We also indulged our tastes and developed a ravenous and eclectic appetite. We ricocheted from Buffalo Chicken Wings to Pasta Primavera to Walnut-Encrusted Goat Cheese Salads to homemade Crock-Pot chili in the course of a week. Brunch, replete with quiches of all sorts, became de rigueur. No self-respecting diner would be caught dead eating before 11:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. By decade's end, no self-respecting man would be caught dead eating quiche.

The Immigration Act of 1965 opened our doors to millions of Asians and was responsible for the exotic restaurants that were now springing up in even the most homogenized neighborhoods. The first to hit were Szechuan palaces, known for their hot and spicy cuisine. Foodies, whose taste buds until now were accustomed to nothing hotter than pepperoni, were happily chugging glassfuls of water in between searing bites.

Hungry for more, we soon feasted on Hunan, Vietnamese, Korean and, in the 1990s, Thai specialties. Many experts point to the '70s as the beginning of America's love affair with heat. It would take only 20 years before salsa surpassed ketchup as the most popular condiment.

The American palate had finally been unleashed, and anything ethnic was worthy of consideration. Italian food, primarily American adaptations of Sicilian and Neapolitan dishes, now turned to Venice, Abruzzi, Tuscany and Milan for inspiration.

"Many Italians from the North had money and came to this country in the '60s and '70s to open restaurants," says Lidia Bastianich, host of PBS's Lidia's Italian Table and author of the companion cookbook of the same name (William Morrow & Company, 1998). "What fueled the renaissance of Italian food in this country was the curiosity of Americans," she adds. "They were willing to try anything."

Bastianich recounted how during the '70s she occasionally featured a dish from northern-Italy such as Vitello Alla Bolognese or Fettuccine Alfredo in her restaurant along with more familiar Italian-American dishes. By the end of the decade only a handful of the hybrid dishes remained.

Despite such ethnic fervor, one of the most popular dishes of the day was the very classic, very British Beef Wellington — a fillet of beef tenderloin coated with pâté de foie gras and a duxelles of mushrooms that are then all wrapped in a puff pastry crust. Some believe that Wellington's popularity had more to do with America's competitive spirit than with any deep passion for British cuisine.

It began in the '60s when couples started dabbling in a bit of culinary one-upmanship. Dinner parties with friends became elaborate as complicated recipes appeared on tables with greater regularity. Beef Wellington was considered the height of difficulty and expense because of the preparation of the puff pastry and the price of the pâté de foie gras. Kudos and furtive jealous glances went to the cook who mastered such a bear of a recipe.

Although Beef Wellington went the way of Beef Stroganoff and Boeuf Bourguignon, it did stage a comeback in magazines such as Gourmet in the '90s, when prepackaged puff pastry and domestic foie gras made it much easier and less expense to make.

The '70s gave rise to another icon who began her own revolution to rival Julia's. From her famous Berkeley, California, restaurant, Chez Panisse, Alice Waters reintroduced the notion of cooking with natural, seasonal ingredients–-an almost forgotten concept because of the prepackaged-food boom. Her mantra: fresh food, simply prepared.

To remain faithful to her ideology, she scoured organic farms for fresh, interesting salad greens and vegetables. Through sheer will Waters marginalized iceberg lettuce to make way for arugula, mesclun and chicory. Her passion and respect for food attracted a coterie of young chefs who, under her tutelage, would bring her California Cuisine to the rest of the country — a refreshing counterpoint to the excess of the next decade. more >

Recipe
Beef Wellington

 


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