/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.11883629]

>new american cuisine

Why do people circlejerk this when nothing is special about it besides the presentation?

[Anonymous No.11884041]

>>11883629
I dunno. All it is is ‘take one base protein and throw fifty random fancy sounding ingredients and techniques at it so people think it’s good’.

[Anonymous No.11885792]

>>11883629
isn't that just mashed potatoes with fried battered pork

[Anonymous No.11885815]

>>11885792
With porcini duxelle, fava lupini tahini crême, oven wilted vegetables, maple caramelised pearl onions, pan seared cherry tomatoes, shallots paisanne and a furious self-congratulatory masturbation session from the chef.

[Anonymous No.11886444]

I understand the whole "people eat with their eyes first" mantra, but what ever happened to food that actually tastes good? I feel like food is so over done these days. Just make simple, delicious food. Accomplish that, then worry about presentation.

[Anonymous No.11887311]

>>11883629
even presentation is shit

[Anonymous No.11887344]

>>11886444
Restaurants near me are actually hand making their ice cubes these days. It's all gone to far

[Anonymous No.11887368]

>>11883629
Because people are bored. Why the fuck does anyone do anything idiot?

Why do you bitch about what other people want to spend their money on? And no I do not go to these type of bullshit restaurants. But I also don't focus on it. Just worry about what the fuck you're doing.

[Anonymous No.11887413]

>>11886444
Simple and Delicious are rarely connected.
Most people that say cooking is all about simplicity are just lazy. This push for everything to be easy like '1 pot 4 ingredient Mac-n-Cheese' is backwards and in the opposite direction that cooking should be moving.

[Anonymous No.11887470]

>>11887413
No, but coping with mediocre ingredients through complexity isn't a right direction either.

[Anonymous No.11887488]

>>11887470
You've got a point. I get annoyed tho because, cooking well takes effort and patience and seeing people 'half-ass' it while saying the "key to cooking is simplicity" or "its rustic" really pisses me off.

[Anonymous No.11887489]

>>11887413
>Simple and Delicious are rarely connected.
If you're getting all your ingredients at the supermarket, maybe. But if you have quality ingredients (in season) simple is usually delicious. At its heart New American is a rediscovery of that, and I would call it very much the right direction for cooking to take. Value the ingredients and how they are sourced first and foremost, then start thinking about how to make something delicious and visually appealing out of them.

[Anonymous No.11887515]

>>11887489
>But if you have quality ingredients (in season) simple is usually delicious.
Absoloutely yes. But that's the "rare" part. Most people don't have good ingredients, they have industrial produce and factory-farmed meat.

>>Value the ingredients and how they are sourced first and foremost, then start thinking about how to make something delicious and visually appealing out of them.
Agreed completely. I just hope you understand that what you just wrote there is not normal, it's rare.

[Anonymous No.11887563]

>>11887489
High quality ingredients are important but put it this way, (assuming you follow standard western food preferences)

You can have steak and mashed potatoes, all high quality ingredients, simple, delicious, and easy-ish to make

Or, you can have the same steak but dry-aged then cooked sous vide and seared served with a pan sauce (au poivre/red wine reduction/etc). And instead of standard mashed potatoes you instead get Parmesan and herb mashed potatoes or whatever your preference

Even if the ingredients are the same the complexity and extra effort put into the second makes the difference.

[Anonymous No.11887586]

>>11887489
Where am I supposed to get professional foods from?

[Anonymous No.11887614]

>>11887563
If your ingredients are top-notch quality then adding complexity usually is counterproductive.

>>11887586
Grow your own veggies and herbs. Buy the ones you can't grow from farmer's markets, local CSAs, or mail-order them from shops who specialize in quality. Hunt and fish your own meat and fish. When you can't, buy from small local farms who raise heritage breeds, or take the time to visit upscale butchers and good fish markets. Buy spices from trusted vendors instead of wal-mart.

[Anonymous No.11887620]

>>11883629

For a moment there, I thought you were talking about Noma.

