Food, wine and the meaning of life

Hahaha, that actually made me laugh to type the title above. What the hell do I know about life, much less the meaning of it all? Sure I can tell you what works for me but who cares about that, other than me. Food and wine are different topics but the same response applies...WTF!!!

When I sit down to start typing I'm never quite sure where it will end up or even what I am trying to say, and that's ok because all I am doing is thinking out loud, sort of. In this case, what drove me to start hitting the keys, was the clip from the movie Sideways about the life of wine. A wonderful movie that is easily one of the best movies about something I love, wine.

Miles and Maya are sitting comfortably numb getting to know each other. Call is sexual tension if you will but I think it is on a much deeper level, exposing your soul to a virtual stranger because you sense that maybe this one is different and you are tired of being afraid. Maya launches into a poetic and beautiful soliloquy about the relationship between wine, seasons, people and the passage of time. I can never do it justice so please look it up on YouTube. When you're done, come back and continue reading...

Now that you're back...think of Miles. Look at his face when she is talking. That sound you heard was him falling for her. The "I get you and you get me" feeling is so elusive in life that when confronted with it we can be dumbfounded. His face is all subtlety but so impassioned. He has fallen in love. And.........then he let fear come back in. That sound was the floor dropping out from this potential relationship. A beautiful scene. Big dummy Miles!!!!

I might have mentioned previously that a good friend of mine once told me that she was not going to let fear rule her life. Being relatively stupid and naive I wasn't sure what she meant. Fear of getting hitting by a car? Fear of heights? Fear of rectangles? No stupid, the fear of letting yourself open up. Be willing to be vulnerable, to get hurt, to suffer, because then you can truly experience the true possibilities of life. To find happiness. To find love. I immediately took on that idea as one of my mantras. Sure things can be scary, but I'm not going to let that change my outlook. Bring it on sister.

Drifting off to the left now, let us examine the food aspect of this post. Namely my ideas on what good food is about. This is where I may climb up on a soap box for a bit, please indulge me.  If not...whatever.

Stop fucking around with food!!!! If you've read my description of those tomatoes I ate in Croatia you will have a sense of what I think good food is about....good ingredients. Treat them with respect and try to do little to them so as not to screw up what a dedicated farmer, grower, fisherman or what have you has done to bring you that morsel of food. Talk to a farmer and see the passion in their eyes as they describe their crop or the how they treat their cows and pigs. Why in the world would you then turn to "show business" to cook that food? Case in point - I watched a chef take cherry tomatoes, cover them in liquid nitrogen to freeze them. Once frozen he roughly broke them up to produce a shattered effect. That's it. This was the height of gastronomy for this clown. I seriously wanted to put his head in the bowl and pour liquid nitrogen on it....stupid melon head. I sat in on a demonstration at a food show a few years ago and this chef was demonstrating some of the beautiful things you can do with chemicals. He took 1 cup of peanut butter and blitzed it with 1 cup of lecithin to produce peanut butter powder that you can use as a sort of seasoning. Now I can appreciate the avenues that this opens up for me as a chef but can it be good to be ingesting that kind of chemical on a regular basis. Oh...and if you have to be careful of breathing something in lest it fuse your lungs together why the fuck would you use "meat glue" AKA transglutaminase.

I can appreciate the beauty of what some of these molecular chefs are creating and I don't think it deters from their skills as chefs, but I can't help thinking this is the latest fad in cooking. It already is waning of course so I think I am right but the larger issue, for me at least, is why are we going down that path in the first place. For show? To have an edge over the competition? Ego? Yes and other more benign reasons I am sure, Not for me though. While I am as guilty as the next person of not eating the best foods all the time, due to many factors, I know that when it comes down to it, a slow braised osso bucco with lots of garlic and a big red barolo or a butter poached lobster tail with a good crusty baguette to soak up the butter are better for me and my loved ones than the hot dogs from Costco. Not that I mind a good hot dog of course...hahaha

Let me step down from my soap box now...there. Food and wine. There you have it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, brings as much as pleasure as sharing a meal with good friends and family, preparing a meal with a beautiful woman or deep conversations over a glass of wine. I am inspired by these interactions, they help feed my soul. And when I find that Miles and Maya moment over a glass of Pinot Noir or (fucking) Merlot you can be sure I won't be afraid.

Ciao
D