In defense of James Beard

 

Cube steak in a crockpot
My kind of recipe

I had let copies of Bon Appetit stack up on the corner of my desk, so last night I decided to leaf through them. When I came to a recipe for Filipino spaghetti, my first thought was I like the recipe I already have, one that’s passed down from a friend’s mother. Why would I choose one with hot dogs in it? Kind of like I don’t need musubi (Filipino sushi with Spam). Smoky chicken and avocado salad—might be good, but I’m not fond of smoked fowl. Pumpernickel panzanella is definitely out—seems to me the pumpernickel would overrule the rest of the salad. Pollo guisado – chicken stew with sofrito, but why use the Mediterranean version of mirepoix when the standard French/English/American version has served me well for years. A recipe for salmon candy—which is really salmon strips smoked long enough to be salmon jerky. Why call it candy? A pork shank recipe that announces right off the bat that it requires “advance planning.” I cook dinner for four in a tiny kitchen—on a hot plate and a toaster oven. I really don’t need something that will take advance planning and probably won’t work in my kitchen anyway. I can’t, for instance, start something in a skillet and then pop the skillet into the oven, a common technique these days. That blasted handle simply won’t let it fit, though I have thought of a skillet without the long handle.

My point in all this rambling is that most of the recipes in cooking magazines these days are irrelevant to the way I cook. Southern Living is perhaps the exception, though a personal quirk of mine makes me wish they wouldn’t use so many shrimp recipes (I’m allergic). I want the kind of cooking James Beard was a spokesman for. PS: I have let my subscription to Bon Appetit lapse and had sometime ago let go of my subscription to Food and Wine. My source for new ideas and new recipes now is the internet.

An American chef, cookbook author, teacher and television personality who became known as  the Dean of American Cookery, Beard had a television cooking show before Julia Child ever thought about it. He taught at The James Beard Cooking School in New York City and Seaside, Oregon and lectured widely, always emphasizing American cooking, prepared with fresh, wholesome, American ingredients. Americans, just becoming aware of their own culinary heritage, followed him intently. Beard, raised in Oregon by a mother equally interested in food, grew up on fresh seafood, fruit, and vegetables. After years in France as an expat, he returned to the States where he saw it as his mission to save American cooking, even while introducing French dishes to the American palate. His insistence always was on the freshest and best ingredients available.

Once on a return visit to Oregon in the early fifties, Beard was horrified to find the local food page touting a pineapple Brown Betty made with marshmallows, graham cracker crumbs, pineapple (presumably canned), and nuts. 1950s food influencer Poppy Cannon equally horrified him, and he complained that she made a vichyssoise of frozen mashed potatoes, a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup, and one leek sauteed in butter. Beard introduced the American palate to such European delights as cioppino, paella, beef salad Parisienne, pastitsio, and ragu Bolognese. But his tastes for American food ran from meatloaf to coleslaw to shortcake. He taught home cooks to make quiches and frittatas and soups from ingredients such as homemade broth. In all his cooking he had no use for prepared or convenience food.

 

Beard needs no defense, but I do, and he has become my personal culinary hero. When I feel the need to justify my growing devotion to American cooking, I refer to Beard.  Some think I am not adventuresome enough when I shy away from peppers (do NOT like the flavor or the heat) or refuse to try the various versions of tofu or kale (I did make one salad I liked). But when people question my return to the cuisine of the Fifties, I turn to James Beard as not just an example but a trendsetter. In this day when recipes call for gochujang (a spicy, fermented paste from Korean cooking), harissa (a Tunisian spicy chili paste), or kimchi (seasoned, fermented vegetables common in Korean cookery), I can take refuge in pointing to Beard’s distinguished record (many awards and now coveted culinary awards given in the name of his foundation). Like Beard, I like meatloaf and coleslaw and shortcake. Along with salmon croquettes and mashed potato cakes, roast chicken and leg of lamb and Welsh rarebit and a hundred other dishes I remember from my mom’s kitchen. I love tuna salad and deviled eggs and I almost always serve a green salad with a proper dinner.

 

I am seriously thinking of changing my Thursday food blog from Gourmet on a Hot Plate to From My Mom’s Kitchen. I doubt the content will change much. I’ll still incorporate new techniques and new recipes, but they will mostly fit in with the basics I learned cooking with my mom in our kitchen in Chicago in the fifties. I welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas. Let me hear from you.