Archives for the 'Food Writing' Category
Why I Love Globalization, Reason #477
I can sit in front of my computer in Washington, DC and read this in the Taipei Times:
“I want to give customers in Taiwan the real taste, the taste [of the Mexican food] I grew up with,” says the Canadian-born [restaurateur Eddy] Gonzalez, whose parents are Mexican immigrants.
The review also includes mention of 7-Eleven and Starbucks.
NYT Makes All Your Sandwishes Come True
Where to find the best sandwich in NYC? The NYT has you covered like… like… like bread around PB&J.
The ground rules: A sandwich had to be composed as such; mere food on bread did not count. (This left out, for example, pan de lomo saltado, a popular Peruvian stir-fry of beef, onions and peppers laced with soy sauce, typically served with French fries, but piled onto a crusty roll for sandwich purposes.)
Burgers and wraps were out of the running, as was the universe of empanadas, samosas, patties and arepas; the same went for any sandwich that had to be eaten inside a restaurant or was otherwise unavailable for travel to a picnic, a ballgame or a playground.
The winners? Find out for yourself, but be warned that a great New York sandwich need not be from New York (city or state).
Miracle Fruit Turns Sour Sweet, Blogger into Star
Friend and DC food & drink guru Jacob Grier has become something of a go-to guy when the press needs its fix of miracle fruit, a mysterious berry with the power to turn diners’ palates upside down. Jacob attended a miracle fruit party about a year ago, where he investigated the rumor the
…unusual fruit possesses an amazing property. Eating one temporarily alters one’s sense of taste, making sour, bitter foods taste sweet and delicious. People in West Africa, native home to miracle fruit, have reportedely used it for centuries to make their diets more palatable.
It’s also a literally forbidden fruit. Attempts to market it and its active protein miraculin to diabetics were mysteriously thwarted by the FDA in the 1970s, relegating miracle fruit to underground cult status.
[…]
The fruit itself is mostly tasteless, though slightly sweet. The pit is surrounded by a weird, slick layer of pulp. It’s not bad to eat, but one would get bored with it pretty quickly. The true test came next, as we again sampled the lime. The result? Utter astonishment. The very same lime we’d tried moments before suddenly tasted like it had been dipped in sugar. All the stinging acidity was gone, leaving only the pleasing citrus and an amazing sensation of sweetness that left us craving more.
Indeed, it’s true. I’ve eaten miracle fruit with Jacob, followed by foods I know to be sour tasting richly sweet.
Well, Jacob’s love of the fruit led him to blog about it a ton, which led to a bunch of blog coverage, which in turn led to a front-page article on another of his tasting parties in the Wall Street Journal. Just yesterday, a recent tasting party Jacob put together appeared on BBC Radio, alongside this excellent story on the fruit’s positively wacky effect and history. Check out Jacob’s wrap-up of yesterday’s coverage here.
04/20/09
So it didn’t occur to me how great it would be if I were to write a completely serious piece on pairing food with 4/20 until yesterday–a day late. That’s when I read this in the Chicago Tribune:
One 39-year-old Chicago professional, who didn’t want his named used for obvious reasons, said he’s all set to host his fourth annual 420 party.
“We serve pizza rolls, Lit’l Smokies, all kinds of candy bars—the munchies-food I guess you’d expect,” he said.
So I’m totally on the ball for next year. Reminder to self.
Read my 2004 interview with then-High Times editor (formerly one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people) John Buffalo Mailer here.
Food Rationing Hits U.S.!
That’s the alarmist message in today’s normally austere, conservative New York Sun. What’s the deal?
Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.
At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.
“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”
The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.
Well, that’s a chuckle. It’s hardly rationing just because you can’t buy a 20-lb. bag of food. It’s not like you can’t go into any grocer in America and buy a smaller bag of Uncle Ben’s. It’s just that bulk, discount food is probably going to be harder to find for the time being.
As for the hoarding stories, let me add my own anecdotal evidence. About three years ago, I bought one of those 20-lb. bags of Royal basmati rice (pictured) at Costco. I never got around to opening it, and I still have it. Thus, I’m apparently a hoarder! Except that I could still buy it right now at Costco for next to nothing, which makes my rice–like the Sun piece–a little silly, and a little stale.
Thanks to Jessica for the tip.
