pecunium | On Food Porn (safe for the hungry)

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On Food Porn (safe for the hungry)

I like writing about cooking, because I like reading about cooking.

I've been able to cook, at least a little bit, since I was about five. My mother was a lab tech (mostly phlebotomy) for a hospital, in a small town, and was on call every third day (which tells you how big the town was. She says she was able to cross the town, in a snowstorm, carrying a four year old, and with me walking, in 20 minutes. The next day she asked for directions to the hospital, "Go to the new stop-light, turn right and go half a block."

"How do I know the new stop light?" [this was a mostly rural area, one might have a "new" stop light, aged to a fare-thee-well]

(looking up at the light under which they were standing) "It's t'other one.")

So, lest my sister and I go hungry (or need to wake the neighbor upstairs) I was taught to make soup, from cans. I don't really recall this, but I don't really recall ever thinking the stove was a mystery either.

I also, so I'm told, showed an early fondess for good food. In my weaning my mother decided a pot roast (one of my grandmother's stellar items of cookery, she was mid-western bland, in the main, save for a few things, a goulash, and stuffed cabbage being the two I recall... leftovers from her grandmother's youth in Prague) was tender enough to give me. The next day Gerber was seen to have lost a customer, as I refused to swallow the tinned beef. I couldn't keep it out of my mouth, but I, so it seems, could; and did, refuse to swallow it.

The first real cooking I remember learning was french toast (which is really German Toast; the name was changed in WW1 when sauerkraut became liberty cabbage). At the age of, roughly, 14 I was in charge of cooking dinner, which chore I kept until I was about 18, and my mother was no longer working, outside the family bookstore.

Which is why, I suppose, I find it interesting that there are people who don't cook. It's as strange to me as people who don't read.

I know people like to read about food. I like to read about food. I have linear feet of books about food (not so many pure cook books, though I have a few). Books on butchery, on pasta, On Food and Cooking, on bread, meats, ingredients, history, cheese, fermenting, beer, wine, you name it.

I am not, in my opinion, all that great a food writer. I detail, with callous disregard of non-cooks, things I've made. I don't have wonderful stories about the pasta dish I was taught to make in a small restaurant in the Tyrol; because I've not done such (but when I made the pasta, it was at least that yellow... I had eggs from cage-free chickens who get to scratch... the recipe is simple, all the moisture [save for a few drops of olive oil] is from egg yolks).

Which is why I am amused at the offers to let me come and cook. To me, it's not a big deal. I understand the urge to eat other people's cooking. It's why I root around for restaurants (and if I spend two weeks in a city, it's a certainty that I'll have found someplace worth reccomending).

But I post the bare bones of a meal (you could makes something like it from my description) and people swoon.

I don't really get that.

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I like to read about food. I have linear feet of books about food (not so many pure cook books, though I have a few). Books on butchery, on pasta, On Food and Cooking, on bread, meats, ingredients, history, cheese, fermenting, beer, wine, you name it.

Our footage of food books is growing almost as quickly as the rest of the library. Last year,

seriouspenguin and her man sent Johnny Trash two books, one on cocktails and Mary Meade's Sausage Cookbook. Heh. Now I'm bit concerned that they might want us to slaughter a pig for their next visit.

But I post the bare bones of a meal (you could makes something like it from my description) and people swoon.

I don't really get that.

This is just my opinion. :p There is a reason we call such posts food porn. For people who appreciate culinary skills, which you seem to have a remarkable instinct for, it's a connection of sort. The descriptions of the simple ingredients, which I think are the key to the whole puzzle myself, starts the brain to thinking how that tastes, the freshness , the scents, the very sensation of the food that you're describing, tickles a pleasure region in the brain.

My ex bf had NO palate. He wasn't into new foods, new experiences frightened him period. Makes me wonder honestly how I ever got involved with him but that's a whole other post! :p My point is this - there are some people that get stimulated by new restaurants, new recipes, new oral pleasures from the kitchen. I'm one of them.

It's nice to read about someone who takes such pleasure in their cooking, for it is, for me, an act of love.

I'd have to say there are two things I look for in food writing. Can I taste it? Can I see the method?

