The Challenge

Reading a thread about where to buy quality meat on my favorite foodie forum (DR.com, the link can be found under "Links" on this page), made me start thinking again about the whole "is it worth it" issue regarding buying only the best-of-the-best ingredients for cooking.

Perhaps it's due to being a transient military person often living at the ends of the earth or from growing up in small, podunk towns, but I cannot fathom driving 50 miles to buy dry-aged boutique beef at a far-flung grocery store. My approach to cooking is to make the best of what is available locally. That includes sometimes not cooking a certain dish or abruptly changing the menu because a special ingredient suddenly appears at my local store (fellow military commissary-shoppers will totally relate to this phenomenon!).

I feel that in most cases, once I finish cooking a recipe, adding all the appropriate spicing and tweaking the ingredients as needed to get the most of them, any "special-ness" or lack thereof is either drowned-out by other flavors or is no longer discernible. For example, the soon-to-be-famous imported vs. domestic canned tomato debate... My approach: Are the tomatoes too acidic? Add a pinch of sugar to the sauce. Are the tomatoes already rather salty out of the can? Don't add as much salt. Too watery? Cook the sauce a bit longer. Hardly rocket science.

I do take exception to this approach to cooking when an ingredient is served essentially unaltered and is the main component of the dish. RWT and I don't eat steak, so specialty meats are pretty much a non-issue for us. But I am sitting here as I type eating pralines for breakfast (mmm, the breakfast of champions!) and I will go out of my way to go to Trader Joe's (which is only about 5 miles from my house, so not too far out of my way) to buy nuts. Why? They are cheaper and better quality than what can be found in most grocery stores. For walnuts in brownies, it does not really matter as long as the walnuts are not totally rank, so most any walnuts will do. But for pralines... flabby nuts will result in mediocre pralines. Toasting the nuts will help some, but fresh, non-soggy pecans are essential for top-notch pralines because there are so few other ingredients/flavors present.

There are also the occasions where I really need a specific, non-substitutable ingredient and acquiring it has lead me into some great experiences. When we lived in the boondocks of southern Maryland, I started vegetable gardening mainly because I could not buy Italian parsley down there (even after a 10-minute argument with a grocery store produce manager that Italian parsley and cilantro were really not the same thing!). I also perfected making bagels while living there because decent ones were simply unavailable. Both are skills that I am thrilled to have learned!

However, I must admit that I will occasionally break my pattern and go out of my way to buy something high-end. But I usually end up regretting it later. For my foodie forum picnic last weekend, I went to Trader Joe's and bought some Neiman Ranch bacon for the BLT spread I was taking. But after combining the bacon with arugula mayo and oven-roasted tomatoes, I'm really not sure than anyone could taste the difference between sustainable, small family farm, deep-bedded pig, apple-smoked, pricey bacon and Oscar Meyer bacon.

So for now I will continue to keep the mileage low on my beloved old Celica, enjoy the extra free time and accept the challenge to make great meals with rather pedestrian ingredients -- just don't tell the food snobs!