Memory Makers and Memory Re-Creators

There are two types of Chefs. Those who make culinary memories and those who re-create memories.

The first is more common because they gave you your first taste of something.

Chances are it was your mother. In my case, I have been cooking since I was five years old. Many of my first tastes were ones I created myself but my parents introduced me to many different culinary traditions with the idea that you can not say you don't like something unless you try it once.

There are few major cooking styles I have not tried as a result. From rattlesnake chili to sweetbreads, I've tried a lot and am willing to try more. But my point is your first taste of something creates a culinary memory.

My favorite "The Simpsons" quote is of Principal Skinner recounting his experience as a POW "I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk, and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States but they just can't get the spices right."

That is your first taste experience, your memory maker.

More rarely, you have the miraculous experience of eating a chef's dish that takes you back in time to that first taste of some other dish. You experience that dish as both nostogic and new. It transports you to both a new and old place at the same time.

Those dishes are made by chefs who are the Memory Re-Creators.

These are the Chefs that take your most basic flavor experiences and not only re-create them but make them so much better that you are moved to tears. Chef Keller of The French Laundry is famous for this.

A friend of ours made it his ambition to eat at three of the World's Best Restaurants (including waiting three YEARS for a reservation at one of them). He considers The French Laundry to be the best of his experience and part of his experience was Chef Keller's chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate Ice Cream. A real basic.

But this chocolate ice cream from The French Laundry was so good, so perfect, that our friend felt both moved by all the memories he ever had of chocolate ice cream but also declared that he could not eat any other chocolate ice cream again because he'd eaten the perfect chocolate ice cream and it would be hard to hard to import Chef Keller's ice cream from California to the UK.

My point is always cook to your best because you are both a memory maker and a memory re-creator and also try everything. You never know when you'll make a culinary memory of a lifetime.

I'm sharing this because Pixar's Ratatouie is on and while it is not my favorite cooking film (Babette's Feast - which ROCKS!), it's gotten me on a food subject.