A map of her mouth: offerings to my daughter

An essay and recipe for Oyster Mushroom Risotto with Kelp and Kräuterseitlinge. Words and photographs by Jessica J. Lee.

Good morning and welcome to Cooking From Life: a Vittles mini-season on cooking and eating at home everyday.

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Cooking from Life is a Vittles mini-season of essays that defy idealised versions of cooking – a window into how food and kitchen-life works for different people in different parts of the world. Cooking as refusals, heritage, messiness, routine. 

Our seventh writer for Cooking from Life is Jessica J. Lee.

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A map of her mouth : offerings to my daughter

An essay and recipe for Oyster Mushroom Risotto with Kelp and Kräuterseitlinge. Words and photographs by Jessica J. Lee.

6 months + : Thick spears, wedges.

Avocado, sweet potato, cucumber.

The first food my daughter tastes is avocado. She is six months old, and we are in the middle of moving from Cambridge back to Germany. The summer has been brutally hot, and we are rushing, packing things in boxes and preparing for the move. I set up my daughter’s high-chair amidst the boxes and lay a slice of avocado in front of her. It’s big enough for her to hold in her doughy hand, soft enough to press into her tiny mouth.

I sit watching, willing myself to stay quiet and let her try. I imagine after months at my breast it will feel different, but the avocado is milk-sweet – a gentle beginning.

I am attached to the idea of her eating avocado before anything else because it was also my nephew’s first food. Even though everything I read tells me I need to let her lead the process of weaning, I’ve entered it with expectations. I am here to make offerings, which my daughter may or may not accept. She squeezes the avocado and green erupts from her tiny fist. After two minutes, when she’s mushed no more than a thimbleful into her mouth, she is done.

When I tell my mother we are planning to use a method called baby-led weaning, she responds by saying that she didn’t introduce me to solid food until I was one. I tell her that this cannot be true: twelve months is far too late to start solids. She must have forgotten; it’s been thirty-six years. With the full authority of a TikTok I watched, I explain that back in the 1980s it was common to introduce babies to purées at four months. She retorts that she does not understand why any of this matters.

I have the same conversation with my mother-in-law a few days later, and then my stepmother. They tell me that the baby will choke if I give her whole avocado – I should serve her baby cereal or purée instead. ‘There are studies’, I reply, trying to hide my frustration. I tell them that my daughter will learn the map of her mouth. She won’t be picky later on. I do not tell them there are also studies that show it doesn’t really matter whether we use purées or not. That I have made my decision based on a feeling, a belief. That she will be better off eating like us. Eating together will cement our bond.

The next day I offer her sweet potato. I’ve spent weeks planning this order of foods, consulting the Solid Starts app, using its diagrams which show ‘How to Serve’ foods based on the baby’s age. We will introduce allergens, one at a time, and alternate days with new fruits and vegetables. I hold out a thick wedge of steamed sweet potato. She takes it from me and smears it on the tray.

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9 months+: Diced cubes, thin slices.

Butterkäse, Schupfnudeln, tofu.

Before I was a writer, I was a student. I lived in a shared house with friends whose preferences I learned to cook around: replacing onions with garlic; disguising aubergines by layering them into lasagne. I began to write a blog of the foods I was cooking, a bank of recipes I loved. Chilli-flecked noodle salads. Crisp fried tofu with astringent vinegar.

By the time I was in my thirties – married, quiet, comfortable – I was more experienced, ready to take risks. I made hand-pulled noodles on a Wednesday night, fried peanut gluten and liangpi on a Sunday. My husband, a Venezuelan-American I met while living in Germany, fell into step with my cooking routines. Our wedding guest book was Cynthia Chen McTernan’s A Common Table – a cookbook drawing on so many cultural influences that it felt like a mirror of our home. Our guests left us notes on its pages. In our life together, my husband and I defined our bond through foods we both loved: salt, spice, sour.

These days, cooking for my daughter, I learn new adaptations. I pull out portions of soft, diced vegetables before breaking a Golden Curry block into water. I fry Schupfnudeln with shallots and spinach, plating hers before I add gochujang for myself. I extract noodles from a pot of Shin Ramyun before adding the seasoning; I serve my daughter’s with Taiwanese sesame sauce and slices of silken tofu, her fast favourite. When I offer her food it always feels high-stakes, because I love food, and my husband loves food, and what if somehow she doesn’t?

In these months, I begin photographing my daughter’s plates, largely so I can keep track of what I’ve cooked and fed her. I post some to Instagram and feel immediate shame. She isn’t eating everything I serve her, and I don’t want it to seem as though she is. But a part of me is buzzing.

