No, I don’t mean to literally pick up a table and physically turn it over, but to get a table of diners in and out as quickly as possible and then shuffle them out the door so that the next unsuspecting victims can be seated and then served a stringy, tough sirloin and “loaded” baked potato. Salad bar and mud pie are extra.

The words “fast” and “furious” are more likely to be ingrained into the minds of many chefs. And the terms apply both to the food and the equipment.

It has become a part of our culture to expect that we can drive up to a fast-food joint and have our lunch literally handed to us while we sit in our car. Just a two minute jaunt off the highway to pickup a Double Whopper with Cheese and we are on our way, cell phone in one hand, Diet Pepsi in the other, the fries straddled between our legs. Some drivers juggle all the elements of the meal while somehow managing to operate a motor vehicle at freeway speed.

The food is made fast, delivered fast, and we eat it fast, allowing us more time to cram yet more activities into our day.

Take a behind the scenes tour of a more sophisticated restaurant at about 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night and you witness for yourself what I mean when I say “fast” and “furious.”

You enter into the bowels of an industrial giant – gleaming stainless steel covering the counters, work stations and hoods above the stoves. You feel a blast of heat from the scorching ovens and searing grills, the deafening noise of fans designed to remove smoke and soot from your prime rib as it roasts.

The chefs are furiously shouting out orders while line cooks wield surgically sharp knives. The floors are a haven for microorganisms – rubber mats designed to keep the cooks from slipping catch all manner of grit, grime and muck. It is a disaster waiting to happen and an environment that makes the local Occupational and Safety Inspector wince in pain when he pays his monthly visit.

All of this controlled chaos is precisely scripted to serve two purposes.

First, push a rookie chef through this type of kitchen boot camp and it will show him what life is like in the “real” world – you must be able to withstand the pressures of feeding as many “covers,” i.e. diners, on any possible night. You have to get that $20.00 appetizer of tuna seared quickly and then squirted with wasabi cream as quickly as possible so that the diners can move on to their main courses.

Secondly, most diners today want to get in, eat and get out. Aside from addicted foodies like me, few of us today want to spend upwards of 3 hours eating dinner. We tend to think there are more fun pursuits out there than taking the time to enjoy not only the experience, but the flavors and virtues of slow-cooked foods.

But in our race toward “fast” and “furious”, we have forgotten the values of “low” and “slow.”

Walk into any good American barbecue joint and you will see first-hand what I mean by the terms “low” and “slow.” A great example of the craft of “low” and “slow” can be found at Chuck Hinton’s Rib Shack in Portland, Oregon.

I lived around the block from Chuck’s place – a tiny storefront with a huge black kettle smoker sitting out front on the sidewalk. Every morning at about 8:00 a.m. people would start to loiter around Chuck’s place and take up residence in one of the plastic chairs to be the first in line for his slow-cooked ribs, brisket and sausage links.

My favorite meat dish was the pulled pork sandwich-a mountain of slow-cooked pork pulled into shards by hand and piled high on a plain white hamburger bun.

Yet the customers wouldn’t be able to take lunch home for another two or three hours. Chuck didn’t seem to open the place until he was good and ready, and the ribs were just right.

Although I was never able to pinpoint either the cooking methods or the recipes used, I suspect that Chuck and his crew actually started smoking those ruby-red, meltingly tender ribs way before the crack of dawn.

While his customers were still snug in bed I imagine Chuck was probably loading up that beaten-down smoker with logs of hickory and mesquite. As the meats slowly-cooked and turned in their fatty juices, the other dishes of the day were prepared; cornbread, peach cobbler, dinner rolls, coleslaw and potato salad, all handmade with slow, loving, tender care.

You had to get in line early at Chuck Hinton’s because the place was so darn popular that if you didn’t have lunch in hand by noon you could be out of luck, and the darn place closed by 2:00 p.m.

I don’t know if Mr. Hinton is still in business today, but I suspect he is, snickering to himself about the beauty of “low” and “slow.”

The concept behind “low” and “slow” cooking is simple – using a low temperature to cook meats slowly, allowing the fat to slowly melt into the meat and the fibers in the meat to slowly break down and become incredibly tender.

The trick behind “low” and “slow” cooking is to choose the right cut of meat and to either baste the meat with liquid or braise the meat in liquid so that it doesn’t dry out during the long hours of cooking.

Pork is in fact one of the most popular meats used in slow-cooked dishes. But you must use care in selecting the right cut of pork for your slow-cooked recipe.

