I just read Michael Pollan's article "Out of the kitchen, Onto the Couch" about the supposed end of cooking as we know it. There are many (too many) parts I agree with, but as someone who makes pickles, puts up pear preserves, makes mac and cheese from scratch (having never subjected my child to any mac n cheese from a box), makes pies, cookies, and cakes from scratch and tries all sorts of new recipes that don't involve dumping anything. I take great umbrage at the sentence (section 5 graph 2, last sentence), "... yet all American women now allow corporations to cook for them when they can." In true and proud gen-x style, I'm throwing the bullshit flag on that one. Why American women? hmmmm....
Oh, and Harry Balzer can bite me too.
t.b.c.
Another similar criticism of the article is here .
Showing posts with label bullshit flag. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullshit flag. Show all posts
05 October 2009
Food Terminology
Last night, on the 1st episode of Next Iron Chef, the participating chefs kept tossing around the word confit. Now, I know of duck confit, but I've never heard of someone making mango confit or salmon confit. Both sort of defy the definition of the word. If you look at Barron's Food Lover's Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst, which I have owned and used since 1999 at least, you would not that confit is defined as such, "...is derived from an ancient method of preserving meat (usually goose, duck or pork) whereby it is salted and slowly cooked in its own fat. The cooked meat is then packed into a crock or pot and covered with its cooking fat, which acts as a seal and preservative."
It certainly seemed like everyone had just learned the word so they were using it as much as possible - blame it on the foodie I suppose. groan.
So are they just tossing around words to impress people who don't own a copy of the Food Lover's Companion? If (and that's a big IF) Food Network is interested in getting people to cook - which I realize these cooking contest are not designed to do - you would think they would advocate for proper use of terminology. I would have expected, at a minimum, that Alton would throw the BS flag on the chefs... disappointing.
It certainly seemed like everyone had just learned the word so they were using it as much as possible - blame it on the foodie I suppose. groan.
So are they just tossing around words to impress people who don't own a copy of the Food Lover's Companion? If (and that's a big IF) Food Network is interested in getting people to cook - which I realize these cooking contest are not designed to do - you would think they would advocate for proper use of terminology. I would have expected, at a minimum, that Alton would throw the BS flag on the chefs... disappointing.
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