Chef Mojo

Iwo Jima, March 26, 1945

Prayer at the Fifth Marine Division Cemetery Iwo Jima by LT Roland Gittelsohn, CHC, USNR

This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island. Men who fought with us and feared with us.

Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet... to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory. It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them, too, can it be said with utter truth: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. It can never forget what they did here.” No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our division who are not here have already done. All that we can even hope to do is follow their ex ample. To show the same selfless courage in peace that they did in war. To swear that, by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours, not theirs. So it is we, the living, who are here to be dedicated and consecrated.

We dedicate ourselves, first to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried here in war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helps in her founding, and other men who loved here with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor... together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews... together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it com­memorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, then, as our solemn, sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.

To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly sup pose, as did the last generation of America’s fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of democracy at home. This war, with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generation’s struggle for democracy. When the last battle has been won, there will be those at home, as there were last time, who will want us to turn our backs in selfish isolation on the rest of organized humanity, and thus to sabotage the very peace for which we fight. We promise you who lie here: we will not do that! We will join hands with Britain, China, Russia in peace, even as we have in war to build the kind of world for which you died. When the last shot has been fired, there will still be those whose eyes are turned backward, not forward, who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty and wealth in which the seeds of another war can breed. We promise you, our departed comrades: This too we will not permit. This war has been fought by the common man; its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man! We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons–the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers, will inherit from your death the right to a living that is decent and secure.

When the final cross has been placed in the last cemetery, once again there will be those to whom profit is more important than peace, who will insist with the voice of sweet reasonableness and appeasement that it is better to trade with the enemies of mankind than, by crushing them, to lose their profit. To you who sleep here silently, we give our promise: We will not listen! We will not forget that some of you were burnt with oil that came from American wells, that many of you were killed by shells fashioned from American steel. We promise that when once again men seek profit at your expense, we shall remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly, in the ground. Thus do we memorialize those who, having ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: this shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come we promise the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.

Amen.

Take a moment to remember and to honor those whose bones rest marked and unmarked in the cause of
freedom.

Postscript: The story behind the story is breathtaking in it's scope and it's impact. Read it all, as they say...

Foolish Notions

Via SteveF at Daily Pundit comes this:

The intersection of modern chemistry and the culinary arts: Chefs are now using hydrocolloid gums in creating new dishes:

creations like fried mayonnaise and a foie gras that can be tied into a knot.

While I applaud their inventiveness, I don’t like mayonnaise. Frying it is unlikely to make me a convert.

I have issues with this, albeit complicated. I replied to to this post thusly:

(...)

Boy, talk about waving a red flag in front of me. This is a rather sore and delicate issue with me. I much preferred the days when the science of cooking remained in the background. So much of what is mentioned in the linked article seems gratuitous; chefs screwing around simply for the sake of it and for manufacturing drinking stories. The plates pictured in the article are the expression of silliness bought on by a hubris smitten fool. I’ll take cockiness in a cook - in fact, I value it - but this sort of showboating makes a mockery of what I do.

It’s not the cholesterol aspect of fried mayonnaise that I object to, but the preposterousness of the application of a classical sauce in such an imbecilic fashion. It accomplishes nothing and does not further the art of cooking in any way whatsoever.

Although I admit a great deal of admiration for Ferran Adria and his little squadron of mad monks holed up six months out of the year in some heap of an old building in Barcelona, I think the chefs who have latched on to what they believe he’s doing have gone pretty much off the cliff. It’s as if everybody at that art school in the back of the comic books - you know the one; draw the pirate…- has decided that they can emulate Picasso by “creating” what they think to be “abstract” art.

The whole thing has become an exercise in frivolous vanity; the culinary answer to Piss Christ. The idea seems more to shock and amaze with absurd novelty than it is to practice one’s craft honestly and with dedication.

I mean, really. Foie gras you can tie up in a knot? To what end? What’s the meaning? I can understand Adria creating a green blob on a silver spoon that sensually recreates the taste and texture of a fresh sweet pea ravioli, but not industrialized foie. I’ve used Adria’s rosemary device on a number of occasions to great effect in order to demonstrate olfactory aspect of taste. But sheets of meat juice? That’s what labs use for incubating cultures. Whatever.

The art and craft of cooking is endlessly fascinating, but can be incredibly tedious when chefs get silly. As interesting as I find Adria, give me a Batali, with his short ribs, or a Bourdain with his steak frites, any day of the week. Chefs like Thomas Keller or Masaharu Morimoto will be remembered long after these narcissistic children have crashed and burned, leaving a trail of atomized chemicals stinking in their wake.

Nothing beats honest, real food lovingly prepared by those who dedicate themselves to their craft. And I know that on my worst day, I can far out-cook these shoemakers.

(...)