一把250美元的鸡蛋勺和一场21世纪美食文化大战

In the great food culture wars of the 21st century, the egg-spoon skirmishes may one day be remembered as pivotal.

在21世纪的美食文化战争中，鸡蛋勺之战有朝一日或许会被作为一个转折点。

Recent conflicts over this long-handled cooking tool have fostered a new social-media meme, a fresh front in the #MeToo movement and a handcrafted version that costs $250, not to mention new volleys lobbed by Alice Waters and Anthony Bourdain.

近来，有关这个长柄烹饪工具的争端催生了一个社交媒体新米姆、一道#MeToo(我也是)运动新战线，以及一个售价250美元的手工制作版本，更别说还有爱丽丝·沃特斯(Alice Waters)和安瑟尼·波登(Anthony Bourdain)之间的又一场对骂。

But every war is steeped in history. The first egg-spoon dust-up occurred in 2009, after Waters, the spiritual mother of all that is organic and sustainable, cooked Lesley Stahl an egg in an iron spoon she held over a fire in her Berkeley, California, kitchen for a segment of “60 Minutes.”

但每场战争都有历史渊源。第一次鸡蛋勺纷争在2009年掀起，当时，世间一切有机和可持续之物的精神之母沃特斯，在她的加州伯克利厨房中，将一把铁勺放在火上，为莱斯利·斯塔尔(Lesley Stahl)做了个鸡蛋，那是《60分钟》(60 Minutes)节目的一部分。

Waters had acquired the spoon after she saw one in William Rubel’s book “The Magic of Fire: Hearth Cooking: One Hundred Recipes for the Fireplace or Campfire,” and asked the San Francisco master blacksmith Angelo Garro to make her one.

沃特斯的勺子，是在看了威廉·鲁贝尔(William Rubel)那本《火的魔法——壁炉烹饪：适合壁炉及篝火烹饪的100道菜谱》(The Magic of Fire: Hearth Cooking: One Hundred Recipes for the Fireplace or Campfire)后买的，她还请旧金山名铁匠安杰洛·加罗(Angelo Garro)为自己打造了一个。

“I liked that feeling of watching it and holding it,” Waters said in a recent interview. “It’s not like cooking it in a pan. You just feel like you’re really in charge of it. It’s so elemental. It’s really primitive, in a way.”

“我喜欢那种看着、拿着它的感觉，”沃特斯在最近的一个采访中说。“这不像用平底锅。你会感觉你是真的在掌控。感觉很自然。真的很原始，可以说。”

Her appearance with the spoon set off some viewers, notably Bourdain, who was then into the fifth season of his culinary travel show “No Reservations.”

她和勺子的亮相引来了一些观众，尤其是波登，当时他的烹饪节目“没有预定”(No Reservations)已经进行到了第五季。

“She’s Pol Pot in a muumuu,” he was reported to have said at a New York food festival shortly afterward. “I saw her on ’60 Minutes.’ She used six cords of wood to cook one egg for Lesley Stahl.”

“她是穿着穆穆袍的波尔布特(Pol Pot)，”有报道称他不久之后在纽约美食节上说道。“我看她上了《60分钟》。她用了六截木柴给莱斯利·斯塔尔做了一个鸡蛋。”

The lines were drawn. On one side were those who viewed cooking an egg over a fire as the embodiment of food elitism and all that is annoying about the Slow Food movement. Only people who are very rich or very poor have fireplaces in their kitchens, critics said. Where is a working parent supposed to find the time?

界线已经划清。界线的一边认为，在一团火上烹制一个鸡蛋，是饮食精英主义的表现，还有慢食运动(Slow Food)那烦人的一切。批评者表示，只有非常富裕或非常贫穷的人，厨房里才会有壁炉。工薪父母哪里找得到这样的时间?

In the opposing camp were people happy to discover a slow, delicious way to make those farm eggs that they had worked so hard to find. Even if the egg spoon was merely aspirational, it set the bar for a simpler way of cooking and eating — one in which a fire-roasted egg slipped onto levain toast seemed the antidote to an unthinking, tech-dominated culture fueled by unhealthy, overly processed food.

而对面的阵营里的人却乐于发现一种缓慢而美味的制作方式，来烹制自己辛辛苦苦找到的柴鸡蛋。即使鸡蛋勺只是个精神鼓励，但它也为一种更为简单的烹饪和饮食方式设定了标准——一只火烤的鸡蛋夹进一片天然酵种面包，仿佛就为过度加工的不健康食物导致的没有思想、技术主导的文化找到了解药。

The egg spoon became a mark of insider status and a tool of seduction. Food writers like Daniel Duane, whom Waters hired for the Chez Panisse Foundation, fell prey.

鸡蛋勺成为了圈内人身份的标志，以及用来吸引人的工具。一些美食作家，比如沃特斯为帕尼斯基金会(Chez Panisse)请来的丹尼尔·杜安(Daniel Duane)，就上钩了。

“Waters looked playfully into my eyes and said: ‘I’m going to have to make you the Egg,'” he wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 2012. “'It’ll take a few minutes. Is that OK? I have to build a fire.'”

“沃特斯逗趣地看着我说：‘我必须要给你做个鸡蛋，’”他在2012年的纽约时报杂志上写道。“‘得花上几分钟，可以吗?我得生个火。’”

The egg spoon slowly moved into the mainstream, with loving tributes in magazines like Cooking Light. Last year, the design website Remodelista proclaimed it “legendary.”

有了《烹饪之光》(Cooking Light)这些杂志发表的颂歌，鸡蛋勺慢慢成为了主流。去年，设计网站Remodelista用“传奇”来形容它。

Then, in January, Tamar Adler, a food writer and Chez Panisse alumna, noted her egg-spoon predilection in “The Grub Street Diet,” a column in New York magazine in which notable people keep a diary of a week’s worth of eating.

