Salsa now outsells ketchup in this country. Obviously, our tastes have changed. While the cause may be simply the boredom of a material, fast-track society rather than culinary enlightenment and heightened sophistication, we are demanding that the food we consume at home as well as in restaurants be flavored in ways that command our attention.
As recently as 1976, in his book ”Eating in America,” food historian Waverley Root wrote that the average American`s ”food has been gradually becoming more banal for several decades.” He concluded, ”American cooking remains as uncompromisingly Anglo-Saxon as it has been from the beginning, at least in spirit.”
Nonetheless, Root went on to cite ”seeds of a new recovery and birth of an American cuisine suited to our own times.” He credited Americans for becoming exposed to more varied food through eating in restaurants and from reading, making them more aware of health and nutrition.
But neither Root nor anyone else predicted the explosion of flavor in the land of the bland that has transposed the food on American plates from black- and-white to color.
Meat and potatoes? They`re still around, but now they`re seen in company with garlic, onions, a variety of peppers, olive oils, tropical fruits, European herbs such as basil and rosemary and Oriental seasonings such as five-star anise and fresh ginger.
In one Dominick`s supermarket last week, the following were found in the produce area along with traditional vegetables and fruits:
Jars containing freshly sliced mangoes, freshly squeezed fruit juice, tofu, half a dozen dried exotic mushrooms, dried habanero peppers (the world`s hottest) along with banana peppers and tomatillos, packets of fresh herbs, noodles and cut vegetables in a packet labeled ”Oriental stir-fry,” wonton wrappers, two competing lines of fresh pasta sauces (and fresh pastas) and 2- ounce packages of ”freshly ground gourmet coffee.” Elsewhere were a choice of 15 barbecue sauces, 10 1/2 shelf-feet of salsas, 21 of packaged Oriental ingredients, curry- and saffron-flavored rice and canned vegetarian chili.
Much of the flavor focus for time-pressed, often reluctant home cooks is on prepared condiments and salad dressings. From-scratch cooks are chopping up the fresh herbs and tropical fruits and using them in marinades, sauces and relishes unheard-of a few years ago.
The reasons for this dramatic evolution are many.
Immigrants, curiosity
Start with our new-found culinary curiosity and wide availability of new flavor ingredients. Stir in restaurants and food markets opened by the recent surge of Asian and Hispanic immigrants and the openness of a well-educated generation of American chefs who, as food and restaurant consultant Clark Wolf puts it, are ”willing to go pretty far out to set themselves apart” from slavishly knee-jerk French or continental chefs of the past. Season with the keen competition among restaurateurs and caterers and we begin to comprehend why flavorful fare has become an important part of the contemporary American menu.
Furthermore, although those lonely first bottles of raspberry vinegar seemed pretty irrelevant a couple of decades ago, forcefully flavored food is no fad. Bet on it sticking around because A) as with sex, there`s nothing to replace flavor once you`ve gotten used to it and B) the recent link between what we eat and our health and longevity has led to a genuine interest and concern about ingredients. We demand to know what`s in our food, from where and from whom products are coming. Inevitably we begin to make distinctions based on quality and flavor.
”My customers are more and more aware of flavor and they know when it`s missing,” says Jean Joho, chef of the Everest Room. The French-born Joho, who came to Chicago seven years ago, now uses American products almost exclusively in his kitchen. ”It`s hard work,” he says, ”but you can find meat and vegetables that have as much flavor as they do in Europe. Also, I think American cooks have become much better at blending ingredients, at matching elements that are harmonious.”
As for beverages, Joshua Wesson, co-editor of the Wine & Food Companion newsletter, points to the interest in single-malt Scotch and micro-brewery-produced beers as part of the quest for flavor.
”People are looking for antidotes to the riot of flavors on their plates, but beer is no longer the only gustatorially correct match for spicy food,” he says. ”Inexpensive sparkling wines are becoming popular as fire-extinguishers and so are wines with a touch of sweetness.”
It is easy to credit a major portion of this dining evolution to the fabled melting pot. While we Americans are subject to irrational squeamishness about individual foods (such as whole fish, offal and rabbit) that rarely trouble residents of other cultures, we have very little cultural resistance to ethnic cuisines in general.
Ethnic springboard
Ethnic dining, in turn, seems to have been the springboard that has given us some potent weapons to help change the way we eat. Call it perversity, but we are learning to love negative taste sensations: the burning, searing effect of hot peppers, the puckering sting of citrus and vinegar and the bitter flavor of radicchio and broccoli rabe, escarole and endive. The peppers were introduced to us in Mexican (and, by extension, Southwestern) and various Asian restaurants. Tropical cuisines provided the citrus influence, while the use of flavored vinegars and bitter vegetables came from Italy and France.
