Fly #3: Heston Blumenthal, don’t sell yourself to the fodder of the plebeian

Heston Blumenthal is my newest crack addiction. Procrastination, once stale Facebooking and the odd exotic afternoon snack (savoys with cheese and tomato sauce, anyone?) is now a hedonist YouTube binge of How to Cook like Heston shows. I will flip from a shirtless picture of Jake Gyllenhaal to a clip on how to perfect Heston’s black forest cake, and there would be no change in my desire to lick the screen. So you can imagine that I was close to devastated when, after a fevered two-hour read, I concluded that cookbook Heston Blumenthal at home was an anti-climax to his on-screen extravagance. 

In its hefty 400-page glory, there are few gems accessible to commoners.  Many of the recipes are far above anything classified as “home cooking”. My mother, an accredited chef, and myself, proud amateur, attempted the most pedestrian recipe - the slow-cooked lamb shank and giant couscous salad. What was assumed to be a breezy hour of cooking was actually a rambling cacophony of North African spice mix on the floor, and squished couscous between the stoves. After many floor mops and emergency trips to the IGA, the meal actually turned out to be a raging success. But this was at the cost of a whole afternoon and a kitchen which resembled a crime scene. The book is advertised as “classic home cooking, by Britain’s most creative chef”, which is a testament to the artistic grandeur of Heston, not his family-friendly dishes. Since when was the use of dry ice, or 15-ingredient, two-kilogram crab stock ever classic home cooking? Come now Heston, we don’t all have a laboratory, or the Atlantic Ocean for a kitchen.

For this reason, the lusty final masterpiece photos and attractive recipe layout make a flip through torture. How could you dedicate a whole-page photo of the perfect cheese toastie, and tell me I can only re-enact the fantasy with a fondue set, two types of rare cheese and seven assorted spices and flavourings? That is not home cooking, and the vision of sinking my teeth into this crisp cheese dripping toasted sandwich will only ever be unrequited love. It is page after page of frothing-at-the-mouth, jump-out-of-the-page decadence, and a teasing recipe that masquerades user-friendly ingredients and methods. But I can’t make any of them, and I finish my fruitless recipe hunt cursing the maestro.

Despite struggling to capture the lay-man imagination, the book is worth it, if only, for a read of its background information on how the meals “work”. Heston explains the science behind leaving the chicken out for 45 minutes before roasting it at 180C, and how slow cooking a stock allows soluble proteins to rise to the surface, making them easy to remove. He also uses the science of all the senses to uncover the mechanics behind a sweet tooth, and how playing music can enhance a meal’s flavour. While it would be far-fetched to serve a shell with a soundtrack of waves and seagulls whilst dining on edible sand and pickled seaweed, as Heston does in his restaurant, the first chapter offers an eccentric insight into food and the brain, something often skimmed over in the conventional cookbook. But the inclusion of food chemistry does not take away from the depressing reality that these dishes are just too hard and too obscure for the wannabe chef.

I could set aside a few days, and sacrifice some kitchen utensils to recreate a garden salad with edible soil, or, as it is named in the recipe, “gribiche”. But in the spirit of home cooking, why would I put myself through so much food preparation labour when I could heat up spaghetti from last night? Heston Blumenthal at Home would do the three-Michelin star chef justice if it were named along the lines of his other book, In Search of Perfection.

Heston battles to find a medium between his capricious gastronomy and the square meal of Joe Blogs. If you are one of his tragic disciples, or if you really have a thing for crab lasagne, Heston Blumenthal at Home is worth the sweat. Otherwise, it’s a jumbo book of did-you-know facts and a gallery of food pornography.

Black Forest Gateau http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQ7nwCJBlg
Cheese Fondue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxcIQOAaB24

Fly #2: Judging fat people? You are just a big loser.

“A life without happiness, companionship, love. A life alone.”

