A.A. Gill on the pleasures of cooking

RIP A.A. Gill. Your words will continue to inspire me for years to come."Before I wrote about restaurants, I wrote about cooking. And before I wrote about cooking, I taught cooking. And before that, I taught myself how to cook. And before that, I bought sloppy brown take aways and put them on the floor and shared them with the dog. I cooked because I was unhappy and unloveable, and I discovered, over the years, that if you look at the lives of most people who have spent more time, trouble and money than is strictly necessary on their dinner, you'll generally find that food and cooking is a balm, a physical therapy for some unhappiness, some loss, or cruelty or loneliness. 

If you read cookery books, it isn't hard to discern the depression and langour of chefs and restauranteurs and recipe compilers who found they tend to all eat with a black dog. There is something fundamental about the practice of preparing food: it is always a kindness, a communion, a wish that you will be well, that you will be healthy, that you will be replete and feel warm and safe.

There is a temporary earthly redemption when you take something that was cold and desiccated, dead and defunct, and make it live again as something else, something that heals. And learning to cook is hospitable and collective, it comes with conversation and togetherness, it is the bond of family and friendship, the connection to community and culture."

A.A. Gill

Block on Thai food and sex

"I'd sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies."

Francesca Lia Block. 2000. The Rose and the Beast: Fairytales Retold.

Grace Dent on burgers

"The fetishisation of the burger continues. Despite the bombardment of Honest, Byron, Dirty Burger, Patty & Bun and MeatLiquor aiming to put a 3,000-calorie blowout of brioche, batter and bourbon on every corner, London shows no signs of ennui. I am not their average customer. Diet sensibility-wise I find myself straddled several yards short of the spooky Eat Nourish Glow brigade — who claim to survive on tepid egg cups of boiled bones — yet far from a woman who eats a double-stack patty with onion rings dipped in chipotle mayonnaise at lunchtime guilt-free. Although, if I’m honest, I can, and have done, and several photos of me exist on the internet standing at parties with my arms around gaunt, size 6 showbiz chums resembling, in relative terms, an amiable Tyrannosaurus rex that has entered a toddler’s sandpit."

Grace Dent

Counihan on bread

"Like all foods, bread is a nexus of economic, political, aesthetic, social, symbolic, and health concerns. As traditionally the most important food in the Sardinian diet, bread is a particularly sensitive indicator of change."

Carole M. Counihan

Counihan, C.M. 1999. The Anthropology of Food and the Body. New York: Routledge. 25.

Janisse Ray on seeds

"If you haven’t heard what’s happening with seeds, let me tell you. They’re disappearing, about like every damn thing else. You know the story already, you know it better than I do, the forests and the songbirds, the Appalachian Mountains, the fish in the ocean. But I’m not going to talk about anything that’s going to make us feel hopeless, or despairing, because there’s no despair in a seed. There’s only life, waiting for the right conditions – sun and water, warmth and soil – to be set free. Every day millions upon millions of seeds lift their two green wings."

Janisse Ray