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Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
Most of us don’t rely on white powder to help us do our job, but food blogger and restaurant owner Haddock did at a recent wine festival. Wonder what the street price is for methocel.
A (presumably nonnarcotic) white powder, the methocel was meant to help mold the warm lamb’s-neck terrine that Haddock had planned to serve at the recent Zinfandel Festival in San Francisco. Problem was, it didn’t work.
Don’t you just hate it when the drugs let you down?
The methocel, which is supposed to gel when warm (as opposed to most gelling agents, which become firm only when cold), failed to set the terrine, leaving Haddock with 800 portions of ungelled warm lamb broth.
What did he do? Check out his blog, Knife’s Edge, to see how a pro deals with a last-minute crisis on a grand scale.
Posted
on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
by Tea Austen Weaver in Food Media |
More like this: haddock, knife's edge, media, methocel, the grinder, zinfandel festival
Now this is dead brilliant, what?
Check out these two ingenious devices for cooking perfect eggs. First we’ve got the British Egg Information Service (yes, that’s a real thing), with their “self-timing egg,” which is
… imbued with the powers of heat-sensitive invisible ink that turns black the minute that it is ready. All you need to do is decide whether you prefer your eggs soft, medium or hard-boiled, and buy accordingly.
Just think: No more agonizing over gray yolks! You’ll take first prize with your deviled eggs at the next office picnic!
OK, you can calm down now and take a dekko at the PerfEGG, which was designed by a 22-year-old industrial-design student at Brunel University. The PerfEGG “keeps the water temperature constant for 8.5 minutes without reaching boiling point. The aim is to let the egg white coagulate but keep the yolk runny.”
Being slightly more oriented on the soft-boiled process, the PerfEGG is impossibly, delightfully British. Except for the Anglophiles who stock egg cups along with tin toast racks and bottles of Pimm’s, most Americans don’t seem to have too much call for soft-boiling their eggs, perching them in the aforementioned egg cups, beating a staccato with their spoon, and dipping hot buttered toast strips in the golden pool within.
However, as I am one of those Anglophiles and also wish to take a blue ribbon for my deviled eggs, I have my fingers tightly crossed that both these eggzacting devices make it across the pond very soon.
Posted
on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic in Food Media |
More like this: cooking eggs, egg, eggs, food gadgets, media, perfegg, pimm's, the grinder
The St. Petersburg Times (of Florida, not Russia) is reporting that “17 of 24 Tampa Bay area restaurants tested last year by the Florida Attorney General’s Office advertised grouper on menus but served some other fish.”
The most entertaining snippet of the piece:
WingHouse serves a ‘grouper teammate’ sandwich that is swai, another Asian catfish.
Director of purchasing Christopher M. Jones said he has been on the job only a few weeks and was not party to conversations with the state but said WingHouse would follow the law.
Customers know that ‘grouper teammate’ is not really a grouper, he said. ‘It’s all a fun joke.’
Hilarious! Laissez les bons temps rouler!
A criminal investigation is under way, and the implications of GrouperGate are all pretty much terrifying.
1. If you go into a restaurant and order a particular kind of fish, there’s a chance the restaurant is conning you. Moreover, there’s a chance that the restaurant’s actually been conned by its supplier, and therefore will present you with the wrong fish without even knowing it.
2. People—customers and restaurateurs—can’t tell one kind of fish from another. Have we all lost our collective tastebuds? Or does it just not make much of a difference what we’re eating anymore?
3. There are not enough damned grouper to go around. Lump that in with the seemingly endless list of different overfished seafood species, and we’re clearly facing a seafood problem of epic proportions. And by “seafood problem,” I mean “aquatic ecosystem problem.” Because that sounds a little less gluttonously narrow-minded.
Posted
on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
by James Norton in Food Media |
More like this: fake fish, grouper, media, overfished, scam, st. petersberg times, the grinder
Frank Bruni, restaurant critic for The New York Times, joined the rest of the world this week, dining just like a “normal” person.
As he explains in his blog, it happened just as it does to the rest of us. Feeling hungry after a movie, Bruni and a friend popped into a neighborhood restaurant—without reservations, without prior research, and without great expectations beyond the hope for a decent meal. Just like the rest of us.
