36. Chapter 1 of Bien Manger Pour Bien Vivre

July 31, 2022

THE ART OF EATING AND COOKING

AUSTERITY BECOMES A VIRTUE

GASTRONOMY AS AN ART

A NEW DISH IS GREATER THAN A NEW STAR

BRILLAT SAVARIN:  "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are."

ART. AND SCIENCE:  food science

GASTRONOMY:  stimulation of a maximum secretion of digestive juices

WORDS ABOUT OUR PROGRESS:  David (SOCOPLAN) and Servando (SCAP)

COCOA FARMER AS A SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING

Transcript

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If that sounds familiar, it should. It's Chopin's first prelude, which I played last podcast, the prelude in G in C major. But I am switching the format now and I thought I'd restart at one. For the next 24 podcasts, I will play a Chopin prelude at the start of the podcast and a Bach prelude in the same key at the end of the podcast. Choosing preludes in the same key allows the listener to compare a romantic sound with a classic sound while holding the tonality or key constant. Chopin finished his twenty four preludes in a monk's cell in the monastery of Valdemosa on the island of Majorca. Similarly, Bach, a hundred and thirty years before, wrote much of the well tempered clavier, also consisting of twenty four preludes in the twelve major and twelve minor keys in a prison cell. He was in prison for obstinacy, having repeatedly demanded release from employment so he could take a better paying job. In those days you had to ask permission of your employer to be fired from the job before accepting another job with another employer. We continue with Bien manger pour bien vivre eat well to live well. In this podcast I have translated the first chapter which is entitled Gastronomy. So we begin. Gastronomy represents an entire world because it is both art and science. Gastronomy is an art. The concept will cause certain people to protest those who believe you have to eat to live and not live to eat. For them, the art of eating has no right to exist. And my uh comment already of course by eat to live he means eating merely to survive and not for enjoyment. And so the art of eating is meaningless to such people. I don't believe there are such people. Even a die hard steak eater who limits his choices to meat and potatoes is driven by the taste, aroma, texture, and appearance of the food. It's just that he has limited interests, that's all. There are even gastronomic principles at play with the one his limited taste. There is an art to cooking a steak, for example. There is also an art to baking a potato. And there is science. To properly grill a steak, the art is knowing how to light a fire and to bank the coals in order to obtain an even heat. And the science is knowing what cuts of meat grill best. Those with higher fat contents from feedlot finished finishing undergo more Mayard Browning because of the lower water content in the flesh. That's the science. We could return to the book. This is the result of atavistic mortifications that reach back to the time of early Christianity, the result of not really thinking about gastronomy as an art. The triumph of Christianity over the religions associated with Roman decadence has introduced into Western cultures an austerity that is associated with the rise of the Christian religion. The initial austerity eventually became a virtue and then a dogma. And my comment there is truth to the idea that early Christians rebelled against the corruption of Rome, and it's easy to see how that would harden into dogma. But it's also true that monasteries became famous for their bon vivant attitudes. A lot of distilled spirits, cheeses, and breads originated in monasteries. Medieval monks were famously depicted in paintings as plump and self satisfied. So I'm not convinced that atavistic mortifications and ancient yearning for suffering and austerity explains why some people as true the art of eating. I think it's more explained by the psychology of individual differences. We return to the book. Meanwhile, little by little Christians needed to express their religious feelings using art. One began to see a rapid evolution of art from the catacombs to the Gothic era. Christian art was born on the ruins of Greco Roman art. The sense of taste followed the same slope. Days of fasting became less frequent and lengths became shorter. Art is nothing then other than the cause and effect of the refinement of certain senses, such as vision, audition, and touch. Why deprive the sense of taste its rightful place in the genesis and triumph of art? Vision created painting and sculpture, audition created music, and taste created gastronomy. As will be exposed in the rest of this book, the sensation of pleasure caused by a good meal does not depend solely on taste. There are other senses that come into play vision, aroma, etc. Gastronomy therefore is not solely dependent on the palate, it also depends on mental processes and the interplay of the senses. Gastronomy is therefore a complete art. And here's my comment to what he said. I would go still farther. To me, gastronomy has five dimensions, making it the most complex of all the arts. The first dimension is taste, which is sensed by the taste buds found in four types of papilli on the tongue, which produce the so-called Aristotelian tastes of sweet, bitter, salty, and sour. Second you have aroma sensed both through the narries of the nose as well as the back of the throat, making it possible to appreciate the pungency of blue cheese in two different ways. The third dimension is tactile, whereby you feel the food and judge where it is positioned in the mouth as