Edo Ergo Sum

Hunger Strike

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:27:00 +0000

Potatoes. My dad hated potatoes.

Growing up in a Korean household, you eat a lot of varied things – a lot of things that most people would not consider “food” (Sea cucumbers? Congealed cow’s blood? Bellflower root? Yep, we ate them all.), but the one food item that never made an appearance? Potatoes.

It’s not that potatoes are not featured in Korean cuisine – there are plenty of recipes with them. It’s just that my dad hated them…to the point where he forbade my mom from ever buying them (Unless my brother-in-law was coming into the house. He was supposed to have potatoes. He’s Irish.) There was another reason: Hunger.

My dad was born on the island of Cheju in what is now South Korea.[1] At the time of his birth, the island was occupied by Imperial Japan, during World War II.[2] By the time my Dad was two years old, my paternal grandmother was working in Japan and my paternal grandfather, a radically independent fisherman with Communist leanings, had left to join the Kim Il-Sung’s Workers’ Party of North Korea. My grandfather was never to be seen again.

What did this mean for my father? It meant potatoes. Endless amount of potatoes. Rice was too expensive. Potatoes were cheap. And they were ubiquitous. For those living in the relative comfort of Seoul, food was to be found through the black markets of US Army provisions[3]. But for my father, growing up on an island that was believed to be a hotbed for Communist partisans, this meant NO food. Already on the threshold of severe famine, the burn-and-slash attacks by Nationalist guerilla groups had drained the island’s resources dry. Even fishing, which had sustained the island for years, was destroyed as American and anti-Communist Nationalist navies patrolled local waters.

While war is an obvious condition for food insecurity, what we have now in the United States seems unfathomable. According to the latest statistics from the USDA [4], 15% of Americans, or about one in seven, are using the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (“SNAP”), better known as food stamps. Despite the “recovery” from the Great Recession of 2008, food stamp usage has remained relatively high, even rising 1.8% from January of 2012.

Food banks and pantries across the US are suffering in what seems to be the perfect storm for hunger: Smaller food donations and rising ranks of needy persons. Furthermore, tight demand for food has only made this condition worse. Under the Emergency Food Assistance Program, USDA buys excess food from suppliers and donates it to local food banks. In the past year, tight supplies, due to drought and skyrocketing worldwide demand, has decreased the amount of food USDA has bought for the program and thus the amount donated to food charities.[5] On the other hand, food banks have seen the demand for their services grow, in some places by double digits, as economic recovery has not meant new jobs for many. While the newest numbers by the US Department of Labor indicate a drop in unemployment from the recent all time high of 10% in October, 2009 to 7.6%,[6] as several economists have noted, the numbers don’t reflect the real story: many unemployed have been so discouraged by the job market, they have dropped out all together, only increasing the pressure on welfare benefits such as SNAP and Social Security.

But what the numbers can’t reflect are the poignancies of hunger. While the physical effects are obvious -- malnutrition, arrested mental and physical development for children, and higher rates of disease -- the psychological effects can and do last just as long. For every person on food stamps, using the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (“WIC”) or receiving a subsidized lunch at school, there is a story of pain, humiliation and mental anguish unassuaged even when or if they ever come off the welfare rolls. As seen in Ancel Keys’ famous study on the psychological effects of hunger[7], Keys noted that subjects were prone to disordered eating habits, vacillating between devouring their food or eating so slowly as to savor every last bit of food. While Holocaust victims exemplified the conclusions of Keys’ study, his observations are no less applicable to those living in food insecure homes now. Behaviors such as hoarding, gorging or hiding food last far longer than the physical pangs of hunger. And for many, the constant insecurity of not having enough food will mark their own sense of security for years to come.

And for my father, that insecurity came in the form of a lowly potato. It was not a vegetable destined to be a chip or a fry, but a lingering symbol of poverty and hunger. It was a constant reminder of a childhood that he would rather forget. For many of America’s children, parents and so many others, they could only wish hunger was such a distant memory. Unfortunately for them, it’s an ever-present reality that will only bring more scars than they can ever hope to bear now or in the future. With or without potatoes.

This post is part of Food Bloggers Against Hunger, a collaborative effort of over 200 food bloggers, The Giving Table, Share Our Strength and the documentary, A Place at the Table to bring awareness about hunger, protect SNAP dollars for hungry families and push for anti-hunger legislation in Congress. Want to do something to fight hunger? Click here to write to your Representative, Senator or elected official that you want to end hunger in America by maintaining and prioritizing anti-hunger initiatives in Congress.

This post has been cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

[1] Cheju Island, now a giant tourist destination for much of East Asia, was a small underdeveloped island, mainly populated by fishermen/women and small farmers in the early 20^th century.

[2] Korea was annexed in 1910 by Imperial Japan. Much like the colonial empires of 19^th and 20^th century Europe, Japan sought to dominate the Korean peninsula for strategic purposes.

[3] My mother’s first introduction to cheese and mayonnaise was from the black markets in Seoul during the Korean War. As US troops filled the city, American foodstuffs, such as chewing gum, chocolate and yes, American cheese, were introduced for the first time in Korea.

[4] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/05/some-15-of-u-s-receives-food-stamps/?KEYWORDS=Food+stamp

[5] In 2011, the USDA bought 421million pounds of surplus food; in 2012, only 129. (Source, USDA).

[6] Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor

[7] The study, dubbed the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, was done in 1944-1945, not only to study the psychological aspects of hunger and starvation, but also to help direct Allied relief efforst in post-World War II Europe. The results of the experiment were summarized in 1950 in Keys’ two-volume work, The Biology of Human Starvation. Keys, A.; Brožek, J.; Henschel, A.; Mickelsen, O.; Taylor, H. L. (1950). The Biology of Human Starvation (2 volumes). St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Press, MINNE edition.

Nomavirus is Everyone's Virus and Everyone's Cost

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Restaurant Noma. Photo Credit: Huffington Post

Last Friday morning, Extra Bladet, a Danish Tabloid, broke the story last Friday morning: “Noma: 63 hit by Roskildesyge (Norovirus in Danish).” Norovirus, a highly virulent and contagious virus, causing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, or gastroenteritis, sickened 63 out of 435 guests over a two-day period in February according to reports by The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

For the world’s top restaurant, this was not just a case of Noma catching the flu. The story went viral. Food websites, such as Eater and Grub Street, lapped up the story as soon as it was reported in Danish papers, and soon, all other established media sources, including National Public Radio, AP, UPI, Huffington Post, ABC News and the LA Times followed suit.

While the Twittersphere was burning through its schadenfreude quota, the actual scientific details about the illness were buried under a pile of snark. Norovirus has been at epidemic levels, causing almost 21 million illnesses each year in the US alone. According to the CDC, there is really no specific treatment and prevention, that is, proper hand and food hygiene, is often the best cure.

The problem is that norovirus is one tough bug. According to a paper in the Journal of Infectious Diseases [1], “Noroviruses are perhaps the perfect human pathogens… highly contagious, rapidly and prolifically shed, constantly evolving, evoking limited immunity, and only moderately virulent, allowing most of those infected to fully recover, thereby maintaining a large susceptible pool of hosts.” In other words, it’s a public health nightmare. Carriers often don’t know they have it or continue to carry it after they recover, thus passing it on to unsuspecting victims. It can survive at a wide range of temperatures, from below freezing up to 140F, and can survive for nearly two weeks on many surfaces. And it doesn’t need a high viral load to do its job: less than 20 viral particles are enough to cause illness. And it just needs one carrier to infect an entire community or institution.

Considering the prevalence, incidence and virulence of norovirus, it seems almost unbelievable that Noma didn’t have a previous outbreak of norovirus or have more patrons puking their guts out. What happened at Noma could have happened anywhere and everywhere, as it did in London in 2009 when 240 diners contracted the virus at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Fat Duck and a Chipotle outlet near Kent State University in Ohio in 2008.

But then the question is why didn’t Noma have an outbreak earlier or have more guests holding their stomachs? Hygiene is one factor. While the Danish authorities cited hygiene problems, specifically a “lukewarm” hand washing faucet, chefs and waitstaff are given strict instructions to wash hands thoroughly with hot water and soap on a regular basis. Although norovirus has been known to withstand even a dishwasher, frequent hand washing often cuts transmission rates. But one policy that Noma has is critically important: paid sick days. The CDC has found that 89% of norovirus outbreaks occur in places were food is prepared and handled on a regular basis: schools, nursing homes, cruise ships and restaurants. As it takes only one infected person to cause an outbreak, keeping quarantine on ill or possibly infected workers is paramount. Noma has a strict illness policy in which any ill worker, from the office to the cleaning staff, is sent immediately home at the slightest sign of illness and is told to stay home for 48 hours after symptoms subside. And they are paid for those days.

Compare this to the United States. According to the CDC, in 2011, 12% of restaurant workers reported signs of norovirus. The CDC also reports that 50% of norovirus infections can be traced back to food service workers. [2] According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research,[3] 78% of hotel and food service workers do not have paid sick leave. Another food service workers advocacy group, ROC (Restaurant Opportunities Center) United estimates 90% of food service workers lack paid sick leave. Due to the low wages and the job instability of food service work, many of America’s cooks, busboys, and servers can neither afford to stay home due to lost wages nor firing, only encouraging ill workers to come to work and infect their co-workers and patrons. Add the lack of health insurance to the absence of sick days, and you have a recipe for an ongoing epidemic.

But where is the will to change public health and labor policies to prevent such epidemics from happening? Small business owners complain that health insurance and paid sick days are too costly for them. Yet the cost of NOT giving workers sick days is much greater. According to the Integrated Benefits Institute, $227 billion are wasted due to lost productivity from illness.[4] In an economy that is barely recovering from a recession, these are dollars that cannot afford to be squandered. According to Cornell University economist Sean Nicholson, for every dollar spent on employee health care, employers can save three dollars in costs.

While Noma tries to repair its unfairly damaged reputation, millions of other food service workers at no-name restaurants are just trying to work through another sick day. Too bad that they don’t have Eater or Grub Street gleefully sneering at their misfortune. It might be the only way that their plight and that of millions of others working without sick days will finally be able to serve you and the public better.

[1] http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/205/11/1622.full

[2]Widdowson M-A, Sulka A, Bulens SN, et al. Norovirus and foodborne disease, United States, 1991–2000. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 2005;11:95-102

[3] Vicky Lovell, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Women and Paid Sick Days: Crucial for Family Well-Being, 2007.

[4] http://www.ibiweb.org/UserFiles/File/Poor Health Costs US Economy 576 Billion.pdf

Creating MADness

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:46:00 +0000

1st Mad Monday: (from left to right) Knud Romer, Erwin Lauterbach, Tal R & Rene Redzepi & Paul Cunninham

A number of years ago, when I was at the Tate Modern in London, I was attacked by a sticky mist of water and the glare from a giant Day-Glo bulb of orange-yellow light in the museum’s Turbine Hall. Confused at first, I just squinted my eyes into that searing ball of light. Then I glanced at the floor and saw of bunch of people lying there as if they were at the beach for the day. Yeah… right, I thought. Crazy art people. And then I saw the sign: Olafur Eliasson. "The Weather Project." Epiphany. I immediately lay down on the floor and basked in that light.

I thought of this on Feb. 25 when I attended the inaugural lecture of René Redzepi’s MAD Mondays, a public lecture and discussion series based on his wildly popular annual summertime MAD Symposium. How did Eliasson's concept spring to life? For that matter, where did Picasso’s "Guernica" come from? How did James Joyce create his stream of consciousness for Ulysses? And where does René Redzepi come off serving ants and cricket paste at dinner at his "world's best restaurant," Copenhagen's Noma? The answers to all these questions lie in the nature of creativity.
An understanding of the creative process was what Redzepi attempted to get at, at the first MAD Monday, by moderating a discussion, held upstairs in the book-lined chefs' common area at Noma, between four different people who all have stakes in the creativity game: chef Paul Cunningham, formerly of the Michelin-starred The Paul in Copenhagen; Danish author Knud Romer; Danish-Israeli artist Tal R; and the grand old man of Danish gastronomy, chef and cookbook author Erwin Lauterbach.

Starting with his own failure to understand the creative process, Redzepi declared, "Why creativity? Since 2010, we’ve tried to answer that. And we have no clue." Then, turning to the panel, Redzepi asked about their own challenges with creativity. For Lauterbach, the seeming paucity of fresh ingredients forced creativity upon him. "In the '70s, it was all French cooking," he said. "But I was in Sweden and I needed to be creative making food with just four products, like beets and potatoes."

For Paul Cunningham, the challenge was more mental than physical. After he garnered heaps of accolades for The Paul, the pressure of running a successful restaurant, writing cookbooks, and promoting his own "brand" eventually exacted a huge toll. "I was afraid of saying no," he said. "The stress of creativity created a monster." That monster was a nervous breakdown that led him to close down his restaurant at the height of its fame in order to find his mojo again, leading him to the rural coast of Jutland to cook at the resort inn Henne Kirkeby Kro. And with a new sense of freedom, not only did Cunningham find creativity, he also found happiness. "Creativity and happiness go hand in hand," he added. "And for me, they have to be that way."

But can anyone be creative? "I think the conventional idea of creativity is wrong," Knud Romer told the crowd. "That it is something immediate. It’s nonsense." But if our romantic notion of creativity is not what creates the newest dish or the critically acclaimed novel, then what is it? For Romer, creativity does not come from "nowhere," it’s the product of discipline and sweat. "To be creative is hard work," he said. "You have to have a goal. You have to learn about your craft, whether it is cooking or art. And you have to have knowledge.

Artist Tal R didn’t see creativity so much as an issue of knowledge but more in terms of process: "What is creativity?" he asked. "It is the free-fall of an idea." And falling free means that sometimes "you have to break something." That process is not necessarily one of originality, but one that involves a social push from others, whether it is from competition or from mimicry. "There’s a lot of stealing that goes on in creativity — I steal all the time." But does that make one less of an artist? Tal R says no, "It’s not the clichés or the stealing. It’s the desire that makes creativity."
And with respect to cooking, Redzepi sees begging, borrowing, and stealing in the same light, but in the end, he believes, it’s still the individual who determines creativity: "You can feel the creativity of the individual in the dish," he said. "Recipes are just a guideline." When the session ended, as the audience filed out the door, the Noma staff distributed chocolate chip cookies and Mikkeller beer to everyone. Each cookie was different — a vivid (and delicious) symbol of what it means to be truly creative.

Cross Posted at The Daily Meal: http://www.thedailymeal.com/ren-redzepis-first-mad-monday-panel-discussion#ixzz2MseD6VRP

The People 9/11 Forgot

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 06:10:00 +0000

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake the fuck up!”

“What are you doing here? Go away!”

“Somebody just bombed the World Trade Center!”

“Oh my fucking god! Are you kidding me? My sister. Oh my sister!”

I had just come back from New York City the night before. I had spent a week with my sister going to Barneys Warehouse Sale, wasting too much money on coffee at Café Gitane and raiding for kitchen supplies at Broadway Panhandler. I thought it was a good reward after 2 months of grueling research in Europe. I went back to California refreshed and rejuvenated.

All this seemed completely trivial the next day. I staring dialing, 212… Damn. No response. 212… 212… 212… Call mom. Maybe my sister called mom. No news. Worry worry. What about her husband? Doesn’t he work in Tribeca or was it Soho? Can’t remember. Dial again. Nothing. My friend had some secret phone pass number that should work. Dial…wait…dial. Oh thank God. You’re all right. Where’s Tom? He’s all right. What about everyone else? Tom’s family? I’m calling Mom and telling her you’re OK. Don’t move from your apartment. Keep me informed….

As we all witnessed in what can only be our generation’s version of the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 has been burnt into our minds. The images, the stories and the sorrow have occupied our national narrative now for a decade. Persons we never heard of became objects of scorn and hate. Places we never been to became headline news. Words we never knew became commonplace. In a twisted version of the Kevin Bacon Game, we all know someone that has been affected by 9/11.

And after Iran, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, the Taliban, jihad, and Al Qaeda, many of us are still trying to grasp the meaning or senlessness of 9/11. The statistics bear out the damage, but not the suffering. 2,819 dead. 343 firefighters and paramedics killed. 19,858 body parts found. 3,051 children lost a parent. 146,100 jobs lost. 40.2 billion dollars in insurance claims. And on and on…

And yet in all the numbers there were still those that were forgotten. Seventy-three workers at Windows on the World on the 106^th and 107^th floors of Tower One in the World Trade Center never got the recognition. All low-wage immigrant service workers, they slipped between the cracks of all the statistics. Many of them were illegally employed. Most had few relatives in the New York vicinity. All the workers had family members from the 4 corners of the earth: Colombia, Mexico, China, Ecuador, Brazil, etc. While all families were eligible for the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, many of them, due to language, diplomatic or economic circumstances never did receive their share of the victim funds. Furthermore, many relatives couldn’t even penetrate the legal maze of paperwork that compensation involved.

For those that survived the attacks, their own nightmare was beginning. Left with no job, no health care, no benefits, they were left on their own to navigate their lives post-9/11. Unlike high profile businesses such as the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald or city employees, such as the New York Fire Department or the New York Police Department, there was no safety net for those working at Windows on the World.

In a dirty little secret that everyone in the restaurant industry knows, restaurant workers, and not just those working at the Windows on the World, live with very few benefits, almost no health coverage, little financial stability[1] and few workplace rights (if any, and many times, those rights are routinely ignored or violated). Part of the problem lies in the unskilled and low-skilled nature of restaurant work. Waiters, dishwashers, line and prep cooks, clean-up crew, busboys, hosts, and bartenders are all the backbone of the restaurant business, and they are paid marginally compared to the physical and stress demanded. And unlike construction workers or other unskilled labor, many of these laborers are non-union,[2] thus lack any power to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

The other part of the problem lies with restaurant owners.[3]. Food is only about 38-42% of the total budget of a restaurant. The rest of the money goes to staff and overhead. In the end, restaurants keep about $.04 of every dollar spent at a restaurant. This being said, it is no surprise that 75% of restaurants go out of business after 4 years. Considering that labor enforcement is weak and profit margins are low, there is every single incentive to cheat the system by underpaying workers.

And then there is the documentation problem. Simply put, many restaurant workers are illegal. And no, it’s not just taco joints, greasy spoons and Chinese restaurants. Some restaurants are fooled by false documentation. Others look the other way in terms of false documentation. And then there are those who purposely hire illegal workers. In any case, illegal workers are caught in a legal catch-22 when in comes to unpaid wages or worker abuse. Complain and they get fired or possibly reported. Don’t complain and they get treated like ****.

So what is one to do? Don’t eat at restaurants? Well, I for one could never do that – I just like food too damn much. One solution is to check on the web which restaurants have the best employment records or policies.[4] Another solution is to support the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York. Founded by surviving staff of Windows on the World Restaurant, the organization advocates on behalf of restaurant workers, creates job training and development opportunities for restaurant, and lobbies for better working conditions for all restaurant workers.[5] Third, push your Congressperson for immigration reform. And what you can do immediately? Pay a good tip for service. Restaurant workers work grueling hours under pretty stressful conditions so you can have a good meal. They deserve to be remembered every day – not just on 9/11.

Windows on the World’s Classic Manhattan (adapted from Dale DeGroff)

We all could use one today.

