Quote of the Day

"They're happy because they eat butter!"

From the Weston A. Price Foundation's website.

Is Kosher Greener?

Thanks to Jay for sending me this article from Slate. It's an interesting read for anyone like me who has wondered if the ancient foods laws of kashrut and halal match up with the newer school (though many would argue that it's not new at all) of food purity: sustainability.

So is kosher meat better for the environment than the non-kosher alternative at the supermarket? According to this article, no.

Essentially a kosher animal is one that is raised exactly the same as a non-kosher animal (in a feedlot, on antibiotics, without massages) until the moment it is killed. While a kosher animal may be killed more humanely (an overlap with sustainability), by that point the environmental damage has already been done. Kosher meat may technically fit the criteria followed by observant Jews, but it does little more for the animal, the planet, or the eater. If you want to eat kosher and eat green, you need to look for eco-kosher certification.

As I've said before, if I have the choice between a sustainably raised pig and kosher, supermarket chicken, I take Michael Pollan's advice before the lord's. Kudos to those who are making it easier to do both.

What's really interesting to me is that if you were to raise animals the way Jews did in the ancient days, by default you would end up with eco-kosher. So really the enemy is modernity.

Winter Shrimp Boil

While skating over (refrozen) ice fishing holes on Fort Pond last weekend, I was reminded of another way to keep it local in a New England winter: eating ice. Also, fishing.

Unlike crops, fish don't die in the winter, so we can kill them and eat them. Last night I had the chance to eat many, many marine creatures thanks to sometimes T&F contributors Dave and Karen.

They participate in the Cape Ann Fresh Catch seafood CSA (or "CSF") and receive alternating pick-ups of shrimp and fish, fishing conditions permitting. To make up for a missed share last week, yesterday they received a whole cod plus five pounds of shrimp, a pairing my friend Amanda called "surf n' surf."

You would not believe how much shrimp five pounds of shrimp is. At a restaurant, shrimp is stingily doled out by count: a skewer of four, one per summer roll. Last night the four of us ate as much shrimp as we possibly could, the shrimp was as delicious as imaginable, yet shrimp remained.

Even a rubbery, defrosted and then overcooked, farm raised Indonesian shrimp that's destroying the environment is still pretty tasty, but these were a different ball game altogether. I often bring up the backyard tomato anology and it applies perfectly here; everyone knows how much better a homegrown tomato is than its pale and mealy supermarket cousin, but not everyone realizes that everything is like that. Whether it's a leaf of sage from your herb pot or a shrimp hauled in that morning, fresh, local, real food is always as different from the alternative as those two tomatoes are from one another.

Every shrimp was like a little lobster. The flesh was as supple as cotton candy, the flavor sweet like the finest, freshest butter and not at all "fishy." Most were teaming with (what I hope was) roe, a delicacy within a delicacy. The heads were a pleasure to suck and contained a more concentrated dose of shrimpiness than rest of the body combined, besides a couple of bitter ones that must have been thinking dark thoughts when the net was hoisted. I'm glad they were stopped before they could act on their impulses, whatever those were (probably "let's eat some more sh*t!").

Dave being a Marylander, the shrimp was prepared a la boil and quickly steamed in a pot that contained shrimp stock (from a previous week's shells), white wine, a little heat, Stillman Farm sausage (another CSA), potatoes, and corn.

Of course fresh locally grown corn can't be found for a thousand miles in any direction, and the boil is generally a summer thing, but the novelty factor served as a bright light in these cold, dark days. It was a decidely unseasonable way to feast on an otherwise seasonally available ingredient: (too much) shrimp.

Now isn't that better than eating ice?

Leeks + Stock = Soup

When I was an adolescent on a trip to Israel, I asked my rabbi for his opinion about the validity of other faiths. "There are many paths up the mountain," he added, sagely. "But we think ours is the fastest."

I feel the same way about making soup by simmering leeks in stock. There are many other wonderful ways to make soup, but this one most efficiently cuts to the essence of soup (and unlike religion, it doesn't require you to sometimes wear nice shoes). I could stop this post right there, but I continue.

A steamy bowl of leeks swimming like slim green eels in a cloudy broth of chicken stock is somehow strangely comforting. There's just something so soothing about a leek. Maybe it's their cool, blue-gray hue, or their steadfast, vertical growth pattern. Maybe it's that I primarily associate them with spring and fall, those gentler seasons in which they flourish.

For stock, I save my chicken bones for a couple of months in the freezer and then roast them. While those simmer in water for a few hours I add whatever aromatic veggie scraps I might have around. A limp carrot here, some sage stems there. Once I froze a somewhat deflated celeriac whole and when it was stock time (or stock o' clock), in it went. I love making stock: it ties up all those little loose ends.

I'd write up a recipe for this soup but there's really nothing to say besides this: slice leeks vertically into thin strips, wash them well, simmer until just tender in stock and add salt and pepper to taste.

It may not sound like much, but there's really something to it.

Appearance v. Reality

As you can see, my dog Oli loves the woods behind our house. But a few months back he chased a cat into those same woods only to return with blood spurting from his paw. It turned out that he had cut an artery, and I'm grateful that we live so close to the vet as a thirty pound dog only has so much blood to lose.

At the vet, they put a tourniquet on his leg and knocked him out so that they could tie off the artery and stitch him up. When they removed the sutures a few weeks later, the wound re-opened and we had to return to have it stapled shut. As you can imagine, none of this was much fun for me, my dog or the vet, despite the vast sums of money they earned in the process.

The cut appeared to have been caused by a piece of broken glass. Oli and I traipse through those woods almost every day, and since he was only injured once, I decided it was a fluke. We now stay away from the vicinity of where he was hurt, and I thought that meant we'd be safe. Until yesterday, when virtually the same thing happened in an entirely different part of the woods. He didn't get the artery this time, but it was a terrible cut nonetheless and certainly worse than any I've ever had. If you don't believe me, there are plenty of bloody paw prints still in the snow.



There was another rush to the vet, and now he's lying beside me with a bright blue splint on his left hind leg. As my friend and fellow cook Chris said, "If he's going to be running up bills like that, he'd better get himself a job."

If you're wondering why I'm writing about this on a food (and tea) blog, here's the tie-in. Whoever threw that bottle into the woods may have thought that their action had no recourse, but years later it would cause great suffering and financial loss. Hmm, what other aspect of our lives does that sound like? How about.... food! Our effect on the world based on the kind of food we eat is just as direct a relationship as bottle-tosser to pup.



The woods behind my house are gorgeous, but if you look hard enough you'll find that they're in fact full of broken glass and rusty metal from years of irresponsible dumping. Same with that gorgeous steak on your dinner plate. It might appear perfect in every way, with a rich marbling, juicy pink center and salty crust. But unless that steak was sustainably raised (pastured, local, humanely slaughtered, etc.), you have to learn to associate it with the pesticide, synthetic fertilizer, petroleum, antibiotics, and cruelty that went into it. Even if it looks fine.

Do the woods in the photo above look dangerous? Perhaps a little foreboding in a Hansel and Gretel kind of way, but dangerous, no. Yet they are, as is that steak (or tofu, for that matter, depending on how and where it was created). Instead of not seeing the forest for the trees, I've been not seeing the broken glass for the forest. But we're not going back there anymore, unless I get Oli some Muttlucks.

Just like Oli's accidents, that beautiful looking, planet destroying steak is another reminder of the lesson our high school English teachers tried so hard to drill into our Stone Temple Pilots-addled brains: appearance versus reality.

Nostalgia-Inducing Sesame Street Food Videos

Do you remember those Sesame Street videos that revealed the origins of common items like crayons or peanut butter? I do. They were seared into my brain by repeat viewings during formative years.

Of course now they're easy to revisit thanks to youtube, and I've made it one step easier by including a couple in this post. These two were some of my favorites, probably because they focused on food. Inspired by the one about making cheese, my sister and I used to swirl the water in the swimming pool pretending it was separating into curds and whey.



The funny thing about these videos (besides how all of the cheese makers have huge beards and how the narrator is that 80's kind of androgynous) is that they show where food comes from, but in both cases the answer is "a factory."

Meals from Meals

A recent lunch consisted of black sushi rice with avocado and pickled ginger, a hunk of raw cabbage with lemon juice and a sprinkling of salt, shredded, poached chicken with Sichuan peppercorn, and just a touch of goat stew. In case you can't tell, all leftovers.

That's often how lunch goes when I'm working from home. Though I'd rather slave over a hot stove than a slightly warm laptop, I have a rule against doing any real cooking during the work day and so lunch is usually a melange of remnants of previous meals. While I wouldn't have made the above menu as a first run, I enjoyed it nonetheless. These comestible synecdoches always bring back fond memories of the larger meals they represent.

The rice reminded me of dinner a few nights back, when we attempted to make sushi before realizing we didn't have any nori. Raw cabbage always brings to mind another strange lunch: Michael Ruhlman's cabbage and peanut butter sandwich. The shredded chicken brought back memories of poaching my last bird. We both simmered at the same time, I in the bathtub and it in an anise and ginger broth. The stew was made with goat from Codman Farm and root veggies from our winter CSA, proof that you can go local year round.

I enjoy these kaleidescopic lunches. I'm sure there are people that throw away most of their leftovers, and I certainly have to relegate some stuff to dog or compost, but a well managed rotation of meal remainders can itself give birth to other, equally satisfying if less coherent dining experiences.

Lunch is rarely as relaxed or as elaborate as dinner, but eating something the next day allows me to relive the magic of the night before, when I was drinking wine with my wife and not thinking about work. Kind of like those bittersweet moments when you recall vacations by seeing far off purchases on a bank statement weeks later.

And if leftovers sounds too blah, call it small plates.

Quote of the Day

"Best to try this healthy, vegetable-packed cake today before your mouth blisters into a cyst-riddled pus hole. "

From the very strange and very enjoyable blog Apocalypse Cakes.

Photo of the Day: Adult Cupcake

Aka defrosting chicken jus. (Ironic that one would defrost a cupcake.)

Chateau de la Chesnaie Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie, 2008

Ever since reading Asimov's post on chablis, I've been hankerin' for dry, mineral heavy whites. Assuming one can in fact "hanker" for fine wine.

Wine consumes a relatively small proportion of my food consciousness compared to gourmands of ages past. With food lovers of my generation (I'm avoiding having to say "foodie" -- shudder), wine is much less cool than Belgian beer or artisanal hard cider. However, wines such as Chablis and the Muscadet pictured above have excited me more than any others. Ever. I want them all the time.

Perhaps that's because this kind of wine -- dry, chalky, citric -- was previously so unfamiliar to me. Who ever took a sip from their parent's glass and tasted limestone? ( My all time favorite wine guy, Chris at West Concord Liquors, described the taste of a particular rosé as being like sucking on a lime - mmm!) I just wasn't ever exposed to anything like this.

I've had plenty of Merlots and Cabernet Sauvignons that have been equally good at being Merlots and Cabernet Sauvignons as the whites that I've been drinking, but they could never be as interesting. A good peanut just isn't as good as good olive.



I know what you're thinking: "I should check my e-mail." But here's what would be a convenient thing for you think at this point in the post: "Sure these wines sound great, but what about the price?" Well I'm glad you asked.

Notice the above photo. See the cute little chateau, the confusing array of French words (which is the vineyard, which is the region, which is the year?). Now notice the price tag. That bottle costs thirteen bucks and is as good as anyone needs wine to be, yet it's about a Brazilian times better than so many other boring bottles you're apt to get for the same price. And it was way better than Avatar, which set me back about the same amount.

I've been told (by people and by the backs of bottles) that Muscadet is "the" wine to drink with oysters, but the hype didn't prepare me for just how symbiotic the paring would be. The highly mineral wine already has notes that taste like oysters, or oyster shells to be more precise, plus citrus. Kind of like an alcoholic oyster with a squeeze of lemon. The oyster of course brings zinc and salty sea breeze. My mouth puckers and waters just thinking about it. Why did steak and lobster get to be called "surf and turf?"

This wine also wins the "most improved by swirling" award. I was absentmindedly rolling my wrist with glass in hand while thinking about something else in the same way I might play with a paperclip, but when I tasted the wine again it had undergone a complete transformation. (Paperclips taste the same no matter how much you play with them.)

After a few laps around the glass, the slight effervessence was gone but all of the sharpness and flavor remained. It was as though the wine had slipped off its glove and I could now feel the warmth of its hand. (I was going to write something much, much dirtier.)

Additional Thoughts

First, back to the subject of micronutrients. In thinking more about Kristof's piece in the Times, I realize that the foods he lists which contain micronutrients ("salt, sugar, flour or cooking oil") are all processed.

But surely micronutrients occur naturally, otherwise the human race would never had made it to modernity. I'm sure that infusing flour with folic acid is the shortest and most immediate step to upping the micronutrient intake for nutrionally deprived populations, but then what?

Here in the U.S. we're suffering the long term effects of what is now referred to (negatively) as the Western Diet: diabetes from sugar, hypertension from salt, and every bad thing you can imagine being linked to white flour. I know that any food is better than no food and that processed foods are the quickest fix to famine, but the last thing we want to do is to forever hook other populations on the stuff that is now doing us in.

My guess is that micronutrients naturally occur in the foods that everyone ate prior to industrialization, and in a perfect world we would enable populations to get back to eating their traditional diets, which nearly always consist of more real food such as fruits and veggies, rather than mixing vitamins in with their sugar.

Now to return to yesterday's post and my vision for a more sustainable winter food supply for New England. I left off a key component of eating locally grown produce in winter: extending the season. Greenhouses, hoophouses, cold frames and so forth. There are farms that harvest spinach in the winter in Maine. The technology is cheap, the environmental impact is far lesser, and the source is more reliable. What are we wating for?

A Taste of the Suburbs

See here for my article in today's Globe about my new neighbor, a Pakistani exchange student who loves to share his own national cuisine and to eat ours. Of course his favorite Pakistani dishes are curries and his favorite American food is "junk."

Florida, Frost, Food and Pythons

The above photo was not taken in my home state of Florida, but it nearly could have been (it was snapped on Sunday during a snowshoe through the Sudbury Desert). As you've probably heard, temperatures in FL have plummeted to record lows, wreaking havoc on a state better known for being too hot all of the time.

