“Is Food Scientific or Artistic?” I was asked this a few days ago when applying for scholarships. I came to the consensus that,
Food is the basic unction that keeps us alive, it does not only give us the proper nutrients but it brings life unto our being. Some see food as a religious sense, others enjoy it for the many flavours that reside around the world, others like to limit their intake of food. We all need it, some way or another. Therefore everyone is affected by the very idea of food.
As a person who hides behind food, as an unspoken aspect of the meal that many guests do not bat an eye at. I originally took up the study of food, due to my upbringing, which was surrounded by creativity. As nearly everyone in our family as a hobby did something artistic, mine was along the lines of drawing, painting and (surprise) writing. I later picked up photography when a disposable camera was placed in my hands during field trips and I would reserve some film for other things I thought had beauty that were not the ‘status quot’.
The world is so overwhelmingly competitive when it comes to the any field of the arts. It typically takes a lot of time of study and practice, and even after so much practice one may still not be good enough to be successful. One may say the fear of failure hastened my decision, but to the latter, I had difficulty coming up with a decision.
After stepping my small feet into the culinary world, for a year, I found that I absolutely loved it. That it was something that did not tire me, regardless of how many hours I stood on my feet, or how many burns my forearms collected, I found that I picked right back up and looked for more. There was a strong sense of creativity in the kitchen, although not everyone was “creative”. Those that had an eye for it, were granted brushes to paint with.
So thus I attended culinary school and learned all the reason why food cooks the way it does, trust me there are not enough resources to explain why. My muscles learned to memorize the order of everything and the classical way to prepare food, but after comprehending why, I learned how to break the rules how to add my own sense to plates, and that was what I was really looking for, my little outlet of creativity.
It goes so much deeper than art.
After learning the why behind food, I began to ask the who behind the why, and why the who came up with such raging hypothesis, and why can’t the who change to a different who. Why couldn’t the who be me?
To come up with such answers to dig with such research, I learned that the one must learn the science first, for after comprehending the why, and breaking all the unbreakable rules, one can truly be artistic. It is a frontier that has not been stepped on yet, for so many people do not ask the why, but simply face it as fact. For when facts can be broken down to truths, the truths can be used in such a creative format that only a select few can envision and even fewer fulfill.
-cheers
Cooking Adventures With Maddy 