[Anonymous No.11887623]

>>11883629
looks like my breakfast, i could just be fucking leftovers thrown together
>the best breakfast is leftovers though

[Anonymous No.11887628]

>>11887614
Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can mail-order a lot of things. I get ham and canned seafood from La Tienda. I get dry goods like rice, flour, and grits from Anson Mills. Spices from The Spice House, sausage casings from Butcher & Packer, mushrooms and poultry from D'Artagnan, etc.

[Anonymous No.11887702]

>>11887515
>I just hope you understand that what you just wrote there is not normal,
This doesn't have to be true though. Shit quality ingredients may be pervasive at the supermarket and restaurant purveyor because most folks are happy to accept low standards of quality in return for cheap, convenient food. This is why McDonald's and Taco Bell exist. But it's on you whether you accept those standards. If you choose not to it's a lot more work and expense on your part, but it's not impossible to do. Naysayers mock the farm to table movement and chefs listing how their ingredients are sourced on the menu, but I believe that's really so much sour grapes. The increased cost of doing so makes these restaurants out of reach for many of us, so there's a tendency to consider them pretentious bullshit because we can't afford them. But in truth they're fighting the good fight. And it's even easier for a home cook to do the same.

Live in a city? Shop at farmer's markets and specialty stores that carry quality products. Let trips to the supermarket be a necessary evil, not a significant percentage of what you actually cook. Support local producers. Live in the country? Plant a fucking garden and get to know some local farmers. Of course it will force you to change the way you eat, but is living off factory farmed ground beef and chicken breast with some frozen vegetables on the side or some salad from a bag really all that great to begin with? It isn't. It's not as easy or cheap as the default of just going to the supermarket and filling up your cart with whatever bullshit they have there. But you have options. You just have to be a little motivated if you don't want to settle for crap. You just have to decide you give a shit about quality and are willing to do what it takes to obtain it.

It's not an impossible dream. The default exists because most people aren't paying attention or don't give a shit. But there's no law saying you have to be one of them.

[Anonymous No.11887761]

>>11887702
>This doesn't have to be true though.
Oh, I agree it doesn't HAVE to be. I'm just stating that it currently is though. As you said, shitty ingredients are pervasive and most people have low standards. That's all I'm saying, and it sounds like we agree on that.

>>If you choose not to it's a lot more work and expense on your part, but it's not impossible to do.
Clearly. All I'm saying is that most people choose not to put forth that extra effort. Could they fix it? Absoloutely. That wasn't my point. I'm not saying it's impossible to fix, I'm stating that by my obsrevation most people don't care about fixing it.

And in the end I think effort is the crux of the problem. From my personal experience, if you cook from scratch you save so much money that you can easily afford to buy premium ingredients and you still end up spending about the same or perhaps even less than someone who eats fast food every day. I posted the sources I use in >>11887628

[Anonymous No.11887821]

>>11883629
I SAID CARAMELIZED ONION, NOT CARBONIZED, YE FOOKIN DONKEY

[Anonymous No.11887884]

>>11883629
>american
Its a meme started by those French queers, they think a plate of food is supposed to be microscopic and look like an art piece. Shit like this is for people who aren't hungry, but wanna blow way too much money just to say they ate at a "fancy restaurant" and then they eat something else immediately when they get home. When I've been working construction all day, I don't want a minuscule Picasso panting to look at, I want to fucking eat. Look how small that is, those are grape tomatoes for scale.

[Anonymous No.11887936]

>>11887563
>Even if the ingredients are the same the complexity and extra effort put into the second makes the difference.
I'm not denying that some great food is technique driven. My point is that as a home cook your food need not be if you source your ingredients well. There's a tendency among home cooks to ape restaurant food using supermarket ingredients. Same with chefs at mid tier restaurants trying to ape top tier places using shit they get from SYSCO or US Foods. Of course they rely on flourishes that would be gilding the lily with great ingredients in an attempt to elevate the mediocre ingredients they start out with. Italian farmhouse cooking kinda proves you can do everything simply and have it be excellent if you start with fantastic seasonal ingredients. That doesn't negate the value of technique - it's a large part of what you're paying for when you go out to a good restaurant, that they folks cooking your food there employ a level of technique home cooks do not. But home cooks with access to good ingredients do not need that level of technique to make delicious food.
>>11887761
>if you cook from scratch you save so much money that you can easily afford to buy premium ingredients
This has been my experience as well as long as you don't lean hard on the meat, seafood and dairy. That's where the price difference between standard issue and the good shit is pretty fucking steep. If you choose to insist on quality ingredients and want to keep your food costs in line it's probably wise to adopt the aesthetic of eating less meat but better quality when you do.

