The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.91: The Origins of Artisanal Food in America

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

Patric Kuh, James Beard award winner, Food Critic for LA Magazine, and author of Finding the Flavours We Lost: From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food, joins me to talk about his book.  I ask Patric about the cynicism surrounding bearded Brooklyn craft pickle-makers, whether it's okay for food artisans to sacrifice a little bit of quality for efficiency, and how small-batch producers can remain competitive against their large-scale industrial competitors.   

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. Perhaps I was a little protective in the book of those people who have chosen to grow, but that's because I get tired of the argument that only small is good. Because only small is good if you're making three loaves of bread and employing nobody. You're not really embracing the possibilities, which are age-old, of economic independence behind being a real artisan. So if you listen to this show, you know that I read a lot of nonfiction books about farming and food in preparation for the interviews I conduct. Most of them are worth reading simply because of the information or arguments they contain.

But only a few of them contain really good prose. Finding the Flavors We Lost is one of those books. It was written by this guy. Hi, so I'm Patrick Kew. I'm the restaurant critic of Los Angeles Magazine. I've been doing it for 15 years, and I've also written a couple of culinary histories. The most recent one is Finding the Flavors We Lost,

From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food. And about 10 years ago, I wrote The Last Days of Oat Cuisine, The Coming of Age of America's Restaurants. Patrick failed to mention that he's received a James Beard Award for his food writing. Finding the Flavors We Lost represents Patrick's effort to understand and explain the origins and evolution of America's artisanal food culture, which, unlike Europe's, has pretty shallow roots. But it's also a book of stories about people who are seriously passionate about the food they produce, written by someone who's as committed to quality in his own vocation as the people he's writing about. I spoke to Patrick in late January of this year. Here's our conversation. Patrick Kew, thanks a lot for joining me on the Rubinant Podcast. Pleasure to be here, Jordan.

Patrick, I've read a lot of books about food culture, and almost all of them begin with a preface or introduction that lays out the author's motivations and thesis. Yours doesn't. From page one, you immerse your readers in the lies of the artisanal food producers whose stories you're telling. And I'm wondering if omitting an introduction was purely a stylistic choice, or if you were trying to make a statement by not making one? That's a good question. I wasn't, I don't think it rises to making a statement, but I did want to get into the story as quickly as possible. And some prefaces that I read sound like a lot of throat clearing before getting into what one wants to talk about.

And I knew I had to make the story as compelling as possible so it wasn't dry, theoretical about food. It had to be about people food it had to be about people it had to be about flavor and i had a great scene of this uh this homesteader receiving a cow on her wedding day and not knowing what to do with the milk and i i sort of said to myself let's start there and let's start immediately and let's get the ball rolling. Let's get the narrative rolling. And so, yeah, I was conscious there was going to be no preface. And I just hoped that I could build up the argument as I went along and not have a big expository five, 10 pages saying what the

argument was going to be. I hope it worked. I think, you know, Patrick, I want to tell you, I think it did. I found it, I found the style refreshing and there is a thesis there. There is an argument there, but it's, it's, it's just wound through these, these really beautifully written stories you tell about these producers. So, um, yeah, I think it worked really well. Uh, so, so Patrick, I don't, I don't, I want to, I want to start maybe with the topic of cynicism. I don't think that many people would doubt that the artisanal food movement has demonstrated a sincere commitment to producing really good food. But there's also a cynical element of the public about artisanal food. Some people see it as a feat or precious or elitist. And for this book, you interviewed what I have to assume was dozens of food artisans across the country. And I'm

wondering if you think those characterizations are fair or to what degree they're fair. Okay. So we're diving into really what is the current artisanal scene with that question, and you're absolutely right. Certainly a lot of people think artisanal food is for the elite few who care about some sort of nuance of flavor that everybody else is perfectly happy to live without. to live without. And I certainly was aware of that, you know, as somebody who was researching this, as somebody who was purchasing it, you know, sometimes I see things like, you know, free trade, free trade, small batch vodka, free trade, like quinoa, small batch vodka, free trade, like quinoa, small batch vodka. And I said to myself, oh, my goodness, you know, how small, how tiny the demographic who's interested in this particular ingredient is. What is the perception of somebody who is just browsing in the liquor store?

