I’ve always been a big eater, but over the past couple of months I’ve become obsessed with food. For the first time in my life, I have my own kitchen, as well as the respon­si­bil­ity of keeping two people reason­ably well-fed. My daily routine go straight from work to one of several purvey­ors (Nica’s Market? Hong Kong Grocery? Or, god forbid, Shaw’s?) and imme­di­ately start cooking when I get home. It’s gotten to the point where I lie awake at night mulling over the next day’s menu in my head, wonder­ing how long that giant bunch of basil in the refrig­er­a­tor will keep, formu­lat­ing the exact process by which I will prepare polenta, deciding what I’ll throw into my next batch of aïoli (maybe that basil?). I read cook­books in my free time, even watched straight through the second season of Top Chef, and no, I can’t believe that hack Marcel made it to the final round. (You know what would be really great, though? Top Composer. Think about it.)

I have similar values in the food I cook as in the music I write. I like simplic­ity. One of the best food I’ve ever had is blue crabs, steamed in their shells with plenty of red pepper and Old Bay (I was reminded of this while visiting my Grand­par­ents last week). Crabs really speak for them­selves. Simi­larly, I don’t like to gussy up my music with a lot of surface sheen or virtu­osic frippery. If the mate­ri­als can’t stand up by them­selves, I don’t use them.

This is not to say that a dish, or a piece, has to be totally concep­tu­ally inte­grated. Most of the time, I make it up as I go along. Most of my effort is expended trying to make disparate ingre­di­ents work well together, to comple­ment each other. Some­times the unex­pected juxta­po­si­tion of two elements is enough to justify the whole, though not always.

I’ve been chron­i­cling my cooking/eating expe­ri­ences on my Flickr page. Feel free to stop by and leave a comment, or better yet, a recipe.