Here in New England we're used to such temperatures, but we're also used to getting a lot of our food from Florida. This fact was driven home for me yesterday I swung by my neighborhood natural foods market. The produce shelves were nearly bare save for a note explaining that below freezing temperatures throughout the South were to blame.

Oh, right! I forgot that bananas, tomatoes and all of the other tropical flora we're used to devouring day in day out actually come from very far away, and that many have pointed out the tenuous nature of depending on such distant places for our food supply.

It's been said that, when it comes to food, the country can survive without the city but the city can't survive without the country, and now it seems that cold places can't survive without the (supposed to be) warm places. Of course the delicious irony is that the less sustainable our food supply, the more chaotic the weather is going to get and the more we'll see the system flounder. In other words, the more we ship produce from far away, the more carbon we pump into the atmosphere, the weirder the weather gets, and the more wrenches will get thrown into the plan.

What does a more sustainable New England food supply look like in winter? On a grassroots level, it means home cooks doing more freezing, canning, drying and storing locally grown produce that keeps well. For instance, the $200 worth of root veggies and apples my wife and I have chilling in our hallway. But what does it mean for people who aren't hippy hobbits?

On a larger scale, we need more local processing of local ingredients. That way those of us who don't have time to cook and jar applesauce (though in my utopia that's something we all make time for) can go buy locally grown, frozen, dried and stored stuff at your neighborhood market. As Grist reports, to truly go local, we need not more independently owned groceries.

The one good thing about a freezing Florida is that it may help inhibit the horrifying Burmese python problem. When they get cold, these exotic invasive monsters come out to bask in the sun, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Coalition is reminding hunters that it's a good time to find one and blow it away. And that opens up a whole new food supply.

A (Delicious) Ghost from the Past

I recently received a slim box in the mail with the surname "Gannon" written on the return address. I knew that could mean only one thing: I was going to eat some of the best chocolate in the world.

For those who don't know, Brendan Gannon ran the artisanal chocolatier known as La Tene out of Cambridge, MA. He had sent me a precious box of his spectacular creations as a combined wedding present/holiday gift, and I was thrilled to savor his stuff once again. There was only one catch... Brendan Gannon had been dead for years.

Well Brendan hadn't, but La Tene had. In a turn of events that still breaks my heart (or at least my taste buds), Brendan closed the doors to La Tene a couple of years back for no particularly shocking reason except that it can be really, really hard to run a small business. At the same time I was burying my own creative enterprise, the sketch comedy group my friends and I had started in college and that kept us touring around the U.S. for years afterward.

I was ready to let the comedy group go, but I was not ready to say goodbye to La Tene, and I told Brendan as much in no uncertain terms. His chocolates are simply the best. From the vegan peanut butter cups to the triple creme truffles (or the Sichuan peppercorn truffles, or the Guinness truffles...), this was a man who knew what he was doing. And what he was doing was making great chocolate.

I relished each and every one of my phantom La Tene chocolates as though enjoying one more night with a lost love. Actually, you can just change the "as though" in that last sentence to a comma.

I'm guessing that the box I received was part of a limited run that BG did for the holidays, because as far as I know it is simply no longer possible to experience La Tene. But if you really, really want to, I suppose you could beg Brendan or offer up vasts sums of money here.

But maybe that would be asking the beautiful and mysterious woman to take off her scarf.

Fruit Loophole

The 36th rule in Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules is "Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk."

But what if my breakfast cereal is loaded with turmeric?

Circle of Life (and Compost)

Shortly before New Year's my compost bin reached capacity. Since I've never lived in any one place long enough to fill an entire Earth Machine, I wasn't exactly sure what to do.

My short term solution was this: empty the bin and cover the compost with a tarp until Spring. Would that be enough to keep out the foxes, raccoons and teenagers who hang out in the woods behind our house? Only time will tell.

Most of the compost was frozen solid, but the oldest stuff had stayed loose due to heat released by what Wikipedia so poetically calls "the microbial oxidation of carbon." As far as I'm concerned it was that or magic, since I have no way of proving either. But as a result I was left with the doughnut shaped ring of frozen compost pictured at top. What better embodiment of the notion of "closing the loop?"

A doughnut made out of decaying vegetable scraps and eggshells might not appeal to some, but I was intrigued. Here was a chance, on the eve of a new decade, to come face to face with the Ghost of Food Scraps Past. In an era when most of our garbage is whisked out of sight before we think twice about how much of it we produce or where on earth it goes, here was an opportunity to take a closer look at my personal consumption.

What I learned is that I eat a lot of eggs (the shells take a while to break down) and that things that say they're compostable, like potato starch forks or corn plastic bags, certainly don't seem to be.

In looking through the strata, I was able to recall some specific meals. There was a layer of corn cobs from a corn stock I made last winter, and the skin of a pumpkin that I'd peeled for a curry. When I had dug out the center but not yet lifted off the ring, the pile looked very much like a puehr cake.



And now that I think about it, there's plenty of puehr in there.

Absent from the compost pile was all of the junk that we couldn't turn back into dirt (besides the wine bottles I'm saving for another garden barrier, the egg cartons I keep forgetting to return to the farmer, and the bones that I bury in the woods). For instance, there were none of those eerily bandage-like spongy things that come under packaged meat.

Luckily, most waste can be composted or recycled and we don't produce very much trash. Or at least that's what I think. If there were a special cubby just for me at the garbage dump, and at the end of the year I could see all of the useless junk I sponsored, I'd probably be surprised.

But at least some of my waste will end up back in the garden, assuming those teenagers don't get to it first.

The Dirt on Gluten

See here for Dr. Mark Hyman's piece in the Huff Po' on why the f*ck everyone is suddenly gluten intolerant.

Micronutrients, Big Change

If you think microgreens are the hottest edible thing that begins with the prefix micro, think again. See here for an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof of the NYT regarding the amazing health benefits of micronutrients such as folic acid and iodine.

Kristof lays out one of those familiar scenarios in which it is very, very easy to do good. The basic gist of it is this: micronutrients are extremely important in early development and are cheap to provide yet are lacking in the diets of many residents of impoverished countries. The obvious question then is how to make micronutrients a bigger component of foreign aid.

Here's an idea. If American restaurant goers simply used the money they spend on the pricey but superfluous garnish known as microgreens to instead donate micronutrients to developing nations (according to Kristof, a year's supply costs less than a hamburger), there would be fewer babies born with holes in their heads, and would anyone really miss microgreens?

Seems like a fair trade to me. If anyone out there wants to start an organization called Micronutrients not Microgreens, you have my full support.

And while I appreciate Kristof's effort to raise awareness about this issue, I do find his lede somewhat misleading. Are folic acid and iodine really "scrumptious?"

Rishi Ancient Emerald Lily

I've been in love with oolong for soo long that I can barely remember the last straight up green tea I've had. When I recently saw the attractive, slender whole leaves of Rishi's Ancient Emerald Lily displayed in a plastic baggie at my local natural foods shop, I decided to give it a go.

The Rishi website promises notes of pine nut and wildflowers. These I did not taste. I found the first brewing a little, for lack of a better word, seaweedy. It's a slightly unpleasant flavor I sometimes find in greens, and a personal reaction that can probably be traced back to my earliest associations with the stuff.

I first had green tea as a kid at the Japanese restaurants in my home town of Boca Raton where it was served along with miso and sushi. Those umami, oceanic flavors were so different from anything mom made at home, and when I drink green tea with a particular flavor profile today I can still summon up the befuddlement of my young palate.

Subsequent steepings proved more mild and less fishy with the nuttiness and grassiness that I associate with some of my favorite greens. The flavor was fine if unexciting, but what I really like about this tea is its organic and fair trade certification.

Sometimes, fair trade means a compromise in quality. Fair trade coffee and bananas are just as good as regular (or "evil") coffee and bananas, but they'll probably never be the THE best coffee and bananas. Of course human rights are vastly more important than complexity of flavor, which is why a pretty good fair trade trea becomes a very good tea in my book (or blog).

As I've discovered thanks to my new bowl, food and drink alone are not the sole components to pleasureable eating. Think about eating a Jean-Georges meal out of a tin can: it's just not the same, unless you're a goat. So in addition to lighting, tableware and presentation, we should all add ethics to our meal enhancing bag of tricks. This is one of the many reasons Chez Panisse remains so popular. After eating there, diners radiate a glow for more than one reason. There's the quality of the food and then there's the righteous feeling of knowing where it all came from.

I'm willing to give a so-so tea a great rating because of factors that have nothing to do with its flavor, and I'm not alone. Heck, I'm even happy to spend a little more cash to get this mediocre tasting but more ethically just product.

Restaurants, are you getting this?

A Nauseatingly Decadent Christmas

This year I observed Christmas in the manner that I felt best befit my Jewish heritage: eating so much food that I felt sick.



On Christmas Eve there was tourtiere, a French Canadian meat pie that allowed Karen to embrace her culinary roots and me to eat three kinds of meat in one bite. As is the custom, the tourtiere was served with pickles, which help to cut the richness of the very once-a-year tasting pie.

Christmas day started with a cup of coquito, smoked white fish and Elise's challah (notice Oli's interest in it).



After doing the breakast dishes, we then made more breakfast. This time it was scrambled eggs with bacon and leeks, and of course by the time we'd finished it was time to start preparing dinner, a braised turkey stew.



Gripped by the festive spirit (and beer), I combined every delicious ingredient I could summon. I browned two turkey wings and one thigh along with onions, celeriac and carrots. In went several dried figs, some defrosted chicken of the woods from last autumn's bounty, dried shitakes in case defrosted chicken of the woods don't taste good (they do), a few Santa Barbara black olives, leeks leftover from breakfast, wild rice, which isn't really rice at all, fresh sage and parsley, a dash of pimenton, and an ample sprinkling of black pepper. Admittedly, there may have been fewer ingredients if I'd had fewer coquitos at breakfast #1.

Amanda brought some seriously marinated seared beef (in merlot and Sichuan peppercorns), and for dessert there were Karen's homemade truffles. Throughout the day I ate gingerbread ornaments off of the tree, without my hands. I also seem to remember eating some sausage, and probably putting some into the stew, too. There were copious amounts of Fingerlakes wine, Belgian beers, Belgian style beers, port, a small bottle of icewine that myseriously appeared, some Jameson with a lemon wedge, more coquito, and, in a nod to temperance, handfuls of mesclun mix eaten out of the bag. Oh, and some leftover goat gouda from our wedding. And at some point I ate three eclaires.

When I went to bed, I felt like I was body surfing on a wave of protein, sugar and alcohol. Sugar plum fairies would have danced in my head if all of the blood wasn't going to my stomach to fight the losing battle for digestion.

I went to sleep feeling as regal as the Nutcracker but woke up in the middle of the night feeling more like the eviscerated mouse king. Only instead of a sword, my stomach had been pierced by my own lack of self control around so much incredible food. Call it protein hara-kiri.

Cold, in pain, and alone in the darkest hours of the night, I swore that I'd never again eat and drink with such abandon. In the morning I woke up feeling fine and couldn't wait to do it again next year. Or maybe next week.

Market, Reviewed

Jean-George's new Boston restaurant Market was reviewed favorably in yesterday's Globe. You might recall my preview piece on Market from when JG was in town scoping out suppliers. That is all.

On Avatar

Spoiler alert: I'm taking a break from posting about tea and food to discuss the film Avatar, and in doing so I'll be revealing certain key plot points. More important spoiler alert: Avatar is a terrible movie.

Before we come along, the planet Pandora is inhabited by tall, blue humanoids that look part African, part Native-American, have pointy teeth and can hiss like snakes.

As a Jew, I found the portrayal of my people in Inglourious Basterds to be rather flattering. If I were Masai or Sioux, I'm not sure I could say the same of the creatures in Avatar, who with their ear stretchers and monkey chant-like prayer ceremonies are clearly meant to represent the indigenous peoples of Earth, only hotter.

With air-brushed features and waspish waists, the Na'Vi look more like something from the pages of Cosmo than National Geographic. In creating a race of athletically superior, scantily clad supermodels, Cameron commits one of the biggest colonialist no-no's: sexualizing the natives.

In the director's defense, the Na'Vi have an elaborate social order, rich spiritual traditions and live in harmony with their planet and their god. Of course all of this, including learning to control flying dinosaurs with your hair, is mastered by the protagonist in three months.

Though the film champions indigenous rights, it's white people (in blue bodies) who get the best health care. When the Na'Vi tribe is decimated in an attack meant to evoke September 11th, instead of looking after their own, the entire clan gathers to appeal to their god to heal one white lady. And who unites all of the tribes to save the day? A white guy, on a red dinosaur.

Halfway through the film, at which point you'll already have to pee, I found myself wondering how Cameron could possible resolve a situation that, in the real world, has yet to be resolved: how to make peace between corporate interests and the livelihoods of indigenous peoples. The solution was fantastical flying reptiles, some guns, and the will of god. (forehead smack) Of course!

But my problems with Avatar extends beyond the portrayal of the Na'Vi. Despite the film's title, the actual theme of what it means to have an avatar was underdeveloped beyond the notion that if you don't have legs and your avatar does, you like it. The 1994 Aerosmith video for Amazing makes you wish you had an avatar more than Avatar does.

Also, what's the message for the thousands of adolescents who are flocking to see the film in crowds as thick as the trunk of the Hometree? That deep down, who you really are is your twitter account.

A word on the effects. Contrary to what you are clearly meant to think after being beat over the head with millions of dollars of technology, I didn't find the CGI drenched landscape realistic or even engaging. I found most of the effects shiny, cartoonish, and sort of... fruity.

The 161 minutes of eye candy make you feel the same way you'd feel after eating real candy for 161 minutes. After Halloween, all you want is a piece of lettuce and a glass of water. After Avatar, you crave real actors and good writing.

Also, who named the planet Pandora?

Leeks and Eggs (or Eggs and Leeks)

What, besides dirt that's impossible to remove, is there to not love about leeks? They're like onions without the bite, plus some spinach.

