Since "Da Jang Geum", sincerity has always been talked about in almost every food, and a bowl of rice also has three or five layers of sincerity. This style reached its peak in "Bite of the Tongue 2", and it almost became a disaster. Thinking about a porridge and a meal is hard-won, and now all kinds of sincerity are so full that even if you don’t eat it, you are afraid of burning your mouth. For fear of finishing eating, my face is ugly and sorry for my sincerity in cooking.
Delicious food must become delicious food, and delicious food must be complete and nourishing. This very idealistic theory has now become a classic theory of diet introduced by the domestic media. So what we hear and see is some kind of emotion that almost makes you cry and finally internalized into tempting food, some kind of emotion that can never be ideal becomes essence in the kitchen. Desires of all kinds are transformed into appetites.
Originally, a cook selected exquisite ingredients, cooked with heart, and considered the needs of diners to match the nutrition with the seasons. Now it has become a very hard work.
Watching the British food writer Nigel Slater's food show, you'll be relieved—everyone who is in charge of the family has a feeling that the moment you bring it to the table and let everyone eat it is like an interview, and you always have to praise it to pass. But Nigel Slater is completely like an uncle, because I want to feel it.
Although he is a crooked man and not handsome, he looks very dick. Therefore, this show is still a bit manly. He has a saying called follow your taste, which is rare in food shows. Because of the tune of "I like it", the chef's taste seems to be ignored in all food shows. , The chef always thinks that the customer is God, that is, the law that he will do what his family and customers love. The "he" who was hiding in the show was always the boss who controlled the food score.
Martha Stewart, the equally popular eating show on the other side of the ocean, is completely the tone of a typical perfect housewife. She started every episode with "Look, it's Christmas season, or summer, or Thanksgiving, what food should I prepare for my family?" In the middle, it is inevitable that this child or your lover will definitely Likes and so on, the preference of the cook is not important at all, the point is to cook for others to eat, the housewives in ancient and modern China and foreign countries go to the kitchen are students entering the examination room, waiting to hand in the paper to score - the most important thing is to please the person who likes it. This very Asian housewife's tone permeates Martha's countless life shows throughout the year - you have to please others.
The same story about food and people, the British film "Toast" adapted from Nigel Slater's autobiography is a bit different. Loving you can also fool you in your diet, and hating you can also be exquisite in your diet. Feelings are not over-teardropped here, making it very tear-jerking, as if the products of my mother are always the taste of love, and a bowl of hot soup must be red in the eyes. Technological flow is invincible delicious food, but without emotion. It was a conspiracy between the diners and the cooks. It's not that feelings aren't important, but that the desire to eat can't be simply felt or always act like an encyclopedia.
Nigel Slater's mom is a terrible cook, not even a cook, her best food is bread machine toast with salted butter, and even McDonald's is more complicated than her. Never buy fresh vegetables, always canned spinach. The taste is single, and the processed food ham is also canned ham. God, Nigel Slater's ham has aspic jelly, just like our Merlin ham.
Nigel Slater's mother is not the kind of magician who wears an apron and brings out delicious food from the kitchen, she is just a middle-aged woman in the kitchen with an anxious, confused, nervous face, and the batter from the mixer is not good. Cooked to the extreme. And she's wary and defensive in her approach to food, and picking a pork pie at the grocery store is seen as vulgar. Vegetables cannot be bought, and the blender is out of control. Every time Nigel Slater suggested cheese deli in the grocery store, his mother always looked horrified "who knows how they're made" It's easy to think of our mothers - unfamiliar food, highly Alert, and with a face of righteous refusal. Nigel Slater's mother's attitude towards food was completely undesired, just hesitant and nervous and coping.
Nigel can't even get a pork pie because her mom thinks it's too vulgar. As if the white-collar workers in the high-end office were too embarrassed to carry a plastic bag of aunt's dumplings or Xinya Dabao into the office, the food is always classy. Isn't Queen Sophie shocked when Princess Sissi eats hoof meat. The little white-collar workers at McDonald's look down on the egg-filled cakes at the roadside stalls for breakfast, and the executives who hold breakfast meetings at Hilton don't get Yonghe soy milk, so if the middle-class British who are not good at cooking can't eat red wine braised chicken and seafood spaghetti, they have to eat Eat butter toast.
