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One of my first blogs was about margarine, a subject about which I have some passion. I wondered how it came to be, why a human being with a choice would eat it, and overall my bewilderment that it exists at all. I really just don’t understand why one would eat something avowedly fake and think it was a good thing.

My love of real butter deepened, though, last week when I made a coq au vin for my regular dieting customers (yes, there is indeed a diet that does allow if not celebrate chicken in wine). This French recipe, courtesy of Julia Child, requires that the chicken, mushrooms and onions, all essentials, be cooked in hot butter. Because I am a simple cook and not Julia Child, I worried that my commercial stove top – which could probably render ore into iron – would burn the butter. So I clarified it – a simple process to remove the milk solids that will burn at low temperatures.

For someone who regularly cooks with either olive oil, canola or grape seed oil, this ghee – as it is known in India – is fascinating stuff. The chicken slides around in the pan and gets the right shade of brown without sticking or burning. Hot spots didn’t seem to affect the browning. Mushrooms retain all their nice moisture while cooking to a light tan all over. I was most pleased, and plan to use it again and again. You should too.

And here’s a nice way to make a morning omelet special. Cook it in whatever oil you like, but serve it atop a pat of butter. It will melt, flow and form a delicious base for you to break your evening fast.

Bon appétit.

In a country that worships the lowest possible price for almost everything, I’m something of a non-conformist. I’ve always reacted badly to cheap. Like Dickens, I don’t care for stingy people. I have trouble understanding penury. I don’t think low cost trumps everything when shopping. That could be why I’m not what one might call a wealthy man.

As a cook, though, cheap makes me crazy. When I see a deal on food that sounds too good to be true, my eyes narrow and I get suspicious. Knowing something about food and how basic ingredients are made into meals, I look at an ad for a taco or a hamburger or a chicken sandwich that costs $1.00 or less and I don’t squeal with delight at all the money I’ll save. I squeal with angst about the godawful things that the food chain must have done to make it so cheap. It’s either a loss leader to get you in the store where they can sell you more profitable stuff – like $2 or $3 for a quart of carbonated sugar water, or they’re actually able to make money on the $1 item. If the latter, then the cost of the ad, the building, the poster on the counter, the packaging, employees etc. all comes out of the dollar, leaving maybe $0.10 to $0.12 for the food, or less. If there’s meat in it, you’re probably not getting the best parts of the beast. And the parts you are getting have likely been processed in ways polite people don’t discuss on the radio.

If I want a burger, I’d much rather get one at a local burger joint – like the one on Whitesburg – where you can see the cooks grab a batch of meat and pat it into a burger, slap it on the grill and cook it. And where you pay more than a dollar for the result.

Let me start this rumination on food and its enjoyment with a quote from William Butler Yeats.

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,

Now, Yeats was not thinking about food when he wrote this. Far from it. He was more concerned with the price one has to pay – what one must give up in exchange for the toil and concentration required to become a great poet.

I have lowlier concerns, and being a cook, when I think about Yeat’s Choice, I do think about food. And making good food seems to dance in the middle here between creating a good life and creating excellent work.

I know, for example, when I prepare a carrot juice and star anise reduction, that I am making the essence of delight. No one, and I’ve presented it to or forced it on many, can taste that without a keen sense that their life is now better than it used to be. Any chef can point to similar dishes. Chocolate-y things. Rubbing your finger around the bowl that used to contain a mousse, or licking the wire whip dripping with hollandaise. Each dish is the product, believe me, of much toil, focused attention to detail, worried tweaking of the seasoning, anxious concern for viscosity, for the right smell. For all that goes into setting high expectations for a dish and fulfilling them.

In fact, I don’t think you can achieve excellence in food – or something close to it – without at the same time giving proper attention to perfection of your life, certainly your enjoyment of your life. Yeats was absolute in his devotion to his work, but if he had been a great cook, instead of a great poet, I have a hard time thinking that the life and the work would have been so at odds.

As a general rule in restaurants, I don’t want a chef cooking my food who looks like a marathon runner. Like Shakespeare’s Caesar, “Let me have [chefs] about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.” I want people who love to eat, who have a hard time saying no to something good, and whose bodies bare the imprint of a rich, varied and luscious diet.

With that said, I must confess that I’ve spent a lifetime on diets of one form or another. This is because everyone in my family succumbs, eventually, to circulatory and heart problems. So, at one time or another I have given up or restricted virtually every type of food – meats, cheeses, eggs, chocolate, sweets, dairy products, salt, sugar, bread, pasta. I have fasted for, I think, up to three days (trivial to serious fasters, but tough for me). And, please understand, none of this has been easy. I am not someone for whom food is fuel. Food is keen pleasure. 

At this time of my life, I eat nothing white (a concession to an overworked pancreas). That is as restrictive as it sounds if you think about it, and  particularly if you add sweets to the list – these, even if not white, act like it, according to my medical advisors. If you add to that a personal and intense aversion to fast food of any kind, to processed food, to factory food, you can see some real limitations here.

For the most part, though, I live with it just fine. The reason is that I know how to cook and if you know how to cook, you have a world of interesting things to choose from, even if none of them can be white or sweet. There are meats, crustaceans and fish, poultry, eggs, butter, vegetables, beans, nuts, herbs, olive oil, cheeses, fruit and all the lovely things one can do to prepare them. And, there’s foix gras (not a nice food but absolutely wonderful) and sausage and barbeque, also not nice but definitely on my list.

The diet works for me, but I would be hesitant to recommend it, nor do I think, like reformed smokers, that everyone absolutely must eat like I do. I love what I don’t eat and I cook it very well. So sweet desserts and all good things made with sugar, flour, eggs and butter – pies, mousse, fudge, egg custard, creme brulee. Roasted potatoes, French fries, potato chips. Crepes and waffles with maple syrup.  Lasagna and all forms of pasta dishes. Pizza. Foccacia bread. Sandwiches. Burgers. Bread pudding with bourbon sauce. And on, and on.

As a dieter, I can also cook for other dieters. It comes easy. And another consolation is that when I get the chance to cook verboten things, I do have to taste them. Sometimes more than once. After all, your food has to be perfect.