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If my steak could talk
With a linen napkin draped across my lap and a glass of fruit infused water in hand, I sat and wondered what the steak on the plate in front of me would say if it could speak.
JORDAN MOSHE
It was no ordinary steak, it was a masterpiece of haute cuisine, a serving of tender slivers of beef atop a bed of al dente lentils, and I could feel it judging me. After what I had put it through, it had every right to.
It may be thrilling to dine on gourmet food, but preparing it yourself beforehand has the potential to make you anxious about eating it. I learned this on Monday evening at the Healthy Shabbos Cooking event held at Discovery’s headquarters in Sandton.
An initiative of the Shabbos Project this year, the evening offered a hands-on cooking experience under the guidance of renowned Israeli chef Tali Friedman. Together with 25 others, and following her instructions, I was eager to cook up a storm at the Discovery Vitality HealthyFood Studio.
The state-of-the-art kitchen (kashered for the occasion) on the ninth floor had a view of the Sandton evening skyline and boasted rows of gleaming cooking stations. Their marbled tops sported induction stoves, an array of pots and pans, utensils, and recipe cards at the ready.
Nearby, tables set for dinner stood waiting to receive our culinary creations. To get us in the mood, staff served us an entrée of Jerusalem artichoke soup and ceviche with cherries.
We were then given the task of creating fish fillet in Mediterranean sauce, eggplant Baladi with chickpeas and tahina, and ribeye with tomato and peppers served with frikeh. Now, I’m no stranger to the kitchen, but my vocabulary turned up blank with “Baladi” and “frikeh”. The best it could do was render them amusing by altering them into “baldy freak” for my personal amusement.
Things didn’t look promising as the cooking got underway. Friedman’s description of the dishes and basic outline of the recipes sounded simple enough, but that was before she left us all to our own devices. I tried to look casual as I sipped my water and gazed around the room in feigned interest, feeling the perspiration on my brow as I thought to myself, “Jordan, you should just stick to boiling water. Live off microwavable meals for the rest of your life, and tell no one what happened here tonight.”
To my immense surprise, the evening that unfolded proved far more entertaining and less nerve-wracking than I’d expected. I also discovered I wasn’t the only lost soul in the room. Concerned expressions, requests for help, and repeated calls of, “What did she say we must do now?” weren’t only commonplace, but proved that we were all in the same boat, collectively unsure whether to throw our oars overboard or set it on fire.
Sailing certainly wasn’t easy, and I believe that the assistant chefs will wake up screaming for weeks to come because they can still hear my voice asking for guidance.
When I wasn’t asking the staff for help, I was unintentionally reinventing the recipes. A loose lid on a grinder left me with enough pepper in my pan to season dishes for years to come, forcing me to start from scratch after an already inauspicious start. What started as a compliment for my creativity became a look of unbridled horror when an assisting chef realised that the black spheres weren’t lentils but peppercorns. She looked as though she wanted to weep as I began afresh. Whether for me or herself, I’ll never know.
After almost two hours of labour, we sat down at last to sample our handiwork. We’d sautéed and seared, grilled and grinded, perspired and platzed (cracked). Our cohort had even suffered a casualty along the way, bringing Hatzolah responders to the scene with a stretcher to attend to a chef who’d been burned by an exploding eggplant.
From beginning to end, it was certainly an eventful evening, and the fact that we could conclude it all by eating the dishes certainly felt fitting.
The evening taught me many things. I developed newfound respect for the culinary arts and learned that there’s no shame in asking for help when pepper overruns your pan. I discovered that gourmet kosher food isn’t only a possibility, but less daunting than I’d imagined. However, it demands some effort, patience, and a willingness to feel hopeless at times.
Perhaps most importantly, I learned that “frikeh” refers to the lentils, but I’m sorry to say that “Baladi” remains beyond me and will remain synonymous with baldy for some time.