Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies

by Dane, Michael

  It’s the weird combinations you find at a State Fair that bother me. Let me explain. Chocolate is good. Bacon is good. That doesn’t mean chocolate and bacon are good at the same time.

  I mean, sex is good, and bicycling is good, but I wouldn’t recommend having sex ON a bicycle. Just stop screwing with the natural order of things. What’s next—lamb soda?

  There is one bizarre food hybrid that makes sense to me. I have to give credit to the visionaries at Domino’s Pizza, who sell something called an ‘Oreo pizza.’ It’s the size and shape of a pizza . . . and it’s made out of Oreos.

  This idea obviously came from someone in their marketing department who smokes pot, because only a stoner would think, “I really just want to eat a bunch of cookies, but I’d like to pretend I’m having an actual meal.”

  How would you like to create the next trendy State Fair food item? It’s easy—just use the following handy chart!

  First, choose one item from each column . . .

  Now use the two food items in any order, along with one of the following phrases:

  “dipped in,” “wrapped in, “or “stuffed with”

  Then decide how to serve it:

  “on a stick” or “in a cup”

  Now, who wants Broccoli Stuffed Alligator On a Stick? Show me a kid who wouldn’t want to try some Trout Wrapped in Licorice! Even Grandma might try a cup of Almonds Dipped in Duck Fat!

  MYSTERY DISHES

  One would think that, if I were taking a picture of something, I would also write down what it was. Since I don’t, I have a lot of pictures of . . . food.

  It’s a safe bet that the first picture was a meatloaf, and the second was probably chicken. All I know for sure is that broccoli was on sale that week.

  I Know It When I See It

  If a picture is actually worth a thousand words, then I worked much harder than necessary on the book you’re reading. This book has about forty thousand words, so by that formula, I could have simply taken forty pictures to make my point.

  Having read more than my share of food blathering, and having now blathered a bit myself, I want to offer a couple of suggestions to anyone out there considering getting all ‘bloggy’ about food:

  If you’re writing about food, try to use words that at least, in some small, tangential way, relate to FOOD.

  Very few salads are actually ‘ethereal’ (celestial; heavenly; of or pertaining to the upper regions of space), and please stop calling things ‘TOOTHSOME.’ That’s like American Idol judges saying something is ‘pitchy’—it doesn’t mean anything!

  No matter how well your duck confit turned out, do not write that you had a ‘foodgasm.’ I enjoy food. I’ve had some amazing meals in my life. None of them have been as good as sex. If you are in fact having ‘foodgasms,’ you need to see a doctor.

  My next tip is for anyone who uses the subtle, nuanced medium of still photography to enhance their writing and communicate the essence of a dish:

  Stop with the EXTREME CLOSEUPS! It’s the photographic equivalent of YELLING! I don’t need to feel like I’ve been miniaturized and trapped in a freakishly large bowl of bisque. No matter how ‘rustic’ or ‘artisanal’ the bisque is. If I want to experience the ‘essence’ of a dish, I’ll cook the freaking dish.

  I recently discovered that our camera has a special setting for ‘food,’ which tells me there are far too many people writing about food these days.

  I’m not sure what the setting does, exactly, but I’m guessing that without it, none of my pictures of food would even look like food.

  I like to take pictures of things that I write about, but I’m still learning. One thing I’ve learned is to write down what the dish being photographed actually was. I have a lot of pictures of what probably was some variation on meatloaf, but I’m not really sure.

  I also have a tendency to shoot all my food pictures from directly above the dish—

  —which makes an cobbler look more like aerial views of an archaeological dig site. There’s a reason The Girlfriend takes most of the pictures now.

  While there are many things you could say about our photo-culinary exploits, I don’t anyone would describe our pictures as ‘food porn.’

  The term ‘food porn’ was coined in the mid-eighties in the book “Female Desire,” and the author claimed,

  “Cooking food and presenting it beautifully is an act of servitude . . . a symbol of a willing participation in servicing others.”

