Putting meat in its place

Putting meat in its place
By DEVRA FIRST
The Boston Globe
Monday, April 27, 2009

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090428/ARTICLE/904279961/2059/LIVING?Title=Putting-meat-in-its-place

Meat has been the central object of worship among food religionists for some time. Their bible, Fergus Henderson’s “The Whole Beast,” got chefs hot for nose-to-tail eating. Anthony Bourdain consumed all manner of animal bits and bobs on TV, and dissed those who didn’t want to do the same.

“Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food,” he wrote in “Kitchen Confidential.” David Chang built temples to the pig with his Momofuku restaurants in New York, and the press and adherents flocked.

Head cheese, sweetbreads, marrow and cockscombs became foodie darlings, and a certain machismo prevailed: It was wussy to not eat these treats, the funkier, the richer, the more indulgent the better.

But lately the food world has seen a slight retreat from this meaty fervor — a step back, a measured gaze, and a thought bubbling up: Perhaps less is, after all, more.

This isn’t polar opposition to the carnivorous lifestyle. People still love their meat. They are simply moving toward balance. In his recent book “Food Matters,” Mark Bittman argues for eating a vegan diet during the day and whatever you want at night. Philadelphia magazine restaurant critic Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond have a new cookbook out called “Almost Meatless,” filled with recipes that use only a small amount of meat in each dish, a flavorful accent rather than the star of the show. “My husband ... likes his lentil burgers a lot better with bacon on them, and I admit: so do I,” writes Manning in the intro.

During a talk at Tufts recently, author Michael Pollan shared with the audience his complicated formula for a healthy diet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (By “food,” he means the nonprocessed stuff, not what he calls “edible foodlike substances.”)

To read the full article: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090428/ARTICLE/904279961/2059/LIVING?Title=Putting-meat-in-its-place