Some people eat to live, some people live to eat...and then there are the people who just have no idea what they are doing.  Whether you love your body or you love food, you aren’t going to be happy unless you can understand what it is to “cook with love”.  Thank the lard I am here to explain how to make sweet love in the kitchen.  It is THE most essential ingredient to any good meal and we all know what a good meal can lead to!

There are two basic ways of making sweet love in the kitchen.  There is the spontaneous “quickie” where you are using ingredients that you just had laying around the pantry and the fridge, waiting patiently for someone to caress them.  Then there is the well thought out “can’t walk the next day” session.  This is where you spend some serious time menu planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, setting of the table, shining the silverware kind of lovemaking.  They are both equally good and satisfying, but I tend to prefer the “can’t walk the next day” to the “quickie” only because I am a chef and a major stickler for detail.  So with that being said, let’s focus on the “can’t walk the next day” kind of love.

Menu planning is like foreplay in the kitchen…shopping in LA on the other hand is like a bad kisser…you work with what you’ve got but it can be a major turn off.  I usually start each meal inspired by one sole ingredient, whether it be a spice, a veggie, or a protein of some sort.  I like to peruse my cookbooks and magazines searching for something that I haven’t used in a while or that I know is in season.  Once I find that one thing that has gotten my juices flowing, I decide what kind of ethnic “position” I want to take.  Am I in the mood for some spicy Mexican or Thai lovemaking?  Some sweet and salty Japanese?  Some romantic slow Caribbean or maybe I will just let the ingredient dictate.  Just take yourself to the market and start with that ingredient and go with it.  Either way, you must take your time choosing just the perfect tools to use to cook with love.   Before I start, I like to explore my ingredients.  How do they like to be cooked?  How many different ways can I arrange them on a plate?  Once I begin the preparation, I really like to taste everything as I am going along.  This builds excitement and anticipation and allows you to adjust your seasonings.  Don’t just follow a recipe.  This is the very first thing to remember when cooking with love.  You are solely responsible for your ingredients and that means putting in the effort to make that food your bitch!  Any Neanderthal can follow a recipe, but it’s the understanding of the ingredients that brings the love.  Everything else should come naturally.

Now, when cooking with love it is also essential to have a good setting.  Setting the table is equivalent to the lighting of the candles and putting on just the perfect music part of the lovemaking process.  .  DO NOT wait until the last minute to set your table.  You don’t light the candles when you are done with the lovemaking; you do it before to add to it!  If you take the time to do the setting right, it only adds to what happens in the kitchen. You wouldn’t serve a fine wine out of a plastic cup or a tasty rack of lamb on a paper plate would you?  I also find this essential when it’s just a “quickie”.   You will feel the love much more if it’s eaten in a beautiful setting.  Those people who actually eat in fast food restaurants are beyond my help, I fear.

Plating of the food is also a very important part to cooking with love.  You want the food to look enticing.  You want your guest or guests..If you’re into that sort of thing…to ooh and ahh.  Food always tastes better if it looks amazing.  It is psychological.  Just like when that super hot guy was better than you thought he was…just because he was soooo HOT!  Food is that way too.  BUT, if you put enough love into it, you can’t go wrong.

So these are the basics to cooking with love or making sweet love in the kitchen.  It’s not so much about the tools and techniques as it is about the attitude and effort.  Next time we will touch base on the quickie.  I know…you are asking yourself why didn’t I start with this because it’s what most people are used to.  I guess I am just trying to inspire you to spice it up a bit!  Get those creative juices flowing people!

Let me just preface this by saying it isn't rocket science. 

So, for the Holidays this past year I did not have one party to cater…thanks Mr. Government for sending the economy into a downward spiral…so I decided I was going to make some of my tasty treats to sell.  I stuck with a few of my tried and true, world famous delectables like my basil and vodka cured lox, and my Caesar salad dressing.  Then, I somehow got it into my head I was going to take local, organic pork bellies and make smoked apple wood and pepper bacon.   I am not here to tell you how to do it, but more like how NOT to do it.   It wasn’t a disaster so to speak.  Everyone but me seemed to love it in the end.  Let’s just say it didn’t go as smoothly as I planned.

 I think it all started by going the wrong way on the freeway to pick up the pork bellies.  I usually have an acute sense of direction, but not on this day.  When I got the pork bellies home there was one main issue with them that turned out to be huge in the end.  They weren’t whole pork bellies.   They had been cut into pieces for packaging purposes.   This left the bellies in strange shapes and sizes, which lead to the next issue; getting them to cure evenly.   I wound up with 9 different pieces of belly to equal 30lbs.  It also still had the skin on.  Now, most of this is my  responsibility for not asking all the right questions.  It took me forever to find a local place to get them and I was so excited to find them finally that I jumped the gun a little. 
Let’s jump forward 7 days.  All seemed nice and kosher,(HA!!) until I found out from one of my purchasers of said bacon that she needed them by a certain date.  This meant I was going to have to stay up after work and smoke them in the dark.  Note to self:   invest in headlamp.   Now, during the week while the bacon was curing I was also making jam, smoked olives, Caesar salad dressing, candied spiced nuts, gravlax, spice rubs, and working full time at my usually part-time job.  I was exhausted and barely able to stand when it was time to smoke the bacon.   I smoked it for 5 hours at 150 and just figured it was time for it to come out.  In the dark and half asleep I pulled it off the smoker and attempted to take the skin off while it was still warm.  I was just tooooo tired and decided I would deal with it in the morning. 

 The next day I packed it all up in the car, along with my vacuum sealer and headed off to work to slice and package.  This is when I perform my second attempt to take the skin off.  FUUUUUNNNKKKKK!!  I am just still too tired and have no patience for this.  I get the skin off one of them and throw it on the slicer.  It is at this point that I realize I haven’t smoked it long enough and gotten it to the right temperature and I need to cook it some more.  I am aware as a chef this could be a dangerous venture and I do spend about the next hour on the internet doing some research on what to do.   In the end, I decide to bring it up to a certain temp in the oven.  This seems to go well and when it comes out I easily remove the skin with my sharpest knife.  .  It is also at this point that I call said purchaser and let her know that there is no way in hell it is going to be ready in time and what can I do in place of the 5lbs she wanted. 

 After the bacon has chilled sufficiently in a very cold fridge overnight, I pack it all back up in the car and head back to the slicer.  Oh, it is soooo pretty…and tasty.   There is just only one thing wrong.  I am losing way too much of it to scrap because of the way it was cut.  I start to panic as I see my now 26lbs of bacon dwindling.  I am cursing the person who cut this into so many pieces and myself even more for buying it like this.   I get down to my last slice of bacon and get a whopping 17lbs in the end.  Exactly what I needed to fill my existing orders after the 5 lbs I didn’t have ready.  This seems to be the only highlight of the whole experience.  That and everyone else seems to have really enjoyed it.  I have yet to try any of my bacon except for the miniscule piece I cooked when I first started slicing it.

So in review, let’s just go over the do’s and don’ts

• Do ask many questions when speaking to suppliers
• Don’t get it with the skin on.  It’s just another step to the process.
• If you have to, do take it off while it is still warm
• Don’t multitask 10 other things during this process.
• Do sit down and take deep breathes and gather your thoughts.
• Don’t try and smoke it at 8 o’clock at night after working since 7am. 
• Don’t finish it in your oven unless you want your house to smell like smoke for the next 2 weeks.
• Don’t guarantee a certain amount if you don’t know how much you are going to have. 
• Do ask me how to make bacon.  I can now tell you exactly what to do and what can go wrong and what to do if it does go wrong.

 I hope you all can learn something from my mistakes.  I know I have!