Affective cuisine survives fads like TikTok and reality shows – 06/19/2023 – Food

“I’m not interested in haute cuisine.” It is with this premise that chef Gabriela Barretto opens her book, “Como Cozinhar sua Laziça” (ed. Melhoramentos), and elaborates the menu of the São Paulo restaurant Chou. Pasta with creamy sauces is served in bowls or in a frying pan. The pork, cooked slowly, goes on the plate with a generous portion of polenta.

“I had a childhood in an idyllic environment and I try to rebuild that place in my food. Chou’s flavor is rustic, it brings warmth. No one is distracted by the technique.”

Barretto is one of the contemporary exponents of a gastronomic school, the so-called affective cuisine, which demonstrates longevity in the midst of fashions and trends.

It resisted the arrival of molecular gastronomy, known for its spheres and foams, and the long tasting menus. It doesn’t lose steam even in the age of reality shows and TikTok videos, which make any preparation seem instantaneous.

To build the basis of this cuisine, chefs like Carla Pernambuco, Mara Salles and Paola Carosella cook based on memories and dialogue with the public far beyond the stove. In the records of their recipes, printed or digital, they seek to hook the diner through emotions.

The affectionate language, which is at the heart of affective cuisine, has even become a business niche. “Handcraft grade and hospitality are major trends in the sector. By telling stories about their products, manufacturers appeal to consumer nostalgia and mitigate the stigma of industrialized products”, says Simone Galante, from Galunion consultancy, specialized in food business.

Affective food represents a kind of rest, according to Paula Pinto e Silva, PhD in social anthropology from USP. “After valuing the exotic so much, people started looking for food that doesn’t need to be deciphered. Soul food.”

Not by coincidence, “soul food” was a term that chronicler and caterer Nina Horta (1939-2019) used to use in her columns in this Sheet. Instead of focusing only on recipes, she used her space in the newspaper to describe the emotions aroused by food.

Horta’s works on eating and cooking, rich in onomatopoeia, metaphors and interjections, helped to forge a style that transports the public to a homely universe, far from the glittering salons of restaurants.

The author assumed a “solemn implication” with snobbery. She was critical of establishments that served kiwi mousses and tiramisu but didn’t offer good sago. His first collection of chronicles, “Não É Sopa”, from 1994, was re-released by Companhia das Letras in 2020.

The writer is also the subject of the course Nina Horta – Literature of Sensations, now in its sixth edition, taught by journalist Luiza Fecarotta. The next one, with a queue already in place, will take place at the Wilma Kövesi de Cozinha school, in October.

“She created a new interpretation of food, inaugurating a crop of gastronomic texts that didn’t even need to be accompanied by recipes”, says Fecarotta.

Author of books that mix recipes and memoirs, including “Cozinhando para Amigos” (ed. DBA), chef Heloísa Bacellar sees culinarist Bettina Orrico and presenter Palmirinha, both dead this year, as sources of inspiration for her cuisine.

On the nacozinhadahelo.com.br portal, the chef tries to teach recipes such as the “delicious” meat ball, the rice pudding “from grandma’s house” and the peanut cake “from here in the country”.

“I have magazine clippings pasted in my notebooks. Bettina Orrico gave recipes that air of people’s food. And the number of people that Palmirinha motivated to cook? Both of them, as well as Nina Horta, helped me to understand that the path I chose he wasn’t crazy.”

What makes the affectionate relationship with food such a topical topic? For the anthropologist Paula Pinto e Silva, an entire generation of women broke with the domestic kitchen in the 20th century to conquer the job market — and it is her children who today seek to restore that proximity.

“We cut a bond that always existed. Suddenly, we didn’t have grandmothers and mothers cooking anymore, which broke one of the functions of food, which is to guarantee identity”, he says. “No one wants to explore new flavors all the time, and the more difficult the socioeconomic and cultural context, the more people seek this familiar food.”

Paulista from Campinas, Jane Lutti promoted closed-door dinners at her home, in 2012, when she decided to delve into the study of affective cuisine. She took advantage of meetings to hear stories that always related flavors and good memories. Her discoveries have already turned into two books.

“The first systematizes the concept in a very democratic language. I have conquered even readers who admit they don’t have the habit of reading. The second is a collection of recipes with their stories. The process of choosing was therapeutic”, she says.

Lutti disagrees with the idea that affective food has to involve dishes of exceptional quality. He claims that he hated his father’s food, full of industrialized spices, and only understood the emotional charge of those flavors after his death, in 2014.

“I lost my mother at the age of 3 and my father was left alone with eight children. In the morning, he made a sandwich with stale bread, a dubious sausage and withered tomato. Today, I miss that flavor. It was his way of showing love.”