A journey through the kitchen

When your kids choose a biscuit over you, you need to up your game

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

This morning, because I was seized by a fleeting desire to be a good mother, I foolishly asked my dear children if they would be open to having moussaka and apple crumble for dinner. Unfortunately, they all said yes. Not a single child said, "Actually, I think I'd prefer a boiled egg and toast."

For those of you who have never found yourself on a moussaka-making expedition, this is a dish that involves slicing up baigan into little discs and individually frying them all to produce a beautiful, crispy, unhealthy layer of aubergine sandwiching a layer of qeema. It is laborious and time-consuming, but well worth it. At least, that is what people say when someone else has to stand in front of the frying pan overturning little brown circles of vegetables and then scrubbing oil splatters off the stove. As if all this is not boring enough, moussaka also involves a similarly tedious process with potatoes, so you get to have twice the fun.

The tedium of cooking

This fleeting desire to be a Grade-A mother stemmed from what turned out to be a sadly mistaken assumption of the existence of a couple of old pieces of baigan slowly dying in the fridge, along with two bags of green apples. Moments after making that rash moussaka promise, I remembered that I had actually disguised the baigan in a vegetable pulao last week (not that anyone could tell, thank goodness). No one in the house has ever expressed any admiration whatsoever for the poor maligned baigan, but if you want to be a good mother, you have to cavort with vegetables. Sometimes, that means bringing home a couple of large pieces of purple baigan that no one wants.

Anyway, it transpired that not only did I not have baigan, I also didn't have green apples. The green apples had been procured out of a genuine desire for apple crumble, but this morning I learned they had been disappearing into a child's lunch bag all week, because apparently they are "so much nicer" than red apples. So now, if I want to maintain my good mother façade, not only do I need to cook something more complicated than toast and a boiled egg this evening, I also need to factor in a grocery detour before the school run.

Why do I dangle promises involving kitchen work before my children? Why do I just not order a takeaway for the days I don't feel like cooking? I'm not sure. All I know is that nursing dreamy cooking visions is a charge nearly all mothers are guilty of. Pakistani mothers, anyway. Winning over people with food is just the Pakistani way. There can be no higher badge of honour than to host a dinner and have not an inch of space left on your dining table. If there was a Nobel Prize for cooking, it would find its way unerringly to a Pakistani woman.

That woman would never be me. My rash dinner promise notwithstanding, my pre-children self would never have dreamed of seeking glory in the kitchen – mainly because before I got married, my culinary skills did not stretch much further than making toast. I accepted kitchen work as a chore to be endured, although rather lacking the grace displayed by Sharjeena in Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum. It is assumed by all that new bride Sharjeena – detested by her mother-in-law will saunter into a kitchen and produce something edible. On her first day in the trenches, she is informed she must whip up pulao, shami kabab, and qorma, among other things. Our heroine acquiesces with nary a quiver of a lip or a batting of an eye. Despite the fact that making shami kabab is not quite the five-minute task her mother-in-law seems to imply, Sharjeena straps on her game face and, thanks to the suspension of disbelief, accomplishes her mission.

A reluctant acceptance

I was never a Sharjeena. I have also never had a dragon mother-in-law. However, I feel compelled to dazzle my children with culinary expertise because they already think so little of me. Last week, for example, my youngest told me to not bother coming and listening to her read at school. "If you don't come, we get to serve biscuits to the other parents," she explained. "And if there are biscuits left over, we get to eat one. Or two, if we're lucky."

For reference, this was the child who was glued to the hip during toddlerhood. Now that she is 10, I lose in a competition where the other side is a biscuit. Not only this, it has also been heavily hinted to me that my parenting could use some improvement. Last week, the same child persuaded her father to take her shopping for random rubbish. "Mama must be so jealous of your parenting skills," she observed to her father.

Well, this cannot be allowed to continue. If I have to improve my ratings by standing in front of a frying pan turning over slices of baigan, then so be it! Because you see, whilst I – and so many of my mothering peers – would like nothing more than to outsource meals to a food delivery driver or the ready-meals section of the local supermarket, it all comes at a frightening cost – and I do not mean money or nutrition.

Simply put, when they grow up, I do not want my children to cherish fond memories of frozen pizza or the ding of the doorbell when the food driver turns up. How appalling would that be? Takeaways may eliminate the need to do the dishes (beastly as they are), but also they serve to take something away from a mother with a large ego who wants to do it all. As someone who is less appealing than a dry biscuit, the least I can do is win back the offspring by stamping a part of myself in the non-biscuit food they consume. When they are older, my children should not say, "Remember the day Mama didn't come to school to hear me read and I got to have two whole biscuits?" Instead, they should say, "Mama is so clever, she gave us moussaka and apple crumble for dinner."

Food forms the fabric of our lives. Long after it leaves our bellies, a complicated dish like moussaka lives in our hearts and minds in a way that boiled egg and toast never can. A takeaway guy should never be allowed to supplant my moussaka glory with a chicken tikka pizza. And now if you will excuse me, I have a grocery run to do.