Food and Whining - An outlet for a mediocrity-weary diner.

My First Fork

2011-04-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

A preference for one thing over another is a natural human tendency. Rather, it's a survival tendency. If this watering hole is better than that watering hole, and you're an elephant, it's in your genes to communicate that fact. And those that don't follow you take their chances. Literally.

For humans, stating a preference - declaring that one food or music or way of thinking as being better than another - can be perceived by some as being elitist, arrogant, or as they say in Britain, "up one's self"; which perhaps help explain their food.

As I write this, I'm in front of a new audio system. While I consider myself a music fan and want to treat food and music as equals, I tend to listen to music while making food; the auditory being a single stimulus while the sights, smells, and tactical nature of food occupies the other senses. A good soundtrack makes audible what the other senses are celebrating.

Due largely to coincidence, I now have a sound system which is disproportionate to my previous dedication to listening to music. In short, it's expensive. Really expensive. It would be as if I had been fishing a few times, and then decided to buy a river. And yet, I'm discovering things I've never heard before. Recordings I hearing through a tiny record needle, are being played before me anew; like a high school crush frozen in time and is now presented again. And not in black and white, slightly out of focus and faded a bit by time, but enhanced and enchanted. As if you had the perspective of now way back when and truly appreciated what you saw and felt. It's like that, but with sound.

This notion of the "hardware" affecting the "software" does, of course, relate back to food. And of youth.

If food is the "software" of dining, then dishes and flatware, napkins and wine glasses are surely the hardware. While none of these alters the flavor of what we're eating, they can subtly affect our enjoyment of it.

Growing up, my parents had what I would call a "modest" kitchen. Dishes were always unremarkable (and unbreakable) melamine or "Corelware", flatware was modest and no more than about 5 of any one utensil matched. Table knives were dull and/or serrated, prep knives looked as though they'd all served time in a slaughter house cutting on cement slabs. It all matched the skills and level of passion my parents had about food. Neither the food nor utensils felt slighted; they were in perfect harmony.

While cleaning out my mother's house of every single item imaginable, I came across a random but remarkable memory, a single element which may have inadvertently uncovered my early interest in food and how it's consumed - a single fork. I've no idea where it came from, nor why we only had one of them (I suspect a neighbor brought it over and it was orphaned along the way), but it was distinctly different than the rest. It was a bit too ornate for my taste but implied the object had value. Most noticeable of all, it was heavy; especially when compared to the stamped-out-of-sheet-metal flatware it shared a drawer with. It was a bit shinier than the others, but not in a showy way. It felt "right" in my hands and it became my preferred fork whenever it was available in the drawer.

I wonder if anyone else in my small family noticed it. Could they honestly reach into that drawer and grab just any old fork when this one was there? Were they all equal candidates for conveying such important cargo?

Surely this single piece of metal is, in part, responsible for (or indicative of) my tendency toward better utensils now. Dining out for a living for 8 years exposed me to a lot of dishes and glasses and forks and knives, and I found one company and one style that reminded me of that balance I first enjoyed so long ago, an Italian company called "Sambonet". It took me years to get enough light and focus to read the convoluted logo on the "top" side of the forks. Then I noticed the knives stamped clearly with the name. I ordered a set as soon as I could find them online. They certainly weren't cheap, but they'll be with me for a very long time. And so will that first fork.

The Tasting Menu

2010-12-29T23:54:00.001-08:00

Dining experiences come in many forms, from the unexpected "taco truck" at the right hour of the morning (usually well past midnight and often dangerously close to dawn) to 3 or 4-star (depending on the measurement) restaurants with name-brand everything, including the staff. Taco trucks tend to exceed our expectations because, frankly, one's expectations of quality are tempered in the wee hours. But those other places? They come with certain metrics.

I spend what others could easily call an "inordinate" amount of money on food in a year. However, it's been a while since I'd spent what I would consider an "inordinate" amount of money on a meal.

The number one slot belongs to a meal in Monte Carlo at an Alain Ducasse outpost (Louis XV) which rocked my credit card like a speed junkie on a pinball machine. It was an unexpected opportunity and seized knowing it would be unique. Below that, plenty of meals in New York caused me to wince one the bill was tallied along with Hong Kong, Tokyo, and London.

Tonight's meal took the #2 position.

Until one dines at a restaurant daring enough to serve 12 courses (or so), it's an experience which is tough to explain. You really do get swept away by it all, the attentiveness of the servers, all of whom know not just what is on the menu, but why it's there, what it's made of, and why it all works together. Pricey decor, the diversity of the menu; it's hypnotizing. You need to do it at least once. Maybe twice. Three times at most.

And then stop.

Benu comes from grand breeding, an offspring of The French Laundry. Unlike "The Laundry", you don't need to book centuries in advance and you have more than 14 seconds on the first full moon on a Tuesday to PHONE them when a tide is 1/4 high to beg for a table; like phoning a radio station to win concert tickets when you were 16. (The über-rich will always want to out-reserve each other and that is why The French Laundry and its ilk will always exist.) The rest of us riff-raff are forced to go elsewhere, if not the galactic center of dining experiences, then to one of its orbiting moons. We get tempted by the prodigy of Keller starting something new and amazing, in an easier location and with slightly better odds of getting a reservation.

Before I go much further, if you've never been to a place like Benu, then stop reading and go. You owe it to yourself to experience such a meal unwearied by what follows. It'll cost you an arm, leg, and kidney, but you'll learn something and more importantly, you'll be surprised.

If you have been, don't go.

There is a bell curve (in my mind) which plots the likelihood of enjoying a meal. The vertical axis is enjoyment (from inedible to nirvana), the horizontal is the price (from fast-food to the stratosphere). If you can picture all of that, you'll see enjoyment peaks near the middle, or maybe more toward the 3/5ths mark).

Let me make this even easier.

Write down the number of pleasurable, memorable meals for which you spent more than, say, $200 per person. You looked forward to the meal, enjoyed every moment of it, left feeling both full and satisfied with food, wine, and service. Do not write it down if you left the restaurant feeling like bloated whale which has beached itself.

Now write down the number of memorable meals for which you spent between $75 and $120 per person.

In my case, I'm struggling to put down any of the first variety. In Monte Carlo, I was feeling sick part-way through the meal. Course after course kept hitting me, wave after wave of food. At Coi in San Francisco, the food was interesting but hardly earth-shattering; unlike the bill. At WD-50 (hardly stratospheric but 8 courses was a challenge), the food was novel but in stark contrast to the other meals, I left... not "hungry" but "unsatisfied". I wanted another meal, not due to hunger, but the satisfaction receptors in my brain seemed independent of my stomach. Something similar happens when eating in an airport; you eat because you have to and rarely brag about it later. The food at WD-50 is innovative for sure, but the mental challenge of each dish gets a bit tiring. Maybe it's a mood thing, which I liken to sushi. If you're not in the mood for sushi, it's a little difficult to eat.

On the other hand, I can name probably 20 memorable, delicious, and truly satisfying meals for 1/3 those prices.

My first meal at Gotham Bar and Grill in New York comes to mind (and a meal or two thereafter, which is a long story), Chanterelle, also in NY, nearly every meal at Zuni in S.F., ditto for Water Grill in L.A., Blackbird in Chicago, Vong in London, and 2 dozen tiny, unexpected jewels along the way. In many cases, it would cost the same to travel to these places dine and return with positive memories than to eat at a "flagship" restaurant. Odds of getting a reservation increase as well.

As for Benu, seating was early; 5:45 to be exact. That table was targeted for turnover and the pace of the courses made it feel that way. There was barely time for consultation of either server or sommelier about what was being consumed before the "air traffic" behind them quickly piled up. As usual, the arrival of each course came with a presentation recited with the clarity and assertiveness of a potential "Miss America" citing her intended goals if crowned.

Most importantly, I experienced (once again) what I have come to fear in all "tasting menus" - dreading the next course. Not because it's likely to be bad, but because my hunger was satiated 4 courses ago. It's like grocery shopping when you're full or the smell of beer as you clean up from a party the night before. It's not fun. Regardless of how small the portions are, if there are 15 of them, you're going to over do it and you're going to hate yourself for it.

That night, sleep was restless, fitful, and dreams were bizarre and haunting. It was as if my body was reminding me of something which 1 out of every 20 fortune cookies will tell you: too much of a good thing can be bad.

Whining as a means to an end.

2010-06-28T20:59:00.001-07:00

I've always written. In binders and notebooks, on typewriters, and on computers; the latter, for 28 years. And I've always loved food, though I fell in love long before I got to know it well enough. It was probably inevitable that I write about it.

My first blog entry about the "Death of the Martini", while a bit peripheral to the topic of food, encompasses why I started writing in the first place - I saw something I didn't like, I wrote that piece, and then began asking questions. Writing it all down gives me a point of reference, a reminder that something in food is broken in some small way.

At the end, I ask whether there might be a resurgence in cocktail making and, in the three years since I started FoodandWhining, I have discovered that there is indeed a resurgence, a revolution, a revival of "artisanal cocktails". Mind you, not to the point of being able to order a perfect Sazerac in any bar I enter, but I've been surprised by "secret stashes" of ingredients and skill sets.

FoodAndWhining is a tongue-in-cheek way of asking a fundamental question about food, one I've asked since I had to stand on a chair to watch my father "cook"; "This is great! BUT! Is this the best there is?"

It's also to encourage people to cook for themselves, and experiment, research, ask questions, and be bold. Food is the third-most essential ingredient in being alive and offers both an obligation and an opportunity to explore the incredible diversity of something you cannot do without. Apart from love and sex, what you consume should be considered thoroughly. Preumably your ideal sexual parner wouldn't be "ordered" through a drive-through window, so why should your food be?

Luxury without Impact

2010-06-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

In an effort to follow the advice I post here, I purchased a book I referenced only in passing in my blatantly fluffy piece about making clear ice.

"The Frozen Water Trade" by Gavin Weightman is one of those books that opens up a hidden world behind something we take for granted. It's history, entrepreneurship, and struggles against adversity for ice. It covers its collection, distribution, and sale before there were handy machines which would make it in abundance automatically.

I think most people under the age of, say, 50 know that ice was sold in blocks but know very little about beyond that. My grandparents referred to their refrigerator as an "ice box" which I assumed to be a holdover from their modest upbringing and scant education. My assumption was that companies manufactured ice in large quantities and distributed blocks regularly to homes with a box in which to hold it. It turns out, the history of gathering and storing ice goes back much further than that. Thousands of years, in fact.

In some parts of the world, mother nature makes great quantities of it like clockwork; sometimes to the point of hindering the activities of human beings. In short, ice comes along with great regularity requiring no help from us. A valuable commodity which makes itself.

While there isn't much of a market for ice in January for the people who live in and around it, when the weather shifts and the temperature (and humidity) rises, they change their tune. Someone along the way thought to cut large slabs of ice during winter, and store them which is no simple task given than fiberglass insulation was another 80-100 years away, and mechanical/chemical refrigeration was only in its infancy. It would be some time before a machine could freeze anywhere near as much water as mother nature. So, to protect ice from the inevitable approach of summer, they built insulated warehouses called "ice houses" to store ice for the summer.

Frederic Tudor thought bigger than that. Much bigger. What about places where it was hot all the time? Havana, Calcutta, Martinique? How many people of means travel to those destinations, and how much would they be willing to pay to have ice in their drinks, or ice cream on a sweltering day? Getting it there was the tricky bit. He needed an ice house that would float.

There were hopeful signs; someone noticed that wooden crates in ships from Norway would still have ice on them months later in the Caribbean. Wood, it seemed, was at least a decent insulator. Saw dust became the most flexible and plentiful (thanks to the saw mills nearby) means of insulating ice for what would be very long voyages.

Not to give away the ending of the book, but it was a colossal success. (Why write a book about a crazy ice guy if he failed?)

What Frederic Tudor achieved was astounding in its scale, if subtle in its longer-term effect on mankind. It was how he did it and - more importantly - WHEN he did it that fascinates me.

At first, his story reminded me of the insane waste of resources we use to transport bottled water from every continent on earth (even if it's frozen and we need to thaw it.) But if you think about when all of this took place, you'll see it as an amazingly "green" enterprise.

First, to freeze water, we now use electricity rather than forethought. They, on the other hand, simply stepped back and waited for a lake which had frozen for hundreds of thousands of years to freeze once again. To keep water frozen, we continue to use electricity; often in the same device used to make it in the first place. In their case, they hauled large blocks of ice (via horses) to ice houses which, for the next several months, would be the same temperature as the ice itself. Once the weather changed, insulation would help keep the ice cold.

When it was time to move the ice, horses were once again employed to move them around town or to the ships. (Internal combustion-powered vehicles weren't ready to carry anything heavier than the rich people who could afford them.) The ships, in turn, used a source of energy we're only now returning to - wind. Yes, it took a long time to get to where you were going, but other than cooking fires (if such things were permitted on a wooden boat; I'd think not), the ships generated little to no carbon emissions.

From the ship, it was back to horses again or, if the distance on land was greater, then steam locomotives were used; presumably coal-fired. Here's where the "green" breaks down a bit, coal being a notorious pollutant. But if you think about it, steel wheels on steel rails makes for very little friction. Trains can't climb steep mountains so you would either go around them or through them. Hence, no hills to climb burning more fuel.

Once it reached its final destination (sometimes 10,000+ miles from where it started), back into an insulated box it went until it was chipped and used in the finest treatment for Malaria ever invented - the Gin and Tonic.

Considering the effort involved (mostly human and animal), the distance covered (across ice, over land, stored in an ice house, hauled on a ship, placed on a train, hauled over land again, then held), this whole endeavor required amazingly little in the way of fossil fuels.

Ice, too, is an immense luxury, especially at a time when it wasn't possible to just make it anywhere you wanted. Fredric Tudor did the world no giant favor by providing ice to it, but he did make people happier. While a minimal carbon footprint wasn't something anyone pondered in those days, it's remarkable how something so fleeting and frivolous could happen with such minimal impact on the planet.

Ironic but perhaps inevitable that the ice trade migrated to refrigeration units out of convenience, but also because the water sources were becoming polluted.

Natural Selections and Food Chains

2010-02-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

I remember watching "Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom'" as a child and how it all seemed so cruel and unfair. A lion would stalk an hours-old, baby of some variation of "deer" and when the parent was even the slightest bit inattentive, the lion would storm in and kill the animal, often under the helpless gaze of the parent. The fact that the prey was cute didn't help the matter. (Cuteness seems biologically designed to amplify sympathy.) Why didn't the film crew step in and stop it? How could they just allow such a brutal death? The reality, which I couldn't understand at the time, was that while one cute baby animal died, a few other cute animals (cubs of the lion) would be fed, along with mom. As an ironic bonus, the parent of the sacrificed animal wouldn't be passing such inattentive genes on to the next generation. Lessons about "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" and "food chain" wouldn't be clear to me for some time.

Restaurants, too, have eco-systems and life spans. Some spans are as short as a bait fish, 99% of which only serve to feed other animals, while other restaurants have the longevity of George Burns or redwood trees.

One of my favorite restaurants on earth, which happens to be based in New York, "Veritas" has very good "roots". It's a restaurant borne out of an abundance of wine (by a very serious collector) and that collector's passion for it. It features a menu created for the wine list (rather than the other way around), it's in a great location, and is a tiny, efficient space staffed by the most attentive and considerate professionals. They've always managed to offer familiarity and recognition without ever breaking character, armed with both knowledge of and passion for the contents of plates and stemware.

In September, Veritas closed "for minor renovations".

Granted, restaurant closings happen out of need (such as repairs to plumbing or ventilation), but they must choose wisely when and for how long they close. I've learned over the years, when a restaurant shuts, it never reopens quite the same way. There's always a tweak to the menu, a slight (or complete) change of staff. When an animal in the wild stumbles or falls, it alerts predators. When a restaurant stumbles, it alerts other restaurants willing, if not anxious, to feed the patrons of the failing one. News of "illness" in the business spreads quickly.

Granted I'm not a local, and can't tell you what (if any) subtle changes have occurred at Veritas in the 5 months since I last visited, but the feel is decidedly different. The mechanism seems a bit more sluggish, rattles a bit more, and sometimes backfires.

First, there was room on a Saturday evening. In September. At the bar. This is rare. There are - at most - 40 seats in the entire restaurant, and some people like to just stop by for an appetizer or dessert and the bar is the best place for it. (You also bypass the requisite prix-fixe menu at a table.)

The second sign of trouble came when I ordered the skate wing. When prompted for a glass of wine, the bartender asked if I wanted red or white. The sound of screeching tires in my head was combined with the sounds of an impact and breaking glass. My heart sank. Red? With skate?

Wait, I'm in Veritas. Surely I am the one who is missing something. I glanced at the menu again to check the preparation. No, red was wrong. Rosé may have been close, but red was wrong. When questioned, she (wisely) conferred with the sommelier. He looked at her for just a moment too long, presumably also in disbelief about the question, and whispered something back. She returned with two suggestions, ones I would have chosen on my own.

This was a seemingly-minor setback, but spoke volumes. Three years ago, this well-intentioned but clueless bartender wouldn't have made it past the second round of interviews. Now, she was "speaking for" the restaurant.

Having taken note of this incident, but not jumping to conclusions, I soldiered on with my first course. While I hate whining about portion sizes, the starter was insultingly tiny, like two soup spoons worth of food. Pasta is cheap to make. There could have been more of it. A pattern was emerging.

When I asked about the familiar staff, one person had left, the other was in Hong Kong. I sensed "job interview".

Still, natural selection works hand-in-hand with evolution; you can't have one without the other. I hope Veritas is simply evolving, adapting to the newly-stingy economy on which it depends. But I fear that its breathing is labored and pulse is slowing; they may be simply waiting out their lease.

Sympathy for a single animal seems pointless in a herd, all of whom are destined to become part of a bigger food chain. But when you get to know one very well, it's hard to say goodbye. I'll continue to visit and monitor progress, but I'm realistic. It had an amazing run, and if it has since gone to restaurant heaven by the time I go back, I know that it will have lived a happy life.

Veritas may not be alone. Others in the herd may be stumbling.

Ferran Adria broke the news that he plans to shut down El Bulli for two years while he re-evaluates what they're doing, and determine whether or not they'll continue to do it (at least in its current incarnation). For perspective, this is a bit like Bono declaring that U2 would stop making music at the peak of their career, or Steve Jobs declaring that he's going to go build canoes for a living.

Closure of the flagship restaurant only slightly decreases my chances of eating there; 2,000,000 requests for 8,000 seats per year, but it would still be a great loss. While there are rumors of health issues with either Ferran himself, or a member of his family, and others speculate that he is simply running out of ideas, or maybe all of those things. I suspect it's the food.

Yes, the cuisine he invented or simply refined invites speculation, criticism, emulation, displeasure, and - at times - disgust. (Deep-fried rabbit ears come to mind.) His food, his methods, his focus for 6 months of the year on developing the menu for the remaining 6 months, his kitchens (both test and restaurant), all provoke and invite envy of efficiency and resources. And herein lies the problem.

The food is not very satisfying.

Is it "good"? Yes. Is it well-cooked? Yes. Is it unique (at least for a while) in all the world? Yes; but it's lacking that pleasure you get from eating a pizza after you've moved furniture all day. It's the psychological equivalent of "umami"; deeply satisfying without a particular sensation. "Satiated" is perhaps another good word to explain what you don't feel after this kind of meal.

Take the restaurant "WD-50" in New York. Wiley Dufresne worked for Ferran but wanted to take the chemistry set to the next level. The first time I dined at WD-50, it was an amazing experience; having someone tinker with your preconceptions and perceptions about food leaves you giddy. The second time, it was fun, but not as earth-shattering. After the third time, I walked away barely full and not at all satisfied. Molecular gastronomy seems to cause you to spend so much time thinking about what you're eating that your senses never get a chance to simply enjoy.

What El Bulli has done will change food forever. While not every restaurant will suddenly specialize in foamed sea cucumber sperm, some will tinker with texture and flavor a bit more knowing that the world respects the source of inspiration. They became rock stars by showing the creative potential of food and never (visibly) letting their fame interfere with their mission. Going out on a "high note", and perhaps each doing something individually may lead to something bigger.

We can no more slow or halt the demise of a restaurant than a photographer can halt the food chain in the wild; nor should we. It's all part of a process.

Highland Christmas

2010-01-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, we all find ourselves in uncomfortable situations, equivalent to someone afraid of water being forced to swim or someone afraid of heights forced onto the ledge of a building. Being cast from our comfort zone can only do us good in the long run even if it makes us a bit crazy in the short term. Sometimes, for reasons of adventure, curiosity or even self-punishment, we even launch ourselves into such situations by choice.

My own version is two-fold; on one hand, I've lived for nearly 43 years on earth without waking up to an actual, genuine "White Christmas" so raved about in songs and lore. I've been chilly at Christmas, but never truly cold. I've lived in a trailer park or suburban house, most without a chimney further stunting the believability of Santa Claus. This year, I've chosen to spend Christmas in a harsh, alien landscape – one laden with snow – testing my distaste for cold weather. That whiteness comes at the expense of travel convenience and the requirement of extra layers of clothing, but it is a thin, powdery layer of assurance that Christmas is actually happening. (Seasonal changes in California can be hard to detect.)

The second challenge I face is my blatant fear of "bad food" and my palate has become more and more difficult to please. Given mobility and a credit card, I can usually find something to "survive" on. The snow would make driving (and even walking) difficult and would restrict my culinary freedom. Stranded on a farm, I had to make the best of what I had at hand.

These two fears – cold weather and bad food – would be tested in a single, precarious destination for anyone particular about food - The United Kingdom; specifically, Scotland and England. While the cuisines of several other countries (Holland, Sweden, Denmark, among others) deserve a similar reputation, none are as notorious.

The Food Network, Travel Network, and recurring articles in food magazines and on the web lead us to believe that a culinary revolution has already taken place throughout the U.K. Thanks to Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Fergus Henderson and the like, the U.K. is waking up to their own abilities and roots in food. In Marco's case, he reminded the English what the French have known for centuries, Fergus reminded them of how they once cooked, and Gordon taught them the discipline to seek more from their cuisine. Hester Blumenthal – well, he headed in a completely different direction.

The "crown jewels" of British restaurants can indeed dazzle provided the chef doesn’t strictly adhere to traditional ingredients and preparations. Among the many things British food lacks apart from flavor is balance, and prudent additions from other cultures can transform this humble cuisine into something more.

Even as I type this, at 35,000 feet somewhere over Greenland, I am hurtling myself into the belly of the culinary beast - Scotland - where there's plenty to be afraid of. The primary sticking point for most people is a single dish mimicked in a dozen cuisines around the world, but singularly feared from the Scottish - haggis. It's all the things we (as Americans and largely the English as well) consider outside the realm of actual food. To us, haggis contains what are normally remnants with the notable exception of fur and hooves.

Upon arrival, I wasn't sure where to begin. I could hardly start at haggis and work backward; instead, I would do a bottom-up approach - get to know the basics, understand the overall flavors, and then head for the peak of the mountain.

Fish and Chips.

I stumbled, quite by accident, upon the best fish and chip shop ("chippy") in Scotland, which was fortunate; I was after the absolute pinnacle of what this dish can be. However, the differences between vendors are subtle, and a look at the ingredients explains why. Take fish, (and not a potent fish either - cod - "tofu of the sea"), batter (flour, water, and maybe beer), an inert oil heated to 400 degrees, and combine. Then, take par-boiled potatoes, cut into sticks, add them to the same oil, and drain. Serve them in a cardboard tray, voila.

Frankly? You get something not unlike every other version of fish and chips you've ever had. Nobody adds herbs, no detectable spices other than salt, no marinade, no innovative dipping sauce, nothing. It’s the same thing. At its very best, fish and chips is still a dish of mute flavors which demand bolder ones to make it interesting, a blank canvas seemingly designed to be painted with malt vinegar or tartar sauce. Even at this award-winning venue, the tartar sauce was in tear-and-squeeze packets manufactured by Heinz.

Turf

The second on my to-do list was frightening in name, ingredients, and appearance; black (or blood) pudding. While not actually black, it's nearer to black than any other color and "pudding" doesn't seem to suit either the American or common British use of this word (I took it to mean their generic term for "dessert", but pudding seems to describe anything ground/minced, and edible with a spoon. Then again, the Scottish refer to dinner as "tea", so there you go.)

I'm not terribly squeamish about eating something made primarily of dried blood. In fact, it was intriguing. As Fergus Henderson (whom I hope to meet on this journey) says, "it’s the essence of the beast". We carnivores eat all manner of animal, nose to tail in some rare instances, but this most vital of fluids is usually lost to industrial purposes (glue) or to dog food. It's a pure form of protein and a shame to waste.

I generally like my first taste of any “challenging” dish to be from the best source possible, and prepared by knowing hands. However, my first taste of black pudding would be prepared in a home from a freezer by me. I cut slices, glistening with ice crystals and wrapped in plastic, thawed them in hot water, then fried them (minus the plastic) in a pan with a most orthogonal ingredient (olive oil) and dived in.

As I started eating, I pondered what most people struggle with in food. Probably the biggest is any blatant-reminder that you are eating an animal of some sort; the connection between "dead corpse" and "main course" being too much for people to handle. The smell of tripe can instantly remind us of what it did for a living, as can kidneys. Tongue, brains, nose, tail, ears; all-too-recognizable and enigmatic challenges to what we think of as food.

Even for me, black/blood pudding exhibits only two daunting pretenses; its appearance (which resembles a random piece of a burn victim) and its named contents. It tastes nor smells like anything else I can think of and nothing I'm likely to crave in the future. I'm not sure if my displeasure stems from the main ingredient, or one of the others mixed with it. Maybe this is just what dried, fried blood tastes like. I’d taste it one more time during the trip, and come to the same conclusion. I’d be curious what the cuisines of other countries do with this same “challenging” ingredient.

Taming of the Wild Haggis

For all of the disappointments in Scottish cuisine, the one we’re trained to fear most was actually the least threatening and even interesting. Like black pudding, the “haggai” (my invented plural for haggis as there were three of differing spice levels) we had were cooked in a home by experienced, if not trained, hands, along with the traditional "neeps and tatties"; mashed turnips and mashed potatoes.

Despite the variety of offal in it, it smells nothing like the ingredients it contains nor the bladder containing it. Salt is an abundant ingredient (the Scottish tend to either omit it when it's needed or use far too much.) White pepper plays a big role, and what you're left with is a slightly gluey meatloaf owed to the suet mixed in with the other animal goodness.

Is it good? That is very much in the palate of the beholder, but I will say that haggis is nowhere near as daunting as its reputation. I would say it’s worth trying if you get the chance, but wouldn't say that the flavor is worth seeking out. Much like turkey at Thanksgiving, it's suitable for a once-a-year meal on "Rabbie Burns" night, a celebration of Scottish poet Robert Burns where haggis is served with whiskey (or even poured over the it).

A second version I had in a restaurant (shown above) modified little about the basic dish. Apart from serving it formed into a circle with a whiskey and mustard cream sauce which was a marked improvement in the balance of flavors, the essence of the dish intact.

Scotland is a country steeped in tradition, but tradition has another name; momentum. Tendencies, both good and bad, have little chance of changing without motive and there doesn't seem to be a motive or desire to change much about food in Scotland. Do they have good food? Yes, though much of it isn't traditional or even Scottish for that matter. In the more expensive restaurants, the flavors and textures are still tempered to the Scottish palate. You can taste the restraint; if not in main courses, then in the side dishes. Vegetables are often boiled beyond recognition, and mashed if they resemble anything at the end. Beef is generally cooked to cremation, and greens make rare appearances on a plate.

For whatever reason, the bulk of Scottish people just aren't focused on nor passionate about food. Dinner (“tea”) is simply to combat hunger, one "tick" on the to-do list of the day and activities resume once it is finished. To discuss, question, or form a strong opinion about food can be perceived as being "up one's self" (snobbish); a no-no in a classist system. Best that I’m a visitor here.

Stars

2009-11-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

I am unaware of any process in nature more volatile than that of rating a restaurant. The wildly-diverse experiences that wildly-diverse people can have even at the same establishment mimics the sporadic nature of earthquake predictions, snowflake patterns, or the formation of galaxies. To truly gauge a restaurant, all potential reviewers would need to dine on the same night with the same crowd, be cooked for by the same staff, served by the same server, at the same table, have the same tastes, having had the same prior dining experiences; already a staggering number of variables.

Another factor, as any professional restaurant reviewer can tell you and most people discover on their own, is that one's impression of a restaurant can change radically even between visits. Chefs make mistakes, servers have “off nights”, moods of diners vary wildly, and what someone is craving should be aligned (ore or less) with the cuisine of the restaurant chosen. If you're in the mood for a steak, dinner at "Salad Salad Salad!" probably isn't going to do much for you.

And herein lies the volatility and inaccuracy of Yelp...

There is a great article about how nearly every restaurant scores 4 out of 5 stars, whether flagship or "dive", whether the food is far better than the atmosphere, or the other way around. A review must be tempered with expectations; if you’re in a tiny taqueria, then expect amazing tacos rather than stellar service or Le Cirque-like ambiance. If you’re at Le Cirque, don’t complain that they made you wear a jacket and wouldn’t serve you ketchup with your duck fat fries.

The average of 4 makes sense when you think about it. Flaws can be found in nearly every dining experience. Maybe there was a draft at your table, or lighting fixtures were aimed at the floor rather than on your table. A dirty fork, a chipped wine glass, or a poorly-timed cooking duration can leave just enough of a mark to cause someone to withhold that extra star.

On the other hand, most people instinctively avoid a restaurant to which they would likely award only a single star. Factors of such restaurants are visible even before the menus are.

And what about those little stars? What do they actually mean? Half the reviewers go into lengthy detail about “what the stars mean to them.” I'd rather listen to people discuss horoscopes.

The daily creation of a high-end restaurant menu depends on a thousand variables; availability and timely-delivery of ingredients, capable and thorough preparation of those ingredients, timely and accurate cooking and combining of them on a plate, timely and orchestrated delivery of that plate to the correct table. It mimics the complexity of a mobile phone call in and is miraculous in its very existence; a complexity which only becomes visible when it fails.