Is this what their idea of artisanal is? And there is this understanding, this perception, it's very twee, it's very inconsequential. And so, therefore, I sort of had to make sure that the consequences, the importance, that the consequences, the importance, the real passion that existed behind a search for flavor. And that's why craft became such an important aspect of this book, because people are forcing themselves to learn excellence. forcing themselves to learn excellence.

And I don't mean it intellectually. The cheesemakers, bakers, brewers, you name it. There's intelligence of the hands that has to be learned. And American artisans, Canadian artisans, are learning this without all the benefits of European artisans, which is the guild system, the apprenticeship system, even the family history of great quality, the cultural idea of great quality. You know, certainly in the United States, many, many of the artisans who grew up, who told me, you know, I grew up eating Kraft cheese,

I grew up eating just, you know just store-bought regular bread. It was passion that led them to learn how to become artisans. So that was one aspect of why it's important. And then there's an important aspect, which artisans sort of don't want to talk about, is growth and size and having economic importance. A lot of artisans today are in a position where they can employ people, that they're getting larger, that they're selling to more people. And I find anybody today who can create jobs and do it through something of quality is

very much operating in the real world and doing something that's fantastic. And so whether it's craft or just the economic force that artisans have managed to establish, these are far from inconsequential little, you know, one percenter worries. This is very much operating in the real world, but operating in the real world with an idea of excellence and quality, which makes it actually inspiring. Well, let's talk about that economic force or the economic challenges that artisans face that you mentioned, because there's a real, you do a great job of exploring in the book, the tension between, you know, producing food for flavor and producing

food for efficiency, because at least in the mainstream food system, there really is, there's, you kind of, well, our food system is really emphasized one over the other. And that in pursuing the immense levels of efficiency that it's attained, it's largely lost flavor. But then there's the paradox, as you kind of mentioned, that it's a complicated question but um if i may i think you took a bit of a like you were defensive of a lot of those artisans in the book who have chosen to to expand and to succeed yeah um but but and yet and yet if they go too far i think there is a point when they perhaps have sacrificed too much flavor so so do you have any sense of where that line should be drawn well i think I think the line should be drawn by the consumer who says, this is no longer as good as it used to be.

And so it's not a very theoretical – I don't have a theoretical answer for that. Artisans have always existed in the marketplace. If you're not selling, it's a hobby. So an artisan has always had to face, you know, the reality of the marketplace. And on the good side, that's created a level of independence. That's created a way to navigate life. On the, it's not the other side, but there are market forces at work also.

You have to make something well enough that a person wants to buy it. So, growth. There isn't a number. You know, one artisan said to me, I've always used a mixing bowl to bake. One of the pioneer American Californian bakers said, I always used a mixing bowl, a Hobart mixing bowl to bake. Would somebody tell me the size of a mixing bowl that once you go to that size,

you're no longer an artisan? You know, it's a good question. It doesn't exist. If the quality drops, the market will respond by no longer saying it is worth the extra cost to purchase what you're doing. certainly have to be on the lookout for very cynical market manipulators who will produce things practically on an industrial scale, but wrap it in, you know, paper, old paper, and wrap it in little twine and have kind of letterpress font labeling. And you're absolutely right. There's an awful lot of cynicism out there. But to start from, I get very nervous about the premise of growth is bad.

And perhaps I was a little protective in the book of those people who have chosen to grow, but that's because I get tired of the argument that only small is good. Because only small is good. Because only small is good if you're making three loaves of bread and employing nobody. You're not really embracing the possibilities, which are age old, of economic independence behind being a real artisan. Brewers are constantly having this discussion because craft brewing has become defined by small scale. Now, the American Brewers Association has a real number, 6 million barrels a year. It used to be 2 million barrels a year until Samuel Adams, who makes more than 2 million barrels a year, said, oh, so we're no longer a

