PASSIONATE RATIONS

(From prior posts, you know I’m embarking on a tour through James Peterson’s “Cooking” cookbook. This post relates to that adventure.)

I am not enamored of the typical grocery store. For the most part, they are purveyors of mediocrity. Brand names abound, while truly excellent products (and highly knowledgeable butchers, bakers, and the like) are absent.

This became very clear to me on my most recent foray into the too-brightly-lit corridors of my local “super” store (you know you’re in trouble when there’s “super” in the title). Among the banal, I had some unusual items on my list: French butter, chicken livers, pancetta, prosciutto.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “why the heck would you even bother with a chain grocery store for that stuff? Start with a real butcher, an Italian market, or a specialty foods store.” But I was trying to be optimistic. I mean, darn it, at least for the sake of my (the customer’s) convenience, my grocery store should carry such things, shouldn’t they? And why wouldn’t they want to?

In any case, I thought they store would have pedestrian chicken livers at least.

No such luck. The butter shelf was stocked only with what pathetically passes for butter here in the U.S.—under-flavorful hunks of dyed-yellow fat. There was no pancetta or prosciutto—or anything close (except pre-packaged bacon)—to be found. And, while the store had beef livers, nary a chicken liver was clucking about.

So much for convenience. Clearly I need to better cultivate relationships with the local artisans of meat and dairy.

Sorry, Jim, my experiment with your terrines will be further delayed until I find a decent source of ingredients.