Mom's cooking = comfort food?

Ruminating about cooking lately. I've always appreciated good food and can cook a nice meal. I can follow a recipe fairly easily, improvise on it - and the results have been decent. But I consider myself just an ok cook....never a great or wonderful one. That title I reserve for the likes of my aunt (may her soul rest in peace), and my mother.

My aunt was a legendary cook. She had a huge repertoire of dishes and can have four or five parallel stoves running, each making some complicated marvel. She would chop up vegetables like a magician and didn't mind being before a gas stove cooking up all this even in the 100 degree plus Chennai heat. She's the top rung cook in my book.

My mother comes a close second, and makes very flavorful dishes. The aroma of her dishes fills the house and makes one immediately hungry. When I go home for a visit, I eat anything she makes. No complicated meal requests from me. I've always been sensitive to the time and energy of others, particularly my mother who has grown frailer over the years. The simplest dishes are what I ask for....for my enjoyment, and to give my mother the pleasure of making something for me. I look up to women like her and admire their culinary skills. And relish with great gusto whatever they've been kind enough to make for me.

As for what I make at home, I've made peace with my ok-cook status. On my India visits, I make sure my daughter gets to eat my mom's signature dishes and have a taste for the good stuff.....That way, she'll get an appreciation for authentic, South Indian, vegetarian food, was my logic.

But Kamala surprised me. The day we returned from a month-long vacation to India and I made my simple home fare, she declared with great pleasure:

"Amma, this is the rasam I've been waiting to have for SO long!"

Huh? Am I hearing right?

"Kamala, your paati makes much better rasam, child!"

She shakes her head.

"Uh-uh! Yours is the best!!"
"It is?"

And of course I'm grinning like an idiot, pleased as punch.

*-*-*-*

I dismissed that as a one-time occurrence. Maybe her taste is different, I thought. And rasam is one of the dishes I make well, so this isn't that surprising after all.

Anyways, a couple of days ago, we watched the movie Swades. Moved by the scene where the hero meets his nanny (whom he considers his second mom) after many years, I started missing home. And with that came a longing for my mother's food.

Decided to make parota, a softer version of the chapati, just the way my mother makes it. Rolled the dough into small circles, smeared it with ghee, folded it into a triangle, re-rolled it and roasted it on the pan.

Came out quite well. I served it with Cauliflower curry, one that my daughter likes. Told her that this is how paati makes chapatis and waited for her reaction.

The girl takes one bite of the parota, and looks doubtful.

"Why, Kamala, isn't paati's chapati nice?"

She nods, then says "But amma, yours is much better. That one's really yummy!"

Well, I'll be darned!! :)

So is "mom's cooking" really a synonym for comfort food, and not the wonderful tasty masterpiece its made out to be?