Re: Rainbowbridge?

Where do you go to learn what you know? (sounds like a Dr. Suess title)

hello Fire Horse,


Since you asked, it starts in 1965 with a book called Cooking is Child’s Play: an un-birthday present from my parents to my sister and I, about the time my mother began to really enjoy working full time. It’s a hardcover book in both English and French, almost impossible to find now; the sort of book that makes you feel like a chef, as you haul it out, and have to clear enough counter space to get serious. The French pages are more colourful, and the loose cursive script more enchanting than its English counterpart, so it’s an ingenious and delightful way to seed children with a love for the ‘colour’ of language, and a wish to look beyond their own familiar territory, while they wend their way through some classic French recipes: things like “chicken in a salt crust”, that calls for about five pounds of kosher rock salt, and shows a miner’s pick and the paraphernalia that one might use to ‘unearth’ the perfectly browned and roasted bird. Or “egg nests” wherein the nest is the whipped egg white, and the yolk the egg. -These were very elegant recipes for the still- freshly-sodded suburbs turning their backs on the old family farmlands, where every house had Velveeta cheese and bologna in the fridge-

And then there’s “quick cake”, a classic all-purpose cake, that my sister and I made many many times, even well into young adulthood. By then, we carried the coloured drawings in our heads of a cake with labyrinthine tunnels, the result of overbreating, a cake that fell flat in the middle, because the oven wasn’t pre-heated, along with a cake of a certain long-lived golden, in the memory, that was not only quick- but good. “Souffléd sardines on toast” years later resurfaced as among my son’s favourite first foods, when sitting outside in his highchair, under a big tree. One thing I believe was really formative toward my engagement with food, was the instruction on how to trace and cut out a box shape that, fit together, was the equivalent of one eight ounce cup. And then, the book advised, not
to actually *use* this, or any ‘real’ measuring cup, but to fill it with beans, find a favourite cup around the house that held the same amount of beans, and use *that*. Something in that direction awakened the artist in me to a love of the ‘play’ part
and now, years later, I don’t use measuring cups. Don’t even own any, but I can gauge the amount of something by eye and taste. And touch.

I don’t use recipes much, although I love to read them and even collect them, just for the reminder of a particular taste- something inimitable, like say, the flavour of a good tomato sauce made with the minced leaves Only, of celery, and the smoky veil of toasted ground cumin. That particular combination is part of an Egyptian dish of red lentils, served over rice, topped with the sauce and then lots of long-cooked, slowly caramelized onions. The original recipe has become internalized, but it was the playing with spices and combinations of flavours and just generally exploring, that filed it away. …it is a very etheric happening, I feel a great fluidity of peace and joy, and almost a feeling of being dissolved into the solitary act of making food; it makes itself, so to speak. A curious sense of connection with others too. Celebratory. I read and gather and accumulate, it seems to me in much the way a cloud accumulates water…then at some point, it rains.



I love a good rain. Lately I’ve been transitioning more and more toward raw, and I’ve even discovered I really Like zucchini. Used to be that we grew it and stuffed it, and could never use it up, and I began to detest it. That is, cooked!
Raw, as in fettucini with the tomato sauce I was talking about, and a bit of cayenne and olive oil and a splash of apple cider vinegar, it’s delicious. That was today’s lunch. I'm feeling like I could eat this often, with some simple variations.


Here’s what I was playing with later. Seeing how it works...

http://greenchefs.tv/deliciouslyraw/raw-ravioli/


I looked at this “ravioli” picture *forever* while I was doing the MC. Just taking it in: they are that beautiful to my eye. Finally today I mixed up my own version. I can tell the turnip wants to be younger for the taste I’m envisioning, but the marjoram and thyme and the walnuts are just right, with the sunflower seeds. I did not use her recipe, but the fundamentals are sound. Nuts, seasoning, etc. Once you get the sense of it, and the order that things naturally flow in, you let it happen.
-- I remember that's what Cooking Is Child's Play taught. Apart from all the fun, I'd sort of forgotten that it taught me everything from the order in which things get mixed, to how it is that mustard and lemon can "cook" egg, when you make mayonnaise, to how to saute, to whip eggs, and on and on. it was a very good start. I've never seen a really good kid's cooking book these days that wasn't sort of TV-minded, and a bit anti-food, if you know what I mean. My son, now all grown up, had some of that book's teachings passed on to him, via osmosis, since the book had gone by then, and he too is a wonderful cook. The other day when tasting some brazil nut croquettes I made, while I was fasting, and NOT tasting, he assured me right away that with a little marjoram and some rolled oats (added in to the coating mixture)they'd be perfect. I knew just what he meant.

I think you’ve inspired me to perhaps begin a weblog. Food -and all things beautiful and alive- IS pretty much one of the big passions, for me.



If the thought of any more links come up, I’ll return and put them here in this post. I hope something of this inspires you...it's more than you asked for, and probably less, too.

:-)


Best

C.