On the first day of landing in New York, I pulled a suitcase to catch the train
In March 2019, I packed 20 boxes of luggage and sent them home, bringing almost six years to an end to my nearly six years of life in Beijing. The rational way of thinking of the finance profession has restrained my impulse to change careers immediately. A year of studying in the UK has completely changed my definition of the ideal job, making me full of courage to do the ideal job at the age of 30, and at the same time, the professional background has given me the ability to improve the viability of the ideal. Most people would say that there is a gap between ideals and reality. I have no doubt about this, but I also believe that the gap between ideals and reality can be shortened through planning. At the age of 28, for the first time in my life, I made a decision for myself--- changed from a financial worker to a kitchen apprentice. This is a decision that a 28-year-old girl should make in the conventional sense.
In fact, the plan to decide to transfer from the workplace to the back kitchen was on the back list from 2013, when I received my master's degree in finance, but there was no chance to realize it. But from the day they graduated, the foodie's brain selectively began to forget the string of financial numbers and replace it with bowl after bowl of exotic food. Food fills my stomach and stomach and accounts for fifty percent of my life. I'm glad I finally found my dream job goal before I turned 30, and I'm glad the idea didn't burst out at the age of 18. Making a decision is no longer easy these days, and there are too many factors to weigh, but once you make up your mind, you will inevitably think through and imagine the worst outcome.
Until now I still remember what my dad said to me: If you can't go down this road and want to come back, you can't get back to your current position, can you bear this sense of gap?
I said, I can!
Bonding with food seems predestined
In retrospect, an interest in food and cooking wasn't the idea that you had to make ends meet studying abroad. Although my parents never admitted that I was obsessed with cooking because of them, the "good meal" thing has been deeply rooted in the bone marrow since childhood, perhaps starting from standing at the table to help press the potion; it may have started by watching my mother and grandmother dry bean paste on the balcony; or it may have started by following my uncle to the river to touch the snails. I remember when I was a kid my dad would make fried chicken and braised fish in a delicious sauce, and he would always call me to the stove to "show off" his craft. At that time, my grandmother's family had a yard, a hawthorn tree, a toon tree, and since then, I have been accustomed to listening to my family discuss the fresh and tender toon that has just been laid down recently, and I bought new leek flowers tomorrow, what is coming to the market, and what is the season to eat. Perhaps it is the beautiful memories behind these foods that make me believe that eating every bite of food well can make the soul feel more pure happiness.
When I grew up, my favorite thing was to organize a game and eat with everyone. In the first few years, I tasted the taste of the corner of Beijing, and as soon as I heard where a new store had opened, I couldn't wait to punch in. Later, after the work stabilized, he began to indulge in the vegetable markets in various streets, and as soon as he caught up with the seasonal season, he was busy organizing a meal to satisfy the desire to swallow the first fresh bite of the season. As the number of places left behind has increased, more and more meals have been organized, so I began to fantasize about making "rice bureaus" a business. In 2017, we founded "Anytime Date" Co., Ltd. (a brand with a small lotus talent) with good friends, and we originally hoped that we could travel and eat together with new friends. I shared my curiosity about the unknown with everyone; I spread my freshness about things to the world, but later, the decision to study at the Culinary Institute of America (hereinafter referred to as the CIA) made me slightly restrain my imagination of career, and first turned my interest into a career to appear more down-to-earth, so that I would have more confidence and confidence in the pursuit of my life's career. During the two years of further study, it was like a long journey from the market in Beijing, leaving a gastronomic footprint in the Mediterranean, the American continent and the Eurasian continent. Kitchen knives, cameras and paintbrushes helped me jot down the smell of cooking smoke from this trip.
Paintbrush to get the kitchen knife out of the cutting board
Notes for the last lesson of the Cooking Basics class
I have always felt that this is a blessed journey, from the day I enrolled in school, and I have always believed in it until now. Returning to campus after a long time at work feels a bit like buying a ticket to return to old age. It's like flying 12 hours and waking up back to 10 years ago, but the duration of this trip is only 2 years. I want to document this hard-won opportunity and not miss a single detail. The kitchen is a fast-paced place, with every rise and fall in temperature; every minute and second the clock moves; every moment the knife rises and falls, the food undergoes a wonderful change of reaction. From the moment I was given a chef's hat at cooking school, it also opened my curiosity and triggered my perception of fresh neurons. Compared to cameras recording moments of life, brushes can span space and time. The cooking handbook begins with the first "Basics of Cooking", the stove and cutting board extend from the kitchen to the writing desk; the burnt brown of the Merlard reaction when the protein is heated; the crushed flowers of the flour fried in the oil pan; the cross grid of the steak falling on the baking sheet; the threads of the mashed potatoes swirling down from the framed flower bag; the oily light reflected by the vegetables in the water; the heart that spills out of the egg when it is cut open, and so on, all of which are recorded one by one. It may be that the skill of boiling the broth is not only mastered by the foot strength of standing in the kitchen for a long time, but also the endurance of sitting in front of the writing desk. As the course experience progressed a little deeper, the cooking handbook stacked in front of the desk was also drawn from "Basics of Cooking" to "World Cuisine Map". Color is something that inherently has the magic of transmitting taste, and those that cannot be tasted on the other side of the earth seem to be eaten in the mouth once they are drawn with a paintbrush.
