A couple of weeks ago, I featured a cheeky video mashup of Nigella Lawson saying oh-so-naughty things, so, in fairness, here’s the same shtick with Gordon Ramsay:
Tag Gordon Ramsay
Not The Magical Fruit, The MIRACLE Fruit
Do you remember maybe three or four years ago there was a flurry of interest in something called “miracle berries”? They’re a small fruit that has a protein in it that makes sour things taste sweet. You rub the berry on your tongue, and then lemons take like candy, pickles are sweet, etc. You can’t really get the berries legitimately in the U.S., but people found a source and had “taste tripping” parties. Finally, somebody got smart and started making miracle berry tablets, and the novelty wore off and we all forgot about it.
Well, it’s probably due for a rebound, especially because of this Wired story today that explains how the protein, called “miraculin”, does its trick.
Here’s a clip from the Graham Norton Show from 2008 featuring none other than Gordon Ramsay trying the miracle berry, and he doesn’t seem all that impressed with the effect:
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Some Headlines Just Write Themselves
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Linkapalooza – Food And Other Delights
I had to stop watching this video because these guys were making me mental. It’s a gaggle of British geeks trying to put to the test Gordon Ramsay’s assertion that all of the recipes in his cookbooks are things that ordinary people could make at home. Except that these guys are either being deliberately obtuse or they are unimaginably stupid. Given that they’re geeks, we’ll go with a mixture of both — they are obviously trying to prove him wrong, but they also obviously know nothing about cooking when it deosn’t involve Hot Pockets (or whatever the British equivalent product is called) and a microwave. You might have more luck with it than I did.
Meanwhile, apparently Gordo’s been caught with his knickers down. The headline on that article is “Cheat And Two Veg”. HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Personally, I was hoping for something along the lines of a Spotted Dick joke, but it’s early yet. I also got a kick out of the Huffington Post’s charitable reference to the woman as a “Professional Mistress”. Oh, and here’s her blog, “Pillow Talk With Sarah J. Symonds”, in case you’re interested.
But back to the subject of food…
Maille mustard has been manufactured in Dijon, France since 1845, having been first invented more than 100 years earlier in Marseilles by Antoine Maille as a cure for the plague. Since then, Dijon has become world famous for the pungent, vinegary style of mustard that became popular in the United States in the 1980s with the success of Grey Poupon. However, as time went by, fewer and fewer mustards were actually made in Dijon except for Maille. Now there will be no more mustard made in Dijon, as the production of Maille products is moved to other factories throughout France. Back in 2000, global conglomerate Unilever, which owns everything from Slim-Fast to Vaseline, bought the Maille company, and they are consolidation production plants in France to cut costs.
This blog post at Epicurious takes a stab at predicting the food trends of 2009. Some of them are no-brainers: he preditcs that composting will be big (oh, really?) and that Starbucks’ popularity will die out in favor of local chains (with a 97% loss in profit for *$ last quarter, this is like predicting it will be dark every night). Some of them are pleasantly surprising: he thinks Portland, ME is about to become the hot new foodie town (actually, it’s been the “next big thing” for a decade, but it is about time indeed), and he says ginger is about to go big as the next must-try ingredient in cocktails. A couple of them score high on the “WTF” scale: Peruvian cuisine? Smoked foods? Anyway, save this for this same time next year to see how on-the-spot he was.
My friend Jo tipped me off to this story a couple of weeks ago: Ihsan Gurdal, the owner of the hallowed and much-loved Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge and Boston, has been selected to receive the “Merit Agricole” medal from the government of France for his exceptional role in bringing French cheese and other fine culinary products from France to the attention of American consumers. Vive Ihsan!
Lastly, a personal item. I would like it duly noted by one and all that I manned-up and ate a full serving of brussel sprouts with my Thanksgiving dinner. I kept our dinner menu simple this year and chose to make only one green vegetable to go with the mutant turkey breast, stuffing, and roasted sweet potatoes. Bridget implored me to make the Little Green Balls of Death, as they are a favorite in her family. Initially, my reaction was to say “Hell No!”, but after finding this Mark Bittman recipe posted at Serious Eats, I relented. I also decided that in the name of holiday simplicity, I would try them myself, since a good cook always eats his own food. Charlotte, on the other hand, would not be swayed and got a serving of frozen broccoli. The recipe, like most of the things Mark Bittman comes up with, was very simple — almost as simple as the traditional preparation of boiling the little bastards — and involved ample amounts of butter and wine, which I figured would probably do as well as anything to cover up the nasty flavor. And I was right. They were edible. Bridget and her parents absolutely raved about them, so if you are one of those people who (heaven forbid) likes the LGBoD, you will probably like this recipe, too. In the future, when I am pressed upon to make brussel sprouts, this will probably be my default recipe. You can pick up your jaws now.
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Everybody Hates Gordon
I’ll bet there are more than a few former employees of Gordon Ramsay, not to mention all the reality-show contestants, who have secretly (or not-so-secretly) wished for this moment.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
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Linkapalooza — Celebrity Gossip SPECIAL!!
From our “How Quickly They Grow Up Department”: Tween pop idol Miley Cyrus is reported to be in negotiations for a million-dollar deal to be the spokesperson for LifeStyle Condoms That’s going to put a whole new spin on her signature tune “The Best Of Both Worlds”, dontchathink? In related news, yesterday I got to explain what condoms are to my 7-yera-old daughter over lunch. Her reaction? “That’s gross!” I predict millions of similarly awkward conversations between parents and their pre-pubescent female children, but a huge uptick for sales of “Hannah Montana” bubblegum-flavored personal lubricant in Disney stores across the country. Meanwhile, Miley’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, is still a has-been. That is all.
