The Green Watch, part 9.
I'm currently reading Kitchen Confidential by Tony Bourdain, both as part of 50bookchallenge(which I am hopelessly destined to lose this year) and as a result of a serendipitous event involving Boom-Boom's roommate, who is a chef, and her deconstructed bookshelf of Sunset cookbooks, James Beard biographies, and back issues of Bon Appetit and Everyday Food:
me: Can I read this?
Pree: Totally.
Now, as much of a fan as I am of 24/7 food porn, Food Network is a shell of its former self since forgoing working cooks like Bourdain and Jamie Oliver for numbnuts like Rachael Ray and Emeril. Barring Alton Brown's Feasting On Asphalt, Bourdain's A Cook's Tour was the last piece of iconoclastic, adventuresome food travelogue television I've witnessed on that channel. Everyone eats at least one bug in their lifetime, whether on purpose or not, but I knew Bourdain had no fear when he tucked into roasted sheep's balls in Morocco. This is the kind of FTW attitude I prefer to see when it comes to food and cooking and so-called cuisine, an internal desire, as opposed to just making the plates look as pretty as your executive chef(Todd English, Kerry Simon, etc.).
Kitchen Confidential also has the surprising side effect of being one of the few books I've read in my life that has made me, literally and consistently, laugh out loud. The funniest passage I've read so far also happens to be the most ironic:
"Vegetarians and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold."
Instead of being insulted, this comes across to me as a refreshing take on the often unheard animosity between weed-eaters like me and the rest of the omnivore population. Bourdain doesn't care that you're a vegetarian, and he's not going to try to convert you back to eating meat like so many other people have tried and failed to do. So, while he may spit bile at V-people at every opportune, vehement moment, it's at least with a modicum of respect.
Then again, the man's passion for all things edible(if not necessarily delectable) probably exists in the upper hundredth of a percentile. We all need to eat, some of us more than others, and some of us can make the distinction between an oral fixation and taking true pleasure in taste and texture. But like the biochemist Luca Turin, whose extraordinary olfactory senses open up worlds of sensation most of us can't even imagine, Bourdain is willing to subject his palate to offal we wouldn't even look at, not just to say that he did, but because it's undiscovered country.
Bourdain has been called a poseur by some, and I'll admit I sound and feel a little starry-eyed myself about him and his work. What's scarier is that I'm now revisiting the reasoning behind my own turn to vegetarianism, which has never been satisfactorily defined. Ethics or pragmatics? Carryover pain or healthy colon? Pleasure or practice? Bourdain is obviously a proponent of bacchanalian consumption, even to the point of eschewing the occasional hangover or tummyache if it tasted good the nite before.
Which naturally begs the question: do we eat merely to survive, or to live?
=]'
me: Can I read this?
Pree: Totally.
Now, as much of a fan as I am of 24/7 food porn, Food Network is a shell of its former self since forgoing working cooks like Bourdain and Jamie Oliver for numbnuts like Rachael Ray and Emeril. Barring Alton Brown's Feasting On Asphalt, Bourdain's A Cook's Tour was the last piece of iconoclastic, adventuresome food travelogue television I've witnessed on that channel. Everyone eats at least one bug in their lifetime, whether on purpose or not, but I knew Bourdain had no fear when he tucked into roasted sheep's balls in Morocco. This is the kind of FTW attitude I prefer to see when it comes to food and cooking and so-called cuisine, an internal desire, as opposed to just making the plates look as pretty as your executive chef(Todd English, Kerry Simon, etc.).
Kitchen Confidential also has the surprising side effect of being one of the few books I've read in my life that has made me, literally and consistently, laugh out loud. The funniest passage I've read so far also happens to be the most ironic:
"Vegetarians and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold."
Instead of being insulted, this comes across to me as a refreshing take on the often unheard animosity between weed-eaters like me and the rest of the omnivore population. Bourdain doesn't care that you're a vegetarian, and he's not going to try to convert you back to eating meat like so many other people have tried and failed to do. So, while he may spit bile at V-people at every opportune, vehement moment, it's at least with a modicum of respect.
Then again, the man's passion for all things edible(if not necessarily delectable) probably exists in the upper hundredth of a percentile. We all need to eat, some of us more than others, and some of us can make the distinction between an oral fixation and taking true pleasure in taste and texture. But like the biochemist Luca Turin, whose extraordinary olfactory senses open up worlds of sensation most of us can't even imagine, Bourdain is willing to subject his palate to offal we wouldn't even look at, not just to say that he did, but because it's undiscovered country.
Bourdain has been called a poseur by some, and I'll admit I sound and feel a little starry-eyed myself about him and his work. What's scarier is that I'm now revisiting the reasoning behind my own turn to vegetarianism, which has never been satisfactorily defined. Ethics or pragmatics? Carryover pain or healthy colon? Pleasure or practice? Bourdain is obviously a proponent of bacchanalian consumption, even to the point of eschewing the occasional hangover or tummyache if it tasted good the nite before.
Which naturally begs the question: do we eat merely to survive, or to live?
=]'