Celebrity chef Tony Bourdain on the USS Nashville, safely evacuated from Lebanon.
Month: July 2006
Watch Beau cut pineapple. An…
Watch Beau cut pineapple. An instructional video for those unsure how to cut up a whole pineapple. Also check out his choked-up knife grip.
Foodies love the arcane patois…
Foodies love the arcane patois of the professional kitchen and, whenever possible, use it in general conversation. And another annoying traits of "gourmet snobs," a group I don't want to join anytime soon.
Grass-fed Montana beef from La Cense
About two months ago I received an email from La Cense Beef telling me about their grass-fed beef and asking if I'd be interested in writing about it for my site. I replied and asked for some "review steaks" (a la Michael Pollan) so I could try the product before writing about it. To my amazement, they said yes and sent me two steak burger patties, a ribeye, and a New York strip steak. And over the past six weeks, we've eaten it all and I am here to report: yum! First, a bit about the beef, which comes from Montana and is raised without added hormones or antibiotics:
La Cense Beef is natural and fed only grass. Unlike some other “grass-fed” brands, La Cense cattle are never fed grain to “finish” and produce rapid weight gain. The introduction of any amount of grain to the diet of cattle can diminish the quality of the beef, reducing both health benefits and the real beef flavor that makes this a truly epicurean ingredient for your finest meals.
La Cense Beef is produced exclusively from cattle born and raised on the La Cense ranch. La Cense Beef is not produced from cattle raised by a consortium of other ranchers. In this manner, La Cense is able to oversee quality production and adherence to its standards for humane care, as well as ensure that La Cense cattle never come into contact with other herds, which might lead to contamination or transmission of disease.
We started with the burgers, which I overcooked a bit but had a very nice heft and flavor to them. Next we ate the New York strip and I was very impressed with it. Some grass-fed beef I've had has been pretty lean, so even if it's undercooked a bit, it still may lack some moistness that makes a steak so good. But not this strip. It had a nice strip of fat along one side and it stayed juicy throughout cooking. It also had a great chewiness and tang, and what I can only describe as a real beef flavor. We ate the ribeye last and enjoyed that as well. And we had to cook all of them indoors on our cast-iron "grill." I can only imagine how good they would have tasted had they been done outdoors over fire!
We don't eat that much beef. When we do, I like it to be grass-fed and humanely raised but I also want it to taste delicious. La Cense beef makes that possible. Jason had a great steak frites at Bouchon last weekend. With the help of the Bouchon cookbook, we're going to attempt re-create it here at home with a flat iron steak I just ordered from La Cense.
Next week I'll be doing…
Next week I'll be doing a guest blogging stint over at the Epicurious Epi-Log. Editor Tanya Wenman Steel is going on vacation and has graciously asked me to fill in for her. Updates will continue here as usual but I'll also be doing something a little different over there for the week, so be sure and check it out.
US to reduce voluntary mad…
US to reduce voluntary mad cow testing, few infections reported. This reads like an Onion headline but sadly it's not. Though the Times reports that this year the Agriculture Department’s inspector general found serious flaws in the testing process–it's voluntary and the sampling is not random–the US will reduce testing for mad cow by 90% because a very low incidence of BSE has been found.
The secret to a good…
The secret to a good old-fashioned pie crust? Lard. The pie shop where I worked for a summer used lard, and since one of my daily tasks was to make the crust, I worked extensively with a large 50 lb. tin of lard. It yielded a wonderful crust, so flaky and flavorful. Now I usually make a pâte brisée with butter for my pies and tarts but that's because I always have butter on hand.
More on supertasters
In addition to Meg's two posts, I'm adding this essay by a supertaster, David Leite, who runs the excellent website, Leite's Culinaria, which won the Beard award this year for best food site.
That famous chef's cookbook you…
That famous chef's cookbook you love so much was probably not written by that famous chef. The FT looks at who really writes the cookbooks and tests all those recipes. [via TMN]
Wine critics now claiming to…
Wine critics now claiming to be supertasters. What's funny about that: at Taste 3 we saw a presentation about (duh) tasting and learned that supertasters love white zinfandel. They like sweet flavors and tend to prefer sweet wines. Does that mean we'll see a supertaster wine critic give a nice ol' jug of white zin a 98? [via The Food Section]