1/2 oz. sweet vermouth

2 1/2 oz. rye

lemon twist for garnish

In a cocktail shaker, combine 4 ice cubes, sweet vermouth and rye and shake until cold. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with lemon twist.

Note: This blog post was originally published on 9/11/2011, however, as a tribute to those who served, survived and died during 9/11, I am reposting it. Considering the state of the US economy, the message has never been more pertinent to the brave workers everywhere that helped New York City recover and move on.

[1] A 2005 study by the Restaurant Opportunities Center in NYC reported that 60% of restaurant workers earn wages at the poverty level. Since the recession of 2008, that number has surely increased.

[2] This is not to suggest there are not unions for the service industry, but only 1% of the NYC restaurant workforce is unionized. Amazingly, 43 of the 73 workers that died at Windows on the World were members of the hotel and service industry union, UNITE HERE. The restaurant industry has special challenges to labor organizers due to the fragmented nature of the restaurant industry. Unlike hotels, casinos and the like, 93% of restaurants employ less than 50 workers, according to the National Restaurant Association (think about the local taco joint or the Thai place around the corner – NOT Daniel). Trying to build a coalition around small business requires an immense amount of resources that unions don’t simply have (even thought the mafia seems to do it well…).

[3] Once again, this is not to suggest that all restaurants are guilty of this. Many of NYC’s best restaurants hire legally and pay wages according to law. Some of them even give their workers health insurance and benefits, most notably at Tom Colicchio’s Craft and Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack (Bouley also gives health benefits, but no paid sick days or vacation. Boo!). But several high profile restaurants, including Del Posto, Morimoto, Alto as well as chefs/restaurateurs Mario Batali and Bobby Flay have been accused of stiffing their working stiffs in the kitchen (Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2011. For the article, click here.) Many restaurateurs claim that there is confusion in the law regarding the distribution of wages, especially to those that regularly receive tips, such as bartenders and wait-staff. (According to US wage law, those workers who receive tips on the job are paid less than the minimum wage.) Dishwashers and other staff just get screwed at minimum wage (or less).

[5] The Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York City has released a restaurant guide for restaurants that adhere to fair labor practices (click here for the list).

[6] If you are outside New York, Restaurant Opportunities Center United works on a national basis for restaurant workers rights, with branches in Michigan and Chicago.

Organics! We don't need no stinking organics...unless we do.

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:04:00 +0000

Crop duster working overhead in California as farm workers pick produce

Well, the jury is out. Stanford University just published a study saying that the literature “lacks strong evidence” that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional. Some of you are probably kicking yourself for trading your child for that precious locally grown, organic tomato you bought last week at Whole Paycheck.

While conventional farmers are doing the “Told-You-So” dance and bobo moms weep for their not-above-average children, is there still a reason to eat organic despite the study? Yes there is and it has everything to do with health. Despite the title of several headlines across major newspapers,[1] organic food is better for you, and dare I say it, healthier for you. And here’s why[2].

1.Pesticides. According to the study, the researchers found that 38% of the food study had pesticide residues. This is in comparison to 7% found in organic produce. The researchers had basically poo-poohed the effects of pesticides because all pesticides levels were below the mark of what is accepted by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But what the researchers did miss was the long-term effects of pesticides. The longest term study was two years. Most cancers and other associated diseases with pesticide exposure take much longer than 2 years to manifest.[3] And if you have kids, you should be especially worried. Because pesticides affect children more adversely than adults due to body weight, their even exposure that is under EPA levels for adults could be threatening for children.

2. Antibiotic exposure.[4] While the researchers did acknowledge antibiotic exposure as a reason for going organic, what they did not explicate was the effect having antibiotic-laced meat in most grocery stores, namely, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Currently, 80% of all antibiotics used in the US are for livestock use. And most of those antibiotics aren’t curing Elsie the cow of her nasty cold – they are used to promote growth or yield (e.g. milk or meat output) for animals. This rampant use of antibiotics in farms and ranches has only increased the amount of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the US Food and Drug Administration’s own reports, common meats, such as chicken breast, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops, have had increases of 26.6%, 55.3%, 11.5% and 17.5% in E. coli that were resistant to 3 antibioitic classes. Ground turkey, for some reason is the real winner with 28.2% of all samples resistant to four antibiotics classes. And that’s just E. coli. Just wait to you see the numbers for Salmonella.

Until the FDA actually gets their act together about banning or severely curtailing sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics, the only insurance we have against the growing tide of antibiotic resistance is consumer power. If there is a growing market for antibiotic-free meat, then farms will realize there is a market for them. Yes, that means you will have to pay for your meat, but do you want to see salmonella become the next ebola? Only through collective action can we stop this public health nightmare. Relying on the vegan next door will not do the trick.

3. The Environment. Although there are plenty of people who argue this point, I think it’s worth reiterating. The methods used for organic farming protect soil fertility. Any farmer will tell you the key to growing crops is in the soil. No soil equals no farm. The problem of conventional farming is in the snowball effect it has on the environment. By using destructive tilling practices and monoculture, conventional farming denudes and erodes the soils of not only the healthy bacteria and nutrients needed to grow crops, but insures that for the next generations that they will be dependent upon fertilizers to get the same yield. The run-off of fertilizers from industrial farms have been implicated mass pollution that not only destroys drinking water for residents but also creates “death zones” (or eutrophication) in bodies of water due to high concentrations of fertilizers. Organic farming insures that nutrients are not stripped from the soil. And healthier soil means less water, less erosion and often, better yields.

Speaking of pesticides, they too cause a chain reaction across ecosytems by poisoning the entire food chain in a particular ecosystem. But there’s one benefit to pesticides – pests get heartier. In a farmers’ version of the nuclear arms race, heavy use of pesticides encourage pesticide resistance in organisms, which in turn only encourages heavier use of pesticides in another form.[5]

4. Biodiversity. And of course, organic practices encourages biodiversity. Plants and animals, like people, depend on genetic diversity to keep a healthy population. Monoculture and industrial farming practices not only destroy the genetic variation that keeps plant species hearty, but also destroys the local ecosystem that provides homes, food and shelter for millions of other species in the area.

5. Taste. Last, but not least, taste is probably a huge reason why you should buy organic. While the jury is still out as to whether there is a statistically significant difference in flavor, but think about it. Because organic farmers have higher costs compared to conventional farmers, the need to take care of their crops is paramount if they want to market them. Seen all those pictures of workers dumping bins of green, unripe tomatoes into a giant truck? Try doing that with a ripe brandywine, and you can forget about selling it…because it will be tomato sauce.

Furthermore, as freshness counts in good tasting produce, the quicker turnaround time between farm to market insures a better tasting product. What tastes better? A three-month old apple from Argentina or an apple you just got off the tree? Most conventional produce is grown for shelf-life-NOT for taste. Add the chemicals sprayed on most apples, and you’ve a recipe for avoiding apples. Going organic insures a steady market for farmers that care about good tasting food – instead of good for a trans-Atlantic-boat-ride food.

Of course the irony in the Stanford study was that it proved what organic advocates said it was supposed to do: raise crops and livestock that have no exposure to pesticides, antibiotics and hormones. Organic practices are about METHOD-no one every promised a nutritional benefit. But in buying organics, you are buying for health – your health, public health and the earth’s health. And if don’t remember that, we’re going to be a lot less healthy in the future.

[1] Titles include This Week’s “Is organic food a waste of money,” National Public Radio’s “Why Organic Food May Not Be Healthier for You,” New York Times, “Stanford Study Casts Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce.”

[2] There are several problems with the Stanford University study. And they are serious ones. But main gist here is WHY one should buy organic, NOT why Stanford researchers stink. But in the interest of scientific geekdom, I will go through the major problems of this study. First, the actual design of the study is problematic: the researchers did a meta-analysis of 240 studies and only used 17 studies actually looked at the effects in humans themselves. The biggest problems with meta-analysis is in selection and confirmation biases. We don’t know which studies why studies were accepted or taken for analysis, therefore researchers could potentially cherry-pick studies that confirm their original hypotheses. Also meta-analyses are not consistent in experimental assumptions and methods, including that of the meta-analysis itself. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. And then there’s the infamous Simpson affect. The studies themselves could all point to being statistically significant in one direction, but the meta-analysis proves otherwise. The best example of this would be Derek Jeter’s batting average. A study at Dartmouth looked at different ways of calculating Jeter’s batting average…only to conclude that different calculations gave very different answers.

Furthermore, the study has some serious omissions in terms of what defines health. Only 17 of the studies included human test subjects, and of those 17, only three analyzed the health outcomes (of which two of the three looked at allergies-which has nothing to do with nutritional profiles of organic food). The lack of metabolic analyses in these studies is seriously problematic in determining the full nutritional or health value of organic versus conventional. Could our bodies use nutrients more efficiently if they were found in organic food form? What role does pesticides and antibiotics have in metabolizing food? Without a deeper analysis into those biomedical questions, the study doesn’t really help with the study of health outcomes.

And lastly, the study didn’t look into the other motivators for eating organic. While the researchers in the study claimed that the question of organic foods’ nutritional content was a frequent one, people eat organic for plenty of different reasons, with nutrition probably being one of them. But by not investigating the actual motivators in buying organic foods, the researchers missed a real opportunity to pinpoint the why consumers make the food decisions that they do.

[3] Diseases linked to pesticide exposure include Parkinson’s, hormone disrupters or endocrine system imbalances (early puberty, decreased sperm count, etc.) and cancer (260 studies link pesticide exposure to cancer).

[4] For those interested in exploring the relationship between antibiotic use and public health, there’s a really nice piece done by PBS’s Frontline on the effects of sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farms on public health.

[5] There’s one more environmental benefit to organic farming: carbon sequestration. According to some studies, organic farming is better at capturing carbon than it’s conventional couterpart, thus making it a better weapon fight climate change. Unfortunately, there are not enough studies to make this a conclusive benefit of organic farming. But if it is true, organic farming could be another weapon against climate change.

Don't Pity the Fool!

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Gooseberries!

“We were getting rather frustrated with Transport for London at one point and discussed internally trying to get on a bus with a coffin.” – London funeral director John Cribb expresses frustration at special road lanes set aside for Olympic vehicles.

By now, we probably have a case of Olympic fatigue. I know I do. Even thought the 2012 London Olympics are officially over[1], there are only so many rounds of women’s boxing, shot put and Michael Phelps that one can take within a 14-day period. There is no way that anyone can convince me that McDonalds builds Olympic champions. And don’t even get me started on the overly-enthusiastic commentary from sportscasters…no matter how much you yell, synchronized swimming is not an inherently scream-in-your-face sport.

From the looks of it, it seems that Olympic attendees have had it with the food offerings at Olympic venues. Stories of faux-Mex, 12-dollar crap fish-and-chips, 10-dollar beer and McDonalds everywhere have been the complaint of many attendees. Add industrial scones, cheap tea and Cadbury chocolate bars, this was probably not British food’s finest moment. This is especially sad considering the renaissance that British cooking and restaurantation has had in the last 10 years. Maligned for many years as a cuisine of mushy-peas, Marmite and funny names,[2] British cooking has returned to its roots by concentrating on high quality regional foodstuffs and ingredients. Neal’s Yard Dairy, in London, has a full selection of artisanal British cheeses – from 4 different types of cheddar, several blue cheese that are NOT named Stilton and a Stinking Bishop.[3] St. John in London has done this brilliantly by bringing back old classics such as Eccles cake, pigs tails and Welsh rarebit in a form that actually tastes like it was supposed to (by that, I mean it tastes like food you really want to eat).

One of those quintessential British ingredients is the gooseberry. Native to the UK, northern Europe and parts of Asia, the gooseberry (Ribes uva-crispa) is related to currants. Native to parts of Northern Europe (both in the UK and on the continent) and across Asia, gooseberries are thorny bushes, about 1-3 feet. While gooseberries can be found in the US, its cultivation is very limited.[4]

Gooseberries look much like their currant cousins in shape, but slightly bigger in size. While there are several varieties of gooseberries, most are a pale bright green and are used primarily in desserts and preserves. Primarily fruiting in mid-late summer, their sweet-tart flavor is a primarily used for pies and preserves. But honestly, why waste fresh fruit? Gooseberries are perfect for another one of those classic British desserts: Fool.[5]

Fool, like its related desserts (or puddings, if we really want to all-Brit) Eton Mess and trifle, is merely a sweetened fruit puree folded into whipped cream. And fool, like gooseberries, has been around for a while-some sources have it dated as far back as the 15^th century, especially the gooseberry variety.

Because it is SO simple to make, it is absolutely crucial to have to best quality ingredients-namely, good fruit and fresh cream. Now I could go on about the abysmal quality of dairy in the US, but if you are lucky enough to get good cream[6] this is the perfect use for it. In terms of the berries, if you happen to get real gooseberries, then by all means use them. In a pinch, you can substitute any soft fruit, blackberries, strawberries, etc. and it will just as good. The only key is that the fruit be ripe and in season. And the best part about fool? It’s NO COOK cooking. The only equipment you really need is a hand mixer, and you don’t even need that (for those who want an upper bicep workout). Mash fruit, whip cream and fold and you’re ready to eat.

And with this, I say good riddance to the Olympics. But I definitely hear the UK calling. And it’s because I’m a fool.

Hay-Infused Gooseberry Fool (with blackberry garnish)

Hay-infused Gooseberry Fool

Because I like a twist on things, I have incorporated a little something extra for this particular fool recipe – smoked hay. You’re probably thinking I’m nuts, but smoked hay accentuates both the cream, by bringing out its grassy/savory elements, and the gooseberries, by foiling the acidity. But if can’t really deal with the idea of horse fodder in your food, by all means you can omit it, but I think you’d be really missing out. You can get hay at any pet shop, but if you are lucky enough to have a local source, by all means use it. (And for those of you worried about diseases and those sorts of things, because the hay is heated, any critter, small or large, will not survive. Trust me.)

2 large handfuls of hay

1 pd. of gooseberries (or any other soft fruit, e.g. blackberries, strawberries, raspberries) with some reserved for garnish

¼ c. sugar + 2 tbs. sugar

11/2 c. cream (see note)

Mint leaves for garnish

1. Smoke hay. Heat oven to 350F. Take a metal baking sheet and line with foil. Place hay on top in an even layer. Place in oven and bake until it starts to smoke and have a noticeable scent, about 45 minutes to an hour. (Start checking at 45 minutes. You don’t want a fire in your oven).

2. In the meanwhile, take the cream and place it in a metal bowl. Place in the refrigerator to chill until hay is finished smoking.

3. Also while hay is smoking, make the fruit puree, take chosen fruit you are using, and mash roughly with a potato masher, until desired consistency. (For a smoother consistency, mash thoroughly and strain skin and seeds out with a fine-meshed strainer or a chinoise.) Add ¼ cup of sugar, stir thoroughly to dissolve and place in refrigerator to chill. (You will probably have more than you need for the recipe. Use the rest for yogurt or pancakes!)

4. When the hay has finished smoking, immediately place the hot hay into the cold cream and let it infuse for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

5. When ready to serve, take infused cream and strain hay out of cream, using cheesecloth lined strainer (you want the taste of hay, not actual hay in your mouth) strain all the hay out of the cream. Press on the hay to make sure you can extract all the cream from the hay.

6. With a hand mixer, add 2 tbs. of sugar into the cream and whip into hard peaks form. Add 1 ½ c. of fruit puree; gently fold into cream until thoroughly combined.

7. Place into individual dessert bowls or into a large serving bowl. Garnish with reserved berries and mint sprigs. Serve immediately.

[1] I’m not sure what is defined as “over” by the Olympic committee. Even though the closing ceremonies were Sunday, I hear that the Bronze soccer match is going to be today. Are the over or are they not? Does anyone have an answer to this?

[2] Funny names would include Toad in the Hole (sausages encased in Yorkshire pudding batter), Bubble and Squeak (fried vegetables from a roast dinner) or pasties, which are encased meat pies (for a long while I wondered why the British were naming food after the things you put on your boobs).

[3] Stinking Bishop is a washed rind, soft cow’s milk cheese that is pretty stinky, but not offensively so. Made exclusively in Gloucestershire, the cheese used to be made solely of Gloucestershire cows, but due to scarcity of the breed, other cows’ milk may be added.

[4] To those that get annoyed by the US customs agents asking you if you have any fruit, plants or seeds from a foreign country, get over it. The main reason why gooseberries and currants are not cultivated in the US has to do with invasive species. The Ribes sub-genus is a host for white pine blister rust, which has devastated pine forests all over Europe. For that reason, Maine and a couple of other states (mainly in New England) have forbidden the cultivation of currants, gooseberries or any hybrids in any form.

[5] For a while, I thought the name fool came about because it was so simple to make, but the Oxford English Dictionary basically told me I was fooled (HA!). There seems to be very little history on the dessert itself, beyond it’s ubiquity after the 16^th century. Some have traced the etymology from the French word fouler, or to crush, but according to the OED, that is completely off. If anyone has a clue as to the origins of this word, let me know. I’ve been wondering about this for a while….

[6] I think raw cream is amazing stuff, but honestly, from a public health perspective, raw cream is a raw deal. Anyhow, it is almost impossible to get unless you know some dairy farm that will supply you with the illegal goods (yes, raw milk is illegal in several states). The main problem with raw milk is that it is usually filled with pathogens, e.g. E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria. Yes, pasteurization kills a little bit of the taste, but you won’t taste much from a hospital bed if you get food poisoning.

Drink It Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:08:00 +0000

“Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.” – Baz Luhrman, “Everyone is Free to Wear Sunscreen”

I’m usually not much of a drinker. I do enjoy a nice glass of wine now and then, but honestly, if you were to ask me the minute differences between a Super-Tuscan and a Brunello di Montalcino, I’d probably say, “Uh…one’s tastier than the other?”

This is not to harsh on oenophiles and wine experts. In fact I’m pretty envious of their knowledge of terroir and their palate memory. I’m not going to try to compete with 70 year old guys that can’t find their glasses but can sure as hell tell me which side of the hill a Trebbiano was grown on. I’ll just be content to see a picture of happy vintner in bucolic nowhere-ville.

I would probably have to say the same of cocktails…until it comes summer. Somehow the combination of heat, bared bodies and stale coconut oil has me thinking cocktails…in any form. Martini, Negroni, Long Island Ice Tea, whatever. As long as it’s cold and it has alcohol, I’ll pretty much drink it.

Cocktail at Grant Achatz's Aviary in Chicago

This attitude has gotten me pretty far, for the most part. But if anyone has noticed, cocktails and spirits have gone the way of wine, in terms of science and knowledge (and snobbery, but we won’t to there). Want bacon infused vodka? Vaporized tea? Liquid nitrogen? They got it, and then some. Call it molecular mixology or crazy drinking, but this is NOT your dad’s gin and tonic. Bars such as Aviary and Longman & Eagle in Chicago, PDT in New York City, and Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco have re-examined not only the ingredients of drinks but also the technique involved in making them. Even cooking schools have noticed. David Arnold, technology director at the International Culinary Institute[1] and inventor extraordinaire at David Chang’s Booker and Dax, has gotten into the game by distilling his own spirits (Hint: Don’t try wasabi…) and pressure cooking onions for a future drink.[2] Homemade bitters, herb-infused spirits, and vegetables have all become the new ginger ale, sour mix and maraschino cherries for barkeeps. And it’s not just vodka, whiskey and gin. A whole set of old world spirits, such as Fernet Branca[3], Crème de Violette, Herbsaint, have been playing with new artisanal rums, tequilas, and brandies to create some pretty unique concoctions that wouldn’t be out of place in a lab.

