Leather Storrs: Cooking with Someone You Love

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Leather Storrs, GoLocalPDX Contributor

When I was 4, my mom was invited to be a teaching physician at Saint John’s hospital in London. My father and I went with her. My dad offered his services to local architectural colleges, but they politely declined, so he enrolled in the Leith’s School of Wine and Cooking, where he was a voracious and intuitive student. His joy in both creating and eating inspired my love for food. And it also forged a unique relationship between us, with its own traditions and jargon.

Because my old man was 50 when I was born, we didn’t play much catch. “Go out for a long one,” meant step back two paces. But we played food. I may have been the only preschooler who not only knew how to pronounce “Coquilles St. Jacques,” but also knew that it was a scallop and mushroom gratin served in the shell. “Coq au Vin,” a winey braise of chicken, mushrooms and bacon was another favorite, partly because we both liked to say it, and also because the wine seasoned the chicken and my dad.

It wasn’t all eclairs and gratins. I am still haunted by the memory of late nights at the dinner table choking down grainy, overcooked salmon dressed with gloppy dried dill mayonnaise, or phlegmy mussels floating in cold, salty broth. But honestly, most of what my dad made was pretty good and recognizable. The real trouble started when we went out of the country to eat.

He had a very tenuous grasp of the French language which he concealed by speaking with sweeping arms and great enthusiasm. At a snazzy restaurant in France he identified and ordered a veal dish for me, from the helpful word “Veau”. He missed the part where it said sweet breads. When is too young to eat the thymus gland, I wonder? On that same trip he missed another modifier and I ate a hamburger… made of horse. But also on that jaunt he recognized the remarkable Charantais melon and we gasped in amazement when the little grey green ball arrived on the table. It had been elegantly topped and seeded, the lid replaced. The waiter removed the top to reveal Fanta colored, exquisite flesh and an aroma so thick and honeyed that it seemed to settle over us as we battled for the last scoop.

Many of my fondest memories involve cooking and eating. Swordfish reminds me of the time my Dad and I were on a sailboat in Turkey. We swam to shore with another guest, who happened to be a Nobel Prize winner. Somehow during our fish feed the Laureate, who was probably seventy, pulled a grizzled condom from his wallet to show us he was prepared. Whooping and laughing, we collectively gave him the business. It was the first time I felt that my dad saw me as a man. And tater tots! He would point out the window at an invisible hippo or Orangutan as he liberated tots from my plate. I loved it so much, I’m paying it forward to my own children. Unfortunately, they’re smart.

Cook with someone you love. Forage with your best friend. Share a secret chocolate hiding place with your mom. Buy some fancy Saffron. Steal some tater tots. Everybody eats, it’s up to you to decide the where, how, why and who.

Leather Storrs is an Oregon native who has served 20 years in professional kitchens. He owns a piece of two area restaurants: Noble Rot and Nobleoni at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where he yells and waves arms. He quietly admits to having been a newspaper critic in Austin, Texas and Portland.