But even so, she's willing to take risks for Nigel Slater, who bakes weirdly burnt frosting cakes and keeps reassuring a disappointed Nigel Slater that it's not too bad. Then, for the first time ever, he cooked pasta at home. Of course, the grumpy dad was completely impatient and accusing. With such an impatient and intolerant host, it is not surprising that the hostess is suspicious and apprehensive about all attempts. And apparently the dad was conservative and irritable, he tasted the pasta and said it is off. Every dinner, the family's eyebrow lawsuit is lively, the mother's nervousness, the father's irritable and helpless, Nigel's simplicity and confusion, cross, avoid, resolve, and finally my mother said I'd better bake some toast, let everyone relax tone. Boring, safe and familiar, considerate, helpless, sigh, tired, and loving.
Mother's poor cooking skills can't stop Nigel Slater's thirst for deliciousness. Looking at the exquisite recipes in the middle of the night, those pictures that almost highlight all the details, potato stewed beef casserole, spaghetti bolognese, let you imagine at a glance that the beef is soft and rotten, the meat sauce is fragrant and the noodles are crispy slip. Nigel Slater let out a groaning sigh, so his father got angry and thought that the young son was doing Jia Ruigan's "finger accusation of depletion", he pushed open the door and shouted angrily.
But mom loves Nigel Slater. Father is so irritable and serious and difficult to communicate. Only the mother is a buffer zone. Nigel Slater is introverted and tense and stubborn. Appetite has long been full of teeth, and sexual desire is still in its infancy. Nigel silently fell in love with the gardeners at home who secretly saw his naked back, and liked to hear him talk about all the feelings about nature. He also knew that his parents had not seen him for a long time. Sex life. We thought we were hiding something from the child, and you have no idea how he found out. Nigel's house smells like Mrs Chatterley's lover's house, locks all desires in lockers, and is too scared to talk about it, his father can't stand seeing a toddler naked on the beach , feel immoral. So Nigel grew up alone in a rigid family, and growing up was lonely and unspeakable. If his parents hold a normal ruler in their hands, and are always nervous to cut off all the excess parts with quick scissors, in the end, the child can only hide the unsatisfactory parts so that you can't find them.
And such parents are always nervous as soon as they see signs that their children are a little out of the way of the adult world - there is something wrong with the children, and they always think badly first. It's the same old saying - this is a film about growing up, a child's small world is rich and monotonous, and it almost imagines a limited horizon to the extreme. And every detail is carefully considered and polished.
In order to reflect the development of Nigel's sexual orientation, step by step, there are countless interesting and warm little details and dialogues. Every little scene in this film is very delicate and humorous. Nigel gave the school milk and was willing to take off his pants. the fat boy who is not willing to let him see the yellow-haired girl in the panties; he talks to the gardener josh about his mother's pregnancy concerns, not his father; a physical father who almost never gets close to Nigel psychologically; to prepare a gift for josh , he and his friend were choosing gifts in the grocery store. The friend said that he fell in love with the gardener, but he retorted that he just loves gardening - this is love and secret love. You have been lost in three ways. The two children were picking and choosing nothing more than candy snacks and snacks for children, but they both felt that the other party's choice was too unprofessional for the old lady or too uncool for the little girl. In the end, they chose refreshing candy and chocolate lime juice. Feel cool. Hehe, the coldness and sourness of mint is already the ultimate experience for a child to break the ring.
When Nigel was a child, he was forced to eat meat patties and beans that he didn't like when his father who didn't know how to communicate, and he was forced to drink milk that vomited at the smell of it by his strict teacher. Who wasn't forced to eat food that he didn't like when he was a child? Carrots, spinach, green beans, milk, everything claimed to be good for you was cooked by our elders
unpalatably unpalatable. This is probably an important reason why Nigel always advocated after he became a gourmet, you like it yourself. If you don't have the freedom to eat anything in life, and take food as a tonic, what's the point?
There are such mothers in this world, and cooking is a hurdle for them.
She is no less loving than other mothers, but she can't serve a decent dish. A good cook is often an essential element of a good mother, but the troubles and worries and pressures a mother faces often make a mother unwilling and unable to cook a meal. Nigel Slater's mother is always a little nervous and sad at the beginning of the film, and after a failed attempt, she looks even more lost and confused. The reason is not revealed until the middle of the movie. My mother is sick and cannot be cured.
