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Wednesday, September 24, 2003

An article from yesterday's CNN news that didn't get top billing. 5:58:03 PM    comment []

If you haven’t already cancelled your WSJ subscription, today would be a good day to check out what’s on the minds of fascist foodies. No, Peggy Noonan isn’t charbroiling the Clintons again, I’m talking about The Food Geek (subscription only) by Eileen Daspin, which is safely away from the OpEd page. It’s a light-hearted article about “molecular gastronomy,” the science underlying cooking. Cooks’ Illustrated fans will recognize Here In America’s Test Kitchen immediately. There’s a link to egullet.com’s The Daily Gullet, another to Chowhound.com. Also some stuff that can only be described as weird:   The scientific pursuit of new tastes can get messy, especially since some of these books have folks searing steak at 500 degrees while donning welding gloves. But food snobs say the move is getting a push from Europe, where chefs like Heston Blumenthal in England are mixing mashed potatoes with lime jelly cubes (it creates a new palate cleanser), while Spain's Ferran Adria takes his science literally, serving soup in test tubes. There's home-grown impetus, too, from the boom in fancy kitchen gear to the public's interest in the human genome, which has turned folks into armchair scientists. Here’s some more science from a table at the article’s end: If making your pasta isn't enough to impress your guests, maybe a science lesson with dinner will help. Here are some recipes that illustrate everything from how to caramelize to why oil and water mixes. Hopefully, they taste good, too. DISH INGREDIENTS INSTRUCTIONS CHEMISTRY AT WORK Ceviche Fish, lemon juice, lime juice, onion, garlic, jalapeno, parsley, cilantro Cube the fish, mix with other ingredients, cover with plastic in a glass bowl and refrigerate. The acids from the lemon and lime juices work on the fish's protein, making it taste "cooked," even though it technically is still raw, says author Alton Brown. Earl Grey creme brulee Heavy cream, loose tea leaves, egg yolks, sugar, light brown sugar Boil cream and tea leaves; beat eggs and sugar. Add cream a spoonful at a time. After baking, sprinkle tops with sugar, and heat with a blowtorch. Cooking makes the protein in the egg yolks harden and hold the cream in a "net." If you overcook it, though, you'll end up with scrambled eggs. Coca-Cola grill-roasted chicken Cumin, chili powder, pepper, coriander, sugar, cinnamon allspice, chicken, cola Soak chicken in sugared and salted water for an hour, dry and rub with spices. Poke extra holes in can and slide chicken over it. Grill until done. Soaking the chicken in salted sugar water helps the bird to absorb more moisture and to brown better; the cola adds flavor. German potato salad Red potatoes, salt, vinegar, shallots, mustard seeds, bacon, sugar, pepper, parsley Boil potatoes. Mix in some vinegar, add shallots. Toast the mustard seeds, fry and drain the bacon. Add vinegar to bacon fat and cooking water. Toss with potatoes and serve. Red or new potatoes have higher moisture than Russets and a mix of starches that make them just right for potato salad. They keep their shape instead of falling apart. Skirt steak Skirt steak, vegetable oil, salt, fresh ground black pepper Spray steak with oil, rub with salt and pepper and lay on a cast-iron skillet that's been heating up on highest temperature for three minutes. Sear three minutes per side. The carbohydrates and amino acids in the meat are reacting to the high heat, creating flavor and color. (Left on too long, they also burn.) Mr. Brown points out that searing does not "seal in flavors," but creates a tasty crust. Touch of Grace biscuits Cooking spray, low-protein flour, sugar, salt, shortening, cream, buttermilk, flour, butter Mix flour, sugar and salt; work in shortening with fingers. Stir in cream and buttermilk. Scoop out balls of batter and powder with flour. Place balls in the pan and bake. Brush with melted butter. Low-protein flour and very wet dough (creates steam in the oven) makes for moister biscuits, says Shirley Corriher, author of "Cookwise."   5:55:31 PM    comment []

I have purchased foie gras just once in my life – over the holidays last December when I made a pate and a roulade with perigourdine sauce. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want very often, even if you could afford it. The treatment of the geese and ducks used to produce foie gras has always been controversial, so it’s not surprising that it would erupt into a crisis in California, the tropical rain forest of weirdness. Fine cuisine, yes, such as Sonoma Saveurs, where foiue gras graces the menu, fine wine, and also fine activists like Gourmet Cruelty who have taken to vandalizing restaurants, farms, and homes of chefs who serve foie gras. The NYT has an excellent report today: Last week, a group calling itself Gourmet Cruelty released videotapes to a news station in San Francisco documenting what they called animal torture at Sonoma Foie Gras in the town of Farmington in the Central Valley. Four self-proclaimed "duck freedom fighters" sneaked into a shed at Mr. Gonzalez's farm, "rescuing" four ducks on a mission they and others describe as the underground railroad for ducks. "These birds are literally slaves to our appetite," said Kelah Bott, 29, a member of Gourmet Cruelty, who said she has "liberated" at other times. It’s difficult to remain neutral in this confrontation. If you enjoy meat and dislike maltreatment of animals, there’s a fair amount of compartmentalization and rationalization required. My natural alignment is with the chefs who are legally providing a delicacy and it’s really easy to marginalize the activists who are breaking the law. Sometimes I imagine these groups are created and funded by ADM et al simply to be marginalized, to shift attention away from the hideous conditions at the animal factories that produce meat as cheaply as possible. Generally, I settle upon the covenant, or maybe it’s a contract, that humankind made with animals when we ceased being hunter/gatherers and began raising our own food. We feed you and allow you to propagate, but when your time is up we kill you for food so we can continue feeding your progeny. It’s simple. I doubt chickens and maybe cows would have survived as species without this covenant. The corollaries to it, such as Halal, Kosher, or even the USDA, dictate that we treat the animals humanely and raise them in a sanitary environment. The modern factory farm, designed to raise animals as cheaply as possible, is borderline at best in compliance with these corollaries. You don’t have to be an activist to be appalled by the treatment of animals at them or the stench and potential environmental hazards they present. They do provide cheap meat, that’s for certain, but maybe meat should be more expensive. We’ve become an obese nation by gobbling cheap meat, driving up health care costs from the resultant plagues of heart disease and adult-onset diabetes – and that’s before we even consider the long term effects administering additives and hormones to animals that would require long term testing if they were to be given directly to us as drugs. No, cheap is not good, it is a synonym for low quality. If we were to raise farm animals properly, the meat would be more expensive but lower health care costs could cancel it out. It’s a free market thing. As for the foie gras, I don’t know if I’ll ever eat any again. Maybe, if it were cheaper…see what I mean. I can decide to buy eggs that are from free-range chickens (I do) and meat from animals that are properly treated (I don’t, not yet). When foods are properly labeled, I can also choose whether or not I want to a voluntary subject in the grain industry’s experiments with genetically modified grains. That too is a free market choice. Let everyone know what’s being sold and let them deal with their own conscience if they buy it. That’s called freedom. Oh, by the way, the geese at Sonoma Foie Gras have released a press statement in which they denied being tortured, but collectively took responsibility for the Lindbergh kidnapping. 6:09:27 AM    comment []