Cooking has become a moral issue, according to the authors of a book published this month. In Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It, the sociologists argue the pressure our society puts on women and mothers to cook doesn’t fit with the realities of busy schedules and small kitchens.
The scene of mother laying out a meal as the kids scramble to the table is also kind of racist and sexist; it’s an “image of white middle class families” that “doesn’t make room for other types of people,” according to the authors.
If our ideal of gathering the family around a kitchen table is so retrogressive, then why do we bother with it at all? For an answer, ask the stars of “Chef’s Table.”
The Netflix show, which released its sixth season last month, tells the stories of world-renowned cooks. Rather than shaming you for not searing foie gras, the chefs often munch on sandwiches at diners in between explaining how they fell in love with food.
Mashama Bailey, executive chef at The Grey in Savannah, Ga., knows Southern cuisine has a complicated past. Her restaurant in historic downtown Savannah is a former segregated bus station. For her, the symbolism is powerful.
“I feel this responsibility to educate people through my cooking,” she says. “That’s the part of Savannah that I want to share.”
Bailey elevates traditional Southern foods such as grits and fried chicken, and reclaiming food helps her improve a bitter narrative in Georgia’s past. It may sound simple or symbolic, but for her, developing a new Southern cuisine is a step in the right direction.
Cooking is not just about addressing racism. At the end of the day, it’s really about the value of gathering friends and family together.
“Whenever you get a bunch of people at a table,” Bailey says, “you learn about the people at that table. The young folks learn about their elders; they learn about their culture and listen to stories about the past.”
When the Pressure Cooker authors argue we should stop idealizing the home-cooked meal, they miss the point. We don’t idealize the family sitting around the table because it was made possible by domestic servants and middle-class jobs. We idealize the kitchen table because it’s a stage for familial interaction that is increasingly rare in an era of glowing screens. We idealize the dining room table as a place for discussing ideas and enjoying friendship. We romanticize the home-cooked meal because when people gather together to eat, they slow down long enough to hear each other’s stories.
