The Translucent State of Food Writing

I am not going to make any friends with this article, and I'm simultaneously going to come across as an insufferable elitist. Obviously, I am part of the food commentary pseudo-media, so self-reflexive statements about the state of affairs cast a biased pall immediately. For me to comment on what I think is the softening of food writing, intrinsically implies I can either do it better, or I am so brilliant I can offer advice to make everyone else better. Immediately, I'm at a disadvantage.

So, with that acknowledgement, food media has become soft. Mallomar soft. It is understandable. Food is a comforting thing in our lives, and it trades off neck and neck with sex as one of our top two drives. It only makes sense, therefore, that we talk about food in hushed, revered tones. Everything takes on a whispery, nice-nice sort of narrative, whether it is TV, radio or print.

Makes sense, really, food isn't exactly a hard hitting topic. Anthony Bourdain already made a splash with the miniscule controversies of kitchen life, but again, that focuses on the business and practices of selling food to the public, not the food itself. It's like trying to expose the salacious eccentricities of the textile industry. There's no there, there.

I was recently enbroiled in a minor scuffle on La Foodblogging, in which I was accused of being wordy, elitist, and abrasive. It brought into focus something somebody had previously posted about the insistence of food writers to use flowery terms and SAT words because they have a need to exude some sort of self-importance. The reaction to which was a straightforward and logical response that said something to the effect of "There are only so many ways to describe mashed potatoes."

Of course, the respondant was precise and accurate. As food writers, we have to keep searching for new and creative ways to express love for a food, and then describe the food. It comes as no shock that putting a new twist on a food description, adding humor, using literate terms will infuse new life into the same old description of mashed potatoes. Buttery becomes cholestoric. Mashed becomes fustigated. Otherwise, it's the same article your mother read in Good Housekeeping 40 years ago.

So, here we are, caught in a stagnant tide between two eras. Like art, the deconstruction of food has a very benign glow about it. Most art criticism does not take into account what people dislike about it, same with food. But I don't shy away from some of the negative aspects of food. Certainly there are negatives: overconsumption, weight gain, abuse, preservatives and other chemical additives, textures and flavors that go awry. Just because we love food doesn't mean there aren't bad qualities to food, we just ignore them in our reporting.

It took me by surprise that people were put off by negative comments, especially in light of being a restaurant review. True, I was railing against a particular food, not the restaurant, and people seem to defend all food as if it is lovely and huggable like a tribble. The product in question was surimi, synthetic crab formed and pressed from fish product. I call it K-rab. I also consider it one of the most vile creations man has ever inflicted on planet Earth, and my supposition is the Japanese created it in response to our nuclear attacks to end World War II. They succeeded.

I wrote a column earlier that instructed readers to be honest about what they eat, and where it comes from. I've been straightforward with my depictions of cruelty in the production of foie gras and veal.

My interpretation of the criticism I received is that we really don't want to be honest about food. We want to shroud it in euphamism, like calling something Sweetbread instead of fried thyroid.

Like the old saying says "Law and Sausage. Two things you don't want to know how its made if you love it." For that matter, nobody wants to think about how exact the phrase (referring to sausage production) "We use everything but the oink," is. Because, as you bite into a juicy Italian sweet sausage, images of rectum, eyeball, organ meat, cartilage, snout and testicles will dance around your head and onto your tongue.

But that is exactly what sausage is made out of: leftovers. And force feeding ducks is precisely how you make foie gras. And animals need to be killed to be eaten.

Yet, I know I will not radically change the landscape of culinary discussion. On these pages here I discuss food with honesty, but as I host a party of 10 I'm not going to describe gutting and filleting the trout amandine in front of them. A time and a place for everything, the bible notes...somewhere. And this is the time and place to discuss food with critical thinking.

This is a complete departure from what I read, watch and listen to in the media. Alton Brown actually comes closest to food honesty and information, with his giddy breakdown of food science. I like his show, which is informative and amusing. Food TV's remaining programming has degenerated into bland smiley faces that coo and sway over steamed haricort vert or the latest pasta dish from the Plunging Neckline Princess, Giada De Laurentiis.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, firmly entrenched, and virulently infecting the rest of Food TV, is the scourge of Rachel Ray. She is the demonically chipper host of 75% of Food TV's programming. Her unsettling maw eerily resembles The Joker, and you get the idea she could grind her arm (or YOUR arm) to the elbow in a carrot juicer and wouldn't miss a beat of her sunny disposition and laquered charm. She is poised to be the next smarmy know-it-all, taking the mantle from Martha Stewart once she is decapitated in a food processor.

Is this really what we like? The evolution of food media would suggest otherwise. We have never latched ourselves onto big breasted, hot models for cooking advice. In fact, it's the opposite. We want direction from a matronly instructor, who knows her shit and takes no crap. That, in Julia Child, we revered.

From men, we have a more forgiving tolerance on who teaches us how to cook. They run the gamut from ambiguously gay flamboyants like Graham Kerr, to obnoxious narcissits like Bobby Flay. For the most part, they are all the same, interchangable person...with or without the "bam"

Yet, for all the disparate personalities, they meter out advice and food talk with the same message. There is nothing really different or challenging for our consumption, so to speak.

I'm not setting out to be an iconoclast, nor is what I'm saying so much more important or groundbreaking. But let's face it. Cooking can be aggravating. Have you ever tried to make a souflee? Have you ever had to time 10 dishes to all come out when they are supposed to without keeping the 8 other dishes warm? The spin we see in magazines and television, nimbly dodge a very important point: it isn't as easy as they portray.

The one universal theme among culinary media is you can do this, too! We know there are different competancy levels in all human endeavor, and cooking is no exception. Some people have talent, others lack it. A recipe is just a formula, but without the right technique, the final dish will have a different character than the glistening torte on the page.

It's not all easy, and everything won't always come out right. That's why magazines make six dishes and take the best looking one for the picture. They just don't tell you that.