Andrea MacMichael

Food and Travel Seminar

10/12/16

Secret Ingredients Reading Response

            After reading from many different authors in these pages from Secret Ingredients, I have noticed that I enjoy food writing that is light hearted. I especially enjoyed reading M.F.K. Fisher’s piece “The Secret Ingredient” and Anthony Lane’s piece “Look Back on Hunger,” because food was critiqued and described in funny, relatable ways. In “A Look Back on Hunger,” Anthony Lane brings up the understandable frustrations that cooking entails, and M.F.K. Fisher includes the way we all try to obtain the secret ingredient of a favorite dish from someone else.

            In M.F. K. Fisher’s piece, I found myself thinking about the summer and my family barbeques with all of my relatives. Each family would bring a dish to share, and one of my favorites was my aunt’s tortellini pasta. It was so simple, cheese filled tortellini tossed with veggies and Italian dressing, maybe a few spices. But I could never replicate it at home. She makes it the best. Similarly, Fisher goes to great lengths to learn how Bertie Bastalizzo makes her dumplings, sending his daughter into the kitchen as a spy, and so on. So often, I believe we try to cook like other people, maybe because we love a certain dish they make, but it is extremely hard to replicate what another cook or family member makes. Even if we know the coveted secret ingredient or special touch, a dish will not often have the same spark. I appreciated the line from page 105, “we are so conditioned to the threat of the Secret Ingredient, and the acceptance of trickery, that even honesty has become suspect when we are brash enough to ask for recipes.” This line spoke to me because it can be intimidating, and it can feel intrusive to ask someone for a recipe. Recipes are works of art, and some secrets in the kitchen are meant to be kept. But, even if we do get to know the secret, I think we still lack the personal touch that Bertie Bastalizzo or our aunt has. Clearly, what can make a dish go from good to great can be as simple, and strange, as Chow Chow, or maybe a pinch of pepper, but those are just ingredients on paper.

            I was also interested in the comical writing of Anthony Lane. His strong voice and opinionated piece made this reading believable for me. He struck me as honest, experienced in the culinary field, and authoritative enough to be poking fun at recipes, cooks, and deciphering the good and the bad of cookbooks. I found it insightful when Lane stated, “we know too much about food” (154). He describes how he ate reindeer and other “exotic foods” at restaurants recently, and was not at all phased. I think it is true that the average person has a lot more knowledge of cooking these days, and that people seem more interested in trying to cook more difficult or exotic dishes like the ones we find in restaurants (the ones we order out especially because we can’t make them for ourselves at home). In addition, I absolutely loved Lane’s critique of Martha Stewart and her cooking shows, because he speaks from the audience’s point of view, and makes fun of her oddly calm and constantly bright demeanor as she makes intricate dishes and, without so much as an air of frustration, continues to cook. I found it amusing because Lane points out how we all feel about dining in at one time or another. We (or our parents) get tired of cooking at home. We lose interest in the food and our brains focus on the dishes that have to be cleaned. And, most of us certainly don’t live a lifestyle where we can grow our own food for every meal and be the household ‘perfect’ cook like Martha Stewart seems to be.