This recent article from the British newspaper The Independent reports on a company in Latvia called Mottra, which has devised a way to remove the roe from sturgeon without killing the fish. They hope that this “sustainable” process, along with other eco-friendly and high-quality production methods, will help them revive the caviar business, which has been in steep decline as traditional methods had basically all but wiped out the sturgeon populations in Russia and Iran. A 1-ounce jar of their ossetra caviar will set you back about $65, so it remains as much a luxury product as ever, but at least it means that real caviar will still be around for a while.
This story from the Chicago Tribune puts together a Top 10 List (hey, now THERE’s an idea!) of “The Worst Dining Trends Of The Decade”. I’m not sure WHAT decade they mean, because some of the things on the list go back to the 1990s, but whatever. The article forces you to click through a photo gallery to see each item on the list, which is itself one of the 10 Most Annoying Things about online newspapers, so I will sum up the list for you here and offer a choice remark or two:
- Deconstruction — presenting all the ingredients in a familiar dish in some different order or assmeblage. Sometimes a deconstructed dish is a refreshing way to revisit a tired stand-by, other times it’s just silly.
- Chef As Media Whore — really has nothing to do with food except, yeah, it’s disappointing to go to a famous restaurant and discover that the chef hasn’t actually cooked there EVER (I’m looking at YOU, Gordon Ramsay). If you have seen any of the episodes of Next Iron Chef, it’s frankly embarrassing how these people are trying to turn themselves into celebrities.
- The Menu As Book — also really has nothing to do with food so much as the “dining experience”. It’s only really annoying when that paragraph of purple prose turn out to be telling you you’re getting an over-cooked piece of fish with a little sauce and a couple of steamed green beans.
- Foam — ’nuff said
- Knee-jerk online reviews — all those 5-star reviews on Yelp are indeed pretty fucking useless, as are the 1-star reviews from angry people. The idea that you can get meaningful information by aggregating 10 million uninformed opinions was hopeless in the first place, and isn’t limited to restaurant reviews.
- Proudly obnoxious fast food options — you know, crap like those disgusting KFC “Famous Bowls”, or those multi-patty 10,000-calorie burgers. Yes, I know they’re trying to be ironic, but there are a lot of stupid people in this country on whom irony is completely lost and who don’t have the health insurance required to ream out their arteries after eating this shit. Good call.
- Communal Tables — making dining parties sit together like one big, awkward family Thanksgiving dinner with relatives you’ve never met. This is a new one to me, but, yeah, if I’m paying premium for a nice dinner in a swanky joint, I don’t want to sit next to smelly Uncle Whats-his-face.
- The $40 Entree — fuck yeah. There’s a recession on, people. This ought to be a lot higher on the list than #8
- Molecular Gastronomy — I think this is still in the realm of super-high-end places, and it’s fine to have those experiences available, so I’m not sure I would be so quick to put this on the list, but I suppose it will eventually start filtering down into restaurants where they have no business trying to do this stuff whatsoever, so maybe the list is just a little ahead of the curve.
- Fried Onion Blossoms — oh, my, yes, they are disgusting, but I think this belongs lumped in with the other fast food crimes. Maybe a better #10 might be “Wine Flights” — serving two sips of five different wines with my four-course prix-fixe dinner doesn’t make the food or the wine any better, and if the wine servings are too big then I am too drunk to care about your food mid-way through the main course.
Last week, Atlantic Magazine food blog contributor Regina Charboneau had a post entitled “The Five Books Every Cook Should Have”. Wisely, she didn’t specify five individual cookbooks, since that way madness lies; instead, she outlined five TYPES of cookbooks that should form the backbone of one’s cookbook collection, namely:
- a technique primer based on French cuisine
- a big recipe compilation cookbook
- a pastry cookbook
- another technique primer, this time Italian
- a comfort food cookbook
Hard to argue with her reasoning, although I might extend the list a little and include one non-Western cuisine and a quick-and-easy cookbook. She mentions a few of her own choices within those categories, and the commenters on the post also list their choices; all the usual suspects are mentioned numerous times (Joy of Cooking, Julia Child, Mark Bittman, Marcella Hazan, Elizabeth David, etc.), with a few less-known titles that might be worth having (like Jewish Cooking In America) If I had to list my five, they would probably be: La Varenne Pratique, Joy of Cooking, The King Arthur Cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and “Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home”.
