The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry ***** by Kathleen Flinn
I’m joining Jain with my Edible Book Review at Food for Thought, where ”pages from your book magically mix with the kitchen and your camera”.
This was an excellent book, especially for Food for Thought. I devoured it :-) It was a quick read~I was able to finish on recent flight & while waiting at the airport. It made me laugh out loud, cringe at times, and feel a lot of empathy and admiration for Kathleen, who at the age of 36, decides to make lemonade out of the lemons she’s handed, when her job is eliminated. Following her dream to go to Le Cordon Bleu, she moves to Paris which requires her entire severance package and savings. Against her mother’s advice to get another job immediately, and without the benefit of speaking French, Kathleen embarks on her journey. If you’ve ever made a career change, taken a leap of faith, or just wish you could pick up and move on~ you’ll enjoy this book:
“Life is so much easier when you can wrap yourself within the veil of a big company’s identity. People assume that so much of what you do is who you are, and it’s easy to believe that yourself. There’s a stamp of worth that you get automatically by association.”
Chef Savard explains how to cut an onion. . .
“So, the sharper your knife, the less you cry.”
“I sink into the water and consider Chef Bertrand’s comment that pastry is like people. You can’t hurry love, and you can’t rush puff pastry, either. You can knead too much, and you can be too needy. Always, warmth is what brings pastry to rise. Chemistry creates something amazing; coupled with care and heat, it works some kind of magic to create this satisfying, welcoming, and nourishing thing that is the base of life.”
Quiche aux Oignons D’or et aux Tomates Rôties
Golden Onion and Roasted Tomato Quiche, recipe here
Kathleen reminisces about meeting Julia Child at a writer’s conference:
“Just as I sat down, I heard a familiar warble ask, ‘Is this seat taken?’ Julia squeezed her giant frame into the seat next to me. It was as if God Almighty had saddled up on my left. ‘The salmon at breakfast was so good, I had to finish it.’ she whispered in a conspiratorial tone. She took copious notes of the morning’s sessions. As we broke for lunch, she closed her notebook with a satisfied smile.’I always love to come to this workshop. You learn so much.’ she said. This amazed me. After all, she was Julia freakin’ Child. I assumed she knew everything there was to know about food and cooking. I politely told her so. She laughed. ‘Oh, no, you can never know everything about anything, especially something you love.’ she said, patting me on the knee. ‘Besides, I started late.’
There are lots of ups and downs for Kathleen. . . she does has company to commiserate with: “This isn’t cooking, it’s like learning a complicated sport!” — Kim, a student in Basic Cuisine
“Undeterred, I sign us up online for a promising monthly event. ‘Practice French language skills and meet new friends in a non-threatening environment,’ the description reads. Photos on the site had nothing but smiling, happy people holding up glass of wine or waving at the camera. It turns out to be a horrible blind date with ten people.”
Confit Provençal aux Tomates
Provençal tomato spread, recipe here
“It’s easy to appreciate why sauces developed into one of the distinguishing elements of French cuisine: a great sauce can hide a host of deficiencies. A bad sauce hides nothing, especially not itself.”
”Today’s sauce calls for roughly three tablespoons of butter and about a cup of cream. At 55 calories per tablespoon of cream and 90 for the same amount of butter, I calculate that these ingredients alone contain more than 1,500 calories. Perhaps this explains why I’ve gained seven pounds in five weeks.”
“I’ve gone through more than three hundred recipes, ninety lessons, my entire savings, and an incalculable number of calories from fat, cream, and butter. I look at my hands, scarred from a motley assortment of cuts and burns.”
“Everyone learns something different at Le Cordon Bleu, and maybe this is my lesson.” she says. “Sometimes I can’t be the best. Like today. My sauce was fine. It wasn’t the greatest sauce the judges saw, but it was what I could do today. I have to be happy with that.”
“As in cooking, living requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along–you can’t wait until the dish of life is done. In my career, I always looked ahead to the place I wanted to go, the next rung on the ladder. It reminds me of ‘The Station’ by Robert Hastings, a parable read at our wedding. The message is that while on a journey, we are sure the answer lies at the destination. But in reality, there is no station, no ‘place to arrive at once and for all. The joy of life is the trip, the station is a dream that constantly out distances us.’ How many tears did I cry because I didn’t know what I wanted? ‘The sharper your knife,’ as Chef Savard had said, ‘the less you cry.’ For me it also means to cut those things that get in the way of your passion and of living your life the way it’s meant to be lived. Of course, I also learned to make a mean reduction sauce and to bone an entire chicken without removing the skin, which is nice too.”
For more information on the author, visit her website & blog where you can find a recipe for limoncello out of lemons, rather than lemonade :-)
