Green Lentil and Spinach Stew

“Once I was having coffee outside. I lingered for a while, and the cafe owner who had probably forgotten about the only stranger in the shop started scolding her assistant while they were both working at the open kitchen and prepping for that night’s dinner. The assistant looked scared and upset, and for a second I imagined how all the verbal abuse was leaking into the food that the guests would be eating that night. I thought that I do prefer eating food prepared by the people I know, people with clean and positive minds,” my friend shared on Instagram a while ago. And who said that Instagram exists only to showcase the hip-looking cups of cappuccino and your manicure?

I have always thought of food as a form of energy. As I am preparing ingredients, cooking them into a dish and sending to the table I am putting on the plate a small bit of what I think and feel at that exact moment. Have you noticed when you cook for pleasure without rushing the food comes out much better than on the days you feel unwell, or pressed for time, or cook out of need?

People who eat your food may experience a range of feelings depending on what you seasoned your food with. Think of the novel “Like Water for Chocolate” where talented cook Tita grieves her beloved man marring her sister and prepares their wedding cake that makes the guests who eat it cry and long for their true love. Instinctively we all understand these subtle powers of food, but have we ever consciously used that knowledge?

Well, our forefathers did. Many traditional cultures and religions assign huge importance to the rituals related to the food preparation and the person in charge of it. Ability to feed and nourish, to get people around a table is a sacred power I noticed to exist when as a kid I observed my grandma cooking. Looking at the tables she prepared you could tell at once who sets the mood in the family.

I notice how cooking these days reflects the life we are living. We rush, resort to shortcuts (processed foods) and outsource what we should be doing ourselves (living on takeouts). We don’t know what’s truly good, let others make choices for us and follow yet another ridiculous diet or a superfood trend. We cook out of ego so we have the bragging rights on the social networks. Cooking with love? Cooking to make your family happy? That seems increasingly out of fashion.

Having been working with food for the past five years and now being responsible for feeding hundreds and even thousands coming to Babushka, I only got convinced that cooking is about passing energy. That’s why I work on cultivating happiness when I cook and try to register any slightest change in my mood. I do not even enter the kitchen when I am upset and leave just as I might get angry.

However once you have a restaurant the whole passing energy business becomes more complex since there are many more people involved in growing, buying, making and serving your food.

Take our vendors. I prefer buying my fragrant herbs and greens from two farmers with kind smiles and the hands that only someone who works on the land does. I’d buy anything they grow because I know that their produce has soaked up plenty of care and kindness. Every time I approach their stalls I remind myself to stick to the shopping list, or I would be overloading my shopping trolley with all that is there.

I prefer buying vegetables and fruits from the small local farmers rather than the middlemen. I do believe that diversified local farms have healthier agricultural practices than big mono farms resulting in the better tasting produce, but I also believe that the amount of thoughtful labor and good energy a local farmer invests in their products matters as much.

Interactions with the market vendors is another department where I am careful. Three times a week me and my husband head out to the local farmer’s markets. We take our time to visit every stall we frequent even if we don’t purchase anything from them that day, have a chat and maybe a cup of tea. Of course I like it when the vendors appreciate our loyalty and offer special rates to their products, but I appreciate more when they offer the freshest, take out a new box from behind the counter so I could choose the best and reserve for me things that come in limited quantities trusting I am going to show up that day and pick them up.

When my free-range egg seller from whom we shop every week decided to charge us “the summer holidaymaker” rate and I got upset, his eggs did not taste as good as before, I swear. Or the sardine seller who guaranteed the best stuff and sent us defrosted fillets falling apart. Or the butcher who brought us the worst liver I have ever seen; it took hours and quite a bit of my rage to handle and by the time I sliced it I wondered if I should serve this liver that has soaked so much of my anger to the guests. That’s why I carefully choose my suppliers.

And then there are other people in the kitchen besides me. The woman who helps me starts any major culinary venture be it culturing yogurt or rolling the dough with a Bismillah (“In the name of Allah”), a way to stay mindful and ask for support in a new undertaking, however big or small. As the reservations count goes up in, she tells me, “We are fully prepared and going to have a fun night if Allah wills. The only thing I am asking from you, please, be relaxed”. And I am thinking to myself how lucky I am to have the wisdom and support of somebody who have worked in the restaurants for two decades, but even more - someone who cares about the chemistry in the kitchen and knows that we are in the business of passing energy, not “pushing plates” as the Turkish restaurant slang goes.

But then there are days when things don’t go so well. When the greens are not washed properly, when something gets burned, when perfectly edible stuff gets tossed in the bin. I get upset and not just about the time loss, or additional cost, or reputational risks for Babushka. I also get upset that the good intentions I wanted to put on the plate for my guests to enjoy got jammed on the way.

So when I heard the knife blade crushing against the cutting board and realized that my intern butchers tomatoes instead of gently cutting them into neat diced for Rum Karısı, our meze of yellow zucchini braised with tomatoes in olive oil, I got furious. “Do you even know how to use a knife?” Unfortunately, I did not stop there and told him a lot of things, things I wouldn’t love to hear myself. I don’t think it helped anything; the tomatoes got poisoned with fiery. I had a chance to rescue them, but had chosen to make it worse.

There were other times. Four portions of Russian dumplings that I left on the table for the staff to pick up instead of sending to the guests. Four portions of our hand-made Russian dumplings we could not sell because they looked like the person who fried them did not care much. He probably did not being obsessed with the drama his girlfriend launched on the phone that very minute or whatever. I could have chosen the tomato path again, but I knew better this time. I said, “We cannot serve these dumplings like that. Set these aside. Wash the frying pans. Start anew. Get focused. Cook them like you mean it”. The new four plates we sent in a few minutes became the highlight of the meal for the table that night. I was not surprised to learn that. Yes, our dumplings are delicious, but they contained something else besides the usual ingredients. The calm of the cook, his desire to please and my confidence in him.

My dad calls it transcendental cooking, or ability to affect the other person’s mood or even well-being by your food. He talks about setting yourself in the proper mood and being aware of your intentions as you step in the kitchen. He thinks I should coin the term, write a book about it and get famous. But for me it is simply enough to know that it works.