Foodies

Some years ago, I read an article about clothing designers. At one point, a designer, describing how fascinated and taken she was with a given design, referred to it as "very eh-eh.....very oh-oh". I remember thinking 'What in the world is this person talking about?' I knew that what she was trying to express was an exalted level of fascination, but that she could not do so using normal, or even extraordinary, English words bemused and startled me.

I've come to the conclusion that people who are fascinated with food have much the same malady. I have a very basic view of food -- not quite as pure as people who think of it as simply fuel for their body; I like chocolate and a good hamburger, a decent cup of coffee and a nicely done piece of French toast. But I don't have exalted standards for any of it. I won't throw tantrums if it isn't exactly what I wanted it to be, or isn't remarkably better than it was the last time I had it. I get disappointed when we make coffee in the morning, and its a little weak, or a little strong, but I won't rage and weep, rending my hair in a paroxysm of despair.

Apparently, there are professional cooks who would do exactly that. These people seek to reshape, repurpose, and redo what you might regard as simple pieces of meat, grain, or vegetable to create the most rarefied pieces of edible artwork, and sell it to captivated, mesmerized foodies whose reaction, upon receiving this blessing, would transcend the normal bounds of the language. Swooning comes to mind.

I know this because I just finished skimming Heat, a description of a writers progression from being someone who'd like to work in a restaurant through the various levels of pain and grief (actual pain; he describes watching blisters form instantly on his fingers when dropping meat into a glowing hot pan puddled with sizzling olive oil) to achieve perfection -- not absolute, because apparently there is no absolute perfection when it comes to professional foodies, as there's always another level of nuance, another technique to try, another method to modify. I had intended to read it because I thought it was a culinary version of A Year in Provence, with casual, languid descriptions of foods, and how they were prepared; I thought that while surely I would in no way want to emulate these people, for whom salt is not just salt, but must be the right salt, from the right region of the earth, else, whats the point?, still, I thought it'd be interesting reading about a casually interesting area: food preparation on the professional level.

It is, in fact, as casual as Marine boot camp...but without the grace and elegance thereof. It is a pulsing nightmare of screaming cooks, splattering blood (Slice from the neck down and away...never upward....save the brains and kidneys), chefs literally rooting in the garbage for food that they will cook, arrange, and sell -- and to people happy to eat it. The people who do this are demented, fanatical, zealous. There are no casual, languidly elegant cooks here. The genial, smiling professional chefs you see on television? They weren't like that when they worked in the fires of hell, storming and shouting and raging and wreaking havoc -- and that on good days. Apparently to be a great chef, you have to be a freakin' maniac...and to be a foodie, you have to think its normal to eat things that vultures would reject.

No, thanks. Cookie, anyone?