food museum blog

"Food 2.0" Energizes!

Charlie Ayers is my kind of food guy and cook.  Most associated with being the fellow who "fed Google," he was the head chef there from 1999 to 2005, responsible for feeding 1500 people each day, 4000 lunches and dinners, in 10 cafes at Google's Mountain View, CA, campus.  His goal was to feed a diverse and smart group of people tasty, healthy food. Evidently, he succeeded.

His book , Food 2.0,  $25,  just published by DK Publishing, reflects his Google-ish commitment to  fast, unfussy, fresh food that might even push you into the genius category.  His tips upfront are utterly sensible and smart,  laid out with crisp, readable efficiency. What to keep on hand and how to keep it so that when the yen for a snack wafts over you, the veggie munchies are right there, ready to go.   I imagine he's the kind of person who stands at the fridge, eating a handful of blueberries, a couple of carrot sticks, a few lettuce leaves, and calls it salad on busy days.

What utterly won me over, however, was his love of full-fat, plain yogurt. He speaks my mind, indeed.  That ambrosia is good for the digestive system, satisfying, and bears no resemblance to the manufactured sweet, fruity little cupfuls of junk all over the supermarket. He also praises Trader Joe. Yes! Also: "Chocolate is a non-negotiable part of my life."

One of his early recipes is for "Mystery Fondue," made from assorted bits and bobs of cheese he saves up and then melts together with white wine and mustard seed.  And Apple and Brie Quesadillas, Silicon Valley Split Pea Soup, as well as Seared Southwestern Ahi Tuna Tornadoes, and a further slew of eclectic offerings.

The ahi is rubbed with a chile-spice mix, seared, and then wrapped in a tomato tortilla spread with a lime and spice avocado mayo and a stack of jicama, carrot, napa cabbage.....

OY--he even makes spinach latkes.

Food 2.0  is a solid and satisfying book, even in review-copy grainy black and white.  The retail hardback is in resplendent full-color from fabled Dorling Kindersley Ltd.

Home Cooking from the Mediterranean

In these troubled times of an expensive out-of-control war, food crises, political shenanigans and more, it is always a comfort to, well, eat. But before that, cook something homey and warming and reminiscent of a more tranquil time.
Armenian-American chef and restaurant owner Zov Karamardian's self-published book  ZOV--Recipes and Memories from the Heart offers up multiple tasty, colorful dishes that fill that bill.  The first entries I checked were under "eggplant" in the index, because one of my all-time favorite pleasures was a bubbling rich eggplant casserole perfected by a friend's Armenian-American Mom. To my delight, Zov presents an inviting vegetarian Eggplant Tagine, made with chickpeas as well, typical of the North African stews that combine subtle flavors with slow cooking. She recommends with it Roasted Rack of Lamb with Pomegranate Sauce --the pomegranate, today's latest health juice item,  reminds us of the possibility of enjoying "new" ( albeit ancient) tastes.
Kooba Hamoud, appropriately an Iraqi dish--a "meatball soup with lemon and mint," reminds me of the garlic, mint and lemony dishes we enjoyed as Peace Corps volunteers in Iran.

Can anyone tell me why human beings waste  lives, money, time, energy, spirit and resources in the archaic pursuit of warfare in the 21st century, when we could be sharing aromatic dishes of food with one another?

"Cooking Light's" Gargantuan Opus

Eleven million readers! So claims Cooking Light magazine on its website. Established by Southern Progress Corp, Birmingham, AL,  in 1987, the magazine's aim is to scale back the fat in not just fried chicken--( NB--fried chicken empire KFC apparently is now offering grilled hens)--but in a wide range of traditional as well as global recipe favorites. Its approach is readable, practical, and utterly specific. And younger cooks in my family have praised the magazine's suggestions over the years.

Yesterday the company launched Cooking Light Complete Cookbook--A Fresh New Way to Cook, published by Oxmoor House, $34.95,  part of the Southern Progress group. Again, the practicality of the approach stands out. The 5-ring binder book containing 1200 recipes allows for easy removal of pages. Its surface is washable, for messy cooks like me, and the book comes with a DVD labeled "Bonus--Cooking Light Dinner Tonight Cookbook" featuring 100 recipes and multiple how to's.
( Yes, I have printed up recipes from the Internets but I have never allowed my laptop anywhere near my cooking arena, lord no. ) Calories, fats, carbs, etc., are listed at the end of each offering.