Update: Sam’s Club is now limiting customer purchases to four 20-lb. bags of rice. “On average,” the company notes in a press release explaining the move, “a typical Sam’s Club Business Member does not buy more than 80 pounds of rice in one visit.”
Can a Bacon Mag Be Far Off?
Booze mags abound. Imbibe. Modern Drunkard. Stuff about wine. Food mags are dime a dozen, too. But never has there been a magazine solely devoted to meat. Until now, reports the Washington Post.
…Meatpaper is not the kind of practical magazine that’s likely to publish a story called “10 Hot New BBQ Tips for Sizzlin’ Summer Cookouts!!” It’s the kind of arty, cheeky, ironic magazine that just published a story called “Sweat Sock: The Other White Meat.”
Meatpaper isn’t really about meat, it’s about “the idea of meat,” the editors explained in the first issue last fall. “Half the people who pick up Meatpaper assume it’s some kind of vegan hate letter addressed to their salami sandwich. The other half wonder if we’re subsidized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. That’s how we know we’re on to something.”
I would follow up that quote by noting that they are on to something, but I shouldn’t, unless I put it in quotes, since that’s what the Post wrote. More here. Meatpaper online (meatweb?) here.
Urbanite Baltimore calls the most recent issue of Meatpaper “a smorgasbord of carnivorous delights” here.
Chewing the Fat on Lard’s Resurgence
A week or so ago fellow Crispirator Jerry Brito was lamenting how hard it was to track down a good handful of lard. I recall him saying he went to some extremes (only slightly short of doing the killing and rendering himself) to track down a portion for cooking. I’m sure we’ll hit on that in the podcast later tonight.
Anyways, on Monday night, I had a pretty lengthy discussion about lard with a classmate while chomping on very good pizza (paid for by my ping-pong shark of a food & drug professor, who since he reads this blog–and brought up that he used to eat that little piece of lard in canned beans–gets another thanks here) at Comet. Our conversation took place in the context of a class outing to discuss In Defense of Food, in which Michael Pollan mentions the joy of lard (at least as compared to his aversion to trans fats) more than a handful of times.
Well, today I came across a great piece on the (seemingly Midwestern) revival of–guess what?–artisan lard!
In Kansas City, Kan., Bichelmeyer Meats… renders lard once a week, generally on a Wednesday or Thursday, according to Jim Bichelmeyer, who owns the business with his brother, Joe, and nephew Matt.
It’s a relatively simple process: The back fat and any other trimmings from freshly slaughtered hogs are coarsely ground and put into a small, steam-jacketed kettle, which works like a stove-top double-boiler. The key is to keep the fat off any heat source. The process is called wet rendering.
It cooks in the kettle four to five hours, stirred every 15 to 20 minutes, until the solids melt into a liquid and the cracklings - the bits of skin and meat - rise to the top.
The cracklings are skimmed off and sold; the lard, once it has cooled enough to handle, is strained and poured into 5-, 10- and 26-pound containers. It is pure lard. Unlike lard found on supermarket shelves, the Bichelmeyer’s product contains no preservatives or additives.
[…]
He sells 300 to 400 pounds of lard a week, and there’s a waiting list for the cracklings.
More here. Pick up your lard from any of the sellers mentioned in the piece or here. Another good recent piece by the lard article author, KC Star food writer Lauren Chapin, here.
In case you’re wondering, I haven’t cooked with lard since seventh-grade home ec class. I plan to rectify that pronto.
Would-Be Prezzes and Supporters: Eaters All
Today’s NYT has a four-piece feature on how potential-voter dining habits correlate to support for a certain presidential candidate. Slate has kindly boiled down those four pieces into a paragraph:
[T]he NYT points out that each side is carefully analyzing how their potential supporters eat in order to target them as specifically as possible. The paper’s dining section compiled an interesting list of the overarching themes that can help identify supporters. For example, Clinton’s like fruit-filled cookies, while Obama’s, strangely enough, “intensely dislike vanilla wafers.” McCain voters are partial to Hardee’s, while Clinton’s like Church’s Fried Chicken, and Obama’s skewed toward Panera Bread. How about snacks? Clinton’s supporters prefer Newman’s Own Pretzels, McCain’s like Sun Chips, and Obama’s are partial toward Kettle Chips. Of course, exceptions are plentiful but these comparisons are more than a little addictive.
