Been a long time since my last blog, and I’m going to start it off with something that relates strongly to one of my last posts, as well to the first project that I did with Cory about Sprouts (AMS), and the current Pulse/AMS project my group is currently working on. I was watching a random channel the other night – well I guess it wasn’t that random of a channel… must have been the food network although it seems like there are like 5 different food networks these days for each age-group and toothbrush color.
Regardless, the show was about Larry Forgione — considered by some to be the “godfather of american cooking.” His accolades in the culinary world are beyond impressive, but what caught my attention is what got him famous. A young Forgione spent a score of years in the United Kingdom where he witnessed the regular practice of restaurateurs buying wild chickens from local peasants, bartering for wild mushrooms from local foragers, and publishing the names of the local farmers where their produce had come from on their menus.
The catch here is that Forgione had realized the benefit of finding fresh, local ingredients — all sourced back to their roots, to ensure the most flavorful and healthy meals possible, ensuring cooperation in the local economy and ecosystem, and providing an alternative to the technocratic culinary corn-based zombie that commercially manufactured man-fuel industry had become.
When Forgione returned to the States and began work in New York, he was appalled by the quality of the ingredients he was given to use, and angered by mandates to encourage cost-cutting over quality ingredients.
That was when Forgione decided to open his own restaurant (An American Place, NY) at which he would be free to take his chosen path in bringing food to the dinner table – the one that he had learned and knew would have a positive net benefit for his locality.
Forgione meticulously dissected the local flora and fauna fit for eating, as well as climbing through the cracks in the woodwork to find the old woman who’s friend had an uncle that could find the best morel mushrooms in upstate New York. Forgione actually coined the term “free-range chicken” and made this more ethical and clean practice become considered beyond the standard as a healthy, quality, sustainable food. While all of this was happening, Forgione was making a name for American cuisine. He was proving that he could find ingredients of the same quality of those imported from Europe or Asia in America’s very own fertile lands, and make them into simple, fresh dishes inspired by the flavors of his own country and his locality.
This may not relate directly to this class or my current projects, but it represents a few very worthwhile things. One, Forgione learned something really smart and he realized that it should be replicated. Secondly, he actually went for it. It may have been small-scale at first, but eventually he was able to do in part what a lot of minds seem to be focusing on in the d-studio. That is, harnessing or finding the ability to change human behavior…. for the better.