This is a tough book. On one hand, I agree with almost - ALMOST - everything it has to say, but on the other, if it had been any part of my early learning experience, I think I might never have started cooking because it is apparently next to impossible to do correctly. Make no mistake, as far as John and Karen Hess are concerned, there is absolutely a correct and an incorrect way to cook. The jacket reviews label it a jeremiad, diatribe and a philippic on American cooking. It's the kind of thing that turned a generation or two away from going near the kitchen. "Can't do it right, not gonna do it at all", sort of thing.

     The book, published in 1975, is quite informative and I understand that it has been quite influential. It is well written and documented and it isn't a "COOKBOOK", but a commentary on the state of the taste (expectations) of America. It seems that American food has been declining in taste and authenticity since 1800 and reached a real nadir in the 1970's. The decline is hard to verify, but methods and food stuffs have clearly undergone changes and often not for the better what with the invention of the in-home iron stove and all that new gadgetry.

    Many of us enjoy working in the kitchen and feeding family, friends and entertaining; this book goes some ways towards making that a less pleasurable experience because, except in rare instances, we will not have the 'correct' ingredients or techniques to do a first or even second rate job. It might taste 'okay' in a half assed sort of way, but it won't be authentic. Rotisserie cooking isn't rotisserie cooking unless done in front of a live wood fire on a spit turned by kitchen gnomes or maybe a spring. I disagree.

    The Hesses despise factory foods; no argument there. They deplore canned or dehydrated stocks. Again, this is hard to dispute. It is impossible to disagree with their disdain of the word 'gourmet' - may it disappear from the English language! Gourmet bottled salad dressing - how is that possible? They fairly explode the New York Times and Craig Claiborne, especially his free renditions of the classics and his use of thickeners and sugars. They are among the earliest mainstream writers that I know of to bash the 'nutritionist' home economics approach to food and I stand and applaud them for it.

    Most of the early television celebrity chefs get pounded as charlatans or worse. Cooking, authentic cooking, can only be learned - they seem to say - either at granny's knee or by a six year apprenticeship in a kitchen. Oh, my.  

    Of course no one is born knowing how to cook any more than they are born knowing how to paint a picture or drive a car. Cooking is learned. It takes time and maturity to do most anything. Every little  experience adds to the whole. We gain experience bit by bit. I grew up in a house with great food, but where the cook believed that cooks knives should never be sharp because the self inflicted wound would be worse than with a dull knife. Julia Child taught that a sharp knife was less likely to slip and cut one at all. She taught that an inexperienced cook would be helped along by having the right tools for the job - including techniques - and this was especially important with knives. An accomplished bladesman can use a dull knife under duress, but who would choose to? Cripes, I can cook on a rock and do prep with a two inch Swiss Army knife but I would rather use a heavy iron pot and sharp 8" cook's knife even in semi-survival situations. J. Child got a lot of us who hadn't paid much attention before thinking about food . She was, I thought, a wonderful beginner's teacher.

     As I recall, she taught that home cooks would be much better off making their own stocks, but she noted correctly that most of us wouldn't and so would have to make do with canned or dehydrated products. I did so for years until a bright light appeared and it was revealed to me making a good chicken stock or veal stock or lamb stock is pretty simple* and makes for vastly better food and so started making my own on a somewhat regular basis whenever I have leftover roasted anything; but if, starting out, I had been convinced that nothing but homemade stock would be acceptable, I wouldn't have started at all. I make a stock and freeze it. This is NOT acceptable in the Hesses view, but I don't live in the kitchen. I do the best I can, but it is a matter of degree, I suppose. Similarly, Diana Kennedy's book on Mexican food is a great read, but I can't use it in any meaningful way if I strictly follow the dictates.  I don't have days and days to prepare most meals and I don't have anyone in the kitchen other than myself.

     An important point, made repeatedly, is that the raw ingredients to be found in much of America are simply poor quality and/or travel weary. This is true and the point is made and taken, although transport is much improved as are grocery facilities since 1975. The Hesses deserve fair credit for the emergence or reemergence of the local farmer's markets, especially here in the New York area. Local is usually fresher and better. It is rarely cheaper and we need to come to terms with that. This is going to be harder and harder to do as more of us go looking for local products.  High quality, fresh and local produce is expensive and hard to distribute. It is an unfortunate fact that many humans world wide view food as nothing more than a source of calories and something to drive off hunger. Mass produced food has a place even if many of us avoid it whenever possible.

     Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food makes many of the same points thirty years on, but it isn't as difficult to read. I will also say that there are a few recipes in the Hess's book that I am going to try. They read wonderfully and after cooking for several decades I think I know how to follow them without having anything but the basic outline as given. I don't have access to Bresse chicken, but I'll make do with D'artangan $5.00 a pound, supposedly free ranging, scratch in the dirt, chicken. I'll have to buy the vinegar; I don't keep a constantly replenished wooden keg on the counter in a corner of the kitchen, but it will provide at least an idea of what poulet saute' au vinaigre is. If I were to take this book too much to heart, I might say, "Why bother?"

     They are dead on the mark with their restaurant criticism. This family doesn't bother with restaurants very much unless it is something I just don't do, like sushi or sweetbreads. Competently home cooked anything is usually going to be better than most restaurant food.  I think this applies especially to extravagantly praised and priced restaurants, but that's another rant....

   All in all, I am glad I read the Hesses when I did and not thirty years ago. I am hard pressed to say why this book makes me so uncomfortable, but it does. Maybe it's the idea that quality and taste vary in inverse proportion to convenience and the amount of time spent in the kitchen and field and that less drudgery equals less quality. Bad technique can ruin good food. Good technique can go a long way towards making less than prime ingredients (I do not mean expensive here) into something quite palatable. In the best of all possible worlds, both are desirable.

 

*Making stock CAN BE an incredibly complex, time consuming and expensive process. That's not the kind I make. My stocks and sauces are primative compared to high cuisine. I don't always skim the  scum as it rises and I hardly ever clarify them unless I am experimenting. mybad. I wouldn't hold it against anyone who does and I would expect restaurants with kitchen staffs to do so. I'm sure that it is good to do those things always, but, again, I don't live in the kitchen.