What makes me a passionate cook?
It’s quite unpopular to start an answer by rephrasing the question. Nonetheless, the iconoclast in me says to hell with it!
What makes me a passionate cook?
Let me answer, I request you to bear with my long and winding answer, but to correctly answer this question I see no other way.
What is passion? Wikipedia defines passion as a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something. Passion can range from eager interest in or admiration for an idea, proposal, or cause; to enthusiastic enjoyment of an interest or activity; to strong attraction, excitement, or emotion towards a person.
According to the above definition of passion, I certainly am unquestionably passionate about cooking. My incredible passion for cooking led me to pursue cooking as a profession and a career. Cooking food, not cooking meth, Breaking Bad was good, but I do not want to go to jail.
What invoked this incredible passion for cooking within me? I do not know, I simply cannot single it out to one thing or one source. Such is life — there are always many things in life that guide people and influence them, which was the case with me. Cooking, to me, is part art, part artisanal, part science, part alchemy and magic, and part metaphysical.
Let me explain. Cooking is part art because we humans first eat with our eyes. The composition of a plate is as important as the taste of food is to one’s palette.
Beautiful food salivates us, in turn making us hungry.
Cooking is part artisanal. Just as a carpenter needs to know how to make a chair and repeat it time and again or how a potter can make thousands of identical pottery items, similarly you need to know how to replicate a dish repeatedly. This repetition to replicate a dish and be consistent in its replication makes food artisanal.
Cooking is part of science because science explains the process of cooking. Biology explains how fruit ripens. Chemistry tells us why some foods develop a crunchy and crispy crust under contact with heat and fat. It is called the Maillard reaction. A cook needs to have a scientific approach to food, and then and only then will be able to expand the context of food from a scientific level to a more alchemical one.
Alchemy is a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. In medieval times, people believed that a skilled alchemist could transform lead magically into gold. Is there any truth behind these claims? I do not know. But I know that cooking can turn seemingly inedible organic matter alchemically into delicious, nourishing and life-sustaining food. If this is not extraordinary then I do not know what is.
And lastly, how is food metaphysical? It is proven that the growth in the size of human brains directly correlates to the discovery of fire and its subsequent use to cook food. So what we are today as a species due to our ancestors cooking the food they hunted or gathered. Subconsciously, human societies worldwide have been deifying food and Nature’s ability to produce food since time immemorial. Pagan cultures across the globe pray to mother Earth to provide them with ample food. If not people knew they would die. Here in India, we celebrate harvest festivals every year. We have different names for them, Sankranti and Pongal in the South, Lohri in Punjab and the neighbouring states, Bihu in the northeast and Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra. These are just a few to name. There are many more across my country and more across the world. Intrinsically we associate life with food. Humans offer food to appease the whimsical Gods we worship, simply to live another day to cook and eat food.
Cooking and food are the essences of life, cooking and food are celebrations of life. We are what we eat. Maybe it is true.
I hope you see my passion for cooking and the way it inspires me. Alas, I no longer work as a chef, but I pray to whatever gods may exist not to let my passion for food die.