But, and here come the "buts," where's the joy? The exuberance of eating well --oops, that's another food mag---the taste, the aromas, the cultural background? Not here.

The layout begins with a section on In Season, all well and good. Then it gives a primer on what Healthy Eating is about, according to the authors, who must be congratulated on a thoroughly vetted, complicated project, mind you.   Next up are Entertaining and  Appetizers & Beverages, thereby making me feel I had stumbled into a 1950's  tome from Betty Crocker. Wha? Maybe the 21st century has reverted to home entertaining on a big scale while I was blogging--maybe gas prices are thrusting us back on cocktail hour with the neighbors. Maybe?

But having to flip through a major cookbook in search of main courses??  See-- after doing the Wasabi Bloody Marys--OY!-- and Mini Black Bean Cakes--yum, we are really salivating for dinner, and yet the cookbook offers us mega pages of BAKED GOODS next--breads, and cakes, and cookies and, and...

OK, I am possibly making too much of a fuss, but the fruit and veggie sidedishes are smack dab at the end next to substitutions and what a cup is and whatnot. The fish section neglects to inform the reader about the health benefits/sustainable issues of fish, but I suppose there's no room, sadly. And, alarmingly, an entire section of luscious looking fare is labeled Meatless Main Dishes. Please! This is so..........Betty Crocker?  Mushroom Tamales, Tomato Basil Tart, Corn Fritatta, yes. I think 21st c. Americans can handle Vegetarian Main Dishes, I really do.

I realize this is not intended to be the kind of cookbook one gets into bed with, red wine and oozing cheese on the night stand, for a sensual romp through phantasmagoric foodland.  Sitting bolt upright at my desk,  however, I utterly fell for the recipe for Swedish Limpa Soda Bread--it's seasoned with anise and orange rind. Excellent.

Congratulations, Cooking Light, on a major opus many will find perfect--the superlative recipe for Grilled Fries ( white and sweet) on p. 381 has been duly noted.   

Scared of Cooking? No Time?

Michael Pollan, author of several well-researched books on American food and eating, recently said in an interview that Americans are making cooking a "spectator sport." And thus many are becoming intimidated by the world's oldest nurturing activity, as if it is the province only of flashy chefs with obscure ingredients at their knife points.

BBC America carries a slew of Chef Gordon Ramsay's shows, including one in which he invites to his restaurant a big crowd of youngish women in an effort to "get women back in the kitchen." The dishes he does for that show are relatively simple and quick to do, especially if you are accustomed to working fast and efficiently in the domain that many women determinedly tried to escape for years. But...several women interviewed still felt that cooking takes much more time than they have available.

What a dilemma--from being tied to the stove in the olden days, with tiny kids awash in a probably cramped house, to today when many have mega kitchens in which they barely prepare coffee, women are....what? Continuing the rebellion?

Apparently this is where Rachael Ray and her 30 minute meals come in. I have not seen the show but have read it being put down in some of the foodie press because Ms Ray has been known to use the odd can of mushroom soup in a recipe, poor retro thing...

People have always been amazed that I regularly cook freshed mashed potatoes. How this simple food became complicated, I do not know. In the time it takes me to peel a few spuds, cut them up "small" and toss them in water, an acquaintance can still be kvetching away about the lack of time for such a gourmandish and outlandish undertaking.

Ramsay grills, steams or sautees much of his food, all quick cooking methods no matter what. Yes, one must peel and chop some veg, maybe even wash lettuce, but this can be done while yacking with one's kids, sipping a glass of wine. We're not talking about stuffing ravioli or baking bread, those these activities, too, can be speedily done with decent planning.( Not so much by impatient me.)

Maybe it's time for a reality cooking show featuring dozens of average unfamous mortals who are competent and swift in the kitchen--with the final 5 minutes always showing a family or group of friends at table, enjoying the food, community and conversation.