In the spirit (HA!) of the summer cocktail, today’s recipe takes some classic late summer fruits and puts them to boozy use. Blueberries, which are right now in season across northern latitudes of Europe (Germany, Poland, Scandinavia) and in northern US states[4], are amazing in drinks. The problem is with the skin and the seeds, which does not make for a pretty drink. But by muddling and straining the blueberries, you get all the booberry deliciousness without any seeds stuck in your teeth (definitely NOT sexy). But for you men who might think that any “fruity” drink is not manly enough, don’t worry, I’m on to you. To give some hair on this drink, I’ve added a nice herbal element: thyme and mint. By infusing some time into some sugar syrup as well as muddling some mint with the blueberries, you get a foil to all the sugar. Add some gin and you’re ready to rock. But trust me on the sunscreen.

Thyme's up!

Thyme’s Up

Yield: 1 drink

1 c. sugar

1 c. water

Zest of 1 lemon

1 large bunch of thyme (reserve a sprig for garnish)

10 blueberries + 2 for garnish

10 large mint leaves (use Moroccan mint if you can get it)

1 oz. gin (I use Hendricks or Bombay Sapphire, but any good quality gin is good)

1 oz. vodka (I use Stoli, but once again, any good vodka will do)

Soda water

Crushed ice

Lemon cut into eighths

Lemon peel twist for garnish

1. To make the thyme simple syrup, take sugar and water in a small saucepan and put over medium heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar and let come to a boil. Take thyme and slap it between your hands, as if you were clapping with mint between your hands (to bring out the essential oils in the thyme) and place into the syrup. Add lemon zest and let it steep 8 hours or overnight, covered. (You will have far more than you need for the drink. Save the rest for other things…like more drinks or as a sweetener for tea.)

2. To make the drink, take a glass muddle blueberries until they are completely juiced. Take mint and slap it (exactly the same method as the thyme) and then place into glass and muddle with smashed blueberries. Take the muddled blueberry mixture and using a fine meshed strainer, strain the juice out of the blueberries until all the juice is extracted (push on the solids with a spoon to get the maximum amount of juice).

3. Place a handful of crushed ice, gin, vodka and 2-3 tsp. of thyme syrup with the blueberry juice and shake or stir mixture until cold and well mixed. Strain drink into serving glass, top with soda water. Taste to see if more syrup is desired (I like my on the not-so-sweet side) and add the juice of 1 lemon eighth. Garnish with thyme sprigs, blueberries and lemon twist.

[1] International Culinary Institute is formerly known as the French Culinary Institute.

[2] David Arnold is currently working on a book on the science of cocktails. Rumor has it that it will come out with Norton some time in the next year….

[3] A lot of these spirits have been around for ages. Aperol, Chartreuse, Lillet – they’ve been traditional Apéritifs and digestifs for Europeans for quite some time. The interesting thing is their “rediscovery” as cocktail ingredients instead of just a straight shot (or with a bit of soda or water).

[4] Blueberries usually are seasonal starting from June to August. Fruiting primarily depends on latitude and altitude, with lower altitudes and latitudes starting first. Of course with climate change, fruiting is starting earlier and earlier.

Noma - A Work Still In Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 08:55:00 +0000

“I have never seen further than standing on the shoulders of giants” – Sir Isaac Newton.

When Sir Isaac Newton uttered these words, he was referring to the years of research and discovery from such greats as Galileo, Kepler and Brahe that gave him the base to do his own work. Although we would like to think that genius is the force of scientist, any scientist will tell you for every good thought they ever had was the product of years of study, lab work, number crunching and observation.

In a lot of ways, cooking is in the same vein. For every top chef that is anointed the next best thing by Michelin, San Pellegrino Top 100 restaurants, or Food Network, there are years of training and apprenticeship (stagiaire in French). While a phenomenal dish may be born in chef’s head since they were 15, there are hours (and hours and hours) of peeling vegetables, stock making and kitchen drudgery before that plate even hits a restaurant 10 or even 20 years later.

Thus when I first went to Noma [an abbreviation of “Nordisk Mad” (Nordic Food)] in 2007, I realized that something was brewing in René Redzepi’s head long before the wood sorrel even hit the plate.

By now, the origins story of Noma is fairly well established. BN (“Before Noma”), there was only a revolving door of pork, potatoes, herring and grumpy Protestants. And AN (“After Noma”), every restaurant in Denmark is busy foraging for herbs with funny letters and killing moose with their bare hands.

But as with any origins myth, the truth is far more complicated. Yes, Denmark for years was not what anyone would call a “dining destination.” Beyond the famed smørrebrød, all you could in terms of fine dining was from Italy and France. And outside Denmark? Interest in Scandinavian food was a novelty – but mainly of the IKEA and butter cookie-kind (Granted, Marcus Samuelsson did Scandinavia a huge favor by elevating Scandinavian food to fine dining in the early aughts with Aquavit).

In 2003, Claus Meyer, the Danish restaurateur, approached a bunch of chefs about opening a high-end restaurant that highlighted Nordic ingredients. Most chefs passed. Except a young chef named René Redzepi. After having stints at Pierre André in Copenhagen, Jardin des Sens in France, El Bulli, and French Laundry, Redzepi, then working as a sous-chef at the Kong Hans, agreed and a partnership was born.

But the beginning was not easy. Sourcing was a bit of a problem: No one just had piles of wood sorrel at the grocery store. But that was the least of Noma’s worries: How do you convince diners, much less chefs, that there was any worth in Nordic food? Chefs were the easy bunch. Ten months after Noma opened, Redzepi and Meyer did a Lars Von Trier. Working with area chefs, they created the Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen.

Chefs working inside the kitchen at Noma

But as the 17^th century French playwright Moliere said, “I live on good soup, not on fine words.” The proof was ultimately in the pudding. After reading several reviews of Noma, I decided on a whim to go there for lunch in 2007. After eating at many of the world’s top fine dining establishments, WD-50, Charlie Trotter’s, French Laundry, I was not expecting to be surprised.

How wrong I was. Starting with a couple of amuse-bouches of root crisps and egg cream, beef tartar with wood sorrel and a juniper vinaigrette and an aebleskiver (a donut like pastry made with batter) filled with pork and dusted with vinegar powder, this was not your farmor’s food.

The mains also did not disappoint. Instead of the ubiquitous pork, there was seafood abounds. Squid was served with unripe strawberries, cream and dill. Razor clams were served with an edible shell of parsley gelatin and a dill-mustard sauce, garnished with a mound of horseradish powder. Tender reindeer had ramson, woodruff and celery. This was food that broke ALL the rules yet maintained a rigor in taste. I tried to convince my friends of the ingenuity of the food I was eating, but I mainly faced a deer-in-headlights expression. They didn’t get it and to a certain extent, neither did I. It wasn’t that the food wasn’t delicious. It was fantastic. What I couldn’t get my head around was the juxtaposition of radically local ingredients with classical technique. It was if someone put a chef in Mars and asked him to go crazy.

But it just wasn’t the food. Who decided that an old ship warehouse could be repurposed to a fine dining destination? Who has the chef greet you like you were his neighbor? And shouldn’t chefs be cooking the food and not serving it? And since when did fine dining destinations look like a hunting lodge? And it still gets a Michelin star?!

René Redzepi has now become the poster boy for an uber-locavore and foraging movement that even has New York’s Central Park worried for its plants. Almost as if he predicted a backlash to the chemical warfare of molecular gastronomy, Redzepi’s style of cooking has now become a dining meme to the point that a television show, Portlandia, has made an entire parody of locavore and wildvore dining practices.

Amsue Bouche of Malt Flatbread with Juniper being prepared

Did two Michelin stars, a Time Magazine cover and three consecutive number ones in San Pellegrino Top 100 Restaurant list change anything? Certainly the restaurant itself has changed. From a kitchen staff of under 10, the staff is now of close to 40, including 20-30 stages, plus a hoard of foragers, farmers and fishermen supplying the restaurant. Add a completely renovated kitchen, a food laboratory, an actual head chef beyond Redzepi, and it’s any wonder that the restaurant is in the same physical location.

But what about the food? Over the course of this year, I was lucky enough to dine at Noma twice, once at lunch and once for dinner, and well, things have changed. But to use the words “better” would be a misnomer: Noma didn’t become “better” or “worse.” It just is.

This was evident the minute I sat down to eat. Opening with an amuse-bouche of malt flatbread shaped in the form of a tree branch with a dusting of dried pine needle powder set inside a vase of local flora, the setting might have proved to be too precious – until one took a bite. The slightly burnt caramel undertones of the malt were offset by the herbal bitterness of the pine powder, as if one could capture the Swedish woods in a cracker.

And on and on it went, this series of amuse bouches, each reminiscent of the best Scandinavian holiday you never had. A blue mussel with concentrated mussel juice and celery was encased in an edible shell with the taste of Limfjord in a mind’s eye. A pot of baby radishes and carrots planted in a “soil” of ground malt bread and a puree of herbs and crème fraîche. A tin of cheese “cookies” topped with chopped arugula and stems taken from an assortment of herbs used in the kitchen that day. Toast topped with smoked cod roe was the summer picnic on the bay.

Snack of Blue Mussels with an edible shell

By the time I finished all the amuse-bouches, I realized what the change was there. Yes, some of the “standard” Noma dishes were still on the menu: the beef tartar with sorrel, the marrow salad with pickled vegetables, but others got a new twist, such as the æbleskiver.

While earlier, Noma nibbled on the edges, it was evident in within that first hour that Noma had pushed itself to virtually change the ontology of fine dining. The categories of what were “ingredients,” “cooking,” and “food” were all challenged, just in 14 bites. Salad? Forget it. René has ants. They tasted like lovage, simply dressed with vinegar. Aebleskiver, looked the like its generic self-until you saw the muikku (a small Finnish freshwater fish) speared through it. One bite later, revealed a square chunk of piping hot pickled cucumber. And using shaved frozen cod liver, normally destined to Omega-3 supplements, as a Nordic answer to foie gras? Huh?

Tastes like lovage! Live ants dressed with vinegar

But the push was also in seeing how much work ingredients and technique could do. Redzepi asked more of his ingredients, geography and culture. And in turn, Redzepi was asking his diners to take that risk with him. A dish of fresh and fermented peas (or “peaso” as our server joked) used the fermentation techniques of ancient Japan to place vegetable, animal and mineral all in one dish. A dried scallop, beechnut and biodynamic grains plate used locally grown grain and herbs to create a “grød” or porridge with dashi-esque freeze-dried scallop chips placed on top for an umami crunch.

Pear Tree dessert with pear and thyme sponge

But lest one think that the desserts were to be neglected, Noma’s chef de partie Milton Abel and pastry chef, Rosio Sanchez, did not disappoint. A dessert of poached/grilled pear, seasoned with lemon thyme, sat next to a frozen sponge of thyme and a sauce of thyme oil. The natural sugar in the grilled pear only became more evident with the judicious use of thyme and a sprinkling of salt. A dessert of walnut and berries had no hint of it’s origins until you took a bite-it was walnut ice cream, but balanced with the tannic notes from a slightly bitter walnut powder and an acid punch of powdered berries.

“Is everything all right?” asked the waiter. It was more than “all right” – it was incredible. But in some ways, this is not really the right question to ask. No one ever asked Newton, if things were “all right.” Nature is as nature does, but even Newton admitted that while “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.” The question for Noma is not whether there should be expectations upon what the “perfect” dining experience should be. The genius of Noma, like in science, is in creation. It still is becoming.

Cross-posted (with edits) on The Daily Meal

Are we MAD? Yes we are! Reflections on Day 2 of MAD Food Camp

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:22:00 +0000

Ferran Adria burning down the house at MAD Food Camp

Considering the theme of MAD Food Camp was appetite, the first day’s speakers certainly whetted the audience’s appetite. In the words of one chef, Josh Pollen of London’s Blanch and Shock, day two was only bound to be “massively epic.” With heavyweight speakers Wylie Dufrense, Nordic Food Lab, Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver, and Ferran Adrià, listeners had no excuses.

Chido Govera

But before any of the speakers began, René Redzepi paid to tribute to Spain – Spain’s soccer team, that is. Busting out a giant picture of the Spanish flag, Redzepi asked the audience to listen to the Spanish national anthem – probably much to the consternation of Massimo Bottura. But the start of day two was not about games. In what was probably the most poignant talk of the entire symposium, Chido Govera talked about hunger, memory and the will to do differently. Govera, a young Zimbabwean, was orphaned at the age of seven. Left to take care of younger brother and grandmother, Govera learned to forage for mushrooms from her grandmother. Saved from forced marriage by her own decision, she was fortunate enough to be chosen for a pilot project on fungiculture. Taught how to cultivate mushrooms using agricultural waste, Govera skills provided her money and food for not only supporting her own family, but also other orphans in her community. Using her story, she has not only taught fungiculture to other disadvantaged youth, but also started her own business to fund her development projects across the Africa and even in Oakland, California. But what does this do with appetite? In what could be said as an inspiration to the world, “Appetite lets us look inward and bring it outside to make change with what we have.”

"It was a shitshow" Oh boy. Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese

Hope was also the message of Anthony Myint and Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese Food. In only what could be a described as a fairy-tale which even made St. John Bread and Wine head chef Lee Tiernan cry, Myint and Bowien told the story of Mission Chinese Food. Myint, then a line cook in San Francisco, “didn’t know what I (Myint) wanted to do with my cooking career. As I often do in moments of uncertainty, I ate a taco.” And thus the story of Mission Chinese Food was born. First starting with a food truck and then renting space from a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant for the princely sum of 300 dollars a day, Bowien and Myint started cooking food in a cramped kitchen, also shared with the still running Chinese restaurant. It wasn’t easy. As Myint and Bowien put it mildly, “It was a shitshow.” After doing their own cooking for a stint, Myint and Bowien would then sponsor guest chefs at the restaurant. As each night was a “logistical nightmare,” both Myint and Bowien thought that maybe “failure was an option.” After closing the restaurant for a month, Bowien and Myint reincarnated themselves as Mission Chinese Food. Like other Chinese restaurants, Bowien and Myint hired local Chinese immigrants to be staff. Unlike local Chinese restaurants, they paid their workers living wage and donated a large part of their profits to charity: one year alone, $130,000 dollars was donated to the San Francisco Food Bank. Using their appetite for good food and social justice, Bowien and Myint’s story proved that Cinderella can go to the ball… even with Szechuan peppercorns.

As several speakers noted, part of understanding appetite is understanding science. In studying the memory of meals, Dr. Paul Rozin examined the psychology of memorable meals and his findings should make restaurants take notice. After surveying diners in America, Rozin asked “Why should be serving dessert at the end of meals if it’s not our favorite dish?” (Sorry, pastry chefs.) The key to memorable meals is in the physical ordering and structure of meals. Foods that are novel, food order (quick survey of Mad Food Camp participants found that majority liked appetizers the most), and communality all affect our experience with meals. But are chefs willing to incorporate those elements into planning meals? Are we missing a certain vocabulary about how we understand the meaning of food?

In challenging conceptions, the Nordic Food Lab’s Lars Williams and Mark Emil Hermansen presented the world of edible “inedibles” – namely insects. In a world where food security has become paramount concern of policy makers, environmentalists and governments, why aren’t we eating more “inedibles”? For Nordic Food Lab, that question is one of the reasons to go wildvore. But the other major concern? Deliciousness. “Deliciousness is the driving force of edibility.” Distributing a little bag filled with live ants, bee larvae and a fish sauce of garum and grasshoppers, “Everything is edible, just some things have consequences.” Luckily for us (and any future diners at Noma), the ants, bee larvae and grasshoppers happen to be delicious and can create unique flavor palates. So why aren’t we eating more ants, grubs, and grasshoppers? “Only prejudice can make it taste bad.”

Science. For any occasion. Wylie Dufrense of WD-50

And speaking of prejudices, there are the chefs who just aren’t interested in science. To those who think as such, Wylie Dufrense of WD-50 has a message for you: “There are many people outside the kitchen with much more knowledge than chefs. We have to learn from them too.” For Dufrense the appetite for knowledge came out of a curiosity to know how and why chefs cook. Going through the motions is not good enough: “Understanding the processes and having more knowledge about the ‘whys’ helps us (chefs) to do our jobs better.” But lest anyone think that Dufrense is just a scientist, he also emphasized the personal and creative aspect of chefs. How can that be expressed? With humor. But in the end? “Whoever knows the most wins…Let’s keep knowing. Let’s keep learning. Let’s keep cooking.”

But that humor bit? Leave it to Mr. and Mrs. St. John to provide it. Sitting down on two hay bales with a nice bottle of red, Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver of St. John Bar and Restaurant in London. What do these refined gentlemen have to say about appetite? Fergus said it best: “I am a prisoner of appetite. I have a lunch habit.” But in terms of where that appetite comes from? It’s from diners. That is where the force is. But in terms of a restaurateur? Trevor tells it like it is: “A good restaurant will take five or six years. You have to have an appetite to hang on while you build that.” To wit, Fergus suggested that “chefs have to be Jedi knights, or rather, Jedi chefs.” But most importantly, the message was one of humility – and a good bon mot.

The St. John Show: Fergus Henderson & Trevor Gulliver

Adria explains the entire culinary universe...on a flipboard

But in what was probably the most anticipated talk of the entire symposium, Ferran Adrià took the stage. Considering the circumstances, it was a miracle that he appeared at all: “For 18 months, I (Adrià) swore I would never go to another chef symposium. I swear. But I came. And I want to explain why.” In what may seem as a surprise to many, Adrià explained from 1994 to 2008, El Bulli never made any money. But it was never the point: “I got into cooking because I like the challenge of creativity, to forge new paths. I never searched for success, but happiness.” Creating that happiness takes a lot of work. In probably the only statistical demonstration using grapes, Adrià pointed to the miniscule population interested in avant-garde cuisine-in a grape seed. “What’s a grape seed? It’s nothing! But if you put it in the ground, it grows.” But that growth is one that takes hard work, dedication and creativity. And creativity does not come automatically. It’s a capricious beast: “If you want to play at the Noma/El Bulli level, know that creativity has no compassion, no matter how passionate the chef.” But ultimately it is not just one chef that makes a great restaurant. For Adrià, “El Bulli is not made by Ferran Adrià. El Bulli is bigger than any of us.” And in what could only be a tribute to the 2000 staff that came through the restaurant, Adrià reminded all of us what it’s all about: “The human side of this symposium is always with human values - ethics, honesty, happiness and justice – and you.” If Ferran Adrià and El Bulli are any indication of the manifestation of those ideas, the world is going to be a better – and happier – place for it.

Cross-posted at The Daily Meal.

Chewing on Thoughts: Day 1 of MAD Food Camp 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 02:56:00 +0000


Hosts with the mosts. Rezepi and staff greeting MAD hatters to food camp

After much anticipation and Twitter buzz, René Redzepi’s second annual MAD Food Camp started in Copenhagen yesterday, Sunday, July 1, with giant balloons set afloat in the middle of the audience at the start of the program. The two-day symposium brings together chefs, food purveyors, scientists, and writers under a common theme. While last year’s symposium centered on vegetation and its various iterations, this year’s theme looks toward a more bodily concern: appetite.
"We need appetite to make our lives better," said Redzepi. Yes we do, but how?

