I'm no Professor Bainbridge when it comes to wine, but I enjoy buying and drinking the stuff, especially from the wonderful Moore Brothers. I was introduced to Moore Brothers when I was living in Delaware (one of them was sommelier at Philadelphia's well known Le Bec Fin) and was delighted when they opened their New York location. It is a pleasure to drink wine chosen by people who know what it is supposed to taste like. I have never had a bad bottle from them.
In any case, yesterday we had a terrific rose from Italy, Proprieta Sperino, Rosa del Rosa. The wine has a immensely powerful aroma, which my girlfriend thought was apple and I couldn't identify. Flopping around the internet, I found a tasting note by someone else that gave me a clue as to what I was smelling - which is to say, extremely pungent raspberries. In any case, I agree with the commentator at The Tasting Note. "This is a ****ing good rose."
(Dinner, incidentally, was chicken breast taken off the bone and sauteed skin side down on my gas griddle for fantastically crispy skin [fried chicken without the guilt, I said] with a simple red potato salad [boiled potatoes, spring onions, dijon vinaigrette but made by replacing half the red wine vinegar with lemon]).
4/25/2008
Twilight Picnic
We had a delightful twilight picnic in Astoria Park last night, overlooking Manhattan. Dinner was good turkey sandwiches, rubbed generously with kalamata olive paste, and thick slabs of Greek pastry from the usually excellent Artopolis bakery. Also, one of the park's indigent inhabitants came and yelled at us about "the blood of science and god" for five minutes, but that didn't spoil the mood.
4/24/2008
Torture
Warning - Non-food content!
Professor Sandy Levinson at Balkin has a post today concerning the moral gravity of torture compared to, say, carpet bombing. It resembles, in a way, a colloquy I had with Prof. Levinson when I was his student during his visit to HLS. Briefly, I tried to push him to provide a clear answer to why torture was worse than any of the other barbarities that accompany war. The only answer that has even remotely satisfied me is that torture involves the infliction of pain on someone entirely in your grasp. It is, in that sense, especially barbaric, an indicative manifestation of a basic incivility. But I do not see how dropping an atomic weapon on millions of civilians who do not know it is coming is any worse.
I suspect that Prof. Levinson's answer to the conundrum is rather different than mine, in that he would likely say that both the bombing (as well as a host of lesser civilian oriented attacks) and torture are equally indefensible, constitute war crimes, etc. During my talk with Prof. Levinson, and on my old blog, I've gone on the record saying that I am willing to defend our obliteration of Germany during WWII, as well as Hiroshima/Nagasaki, while I am not willing to permit torture (in which I include waterboarding). But my distinction is not based on morals - the man or woman who orders either, I think, bears an equal and possibly indelible, moral weight - but on practicality. Torture doesn't work, it can be used on our men and women, and it looks horrible in a conflict where we are fighting an ideological war as much as anything else. But is the distinction really one of gravity, as people seem to think? I'm not sure.
Professor Sandy Levinson at Balkin has a post today concerning the moral gravity of torture compared to, say, carpet bombing. It resembles, in a way, a colloquy I had with Prof. Levinson when I was his student during his visit to HLS. Briefly, I tried to push him to provide a clear answer to why torture was worse than any of the other barbarities that accompany war. The only answer that has even remotely satisfied me is that torture involves the infliction of pain on someone entirely in your grasp. It is, in that sense, especially barbaric, an indicative manifestation of a basic incivility. But I do not see how dropping an atomic weapon on millions of civilians who do not know it is coming is any worse.
I suspect that Prof. Levinson's answer to the conundrum is rather different than mine, in that he would likely say that both the bombing (as well as a host of lesser civilian oriented attacks) and torture are equally indefensible, constitute war crimes, etc. During my talk with Prof. Levinson, and on my old blog, I've gone on the record saying that I am willing to defend our obliteration of Germany during WWII, as well as Hiroshima/Nagasaki, while I am not willing to permit torture (in which I include waterboarding). But my distinction is not based on morals - the man or woman who orders either, I think, bears an equal and possibly indelible, moral weight - but on practicality. Torture doesn't work, it can be used on our men and women, and it looks horrible in a conflict where we are fighting an ideological war as much as anything else. But is the distinction really one of gravity, as people seem to think? I'm not sure.
