“Great Cooking Demands Great Eating”

The Supper of the Lamb Essay

When you pick up a book labeled “cookbook,” what do you expect? Recipes? Tips? Do you ever expect prejudices and ideas instead of recipes and tips? In Robert Capon’s book titled Supper of the Lamb, prejudices, ideas, opinions, and hilarious advice are buried all within the book, not just recipes. He even goes so far to state that he might not go through a recipe in the whole book and just talk and write. However, not to worry, he writes this book over the preparation of a leg of lamb. Three take away points a cook can get from this book are these: Cooking is an art, enjoy alcohol, and embrace calories.

Since you are a cook (or not) you will soon see that cooking is an art that one must acquire and practice often. You can’t expect to be great at anything if you don’t practice. Sure you may be able to prepare a boxed cake or hamburgers if you are in a hurry, but great cooking requires beautiful and difficult techniques. Practice your cooking skills and learn new things. While learning new techniques is hard at first, if you keep up with it, you will be rewarded at the end. Cooking with little technique does not bring the most wonderful and pleasing results to the table but it can do the job. Learn and practice cooking lots of recipes to become better, don’t fall for recipes that require no technique. After all, cooking is an art and requires diligent practice with some expensive tools. Tools such as knives, skillets, and stoves. In today's ordinary kitchen store, you will find shelves and drawers full of “tin fiddles.” What are tin fiddles? Tin fiddles are fake kitchen equipments such as bread knives and electric stoves. Yes, I am saying that though a knife may be labeled a “bread knife” and an electric stove ay be labeled a “stove,” these are not the “real deal” things. Bread knives will not easily cut bread when it is hot out of the oven so you can enjoy it at its best time. Well how are you going to cut bread? Try to see if you can find a “wavy edged” knife, swipe it a couple of times on a stone and six on steel, then cut into steaming hot bread and see how you fair with it. And electric stoves, they are uncontrollable in their heat and don't do a cook justice. They try to control the cook and the dish that is being prepared instead of the cook being in control. They try to have the upper hand even though the cook should have the upper hand at all times. Afterall, the cook is the artist.

Secondly as a cook and a person in general, you should enjoy alcohol. Alcohol is all over the place and comes in many forms. Beers, wines, whiskeys, rums, there are all sorts of forms. Everyone should drink all sorts of forms and enjoy them. Good men concern themselves with drinking and enjoying good alcohol, not getting drunk and abusing the drink itself. Wines should not be thought as a wicked beverage, but an excellent drink. And, one must drink a lot of alcohol over time before one becomes an expert, especially if you are a cook.

The last point I want to make in this essay is embrace the calories in food. Too many people will not enjoy their food because of the calorie count in it. But the counting of calories is the work of the devil. There are many passages in the Bible that talk about feasting and enjoying food with a group of people. So, why not enjoy food? Spend money, lots of money, on food pleasures and cut back on other pleasures. In fact you should wear your food (or weight) with pride! “May your men wear their weight with pride, secure in the knowledge that they have at last become considerable. May they rejoice that they will never again be taken for callow, black-haired boys. And your women? Ah! Women are like cheese strudels. When first baked, they are crisp and fresh on the outside, but the filling is unsettled and indigestible; in age the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling comes at last into its own. May you relish them indeed.” What a wonderful quote and saying! However, if you are struggling with weight issues and need to lose some pounds, fast don’t diet. Diets are also works of the devil for they cause a person to lose the joy of eating. People should enjoy eating and, if needed to lose weight, they should fast and look forward to the reward of eating once again when the extra weight is gone. But overall, don’t worry about your size. Cook fancy dishes and eat lots of food!

These three points come from The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Capon with the hope that all people will enjoy eating and embrace new and difficult challenges as they cook. Afterall, great cooking demands great eating.

Cheers!

Chloe Elizabeth

Chloe Evans 8/17/18

Senior Food Course