According to the day’s first speaker, noted Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders, the answer to Redzepi’s question lies in re-examining our relationship to the natural world. "The sad story of vegetation and gastronomy is that we eat so few species," he said, "[in spite of the fact that] the world is edible everywhere you look." For Nørretranders, our inability to use our innate sense of appetite has diminished our own relationship to nature and the environment. How to correct the situation? By thinking with our stomachs and demanding more from our natural selves and of nature itself.


Rodderick Sloan: Fisherman Extraordinaire

No one knows this better than fisherman Roderick Sloan and butter-maker Patrik Johansson. Purveyors to Noma and other restaurants, both say that it was the appetites of diners and chefs that allowed them to re-engage with their own natures. Diving into Arctic waters to supply Noma and other restaurants with impeccable sea urchins, Sloan has an almost preternatural knowledge of ocean terroir that provides him a living even in the harshest conditions. For Johansson, making butter provided a conduit into a lifestyle that allowed himself and his family to return to the country in rural Sweden after years of being an IT consultant. "We’re kind of hippies with a Michelin edge," Johansson says.

Me and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

But what happens when we abuse nature? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River Cottage chef, food writer, and activist, explored this theme in describing the vast problems of fish by-catch rules, by which half of the fish hauled in by trawlers, much of it edible, must legally be thrown back into the sea dead. Calling overfishing and the wasteful practice of fish discards as one of "the fixable problems we have," Fearnley-Whittingstall called on chefs to use think about how can aid social conscience in creating better food: "I think food is always more delicious when we feel good about it."

On the other hand, David Chang explored what seems to many the epitome of artificiality: MSG, or monosodium glutamate. But for Chang, MSG is not banned in his vocabulary or his kitchen. In describing the role of glutamates in creating umami, the so-called "fifth taste," Chang blasted a food culture that vilifies one particular ingredient on the basis of unsubstantiated knowledge: "If MSG is so bad for us, then why don’t we question why it is so bad for us?" Noting that "All data suggest that MSG is not harmful for you," Chang squarely put the blame on cultural misunderstandings of science and flavor for wiping out what he believes is one of the pillars of good food.

David Chang

But culture and tradition do not have to be the enemies of cooking. It depends what how you use it. For Massimo Bottura, the famed chef of the Michelin-three-star Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, culture is a motivating force in cuisine. "Culture is awareness," he said. However, culture should not be hidebound. In describing the boiled meat dish bollito misto, Bottura asked, "Are we so sure that tradition respects the ingredients?" It is precisely that tension in culture that allows the chef to push the boundaries of cuisine as an emotional lever between past and present, tradition and modernity. And as if to take a wink and a nod to those cultural notions of food, Massimo presented a film short with a rather macabre take on tortellini.

And there is no tradition that respects tradition as much as the Japanese kaiseki meal. But for chef Shinichiro Takagi, of the celebrated Zeniya in Kanazawa, on Japan's western coast, the traditions of kaiseki allow for a highly personalized culinary conversation between food and nature. When a diner makes a reservation at Zeniya, Takagi asks as much about the diner’s personal journey to Japan as he does their food preferences. It is this personal touch combined with 500 years of tradition that allows for a unique culinary journey through time and space.

Dan Barber and a picture of Dr. Stephen Jones experimental farm

For Westerners, no food carries so much cultural weight as bread. In the last talk of the day, Dan Barber, chef of Blue Hill restaurants in New York City and at Stone Barns in New York's Westchester County, asked why and how did wheat get the shaft? In an examination of the standardization of wheat, the monoculture, and its impact on flavor, Barber described his relationship with plant scientist Dr. Stephen Jones in breeding a wheat variety that was both flavorful and environmentally sound. Challenging chefs, he threw a gauntlet on the table: "This farm-to-table movement is the wrong way to think about it. We need to do more. We need to engage with people like Steve. None of Steve’s work matters unless it’s tied to cuisine." Chefs can and must be the instigators of change in this world. And tomorrow will be another day at MAD Food Camp to see how it’s done.

This has been cross-posted on The Daily Meal.

Prometheus Unbound

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:27:00 +0000

According to Greek myth, Prometheus had stolen fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. For this the gods condemned him to be chained to a large boulder, where, every night, an eagle would eat his liver. Forever.

Maybe Prometheus’ punishment was just. Imagine eating constantly eating raw antelope. Imagine constantly freezing, even in Sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine being constantly being attacked by insects, lions or the dark.

But controlling fire was not just a matter of stealing it. Fire is a complex chemical reaction involving oxygen, fuel and an ignition source. Unless all three elements are present, a fire will not start. It’s still a wonder that humans managed it at all. While dates for man’s earliest control range from 1.7 million to 400,000 years, for most anthropologists, incontrovertible evidence of controlled fire appears around 125,000 years ago.

Fire has had a remarkable effect on our own evolution. According to the anthropologist Richard Wrangham, the ability to cook food with fire was the defining moment in evolution: it explains the shift from the more ape-like Homo habilis to our modern ancestor, Homo erectus. As cooking makes food more bioavailable, more energy could be devoted to human brain and body development than on digestion. Although direct evidence of cooking, such as ash deposits and carbonized animal bones, is often lacking in archaeological records, Wrangham argues that smaller teeth and larger brains suggest fundamental changes in eating habits from raw to cooked.

But the most interesting aspect of Wrangham’s thesis is on human sociality. Before fire, everyone foraged for him or herself. You eat what you can find. But as cooked food takes time and effort, it soon becomes a valuable resource. Wrangham argues that it is this need to protect food that formed the need for social bonding between sexes.

While some anthropologists dispute Wrangham’s interpretation of the archaeological evidence, there is little dispute about the importance of fire to humanity. What Wrangham does not discuss in detail is how early man may have prepared food. What kinds of tools did they use? How did they manage heat? How did they know when food was done? Modern kitchens and recipes with their measurements and standards cannot answer these questions.

For Niklas Ekstedt it is this standardization in modern cooking that has erased the ancient craft knowledge of our hominid ancestors. Reading 17^th and 18^th c. Swedish cookbooks, Ekstedt noticed the inordinate amount of attention paid to cooking fires. As a challenge to himself and the dining establishment, the owner/chef of the eponymous restaurant Ekstedt in Stockholm has based an entire menu only using wood-based fire. There are no gas stoves, no electric ovens, no pacojets- only open fire, a hearth oven and a wood burning iron stove.

The tacit, embodied knowledge of how to build a fire and how to cook over fire cannot be written down. It is this knowledge Ekstedt wanted to recover in his restaurant. Ekstedt admits the learning curve was steep. In an experience he likens to Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki, building the restaurant and the menu required the staff to set aside past experiences: “We all started from scratch.” Everything, from how to build the fire itself, to which woods were best for cooking, and which utensils and cooking equipment functioned best, demanded a complete re-thinking from the team’s culinary training. . Hardware warehouses replaced kitchen supply stores. Soldering irons, heavy gloves and blacksmithing tools became commonplace.

Diners have also had to test their palates. Ekstedt still uses traditional Scandinavian ingredients, but the fire and custom utensils make for new dishes. Damp seaweed is used to package mussels inside a wire basket. Lobster is smoked in a chimney. In a twist on using traditional cast iron cooking, Ekstedt incorporates the iron itself into the dishes. By throwing acid into his cast iron pots, iron leeches into sauces, purees, and garnishes. The result is diners saying, ”I haven’t tasted this before.”

The most unpredictable factor of all is the fire itself. As Ekstedt acknowledges, “No one is bigger than the fire.” Just as cooking changed social relations for early man, the fire in Ekstedt’s kitchen has changed the hierarchy of his kitchen. There is no “I” in fire. “Everything I know I learned from my team.”

Karl Marx called Prometheus “The greatest saint and martyr of the philosopher’s calendar.” Although fire’s gifts have been many, perhaps the greatest gift lies in society. For Niklas Ekstedt, the revolution has just begun.

This is Grounds for Divorce

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Another report from the annals of rawhood[1]…..

Day 4

After another lovely breakfast of raw oatmeal and nut milk (déjà vu…all over again), I realize I need help. I make an appointment to meet a friend for lunch at the only raw restaurant in town. I look at the menu and I literally salivating over my keyboard. Lasagna, sandwiches, Thai pasta & yogurt!!! I’m not really caring about how they create the food because at this point anything that does not involve me grinding, soaking or starving is good.

I head over to the restaurant and it’s packed. Mainly with emaciated fashion types with their “it” bags and the their gay BFF (I have nothing against gay BFF’s…I have one myself). The occasional guy is the man that got dragged in by their husbands.

My friend orders an avocado sandwich with “raw bread” and I get the lasagna (because they were all out of the Thai curry pasta). I opt out of the juice selection because I don’t want any delay between anything resembling real food and me. Our food arrives and my friend’s sandwich is interesting. The “raw bread” seems to be a cracker like bread made with ground seeds and nuts, which were then spread on a sheet to dehydrate to resemble “bread.” The rest was an avocado, some veggies and a raw chili “mayonnaise.” My lasagna consisted of thin sheets of zucchini layered with a tomato puree, walnuts, parsley pesto, cashew cream and spinach.

I don’t know if I was delirious from hunger, but they were pretty good. Even that “raw” bread thing was all right. But I noticed the food was extremely heavy. The bread was pretty leaden. The weight of the cashew cream alone, which was basically a whipped cashew butter, alone was akin to a brick. All those nuts and seeds made it the food equivalent of a raw football player – packed.

According to rawists, the food has to be nutritionally and calorically dense due to the nature of the diet. Raw food diets often don’t contain enough calories or nutrients to keep one’s weight stable. Several studies examining the nutritional and caloric content of raw diets are seriously lacking in calories (the fashionistas at the raw café were skinny probably for other reasons) and are often underweight and undernourished. The Giessen Raw Food Study[2] examined 527 raw food practioners and found that 29.5% of males participants and 24.9% of female participants were underweight. Most of the women stopped menstruating. And all had bone density issues. The vegan rawists were the most susceptible to nutritional deficiencies, and because they all eat raw food, they were all susceptible to food pathogens (as in E. coli, Salmonella, etc.). The conclusion of the scientists was pretty harsh: “a strict raw food diet cannot guarantee an adequate energy supply.”

It explained why I was freaking hungry all the time. But the solution? Was to eat more food, but what?

Day 5

Determined to shovel in more calories into my system, I made a pilgrimage to the health food store looking for the all the stuff that rawists use to make their mock-fill-in-cooked-dish-here. I hit alternative food nirvana. Raw food, vegan food, vegetarian food, health supplements (my favorite vegetarian rennet) galore. I thought I would die of healthiness just from the wafting aroma of spirulina.

Seeing that I really didn’t have a good idea about what food would be needed for a raw diet, I asked the very eager saleslady about my predicament. She piled a basket full of chia seeds, raw bars, raw cocoa nibs, seaweed powder, quinoa flakes, raw crackers and 5 different types of vitamin and mineral supplements. When I asked her what I was supposed to do with this surfeit of rawness, she said calmly, “Oh, don’t have all the raw cookbooks?” She picked out three (one in Danish, one in English and a third that I rejected because I don’t read Finnish).

Two hundred dollars lighter and armed to the teeth with raw foods, I was determined to make something that was akin to my tasty lunch the day before. As usual, I was too late. The cake I wanted to make needed me to pre-soak nuts and quinoa flakes for 6 hours. I was going to pass out if I waited 6 hours for food. I decided upon the zucchini “pasta.” No soaking required, just a mandoline, fresh coconut milk (which I didn’t have, but I didn’t care), some limes, curry powder, lemongrass, ginger and garlic. I shredded my zucchini into long strips and tossed it with the magic mixture and sprinkled some chia seeds on top. Not bad, but it tasted raw…very, very raw. The garlic completely overpowered the mixture because it was…raw! And I was really missing an umami element…as in fish sauce and there really needed some sugar to balance out the spices.

I ate it anyway and I was grateful that I was capable of making a raw dish that tasted somewhat OK. The problem was that this was basically the only raw dish I was capable of making in less than an hour. Unless I was going to remember the night before to soak everything, I was going to be eating this again the next couple of days….

Day 6

Luckily I remembered to soak some quinoa flakes and some cashews the night before. I was basically trying to find a substitute for sushi, if not to get some seriously needed iodine in my system. But before I could even go there, I, on orders of the raw police at the health food store, needed to have a drink…not of the good kind. Because I didn’t have a juicer and basically refused to be quilted into buying one by the health food pusher, I just stirred apple juice, with some yeast powder and 2 teaspoons of spirulina into a glass. It looked pretty gross. Green and brown lumps of undissolved powder bubbled on top. Unable to drink this mess, I shoved a banana and some frozen berries into the mix and chucked it all into the blender. The powdery blobs disappeared, but it was a pretty unappealing shade of green. It tasted fine when I got over the green. My daughter said, “Mommy, why are you drinking that?” Before I could answer, my husband said, “Because sometimes, your mommy is a little silly.”

How do you explain fad diets to a 6 year old? I, like, many parents, am very concerned about the eating habits for my child. But in an age when girls as young as 3 are worried about their weight, telling your child that you are on some kind of “diet” is not exactly encouraging healthy body images. On the other hand, when one in three Americans are overweight, I should be concerned with what my child eats. Luckily, my daughter never followed up on the question, but left me wondering how all these fad diets are screwing with our own understanding of health….but not before my husband said, “When is this diet going to end? You’re tired, cranky and your food looks weird. You know, this is grounds for divorce.”

This diet is really starting to look like a raw deal.

[1] This is Part 3 of a 4 part series on the Raw Diet. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

[2] http://www.ptat.thaigov.net/contents/PTAT_JOURNAL/.../V23N1-KK.pdf

The Bitch is Back

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:22:00 +0000

So I am on day 3 of my raw food challenge. And while it started off with good intentions and a fridge full of produce, it’s rough going. Read it…and weep.

Day 1

I actually started out with dinner and luckily for me, I happen to like salad. A lot. But because I was not so cruel as to make my husband and child go through the raw diet, I prepared some pasta for them as well as a giant salad for the three of us.

You would think that preparing a salad would be pretty easy from the rawist point of view. Wrong. While the vegetable component was fairly simple, the dressing was not. Our go-to salad dressing had a problem and the name of the problem was balsamic vinegar.

Vinegar is a fairly simple: it’s just the byproduct of wine or alcohol making when the yeast involved in fermenting wine eat up all the sugar and convert it to carbon dioxide and acetic acid, aka, vinegar. But unlike most vinegars, which are not cooked in any way, balsamic vinegar is based on the cooked must of the white Trebbiano grape then left to age (usually in oak casks).

Yup. Balsamic is cooked. But no problem! I just replaced the balsamic with red wine vinegar. But in my dressing, I usually also put a pinch of sugar to balance out the vinegar. Guess what. Commercial sugar, either cane or beet, is out-it’s based upon the processing of boiled raw beet or cane juice so it can crystallize. So, out with the sugar and in with the honey. Olive oil? Luckily, that was OK. But salt? Commercial salt is also made with high amounts of heat. Luckily, I had some super-pricey French salt that was naturally evaporated by the sun.

Normally, salad dressing takes me 3 minutes to do. Thanks to reading and researching every single ingredient in my usually simple salad dressing, it took me 20. I was NOT amused. If it weren’t for the glass of wine (thankfully, NOT cooked), I would just said, “Screw this.” But after my booze, my cooler, rational head prevailed and told me not to quit. After all, I am doing this in the name of science!

Day 2

I usually don’t make breakfast. My husband does that. But before you have this romantic dreams of breakfast in bed or a whirling dervish of cooking activity, the breakfast I get is the “Continental[1]” kind: toast, coffee, butter and jam. If we’re really fancy, we bring out the yogurt.

As you can see from my usual breakfast, I was entering a rawist minefield. Bread is baked. Coffee uses roasted beans and boiled water. Butter, while potentially acceptable for rawists, is a problem because all the milk here is pasteurized before being churned. And jam? Always cooked and it already had sugar in it, which made it double problematic.

What did I do? Well cereal is out – that came out of cooked grains. I had some meusli running around. After a quick check of the ingredients, it looked acceptable, but no yogurt, milk or in fact any dairy product was acceptable. Before I started getting worried I would have to choke down some breakfast, I looked in the pantry and saw some soy milk. Saved! Until I realized that to make soy milk, the beans are boiled and then pressed the make the milk.

In the end, I ate my muesli raw with a piece of fruit. Wasn’t so bad. And not having coffee? Well, I guess I could just do some tea with some hot tap water. I don’t really need the milk for tea, so I was OK.

Two hours later, I’m not such a happy camper. Lack of caffeine has set in and despite 3 cups of black tea, I have the headache from hell. I want my coffee. I want my coffee NOW!!!

Out of desperation, I decide to consult several raw food books and see if there is any way to get my coffee fix. The short and the long answer? NO. Out comes the advil.

Luckily for the raw diet, I don’t eat lunch (mainly due to the fact that as a writer, I really don’t spend any energy except for getting cups of coffee…which I no longer can drink). I snack on some carrots and an apple. I want a yogurt, but that’s not happening. I’ve prepared another salad for dinner, this time with some nuts and raisins (which, according to the Raw Food Nazis, is ok). Kid and hubby get some roast chicken. I try to inhale extra calories from the smell.

Day 3

After a hearty breakfast of some more muesli and fruit, I realize my stash of fresh fruits and vegetables is disappearing…fast. I make a trip to the grocery store thinking I could get some nut milks, some more produce and nuts and olives as snack items to tide me over the stomach rumblies.

I find my goods and I come home. But I realize, I’m exhausted. And I still have a headache. I think it’s a lack of protein, so I munch on some more nuts and drink buckets full of water and some juice. No luck. It’s time to use my lifeline. I call my vegan friend, who seems to have all information on diet and nutrition.

Bad news. According to him, the reason why I tired, grumpy and headachy is because all the “toxins” are leaching from my body. If all the toxins leaving my body were causing me so much pain, then maybe I should have stuck with keeping the toxins in my body. At least I wouldn’t be so bitchy.

He recommends that I take a B vitamin supplement and a D vitamin supplement. He also recommends that I start “soaking” raw grains to get something that resembled a cooked starch, which then gets me thinking about rice. I can do without bread for eons, but rice? Someone is going to take away my Asian cred if I can’t get my rice. God damn it…now I want rice.

Seeing that I am starting to hit the desperation point for food, I start looking into all the recipes that for rawists. What? I could have pasta and or a sandwich? Yay! Until I saw the ingredient and equipment list. Someone didn’t tell me in the Raw Food Newsletter that I would have to invest a small fortune in a dehydrator, a juicer, a seed sprouter, chia seeds[2], psyllium husks,[3] dulse[4] galore. I tried looking around e-bay for a cheap dehydrator. Cheap being 170 dollars I didn’t have. Seed sprouters – uh, not available at the grocery store. Needless to say, I didn’t have any psyllium husks, chia seeds or dulse.

Back to eating another salad. Or maybe not. I realized that there were a bunch of proteins I could eat that were not “cooked.” I live in Scandinavia…there’s pickled herring galore! Also, there’s gravlax! But of course, there’s a catch. Both herring and gravlax are traditionally eaten with bread, mainly to counteract to saltiness. No bread, therefore, just salt. I tried making a little ssam like gravlax burrito. SOL. Too Salty.