Unfortunately, Yelp's greatest flaw is that inaccurate or unfounded reviews cannot be "voted off the island". The only thing you can do with an errant review is not say anything positive about it. That's right. If a vegetarian gives an otherwise 5-star steakhouse a single star, the other Yelpites can't then vote that attention-seeking jackass off the review list. If you're not into meat, why were you at a steakhouse and, more pressingly, why would you choose to write about it? I don't negatively review Tom Waits concerts nor the new Dodge Charger, and I'm pretty sure that people interested in either don't care about my opinion of them either.

Let me put this in another scenario. Let's say you invite 100 people to a party, and one of them takes a dump on your piano. In Yelp land, the only thing you can do is NOT say anything NICE about that person. You can't kick them out, you can't blacklist them from other parties, and you can't really tell them off. Despite the fact that everyone can smell the obvious deed in the room, they are similarly powerless against cleaning it up or preventing it from happening again.

All those budding restaurant reviewers (the verbal equivalents of "producers" of YouTube videos) treat reviews the way eighth-graders treat a book report. “Chez Blah is located on the corner of…” Stop. We know where the restaurant is, that information is given even before the reviews start. Then they go into long, tedious dissertations about how they were meeting someone for their birthday after having just won the world record in backward roller skating, etc. On and on we read, looking for useful content to make or break the decision. Through stories of newborn puppies, Frisbee championship wins, parking lot fender-benders, and “too many coktails(sic) before dinner”, are tiny nuggets of information. In short, a star rating really doesn't mean a whole lot. To truly consider a restaurant, you need to read through the reviews, which puts us back to square one.

The presumed goal of Yelp was to have a large cross-section of people share their opinion of a given restaurant (which makes sense), but reading through the reviews is a bit like reading a newspaper review where every paragraph was written by a different person and they repeat the obvious over and over again.

The actual goal of Yelp is to be a successful and profitable website and, to do that, you need "traffic". And what gets traffic? Vanity. Seeing one's own words, having them read by others, commented upon, and easily referenced. (In my case, the vanity more than the traffic.) Quantity of Yelpites is better than quality of them.

I need to explore Yelp further to know how (or if) it can actually be useful. The fact remains that determining whether a restaurant is worthy of your money is still reliant on a number of pieces of information; word of mouth (which carries much farther and more reliably than electrons), web research, “pedigree”, and perhaps most tellingly, how busy are they? I instituted a policy some time ago called “I don’t dine in empty restaurants”. It has been the most reliable indicator of quality to date - with only one gaping flaw; the Cheesecake Factory is always full. So is The Olive Garden (I think). Likewise for Chili’s, Chevy’s (which I like as a guilty pleasure), McDonald’s, etc. Being full - by itself - is not an indication of quality, it is simply an indicator of popularity. Again, trust (at least partly) your instincts. If you see three seemingly desirable restaurants in a row, two are full, and one is empty at 8:30 on a Saturday, you at least know which one to avoid. And you don't even need to Yelp.

The Hooks

2009-11-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

You grab a seat at the bar and, if this is your final destination rather than simply a "stop-over" in the wait for a table, there is often a quick search for a hook under the bar. I'm not even really sure when they came about. I don't have distinct memories of them from a decade ago, but surely they've been around for a while. It was an elusive solution to an obvious problem.

Those sometimes-knee-piercing little attachments are wildly-useful tools for storing the various accessories required to survive daily life. For women, it's an obvious purse hanger allowing it to be kept within reach, off the floor, and protected just enough from anyone who might be tempted by its contents, or the bag itself.

For men, it's a little less routine. Those bold enough to carry a "man bag" can use the hooks much like one would with a purse. They can also hold umbrellas, a camera, perhaps a small laptop bag or messenger bag, a bike helmet, the occasional hat, jacket, a tie at the end of a long week at a job that requires one, or the "score" at the end of a successful shopping day.

Quite often, given their hidden location and the inattentiveness, created by imbibing at the bar above them, people leave things behind on those hooks; such as an Aero bed, reported one bartender. And, on one occasion, a bag of cash totaling $1,500. (I, for one, have left many items behind in restaurants but I'm pretty sure I would always remember my "bag of cash".) Someone even left a shoe behind, which hung from the hook for hours, the owner eventually returned to claim it with clear proof of ownership - wearing the other shoe. One marvels at what occurred between leaving it and reclaiming it. And any number of backpacks which hold the essentials for daily life.

There is a challenge, however. For the hooks to be "discovered", one must hunt-and-peck under a bar where all manner of gum has been discarded, spills have collected and dried into a sticky, syrupy stalagmites, Band-Aids left, clothing labels stuck, and temporary building security stickers abandoned. One must search sufficiently but guardedly.

Hooks have become so depended upon that their absence seems almost like an insult. Jackets must be sat upon or traded in for a numbered plastic tag, purses propped on the step below the bar or rested precariously on the foot rail. During winter (in places that actually have some semblance of it), bulky winter coats, gloves, and hats must be "checked" creating that need for a tip jar, which, one might argue, is an incentive for restaurants to not install hooks in the first place.

I've joked for years that, when I finally open a restaurant (and I'm quite certain that bad decision awaits me in the future), I'll put dozens of them under the bar to show that I "get it".

Speakeasy Culture

2009-09-29T02:10:00.000-07:00

A good cocktail is not simply a spirit cloaked in a Halloween costume, it is formally-dressed and in full makeup ready for its closeup.

Regardless of how “cutting-edge” you consider yourself, everyone gets nostalgic now and then. It’s a natural human craving for a simpler time when efficiency and profitability didn't trample over quality, when having vegetables for dinner meant having to grow and harvest them first, when communicating with someone far away meant writing a letter, and everything was hand-made because there was simply no other way things could be made. Cocktails have become automated and "dumbed-down" in the form of the ubiquitous "soda gun", pre-mixed high-fructose corn syrup-laden "juices", and cheaper versions of classic ingredients have become the norm. While organic and local food has swept into restaurant kitchens around the globe, their cocktail bars really haven’t kept pace. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen “fresh lime juice” on a menu (which I prefer to see being *actually* squeezed out of a lime) only to watch it pour from a dubious plastic screw-top container, nor can I help but wonder where that “lime” actually came from. If a menu simply says “lime juice”, I assume they mean Rose’s.

Aside from the ingredients, we like our vices to be exactly that - a vice. Fruit is much sweeter when it is forbidden and half the fun is “getting away with” something. We want absinthe because it's a little bit naughty, and rumored to be dangerous. A beer tastes all the better after a hard day of work, a cocktail tastes much finer when it is lovingly crafted. And if the purveyors make the bar just a bit of a challenge to find, it creates a more secret, private world in which to enjoy that vice.

Here we sit, at the crossroads of lackluster ingredients, indifference to an end result by both servers and consumers of the product, and perhaps a desire to return to simpler times when just the act of consuming alcohol made you an outlaw. Welcome to speakeasy culture.

Admittedly, I’m a little late to this party having just noticed a magazine on my coffee table covering the phenomenon from almost three years ago. Still, I'd hate for these two *technically* unrelated trends of quality cocktails and “secret society” drinking to be confused with one another because - frankly - the latter is going to fade from favor (it’s cute now, it won’t be forever) while the prior should forever replace the soda guns and cocktails which resemble booze-laden desserts.

First, the drinks.

The cocktail was born when we began combining ingredients - gin with vermouth, bourbon with bitters, rum with lime and mint; all honest cocktails. Over time, the technique and quality of ingredients - including the spirits themselves - have gone downhill along with our ability to taste the difference.

Sleazy ingredients such as cheap sweet-and-sour “mix” started sneaking in, the liquid equivalent of “Hamburger Helper”. Sweet and sour is not only an ironic description, it’s also almost as useless a descriptor as the individual flavors alone. “What does this dessert taste like? It’s sweet.” It would be a bit like describing a main course as “yummy and delicious.” "Sweet and sour mix" is two adjectives and a verb sharing a glass with quality tequila. (Well, sometimes mediocre tequila.)

And in the clearest sign of the apocalypse, Red Bull somehow became an ingredient in “cocktails”. Far from hand-made, this stuff was engineered with the help of a pharmaceutical company, uses an ingredient found in animal bile (quite the contrast to that “bull” myth), and has all the flavor dimension of “Otter Pops”. It has as many imagined benefits as absinthe has hallucinogens. Combining it with vodka results in what can only be described as alcoholic Kool-Aid.

Most cocktails these days are slopped together with all the care and passion of a drive-through employee. It’s ironic that the most profitable product in any restaurant is also the one which has gotten less and less attention. They want you to drink more, naturally, but have only now begun to do something to encourage your enjoyment of the results.

The bartenders of better establishments eschew such silliness. There is no bull (red or otherwise), no Cosmos, no Lychee martinis, no chocolate martinis, and in a few extreme cases, no vodka. (The argument being that vodka is the alcohol equivalent of tofu without sauce on it; inert and uninteresting.) The sweetest things you’re likely to find are the spirits themselves. Juices are squeezed from their respective fruits into smaller containers, usually glass. Bitters are either house-made, or are among the newer versions which aim to mimic the classics (Peychaud’s, which IS a classic, Fee Brothers, Regan's, The Bitter End, etc.)

A cocktail recipe is rarely as long or complex as a restaurant main course, but they are often much more precise in their measures and no less demanding and specific in their ingredients. 4 dashes of Peychaud’s bitters means exactly that (though everything is subject to "season to taste".) Mixologists (few care for that title) are refreshing in that they measure ingredients with a great deal of precision and, even more shocking, actually taste (via the finger-over-one-end-of-a-straw technique) the results of their craft. Perhaps this is an incentive to call oneself a mixologist, allowing for a gentle buzz to accumulate over the course of an evening from a few dozen “micro-sips”.

Despite my appreciation of cocktails, this return to the classics has been eye-opening, akin to my first discovery of gin and tonic after the syrupy taste of wine coolers. I’ve always tended toward the classics, preferring gin over vodka in a Martini, a love of Manhattans, and the inherently summer charm of a gin and tonic; all far from the sticky, sugar-rimmed nightmares created recently. The balance and complimentary nature between ingredients in a classic is amazing, like each voice in a chorus contributes its part and none overwhelms the other.

Aside from the staff, and a passion for their craft, there are the other components, from stemware, the bar, to even the ice itself.

A glass is more than a means of keeping a drink off the floor. It is a conveyor of the cocktail, the formal gown in which it will be dressed. A classic such as a Sazerac should be clad in stemware worthy of it, not the alcohol equivalent of “sweats and a t-shirt”. Raines Law Room in New York scours estate sales and eBay auctions looking for suitable glassware. Amazing what a subtle difference it makes.

Then there is the bar itself. There is no fake memorabilia on the walls (well, not much anyway). There’s no thumping music, no disco ball, no jukebox, no pool tables, and best of all, no television showing “the game” or some other inane visual distraction from conversation or the cocktail at hand. Other than the movement of the bartenders themselves, there isn’t much in the way of distraction. If you’re with a companion, you can concentrate on each other. There’s often no sign and, indeed, finding these places can be tricky (though web sites give plenty of hints on what to look for.) It’s a safe bet that few people “wind up” in these places. You pretty much need to know what you're looking for.

I quickly became fascinated with - of all things - ice. The result of only three, simple ingredients (water, cold, and time), there were many complexities to the process. It hadn’t really struck me before, but the ice they used is clear; a subtle, but pleasing, effect. (Dutch Kills bar in Long Island City buys their ice from an ice sculpting company at, rumor has it, a dollar a cube.) I say effect with regard to completely clear ice because this doesn’t happen accidentally. If you want clear ice at home, you need to take steps. So many, in fact, it deserved its own blog.

Their handling of the ice that was also intriguing. It wasn't that they put ice in each cocktail, it was which ice they used. Your average bar simply scoops the same ice into every drink they make (even if they later strain it all back out again.) At The Violet Hour in Chicago, rather than fill a pint glass with random ice shards, they would instead place a racquetball-sized chunk of ice in the glass. The other ingredients would then be added, and the resulting combination stirred to blend them. Unlike the "James-Bondian" approach, this was a Martini which was crystal clear. No bubbles to cloud, no shards of ice to disrupt the otherwise flat surface. It's a memorable sensation to have something you believed in thoroughly turn out to be exactly wrong. Clear cocktails should be stirred.

Much as I seem to have neglected this wave of progress (which, ironically, requires us to take a few steps back), perhaps the “old-school” style of bar tending and cocktails never really went away, it is we that strayed from it.

The List:

The Violet Hour, Chicago - Above ground, and huge, it was my first. Dark and pretentious, but with cocktail skills to back it up, it is WELL worth a trip. Look for a large wooden wall, and on the right side you’ll eventually find the door.

Pegu Club, New York - Not only above ground, but upstairs, the Pegu is a very large bar considering the cocktails being made. Fortunately, they also serve appetizers, each with a recommended cocktail pairing. Easy to miss, look behind a bus stop for a glowing red sign in the door.

Raines Law Room, New York - Probably my favorite overall, the feeling is much more of an intimate home than a bar. The “bar” itself feels more like a slightly modified kitchen. Look for a doorway at the bottom of a few steps, doorbell on your left will have a tiny sign.

Little Branch, New York - Probably my least favorite because, among other things, the interior looks like an actual speakeasy. No real semblance of decor here, but the drinks are good and the “genes” of Little Branch are strong. Look for a door on the end of a wedge-shaped building which hardly looks like it could go anywhere.

APO / Apothecary Lounge, Philadelphia - Now closed, was quite different in being street-level with no attempt at hiding. While it has been laid to rest, it's worth googling their cocktail list for inspiration.

The Varnish, Los Angeles - Another bar with larger “parents”, the Varnish sits behind an easily-overlooked door at the back of a sandwich shop. Walk in, head straight back (make sure they’re open, of course) and you’ll see a cocktail sign on the door, and that’s the only sign you’ll see. An important point here is that the front of the house (Cole’s) actually has a pretty darned-good bar itself. If the back room is full, don’t hesitate to sit out front where you can also grab a bite to eat.

The Drawing Room, Chicago - The 8-person bar gives plenty of room for bartender chat. Charles Joly, who was my mixologist, is as informal as he is informative. Tinctures are house-made along with a few bitters, and they have a unique offering in the way of smoked cachaca thanks to a little invention made for Grant Achatz at Alinea. While the drinks are top-notch, this is not quite a speakeasy. In fact, since the bar faces the dining room, I can imagine this being a bit noisy on a busy night. Go anyway.

P.D.T. (Please Don't Tell), New York - Not quite Milk-and-Honey exclusivity, but about as tricky to get into, they turn out a great product, but I'm a bit too old to make a reservation between certain spans of time. If you're feeling up for an adventure, and don't mind a few hoops, you'll have a great time. Don't bother showing up without a reservation.

Flora, Oakland, California - Seemingly a converted diner, Flora makes cocktails worthy of praise. Much more open and among few awesome bars at street level, their food is also worthy of respect.

Absinthe, San Francisco, California - My friends assure me I'm missing something, but despite a respected following, I recommend it with hesitation. This is not the environment in which I want to consume a well- crafted cocktail. Perhaps 2 in the afternoon affords the quiet I'm looking for.

Alembic, San Francisco, California - This place is hit-or-miss. Mind you, the cocktails are great, but they've fallen into that cult of snobbish bartenders which went the way of the dodo WELL before the recession started.

Andre's Restaurant & Lounge at Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, Nevada - A truly good watering hole in Las Vegas is about as hard to find as actual water. While Andre's doesn't fit the "speakeasy" definition in terms of setting, they certainly get their by using legitimate ingredients. When I grilled the general manager about their use of faux truffle oil, he noted that the truffles are sliced, poached sous-vide, and then added to the dish. While I only had a single cocktail, their belief in ingredients is evident in their drinks too.

(Following are places I have not visited, but have modestly researched.)

Downtown Cocktail Room - Las Vegas, Nevada - Way off the strip, and in fact at the very end of the Fremont district, sits a red neon sign. Below it, an entrance to a very sleek and low-key cocktail destination (if you can figure out how to get in... Hint... the door is on your left and it's metal.) True cocktails from a knowledgeable and fun staff.

The Teardrop Lounge, Portland, Oregon

Beaker and Flask, Portland, Oregon

Rob Roy, Seattle

The subtleties of clear ice

2009-09-29T01:25:00.000-07:00

"Surprisingly, though, taste is not the only consideration. 'Presentation is the most important thing - garnish, colour, the glass. If the drink pleases the eye, te customer's mouth will start to water. Aroma is the next thing, then taste. We apply these criteria when judging a new cocktail in a competition."

- Peter Dolelli, The Savoy Cocktail Book

In every high-end bar (and even some of the lower ones), there is a subtle ingredient in nearly every drink they serve; so subtle that it's downright transparent. Depending on the machine making it, it can sometimes be as clear as glass. That transparency is no mean feat. More on that in a minute.

The mere presence of ice in cocktails is, in itself, a long story. Hints at the origins are simple - someone discovered that in warmer weather, people enjoyed (but needed to become accustomed to) cooler alcoholic beverages and anything which would sell more liquor for a bar was welcome. And, with that, the ice trade was born. The story of a man who shipped ice from New England to as far as Calcutta, India can be found in a book entitled "The Frozen Water Trade", a biography of Frederick Tudor.

Now, the presence of ice in cocktails is routine and largely taken for granted. But why shouldn't ice be treated with the same care as the other ingredients? Its flavor is certainly a consideration, but it is so easy to overlook it as an aesthetic ingredient of a cocktail? Ice which is clear is more attractive than ice which is cloudy, that part is simple. But making clear ice is trickier than one would think.

Think about the last really good cocktail you had which contained ice. Now let’s contrast them with the oddly-shaped “cubes” generated once every 30 minutes or so by your refrigerator - utilitarian, unattractive, efficient, largely opaque, but abundant. Quite suitable for a glass of iced tea, but when ice is given a higher calling, it should spruce itself up a bit and “look the part”.

Your ice machine makes less-than-pretty ice, so you decide to just make your own. (It's one of the easier things to make.) If you take tap (or even filtered) water and pour it in an ice cube tray, your results will be very similar to the ice maker and to that of the weather in Seattle - mostly cloudy. Here is where a bit of work - and science - comes into play.

I set out, over the course of 3 months or so, to figure out why restaurant ice was clear and mine wasn't. We're not talking rocket science here. My water isn't drastically different (consisting almost exclusively of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen), and it's not like there are different kinds of "cold". So how did they do it?

I did the obvious and searched the internet, finding answers (or, at least, theories) everywhere from Yahoo Answers, to the marketing materials of ice machine manufacturers, to the engineers responsible for The Ice Hotels in Canada and Sweden who need to make massive sheets of clear ice (as well as nearly-opaque ice for the walls of the rooms). One guy even posted a video on YouTube which I've seen referenced on any number of other web sites as being THE solution to the problem. I'm suspicious of the results, his cube looking too much like the plastic props used in food photography. His ice is a little TOO clear for reasons I'll explain in a second.

For a home mixologist, there are as many opinions and theories about how to do this as there are cures for hiccups, and just about as many actually work. Were I a tad smarter, I could simply use my degree(s) in physics and engineering to solve the mystery. Alas, I lack degrees in either. I am, however, abundantly patient and find comfort in solving the most insignificant of human problems.

We’ll start with two obvious points:

Filter the water. Even if what you filter out isn’t contributing to the appearance of the ice, you’ll be drinking some portion of the end product and filtering will make it taste better.
Most of what you see in “cloudy” ice cubes is actually the opposite of clouds; clouds are water suspended in air, cloudy ice is air suspended (rather, trapped) in frozen water. Clearly (ahem) the air needed to come out.

I was close to the right answer though, noticing that the bubbles tend to be in the center of the cube. Logic would dictate that the LAST bit of water to freeze is the one which contains the air; bubbles being a bit like sheep herded to the center of the cube and frozen in place. As water froze, it pushed the air along and, when the air had nowhere to go, it was entombed. While I still think this might be part of the equation (give the bubbles somewhere to go, and you’ll get clearer ice), the solution I found doesn’t focus primarily on this. Rather than chase the bubbles off, get rid of them before the water goes in the freezer.

Nearly all of the sites will tell you to boil the water. At boiling point, water can no longer “hold” air and will release it first (counter-intuitive given the number of bubbles created during boiling, but those are different.) Sure enough, a good boil reduced the density of bubbles considerably, but it didn't get rid of all of them, it was a start.

There is another inherent factor that I wasn't quite capable of grasping on my own. Ice in your freezer freezes from the outside in. Now, think about what water does to just about anything when it freezes... It breaks it to the tune of about 30,000 pounds per square inch of force. This is why you get broken pipes in cold weather.

Ice does the same thing to itself when it freezes. The outside freezes first, then the inside begins to freeze, which expands, and cracks the outside. Then the inside freezes deeper, then the outside cracks again, and so on.

The key - and it's a tricky one to achieve - is to get the ice to freeze in only one direction. The frozen water has already expanded, all you're doing is adding to it.

One method used in restaurant-grade machines is to continuously run water over a cold plate building up ice in layers; a somewhat impractical method in a home refrigerator (though I did consider drilling holes in mine and installing an aquarium pump to cycle the water). The purest water will freeze first, so by simply running water over the same surface, you’ll get clear cubes. (This is in part why icicles are so clear.)

Lacking the ability to use this approach, I pondered whether something else may contribute to clarity, something I hadn’t tried yet - controlling the rate at which the water freezes. I’d always frozen water quickly to test any particular theory I had in mind, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me to slow the rate of freezing.

Okay... Great. Now how do I “slow down” my freezer? Raising the temperature didn’t seem practical (nor wise, like a thermal version of “The Price is Right”.) How could I keep the freezer at the same temperature, but slow the rate at which the ice froze?

Then it hit me - if an ice chest at a party slows the rate at which ice within it melts, then an ice chest in a freezer would slow the rate at which water freezes. In a word? Bingo.

I took a small “Igloo” picnic bag with modest insulating properties and placed two ice trays inside, filled with filtered, previously-boiled water. Ice in an open tray will freeze in about 45 minutes, these trays took almost 8 hours, but it was worth it.

To be fair, they’re still not “crystal clear”. There are still some bubbles in the core, but they’re not riddled throughout the cube. A bit more experimentation might be in order - boil the water longer, slow the freezing process further with thicker insulation, etc. but this one step got me 90% of the way there.

Then there's fracturing. Ice, when placed in liquid warmer than it is, will almost inevitably "crack". I kinda like the fractured look, but some may not care for it. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much that can stop this; physics is pulling rank. (When you warm the outside of the ice, it begins to expand faster than the cooler interior can which leads to the cracking you see and hear).

While most of the ice they use is cubed, not all of it is. Some are lemon-sized "boulders", others are more like random shards. Both are relatively easy to make at home and the latter takes advantage of that fracturing process.

Take a 1 quart plastic container (it needs to be flexible, of course, or ice will tear it apart as it expands) and fill it about halfway with boiled, filtered water. Place that in an insulating container, and then into the freezer. Freeze at least overnight, if not a bit longer to make sure the ice has reached its lowest temperature. (Note that, after freezing, the ice continues to get colder. Most freezers are set for 0 degrees Fahrenheit which is, of course, 32 degrees below freezing. Note that using the ice just after it freezes will help prevent the fracturing I mentioned a moment ago, but will cause the ice to melt faster.)

Remove from the freezer and let the container sit on a counter top face down over a towel or some other object to catch the ice when it falls out. (It may be tempting to run water over the container to free the ice more quickly, but that will cause the ice to fracture before you want it to.)

Once the ice falls out, clear out your sink. Then, run water over the ice (cold water will do just fine), and wait. About 2 seconds later, the ice will most likely crack and, at that moment, try to break the ice apart. (A kitchen mallet works well for this, or the handle or back of a knife.) The ice will tend to crack along the fractures.

You should have 6-10 pieces of varying sizes. If there are still bubbled areas, you can run just that portion under a thin stream of tap water to "wear" it away.

Rinsing the resulting pieces will round the edges a bit and make it easier to check the clarity of the shards.

There you have it. Perfectly (or, at least, relatively) clear ice is probably the smallest detail of a finely-made homemade cocktail, but it is clearly an important one.

Natural Selection

2009-09-12T21:43:00.000-07:00

I remember watching Wild Kingdom as a child and how it all seemed so cruel and unfair. A lion would stalk an hours-old, four-legged baby of some animal variety and, through the magic of camera work, when the parent was even the slightest bit inattentive, the lion would kill the animal, often under the helpless gaze of the parent The fact that it was cute wasn't helping the matter. Why didn't the film crew step in and stop it? How could they let it just get killed? The reality, which I couldn't understand at the time, was that while one cute baby animal died, a few other cute animals (cubs of the lion) would be fed, along with mom. As an ironic bonus, the parent of the sacrificed animal wouldn't be passing such inattentive genes on to the next generation. The impermanence of the universe wasn't yet clear to me.

Restaurants, too, have life-spans. Some as short as a bait fish in the ocean, born only to feed other animals while other restaurants seem to have the momentum of George Burns or redwood trees. Two things cement and define the lifespans of seemingly-permanent eateries. The roots and the leaves.

Veritas has good rootstock, a restaurant borne out of abundance of wine and passion for it. A menu created for the wine list (rather than the other way around.) It's tiny, in a great location, a beautiful space staffed by the utmost in attentive and considerate professionals who offer familiarity and recognition without ever breaking character, armed with both knowledge and passion about the contents of plates and stemware.

However, a week ago or so, Veritas shut down for minor renovations. Okay, it happens and they must choose wisely when and for how long they close. But as I've learned over the years, when a restaurant shuts, it never reopens quite the same way. When an animal in the wild trips and falls, predators take notice. There's always a clear fix for the problem, but another inexplicable change has almost always taken place.

Granted I'm not a local, and can't tell you what (if any) subtle changes have been made in the last 5 months, but the feel is decidedly different. The mechanism seems a bit more sluggish, rattles a bit more, and sometimes backfires.

First, there was room on a Saturday night. In September. At the bar. This is rare. There are only so many seats in the entire restaurant, and some people like to just stop by for an appetizer or dessert and the bar is the best place for that. (You bypass the requisite prix-fixe menu that way which may be overkill if you just had dinner.)

The second sign of trouble was that, when I ordered the skate wing, the bartender asked if I wanted red or white. The sound of screeching tires in my head is one thing, the sound of impact and breaking glass is another. My heart sank.

Wait, I'm in Veritas. Surely I am the one who is missing something. I glanced at the menu again to check the preparation. No, red was wrong. Rose may have been close, but red was wrong. She conferred with the sommelier, he looked at her a moment too long, presumably also in disbelief about the question, and whispered something back.

She returned with two suggestions (ones I would have gathered on my own).

While I hate whines about portion sizes, the starter was insultingly tiny, like a double-sized course at French Laundry (minus the flavor). Pasta is cheap to make. There could have been more of it.

When I asked about the familiar staff, one person had left, the other was in Hong Kong. Uh oh.

Still, natural selection works hand-in-hand with evolution. Can't have one without the other.
I hope I'm wrong about Veritas, and that it will continue on in some new streamlined form, but I fear that its breathing is labored and pulse is slowing. They may be simply waiting out their lease.

It's like feeling sympathy for a single animal in a herd, all of whom are destined to become part of a bigger food chain. But when you get to know one very well, it's hard to say goodbye. I'll continue to visit and monitor progress, but I'm realistic. It had an amazing run, and if it has since gone to restaurant heaven by the time I go back, I know that it will have lived a happy life.

When a Superhero Disappoints you

2009-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

In the marketing business, "branding" is everything. Where once a brand implied an assurance of quality, it only now offers familiarity and bragging rights. In recent years, the allegiance to brand has trampled right over actual quality. A strong brand can get people to pay a premium for the brand name alone.

Sadly, both restaurants and the chefs who lead them seem to be falling into a similar trap. Outpost versions of classic restaurants only rarely live up to the the originals. Perhaps it's simply the absence of the famed chef who can't be in all locations at the same time, or maybe a shortage of staff with sufficient passion for food and service, or that some locations simply entertain less finicky clientele. Whatever the case, the disappointment of at such a restaurant can tarnish the original. Such was my case with Gotham Steakhouse in Miami; but first, a bit of history.

When my former chef-girlfriend and I broke up a dozen years ago, I was surprised at how much I had learned about cooking; if not the details, then at least the essentials and general direction. I could cook a meal at home I couldn't afford in a restaurant. While she and I would remain friends, our interaction would never be quite the same. I knew I needed (and wanted) to keep the momentum of my food education going, so I headed over to a local bookstore to see what I could find. (The internet held promise as a resource but was far from ready and broadband was about 5 years away.)

The food section held a dizzying array of regions, styles, chefs (Emeril, Julia, and Wolfgang were about the only "celebrity" chefs), and aversions (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.) Among these was a single gold-spined tome with clear and concise lettering which simply said "Gotham Bar and Grill". Perhaps it was that glittery spine combined with the mystery of New York, but the attraction made me reached for the book and begin to read.

My first "real" cookbook

While now the content seems modest, the details he gave were exactly what I needed; not just WHAT to do, but WHY you do it. For many of the dishes, he also included variations and wine pairings.

Moments later, it was in a paper bag with a receipt tucked in it (which would serve as a makeshift bookmark for several months.) I took it home and began reading immediately and was cooking from it shortly thereafter. For several months, it was the only book on my "shelf" (microwave oven). It was soon joined by "The Joy of Cooking" with a flood of others to follow, but Gotham Bar and Grill will always be my "first" and I still return to it on occasion.

A year later, on my first trip to New York, I prompted a friend to for dinner options. He rattled off a few... Gramercy Tavern among them, and then he said "Gotham Bar and Grill". Everything he said after was lost on me. Of course! I didn't even make the connection on my own; I'd come to the very city that surrounds and inspired the restaurant and cookbook in my collection. I assured him we'd found our choice of restaurant. Mike met me at my hotel in a suit and tie; a shocking switch having only seen him in jeans and t-shirts for years. Into a taxi, and off we sped through a skyscraper maze, a high-speed chase after motionless prey. We were seated at among the worst tables in the restaurant, and I couldn't have cared less. It was time to find out what the food could taste like; and I was blown away.

I'd return in later years with various guests and usually on an expense account; a luxury equivalent to hiring the author of the cookbook to prepare the dishes for you, and it was worth every penny.