4/23/2008
The Chart Explained
Pinkberry, the luxury frozen yogurt brand sweeping the nation, has recently been exposed as, well, not especially natural (as it had been advertised). I'm not surprised, because I tried it about a year ago and wasn't impressed,suggesting that I would have been equally happy with a McDonald's soft serve ice cream cone. Now that the Pinkberry ingredients have been revealed, probably courtesy of the law suit contesting their claim to be natural that was recently settled, we can see exactly how Pinkberry yogurt compares with its much cheaper, down market competitor. Below, you'll see a chart comparing all the ingredients of each dessert, drawn from their respective web pages.
My methodology is pretty simple. I found the ingredient lists of both frozen treats, and attempted to categorize each ingredient by way of google. For those ingredients that differ, I have provided a link to what I found. My conclusions are below, and I present them with the obvious caveat that since I'm not any kind of food scientist, I may well have something wrong. If so, tell me, but even if some additive is a emulsifier and not an acidifier, I think the point is basically made. At about four times the cost, Pinkberry has more ingredients, more additives, and more food coloring than Mcdonald's. Advantage Golden Arches.
1. As you can see, 10 of the ingredients (the Red) are basically the same. Yes, Pinkberry has yogurt and Mcdonald's has cream, but effectively, there is no difference or superiority here.
2. Both are full of additive emulsifiers (What I've coded as Green)
3. Pinkberry includes starch. That is to say, a pure filler.
4. Pinkberry includes three different kinds of acidifiers (Purple). I couldn't find any in Mcdonald's, but this may have something to do with the need for Pinkberry to be tart.
5. Pinkberry is colored with Yellow 5 Lake. That is to say, tartrazine, an often controversial coloring required to be reported on a label by the FDA because it causes reactions in some people. Pinkberry's color is as natural as Mountain Dew.
My methodology is pretty simple. I found the ingredient lists of both frozen treats, and attempted to categorize each ingredient by way of google. For those ingredients that differ, I have provided a link to what I found. My conclusions are below, and I present them with the obvious caveat that since I'm not any kind of food scientist, I may well have something wrong. If so, tell me, but even if some additive is a emulsifier and not an acidifier, I think the point is basically made. At about four times the cost, Pinkberry has more ingredients, more additives, and more food coloring than Mcdonald's. Advantage Golden Arches.
1. As you can see, 10 of the ingredients (the Red) are basically the same. Yes, Pinkberry has yogurt and Mcdonald's has cream, but effectively, there is no difference or superiority here.
2. Both are full of additive emulsifiers (What I've coded as Green)
3. Pinkberry includes starch. That is to say, a pure filler.
4. Pinkberry includes three different kinds of acidifiers (Purple). I couldn't find any in Mcdonald's, but this may have something to do with the need for Pinkberry to be tart.
5. Pinkberry is colored with Yellow 5 Lake. That is to say, tartrazine, an often controversial coloring required to be reported on a label by the FDA because it causes reactions in some people. Pinkberry's color is as natural as Mountain Dew.
| Mcdonald's Soft Serve | Pinkberry |
| Milk | Skim Milk |
| Sugar | Sucrose |
| Cream | Nonfat Dry Yogurt |
| Nonfat Milk Solids | Nonfat Dry Milk |
| mono- and diglycerides | mono- and diglycerides |
| guar gum | guar gum |
| dextrose | dextrose |
| sodium citrate | sodium citrate |
| artificial vanilla | natural and artificial flavors |
| Corn Syrup Solids | Fructose (a corn syrup extract) maltodextrin (corn syrup based thickener) |
| sodium phosphate (emsulsifier) | |
| carrageenan (emsulsifier) | propylene glycol esters (stabilizer, emulsifier) |
| disodium phosphate (emulsifier) | soy lecithin (emulsifier, stabilizer) |
| cellulose gum (stabilizer) | sodium acid pyrophosphate |
| Vitamin A Palmitate (fortifier) | Starch (filler |
| Tocopherol (Vitamin E, preservative) | |
| Yellow 5 Lake (tartrazine) | |
| Citric Acid | |
| magnesium oxide | |
| calcium fumarate | |
Prune
I took the opportunity of a fairly early night to dine at Prune last night. For those who don't know, Prune's Gabrielle Hamilton is, by all accounts, the quintessential chef's chef. She runs the restaurant herself, chefs eat there, and it is beloved of the New York food cognisenti (see, for example, the Amateur Gourmet, who had a few of the things I had when he visited) . It also has about 24 seats. Consequently, it is effectively impossible to get into on the weekend, so we weaseled in at 9 pm last night.
