Simply Simon

Dinnertime

A while back I reflected on the challenges of dinnertime at our house, the constant struggle to maintain the family table as sacred space.

Recently, I came across a newspaper article in which the reporter asked a group of 14-year-olds, “What is dinnertime like in your home?” The answers are telling.

“I eat dinner with my mum, dad and dog. During dinner we don’t talk a lot, because we are too busy watching the soap opera that was recorded that day. It’s a pretty laid-back time for the family, because we all sit down in the lounge room and watch something we all like.” (Karen)

“I usually eat by myself. My parents are either not at home or they are upstairs playing on the computer. So obviously I rarely talk during dinner. But I like it that way.” (Matthew)

“We never eat together. I eat about 5pm, always something different from what the rest of the family eats, because I am picky and hate a lot of stuff. While I’m eating I talk to my mum. Usually our conversation turns into an argument, which then fades and we watch the Simpsons. My mother and brother eat at about 6.30pm and watch Neighbours. Finally, my dad comes home at about 8.30 and eats whatever mum made and tells me about his day.” (Sasha)

“Usually my mum will call from work and ask me what I want to eat. If I’m in a hurry, which I usually am, I’ll tell her McDonalds or Hungry Jacks. She will bring it home and set it on the coffee table in front of the TV. Mum usually doesn’t bother having anything so she goes and does something else. Within 10 minutes I am finished and ready to get back to my schedule.” (Jeremy)

“When I was younger, my mum insisted that we all sit down to a nice family dinner, and we could talk about how our day went. Every now and then my sister could weasel her way into the living room to watch the TV, but my mum said we needed to spend quality family time together … not with the TV. But lately it has become pretty rare for us to sit down together and eat a home cooked meal. My father is working long hours and my sister has gone off to Uni, so mostly it’s just my mum and me. Mum doesn’t want to cook a big meal just for the two of us, so we usually have leftovers or take-away.” (Lindsey)

“I eat dinner with my oldest brother Manuel, my sister-in-law Dara, my niece Lucy and my baby nephew Jordan. I like dinnertime, because we first say our prayers, then we eat and talk about our day and things. My niece always makes us do this little thing where we clink our glasses together and say, ‘To the open road!’ She got it from a Goofy movie.” (Daniel)

The sandwich

Did you know that Australia’s $9-billion-a-year fast-food industry is spearheaded by the sandwich? It’s true. While the average Aussie consumes 18 buckets of chips and 12 hamburgers in a year, he … or she … gulps down 20 takeaway sandwiches! I guess that explains the pervasive Subway, Australia’s fastest growing fast-food franchise by a generous mile.

I’ve always thought of the sandwich as a humble thing. To be honest, I’m not a fan. Too many memories of those limp and slightly soggy jam things mum packed in my school lunches for years on end (sorry mum!). But after some in-depth research (OK, so I read one article), I’ve decided I should offer my lunch more respect. While it may be humble, the sandwich's pedigree is both religious and honourable.

Apparently, the first known sandwich was made by the famous 1st century rabbi, Hillel the Elder. He initiated the Passover custom of sandwiching together two matzohs with a mixture of chopped nuts, apples, spices, and wine. The sandwich filling was a reminder of the suffering of the Jews before their deliverance from Egypt. Even more, it represented the mortar used by the Jews in their forced labor in Egypt.

Then, during the Middle Ages, there were these thick blocks of coarse, stale bread called trenchers they used as plates. The idea was to load up your trencher with meat, gravy and whatever else and eat it with your fingers. During the course of the meal, the trencher absorbed the juices, grease and gravy, and commonly, if you were full, you would give it away to the poor who hovered hungry in the streets.

The sandwich—religiously symbolic and an expression of mercy … not bad for two bits of bread.

Chef, celebrity and magic

Jamie, Stephanie, Neil and Nigella: though it may be pushing it to claim these as ‘household names’ in Oz, there will be a fair percentage of us that can, quite instinctually, add surnames to each one—Oliver, Alexander, Perry, Lawson. There’s no doubt, the rise and rise of the celebrity chef is near meteoric. Where once the professional cook toiled in relative anonymity, today’s culinary elite play centre stage in popular culture, enjoying a measure of celebrity previously unparalleled in the traditionally working-class world of the kitchen.

