Food matters, said Barbara Kafka, widely known food columnist and writer, at the “In Depth: Art, Culture, and Politics” forum during the APsaA December meeting. It is self-evident that unlike shelter and clothing, only food (and water) permits and sustains life. Food matters because its recorded portrayal tells the history of human social cultures.
Kafka's presentation briskly moved through the last 8,000 years that document food gathering, production, and consumption. Neolithic cave paintings illustrate the hunted animals that were an important food source. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics record that culture's cultivation of grains. They also record the shift from migrating tribes of hunters and gatherers to stable communities of food cultivators. In medieval Europe, food was governed by sumptuary laws that protected the privilege of royalty. White flour could only be sold to royalty; ordinary citizens had access only to unmilled flour. (When these peasants later migrated to new lands, they exercised their new prerogative to buy white flour, discarding black bread with its greater nutritional value.)
Americans sometimes become nostalgic about life in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth (and even nineteenth) centuries, believing people then lived simply and more close to the land. This thinking ignores the harshness of the winters when food sources were scarce. Much of the summer was spent saving and storing food for the spare months ahead. Mothers fattened their families in anticipation of a lean winter diet.
Yet consciousness about food is a relatively recent phenomenon in this country. Good nutrition and its management came sharply into focus during World War II. Draft boards' physical exams came up with a startling finding. Many men were discovered to be badly nourished. This fact launched school lunch programs. The country needed a population of strong, healthy men.
Maintaining adequate nutrition in pregnant teenagers has become an important public health issue. This target group often produces infants with low birth weight, babies who never catch up and who often have concomitant developmental problems.
Kafka contends that food — its production and its role in the economic, social, and political aims of countries — matters a great deal. In the quest for greater productivity, fertilizer and insecticides have entered the food chain and in a number of cases pose a threat. Fertilizers are washed into the aquifers and promote the growth of algae in pure waters. Banned in the United States, DDT is now shipped abroad but returns to us in rain.
Photo by Mervin S. Stewart
Around the globe, people love shrimp, but the world is paying a heavy price for this appetite. Shrimp are easily grown and harvested from lands washed by low waters. Rice farmers, eager to cash in on the demand, readily convert their rice paddies to shrimp farms. The new wealth is short-lived. The half-life of any shrimp paddy is very short. Shrimp quickly generate a great amount of detritus that is not soon washed away, making the land unusable for both shrimp and arable crops. Poverty then sets in. Similarly, in the United States, there are hundreds of acres of former Pennsylvania hog farms that will not be arable for more than a thousand years because of the waste from hogs.
Only recently, Kafka observed, has food become a respectable intellectual endeavor. The cookbook industry is also a recent contemporary phenomenon. (The restaurant and food industry is the second largest U.S. industry.)
The French began recording their recipes early in the twentieth century. When cookbooks first appeared in this country, working chefs — men — wrote the high cuisine books and women wrote the home cookbooks.
Now there is a blurring of this distinction, with men and women writing for both markets. Recipes written for the home chef can be treacherous for wives who wish to please their husbands. Kafka recalled her experience of making matzo ball soup for Ernie, her husband. She took elaborate pains to make the lightest and fluffiest matzo balls she could for the chicken soup. Ernie took one look and pronounced, “These aren't matzo balls! They're not small, round, and they don't bounce!”
Kafka is probably best known for her two recent controversial books, Microwave Gourmet and Roasting: A Simple Art. These two books map short paths, not shortcuts, for preparing and cooking delicious and imaginative meals. Especially for holidays, Kafka challenges the long held belief that the cook must spend four to six hours preparing for a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner. She has pioneered methods that allow the cook to spend half or less the time on an equal, if not better, meal. Although the books have been well received, skeptical, tradition-bound critics have questioned Kafka's techniques and motives.
In her microwave book, Kafka writes, “The microwave oven makes it possible for all of us to cook and eat good homemade food again. We can return to entertaining without sacrificing our lives to it.” Yet the two major technical breakthroughs that Kafka advocates generated the book's initial great controversy. One is the recommendation that, before microwaving, foods be sealed airtight or with plastic wrap. The second is Kafka's discovery that small quantities of food may be deep-fat fried in the microwave.
Skeptics sounded alarms that airtight plastic wrapping can be dangerous. Heated liquids
Morris L. Peltz, M.D., is a training and supervising analyst for the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. He manages the “In Depth: Art, Culture, and Politics” section of the Scientific Program.
could erupt in geysers through the plastic wrap. Kafka writes that plastic wrap “is not rigid when subjected to steam pressure; instead it blows up like bubble gum. Don't be alarmed, nothing bad will happen: Your food will cook more evenly. Its pressure helps cook the food, keeps it from drying out, and creates a perfect mini-environment.”
As for deep-fat frying, Kafka contends that it is categorically problematic and dangerous. But she has found it is safer to deep-fat fry in a microwave than on the stove top because the fat cannot splatter onto an open flame or on heated electric cord. There is also less chance of the oil superheating. It is safer for the hands and face because of reduced chances for splattering. And there is little chance of knocking over hot fat.
Critics of Kafka's roasting book have charged that 500-degree roasting of meats and vegetables is simply a gimmick. Kafka doesn't agree. Roasting meat at 500 degrees keeps it from steaming and getting that unpleasant powdery mealy texture (think overcooked turkey breast meat). The high heat quickly caramelizes the surface, making that delicious brown crust everyone loves. The fat melts into the meat, keeping it moist.
Kafka's latest book, Soup: A Way of Life, has been warmly received by the critics. Cahners Publishing Weekly writes, “The recipes are terrific. Who could argue with hearty Winter Duck Soup, refreshing Simple Celery Soup, Tortilla Soup, elegant Cold Pea and Mint Puree with Shrimp, or a Spicy Peanut Butter Soup that can be served hot or cold?”
Kafka observed that food styles depend on cultural values. During the nineteenth century, obesity in men, at least in the upper classes, denoted wealth. Consider the vast gold chains draped across the paunches of men like Diamond Jim Brady or J. P. Morgan. Today among the rich, thin is chic. Because of the unlimited food available in this country, every taste, within budgetary confines, can be indulged. In general, people don't need as much food now because of decreased caloric demand: less physical work and central heating. But they have more choices: Our food culture has been enriched by succeeding generations of immigrants who brought their recipes and taboos with them.
Kafka is skeptical of the view that food is an art form and that chefs are artists. Rather, she believes, food preparation and presentation is a craft at its best. In New York today, the “hottest” food is Neapolitan and Genoan. Kafka predicted that future trends will include more Indian, Russian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Caribbean-influenced cuisine.