For Bourdain Day, I wondered which cakes or desserts he favored. “Anthony Bourdain Is Not a Fan of Dessert,” the Internet told me. Buzzkill.
Is it true? I did more research and read some books. My purpose was to bake something reflecting his tastes as a way to interweave the substantive and the bittersweet.
One day more than three years ago, an author suggested I map Bourdain’s literary footprints as guidance to establish my own path. It’s striking — pun intended — that Bourdain’s is the name that entered the fiction author’s mind the moment an aspiring food author posed an elementary question.
As I now spend more time reading Bourdain’s books, I’m haunted by the allusions to mental illness. I found a worn paperback of A Cook’s Tour at the little free library. It’s unnerving to read references to “… appearing to be on the verge of some sort of psychotic break …” and “the TV crew thinks I’m having a breakdown.”
Fade to black. Hard pivot back to baking.
On a charmingly outdated New York magazine page, there’s a strawberry recipe credited to Bourdain of Les Halles. I don’t find it in Anothny Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook. I’d like at least one other source to confirm attribution. Get a grip. It’s not a life-or-death question.
I make the strawberries for Bourdain.
I next open his ultimate Appetites. Viewing the table of contents, I gain confidence I’ve found my answer. There’s a dessert section. I turn to the page … and it explodes in my face.
Fuck dessert.
Okay. I don’t mean that. I like dessert just fine. But if I had to live without one course for the rest of my life, dessert would be the one to go. […]
I do, in fact, on occasion, enjoy a little bite of chocolate or something sugary at the end of a good meal. But then … I want cheese.
Cheese is magic. The cheese course, irreplaceable. All the knowledge accumulated by mankind and all the mysterious forces of the natural world reside in cheese.
He doesn’t want any cheese. He wants Stilton. I stumble across an earlier reference to Stilton in A Cook’s Tour. It has spoken to him for some time.
Here’s your Stilton, Bourdain.
I chose the expensive kind in your honor. You paid a higher price. Your last choice was your last. You had exhausted the choices on your plate. Yours was an appetite even omnipotent cheese couldn’t fulfill.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 