Heard, Chef.
July 20th, 2024
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gone to college. Sometimes I think about how my life would be different if I did something I “actually loved.” Something I “really loved.” What’s so ironic about that is that I’m not even sure what I love and sometimes I think I don’t love anything so how could I pick something (?) and sometimes I think I love so many things that I could never pick just one. There are things that I love but do not see myself doing in the future. I love criminal justice and criminology but the thought of working in it is uninteresting. I loved psychology but never wanted to be a therapist or a social worker or a researcher or an advocate or anything like that and that’s why I changed my double major to journalism. I love journalism and writing and everything that comes with it but the notion that I would have to write about the daily or breaking news or write TV scripts for newscasters or have to be an impersonal narrator of the world and not interject into it is, frankly, boring, and there’s not a lot of jobs in media that fit my personal parameters for the ideal career.
A lot of the time, I wish I went to culinary school. It’s pretty often that I wish I didn’t go to traditional college and instead went to culinary school and learned to cook properly and lived out my childhood dreams of cooking in and possibly even owning a restaurant and just generally being a sexy chef. I wish I went to culinary school because I love to cook and I have loved to cook since I was young. When my parents were married, my mother cooked a nice meal every single night for us. I was young when they got divorced and I have lived more of my life with them not married than I have with them married. What I remember most about their marriage was eating. Although my mother hates to cook, she was (and still is) a phenomenal chef. I remember us hosting dinner parties and she would let me set and decorate the table while she was preparing the meal. I remember wanting to not only wash and peel the potatoes (my allotted job) but to also prepare and cut and season and cook them and call them my own.
I remember every bite of everything I have ever tasted. I remember the potato leek soup I would ask my mom to make me on my birthdays. I remember the first time I tried escargot with my high school boyfriend at a small restaurant in my hometown. I remember the rich beef stew I ate in France when I asked the waiter to pick a meal for me off the menu because it was all in French and I couldn’t read it. I remember the first time I tried an oyster and how it had a foamed herb buttermilk (chive and dill, I believe) and caviar on top and how I accidentally chewed it and almost threw it up. I remember the nicest restaurant I have ever been to and the dingiest restaurant I have ever been to and how both meals are some of the best I have ever had in completely different ways.
I was at therapy a few weeks ago and my therapist asked me to talk about what I do to decompress when I am upset. And, without even thinking, I said, “I don’t know. I guess I like to cook.” I kind of just sat there, shocked that “to cook” was my immediate answer. There are a lot of things I do to decompress that I probably practice more often: Writing in my diary, listening to music, watching Normal People (again)... But my knee-jerk reaction was “to cook.” She asked me, “Why?” and I just started talking – on the spot verbalizing things that I had never consciously thought about before.
I don’t enjoy cooking to eat. I enjoy cooking for the act of cooking itself. Cooking for the act of creating. Cooking for the act of sharing. And I’m sitting on my therapist’s gray couch just spewing my organic thoughts – so organic that not even I have knowingly touched them yet. I like to cook because I enjoy the mundanity of it. I like to cook because I enjoy the complexity of it. The methodical cutting – the chop, chop, chop, chop the sound of a sharp knife cutting through an onion or an herb or a pepper or a chicken breast or anything because I can cook anything. Experimenting with foods to see what goes together and what does not and how long I should cook something for and how I should cook it and can I cook it a different way and how does that change the ingredient into something new entirely? Tasting something and just innately knowing that this needs acid and that needs heat because without it the meal is going to be unbalanced and boring and tasteless is the most satisfying feeling. My dad (health freak) always talks about how there are two types of people in this world. There are people who eat to live (him; skinny) and people who live to eat (American; fat; eww). I cannot stress this enough: I do not just eat to live. I don’t even live to eat, really. I live to create. Food is just a medium.