It is this phenomenon that the American writer Michael Ruhlman explores to such effect in his wonderful book, The Reach of Chef: Beyond the Kitchen. In this third volume of his culinary trilogy—see The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef—Ruhlman follows some of North America’s most respected chefs as they exit the kitchen for the brave new world of commercial celebrity. According to Ruhlman, the most successful chefs are routinely lured away from the stove to become the embodiment of a ‘brand’, establishing up-market chains, publishing glossy books, endorsing products, and becoming TV personalities with extraordinary levels of recognition.

This is a terrific book. Ruhlman is a gifted observer whose passion for the subject makes his writing sing. His descriptions of the day-to-day working of the restaurant kitchen are as good, and often better, than any others I’ve read. In the midst of it all, though, I am most intrigued by his observation that today’s dedicated chef is, to some degree, culturally lost in transition—from what Ruhlman defines as her finest role as ‘artist-monk’ to the entrepreneurial and highly exposed chef-as-commercial-brand.

It has often occurred to me that work of the cook is an honest one. While those in professions like mine can play endless charades with words and ideas, cooking is much less inclined to slight of mind, or hand. No matter how fancy the garnish, the food is either good or it’s not. In Ruhlman’s words:

" ... in a good kitchen you can't lie to yourself. It's a black and white world. A truth pervades the restaurant kitchen that is undeniable, impressive in its immediacy and clarity: Your food is ready or it's not, you're in control or you're in a mess, you're in the dance or you're in the shit. It's plain to see."

Perhaps it’s this basic honesty that is most at stake in the ‘celebratising’ of gastronomy, and not just for the chef. Just as Hollywood celebrities embody a world of fantasy far removed from the mundane realities of our own, so culinary celebrities can so glamorize the kitchen that it becomes a place of magic and mystery rather than one we inhabit. Cooking is mesmerizing, something to drool over and aspire to while we heat up yet another microwave dinner.

Ruhlman’s final words are for the professional chef, but they might just as well be for all of us:

"When this whole chef world gets too complicated, when all this talk of branding is too much, and the head spins with notions of rollouts and management contracts and licensing deals and charitable foundations and television opportunities and Vegas, there's always this: the kitchen. We've all got to eat. A kitchen is a good place to be, almost always the best place in the house, whether that house is a home or a restaurant. A place where you can't lie to yourself. Go to the kitchen. Wipe down your counter till it shines. Set out a heavy cutting board. Steel a paring knife … Gather your shallots, your parsley, your tomatoes … and stand in one place and cook for a long time. That's the greatest thing about a kitchen—it's guaranteed always to be there, will always be only and exactly what it is. That's where the greatness begins.”

Dinner time blues

As after-dinner conversations go, this one was not my best. One of my beloveds wanted to address some aspects of our family life that were a cause of discontent. High on the list—the long list —was our practice of family meals: “Why can’t we be normal?”

Apparently, ‘normal’ is the practice of allowing each person the freedom to take his or her dinner to wherever he or she wants to be, that is in front of the television, sitting at the computer screen, listening to the iPod, etc. I was told that ours is the ‘only’ family among those of school friends that clings to the quaint tradition of sitting down together at the same table: “It’s so gay!”

OK, so I probably didn’t react as sensitively as I should have. I might teach spirituality, but this was not one of my finer spiritual moments. Upon reflection, I have to own the fact that this conversation trespassed into some loaded territory for me. I have much invested—theologically, pastorally, personally—in the sacredness of the dinner table. I teach an entire unit on ‘table spirituality’; I’ve written articles about the sacredness of eating; I speak publicly about the Christian ministry of hospitality; I value my kitchen and view the cooking I do in it as a spiritual service.

All very well, I suppose. Though apparently, not every member of the family has imbibed the table’s profundity in the way I’d planned. Evidently, our daily ritual of ‘divine encounter’ is not feeling terribly divine.

