Culinary Books I Have Been Reading Lately

It's been awhile since I have talked about the books I have been reading. As I have been working on my thesis I seem to have my nose stuck in the same few books each day, but I have also picked up a number of other great books the last few months.

Let's look at some books I have been reading for my thesis research. In reading some of the titles you might get the direction as to where my thesis is going. A particular favorite of the books I have been reading in Food in the USA: A Reader by Carole M. Counihan. This book is a collection of articles written about, well food in the USA. There are some regional writings, political and cultural writings (how the heck did Coca-Cola become the national drink of America?), food as the American identity, and a number of other great topics.

Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation by Roger Horowitz is an interesting way of looking how meat has become such a large part of the American diet. It also explores how, what was once such an expensive item, has become a relatively cheap and affordable, albeit generic form of protein consumption.

A really enjoy this book by Carol Fisher, American Cookbook: A History. Have you ever wondered why your grandmother's cookbook looks so different from the cookbooks of today? Well you'd be amazed at the cookbooks from the 17th century. It is great to see where the cultural influences have come from that drove the different cookbooks that have proliferated in our country. Originating from English roots, most of our books were influenced as such with irritation toward French cookery until we became enemies with England and friends to France.

These next few books are from a series called Food in American History. These are written in a very academic manner and are not for the causal reader. These books however are some of my favorites in my library. American Indian Food by Linda Murray Berzok explores the pre-Columbian era and the cultural exchange that change the American Indians in both positive and negative ways. Written without bias, this is how a text of this sort should be written. The second book which is certainly a favorite is Food in Colonial and Federal America by Sandra L. Oliver. Ever wonder where some of our cultural food items came from? Did you know that the reason we took up coffee drinking was to boycott English tea imports? Did you know the reason we don't eat lamb like some of our English ancestors was as boycott as well? It was more important to have wool from our sheep than it was to eat mutton. Food in the United States, 1820s-1890 by Susan Williams brings us into the 19th century and introduces us to the ethnic influences many of us are accustomed to.

One last book I will share with you from my research is an easy to approach book that will make you change the way you think about dining and eating in the United States. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan identifies all of the issues that have burdened the USA over the last century in the food industry. Today many think of fast food as normal food, Olive Garden as traditional Italian, Taco Bell as traditional Mexican and my disgust can go on and on. Corporate dining has homogenized our food so much that we can goto TGI Friday's, Applebees, Houlihan's, Ruby Tuesday's, any of those theme steak houses like Outback, Bugaboo Creek or otherwise and pretty much get the same meal. We have come to think about food in this country in terms of calorie, nutrient, carbohydrate and fat consumption while not caring about the food itself. We eat food wrapped in plastic that say cheese on them, but share about as much in common with cheese as a bowl of glue. This book is a must read, it will make some of you cry for those who still know how to cook. This is one of the books which made me rethink the way I eat today.

I will toss two more books in here just to share a non-academic or food writing book. I have been wanting to buy Alain Ducasse's Grand Livre de Cuisine and the dessert version for some time. These books are an extensive exploration of many of Ducasse's modern take on French classical cooking along with his personal recipes. It reminds me of Le Guide Culinaire, but without the attempt to codify cuisine as Escoffier was attempting. This book to me though is an important asset to any professional chef's library or any serious home cook that enjoys cooking French cuisine. Do yourself a favor and buy these books from Amazon.com. I purchased them foolishly from a private bookstore that is a favorite of mine to promote a local business in Boston, but at $250.00 compared to $114.00 used from Amazon, I think I should have waited until I came home, so much for impulse shopping. You can purchase both the desert text and savory text for the cover price of the savory text alone. I have both now though and even at the higher price I am extremely happy I own them.

So there you have it, go forth and read. I have a large number of other purchases I have made recently for both personal reading and academic research. Hopefully I will get a chance again soon to share a few more of my readings with you, until then happy reading!

Driving Down I-95 Hungry

Have any of you ever driven down the east coast of the United States on I-95? I have taken this trip a number of times, most recently today actually to goto St Augustine, Florida. One truly gets to see the degeneration of American cookery when traversing this stretch of highway. Let's just say the word "cuisine" is a hard word to pronounce when taking the trip.

A number of times on my way down I popped in a request for restaurants in my GPS, hoping for some local flavor in different areas on my way down, certainly hoping for something more than fried chicken or hamburgers. I am not a fan of corporate manufactured foods as many of you know. This however, seems to be 99% of the offering within the first few miles of any exit on the trip down the coast.

I swear I saw a sign every ten miles telling me that there is a Cracker Barrel in another ten miles. Southern charm, with none of the charm or flavor, but hey you can buy a rocking chair off their front porch to pretend there is some charm there. The second "restaurant" I saw most often seemed to be Roy Rogers, with Burger King a close second. I always wondered why Burger King seemed to be most popular on the highway, where as McDonald's doesn't even seem to bother with highways or even some malls, but I digress.

Once you make it to the half-way point, Western Sizzler and Denny's seem to be off each exit, and a bit further down Waffle House is another "diner" that seems to have put the local ma and pa diners out of business. I typed in "deli/cafe" into the GPS and all that came up was Subway. I wanted a laugh, so I typed in Italian and got Pizza Hut, is Pizza Hut what we think of as Italian cuisine these days in America? Or is Pizza Hut the pizza equivalent of McD's?

