BrianKaneOnline » Food

Digesting

Brian — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:04:43 +0000

Links from the world of food:

Recently, I had a post about some recent articles linking picky eating to OCD and even autism, so this Daily Beast article caught my eye: veganism may also be a manifestation of eating disorders. A 2009 study of young adults ages 15-23 showed that those who said they had adopted “vegetarian” diets were also more likely to have engaged in binge/purge behaviors and use of laxatives or other “diet pills” for weight loss. The article also says that adopting a vegan or vegetarian diet is a recommended tactic for hiding an eating disorder promoted on “pro-ana” websites. The article is careful not to say that all vegans have eating disorders, it’s that people with eating disorders often turn to vegetarian or vegan diets as extreme weight loss mechanisms.

On the opposite end of things…this article from Twin Cities.com informs us about a Vietnamese restaurant in St. Paul, MN that has begun offering its diners a pho eating challenge: consume a bowl of pho that contains TEN POUNDS of rice noodles, along with the usual assorted slices of beef within 45 minutes to win a t-shirt proclaiming you to be “The Pho King”. The writer tried the challenge and couldn’t get anywhere close. He got a “Pho King Loser” t-shirt for his trouble. I loves me some pho, but I know I couldn’t slurp down ten pounds of rice noodles even if I had all day. But I would give it a go just for the “Pho King Loser” t-shirt. Sounds to me like the owners of the restaurant are deliberately angling to get “Man Vs. Food” to come pay them a visit.

This post at The Atlantic’s food blog by contributor Sarah Eltman makes me sad. She writes about going back to Barcelona after many years, expecting to enjoy a foodie holiday visiting all the local eateries and sampling authentic dishes made with local ingredients, only to find that the globalization of industrialized food means that the ingredients used in those places now are the same over-processed crap we eat at home. I’ve wanted to go to Barcelona for years, but maybe I’ll just go to Taco Bell instead.

And on a more practical note, this Serious Eats post tells us how to make our own crème fraîche at home. I was a little surprised to realize that I did not already know how to do this, because I’ve long known how to make yogurt and make a substitute for buttermilk, but there you have it. Indeed, all you need to do to make crème fraîche is to add a tablespoon or two of plain yogurt or buttermilk to a pint of heavy cream and let it sit for 12-24 hours, unrefrigerated. Just make sure none of the dairy involved is ultra-pasteurized because that kills the necessary bacteria. It gets harder and harder to find dairy that isn’t ultra-pasteurized these days, but if you’re lucky your grocery store still sells a local dairy’s products that aren’t. Once you get the tang and consistency you want, refrigerate your finished product and it will keep for 7-10 days.

Hey Food Network, Listen Up!

Brian — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:57:58 +0000

Feed Me

Brian — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:33:49 +0000

Britain has always taken a back seat to other countries, especially France and Italy, when it come to cheese, but did you know that there are 700 varieties of cheese made in the U.K.? Only 14 of them rise to the level of AOC-style designation, but it’s not unusual for artisanal cheeses to be as good or better than traditional styles. This BBC article talks about the growing public appreciation for cheese in the U.K. and the resulting explosion of cheese-making throughout the country.

Speaking of British traditions…for centuries, British sailors were issued a daily tot of rum as part of their rations. The rum was typically added to water and called “grog”, since the water wasn’t particularly palatable. Crews would even mutiny if their grog was withheld. The Royal Navy continued this tradition until 1970, if you can believe that, and the final issue of rum was ceremonially served to RN sailors as “The Black Tot”. The last of that specific stock of rum is now being sold, having been kept in storage all these years (just in case, I guess…you never know when they might need a flagon or two), at the rather steep price of £599 for a pint…although you do get a nifty replica of the copper cup used on ships to measure out the rations.

On our vacation to Cape Cod earlier in the summer, we took Charlotte to her first-ever drive-in movie at the Wellfleet Drive-In. There are so few working drive-in movie theaters left that we figured it might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for her. I was tickled that when the screen finally lit up one of the very first things they showed was a real 1950s ad for the concession stand just like the one in the YouTube clip above. This recent Serious Eats post has a handful of some of the better known ones, and if you go to the webpage for that YouTube clip, you will notice a slew of similar nostalgic bits of drive-in ephemera. Sadly, the actual concession stand food was still just as shitty and overpriced as it ever was, but at least she can say she got to have the experience.

This is called the “Toast-E/R”, and it lets you make your breakfast a little more exciting by pretending that you are defibrillating your bread into toasty deliciousness. It’s a project from designer Shay Carmon, so don’t rush on over to Target to try and buy one just yet, but don’t you just want it like RIGHT NOW?

Did You Say Asperger-us?

Brian — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:36:11 +0000

A pair of articles have drawn some interest in various online haunts:

First, the Wall Street Journal had this story a couple of weeks ago about classifying adult picky eating behavior as a variant of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and adding it to the DSM-IV as a clinical diagnosis.