craft brewer. We practically invented craft brewing, but now we're no longer a craft brewer. So they upped it to 6 million barrels a year. For me, these numbers are inconsequential. It's about the quality. And the argument has been oversimplified to growth is selling out. And if we just continue that, it really will become the elitist joke that people are all too ready to accuse artisanal food of. Patrick, when I read your book, it seems so clear to me that at least the people you profiled are true artisans,

are very, very sincere in their efforts. And it had me wondering if some of that bad reputation and cynicism comes from the presence of imposters in the market that muddy the waters when it comes to people forming opinions about food. Because it doesn't take much fake instances of fake artisanal food for people to maybe paint the whole industry as kind of full of shit. industry is kind of full of shit. Yeah. Well, again, to talk about brewing for a second, huge

brewers, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, they've all started little side breweries like Blue Moon that sort of have the artisanal sort of fonts, the artisanal posters, the whole idea of small batch, but there's huge breweries behind them.

And so they've sort of co-opted the idealism. I've always come back to this idea of time, because I feel time is sort of the key question in this. What industrial efficiency did was pencil out time. Time was always what established, what created flavor. And there were certainly different notions of time. notions of time. A baker might require 24 hours to go from mixing bowl to bakery shelf. A distiller might need three years to go from still to bottle. Those three years of a whiskey, a bourbon slowly aging in a barrel in a rickhouse. A cheesemaker may need a few months, but industrial efficiency, the first thing that they penciled out was time.

You know, things sitting in warehouses was costing them money. Things sitting in vats and barrels and proofing baskets, you name it, that's money to industrial efficient approach to food. So I ignore the packaging because packaging can be so easily manipulated. I ignore the font. I almost ignore the poetic, lyrical stories on people's websites because who knows if that's true. But what I key in on is how much time did it take to make this and how much time did it take to develop?

Did the producer allow it for the flavor to develop? And, you know, when you're in with a cheesemaker and they say, it's not ready after eight months and I'm going to leave it, you know, nine, 10 months before putting it out to market. That's all financial sacrifice on that person's part to be able to, when they sell that wheel of cheese, to say it is as good as it's going to be. And so I guess it's a long-winded answer, but for me, the key aspect of it all is the time. So I think there's no better illustration of that concept of the time that you're talking about in your book than maybe the story of bourbon and how the flavor, the true flavors of corn were lost from bourbon

because of advances in the distilling process. Can you recall that? I know it's been a long time since you wrote it. Can you recall that? And if so, can you talk about it a bit? Yes. Well, what I was really interested in, I went to Kentucky, and I went as a person who loved bourbon,

but didn't really understand more than a very basic understanding of distilling. And I don't think we have time for long talk on distilling, but certainly in those early years, it was a very raw product it wasn't aged it wasn't the sort of a very something like raw harsh alcohol now by by the 1830s and 1840s that they did understood that aging and oak barrels really mellowed the spirit while maintaining that wonderful core corn flavor. Well, industrial efficiency, of course, came knocking, and the column still was invented in Dublin, Ireland, actually.

and invented in Dublin, Ireland, actually. And it was soon being used by distillers who could distill thousands and thousands and thousands of gallons of neutral spirits in tiny fractions of time, like one day. And, of course, the price was the flavor was taken from whiskey. And it very much became a neutral spirit, which could be turned into, I mean, talk about cynical. With that neutral spirit, they would add coloring, they would add flavoring, and they could call it, you know, whiskey. They could call it bourbon. They could call it gin. They could call it brandy.

You know, all these things in reality are made from different ingredients. But once you have neutral spirits and just depend on coloring and flavoring, you can do anything. you can do anything. And what the modern artisanal craft distilling movement has done is very much reclaim a tradition of ingredient paradox because distilling, as you know, it condenses, and then it condenses the essence of an alcoholic beverage, maybe a 5% alcohol, but by distilling, it purifies and increases the alcohol and renders it almost the purest version of that ingredient. And that's, of course, why people love a great Armagnac, a great brandy, a single malt scotch. And modern artisanal distilling is very much bringing that idea of the ingredient can speak through this product. Distilling does not just strip away and leave you with neutral alcohol. Great distilling celebrates an ingredient, and it can very much celebrate a, part of our heritage of corn. Okay, Patrick, I'm an organic

veggie grower. I'm a small scale veggie grower. And I'm not going to call myself an artisan, and I'm not just being humble. But I do care about flavor that I'm producing. about flavor that I'm producing. And I get asked a lot of the time by my customers and just others that I'm talking to about what I do, why would I produce costs more than the stuff that's in the grocery stores? And to some degree, you just illustrated why it can cost more with your story about bourbon. But I was really curious to ask you if in your research for this book or just in other research you've done, if you've had a chance to see economies of scale in action, whether it's by like mainstream food industry or whether it's just by artisans who have taken major steps towards, you know, more efficient manufacturing.

