Since I published my first book, about five years ago, I have traveled all over the country giving talks and lectures, up and down, riding on an old thing that makes a lot of noise but uses little, announcing the good news, inflaming the masses with hunger for cooking, with the air of a Calvinist preacher or an ointment salesman: “the kitchen is alive!”, “the kitchen is yours!”
The rooms are usually always full, due to that buzz effect that comes out every now and then on TV, but very rarely is there gender equality among those present. My audience is mainly made up of women. Ladies who are over sixty and carry more hours of culinary training than me. They know better. They cook better. Some of them have been providing breakfasts, lunches, snacks and dinners every day for more than forty years. Yet, at this point in the film, they still think they can learn something from a cooking talk. It’s very curious.
Almost always, in front of an audience of these characteristics, my speech, regardless of its thematic axis, involves breaking the crust that surrounds them and keeps them silent in front of a young woman who has a microphone. I encourage you not to be taught lightly celebrity coming from the media or from Instagram on the importance of not throwing food away (for them, who never throw anything away), on the organization of weekly menus (for them, who put a pot on the table every day), or on how important it is to go shopping with a list (for them, queens of taking advantage of opportunities and recognizing obsolete lettuce).
Sitting around this fire, whether there are twenty of us or five hundred, we talk about what really happens on Wednesday noon and on Tuesday evening. We wonder who uses the digital scale to prepare dinner on Thursday, and if anyone has ever prepared dinner on Monday by reading the instructions. We laugh together and recognize each other when we suddenly call into action the pot of broth to prevent the kilo of chicken wings we bought three days ago from going bad and remaining forgotten, hidden behind the package of quintals, in the refrigerator. We face the same dilemmas and, curiously, we realize that we usually solve them in the same way. We understand each other.
I talk for as long as necessary, but I always save some time at the end of the event to open up the conversation even more so everyone can participate and raise questions or dilemmas. The microphone runs around the room. And it doesn’t fail: two times out of three it’s a man (a category that usually represents a small minority of the public) who gets up and makes the first speech: “More than a question, I have a reflection.”
I know that this statement is an old acquaintance of my colleagues in the teachers’ guild. But in the environment in question, that of the domestic kitchen, the pearl shines with the light of a thousand stars. The above reflection usually begins with the citation of a famous phrase by one of the most illustrious national gastronomy writers: “Pla comments that the best meat for stew…”, “Vázquez Montalbán, on the other hand, writes that…”, “Luján says that, in winter, the best type of stew…”, and the ending is “what do you think of the topic”.
Curiously, he usually doesn’t come to this meeting alone. He has come to accompany his wife, who sits silently in the next chair, now visibly tense. She’s the one who’s cooked the vast majority of casseroles and stews he’s eaten in his entire life, and now she sees him get up and ask a stranger to cook at home. I’ve seen it dozens of times, and I always answer the same way: “How do you do it, Antonio?” And he always replies that he doesn’t cook, that in his house the one who cooks is his wife.
So I can only invite you, with a bit of malice, to ask the question to the authority on the matter who is at your side and who it has never occurred to you, in all these years, to ask. The ladies collapse. But if you stop to look at it a couple of times, the view tugs at your heart. After a lifetime dedicated to a profession, the world does not grant them even a shred of authority in the matter.
