Family Cheesecake

There is something to be said about family. Despite the name calling, the arguments, the constant ups and downs, there are those moments when the family sits down together around the dinner table and it all comes together. The jokes, the memories, the brief silences when a glance across the table at your father, your sister, your uncle, or your best friend says it all. As each course comes and goes, as each plate is passed around for all members of the clan to taste, doors are opened, doors filled with raw emotion. This is where the magic happens.

I have been blessed with numerous families around the world, families made-up of perhaps the most generous, kind, intelligent, interesting people this planet has to offer. Families so bonded that their love is intoxicating. My families are my life, my soul, my very being. Without them I would be nothing. They have given me support when I thought I could not go on, strength when I was weak and most importantly love when I had none to spare. And what have I given in return? Well hopefully, at the very least, food on their plates.

Just over a year ago my friends poured into my apartment in Barcelona, bottles of wine in hand and each with a delightful dish to celebrate Thanksgiving. I was frantically attempting to roast turkey legs (a full turkey was almost impossible to find) and bake a pumpkin pie from scratch. As they stepped into the kitchen with helping hands, my anxiety vanished. Sitting around the table devouring food made by people from around the world, most of whom had never celebrated the holiday before, talking politics and telling stories, I realized this was what I was grateful for. This was my family who stood by me through it all, who held my hand as I learnt how to grow in a new country, who always leant a shoulder to cry on and a room to sleep in. Months later I was to be welcomed by another family, a different one.

I hoped on a plane and headed back home to the east coast for Christmas. Locked away from the icy cold, safe between the walls of my mother's cozy apartment I was set on preparing lasagna for my mom, sister and a few of my very best friends...this was my childhood family, the ones who watched me grow up, screw up and then helped me get myself together. Appropriately, the oven was still covered in oven cleaner, leaking a toxic smell into the air, and the lasagna dish was not meant for the oven, exploding half way through the process, causing my mother and friend Monique to help me scoop the remaindered of gooey cheese and tomato sauce into another dish. A possible disaster, we all sat around the table and each person ate and enjoyed (or at least pretended to for my benefit). As we cracked jokes and laughed until we cried, it seemed as though that meal was a reflection of our very relationship. Unable to believe my family could grow, my move to San Francisco would prove me otherwise.

As I settled down in my new apartment, I was enjoying a day off by cooking a celebratory first meal. As I stirred bolognese sauce, my friend Rachel was showing our friend Andreas spots on the living room walls that needed to be touched up with paint. As the spaghetti simmered in the pot, I called for them to come to the table. They were my grown-up family, my family who was watching me transition into an adult, my family who came out with me to late night dinners after a long day at work, who gave me advice, who encouraged me to be more. As I served the pasta into individual bowls, I heard glass crashing. Shaking my head, unable to imagine what it could have possibly been, Andreas was hanging out of the window as his arm slipped while painting and went bursting through the glass. Unharmed, he came to the table, as we sat down to eat, giggling, we figured it was a sign of good luck. A new life, a new mentality. But there was always the old life.

The past two days I have spent baking cheesecake. A very special family recipe passed down through the generations. Perhaps the only bond between my mother's and father's family. My mother used to bake this cheesecake when we lived in Pakistan and it was an overnight sensation. Everyone went crazy for it, in specific my father and my uncle. My uncle begged me to make it this year, and after one down I have two more to go. Thinking about the next one on the list, a large group of my family sat around the dinner table together, after years of being separated. This was the family who knew me from day one, who talked to me while I was tucked inside my mothers stomach, who remembers all the outrageous things I used to say, who watched me grow from so small to so tall, this was my blood family. And the only thing that ties this blood family to my other is a decadent, rich, highly-addictive cheesecake.

A cheesecake for the ages, one that I have made for each of my families because this cake brings people together, it bonds them and it allows me show how much I care.

I swore to my mother I would never share the recipe, but if you do have a cheesecake recipe, bake it, share it, and spread the family love.