Mark Miller: belief

Transcript context

…No, no — what are the characteristics of it? I can tell you the general broad strokes: women are essentially more concerned with internal experiences. They are more motivated to talk to someone in a dining room table. The guy will look at the television. You get four guys, and the four women will talk to each other. The point is, is that early on, there’s a better internalization of the phenomenological world inside the body. They actually begin to recognize those characteristics of things that are what I would call “body perceptuality.” That tends to be a little bit more subtle. It tends to be a little bit more in time. They don’t like the transformative process as much as understanding the — I’m going out on a limb — but they would prefer to accept the flavor, personality as is and understand it, rather than change it into something, that I do. Like Fuchsia said, if you took that carrot, that pork, that kidney, and just made it spicy, that’s what guys — they want to change it and transform it. They want to create something new. They want to actually not allow . . .If you allowed nature to take its course, then you wouldn’t be cooking. You don’t have to heat. You’re not transforming with spice. Except for Lydia Shire in Boston — she was the only one that I could never tell — women tend to actually believe that the ingredient should be left alone (Alice Waters or that school of cooking), and that you can literally coax natural ingredients into something that’s complex and satisfying and sophisticated and healthy. And if it’s sustainable, it’s even better. Men: I believe that if we go too far, that we’re not going to learn how to make moles, that we’re not concerned with other black bean soups. When I lived in Guatemala, every woman in the village made black bean soup. Not one of those women ever told me, “I go to the market and buy organic black beans, so mine is better.” No. [laughs] Every woman knew how good her black bean soup was. The best woman in the village, she has 37 steps. She really got me going. Women tend to be more focused and more creative and more subtle. It doesn’t mean that they’re not as rich a tradition. It just means that it’s a different level of recognition. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Mezcal or tequila?…

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