I want to equally romanticise cooking for myself more too. When it’s just me I forget what I like and crave. My shopping list Bagels, Eggs, Dark Chocolate. Staples I will always have and rely on but do not provide me a nourishing meal. I would rather fill my evening doing other tasks instead of dedicating time to making a meal for just oneself, only to pass out on the sofa three mouthfuls in because by the time you have finished it’s gone past midnight. But, I think the way you feed yourself is a reflection of your self-worth. Each plate its own testament, reminding yourself - I love you.

Aesthetics

I love beautiful things and this seeps into a lot of my life. I appreciate the symmetry of trees on a street, an interaction on the tube playing out across from me that could be a cinematic frame, the colour grading when light seeps through sheer curtains. Everything has the ability to look good, poetic. Therefore this includes the plates I eat and the environments I make and consume them in. I greatly appreciate the aesthetics of a home kitchen. I love when I enter a house and can recognise it’s a kitchen household, not a living room or a master bedroom one. It is comforting to know that the vessel of the building is where everybody gathers and eats. Low lighting, wax candles, rustic tiles, an aroma of smells. A slow pour of a red wine. A full-bodied chianti or Rioja being my personal choice. Half the bottle in your thin-stemmed glass, the rest bubbling and spitting in the saucepan. A handcrafted dinner playlist. Played from a Hi-fi or CD player. If you choose to use a smart speaker of some sort connect via bluetooth yourself, don’t ask Alexa because you will repeat your request four times and she will play something else entirely and it will ruin any kind peace you just placed yourself in.

I can’t wait to have my own kitchen to put my mismatched plates and coloured espresso cups, stacked awkwardly in glass cupboards too small. I scour the home section in charity shops for hours, caressing unloved ceramics, knowing it just will sit amongst my parents own chosen mugware as a misfit until I have a place of my own for it. I will invite anybody and everybody for a morning coffee with my lopsided latte art. A heart that actually looks like a penis but my guests all far too polite to comment on it.

Love

I saw an article that measured love on a Kitchen Scale. How comfortable are you in their kitchen? Can you make yourself a drink? A sandwich? Dinner? Can you survey their fridge? I think practices like knowing how somebody likes their tea or coffee and being able to make it for them and pick out their favourite mug to enjoy it in is a beautiful act of love. Do they use a a Cafetière, A Moka Pot or exist fully in the 2000s with an electrical machine? What type of sweetener is their preference? Those who say honey I intrinsically trust and I’m not sure why. How much butter do they spread on their toast? Are they the type to use the same knife to contaminate the jam? My best friend knows I drink everything with a straw, so keeps a glass one in her drawer for when I go round. I buy cow’s milk for the fridge for when she comes round. Intimacy is always in these smaller things. The magic of the seemingly mundane.

I think about anybody I have ever loved and my love for them has developed in a kitchen. I knew I loved my first boyfriend in the kitchen of his mum’s old house. He was making a chicken Alfredo for our anniversary and I was watching him and he would turn to me and ask to taste his sauce - not an innuendo, it was a white wine one that I licked from a wooden spoon, happy to burn my tongue and withstand the porous and splintery texture of the utensil. He put on Amy Winehouse, October Song, and poured me the rest of the bottle. We were freshly eighteen, playing domesticated adults. I felt a warmth that was different to if I sat in his bedroom or the living room. I said I loved him in my own kitchen two months later because this feeling, that if objectified would be a bowl of soup with melted butter or crème fraîche swirled through, consumed me again.

My friends, my life’s greatest loves, I have too fallen in love with in the kitchen. I think about the once strangers that I met at university who I only truly bonded with when sitting on a sticky kitchen floor whilst we all cooked our various dinners in rotation, 4am after a night out making instant ramen drunk and laughing way too loud, boiling a full kettle and it not being enough to make seven cups of tea. Or, my childhood friends. We orientate our days around our grumbling stomachs, always thinking of good food and what meal is next. We wake up, hungover. One fries the eggs and another, the bacon. The rest of us lay the table and butter crumpets and we talk about the past 6 months of our lives, no matter where we are, the kitchen remains a haven.

Every time I return to where I grew up, which is not as often as I should, my school friends and I never really go out. For one we live in a graveyard town, the nearest club or bar is a twenty minute train away that you have to be back on by 11pm or it’s an £80 cab. But also, I think turning 18 in lockdown then shipped straight to university meant we reserved that lifestyle for our respective uni experiences. What we have always done and done well is communal dinners. I think about being around a table with girls I love and choking on the £7 Prosecco from laughing so hard, not because it tastes like urine, and passing plates over for a second serving. It’s not always home style cooking, we are known to over order when it comes to a Chinese takeaway but it makes for somebody’s lunch the following day. Better eaten cold and lazily anyway. These tables and takeouts have seen us throughout stages of our lives from thirteen. Boys names have come and gone over these tables quicker than seasons change. We’ve cried and laughed. The table is mobile. I always get soppy about womanhood and female platonic love on the way home, drunk off a bottle chicken wine, gushing to my mother who has collected me later than I initially promised because we can’t shut up. Because around the table it’s on full display. Women that shine their brightest when not in the presence and hyper-aware of men, we are extra funny and witty and sentimental around other woman we love and understand fully in a way that only we can.

