“When I’m at home, I’m busy. I don’t want to cook. I have a small apartment. I don’t want to get the kitchen dirty,” he said. “The way I cook at home is really inspired by these dishes that are in the book. They’re super easy to make, for the most part. You can pretty much shop at your local grocer for most of the ingredients.”
Sounds pretty good.
“The fried chicken in the book has an African-inspired marinade. It’s got some habanero. It has a nice spice to it. It’s coated in tapioca starch, and it’s fried in avocado oil.”
Local grocers in the US have sure changed since I was last there. As many as two brands of hot dog used to be the height of sophistication.
Habanero? African-inspired? Marinade? Avocado oil?
Is this three, or four, or even five degrees of cultural appropriation?
I was thinking of doing a similar marinade for today’s roast beef, perhaps using avocado oil and exotic spices, but then thought “F*ck it, I’ll just have a blob of horseradish on the side.”
Nothing in that bit of cooking snobbery classes as “not getting your kitchen dirty”, nor, given he uses avocado oil.. not smelling up a small appartment something evil..
Habenero, avocado, tapioca – South American
Marinade – French
But its somehow ‘African inspired’?
And this guy’s a ‘Top Chef’?
Now that I click through to the article I see where the ‘african inspired’ bit comes from.
That would have been the 1970’s then? Maybe the early ’80’s.
There seems to be an article in the Speccy, to which I don’t subscribe, claiming to explain why British food is so much better than French. Is this World Food Delusion Day?
I always thought that Britain now has the best cuisine because ours used to be really awful so we imported everybody else’s. So now our food is really cosmopolitan.
If you’re trying to keep your kitchen clean, the worst thing you can do is fry something on the stove. That sticky oil gets everywhere.
There’s even a Paul Krugman essay about that. Largely correct too.
There’s a little linguistic trick there. Local grocer isn’t the same as the grocery store – the supermarket. Closer to a bodega in NYC perhaps. But the US more generally doesn’t really have those left. There’s not really that intermediate stage left between the supermarket with 40k SKUs and the 7/11 with half a cooler of actual food rather than potato chips.
Ah, another super-cool hipster chef hawking his cookbook with the promise of more health and better taste.
It’s bullshit.
Tapioca starch and avocado oil. Very hipster. One can’t use corn starch and olive oil. Nope. Too proletarian. Must use tapioca starch and avocado oil. They aren’t any healthier and add nothing to the dish… other than an opportunity to do some food virtue signalling.
Want to eat healthier? Don’t eat anything that’s fried. Substituting avocado oil for whatever oil might add a few minutes to your lifespan (although even that’s doubtful), nothing more.
Calling “African” something that consists of foods native to the Americas reminds me of a rule of (I think) Steve Sailer – USians find Latin Americans boring but respond to Africanness. (Though not always in the direction of approval, I suppose.)
Yes, the US doesn’t really have that intermediate size supermarket. The last couple of decades in the UK have seen a flourishing of Tesco Express/Metro, Sainsbury’s Local, Little Waitrose, with a vast range of fresh and chilled foods. There’s still the odd town in Wales where the only shop is a scruffy Spar, but overall the UK doesn’t have fresh food deserts any more.
Frying in any vegetable oil is much the same process as making paint. You want to drink Dulux?
Lard
‘When I’m at home, I’m [not] busy. I don’t want to cook.’
So my favourite (only) recipe is rubbish bin stew. I won’t nauseate you by describing it.
Bread and dripping! Perfect recycling.
There seems to be an article in the Speccy, to which I don’t subscribe, claiming to explain why British food is so much better than French. Is this World Food Delusion Day?
It’s Jonathan Miller:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-food-in-britain-is-so-much-better-than-in-france
(I think you’re allowed a couple of free articles a month)
It’s not just that British food has vastly improved in the last few decades, he’s lamenting the decline of local bistros in France (there are still some left, of course) and their replacement with ‘boil in the bag’. I’m not sure I agree, I’ve always found very acceptable local eateries in France (away from the obvious tourist traps, anyway).