Ten cups of water later, I’m still thirsty and hungry. Try an extra bowl of raw oatmeal with almond milk to quell the hunger. Not working. I’m just going to bed. I’m going to have to find a solution because I’m starting to get really annoyed with this diet. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Too…tired…to…think…about…food…again.

[1] I’ve always been really curious as to why this breakfast has been called a “continental” breakfast. Granted, this is the standard of breakfast for most across continental Europe (Even the French don’t eat a croissant everyday…it’s a occasional thing. You are more likely to see the French eat a baguette with butter.) But who decided that coffee and toast was the purview of the “Continent”? Hmmm.

[2] Yes, this is the same stuff from “Chi-chi-chi-chia” Head. Apparently, chia seeds are a “superfood” containing a large amount of Omega-3 fatty acids (like the kind you get in fish).

[3] This is the same stuff that’s in Metamucil. The one problem you don’t have going on a raw diet is fiber….

[4] Dulse (Palmaria palmate) is a red seaweed found on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It’s primarily used as a thickening agent (carrangeen) for food products.

10 Days in the RAW!

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Being a food writer has its occupational hazards – mainly in the form of being really bad for you. Foie gras, cheese, booze and chocolate are all pretty tasty, but it ain’t health food. I have to admit, after some meals, I feel like the restaurant owes me a side of Lipitor just to make sure that I don’t keel over at the table.

The dirty little secret to restaurant dining is this: the reason why the food taste so damn good is not just due to the talents of a genius chef. It’s the fat. And usually gobs of it. A couple of months ago there was a giant hullabaloo over Paula Deen’s deal with Novo Nordisk after revealing she had diabetes.[1] In the large debate over the Queen of Butter’s conduct, an intrepid reporter did a side-by-side nutritional profile of Deen’s “Oven Fried Wedges” vs. Thomas Keller’s “Tasting of Potatoes with Black Truffles.” Keller’s received the heart attack on a plate award with 484 calories vs. 328 for Deen’s.[2] The price for this indulgence? A mad gym schedule, health problems or both.

On the flip side, as a someone who writes often on health and sustainability issues, I have probably seen every single trendy diet out there – paleo, vegan, vegetarian, extreme caloric reduction, low-carb, Atkins, acai berry, tapeworm, human growth hormone, implanted feeding tube…you name it, I’ve seen it. But up until now, I haven’t tried any of them -mainly because they’re crazy fad diets[3] that have no sound scientific (read: double-blind test in a peer-reviewed journal) evidence for them.

But one diet has intrigued me as of late – the raw diet. Touted by celebrities such as Woody Harrelson, Natalie Portman, Sting and even famed Chicago based chef, Charlie Trotter, the diet is supposed to help your loose weight, detoxify your body and increase your overall health and make you look as good in a bikini at 40 as Demi Moore (who is also an adherent to the raw diet cult).

The raw diet is basically what it sounds like. You only eat raw food. So no yogurt, no cheese, no bread, no rice, no cooked meat (but sashimi and steak tartar are fine) or roasted vegetables. But it’s not that simple. If you look at the labels of most foods, there is likely some component that has been cooked.

I, like many, am quite suspicious of any health endorsements, especially of the celebrity kind. But what got me thinking about the raw diet were not only the amount of people latching onto the diet, but also the amount of “scientific” information backing up these claims. The source of all these claims? Enzyme Nutrition by Dr. Edward Howell.[4]

Basically, Howell says that raw foods contain enzymes that help with digestibility. By cooking foods, all those enzymes are destroyed, thus forcing the body to produce digestion enzymes that it otherwise wouldn’t need to produce. Because those enzymes are a finite resource and a “life-force”, wasting them on digestion would reduce the amount that could be used for other functions, such as overall health and longevity. Because raw foods still carry those life forces, enzymes, our body preserves its own enzymes for better health.

Pretty kooky stuff, eh? But people love it, citing it all the time as the scientific justification for a raw diet. Never mind that the science is from the 1920’s and 1930’s.[5] Never mind that the empirical science is never demonstrated. Never mind that the logic is completely ass-backwards.[6] According to raw foodies, it’s ALL true!

Since the fad took off, several scientists, anthropologists and nutritionists have blasted the “science” of raw food. Chief among them is the physical anthropologist Richard Wrangham. In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Wrangham posits that large evolutionary moves in hominid history are largely attributable to larger caloric consumption in the form of cooked food.[7] By cooking food, Wrangham suggests that prehistoric food sources became more bioavailable-that is food becomes easier for the body to digest thus saving calories for other activities, like growing cranial and brain size. It explains the shortening of digestive tracts, it explains the shrinking of jaw and teeth size, and it explains the rapid development of earlier forms of hominid species to the modern homo sapien. In short, for Wrangham, cooking food was the key in pushing human evolution.

I’m all for brain growth. I’m also all for easier mastication. But in the spirit of empirical research, I have decided I am going to put all these rawist claims to the test and actually try it for 10 days. Granted, I am not the most objective observer. But if I feel better at the end of 10 days, maybe there is something to be said for this diet…or maybe I will only be more convinced that this diet is a piece of @$#@$^!

So for the next ten days, I will blogging about my experience in the RAW. God help me and someone please call an ambulance if you don’t hear from me in a while. It’s going to be a LONG haul.

[1] If you want to relive some great moments in food notoriety, read my post on Paula Deen here….. http://www.edo-ergo-sum.com/2012/01/paula-deen-and-american-dream.html

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/bruni-paula-deens-revelation.html

[3] The vegan and vegetarian diets are exempt. There are plenty of good reasons to do both, and for the most part, they are very good for you and the planet. Vegans usually have to supplement their diets with some vitamins (due to incomplete protein sources) but for the most part, most scientists and nutritionists will agree that being vegan or vegetarian won’t hurt you and probably would even make you a healthier person.

[4] While the book has been published since 1994, the original manuscript is much older – from the 1946. Howell, Dr. Edward. Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity. 2^nd ed. (Lotus Press, 1994).

[5] Yes, I do realize some science from the 1920’s and 30’s still holds, as in Einstein. But this stuff? Uh…handily defeated by something called biochemistry….

[6] For those of you interested in the logical fallacies, it’s the one called argumentum e silencio (or argument in silence). The argument basically says the argument must be true because of “lack of evidence.” In other words, just because no one has argued against the theory doesn’t mean that the theory is true.

[7] Wrangham, Richard. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. (New York: Basic Books, 2009). While Wrangham’s is a popularization of the larger debate in physical and developmental anthropology about fire and hominid development, the book does a nice job describing a lot of very complex academic arguments regarding cooked food and the use of fire. Most of these debates revolve around the timing, effect and physical evidence around cooked foods and human development. For the articles regarding these debates, just go to the footnotes (says the footnote girl).

I am the Resurrection and the Life

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 09:52:00 +0000

Every year I dreaded Easter. Not because I have anything against bunnies, little chickies and pastel colors, but because we would be forced to go to our local Korean church.

Yep. I was that atheist kid. Never got the God thing. Never got the prayer thing. Never understood why I reading some funny book would get me anywhere. And what’s the deal with Good Friday[1]? What’s so good about getting your hands and feet nailed to a cross and being left to rot? I would not exactly call it good for anyone, much less Jesus. For me, church was a waste of three hours in which I could be doing something else…ANYTHING else.

But that was all for naught. Like many other Korean families that immigrated to the United States in the 70’s and early 80’s,[2] I was stuck going to church. Not because my parents were particularly religious – mainly because churches had become the meeting ground for the Korean community. Between the Praise God sessions (which I never fully understood) and singing Amazing Glace, there were aborted Korean language classes (the American part of Korean-American kids was just too undisciplined for native born Korean teachers), rumor mongering (Korean mothers make Gossip Girl look like amateurs), and Dr. Lee & Dr. Kim yapping about Dr. & Dr. life.

But when it came to Easter, the youth minister, Dr. Rhee, would attempt an egg hunt in the churchyard (which we had to finish in an hour before the people who actually owned the church, some white Methodist Church, wanted it back) and that was the end of it.

This seemed in stark contrast to the rest of Chicago. The Ukrainians had batik painted eggs that beat the pants off of any Paas set. The Poles would bring baskets of food to be blessed by the pastor for Easter. Even Jews, who didn’t have Easter, got those macaroons, brisket and matzo sandwiches.

Suffice it to say, we were pretty clueless about celebrating Easter, beyond gorging on bad chocolate eggs. In fact, I exclusively went to Passover Seders (I make a killer Matzo brei) for years because all my friends were Jewish. That Easter thing? Meh.

Until I met my current husband. My husband is European, and they are big on Easter. As soon as the Christmas decorations are gone, out come the Easter creep – bunnies, chickens, beer (yes, they have Easter beer). And starting around Palm Sunday, the entire continent takes the week off to be…uh…European.

And when it comes to Easter in Europe. It’s lamb. Yes, that cute fuzzy little lamb. While lamb isn’t very popular in the US[3], in Europe, especially in Europe, there is a great tradition of eating lamb due to the traditional pasture practices.

But when it comes to sustainable eating…gulp. Lamb is really not very sustainable. In fact, it’s dead last in terms of environmental impact, according to Environmental Working Group’s Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change. This would seem counter-intuitive. Sheep has been used for over millennia as a source of meat and wool. They graze on grass. They don’t need much care beyond shearing.

Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Because sheep generate the same amount of carbon dioxide and methane (CH4) but are far less efficient in producing edible meat, they deliver pound per pound of meat, far more greenhouse gas emissions per weight.

So it’s worse to eat lamb than beef. So I should eat more beef, right? Wrong. It’s all about comparing the relative to the absolute. The problem here in comparing the two types of livestock lies in the overall statistics of livestock ranching and consumption of the two different animals. When it comes to the amount of sheep raised in the US versus that of cattle, the number of cattle in the US vastly outnumbers the number of sheep raised in the US. (2.5 million sheep vs. 96.3 million cattle in 2006.) Multiply that number with the amount of their total CO2 impact, beef is far worse to eat in absolute terms. How much worse? 216 million pounds of C02 equivalents total for sheep vs. 5.739 BILLION pounds of CO2 equivalents – basically beef beats the pants off of sheep by a factor of 27 times in the total number of CO2 equivalents.

But when it comes to husbandry practices, it’s a toss up. According to the USDA, 98.4 percent of all sheep farms have fewer than 500 heads. Unfortunately, the other 1.6 percent count for about 50 percent of the sheep raised in the US in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), aka, “Factory Farms.”[4] These farms, instead of raising sheep on grass, feed their sheep grain (usually corn, just like cattle) and predictably, have all the same husbandry, food safety and environmental problems that CAFO’s have: water pollution, decreased air quality, animal welfare concerns, antibiotic resistant bacteria, higher levels of diseased animals, and higher incidences of salmonella and E. coli.

So why bother eating lamb or any meat at all? Well, here’s the deal. People aren’t going give up eating meat. Even though there are several good ethical and environmental reasons for giving up meat, it’s not going to be possible for many – because people like it. Stupid, I know, but people like the taste of meat. The question then is how to make a better system that minimizes the environmental and animal welfare issues associated with industrial livestock husbandry.

What does this have to do with sheep? Even though the problems with concentrated sheep husbandry is just as bad as with cattle, unlike cattle, there is still hope to change the sheep business. First, as majority of sheep ranches are pasture-raised, the public health, disease and environmental impacts of CAFO’s are automatically decreased. According to several studies[5], grass-fed meat has less fat and more nutrients (vitamin E, beta-carotene, omega-3 fatty acids, lineolic acid) as well as being less expensive to produce (don’t have to pay for all that expensive grain). Secondly, because grass-fed sheep use less energy intensive inputs (e.g. grain) and are constantly moving across pasture, they not only help decrease the total energy needed for growth, but also encourage forage growth in spreading manure across a field. This field management system helps with carbon sequestration as well as preserving soil and local biodiversity.[6] Thirdly, and this is most important for many ranchers, the margins on grass-fed meat are huge. Consumers will pay for both the environmental and health benefits of eating organic or pasture-raised meat – as much as 200 percent more. One agronomist has placed the natural or organic beef market at $350 million dollars, with a potential growth of 1billion dollars in the next five years. Sheep is a ready-made market for this potential – it has already the land and some of the husbandry practices. The demand is there as well – the US is a net importer of sheep and lamb meat. By adding on the premium for pasture-raised sheep, CAFO’s could profit themselves out of existence.

But why isn’t this done? It’s not just a lack of political will, but also a question of economics. CAFO’s make money on volume. But ultimately, it is the consumer that has to do the hardest work. As the case of pink slime and Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB) has shown, consumers can and should demand a better food system. The hardest part is not convincing Congress or some Federal agency for more regulations regarding antibiotics, welfare standards or public health initiatives regarding livestock. The hardest part is convincing the American public to demand change with their dollar. By choosing NOT to purchase meat that is made in factory farms, we as a collective can get change. The FDA ain’t gonna do it. Neither is the USDA. It is incumbent upon us to make that change and resurrect a better food system for all.

Yangrou Paomo

This is specifically a mutton recipe NOT lamb. Why? The likelihood that you can find an organic or pasture raised lamb in spring is very unlikely (or very expensive) due to the life cycle of sheep. Spring lambs were not born in spring…they were born in winter and probably never saw the light of day by the time they got to the butcher. Not very sustainable. Muttons, on the other hand, are about 2 years old, and if pasture-raised (and by now you should be convinced of buying as such), they are usually also used for wool and milk production – which I think is what the animal should be used for. In the taste department, mutton has richness that lamb simply does not. And for this recipe, that gaminess is needed to stand up to the complex spicing of this dish.

As for the origins of this dish, this is specifically a Xi’an dish. Xi’an, the former capital of the Tang Dynasty (9A.D.), due to its location on the Silk Road, brought Islamic religion and culture to China. This is not only reflected in the native Chinese Muslim population, but also in its food: Xian dishes often contain Arabic ingredients, such as mutton or cumin, as well as pita-like flatbreads common in the Near and Middle East. I think it’s a nice antidote to the usual boring roast and the best part? You really don’t have too much. Dump in a pot and let it sit. The long braise let’s you spend your Easter doing other things…like looking for chocolate eggs. Happy Easter!

2-2 ½ pds. of mutton, in large chunks, trimmed of excess fat

large mutton bones

2 large onions, roughly chopped

6 cloves of garlic, finely minced

2 in. piece of ginger, finely minced

½ pd. glass noodles (can be found at any Asian grocery store)

1 dried red chili

10 white peppercorns

1 tsp. ground cumin

3 star anises

Cinnamon stick, about 3 inches

1 tsp. ground cardamom (if have whole cardamom, add 4 pods, crushed lightly)

¼ c. of Chinese Shaoxing wine or other rice wine

4-6 loaves of pita bread (try to get it at your local Middle Eastern specialty shop)

Salt

For serving

Chinese chili sauce (garlic chili sauce or Sriracha are both fine)

Chopped cilantro

Pickled garlic (Chinese if you can get it)

1. Place mutton, bones, onions, garlic, ginger, chili, peppercorns, cumin, star anise, cinnamon stick, cardamom and wine together in a large stockpot. Pour about 10 cups of water (enough to cover everything) over the ingredients and let it come to a boil over medium high heat.

2. Turn down the heat to a simmer and skim any accumulated scum floating on top. Simmer 3 hours uncovered or until mutton is soft. (If the broth appears to be too little, add more water to the pot)

3. Remove spices and bones and keep stew hot while preparing noodles according the directions on the package.

4. Add salt to taste and place noodles on the bottom of a large serving bowl. Add stew on top and garnish with chopped cilantro.

5. To serve: Ladle stew into individual soup bowls. Have diners tear peanut size chunks of pita bread into soup and serve with chili sauce and pickled garlic on the side.

[1] In Danish, Good Friday is called Lang Fredag, which makes far more sense than Good Friday.

[2] Unlike the Chinese and Japanese, which had native populations in the US before WWII, Koreans were not a large Asian minority in the US until 1965, with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The act closed the previous quota system of previous immigration laws and instead determined immigration status upon skill level and family relationships. Thus, the joke about every Korean being a “Dr. Kim” or “Dr. Lee” is due to the number of highly qualified professionals that were given admittance starting in the late 60s.

[3] Lamb makes up only 1% of all meat consumed in the US. While still popular amongst certain ethnic groups, mainly Muslims and Greeks, many Americans consider lamb too “gamy” for their taste.

[4] USDA defines CAFO as "a production process that concentrates large numbers of animals in relatively small and confined places, and that substitutes structures and equipment (for feeding, temperature controls, and manure management) for land and labor." MacDonald, J.M. and McBride, W.D. (2009). The transformation of U.S. livestock agriculture: Scale, efficiency, and risks. United States Department of Agriculture. I have written an post on the problems with CAFO’s and cows in an earlier post. http://www.edo-ergo-sum.com/2010/11/wascally-wabbit.html

[5] Duckett, S. K., S. L. Pratt, and E. Pavan. 2009. Corn oil or corn grain supplementation to steers grazing endophyte-free tall fescue. II. Effects on subcutaneous fatty acid content and lipogenic gene expression. J Anim Sci 87:1120-1128.

UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists). 2006. Greener Pastures: How Grass-fed Beef and Milk Contribute to Healthy Eating. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/greener-pastures.pdf

[6] Johnson DE, Phetteplace HW, Seidl AF. 2002. Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Ruminant Livestock Production Systems. In Greenhouse Gases and Animal Agriculture (eds J. Takahashi & B. A. Young). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier. http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron515/Johnsonmethane.pdfJohnsonFAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2009. The State of Food and Agriculture. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome. Accessed online 7/12/11 http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0680e/i0680e00.htm;

Pelletier N, Pirog R, Rasmussen R. 2010. Comparative Life Cycle Environmental Impacts of Three Beef Production Strategies in the Upper Midwestern United States in Agricultural Systems. http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/research/marketing_files/Pelletier_Agricultural_Systems_beef.pdf

Macho Macho Man

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Village People - Macho Man (version longue) by scorpiomusic

When I first saw the “The Ethicist” contest in the Magazine section in the New York Times, I was pretty excited. Six hundred words to write an ethical defense of meat eating. OK, I’m game for a good intellectual exercise. And the judges are pretty solid: Michael Pollan, Peter Singer, Mark Bittman, Jonathan Safran Foer and Andrew Light. All right. But the more I thought about the contest, I angrier I got.

Let me explain.

I could complain that this will be the best PR campaign for the meat industry. By baiting my intellectual vanity, the New York Times is giving the entire meat industry a butt-load of excuses for future lobbying campaigns. This is probably the best gift the beleaguered meat industry can ask for after the pink slime debacle. You know that Cargill, BPI, ConAgra, the National Cattleman’s Beef Association and meat lobby are just champing at the bit for these results to come out so they can co-opt them. Why come up within some paltry excuses to eat meat, when those geniuses at the New York Times can do it for you?

I could also complain about that this contest is also an exercise in intellectual masturbation by the New York Times. Already in the premises of the contest, the Ethicist has assumed that meat eating is ethically indefensible. So then what’s the point? To out every single defender of the industrial meat complex? Instead of having a public discussion about the ethics of meat eating, this, instead, will be a pissing contest amongst a bunch of philosophers to “trump the enter judge name here.” There’s no fun like straw-man fun for philosophers.[1]

But what really gets my goat? The judges. Why? It’s not because I don’t think they are not qualified, nor is it because I don’t respect their work. Peter Singer, an ethicist at Princeton, has written the book on animal rights, Animal Liberation. Mark Bittman, cookbook author and food writer, has been writing on food for the New York Times for over a decade. Michael Pollan is the author of several books on nutrition, diet and sustainability, most notably the Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Rules. Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Eating Animals, which basically has converted many a person into vegans. And there is Andrew Light, environmental advocate and policy expert.