well as its freshness and safety to eat. The fourth dimension is appearance, measured both in black and white and in color. And the fifth dimension is sound, which adds complexity to texture. Thus a cracker feels brittle and crumbly, and at the same time, this is confirmed by the sound it makes when it is chewed. We return to the book. Gastronomy is also a science, applied science. Some will belittle science's importance by claiming that it's merely technology or empiricism at play, not science. But really, it's important to differentiate empiricism and science. After all, empiricism is merely a step on the way to science, a passing step from ignorance to knowledge. The goal of the human spirit is to replace empiricism with science. And my comment to that, differentiating empiricism is not from science, actually, which is what he's doing, actually in the field of the philosophy of science, one can divide the scientific method into two human efforts, empiricism and theory. This division goes back to the fourth century BCE when Aristotle was Plato's student. Plato focused mainly on theory and Aristotle more on evidence. Taking a beach as an illustration, Aristotle walks along a beach and finds shells that he categorizes into muscles and clams, simply by the power of observation and knowledge he gained in his youth. Plato's, without walking the beach, might theorize that all life gets its character from some sort of predetermined code. And he might convey to Aristotle, who was his student, that variants in shape and color of the muscles and clams come from that code. And of course, at that time they didn't know about the genetic code. This would be a theory. So Plato is theorizing that the differences between the two bivalves comes from some sort of a code. So, in a way, then the scientific method needs both empiricism and theory. That is Aristotle's observations on the beach and Plato's theory about predetermined code. The author, Depomion, seems to suffer from a common malady among scientists that there is something far more special about theorizing than there is about collecting data, and that empiricism is necessarily imperfect and it's a way on the path to true knowledge. One sees this kind of differentiation between empiricism and theorizing in universities. Empiricists are often looked down on by theoreticians, even though it's far easier to develop theories when presented with empirically derived data. Okay, so we return to the book. Let's assume that gastronomy is only one technique. This technique is governed by real science, applied science, having areas in common with all other sciences. One can attribute to a book cook an artistic ability while denying him or her all scientific ability. Such a cook might blindly execute recipes, but he or she will never create a new technique. This cook will remain forever constrained by an infinitely small circle of abilities, not even aware that there might exist new combinations that could come into play. Such a cook will always be a bad cook. And my response to that is once again I have to disagree with the author. History is replete with superb artisans who lack a scientific background. Take for example the legendary glass blowers of Murano. A glass blower might make a wealth of gorgeous art, but he or she may not be able to give a lecture or write a book about the science of silicon, the element from which glass is made. However, uh the glassmaker would know from experience and from the teachers that glass crazes when it is subjected to rapid cooling. A theoretician might go farther and talk about the intersilicon bonds that are involved in uh crazing uh during cooling. Uh so a practitioner would take the theory and develop uh a new product, but you don't have to know about the bond angles to do that. You just have to apply cause and effect, uh that is through experience. The book continues. Uh the discovery of a new dish does more for humanity than the discovery of a new star, so says Ria Savarin. Perhaps this is a bit exaggerated, however, it's arguably just as difficult to find a new planet as it is to find a new dish. A cook must be cultivated, well educated person, like the gourmet. Just remember that the combination of foie gras and truffles is the work of Rossini and the use of kidneys to heighten flavors of certain dishes was imagined by Meyerbear. So my answer response to this is I'm writing this just as we are being regaled with the fab fabulous new discoveries of the James Webb telescope. So it's hard for me to even imagine that a new dish is worthy of a new star just because of the breathtaking images that have been coming and then the notions of being able to see within 200 million years of the beginning of time. But as for the three names that he mentions, Priya Savarin, Rossini, and Meyerbear, I'll give you a little background on each. Jean Antel Priasavarin is best known for his book La Physiologie du Goût, or the Physiology of Taste, and for his most notable quote, tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are. Pria Savarin was a lawyer, and his favorite pastime when he wasn't in court was the writing and thinking about the glories of French cuisine. Giacono Antonio Rossino Rossini wrote thirty-nine operas, the most famous being The Barber of Seville. The last forty years of his life were devoted to a bon vivant lifestyle, which included consumption of one of his favorite dishes that he made up, the Tournado Rossini. This is a one inch thick piece of tenderloin fried in butter, then perched on a buttery crouton topped with a slice of duck foie gras and a healthy slice of truffle, then surrounded by a couple