Amina Brown

Is tuna fish cooking?

I went to my grandma and I said, Grandma, if the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, I'm not going to get there like this.

You need to teach me all the things you know.

She clapped her hands like she does when she gets really excited.

And then she looked at me real serious.

And I knew we were about to get to work.

First assignment, collard greens.

I'm there in my grandma's kitchen.

We're hip to hip.

There are no written recipes for any of this.

So I'm just there in the kitchen with her trying to catch some tips and suggestions and take the best notes I can.

We start with these big collard green leaves on the stem, soak them in salt water.

She takes me through each step of the process, how you gotta cut the leaves off the stem and roll them up just right, cut them into one inch pieces.

so they have that perfect bite.

We make my grandma's amazing collard greens.

But now, I gotta go back to my first apartment kitchen with its faux granite countertops that I was really proud of and try to make these collard greens by myself.

So I do, and I put together a little tasting dish, take it back over to my grandma.

She tastes it and she says, now baby, I think you got the texture right, but it's a little salty.

I go back over a period of weeks and I try this until finally I hand her that tasting dish.

And when it comes back to me, there are no collard greens left in it.