tschen blood.....la-la la-la la-la.
It'll be a little long, but the story is too sad.
Forty years ago, you could go down during a full year throughout the all France, lunching and dining every times in small village restaurants where the wife of the patron served you for two $ six cts, her "pâtés" made with the products of the hunting of their husband and the vegetables from his garden. The meats came from the farmers next door.
Local recipes you cannot find elsewhere, 365 days never eating the same thing.
Each butcher could tell you the name of the beef, the color of his dress and show you the field where he grazed.
Today, under pressure from hypermarkets and their purchasing offices , farmers bankrupt one after the other, and farms become industrial plants, farming is practiced with industrial foods. Vegetables and fruits, DNA modified, or carefully grafted and crossed are chosen for their appearance and the duration of their conservation rather than their taste, grown with pesticides. You just eat good looking plastic fakes of tomatoes. Oh, did-we remember it was juicy fruits, so tasty and exploding in the mouth, when today we will break our teeth on this tasteless red perfectly spherical thing ?
Under pressure from European legislation, Restaurants cannot serve local products. It's called the "traceability". Pigs grown in a country from the east of the Europa, killed on the other side of the globe, cut and mixed elsewhere who traveled more than any of us in our lives. Horses mixed in our beefsteaks.
The Michelin Guide, which at the begining, roamed the countryside to find small exceptional familial addresses that made your wonderful steps for few bucks, is now a hit parade of top rated ten trendy Parisians restaurants ...overpriced ...artificial.
They stay alone to have the opportunity to serve real vegetables, real meat and real cheese, because they spend their time, a full time job, to find THEIR suppliers, among the last of the Mohican farmers in each region.
In short, the same sh.t everywhere in the country, may-be in all Europa, in the shops, small restaurants, our family tables.
Forty years ago, you could go down during a full year throughout the all France, lunching and dining every times in small village restaurants where the wife of the patron served you for two $ six cts, her "pâtés" made with the products of the hunting of their husband and the vegetables from his garden. The meats came from the farmers next door.
Local recipes you cannot find elsewhere, 365 days never eating the same thing.
Each butcher could tell you the name of the beef, the color of his dress and show you the field where he grazed.
Today, under pressure from hypermarkets and their purchasing offices , farmers bankrupt one after the other, and farms become industrial plants, farming is practiced with industrial foods. Vegetables and fruits, DNA modified, or carefully grafted and crossed are chosen for their appearance and the duration of their conservation rather than their taste, grown with pesticides. You just eat good looking plastic fakes of tomatoes. Oh, did-we remember it was juicy fruits, so tasty and exploding in the mouth, when today we will break our teeth on this tasteless red perfectly spherical thing ?
Under pressure from European legislation, Restaurants cannot serve local products. It's called the "traceability". Pigs grown in a country from the east of the Europa, killed on the other side of the globe, cut and mixed elsewhere who traveled more than any of us in our lives. Horses mixed in our beefsteaks.
The Michelin Guide, which at the begining, roamed the countryside to find small exceptional familial addresses that made your wonderful steps for few bucks, is now a hit parade of top rated ten trendy Parisians restaurants ...overpriced ...artificial.
They stay alone to have the opportunity to serve real vegetables, real meat and real cheese, because they spend their time, a full time job, to find THEIR suppliers, among the last of the Mohican farmers in each region.
In short, the same sh.t everywhere in the country, may-be in all Europa, in the shops, small restaurants, our family tables.
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Christophe,
I understand what you are saying about the global marketing of tasteless foods grown on corporate farms. What we are now seeing here in the States and it has always been there to a lessor extent is the rebirth of the small farmers and organic growers who are again producing great tasting, if not perfect looking produce and free range animals grown in the old ways. The only problem is that with that trend comes the costs, it is much more expensive and many just can't afford to eat that way. To double or triple your food costs while you salary is stagnant just doesn't work out that well, so this is more for the well to do who can pay the cost for those great tasting foods. I grow tomato plants in my yard, use no pesticides and let them actually ripen on the vine, they taste like something and not a perfectly round globe of nothingness. I can't exactly raise my own cows or chickens so I either eat what is in the normal market or pay a fortune for better quality meats, this just seems to be the way of the world today.
I understand what you are saying about the global marketing of tasteless foods grown on corporate farms. What we are now seeing here in the States and it has always been there to a lessor extent is the rebirth of the small farmers and organic growers who are again producing great tasting, if not perfect looking produce and free range animals grown in the old ways. The only problem is that with that trend comes the costs, it is much more expensive and many just can't afford to eat that way. To double or triple your food costs while you salary is stagnant just doesn't work out that well, so this is more for the well to do who can pay the cost for those great tasting foods. I grow tomato plants in my yard, use no pesticides and let them actually ripen on the vine, they taste like something and not a perfectly round globe of nothingness. I can't exactly raise my own cows or chickens so I either eat what is in the normal market or pay a fortune for better quality meats, this just seems to be the way of the world today.
Yes. What a progress of our civilization. while all the stuff we absolutely don't need to survive, like smartphones, TV sets, Hifi equipment, computers, are near to be offered, and so many people just cannot afford any more the absolutely necessary things, like houses, food, medicine, gasoline to go to work etc.
And all this technical progress in industry, supposed to relieve workers from painful tasks, just creating unemployment, stress and anxiety, ten times more painful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx3UPbonQwA
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At age 12-13*, I saw Bocuse on a cooking show at a German tv channel.
The fckr couldn't even peal a garlic clove, excused himself (in embarrassment mode) by adding that he has people to do that.
