Traditionally Untraditional

I struggle with how I describe my cooking style.

Whenever I meet someone interested in the food aspect of my life, they usually tend to ask me what style of food I specialize in - Is it Italian? French? New American? No.  No.  Maybe...but no. The long answer, as you know by reading this site, is that I'm ingredient and technique focused.  After that, I try and create flavors that make sense to me.   Part of this is my desire to express myself creatively with food.  The other part is that I believe once I've mastered cooking techniques, making a dish becomes an expression of what I've experienced and what inspires me.  I make dishes like corn juice soup based on an experience in a restaurant.  I am inspired by trips to Italy, Argentina, Sonoma and sometimes Rockaway, N.J.

Rockaway is a small, middle class town in northwestern NJ.  I grew up there, as did generation after generation of my family.  While I was home for Christmas, I had a typical experience that, in retrospect, allowed me to articulate my cooking style to myself. 

Uncle Beef, Renee and I went to an 80 year old German pork store called Schwind's.  Nothing new here - we've gone to Schwind's plenty of times before. In fact, my uncle, his friend and others have been frequenting Schwind's their whole lives.  They make traditional Weisswurst and sausages that are just phenomenal.  The entire operation has been family run for their entire 80 years and still is to this day.  It shows in the quality of their food but in the fact that this isn't a yuppified foodie like stop to supplement a trip to Whole Foods.  This is their lives and you can taste it.

We picked up some veal sausages and took these treats, some traditional sweet German mustard and rolls to our friend Bob's house for an afternoon snack. Uncle Beef browned our Weisswurst in butter to get a nice brownness to them.  We cut them open to reveal a light, almost airy, rich interior of veal like mousse.  The picture speaks for itself, really.   They were the simplest expression of tradition and flavor I could imagine tasting.  Every bite seemed to remind me of how complicated food can be, especially when I cook it.

But the next morning, I was back at the stove to make myself a simple breakfast before heading back to NYC.  Somehow, like always, I forgot about the tradition of Schwinds, or how other Germans would prepare their Weisswurst.  I only thought about what would make my breakfast as tasty as it could be.

Another part of my Rockaway, N.J. experience is Latin American influenced.  The day before, I was able to pick up some arepas from a Latin American influenced grocery store that is quickly becoming yuppified.  I bought the arepas out of principle, without a real plan on how (or if) I'd use them.   

But I did what was natural to me.  I browned the sweet, yellow corn arepas (almost like a thicker, more savory pancake...or not) and used them as a base for some of the browned Weisswurst.  I fried an egg and perched it on the sausage and arepa.  As I broke the yoke and had an excellent and random breakfast, I realized what a culinary sin I had created.  Decades upon centuries of people have enjoyed the arepa and the Weisswurst in traditional cultural ways, and I just slap them together casually on an instinctual whim.  In Jersey.

In some ways, I felt guilty.  But I also felt inspired (and certainly satisfied) with what I had just eaten.  I then realized what I'd always known - my cooking style is rich with tradition, only personalized based on my own experiences.  For better or worse, I guess I'd call it traditionally untraditional.

Comments

[mike]

joe, i've been reading your site for some time and think traditionally untraditional sums up your style very well. and not just cooking. great post.

mike

[Hande]

Oh, joe... I realize you challenge traditions. I am with you. I do it often enough. But weisswurst... See, I am a "zugereiste" (incomer in bavaria) and married to a real Bavarian guy. And some things are holy. There is only one way to eat weisswurst: Let them cook in not boiling water, do not use a fork and a knife, just suck them out. Eat sweet mustard and brezen (big, softer pretzels) with it and drink a weissbier (yeasty, foggy, sweetish bavarian beer). Do all of this only before the noon bells chime.
Otherwise you out yourself as a "Preuss" (Prussian), the worst thing you can be called in Bavaria! ;-)

[mek]

Ultimately cooking is about making food that tastes good, and to cook well is to take what's already good and make it better. We are all too often limited by the quality of our ingredients, and thus to maximize the quality of a dish is to cook with what you have, rather than what you'd like to have.

To that end I tend to make all sorts of culinary sins like the one you describe above - if you have great ingredients that taste great together, just make it happen! Good on you.

[elizabeth]

I read this site and turn to your recipes often precisely because you are not overly involved in following food rules. You know what tastes good, and you are true to that. Worry not. If that is traditionally untraditional, I love it.

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