Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Food & Drink / Food Chain Longing for Liebling
Posted by Chip Dudley on 02.28.07 at 06:15 PM
I was watching No Reservations the other night and it hit me that long before Anthony Bourdain brought his particular brand of intemperate criticism to the world of the kitchen, there was A. J. Liebling, raconteur, gourmand, and New Yorker stalwart for 30 years. His most foodcentric work is Between Meals: An appetite for Paris and is required reading for anyone interested in the glory--past glory, according to Liebling--of French cuisine. Though the vicarious pleasure of reading Liebling's descriptions of eating well as a student in Paris is considerable, it's his hilarious polemics (rants really) that provide so much of the charm. Here's Liebling on the decline of eating well:
"The reason that people who detest fish often tolerate sole is that sole doesn't taste much like fish...They prefer processed cheese because it isn't cheesy, and synthetic vanilla extract because it isn't vanillary. They have made a triumph of the Delicious apple because it doesn't taste like an apple, and of the Golden Delicious because it doesn't taste like anything...The standard of perfection for vodka (no color, no taste, no smell) was expounded to me long ago by the then Estonian consul-general in New York, and it accounts perfectly for the drink's rising popularity with those who like their alcohol in conjunction with the reassuring tastes of infancy--tomato juice, orange juice, chicken broth. It is the ideal intoxicant for the drinker who wants no reminder of how hurt Mother would be if she knew what he was doing."
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Liebling is indeed a delight. Here's the opening paragraph from "Between Meals': The Proust 'madeleine' phenomenon is now as firmly established in folklore as Newton's apple or Watt's steam kettle. The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book. This is capable of expression by the formula TMB, for Taste > Memory > Book. Somte time ago, when I began to read a book called 'The Food of France', by Waverly Root, I had an inverse experience: BMT,for Book > Memory > Taste. Happily, the tastes that 'The Food of France' re-created for me -- small birds, stewed rabbit, stuffed tripe, Cote Rotie, and Tavel -- were more robust than that of the 'madeleine', which Larousse defines as "a light cake made with sugar, flour, lemon juice, brandy, and eggs." (The quantity of brandy in a 'madeleine' would not furnish a gnat with an alcohol rub.) In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steams, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island duck, he mght have written a masterpiece."
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