Mama's Tears

With our baby-bird spoons, tasting and seasoning Mama's soup.

She cried out when you came into the world, when you were plucked like a full ripe fruit from the impossibly small slit between her legs. She wiped a droplet from her cheek when you ran up to give her the four leaf clover clutched tightly in your chubby hand. Then when you ran away, or off to college, to the army or into marriage, her tears flowed unequivocally for joy and grief alike; for a Mama knows these two faces well, stamped indelibly on the one real currency of life.

The great universal solvent, water, and salt, nature's catalyst, join in a teardrop to flow in a release of emotion, becoming tiny agents of expression and relationship: I thought, flicking another pinch of salt into the bolognese sauce to lock in the latest level of flavor. We've discussed the role of salt in cooking a lot lately. "Salt is not an idea," Robert punctuated with a spoon in his hand, "Start with stock and vegetables and taste it. You can't taste anything! Add salt and suddenly: There's the sweetness of onion, carrot, celery, and the stock becomes a foundation beneath them."

Like tears' movement of emotion, there is a dance between the liquid in a sauce and the salt we use to season it that allows the ingredients to express themselves more fully. If a sauce has three ingredients and the third isn't found, adding salt will help bring it forward and meld them together. Salt is added in stages to lock in flavor as sauce develops, so that as it nears completion only minor adjustments are needed. Sprinkled on top of simmering vegetables, salt facilitates the release of water and bitterness so the starches can break down into sweet sugars.

Remember Mama when you season. She cried over your pot many times watching you develop!

Robert's Potage aux Haricots et aux Champignons Sauvages, perfectly seasoned.