Surely I thought I could get some good barbecue close to the highway. I typed in BBQ in North Carolina and I got a list with Duke's, Duke's and Duke's. Even BBQ is boil in bag now it seems. Luckily I saw on the list a place called Allen's Barbecue which seemed promising.

Allen's BBQ was in South Carolina, it was a 20 minute detour from the highway. I can't tell you the amount of restaurants I was barraged with on my way to find this place though. Lone Star Steak House, Applebees, TGI Friday's, Bob Evans, 99 Steak House, Texas Steakhouse and Salon (A little taste of Texas in NC?) and there were many many many more, doted in the path was obviously a WalMart or two as well.

I was so happy when I got to this place though. It was a little "hole-in-the-wall" place in a strip mall. I missed it on my first pass actually. Lots of locals in there, with one of those old peg boards listing their offerings of just smoked brisket, pork and chicken. They had a number of sides, including baked beans, fried okra, potato salad and the other BBQ usuals. Soda came in a politically incorrect Styrofoam cup and I got myself a Dr. Pibb. Nice southern hospitality, friendly people and the kitchen wasn't spit shined, nor was the dining room and the bathroom left a little to be desired, but ya know what, it wasn't a crappy white washed chain restaurant.

This is what road food used to be. Local people making great food for people on the road. Sharing a bit of love and soul with your fellow man/woman and showing a passion for cooking. Today the highways sell "food", in quotes because there are so many chemicals in the foodstuffs, that they hardly resemble their intended outcome.

So what my pulled pork and brisket have fat in them, yeah there was mayo on my potato salad as well. However, I knew exactly what was in my food and I could pronounce it. This trip really made me think about my thesis a bit and the direction of American cuisine.

Uninspired American Cuisine

I really would like to know what people like about the high-end steak-house or seafood-house concept. I am almost hypocritical in stating my disdain for these places as I used to have a real love for Morton's Steakhouse, but recently my opinion has changed. Ridiculously huge portions of protein paired with huge portions of potatoes and "okay" vegetables just seems so culinarily dull to me. Then they want to charge you $35+ for a fish entree or $40+ for a steak entree. Then you need to pay like $10 for a baked potato, I mean come on, at the grocery store a potato even at that monstrous size costs only 25 cents.

Is this the height of "American cuisine" perhaps? In my gastronomy program we are always debating on whether-or-not we have a cuisine in this country and this idea dawned on me yesterday at my dull dinner (I'll get into the dinner more in a minute). When one talks about the American diet the concept of "meat and potatoes" always comes up. We see this idea when goto McDonalds in the hamburger (steak) and fries (potato), at TGI Fridays in the steak, mashed potato and small portion of veggies, Go off to a "family restaurant" and the theme is meat, potato and the "seasonal" vegetable.

Our most popular chain restaurants all feature the same menu just dressed differently. As mentioned McD's is steak and potatoes in a bun, Applebees is steak and potatoes dressed up on a sizzle platter, TGI Fridays is steak and potatoes with Jack Daniels sauce is a "fun atmosphere," Outback gives us steak and potatoes with a GIANT 3,500 calorie blooming onion, Lone Star gives us steak and potatoes like an American cowboy would want it (supposedly), Benihana gives us steak and starch (they do rice sorry, but it still works here) with an Asian "inspired" show as teppinyaki is an American inspired invention not Japanese and it just serves us our steak in a different way.

So should we be surprised that the most popular and expensive high-end concepts in the United States is not contemporary cuisine but simple meat and potatoes cooked perfectly for a high price? I say no, it is just a result of when people that do not understand cuisine want to spend money and end up at one of these places (I hope I am not insulting anyone here, it's not my intention). The atmosphere in these places is "white-washed" with little culture and high in pretension. Where does the pretension come in though, not from the cuisine, is it a way to make you feel like you are in a location where only the high dollar is worth getting through their walls?

This all came about from my dinner last night at the Atlantic Fish Co. which is a restaurant here in Boston. The menu features simply the name of certain fish that came in that day along with options for sides. Chilean sea bass $38.00, what a crock. Then add in the appetizer of crab cake at $18.00 and an apple crisp at almost $10, you start to see the big picture. The waitstaff was dressed well-to-do and the atmosphere was dark mahogany woods and there was a visible kitchen. Each "cook" wore a floppy toque which reminds me of back when I was in culinary school and that is exactly where my food looked like it came from when it came to my table, a simply perfectly cooked piece of fish, along with a large portion of under seasoned spinach and some tough lobster ravioli (great sounding entree?). I was also reminded repeatedly how great my meal was by my server as obviously I must not know what cuisine is, well because I am eating at a place that has no "cuisine," but just has large portions.

I apologize for the rant, but this is just what was on my mind today and I had to share it. I would like to take the time sometime and really research whether or not we really have a cuisine here in America other than meat and potatoes presented to us in different forms. I'll also add the food was not bad at Atlantic Fish Co. it was just dull and uninspired and way to expensive. I would love to hear some other people's opinions on this subject.