Must food writers be able to cook well?

[Hest88]

Well, there seems to be a consensus here. And quite a logical one, too. Restaurant critics needn't be good cooks, but damn well better have knowledgeable and refined palates, while recipes writers need to be good cooks.

Of course, there are the Alan Richmans, the Jeffrey Steingartens, the Calvin Trillins, and the Ed Behrs on the scene, and they are fabulous (and I'll bet me left foot most of them cook very well). But these writers are an elite minority.

Quick note: from his writings, I'm actually under the impression that Jeffrey Steingarten is a pretty fine cook. At least I would trust his baguettes, French Fries, and roasted pork anyday! Also, from Ruth's Reichl's books, I suspect she's a pretty good home cook as well.

[Lesley C]

Also, from Ruth's Reichl's books, I suspect she's a pretty good home cook as well.

Yes, as I said in my post, "I'll bet me left foot most of them cook very well."

Reichl also worked in a restaurant.

[balmagowry]

OK, I slept on this one and I woke up this morning realizing just how utterly ESSENTIAL it is to be a good cook to be a good food writer – and I’m not talking a restaurant critic here, but food writer.

You know, I can't disagree with a word you say in this post except the conclusion you draw from it and present as a premise.

Yes, it is certainly true that the vast majority of great food writers today and in the recent past are cooks, ranging from the competent to the stellar. Yes, the majority of food writing (outside of restaurant reviews) does include recipes.

But aren't you falling into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? This goes to the very essence of my distrust of statistical relationships (you know, lies, damned lies, and...). If the majority of food writers are cooks it does not necessarily - logically - follow that being a cook is a requirement for being a food writer. For most kinds of food writing, perhaps. And maybe this is just yet another illustration of my premise that I'm living in the wrong century: perhaps it is more the case now than it was when my beloved and above-mentioned Dumas, Grimod, Cussy, and Brillat-Savarin were writing on the subject. IAC, I continue to believe that for some types of food writing - the historical, the philosophical, the whimsical, the artistic - a practical knowledge of cookery is not an actual necessity. It can certainly enrich and enhance - it often does so for me. But even for me there are situations where it need not, and does not, come into play at all.

Think of Voltaire!!!! No cook, but what a deft judge of food and its fads!

More currently, think of Barbara Wheaton, C. Anne Wilson. I know Barbara does cook - but in much of her written work on food that fact simply isn't relevant. I don't know whether Wilson is a cook or not, and I don't care: her work is valuable on its own whether she is or not. Think of Dorothy Hartley - her work is very charming and informative though not always accurate; her recipes, however, simply do not work. Same, by and large, with John Thorne. These are both people who write entertainingly and seriously about food and whose contribution to the literature on the subject I greatly value; but whose practical knowledge is to be taken with a great deal of salt. (Pity there are no disclaimers on their work; but the issue of people who mistakenly believe themselves to be accomplished cooks is a whole 'nother can of worms.)

That said, I think it can be agreed that in order to do even non-recipe-based food writing it is necessary at least to have a deep understanding of, and love for, food and everything that goes into making it the marvel that it can be. To be sympathetic, in the oldest sense of that word, with the loving acts of food preparation.

Otherwise it becomes a question of where you draw the line. Yeah, I'm a pretty good cook and gardener, but with one esoteric exception I know nothing of animal husbandry and butchery - I am only competent to work with the end products. I have some theoretical understanding of certain of the issues involved, and that's about it. Am I qualified, then, to write about methods of cooking meat? Yes, I think so. If I had never actually cooked a piece of meat but had always adored good meat and had read thousands of recipes and sampled thousands of dishes and worked closely with expert cooks and discussed their work with them at length - at the end of such a process might I have something worthwhile to say about meat? Yes, I think so.

