Haute Cuisine Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Haute Cuisine. Here they are! All 41 of them:

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
So there I was eating haute cuisine in a mobile home. He cooked for me as seduction, a courtship, so that I'd never again be impressed with a man who simply took me out to dinner. And I fell in love with him over a deer's liver.
Kristin Kimball (The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love)
Because, you know, a colored woman with class is still an exceptional creature; and a colored woman with class, style, poetry, taste, elegance, repartee, and haute cuisine is an almost nonexistent species.
Kathleen Collins (Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?)
For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits.
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
It's generations of clack cooks like Solomon Northup's wife - she's illiterate but she's conversant in haute cuisine.
Michael W. Twitty (The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South)
For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)?
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
The Tower is not a sacred monument, and no taboo can forbid a commonplace life to develop there, but there can be no question, nonetheless, of a trivial phenomenon here; the installation of a restaurant on the Tower, for instance ... The Eiffel Tower is a comfortable object, and moreover, it is in this that it its an object wither very old (analogous, for instance, to the Circus) or very modern (analogous to certain American institutions such as the drive-in movie, in which one can simultaneously enjoy the film, the car, the food, and the freshness of the night air). Further, by affording its visitor a whole polyphony of pleasures, from technological wonder to haute cuisine, including the panorama, the Tower ultimately reunites with the essential function of all major human sites: autarchy; the Tower can live on itself: one can dream there, eat there, observe there, understand there, marvel there, shop there, as on an ocean liner (another mythic object that sets children dreaming), one can feel oneself cut off from the world and yet the owner of a world.
Roland Barthes (The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies)
dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
The Dilligas is perhaps the ugliest boat I've ever been on... Dilligas is an acronym: Do I Look Like I Give A Shit.
Steven Rinella (The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine)
a lobster tail scallop and a ruinously thick slice of T. melanosporum, the black truffle that does for French cuisine what a Wonderbra does for an ambitious ingénue.
Rudolph Chelminski (The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine)
In the main, my mother’s function was to prepare the meals, which she did like an amoeba might, with neither creativity nor taste, but lots of mayonnaise.
Adeline Dieudonné (La Vraie Vie)
And please, whatever you do, don’t tell us that what we do, either in love or lust, is unnatural. For one thing if what you mean by that is that animals don’t do it, then you are quite simply in factual error. There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that ‘natural’ means ‘all natures but human nature’: mercy, for example, is un¬natural, an altruistic, non-selfish care and love for other species is unnatural; charity is unnatural, justice is unnatural, virtue is unnatural, indeed — and this surely is the point — the idea of virtue is unnatural, within such a foolish, useless meaning of the word ‘natural’. Animals, poor things, eat in order to survive: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have Abbey Crunch biscuits, Armagnac, selle d’agneau, tortilla chips, sauce béarnaise, Vimto, hot buttered crumpets, Chateau Margaux, ginger-snaps, risotto nero and peanut-butter sandwiches — these things have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old greed. Animals, poor things, copulate in order to reproduce: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have kinky boots, wank-mags, leather thongs, peep-shows, statuettes by Degas, bedshows, Tom of Finland, escort agencies and the Journals of Anaïs Nin — these things have nothing to do with reproduction and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old lust. We humans have opened up a wide choice of literal and metaphorical haute cuisine and junk food in many areas of our lives, and as a punishment, for daring to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, we were expelled from the Eden the animals still inhabit and we were sent away with the two great Jewish afflictions to bear as our penance: indigestion and guilt.
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
To the chefs who pioneered the nouvelle cuisine in France, the ancienne cuisine they were rebelling against looked timeless, primordial, old as the hills. But the cookbook record proves that the haute cuisine codified early in this century by Escoffier barely goes back to Napoleon's time. Before that, French food is not recognizable as French to modern eyes. Europe's menu before 1700 was completely different from its menu after 1800, when national cuisines arose along with modern nations and national cultures.
