Post Category → birdcage liners

Phantom smoke

I guess I have to weigh in on the hometown paper’s knockoff of the New Yorker’s food issue and note how amusing it was that the flack paid to promote it in the age of social media linkapalooza chose to highlight some of the lamest material. To me the best piece was, of course, the one on the politics of food, but it could been more explicit. As I learned 20 years ago as we were researching our ill-fated harvest book, money’s what buys you power in this country; even Vidalia onion farmers had to kick in like 5 cents a bushel to protect their AOC in DC. Until there’s an Occupy K Street, Big Food will rule. And it definitely will as long as any old bacon, even the industrial kind, will do in 50 recipes from a sermonizer.

XO, once a sauce but then a feature

Much as I love the Murdoch Crier’s local news pages because they actually cover a beat the hometown paper has pretty much abandoned, I’ll also admit I read it because I also love counting how many copy-editing glitches make it into print when anything involving food is involved. Last week it was “charcuteries and salumis.” Which I guess are like swines and geeses. So when I saw a mention of “mou sauce,” I was sure the slot had nodded off again (or was still in shock from having proofed the wackadoodle editorial pages, with all those Uranus datelines). But whaddaya know — it is a thing. Not something worth explaining, of course, so I will even though I couldn’t find it in any of my many Italian cookbooks/references, including Waverley Root and the exhaustive “Silver Spoon”: It’s a toffee or caramel or butterscotch sauce, depending on which Google link you click. Of course, you have to click. . .

Birthday cake by Walmart

This might not be the dumbest thing to see print in donkey’s years. But it’s close. In a thumbsucker on how sweltering it is in Phoenix (Phoenix, I tell ya!), we were informed it’s even “too hot for spicy Mexican food in the barrio.” Funny, I don’t remember giving up chimichangas for August. Better pass that along to the Oaxacans, not to mention the billions in other torrid climates who know chilies are to food as salt is to sweat. When the sun starts beating, you don’t get out the blanc mange.

How’s that wine you import, Señor?

My only regret in wildly killing out about a thousand writeme emails stacked up over the month is that I might have erased evidence for when press trippers later write up press trips in pure and holy outlets with shrinking budgets. Out with serious food people recently, we had a good discussion of the hypocrisy of the hometown paper in shunning contributors who may have indulged when, say, a Chilean wine expedition is converted to a food feature. “But maybe the rules are different for staff?” LOL. Guilty on two counts.

Turbid gravy

It’s “a chain restaurant. Its first branch opened in 1964 in Madras . . . today it has some two dozen outposts . . . Accordingly, the menu aims a little wide.” Hope snarky bloggers in the subcontinent had a field day with this, not least cuz the folks in the photo did not reflect the description in the review. They coulda been chowing down at the newest Olive Garden out in a “snippet” of real America. And I doubt even there too much “dismembered” garlic is a worry, although those unsophisticated but authentic diners might actually need thalis translated as set meals. Who would ever have expected we’d be pining for the good old days of endless gyros and “corn tacos”?

Guildhall, 10 Downing — what’s the diff?

Just saying: If you want to write about DIY mayonnaise this summer, there’s an actual news peg. The price on the commercial kind has suddenly gone caviar-high. We walked into a Gristede’s the other day, and right back out, on seeing Hellmann’s for $6.99 a 30-ounce quart. On sale — the regular price was $8.19. Even using Knoll Krest eggs and Planter’s peanut oil, you could make your own for less. Unfortunately, I pay for the permanence. Even the best homemade mayonnaise has the shelf life of local strawberries.

“Spit and image”

Also, too, I tuned out nearly all the fluffing for the hometown paper’s big “morality of meat-eating” debate — it had all the validity of a HuffPost boob-science screamer, with its naked intent to amass links and comments. But I did read a news story in the relatively-sedate-for-Murdoch competition on the sad state of horses in this country that subtly made a very good case for the morality of eating horsemeat: to prevent suffering. Since the animal “rights” wackos got equine slaughterhouses shut down, horses often starve before they are sent off on long, miserable drives to abattoirs north and south of the ethical borders. If I were the naive type, I’d be wondering where all the concerned citizens of California are in preventing this outrage rather than outlawing the practice of letting ducks eat like the poors. But I’m probably among the very few not surprised that a grandstander would publicly ban foie gras while privately bowing to clients for private parties. Give that paragon a cheese-ass medal.

