Carrot Top

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All above, writers that are so very different, each from the other, and all and each from MFK. There are writers of older traditional cookbooks that have a bit of the story-telling essence in tiny parts, but never with a full story-line developed that I know of (though I am sure there may be some that I don't know of). Elizabeth David - I think of someone who *taught* about food. Recipes, lots of recipes (though not codified) from "different places", with prose attached. Mostly I put her in place as one of the Beau Monde of that time and place, the literati glitterati that inhabited parts of Europe as ex-pats from here or there. James Beard had a strong American voice. He wrote not of Europe all the time, but about "us", in his here and now. There was an essence of a man who loved to eat and who loved to cook, and who *did* cook. I think of him actually physically cooking, much more than I think of Elizabeth David cooking, for example. Again, I think of him as a teacher. Lots of recipes, and very well codified for the "modern" cooks use. Ruth Reichl I think of as a modern Renaissance woman. Not specifically or solely a "food writer" but a professional and a businesswoman who wears many capable and creative hats, able to move from hat to hat unblinkingly. The hat of restaurant reviewer was one that she wore for an extended time, so that one wins out for me in a certain defining way. . . (so far, who knows what else she might do in the future). Jane Grigson had a formalcy to her writings - they were very categorical and amazingly detailed. I don't think of her in the form of "storyteller" as much as "Professor JG". AJ Liebling to me wrote of food as a secondary interest. Again, I think of him as part of a different "Beau Monde" the one that existed here, the literary set, the sporting set, and that is a thing in itself to be. I don't think of him as primarily a "food writer", but much more a journalist who happened to write about food sometimes. I still do not think that MFK (with this reading, this time, that I am doing of her) is writing primarily about food. She also primarily seems to me to be of the Beau Monde set of that time, to have sprung from those social advantages and certain pressures and ways of being, which puts a certain form upon most writers that inhabit those worlds. I think she chose to try to write about large themes and used the device of food to do it. I am also not completely sure that all the stories (and not only the personal parts) are "true", even the stories about eating and food and how the story played. She writes like a fiction writer, like a story teller. She is boldly romantic. There also seems to me to be a large portion of sexuality (besides the quieter sensuality) scooped right into her writing, which is quite different than the other "food writers" (I'm not sure about Dumas, there may be some there, but of a different shape or taste. . .?). Is the sexuality also being used as literary device? An injection of that, well done, into her works, is not uncommon. And it works, for her. With bold knife and fork, it works. The recipes she includes in the book are almost as desultory follow-up to her stories/essays, in many cases. . .and in others, they are phrased and handled so that the teaching of cooking food still does not take precedence over the Story. She was different, yes. And those who are loyal to her have a deep and intense loyalty, for she is not just talking about how to cook food in her writing - she's talking about other things, life things. And that, also, is where some are beginning to question their trust in her writing. She wrote not just about food, or even mostly in some ways. She wrote about deeper (forgive me, is there such a thing?!) things than food. Perhaps her story-telling ways affected "food-writing" in that it pushed it forward into something that could freely move into different genres, and made writing about food more appealing to those who might not have an intense interest in food itself, or recipes themselves, or how to cook themselves, but who certainly were ready to be charmed by a story that could sing, in many many ways. To me, she is a story teller who tells stories that have food as defined focus, food as literary device. The other writers mentioned about, focus on food first. . .and not as literary device for the most part, but with the story to follow. But I don't think of them as having "descended" from her in any way, though she is much publicly lauded as our "first food writer".

K is for knowledgeable (a word it takes some knowledge to know how to spell). What is knowledge? In food, of course, as we are talking and thinking of food. Is it knowing how to cook? Is it knowing how to read and perhaps adjust a recipe? Is it knowing how to cook without a recipe placed in front of one? Sometimes you hear "That guy sure knows a lot about food!" or. . ."That woman has such little knowledge in the kitchen it is amazing her family doesn't starve!" (Gender definitions and irony intended here.) In the past if you didn't know how to pluck a chicken, you might not be considered knowledgeable about food. . .or how to milk the cow, or make butter, or bread, or grow a garden. But that has changed, and new things have taken the place of the collection of facts now needed to be considered "knowledgeable". Does this mean we are now stupider in not knowing? Perhaps. . .perhaps not. My theory of knowledge is that facts are not enough. Facts (or what pass for them, sometimes, in an increasingly information-driven world) are like flies at a summer picnic - they are everywhere. They drone on at one from television commercials, they hearken from newspapers, they come and sit on your arm where you have to swat them off in zillions of cookbooks in gazillions of flavors. More and more and more. Facts take you as far as your nose and no further, in cooking (as in all other things - love, war, or play). You can pile them on like sausages on a platter. Tell me where they take you. Perhaps they can take one to a recitation of them, a bowing to them, a smiling nodding of "knowing", from one to another or from one at another. And where do they take you. Whack! Smack! Back and forth the facts fly, just being facts. Knowledge means taking the facts and kneading them into a different loaf. Make the loaf yours, if you can. Why not? Let the facts swirl around your fine loaf, dancing and prodding at it, as they live in the air of facts. Perhaps take a fact and paint it onto your loaf - but don't do it according to any other fact. Make it your own way. Why not? What is there to lose? A fact or two? What is there to gain? Something you've cooked that is just yours, done just your way, as you like it maybe? Make a knowledgeable chowder, a mousse, a pickled pig's foot, a deep dark sauce of your facts. Toss a pizza of your facts into the air and see what comes down. Don't let the facts pile up on the tip of your nose. Cook them, bite them, lick them and digest them if possible. Cook them into something your own. Only you know what that is, true? Only you.

