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The IHT asked Patricia to write an essay on food
in the new millenium for a special section the paper
published on Dec. 3, 1999. Here's what she said:
A Gourmet's Recipe for Happiness
I AM LOOKING at the cover of a current American food
magazine. The background of the photo is a deep, dark
blue, the shade of the sky of Las Vegas. In the foreground
there is a cute, preppy young man with shoulder-length,
jet-black hair. He is on his black cell phone, has Hollywood
star-style black sunglasses, holds a white coffee cup
and is dressed in never-been-washed chef's whites. Note,
also, there is NO FOOD on the cover of this food magazine.
In a nutshell, the cover epitomizes almost everything
about the future of food in the world. Or at least the
image of such. Chefs don't work; they sit on the phone
beneath the blue Las Vegas sky, probably talking to
their agents about the next deal, the next ad, the next
free BMW, the next franchise, the next public offering.
Restaurants, more and more and more around the world,
are about money, about sex, about power, about seeing
and being seen. Or being scene. They are not about what
is on the menu or what is on the plate, much less the
excellent quality of the ingredients, the true creativity
of the chef.
They are not about food. A few pages later in the same
magazine, there is a fat, bearded, naked chef holding
a blender in front of him so that the machine just manages
to cover his private parts. It is part of a series of
advertisements entitled ''Famous Chefs Naked With Blender.''
Again, no food. But sex.
If one believes much of what one reads, no one in the
modern world eats at home or cooks anymore. Then, I
ask, why are farmers' markets, especially organic markets,
flourishing around the world? Why are supermarkets being
built with 150 checkout counters? Why are we soon to
have refrigerators with computer chips that tell the
store to deliver another quart of milk, or pickles,
or a dozen eggs as soon as the last one is empty?
If one believes much of what one reads, no one in the
world eats anymore, or at least eats what we used to
call ''three square meals.'' They are all on the latest
diet, whether it's the moon diet (where you fast for
24 hours before each new moon and each full moon) or
the protein power diet (where you give up all that great
sourdough bread, sweets and wine, pasta and rice but
gorge on thick steaks, foie gras and triple-creme cheese)
or they just starve themselves. Then why are obesity
rates jumping off the charts?
It is because more and more and more we live in a world
of contradictions. Speed up, so we can do more, see
more, make more money, HAVE more stuff versus SLOW DOWN,
so we can enjoy, savor, appreciate. On the one hand,
all of this makes me very depressed. In a day where
there is so much money in the world and so much CHANCE
for a healthy segment of that world to develop a true
sense of taste, serious palates, with an opportunity
to truly appreciate and savor the best foods that nature
can offer, we throw it all over for gloss, money, sex,
glamour, emptiness.
It does not take more time to eat a good meal than
it takes to eat a bad one, so why would anyone ever
select the latter? How DID we get to where we are today?
Where did we go wrong? How did we get derailed? Because
the money people rule the world and they have no sense
of taste? Because you can't make good money from good
food? I don't agree.
very day I meet people - winemakers, small independent
merchants who run cheese shops or butcher's shops, dedicated
farmers who make extraordinary raw milk goat cheeses,
chefs who run small restaurants - who make a very good
living happily doing what they are passionate about
and that they do best.
On those days, I am wholeheartedly optimistic that
the millennium will see a sea change in the world of
food. I still believe that in my lifetime I will see
the death of the McDonald's hamburger chain, which to
me is more and more the symbol of how we got on this
path to madness, quickness, blandness, sameness. Next
time you walk by a McDonald's hamburger stand anywhere
in the world, look at the people inside: No one is having
fun, no one is laughing, or even smiling. Mostly they
are there alone staring into their Big Mac and beyond
into a world of emptiness.
