Like many who grew up in this commercial tsunami of cooking shows and chef competitions, cooking for me was a sport before it was a passion - but it was always an obsession. Before I learned to chop an onion, I was fantasizing about the perfect tasting menu - exploring ideas for sauces and meats and bizarre gastronomic techniques of which I hadn’t the first inkling how to make. I spent my days fetishizing the idea of cooking rather than paying any heed to the skill that goes into it.
On my twelfth birthday, (in a last ditch effort to get me interested in cooking - or at least to shut me up about my gourmet infantilizations) my parents bought me an ice cream maker. And so ice cream became my new, far more tangible obsession. For the next year, I would perfect the simple art of whisking egg yolks into sugar and hot - but not too hot - cream. I would make over two dozen batches of ice cream, each concoction wilder than the last; mint, vanilla, coconut, ginger, cardamom, basil, almond and cherry, apricot and pistachio, chocolate and hazelnut. Some creations faired better than others, (basil was a spectacular failure) but with each new recipe I found myself drawn further and further into the world of food.
Cooking first captured my imagination because it is the exact intersection of science and art. But in the last few years, especially as a college student without access to a kitchen, I’ve almost entirely stopped cooking. So I was reinvigorated to discover that a course within my major was dedicated to the study of food. In this class, I am hoping to find ideas and philosophies with regard to the culinary arts that extend beyond my cultural limitations. I want to travel the world of food - and when I’m finished - I want to head straight to the kitchen and get to work.
Oh, and my favorite food film is Ratatouille. I mean, c’mon. Am I even allowed to pick something else?
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