The vitality of thought
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- Published on Monday, 20 February 2012 11:08
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This is the first dinner club in some time. The photos tonight are of a few of the appetizers on the new winter menu. Stuffed calamari with crab, roasted beets and oranges with feta cheese, smoked duck breast with roasted pear and a dried cherry sauce. The crepe is a New Orleans inspired dish, a paprika crepe with fine herbs with shrimp and scallops in a spicy pepper sauce. It was much better on the plate than it was in my head. January was a trip to Monterey to visit family and walk around like Icabod Crane and ask people if they knew who I was.
The west coast seems to have been hit more severely from the financial crisis. Places I had worked that at one time were hard to get a table are boarded up or for sale. Everyone I spoke with seemed to be in the survival mode or just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Very depressing. This was the first time in five years Elvi and I had not gone to Europe to taste around and have a little culinary adventure.
Travel has always been my best teacher. If cooking is in fact a sensory experience what better way to learn than to go and experience the sights and smells of where most of the great cuisine originates. To walk around the produce markets in France and see the faces of the people growing and selling all the different produce and cheeses and herbs, this will engage you and make you want to cook. When I see the fresh seafood laid out on ice and whole specimens, not just the fillets, my hands start twitching as I want to make stock out of the entire market. I think it is important for cooks to experience how other cultures perceive food, as an everyday source of joy and a huge part of enjoying life itself. Not as a “product” as it is commonly referred to here.
Learning how to cook has been a lifelong experience for me. School was important. The C.I.A., City College of San Francisco, Johnson and Whales to study chocolate. I think to a cer tain degree classroom study is important for all of us. You can acquire knowledge that can be very useful in improving your skills. It does not however make one a good cook. Knowledge is in your head, and good to have. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom requires experience, having your senses fully engaged, and the optimum appreciation and respect for good ingredients. Wisdom is what happens to knowledge on the way from your head to your hands. It can also be elusive and mysterious. The pursuit of it is why I’m really happy I’m a cook.
Until next week, Caio Tutti!
Mike