然后，在一月份，在帕尼斯待过的美食作家塔玛尔·阿德勒(Tamar Adler)在纽约杂志专栏“格拉勃街食谱”(The Grub Street Diet)中提及了她对鸡蛋勺的偏爱，许多名人都会在这个专栏记录一周的饮食。

After drinking her daily “Mason jar half-full of black tea and half-full of organic lactose-free whole milk and maple syrup,” Adler cooked an egg in a spoon over coals.

喝下当天的“用梅森罐装的一半红茶加一半有机无乳糖全脂牛奶和枫糖浆”后，阿德勒会在炭火上用一个勺子烤鸡蛋。

Even she knew it had baggage. “Though I cringe to admit it,” she wrote, “I not only own, but love, a hand-forged egg spoon.”

连她都知道这东西是有过去的。“尽管我羞于承认，”她写道，“我不仅有，而且还热爱一把手打鸡蛋勺。”

The smoldering war was reignited. Over drinks and on social media, mocking ensued. The hand-forged egg spoon was recast as the new silver spoon.

战火硝烟再起。在酒桌上，在社交媒体中，人们纷纷出言嘲笑。手打鸡蛋勺被再造为新版银汤匙。

But social context is everything. This is the post-Harvey Weinstein era, when gender imbalance, assault and harassment in professional kitchens have been laid bare. The egg spoon has caught a ride on a new wave of kitchen feminism. Egg-spoon haters now find themselves under attack.

但社会背景决定一切。这是后韦恩斯坦时代，职业厨房中的性别不平等、性侵、性骚扰正被暴露无遗。鸡蛋勺搭上了厨房女权主义新浪潮的顺风车。鸡蛋勺仇恨者发现，自己现在成了被攻击的一方。

Kat Kinsman of the website Extra Crispy devoted a column to what she saw as sexism in the egg-spoon attacks. If Francis Mallmann, the subject of an Esquire profile titled “Is Francis Mallmann the Most Interesting Chef in the World?,” had cooked an egg with a spoon instead of roasting a lamb on a wooden cross, he’d be a hero, she wrote. (Waters, incidentally, has given Mallmann one of her beloved egg spoons.)

Extra Crispy网站的卡特·金斯曼(Kat Kinsman)在一篇专栏文章中专门讨论了她所谓“蛋勺攻击”中的性别歧视。她写道，如果弗朗西斯·马尔曼(Francis Mallmann)用勺子烤了个鸡蛋，而不是在木头十字架上烤了只小羊，那么他会成为一个英雄(顺便说一句，沃特斯把她心爱的一个蛋勺送给了马尔曼)。《Esquire》杂志曾刊登过马尔曼的特写文章《弗朗西斯·马尔曼是世界上最有趣的厨师吗?》。

And now, the latest salvo: In Slow Food’s version of an in-your-face move, Waters’ daughter, Fanny Singer, has introduced an egg spoon for sale through her website Permanent Collection.

现在的最新事件是：沃特斯的女儿范妮·辛格(Fanny Singer)开始在自己的网站Permanent Collection上销售蛋勺，这是慢食运动的公然挑衅。

The 16-inch iron spoon is hand-forged to Waters specifications by Shawn Lovell, whom Singer described in an email as “an incredible female blacksmith in Alameda, Calif.”

这款16英寸长的铁勺是由肖恩·洛弗尔(Shawn Lovell)按照沃特斯的规格亲手打造的。辛格在接受邮件采访时表示，洛弗尔是“加州阿拉梅达一位不可思议的女铁匠”。

The spoon costs $250. Five percent of each sale will go to the Edible Schoolyard Project, which began after Waters made gardening and cooking in schools her life’s work.

这款勺子售价250美元。每一笔交易的5%都将用于“可食校园项目”(Edible Schoolyard Projec)，该项目是在沃特斯将园艺和校内烹饪作为毕生事业后开始的。

Waters has never marketed frying pans or signed her name to stoves. But this time the stakes were high enough, Singer said: “This is attitudinal and atmospheric.”

沃特斯从没推销过煎锅，也从未把自己的名字签在炉灶上。但这一次的赌注足够高，辛格说：“这关乎态度和氛围。”

For her part, Waters is as much a supportive parent as she is the figurehead of the spoon wing of the #MeToo movement. “It is hilarious,” she said, “but in another way, I want young boys to hold that spoon, too. I want them to feel the sense of the fire and the closeness to the simplicity of it. It helps you become sensitive. We are hoping men become sensitive and we find each other in that place.”

沃特斯既是一个支持孩子的家长，也是#MeToo运动蛋勺派的灵魂人物。“这太搞笑了，”她说，“但从另一方面讲，我想让年轻男孩们也拿起那个勺子。我想让他们知道火的感觉，它的亲密感和质朴。它能帮你变得敏感细腻。我们希望男人能够更加敏感细腻，让我们可以感受彼此。”

And what of Bourdain, the original egg-spoon skeptic? He concedes that there is a bit of sexism baked into the egg-spoon wars, but for him, the issue isn’t gender equity. It’s stupidity.

那个最初的蛋勺怀疑者布尔丹呢?他承认蛋勺之争中存在一点性别歧视，但对他来说，问题并不是性别平等。而是愚蠢。

“I am quite sure male chefs have committed far, far worse crimes in the cause of pretentious and pomposity,” he said. “There is plenty of silliness out there to make fun of on both sides.”

“我敢肯定，男厨师们做过更自命不凡、装腔作势的事，”他说，“双方都做过很多值得嘲笑的蠢事。”