Hamilton's signature is the utter simplicity of her cooking. It is almost off-putting, to tell you the truth. A dainty slab of monkfish liver (which I have never had before, and had no idea that monkfish had a liver of that size) dressed in nothing but balsamic. Enormous, langoustine sized shrimps, grilled whole, and served in nothing but an anchovy butter. Or, my girlfriend's grilled quails with raisins and escarole, which brought to mind a Jewish pasta I once learned involving schmalz, pine nuts, and raisins. As for dessert, at my first bite of the ricotta ice cream with butterscotch croutons, I thought, "Eh". At my fifth, my spoon started scrunching imperceptibly towards my girlfriend's side of the scoop. And at the end, I was scraping the plate to get the last bit of butterscotch. A truly understated, delicious, ending.
Two questions: 1) Why is it called Prune? (Aha! It was Hamilton's childhood nickname!) 2) Why, why is it so small? (Presumably to allow the chef to keep total control (she was there, after all), but wow. How do you make money in such tight confines?).
Hamilton's signature is the utter simplicity of her cooking. It is almost off-putting, to tell you the truth. A dainty slab of monkfish liver (which I have never had before, and had no idea that monkfish had a liver of that size) dressed in nothing but balsamic. Enormous, langoustine sized shrimps, grilled whole, and served in nothing but an anchovy butter. Or, my girlfriend's grilled quails with raisins and escarole, which brought to mind a Jewish pasta I once learned involving schmalz, pine nuts, and raisins. As for dessert, at my first bite of the ricotta ice cream with butterscotch croutons, I thought, "Eh". At my fifth, my spoon started scrunching imperceptibly towards my girlfriend's side of the scoop. And at the end, I was scraping the plate to get the last bit of butterscotch. A truly understated, delicious, ending.
Two questions: 1) Why is it called Prune? (Aha! It was Hamilton's childhood nickname!) 2) Why, why is it so small? (Presumably to allow the chef to keep total control (she was there, after all), but wow. How do you make money in such tight confines?).
4/22/2008
World's Best Restaurant
I see via a couple of sources that the "world's best restaurants" list released for this year. It's sort of an inane list, of course, because the idea of saying that El Bulli is better than The Fat Duck is sort of a meaningless construct. Everything on the list is very good. There are other very good restaurants. Enough said.
What interests me about this is the extent to which food today really is a transnational enteprise, though. Gordon Ramsay is as famous here as he is in Europe. Everyone knows about El Bulli, etc, etc. We are apparently at a point in the development of a world economy (and, really, a world elite, given what these places charge) that it is entirely plausible for someone to casually note that they prefer Troisgros to Le Bernardin, but Mugartiz is better than both. My actual sense is that this convergence has helped the United States very much, and has hurt France, both in reputation and quality (as French chefs feel compelled to ape America).
What interests me about this is the extent to which food today really is a transnational enteprise, though. Gordon Ramsay is as famous here as he is in Europe. Everyone knows about El Bulli, etc, etc. We are apparently at a point in the development of a world economy (and, really, a world elite, given what these places charge) that it is entirely plausible for someone to casually note that they prefer Troisgros to Le Bernardin, but Mugartiz is better than both. My actual sense is that this convergence has helped the United States very much, and has hurt France, both in reputation and quality (as French chefs feel compelled to ape America).
4/21/2008
Where should we go? I know! The British Library!
It's not food related, but I love the idea that one of the great crises in British academia is that hordes of noisy undergraduates are crowding academics out of the British Library. I mean, really? There are so many undergraduates clamoring to study in the British library that there aren't any seats? This was not my experience of British undergraduate study, let me tell you. And if it were true, isn't it a good thing that undergraduates are crowding research libraries?
Carbonara
I'm surprised to see that Michael Ruhlman's carbonara has cream in it. To me, as some people mention in the comments, that's an unnecessary diversion towards alfredo. Still, he does add the egg raw at the last minute, which I think makes things twice as tasty.
