Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies (9 page)

I suppose in a sense I’m
a ‘food writer’ now, since this is a book about food, but it’s certainly not
the type of writing I imagined doing for my first book.

I’m sure that at one
point I wanted to be a novelist, but I have to admit I’m just not that
organized
. I don’t remember
things I wrote last week, so it seemed a bit out of my reach to keep track of
multiple characters over hundreds of pages AND have the story make sense.

“His first novel was
marred by the
recurrence of the main character years
after being killed
.
Also,
several chapters
seemed to be from an entirely
different
novel.”

I thought of being a
screenwriter, until I realized that
every
possible story idea has already been made into a movie.

When I was still doing
standup, I went through a very brief and regrettable phase where I called
myself a ‘comedy journalist,’ and although I understand now how insufferably
pretentious that was, I still love the IDEA of being a reporter.

From
The Front Page
to
All The President’s Men,
I’ve always thought it would be cool to be a
hard-boiled, cynical journalist
,
press pass shoved in the brim of his
hat, tilting against the windmills of corruption.

“Tell me the story behind this alleged ‘meatloaf’ of yours
. . .”

Thankfully, I’ve found
a way to channel my inner Murrow with occasional interviews of people on the
fringes of the food scene.

So, emboldened by my
hard-hitting look at an L.A. doughnut shop, I decided to interview an actual
chef, silly hat and all. Looking back, I probably didn’t need to wear the hat.

Before talking to a
real, working chef, I faced two distinct, but equally daunting challenges.

1. I didn’t know what
to ask a real, working chef.

2.
I didn’t know any real, working chefs.

For the questions, I
just wanted to avoid clichés and ask things he doesn’t usually get asked, just
to get some insight into the culinary mind.

For my subject, I
figured it would make sense to start with someone local, and thankfully, a dear
friend was able to introduce me to Bret Bannon.

Bret isn’t just a
top-notch chef, mind you; he teaches private classes, he’s on the faculty at a
well-respected cooking school, he apprenticed under noted chocolatier B.T.
McElrath, and he leads popular culinary tours of France.

Beyond those
accomplishments, he’s got a great name. ‘Bret Bannon’ sounds like a private-eye
in a morally ambiguous film noir, as in, “
NOBODY double-crosses Bret
Bannon!”

Or maybe ‘Bret Bannon’
is the ‘by day’ identity of a superhero:
“By day, he’s mild-mannered
culinary instructor Bret Bannon—by night, he’s known as . . .  

Despite saying at one
point
“I don’t have a funny bone in my body”
(something I might
have wanted to know
before
I asked him a bunch of oddball questions), he
was charming and handled the interview with aplomb.

I started by asking him
what kind of music he listens to when he’s cooking:

“I
generally don’t listen to music when I’m cooking. If there are people over, I
would rather have conversation, and not have to try to talk over music.”

Okay. Maybe music
wasn’t the ice-breaker I thought it would be.

When I asked him to
remember the first meal he ever prepared for someone important, he couldn’t
remember the meal but remembered this:

“Mother’s
Day breakfast for my mom. I made coffee, and it looked a little weak, so I
added instant coffee. It was awful.”

I think it’s comforting
for the average cook at home to realize that everyone who cooks makes mistakes,
so I asked him to tell me about his worst kitchen disaster—

“I
tried a new recipe, and cooked the caramel too long. It was like cement.”

For some perspective,
I’ve caused a blender to explode, covering my kitchen in liquefied corn, and
I’ve dropped an entire meatloaf minutes before serving. But I still feel like we
bonded on that one.

Then I suggested a
scenario from a chef’s nightmare: If, for the rest of your life, you could only
use one spice in your cooking (not counting salt and pepper), what would it
be?”
After
considerable thought, he chose ‘garam
masala.’

I didn’t learn until
after the interview that garam masala is actually a
blend
of spices.

The Punjabi version of
garam masala typically includes black and white peppercorns, cloves, malabar
leaves, mace blades, black and white cumin seeds . . . also cinnamon, black,
brown and green cardamom pods, nutmeg, star anise and coriander seeds.

