Text 2047, 99 rader
Skriven 2006-06-11 19:44:42 av CAROL BRYANT (1:123/140)
Ärende: From NYT Magazine, 6/11
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June 11, 2006
Food
The Way We Eat: Market Value
By AMANDA HESSER

When it comes to food, the principles of supply and demand do not always
apply. Food is about the senses, and its value is determined by something
less rational. Rarity may put a special gloss — and price — on some foods,
but so will fashion and the perennial need for new flavors.

For example, monkfish was once considered trash fish in New England. In the
1970's, it was rumored that unscrupulous scallop processors would cut
rounds from the tails, bleach, bread and freeze them and sell them as
ersatz scallops. Then American fishery stocks began declining at the same
time that interest in Continental cuisine was growing. "As people became
more worldly and looked up to France as the guiding light with food," said
Jasper White, the chef and owner of Summer Shack, which has four locations
in the Northeast, "people started taking monkfish seriously." Some began
calling it "poor man's lobster." (If you poach monkfish and sniff the
liquid, you'll understand why.) It now sells for up to $20 a pound in New
York City.

Better the poor man's lobster than the blind man's scallop.

Lobster, in fact, was once an East Coast staple of those in debt. When the food
writer and former Times reporter Nancy Harmon Jenkins was young, her mother
would dismiss her complaints about her family's thriftiness by saying: "Poor,
child! Why, we were so poor when I was growing up that all we had to eat was
salt fish and lobster." In the early 20th century, impoverished Mainers
subsisted on what was at hand, choking down that lobster.

"The reality is that it's subsistence if you can get it," said Sandra
Oliver, the editor of Food History News. "It's a valuable food if you can
sell it."

Fashion has always been a powerful and unwieldy influence on a food's
value. It was less than a century ago that New York's top restaurants
served terrapin — a small turtle — as if it were foie gras. And even 20
years ago the idea of paying to eat sea urchin seemed as ridiculous as
paying for bottled water.

Likewise, there was a time in Italy when white truffles were eaten as a
vegetable, like peas. And in Russia, caviar was once used to clarify broth.

Leeks have had more ups and downs than Al Gore. In Rome, they were prized by
Nero, who ate them to improve his singing voice. Later, in Britain, they came
to symbolize the proletariat: in Jane Grigson's "Vegetable Book," a salad of
leeks dressed with vinaigrette and chopped egg was called "poor man's
asparagus." But by the early 20th century, leeks were revived once more, this
time by a French chef in America, who put them into a chilled potato soup,
added cream and sold them under the more palatable guise of vichyssoise. Now
they're just sort of. . .leeks.

A nifty name can change a food's fortunes (which may explain why the
suet-and-raisin pudding that the British call spotted dick has never taken
hold here). Before squid became calamari, fishermen would often leave it on
the docks for the sea gulls. The Patagonian toothfish didn't seem toothsome
until it became Chilean sea bass. And stocks of dogfish were nearly wiped
out not once but twice, though only after the fish became known first as
rock salmon and later as Cape shark.

Then there is the bell-cow effect. Jasper White, who had grown up being
told to throw back the spiny sea robins that fouled his lines (actually, to
kill them first, then throw them back), learned that the fish were an
essential flavor component in bouillabaisse and eventually added them to
his pot. "That was four summers ago," he said. "We were buying it for 40
cents a pound." A handful of Boston chefs followed suit. "Within two years,
they got it up to $2 a pound."

Short ribs took a similar rags-to-riches path. As steaks became cheaper and
more widely available in the 1970's, lesser cuts like short ribs, which are
fatty and require long cooking, were nearly driven out of the market. For
years almost no one ate them — which put the cut in a perfect position to
be rediscovered by Mario Batali and a few other top chefs who would elevate
their menu price into the realm of a luxury food.

Chefs have been spinning peasant fare into gold for centuries. Darra
Goldstein, the editor of Gastronomica, observes that the charlotte — a
layered confection that originated in the 18th century — was "a pudding of
leftovers." In the early 19th century, the chef Antonin Carême gave it a
makeover. He swapped the bread for ladyfingers and added cream, and soon it
was being served on bone china.

Some lowly foods may always remain a bargain. A recipe for "poor man's
pudding" in "The Fannie Farmer Cookbook" contains nothing more than rice,
milk, molasses, cinnamon, salt and butter. (No rich woman would have her
cook use an unrefined sugar like molasses in her pudding.) In the 1970
revised edition of "The James Beard Cookbook," Beard featured virtually the
same recipe (without crediting Farmer), but even he couldn't turn it into
the next pot de crème.

The only true luxury foods remain those that are actually scarce: wild
Atlantic salmon, hand-harvested oysters, wild herbs and game. Though hard
to find, these delicacies are available to all comers in the wild, if you
know where and how to procure them. But since most of us don't, we'll
happily, even blindly, spend our savings on them — and apparently anything
else deemed delicious, novel and valuable
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