by Kevin P. Keating

-1-

There is an ascending and descending order in the cutting of carrots. Think of a musical scale. The slicing of carrots can be a precise thing, like fingers gliding nimbly over the keys of a piano, octave after octave, shimmering glissandos, rolling arpeggios, a forward momentum, a driving rhythm, a skill that is unquestionably athletic as well as artistic. Any chef who has for a decade or more devoted himself to the cutting of carrots will tell you the same thing. I am not the only one. My colleagues are all in agreement on this point. Yet the diners who anesthetize themselves with a bottle or two of cabernet, the ones who devour too quickly and too blithely the salads and entrees prepared for them by these madmen with their strange devotion to gastronomic virtuosity, would never suspect that so much precision goes into so small a detail. But if you pause for a moment to consider the matter, if you think of your favorite novel or symphony or philosophical insight, you might find that the greatest accomplishments are really just reflections of some kind of madness. After all, who else but a madman would devote himself year after year to the cutting of carrots?

-2-

There is the story of William Howard Taft's chef de cuisine , a man with the unlikely name of Joe Mack, who in due course became one of the president's personal secretaries. Taft kept Mack around the oval office the way Nixon kept a tape recorder. Mack, who could wield a quill just as easily as a knife, recorded Taft's thoughts about every conceivable topic--from foreign policy matters to scathing remarks about certain Supreme Court justices (Taft's dream was to become a justice himself, and sometimes his envy got the better of him)--and after writing all day in a leather-bound diary, Mack would head straight to the White House kitchen where he prepared old fashioned dishes for the already staggeringly rotund president, a man who possessed a prodigious intellect and an even more prodigious taste for mutton chops. In the meticulous notes Mack kept, we find evidence of Taft's private discussions with world leaders and his opinions of each--which ones were cooperative, which were difficult, and so on. Occasionally, between an entry about, say, the Prime Minister of Norway and the Chancellor of Prussia, Mack would insert a clever recipe. On one page we find an entry about the legendary bouts of drinking of an English nobleman, and on the very next page we marvel at some sage advice on how to marinate a wild turkey vulture. Beginning with the Taft administration, there has been a close association between food and power in the United States; you might even say that such a relationship is now a part of our national character, and all of this is the direct result of Joe Mack's innovation of adding sliced carrots to a pot of roast beef.

-3-

I know these things because, although I am merely a slicer of carrots in the kitchen of a posh restaurant, I am also a polymath of sorts, a man with an insatiable appetite for knowledge of all kinds, especially knowledge about the labyrinthine history of food preparation. Had the university offered a major in Food History I would have pursued a much different path in life. Admittedly, I am more scholar than chef. This is not a complaint. The slicing of carrots is satisfactory work, and I am paid a fair wage. I have other duties as well, but it is in the slicing of carrots that I find the most pleasure. The sound of the knife striking the cutting board can induce a hypnotic state in most people unaccustomed to such a rhythm and meter, and as I begin to chop I detect a change in mood among my co-workers. The kitchen, dissonant with the clattering of pans, becomes suddenly harmonious, almost tranquil. Things fall into place. The waiters and wine stewards and busboys refrain, at least momentarily, from insulting one another. Ours is a symphonic sound, and I am the percussionist keeping time. A quick glance at the clock. The restaurant will open its doors in twenty minutes, ten minutes, five minutes. All around there is a sense that this night, like all nights, will go off without a hitch.

-4-

The restaurant, all shadows and light and complementary color schemes, is an idealized place with an art deco-inspired décor meant to draw diners into a new psychic space, one that differs completely from the unappealing realities just outside the door. Paradoxically, the restaurant will stay in business only if it mimics the trends of the outside world. This is why I place such a high value on the slicing of carrots, a practice that has gone on virtually unchanged for generations, perhaps even thousands of years. Archeological evidence suggests that the Greeks of antiquity sliced their carrots in much the same way we do today, and some scholars have suggested that the dour priests of the Mesopotamian mystery cults sliced carrots in preparation for human sacrifices atop their ziggurats. That the slicing of carrots may be as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh gives me great comfort and fills me with a sense of awe. Yet the casual diner is not interested in trivia of this kind. People demand novelty. They want pretty murals and fresh flowers in the restrooms. Perhaps because of the overwhelming influx of knowledge and sensory stimulation, people no longer see the profound message concealed in the time capsule of a carrot that has been sliced thin as sheets of parchment.

-5-

Of course, more goes into the cutting of carrots than the actual cutting of them. First, one must choose a proper knife. A chef must look the knife over for craftsmanship and durability, test the handle, smell the wood, gaze at his reflection in the glimmering blade. Most chefs prefer the ever-reliable "master of cooking" knife, a French utensil with a blade that is thin and deep and designed to cut objects with great precision, but I have known chefs to use simple table knives. I once had the pleasure of watching an eccentric Portuguese chef use a hunting knife, a barbarous-looking thing with a thick, corrugated blade. Never taking his eyes from the cutting board, he sliced a dozen carrots and then arranged the slices one by one on a platter so that they resembled the massive swells of an angry sea. Such is the artistry of the greatest chefs. I am not one of them. True, I am quite proficient at my work, excellent even, but my creations cannot compare to the masterworks of a Cipriano Algor or the irreverent Quebecois Boule de Suif. My slicing lacks inspiration, but unlike some of my contemporaries, I have the humility to admit this. Ours is a generation in which many men have come forward to profess their greatness. History will judge the validity of their claims. Some say that food is far too subjective a thing to be measured, even by the inexorable sands of time, but one can just as easily make the same claim about literature or filmmaking. Plato was right. Somewhere in the ether there exists a thing called "perfection," a phenomenon so rare, so illusive, that we are largely unaware of it until one day, as if by magic, it presents itself at our table in the form of a mouth-watering soufflé.

