Friday, May 03, 2002

Learning to Cook

In a couple of weeks, I’m taking a trip to the UK. Naturally, I’m eager to see my family - it’s been two years since my last visit. And I’m also looking forward to some really good food. “Good food?” you may ask, “In England?” Many Americans snicker at the very idea of eating well in England, and with some justification. They reel off second-hand horror stories of boiled vegetables shrouded in pallid and floury sauce, of ghoulish jars of pickled eggs bobbing in vinegar on pub counters, and - their voices cracking with disgust, of steak and kidney pudding.

I console myself that American critics of my culinary heritage hail from a nation whose contributions to the international bill of fare include marshmallow fluff, processed cheese in an aerosol can, which one can spray directly onto the tonsils, and fast food. I idly wonder whether these critics have ever sampled a wedge of perfectly aged, crumbly wensleydale cheese, or blackberry and apple crumble, hot from the oven.

I was raised to be a food snob. Mum fed me and my siblings on classic English Nursery foods: shepherd’s pie, rice pudding, treacle tart and custard. She baked cakes and biscuits following her mother’s hand-written recipes, which she still keeps in a bulging folder shelved by the cookbooks. She taught us to weigh and measure ingredients, and how to follow a recipe and plan the stages of cooking. Growing up as the child of a certain era and class, the closest I came to eating fast food was the occasional snack of Heinz’s baked beans on toast in front of the telly.

Even as an adult, it took me a while to grasp the American distinction between “cooked” and “made from scratch.” In my view, just adding water and stirring, or, with all due respect to the Amish cook, pouring a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup over the top of something, simply doesn’t count as cooking. Recently, I overheard a group of twenty-somethings praising a woman extravagantly for taking the trouble to bake a birthday cake for her friend. Then I realised that she was being praised for her efforts in buying a mix.

For me, cookery is a domestic alchemy that transforms nature into culture, raw ingredients into food shaped by local notions of the edible and tasty. If you start with pre-processed ingredients, with nature already tamed, then the magical moment has already passed and you might as well order out for a pizza. There’s an element of skill and openness to chance, of adjusting recipes according to taste or what looks good at the market this week. Learning to cook can’t be reduced to a list of precise instructions, an algorithm; it requires time, practice and an apprenticeship to a particular cook or a kitchen’s tradition.

American fast-food chains have cast a girdle round the globe, purveying food that is the antithesis of cookery. In a commercial McKitchen, the production process has been re-engineered, broken down into de-skilled McTasks, so that the newest recruit can cook burgers in the house style on the very first day in the job. Young people who apprentice in this kitchen’s tradition will never learn to judge quantities by eye or to correct seasonings by taste.

It’s true that, in the grand scheme of things, such concerns are overshadowed by the appalling economic, environmental and health effects of the fast food industry, so well documented by Eric Schlosser in his recent muck-raking book, Fast Food Nation. But, still, those whose tastes are formed by fast food are learning to appreciate uniformity over spontaneity, salt and fat over subtlety, and the extruded over the made.

Of course, there’s plenty of good eating to be had in America, too, just as there is in England, if you know where to go. I’m musing on my grocery list for the weekend. I hear there’s fresh local asparagus coming in this Saturday at the South Bend Farmer’s market. Hmm.... Perhaps drizzled with a little melted butter and lemon juice?

For Michiana Chronicles, feeling a bit peckish, this is Louise Collins.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on May 03, 2002
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