(no subject)
So my gf is gone for a couple of days. I am working, and I got 2 cookbooks so I am fairly well entertained. I need to find someone with laptop expertise, because I want to see if my Dell can be salvaged, but Microcenter wants 2 weeks and $70 to even look at it. I don't blame them, but if it's a total loss, I don't want to add $70 to the total loss.
I'm having an identity crisis. This may seem lame, but it's a cooking identity crisis. It seems that all roads lead to France, but some of the food/technique, I'm just not feeling. There are things done to vegetables that don't seem right sometimes, and even Michel Richard (very French background, but the cooking style is all his own) said something along the lines of in French cooking, a potato can't just be a potato-- you have to turn it into a mushroom first.
So on the one hand, extraordinarily fussy food is less appealing to me, especially as honestly, it will all turn into poop anyhow. I honestly find it depressing that my best work will someday end up in a sewer someday. On the other hand, while I love rustic, regional cooking, with big flavors and interesting vegetable/meat choices, it can degrade quickly into mediocrity. A little laziness and suddenly, your braise is overdone, your veggies poorly cut, your sauces not seasoned correctly. Your senses are overwhelmed by garlic, cheap wine, and ridiculous folk costumes. There is no happy ending here, unless you like big women and vicious regional limitations.
It is frustrating: shortcuts like lemon juice, garlic, parm, truffle oil, and even butter, can take ok or mediocre dishes and make them palatable. Same for shallots, chives, caramelized onions, and smoking anything. Don't get me wrong-- I like all these flavors, but they are an easy answer to the complex question of "What tastes good?" Cultures outside of the Western canon are inspired and flavorful, but no less immune to the disease. Scallions, garlic, and ginger are a fabulous combination, but when you start with that, add a sweet/spicy sauce, and maybe add mushrooms, then you are falling into the formulaic rut that makes food that appeals to the palate just fine, but leaves the brain and sense of adventure a little flat.
Am I like the porn addict, so desensitized by indulgence that he has to find weirder and weirder things to stay turned on, or the drug addict who tolerates more and more in order to chase that first high all over again?
The first thing that springs to mind is to stop eating, and humiliate myself with some unpresupposing food.
Well, I've tried that. Crappy food still pisses me off. I could not eat for 3 or 4 days, but if breaking my fast with a McDonald's hamburger was my only choice, you know I'd resent it. I mean, I'd eat the hell out of it, along with 5 or 6 of its brothers, but I'm saying, I'd critique the sweet/salty/cheese flavor, too much sugar and not enough beefy umami, and how utterly unsatisfying it is on its own.
The New American thing, which in my mind, has roots in Italian cuisine maybe a little moreso than a lot of others, can be the simplest, purest, most succinct expression of great ingredients to whom justice has been done. Sometimes, though, it's a random fish, a lot of corn, and $30 per plate price tags for something that I more or less could have done at home with a cookbook and a little patience. Again, not always true by any stretch, but it's so hard to not throw in the bad with the good when you never know what a particular dish at a particular restaurant will end up being.
So the question is, what now?
I'm not sure I'm patient enough for Japan, parochial enough for Italy, fussy enough for France, or humble enough for Buffalo. I have so goddamned much to learn, but I know that what I have learned has some value. I just wish I knew which direction to go in next. I know I need to get out and eat. When I was dating Sarah, we hit a lot of places, and between the two of us, had a pretty good idea of who was doing what, where. When I dated Kimberly, we elevated each other's insights and figured things out that would have been damned near impossible for either of us to do on our own. We were best as a team. Chelsea has a good palate, and her ability to embrace the basic, as well as find the flaws in the pretentious, keep my seasoning and technique under constant scrutiny, in a good way. It's like finding out what people think, right or wrong, without the gradual brainwashing that can happen after too much restaurant food, where of course berries are served with sweetened creme fraiche, and that summer squash is used as much as possible (because it takes up space and is really, really cheap) and by adding (balsamic reduction, truffle oil, outlandish aioli, rare evoo) some middle-of-the-road dish is transformed into that special meal that never turns out quite right when you try it at home.
I'll probably burn lots of potential bridges with this line of thought, but honestly, do you ever imagine that with a little technique, a lot of thought, and a whole shit-ton of trial-and-error, a more daring, honest, and slightly alienating cuisine is possible? Or perhaps, many of them? I say alienating because as flavors becme more distinct, they become less universal. Of course, if meat tastes like garlic, tomato sauce, and parmaggiano reggiano, it is universally easy to love. Once these meats start tasting like themselves, some will love, some will be indifferent toward, and some will be mildly disgusted be them. But they will know.
