The Virtue of a Cookie

img_1696When I was a child, I was – often to my parents’ exasperation – obsessed with learning about how to do “grown-up” things. I would climb into my mother’s lap while she booted up AOL, giggling at the funny sound of dial up and watching her fingers fly across the keyboard as she composed emails for work. I would follow my dad around and watch intently as he washed his truck, always trying to help out even though all I could reach were the tires. I even insisted on helping feed the dogs, even though the bowls were about half the size of me at the time. That being said, it’s no surprise that I was also very curious about how things worked in the kitchen.

My mother has always been a very traditional southern cook, and I was certainly no picky eater. By the time I was four or five, I began to wonder where all of these wonderful things like chicken and dumplings, sweet potato casserole, country fried steak and gravy, and peach cobbler came from. I carefully watched my mother dredge thin green tomato slices in meal and flour or chop potatoes into hearty quarters for a roast, usually begging to help and pouting every time she said I wasn’t old enough. One Saturday morning when I was about six or seven, I suppose my mother had either gotten fed up with my nagging or finally decided I was old enough to help, so she pulled up my little stepping stool to the foot of the stove, smiling at me and fishing a skillet out of the cabinet. “How do you feel about scrambling the eggs for us this morning?” she’d asked, fishing enough eggs for our family of four out of the carton. I nodded vigorously, rolling up my pajama sleeves. I was ready to get to work. “Everyone needs to know how to cook an egg,” my mother told me as she demonstrated how to crack one on the side of the skillet. “It’s one of those staple foods.” I looked on in fascination, a spatula clutched tightly in my small hand. Continue reading

Food Traditions: Our Community Glue

fullsizerender-6  In Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw, he dedicates an entire chapter to telling his readers why Alan Richman is a douchebag. Those familiar with Bourdain’s bold personality won’t be surprised at this; however, while Bourdain concedes that Richman is a talented food critic, he attacks him with such vitriol in this chapter that the reader may begin to wonder if there’s even more to the story than what’s being told. Bourdain is absolutely scathing in his assessment, calling out Richman for his absurd dining expectations, his pretentious “rules,” his petty attitude, and his lack of ethics. All of that aside, one of Bourdain’s biggest issues with Richman seems to stem from the fact that Richman decided to kick the city of New Orleans while it was down.

It is clear, not only from this text but from many of his other writings and television features, that Bourdain has a soft spot for the city of New Orleans and its cuisine. In “Alan Richman Is a Douchebag,” Bourdain berates Richman for several pages over his behavior toward the New Orleans citizens and their culinary scene post-Katrina. You can feel Bourdain’s fury leap off the page as he describes how Richman publicly determined that New Orleans “deserved what it got” and stated that perhaps their cuisine “sucked all along.” Bourdain quickly jumps to the defense of the city, describing the suffering and resilience of its people after the storm with a surprising amount of compassion. It is in this passage that Bourdain stumbles upon a greater truth about the link between food and community.

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Comfort Classics: Cheesecake

 

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“There is no lying in the kitchen. And no god there, either. He couldn’t help you anyway….No credential, no amount of bullshit, no well-formed sentences or pleas for mercy will change the basic facts.” –Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw

In describing chef David Chang, Anthony Bourdain gets right down to the facts of cooking: you’ve either got it, or you don’t, and there’s no faking that. Bourdain seems to think that Chang, chef and owner of several New York City fusion restaurants, very much so has this cooking “it” factor. Chang’s restaurants, including Momofuku Noodle Bar, are unapologetically simple, yet Michelin starred. You might even have to wait years to eat there. The success of chefs like David Chang with their boldly simple craft begs the question: is simple, unapologetic cuisine really best? Continue reading

An Ethical Struggle: When Does an Animal become a Meat?

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“True noble animal, I hope you felt no pain.”

– Anthony Bourdain

In the “Cajun Country” episode of Anthony Bourdain’s television program No Reservations, he seeks to discover the roots of the Cajun people of Lousiana. Bourdain travels to New Orleans to see the birth of jazz and the resurrection of classic cuisine. On this expedition Bourdain paints a vivid, sometimes disturbing, picture of what life in Louisiana looks like without its sequins. Continue reading