Now this week there is an article in Time Magazine that looks at research which asks whether or not picky eating is an early indicator of autism

So, clearly we’re not talking about your average childhood aversions to food or even those adults (and you know who you are) who won’t eat mushrooms or tomatoes, or something. The people in the WSJ article have full-blown eating disorders that rival the severity of anorexia and bulimia because they restrict their diets to very limited numbers of foods, often based on irrational reasons. Meanwhile, the British researchers observed that children who developed autism often had more limited ranges of preferred foods, but it’s more of a symptom in the vein of some of the other sensory issues that affect autistics than a dysfunctional behavior. Nevertheless, given the link between autism and OCDs, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that eating behaviors would be a common element.

Food Feed

Brian — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:26:22 +0000

It has been nearly fifteen years since I moved away from Portland, ME and there is precious little I miss about it, but going to Harbor Fish Market to buy my seafood is definitely one of them. So is the best freaking pad thai I ever had, but that’s another story. Slashfood had a short interview last week with the owner of Harbor Fish, Ben Alfiero. They’ve expanded their business to include a wholesale business and they now include non-local product to cater to more sophisticated consumer demand, but they are still in that smelly little run-down wharf building and if you want the freshest possible fish in Southern Maine, they’re still THE place.

In case you hadn’t heard, the Great Bitters Drought of 2010 is finally over. Or, maybe you hadn’t heard there was a shortage of bitters in the first place…well, there was, but now there’s not. So there. This Atlantic Monthly food blog post from April explains the whole story behind bitters, what to look for, and how to use them in your cocktails for that exquisite little floral note.

Waah. Just waah.

Worst. Drink. EVAR.

Brian — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:03:06 +0000

So this list of 20 “Harmful Drinks in America” has been popping up here and there since I first saw it last week. The list is based mainly on the sugar content of the drinks (with calorie count as the second most important factor), and they illustrate each bullet item with an equivalent (in sugar) snack food as well as suggest a “better” alternative for each. The drink they rate as #1 is this milkshake from Cold Stone Creamery, which tops out at over 2000 calories, 153 grams of sugar and 131 grams of fat. The calorie content alone is about what an adult man should consume in an entire day’s worth of meals, and the fat is TRIPLE the daily suggested amount. That much sugar is the equivalent of over 30 teaspoonsful of sugar, or about half a cup.

Unbelievable.

And yet somehow they missed this drink, which, while lacking in sugar, is certainly waaay too popular with people in Washington:

Chicken

Brian — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:31:05 +0000

Well THIS makes me feel a whole lot better: the USDA has changed it’s standard for what percentage of chicken carcasses in a processing plant can test positive for salmonella. The new standard sets the limit at 7.5%. The previous limit, set in 1996, was…drumroll please…20%. Is it possible to be retroactively nauseated, because I think I am.

We’ve all got our hate on for the KFC Double-Down sandwich, right? I mean, could anything BE more disgusting and such a symbol of our gluttony? Well, this The Smart Set post by Greg Beato would kindly like you to remember that the Double Down doesn’t even qualify as an amuse bouche compared with the 12-egg omelets, truck-tire-diameter pancakes, and side-’o-beef burgers that Adam Richman finds in restaurants all over the country on Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food” or the cheese-laden, deep-fried, gut-busting “off the hook” dishes Guy Fieri lauds on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”.

And let’s not forget the health care reform idea touted by Nevada Republican Senatorial candidate Sue Lowden: paying your medical bills by bartering live chickens to your doctor in return for treatment. Who says Republicans aren’t just FULL of…ideas.

Would You Like A Little Tea?

Brian — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:00:28 +0000

‘Cause that’s about all you’ll get in a bottle of Snapple — a little.

Taste The Rainbow

Brian — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:49:14 +0000

True/Slant blogger Nadia Arumugam recently had this fascinating look inside the business of food colorings. Colorings aren’t just limited to the unnatural realm of candy and soda, they are used extensively across the entire processed food industry and are even used with “fresh” foods to maintain our unrealistic expectations of product quality. Hint: your orange isn’t really orange without a big ol’ spray of food coloring.

Teach A Man to Fish…

Brian — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:38:59 +0000

Good Magazine posted this excellent infographic last week that should help people decide what fish to buy at the market to promote sustainable fishing. (You’ll definitely need to visit the link to see the full-sized chart, which is huge) The data comes from the Monterey Aquarium in California, which tracks fishing stocks nationally.

