Author Michael Pollan, who for decades has been analyzing our country's dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship with food, has now decided that at its root the American Food Crisis is actually the American Cooking Crisis. In the era of frantic schedules, industrial farming and processed "food," fewer and fewer folks are preparing healthy meals from scratch at home in their kitchens.
I've been wondering why. Yes, we know all the usual reasons cited -- no time, cheap fast food, supermarket imports, etc. -- but perhaps another culprit has also discouraged more and more of us from whipping up dinner: recipes.
Lately the whole idea of recipes has taken on a sinister tone for me. Who are these domineering "experts" who tell us that we need exactly 1/8 teaspoon of cumin or 6 ounces of blueberries in January? They seem to take it for granted that we'll jump into our cars and whip over to the bulging industrial supermarkets able to provide the most esoteric and carbon-unfriendly imported ingredients out of season.
Fascist recipes are starting to remind me of high school science experiments. Grumpy chemistry teachers exhorting their unhappy students: exact measurements or -- disaster!
But people didn't used to cook like this. For generations home cooks worked from familiar patterns, over and over. Simple, healthy and familiar dishes that -- because they were handcrafted -- were different each time, depending on the "real food" that was growing that season in backyards and nearby farms. Most of these delicious meals were quick and easy to prepare from whatever was at hand. Complicated preparations were left for leisure hours and special feasts -- often communally prepared.
I began to wish I could be more like those old-fashioned home cooks. I imagined them having an almost instinctive understanding of the ingredients of their particular "terroir" as they cooked by the seasons with local ingredients and local flavor.
Slowly I started to sense the deep "pattern recipes" that lie at the core of many of the more precise recipes in the endless cookbooks. Luckily, the internet makes this research easy.
Take "soup" for instance. I read hundreds of recipes for soup to discover the underlying patterns in each set of ingredients and instructions. To free myself from detailed recipes that squelch improvisation and creativity, I boiled them down to a set of simple steps that are open to many variations.
For example, at its core soup involves sauteeing onions (and sometimes chopped carrots and peppers) in oil, adding garlic and more chopped veggies and herbs, plus stock (vegetarian from veggie scraps or meat stock made from last night's bones) and perhaps legumes or pasta. After a period of simmering, additional delicate veggies (julienned chopped greens, perhaps) and flavorings can be added at the end. You can then blend the soup to make it smooth, or leave it "as is."
That's basically it. And from that pattern, the world has created literally millions of delicious variations. The challenge is to create your own tasty version variation from the freshest, healthiest, closest-to-the-earth ingredients on this particular day.
"Stir fry" is another pattern recipe that has sustained life in Asia for thousands of years. The home cook doesn't follow a recipe, but rather improvises every day from what is available in the garden, the pantry or the nearby market. As a matter of survival, parents have taught children these patterns since the dawn of humanity.
So let's follow Michael Pollan's advice and address the real food crisis in America by teaching basic healthy cooking patterns to our children. Perhaps this is the new "Home Economics."
are not going to be a natural whiz in the kitchen, you can learn. you can also waste a lot of time
and money and ingredients getting it wrong on the way to getting it right and making your family pretty upset........it's starts out with your mate. if your mate is a neantherthal who thinks pizza and beer is the top of the food pyramid, you might have some issues. figure out the one dish that you want to eat and perfect it - for yourself. when you feel comfortable enough for another dish - go for it.don't listen to the foodies or get all hung up on iron chef and resturant chefs.......just make what you want to eat. if that's the best dog gone hot dog in poolakaville, then you ok.
In the book “Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America” (2004), Laura Shapiro argues against the idea that the market WANTED processed foods. She instead focuses on the fact that the government had invested a great deal of money and infrastructure into the technology behind processed foods during the war, and basically sold the idea to the public through an aggressive stream of marketing in advertisements and magazine articles. This eventually came full-circle in the 1970's, when the makers of "Tang" orange-flavored drink actually MARKETED their product as a kind of field ration - for America's newest frontier, outer space.
Our taste buds get used to what we're fed, and there's no guarantee that people will automatically prefer the original to the substitute. Why, to this day I know adults who actually PREFER Kraft Mac and Cheese to the real thing. And not to endorse smoking, but think of the legions of those who smoke cigarettes, with their hundreds of additives, who have no appreciation for a genuine hand-rolled cigar.
