Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies (24 page)

You know who should
look into this? The Garlic Council. There must be one—there’s an American Egg
Board, and a Milk Advisory Board (which is where I go for
all
my milk
advice).

There are dozens of
other shadowy organizations, each bombarding us with propaganda for their
special food interests. It always seems sad to me when foods have to lobby for
our attention—we get it, pork, you taste good.

Of course, the list for
following year was entirely different (foods only ‘trend’ for a year, I guess),
and included ‘tiny pies.’ Please, for the love of Julia, explain to me why we
need smaller pies, and why these freakishly small pies will suddenly become
popular!

Maybe plate
manufacturers are scaling way back, or maybe the Pie Council surveyed a bunch
of people who said
“I like pies just fine, and I’d eat more of them, but
they’re always so big!
”

Another food item that
is supposed to be hot this year is, coincidentally, another example of the
convergence of the foodie and stoner mindsets.

They’re called
‘cakeballs,’ and they are balls of cake . . . filled with ice cream. We’re
talking dessert squared here. They may not be trending nationwide, but I’m sure
they’re HUGELY popular with some twenty-somethings I know.

Ultimately, I think
‘food trends’ are a load of crap. I think they’re just PR campaigns. Maybe the
ostrich egg market takes a dive, and all of a sudden ostrich eggs are on the
cover of
Gourmet
and everyone’s buying gigantic
skillets.

You know what food
I
think will be popular next year?
Pizza. You know why? Because pizza will always be popular.

Sure, there may be
years when thick crust is in, or some odd combination of toppings, but the
basic template of dough, sauce and cheese can’t be beat.

Here’s how perfect
pizza is, conceptually—if your slice is topped with something you don’t like,
you just take it off and you
still
have dough, sauce and cheese! It’s genius!

I recently did a survey of more
than five friends, and the results were interesting—when asked their favorite
food
, nearly sixty-seven percent
chose pizza.

Granted, one person specified ‘a
thin crust pizza with Roma tomato sauce and mozzarella, topped halfway through
with prosciutto and arugula until the arugula just slightly wilts,’ but I got the
impression that if it were a death row / last request scenario, he’d be fine
with a plain slice of cheese from Domino’s.

When it came to ‘least favorite
food,’ there was more of a range of replies—beef liver, chicken liver (yeah,
organ meats are really taking the country by storm), sardines, horseradish, and
for some reason, somebody said ‘creamed rutabagas.’

My question isn’t “What’s so bad
about creamed rutabagas,” but “Why would you even
try
creamed
rutabagas?” It sounds like the Rutabaga Council was just getting
desperate—“Look, nobody’s buying these—maybe we should tell people to cream
them, so they seem less like . . . rutabagas.”

Unlike your typical
fifty-something, I’d go so far as to say, overall, I’m in
favor
of
progress
.
I have plenty of tech toys and gadgets that allow me to do literally
dozens
of things I didn’t know I needed to do.

And, I actually know
how to use most of the devices I own, although I’m pretty sure my phone is
smarter than I am.

I also believe that
every technological advance comes with a downside. Which is why, sometimes, I
prefer the old way of doing things.

The telephone is a
perfect example. Sure, now I can press three buttons and find the nearest dry
cleaner, or Ecuadoran restaurant.

Still, the
old-fashioned rotary phone had its advantages. Foremost among them: when you
have a rotary phone, you’re a helluva lot less likely to drunk-dial employers,
or ex-girlfriends.

With a rotary phone,
you might want to tell her off, but by the time you’re through dialing the area
code, you’ve had time to gain some perspective.

Which brings me to
molecular gastronomy. If you’re not in the loop, it’s like cooking, minus the
nostalgia and warm feelings.

See, the theory is that
we shouldn’t be locked into making food the way Grandma did, when we have all
this technology now, and just try to tell me that Grandma wouldn’t have used a
centrifuge if she could have
(“Goshdurnit
! I’m fixin’ to
turn this
pecan pie into an  industrial-looking aerosol f
oam!
”
)
.