It breaks down the information according to geographical regions, but there’s not a lot of difference between most of them other than some obvious differences between Pacific and Atlantic species. Even a quick glance will tell you, though, that most of the popular varieties — cod, haddock, flounder — are nowhere to be found, since those are the most overfished species. Oddly, the Northeast chart lists “spiny lobster” but not “Maine lobster”, even though the lobster population here isn’t particularly stressed and is actually on its way to a second year of overabundance, but maybe that’s just a mistake on the part of the infographic makers. I also notice that swordfish is back on the “okay to eat” list after having been the focus of an embargo by some restaurant chefs a couple of years ago.

Call Something Paradise, Kiss It Goodbye

Brian — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:12:20 +0000

There has been great concern that overfishing of bluefin tuna has decimated the stock to the brink of extinction. Bluefin tuna is one of the most popular fish used in sushi making; maguro is a standard item on any sushi menu, and the more prized fatty loin part, called toro is sold at a premium price. The profitability of bluefin tuna is so high, in fact, that yesterday the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) succumbed to pressure from fishing industry lobbyists and chose not to ban bluefin exports, quite possibly condemning the species to extinction within the next couple of years.

Scott Bowen has a bit of a rant at True/Slant that I have to share more than a little agreement with:

So, who gets to kill the last bluefin tuna? The Japanese? Who will eat the last $5,000 slice — some Japanese billionaire, or some fat sashimi-sucking bastard in LA?

Who gets to shoot the last polar bear? A white Canadian, or a member of a First Nation? What will be the opening price in a bidding war for the pelt — $10 million?

It’s times like this, when I read news like that above, that I react with a sense of the ludicrous — as ludicrous as those delegates at that UN conference on endangered species who acted to endanger those species further — and I start to speculate that there just aren’t enough predators eating people.

The remark about the polar bears? Yeah, CITES chose not to ban the sale of polar bear products (pelts, primarily) either. But at least global warming will kill off all the polar bears before the hunters will, so we don’t have to feel quite so guilty about that.

Obligatory Food Post Of The Week

Brian — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:18:56 +0000

Why, yes, I am a little obsessed with pho, thank you for noticing. And I do try to keep it under control — I limit myself to having pho once every couple of weeks so that I don’t get tired of it, and I try to eat it at different restaurants so I don’t get overdone on one place’s version (even though there is one I like head-and-shoulders above the others). Over the last couple of months, I’ve managed to inculcate my love of pho in Charlotte, so now she often accompanies me when I go out for a bowl. I’ve even had pretty good luck making it at home thanks to this crockpot recipe for broth at Steamy Kitchen. This morning I ran across this article in Smithsonian Magazine from noted food writer Mimi Sheraton about hunting for pho in the food stalls around the city of Hanoi. She also connected with a chef named Didier Corlou, a French chef who has lived and worked in Vietnam for nearly 20 years and has become the go-to guy to learn everything there is to know about pho and Vietnamese cuisine in general. Vietnamese cuisine is a unique fusion of traditional Asian cuisine and French influences, and even though pho is essentially the national dish of Vietnam, it is directly inherited from the French pot-au-feu. Just reading the article makes me want to break my self-imposed restriction and go have a bowl of pho for lunch today.

Noted British chef Rose Gray passed away a few days ago. Gray and Ruth Rogers were the chef-owners of London’s famed River Cafe, which spearheaded the revival of world-class restaurants in London in the 1980s. Americans will probably remember Gray and Rogers best from their beautifully-filmed food-porn cooking show that ran on PBS back in the 1990s; it was one of the first cooking shows to break away from the Julia Child-style 3-camera video format and feature drop-dead gorgeous photography of the food rather than the efforts of the cook. River Cafe became a spawning ground for many of the best-known chefs in Britain today, like Jamie Oliver. Rose Gray was 71.

I enjoyed this pair of posts on The Atlantic’s food “channel” from local chef Chris Parsons about competing in the Bocuse d’Or USA cooking competition. Cooking competitions are not just Food Network reality show fodder; the Bocuse d’Or competition has been around since 1987, and last year the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation was set up by some of the best chefs in the United States to encourage young American chefs to participate. Chris Parsons had toyed with the idea of competing for years before finally giving it a serious go last year. Parson’s own restaurant recently transformed itself from a fine-dine seafood place to a more casual “comfort food” theme (though he plans to re-open Catch somewhere in Boston or Cambridge at a later date).

Invasion Of The Burger Snatchers

Brian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:06:41 +0000

They’re building a Sonic Drive-In on Main Street in my town. It’s just the latest in a number of retail constructions on the main drag in the past couple of years; you’d have no idea the entire economy was in the crapper by the number of construction sites. Sadly for the property developers, though, once they get the sites built, they don’t always have tenants ready to move in, and so there’s a lot of brand-new-but-half-empty retail space waiting for the time way, waaay off in the future, when somebody might want to move in. But I digress a little…

The Sonic is being built right next door to the McDonald’s, which cannot have the McDonald’s franchisee too happy. Previously, the space housed a car dealer. When the car showroom building was torn down a couple of weeks ago, everybody was abuzz wondering what would take the space, but now that the frame of the building is up, so is the large banner on the front of the site. No doubt the cognoscenti of our little suburb knew exactly what was going on well in advance, but for us hoi polloi it came down to a six-foot strip of vinyl tied to a temporary fence to bring the news.

