In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.


Genshi menu: lamb leg and vegetables au gratin

I suppose cooking for just one person (myself) is one of the things I like about living alone. Sometimes, when it comes to cooking, I become rather passionate. Even the presentation must be good. In any case, last night's lamb and veggies au gratin (white sauce) is one of the best I've come up with. It's better than my Japanese food. Lagi shiok sial! Cost: Not sure, but definitely under AUD 7.00 for the entire platter. Food needn't be expensive to be good. You just need to know how to cook it properly and in well-spiced extra virgin olive oil.

I admit that I was really hungry because I didn't eat lunch yesterday. But it was still good, I believe. Cloris tried it and said it was nice. The only thing was that I put too much chilli in it (cut red chilli). It's meant for the decoration and some mild spice but it turned out to be too hot. It's weird because I bought the same chilli from the same Safeway supermarket last week and it wasn't very hot at all. Must be a different emulsion - uh, I mean, different batch of chilli. Ha ha.

The sauce is otherwise my favorite part of the meal. It's a secret sauce so I can't tell anyone the ingredients. Very simple, yet it's something no one would think of. It's not too overwhelming, but it's not too light. Rather, it's got a nice little blend. Tasting it gives me the feeling of a late night dinner in a St. Germain-des-Pres cafZ . At the same time, I kept imagining I was having a humble but wholesome meal after a hard day's work along Via Veneto. I also think of old jazz and 50s European ballades. Lots of emotions on one plate.

The vegetables were pretty decent, except for the potatoes, of which were too many and boiled for too long (and therefore too mushy). Other than that, I managed to pull of a pretty decent combination of mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, yellow peppers and red chillies... all fried in the same pan (yes, including the already-boiled potatoes).

Now the lamb - medium-well, marinated in white wine, pesto sauce, sundried tomato sauce, garlic and seasoned with black pepper and oregano herbs. I could afford to use lots of ingredients here because the strong smell of lamb could hold its own in terms of taste. Net result: the gastronomic assault of the senses! On top of the lamb are whole basil leaves, meant for decoration, though I actually managed to taste it in the lamb.

Now, this may seem like a lot of work. But I actually did the whole plate in 30 minutes. Most other days, I cook for more than an hour (for one person!). The nicest touch I did was to put everything on a steel platter (not silver), which I bought for just AUD 4.95.

The last time I did this well was when I cooked pork shin with lemon-honey sauce topped with caviar. But that was too expensive and took more than an hour, though it tasted just as good as last night's lamb leg.

Although lamb was order of the day, there was little fat involved. I checked before buying. There was just a sliver of it, which melted alway into the gravy. Olive oil is also healthier than regular corn or vegetable oil. And I made sure I used as little as possible anyway. There was enough pesto in the lamb. The main flavours of the meal came from the vegetables, actually, which soaked into the white sauce. Really, it was a meal of a myriad of emotions, full of colours and flavour.

Anyway, all this cooking got me thinking about last year when I was considering being a chef as one of the career choices available to me. I also wonder about the few times my mum mentioned of starting a cafZ of sorts, in which lunches and dinners were available on certain days. I wouldn't mind cooking for that cafZ, you know.

But between cinema and food, I chose cinema. My guess is that either way, I would do pretty decently.

So what was the factor that made me eventually choose film-making? Well, looking back now, I don't particularly yearn too much to be a chef. Whereas, if I chose to be a chef, I might really yearn to make films. Film-making ended up to be something that I liked more.

The more films I watch, the more I'm inspired to make films. I just saw Stephen Kwan's Rouge and Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together during the weekend. They were having a memorial of sorts: The Screen Life of Leslie Cheung. They were both very good films. Rouge was particularly touching, appealing to me more, though it was much less experimental than the existential Happy Together, even though I very much like Wong Kar-Wai's overall dramatic visual style.

The aesthetics of film-making can be applied to cooking, I believe. Like Wong Kar-Wai's films, food must look visually stunning on the outside and taste tantalizing (multi-laterally) on the inside. Yet at the same time, food can be just one part of a whole - never telling the full story. There is always something in the meal, common to all of the finest foods, that no one else can ever figure out. Each bit is a part of something that is not present, a taste left hanging so the consumer would always ask for more...

Anyway, I've chattered long enough. I hope you all have a fantastic dinner sometime soon. If you cook, just remember one thing: the best seasoning you can prepare any food with is love. :D

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam