When Men Cook

When I first met my boyfriend, he didn’t know how to make mashed potatoes. He was uncomfortable making salad.  He once ate an entire can of condensed tomato soup complaining that it didn’t taste very nice, without even thinking that there may have been any preparation involved.  Yet, through gentle encouragement, he’s entered the kitchen, and with the lure that he’ll get to eat more meat if he adds it himself, he’s branched past the barbeque and the George Foreman Grill and into stir-fries and anything involving cheese.  And then, he bowled me over with some baked fish.  He even innovated on the recipe! Beware, an apron with “house husband” isn’t far away….

Now, we all know men don’t like sticking to the rules, and cooking is not exception. But, if you wanted to make something like this, this is the basic premise:

2 fish fillets, 1 tablespoon of oil, 2 stalks of lemongrass finely sliced, 5 shallots finely sliced, 1 chile seeded and finely chopped, 1 heaped teaspoon of ground ginger, 3 tablespoons of chopped cilantro/coriander, rind and juice of 2 limes, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, dash of fish sauce, salt and pepper, few handfuls of grape tomatoes.

Clean the fish fillets and rub in the salt, pepper, and oil. Combine the rest of the ingredients and wrap in foil in a baking dish.  Bake for 30-40 minutes at 425F. Noice!

The Post-Post-Post-Modernism Post

I love galleries.  I can spend all day in the Met.  The Art Institute of Chicago made me giddy with excitement. I can’t stop talking about the Frick (don’t get me started).  But Moma? I left feeling very jaded and couldn’t get it out of my mind that this was a complete RORT.  I can appreciate art wear talent meets innovation.  But this, this, and this are just silly.  Not to mention anything by de Kooning or Rothko. Did that really take skill and talent? Or does the genius belong to the artists’ agents, who concocted ridiculous reasons for artistic merit, weaving in tropes of “evolution”, “microcosm”, “revolutionize”, and “minimalism” (artistic code for lack of skills and materials) and threw in some made up words like “calcificationism” or “misogynmorphosomism” so that no art critic is willing to reveal their complete lack of comprehension. But then, my faith in art was restored. With asparagus.  At a recent dinner party, a friend revealed a simple masterpiece.  It was beautiful, skillful, functional, and really tasty.  Yes, the new wave of contemporary art is culinary, and I embrace it.