I have this travelpass in Sydney which basically lets me travel anywhere I want within a week. I use and abuse it by travelling in multifarious ways to and from work. One place I pass by occasionally when I take a particular bus and get off at a particular stop is called Crow’s Nest, a suburb well known for having some decent grub.
Within that place was Macro Wholefoods Market which basically only sold organic produce. I thought I’d traipse around for a bit and ended up buying some stuff. First, the good.
The Ecor Group hails from Italy and they make a variety of biscuits and pastas and stuff. What caught my eye is their brilliant packaging, which is good simple graphic design, clean modern and tasty looking. Check out their website and you’ll see more of what I mean.
Then there was this slab of fudgy brownie from Phillipa’s, which is local, well Melbournian but you get the point. Its ingredients included Callebaut, which allowed for the moniker Belgian Chocolate Brownie, because Cadbury just doesn’t make up for the 12 bucks I forked over. It was pricey but pretty good. Crumbly, moist and choco-loco. Despite the fact its packed in plastic and off a shelf. Tyler Brule thinks her bread is hot if that means anything to anyone.
Now the bad.
I’m still not convinced my organic orange allowed to blemish naturally by the use of less/no insecticides is actually a good thing. For one, the acceptance of crop pests does zilch, flavorwise at least. At worst, you get larvae nesting in the skin. Dude, wash your fruitz and maybe half the poisonous insecticides is gone. But mainly, I’m not that willing to part with more money for what may not be better. This is grotesque generalization of course. I’m sure there are brilliant organic producers who make the best stuff around but I’m also sure there’s producers out there who make stuff just as good or better and don’t brand themselves under some trendy catchall term that healthnuts go bonkers for. Pro organics will claim the stuff tastes better and its healthier and the animals that were slaughtered lived a good life. And it may do but it also uses more land, yields less and costs more. Also, stop kidding yourselves over the plight of chickens in overcrowded farm videos on youtube. Fact is, humans eat meat. Stop being hypocritical and accept it. If you chose veganism/vegetarianism after watching dem chicken videos, I ask if you wondered about the plight of those plants you’re mowing down and the animals it once supported. Balance is key. Stupid fads do sweet f-all. I’m totally ok with farms that rear black-hooved pigs that only eat acorns freerange that become lovely slabs of ham because they taste good. I really don’t need them to label themselves as a form of marketing.
Also, in case you missed the bit about the price. Here it is again. I can’t afford organic produce and I’m whinging about it. So there. I must mention though, that I found some produce at Macro to be only marginally more expensive than big supermarket chains. Yet, all the good stuff, was always really really pricey, like Duchy Originals for instance. Then again, I suppose you have to pay more for quality. You just have to scrounge around more for good deals.
The title for this post is basically what’s been the biggest deal in the world of fine dining for the past decade or so. Coined by Herve This and Nicolas Kurti, it represents the pair’s ideas with regards to their method of tackling the gastronomic endeavours. It also happens to be the title of a book by the former, a Frenchman who is a fully fledged celebrity in his home country. This very book is what I’d call the new gastronomic bible for tech enabled foodies.
The book itself is divided into several different chapters, which basically explore food and eating using a scientific approach to things. Actually hypothesizing, then experimenting and coming to conclusions legitimately. Which is completely different from the old school idea of chefs and cooking as some sort of mystical haven of acceptable wizards that concoct recipes from the twisting nether. Truth be told, old school trad cooks probably clutch onto that for the fact that they depend on it and it is all they know. Which is why they salt the water and say that it helps preserve the color of beans. It doesn’t and This (tees) goes somewhat in depth to tell you why in his book. That little debunking and much more like it is sort of the kitchen version of mythbusters. Yet, he also goes further, particularly in the final chapter, where he challenges the ideas of traditional cooking and proposes a few logical methods for creating new dishes and simple ways to look at a recipe or a dish. What he proposes is that chefs should cook with more knowledge endowed to them. And why not, for we live in the 21st century but remain entranced by this unmovable need to boil the crap out of stuff in a large pot.
At times, I must profess that I was completely lost with what This was talking about. So many terms are constantly being bandied around, from chapter to chapter that simply fly over my head and I find myself constantly re-reading things. Chemical names for sugars, the names of flavor compounds, the methods of extraction of said compounds. I had to really dig out all the stuff I studied when I was 14. Thank god I had a simple understanding of physics and chemistry or I’d have boiled the book to bits in a large pot.
Its not all lipidic acids and hydrocarbonyxl3 sulfochlorohydrate16 monodioxypham in there though. There’s a good bit of Frenchie swag and humor doing the rounds as well. It actually feels light hearted and sincere in its narration. I get this idea in my head of a madcap professor in a white labcoat prancing around a kitchen / lab excitedly telling you about one discovery and then the next. He rattles off the names of his colleagues at a variety of French institutions so much so that INRA became so familiar to me. What I didn’t enjoy was how some bits were left hanging and incomplete. What I loved was how he gets to the root of the issue, either trumping the myths and old wive’s tales or actually supporting why it works.
Some people say this book can be considered as the modern day’s The Physiology of Taste. I’d hasten to agree, even if I haven’t read every single book out there on modern gastronomy. The book nonetheless is hugely thought provoking and really opened my eyes and mind to a whole host of new ideas. It restructured the way I think about food and cooking entirely and really did wonders to demystifying my own misconceptions. There surely can’t be too many other books that reach this close to Brillat Savarin’s masterwork and at the very least, it shares a resemblance in how its sort of messily structured and loose yet wholly inviting and agreeable.
*x-post from CookBlog.
