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A Good Appetite

  • A Good Appetite

    Excerpted from JUST ENOUGH LIEBLING by A. J. LIEBLING

    The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter's hours on the road. (I have read that the late French professional gourmand Maurice Curnonsky ate but one meal a day-dinner. But that was late in his life, and I have always suspected his attainments anyway; so many mediocre witticisms are attributed to him that he could not have had much time for eating.) A good appetite gives an eater room to turn around in. For example, a nonprofessional eater I know went to the Restaurant Pierre, in the Place Gaillon, a couple of years ago, his mind set on a sensibly light meal: a dozen, or possibly eighteen, oysters, and a thick chunk of steak topped with beef marrow, which M. Pierre calls a Délice de la Villette-the equivalent of a "Stockyards" Delight." But as he arrived, he heard M. Pierre say to his headwaiter, "Here comes Monsieur L. Those two portions of cassoulet that are left-put them aside for him." A cassoulet is a substantial dish, of a complexity precluding its discussion here. (Mr. Root devotes three pages to the great controversy over what it should contain.) M. Pierre is the most amiable of restaurateurs, who prides himself on knowing in advance what his friends will like. A client of limited appetite would be obliged either to forgo his steak or to hurt M. Pierre's feelings. Monsieur L., however, was in no difficulty. He ate the two cassoulets, as was his normal practice; if he had consumed only one, his host would have feared that it wasn't up to standard. He then enjoyed his steak. The oysters offered no problem, since they present no bulk.

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January 20, 2008

Relegated to the Cookbook Aisle

Our Personal Food History

Justenoughliebling

"The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good apetite."

  - A.J. Liebling,
  At Table in Paris, collected in Just Enough Liebling

Contemplation and resolution being the stuff of any new year, and having been successful and surprised in our Chirstmas book wishes, we feel ready to take on the question many of you may have asked yourselves and one we ponder on a regular basis.

Why are we doing this? 

What, if any, are our qualifications?

A good appetite has never been a problem, so with Mr. Liebling's blessing we launched Food, Wine, Life's Pleasures as a lark and an experiment.  We are glad we did, but until recently have been somewhat bashful about why?

Our Personal Food History
Each of us, all of us have a personal food history.  It usually starts at home and is stirred with memory and desire. It includes family holidays and celebrations, birthday cakes, mom's cooking and favorite foods. It may also include worst foods and a few bad tastes, but perhaps because memory is selective, we suspect most of our food histories are friendly and fond affairs.
Arugula
But are they more than that?  We think so and have become convinced of that in the course of writing this blog.

What really made the difference was The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, by David Kamp.

Begin at the Beginning:

Entangling food fundamentally with evolution, French author and historian, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, helps us begin at the literally the very beginning:

Some 60 million years ago, at the beginning of the Tertiary period, a rather  unimpressive tree-dwelling creature realized it could feed itself more conveniently by using the ends of its front limbs to pick up anything that seemed edible and convey the food to its mouth. Thereafter this creature differed from other animals







 

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