tablespoons of Madeira sauce. The combination makes it one of the very best dishes of Haute Cuisine. Giacomo Meyerbeer was a German Jewish opera composer whose works were popular throughout Europe during the 19th century. And another one of his creations besides the operas was Eggs Meyerbeer, which featured sherred or baked eggs next to grilled kidneys and topped with perigus sauce, which is a brown sauce with chopped truffles in it. Depomion holds up a steak with fatty foie gras and fatty Madeira sauce and fatty eggs with grilled kidneys and another fatty brown sauce as paragons of flavor combinations, education, and cultivated tastes. However, we now know that there are a lot of very good vegetables that are not fatty and have wonderful flavors, especially as you find in Mexican or in Chinese cuisine. So things have changed. Anyway, back to the book. The gourmet, who must be a cook in his soul, must understand the how and why of what he and she does. From that day in his or her hands, cooking becomes a science. If one wants to physiologically understand how and why a well prepared and well served meal might give us tremendous satisfaction, it is important to have basic understanding of food, of digestion, of assimilation, and of their effects on our psyche. Does this mean that it is absolutely necessary to know the exact chemical composition of the tissues of an oyster, for example, to appreciate its uncuous texture and its flavor? No. One can be an artist without being a scientist. One can admire a cathedral without knowing stereotomy and the principle of material resistance. One must admit that an observer who has general ideas on the construction of faults and the load bearing of pillars will discover in the church's apps items to admire that would certainly escape the attention of a tourist armed with the latest travel guide from Bedeker. Every art has its scientific side. Art would not exist without the science of the builder. Sculpture would be nowhere without the science of anatomy. Painting would be nothing without the concept of luminosity. The same is true of gastronomy. It would be nothing without food science. Food science is the science of food preparation. Foods need to be made maximally digestible and presented in such a way that they are alluring and will provide the greatest psychic pleasure, thereby promoting a maximum secretion of digestive juices. Once these foods are digested and assimilated, that they become the active agent of tissue repair and also they become us. In addition, digested foods are a source of energy and therefore animal heat, muscular force, and intellectual work. So this is my uh final comment. Well, that's the end of the gastronomy chapter. I want to say a few words about our progress with Project Hope and Fairness and its French cousin Proget Espoir et Equite. David, the president of Soko Plan or Societe de Plantaur de Cacao, or otherwise known in English as Corporation for Cocoa Farmers, finally was able to retrieve the grading machine that was manufactured by Sunrise Machinery Company in Shanghai, China last November and was shipped via Antwerp and finally arrived seven months later, just a few weeks ago in Abijah. We at Project Hope and Fairness were able to make a bank transfer of$2,700 to pay for the customs duties that were charged on a machine worth$1,700. So that's almost a uh two to one cost in customs duties for the value of the machine. And so that gives you an idea of some of what we're up against in doing this project. Um, and now David has just shipped me uh two kilograms of cocoa powder, which I will blend with organic sugar, malt extract, and dried banana powder to make a superb cocoa mix. I've already tried it with another cocoa powder, and we'll find out how David's uh cocoa powder stacks up. Um, other cocoa beverages mixes that I'm thinking of making will include mango powder and baobab powder. So they're truly African cocoa mixes. Umanas, mangoes, and baobab trees all grow in West Africa and are increasingly the source of foreign exchange for farmers and for the countries. Our other business partner is SCAP, SCAP, or Société Corporative Agricole de Pesouin, um, in English Agricultural Co-op of Pesoin. They have finally uh gotten the all-important Declaration Fiscale d'existence or fiscal declaration of existence, which means this coming week, Servando, the president of SCAP, will be able to open a bank account. We at Project Open Fairness will then be able to send him$1,000 that was donated by our rotary club in San Luis Obispo to install an air conditioner in the main production room and to buy a second refrigerator. At this point, Scaff will be able to start production of African Choco Fudge Bar, which comes in three flavors uh peanut, candied orange peel, and vanilla. Next podcast, I should have even more exciting news. Please help us in our mission to make the cocoa farmer in Africa self-sustaining. And with that, the farmer will be able to treat his land better and cut down fewer trees. The solution to global warming lies with the farmer. If we treat the farmer right, he or she will treat the land right and more carbon dioxide will be absorbed. Because uh, when you uh treat the soil right, the soil will be uh will absorb carbon and hold carbon. And we need that because, as you know, we are undergoing very rapid uh global warming caused by our inattention to uh how to uh uh treat the soil properly so that it will absorb carbon dioxide and also how to uh derive energy from uh non-carbon resources. Okay, well, that's the end of this podcast, and so we are finishing with box prelude number one. See you next time,