To me, the art of cooking is essentially the art of living beautifully. While all art is necessary and vital to human enrichment and enjoyment, cooking is the art that is necessary for survival. The art of making survival enjoyable. The art of sustenance. Making art out of sustenance. Art by steaming, shredding, sautéing, slicing, dicing, mincing, mixing, melting, marinading, charring flambéing poaching pickling fermenting blanching braising jesus christ just fucking cooking in any way you can cook is just such fucking art. The intensity and the tenderness that cooking requires of you is not easy and is not small but is impactful and lyrical and just fuck, it’s amazing.
I feel comfortable in the kitchen. I feel at home. I feel in control even when I am not and I feel calm and collected even when I am not. To me, having a clean kitchen is ten-fold more important than having a clean room. Having a nice sharp knife (Japanese, preferably) in my hand makes me feel safe. A nice, hot stainless steel frying pan makes me feel cool.
I remember watching The Bear for the first time ever and thinking: That could have been me. That could have been my life and that should have been my life. That I could’ve had that fucked up intense life and I should’ve had the fucked up intense life. I remember watching the chefs yelling at each other just screaming at each other and chopping vegetables and prepping their meats and getting up early and leaving late and having no life and eating peanut butter and jellies every single day after work and losing their ever-loving mind just LOSING THEIR EVER-LOVING MIND and thinking THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME. I know that The Bear is not a completely accurate depiction of real life and it is just a show and every cooking show I have ever watched is not real life and is just television and I know that a real kitchen is stressful and intense and not for the faint of heart and that chefs are notoriously mean and aggressive and scream and curse but in some crazy maniacal sadistic way I know I would enjoy that I would enjoy the pressure and the aggression and the intensity I would not only enjoy it but could and would be able to keep up with it because although I try to hide it well I have a short fuse and could benefit from a profession in which it is socially acceptable to be that intense and expect such perfection. I know that being a chef is a lot of training like really difficult training for little monetary reward like really little pay and even less public appreciation and that restaurants are the most risky businesses to own but the thought that my career would be literally creating and sharing for the purpose of life would make all of it worth it. The satisfaction of being called “Chef” would make all of it worth it. Yes, Chef. No, Chef. Behind, Chef. Try again, Chef. Salt, Chef. Wonderful, Chef. Thank you Chef. Heard, Chef.
I mean, I’m essentially already half-way there, since most of my clothes are spotted with stains and spills and splatter from the shitty meals I make for myself.
But, as much as I love it, I’m pretty mediocre at cooking, for the most part. I once accidentally added sweetened condensed coconut milk to vodka sauce and didn’t realize it until it was almost done reducing down. I’ve burned every piece of toast I’ve ever made. I almost always overcook my chicken out of the fear that I might undercook it and get salmonella and like shit my brains out and die. I know that a protein will naturally unstick itself from the pan or grill when it's cooked but I am an impatient woman and I always try to flip it too early and (of course) it sticks and breaks and gets all messed up. I’ve almost never followed a recipe because I think that my divine cooking intuition knows better than some dumb chef on the internet and I usually do not actually know better (newsflash) and ruin the meal.*
But I love it. I just fucking love it so much that I don’t care that I’m really not that good at it most of the time. Because when I am good, I am really good. So there. Chew on that.
*One thing I have mastered is cooking a mean fucking steak. Any cut. Any way. I love steak like a man and crave it constantly which makes sense as I am anemic and it’s probably just my body crying out for iron. On the Fourth of July, my friend Lauren was reading a book while we were at the beach. “Izzy, you have to hear this line. This is so you.” While she was reading a romance beach-read, I was not sure what to expect this slice of insight into my external perception to be. She continued, reading from the perspective of the main character, “Ed dreams about it the way some men dream about Margot Robbie. It’s a thirty-three ounce porterhouse…” This honestly had to be the most complimentary thing anyone had ever said to me (although I am more of a filet or NY strip girl myself). I know for a lot of people – especially women – this is not exactly what you hope to be hear as a quote that describes you. But truly, I hope that is the way people see me.