How Do You Explain Obsessions?

It was more or less the middle of the night in our soul food kitchen, and I had decided to another iteration of Edna Lewis’ chicken broth, and then a further iteration into chicken consomme. Why? I wish the fuck I knew.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to prepare this dish with true righteousness. I did that dish all the time. OK, sometimes, I got a bit lazy and didn’t skim off the top layer of fat before moving on to the consomme phase. And sometimes I didn’t even bother with this second and critical step. In the eyes and palates of my guests, big fucking deal. They could not truly tell the difference between a dish made with a golden, translucent consomme and a cloudy but equally luxurious broth. More to the point was this: My refrigerators were getting stacked up like the planes once were over the skies around LaGuardia, and who the hell needed more chicken stock? Why bother making even more, when the technique was pretty much OK to begin with?

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m much more adept at posing questions than providing answers. I really have no idea what I am doing up in the wee hours of the morn making a dish I already know how to do fairly well. I suppose I could chalk it up to insomnia or a mind racing late into the night about god knows all what. Perhaps it’s this elusive search for the perfect golden color of a perfectly executed chicken consomme. I should know. I managed to achieve that color once. Which is something of a torment, as you try perhaps in vain to replicate that moment. In short, I think it goes mostly to the issue of having this sense that “it’s not good enough yet.” And that, pun intended,, is something of a wake-up call.