America蘑菇视频 next top chef is a toddler
Every mother has, at one point or another, gazed into the crystal ball of daydreams and imagined her eldest son’s future as an Olympic runner, or a composer whose symphony fills the halls of history, or a movie star sinking his hands into Hollywood’s concrete, or a sweet, neurotic neat-freak who innovates the garbage disposal industry (that last one just me, or?).
My son is, in my biased opinion, quite extraordinary, but I’ve recently been blown away by his much-advanced culinary prowess. I do believe I am raising America’s next top chef, and America’s next top chef is 2 years old.
My son’s first solid was avocado. He loved picking up pieces of that creamy green vegetable and mashing them between his gums. One afternoon, when he was about 8 months old, I watched my son reach for an avocado. Wearing a delighted grin, he bit into the avocado as though it were an apple. I laughed and stretched out my hand, ready to catch the rind he would inevitably spit out. Instead, I looked on in amazement as he chewed, swallowed, and went in for another big bite.
“Oh, no, we don’t…” I began. Then it hit me: my son had, at his tender age, realized something it takes many adults years to understand, that while avocado is delicious on its own, the experience might be elevated by adding more texture to every bite.
Soon after learning about texture and how it can make or break a dish, my son started experimenting with flavor. To heck with bland purees. He wanted apples dipped in peanut butter, eggs dripping in Heinz ketchup, toast smothered in butter and homemade blackberry jam.
The kid was adventurous in the kitchen; if it was on my plate, my little boy wanted to try it, and he developed a penchant for bold flavors. You can keep your jarred peas, my son seemed to say, I want a bowl of quinoa and sweet potatoes drowning in chimichurri!
My son began inventing his own culinary concoctions. There was Fried Rice Tea, an inventive appetizer that is equal parts room temperature orange hibiscus tea, chilled water, and homemade fried rice. There was Why Not Dip It In Hummus, a bowl of hummus teeming with blueberries and bits of tortilla chips, meant to be enjoyed one spoonful at a time. My son paired unlikely flavors and textures, and his discerning tastebuds knew a winner, even when I wondered what in the world he was doing.
On a recent afternoon, as I readied my daughter for an outing, my son opened the fridge. Good, I thought, he’ll entertain himself for a few minutes by looking at all the vegetables, and this whole leaving-the-house-during-winter thing will go more smoothly. I’d just zipped my daughter into her laughably big, blue winter onesie when my son’s sweet voice called to me from the kitchen.
“Mama, cook!” he said.
“You’re cooking!” I encouraged from the other side of the divider, which separates our kitchen and dining room.
“Mama, cook!” he said again.
I knew his tone; he wanted an audience. I put on a wide smile, picked my daughter up off the floor, and marched excitedly into the kitchen, where my son stood, fridge door wide open, a bottle of near-empty oyster sauce on the floor beside him, stirring a Dutch oven full of stuffed peppers with a small spatula.
“Oh, you’re really cooking,” I said, not sure whether to laugh – because oyster sauce stuffed peppers! – or cry – because oyster sauce stuffed peppers!
“Cook!” he said again, gleefully stirring.
The stuffed peppers were a gift from a friend, who had, upon delivering dinner, informed me they “weren’t the best” and “could use a little something,” perhaps a pinch more salt. When, the following evening my husband reheated the stuffed peppers, I didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d been “enhanced” by our son’s culinary creativity. I was determined to fight my way through every forkful, grateful for a full belly. But, of course, I let my dearly beloved take the first bite.
“These are good,” he said unironically. I took a small taste. And the stuffed peppers were… actually … good. Like, I’d-have-seconds good. My 2-year-old had, somehow, managed to take a traditional dish and elevate it to haute cuisine.
The greatest chefs are known not just for their daring, but also for their presentation, and my son has recently begun challenging the notion of contemporary plating conventions. Why, he wondered, serve butter noodles on a plate or in a shallow bowl when they might more interestingly be served in an espresso cup? His plating is clever, and often serves as social commentary; for instance, he insists on drinking water only from the cup his dinner date is drinking from, which invites diners to discuss who actually owns water, and how we might provide water to those whose cups are empty.
My son also pioneered the Pour and Serve technique, in which a diner receives two bowls, one filled with their dinner and the other empty, and watches in amazement as the chef deftly slides the meal from one bowl to the other while several bites fall to the ground, a beautiful, postmodern dinner dance that provokes the eater to think more deeply about what it means to serve and be served.
As I write this, my son begs for more coffee – he takes his with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk – and I smile at the thought of him and his big, brown eyes and his four-word sentences enthusiastically running a kitchen full of people and appliances bigger than he.
I may be half-joking that my son is destined for greatness, but I am a very biased mother who is sure that, even if he is never crowned America’s Next Top Chef, my sweet little boy will, at the very least, grow up to be a man who knows how to cook a mean stuffed pepper.
Katherine Mansfield is a former staff writer for the Observer-Reporter who recently published her first novel, “Original Works by Katharine Hughes.”