Artiste de Cuisine

As it pertains to food, I've never considered myself a master of presentation. This would disappoint my 6th grade science teacher, who spent many a lecture on how the proper presentation, with bright herbs and a white tablecloth, can make a run of the mill steak look gourmet, whereas the same steak presented less thoughtfully could be mistaken for a Howard Johnson's special. He of course repeated this story to instill in us the importance of presenting our work cleanly, with proper staples and neatly-ripped paper edges.

But even though I'm reasonably aesthetically oriented, I've never had the patience to tinker with small stylistic details of food prep (or any other craft project). I've slowly felt that changing, however, probably because I am finding food in its most natural, elemental state more and more beautiful. I think that with age, the natural world seems increasingly vivid, jewel-toned and art-like.

For example, this week I went about cooking fresh pasta with roasted cauliflower. It started with a simple chop of the veg:
But then look at this art I created by hardly trying:


I picture these as Joshua trees on a Savannah, with ant-sized monkeys hanging from the boughs. Or baobab trees on outer-space planets explored by Le Petit Prince. Or Italian lace woven on a little island outside of Venice.

Then we have the beauty of three different pastas, one simple flour + water, one egg dough, and one with chestnut flour, fatto a mano by yours truly at an 18 Reasons pasta class:

Here's the funny twist-- when I combined these beautiful ingredients, plus juicy capers and homemade garlic breadcrumbs, I ended up with a big pot of mush (albeit mush that my girlfriends at least claimed was quite tasty):

And there I am again, reminded why maybe being a food stylist isn't in my future...