There is a certain flow, one of lyrical respect, required when adult daughters cook with their mothers in the same space.
Writer and media strategist Candace Pilk Karu and interior designer and real estate developer Tyler Karu have mastered this delicately difficult dance with a reverence to each other’s culinary styles and to their shared history. They are preparing food for one of their favorite ways to collectively entertain: brunch.
“Brunch is an anything-goes-menuing opportunity,”
says Tyler, so it is easy to fashion a feast that can be completely prepared before the guests arrive.
“And your guests are always bubbly and bright around midday when brunch is taken,” Candace says. They become even bubblier when presented with this pair’s standard DIY Bloody Mary bar that is stocked with staple tomato juice, horseradish, and vodka, but jazzed up with a prepped plate of interesting additions—like Slim-Jim sticks, trimmed scallions, sliced cucumber, sour pickles, and steamed shrimp to be mixed, matched, and munched on at will.
This mother-daughter brunch preparation ballet is most definitely eased by the flow of Tyler’s sleek and functional kitchen. There is counter space enough on either side of the deep sink for separate working areas. A duel-fuel, stainless steel range with plenty of gas BTUs on top and a steady electric oven underneath enables two cooking agendas to forge ahead simultaneously. And the ample corridor between the refrigerator, island, and range means no one is getting in anyone else’s way.
It helps, too, that both women possess a jovial tolerance for the younger Karu’s husband, Bobby Cooper, as he lobs comic remarks from the peanut gallery about the food as well as the conversation coming out of the stylishly spare kitchen in the couple’s 1950s cape located in Falmouth Flats.
Well, technically it’s not a gallery, but a living room area where Bobby hangs out with his and Tyler’s three dogs, he stretched out on the squarely comfortable couch and they on kingly cushions on the floor. The two Great Danes, called Clyde and Winnie, are tall enough to nose around the muted white quartz countertops flowing over gray (Nocturnal Gray, a Benjamin Moore color, to be more specific) Cabico cabinetry, but also obedient enough that a single strip of packing tape strung loosely across the passage to the kitchen is deterrent enough to stop them in their tracks. As her canine instinct demands, a third dog, a much more demure Brussels Griffon called Haddock, wanders about the open-floor-planned home, which is tastefully awash in soothing neutral tones accented with the ocean blue hues Tyler favors.
Candace works on a plate of coiffed deviled eggs that offer variety in their taste, certainly, but all branch from the same basic recipe: perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs, the yolks mixed with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard and seasoned with salt and a pinch of cayenne. She asks her daughter first for a cutting board, then a serving platter, next a Ziploc bag and, finally, a tiny fork. Tyler produces them all instantly as she goes about her task of making lobster panzanella salad, pulling each from a different drawer or cupboard among the vast amount of very well-camouflaged storage space spread throughout the room.
“Hmm, describe my cooking style…” Candance contemplates the question. “Well, I’m a passionate home cook who relies on simple, fresh ingredients that, when I work with them, allow me to explore different ethnic cuisines.”
She places dots of the yolk filling, squeezed from a trimmed corner of the Ziploc bag, onto the serving platter to gently anchor the halved, cooked egg whites in place before filling them with deft swirls of her wrist. She distinguishes each serving with a drop of Vietnamese sriracha, local microgreen leaves, or a sophisticated dab of caviar, the task that required the tiny fork Tyler dutifully retrieved for her.
Candace asks if she can treat the dogs to the whites that have split in the egg deviling process, a condition that makes them useless for this application. Haddock is keen; the bigger dogs are not.
Clyde and Winnie ignore the egg whites that land with a thunk on the yellow oak floors as they head past their taped barrier, with permission, of course, for a long drink of water. Their dog bowls are elevated to the proper Great Dane height because they are neatly housed in custom cutouts in the window seat storage unit set between two, floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinets. The cupboards frame the picture window with a view of Casco Bay.
As the women fill the top of the eight-foot-long island—designed by Tyler and fashioned by Portland furniture maker Kyle Kidwell—with food, they fill the room with talk of the Chinese hot pot their son and brother, Tim, owner of the Mercury Inn on State Street in Portland, served them last Christmas, remarking at the lengths he went to make the meal as authentic as possible.
“Both of my children have outstripped me in terms of their cooking skills,” says Candace, just seconds before Tyler asks her to taste-test the vinaigrette to see if it needs any more seasoning.
“This [dressing], like many of my go-to dishes, has its roots in a classic Candace recipe. I know those recipes by heart and I just add my own little spin to them,” says Tyler. She swaps out the white wine vinegar in her mother’s French-style salad dressing with lemon juice, which happens to go very well with the lobster and the toasted French bread croutons in the salad in this mother/daughter brunch.
Just as she’s accented her home with the blue of the sea, she likes to fill her plate with the food of the sea. But Bobby is not a fan, so the locally sourced salads she makes to suit their active, healthy lifestyle must be adaptable for both fish and his preferred protein, chicken.
“Her chicken salad is the best!”
roars the peanut gallery.
“But you crush cooking it on the grill, honey!” Tyler volleys back from her spot at the stove.
One staple of the Karu brunch menu that doesn’t necessary earn a spot in traditional sustainable eating rotation, however, is Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. Candace uses them in every monkey bread she makes for brunch because they have helped sustained Tyler—who is allergic to both eggs and dairy—through many moments of her life because they contain neither of those ingredients.
“I used to bake crescent rolls in cupcake tins, sprinkle them with sugar, and send them to birthday parties so she had something sweet to eat besides the cake that would make her sick,” says Candace.
Taylor smiles.
From the outside, you wonder if she’s smiling at the sentiment, the taste memory, or the present-day privilege of cooking with her mother in a space she finds almost as comfortable as the act itself.
