FOOD

Eastern Promises

Zen chef Edward Espe Brown knows How to Cook Your Life.


	print	email	reply

Published: Dec 4, 2007

HANG ZEN: Edward Espe Brown, star of the new film <i>How to Cook Your Life</i>.

HANG ZEN: Edward Espe Brown, star of the new film How to Cook Your Life.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Edward Espe Brown is an accidental chef. In the summer of 1966, the then-21-year-old was hired as a dishwasher at a hot springs resort in Carmel Valley, Calif. When one of the cooks quit, they asked the native San Franciscan if he wanted the job. "I was young enough not to know that I couldn't," laughs Brown.

Shortly thereafter, the resort was converted into the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, an offshoot of the San Francisco Zen Center founded by legendary Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki. Brown, who was already studying Zen at the time, became one of the famed master's students — but he never lost sight of the kitchen.

Now, the Zen priest, cooking instructor, lecturer and author (best known for the 1970 baker's classic The Tassajara Bread Book) has taken his teachings to the big screen with How to Cook Your Life, a documentary helmed by German filmmaker Doris Dörrie.

The film takes viewers inside Brown's educational cooking retreats, where he draws parallels between food preparation, Zen and everyday life. Brown recently connected with City Paper via phone from the West Coast to chat about film, food and the vital importance of what novice cooks might consider "grunt work."

City Paper: With so many projects under your belt, what made you want to break into film?

Edward Espe Brown: When Doris approached me two summers ago and said, "Would you like to do a movie?" I said sure. I've been studying Zen for a number of years, giving public talks and doing classes. But I've always wanted to talk to people in a way that meets who they are, and connect with people where they're at. An interest in a thing like cooking helps people connect spirituality with their everyday lives.

CP: How would you characterize the people who enroll in your classes?

EEB: Many of the people have expressed that they're looking for ways to make cooking a more integral part of their lives. For some people, that means they haven't done much cooking, but they're interested. Others have cooked a lot but lost their inspiration, and want some new way to look at it or approach it. I'm just encouraging people to get in the kitchen and do stuff — that's the way I cook. [I want students to say], "I can observe things, I can notice things." Maybe it's not a masterpiece, but it comes out well enough to sustain them and to offer to other people.

CP: In the film, you emphasize the simplest things — kneading bread, cutting vegetables, washing rice. What value can be drawn from these seemingly mundane actions?

EEB: With cooking, physical labor has become undervalued and underappreciated. [People forget] how much we can actually do with our hands. With food out of packages, you don't have a connection to it that you do if you've cut it, washed it and cooked it. It then becomes part of your life. The myth of our culture is that happiness is never having to do anything. But that happiness is kind of empty, really.

CP: One portion of the film deals with how Americans treat food as nothing but a commodity. But here in Philly, there's been a movement valuing organic, local, sustainable foods. How you noticed a shift, on a national level, toward this kind of thinking?

EEB: [The "locavore" movement] started [in California], and now it's spreading across the country. Certainly, friends of mine are now much more likely to have a subscription to an organic farm than they were eight to 10 years ago. Still, it's obviously something that could stand to grow. It's an empty kind of life, working and consuming manufactured products. Are you just going to work and consume stuff? Or are you actually going to to offer the gifts and resources you have to the world? That message is not just about food and cooking.

CP: Although the Zen diet is vegetarian, do you think that your teachings can be applied by those who eat meat or fish regularly?

EEB: You can prepare things carefully with attention, mindfulness and a conscious effort to care and not waste things. You can do that with whatever kind of diet you're eating. People have so many different viewpoints and are convinced of various things. I am not convinced one way or the other. What is important is that you're handling things carefully, and giving thanks and gratitude regardless of what kind of food you have.

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)

How to Cook Your Life opens at Ritz at the Bourse on Fri., Dec. 7. See our review.