I've been going through the episodes of Mind of a Chef and the main thing I'm learning is there really isn't that much going on in the minds of chefs beyond disturbance. Most of what they have on their minds, as depicted in this show, is incredibly mundane.
Not just regular mundane, incredibly mundane.
They get hung up on the stupidest things and their agonizing over their personal progress is flatly intolerable. They are simply not that interesting. A good number of episodes show the chefs using tweezers to place tiny flowers on precious little snack dishes treated as Fabergé eggs.
If I see one more g.d. pair of tweezers I'm going to... I'm going to... skip past you again!
And then they do something weirdly brilliant. Magnus Nilsson is one such chef. They all are in their own way. Agonizingly slow in discussing his food philosophy, psychologically damaged in his microscopic attention to insignificant details he comes up with ideas for his restaurant that aren't even food. Boring in his recollections. I watched three episodes with him wearing the same stupid sweater. I could smell his unwashed hair all the way over here in Denver. Then he steps out in the snow and describes the smell of leaves that are deteriorating under the snow for all winter. Dry leaves do not have the same smell. The smell creates an emotion. The next thing Magnus Nilsson is inside his Fäviken restaurant kitchen par-boiling leaves that have deteriorated under the snow the whole winter and serving them on a plate as a nest for some kind of little white egg-like hors d'oeuvre tucked into the leaves. He wanted the scent of the forest for his three tiny white balls of food. Possibly mushrooms. I didn't catch exactly what they are. And that's one of twenty tasting courses he serves at this restaurant over a two and half hour period. They serve very few people each night, and they serve them all night. His mind is not on restaurant commercial efficiency. He doesn't care about maximum return. It's all about him indulging his preciously private art. And when he gets tired of thinking up new things, or when people stop coming, then the restaurant will close.
All the chefs featured are this maniacal, simultaneously vacuous and deep, careless and precise, mostly emotional. Very very emotional. Grown up generals in charge of their kitchens and little children at heart, controllers of their own destinies and badly beaten and battered by life.
They often have red eyes.
I had to skip an entire episode of David Kinch as he agonized over the fire that burned down his restaurant. He drags viewers through every emotional aspect of the entire experience until finally he makes a drink that took 500 iterations to perfect while watching sunsets and matching the color and flavor of orange with the drink, while he uses the word "bitter" fifteen times in describing the ingredients. I skipped ahead, stopped, "bitter," skipped ahead again, stopped again, "bitter," skipped ahead again, stopped again, "bitter." I gave up and skipped to the end.
I LIKE SWEET GIRLIE DRINKS, ALRIGHT? AND I HATE THINGS THAT ARE BITTER!
But look how beautiful these are and how much thought is poured into each molecule. Éric wastes his mussels and clams, he wants their liquid not their meat, while another chef devotes an entire episode on her life-philosophy of avoiding all waste and her insane degree of recycling water and broth and her self pride in recovering and preparing and eating basically garbage, breading and frying the bones of fish, for example.
Éric Ripert talks funny, but try not to hold that against him. He is an impressive individual and his restaurant, Le Bernardin, in New York is outstanding. He really is living the dream.
And what does Le Bernardin mean? Well, it means un religieux ordre fondé par Saint Benoît et réformé par Saint-Bernard.
"Do you trust people who don't like caviar?"
"I don't trust people who don't like food."
Well. With my mountain of biases set aside for the moment, I must admit this is impressive.
I love the vegetables that David Kinch presented. I wanted to eat those. Whatever else it may be, prissy, overly fussy, too precious, feminine, anal retentive, that really is art.
But what do other people who bothered to watch this have to say? Selected comments to both videos at YouTube.
* For my taste they ruined nice fish with salt, vinaigrette and sesame seeds. :/
And basil? Nah.
[Your taste doesn't count! Go away.]
* That guy have no idea even about definition of sashimi, as about Japanese cuisine. Fish is spoiled with salt and oil.
[This evoked a lot of response mostly in agreement. Others try to pry him off his narrow definition but he's not having it. The entire series is about how chefs think and create, not how they obey tradition with fidelity.]
* 美味しです！！！
[Ha ha. A puzzle! That first thing means beauty and the second thing means taste. The other scribbles mean sounds. The Japanese person approves.]
* Ok, I really don't like eating sashimi, but this definitely looks worth trying.
[For the second video]
* "And I'm generous with the butter, I don't care"
ROFL
* hair on mackerel at 1:51
[Well spotted. He must have a large screen. I looked but all I see is a hair on my screen]
* This is why I dislike this type of food, what a waste of mussels and clams
[It's not certain they were wasted.]
* Caviar from china and cheap shit mackerel
[That's the thing. They're using their imaginations in combining textures and flavors of food, not matching the cost of ingredients. Objection rejected.]
* Another bullshit from people that have no idea what is really a sashimi.
[It's a good thing that you do so you can keep these professional innovators on the straight and narrow. Or else change might occur.]
* +Rambalac mental masturbation for these to nob heads here
[He shot into his hand towel.]
* Oil means ruined sashimi.
[Holding his ground on his precise immutable vocabulary]
7 comments:
The mackerel and caviar looks amazing. He is right about the broth, fish broths should be cooked fast (time ruins them). I was surprised the interviewer claimed there are no clams on the west coast. What? The PNW has plenty of clams and I am pretty sure they ship them to Cali all the time.
Plus can't you still get clams at Pismo Beach?
I watched the last one first, then went to the sea bream. I am surprised his broth worked with the ginger. I find if I make fish stock beyond an hour, it starts getting very off in flavor. Fish bone stock is wonderful but very delicate. It was a good presentation, I would like to experience how it actually tastes.
Ripert and Bourdain are buddies.
My old man would put caviar in his fettucine alfredo.
I put caviar on scrambled eggs. Cooked low and still moist and fluffy. Caviar put on right at the end as a toping. Really good.
But not all chefs have minds on the edge of hysteria. There's a very witty chef, don't know his name, whose videos are available on Youtube: Food Wishes. Try it, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Okay, just looked it up. The Food Wishes chef calls himself Chef John.
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