gastropoda

Apparently there was some dust-up in a Harlem restaurant. Why it was covered, and at length, in the hometown paper eluded me. And having worked there twice, I remain mystified at how Yelpers came to be validated as sources fit to print. Savvier observers than I just say Metro has gone to the dog, but I suspect there’s something more insidious at work. And then there was the pandering with the slavering coverage of the archbishop in Rome, the guy who considers spinach a local delicacy (also, too, tiramisu, a creation of Treviso). I hate to ask the obvious, but when did gluttony stop being a sin?

And I hope to allah no Afghans were able to access the MFK Wannabe musings of the war correspondent stranded in “Restrepo” land. The death of Anthony Shadid kicked everyone in the gut this week, and I have nothing but awe for the brave who engage in conflict reportage. But this was tone-deafness by the desk, yet again. Are readers really supposed to empathize with someone who has to cook with “mangy” zucchini but has milk for her cocoa? What about the poor people whose country we’re still occupying, who live with indescribable deprivation every single day, with no food porn for comfort, no possibility of escaping to Paris at will? The worst part is that the same photographer who had to illustrate that “suffering” also produced these shots. Seriously: What next, after the plight of a vegetarian sentenced to eat in the “Midwest”? Bobo goes to Applebee’s in search of the salad bar?

Finally for now, I see advertisers are voting with their absence down to the hometown paper and its gutted fud section. Forget chewing. Your jaw will wear out while dropping at the banality of the display copy (and if you wander into the finer-point type, it’s worse: “taco or tortilla base” — WTFF?) But the cretinism is creeping farther afield. I read a bouillabaisse piece days away that came pretty close to journalistic malpractice. Forget the copy-editing sloppiness — the description of the second-largest city in France as a town, the mischaracterization of rouille as saffron-based, the misuse of hardy for hearty — and the lack of history and context and depth and the cluelessness on cooking. Etc. I’m done driving rubberneckers to the train wreck, but it’s really amazing that a newspaper that once prided itself on editing the merde out of every piece of copy disseminated just in print will now slop out slop for all the world to see. I know bloggers come cheap-to-free, but couldn’t spambots go out and eat and regurgitate for even less?

Despite the fact that my next-older sister died of breast cancer when she was younger than the age I just turned, I’ve never been exactly comfortable with the whole beribboning industry. I wouldn’t say I feel vindicated in seeing the lid blown off, but I am very glad to see endorsements like the KFC “bucket for the cure” subjected to some disinfecting sunlight. And I’m totally not surprised to learn the organization is run by wingnuts. I just love that all the Kkkrazies who attacked Mrs. O for her promotion of healthful eating and exercise have to see the Choos are on the other feet now.

I know I insulted Helen Keller and Curly and Moe by Tweeting that the first must have designed and the second two have edited the latest fud section. But jeebus, was it ever bad. I mean, really, are we not living in the most exciting food city on the planet at the most exciting time in history, and we’re spoon-fed Woman’s Day? Break out the funeral potatoes. Even worse than the inch-deep, mile-wide lede was the surreal pairing with an out-of-town expedition to a deep-fryer, followed by the absolutely cretinous “investigation” into which is fattier/grosser, fried chicken with macaroni and cheese or sausage with polenta. Only someone who listens to the real Dean (that would be Jimmy) would be that dumb.

Idle thoughts: I’m guessing Holy Foods bagels are not really “hearth-baked.” Red Waddle would actually be a better name for a heritage breed (especially if we’re talking mandrills). Plus it turns out “a new way to eat a burger” is not with your toes; it involves trying to turn beans into a Reuben sandwich and confusing the headline writer, not to mention the reader. And please alert the Page One editors: A hero may be just a sandwich, but it isn’t made with a bun.