4/19/2008
Le Bernardin VIP
I am trying to figure out how to become a Le Bernardin VIP so that I too can get baby eels. Unfortunately, I suspect it involves eating at one of New York's most expensive restaurants a couple of times a week for a long time, so I'll just content myself with looking from afar. They do look like pastas, though!
Malaysian curry
We're off to a wedding in another state today, which will be a lot of fun. Yesterday, though, I tried to imitate my favorite dish at our local, everyday Thai restaurant, the inimitable Bangkok Tasty. I used a simple combination of red curry paste, sauteed briefly in oil, and then combined with fish sauce, lime, green beans, coriander, coconut milk, bean sprouts, sugar, and firm tofu. It was, indeed, tasty, but next time I would greatly reduce the sugar and up the curry paste, and add cauliflower. Nonetheless, once you get through chopping the ingredients, a wonderfully quick dinner for a night you really need to spend packing, but did not.
El Bulli taking the piss?
I followed Tyler Cowen's link to a well blogged visit to El Bulli, probably the most famous restaurant in the world today. I'm sure the food is actually good - too many people say so to be wrong. But looking at the pictures, I just can't get away from the feeling that they're taking the piss, just a little bit. On the other hand, the restaurant does look beautiful.
4/18/2008
Pizza hut pasta
I don't really know how to explain Pizza Hut's new pastas, which I learned about via Instapundit via the Speculist. I don't understand the business plan (why would I buy frozen pasta from Pizza Hut rather than, say, Stoffer's?), I don't understand the market, and I don't understand why I would want to eat a beef pasta listing so many foul ingredients as this one.
Un-force fed foie gras
Michael Ruhlman writes about a new foie gras from Spain that isn't force fed, as is traditional foie gras, but relies on the goose's natural inclination to gorge itself. I'm skeptical, not only because Gordon Ramsay appears to have rejected it as inferior (and though Ramsay's television persona is something of a joke, he is a very serious, very great chef), but because I had a version of what I believe to be a humanely raised foie gras at the wonderful L'eau a la bouche outside Montreal last year. While it was delicious, and to me tasted better objectively than real foie gras, it wasn't foie gras. It was very fatty, unctuous, liver, and there's a big difference between the two.
4/16/2008
Word of the Day
"Pellucid", meaning transparently clear, from Justice Stevens' otherwise puzzling opinion in today's Baze v. Reese, upholding Kentucky's method of execution.
UPDATE: As in, it is pellucidly clear that most TV chefs have research staffs find them other people's recipes for use in their shows.
UPDATE: As in, it is pellucidly clear that most TV chefs have research staffs find them other people's recipes for use in their shows.
"My" special risotto, says she
The interesting part about the Cindy McCain mini-recipe kerfuffle (in which it was discovered that recipes listed as the McCain's personal home cooking were actually drawn verbatim from Food Network) is that every single current Food Network TV chef does much the same thing, and I've long found it highly obnoxious. "Oomph", groans Giada, as she decorously slithers her "favorite" lasagne into her mouth, or such and such dish like "her mother used to make". The number of Rachel Ray's dishes that she claims she "usually" makes in X or Y fashion are legion. And I won't even get into the pastiche clown, Guy Fieri.
In reality, no one has a ready repertoire of favorite dishes which they've served multiple times in the past vast enough to cover 3 dishes a day for even 30 episodes a year. My own grandmother, for example, a highly talented cook who fed a family all three meals every single day for 40 years, can count perhaps 10 dishes that would qualify as "favorites", or specialties, or about which she can claim with any plausibility "I usually serve it this or that way". She knows of, and can probably execute, any number of other dishes, but those are always in the context of having learned them from some woman in the past, or once having been served it at dinner. In the same way, listen carefully to Batali or Pepin on TV. Very rarely does either use the Food TV code. Rather, they learned the dish in Amalfi, or know puff pastry to be made in this way, or once ate it and remember the flavor vividly. There is none of the forced, fake, intimacy of Rachel Ray's apparently bachannalian home feasts, at which we are to suppose she serves 14 dishes a night to an army of hungry omnivores. Of course, professional chefs have a much larger mental library to work from than the rest of us. But that is obviously not what they're invoking on TV.
None of this is to say that there's no value in Food Network, or that I hate the hosts. There is, and I don't. But it is rich of someone to complain on Rachel Ray's behalf that Cindy McCain['s intern] stole her recipes as her own.