I'd think it would be very hard to forget it's so easy to slap a clove with the side of a blade first.
French cuisine has been flushed with the arrival of nouvelle cuisine.
Just think, is there anything more brilliant than pot au feu.
(*my mom was a drunk, my dad an AH who should have slept at his company as well. I started to learn to cook myself at age 10, born of necessity)
Please excuse the aura of my posts. I smell poo 24 hours a day, and starting to feel like a coprophagiac.
Mr. J has great difficulty keeping Dr.AHyde out of the picture.
Let's not meander into politics.
I think the grocery situation can be analogous to overshoot in an electronic system.
Many people want more variety than just what is in season locally. The market (the literal one) supplies it. Now many people value the freshness and quality they find in local production. It is also supplied. In time it will find its balance.
I think the grocery situation can be analogous to overshoot in an electronic system.
Many people want more variety than just what is in season locally. The market (the literal one) supplies it. Now many people value the freshness and quality they find in local production. It is also supplied. In time it will find its balance.
Where I live, you can actually get grass-fed beef for cheaper than grocery store beef. It's just the butchers here are so pathetically terrible that they don't know how to drain the meat properly or something so it tastes like dead animal. Locally farmed stuff isn't too expensive, if you buy to make food from scratch. Of course if you don't live in an area where many people have grown their own food in the past, then "healthy" food prices will absurd.
Jacco, don't be so cruel to Bocuse.
I believe he is just a very simple man from the country. He was a real chef, from a familial tradition. Naive, uncultivated and victim of the system. Now he believes he is the master of the world, at the head of an empire, ridiculous and unbearable with its self sufficiency and arrogance, watching the stars of the restaurants he manage all over the world, and the amount of his bank account. Better with Nasdaq than a knife, now, for sure, having lost even its name, transformed in a trade mark. I feel his story very sad, in fact.
Remember Bernard Loiseau, the same king of man, who reached the top, and committed suicide because he could not find any sense to his life any more and afford the stress that comes with such a [success ?].
Guide Michelin create Idols then makes explode the men they had inflated with hydrogen. Show business.
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I was fortunate enough to try his cuisine legere while he was still alive. Remarkably good food, a memorable meal. Michelin does not tend to reward creativity, alas, but more of how well a strict tradition is followed.
Michael Pollan's books on food and where it comes from are highly recommended. I've only read one, The Omnivore's Dilemma, so I'm extrapolating a bit.
The story of Polyface Farms and Joel Salatin I found of particular interest, especially as a counter those who insist that certain foods are "unsustainable", or that factory farming is the only possibility.
The story of Polyface Farms and Joel Salatin I found of particular interest, especially as a counter those who insist that certain foods are "unsustainable", or that factory farming is the only possibility.
I don't know for now, as I had not read Michelin since years. It was true, for sure, 10 years ago.
Is-it still with fashioned chef like Ferran Adrià or Thierry Marx and their "molecular cook" ?
Sy, you seem passionate and real expert in foods and wines, do you have some French or Italian ancestor in your family ? ;-)
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And all this fashion is boring. Is a gala night, once a year at "Le bal des débutantes", has any sens compared to all the evenings by the fireplace with his family and real friends ?
Did-you mean Couscous and Tagines, Hommos and Taboulé or Cretan cooking so good for the heart and long life ? ;-)
No couscous, no Thaï or even Chinese restaurant, in my Portuguese area, No real Italian or French ones neither, the hard part of the life of an emigrated ... And, in the local restaurants, apart very good fishs, the only vegetables they offer are French potatoes and rice. Cannot afford any more the simple sight of a grain of rice and a piece of porc. :-(
Lord, have mercy on me !
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Sign of the times often is boring.
I had dinner (complet) at Maxim's in Paris a day before it was bombed, lucky me, only cost me a weeks salary. (I've always refused to work for minimum wage)
A 4-course meal within 30 minutes in the Rue Bonaparte, for 45FF, during a lunch break from the Louvre was amusement on a different level.
I wish I could tell you to have dinner at El Bulli before you die, the garden is extraordinary if you're a fumador.
It sounds like you need to do your own cooking Christophe! At least you know what you like and will enjoy. I eat and make all types of rice dishes but it is not only the type of rice you use but the spices added. Risotto is always good but takes to much time to do often and I love Asian foods and do attempt to cook Thai food and Indian curries but it is something I am still learning. I eat fish as often as possible but it has gotten so expensive for many types of fish. I have really gotten into Steel-head trout and replaced salmon with it now as I really like the taste better. I will say I started cooking very young so it comes naturally to me, I just need a recipe if I am going to bake something, I couldn't make that up like I can so many other foods. A full compliment of spices is essential to making so many dishes interesting, garlic is one spice I use most often with the normal salt and pepper, but turmeric, mustard, basil, oregano and so many other spices are needed to give a dish a real flavor. Some seem to be fine with little to no spices but I just don't enjoy plain foods unless they contain a lot of fresh vegetables to add flavor to the food. I will say at least here in Los Angeles we have such a variety of fresh foods that it would be hard to be somewhere with a limited variety to keep foods interesting. Perhaps I have some hidden French ancestors hidden in the closet, but I do know about all the Eastern European background that makes things interesting, from the Dutch, Hungarian, Austrian, German to the Ukrainian, and much in between.
I hear a lot of that here lately.
Your friend forgot to mention to you that the véritables gourmands of Europe are the Spanish (et des Gel-biques).
La bouffe Basque is no1.
(the most horrible cuisine of southern Europe is north-Portugal : bacalhau, with boiled potatoes and broad beans. Praise be Christophe resides in the south)
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