Then again, Americans have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the falsities of food that there’s actually a debate online over whether butter can be successfully substituted for shortening in xmas cookie recipes. For Crisco’s sake, butter has been around since the first udder squeezer realized you could whip cream into a solid state of bliss. Of course spritz cookies can use butter. Once upon a time whole squadrons of home economists had to be enlisted to convert all those time-honored butter recipes to use oil chemically converted into a scary solid. And now here we bake, baffled about the basics. The funny thing is that there is actually a fear-free substitute for shortening, the very ingredient it was invented to replace. It’s a four-letter word, but lard makes amazingly crisp cookies.
Post Category → onward and downward
Go, Coolio, go
My Tweet on Dubai was “None dare call it Vegas.” The world is waking up from a pretty bad bender and acting as if no one could have predicted epic fail with ski jumps in a desert. But the same meltdown is happening in the Nevada wasteland where all the marquee chefs are clusterfucking. A restaurant wonderland where nearly all the food and consumers have to be flown in is not exactly sustainable no matter how much muck the climate-change deniers throw up. Maybe they should just declare falafel the new sushi and be done with it.
But what about the bourbon?
So media financial experts are weighing in on the great pumpkin shortage of 2009 and saying yes, we had more to fear than fear itself. I’m not going to even start on how these are the whizzes who didn’t notice the economic boom was based on bankster fraud, just note that even with a horrible harvest, the real shortage would not be felt until next Thanksgiving. Unless huge stockpiles in warehouses have all been eroded, which I kinda doubt. The bigger lesson of the near-disaster seems to have gone over everyone’s head. The pumpkins that turned to mush in the fields were grown from proprietary seed. Monoculture is just another way of saying “shortage waiting to happen.” Ask the tomato growers wiped out by blight spread by plants sold in big box stores. Or ask the Irish. Maybe one label is not enough for most cans. One mother not to mess with is nature.
Not a pot to trickle down in
Just as all the culi-pundits are sending people around the bend over the too-muchness of Thanksgiving, the silly government decides to inform anyone paying attention that 49 million people are going hungry in what boasts of being the richest country in the world. Much as I hate the bureaucratese of “food insecurity,” it does hint at the awfulness of not knowing where your next meal is coming from. And much as I hate kids, I can’t deny they’re the future — I want them growing up healthy and strong enough to change my diapers someday. In my lifetime I never thought I would see a cartoon of a family at the table with the parents advising the son and daughter to clean their plates because “children are going hungry in Oregon.” To think it all began with ketchup as a vegetable. . . .
Monetary Jack? It’ll cost you
Twice lately, at Zabar’s and at Holy Foods, I have passed tasting tables where slices of cheese were being offered under something fruity and have felt rather sad. How quickly a brilliant concept devolves into typical American raspberry-chocolate-ranch-Dorito panini. It’s not just fast food that has fattened this country. It’s bastardization and trend mashups. A great cheese is great on its own. It doesn’t necessarily need frosting. But tell that to the people who will wind up schmearing Smucker’s over Kraft’s best. . .
In Nero’s rotating banquet hall
But the most annoying food feature lately had to be the one by the AP reporter who persuaded Food Network stars to come up with things his little shit (a k a Republican in the making) might eat. Forget whether it was self-serving and self-promotional for a journalist to spotlight his own spawn and try to solve a personal problem. Whatever happened to shaming kids into eating because people are starving in India? Update it by reminding the privileged snots that kids are starving in America. Enough with the damn Dexterism already.
Smells like mint Kool-Aid
Now that Holy Foods has invaded, the new game in my neighborhood is Market Death Watch. I was betting on the Mustard Museum to go under first but just got an email from a friend saying he is thrilled never to have to set foot into Barzini’s again, which does not bode well for that cavern of surliness. I don’t expect the Food Shitty to suffer because it’s so cheap; everyone loves Mani, and the two shops owned by the same couple should benefit from proximity (my consort’s studio manager says she is not gonna walk two extra blocks for $$ midafternoon coffee). Where HF will probably be most competitive may be with customer craziness. The other day I was in line with both a well-dressed couple whose huge cart held only ice and water (doesn’t 365 Brand come from the tap?) and a ponytailed asshole picking a procedural fight with the checkout wrangler. He actually yelled, “No, I’m right! I’ve been shopping at Whole Foods for 10 years and you’ve been working here for two weeks.” If the unmedicated are drifting north, Fairway may be in the game. . .
Brigadoon in a natural casing
Another friend braved the crappy 9/11 weather for a couple of days in the city that never freaks and showed up at our place with a camera full of food from San Gennaro. Which weirdly brought back too many memories of my very first foray to NYC, when my next-older sister and I took the train up from DC and hooked up with the daughter of one of my mom’s brothers. I may be redoing an “I remember . . .” but four recollections linger from that night: Her teeny apartment in Queens, where her wedding dress still hanging on a closet door was the only decoration. The scary cab ride to Little Italy and her handing the driver $5 for a $4 fare and snarling when he pocketed it, “Gimme fiddy cents back.” The scary-smelly food on Mulberry Street and crowds so tight I would have worried about being trampled if I had known what a scrum was way back when. And the disgusting brown french fries I made my sister go out to find me for my anorectic dinner from our room in the Statler Hilton. Someday I should dig up the photo button we had made of the three of us at the festival that one time we were together, if only to marvel that this dissipate is the one still standing (cousin died of AIDS, sister of breast cancer). When Don posted his gallery on Facebook, though, I saw something so much more happy-making. As accustomed as I am to the disconnect between street food and real food in this town, I was still amazed at the insanity of what is served on the streets where Neapolitan/Sicilian travesties reign. Deep-fried Oreos? Colombian cat on a stretcher? Cannoli any way but in a shell? I guess if New Yorkers can’t make it to the state fair, the state fair had to come to us. But surely we can do better. Are we going to let Orange County get away with deep-fried avocado and deep-fried White Castle burgers and deep-fried Spam? Can’t anyone around here deep-fry a slice? Or a rat?
