the godfather

We all have certain books sitting on our shelves that we know we ought to read, but always postpone. They frequently are books lent by friends or classics that we've been shamed into adding to our list. My own guilty example is Swann's Way by Proust. It is not something of which I'm proud - I picked it up when I was still taking French and because it struck teenage-me as a book that broadcasts intelligence - but when I notice it on our bookcase, it weighs on me with a heavy feeling of obligation. I've tried to read that book so many damn times and I just have to say: when a book begins with a discussion of sleeping habits, I'm probably not going to last.

That said, I came across the most wonderful surprise of a book this last weekend when I resigned myself to picking up one of these abandoned books and slogging through it. Happily though, it only took a few words of Angelo Pellegrini's introduction before I was wholly hooked and readily devouring his story. I can best describe The Unprejudiced Palate as the soapbox of a charming, practically-minded, opinionated (as when he entirely dismisses saffron) and very progressive bon vivant. Full of grand, declarative pronouncements on how to eat (which, as the New York Time recently pointed out, the Italians do with such aplomb), Pellegrini's writing offers one of the most coherent arguments for the good life that I have ever read. Even throughout the last third of the book - which he devotes entirely to recipes - Pellegrini remains thoroughly readable, precisely because all of his recipes are penned in such a clear and persuasive voice.

Do not mistake Pellegrini for some over-privileged epicure - all of his statements are firmly rooted in the value he places in honest labor and cultural knowledge. He advocates humility and tradition over decadence and indulgence and, because of this, sounds as though he is writing from the middle of the current dialogue over the politics of sustainable food. Over the last week since I read his book, I have come across numerous articles that show just how contemporary The Unprejudiced Palate is for having been written in 1948.

Last week in the New York Times, Eric Asimov offered his opinion on how parents should introduce their kids to alcohol, which brought to mind one of my favorite passages from the book:

"One summer morning several years ago, I was having an early breakfast with my three-year-old daughter in a small hotel in Utah. When the waitress asked what I wished to drink, the little girl announced to the bleary-eyed salesmen and the shocked grandmothers in the dining room that she would take coffee if they put a little rum in it. Since I had anticipated the possibility of frustration en route, I drew a little flask from my brief case and obliged the infant toper with a spoonful of rum in her coffee and milk. When we left the dining room, I felt certain that in the opinion of my fellow guests I hadn't scored much higher than an old soak and a corrupter of youth.

If, however, there was any wise among them, they must have seen in the incident a practical lesson in temperance. My daughter is now twelve. She still takes a teaspoonful of rum in her coffee and milk every morning. To date she has consumed approximately four thousand teaspoonfuls, or enough, say, to kill a whole circus of elephants."

This glib tone paired with common sense is absolutely classic Pellegrini. From the immigrant's point of view (Pellegrini came to the States shortly before the Depression), all of the brouhaha surrounding booze in the US is patently absurd and fully the result of a skewed relationship with food. "The self-appointed arbiters of the American's liquid diet," he writes, "have perverted that Hellenic virtue into a Puritan vice." Precisely by removing wine and drink from everyday conviviality and relegating it to bars, Pellegrini believes that Americans created their own drinking problem. Simply put: if you raise someone to appreciate the craft involved in alcohol and its place in a culture, they'll grow up to respect it.

Pellegrini argues that this embrace of excess in things that should be appreciated in their rarity is at the heart of America's distorted notions about food and health. One of the most interesting aspects of The Unprejudiced Palate is the abundance that Pellegrini finds in even the leanest of times and with the humblest of ingredients.

"A bunch of green onions, a few herbs, a handful of spinach, a little grated cheese and six eggs, can be fused into a delicious main course for the average family. The possibilities for going somewhere from nowhere are literally unlimited. They cannot be learned, of course, by those who persist in going to the grave on meat, potatoes, and gravy."