“It’s time for them to lose the weight, find the self esteem and gain the confidence”

The Biggest Loser 2012 pledges to save fat people from a life of singledom. Finally, something that is actually attacking the real side effects of weight gain!

Fortunately this pledge is wrong. Plenty of fat people get married, have sex, and feel as happy about themselves as the narcissistic personal trainers on The Biggest Loser. Why is it then that we still believe the false correlation between body weight and love life, or that being obese gets in the way of having a good time? The Biggest Loser is perhaps the most direct example of societal stigma against obese people, rather than obesity itself.

To cope with the national shame of potentially being the world’s fattest country, we have waged a war on obese people. The logic that fat equals failure, seems irrefutable, but an inherent dislike of The Biggest Loser has pushed me to question my own long-engrained prejudices against fat people. Some quotes against obese people I have heard this week alone:

“Fat person on the road! 100 points if you hit them!”

“Because she’s fat, I hate her even more”

“I would hate myself if I looked like that”,

And finally, “how could you let yourself get so fat?”

This question has baffled more than the weight bigot, or “fattist”. The overweight and obesity crisis, which in 2008 included 61% of the population*, has begged one explain why Australians seem to eat too much and not move enough. As calorie input and output are largely at the mercy of the individual, many will point the finger at lack of informed decision making, or greediness, as reason behind unhealthy weight gain. Does this make it okay, therefore, to pass judgement on obese people because they “chose” to be that way?

As the line between personal responsibility and health is so thin, a prejudice against obese people seems justified. Yet the war actually hinders any progress obese people can make to achieve a healthier body size. By turning obesity into a problem of personality, rather than health, people who are obese often feel marginalised and second-rate. This is not a good start to try new ways of living and lose weight in the long-term, as chronic weight gain is often due to environmental factors such as sedentary jobs, an upbringing of unhealthy eating, or as a consequence of emotional problems. These factors will not suddenly change as they require a struggle against reinforced habits. Just because an obese person struggles to make such changes, does not mean they have failed personally while everyone else lives vice-free. All humans, including the fittest athletes are lazy, make poor health choices and are weak to temptation, especially of the culinary variety. Someone’s personality is inconsistent and constantly in flux, making it impossible to determine with something as stagnant as body size.

Obesity levels have doubled since 1985*, and with no indication of rate decreasing, weight gain is set to become to become multi-generational health problem. Based on previous rate growth, it is esteemed that by 2020, 80% of adults will be obese*. Fattism is not helping fat people lose weight, and it only adds to the nation-wide confusion of what, where, and how much to eat. Our food and exercise choices are pushed into indecisive oblivion when we see the gleeful victimisation of fat people in The Biggest Loser, then straight after, a fevered thirty minutes of Masterchef that salivates over calorie-laden decadent dishes. If plenty of basic food education is enforced at school and in the public, perhaps we could see the unglamorous truth behind Masterchef contestant Lily’s rich chocolate cake, currently the most popular recipe on the show’s website. The media needs greater diversity in actor body types, providing entertainment which does not encourage self-hate and exclude obese people. Theatres, planes and clothing stores must modify to the larger consumer, and promote a consumer culture which does not humiliate one for their size.

So to all the fattists out there: The next time you see someone large, do remember that, just like downing three diet cokes a day, a penchant for cigars or binge drinking once a week, it is a problem of health, not personality. The war on obesity is not a war on people who are obese, it is a war against diet and food habits. We do not live to eat, we eat to live. You are more than what you eat.

*statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics

Fly #1: Money, it's a gas...and an electricity upgrade

Reflecting on a gap years is often a gush over what knowledge one has attained of the “real world” via overseas expeditions. I have had my fair share of these. I travelled to South America for two months, as well as a rowing trip in New Zealand. The most impressionable lesson I would take from my debut to adulthood, however, came from an unexpected encounter during my very first job as a sales representative.

