This week we’re discussing cuisine. I have a great love of haute cuisine when done properly and I loathe it when it’s a sham. Gastronomically speaking the French rule the world, whether you care to admit it or not. Over the years the French have truly made an art of fine cooking, sauces and pastry.

Some people are enamored with nouvelle cuisine. A lot of people talk about California cuisine and new names for cooking styles spring up every week. There’s an entire TV channel devoted to food, though most of the time they cater to the mundane. In case you don’t know, Rachael Ray is not a chef. Sometimes I’ll tune in so I can picture her naked in a tub of cling peaches in heavy syrup, but she may as well be an army cook as far as cuisine goes.

A lot of people don’t know good food from bad. I know plenty of people who go to expensive restaurants and pay $35 for an entrée and think it’s wonderful, when it’s really slop. I know an over-rested steak when I get one. I generally don’t send food back because I know what happens when you do that. Nor do I blame the servers for dry meat or shitty food in general. I take it in stride. That’s why I go to the same places a lot. When a great chef is running a kitchen you get consistency.

I lot of people see lamb on a menu and order it not even thinking to ask if it’s domestic. Most of time it’s not. How do you think it was preserved on it’s trip from Australia? A lot of people still order Swordfish in restaurants, even though it’s been known to harbor foot long worms. Have you ever seen a chef order Swordfish? Somewhere along the line Chilean sea bass became a big deal. I don’t particularly care for it, but the bigger question is why would someone in a coastal city order a most likely frozen fish when they’re sitting on the fucking water in Palm Beach? Local produce and especially fish are better bets in almost all cases.

I once traveled in the Midwest for business and I guy I was with kept ordering clams and fish in every restaurant we went in. And while fresh seafood is available away from the coast you really have to think about the individual restaurant and how many times a week they order fish. Don’t even get me going about ‘the specials’.

But back to haute cuisine. It can be decadent. I’ll probably die of a heart attack from eating Foie gras, but it will have been worth it. If you’re not familiar with Foie gras, it is a pâte made from the grossly enlarged liver of a force fed goose. Those livers can weigh three or four pounds. It’s very expensive, the texture is smooth as silk, and it’s quite rich. Also, animal rights people go ape shit whenever they hear the word. For me it’s like heroin; a dangerous addiction that will probably kill me, or least give me the gout.

It’s also used in a lot of very complicated dishes, like Wellington. Haute cuisine is a complicated affair in general. A lot of dishes take a great deal of time to prepare. Demi-glace is a perfect example of a classic French sauce that’s so time consuming to prepare that few restaurants do it from scratch anymore. It entails roasting veal bones in an oven for hours, preparing an Espagnole sauce, making a roux, adding wine and reducing the shit out of it until you’ve got liquid gold. I’m a sucker for a good demi-glace.

Traditional French meals, as well as some Italian, serve the salad at the end of the meal where it belongs. Then comes the cheese course, another favorite of mine. A good cheese menu is rare these days and in America you’re stuck with pasteurized cheeses only, which is a terrible shame.

There’s no reason to be intimidated by fine food. There’s nothing I enjoy more than fine food, good service and a selection of great wines and cognacs. The ride home will entail a good deal of flatulence, but it’s a small price to pay.