Eating lychees under an avocado tree

Author: Gail Simmons

At first I mistook the ‘professional eater’ in the title for the competitor eater like Man Vs Food.

Our first experiences with food start with mom and her kitchen. Gail Simmons’s interest in cooking too took off at her mom’s kitchen making omelettes. Later she took this to an assembly line level churning out 50 of those at a Kibbutz in Israel that sounds like a ‘Biosphere’ experiment.

Her father having grown up in South Africa, the author had access to special foods there resulting in a wider palate. She has traveled widely and tasted food in all those places.

She let her passion lead her to her career in food writing and then a Merchandising manager. She went to culinary school, worked on the line and learned the business of restaurants. She excerpted a food journal to give the readers an idea of how much food she tastes in a day.

I have seen my share of ‘Chopped’. So I was interested in knowing the behind the scenes of cooking competition on TV. The author has written of her experiences judging food on top Chef. She classifies the contestants whom she calls chef-testants. ‘Top Chef Just Desserts’ was an insight into how food contests have to consider the cooking time and recipe policies before issuing a challenge.

The  book's focus on food is maintained well all along the food. Even when she describes her wedding, the emphasis is on the food for the event. Even though this book does not have many recipes or much cooking, with its description of techniques (how in modernist cuisine, having a foam adds the essence without adding texture or volume) and a wide variety of foods it urges the reader to savor each morsel to get the taste/essence of it. Like the author says 'being a young line cook (is) you dont use your mind much. You are taking orders. you're not thinking or creating - ... I needed to go back to using my head'.

In the end she does say that she is ‘not in the business of competitive consumption’.