food museum blog

More Than A Tree Grows There: Garden-Wise Greening in Brooklyn at the BBG

Urban foodie gardeners take note: One of our favorite people, Joan Dye Gussow, is the keynoter at this year's 25th annual Making Brooklyn Bloom all day  event at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this coming Saturday, March 10. Her topic is : "Global Reflections on Eating From Home." Explore the day's offerings here.

I would definitely get my hands dirty at the workshop titled Brewing Compost Tea, as long as I could also partake of Best Heirloom Vegetables for Brooklyn.  And also, Growing Organic Food in Containers , a technique I have decided to try this spring here in the high desert of New Mexico, as containing the water is such a daunting challenge.

If you are visiting the NYC metro area, do visit the glories of the BBG. Here's what's blooming in March.  On line take a look at this rich section of the BBG website about Kitchen Gardening

(Pictured: At left, the BBG's Home Composting Exhibit. At right, the Herb Garden.)

Devil Crabs Served Up With Cuban Luvvvvvv

Here's Lili, Queen of the Florida Devil Crab entrepreneurs.  We had just turned south from Ybor City and were heading down to Bradenton when we spotted her tiny white scooter-style  van by the side of Route 41 South.

"Hey, Mama, what can I get you?" A high energy huckster in the best possible sense, Lili  has the patter and jive of the pro she is. She told us she had started up and sold a handful of businesses over the years, always taking a year off before starting the next.

This time her aim is to revive the roadside vendor tradition of Ybor City, selling deep fried devil crabs, crab empanadas, meat-stuffed potatoes, ( based on her Mom Lidia's recipes,) French fries, and, in the works, a range of desserts.  Her wagon? An Indian-made white "van", brand name Bajaj, serves as vending point, kitchen and vehicle.

Oh-- did I mention that she's Cuban?

"The Cubans coming into this country, many of them, are educated professionals, " says Lili.  "But they can't get good work here the minute they arrive.  They're janitors making $6 an hour. I want to offer some of them the opportunity to become self-sufficient, owning and running a franchise selling devil crab."

Lili and her family came to Ybor City from Cuba in 1970, when she was five. Her parents had been running a grocery store.  Castro's people seized the family's stove, and their sewing machine. In the States her parents worked at the Arturo Fuente Cigar Factory, as well as at other jobs.

Right now Lili is training her cousin Maribelle,  over from Cuba just three months, and a young friend in Florida just a month.  They are intently trying to learn the customer chatter Lily has perfected--their English is raw--along with the fry technique.  Maribelle bends over the fry pot, and Nomar is set to doing prep work in Lili's brother's restaurant. The little white vending van sits out front of his place, Monday through Friday, 1-6.

When traffic starts to thin, the shy and retiring Lili roars into the restaurant and zooms back out dressed in her chicken costume, wildly waving a sign that reads, " Eat More Devil Crabs."

At $3 a pop, the plump crab croquettes are beyond good, and far better than those I praised at Columbia Restaurant. " Of course," says Lili," when I tell her that.

"These are made with lotta, lotta, lotta Cuban love. ( Three times, three times.) That's the secret."

Did I mention that Lili Peguero is Cuban?

( To buy a franchise email Lili at lilisdevilcrabs@yahoo.com)

Spud Heads Soar!

No Couch Potato he, Mr. P.H. was retrofitted last year as a fit and healthy runner, and in his balloon incarnation again will fly in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade this week. In addition, the United States Potato Board has opened a Potato Head-quarters in New York's Chelsea Market that will be offering recipes and family spud fun through Friday.

Not appearing in the parade is an actor some in the business apparently once dubbed "Mr. Potato Head,"  Daniel Craig, the new Bond, James Bond. Frankly, we don't see the resemblance....

In memoriam: R.W. Apple, Jr.

R.W. Apple, Jr. has died. Though lauded for his political writing and editing over a long career at the New York Times, Mr. Apple's appreciative food writing, barely mentioned in today's obit, will long remain with me.

The blog Take Back the Times  featured this a year ago:  "Apple is not one of these restaurant critics who sneaks into the restaurant, wearing a false beard and no one knows who he is. No, his arrival is often set up well in advance, and he goes, as he did at Uglesich's, for a special meal where the proprietor has put on all his best efforts.

