It struck me recently that as cooks we fulfil one of two roles: we are the equivalent in music of the conductor, or the composer. Both are honourable occupations, though I think most of us would hold the composer in higher regard. I get the impression few conductors would share that opinion, however.
When I follow a recipe (I rarely weigh out every ingredient, but use recipes as guidelines) I am being a conductor, taking the ideas of another person and making the best of them, putting my own personal twist on them. I have to balance the ingredients, as the conductor balances the sections, though at the end of the meal I don't do my Mark Elder last chord face - think having an orgasm and simultaneously smelling a particularly noxious fart.
It is far, far tougher being a composer. There are very few new things in food. Many that are claimed as new are either a) not; or b) bloody awful - some of the now long past nouvelle cuisine horrors for example. When I started to consider this topic I tried to think of any dish I had actually created, and even those that may fit the bill, like a crab and pumpkin soup, tend to have been a variation on a theme, as it were.
Looking again at the comparison of music and food I've come up with some matches:
Beethoven: A huge rib of beef, satisfying, timeless, done to perfection.
Tchaikovsky: Poire Belle Helene (named for an Offenbach opera btw) with much too much chocolate.
Boulez: Fish heads with asparagus, mango and porridge prepared in a concrete mixer then thrown at a wall by a blind man wearing boxing gloves - and if you don't like it you are clearly a useless idiot.
Back to being a conductor tonight. I must dig out my mutton dressed as lamb black polo neck.
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