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Most of my time these weekends is spent cooking.
At the end of the end day it furnishes me the satisfaction of having created something, a feeling that bears a somewhat tortured resemblance to what I once managed to obtain out of attempts at writing, but now with the benefit of having food on my table at the end of it all. Although, it is something else entirely that actually puts food on the table for me, something decidedly unappetizing, some days.
Cooking, as a creative enterprise, seems so much unlike writing though, which, in its purest form, I imagine to be an activity fueled by an implacable spirit, vaporous and cold, gliding about an empty stomach, shouting admonishments under the influence of various distillations. Cooking relates to that stomach, but seemingly inhabited by a much tempered spirit, patient, age-worn, discerning. Hunger, ironically, is never the point.
Also, lately, I've found cooking to be a way of associating with books, making them come alive for me. Be it a Sicilian dish Camilieri's Inspector Montalbano gushes over, or Sebald's monologue on the history of Herring fishing, these and even more elliptical references have been enough to spur me on in search of appropriate ingredients. At my table the distillation of those words, my interpretations; I'm eating words literally, stewing in their juices for all they are worth - a practice, I think, in self-annihilation, but more on that later.
For now, I leave you with a passage from Camilieri's The Snack Thief. Make what you will of all this -
Most of my time these weekends is spent cooking.
At the end of the end day it furnishes me the satisfaction of having created something, a feeling that bears a somewhat tortured resemblance to what I once managed to obtain out of attempts at writing, but now with the benefit of having food on my table at the end of it all. Although, it is something else entirely that actually puts food on the table for me, something decidedly unappetizing, some days.
Cooking, as a creative enterprise, seems so much unlike writing though, which, in its purest form, I imagine to be an activity fueled by an implacable spirit, vaporous and cold, gliding about an empty stomach, shouting admonishments under the influence of various distillations. Cooking relates to that stomach, but seemingly inhabited by a much tempered spirit, patient, age-worn, discerning. Hunger, ironically, is never the point.
Also, lately, I've found cooking to be a way of associating with books, making them come alive for me. Be it a Sicilian dish Camilieri's Inspector Montalbano gushes over, or Sebald's monologue on the history of Herring fishing, these and even more elliptical references have been enough to spur me on in search of appropriate ingredients. At my table the distillation of those words, my interpretations; I'm eating words literally, stewing in their juices for all they are worth - a practice, I think, in self-annihilation, but more on that later.
For now, I leave you with a passage from Camilieri's The Snack Thief. Make what you will of all this -
Only then did the professor break a meatball in half with his fork and bring it to his mouth. Montalbano hadn't yet made a move. Pintacuda chewed slowly, eyes half closed, and emitted a sort of moan.-
'If one ate something like this at death's door, he'd be happy even to go to hell,' he said softly.
The inspector put half a meatball in his mouth and with his tongue and palate began a scientific analysis that would have put Jacomuzzi to shame. So: fish, and no question, onion, hot pepper, whisked eggs, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs. But two other flavors, hiding under the taste of the butter used in the frying, hadn't yet answered the call. At the second mouthful, he recognized what had escaped him in the first: cumin and coriander. 'Koftas!' he shouted in amazement.
'What did you say?' asked Pintacuda.
'We're eating an Indian dish executed to perfection.'
'I don't give a damn where it's from,' said the professor, 'I only know it's a dream. And please don't speak to me again until I've finished eating.' -
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