I've played around with leeks a lot and found that they're as versatile as they are funny to anthropomorphize. Though most chefs would say "discard" if you asked them to free associate a word with leek greens, I'm a big fan. You can blanch them and crisp them in hot oil as a garnish, you can chop them up and add them to a soup, or you can do my absolute favorite thing to do with either part of a leek. If you've read the title to this post, you know what that is.

A warm mound of leeks and eggs is the most comforting breakfast imaginable. Disagree? What, do you think French toast is? You're wrong: it's leeks and eggs.

Leeks and eggs are like peas in a pod, only better, because they're two things and because they're better than peas. They go together perfectly, and I could waste your time by describing exactly how and why, but instead you should just go make some.

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Recipe: Scrambled Eggs and Leeks for Two (People)

Leeks (about half of a normal sized leek or five inches' worth or 3/4 cup chopped)
4 eggs
a pinch of salt
a pinch pepper
a pinch of your cheek, to know that you're not dreaming

1. Slice the desired amount of leek once down the middle and then chop into half circles, about the thickness of a Necco wafer.

2. In a deep bowl, pour cold water over the chopped leeks and thrash them around to remove the dirt. Once the dirt has settled, skim them from the surface and rinse again.

3. Warm a glug of olive oil or a pad of butter in a pan, enough to cook both the leeks and then the eggs. Add the leeks. Cook until tender but not crispy.

3. Add the whisked eggs, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring, to achieve a custardy, small curd scrambled egg. Serve with toast.

4. What else do you need to know?

Quote of the Day

In today's The Pour, Eric Asimov writes the following:

"You might have to travel to Sauternes territory, southeast of Bordeaux, for a demonstration of how a good Sauternes can highlight and amplify the sweetness of, say, lobster."

Though I don't think you really have to go anywhere to get that lobster and Sauternes would be good.

Self-Fulfillment Through Servingware

As I've said before, when it comes to food, I'm all about the food.

I'm much more concerned with the quality of what I'm actually eating (both gastronomically and ethically) than with the pedigree of the china it comes on or the knife it was cut with. That said, we've received some really nice wedding presents that have caused me to re-think my hard line on non-edible kitchen items.

Granted the gifts have remained within the spectrum of our preferences. Rather than a home sous-vide machine, we've received items such as a handmade Oaxacan table cloth and a lazy Susan made from a "retired" wine cask, but even these crunchier accoutrements have shown me the pleasures of atmospheric dining, and now that I've been there, I'm not sure I want to go back (to eating lunch directly from a hot skillet).

Salad just tastes better from the bowl pictured above. It turns ordinary dining into feeling like you're having dinner at a the hole of a very well-off hobbit. We're nursing the last greens we'll be getting from our winter CSA, and they deserve no less pomp than being nestled in the hollow of a handsomely carved walnut burl.

To return to the subject of knives, we also got a really, really good knife. I used to think that sharp was the only important feature of a knife, but I've now tasted Japanese steel, and I like it.

Watch out, bushels of root veggies in my hallway.

Flavor Imbalance

When cooking, one generally tries to achieve a balance of flavors. If your dish is salty but flat, you can splash in a little lemon juice for acidity, and so on.

But what about a dish with boldly unbalanced flavors? What about something that just screams one single ingredient? Like CHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKEN!!!!!!!!

That's what happened when I made the soup pictured above.

I normally go for balance, but an off-balance dish can be much more interesting. Granted, this only applies to those who want their food to be "interesting."

Butternut squash puree is, by now, a no brainer. Even a stupid baby could make it. I've made it many times, sometimes with cream, sometimes with stock, sometimes with nothing more than water, and it's always easy and tasty. But since I rarely cook the same thing twice, I decided to mix it up this time.

No parsley garnish. No splash of cider vinegar. No trace of nutmeg. No roasted garlic. No sweated onion. Very little salt. I only added a small but dense amount of chicken jus replete with a thick layer of yellowish fat. It was not stock, which would have been delicious and well balanced. No, this was a one-note addition. And that note was chicken fat.

Though simple, and though it didn't contain anything remotely like, say, pomegranate seeds, shaved parmesan or a drizzle of truffle oil, all of which would have been lovely, it was a challenging bowl of soup. Rich to the point of disconcerting, chickeny to the point of overshadowing the typically dominant, sweet squash, it was unlike any butternut puree I'd ever had. Even the color was more poultry than plant.

If I'd had it at an otherwise unremarkable restaurant, I would have thought it was terrible. Why didn't they at least sprinkle on some black pepper? But if I had been served it at a great restaurant, I would have marveled at their audacity.

Quote of the Day

From the fascinating NYT piece on the new and (not at all, really) affordable sous-vide machine for home cooks:

"English chef Heston Blumenthal, who once sous-vided a whole pig in a hot tub..."

I'm sure sous-vide cooking is extraordinary, but can you imagine anyone who buys one of these things feeling anything but regret about their purchase in 10 years?

An imagined conversation in 2019:

Wife: Honey, let's get rid of that creepy machine you bought that costs as much as it costs to feed many starving children.

Husband: But I was just going to make some perfectly poached eggs, even though, with talent, I could do so more or less for free.

Wife: All right. But I'm going to put it with the bread machine and salad shooter.

Black Garlic

I'm not going to beat around the bush: black garlic is crazy, and you should try some.

I can't think of any other foodstuff that is at once so familiar and so confounding. When you taste a clove a black garlic, you know that you're eating garlic, yet the flavors have all been rearranged in new and different configurations. In terms of taste, black garlic is to garlic as ice-9 is to water.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, black garlic is non-black garlic that has been specially fermented and aged. Like most delicious things, it's long been used in Asia for medicinal purposes and is now being exploited in the West.

And with good reason. One word you'll often hear associated with b.g. is "fruity," and it's true. In comparison to boring old raw garlic (yuck!), the dark stuff is mellow, sweet, and... very difficult to describe.

When Amanda made an aoli with both roasted garlic and black garlic, the mysterious flavor only deepened, though walnuts were suddenly apparent. Black garlic reminds me of real balsamic vinegar without the tang and with.... again, hard to say.

I guess that, like Coke, black garlic tastes like black garlic.

Poached Chicken

Now I love a roasted chicken as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy is Simon Hopkinson. In other words, I really love roast chicken. But if you're not going to eat the whole thing as soon as it comes out of the oven, with your bare hands, hunched over the skillet, dredging it in its own fat, roasting may not be the wisest use of a bird.

If you're cooking a chicken to eat all week, poaching provides a much moister option. Cold roasted chicken, by which I mean a roasted chicken that has been refrigerated and not some feat of molecular gastronomy, is quite delicious but seems so much tougher and drier than when you ate it hot. Yet poached chicken can stay downright silky when cool, even a few days after refrigeration.

In the past I've always boiled, but Fuchsia Dunlop has turned me on to the magical texture of the gentle poach. See the awesome Land of Plenty for the full technique, but the basic idea is that you boil water, add the chicken, bring back to a boil, simmer, then "plunge" the chicken into cold water to stop the cooking process. Here's mine in it's cooling bath/watery grave.



You think any chicken cooked in liquid is moist and tender, but you've never had it this good. Another bonus is that you're then left with the poaching liquid, which in my case also contained about a thumb's worth of a crushed ginger, a few pathetic old carrots that looked like a very tan witch's fingers, and a dried chili from Common Ground a few years back.

I drank the liquid in a bowl of noodles with a few paper thin (assuming the paper was cardstock) slices of raw kohlrabi. Doesn't that seem like something you can do?

Apart from the brutal murder of the chicken, it was a remarkably tranquil dish.

Breaking News: Holiday Cocktails

See here for my latest piece in Stuff magazine (Boston) on holiday drinks to rival eggnog.

Though deep down, I do love eggnog. I suppose I even love it not deep down.

Wedding, Honeymoon, Homecoming

Last week, I got married. It was incredible. Neither words nor 0's and 1's masquerading as words could describe it.

What I can describe is the food. The entire experience can be broken down into three distinct food phases: wedding, honeymoon, and homecoming.

At the wedding ceremony, we (barely) ate:

-mushroom, leek and ricotta salata strata
-turkey chorizo and black bean strata
-the best soup I've ever had (sweet potatoes, chicken stock, cumin, peanut...)
-roasted potatoes
-Iggy's rolls
-Iggy's croissants
-tons of incredible cheese
-arugula salad
-rivers of West County hard cider
-boatloads of roasted marshmallows
-bushels of sun crisps and merle rouge
-olive oil gingerbread with cranberry glaze, whiskey whipped cream and candied Buddha's hand (our wedding cake)

All of which was prepared by my good friend, the excellent chef Mrs. Amanda Jane Loring. If you want her to cater your event, and you do, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch.

For our honeymoon, my wife (!) and I then went to Portland, ME to do little besides eat. We consumed:

-french fries fried in duck fat, in Duck Fat
-the best piece of fish I've ever had: a small square of seared swordfish toro at Miyake
-one of the best cheeses I've ever had, Maine made (the name escapes me, but I'll post it later)
-Honeymaker mead (wouldn't be a honeymoon without it)
-Damariscottas and Pemaquids
-the rest of the Sustainable Red
-$2.75 bahn mi at Kim's
-leftover Iggy's croissants
-leftover olive oil gingerbread with cranberry glaze, whiskey whipped cream and candied Buddha's hand (our former wedding cake)

The first meal I made once home is the one pictured at top. Baked chicken legs and apples with a root veggie melange and hearty salad greens, the latter two from our winter CSA.

The food at the wedding was delicious, geared to please a crowd, appropriate for brunch and indicative of our epicurean ethics. The food on the honeymoon was sheer decadence. The meal back at home was a balance of both. May my new wife and I eat thus till the end of our days.

Stewart v. Ray

I can't BELIEVE that Martha Stewart went so far as to say that Rachel Ray might not have a garden. When will these divas stop clawing each other's eyes out?

The Choice of a Lifetime

In all likelihood, this will be my last ever blog post as an unwed man. This Saturday, I'm getting married.

I was well prepared for the intensity of planning the wedding thanks to advice from friends and family and thanks to the movie Father of the Bride. What I wasn't ready for was the nearly talmudic decision making process of how to make the event (and the menu) as sustainable as possible (or as sustainable as we could afford).

Compostable cups or reusable glasses? Local apples that have been sprayed or organic ones with transportation induced carbon footprints? Classy, printed invites or a pdf sent over e-mail? Such decisions were seemingly endless.

This may not surprise those of you engaged in the complex task of figuring out how best to eat while remaining a responsible global citizen. Though vegan/Hummer versus omnivore/Prius comparisons aside, I think the solution is fairly simple and well summarized on the yellow rubber band on the cover of Pollan's most recent book: "eat food, not too much of it, mostly plants" (he goes on to provide a more precise definition of "food"). Though of course this is harder to do if you're one of many Americans living in a food desert or if you're part of the growing ranks of the poor and unemployed who can't afford such a lifestyle.

In the end we compromised, using some local ingredients, having very little meat, and serving locally made hard cider in compostable cups (and I'm still craiglisting for someone who's actually willing to turn them into compost). But the real challenge came in picking a wine to use during the actual ceremony.

In one hand I held a highly rated Canadian ice wine which I knew would make for a thrilling, sweet and complicated sip while at the altar. In the other hand was a small bottle of something called Sustainable Red, a California blend that was much less exciting but which claimed to be carbon free among other eco-perks advertised on its recycled paper label.

Suddenly, on the eve of my wedding and on this threshold of my future, I felt as though I was making the choice of a lifetime. Though simple, the decision seemed epic: should I pick the bottle that contained experience or the one that held morality? Should I eat the apple or live in Eden?

In the end I went with the Sustainable Red, because that's the carboon free foot on which I want to start my new life.

But if someone bought me the ice wine, I wouldn't turn it down.

10 Unforgettable Brazilian Dishes You Never Heard Of

See here for Brazilian blogger Regina Sharf's post on some of Brazil's more popular but lesser known culinary offerings. If you're unfamiliar with buchada de bode and pato no tucupi, you should really bone up.

The jambu, which Regina describes as "numbing... a plant that causes a weird anesthesia effect on the mouth" sounds a bit like Sichuan peppercorn. With the exception of overdoing cloves I can't think of any other ingredient known for its numbing effect. Can you?

If I Lived in Philidadelphia...

...I'd be going to the Festival of Forgotten foods:

http://www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/20091112_On_the_Side_.html

"It is a fine time to review the inventory in the local larder, our vintage foodscape eroding in spots, the scents of our street food overshadowed too often by the cheesesteak."

On the menu will be salt oyster and sweet corn casserole, a Thomas Jefferson recipe ale, snapper soup and catfish and waffles.

Vegan Dog Bone

Finally, a use for those wilted Brussels sprout stalks that you never got around to braising with bacon and figs.

I'm sure I'm not the only one familiar with the paralysis resulting from not using produce at its peak. If I have supermarket romaine that starts to wilt, it doesn't stop me in the least. I rip off the slimy parts, wash, spin and essentially still have fresh lettuce.

But the higher the quality of the produce, the more intense the paralysis. For instance, if I have a backyard tomato that's starting to get fuzzy, rather than quickly throwing it into a sauce, I guilty watch it collapse into a pink puddle, frozen by guilt.

My Brussels sprouts are not only organic but also locally grown, a real double whammy for the conscience should they go to waste. It's even worse than when your parents make you finish your soggy, defrosted spinach because of the starving children in Africa. You bought those Brussels sprouts because you believe that, as Wendell Berry said, when we eat, we vote. Therefore not using those sprouts is akin to checking off the box for Nader.

Luckily, I've seen the error of my ways and also have some fresh sprouts from my winter CSA that I'll be sure to use up right away. And in the meantime, I've found that an old B.s. stalk makes an excellent dog toy. Especially for a dog who's getting cabin fever because his severed artery hasn't quite healed yet.

A Serious Salad

I like salad one of two ways. Completely unadorned, eaten without utensils and out of the bag, or loaded up into a meal in and of itself. Give me anything in between, like a wilting mesclun mix with a few mealy slices of apples, and I'll punch you in the face.

The above photo does not do justice to the spectacular meal-of-a-salad that I assembled last night. That's because I took the picture halfway through the process, and by the time it was done, it looked so good that I couldn't wait another 1/60th of a second.