Very glad I took my lazy time processing my thoughts on the war story of the “veteran” vegetarian (“nearly lifelong” wouldn’t sound as ruff-and-tuff a struggle at 30ish, I guess). So many other blogs/sites/commenters have laid into the parochialism, condescension and general cluelessness on full display under the most idiotic graphic. What I’m savoring is how it took a silly food story to expose just how under-qualified Dash, Son of Pinch really is for that huge job in an age when no one else invests in standard coverage of “real America.” Way back when, I learned there’s a reason Madame X was hesitant to fall for pitches from correspondents aside from Johnny Rotten: Very few who had not invested the time and forkwork in developing expertise off the “serious news” beat could deliver. Lots of us do it, but food writing is not women’s work. Some heavy lifting is required — if you don’t know it all, you have to find it out.* Over to the national desk they’re probably fine with hiring stringers and throwing emergency ermine over the emperor’s spawn.* But eatin’ and drinkin’ and watching fud teevee is not much to draw on when you get a tossed-off salad of under-reporting and over-padding. You don’t have time to see all the odes to KCMO as the next city destined to conquer stockyard palates. So you go to press with the embarrassment you have, not the one you wish you could kill.

And not to get too bogged down in the race to the bottom at a place where I was glad to have worked twice (seeing sausage made does give you insight), but I almost wonder if Dash wasn’t just providing cover for the public editor’s WTF. His smashed beans and lard definition were forgotten once the ugly truth was revealed: Reporters no longer put the truth first. The best reaction I’ve seen so far reaches farther back in time than I understood, since I trace the rot to the Reagan years (“first they came for the air traffic controllers and we said nothing”). That was back when Pinch padded the newsroom in stocking feet, treating us as if we were serfs hunched over keyboards in his den. I know I’ve recounted this many times, but one of the tipping points that tilted me out of that newsroom and into restaurant school* was having an editor storm the desk on deadline and bellow: “We can’t run this. It makes Washington sound like Calcutta.” Up until that very late night, I had always believed journalists operated without considering fear or favor. But if a story about soft-hearted Capitol Hill staffers passing out sandwiches to the homeless in the nation’s seat of power was so dangerous, what else had to be skewed? Whitewater/Coke Can/Yellowcake, here we come . . .

This is nothing personal on the phenomenon formerly known as Mr. Cutlets, especially since he once bought me a cheezburger and let me make an ass of myself as he was starting his first “real media” gig. But the Tweets about his take on the end of Ms. Perfect’s teevee run make me worry he has mastered the Clickiverse a little too well — call it “say anything.” Whatever killed her show, it was not a disconnect from America in hard times. Her whole grand scheme started, after all, in the Reagan recession — my going-away gift from co-workers on the national desk at the NYTimes in 1983 was a copy of “Entertaining” that they’d bought for $45, nearly what Keller’s opus went for a full 16 years later. Her whole schtick has always been selling an inaccessible lifestyle. Didn’t this country survive the first Depression through fantasy? And I definitely don’t buy the notion that the EVOO One is the new false idol. Once upon a time in America, Jeff Smith was Martha’s big competition. High and low always coexist on the gravy train. So let me rephrase that “say anything.” I meant to type “verbal mandrill.”

Wondered this last night over to the Twitter: Meatballs or melanomas? And it was even more gruesome in print. That sauce splotch looked like a pulled scab.

Ron Paul is making it clear that anyone in this country can now walk away from responsibility for even the most insane guano published under his name. But I was still (somewhat) surprised to see the Egopedist calling for fresh tomatoes and basil in recipes on the same day the front page of his enabler was dissing organic farmers in Mexico for growing and exporting those very same ingredients out of season. I guess if you moosh up beans and oats as a burger you get right with the Berkeley food gods?

Speaking of the New Yorker, did the hometown editors think no one gets both publications? Faux News attack aside, that lead story read like deja vu all over again.

