This is the first post of yours I've found cause to generally disagree with. I don't think the premise makes much sense and the examples given don't generally support it.
Right at the outset you contrast an elaborate meal at Guy Savoy with a "simple" pan au chocolat, but anyone who's ever learned the art of making French pastry knows that there is nothing simple or minimalist about making a croissant of any sort.
Later on Alice Waters is cited as an exemplar of minimalist cuisine when in reality she's a well-trained French chef who. Yes, she's focused on ingredient quality and freshness like any other French chef but many of her dishes are quite elaborate - as I can attest from having cooked my way through her cookbooks. This is just one example on the cuisine front - I could cite several others.
The minimalist vs. maximalist schtick doesn't work any better with coffee. If we take Freed, Teller & Freed or Peet's or Schapira's - all among the oldest specialty roasters - as examples, all of them were extremely focused on showcasing origin flavors and disapproved of any additives to their coffees. Beverage service at all of these places was either nonexistent or extremely limited so that they could focus on selling coffee for folks to brew at home. The line out the door at Peet's on Vine Street was people lining up to get 8 oz. cups of drip coffee - and a tool to get customers to buy beans and brew them at home.
The supposedly minimalist Third Wave roasters mentioned are cited as being "transparent" in their roasting, but there's nothing murkier than grainy, underdeveloped coffee - especially if run through an espresso machine, whose amplification of acidity makes the shot taste like lemon juice. These folks simply wouldn't be in business if their customers actually had to taste what they're drinking, but fortunately the oat milk, panoply of flavorings and inherently bland (by reason of both manufacture and temperature) cold brew (not to mention free wi-fi) mask many sins of commission and omission. Oh and the "seasonality" thing is a total joke. In perhaps a hundred visits to such roaster-retailers I've never found a single one who sells only coffee from the current crop cycle.
You’re right of course about the difficulty of making a croissant. I guess I’m not trying to say it’s _easy_ to make minimalistic cuisine; it’s that the aesthetic valorizes simplicity. In “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” the food is studied, difficult to achieve, artful, and very very simple. Alice Waters famously said, “When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.”
We’re talking here about aesthetic- like the contrast between Art Nouveau and Bauhaus. Both require skill and technique, but one values florid ornament and the other austere simplicity.
Now: the minimalism and maximalism I’m speaking of are two poles of expression, which means that most examples fall in between somewhere. Yes, Alfred Peet believed in showcasing origin flavors, but George Howell pushed farther in the direction of fewer coffees on the menu, roasted lighter, with more emphasis on terroir and less on process.
My goal here is to explain the motivations of a post- third wave generation of coffee people who embrace process flavors and other ornaments, which seem excessive and even offensive to the purists of the minimalist school. I know this movement seems contemptible to you, but in my mind, you’re just being true to a very distinct, ingredient-focused, philosophy you have always espoused so eloquently.
I am not a sophisticated coffee drinker, so I’m going to leave the second half of this post to the professionals.
I thought the first part of it was a terrific description of some currents in American food culture in my lifetime.
I just have one small thought to add to the discussion of Mexican food and culinary culture.
Obviously, this post was written from the perspective of the US, and not intended as a general characterization of Mexican cuisine.
As an American who’s recently moved to Mexico, one of the aspects of food culture in Mexico that’s really struck me since I’ve been living here is the centrality of simple, even almost austere, preparations in the way Mexicans actually eat and the qualities they value in their food.
In a lot of ways Mexican cuisine, sitting as it does in one of the great heartlands of agriculture and flavor in all of human culture and also at the point of intersection of the food cultures of Europe and Southeast Asia, is one of the most complex and “maximal” you could hope to find.
But a lot of the food that Mexicans love to eat also has aspects of extreme simplicity, even austerity.
It’s a little hard to tease this out, and it’s very much an area where I’m just beginning to understand. So this is going to be a bit clumsy.
An example of the kind of food I’m thinking of is the very plain guiso made with potatoes, some meat, and a few different types of vegetables. It can be eaten with rice, or just tortillas.
When I make a stew, my first reflex is to use a braise to get browning flavors from the sautéed meat into the mix; my second reflex is to cook a mix of vegetables in oil so their flavors blend and open up; and my third reflex is to create a thickened sauce, whether by adding flour somewhere in there or by deglazing or cooking down the final result. (Sometimes it works great; sometimes I end up with a mess.) In general, my instincts tend towards the maximal.
