{"id":3914,"date":"2010-09-23T10:50:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T10:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/?p=3914"},"modified":"2010-09-23T10:51:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T10:51:45","slug":"in-a-perfect-world-id-be-a-stilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/23\/in-a-perfect-world-id-be-a-stilton\/","title":{"rendered":"In a perfect world, I’d be a stilton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Bourdain: From rebel chef to doting dad<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bad boy chef is now an ex-cook who tells stories.<\/p>\n

Anthony Bourdain reluctantly embraces the label at first, saying \u201cyou can call me anything you want, I\u2019m just glad that anybody cares.\u201d But then he wavers. That\u2019s why he named his new book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a deliberate non sequitur \u2014 you can\u2019t be both medium and raw,\u201d Bourdain says Tuesday in Toronto. \u201cI\u2019m not a chef. I\u2019m not a writer. I\u2019m not the angry, snarky \u2014 what is it? \u2014 bad boy of cuisine. I\u2019m somewhere else now. The book is about second-guessing myself, and conflicting emotions and elements that don\u2019t exactly fit together for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been a decade since Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly \u2014 which he calls \u201cthat obnoxious but wildly successful memoir\u201d \u2014 changed the trajectory of Bourdain\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

It got him A Cook\u2019s Tour (the book and Food Network show), followed by Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel and now Medium Raw (his 10th book). It got him out of the kitchen after 28 years of hard labour. It hastened the breakup of his first marriage, which paved the way for his second marriage and fatherhood.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. At 54 Bourdain is the blissed-out father to 3-1\/2-year-old Ariane, who just started pre-kindergarten.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a top-of-the-line Bugaboo (stroller) \u2014 pink,\u201d admits an animated Bourdain during an interview at Mercury Espresso Bar in Leslieville. \u201cI pushed it with pride. And I will tell you, with pride, that I was the star pupil in my Lamaze class. I\u2019ve totally gone over to the warm, fuzzy side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe he dabbles in the fuzzy side, but the lanky New Yorker still dresses in black (jeans, T-shirt and blazer) and still exclaims \u201cnice choice\u201d when the coffee shop blasts a song by the Stooges.<\/p>\n

In Medium Raw, the former heroin addict admits to owning a couple of suits. He wears one of them on the cover, though it\u2019s offset by the pockmarked brick wall behind him, the knife in his hand and the wedding band on his finger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly didn\u2019t want to wear a chef\u2019s coat,\u201d says Bourdain. \u201c(The suit is) the uniform of my traditional enemy, who I\u2019ve become. I just thought it was the opposite of a working hero, which I am not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, so he lives on the Upper East Side, feeds his daughter organic food, and calls himself a \u201cjaded, overprivileged foodie.\u201d<\/p>\n

He slings that at himself before anyone else has a chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would be hideously dishonest to not remind people of that constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, when given the chance to act like a world-weary foodie with an exacting coffee order, he\u2019s downright casual, requesting only \u201csome jumbo-sized latte with sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n

But speaking of jaded, Bourdain \u2014 who\u2019s giving a public talk Wednesday night at Massey Hall \u2014 admits Monday\u2019s sold-out show in Houston didn\u2019t go so well because the audience simply knew too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree minutes into it, I realized they\u2019d heard it all, between interviews, articles, blogs and the books. It was an awful moment for me. This audience was very wired in and this is the world we live in now. If you write about food too long, you run out of adjectives and, more importantly, you lose the sense of wonder. It\u2019s a terrible thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

China, Bourdain figures, is the next food frontier. Even if he devotes the rest of his eating life to figuring it out, he expects to \u201cstill die knowing relatively nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bourdain\u2019s sense of wonder makes multiple appearances during the interview.<\/p>\n

He worries about being that idiot who tires of foie gras and truffles, and then slides into a spirited discussion about how he and his chef friends love yakitori \u2013 Japanese, charcoal-grilled chicken parts.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the care and feeding of his daughter. She gets hot dogs (organic), grilled cheese and pasta with butter, but she\u2019s also well-travelled (already) and exposed to everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe likes pecorino (cheese), anchovies, sardines, tuna, olives and risotto,\u201d says Bourdain, who never forces her to eat what\u2019s put in front of her. \u201cAnd she loves raw oysters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bourdain hasn\u2019t cooked professionally for over a decade, and admits to eating out with chef friends and ordering in a lot like most New Yorkers. When he cooks at home, it\u2019s \u201cin one pot\u201d and it\u2019s probably stew, beef bourguignon, steak, calf\u2019s liver, pasta or risotto.<\/p>\n

Still, in Medium Raw, Bourdain advocates cooking at home whenever possible and calls basic cooking skills a virtue that should be taught as soon a child can be trusted with a knife.<\/p>\n

It has been eight years since Bourdain visited Toronto. Back then, we got 90 minutes together for Vietnamese iced coffee, Salvadoran pupusas and Chilean corn pie in Chinatown and Kensington Market, but came up empty on his search for raw milk Canadian cheese.<\/p>\n

This time I bring four Canadian cheeses, including two raw ones, for our 45-minute coffee interview.<\/p>\n

Guidi predicts he\u2019ll go for the Bleu D\u2019Elizabeth from Quebec, \u201cbecause big personalities like big blues.\u201d She\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to be a cheese it would be a really funky, slightly overripe blue cheese,\u201d says Bourdain, breaking apart a baguette by hand and diving into the cheese. \u201cIn a perfect world, I\u2019d be a Stilton.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Source: TheStar.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Bourdain: From rebel chef to doting dad The bad boy chef is now an ex-cook who tells stories. Anthony Bourdain reluctantly embraces the label at first, saying \u201cyou can call me anything you want, I\u2019m just glad that anybody cares.\u201d But then he wavers. That\u2019s why he named his new book Medium Raw: A…<\/p>\n

Read More “In a perfect world, I’d be a stilton”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-3914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-linked-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3u9vK-118","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flubu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}