April 3, 2009

• The Cooks of Summer

    “No beast is a cook.” James Boswell

  In the heyday of the Enlightenment, James Boswell defined human beings as “the cooking animal.” He had to hide this thought though in unpublished footnotes. The prevailing intellectual dictatorship insisted on describing our species by more ennobling characteristics – like judgment, rationalism and the “passions of the mind.” Cooks had been the scourge of such elitists since classical time. By concluding that humankind distinguished itself from the rest of nature by the singular trait of transforming food with fire, Boswell rounded our species off by an all too common denominator. Cooking had probably been the primary occupation of half the people who had ever lived. So it was dismissed as the work of women, slaves and drudges.

  But it wasn’t always that way. Six thousand years ago in Egypt, the world’s first chemist discovered that yeast, flour, water and heat created bread. That scientific breakthrough created civilization, freeing humans from the all-consuming quest of hunting and foraging for their food. Ancient Egyptians, Asians and Sumerians all treated cooks, and brewers, like royalty. It took some 2500 years before philosopher types began casting cooks in negative light. Socrates and Plato riled against them for distracting people from “nobler pursuits.” Not all philosophers agreed with them.

  When Diogenes the Cynic chided Plato for going to Sicily, the epicurean capitol of the ancient world, Plato defended himself by proclaiming that, while there, he only ate raw foods and he always slept alone.
  “Why then go to Sicily?,” Diogenes asked, cynically.

  The western world has been ambivalent about cooks and cooking ever since. Today elitists will speed dial for hours in order to reserve a table, six months in advance, at restaurants where chefs like Thomas Keller or Ferran Adria perform S & M tricks on food. Yet the best selling cookbooks of the day all simplify entire meals to fit inside 30 minute time frames. While young food lovers will go $60,000 in debt to earn a degree from a top culinary college, the most popular restaurants in our suburbs are invariably flashy, corporate franchise templates that produce nothing creative from their kitchens. While farmers markets gain popularity, making more people aware of richer varieties of foods, the average American now “dines” more than once a day at a fast food joint. Yes, that’s once a day, not a week. And every year now colleges report that fewer students know how to cook anything at all.

  So, summer is the time to reap new respect for cooks and cooking.

  

  And for cooks, summer begins when it’s warm enough to light the smoker or the grill outdoors. No other season puts us so in touch with our foods. Today, thanks to the growing popularity of backyard grilling, more people cook in summer than during the other three seasons combined. The black dirt of Iowa still yields the bounty that made our state a magic word in 19^th century Europe and inspired many of our ancestors to cross oceans and mountains for the chance to grow food in it. Stemming from the not-so-distant days when we were a rural state, our summer cycle of fairs and festivals still celebrates our foods and our cooks. They have become the keepers of the hearth that nourishes the Egyptian miracle, the 6000 year old culture of cooking.

  

  In summer we’re reminded that the caretakers of the culinary arts are not restricted to the kitchens of our better restaurants. While fine dining is not endangered, the more important art of preparing simple food with extraordinary skill is. As our “Living Legend” series and our “Fairs and Festivals” story point out, many twentieth century cooks tired of the hard work it took to practice that art, and they pawned it as soon as the Clarence Birdseyes, the Henry Boyardis and the Harlan Sanders of the 20^th century offered them convenient short cuts.

  Today, the old art of simple food lovingly prepared is practiced mostly by non professionals. It can be glimpsed at barbecue competitions, county fair pickling contests and state fair bake offs. It is honored at food festivals like Old Threshers’ in Mount Pleasant, Houby Days in Cedar Rapids and the new Bacon Festival planned by Living History Farms and the Iowa Culinary Institute. But convenience has overwhelmed its practice at the restaurant level.

   Most Iowans can no longer distinguish how much better a freshly laid, free ranged hen’s egg tastes. Or that fresh food has so much more flavor than frozen, let alone canned or processed. And that nothing should ever be fried in anything that has been “hydrogenated.” Most of us have forgotten that only ripe fruit, high fat butter and pure rendered lard can make perfect pies. Or that it’s worth waking up at two o’clock in the morning, and again at 4 o‘clock, to check the embers and the temperature in your barbecue pit. Most of us don’t understand the rewards of driving a thousand miles to check out a superior source of chilies, or dry rub, or country ham. Or that it’s important to keep alive the debate whether steaks should be blotted with paper towels, rubbed with salt, or blown with a hair dryer – to insure the perfect sear.

  During Iowa summer, such questions will be argued by those who care enough about that lost art of cooking simple things with love and expertise. So celebrates the people who have kept the faith – the extraordinary cooks of Iowa summer. Whether they be rising stars, competition circuit junkies or homemakers, they are all preserving knowledge too valuable to be lost. This is the season of Iowa cooks, from our backyard decks and our motorcycle night drive-ins to our most sophisticated new restaurant and most prestigious blue ribbon bake-off. Avail yourselves of the bounty.

  Or, why then be in Iowa?
  

  • 9:06 pm
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