THE PARENT - EMOTIONAL SOUP- THE FRENCH LOOK - COOKING VERSUS CHEFING - A QUICK RECIPE
If my life was a magazine cover. The March issue.
Just start. It's all I can think of to get this newsletter out. There is so much to say, yet too much mind clutter to get it said.
IF MY LIFE WAS A MAGAZINE COVER
COOKING
EMOTIONAL SOUP
To help you make it through this emotional course, I have a recipe for you to start with. Just in case you are here for the food.
Believe it or not, food has been the last thing on my mind of late. I thought this may be how normal people see food, I mean people who don’t choose food as a career. They make it more of a means to an end, or just a part of life. I must admit, watching my millennial babies’ food shop to a budget and food prep for busy work weeks is very cute.
EATING AT WORK
I never entertained this millennial idea. I ate at work, hated domestic food shopping as it was always delivered by a purveyor, and domestic cooking kinda sucks. Most domestic kitchens are not made for cooking, but for looking at; the gas doesn’t get hot, they have no real pans, and every bloody thing is in a cupboard or a drawer. You can’t just grab a pan off a shelf and plate off a bench. And jeez, I hate Laminex; give me stainless steel with a good block of wood for chopping and maybe a piece of brocante-sourced marble any day. Okay, I've been cooking in my mother’s kitchen and I hate it; it shows!
THE QUICKY
Yes, I have been cooking for myself and my mother, i.e., every meal, 3 x times a day. Some would still call this cooking. For me, my meals have become even more minimal; made more for their nutritional content and health issues than for more exciting entertaining or recipe development. I did do a bout of Autumn dishes to come out soon in THE GROWER for Vegetables WA. That was as glamorous as I got besides whipping up a table for my mother's 80th birthday. The standout on the table was not the berry, chocolate, orange, and pepper pavlova, but the baked cauliflower with Garam and curry masala, pomegante, dates, lemon, and mint.
COOKING VERSUS BEING A COOK VERSUS BEING A CHEF
A recipe is nice; you can follow it and end up with something you like. More importantly, you learn something. Once you learn something, a set of skills, a skill like sautéing, for instance, and you know how flavours combine and you know what cooking does to flavour, then you don’t need recipes anymore; you are a cook!
Disclaimer: Cooks use recipes, but more as an ideas library or maybe for guidelines; the rest they make up with what they know and what they have.
Being a Chef, simply put, means that you can cook for hours on end, you have all the motor skills, and you can juggle a million orders, cook multiple dishes at one time, you have deep product knowledge, and you get paid for it. The cool room is a place you go to scream or cry, or stare into space as you forget why you went in there. The milk carton in the alley is where you have your smoke, meals, and/or gossip, plot your next move to a new station, or just sit down. Family meals don’t happen everywhere; if they do, you are lucky. Plus, you know your food costing and kitchen politics, you smile at the owners and shareholders, know who is doing the payments and payroll, and your best friend is The Barman and/or Person. The Sommelier is a supreme being who comes from another more poetically elegant universe. They don’t seem to work as hard as you do or get as unravelled. The Manager is someone you must wrangle as you try to find out who is coming in or when they will have the doors open so you can get in early as your prep list is longer than your hourly rate allowed. There are no romantic entanglements allowed in the kitchen, but usually, there is a lot of flirting and casual affiliations that usually end badly. The Head Chef is your GOD, you take orders but still think for yourself.
COOKING
&
EATING
That's why I say I haven't been cooking, just eating and putting food together. This dish took minutes, surprising my taste buds as it packed a load of flavour with minimal effort. It's a bit like my new make-up, but way easier on the prep. Plus, it revolved around good tinned tuna, the Italian type packed in extra virgin oil.
RECIPE
BROCCOLI, PEAR, TUNA & KIMCHI
Get a very large deep platter. This is important as you need room to toss a lot of big ingredients. You are serving on the same platter.
To the platter add:
1 perfectly ripe pear, quartered and cut again
A large tin of drained good tuna
A shredded green end of spring onion
A couple of sliced Lebanese cucumbers
A whole head of broccoli cut into big pieces, steamed and hot
A very large amount of Kimchi (to taste)
A big grind of fresh pepper
A few toasted fennel seeds (my trademark)
A good splash of EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL
Mix it all together, taste and adjust.
The kimchi and pear with the savoury fishiness of the tuna are melded with the hot creamy green of the broccoli. The palter is dinner. It's all you need.
This is the only thing worth writing about of late that I have cooked.
LE PROJET FRENCH HAIR
et l'aspect naturel
Picking up from my last newsletter, I'm growing out my hair colour. I know you are thrilled!
If you subscribe, find out more: how I’m aiming for the French Woman Look, The Tricks, Weird Life and Epiphanies, Inherited Things, The Parent, Mothers & Daughters, and the Balance Equation theory. Everything you need to know.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to COOK WITH ME IN PROVENCE to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.