Raymond Sokolov (Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats)
They have twenty-four one-hour sittings every day with only one table per sitting." Sam groaned as he closed his laptop. "I'd better grab some sandwiches on the way. It sounds like the kind of place you only get two peas and a sliver of asparagus on a piece of butter lettuce that was grown on the highest mountain peak of Nepal and watered with the tears of angels." "Not a fan of haute cuisine?" She followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine. "I like food. Lots of it." He stopped at the nearest café and ordered three Reuben sandwiches, two Cobb salads, and three bottles of water. "Would you like anything?" he asked after he placed his order. Layla looked longingly as the server handed over his feast. "I don't want to ruin my appetite." She pointed to the baked-goods counter. "You forgot dessert." "I don't eat sugar." "Then the meal is wasted." She held open her handbag to reveal her secret stash. "I keep emergency desserts with me at all times- gummy bears, salted caramel chocolate, jelly beans, chocolate-glazed donuts- at least I think that's what they were, and this morning I managed to grab a small container of besan laddu and some gulab jamun.
Sara Desai (The Marriage Game (Marriage Game, #1))
Growing up, I considered [my dad] to be an exemplar of fidelity. For instance, he didn't believe in removing his wedding ring, no matter what. Whenever he washed his hands, he would thoroughly scrub his right hand, then align his two ring fingers tip to tip, slide the ring from his left ring finger to his right, then scrub his left hand.
Steven Rinella (The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine)
Jednakże zdołałem pojąć, jak fałszywym mitem jest haute cuisine, wytworna kuchnia (...) Już sama strata czasu na ich przygotowanie jest nonsensem (...) Panuje również złudny pogląd, że przyrządzenie niezwykle wyszukanej potrawy to zajęcie bardziej 'twórcze' niż gotowanie rzeczy prostych. (...) Pretensjonalna angielska gospodyni nie tylko myli się uważając umiejętność przygotowywania pracochłonnych, wyszukanych potraw za cnotę, lecz także często wykorzystuje ten swój bałamutny kunszt z myślą o tych, którzy w istocie nie znajdują żadnej przyjemności w jedzeniu. Większość moich przyjaciół z teatru była już tak zalana, kiedy podawano pierwsze solidne danie, że nie miała na nie wcale apetytu albo prawie nie zdawała sobie sprawy, co przed nimi postawiono.
Iris Murdoch (The Sea, the Sea)
He took the juiciest leg and neck meat, slicing each piece down the middle... ... and layered them so they could be wrapped into a single ballotine tube. Then he sautéed it in a frying pan, successfully subduing its distinctive odor while cooking it to perfect juicy tenderness! The sauce was a red wine reduction using hare bone fond and meat... ... which was then infused with foie gras, chocolate and the hare's own blood, making it the perfect accompaniment.
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 29 [Shokugeki no Souma 29] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #29))
Memories fill my mind, as though they are my own, of not just events from Gideon's life, but of various flavors and textures: breast milk running easily down into my stomach, chicken cooked with butter and parsley, split peas and runner beans and butter beans, and oranges and peaches, strawberries freshly picked from the plant; hot, strong coffees each morning; pasta and walnuts and bread and brie; then something sweet: a pan cotta, with rose and saffron, and a white wine: tannin, soil, stone fruits, white blossom; and---oh my god---ramen, soba, udon, topped with nori and sesame seeds; miso with tofu and spring onions, fugu and tuna sashimi dipped in soy sauce, onigiri with a soured plum stuffed in the middle; and then something I don't know, something unfamiliar but at the same time deeply familiar, something I didn't realize I craved: crispy ground lamb, thick, broken noodles, chili oil, fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk, tamarind... and then a bright green dessert---the sweet, floral flavor of pandan fills my mouth.
Claire Kohda (Woman, Eating)
We'd had two blizzards and it was only December and my mother said if it snowed one more time she would skewer herself on a butterfly knife. That's when it occurred to me that we could move to California, and for about ten seconds, I felt like a genius. We could have avocado trees and Honeybell orange juice every morning. We could drive up the coast on weekends and be treated like royalty at the French Laundry. She could open a new kind of bistro that married haute French cuisine with New American. Alice Waters would make us brunch at her place and would be blown away by the dessert that my mother baked with four varieties of heirloom plum.
