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).

See Also

• July 27, 2009 -- Comestible
• March 3, 2010 -- Tell ‘Em “Julia Sent Me”
• February 24, 2010 -- I Would Like Some BruSKETta With My Fuh, Please
• December 17, 2008 -- Ciao, Franco
• December 2, 2008 -- Linkapalooza – Food And Other Delights

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.

See Also

• November 19, 2009 -- Hunger In America, More Hunger In New England
• March 9, 2010 -- Hello, My Name Is Brian And I Am A Civ Addict
• February 10, 2010 -- Ayuh
• January 29, 2010 -- Truth Or Dare
• January 20, 2010 -- When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade

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?

See Also

• March 10, 2010 -- Obligatory Food Post Of The Week
• December 17, 2008 -- Ciao, Franco
• December 2, 2008 -- Linkapalooza – Food And Other Delights

I got yer giant 7-pound wiener right here, baby.

See Also

• Sorry, No Related Posts

Pho, of course, is one of the ten. The thing about pho, however, is that even if you say “fuh”, you are still not quite pronouncing it correctly, because it has an intonation that the little diacriticals on the last letter give it: ở This is how it should be said (link goes to an embedded .ogg sound file, you may need to download a codec to get it to play on your computer). I suppose that’s only really necessary if you’re in Vietnam and need to get it right for the locals, but we are being persnickety here, after all.

Don’t even get me started on bruschetta, though. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve had to hear a waitron call it “broo-shett-a”. I have even had a server actually correct me when I said “broo-SKET-ta”. Here’s the scoop, kiddies, they don’t use the letter “K” in Italian for the most part, instead they assign the “K” sound to the dipthong “CH” (and boy am I tickled to use the word “dipthong” in polite company). It’s the French who make “CH” sound like “SH”. So if you want to say it that way, make sure you ask for “brochettes”, not bruschetta.

Oh, and Giada would like to have a word with you about another Italian delicacy:

See Also

• March 10, 2010 -- Obligatory Food Post Of The Week
• July 27, 2009 -- Comestible

Instead of a crust made out of a single sheet of dough, his crust is made out of a series of overlapping “shingles” that can be torn off into whatever size serving the eater prefers. It’s a brilliant idea and I think it would be a smart way for pizza places to market large pies for groups.

The Economist’s offshoot magazine “Intelligent Life” features this online article wherein the writer and some friends attempted to choose the “Best Cheese In The World”. Hopeless task, to be sure, but in the undertaking they came to the conclusion that the U.K. is in the midst of a “Golden Age” of cheese, with dozens of excellent hand-crafted cheeses now being made in Britain. The article is full of recommendations, only one or two of which are non-British. If, like me, you enjoy having a cheese sampling evening once in a while, it’s probably worth seeing if you can hunt down any of the recommendations from your local cheesemonger.

Buncha geeks at MIT have put together this device that uses the concept behind 3D printing to make “printable food”. It’s sort of a prototypical version of the “food replicators” from Star Trek, which could seemingly create anything out of nothing just by the issuing of a command (“Tea, Earl Grey, hot!”). This Salon article from a couple of weeks ago is a little breathless about the idea of food printers replacing traditional food preparation, but it’s likely that it probably will find its way into the kitchens of “molecular gastronomy” maestros in one form or another. They already use food-grade printers to produce edible paper items at places like Alinea, so this would be the net logical step. Just don’t expect to be ordering your hot Earl Grey tea any time soon.

See Also

• December 19, 2008 -- For The Foodie Who Has Everything

This article in yesterday’s Boston Globe is an interesting case study in why some restaurant locations never seem to work out. The place is about to reopen as yet another restaurant after a parade of places that came and went with so much regularity you couldn’t be sure what would be there any time you drove by. The article doesn’t seem to address what I think is the central reason nothing lasts: it’s too far removed from the rest of Davis Square’s assortment of dining choices to attract a walk-in crowd. While the spot worked out well for the bakery cafe that was there for a long time, people walking around looking for lunch or dinner aren’t too likely to wander that far away from the action in the middle of the square. Until it becomes a destination in its own right, which the new chef-owner clearly believes it will, it’s likely to stay a revolving door.

Location doesn’t explain a couple of other similar revolving-door places I can think of in Arlington. Right in the center of the town, along with a cluster of very successful places, there are a couple of spots right on Massachusetts Ave that are as regular as clockwork with the changing of the management. In one particular case, it was actually successful for a while as an Indian place called Punjab; so successful that they moved to a bigger space a couple of doors down and sent their original space back into Cursed Cafe territory. So even a doomed spot can be turned into a success if the right thing happens — in the case of Punjab, there were too many Asian restaurants and no Indians ones, plus they benefitted from the coincidence of a regular program of Bollywood movies at the theater a block away, which brought lots of Indian visitors to the district.

I also find myself wondering what sort of inertia keeps lackluster places going year after year when better ones come and go. I suppose some places develop that vibe of being an institution in their particular geography, but usually those places have SOMETHING to recommend them. In the very same locations where the revolvers I’m talking about live, there are restaurants that seem to exist in some Bizarro world where no traffic equals longevity. Funny thing, the restaurant business.