Here I am, a decade later, expectations set long ago and far away, seated in Gotham Steakhouse in Miami hoping that the first part of the name will carry more weight than the second. I pray that, for Alfred Portale - who has mostly shunned media attention - to put his name on something, it would live up to the same standards he set long ago.

Nope.

The food was good, though it had few deviations from any other steakhouse, the service lacked confidence and polish, the restaurant was open and harsh missing the warmth and softness of the original. The sizable bill landed with a "thud" on the table striking an urge in me to haggle over the results. It wasn't "bad", but it certainly wasn't "Gotham".

If there is one restaurant that can weather an evil twin, it's this one. Given Gotham's longevity in a city of "restaurant churn", I doubt the perception of the original is in jeopardy, but it was an expensive lesson and created the first flaw in a previously flawless history. In short, never dive into water unless you know how deep it is and never "order big" in a restaurant until you've tasted the appetizers; regardless of whose name is on the door.

Check Please

2009-07-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

For all the uniqueness to be found in every restaurant, there is one process handled in a strikingly similar (if not identical) fashion by all of them; "the check" or "the bill".

Let's first make note of the cultural distinction between those terms. If you receive a "check" in the mail, that's usually a good thing. You now have money you didn't have before. A "bill" that arrives in the mail is the opposite; you now owe money you had just a moment before. Yet, Americans traditionally refer to the "meal invoice" as a "check".

Obvious as it might seem for a restaurant to tally up your meal and give you a summary - their per-unit cost multiplied by the number of units you ordered, totaled at the bottom with the ever-present sales tax - a quick Google search indicates that the entire idea is patented. Who knew?

For those in a hurry at the end of a meal due to prior obligation, the company at the table, or in my case, an insatiable need to get up once a meal is "over", the universal sign language for "check please" (scribbling with an imaginary pen in the air or against the other hand) conveys silently what whistles and finger snapping presumably did in days gone by.

A good server will squeeze every dime from a table before letting it go, injecting dessert menus, inquiring about after-dinner drinks, and the "Anyone for coffee, latte, cappuccino?" ploy before surrendering.

The arrival of the bill is an awkward moment. I'm not sure I dare proffer the parallel between prostitute and "John" whereby, still reveling in a moment of bliss, "John" is handed the financial reality of their relationship. It's a 5-second transition fraught with nuance.

Restaurants which follow the European method (the diner needing to request the bill) run the risk of seeming inattentive, while the American variant can cause a server to deliver the bill too early and come across as "okay, time to get out, we gotta turn this table." Some places will put the bill down along with a whispered assurance of "no rush, whenever you're ready..." It's like breaking up with someone and leaving their valuables near the front door, but with an assurance of, "Yes, it's over, but no rush getting out of here."

The server delivers the bill, clad almost universally in a black vinyl American Express-branded folder in a some neutral location on the table. It's then up to the diners' to begin their own dance.

Servers know that a bill sitting on a table ages like a flounder on your desk, but much more quickly. For any micr0-power struggle at the table, a gauntlet has been thrown. There it sits, beckoning to those fans of the over-handed and unnecessarily-firm handshake, waiting to be snapped up.

One should never seem too eager to pounce on a check even if that person is presumed (or known) to be the one picking it up. To the other members at the table, it can seem like eagerness to get on with the evening or to arrest the current conversation. A bill can sit quietly on a table until its presence has faded from attention. Then, a casual reach (while still talking) keeps others obliged to focus on what you're saying rather than on what you're doing. A quick glance ensures it's the correct bill (and, like a good poker face, you never wince - even if it's 3-times the amount you ever imagined being able to expense), and a credit card is slid into that well-worn (and often broken) pocket, sticking visibly out the top so servers know it's clear to collect it. Those with a keen interest in the amount will keep hold of it, even gesturing with it as part of the conversation, lest someone else slide a card in sideways.

Off it goes, and fingers are crossed that the bill was paid in time. Those of us who've had a "sketchy" credit history from our youth cringe at the thought of the card being rejected for any number of random reasons.

The bill returns, having made two friends in the form of credit card receipts. A smart server will do away with the itemized bill as it (in California) gives a quick method of calculating a 15% tip. (Double the tax, and you're in the ballpark.) Making people do math in their heads, especially over the age of 40 and after a bottle of wine, must surely result in people rounding up rather than down. Clever. If cocktails preceded the bottle of wine, servers are smart enough to wrap your copy of the receipt around your credit card to ensure you sign and leave the correct one.

Here is where the entire process is seemingly broken. There are two ways this can go:

1. A "carbon copy" receipt - one white, one yellow, you sign both and take the yellow one.

2. Two very similar copies - One of which says "merchant copy", the other "guest copy", but, 95% of the time, they're IDENTICAL! The other 5% of the time, the one the merchant keeps has a complete credit card number on it, the guest copy only shows the last 4 digits. I've been tempted to sign and leave the guest copy just to see what would happen.

In almost all instances, a cheap pen accompanies the "bad news", gripped by the spine of the folder which is inevitably cracking from months of fatigue.

Restaurant bills are, I propose, the most typographically-boring devices ever imagined; for all the diversity in a restaurant, the final transaction often feels uninspired. Even the shiny, curly, flimsy inorganic thermal paper "feels" sterile.

In the upper echelons, well-beyond where general celebrations and expense accounts usually reach, the process is modified. Stratospheric dining establishments recognize those final moments as being as unique and memorable as the dining experience itself.

Alaine Ducasse (at least for a while) would present diners with a choice of high-end pens with which to sign the check. Cartier, Mont Blanc - fussy, perhaps, but I admire his attention to every last detail. Why give your guests sticker shock from an Alain Ducasse meal only to have them sign it with a cheap pen on paper that tries to curl up on itself?

It's an idiotic method anyway. Presumably the credit card companies charge a lower fee if you can convince someone to sign a piece of paper as it lowers the credit card company's risk slightly. I just imagine a vault somewhere holding trillions of signed slips of paper, all of which will fade before they could be burned thanks to that lovely thermal ingredient.

Perhaps it's too complicated a process to tinker with, but I'll applaud the first restaurant to put a new spin on this worn-out task.

"Us" vs. "Them"

2009-06-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

A book, or article, or blog I've always wanted to write (and may yet if I can figure out how to retire) is an in-depth study on the differences between home cooks and restaurant chefs. Aside from the obvious (formal training), what do they know that we don't? Michael Ruhlman took a good stab at it, trying to bridge the connection between home cook and restaurant chef, offering an education on the process in snippets, but I think there's more information to be had. What - in one sentence or even word - do they do or have or know that we don't?

This elusive "thing" was what I wondered about first as I began to really discover food. An ex-girlfriend, a former chef in San Francisco at Square One and Stars, was the first to enlighten me. As she would cook even a casual meal, I'd study and question every move, cut, grind, amount, and method; as if even obvious maneuvers held secrets.

She did clear up a few things, but there weren't really any big mysteries involved. She first taught me to trust my instincts, and experiment. Those moments, when you're afforded the uniquely-human opportunity to provide food for someone else offers inspiration and an opportunity to do what restaurant staff take for granted - practice.

1. Practice

A writer writes, a painter paints, a photographer photographs, and a cook cooks.

Restaurant cooks have something going for them that is both good and bad - repetition. I think most home cooks look at a gleaming restaurant kitchen, clad in stainless steel and copper with long slabs of white marble as the purest expression of a space dedicated to the task of cooking. It's hard not to romanticize what it's like to cook in that environment.

However, unlike home cooks, these people aren't cooking what they want for dinner, they're cooking what you want for dinner, and they're cooking the same thing over and over and over. They rarely get a chance to "wing it" or are given carte blanche to make up their own dish (though I'm sure it happens.) A bit like a fighter pilot, they must use a massive piece of equipment for a single task rarely dictated by them. They're trained on how to use it, but only occasionally get to "cut loose" to have fun with it.

2. Eliminate Variables

The ingredients, one could argue, are the same, so what does a restaurant kitchen do with, say, a carrot, that home cooks don't? They boil them in the same kind of water (water doesn't stray too far from the 2-parts Hydrogen to 1 part oxygen recipe), and steam it in the same kind of steam (ditto on ingredients for steam). Where are the other variables? Now we're getting somewhere.

It's tempting to blame the equipment. Missing BTU's (though this is true in a wok), the benefit of making 15 gallons of stock at a time, access to a salamander, flash freezer, blowtorch (easy enough to put in a home kitchen but it generates odd looks from my housekeeper), having someone else to do prep for you, and an endless supply of clean pans - all within easy reach. All of these contribute to a better end result (trust me), but there is more to it.

They cut carrots to the same size, every day. They have a pot of boiling water, into which they might plunge those carrots for the same amount of time, every day. They measure sauce for a plate the same way, every day. You get the picture.

3. Keep it clean

They do this thing I've never quite mastered; "clean as you go". If anything will keep me from being a chef (aside from the pay), it's this discipline. My ideal kitchen would have a moving conveyor belt where I could trash one part of it, press a button, and that part would be whisked away to reveal a clean surface.

Experience obviously helps, and formal education means having been taught the right way to do things from the very beginning. It's hard to "unlearn" bad habits (if you've always typed with one finger, chances are good you always will.)

The formula began to make sense.

But when a chef strays from the norm and begins to break rules thought to be universal, I begin to wonder why. Feran Adria, and the rest of his molecular homies (at first glance) might seem to be straying just for the sake of novelty. Who needs a deconstructed version of any dish? Who needs a laser to cook with? Tony Bourdain's documentary with Feran Adria, brilliant overall, had a 3-second segment that stuck with me - their test kitchen doesn't have a gas stove. I think the quote is "forswears flame"; that's quite a statement. Those that cook on electric coils long for the caress of blue flame under and around a pan. The fact that he shunned it not only struck me, it downright HAUNTED me. Short of emailing him and asking why, I had to figure it out myself.

Four thousand miles away, another ingredient geek was installing a $20,000 coffee maker at Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco (Jim Freeman and Colleen Donovan - though I have a hunch this was more Jim's idea than Colleen's). Yes, there are similarly-priced espresso makers, but the primary device here doesn't even do that. In fact, the core of the device is just a really bright light.

Yup. That's $20,000 worth of heatlamps on dimmers. (There's a bit more to it than that, but not much.)

It's a sexy gadget, to be sure, and that sex appeal has brought people from far and wide to taste coffee made by this arsenal of 400-watt lights aimed at the ceiling. Seriously, the thing is beautiful... and, yet, the notion of someone spending this much money on a sideshow gadget didn't sit well with me. Yes, restaurant (and certainly coffee) sellers will do wacky things to get your attention (never, fortunately, rivaling the zaniness of used-car salesmen), but this didn't add up. There had to be a reason, and I suspected it was linked to Adria.

I had to see this thing in person. Then, I had to buy the "home version" to play with (minus the heatlamps). As I watched my home-version make coffee differently than the ones at Blue Bottle - the water bubbled into the upper chamber faster, and was vacuumed back down faster, I got curious. I watched a video online, showing how they make coffee at Blue Bottle as well as in vacuum coffee bars in Japan, again to verify, then repeated the experiment again. And then, it hit me.

4. Control

That was it. In both cases, the reason for straying from the norm was control. They asked, "What if we cooked this slower?" and "What if we slowed the vacuum rate down?" (Well, if they didn't ask it, I did.)

This is not to diminish the power of repetition, nor of innate talent, but it clears up why someone would pay $20,000 for bright lights.

If there is one primary element or process or concept that separates a home kitchen from a commercial one, it's control; over temperature, time, rapid access to heat and cold, instant access to equipment and ingredients, and - above all - a team of people surrounding you all doing their individual tasks.

I don't think home cooks need to envy restaurant kitchen staff; it may very well be a case of "the grass is always greener". Or perhaps it's the "lettuce"...

The Green Fairy

2009-05-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

I've heard any number of people blame a particular spirit for a bad "night out". "I can't drink tequila any more." is a frequent line; the (inaccurate) presumption that the drink, rather than the state of mind, was to blame for a sordid evening. Those bruised by imbibing too much are destined to always connect a whiff of tequila (or Jagermeister or, in some cases, gin) with physical revulsion; it's the body's way of protecting itself from being poisoned. Again.

One spirit has a reputation for going one step further, beyond the normal effects of alcohol into a completely different realm. Just the name "Absinthe" conjures images of people in woodcut images passed out (or dead) on the streets, like a green liquid plague that swept through the population. A substance so dangerous as to be banned almost guarantees that someone will seek it out.

Presumably we were too content with the normal variety of alcoholic beverages and needed something a bit more dangerous. Much like eating the Japanese delicacy of pufferfish (fugo), where the actual poison (tetrodoxin) is present, Absinthe also had a toxin in it. Like fugu, there is a perceived risk in imbibing Absinthe. Since the essential flavor is of anise and can be had from any number of other liquors and spirits (Ouzo, Pernod, Pastis, Arak, etc.), it is surely the threat of poisoning that lures Absinthe fans.

However, the web may be the cause of both the popularity, and waning interest in Absinthe. While people can learn more than ever about this mysterious drink, banned in the United States and most of Europe, they presumably only read enough to learn that it was notorious for being a psychoactive spirit. Unfortunately, that's not entirely true.

While the original version of absinthe did contain small amounts of tijone, there doesn't seem to be enough in Absinthe (the older variety) to cause any different effect than alcohol alone.

Apart from the perceived "danger" of a slightly-poisonous drink, Absinthe has another necessary ingredient to become a trend - a ritual. Absinthe is distilled at high-alcohol levels and should be diluted with water before being consumed. This process isn't merely a matter of tossing together a bit of booze and a squirt from the bar "gun", it involves ice-cold water dripped through a sugar cube into a glass of Absinthe creating a cloudy mixture. A key component of the ritual is that it be performed in front of other people. The gradual trickle of water through sugar cube into the glass gives ample time to raise the curiosity of other people and invite inquiry and perhaps even a touch of envy.

Part of the ban on Absinthe was perhaps due to the people who chiefly consumed it. These "bohemians" were seemingly disliked more than the drink, but outlawing the drink got rid of the people.

I predict the end of the Absinthe craze (or, at least, noted trend) will not be because of its non-existence psychoactive effect, nor because people are too impatient to wait for the ritual water trickle necessary to make it consumable, it will be because of its flavor. Anise is not for everyone and without some other benefit to drinking Absinthe (hallucinations or some other kind of good buzz beyond that of alcohol), people just aren't going to drink it.

For now, we're forced to be aware of Absinthe because of the clever marketing which surrounds it - the omnipresent ice water vat placed at the epicenter of the bar, sometimes with a logo on the front to lure you into a particular brand. But, give it a year and we'll be back to where we were and Absinthe will be relegated an only-occasionally-requested spirit alongside Cynar, Pernod, and Campari.

Extraterrestrial Life and Busty Waitresses

2009-04-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Back when people were only beginning to ponder the the contents of the heavens separately from their astrological baggage, H.G. Wells wrote about the possibility of life on other planets and what might happen if they were to visit us. What might they look like, be like, think like? While his interpretation of them wasn't very flattering, his willingness to even ponder their existence was a quantum leap forward. Not all that long before his time, this kind of thinking would have been viewed as heretical and could even be life-threatening. It takes an amazing mind to ponder the notion of life elsewhere when there had never been evidence to suggest it and a bold mind to promote such an idea.

For whatever reason, Mr. Wells was the first person I thought of when I learned I had lost a dear friend, mentor, and boss, Edward "Bud" Sweitzer. Bud passed away, suffering from what most people secretly aspire to; old age with a robust and story-filled life to leave behind. He, too, was bold and forward-thinking; albeit in a much more terrestrial way.

We were an unlikely combination as boss and employee; I was a 22-year-old computer nerd and he was a retiree from the world of fire protection in his early 60’s. Bud had more vision than technical ability and I had more technical savvy than girlfriends.

What Bud envisioned and had hired me to create was a more focused version of something we all now use on a much grander scale – the internet. Bud envisioned (in simplified terms), a pool of information available "on-line" to hundreds(!) of other people to read and review at any time. Technology of the day (20 years ago), wasn’t quite ready, the “always-on” nature of the internet and required an infrastructure that was years away.

But it was not that vision of Bud that I will cherish the most - I will remember him and food.

Coffee

Coffee, combined with a cigarette, was Bud’s morning ritual and, essentially, breakfast. He wasn't snobby about his coffee either. He was happy with "Sanka" as much as he was later happy with "Two-buck Chuck" wine. For him, it was not the ingredient so much as the ritual.

On my first day working for Bud, he strolled into the (mostly) empty office 20 minutes late. My job was to answer phones for the on-vacation (and eternally-cranky) receptionist and I sat awaiting instructions.

He entered the building solo with the same dramatic flare normally reserved for 3 or 4 people, a singular entity wielding the presence of a full entourage. "Mornin' Dan'l!"

I'd never heard my name abbreviated longer than "Dan" and yet shorter than "Daniel”. That was Bud, a hybrid of respectful formality and utter efficiency.

He swooped past my "eager to know what the hell I should be doing" look toward the back of the office. I adjusted my tie (which I would never wear to the office again) as he made the unmistakable noises of coffee brewing. He may have been singing; he did that on occasion. He emerged from the hallway wielding his ever-present (and now full) coffee-mug. He plopped himself down on the reception-area loveseat, pulled out a cigarette, crossed his legs, lit up, and took the first drag with a moment of focus...

"Dan'l, here's the way I like to start the day; I arrive at the crack of 9:20, we get a cup of coffee, I check whatever messages I have, and then I come out here, sit on the couch, you and I shoot-the-shit for about an hour, and then we go to work. How's that sound?"

It's like this guy, essentially a complete stranger, could either define or predict my work ethic for - at least - the next 20 years.

I sat, in awe, of this man. Not just for his keen perspective on how work should be approached, nor his vision of using computers to disseminate information, but on life in general. His weekend highlight was family and friends, though he also clearly cherished the “individual hours”, often early in the morning when he could just "be". He'd often sit on his porch at 5:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee and a loaded shotgun - waiting for gophers. Comfortably distant from neighbors, though certainly not completely out of earshot, he would often obliterate "the little bastards" from the comfort of his chair. It wasn't simply for sport, mind you. I seem to recall it being a problem with the holes in the ground over which a horse could stumble and break those surprisingly fragile legs.

Bud has presumably hunted or fished everything that swims or walks. His son, Matt, carries on that tradition. I cannot call myself a true omnivore until I hunt something. I had never considered it before, but Bud also taught me the direct route between an animal and food, and he was respectful over the loss of life but also wasn’t preachy about its "rightful place in society". It just "was".

The Cup and the Apple

Had I not actually been there, this could easily be mistaken for fiction or urban myth, but it happened.

We were on our way to meet with a fire department in San Francisco, driving along in Bud's "company vehicle" (a Ford Bronco) on highway 80 heading over the bridge to San Francisco. The entire time, Bud was (as usual) brainstorming.

He had left the office with a cup of coffee and an apple, alternating between them as he drove and during the brief moments when he wasn't thinking out loud. His mind was occupied on a low-level by the process of driving, on a high-level with grand ideas about improving fire department communication.

Bud had finished the apple just before the initial span of the bay bridge and placed the core in the cup holder between us; though it was clear he wanted rid of it. On that initial span, still verbally brainstorming, he realized he could dispose of the apple core over the side of the bridge. He rolled down his window, still talking and focusing, and jettisoned the apple core without breaking stride. While I heard what he was doing, I didn’t actually see him do it.

At the end of his current brainstorm, he reached over for his cup of coffee, and pulled up an apple core. The confused look on his face was priceless as he couldn't grasp that the apple core he had just thrown over the side of the bridge had somehow teleported back into the truck. He glanced quickly from core, to now-closed window, back to the cup holder. Indeed, he'd thrown the coffee cup, rather than the apple core, over the side of the bridge.

The Oakland Bay Bridge is about 14 miles long, and I laughed continuously for almost all of them.

Waitresses

Bud was a charming guy. Waitresses, in particular, held a fascination for him owing perhaps to the uniform. In particular, it was the elder waitresses with whom he got along best. Like him, they were from a time when flirtatious banter was a far cry from sexual harassment.

One "old-school" restaurant we'd occasion was about 3 blocks from our office. The name escapes me and while it had been there for 40 years at that point, I can't imagine that it's still there. By that point, maybe it had enough momentum to just keep going. The waitresses were either 24 or 68 and nothing in between, the décor was closer in age to the elder waitresses and, if anything had been replaced in all that time, it was an exact replica of how it looked the day it opened.

During one visit, two waitresses approached our table, one from each of the age categories. "Ruth", the elder, had seen Bud many times and was training "Sarah" on the fine art of waitressing. Ruth asked if we were ready to order.

Bud looked up at young Sarah's starched and unsoiled uniform, and saw her name tag above her (ample) left breast. "Sarah, huh? What do you call the other one?" Sarah's face was blank for a moment and then went almost as red as the vinyl covering the front door. Ruth clarified, "That's just Bud honey, he's harmless."

As they walked away, Bud noted, "See, the thing is Dan'l, they think I'm a harmless old man. What they don't know is, I mean every word of it. If they ever took me up on anything, I'd be in trouble since I haven't been able to get it up in 15 years. It's like a dog chasing a car; they chase them even though they'd have no idea what to do with it if they caught one." Bud certainly taught me to "Seize the day, but make sure you seize all of it".

I will bend a massive rule and raise a glass of Two-buck Chuck to Bud; you'll be missed, my friend.

False Prophets

2009-04-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

Religions who "market" door-to-door also happen to be the most restrictive in what they allow their followers to do. Fitting that those most easily "sold" on a belief system would also be the most likely to "stray" from it.

Zealotry begins identifying what people are most likely suffering from. Uncertainty, loneliness, lack of "direction"; all manner of perfectly normal human traits which can usually be alleviated over a beer and a conversation with a good friend.

What's all this got to do with food? Let me tell you.

A friend of mine (more specifically, a co-worker) from long ago added me as a friend on Facebook. Her posts were mostly inane; bike riding or going out to a movie. And then, out of the blue, she posted a link to a site that shows before and after pictures of people who had chosen to eat nothing but raw food. The results, as you might expect, were similar to those of vegans; the "before" pictures were of plump, apparently happy people, the "afters" look underweight, pale, and slightly translucent. (Maybe it's my eyes or my bias, not sure.)

There is plenty of research about the benefits of raw food on plenty of other web sites, so why did these people feel the need to post before and after pictures of themselves, and go into a long-winded (even by my standards) dissertation about their "process"? And all, coincidentally, wrote about their experiences in almost exactly the same way. I began to smell a rat...

Alongside of each of these miraculous transformations from cooked to raw were ads for books, recipes, etc. and at the very end of most of them, was a similar catchphrase; "raw lifestyle". Now I smelled an even bigger rat. About 2/3 of the people who posted these photos had dramatic and courageous stories about how they overcame their addiction to - are you ready for this? - cooked food(!) About the same number also just happened to be "life coaches". Yup. In one way or another, nearly all of them were selling something. Including my friend.

The final straw was her posting a comment about "What needs to happen before you change your behavior? Do you really need to get sick first?" It was at that moment I removed her from my "friends" list. Trying to sell your friends something was strike one, being self-righteous about an extremely boring way to live is quite another. There is no third strike.

Among the shiny, happy (semi-translucent) people on the web site she posted is "Jeff". I liked this part of Jeff's story, red emphasis is mine:

One day I showed up for a recovery group meeting and the counselor started telling us about food addictions and the relationship it has with our emotions. He invited us to try something new: go practically all raw. He asked us to eat only fruit in the morning, drink only grape juice, eat a big salad for lunch and dinner. He encouraged us to go visit a local natural market and buy only organic food. He basically told us we can eat our way out of our addictions. I became hooked and I wanted to know more. He further explained things like various food addictions such as wheat, corn, sugar, meat, dairy, and potatoes. He said we would not know what we were addicted to unless we got away from everything and then upon reintroduction we could discover the allergic symptoms associated with food addiction.

He was told he can eat his way out of an addiction, and he was hooked? He was addicted to the notion of getting out of an addiction? And this addiction was to what the rest of us refer to as "food"? Okay, corn is not inherently evil, we just put it in everything. But wheat? "Meat"? DAIRY? Milk is one of only three things actually DESIGNED to be food. Sugar? Same problem as corn; it's not evil, we just use it in evil ways. Potatoes? This is retarded.

I'm sure it's simply the way he chose to phrase it, but perhaps what these people are addicted to is not cooked food, but to the notion of being able to do without something the rest of us take for granted. A quick Google search yielded nothing, but perhaps again phrasing is to blame. Is it possible for people to be addicted to self-righteousness? To find error in one of the most primal of human instincts, then find a way to "sell" other people out of it? What larger market than food?

Because raw food has been a part of the bulk of human existence much longer than cooked, one might argue that we are (mostly) designed to eat raw foods. However, let's remember that plants evolved to defend themselves. It is not in a plant's best interest to be consumed. Cactus protect themselves in a rather obvious way. Spinach, on the other hand, is far more subtle.

Spinach contains oxalic acid. Oxalic acid combines with the iron in spinach and creates a situation where the body can't absorb the iron in spinach. Cooking "denatures" the oxalic acid and allows the body to absorb the iron. There are a number of these scenarios outlined in Jeffrey Steingarten's book "The Man Who Ate Everything".

Raw foodists are warned against "going raw" all at once. Vitamin B12 deficiency, low iron intake, likewise for calcium, etc. are all things to watch out for. Digestive systems which have had nothing but cooked food need to be "trained" how to process raw, and this can vary from person to person. And raw fans claim that "enzymes" in raw food that aid in digestion are destroyed during the cooking process. However, these enzymes are created in much larger quantities by the body itself.

Okay, I'm also biased. I cannot imagine a life without bread. Acme sweet baguettes, in particular with a touch of Plugra butter rivals any complex dish I've had in any restaurant planet-wide. The searing of a steak, the creation of that darkened crust, the deglazing of the pan, the whisking of flour (Wondra or otherwise) to create a sauce all depend on heat. We're not necessarily talking deep-frying; there is ample room in a diet for blanching or steaming.

It seems that when benefits which should be obvious become promoted heavily by a group of people, something is being sold. Then again, who would have thought Coke and Pepsi could remove nearly all of the ingredients from their soft drinks and still sell it for the same price?

And, even with that triumph accomplished - the fear of tap water, the inconvenience of a sterile container - who would have thought water would need to attend yoga class before being consumed?

Or, should I say, who would have thought there would be people to buy it?

A Return to New York

2009-03-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

The second anniversary of Food and Whining coincides with my return to one of the biggest joys surrounding food I know of; dining in New York city.

It's been over two years since I'd last visited; two long, complicated, stressful, painful years (the first more than the second). The demands and uncertainties of divorce and the loss of my father overshadowed optimism and long-term thinking. There were times when I was convinced I might never set foot in New York again. "Things will get better", assured those who had endured the process first-hand. Indeed, things got better; a great deal better. After a 2 year hiatus, I'll be here twice in under a month.

I had nearly forgotten the trademark intensity of this place, but the taxi ride from Laguardia into Manhattan was a quick reminder. My taxi driver, like all other New York taxi drivers, used the accelerator pedal as an on/off switch between valve-rattling acceleration and slamming on tbe breaks for near-brick-wall-stops. Rapid flicks of the steering wheel navigated the narrow (and brief) gaps between other cars in constant search of just one more car length. The notion of "hurry up" is implied here; it is a pressure cooker, a time machine, a forest of skyscrapers in a (mostly) grid-like structure. You can have anything you want, at any time of the day or night, and you can have it delivered.

On this trip, that intensity would also include record-cold temperatures (since 1994 anyway). An average northeastern winter would be extreme enough for any Californian as we only really have "winter" at altitude as a novelty for skiing. I'm used to recreational cold, conveniently located where it's needed. Here, it was ubiquitous and invasive. Missing from my early trips is cigarette smoke, the haze of which added ambiance to bars and clubs, blurring details, creating a slight veil of intimacy on an otherwise crowded island.

Regardless of the "real" reason I was in town (usually work-related), I was there for the food. I don't think the food is necessarily better in New York, but the environment converts it from mere dining into an experience.

Between trips, I'd grab every scrap of information I could about new restaurants, from in-flight magazines to more obscure articles in Food Arts magazine; all of which served as a collection of statistics equivalent to sports but with fewer fans.

I wanted to branch out to new places but I also felt I allegiance to my old favorites; the "go-tos", the "tried and true" places that wouldn't steer me wrong.

The first stop was Veritas.

I double-dipped on my first two nights at Veritas. I feel a sense of shame given the massive number of restaurant options in New York, but there is a sense of comfort and a knowledge that my odds of getting in are good as I don't handle rejection well. Before branching out, I had to reconnect.

The last time I was in, Tim (the Mâtre d') was leaving the restaurant after a decade. The celebration began days before his scheduled departure, his fans stopping by when they could to wish him well and raise a drink to him, and he to them. At dinner on a Thursday, I made note of Tim's pending departure the following day.

I would be having dinner with my friend Tracy at Veritas the following day, and anticipated an early arrival to ensure we got a table. Unfortunately, I arrived much later than I had hoped and hadn't made a reservation; an oversight for which she scolded me and rightly so. Despite the fact that it was raining, I had a hunch our odds would be equally slim elsewhere. But Tracy had lost her grandmother and girlfriend in the span of a single week; I wasn't taking no for an answer. I was already planning a way of getting us in.

I met her at "Flute", directly across the street. Three-quarters of the way through a glass of Champagne, I remembered that this was Tim's last day. I quickly downed the remaining quarter of a glass, sat down the empty, and assured Tracy "I'm going to get us a table."

I ran across the street through raindrops the size of a Texas belt buckle, walked in to plead my case, spotting no empty tables nor spots at the bar. To reduce my odds even further, there was a couple in front of me. If there were was a last table to be had, they had it. Tim greeted the dripping diners at the host stand noting that the only open table was next to the front door and his (loud) going away party would be starting within the hour. The couple cowered a bit and chose to "look elsewhere".

I approached the podium, hoping for a bit of recognition from Tim, and said, "Yeah, I'm here for your going away party... Are there any tables available?" His memory served well and he mentioned (with similar warning) the table near the front door. I accepted immediately, assuring him we didn't mind the noise and even intended to contribute to it. I ran across the street to get Tracy, and a dining (and wining) adventure began.

