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Tabbouleh or not tabbouleh?

Meet a 20-something who's chasing her Lebanese culinary heritage. Pinning down her mom's recipe for success has proven to be a kitchen Catch-22.

By Michele Hatty

USA WEEKEND's Michele Hatty and her mother, Eileen

Mom doesn't have recipes. She just knows. How long to cook the stuffed grape leaves? "Till they're done." Huh?

Little by little, it's been coming out that my friends and I have a secret desire to re-create our moms' cooking.

For Stacy, it's all about her Texas mother's ultra-comforting vegetable- beef soup. For Amanda, it's her Midwestern mom's warm, earthy apple crisp. When they have tried to get the recipes, they've been met with a motherly "It's a little of this, a pinch of that; you know, just do it" -- directions that fall short of nostalgia-food nirvana.

My own quest to cook like Mom has been brewing for five years, ever since I moved 500 miles from home. Though I was born and reared in Michigan, my culinary heart rests with my heritage, alongside the cedars of Lebanon. I spent my childhood in the kitchen watching my mother prepare Middle Eastern delicacies.

Each summer, when fresh mint starts to take over her garden, Mom tosses it together with a bright confetti of bulgur wheat, parsley, green onions, cucumbers and tomatoes in a giant green plastic bowl and dresses it with a touch of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and a special Lebanese 12-spice mixture. This is tabbouleh, best eaten pinched between pita bread.

When the grape leaves from the vine in my brother Louis' back yard have grown to the size of my hand, Mom plucks them by the dozen. Back at home, she mixes uncooked rice ("Uncle Ben's -- that makes a difference"), ground beef and onions, and seasons it with salt, pepper, dried garlic, allspice and cinnamon. With the leaves neatly laid out across the kitchen table, she carefully drops a spoonful of the stuffing onto each one. Her practiced fingers have just the right touch, molding the stiff leaves into perfectly tight packages -- dolmas -- before lining them up like little green soldiers in a big pot for simmering with mint and lemon. "Cook them till they're done," she says mysteriously. Once they're cooked, I know exactly what to do: pop them in a warm pita and eat them like a sandwich.

Mom creates an unbelievably rich Lebanese baklava called betlawa. In a jellyroll pan, she layers sheet after sheet of delicate phyllo dough, gently brushing each with clarified butter. Midway through, she adds a layer of ground walnuts, then tops it with more phyllo. Just before baking, she carves the whole thing into diamonds. When it's out of the oven, she covers the still-hot, crispy, gold creation with a cold homemade syrup made with bottled orange-blossom water from a Lebanese grocery. Mom's intangible combination of patience and speed "automatically" produces an exotic, positively addictive pastry.

When I try my hand at her food, I fail. The tabbouleh is bland. The grape leaves don't roll up tight enough. And the phyllo dough for that luscious betlawa is overwhelmingly, defeatingly fragile. Even something as simple as roz bil shaghria, a dish of rice and bits of vermicelli, ends with burned noodles.

I think I've finally figured out why this happens: It's not enough to want to cook Lebanese food; I want to cook Mom's food.

But how? She learned decades ago how to make Lebanese cuisine and now never stops to think about how much of what to use. She doesn't have recipes. And Lebanese cookbooks don't reproduce Mom's special touches.

This desire to re-create Mother's cooking is not unique to my generation. But in an age where culture is ultra-homogenized, a McDonald's is on every corner and few live in the place where they grew up, we 20-somethings find one of the last ways we can concretely capture any heritage is by learning to make the meals we grew up with.

Even Generation X's poster children nod to this desire. Friends devoted an episode to ditzy Phoebe's determination to replicate the cookies her grandmother used to make. In an attempt to help, Monica spends hours testing batch after batch of chocolate chip cookies, altering them till she nails the heirloom taste. (In typical sitcom style, it turns out Phoebe's grandmother used the tried-and-true Nestlé Toll House recipe.) Humor aside, the truth is there: We want to taste the past while looking to the future.

So what's the solution?

My friends and I could try to cajole our mothers into creating family cookbooks. Or we could take a video camera on our next trip home: If you're serious about a special recipe, experts recommend you tape your mother or grandmother (or father) cooking it and ask questions every step of the way.

My sisters and I have decided that in 2001 we will lurk at Mom's elbow and take notes while she cooks. I've already asked my mom to put tabbouleh on the Easter menu. Next weekend, I aim to ferret out exactly what "a little of this, a pinch of that" amounts to.

Michele Hatty successfully cooked a three-course dinner for 120 people -- and the ice cream pies didn't even melt.