It’s kind of a big deal, not just because our town lags behind all of its neighbors in sheer density of fast food chains that aren’t Dunkin’ Donuts, but because it’s only the second Sonic location in the entire state of Massachusetts. Indeed, it is only the second Sonic in ALL SIX New England states. The first Sonic opened last summer to much attention from cherry-limeade-starved souls, who were willing to endure two-hour lines, valet parking, and unholy traffic congestion on a major thruway (the infamous Route One strip). Needless to say, there is much tut-tutting and clucking by the villagers, who are worried that the already-busy section of Main Street will turn into a parking lot from all the looky-loos who will descend on us like a plague of french-fry-devouring locusts.

Having grown up in Maine in the 1970s, I have been down this road before. When we first moved to Lewiston-Auburn in the summer of 1971, there was only one McDonald’s for a “metro” area of about 70,000, and it was way on the outskirts of Lewiston, close to the Maine Turnpike exit. It was a huge deal when, several years later, a second McDonald’s was built on the Auburn side of the river, and then equally big deals ensued when Burger King arrived a few years after that, and finally, when I was in high school, Wendy’s. Maine, however, is always late to the party for the expansion of national retail chains; there are still only a small handful of Starbucks in the whole state (our town in Massachusetts got its Starbucks two years ago, but they are numerous in the Boston area).

In a bit of serendipity, this infographic is making the rounds online. It shows the distribution of the major fast-food burger chains in the United States. Here’s the Fast Company article that brought the map to the attention of the Internet, and here’s the original blog post from a site called WeatherSealed.com. The Fast Company version changed the background color to make the McDonald’s locations (which were plotted in black against a black background in the original) stand out better. It’s interesting to see that McDonald’s base is so tightly concentrated in the Northeast, but even more interesting to see the predominance of other chains in other regions: Dairy Queen, which is a rarity here in the Northeast and operates almost exclusively in its form as an ice cream stand, OWNS the South Central region in a way that McDonald’s can only dream of.

For the sake of the franchisee, I hope the arrival of Sonic goes better than the arrival of Krispy Kreme donuts a few years ago. The anticipation behind the opening of the Krispy Kreme in Medford was nothing short of insane, and the initial customer response was enormous, but after about a year the whole thing died right off and the Kripsy Kreme chain itself went into bankruptcy. The retail location sat empty for a long time before finally being picked up by the beloved local chain of roast beef sandwich shops, Kelly’s. Meanwhile, the Ghost Town Plaza across the street sure could use half a dozen tenants.

Tell ‘Em “Julia Sent Me”

Brian — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:53:57 +0000

The Boston Globe has an article today about an underground dining club in the area, one of apparently a handful operating. According to the story, the idea kicked off in Portland, OR a few years ago and has spread around among foodie communities everywhere. Indeed, on the Food Network cooking competition show “Chopped”, they’ve had at least one “underground chef” that I can recall, who was from New York (as most of the Chopped contestants are). The idea, if you don’t bother to read the link, is that people find their way through their personal networks onto an e-mail notification list that invites them to a location (usually in someone’s home) for a dinner party. The chef prepares dinner for the 15-20 invited guests, who are expected to show up with a bottle of wine and $50 as a “suggested donation”.

Back when I was cooking, this was an idea I was very much intrigued by, but I didn’t realize at the time that it was as well-established as it seems to be. For the person doing the cooking, whether they’re a professional chef doing little gigs on the side, or a serious amateur, it offers the cooking experience reduced to its best elemental nature of doing one’s best work without the repetitiveness of banging out the same five entrees forty-seven times a night. And for the amateur chef in particular, the “suggested donations” ease the burden of the expense of simply throwing a dinner party. The guests get the reward of being able to enjoy fine cooking without the overhead of inflated restaurant prices, and probably get better food than they would in all but the really top places. The “underground” element has some implications with regards to food safety and the burden of adequate health inspection, not to mention the obvious avoidance of the Tax Man, but, hey, it’s a recession, baby.

I have two questions after reading this article: 1. how many of these supper clubs are there in the area and 2. how do I get on a mailing list?

BrianKaneOnline » Food

Digesting

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Hey Food Network, Listen Up!

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Feed Me

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Did You Say Asperger-us?

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Food Feed

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Worst. Drink. EVAR.

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Chicken

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Would You Like A Little Tea?

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Taste The Rainbow

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Teach A Man to Fish…

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Call Something Paradise, Kiss It Goodbye

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Obligatory Food Post Of The Week

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Invasion Of The Burger Snatchers

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Tell ‘Em “Julia Sent Me”

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