  I have a fundamental problem with the phrase ‘food porn.’ No matter how you define pornography, it’s a bit of a leap to apply the term to pictures of food.

  It’s true that the words used by food writers are straight out of ‘Penthouse Forum.’ Succulent. Decadent. simmering. And don’t forget all the drizzling, and the simmering, and the oozing.

  this is not an example of food porn

  But there’s a simple test you can apply which proves that food pictures can’t be ‘pornographic’—would you be mortified if your mom walked in on you looking at a picture of food?

  “Honey–I thought you blocked the Food Network in Bobby’s room! The boy’s DVR is filled with ‘Iron Chef’ episodes! Next thing you know he’ll be basting things!”

  The term ‘food porn’ may be of recent vintage, but the concept has been around for centuries. Take a look at this medieval obscenity, courtesy of Cristoforo Munari (1667-1720)

  –

  “VASELLAME DI TERRACOTTA, ZUCCA, VERZA, SPALLA DI MAIALE E PIATTO CON COLTELLO PIATTI”

  Translation: "Still Life with Unfortunately-placed Cabbage"

  Or how about this 1864 Monet, provocatively entitled, “The Joint of Meat”

  Notice here how Monet objectifies his subject, treating it

  as if it were just "a piece of meat"

  Ultimately, what’s considered food porn depends on where you live. It’s all about ‘community standards.’Maybe, in parts of the Deep South, a picture of a stick of butter is pornographic—maybe in the Ukraine, it’s a soft-focus image of a bowl of borscht.

  You Can Look It Up

  Learning to cook requires learning a new language. It seems like there are dozens of terms for even the simplest kitchen tasks, and a lot of the words aren’t even in English!

  So, as I started to cook more, I gathered more recipes, and that meant learning a lot of cooking terms on the fly. And on the internet.

  I’m always hesitant to trust information on Wikipedia, because it’s ‘community edited,’ which means anybody can change an entry.

  I’ve heard it’s better now, but I was always nervous that I would try some technique from Wikipedia for making, say, short ribs and accidentally create a crude explosive device.

  I knew I had to stop relying on the internet when I read the following entry for the word ‘julienne’:

  adjective (of food, especially vegetables)

  fashioned into the shape of sixties actress Julie Newmar (derived from ‘Julie N.’)

  By now, I’ve mastered quite a lot of cooking jargon, which I try to drop into the conversation. Some people are less impressed than others . . .

  The Girlfriend: What’s for dinner tonight?

  Me: I blanched some haricots verts to go with the braised turkey, and right now I’m working on a remoulade.

  The Girlfriend: Did you say we’re having turkey?

  There’s no reason to memorize every arcane food word or phrase, but you should probably learn a handful of basic terms. Conveniently, I’ve assembled a sampling of cooking vocabulary that I believe could cause confusion for the novice cook.

  Bear in mind, some of these refer to fairly advanced techniques or complicated dishes, so in certain cases, I chose to simplify the definitions.

  A COOK'S LEXICON

  Note: Some definitions may not be ‘technically’ correct,

  and certain foods mentioned may not, in fact, exist.

  Antipasto: small, unsatisfying portions of food served before the meal, typically at te
dious group events, designed to distract people from how long it’s taking to get their main course

  Aspic: a jellied meat stock, probably originating as a prank that got out of hand . . . since it’s a jellied meat stock, and therefore not meant for actual consumption

  Bard: to tie fat around meat before cooking, apparently to increase the amount of fat in one’s diet . . . also, to recite Shakespearean monologues while cooking

  Broiler: the part of an oven, typically on the bottom, that is impossible to clean…most often used to test the smoke alarm in my apartment

  Brûlée: from the French for ‘burnt,’ first used to illustrate that everything sounds more appetizing in French

