Week 7 :: Dessert (A Culinary Soundtrack)

It's rare that I cook without listening to music. I admit, rather shamefully, that I had gotten into a bad habit of cooking whilst watching television, something that makes me feel as though I am not being mindful of what it is that I am doing. That aside, music of some sort generally comprises a significant portion of the little ambiance that I try to create in my kitchen each week.

Different tasks require different soundtracks, as is to be expected. You cannot whip your egg whites into submission if a calm Mozart sonata is playing; nor can you coax a hollandaise sauce into its delicate balance if you are aggravating it with some frenzied Rachmaninoff. Sometimes, of course, cooking requires silence, but since I do not feel like engaging in a musical debate about the merits of John Cage's 4'33", let us continue with the aforementioned proposition that food is best cooked with some sort of appropriately matched music.

In my own haphazard logic, I find it more appropriate to match my music to the techniques that I am using the most, rather than to each ingredient. This week, as evidenced by the stuffing, the chicken, and the cake, baking featured rather prominently.

Although baking appears to be one of those cooking techniques that affords you the convenience of "setting it and forgetting it," it really requires, when you are baking multiple things at once in an oven of constant temperature, a keen eye and a subtle intuition into the rising and falling of the dishes in the oven. The foil cover on the stuffing swells to make its own convection cocoon; the cake breathes deeply and puffs out its chocolate bouffant; the chicken hisses and bubbles, shuddering slightly as it nestles itself in a warm foil jacket.

The delicate interplay of intensity and delicacy that is inherent to baking requires music that is similarly structured. As such, I've chosen to match Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major (K622 - Adagio) to this meal. The strings and clarinet begin together quietly, as the meal adjusts to the warmth of the oven; then the strings sweep, gaining intensity, revealing the melodious potentiality of the clarinet, who then ventures out on its own in short bursts, constantly supported and reinforced by the lines of the strings. At 1'59," the clarinet triumphs, just like that moment when one finally notices the cake batter rising unexpectedly and grandly, with all the pomp and circumstance of any French emperor.

The strings and clarinet exchange breaths, until 4'59," when the strings swell gloriously, preparing the meal for the final delicate caramelizations and the quiet crispnesses that manifest themselves. At 6'00," the dishes are pulled gently from their warm cavern, and they let out several small, content sighs as they prepare to cool on the counter.