Yesterday I caught a bit of Julia Child on PBS. Julia was cooking a creme fraiche custard brioche tart with chef Nancy Silverton and it looked amazing. At the end of the episode, which showed some very sweet interaction between these two throughout, Julia tastes the assembled tart and is speechless for a moment. Then she explains, “It’s a dessert to cry over.” The best dessert she had ever eaten (her words) had moved her to tears.
Julia Child had a way with words, and it’s part of why I am so fond of her. But even she would have been hard pressed to fully describe that first blissful bite of dessert. As much as I would sometimes like to re-experience or re-enact my encounters with food, for the sake of feasibility, brevity, or sheer laziness I am confined to words and pictures. And those words and pictures will never really do justice to a meal. Words can hint at the experience through a sort of intellectualized reconstruction, or they can exaggerate certain aspects beyond recognition (in the food porn-y sort of style I hope to avoid). I wouldn’t pretend to “take you there” using words and images alone.
So, with that limitation right out there from the start, I submit my first blog post here.
