FOOD-LIGHT

There is light in food.  This is a Truth – figuratively, literally, metaphorically.

The connection of light to food is simple to trace.  Even post modern molecular gastronomist must concede petro-chemical food at one time was light – sunlight to plant-life to rotten mass buried, subsumed and compressed into crude, then refined back to digestible molecules reassembled.  (A form of alchemy.)

One intention of the alchemist of old was to transform food-light (molecular gastronomy is an example of this).  The intent of a twenty-first century alchemist should be to preserve food-light and to keep that light in the fore of one’s work.  (“Cook” and “chef ” are ranks of Alchemy, as is the Zen “tenzo”.  As the alchemist grows in their practice, cooking remains essential to that practice and hence food-light remains essential).

A rhetorical question: “what does food-light taste like?”

A second rhetorical question: “why preserve food-light, and keep it in the fore?”

One answer to both is illustrated in a small dinner I prepared the other evening.  The occasion was a get together to send the Young Master of the House (a novice in training) off to France for the summer, friends were chaperoning him on his flights, which coincided with theirs.  It was also the occasion to share a special bottle of wine they had given me.

I start with a “recipe” and then some thoughts about it all. Read More | Comments