Why I love Jeffrey Steingarten

(Question posed by GG Mora, on this week's egullet Q&A forum)

Question:

Wow! The snowballing culinary revolution in America! Everybody's in on it! Widespread gastronomic knowledge! There'll soon come a day when we won't ever have to eat bad food again! Even Grandma's using Extra Virgin Olive Oil!

Or is it a sign of the coming apocalypse? The olive oil at Grandma's is rancid, because she got a great deal on it at TJ Max...and Grandma, sadly, doesn't know from rancid. Holy shit! Bill and Mary, king and queen of potato chips and onion dip and pigs-in-a-blanket, are suddenly serving tomato-mozzarella salad at their annual open house! But the mozzarella is the plasticky crap from the supermarket, the tomatoes are out-of-season mealy-pink cardboard, the balsamic is ersatz, and they couldn't find fresh basil, so they used dried and supplemented it with fresh dill (they're "creative"!). Your best friend, whose favorite cookbook up until now has been the Marlboro Man BBQ Book, got the El Bulli book for Christmas....He's throwing a no-holds-barred dinner, all cooked from the El Bulli book, and you're invited!

What hath we wrought? And is there any turning back?

Answer:

Dear GG Mora,

Wonderful question. Or, more accurately, diatribe.

But what right do you have to buy extra virgin olive oil and deprive grandma? The only difference is that you know from rancid. But did you really know ten years ago? Twenty?

We all start somewhere. The only way is up!

What did I or you really know about mozzarella until we had travelled to Campania and tasted and chewed on the true cheese with all of our measly powers? For me that was six months ago. Before then, I was fond of stuff from some places in Little Italy only because it was made fresh every morning.

Yes, there is a way back. Food lovers and writers should talk much more about quality and taste. Don't use balsamic unless 1) you can afford the good stuff ; 2) you can taste the good stuff; and 3) you use it only where this precious treasure belongs.

And if you can't afford it, be secure in the knowledge that great fried chicken is as fine a meal as anything that humankind has ever discovered.

And anybody who prefers waxy, factory-made mozzarella to a bowl of really good potato chips should go back to his or her childhood and start again.

One of the great thrills in exploring for food is discovering inexpensive dishes that are as delicious and satisfying as foods that onlhy the rich can afford. I remember a spaghetti dish I was served at a good restaurant in Siracusa on Sicily. Maybe it was bigolli , thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle. The sauce was chopped onions, a few preserved anchovies, and lots of breadcrumbs fried in olive oil. You'll find recipes for this in several Italian-language cookbooks. I've made it several times with only partial success--my versions lacked the lightness and finesse of the original. But I can tell you that nothing could have been more delicious than what we ate in Siracusa. It must have cost them 50 cents a plate.

The last time I travelled to Bologna, I ate the lasagna in several trattorias. It was similar to the recipe in Marcella's first book, though it was less austere, with more bechamel and more ragu, but still with only four layers. I was speechless with delight, at least for a few minutes. And you can make it yourself from relatively inexpensive ingredients. The main cost is labor. You cannot make it with anything out of a can or a bottle or a package. When I returned from Italy, I asked an "important" restaurateur at an Italian-style restaurant why she didn't serve real Bolognese lasagna. She agreed that nothing in the world could more delicious. But she gave a very complicated explanation for why it wouldn't fit on her menu. (You'll be lucky to find it on five menus in this country.) I asked her whether it didn't all boil down to the notion that she couldn't charge enough for it. Reluctantly, she nodded.

That's the attitude we need to combat.

Jeffrey