Just a dash of cooking, but a big dollop of inspiration

The documentary film Pressure Cooker, which opened in San Francisco Friday, may disappoint if one is looking for a food and/or cooking movie.

But if one is looking for inspiration -- true life inspiration -- see this movie. The inspiration it offers and the real-life drama of the students' lives more than make up for the relatively limited screen time devoted to actual cooking.

Pressure Cooker is the story of a culinary arts class at Philadelphia's Frankford High School, an inner city institution whose students face an array of issues from their grinding urban life. Culinary arts teacher Wilma Stephenson is their mentor, surrogate mother and whip cracker.

Stephenson knows that the way out for her students is learning to cook so well that they take top honors at the area high school culinary competition and earn college scholarships. See the film to find out if they do.

This is a true-life version of To Sir With Love and the many other lesser films that show gifted, dedicated teachers inspiring their students to achieve beyond their own and many others' expectations.

(Photo credit: Lauren Feeney/Bev Pictures)

Cuisinart and me

My new Cuisinart blender got its first workout last evening, providing the purée for a red-pepper soup for dinner. Subtly delicious, if I do say so myself.

The temptation in the latter stages of cooking was to over-season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, because it tasted bland. I added a little salt and pepper, but no more. Good thing, because the subtle taste built itself up by the spoonful to a most pleasant fullness of flavor.

The key, I believe, was buying fresh red peppers and roasting, peeling and seeding them myself rather than what so many recipes call for: buying roasted peppers in a jar. Doing it from scratch, although it is a bit of labor, allows the peppers to retain a subtle smokiness from roasting. That is lost when the peppers are stuck in liquid in a jar.

An example of why cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients is the only way to go.

It should be Julia first, then Julie

A full biographical film on the life of Julia Child would have, should have, could have been more appealing than the two-story combo now in theaters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Julie & Julia, mostly for its entertainment value but also for what seemed to be a fact-based portrayal of how Julia Child got her start and how she became the "mother" of modern American cooking and the entire movement to higher quality cooking and eating.

(The Food Network, Anthony Bourdain and Top Chef, among many others, can thank Julia for raising awareness of good food well prepared, allowing American society to accept such an inundation of programming devoted to cooking and eating.)

What the movie paid only passing attention to were the behind-the-scenes details of not only Julia Child's professional life but of Julie Powell's. A for-instance: No one washed a pot, a pan or a dish during the film's 124 minutes. Not that such a scene would have added a lot, but let's be realistic: When the cooking and eating are done, cleanup awaits.

I have read parts of Julia Child's biography and all of "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell, and the essence of both is captured by the film.

I simply would have enjoyed more, much more, of Julia Child's life.

Guess I'll eat a big, gourmet breakfast

How does one cram for the entrance exam at culinary school?

I will take that exam -- the Wonderlic Scholastic Level Exam -- today as part of the formal application process. I'm a bit nervous about it. No school-type exam with anything at stake has come before me in ages.

My assumption is that it will focus on language, math, geography and other basic information that any graduate of high school would know. I'm a graduate of high school AND of college, but those were in a previous millennium.

So if pi is still 3.1416 and the capital of South Dakota is still Pierre (pronounced peer, not Pee-air), I should be OK. Watch this space for an update.

Speaking of Mom's cooking ...

Los Tucsonenses know: The kitchen in heaven is where green corn tamales come from.

The unique, melt-in-your-mouth tamales are among the delicacies of genuine Sonoran cuisine -- along with menudo blanco and paper-thin flour tortillas.

That green corn tamales usually are available only in late summer, when the white corn is ripe and the green chiles are at their sweetest, makes them even more desirable and delicious.

My mom and my tias worked every August and September on big batches of tamales. We kids were the laborers, husking the corn, cutting the kernels and taking them to the molino at the Chinese market down the street. The result was masa, the corn meal that is at the root of all tamales.

From them, my mom fashioned the tamales, with a little manteca, cheese and roasted chiles. After an hour or so of steaming, we were gorging ourselves on the delicious tamales, accompanied by fresh-made beans.

For the first time ever, I tried to replicate that recipe on my own on Sunday, buying white corn, green chiles and good Jack cheese at the farmers' market. A small batch -- just four cups of corn kernels -- produced 10 tamales. They were a bit coarse, but the authentic flavor came through.

Ah, green corn tamales as my mom made them. They come from heaven's kitchen.

Mom's home cooking

My brother, probably the best cook among the three offspring of that marvelous cook Ofelia Islas Chihak, used to tell a joke about going into a café by the name of "Mom's Home Cooking." Where, he cleverly asked the waitress, is Mom? Without pause, she met the smart-ass question with a smart-ass response: "Just where the sign says: She's home cooking."

That's where and how I remember my mom the most: home cooking. A young, beautiful, vibrant version of my mom dominated my dream the other night. She died five years ago next month, and yet I think about her every day.

Most especially, I think about her when I am cooking. My mom taught me, my brother and my sister to cook, partly by osmosis, partly by direct instruction. She cooked as part of her housewife duties, but underneath, one could see joy in the creativity, passion in the preparation, satisfaction in the outcome.

My passion for cooking came from her. It is to honor her and her passionate gift to me that I dedicate my venture to culinary school.

Into the frying pan

The feeling of new life is stirring within me. New life in the form of enrollment in culinary school, with all the opportunities, wonders and ideas it carries.

Oh, and the fears -- hundreds of them. But let's keep this recipe simple, with just the Top Four Fears:

No. 4: Can I handle five days a week of other people telling me what to do after all these years of my telling others what to do?

No. 3: Can I find something in this beyond the ability to dazzle family and friends by whipping up from scratch a tasty béchamel sauce in my kitchen?

No. 2: Can I unlearn my self-taught cooking skills, reserving the creative juices for later inclusion, to adopt the proper ways of the French kitchen?

No. 1: Can I fulfill my long-held desire to be a capital-C Cook?

Fears aside, a good cook tastes what he is making before serving it to others. I have been tasting this for a long time. It is good, and I shall serve it.

¡Que aprovecho!