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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
The Business of Cooking For me the act of cooking is so sacred and so connected to my emotions, it really cannot coincide with any sort of unhappiness. It will not surprise you then that one of my favourite novels of all time is “Like Water For Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel.
As I write this I am cooking for someone I have known since I was 17, and for her wee daughters. It’s been a long time since I cooked for children but I have to say it opened a portal in my heart this morning I’d forgotten. Everything from the shopping to the chopping has been fuelled by affection. And soup, which I have mentioned on here many times before, is always going to be the best way to love people. I will be joined in the kitchen tomorrow by another much-loved friend and the girlfriend power will be amazing, as it should be when women and food meet.
And also, because I have made this connection between love and cooking [again] I have to set aside the notion of cooking for a living, for money. Nothing I have ever done with passion has been about the money, and it just occurred to me that as with my painting, cooking is one of the sacred non-verbal arts I need to protect from the “How much do you make?” game.
Right this moment, I am simmering a mirepoix. I am cooking it down and down, nice and slow, letting it fill the house with its simplicity and grandeur. I never went to chef’s school and found out by accident that my method of soup-making is actually an old Italian method. I’m a happy kitchen peasant from a way back. I feel much better being back in my own cooking groove: it is the right one for me, driven by love.
For this particular soup, I add cumin and salt as the vegetables cook down. I add boiling water and cook it down some more, some more again, and I always listen to music, which today is Sara Vaughan because it simply has to be her today. And then I add roasted squash and more salt and pepper and I sing a little, because when making soup, you ought to sing.
When I was a babysitter long ago, I remember how much love I felt making pancakes in the shape of the initials of the children whose lives were entrusted to me. Little salads, little moments of “Try this, you might like it!” And it dawned on me this morning, shopping, how much fun I always had working in restaurants when kids were in the house and had some little special demand. It’s briefly irritating to any snobby chef to hear “Do you have ketchup?” but then, when you hear that you make the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world, there’s no need to be bugged by anything else, not really, ever again.
Reading: Pablo Neruda.
Listening to: Cassandra Wilson and Sara Vaughan
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