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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:17
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'The beau monde brand of cooking that is gracing restaurant menus across the country is called "new American cuisine." Its roots reach back to the earliest days of colonial settlement. It has come of age only recently, starting in the finest restaurants in our biggest cities, then spreading out geographically and socially to take root not just in restaurant kitchens but also in home kitchens around the country.
Like our forefathers’ and mothers’ cookery, new American cuisine is driven by seasonal ingredients purchased from local growers and small distributors. Its purveyors profess a commitment to presenting nature in its purest finery — peppery greens freshly pulled from the soil, fragrant fruits just plucked from the tree, and succulent fish netted in nearby sea or stream. The recipes they create are culled from a vast reservoir of regional and immigrant traditions made possible by the rich American experience. Each dish is meant to please the eye and delight the palate; each also connects us to the past. New American cuisine is our most mature blending of "indigenous ingredients, regional preferences, ethnic influences, and historical currents and traditions" to date, as David Belman wrote in the trade publication Restaurants USA.
With the ripening of new American cuisine has come a stunning profusion of restaurants and cookbooks devoted to the exquisite, authentic rendition of cooking from around the world. We do not just have Chinese food. We have Hunan, Szechuan, Cantonese, and more, and before we leave Asia, we can add Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisine, and Pan-Asian noodle houses offering up Indonesian and Malaysian variations. Where "Italian" once meant tomato sauce, we now choose from specialists in the cooking of Piedmont, Tuscany, Liguria, or Sicily. "Pacific Rim" cooks and Mediterranean restaurants span continents to offer samples of the beguiling similarities and intriguing differences on the stovetops where a body of water meets the land.
Meanwhile, any local supermarket bursts today with exotica unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. Consider the produce department. The ubiquitous white button mushroom is now just the humblest offering in a mushroom section, which also typically includes portabella, cremini, and shiitake, for starters. Iceberg lettuce must make room for green leaf, red leaf, escarole, endive, radicchio, Boston, and more. Most of those lettuces are now also available prewashed, impeccably fresh, and absurdly convenient, packaged in high-tech plastic bags. Through hybridization, we have discovered entirely new fruits and vegetables: Grocers have recently introduced us to broccoflower, the plumcot, and broccolini.
There is no avoiding a simple conclusion: Whatever else may be true of our cultural condition, future gourmands, "foodies," and social historians alike will conclude that by the end of the twentieth century, the golden age of cooking and eating was upon us.'
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mindseye
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A Yankee living in Shanghai
Apr 1999
time: 13:17
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When I think of the UK, COOL is what pops into my head.
Last edited by mindseye on 10-12-2004 at 09:34
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
What about roast turkey or apple pie or or New England Clam Chowder or dozens of other uniquely American foods?
Few countries can offer a steak any where near as good as those you can find in just about any city or town in America. |
I'm sorry Oerdin old bean, but you've lost the plot.
There is nothing 'uniquely' American about roast turkey. In fact, not long after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, the Spanish were shipping the bird back to Europe where it soon started supplanting the goose as fare on holy days. Domesticated turkeys were in fact shipped from Europe to colonies in North America.
If you'd said, for instance Mole poblano de Guajolote, or a whole turkey tamale (as served by Caribbean Indians to Columbus and later Spanish settlers) you might be barking up the right tree. As it is, Europeans in Europe were eating roast turkey before the United States were even thought of.
And where do you think clam chowder originated ? Try Cornish and French/Breton sailors. In fact, its roots go even further back- a seafood/shellfish stew or soup with milk would have been eaten on any of the fish days prescribed by the Mediaeval Christian calendar- there's a recipe for 'Caudel of Musculs to Potage' in the recipe collection 'The Forme of Cury' copied by the scribes of Richard II of England- the compilation dates to about 1399, although the recipes are of earlier derivation.
I believe that 'Le Viandier' a cookery book collated by Guillaume Tiral or Taillevent and dated 1380, has a similar recipe. 'Caudel' and 'chowder' derive from the same Latin root as the French 'chaudiere' .
Now the apple pie thing is utterly hilarious- again, Kent and Somerset in England alone are renowned for their varieties of apples, and I can attest to the delicious taste of succulent fragrant spiced Dutch apple pie, redolent of cloves and sweetened with dried fruit.
Now remind me- wasn't New York once New Amsterdam?
Hmm... I'm sensing a connection.
As for the steak- you should travel more. Argentina and Brazil and Uruguay all have restaurants solely devoted to meat dishes, or cuts of meat. Australia and New Zealand can also boast plentiful supplies of world class beef.
Next you'll be claiming Americans invented eating.
http://www.thousandeggs.com/glossary.html
http://www.psgrill.net/Encyclopedia/ENCYCLOPEDIA.html
Last edited by molly bloom on 10-12-2004 at 16:11
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08-12-2004 21:39
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