The first, well that comes from some attention to the ingredients. The second is trickier. It requires some detail, but not that much (no need to say I heated the pan to the point toasted sesame oil starts to scorch and cool it with an infusion of peanut [which would be one way to know when a wok was ready for veggies, but it could give an off flavor to the oil. I digress).

I would have to say, given all the food writing I've read, my food porn style comes from a writer of detective stories. Robert B. Parker. I have a couple of dishes I reconstructed from sketches he's dones of meals Spenser cooks. It is because of him I elected, some years ago, to essay cumberland sauce.

TK

It is intersting that Anthony Bourdain who you slightly remind me of somehow is also a thriller writer as well as a chef.. I take it you've read Kitchen confidential?

I have a lot of things to say about my own learning to cook experiences as a child, but for now, I just want to say that the food writing we do currently has a different purpose. Neither "can I taste it?" or "can I see the method?" is what informs our writing. Our goal is to get people in third-tier suburbs to eat at non-chain restaurants. There are relatively very few of these places, and they might not be as reliable as the chains, but I see our food writing goal as promoting independent restaurateurs in our state.

K.

Reviews are a whole 'nother matter.

I ought to review some of the places near here (esp. now as I am home more often). There are a few which I can, without reservation, recommend to one and all, and should.

TK

I think your first sentance here answers your question in the post. Your details are stunning....perhaps as one who is also fond of cooking, I can appreciate your posts more. It's rare that I cook on the fly with such ease, confidence and exotic ingredients as you. Maybe that will come with time.....

I can ad lib, but if I'm working with something truly spectacular or foriegn to me, I tend to be a little more careful... ;)

Perhaps you have a wordsmithing skill that makes the things you cook seem superb. (I'm not (necessarily) implying that they don't actually taste that good, /j/u/s/t/ /h/i/n/t/i/n/g/ /f/o/r/ /a/n/ /I/n/v/i/t/a/t/i/o/n/ but it does seem to be a possibility.)

Having spent my childhood in norther Ohio and southern Michigan (though my mother was from Kentucky, of Swiss/German parentage) and being somewhat allergic to hot spices/seasonings, I quite like "midwestern bland" -- primarily as Comfort Food. (I've yet to find a restaurant that offers proper Macaroni & Cheese -- with at least three kinds of cheese and enough eggs in the milk that it's firm enough to slice and fry when heating-up as leftovers.) This does not, however, preclude considering "I've never had that" a perfectly good reason for ordering something at an exotic ethnic restaurant, or (years ago) telling a waitress "I know absolutely nothing about Ethiopian food; I don't like much salt or especially-hot spices. I expect to pay about XX dollars. Feed me." (That's a modification of the way the late Ron Ellik ordered when he led an Expedition of the Great Wall of China Science-Fiction, chowder, and Marching Society to Chinese restaurants at WesterCons some decades ago.)

One of the advantages of Food Porn is that it is inherently absolutely egotistic.

Don, feel free to call on us, anytime you're here. I'll even take your cardiologist into consideration.

I suppose I ought to take it as praise of my writing, and just not ponder the existentials of it. I understand your wishing for the macaroni and cheese of paradise. Can't be found in these parts.

My early childhood was spent in Ohio (Cleveland, and environs) and Northern Indiana.

Ron Ellik's method of finding food seems wonderful.

John Hertz and I have sampled many a restaurant. There was (no more, it was too much of what it was for the area) a delightful, and superb, Chinese place in Riverside/San Bernardino (where Foothill hits I-215, near the Virgina Dare Plaza). We went in there by happenstance, heading home from the faire one weekend.

It became a staple. Took about three weeks for them to figure out these gai lo really did know what they were eating, and would eat what they asked for. After that we were on the list of people who got to eat of the secret menu.

TK

Don Fitch! How nice!

K.

Eggs in mac and cheese???? No way.

But out of curiousity, when would you add the eggs to it? start of the bechemel sauce? when you add the cheese?

My mac in cheese usually has three kinds of cheese. Depends what's in the fridge. There's a chipolte cheddar that is sold at the local organic food store that is awesome in mac and cheese. Smoked gouda is also good, but can overpower, so you have to be careful.

You can add it to the sauce (which is the best) and so it becomes a trifle more custardy. You have to stir more, and you can also add it with the cheese (as a binder). You still need to stir more.

TK

Cluefairy wrote:
"Eggs in mac and cheese???? No way."

