In Plenty: Digression on Food, the legendary Australian restaurateur Gay Bilson provides a compilation of intelligent observations about food and culture in Australia. She does so through the lens of her own experience in three notable Sydney restaurants. It is a pleasure to read. For me, Bilson provides one of the more eloquent testimonies to a…
Category: Chefs
Soup and democracy
I like soup. During these cold winter months I make a large pot every weekend–pumpkin and ginger, corn and asparagus, chicken noodle, lamb and veggie, lentil and chorizo. For me there’s nothing as comforting, no meal as intimate or satisfying as a bowl of soup served with a good sourdough. It warms the soul as…
Cooking and calling
Commonly, the experience of ‘calling’ in the Christian faith is approached as a mysterious thing and highly prized; to have heard ‘the call’ is to have entered the ranks of the spiritual elite. Tragically, such a mystical approach leaves the majority of Christians in the stands; there they sit—excluded and disempowered—destined to be spectators while…
From the kitchen to the pulpit
Chefs are not always great writers. There are some wonderful exceptions, but most gifted chefs are doing what they do best without literary diversion. While recipe books abound, to have a chef write more explicitly of what draws him to his profession–and what keeps him there–is rare. It is this that makes Daniel Boulud’s Letters to…
Ruhlman’s ‘The Soul of a Chef’
Seriously, how could I not? With the title The Soul of a Chef, I didn’t much care what was in it. And the thought that this might truly be a serious exploration of spirituality in the professional world of the kitchen … the possibility was enough. This is not Ruhlman’s first literary stirring of the pot. …
EATING HEAVEN 