Fine Dining vs. Cheap Eats

[Bux]

For all its simplicity in conception, risotto (which can contain many ingredients) is extremely difficult to prepare expertly. I would offer to do it for you, but you seem irredeemably recalcitrant (also in a good way).

Feed us and I'm sure anyone of a number of us would be willing to explain it to Plotnicki.

[LaNiña]

Heresy, I know, but has anyone tried to do risotto in the microwave? It really does come out surprisingly good...

[Robert Schonfeld]

Feed us and I'm sure anyone of a number of us would be willing to explain it to Plotnicki.

I'm game, but my place is too small. How many can you accommodate, Bux?

[Steve Plotnicki]

"-Italian food is based, as you have understood, on simplicity and emphasis on the quality of ingredients, rather than on complexity. This is intent, not accident or failure."

Robert S. - I don't buy it. That argument rests on Italy having superior terroir than France and while Italy has some great terroir, I wouldn't call it superior. Italian cuisine hasn't really advanced in a few hundred years. Maybe it has to do with the unification of Italy coming at such a late date? And how cuisine in Italy is basically provincial. As oppossed to Paris, where you can find every type of French restaurant, Rome and Milan are in large part made up of Roman and Milanese restaurants. And I will take exception to a risotto being a "great dish." Yes I've enjoyed some delicious risottos in my day but in general it's too simplistic for me. Only a seafood risotto ever really moves me. But that's because it almost isn't risotto anymore. It's more like paella with tomatoes.

Bux - I am trying to stay away from the argument about whether the perfect rose all by itself is more beautiful than a bouquet of flowers. Unfortunately the answer to that question is, depends on how perfect the rose is or how good a bouquet was made or what the backdrop for the rose is blah, blah, blah. But in general, if people around here were interested in flowers, they would most likely be interested in making bouquets. Not putting single roses into bud vases. And the beans are the same. The number of ingredients in cassoulet is what makes that dish have such an allure for most of us. When it's on, it is harmonious. Tuscan beans can be great, but never quite that harmonious because it's just a side dish.

[Jinmyo]

Heresy, I know, but has anyone tried to do risotto in the microwave?  It really does come out surprisingly good...

Nina, nooooo... Please explain... How ne can do the stirring required to emulsify? Pop it out every 30 seconds?

Confused, I remain, as always,

Yours,

Jinmyo

[LaNiña]

Well it doesn't come out as creamy, but it's a lot easier and it's acceptable in a pinch. Do a google search - there are tons of recipes.

[Jinmyo]

Nina, okay. I've never felt that pinch. Though I have finished/re-heated some risottos in the microwave occasionally. But start to finish just bemuses me. Oh well. Lots of things do.

[bushey]

I agree with Nina that the results you get from the microwave can be very good. I have a recipe I cut out from Country Life magazine -- why I ever had a copy of that magazine, I'll never know -- for basic risotto with fresh spring peas and it always comes out good. It's great for those times when you want a somewhat special side dish and don't feel like a) standing at the stove and stirring or b) making a "boxed" risotto.

[Bux]

Feed us and I'm sure anyone of a number of us would be willing to explain it to Plotnicki.

I'm game, but my place is too small. How many can you accommodate, Bux?

You actually only need to feed one articulate volunteer, but I'm not sure that explaining would do anything to change Steve's mind. While I find complex foods more worthy of analysis, I also find that complexity often rests in the mind of the beholder.

[Wilfrid]

Pedantry will get you nowhere.

But I enjoy it.

Actually, the bit about the boat wasn't the main point. I was trying to indicate that the only countries you would need to pass though France to get to - west of Germany - are Belgium and Holland in the north and Spain and Portugal in the South. France just isn't en route to anywhere else in mainland Europe. Which I think is a problem for your theory.

Since this is obviously a digression - albeit a responsive one - perhaps I should have the courtesy to say that this thread had made an interesting read, but I still find the issues out of focus. I think the point has been made that "cheap" is not cognate with "simple". I would also suggest that "complex" is not cognate with "good". By definition, there is more to be said about complex things than simple things: whether what is said is interesting has to be determined case by case.