From our “It’s Bleedin’ Seabird Flavor” Department: Celebrity chef and noted gastrosexual Gordon Ramsay got a little more than he bargained for recently when he fell ass over tea kettle off aa cliff in Iceland trying to catch a live puffin to cook and eat on his television show. The puffin bit him on the nose, causing him to lose balance and plummet onto the rocks below. Ramsay was quoted as saying “%6*@#$! *_@%@$^!!! you sodding puffin!” Nice mouth, Gordon. Do you talk to your mother that way?
From our “Too Hot To Trot” Department: It’s official: former Vice President Dan Quayle will NOT be one of the celebrities on the upcoming season of “Dancing With The Stars”. Why not? Sources say the only dance he knows how to do is the Mashed Potatoe. I t looks like pop star Lance Bass WILL be on DWTS, but producers have put the kibosh on having the now-out-of-the-closet star dance with one of the male dancers. That’s one less “showmance” to have to think about come September. The celebs will be announced on August 25.
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Food Link Dump
Here’s a bunch of food-related links that aren’t necessarily inter-related, but I wanted to share them with you:
Former “America’s Next Top Supermodel” contestant Elyse Sewell went to South Korea lately and tried a dish that contained dog meat (a common ingredient in several Asian cuisines). Guess what? It tasted like dog. (via)
There is a growing realization that despite the sensible opposition to genetically-modified food, we may have no choice but to make use of it anyway to combat the problems with food productivity in developing countries because we’ve fucked up the ecosystem so badly. Monsanto, the corporation most involved in designing and marketing GM crops and the targeted pesticides and fertilizers that go along with them, clearly recognized the inevitability of this a long time ago, which is why they have no compunction about strong-arming American farmers.
A couple of weeks ago, Laura Shapiro wrote this piece for Slate taking celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and his ilk to task for being out of touch with the reality of the situation faced by most home cooks in America: what he says should be a quick-fix dinner is a huge task for the home cook who gets home at 5:30 and needs to have dinner on the table at 6:00. Celebrity chef cookbooks, she complains, all expect you to have a traditional butcher on hand, ready access to expensive and hard-to-find ingredients, a full batterie de cuisine, and the skills of…well, Gordon Ramsay. She’s not wrong in a number of ways. Celebrity chef cookbooks in particular are the most guilty of engaging in food pornography and outsized expectations, and even Ramsay himself admits that he doesn’t cook for his family at home. She correctly observes that the genre of “quick meal” cookbooks (which the Ramsay book claims to be but surely is not) offer solutions that only work if you do such revolutionary things as plan ahead, shop in bulk, and learn how to fucking cook (Sorry, I’m channeling Gordon a bit myself). And that’s where I lose sympathy. Anyone who really thinks they can whip up a celeb-chef-quality meal in 30 minutes without any advance effort or expertise will also believe that they can lose weight without dieting and exercise, can make a fortune in real estate with only $10, or can have a penis bigger than the Eiffel Tower with just one little pill. 3QuarksDaily blogger Abbas Raza agrees with Shapiro, but takes his own tack: he’s all about taking the time to enjoy being in the kitchen when he cooks. Professionals need to learn how to be as efficient and multitasking as possible, amateurs do not. How can you enjoy eating the meal if you don’t enjoy making it?
If you haven’t read this New York Times article about how the increasing cost of fuel is being reflected in the price of food due to the sometimes bizarre transportation involved, please do. As I have said before, locavorianism might sound like just more fooodie snobbishness right now, but within a few years it’s going to become the way of life for most people, just as it was for centuries.
Harper’s Magazine has this great story about the foodie craze for raw milk and how some dairy farmers have created large and elaborate bootlegging operations to deliver the product to consumers while evading the efforts of the FBI. Some people claim that raw milk helps restore necessary bacteria in our intestines that fight off the increasing number of food allergies being diagnosed, helps reduce the number of unwanted hormones and steroids we ingest from milk produced by large commerical dairies, and that it’s just plain better tasting. This is an informative and well-researched article — don’t be surprised to see it pop up as a book down the road.
My friend Jo pointed me to this company’s webpage, which features beater blades with rubber scraper edges. They have one to fit just about every major model of stand mixer, and this definitely qualifies as a “Why didn’t they think of that before?” item.
Lastly, you probably read that Mars is buying Wrigley’s Gum. I would make a joke here about Uranus and the Hershey Highway, but I’ll let you figure out something on your own.
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Great Balls Of Fire
Yesterday, Slashfood picked up this item from the British tabloid The Sun wherein Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay told reporters that he’d managed to set fire to his testicles while cooking, but this morning the “Daily Dish” gossip column at SF Daily calls that story a load of bollocks. According to that column, Ramsay’s wife Tania says he had simply gone for a checkup and was making the story up (probably to explain why he was walking funny).
It’s not the first time Ramsay has made stories up just to get a little attention. This excellent New Yorker profile of him by writer Bill Buford from earlier this year reveals that it was Ramsay who staged the theft of his reservation book from his first restaurant “Aubergine” and blamed his arch-rival Marco Pierre White. That stunt was one of his first forays into sensationalized publicity, and he continues to be a press-whore to this day.