The next day, it was too cold outside to even think. Aside from dining in New York, I love walking. And walking. A hike through through the woods bores me to tears (sadly) but through New York is restorative and never, ever boring. In this weather, it was impractical and unpleasant to walk more than a few blocks. Mother nature had kicked on the blast freezer; walks were brief, layered in insulation, and uncomfortably cold.

Undaunted, I bundled up a bit tighter and walked a mere 3 blocks to another of my culinary faves - Esca, which is part of Mario Batali's empire. Their "crudo" (raw) fish list always reads like a Haiku of simple trios; always a fish or shellfish, usually olive oil, and often an obscure sea salt. (yeah, I know... Salts have become the cult thing to do, but with them, somehow it works.)

At Esca, too, efficiency is king and the precision of this restaurant makes a Swiss clock seem like the results of a hillbilly armed with bailing wire and duct tape.

I instinctively want to help in a restaurant, a bit like an Australian shepherd's instincts are to herd during a rhinoceros stampede. When I eat at the bar, I'll remind servers of forgotten orders, memorize what items they have run out of, and in general just play sideline expediter.

In this instance, a waitress sat down two wine glasses at a table and, as each landed, I saw a swirl of water in the bottom of the glass. Given their meticulous handling of spotless stemware, I couldn't imagine the error nor the fact that the waitress hadn't caught it.

I politely but assertively tapped her on the shoulder and she resistantly turned around. I quietly noted the problem - mystery liquid in the glass - hoping secretly for a thank you and the superficial feeling of having impressed a cute waitress.

Instead, verbal fangs appeared from out of nowhere loaded with tempered, but stern, venom, as she -too - spoke softly but with a sense of urgency; "We prime the glasses with wine before we serve them."

Oh.

It had been a while since my ignorance of all but the most obscure of restaurant workings had bubbled to the surface like the opening of a warm and agitated bottle of Cremant. I cowered in my chair, stung with the knowledge I had nearly derailed the efficiency of which I am such a fan as the waitress resumed her presentation.

Sommeliers are easy to spot. They tend to nearly every table at least once, dress better than servers, but not as well as the maitre d', and have a combined look of both optimism and surrender in their eyes. Esca's was a woman in her early 50's. I called her over with an exaggerated "come here and help me feel better about the stupid thing I just did" gesture. She, having just stifled a yawn, seemed eager for distraction and to assist. She explained the practice of opening the bottle, pouring a bit into one glass, and pouring that glass into another, and finally into her tasting glass; a bold test of both the wine and anything in the glassware that might interfere with it. I sat corrected.

Sitting at the minuscule bar at Esca gives you an even better sense of what "belly-up" dining is all about. In this case, the "bartender" (Victor) is more like a server captured in his own domain, as knowledgeable about the menu as any server, and brings a mix of silky service with an accent and attitude that you could only find in New York.

And so my addiction to New York has been satiated (for the moment) and there is going to be a need for me to visit on a fairly regular basis. Despite the 5-hour plane ride in either direction, it's good to be "home" again.

Food's "other" roles

2009-01-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

It surprises me sometimes how we "use" food for purposes other than the obvious. Business meals are, if you think about it, thinly-disguised bribes. (Ironic that in business lunches or dinners, we busy with food the same orifice necessary for conversation.) The phrase "let me buy you lunch" often accompanies the knowledge that the person doing the inviting wants something and food is a fantastic bribe for getting it.

In the romantic world, a man inviting a woman to dinner allows for intimacy, conversation (hopefully minus the business transaction part), an opportunity to show good taste by his choice of restaurant, demonstrate the ability to support by picking up the check, and - let's face it - pouring a drink or two into someone loosens both the conversation and the occasional bit of clothing. In both of the above situations, food is merely a vehicle, a means to an unrelated end.

In other situations, food is less about enjoyment and more about need. Hunger is a reminder that we need food a few times a day but we, being the industrious critters we are, occasionally put ourselves in situations where the options for food are limited or non-existent. Airlines have abandoned the idea of feeding you (for free, anyway). Business trips with late-night arrivals in hotels that don't offer in 24-hour room service can mean dinner will result from feeding quarters into a vending machine. Sometimes, we even lodge with friends and are subject to their interpretations of "cooking". Caveat lodger.

Then there are situations where food doesn't really belong at all. Take popcorn at the movies, for example. I know it's "traditional", but I don't really eat popcorn at home for most of the same reasons I don't eat foam peanuts at home; they're mostly air, lack a whole lot of flavor, and you're guaranteed to have some of it stuck between your teeth.

At a theater, we must also face that inevitable question from the person serving us said popcorn - "Would you like butter on that?" Butter? The only time I've seen actual butter put on a pile of popcorn, I put it there. I don't believe butter will be placed on my popcorn any more than I believe that cheese is being served on the nachos. I'm going to assume that what is actually squirting(!) out of that pump onto the popcorn is something that smells "buttery" and tastes "buttery" but is in no way related to actual butter. (I must confess there is one theater in San Jose which is independent and serves actual butter on their popcorn; a single and powerful reason to go back there.)

And whose brilliant idea was it to sell 32-ounce beverages at a movie theater? First off, even 32-ounces of plain water would pretty much guarantee the need to pee 45 minutes into the film. Secondly, caffeine is a diuretic. You're ASKING for a bathroom break, and there is no pause button in the arm rest at a movie theater.

I recall going to a theater and, for whatever reason, ordering a hot dog. The "meat" for this thing looked like it had been abandoned and turned constantly on those greasy rollers since the initial release of Saturday Night Fever. I ordered the shriveled meat cylinder, the guy assembled the two primary pieces, slid it into that foil-lined bag, and walked away. When I asked why he didn't just hand it to me, he replied - and I kid you not - "we have to walk them down to the register because people steal them." As I removed $6.00 from my wallet for what would be the worst hot dog I've ever eaten, I understood the theft motivation - paying money for it was painful.

But above all, I'm wondering what it is that makes people want to rub food or beer in their hair or on themselves. Daily. I think it was beer that first threw me. A shampoo I remember from my teens called "Body on Tap" claimed to contain beer, with the commercials coyly warning, "But don't drink it!". I'm not sure now if they were being cutesy or simply trying to avoid a lawsuit, but it certainly didn't smell like beer, so whatever amount was in it was not enough to be worth drinking, only enough to make a marketing slogan. But how did they come up with this in the first place? Daily hair-care meets Animal House.

And what of all the other odd food ingredients? Extracts, oils, and "essences" all promising to make hair "shiny and full"? Or all manner of food products to make skin more "youthful", "glowing", "radiant", and other difficult-to-prove adjectives? Someone must have had sushi the day they decided to put seaweed in a shampoo. Much like my take on dirty-martinis, if you wouldn't rub it in your hair by itself, why are you rubbing it in with shampoo?

Bees, too, must be getting sick and tired of us taking their hard work and turning it into all sorts of non-food products. "Burt's Bees", a once tiny and simple company, has since been purchased by Proctor and Gamble presumably giving Burt enough money to shave, get a haircut, buy a new non-Hawaiian shirt, and park his yacht in the Bahamas.

To me, this is all a waste of food. If you're going to put something edible on your body, make sure to have someone standing by to remove it from you; "creatively".

Carcasses and Cranberries

2008-11-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

Childhood memories are largely first impressions of a place and time, a new smell, taste, or sound. We have larger tolerances for new things in youth than we might later in life having not yet formed much in the way of opinions; the world is still mostly new.

It must surely be in these formative years that most Americans develop a taste for turkey and all its companion dishes for Thanksgiving. Stuffing, mashed potatoes (and the million variants of it), cranberry sauce (occasionally still in the shape of the can in which it was held), gravy, yams, and on the dark side, Jell-O molds, and the ultimate assault on what never to use as an ingredient - pumpkin pie.

At no other time of year (save for Christmas) do we subject ourselves to the surprisingly-incapable protein of this giant chicken. Yes, the flavor is slightly different, but when would you ever choose to cook and consume 26-pounds of chicken? Do we want that much chicken? Do we want to be stuck with extra chicken when it's over? Too much of just about anything is, well, too much. Makes a 48-ounce porterhouse seem tame by comparison; if not on "hoof", then on the plate.

Selective breeding has created a much different bird than was served at the first (or, for that matter, first 200) Thanksgivings. Turkeys we dine on today could hardly survive in the wild being ridiculously easy to catch and utterly defenseless. Early turkeys were surely more "gamey" with a richer flavor closer to duck or pheasant.

The rest of the year, turkey is relegated to a low-fat diet served most often in sandwiches or... umm... no, that's about it. Sandwiches. Rarely will you see it on a formal dinner menu in a restaurant. Apart from Thanksgiving dinner itself, I'd dare say you'll never find it.

And the supporting cast? Okay, mashed potatoes are perhaps the universal exception to the uniqueness of a Thanksgiving meal. While beloved by nearly everyone, they can vary wildly in their preparation. Flakes from a box don't count, nor potatoes lacking a fat (butter, bacon drippings, or - if you must - margarine).

Stuffing can also be a remarkably delicious element; so much so in some cases that it outshines the blandness of Turkey. Bread, seasonings, a protein (oysters or sausage), and moisture. Awesome.

And then we hit a wall.

Yams? Or it's easily-mistaken-for-it cousin, the sweet potato? The latter, sliced into fries and cooked as such, is pretty good. But yams? I've yet to hear someone use the phrase, "These yams are amazing!" outside obligatory compliments even about bad cooking. "You've out-done yourself this year, Marge!" Really? Even if most of this was thawed yesterday or scooped from a plastic store-bought container today, she somehow managed to do it better than last year? I just can't fake that voice, I cannot be convincing.

Cranberry sauce? At what other point (save from Cosmopolitan cocktails) do we seek out cranberries in such abundance? Cranberry juice maybe, but even that has seemingly invaded every other fruit juice known to man.

Ambrosia salad? Okay, this may be a largely "Southern thing", but we're beginning to hear the sound of scraping the bottom of the recipe barrel. Basically, if you're doing anything with mini marshmallows other than putting them in hot chocolate, stop. Ditto for Jell-O. Amazing things can be done with unflavored gelatin, but once you put "natural flavorings" in it, it's done. (Jell-O shots count too. Just drink alcohol like a grown-up.)

Green beans take a variety of abuses during this time. In fact, the whole notion of "salad" takes an awkward turn. About.com has an entire entry dedicated to "congealed salads"! Second only to "coagulated", "congealed" sends out a message of, not of dining, but of a crime scene.

Which leaves us with the crown jewel of Thanksgiving day; that one element which, even after having stuffed ourselves to resemble the turkey prior to baking, we somehow manage to find room for - pumpkin pie.

I think most of us have had the same previously-frozen pumpkin pie for the last several decades. They don't change much, but the switch from "Cool Whip" to actual whipped cream is a subtle, and welcome one. (The inventor of Cool Whip deserves an award for selling a container of mostly air. And for combining sugar, wax, and condom lube into a delicious dessert treat.) Kinda makes the ad parody of "Shimmer" on Saturday Night Live some 34 years ago seem like a prediction.

Food geeks, forced to consume canned, frozen foods can't help but think there's something better. A fresh pumpkin pie made from actual pumpkins must surely outshine the frozen variety. In every other imaginable instance, fresh is substantially better than frozen. This is probably the one exception to that rule. A fresh pumpkin pie tastes pretty much like a frozen one. The texture is a bit lighter, the flavors a tad brighter, but at their absolute peak, pumpkins taste like pumpkins. As a friend of a friend pointed out, "The difference between an average pumpkin pie and the best pumpkin pie isn't very big." (Thanks Zalman!)

I guess even with our stern allegiance to amazing food, even the most passionate foodie caves once a year. We may stray from turkey from time to time, but we (usually) return. At least a year has passed since we had turkey (in that quantity anyway), and "well, it is Thanksgiving, after all" is the refrain of surrender. We give in, at least a little, to tradition and set aside our obsessive food tendencies.

Now, pass me another glass of Beaujolais Nouveau.

Strategy for The Menu

2008-11-23T00:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's a slam-dunk, and only a quick-parse of the menu is all that's needed for me to make a decision. It might be a dish for which the restaurant is famous, standing out like a sore Zagat guide-flipping-thumb or an ingredient combination so classic, simple, and austere, it beckons like the softness of your own bed after a long business trip.

And then there's the other 98% of the time.

Those other times it takes me several parsings of the menu to even begin to think about what I might want. I mean, we're talking here about the fundamental fuel of life and choosing the substance which will, in a short time, actually "become you" isn't a decision to be made lightly. Your options are handed to you mere moments from a bustling city, often at the end of a work day that confounds (and often annoys) you. You're still a bit rattled from the rattles eminated during the high-speed cab ride, a bit disoriented, and now must quickly transition into “food mode”.

In most cases, you've no idea what to expect until you see the menu. It's like a quiz for which (lacking a web browser and the foresight to look up the menu online) there is no means of research. Good menus change daily and updating the online version is a luxury to diners afforded by only a few restaurants.

With no decision in sight, your server assures, “No rush, I'll come back.” Indeed, he'll be back in a calculated and usually too-short amount of time. Fortunately, that all-important (to both diner and restaurant) drink order can keep him or her busy for a while, and they usually know to let the first few sips of cocktail settle in before asking “if 'we've' made any decisions yet or have any questions about the menu.”

But before he dashes off, he offers (nay, insists) on rattling off today's special. Is it me or are these almost always about one ingredient too complicated? And why is the special so rarely written down? Even on a separate sheet of paper, I'd like to be able to refer back to it when weighing the options. Inevitably (and more so as I get older), the question arises “What was the special again?”

I'm also struggling to do this while also (pretending in some cases) to pay strict attention to the ramblings of those around me. In most business dealings, I'm fortunate in being able to choose my dinner guests based on both social and culinary compatibility, but even the most fascinating of dinner companions are at odds with the tantamount decision of the meal at hand. Many of these same gifted, talented, and interesting people also have the uncanny ability to simply glance at a menu, see a single dish, and be “sold”. “OH! Salmon! I love salmon. I'm having that", closing their menu as if to mock my inability to choose. Never mind the thing could be prepared with beef jerky glaze and a rhubarb-scented sneaker, this singular ingredient usually surrounded by non-threatening "sides" is enough to cement their decision.

I take a bit longer.

Salmon. Okay... Well, kind of the token "safe" dish on the menu (along with the subtle variant of a steak with potatoes (frenched and fried, baked and mashed, etc) or chicken similarly accessorized, so for me to order salmon requires a preparation worthy of reconsideration of a humble, if predictable, fish. Barring that, I'll need inspiration from the side dishes.

While vegetarians and I (generally) do not get along (save for the four-legged ones which eventually serve as a main course), vegetarians recognize (rightly) that a dish need not contain meat to be good. In many cases, a carnivorous restaurant will treat vegetables with equal, if not better care and consideration than one where dead flesh never enters the door.

With this in mind, any time vegetables are generalized with the horrible moniker "veggies", run the hell away. A close second is the use of "vegetable medley" which either means they from a (frozen) plastic package of the same name, or they don't treat vegetables well and haven't seen fit to itemize them on the menu. Vegetables, despite their exclusive and fanatic followers, are worthy of respect and should be mentioned by name.

Servers will often return, visibly folding their notepad to a blank page - a subtle prompt to the table to get your act together, and prompt one last time about "any questions about the menu?" In the case of Olivetto's in Oakland, your odds of parsing even two-thirds of the menu on your own are slim.

Once a menu is parsed, obscure ingredients clarified, preparations explained, etc. only then can one begin to narrow the options down. But I think I need a system.

Maybe a rating system of some kind; checkboxes of 1 to 5 stars next to each dish on a menu and eraserless "golf" pencils handed out to each table. Each diner gives a score to each dish for uniqueness of primary ingredient (i.e. Chicken gets 0, Beef gets a 1, Bison gets a 3, Koala gets a 5, loin of screaming child next to you, 10+), a score for preparation thereof (Tuna, seared - 0, beef poached sous vide then seared, 3, duck egg anti-griddled on the bottom, and heat-gun baked on the top - 5), etc. Add up the score, there's your answer.

And then there are the sides.

Sometimes a “side” will put it over the top for me. A three-way-tie of lamb vs. pork loin vs. filet mignon will be broken if, say, there are caramelized Jerusalem artichokes on one. Fingerling potatoes? Bingo. Yukon golds blended with celery root after taking a collective “ride” through a potato ricer? Yes, please. Spinach, lovingly sauteed with garlic and shallots, or shredded Brussels sprouts with bacon and a bit of its grease, steamed and grilled endive, potato gnocchi - the list goes on.

Ferran Adria had a brilliant point about how we somehow "value" proteins (i.e meat) more than a vegetable in both in gastronomic and, therefore, monetary terms. In reality, "sides" should not be thought of as accessories to the main protein as they can - if done correctly - stand on their own.

Aside from the checkboxes, I need other tools to make that important choice. A score card, Post-It notes, a highlighter pen and a search engine, a seasonal vegetable chart, and - in the most desperate times - a simple coin to toss. I may make 4-5 visual trips to the menu, interspersed with questions to the server, to decide, but once I sense others have made their choice, I give myself a 60-second warning. When my turn comes, I'll slowly start closing the menu, "closing the door" on my decision. Then, and only then, will I make the final decision. Nothing like a deadline to get you motivated.

Road Warrior 2 - A return to business travel

2008-10-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

Business travel, as I've mentioned, is sometimes about brilliant moments when an impossible-to-get-into restaurant becomes available and is paid for with someone else's credit card. At other times – like tonight – every element of time and space conspires against your best intentions of, not just eating well, but of eating at all.

I arrive at my unremarkable hotel in Orlando at 10:50 p.m. on a Sunday; already a bleak scenario in all but the biggest cities. Dining options are looking sparse. Those who are bound to partake in the nearby Magic Kingdom are usually in bed before 9:00 as are their parents as they try to temper the expectations of the kids wanting to go see what’s-his-mouse RIGHT NOW.

I asked about room service. I was handed a stack of menus, 4 from Chinese restaurants (one Chinese and Sushi bar), the other two were pizza. Oh, and most stopped delivering at 11:00; a fact I recognized at 10:56 p.m. Yeah, that’s not room service. Room service is an incredibly predictable collection of the safest foods on earth; Club sandwiches and hamburgers, previously-frozen pizzas and chicken fingers, wings, deep-fried mozzarella sticks, and usually some attempt at a salad (with chicken or shrimp).

None of the 4 interconnected hotels has any form of food past 11:00. No room service, no “café”, nothing. One would expect that with that many potentially empty stomachs, the urge to make money from such a captive and overweight audience would prevail. No dice.

The pizza arrived 40 minutes later, the vending machine down the hall provided the "Coke", and at a desk under a fluorescent bulb, I prepared for my presentation the next day.

Heck of a welcome back.

The word you're looking for is "hungry".

2008-09-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

There have been remarkably few times in my life when a source of food was hard to find (though GOOD sources have been elusive plenty of times). Locating the type of cuisine I'm in the mood for may be tricky (without an internet connection or concierge with one), and it may be a longer walk than I'd like or a pricier taxi ride than I can afford, but food has pretty much always been around.

The other day, I had skipped breakfast (as I often do) and zoomed right past lunch (which I do occasionally) and by the time dinner considerations were due, most places were closed and I wasn't really in the mood to cook. I hadn't eaten (other than coffee) in 24 hours and I remember yelling in my car, "I am starving!" Fortunately, such utterances these days appear to be nothing more than a heated conversation on a bluetooth headset.

"Starving". I considered that word more carefully. "Starving"? Well, no, I wasn't "starving." I neglected food that was readily available, and simply placed other priorities above it (which is odd when you think about it.) That word is (or should be) reserved for those who cannot get to food, or the food cannot get to them.

A book about concentration camps noted how survivors, upon returning home, cherished food so much more because they had either done without it entirely, or subsisted on meager (or downright unpleasant) substitutes for food. Sawdust, sand, insects (not bad, actually), paper, clothing; anything to fill the void.

When I finally sat down that night to a large bowl of pasta, it tasted that much better because I was truly hungry and had done without food for a day.

There are those unusual circumstances whereby, even in this country, food is no longer readily available. I had a neighbor once who lived in Florida during Hurricane Andrew, and he told me stories of how rational, thinking human beings become - quite literally - a very different animal when there is no food. What you had, you kept, rationed wisely, and protected with weapons if necessary. The stories he told pale in comparison to Katrina.

And then we have a rugby team crash in the Andes. Once the food was gone, and they began to die off, they resorted to eating each other (and not in a fun way). When interviewed, the question was asked, "How do you explain eating another human being." You could almost hear him nodding as the question was asked (I'm quite sure it had been asked before.) His answer was surprising in its brevity and clarity - "If you do not think you are capable of eating another human being, you have never been truly hungry."

In my morbid way of thinking, I can't help but wonder what would have happened to a vegetarian among these unfortunate folks. I wonder if that selective switch would get overridden by a lower part of their brains, and they would eat on instinct.

Best not to thrive on such sick and twisted thoughts; the downing of a plane and humans forced to eat each other, nor the base-instincts of vegetarians "when push comes to shove". It's more productive to reel in horror that millions of people live on that brink, beyond hungry and famished, beyond hours or days since a last meal, every day. Do what you can, give what you can, but cherish every meal - good or bad - that you have access to.

Dad 2

2008-07-28T00:51:00.000-07:00

He knelt down to check something at work and when he stood up, he nearly fell over. It wasn't a lack of coordination (though he's never exactly been a swan), nor simply "standing up too fast", nor was it fatigue. He took note of this anomaly but largely shrugged it off.

Later, he was writing numbers in a column and was finding it difficult to keep the numbers in a straight line. It was also hard to prevent a "4" from looking like an "X". For 64 years, the same brain had sent the same commands to the same muscles in the same hand, but suddenly it seemed the message was getting garbled on the way. The final straw was a slight slurring in his speech. Having never seen my father drunk, and knowing he wasn't at the time, this was a new experience for me. Clearly, something was wrong.

Obvious symptoms led to an obvious diagnosis by my mother and close friends which led to the emergency room. A test revealed no stroke, but between a CAT scan and an MRI, this buzzing, whirring, utterly annoying device that they found the problem; a "lesion" about the size of a lima bean at the base of his brain. There were two other lentil-sized "lesions" in other areas, but it was the "base" version that was the core problem. A biopsy verified that cancer was the culprit, and the kind that neither doctors nor patients look forward to finding.

The future details were unclear, and subject to the whims of fate and tenacity of cancer cells, but I believed it was time to take inventory.

In a previous entry, I've given praise to my father for, if not quite thoroughly educating me about food, then for at least offering a glimpse at what existed outside my humble surroundings. To him, I owe a great debt and one I have pondered trying to settle for a long time.

For years I've wanted an "ultimate" payback, some way of thanking him in one giant sweeping gesture for all he inspired in me about food. And yet, there is no single gesture that seemed adequate. I had grandiose plans of taking him to New York for his 60th birthday, of showing him - as he showed me - what food is capable of and the emotions it can inspire. But I realized a few years ago that I was pushing him beyond where he needed to go, and certainly beyond his comfort zone.

Food is a cumulative experience. You need to know what the bad tastes like to appreciate the good, and to taste good food to have a point of reference in your own kitchen or know when you're getting ripped off in the commercial version of someone else's.

To put it simply, honestly, I don't think he would have "gotten" New York. While great food is very much within his realm of appreciation, New York might be a bit of a stretch. It would be "wasted" on him. I came to realize that you cannot recreate in a single event what is ultimately a life-long journey. It took him 18 years to teach me what he knew about food while simultaneously figuring how how to raise a family, advance in a career, etc.

Rather than attempt to make it up to him in one fell swoop, I've decided to skip one "fancy" meal a month and take the money I would have spent otherwise and donate it to the American Cancer Society. A fancy meal to me is, maybe, $100 which, in turn, sounds like a lot of money when you think about donating a year's worth to a charity. But, considering what you get, in a karmic sense or a real one from the same expense, kinda seems worthwhile, doesn't it?

What are THEY having?

2008-07-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated by other people's grocery lists. Those brief, informal notes serving to help remember any more than 3-5 things at a time.

By definition, they must be scrawled on a random scrap of paper, and very rarely on actual "note" paper. Once they've served their purpose, they're often dropped in the parking lot while fumbling with groceries and keys, or simply left behind in the cart/hand-baskets. They more than a simple list of items, they are a snapshot into the needs - both common and at times bizarre - of complete strangers; voyeurism at its most obtuse.

The medium of choice is often entertaining. The backs of paycheck envelopes is a popular and rather obvious choice as well as quickly-torn corners of larger sheets of paper. Others have kittens or Ziggy, or Garfield, or a real estate agent's name (and picture) on it somewhere. Whatever the source, these sheets of paper are employed on a whim, used quickly and without much concern for legibility beyond the author, or appearance or longevity, and unceremoniously discarded, forgotten once the job is done like a tissue or toilet paper.

At a time when technology does so much, the humble shopping list remains difficult to replace. Technology will have a hard time replicating the efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, and power-consumption of a grocery list. They manage to carry a list of items used to either sustain life itself, or the other myriad other essentials upon which modern life depends. A shopping list is such a meager vehicle, shreds of tree doing so simply what billions of neurons in the human brain can't seem to do reliably - remember 5 things.

The internet is great for many general things, but it's extremely good for gathering and sharing the whims of like-minded people. Obscure curiosities that would otherwise certainly be dismissed. The pinnacle of that must surely be this most amazing, and yet useless, sites of all time. I give you...

The Grocery List Site.

http://www.grocerylists.org

Quick Food or Fast Food?

2008-06-18T20:46:00.001-07:00

Fast food gets a (deservedly) bad rap; a fact I have whined about mightily in this blog and further cemented in my new favorite book entitled “The Ominivore’s Dilemma”. (Yes, I’m a tad late to some parties.) The ingredients in fast food are far from genuine, most are extracts of entirely different and significantly cheaper substances that simulate the taste and/or smell of the intended flavor. For example vanillin is a curious by-product of making paper, spent yeast smells a bit like beef and is a major “flavoring agent” of nearly every canned soup and beef stock on the shelf; a fact about which I have mixed emotions given the apparent environmental impact of real beef.

Fast food aims to be “tasty”, not delicious, engineered by teams of food chemists who have turned to the dark side of “molecular gastronomy”. Fast food is adequate, not wholesome, utterly convenient by requiring zero planning or forethought, and is mindlessly-affordable. “Reasonably-flavored, convenient, cheap food” is perhaps a better term than simply “fast food”.

A comedian, Bryan Reagan, has a great line about having waited 2 years to get a new prescription for eyeglasses. “You ever wait that long? How is instantly-improved vision NOT at the TOP of your to-do list?” A similar case could be made for food; how is choosing the very substances that create “you” not at the top of your priority list? I know people who put more thought into their clothing than they do with what they put in their mouth. Corny as it sounds, you are (or rather, become) what you eat.

There is a trend in Silicon Valley to populate the day with so much work, one forgets (or simply neglects) to eat. Hopping between deadlines, we skip meals; zipping right past the very thing that sustains life itself. We bypass fundamental nourishment and blame being overly-busy, bordering on "overwhelmed", as the cause. We have deadlines to meet in order to secure a paycheck and more importantly, to perpetuate a sense of overkill. This notion of work-over-food is as frightening to me as the food most people end up eating due to the diminished time they allow themselves to ingest it. Fast food’s availability allows them to “skip lunch” knowing they can quickly, readily, and cheaply “grab a bite” later.

I’ve certainly skipped a meal because of deadline demands and fast food, or its in-bred cousin “trade show floor food”, is the only option. Likewise, airports haven’t seen fit to provide organic, fresh, wholesome, sustainable food outlets. It is at those times, if hunger is strong enough, animal instinct kicks in and a “Mc-something” becomes acceptable, though you feel dirty about it afterward. It’s a pleasing thought that fast food chains might go bankrupt if people ate fast food only at these desperate times, when no grubs, beetles, or guinea pigs are available. To abandon fast food altogether in today’s world of cell phones and instant messaging, where everybody “had a crazy week”, and deny ourselves being able to eat on-demand, is unthinkable.

“Speed” forces us to sacrifice quality; the airline seat I currently occupy, for example. If the idea of flying asparagus from Argentina to California seems ludicrous, then ponder the insanity of eating that same asparagus on another plane from San Francisco to Miami; in December.

At this very moment, I am in just such a position - though it’s June, and due to a friendship I will never quite fathom*, I am fortunate to be sitting in “First Class”. “First”, of course, being a 4-inch wider, 8-inch deeper version of Coach Class with free drinks and heated food, metal utensils (including a return to shortened metal knives which are not NEARLY as dangerous as the serrated plastic versions of only a year ago.) The often-crooked, always rickety fold-out "tray table" is draped with a napkin to hold an miniature array of visually promising, but inevitably disappointing, plastic-tasting food. Some items are more edible than others. The bread roll is almost always a throw-away resembling the end-product of an “Easy-Bake” oven. Bleached, bland, and soulless flour doing the rest. The chicken is closer to jerky and contains curiously-sourced “grill” marks. The cheesecake wasn’t bad.

Why are we trying to emulate a fine-dining experience at 38,000 feet in a big metal tube hurtling through the air at over 600 miles per hour? Where did this idea came from? Surely this was born from the the days when jets were new and only rich people could afford to fly.

But why go to so much effort? Why isn’t a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich an option? They are far better in terms of taste, far easier to store and create in the limited resources of a plane, quicker and lighter to serve, and edible by all but the most insane vegangeterians (a word I made up just now). And, let’s face it, anyone who doesn’t like a P.B.& J. is surely a terrorist and should be removed from the plane for questioning.

Granted, all of these cases could be rectified by the aforementioned “planning ahead”. I could make my own PB&J to bring to the airport, along with an apple, and a reusable plastic container for water I could refill at any drinking fountain. While fast food’s is an enemy whose bad intentions have only become truly clear in the last decade or so, our subconscious dependence on it remains. Convenience is a luxury we can’t afford any more.

* As I made my way to my seat in 26D, I made eye contact with a woman who had that look of “can we trade seats so that I can sit next to my friend/husband/daughter/kidney donor?”; a look I met with minimal sympathy having taken an uncharacteristic red-eye flight just hours before. 26D, you see, is an exit row. Her offer was 23D, only slightly closer to the front of the plane, but much nearer to the seat in front of it.