[Anonymous No.11887945]

>>11887884
You summed it up very well. Fine dining is not for hungry construction workers. The experience is designed and priced to keep people like you out of such places.

[Anonymous No.11888100]

>>11887945
Easy there, you're going to cause Billy Bob the nail pounder to blow a gasket.

[Anonymous No.11888140]

>>11887884
>has never actually eaten at a fine dining restaurant

[Anonymous No.11888151]

>>11886444
>I feel like food is so over done these days
This has been a thing since forever. Picture a "feast" in your mind. All that food lined up on the table? It's all cold, tastes like shit, and is literally only there for presentation. It was 100% about looking good and just needed to taste okay, nobody gave a fuck because the point was to show off.

I agree it's fucking retarded, if someone could link the "deconstructed cinnamon roll" that was just a bun with cinnamon and bullshit sprayed all over it, that sums it up best. But the key point is that things aren't starting to become shit now, they have always been shit. The absolute blind nostalgia people have for the past is ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.11888168]

>>11886444
Why do you assume presentation comes at the expense of taste? It doesn’t if the cook is good.

[Anonymous No.11888173]

>>11887614
>If your ingredients are top-notch quality then adding complexity usually is counterproductive.
I strongly believe that this is the case. 99% of chefs have nothing to add to a dish, your job is simply to not fuck up what you have been provided. I feel like musicians are the same way. The "mediocre" ones often give the best performances, I hate all the little trills and flourishes that the famous ones often add. Bach's first cello suite, as well as Air are both often ruined. Just play the music, it's beautiful as is, adding anything else takes away from the enjoyment.

[Anonymous No.11888208]

>>11887488
its just about ingredients in the end, most techniques came as a way of preserving or improving on sup par ingredients.

[Anonymous No.11888368]

>>11888168
I'm not that anon, he/she has a point. An awful lot of the time the cook is NOT good, and there's just a bunch of theatrics on top of mediocre food. It's easy to be jaded by that.

I don't know if you ever saw it, but check out the first time Bourdain went to El Bulli. I think it was an episode of "no reservations". From his interviews before the meal you could tell that he was 100% expecting a bunch of bullshit gimmicks on top of bad food. But he was shocked that the food was actually good, and not just amusing because of molecular gastronomy tricks.

A lot of the time presentation is just decoration on crap food.

[Anonymous No.11888483]

>>11887884
>started by those French
Isn't it just mostly just American-French fusion?

[Anonymous No.11888524]

>>11888173
Very well said. Part of my job is producing vocal performances for music. Which means I spend a lot of time coaching a vocalist to just sing the damned melody in their own voice. Because when you put a singer in front of a very expensive mic they all want to be Sinatra or Ray Charles or Willie fucking Nelson. They can do that live all they want, but on a recording it just sounds false. And listeners only love a put on when it's really good, like Springsteen, Dylan or Tom Waits. The rest of the time just singing the song straight is the best way to go. It sometimes requires many takes to coax that out of a singer. Getting them to trust that the song is good or we wouldn't be wasting our time recording it. Even when it's a song THEY wrote they still do this.

Same is true for chefs. They feel pressure to have a signature dish or style because a handful of greats became superstars that way. What they don't realize is that those guys are the exceptions to the rule. No one cares about your signature style unless you happen to be a genius. Chances are you're not. I'd be like putting a band together and expecting to be the Beatles. It's not going to happen.

>>11888368
>An awful lot of the time the cook is NOT good, and there's just a bunch of theatrics on top of mediocre food.
The truth is that expectations about how the food ought to look are a function of the type of restaurant and the prices they charge. Whether or not the place is actually good is all too often unrelated.

[Anonymous No.11888526]

>>11887821
my fucking sides are seared off

[Anonymous No.11888590]

>>11888168
I don't assume that, I just feel like a lot a restaurants put presentation before actual taste when it should be the other way around.