In other food news from the presidential trail, Cindy McCain is a recipe thief, Hillary drinks Canadian whisky, and Barack Obama’s mom was a one-time food stamp recipient.
All this political food talk reminds me that a friend (not Monica Lewinsky) once suggested a certain bodily fluid of Bill Clinton’s probably “tastes like BBQ sauce.”
Like a Taco Bell Gordita, Only Grosser
Butch’s Pizza has been around in Appleton, Wis. for several decades. Sounds like a good, traditional, family-style pizzeria.
Butch’s is filled with charm. For example, [owner Ned] Montanye’s community involvement is evidenced by the dozens of youth sports trophies that adorn the walls.
[…]
On the menu: I couldn’t decide on just one pie, so I just ordered two. I got a 14-inch Butch’s Special ($15.20) on thin crust, which is topped with sausage, mushrooms, pepperoni, green peppers and onions.
“All the flavors blend together really well,” Montanye. “I like adding bacon to it. That really jazzes it up.”
So far so… great! Awesome! Perfect! But then…
I also ordered a 14-inch Taco Pizza ($18.25), which is made with taco meat, lettuce, tomato, taco sauce on the side and, as a nice touch, crushed Doritos on top.
“Our taco pizza I think is amazing,” said Ned. “It is so filling. There is a lot of stuff on there.”
Speechless. Horrified. More here.
Though I’ve learned the Internet is rife with taco pizza recipes, anyone who craves such crap deserves to eat the Burrito Mexicalian Pizza, which features as its first ingredient “1 box single cheese pizza mix.” Check out Norway’s inexplicably “singing” taco pizza here.
Food at War
While nearly every outlet is taking this week to look back on five disastrous years in Iraq, both the WaPo and NYT have nice pieces up that look at eating in the midst of war. While the MRE certainly still has its place, wartime food is much more than hard tack.
Ashley Gilbertson of the NYT’s Baghdad Bureau speaks and eats with Italian war photographer Franco Pagetti, who knows his food.
Franco sent me an e-mail early in the morning with his grocery list. For the gnocchi all we needed were potatoes, and for the sauce tomatoes and white onions. He already had Italian sausage he’d couriered in from home.
In Iraq, going to the market is incredibly dangerous — when McCain visited one in 2007, he took a company of soldiers. Our Iraqi staff just went alone. Low profile was safer, but the main concern was suicide bombers. Bazaars were their preferred locations to kill the greatest number of people.
When Franco arrived, we got to work on dinner. Making gnocchi is not an easy process, especially from scratch. All the more so when you are sous-chef to Franco. We were using his grandmother’s recipe, and he was fastidious. “Ashley! Use a knife to take off the skin! You will burn!” (He was right). “Ashley! You idiot! What’s wrong with you? You’ve never cut an onion?” (Not really.) “Ashley!” “You’re not making footballs, you make gnocchi!” (Never again.)
Walter Nichols, meanwhile, covering the domestic beat, writes for the WaPo about the food scientists who make up the MRE, and a new combat ration for soldiers — the First Strike Ration.
When U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan open group combat rations in the months to come, they might find an unexpected treat: a walnut tea cake that serves 18. And before they even get to it, they’ll have chicken pesto pasta and Burgundy beef stew to finish off.
At a recent Pentagon demonstration of advances in field food, a group of Army veterans and young soldiers who had recently returned from Iraq stood shoulder to shoulder with military brass to sample entrees and desserts that will be introduced in war zones over the next few years.
Let’s hope we can cross Iraq off that list — or at least our participation in it — as soon as possible. Certainly for the troops’ sake, but also so someone can write an updated Iraq travel guide already.
NYT Creates ‘Fat Pack’ Phenomenon
Some people like to eat. Some of those people like to eat well. Some of those people are fat. Where I see, at best, a Venn diagram, the NYT sees a story.
If 1960s Las Vegas had its Rat Pack and 1980s cinema its Brat Pack, early 21st century food has its Fat Pack. [eGullet co-founder Jason] Perlow was a charter member. Now, like some of his fellow travelers, he is learning what happens when the Fat Pack’s philosophy of excess meets the body’s limits of endurance.
The journalists, bloggers, chefs and others who make up the Fat Pack combine an epicure’s appreciation for skillful cooking with a glutton’s bottomless-pit approach. Cramming more than three meals into a day, once the last resort of a food critic on deadline, has become a way of life. If the meals center on meat, so much the better.
