Food and culture
Food – pretty general, no? To be honest, we agree, but we would like to change the attribute “general” (which in my understanding is rather negative) to something more positive? Uplifting? Meaningful? Less technical? Something of everything.
Yes, the more appropriate or fitting term is as follows: diverse.
We come from a country that potentially has an abonnement for a safe last place in a looooong list countries that people name when asked: “What country or place do you think of, when you think of food?” Or “Food culture”. Or “good food” Or when you ask in which country people are very passionate about food”. Let me guess the first 5
- Italy
- France
- Spain
- Greece
- India
- …
- ..,
../.
And the last place goes to GERMANY. Congratulations!
We think North Korea or Greenland features before the Fatherland.
Lidl and Aldi
There is a reason why the godfathers of discounter – or shall we say the GODS of cheap supermarket – or can we say the gods of soulless supermarkets are Aldi and Lidl. Both owner / owner families belong the richest Germans to have ever existed.
Richest Germans? For what?
For strapping off culture, sophistication, joy, taste, quality, social relationship, plenty of time, selection, sustainability, environment friendliness, connection, freshness, room for failure and the soul of one of the most important aspects of our live: Food and how we get it, understand it, appreciate it, value it, taste it and respect it, and with it the producers of the same food.
We don’t want to shed alligator tears. Both named examples made food and other products a lot cheaper which is a good thing. They pay the employees well and contribute as philanthropists greatly to society.
They have revolutionized the way an industry works
And they don’t sell only crappy low-quality products. Just the opposite partly. In any case and here in my conclusion: Ze Germans don’t like to spend a lot on their food.
And that obviously leads to a culture of underappreciation. And to a drastic restriction of accessing “other” than cheap food. Not necessarily expensive food but food less produced on a industrial scale with solely profit in mind.
And we are speaking of culture: have you ever had the joy of discussing paste with an Italian? Or pastry with a French person? It astounds me what level of detail exists. And of course, there is no “School of Food” in France or Italy that every single citizen has been to.
It’s a part of the culture. Day to day appreciation of food.
Our interest in food
Long rant, one conclusion: WE MAINTAIN AN EXCEPTIONAL HEAVY INTEREST IN FOOD.
Not just eating: restaurant experiences, cooking food, food culture, absorbing how different persons, cultures, chefs understand, appreciate and make food, home coming to eat Mamas food, exploring new flavors, trying new styles, tasting, liking, loving, hating, criticize, praise, be taken by surprise of good, bad and different, concepts, styles, executions, creativity, combinations, places, chairs, sofas, lights, cellars, palaces and place. Enjoying and constantly expanding my taste inventory: I enjoy line cuisine, mc donalds, Chinese, Japanese, pizza, eggs, puddings, cans, bottles, deep fried, raw, fine dining street food, urban, meaty, vegan, gluten free, mac’n’cheese, buffets, all you can eat, no star to three star, creamy, spicy, thai, Indian and so forth.
WE EAT EVERYTHING.
When we say everything, we mean we try everything. Not everything is obviously your day-to-day. Food, but we believe there is a place there is a time and there’s company and there is a restaurant and there’s an evening and as the occasion to try every food on the planet. We appreciate the simpleness and the purity of simple Italian food, but we can also develop extreme excitement for a complicated increasing 10 course “menu degustation”. McDonald’s fast food is something we really like, but also Pizza, the food of my mother and a sandwich from the petrol station. Everything has its time, and everything has its place.
My hometown – the Black Forest
For example, when I was a kid, and even when as an adult, we regularly drove long distance from our hometown in the black forest to the very ends of France, either in the north the Britannia, or in the south Hossegore, Biarritz and a lot of places up and down the beautiful sandy beach of the Atlantic western coast of France. The feeling of departing and going and driving through the night, getting up early in the morning after not too much sleep because you’re so excited, and then driving in the morning, stopping a little bit tired at a petrol station somewhere in the middle of France, and going into the station and ordering a coffee and one of those long soft tuna sandwiches is a very cherished taste of its own, that I’m very fond of. Soft sweet baguette like bread, to know, because hard-boiled eggs and Mayo.