Even my own love for my parents developed in our kitchen. Obviously the love you have for parents that are good to you is innate. You love them because they raised you and love you first or whatever. But I didn’t truly know the people my parents were until I started getting older. The reality being that I did not think of them outside of myself until I was an adult. Over dinners and coming back between university terms, I found out about their lives before me, stories of those they had loved before and after each other, family and personal secrets divulged whilst tucking into a fish pie.

My mother always tells me bad news in the kitchen, I used to think it was purposely symbolic, receiving uncomfortable information on our old and extremely uncomfortable dining bench as opposed to be told ‘you might want to sit down’ on our comfy and inviting L-shaped sofa. We used to have our most explosive fights over the kitchen sink. She would be washing up and I would be drying, the argument over something so petty of course, I would start slamming the dishes as I put them away so the bangs covered the mutters under my breath that I knew boiled her blood. No surprise, this infuriated her more. One of our top talents is getting under one another’s skin. She would cuss me out in Swahili and say I will pay for any chip in her oven dishes. My stepdad would shut the door of the kitchen, our hurling of insults interrupting TV time. By the time the washing up was done, we were friends again. My father and I are the opposite. He is a wine enthusiast, so it’s only ever over a bottle from his monthly subscription that we indulge into anything surrounding our emotions. No displays of passions even close to as under my mother’s roof but still the disclosure of anything occurs in the kitchen. I think this will always be the case. I imagine all my life events, meeting of new partners, job celebrations, engagements, other family member’s achievements will be announced over a kitchen table in the places I recognise as a home.

The loves I have met and made in the kitchen are domestic, safe, comforting. I see them as bread. You prepare and let them bake and develop and it results in a warm delicious product. Love is my best friend’s laughter as we make the worst tasting espresso martinis before we go out despite already being twenty minutes late and she hates the taste of coffee. Love is passing my sister the chopping board and peeling potatoes together whilst listening to Fleetwood Mac. The beginning of love is him leaning against the breakfast bar whilst you talk about the future of space travel and it’s links to elitism. You are unpacking the dishwasher and passing him bowls, pointing to where they go because he doesn’t know his way around yet. Love is forehead kisses as you sleepily brew two coffees, they pass you the milk and flip the pancakes because you always make a mess of it and get batter on your striped pyjama bottoms. All of it romantic. Sweet and simple love in the kitchen.

Of course, I recognise this is not always the case.

I think it’s right to call out the history of opression of women in the kitchen. I have spoken of it as an endearing environment when for years and still is, it can be a prison. I look around at the families that surround me and it is mostly women feeding everybody and whilst many may enjoy that, it should not be the default. I am also aware the domestic and sexual abuse is high in the kitchen. Throwing of pots, pans, the smashing of glasses. I hope a love for the kitchen would be universal but I get why my perspective of one comes from a place of privilege and freedom of choice.

Social

The nickname people call our family is ‘Kitchen Kemps’ and our theme tune, Jon Lewes’ ‘You will always find me in the kitchen at parties’ because alas that is where we are. Another drink being placed in our hands, plating canapés, one of my five uncles polishing off an appetiser. I think, that side being a big family, five children, nine grandchildren, we love noise, busyness and this is what occurs in the kitchen - a social hub - everybody’s natural meeting place. I always wonder why that is. Who came first, the Chicken or the Egg? Do we gather here allured by the smells, the food or is it because people are already gathered and it offers the practicality of being able to cook and chat simultaneously. I don’t know but don’t mind it all.

All the best parties and afterparties you attend occur in a kitchen. They draw the best out of us. We don’t do as much small talk in a kitchen, thanks to the intimacy of one, you feel already close to them. Quite literally. Everybody has to bundle together because they’re not often that big and you chat and drink and nibble. I love when there’s a smoker. Not for their health obviously. But it becomes an adventure. You leave the kitchen to accompany them to the garden. It feels dangerous. You have left the safe space. Then it’s like a stream of hot water running in a cold bath when you return. Then the guests all leave and you remain in the kitchen still several hours later debriefing what just occurred. Steaming frothed hot chocolates all around. Smiling to yourself in-between sips. I vow to throw several kitchen parties. My 21st was one and some of us ditched the kitchen around midnight for a club in central London and I got drunk and kissed a stranger, we ended up in a casino and argued with a policeman when really I should have stayed in the sanctuary of the kitchen. The night ended there nethertheless, as me and my friend discussed the absurdity of the night that had just occurred, calling and cackling down the phone to these figures we had met. Eating leftover birthday cake in cowboy boots. There are not enough of them these days. You don’t find yourselves in kitchens with strangers as much. Too many people are sociopaths and murders, it is a lot less sexy.

