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Perfection of the Life

Let me start this rumination on food and its enjoyment with a quote from William Butler Yeats.

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,

Now, Yeats was not thinking about food when he wrote this. Far from it. He was more concerned with the price one has to pay – what one must give up in exchange for the toil and concentration required to become a great poet.

I have lowlier concerns, and being a cook, when I think about Yeat’s Choice, I do think about food. And making good food seems to dance in the middle here between creating a good life and creating excellent work.

I know, for example, when I prepare a carrot juice and star anise reduction, that I am making the essence of delight. No one, and I’ve presented it to or forced it on many, can taste that without a keen sense that their life is now better than it used to be. Any chef can point to similar dishes. Chocolate-y things. Rubbing your finger around the bowl that used to contain a mousse, or licking the wire whip dripping with hollandaise. Each dish is the product, believe me, of much toil, focused attention to detail, worried tweaking of the seasoning, anxious concern for viscosity, for the right smell. For all that goes into setting high expectations for a dish and fulfilling them.

In fact, I don’t think you can achieve excellence in food – or something close to it – without at the same time giving proper attention to perfection of your life, certainly your enjoyment of your life. Yeats was absolute in his devotion to his work, but if he had been a great cook, instead of a great poet, I have a hard time thinking that the life and the work would have been so at odds.

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Eat Nothing White

As a general rule in restaurants, I don’t want a chef cooking my food who looks like a marathon runner. Like Shakespeare’s Caesar, “Let me have [chefs] about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.” I want people who love to eat, who have a hard time saying no to something good, and whose bodies bare the imprint of a rich, varied and luscious diet.

With that said, I must confess that I’ve spent a lifetime on diets of one form or another. This is because everyone in my family succumbs, eventually, to circulatory and heart problems. So, at one time or another I have given up or restricted virtually every type of food – meats, cheeses, eggs, chocolate, sweets, dairy products, salt, sugar, bread, pasta. I have fasted for, I think, up to three days (trivial to serious fasters, but tough for me). And, please understand, none of this has been easy. I am not someone for whom food is fuel. Food is keen pleasure. 

At this time of my life, I eat nothing white (a concession to an overworked pancreas). That is as restrictive as it sounds if you think about it, and  particularly if you add sweets to the list – these, even if not white, act like it, according to my medical advisors. If you add to that a personal and intense aversion to fast food of any kind, to processed food, to factory food, you can see some real limitations here.

For the most part, though, I live with it just fine. The reason is that I know how to cook and if you know how to cook, you have a world of interesting things to choose from, even if none of them can be white or sweet. There are meats, crustaceans and fish, poultry, eggs, butter, vegetables, beans, nuts, herbs, olive oil, cheeses, fruit and all the lovely things one can do to prepare them. And, there’s foix gras (not a nice food but absolutely wonderful) and sausage and barbeque, also not nice but definitely on my list.

The diet works for me, but I would be hesitant to recommend it, nor do I think, like reformed smokers, that everyone absolutely must eat like I do. I love what I don’t eat and I cook it very well. So sweet desserts and all good things made with sugar, flour, eggs and butter – pies, mousse, fudge, egg custard, creme brulee. Roasted potatoes, French fries, potato chips. Crepes and waffles with maple syrup.  Lasagna and all forms of pasta dishes. Pizza. Foccacia bread. Sandwiches. Burgers. Bread pudding with bourbon sauce. And on, and on.

As a dieter, I can also cook for other dieters. It comes easy. And another consolation is that when I get the chance to cook verboten things, I do have to taste them. Sometimes more than once. After all, your food has to be perfect.

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The Tomato in Winter

Few delights of summer are more satisfying than a fresh tomato, plucked from your own backyard vine, warm from the sun, sliced and eaten raw or with a touch of fresh mayonnaise. The aroma – even before you slice it – the rich red juice, the firm red flesh – ah. Few are the delights indeed that are better than a fresh tomato.

But in winter, if you try the same slicing and eating mostly raw with the tomato-like objects you find for sale in the grocery, it is not the same. In place of juice, there is watery pinkish fluid that’s vaguely tomato-ish. The texture is mealy or tough. In salads, as garnish, on a sandwich, these tomatoes are mostly worthless.

Or so I thought for years until I started roasting and searing and grilling these otherwise useless tomatoes. I was, you may say, very pleasantly surprised.

Quickly, here are a few things you can do that yield lovely results:

Slice a whole winter tomato in half and sprinkle the cut side with chopped garlic, dried thyme, kosher salt and fresh pepper. Top with fresh bread crumbs – just pop some bread in a food processor – and drizzle with olive oil. Roast hot until they wilt and crust over.

Or slice a winter tomato and sear it in a hot smoking skillet with a little canola oil. Let it cook till it blackens and flip it. Use it on top of eggplant or your morning eggs.

Or take some (also tasteless) winter cherry tomatoes. Cook them whole in a hot skillet with olive oil and toss until they burn a bit on the sides. Season and add to other cooked vegetables, or use them to garnish a pork chop or grilled chicken breast.

I’ll also cut winter plum tomatoes in half, squeeze out the juice and toss with a lemon-olive oil herb vinaigrette and roast them at 500 degrees or so.

In all these cases, what you’re doing is cooking off the watery fluid and concentrating what flavors are still there. Because despite what the tomato engineers have perverted in the cause of durability, shipability and shelf live, they are still, deep down in their round little souls, tomatoes. You just have to cook off the dross and flavor them a bit.