In Bruni’s own words, “I ate spontaneously. I ate imperfectly. I ate without agenda.”
‘Cause sometimes even restaurant critics get hungry.
Congratulations, Frank. You’re normal.
Posted
on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
by Tea Austen Weaver in Food Media |
More like this: dining without reservations, frank bruni, media, new york times, restaurant critic, the grinder
New York magazine has a one-page story on KidFresh, “an Upper East Side children’s food store” that caters to “time-starved parents and juvenile taste buds.” The piece is nominally about the store, which lets kids push miniature carts around and browse 35 elegant little prepared refrigerated—and mostly organic—meals. But the star of the show is 10-year-old Jake, a precocious little foodie who says stuff like this:
‘I expected the food to be like Campbell’s soup, but it’s not at all. It’s pretty good, but not for a guy like me. I prefer Citarella or Dean & DeLuca. I treasure things like an aged balsamic vinegar and truffles—the mushrooms, not the chocolate.’
The moral of the story: Raise your kids on the Upper East Side, and brace yourself for wisecracking little adults who are freebasing and making commercial-quality crunk mix tapes by the time they’re 14.
Posted
on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
by James Norton in Food Media |
More like this: crunk, jake, kidfresh, media, new york magazine, the grinder
The blogosphere is enraptured by Michael Pollan’s (The Omnivore’s Dilemma in case you were snoozing under a rock last food year) piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.
“Unhappy Meals” is a polemic against processed food and the cult of “nutritionism”—that is, eating nutrients (often found in boxes of fortified crap) instead of eating whole foods. Don’t have time to read the thousands of words that encompass the history of nutrients, the rise of high-fructose corn syrup (boo, hiss), and the crucial differences between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids? Skip to the end, where Pollan gives nine “rules of thumb” he has collected.
More than 100 blogs have already weighed in on the story. Most are effusive in their praise. “Brilliant,” notes sustainable-food blog Post-Haste Taste. “Wonderful,” says nutrition blog Guerilla Nutrition. “So simple and so true,” says Calorie Restriction blogger Christina’s CR Journal. Some bloggers, like Waisted in the Wasteland, are so inspired by the article that they’ve vowed to move The Omnivore’s Dilemma to the top of their to-be-read stack. Not even a blog called Snarkmarket could work up any snark for Mr. Pollan. Everyone, it seems, loves him.
Well, except those malcontents on Metafilter, who bring a refreshing skepticism to the party, bashing Pollan for sins that range from essentially “writing the same article/book over and over again” to not even bringing up the concept of exercise. Posters on Chowhound (Chow’s sister site) are also having a thoughtful discussion around elements of the article.
Is “Unhappy Meals” the seed that will turn into another Michael Pollan best-seller? Stay tuned!
Posted
on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
by Miriam Wolf in Food Media |
More like this: calorie restriction, media, michael pollan, new york times, omnivore's dilemma, the grinder
After yesterday’s hot mess, Food & Wine is backpedaling as quickly as possible. Today their homepage announces: “Hungry for the Truth: Who’s the Real Top Chef? See profiles of both finalists that we prepared in advance [emphasis mine] of the last episode.” When you click through, you are informed:
Yesterday, an intrepid reality tv fan found a Top Chef story on Food & Wine’s server. Food & Wine prepared profiles of both Top Chef finalists in advance of the last episode so that we had a story on the winner ready to publish immediately after the season finale. Now for everyone to see, here are profiles of both finalists, Marcel and Ilan. Watch Top Chef on Wednesday, January 31 at 10PM EST to find out the real winner.
Nice try, Food & Wine. You can argue until you’re Cabernet in the face that the profile “found” yesterday is not necessarily that of the winner, but not many will believe you. Especially not the rapacious posters in the spoiler thread at Television Without Pity. A few posters in the aforementioned thread suggest differences in the writing quality between the two pieces, opining that one feels more forced or faked than the other.
Honzo Steel cracked me up with this comment in the Television Without Pity forums: “Wow! This is just like the movies. Roxie Hart Guilty. Roxie Hart Not Guilty. Superman Dead. Superman Lives.” Superant adds, “Maybe it’s like the movie “Clue,” with multiple endings. One, where Ilan wins. One, Marcel wins. Another, Tom C executes everyone by firing squad.”