Jessica Soffer (Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots)
I grew up in Pittsburgh." "In Pittsburgh?" Arthur says, a small snort escaping him. "An unlikely place for a classically trained chef." "People have been known to eat in Pittsburgh, you know," I tell him, with a backwards glance as he pulls out my chair. The man is a snob. "Well, of course they do. I just meant that, well, even today, it's not exactly the bastion of haute cuisine. Twenty, thirty years ago, forget it. In fact, can you remember the last time a Pittsburgh restaurant was featured in Bon Appétit?" Touché. In fact, the only time that I can remember a Pittsburgh restaurant being mentioned in a national magazine was several years ago when Gourmet mentioned Primanti Brothers in an interview with Mario Batali (who'd eaten there on a recent trip and enjoyed it). For the uninitiated, the Primanti sandwich is a cheesesteak sub, served on thick slabs of crusty Italian bread and topped with very well-done grease-still-glistening French fries, coleslaw, and, if you're really a traditionalist, a fried egg. Apparently, it has become the signature food of Pittsburgh.
Meredith Mileti (Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses)
Berlin’s alternative edge, exciting food scene, palpable history and urban glamour never fail to enthral and enchant. More than a quarter century after the Wall’s collapse, the German capital has grown up without relinquishing its indie spirit and penchant for creative improvisation. There’s haute cuisine in a former brewery, all-night parties in power stations and world-class art in a WWII bunker. Visit major historical sights – including the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor and Checkpoint Charlie – then feast on a smorgasbord of culture in myriad museums.
Lonely Planet germany
Servers swept across the floor as they could hear invisible music to oohs and aahs from all the tables. Ours presented us with a palm-sized white plate with two teensy golden choux pastry puffs. "Foie gras spheres with Sauternes jelly," he proclaimed. The sweet-savory cloud dissolved on my plate, and I couldn't help but hum. "Holy crap, can I have fifty of those and call it a day?" I said. "That's fantastic." Nicole nudged me with a grin. "Told you." After the puffs came neatly squared smoked eel sandwiches, the fish's smoky richness bitten off by sharp horseradish. They were delicious, and fairy-sized. So were the next two dishes.
Sarah Chamberlain (The Slowest Burn)
In technology, as in writing or speech-or haute cuisine-there are varying degrees of fluency, of articulateness, of self-expression. A beginning practitioner in architecture, like a beginner at a foreign language, will use the same base combinations-the same phrases-over and over, even if not quite appropriate. A practiced architect, steeped in the art of the domain, will have discarded any notion of the grammar as pure rules, and will use instead an intuitive knowledge of what fits together. And a true master will push the envelope, will write poetry in the domain, will leave his or her "signature" in the habit-combinations used.
W. Brian Arthur (The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves)
But on the plus side, I was living like a millionaire without paying higher taxes, and I got to hang out with a Real Live Hollywood Star and eat haute cuisine. Of
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter's Final Cut (Dexter, #7))
Is there really any difference, the writer Jeb Boniakowski once asked, between highly engineered and processed foods like the kind you find at McDonald’s, and molecular gastronomy, the application of food science to cooking that became popular in modernist haute cuisine establishments like elBulli and Alinea? Boniakowski draws a powerful conclusion that should be obvious in retrospect: “I’ve often thought that a lot of what makes crazy restaurant food taste crazy is the solemn appreciation you lend to it.” But we tend to limit our indulgence of that appreciation. Boniakowski offers a delightful thought experiment to illustrate the point: If you put a Cheeto on a big white plate in a formal restaurant and serve it with chopsticks and say something like, “It is a cornmeal quenelle, extruded at a high speed, and so the extrusion heats the cornmeal ‘polenta’ and flash-cooks it, trapping air and giving it a crispy texture with a striking lightness. It is then dusted with an ‘umami powder’ glutamate and evaporated-dairy-solids blend.” People would go nuts for that.20 Even
Ian Bogost (Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games)
The desert madness." He'd never been to Africa, but he'd seen plenty of remote places and what they did to men. "Lots of them get it. They've nothing to do but brood. Time treats them badly. It stretches worse here because the liquor stinks and there aren't any women. The place just uses them up. Even their assholes get raw from the sand." "I'll never let the desert affect me as it does them," Paul said. "I'll go home first." Remy couldn't help mocking Paul gently for his naïve enthusiasm. "I think you take it a bit far the other way. Let me see if I understand your point of view. In the market there are clouds of flies competing with swarms of beggars for the pleasure of eating camel shit mixed with rotting vegetables. What they can't stomach the cook picks up. He spices it up nicely with some old spit and smears it on top of a mixture of couscous, peb- bles, and sand. Then he dishes it back to you, at six times the price he'd charge anyone else. You know what you're eating-you watch him prepare it-but all the same you enjoy it, because it's exotic." "That's about it." Paul smiled. "L'haute cuisine d'Afrique." Remy roared.
