Secret Ingredients

Probably like most of you, I was excited to read more of Anthony Bourdain’s writing. I purposefully saved his for last, hoping to make my last ten pages as interesting as possible. He did not disappoint. One of the things I love about Bourdain is that he tells it like it is. He doesn’t sugar-coat. I loved how he came right out and admitted faults in health codes. Bourdain is not afraid to say that kitchens don’t run quite how the public thinks they do. The “save for well done” meat interested me as well. After reading his piece, it made sense to me that things like that go on in restaurants, but I’d never really thought about what goes on behind the kitchen doors. A restaurant is a business so obviously they’re going to try and maximize profits. Sometimes that means sending returned-bread right back out. Bourdain paints cooks as aggressive natured people with, of course, strong opinions about food. So if they think you’re disrespecting a dish, say by ordering it well-done, then it’s not too surprising that they choose their worst cut of meat for you. It’s almost kind of funny. 

I found Julia, in the “Good Cooking” piece, to be a very likable person. I especially liked how she was not afraid of things going wrong and just rolled with punches, seeming to almost like when something out of the ordinary happened so she could use it as a teaching point. I thought the part about her only getting upset once because a cameraman turned his camera off when a fire broke out to be quite humorous. She seemed to have a genuine interest in teaching the public everything she knew about cooking and really making her audience better cooks. I think that is a very respectable trait for someone in her position.

Although only a minor piece in the writing, I thought the issue of convenience food taking over was noteworthy. It seems to be a recurring theme throughout a lot of our reading and it really seems to be true. More people seem to rely on fast food or microwaves more often than cooking their own meals. I never put much thought into it prior to this class, but now I especially want to learn to be at least an adequate cook so that I can always eat fresher, overall better food.