But there’s someone missing at this otherwise esteemed panel. Think about it.

WOMEN!

On the surface of it, this seems like a lame-ass complaint. Who cares if the judges are girls, boys or Martians as long as they can adequately judge the contest? This is not just a matter of diversity for diversity’s sake.[2] And it’s not just a matter of a lack of experts; there are plenty of amazing women who could judge this contest.[3] This is an issue about consequences as much as it is about principles…something that the New York Times contest seems to have forgotten. Why aren’t the people that have the largest stakes in the game not there to judge it?

Look at these numbers: 62% of women do the grocery shopping[4] and 68% of women cooked the meals in their household.[5] And it takes a lot of time to do it: And according to the United States Department of Agriculture, women not only spend double the time at the grocery store versus men, but they spend triple the amount of time in meal preparation.[6]

The issue here is not so much WHY women are spending so much time at the grocery store or cooking meals (which is subject to a WHOLE other discussion which is just as painful)[7], the issue is that women have skin in the game. If women are the majority of persons preparing meals, they have an enormous influence in how food decisions are made. It’s not just the ethics of food – it’s nutrition, sourcing, food safety, health claims and God knows what else. We should be the FIRST in line to be judging the ethics of food because we do it everyday for our families, friends and children.

Look. I don’t want to be ragging on another sister…that’s not just my style. But Ms. Kaminer, if principles matter so damn much to you, why didn’t you think of the principle of utilitarianism? If you really care about changing the food system, think about those who do it every day…and it’s NOT a bunch of white males

[1] I have plenty of other complaints about this contest. I don’t seem to see any ranchers or biologists around. They deal with animals every day…and not on a hypothetical or meat counter basis. An evolutionary anthropologist would be good too to throw out all those stupid paleo arguments about eating meat. (I will deal with the paleo-diet another time. Another food fad that is based on faulty perceptions of evolution and pre-history.)

[2] Anyone that is interested in the diversity argument regarding this contest, should look at Carol J. Adams piece: “What’s Wrong with Only White Men Judging a Contest Defending Meat-Eating.” She does a nice job breaking down the bias problems in both philosophy as well as in media and why it particularly matters in this particular context.

[3] Michele Simon, the author of Appetite for Profit, asked Ariel Kaminer (“The Ethicist”) about the gender choice of the judges. Kaminer said the judges were chosen mainly for their “name recognition.” Since when has ethics become American Idol?! Simon, thankfully, has placed a nice list of women who could easily go toe-for-toe with the panel. http://www.appetiteforprofit.com/2012/03/26/suggestions-for-female-judges-for-ny-times-ethical-meat-contest/

[4] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/in-u-s-men-are-shopping-more-than-ever-while-women-are-watching-more-tv/

[5] Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

[6] USDA: http://www.ers.usda.gov/amberwaves/november05/datafeature/

[7] I am not in any way, shape or form suggesting that women should be the only people in the kitchen. I think Marion Nestle said it best: “The greatest gift you can give your sons is to teach them how to cook.” Right on, sister.

No Soup For You Today!

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:31:00 +0000

"I live on good soup, not on fine words."
Moliere (French Playwright, 1622-1673)

Soup's On! French onion soup.

I know all you people in the states are going to be laughing at me, but I have a hankering for soup. Yes, I do realize that it’s 60 degrees in New York City. And my mother just called me to say that she’s been playing golf for the nth day straight…in Chicago.

But here in Copenhagen, the date says spring…but the weather? Let’s put it this way…we haven’t packed our winter jackets away. And my three-week cold from hell hasn’t gone away either, so soup it is, but not any soup…French onion soup.

I’d like to think of French onion soup akin to the Gogo Yubari[1] from Kill Bill Vol. 1. You think it’s going to be nice light and easy, and then, BAM! Knocks you out with 2 for 1 punch of umami-caramel goodness.

Why is it so damn good? Well, for starters, it has to do with the onions. The carmelization of onions give it the bittersweet base. The beef broth gives some savoriness to the base. Some alcohol balances the sweetness. And the cheese crouton adds the final umami punch. It’s a flavor no-brainer.

The base of ANY good French onion soup is the caramelization of onions. And lest you think that caramel was only for apples, dessert & Halloween, you’re on notice. Browning on French Fries? That’s caramelization. Roasted sweet potatoes? That’s also caramelization. Along with the Maillard reaction[2], it’s one of the critical chemical reactions in cooking that is truly transformative.

Caramelization at the heart of it is simply the chemical breakdown of sugar into new compounds via pyrolysis[3], otherwise known as heat & chemistry. Any sugar will do: fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (milk sugar), sucrose (beet & cane sugars – the white stuff you buy at the grocery), or maltose (the sugar in barley that is used in making beer). Sugar, unlike proteins, is incredibly stable – they will not oxidize, denature, coagulate…basically all the chemical reactions that spoil food. But the one thing that gets sugar moving? Heat. By heating sugar, the water is evaporated out of the sugar and starts to break down creating new compounds that contribute to browning, bitterness, aromas, sourness and nuttiness.

But it takes a lot of heat to get that reaction going. Fructose (in fruits like apples, bananas, pineapples, etc) and glucose (grape sugar) will caramelize at relatively low temperatures, 220°F and 300°F, respectively, due to their chemical makeup (they have free electrons to donate, thus making it easier to react to heat). Sucrose, on the other hand, is a much more complex (it’s basically a fructose molecule attached to a glucose molecule via their free electrons) and much more difficult to break apart – thus the higher temperature needed to start caramelization, around 340°F.

But what does this have to do with onions? Yes, onions raw have a distinct sharpness (that’s from the volatility of sulfur compounds in onions), but their high sugar content, in the form of fructose, is what we want them for in French onion soup. And the characteristic nutty, rich flavor is dependent upon caramelization and the Maillard process. But this process is not a straightforward one. Because onions are 75% water, neither process can begin without the water being evaporated first. Only until the onions are “sweated” out, in which the onion cells burst and release their water, AND the temperature reaches around 220°F (the temperature at which fructose caramelizes) will both processes start.

And that’s when you start to see browning in your onions. However, the process is not a quick one. The key with caramelizing onions is really going low and slow. Can you speed it up? Not really. Why? Turn up the heat, and your onions will char-raw and you will not pass go or collect 200. You will have to start all over again. You can change the pH of your onions, by adding baking soda (alkaline) to speed up the Maillard reaction, but it will give a chemical aftertaste. That’s no good either.

But you can add a pinch of salt. Why? Salt leeches water out of cells and that will help speed up the evaporation process. Some people add sugar as well, but beyond sweetening the onions a tad bit, it will do very little to speed up the process, mainly because sucrose (table sugar is sucrose) requires more energy (heat) to caramelize thus increasing the possibility that your onions might burn.

So what’s a time strapped person to do? Sorry…there are no short cuts here. It’s going to take you a full 1-2 hours, dependent upon the amount, (and if you go the Thomas Keller route, another 3 more) for onions to caramelize properly. Anyone that tells you that it’s going to take a shorter amount of time is fooling you. You are going to have to have some serious time on your hands. But the good news is that once you’ve made the onions, the rest of the process is pretty simple. You just need some booze to deglaze (I’m partial to cognac, sherry or calvados), good beef stock (or if you don’t have that, get some low sodium vacuum packed stock[4]), some Gruyere and stale bread and you are good to go. Even though you aren’t in France, at least you can eat like you are. And that is worth 3 hours of anyone’s time.

French Onion Soup

One more note – the more aged your Gruyere, the better. The Gruyere gives the necessary counterbalance to all sweetness in the soup. Also, don’t freak out about the vinegar. It’s pretty traditional in France to add a touch to the soup to balance it out both the sugar and the fat from the cheese. And if you don’t believe me about the amount of time it takes to caramelize the onions…just look at the pictures.


Time 0. Onions straight into the pot.


20 Minutes. No browning, but a lot of sweating going on.


45 minutes. Still no caramelization.


Hour and 10 minutes. Ah! There's color!

We're at 1 hour and a half. Looking good.

2 hours. Finally. Freaking. DONE!

Serves 6-8 as a starter or 4 as a main course

4 tbs. butter

2 tbs. olive oil

8 large onions, thinly sliced into half moons

1 sprig of thyme

8 c. beef broth (preferably homemade)

¼ c. dry sherry

dash of calvados (if you don’t have any, any other good brandy or cognac is ok)

2 tbs. sherry vinegar (you can use balsamic as well)

8 slices of day-old good white bread (peasant bread or baguette are good choices)

1 clove of garlic, halved

6-8 oz of aged Gruyere, shredded

1. Heat butter and olive oil in a large heavy skillet or Dutch oven (NOT non-stick or cast iron) over medium-low heat. Add onions, pinch of salt, and cook until caramelized and deep brown, stirring often. If the onions stick to the bottom of the pan, add a dash of water, loosen onions (like deglazing a pan for sauce) and continue. This will take a minimum of 1 ½ hours…probably closer to 2 (see pictures).

2. Add sherry and scrape any browned bits off the bottom of the pan. If you are using a skillet, transfer onions to a stockpot (if you use a Dutch oven, you can just leave them in the pan). Add beef broth, thyme and sherry vinegar to onions. Turn up the heat to medium high and bring to a boil. Once at a boil, turn down heat and let soup simmer for 45 minutes.

3. In the meanwhile, rub cut sides of garlic on bread slices. Place in a 350F oven until toasted (it will take about 2-3 minutes).

4. Add calvados and check for seasoning (it will probably need a good pinch of salt). Ladle soup into ovenproof bowls, top with slice of bread (use 2 slices if you’re using a baguette-they’re small) and sprinkle cheese on top. Place under your oven broiler until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown. Serve immediately.

Vegetarians: This soup can be made vegetarian by omitting beef broth and using vegetable broth instead.

NB: Just like anything else that is heated in an oven, the bowls are going to be PIPING hot as well as the soup inside it. Be VERY careful taking bowls out of the oven and please warn your guests that the bowls are very hot. We’re talking 3^rd degree burns here.

[1] Just in case you haven’t remembered who this is, Gogo Yubari is the apprentice of O-ren Ishii. O-Ren is the Asian chick of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (played by Lucy Liu in the movie).

[2] It’s the nitrogen and sulfur in amino acids in meat that give cooked meat it’s distinctively “meaty” smell and flavor when heated, unlike sugars which are always a combination of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon.

[3] Pyrolysis is from the Greek, “pyr” for fire and “lysis” to separate.

[4] I’m not being picky for no reason. Canned stock has BPA (Bisphenol A) in their liners. Unless you want reproductive problems, stay away from the stuff. The vacuum packed stock has no BPA’s in it. Trader Joe’s makes a nice organic one that tastes reasonably good.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Illustration depicting the Irish Potato Famine (Source unknown)

“I belong to the faubourg Saint-Patrice called Ireland for short”

-James Joyce (Irish novelist, 1882-1941)

St. Patrick’s Day. If Hallmark or McDonald’s Shamrock milkshakes has not already reminded you, it is the day to pretend your Irish, get drunk or both. Just in case you forgot, St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and St. Patrick’s Day, today, is the anniversary of his death. Legend has it that St. Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland by chasing them into the sea while he was fasting.[1] He is also noted for his use of the shamrock, or three-leafed clover, as a pedagogical tool for explaining the Holy Trinity to Ireland.

Since the 6^th century, St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated as a saint day in Ireland and amongst the Irish, with the usual mass and feast following. Of course, leave it to the Americans to distort any “Holy-day” into a celebration of capitalism.[2] If it’s green, a shamrock or a leprechaun on it, it’s for sale (including a special clover gold and diamond necklace at Tiffany & Co. running for the paltry sum of $1,525). Also in homes all across North America and Ireland, “traditional” Irish food, such as soda bread, corned beef[3] and cabbage will be served in honor of the holiday. Heck, my mom even made us corned beef and cabbage when we were kids – and we were Korean.

Interestingly enough, the corned beef and cabbage served on St. Patrick’s Day does have a history that dates back to the 17^th century. The “corned” beef is derived from the Old English term, “corn” referring to any grain or grain-like particles. In the case of corned beef, the corn is the coarse salt used to preserve the beef, thus “corned” beef. Starting already in the 18^th century, both the English and the Irish made corned beef for trade across British Empire and the North America. A large part of that corned beef made for commercial and trading use was centered in coastal Ireland.

Why Ireland? Because it had plenty of land for the raising cattle. As land for pasture became increasingly expensive during the nascent Industrial Revolution in England, Ireland became cheap source of grazing land for cattle. With ports in near distance, shipping and trade across the Atlantic was commercially viable and economically profitable. And as the British population became increasingly wealthy, so did their taste for Irish beef, increasing the demand for pasture throughout Ireland.

But that demand for beef came at a price. And the price was paid by the population of Ireland. Although 80% of the Irish population was Catholic, they owned little of the land (due to previous laws restricting the civil and property rights of Irish Catholics). Who owned the land? British and Anglo-Irish landed gentry (most of whom never set foot in Ireland). And guess who were their tenants? Catholic-Irish.

As tenants of their absentee landlords, the Catholic Irish were reduced to poverty – on a good day. And as having little land for their own subsistence, the rest used for cattle grazing or for grain production for Britain’s growing middle-class, the tenants depended upon the lowly potato for the majority of their meals. While earlier the potato was a supplementary crop, compared to dairy and grain products, the decreased availability of arable land pushed the potato as the main source of food for Ireland’s landless tenant farmers. By the force of poverty, these farmers went into monoculture. By the time the Irish potato blight came along in 1844, Ireland’s fate was already a forgone conclusion.

And what does this mean for today? As world’s appetite for meat grows larger across developing nations, such as India and China, we are seeing less and less land available to feed the world’s populations. Currently, forty percent of the world’s grain goes toward feeding livestock. The world’s cattle consume enough grain to feed 8.7 billion people. Seventy percent of all US grain goes to fuel or livestock consumption. There are approximately 1 billion people starving in the world today.

Are we the new British Empire?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

[1] Scientific evidence points out that there snakes have never inhabited Ireland – or any other insular island, such as Greenland or Iceland. The closest thing that Ireland has had to a snake is this thing called a “slow worm,” which is technically a legless lizard. Go figure.

[2] According to various histories of Revolutionary America, St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated for quite some time in the US. But as the first Irish immigrants to the US had been Protestant, the traditional linking between Catholic mass and St. Patrick’s Day was disassociated. With the waves of Irish Catholic immigrants flocking to the United States in the 19^th century, the church became central again to the celebrations and parades across the country.

[3] To those who have not are not familiar with this foodstuff, corned beef is salt-cured beef (can be wet-brined, dry-cured, or tinned) to preserve it. It is in the same category of preserved meats like pastrami, bresaola, prosciutto, etc. You can just call it Anglo charcuterie.

You Can't Do That On Television

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:31:00 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t have kids, you’ve probably heard about the “pink slime.” If not, “pink slime,” dubbed by former United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and whistleblowers Carl S. Custer and Gerald Zirnstein[1], is the scrapings of beef scraps, connective tissue and other fatty beef trimmings off the slaughterhouse floor (read: stuff that no one else will eat), ground to a gelatinous pulp, centrifuged to remove excess fat, and then treated with a “puff of ammonium hydroxide” to kill food pathogens, such as E. coli and salmonella.[2] According to Zirnstein, 70 percent of supermarket ground beef is BLBT.[3] But why can’t we see it? Because it’s often mixed in with “real” beef as filler and there are NO USDA regulations for labeling it as anything other than “100% beef.”

School kids get the delightful mixture of BLBT as well. In 2009, the USDA school lunch program bought 5.5 million pounds of the stuff. This year, the USDA was slated to buy 7 million pounds for school kitchens across the country.

Beef Products, Inc. (BPI),[4] the sole manufacturer of this tasty concoction, calls it “Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings,” (BLBT) and claims it’s perfectly safe to eat.

Well, surprise, surprise, beyond absolutely disgusting, the “beef” is not safe. Even without testing, the method in BLBT is made could leave you with the heebie-jeebies. BLBT is made with trimmings that have the most contact with outermost parts of the cow – the same parts that are smeared with cow manure.[5] According to the New York Time’s article on BLBT, between 2005-2009, BLBT was four times more likely to contain salmonella. Cargill, the food behemoth with a checkered food safety history, stopped using BLBT because of salmonella contamination. Even McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King stopped using the “beef” as filler for their products last year.[6] In spite of this and other reported E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, USDA still deemed the stuff safe to eat.

But can you avoid it? Yes, if you grind your own meat or avoid beef all together. What about your kids? Pack them their own lunch.

But today, after 228,000 (and counting) people signed a Change.org petition to get BLBT out of school lunches and much bad publicity, the USDA announced that school districts would be able to opt out of buying BLBT meat for school lunches.[7]

But this doesn’t solve the problem. The larger problem lies in something else: money.

The real losers in the pink slime fight are the poor. While everyone has zeroed in on the safety issue of pink slime (and rightfully so), the safety issues are really the byproduct of ruthless penny-pinching and corporate lobbying. The only reason why BLBT even exists is because of the lobby efforts to promote it as “beef.”[8] The reason why the USDA contracted BPI for the meat in 2000, in spite of the misgivings of the Agricultural Marketing Service (the USDA division that buys food for school lunch programs), was so they could save about $.03 (!) per pound of meat…at a total saving of about $1 million dollars a year[9], versus buying regular trimmings.[10]

According to the USDA’s own numbers, 31.6 million children receive low cost or free lunches. Even though school districts might have a choice in buying no-filler beef, the likelihood that poorer school districts can afford the cost differential for better quality beef is little to none. These are the kids who have NO choice as to the quality of food they receive. And for some, school lunches may be the only meal they get all day. Has the school lunch system gotten so bad that the USDA is willing to sell out their health for 3 fucking pennies?!

And this is the crux of the problem. The quality of children’s nutrition and food is the most important factor in the School Lunch Program – not cost. What kind of lessons are we teaching our children when we say that food comes from a centrifuge and an ammonia aerator? And worst of all, is the USDA contributing to a society of have and have not’s in which the poor only receive the dregs of food only fit for dogs, under the excuse of the bottom line?

While many of us can be grateful for increased awareness regarding our food system, we must remember that many do NOT have those resources. If there’s any lesson to be gleaned from this scandal is that money talks – and often talks over those who have none. Civil society is the first step in making sure moneyed interests don’t win over those of social justice. Get angry...and then do something.

NB: If you want to sign up for Change.org petition to get BLBT out of school lunches, please go here: https://www.change.org/petitions/tell-usda-to-stop-using-pink-slime-in-school-food

Ground Beef

For those of you who want to be sure what’s in your ground beef, there’s a really easy way to do this: grind your own. While you can choose any cut you like for grinding, I think it’s helpful to think what you will be using the beef for before your grind. For example, for burgers I prefer chuck and a bit of sirloin for a meaty, but not too fatty burger. Others, namely Pat LaFrieda (the meat purveyor to Minetta Tavern and other top New York restaurants), use a combination of chuck, short rib and brisket. For other recipes, such as Bolognese, plain chuck is going to be fine, since it will be cooked down with other meats and tomato. But for grinding your meat, you can use an old-fashioned meat grinder (I have one and love it) or do it in a food processor. If you choose to do it in a food processor, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. Cut the meat into 1-inch cubes before your process. The processor can’t handle giant chunks of beef. Cutting it beforehand will make easier to process.