David Ball (Empires of Sand by David Ball (2001-03-06))
Although this style of cooking was a kind of haute cuisine for the elite, costly garum was frequently described as “putrid,” which is to say rotten. “That liquid of putrefying matter,” said Pliny. Seneca, the outspoken first-century philosopher, called it “expensive liquid of bad fish.” But his protege, the poet Martial, apparently did not agree since he once sent garum with the note “accept this exquisite garum, a precious gift made with the first blood spilled from a living mackerel.” But Martial was probably writing about garum sociorum, which means “garum among friends,” the most expensive garum, made exclusively from mackerel in Spain.
Mark Kurlansky (Salt: A World History)
Il suivait l'avance des armées sur une carte accrochée dans la cuisine, découvrait les journaux polissons et allait au cinéma à Y... Tout le monde lisait à haute voix le texte sous l'image, beaucoup n'avaient pas le temps d'arriver au bout.
Annie Ernaux (La Place)
In the minds of many hunters , especially those who subscribe to the alarmist reckonings of the National Rifle Association, the primary threat to hunting is not suburban sprawl or wilderness destruction or the poisoning of our air and water. Rather, they believe that the primary threat to hunting lies within the government’s desire to take all the guns away. Animals will be running around everywhere, elk and bears will be banging down our doors, and there won’t be a thing we can do about it because of those damn liberals with their gun-control laws.
Steven Rinella (The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine)
Il n'a jamais frappé ma mère, mais : l'a menacée de disparition, traitée de connasse et de vioque une bonne centaine de fois, a tendu son poing au-dessus d'elle, lui a agrippé les seins de colère et d'excitation mêlées dans la cuisine, lui a rappelé qu'elle n'était pas bonne à grand chose, puis lui a rappelé le contraire, qu'elle pouvait tout faire, qu'elle était bien plus intelligente et talentueuse qu'elle n'osait se le figurer. L'a comblée et humiliée, parfois dans une même phrase, un même geste, l'a tordue. Une seule chose était certaine : sans lui, elle ne s'en sortirait pas. Il ne m'a jamais frappée avec ses poings, mais : m'a jetée d'un coup de pied du haut de l'escalier, pris le bras entre ses deux mains, tordant ma peau d'enfant sous la sienne, plus rêche, plus marquée par la vie, m'a menacée surtout, souvent, pour m'apprendre la vie, m'a dit et répété que j'allais le payer, plus tard, que je paierais tout, même ce que je n'avais pas fait, que tout se payait, son poing au-dessus de mon visage, m'a dit et répété cela, me parlant d'une voix fauve, comme on montre les crocs.
Blandine Rinkel (Vers la violence)
Welcome to the world of haute cuisine, sweetheart." Her breath catches in her throat. Sweetheart. She knows he's being sarcastic, but the word echoes around inside her skull and makes her feel so terribly strange. Tingly. Oddly warm. Her heart picks up in pace and her skin burns like soft fire. A tiny voice in the back of her head craves to hear him say it again. Alexander leans forward, officially leaving no space between them. They're so close that all it would take is for Eden to tilt her chin up just so for their lips to touch. "Here's what's going to happen," he says, tone low and smooth. He smells like peppermint toothpaste and clean laundry, hints of hazelnuts and vanilla lingering just beneath the surface. "Chef?" she mumbles, mesmerized by the warmth radiating off of his body.
Katrina Kwan (Knives, Seasoning, & A Dash of Love)
Eishi Tsukasa and Rindo Kobayashi's meal carried us to a paradise of haute cuisine... and when we thought we had settled comfortably into our new Eden... ... a Divine Messenger appears... one who has learned playful trickery. A Rebel Angel... come to steal us away to a new land of unknown delights! "Father, I'm determined... Cooking requires freedom. And to protect that freedom, I will spare no effort and shrink from no challenge!" It's no fun if you already know what you're going to get. "Honored judges, that is the extent of my specialty... Le Plat Véritable... ... Delinquent-Daughter Style.
