At the point where Bourdain is picked up by the two Indian ladies I realized, "pressure cooker." He's afraid of them. And sure enough, they use pressure and he acts afraid of it. And I do not understand that. I do not respect that in chefs. It is a thing that housewives know about and use and do all the time, so to act like it's odd and out of a chef's grasp is ridiculous. They do that sometimes, I notice, stake out an area to be resolutely closed about. I hear them say things like, "Baking is chemistry. I don't do baking."
One episode on Food Network involved a contest between chefs taking place in Aspen. The deal was to impress other chef-judges with a meal at a decked out resort. The place has everything a chef could ask. All contestants had difficulty with altitude, none of them even considered using pressure to compensate. I was sitting at home thinking how ridiculous that is, how it makes everything else they are squabbling about moot. There was no cook to root for in that case, I wanted each one of them to lose.
5 comments:
Wow, I gotta get to that St. John restaurant before I die. Heaven on earth.
Ok… maybe they're not exactly snobby brahmins' daughters but still!
It's cool to get a historical perspective on food porn dating back to 2001 when Gordon Ramsay didn't yet have shows about turning around bed and breakfasts.
Bourdain wrote about St. John and its chefs in his books. He is obviously a big fan of their emphasis on traditional old school English meat cooking. Not much different than country French, German, Spanish and Italian cooking--meat was too valuable to waste (although I tend to favor pork for obvious reasons). And I agree with ricpic, it should be on your must visit list when going to London.
I do not use pressure cookers very much (I am not sure I even have one anymore) but given their speed of cooking, I am surprised more commercial chefs don't use them (like convection ovens, they save time). I do not get the fear thing.
Baking is chemistry. You screw up the reaction if you do not follow the science.
Cooking is generally more forgiving (although some dishes have to be done precisely).
Post a Comment