Granted, if I’m honest, it doesn’t always feel that way to me either. Truthfully, our dinner table can sometimes be more an emotional hot spot than a haven of serenity and harmony. Too often, it’s the place where household tensions and conflicts, and each person’s weariness, are on graphic display. The sparks might fly, but not always the ones I’d hoped for. And then, of course, there are the moments when it all feels so routine and mundane that even I have trouble recalling its significance.

Regardless, this awkward interaction left me feeling despondent. I’d failed … or at least that’s how it felt. The intensity with which these protestations were expressed caught me off guard. After all these years, is our family mealtime really that easily dismissed, that insignificant … that negative?

As I’ve mulled this over in the last week or so, I’ve had to gently remind myself of many things, not the least of which is that the spiritual and the mundane do not always count each other out; that holiness and chaos don’t always inhabit alternative galaxies. In reality, claiming something as sacred does not render it extraordinary or eternally tranquil.

It’s a bit like the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. How many times does it seem so routine as to be almost boring? Sometimes I ‘feel’ it; often I don’t. Is it any less significant to my spirituality? I don’t think so. There’s something about the routine practice of sitting down at the table together—hearing the same words, looking at the same people, praying the same prayers—that, over time, shapes who I am. What’s more, even upon Jesus’ institution of this sacred meal, his words and actions were followed immediately by a dispute and harsh words among those at the table. This idealized moment of community was anything but serene.

In retrospect, this after-dinner conversation, as difficult as it was to have, has highlighted two things—apparently contradictory—that I think are worth holding together.

First, the sanctity of our dinner table is too important to take for granted. Frankly, I’m not ready to become a ‘normal’ household yet. I’m holding on to the daily ritual of the dinner table. In my view, it’s too valuable to surrender—one of those practices whose worth you only fully know when it’s no longer there. Just yesterday, our newspaper highlighted another study documenting the importance of the family meal table to the psychological wellbeing of adolescents. For me, the challenge is to remain an attentive host, vigilant to the presence of God, sensitive to the needs of those seated, and always ready to nurture the sacred potential of our gathering.

Second, my overwrought expectations of the table can do with a good dose of humility. Not every meal will be an epiphany. Not every moment can be profound. The impact of our daily encounters across the table—the routine, the mundane, the tension, the cross words and funny stories—is cumulative, appreciated only in retrospect. Our spirituality is shaped as much in the shadows and tensions of family life as it is in serenity and laughter. So breathe deeply, I say to myself, and let the sacredness of life take care of itself.

A culinary mountain

In the year I began my chef's apprenticeship (1978), there were 5,000 restaurants in Australia.

Today there are 39,146.

Where do I begin?

A restaurant shepherd

It happens almost every night. Daniel, the owner of a small Chinese café just metres from my apartment, rushes out to meet me as I walk past. It’s not a busy place; it’s off the main drag and attracts only those who know it’s there. Still, Daniel and his wife are there every night, alone, six nights a week, serving the slow but steady trickle of late night diners. I can only assume it’s a lonely business. The enthusiasm with which he accosts me each night underlies the fact.

Melbourne’s CBD is home to an extraordinary and ever increasing number of such places. No doubt some provide a lucrative income, but in such a crowded market I assume there are others that struggle to survive. And the work itself: hot, cramped, relentless and routine. From recent reports, I understand that employees in such places are paid consistently lower rates and often with ad-hoc and unregulated conditions. Sometimes I see these workers seated on upturned milk crates in the dark and smelly laneways that run behind the kitchens. And I wonder what life is like for them. Perhaps for some of them life is good, for others ….

I came across an inspiring story recently in the on-line edition of the LA Times. It was the story of Esther Lou, a Chinese-American woman who exercises a ministry to kitchen workers in Chinese restaurants across LA.

In the US, there are more than 1 million immigrant workers in 41,350 Chinese restaurants. Many of these workers speak little or no English, are at the bottom of the social scale among their own ethnic community, often work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and, if in the country illegally, have no access to labour unions or social service networks. Life is hard.

"In every kitchen," Lou is quoted as saying, "there's always the same tired old man hiding in the corner near the stove that is his life." She tells of the Taiwanese pot washer who laboured these long hours, 7 days a week for 30 years to support his family. When he died, Lou asked his two daughters to speak at his funeral, but they said they hardly knew him.

