The Death of Fast Food

Cold War Era Food

Over the hurried, inexorable, and giddy gallop towards the modern era Americans were convinced by advertisers that cooking was just not worth the effort. We were too busy to cook. We had better things to do with our precious “free time.” We were given time-saving choices when it came to meals so there was no longer any reason to “slave over a hot stove” (I’m almost certain that expression was created by advertisers).  I can’t remember what was supposed to be so thrilling in our lives that didn’t allow us to prepare our own food but it must have been wonderful.

Things are changing in the mentality of modern Americans. Cooking shows air 24 hours a day. Chefs are celebrities.  As I have often said, internet sites like YouTube have cooking video instructions coming out of their ears so the Italian grandmother you never had is available to walk you through even the most harrowingly complicated menus. If you have any doubt concerning this tectonic shift of attitudes I propose that you do a Google search of any sort of food that comes to mind.  Ironically, in a search for chicken pot pie*—the former gold standard of crap, pre-prepared food—the first things to come up in the queue are home-made versions.

*The chicken pot pie was a fantastic idea on paper but its execution was nearly that—an execution—for millions of American children during the 1960’s. The chicken pot pie was an individual serving of chicken-related matter (mostly ears, feet, and chicken toe nails) that was wrapped in a pie crust and housed in an aluminum alloy pie pan.

The pies came frozen from the super market and took approximately one school term to defrost. To serve you simply placed the chicken pot pie in the oven at 1,900 degrees at the beginning of the Tom & Jerry cartoons around 3 in the afternoon and the pie would be done later that evening during Green Acres. Chicken pot pies were delicious, so I have been told. The problem was that they took so long to cook that you would be practically fainting from hunger by the time they were ready. I’m sure I’m not the only kid who completely scorched his entire digestive track eating a pot pie while it was bubbling hot. It was like eating chicken-flavored lava.

Paella is Pronounced "Pa-ay-ya" for F#@X's Sake

After looking at some cooking videos on YouTube I think I am going to start a terrorist organization called “Stop Calling Paella ‘Pa-el-la,’ Please!” Do these same English speakers call pizza “piz-za?” My Spanish accent needs a lot of work but this mispronunciation borders on a racial slur.

P.S. Gordon Ramsey is always hopping around like he had to take an evil piss about an hour ago and is now in the early stages of wetting his pantaloons. For my money he is the absolute worst of the celebrity chefs. I saw an episode of his show where he goes in and bails out a failing restaurant. They are failing because they don't deserve to succeed. It's like helping out a wounded animal on the Serengeti, it goes against the natural selection process.

Arroz de Setas - Mushroom Paella

Welcome to my kitchen. This dish turned out rather well because I used stock from cocido which I made a couple days before.

Study Hard So You Can Be Rude in Spanish, Too

Keys my ass you bigga sheet!

I wouldn’t call it an advantage but one thing about attaining a fairly high level of fluency in Spanish is that now I can get snippy with people who piss me off. Before I was stoic and patient, now I have the linguistic luxury of being bitchy. Before you know it I’ll be a full-blown asshole (just like I was in English?). In my defense all that I can say is that I have never consciously worked to improve my Spanish for the sole purpose of berating someone who gets on my nerves. I suppose that I could try being conversant in the language and a decent person. I’ll give a few examples and let others decide if I’m being too touchy.

I sat down just now in my corner bar and there is some old guy working who is here in the mornings. I have been coming to this bar regularly for about two and a half years so unless he suffers from recurrent amnesia he should recognize me from the last time I came in which was fucking yesterday. He was sitting on the terrace talking with one of his home boys and I took a seat inside. It would have been virtually impossible for him not to notice that I walked in as he was sitting directly in front of the door. I sat down, turned on my computer, went to the restroom, came back, checked my email, sent a text on my phone, et cetera, et cetera for over ten minutes.  I don’t really come here for the food or drink as it basically serves as a satellite office for me so I don’t really give a shit if I get served or not—and I’m certainly never in a hurry—but this just seemed like a complete lack of respect.  

Another customer walked in and the old barkeep hopped up like it was the owner of the place and he shuffled quickly behind the bar to serve the new customer. Then he walked around the bar—right past me—to clean off some dishes. As he walked back behind the bar I looked straight at him in an attempt to make eye contact. He was a meter away but evidently I was invisible to him. I tried to get his attention by saying “excuse me” but nothing doing. Finally I stood up and walked over to the bar in front of him. I didn’t say anything at first and he still didn’t bother to ask me what I wanted so I told him with extremely exaggerated politeness that when he could, if it were at all possible, it would be stupendous if he could find the time to make me a café con leche. He is too dim-witted to pick up on my heavy sarcasm but it made me feel better. Does that make me an asshole?

I was in a news kiosk last Friday and I explained to the middle-age couple working there that I was looking for the books by Mario Vargas Llosa that El País newspaper has been selling every other Friday. The old guy just looked at me like I was from another fucking planet and started whining that he didn’t know what I was talking about when I cut him off very abruptly. I asked him, “Excuse me. Do you work here? I have been buying these books in this very shop for the past month or so.”  The woman—obviously with more sense—knew what I was talking about and I just turned my back on the man while I talked with her.

Sometimes I get annoyed with people who ask me to repeat something extremely simple. I just think to myself, “What the fuck did you think I said when I ordered a cortado?” Even the worst Spanish pronunciation shouldn’t be confusing to someone who works in a café and hears this word about a million times a day. I asked a young girl one time if she spoke Spanish because I could repeat the order in English or French or Arabic or Greek.

Coq au Vin

I still can’t decide if this dish is even worth the tremendous effort required to pull it off. It is definitely one of those dishes that make you just sit back after every bite and groan with pleasure. If you make it at home I guarantee that it will be better than what you order in MOST restaurants. It’s difficult to serve in a restaurant situation. Your friends will love you for it, if that is a big consolation.  I used a hen this time, or gallina as it’s called in Spanish. No coqs, roosters, or gallos to be found on my shopping expedition to the Russafa market.  The hen worked well as a substitute

Hens can lay an egg a day whether or not they have been fertilized by the male. They begin laying at about six months and can lay eggs until they reach about two years.  Chickens raised for meat are male and female, sold at 6 to 12 weeks old. An older bird means tougher meat which means a different cooking process. And with the need to find a way to cook a very old rooster thus was born the fricassee method of stewing the bird in sauce or gravy. The meat, skin, and connective tissue in these old birds are tougher but this also means that they will lend more flavor over a long cooking time. If you made this same dish with chicken, using the same cooking time as in this video, the chicken would completely liquefy.