Look at how I’ve figured this out, I want to say. Look at her. She is one of us.

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12 months+: Chopped, sliced, cooked, raw.

Mushrooms, seaweed, egg.

On my daughter’s first birthday, we cross a porous boundary: she is allowed to have salt, sugar and honey. But everything I read recommends avoiding serving these ingredients in excess. I google: What is excess salt for a toddler? Can a toddler eat soy sauce? The answers are various – Yes, No, Perhaps, In moderation. I begin to serve her the same meals as us, diluting the sauces with water.

At thirteen months she shows a preference for mushrooms. It is like nothing I have seen before. She loves them. She picks them out of omelettes with a now-mastered pincer grasp. When we go for dinner one night, she leans across the table and steals every mushroom off my pizza, pressing the next into her mouth before she has swallowed the last. She pilfers them from the cutting board as I cook. I check the app to see if there is such a thing as too many mushrooms. It tells me: No.

The mushroom phase (cloud?) passes over us for two months. And then, one day, she is done. The week I make my husband’s favourite oyster mushroom risotto, she stops swallowing them. She still brings them to her lips, tastes them – even chews them. But she returns them to me, disgorging them from her mouth like a mother bird feeding a baby, my offerings refused.

I try not to take it personally. Not to think of the app, and of how many times I consulted it to check how to cut each different type of mushroom. I try not to think of the first time I made this risotto, when my husband asked me to write down the recipe, and how we both love it and have made it almost monthly since then.

I try, instead, to use stock phrases I’ve learned from toddler dieticians online, narrating her actions back to her: ‘You squished the risotto with your fingers’, I say, spooning her leftovers onto my plate. ‘You tried the mushroom and spat it out.’

My daughter is sixteen months old now, and we are in a new phase of selectiveness. I do not want to call it pickiness, for all that the word implies. Quoting an Instagram post, I tell my husband she is exploring new modes of decision and refusal, small moments where she can wield control in a world designed for adults. I do not say that it stings when she refuses the meals I cook. That despite my best efforts to let her lead this process, I find it hard to let go of the outcome. I do not tell my mother, or my mother-in-law, or my stepmother.

I go on, checking the app for advice on what to do next.

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Oyster Mushroom Risotto with Kelp and Kräuterseitlinge

Enough for 2–3 people

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 shallot, diced

125g chestnut mushrooms, chopped

125g oyster mushrooms, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced or finely grated

250g arborio rice

60ml Shaoxing rice wine or mirin

1 sachet vegan dashi powder (I like Yamaki brand)

1 tablespoon dried wakami kelp

1 litre boiling water, approx.

2 large Kräuterseitlinge (King oyster mushrooms), sliced lengthways

Salt and white pepper, to taste

To serve:

Shichimi togarashi, to taste
Grana Padano, to taste (optional)

1. Heat a deep saucepan over medium and melt 1 tablespoon of the butter into the olive oil, reserving a spoonful of butter for later. Gently sauté the diced shallot and chopped mushrooms, for 6–8 minutes, until shimmering and soft. Add the garlic and cook for 1–2 minutes, or until fragrant.

2. Add the rice and stir through until every grain is glistening with oil. Toast the rice for a minute or so, then deglaze the pan with the Shaoxing rice wine or mirin, stirring constantly.

3. Sprinkle in the dashi powder and dried kelp, then add 250ml of the boiled water. Stir and turn the heat to medium-low.

4. Continue stirring while the rice cooks, adding more boiled water bit by bit as the liquid is absorbed. You may need more or less water depending on your rice; check for tenderness after about 20 minutes. (Mine took around 25 minutes in total.) Season with plenty of salt and white pepper.

5. Meanwhile, in a frying pan, melt remaining butter and fry the Kräuterseitlinge over a medium heat, pressing down on each mushroom so that it becomes golden brown on each side. Once the mushrooms are well browned, turn off the heat and season with salt and white pepper.

6. Serve out risotto and top with the fried Kräuterseitlinge. Add a sprinkle of shichimi togarashi and, if you want, grated Grana Padano cheese.

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Credits

 Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author and environmental historian. She has written three books of nature writing, Turning, Two Trees Make a Forest, and Dispersals (forthcoming) and is co-editor of the essay collection Dog Hearted. Her first children’s book, A Garden Called Home, is also forthcoming. She lives in Berlin with her husband, daughter, and a dog called Brisket.

Vittles is edited by Rebecca May Johnson, Sharanya Deepak and Jonathan Nunn, and proofed and subedited by Sophie Whitehead. The recipes in Cooking from Life have been tested by Ruby Tandoh.