People in the restaurant business often speak of a regimen they call going "from the pillow to the stove." It’s an all-consuming way of life. At least Daniel has his own business. Others, working as labourers with limited language skills and even fewer choices, are left feeling trapped with no viable alternatives that they can access or understand.

What’s inspiring in this story is Lou’s compassion and her unusual sense of vocation. Describing herself as a 'restaurant shepherd', Lou says, "For all these people, I want to serve as a bridge, not only to religion, but to a better life." Lou's passion arises directly out of her own life experience. She and her husband owned five Chinese restaurants, but to cope with the hours and the unrelenting pressure, her husband turned to alcohol and cocaine. Subsequently, the couple lost their restaurants and almost lost their marriage. In this midst of this they “found God.” Since then Lou has been on a mission ... but often a very lonely one.

Lou says that in seeking partnerships with Chinese churches, she routinely hits "the status wall." Commonly, these churches are full of hard working and highly aspirational Chinese immigrants who are assiduously seeking middle class respectability for themselves and their children. For many of these congregations, identifying too closely with those at the bottom of the social scale is judged a retrogressive step.

It leaves me wondering if Melbourne has any un-sung heroes like Esther Lou.

The Church of St Ronald?

"A meal at McDonald’s can be looked upon as having some of the character of a social or religious ritual. Rituals occur in designated places, marked by distinctive emblems such as the cross above a church, and at prescribed times, such as the sabbath. For a patron of McDonald’s, the eating rituals occur under the sign of the golden Double Arch and at the prescribed times of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ritual is also characterized by words and actions that have been prescribed by people other than the current performers of the ritual and that have been codified in some revered text, such as the Pledge of Allegiance or the Bible. The employees at McDonald’s who take the orders and deliver the burgers, fries, and shakes display a behavioral uniformity that is prescribed by the originators of McDonald’s and codified in the 360 pages of its standardized Operations Manual. Those responsible for carrying out the ritual have been trained at the McDonald’s analogue of a seminary, known as Hamburger University, in Elk Grove, Illinois. ... Ritual is also repetitive and stereotyped, of a limited range, adhering to a largely invariable sequence. Day after day, year after year, burgers are sold at McDonald’s with virtually the same catechism of requests and replies: ‘I’ll have a Big Mac.’ ‘Will there be any fries with that?’ ‘Thank you, have a nice day.’ The transactions at McDonalds express values esteemed by the modern North American society: technological efficiency, cleanliness, service, and egalitarianism. At a McDonald’s, people find exactly what they have come to expect. They know the liturgy, and what pecuniary dues they will have to pay; they have found the comfort, the security, and the reassurance there will be no surprises that are among the benefits of any ritual.”
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Farb & Armelagos, Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 216-217.

Milton's table

Chef / theologian Milton Brasher over at don't eat alone has tried his hand at a poetic form called villanelle. While I don't fully understand the form, I reckon this end reult is pretty cool:

Blogganelle

I call my blog “don’t eat alone”
and wish for friends at every meal
as I keep cooking in our home

or at the Inn that I don’t own
my joy with food I can’t conceal
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”

the kitchen is where love is grown
at least, for me, that’s been the deal
and so I cook to make a home

‘cause home is not a place I’ve known
since I grew up on wing and wheel
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”

the ache for home lives in my bones
belonging I most want to feel
so I keep cooking my way home

following crumbs that love has strewn
to what is real – (more than ideal)
I call my blog “don’t eat alone”
as I keep cooking in our home

Bread of Life

I love bread. Not the plastic wrap variety at the grocery store, but the freshly-baked loaves piled up in baskets at the market—sourdough, farmhouse, dark rye, alongside the baguettes and bagels. The most challenging part is choosing which loaf.

Bread comes so easily these days. Not always so. In traditional societies where bread was a staple, the tasks of bread making demanded energy and time in proportions we can barely believe.

I’ve not long finished reading Jacques Pépin’s autobiography. Almost a household name in the United States, the young Frenchman immigrated to New York in the 1950s to cook. His story is captivating and worth coming back to later.