Beverages

I associate alcohol with the kitchen. Occasionally you have a glass of wine in the bath but mostly your pour your red whilst making a bolegnase or with it. Me and my friends turn the island that runs through the middle of my kitchen into a bar before we head out, concoting random cocktails, one of us a bartender the other the taster, they both usually have an untasteful measure of booze. Christmas morning mimosas at the dining table with breakfast. The kitchen is not only associated with food. In all the kitchens I have inhabited and know my way around there is usually a large designated spirits cupboard and if you’re anything like my parents it hoards miscellaneous bottles somebody has bought them over the years which they have never touched. I remember when I was fifteen my friends started throwing parties and as single-sex educated girls we needed the liquid courage to approach the boys we’d invited from the school next door. Some would get their older friends of friends to get them alcohol from the shop, others could use their sister’s ID. I had to resort to taking one of these strange bottles that would not go amiss. Off I go with something sticky and black, 15 year old TJ used to Caribbean Crush and WKD, was not used to 45% dark rum. My mum picked me up as my friend’s mum explain the state I was in. I apologised profusely after a lecture on stealing and alcohol abuse. Then my mum laughed in my face and said hope you enjoyed your first drink being straight Kraken, there’s a reason your step-father left that one in the reserves. My throat burned but jokes on her for believing that was my first drink.

Appliances

My Grandma cooks on an aga, my mother uses a gas cooker, my father has an induction stove. I think where there’s a flame it’s cosiest but easiest to screw up in my experiences. Their commonality being that they’re all entirely unreliable. I remember in my first year student house we had induction, fucked me over actually because I took the various hand me down pots and pans from each of my parents, some nice vintage Russell Hobb ones in there - excited to start my cooking journey with them, realising they’re not induction compliant so had to drive to Ikea and purchase a new much shitter set, being all I could afford, maybe this is why I gave us food poisoning. Blame the tools not the workman, however the saying goes. Anyway the hob had cupboards above it that me and my flatmate had to climb on stalls and then counters to access, not like a student halls to be poorly designed(!) Our second night my flatmate knocked a salt shaker out of hers and the entire hob smashed when it landed and that was how we first met the maintenance team who would pay us several visits throughout our stay, always to fix glass, from when one of the boys kicked an American football through the kitchen window to when one of their exes kicked in the door. It was the type of glass contained within plastic too so I could tell she took leg days seriously, not sure why he let her go.

In our third year house, we had a faulty boiler. And gas cookers. Our carbon monoxide alarm didn’t work, nothing did really. Student landlords do not give one fuck if you are at risk of death as long as they can still bill your guarantor. Our boiler pressure kept dropping and we were told whatever you do just don’t touch it. One of the girls touched it. Then in a panic called National Gas because she could suddenly smell gas, thinking it was because she had touched the boiler. I had just got in from a two hour lecture, two of them were crying because the agents had shouted at them. The electronics had been turned off. We were told to evacuate. The gas men arrive in their orange suits. My housemate who called turns to them and goes funny story, we don’t actually need you guys anymore. They did not seem amused. He goes it’s a code of conduct and he needs to checks the property regardless. It was a four floor, six bedroom house. We stand there sheepishly as he takes his time. He turns on our gas cooker. I am standing in front of him and let out a scream purely out of shock and I had extensions in, worried they were about to go up in flames not realising he was behind me. He goes “well, think we know who won’t be becoming a gas engineer”. Then in the same monotonous voice says what we already knew, that the boiler leaking water has nothing to do with gas and he couldn’t smell anything. We apologise and he replies with a roll of his eyes as if to say ‘women, hey.’

My favourite kitchen appliance will always be a coffee machine. I have worked at two cafe’s, a restaurant and hotel now. I have used a DeLoghi Espresso machine, a La Spaziele model where I could brew six beverages at once and a shitty SunBeam Cafe Barista machine. My dream is to own a coffee-house style machine in my own kitchen one day. I hate my Nespresso but use it out of desperation when I can’t hold off until work for my caffeine fix. My dad’s espresso machine takes five working days to recognise I have refilled the water tank. The truth is the beans matter more than the machine but again, it comes back to the aesthetics of these things. And, I like the convenience of frothed milk in under ten seconds.

Christmas

When I return home and it’s not the festive period, we do not exist in the kitchen as much and my schedule is booked and busy with seeing everyone whilst here for a limited time. This year I came home for Christmas and I have no place else to be other than the kitchen table. Food an excuse for us to slow it down and talk again.