Come on - it's just peasant food. Good but...
I need lotsa things else.
And the French may think that they've got it all worked out but the
problem is, they usually have.
A great Australian poet (Slessor) said that the whole multicultural
food thing was a nonsense - there are only two great cuisines -
French and Cantonese. And in the thirties, his milieu (Central
Sydney) was well equipped with both.
His thesis? - both had a routine for preparing whatever raw
ingredients you may encounter on any given day and producing superb
results. Today you've got what? - reindeer liver and chinese greens?
- reach for the Larousse Gastronomique and start thinking. Both
cuisines come in a bewildering array of styles. Whatever you've got
that's good (and perhaps not so good) they can deal with it. Most
other cuisines go into a terminal sulk if there's a typical
ingredient or two unavailable - be it garlic, tomatoes, potatoes,
banana palm shoots, a particular kind of oil or, gawdelpus, ketchup.
So basically, what the multicultural food revolution has delivered is
the cheapest and worst of unsubtle pap - anything that can be
assembled on a production line by bored teenagers trained to follow
bells. Burgers? - basically a low grade steak sandwich. Pizza? - a
baked open sandwich. Noodles? - flour paste with virtually the same
ingredients you put on a pizza (the array even looks the same).
Pasta? my local place has five shapes and ten sauces, refreshed and
assembled while you wait. 'Chinese'? - mostly 25 ingredients
assembled and fried up to order. Anglo-Indian? (Especially Balti) -
8-10 sauces and twenty ingredients, all pre-cooked. Fish and Chips -
don't ask, I'll get upset.
The only other requirement apart from breaking it down into pre-
cooked basic components which can be recombined to order is that it
be loaded up with oil, salt, sugar, chili, soy, ketchup or whatever
else will make it taste halfway reasonable. It's not about food, it's
about production.
We've been conned - it's all factory food.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 25/02/2009, at 1:41 PM, Sue Pearce wrote:
> Then I realized, this is the home office for food, despite what
> another
> nearby country thinks. Who needs anything else?
--
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