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 30 [Shokugeki no Souma 30] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #30))
Readers read in so many different ways, any one standard of measure is inadequate. No matter their pedigree, inveterate readers read the way they eat—for pleasure as well as nourishment, indulgence as much as education, and sometimes for transcendence, too. Hot dogs one day, haute cuisine the next. Keeping
James Mustich (1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List)
In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the air (or, if you pick the wrong sushi place, the whiff of something worse). You can visit an expensive, artisan counter in Tokyo and order unusual and impeccable seafood, but come on: tempura is fried stuff. You drink frothy mugs of cheap beer and call for more food any time you like. Bacon-wrapped cherry tomatoes on a stick, tempura-fried? Sure, we had that. A bowl of dozens of whole baby sardines, called shirasu? Absolutely. (Iris claimed these for herself.) Why aren't there tempura bars in every city in America?
Matthew Amster-Burton (Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo)
That mess can't possibly come together in any proper way! I haven't the first idea what either of them is thinking! No, Erina Nakiri. You do know. Think back to what you found in abundance at Polaris. All the crazy, incomprehensible ideas bouncing off one another... creating solutions... creating possibilities I'd never imagined possible. Chef Saiba and Yukihira are doing just that. By letting their ideas and egos clash... they're trying to create something that could never come about through any preestablished method. This is the test Chef Saiba has set before us. Ugh! None of this can be considered cooking! To a perfectionist like me, this is plain unthinkable! But... if that's what you want... You're on! "What's this?!" "M-Miss Erina!" "She's cooking a steak?!" "W-what stage of the recipe is this? Is that the kind of dish this is?" "No! I've never heard of such a thing! The traditional Hachis Parmentier recipe always calls for thinly sliced or ground meat! Th-this is shocking! Miss Erina has always epitomized the traditional standard of haute cuisine. For her to do something so... so unorthodox!" Finally... in a sense, this is a first for her. The first time... ... she's truly had to train.
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 24 [Shokugeki no Souma 24] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #24))
What an impact! Wrapped together in strips of piecrust... ... the two distinct layers of stuffing each amplify the deliciousness of the other! The top layer is a chicken mousse! Tender, juicy cooked chicken... ... put through a food processor with heavy cream and seasonings until it was a silky-smooth puree! Its thick yet gentle savory flavor, accented with a touch of sweetness, slides across the tongue like satin! And the bottom layer is a beef meat loaf! Its flavors are perfectly paired with both the creamy chicken mousse and the demi-glace. What a frighteningly defined dish!" "Okay, but he used convenience store food for all that?! There's no way it could be that delicious..." "Oh, but it is. His skill elevated the ingredients to new heights." "Um, i-it really wasn't all that much. All I did was, well... To give the chicken mousse a more luxuriant texture, I carefully mixed in some egg whites beaten into a stiff meringue... And then added a little mushroom paste (Duxelles) to boost its richness. Canned mushrooms have a mild funk to them, so to get rid of that smell, I minced and sautéed them until nearly all their moisture was gone. I also reduced some red wine as far as I could, leaving behind just its umami components, and added that to the demi-glace. It isn't the best, but I had only cheap ingredients to work with. What about that isn't "all that much"?! "The main common ingredients he used were a precooked hamburger patty, chicken salad and a frozen piecrust. They're prepackaged foods anyone can buy, designed to be tasty right out of the box. In other words... They're average foods with completely average flavors! Use them as they are and you'll never pass this trial! Out of all of them, he singled out the ones that could stand up to haute cuisine cooking... ... and melded them together into a harmonious whole that brought out their best qualities while eliminating anything inferior! It's a level of quality only someone of Eishi Tsukasa's skill could reach!
