Simple Kitchen Seasons

Alice Waters is an American chef and co-owner of Chez Panisse, the original “California Cuisine” restaurant in Berkeley, California, as well as the informal Café Fanny in West Berkeley. A champion of locally-grown and fresh ingredients, she has been credited with creating and developing California Cuisine and has written or co-written several books on the subject, including the influential Chez Panisse Cooking (written with then-chef Paul Bertolli). She has also promoted organic and small farm products heavily in her restaurants, in her books, and in her Edible Schoolyard program at the King Middle School in Berkeley. Her ideas for “edible education” have been introduced into the entire Berkeley school system, and with the current crisis in childhood obesity, have attracted the attention of the national media. She is a head advocate of a multi-billion dollar stimulus package that works to give every child in the public school system free breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. She states that taxpayers should endorse this package because we are already paying for it in terms of our health.

Waters advocates eating locally produced foods that are in season, because she believes that the international shipment of mass-produced food is both harmful to the environment and produces an inferior product for the consumer.

Here is a long excerpt from an interview with Salon that was done in 2007:

Salon: You definitely have a goal for this book beyond recipes and technique. What is your objective?

Alice Waters: I want people to focus on where the ingredients come from. That’s really what’s important to me. It’s not so much what they’re cooking, it’s with what ingredients they’re cooking. It can be a hot dog — but where’s that hot dog from? What kind of ranches are producing the meat? Are the animals being fed hormones and antibiotics out there on the range? Are they in feedlots? Are they enjoying the natural resources of the region? You know, what’s in the hot dog? What’s in the bun? What’s in the mustard? What’s in the ketchup?

That’s what I’m interested in. Because every decision we make about the food that we eat has consequences. And they aren’t just about people’s personal health. There are consequences in terms of the healthcare system for all of us if people eat food that makes them sick. And there are environmental consequences. But I think the thing that people don’t understand is that there are cultural consequences.

When we’re eating fast food, we’re not just eating the food, we’re eating a set of values that comes with the food. And it’s telling us that food should be cheap. It’s telling us that food should be the same no matter where we are on the planet. It’s telling us that advertising confers value. That it’s OK to eat 24 hours a day. That there are unlimited resources. It’s telling us that the work of the people who grow or raise the food is unimportant — in fact we don’t even need to know. And all of those values are informing what’s happening in the world around us. We’re ending up with malls instead of beautiful places to live in.

Salon: I’ve been cooking from this book for about a month now.

AW: You have? Tell me, did the recipes work?

Salon: Yeah, they were wonderful. But as you say, it’s less about the recipes than your ideas of where to get the food. And I’ve been following those ideas too. I went to the farmers’ market several times.

AW: You know this would be any old book of recipes if it weren’t for the philosophy of food at the beginning. If you’re just going into the store and buying those ingredients, if you’re really a good cook you could probably make something. But what is beautiful is that this changes your life. It brings you into the whole community of people and hopefully brings you back to the dinner table.

Salon: I agree. But, some things I’ve noticed. First of all, it’s not easy to do this. I’m a writer so I have a lot of free time. I can take Tuesday afternoon off and go to the farmers’ market. So it was relatively easy for me to do it compared to someone who has to punch a clock. What do those people do?

AW: I think there are lots of ways, actually. I think you have to decide you’re going to work at this a little bit. To begin with, you set aside a day that you might want to eat with your family. It doesn’t have to be a dinner or a complicated thing — it could be an afternoon tea. It could be a Saturday lunch. It could be a breakfast. But hopefully you will decide the following week you can do it twice a week. That’s the beginning.

I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday and I’m buying for family and friends I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat on the weekend but also about what I’m going to make for the following week. You know those tomatoes, I’m not getting them dead ripe unless I’m eating them for lunch — I might get them a little firm so that by Wednesday I can have them in a salad. I’ve always got something in the pantry — I talk a lot about what you can cook when you just have a closet full of pasta and grains.

Salon: So how often would you go to the farmers’ market in a week?

AW: Twice. I mean, if I could I’d go every day, but I go on Saturday when I can buy a lot of things, and on Tuesday. And then I’ll go get other things in the regular market as a sort of backup.

Salon: You recognize, though, that it takes more time to do it this way than going to the store.

AW: I do absolutely recognize it takes more time. But this is all part of fast food values. Let’s do it quickly. Let’s get it over with. Let’s let the machines do it for us, because kitchen work is drudgery and so is garden work. Let somebody else do that.

Get out of that mind-set and tell yourself cooking is a meditation. I like to do it. It’s relaxing for me to come home — it truly is! — and wash the salad. I love to see the salad in the sink. To spin the salad. I like to dry it. I like to pound to make a vinaigrette with my mortar and pestle. I enjoy grinding coffee and putting it in the filter and warming up the milk. It’s part of a ritual that gives my life meaning and beauty.

I feel particularly like this on my book tour, that this is a crazy kind of life. It’s over before you know it. And so you have to find ways of slowing it down. And this is an everyday delightful way to slow it down. Take time. Take a moment. The most important value of this book aside from nourishment is that there’s pleasure in the doing. It’s pleasure in work. It’s something that we don’t understand in this country. Work is over there and pleasure’s over here, and we work our whole lives so that we can go on a cruise ship. It’s just insanity, and some people don’t even make it to the cruise ship.

So we have to figure out about everyday pleasure. It’s trying to bring people back to their senses. Put the smells in the house. Make the chicken stock so it makes people hungry. Burn the rosemary, make the farro, make the bread. These are all aromatic ways to bring people back to the table.

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I think this goes directly to what my foodblogging is all about. It really sums up what I want in life — to be healthy and have a positive outlook. Now I’m not naive. I wouldn’t be able to shop at the farmer’s market regularly if I were laid off all of a sudden [and for that I'm grateful].

That said, I think the principle would still be the same. Okay, so the produce wouldn’t have that stunning freshness. I’d have to settle for regular $2 supermarket eggs. That’s okay. If anything, the lesson Alice teaches us is that cooking is a luxury that any of us can afford even in the worst possible situation. It’s something we should take time to savor. We only have one life and it’s up to us to make the most of it while we can. What better way to do it than to start with food?

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You can read the entire interview here. The audio version is here (which I recommend over the print version).
Related discussion on eGullet can be viewed here.