Over the past twenty years or so, in their “fast” and “furious” onslaught to hyper-breed porky and provide America’s tables with that “other white meat,” some pork producers have gone too far-leaving us with pigs whose meat is lean yet virtually tasteless.

Those of us who are pork connoisseurs are standing up and saying, “Enough already! I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

I just had to chuckle recently when I read in the farm commodities section of the Wall Street Journal that there is an effort underway by a rogue group of pig farmers to go back to raising good old-fashioned pork-the kind with a distinct layer of fat and marbling so that your fried pork chop will taste just like the pork chops and apple sauce that Grandma used to make.

Due to the public outcry for more flavorful pork, you can now find boutique breeds in our finer gourmet grocery stores with labels like “Black Kurobota Pork Loin.”

I suspect it will take about another ten years or so before the cycle is back to square one and we will see more fatty and tasty pork back in our markets. Until then, the rougher cuts of pork like pork shoulder and “country-style” ribs will do just fine in any slow-cooked dish.

Slow-braising pork in liquid keeps the meat moist while it becomes tender. But I recommend you add some zest to the water or you will end up with a sickly, boiled butt of pork. An example would be to flavor the cooking liquid with chicken stock, garlic and chili powder to enhance the flavors and to give the pork a Mexican accent.

“Pulling” pork is an age-old method brought to America by African-American slaves in the South. Pulling the meat apart by hand will leave you with little bits of soft pork to wrap up in an enchilada or to throw into a pot of beans.

Surprisingly, duck also does quite well when slow-roasted in the oven.

I have spent many years, and gone through a whole flock of ducks, in my pursuit of the perfect roasted duck recipe. During my search, I came upon a recipe from a famous Seattle chef who called for first roasting the duck in a very hot oven, turning down the temperature and roasting the duck for about an hour, removing the duck from the oven and then cutting it into quarters, then sautéing the duck in a pan. What a ridiculous effort I thought, too many unnecessary steps. Why not just take the low road and let Daffy roast on his own and see what happens?

I tried and it worked. I found that a 275F/135C oven works best. Trim the duck of any excess fat. Just place a head of garlic cut in half into the cavity of the duck. Add a sprig of thyme and rosemary if you like. Truss the legs of the duck and tie them together so that the cavity is closed. Fold the wings of the duck under the carcass.

Do not season your duck, not with Cajun spices or with Herbes de Provence. No salt. No pepper. Nothing. Those seasonings may burn during the slow-roasting process. Do the seasoning at the table after the duck has been carved.

Now pour about a cup of water into the bottom of a roasting pan. This will create steam in the oven which helps keep the duck moist. The water also prevents the fat from the duck from burning in the roasting pan, which can create horrific clouds of burning duck smoke. Place Mr. Duck on a rack over the roasting pan and put him in the oven.

Now sit back with your favorite book and a nice glass of wine and let the duck roast for about 4 hours. Yes, 4 hours. Your only exercise during this time will be to baste the duck about every 30 minutes or so. You see, the duck fat seeps out into the water making a tasty basting liquid. Every time you baste the duck with that liquid, it helps to squeeze more juice out of the duck, which in turn enlivens your basting liquid even more. And that basting liquid is what aids in delivering a golden, crispy-skinned bird to the table.

Your family will be presented with a duck full of unctuous nuggets of moist, tender, gamy meat that absolutely melt in your mouth. Quite ducky if I say so myself!

The beauty of “low” and “slow” is being appreciated more and more every day by restaurant chefs and home cooks alike.

Daniel Boulud of the famed restaurant Daniel in New York has been known to slow-cook beef short ribs for up to 12 hours and then serve them in a deep, rich, red wine sauce with freshly grated horseradish for the tidy sum of around $30.00.

And one of the most popular entrées making the restaurant circuit right now is to slow-cook a leg of lamb with a bundle of garlic for one day, yes, one whole day, 24 hours to be exact. While I haven’t tried it myself, I am told that lamb-lover’s literally cry when they tuck into this delicious joint of meat.

Another sign of the increasing popularity of “low” and “slow” cooking is witnessed by the growth in sales of that infamous cooking vessel of the 1970’s, the crock-pot.

While the crock-pot of today is still adorned with those awful kitschy flower motifs, the modern crock-pot also comes in jet-set metallic chrome. Even better for those of us who have to work by day, the crock-pot of the 21st century has a sophisticated, built-in thermostat. We can put the chicken and tomatoes in the crock-pot before we leave in the morning. When we open the front door upon our return, we are met with the scent of chicken cacciatore wafting through the house.