I’m sure you can think of plenty of Mexican cuisine that uses these techniques. In fact, one characteristic of Mexican cuisine is to use any of all of these techniques to create sauces, stews, and stuffings which are then combined via additional labor-intensive and tricky techniques to result in dishes of extreme complexity and richness, like tamales chiapanecos (maize flour filled with shredded chicken, dried fruit, almonds, and olives, steamed in banana leaves in a tomato and chile sauce flavored with raisins, more almonds, dried herbs, and spices); or chiles en nogada, a specialty of Puebla (poblano chiles roasted, stuffed with a picadillo or filling of ground beef flavored with fresh and dried fruit, olives, nuts, and spices, dipped in an egg batter and fried, served in a sauce of almonds, walnuts, and cheese or cream, and garnished with pomegranate seeds).
But what has struck me so far is the prevalence of dishes where those complex flavors and elevated techniques are absent, and the value that’s placed on effects that come from the opposite, minimal approach.
Namely, a lot of delicious Mexican food is made by briefly cooking some kind of allium with a bit of oil, then adding water and very coarsely cut up ingredients - halved corn cobs, potatoes cut into quarters, carrots or chamote in huge chunks, and chicken, beef or pork on the bone or in large chunks - then simmering until done. The results are delicious, and of course depend on the quality of the ingredients, especially the freshness of the vegetables.
Where it all comes around again is in the Mexican style of making meatballs, which are just called by their Spanish name, albóndigas. I would argue that a meatball, especially a spiced meatball, is typically a product of a fairly maximal approach to cookery - though it is also, of course, the result of the need to stretch ingredients and the desire to avoid waste.
In this respect, Mexican albóndigas, like picadillo, a stew made with ground beef and flavored with both Asian spices and European raisins, almonds, and olives, does not disappoint. The meatballs themselves can have many of these ingredients (not sure about the olives).
But a dish of albóndigas, in contrast to the Italian-American meatballs we eat north of the border, isn’t served in a rich, thick sauce. The meatballs aren’t breaded or fried - or roasted - to create browning flavors and extract them into a rich sauce.
Nope, albóndigas are boiled in water with huge chunks of corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. The broth might be flavored with a little onion, which might or might not be softened in oil before cooking.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get good at this style of cooking. But it’s delicious, strikingly different from what I’m used to, and showcases a back-and-forth between minimal and maximal impulses that is really fascinating and quite different from what I’ve come across in other countries.
Thanks for the inspiration Peter! I always enjoy reading your posts here - so much information, beautiful writing, clear thinking, and food for reflection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moctezuma%27s_Table
The amazing thing about the menu on this Wikipedia article is that I feel as if we ate many of those foods just last week!
This is the first post of yours I've found cause to generally disagree with. I don't think the premise makes much sense and the examples given don't generally support it.
Right at the outset you contrast an elaborate meal at Guy Savoy with a "simple" pan au chocolat, but anyone who's ever learned the art of making French pastry knows that there is nothing simple or minimalist about making a croissant of any sort.
Later on Alice Waters is cited as an exemplar of minimalist cuisine when in reality she's a well-trained French chef who. Yes, she's focused on ingredient quality and freshness like any other French chef but many of her dishes are quite elaborate - as I can attest from having cooked my way through her cookbooks. This is just one example on the cuisine front - I could cite several others.
The minimalist vs. maximalist schtick doesn't work any better with coffee. If we take Freed, Teller & Freed or Peet's or Schapira's - all among the oldest specialty roasters - as examples, all of them were extremely focused on showcasing origin flavors and disapproved of any additives to their coffees. Beverage service at all of these places was either nonexistent or extremely limited so that they could focus on selling coffee for folks to brew at home. The line out the door at Peet's on Vine Street was people lining up to get 8 oz. cups of drip coffee - and a tool to get customers to buy beans and brew them at home.
The supposedly minimalist Third Wave roasters mentioned are cited as being "transparent" in their roasting, but there's nothing murkier than grainy, underdeveloped coffee - especially if run through an espresso machine, whose amplification of acidity makes the shot taste like lemon juice. These folks simply wouldn't be in business if their customers actually had to taste what they're drinking, but fortunately the oat milk, panoply of flavorings and inherently bland (by reason of both manufacture and temperature) cold brew (not to mention free wi-fi) mask many sins of commission and omission. Oh and the "seasonality" thing is a total joke. In perhaps a hundred visits to such roaster-retailers I've never found a single one who sells only coffee from the current crop cycle.
I appreciate the disagreement, Kevin!
You’re right of course about the difficulty of making a croissant. I guess I’m not trying to say it’s _easy_ to make minimalistic cuisine; it’s that the aesthetic valorizes simplicity. In “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” the food is studied, difficult to achieve, artful, and very very simple. Alice Waters famously said, “When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.”
We’re talking here about aesthetic- like the contrast between Art Nouveau and Bauhaus. Both require skill and technique, but one values florid ornament and the other austere simplicity.
