I was watching an interview with Jacques Pepin a while ago, and someone asked him, looking back over his life as a professional chef and instructor, what changes in the food/culinary industry did he see as significant.
He went on quite a while, touched on a fad or two that he didn't like, the rise of the celebrity chef, people having more interest in their food, and how ingredients have become much more widely available around the world.
So, I ask you all here: in your lifetime, what changes have you noticed, and I'm more interested in what has impacted you directly, rather than some big-picture observations. What changed culinarily in your personal life from when you first became interested in food to now?
For me, a couple of things. When I was a kid, there was no international cuisine except for Dominos/Pizza Hut. I remember when the first Taco Bell opened (in the next town over), none of my family or friends even knew what a taco was, we had to ask around at school.
Nowadays, of course, not only am I surrounded by fast-food versions of Chinese, Mexican, and Italian cuisines, but less than an hour from me are proper Middle Eastern, Indian, African, Bolivian, and other legitimate international restaurants, as well as decent seafood (not that I can judge it because I don't eat it) and traditional American dishes in a higher-end setting, but even going to mid-market "lowest common denominator" places (like Applebee's, Olive Garden, Abuelo's) is a step above what we had as a kid. It may sound funny to say it, but we never had anything as "exotic" or "fancy" as Olive Garden - it just didn't exist in our area when I was a kid/teen.
The other thing is the explosion in the variety of ingredients available, even in my small Midwestern town. Potato chips/crisps came in three flavors when I was a kid, and one of those was plain, which isn't even a flavor. Ice cream was vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, and if you got really fancy, you could get the Neapolitan variation, which was...a layer of vanilla, a layer of chocolate, and a layer of strawberry, all in the same carton. Imagine that!
Cheese was American, Colby, Cheddar, and Swiss. That was it. No feta, no gruyere, no Brie. Flour was AP or self-rising, and cake flour only at specialty stores. No bread flour, no rice flour, almond flour, etc. No flavored tea except for mint. I remember when Celestial Seasonings first hit our Kroger - the boxes were like little works of art.
Nothing organic. At all. Produce was just very typical - apples, oranges, pears, grapes, berries. Lettuce, potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. No pomegranate, no kiwi fruit, no mangoes, nothing like that.
Since we're all from all over, I'd be interested in how things are different now for you, compared to when you were a child.
He went on quite a while, touched on a fad or two that he didn't like, the rise of the celebrity chef, people having more interest in their food, and how ingredients have become much more widely available around the world.
So, I ask you all here: in your lifetime, what changes have you noticed, and I'm more interested in what has impacted you directly, rather than some big-picture observations. What changed culinarily in your personal life from when you first became interested in food to now?
For me, a couple of things. When I was a kid, there was no international cuisine except for Dominos/Pizza Hut. I remember when the first Taco Bell opened (in the next town over), none of my family or friends even knew what a taco was, we had to ask around at school.
Nowadays, of course, not only am I surrounded by fast-food versions of Chinese, Mexican, and Italian cuisines, but less than an hour from me are proper Middle Eastern, Indian, African, Bolivian, and other legitimate international restaurants, as well as decent seafood (not that I can judge it because I don't eat it) and traditional American dishes in a higher-end setting, but even going to mid-market "lowest common denominator" places (like Applebee's, Olive Garden, Abuelo's) is a step above what we had as a kid. It may sound funny to say it, but we never had anything as "exotic" or "fancy" as Olive Garden - it just didn't exist in our area when I was a kid/teen.
The other thing is the explosion in the variety of ingredients available, even in my small Midwestern town. Potato chips/crisps came in three flavors when I was a kid, and one of those was plain, which isn't even a flavor. Ice cream was vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, and if you got really fancy, you could get the Neapolitan variation, which was...a layer of vanilla, a layer of chocolate, and a layer of strawberry, all in the same carton. Imagine that!
Cheese was American, Colby, Cheddar, and Swiss. That was it. No feta, no gruyere, no Brie. Flour was AP or self-rising, and cake flour only at specialty stores. No bread flour, no rice flour, almond flour, etc. No flavored tea except for mint. I remember when Celestial Seasonings first hit our Kroger - the boxes were like little works of art.
Nothing organic. At all. Produce was just very typical - apples, oranges, pears, grapes, berries. Lettuce, potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. No pomegranate, no kiwi fruit, no mangoes, nothing like that.
Since we're all from all over, I'd be interested in how things are different now for you, compared to when you were a child.
