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Authors: Jonathan Dixon
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Fisher; a biography of Carême; an account of the case of Bernard Loiseau, who caved to the pressure of maintaining his Michelin stars and killed himself; a history of Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
I always had a strong interest in sources and genealogies. Transfixed by the Rolling Stones as a kid, I discovered Muddy Waters, and after him, I found Robert Johnson and from him worked back to Son House, and then to Charley Patton. From Dylan to Johnny Cash, from Cash to Hank Williams, from Hank Williams to Jimmy Rodgers and Roy Acuff.
When I’d study contemporary cookbooks—
Zuni Cafe, The Elements of Taste, The French Laundry, The Art of Simple Food
—the affect of old-style French cooking was obvious. And on one hand, these were the echoes of the dishes people like Anne Willen wrote about in
Regional French Cooking
or
French Country Cooking
. On the other, some of these recipes stretched back to Bocuse and the Troisgros Brothers, and back through Fernand Point, and to Escoffier before him. I grew fascinated with the breadth of the lineage. Keith Richards plays like he does because he was dyed in the antique blues. To cook well, one should walk the same sort of reverse path. I began religiously poring through classic French cookbooks.
I went out shopping one day at local farm stands and a butcher store up the road. When I got back, I made bacon and eggs with fried tomatoes for lunch. As I ate, I realized everything on my plate had been grown within four miles of our house, and much of it had been gathered that morning. And it tasted that way. I was knocked out by the realization. I was blown away by the food itself. Each bite of the eggs, the tomatoes—these perfect foods—this was the cornerstone of everything I was doing. Each technique we’d learn going forward, each piece of information, was to be put to use in keeping intact the integrity of food just like this.
I had spent a lot of leisure time paging through those high-end cookbooks, often in amazement, sometimes incredulous over how fussy and particular the methodology was. But I understood right then why, when you had ingredients like this—a tomato that wasn’t going to get any more perfect—a person would be so ridiculously painstaking. You do not want to dilute perfection. It would be a betrayal.
It was like taking acid; my perceptions widened. On my thirty-eighth birthday, Nelly invited some people we knew in the area andsome friends from the city over. I grilled chicken with a cherry barbecue sauce I’d made. I found my focus turned entirely on the food, aware of what the chicken was doing at each moment on the grill, the progress of the color of the skin while it cooked, the feel of the chicken as it got more and more done. The chicken was free range and local; I’d brined it for an hour or so before drying it off and putting it over the heat. I waited a long time before applying the sauce, knowing it would burn easily otherwise. I began understanding that cooking was an assemblage of small steps. It was obvious, I guess, but mind-altering all the same.
Ten days after my birthday, school started up again.
When the kitchens opened for lunch, it was usually futile to try and get anything from the Asia kitchen. The line was invariably down the hall, whether it was for the Vietnamese street food on a couple days, the curry sampler on others, or sushi on different ones. The Mediterranean kitchen was still crowded, but a safer bet. I’d had some really good gnocchi with duck ragu there, and some surprisingly great thin-crust pizza, as well as nicely executed suckling pig. The Americas kitchen was the fallback. It was reliable, frequently pretty damn fine, and often the least crowded, except on fried chicken day. A few days after being back, a bunch of us had hit the Americas kitchen and were taking our plates back to the dining room. There were eight of us at a table, and most had ordered the duck with raspberry sauce and scalloped potatoes. We began
I always had a strong interest in sources and genealogies. Transfixed by the Rolling Stones as a kid, I discovered Muddy Waters, and after him, I found Robert Johnson and from him worked back to Son House, and then to Charley Patton. From Dylan to Johnny Cash, from Cash to Hank Williams, from Hank Williams to Jimmy Rodgers and Roy Acuff.
When I’d study contemporary cookbooks—
Zuni Cafe, The Elements of Taste, The French Laundry, The Art of Simple Food
—the affect of old-style French cooking was obvious. And on one hand, these were the echoes of the dishes people like Anne Willen wrote about in
Regional French Cooking
or
French Country Cooking
. On the other, some of these recipes stretched back to Bocuse and the Troisgros Brothers, and back through Fernand Point, and to Escoffier before him. I grew fascinated with the breadth of the lineage. Keith Richards plays like he does because he was dyed in the antique blues. To cook well, one should walk the same sort of reverse path. I began religiously poring through classic French cookbooks.
I went out shopping one day at local farm stands and a butcher store up the road. When I got back, I made bacon and eggs with fried tomatoes for lunch. As I ate, I realized everything on my plate had been grown within four miles of our house, and much of it had been gathered that morning. And it tasted that way. I was knocked out by the realization. I was blown away by the food itself. Each bite of the eggs, the tomatoes—these perfect foods—this was the cornerstone of everything I was doing. Each technique we’d learn going forward, each piece of information, was to be put to use in keeping intact the integrity of food just like this.
I had spent a lot of leisure time paging through those high-end cookbooks, often in amazement, sometimes incredulous over how fussy and particular the methodology was. But I understood right then why, when you had ingredients like this—a tomato that wasn’t going to get any more perfect—a person would be so ridiculously painstaking. You do not want to dilute perfection. It would be a betrayal.
It was like taking acid; my perceptions widened. On my thirty-eighth birthday, Nelly invited some people we knew in the area andsome friends from the city over. I grilled chicken with a cherry barbecue sauce I’d made. I found my focus turned entirely on the food, aware of what the chicken was doing at each moment on the grill, the progress of the color of the skin while it cooked, the feel of the chicken as it got more and more done. The chicken was free range and local; I’d brined it for an hour or so before drying it off and putting it over the heat. I waited a long time before applying the sauce, knowing it would burn easily otherwise. I began understanding that cooking was an assemblage of small steps. It was obvious, I guess, but mind-altering all the same.
Ten days after my birthday, school started up again.
When the kitchens opened for lunch, it was usually futile to try and get anything from the Asia kitchen. The line was invariably down the hall, whether it was for the Vietnamese street food on a couple days, the curry sampler on others, or sushi on different ones. The Mediterranean kitchen was still crowded, but a safer bet. I’d had some really good gnocchi with duck ragu there, and some surprisingly great thin-crust pizza, as well as nicely executed suckling pig. The Americas kitchen was the fallback. It was reliable, frequently pretty damn fine, and often the least crowded, except on fried chicken day. A few days after being back, a bunch of us had hit the Americas kitchen and were taking our plates back to the dining room. There were eight of us at a table, and most had ordered the duck with raspberry sauce and scalloped potatoes. We began
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