Food
Lov'n Spoonfuls
By Laura Lillie Mathews
Some say that "cooking with love" is the difference between a good meal and a great meal. And while both activities require tasting and handling; a meal made with love is not to be confused with making love to a meal (especially important to note when any deep frying involved).
In the evolution of scrumptious edibles a passionate cook frequently calls upon his or her palette as part of the careful coddling involved in fine meal preparation. And one can only hope that said cook is changing spoons between taste tweaks.
Gross! You say? Foie Gras! Like it or not, the truth is that for every great fry a little spit must fly. To every great dal a little sputter must fall. Tasting is tweaking and tweaking is what separates the mediocre meals from the memorable ones. To be great, one must taste.
But, whether it is the Cordon Bleu Chef, or your brother-in-law at the helm of the stove-top, any lascivious suck on the wooden spoon, or finger stirring, dipping, followed by plunging into a drooling orfus is enough to spoil the heartiest appetite! And with meal time always just around the corner, let’s rather stimulate enthusiasm for edibles with more pleasant imaginings, like exotic street markets - dusty roads dotted with merchants peddling fresh produce from their herb wagons.
Saffron scented dishes conjure images of North Africa; and as you picture yourself in your mind’s eye, coming over the dune on Alice’s back, parched and hungry from the long desert trek, you can almost convince yourself that the lip-smacking-suction-siphoning-sounds coming from your host’s kitchen are really just the puckerings of your thirsty camel.
Forcing your mind to block out any gob smacking sounds from the cucina and any accompanying visuals will serve you well come meal time. Besides, it’s really quantity that counts here. It’s the ratio between the chefs’ spoon spittle and soup broth per serving that matters.
And if good taste is essential to quality meal preparation, then a cook’s healthy hygiene is mandatory for enjoyable mastication. Which begs the question: Who the heck is cooking this meal anyway?
I’ll never forget a little place in South Africa my husband and I discovered on our way back from the Wild Coast. We were somewhere between Durban and Margate - a small bend in a long curve this side of the Indian Ocean. This is a region where the "big fish" stories are true - at least when it comes to prawns which grow as big as lobsters! So, when we stopped at the only restaurant in the middle of nowhere, I was certain I was in for a fresh and regional treat!
As I perused a meandering menu of monkey gland sauce, smoked kipper and waterlily stew, it was the prawn Bisque that splashed off the page.
When the bowl of steaming hot liquid plunked down before me I leaned in to realize my food fantasy and couldn’t help but wonder if unwittingly, we made a wrong turn and got off in Lilliput! Four iddy biddy cocktail shrimps, crustaceous casualties really, drifted on the surface of an otherwise lonesome broth. The dish was so far from what I expected that all I could do was laugh. My husband and I giggled and joked until the soup dragon, er, lady emerged from her kitchen-den.
She was heading our way, after all we were the only ones there. With hair that preceded her tiny bent frame - a wild grey mane twice her size - tamed only by thick, grease laden creases that naturally parted the follicles into farmer’s rows, she arrived at our table.
Her white apron looked as though it was used to clean up after a land mine disaster. And with arms flailing, spittle flying from her tight, thin lips, and amazingly, a cigarette with an ash as long as the filter somehow festooned to the corner of her mouth, she hissed, Whatza matta? You don’t like my soup!??
I felt the sudden urge to run. Besides, when both food quality and hygiene miss the mark it’s probably a good idea to just skip dessert. We high-tailed out of there, heading for the high veldt, imagining what other fine delicacies the soup lady might have in store for the next hungry travelers to stumble out of the bush and upon her kitchen.
Until this broth debacle seafood bisque was a dish Iraved about. I recall velvet cream texture infused with a bold stock and fresh local fare. However, in defense of the soup lady, the word "bisque" is synonymous with broth or chowder leaving great room for interpretation and in my case especially, room for something else to eat.
Finally, cleanliness is a real appetite maker or breaker. I expect any cook to be clean as a whistle. There is to be no nose picking (yes, big gasp - I’ve seen it at a dinner party!), head scratching (especially of the flaky, oily variety), crotch adjusting, or ear itching. No! No! No! If any of this is done before the meal is served, not only does the appetite flee, traumatized and left shaking in some dark closet of your stomach, but the cooks only redemption is an immediate and thorough hand washing.
Passionate cooks take great pride in their ability to wow a crowd. And cooking at its best is really a labor of love. And so, in the end, a good meal is love you can taste. And if the food tastes good enough to create a lasting memory or simply make you want to come back for more then the cook has done his job well. And if that means a trace of DNA in every signature dish, so be it!. After all, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Then again, you could always invest in a fast camel.
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