It's going to have to start with the kids, while their taste buds are still malleable. This is why I think Jamie Oliver's heart is in the right place with his "Food Revolution" - although I'm saddened to see the incredible amount of resistance he's been facing. When he was in Huntington, WV, and showed the kids the revolting process of making of a chicken nugget, fried up the resulting macerated pink goo made from skin, tendons, and God only knows what else, and then asked the kids how many of them would still eat this stuff, every single hand shot up. My heart just sank.
But fortunately, kids are generally more impressionable than adults. Show a kid a picture of a beautiful cow and a documentary about factory farming, and they just might swear off McDonald's altogether. Do the same with an adult who's been eating that stuff for 30 years, and any ethical qualms they may have might easily take a back seat to habit, convenience, and long-acquired taste preference.
A return to home cooking will occur only when the culture at large accepts it as imperative.
Mayonnaise - if you have oil, egg, dried mustard, and vinegar or lemon juice, you can whip up mayo in 2 minutes in the blender. That way it's always fresh, and you know it doesn't have junk in it. Saves room in the fridge, too.
Yogurt -- "scald" some milk -- whatever kind you want -- in the microwave (I'm really lazy). When it's cool, stir in some yogurt from the last batch (the first time, use purchased yogurt and make sure it has live cultures). Put in in a jar or bowl or something, cover loosely with saran wrap or the jar lid, and put someplace warm (near the heater, in a crock pot with some water on warm, in a very low heat oven) for 6 hours or more. When it's the right thickness, you're done. Take a few minutes to do this before you go to bed some night, and harvest your yogurt in the morning.
The good news, from what I can tell from my nieces, my son's female friends, etc is that there seems to be a resurgence of cooking from scratch in the younger generation and a lot of them have old family recipes that have been passed down.
I was lucky that my grandparents had a farm. They taught me to process plums and strawberries into jams. Vegetables into sauce. To utilize the land. It was too bad that their children, my Mom, aunts and unkle never learned to appreciate that. They became enamoured with the prepackaged stuff we have today and that we were mostly raised eating from. I would relish the days at my grandparents farm, but out of nine grand kids, I am the only one who cooks entirely from scratch. Articles like this help, but we are nowhere near where we used to be.
It's nice to know that if you're going to make soup, the first 4-5 ingredients are the same (and so on for other meals). Kudos, Linda B., for reminding me of this.
I kick myself that I didn't figure this out sooner! Starting by sauteeing onions, garlic, carrots, celery etc seems to be core in so many cuisines. Add green peppers and you have "the trinity" of Cajun cooking (onions, celery, peppers) that seems to be the start of almost every meal.
Lets look at one of the first cookbooks, the compilation by Aguste Escoffier. There are no measurements, just simple instructions left open to a wide range of interpretations, and the compilation is large enough to work in any season on a local level. If you want the pattern recipe book to beat all, pick up The Escoffier Cookbook.
Reviving our personal wellness in an industrialized society requires a realization that it needs fixing. Beyond that it is adjusting your life to meet that goal of health and wellness. However, our miss-education has deprived us of the knowledge we need to move towards that goal quickly. First we educate ourselves, in whatever way possible, of the truth of our global food industry, only then can we begin making serious steps towards a humanistic, environmentally sound, and still flavorful solution.
http://tipthecook.net
I would like to see more people cooking from scratch, but too many have aversions, allergies and problems with the clean-up aspect of cooking in general. I too was raised in the 70's, with Home Ec. I was one of only 7 guys in a class of 30 students. We learned the basics of sauteing, griddle cooking, boiling, cold preparations (salads & cheese), baking and frying. All have come in handy through today. I needed to learn how to cook because my mother was and is a horrible cook. She believes, as many do, that why go through all the trouble. That when you buy and serve Stouffers or Marie Calendars, it will taste the same as anything made from scratch. I have heard her and others in my family say "Nobody will appreciate it, so why bother." I believe this sentiment is prevalent in today's society.
I can't change my family. It will be hard to change the nation. First there needs to be interest in cooking and food, then maybe the nation will advance in this regard.
People don't cook because they don't want to cook. It's easier to buy it ready-made, and so that's what they do. Oddly, it seems one of the best ways to reverse the trend is to give up on the adults and get kids interested in food, and one of the best ways to do *that* is to get them involved in growing it, raising it, fishing it, and hunting it. Cooking is then the natural next step. So maybe that's where we should be focusing -- making sure our kids have skin in the game. My contribution's at: www.starvingofftheland.com