The last thing Jerry cooked for me was a meatloaf, over 30 years ago. The depth of his devotion to me was that effort. He generally looks like a deer in the headlights when it comes to the kitchen. I cook; he cleans up. While he’s cleaning up, I lie on the sofa and watch something on my phone that he wouldn’t be at all interested in.
Like “Chef’s Table.” I like it because each episode is really a study of the personality of the chef. Ana Roš, for example, is the genius behind Hiša Franko restaurant in Kobarid, Slovenia. When she told her parents she wanted to marry the sommelier and be a chef instead of a diplomat (she was also a world class alpine skier), her father didn’t speak to her for years. When the first edition of the Slovenian Michelin Guide came out, her restaurant won two stars.
I like it that nearly all the chefs are working to bring simple local food to the high-end table. They traipse through the countryside finding out what the locals grow and eat and what grows wild. They want to make people proud of their indigenous food.
I’ve decided I like cooking. I have decided this since cooking is a necessity when you are vegetarian. I am vegetarian as of three months ago when I had the new cancer—not related to the first and very small, but still. Look it up. You’ll see how much lower the cancer rate is among vegetarians. Lower still among vegans, but that’s a bridge too far for me.
I actually have to plan meals and shop for specific recipes. My old way was to keep a lot of meat in the freezer, thaw something for dinner, add a vegetable and salad: done. As my children used to say, it was one brown, one green, and one white item. They exaggerate.
It’s been interesting. Fortunately, I have time. I don’t know how a young mother who has a job could manage. The most interesting lately has been a zucchini and egg tart, from New York Times Cooking (I use that a lot). How, you ask, does Jerry adapt to this? Surprisingly well. I offer frequently to cook him some meat. He says don’t bother. Still, I have made him spaghetti with meat sauce. I just leave some plain sauce for me. I have cooked him a chicken breast. I’d do steak if he wanted it.
My son Scott—whose birthday is today, by the way!--loves to cook, too. My daughter Kelly, not so much, although she does. She has four children, so she pretty much asked for it. When Kelly and Scott were young, I’d say, “Who wants to help me cook and who wants to clean up?” You can guess who chose what.
I am stunned by the presentation of some of the world-class dishes. I watch chefs bend over each dish with tweezers, placing one tiny leaf, or whatever, on top. I can hear the patron of Golden Corral say, “Good grief, there’s hardly any food there! It’s all a game, a show!” Of course it’s elitist. Most people are grateful for anything on the table. It is art with food. Art is also elitist. It’s at the top of Maslov’s pyramid of human needs. Self-actualization, he called it.
But which person (assuming there’s no food deprivation) is actually more aware of the meal—the one who has a mounded heap on his/her plate, or the one who has a carefully arranged small portion in the center of a large plate, the plate like a frame? I guess you could argue either way, but the beauty of the dish is part of its appeal. It says, “Taste me carefully. Pay attention. Don’t worry, you’ll eventually get full after several dishes, but do it mindfully.”
Anyway, it’s an adventure. Like writing a poem. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much, but when it does, things come together and surprise you.
P.S. If you’ve been having trouble getting Wobbly, Squarespace says they made some changes so that you may need to update your browser, and if that doesn’t work, update your operating system. They say Firefox always works fine. It’s the other browsers that may have trouble.