See Also

• Sorry, No Related Posts

Yesterday I mentioned that the maple sugar producers would be hoping that ol’ Punxsutawney Phil would not see his shadow this morning, but, as usual, he did (although, that linked NatGeo article says that Phil is only right about 40% of the time). So it might not be a great year for maple syrup.

However, the cold weather that has dipped all the way down into the southern states this winter has had a beneficial effect on the carrot crop, according to this Atlantic food blogger, who lives in Texas. Apparently colder weather results in sweeter carrots. In fact, January is National Carrot Month, and tomorrow, February 3, is National Carrot Day, so obviously the dead of winter is Wabbit Duck Carrot Season!. There’s even a cute little song:

See Also

• Sorry, No Related Posts

I guess conditions are a bit milder in the New York City area, because here’s a first-hand account in the NYT from a woman who got to help out with a small sugaring operation right in the heart of Brooklyn. And by “small operation” I mean one sugar maple in some guy’s backyard, but they still do the whole thing with the taps and plastic tubing and buckets just like the farmers in Maine and Vermont. She got two gallons of sap for her efforts and then set up her own evaporator station in her kitchen to boil it down into Grade A syrup. You need 10 gallons of sap for 1 quart of syrup, so she didn’t get much finished product, but the very idea of boiling your own maple syrup on your stove seems like it would be a kick.

Here’s a clip from my favorite TV show, Dirty Jobs, where Mike Rowe, the host, helps a maple syrup farmer tap his trees, to help you get a sense of what the job is like. You can do it in your own backyard, too, if you have a sugar maple tree. This webpage has a video that tells you how to distinguish a sugar maple from other maple trees (which do not produce edible sap), since sugar maples are not as common in settled urban areas as Norway maples.

See Also

• March 25, 2009 -- Anagnoresis And Peripeteia
• March 2, 2010 -- Don Kent
• February 23, 2010 -- Observe The Snow, It Fornicates
• January 27, 2010 -- Because Road Runners Live In The Desert, Silly
• January 22, 2010 -- Looks Like His ACME Thermal Underwear Failed

Hey kids, your old pal Mr. Greenjeans says if you want to be healthy, you’ve gotta eat your leafy green veggies. Spinach was always Popeye’s favorite, but there are all sorts of greens to choose from, and most of them actually taste pretty good once you know how to cook ‘em and season ‘em. This post at Epicurious is a great guide to all the different types of greens you can find in the supermarket and even has links to recipes for each kind. Here in the Northeast, we get fresh local greens in the late part of the growing season, but they’re grown as winter crops in the South, so they’re available in supermarkets even now.

Here’s a recipe I like for kale:

Braised Kale with Onions and Pine Nuts

Ingredients
• 1 cup pine nuts
• 1 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 cup minced onions
• 1 bunch kale, stemmed and sliced thin
• 1/2 cup vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Directions
In a large saute pan over low heat, toast pine nuts for 3 to 4 minutes until lightly browned. Add butter and allow to brown. Add garlic and onions. Cook for 3 minutes until slightly caramelized. Add kale and toss lightly. Add broth, cook kale for 5 to 6 minutes until tender and liquid has evaporated. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

See Also

• October 12, 2009 -- Like The Good Old Days
• January 12, 2009 -- IKEA Cuisine

At least these tricks involve using (mostly) edible items. Some food stylist techniques include using Elmer’s glue in place of milk in cereal ads, painting food with glycerin to make it look shiny and juicy, and spraying food items with spray paint to enhance color. Granted, nobody’s ever going to eat the food used in commercials and photo shoots, but it’s the sort of unrealistic expectation that food ads create that results in situations like Domino’s Pizza having to “reboot” their product because the reality was so unappetizing. (I wonder if they’re going to fix the pasta bowls, too)

See Also

• March 10, 2010 -- Sing Along With Mitch-ski!
• March 4, 2010 -- Invasion Of The Burger Snatchers
• February 23, 2010 -- A Boid’s Gotta Get To Woik, Knowhutimean?
• February 10, 2010 -- Today’s Moment of WTF
• January 27, 2010 -- The Militant Atheist

Raye’s Mustard is a product made in Eastport, Maine that probably most people outside of Maine have never heard of. In fact, I’d wager most people inside of Maine haven’t heard of it either, even though it has been around for a long time. Apparently Martha Stewart “discovered” it not too long ago (Martha owns an island off the coast of Maine and spends a lot of time there…it probably reminds her of her days in the pokey), and she still has enough juice with the foodie crowd to bump a product. This morning there’s a post on The Atlantic’s food blog by Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig, also singing its praises, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to get in on the bandwagon. Weinzweig writes about how the Rayes produce the mustard using an actual stone mill, the last of its kind in the U.S. You might remember this post I wrote back at the end of 2008 reporting the end of traditional mustard making in Dijon, which helps underscore what marvelous things traditional handmade food products like Raye’s Mustard really are. (Unsurprisingly, Zingerman’s does indeed sell Raye’s, in case you were wondering)