There _is_ a Profound PHilosophical Difference here. You're thinking, I suppose, in terms of macaroni and a sauce; I'm thinking in terms of a single solid entity.

"But out of curiousity, when would you add the eggs to it? start of the bechemel sauce? when you add the cheese?"

Cook a batch of macaroni. (Elbow, of course, that and spaghetti being the only kinds of pasta that were available to most people in the midwest 50+ years ago -- in the "imported foods" section, naturally.) Drain, and dump into a casserole dish. Stir in quite a lot of grated cheese (at least 50% of the volume of macaroni, I'd say). Traditionally, this would have been Velveeta/American Processed Brick, though if you lived in a Big City (like Toledo, Ohio, which had _two_ Chinese restaurants (and three Italian ones), for your choice of Exotic Ethnic Cuisines) you might have access to a market that carried "cheddar" and "Swiss". (You can understand why I was thrilled to discover Trader Joe's, back when that chain consisted of two stores -- "Almost-Gourmet food for not-quite-Yuppies" should've been their Motto.) I generally use affordable ones -- an aged Welsh or Vermont cheddar, a domestic "Swiss", and a Tillamook Jack, or maybe a Jarlsberg, sometimes with a few tablespoons of finely-grated Stilton. Stir cheese into the hot macaroni carefully, so it doesn't clump too much. Estimate the amount of milk needed to almost cover the mixture, beat in about one and a half large eggs per cup of milk, add and stir (adding a little more milk if necessary (skimmed milk if you're on a low-fat diet and can convince yourself that the Virtue of this outweighs the Sinfulness of the cheese & eggs)). (Topping with crushed potato-chips is Traditional but optional, and I never do it.) Pop into the oven (regular might be best, but I always use the microwave) and bake at a fairly low heat until it's set in the center. (Using a rectangular dish facilitates slicing if you want to re-heat leftovers in a frying-pan over medium to low heat.)

Don Fitch,
whose Religious Credo also includes the necessity for toasting the inner side of the bread used for toasted cheese sandwiches, and using a (sweetened) Bisquick mix for Strawberry Shortcake. Some things are simply Not Negotiable.

Wow. That's sliceable. I've never had it fixed that way. Well.

My parents have shopped at Trader Joe's for as long as I can remember. When I moved from L.A. to Seattle (now Boston) many many years ago, I missed shopping there. The stores came to Boston a few years ago and that made me happy.

Perhaps it's an upstate Ohio thing. Because macaroni and cheese, of that family, is the way I recall it.

Kraft telling me they are the cheesiest, well it's a cruel hoax.

TK

I don't understand people who don't cook at all. I can understand not reading about foods. I don't read about them much, but I like to cook, and I like good food. But I don't understand never cooking - always eating out of a tin or a cardboard tray is unbelievable to me because sometimes you deserve to get creative and enjoy youre food instead of just eating it! I mean, sure, you get busy, but why eat if you don't eat good?

I hadn't realized that "freedom fries" wasn't a new concept. Interesting. French toast stuck. I'm glad that freedom fries didn't.

Cooking is easy, really. There are only a few things one can do to foods. There are some tricky assembly issues, and dessert cooking is a seperate art, mostly because of either assembly problems (e.g. a napoleon is three assembly issues combined) or the tempermental behaviour of the ingredients (though one might say a sour-milk cake is an assembly problem. Then again, all death can be attributed to heart failure... it's a matter of perspective).

What one needs, to become a good cook is, in the words of Larry Niven, a willingness to eat one's mistakes. Rarely have I made things which were absolutely inedible. Some have been things I'll never do again, but most have been edible.

These days (with a lot of cooking under my belt) I can usually step into the kitchen and be 3/4rs fearless about what's coming to the table, though I do have a couple of stand-by dishes for impromptu meals to impress.

TK

I threw out an experiment once. And until I've learned a bit more about the properties of eggplant, I will not be attempting to do anything with eggplant again! My recent, "I ate it, but I won't do it again," was when a strange level of curiosity overcame me and I had to see how cod would taste if I fried it, but instead of breading it, I used tahini. I have no idea what possessed me.

