If you said, “dry the sausage out and microplane it into a
teaspoon of concentrated tomato water,” you may be
pigeonholed as a modernist. On the other hand, if you just
make the same sauce your mom did, you may get called a hack.
Just what is a conscientious cook supposed to do, anyway?
(MORE: Does Jewish Food Have A Future?)
The tension between tradition and innovation is challenging a
lot of chefs these days, many of whom are searching for a
third way out and not finding it. This became obvious to me
last week when attending the Starchefs Congress, an
international summit of culinary minds who come together to
look at the latest kitchen equipment. In one demonstration,
Davide Scabin, a chef of the future from Rivoli, Italy, gave
a presentation on how to use “fresh dried tomatoes” from a
vacuum bag, and how to make pasta so you can store it for
five days in the refrigerator. He also made a risotto that
looked a matzoh. (At least, I think it was risotto.) I was
baffled. But Scabin insisted, as such chefs always do, that
he was, at least in spirit, being true to the traditions of
his grandmother.
Scabin was followed by a panel consisting of Mario Batali,
the most influential Italian-American chef, Scabin, and Mario
Carbone, one of Batali’s proteges. Carbone, along with his
partner, Rich Torrisi, have their own experiment underway in
how to modernize traditional cooking without completely
perverting it, but it was almost impossible to nail either he
or Batali down on just where the line was. What was a
technique midway between mom cookery and tweezer food, I
asked them? Mario said the key was in searing meat. Carbone
said cooking spaghetti well. I walked away perplexed.
(MORE: The Perils of Coffee Snobbery)
It’s not just Italian-American chefs who face this question.
In a recent issue of the brilliant food magazine Lucky Peach,
there was a collection of recipes from Momofuku’s “mother’
s day expo,” a kind of workshop in which chefs from David
Chang’s various restaurants were invited to produce high-
concept tributes to their mom’s cooking. Matt Rodofker, a
Jewish cook at Ssam Bar, produced his version of the
traditional deli platter: Tasmanian sea trout played a triple
role as lox, pastrami, and corned beef, and olive oil-poached
hake guest starred as whitefish salad. A Manischewitz wine
cocktail, complete with bitters, gin, and simple syrup,
accompanied the platter. It sounded weird to me, but it may
have been good; at least the guy was trying to stay true to
Jewish cooking by keeping the technique relatively simple.
Spanish food hasn’t always been so lucky. The best thing
about it—its rustic and raw materials—have too often ended
up as disembodied broths and Star Trek-like food cubes in the
hands of its modernist masters.
