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12/5 #523 IT MADE A DIFFERENCE: COMMUNICATIONS
Today we are going to finish up our series of programs that recognizes the influences that have shaped the way Americans eat today. If you want our opinion, one factor stands out above all the rest in explaining why we have become a much more interesting nation, and that would be the explosion in communication. The media and the Internet have changed everything, and we can identify a few of the most significant vehicles on the information highway.
The New York Times: as the most important publication in the naiton’s most important food town, the NYT has been supremely influential. The Times broke the mold of food columns by placing Craig Claiborne’s articles off the “Women’s Pages” and by treating cooking as a “lifestyle” issue. The Times invented the “make or break” restaurant review, and thus dictated what was working and not working as America lurched toward culinary sophistication. “The New York Times Cookbook” remains a classic to this day, and is highly regarded as a consolidation of thinking on the new American cuisine.
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking”: by Simone Beck and Julia Child, this was the book that transformed French gourmet and home cooking into a do-it-yourself hobby for eager Americans. It capitalized on our admiration for all things French (circa 1960’s) and Child’s sensible system of ingredient substitutions. And if you wanted to cook this way, you needed the proper equipment, which in turn launched another industry.
“The Joy of Cooking”: Erma Rombauer’s accessible, easy to use guide to conventional American cooking has been a perennial favorite for wannabe cooks. Initlally a text of standard American cooking, it was updated to absorb many foreign influences. It gained a reputation as a friendly, reliable teacher, as comfy and easy to digest as a bowl of macaroni and cheese. A superb first cookbook.
“The Moosewood Cookbook”: Mollie Katzen captured the counter-culture zeitgeist with her all-vegetairan cookbook. Her monumental contribution was to emphasize flavor over self-righteousness, thus opening our eyes to the appealing possibilities of cooking outside the box. By mining such diverse veins as Indian, Middle Eastern and Kosher cooking she argued persuasively that you could eat well and eat kindly at the same time.
Gourmet Magazine…initially more oriented to travel and luxury than food, this magazine became the go-to source for advice on high-end dining. (Think how much we learned about presentation from Gourmet’s food photography.) Whether acting as a monitor for restaurants on both coasts, or as a guide for those with aspirations to gourmet cooking at home, the magazine became something of a standard bearer for America’s culinary manifest destiny. As editor, Ruth Reichl cultivated a justifiable role as national arbiter of what was good to eat and drink. It remains a truly inspiration publication.
PBS cooking shows: Very early on Boston’s WGBH saw a strong connection between its tweedy Harvardesque audience and gourmet cooking. Chinese chef Joyce Chen was first out of the box, with Julia Child and Thalassa Cruso close behind. Other stations in the PBS chain picked up the flag, including our own MPT, which brought the superb Pierre Franey to the airwaves. The motley collection of cooking characters became a staple for Sunday afternoon viewing, and an entire generation of aspirant home cooks literally saw how to do it through “the magic of television”.
The Food Channel: this high energy cable operation has made good cooking a pop phenomenon and in its own way marks the true democratization of the fine cooking movement. Its shows may lack the class of ”The French Cook” and they may frequently leap over the top, but no one ever said fun could not be a prime ingredient in every meal.
The Internet: We used to prop a cookbook open in our kitchens as we mixed and minced, but today it isn’t uncommon to find a little corner for our laptops. There seem to be websites beyond counting that warehouse untold numbers of recipes and related cooking tips. Perhaps most importantly is the access the Internet provides to rare or hard to find ingredients, and the ability to shop at home for the whatever gadget you could want, from barbecue boxes to food grinders. Once again we see the impact of democratizing cooking.
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