COOKING WELL AS A MEANS OF NECESSITY

I heard about this contest held by Anthony Bourdain, a personal hero of mine, to write an essay about what it means to cook “well”. In my opinion, cooking well means understanding the grass roots of any cuisine you love to cook. Great chefs don’t just start cooking great food. Most know what their mother, grand mothers and great grandmothers cook. One of the reasons I always post a history of different cuisines on this blog is so that cooks understand and relate to the different cuisines they cook. You can vote for my essay by using the following link:

http://bourdainmediumraw.com/essays/view/1270

Here is the essay:

A mother preparing dinner for her five children… no father on sight, no brothers, sisters or parents. She works 12 hours a day to make ends meet and another eight hours preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner and tending to the needs of her children. You walk into her house and smell the fragrant stews consisting of inexpensive meats and aromatic vegetables slowly cooking in a hand-me-down, dilapidated pot missing a single handle. Young eyes focused on their mother, she is barely sweating, as they eagerly await for tonight’s dinner. Despite the poor conditions of their small two-bedroom apartment in a poor neighborhood, after dinner the children run off and play outside excited about coming back for seconds of the unnamed stew their mother lovingly prepared for them. Although the scenario is not uncommon for this household, the mother is always able to create different dinners for her children, using different mixtures of beef, chicken, pork and spices to keep her children smiling and from asking “this again?.”

Twenty years later, one of the same five children, a respected, successful business man, sits down in a four-star restaurant and enjoys a meal prepared by a CIA-graduated chef with 15 years of experience in top French restaurants from around the globe. A kitchen stocked with the finest stock pots, sauce pans and kitchen equipment that money can buy. The Chef is assisted by classically trained souse chefs cooking with only the finest local ingredients. The plates are works of art as they are escorted out to the patrons by tuxedo clad waiters. When dinner is over, the Chef approaches the table with a fake smile to ask the patron, “How was your dinner?.” The patron smiles back to reply “It was well done.” The Chef walks away with a look on his face that screams, “Of course it was, I am the Mozart of the culinary industry.” The scenario is not uncommon for this or many other restaurants. The menu is consistently being “innovated,” using different mixtures of beef, chicken, pork and spices to keep the patrons smiling and from asking “this again?”

After the next couple of days, the patron has long forgotten about the dinner he had at the four-star restaurant. Shortly afterward, his mother calls and asks him to come to dinner that she has spent hours preparing. Of course, there is no hesitation in accepting the offer. After twenty years, he remembers… he remembers the smells from the old apartment, the sight of his mother smilingly over the pot worthy of remebering and the different variations of stews his mother created, while tending to the same stock pot. Most of all, he remembers that “cooking well” derives from the means of necessity, not immortality.