Whenever I had a not-so-happy phase in life, I had the tendency not to eat and skip meals or eat soup and toast instead of a meal because I was too lazy to cook. I don’t know what triggered it but at some point I realised that I should look after myself no matter what circumstances and whether I’d feel like eating or not: I should have something nutritious. I guess my approach to cooking changed when I realised that I could use cooking to treat myself, be good to me. Buying and preparing nice, good food was like buying a gift for myself. Ever since that moment, years ago, cooking became almost some kind of meditation and/or celebration instead of a daily chore.
Last week I watched a show on BBC4 about the biggest Chinese restaurant in the world situated in the Hunanese town of Changsha [circa 5000 seats]. The owner at some point explained her philosophy of cooking in relation to her chefs which -what I first thought- was quite similar to mine: food is an expression of the soul… I feel that, when you cook something that looks and tastes beautiful, you don’t just feed your body but your soul too. To me cooking is relaxing [most of the time] and I try to take time and not feel rushed by a clock. I developed my own cooking Taoism [nourishment of the body, longevity] combined with some Confucianism too [taste, texture, appearance].
So what I didn’t understand about this show was the owners philosophy and how it was so not applied to their ways in preparing meals which was quite disturbing to me. At some point the 300 chefs were in a competition to show how quickly they could prepare certain dishes. They showed how to descale a live fish with a knife whilst holding it down on a cutting board. Next thing they did was batter the fish and shove the still wriggling body in a wok with smoking hot oil until fried. They then put it on a plate, sprinkled some green over it and served a fresh slowly dying fish to the jury. A similar thing happened to a snake which was skinned but the ‘worst thing’ happened to a duck…
The owner said that to keep her chef’s minds creative so they would come up with new ideas for new menus, she would take them out on a field trip to refresh the spirit. This time she took them to visit the duck farm that supplied their 200 consumed ducks a day. After a tour around the farm, they prepared their own meal and showed how to kill a duck before preparing it. It came down to poking a bamboo stick right through the breast, putting your finger through the hole to pull out the heart of the live duck. All this to keep the good flavours and happy customers… I had to turn my head away in disgust because I already had seen an overdose of animal cruelty during this 45 minutes show.
I was in total shock to see such cold-hearted behaviour. Don’t get me wrong I don’t approve of certain Western ways either but this was just immoral and all done for the sake of making as much money as you can to serve the country’s elite and the communist party… It totally doesn’t make sense to me, none of it. Well I guess my definition of nurturing myself and preparing a beautiful meal to celebrate tradition or simply to give a gift to myself and/or others is a totally different philosophy than the one showed on BBC4 that evening. Storyville: The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World, BBC4 broadcasted on Tuesday, 27 May 2008.
My definition would be something like this:
Last Saturday I had the most delicious flower ever… yes a thistle. Some might not realise that a certain ingredient of Mediterranean cuisine is a flower as well, the bud that is… But my thistles were huge and cheap too, only a pound each. And since it’s all about simplicity I boiled them with some garlic, a bay leaf and two slices of lemon. I made a dip of olive oil, lemon juice, some Dutch herbs, salt, pepper and a tiny bit of Lea & Perrins. I was having a most exciting, delicious and finger-licking lunch that day…
Like Mother Pearl…
He loves me… he loves me not…
