Q&A with author and Batali apprentice Bill Buford. His new book about his experiences, Heat, was released yesterday and I'm anxious to read it.
Today's New York Times looks at soldiers' food care packages in Iraq. Reminds me of the story my grandmother tells of mailing my grandfather his favorite molasses cookies during World War II. Unfortunately by the time they arrived on his ship in the South Pacific, they were moldy and inedible.
How did I miss this Ed Levine post on fried clams? He lists some good spots close to home here in NYC and also CT, MA, and ME. I love fried clams, though not as much as fried scallops (which are one of my favorite foods to eat in the whole wide world). I've been thinking lately about clams and wishing there were good spots here in the city. I'll have to try Ed's suggestions. And I have a suggestion of my own: Danny Meyer, why don't you open a Clam Shack along the water some place? [via Eater]
Sam from Becks & Posh writes to say:
Coriander - means the leaves and Coriander seeds means the seeds. I never once heard it the other way around.
Since Sam's from a country that actually uses the term coriander, I think this provides more evidence that Emeril's wrong. Of course now Sam says cilantro like the rest of us...
The great cilantro coriander debate
Last night I was watching a bit of Emeril Live on the Food Network. Half-listening to the episode about grilling, I suddenly tuned in when I heard Emeril say, "When it's young it's called cilantro, and when it's old it's called coriander." That surprised me, as I always thought it was simply a localization issue: cilantro in North America and coriander everywhere else. Clearly it was time to do some research.
First stop, my trusty Larousse Gastronomique whose entry sits under the heading CORIANDER (CILANTRO). It says it's "[a]n aromatic umbeliferoius plant used both for its dried seeds, either whole or ground and its leaves." Further on it notes "[c]oriander leaves, sometimes know as Arab parsely or Chinese parsley in France and as cilantro in the United States..." There is no mention of age. I check Wikipedia's entry on coriander and it says a lot about the history of the plant, its various uses and parts, and nothing about any difference in name as it relates to the age of the plant.
Verdict? Emeril is wrong! Or rather, being a bit misleading. Both articles note the seeds are commonly called "coriander" (rather than "coriander seeds") and the leaves are referred to as "coriander leaves." Since the seeds are dried before they are used, it is a fact that they are older than the fresh green "coriander leaves" or cilantro one finds in salsa. So technically Emeril is correct. But is that really what he meant?
He would have done better to say something along the lines of: "Cilantro and coriander are the same plant, but in the US we use the term cilantro when referring to the fresh leaves, and coriander usually refers to the dried seeds of the plant." Maybe that's too much to say on TV, or maybe his audience doesn't care that much. Maybe I care too much. But it seems to me that if you're going to educate people about food, you should try to be as accurate as possible.
Wondering how come it's so expensive to go organic? Grist Magazine tells you why, but they can't resist slipping in some advice at the end with, "You know, going veggie is a very useful, highly effective environmental step. And it can be cheaper than going organic." I didn't like that.
A listing of good domestic rosé wines from the San Francisco Chronicle, in case my recent posts about rosés have piqued your interest.
If you are not currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan: stop everything immediately and get yourself a copy. It's that good, and that important.
I've been reading it for a week now, and had expected to write a review when I'd finished but it's taken me longer than I anticipated to get through it. There's so much to chew on I find I just stop reading mid-paragraph to think about everything he's saying. And really, it's so eye-opening that it's foolish for me to wait until I'm done to tell you: if you care about food, read this book.
Here's a small sampling from some of the pages I've dog-eared:
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest. (p 108)
"The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary [of Agriculture] Glickman said. "It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality."...Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. (p 179)
Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate....Yet growing the food is the least of it: only a fifth of the total energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around. (p 183)
[T]here are no pigtails in industrial hog production. Farmers "dock," or snip off, the tails at birth, a practice that makes a certain twisted sense if you follow the logic of industrial efficiency on a hog farm. Piglets...are weaned from their mothers ten days after birth (compared with thirteen weeks in nature)...[b]ut this premature weaning leaves the pigs with a lifelong craving to suck and chew, a need they gratify in confinement by biting the tail of the animal in front of them. (p 218)
Our food system depends on consumers' not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring...[o]f course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds. (p 245)
So fight the indifference, and fight the ignorance. Go read The Omnivore's Dilemma. No book has changed the way I think about food and food production more than this.
According to the Porkchop Express, May is National Hamburger Month! PE visited DB Bistro Moderne and writes about the meal and the history of the burger. Who knew it was National Hamburger Month? And now it's the final day, so it will be hard for me to cram in all the necessary celebrations. But I will try.
These recipes for garlic scapes sound interesting, though I'm not sure they necessarily highlight the scape. The scape "is the sprout of the garlic plant, a thin, green stalk that curls above the ground and is more tender and sweeter than the cloves that lie below."
Looking for a bad-ass gift for a chef in training? Ask.Metafilter has ideas for you. My suggestion was a gift certificate for an amazing restaurant. Sure, a good knife is useful, but a meal at a great restaurant can blow your mind.
For a current account of war food, check out Operation Kabob, AKA: Food on Deployment in Iraq. I didn't realize they had Burger Kings and Subways (and Pizza Huts) at the Forward Operating Bases. I don't know why that seems crazy to me but it does.
A Q&A with Nina Planck, the woman behind the new beyond greenmarkets from New York. Apparently they'll be called Real Food Markets and will open June 17th. They will feature food from co-ops and will be "lengthening the food chain a tiny bit."
News about the new beyond greenmarkets set to open in Manhattan. While I'm all for more markets, I'm not sure I'm interested in buying "guacamole made from Costco avocados." Guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
Long letter from Whole Foods to Michael Pollan to address "misunderstandings [that] are now circulating about Whole Foods Market as a result of his book and recent interviews." [via Accidental Hedonist]
Breadbasket of Democracy from Orion Magazine tells the story of North Dakota wheat farmers fighting Monsanto's attempt to get them to plant genetically-modified wheat. [via del.icio.us/sautewednesday]
wd-50 in six dishes is a thorough, thoughtful review of a recent meal at wd-50. I've been once, it makes me interested in returning again.
Four years since the French Laundry
Four years ago today, I wrote about my meal at the French Laundry. Can it have been that long ago? I still can taste the "Oysters and Pearls." I can still smell the flowers in the garden. I can still recall the first taste of foie gras on my tongue as years of vegetarianism evaporated in one bite, never to return again.
There have been other meals, even other amazing meals, but there's never been a meal like that one at the French Laundry. I doubt there ever will be again. I no longer even consider it in my "top ten meals" because it can't compare to anything I eat now. That's not to say what I eat now isn't as good, but rather that the French Laundry meal was a point in time long ago, and I was a different eater then. I had never spent so much on food before (nor had I ever saved up for a meal before). I'd never eaten foie gras before. I'd never ordered Champagne without knowing its price -- though I'll admit to a serious heart palpitation in the garden after we order our Champagne and I realized I had no idea how much it would cost.
The meal at the French Laundry was a turning point for me, a sea change in my culinary life. I started eating meat and dairy again, and I rediscovered my passion for cooking and for food. You could say the meal at the French Laundry has led me right to where I find myself today: passionate about food and spending as much time as I can learning and writing about it on this site. So thank you Michael Ruhlman for introducing me to Thomas Keller with The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection and thank you Chef Keller for sharing your perfection with me for one night.
The Porkchop Express compares some Greenmarket eggs. I've had both kinds he reviews and I can't decide which I like more, they're both so so delicious!
Lucy's Greenmarket Report updates whenever there's a Union Square market (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday), telling us what's for sale and what looks good.
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