Masterchef: cooking, conviction
“It is hard work. I didn’t get these wrinkles and bags under my eyes from sunbathing.” The no-nonsense wisdom of Michel Roux Jnr, the twinklingly tough, or toughly twinkly, centre of the Masterchef universe.
I thought, you wouldn’t get Damien Hirst saying that. Or Nicky Haslam. Or Kanye West. Or anyone else who pretends to be reaching for the diamond perfection of high art, when really all they’re doing is passing time until the cheques roll in.
The tragedy of the top-class chef is that he’s crafting monuments that disappear minutes after they’re created. The difference between Michel Roux Jnr and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, of course, is that Roux can build his masterpieces again and again, to order, perfectly. I passed over the Royal Albert Bridge twice a few weeks back, but it wasn’t as satisfying as the lobster salad I ate at Petersham Nurseries, months ago, a meal that exists as mere memory for me now — but as muscle memory for the chefs who could conjure it again in a flash. Which is more impressive?
The thing that binds Roux and Brunel together, if we must bind them (and we must or I wouldn’t have started this post), is conviction. The great Victorians burned with it, for better or worse, and we’ve lost it since. Last night, on BBC4, I watched Roux speak of his love of Escoffier for an hour, then followed that up with a doc on Paul Liebrandt, who scorched a path through New York gourmand-land with single-minded zeal — forten years before he found his patch. And I thought, are these guys the last ones with any real certitude? With a mission? With a desire to work for something intangible, beautiful, zirconic — until their eyes sag?
“We may not improve our lives but may achieve at least our ambiguities.” A line from The Table Comes First, Adam Gopnik’s meditation on the dinner drama, which I’m currently reading (devouring). It’s too modest. Perhaps it’s only chef who can improve our lives in the end.