Now: the minimalism and maximalism I’m speaking of are two poles of expression, which means that most examples fall in between somewhere. Yes, Alfred Peet believed in showcasing origin flavors, but George Howell pushed farther in the direction of fewer coffees on the menu, roasted lighter, with more emphasis on terroir and less on process.
My goal here is to explain the motivations of a post- third wave generation of coffee people who embrace process flavors and other ornaments, which seem excessive and even offensive to the purists of the minimalist school. I know this movement seems contemptible to you, but in my mind, you’re just being true to a very distinct, ingredient-focused, philosophy you have always espoused so eloquently.
I am not a sophisticated coffee drinker, so I’m going to leave the second half of this post to the professionals.
I thought the first part of it was a terrific description of some currents in American food culture in my lifetime.
I just have one small thought to add to the discussion of Mexican food and culinary culture.
Obviously, this post was written from the perspective of the US, and not intended as a general characterization of Mexican cuisine.
As an American who’s recently moved to Mexico, one of the aspects of food culture in Mexico that’s really struck me since I’ve been living here is the centrality of simple, even almost austere, preparations in the way Mexicans actually eat and the qualities they value in their food.
In a lot of ways Mexican cuisine, sitting as it does in one of the great heartlands of agriculture and flavor in all of human culture and also at the point of intersection of the food cultures of Europe and Southeast Asia, is one of the most complex and “maximal” you could hope to find.
But a lot of the food that Mexicans love to eat also has aspects of extreme simplicity, even austerity.
It’s a little hard to tease this out, and it’s very much an area where I’m just beginning to understand. So this is going to be a bit clumsy.
An example of the kind of food I’m thinking of is the very plain guiso made with potatoes, some meat, and a few different types of vegetables. It can be eaten with rice, or just tortillas.
When I make a stew, my first reflex is to use a braise to get browning flavors from the sautéed meat into the mix; my second reflex is to cook a mix of vegetables in oil so their flavors blend and open up; and my third reflex is to create a thickened sauce, whether by adding flour somewhere in there or by deglazing or cooking down the final result. (Sometimes it works great; sometimes I end up with a mess.) In general, my instincts tend towards the maximal.
I’m sure you can think of plenty of Mexican cuisine that uses these techniques. In fact, one characteristic of Mexican cuisine is to use any of all of these techniques to create sauces, stews, and stuffings which are then combined via additional labor-intensive and tricky techniques to result in dishes of extreme complexity and richness, like tamales chiapanecos (maize flour filled with shredded chicken, dried fruit, almonds, and olives, steamed in banana leaves in a tomato and chile sauce flavored with raisins, more almonds, dried herbs, and spices); or chiles en nogada, a specialty of Puebla (poblano chiles roasted, stuffed with a picadillo or filling of ground beef flavored with fresh and dried fruit, olives, nuts, and spices, dipped in an egg batter and fried, served in a sauce of almonds, walnuts, and cheese or cream, and garnished with pomegranate seeds).
But what has struck me so far is the prevalence of dishes where those complex flavors and elevated techniques are absent, and the value that’s placed on effects that come from the opposite, minimal approach.
Namely, a lot of delicious Mexican food is made by briefly cooking some kind of allium with a bit of oil, then adding water and very coarsely cut up ingredients - halved corn cobs, potatoes cut into quarters, carrots or chamote in huge chunks, and chicken, beef or pork on the bone or in large chunks - then simmering until done. The results are delicious, and of course depend on the quality of the ingredients, especially the freshness of the vegetables.
Where it all comes around again is in the Mexican style of making meatballs, which are just called by their Spanish name, albóndigas. I would argue that a meatball, especially a spiced meatball, is typically a product of a fairly maximal approach to cookery - though it is also, of course, the result of the need to stretch ingredients and the desire to avoid waste.
In this respect, Mexican albóndigas, like picadillo, a stew made with ground beef and flavored with both Asian spices and European raisins, almonds, and olives, does not disappoint. The meatballs themselves can have many of these ingredients (not sure about the olives).
But a dish of albóndigas, in contrast to the Italian-American meatballs we eat north of the border, isn’t served in a rich, thick sauce. The meatballs aren’t breaded or fried - or roasted - to create browning flavors and extract them into a rich sauce.
Nope, albóndigas are boiled in water with huge chunks of corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. The broth might be flavored with a little onion, which might or might not be softened in oil before cooking.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get good at this style of cooking. But it’s delicious, strikingly different from what I’m used to, and showcases a back-and-forth between minimal and maximal impulses that is really fascinating and quite different from what I’ve come across in other countries.
Thanks for the inspiration Peter! I always enjoy reading your posts here - so much information, beautiful writing, clear thinking, and food for reflection.