Thanks

Winstor Gratis

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/in-the-night-kitchen/

The article is about a woman who upon leaving London, stops at a cafe and has a piece of cake, a taste she cannot forget. Upon her return to New York City, she wakes up in the middle of the night, baking until dawn in an attempt to duplicate that taste.

I find that a lot of my own cooking is motivated by an “attempt to duplicate that taste”. Like the pizza my father used to bring back from City Island, New York, in the early 1950′s, to our home in Pelham, New York. I regret to say I have yet to replicate or experience that taste.

There was a particularly poignant comment to the article in The Times, which I am forwarding here:

“A really wonderful bit of writing. Camus once said that “cooking is like love, it should be entered into with total abandon, or not at all.” I find that when I’m making dinner, baking or whatnot during the day there are a million and one thoughts going through my head….the time constraints, my work, the neverending to do list, the current location of my cat as I place the ingredients on the table and turn my back…but early, very early, in the liminal space between the end of one day and the beginning of another there is a unique moment of solemn contemplation where it is just me, my ingredients and the task at hand. The whole thing becomes gentler, even a touch more selfish (which can be lovely sometimes). Sadly here in the cold northeast of China there are few ovens to be found, and none much larger than a toaster oven…..so for the time being my early morning baking consists of skillet cornbread prepared in a wok as I listen to my neighbors rooster fail in his attempts to wake my neighbor.”

Akin to this phenomenon might be the recently discovered fact that 80 to 90 percent of the people who watch the cable cooking shows never cook at all.

Bereft of all this foolishness is the appreciation of truly good food. Perhaps we have to get back to the enjoyment of food as portrayed by the mother in the movie “The Loved One”. I am referring to the scene where she is lying on the kitchen floor, with the refrigerator on top of her, thoroughly and consummately enjoying that turkey leg and the bird to which it is attached. Of course I am presenting a little bit of hyperbole here, but you know what I mean.