KEY POINTS:
Like most people of my generation I learned to cook from my mother, then school, then books.
In Canada in the 1970s, my world was taken over by slick food magazines. In Paris in the 1980s, I learned about fresh food markets, cheese and wine. I opened a restaurant and discovered exhaustion, anorexia and insanity.
In the 1990s, the world was gradually taken over by sun-dried tomatoes, rocket, flaky sea salt, quince paste, dukkah, creme brulee, 70 per cent cocoa chocolate and buffalo mozzarella.
Now in the 2000s it's all micro-greens, quinoa, cavalo nero, purple potatoes, ciabatta and jamon. But get this, the more competent I became with food, the simpler it got.
When you're young it's all about impressing and experimenting, and as you get older it's about being at one with the universe and accessing your inner regional cook.
Regional is code for easy. Your friends and family will not love you more for tetsuya's floating islands which bleed chocolate (you do it with a syringe).
It's cruel but true.
They will love you for Nigella's plum pudding. They will especially love you if you look like Nigella and that is also cruel but true.
The point of cooking is to share the love around, have people feel comfortable and go for delicious rather than death defying.
I have noticed that we cook less but buy more cookbooks, watch food telly and eat out more.
This is called transference. we sit up in bed and read cook books and magazines because we miss the preparation, smell, colour and cooking of food and the pleasure it gives us.
Like the saying, "there's nothing like curling up in bed with a good book or someone who's read one", with cuisine there's nothing like eating a good meal or being with someone who's eaten one.
Food writers inspire us, inform us, record history for us and reflect our culture.
New Zealand produces inter-national quality culinary literature - recently Cuisine won best food magazine from the cordon bleu world food media awards.
And Julie LeClerc won best recipe book for her fabulous Taking Tea in the Medina, about Morocco.
Over the years I have had literary love affairs with Mark Kurlansky, Marcella Hazan, Robert Carrier and Elizabeth David.
I have read wonderful food literature such as Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, My Year of Meat by Ruth Ozeki. I am still in love with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall,MFK Fisher and Paula Wolfert.
I have my moments with food critic AA Gill. Provocative is his middle name. The other day he said organic food was just a value-added designer label which had totally lost track of the organic movement's original ideals. And it hasn't made anyone a better cook. but reading cookbooks has.
- Detours, Herald on Sunday
