My friend: “Look at that, how gorgeous is that!?”
Me: “Very pretty. Looks a bit too busy for me, though.”
My friend: “What do you mean, busy? This is art!”
Me: “I never said it wasn’t! Whoever did it clearly has skill, talent, and vision- I just wouldn’t want to eat it.”
I wasn’t lying at all. The picture was of an immaculately conceived wedding cake- pristine flowers of gum paste exploded from the corners. Delicate chocolate work clung to the velvet-smooth sides of the tiers seeming to defy gravity. Flashes of color seemed to dance over the cake, like wisps of flame against a snowy field in a full moon.
It was pristine.
It was exquisite.
It was positively breathtaking.
I didn’t want to eat it.
So, in my opinion, it failed as food.
As I’ve discussed before, very often I’ve been asked by friends and relatives if I didn’t want to have my own show someday, going into a business like Ace of Cakes or Cake Boss, and my lack of desire for such work has been met by various levels of incredulity. I recall one conversation with a relative who was positively exasperated and infuriated when I insisted that I didn’t want to grow my business to such a point that I would no longer have to bake- in his words, where I could “just show up on Monday, collect my check, make sure no one’s hurt themselves, and leave.”
He insisted I was being idealistic and naive. I insisted that he just didn’t “get it.”
In a way, we were both right.
To my mind, food shouldn’t just be beautiful- it should be appetizing. Any outward beauty or elegance should be in service to making the dish whet the appetite- to make that first bite “taken with the eye” utterly intoxicating and addictive. Food is a unique art form in that a vital part of its existence and reason for being is its destruction. Name a single book what was written with the INTENT it should be destroyed. How about a painting? A song written so that it should never be sung by anyone again? It doesn’t exist.
Only food finds its ultimate fulfillment in its moment of destruction.
Food, despite all the meaning and beauty and symbolism we attach to it, is what in the end? S*** in waiting.
What makes food beautiful to me? Three words- “Simplicity, with elegance.”
Put another way, ordinary things done extraordinarily well.
I want my food to look like food, but I want it to look like EXQUISITE food. For example, can you think of something more plain and ordinary than a pie? They are everywhere- housewives make them. Definitely not something you’d find on the menu of a Michelin Star winning restaurant.
A pie done with ELEGANCE, however, is something else.
A warm, soothing aroma from the oven that wraps its arms around you like a loving grandmother.
A soft, crackling sound from the crust as it cools and the layers shrink and separate.
The intricate, delicate crimping of the edges- reminiscent of a wreath of flowers, or a hand-sewn lace.
The engaging, golden color and shine, provided by a perfectly mixed eggwash, brushed on the crust at the RIGHT temperature, at the RIGHT time.
Vents, clean and sharp as the knife that created them, offering a peek at the goodness inside.
And finally, the filling- homemade, with the BEST and FRESHEST ingredients, in the PRECISE proportions to create a filling neither too stiff, nor too runny.
Just writing all that made me drool.
It is wonderful, necessary, and desirable to have artistry and skill. But elegance and finesse are something completely different. If you can execute your work with that, even the simplest things can be a work of art.
And they’ll be food.
Food that people want to eat.
Be tasteful,
be elegant,
and of course,
Stay classy,
-BHB
The Black Hat Baker 