Which is my way of leading into this: I’m a total advocate of the attempted reincarnation of the Fulton Fish Market, not least because I believe food is the future in this country; everyone has to eat, and the opportunities for entrepreneurs are as boundless as the frontier once was. But at this last one, for the first time, I started wondering the same thing I do at the “fancy” food shows: How in hell can people possibly hope to build a business on stuff that just tastes bad? Why don’t their loved ones tell them? I wound up buying a (great) ginger cookie midway through just to get the nasty bits out of my mouth. I know I have only myself to blame for even trying the “organic soy-and-oat tempeh” I was lured by after noticing tamales were involved. But jeebus, was that ever a crime against natural. And the “Peking duck cookies,” made with duck fat and five-spice powder, were nothing short of foul. Duck fat is lard’s funky cousin, and I love duck. I would ask if the food revolution now heating up might be hampered by its weak food soldiers, a generation raised on processed crap and now setting out to change the world with no palates. But I also tasted two fish soups that were pretty bland. And those were all made by established companies. Coming soon to the Javits Center . . .

Epistemic closure is the undeniable diagnosis for most of wingnuttia, which probably explains why the deluded would look to an “economics” blogger sans calculator for advice on cookbooks. Naturally, she did not mention the manual for the socialist contraption she so proudly hailed after dropping $1,500. But she did “inform” readers that Maida’s books are out of print. Because that’s how capitalism works — no reissues are possible if the market demands. My advice to the closed-minded: Ask a liberal. We think anything goes anywhere, but especially in the kitchen.

Also, too, it’s unfortunate there’s no place where good people like Willie Nelson can go to get their food message out to a wide audience online. He’s totally right on Occupy the Food System, but I ain’t linking to a site that apparently believes we can all eat well when outlets don’t pay. Might as well shill for Smithfield processed crap behind photos of frolicking heritage hogs.

File all this under “no wonder the stock is down 85 percent”: The new routine in this consortium involves me trudging to the front door to pick up our two newspapers (and The Cat off the dining room radiator) and returning to bed to listen to my consort rattling off all the fresh news he’s picking up on the iPad. But as accustomed as I am to moths flying out of gray pages, I was still pretty amazed to see a cover feature on a restaurant attraction I wrote about in . . . 2005. This was pre-permalinks, so I’ll excerpt from Older Trails:

The Disneyesque: Gradisca, where we wound up after the Greenmarket thanks to all the press the mamma making the ravioli has been getting. Walking in to see her in all her ample glory, rolling out the dough and spooning ricotta and herbs into it, was like Italy, but the prices were definitely New York. I think there were eight little square ravioli on the plate for $22 at lunch. They were good, and the butter-sage sauce was extraordinary, but that is not exactly comparable to many lunches at “Mamma’s” in Costigliole in Piedmont a few months ago. ETC

And then, where do I begin with a piece with potluck in the hed and the archival photo but bake sale as the apparent point? I guess with this:

Memo From the Bake Sale Police:

–Rice Krispie Treats will continue to be acceptable; baking store-bought cereal with store-bought marshmallows proves you truly care.

–Naked Oreos will not be tolerated. Please enrobe them in melted 85 percent cacao chocolate, preferably single-origin from the smallest plantation in Madagascar. If the chocolate seizes, it’s the pastry gods’ way of saying you’re a terrible mother.

–If you must bring Munchkins, please be sure to turn them into a towering croquembouche first. Cooking sugar to the crack stage is no bother; candying fruit for the garnish is a snap. (Please start with hand-harvested heirloom fruit, however.)

–When we say homemade, we do not mean Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker. Brownies from a box are an insult to all true moms slaving over Rice Krispie Treats.

–Poundcakes are definitely encouraged. Your one-hour, 45-minute investment in all-time-high-priced butter and free-range organic eggs and special cake flour will pay off when we sell slices for $1 apiece to cover toilet paper for the kiddles’ bathrooms. Do not think about why bakery cupcakes would cost you less in time and shekels.

–Also do not do the math on flour and sugar versus Chips Ahoy. King Arthur goes for more than a buck a pound. Chocolate chips will run you $4 a bag. You will need butter (now at an all-time-high price). And brown sugar.

–We will not, however, suggest any reasonably priced, non-time-sucking alternatives to Oreos. You’re on your own, bitches.