I pointed out her offer was lacking in incentive. Her friend directly across the aisle, upped the ante; she offered 1A in exchange for 26D. I hesitated just long enough to consider a downside. Seeing none, surrendered 26D, and headed for the front of the plane.  

Outdoor Season

2008-05-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I can do the math. It's been over a month since I published the last blog entry. That's not like me (you know that) and if there's an excuse to be sought, it's all good.

There's been plenty of inspiration, believe me. Dinner at SPQR in San Francisco, lessons in charcoal grilling, preparing my first "perfect" meal of the year, discovery of an amazing Kosher wine(!), and discovery of quite possibly the worst wine bar on earth; and yet, April 15th stands as the last entry. (The devastating effects of April 15th being "tax day" is an obvious buzz-kill to creativity.)

Primarily, I blame the weather. California has a climate envied by many (though others have similar or identical climates without the cost of living that goes with it.) That climate is sneaky... I had my heater on a few times near the beginning of April. Even if it sat idle all night long, it was at-the-ready should the temperature dip low enough.

Out of the blue, middle of May, 100-degree weather sets in. We go from Nor Cal "Spring" to June in Nairobi almost overnight. The focus of indoor activities is halted, sometimes midway through the process (like, for example, ironing, and general housekeeping duties for that matter), shorts and sandals are pulled frantically from storage, and any excuse to be outside is pounced upon.

Regardless of activity, we all get hungry - indoors or out - and suddenly sustenance is somewhat at odds with wanting to be outside. The goal becomes eating without having to go back inside. Restaurants with outdoor seating are sporadic, and on the warmest of days, are in the most demand.

If one gets hungry at home, the approach is obvious to any red-blooded American - outdoor grilling. It's our birthright, our national pastime, and a primal instinct for men. Having tamed it quite some time ago, charcoal is coaxed until white ash covers the coals, then tempered by limiting oxygen to maintain that all-important "slow heat".

The combination of solar and charcoal-created heat does induce a thirst. Therefore, one must enjoy a beverage while playing backyard Prometheus. Opinions differ here, and can even change between occasions. Gin and tonic? Mojito? White wine? Certainly a glass of Cabernet just doesn't work with smoke wafting in your face. Maybe a white wine, but only if you're wearing a sun dress, and at no time if you are the one "tending" the fire.

A man must tend to the fire (especially if it's charcoal-fueled) as flame can't be trusted to do its job unsupervised. Some sort of poking device is required, from honed steel rod with a leather handle to a generic "stick", again, to remind the fire who's boss.

I must admit, I am not a master of barbecue. I have a gas grill which is, basically, an oven with HORRIBLE temperature control. It lacks that beautiful, carcinogenic taste and smell created by burned wood, and lacks the romance of "creating fire" when the process consists of turning a knob, and pushing a button. The metallic "clang" after the button is pressed further emphasizes that THIS fire is under control, with or without you. This is a great device for slow-roasting ribs, roasting fish, roasting, roasting roasting. It's an oven.

My charcoal grill is much closer to my genetic heritage. My father, a prominent feature in my food world, was always tinkering with the process. To coax the coals onward, he'd get an extension cord and a blow dryer, and force-feed oxygen into the mix. It worked. Insanely-intense heat in only a few minutes. Here, it's important to understand the physics of fire and the tendency of hot air to rise, but one must also be in-tune with temperatures and cooking times.

The season is just getting started, but this is truly the time of year when I "come alive", food-wise. Time to get my knives sharpened, the counters cleaned (or replaced, eventually), and add carbon to the list of ingredients for dinner.

Mind over Matter

2008-04-15T22:15:00.001-07:00

With food, I generally say "bring it on". If I'm in a new place, I want to try the local food. I want to know what's good wherever I am, and I strive to experience new and interesting foods whenever possible.

Now, all of this sounds good on paper, and I'm sure you have a mind as open as I do, but I can assure you that there are foods somewhere in the world that will make you realize you're might not be as prepared for bold experimentation as you thought.

It happened to me on my first trip to Paris. My work colleagues and I had just completed an obligatory day of supporting tourism and were anxious to eat. We were in search of a local place serving the "real stuff" made the "real way".

Fifteen minutes and a restaurant recommendation later, the 10 of us were seated at a long table against a wall; perhaps an effort by the staff to isolate the unmistakable volume of Americans. We didn't care as we were enraptured by such a food adventure.

Prompting our translator and co-worker for a recommendation, he noted that this particular restaurant specialized in something called - and it's key to note the spelling here - "andouillette". Tanguy's thickly-accented description was what sold us on it: "It is very... 'natural', it's very French, and there is an entire association dedicated to it - the AAAAA." I somehow reasoned that, if there was a society dedicated to it, it must be good. Four of us ordered it.

Andouillette, I figured, must be like andouille sausage.

Here, dear readers, is where the rails of the logic train run directly into the side of a mountain. Rarely in my life have I been so very very wrong. I failed to recall that there are also "associations" who do things like skinny dip in the icy waters of Sweden, people who skewer their bodies on religious pilgrimages to prove their devotion and - most frightening of all - drink Red Bull when not at gunpoint. Just because a large number of people do something doesn't mean it's good, it just means that it's "popular".

From his description, we'd just ordered what might be the most authentic and amazing meal we would have in Paris and settled in to wait for our meal with our glasses of wine.

The approach of the food was almost covert, given its eventual impact. The servers arrived silently, like a team of Navy seals surrounding the noisy table of tourists. The plates hadn't even reached the table when the true horror of our choice became evident.

As the aroma wafted down and across the table each of us assumed we were sensing something in error, the smell halting conversations mid-sentence as if someone had hit a pause button on reality. Alarm bells rang in our heads individually, and then collectively.

In silence, each of us tried to recognize what we were smelling. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't related to food. I forget who identified it first, but "elephant cage at the zoo" nailed it.

Andouillette, is basically pig intestine stuffed with even lower intestine, along with some onions and herbs. Even so, it didn't smell like onions, nor herbs, nor the broth in which it had been cooked for many hours; it smelled like intestines and nothing else.

Despite every ounce of my being telling me that this was not food, I refused to let a mere 33 years of bias spoil my dinner. I went for it, cutting off a conservative slice and, while holding my breath, took a bite. I think I managed a total of 3 pieces before I could no longer "fool" my brain.

I've had other food biases against which I've rallied. My hatred of ketchup stemmed from my younger brother's abuse of it and has only been overcome in the last few years.

I still hate Wintergreen gum (it reminds me of Pepto Bismol which my parents usually gave me shortly before I vomited; hence, it reminds me of vomiting. My brain will forever confuse the cause and effect).

"Miracle Whip" is among the worst ideas ever (and never confuse it with "mayonnaise").

I became quite ill one night after eating a meal that included foie gras and, despite the probable lack of blame on the part of the foie, a connection was wired in my brain that "foie" equaled becoming ill. That has been the toughest one to overcome. Millions of years of evolution have been spent preventing you from eating the same bad thing twice.

My first bout with sushi back when I was probably 22 years old was cautious, but eventually grew into an addiction.

Alas, I don't think I can overcome andouillette. I have a hunch I'd face the same problem with durian fruit which carries the powerful scent of a dirty diaper thus preventing most animals from eating it. Just about any dish containing tripe which hasn't been washed and bleached of its former role, will probably always remain at arm's length. It seems I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Hey, at least I gave it a shot.

One

2008-04-08T14:02:00.001-07:00

I somehow missed the first birthday of my blog, a numerically-significant step going from 0 to 1. Blogs can't drop the usual hints that a gift will soon be in order. In my defense, I didn't forget, I just could have sworn it was April of last year when the whining first began.

To those that read these ramblings and enjoy, I want to thank you for your support, and based on the number of hits to the site, there are more of you than I thought. While I've shared much, and you've tolerated much thus far, I'd like to share a little of what I've learned about food, writing, and myself in the last year.

The blog was, I imagined, some small way of reaching out to people. To say, "It's not just you, Starbucks coffee does suck." Restaurants that were doing good should know it and be talked about at length and prodded to keep it up, while the ones that were doing bad needed to know that we noticed the "lack of effort". Whether that has ever made a difference remains to be seen, but no bartender who serves me on a regular basis dares make me a martini without vermouth. It's a heartening, if liver-threatening, sign of progress.

Writing requires sharing something of yourself, and if you do it right, at times it's the literary equivalent of stripping naked in front of your friends. It's easy to share that of which you are most proud while hiding that of which you are most ashamed. A year ago, I stood in the eye of a hurricane of change; divorce is no less distressing for being such a wide-spread activity. With the process in the soul-less hands of the legal process, my frustration could only be aimed at those who abused, misrepresented, and misunderstood something so straightforward as food. Law and change are complicated, food needn't be.

It takes guts to chide others about something you have hardly mastered yourself and it's arrogant to think yours is the only opinion. Yet, without someone having an opinion, nothing moves forward nor upward. Apathy breeds things like "The Cheesecake Factory", McDonald's, Starbucks, and vermouth-less martinis while passion breeds El Bulli and the French Laundry, bread and cheese, Blue Bottle Coffee, and antique Absinthe collectors.

I've learned that food is a life-long companion whom I hope to understand sufficiently, if never completely. It's an obsession (in my case), and a passion at the same time. I've no real opinions on politics (other than a certain hesitation with the current administration), no clue about sports, with religion, I've a clear favorite but know embarrassingly little about the rest. On food, however, I stand firm. I'll talk out my ass about it for an hour, criticizing the food of others while woefully lacking in recent kitchen practice myself. I'll harshly ridicule "the vegs" (-eterians and -ans) while at the same time corralled into a limited diet thanks to a well-deserved ulcer; an effective, if unconventional way to lose weight. One might say, I couldn't live without food and, even if I could, I would eat anyway.

And then there are random things:

I cook better in a large kitchen than I do in a small one. Size matters, damnit.

I can use a cheap knife almost as well as I can an expensive one, but cheap pans are useless. Good countertops are key, expensive cabinets are pointless. An expensive sink is quieter, an expensive faucet "feels" better. A cheap exhaust fan is as useless as a cheap pan.

I've learned that when you're "into food", people are afraid to cook for you, and that is a shame.

My grandmother was the best cook I'm ever likely to know, and unfortunately, most of her recipes died with her.

I may never again get to go to as many amazing restaurants as I used to, but I'm grateful, humbled, and more knowledgeable for having been allowed to. It taught me what food can be.

Most of all, I'm grateful that, during 4 seasons of change, there were a few constants in my life; food, wine, and friends; all essential and all comforting - often in tandem - and to each, this blog is dedicated.

Happy Birthday foodandwhining.

--Daniel

Fire Alarms and Widespread Calm

2008-03-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

I fear several things when venturing into any restaurant, especially for the first time, but "death" isn't normally among them.

Obviously, the potential is always "there"; various choking hazards, icy sidewalks and an odd ingredient on the floor creating a slipping hazard, and the occasional (though rare) food-borne pathogen waiting to catch you off-guard.

For the greater part of human existence, eating has been at least a little dangerous, unpredictable in supply, and something you had to earn. After all, food doesn't want to be hunted. In fact, the more delicious it is, the harder it is to catch.

Tonight, for the first time, the very act of dining itself might just kill me and, if it doesn't, I'll have something to blog about.

I sat at a large, possibly "over-done" restaurant, the architect is clearly and unabashedly in love with concrete and steel. The bar and floor are concrete, silo-sized cylindrical wine tower in the middle of the room, corkscrewed by a two-person-wide staircase made entirely of steel; not the kind of wine rack you pick up at Pottery Barn. I was three minutes into my first glass of wine when, in the submarine-like acoustics of the room, an announcement came over the P.A. system about a reported fire on the 17th-20th floors of the building above (or at least nearby).

Since the "God voice" lacked direct instructions to evacuate (or to do anything else for that matter), conversations resumed and patrons moods were untempered. They seemed unafraid based on very little information despite one of the possible options being that there was a fire of some size directly over our heads. In fact, the announcement seemed to trigger more curiosity than panic, as if they assumed it was all just a gimmick. Perhaps the whole restaurant would be encouraged to sing happy birthday to "Sarah" or the threat of fire was merely a segue into their 'hot' happy hour special:" Free drinks for the next hour for everyone in Goretex" (If you've never been to Seattle, it means everyone's getting free drinks). If there was any potential harm, not one person took it seriously. No one stood up and left... at first...

Being the sick bastard I am, I thought about how many disasters have been amplified in magnitude simply because people didn't think "this could happen to them". How many times have 30 people died, 10 because they were in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time and unable to avoid it, while 20 others were warned but didn't take the warning seriously?

I wondered; if an evacuation was ordered, how many customers would take their wine glass with them? I know I certainly would. Restaurant staff are unlikely to hand you a bill after you've been evacuated and, besides, it was nice Schott-Zweisel stemware.

The moment the announcements began, someone turned on/up the music, thus muffling the announcements. The potential upside for business is clear; nothing stops people buying alcohol more than the threat of perishing in flames so muffling a life-threatening message would protect business. Rather than trying to determine what someone was thinking, a better approach is to assume that someone wasn't thinking.

Besides, there's an upside to evacuating a building perched above a wine bar/restaurant. Those people need to go somewhere. Being a huge fan of conspiracy theories, I couldn't help but analyze the suspicious sequence of events: it being a Monday - the one that follows Easter no less - what restaurant owner wouldn't be above grabbing a P.A. microphone and "encouraging" those on the most obsessive-compulsive, workaholic floors to make their way quickly, but safely, to the nearest exit. Once outside, most would be unlikely to return to work after such an adrenaline-packed jolt, and would want something to steady their nerves. With the evacuees safely parked at the bar, then - and only then- would the manager announce the all-clear.

I hesitate to mention the name of the restaurant due to their borderline-criminal handling of the fire alarm. They hardly seemed to need my publicity, and are scarcely under threat of going out of business if my scorn should surface.

Everyone, as far as I can tell, left intact and not in flames. We were never actually in danger, though that is only anecdotal evidence. There was a pivotal moment though when all of that could have easily changed. Had the threat been real, 150 people with varying amounts of buzz would have attempted to evacuate at the same time.

All in all the evening was a precursor to a disaster that never was. Oh, the food wasn't bad either.

Inspiration

2008-03-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

You'd think I'd have no shortage of ideas on what to cook, thanks to the forest-flattening number of magazines that flood my mailbox and cookbooks with far more recipes than I can ever hope to cook. Likewise, there is no shortage of ingredients which California is capable of cultivating even in those months with an "r" (and sometimes "ry"). With the depth and breadth of ingredients for sale at the local farmer's market, Whole Foods within affordable driving distance, Draegars, Andronicos, the Milk Pail, Ditmer's meats, Oakville Grocers, etc., I'd have no problem throwing together even the most obscure ingredients. I have all the cookware I (or any reasonably-equipped resort hotel) could ever need; albeit in an exceedingly small amount of space. This is hardly a valid excuse because I've had brilliantly-created food out of a restaurant kitchen so small as to prevent the staff from taking a deep breath. With all my talk (whining, whatever), you'd think I'd be churning out inspired, if not always brilliant, food day after day.

But something has been missing; a singular, elusive, magical ingredient without which any dish can fail, or never take shape in the first place - inspiration. It's not just innovation, execution, emulation, emulsion, or precision, it's about wanting to do all of those things, and wanting to make the best meal you can. For those that cook professionally, inspiration plays a part, but obligation (in the form of needing a paycheck) plays perhaps a larger one. In my case, it COSTS me money to cook, so money as an incentive, isn't part of the equation. In this case, having someone to cook FOR makes all the difference. Cooking for someone makes you strive for the very best because nothing else will do.

I'm not saying I haven't been inspired at all recently, it's just that now someone can chime in with an opinion as strong, impassioned, and leveraged of analogies at great length, as my own; it's a bit like being from another planet, and stumbling upon someone from your own neighborhood.

To anticipate early in the day what I might want for dinner is a challenge for me. I need to think past the demands of laundry, gardening, dishes, overdue emails, bill paying, phone calls to mom, grandma, inmate cousins, and, well, just about anything else; in favor of focusing on the culinary pleasure of the one best-suited to understanding the offer at hand. It's foresight and planning; acting versus reacting.

Inspiration sometimes comes not just from those we hold (literally) the closest, but from those we should simply spend more time with, and don't.

I had dinner recently with a friend (hi Matt!) who reigned supreme in my collection of friends not all that long ago. Time, careers, and perhaps a bit of laziness caused us to drift apart for awhile. Meeting up again, I was reminded of how much we overlapped in our appreciation of... well, just about everything; it's almost scary. It harkened back to a time when we lacked worldly diversity and simply overlapped on the matters of the day.

Regardless of the source, it feels good to march back into my tiny kitchen with a consistent purpose again, armed with a dash of inspiration which I find improves any dish.

"CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY"

2008-03-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

You know the drill.

It's a Tuesday, a friend is in from out of town, you want to "catch up" with them over something better than you'd normally put "ketchup" on, you "know just the place", you coordinate schedules, taxis, cars, parking spaces, approach the front door - surprised at how busy it is - and as you reach for the handle, a piece of paper taped to the door is already beginning to mock you:

"CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY"

Something about making the letters all upper-case seems to pound the point home even harder; you're not welcome here.

Believe me, I "get it". I understand it's an off night, filling the tables is unlikely, but breaking even would be nice. A secretary from a local law firm drops in at lunch to see about renting the restaurant for a private party (celebrating a partner in the firm having grown another row of teeth). From the restaurant's perspective, it's tempting; 30 people - guaranteed - will eat, drink, and be merry (and spend money).

However...

The restaurant won't likely see the members of the private party every Tuesday (most of them anyway). Meanwhile, 12 regulars came by and denied access by that infernal sign. The "bread and butter" customers to who weekly eat bread and butter at this restaurant, instead stand outside, staring at those four words as if they were a paragraph of bad news, like jilted lovers reading a "Dear John" letter seeking to understand this sudden and inexplicable rejection.

It's an awkward moment in the life of a restaurant; do you take the quick money and hope that the previous love you've given will carry over the next time they want to come by? Or do you resist and hope that business will simply pick up?

Surrounding any restaurant are plenty of others ready, willing, and usually able to take on the overflow. If a flagship restaurant decides to close its doors to all but the invited, all of the die-hard fans that show up must look elsewhere to smaller places formerly hidden in the shadows of the larger restaurant. It is on just such a night that culinary infidelity begins; those diners seeking to be satisfied by their regular dining establishment are forced to look elsewhere.

Dan Gordon, one of the two founders of Gordon Biersch brewery/restaurant, was asked about the line outside his restaurant, to the casual observer, a clear sign of success. "Quite the opposite", he said. "No worse stigma than being thought of as a restaurant that no one can get into. Because, after a while, they don't even try." If not the kiss of death, it's the first pucker. A "PRIVATE PARTY" sign must surely be like the smell of blood in the water for other restaurants. There is money itching to be spent and, if they're smart, ready to catch it.

To restaurants that close completely to cater to a private party, I say watch your ass, and make sure you're cranking out better food than any other restaurant around you. Close off part of the restaurant, not the whole thing, and profit from the regulars, and the occasionals, at the same time.

The Trouble with Truffles

2008-02-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

The latest in unfortunate trends seems to be truffle oil. It's everywhere being put on everything both appropriate and bizarre. It is becoming a panacea for an otherwise lack of flavor focus, a singular obscure ingredient (in the palates of most people) that adds that earthy dimension difficult to describe and impossible to emulate. Well, almost impossible.

This sudden trend is no-doubt due to the the introduction and restaurant promotion of artificial truffle oil. "Give your customers the flavor of expensive, exotic truffles - and charge them accordingly - and you pocket the difference." For any restauranteur, the opportunity to bump the price of an appetizer by a buck or two for mere pennies per dish is a no-brainer.

While truffles can range anywhere from $60 to $300 an ounce (depending on who you ask, what time of year, and whether you want black or white truffles), one truffle can make a respectable amount of truffle oil. But it's still pricey. Like any other organic compound, a truffle begins to die once it's plucked from the ground, so it must give off its aroma and flavor to an oil quickly and, likewise, that oil needs to be used before it oxidizes.

The artificial version is understandably MUCH cheaper than the real thing. Truffles are notoriously expensive when measured in dollars per pound placing hem probably third in line behind gold leaf (bizarrely and unnecessarily sprinkled over chocolate desserts on occasions in places that cultivate bling in food) and saffron threads. The promise of delivering such a "rich" flavor at a fraction of the price is obvious. There's only one problem; it doesn't quite taste like truffle oil.

The first time I really encountered it, the knock-off was SO bad I thought the oil had gone rancid. After taking a bite from my plate of carpaccio (which listed truffle oil among the ingredients; a clue I should have caught), I nearly gagged thinking that an otherwise savvy restaurant had somehow neglected a bottle of olive oil for 6 months. I urged others at the table to stop eating other items tainted with the oil. To my horror, they kept eating it. Not that rancid oil is overwhelmingly bad for you (though, if you can parse this article on it, you'll have a better idea), but it just tastes nasty.

Another one that confounds me is oxidized butter. Restaurants slice little pats of butter into a bowl in the morning, and then place it in a refrigerator where a fan blows air all over the individual pieces. By the time it reaches your table, it's got that trademark "off" flavor to it. (Much like the good flavor of real truffles is hard to describe or liken to something else, so too is the bad flavor of oxidized butter. If you slice through a stick of butter, and notice the outter layer is clearer than the more opaque inside, you can scrape the outer layer off and taste for yourself.)

Here is the kicker - most people don't seem to recognize (or care) about oxidized butter and I was the only one at the table that thought that "truffle oil" was actually "rancid oil". While I'd like to think I have a developed palate, my fear is actually that others are getting accustomed to the flavor of artificial ingredients and clearly inferior products. While the smokey flavor of, say, a McDonald's hamburger is created chemically, I think the average person (if they really sat down and thought about it) would make a distinction between what a charcoal-grilled hamburger should taste like. But given the sticker price of truffle oil, how many people will detect the difference?

How do you make fake truffle oil? It's impractical (okay, impossible) to emulate all of the chemicals from truffle oil, so you focus on the biggest one. In short, figure out what gives, not so much the flavor, but the aroma of truffle oil and triggers that response. Give up? It's 2,5-dithiapentane.That was probably going to be your guess though.

A quick search confirms that both pigs and mixed-breed dogs are used for truffle hunting (dogs preferable to pigs because pigs like truffles), but I can't seem to find a source for 2,5-dithiapentane.

That's troubling.

Supper Bowl Sunday

2008-02-13T17:20:00.001-08:00

At first, the density of people at the grocery store seemed fairly normal. Those of us cursed with a "brief" attention span struggle a bit with simply making sure we get what we came for, so the quantity - high or low - didn't seem out of place; dense without being crowded. And then I began to notice a trend - a preponderance of chips (potato and/or corn), guacamole in plastic containers, and guys wandering around in football jerseys that they clearly didn't wear for work, 12-packs of Budweiser in hand hovering over the meat counter. What in the hell was going on?

Ah. Superbowl Sunday. Save for the fact that it falls on a Sunday (much to the detriment of productivity the following day), it's basically a national holiday. Friends gather 'round the warm glow of an enormous television (purchased primarily for this day) and celebrate the athletic prowess of total strangers while screaming criticisms at the players that will never hear them.

Normal people bet on which team will win, often going so far as to estimate the margin. In my case, they bet on whether or not I have any clue who's playing and whether I know when it is.

Probably clear by now, I'm not a sports fan. I chose to cook.

Keeping with my New Year's resolution, I followed a recipe. Rather than have my food magazines simply accumulate, skimmed for inspiration on topics near and dear, I glanced down at the most recent issue of Gourmet magazine on my kitchen counter and spotted biscuits on the cover. I froze in my tracks. THIS was what I wanted fo make.

I tore open the plastic, flipped through to the recipes letting the subscription cards (or "blow-away" cards, as they are called in the magazine world) fall to the floor, defiant about picking them up. I flattened the page against the spine, made note of the ingredients, and ventured out to the supermarket.

I can't lie, there's something about biscuits. Perhaps my southern roots showing (Dad's parents were from Oklahoma), or perhaps hearkening back to my mom's almost daily breakfast for me; Bisquick "drop" biscuits. Biscuits from a box topped with margarine... humble roots indeed. My mother, having never pondered exercise of any kind and with frighteningly-poor dietary tendencies (the details I refuse to even discuss publicly), would unabashedly order "biscuits and gravy" at Denny's when (and whenever) her urge kicked in. While her diet scares the hell out of me, her boldness to ask for (or go get) what she wanted is endearing. Biscuits, obviously, take me back.

There are other kinds of biscuits; the kind in the tube with the dough boy on the outside. Prep is pretty straightforward, one turns on the oven, unwraps the outer layer of paper on the tube, and smacks it smartly against the counter. Took me decades to realize the popping sound due to what they used instead of yeast or baking powder; CO2 is pumped into the can and the whole batch of biscuits is "carbonated" to allow them to rise while baking. Food soda. If Ferran Adria had thought of it, we'd consider it brilliant.

In my case, I went big and used an ingredient that strikes fear in my heart (because my heart is an integral part of my bloodstream) - lard. There's no denying it; if you want to make real biscuits or a real pie crust, this is your ingredient. There is something just so wrong to me about cooking with a half-cup of lard (wrong as in health considerations, the benefits flavor-wise are abundantly clear) though it was diluted, suspiciously, in 5-cups of flour. Since baking is an activity I tend to stay clear of, I'm not at liberty to speculate about that ratio being correct, but it seemed a bit low.

The results were... disappointing. Instinct told me the ratio of flour-to-fat was too high, but I've been wrong before. When the game was over, I was a slightly better baker. I can't say that any of my friends were better football players.

Snake Oil, Part 2 - Unfiltered

2008-02-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

A few folks have emailed me both in support of, and in strict opposition to, my comments regarding Riedel glassware. However, not one of them was able to explain the following.

Crate and Barrel has several wine glasses that, should you draw an outline of their shadow on a wall (with a piece of paper on it ideally), you'll notice a STARK similarity between them and the shape of Riedel's Vinum series. I'd be surprised if one can copyright (or patent) the shape of a wine glass which explains how C&B was able to source these things.

Which begs the obvious question - if a wine glass made by C&B has the same shape as a Riedel glass, doesn't it do the same thing? While Riedel socks you for $19.00 a glass, C&B can do it for $5.00. (Presumably the latter are glass and not crystal but...)

As many of you know, I'll attempt an authoritative talk about food but, when it comes to wine, I defer to others for true wisdom. Among those who have chimed in is "Krista" who works in a lovely little wine bar in the area, who penned her own take.

“In my email this a.m. was the first of oh, say 40 Wine Enthusiast newsletters that I receive in a day- but this one urged me to take action to purchase Riedel glassware before Feb 1^st, as they will be raising the prices. And I felt compelled to write you. Ok, I just needed to vent... Snarkily. You seemed a fitting forum, and since my blog is intended for wittily packaged and borderline fluffy educational wine rants, and you willingly put your email on yours, you kind of asked for it. So here is my brief snark/tirade: Glad to learn that Riedel finally wised up on the bargain they were giving people, what with those low-low prices on their magnificent invention. Yes, in case you weren’t aware, here is a blurb from the Riedel website: Claus Riedel was the first person in the long history of the glass to design its shape according to the character of the wine. He is thus the inventor of the functional wine glass.

Apparently before Riedel the wine glass was a rather impractical item... the only way I can think of a glass not properly functioning in the delivery of wine is well, if it had a hole in the bottom. Or rather, lacked one at the top. Maybe if it had a jagged, razor-sharp edge that would rip my lip to shreds with every sip, then I may not receive optimal pleasure from my wine-drinking experience. But I have to agree (and interpret) the obvious wisdom of MS and Goddess Catherine Fallis, that the most amazing wine is still amazing drunk from a Dixie Cup, and that swill is still swill, even if it is served at precisely 65 degrees in a Swill model glass from the Sommelier Series (at this point, I imagine there is one).

Speaking of asinine models, what is up with the Zinfandel/Chianti model from Riedel?? Ok, the Burgundy model, I kinda get. The Rose model is cute, but pushing it. But what the hell is up with a glass that is precisely designed for optimal pleasure for both a Zinfandel and Chianti Classico?! It just makes my brain hurt. Here are all the wines it is recommended for: Ajaccio, Bardolino, Beaujolais Nouveau, Blauer Portugieser, Carignan, Chianti, Côtes du Roussillon, Cótes du Ventoux, Dolcetto, Dornfelder, Freisci, Grignolino, Lambrusco, Montepulciano, Patrimonio, Primitivo, Sangiovese, Trollinger, Vin de Corse, Zinfandel.
Yep, when I think Montepulciano, Beau. Nouveau is the obvious kissing cousin.”

(Sigh) So much snark, I just wish I'd written it myself.

Bucks Stops Here

2008-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Sunny Beans Coffee in Alameda seems to have come up with an absolutely brilliant bumper sticker. Just sad that I didn't think of it myself...

Everybody in Alameda, go here instead of Starbucks please (but not all at once...)

Here, taste this

2008-02-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

For all of the obvious bad points about business travel (especially when trade shows are involved), there was one perk, one thread of cultural redemption I'll always cherish; for 6.5 years, I ate some amazing food on someone else's dime. (Fortunately, it was a cash-rich multi-billion dollar corporation.) New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, L.A., Paris, London, Stockholm, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney... in each case, I was allowed to explore the local culinary scene in some detail without going bankrupt in the process.

Uunless your job is actually to be a food reviewer, or you're the V.P. of something, you're unlikely to be given an appropriate budget. Inevitably, I or one of my coworkers, would bump into (or shoot right past at high speed) our allotted $75 a day. Ironically, when I did exceed my "per diem" by, say, $15.00, I received a scolding for it despite the fact that every day for the 5 days prior, the only thing I had eaten all day was a soggy, stale, almost "flavor vacuum" of a sandwich with an over-sized Coke made with unfiltered tap water and a dwindling CO2 tank for $9.00 a day. How much you saved (or tolerated) didn't matter, it was a number. If I was allowed $75 a day, and I only spend $15.00 of it, why couldn't I spend the difference all at once?

