Current Reading

I wanted to post something that I read recently and thought was very interesting:  

"Culinary snobbery used to stress expense and show.... Now it's moved toward ingenuity and surprise-and incidentally, toward cheaper cuts and neglected fish. In the present gastronomic furor, restaurant chefs the world over are reaching in all directions for novelty-often with good results. We are not thinking in the same stiff categories that we used to. Meat can be a seasoning, not a prime ingredient. A main dish of grains, or a robust combination of vegetables, sufficiently anchors a meal. More and more we're composing menus by instinct rather than by rule."  

I think that this truly captures the food world at the present moment in both the restaurant world and in home kitchens. The amazing thing about the quote is that it comes from James Beard circa. 1981 in his wonderful book "The New James Beard". This is a book that I have picked up dozens of times but it really struck me this time through. Obviously this goes to show how brilliant James Beard was but also how much the food world, and world in general, lives in a constant state of cycling back on itself. As they say "The more things change...."