I don't cook because it's trendy. In fact, I don't do anything because it's trendy. I like what I like, and I do what I like because, well, I like it -- genuinely, from the heart. While there are the "faux foodies" (as I call them in "The Problem With Poseurs") out there, and while people often accept them as the real deal, I don't. I don't accept them because I have no tolerance for artificiality. But also, I don't accept them because they are, in effect, trivializing the art of cookery and its meaning to the cook through their feigned passion for it.
It may reasonably be taken as a given that I cook because I love food, I love to eat. As Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright wrote, "One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." So, yes, I cook to eat; I learn dishes that intrigue me, or that I love, I cook them, and subsequently, I gleefully gobble them up.
But for me, the glee rests not only in the gobbling, but in the process. As Julia Child put it, "Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet." I couldn't agree more because, not only do I consider cooking an art, but also, because I simply love cooking. I love the chopping (yes, even onions, in fact, especially onions); I love the clean crunching sound of a chef's knife slicing through a stalk of celery, and I love the scent released when mincing rosemary, or chiffonading basil. I love the way heavy cream, thick and white, coats the inside of a clear glass. I love the hiss of garlic hitting hot olive oil, and even more, its unmistakable aroma. I love the "chef's samples": not-so-surreptitiously stealing a shaving of Parmigiano Reggiano, or popping a chocolate chip (or two, or three...). I love folding said chocolate chips into the structured silkiness of a meringue batter.
The labor is one of love, and joy. While quick-and-easy recipes are great, I mostly enjoy making involved ones, and, within reason, tend to avoid shortcuts because, aside from striving for authenticity (especially with ethnic dishes), I don't want to cut things short. I love to linger in the kitchen, one of my favorite places in the home, and one of the places where I feel most at home. I love the warmth of the oven on a cold night, especially when the smell of cinnamon or warm chocolate is radiating from it. I love the miraculous effects of the range on a stove top: it boils, it simmers, it sautés, it fries, it melts, and it heats. I love seeing a dough coming together, or a sauce reducing, or a ganache gleaming. All these things are, literally, a feast for the senses. And yet, there is more at work, here.
Many people say it: "Cooking is therapeutic." And it is. I love cooking because, like the act of eating as described by Pavarotti, one must devote time and attention to it. It helps one to focus on something other than stress, work, trifling people/situations, and it clears the mind. The most important thing, when you're in the kitchen, is to keep your mirepoix from burning, or your sauce from sticking (and let's face it, there are other, more cathartic therapeutic merits to punching down risen dough). Everything else is filtered out while you escape into a world filled with sights, sounds, and smells. It is a healthy respite from the wearisome world; some people choose delusion, I choose cooking. This is why the two do not meet -- paper moons and mezzalunas don't mix. Phonies cannot truly love cooking because it isn't enough and it, too, exists within their realm of unreality, defined and colored by delusion. Cookery for cookery's sake is what brings true contentment.
When free of fakery, cooking, with all its hard work and joys, is therapeutic because it is a very real way of creating something, of making something beautiful and beneficial through the healthy expenditure of energy and concentration. And, perhaps, above all else, the most important ingredient -- trite tho' the expression may be -- is love, which, when true, can only be positive: love for food, love for cooking, a healthy love for self, and a love for others. When cooking is steeped in, and based on, love, it creates more love -- love within the cook's heart, love for one's guests, love for life, and by extension, love in the world. And this is precisely why it must come from the heart, and speak to the heart. Indeed, as the French have it, "La cuisine est un révélateur de l'amour."
- Lisette
Showing posts with label faux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faux. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Problem with Poseurs
What is it about poseurs that bugs us so much? Is it their inauthenticity/dishonesty? The idea that they seem to think we don't see through them, that they've put one over on us? Or, is it the fact that they do seem to fool so many people? Or, is it because they seem to travel in packs, all of them browning each other's Pinocchioesque noses? All of the above, most likely. At least, that would be my answer.
