tsvetoslav shalev

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.

― Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

Complementary listen

I am a conservative eater. If a certain combination of ingredients and heat produces the desired flavour profile and texture, you can expect their return to my table sooner than the announcements of new Star Wars spin-off shows. Day in, day out, a creature of habit, I reach for the same menu items, optimizing the process, pre and post. My first objective is to sustain; then to fuel and to drive. The monotony does not bother me in the least. When I do not eat due to emotional distress, I am at ease and at peace with my meal choices. You can say I am an experienced zazen practitioner at the dining table. I also happen to be a lover of all things diverse. Life’s depth is an enigma; its meaning profound, but a wealth of experiences lie in its marvellous variety.

I watch her slender hands attacking a fresh batch of dough with enviable competence. To a passer-by, she is a youth hard at work in the kitchen of her family home. Her intensity, however, is competing with fiery pain all too familiar to many of us. She is writing a love letter in a baking tray. Her sincerity of intent manifested objectively, so real you can taste it. In the delicate pale-pink blush of macaroons, the melancholy decadence of biscuits enrobed in white chocolate, in the orographic knots of her babkas. As I close my eyes and follow the scent of yeast, caramelizing sugars, and cinnamon, I am led into a private space where the oven reigns supreme. Its heat matched only by that of her precious tears. In this complication, her human abilities match the spontaneity of creation itself. A beguiling shimmer of causes and effects, of primal triggers and melted cheese. My Heaven is her Hell – an impassable temporal irregularity of two particles in varying stages of decay.

A firm believer in the honesty of her creations, I am compelled to continue to explore a universe in which we live to have foods made lovingly. I am a child again and in my grandmother’s kitchen. She is rolling dough, sprinkling it on occasion with flour the hue of the first snow. Her wrinkled hands move the rolling pin deftly, as the pliant ball turns into a thin sheet – one of many, the unappetizing promise of a pillowy banitsa with acacia honey. And not a care in the world. Only time, like a faint hum, an itch in a hard-to-reach-place, a will-o’-the-wisp in the yet unexplored corners of my adolescent mind.