One of my current obsessions is the working relationship between Talleyrand and Careme. I've already run on about Careme, but one thing I've neglected to mention is that I think Talleyrand's thoughts on food and dining have a special value of their own, even though he never put hand to casserole. And at the opposite end of the sophistication spectrum, I'd give my eyeteeth to get Cambaceres's thoughts on the subject from the horse's mouth. A three-way debate among those men would be a spectacle indeed.

As usual I have run on a lot longer than I meant to - sorry; think I'll take Blaise Pascal for my patron saint - and long after my real point has been made. Which is that it has certainly been demonstrated that the majority of great food writers are cooks; but that that does not constitute proof that all or even most of them have to be.

Edited May 7, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[balmagowry]

Nothing more egoistic than quoting oneself

Nothing wrong with it either, especially around here, especially when it's so relevant. Some of us, ahem, naming no names but if I did I'd probably be referring to myself, do it all the time. Eventually one overcomes one's shame altogether.

[Lesley C]

Balmagowry, I think many of the writers you worship (and I mean that in a nice way) are great writers and historians who have set their sites on food. But to me they could be writing about poetry or music in the same way. Yes, they are important and yes they are brilliant but they are a tiny elite. Are more people today reading Nigella Lawson or Brillat-Savarin? Julia Child or Barbara Wheaton? I think we all know the answer.

I see another facet of this question as well. Should someone who wants to be a food writer be able to cook well? My answer to this is a resounding yes. Why? Because it will open countless doors in a world with few doors to open.

Having attended cooking school I can not only write a restaurant review or a how-to food story, but take a chef's recipe written in grams with a yield of 400 brownies and turn it into a 12-portion recipe for the home cook in cups and tablespoons, I can watch a chef prepare a dish and transform it into a recipe (not easy), and I can read through a recipe and tell you if it works or not before even getting out a mixing bowl.

Thanks to my cooking background, I also speak the language. I know the difference between the words sauté and simmer, whisk and cream, pan-fry and grill.

I meet plenty of people -- young and old -- who want to be food writers and I tell them all to get some formal training. Sure, they can write a story about the mole they had in Mexico, their first taste of good chocolate, and how they make wine in the garage. But unless you’re already an established writer, you probably can’t make a living doing that. To be a full time food writer (which probably means you’re a freelancer), you need to be versatile. And the more you know, the more work is available. IMO, it's only logical that people who know how to cook will have the most opportunities in this business.

[balmagowry]

OK, this time I can't disagree with a single word you say. Not one.

Always one to stand up for the underdog, though, I will only maintain that the literature would be very much the poorer without those writers I worship. That they "could be writing about poetry or music in the same way" does not in my view suggest anything against them as food writers - though in fact I do think their writing demonstrates their relationship to food is a lot more intimate and specific than that.

A thought which follows on from that and from what you say about which writers "more people today... are reading." I suppose you're right about that too, and I'm well aware that my defense of classics is lamentably uncommercial for someone in this business. And yeah, it's largely a personal trait: I also read Austen and Richardson and Trollope far more readily than I do any of today's crop of "in" and "hot" novelists. Fair cop, if that's an indictment. But... there's always a "but," isn't there....

But I think someone has to make an effort to counterbalance such trends, even in a small way, and to keep the classics alive. Look around eG - among its 11,000-plus members are many who love these older works and collect them and learn from them; and I am not the only writer who does so with an eye to informing modern usage and thinking. As I have said far too many times, no doubt, everything old really is nouvelle again. There's a place in the world for food writing that bridges the gap between the scholarly and the practical, especially if it does so in an entertaining and accessible way; that's my beat (or perhaps my off-beat!). M.F.K. Fisher obviously felt as I do, or she wouldn't have mounted such a tremendous effort to bring Brillat-Savarin back out of comparative obscurity. Ask Julia Child about Careme and Brillat. Ask Jacques Pepin. Those people care - and they ain't chopped liver.