In its finished state, the salad contained the following:

-mixed greens from our Shared Harvest winter CSA
(spinach, chicory, red leaf lettuce, radicchio)
-cubes of baked sweet potatoes leftover from a previous meal, warmed and well salted
-crisp bits of Vermont Smoke and Cure bacon
-roasted sunflower seeds
-balsamic vinegar, whisked into the bacon grease (I'm currently roasting blue potatoes in the rest of it)

I cannot tolerate that fact that this divine creation -- at once sweet, salty, crunchy, and mushy -- shares the same name as bowls of iceberg lettuce and shredded carrots.

This is how tenth generation vintners must feel about "Two Buck Chuck," or how other, more successful gods feel when they look on our god's creations. Because, when it can be so good, it's embarrassing by what humans deign to call "salad."

Then again, if we were made in god's image, bad salads are His or Her fault.

The Armenian Cucumber: Cucumber or Alien?

Every now and then I like to touch base with my good friend, storyteller Jordan Hill, about how much more exciting the local food scene is in his current residence of Tucson, AZ. Of course I'm extremely proud of my own foodshed, but I guess the mesquite flour is always greener on the other side.

One day the subject turned to Armenian cucumbers. I've been delighted to find these crisp, thin skinned snacks at Boston far-mar's and was glad to hear from Jordan that they were thriving in the Southwest as well. Only it seemed there was something different about the Armenian cucumbers he was getting. While mine were the size of a small cigar, his were as big as my dog. Or, as Jordan here illustrates, his (hairy) leg:



They seem less like a vegetable and more like an oasis. Apparently the adjective "Armenian" not only means a resident of the republic of Armenia but also "either small or of Seussical proportions."

His cucumbers looked like they could eat him. However, it seems Jordan and his wife Autumn found a way to beat the cukes to it.



They butchered the monsters into delightful salads and cold soups: perfect food for living in the Sonoran dessert.

Many vegetables will grow to these proportions if left unpicked, like okra or zucchini, but at that stage their increased size usually correlates to a decrease in texture or flavor. Apparently not so with the Armenian snozzcumbers. Jordan and Autumn report that they are quite delicious.

My curiosity is certainly peaked by these watery beasts, and I'd appreciate it if someone out there could clear up the mystery as to why my Armenian cukes are small and Jordan's are so big. (Besides the obvious explanation that he's more of a man than I am.)

One thing I do know about Armenian cucumbers is that, though large, they're nowhere near as creepy as that giant rabbit. That thing gives me the willies.

Cinnamon-Chile Wood Fired Chicken

As much as I appreciate the exotic, if lemongrass and rosemary were tied to train tracks and I could only save one, I know I'd go continental. In other words, I'm no Jean-Georges.

However, when rubbing down the above chicken before it's fight with the flames, I suddenly felt inspired to add some tropical notes to the mix. I took two Eberly's (sorry Lionette's) chicken legs and smeared them with peanut oil, salt, cayenne, chile powder, cinnamon and ginger. That and the smoke from the wood fire -- nature's pimenton -- created an eye-crossingly good grilled chicken.

As far as wood fire cooking goes, I've said it before and I'll say it again: even though you associate sitting around the fire with the nighttime (and perhaps harmonicas and plastic saguaros), it's a really good idea to start your fire earlier if you plan to cook on it and plan to see what you're cooking.

That said, I've never thought to start a cooking fire before dusk, but even so I'm starting to get a feel for it. This time I didn't scorch the chicken black and leave it sashimi grade on the inside, as I have in other dimly lit grilling experiences. And when the coals pooped out I did have to finish it in the oven for about ten minutes, but otherwise this was everything you want from chicken grilled over a real fire: crackly skin, juicy meat and just a touch of ash.

But it was really the spice mix that drove me to blog about it. I can't imagine anyone trying this recipe and being disappointed, unless they're either vegetarian or a chicken.

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Recipe: Cinnamon and Chile Grilled Chicken

serves 2, or 1/2 of a glutton

Note: You could use a charcoal or gas grill instead of a wood fire, but you could also go to KFC.

2 chicken legs, as sustainably raised as you can afford
a glug of peanut oil
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp chile powder (something like ancho)
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp cayenne

1. Start your fire.

2. Rub your legs with the peanut oil and spices. Do the same for the chicken legs.

3. Once the flames have given way to coals and once your grill is hot, add the legs.

4. Watch carefully. If they're giving any suggestion of catching fire, raise the grill or spread the coals to diffuse the heat. If they're not browning, lower the grill closer to the heat.

5. After about 10 minutes or when mahogany (golden is for people who peel cucumbers), flip and repeat on the B-side.

6. When both sides are brown and crackly, cut one thigh to check the interior. If they're at all pink, continue grilling with less direct heat or finish in an oven set at 350.

7. Barely hear the rosemary scream over the train's whistle.

Kimchee Donuts!?

Thanks to Serious Eats for making us all aware of the fact that there are kimchee donuts at Korean Dunkies.

I like Serious Eats' rubbernecking attitude towards food: half of the stuff they post about grabs me because it looks delicious, the rest intrigues me just as much for precisely how it does not.

Coffee: A Seven Hour Thrill Ride

I drank a cup of the always excellent Karma coffee yesterday at 11:30am. I felt like a king, or a god, or the king of the gods. But at 7pm that night I was still twittering, and I'm not talking about social networking.

For those of you who are numb to its effects, allow me to be the canary in the coal mine: coffee does absolutely crazy things to your body. You may not be able to tell because you've gotten used to it, but hear my words. Coffee is black magic. Not being used to it, drinking just one cup changed the entire course of my day.

I respect it, but I wouldn't let coffee into my daily routine any more than I'd invite someone dangerous over to tea, no matter what that series of "How to Be An Artist" posters from the 90's said.

Even in my years as a touring performer, I never wanted to turn to the dark side, for I knew the temptation would be too great. In all those years of 1,000 mile driving days, late night performances and 6am flights, I could count the cups of coffee I had on one hand. And I don't have extra fingers.

If I don't like what coffee does to me, why, then, do I ever drink it? Because, a few times a year, I think "why not?" I also recognize that few ingestibles have the powerful sensory properties of coffee -- that aroma, that viscosity! -- but a few hours after I've had a cup, I inevitably think "why did I think 'why not'!?"

Links Galore, Links Galore

Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce (and why there are 36 kinds of Ragu)

What the world eats (answer: things in boxes and fake looking fruit, except in Ecuador)

McDonalds withdraws from Iceland (if it were Wendy's there would be an excellent Frosty pun in there somewhere)

A vegan in a Hummer may not be better than a carnivore in a Prius (though there are no vegans in Hummers, so really it's irrelevant).

Cocoa Rose Tea

I recently received a comment asking "when will you talk about tea?" The answer is "now."

With cooler weather more or less here to stay (we've been bouncing between snow and 70 degrees), tea season has officially begun. I've been drinking a lot of mate and tung ting, with the occasional herbal like elderberry, hibiscus or lemon thyme from what remains in the garden. But the most interesting non-true tea I've had in recent memory has been the cocoa rose served at Sofra.

Like soy and flax before it, cocoa is now making appearances where it often doesn't belong due to the fact that people think that it will save their lives due to the fact that it does have some healthful attributes but more because the industry is paying massive amounts of money to make you think so. And so I approached cocoa rose tea about as skeptically as I approach rooibos chai, which is to say very skeptically.

And yet it was wonderful. The bitter richness of the unsweetened cocoa, the full perfume of the rose petals. At once earthy and celestial, it worked.

When I was in middle school, one of my teachers blew my mind by saying that it didn't matter if you ate healthily because you could still get hit by a bus. From then on, I would use this rationale as my excuse to eat ho ho's and drink liters of Jolt, which was a bar mitzvah's version of being a devil may care bon vivant.

To some extent, I still believe in my teacher's words. But if, at the moment that reckless MBTA bus splattered your brains across Mt. Auburn Street, you had a cup of cocoa rose in your hand, you'd go out smiling.

Happy International Day of Climate Action

If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the icon at right or see here.

And don't forget, the way we eat has a tremendous impact on the world around us. And perhaps more importantly, on the world around other people, around the world. So eat your broccoli stems.

I Make Steak

As you may have noticed, I'm more of a foraged mushrooms and noodles kind of guy than I am a steak eater. But as you can tell from the photo above, I do also eat steak. And when I do, I lick the cutting board afterward. Hmm, maybe I should make steak more often.

There are several reasons I don't usually make steak. One is that I never buy it. Two is that it's kind of boring. Three is that eating copious amounts of beef doesn't set the best example for all of the aspiring third world peoples who are now destroying their resources to copy our lifestyles. Sorry, planet.

But I do eat beef on occasion, and in my world order there is certainly a place for small amounts of locally raised, lightly seared, grass fed cow flesh. Especially if it's cooked in butter and topped with a rioja reduction, as was the steak I made last night.

I picked up a Hardwick Beef flat iron (the steak formerly known as top blade) from City Feed and Supply in JP, one of the few markets in the Boston area that makes you feel like maybe, if you squint real hard, you could be in one of the lamest neighborhoods of San Francisco.

I did what I almost always do with steak. I heated a skillet, tossed in a lump of butter, waited until the foam subsided and then slapped in the salt-rubbed meat. I didn't touch it until the juice started to bubble up, at which point I flipped it, at which point it was basically done.

I then transfered the steak to a cutting board to rest (forever) while I deglazed the pan with a splash of wine and a little more butter and chopped shallots, rosemary, or whatever I happened to have on hand that made sense. I served the meat over arugula alongside basmati rice and a butternut squash and chicken stock puree, assuming you can still say "served" when it's just for yourself.



I don't describe this process because I feel that it's the best, or even because I want others to follow my technique, which isn't even "my" technique but something I once read somewhere. I share this information in the democratic and confessional spirit of food blogging: this is what I do, know that, and now go do what you do.

But if you do do what I did, you'll be as happy as a cow. Or as happy as I was when eating a cow that, from what I understand, had been relatively happy.

Also, for those of you who think you can't eat responsibly and well for an affordable sum, know that this steak was only a little over four bucks and that I was completely satiated after eating only half of it. In other words, I had one of the best steaks of my life for about two bucks and could still feel plenty smug about supporting a righteous cattle farmer.

And I'm going to do this again any time I'm by City Feed & Supply, so watch out.

The Real Deal

Over the weekend Elise and I stumbled upon what must be our best local cider hook-up: One Stack Farm in Stow, MA, which presses its own apples in the antique device pictured above.

And that's the only place you'll find it. Because One Stack doesn't pasteurize or add preservatives, they're only legally allowed to sell on-location. On top of that, the stuff they do sell has to be slapped with a warning label detailing the potential health hazards for the young and old.

Now think about the other potential health hazards in the food we eat, and think about what bullsh*t it is that that crap doesn't have to be labeled while this does. Meat cut by workers who don't get paid for the time it takes to clean their knives gets a pass, yet the kind, old pipe-smoking apple farmer down the road has to put a skull and cross bones on his juice.

Regardless, One Stack cider is so delicious, so fresh, round and balanced, that I'd drink it even if it could kill me.

Tea and Food... and Music!

Last night I had a perfectly good Jack Daniels and club soda at the Avett Brothers show at the Boston House of Blues. If you only read food blogs, stop reading now. For the rest of you, I now present my first ever post on music.

In a nutshell, the concert was absolutely rockin'. I can't think of any other band with two leads who, when not singing and simultaneously manning the drum set, are singing, playing guitar or banjo and banging out percussion with a kick drum or high hat, the latter being alternately played by pedal and by direct kicks from the taller Avett brother's boot tip. The crowd was up on their feet for the entirety of the concert, and not just because there weren't any seats.

Nor have I seen a cellist play with such emotion that it seemed like the bow was a saw he was drawing across his own stomach. Nor have I ever heard a band make a point of saying "Thanks for inviting us back to the stage" when doing that thing that bands do and coming back on after pretending to finish.

Perhaps that gratitude was not as sincere as it seemed and was instead an example of a highly polished folksy affect. If that's the case, then I'm just as impressed with the Brothers' theater skills. They're either the nicest, most earnest band I've ever seen ("Y'alls' enthusiasm is the only reason we can stand straight right now"), or they're superb actors.

I especially recommend checking out the AB's at this catalystic point in their career. As I type, they tip, and it remains to be seen whether they'll become a full blown stadium act with indie roots, like Wilco, or an indie band that plays like they're playing for a stadium regardless of the venue. By the end of their set last night, the Avett brothers, along with the non-Avett brother Avett Brothers, were drenched with sweat, hoarse, exhausted, and, it seemed, delighted.

For the first half of the set I marveled at the manic enthusiasm they brought to the stage, but for the second half I worried about them. Can the kind of guys you'd like to bring home to meet your mother survive an increasingly stacked tour schedule and continue to belt out their anthems with the same blend of ease and energy night after night? It remains to be seen, and the shorter of the Brothers sounded like he was really straining by the end, though not remotely holding back.

Listening to their music or watching their videos alone, the Brothers' shamelessly sincere lyrics and dreamy, lingering gazes sometimes verge on awkward. Watching them do the same live, you don't care, you just stomp your foot.

Peace and Hominy

There may be nothing more comforting than having a bubbling crockpot full of hominy stew. Except perhaps two bubbling crockpots full of hominy stew.

I've been making such meals ever since having the posole at Ole in Inman Square, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with my results. I've used both beef bones and chicken legs and each has yielded a rich, buttery broth. After a long simmer, the hominy surrenders its starch to the surrounding liquid, and the whole thing tastes like the best corn tortilla.

I've also been using Amanda's slow cooked soup plus fresh garnish theory, which I think I can now call the slow cooked soup plush fresh garnish law. One day, Amanda thought "It seems like such a waste to make stock out of ingredients like vegetables that you could eat instead." And then she thought "What if you could make stock out of something that you wouldn't otherwise eat, like bones and spices?"

So she started making soups with just a spiced bone broth and finishing it with herbs and veggies at the very end, thereby creating the perfect yin and yang of slow cooked richness and last minute freshness.