2. Don’t put more than a pound of meat at a time. Your processor will get overworked and even worse, you will have unevenly chopped meat.

3. Pulse, pulse, pulse. Process the meat in steps and there won’t be any temptation to over-process it into meat slime…kind of like the stuff above. This is especially important for burgers – over-processed meat will not pack nicely or cook properly.

If you are the type of person that doesn’t want to drag out the machines every single time you need ground beef, just do it all at once and freeze in portions. And yes, this method also works for pork, veal, and lamb. You’ll never go back to mystery meat again.

[1] This comes from Michael Moss’ Pulitzer Prize winning article in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?pagewanted=all

[2] Yes, this is the same ammonia, NH3, which is in bleach and other fine cleansing products.

[3] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/70-percent-of-ground-beef-at-supermarkets-contains-pink-slime/

[4] The euphemism “products” for what this company is selling is pretty laughable.

[5] Quick science note: E. coli is occurs naturally in digestive systems of warm-blooded animals, including humans. While most strains of E. coli are harmless (and are good for your digestive system), there are known strains that cause food poisoning, including E. Coli O157:H7, E. Coli O121:H19, etc. In the case of beef, E. Coli O157:H7 are often present in the intestinal tracts of beef cattle. The transference of E. Coli to beef is often a result of poor food processing, animal husbandry, and/or slaughtering practices. Granted, anything food is susceptible to E. coli poisoning, but due to its natural occurrence in cattle, beef is the most suspect in E. coli outbreaks.

Salmonella is a different story. Although it too is naturally occurring, it is primarily pathogenic, and it also resides inside intestinal systems of mammals and birds. Once again, spread through fecal matter, good animal husbandry and slaughtering practices will often cut transmission rates from animal to food. But it’s not foolproof. Thus for both salmonella and E. coli, regular testing at all food contact sites (farm to processor to retail, etc.) is critical to catch cases before the spread. Also, proper food handling (keeping food refrigerated, washing hands, cooking food thoroughly) will also cut transmission rates.

[6] This, of course, begs the question of what the hell was fast food doing placing this crap in the burgers in the first place?

[7]http://usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2012/03/0094.xml&contentidonly=true

[8] In a 2002 email message, Gerald Zirnstein, the USDA whistleblower mentioned above, wrote: “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

[9] One million dollars seems like a lot of money, but compared to, uh, military spending…like the C-17 fighter, which even Senator John McCain has admitted was useless, at a cost of $250,000,000 per plane, maybe we should be spending our money a little more wisely…

[10] Yes, once again, why are we using these trimmings to begin with?

Purim - A Soap Opera

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:34:00 +0000

"God may play dice with the universe, but not with Mrs. Schmalowitz’s lukshn kugl, nor especially with her latkes and hamantaschen."

-Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago Professor of Anthropology & Linguistics

Waay back when I was in college, I was dating this guy. He was Jewish but in that Woody Allen way. Kinda nebbishy but with a sense of humor. A couple of months into our relationship, I asked him if he knew where to get hamantaschen in Cambridge.

“What’s hamantaschen?”

I think he just lost his Jewish credentials right there.

To those of you who don’t know, hamantaschen, literally translated as “Haman’s Pocket” in Yiddish, are the traditional triangular pastries for Purim[1]. To those of you (including my ex-boyfriend) who don’t know the story of Purim, it’s pretty good. If it weren’t a story of the impending extermination of the Jewish people, I think it would have made for an excellent soap opera, with Susan Lucci playing the female lead. The story goes something like this:

According to the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible, Haman, an advisor to King Ahasuerus of Persia, plots to kill all the Jews in Persia by convincing the clueless King that Jews were a “… certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people's, and they do not observe the king's laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them." Esther 3:8.

Because the King is clueless, he tells Haman why don’t you do something about these supposed “certain people”? This is when Haman hatches a plot to kill the entire Jewish population.

But why would this Haman guy do something this evil? Because he was once insulted by a Jew…some guy named Mordecai, who apparently refused to bow down to him. A pretty pathetic reason to kill an entire people, but don’t worry, Haman gets his due. What Haman doesn’t know is that Queen Esther, the super cute wife of the King is secretly Jewish, having been raised lovingly by her cousin…Mordecai.

Mordecai convinces Esther to pipe up to the King about the upcoming massacre-not the wisest thing to do especially considering that the talking to the King without being summoned could involve death and she would be basically outing herself as Jew. A double no-go. But after starving herself for three days to get the balls to talk to the King Clueless, she decides to do it. Upon hearing this, the King finally figures out that he’s been a total fool and orders Haman and his ten sons (only in the Bible would anyone have ten(!) sons) to be killed.

And there was much rejoicing…

So what’s the deal with these Hamantaschen? Beyond the name Haman, there are various stories behind the pastry. One theory is that the cookies are supposed to resemble Haman’s tri-cornered hat. Possible, but not really convincing (like anyone really knows what kind of hat Haman was wearing). Another suggests that the pastry is supposed to resemble Haman’s ears, in reference to the defeated enemy. Plausible, but I’m still trying to connect the dots between ears and death. One anthropologist has suggested that Hamantaschen were to resemble the dice used by Haman to determine the date of the planned Jewish massacre. I’m going with this one because…it sounds scientific?

Whatever the symbolic reasoning behind hamantaschen, they are crazy delicious. But after years of being able to get good hamantaschen, I never bothered making them. Why put in the effort when yummy bagel shop has LOADS of them? Bzzz. Wrong answer. It’s when you don’t have the deli, you realize that you should have learned to make them before you were S.O.L.

After messing with a bunch of so-called “bubbie’s” recipes, I finally have gotten one that seems to the right balance between crumbly and chewy. As for the filling issue, I am partial to poppy seed, if not for the discreet thrill of maybe testing positive for heroin if I eat too many (that has yet to happen), but prune and apricot are also popular. But whichever you choose, you can’t go wrong. And you didn’t even have to starve yourself for 3 days to earn them.

Hamantaschen

This recipe is for the poppy seed filling. If you would like the fruit filling, you can easily substitute good fruit marmalade for the filling.

Dough:

Zest of 1 lemon

Zest of 1 orange

1 c. powdered sugar

1 ¼ c. white flour

1 c. whole wheat flour

2 eggs

1 c. (2 sticks) of butter, softened

Poppy Seed Filling:

1 c. milk

½ c. sugar

1 c. poppy seeds

Juice of ½ lemon

Juice of ½ orange

2 tbs. butter

1 egg, beaten

1. Place lemon and orange zest, powdered sugar, white and wheat flours into a food processor to blend thoroughly. Add eggs and butter and process until dough forms a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours or overnight.

2. While dough is chilling, make filling. Grind poppy seeds in a spice or coffee grinder. In a small saucepan over low heat, heat milk, butter and sugar until sugar dissolves. Pour about 1/4 of hot milk mixture into beaten egg and beat well. Return egg mixture into saucepan with the remaining milk mixture until the mixture begins to thicken and coats the back of a spoon (not unlike a custard or curd). Take off heat and stir in poppy seeds. Stir in lemon and orange juices to thoroughly combine. Cool completely before using.

3. Preheat oven to 350F. To form pastries, roll dough to ¼ inch thickness. Use a cookie or biscuit cutter to make about 3 inch circles. Place a generous ½ tsp. of filling onto the middle of the circle. Fold up sides of dough into a triangle shape so that the last corner under the starting point, so each side has one underlying and one overlapping corner (like a pinwheel). If one of the sides has a 2 overlapping corners, you did it wrong. (Folding like a pinwheel makes sure that the flaps won’t burst open during baking.)

4. Place cookies on parchment or silpat covered baking sheets. Bake cookies until brown, about 15 minutes. Cool before eating.

[1] The word “Purim” comes from the ancient Akkadian word for lots (same basis for the word lottery in English), referring to the lottery that Haman used to choose the day of Jewish extermination.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Dear Farmers and Ranchers:

A couple of weeks ago during the Grammys (yeah, I know, the Oscars were yesterday), Chipotle aired a short with a cover of Willie Nelson singing Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” (See above.)

The twittersphere went nuts. While Whitney Houston death may have brought the Academy together, it was Chipotle’s ad that stole people’s hearts. Even Fox News (yes, FOX NEWS!) praised it saying:

“...while people may dream of animals roaming free before being taken to slaughterhouses, in reality, most meat comes from animals held in cramped cages their entire lives, pumped full of drugs and food that plumps them up in a short amount of time.”

While food activists were delighted to see such support against factory farming, you farmers and ranchers…were uh…I’ll let you speak for yourselves.

“Is it really correct to characterize larger farms as ‘factory farms’ that mistreat animals if they are housed in barns protected from inclement weather?”

-U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance

“There are so many things wrong with the picture painted in the Chipotle Grammy commercial (this commercial has been out for awhile, just not on T.V.) that I don't know where to start.” - Crystal Cattle

“You don’t have the slightest clue about what goes on on family farms.”

Dairy Business

“Words like ‘disappointed’, ‘grossly distorted’, ‘misrepresentation’, ‘fiction’, ‘mis-characterization’ filled my streams.” Cris from GOODEness Gracious

“Commercial farmers will have to decide whether we can withstand public opprobrium while continuing to efficiently produce the world’s most essential good or join the entertainment industry, selling expensive pork chops with heaping sides of nostalgia.”- Blake Hurst, President of Missouri Farm Bureau in NYTimes op-ed

Well, I might not agree with the opinions, I do understand the sentiments. Most farmers and ranchers I talk to say that that animal welfare is their first and foremost concern. And I do believe that for the most part, they are sincere. But what about consumers? As seen with the outpouring of support for Chipotle as well as outrage directed at CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), consumers are not so convinced. In fact one study, by consulting firm Deloitte, asked consumers “"Are you more concerned than you were five years ago about the food you eat?" Seventy-three percent of respondents said, “yes.”[1]

This of course is nothing new. The food scandals of the 1910’s were in good part due to the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Several food borne illnesses, starting with the Jack-in-the-Box E. Coli deaths have made the public even more wary of industrial food products of any kind. You paint people like me as organic food-Nazis, but there’s a reason why we’re scared. We see strawberries carrying 54 different pesticides loads that cause a whole range of diseases and developmental disorders. rBGH or rbST(or recombinant bovine growth hormone) was a commonly given to cows to increase their milk output, until a public outcry forced dairy to stop using it.[2] And then there’s the GMO debate…

One might ask, well, what does this have to do with farmers? It has everything to do with farmers. You raise the food we eat everyday. What affects the quality and the safety of our food sources is of inherent interest to a society. Why? Because we consumers eat it.

Although I would like to see more regulation in food and nutrition awareness and better environmental regulation, I realize these things take time – and should be open to debate. That’s what most of us who are interested in food activism really want: An open and honest debate about how food is made, distributed, marketed and sold in this country. And farmers and ranchers are key in making this happen. How are we to achieve this? Let me count the ways…

1. Transparency. Why transparency? Because the basis of any good policy is contingent upon having all opinions heard. And you can’t form any critical opinions without having the proper information at hand. I realize farms are suspicious of muckraking journalists looking for piles of dung to fling onto headlines, but are ag-gag rules really the way to deal with this problem? Maybe the better way is to open farms for inspection. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. And better yet, unlike the many food activists who have oodles of media resources, maybe you’ll get a chance to tell your side of the story about farming or ranching. You will get to complicate a picture that often gets over-simplified by media sources that don’t know squat about farming. You don’t want your story co-opted? Tell it yourself.

2. But DON’T sugarcoat the truth. No one likes a snow job. No, I don’t mean this as an underhanded way of getting ammunition for animal rights groups or environmentalists. As tempting as it would be to show bucolic pictures of happy cows roaming the green pastures or fields of wheat gently waving in the breeze, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Farming is a rough job. No vacations. No sick days. And it’s risky and dangerous.[3] Showing people these idealized images of farms won’t get them to understand the realities of farming, and in fact, in the end will undermine your profession. By romanticizing farming, you really set up a series of unrealistic expectations that can NEVER be met, no matter how organic, sustainable or green the farm is. Instead explain the realities of the job – we’ll be a lot more sympathetic. Believe me.

3. Economics. While most people get the basics of economics when it comes to their household or the nation’s debt, trying to explain the economics of farming or ranching has many a city mouse screaming “Get me an accountant!!!” Part of problem with our food system is a contradiction in consumer habits: we want safe food, but we want it cheap. And as any economist can tell you, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The margins for farming and ranching are razor thin.[4] Much of the justification that farmers have for concentrated feed operations and other practices comes down to economics and markets. You want consumers to understand that process? Break down the numbers. Just as most of us want to see how our food is sourced…we should also see how much those processes cost. [5]

4. Blame the food industry – NOT the consumer. I hate to say it, but if you farmers should be furious, you should be placing your blame DIRECTLY on the food industry. They’re the ones that are forcing you to have bad husbandry practices. Why do you need to put antibiotics into your chickens? Because with KFC only paying your $0.30 for chickens that goes into their buckets, any lost chicken is lost revenue.[6] If you want to make money dealing with food and meat processors, you’re screwed – because they hold all the cards. If you want to sell to them, you have to follow their rules, which aren’t cheap, animal-friendly or sustainable. And that also means going big, because the only way to make a profit (if you’re lucky) is through economy of scale. Small time livestock holders never had a chance.

And it’s not just for livestock. Monsanto? They have 93% of the soybean market and 80% of the corn market.[7] They also bought vegetable seed company Seminis in 2005 – Seminis held 40% of the vegetable seed market (corn, peppers, lettuce just to name a few) making Monsanto the largest seed owner in the world.[8] And there’s that thing about Roundup. They sell you Roundup to get rid of weeds. But the problem was that crops couldn’t tolerate Round-up after planting. [9] But lo and behold. Monsanto had an answer for that too. Roundup ready corn and soybean – at triple the price of conventional seed ($130 for conventional corn vs. $400 for Roundup Ready corn). But it’s too late…you’re hooked on the seed and the herbicide. Never mind it’s really expensive. Never mind that the yields are not necessarily better than conventional (the jury is still out on that one). Never mind the environmental consequences of Roundup-resistant weeds as well as genetic transference (but don’t worry, I’m sure Monsanto will have a solution for that too)… [10]

In short, they’re using YOU to make millions while you get NADA. We consumers get that. But what makes consumers confused is when the food industry uses YOUR image to defend their practices. We can’t help but conflate the farmer with industry and their bad practices. Cut the Gordian knot and free yourself.

The truth is, we all need each other. We can’t eat if don’t have farmers. Farmers can’t survive without consumers. I know all you farmers have been saying, “Talk with us, not AT us.” A lot of us are trying. But we need your help. And Willie Nelson's too. Give us something to work with and we'll work with you. It's a start and that's what matters.

Sincerely,
Omnieater

[1] The Deloitte study and survey can be found here: http://www.deloitte.com/us/pr/foodsafety/2011survey

[2] Just in case you didn’t know this (non-ag people), rGBH was made by…Monsanto.

[3] US Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that farming is one of the most dangerous jobs out there – about 12 times as dangerous as the “average” job (click here for the link). I’ve seen it. My brother used to be a doctor at the University of Iowa. The amount of crazy farm related injuries from farm equipment were astounding.

[4] More so for small farms. Small farms make up 88% of all farms in the US, but only make 34% of production. Large farms are 9% of the total of farms, yet make 66% of production value.

[5] By the way, consumers are willing to pay higher prices for safer food. According to a Pew survey, two-thirds of Americans would be willing pay more for it. As to what “safer” means, is up to debate, but I bet you for most people, that would include pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc. Furthermore, 75% would be willing to pay one to three percent more for safer food. Food industries are not off the hook. Seventy percent of respondents said that food companies should pay $1000 to offset food safety costs.

[6] http://grist.org/food/food-cafo-reader-editor-daniel-imhoff-on-the-ills-of-factory-farms/full/

[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/28/AR2009112802471.html

[8] Monsanto has been sued by the DuPont, it’s rival, for antitrust violations (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). The Department of Justice has also investigated Monsanto for their monopolization of the seed market.

[9] Point of clarification: For farmers, the beauty of Roundup was that it could be placed directly onto the ground and be just left there without consideration of the crops’ or weeds’ lifecycles. It saved a lot of work. One caveat though – you can only spray Roundup before planting – not AFTER.

[10] The obvious discussion here is about GMO. It’s a discussion that is so complicated (and contentious) that it won’t fit a 1500 word essay, much less a book…or two. I’m against GMO mainly for environmental risk reasons, but this is not the point of this essay...

Getting Piggy With It

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:37:00 +0000

A sign from the 1970s reading "Danish pigs are healthy; they burst of penicillin"

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with the “Little House” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, especially the first volume in the series, Little House in the Big Woods. Contrary to the moralistic cheese dripping form the TV series, the book described man and nature “red in tooth and claw.”[1] Bears were bears. Deer was food (they killed Bambi?!). And for god sakes, don’t ever go out in a Wisconsin blizzard alone!

To a 6-year old suburban girl, the idea you could live in the middle of nowhere, and you could still eke out a living was very cool. Cheese, maple sugaring, butter churning…you could make that stuff? Yep, you could make that stuff. But the best part? The section about pig slaughtering (This was the age before Babe came out).

“It doesn’t hurt him, Laura,” Pa said. “We do it so quickly.” . . . It was such a busy day, with so much to see and do. Uncle Henry and Pa were jolly, and there would be spare-ribs for dinner, and Pa had promised Laura and Mary the bladder and the pig’s tail.”[2]

Yum. Spare ribs for dinner. The bladder bit was explained later (used to make a balloon…early lesson in anatomy for me). But the pig’s tail? What the hell were you going to do with that?

“Pa skinned it for them carefully, and into the large end he thrust a sharpened stick. Ma opened the front of the cook stove and raked hot coals into the iron hearth. Then Laura and Mary took turns holding the pig’s tail over the coals.

It sizzled and fried, and drops of fat dripped off it and blazed on the coals…At last it was done. It was nicely browned all over, and how good it smelled! They carried it into the yard to cool it, and even before it was cool enough they began tasting it and burned their tongues.”[3]

Oh. That’s what you did with a pig’s tail. In a pathetic attempt to repeat this tasty project, I asked the meat guy at the local grocery store whether they carried pigs’ tails. All I got was a “Where is your mother?!” I also tried to suggest this to my Brownie troop leader. Needless to say, it didn’t happen.

So much for my adventures in pioneer food-hood. I would have to wait 32 years later before I would get my chance at the pig’s tail. And no, I don’t live on a farm or slaughter pigs. That chance was at St. John Bread and Wine in London.

Smoked Anchovy with Roasted Beet and Hen's Egg

To those of you living in foodie land, this should not be surprising. Fergus Henderson and Trevor Guilliver (re)-invigorated “nose-to-tail” eating practices that were basically forgotten, thanks to urbanization, industrialization and commercial food practices. But when St. John first opened in 1994, this was not “hipster” or “haute” food. Fine dining was French – definitely NOT British. Times have definitely changed. With a menu that consisted of hare with lentils and pig trotters (pig’s feet to us Americans), oxtail tongue hash with a runny duck egg, braised lamb with potato and seaweed, roasted beet with anchovy, and a incredible local peach sorbet (with an icy shot of vodka), I didn’t care where those parts came from. They were delicious.

