Pollan Good Read On Cooking

[Bill who putters]

Eight pages but insightful.

Bill

[David Hare-Scott]

Pollan is one who "gets it" when it come to dining and cooking.

It isn't a spectator sport. It shouldn't be a vicarious pleasure mediated by the dreaded babble box. That is just pornography and the way it is usually done gives the viewer as much chance of real enjoyment as watching p*rn gives you the chance to actually get a leg over Angelina (or Brad as the case may be). Cooking under time pressure is only justified by commercial necessity, to prepare "gourmet" food at home at high speed entirely misses the point. To watch food p*rn done under time pressure combines both stupidities and I really don't understand why people do it.

Dining and cooking is a participant activity and like real sex it should be done at leisure and with those you love. To get directly on topic: if you can also cook with ingredients that you have just cut from the garden you are really living.

David

[Charlie]

Very very good post, David. Thank you and I agree with all points.

We do this very thing often here, with our children and grands, (and extended family when we can get them together) with the ancillary goal of instilling in the grands an appreciation for real food and real cooking, teaching them how, and keeping our sons on the course they learned.

Yesterday we did Frogmore Stew, more commonly called Low Country Boil nowadays.

It was a full family process. Early in the week younger son and I trapped half a hundred large crawdads, yabbies to you, and purged them for two days in a ninety gallon tank of rainwater, which had a recirculating pump and an dual air pump with two bubblers. Grands enjoyed watching and *not* touching the mudbugs! (The purging water, with its nutrients, is then pumped to the garden)

Locally raised sweet corn (hours off the stalk) wild caught shrimp, organic red potatoes, the crayfish, Andouille and smoked sausage all boiled up outside and served with fresh from the garden cukes with rice wine and salt dressing and fresh from the garden green beans dressed with from the garden garlic sauteed in butter and fresh from the garden ripe tomatoes (finally).....

Everyone participated in the prep and cooking and the meal took well over an hour to enjoy!

The youngest, twenty-one month old granddaughter Quinn enjoyed the yabbies more than anyone. She devoured the tails, sucked the heads with her uncle and I (the rest are a bunch of p***ies) and then proceeded to dissect the thorax and head as a matter of interest!

Care Charlie

[FarmI]

Hmph! Why wasn't I invited? I'd have done such a meal real justice and homage (just try getting my snout away from a trough with such treats in it...........)

[Charlie]

LOL!! Totally apt description!!!

There are few that I would rather have at trough, uh, er, *table*, than you, Fran. I daresay that you would fit well with us and the raucous camaraderie we often enjoy at table.

Meals like this, eaten with fingers, are becoming more common with us, as we prepare and experience more food from other cultures. I believe it heightens the food experience and is much more inclusive and comfortable for the toddlers, as we enjoy food with them in the way that is still most natural for them.

The next time we enjoy yabbies, we shall set a place in your honor and I shall toast you with the head.

After this exchange, I'm so hungry I could eat the arse out of a low-flying duck.

Charlie

[Billy]

Huh! I always eat the fingers separately ;O)

[Charlie]

Hah....a true gourmand ye then are not, 'twould appear!

Charlie

[FarmI]

:-)) I was slavering just reading what you wrote!

I used to do raucous cameraderie very well - probably I did it best in the late '70s/'80s when 'dinner parties' were all the rage.

You'd remember the sort of thing - 3 days spent in preparation when one did such silly things as hand making chocolates to round off the meal.

These days I seen to have enough trouble feeding ourselves let alone a host of people, but I do enjoy cooking with my 3 year old grandson.

Describes it to a 'T'! So far the 3 yr old and I have only done pretty simple things such as pikelets and baba ganoush (since he loves to operate the Tupperware mixer that beats and chops), but he's a whiz with a knife and I know he won't cut himself even if his chopping isn't very even yet. He'll get there though with more practice. Great little bowl licker and finger dabber-innerer.

Well that sounds great but can't you email me a virtual one?

Or the crutch out of a rag doll? :-))

[Charlie]

Sheesh, I just peed a little re-reading what I wrote!

Yep. Just the children and grands is enough raucousness for us now. Comaraderie with "others" has taken a backseat, in comparison to the "old days" also. Things change, our work necessitates it, we age, minds and attitudes shift, yet we often return to things that have lost importance in this age and try and continue the skills and traditions.

I well remember and some of the things we did, such as the handmade chocolates, are beyond our energy and time levels now as well. We still do a few large, extended family things a sevearl times a year, around holidays, and they abso-effing-lutely drain us. They have become less frequent in the last few years.

Yep. In the past I didn't understand how my elders could lose interest in cooking and all that stuff. Why would they go out to eat so often? I now understand.

Yeppers. Elder grandson has been using the knife here since three also, though he started not with one of the sharp ones, but had his own that was not likely to cut to the bone or worse. He now uses the same as we do. He has seen, on me, what a proper edge will do to flesh and has learned not to hurry with a knife.

Heh heh, the kitchen whizz is one of the first they start with and has a particular fascination for them...noise, action, results....gets no better! We've not been able to run the whizz, nor the mixer, without a youngster attached to hip for a long while. :-)

Pikelets? New to me. These?

so, this is a great recipe for the younguns and soon to be prepared. Thanks.

Hmmmm......????

Thru a cane chair? ;-)

Charlie

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[FarmI]

I don't think I've lost an interest in cooking and we certainly eat out far, far less than we once used to do. In our case we seem to be spending more time cooking but doing more basic and more inventive stuff.

I now cook a lot more bread and preserves than we did in the 80s - being retired, I have more kitchen time. We also now spend more time inventing recipes or ways to cook more produce from our garden. This is a real challenge at this time of the year when we're approaching the traditional time of the 'hungry gap' of Spring.

Our winter garden is now quite sad and not a great deal in it - broccoli, silver beet (chard), potatoes (still in the ground) and a few other sad looking things, so what to do with that lot?

Last night's main course was a vegetarian lasagna made with home made pasta and steamed veg that included broccoli leaves, silver beet and a few other greens gleaned from the garden.

And the bloody chooks have gone on strike and aren't laying! Not as many eggs as there should be - lazy sods!

We haven't used the real whizz yet, but we'll get there.

We do a lot of camping and since I like to eat well whilst doing that, I bought this gizmo and this is the devise he really loves using - sort of a manual whizz:

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cream (an easy alternative to scones) - sort of a thick pancake batter recipe and smallish - 4 inch max across and the ideal thing to make in an electric frypan. More recipes here:

> If so, this is a great recipe for the younguns and soon to be

More than welcome.