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| Show cooking as a real attractive art (picture from Fooding Social Club) |
Since I live in Italy
I’ve seen a lot of of show cooking events. To me it remains strange to see
people that make cooking an event to animate the visitors. Usually it does not
even animate me at all, as usually it is too far away too see something, the stories
are boring (no one like to hear, cut this…, stir that….) and the result is disappointing.
A blog about the sense and non sense of using food to entertain.
Show cooking is a form
of entertainment that is typically of our days. In earlier periods, one could hardly
afford to use food for these kind of events: most people would already feel
lucky if they had enough to feed themselves.
For centuries,
preparing food has been an act done by the whole family. The men collected the
food, the woman prepared it and then it was eaten by the whole family. The
preparation took hours or even days and it was not something that was perceived
as a spectacle. Rather it was hard work and if you were not helping in the
kitchen there were definitely lots of other things to do to keep the household
running.
We now slowly seem to
lose respect for this ‘profession’: ready-to-eat-breakfasts, quick lunches and
cheap dinners at the sushi bar are
now the order of the day. And that also enabled this to make a show out of it:
open-plan kitchens in many restaurants and the earlier named show cooking.
Even though show
cooking seems something of these days, we should not forget about the examples
of the past, of the rich that could afford to ‘play’ with food. This class has
always used food to show off their guests as described in John Dicke’s Delizia. And we all
know the still lifes, for example the ones by Caravaggio, in which food became the main
subject of an artwork. If it interests you, I suggest you go and visit the Art&Foodexhibition
that will be organized by Expo 2015 and Triennale Design Museum, Milan.
To get an idea of
what we now do with food (besides eating it) you should do a google search on ‘food
art’. I was amazed of the artworks that are created of products that are
actually made to eat. Anyhow, back to the shows. I’ve (accidentally) visited a
few of them, but hardly once I’ve been convinced about the intention. Usually
it is not more than a (famous) cook that prepares a simple but tasty dish while
explaining what he is doing. The only difference I see with watching a cooking
program on the television is that you are now treated with the nice flavors
that come with the cooking process. It is quiet boring anyhow.
As I said, once I was
taken by the performance. During an
aperitivo at the Festival delle Comunità del Cambiamento, FoodDj Nick Difino from Fooding Social Club did a good job.
While preparing the dish he treated us with good music and interesting stories,
not about the recipe, but about the ingredients, the history of the dish, and
so on. It was a real pleasure, not only
for the mouths, but also for the ears and eyes.