Here's how my posole works, and I'm open to other suggestions. I brown a few chicken thighs and do the same with onion, garlic and cumin seeds. That all goes into a crockpot with the hominy (previously soaked overnight), a large can of tomatoes, a dried chile, salt and a splash of some leftover wine or vinegar. I forget about it pretty much all day, then take the meat off the bone, reintroduce it, and serve with chopped cilantro, diced raw onion, and lime wedges. It is divine.

Here's the one problem: when the chicken is falling off the bone and everything else is just perfect, the hominy still needs to keep going. What I've been doing is finishing it on the stove on higher heat once I take the chicken out, but it would be nice to get everything to finish at the same time (single entendre). I suppose I could just start the whole thing earlier - any thoughts?

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Recipe: Posole (At Least I Think It's Posole - Call It Hominy Stew to Be Safe)
serves 4

The stew:

12 oz of hominy, soaked overnight
4 chicken thighs
1 28 oz can of tomatoes
2 cups water
2 onions
1 whole garlic clove
2 tbsp cumin seed
1 whole, dried, chile pepper
salt to taste
a splash of wine or a slightly smaller splash of balsamic or wine vinegar
2 tbsp pimenton

The garnish:

1/2 bunch chopped cilantro
1/4 diced, raw onion
1 lime, cut into wedges

1. Brown your chicken thighs, onions, garlic, and cumin seed.

2. Add the above to a crockpot with everything else in the stew list.

3. Simmer on "high," about forever.

4. Remove the chicken and shred like pulled pork. Put it back as such.

5. Serve with the garnish.

Destiny Fulfilled

I found this old photo of myself when I was back home in Florida. Guess I've been a foodie since the time that I might have referred to food itself as "foodie."

The Amateur Gourmet on Kimball on Gourmet, Plus Zombies

See here for Adam Roberts of the Amateur Gourmet's brilliant response to Christopher Kimball's op-ed in the Times regarding the fall of Gourmet. (And can we all just note the irony that an old media publication called Gourmet has fallen while a food blog called the Amateur Gourmet continues to thrive? )

Apparently, Christopher Kimball thinks that it's me, a blogger, who killed Gourmet, and Adam couldn't be more lucid in my (and his own) defense. He writes:

"These food blogs represent a welcome break from institutional food writing; they are fresher, brighter and more truthful than the kind of writing Kimball mourns—writing that must pass through board rooms, across copy desks, and into editorial meetings before it’s ok-ed and printed. By the time it hits the stands, it has all the relevancy of a tomato in January."

Well roared, Lion. Adam has voiced my own thoughts better than I could have, though I do have a few additional points and observations. The first is that, while I disagree with his position on new media, I do admire Kimball's dogged, "cold dead hands" defense of his crumbling ivory tower.

If you've seen Zombieland, it brings to mind Tallahassee's climactic stand-off at the film's close. Locked in a cage (closed minded thinking that fails to see the good in new media), Tallahassee (Christopher Kimball) fires his pistols (NYT op-eds) at a seemingly infinite wave of attacking, rabid zombies (Adam Roberts). The only difference is that Tallahassee wins.

Also, Kimball writes that if you "Google 'broccoli casserole' and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing." But isn't every broccoli casserole disappointing?

Understanding the Chicken

After multiple dining experiences (and blog posts) involving the chicken of the woods mushrooms growing near my home, I have only just begun to know how to fully appreciate them.

Though this fungi can run tough and/or dry, when you pick the right parts of the right mushroom at the right time and prepare them correctly, the c.o.t.w. is absolutely divine. Sound like more trouble than it's worth? It isn't. The same guidelines apply to a zucchini, we're just more used to dealing with those.

Here are my rules for having a healthy relationship with this vegan chicken:

1. Only pick specimens that you want to eat. This is difficult to do, because in your ecstasy at having discovered an enormous, traffic cone-orange wild mushroom, you're going to want to take it all. But you really only want the tender, flexible tips of an older mushroom and not quite all of a younger one. They're most tender at the edges and become woodier as you move back towards the base. I suppose the tougher parts are good for stock, but so are onion peels.

2. A mushroom brush is not enough. Unless your 'shroom is growing high up on a tree, or in a hospital, it will have dirt not only on it but in its "skin." The mushroom seems to embed little pieces of the forest that can't just be wiped away, so before you cook it, taking a paring knife and gently scrape or poke out any dark bits. Remember, you'd do the same with an unsightly zucchini.

3. Keep it simple. It's only when I try to dream up fitting preparations for this glorious ingredient that I end up not using it and letting it turn pale and sad. Pick it, clean it, and just cook it up in a pan with a little olive oil and salt. Eat it straight up as an amuse, on toast, on noodles (pictured at top), or whatever. It is so richly flavorful - sometimes like poultry, sometimes like eggs, sometimes with a hint of lemon - that it needs little else.

4. Slice it thinly. Doing so will shorten the cooking time and enhance the texture, which, if you follow the other rules, can be as soft as an omelette.

4. Don't eat it if it's growing on a pine or another type of conifer. Apparently that can make you ill, though your odds are probably still better than if you were eating ground beef.

My Favorite of Michael Pollan's Favorite Reader Submitted Rules for Eating

"Eat foods in inverse proportions to how much its lobby spends to push it."

From this entertaining and thought provoking NYT feature.

Great Ingredients, Horrible Food

Dinner prospects couldn't have looked better.

I had chicken jus, chicken fat, and a fresh chicken of the woods mushroom harvested from the woods behind T&F HQ. I also had a can of coconut milk and an heirloom eggplant from Allandale Farm -- a Louisiana Green -- plus plenty of spices, fresh cilantro, scallion, and my go-to dried noodles. By all accounts, it should have made for a bangin' curry.

It was not, and I blame the Louisiana Green. The eggplant was gaggingly bitter and made my tongue prickle and itch in that special eggplant way. I would have just eaten around it, but like a skunk that's been hit by a car, its influence had spread.

The whole beautiful thing tasted as bitter and as mushy as the eggplant. I ate the noodles with as little of the sauce as possible and, out of respect for the slugs whose food I'd stolen, picked out the pieces of the mushroom with a pair of chopsticks. I was so disgraced that I couldn't even bear to empty the pot for another day, and so it remained on the stove, full of horrible curry, haunting me. It's final resting place was not my stomach, but the trash can. Hence the above photo.

Ironically, I had picked up the eggplant while researching an article on the resurgence of heirloom vegetables. My slant had so far been positive, but now I might reconsider.

It was definitely the worst tasting, highest quality food that I've ever eaten. In that one sense it takes the cake, though I wish I had taken a piece of cake for dinner instead, and I hate cake.

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Recipe: Ruined Curry

Directions: Combine the freshest, most flavorful, heirloom, organic, local, seasonal vegetables possible with spices of your choice and equal parts coconut milk and chicken stock. Add a nasty eggplant. Serve over noodles. Throw away.

My Latest

See the link for my latest article in Stuff magazine (the Boston one, not the now defunct lad mag). The topic: fall wines.

http://stuffboston.com/liquid/archive/2009/10/05/fall-up-your-glass.aspx

Fall Raspberries: The Best I've Ever Had

I'm going to be honest with you. Berries aren't as sweet as you think.

Yet when you think berries, you think sweet, largely because you think of what we do to them: crisps, cobblers, cream and sugar. Fresh from the bramble it's a different story, as the flavor profile of a berry is often dominated not by sugar but by pucker.

I generally prefer the taste of unadulterated ingredients, so I appreciate the tang of a real berry, but the fall raspberries I've been eating lately have me singing a sweeter tune. I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but it seems as though there are very different raspberries in summer and in fall. Also, there are raspberries in fall at all.

I usually think of raspberries as a strictly summer thing (barring tasteless - in more ways than one - imports) and am glad to see that they're getting a second wind. My hunch is that the fall raspberry is a different variety that's on the up and up as eating locally and seasonally gains ground.

From what I've observed (and not from any actual research), fall raspberries differ from their summer counterparts in two ways. The color, like the weather, is darker. The flavor is sweeter, more mellow, somewhat honey-like and almost absent of any acidity.

I'm reminded of a passage in the Omnivore's Dilemma about different recipes for eggs from different seasons, and I wouldn't be surprised if, in our recent past, there were similarly varied treatments for summer and fall raspb's.

I'm sure that in the annals of cookery there are absolutely delicious fall raspberry-specific tarts and sauces and such, but they're just so good that I can't stop myself from gobbling them up unaltered.

Mr. Vongerichten Goes to Boston

See today's Globe for my article on the Boston opening of Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's 25th restaurant.

His farm-to-table concept, called Market, already exists in three other cities around the world. Which is why I thought it was so funny to write the following line:

"The Boston Market, not to confused with Boston Market..."

My editor disagreed. See the whole thing here:

http://www.boston.com/ae/food/restaurants/articles/2009/09/30/vongerichtens_latest_venture_has_international_flair_regional_flavor/?page=1

Cereal + Diabetes = Comedy

I try to do my part in helping the association between sugar and diabetes, but Boston area comic Tom Dunlap has taken it to the next level. I saw a recent set of his at The Comedy Studio and got him to send me the relevant bit. Here's the transcript, so you'll have to do your own comic timing:

These next few jokes are called, "Advertisers don't care about children."

Cookie Crisp Cereal: It's cookies for breakfast! And diabetes.

Kellogg's Corn Pops: Gotta have my type II diabetes.

Frosted Flakes: THEEEYY'RRRRRRRE diabetes.

I think you get the point. It upsets me that advertisers shove sugary cereal down kids throats, and they don't care! They don't care that Raisin Bran is just two scoops of diabetes, you know, they don't care there's some children in hospitals, snap-crackle-lost-a-foot to diabetes. What it comes to is Kix Cereal: It's kid tested...positive for diabetes.

A Shortcut to Food

As some loyal readers might know, T&F is in part a musing on how to eat well while working from home. And I think I've finally cracked the code.

The answer: highly seasoned ground meat and noodles. Don't be thrown off the seeming simplicity of the dish. This can be very, very good food.

For instance, dan dan noodles, perhaps the greatest culinary gift the Sichuan province has made to the rest of the world. If you can just look past your school room cafeteria associations -- to stop beating around the bush, that's "beefaroni" -- you'll see the vast potential in this elemental combo.

The version pictured at top includes ground pork from happy, heirloom pigs at nearby Drumlin Farm and mung bean noodles, which looked very cool and just a little scary while resting in a glass bowl.



My inspiration started with dan dan noodles, which is basically soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, Sichuan peppercorn, chili flakes, and something else that restaurants do that I can never replicate at home (and no, it's not MSG, unless they're lying to me). But now I just throw together real meat and complimentary spices and it always works out. The one in the photo, which was the best yet, had a sauteed onion and bell pepper and focused primarily on the interplay of pimenton and cumin. It was so rad.

And you really could make the whole thing in ten minutes. Add more veggies to the meat and you've got a balanced meal, assuming that phrase still means anything. Use non-wheat noodles such as mung bean, rice, or buckwheat and it's that much more interesting.

This really is the fastest, most filling and flavorful lunch (or dinner) I can think of.

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Recipe: Not Beefaroni

1 package mung bean noodles (or rice noodles, buckwheat, udon, spaghetti, etc.)
1 lb organic, sustainably raised meat (pork, beef, turkey, beefalo...)
1 onion
sesame oil
soy sauce
spices!

1. Boil the noodles until katame ni yuderu. Rinse and toss with oil.

1. Sautee the onion until translucent.

2. Add the meat to the same pan and cook until brown and slightly crispy.

3. Add the soy sauce and spices (such as pimenton and cumin).

4. Add the sesame oil.

5. Top the noodles with the meat.

The Reign of Gorditas Continues

Now just because the article isn't still up on the Globe's main food page, it doesn't mean that I'm not still cooking and eating tons of gorditas ala Chole Adams.

In fact, they're the most satisfying vegetarian - vegan, even - meal I can remember eating in a long time if not ever. Must be the starch combo of the beans and cornmeal. Or maybe it's all the fat? Either way, they're one of those perfect, transitional early Fall foods. A hearty base of corn and beans, and an end-of-summer topping of raw tomato, onion, and cilantro.

For the recipe, follow the link from the article, with two additional notes. Your choice of refried beans can really make or break the dish. I recommend taking cooked (canned works) beans and blending with a little water, some sauteed onion, garlic and ***pimenton***. Also, it's a lot easier to just dress the top of the gordita rather than slicing and stuffing it.

If you really want to be like me, you can also garnish with lemon (cucumbers) and lime, as pictured above.

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Recipe: Gorditas de Chole

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/09/09/gorditas_recipe/

Not Too Chicken to Eat Chicken of the Woods

I was recently poking around in the woods behind my house (by which I mean my rented apartment) with my dog, and as always, I had one eye out for wild edibles. But unlike most of our forays, this time I returned home with a few pounds of serious food tucked under my arm. As you can see from the photo above, it was a mushroom.

A chicken of the woods, aka sulfur shelf mushroom, as I've previously covered here.

Though I am interested in foraging, I am not at all interested in eating a mushroom that might kill me. Luckily the c.o.t.w. is no such mushroom. Known as a "beginner fungi," it has no poisonous counterparts and is ridiculously easy to spot. It's like it wants us to eat it.



And the feeling is mutual.



We made a risotto with little else but the wild fungi for flavor, and also sautéed a few hunks of it in butter and pan drippings from a chicken not of the woods. These were absolutely outstanding.



The sulfur shelf ain't no slimy, watery tasteless white button. It's a wild mushroom, and it tastes like it. The 'shroom is meaty in both texture and flavor, hence the name (I think). In fact I can't recall any other vegetarian foodstuff with a chew so downright steak-like.

Of course the actual chicken pan drippings accentuated the fungi's umami, but it worked with what was already there. As the drippings reduced, the mushroom took on a glaze and the edges began to candy. Little bits of hand-torn fresh rosemary didn't hurt either.

I don't eat every wild edible I find in the woods behind my house, largely because of concerns for the health of the soil. Though the woods are beautiful, they're low and surrounded by suburbia, and I imagine that much of the pesticide from my neighbor's lawns and the oil from our cars all finds its way down there. There's a beautiful elder growing out of the middle of a stream at the nadir, and at present it's full of berries, and I love elderberries, but I don't love lead.