Surely industrially created, and something you wouldn’t eat on a Sunday lunchtime. But at this occasion, is most probably the best will in the world. Sometimes we also packed our travel lunch into a big cooling box, and that contained many many hard-boiled eggs, rose fresh from a German bakery, picked up 4 o’clock in the morning just after leaving the oven, black forest ham, butter, smoked pork sausages called “Wienerle” and another smoked salami like sausage called “Landjager”.
Family Courts
And there was the Fairy Mousse. A invention of my mother, as far as I know. hard-boiled eggs, cut into small pieces, a lot of garlic, tomato paste, and butter. A medium-sized Tupperware bowl with lid and everyone takes a plastic knife and put the staff and spread generously on one side of a fresh white crusty bun. You can imagine that everyone was smelling like a Greek field but that as well is a memory of getting together, eating home-made food, be excited about the holiday ahead, resting somewhere in the middle of nowhere next to toilet but enjoying having the easy and very very satisfying home food.
Family vacations in France
My fable for France and its food is potentially related to many, many holidays as written above. When we go as a family, most of the time to Brittany, there’s a very small island funnily enough called the “Big Island”, (Ile Grande), with a beautiful piece of land next to an old stone pit on peaceful green place of rest stand to modern like houses and we would occupy those for three or two weeks in the summer. One of the two sacred things per day is either to walk in an early morning crisp and a little bit wet like Brittany is, full of character, you slender down through that little, little village and into the local bakery where potentially 95 of the customers are tourists. Not necessarily Germans or non-French people because the front have to make holiday in their own country. Who can blame them?
The bakery is urban as it comes. Non-gentrified wide a little bit shabby and two feisty ladies in their shouting at you what you want. But the way it presents itself, versus the quality, filly grain execution of old craftsmanship and the smell and the feeling and the butter and the new Turner and fresh raspberry jam and poor ham finely sliced in pink or just the pure bred itself, pain au chocolate, flutes and plain croissants: it could not be any more opposite. That describes the standard of bakery and pastry pretty well. For French people that standard, for us, the foreigners it’s an absolute delight even from the smallest village bakery better than any sort of restaurant that you can imagine from home.
My time in London
Bakery, sandwiches and any sort of similar products and food however I also like to eat from those gentrified corporate tired mass production sensitively branded chains that I connect with one of my favourite towns in the world: London. Bakeries like Paul. Sometimes, and that with a lot of pleasure, and a sausage roll of Greggs, grab a sandwich at Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s, all, one of my all-time favourite places to eat is Pret a Manger. Please don’t judge me on how they produce food, whether it economic friendly, gender neutral and whatnot. It’s about going there, eating one scrambled egg with sun-dried tomatoes before a long day in the city – heaven!
And to take longing a little bit out of the crossfire, certainly of never eating more diversified, more creative, more intense than in one of London’s thousands of restaurants. I lived pretty close to Borough market, which everyone knows from every chef in London who thinks he’s alternative and urban and truthful. It is a very very interesting market, and there is a lot of high-quality food but for me it’s a little pretentious, but again who can blame anyone, how many times it was featured on Jamie Oliver, or any other fancy television chef, they need to make the best of it. I used to go with a friend to Borough market, normally on a Saturday morning. We were horribly hung over from last night and would go with very small eyes and a very great appetite and hunger for something really unhealthy or really unusual to Borough market. There is someone the middle stand where they only sell oysters. Fresh oysters from somewhere in Great Britain. The guy, a feisty English bloke, Cockney accent, long green plastic apron, strong, tattooed, Hairy underarms and using regular building gloves to precisely be manoeuvring a small thick pikey blade of an oyster knife.
The opening of the grey, edgy beautifully patterned shell of the oyster, opening it like a treasure chest and leaving a lot of salty water inside the lower bigger the prize shall of the oyster was spectacular on its own. He would hand to you and say, “seven quid ma’e”. Again, that oyster experience is totally different to a Michelin restaurant, and the oyster itself is celebrated as a precious product from the sea. Nothing where people will discuss to have one or two between seven courses.
What it will be about
In this part of my blog, we will be as diverse as we was elaborating above. Not just about food, but also cooking, wine tasting, kitchen tools, food tools, decoration, portraits of persons, travelling, shopping, restaurants, bars, petrol station and baby food.
We will mix, discuss, post, film and we will be for 100%: open minded, without preoccupations, authentic and raw.