Even to those who have been in the game long enough to have seen more than a few cycles of food and diet fads, the Fat Pack culture is a shock.
“Most of us who are in this profession are here as an excuse to eat,” said Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and former New York Times restaurant critic who has chronicled her own battle with weight loss. Still, she said, “I’ve never seen such an outward, in-your-face celebration of eating fat.”
Mr. Perlow, who has embarked on an aggressive diet and fitness overhaul, believes that his online colleagues will soon realize that the time has come for healthier eating.
“I do find it irresponsible that they have done nothing to address health issues,” he said of eGullet, which he left in 2006 after a dispute with another of the site’s founders, Steven Shaw.
“The whole foodie lifestyle and diet I used to participate in — I’m not going to say it is unhealthy, but it is excessive,” he said. “I think you can still keep the food very interesting, but do it in moderation. That’s what the food community of the future is going to have to be.”
To which many members of the Fat Pack say: Shut up and pass the pork butt.
While one blogger at Serious Eats claims to be part of the phenomenon, I’m going to rain on the whole damn parade.
There is no phenomenon. People who consume more calories than they burn off through exercise become fat. I could stand to lose some weight, and I know I can easily do so by consuming fewer calories and exercising more — not by claiming membership in some fictitious “Fat Pack”.
Anton Ego Green-Lighted to Un-Retire
A judge in Ireland has overturned a lower court ruling that awarded damages to a restaurant owner whose restaurant scored a poor review from critic and chef Caroline Workman in The Irish News, reports the Times Online.
Restaurant critics, and newspaper proprietors, were celebrating yesterday after a judge upheld their rights to publish unflattering reviews of bad food and lousy service.
Sir Brian Kerr, the Northern Ireland Lord Chief Justice, overturned the award of £25,000 to Goodfellas pizza restaurant in West Belfast against The Irish News.
[…]
The newspaper’s restaurant critic, Caroline Workman, criticised the quality of the food, the staff and the joyless, smoky atmosphere of Mr Convery’s premises. The jury, hearing the case more than a year ago, agreed with Mr Convery that her review was defamatory, damaging and hurtful and he was awarded £25,000 in damages.
A sampling from Workman’s original review:
After one ring of squid . . . it became clear the dishes were made with the cheapest ingredients on the market”
“Our main courses arrived in as much time as it took the chef in view to rip open three blue industrial-size bags of processed cheese”
“The staff have no more time to be involved with their customers than those in a motorway cafe”
Critics talk about the secrets to plying their trade here, here and here.
Backhanded Review of the Week
Under the title “Could be Worse,” Alison Hallett writes a great review in the Portland Mercury of a restaurant that, well, could be worse. The lede:
Leonardo’s isn’t going to make it onto any critical best-of lists anytime soon, with a menu of passable Italian dishes dressed up with bells and whistles that aren’t fooling anyone into thinking the food is better than it actually is. (Pine nuts! Dried cranberries!) The place is mediocre, but inoffensively so—and considering that Leonardo’s is situated in a space formerly home to restaurants that actually were offensive (the short-lived tapas joint Graze, and before that Nina’s Place), this actually is a backhanded endorsements of sorts. Simply put: Leonardo’s is the best restaurant to ever occupy 939 NW 10th Avenue.
The whole review reads like that — funny, snarky, and smart. Good stuff. More here.
Also noteworthy: the Mercury is looking for a food editor.
William F. Buckley Dies
William F. Buckley, the National Review founder, died last night.
What’s that got to do with food? Plenty. First, he was discovered at his desk by his cook.
Second, one of my favorite Buckley stories includes what I consider to be the greatest, most evocative food sentence of all time, by Tom Reiss in a 2005 New Yorker profile of Buckley:
Buckley’s housekeeper, a stout Slovak woman, served us hamburgers, on fine china, with ramekins for ketchup and mustard on each plate, and I asked Buckley how he felt about conservatism’s current course.
That, my friends, is writing.
The NY Times obit notes Buckley’s own food writing, from Cruising Speed: A Documentary:
For example, in “Cruising Speed: A Documentary,” published in 1971, he discussed the kind of meals he liked to eat.
“Rawle could give us anything, beginning with lobster Newburgh and ending with Baked Alaska,” he wrote. “We settle on a fish chowder, of which he is surely the supreme practitioner, and cheese and bacon sandwiches, grilled, with a most prickly Riesling picked up at St. Barts for peanuts,” he wrote.
