A good BBQ operation looks more like a furnace than a kitchen. The “small” metal boxes are the actual pits, the pit master is stoking the coals in the coal pit and moves them into the individual BBQ pits.

To the few who were confused – I apologize. I actually concocted this months in advance and the rather … iffy … timing with a real world change [...]]]> As was obvious to most, last week’s “Jonas goes mad” string of emails, YouTube links, and those letters some of you got … April Fools and all.

To the few who were confused – I apologize. I actually concocted this months in advance and the rather … iffy … timing with a real world change in my life was neither intended nor actually much thought about by me when I implemented the prank.

That said, I am just back from Ohio where I took this insanely cool photo:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a 1894 Rumford. First of its kind with Gas/Coal hybrid firing it didn’t have the 1920s enamel coating so it was a beast to clean.

The cool part, here, is the dual-firing that had to be done in a way that wouldn’t blow the whole stove up if the gas side overheated. To do this, a secondary vent was laid and had to be connected to an external area of the house.

These stoves still, however, killed a few cooks by flaring up in inopportune moments.

I will be incommunicado for the next two, three, days and then it’s Los Angeles time. Can’t wait to eat, talk, and visit the Magic Apple, America’s largest magic supply store.

Beef chapter: three wonderful places I am writing about, a primer on meat cuts, an intro to curing, storing, and much more, a few recipes, a box on transglutaminase (meat glue), and [...]]]> (as much as I dislike the idea of this in most cases, “like” festcraft on Facebook and get a free advance copy eBook)

Beef chapter: three wonderful places I am writing about, a primer on meat cuts, an intro to curing, storing, and much more, a few recipes, a box on transglutaminase (meat glue), and an interview with a German Master Butcher who’s done this since 1952.

Produce chapter: I am visting a self-sustaining farm in Oklahoma, foragers in Ohio, and Chez Panisse in Berkeley in April. Also building a seasonality calendar and adding some extremely cool recipes for vegetarian dishes and vegetables as main elements.

Dessert Chapter: A former Wolfgang Puck pastry chef talks about making desserts for a diverse population and how to deal with Coeliac disease, a pastry chef shows how to make vegan cupcakes, and (hopefully) a marshmallow goddess talks about flavors that work and don’t work. In the techniques section we make the perfect crepe and nitrogen ice cream, talk about the history of desserts in America, and then visit the Romans. Recipes range from pies to almond brittle and pecan snacks. Also a small addendum for weight lifters and runners on the go.

Alternative Sources: covering a little bit more about foraging. Also growing your own produce and fruits, an interview with a hunter, a conversation about backyard chickens, and the rise of urban farms.

With AB1678, the bill introduced in the California assembly that would make it almost impossible for Food Trucks to park anywhere downtown in the state due to ban-miles around schools, even harsher restrictions already in place in San Francisco, and other states and cities evaluating [...]]]>

With AB1678, the bill introduced in the California assembly that would make it almost impossible for Food Trucks to park anywhere downtown in the state due to ban-miles around schools, even harsher restrictions already in place in San Francisco, and other states and cities evaluating similar measures or making food truck operations prohibitively hard to start – what is happening?

Are we in a hype-spiral that has blown something originally very small and benign into a force that endangers our children? I don’t think so.

Food trucks are definitely surfing a hype, I am not sure they are a hype in and by itself. The hype these mobile food service operations are attached to is bigger: the, as I call it, New American Quest For Food.

Traditionally, restaurants have never been one to kill hypes. We all profit and benefit from this quest, we all cater to it through menu management, marketing, and other strategies. Many restaurants also started their own food trucks, getting into the business with an advantage few independent operators have – a full kitchen, a developed menu that can be adapted, and existing financial, social, and technical resources (and this starts with a place to park at night).

The drivers behind the anti-Food Truck movements are partially ill-informed politicians who are seeking quick solutions and scapegoats and find them in the weakest link in the food service industry (a win is a win, no matter how weak the opponent, something PETA and others have been doing for decades), and the owners and operators of fast food chains and drive through eateries.

To them, the newcomers are a threat in the area of fast service while providing individualized meals instead of mass produced fare. Add into this that the same companies who supply fast food also supply school lunch ready-mades and you will understand why those companies are so hell-bent on making sure the choices for, especially, young diners are between McChickenKing and the school cafeteria.

Walk-in and sit-down dining is often prohibitive enough to school children, students, and even businesspeople, that the fast food and in-house cafeterias do not have to fight them as hard. Put a mobile truck that can be parked in an office space parking lot or near a bus stop into the equation and those providers will lose money.

Food trucks aren’t new. Their prevalence and quality is, relatively, and that scares the old, packaged food, guard.

Update: on G+ Rich Thomas remarks:

I am not sure you have it right here. Listening to the debate about food trucks in the Bay Area, you hear a lot of complaints from sit down restaurants, not just fast service restaurants. You hear these restauranteurs talk about the advantage food trucks have by not needing to pay rent or property tax. They also talk about food trucks being able to move during the slow times. I think you are not giving a full reading of who is supporting AB1678

Further discussion about that part there.

