Three Questions Rattling About In My Head

I've had three questions rattling around in my head the last two weeks.

1. If Bill Gates came to you today and offered to underwrite your education and living expenses no questions asked for as long as you needed, where would you go, what would you learn, and why?
2. If you could be taught to make one dish/food/cuisine perfectly every time, what would it be?
3. If tomorrow you were facing execution, what would you want your last meal to be?

I've been troubled with these questions, not because I don't know how to answer them. It's because I do have the answers, I'm just not sure I want to speak them out loud. But I'm not doing myself any favors by dodging them, and I'm just going to continue being tormented if I keep avoiding, so...here are the answers.

1. If Bill Gates came to you today and offered to underwrite your education and living expenses no questions asked for as long as you needed, where would you go, what would you learn, and why?
   I would go to one of three places: Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, The Culinary Institute of America in New York, or the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. I want to study cooking. Why? It brings me so much joy. I am happiest in a kitchen, amidst the clatter and chaos and rush of preparing meals for people. I love the look of joy on someone's face when I've made them happy with the food I created. I cherish the sounds of joy when they're eating and the food is a delight. I love the construction, the act of making, the creation of a dish. I pour over cookbooks and read different ways to make things. I just finished "A Cook's Tour" last week and now I'm reading "The Making of a Chef". I love to eat, I love to try new foods, I love to try new combinations of spices. I am thrilled when I try to make a dish and it comes out right. Even if I fail and it comes out interesting.

   And while I try to get into the kitchen as often as I can to cook, I feel like a rank amateur, a poseur who knows almost nothing. I feel clumsy and unskilled, and I want to know more. I want to do more. I want to take the next step up from where I am now.
   



2. If you could be taught to make one dish/food/cuisine perfectly every time, what would it be?
   
   
   French Food. I want to learn how to make French Food perfectly. I know that some of you might be surprised given my complete adoration of Indian food and Thai food, or how I will gladly walk to Chinatown any day in any kind of weather to eat authentic dim sum at the Ocean Harbor, but I admire French Food.

   I like that the French, more than a lot of European nations created a culture of food, not just an industry of food, but a true art of cooking. A lot of other cultures seemed to treat food as an afterthought, just fuel for the day. The French turned it into something to be studied, to be written about, to be argued over, pontificated on, to be something perfected, because there is a beauty to perfect food.

   Beyond that, the French have done this not just with the best cuts of meat, or the most palatable, but their whole art revolved around turning some of the strangest cuts of meat, the organ meats, the offal, hooves and tails, into something that's not only palatable, but something that could be celebrated. That's amazing to me. It's inspiring, and I'm constantly awe-struck by it.



3. If tomorrow you were facing execution, what would you want your last meal to be?

   That all being said, my last meal would be rouladen, the way my mother made it when I was a kid, pickled red cabbage, and her potato dumplings. I may idolize French food, but I still derive intense pleasure from German food. I have had near religious experiences in Germany, eating with family. And maybe that's part of where my appreciation for French food comes from.

   My mom is from the Alsace, which is the French/German border region, and so much of the food there crosses cultural lines as well. In the Alsace they don't drink much beer. It's wine country, the land is beautiful, the people are joyful, and the food speaks to that. Every time I go to Germany the food is a revelation, an apocalypse of sorts, the end of one way to thinking, and the beginning of a new way to look at food. When I think of Germany, I think, in large part, about the food. It is holy to me, and if I were to be facing my imminent demise, I would want to eat that food again. I would not only be comforted by it, but also I would feel Communion with God in it. And that's the crux of the issue for me. I have had experiences so powerful with food that I have wept with joy for being able to eat that dish at that moment. I have been transported to states and places by food that are truly indescribable, and if I could learn to harness that power, to give that to other people, I would be very happy.
   

I've never really spoken these thoughts or feelings out loud, and I feel stupid and silly and nervous for airing them, but they are what they are. Those are the thoughts I've been avoiding for a while now.

The problem now is I've answered them, but am I going to do anything with the answers? I don't know yet.

It's one thing to know where you want to go. It's another thing entirely to go there.