"I had been cooking all my life, but only as a way to please grownups; now I discovered that it had other virtues. I yearned for romance and dreamed of candlelight suppers. I started with the recipes I had learned, but I soon branched out. It never occurred to me that a recipe might be too hard. I understood the rhythm of the kitchen and I was very relaxed. And very lucky. If anyone had cared about the outcome things might have been different, but everything I cooked turned out fine. I developed the skin of a cook, I learned to ignore minor burns. And to improvise." (Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone)
"Cook Review" is a play on Book Review, the chosen title for my longtime food blog, and I think the onomatopoeic reference is pretty obvious. But what’s not obvious is this: who’s the book? what’s the story? and what’s the lesson to deconstruct through literary (I mean culinary) criticism? Is the author using “quotes” efficiently to shape the theme throughout the “book”? And what about the title of the “cook,” does it convey the coherence of each ingredient to make a whole plate desired? Is reading it worth the taste, after all? Did you eat and enjoy it? Did you learn anything from it? And, finally, did it stir your imagination word to mouth? I have been cooking for writing since moving to New York more than a decade ago, and I’m still slicing and burning food to my standard of perfection where deliciousness and nutrition meet love on the stove and page. In a sense, I am my own “critic” and present my “review” after I had cooked. Again, is it all worth the effort in rehashing it all out? Because every little “poem” I make here is like a new tapas served on this “counter” for you I’ve test-tasted and had been worth traveled for discovering new foods, a cook review at every bite should be a wonderful experience, no? It’s almost the end of the year and the holidays are coming and I am reflecting on some kind of closure that whole breadth of time. O.K., looking back, pointing to the dish I really liked, and that one I could picture, sure, and had indeed enlivened this book. There were times, too, when a chapter was the saddest, more so because of the food you cooked, and you couldn't imagine it was going to be the last time you did. I just buttered raw pecans in a pan with rosemary needle pines and tossed the roasting fragrance like a pro to cook evenly and remembered Christmas in France with friends and your bygone happiest. The Guatemalan vendor at the farmers market yesterday gave me a lesson about what to do with a cactus fruit and said to juice it, and that was distinctly its utility, and not confusing with the plant's leaves when cooked achieve grilled bell peppers quality you could sandwich in a soft-shelled taco. My dependent-on-the-fresh-catch menu at Cayman Islands wintering there from New York was by far the greatest "cook" I ever read, and it taught me these: (1) you have a difficult but a precise job to bring out the best in what you have on the kitchen counter to feed your family; (2) do what you can never do in your high rise little apartment in the city like wok-frying in peanut oil and curry leaves a whole spiny lobster sizzling with garlic and table wine; and, (3) snorkeling at sunset around shallow reefs on white sand and after, walk the long beach to the limestone cliff where you see from a distance Caribbean boobies land to nest for the night while holding your lovers hand feeling like it's eternally held, eternally loved.
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