Good, clean and fair does not always equal quality
Mar 31, 2009 farmers' markets, farming, general food, groceries, sustainable agriculture
I briefly touched on something similar before, but over at Serious Eats, Ed Levine nails it…
I am so down with the food revolution you have no idea. It’s just that I think it’s high time we realize and acknowledge that good intentions and responsible stewardship, and even passion, are not by themselves enough when it comes to making great artisanal food.
You need three things:
Experience: Which means time allowing for lots of trial and error and sufficient apprentice time
Time: To understand how to make it good
Knowledge: That is, you have to know how to do something, and when it’s delicious
Tags: Ed Levine, Serious Eats
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March 31st, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I agree completely with the first paragraph but I think the Problem is, “my mother” could fit within the criteria (for many people) spelled out in the second.
To say that experience is one criteria is to directly acknowledge that what is “good” is relative – the experience will get the maker many comparative examples of what they are creating so that they can make an informed decision about which is the best – among that which they have experienced. And Experience does, indeed, take time.
I believe that most of us could come to a consensus on a list of concepts that qualify certain categories of food as “good” in the sense of wholesome and/moral. For example, we could talk about how it was raised, we could talk about chemicals and toxins used in the growing or raising, we could talk about things such as high fructose corn syrup, transfats or other ingredients we know to be unhealthy.
However if “good” means “tastes good” then forget it. So too, “delicious” is another thing. I cannot accede to the idea that “delicious” could ever be a completely objective state of affairs.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:54 am
one of my favorite quotes is from Brian (Pomme etc), “good food is good food, doesn’t matter whether it’s a hole in the wall or fine dining.”
I’ve met some talented young cooks/even chefs that worked their tails off and worked under some recognizable top teir chefs/restaurantuers. They took a speed route. Time/experience varies from person to person….some pick up balance easily. Part of experience is what you grow up with… some of my best friends (exceptional chefs) grew up in homes that had loads of children, little money and a mom that didn’t cook well.
Others grew up in Europe with inspiration from birth.