towards more efficient manufacturing. I'm wondering if you have developed any kind of quantitative sense of just how much more profitably or efficiently one can operate at larger economies of scale. Because when I answer those questions that people ask me, I have a really tough time giving a good answer because I only have an idea that these much larger industrial farms can produce things much more cheaply just because of economies of

scale, but I haven't actually seen them. Do you have a better sense of what can be achieved? Well, let me see if I can, it's such a smart question. Let me see if I can do it justice. It's such a smart question. Let me see if I can do it justice. First of all, I think anybody in the food world is almost operating at a disadvantage compared to the doctor, I see there's maybe three or four doctors sharing a waiting room, sharing medical equipment. They've got some kind of sharing the cost of having a person there to greet, to take calls, to an office manager. I mean, doctors have figured out how to band together and reduce their costs. Other industries are going towards automation, whether it's banks that really don't want you to walk inside the bank and take up a person's time. They want you to do everything on the ATM.

Department stores that no longer have that many people working the floor and they leave people to browse and just have one or two people and somebody at the cash register. I mean, all these other industries are figuring out how do we cut costs, how do we cut costs. Food, whether it's restaurants or producers, cannot often take advantage of this. I mean, the restaurant business is trapped in a sort of two waiters for every ten tables. Chefs are criticized if they have too many operations. It's almost like, no, you have to maintain business practices that the rest of the world doesn't have to. And artisans and farmers, I think, are, together with restaurant people, sort of regarded as having to have certain ways of operation that sometimes are not really economically feasible.

So that's one aspect of it. The economies of scale, let's just talk about cheese, most artisan cheesemakers want to know the herd of cows that their milk is coming from. to know the herd of cows that their milk is coming from. They either own the cows and milk them themselves, or they have a deal with one farm, and that farm produces the milk. So very few artisanal cheesemakers are using co-op or commodity milk, because they would argue that the quality of their cheese begins with the quality of the milk. So they don't want 50 farmers' milks mixed together and then being delivered to them.

Bread. Wheat. One hears constantly about artisan bakers rejecting commodity wheat, that wheat grown by large entities or even large commodities. More and more, bakers are promoting the farmers who are growing the wheat. So again, that's a reduction in size, not an increase in size. It's sort of, it's almost, it is almost a paradox because artisans want to sell more, need to sell more, but they want to source the ingredients from smaller and smaller plots of land

or from smaller individuals. I think what I see, and I sort of have my restaurant critic hat on now, I've worked at the restaurant critic for 16 years also, is rather than increase their size, what farmers have sort of figured out is increase your quality. And every ambitious restaurant in L.A., certainly the city I know best, is listing the names of the farmers who are selling them their vegetables and fruits. And so you differentiate yourself. It's not quite economies of scale.

It's economies of quality that when the quality gets to a certain stage and the chef needs that quality, they're prepared to pay more for that quality and the farm becomes sustainable. and you know you bite into something the big grown by a by uh... uh... uh... a smaller farmers at batman but this is the the the the unique the food this ingredient captured the this place captured you know i get nervous around the notions of terroir but sometimes that's just so there and every mouthful that it's not that, you know, it's obvious it exists. So, Patrick, last question.

There's a section in your book where you're talking about food provenance. And you write that, quote, I sometimes think that the idea of indigenous flavor is being burdened with recreating the bonds that industrialization destroyed, end quote. And I'm just wondering if you could elaborate on that, on what you meant there. a little protective of people who are doing good work and nervousness about huge societal shifts being loaded onto them. You know, one example I'll give is chefs. And, you know, in L.A., we have a very large and unfortunate homeless problem. And chefs do their best to donate extra food. I mean, there are no more generous people than chefs.