Fed by the line that if I signed over a mere five people a day, I would earn one thousand dollars per week (not true), I was first in line to door knock house after house all over Melbourne’s outer suburbs. The residents of Rowville, Sydenham and Frankston, were graced with the pleasure of my presence, cued in with a cheery knock and pre-rehearsed “I’m here about power discounts, won’t take a minute”.

The job was terrible. The hours were absurd, door knocking from 11am, and picked up by 9pm. It was only commission based and I most certainly did not get five sales a day. My only buyers were single men, mothers who took pity and very old people who thought I was from the government. I knew that at some point, I needed to quit. Even someone as lowly qualified as me could find better work, as what I was told by many people answering the door. The unexpected encounter and “life lesson” came when I knocked on the door of a man who answered stark naked. True to the honour of the sales representative, and my frightening penchant for confrontation, I spat out my sales pitch, “Your house is on our list for an upgrade!” To add to the hilarity, he responded, “Yep ok I’ll buy it”.

I’ll buy it? No! I went on to fill out his contract anyway. I was, only one year out of childhood, already obsessed with profit. A sale is a sale, I reasoned. This man wants to buy his electricity from us, and I want my money. What he chooses to wear, or not wear is irrelevant. Dollar signs in my eyes had blinded rational thought. I acted like answering the door naked to a stranger was perfectly normal. Under the opportunism and faux-confidence I was terrified.

Why did he not realise that this was a bizarre and wildly inappropriate situation? I was in denial about taking my financial ambitions out of control, so I settled on moronic curiosity as reason to continue the sale.

“So, what do you do?” Every sale had to be verified to the proverbial call centre in the Philippines. While calls to the crackly voice on the other end were usually a speedy affair, this time they had put me on hold for ten minutes. This does not sound long until you are stuck with a very old fat naked man at the doorstep and nothing between you but a clipboard.

“I’m unemployed”. Really? I picked UN diplomat.

“Yeah” He looked sheepish, and for some reason, it seemed rude asking him to put clothes on. It was his house after all. I was on his front step pushing this silly contract on him. He was surely doing me a favour, buying from a sales representative.

“Do you want to come inside?” Oh god.

“Ahhh no, I better not, it is against company policy”.

He gives me an incredulous look. Excuse me? You have been naked, visible to the public eye from your front door for the last fifteen minutes, and I am apparently the one with the problem. The naked man situation was now no longer funny, it was unsafe. I should have seen this and either assertively demand he put some pants on, please sir, or walk away. But I didn’t. I wanted that forty dollars.

“I know. It’s ridiculous” I say. I was trying to be on the same thought wavelengths so as not to create an awkward tension and potentially lose the sale. My job was to be their best friend for five minutes, convince them to buy the electricity and never see them again. What difference did it make if they were naked?

My saviour from the Philippines call centre confirmed the sale and I was off the hook. I made a beeline for no place in particular and called a co-worker, who, door knocking away in a happy place where people answered fully clothed, suggested that I “just have a ciggie” and “chill out”. At the 9pm pick up I couldn’t wait for the dramatic reaction that would surely amount from such gross employee mistreatment. Would there be a law suit? A 60 Minutes documentary? The possibilities were endless.

“But did you get the sale? Good.”

I quit the week after.

For the weeks and months that followed I told this story to anyone who would listen, whether or not it fitted into conversation. I thought it was a entertainment piece, an ode to the plight of the sales representative. I stopped, however, when most were shocked and even disappointed that I pushed the sale. Even though nothing technically dangerous happened, I finally understood that money is not high on the priority list when values, and more importantly, safety are at stake. Forty dollars should not have been justification to converse with a nude stranger. This lesson, while learnt in a disturbing way, has guided me through many orthodox financial decisions, such as finding a new job and picking out degree majors. I wish I could have learnt the insignificance of money without compromising basic morals or common sense, but I suppose, in the spirit of the gap year, it was a life lesson that could only be learnt in the real world.