I have friends who are convinced that good-food culture is nothing but bourgeois pretension, all puffery, no sincerity. Of course it can be that, but appreciating the aesthetic quality of food shouldn’t necessarily be any more outrageous than appeciating aesthetics in any other realm (though realms most removed from the legitimacy of high arts are going to be particularly received as lifestyle markers). Which isn’t to say class doesn’t overdetermine our food choices, merely that there is such thing as integrity and quality in food. It’s not all pretension.
All the more reason that I appreciate a couple of pieces in this week’s food section of the NY Times that argue for quality over fussiness. First, a food photographer, Andrew Scrivani, reflects on why he’d rather be out of business.
[I]t’s impossible to forget that mealtime was once sacrosanct, that life revolved around food and the family dinner table. The love of beautiful cookbooks is evidence that people still appreciate these values.
But rather than cooking, they now prefer dreaming about what these books represent. They fantasize over "The Art of the Tart" by Tamasin Day-Lewis while eating Entenmann’s coffeecake.
His takedown of celebrity chef trend toward cookbook-as-advertisement is spot-on, as well. I’ll second Scrivani’s sentiment: there are a couple of cookbooks I really like that are beautifully laid out and photographed (the River Cafe cookbooks, for instance), but mostly I appreciate books that privilege cooking basics over class voyeurism.
Second, Mark Bittman takes what has long been my position: for most purposes, high-end cookware pales in comparison to the qualities of cast-iron skillets. I’m always amazed that some people spend so much money on cookware that’s meant to show they cook when in fact they so obviously do not.
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