Food for thought

Dear Gabriel

I’m fascinated by cooking and food, and in fact the whole industry. I didn’t really grow up with this obsession but ever since all these food programmes came our way I’ve become really hooked. I’ve dabbled in writing and want to make my first novel about the food industry – more specifically a cooking school.

So my question is about the owner of the cooking school – if the tabloids (and cooking shows) are to be believed, great cooks are over the top, self centred and have flaming tempers. Do you think this is a cliché, and like all clichés, to be challenged? And why should a great cook have a flambé temper?

Thanks

Anastasia

Greetings Anastasia

Well your question is very timely because I’ve just read this article about Julia Child in a recent edition of Vanity Fair magazine. The article is shaped around the new movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, Julia & Julia, in which a modern day Julia slowly cooks her way through the older Julia’s now famous bible, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

It’s a beautifully written article by the way and if you’re interested in writing, and writing which uniquely captures the quirky charm of Child, I’d strongly suggest you read it. Allow me to indulge myself and quote from it. Writing of Julia’s charms the author marvels at her voice but also her kitchen technique, achieving almost religious heights: “Yet the voice is only half of it, the other half being her silence as she kneads the dough or wields the knife, the intervals of rigorous quiet, pure concentration, that give the show a spellbinding inner rhythm, an almost medieval sense of heat and light.”

If you sense a hint of adoration in that excerpt you might be right, and I think this says something about what an amazing person Ms Child was. Tall, homely, with an odd blob of curls, and a voice “like a great horned owl”, Julia fell in love with French cooking and turned this passion into a book and then a TV series. But what really shines though in this article is her warmth, sense of fun, generosity, passion and commitment. Never, it seems to me, did her sense of right and wrong about cooking ever turn into vitriol or the humiliation of lesser mortals.

So to answer your question (eventually!), no I don’t think great cooks need to be a pain in the butt. Obviously some of the greats are closer to being artists than artisans and perhaps a case could be made for the fragility of the artistic temperament (need I say Gordon Ramsay?). But Julia Child was an example of someone who brought wit, humour and wryness to her artistry. Does this make her an exception? I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be fun to write a character who could turn her passion for food into compassion for us lesser mortals who struggle with soufflés? Personally, nastiness turns me off, leaving a bad taste in my mouth (sorry had to get that pun in).

Gabriel
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