Among the glut of “Best Of The Decade” articles that have inundated us all these last several weeks, Fast Company (of all places) had a post summing up what it called the “Eight Biggest Kitchen Innovations of the 2000s”. Now, usually Fast Company is more interested in social networking, green technology, and other buzzword-of-the-minute flimflammery, but that drew my attention. Sadly, the piece is one of those annoying “slideshows” that makes you reload the page every time you advance forward (all the better to collect ad revenue, my dear), and the resulting text is a little slim but here is my neat little summary list for you and some personal opinionating to go with:

1. The turbo-oven — Yes, that thing Starbucks uses to overcook your breakfast sandwich. I’m not sure you’ll find too many $8000 turbo-ovens in home kitchens yet, but the professional models are showing up in all sorts of smaller restaurant situations that would never have sprung for the big convection ovens heavy-duty kitchens have.
2. Vacuum sealers — Those crappy things you see on infomercials have been upgraded quite a bit in recent times. The one in the FC post is a deluxe model (natch), but a basic one can be had for about $100 according to this site. I have to say I might actually buy one of these.
3. FreshDirect.com — A-ha! FC shows its true colors by naming a website as a “kitchen innovation”. This is a New York City-only service that lets insufferable New York foodies feel superior and sanctimonious about buying “fresh and local” produce. What bullshit!
4. Home Molecular Gastronomy — Oh, please.
5. Vorwerk Thermomix — a German-made überappliance that blends, steams, boils, grates, whisks, kneads, chops and has a built-in food scale all for only $1400! And you have to buy it from a Canadian website! Could it get any more trendy?!?!?! Foodies will LOVE it! WARNING: If you actually buy one of these, Alton Brown will personally come to your house and bitch-slap you.
6. Microplane Grater — At last, an actual kitchen tool worth talking about! The fine-rasp grater was a HUGE sensation when it came out, and rightly so. This guy is the ultimate grater for Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, lemon zest, or anything else you want finely grated. I have a couple of larger-grate Microplanes as well, but this one is truly indispensible. Good call!
7. Epicurious iPhone App — More electronica, but this one is actually pretty handy because it builds shopping lists and has a metric buttload of recipes to choose from. I don’t know if the recent demise of Gourmet magazine will doom this or not. Also, not really an “innovation”, as recipe software has let you make shopping lists for eons, but a very good portable app for the gadget-loving cook (ahem!).
8. Tabletop Sous Vide — Professional kitchens ADORE sous-vide (but only in places where local food ordinances haven’t banned it), and if this came down a few notches in price it might catch on with home cooks, too.

See Also

• October 28, 2009 -- Six Minute Egg
• October 27, 2009 -- Go Boil An Egg
• October 23, 2009 -- An Assortment Of Food Links
• February 27, 2009 -- Linkapalooza 02/28/09 – Food
• February 23, 2009 -- Hail To The Chef!
]]> http://www.briankaneonline.com/2010/01/04/a-smorgasbord-of-food-links/feed/ 3 http://www.briankaneonline.com/2009/12/11/dont-eat-that/ http://www.briankaneonline.com/2009/12/11/dont-eat-that/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:34:31 +0000 Brian http://www.briankaneonline.com/?p=2734

There are plenty of gross things that you probably wouldn’t eat in the first place, but this website has a list of seven things that you probably eat all the time that some scientists would never consider putting in their mouths for one reason or another: additives, unsanitary production methods, chemical leaching from packaging, etc. You probably won’t be too surprised at the things that made the list, although one of them took me a little by surprise. Also, a couple of them are so ubiquitous in our commoditized food supply that there’s no real alternative except to stop eating those things altogether.

See Also

• November 16, 2009 -- You Gonna Eat That?? SRSLY??
• October 28, 2009 -- Enlightening (and Discouraging) Factoid Of The Day
• September 2, 2009 -- When The Swallows Salmon Come Back To Capistrano Paris
• March 3, 2009 -- “Things I No Longer Believe In”
]]> http://www.briankaneonline.com/2009/12/11/dont-eat-that/feed/ 2 http://www.briankaneonline.com/2009/12/07/his-noodly-appendages/ http://www.briankaneonline.com/2009/12/07/his-noodly-appendages/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:56:39 +0000 Brian http://www.briankaneonline.com/?p=2704

Over the weekend, blog-buddy Karan asked some of us if we had any great ideas for homemade food gifts to give to family and friends for the holiday season. Quite honestly, we’ve neither given nor received much in the way of homemade food items, but when I ran across this tasty confection I knew right away that it was the PERFECT holiday food gift item for anyone! Here’s the recipe. (via The Friendly Atheist)

See Also

• November 25, 2009 -- The BKO Guide To Thanksgiving
• August 3, 2009 -- What? No Lark’s Vomit? No Steel Bolts?
• March 27, 2009 -- Candy Is Dandy, But Liquor Is Quicker
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