In the early chapters, Pépin recalls his boyhood days spent on a farm in rural France during the War, an arrangement set up by his mother for his protection. Amidst those memories, he describes the cooperative task of bread making in the local village. It’s worth quoting at length:

Every couple of weeks, Madame Mercier (his host) undertook the formidable task of making bread, a staple for the family. Preparation started two or three days ahead of time. She began with a leftover hunk of dough about the size of a plucked chicken, which she kept covered with water in an earthen jar in the cool cellar under the house. To that, she added flour, water, and salt to form a soft mixture, like slurry, in the pétrin, or kneading vessel ...

Making the bread was back breaking work. The first slurry would be left to ferment and rise a little, usually overnight. In the morning, the fermentation would have run its course, and Madame Mercier added fresh flour and water to the mixture to give it new life. She left the dough again for a few hours to activate and ferment, repeating this process, called a rafraîchi, or a refreshing, several times over the course of three days. Eventually, her dough became strong, elastic, and filled with pockets of air, which would burst and produce a wonderfully aromatic, yeasty fragrance that permeated the farmhouse. On the final day, Madame Mercier shaped the dough into round loaves, saving a piece to store in the cellar as a starter for the next batch of bread.

Like every other household in Montvernier, the Merciers lacked an over large enough to bake the dough Madame Mercier had so laboriously prepared. Instead, the people of the town shared a massive common baking oven with the residents of a nearby village .... Bread-baking day had all the excitement of a carnival. Villagers greeted each other loudly and gossiped in small clusters. Kids ran about and played.

The oven seemed as large as a house ... The smell of so much baking bread was enthralling. … One after the other, farmers arrived with their loaves, two dozen or so each, and the baker would take over. At the end of the day, some farmers bought casserole dishes, containing anything from beans to cabbage, to be cooked overnight in the heat retained by the oven.

It’s an intriguing story. I suspect that this was something akin to the communal experience of the rural dwellers of Jesus’ day. For the majority lived in clusters of homes built around shared cooking hearths and water supplies. Daily bread making was a community experience—not mine but ours.

Inhabiting the highly individual world that I do, when I hear Jesus say “I am the bread of life,” I naturally think of a loaf made especially for me—my relationship, my spirituality, my sustenance. Though I notionally tip my hat to the idea of community expressed so tangibly in the Lord’s Supper, often the connection is more theoretical than lived. It’s a sad admission. In reality, thinking communally takes much more effort when we live so independently. Yet to miss the shared nature of grace expressed in Jesus is to miss both its depth and its breadth. Salvation is all the poorer when it’s only mine.

A Good Weekend

It was the annual food and wine issue of The Age Good Weekend on Saturday, to coincide with the Age-sponsored Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. As usual, it was bumper issue of good reading ... well, for the food obsessives among us anyway.

• The regular Two of Us column dedicated to the mother-daughter team of household culinary legend Margaret Fulton and Australian Table’s Suzanne Gibbs.

• Melissa Sweet’s Meal or Medicine? An article exploring the recent but unrelenting push to medicalise food, rendering every meal we eat a minefield of anxiety and creating new and seemingly boundless marketing opportunities for the food industry. Think 97% fat free!

• John Carlin’s fascinating expose of the renowned Spanish chef, Ferran Adria. Better known as The Alchemist, Adria is more at home in a laboratory than a kitchen, yet operates a 50-seat restaurant booked out through to the end of 2008 with over 400 requests for every table. 800,000 people call or email every season for the chance to eat Adria’s concoctions. Not my cup of tea, but his impact on the wider culinary scene has been extraordinary.

• Fenella Souter’s beautifully written reflection, A Voyage Round my Kitchen. She reminds us that time spent in the kitchen is not about lifestyle but life itself, “from slow simmer to rolling boil.”

• Cooking the Books, a wonderful and funny collection of reports from Age writers who put various cookbooks and their recipes to the test.

• And Matthew Evans’ Yum Yum, Pig's Bum, a stroll down memory lane … snot blocks, Fags, Wiz Fizz, Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs, Golden Gaytimes, Sunnyboys, rissoles, school milk, and Chiko Rolls. Ahh, the memories!