Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch
I know talking about the importance of cooking to readers of your food blog is preaching to the choir, but I wanted to highlight a few things from Michael Pollan’s latest article in the New York Times Magazine. Pollan is a Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley best known for his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’ve been following his work since he called Twinkies “synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes” in an article two years ago about the problems with the U.S. farm bill. I also liked that he used the phrase “head-hurtingly complicated” a few paragraphs later.
His new article looks at what it means to “cook” in the age of fast food chains, frozen PB&J and more squeezable products than I like to think of. Pollan explores the relationship between the decline of true cooking and the rise of Food Network. “The Food Network has helped to transform cooking from something you do into something you watch,” he says.
Food on television has changed a lot since Julia Child prepared meals live and unedited. Sure, it’s called “reality” TV, but it’s manipulated on every level: makeup, lighting, editing, music, pre-measured ingredients, multiple takes, etc. The Food Network and other food shows have moved away from teaching people to cook and are increasingly about absurd challenges:
“We learn things watching these cooking competitions, but they’re not things about how to cook. There are no recipes to follow; the contests fly by much too fast for viewers to take in any practical tips; and the kind of cooking practiced in prime time is far more spectacular than anything you would ever try at home. No, for anyone hoping to pick up a few dinnertime tips, the implicit message of today’s prime-time cooking shows is, Don’t try this at home. If you really want to eat this way, go to a restaurant. Or as a chef friend put it when I asked him if he thought I could learn anything about cooking by watching the Food Network, ‘How much do you learn about playing basketball by watching the N.B.A.?’
What we mainly learn about on the Food Network in prime time is culinary fashion, which is no small thing: if Julia took the fear out of cooking, these shows take the fear — the social anxiety — out of ordering in restaurants. (Hey, now I know what a shiso leaf is and what “crudo” means!) Then, at the judges’ table, we learn how to taste and how to talk about food. For viewers, these shows have become less about the production of high-end food than about its consumption — including its conspicuous consumption. (I think I’ll start with the sawfish crudo wrapped in shiso leaves. . .)”
I don’t know. If you care enough about food to have such knowledge and order such a dish, then you probably have a higher standards for what qualifies as cooking, too. Maybe you’ve tried to make your own pasta dough. At the very least, you make your own sauce. But you don’t count adding fluorescent powder to milk and noodles as cooking, and you don’t even want to talk about Easy Mac.
In the world of food blogging, standards for cooking are higher everyday. Have you rolled your own sushi? Infused your own oils? Baked your own graham crackers and oreos? Made your own yogurt or ricotta? Oh great, you’ve made hummus from dried garbanzos you soaked yourself? Well, now everyone is using fresh garbanzos, get with the program.
But we’re still a small subset of the population. Pollan talked to a food-marketing researcher who is convinced the majority of Americans are too far gone in their eating/cooking habits because they’re “cheap and lazy.” Not to mention, busy. So Pollan sees cooking as becoming recreation instead of daily necessity.
It’s “a backyard sport for which we outfit ourselves at Williams-Sonoma, or a televised spectator sport we watch from the couch. Cooking’s fate may be to join some of our other weekend exercises in recreational atavism: camping and gardening and hunting and riding on horseback. Something in us apparently likes to be reminded of our distant origins every now and then and to celebrate whatever rough skills for contending with the natural world might survive in us, beneath the thin crust of 21st-century civilization.”
I’m with Pollan on that one, and I’m sure a lot of you are, too. How satisfying does it feel to knead dough or grind spices?
A lot more than it is opening a bag of Wonderbread or using a packet of onion soup mix.
Category: Generally Food Related 5 comments »
July 31st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I used to cook a lot from scratch. But I got busy with work. And I live alone so would end up eating whatever it was every night for a week. Or I’d have a freezer full of leftovers.
I made bread. I ground some spices. I’ve made hummus and tahini. Home made canoli, wontons, pasta.
I still enjoy making the occasional pie. But my eating did degenerate to processed grocery store specials for many years.
Now I’m trying to go back but it’s hard. I’m plagued with constant fatigue and when I come home from work, all I want to do is nap, grab a quick bite, watch TV for a few hours, then go to bed to repeat the cycle the next day.
Cooking takes time. I just can’t wait 2 hours for the chicken cacciatore to get done. I don’t have energy on the weekends to spend 6 hours doing homemade meatballs and spaghetti sauce from scratch. At least lasagne is relatively fast (if I use store bought noodles) and freezes well.
I used to have a nice garden and would can my excess for the winter months. Not anymore. Another victim to work and fatigue.
I’ve decided to stop eating processed foods, most specifically anything with high fructose corn syrup. Do you have any idea how hard that is? If I want a shrimp cocktail, I have to make my own sauce. Same with BBQ sauce. I have to make quite a bit from scratch to avoid HFCS. It’s in everything from pizza to bologna, yoghurt to ketchup.
Buying organic, Kosher or foreign is the easiest way to avoid it. Then you spend a lot of time and energy cooking from scratch.
I’m starting small. Bento lunches.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:40 am
britt, I actually cooked lunch today for the family, all on my own.
well, I didn’t make my own pasta dough, but i did boil the spaghetti. And I sautéed shrimp with chopped garlic and cherry tomatoes in cream, white wine, and oregano. but i think i’ll stick to letting Char prepare the meals, its far too much work.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
mlaiuppa — The article talked a lot about how our society is overworked and so even in the event we have two hours to make the chicken, we are too tired to do it. It’s a shame, especially in your case where you want to cook meals and eat healthy, but time-saving alternatives aren’t up to par.
I guess that’s why I’m going all out now while I still can. I work in the evenings so I spend the day gradually preparing parts of the meal. I spent most of Friday morning and afternoon cooking. Made pita from scratch, hummus, lamb meatballs (with homemade breadcrumbs), tabbouleh and tzaziki. Also made homemade yogurt and whole wheat crackers.
It’s a luxury I wish I could always have, but I know won’t last when I get a real day job.
Chase — But I bet it was delicious! Also, you get a little faster with things the more you do them. The cooking time stays the same, but you’re able to peel and chop things quicker, plus manage your time right so you’re not waiting around for things and then scrambling at the end.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Thank you for contributing to a great article. I grew up in a family (and a country that cooked from scratch and local) and feel very lucky for that legacy. One gets better and faster at cooking as one does it. I put myself through college still cooking creatively from scratch is a plug in burner and toaster oven and microwave inside a small efficiency that was part of a single family home. I did it because I felt it was an investment in myself (from a health stand point of view) and always felt a sense of pride “supporting” myself and eating significantly better and cheaper meas. I am now married to an American and meet so many people (including my in laws) that do not cook from scratch and struggle in keeping a healthy diet. I try to help but like Mr. Pollen said in other articles it is a big Gorilla that one has to fight. I know as I am in the food industry. Yet I am so happy lots of people (I think the blogs have helped a lot) are realizing it is not an economic thing or social thing it is a basic human thing that anyone can do and enjoy doing.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Samy — Thank you for sharing. You’re absolutely right about cooking being a basic human thing that people ought to do and glean enjoyment from. Here’s to hoping more people realize it.