09.20.2009 subconscious vs conscious

My interrogation of the day will be about doing things consciously or using you subconscious ! waouu
I thin it is a question you can ask about cooking. My case is simple, I'm litteraly unable to follow a recipe. It could lead to a catastrophy sometimes, for sure, but most of the other time, it's not so bad. Even people that like me a lot, tell it's delicious. I simply follow my instinct... and it is that way that is good and pleasant to cook for me.
Yesterday I took a sushi maki class in Paris with the great Hisayuki Takeuchi. Wonderful inspired and creative chef. He made us a demo of how to make maki his way - very special way by the way - and it was a pure pleasure. This fabulous guy can't stand cooking without music, so he turned on the music and explained us that when you make sushi and any kind of good food in fact, you can dance and so give rythm to your dishes. Cooking for him is an act of joyful creation. His maki are all inspired from famous artists; Renoir for Pika Pika maki and Monet for the don-don maki.
The other thing that made me smile was his ability to mesure 50, 60g of rice to make a maki roll, it was so funny, noboby could have told if he was right but he looked so convinced that well he should be right. So is it conscious or subconscious that drives Hisayuki way of cooking ?
The real question behind that is about feelings, do you feel a recipe and then you make a good dishe, or do you only do what you're told to do in a cook book ?
Same way in your everyday life, are you leastening to your deep feelings and follow through or do you content yourself in doing what people are telling you or waiting from you ?
That's a question that I'm trying to deal with presently.
So here is my subconscious salad of the week.




The subconscious salad

Ingredients :
1 bowl of green salad
2 figs
5 tomatoes "coeur de pigeon" kind of cherry tomatoes
A handful of oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus)
Olive oil, balsamico vinegar, black pepper
Option : fresh parmeggiano slices

Clean all the vegetables. Cook your oyster mushrooms quickly in a pan with a little olive oil. Remove from the heat and wait a little they become lukewarm.


Mix the salad, the tomatoes cut in two, the figs cut in four (you can peel them if you taste better wihtout the peel).
Add the mushrooms.
Dress with olive oil and balsamico.
If you have fresh parmeggiono, add it on top of your salad.