@starsbegone

And while I’m increasingly skeptical of the one respectable Murdoch outlet in the world, I did like the front-page story on how adult children of McDonald’s franchisees are pushing for lucrative changes, like staying open later, accepting credit cards, offering free WiFi. Talk about attracting a new generation by listening to that same generation. Imagine if newspapers had the same idea. Instead, they make me think of the Henry Ford quote that’s been bouncing around the Twitter lately: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” And even that vision is not as limited as paywalls around soufflé recipes.

Dog “dirt” or tournedos?

And I shouldn’t mock, because I once had an ill-thought-out letter published in the birdcage liner for wingnuts, too. But the (unlinkable) one from a woman responding to a front-page story on wine at White Castle had me almost ROFL for the lack of self-awareness. If Mom was bringing rebottled vino to McD’s and Burger King 40 years ago, it was not because she wanted to evoke midnight in Paris. She was leaning on mother’s little helper before Prozac and Valium.

Pepito in a drum

My mom had a million maxims, one of which was that you only entrap yourself in a tangled web of deceit. (She always quoted the original, of course.) And I’m hoping that will be the case with the butter-golden girl of the most tarnished hog business. And with those who just promoted the book in the pages of what presents itself as an august publication, of the highest integrity. I’m so old I remember when you wouldn’t review a cookbook without actually cooking from it. Let alone shill a promotional brochure without pulling back the chicharron to acknowledge what lies beneath.

Did someone say nutrition Nazis?

Figures that it would be Molto Ego who would induce second thoughts on my crazy idea of posting daily. By Sunday I’m sure I’ll have a whole other negative reaction to the bankster brouhaha over his loose lips; right now I love the idea of those guys writing checks for credit default swaps their guts can’t cash. And in the meantime I’m focusing on the rather astonishingly lame coverage of the linkbait. At first I was impressed the formerly arboreal media even jumped on the story. But then I started to count bylines — four for Rupert’s crew, three for Pinch’s — and neither mega-team answered the obvious question: Can you get into the “boycotted” restaurants? Saturday at Del Posto, for the record, is as open as it always was to peons: 4:30 or 10:30. Babbo’s line is nonstop busy. But if you want to know what the commenters are texting, including on whose cash keeps the crudo afloat, just head on over to your hometown paper. For the insights, you know, you can’t get on your own.

Praise the room and pass the potpie

I’m a little behind, but did we really need a Brit advising Americans on how to cook on a camping trip? As Paul Theroux must have wondered, shouldn’t she be sitting in her underwear staring out to sea in Cornwall? I would ask if they’ve lost their fucking minds, but the answer is too obvious. I could deal with bangers on the barbie before fava beans in the field. It’s been 40 years since my family would pack up the bedrolls and the old Coleman stove, and I still remember what a hassle cooking anything but freshly caught trout was. And we had a wood stove to practice on at home. What’s most amazing is not just that a recycled book is being passed off as fresh. It’s that I was the most recalcitrant Girl Scout ever and still know you do not approach a campfire barefoot. You may start thinking s’mores with those marshmallows. But watch out for napalm. . .

It’s pronounced Goya

And this new Nigella. Sacre merde. Is there anything better than a cliché? Why would anyone presume we need lecturing on not shopping in supermarkets? For a home cook, the great glory of living here (or in Paris or San Francisco) is the variety of ways to part with food dollars. But I guess it’s all a clear indication that the target audience is officially “out here” (no matter that one of my old friends could never get home delivery of the birdcage liner in Louisville). The thing shoulda been conceived as Kountry Kitchen. Slickers might learn something.

No Rocco, please, we’re English

Apparently only outsiders read the hometown paper’s public editor’s lament about trash-tracking, which noted that three different sections had run silliness about a non-story. This week readers were subjected to back-to-back gluten-free BS. Of course, this is the pinnacle of journalism that sold the world the connection between yellowcake and WMD. But still. Would a better story not focus on whether this trend should even be a trend? Humans have been eating wheat/wheat products for millennia. Why the pushback now? Has everyone gotten lactose-intolerant to oat bran with pomegranate juice? A few years ago I met a woman in Tuscany whose brother’s guts were being corroded by celiac disease, and I have taken it seriously ever since. Still, I somehow doubt half of America could be similarly afflicted. But I am looking forward to Nivea in Thursday Styles . . .