4 ms·

While I agree that constraints can lead to creativity, there's not nearly as much 'consensus' when it comes to cooking as you think. Someone from France and so

by Mikeb85 12y ago

While I agree that constraints can lead to creativity, there's not nearly as much 'consensus' when it comes to cooking as you think. Someone from France and someone from India will have very different ideas on how to cook something, even if they both live in Canada and have the same ingredients and cooking apparatus.

derefr 12y ago
Note that I'm mostly talking about the five-star chefs who do global competitions, as far as "cooking alike" goes. Like the best singers have a "vocal range" so wide that it overlaps with a lot of the other best singers, the best chefs have a "culinary range" so wide that it overlaps with a lot of the other best chefs. Basically, a thousand-dollar meal in America doesn't look a lot different than a thousand-dollar meal in Pakistan or one in Norway, because if you're paying a thousand dollars for your meal, you're getting a chef who could make anything, and who has ordered their ingredients from everywhere. That doesn't seem to be a very widely-applicable point, I admit. But my real argument is that this a point on a spectrum. Hole-in-the-wall short-order cooks are on one end, inventing new ethnic foods out of necessity. "Globally-ranked" chefs are on the other end, synthesizing together every style in the world and thus ending up with their own "cosmopolitan fusion cuisine" culture that doesn't really belong anywhere except within the space of a fancy lounge. Between those points, most real chefs lie—not quite constrained to only cook with what's grown locally, but not quite free enough to bring together fresh ingredients from opposite ends of the earth on a whim. Western "home cooking" is precisely in the middle, in fact: a cuisine that sits on one end of the incentive-structure of the global shipping industry, cooking with whatever can cheaply be brought from wherever it was grown to a local chain grocery store.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Still though, just thinking back to the cuisine in my wife's home country (a thoroughly 3rd world country), even with something as basic as a fish you get from a fisherman on the road, we'd eat fried fish, fish curry, fish stew, fish sautéed with various starchy vegetables or greens then eaten with flatbread or rice, and so on... Even in a culture where the only cooking implement is a fire in the backyard (and a clay oven similar to a tandoor), all the vegetables come from no further than the next village over, and starchy vegetables are dug up from behind the house, the variety was staggering. Fusion cuisine exists everywhere BTW. African cuisine has Arab and Indian influence, Caribbean cuisine has African, Indian and Amerindian influence, Asian food has Western and Indian influence, and the various Asian cuisines all borrow from one another. Heck a great example of fusion cuisine is the Kebab - seen from Germany to Turkey to Iran, Pakistan, all the way to Vietnam and elsewhere. All have regional variations, yet all can trace some sort of middle-eastern (likely Iranian) origin. The fusing of cuisines has happened since the beginning of time, ever since nomads encountered agriculturalists, since Egyptians traded with Sumerians, since Greeks journeyed to Babylon and India, when merchants travelled along the silk road (all Western cuisines use Black Pepper, which is certainly not indigenous to Europe), etc...
- rictic 12y ago
  One possible contributory force here might also just be the smaller size of the market for >$1k meals, resulting in less total creative effort being brought to bear on the problem. Intuitively this seems very likely: a large fraction of the world's population cooks on a regular basis, and the sheer scale could overcome even very large forces that select for highly skilled and creative chefs to cook in fine dining.

by Mikeb85 12y ago

derefr 12y ago

Note that I'm mostly talking about the five-star chefs who do global competitions, as far as "cooking alike" goes. Like the best singers have a "vocal range" so wide that it overlaps with a lot of the other best singers, the best chefs have a "culinary range" so wide that it overlaps with a lot of the other best chefs. Basically, a thousand-dollar meal in America doesn't look a lot different than a thousand-dollar meal in Pakistan or one in Norway, because if you're paying a thousand dollars for your meal, you're getting a chef who could make anything, and who has ordered their ingredients from everywhere. That doesn't seem to be a very widely-applicable point, I admit. But my real argument is that this a point on a spectrum. Hole-in-the-wall short-order cooks are on one end, inventing new ethnic foods out of necessity. "Globally-ranked" chefs are on the other end, synthesizing together every style in the world and thus ending up with their own "cosmopolitan fusion cuisine" culture that doesn't really belong anywhere except within the space of a fancy lounge. Between those points, most real chefs lie—not quite constrained to only cook with what's grown locally, but not quite free enough to bring together fresh ingredients from opposite ends of the earth on a whim. Western "home cooking" is precisely in the middle, in fact: a cuisine that sits on one end of the incentive-structure of the global shipping industry, cooking with whatever can cheaply be brought from wherever it was grown to a local chain grocery store.

Mikeb85 12y ago
Still though, just thinking back to the cuisine in my wife's home country (a thoroughly 3rd world country), even with something as basic as a fish you get from a fisherman on the road, we'd eat fried fish, fish curry, fish stew, fish sautéed with various starchy vegetables or greens then eaten with flatbread or rice, and so on... Even in a culture where the only cooking implement is a fire in the backyard (and a clay oven similar to a tandoor), all the vegetables come from no further than the next village over, and starchy vegetables are dug up from behind the house, the variety was staggering. Fusion cuisine exists everywhere BTW. African cuisine has Arab and Indian influence, Caribbean cuisine has African, Indian and Amerindian influence, Asian food has Western and Indian influence, and the various Asian cuisines all borrow from one another. Heck a great example of fusion cuisine is the Kebab - seen from Germany to Turkey to Iran, Pakistan, all the way to Vietnam and elsewhere. All have regional variations, yet all can trace some sort of middle-eastern (likely Iranian) origin. The fusing of cuisines has happened since the beginning of time, ever since nomads encountered agriculturalists, since Egyptians traded with Sumerians, since Greeks journeyed to Babylon and India, when merchants travelled along the silk road (all Western cuisines use Black Pepper, which is certainly not indigenous to Europe), etc...
rictic 12y ago
One possible contributory force here might also just be the smaller size of the market for >$1k meals, resulting in less total creative effort being brought to bear on the problem. Intuitively this seems very likely: a large fraction of the world's population cooks on a regular basis, and the sheer scale could overcome even very large forces that select for highly skilled and creative chefs to cook in fine dining.