Thank goodness you posted that, Jack. Now I'll be able to make myself understood next time I go to a Cockney Pie and Mash Evening, or a Cockney Pie and Mash Function.. Now my tastebuds are all a'quiver for some jellied eels! Must go put on my Pickwick Papers cap and set out to find some, armed with my new vocabulary. Wish me luck.

I wish you best of luck, Janet, but do not think you really need it for if you are decisive enough it is possible that you might not *have* to whistle for luck to come. Organized (or even organised) won't happen here tonight, with two children, two evening activities in different directions they need to be taken to and home from, and two different desires for what they like for their dinners. I can decisively say that.

Where is the drooling smilie face? Yikes, that sounds good! The only time I've ever indulged in all the morels I wanted was in Battle Creek, Michigan of all places. There was this fantastic huge old fancy grocers right downtown in the middle of the rest of downtown, which was rather depressed. An enormous place, thirty foot high or so ceilings, food stuffed in everywhere, elegant food but not elegant tables for it. Everything was sort of wearing out in the place, though there was still a big black grand piano near the entrance where on Saturdays there was actually a man in black tie who would come play (!). I remember the meat department which had a separate cold room. . .startling. It was freezing in there. Then there was the produce. Every. single. thing. you could possibly want, laid out just funky-like. I think it was in the Fall that one day morels suddenly appeared, huge boxes of them toppling over, mounded high. I thought I was hallucinating. No, it was morels. And though they were not cheap, they were *not* expensive, either. Three pounds I bought. They disappeared very quickly. I think they were there for about three weeks, in that incredible store. An astonishing find, just like yours was. Thanks for reminding me of that time.

I see that you skipped "I" for "indecisive". Not sure whether that was through exteme good manners in avoiding using "I" too much or whether you are never indecisive. Or whether you just couldn't decide whether you wanted to be indecisive or not. Decisions, decisions. P.S. Puff pastry is not something everyone has to master, just as being calm is something not everyone has to master either. Personally I haven't made puff paste in years.

E is for Envious which is what I have been sometimes, when viewing the large, well endowed, shiny expensive kitchen that belongs to someone else. My kitchens have been all sorts of shapes, and never yet a perfect one. Is there such a thing as a perfect kitchen? Does anyone know? How could there be such a thing as a perfect kitchen if the cooking done in it is always progressing, growing, changing, as cooking will do sometimes. The thing is, that most of the perfect kitchens I've seen are unused. When asked, their owners will smirk a bit, with some little pride, and say. . ."Well. . .I really haven't the time to cook. . ." or " I had it done this way to improve the value of the house." Really, though I can smile dimly in response to these things, mostly both ideas strike me as rather obnoxious. Not the people. . .but the ideas. Obnoxious ideas. A kitchen is to be used, whether there is time for it or not. A kitchen built for monetary value gives that, and that only. And what is that?! The Emperor may hoard his gold, but sooner or later he will find he has no clothes. And he will be not only naked but hungry too. And what will be there, with its little smirk? The large, well-endowed, shiny expensive kitchen that holds nothing to eat, nothing at all. Well. . .maybe a Frito or two. But no more. Envious? No, no longer, not after understanding the reality of the perfect kitchen that is not.

So the pasta machine has better hands than you? It can baby a thing better? Karen (who prefers real to steel and something with a brain attached rather than not, any day ) (Please be sure to loudly sing opera as you roll the dough through the rollers. . . .)

