HAPPY CHEF

(Only an upper Midwesterner knows the joys of Happy Chef.)

So anyways, it’s been suggested to me by a person of my acquaintance that perhaps I ought to give a full accounting of my own culinary quirks which, while not exactly numerous, are not exactly non-existent, either. Forthwith, then, my full disclosure:

First of all, there’s only one food that I really will not eat under any circumstances: sun-dried tomatoes. I have tried to appreciate them, dear reader, and I simply cannot. While to some they call up images of sun-drenched Sicilian hillsides or quaint Tuscan villas, to me they’re like eating boogers from the nose of Satan. If I wanted something with the texture of raisins and the flavor of vomit, I’d knock back a half-dozen prune daiquiris before dinner every night.

My second food phobia is a little more serious: Egg yolks are always a tricky proposition for me. I’ve never in my life eaten an over-easy egg, much less sunny side up. But I find the grainy texture and acrid smell of hard-boiled egg yolks the most difficult to take of all–and don’t get me started on deviled eggs, since I’m not all that nuts about mayonnaise and yellow mustard, either. And if you’re the sort of person who adds sun-dried tomatoes to your egg salad, good for you; just don’t get any on me, please.

Likewise, I cannot abide canned vegetables of any sort, except for corn–and even then, I’d rather have frozen or fresh.

Oh, and here’s one for the record books: guess which two foods almost everybody loves, but I could take or leave? Chocolate and french fries. Nothing against them, but I almost never crave either. I also don’t like McDonalds, except for my once-a-year Quarter Pounder with Cheese (which I still have not had for 2004).

I also have to note that there is significant culinary common ground in this house. We all agree that fish fries are wonderful, Pizza Hut is not, and at the great heavenly feast, we’ll be standing in line for enchiladas, beans, and rice. That, and we celebrate every major milestone in our lives with some sort of smoked pork product. OK? Have I convinced you that dinnertime at the Hasty house is not the grim power struggle I may have accidently on purpose made it out to be?

Well, then let me continue. Because, you see, cooking for two fussy eaters is not an entirely negative thing. A person can learn a lot from the experience, as it turns out.

For instance, the first time Paula and I went out for fish fry, while we were still dating, I was appalled when she put ketchup–ketchup!–on her fish. Everybody knows that the only proper condiments for fish are lemon juice, malt vinegar, and tartar sauce. Ketchup is a notorious bottom-feeder condiment. Ketchup is what the French and other sophisticated food snots blame for our inability to taste our food. After all, ketchup is just a means of putting sweet and sour flavors on everything, thereby making everything taste like everything else.

If you dump the stuff on everything willy-nilly, that is. But in trace amounts on fried fish or in other non-traditional applications, it’s a tremendous flavor enhancer. In addition to being a major source of the powerful anti-oxidant lycopene, cooked tomato products are full of the natural flavor enhancer glutamic acid, which makes everything you put it on taste a little more like itself. Thus, a small amount of ketchup on your fried fish brings out the flavor. (As I discovered last night, a couple tablespoons of ketchup added to a pot of bean soup can also save it from terminal blandness without making the soup too salty–or too spicy for a six-year-old to eat.)

So you see what my blind insistence on the “proper” condiments for fish amounted to: pointless orthodoxy. Because, truthfully, all lemon juice or vinegar ever did for my fried fish was make the crust soggy, and tartar sauce is basically mayonnaise, so it’s never been a favorite of mine. Consequently, fried fish was never something I absolutely adored–just something I didn’t object to. All because I refused to believe that a little ketchup might make it taste better; instead, I thought the ketchup was just a trick for people who didn’t like fish. Like I said, pointless orthodoxy.

Why? Why do we cling to such established norms instead of letting our own palates be our standard? Why is our notion of “good food” in this country so beholden to what pleased a Frenchman’s taste buds in the 19th century? Is a really good chicken taco worse food than coq au vin? In these food-crazy times, do you surrender your claim to fresser-dom if you dare to admit that you’d rather have a really good burger than a sort-of-good steak? I don’t think you do–but then, despite all appearances to the contrary, I’m not actually a food snob.

And there’s the problem. Too often, we train ourselves to prefer that which pleases others instead of that which keeps us–and our “clientele”–happy. The end result is a bunch of pointless orthodoxy.

(Granted, not all orthodoxy is pointless; as Fran Lebowitz once put it, “People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first to have thought of adding fresh lime juice to scalloped potatoes try to understand that there must be a reason for this.”)

Now, you know there’s a ministry-related point coming in all of this, just like there was last time. But it’s not the point that you think. My call is not for preachers to preach that which “keeps the customer satisfied;” the Gospel is corrosive stuff and not everybody is going to like being splashed with acid. No, my call is for preachers to spend as much time learning how to listen as they do thinking about how they’re going to preach.

I return to my fried-fish point. Whom did I impoverish by my stubborn insistence that I already knew everything I needed to know about dressing fried fish? Certainly not my wife and stepdaughter–I never prevented them from putting ketchup on their fish, after all. But every time they did, I put myself above them mentally. I may not be perfect, but at least I don’t put ketchup on my fish like some barbarian, I thought. And in so thinking, I robbed myself not once, but twice: Firstly and most obviously, I robbed myself of a better fish-eating experience; secondly, I robbed myself of the chance to relate to them as a partner instead of as the Dinner Commandant. Only the latter of these was a loss to them as well. But it’s a pretty big loss.

Too often I see preachers pulling a “ketchup on fish” act with the people they serve. They retreat from true engagement with the cultures in which they live and immerse themselves instead in elitism of one sort or another. Whether it’s the sophisticated mainliner who can’t be bothered to listen to anything but NPR, or the culture-wary conservative who rails against shows which went off TV a decade ago, or the overworked Catholic priest who, of necessity, reduces every act of ministry to a mere process instead of a true engagement, somehow, someway, we all wind up impoverished for the experience–and, while it hurts the people we serve, it hurts us even more.

In my opinion, there’s never an appropriate circumstance for a preacher to consider him or herself superior to the people he or she serves. It’s absolutely fatal to ministry. If you want to reach people–and I mean really reach them–it means listening to that goshawful hick AM station that broadcasts nothing but farm reports and Johnny Paycheck songs. Or going to the tractor pull. Or putting down Christianity Today and picking up Reader’s Digest. Or somehow, someway, participating in the same culture as everybody you serve does. Even the most world-denying Christians have some engagement with the rest of the world, after all. And how are you going to meet the needs of sinners unless you have some sense of the sins they’re caught up in?

A good preacher should be able to talk intelligently about the things his or her people care about. If that’s social justice or apocalyptic literature, so be it, but any dope can figure that out. But if it’s the Green Bay Packers or local development planning or violence in the streets, well, that’s important too. Every good sermon is an admixture of topcality and timelessness. We hope, when we step in the pulpit, that we speak of eternal truth (or at least we’d better hope we hope that), but it’s far too easy to forget that our calling is to serve God’s people in this place and at this time. And if you want to do that, you’d better be here, now–not where you’d rather serve, or when you think people might be more receptive to your message. Snobbish orthodoxy makes little sense at the dinner table, but it makes even less sense in the pulpit. Just put out your best home cooking, and trust that God can make strong spiritual bodies out of your best efforts.