One of my goals for this year is to push myself in the direction of simplicity and sensibility. True, these have been a focus for a long time now, but now they must become a religion. It really has been all about flavor. Not just the concept of pushing flavor or elevating flavor, but more so of just realizing flavor. This year I will talk less to my food, and listen more to what it has to say. This goes part and parcel with everything else that has come to pass... appreciating the simple joys of a baby's fascination with simple things, getting a chance to play in the dirt, becoming aware of the truly important things in the universe, blah, blah, blah.
To be all about flavor, you need to know where it is, where it goes, and what to do with it. There are no grey areas... it's really hit or miss. Working with much older cooks in New Orleans years ago opened my eyes to it. My tastebuds had already been open to it from childhood, but lofty goals and a young chef's ego are not the best recipe for great food. It has to be that simple. With experience, one learns to take things back down (or to drive it home in a way that inexperience can never achieve). The main reason is because that's how our gastronomic system works. Our brain has evolved to recognize certain stimuli on the tongue as either something the body needs or something the body needs to discard. As one of my chefs used to bark at us continuously on busy nights... "It's just food, not rocket science," I hear the echo of these words still today. True, many of us would like to believe that food should be elevated to the plasticity and trendiness of the fashion industry, but because it is not that, it is much more than that. It is food, glorious food. Because it is simple, it is something beyond what all of the magazines, blogs, television shows, and books make it out to be.
So here I go into a decade that I could not even fathom as a child. Something that seemed so futuristic and so beyond anything in the SciFi movies (can you believe we're not all driving around in space cars... what happened?), and the biggest focus in my head is simplicity. How ironic, and how incredibly perfect. It's realizing that anything can be beautiful, and even a southern breakfast of grits, slow poached eggs, and cherry cola glazed ham can hold all of the flavor and aesthetic sensibility of a Japanese dish (well, maybe a little more if I'd added some fresh scallion from the garden).
So, does this contradict my previous post on food and art? Not really. It is structure and aesthetic working together. It must still make sense. It must drive to the point. It can be elevated, but at the same time avoid what our friend, Frod, calls "too many notes" (from the naive but truthful words of the Emperor in Amadeus). It's the same with everything. No matter how much architecture may strive to become art, it doesn't succeed if it can't keep the rain off your head.