skinny girls & mayonnaise

When I do a cooking class, one of the most important bits of wisdom I can give students is that food should engage all five of the senses. It can be the most intricately prepared dish in the world, it can be delicious. But if it has an off-putting smell, the experience is ruined. Food should be engage your mouthfeel — which is why silky food such as risotto often benefit from a bit of crunch. The sound of diners enjoying their food should be like a symphony. And perhaps most important, food should be beautiful to look at. No one wants to eat gray mush, no matter how good it may taste.

Follow a recipe, and you’ll often get a delicious result. But the look of your dish is more of an intuitive thing. It’s more of an art. And there are simple things you can do to make a dish look beautiful. Consider colors. If your dish looks dull, add a shaving of carrot, or some purple garlic chive flowers from the garden. A drizzle of brilliant green extra virgin olive oil is often the finishing touch on one of my dishes. Or a dark swath of complex Indonesian kecap manis.

Here are some photos of my annual New Year’s Eve dinner. Another important tip for students is to have your mise en place in place before you begin. More about that in another post. I’ve included a shot of my NYE mise en place. All the “beautification” of these dishes involved relatively simple steps — a few flower petals, a drizzle of sauce, etc.

Perhaps most importantly when you cook are some of those other senses we often forget — your sense of wonder, your sense of play, and your sense of adventure. Eat to live, but more to the point, live to eat!

I was giving a cooking lesson to my friend Tracy’s “gourmet group” recently, and was telling the ladies about cooking a duck and using every part of it — the meat, the skin, the liver, the bones — and getting some winces from the girls. (I know, ducks are cute…) But I was making a point of not wasting and using as much as you can of an animal that has died for your sustenance (and/or pleasure). It’s the sacred thing to do.

My wife and I once had a grilled fish on the beach in Mazatlan — it took the guy 2 hours to cook it, he told us his story, about his life and family, gave us Pacificos, and finally presented the grilled fish in all its glory. We felt honored to be eating it, squeezed with lime, drizzled with salsa, wrapped in tortillas. This is what eating should be. I cooked a whole Japanese sea bass on the grill a few nights ago, head and all. We picked the meat from the bones, just like in Mazatlan, made tacos. Then I threw the bones and head into a pot of water with an onion, bay leaf, celery found limp in the veggie drawer… and made a stock. I froze the stock in ziploc bags to have when I want it for fish soup, paella, whatever. Most people would’ve simply thrown the bones away. But respecting the animal is the sacred thing to do. And you get a few more meals out of it, which in difficult economic times is also the smart thing to do.

I was at dinner at a friends house a few weeks ago. She bought a roast chicken somewhere, served us the meat, and was getting ready to throw the bones away. “Can I have those?” I said. The bones from a roast chicken you buy at the market or wherever will make the BEST chicken stock you’ve ever had. Throw it in water with an onion, carrot and bay leaf, some salt, simmer for an hour or so, and strain.

Mindfulness is the most important aspect of cooking. Mindful of your ingredients and their freshness. Mindfulness of the seasons. Mindfulness of your body and what you put into it. People along the Adriatic eat lots of fresh fish, they pour olive oil liberally over EVERYTHING, they eat pork and beef grazed on the farms around them, they eat fresh butter and greens foraged from the hills, or that they grew themselves. They linger hours over their meals, conversing,  and drink more wine than the average American. And they live longer than anyone else on earth.