I’m sure Bret
knew
that garam masala wasn’t just
one
spice. He was just dodging my line of
questioning. Very crafty, Mr. Bannon. Very crafty indeed.

Now it was time to get hypothetical:
If you had a time machine, where, and during what historical era, would you
like to be a cook? Turns out, he loves France (how unusual for a chef, right?),
but he added,

“I
don’t know if I’d want to be a cook during Louie XIV’s era… I’d rather be a
participant.”

One more ‘what if’: A
wealthy benefactor wants you to cook one dish that best represents your style
and your strengths. What do you cook? After a long pause, he said,

“Probably . . .  a
cassoulet.”

I started thinking
about this marvelous, hearty Provençal stew when—I had it!

That’s
our superhero’s name—
Captain Cassoulet
!!! Now I just have to design a
cape, and a toque with special powers!

I could tell my
relentless questioning was making Chef Bannon sweat, but he tried to play along
. . . until a simple question about hotdish caused his story to unravel.

To give things a local angle,
I asked him how he might put a gourmet spin on the beloved Minnesota classic
known as Tater Tot Hotdish.

“I’d probably make my own tater tots. If
I remember correctly, you grate the potatoes, and then you add a little bit of
gelatin, then you hydrate it.

Then
you roll it with any other spices into a cylinder that’s about an inch in
diameter; then you refrigerate it, and you cut it, and you deep fry them.”

Something didn’t seem
quite right. Maybe it was the word ‘gelatin’ that put me off. Sure, he could
describe
tater tots, but did he really
understand
what they represent in a
broader context? Then, the bombshell:

“I’ve
actually never made tater tot hotdish.”

Finally, after
minutes
of exhaustive research and tireless digging (okay, I was a little tired), I had
uncovered some dirt! I could sell this to ‘
TMZ
!’

I’m not usually tempted
by infomercials, other than the Time-Life
Ultimate Rock Ballads
collection. You can’t blame me there—it had that one song by Glass Tiger. . .
how is that NOT worth $118?

Normally, though, I’m
not sucked in by ads. But give me a half-hour pitch for some new kitchen
gadget, and I will stare at the television transfixed, wondering, “How have I
managed to even
feed myself
without one of these?”

The Girlfriend wasn’t
on board with us getting a Jerky Gun™, since we
technically
didn’t need
one, so now I try to appeal to reason.

Besides, if TV has
taught me anything, it’s that my way of doing things in the kitchen will just
lead to spills, messes, and wasted money.

Why, according to an ad
I saw for some vacuum sealer thing, last year alone I threw away more than
five
hundred thousand dollars in food!

My rational mind tells
me that most of the products advertised on late night television are crap, but
what if
this one
really
is
‘revolutionary?’ In that case I’d be
an idiot
not
to buy it, especially if they’re throwing in a second one
‘absolutely free!’

I
almost plunked
down a hundred bucks for
a Magic Bullet set, partly because it’s the only infomercial product I know of
named after an assassination conspiracy theory. Mostly, though, I figured a
c-note was a fair price for something that’s magical.

The Magic Bullet has a
high-torque power base, and I think it was the great chef Escoffier who said,
“La cuisine
est tout au sujet du couple, bébé!”
That’s right; I
looked up the French word for ‘torque.’

Naturally, you get your
cross blade and your flat blade, your tall AND short bullet cups, some
steamer/shaker tops, and your resealable containers.

You also get party mugs
with ‘comfort lip rings,’ because who
hasn’t
had a party ruined by
uncomfortable mugs?

At this point I’m sure
you’re thinking “That’s probably all there is,” but in fact . . . THERE’S MORE!

There’s a Magic Bullet
Cookbook that’s worth the hundred bucks by itself–if only because it includes a
recipe for ‘snazzy egg salad.’ I’ve made egg salad before, but it’s
never
had any snazz!

And
they’ll throw
in a blender,
and
a juicer that “works as easily as
the two-hundred dollar juicers.” You know, those two-hundred dollar juicers so
many of us grew up with. All told, the Magic Bullet set gives you twenty-one
pieces of time-saving convenience!