Who does not have enough time for that, at least once or twice a week?

ps One of my pet bugaboos and a huge timewaster, is the American habit of involving their kids in organized sports, and attending practices, snoozing through every game, weekend after weekend.We did it too, friends, until finally the light dawned--the kid was a decent goalie but was never going to be of those gifted and balding World Cup goalkeepers--so as a family we took golf lessons, signed up for racketball sessions at the gym and so on. Lifetime sports! What a notion. 

This left much more time for whipping up cranberry walnut bread and making scalloped spuds.

We Are Sooooo " Starbucked."

Skimming through a snappy new book about the Starbucks phenomenon, I learned that the company opens six new stores a day, many of them extraordinarily close to one another. The author of Starbucked, ( Little, Brown) Taylor Clark, finally explains what I really wanted to know, the whole absurd ( and brilliant) "tall, grande and venti" thing. 

According to Clark, " The company's signature innovation in the world of marketing was its invention of an entire proprietary language for its products....In adopting proprietary language, Starbucks bet correctly that once customers learned the lingo, they would feel out of place at other coffeehouses."

Snobs! Jerks! Morons!   ( Starbucks has a 22 page book re this lingo--just ask for it, you fool.)

In tiny print at the bottom of page 98 where Clark discusses lingo, he states:" The "short" cup is still available at Starbucks stores, as a sort of in-crowd secret."

"Short" means small, here, people, so if you are feeling feisty and fully confident, walk into a Sbucks and get an ordinary-sized coffee.  As I am about to take a long road trip, I will try this gambit soon.

Typically, however, if I have a choice, I opt for other coffee joints. (Assorted family members and former family members have been bona fide baristas at independent shops where the coffee is roasted on site and the quality is far better. )  But if SB is it, I always order an espresso, and demand, in the nicest possible way, an actual cup---I point at the tiny Italian espresso-appropriate ones they have perched on the machine for show.  The exceedingly polite baristas oblige me.

Not finished the book yet but it clearly is a well-researched, good read. I feel the siren call--  Yes, the merbabe in the logo is a siren  who apparently was originally quite a come hither raunchette, but as the company grew, Madame covered more of her privates---of coffee! 

But I just had a lovely Melitta-dripped cuppa Dark Sumatra...............someone stop me, please.

( Superb visual, thanks-- Inspired by Escher's Relativity, created by Alien Loves Predator, found via Jack Cheng. http://web.mit.edu/cms/bcc/uploaded_images/starbucks_escher-757783.jpg&imgrefurl=http://web.mit.edu/cms/bcc/2005/10/starbucks-relativity.html&h=320&w=302&sz=41&hl=en&start=7&um=1&tbnid=dfYobVc_x3XM0M:&tbnh=118&tbnw=111&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstarbucks%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN)

Halloween Excess, Plus, Homage to Peg Bracken

USA Today tells me that Americans spend on average $65 per head on Halloween-related cr*p. $20 of this goes for candy, apparently. I spent $4 on two small bags of seasonal-looking candy kisses,  some of which has gone into the craws of  assorted pals, one utterly inadvertently into the dawg ( she lived!,) and the rest, most of the bags, is sitting near the front door wondering what in hell ever happened to Trick or Treaters? !  I had a carved and lighted punkin up, too.

Moving on--I noticed belatedly that the Queen of mushroom soup in a can,  Peg Bracken, had died in Oregon. Her "I Hate to Cook Book" is out of print, "doubtless a casualty of the Age of Arugula," as the NYTimes obit put it.  Back in the day when mothers like mine left Halloween costuming to the kids, as in --"go look in the closet-- be a tramp? ( The freightcar riding variety.) A ghost?" -- Peg Bracken was a blast of sardonic joy. "Some women, it is said, love to cook. This book is not for them," began her classic tome, published in 1960.  If a recipe was fast, easy and straightforward, it was good, period.  ( Frozen foods, canned foods, dried foods in cans, all were stars in this anti-Fanny Farmer, nothing- from- scratch, approach. )

Mind you, by the time Bracken's book came out, with no tiny kids to feed, my mother had already moved rapidly away from once-a-week meatloaf and pork chops with apple sauce. ( The meatloaf was never really jettisoned it was so damn good .) She subscribed to Gourmet and enjoyed experimenting. Urged along by her, ours was the first family to walk through the red and gold doorway of the first Chinese restaurant to open in our suburban area.