Thursday I’ll be heading out on a trip to Boulder, CO, for the weekend [...]]]> Well, that was quite the time of no feastcraft. I am swamped with work and personal stuff and whenever I sat down to write something about something something else came up. And, yes, “something” is the perfect word for all that.

Thursday I’ll be heading out on a trip to Boulder, CO, for the weekend and would love some tips and hints and pointers at places to go and things to see, both on the drive north and back south and in Boulder itself. There’s a museum I found that’s about an hour out of the way that has a collection of victorian cookware that found its way into the States through immigrants. So I’ll be going there.

I’m also still looking for things to go see in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada…

Over at City of Ate Scott Reitz talks about doneness and the (very Texan and San Franciscan) custom to ask diners to cut open their steak and check if it’s done to their demands:

But here’s the rub. While beef certainly displays visual cues [...]]]>

Over at City of Ate Scott Reitz talks about doneness and the (very Texan and San Franciscan) custom to ask diners to cut open their steak and check if it’s done to their demands:

But here’s the rub. While beef certainly displays visual cues that indicate doneness, you can’t see medium rare, because it’s not a color. It’s a temperature (130 to 135 degrees, if you care.) Doneness should be tested when a steak is back in the kitchen with a thermometer, not table-side with a spotlight. I want my steak to rest easily on plate before I cut into it, end to end.

Scott has a point. Why should quality control be left to the diner? After all, isn’t that what makes us cooks and chefs? The ability to cook things to order?

But that’s only part of it. When I asked the same question in San Francisco I received a pretty depressing answer: diners dislike their food to be touched by cooks. And, said the food critic I was talking to, since everyone knows from Food TV that doneness is established by poking meat with fingers, diners seem to be more in favor of testing themselves than letting cooks prod their fare.

That’s of course correct. Unlike Scott’s “thermometer” scheme, I poke my steaks with my finger. Thermometers are slow and hold up service. Even the good fast ones from Taylor or Harold take five to eight seconds to read correctly. A touch is faster and as accurate. And can’t be stolen by a scumbag linecook. It’s all in a day’s work and two decades’ experience. A simple experiment at home is to squeeze one’s ear lobe, poke one’s chin and nose. The difference in “springiness” more or less translates into the feel of a 1.5 inch steak when done well, medium, or rare. After a few years I can touch my steaks when plating and know what doneness they are.

Good cooks know, from mere visual inspection before adding the steak to the grill and from experience with differently stored (we store our steaks below the danger zone, for example, so we need more time in the oven to bring it to temperature. Other places store at higher temps and pull smaller batches to avoid leaving them out above the prescribed time) cuts how long a grill and bake will take. Something in the back of my head keeps nagging me at about the right time, even if I am not consciously looking at clocks. Again, that’s what experience brings and what makes me (and tens of thousands of cooks and chefs) different than our self-proclaimed “chef” impostors and culinary school graduates.

Being able to cook steak right is one of our claims to those sixty cents above minimum wage we so dearly deserve. Relinquishing that control to the diner is not now and has not ever been our choice. Instead it’s a combination of Front of the House distrust and diner de-education, namely their unwillingness to concede that, yes, the people in the back of the house actually touch their food. We still do, but by letting diners do a little Quality Assurance on the table we at least add one more illusion to the elaborate construct of letting eaters think they’re as smart as us about food and as in charge as we are.

The year is 2009. Teresa Puente. a blogger for ChicagoNow (to call her a journalist would be about as stretching it as calling me one) asks “Why is Rick Bayless the expert on Mexican cuisine when he’s not even Mexican“. A year later, Cammie [...]]]>

The year is 2009. Teresa Puente. a blogger for ChicagoNow (to call her a journalist would be about as stretching it as calling me one) asks “Why is Rick Bayless the expert on Mexican cuisine when he’s not even Mexican“. A year later, Cammie McDaniel, this time for the Chicago Tribune, writes “Bayless insulting to Mexican-Americans” and means it.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But it shows a trend – X is offended if non-X sells X’s food and, somehow, is made the “expert” on whatever X they’re serving. Or is it?

Mario Battali is American. Not Italian. He was born and raised in America. His food is influenced by Italian-American dishes, sure, but Italian-American is about as Italian as it is Irish (or Irish-American is Irish, for that matter). He spent a few years in Italy and that qualifies him to claim Italian influences. But so did Bayless in Mexico. In fact, if I am not mistaken, Bayless spent more time in Mexico than Batali in Italy. And don’t get me started on Scott Conant. Not even remotely Italian by heritage he spent a few months cooking in Italy and is now the “predominant expert on Italian cuisine” to quote the starter blurb in Chopped. A few months in Italy? Compared to six years in Mexico for Bayless? If Conant is an expert so is Bayless.

Should Marcus Samuelsson be allowed to cook anything but Swedish, Austrian, or American food? Should I, for that matter, be allowed to cook French or American food. After all, I am neither.