In reality, no one has a ready repertoire of favorite dishes which they've served multiple times in the past vast enough to cover 3 dishes a day for even 30 episodes a year. My own grandmother, for example, a highly talented cook who fed a family all three meals every single day for 40 years, can count perhaps 10 dishes that would qualify as "favorites", or specialties, or about which she can claim with any plausibility "I usually serve it this or that way". She knows of, and can probably execute, any number of other dishes, but those are always in the context of having learned them from some woman in the past, or once having been served it at dinner. In the same way, listen carefully to Batali or Pepin on TV. Very rarely does either use the Food TV code. Rather, they learned the dish in Amalfi, or know puff pastry to be made in this way, or once ate it and remember the flavor vividly. There is none of the forced, fake, intimacy of Rachel Ray's apparently bachannalian home feasts, at which we are to suppose she serves 14 dishes a night to an army of hungry omnivores. Of course, professional chefs have a much larger mental library to work from than the rest of us. But that is obviously not what they're invoking on TV.
None of this is to say that there's no value in Food Network, or that I hate the hosts. There is, and I don't. But it is rich of someone to complain on Rachel Ray's behalf that Cindy McCain['s intern] stole her recipes as her own.
4/15/2008
A quick weekday dinner salad
For most of 2007, I spent every day and much of every night in the office. The economy was piping hot, and legal practice for a corporate lawyer in New York was an unending stream of deals and transactions. In those circumstances, even the quickest home meals were impossible. The best I could do was order hummous, or taboule, or the like, from some of the middle eastern restaurants here in New York, and lose myself for a moment or two in nostalgia for home.
But the economy has slowed down, and my life is much better. I don't mean to downplay the wretched effects of economic stress on many people, but I have enjoyed very much coming home before midnight, the opportunity to see my girlfriend for more than snatched meals outside my office, the chance to breath some fresh, non-air conditioned air. And, of course, to cook during the week.
Weekday dinners need not be complicated, or time consuming. The last thing many people want to do after coming come from work is to wait for a stew to thicken. With spring finally here, furthermore, the vegetables are improving every day. With that in mind, dinner last night was this grilled goat cheese (from Vermont's Coach farms), atop a salad of tangy, spicy, dandelion leaves and thinly sliced apple, just to soften the sometimes astringent dandelions the tiniest bit. No, it's not fancy, but it'll do.
PS - I often get into arguments with other people who have long running issues with weight over whether one can plausibly eat, say, a 4 oz. chunk of goat's cheese healthily. All I have to say is that a 4 oz. goat's cheese like the above has about 250 calories, has great "mouth feel" (to use one of the worst food industry phrases) and "umami" up the wazoo. I'll take that over a frozen diet dinner any day of the week.
4/14/2008
A worthy pro-bono project
I had never before heard of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund, but now that I have, I'm enthused. Among other things, they're engaged in defending small farmers from the ravages of New York and California's state agricultural regulators, who are (as are all American agricultural regulators) evangelical about rubbing out raw milk. Especially interesting is the saga of Meadowsweet Farms, which apparently distributes raw milk and other dairy products through an LLC into which someone wishing to enjoy good food contributes capital. The profits produced by the cows fed by the capital contributions happen to be sweet dairy goodness. Unfortunately, Meadowsweet is under withering attack from the government, which is attempting to prove that it is illegally "selling" raw milk. A fascinating situation, and a worthy pro-bono project for any (ahem) lawyer.
Commodity Prices force school lunch cuts
The Washington Post reports the disturbing news that rising commodity prices are causing bad changes in school lunch programs. The really disturbing part of all this are the choices the schools are making to react. One school district has replaced "healthier options" (presumably milk) with Yoo-hoo. Another school has removed tomato slices (inappropriate given the season anyway) and replaced them with celery. And yet another came up with limiting fruit to twice a week.
I realize that the budgets are stretched. But it seems obvious to me at least that part of this has just got to be incompetence. Not because they're out of money, but because the apparent solutions have such deleterious effects that they're clearly worse than the disease.
I realize that the budgets are stretched. But it seems obvious to me at least that part of this has just got to be incompetence. Not because they're out of money, but because the apparent solutions have such deleterious effects that they're clearly worse than the disease.
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