I believe that, based on what I've read in your LJ, you're probably a better cook than I am. I don't read a lot of cookbooks. I just taste things I like and then come up with weird combos to put together. I have made some amazing things just by luck, but because I"m not good at following directions, and I don't read a lot about food, my experiments can be hazardous. Unless I"m sure of the foods I'm using, I don't experiment on guests. (So modifications on a theme I've already used with success will go for guests, but rarely will I use brand new ideas).

But I started with easy things. I'd buy tomato sauce and try to figure out how to "spice it up" so that I didn't have the same damned, boring meal for the next six weeks because one sauce was on sale. For me, a break through came in from a song on an a capella CD I've got. A trucker's singing about how he's got to get home for his wife's houston hash. He listed the ingredients, so I decided to see what would happen if I used them (slightly modified due to vegetarianism), and I ended up with an amazing dish.

My world imploded. It's never been the same. You can cook without recipes as long as you have an idea! Oh, recipes are amazing. I adore what I've made when I've sat down and followed complex recipes, but I just don't have the patience for all that measuring. Recipe cooking is for when taoist_pagan's home to keep me on track and make sure that I actually use a measuring cup and spoon.

Cooking is easy, really.

Er, I suppose. Anyone can boil water and put pasta in it. Not everyone necessarily has the creativity to look at what is at hand and come up with a dish or two. I fall into that category; I'm usually okay with a recipe at hand, but the few times I've tried improvising, the results have been at best tolerable. I like reading your food porn posts because I can sometimes get a bit of inspiration from them. You may not see it as a big deal, but it's probably more impressive to people like me who haven't developed a particular talent for it.

You can do it, you just need a place to start.

Pick something which has room for variation... if the prep has room for variety all the better. Omlettes and soups are good.

Learn to make a basic one. Then play with it.

Alternate method. Find something with lots of variety, but ample recipes. Make the differing versions. You will come to the point you can riff on the themes (it is like music, some is symphonic (tortes) some is loose and folkey (soups) some is jazz... omelettes.

Some cooks are more prone to one style than another, some are ecclectic and some are just whores for the new.

TK

Some advice: never make a creme brulee when your other dishes also require a huge amount of oven time. Well, unless you have more than one oven, I guess. I don't. I did this once. Ooof. That was a long day.

A friend of mine didn't learn how to cook until her late twenties. She also had no appreciation of good food. Her parents never cooked. Junk food. Things served with no spices. Etc. She just didn't know.

It wasn't until she started hanging out with our group that she got into eating all sorts of ethnic foods and branching out. We would have potlucks almost every week, and we knew she had no experience with food when we sent her out to get spinach and she came back with chicory. heh.

Eight years later? She'll eat almost anything and she's learned to cook and isn't half bad at it, either. She's very proud of herself. She's still not rabid about it or watches much food porn, but she tries.

Very few people actually cook these days and even fewer, well *and* originally. It sounds like you do the latter and naturally people respond. As for the description itself - it does have a certain freshness (sic). As another cook-er, I usually report the bare list of particular things I made I'm pleased with, and maybe if they turned out well, not how I made it or why - you do convey that. Process as well as product. I enjoy reading it (she said needlessly.)

One of the fun side effects of being a Nero Wolfe (authored by Rex Stout) fan was reading about the meals prepared by Fritz. After a while someone at Penguin figured out that recipes for the meals might sell, and the result was The Nero Wolfe Cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1888952245/qid=1107045522/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-7190626-3448765?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). It's now back in print after 20 years of unavailability, and it's great fun.

Linkmeister (http://linkmeister.com/blog/)

I can probably cook better than I give myself credit for. I don't particularly enjoy the pressure though -- of either getting dinner ready _now_, or cooking for non-family. It's probably because I grew up in a time/place where women were judged a lot by their cooking skills that I have cooking issues. :)

I too was a child that taught myself how to cook. My mother stopped cooking when I was about 11 or 13, and my father only does the customary BBQ or the occasionaly holiday eve chili.

I started making easy things - tuna toasties, mac n cheese, soups, etc. As I grew older, and my food snobbery advanced, I because more discriminatory about what ingredients and things I would make and put in my mouth.

Incidentally, I've managed to no longer appreciate some of my mother's dishes that I once thought were absolutely amazing. This, I feel is the only downside to my own personal culinary journey.

I only wish I could devote more time to pursuing new techniques. :)

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