1. Write in the transcription and memorize the following words:

oxymoron chef soaring reputation to still guise to substitute for to boost the demand grudgingly to curtail consumption to glaze tipsy to whet starch purée consommé dime		оксиморон шеф-повар улучшающаяся репутация успокаивать, утихомиривать предлог замещать, подменять повышать требования неохотно сокращать потребление глазуровать подвыпивший, навеселе обострять, возбуждать крахмал пюре консоме десятицентовик
to drum sth into s.o./s.o.’s head		вдалбливать что-н. кому-н. в голову

II. Read and translate the text. A taste for tradition

Old-fashioned food is making a comeback

Not so long ago "good English food" was regarded as an oxymoron by foreign visitors to Britain. In joking about the horrors of insensitive European harmonisation, they ranked English chefs alongside Swedish comedians, Italian tax accountants and Spanish animal-welfare officers.

But in recent years the soaring reputation of the best English restaurants has stilled the laughter.

English culinary schools have benefited mightily from this national enthusiasm for good food. Typical is the Bath School of Cookery, which occupies a comfortable 19th-century country house and is provisioned by a two-acre walled garden of herbs, fruit and vegetables. It offers a number of courses, including a basic one that introduces students to dishes that would have been familiar to Mrs. Beeton, but which now come in a healthier guise: spotted dick without suet, for instance, or minced chicken substituted for minced beef in meat puddings.

Pubs must share the praise for this revival of interest in traditional English food. Their improved menus have helped influence the curriculum at cooking schools as well as boosting the demand* for places. A Rip Van Winkle would be amazed. The food grudgingly provided by most public houses in England used to be notoriously bad: curly sandwiches and concrete pork pies. But in the past few years, with stricter enforcement of drink-and-drive laws curtailing alcohol consumption outside the home, the quality of its "blackboard" or counter menu has often become as vital to a pub's reputation (and profits) as the quality of its beer.

Many pubs now serve good, traditional English grub. Such dishes as cottage, shepherd's and fisherman's pie, corned-beef hash, and bubble-and-squeak provide the main courses; sherry trifles, summer puddings and fruit tarts are among the favourite desserts.

At schools like Bath, the traditional ways of doing things are also drummed into students: glaze white bread and pies; put pastry leaves on meat pies but never on fruit pies; angelica and cherry to top off tipsy trifles; a china blackbird helps whet the appetite as well as let steam escape from under the pastry—lessons that were lost for a generation or two.

The American way

The same emphasis on culinary tradition and old-fashioned food is apparent at the Culinary Institute of America (cia) at Hyde Park in upper-state New York—but with much greater emphasis on fewer calories and less cholesterol, salt, sugar and protein. A rich vegetable stock, thickened with cornstarch, replaces two-thirds of the oil in vinaigrettes and mayonnaise. Yogurt and ricotta cheese, pureed until very smooth, replace cream and milk for "ice cream". Cooked Carolina white rice substitutes for pork fat in the sausage that tops the sausage pizza.

It is hard to exaggerate the influence on the American kitchen of the cia. It is by far the largest cooking school in the United States, turning out up to 10,000 cooking professionals a year.

Mr. Ruhman donned a chef's tall-hat, white jacket and houndstooth-check trousers to enroll as a student at the cia in order to research "The Making of a Chef" (Henry Holt; $27.50).

A famous teacher there, Chef Pardus, told him: "You're cooking with your eyes, you're cooking with your nose, you're cooking with your ears—all your senses." The chef was not joking. All of them are essential for preparing the classic sauces that provide the foundation of the teaching at the cia—and for making a consommé that meets Chef Pardon’s demanding test of being so clear that you can read the date on a dime at the bottom of a gallon of it.

Visitors to the United States, as well as Americans themselves, are pleased to learn that this increased respect for tradition is not confined to food but extends to service too. Students at the cia are reminded of the old tradition that cooking is about hospitality first, and then about food. Without hospitality, they are told, there would be no guests to feed.