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 33 [Shokugeki no Souma 33] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #33))
She'd ordered the curated wild Alaskan sea cucumbers, sprinkled with artisanal milk thistle foraged at dusk from Springdale Farms and served in a sea of pureed stinging nettles. At least Sam thought that's what it was. She'd eaten the entire cucumber slice in one bite. "Are you sure you wouldn't like something, sir?" The waiter, dressed in a grain sack with cutouts for his head and arms, hovered at Sam's shoulder. "No, thank you." Sam rubbed his belly and let out a small burp. "I shouldn't have had that second Reuben on my way over. Or maybe it was the Cobb salad. I'm so full I couldn't even handle an amuse-bouche of fermented sardine foam or dihydrogen-monoxide consommé.
Sara Desai (The Marriage Game (Marriage Game, #1))
But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn’t be hocked.
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
Pourquoi diable me soucierais-je du prix des choses ? Ma raison d’être est de vivre, non de calculer. Et c’est précisément ce que cette bande de vaches ne veut pas que l’on fasse – vivre ! Ce qu’ils veulent c’est que l’on passe sa vie à aligner des chiffres. Ils comprennent ça, les chiffres. Ça vous a un air raisonnable, intelligent. Si c’était moi qui tenais la barre du gouvernail, peut-être l’ordre ne régnerait-il pas, mais bon Dieu la vie serait plus drôle ! On ne passerait pas le temps à chier dans sa culotte à propos de choses qui n’en valent pas la peine. Peut-être n’y aurait-il pas de macadam dans les rues, ni de voitures aérodynamiques, ni de haut-parleurs, ni de trucs ni de machins de mille millions de sortes ; peut-être même n’y aurait-il pas de vitres aux fenêtres, peut-être devrait-on dormir à même le sol ; peut-être n’y aurait-il pas de cuisine à la française, à l’italienne, à la chinoise ; peut-être les gens s’entretueraient-ils quand ils seraient à bout de patience, et peut-être personne ne les en empêcherait-il parce qu’il n’y aurait pas plus de taule que de flics ni de juges, et qu’il n’y aurait certainement pas de ministres ni de gouvernement, ni de question d’obéir ou de désobéir à leurs saloperies de lois ;
Henry Miller (Tropique du Capricorne / Tropique du Cancer)
Pourquoi diable me soucierais-je du prix des choses ? Ma raison d’être est de vivre, non de calculer. Et c’est précisément ce que cette bande de vaches ne veut pas que l’on fasse – vivre ! Ce qu’ils veulent c’est que l’on passe sa vie à aligner des chiffres. Ils comprennent ça, les chiffres. Ça vous a un air raisonnable, intelligent. Si c’était moi qui tenais la barre du gouvernail, peut-être l’ordre ne régnerait-il pas, mais bon Dieu la vie serait plus drôle ! On ne passerait pas le temps à chier dans sa culotte à propos de choses qui n’en valent pas la peine. Peut-être n’y aurait-il pas de macadam dans les rues, ni de voitures aérodynamiques, ni de haut-parleurs, ni de trucs ni de machins de mille millions de sortes ; peut-être même n’y aurait-il pas de vitres aux fenêtres, peut-être devrait-on dormir à même le sol ; peut-être n’y aurait-il pas de cuisine à la française, à l’italienne, à la chinoise ; peut-être les gens s’entretueraient-ils quand ils seraient à bout de patience, et peut-être personne ne les en empêcherait-il parce qu’il n’y aurait pas plus de taule que de flics ni de juges, et qu’il n’y aurait certainement pas de ministres ni de gouvernement, ni de question d’obéir ou de désobéir à leurs saloperies de lois ; peut-être faudrait-il des mois et des années pour cheminer d’un lieu à l’autre, mais on n’aurait besoin ni de visa ni de passeport ni de carte d’identité, parce qu’on n’aurait besoin de figurer sur aucun registre, qu’on ne porterait pas de numéro et que si l’on avait envie de changer de nom toutes les semaines, qui l’empêcherait ? Ça ne ferait pas la moindre différence vu qu’on ne posséderait rien que ce que l’on pourrait emporter avec soi, et pourquoi diable aurait-on alors envie de posséder quoi que ce soit puisqu’il ne serait plus question de rien posséder ?
Henry Miller (Tropique du Capricorne / Tropique du Cancer)
The cucina casalinga and cucina povera are the new haute cuisines.
Loretta Gatto-White (Italian Canadians At Table: A Narrative Feast in Five Courses (3) (Essential Anthologies Series))