Slow Life, Slow Food
By modern standards, risotto is the slowest of slow foods. You add broth, to your grains or rice, and slowly, carefully, and patiently stir. Then you stir some more. Most recipes suggest you could be done in 20 minutes (with rice), but in my experience, risotto takes up to an hour. The barley risotto pictured took an hour. You are basically massaging the grains over and over, like they are Kobe beef cows. You are slowly watching them (and tasting periodically) as they start to release their starches. When this happens, you start to see the creaminess on the bottom of the pan as you stir. That is how you know you are getting closer.
Risotto is not a modern dish. Modernity values speed and convenience. Modernity is that giant pack of kimchi noodles from Costco. Modernity is a frozen pizza tossed in the oven between gym visits, kids’ extracurriculars, or whatever else you have to do that night.
Speed kills, though. Speed causes anxiety. I think as a society we are passed the days of being “busy” as a badge of pride. Are you too busy to cook real food? Many of us feel that we are, but still, we persist.
Slowing down has its own benefits. Carl Honore, as my friend Sunil reminded me, wrote a whole book about the power of Slow. Slow down, don’t speed up.
The truth is, getting dinner on the table takes skill and practice, but you have to start somewhere. Barley risotto is maybe not the best weeknight dish, but there are many other things that you can make in about a half an hour. Is half an hour too long to spend on preparing real food?
What are the alternatives? Not cook, so we have more time to mindlessly thumb through our social feeds?
It is our minds that have trouble slowing down. I have written before about how too much time on digital devices makes my mind and soul feel sick. Cooking connects me to the Earth, and to my body. Digital life is very one dimensional- consumption through our eyeballs and ears.
The analog world has lots of opportunities to just slow down; the digital world always moves way too fast.
That is why I make time for these seemingly retro pursuits:
- cooking proper food
- reading books
- listening to lengthy ambient tracks, like Brian Eno, or William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops
- staring out the window, now and again
Being busy is a cult. Moving fast is for athletes. Slowing our minds down is what we really need to do. Consume less news, and consume less social media, and pay attention to the world. Just. Slow. Down. And pay attention.
If given a choice between being a turtle and a hare, remember, that with certain mathematical tools, at least, the turtle always beats the hare to the finish line.
Besides, life is not a race. Like the Brand Nubian song says, “Slow Down”.