Me, I like ‘comfort
food.’ Those two words just go together, like
good
and
sex
, or
Turner and Hooch. Besides, on a certain level, shouldn’t
all
food be
comforting
? Nobody
wants to hear the waiter say, “
Our soup this evening will make you particularly
uncomfortable.”

I appreciate
creativity, but I think there’s a limit to how ‘challenging’ I want dinner to
be. Yet that’s what molecular gastronomy is all about—using chemistry and
physics to create new and ‘interesting’ meals.

If I understand it
correctly, it’s designed for rich New Yorkers to enjoy from an ironic distance.
Think of ‘molecular gastronomy’ as the bastard love child of Marie Curie and
Mario Batali.

It’s perfect for people
who feel, “I want to cook, but I was hoping there could be more exposure to
dangerous chemicals, and lasers.”

The bible of the
movement is called
Modern
ist Cuisin
e
,
and it comprises five volumes and 2,438 pages.

The set even has its
own
trailer
you can watch online. But I think six hundred dollars is a
little pricey for a cookbook, unless it also, say, predicts the future. Six
hundred bucks is two months of
food
for us.

Modernist Cuisine
has
a dessert recipe for something called ‘Garnet Yam Fondant with Sage Foam.’ Since
I’m sure the name alone has your mouth watering, let me parse the recipe for
you.

 If you want to
liven up your next pool party with this treat, you’ll need plenty of xanthan
gum, isomalt and something called Versawhip; you’ll also want a vacuum
sealer, three pipettes, and a mandoline.

There’s one step you’re
supposed to do for exactly 15 seconds, and something or other is supposed to be
cut into 3 x 1 1/4″ tubes. Then you blanch the yam disks! Yum!

I swear, with all the
references to emulsions and infusions in modernist cuisine, I’m not sure if
they’re making food or shampoo. Maybe ‘sage foam’ can be both. I don’t know.

I’m pretty sure that
for the last, maybe,
all of recorded
history
, people have done just fine cooking with pots, pans and
spatulas.

Not to mention that
nobody
has ever had a meal in a restaurant and told their waiter,

 “I’ll
have the special, but could you immerse it in liquid nitrogen? I’d like to feel
like I’m dining in a laboratory.”

The equipment alone for
a ‘modernist’ kitchen is a little intimidating. Unless you scored a 4 or a 5 on
your Advanced Placement science exams, do you really need to be trying to use a
‘rotary evaporator?’

How about a
‘vitoceramicgriddle’? Let alone a twelve-hundred dollar ‘immersion circulator.’
I’d be too worried about meeting OSHA workplace standards, and waiting for an
environmental impact study.

By comparison, let’s
look at the
Country Kitchen Cook Book.
Published originally in 1911 by
the
Dakota
Farmer
newspaper, this handy volume weighs in at a lean 150
pages.

I have the 1924
edition, and you’ll notice it’s “Completely Revised.” Because you wouldn’t want
guests digging into some ‘Stewed Prairie Chicken’ and thinking, “Seriously?
That is
so
1911.”

Most of the
‘information’ in here was, I suppose, common knowledge to the pre-Depression
‘Farm Woman.’ Seriously, who
didn’t
know how to make
Chicken
Maryland,
or
Broiled Squab on Toast Points
?

What makes this book a
treasure are the various clippings that a woman named Mae kept tucked between
the pages of the book.

Because of Mae, I now
know how to make my own floor wax and furniture polish, and I also have hand-written
instructions for making cheese biscuits

There’s actually a
recipe for making crackers. Shows you how spoiled by modernity I am—I didn’t
know you
could
make crackers. I thought all the
crackers on Earth were made centuries ago and boxed up by monks.

She saved the news item
above, with the headline “Autumn Dish Recipe Wins In Contest,” and as you read
about ‘Mrs. Thomas’ and her ‘Better Homes and Gardens Recipe Endorsement’, you
can almost picture Mae ripping it out in disgust and vowing to win in 1925.