Last Market Day

It's so cold now that I wear a toque and mittens most mornings; nevertheless, I headed over to the local farmers' market this afternoon as usual, not even pausing to consider the relation between farming and the seasons. As I approached, my tummy sank: no tents, no bustle. Ah! It's October 28th, and the farmers' market season is frosting over like parsnips.

But a valiant few braved today's wind warning and 4 degrees: the butter tart lady seemed to be wearing 2 coats; the bread teens were jumping in place, the too-friendly coffee dude was scowling. The fresh produce offerings were meagre. And yet, somehow this way is preferable. I often feel both overwhelmed and not up to the task during the real bounty weeks, when everything looks appealing and immediate. Those are the times when I buy too much and struggle to mow through heads of kale, cauli, beets & greens, potatoes, celeriac and green beans in one week. Better this: fewer options, less guilt.

It also doesn't hurt that Fall stimulates the desire to cook. So today, it was 2 adorable little butternut squashes as well as a basketful of sunchokes, a bunch of pea shoots and 4 winter radishes (candy cane striped and delicious raw). The squashes will become soup (and they last forever, so no real rush there), as will the sunchokes. Soup is the default setting for winter vegetables

In typical style, I had no real "plan" for supper tonight, but while on the phone I distractedly cut up a cooked potato and mixed in minced pea shoots, mayo and mustard and ate the whole yummy bowl with a spoon, and then mandolined 2 radishes and a Honeycrisp apple (from a marketing a few weeks back) and tossed with vinaigrette. Not bad, Chef.

Well, Thursday night we're feeding 600 people at the office, so I'm going back into the vortex. Better eat well while I can.

TV food and Steak Meurice

Although I care for very little of what's on the food television shows these days, I have tremendous respect for the generation that created the genre. Watching episodes of any of the old shows is always inspiring; and they were so much better than the dreck we see now. Julia Child is widely recognized as a pioneer of cooking shows, and her reputation continues to shine. But what about the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr? He of the greatest cooking show of all time. He who made 455 30-minute episodes between 1969 - 1971? 455 EPISODES. (The punters on the Food Network can barely squeeze out 13 episodes a year now.)

The Galloping Gourmet was--simply enough--fun to watch. Kerr himself was a handsome bon vivant who made cooking exciting, enjoyable, and appealing. He gave his audience confidence as cooks and I would argue that he did this not by making 30-minute meals or fast and easy recipes, but because he very clearly expressed the pleasure he himself took from cooking and eating (who can forget his orgasmic expressions as he would taste his dishes, close his eyes and swoon). That he was sexy and awe-some was gravy. He captured then what very few cooking shows have done since. His show was #1 simultaneously in the UK, US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. No freaking kidding. But after a motor accident in 1971 he changed his foie gras and clarified butter-loving ways, befriended broccoli and pretty much disappeared.

My partner in crime and I are keen to cook through the recipes in Kerr's masterpiece cookbook. Having watched his show as children, we're curious now to taste and see what kind of cook Kerr really was; his persona loomed so greatly. Do the recipes taste as good as he made them look? Do they still work now in 2008? Or have times and tastes have changed?

Last night my squire brought over $4 worth of excellent locally-made morcilla (Argentine blood sausage) (plenty for 2 eaters) which we broiled and ate with a cast iron panful of bacon, onions and savoy cabbage while we hashed out the details of our project. The rules will trickle out as we write about our culinary adventures and discoveries. Steak Meurice, a signature of Kerr's, is first up.

Inspiration and agitation

I'm eating crow today. Ever since I had a showy but bad meal of molecular gastronomy last year, I've been bashing the movement vociferously. The epitome of this bad bad meal -- which I ate begrudgingly, as it was for a restaurant review and I had to -- was a scallop that had been pureed and extruded into ribbons of fettuccini. Hey chef smartypants (I yammered in my head) what possessed you to fuck with one of the ocean's dreamiest treasures (that needs nothing more than a searing in a mofo hot pan to achieve perfection?!)

So I've had rather a chip on my shoulder about the whole molecular gastronomy thing ever since. Until yesterday. I had the chance to hear and see elBulli chef Ferran Adria, inventor of the new gastronomy. Like elBulli's melon globules which (allegedly) burst on the tongue, his eloquence and philosophy took me by surprise.

The guy's a genius, simply enough. He's an artist and an innovator and whether or not his style of cuisine floats my boat, he has revolutionised my craft. When you hear an artist (a true one, in any field) speak about his passion it's hard not to be persuaded.

I won't even try to explain the cuisine. It is to cuisine what Picasso is to Impressionism: a revolutionary change. As Adria explained, he invented a new alphabet. It's hard to imagine anything new -- truly NEW -- in cuisine, but he did it. And yet, his goal is still what chefs have been attempting this whole time: to be provocative and to cause happiness and even laughter.

His insights included that chefs rarely eat their own food as their customers do -- sitting down, not just tasting it off a spoon standing over the pot. (Guilty as charged); that mine is the best generation of chefs in the history of cuisine because we do it out of passion, not out of necessity; and that it doesn't matter how the food is made -- what matters is how it tastes. Now how can I be pissed off at that?

I celebrated with too much Champagne and so spent tonight at home nursing a headache and a stock pot.