For My Friend Lawerence , who will understand.

[mixfinder]

A most Pleasant Day

Edna Lewis wrote an American classic titled, In Pursuit of Pleasure. It follows the lament that nothing "tastes like it used to". Edna's famous line was, "No one comes home from work at 5:30 and eats at 6:00 and has it taste like it used to".
I am teaching a class tomorrow in that vein and have spent the day caramelizing, deglazing, reducing and oven roasting and plethora of options for the class to taste. I am also using the French art of browning butters for blanc, noisette and noir.
I reduced peaches in brandy and put them in a rich butter crust cobbler. Each fruit and vegetable is present raw, steamed and maximized as is a soup and the cobblers so the class can see and taste the complexity of flavor that comes from just a little more time.
Today I used my Artisan, the Farberware electric skillet caramelized pounds of vegetables, Kitchenaid,s version of Allclad, the Maytag smooth top and my French baking dishes. As I was cooking I dumped every pan, bowl, and utensil in the Maytag dishwasher, set it on Sani and set to read the paper.
Now I call that a pleasant afternoon.
Kelly

 

[maytagbear]

Kelly-

According to Amazon, it is "In Pursuit of Flavor"

Edna Lewis is a underknown American Living Treasure.
Granddaughter of slaves, she has synthesized African cooking, soul cooking, and American French into something astonishingly delicious, true, and unique.

She has had an amazing career-- from Brooklyn's famous Gage & Tollner restaurant to coastal Virginia.....

Her books are all evocative, yet sound. Unlike some trendier names who can't write a working recipe with the ghosts of Craig Claiborne and Julia Child behind them, Edna Lewis's recipes are about as failure proof as can be.

She's now quite elderly, in her 90s, I believe. However, there is a forthcoming 30th anniversary edition of The Taste Of Country Cooking to be released on 1 August 2006, and I plan on saving some of my birthday money to get a copy.

There's just something about a kitchen day, when there is either a gentle deadline, or no deadline at all, and sometimes there's a feeling of only what could be called "flow."

Thank you, Kelly, for thinking of me.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[mixfinder]

Pleasure

Lordy! Do I have it on my brain!?!
I know it is, In Pursuit of Flavor. Edna was grand women who simply flowed into a room with her quiet, slender, tall elegant demeanor. She died about 6 weeks ago. She, James Beard and Julia Child worked tirelessly to establish American Cuisine in an equal place with other cultures.
Kelly

 

[lightedcontrols]

Kelly....

Kelly,
Things DON'T taste like they used to! We get fruit and vegetables in the markets that have been gassed to look good and will go from UNRIPE to rotten VERY quickly with very little flavor. Fruit needs to mature in the tree, bush, or vine, or the taste just isn't there. The simple chicken has been genetically engineered to be all white meat with HUGE Dolly Parton breasts and very little anything else. See one yet? They don't taste like chicken. They taste like NOTHING. In my youth, my Grandmother had chickens that just ran free in the yard and ate the food scraps from breakfast, lunch and dinner. Those babies had flavor!!! I even find it very hard to get good butter like Keller's. Most people buy that Land O' Lakes wax stuff and have become happy with that. The state of food in this day and age is just sad. Our tastes have become sweeter, saltier, and spicier in the last 15 years for a reason. It's the ONLY way to add flavor to food! I could go on here but I think you get the idea. I spoke to the cooking school at the Greenbrier (LaVarenne) (was a guest of Anne Willian) about this very matter just two years ago, and from what I've seen, nothing has improved. Mark

 

[thor]

Flavors!

Mark, you couldn't be more precise. I live in Buenos Aires, and within a radius of 150 miles from the city there are dozens of towns where fruit, vegetables and other farm produce are grown. During the nice weather weekends me and my wife love to travel by car to these places, and literally buy car trunks full of produce at the farms.

But the best of all is their price. For instance, a 10 kg mesh bag of oranges, $ 3 (yes, US$), a bag of 5 kg of fresh potatoes for $ 2, a 5 kg bag of fresh figs for $ 3, and the list goes on with tangerines, sweet potatoes, pumpkins (a whole 20 lb. pumpkin for $ 1), farm eggs ($ .70 a dozen!), a bag this big full of peaches for $ 2. Blood red plums are sold for $ 2 for a 8 kg bag. When you come to green leaf vegetables they almost give them away for free.

Once in the kitchen, these produce just perfumes or whole house with their aroma. We don't refrigerate any of the fruit or larger vegetables, except for green leaf vegetables. When I come home at night and I open the front door I am surrounded by the aroma of all the produce. I really love this.

I have learned to cook canned peaches in syrup, all kinds of marmalades, and after cooking the aroma remains inside the house for days! Needles to say, we have no capacity to consume all these fruits and vegetables, so we always give away bags full of fruit to our friends, who really love it.

My wife has even written down in her agenda the different harvest dates for each of the different produce. For instance, in two weeks from now we are going after the fresh Seville Oranges, perfect for orange marmalade (I make it with a 200 year old English recipe!).

The downside of all this, now we just can't eat any vegetable or fruit purchased at the supermarket or regular grocery store. They don't have any taste at all! As a matter of fact they do have a taste: plastic!

 

[maytagbear]

That's why,

when I have a chance, I go to farm markets. I can't wait until ours opens in late July.

Yes, sometimes supermarket "organics" taste better than the regular stuff, as well. I just wish the price differential was less.

As far as Land-O-Lakes butter goes, I am only going to say that there is a regional plant about 8 minutes from here.

It's a trade off, and a complicated one.
Factory farming has advantages, and great disadvantages. So that food is accessible year-round, and at prices most consumers can afford is great, but monobreeding, and routine use of God only knows what chemicals....Not to mention the ecological damage brought by great lagoons of swine waste, for example.

If I were routinely feeding young children, I would make an effort to make sure they only ate certified organic produce and milk and meat.

The late Laurie Colwin (a wonderful writer, and a great food writer) wrote about this in her second book of food essays, More Home Cooking-A Writer Returns to The Kitchen.In her essay on feeding children, she had a very sensible suggestion about not letting children have unlimited access to television.

Of course, my nieces are now grown, and the eldest is about to be married later this year, but they have all told me (separately), that they treasure the time and food they had at "Unkie's" table.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[mixfinder]

Headache

Mercy, Mark, take a breath.

Yes, the agri system allows us to eat produce 12 months a year and it takes like plastic.

That was the point of Edna's book. She tells you how to use skill and love and craft FULLY flavored meals.

My class today, demonstrated how to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

If you all recall, I posted thoughts on the subject of eating quality fruits and vegetables, in season, a few weeks ago and was skewered.

You all are a fickle bunch.

Kelly