Apple does not appear at lousy restaurants. He only goes to the best, and the NYT sends him and his wife, Betsy, who is usually present, all over the world at its expense. It falls into the category of a public service of the first water."

On a trip to Shanghai  that Apple wrote up  for the NYT in October 2005, he reported that after a morning sampling goodies from food stalls, "...I felt fat as a Strasbourg goose, but my eating buddies insisted that we stop at a 24-hour noodle shop on Shandong Zhonglu, behind the Westin, to watch a particularly deft cook do his stuff. "No need to eat," said Mr. Leung, a Hong Kong-born Chinese. "Just watch." Sure. We watched, all right, as a huge ball of dough was kneaded and rolled and tossed and hacked into ragged little squares that reminded Mr. Vongerichten, an Alsatian, of spaetzle, and twisted and stretched and flipped and folded into long, supple noodles. But of course I had to sample a bowl of beef noodle soup, lightly curry-flavored, before we left, and of course that spoiled my lunch."

This detail of Apple's packing was in today's NYT obit: "To the end of his life, Mr. Apple kept a small black bag packed with essentials, including a personal pepper mill, ready to be whisked away on a moment’s notice for a big story, or for a little one that caught his fancy."

(Ah, this touches my heart---  my mother, too, never traveled without her black pepper, along with coffee-making gear and decent wattage light bulbs.)

Another favorite of mine, Calvin Trillin, profiled Apple in The New Yorker in 2003.

( Top: Gerald Scarfe's Falstaffian caricature of Mr. Apple.)

Which Came First: Bread or Clay Pot "Baking"--Plus! Bread and Art

Here's a question for you--which came first, bread baking or clay pot firing in the oven?  This came up when we met recently with two artists and a baker in Santa Fe to discuss a food happening for the fall to raise awareness about The FOOD Museum's push to recognize food heritage sites. among other things. The baker, Willem Malten, once a Zen monk in San Francisco, runs Cloud Cliff Bakery. The artists, Ana MacArthur and Chrissie Orr, collaborated last year on an all-bread mandala, breads and grains courtesy of Willem. The mandala was constructed outdoors at the State Capitol Building and was part of a wild exhibition on food and art titled : The FOOD Show-- Politics, Pleasure and Pain.

(The idea behind the mandala last winter was for it to slowly deteriorate,  nibbled on by birds, carried off by squirrels, munched from directly by street people, swept clean by wind and snow, and so on.)

Anyway! Ana brought up the question about the oven's first purpose because she and Willem had been discussing the many similarities between dough and clay. A few years back, inspired by pictures of "bread heads" in a 1930's book about the Poilane Bakery in Paris, Willem decided to make his own heads out of bread for the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration in November of 2002. He made gypsum casts of faces and subsequently filled the resulting molds with dough---he baked 70-80 heads, hung them up in his bakery/cafe, and on the night of November 2 gave a lecture there on bread as a medium for sculpture, mentioning the Poilane Bakery's influence on him.

The next morning when Willem walked into his bakery earlier than normal a copy of the New York Times was sitting right on the counter. This was unusual because the paper was always late, and it was never placed in that spot. On the front page was a headline about the accidental death November 2 in France of Lionel Poilane, the famous bakery's owner.

( Pause for a nod to synchronicity.)

Now---- many of you probably know that the Egyptians, and others in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East first made bread on the hearth, a flat bread. But they also developed a way of making multiple raised breads in pots resembling flower pots that were stacked over the coals of an open hearth. ( Take a look here.)So bread-baking went from the hearth, to the hearth with something to contain the dough as it baked, to an actual oven.

Research in one of our favorite sources, James Trager's The Food Chronology, suggests that fired pottery has been around since at least 6000 BC but that bread baking per se dates from about 2500 BC.  BUT--the earliest clay containers apparently were fired in bonfires rather than in actual ovens or, as those pot people call them, kilns. ( For a look at a Roman-style bread oven, look here.)

Surely someone practical and task-oriented somewhere in those ancient days threw some dough along with a pot needing to be fired into an oven and snatched out the "bread" when it was just  ready to eat--yeasty, hot and perfect?

(Willem's bread head photo courtesy Anita Zednik.)

