The Supermarket Gourmet, by Buck Reed
Last month, I wrote about baking and what it takes to become a baker. In a sense, I was talking about turning a discipline within the culinary world into a hobby. A gastronomic hobby is about taking a basic need— eating—and turning it into a passion. We are talking about taking one specific aspect of the culinary arts and turning it into an obsession. We all consume vinegar in one form or another almost every day, but imagine for a moment the type of person it takes to make their own vinegar. Just learning the procedures and safety measures it takes to produce an everyday ingredient like red wine vinegar would take a fanatical dedication.
Charcuterie is the art of cured, smoked, and preserved meats. Within this group, you will find people who make pates and terrines, which are processed and cooked meat “loafs” that are served cold and taste as good as they look. There is also sausage making, which at one time was a necessary skill for preserving meat before this refrigeration craze took over. There is even a small contingent of home cooks who are dedicated to making bacon.
Another home cooking hobby that is becoming well-known is cheese making. There is an increasing interest in learning the ingredients, techniques, and styles of dairy products. Many people are finding the exploration of ingredients a welcome diversion to visiting farmers markets and family farms in pursuit of quality milk products they can turn into their own cheeses.
Canning and preserving can also be considered a satisfying hobby as well. Each canning season can be filled with seeking out the best produce possible for the time, and turning them into tasty, nutritious foodstuff for later use. Preserving fresh green beans or lima beans, or making strawberry jam or lemon marmalade, can be an economical endeavor filled with long days of hard, but rewarding work.
The knowledge needed to learn the techniques of these and other culinary hobbies may be daunting, but for the most part, the financial cost can be quite reasonable. If you are going to dedicate a part of your life to a culinary hobby, you need to learn about controlling the product at every step of its production to get the best out of it. The reward is that you get to say you made the product from scratch, as you share it with people who will both appreciate your efforts while still looking at you like you are some kind of nut.
I actually got involved with zymurgy, the art of fermenting beverages into alcohol, beer, and wine. My niece helped me with bottling a batch of beer one time and, somewhere in the middle, my future bootlegger informed me that I could buy this stuff already made and bottled in the store. But it isn’t about making beer or wine; at the core, it is about learning to make it better.
If you have any questions or ideas on a future article, please feel free to stop me on the street (seriously I am not that busy) or write to me at
[email protected].