In the Land of Poseurs, citizens come in all forms, all of whom are annoying, tho' to differing degrees, to different people. In the interest of time, let us consider two examples, one that particularly irks me being the faux foodie. Said poseur is one who has come late to the gastronomical game, and without any skills, tho' professing many. This type of imposter has a tendency to follow trends, taking them up with such vigor that they appear to be deep-seated passions, both to observers and to the poseur himself. This is the part where genuine foodies get really, really irritated because they truly love food; it is both art and therapy to them, and may, in fact, be tantamount to a lifeline. They watch silently while the faux foodie dazzles people with empty shows of culinary knowledge and prowess, knowing that it's really all smoke and mirrors -- from snuffed candles and shattered looking glasses. They don't buy it, they certainly don't want to eat it, and they can't see why anyone else would. But they do. And they often gleefully follow suit... like lunkheaded lemmings. Those of us who refuse to follow anything -- be it a trend or an order -- that does not sit well with who we are and what we represent, get fighting mad over such displays because they seem to mock our vehement individualism. Where we choose to live honestly, authentically, as staunch individuals, poseurs do not; rather, they choose to live as copycats cloaked in the (knock-off) cat's pajamas. Naturally, this spuriousness is bound to, well, get our backs up.
The artificial Artiste, "with a capital 'A,'" to paraphrase Karnock in A Stolen Life, is another such thorn in the side. This type of wannabe makes it his business to display so-called artistic interests and capabilities, be they in music, painting, dance, fashion, or what have you. He is likely to be found sharing photos of his atrocious watercolors, his favorite being the one of a tumbleweed-tailed bunny in a field, nibbling -- with saber teeth -- on a carrot twice its size. The lack of talent is, however, evident only to a handful, and this, naturally enough, is irksome. Or, you might spot him showcasing his limping Latin dance skills; nobody can do the "syncopated" salsa like he! He basks in the accolades of the undiscerning while the rest of us hold our heads in our hands and pray for the ballroom butchery to end. We hope that withholding positive reinforcement might stop the horror, but it doesn't because it simply isn't needed; this type of poseur gets all the positive reinforcement he needs from his own deluded self, which is, sadly, a never-ending font of encouragement, and one of legendary proportions.
It would appear that there is, really, nothing we can do about it. Against the poseur’s ego, there is no weapon great enough. None, perhaps, except time (tho' this is not at all a certain remedy). So let the poseur paint. Let the clodhopper (lindy) hop. Let the faux foodie dabble in cookery; all it may take is time... and enough kitchen twine to "hang himself with."
- Lisette
In the Land of Poseurs, citizens come in all forms, all of whom are annoying, tho' to differing degrees, to different people. In the interest of time, let us consider two examples, one that particularly irks me being the faux foodie. Said poseur is one who has come late to the gastronomical game, and without any skills, tho' professing many. This type of imposter has a tendency to follow trends, taking them up with such vigor that they appear to be deep-seated passions, both to observers and to the poseur himself. This is the part where genuine foodies get really, really irritated because they truly love food; it is both art and therapy to them, and may, in fact, be tantamount to a lifeline. They watch silently while the faux foodie dazzles people with empty shows of culinary knowledge and prowess, knowing that it's really all smoke and mirrors -- from snuffed candles and shattered looking glasses. They don't buy it, they certainly don't want to eat it, and they can't see why anyone else would. But they do. And they often gleefully follow suit... like lunkheaded lemmings. Those of us who refuse to follow anything -- be it a trend or an order -- that does not sit well with who we are and what we represent, get fighting mad over such displays because they seem to mock our vehement individualism. Where we choose to live honestly, authentically, as staunch individuals, poseurs do not; rather, they choose to live as copycats cloaked in the (knock-off) cat's pajamas. Naturally, this spuriousness is bound to, well, get our backs up.
The artificial Artiste, "with a capital 'A,'" to paraphrase Karnock in A Stolen Life, is another such thorn in the side. This type of wannabe makes it his business to display so-called artistic interests and capabilities, be they in music, painting, dance, fashion, or what have you. He is likely to be found sharing photos of his atrocious watercolors, his favorite being the one of a tumbleweed-tailed bunny in a field, nibbling -- with saber teeth -- on a carrot twice its size. The lack of talent is, however, evident only to a handful, and this, naturally enough, is irksome. Or, you might spot him showcasing his limping Latin dance skills; nobody can do the "syncopated" salsa like he! He basks in the accolades of the undiscerning while the rest of us hold our heads in our hands and pray for the ballroom butchery to end. We hope that withholding positive reinforcement might stop the horror, but it doesn't because it simply isn't needed; this type of poseur gets all the positive reinforcement he needs from his own deluded self, which is, sadly, a never-ending font of encouragement, and one of legendary proportions.
It would appear that there is, really, nothing we can do about it. Against the poseur’s ego, there is no weapon great enough. None, perhaps, except time (tho' this is not at all a certain remedy). So let the poseur paint. Let the clodhopper (lindy) hop. Let the faux foodie dabble in cookery; all it may take is time... and enough kitchen twine to "hang himself with."
- Lisette
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