The family's diet desertification came after Mom's condition worsened. Although my mother's meals were already lackluster, they could still be eaten anyway, and the desolate diet that accompanied the family's feelings became even more appalling. A child who grew up in a family with poor communication, vaguely felt that his mother was going to leave forever, and from then on he was completely thrown to his authoritarian father. Yes, it all started with the clumsy and blunt instructions of my father, going to the beach on a rainy day and dancing in a grand hotel.
Nigel, a little kid, doesn't know how long he will be worried in his heart, but he still asks his mother, "Is it going to be all right before Christmas?" This is the happiest day of a child, and he will inevitably be a little selfish and hope for everything It all happened as he hoped - someone made delicious pies, and there was joy at home. In the end, when his mother forced him to teach him how to make mince tarts, a child could see that his mother was not better, it would only get worse, his mother would definitely leave him, and he would definitely get along with his father alone and helpless. He has always been surrounded by only his mother who can talk to him. It is warm. If his mother leaves, it means that he will be left on an island at home. The most fearful thing is often something we can't describe at all. A child is afraid and desperate about death. He collapses and goes mad. He vents all his anger, grievance and pain on his unretainable mother, the pain of despair. I hate you, I want you to die, this is how little children curse with death when they are afraid of death, because they have never really seen and felt death, only vaguely feel that it is a An irresistibly painful separation, the living who cannot bear the separation even envy the dead who are unconscious.
Before my mother died, my father was unable to comfort the little Nigel patiently. After they gave little Nigel a Christmas present ahead of time. The grumpy father showed his weak side in the middle of the night, huddled in a corner of the children's room and weeping.
Then they fell into a concentration camp on diet. Overcooked cans, burnt toast. Nigel sincerely baked haddock for Dad, but because of the long wait time, it was darker than our skewers. The lives of all the grandfathers at home and abroad in ancient and modern times are always extraordinarily messy in terms of food and beverages.
Mrs Potter fell from the sky just in time. She could clean, she could cook, she was coquettish, but she wasn't Nigel's mom. So when the most common war in the world breaks out between the stepson and the stepmother, who can win the father's stomach becomes a strategic high ground.
Start with a wedge that hits the family, that apple pie. The battle for food and the battle for love begins. Nigel admits his stepmother's culinary prowess, especially lemon desserts. Delicious food is delicious, even the disgust brought by the stepmother who wants to occupy the magpie's nest can't resist the needs of the tongue and stomach. So when he watched his father send his stepmother home with ten thousand dissatisfaction, he still felt the sweet happiness of eating apple pie.
According to the plot of "Toast", Nigel has been trying his best to learn the recipe of his stepmother's craftsmanship in his youth. This competition is very interesting and cruel. It makes the home delicious, but it has turned the table and the tongue and stomach into a battlefield. Delicious but full of hostility to make these delicious, it is a melee of worship and aggression and counterattack. In the food arms race, every meal is stressful. That was probably the culinary era of Nigel's life when he wanted to win the favor of others the most.
When my father left them, it actually meant that he no longer had to care who had more cooking food at the table. He was completely wound up in his family, and he was free.
When he left his stepmother, the "thank you" he said made his stepmother panic, of course she knew that all the food she cooked with Nigel was ammunition for a war, of course she knew that her cooking proficiency was almost Another source of Nigel's pain. Nigel's thank you was actually a goodbye to all the pain the years had given him. What he had learned in hostility, the torture had shaped him unknowingly.
The disappearance of the object of this war allows Nigel to truly release himself. Kind of like a person who has been struggling with himself can finally forgive himself and others and go far away.
It is worth mentioning that the screenwriter of this film, lee hall, is also the screenwriter of another "Billy Elliot" that tells the history of juvenile growth. It tells the story of another boy who eventually grows up in a family that is not harmonious. The story of a famous ballerina. The boys in both films excel in a field traditionally women are better at—ballet and cooking—both come from families with grumpy fathers and young boy friends with sympathetic tendencies. And in "Toast", the gay boy from the boss's house is just a handsome boy who grew up to go to ballet school. If you look at it together, you will definitely sigh at those lonely boys.
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