Vocally Eat Locally

Joan Dye Gussow is that rare person on this planet who lives what she believes. And she believes emphatically in eating locally. We ate breakfast today at her house on the Hudson River in Piermont, NY---the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries had just been plucked as locally as a few yards out into her garden plots lapped by the tidal Hudson. As best as she can, 77 year-old Joan eats from her 12 raised beds and assorted pots and side plantings, year round.

A nutrition educator by trade, she is professor emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, has sat on numerous boards, and is friends with most of the stars in sustainable ag/organic gardening and so on. Her latest book, This Organic Life, published by Chelsea Green in 2001, grabbed us by the small hairs in the chapter titled " California and the Rest of Us." We Americans demand and expect cheap food year round, regardless of the season and we pay mightily for it, our taxes keeping the flow of bought and/or stolen water coursing into the irrigated fields of the deserts of California. It's an insane situation that has put farmers out of business across the US and left many major metro areas across the country dependent on produce from the West.

And Joan asks how long can the West provide?

" There are many threats to California's continued fruitfulness--soil erosion, air pollution, salinization of irrigated land,the invasion of exotic pests, and land subsidence are among them. But the two most worrying are the disappearance of farmland and the competition for water."

Another ramification that strikes Foodie's mind is that "terrorists" could easily disrupt or block the flow of food heading east in trucks. Ponder that the next time you observe airport security personnel nonsensically herding elderly ladies into machines that seek out hidden explosives by sending puffs of air into their blouses and up their skirts.

Most of us cannot grow all our own food--even Joan buys grains and grapefruit juice and surely Belgian chocolates ( we must ask her!)  from beyond her garden walls--and a commitment to eating locally does not require us to give up all taste for globally traded products. We are only entreated to wake up to what we eat and who produces it and why we want it or think we need it. 

Please read this speech Joan gave to the Connecticut Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association in 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.

Whither the Peruvian Anchovy

Peruvian conservationist Dr. Patricia Majluf has just received the UK's prestigious Whitley Gold environmental prize for her campaign against "the impact of anchovy fishing" and her efforts to preserve coastal ecosystems.

According to a BBC News report, 

" We hope the award will help [Dr Majluf] in her fight to bring an end to unsustainable fishing practices along this globally important coastline," said Edward Whitley, founder and chairman of the Whitley Fund for Nature.

The Peruvian anchovy fishery is the largest single species fishery in the world.

Much of the catch is processed into feed for fish farms in the developed world.

Some populations of sea-birds have fallen by 95%, thought to be principally down to a lack of anchovies to eat.

"The decline in the anchovy populations to put fish on our tables has at the same time reduced the ability of their predators, sea-birds and cetaceans, to survive," said Mr Whitley. "

Curiously, back in 2000, the Peruvian government, backed by the FAO, began a campaign to encourage Peruvians to eat more anchovies, a highly nutritious food possibly wasted on the fish at the fish farms of the world. The campaign faced some hurdles--first, many Peruvians negatively associated the fish with the poor. Secondly, improper handling of the small fish had caused many who did eat them to fall ill. Thirdly, even though the FAO deemed the anchovy population "plentiful", weren't they all going to the fish farms?

It is unclear how Dr. Majluf's campaign and that of the Peruvian government will dovetail.

( Anchovy processing photo by K. Iversen.)

Celebrating Giants--Dr John Niederhauser & Co.

Foodie and Spouse are back from Tucson where we participated in a memorial service--hey--a bacchanalia--celebrating Dr. John S.  Niederhauser, " Mr. Potato," founding board member of The FOOD Museum, nee The Potato Museum, who died this  past August.  ( FS's remarks placed Niederhauser in a food historic context.)

Okay, in truth, the celebration itself, mounted by Dr Merle Jensen and the University of Arizona, was tasteful and appropriate, and filled with thoughtful gustatory tributes to the potato--fresh mashed spuds were served up in plastic glasses  as "potato martinis, " with appropriate toppings.
Thick cut "real" potato chips were available for scooping out the zillion layer dip.  There was Mediterranean spud salad and twice baked potatoes, and surprisingly zippy cod baked with tomatoes, olives and chiles.

(  Dr. Jensen, an expert on intensive agriculture, coaxed superb dishes from the U of Arizona food service people. Take a look at an old pet project of Merle's, Tomatoes Live!, here.)
Wines were from Chile and several guests were from Mexico, where John spent much of his career. ( The bacchanalian events occurred at the family gatherings of Niederhausers and their Outlaws...)
Noble Prize Winner Norman Borlaug, the "wheat" man credited with "the green revolution," spoke at the event, as did other colleagues/friends/relations of John. 

