Sweet and Savory: The Taste of Courage (Guest Post)
By: Jackie Falla
As a writer, I live for a good metaphor. It wasn’t until after my visit to La Pitchoune, the house that Julia and Paul Child built in Chateauneuf, located in the idyllic French Countryside, that I reflected on the similarities of the school’s philosophy for cooking and life, to my own. When I started flipping houses that I lived in while construction was underway, I didn’t realize that it was even a plan that I would execute again and again. Nor did I realize that when I had done it a few times that my dear, smart, talented, and beautiful friends who wanted to do it too, thought it best to wait until they were married or committed.
“Argh” I’d say. “Don’t wait. Do it now, real estate isn’t only the 21st century’s answer to self-care. It’s security, it’s the freedom to make decisions, change your mind, make mistakes, grow.”
I wanted to bust the myth that finances, investments, and home ownership were the business of men. I wanted to share with them the feeling of sovereignty that I got from figuring out how to take something that didn’t look like much at all and turn it into something beautiful and worthy.
How absolutely serendipitous that Courageous Cooking School wants to banish the notion that you must be a chef to prepare delectable food, that you must stick to a recipe, follow the rules, and ignore your intuition.
Makenna masterfully mixes convention with the unconventional. She takes the familiar and layers it with x, and then y, adding a little z, and perhaps an e. Unexpected, unheard of, unimaginably delicious until your perceptions of what is possible have shifted. Your meals are a little more daring, your palate a little more expansive. Your ability to stretch, imagine, dream, and entertain wild and crazy combinations begins to marinate over the course of the week.
Once at home, this way of doing things becomes a way of being. It takes less courage to reach for the black lime and blend it with tarragon before rubbing down your halibut in a beautiful sheen of herb and spice, splashing it with a fruity oil, and finishing it with a zest of lemon. Courage, it seems is built by taking it, which is why Courageous Cooking School is an excellent training ground for women that aren’t at all comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable.
The air smells different at La Peetch. It’s scented with rosemary, lavender, and other sweet and savory aromas that dance through the air in and around the property. Our small band of Entrepreneurial Women is invited to follow a few simple fundamentals, aptly scratched out on a chalkboard, the lesson is quick, and then we did the unexpected.
We five students, with our own ideas and preconceived notions of taste and pairings, selected a fruit or vegetable, and one of the spices that lined the corner shelf in the kitchen, floor to ceiling. I chose black cherries and smoked black cardamon, having just smelled the cooking fires of Albania emanating from its jar. Others chose green tomatoes, avocado, wild ramps, Jimmy Nardello Pepper, and Wild Ming. Then the unthinkable happened. We used every single oddball ingredient to make our Gazpacho.
Admittedly, there was a tightening in my chest when Kendall announced her plan to us, but she had her own recipe at a Michelin Star Restaurant in Paris, and we did not. Trust, like the blade of a knife, can have a ragged edge. Wide-eyed we watched, layered, sprinkled, sampled, and savored, something entirely unexpected. It wasn’t only delicious, it was the very best Gazpacho I have ever tasted.
Gone too soon, over too fast, I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow this newfound freedom to fade. I would practice and preach it. I think of Makenna’s story and the fateful day she saw the New York Times article advertising the sale of La Pitchoune, “The Little One”, and wonder how many years of recipe-free cooking preceded her decision to take the courageous leap. It makes me smile to think that real estate was at the heart of this revolution.
My own quest to build wealth through real estate and to encourage women to find sovereignty and agency through this very “real” ownership takes courage. As a foodie, a place where I can indulge my culinary interests, as a Francophile, anything French which most notably includes my introduction to their gastronomic delights through Julia Child and her WGBH program, The French Chef.
I am my Mother’s Daughter, and while she may not have recognized Julia as the revolutionary that she was, as a pathfinder, a women’s rights advocate dressed in the soft fluffy coat of a lamb. I see her. She tended to her flock, including her beloved husband Paul, while skillfully guiding her culinary vision and ambitions to market, and boy did she market the heck out of it. She was a 6’ 3” powerhouse of tenacity.
Was it destiny? Was it preordained that I would someday arrive in one of my very favorite places, the South of France, cooking in Julia Child’s Kitchen, peg board and all? Learning that cooking is a gateway to courage? Maybe. Cosmic alignment of the stars may have played a part as well. All I know is that it feels serendipitous, and has opened my eyes to endeavors and collaborations I otherwise would never have thought possible.