Personally, I’d be partial to a Scooby-Doo ending where Hubert Keller gets his mask pulled off, revealing himself to be Old Man Bourdain, and says, “And I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you f*cking kids!”
Posted
on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic in Food Media |
More like this: anthony bourdain, food & wine, media, scooby doo, television without pity, the grinder, top chef
Recently, we wrote about the controversy brewing in Sonoma County, California, over the use of gestation crates for pregnant and nursing sows. The rectangular cages, which are so narrow that the sows can’t turn around, have been dubbed inhumane by many animal-rights groups. They’ve already been banned in Florida and Arizona (two states, it must be noted, with very little actual pig farming within their boundaries), and will be outlawed in the European Union by 2013.
Now, according to The Washington Post, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, has promised to phase out the use of the crates during the next ten years. With a company as huge as Smithfield, only another corporate supergiant can make a difference. In this case, it was McDonald’s that leaned on the Virginia-based pork producer to make their farming practice—and thus the PR for the buyers of their ham and bacon—a little sweeter.
Maybe Smithfield is finally stepping up its corporate responsibility, after being dogged over the past few years with million-dollar lawsuits from environmental groups and governmental agencies for, among other things, violating the Clean Water Act by dumping hog waste into nearby waterways.
In a press release issued the same day as the Smithfield declaration, the Humane Society of the United States praised the decision and pushed for the rest of the pork industry to follow suit over the next five years.
Posted
on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
by Stephanie Rosenbaum in Food Media |
More like this: farrowing crates, gestation crates, humane society, media, pigs, smithfield foods, sows, the grinder
In a post that launched some interesting discussion on Serious Eats, Adam Roberts of Amateur Gourmet asks, “Does Cooking Make You Gay?”
The basis for this question is Roberts’s observation that Easy-Bake Ovens weren’t marketed to boys when he was growing up (though now it’s a different story, as one commenter points out). “A little boy watching a commercial for an Easy-Bake Oven should roll his eyes or make a fart noise with his mouth to assert his masculinity,” Roberts muses. He describes how it wasn’t until he came out of the closet in college that he felt able to express his “newfound enthusiasm for artisanal cheese, cold-pressed olive oil, and Niçoise olives,” but accurately notes that the testosterone-driven world of professional chefs is a different story. The distinction, he says, is between men who cook at home and those who wield their knives in restaurant kitchens.
But many male commenters take issue with this breakdown, and some of their responses are ultimately more thoughtful than Roberts’s original post. As one asks,
Why do you relate ‘gay’ with being effeminate? Your headline should read ‘Does Cooking Make Men Feminine?’ That’s the real subject here…. What is wrong with being feminine? Historically, we as society treat women as inferior to men. Sexism. It exists in the kitchen because it exists in society. Even with all the celebrity female chefs (who are oftentimes exploited for their ‘sex appeal’), there exists a ‘stainless steel’ ceiling for women in the restaurant world. That would be a more apropos topic.
Roberts does raise the good point that there is probably only one openly gay man among the legions of Food Network and Bravo chefs (Ted Allen). And in other media outlets, gay male chefs like Pichet Ong of NYC’s Spice Market have discussed the prejudice that still exists in the kitchen. But another commenter points out that there are many more “out” lesbian chefs than gay men in the food world—or, in the joking parlance of some foodophiles, the “Dyke Food Mafia” (whose members include big-name chefs Cat Cora, Traci Des Jardins, Elizabeth Falkner, and Gabrielle Hamilton).
I haven’t read any profiles or reports of openly lesbian chefs discussing how their sexuality has changed their experience in the restaurant world—though many say that their sex (female) certainly is a rarity among chefs. What role do you think gender and sexual orientation plays in kitchens, both at home and in restaurants?
Posted
on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
by Christy Harrison in Food Media |
More like this: adam roberts, amateur gourmet, chefs, cooking, Food and Cooking, gay, lesbian, media, Restaurants and Bars, serious eats, sexuality, the grinder
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