One coworker of mine had a great idea - "I think I should be able to eat at least as well as I can in my own house." Seems reasonable, but both he and I are passionate about food and cooking and places that could meet or exceed our own culinary abilities tended to be on the pricey side. In New York, the company paid big money to house us in Times Square (I don't want to stay in Times Square) but I'd rather be much closer to the convention center (where we were often required to be anyway) and spend the difference on food.

About half the time, I'd dine solo and take advantage of having mastered the art of dining "belly-up" dining and sit at the bar. I would venture out armed with anything from years-long, in-depth research to nothing but a strong rumor in search of both sustenance and inspiration. Other times, I was the "designated diner". When you are the one with the strongest opinions about food, you are the one most likely chosen to pick the dining location. In some cases, people I barely knew got wind of my restaurant sherpa abilities and decided to tag along, sometimes by invitation, other times by assumption.

In one such instance in New York, a coworker (and somewhat unseasoned traveler) of mine decided he'd like to tag along... with his girlfriend. Fair enough, not a problem. We all went back to the hotel after work, changed out of our corporate logos-wear, and reconvened in the lobby in various shades and textures of black clothing. (New York can be a bit brutal on white clothing, especially if you take a taxi or the subway anywhere.) Our uninvited but welcome guests showed up in jeans and running shoes (in her case, with the addition of a denim jacket.) I stood there quietly horrified. I'd never even imagined wearing running shoes in New York unless of course I was actually running. I wasn't even sure the restaurant would let us in.*

We arrived at the restaurant, all sat down, menus and a wine list were handed out, and the waiter scurried off for that lag time between sitting and decision making. When he returned, there was a request for a Cosmo, a beer, a Martini (by yours truly), and the girlfriend asked if they had any "white zin".

I rarely have moments in real life when I can actually hear the sound of a needle scraping a record, but this was one of them.

The waiter hesitated for a moment and, I'm quite sure, assumed he'd misunderstood her (despite the fact that there is no other variant of Zinfandel which rhymes with "white"). Though, just in case, his response was gentle and guarded."Excuse me?" She clarified, "White Zinfandel, do you have any White Zinfandel?" Each time she repeated it, a record scratch.

Turns out, he had heard her correctly in the first place. "I don't think we have any." He gave a token, but unconvincing, glance toward the bar as if to survey the wines again to make sure he hadn't missed the first time around. "...but we do have a Tavel rosé. That's (and here's where I could hear the soft, tendony crunching sound of his own tongue being bitten) similar to a white zin." Well, it's the same color anyway.

I had two meals in Hong Kong on consecutive nights; one in a place known for their Peking duck and hand-made noodles, a moderately formal dinner with disconcertingly-low ceilings for my taste. The following night, we ate almost literally on the street; tables and chairs on the sidewalk across the street from the restaurant, lighting provided by bare bulbs suspended from cables overhead. The waitress came across the street, dodging cars to do so, and took our order. As she walked back, she reached into tanks in front of the restaurant I hadn't really noticed previously and, out of each, she retrieved something wiggling and splashing, and proceeded to walk the exceedingly fresh seafood to the back of the restaurant. On plastic plates with plastic knives on a plastic table in plastic chairs, we ate an equally-good, if stylistically different, meal from the night before.

Aside from humorous stories, the biggest benefit to all those business dinners, was knowing what food can be, what it is capable of. It's so important to know what's possible, how high the bar can be set and, ideally, have a target to strive for. I have higher expectations of my own cooking because I've seen what's possible; not just singularly, but consistently across the country and around (at least part) of the world. Food is ultimately not about pretense, or expense, or ingredients, it's about tasting good and allowing you to enjoy the company of others, even if they are coworkers.

Footnote:
* Emeril's in New Orleans once told me they didn't allow jeans in the dining room despite the 5 visibly-empty tables and equally barren reservation book in front of it. I asked where he might suggest I take my expense account, penchant for great wine, and my 5 hungry and thirsty companions. Magically, the rules governing denim we were waved.

New Year, More Resolution

2008-01-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

New Year's resolutions remind me a bit of horoscopes; an awkward and unlikely way to bring change about in your life. (Astrology strikes me as being to life planning what lottery tickets are to financial planning.) I only know a handful of (okay, 3) people who stand a chance of adhering to their resolutions rather than see them fizzle by Valentine's day. (I am not among the three.)

One possible ingredient for failure is our choice of resolve. For many, it's to lose weight and /or "get (back) in shape", probably the one-two punch resolution that fails most, sometimes even simultaneously. Other resolutions have more variable odds of success. For example, if you're 35, and you want to learn German, unless you plan to move to Germany (or another country that speaks German), you'll probably never speak German.

I believe that, if you resolve around changing slightly something you do every day - cooking, for example - suddenly your odds of success get much higher.

To that end, I'm compiling a list of resolutions for 2008 that are food-centric.

Eat at more restaurants in San Francisco - I take that city for granted SO much. One of the most beautiful cities on earth and I neglect it constantly. Not to mention the fact that San Francisco is often in a dead-heat with New York over which is the dining capital of the U.S. Chicago and Los Angeles vie for third place.

Make more stock - I've done it many times before, but not often, and not very well. Michael Ruhlman's book "The Elements of Cooking" is jam-packed with so much of the nitty-gritty stuff I've - if you'll pardon the usage here - skimmed over throughout the years and discarded as being too fussy. I've taken the "self-taught" approach (to varying degrees of success) and hit a wall.

Follow A Recipe - You read that right, follow a recipe. In other words, read the amount and type of ingredient and use that amount of that ingredient. I'm really trying to recall the last time (if ever) I followed a recipe verbatim. I made bread the other day substituting whole wheat flour for all-purpose flour. It turned out wonderfully, but I still strayed from the recipe. (It was a bit dense because I misread the amounts which called for two packets of yeast rather than the one I used.)

Part of this becoming a resolution was reading what Julia Child went through to produce her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Testing each of those recipes repeatedly to make sure she was doing the original versions justice. Who the hell am I to stray from her version without first trying it? There's an old adage about "you can break the rules, as long as you understand what they are first." I think that's the case here.

Stop spending so much money on food - Seriously, crack is a cheaper addiction. Might be that I had to give up my uber kitchen in one of life's twists of fate, and my struggles in a tiny kitchen are at odds with my mild case of claustrophobia (or, hell, maybe I was just spoiled). But I eat out far too often and in not-exactly-bargain restaurants. Until dining becomes tax-deductible, I need to scale back. A LOT.

Stop spending so much money on alcohol - Well, stands to reason that spending money on food would also coincide with spending money on wine. Simply drinking LESS when I do drink would also help this situation, but I prefer baby steps...

Try Greek food again - I'm not exactly sure what put me "off" Greek food, but it was a powerful one. I have a bias against it I can't explain and I must make peace with it.

Other resolutions may come about throughout the year and I reserve the right to add more, though none of these seem appropriate to delete.

E.V.S.O. (Extra-Virgin Snake Oil) - A collection of useless crap

2008-01-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

Saturday Night Live once featured a skit with Father Guido Sarducci about the latest kitchen gadget called "Mr. Tea"; a natural extension of the then-new and now-famous "Mr. Coffee". To use it, one simply places a tea bag in a cup, places the cup in the device, then pours boiling water (from a kettle) into the top of the unit which, in turn, directs the water into the cup. For $19.99, you could make tea more easily than ever before.

As his demonstration went on, it became clear that it was simply a funnel. While coffee makers do a bit more than a funnel, they don't really do that much more. (Units with timers and grinders are pretty good... having freshly-ground coffee waiting for me when I get up is probably the best use of technology I've found so far.) Such ludicrous devices didn't end with the original brilliance of SNL. In fact, there are plenty of these devices to choose from.

Wandering through The Ferry Building in San Francisco (if there is a heaven for food geeks, it contains an exact replica of this place), I stopped in at Sur La Table and was truly struck by the number of - as Alton likes to call them - "single-purpose devices." Knives and graters aimed at a single ingredient, in other cases, I'm not sure they have a use at all. A lettuce knife?

The crown jewel of useless crap seems to be an electric cocktail shaker which has the option of "shaking" (vertically) or "stirring" (presumably swirling the contents). The transition from silver cocktail shakers to stainless ones was painful enough, the omission of vermouth from martinis is an outrage, but to turn the task of making a cocktail over to a machine? Something so sensual, tactile, and elegant thrown into the hands of a robot? This device is the mixologist's equivalent of an inflatable sex doll.

A few days later, I was standing in the plastic products aisle at my local grocery store and stared at the following product in disbelief, hoping there was something about it I didn't understand. "Glad" makes a plastic bag which they claim allows you to steam vegetables in a microwave oven. Yes, you read that correctly. Steaming in a microwave oven; a tiny voice in the back of my head uttered "bullshit".

Let me see if I get this straight - A bag containing vegetables (I'm avoiding their irritating use of the non-word "veggies") is being bombarded with microwaves (which are generating heat creating the steam in the first place) and they allude to (but do not outright claim) that the steam is helping the vegetables maintain their "taste and natural goodness". As for the bag, it doesn't do anything other than allow the steam to escape more slowly. In fact, the only claim that might even be considered legit is that it "eases cleanup". Then comes that casual marketing reference that causes the "fill" in "landfill": "Simply dispose of bag after each use." Buy a product, use it once, and throw it "away".

I have a better idea. Go down to your local thrift shop and look for a Pyrex or Corningware dish. Probably won't cost more than about 3 boxes of those bags, and until you break it, it's permanent. I was now on a mission; to make a list of useless crap.

Garlic Rollers
I was in love with mine too until I learned you can lay your knife flat against a garlic clove, smack it with your hand, and the peel comes right off. Note that these things (rubber tubes, essentially) carry a patent. I'm assuming it's for the way the ends are cut in serration, but don't care enough to research it. Clearly nothing about the patentable parts affects its performance.

Mandolines with a straight-across blade
Absolutely useless. Does your knife work better if you shove it through a cut, or draw it toward you as you cut? In other words, chopping or slicing? Same physics apply to a Mandoline. I know you paid a lot of money for yours, especially if it's metal, and it's made in France so it must be good. Donate it to Goodwill and get yourself one with a diagonal or V blade. You'll see what I mean.

Flavor "injectors"
Seriously, think about it. When you inject it, where's the marinade going to go?

All-Clad's "Asparagus Pot"
Okay, a pot dedicated to a single vegetable is in itself retarded, but this one is so poorly-designed that it's a disgrace to All-Clad's line. The problem lies in the steamer basket; the "feet" on the bottom, which hold the asparagus to steaming height rather than boiling height, are too short. You can only put maybe 1/3" of water in the pot which, if you're not watching closely enough, can easily all boil away.

Celebrity Chef Cookware
You've seen them. Emeril has a line, Mario Batali has a line, Rachael what's-her-name has one. Fine. Fans of each on the Food Channel can buy the play-at-home game of their favorite celeb chef's show. But there was an oddball I spotted the other day.

Marco Pierre White, notorious former boss to Gordon Ramsay, agreed to put his name on a line of cookware. Unlike Emeril, he didn't go with a brand name manufacturer (Emeril's stuff is made "by All-Clad" in their branch factory in China). In fact, most chef-branded cookware is certainly not made to be used in their own kitchens. This puts a surprisingly small dent in their credibility (though not their profitability).

But I think the strangest part of this is that few people in the U.S. have any idea who M.P.W. is! To his credit, he has no cooking show (not in the U.S. anyway) and can come across as an arrogant ass so is unlikely to be offered one. An obscure (if brilliant) chef stuck his name on mediocre cookware, and perhaps wonders what went wrong.

Oh, and just one more...

Riedel Glassware
For about a decade, Riedel has touted the (imaginary) benefits of their glassware. Their claim is not the benefits of the material (leaded glass is hardly new) or necessarily craftsmanship, but that their wine glasses make wine taste better. Brilliant. Subjective, and impossible to disprove.

Specifically, shape. the curvature of each glass which is individually (and suspiciously) tuned for each of a dozen or more individual grape varietals. These glasses magically target the wine toward a different area of your tongue, the details of which are clearly illustrated in much of Riedel's advertising. Doesn't matter whether you understand it or not and certainly doesn't matter if it's true or not, you cannot prove beyond all doubt that their claims aren't true and, if they are, you may be missing something.

Think about it, how can a glass "aim" wine? Even if we all sipped wine exactly the same way (we don't), we tend to hold our head and hand at different angles depending on how much wine is in the glass. Each of us uniquely draws the wine in, gives it a bubbled stir in the mouth, moves it about and, depending on the quantity at hand, either consumes or purges it. How can they claim a glass unifies the way we all drink wine? In fact, the trajectory of the wine over the rim of the glass will change during the course of consuming it, so if their theory is true, the wine will change its flavor based on how much of it you've already had.

Riedel even (wisely) alters the thickness of their glasses so as to be "restaurant grade" and fit in the dishwasher racks. How does this affect the tongue zone targeting system? They don't say. We must simply assume that they have it all under control.

Then, the young Maximilian Riedel goes and cuts the stems off. Did we ask for this? No. Does it help improve the wine? No. Is it more trendy crap for us to buy? Apparently. Is it harder to wash the fingerprints off of "O" glasses? Hell yes. Does holding the glass warm the wine more quickly? Not much, assuming you don't wrap your hands around the glass.

Obviously, they've become a brand to leverage, not an improvement to be understood, the tongue diagram has gone missing, and Riedel-branded glassware is now available at Target (along with a variety of vases all of which clearly say made in China). Seems they've fooled enough of the market to try fooling the rest of the market.

In fact, while you sip wine from Riedel Vinum glasses, there is someone in Austria making a replacement at the Spiegelau factory. Turns out, Spiegelau has been making Riedel's glassware, apart from the Sommellier series, for years. Made sense, eventually, for Riedel to purchase Spiegelau outright. (If you click on that link, you'll find two familiar names in charge of the company.)

I'm most bitter about it, I think, because I bought into the whole thing and then thought about it more carefully. From here on, it's Spieglau and Schott-Zweisel for me. And, no, you won't see stemless glasses in my house.

I have to admit though that none of the other items irritate me anywhere NEAR as much as that cocktail shaker.

Ex-mas

2007-12-25T23:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day, as a celestial event, happens exactly the same way as any other. There is nothing "mechanically" unique about the day itself; no special provision is made for it in the enormous clockwork of the solar system except that the day is slightly longer than the day before and slightly shorter than the day which follows. It's our perception of it that changes its meaning. Despite containing 24 hours, it always tends to feel like it "rushed by". Everything about Christmas stems from what we can (or choose to) make of it; it's not a day made for you, it's a day made by you.

For that past decade, I had spent it with my wife; someone I adored, respected, and admired. During the time we were together, we also had an obligation to others during the holidays; that variable into which you also unwittingly marry and commit - their family. We'd certainly had hit a “rough patch” and an eventual falling out - to put it mildly - and went out separate ways. This year, for the first time in well-over a decade, I faced Christmas alone. Not for lack of invitations from very generous and caring friends, but to "find myself" a bit and remember what it was like to not dread a Holiday.

For all those years, Christmas felt like a day spent holding my breath and pretending to be something (or someone) else. I felt over-dressed, though somehow still inadequately so. The day seemed overly-structured and riddled with expectations. Dozens of songs about love, harmony, peace, sharing, caring, and of course happiness have been written celebrating this day while I found myself placing happiness on 24-hour hold. Tolerance, patience, not saying the wrong thing, biting my tongue frequently about political commentary, choking down the occasional Jell-O-mold, over-complimenting the hostess (often my sister-in-law who would generally sympathize and confess to being as uneasy as I was), and accepting overt compliments year after year on my cooking; even when it was a complete disaster. It was a grown-up version of a children's tea party; getting dressed up and going through motions you wouldn't repeat for the rest of the year.

Today, I woke up to no presents under no tree. I made coffee, tidied the place up a bit (perhaps summoning a nesting instinct or simply following a decade-old routine), touched up a blog entry or two, and that's when inspiration struck (and inspiration rarely strikes me when I'm cleaning.)

I had just placed Julia Child's “Mastering the art of French Cooking” back in its rightful spot on the shelf and remembered my dad talking about having made “Coq-au-vin”. I decided that, in this late hour, I would make it too. That is what had been missing from my Christmases; cooking! The one day for which a year of practice and experimentation could be focused, and yet I was forced to hand over the reigns to someone else, or bow to the culinary restraints of my guests. Not this year. This Christmas was mine.

The grocery store was surprisingly busy given the importance of the day and, unlike Thanksgiving, didn't have as many people lined up with 1-5 items that they had forgotten from the BIG shopping trip a day or two prior. Most people moved gracefully and intently between aisles with no apparent sense of panic or dread. There seemed to be a quiet acceptance of the day, an awareness without panic.

Not surprisingly, many things are on sale Christmas day in a grocery store. Nutmeg, cinnamon, canned sweet potatoes, cranberries; it's perhaps an under-appreciated shopping day; a store's last chance to capitalize on the procrastinators.

I bought my ingredients (from memory having left the "Post-it" note on the counter at home), came home, lit a fire, turned on Christmas lights (rope lights over my fireplace mantle), and cranked up Christmas music. I opened Julia's book to the appropriate page, and hesitated. I must have resembled a Norman Rockwell painting, standing there donning an apron, one hand on Childs' tome and the other on the stack of ingredients. There was a sudden sense of having overlooked an important step.

Something was missing.

My mind was racing; after almost a year-long hurricane of drama, the day which had been "stress-free" suddenly had a twinge of dread. What had I forgotten?

Like a scene from a movie, the missing element made itself known; an inanimate object was cued by fate to make a sound at just the right moment. The ice in which the bottle of Champagne sat had melted just enough to allow the bottle to bump the edge of the bucket. Even Madame Clicquot's ghost is good at marketing.

I yanked the bottle from the bucket, salty ice water rushing in to fill the void, unzipped the foil, unwound the cage, and uncorked the bottle. Given the day and the situation, I allowed it a bit more of a celebratory "pop" than I normally would; the uncharacteristic drama lost on non-present guests.

I now had the right combination; music, food to prepare, a calm mood edged with a sense of adventure, and a glass of champagne with three perfectly thin streams of bubbles rising through the middle. Once could argue that I was missing an audience for whom to cook, but that is exactly the point. I, for once, was the audience. It wasn't about "them", it was about "me".

It was evolution, it was change, and despite solitude, it was happiness. Though I'd have preferred not to be solo, I wanted to prove to myself that I could still go it alone and, with any luck, it would be the last time I would choose to spend it that way; that the need to exorcise a decade of previous discomfort would never need to be repeated. Comfort within myself, the pleasure of cooking a Christmas meal of my own choice, and the experience of trying something new rather than a tradition which made me unhappy struck me as being the way to spend, not just Christmas day, but every single day.

Dressing the Part

2007-12-20T11:48:00.000-08:00

In my former job at a software company, I was deemed smart enough to do presentations and classes on various topics to 50-1000 people (depending on the venue). I'd often rattle off obscure tips and techniques about our software which the attendees, should they ever read their user manuals, would discover was information they've had the whole time. It was because of that thin gap in human behavior - between needing information and seeking it out - that I made a living.

Getting up in front of a large number of people means dressing better than jeans and a t-shirt (though that would be my preference) so my dress code was "graphic designer business casual". Lots of black, non-distracting shoes, etc. Meanwhile, another speaker, Michael Ninness, always wore a suit. For a graphic designer audience clothed primarily in skateboarding brands, and in contrast to the other speakers, "Myke's" attire always struck me as an impressive, if somewhat fussy, choice. (The fact that nothing he wore was ever wrinkled impressed me even more. He must have handed everything to the front desk at the hotel to be pressed upon check-in.)

I finally had to ask him about this suit-wearing business one day and he explained that "wearing a suit makes me feel different. I feel like I need to be more on my game, more focused, and I feel like people look at me differently." All interesting points, though not enough to convince me to wear one. Still, after almost 10 years, his observations have stuck with me and on those rare occasions when I bust out one of my suits, I have to admit that I do feel different in one.

Early on in my cooking pursuits, I was given a chef's coat. As I recall, it included some sarcastic but good-natured comment about "maybe this will make you cook better". Appreciative of the gesture and accepting of the ribbing, I put it on and started making dinner for four. (Chef's whites, like a new pair of white running shoes, must immediately be broken in and "dirtied" up a bit to get rid of that "too-white" look.)

I'll admit, in the early days, I was simply being a poser (hell, I'm still a poser) but over time, I came to rely on that coat as another cooking tool. It allowed me to get dressed appropriately enough for a dinner party, and wear whites over my social clothing to finish prepping or finalize and plate a course. I could transition from messy cook to gracious host in seconds even if I'd managed to dip my sleeve in a sauce, splash water (or red wine) over me, and should I nick a finger with my Global knife, a bit of blood would just add a stroke of legitimacy and character to an otherwise white canvas.

Unfortunately, I also developed a bad habit - wiping my hands on my jacket. This is normally an action of little consequence unless, of course, I wasn't wearing the jacket when I did it. Two quick swipes of dirty cooking hands can send a shirt and pair of pants - literally - to the cleaners.

As Myke noted, it also made me focus on what I was doing. This may sound corny but I "felt" like a chef and occasionally catching a reflection of myself in the kitchen window, I looked like one. A mirror would have been too much and I would have seen right through my own disguise, but the window provided a softened, less-literal view. In my mind, in my kitchen, for that 1-4 hour span, I am a chef. I need to think like one, clean like one, prep like one. Given the long hours, demanding repetition, struggles with staff and unappreciative patrons, not to mention relatively low pay considering the workload, this is about as close as I want to get.

I make fun of people on their way to sporting events wearing those idiotic, over-sized jerseys but, while glancing at myself in that window, I had to acknowledge that I was doing something similar. I don't aspire to cook like any one chef in particular and won't put his or her name on my jacket, my goal is simply to cook at a higher level. If a little white jacket lets me do that, then so be it. Clogs are a stretch, and I draw a hard line at checkered pants.

Therapy and Obsolescence

2007-12-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine worked in the printing business for over 20 years as an "etcher". In this case, etching refers to using chemicals on sheets of film to control color shifts on a printing press. As the "desktop publishing" revolution took hold, computers made it possible to make those same changes consistently, more efficiently, and without having to worry about the effects of those chemicals. Control of color was no longer a matter of chemistry in skilled and experienced hands, it was a matter of moving a slider on a computer screen. In the span of about four years, Robert's core skill was completely obsolete. Gone. Respectable, but quite useless in the new world of printing. Fortunately, he's smart and one of the nicest guys in the world. He joined the company I was working for and adopted the digital age. Unfortunately, digital technology within itself has obsolescence, and its cycles can be shorter than four years. Much shorter.

It was in the opening pages of Natalie MacLean's book "Red, white, and drunk all over" that I identified a kindred spirit. We've both served time in the software world and even shared the same obscure "web evangelist" title, a Silicon Valley-specific role. We've both seen first-hand how quickly obsolescence can come about when you combine software and the web, each acting as an accelerant to the other.

I'm curious if she has experienced the same phenomenon I have. Rather than becoming obsolete in a matter of months, the knowledge each of us acquires about our respective passions will be useful for the rest of our lives.

Without completely realizing it, cooking had become therapy for me. During the day, I had phone calls and meetings, racked up 3000 key strokes, pieced together demonstrations of not-yet-finished software, and when I got home, I had nothing to show. I couldn't hold what I had made, I couldn't place it on the mantle or take it to dinner to show a friend. Instead, it was locked away in cyberspace (a name given to a non-existent location to make those of us who contribute into a black void of intangibility feel better. It's a variation on what your parents told you when your dog died to make you feel better, your version being that he/she went off to live on a farm.) At the end of the day, I have nothing to show for what I did, and large pieces of what I know will be obsolete - or at least have updated versions - this time next year.

I've learned something from everything I've ever cooked and, good or bad, the results were at least tangible. The real "product" at the end of a meal is people being together, drinking wine, and sharing life's experiences and adventures with others. Done right, all that preparation can make someone smile, and while only slightly more tangible than software, it is the best ending to a hard day's work I can think of.

Dad

2007-12-16T12:25:00.001-08:00

At the risk of stating the obvious, food brings people closer together. My own reminder of this fact came about while researching the one person who first inspired me to ask questions about food - my dad.

The need to eat is common to every human on earth and, for most, food is essential to staying live. I like to think that cooks have embraced their own humanity; they've taken a fundamental need and wrangled into the consumption of a passion. Cooking well shares an unfortunate parallel with fuzzy toilet seat covers - a way to take that which we must do and make it a bit more elegant. I find beautiful irony in needing something on a physical level that I also crave on an emotional one.

In exploring food, everyone develops likes and dislikes and the results are as individual as our experiences. However, our preferences can only be based on what we've actually been given the chance to try.

Parents aim to expand the horizons of their children by introducing them to new things. Teaching them a second language, for example, is best done before they've fully grasped the first one. Information tends to "stick" better at an earlier age. Parents gather every conceivable educational device upon which to capitalize on a brain gathering information at blinding speeds. The mantra is "talk to your kids about drugs" and it seems to be working. I don't see a whole lot of kids shooting heroine on their way to school. They are, however, getting fat so clearly they're abusing something. It's ironic to me that something as important as what you put in your body gets ignored. Teach them about food, every day. Hard to say if your child will ever use drugs, but it's pretty much guaranteed that he or she is going to need to eat.

My dad went out of his way to let me try every type of food he could get his hands on. He's not a chef, nor a food writer, and he's not terribly handy in the kitchen. I don't remember him ever sauteing anything, no whisks, no reductions, and certainly no squeeze bottles. In fact, while I'm very appreciative of his enthusiasm for food, I realized I had no idea where it came from. Being of German, Irish, and Scottish decent, his odds of becoming culinarily curious didn't seem very high.

His explorations into food were modest and came in fits and spurts with months elapsing between inspirational strikes. When it did, he would come home with some new vegetable, ingredient, or substance, and in a few cases, a bit of technique, and set up camp in the kitchen. Lacking any cookbooks (that I can recall anyway), he'd follow his own instincts and whatever he learned from watching his mother. He often didn't have a particular goal or dish in mind, it was all about the journey.

In no particular order:

"Halva" - He brought home the sesame version of this eastern Mediterranean and Balkan-region sugary snack, anxious to introduce me to this obscure delicacy. As he described it, there was a familiar focus in his voice combined with a wry grin (a near clone of which I now possess) as he grew more and more certain I was gonna like this stuff. He sliced off two pieces, passed one to me, raised an eyebrow, and leaned back with his own bite awaiting my reaction.

Halva has an odd crystalline texture which feels a bit like a room-temperature popsicle, but surprisingly light and definitely unusual. I nodded in tentative approval. How or when he came across halva in his rather limited travels is beyond me, but my first memories of it were in a trailer park in Kearny, Arizona which would put the year around 1973. I was 7.

Cheese - Dad liked just about every cheese made, as do I thanks to him. In particular, we're fond of cheeses which are, as he likes to put it, "offensive to be in the same room with." My mother, who never wanted anything to do with "cheese that smells like feet", would indeed steer clear of the area.

He also made something one night that he called "cheese" which, as I recall, involved boiling the daylights out of milk. I don't quite remember how all of this worked nor the quality of the result, but standing on a dining room chair to watch, I was mesmerized by the notion of making something to eat out of something you drink.

Mizithra Cheese - I remember this partly because of its sheepy/goaty flavor, but also because of his intentionally-precise pronunciation of it. There weren't many exotic sounding words in my world so the ones that rang of far off lands stood out.

Jicama - A vegetable from the fringe, jicama stands out also because of his strangely Italian pronunciation of it, the "J" serving as a "gi" combination as in "giorno" with an emphasis on the middle syllable.

Home-made Ice cream - The mood would strike once in a while, though seldom enough that the wooden buckets would often have rotted between uses. The inspiration to make a batch usually coincided with his finding a replacement ice cream maker at a garage sale. The details of this process can be found here.

Alchemy - One day he made something that gave me my first glimpse into what home-cooked food can be; he braised mushrooms in red wine. This was, by far, the best thing he'd ever made and it was insanely simple and another example of something you drink becoming something you ate.

While his culinary adventures were somewhat limited, he did manage a few decent restaurants during work events for AT&T. I recall one place he talked about at length with that familiar gleam in his eyes and trademark softer and slower tone in his voice. His recollection was that it was the Top of the Mark (Hopkins hotel), with a large ice sculpture in the center of the room. Even the leftovers (which he brought home to me) had been wrapped in swan-shaped foil. At the time, these were clearly signs of a much bigger dining world.

Victoria Station - A theme restaurant in San Francisco modeled after the Victoria train station in London. As I had no idea where London was at the time, the novelty for me was limited to pieces of the restaurant being made of retired box cars. With reasonably good food and hefty sticker prices, this was reserved for the finest of occasions.

Nantucket Fish Company - Almost directly under the Carquinez bridge near (and slightly over) the water, it's definitely not a place you'd "stumble across". It's otherwise an industrial area with a dirt parking lot and getting to the front door requires crossing two sets of train tracks (which were still in use when I last visited.) Its nearest neighbor is a boat repair shop displaying the aquatic equivalent of cars on blocks. If there's a wait for a table, you can always grab a drink and walk out onto the pier to watch ships of all sizes pass by. While my dad recalls distinctly boats offering a fresh catch to the restaurant, these days, I have a hunch the fish you're eating was in a refrigerated truck more recently than the ocean.

Still, there's a gritty charm about the place. Its obscure location, view of the water, and obvious history are only part of it for him; the other reason is cioppino. This reddish collection of seemingly random oceanic bits was a bit intimidating to me, but the joy of watching the server place a bib on my father was immediate and reliable.

The Crepe Escape - Another of my first and most robust food loves to this day, a sign that there was a much bigger food world out there, was my discovery of crepes. I'm not sure where I first encountered them, but I was hooked immediately. For my birthday, dad took us to San Francisco to a restaurant he knew I'd appreciate instantly, "The Crepe Escape". The French bistro-themed interior of T.C.E. further supported the foreign, exotic feel and flavor of crepes.

It was also here that, much to the surprise of my dad, I first ordered an espresso. While supportive, a bit surprised, and quite obviously skeptical, he asked if I knew what I was ordering. With the waiter standing over us, I wasn't about to back down and admit I wasn't sure what I was getting into. I gave the waiter my most grown-up nod, assuring him I had things under control. I was 12 years old and worldly enough to know that espresso was nothing more than strong coffee; I just didn't realize HOW strong it was.