  Burgoo: a spicy stew, sometimes called ‘roadkill soup,’ popular in areas where people would willingly eat something called ‘roadkill soup’

  Caul fat: the fatty membrane surrounding an animal’s internal organs, used in dishes that require a fatty organ-covering membrane

  Free range chicken: any chicken that is allowed to roam outside of a cage before being slaughtered; these ‘special chickens’ are able to run errands, get library cards or take night classes…they can frequently be found taunting traditionally ‘caged’ chickens

  Mandolin: a device used for cutting food into uniformly sized slices; often confused with ‘mandolin,’ a device used for creating bluegrass music; the first mandolins actually were used for both purposes

  Mince: to finely chop something while watching ‘Sex and the City’

  Parboil: a combination of the words ‘partially’ and ‘boil’… less well-known but related words include ‘almosteam’ and ‘sortapoach.’

  Proof (see also Prove): in baking, the process of illustrating, through logic and deductive reasoning, that you should make cookies more often

  Reduce: when referring to liquid in a pan or skillet, the step immediately before ‘burn’

  Salamander: a kitchen tool used by chefs to aid in browning meat; more frequently, a double entendre employed by chefs, as in, “Waitress, have you seen my salamander?”

  Sauerkraut: A generally unhappy marriage of cabbage and bacteria, from the same people who brought us World War II

  Scotch egg: the result of taking a hardboiled egg, wrapping it in sausage, coating it with bread crumbs, and then deep-frying; a technique designed to make something bad out of something healthy (see also ‘Scotch broccoli’)

  Tofu: a tasteless, oddly-textured substance that allows vegans to believe that they don’t miss real hot dogs

  Yam: Apparently not the same as a sweet potato; best to avoid both just to be sure.

  But Could They Write A Recipe?

  It’s a little known fact that many famous authors, at one time or another, tried their hands at writing cookbooks. Recently discovered correspondence between these authors and their publishers reveal the culinary passion of some of history’s most famous writers.

  William Shakespeare

  Shakespeare mentioned food in many of his plays. In Romeo and Juliet, he offers the cooking mantra,

  “’Tis an ill cook cannot lick his own fingers.”

  And in ‘As You Like It,” there’s this classic food-related insult:

  “Truly, you art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one saide.”

  In Henry IV, Part I, Shakespeare introduces the phrase “eaten me out of house and home.” By the end of Part II, King Henry has finally forgiven Hal and dies peacefully.

  Surprisingly, in the never-published third part of the saga (to be titled Figs and Worts: Recipes for Martlemas), we see Hal planning to abdicate the throne and open a chain of topless alehouses.

  Charles Dickens

  The problem Dickens faced when he started a cookbook wasn’t with his recipe for pigeonpie. David Copperfield’ (the novel, not the annoying magician) hints at Dickens’ love for cooking with a description that could easily have come from a judge on Chopped:

  “The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without; besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as if it had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen fireplace.”

  No, the reason Dickens was never able to publish his cookbook was that he insisted on releasing his recipes in weekly segments.

  With these ‘cliffhangers’, the first week you might get the ingredients, then the following week the actual instructions, and his publisher believed this approach could frustrate the amateur cook at home.

  James Joyce

  Like many English majors, I’ve read at least three or four pages of Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness classic, Ulysses.

  Publishers weren’t thrilled with Joyce’s intended follow-up. This excerpt from Ulysses was originally intended to be the introduction to his “Portrait of the Cook as a Young Man.’

  “If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don’t like all the smells in it waiting to rush out.”

  e. e. cummings

  Buoyed by the success of his poem ‘[as freedom is a breakfastfood],’ cummings wanted to do an entire book of breakfast recipes written in his idiosyncratic style.

  However, an early edition of breakthefastwithsome eggs maybe and a heartywarmmuffin proved to be unpopular with cooks accustomed to punctuation.

  Raymond Chandler

  Chandler may be known for murder and deception, but at heart he was a foodie. He began work on his cookbook in 1956, but only a few snippets of it have survived.