-6-

The dishwasher knows nothing of perfection. He is a loathsome man who keeps a portable TV by his side as he scrubs pots and pan. He hackles with delight every time a Bugs Bunny cartoon comes on. I had no idea children's cartoons came on so late at night. Maybe we've become a society of children, obsessed with infantile pleasures. Evidence abounds.The landscape is cluttered with obese men and women who trundle from one fast food restaurant to the next. Even our adult relationships have devolved into something base and immature. When I step into the dining room, I observe the faces of the diners who, with the aid of alcohol, laugh uproariously or stare at each other with uninhibited lust. Sometimes I spot a middle-aged couple eating in silence. They try, but often fail, not to glare at each other through the flickering candlelight. Soft lighting is meant to disguise more than wrinkles and blemishes. Sometimes a diner will storm out of the restaurant in a rage. This is bad form. People come to an upscale restaurant not for theatrics but for a pleasurable dining experience. Or so pop culture has led them to believe. On TV, restaurants are glamorous places, settings for love affairs and intrigues of all kinds. The dishwasher is oblivious to such things. He grabs a carrot off my cutting board, chomps obnoxiously on it and, in the best Mel Blanc I've ever heard, says, "Aaaaah, what's up, doc?"

-7-

There is commotion in the dining room. A hefty man with a wild mop of hair (an obvious wig) demands that a dish be taken back to the kitchen. The carrots are not cooked to his liking. I have seen this man before. Restaurant managers across the city know his name if not his face. Kinch Mulligan. He is an accomplished shakedown artist and has choked on chicken bones, gone into coughing fits, fallen out of chairs, slipped on bathroom floors, and has even made his face swell up somehow as though he were having an allergic reaction. Mulligan will do just about anything for a free meal and the promise of a gift certificate. When he does pay the bill, a most infrequent occurrence, he has the audacity to complain about the food. He works as a salesman for some company or other; perhaps one of the steel mills that now faces bankruptcy. The restaurant is a popular place for people in sales, and they tend to have more discriminating palettes than most. They request that their carrots be prepared in a variety of ways--stewed, boiled, baked, stir fried, roasted. The restaurant, with its eclectic mix of global dishes, is the place to close an important deal that has been in the works for weeks and months and years. Much can be accomplished during a four-course meal, and the salespeople usually leave the restaurant happy. The only thing that can possibly ruin the magic of the evening is being accosted by a homeless man or threatened by a group of thugs wandering the dark alleys at night. Gentrification in this quarter of the city, once an Irish slum, has been slow in coming, and there are still some rough pockets. We've had a few problems in the past, but the police have done an exemplary job of keeping the poor and the insane away from our doors. The manager also knows the councilman on a personal basis, and that has solved many of our problems. Except for the occasional appearance by Kinch Mulligan, our operation has run quite smoothly over the last two years.

-8-

Although surprisingly few horticulturists have made a proper study of the matter, there are estimated to be roughly eighty varieties of carrot, each with an evocative name. The Tip Top, Oxheart, Swamp King, Bolero, Autumn King, Crusader. There are carrots of different shapes and sizes, colors and textures, roots and cores. Some are rough, some are smooth, some have a sweet, mellow flavor, others a complex, earthy one. A great chef is always at pains to decide whether to use those robust carrots grown in the warmer climes of Louisiana or the heartier ones grown in the tough soils of Ohio. Personally, I prefer to use a variety of wild carrot called the al-zahir, a diminutive reddish carrot found only in North Africa. Given the present political turmoil we find ourselves in today, al-zahir carrots are exceedingly difficult to come by. The American author Paul Bowles, while living in Morocco, spent much of his time cultivating these carrots, which are said to have hallucinogenic properties, and served them to his unsuspecting guest William Burroughs whose ensuing visions and ecstasies produced some of his most imaginative and startling work. So prized is this carrot for its reputed medicinal and mind-altering effects that half-starved refuges making their way across the Mediterranean to the shores of France bring bunches of them in their rafts. They are a universal form of currency, easily converted to francs. In the narrow streets and alleys of old Nice, the French police raid houses and seize entire crates of the carrots. Inevitably, some corrupt low-ranking official, a sergeant or lieutenant, sells them to various bistros in the trendy Marsais neighborhood of Paris where dignitaries, dining along the Rue Ste. Croix de la Bretonnerie, discuss the plight of North Africans, all the while knowing full well how the delectable carrots are obtained. None of this seems to trouble the French establishment, which tends to regard scandals as très chic.

-9-

I, too, enjoy a good scandal, and after the restaurant closes for the evening, I tidy up my station and nod at the manager who flashes me a sanctimonious scowl. He thinks me a craven fellow with many vices. Perhaps he's right, but it's late, I have been cutting carrots for many hours, and without pondering the matter further, I hop into my car and make my way to the Westside Market where I see a man at a vegetable stand. He is of Moroccan descent, and from time to time he manages to obtain the precious al-zahir carrots. Like me, he has a taste for the exotic and otherworldly, and after I pay him the usual sum, we pop a few carrots into our mouths, savor their sharp flavor, let them dissolve on our tongues, and often we find ourselves chatting for hours on end about the life and work of Paul Bowles and the modest and gratifying existence one can find in the cutting of carrots.

<<>>