Obit here.
Update: NBC anchor Brian Williams remembers Buckley as a kind and affable man with a love of good peanut butter.
Greatest. Nonsense. Food. Rant. Ever.
Danny Katz, columnist with Australia’s The Age, has a suggestion or two for the new Oz PM. Except for the whole bit about getting troops out of Iraq, the rest is utter nonsense — and sheer brilliance.
Snacking in cinemas? BAN IT. All that disgusting Slurpee-suckling and Choc-top-chomping - close your eyes and it’s like listening to the soundtrack from the climactic courtroom orgy scene in Creamer vs Creamer. And those popcorn-eaters: it’s impossible to follow a movie-plot when you’re sitting beside someone with a Jayco-sized popcorn-tub, their arm dipping in and out all the way through the film, digging up every last layer of popcorn sediment like the draghead on a Dutch dredger.
Picnics in parks? Ban it. There is nothing romantic or relaxing about balancing on the nobbles of your knees, perched in a patch of man-eating bindies, while you feast on a resort-style buffet of fetid-fetta, sun-dried-out dips, cracked-up crackers, then afterwards lying down and savouring the delicate aroma of a dozen varieties of market-fresh dog turd.
But above all others, there is one ultimate non-eating venue where people will continue to eat: it incorporates the painfulness of bed-breakfasting, the distractedness of cinema-snacking, and the outdoorness of park-picnicking … and I’m talking about theatrical productions in public parks. Because I went to see Romeo and Juliet in the Botanic Gardens last weekend, and it was a good show; it was a fun night out - but it’s not so easy understanding complex Shakespearean drama while sitting in the dark, on the side of a hill, trying to open a tub of sloppy tzatziki.
Fantastic — even more so when I consider than an actual major newspaper published it. Whole thing here. I’m almost certain he cribbed this from a Best of Craigslist post, but that doesn’t make Katz’s piece any less awesome.
Surviving University One Value Product at a Time
The eminent Times of London enlisted a college student in an experiment to see if he could live for a week only buying Tesco Value products. The results proved hilarious:
If I have breakfast at all it tends to be soggy cereal shovelled down my throat from a mug as I walk to a lecture, or possibly an under-toasted slice of bread with some cut-price jam slapped on it. Having said that, Tesco Value cornflakes taste disgusting with or without milk. I do not encourage anyone to eat them, although I’m sure they’d make very cheap confetti. Their version of Coco Pops is to be recommended however, as it has two crucial points in its favour: it contains sugar, and is packaged in a plastic bag, allowing for easy access as you place fistfuls of the stuff in your mouth.
Tesco Value offers two varieties of soup. Both are bad in my opinion. The soup in sachet form results in a slightly chalky concoction that leaves an unpleasant scum on the bottom of your bowl. This particular scum is oh-so-difficult to remove when it comes to washing up - using Tesco Value washing liquid.
Read on to learn exactly just how unfortunate the tomato soup tastes here. Tesco site here.
Raccoon Goes Haute in a Blaze of Gory
Ranger Rick was the first magazine to which I had a subscription. (Mother Jones was the second.) Perhaps that’s why I’ve always had an affinity of sorts for raccoons. And so while they frequently scare the living hell out of my girlfriend and her sister in the parking lot behind our apartment (which is in a building that abuts federal parkland on three sides), I actually dig the little fellas.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat one if I accidentally backed over him. Thankfully, I have a template (well, besides the one I might have used — the fried squirrel recipe in my 60’s edition of Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook) to follow in case one of Rick’s peers were to meet his unfortunate demise under my UniRoyal, courtesy of Monica Eng in today’s Chicago Tribune.
Eng’s friend acquired a bargain-basement raccoon carcass, bringing it to Moto on the city’s west side. There, the kitchen sliced, diced, simmered, and braised said raccoon until it offered up to Eng this brilliant recreation of a roadkill scene:
That is nothing short of staggering brilliance. Stunning. I can only guess that Moto chefs must have looked at a current craze (i.e., chefs cooking and writers and travel hosts downing bats, balls, brains, & blood), seen it had clearly jumped the shark, and applied culinary standards to it (i.e., presentation, whimsy) in order to rein it in and make it something fresh and new. Bravo!
More from the Trib (including video) here and here. Moto site here.
