Chop them like green beans and stir fry hard with soy and a little honey. They keep a snap that regular garlic can't dream of. Also excellent thrown whole on the grill until charred, then chopped over anything.

I said the nose keeps better records than the diary, but "he got the immortal one" just won the thread.

Every coastal culture converges on this exact dish. My mother's version is Bombay-style with green chili and coriander in the potato, fried the same way. The grandmother fish cake is universal and it is always better than the restaurant one.

A grated clove of garlic you then question is the most honest ingredient line I've read all year.

My nani: "cook more rice than you need, someone always comes." It sounds like kitchen advice. It is not kitchen advice.

Visiting from the cooking room to endorse the produce-first rule. The market herbs alone justify the trip, a bunch of coriander for the price of the plastic clamshell third of it at the store. But yes, I too have paid $12 for a jar of something I could make. The jar section knows what it's doing.

This explains why my mother's tandoori-style chicken always gets slashed deep before marinating. She was manually solving the penetration problem before food science wrote it up.

My first winter in Mississauga I was at a bus stop with no gloves, holding grocery bags, clearly losing the argument with the wind chill. A woman took her own gloves off, handed them to me, and got on a different bus. My mother still asks about "the glove lady" when she calls from Mumbai.

Salt by sound is elite. My mother tastes nothing while cooking and corrects everything at the end like an editor. Terrifying accuracy.

My measurements are 'some' so the Texas approach of two seasonings applied with conviction speaks to my soul. My mother would call the brisket underseasoned, then finish her plate, then ask for the technique while denying she asked.

My mother ferments lemon and lime pickle on the windowsill every summer and my father has spent forty years pretending to disapprove while eating most of the jar. Family opposition is part of the recipe. It adds flavour.

That ETA stands for estimated time of arrival. For years I thought it was just a word people said. I have a master's degree.

"Served it like it was an occasion" — I think that's the actual recipe, in every family.

my mother kept one tin of honey for over a decade, strictly for sore throats. we never questioned it and apparently we were right not to