(Part of me wants to go back in time and reinvent that
stupid chain all by myself, creating a golden world
of fresh food, gorgeous ingredients, wholesome food
with flavor. Where people laugh and are really happy
as they eat. )
I learned a long time ago that people who love food,
really love food and care every day about what they
put in their mouths, are HAPPY people. That's because
no matter what other frustrations, trials, tribulations
they may face, they are satisfied at least three times
a day by foods, such as a fabulously fragrant tarte
Tatin made with fresh, mildly acidic Cox's Golden Pippin
apples fresh from the tree. Or they are moved to ecstasy
by the pure simplicity of a perfect sliced tomato sprinkled
with fleur de sel, a few leaves of basil cut into a
fine chiffonade, a drizzle of golden, unfiltered, new-season
olive oil. Or they find true happiness in a bottle of
vintage Champagne, a perfectly aged cheese, a loaf of
bread warm from the wood oven.
I guess what frustrates me is that more and more people
have access to these simple pleasures, yet because of
lack of time or stupidity or stubbornness or phobias
do not reach out and touch that pleasure.
How many people do you know who spend a fortune on
a new kitchen and never cook, and never intend to? How
many people do you know who have a trophy, state-of-the-art
wine cellar and prefer to drink Diet Coke? - I THINK
that in the world of ''haves,'' there is still tremendous
guilt related to food. For those of us who grew up in
an era of Devil's Food Cake and Angel Food Cake and
moved on to Sinfully Delicious Brownies, it is clear
that food is both sinful and rewarding and can, I guess,
be a little of each in the same meal. We are more and
more worried about the safety of our food supply, more
and more fearful of developing deadly allergies. So
we move toward more and more sanitized and processed
food. That doesn't make sense at all. Individuals, even
those who cook, also are more and more disconnected
from the food they do eat.
There is a French program in the schools designed to
teach children about taste and on the first day of the
session the teacher brings in a beehive and asks the
students what it is for.
Fifteen years ago a lot of young students knew it had
something to do with honey. Today almost no children
know. The other day I bought a guinea hen from my Paris
butcher. When he asked how I wanted him to prepare it,
I said I would do it myself. He was shocked, and responded,
''That's certainly rare!'' When I have time, I like
to trim those wings, chop off that head, trim the feet,
for it gives me pleasure to know that bird first as
a whole entity, not a lot of chopped up parts. I have
a dream that I am queen of the world.
I guess that the scenario for my dream world of the
future would go something like this: Technology would
provide the world - developed and underdeveloped countries
alike - with sufficient simple, nutritious food for
everyone on earth.
Everyone would have enough and a wonderful aura of
satisfaction would overtake the world. For those who
wanted to delve more deeply, there would be an incredible
stock of fresh, organic, delicious ingredients available
on a Web site the likes of an Amazon.com. Anything you
wanted - from fresh truffles in season to Australian
yabbies, or plump Italian tomatoes, Venezuelan coffee
beans, to the first crop of just-pressed extra virgin
olive oil - could be on your doorstep within 24 hours.
For those who wanted more public contact with the people
who actually grow your food, there would be organized
open-air markets everywhere, so that you could joke
with the butcher, laugh with the farmer who offers you
a baker's dozen of 14 because he is superstitious of
13, watch as the elderly farm lady wraps her last two
precious eggs in yesterday's newspaper. - PUBLIC vegetable
gardens - like the victory gardens of old - would flourish
around the world.
For a small fee, we could each have gardens tended
by experts, and we could go each morning and pick our
day's crop. To make cooking easier and more pleasurable,
there would be a battery of small, simple, inexpensive
machines that would perform many tasks that require
no cooking skill: perfect cooked rice, a perfect hard-cooked
egg, a perfect flaky pastry. Those supermarkets with
150 checkout counters would be virtual regional food
centers, offering the freshest produce, poultry, meat,
and fish and shellfish for the area. They would have
regular stands where local farmers would offer samples
of their crops. The frozen food department would have
healthy delicious fare for the days you do not want
to cook, with everything from quality frozen pizza to
chili con carne to seven-hour leg of lamb.
Third World countries would export specialty food items
- everything from African hot sauce, dark and pungent
unrefined sugar from the Philippines - and that could
be found everywhere. The local farmers would profit
directly, with no middleman.
In fact, this world does exist, for those who want
to take advantage of it. All it takes is desire. And
a certain hunger. I'm cooking tonight. Anyone want to
come for dinner at my house?
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