Why wasn't I born in California?

It seems like if I am going to be anyone in the world of food, I am already at a huge disadvantage, not being from California. MFK Fisher, Julia Child, and Alice Waters have arguably been three of the most influential figures in the American food world. They are all women. They were all born in California. They all spent formative time in France. And, they have all forcibly shaped the way Americans connect with food.

So, I ask, why wasn’t I born in California? Or, at the very least, what am I doing in New York? Why am I not in France?

MFK Fisher is one of the clearest voices in American gastronomical writing. She gained her professional legs after translating Brillat-Savarin’s The Philosophy of Taste. She grew up in California and writes of long, bumpy journeys to her grandmother’s house followed by luscious peach pie drowned in luxuriously rich fresh cream. She spent a year or so in Illinois attending school before venturing to France with her new husband. Once in France she fell in love the way people loved to eat and eat well. In The Gastronomical Me, Fisher’s autobiography, she recounts meals all over France. She remembers learning how to go to market, haggle to get the freshest deals, prepare amazing meals in tiny apartments, and, later, grow the fresh produce for her custom designed giant kitchen in the French countryside. Throughout she meditates on taste, friendship, love, and travel.

In How to Cook a Wolf, Fisher recommends strategies for dealing with wartime shortages during WWII. Reading it today, in the current economic crisis, and with rising food prices affecting people all over the country, it is shocking how relevant many of the recommendations remain. Fisher took up the flag of growing and preserving your own foods when it was patriotic to do so. Today, community based organizations all over the country are attempting to do the same, but are finding the current political climate less friendly. There is no federal campaign to convince the general public the best way to fight terrorism is to plant a pea patch. But this movement is perhaps more important today as so many neighborhoods are left without access to fresh food and are instead subject to multi-billion dollar campaigns advertising the merits of cheap empty calories that are so prevalent in the fast food and junk food industries. In her book, Fisher includes many recipes for stretching meager meat, flour, and butter rations. She calls on home cooks to be attentive and strategic in using their ingredients. Today, the fight is instead to get cooks back in the kitchen.

We have lost a lot of ground to convenience foods since Julia Child convinced the country that cooking could be more than menial women’s work. Another California girl, Child worked for years in the Foreign Service during the war. It was while on tour in Sri Lanka that she met her future husband. They bonded over adventurous eating wherever they were stationed (they moved next to China). The title of her recent biography My Life in France, emphasizes the importance of the next trip. After the war they were married, Paul got a posting to France and Julia went along, having retired from the service. In France, she realized she knew next to nothing about cooking and food, but the French appreciation for the stuff was infectious. She ended up enrolling in the Cordon Bleu Institute of cooking and eventually distinguished herself among her peers. Like Fisher, she was soon cooking up a storm in one tiny apartment after another. She collected cooking implements and befriended vendors of all types at the Halles Market. She loved the fresh ingredients used, the layering of flavors and attention to detail throughout the meal, including wine pairings. Her tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, brought these French sensibilities to the American kitchen. With her book, people could now create gourmet foods in their own kitchens.

She followed the release of her book with a television cooking show. Taking advantage of the newest form of media, she was entering thousands of homes each night and bringing her lassie faire attitude with her. On one classic episode, she dropped the chicken on the floor, but encouraged cooks to remember that is was only those in the kitchen who would know. She didn’t worry excessively about making mistakes. Though her recipes are extremely detailed and often complex, her attitude, that with a little patience, courage, and tasting you too can turn out classic French dishes any time you desire, makes them more accessible.

Julia Child did a lot to get gourmet cuisine out of the restaurant and into the home kitchen, and to educate the American palate, but Alice Waters took it a step further. Waters, a California girl, tried a couple schools before settling at the radical UC Berkley in the 1960s. Like Child and Fisher, she then went to France to study and eat for a few months. She also came back with a whole new idea of what food could be. She had a dream of opening her own restaurant, which eventually came to fruition with the 1971 opening of Chez Panisse. In Alice Waters and Chez Panisse friends recall Waters’ indomitable spirit and drive to open this restaurant against all odds. Though it is has since become an iconographic restaurant, open for well over 30 years, it took the first 20 to work out how to make a profit. Waters and her staff pioneered sourcing and featuring local and organic vegetables in their dishes. The taste was inspired by the French foods Waters ate in France, but the focus evolved to its own, more stripped down style that allowed the chef and cooks (who work very collaboratively) to feature the flavorful fresh ingredients. Now known as California cuisine, this taste was really developed at Chez Panisse, as they were able to celebrate the local bounty throughout the year in the mild climate of the Bay Area.

Alice Waters went on to spearhead the Slow Food movement in the US and jump-started the conversation on school food that is now consuming parents, teachers and politicians around the country. With her Edible Schoolyard project she seeks to bring children back to the earth to understand where their food comes from, and how to grow and prepare it. She has been a mover and shaker for getting the ideas that all three women have celebrated for so long to be taken up (again) by the mainstream media. Now there are community and school gardens popping up all over the country. Many organizations are teaching people how to use these fresh vegetables in their kitchens and how to get their neighbors excited about fresh food as well.

So who knows what will happen next, but is about time to see another rising female food champion from California who has spent time in France. It clearly won’t be me, but I am looking forward to finding out who she is.