But when I saw the chicken of the woods, I couldn't resist. After all, it wanted me to eat it.

Late Night

The only thing worse than being woken up at 3am by raccoons scattering your trash is then knocking a glass bowl of compost-ready noodles down the stairs, and then cutting your finger picking up the pieces.

News Flash: Filet-o-Fish Not Sustainable

I can't say that I'm shocked that the tasteless fish served in anonymous, fried patties by McDonald's, Denny's, and Long John Silvers is not being harvested sustainably:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/science/10fish.html?_r=1&no_interstitial

Article In Today's Globe

See here for my article and photos in today's Globe.

The subject: great Mexican food very close to Canada. Click on the recipe link to see the second photo. And the recipe.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/09/09/chole_adams_nearly_always_sells_out_her_mexican_food_at_vermont_farmers_markets/

Ceci N'est Pas Une Orange Juice

To round out a brunch I made for visiting family over the weekend, I decided to buy orange juice. When I took a sip, I was surprised how much like orange juice it tasted, given the fact that orange juice isn't really orange juice any more.

I first had this realization thanks to my acupuncturist's blog, which referenced the book Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice. This excerpt from an interview with the author is what made me realize just how different the orange juice on the shelf is from what we think of as orange juice:

"The leading producers of “not from concentrate” (a.k.a. pasteurized) orange juice keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year-round supply. Juice stored this way has to be stripped of oxygen, a process known as de-aeration, so it doesn’t oxidize in the tanks. When the juice is stripped of oxygen, it is also stripped of flavour-providing chemicals … If you were to try the juice coming out of the tanks, it would taste like sugar water. Juice companies therefore hire flavour and fragrance companies, the same ones that make popular perfumes and colognes, to fabricate flavour packs to add back to their product to make it taste like orange juice."

And that goes for the stuff they're still allowed to call not from concentrate, or worse, grove-style or whatever the latest, homiest qualifier is (smooshed by grammy and grampy?).

So it was surprising that the orange juice I bought at the grocery store still tasted more or less like what I think orange juice tastes like. Kudos, flavour and fragrance companies.

Nice Try

An anonymous commenter responded to my post on acai, saying only "acai is great food." The comment was then signed with a link to something called "weight loss diet pills."

I don't which the internet is better for: food blogging or hucksterism.

Lobster Bolognese, Revealed

I'm sure you all think about The Best Thing I've Had All Year as much as I do, but you may not have realized that we received the recipe for it in a comment.

I'm also sure that you all comb through the comments as obsessively as I do, but just in case this one slipped past you, I thought I'd showcase it here. Thanks to Rick Rodgers for sending it along. He wrote:

This recipe was popularized by Alfred Portale at Gotham Bar and Grill in NYC, and is in his first cookbook. You are right--cream, stock, and veggies are the ingredients. I have the recipe in my computer because I worked on the book as the recipe tester and writer.

Recipe: Fettuccine with Lobster Bolognese
makes 4 to 6 main course servings

Lobster Bolognese Sauce:

l/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3 (l to l l/4 pounds) live lobsters
2 tablespoons olive oil
l medium onion, chopped
l/2 cup chopped carrot (about l/2 medium carrot)
l/3 cup chopped celery (about l/2 small celery rib)
4 garlic cloves, sliced
5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
5 sprigs tarragon
5 sprigs basil
l dried bay leaf
3 tablespoons tomato paste
l/4 cup Cognac or brandy
l/2 cup dry white wine
6 cups white chicken stock, or as needed
1 cup heavy cream
Coarse salt and cayenne pepper

Bring a large stockpot of 10 quarts salted water and the vinegar to a boil over high heat. In batches, if necessary, add the lobsters and cover. Cook for 5 minutes. (The lobsters will only be partially cooked.)

Drain the lobsters, place in a bowl, and set aside until cool enough to handle.

Working over a bowl to catch the juices, twist the lobster bodies away from the tails; reserve the bodies. Saving as much of the juices as possible while working, crack the lobster tails and claws. Remove the meat and cut into 3/4-inch dice. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Coarsely chop the lobster shells.

In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and parsley sprigs and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about l0 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste. Add the lobster shells and bodies and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes. Add the cognac and reduce by half, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and reduce by half, about 3 minutes. Add the reserved juices and enough stock to barely cover the ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until well-flavored, about 45 minutes.

Strain into a large bowl, pressing hard on the solids to extract as much flavor as possible, then discard the solids. (If making in advance, cool, cover, and refrigerate.)

In a large saucepan, bring the stock to a boil over high heat and reduce to l cup, about 30 minutes. Add the cream, return to a boil, and cook until the sauce thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Taste and season carefully with salt and cayenne pepper.

Assembly:

l pound fresh fettuccine
l tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons finely chopped tarragon
l0 basil leaves, cut into chiffonade
Sprigs of chervil for garnish

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the fettuccine and cook until al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and return the pasta to the pot.

If necessary, reheat the lobster sauce over low heat. Add the lobster meat and cook just to heat the lobster meat through, about 2 minutes. Stir in the parsley, tarragon, and basil. Add the warm lobster sauce to the pasta and toss well.

Serve in warmed pasta bowls, garnishing each serving with the chervil leaves.

To Eat Wheat?

You can imagine a well sculpted, deeply researched New York Times piece about the increasing numbers of those who cannot (or just think they cannot) tolerate wheat, but this isn't it. This is a baseless morning blog post.

As I've said before, when it comes to the burgeoning realm of food sensitivities, I'm torn. There's my inner Michael Ruhlman, who thinks people who don't eat everything are sissies. Then's there's the inhaler that I stopped using once I stopped using dairy.

Wheat, or gluten, is by far the fastest growing intolerant food. I'm shocked by the sheer volume of people who are giving it up. Often these tales of abstinence are accompanied by miraculous recoveries. Suddenly that chronic back pain you've had for years just disappears, all because you switched to quinoa pasta like that pictured above (with bacon, escarole, garlic and chili flakes).

Sounds fishy, doesn't it? And yet I have my own health success story with cutting out dairy, so I'm left wondering if perhaps it isn't the wheat itself that's to blame. Why would one of the oldest crops known to humanity suddenly turn on us?

Probably because we turned on it. I'm no farmer, but I know we don't grow wheat like we used to. Perhaps we've done to wheat what cell phones did to good old to human interaction.

I don't know if it's the pesticide, genetic modification, over-processing or... well, it's probably some combination of those.

Do I eat wheat? All the time. We all do, and the number of those who cannot is vastly outnumbered by those who can. And I wouldn't be surprised if those who think they can't eat wheat could eat some kinds of wheat, perhaps an heirloom variety not processed into white bread. But to be perfectly honest, I now eat less of it and feel better.


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Recipe: Quinoa-Corn Pasta With Escarole

Ingredients: just look at the directions. The ingredients are in there.

1. Boil pasta.

2. Sautee diced bacon and chili flakes. When the bacon is crisp, add escarole and garlic.

3. Toss the pasta with the escarole, bacon, spices, and one dipper of the pasta water.

"Food"

I just made a curious discovery that I feel obliged to share. If you google image search the word "food," this is what you get:



The irony is that many of us do not consider to above to be food, but rather what Michael Pollan famously called food-like substances. In other words, corn manipulated beyond recognition.

Pollan also suggests that we not eat anything our great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. That excludes pretty much everything in the image above. Then again, great-grandma didn't know what google was either.

Which begs the question: was great-grandma better off? Hard to say, though she was certainly better at not getting obese and diabetic.

What I Ate On Or The Night Before My Birthday

-chips and guacamole
-ribs with chile de arbol
-pozole
-the best flan I've ever had
-coffee with orange rind and cinnamon
-Tres Generaciones Plata
-oats and eggs
-leftover yellow dumpling soup broth
-trail mix: almonds, raisins, coconut
-water
-coconut water
-ham, mustard and cilantro sandwiches (it's what we had)
-trail mix: peanuts and cranberries
-wild mountain cranberries
-wild blueberries
-one partridge berry
-an accidental mouthful of Sculptured Rocks creek water
-beef tongue and tendon in vinegar peanut sauce
-pork belly in garlic sauce
-Sichuan dumplings
-towel gourd with bamboo fungus
-cumin beef
-crispy salt and pepper ribs
-white rice
-lots of sake
-tea smoked duck
-dan dan noodles

Neither Tea nor Food

This morning I was jogging with Oli, the official dog of T&F. As he often does when off-leash and drunk on freedom, he was running circles around me. Literally.

At one point he darted in to nip at my heels and his rabies tag became ensnared by my shoe lace. He pulled away to free himself but instead got twisted up and landed on his back. He stared up at me as if to ask "Master, what is this cruel new magic?"

Moments later, while dashing through the woods, he flushed a deer. The only other time he'd seen one, my typically calm and quiet dog essentially flipped out. He let loose a horrible, primal sound from deep within, sort of a cross between a howl and a garbage truck going off a cliff.

That time, he was on-leash and could not pursue the creature that had bemusedly pranced away. But since then I've always been worried about him seeing another hind while unhindered.

Or to be more precise, I was worried about how many miles he would chase it and how many dangerous, Froggeresque intersections he might cross in doing so.

When he discovered the deer this morning, of course it ran off and of course he pursued. But here's the surprising part: when I called him, he came right back. My only explanation is that he did a quick calculation of how much meat he would get from that one deer compared to how much I would feed him for the rest of his life.

Clearly, my cruel, new magic worked. He trotted happily back to my side and we kept jogging without incident. Except for when he picked up a pointed, six foot long fallen sapling and galloped at me full speed, ramming it into the back of my knee.

But who who needs a patella when you've got loyalty?

Photo courtesy of Cailin, my vet tech.

The Lemon Cucumber

Like many of you out there, I grew up after the Industrial Revolution but before the Delicious Revolution. In that awkward phase of human history, which I hope is drawing to a close, there was only one kind of cucumber: The Cucumber.

I grew up in a healthy household, for the time. That meant no soda, but it also meant industrially produced produce. Even though I lived in Florida, where one could potentially eat from the garden every day of the year, we only had access to the same stuff that everyone else in the country was eating. And everyone was eating The Cucumber, which, like the County Paris, is as bland as it is handsome.

Flash forward to a world in the midst of a food revolution, sometimes delicious, sometimes not. The revolution takes many forms, from riots over rising food costs in Haiti to those locally made logs of goat cheese at your neighborhood farmers market. Though the stakes vary, these are opposite sides of the same coin. Both say, in very different ways, that the system we've been relying on is broken, and that it's time to look elsewhere.

We now live in an era in which there are many, many kinds of cucumbers. Or rather we live there/then again. Before The Cucumber was singled out for its ability to survive long truck rides and still arrive looking like a cartoon, there were many cucumbers bred for many different climates and culinary purposes.

For instance, the lemon cucumber, which is not named for its flavor but for its appearance. And though it doesn't taste like a lemon, it does taste about a bajillion times better than The Cucumber. I'm thrilled to see that heirlooms such as these are regaining popularity, and I plan to eat them all.

But wait, you say. Isn't the lemon cucumber just for limp wristed East Coast liberal elitist foodies, bloggers and food bloggers? Isn't the whole Delicious Revolution a bit "unrealistic" as Anthony Bourdain says?

No. While I now have lemon cucumbers like the one pictured at top growing in my garden, I had my first at an immigrant-run farmers market booth in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Springfield, Missouri. Now that's crop diversity.

Return From Vermmmont Raw Corn Salad

Returning from my annual two weeks teaching in VT is usually a drag. When I would come back to Somerville, I found the urban setting abrasive if not hostile. Luckily my new place of residence is much greener, but in comparison to VT, our nature somehow seems less natural.

So I was cheered to see that in my absence things had been growing back home. Oli had a short, sleek, summer coat, and despite the lack of soil, light, attention and planning, there was actually some food in the garden.

The apples had blushed.



The blackberry blossoms had transmogrified into blackberries.



And there was a cucumber...



... that went into a raw corn salad, along with some of the local sunflower oil I picked up at Pete's Greens.



In the summer I crave unadulteration more than I crave any specific ingredients. I eat less and I eat dishes made with less preparation, if you could call taking a cucumber out of the refrigerator and eating it whole a "dish" that underwent "preparation." But when I can overcome my estivation, I make a raw corn salad.

-----------------------------------------------

Recipe: Raw Corn and Cucumber Salad
(serves 2)

Note: variations are limitless.

1 cucumber
2 ears of corn (suitable for eating raw, i.e. sweet and picked that day)
Pete's Greens sunflower seed oil for dressing (or olive oil)
salt to taste

1. Dice the cucumber, keeping the peel on, unless you're a total weiner.

2. Slice the kernels from the shucked corn cobs.

3. Combine both with salt to taste and an ample drizzle of the sunflower (or olive) oil. If you got 'em, add fresh herbs or nearly anything else.

White Mountains, Blue Berries

One way to beat the summer heat in New England is to rise above it. Yesterday I left the steamy, swampy lowlands of Boston for a chilly, misty mountaintop in New Hampshire. Cardigan, to be exact.

As if the dramatic weather wasn't enough of a reward, the summit was also rife with wild blueberries.



And mountain cranberries.



Now maybe you're not supposed to pick the berries in a National Park, but it's better for everyone if you eat the fruit growing at your feet rather than stuff trucked in from Mexico.

Just leave some for the bears, and for me.

Vermmmont: My First Eggs

In case I haven't made it clear already, Vermont is a really interesting place to eat.

For instance, when visiting the homes of various campers, I was treated to the following meals: elk chili (shot in New Mexico), halibut kebobs (caught in Alaska), and homemade wontons (fried in the kitchen).

Equally impressive is the sheer bounty available in many VT backyards. Nearly every house I visited had an ample vegetable garden, plus many had sizable crops of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and black raspberries with apples en route. Several had both meat and laying chickens, one had ducks and guinea fowl, another pigs.



One home even had its own fully stocked trout pond. Talk about a sustainable source of seafood (pondfood?): instead of overfishing and mercury poisoning, all you have worry to about is otters.

It was in one such backyard that I gathered my first eggs. Then, in an expression of gratitude, I tenderly held my first chicken.



Before then, I had only ever held a chicken tender.

