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What's for supper?
Author: TriSec
Date: 10/17/2009 12:59:03
Good Morning!
It's a Saturday, so we're about to indulge in one of our usual rituals. In a minute, I'm going to the pantry to open a can of mysterious animal meat and potatoes, throw it in a fry pan and drop an egg on top of it.
Some weekend mornings, I actually go through the trouble of adding some water to a pre-mixed powder to make batter, then I fry that and we eat it. (although I'm picky enough there to insist on 'real' sausage - no black & serve in my kitchen!)
But I've never actually made hash from scratch, and it's been ages since I handmixed pancake batter from scratch, too.
Americans, at least, have always gravitated towards convenience foods, easy meals, and fast food. Perhaps it's the postwar car culture. Perhaps it's the increasing speed of modern society. Perhaps it's the pressures to always be doing something, and the simpler pleasures in life slowly slip away.
I'm the master of the kitchen in my house....I cook just about everything and anything, but I always consider myself more of a baker. Growing up with an Italian mum and Grandma, we always had a mountain of pies, cookies, pastry, and everything else around. Christmas Eve, of course, is the number one holiday on the Italian Food Calendar, followed closely by Easter Sunday. There's traditional desserts and other things that I only make once a year for these holidays.
In any case...when was the last time any one of us out there spent more than an hour preparing a meal? Two hours? It's a dying art. Cooking, especially complex, old-world cooking, is becoming increasingly rare. Why spend hours fussing over a Poulet Roti when it's just as easy to drive up the street for a bucket of fried chicken?
Ah, at least there's always Paris. French cuisine is considered by many to be the pinnacle of exquisite gastronomy; volumes have been written about it, and there's a thriving tourist trade among the fine dining establishments in and around the City of Lights.
Perhaps that's why I find this story a little disturbing and sad.
Despite Julia Child living in Cambridge for nearly half a century, I never owned "The Bible" until this past year. It's already become indispensible in my kitchen; basic instructions, sauces, how to cut things up....I knew how to cook, but this has brought me back to some lost arts and new things I never knew.
It's the weekend. Why not go shopping today? Head for your local market, or better yet, a farm stand heavy with your local bounty, and spend a lazy Saturday afternoon doing something different. Slow down and enjoy the food!
Bon Appetit!
It's a Saturday, so we're about to indulge in one of our usual rituals. In a minute, I'm going to the pantry to open a can of mysterious animal meat and potatoes, throw it in a fry pan and drop an egg on top of it.
Some weekend mornings, I actually go through the trouble of adding some water to a pre-mixed powder to make batter, then I fry that and we eat it. (although I'm picky enough there to insist on 'real' sausage - no black & serve in my kitchen!)
But I've never actually made hash from scratch, and it's been ages since I handmixed pancake batter from scratch, too.
Americans, at least, have always gravitated towards convenience foods, easy meals, and fast food. Perhaps it's the postwar car culture. Perhaps it's the increasing speed of modern society. Perhaps it's the pressures to always be doing something, and the simpler pleasures in life slowly slip away.
I'm the master of the kitchen in my house....I cook just about everything and anything, but I always consider myself more of a baker. Growing up with an Italian mum and Grandma, we always had a mountain of pies, cookies, pastry, and everything else around. Christmas Eve, of course, is the number one holiday on the Italian Food Calendar, followed closely by Easter Sunday. There's traditional desserts and other things that I only make once a year for these holidays.
In any case...when was the last time any one of us out there spent more than an hour preparing a meal? Two hours? It's a dying art. Cooking, especially complex, old-world cooking, is becoming increasingly rare. Why spend hours fussing over a Poulet Roti when it's just as easy to drive up the street for a bucket of fried chicken?
Ah, at least there's always Paris. French cuisine is considered by many to be the pinnacle of exquisite gastronomy; volumes have been written about it, and there's a thriving tourist trade among the fine dining establishments in and around the City of Lights.
Perhaps that's why I find this story a little disturbing and sad.
PARIS, France — During the 1970s, I dropped in on Monsieur Turpin, a storied Parisian greengrocer and pheasant plucker. His walrus mustache bristled with indignation.
“Those people,” he said, nodding toward two young Americans chewing on baguettes as they passed. “They are walking while they eat.”
Alas, poor Turpin. Today, even the Louvre Museum has a food court for ambulatory grazing. Soon it will include those ubiquitous golden arches. A Big Mona with fries?
What began slowly in the 1970s is now a galloping, likely irreversible, scourge. France is losing its fabled affinity for good food.
In the country where four centuries ago Francois Vatel fell on his sword because the turbot was late for a royal banquet, frozen fish sticks are all the rage.
A glance down any supermarket aisle is evidence enough, with such ersatz food as thin cellophane-wrapped slices of bright yellow processed cheese.
That feeding frenzy of Julia Child lore inspired Americans — first in the 1960s, then again this year — to revive classic French recipes, but here a dwindling number of people bother to simmer a simple sauce.
Turpin used to wake at 4 a.m. to select each tomato he would sell off the trucks at Les Halles, Paris' then-central food market. He taught me why the family dinner table is the heart of everything French.
Back then I began amassing old volumes and soon realized French food could be hazardous. If my shelves ever give way, I’ll be smashed flatter than a mallet-pounded escalope de veau.
Back in the 1500s, Catherine de Medici brought forks from Italy. Thus armed, French nobles hired cooks to put flatware to good use.
After the Revolution, jobless chefs opened eateries for common folk. Marie-Antoine Careme elevated good cooking to haute cuisine. Later, Auguste Escoffier codified it.
Perusing the books, I found Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s classic remark, underlined in red: “The discovery of a new dish means more to humankind than the discovery of a new star.”
I lingered over a 1937 equivalent of Cooking for Dummies by a Cordon Bleu master named Henri-Paul Pellaprat: “La Cuisine Froide, Simple et Pratique” ("Cold Food, Simple and Convenient").
Opening photos show how to debone a chicken; stuff it with pork, fowl bits, ham, lard and truffles; truss it with surgical knots; and wrap it in a towel for the oven.
Others show the construction of chicken a la Neva in a not-quite-firm gelee and sauce Chaufroid (don’t ask). Nuclear fusion is more simple et pratique.
Despite Julia Child living in Cambridge for nearly half a century, I never owned "The Bible" until this past year. It's already become indispensible in my kitchen; basic instructions, sauces, how to cut things up....I knew how to cook, but this has brought me back to some lost arts and new things I never knew.
It's the weekend. Why not go shopping today? Head for your local market, or better yet, a farm stand heavy with your local bounty, and spend a lazy Saturday afternoon doing something different. Slow down and enjoy the food!
Bon Appetit!