[cabrales]

Feed us and I'm sure anyone of a number of us would be willing to explain it to Plotnicki.

I'm game, but my place is too small. How many can you accommodate, Bux?

You actually only need to feed one articulate volunteer, but I'm not sure that explaining would do anything to change Steve's mind.

I'm a volunteer, although I think Steve P would have to taste an item for himself. Also note the pitfall that I tend to be more articulate about French cuisine than Italian cuisine.

[LaNiña]

Is there a time limit? Let's talk rules and parameters.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid my dear, anyone in the British Isles, Belgium and the Netherlands, who wanted to go to either Spain or Italy would have to do so by traveling through France. And vice versa. And that doesn't take into consideration people who just want to go as far as some point in France. In addition, people in the north of Europe or anyone who was east of the Alps and who wanted to go to Spain would have to pass through France. Not to mention the people who wanted to go to the United Kingdom and traveled through France to board the ferries in Le Havre or Boulogne.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Bux said,

"I also find that complexity often rests in the mind of the beholder. "

Then Wilfrid said,

"By definition, there is more to be said about complex things than simple things: whether what is said is interesting has to be determined case by case."

I find those two statements to be in conflict. Beauty as a matter of personal preference might be in the eye of the beholder, but that isn't an acceptable standard for Eileen Ford. Her concept of what beauty is might be broad, but is not without specifics, and doesn't rely on subjectivity. Eileen Ford is successful because her concept of beauty happens to reconcile with what most people think beautiful is. Yes it isn't a bright line, but it is nowhere near as subjective as people like to make it.

[Wilfrid]

Steve, darling...

1. Here's a map of Europe which you might find useful. No-one has to go through France to get to Italy, except anyone from Spain and Portugal who insists on going by land. And you did originally say you were talking about "west of Germany". I will concede that you need to go through France to reach any point within France, but I think dispassionate cartographical observation might persuade you that there is nothing unique about France's geographical situation to have attracted excess international traffic.

2. Yes, the two statements are in conflict. Guess which one is right.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Gee Wilfrid baby, I looked at that map and France loks pretty centrally located to me. Like anyone who wants to go to Spain or Portugal has to pass through. And the Brits. Did they cross at Boulogne and then go east and cross the alps that way? Or did they go down through Burgundy and the Loire and along the coast so as not to have to pass over the alps? In fact, France is the only route from south to north where you don't have to cross the alps correct? Do you think that would increase foot traffic?

[Wilfrid]

On mainland Europe, you need to go through France to get from Belgium and Holland to Spain and Portugal, or vice versa. What I said. And indeed, you don't have to cross the Alps, mainly because they are somewhere else. The route is completely Alp free.

This explains the pre-eminence of French cuisine?

[Bux]

Wifrid, I think you've made a good point.

Good, complex, expensive. - Most any successful haute cuisine preparation

Cheap, simple, good. - A boiled egg.

Good, simple, expensive. - Caviar

Cheap, complex, good. - I can't think of it offhand, but it probably exists.

[jordyn]

Wilfrid - Pedantry will get you nowhere. Just because people COULD travel to Spain from Belgium by boat, doesn't mean everybody did. Maybe the richest people would go by boat but I think most people went on foot (horse and carriage.) How about the people walking from Northern Europe to Santiago di Campostello? They must have carried much food lore with them don't you think? Or people going to Florence and Rome? Or the French Riviera at the turn of the century?

This assumes, of course, that many poor people were travelling several countries away. I can't believe this happened all that often in the days in which the principal mode of transportation was walking or horse-drawn cart. Today a lot of poor people don't go very far from their homes, and we have all sorts of relatively inexpensive yet quick ways of doing it (car, bus, sometimes even plane). If getting from Delft to Sevilla involved a four month walk, you'd need a really good reason to take that trip.

I'm also with Wilfrid in thinking that France was unlikely to have been much of a crossroads in Europe. In addition to the fact that only a limited number of routes actually make sense through France, it doesn't seem like a particularly important place in geopolitical terms through much of European history.

[Wilfrid]

Thank you Jordyn. Steve hasn't told us precisely which "era" he's talking about either. We should probably clear that up, if we are not to be at cross purposes.

