He loved food with visceral pleasure
Katerina Pavlakis 
Memories of my father
It was my dad's funeral last week.
~
He was a famously good eater.
His love for food was fired up by curiosity and delight, and a craving to understand the inner workings of making something good to eat.
In my memories, cooking at home always involves the ringing sound of him cracking fresh pepper in the big brass mortar and pestle.
I still do it myself every day, in a similar heavy brass grinder, the first item I bought for my own kitchen.
He had a special love for open fire cooking, and often called himself a 'pyromaniac'.
Whether that was a coal grill on the balcony, firing up the stone oven on the island, or a rare feast cooking a whole lamb in a firepit - he always had a 'special technique' up his sleeve and would dedicate himself to these jobs with care and skill that went deeper than 'just' cooking.
He'd set off early on summer mornings to select the freshest fish from the incoming boats, then grill it with huge care and skill (for gently cooking a delicate fish on fiercely hot coals is a masterful feat).
He was also really into 'special kitchen projects'.
He would spend days curing fresh olives from scratch (we still have sealed jars that are fine to eat a decade later.
He would never get tired of trying to make his own wine - some years we kids would help trampling the grapes with our feet to release the juice.
There were baking days when he would fire up the stone oven for a succession of tray bakes, pizzas, and cakes.
Then there was the infamous story of the huge leg of pork to be cured in salt, but it somehow went wrong and he was left with a rotten heap of mess.
And these are just a few of the stories I could pull out of my vault of food memories, that inspire my own cooking every day.
~
Where my mum was the original intuitive cook, my dad was the ever willing kitchen hand and chief eater.
He loved trying out new foods and flavours, from the simplest to the weirdest.
He enjoyed food with visceral pleasure, and a particularly good meal would elicit a sweaty brow.
~
I'm sure he's cooking up a feast where he is now.
And for all of us who stay behind:
We need to remember that life is too short to not enjoy our meals.
Every. Single. One.
Categories: : LIFE