Because Americans have latched onto a handful of foods and consumed them in epic proportions, they have not only sacrificed their health, but also a lot of their ability to cook and even appreciate the value in alternatives to their current ways. By letting go of the myriad edible joys in the world and forgetting what they tasted like, it was a short step before stores were filled with imitation foods - the block cheddar "cheese" and bologna "salamis" that so perplexed the young, newly arrived Pellegrini. To me, this sounds a lot like Michael Pollan's recent talk in Portland in which he discussed the inviolable position of meat in the American diet:



But truly, the greatest argument Pellegrini makes for switching your diet towards more whole foods and vegetables is that, when freshly picked, there is simply nothing better:

"But above all else, they [two sewer-worker (and Italian) friends of Pellegrini] take great delight in eating what they produce in their gardens. While they argue about anything under the sun, and even about some things above the sun, they can never find reason to quarrel about this: that you can't beat what you grow in your own garden."

Across the country, growing numbers of people are currently seeing the value in replanting portions of their lawns or ornamental gardens with edible crops. In a sense, it is a return to the victory gardens that were so successful when Pellegrini was writing. Between a recent CHOW article on urban vegetable gardening, Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates, businesses like Your Backyard Farmer, and the "Food Not Lawns" movement, it is clear that people agree with Pellegrini on the importance of connecting with your food from soil to table.

"If you like your fruit ripened on the tree, bathed with the early morning dew or warmed to it very core by the midday sun, you must grow it on your little plot of earth. If you live in a climate where that is not possible, or if you are among the unfortunate millions caged in dainty little flats, I weep for you a brother's tears of compassion while I pray for your early release from bondage. But if you have the necessary facilities and still prefer the shade of the willow to the taste of a ripe peach, well, who am I that I should intrude upon your eccentricities?"

What struck me about the people's stories in the CHOW article were the vehemently negative reactions some of these gardeners received. It never ceases to amaze me how angry people can get when others strive to do better (or even just do "different"). Take for example this recent lambasting of Slow Food from Metropolis. I fail to understand where the author's apparent anger comes from - is he honestly defending McDonald's? Even if he is, how is it a problem for him that Slow Food hopes to preserve food traditions from being lost to the advance of narrowing, standardized food choices? And you don't have to read the well-written rebuttal (but you still should) to understand just how poorly Sterling understands what Slow Food does. All of his loaded language (ignore all of the word choices like "infiltrate" and just try looking up "myrmidon" in a dictionary) makes it seem as though Slow Food is a conspiracy to secure luxury comestibles for the super-wealthy. In fact, what Slow Food does is work to increase access for everyone to a diversity of foods - the very foods that used to (and, in many parts of the world, still do) sustain cultures that are the very opposite of privileged. And, I hate to have to explain it this simply, but food cannot exist in a vacuum - there need to be consumers in order for producers to have an outlet for their work.

So what really irritates me (& I believe would vex Pellegrini as well) is this tired and unfounded critique of enjoying good food as being elitist. As Pellegrini wrote (and he heaps just as much blame on chefs as on "gourmets"):

"They have broadcast a dastardly falsehood, perhaps to give a certain status to their labor of love - that cooking is an art. The implication of all their dithyrambic spewings on culinary matters, despite their protestations to the contrary, is that excellent food and drink are achievements in refinement beyond the attainment of ordinary mortals. [...]
The prevailing view seems to be that the preparation of a dinner in any way out of the ordinary means hours and hours in the kitchen and "an artist's touch" in the transmutation of ingredients. This notion, for which the precious cookery books are responsible, is as erroneous as it is widespread."

Essentially, as Pellegrini argues, enjoying and creating wholesome, delicious food has been distorted into snobbery; as cooking became equated with art, eating changed into an act of purely aesthetic connoisseurship. (While we are on the subject, can we agree to stop using the term "snob" as though it is a good thing? I understand the concept behind embracing a maligned term for something you love, but does "wine snob" or "music snob" or any such snobbery really do your passion justice?) What is required to rescue food from its removed, rarefied pedestal is exactly what Slow Food does - getting eaters to directly engage with it. Too many people, Pellegrini scolds,

"...are sufficiently urbane and metropolitan to enjoy heartily a good dinner when it is served to them, but their gastronomic self has remained immature out of sheer neglect. [...] The difference between a gourmet and one who eats macaroni salad is precisely the difference between one who enjoys turnip greens and will bestir himself to satisfy a desire, and one who enjoys them but will do nothing about it."

To help restore the lost dignity of simple foods and cultural traditions, Pellegrini argues, we need to be willing to try our hand at tending our own gardens, stirring pots, and crushing grapes. We simply must reconnect with the labor and craft of eating. I can not imagine a better duty.