Carrot Top

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?

Not unless you want a replay of certain parts of "Last Tango in Paris". One of those things one never forgets. So? Share? Don't be selfish now. One among many won't hurt, will it?

How about a preserved lemon story? There has to be one. There always is one where there are preserved lemons. Connect it to the Firesign Theatre, even. Even if it isn't really real. (Example: One night, I was dreaming of the Firesign Theatre albums. A huge twenty foot high mushroom appeared before me and said, in a strangely squeaky voice for such a very large handsome mushroom, "Take me to your leader. And make me some preserved lemons, tout suite, while you are at it . . .") etc etc. Hmmmm?

I don't mean to quibble, I mean to explore, hopefully. I have no final proofs or points to make, really. Though I will espouse positions of my own, my ideas constantly change due to new information learned. There have been many veers from the focus on the thread, and to me, that is something attendant upon the strength of Tim's piece and the not simple nor enclosed questions raised by it. Kudos to Tim, in my book, and the numbers of responses on this thread should bear witness to whatever he happened to strike upon in our minds and hearts. Perhaps another thread would be the place for discussing many of these things. I'd rather give him the numbers, though. As good fences make good neighbors, good numbers make good nods to acquaintance for many things for what they represent. I could try, to find a better link from what I was talking about (and what you were talking about previously in your post) to the French, or the British, but more than an "answer" to things I prefer an ease of conversation rather than a struggle, so maybe another time, another place. My knuckles have been suitably rapped.

Do you believe that those deliberate methods of appropriation were for the most part a conceptual process that was planned, or moreso a case of taking out the (new, foreign) paints that happened to now be before one and simply playing with them, thereby having a deliberate method of appropriation, yes, but one done in real time using the tools one uses as chef on an everyday basis. . .food. . .with concept following the paint rather than paint following the concept. . . I think, Pontormo, that the paint led the way rather than a formal conceptualization leading the paint, in most cases.* It would be curious to backtrack on American fusion cuisine to see whom the leading lights were, and what they claimed their process to be. (*To phrase it another way, an organic process rather than a mentally pre-conceived or deliberately manufactured one.) (I'm actually beginning to feel a bit mental, myself, within this discussion. . . ) (But never deliberately manufactured)

It *would* be interesting to know when exactly the word "fusion" cuisine was coined, Pontormo. I did not find "fusion" nor "cuisine" in Hendrickson's "Enclyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" so went to the usual dictionary (American Heritage) which has no separate entry for the phrase but rather it is the last commentary under "fusion". There was no note of when it was supposed to have started. But that's just a dictionary definition, anyway. Heh.

They really need to invent a new word for this one. I grimace every time I see it. ................................. We sing for our supper as chefs. One way or another. Pretense of mind there or not.

Yes, yes, and yes. Yes. Did I say "yes"? Yeah, I did.

Both anecdotal and imaginative. But then thinking of chefs and what they do *is* a romantic thing. To those that are not chefs. And as long as the cuisine is something exciting and/or conceptual rather than "plain old". (That's okay, too. I certainly made lots of money off that sort of thinking. )

A. . .is for Afraid, of Cave Mountain Snakes while pregnant. B. . .is for Bored. Bored into Turning On The Stove for the first time ever. It was a hot summer day. The sunny days stretched endlessly then, when one was ten years old with no school, no duties, no set times for anything, anything at all. In the morning one would watch TV, sprawled out on the couch trying to find something to watch on any of the three channels that were available then. Bozo the Clown sometimes was on at 8:30, but from there on in, it could quickly become boring. "What's My Line?" and "The Price is Right!" giggled in jolly content from the screen endlessly. How many women with tight-knit curls would jump up and down screeching with pleasure at the hand-mixer they had won? How many men with black glasses and white short-sleeved shirts would look up at the game show host after serious deliberation, and answer a question with pompous nods of their heads at the world? Mid-day a bike ride, a jump in the local pool, hoping that the bully eleven-year old boy would not push one off the diving board once again, scraping one's legs into slices as he laughed uproariously with his friends. Maybe a friend would be around, maybe she would be allowed to come visit (not too likely in most cases, most times, as there were no adults home at my house). One day I was lucky. My friend was allowed over, from some odd chance. We played Mad Libs (our absolute favorite, we laughed and laughed at the stupid sentences we'd made!) and listened to records and finally got hungry. Her mother cooked, in her home, and she did not know how to really make anything to eat. My mother cooked also, but I was used to making sandwiches and eating all sorts of lovely junk that happened to be around. One summer I believe I lived on popsicles and raw bacon, with a smattering of grapes, and it did me no harm. We decided to cook something, on the stove. We got out a 10" teflon saute pan and got to work. We had no preconceived ideas of what it was we were going to cook, so just started in on whatever came from the refrigerator or cupboards. Honestly, I can not remember a single ingredient, but do know that not a single one went together in any way whatsoever. The gas heat simmered the mixture as it came along, growing into whatever it was growing into. First it was beige, then it somehow became a sickening green color, and finally, with a loud stench emitting from it, it turned a lovely purple. We laughed and laughed (as ten year old girls are wont to). It was the gloppiest, most colorful concoction ever invented. Was it food anymore? I doubt it. Somehow we had transformed normal ingredients into the completely inedible. I left it on the stove and we made some bologna sandwiches. My mother didn't say much when she saw it when she came home, except "Karen, clean up your pot," as she walked away. (A typical WASP response to such a thing.) B is for Boredom, and how it can make one turn on the stove to make some really messy things.

Chefs mostly do not think in terms of frame of consciousness that lurk around desires to meld "cuisines". They think in terms of flavor, color, shape, taste, texture, and methodology of cooking. It's not about the "cuisine". It's about the food. For most chefs. Afterwards, of course, when creations have been made, it makes a nice intelligent and worldly sound-bite for the public relations to speak of higher things, higher things being "cuisines" and culture. But mostly, it's about the food one can play with, what one can actually touch.

I also seem to (vaguely) remember wars started based on desires for foodstuffs. And not only in my home, either. Rome/Egypt. . .wheat, olives, lemons? (Don't quote me, I'm just vaguely remembering. . .)

Great topic idea for a thread (?) "I wonder if the first fusion meal was when ___________".

Oh. If I was rude in any way earlier, I apologize. (But not really.) (Lots of wonderful stories. . . )