Peg Bracken was funny and liberating,  freeing multitudes of women from guilt, on a topic traditionally taken very seriously. Throw fodder at your family-- spare me the cutesy baby veggies, for gawd's sake--- and then go have a ciggie.

Recipe Theft, Deceiving Your Kids, And All That

You may have heard about Jerry Seinfeld's defense of his wife against charges of what he dubbed "vegetable plagiarism." Apparently Jessica Seinfeld's book, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, (Harper Collins,) came out about 6 months after Missy Chase Lapine's book on the same topic, The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals  ( Running Press.)  Ms Lapine evidently thinks it's possible that Ms Seinfeld took her ideas and reworked them for her book. Ms Seinfeld says she has never seen the book.

The ideas? Stuffing mushed up veggies in other foods--inside a burger?--in truth, I have read neither book--to get kids to eat them.   According to an AP story, on The David Letterman Show recently Jerry Seinfeld put it this way:

"I love the term 'plagiarism' for this little event," he said. "Because it used to be you had to really take a theme from a major novel, some sort of literary narrative. Now, you're in your kitchen making brownies, you sneak a little spinach in there, your name's dragged through the mud."

Funny! ( Humor defuses many things,  even  possible lawsuits (?), so Jessica is lucky to Jerry on her side.)

A few things here irk /interest me---

1---This "sneaky" and "deceptive" route regarding kids and good food raises many red flags with me, not least the sneaky bit.  What, are you afraid of your kids?  Invite your kids to eat a bit of everything, or at least to try a taste, from the moment the kiddo can do solid foods. Make the food delicious and colorful and unseasoned at first. ( And if she/he won't eat more than a whisper of a veg, do not panic--I recall several little kids who ate only white foods for months, or ate almost nothing, or ate only hotdogs, and they all survived and today are adults who cook  and eat extremely well.)

2--The titles....the  first  is awkward and badly written. The second is waaay too long.

3--The cookbook recipe thing--I have often wondered about this, even as I contributed a couple of "my" recipes to a series of books I wrote about food plants.  I mean, who knows where one gets these things?  A while back I was sauteeing shrimp in some red chile, scallions,  olive oil and garlic and I wanted to make a nifty sauce--so I removed the cooked shrimp, randomly grabbed some tequila, swirled it around in the pan and added a bit of half and half, and had a terrific "new" dish, served with quinoa and baby brocc. Did I really invent something new?  Had no other chef before me put together that combo? I have no clue, but remember, YOU READ IT HERE FIRST, dammit. 

Weigh in, people.

Food Bits and Bobs

As I mentioned on June 29, we recently had dinner with Joan Gussow, "eat local" pioneer and author of This Organic Life, a food issue expert we first met years ago in Washington, DC. As we all tucked into green lasagna, grilled chicken marinated in balsamic vinegar, beet, goat's cheese and arugula salad and more, at the home of Hudson River painter Frances Wells, I was certain that Joan felt no regrets at leaving behind the relentless winter fare of parsnips, spuds and carrots from her remarkable garden. ( Joan was the inspiration for Barbara Kingsolver's new book about her family's year of eating locally in Virginia, and certainly a muse to Michael Pollan on his latest, The Omnivore's Dilemma.)

The next morning we walked through Joan's garden overlooking the Hudson, noting her delight at finding the perfect rethought and reinvented tomato staking device, Green Tomato Ladders from Gardener's Supply, a few of which she had recently purchased. " I never buy anything for this garden, not even plants, but these I had to try," she said.

Six of the people at the table the night before were involved in gardening/farming--two of the elders are Bette ( Lacina) and Dale ( Haubrich) the proprietors and full time workers on their small but fabled organic farm in Sag Harbor,  in the Hamptons.

