Alice Doesn't Cook Here Anymore

Michael Pollan's article in the New York Times Magazine revisits a familiar paradox: consumption of food programming is on the rise, while actual home cooking continues to ebb. A colleague at work reminded me of an Op-Ed that ran late last year, where cookbook author Marcella Hazan argued that the glamorization of chefs comes at the expense of the home cook. Both pieces struck a chord with me, but I don’t agree that cooking shows or chef-worship are in any way the cause of disengagement from the kitchen.

While shows like “Top Chef” and a lot of the Food Network's programming aren’t likely to teach you much about how to cook, they do beget a measure of appreciation for the skill, verve, and creativity that can be a part of kitchen work. These shows make cooking look sexy, but they're primarily entertainment. The homespun practical cooking lessons a la French Chef that Pollan morns haven't disappeared -- they've just migrated.

To the internet.

At the time of the last official Internet Instructional Cooking Material survey, there were, I believe, a gajillion such sites, ranging from Mark Bittman's restrained/simple/delicious "Bitten" blog at the Times to the crazy cavalcade of recipe blogs that Saveur is trying to corral and showcase.

But I'm partly making this up. I don't have cable at home, and only watch cooking shows when I want to be entertained -- for recipes, I run internet searches or hit my very modest cookbook collection.

Where do you turn when you want to cook?

Year of the Pig, adieu!

A tip of the nib to Jonathan Gold, who came to New York and sucked the skin off of a deep-fried pig's ear.

This ran on Saveur's blog (I am interning at the magazine this semester, yes indeed). If it were possible to provide you with a link to the URL of the post, I would, but that's not how Saveur.com works. (Alas.) Since it is such a short, light little thing, I am posting it here in its entirity.

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I Fork New York
by Karen Shimizu

Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic for LA Weekly, writes his weekly restaurant column--"Counter Intelligence"--with expeditionary zeal. A thoroughly democratic eater, Gold celebrates Los Angeles's gastronomic landscape in all of its permutations, from trendy tapas bars to street-side taco shacks.

In this week's column, however, the LA critic returns to his old, er, chomping grounds (from 1999 to 2001 he wrote reviews of New York restaurants for Gourmet magazine) to salute the passing of the Year of the Pig in the Big Apple. With just a weekend to canvas the city, Gold gets busy. "I ate 30 different pig preparations in a little less than 48 hours," he writes, "and it would have been more if I'd gone with the flow."

It is the rude elements of ordinary food--chunks of bread, froufrou-free vegetables, and coarse meats--that fuel Gold's most passionate culinary reveries. He celebrates strong and simple fare in a down-home lexicon that includes words like "oozy," "leathery," "earthy," "gritty," "spare," and "oily." He is not interested in decorous eating or mannered writing; his prose is muscular and sticky-fingered, and rapture hits hardest when a meal leaves him greasy-chinned.

Readers are there by Gold's side at the Spotted Pig as he sits down to a deep-fried pig's ear, and--thanks to his arrestingly descriptive writing--can all but taste the food as it disappears down his gullet.

"You tear into an entire, freaking ear with a sharp knife and a fork, chomp through crisp bits and bony nubs, shards of skin, pockets of former gristle converted to goo. You are close to the animal, even part of the animal; you're Mike Tyson sinking sharp teeth into Evander Holyfield, a Neanderthal devouring his share of the kill," writes Gold. He goes on to rhapsodize about pig's foot at Babbo, roasted marrowbones at Blue Ribbon, cured pork belly, curried head cheese, and pork-jowl scrapple at Resto, Korean-style pork shoulder "braised into sweet, caramelized submission" at Momofuko Ssäm Bar, and the kaleidoscope of charcuterie at Bar Boulud.

While Gold usually finds fuel for his columns in LA, his latest piece carries a palpable whiff of nostalgia for New York's frank fondness for meat. For myself, I just hope that he comes back soon for another binge. Gold's unfettered cave-man hymns to the pleasures of the bone make me nod in agreement and wipe imaginary grease from my chin.