Posted on 02/19/2006 1:13:28 AM PST by Stoat
Lady Claire insists she loves good food, but prefers to call a potato a potato.
Picture: Julie Bull
WOULD madam care for some purée of petit pois and hand-cut pomme frites to accompany her confit of ground lamb encased in a baked pastry shell?
If the diner concerned is the Scottish aristocrat and culinary expert Lady Claire Macdonald, the answer would be an emphatic No - though she would not object to peas and chips with her pie.
The award-winning cookery writer yesterday said pretentious restaurateurs who serve small portions and use fancy words on the menu should "be shot".
The plain-speaking cook called for an end to ostentatious "menu speak".
"I like to cut to the chase. When people start getting too flowery and poetic I think it becomes farcical," she said.
Lady Claire, who is married to Lord Godfrey Macdonald of Macdonald, the high chief of the Clan Donald, claims that British cookery is immersed in snobbery and that the desire to be posh is strangling the production of good food.
She said: "To me, posh is a derisory term, and that epitomises it in the food world. Whoever thought of it should be shot, slowly - or hanged, drawn and quartered."
Lady Claire, who has published 16 best-selling cookery books, singled out the use of "enrobed" and "bathed" rather than "steeped" or "marinated" as two particular pet hates.
She added: "There is so much false pomp with menus and presentation. When you get 'lovingly slaughtered', what you really want to know is if the food is properly hung.
"If you have a smooth sauce, instead of saying veluté, say velvety. It means the same."
The cook, who runs the Kinloch Lodge 4-star hotel on the Isle of Sky with her husband, also criticised restaurants for falling prey to the "vogue from hell" and presenting food in a tower.
She said: "You haven't enough sauce to put on the prongs of a fork. It looks jolly pretty but you haven't got enough to taste. It is done more for the eye than the mouth. Food should look nice, but not at the expense of being able to get a really good forkful. It's infectious and it should be vaccinated against."
She continued: "We need plain speech. Facts are what is needed by people reading menus."
Fellow chef Antony Worrall Thompson applauded Lady Macdonald for her outspokenness and named Jean Christophe Novelli, the chef at Hell's Kitchen in London, as responsible for the revival of nouvelle cuisine.
He said: "I ate from his menu at Hell's Kitchen and I wished that I had stuck with Gary Rhodes's simpler menu. Each dish was at least three lines long and it was a complete load of rubbish. Perfume of this and puddle of that is a complete nonsense to me.
"Sadly, Jean-Christophe will have influenced other chefs with his menu harking back to nouvelle cuisine and style over substance. Michelin-star hotels are notorious for making things over-flowery. They believe description means they can add another ten quid to the dish.
"I for one will not be following that trend. Basic, honest description is what it's about, otherwise customers feel conned."
Thompson said Scots chefs, such as Nick Nairn, were previously guilty of producing very complex dishes, but are now increasingly retro in their approach. Nairn commented that using overly-descriptive terms was a 1990s trend.
He said: "This kind of language is just gastro-rubbish really. You normally find it in country house hotels where ambition overreaches and food doesn't live up to the menu.
"The trend started in the 90s, when chefs started to enter competitions. The food got more complicated for the sake of it."
But Andrew Fairlie, chef at Gleneagles, defended the practice: "Some things aren't directly translatable. Why is an English description better than a French or Mexican term? People can always ask the waiter."
"TURBOT and langoustine en papillotte with Perigord truffle butter" means fish and large prawns cooked in a paper bag with butter made from French truffles.
"Fillet of seabass, fennel caponata, tapenade, fennel veloute" means bass with an aubergine stew, mashed olives and a white sauce.
"Twice-cooked Anjou squab and ravioli of kohlrabi" means pigeon with pasta stuffed with a turnip-type cabbage.
"Pressed terrine of foie gras, monkfish and trompette de la mort, Madeira dressing" means liver, fish and mushrooms in a wine sauce.
THERE'S no space for food fashion in the Highlands and Islands. Just sound, locally reared produce and a stern attitude to frippery.
Fortunately, it isn't too often that any of us is forced to grapple with "dawn-picked mushrooms" or "sun-ripened asparagus slaked with a butter-enriched, hand-beaten hollandaise"... or whatever purple prose might be applied to the most straightforward combinations of the kitchen.
It was the 1980s which introduced this apex of absurdity. The daringly innovative break from cream-laden sauces and the classic French repertoire of Escoffier and Carème which sparked nouvelle cuisine - a new way of cooking intended to intensify flavour, and celebrate simplicity, was soon corrupted.
