Bourdain's provocation

Anthony Bourdain:

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demiglace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living." From Kitchen Confidential, page 70.


So, I think I've mentioned here that my pastime-of-the-moment has become cookery. Up to this point my main consideration in choosing food has been it's relationship to ethics and health. Due to lack of effort, lack of inspiration, and whatever else, I have cooked and consumed boring mealing for a significant number of years.

In fact, just last week I ran into an old roomate form several years back (from the days that I was a Chinatown dweller). He now lives in Quebec and works in a co-operative restaurant. I was sitting in a coffeeshop reading Nigel Slater's Appetite and I turned the conversation in the direction of food. He remembered my meals as being particularly peasant-like and even more bland than his own. I still feel some embarassment (tinged with regret?) at this.

Now the last thing that I want to do is to read a bunch of books on "vegan" and "vegetarian" cookery, despite the fact that I function as a sort of strange hybrid of fish-eating vegetarian with vegan tendencies. I am looking for pleasure in eating (and cooking) after all. So I've been reading books in which almost every recipe drips with butter and probably centres on lamb, chicken, beef, prosciutto... you get the point.

Apart from the questionable health, ethical, and ecological issues which this stirs up in me, I also need to keep in mind that my waistline just fits into my Armani. And I ain't buying another.

Anyway, aren't hobbies supposed to be simple and without philosophical dilemma? Mine seems to boil down to pleasure versus ideology and I do hope to discover a different interesting pastime soon.