Food for Thought: cooking with Child-like abandon

My parents loved Julia Child. She was more than some entertaining fancy to them – though they’d confess childlike giggles watching a six-foot-two woman manhandle a chicken.

It was about how human Child was when she cooked. She would ramble about, drop hunks of chicken on the floor while carving, and unravel that deep, guttural laugh when the stuffing wouldn’t stay put. She was the chef we would all like to be, and, in some ways, already are. That’s why we loved her.

Much like dear Julia, I can’t imagine cooking without narrating the process – to my confused little dog. There are nights when I’m home and get dolled up in my old, fraying toque and a brilliantly colored apron, eager to pounce on a chicken like the six-foot-two chef. I imagine a camera recording me, rolling on despite the flour on my apron and the wine that only sometimes makes it into the tomato sauce.

Recently, I practiced an un-taped run with arrabiatta sauce from-scratch, practicing to record the episode later for YouTube (thanks to The Drunk Chef for good humor and inspiration). But I found that humility, rather than confidence, is the most genuine mark of a good chef. Even though I have a culinary degree I still sometimes struggle with how to cut a carrot. Honesty is the better part of valor – or in my case, the better part of a meal.

Nonetheless, I chopped my way through half of an onion, a carrot and a few cloves of garlic with ease, leaning over the counter to tell Mossi (my devoted canine audience) that if you hold the knife just so, straddling both the handle and the blade, you have more balance and control, and moved on to deglazing. A bit of red wine (which I generously “tested”) simmered in the bottom of my $15 pot, sliding about on an uneven burner. I played it off like it was intended: “You want to pay close attention at this point,” I admonished Mossi, “because you don’t want all the wine to evaporate. Keep moving it around on the burner.”

After dinner was ready, I thanked my unenthusiastic audience and retreated to the living room with a bowl of pasta. Mossi sat eyeing me with a mixture of greed and pathetic neglect. Untying my apron and tossing it on the floor, I looked at his hungry round eyes. I wondered if Julia had ever spent evenings alone, whipping up a sauce or two, regaling her pets with the proper method for finishing a bowl of pasta.

Normally, I like to cook with people, but that night, Mossi was enough. And as I crawled into my papasan chair with steaming arrabiatta and another glass of Merlot, I think I finally realized how fulfilling cooking can be – without a crowd. Cheers to that.