https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/movies/the-taste-of-things-review.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
“The Taste of Things” captures the joy of variety injected into mere existence: savory and sweet, hot and sour, juice and cream and astringency are not required for pure subsistence, but the rich range of taste we have created in our daily meals says something about human longings not easily put into words. This mystery, like love, is hard to parse: Though we know loss is entwined with the feast, we choose to savor it anyhow.“
A feast to go see!
We’re planning on seeing it in a small venue in London, where ticket prices are still reasonable as going to the movies has become so expensive these days.
Love for food and recipes is the perpétuel ingredient to go into the heart of the house. The kitchen , the table , my table and with all the years pass the kitchen how little in space is the ultimate secret to all our secrets.
The banana cake that’s in the oven at this moment is prove of finding refuge too in making food when the heart is not at ease, when we worry and feel insecure. Not knowing exactly about what or why but in pouring the oil into that bowl and mixing gently the ingredients into a smooth cake batter I easily smell, sense the other cakes, memories short lived maybe - as for the time we look for the recipe, find the ingredients in the pantry, prepare the tin, heat the oven, poor the batter into the tin and lick the spoon and let melt the flavours on our tongue is like a wink of the eye - the sensorial journey lives on like words filtered in clouds passing by like love lived and lost.
Cakes are one of my favourite bakes. When I grew up cake was the treat. My grandfather baked cakes and I loved to stand next to him and watch him in the kitchen, there was patience, there was love for each ingredient, there was ease in how he used the wooden spoon and mixed the ingredients into a smooth and irresistible tasty light yellow batter. The feast started when I was allowed to out my finger in the batter and tell him what I thought was right or missing. My face lighted up in one big smile from ear to ear and I loved him so much. And the batter was soft, sweet, vanilla the best. His movements in the kitchen were calm, no mess, all organised and clean, step by step, a kind of a checklist and I followed him in the kitchen. When my patience came to an end it was time to take the cake out of the oven then we had to leave it in the cake form for a while longer and the onto the the yellow tray with tiny holes to cool it down, upside down. While the cake was cooling down we got to prepare the ‘mocca’ (coffee) cream. Dark black coffee made with boiled water poured over a heap of coffee in an iron coffee filter. The dark bitter coffee was then incorporated into soft butter and icing sugar. The icing we made in a coffee bean grinder by grinding caster sugar. All these beauty’s of design appliances made the kitchen a happy playground. When the cream was tight in color, consistently and tasty and the cake completely cooled down the piping could start. A large plastic piping syringe was filled with the cream and my grandfather started a pattern of stripes and dots on top of the cake. And then it was my turn. Sometimes he would cut slices first and then we would decorate each slice with dots and swirls and use different pipings tips. Many many years later at the Cordon Bleu in London I would learn to pipe all kind of patterns and it brought me back to my childhood and all the good moments with him. He after all was one of my biggest inspirations to bake in my life.
Pictures capture banana moments and recipes in both Cassis and London. Vegan and gluten free. Always peanut and nut free.
