One of my fencing teachers tells, to those that want to hear, that you need to almost steal the style of your teacher. Teachers will not tell you. They will teach you, but learning (as far as I have got what my teacher means) is an act of the student’s will, is something that we do. We have to look, to see what they do, perhaps to copy (or perhaps and precisely not to copy) what we see they do. We need to ask the right questions at the right time, so that they can tell one or another anecdote that illuminates what we wanted to know, or what we needed to know. Is tricky, probably as tricky as stealing something is.
This thing about teaching, or at least teaching japanese fencing, came to my mind reading about Claudia Roden. She is credited to have introduced, back in the fifties, the middle east kitchen to us westerners. When her family lived in Cairo recipes were secret, family heirlooms to pass, but not to give to outsiders. But after the diaspora produced by the great conmotions of the sixties and the seventies, recipes became something else. To quote Melissa Clark from The New York Times “They shared the secret of the recipes, so that when any of them prepared that rich orange-almond cake or a mint-sprinkled tahini salad, they would remember one another and feel loved and understood”.
Few days ago I prepared some arepas, the venezuelan maiz-based bread. With precooked cornmeal and water a dough is fashioned, from which patties are made by hand. Then one fries them briefly to create a crust, and let them cook in a warm oven for about twenty minutes. So I expend about half an hour busy, half an hour with my friends. In mixing the dough I remembered the mother of Julio, neighbor from across the street in Caracas, who patiently and repeatedly explained us that the dough needs more water than it seems to need at first. In shaping the patties I remember Victor and Idais, whom taught me to do so, when cooking breakfast in Merida, when we went to exchange ideas and practices with other politically engaged students. I see the broad smile of Noris, the best contact person we could possibly have. I put them in the oven and I think in Cathy, doing exactly that (unknowingly teaching me to prepare them so), when we meet in her (and her sister Olga) flat, before going to a meeting of our political movement. And I certainly remember Vanda, whom frequently received us after those long meetings, she and her sister Saskia fedding us some more arepas at their house, before we finally tried to get to ours. From all of them I steal little pieces of my own recipe for the arepas that I eat here, that my dutch guests always like.
The half an hour is gone, and many more years and kilometers too, in this diaspora of us, yet my friends are here, with me.