Links Galore, Links Galore

I've received a few link exchange requests recently, and it's often difficult to tell which are from actual people and which are from capitalists. I'll let you figure it out:

Kalahari Tea: an eco-friendly, organic tea company that sources raw materials and products from South Africa to support the local economy. Their tea bags are made of unbleached hemp and wood chips, they contribute to the African Wildlife Foundation and are members of 1% for the Planet (which is about the environment, not milk).

The Teacup Tango: I received this tea-themed music video from a wife and husband duo who created it to win a scholarship competition. From their experience they have concluded that "Tea is awesome and there is so much more to it – whichever type you prefer – than we ever realized."

I highly recommend watching it. FYI, my favorite moment occurs at 50 seconds in.

Local Food, Thanks to the Enemy

How f'ed up is it that this Serious Eats video about a local farmer starts with a plug from Kraft?

On the one hand, the local food movement needs whatever support it can get, and if that video only exists because of cash from Kraft, it's still a net positive. On the other hand, I hope no one puts the "Kraft Lite Raspberry Vinagerette Dressing" advertised at the beginning on the veggies they buy at the greenmarket.

I do, however, like that Ed Levine uses the phrase "to grow a crop in their shoes." Isn't that what farms are for?

Vermmmont: Barely Sweet Red Currant Tart

One of the things I look forward to during my annual two week gig in VT is the Dunbar's red currant bush. Lucky for me, the fruit ripens during my stay. Also lucky for me is that the Dunbars don't really like currants, so I'm always encouraged to take as big of a haul as I want.

In the past I've never had the wherewithal to do anything but eat them out of hand, but this year I got it together to whip up a crude tart.



As I prepared it, the berry topping somehow became a black hole for sugar; the more I added, the same it tasted.

I prefer barely-sweet desserts, but even for my palate I had to keep sprinkling on the cane dust. All the while a little devil sat on my shoulder, whispering "Just dump it in! People will like it better!"

Meanwhile, the little angel that, inevitably, sat on the other shoulder, meekly suggested: " Sugar is bad for you. Maybe your friends would enjoy a horribly sour tart and better health?"

In the end, neither won, as I compromised. But the tart was perfect for me, with a challenging level of tartness yet just enough sugar to walk you through it. I made one for the Dunbars as a thank you for years of free currants, but I'm told it met with mixed results. Some of them ate it straight up, some added more sugar, and some passed on it altogether.

Angel: "Even if they didn't like it that much, at least everyone had a healthy dessert."

Devil: "That means more for us! Rrrrrrrrrah! (<-- a devil roar)."

---------------------------------------------

Etymology for Karen:

"currant" origin: Middle English "raisons of Corauntz," translating Anglo-Norman French raisins de Corauntz, meaning ‘grapes of Corinth ’ (the original source).

Hot, Hot, Hot

See here for more of my stuff (writing) in Stuff (magazine). I wrote 8 of the entries for this year's Hot 100 list, and not surprisingly, most of mine are about food. If you're a truly loyal reader, see if you can pick out my prose.

The next post will have more pretty pictures of sustainable food, I promise.

Muscadine Wine

See here for my first piece in Stuff magazine, on the conspicuous lack of Muscadine wine in Boston:

http://stuffboston.com/liquid/archive/2009/07/28/an-appalachian-appellation.aspx

Vermmmont: Wood Fired Pizza

Last night's dinner centered around flatbreads baked in the handmade, homemade clay oven pictured above.

The first course, though prepared in a less exciting cooking vessel, was even better: Turkish cucumber soup, resplendent with curry, yogurt and tomatoes and topped with fresh cilantro.



Dinner companions included hummingbirds, a nearly full moon, and my personified jealousy for the clay oven.

Quote of the Day

From a student at the camp in VT where I'm currently teaching:

"My mom once castrated a lamb with her teeth."

Vermmmont: Maple Roasted Chicken

Last night we were invited to dinner at the home of one of our campers. I was thrilled to learn that we would be having maple roasted chicken. I was even more thrilled to find out what that meant: instead of being covered in a syrupy glaze, the birds had slowly roasted in a haze of maple wood smoke.

The family serving the meal keeps a log near the barbecue for just that very purpose. When they feel like adding a touch of sweet smoke to whatever they're grilling, they simply hack off a few chips to scatter on top of charcoal.



As you can see above, the chicken skin was a deep bronze, and the meat beneath it was tender and juicy. The faintly sweet taste of smoke permeated every nook and cranny.

For dessert we were served a carrot cake garnished with local strawberries and raspberries from "around back." Why don't I live here again?

Non-Dairy Moose Tracks

One ran by outside of the camp I'm teaching at here in Craftsbury, VT. Later in the day I went down to look for tracks, which I found clearly stamped into the mud. A faint channel was visible where it had trotted through the tall grass en route to the woods.

I'd only seen one up here once before: last summer, on my plate.

Back in Vermont

I'm currently up in Craftsbury, Vermont for my annual two weeks of teaching at a Shakespeare camp. (See here for last year's posts.)

Internet access is scant, but I'll do my best to keep posting from this fascinating foodshed. Just today one of my campers told me she's been woken up each of the past few nights by the grunting of a moose.

If you think that's Vermonty, consider this. The following sentence was spoken by a mother to her children at a local natural foods coop:

"Brocoli, Arugula, stop that!"

Homemade Jam: As Easy as Pie

Homemade jam. Go ahead, think about it. The mess, the effort, the special equipment, the self righteousness. Now think again.

If you have fruit and sugar, and you do, homemade jam is at your (sticky) fingertips. You don't have to pick the berries. You don't have to hermetically seal the end product. You don't have worry about odorless, tasteless, killer bacteria.

You don't even have to be a hipster. You just have to cook a little fruit with a little sugar.

I had some strawberries that were on their way out. They weren't even local berries, just some Big Organic (not that good for the planet, but also not that bad, right?) fruit that I had lying around, getting a little fuzzy around the edges. I halved them and simmered with less sugar than you think goes into jam for less time than you think jam cooks for.

I didn't add pectin. I didn't add rosemary or anything else that doesn't belong in jam but increasingly finds its way there.

As soon as the heat and sugar permeated the fruit, my limp, squishy strawberries transformed into vivid, cartoon like fruit. They went from looking like something that you wouldn't want to eat to looking like something that you wouldn't want to eat because you'd think they'd been dyed and thickened with cornstarch.

But no. The thick, ruby red concoction was more natural than most of the girls who went to my South Florida private high school. The berries were plump and toothsome, full of seeds that popped and crunched between my teeth. The flavor was tart and fruity, just a shade sweeter than what you might pick from the vine, and nowhere near as cloying as, say, Smuckers.

It was easy. It tasted amazing. It resurrected my fruit.

-------------------------------------------

Recipe: Homemade Strawberry Jam

-strawberries that no longer look good enough to eat fresh
(about 2 cups)
-enough water to cover the bottom of the pan - no more!
-a fat pinch of unrefined sugar

1. Wash and halve the strawberries.
2. Combine all ingredients in a small pot or pan.
3. Cook until the berries are vivid and surrounded by thick syrup.
4. Cool and store in the fridge, if it lasts that long.

The Best Thing I've Had All Year

..was a lobster bolognese at the Green Street Grill last Sunday night. I simply couldn't understand how any combination of earthly ingredients could taste so good.

My guess is cream. Lots of cream. And lobster stock. Generous hunks of lobster meat, including claw, didn't hurt either.

Yet even those incredibly delicious components don't fully explain the dish's magical powers. I could combine cream, lobster and lobster stock at home, but they did something else, something I don't understand, and it left me awestruck. Probably, it was butter.

Go there just to eat it.

Buffalo Shepherd's Pie

Not only is this dish good in and of itself, but it's also a superior recreation of a childhood comfort food. Without lunch lady hairs.

Even though I secretly liked the version slopped onto my lunch tray as a school boy, this shepherd's pie is a vast improvement, with buffalo meat instead of beef (leaner, hipper), smoked paprika, fresh sage and a touch of cumin. Instead of the classic trinity of frozen peas, frozen carrots and canned corn, we use whatever fresh veggies we have around. Last time our friends brought over some of the surplus bounty of their CSA, including turnips and chard, which worked great.

I also appreciate the irony of a shepherd's pie made from buffalo, since buffalo can't actually be shepherded. The only downside is that while it's still hot, using the term "pie" is really being generous. Even though it doesn't taste like slop, it still kind of looks like slop.

But when you have the leftovers the next day, as you invariably do because you make an entire skillet's worth, because it looks gorgeous and rustic to do so, that slop sets into distinct strata that can easily be sliced into a clean, self-supported wedge.

While eating one such pie during last night's dinner, conversation turned to talk of sprouting grains. Our guests, an enterprising young family that bakes their own bread and makes their own cheese, are in the habit of sprouting everything from grains to nuts. That's a food wagon I haven't boarded yet, largely because of the extra effort required.

That said, when I looked in the dog's water dish this morning, I noticed that two buckwheat grains had accidentally fallen in and sprouted. Guess it's not that hard after all.



Now if only buffalo shepherd's pie appeared so spontaneously.

-------------------------------------

Recipe: Buffalo Shepherd's Pie

1 lb ground buffalo (it goes a long way, 6-8 servings)
8 potatoes
chopped seasonal vegetables
pimenton (smoked paprika)
fresh sage (about a handful)
cumin
salt

1. Make mashed potatoes.

2. Brown the buffalo meat in an iron skillet with a healthy dash of pimenton and slightly less cumin.

3. Layer the chopped veggies and chopped sage on top of the meat, sweating anything that would produce a lot of water first (i.e. chard or spinach).

4. Top with the mashed potatoes. Top the mashed potatoes with a heavy sprinkling of pimenton and a drizzle of olive oil (and cheese, if that's your thing).

5. Bake at 400 until it begins to brown, then slide under the broiler to finish the job.

6. Serve as is or let set in the fridge over night for pretty slices.

Ghana Fishin'

This morning's The World made the obvious link between the G8's proposal to fund agriculture in nations like Ghana and the old "teach a (hu)man to fish" saying.

I just want to go on record saying that I too think it's better to build roads that will help distribute food rather than letting it rot in the fields and then feeding Africans stuff that we grew. I too think it makes more sense to enable farmers to produce their own food rather than continuing to send aid after the fact (which we'll still need to keep doing, at least for a while).

This is that powerful part of the local food movement that is all too often obscured by obnoxious foodies like myself going gaga over scapes or black raspberries. Here eating locally is associated with stuffing yourself with goat cheese, but in other parts of the world it means being able to feed yourself at all.

Big Agriculture stole the word organic, they're working on co-opting "local," and soon Super Walmarts will probably have a little sticker that denotes (alleged) sustainability. But real sustainability is, not to be too dramatic, the key to our survival as a species, and local food is a big part of it.

So the next time you hear a foodie holding court about what they made from their most recent CSA pick-up, try this mental exercise: replace phrases like "ramp tartlets" with "food security."

Personally, I'm looking forward to the first issue of Edible Accra.

Today's Lunch

Eating while working from home is often a double edged sword. On the one hand, you can make whatever you want. On the other, that never happens.

I usually wait too long to eat or don't have anything on hand that I actually want. In both cases, I consume whatever I first set eyes on, and it's never ideal (though I have developed a soft spot for pasta with canned sardines).

But today I had the presence of mind - and the ingredients - to whip up a perfectly acceptable, well timed meal. I browned and then simmered chicken thighs with artichoke hearts and had one with salad and a white bean dip laced with za'atar. The latter might sound fancy, but the only faster starch I can think of is a slice of bread. Also, I had a slice of bread.

The salad consisted of local greens and even more local, accidental wild edibles harvested/weeded from the kitchen garden. As far as I'm concerned, romaine, purslane, and lamb's quarters are just as good a combo as walnuts, pears and gorgonzola. You know, that salad.

It was fast, it was easy, and it was good. The only downside is that I'm not eating it again right this second.

I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for Pee

If you're a reindeer, that is. See for yourself here. It's one of many impressive pics from Globe photographer Essdras Suarez, whose work accompanied my last article.

I'd been meaning to post some of his stuff, but for copyright reasons I think you have to go check it out yourself. You can see more, including his food photography, here:

http://www.essdrasmsuarez.com/phocont.html

The Best Tisane I've Ever Had

Expletives and herbal tea don't often go together, but I'm pretty sure I muttered one after taking a sip of this after last night's dinner. Made from freshly plucked anise hyssop and cilantro flowers, it was the best tisane I've ever had.

For those who poo-poo herbal tea in favor of true tea, know that equally complex flavors are possible from plants besides camellia sinensis. I didn't fully believe it myself, but this tea was the most powerfully flavorful thing I've put in my mouth this year.

Like garlic scapes, the flowers of herbs are a double boon. A culinary asset on their own, removing them also make the parts of the plant that you really want to eat (the bulb of the garlic and the leaves of the herb) more productive. The flowers of the anise hyssop were a shade of purple that would look at home in a Monet, but once hit by the hot water they became pale. I took comfort in knowing that the purple was now somewhere in the liquor, and that I drank a color.

The hyssop is incredibly sweet and of course very licorice like, and the cilantro flowers are, unsurprisingly, a very floral incarnation of the already cool and lovely cilantro. Together the two were sweet and deeply aromatic with just a hint of savory, no stronger than an association.

We spend so much time comparing the flavors of tea and wine to other things like flowers and herbs. So why not go straight to the source and just drink the flowers and herbs?

Or, as a friend of mine one said, if people want things to sell like hotcakes, why not just sell hotcakes?

Bacon, Broccoli, Bean Noodles

The weather is so wet, so damp and clammy, that if we want to be warm and dry we must bypass the sky and look to food. For lunch yesterday, I made my artificial sun of bacon.

I was hungry. I looked in the fridge. These stories usually don't end well, but this was a delicious exception.

I found three strips of bacon. I found a head of broccoli. In the pantry I unearthed a package of my favorite dry noodles: Amoy Bean Strips. I put them together and I had lunch. Great lunch.

Using the meat-as-a-seasoning approach, I snipped the bacon into the kind of tiny rectangles you'll find in non-vegetarian veggie dishes at some Chinese restaurants. I browned it in a skillet, adding diced onion about halfway through. Meanwhile, the noodles boiled and the broccoli steamed. Of course I could have cooked the broccoli with the bacon, but it can be a much cleaner operation to assemble the parts separately and then sauce together.