The curriculum of the CIA is very comprehensive, basically covering various business models in the catering industry, while diversifying the model, but also pursuing the ultimate in detail and depth. From basic cooking to exquisite cuisine, you will find your own interests and directions in the gradual learning. Rather than understanding the chemistry and physical structure between food and food, I have a special interest in tracing the roots of food and understanding the human story behind it. The family ties of citrus; a plate of pickled fish from the Middle East to South America; the diversity of Mexican tacos. I was amazed by the origins of ketchup and fish sauce, and excited to discover fibonacci numbers on the pagoda cauliflower. Taking care of the handbook allows me to bring the food and the story behind it, as well as its little-known little secrets, to more people.
Moments in class
Thanks to the industry aura of his alma mater, every graduate who enters the restaurant world from the CIA will have a stepping stone to enter the exquisite cuisine industry. Therefore, most of the students who come to the CIA to study have a "chef's dream". In contrast, my dreams are actually relatively flat. Probably due to the limitations of age, I know very well that if I start to make "becoming a chef" myself at the age of 30, it is a very unrealistic and immature idea. When the "chef aura" faded, I also saw the shining point that attracted me. If the "chef's dream" is a stage that wants to express themselves with food, I prefer to use food to build a "bridge", a bridge that can connect people and people, people and people's destinations, and people and the world.
Food, let the body not move, the heart is far away
During those years of work, my friends and I traveled to many countries, and curiosity drove us to explore the corners of the world, and also brought us to various markets in the world; "eating well" became an indispensable part of the journey, because eating became a way for us to understand the destination. "Eat well" is to eat seriously and eat authentically. We clocked in celebrity chef restaurants, but what we remember more is in the streets and alleys of the city, a bag of snails that we accidentally bought after watching the World Cup final in France; a fish caught on the ice of Lake Baikal and a barbecue in the forest snow; a dinner at a friend's house in Siem Reap; a roast guinea pig in the deep alleys of Peru... And these memories also make the shining point of our travel story, even if we return to the original point, often can bring us back to the distant place not only the picture behind the electronic screen, but also the taste of déjà vu in the memory.
There is no shortage of people in this industry who tell stories with food, and they all speak very well, and many people use their food to express their culinary philosophy. Compared with them, I am not a storyteller, and I want to use painting to build the bridge between man and the world; in my picture, food is simple, really beautiful, like the snowy winter, holding the hot sweet potato in my hand as pure, without deliberate carving, without excessive decoration. The cold temperature and the boiling sweet potatoes, the flying snowflakes and rising heat, the soft glutinous inner and caramelized skin. Such a simple contrast is the pleasure that food brings me, and it is also the joy I want to express, so that more people can identify with the meaning of food itself.
Eat well and paint well
Now near graduation, the food journey is coming to an end, the notes have been recorded in several large books, the photos have exploded, but looking back, after seeing so many noble and gorgeous appearances of food, I still believe that it can peel off the bloated appearance to reflect its delicacy, not to show the essence of beauty with rare and luxurious; I still believe in the simplicity and purity of the four words "eat well", and accept the gifts of nature frankly. As a chef, cooking for everyone must be an objective statement of the tastes that belong to the seasons and regions, rather than an over-interpretation of the subjective tastes. If a taste belongs to another corner of the world, I hope to show its history and humanities with the enthusiasm of "having friends from afar", rather than the preference of "domination". I am glad that I can hold a paintbrush in my hand, and in addition to insisting on conveying the taste of food with cooking, the brush makes the identity of the "cooker" more full, so that I can occasionally make up for the regret of the taste in my heart after being forced to be fused.
Someone once told me to remember what it means to stick to one meal after another in today's popular way of making convenient food bags. There must be no shortage of people in this world who are trying their best to perform on the dazzling catering stage, foie gras, caviar, white truffles as props for the performance, they hold the right to speak of "rare things are precious", and I may be the one who waits until the end of the stage, the "actor" removes makeup, and serves a hot soup and hot dish. Someone once asked me what I wanted to do in the future? I said that I had no ambition in cooking, and I wanted to cook for everyone in a down-to-earth manner. I want food to enter people's hearts and memories with the taste and temperature it should have.
One of the most beloved walls in the school building