Sushi or salmon mousse?
The most unintentionally LOL story of the week had to be the WSJournal’s headlined “Coach Food Goes to New Heights.” The airlines could probably actually turn a profit if they spent less money hyping their shitty fare and just made it better — either they’re hiring celebrity chefs with huge hoopla (and no perceptible improvements in the crap) or they’re sending out releases boasting of worthless new tactics that the average passenger suffering in steerage would trade for just one plain bag of peanuts. This dutiful roundup had it all: Todd English is whipping up almond-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwiches (the Onion couldn’t have done better); American is selling Boston Market sandwiches and salads to “give passengers assurance of the quality of the food” (ditto on the Onion). Not only is it processed chain crap, but it’s now processed chain crap “prepared by the catering companies that supply American’s food.” You know, the ones who made those old chicken-or-beef mystery meals that were once endless butts of jokes and now seem like fine dining. The great improvements are all junk: chicken gyros and smoothes and Ben & Jerry’s. The most telling quote came from a passenger who said she had brought a Subway sandwich on board because it had to be better than what they were selling. When you can’t beat that faux food, no amount of propaganda can save you.
Let there be blights
And reports that Tavern on the Green reneged on its cookbook deal are not exactly shocking. The only surprising aspect is that anyone really thought a catering hall never known for its food would have recipes worth the sacrifice of trees. I still remember the poor young Swiss chef who was canned back in the last century after the NYT, when it still mattered, awarded only a “fair” for his ambitious cooking. His wife, a then-friend of mine, had given me a tour of the kitchens and the watchword was obviously not quality, only quantity (the only place I think I’ve seen bigger vats was a pumpkin factory in Illinois where tons were reduced for canning). But it’s still a little unsettling to read reports implying potential concessionaires are pulling out because the staff is unionized (read: deal-breakingly expensive). If your plane is going down, would you prefer the pilot with training and benefits or the co-pilot who doesn’t know nothin’ ’bout no de-icing and had to come to work with a cold? Swine flu hysteria made no sense not least because no one wanted to consider how many food handlers can’t afford either a sick day or a doctor. And with sneezing and wheezing, those ridiculous latex gloves are not protection but kabuki. Especially considering the waiters long ago got kinder reviews than the food.
Give me that old-time tobacco juice
And speaking of wine, I passed an in-progress dedicated bar off Amsterdam the other day and thought it looked promising — good name, nice chairs, sleek design. Then a hulking workman ostentatiously leaned out one of the windows and hawked a honking lugie onto the sidewalk. If that’s what the construction crew does in public, I’m not sure I want to brave the glasses in private.
Please don’t feed the pigeon
Andy Warhol misunderestimated New York. Get your 15 minutes and die and someone will spring up to knock off your schtick in about 5. The old boy with his vegetable peelers at Union Square has already been replaced by a woman with a British accent and something of the same spiel for the rubes (I only heard what could be heard in trying to push past the clot of gawkers into the market). I guess it shouldn’t be so surprising. Look how many little chefs have sprung from one Big Homme, and he hasn’t even vacated the premises.
3. [pl.] [Slang] a trifling sum of money
I’m glad people are slowly starting to connect the dots with Big Shitpile, Bernie Madoff and the filthy peanut butter. I have wondered for decades why we have passively assumed the burden of protecting ourselves from industrial food by swallowing the advice to scrub our kitchens and our carrots and literally cook the crap out of eggs, chicken, vegetables etc. It is possible to have clean food, but you wouldn’t know it from the FDA. But I guess all the “leaders” busy shrinking the government small enough to drown in a bathtub didn’t notice the toilet was overflowing. (It’s also funny how all the food people hollering for a garden at the White House and a celebrity in the White House kitchen went dead silent when it came time to add money to a gutted regulatory agency, let alone to school nutrition programs.) Something is really wrong with an America that imports peanuts from China, organic or not. I’d say the race to the bottom is over, and we lost.
Lobbyist of unintended consequences
I must not be as cynical as I’m accused of being, because I am constantly amazed at how predictably the food blogosphere has started to emulate the food coven. A dieter gets dissed, for instance, and they’ll throw Rusty right out of the club. Which is just one reason why the most interesting food stuff I’m coming across these days tends to be buried in political blogs, like Kevin Drum’s musings on how California almonds took over the world. You would like to meet their tailor for sure. But I think it was in the comments that someone noted that farmers were paid not to grow other crops, and now new farmers are jumping on the government gravy train. Coming soon: smoked walnuts, more walnuts in your mixed nuts and more walnuts than you could ever eat, with a nutrition campaign to boot. The free market works in mysterious ways, and somehow I doubt appointing Alice Waters secretary of food would have changed that anytime soon.
I know. I know. It’s deadly serious.
So I’m at a lunch where the focus is on food designed to be the most nourishing and antioxidant-rich and good for you it can possibly be, with dishes developed using a nutrition guru’s vast storehouse of information. And we’re all well into the exceptional raw Tuscan kale salad with teeny flecks of pecorino when one woman says, “I can really taste sodium.” To which NG responds, “Oh, you’re picking that up from the cheese. It’s a pecorino Toscano” etc. etc. etc. At that another woman drops her fork, roots around for and in her bag and pulls out a little white packet from which she extracts a pill to pop. When I can safely get away with it, I sneak out my reading glasses to see what’s written on the white paper next to her wineglass. Yep, it was something for the lactose-intolerant. These guys have their work cut out for them in the land of the chemical cure, where people would bring bottled water to Lourdes.