Clifford A. Wright, one of my favorite food writers, has penned one of those oh-so-true articles about our fascination with context-free recipes: A Recipe, Not a Formula in which he argues that the new cookbooks give us recipes without context.
A modern recipe is written like a schematic. Anyone can replicate the author’s dish if you do all the fussy measuring and timing. If you are the typical American, you will say, “oh, this simple recipe would be soooo much better if I added some sugar and some of those peppers growing in the back yard. Since the recipe is simply a formula, it’s easy to do that while loosing the whole history behind the dish. Unless you have context, which the classic cookbooks usually gave you. Once upon a slower time that is.
You see, folks have tried many things before they’ve settled upon a recipe. In places like Italy, people are brutally honest in their assessment of a dish you place before them. You will learn only to make small adjustments in these traditional dishes—or none at all. Unless you’re a glutton—for psychological punishment.
This insistence upon tradition makes perfect sense. You see, over many years, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, folks have diddled with the dish. They’ve come upon some universal conclusions and incorporated them into the basic structure of the dish. They’ve done the work so you don’t have to screw up the dish.
What I“m saying is that without this history, this context, you are likely to get off course fast.
Writers like Wright and Carlo Middione understand context. If you read Middione’s The Food of Southern Italy, you will understand the cultural context of the food. It’s a favorite of mine, although I think it’s out of print. Middione had a restaurant in San Francisco in which the walls were covered in interesting old photos of Italy. Context was everywhere. Middione also played the system like a pro. He said that the health department wouldn’t allow dishes to be served at room temperature, which is certain death to many Italian vegetable and antipasti dishes, but that if your restaurant was implacably clean, they might look the other way…
Wright is a particularly fine food anthropologist. I really enjoy his Real Stew: 300 Recipes for Authentic Home-Cooked Cassoulet, Gumbo, Chili, Curry, Minestrone, Bouillabaise, Stroganoff, Goulash, Chowder, and Much More.
And consider the “bad” review of Real Stew:
All cultures have delicious culinary traditions — well, at least most of them do — but to insist that American cooks precisely duplicate the ingredients and cooking conditions necessary for ethnic verisimilitude smacks of snobbery at best and condescension at worst. A little more emphasis on user-friendly and, dare it be said, familiar recipes would have made this book considerably more useful.
I’m a little tired of books that simply give the 5 minute simplified microwave version of a Tunisian stew. Besides, nowhere does the book state that Clifford is gonna come at you with a sharply-honed chef’s knife if you deviate from a traditional, well-researched recipe. But you should know from where your recipe came and how the people who make it every day do it, doncha think? Does honesty count these days? I was stunned at the earthy tastiness of real traditional cooking of Sardinia when I finally visited the island, but only after reading a Gourmet article that was crammed with culinary lies gleaned from chefs who cooked for clueless yacht owners and written while the author lounged on a deck chair on a Costa Smerelda beach. Yuck.
If you want something simplified to oblivion, simply sit on your butt and watch the Food Channel, where everything worth cooking can be done in ten minutes or less and won’t make your kitchen smell of long and lovingly-cooked food. Who’d want that?