Not for Nothin', SB, but that was beautiful. Previous to this, my belief was that where beauty exists, there can not be Nothingness. But you've turned that concept upside down now, haven't you. I'm going to continue on with Janet's list, because I liked it and it gives a form to the very vagueness of life. ................................................................ "C" is for Calm Calm is one thing in food. It is puff pastry. Puff pastry can not be made well unless there is a calm enough atmosphere surrounding it, and unless it is handled calmly. It can be made competently if calm is not there, but not really well. The cool flour feels like silk in the bowl. Run your fingers through it - smooth, soft, light, and somehow enchanting. If it does not feel this way, if it feels coarse, sticky at all, warm, or heavy. . .there is something wrong already. The dough must be handled in a calm manner or it will become angry. "Be swift and deft!" are the instructions I remember reading in an old cookbook, a regular cookbook, not a fancy one, one written sometime in the 1940's for housewives. . .and each time since then when approaching making a pastry dough, the words slip into my mind. "Be swift and deft!" Some hands are more attuned to pastry than others. The test is always a short crust, one will always discover innate potential or not, with the making of a short crust. Yet with puff pastry the test goes further. It must be babied a bit, though not indulgently, but calmly. It must rest. It must be folded just so, again and again. Inbetween the folds a measure must be taken, a sense of whether the dough is ready to fold, whether it wants to be folded just yet over the chilled dense molded butter that will fill it with air and height and a towering magnificence that almost reeks of deity invoked when done perfectly, or whether it is resisting the forward movement into becoming what you intend it to be. Any urgency during this time will tilt the progress sideways a bit, edging the final product into a slightly different shape and taste, texture and look. The butter itself is calm, or should be. It should not be hot or weepy, stiff or cranky. It must be ready and willing, desirous even, of being wrapped within the arms of the soft yet strong dough that encloses it. "Be swift and deft! Have a light hand!", exhorted the old battered cookbook. How else to retain a calm dispostion in the face of struggles toward things larger than we think we can become, just as the homey untried ingredients of flour, water and butter meld together in inspired concert to become not just one's daily bread, but instead a castle of edible dreams.

Here's some info, Sandy: New England Cheese Companies The last information surprised me until I realized the focus was on the word "factory". Interesting. . .

Right you are, markk. I'm not sure who should get most of the credit, but I should have mentioned him. I guess the picture was in my mind of him cooking away there, being endlessly entertaining, while she wrote all about it. Probably she came to mind first because when I think of food books, I usually don't think of Alan King. But that could be a lack on my part.

Salami and Eggs might be considered the Jewish cultural equivalent to the Saturday afternoon Burgers on the Grill by the WASPS (here in the US, anyway). Both, traditions that have special masculine components endowed within them. Don't ask me what, but they do. Mimi Sheraton wrote a book called Salami and Eggs: Better than Sex?. . . .

Some ideas from Larry Forgione about what American food is:

Since I had to pull Arlo Guthrie and "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant" (brown rice, anyone? ) out of an old hat, here's another side of American Food: Joe Baum. . . who invented not only uniquely American restaurants (Four Seasons, anyone? ) but who also created new ways of thinking about the "restaurant business". . . those concepts then reshaping the business culture as it had previously existed.

Meow. How about Alice's Restaurant?

And "who we ate for dinner" remains, to this day, as the absolute most favorite conversation at any Wall Street dining table.

It's not only the food and service that have an value placed on them as defined by cost. If you go to a very high-end, "talked-about" restaurant, you can preen yourself----oops I mean talk about it, with everyone that is interested (or even those who are not, if there is a high enough determination to do so ). If you then order the most expensive thing on the menu, you get more bang for your buck in the stories you can tell. I think the term for this is "the reflexive jealousy factor". (There actually used to be a saying . . ."he would dine out on his stories" or something like that. Perhaps economically, the dinners one can get invited to, and the cost of those dinners, based upon the stories of these more expensive dinners, would prove the initial dinner a tiny thing overall? )

Yeah, Brad. Yeah, that was it. I was just confused for a moment. All I know is, "L" is for Latour. Sigh.

I've pulled these quotes from another thread in progress: Busboy said: "I wonder if the first fusion meal was when someItalian married noodles -- origin (Some say): China -- with tomatoes from the New World to make spaghetti abnd red sauce." I like the way he put that sentence together. How would you write it if you were the author? What foods do you imagine the first "fusion" meal as being based on? I wonder if the first fusion meal was when ___________? Cast your vote. Fill in the blank. No prizes awarded, sorry. Except you get to think about food and history.

In the best British tradition? Then Tumble into dreamland. Ta!

Maybe wait till you catch up (whenever that may be, and certainly not tonight!) and then try writing something on "tired"?

And which of those will you choose to regale us with a tale of, Janet? Our ears are perked and waiting.

I love the saying but want to know how you heard it, Michael. Who said it and when? What were you eating when it happened? Just send the story, by way of this thread, to: Lo Bak Dou

Milagai, you are an excellent storyteller. You can play asafetida or hing. I do not have stories of either, myself. A tale of your youth perhaps?