The tiny cup of mystery arrived, awkward in my hands during the gangly years of puberty. The aroma was intense and it was fogged over with beautiful tan crema (which would take me two more decades to appreciate). I took a sip. It was so intense that the fact it was blazing hot was actually the second thing I noticed. I could feel my dad just waiting for me to hate it, but I refused to give him the satisfaction. After considering the first sip, I stirred in a single sugar cube. I wasn't about to let on that it was insanely powerful and was doing all I could to choke it down.

It wasn't too long before my own explorations into food began. It had a slow start, but he had given me the basic "building blocks". He showed me that there is always something new to learn, and something else to taste. He'd done all he could, and once I moved out, it was up to me to keep up the quest. Since eating is something I'll need to do for the rest of my life (literally), I can't think of anything better he could have given me.

I sent him a draft of the blog up to this point and asked him to fill in details which I would then thread into what I had already written. Instead, when his email response came back, I decided to leave then in their own format.

Here is his response:

FOOD CONSCIOUSNESS

My "food consciousness" sprang mostly from my family being deeply-rooted in farming during my early years. Food was chosen for freshness, color, seasonality, and other factors. My parents taught me what they could any time we were in a store or, preferably, at a roadside stand.

Dad felt that you appreciated produce better if it was you that gave it a tug out of the ground or off the tree, vine, or plant that worked so hard to make it for you. That also led to my almost fanatical “waste not, want not” attitude. Something wonderful had occurred to bring that food to life and we shouldn't waste it. Of course, when you're six or seven, even an okra stalk was challenge to pick from and I remember enjoying the smell of the stem after picking the pods.

I was about 12 when I got curious about fresh vegetables and how they tasted in combinations. I raided my dad’s refrigerator, always well-stocked with fresh vegetables, and arranged them on a plate at the table. As I tasted each separately, I focused on their individual smell, taste, texture, and aftertaste (if any). Then I tried them in various combinations; again closely noting all of those same factors. That episode changed my attitude toward food for life. From that time on, food was more that just a way to stay alive – it was an adventure to be enjoyed!

Going one step farther, my parents didn't spend a lot of time experimenting with exotic foods, and wine was not in their diet, so I began to yearn for a bit more excitement. I welcomed the discovery of "chow chow" (a sort of pickled corn chowder) from Oklahoma, and the mule jerky the neighbors brought from old Mexico; both of which were very different from the meat-and-potatoes style my mom tended to make. Though, to be fair, she put it together SO unforgettably! For example, when I cooked a pot roast, and I got cooked meat. When she did the same thing, she got a savory delight.

And then there was my Mexican mother-in-law. She did everything on a grand scale because she often had 30 people at her house for some occasion. Her specialties were southern Texas-style seafood and side dishes, and she was also a master of gravies, migas (a Spanish dish made from bread crumbs), and potato salad.

I'm still surprised I weighed only 135 lbs when I was 21, but that was due to a metabolism I no longer possessed by the time I was 35!

My next defining food moment was when I started watching Julia Child. Her pronunciation of "Coq au Vin" sounded like she was being strangled, but the recipe sounded like fun and I jumped in feet first. I then branched out to the mushrooms in wine sauce which came off well regardless of the variations I tried in the ingredients.

FOOD MEMORIES

As you pointed out, there were places to eat, such as the Crepe Escape that transcended the food they served; they served memories. We remember the trip to downtown San Francisco to that very special place. Food is available anywhere, memories are harder to find!

The Nantucket Fish Company was special and impressed me with how fresh fish COULD be. During their heyday, we went there for dinner and a fishing boat docked on one of the many slips just outside the front door of the restaurant. The crew began unloading the catch, which included some very large fish. The manager of the restaurant trotted out to the boat and, after a few minutes of chatting with the fishermen, came back inside and wrote “Fresh Swordfish” on the chalkboard. Now that is fresh!

At one AT&T dinner, the table got together and bought a $75 bottle of wine. This was 30 years ago, so it is probably a lot more nowadays. I gasped when I heard the price, but my share was small and I was curious. Since that taste of premium wine, I can fully appreciate why people spend big bucks for it. All I remember for sure is that it was a Johannesburg Riesling. They poured me a half-glass, someone proposed a toast, and I tasted. The different flavors went on for at least two minutes, each going by as if my palate were on a merry-go-round. I don’t get that experience out of a seven dollar bottle of sherry!

I've had frog legs in Apache Junction, Arizona. They tasted like mud. I have had frog legs in Montreal, Canada. They tasted like chicken.

Humble Holiday Traditions

2007-12-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

Most people associate the holidays with food, especially those flagship holidays which fall in November and December. My associations between food and holidays are perhaps a bit unusual, but becoming more prevalent and perhaps threatening to the classic definitions of Christmas. While both of my sets of grandparents would do their own take on the Thanksgiving turkey dinner, it was definitely my maternal grandmother who created the most food buzz during Christmas. For some people, it's memories of slow-baked ham or maybe prime rib, but for me, it's tamales, Spanish rice, and menudo. While I cultivate embarrassingly little of my heritage, I am technically half-Mexican and tamales are as much a part of Christmas as egg nog.

Tamale preparation is a bit tedious. I also recall the thought of intentionally cooking with lard sounded a bit disgusting if not borderline suicidal. (My maternal grandfather, it should be noted, died of a heart attack and stroke at the age of 52. I couldn't help but ponder if there might be a connection.) My grandmother, all of 5'2" at her tallest, would command that kitchen, assembling tamales one after another, her increasingly arthritic hands placing meat in masa using much the same dexterity I now associate with sushi chefs placing fish on rice.

My earliest memories were of the whole family converging on her house, the undisputed epicenter of Christmas. It was inexplicable and unmistakably decorated entirely in blue Christmas lights with a collection of familiar cars parked at odd angles on the dirt sidewalk. Rather than simply walk in, my arrival was punctuated with a dramatic entrance. We'd ring the doorbell and wait for my grandmother to act surprised to see me, usher us in from the cold, and - inevitably - would hand us something to eat.

Come to think of it, not eating was never an option. I recall her and I sitting in the living room one afternoon watching TV when a commercial began. She asked if I was hungry, I said I was not. "Are you sure? You should eat something." I assured her, despite my slight build, I was content for the moment. "Grilled cheese sandwich?" Wasn't interested, but sensed that declining would be futile. "I'll make you a grilled cheese sandwich. You eat it if you want it." Cheese, bread, heat, and just a sprinkling of guilt set my meager appetite in motion.

Over time, political struggles in the family began to chip away at the size of the group. The kids got older, moved away (I was the oldest and, hence, the first). Money, whether it was the lack of it or the the questionable way in which funds came about, was often the core of the disputes. In recent years, it's become more of a game of "who is talking to who" rather than a family uniting on a holy day.

This may be how a newer and more personal tradition began between my father and I and, to some extent, my younger brother. My dad loved food (a trait which I presumably inherited and ran with to an extreme). While his pursuit of food is worthy of its own blog entry, for brevity here, know that he was also a true aficionado of cheese. It is that passion that created this new tradition.

He would, about a week before Christmas, go and get a big gift box of cheeses; charcuterie (at the time, simply "salami"), two different mustards, a small ham, and a terrine of some kind. They were generally from Hickory Farms (surprising to me still that a cheese store could do so well among clothing stores in a mall) and were hardly of prime quality, but we looked forward to tearing that thing open and stuffing ourselves full every year. We'd rarely finish the whole thing in a single sitting which left the rest to be nibbled over the bridge days between Christmas and New Year's day.

Though I've moved away and been involved in my own traditions for the last decade, the cheese and salami tradition is one of the few I know I can recreate at will. The blue lights have been taken down, the house sold, some family members have moved (or passed) away, and memories are all I have left of those early celebrations. This tradition doesn't require getting very many people together, it doesn't require invitations and parking hassles; the same three founding members can pick right up where we left off. For about $40.00, we can resurrect a meal that, from a personal level, trumps any fancy Christmas dinner I've ever had.

Star. Bucks. See? Now you get it.

2007-11-17T20:44:00.000-08:00

"As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
- Dick Cavett

A fascination with trends can distract people from reality. Whether it's clothing, paint colors, language, television, etc., it's easy to lose track of what's important; or at least what is in good taste. Or even what actually tastes good. We're easily conditioned; simply seeing something often enough can make it, not only familiar, but acceptable and possibly desirable. Take for example how quick we are to recognize a pair of white cords dangling from the ears of someone walking down the street. Then there are the bite-sized dogs being carted from store to store by their owner as she babbles on a cell phone. Obviously the flurry of Paris wannabes is an extreme example, but that degree of influence trickles down.

Yet another symbol - the white cup with a green circular logo wrapped in a brown cardboard jacket topped with a bit of plastic - goes unabated. They, like the fast food vendors, are taking something otherwise pure and simple - in this case coffee in its various forms - and profiting mightily not by making it better, but by making it fat-ridden, convenient, and overpriced. Perhaps they're too new to be recognized, or too ubiquitous to be considered vile.

A motivational speaker, sent to spruce up the morale at my office a few years ago, asked a great question that has always stuck with me.

"What does McDonald's sell?"

When a guy in a suit asks you a question with an answer this obvious, it's probably a trick so best discard the initial response. After all, McDonald's does not make the best hamburgers in the world (or certainly not in line with their popularity), nor have they ever claimed that they do. So what do they actually sell?

Time.

They pioneered the notion of not even having to get out of your car to eat. Hell, you don't even need to park the car. In exchange for quality, you get convenience, consistency, a low price, and best of all - time.

Getting you food efficiently also works in their favor. The more cars they can pass through the "drive-thru", the more money they make. One bottleneck was the time it took for a customer to piece together and convey what they wanted. They needed a much quicker method of getting you in, getting your money, and getting you food, so they invented the "Combo". A cheeseburger, a medium fries, and a medium drink became reduced to "A Number 2". That abbreviation in our world seems minor, but when consider several million people doing it, every single day, it adds up.

Which leads us to another bright guy aiming for profitable sweet spot of mediocrity who had a similar idea... perhaps he could do for coffee what McDonald's did for hamburgers? Screw quality, give them - no sell them - convenience. Just think of how many people drink coffee. Now think about how much they'd be willing to pay to have someone else make it? 60 cents? $1.40? $2.00? Child's play.

As L.Ron Hubbard once apparently said (and delivered on quite successfully), "If you want to make a million dollars, start a religion." I say, if you want to make a million dollars, sell them something they could make themselves, but would rather pay you quite handsomely to do it for them.

No, wait. Coffee isn't profitable enough. A cup of coffee is, what, $1.45? Surely you'd be willing to spend more than that. But how they get you to order lattes for $2.45 or one of those sentence-long, code word-riddled, fat and sugar-packed nightmares for $3.75 instead of a cup of coffee? Easy. Make that coffee horribly nasty. Think about it. How many people have you seen go into Starbucks and just order a cup of coffee? Now you know why. Seriously, the stuff is like yak ass.

Walk into a Starbucks and take a look at how big their coffee urns are. Tiny huh? Now walk into a Peet's coffee and look at their coffee urns. Big. One of them sells more coffee, the other sells more "Frapacapamacadopolatiationos(TM)". 'Cause they're more profitable.

Having profited myself nicely from several major corporations, I don't have the usual contempt for them. I blame them for doing to coffee what McDonald's did to the hamburger. Both companies misinform younger generations about what something as fundamental (and, in my world, essential and sensual) as coffee can and should taste like.

Starbucks is also kinda sneaky. They remind me a bit of Walmart who declares an obscure location, usually in the Midwest, as having "earned" the "right" to have a Walmart and runs full-page ads congratulating the citizens of this unassuming community for having been rewarded the right to buy absolutely mind-boggling amounts of stuff made in China. Seriously, ALL of it is made in China. All of it. Walmart then proceeds to put mom and pop businesses into bankruptcy all the while touting the number of jobs they're bringing in and how the community will benefit as a whole. Problem is, costs a lot of money to build a Walmart. Costs very little to set up a Starbucks. An espresso maker, some (small) coffee urns, lights, a bathroom, blenders, an ice machine, some couches, an intricate wi-fi network to download songs to your iPod, and some overly-perky people to staff the thing. Opening a Starbucks, you've loaded a bullet in the chamber of a gun aimed at every coffee shop within a 2-block radius. Except one.

The people that they hire aren't your average retail workers. They, too, are part of the branding, experience, merchandising, and research engine. They even get creepy...

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks, I haven't seen you in here before, you live around here? Work around here? Do you bring friends in here? How often? Do you think they like our coffee? How old are your friends that come in here? Are there other goods and services they might find interesting in a Starbucks?" Okay, I made up the last two, but I bet if I let them keep talking...

To me, this is tantamount to door-to-door solicitors. You can't spam me while I'm paying you and especially not before I've had my coffee: "Listen, 'Lisa' (with a heart over the "i" and a smiley face on her name tag), just pour the coffee. Let me worry about my friends."

While I'm on their case, let me clarify another little tidbit. The words you're looking for are "Small", "Medium", and "Large". "Tall/Short" are heights, "Grande" means large so just say large except, here, you're talking about a medium, "Venti" means twenty which, I assume, describes the number of ounces of liquid the container can hold. Every single time I'm forced to order anything at Starbucks (desperate times folks), I'm going to order it by SIZE, not height, mislabled size, or the number of ounces. Thanks.

Wait, I'm not even sure I'm in a coffee shop, a music store, or the lobby to a movie theater? Please tell me because I'm confused. I get a free iTunes download every time I what? Seriously, tell me, how do CD's make the coffee taste better? And why do I need to pay $4.00 for a coffee beverage AND still need to pay for wireless internet access?

Who actually cares what the product tastes like any more? Who among you has any idea who Ernesto Illy is and how everything about Starbucks shatters his world?

Nah. That doesn't even bother me that much. Predatory practices bother me.

In Willow Glen, near/in San Jose, there is a Peet's coffee nestled among a bagel shop (Noah's) and a Jamba Juice. Between them, they pretty much covered everybody's needs. 4 blocks down, on a corner, is a Starbucks. Perfect.

Apparently Starbucks found out about another coffee shop in business within walking distance of their corner store. So what did they do? They built another Starbucks directly across the street from Peet's. (I'm sure the permits to build one on the sidewalk in front of Peet's fell through.)

But ya know what's funny? Peet's is still packed and I think I know why. They still care about on of the main reasons you went to a coffee shop in the first place; the, you know, coffee.

Weird huh?

The Road Less Taveled

2007-11-11T01:02:00.000-08:00

My exposure to wine was basically non-existent until 1996 or so. White Zinfandel (yes, I’ll admit it) was about the only wine I distinctly recall drinking. I guess I just wasn’t a “wine” person. Yet.

At 28, I met my girlfriend "Gigi" who had been a chef at several noteworthy places in San Francisco. During the 2 years we were together, she taught me more about food than I had any right to know without having gone through the same training she did. Having given me an introduction to making good food, she also added the notion in my head that food and wine are inseparable. I then got to experiment with that combination as I traveled on a robust expense account for 6.5 years. It was, essentially, part of my job to travel and take people we wanted to influence out for a good meal. Hey, someone had to do it.

However, as I've learned from Jeffrey Steingarten, in some cases, we must sometimes "unlearn" before we can learn, get back to zero, etc. One must overcome prejudices in order to appreciate food, or travel, or other human beings for that matter.

It was at a now-defunct restaurant in New York called JUdson Grill (Capitalization is theirs) that I took on one of my primary wine prejudices.

It was on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday, a chilly Autumn evening, that I arrived at JUdson without a reservation and was seated in a far corner, away from the crow-like squawks of business people. I had been leisurely strolling through the wine list when a woman with curly dark hair, sassy designer glasses, and a polite tone approached the table. She was JUdson's sommelier in what was (and largely still is) a traditionally male role.

Her approach was a perfect one, done the way a great sommelier should; making it clear that she is a willing and valuable resource, but certainly open to letting the diner choose a wine themselves . She clasped her hands together in front of her, and asked if I had any questions about the list.

I did. Well, not so much a question as a prejudice; one I knew I needed to overcome before I could be a serious wine connoisseur

I closed the list, set it aside, leaned toward her, and said “I need you to help me get over my fear of ‘pink’ wine.”

Declaring a desire to make peace with the lighter of the reds and the darker of the whites, her formality surrendered to a genuine challenge and her true passion for wine came shining through. She smiled broadly, and I could almost see her take a step away from the table armed with ideas already flowing through her brain. She dashed away and returned with three glasses and three bottles, and gave me a taste from each. I became a fan.

Sommeliers welcome a chance to educate, inspire, and enlighten. Simply requesting a bottle of wine - "Silver Oak Cab" or "Sonoma Curtrer Chardonnay" means their only challenge is retrieval the right bottle (while resisting the urge to steer diners toward far more interesting wines.) Offering a challenge is much more interesting.

It seems specific to my generation in this country that have an aversion to that wine which is not quite white, and not quite red. “Pink” wine has been the subject of much ridicule in the U.S. because of one infamous way of processing an otherwise beautiful grape - white zinfandel.

While "blush", "rosé", or just plain "pink" wines have always existed elsewhere, their appreciation here was tainted by this commercialized approach to making wine and it has left a bit of a bad taste in the minds, as well as the palates, of Americans.

So why is "white zin" so prevalent? Let’s face it, it’s cheap, and it’s a great “starter wine” (the equivalent of training wheels for the general flavor of wine). I grew up eating black olives out of a can having, of course, placed one on each of my fingers first, but I have since taken a liking to the delicatessen-grade olives in all their various forms and colors. Tasting the canned versions now is quite a shock, but my appreciation of them early on led to my enjoyment of the "finer" versions now.

While "white zin" can at least introduce folks to wine, I'd argue that it is an introductory taste upon which quality and depth can only be added. Heaven help them if they don't take the training wheels off and move on.

Shark Fin Soup

2007-10-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

I never really imagined I'd write a combined commentary on my two hobbies - food/cooking and underwater photography. How could they, with seemingly so little in common, ever merge into a single entry? In fact, with my enjoyment of fish as a main course and a photographic subject, one might even argue they are at odds with one another. They can hardly be performed at the same time (though easily in sequence - shoot, spear, cook), and - quite frankly - each is an expensive enough hobby unto itself, I'd hardly need to combine them.

Yet, during the Shark Shootout this year, the topic of shark fin soup was raised during our "shark awareness course". A commentary was born.

The cutting of shark fins is a tricky topic. Note that I said "cutting" because, in some cases, the animals are hauled out of the water, their fins removed - I'm sorry, sawed off with a knife - and then tossed back into the ocean, essentially immobilized and bleeding. One hopes that other sharks are quick to notice and put the suffering animal out of its misery before it bleeds to death or drowns due to water not rushing past its gills. It's reminiscent of elephants being killed for their tusks where, in both cases, a beautiful animal is killed for whatever vanity-feeding part of them makes the most money. Shark fins go for about $350 a pound, or $40 a fin. A bowl of bland shark fin soup will run you $10 - $40.

The problem is that sharks aren't easy animals to garner sympathy for. They're "ferocious, man-eating, teeth-packin', hundred-million-year-evolved predators; a finely-tuned engine of efficiency and predation." Right? Every single one of us knows someone who has been attacked, bitten, mauled, or worst of all, killed by a shark. Entire families are wiped out while sitting in their homes. It's practically an epidemic. Okay, not really. I know more people that have been bitten by other people than by sharks.

Hopefully, each of us attaches, even loosely, a loss to the killing of an animal regardless of its reputation. Something must die before you you can have sushi, stir-fry chicken, or a marvelously marbled steak. If we borrow from the great karmic bank when we take the life of an animal, what are we paying in return? Are we making the most out of that animal, or are we so completely removed from the process that we can simply trim off the bits we like best (or those that are the most profitable) and slap mother nature in the face with the rest?

Hell no. Be it oil, or air, or animal, a resource shouldn't be wasted just because it's convenient.

However, simply making the most of an animal doesn't, in itself, mean that there isn't waste. McDonald's is well documented in "Fast Food Nation" for using every ounce of a cow. By the time the suppliers are done with it, all that's left is a bell and a spinal cord. (You and your dog eat the rest.) McDonald's cranks out hamburgers which sit on a rack until they are sold, or such time as they are deemed "unfresh" and are thrown away. They kill extra cows so that someone won't need to wait 2:18 for a hamburger, a crappy one at that. In short, it's a waste on a much larger scale even though efficiency has been worked out to the gram.

I am the farthest thing from vegetarian one can imagine so I'm certainly not opposed to animals as food. Sharks are an important source of protein in parts of the world such as India and West Africa, but you can bet they use the whole shark. I respect what I eat, what had to happen for it to be there, where it came from, whether or not there is more of it, and what I'm wasting in the process. Ultimately, shark fin soup is not about food, it's about cruelty, greed, and incalculable waste.

Cast-Iron

2007-09-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

I heard a salesperson in a cooking store explain to a customer that "iron is a good conductor of heat." That’s true when compared to air or wood, but compared to copper or aluminum, it’s hardly a contender. While iron (cast or otherwise) does not take or conduct heat easily, it does retain it very well. Iron likes whatever temperature it is now and doesn’t easily change. It will eventually give-in and start heating up and, when it does, it's like a big thermal fly-wheel. This is where cast-iron wields its charm.

If you get a thin stainless steel pan nice and hot, then throw a thick steak on it, it'll cool down almost instantly. There just isn't enough mass in the pan to fight back against that big, chilled chunk of protein. Perform the same task with a hefty cast-iron pan, and you'll find the steak will continue to sizzle as the pan gives up heat from its own reserves and takes on new heat from the flames (or coils or magnets) below.

However, all of that powerful momentum comes back to bite you when you want the heat to stop. If your cast-iron pan is too hot, and you need to cool things down a bit, turning off the heat source won't change much for a minute (literally) or two. That pan will continue to give off heat overcooking - or potentially burning - its contents.

I've seen lengthy threads on Chowhound touting the benefits of cooking rather delicate items, such an omelet, on cast-iron. While I’m not saying this isn’t possible, it just shows goes to show that, with enough practice, you can cook anything on just about anything else. Can you do it? Yes. Should you do it? I don’t think so. Temperature control with an omelet is key and cast-iron forces you to think further ahead than you would need to with aluminum or stainless-steel.

Cast-iron also has the problem of being finicky in how it's treated. Can't let it soak in water, can't put it in the dishwasher, and it must be seasoned for the first time before use. This reminds me of my turntable.

A few years ago, I got sentimental about vinyl. I missed the tactile nature of it, how vinyl was almost “alive”; it had to be stored a certain way (or it would warp), handled carefully when removed from the sleeve-within-a-sleeve, the dustcover on the turntable raised, the record placed and immediately cleaned with an expensive cleaning device, and then it was ready to be played. I had forgotten how bad they sounded, like a CD being played through a blanket. The dust, which inevitably remained, was clearly audible.

Turntables and cast iron both have their charms, but for me are best suited to the occasional bouts of sentiment and for specific purposes.

All-Clad - Is it "All-That"?

2007-09-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

I hate Brad Pitt. Don't get me wrong, I think he's a spectacular actor and I'm sure he's a nice guy. Rather, I hate him for having that annoying combination good looks and talent. It's not fair that he should be able to act brilliantly and look like that, all at the same time. Every time I see Brad in a film, I gotta give it to him... he's good. So good, in fact, that Brad reminds me of my favorite cookware. (How's THAT for a segué?)

If you'd have asked me three years ago, I'd have said All-Clad is, hands down, the best stuff you can buy. For blossoming food geeks, there is a dull ache that accompanies not owning "the whole set". It calls to you through cooking store windows, a twinge of jealousy surges through you when you spot a set at a friend's house. Dare I say, it's the stuff their dreams are made of.

It is, however, expensive. When compared to similar pans, the price can be as much as 3X the closest competitor. Given its beauty AND high sticker price, it makes me wonder just how many people even dare to cook on it?

I hunted for, but couldn't find, some statistic about how many All-Clad pans never see more heat than a recessed light shining above them. Numerous houses must contain complete sets that hang, shiny, unused, and untouched for years in kitchens installed for show rather than actual cooking.

Beauty comes at a price. It's more expensive to manufacture and there are inevitably duds that roll off the assembly line. I've no idea how many "seconds" they produce, but it's enough to make them worth selling - at a hefty discount I might add. All-Clad "Seconds", as they are known, are a bargain. (In the same way that, say, 20% off of a Rolls Royce can be considered a "bargain".) The only real difference between the prime stuff and the seconds is a blemish of some kind on the pan as well as an "S" stamped into the underside of the handle; a stainless variation of "The Scarlet Letter" which these pots and pans must wear to prevent people from (easily) mistaking the "duds" for the "goods".

Rest assured that "Second" pans don't look like they've been hit by a locomotive. Rather, it is literally a cosmetic flaw that demoted the piece. I use the word "cosmetic" specifically to convey how small a defect disqualifies a pan for prime status. It may have bumped another pan on a conveyor belt or maybe the riveting machine grabbed it the wrong way, sometimes the handles have a few pits in them. But unless you're planning to have it engraved as an award for culinary artistry, the flaws will soon be masked by the battle scars that any well-loved pan should have.

Unfortunately, you can't go down to your local cooking store and buy "Seconds". I'm sure All-Clad knows that people shopping at a dedicated cooking store likely have - or borrow - the money necessary to buy the good stuff. Seconds are somewhat of a secret in that you need to know they exist, and then know where to get them. Fortunately, the internet provides a consistent conduit. Check out http://www.cookwarenmore.com

It would be a waste to let them simply hang and look pretty because they're very well made; a trait that is easy to take for granted. I was reminded of the importance of a pan's construction while preparing dinner at the home of my buddy Rick. I had decided steaks were in order, so I grabbed a thin but serviceable pan from their cupboard, cranked up the heat on their electric cooktop (identical to the one used on the Brady Bunch, by the way), and parked the pan on those familiar glowing coils.

As I seasoned the meat, an odd sound began emanating from the stove, almost as if metal was moaning. The pan slowly began to transform like something out of "The Terminator", gradually warping toward me as if coiling and preparing to strike. I must admit (having seen too many "liquid metal" movies) that I took a step back, uncertain what was about to happen. The pan leapt about an inch off the stove and landed in two pieces, the thicker steel plate on the bottom having detached from the main part of the pan. I was left with one very hot metal disc, and a warped, wide steel "bowl" with a handle. I was a bit embarrassed, to say the least. I'd abused many a pan before, but never someone else's, and never in such a dramatic way. I apologized profusely.

This is obviously an extreme example, but there are more subtle ones. I recall owning a pan with a loose handle which made the process of flipping the contents of a pan look like the work of a drunkard. I also had a "spot welded" handle that came completely off of a stock pot I was carrying while it contained, fortunately, cold and not boiling water.

My favorite pan is a 1998 "Special Edition" which has been an absolute workhorse. It has long ago lost its mirror finish and a decade's worth of whisk marks are clearly and charmingly visible inside, but it works just as well today as it did when I got it (though I'd like to think it's in more capable hands now.) It shows no sign of peeling apart leading me to assume it'll last at least another five if not ten years. I honestly don't remember how much I paid for it at the time, but I'm certain I've gotten my money's worth.

I was tempted (and coerced by poverty) to look at Emeril's line of cookware which is also made by All-Clad. I'm not a brand junkie by any stretch, but I am a quality junkie. I'll use cookware that says Emeril on it (but NOT Rachael Ray) if I can get the same quality for 1/3 the price.

Turns out, there's a catch with Emerilware and others like it stamped with chef's names - the sides. The All-Clad "Stainless" series, for example, is two pieces of stainless steel on either side of an aluminum core and that aluminum extends all the way up the sides of the pan. With Emerilware, the aluminum is simply a disc that covers the bottom. Hence, the heat distribution on the bottom of the pan is relatively good, but the sides heat up independently - and dramatically - causing the sides to scorch your sauce while the rest simmers gently in the middle. For a stockpot, where the temperature will be relatively low, this isn't as big a deal. All-Clad's big 12-qt. "Multicooker" is stainless, but doesn't have aluminum up the sides (which allows it to be a bargain at $99.) Certainly for boiling pasta water, heat distribution is of little concern. But in a sauce or saute pan, it's critical. Hugely critical.

To be fair, there are at least two other manufacturers who make "clad" metal pans using the same concept (18/0 stainless on the outside, an aluminum core, and 18/10 stainless on the inside).

The first is the "house" brand at Sur La Table, specifically their "stainless" collection. They have what I consider to be slightly better handles given their shape and angle to the pan. The rest is pretty similar. The price is radically different. The equivalent Sur la Table pan is about half of what an All-Clad pan would be. A $600, 9-piece All-Clad set will set you back about $349 in the Sur la Table version.

The other "dark horse" comes from, of all places, Walmart. Their "Tramontina" brand with the same construction specs as those above, but an 8-piece set will only cost you $149.99.

Now, let me also say that not everything you cook on must be All-Clad. Ideally, pans would last "forever", but non-stick pans have a finite lifespan due to the nature of non-stick material. Sooner or later, it stops sticking to the pan itself. It may take a while, and modern pans are much more durable that those of even a decade ago, but spending $149 on a pan that will lose its coating just doesn't make sense. Instead, I take a little trip to my local restaurant supply shop, and pick up aluminum-exterior, rubber-handle-covered, non-stick pans for a measly $50 a piece. They're built for what restaurant cooks are likely to do to them, and it's not pretty.

Okay, fine, If there was ONE thing I could change it would be that All-Clad doesn't have (or offer) glass lids for their cookware. I tend to forget how truly handy they are until I use one from a competing line. No more lifting the lid to see how things are progressing.

Other than that, and the general sticker shock that accompanies All-Clad gear, it's darn-near perfect.

By the way, if you really want - and I do mean really want to understand pan construction, check out this link on eGullet. (And while you're there, check out the other incredible collection of info they have.)

"Understanding Stovetop Cookware" by By Samuel Lloyd Kinsey
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=25717

"Add pasta." Okay, when?

2007-09-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

Regardless of one's level of culinary skill, it is still quite possible to walk out of a restaurant thinking, "How did they do that?" Some aspects are obvious - the best ingredients give best results - but others can be a bit more elusive such as the tendency to cook everything in a single pot, the goal to reduce the number of dishes to wash. Hard to know how much damage has been done to our expectations about flavor and certainly texture.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was cooking a minestrone-esque soup and presumably followed the recipe which put pasta in a pot alongside raw carrots, celery, meat, etc. These other ingredients all required much longer cooking times than the pasta resulting in, as you'd guess, overcooked pasta. Way overcooked.