  Apparently, the book was to be called Easy Chow for Dames and Grifters, and in it, Chandler demonstrates a fondness for hearty American fare, while still maintaining his uniquely hard-boiled writing voice.

  This is a fragment of one of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished recipes:

  “Start the marinade early, when the moon is exhausted and the sunlight still has the deluded notion that it can fight its way through the choking L.A. smog. Sautée the onions until they’re as transparent as a philandering husband’s alibi.

  Then take your knife, glistening like the drop of sweat on the forehead of a guy who just bet his last hundred on a longshot at the track, and cut the lamb.

  The oven needs to be hotter than an off-the-shoulder silk gown wrapped around the curves of a sultry chanteuse, but not as hot as the asphalt on Wilshire Boulevard in July.

  Jay McInerny

  The first hints at what would become McInerny’s iconic style occur in a small volume he pitched to publishers in early 1983.

  Entitled Bright Lights, Big Flavor!, the manuscript is filled with all the touchstones of McInerny’s later work, starting with the urban-angsty, ironic second-person detachment of the opening:

  “You’re tired and beat down but you know you have to cook. You find yourself in a messy kitchen, trying to make sense of the instructions on the package. You think to yourself, “Why did I buy orzo?”

  You realize the orzo was a mistake, just like the eight-ball you got from Rico at the club. But you’re depressed, and you still need to eat something, anything to take the edge off.

  Your hands are shaking and your head feels like a construction site, so you resign yourself to a morning bowl of orzo and regret.”

  Publishers felt that McInerny overemphasized cocaine as a seasoning, and recipes like ‘Peruvian marching powdered biscuits’ ensured a fairly narrow audience.

  Dr. Seuss

  While the venerable Theodore Geisel earned accolades as a children’s writer, he hoped one day to publish a cookbook for more adult palettes.

  To be called Oh, the Couscous You Will Cook Cook, it was never released, as Geisel’s publisher worried that someone trying his recipes would become confused trying to find whimsical ingredients such as “floopers,” “jibberjam,” and “cardamom.”

  You Should Hear the Zucchini

  Imagine a musical ensemble that makes all of its own instruments a few hours before every concert. Or, imagine if performance art broke out at a farme
rs market. Or, maybe there’s no way to describe the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra . . .

  Sometimes called ‘Das Erste Wiener Gemüseorchester,’ they play music on instruments made from fresh fruits and vegetables.

  photograph taken with special lens that filters out joy

  The twelve member ensemble composes and plays a wildly eclectic mix of modern music including “beat-oriented House tracks, experimental Electronic, Free Jazz, Noise, Dub…” Oddly, enough, they don’t mention ‘bluegrass,’ which would seem to be right up their alley.

  They buy about ninety pounds of fresh produce for each concert (playing concert halls across Europe), then a few hours before showtime they make their instruments. Cutting, carving, chopping, drilling—you know, the usual things musicians do before a show. . .

  Carrot flutes, eggplant clappers, and celeriac bongos; and radish horns and pepper rattles and cucumberphones (Dr. Seuss again?), and of course the leek violin. If I’d only listened when my parents pressured me to take ‘leek violin’ lessons.

  Unfortunately, a group this . . . cutting edge has been interviewed before, and all the good, ‘real’ questions have already been asked (damn you NPR!). But if I really wanted to play cub reporter, I would have to put aside my skepticism and my preconceptions.

  For instance, despite what you might have learned from “The Sound of Music,” not all Austrian performers are like the Von Trapp family and on the run from Nazis. So there goes that story angle.

  Were they a bunch of pretentious, bored young Austrian intellectuals with too much free time? Because historically, that’s led to some problems.

  To get to know the group better, their publicist put me in touch with Jörg Piringer, and he proved to be affable, if a bit serious (I know, you wouldn’t think a dude who plays cucumberphone would be serious).