SC - Chocolate documentation?

[Sue Clemenger]

Balthazar and all interested,

I also applaud your skill of knowing how to effect food with predictability.  Sing with joy that you have fostered and nurtured it!  You may not realize how uncommon that ability is.  My view is that such flexibility and prowess comes from having a genuine relationship with food and the craft of preparing it.  Some people can see beyond foodstuffs as nourishment and cooking as a task to get fed.  There are some of us that move into a sort of enhanced consciousness about these things (Like the math geniuses and there theorems) and can actually feel the world of cookery.  It is a rather visceral and spiritual reality.

Some people, though passionate and talented don't ever move into that reality.  They can cook masterfully from recipes and follow instruction great. . . they just cannot feel the heart of the dish or ingredient to the point where they understand the nature of it and how it will fit into the dishes and flavors around it.  It is a moving and emotionally demanding experience for me to go into a kitchen Friday night and come out Saturday having prepared a banquet for 170 of my closest friends.  I think Ras has a similar experience, from what Iinterpret in his writings.  The work itself is very demanding, but not usually all that exhausting; it is the immersion of ones being into the process that makes it abjectly exhausting, an expression of self and a 'dance' of passion - almost a meditative experience for a whole weekend.  (ooops, there I go again).  Not everyone gets there, and /or not every time; it shows when it happens.  

Not everyone does, but we live and work on our skills and knowledge to build the strong foundation in hopes that we can, if we are truely lucky, transcend the Viking gas stoves and the All-Clad to reach back and commune with our historic breatheren in their itimacy with their craft, if for just a moment or just a weekend.

pacem et bonum,
niccolo

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> Balthazar wrote:>
>Let me rephrase that (so it doesn't sound so arrogant):  "...developed, after
>many, many years of study and laborious toil, the ability, which is innate in
>all cooks, though not necessarily unlocked, to instinctively know how to
>change....etc.."

No,  it didn't sound arrogant.  If you've got it, flaunt it.  If you worked
really hard for it, flaunt it a little more  ;-)   I'n my Mother's case we
would really make an effort to cook whenever we could in order to have an
edible meal.  It was literally a case of
"Bacon Flambe......yum, yum."
It's not that she didn't try.  We sent her to cooking lessons.  We tried
teaching her ourselves, she just never got the hang of it at all.  It was a
very sad series of events.  Some people can't learn to cook for nuts, some
have an inherent ability.
She did look at me strangely when she saw me in my chefs uniform recently.
She couldn't really grasp that someone with her genes could become a
qualified pastry chef.  She was even more bemused when I passed the course
last week. (Sorry shameless tooting of my own horn there).

>Does that sound a little more realistic?  Actually, I have always felt
>fortunate to have a natural flair for cooking, just as some folks are
>naturally good at math.  Now, if it will only transfer over to medieval
>cooking....
>That remains to be seen, I guess.

Continue to feel lucky.  You don't have to go through what my Mother did.
The tragic thing was that she was aware she was a hideous cook and was
trying desperately to rectify that situation.  In the end she was content
to let everyone else cook.  Some people are not natural cooks, some people
are.

- -Katerine





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