I’M HAVING A FAT-FREE FOOD FLING!
I’m stepping outside the box, testing boundaries, going beyond the familiar on this site.
Always with a history though – the history of eating animals, the history of original sin – the ugliest of sins that made me and makes the world ugly.
I’m looking for the beautiful in everything. There’s no beauty in enslavement, torture and slaughter.
The world needs to remember that.
This site is about experimentation.
I’m not sure where it’s going or how successful I’ll be in developing new tastes, new textures, different ways of experiencing food, beyond the ‘tried and liked’ and ‘lets make that even more special’ type of fare we’ve all become accustomed to.
Look, if you don’t eat steak, meaning the cooked muscle and fat of one who once lived and breathed with all the systems we animals have, then you can’t expect that you’re going to achieve the same experience by eating something totally different. You can’t eat an apple and expect it to taste and texture like a cow.
Fat is something we use in food preparation to help ease the food into the gut. It’s a lubricant. We put it in everything – just about. Even when I ate steak, Delmonico being my favorite and Prime rib my second favorite, I never ate the center piece. It was too dry. The fatty part is what I went for every time. Who can eat meat without some kind of fat, or fatty sauce to help get it down the throat and into the stomach?
Well, we’re not cooking with nor eating animals, but since we eat too much fat from plant sources, we have to learn ways to lubricate our food absent the fat. Not always, but mostly always.
You can caramelize peppers and onions with animal fat or plant fat and do a great job with both. But if you use neither – the animal nor the plant – for your fat source, then the result is going to be different.
With plants we have a fat source, so the transition between animal and plant isn’t all that difficult.
Without the fat from any source, the foods we usually team the fat up with are not going to taste and texture the same. For the process to be the same – absent a fat source – either animal or vegetable, then someone needs to invent (or discover) a fat-free oil that behaves like a fatty oil behaves under similar conditions. I’m not there yet. Nobody is.
In the meanwhile and along the discovery path I’m looking for agreeable.
In order to be agreeable absent a fat source, then I need to open up to new flavors and textures. Not the flavors and textures and colors of insects, like so many food experimentalists are doing these days.
Stay out of the creature’s way, is my way. The plants have it all. It’s the way we’re using the plants that needs to be explored. Stop exploring the use of living creatures and get to the business of the plant.
I’m just beginning. That I have been experimenting with food absent some form of the animal (meaning absent something) since 1972 has laid a foundation of familiarity for me in seeking an alternative process.
We can’t make everything the same way and just leave out the fat. We can’t load it up with sugar to trick the brain into thinking we’re eating fat either, since everything we eat gets converted to sugar anyway (nice try though). Too much sugar clogs the arteries and too much fat clogs our electrical systems, transmissions, nerve impulses, our main computer, our brain and all that is physical that emanates from it. Nerves contain blood. Keep the blood as clean as possible, so all our organs can do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
Still, our food has to taste good, or we won’t eat it. It must be prepared in a way that we find appealing – from start to finish.
I’m up for the task, I enjoy the experimental process, I like and accept the challenge of moving forward the planet in the realm of cookery.
Join me and let us experience it together.
Chef Davies-Tight, the animal-free chef, at your service
FAT-FREE CHEF™ 