The deal is simple. Cooking and cookery transcends petty little nationalistic bullshit attitudes. Food is a language and culture of its own and, unlike the regionalistic meatheads crying for someone’s passport whenever they taste food, speaks to everyone who takes the time and effort to listen. Battali makes food the way Battali understands food, Bayless does the same. So do tens of thousands of cooks and chefs in this country alone. Your French food in America is made by Mexicans, your Mexcian food by Puerto Ricans, your Spanish food by Mexicans, your German food by Americans. And each and every one of them, for that time, for the precious hours in the kitchen on a stove, forget about the idiotic notion of borders and languages and pride in something they had no power over such as the place they were born. There is pride – in one’s craft, in the results. The rest is best left to those who don’t speak food’s international and uniting language.

With temperatures below freezing in the morning, Texas is once again home to some of the more hilarious hijinks of nature. Atypically warm weather over the past few weeks [...]]]>

With temperatures below freezing in the morning, Texas is once again home to some of the more hilarious hijinks of nature. Atypically warm weather over the past few weeks led to farmers opening their greenhouses and banking on cold, maybe even freezing, mornings but warm afternoons. The result is a slew of great tasting, a-seasonal, fare that can now be enjoyed locally. Time to bring a squash dish back onto the menu.

… for the discerning chewer between Petrus Wine Gummy Pastilles and Havanna eVape drags.

Rocky Agrawal‘s (@rakeshlobster) piece on VentureBeat titled “Yelp advertising is a rip-off for small advertisers“. Then Disqus hickupped again (still asking me why I am not using third party commenting?) so I am posting it here.

For the promise of actual visits, the hope for great reviews and the subsequent influx of paying customers, restaurants are willing to dig deep into their ever-diminishing pockets. We’re gamblers in the great casino of hospitality, hooked on the three lemon streak we had in 2008, willing to double down with our last shirt to see that rain of money once more.

Remember 2001? When Exodus Communications (soon to be CW, later to be Savvis) lost Google and Yahoo and Sun Microsystems and everyone in-between as customers? Those tech smart people paid millions in useless advertising and marketing stunts just for a hope to see their cabinets hum with the monotonous sound of tens of thousands of servers once more. If tech-smart people like Exodus were willing to raise the ante and bet (and, in this case as in many Yelp stories) lose the farm, how can we fault John Q. Restaurateur for doing the same?

The issue here is triple: the aforementioned magical mystery promise, the disconnect between non-tech users and tech creators (quick, what do Venturebeat’s stats say about small business owner readership?), and the makeup of Yelp’s sales pitch which, as you know, doesn’t talk about “CPM” or “Impressions” but focuses on customers and reputation management.

Yelp is settled enough in the criticism and reputation space that it believes it can compare itself to Zagat or Michelin. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if your source quoted the line “we’re somewhat like Michelin or Zagat for the 21st century” as one of the pitches. Another thing often mentioned is Google (“when someone pulls up the place page, our reviews are linked from there”). And everyone knows Google. Everyone fears and worships Google. To the restaurateur this is like a nest of bees to the starving honeybadger – don’t care about the sting of the outlay, don’t care about the technical picture, there’s food on the table to be had, let’s risk it.

This image has nothing to do with the post, I just figured I’d show the final functionality. It was uploaded with WordPress’ image uploader but synced in the back to Dropbox and is now served from there.

I am using:

Food media is at it, again, this time (as every year) in the “shorties”, the annual event “honor[ing] the best of social media”.

Winner in food is, currently, Niall [...]]]>

Food media is at it, again, this time (as every year) in the “shorties”, the annual event “honor[ing] the best of social media”.

Winner in food is, currently, Niall Horan, a 18 year old singer. And, funnily enough, a namesake of his from Dublin.

He’s also the “hottie of the year” (seriously?), a “hero” (10s of thousands of cops, military members, doctors, EMT, and others laugh in disgust), a singer (funny if your chosen profession gets MUCH less votes than your ability to eat things) and “green”.

Down at 4th place is Hannah, the genius behind “My Drunk Kitchen“, the “Epic Meal Time” crew  at 5th, and (ewww) Bitchin’ Kitchen which, while an abomination upon mankind and as disgusting as McDonalds or Roadkill Cafe at least deals with food.

Ladies, gentlemen, this is why we can’t have anything nice in this world. When idiotic teen heartthrob singers can get more recognition in #food than weird cooking videos, the world is screwed.

What I am a little confused about is [...]]]>

noma

I am as thrilled as most of my brothers and sisters in the service of ideas and cuisines that have now become arranged under the monicker of New Nordic that Plate decided to dedicate a whole print issue to the topics we deal with every day.

What I am a little confused about is the “why now” part of the equation. It’s not like it’s new. Sure, noma’s success has propelled the idea into the stratosphere, not the least due to Rene’s ceaseless work in formulating the rules of the cuisine along with giving it a name, but this kind of food isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around for so long, might as well just call it Nordic Cuisine and be done with it.