Aficionado culture is where fun goes to die

From cooking to woodworking, rising levels of skill have become a barrier to entry

Are we making cooking too complex?

That’s the gist of a thought-provoking tweetstorm from economist Lyman Stone, which I’ve edited into a slightly easier-to-read paragraph form:

There are two things happening in the US food culture: More eating out and a complexification of cooking. If you look at recipes from a generation or two ago, there are few ingredients, few steps. Simple, largely working-class type stuff. 

A “good cook” today is expected to be an expert at analysing the vast panoply of globalised ingredients available on the market today. We are told that good cooking requires specific ingredients, has numerous rules, has to