Food Porn

To use kitchen terms the pilot that lit the burner of my desire to enter the culinary world is arguably Anthony Bourdain. Watching No Reservations gives you quick but essential lessons in the art and philosophy of food. Last night, instead of traveling to some exotic location he did a special on "Food Porn". Food that looks, sounds, smells, and tastes so indulgently it can't be anything but a deadly sin to consume it.

He met with Jose Andres, a friend of his and molecular gastronomic* genius. Eric Ripert, a three michelin starred chef in New York**, considered the Prince of Seafood. Among others.

The reason I bring this up is that it reminds me of several things I want to talk about - not in this post, but in subsequent posts.

There are chefs out there who are doing unthinkably amazing things with food using ordinary and extraordinary ingredients. The more I learn about them the prouder I get of my chosen profession. And these chefs have (or in some cases of retirement, had) restaurants that are the models for perfection - or at least as close to as so far achieved.

So that said, in future posts I'm going to discuss chefs that I truly admire in the obsessive way that most people admire athletes or celebrities. Their restaurants and other restaurants/locations that I am making it a goal to some day sit down in. Foods that I must try before I can die satisfied. And finally, my own personal food philosophy.

But for now, I want to tell you about what I did in Meat Cutting. It was charcuterie day! We didn't make pates or anything that complicated, but we did make sausage. I semi-successfully made a knockwurst. It wasn't yet smoked, but we did cook a little bit of it up for tasting and it was delicious. 70% pork, 30% veal with paprika, coriander, garlic, white pepper, mace, and allspice. With dextrose, dry non-fat milk, tinted cure mix (sodium or potassium nitrite tinted pink so you don't confuse it with salt), dextrose and ice water to emulsify and cure the sausage.

Sausage making is not easy, not easy at all. But it's fun. I can't wait until I can take Garde Manger II because they apparently do a lot more with charcuterie. I love charcuterie, I can't wait till I can get a crack at a galantine or terrine.

*molecular gastronomy is a pretty controversial cuisine that combines chemistry and cooking at a far more scientific and experimental level than usual. You see a lot of unique flavors being made into foams (salt foam, carrot foam, etc), any way to change the physical properties of ingredients to invent new dishes is the goal. It's controversial because of a few reasons. Nutritional opponents claim the use of chemicals and strange processes endangers the health of consumers. But the strongest opposition seems to come from the blurring of the lines between molecular gastronomy and other kinds of research and scientific development to create new dishes. Many chefs who are identified as practicing molecular gastronomy take quite a bit of offense, for instance Ferran Adria (someone I will talk about extensively in the future) repudiates the term and actually refers to it as a movement and does not acknowledge it as a cuisine. Chefs like him make efforts to disassociate their food and cooking style with molecular gastronomy by actually issuing a joint formal statement. Ferran Adria describes himself as a deconstructivist. I don't know if Jose Andres considers his cooking to be molecular gastronomy. Hence the controversy.

** Eric Ripert owns Le Bernardin in New York. His three michelin stars are significant because it wasn't up until recently that the Michelin Guide included any American markets. In 2006 when he received his stars, he was one of four in NY to be honored as such. So he's pretty much a big deal.