Hare with Lentils and Pig's Trotter

The food is not particularly complicated. It’s not foamed-up-the-ass. There are no weird agar particles. And the only suspension that’s going on in these foods is a suspension of disbelief that offal is really NOT awful – it’s really, really good.

When I talked to Lee Tiernan, the head chef of St. John Bread and Wine about the dishes, he said, “My uncle used to eat like this.”

What exactly is “like this”?

I seriously doubt that Tiernan’s uncle had a nice Bordeaux with his meal (or maybe he did, and if he did, he’s a really lucky man!), but this is food of Britain’s pastoral past, not the food of Britain’s post WWI[4] industrial factories. The hares were brought in that morning. The fish are from the British Isles and coasts. The pigs were not from the Tesco meat cooler, but from organic, free-range farms with breeds that most commercial farmers would eschew in a heartbeat.[5] And the pig…it comes WHOLE.

But the thing I was most impressed was a particular philosophy at the restaurant. Yes, all their sourcing is at the heart of trendy locavore practices. Conservationists love the fact that the food helps support a genealogical past that would be otherwise lost of industrial breeding practices and agriculture. Foodies love it for its “integrity” to British food traditions. And for Anthony Bourdain, it is the last meal he would want to have if he were sent to the executioner’s chair.

In fact St. John might be called a BoBo[6] wet dream. But for all the hype the restaurant has received (well deserved!), the most poignant statement came from Tiernan: “I’m a chef. I just cook and I try NOT waste anything.”

And that, for me, is the most impressive part of this restaurant. In an age where the wealth of nations has allowed fish to be flown in from the Mediterranean, foie gras to be served any day of the week, strawberries from Morocco eaten in December, waste is everywhere.

Not in Lee Tiernan’s kitchen. Pig tails are made into crispy snacks. Ox-tongue that got a little overcooked becomes ox tongue hash. Pig feet get placed in any soup or stock dish for a little oomph. Bones are roasted for marrow and placed into salad. Veal tails are brined and bones are roasted for soup. Chitterlings[7] (that’s pigs’ intestines)? They’re served with turnips. Not to mentions kidneys, livers, brains and hearts. And when I visited the kitchen, there was a giant pot of assorted pig parts that were probably going into some delicious dish.

Stewing Pig Parts at St. John Bread & Wine Kitchen

Maybe this is the true luxury of modern day life: having the time to cook and eat food that does not come from a freezer, has been freeze-dried into pellets or packaged in swaths of plastic. Food that is honest because it has been honestly raised and made. That’s worth its weight in gold.

Crispy Pig's Tails (Pan is for presentation)

Crispy Pig Tails

While pig tails have now become all the rage in restaurants, Southerners (in the United States) have been eating them for years, mainly as part of Carribo-African-American food culture. Pig tails are tough to come by in any grocery store, so go to the most reputable butcher you can find and ask them about it. They can probably get them from you. Also, if you are near a good farmers’ market that sells pork products, you may be able to order them. And one more thing – make sure they are free range and/or organic. You don’t want to waste your time eating antibiotic laced crap.

8-10 pig tails (look for ones that are fairly meaty), rinsed thoroughly

8 cloves of garlic, peeled and halved

1 onion, coarsely chopped

2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

1 tsp. salt (you can also use a salt blend like Old Bay or any Cajun seasoning-it works nicely)

1. Place pig tails in a large stock pot and fill to cover. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and cover the pot for 15 minutes.

2. Drain pig tails and return to a clean stock pot. Cover with enough cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and then add garlic, onion, red pepper flakes and salt. Boil over medium-low heat for about 2 hours or when the tails are almost falling apart.

3. In the meanwhile, preheat oven to 350F. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil and grease with vegetable oil.

4. Drain pig tails (save the cooking liquid for beans, stock or soup – it’s SO good) and place them on the roasting pan. Roast tails for 30-40 minutes or until skin crisps and browns (If the skin is still is a bit flabby at 40 minutes, you can broil them at bit until they do. But this shouldn’t be necessary.)

5. Take out of the oven and serve immediately with beans, rice or cornbread.

[1] English nerds go gaga. This reference of course is to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem, In Memoriam A. H. H., from 1850 :

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

(From Canto 56)

[2] Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. (New York: Harper Collins, 1971), p. 16.

[3] Wilder, 17.

[4] As much as British food gets knocked on as vegetables-boiled-to-a-blandness, a quick history of British cooking would tell you otherwise. 18^th and 19^th century England, due to its trade prowess, had spices galore from the West Indies, India and the Caribbean. Cakes and ices (ice cream or sorbets) were molded into decorative tins. Game meat was a regular in the fall. What killed it? WWI and WWII when food rationing and food industrialization came together in a pretty unholy alliance (at least for taste buds). Local cooking and food never quite recovered. Until about now.

[5] An excellent example of this is the pig breed “Middle White.” A pig well regarded for its meat in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the breed has basically gone out of pig production due to industrialization and a preference for bacon and lard producing breeds. Considered “endangered” by the Rare Breed Survival Trust, a conservation organization to preserve and protect native animal breeds, the Middle White numbers have bounced back.

[6] Just in case you are not familiar with the term, “Bobo” is a mash-up of the words “Bourgeois” and “Bohemian,” coined by the New York Times columnist David Brooks, in his book Bobos in Paradise.

[7] Chitterlings, contrary to what many Southerners (people from the South of the US) might thing, is actually a word from the mid-Middle Ages England, between the 11^th and 15^th centuries. While originally used to refer to pig’s intestines (and in the South they still do), they can also refer to any type of intestine, such as veal or cow.

What is With That Plastic Baby Jesus Thingy?

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:47:00 +0000

"It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans."

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Letter to Pamela Moffett, 9 and 11 March 1859

Mardi Gras King Cake

Carnival. Mardi Gras. Shrove Tuesday. Whatever you call it, it’s the last hurrah before you give up your beloved enter delicious food item here, before Lent. If you aren’t religious, it’s even better. You don’t have to give up anything for one hell of a party.

And what’s a party it is. While Brazil, Venice and New Orleans are best known for their blowout parades and balls, other countries (this means you, grumpy Protestant Europe) have more subdued traditions. But all of them have one thing in common: Food. Lots of it. The worse for you, the better. We’re talking lots of fat, sugar and eggs.

In France and the UK, there are often pancakes (not the fat American kind – more like a crepe). Poland has Paczki, which is fried pastry dough with a pastry crème filling (not unlike a donut in concept – but far better tasting in reality). Sweden has also has an almond crème filled pastry called semlor. And Italians also have fried pastries in various shapes and fillings including fritelle, sfingi, castagnole, etc.[1]

And then there is King Cake. Named after the biblical three kings, King Cake makes it’s appearance after Epiphany (celebrating the day the Magi visits the baby Jesus) in January. In France, la galette des Rois comes in two varieties: one made of puff pastry with an almond paste (frangipane) filling popular in northern France, and another in the south, made with a brioche-type dough studded with candied fruits. Spain and Latin America also have a similar cake to the southern French one, except the dried fruit is on top, not within, the cake itself.

And New Orleans? Well, just like America itself, the cake is loud and gaudy and heavy. Typically, the cake is an egg and butter enriched yeast dough with some kind of filling (cinnamon is the most common), shaped into an oval with purple, green and gold icing and sugar on top.

But what about this baby Jesus thing? The one thing that is common to all King Cakes is a little trinket representing the Baby Jesus baked inside the cake. Before the advent of plastic, a fava bean or a dried pea was the Baby (and still is traditional in Europe and Latin America). The US, being the US, we have plastic babies. And once again, the US being the US, you can’t bake it in the cake anymore without someone throwing a lawsuit. Thus, the plastic babies are still traditional, but usually left outside the cake or tucked inside right before serving.

But why bother? Because if you get the little bean or trinket, you get the “honor” of supplying the King Cake the next year. Or even better, in Mexico you have supply tamales for Candlemas. And oh yeah, if you’re into royalty, you get to be called King or Queen for the day.

All that effort for a made-in-China plastic non-recyclable tchotcke? Forget the baby. Stick with the cake. Happy Mardi Gras!

King Cake

2 tbs. butter

8 oz. sour cream or cream fraiche

6 tbs. sugar

½ tsp. salt

1 envelope dry yeast

½ tbs. sugar

¼ c. warm water (110F)

1 large egg

3-31/2 c. flour (do not use cake flour)

¼ c. sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

3 tbs. butter, room temperature

Colored icing:

11/2 c. powdered sugar

11/2 tbs. melted butter

1-2 tbs. milk

dash of vanilla extract

green food coloring

yellow food coloring

purple food coloring (or a combo of red/blue food colorings)

Colored sugar crystals in yellow, green and purple

1. Take 2 tbs. of butter, sour cream, sugar and salt and cook over medium low heat, stirring often, until the butter melts. Take off stove and cool to 110F.

2. Stir yeast, ½ tbs. of sugar and ¼ c. warm water in a large bowl to dissolve. Set aside for five minutes or until mixture becomes bubbly.

3. Add butter/sour cream mixture and egg to yeast and stir thoroughly. Add in 1 to 11/2 c. of flour to start and then add the rest of the flour until a soft dough appears (it will be sticky!) and starts to pull away from the bowl (this can be done in an electric mixer).

4. Knead dough on a floured surface until dough is smooth and elastic – about 8 to 10 minutes. Lightly grease a large bowl, and turn dough around to coat. Cover bowl with a clean towel and leave in a warm, draft-free place to rise, until doubled in size, about an hour.

5. In a small bowl, stir cinnamon and sugar together. Set aside.

6. Punch dough down and roll out dough into a 28 by 10 inch rectangle. Spread softened butter on top of dough. Sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mixture on top. With the long side facing you, roll dough tightly in a jellyroll fashion. Seam side down, make into an oval shape, using a bit of water to seal the ends together and place on a non-stick baking sheet.

7. Cover again with a clean towel and let it rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about 20-30 minutes.

8. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375F and bake 20 minutes until golden. Cool for an hour before frosting and decorating.

9. Icing: Stir together all ingredients, except for food coloring, until smooth (you may need to add more or milk to get the consistency you want). Divide the icing into three batches and add 1 drop of food coloring into each.

10. To decorate cake: Drizzle colored icing in desired fashion (since I have a 6- year old, it’s the dump and spread method). While the icing is still wet, sprinkle colored sugars as desired. Let icing set before serving. Best eaten within 2-3 days (it won’t last that long though).

[1] Pastry debates, like pasta debates, are contingent upon region. As one of my friends, married to a woman from Bari said, “All Italian cooking is good, but we all know that Southern Italian cooking is best.” I suspect this statement is what has kept his marriage intact.

Where's the Beef? (Part II of Aging & Cooking Your Own Steak)

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:57:00 +0000

“Did you ever see the customers in health-food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look terrific.”

-Bill Cosby, American Comedian

What’s the point of having good quality beef if you can’t cook it? You’d be surprised how something that seems as intuitive as cooking a steak can be so puzzling to many. If you think that Fred Flintstone is the your model of cooking steaks, then you have a lot to learn (all anachronisms aside, Fred Flintstone probably was aging his meat because he didn’t have a proper meat locker in prehistoric Bedrock).

In Part I of eating better beef, we went through the steps of aging your own meat. That was the easy part. The difficult part is yet to come – how to cook your meat.

You would think there is some universal rule to grilling a steak, but beyond getting your grill at an eyebrow burning 800F, there seems to be little consensus on the grilling debate. I was always taught to use a hot pan, room temperature steaks, and ALWAYS tongs, lest any precious juices come pouring out.

Apparently, Peter Luger, steakhouse extradoniaire, doesn’t play by those rules: They take a cold steak, stick it on the hot grill rack, sprinkle some salt on the steak. They apparently take it out when it’s still raw inside, cut into it, and then place it back into the broiler to finish cooking.

Morton’s, another well-known steakhouse, does it completely differently. Steaks are taken out an hour before grilling to warm up the steak’s interior so there isn’t a temperature differential when the steaks are being cooked. They are salted with the mysterious “Morton’s secret salt.” Then they are blasted in an 800F broiler to sear and finished off in a 400F oven. And they must be rested – to insure the juices are reabsorbed into the meat.

And then there’s the Modernist Cuisine[1] way.[2] First, you sous vide[3] your steak for 45 minutes in a 130F water bath (for medium-rare). Then you go and sear your steaks in a super-hot cast iron pan, broiler, grill or torch. This seems very simple, until you realize that to do this properly, you need a proper vacuum sealer – which will cost you a couple of hundred dollars, and then a commercial sous vide machine that makes sure that the temperature of your water stays consistent – that piece of equipment will cost you around $1200 on the low end (a gazillion dollars on the high end). Add the price of a professional foodservice broiler/grill, that will set you back another 5000 bucks, and then…well you get the idea.[4]

Ideally, we want a crusty outside and a juicy, tender inside. Well, biochemically, it’s actually really difficulty to get that steak.[5] Why? Let me count the ways.

First, let’s start with the steak itself. While raw meat is delicious (steak tartare?), browning a steak[6] allows steak to really shine. When a steak is browned at high temperatures, the browning reaction – called the Maillard[7] reaction – sets in. At high temperatures, 250F plus, a carbohydrate molecule and amino acid molecule react with each other producing an unstable intermediate structure – a glycosalmine. This in turn forms more reactions that result in browning and “meaty” aromas. Because the amino acids contain sulfur and nitrogen, a multitude of compounds can be made that we associate with savory meats.

But those reactions, as mentioned above, only come about under specific conditions. If a pan is too cool, it will not have enough heat (energy) to trigger the Maillard reaction. In real terms, your meat will be cooked, but it won’t brown. Also, have you ever tried browning meat straight out of a marinade? It doesn’t brown well and instead you end up with steamed meat. That is because the Maillard reaction is requires enough heat to dry the surface area. Unless you have a commercial grill that can be heated to high heat, your meat never had a chance.

And then there is the undercooking-overcooking problem. Beyond browning, the most difficult aspect of getting a perfect steak is getting the inside cooked as well as the outside. The problem is that by the time the outside is seared and crusty, the inside could be either dry as a bone or caveman raw. The problem is due to the properties of meat when cooked. The temperature range in which meat is firm yet juicy is about 30F, between 120-150F. In the earlier stages of cooking (around 120F), protein fibers coagulate and push out water molecules resulting in a firm and juicy steak done “rare” or “bleu.” In later stages of cooking, around 140F, the collagen in meat begins to denature, pushing out more liquid and becoming denser, resulting in a firm/chewy yet somewhat-juicy steak at medium. But when you have a super-hot cooking surface, it takes just 3 minutes to exceed that range of temperatures, often resulting in overcooked steak.

How to avoid this? Look to the masters. By initially browning the outside at a high temperature and then cooking the rest at a lower temperature, one decreases the risk of either having char-raw meat or rubber boot by slowing down the cooking process. By giving meat more time to cook thoroughly to the proper internal temperature, one reduces the risk of overcooking.

This all sounds fine and good, but what is the home cook to do? Here’s the deal. You can do this at home, but it will take some thoughtfulness to get it just right. Here are the steps to do steakhouse at home:

Pre-trimmed aged steaks

1. Take your nicely aged steak (see post on meat aging) out and trim if needed off any off-colored pieces and shriveled bits (see picture below) about 2 hours before cooking. This allows the temperature at the middle of the steak to rise a bit so the steak is not ice cold when it hits the grill (this avoids char-raw steaks).


Post-trimed aged steak. Notice it's a bit smaller than above.

2. Pat your steak dry as thoroughly as you can. As mentioned above, the Maillard reaction needs a dry surface to do it’s magic. If it’s soggy, you’ll get steamed meat.

3. Preheat your oven with a rack (a cake rack works well) at 400F. If you don’t have a rack, you can use a baking sheet, but rack is better because it allows for the hot air to circulate evenly around your steak, insuring even cooking.

4. Heat a cast iron skillet on the highest heat possible. You know it is hot enough if the water sizzles immediately after you sprinkle it in the pan.

5. Coat the bottom of the pan with 1-2 tsp. of neutral vegetable oil – NOT olive oil (it’s smoking point is too low). I prefer rice bran oil because it’s neutral in taste and has a high smoking point.

6. Salt your steaks and place them on the pan. For steaks an inch thick, sear steaks for about 1-11/2 minutes on each side, turning once. For steaks 11/2 inch thick, do it for 2 minutes on each side. And for god sakes, use flat-sided tongs to turn the steaks, lest you pierce your meat and let precious juices run out.

Steaks after being seared. Notice the nice crust developed on top due to a hot pan.

7. Transfer your steaks to the oven and let them roast for about 6 minutes for 1-inch steaks or 8-9 minutes for 11/2-inch steaks for medium rare (130F internal temperature). Lessen the time by a minute or 2 for rare steaks.

8. Take steaks out of the oven and tent with foil for 3 minutes to let the juices re-absorb.

9. Eat.

There you have it. Steakhouse steak at home. You don’t need to spend too much money doing it – just a little bit of time and effort. And with steaks this good, you won’t need that red meat fix so often. You’ll eat well – and help save the earth and your health at the same time.

[1] Just in case you don’t follow 5-volume, $600, 50 pound cookbooks, Modernist Cuisine is a book by Nathan Myhrvold (with Chris Young & Maxime Billet) that is a reference book on the science of contemporary cooking. You want to know how they make those crazy foods at WD-50 and El Bulli? Here’s were you find out how they do it.

[2] I don’t have the cash to get the set, thus I am forced to suss out their technique through Amazon’s search function. Illegal? Uh…not sure.

[3] Sous vide is a method of cooking in which foods are vacuum-sealed (think TV-infomercial Food Saver) and then cooked in a low-temperature water bath. The point is to keep food from oxidizing, losing juices and overcooking.

[4] Melissa Clark of the New York Times, has a nice piece on trying to do Modernist Cuisine at home. Her recipe for grilled rib-eye can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/dining/seared-frozen-rib-steaks-recipe.html?_r=1

[5] OK – I am one of those steak eaters who likes her steak rare to just-barely medium rare with a good crust. I am not going to give a lecture to those who do the “well-done” (aka shoe leather) bit. But the advice here is relevant regardless of how you like your steak cooked.

[6] While all browning is cooking, not all cooking is browning. Yes, cooking for meats is defined by the denaturing of proteins – that is the proteins change structure due to heat. Think of it this way: if you put a steak into boiling water, the steak will “cook” – but it won’t be tasty. It will just be a grayish lump of chewy meat.

[7] The Maillard reaction is named after the French physician Louis Camille Maillard who discovered this process in 1912. Maillard reactions require both a carbohydrate (either a sugar or starch) and an amino acid. In the case of steak, it would be the amino acids attached to meat proteins. Although it is often confused with caramelization, the two processes are chemically different (but not necessarily mutually exclusive). While caramelization also is a browning reaction, it only happens in sugars (technically speaking it’s the pyrolization of sugar).

TedxManhattan: Chaning the way we eat

noreply@blogger.com (Omnieater) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:24:00 +0000

Watch live streaming video from tedx at livestream.com

Hi Folks! I'm going to be Live Tweeting from TedxManhattan - Changing The Way We Eat. Feel free to follow along on Twitter or even better - watch it here! Watch, listen and learn.