Hey, I'm in the minority, and I'm talking about the minority - in both cases the eccentric minority, at that - and I know it, so what else is new, and it's fine with me. But as long as I'm around, that minority will continue to exist, and no doubt it will be a pain in the mainstream ass or at least a thorn in the mainstream side, but you can be sure that that won't stop it from yelling and jumping up and down and waving its little flag - even if it's only a minority of one!

[amytraverso]

[snip]IAC, I continue to believe that for some types of food writing - the historical, the philosophical, the whimsical, the artistic - a practical knowledge of cookery is not an actual necessity. [snip]

I agree. But I am also reminded that few people, outside of academia, are writing philisophical, whimsical, or artistic musings as a full-time job. When I started this thread I was wondering if restaurant reviewers and other non-recipe developers have to know how to cook. But perhaps that was a false separation. Most people have to earn a living, and you're more likely to achieve that noble goal if you can cook, and review restaurants, and ghost-write books for chefs, and write about travel, and write features and chef profiles, and develop recipes for Splenda or Cabot cheese, and do whatever else you need to do to bring in income. Even James Peterson figured out he had to learn how to style and photograph his own food in order to pay the bills. So yes, you don't have to be able to cook to write about food, but if you want to be a professional food writer, you really should.

[balmagowry]

Eureka!

I knew there was something in that argument that troubled me, and I just realized what it is!

Again, I do not disagree with the point about versatility and paying the bills. Of course it's absolutely true (though I still don't necessarily buy it as an exercise in pure logic). But it leaves something out that may - for some people at least - be important.

(And mind you, all my talk about not needing to be a good cook is devil's-advocate-play: though not formally trained I am quite a good cook myself.)

The point is this: there are two sides to the food writer coin. One of them is Food. The other is Writer. I hope the powers that be can forgive a touch of Off-Topic sacrilege: in the interests of paying the bills, and even of artistic satisfaction, it is possible for useful versatility to exist on both sides of that coin.

I have a friend who won the Pulitzer for his work as a music critic, and is still gainfully-employed as such - a sweet deal because his wife, also a very fine writer, is art critic for the same paper. Now all of a sudden, what do I see? He is branching out into architectural and cultural commentary - clearly he has a lot of expertise there too - and sometimes this provides opportunities for husband/wife collaboration. Pretty cool. Anyway, until I started seeing these articles, I had no idea he was more than a dyed-in-the-wool music maven; like all his other readers I had done him the disservice of type-casting him.

Think about some of the food writers everyone here seems to admire by consensus: MFK Fisher, Julia Child, Elizabeth David, James Beard, and so on. (And please note I am excluding my own 19th-century obsessions, though they illustrate the point almost too well.) Any one of those people could have been every bit as marvelous and compelling a writer on some other subject. MFK Fisher was, to a certain extent; at least, though food is never very far from her thoughts, her more memoirish essays cover a lot of other personal and cultural ground which is told in an equally riveting manner. All these people have personalities and styles which could lend themselves felicitously to any sort of content. They didn't need to do that; they didn't choose to. Good for them. But for those of us who do need, or who do choose, or both, there are endless possibilities out there.

[EDIT: and what about Laurie Colwin? Novelist/essayist first; highly-acclaimed and much-loved food writer second.]

GBS (incidentally quite a knowledgeable music critic) was quite right when he said "there is no love sincerer than the love of food" - but even that passion need not entirely eclipse all others: it is possible for the same person to write about food and also about - dare I say it? - other things. And for some lucky people it's even possible to pay the bills that way. It's also wise, fun, and intellectually stimulating to transcend one's type-casting on occasion.

It's early days yet, but it's beginning to look possible that my next book will be on a non-food subject. And if this project comes about you may be quite sure I won't undertake it without an assurance of its paying at least some of the bills.

Sidestepping logic again, though, FWIW I do truly believe that in the best of all possible worlds no one, especially not those who write about food, would be denied the joys of an intimate practical knowledge of cookery.

Edited May 9, 2004 by balmagowry (log)