Ugly, But...

I have to be careful here... I'm about to spend an entire post complaining about the Western World's unhealthy obsession with beautiful food, all the while maintaining a blog where I glorify the same. Let's see how fine a line I can walk.

There are several facets to this particular obsession with perfect foods which we all share. At it's most basic, the urge to eat only the most beautiful foods is completely primal. We want the brightest fruit and vegetables, the darkest roast meats, the most perfectly shaped eggs. These things indicate they are good for us and will taste the same. Anything sub-par, any imperfection, gives us pause. An attractive strawberry, for example, looks and smells so because it it at the height of ripeness, and more or less pest free. Still green? Mouldy? Wormy? No longer arousing. It's part of our survival instinct.

Chef's of course, take advantage of this instinct by making their dishes look as beautiful as possible. Aesthetic concerns even sometimes outweigh those of flavor. Ever wonder why so many professional cooking recipes call for blanching green vegetables in pots of salted water and then shocking them in an ice bath? It's because the higher temperature of salt water cooks the greens faster and the ice bath instantly stops the cooking. The result: the chlorophyll doesn't break down as much and you get to eat bright green veggies. The flavor isn't affected one way or another. Young chef's are told over and over: “It must taste good, and it must look good.”

Professional cooks are not the only ones to benefit from our propensity to be drawn to pretty produce. The local fruit shop depends on it. Next time you are buying a few apples, take a look around at the other shoppers. Everyone in the produce section will be carefully examining fruits and vegetables as they drop them into their carts, looking for the smallest bruise or blemish. Any offenders are rejected.

And why not? We pay a certain price for fresh food and expect the best. In fact, the price we pay includes the assumption that only the perfect specimens will be consumed. The remainder, damaged in transit, scarred by adverse weather, bruised by inattentive customers, will be discarded.



This is the natural state of the local produce section. Anything that is not at the height of perfection will not be purchased and is therefor removed. I'm just as guilty as anyone. I've seen a million or so tomatoes in my professional career and I know what an ideal one looks like. You better believe I spend the time looking for prime examples when I shop.

However this embrace of flawlessness has long since slipped over the edge into obsession. It's now a fixation on perfection to the point of perversion. It's a general affliction that sees the rejection of bunches of asparagus because one tip is damaged, a punnet of strawberries returned for the sake of one smashed one, a peach set back down at the discovery of a thumbprint.

All this rejection leads directly to wastage. Produce, as I'm sure most of my readers know, is a variable and imperfect lot. Ever grown your own? How many of your tomatoes came up perfect? 20%? Fewer? Where, in the commercial world, does the rest of it go?

Some of it, obviously, goes into tinned fruit, into chutneys, into jams, into livestock feed. A good deal goes into landfill.

I worked, for a short time, in an office on Wilshire Blvd in the center of Los Angeles where a coworker brought in a bulging bad of homegrown lemons. The were greenish, packed with seeds, pithy, misshapen, and quite sweet-tart and delicious, as a good lemon often is. I took a few home to make lemon curd out of, a couple more disappeared, but the majority sat in the staff room until some brave cleaner tossed the lot out. They'd sat long past the mouldy stage. No one, it seems, is willing to eat an ugly, home-grown lemon.



“Brutti ma buoni.” Ugly, but tasty. It's an Italian phrase which has been adopted, to some extent in the English-speaking culinary world. The phrase, in Italian is applied to a certain type of cookie which is purposely made roughly, to assure it is ugly. I'd like to extend the concept to fresh produce. Pick up that over-ripe, split tomato. Use that brown banana in a milkshake. I'm giving it a shot. This week I am applying the concept to apples.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a roadside apple tree I pick from year to year. I was in the country on the weekend and the apples are falling-from-the-tree ripe. They are ugly. They vary greatly in size, often have worm holes, are quite dirty and slightly misshapen, and they are the tastiest, most crisp, tart apples I think I've ever had. I brought home a basketful.

Apple Galette

This dessert ranks amongst the most simple in terms of preparation, presentation, and overall work involved. It is one of those simple desserts where the end product is magically complex given the limited number of ingredients.

2 lg cooking apples (Granny Smith will do)
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 Tbsp coarse sugar
2 Tbsp honey, warmed
4 pastry disks (below)

Preheat your oven to 180ºC. Peel, core, and slice the apples thinly. Arrange the slices in spirals on the pastry disks. Brush with butter, then brush with the honey, and sprinkle liberally with sugar. Place on baking paper-lined trays, and bake for 25-30 minutes. Until the pastry is crisp and the apples begin to color around the edges. Remove from oven and cool completely. Serve at room temperature with a scoop of ice cream.

Pastry

250g flour
160g cold butter, diced
1 egg
1 yolk
1 Tbsp cold water

Combine the flour and butter in a food processor and process until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. With the processor running, add the eggs and water and work just until it pulls together in the machine. Turn onto a board and work once or twice to bring the dough into a ball. Flatten into a disk, wrap in cling film, and rest in the fridge at least half an hour.

Roll pastry base. Cut into 4 rounds approximately 14cm in diameter. Gather together and freeze any pastry scraps for a future batch (but only use the dough twice, ans over-working will make it quite chewy.)