Cooking with Monks

April 21st, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized

I’m just back from a multi-day cooking workshop with the monks of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, in the Ventana Wilderness southeast of Carmel Valley. I was invited down again to help the monk-chefs who cook for the summer guest season “wake up” their summer menus with some breakaway vibrancy. The winter fare at Tassajara–a full-blown monastic training center for aspiring zen Buddhists–can be fairly simple and spartan, but they pull out the stops for the summer guest season, when they open the gates to anyone who’d like to experience the magical tranquility and great food the place has to offer.

We cooked a meal for 105 people–a personal record for me–that consisted of

  • soft tofu topped with fennel that had been pickled in a gorgeous pink brine of plum wine, umeboshi, rice vinegar, and honey
  • yaki onigiri (cooked rice crammed into triangular molds and filled with umeboshi and chopped nori and sesame, then brushed with a canola/soy sauce blend and grilled)
  • squash pizzettas brushed with a fresh oregano pesto and chopped roasted almonds, then baked
  • broccoli “rice” (finely diced broccoli sauteed in olive oil then braised in fresh orange juice and topped with orange zest)
  • baked soft tofu in a mint puree and dusted with crushed pistachios
  • strawberries infused with lavender and strained yogurt, piled on a shortcake made with lavender

We also spent a day going through old menus and thinking up ways to give them some global zip while keeping the food relatively light, an important consideration for the 100+degree heat that is common in the summers down there.

I’ve written about this before, but one of my favorite aspects of the Tassajara kitchen was its “mindfulness bell” — a bell that sits in the middle of the action, that anyone can ring at anytime. When it rings, everyone stops what they’re doing — no matter what it is — and reflects for about a minute on just what it is that that we’re trying to do when we cook. It’s not really designed as such, but one of its purposes is to pretty much eliminate stress in the kitchen. There’s no task that’s SO important that it can’t just wait for a minute while everyone takes a few deep breaths. How I would love to see the mindfulness bell incorporated not only into every restaurant in the country, but into every home kitchen, too. It’s the perfect kitchen wake-up call, to remember why we even bother cooking in the first place. It’s because we’re hungry, of course, but it’s also one of the oldest, and surest, ways of demonstrating love and care. We just have to remember this WHILE we do it.

I can’t wait to go back.

  1. 9 Responses to “Cooking with Monks”

  2. By casey on Apr 22, 2008

    How subtle, yet delicious, those dishes sound!

  3. By Deno on Apr 22, 2008

    For some reason this makes me think of a story Natalie Goldberg told about cooking at the Zen center in her book “Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America”. I think it’s very(!) cool that you get the opportunity to do this. And congrat’s on cooking for such a hefty number of people. Such an undertaking is a unique sort of mindful excersize - a brief journey with an exceptional spiritual reward. In my opinion, mindfulness is an essential ingredient to have at the center of ones cooking.

  4. By Eric on Apr 22, 2008

    Thanks Casey and Deno! I sometimes look at cooking as the forced, 3x/day practice of seeing how awake I can be for short periods. When you REALLY pay attention to what’s happening to the food, you notice stuff that alerts you to what the next actions need to be. Sights, smells, and sounds give out constant clues as to what’s happening; being distracted means that you miss a lot of those clues.

  5. By Deno on Apr 22, 2008

    As I contemplate this blogpost and the “mindfulness bell” at the monastery I can’t help but think of another interesting read called “The Mindful Cook”, by Isaac Cronin. In this book he points out that the mindful kitchen is a balance of three types of characteristic kitchens:

    - A controlled kitchen - very exacting environment with little creativity (akin to your forced 3x/day perception, perhaps) a cook in this environment is in touch with the understands the food
    - A chaotic kitchen (Cronin calls it the kamikaze kitchen) - this environment has very little control and/or consistency (you may have felt a little of this when you prepared meals for 105p at one time) and is understanding of but not necessarily in touch with the food,
    - The survival kitchen - cooking in this environment exists because you have to and I tend see this as more forced 3x/day pattern of grazing because I’m not certain cooking is necessary exercise in this type of kitchen, the cook in a survival kitchen is more likely to defrost a TV Dinner or order a pizza.

    With that set up I wonder how each kitchen would react to the cooking of bacon at the time the bell rings. In a controlled kitchen I could easily see the ringing of the bell to conjure thoughts of how crisp the bacon is and whether another minute might benefit the crispy texture or not. In a chaotic kitchen I could see that the bacon was forgotten and overcooked and possibly smoldering in the oven or on the stove… and well, does the kamikaze cook have a minute to spare for the bell, “excuse me, gotta pull the bacon”. And what of the survival kitchen, can we assume that this cook is using precooked, nuke to rewarm product? Is there any actual wakefulness in this kitchen? I really can’t say for any one case but these are the thoughts that run through my mind (along with those are other thought that contemplate how the monastic bell would play in Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen). But, since I’m stuck here at the office and taking a late lunch, I must say, “it is time for a BLT”.

    Deno

    P.S. Real Simple review of the book: http://simplystated.realsimple.com/food/2008/03/getting-in-touc.html
    P.P.S. Eric - I have a spare copy of this book if you wan’t it I’ll see that you get it…

  6. By Jan in nagasaki on Apr 22, 2008

    i. am. so. jealous.

    that is so cool!!! I was a cook at a (lutheran) retreat village in the cascade mountains of washington state… summers up to 400-500 people, winters as low as 30 or 40. not vegetarian, but very low on the food chain cooking, fresh bread daily, I totally loved it.

    please put me on the list to buy your next book which will be all vegetarian breakaway mindful cooking!!!!

    i can’t begin to list my favorite (vegetarian) cookbooks, but “tomato blessings and radish teachings” would be near the top.

  7. By Eric on Apr 22, 2008

    Deno, the Cronin book sounds right up my alley, and I’d love to take you up on your offer of the extra copy, thanks! And thanks for the link to the review of the book — really makes me want to read it, and possibly review it here. I seem to be an odd amalgam of all three types of cooks.

    And Jan, thanks. Mr. Tomato Blessings, Ed Brown, is the grand poobah of Tassajara cooking, his influence is everywhere. Check out his new movie, How to Cook Your Life — it’s great!

  8. By Deno on Apr 23, 2008

    Eric, I do think you will enjoy this book! ;-) I had to take a look at his chapter on the kitchen/cook argument and acertain that I’m representing it correctly. In fact the three types of cooks are akin to points on a triangle and each is representavice of one of the elements (air, fire, water - earth is the actual kitchen). Every cook posesses these qualities it is when they rely heavily on one aspect balance is compromised and and the trus styles really show. The mindful cook is aware of this and can reflect on this to regain balance. Cronin goes pretty deep here making it an inspitring read for the Zen cook. He also covers some food history and writes about going to the market as a mindful practice. He reminds us that it is not only what you chose, it’s also what you don’t choose that matters. A major premisis is that posessing an awareness of how one cooks will lead to a free and open (enlightening) relationship with cooking and eating. This is how I see the bell, it forces the mind to wander, unearths awareness, and leads one down the path of enlightenment.

  9. By Jan in nagasaki on Apr 23, 2008

    eric, I did not know he had a movie. I’ll look for it!! thanks for the info.

    could you please share some recipe secrets about pickled fennel????

  10. By Eric on Apr 23, 2008

    Here’s some info about the movie — it’s really worth tracking down:

    http://tinyurl.com/5fo4yv

    The same filmmaker, Doris Dorie, made a hilarious movie of two German brothers who go to Japan to study in a zen monastery — it’s called “Enlightenment Guaranteed.”

    I’ll write an entire post about pickled fennel soon.

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