Ok, time to go to sleep and do it all again tomorrow.
-R
I'm having an identity crisis. This may seem lame, but it's a cooking identity crisis. It seems that all roads lead to France, but some of the food/technique, I'm just not feeling. There are things done to vegetables that don't seem right sometimes, and even Michel Richard (very French background, but the cooking style is all his own) said something along the lines of in French cooking, a potato can't just be a potato-- you have to turn it into a mushroom first.
So on the one hand, extraordinarily fussy food is less appealing to me, especially as honestly, it will all turn into poop anyhow. I honestly find it depressing that my best work will someday end up in a sewer someday. On the other hand, while I love rustic, regional cooking, with big flavors and interesting vegetable/meat choices, it can degrade quickly into mediocrity. A little laziness and suddenly, your braise is overdone, your veggies poorly cut, your sauces not seasoned correctly. Your senses are overwhelmed by garlic, cheap wine, and ridiculous folk costumes. There is no happy ending here, unless you like big women and vicious regional limitations.
It is frustrating: shortcuts like lemon juice, garlic, parm, truffle oil, and even butter, can take ok or mediocre dishes and make them palatable. Same for shallots, chives, caramelized onions, and smoking anything. Don't get me wrong-- I like all these flavors, but they are an easy answer to the complex question of "What tastes good?" Cultures outside of the Western canon are inspired and flavorful, but no less immune to the disease. Scallions, garlic, and ginger are a fabulous combination, but when you start with that, add a sweet/spicy sauce, and maybe add mushrooms, then you are falling into the formulaic rut that makes food that appeals to the palate just fine, but leaves the brain and sense of adventure a little flat.
Am I like the porn addict, so desensitized by indulgence that he has to find weirder and weirder things to stay turned on, or the drug addict who tolerates more and more in order to chase that first high all over again?
The first thing that springs to mind is to stop eating, and humiliate myself with some unpresupposing food.
Well, I've tried that. Crappy food still pisses me off. I could not eat for 3 or 4 days, but if breaking my fast with a McDonald's hamburger was my only choice, you know I'd resent it. I mean, I'd eat the hell out of it, along with 5 or 6 of its brothers, but I'm saying, I'd critique the sweet/salty/cheese flavor, too much sugar and not enough beefy umami, and how utterly unsatisfying it is on its own.
The New American thing, which in my mind, has roots in Italian cuisine maybe a little moreso than a lot of others, can be the simplest, purest, most succinct expression of great ingredients to whom justice has been done. Sometimes, though, it's a random fish, a lot of corn, and $30 per plate price tags for something that I more or less could have done at home with a cookbook and a little patience. Again, not always true by any stretch, but it's so hard to not throw in the bad with the good when you never know what a particular dish at a particular restaurant will end up being.
So the question is, what now?
I'm not sure I'm patient enough for Japan, parochial enough for Italy, fussy enough for France, or humble enough for Buffalo. I have so goddamned much to learn, but I know that what I have learned has some value. I just wish I knew which direction to go in next. I know I need to get out and eat. When I was dating Sarah, we hit a lot of places, and between the two of us, had a pretty good idea of who was doing what, where. When I dated Kimberly, we elevated each other's insights and figured things out that would have been damned near impossible for either of us to do on our own. We were best as a team. Chelsea has a good palate, and her ability to embrace the basic, as well as find the flaws in the pretentious, keep my seasoning and technique under constant scrutiny, in a good way. It's like finding out what people think, right or wrong, without the gradual brainwashing that can happen after too much restaurant food, where of course berries are served with sweetened creme fraiche, and that summer squash is used as much as possible (because it takes up space and is really, really cheap) and by adding (balsamic reduction, truffle oil, outlandish aioli, rare evoo) some middle-of-the-road dish is transformed into that special meal that never turns out quite right when you try it at home.
I'll probably burn lots of potential bridges with this line of thought, but honestly, do you ever imagine that with a little technique, a lot of thought, and a whole shit-ton of trial-and-error, a more daring, honest, and slightly alienating cuisine is possible? Or perhaps, many of them? I say alienating because as flavors becme more distinct, they become less universal. Of course, if meat tastes like garlic, tomato sauce, and parmaggiano reggiano, it is universally easy to love. Once these meats start tasting like themselves, some will love, some will be indifferent toward, and some will be mildly disgusted be them. But they will know.
Ok, time to go to sleep and do it all again tomorrow.
-R