Paul Bocuse, Jiro Ono, Pierre Herme, Dario Cecchini, Mario Batali (Pre scandal), the endless list of restaurants that serve local cuisine etc etc. Would be tragic for tourists to visit a destination only to discover true local culture and cuisine is confined to someone’s home.
One could argue the professional chefs are passionate enough to dedicate life long career out of this pursuit. Additionally culture is often represented in art forms - folk dances, clothing (i.e kimono), sculptures, pottery etc. I don’t see the distinction you made between a home cook and a professional chef.
Ray if you’ve never watched “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, I highly recommend it. If this doesn’t convey a obsessive pursuit of perfecting and conveying one’s culture as an art form I don’t know what is…
Don’t forget WWII. And I don’t just mean “war brides” from overseas. The draft brought lots of people together in places in the US they never otherwise would have been. I’m the product of one of these WWII marriages. It was quite a cultural fusion. And it happened in a lot of families. Certainly in the families of a bunch of my childhood friends. I’m about to read The World on a Plate: A Tour through the History of America’s Ethnic Cuisine. I’m curious to see if it mentions this phenomenon.
You seem to be more interested in knives than the cooking itself. Knives are just a small part in the whole cooking process (and even less important in the context of the ultimate quality of your dish (which is the only thing that counts) - you can make fantastic dishes with really really crappy knives but you can’t make even decent dishes with crappy ingredients (and I would argue that even pots and pans are to a certain degree more important than knives)
Yup. The crappiest knife can be sharpened. Once sharp, it can do most every prep job, even if it is not elegant. The crappiest pan, not much thicker than foil, cannot be made thicker or have its metallurgy changed.
I used to live in Houston. A Vietnamese family moved to Brazil and then to Texas. They had a buffet of both cuisines. I was fond of spooning black beans into my bun cha ga.
Ray. I have no idea what you are talking about. Chefs are professional cooks. To say professional cooks (professional restaurants) do not expression of culture is pretty ridiculous. Professional painters, professional musicians, professional writers are all great drivers of human culture. Food is no exception. I do not understand why you keep making these illogical baseless statements. Do you get a kick out of saying things to get attention?
The Japanese knife culture you claimed to be so interested… they are developed through highly respected professional knife makers.
In addition, what does culture has to do with cookware brands?
