Alain Ducasse, the celebrated chef who knows a lot about French cooking but less about French living, complains that les mamans françaises are no longer teaching their daughters how to cook. He blames "working mothers" for the trend, which (according to an interview in today's Independent) means that French cooking is no longer a daily ritual but a weekend hobby. Quelle horreur!
Ducasse has been spouting nonsense like this for years. At one point, he joined with a battery of top Michelin-star chefs (and French president Nicholas Sarkozy) to propose that UNESCO give World Heritage status to French cooking.
Last year, Slate's Michael Steinberger published a book titled Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France, which we debunked in a blog post back in September. The world is changing, to be sure, and some of the best "French chefs" are no longer French.
We're not worried. If there's really such a decline in the level of French gastronomy, we don't see it in Seattle, where most of the trendy young chefs still use French techniques (then give their dishes Italian names). We don't see it in Paris, where the thriving street markets are still full of charcuteries, fromageries, pâtisseries...and shoppers. Produce stands are thronged by traditional housewives, pensioners, tourists...and working moms. The kids are in school, of course, eating a traditional three-course lunch.
That picture, by the way: schoolkids learning about escargots and pâté: from the chef at Burgundy's Clos Vougeot.
So here's Cornichon's question for M. Ducasse: what's more important? Une maman who knows how to cook (but only cooks on weekends) or un enfant who knows how to eat (and eats every day)?
Wait a sec. Let's not be myopic here. So, I'm supposed to APPLAUD the fact that modern capitalistic society requires two working parents to feed our kids well?
Sorry but you just might be missing Ducasse's point. Whetehr he's a blow-hard or not, it can't be denied that historically significant cultural attributes are ever-threatened by a stressed, electro-everything, super-sized, fast food, on-the-go, stock obsessed, poverty-creating system, the one we simply call the American
(United Statesian?) way.
To ignore that and act like all's well in culinary-land because Seattle, one of the very-richest cities in the world, has tens of thousands of foodies seems a bit naive and ludicrous.
Go study Québéc's never-ending struggle to remain Franco on this continent or talk to the Ballard fishermen who can't afford to raise their families in Ballard anymore (and, consequently call Shorline and Arlington home) before reaching myopic conclusions. Am I overreacting? Or, do most of us have heavy-slumber shades over our eyes, denying the REAL reality.
Wait a sec. Let's not be myopic here. So, I'm supposed to APPLAUD the fact that modern capitalistic society requires two working parents to feed our kids well?
Sorry but you just might be missing Ducasse's point. Whetehr he's a blow-hard or not, it can't be denied that historically significant cultural attributes are ever-threatened by a stressed, electro-everything, super-sized, fast food, on-the-go, stock obsessed, poverty-creating system, the one we simply call the American
(United Statesian?) way.
To ignore that and act like all's well in culinary-land because Seattle, one of the very-richest cities in the world, has tens of thousands of foodies seems a bit naive and ludicrous.
Go study Québéc's never-ending struggle to remain Franco on this continent or talk to the Ballard fishermen who can't afford to raise their families in Ballard anymore (and, consequently call Shorline and Arlington home) before reaching myopic conclusions. Am I overreacting? Or, do most of us have heavy-slumber shades over our eyes, denying the REAL reality.