Add to these a passion for flavorful, fresh herbs and spices, a receptivity to unfamiliar ingredient combinations and a willingness to invest in healthful eating and a cook can prepare very satisfying menus without the crutches of butter, cream and even salt.
These cooks are adapting various techniques-some new, some newly back in favor-to further the healthy execution of their dishes. Food is cut smaller and often in novel shapes to cook more quickly and retain its texture (texture and eye-appeal are two ways to distract from or compensate for the absence of familiar flavors). It may be cooked over steam or on a grill or in the flavor- enhancing, time-saving environment of a pressure cooker. When sauteing, a non-stick skillet may be used to allow for a minimum of fat. A variety of oils flavored with anything from truffles to turnips will be used in limited quality to anoint the food before serving.
According to Robert H. Bacon Jr., who, as head of a wine-appreciation society called the Commanderie de Bordeaux, frequently plans banquets with cutting-edge chefs:
”The chefs are taking the essence of flavors, then trying to combine them. The effect is different layers of taste, not one single, overriding taste.”
The technology of taste
”The interest in taste and flavor research has never been greater,”
says Robert Lindsay, a University of Wisconsin food technologist who specializes in flavors.
Over the years, food technologists, the scientists who invent flavors and reconstruct nature`s bounty, have been accused of lack of taste. But taste is a vital concern, especially in developing fat substitutes or products that contain reduced fat or are fat-free.
Fat, as one technologist puts it, ”gives food a rich, creamy sensation and also carries most of the substances that deliver taste.”
Experiments continue on recreating the taste of chocolate and salt. And biotechnologists are trying to develop ”super fruits” that would provide potent flavor extracts.
”I suspect efforts like these will continue as long as there is consumer pressure to come up with nutritionally modified foods,” said Lindsay.
Asked about the success of fat substitutes, Lindsay responds:
”Developing low-fat, low-calorie products has presented terrific challenges. If you hear a description of a fat substitute`s ingredients and their application, it seems straightforward. But it is not easy to fill in total flavor. The void can be detected in texture, or sensory responses. There are products that don`t have fat, but they are not equivalent in richness or mouth-feel.
”The goal is to fill in flavor while using minimal processing and maintaining fresh-like character.”
Lindsay finds consumers in general ”have enhanced their appreciation”
of taste and flavor, though ”a lot still are perfectly happy with the status quo.
”Experience is greatly influential in taste response. We`ve seen that people who live their lives drinking low-cal soft drinks don`t like those with full flavor. Skim-milk lovers often find whole milk revolting. So there is a lot of learned or conditioned behavior. Salt is an example. Take it away for a time and, when restored, a normal amount will seem too strong. Also, if food tastes good, the lack of fat need not be a negative.”
`Pleasure through pain`
But how does a searing or bitter (which can include charred or burned)
taste become a positive? How can salsa become more popular than ketchup, as Packaged Facts Inc., a New York market-research firm, announced this spring?
Isn`t it against human nature?
Dr. Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says: ”There is no easy explanation. Bitter and irritating sensations are innately negative, but a large number of people around the world refuse to eat food without them.
”There is no evidence of a change in the sensory system. The most likely cause for trying a hot pepper is peer pressure, as a form of thrill eating. One hypothesis is people eat peppers in the sense they might bang their heads on the wall: because it feels so good when you stop. Another is biological. The saliva caused by eating hot peppers helps you down the dry, bland ingredients found in many tropical countries.”
”It is a route to pleasure through pain,” adds Robert Lindsay. ”When you look at individual histories, you see the person went through a pain stage then found the hot sensation almost habit-forming. You do get desensitized and in most products coming on the market the seasoning is not intended to blow your head off, but to help give a total pleasure sensation, to perk things up.”
Beyond euphoria, however, lies self-indulgence. As, for instance, in the premise of a food catalog of hot and spicy sauces titled ”Mo Hotter, Mo Better.”
Such flavor mania leads Wesson to sound a cautionary note.
”Today`s cooks can`t resist playing with flavor,” he says. ”Some of their food seems engineered and it can be painful when they go overboard.”
(Consider the following restaurant special: a puff-pastry appetizer stuffed with snails and served over a sauce made from cream, Cognac, raspberries and raspberry vinegar.)
Jeremiah Tower of Stars restaurant in San Francisco, the innovator who has been a leader in the so-called California Cuisine movement, goes further. ”I believe we should ban balsamic vinegar for a year,” he says. ”We need to wean ourselves from this plethora of exotic ingredients and add only a few, very appropriate flavors to each item we cook.”
But, as sociologist Lionel Tiger observes about people making food in his recent book, ”The Pursuit of Pleasure”:
”Pleasure counts big. Like music, which is not necessary for survival, food, which is, can be fun to make. . . . New foods and more food meant more opportunity to create more tastes and new ones. Hence, more and new pleasures.”
