MountainMornings

So I was procrastinating and reading the New York Times online the other day, and being a card carrying Francophile, I never pass up a piece on my favorite culture. Combine Les Francais with food, and I’m smitten.  Of course I had to read “There’s the Wrong Way and There’s Jacques Pepin’s Way!” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/jacques-pepin-demonstrates-cooking-techniques.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

To quote this 75 year old gastronomic genius, “Who want to die in good health?” Yes, I watched “How To” video after video (sharpen a knife, make an omelet), because I was drawn to his French accent and his hands. Pepin feels that the great chef has technique, which through repetition will turn into talent. “Good cooking is controlled creation,” and in everything we become masters at our craft if we continue to do it day in and day out. That could be playing a guitar, or writing, or tennis, or reading x-rays, anything. Even knitting…

When an interviewer said that Gabrielle Hamilton, who wrote “Blood, Bones and Butter,” called Pepin the greatest living chef, it whet my appetite for her book, which is sitting next in line to be read. Her restaurant, Prune, in downtown Manhattan is known for its comfort food prepared to exacting gourmet standards. Her memoir proves she is that rare combination of chef, one who can write well! A review from the aforementioned newspaper says it all:  “It’s a story of hungers specific and vague, conquered and unappeasable, and what it lacks in urgency (and even, on occasion, forthrightness) it makes up for in the shimmer of Hamilton’s best writing.”

Sometimes I’ll shoot an email link to a story downstairs to Bob’s office, which I did with There’s the Wrong Way with Pepin’s speed and skill. I may have wistfully longed for sharp knives that can slice through a tomato just so. And yesterday, after returning from the grocery store, I caught my husband sharpening the last of my knives in the late afternoon sun in my kitchen. And it was almost as good as catching him holding a baby after letting me sleep through a feeding.

Orange Mountains