It translated into coin-sized towers of wafer-thin food, eternally surrounded by a raspberry jus or a kiwi coulis. Offering barely a decent bite per course, it was piled on to glossy black plates at maximum expense and with minimum impact on the appetite.
The edible world was suddenly "sun-drenched and freshly-plucked", it was "swathed, bathed and fragranced".
But now the biggest names in Scottish cooking - Andrew Fairlie, Jeff Bland, Geoffrey Smeddle - all favour straightforward menu descriptions. What happens in their kitchens is far from straightforward, but that's their secret. And the enticing mystery of fine cooking.
Today, the more succinct the description, the better the food is likely to be. Rosy-fingered dawn need not tamper with your chanterelles ever again.
GILLIAN GLOVER
I'm just amused that she can call for an end to pompous and ostentatious language when her husband refers to himself as "Lord Godfrey Macdonald of Macdonald, the high chief of the Clan Donald"!
Also that the Scotsman can't spell the 'Isle of Skye'!
Oh my God, I'm going to vomit.
"Ravioli of kohlrabi?"
No. Just "revolting CRAP."
Close, but not quite -- the butter isn't "made from French truffles". Butter is not made from truffles. Butter is made from cow squeezings. It's *flavored* with French truffles.
It translated into coin-sized towers of wafer-thin food, eternally surrounded by a raspberry jus or a kiwi coulis. Offering barely a decent bite per course, it was piled on to glossy black plates at maximum expense and with minimum impact on the appetite.
Back at the height of this nonsense, four of us dropped into a decent-looking restaurant at random while we were out on the town, and although the food was okay, all of us were quite literally still hungry when the meal was over. Filling up on desert wasn't much of an option -- it was an Asian restaurant and they're not big on deserts. So we paid our bill, left, and immediately chose another restaurant to go into and continue eating...
Heh -- good point. Ravioli should be filled with something hearty and artery-clogging.
You say tomato, I say to-mah-toe! This is funny stuff and I'm of Scottish descent, bigtime. Can ye cook over in Bonnie Scotland yet, Madame?
If it's not SCOTTISH, it's CRAAAAAAAAAP!
Hungarians actually do cook it, sometimes; but, ye gods... in ravioli, you're right, it is vomitacious!
Since when has Nouvelle Cuisine been popular in Scotland?
The Scots torture, kill and then boil their food.
I think I'll stick with Mexican and Tortiere, with Pigs feet and Pomme Frits.
Haggis? I've seen it. I know what's in it and I don't want it.
Raw is the only way I can stand it. Usually served soaking in salt water. But otherwise I'd never touch the stuff. I have the "bitterness gene."
From my point of view, thankfully so.
I hereby grant unto you my lifetime portion. ;OP
She just hates the French.
| "Joe Lowder Mesa, AZ |
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| We were treated so uncommonly well today that I just wanted to write a note to comment about that. Apparently you have recently remodeled your Whataburger location in Apache Junction and it is remarkably clean and inviting. But even more impressive than the sparkling appearance was the fact that the manager (Paul, I think was his name) was exceptionally nice and accommodating. My wife ordered a breakfast burrito and I ordered your two hot apple pies for 99-cents special ... but after we sat down, Paul came to our table and apologetically informed us that he was out of the pies but offered to substitute something else, which we did. He was so nice about the way he handled this that I didn't mind at all. Another employee (Richard, I think) was also uncommonly polite and helpful. All-in-all, even though we live several miles away, we will be back and will be telling others about the exceptional service at your newly remodeled AJ location. Joe & Patti Lowder" | |
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Unfortunately, there's no Whataburger (yet) nearby the stoat cave but it sounds like a friendly place with good food and no ostentatious or fou-fou menus.
LOL...thank you! :-)
Yes, she appears to be a very bright and erudite lady :-)
I'm delighted that you enjoyed the article :-)
mmmmmmm... Whataburger. It was a real treat when we got to go there. But man, I'd kill, or at the very least seriously maim, to have a Braum's burger, fries and cherry limeaid.
So many restaurateurs fail to realize that people talk to each other. If you serve "fashion food" you may get a few good restaurant reviews by the "usual suspect" snooty restaurant reviewers, and from that you will get an initial rush of business from those who worry about being seen in the "right places" but as the months and years roll by you won't have a sustainable business model because when hard-working people decide to have a special evening out at a restaurant, they are looking for good food, good ambiance, and a solid meal for a fair price. Restaurants who treat their patrons as you were will not get the sort of dedicated repeat business that keeps such a business in the black over time.
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