Recipe for Love
"She teaches traditional Somali cooking classes in Tottenham. He signs up to learn his mother's recipes—says he wants to cook for his kids someday. Week after week, the spices get hotter and so does everything else."
Every Saturday, I teach cooking.
Eight students. Four hours. One chance to pass down recipes my grandmother gave me before she passed.
Most students come once. Learn a dish. Never return.
Idris has come every week for two months.
"You don't need more lessons," I tell him.
"I'm not done learning."
"You can make suugo with your eyes closed."
"I still burn the rice sometimes." He smiles. "Besides, the teacher is worth the tuition."
He's thirty-four. Divorced. No kids yet but wants them.
"I want to cook for my children the way my mother cooked for me," he said during our first class. "She's getting older. I want to preserve what she knows."
It was the most beautiful answer I'd ever gotten.
It's also the reason I can't stop thinking about him.
Week eight.
We're making lahoh, and his batter is finally perfect.
"You did it." I lean over his shoulder. "See how it bubbles? That's exactly right."
"I had a good teacher."
"You had patience." I'm too close. I should step back. "That's rarer."
"What about you?" He turns, bringing our faces inches apart. "Are you patient?"
"For what?"
"For me to get up the courage to ask you to dinner."
"I can't date students."
"Then let me graduate." He sets down his spatula. "Give me a final exam. Let me cook you something. If you like it, I pass. If you pass me, I'm not your student anymore."
"And then?"
"Then I ask you to dinner properly." He holds my gaze. "What do you say, teacher?"
The "final exam" happens at his flat.
He cooks everything I taught him—suugo, rice, lahoh, tea with cardamom. I sit at his table like I'm at a restaurant, not a student's kitchen.
"This is incredible," I admit.
"I learned from the best."
"You learned from your mother."
"I learned from both of you." He sits across from me. "Two women who taught me that cooking is love made visible."
"That's very poetic."
"That's very true." He takes my hand. "So? Do I pass?"
"You pass."
"Then I'm not your student anymore."
"No."
"Then—" He stands. Comes around the table. "—I can do this."
He kisses me.
His kitchen becomes something else.
We move from the table to the counter to the wall, dishes forgotten, the meal getting cold.
"Idris—"
"I've wanted this since week one."
"You hid it well."
"I wanted to learn first." He lifts me onto the counter. "Learn everything you could teach."
"There's more."
"Show me."
I show him.
In his kitchen, surrounded by the meal he made me, we create something new.
"You're beautiful—"
"You're burning the lahoh."
"Let it burn." He pushes up my dress. "I have better things to eat."
He puts his mouth where his hands were.
On the counter where he makes his mother's recipes. Where he'll make recipes for his children someday.
"Idris—yes—"
"You taste better than anything I've learned to cook."
He's thorough.
Methodical.
A very good student.
Later, we eat cold suugo and laugh at ourselves.
"The food was supposed to be the main event," he says.
"The food was the test. This is the celebration."
"What are we celebrating?"
"You graduating." I curl against him. "And whatever comes next."
"What comes next is me asking you on a proper date."
"I thought this was a date."
"This was an exam." He kisses my forehead. "The dates come now. As many as you want."
We date for a year.
Cook together every weekend. He introduces me to his mother—who approves immediately because "she knows food."
"Will you teach my grandchildren?" his mother asks one dinner.
"If you have grandchildren," I say.
"When." She looks at her son pointedly. "When you have grandchildren."
Idris finds my hand under the table.
Squeezes.
He proposes in my cooking school.
After hours, with ingredients set out for a meal.
"I want to make something with you," he says.
"What?"
"A life." He kneels. "A family. Children who know their grandmother's recipes because their mother taught them."
"I'm not their mother."
"You could be." He opens the ring box. "If you say yes."
I say yes.
And we start cooking a new recipe.
One generation at a time.
One dish at a time.
One love at a time.