Molecular Gastronomy

Food is sex. And by saying that, I am giving myself away as a chef. This is true. Food is sex and I am a purveyor of it. This philosophy renders anyone and everyone around me as a passive, receptive, orafice. I drizzle oils across their tongues. I squeeze crème fraiche into their mouths. I do my best work in the kitchen, but my masterstrokes occur in the dining room...

When my wife slaps me she does it with such vitriol that I feel little bells ringing along my cheek, and a little noosphere of pain buzzing just above my skin. I've gone out and slept with the wrong woman again. She knew too many people. She ate at the restaurant too often. I would do it again.

There is no one around me even when I'm standing in a crowd. No people. Just mouths. This is how I see myself.

Stanley, my new souschef asked me what my first set of knives were like. I fired him on the spot.

I have a tattoo of a cow on my back. Dotted lines delineate the different cuts of meat. Shank. Sirloin. Shoulder. Head.

They say molecular gastronomy is dead but last week I created a popcorn cloud so light and airy that it floated along the air like a dandelion and landed on the tongue of a sweet asian girl half my age. They say foams are passe but she didn't mind.

My wife asked me why I hurt her. She asked me why I hated her so much.

I created a spoonful of chocolate caviar and offered it to her as a truce. She threw it into the trash. She got ill that weekend and disappeared into the bedroom. I made her a spiral of chicken noodle soup. It looked like a roll of fishing line, white and translucent, in a coil on a single white asian soup spoon. "You stick your finger into it like a ring and rest it on top of your tongue," I explained. "Let it dissolve and let the flavors waft through you."

"Why can't you make food that actually nourishes people?" she asked.

I gave her a small bag of olive chips. She crumpled it and threw it onto the floor. "Nothing of substance. You're as vapid and cold as the liquid nitrogen you use to make your stupid frozen heirloom tomato salads with."

For love or for money you should really feed people instead of piquing their curiosities and vanishing like dry ice. Give them a dish they can hang onto.

I don't, of course. But I'm working on it. When my wife tells me she's pregnant, I begin to make a list of possible baby food purees. Spinach. Fish. Carrots. I aim to season them subtly and elegantly. Food is love.

When my wife tells me that the baby is not mine, I throw out the list. I go into my kitchen and create olive oil needles. Liquid ham and blood orange essences. Burnt onions. A mushroom cloud.