They're constantly giving to benefits, giving their time giving their employees time giving uh... you know giving through it but you know i hear people tell about at the you know there was a homeless person down the street to homeless people how can you justify going to to have a you know uh... an expensive meal at sort of bothers me because a

you know that chef is creating jobs and tax dollars and indirectly helping solutions to homelessness. But also just, you know, and there's also a doctor's office down the street. There's also a dentist. There's also a gas station. Why is it the chef who is responsible for solving issues that we as a society have to solve? So there's an aspect of, you know, let's not do that. And then from the point of view of the broader food world, it's, you know, artisans are people who are devoting their lives to quality. And yes, there's a, on an individual basis, they are reconnecting people to their heritage, reconnecting people to flavors that were completely endangered, if not extinct.

But let's leave it at that. If this heirloom pippin reminds you of a pippin in your grandparents' garden, that's great, but that sometimes is enough. It's not why has industrial efficiency and mass agricultural practices stripped flavor from the food we eat? Those are big questions. Those are questions that have to be engaged with as a society, just as we have to engage with homelessness as a society. But I don't think you can load that on the shoulders of every baker, cheesemaker, brewer,

chocolate maker, coffee roaster. They are doing their little bit, but that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't as charged with... We're not absolved from engaging with that question just because we're consumers. And so I think what I was trying to get at and what you quote is, each artisan is responsible for bringing their, and farmer, and I do believe there's artisan farming. Each artisan and farmer is responsible for bringing their plot of land, you know, for hoeing their row. And whether that's coffee roasting, bourbon making, single source tea, you name it. But we as a community and as a society are responsible for addressing the bigger problems.

So I think that's what I was trying to get at. Well, Patrick, it was a really enjoyable read. I'm really glad you wrote it and that I had a chance to read it. And I very much appreciate you coming on the show to talk about it today. I'm delighted. And thank you for all these great questions. You've really made me think about the book in a new way. So thank you. All right. So I hope you enjoyed that, folks. I highly recommend Patrick's book. And guess what? I've got one copy of the book to give away to a Canadian listener who promotes this episode on Twitter or shares the post for this episode on Facebook, which you'll find at the Ruminant Podcast Facebook page. wine, chocolate that I'm giving away. That was the book I covered in the last episode.

As for the wire weeder giveaway from Two Bad Cats, I haven't had time to ask Peter who won, so I'll announce that in the next episode two weeks from now. Okay, so look, it's my intention with this new format to include a shorter segment in each episode that's aimed squarely at the practical aspects of farming and gardening. I don't have one this week, but cut me some slack, okay folks? I didn't have time this time, because two weeks ago, my son was born. Vanessa and I are the proud owners of a brand new organic baby boy, and we couldn't be happier, but we also couldn't be more tired. Well, okay, I could.

Vanessa's been kind of taking one for the team as far as sleep deprivation goes, but I have been really busy with the baby and so it made it hard to do a second segment for this episode. Anyway, his name's Levon Samur Mar and we like him. I'll talk to you in two weeks, everyone, and I'll bring a practical segment with me come hell or high water. Oh, and please consider doing the following. Promote episodes of this podcast that you like on your social media so that others can experience your joy. And write me emails. I like getting them. Editor at theruminant.ca. Secretly, or not so secretly, I guess now, I was disappointed I didn't get a single email about that short piece about being in the Zone that I did in December, the one that features that Metallica song. Which probably

confirms my biggest fear in releasing it. That it wasn't cool, it was just lame. Which is okay. Sometimes you gotta be willing to skin your knees. And don't bother complimenting it now. I don't need your pity. But send me emails about other stuff, good or bad. Okay? Okay. XOXO, Jordan. but send me emails about other stuff good or bad okay okay xoxo and maybe a roll of duct tape and we'll run right outside of the city's reaches we'll live off chestnuts spring water and peaches we'll own nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be me Because why would we live in a place that don't want us

A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car To keep my love going strong

So we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be to be