Of course, it’s not enough. It never is. That’s the thing about obsession.
Powell is famous for cooking her way, recipe by recipe, through Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.’’ One of the harrowing high points of Powell’s resulting blog (The Julie/Julia Project), book (“Julie and Julia’’), and movie (in which she’s played by Amy Adams) centered around her having to bone out a duck, so it’s not surprising to learn that Powell has a thing for butchers who can do the complicated and messy job with ease. “Rippling deltoids and brawny good looks are nice, of course, but to me a butcher’s sureness is the definition of masculinity,’’ she writes. “It strikes me as intoxicatingly exotic, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.’’ What’s surprising is that in “Cleaving’’ she decides to become one herself.
It starts to make sense, though, when she describes the actual process of cutting apart the primals, taking the unprocessed sides of beef, lamb, and pork and producing the perfect roasts and steaks you find at the meat counter. “I spend my days now breaking down meat, with control, gentleness, serenity. I’ve craved certainty in these last troubled years, and here I get my fix.’’
Powell isn’t just honest about her flaws and foibles, she writes about them blatantly and self-indulgently. Her writing is peppered with profanity, and she seems titillated by her indiscretions, which are described mostly in flashback form. “I was finally doing something I ought to have felt ashamed of, and for the first time in a long time, no obscure guilt squeezed my heart at all. I was giddy. Wanton. I had a lover.’’