When everything was cooked to my liking (crispy bacon, translucent and slightly brown onions, bright green broccoli), I tossed it all with a splash of sesame oil and a drip of soy sauce. And of course the ample fat surrendered by the bacon as it gently sizzled.

It wasn't warm outside, but it was nice and warm inside (my stomach).

On Acai

See here for Adam Stark's latest dispatch, this time tackling the dubious qualities of the so-called "superfood" acai.

Personally, I think all foods are super, and my suspicion is always aroused when any one is singled out as a magic bullet. I never knew precisely why acai was bullsh*t, and am glad for Adam's thorough debunking.

As Michael Pollan so succinctly put it, "Avoid foods that make health claims." After all, broccoli doesn't advertise, except in this brilliant Onion article.

Again, you can read the acai piece here and an excerpt here:

Q: But I don’t care about science – it’s all sponsored by the fascist military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex, anyways! What matters to me is the shamanic healing wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin. Don’t they use açaí for, like, everything down there?

A: Actually, they mostly use it for breakfast. Sort of like we use grapefruit.

A Local, Vegan, Wacky Wedding

I spent this past weekend up in Maine at a wedding which revolved largely around food, as all festivities should. The bride is vegan, the groom vegetarian, and both are deeply committed to the local agricultural scene and to the DIY lifestyle in general. Which is why their cake was topped with shrinky dinks of themselves.



All of the bubbly, and there was a lot of it, was a ginger champagne brewed and bottled by the bridegroom and spray-paint stenciled by the groom's sister and brother-in-law.



Other menu items made by the couple included seitan (for 120), kimchee and sauerkraut made with local produce (I love the idea of Maine kimchee), a bowl of super garlicky hummus the size of a small child, and momos for all. For those who didn't want ginger champagne, they had also home brewed IPA, hefeweizen and ginger beer, which went into many a dark and stormy.



Also, all guests were required to wear fake mustaches like the one seen here on the groom's finger.

The wedding was a celebration of both love and local produce. Not only did they feed everyone with sustainably grown ingredients, but they did so creatively and colorfully. So I was struck by the contrast between that experience and this comment left on my last blog post:

"Good grief, your ideological crap about local produce has been debunked many times over and you are still on about it. Get a grip, retard."

Clearly, the anonymous author of the statement above has never been plied with locally made ginger champagne and kimchee. Also, they're stupid.

Butterwhat?

I bought this squash at my local "normal" grocery store, a Stop & Shop. I don't normally shop at chain groceries, but I also don't not shop at them.

Of course my favorite places to acquire food are farmers markets, CSA's, natural foods shops, my garden, and the woods. But I sometimes shop at supermarkets if for no other reason than to experience food like most Americans do. I like lemon cucumbers as much as the next foodie, but I'm never going to be too high on my food horse to avoid grocery stores. Sure they're doing horrible things to the world, but you have to recognize that just having the option of shopping at one makes you an incredibly, incredibly privileged global citizen.

Also, supermarkets yield quirky food items like the squash pictured above. I'd bought it to make butternut crepes, a truly divine dish that depends heavily on first browning the squash and then adding whole, fresh leaves of sage towards the end (quick eco-thical analyses: good that it's not meat, bad that it's not sustainable, local, seasonal, etc.). But I had to pause when I noticed the sticker.

The variety is Waltham, also the name of a town just a few miles from where I'm currently typing. But the place of origin is La Paz, Honduras, which is about 4,000 miles off. A brief internet search tells me that the squash is native to Mexico but by 5,000 years ago was being cultivated by the Incas in what is now South America.

At last, after a long, rich relationship with humanity that spans continents and thousands of years, the butternut has come to its final resting place: a nauseatingly lit supermarket shelf in the 'burbs.

So thank you, Stop & Shop. I never would have had that moment of malaise while picking a strawberry from my garden.

Quote of the Day

"The ever burning climate will not ignore the carbon emitted from fresh figs flown into Boston because you recycle."

From the latest Lionette's newsletter.

Quote of the Day

"You can go to most any area of this country and eat Thai or Chinese or Mongolian barbecue, but you can't eat indigenous foods native to the Americas."

From Loretta Barrett Oden, in an excellent NYT article from '05. And if you do want to eat those indigenous foods, you can always check the Native Tech guide in the Resources section at right.

Cape Cod Grub

I had two excellent eating experiences on a recent trip to Cape Cod. The first was the soup pictured above, made with tons of mushrooms, a few handfuls of wild greens and a splash of goat milk.

In case you can't tell, the soup was entirely the product of necessity. But by just using what we had on hand I managed to produce a vast quantity, and it was a real crowd-pleaser to boot. I started by browning onions and garlic and then sweating all of the stems. With salt and water, these cooked for quite a while longer, yielding a hasty stock. I then added more water, the sliced caps, and some greens and herbs that happened to be growing around the property where we were staying. These included sheep sorrel, garlic mustard, and feral oregano.

It was even vegan until I added a few cups of the goat milk at the end, which made the broth almost bisquey and gave it the slightest twang. We slurped mugful after mugful all day, even once it had gone cold.

The second excellent eating experience occurred when I was asked to pitch some spent lobster shells off the dock. I had arrived too late to actually eat the lobster, but I picked a meal's worth of meat off the carapaces. It was dark, so I couldn't very easily tell coral from tomalley, but it was divine. Someone even left me a claw!

Squatting on a dock in the dark and sucking second hand lobster gook out of shells that were supposed to be thrown away may not be for everyone, but I guess that's what makes me a gourmet.

So Good, There Must Be A Name For It In French

Sometimes when I hit upon a great new dish, I think "I've done it!" Other times I think "This is so good, the French must have already done it." The chicken leg pictured above fell into the latter category.

I usually buy chicken whole, but sometimes I want less than a whole chicken in less than the time it takes to cook a whole chicken. When this happens, I carve off a raw hunk of bird to cook immediately, and later, when I roast the rest of it, it appears as though there has been some sort of accident.

This time, I sawed off a drumstick, which I browned in olive oil. I then added about a cup of stock, several whole peppercorns, and sliced garlic. I covered and simmered, and once the meat was tender, I reduced the remaining liquid and poured it on top of the leg.

The meat had that supple moisture that only cooking in liquid can provide and the stock cooked down to a thick, chickeny sauce made all the more flavorful by the browning. And while cooking with stock might sound a little involved, the whole thing took about twenty minutes, also known as the time it took to chop and steam a few sweet potatoes (see background of photo). That and the leg was lunch.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to cook chicken like so, but I'm as excited about the dish as though I were.

-------------------------------------------------

Recipe: Hasty, Seemingly French Chicken

1 drumstick or thigh per person
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp whole peppercorns
3 cloves garlic
salt to taste
olive oil

1. Brown the chicken in the olive oil.

2. Add the stock, garlic, and peppercorns.

3. Cover, simmer until tender (about 15 minutes).

4. Remove the chicken and reduce the remaining liquid to the consistency of maple syrup.

5. Pour the sauce over the meat and garnish with the peppercorns and garlic. Serve alongside steamed sweet potatoes.

6. Exclaim in delight using whatever French you know.

7. Explain to your girlfriend why the raw chicken in the fridge is missing a piece.

Quote of the Day

A sobering thought from Mark Bittman's latest article on fish:

"It takes three pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon."

The Return of Local Fruit

In New England we're now safely into strawberry season, and I know this because I've been eating a few out of the garden every day. Finally, we can all stop pretending that rhubarb is fruit.

In this part of the world, the strawberry heralds the return of fresh, local fruit and produce in general. Some of us do eat locally grown fruit throughout the winter, thanks to canning, drying, freezing and stockpiling apples, but there's nothing like the taste of some fructose picked at its peak.



The rest of my meager but satisfying kitchen garden is also coming along. The old fence we filled with our landlord's (horses') manure has held up well, and we've got two of the beds pictured above. To the strawberries, sorrel and garlic that survived the winter, we've added cilantro, spinach, lemon cucumbers, broccoli, broccoli rabe, zephyr squash, arugula and romaine. There are a few spaces left that I'd love to fill with ground cherries or tomatillos.



We've also added several herbs on the notion that perennial herbs in containers are the most non-committal form of kitchen gardening. These include anise hyssop, lemon thyme, lavender, sage, rosemary, and eucalyptus. I look forward to making a tisane from one leaf of each.

There are also a handful of wild edibles around the yard that I plan to start chowing down on in earnest as soon as I test to make sure that the soil isn't too leaden. The most exciting of these are the blackberries that each of these white blossoms will hopefully turn into.



I think of gardening as an extremely low stakes game of chance with an incredibly high payoff (if something that is low stakes can also have a high payoff). The worst case scenario is that you lose a few bucks while still having gotten exercise, time outside, and that ineffable sense of joy that comes from planting something you, or rabbits and squirrels, can eat.

If You Watch One Slideshow of People Tumbling Down a Hill For Cheese...

...then watch this one:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/coopers_hill_cheeserolling.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1

Note the participant who had to be carried away in a stretcher.

Monochromatic Breakfast

In looking through my latest batch of photos I was surprised to see that I'd recently had two very different but very monochromatic breakfasts.

The first was a smoothie, pictured above. My standard blend is one banana, sometimes frozen, sometimes not, unsweetened soy milk, peanut butter, and a scoop of some weird, green powder that I got for free.

I've been drinking one every morning for about a month now, but had never realized just how similar the color was to some of my plates. The smoothie nearly disappeared when placed atop one.

The second monochromatic breakfast featured ground buffalo meat on teff, the Ethiopian grain often grown in Idaho.



Two breakfasts, both alike in dignity, and color.

Caveat Ramps

I'm glad that more and more people are eating fiddleheads and ramps, and thereby realizing that not all food comes from supermarkets. But fiddleheads and ramps may not be glad that people are eating more fiddleheads and ramps.

I'm an advocate of using (by which I mean eating) nature in order to appreciate it, hence my fascination with wild edibles. However, different plants require different harvesting techniques to ensure sustainability.

For instance, picking an apple doesn't have much of an impact on the plant, but uprooting the tree does, and essentially that's what happens when you, or whoever you pay to do the do the dirty work for you, harvests a ramp. As this article from the Globe and Mail says, "eating a nice sized bulb could be the equivalent of dining on an old-growth cedar, since a bulb could be 18 to 20 years old."

Which isn't to say that people shouldn't eat ramps - they should - they just shouldn't eat all the ramps. Let's not have another cod here.

Leftover Pizza Dough Rolls

This is going to be the kind of post that professional chefs hate.

On Saturday I woke up and read a few pages from MKR's "Cross Creek." I was in the middle of the chapter about what she ate while homesteading in rural Florida, which of course was the one I liked best. Here's the part that I read:

"My most successful Dutch oven rolls were prepared in the middle of the St. John's River... I brought out my bowl of dough, my extra flour, my butter and my Dutch oven from under a seat in the rowboat, and while spray from the wind-swept river dashed into my face, I mixed the dough in the bowl in my lap, shaped my rolls and placed them tenderly in the Dutch oven. I put the oven far forward where the late afternoon sun would rest on the lid, and by the time we reached Salt Springs Run and the camp fire was built, the rolls had risen and were ready for baking. They had never been so delicious. Supper was superb, and the fresh-caught bass white and sweet and firm, the coffee strong and good as it can only be in the open."

Of course, as you do now, I wanted rolls. Fortunately, Elise had realized just the night before how easy it is to make knotted rolls from scraps of pizza dough. (I'm guessing this is why such rolls are always on hand at pizzerias.) So lucky for me, moments after reading the Rawlings' passage, I was nose-deep in a hot roll.

The fact that you can make rolls from pizza dough is probably excruciatingly obvious to any real chef, which is why he or she might see this post as nothing more than the amateurish drivel of a naive foodie.

But I'm glad that I don't know everything there is to know about food. That way, even simple things like pizza dough rolls come as a total surprise. My kitchen might therefore be a fool's paradise, but it's still paradise. Or it would be if Elise also figured out how to turn leftover pizza dough into fresh-caught, white and sweet and firm bass.

Cheese Wheeze

A word on food as it relates to health. Specifically, my health.

These days there's plenty of skepticism about picky eaters disguising their preferences as allergies or the even less convincing "food sensitivities." But I've learned from personal experience that these distinctions are to be taken seriously.

Early this year, I dragged myself to an allergist for help with chronic congestion and wheezing that had become nothing short of scary. Elise's birth mother died from asthma, and so I take having trouble breathing very, very seriously. The allergist told me that there was nothing about my lifestyle or environment that was worth the money or effort to change, and that I needed only to use an inhaler or nasal spray when things got bad. Since they were bad every day, I started doing so regularly.

The drugs were shockingly effective, but I didn't want to be on them for the rest of my life and knew that there was more to the story. I made an appointment with a local acupuncturist/nutritionist to see if I could get to the root of the matter. That root turned out to be dairy.

The acupuncturist, who I now see regularly, suggested that I might have a food sensitivity to dairy. I was doubtful, especially because I didn't think that I ate that much dairy, but decided to see what would happen if I experimentally cut it out.

This is no exaggeration. Within days, I felt as though a weight had been lifted. I completely stopped wheezing, and the nasal congestion that I had come to accept simply as part of being Jewish completely disappeared for the first time in my adult life. Now, in my new, quasi-vegan life, I never use the inhaler and always breathe clearly. No cheese, no wheeze.

Was it because I have a unique sensitivity, or would every adult do better if they cut out the white stuff? Is it genetics, and if I were born a strapping, Swiss goatherd I could eat milk for three meals a day? Is the problem that I was raised on pasteurized milk and so I have an f'ed up immune system? I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that I'm breathing as clearly as a wind tunnel, and I'm not interesting in doing anything to mess it up.

And now, a shameless plug for my acupuncturist. The guy is really, really good (as is his wife, who practices in the same office). Go to him:

George Mandler
Assabet Valley Natural Health
32 Powder Mill Rd, Maynard, MA 01754
978-461-2001 (office)
617-913-5970 (cell)

Image courtesy of Just Clean Fun.