Food Noir

Something I haven't mentioned around here is my obsession with food tv. I love to cook, and I am not bad at it, but I don't hold a candle (not even the tiny lobster butter warming kind) to Bobby Flay, Mario Batali or Gordon Ramsay. I love the intensity of these guys.

I rarely try to cook their recipes, though I do pick up a pointer or two on how to cut an onion or fry an egg. There is just something about the drama of it all. I am riveted to shows like Iron Chef (food as a sporting event) or Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (food as a "reality" drama). Recently when switching between my wife's favorite, "Without a Trace" and Iron Chef, unfortunately in the same time slot, I realized that I didn't care if they found the missing teen druggie - what I really care about was how Bobby Flay was going to use the split Vanilla Bean pods in Battle Bacon. I guess we pick our own sort of drama.

This summer as I draw for hours on end I have switched to books on tape - growing tired of bad radio and overplayed music CD's. My ultimate fave (one that keeps me glued to my drawing board) is Bill Buford's Heat. Buford becomes a kitchen slave for the master, and quite nutty, chef Mario Batali. Listening to this book is better than most crime dramas. Buford obsessively tries to  follow Batali and other kitchen guru's instructions to cut the carrots to perfect one millimetre chunks, or delicately remove the duck oyster without eviscerating himself. Again, it's not like I want to cook like these guys or follow Buford's path and become a slave in the high scale adrenalin fueled subculture of a New York kitchen. I think it has something to do with heroes. These eccentric chefs are like gunslingers or samurai warriors (both childhood obsessions of mine). Instead of gunning down the baddies, or slicing off arms Yojimbo-style, these guys are trying to poach the perfect salmon while in busts a table of nineteen and two critics from rival newspapers. Great stuff.

Now does that make me old or just plain weird?