Kitchen Confidential
There's a paragraph in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential that made me smile as it could have been penned by Briddon: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, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The bodty, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumour of a cold..
The irony is that this rant is contained smack in the middle of a chapter outlining why in a restaurant you should never eat fish on a Monday, never eat Swordfish on any day of the week, have mussels only if you know the chef personally and have seen with your own eyes how they're stored and prepared, avoid Hollandaise sauce like the plague it is likely to contain, and avoid chicken lergely for the very same reasons I became a vegetarian.
Oh, coincidentally in the next chapter he goes on to recommend a book by Jacques Pepin to learn knife skills from. Sensible man.
2 Comments:
Anthony Bourdain is one of my favourite TV chef's. I can say this even though he is an American!!!
His love of food is evident from his TV show where he travels the world eating anything people offer him. His passion is infectious and this makes his program interesting and exciting to watch.
His description of vegetarians could, as Chris said, have been written by me.
In truth I don't have anything against vegetarians. I actually call some of them friends :-). I do however love the rise I get from Chris though whenever I make comments about how mis-guided they all are :-).
I do however think it is a pity that these people are missing out on some if the worlds finest foods. Everything from a bacon sarnie to Fois Gras to Steak Tar Tar is just out of their reach and it is all so delicious. There is nothing better than cutting into a Fillet Steak cooked 'blue' and tasting the almost raw meat. It is just devine.
I do not understand veggies who eat fish. What have fish ever done that is different than a pig or a cow? Either be a veggie all the way or grab a steak knife.
When Anthony Bourdain says 'Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.' Chris should remember when he, Tim, Phil and Jane came round to my house for a meal and Victoria had to cook a seperate meal for him. I am sure that this is what Mr Bourdain means. :-)
Why didn't you just cook one veggie dish for everyone to eat?It's hardly a hardship with all the fab food around.
I thought the idea of inviting people for dinner was to make them feel welcome?
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