Cooking with love

I'm currently reading Bill Buford's HEAT. It's about this writer who becomes a slave in Mario Batali's Three Star NYC restaurant called Babbo. It's like watching a good documentary. Buford is funny in his humility and inspirational in his efforts and observations.

One of his observations I particularly liked this morning is his description of a phenomenon called cooking with love. When you cook a meal for someone, it is a seduction. He watches the chef's at Babbo, and even the most mercurial tempered chefs will smile while they are coming up with a new dish for the staff to try out. They are not only providing sustenance, the one basic human need for life, but they are also providing joy, playing with taste buds and obviously hoping you cream your pants. Buford makes another particularly good point, "what else do you stick in a person?"

Personally I defer from the 'kitchen talk,' but the idea of cooking with love is why I do like to cook. I don't ever call myself a good cook, especially after reading this book that describes processes called reducing, pureeing, and bias-slicing, but I do think my double effort and love for it does manage to produce something edible. I do cook with love. I also write with love, as frustrating as these two crafts can be.

The other night I chopped up fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and tomatoes from the garden, carved day old French bread (perfect for bruscetta when toasted). I took the bread and dipped it in olive oil, toasted it and made a beautiful bruscetta for a beautiful girl - now that was a seduction.

I haven't made a dessert yet, in a long time actually, but I have a recipe for canned cherries, roasted almonds, meringue that gets molded with alcohol to look like a spewing volcano when lit - now that will be some night.