Two of the younger tribe of earthworkers, members of my family,  tra la, will be starting their own intensive organic growing operation in Poland, Maine next spring and are currently working full-time as apprentices  at Riverbank Farm in Roxbury, CT.  

We visited John, neophyte farmer, and Sonya, experienced, one afternoon in Connecticut , arriving in time to snap them in full worker gear, tired and dirty from the day.

After we toured the place we were treated to a recently picked and cooked meal in the apprentice's kitchen that redefined the meaning of the word "fresh."   A pea picked 10 minutes ago compared to a pea picked a week ago, packed up, cooled, and hauled across the county---that is the definition of luxury for most mortals.   

Top: Meal on the Hudson; Top right: Joan in her garden; Left: John and Sonya; Right: The meaning of fresh

   

Garlic from There and Here

The WaPost has just discovered that most of the garlic sold in US supermarkets is coming from China. I asked my local grocer months ago about his garlic--it was from China-- because it looked suspiciously overly uniform.  (It was also mighty cheap. )

Here in New Mexico I can get terrific and diverse varieties of garlic at the growers' markets so I buy the Chinese only in the depths of winter.  But the American consumer has to face facts--Chinese growers and food suppliers are dominating world markets in multiple categories, whatever their  standards of integrity and cleanliness.

As the Post piece puts it:

"The FDA, responsible for inspecting some types of food from 130 countries, last year was deluged with 21 million shipments of food imports, among them 199,000 from China worth about $2.3 billion. FDA inspectors refused 298 food shipments from China in the first four months of this year: They included catfish laden with banned antibiotics, mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides, and others. The rejection rate for Chinese goods is about 25 times that for Canadian goods."

FYI  A lovely book about growing garlic in NM is this one:

Crawford, Stanley, 1991: A Garlic Testament - Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. 10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10022, ISBN 0-06-018207-5, 241 pages.

( Pristine-looking Chinese garlic pic from http://dq-food.en.alibaba.com/product/50086691/50399618/Nuts_Seeds_Vegetable/Chinese_Garlic.html)

( Earthy, skinny NM garlic from http://www.spicelines.com/2006/09/the_pungent_clove_part_1_looki.htm)

From "Fried Baloney Tra La La" to Kraft on White Bread--Presidential Favorites

It's not a huge surprise to me to learn that the current Prez of the US loves Amurrican cheese--"Kraft singles"-- on white bread, and pb with honey sandwiches, too.  Regularly.

We all have our comfort food choices, of course--like mashies with butter flowing like magma over the edges, for instance. But to be able to command the White House chef, in this case Walter Scheib, prior to his being canned by Laura Bush in 2005, to make virtually anything, virtually any time. Wow. 

Were I the Eater-in-Chief, I might have rung the chef up to say, " Last night I was dreaming of fresh grilled sardines, matchstick potatoes, Belgian endive salad with fresh pear, oh, and, a slice of flourless intense choc cake, Walter, whaddyathink? Can you make my dream come through for lunch today? ( With Gorgeous George Clooney to discuss starvation in Darfur... Lordy, not appropriate...) With just one glass of an ultra dry crisp, chilled gray wine, pretty please?"

Ah well. Apparently Chef  Scheib's book, White House Chef, came out in January of this year. An interview with the chef just turned up at Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper.

Working for the Clintons for many years meant slowly shifting the White House kitchen from all French to a better reflection of the best of American food--flavorful, fresh ingredients and wines from all over the country.

It also meant preparing this nostalgic nosh for Bill Clinton's High School reunion:

"We were doing a cook out for about 1000 people and I was asked to make Fried Baloney Tra-La-La," Scheib says. The gourmet chef obviously had no idea what the dish was. "They told me to cut a hole in the baloney, fry it and then when you flip it you crack an egg into the hole and fry the egg in the middle. I thought it was the single worst thing I had ever heard but it wasn't about what I wanted so we made 1000 portions of it and they all ate the hell out of it."

There's more--about the friendliness of the Clintons towards staff, versus the distance established from the beginning in the supposedly "just a regular guy with a Texas accent" Bush WH. But that's another story.

( Pic from http://www.leadingauthorities.com/24100/Walter_Scheib.htm)