My place is in the kitchen and other stories about good food

A man recently killed himself, over food. His name was Benoit (Benedict) Violier and he was a topflight chef near Lausanne in Switzerland. In fact, he had just been named the best chef in the world by France’s prestigious La Liste, which ranks the best

restaurants in the world, when he apparently shot himself in the head at his home.

Following his death, many of his colleagues in the profession spoke out frankly about the sorrows and tribulations of these top masters of good food and good cooking. Apparently, getting to the top of good cooking and staying there is so stressful that

suicides like Violier’s are not uncommon in the fraternity.

For such characters, perfection is the mantra, and anything falling short of that is, for them, not a misfortune but a disaster. Thus food becomes a matter of life and death. Turning out a perfect dish, whether it is vol au vin or lobster thermidore, makes life

worth living. Being criticised, or even personally dissatisfied, over the smallest detail, whether in the consistency of one’s Agnes Sorel soup or the sweetness of one’s chocolate mousse dessert, seems to erase, in the mind of these perfectionists, all traces of

self-esteem and respect.

You have probably noticed that we have wandered off into French jargon, all the way from chef to mousse. This is almost inevitable, as the French are the greatest talkers about food, as they are, too, about love, l’amour. As they talk about food, they dish

out praise and criticism in equal measure, and chefs who wish to survive in the trade would be well-advised to be pretty thick-skinned and tough-minded.

FASCINATION WITH LA CUISINE

Anyway, it is probably from my pretensions to la langue et civilisation francaise that I picked up my penchant for food and cooking. Although I did not become an assimilé, like Senghor and some of my contemporaries and friends, I must admit that some of

my French teachers’ indoctrination certainly stuck, including the fascination with la cuisine (both kitchen and cooking).

I love good food, and I love the intricate processes of preparing it. That makes me a gourmet and a culinary enthusiast. I am devoted to good eating and I am devoted to quality cooking.

Now, if we may stray into some stereotyping, the average Kenyan or African man is at a total loss with matters concerning the kitchen and all the goings-on in there. Many of us would frankly admit that we cannot even boil water without burning it.

Some of us may even find it difficult to remember when they last stepped into the kitchen. Most urban bachelors depend for their nourishment almost entirely on fast food joints and, where available, the hospitality of the workplace.

There are, of course, a number of reasons for this distance from the kitchen. The most obvious is our very gendered socialisation, where we are indoctrinated from infancy that the kitchen is a woman’s place and preserve.

As soon and as long as you are a man, the kitchen is off limits to you, according to many of our “cultures”. Among the Baganda, for example, a man’s looking, let alone stepping, into the kitchen is a sure sign of intrusive “greed”.

We sometimes disguise this lopsided upbringing with excuses like being too busy with “important” matters to spare any time for that side of things. Even some of our emancipated and empowered sisters use the same pretext to leave all housework, including

cooking, to their hired assistants, those women of lesser stature, whose place is still in the kitchen.

I do not blame my sisters for this. The kitchen and “back room” spaces have, admittedly, been used for centuries as symbols of their suppression and oppression, denying them visibility and opportunities to participate in public affairs.

But this should not prejudice either men or women against voluntary presence in the kitchen and involvement in its activities. It is a place of creativity and of nourishment and sustenance for the family, not only physically but also socially.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why modern house designers are making kitchens more spacious, more airy and all-round more user-friendly. They are actually living spaces, and many families do not only cook but also have most of their meals there.

This makes claims of female monopoly of the kitchen and male exclusion therefrom just old-fashioned and chauvinistic rubbish.

Cooking, properly approached, is also a profoundly creative activity. The choice, preparation and blending of ingredients, the cooking — whether steaming, stewing, grilling, baking or frying — and the  final serving of a dish maybe compared to the

composition of a poem or a musical symphony.

This absurdly reminds me of my relative, Maria. She once heard me say that I was going to sauté some potatoes that were on the stove. Traditional Muganda woman that she is, Maria took the opportunity, when I was attending to something else, to take the

potatoes and mash them into a fine paste. You see, when I said sauté, she thought I meant sota, which is “mash” in Luganda!

Anyway, mashed instead of sauté, we had a fine dish of potatoes and a hearty meal. Culinary “accidents” do often occur, when a planned dish goes drastically wrong, but we should not regard them as disasters. Instead, we should imaginatively make the

best of what turns up. I suspect that the person who first cooked scrambled eggs did not originally set out to do that. An omelette or a fried egg gone wrong was just “scrambled” into the stuff that today we love to spread onto our toast.

In any case, we cannot turn into perfect cooks at the first attempt. As with everything, practice makes perfect. Once you decide to give it a try, not fearing to burn that water when you boil it, you will be surprised at what a satisfying activity cooking can be.

But do not harm yourself if your first katogo stew does not turn out as perfect as the Kampalans make it. Bon courage!

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and literature in East Africa