Foodie was sitting in the audience at the Tucson Botanical Garden pondering the giants there gathered, and the remarkable man being honored--people  not only gifted and hard-working in their chosen fields, but also filled with curiosity about people and places, energetic, inspiring types,  generous with both time and money, and talented in myriad other ways.  ( Don't multifarious midgets seem abundant elsewhere in public life? )

Mind you--some of their work is questioned by some environmentalists and those opposed to certain aspects of biotechnology . This Reason Magazine interview with Borlaug a few years ago spells out precisely his views on the role of agriculture in feeding the world.

(Note: Planet Potato image courtesy The Potato Museum at www.potatomuseum.com. )

Dr. John S. Niederhauser--In Memoriam

No brief obituary could possibly do justice to the memory of John Niederhauser, potato scientist, World Food Prize Laureate 1990, and founding board member of The Potato Museum, The FOOD Museum's originating source. John was 88 when he died in his sleep on August 12, 2005 at his home in Tucson, Arizona.

We last saw him in March, and he was up to his usual hilarious and insightful quips and quirks, discussing politics, world hunger, his beloved Mexico, and, of course, the potato, the vegetable that claimed his attention throughout his long career.

There was never a quality shaggy dog story or brief one-liner John did not appreciate, and worse, remember, in full detail. We doubt anyone ever stopped him when he would begin genially," You know the one about the duck and the anti-freeze.......please tell me if you've heard this..." because his story-telling skills were superlative.

A tall man who had been a precocious boy in Central Washington State, and top student at Cornell, earning his PhD in plant pathology in 1943, he went on to be a Rockefeller-funded scientist based in the highlands west of Mexico City. There he determined that the potato strain responsible for late-blight had originated in Mexico where wild varieties had genetic resistance to the pathogen. For 30 years he and his team worked to develop resistant potato varieties that subsistence farmers could grow, thus cutting down on expensive fungicides while also reducing their environmental impact. ( While in Mexico he also found time to become the founder and president of Little League baseball  from 1954 to 1969,  and the Latin American Commissioner from 1957 to 1969. )

Not only was potato production hugely increased in Mexico, but programs in Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Colombia and Pakistan were able to boost production four to eight times. John went on to help establish the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, and several other global agriculture initiatives.

John's wife, Ann Faber Niederhauser, with whom he raised six children, was his  companion and support in all endeavors. A gifted weaver not only of rugs and cloth, but also of memorable  gatherings of family and friends, Ann died in 2000.

Cristeta Comerford, White House Chef

Marian Burros reports in today's NY Times:  Cristeta Comerford yesterday became the first woman to be named White House executive chef after a lengthy selection process.

Laura Bush, the first lady, said she was delighted that Ms. Comerford, who has been an assistant chef in the White House since the mid-90's, had accepted the job. "Her passion for cooking can be tasted in every bite of her delicious creations," Mrs. Bush said

Ms. Comerford, who came to the United States when she was 23, received a bachelor's degree in food technology from the University of the Philippines, studied classic French cooking and worked in Austria. She also was chef at two Washington hotels. And she collaborated with the California chef John Ash to promote American game cooking.

Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, representing more than 2,000 culinary professionals in the United States, may want to take credit for Ms. Comerford's elevation. The organization sent a letter to Mrs. Bush last May, asking her to consider a woman for the job because the chef would be a role model for women.

"Throughout our history, women have been at the helm of feeding American families," the organization wrote. "Now is the time to have a woman at the helm of feeding America's first family."

But according to the White House, none of the people suggested by the organization, most of them well-known in culinary circles, were interested in the job. The pay, $80,000 to $100,000 a year with no overtime, for what is essentially a private family chef who occasionally has an opportunity to show off at a state dinner, is well below what top level chefs can earn on the outside.

And opportunities to dazzle at state dinners are few and far between in the current White House; there have been only five since Mr. Bush took office.

"I'm glad it's a woman," said Alice Waters, the noted Berkeley, Calif., restaurateur. "It can't be anything but encouraging to people to have someone at the top, particularly from another country. That particularly makes a beautiful statement that someone has succeeded to the extent that they represent the president."

SuperChefBlog has been covering the White House chef vacancy story.