Sacrosanct

Earlier this month, Jenny asked a great question. It was a marvelous question. And I’ve been meaning to answer it every single day since it came up. This came in response to my post about hummus, which I steadfastly insist has to be made with both chickpeas and tahini as a matter of definition. So Jenny wanted to know,

“How do you determine which culinary traditions are okay to modify (such as Pizza) and which are sacrosanct (as in this case, Hummus)?”

Let’s start at the very beginning.

After the Fussy Manifesto, my very first post on the FLB was about the difference between grilling and barbecue. It was a short post. And not entirely correct. Down the road Mr. Dave would berate me for sticking to a tired paradigm of arguing for the supremacy of slow-and-low cooking as the only true definition for barbecue. And subsequently I’ve softened my resolve.

Switching gears a bit, one of my favorite cocktails is a simple combination of whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters, stirred with ice, and served up with a brandied cherry. For years I had been calling it a Manhattan, even though I had been making it with bourbon. But recently I was reminded that a true Manhattan requires rye whiskey, and David Wondrich convinced me that I had been wrong all those years.

The short answer to Jenny’s question is research.

As strongly as I hold to my opinions on these matters, they are not always fixed in stone. The above examples show I can be moved in both directions, loosening my definition of barbecue and tightening my definition of a Manhattan.

I will also admit that my deep obsession with food takes me to places on the edges of reason. For example, you are probably familiar with those loaves sold on supermarket shelves that are sliced and made primarily out of wheat. People use them to make squishy sandwiches for children. Some adults even use these slices for their own sandwiches. Well, I’m not entirely convinced that we should be calling that “bread”.

I’ll spare you from that crazy rant for the moment.

However, there are some products that have a federal standard of identity. Ice cream is one of them. And I believe in holding the line on these things. Unilever has been up to some shenanigans on both sides of this issue. Their Breyer’s brand expertly deceives consumers that they are buying Ice Cream when instead they are being sold Frozen Dairy Dessert (a much cheaper product that replaces expensive butter fat with gums, fillers, and other dreck). But the very same company (Unilever) is suing Just Mayo for deceiving consumers into believing a vegan sandwich dressing is actually made from eggs. You see, “mayonnaise” has a standard of identity too, and it includes eggs.

Of course there are some foods that are named after a main ingredient. And in these cases, you can’t have the dish without it. For example:

Bruschetta – that’s the charred bread (not the tomatoes on top)
Banh mi – that means bread too
Muffuletta – the round sesame bread of the sandwich
Hummus – chickpeas

Still, I suppose there will be people who argue for things like a vegetarian meatball. Obviously, if it’s made out of meat, it can’t be vegetarian. Flipping that around, if it’s vegetarian, it can’t be a meatball. I like to call things what they are. Chef Ric Orlando developed a pretty popular dish he called eggplant balls. A lesser chef might have called them vegetarian meatballs, but Ric held the line.

Pizza has no standard of identity. As far as I know, it has always been a dish in the form of a pie. Thus, I’m very open to different styles of pizza, and try to appreciate each one on its own merits.

Sometimes when foreign languages are involved things get confusing. Take the English “macaroon” versus French “macaron” debacle. Thanks to Pierre Hermé and others, the fanciful egg white and almond meal sandwich cookies that surround a deeply flavorful and creamy center are widely called “macarons”. In France, they are. And if you are the kind of person who uses the French pronunciation of “croissant” when ordering the pastry in America, you can call them “macarons” too. But here we call them macaroons.

Technically, neither word is right, because the word comes from the Italian “maccarone” which The Culinarian defines as a “cake/biscuit made of ground almonds.” And those piles of coconut that we eat during Passover that are sold more widely in U.S. coffee shops? Those are simply coconut macaroons, so says the Food Lover’s Companion.

Look, I don’t know everything about food. I’m a student on the subject. And anyone who claims to know everything about food is lying. There’s simply too much for any one person to ever know.

We learn. And as we learn we grow, we change, we evolve.

My deep love for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is now long gone. I went through a phase where I actually thought soy milk was a good idea. Wine no longer is such a central part in my enjoyment of meals. In some ways, as I get older (and hopefully wiser) I’m also getting more flexible in my beliefs. But just like you can’t make polenta without cornmeal, you can’t make hummus without chickpeas.