I suspect research would show that long journeys by road, pre-twentieth century, were determined by factors other than geographical accessibility. Italy would have been a major destination for anyone from the north of Europe, for religious and cultural reasons. I suspect traffic between Belgium/Holland and Spain/Portugal would not have been especially heavy. As far as the British Isles are concerned, I think the fact that they are offshore makes them a special case. I think leisure travellers headed for Spain really would, for the most part, have gone by ship - they would have needed to amke the channel crossing anyway, so why not cross the Bay of Biscay. Poor people heading back and forth between Britain and Spain and Portugal? Why?

[LaNiña]

Wifrid, I think you've made a good point.

Good, complex, expensive. - Most any successful haute cuisine preparation

Cheap, simple, good. -  A boiled egg.

Good, simple, expensive. - Caviar

Cheap, complex, good. - I can't think of it offhand, but it probably exists.

pizza.

[Toby]

Well, I just logged on today and I see this discussion has grown. Steve, I think you should be more careful when discussing history.

On just one point, I believe that the type of high cuisine you're talking about was first codified in Florence during the early Renaissance in the 14th century, transmitted to the Bolognese and then to the Venetians and only then to the French.

The Italians do make a dish with white beans, duck, sausages, pancetta, sofritto, red wine, broth and parmesan that is close to cassoulet.

Whatever point of view a person is comfortable and happy with is fine -- Eurocentric or whatever. But a complex dish, in any cuisine, is simply made up of a lot of simpler elements. So you have more elements to analyze, but each element is relatively simple. Quantity or quality? Like if you don't know the alphabet, you can't read.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"The Italians do make a dish with white beans, duck, sausages, pancetta, sofritto, red wine, broth and parmesan that is close to cassoulet"

I think everybody keeps overcomplicating this issue. It isn't that there might not be an Italian version of cassoulet, it's that nobody cares about it. Go pick up Fred Plotkin's book on the Friuli-Venezia. There are loads of recipes that are unusual in there. But I don't see people clammoring for the information about how to make them. People aren't trying to perfect their frico. But they are trying to perfect their gratin.

Everyone keeps trying to argue this point by turning the question around and asking, is a cassoulet really better than Tuscan beans? And the inference when they ask that is that they really don't think so?.That isn't the issue. It should just be accepted that more people are interested in making a cassoulet than Tuscan beans based on a head count. And if people are unhappy with the obvious reason for that, i.e., cassoulet has more ingredients in it than Tuscan beans so the flavor of one is more complex, then that's a personal preference. But what that has to do with the objective measure of complexity as so well outlined by Wilfrid I don't know. Tea is a more complex drink than water. And a milkshake is a more complicated beverage than a glass of chocolate milk. And that eventually gets us to truffles being more complex than button mushrooms. Just extrapolate it from there.

[Rail Paul]

There's also the issue of using modern borders to define mediaeval lands and passage thereover.

At various times in history, protection of the English-Norman king, or the Duke of Burgundy, or the Moors would have been required to transit what is now modern day France. A resident of the Spanish lowlands (Benelux) would likely have travelled by sea to avoid the highwaymen and servants of a hostile monarch. Even the traveling English king found himself kidnapped and held for ransom in Austria at the dawn of the thirteenth century.

In the 1500s, religion would have determined one's fate as a traveler, with free-lance heretic finders lurking in every quarter. Whether Jewish, or a member of any Christian flavor, death could be a result of the "wrong" answer to a theological inquiry. Much like Northern Ireland or parts of the Middle East today.

[Wilfrid]

Oh, Steve, pick on something we agree on, and spoil my fun . But do you think more people are clamoring for cassoulet - which indeed they are - only because it is more complex in construction and flavor? Surely also it has something to do with the fact that it is much better known than "Tuscan beans". One thing the thread has perhaps overlooked is that there has been an astonishing fashion for French food - an enduring fashion, but a fashion nonetheless. Factors other than quality have been responsible for the dominance of French food in many international markets in this century. I believe these factors have ensured that haute cuisine is, in fact, more discussed than simpler cuisines - and I also see the work of writers like the Sterns as part of a reaction against that fact.