But there were more subtle issues. Even in California, there remains a generational tendency toward dried herbs and pre-made packages of "seasonings". I watched him cut up the carrots with a dull knife and thumb positioned squarely in the crosshairs of what sharpness remained (those with any knife skills whatsoever understand how difficult it is to watch a newbie with a knife), and combined all of the ingredients - plus tomatoes - in a thin aluminum pot. By the time it was all assembled, the inclusion of the pasta at the beginning didn't even register.

I'm focused on so many things, the obvious can slip right by. I'm noting the Sambonet flatware was set face-up while pasta is being over-cooked. How did I miss that?

I then clued him in to the idea of cooking the pasta just short of al-dente, and then combinging soup and pasta at the end. Assuming that it will take a few swirls to stir in the pasta, it will be cooked perfectly by the time it reaches the soup bowls.

Those lacking the instinct to know when to add an ingredient can certainly get by with this method. This notion of cooking items separately along with an understanding of why and when to do so is a quantum leap in the making of a good cook.

Farmer's Market, or Buyer's Market?

2007-09-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

I read Michael Ruhlman's blog regularly for genuine insight and snarky commentary. I love that he goes out of his way to not only acknowledge when he's wrong, but to stand vocally and emphatically corrected.

In this installment, a casual mention of an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer noting that our general assumption of a farmers' market is that of cheaper produce. Mr. Parsons, of course, set him straight.

One part of the Plain Dealer article that struck me is that the pricing of farmers' market produce was 28% higher than that of supermarket produce. Rather than being cheaper, it was considerably more expensive, on a percentage basis.

I suppose our (or at least my) assumption that farmers' markets would be lower stems from the prices you get out in the countryside as you drive by their farm. It's you that's incurring the expense of fuel and time to hunt down such bargains.

I've always found the charm to be, not of lower prices, but of higher quality and cutting out the middleman. (Middlemen are notorious and highly unpopular regardless of the setting.) By purchasing carrots from someone with dirt under their nails (put there by having pulled your newly purchased carrots out of the ground), you have shortened the path food takes in getting to you. There is also a more direct link between you and the person that grows (or at least picks) your food out of the ground.

Farmers' markets tend to, in my experience anyway, thrive most in areas with massive amounts of disposable income. My home in Mountain View, California, is about a mile from a massive farmers' market held near the train station downtown. Mountain View, of course, is also home to Google, a generator of several billionaires and more than a few millionaires. If their budget for the market that week was, say, $20.00, they would end up spending $25.60 instead. Hardly a deal-breaker. They're supporting the farmers directly, cutting out that pesky middleman, and getting a better product to boot.

And then there's the darker side...

I was having dinner, not surprisingly, while seated at a bar (Zucca in downtown Mountain View) when a gentleman sat next to me. He was was quickly recognized and acknowledged by several members of the staff including the owner himself. While chatting with various employees, there was some utterance about his farm. Thinking I may have misheard what was going on, I listened a bit more intently. Sure enough, farming was mentioned again.

I had to ask... "You own a farm?"

He did.

"And what do you farm?"

"Kiwi's".

We began chatting and I mentioned the concept of buying locally, etc. since NOT buying locally means that you're burning oil in various flavors, to get food from one place to another, forcing the farmers to pick fruits and vegetables before they're ready, etc.

"The funniest thing is that Japan and Korea are our biggest customers. They especially want the 'perfect' spectimens and they will pay handsomely for them. I can sell the cream of the crop to them for maybe 4-5 times the price people in the states would be willing to pay."

This is a concept I'd never even imagined. While consumers are being taught to buy locally, farmers are seeing much more lucrative deals overseas. I can, apparently, get "better" produce from this man 4000 miles away than I can at the local market.

He also mentioned another concept my naive little mind has a hard time with. "The kiwis we grow are patented and we're growing them under license. They're all clones of a single plant. In fact, all of the fruit is sterile. You can't grow another kiwi from one of ours."

It would take some researching to determine if sterility is an unexpected (though presumably welcome) side effect to the cloning process, or if this an example of "genes as intellectual property".

Presumably it would be very difficult to convince the Japanese to not buy fruit flown in from the US (and it would certainly put a dent in our farming economy, though the flown fruit is the prime quality so we're talking about relatively small amounts), but ultimately it's better for everyone if we buy as close to home as we can get. And, yes, that means we'll have to do without asparagus in December.

Table or "belly-up"?

2007-09-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

One aspect of business travel which I cultivated out of necessity is the fine art of dining alone. In particular, dining while seated at the bar - otherwise known as the “belly-up” approach. The reference, of course, being the proximity of belly and bar when one is so seated. Being male, I take the ability to dine alone at a bar without being hassled for granted, though I can easily imagine a female might not having quite the same comfort level. Can be difficult to enjoy a meal if you need to run defense for most of it. Even so, there are numerous reasons to seek out such a spot whether singularly, a pair, or even a trio:

1. When there are no open tables, and a line of people out the door waiting for one (either via reservations or on the list as walk-ins), there is often room at the bar. Bars unfortunately have the seating philosophy of Southwest Airlines; a free-for all requiring a delicate balance between sufficient manners to avoid conflicts and a dash of aggressiveness to assure yourself a seat. I've found a drink in hand passes the time nicely while waiting for a spot to open up and allows for a perusal of the menu and/or wine list without a server having to monitor you.

2. Once you're seated, the entertainment value of a bar seat really kicks in. For one thing, bartenders don't usually remain “in character” the way servers do. They will be polite and helpful while tossing napkins in front of you like a seasoned blackjack dealer, but the moment they step away, they're more likely to bark orders to a busboy or berate another bartender for pouring the wrong whiskey. I've always found the interaction to be much more human and organic with far less pretense and political correctness; a refreshing change from the corporate world. For that reason, I sometimes seek out a spot at the bar even when there is a table available.

3. Your dining companions tend to turn over more quickly as some people are there just for a drink, a drink before dinner, or in some cases, are also fans of “bellying-up”. You get miniature snippets of people's day, the most recent events, etc. Spotting people who are on a blind (or first) date is hours of entertainment.

4. Another reason I choose a bar seat is that I'm cognizant of the profitability of any restaurant and feel bad singularly taking up a table meant for two. This is especially true when there are clearly people waiting for a table. Single diners don't tend to order a bottle of wine (not that I'm incapable of it, I just don't generally do it), and they spend about half as much as a table for two. If it's a restaurant I dearly want to thrive, I'll pass up a table in favor of the bar.

5. I'm sure there's potential for a much grander social experiment here but I find that, if I'm seated at a table, (with or without a companion) and there are people on either side of me, I'm much less likely to strike up a conversation with them should a topic of note be overheard. For whatever reason, the 12-inch chasm between tables creates barrier few are bold enough to span. Sitting at the bar, on the other hand, creates a contiguous dining surface giving it a much more communal feel.

Some restaurants try the communal table concept with varying degrees of success. Few people (Americans anyway) will seek out a shared table. Larger tables here are generally set up to either accommodate larger parties, or used as a place to put walk-ins when the other tables are spoken for. When one is able to choose their communal table mates, that's one thing, but being arbitrarily assigned strangers is a bit much for territorial Americans to risk.

6. There is much to be learned from bartenders about most any subject. Many bartenders and servers are in professional transition; this is a job to pay the bills while they're going to school, an interim step once they're out of school, and for others, it's a position they've held in the past and now circumstances have caused them to rely on those skills once again. There is no shortage of human conditions that can provide bartenders and the demand for them.

Bartenders also have more time to talk to you. Their “domain” is a 50-100 square foot waist-high cage restrained by a drawbridge at one end. Servers, meanwhile, dart around most the restaurant. A server can't really talk to you while monitoring other tables, but a good bartender can keep tabs (literally and figuratively) on 10 people from a single vantage point.

Sitting at the bar also means you can keep an eye on the bartender making your drinks. Even the finest 'tender can be suffering from an evening of their own revelry the night before. This can leave him or her a tad inattentive. I recall one server approaching our outdoor table the afternoon after St. Patrick's day, a menu shielding his eyes from the sun. The menu seemed like an odd choice since his eyes were mostly closed anyway. He confided that the evening prior had been a bit... “tempestuous”. We were sympathetic to his plight and did our best to accommodate, much the same way servers do with customers.

And now for the down-side of bar seating...

The television. Its proliferation is similar to the giant black pepper grinder, the yuppy salts, and bottled water. Go ahead. Try it. Try to go into a bar, in California at least, and dine at a bar and NOT have a television blaring at you. Being utterly indifferent to sports of most any kind, I can't help but feel like there is a foot/base/basket-ball game being played around the clock, regardless of the season.

Ultimately, for a restaurant geek, bar dining is a much more interactive experience. Bartenders know what the buzz is in the kitchen, new stuff, bad stuff, clever stuff, wines they haven't put on the list yet (in which, if you show any interest, you'll likely get some to taste), and somehow always seem to be a hub for the restaurant. Even managers come to check in with the bartenders. If the butter is oxidized, if the 9-oz. Martini gets too warm and you're 1.5 ounces into the drink, if the fork is dirty, the knife is missing, and so on, a bartender will be there for you, front and center, long before a server would be.

Pepper Grinder Nation

2007-08-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Among the many aforementioned steak house/chop house trends in my blog is the Paul Bunyan-scale that seems to accompany their offerings. The steaks are enormous, portioned more for dedicated 4-legged carnivores than us upright-walkers. Steak knives apparently needed to be scaled accordingly. I have yet to see a steak knife show up at the table that didn't elicit a quiet but clear surprise. It looks more like a murder weapon than a dining utensil and now this person must wield this serrated, comically-huge device and pretend it feels natural. They seem a better fit for survival in a jungle than simply dividing a steak into chewable portions.

Shortly after being handed this hand-held meat saw, the waiter asked if I'd like fresh-ground pepper. The origins and usefulness of this practice elude me; for one thing, if I do want some, why do I need to wait until he goes and gets the “Louisville Slugger” pepper converter? While he/she goes to get it, the food has cooled in the mean time. Second, why does the damn thing need to be that big? I'm insecure enough about a variety of things, I don't need a guy leaning across my date with a long, shapely device which, with a few twists of the wrist, ejects something I'll soon put in my mouth. I must imagine that a compromise in grinder capacity and overall size can be reached.

The size of the pepper grinder generated some debate and brings several theories to mind, the most obvious is that people steal the little ones (drunk people, in my experience, will steal just about anything). The second is, once we've decided a server will do the grinding, a longer grinder allows an easier reach to more distant plates. Fair enough.

However, while peppercorns are hardly picked fresh from the tree/vine and loaded in pepper grinders that morning, I just wonder how long it takes a single peppercorn to make its way from loading platform to your plate. Has anyone tagged a single peppercorn and determined the delay?

How about, instead, you go ahead and put one of those small pepper grinders on the table for me (the 48 bucks you're charging me for a 4 oz. filet mignon with no sides should more than cover the loss of a $2.00 pepper grinder to every guest who orders one).

And, seriously, a sharp steak knife is far more useful than a dull, over sized one that could, should the need arise, gut an elephant seal.

Then again, I did preface this with “steak house/chop house” clarification so the bizarre portions and brontosaurus-sized utensils all seem to be part of the package.

See? It's not just me. Here's another good one. (Read the whole thing for a laugh, or do a search for "the giant" for the short version.)

Vegan Sex?

2007-08-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

If a vegan has sex with a meat eater, is that wrong?

My question is, why would anyone want to have sex with a vegan?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/AAMB4/aamsz=300x44_MULTILINK/4147483a6009.html

Food World Glitteratti Ripping Me Off?

2007-08-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

Or are they simply getting around to the inevitable and most wides-spread offense?

Who's to say? Michael Ruhlman takes on the ubiquitous and offensive Chicken Ceasar. GO>

The Second Level of Molecular Gastronomy - The Why

2007-05-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

With all the fuss being made over molecular gastronomy, including whether it is even a technique or style of cooking at all, it was hard to resist dabbling in it myself. Why? Because, obviously, in my decade of cooking for friends and relatives, I've mastered all there is to know about fundamental technique, am in touch with where food comes from having harvested rice, picked apples, slaughtered all manner of livestock, poultry and fish, prepared meals from every ingredient known to mankind, and have a technique for presentation worthy of a show at the Met. Okay, none of that is true. I simply wanted to take a shortcut.

While there are plenty of opinions and commentary on the web and in various blog zones regarding the molecular approach to cooking, there is remarkably little in the way of actual, technical advice and instruction; even those from whom you purchase the ingredients. All seem a bit reluctant to hand over much in the way of useful, technical info.

Xantham Gum for instance is a thickener. But so is Methylcellulose. Sodium Alginate is also a thickener, but it also helps with spherification. So... which do I choose, and when?

The Willpowder site offers little guidance. The amount of detail they include wouldn't fill a Post-It note and, yet, this is an entire avenue of cooking that has no pas upon which to draw.

As I am genetically predisposed to ignore directions, I trudged forth with a basic experiment - food "air". I thought all I needed to know was that agar agar, when dissolved in liquid, and blended, made foam. Or, rather, one variation of A foam.

Dismal failure. It was not the quick-and-dirty "with this magic potion, all research requirements go out the window." As I stood there, pained and dumbfounded, contemplating some form of self-destructive action involving a serrated knife (I tend to take my kitchen failures very poorly), I could feel enthusiasm for the rest of the meal dwindle a bit. However, I continued on.

As I prepared the rest of the meal (steak au poivre), the fog began to lift. A thick slice of reality was served up by my sufficiently-distracted brain in the form of, "But why were you making a foam in the first place?" It reminded me of a question a buddy of mine asked of me after reading a few pages of the screenplay I was writing; "Why are the characters doing this?" I was so focused on the dialog, the interaction between characters, and their various adventures that I forgot to include why they were doing this in the first place. I didn't really have an answer for either question.

In the case of a foam, I'm curious what effect it has on texture and how it can make a sauce that is otherwise a bit thin more "clingy" to the dish it is dressing so, in the case of molecular pursuits, there is some direction in my quest. As for the screenplay, I'm leaving that on simmer...

The first level of molecular gastronomy - making ice cream

2007-05-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

As a six-year old, you've begun to understand a few things about the world such as gravity (you know it's there, but not why), wind (handy for various things), walking and presumably talking. Eating is mostly solo activity only requiring occasional parental intervention to open a carton or explain how the hell you eat an artichoke. (They're not really self-explanatory.) It is still a somewhat awkward process as the dexterity for knife and fork requires a bit more practice, slightly stronger (and larger) hands, and a certain tolerance for an intermediary between hand and food. Preparation of food (other than cereal) is largely a mystery usually handled by mom when you're hungry, and occasionally by grandma should you so much as look like you might be thinking about hunger. Grandmothers will usually make you something "just in case".

Of all foods, ice cream is one kids understand implicitly. They know all they need to; it involves cold, sweet, summer, and occasionally a musical truck that halts when it detects children running with money. By the age of six, kids pretty much understand the inner workings of ice cream.

However, to add a bit of mystery to this otherwise mastered topic, my father would, at random intervals, make ice cream. The process was fascinating, confusing, and frustrating all at the same time.

Think about it. First of all, you're freezing liquid in something other than a freezer. As a kid, you know that when you put water in the freezer, it will eventually freeze. The same is true for, say, bugs, worms, goldfish, etc. This experimentation gets interrupted when mom discovers non-food items in the freezer. With a perfectly good device for freezing things, why would dad be sitting in the back yard feeding ice into a rotating bucket?

The other puzzling aspect was the addition of salt to the ice. And not just regular salt, special, chunky salt. "What's that for?", I asked. "It makes the ice colder." I recall this sounding like a fishy theory even early-on. How could the ice get colder than it already is? Still, I was six; I've just discovered balsa wood can fly when cut into plane shapes, lightning bugs/fireflies glow without batteries, magnets stick to things for no apparent reason, and a magnifying glass in sunlight can make fire; in short, the world is still full of mysteries. Who am I to judge?

Then things got weird.

He added a raw egg to the mixture being combined in a blender. Over the whirring noise, I made clear my disgust and asked, "Why did you do that?" "It makes the ice cream thicker", he shouted over the whine of the blades. Equal in suspicion to the salt theory, the thought of a slimy, raw egg in perfectly good ice cream was a bit of a turn off. Fortunately the blender did its job of dissipating whatever slimy influence the egg might have into imperceptibility. Psychologically, I still knew it was in there.

Turns out, he was on the right track. The yolk is an emulsifier while the albumen (white) does pretty well at creating foams (as proteins are apt to do) which make the ice cream taste "richer" by holding air and even creating a slight insulating effect so it melts slower.

Sometimes he'd place other items in the mix such as malt or fruit, he'd even tinker with the texture of the end result by stopping the crank completely for about 15 seconds late in the churn, then crank for a minute, then pause again. "If you pause, it gives the mixture time to freeze hard and when you turn the crank, you make little crunchy bits that wind up in the ice cream." He was right. I wonder what in the world made him realize this? My father, who couldn't cook to save his life, was experimenting with the texture (or "mouth feel") of food.

Come to think of it, he experimented with just about everything. He had an electronic lock on his workshop while in his 20's, he converted our analog wall clock to an LED digital version, and converted the television in my bedroom to a computer monitor (thus relieving me of a television in my bedroom. It did, come to think of it, help with my high tech career.) Despite his fascination with electrical gadgets, he somehow preferred the control of a hand-cranked ice cream maker over the convenience of an electric one. He shunned the "place the gel-filled bucket in the freezer and avoid the ice and salt" approach as well. Maybe this is where my tendency for tinkering comes from.

As I ponder my first experiments in food, I have dad and a hand-cranked ice cream maker to thank.

Abalone > How did I miss that?

2007-05-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

I've always hated ketchup. Seems odd, given the popularity of it, that I would somehow miss out. Not that I am one to hop on the popularity bandwagon, but I love everything else that surrounds ketchup - burgers, fries, and Coke. Where did this odd bias come from? My brother.

For as long as I can remember, he put ketchup on everything. Two pieces of bread with ketchup in the middle constituted a "sandwich". Ketchup on potato chips, mounds of ketchup on fries, ketchup ketchup ketchup. It didn't help that I already had a distaste for so many foods in this country being sweet, the worst offenders of all time is "Miracle Whip" which, if you've ever naively mistaken it for mayonnaise, you know the palate-wrenching horror that ensues. If you haven't imagine oily cake frosting. Yeah, nasty.

In essence, I had 30 years of predjudice against ketchup. I've done just fine in defiance of it, cringing should it wind up in a burger without my knowledge, but I knew that to truly "get" food, I needed to overcome my bias. Thanks to Jeffrey Steingarten, whose brilliant book "The Man Who Ate Everything", and reading about him overcoming biases against much bigger culinary obstacles such as oysters, I knew I could tackle ketchup. In fact, it was an entire chapter he dedicated to "the best" ketchup debate that really drove me to reconcile my distaste with such a perfectly formulated sauce.

I sat down with the best fries on earth (In-and-Out Burger), a large Coke (he prefers the vile "diet" substitute), and a burger to balance things out. It was tough. Re-educating a palate, stuck firm for so long, took some time. Ketchup and I are now on fantastic terms. I was, if you will, playing catchup with ketchup. (I actually wrote this entire blog entry just to do that joke.)

It happened again last night, though not out of bias, but simply out of somehow neglecting what should have been a well-worn path. Abalone. It felt like one of those dreams where you arrive at school (or work) without clothing on. It feels like the question should be, "When is the last time you had abalone", not "Have you ever had abalone?" How did I miss something so obvious? I love every other kind of shellfish, how did I miss this one?

It was time for reconcilliation.

Rather than take on the task of cooking something myself for the first time, I did the smart thing; I let someone who has done it before do the cooking for me.

Diane showered the usual caveats, "This is definitely not gourmet, I don't know if you're going to like this, this isn't fancy", yadda yadda yadda. What she didn't know is that I was humbled to have her cook for me and, more specifically, cook something I had no idea how to prepare. I stood back, said little, took pictures, and learned.

They were magnificent! Just as she described, mild, firm but not rubbery in texture, like well-prepared calamari, breaded and fried, with a simple salad, potatoes, and wine. It didn't need a sauce swirled on a plate, exotic knife skills, or obscure ingredients. That meal, like art and good design of any kind, was successful - not because there's nothing else to add, but because there's nothing else to take away.

Pacific : Gas or Electric? - An introduction to induction cooking

2007-04-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

My first real foray into cooking was on an electric stove. Not the sleek, stealthy modern variety with a continuous black glass surface, but rather a relic of the late 70s featuring those iconic glowing orange coils. The combination of its "car cigarette lighter" technology and analog clock (which continues to keep good time) seems so frank and honest, how could I not love this thing? Those twisting spirals looking not unlike those on a vinyl LP of the same era harkening back to a simpler time when both cooking and music reproduction were performed with flat, spiral technology?

As anyone who has cooked on both gas and electric can tell you, the biggest feature missing from those vertigo-inducing coils is immediacy. They can take a minute or so (literally) to heat up and must then, in turn, heat up the pan. In short, the time from "inspiration" to "a pan hot enough to do anything with" is enough to kill the moment.

Flame from a gas stove comes out around 2500 degrees (which, according to my quick research, is actually twice the melting point of my aluminum pans.) Fortunately for the pan, there isn't a 1:1 transference of that energy or the aluminum pans would be molten pools on my stove. Obviously some "diffusion" of the energy is taking place; it is, in fact, the first stage of the inefficiency in a gas stove. Gas is in the neighborhood of 30-40% efficient (electric coils are around 70%). However, since fire itself is at temperature immediately the pan heats up more quickly than it would on coils.

The other big factor I think people struggle with is variability; not knowing "exactly" how much heat is being applied. Unless the coils are visibly orange, it's tough to gauge how much heat is being produced. With gas, you can plainly see how much flame is licking the pan whereas coils only communicate by way of the little control dial; and it only has 8 increments (one of which is OFF.) I haven't tried placing the dial *between* two settings, say 6.5, to see if there are finer increments, but I sincerely doubt it.

Then there is the unavoidable fact that fire is sexy. People don't sit around a radiant coil heater on a camping trip or huddle near an electric furnace in a ski lodge with Irish Coffees. Fire is organic, primal, and since childhood, something powerful. A wood fire seems alive, snapping and popping, and responding to being poked and prodded; it must be fed and respected.

Flame is also handy for a variety of tasks such as charring peppers. If you're my grandmother, you warm tortillas directly on the flame. She'd lay them on the burners sans-pan, wait about 4 seconds, and reach down with her bare fingers and flip them over. Her ability to reach into an open flame was mesmerizing to a 6-year old. When I did it, I burned my finger. What magical power allowed her to reach directly into fire? This power helped later explain why my grandfather was at least a little bit afraid of her.

With all of the praise of fire aside, I have humbly been forced to cook once again on the coiled beast. This time, I'm seeing it from a fresh perspective. I've "had gas" for six years now and one thing I notice with the electric cooktop is the pan/pot handles don't get as hot. With a gas cooktop, the flame heats the bottom of the pan and then continues to rise on all sides heating the handle to finger-scalding temperatures. A stray kitchen towel left inches from the coils is less likely to catch fire than it would next to a blue flame, the flame itself is the same temperature whether it's set on simmer, or high.

Electric coils, however, share a flaw with a gas range - lots of places into which food can fall. The smooth surface of modern electric ranges leaves no place for errant pasta, rice, vegetables, and small chunks of meat to hide.

Which leads me to electric's mutant cousin.

I'd heard of induction cooking for years and dismissed it as an unnecessarily complicated technology. (I often do this with things I don't understand.) Gas is the ultimate, right? Electric was the bane of people forced, by building codes or ventilation limits, to use something other than Prometheus' gift.

It was an article about the top-of-Everest-level-restaurant, El Bulli, that made me pay attention to induction cooking. In the "Taller" (tai-yer for the gringos in the audience - the test kitchen for the restaurant), there is no gas cooktop (at least not in the coverage I've seen), only induction. Other than looking really cool, what was with the no-flame thing? What did they know that I didn't?

This is a clever, highly-efficient - if somewhat obscure - means of converting electricity into heat. Rather than electrical resistance causing heat in a coil, electricity is used to create a rapidly-reversing magnetic field (ironically, through a coil) and the magnetic field oscillating annoys the hell out of the iron in the pan, thereby heating it up. Thus the heat isn't generated by the cooking device and transferred to the pan, it's generated by the pan. This makes for a really fast heat-up time and when you turn it off, it's OFF. There are no coils to cool down. Even a gas cooktop has metal grates that hold some heat but it’s probably negligible so we’ll call that one a draw.

And then there is a BIG differentiator; even the "high-end" gas ranges don't allow you to set the temperature of a pan. Induction cooktops, on the other hand, come in a variety of levels and prices, but in the countertop model I purchased, you can set a desired temperature. Wait, did you hear what I just said? You can tell the device the temperature you'd like the pan heated to. This erases the "I wonder what 'medium' means on this cooktop" problem.

Okay, before I lead you too far down the path of thinking this is the promise land, let me assure you that this is not a dead-accurate, temperature-controlled device. It's "in the ballpark of" the temperature you set. It is not as accurate as, say, an immersion circulator. I would call it "accurate", but not "precise". It is, however, a fantastic way of accurately cooking vegetables, poaching fish, etc.

There is another drawback... it requires specific cookware. I mentioned the reliance on a magnetic field to heat the pan which means - you guessed it - the pan must be magnetic. Aluminum, solid copper, and most some stainless steel pans are not magnetic.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that several companies, All-Clad among them, make induction-compatible cookware. Their "Stainless" series is magnetic which is odd because my stainless-steel hood is not magnetic, nor is the door on my refrigerator, nor several other stainless steel gadgets in my kitchen.

Turns out, the "ratio" of nickel to iron/chromium determines whether or not stainless steel is magnetic. If you have nickel, no magnetism. The numbers such as 18/8 or 18/10 indicate the percentage of chromium to nickel (if any). 18/0 means there is no nickel in it which allows it to remain magnetic.

So why not leave the nickel out of all of them? Nickel is a healthy contributor to the "stainless" monicker. 18/0 pans are not as corrosion resistant.

(Note that the All-Clad claims that the "Stainless" series is the ONLY induction-compatible line, but it turns out that the Copper-Core line is sometimes magnetic. In a set of several pans of various sizes, a magnet stuck to one fry pan, but not the other, and they were identical. More recently, I've seen Copper Core pans stamped with "Induction Compatible" but I see no formal announcement from All-Clad as yet.)

A phone call to the All-Clad help line didn't enlighten much. They reiterated that the stainless line is the only one guaranteed to work with induction. (Everything written by a PR person contains the word "reiterated".) However, I found 4 Copper-Core "seconds" (imperfect) at a discount store and all of them are magnetic. This may have to do with the source of the stainless steel on the outside of the pan.)

You may have a tricky time going to a cooking store and asking about induction-compatible cookware. I went to 6 places and, in most cases, they had no idea what I was talking about. At first, I was simply trying to figure out which set I could use, then it became a game to see how well various cooking stores understood the technology. If they weren't sure, and I was still researching, I'd find a magnet in the store and hold it against the bottom of the pan. If it slid off, no dice. If it stayed, it would work.

There is another minor point worth mentioning that distinguishes gas from either of the other two methods - tilting the pan. Gas will still generate enough heat for a pan tilted at, say, 20 degrees. An induction cooktop will notice the missing pan and turn off, electric coils just don't carry heat that far. I'm a "pan tilter" so this is a consideration for me.

Ultimately, kitchen 3.0 will probably be 4 gas burners and a separate induction drop-in cooktop. Gas for roasting, boiling water for pasta, and for stir-frying, induction for more delicate tasks such as sauces and chocolate. My old pans can breathe a sign of relief knowing they still have a home.

Still, Sparkling, or Tap?

2007-04-24T01:06:00.000-07:00

Chez Panise stopped serving bottled water.

It's good to find validation for a protest I arrived at on my own. I don't do well keeping up with the protests of others.

The origins of that protest were formed based on my visit to Fiji where they serve - you guessed it - Fiji water. (Well, to the tourists anyway...) Some enterprising person thought, "Hey... this is a tropical paradise... Why don't we bottle water from here and ship it to people." Fittingly, that person was not Fijian.

I can't help remembering the staggering amount of water I had flown over to get to Fiji. The plane flew for something like 12 hours, at 600 miles an hour, and all but the first 4 minutes and last 3 minutes were water. Water surrounds Fiji and, yet, they can't drink it.

Fiji water gets here somehow. A pipeline is too long (though apparently more cost-effective than oil), airfreight is way too heavy, railroads... well, the rails would rust. Which leaves a ship. Ships run on oil, but are very good at transporting heavy freight (including, ironically, oil.)

And despite the overrated taste of Fiji water, I found myself - for a while - caught up in the, "Hey, I'm having a fabulous meal here. Why should I be drinking tap water?" Not to mention the fact that Fiji water did the smartest thing I can think of to pimp their wares; they built a custom, silver-plated container with a rounded shape that could only hold a bottle of Fiji water. Absolutely brilliant.

San Pelligrino, on the other hand, is *really* good. Voss is... well... water... but in a sexy, modern, unabashedly phallic container. There are others... Pana is the "sans gas" version of Pelligrino along with a variety of other waters produced probably 2 miles from the name-brand varieties, but lacking the cache, don't get asked for by name.

But I digress...

Bottled water in restaurants was the brainchild of the makers of the water. I'm sure they sat around and watched people dine and thought, "they're not spending enough on dinner. Maybe we should charge them for flatware... no... The bread? What if they asked for bread by name?" No good. Atkins kicked in. Suddenly injesting carbs was as unthinkable as wearing fur.

I'm sure they watched a busboy moving from table to table like a hummingbird through a rose garden, paid by the restaurant to deliver a substance the diners weren't even paying for. Not just some of them, all of them. It sounds insane in retrospect; "Let's charge them for water! But not just any water; imported water." Thus was reborn the "Evian Syndrome".

Suddenly, even the non-drinkers were profitable to a restaurant. They're not drinking expensive wine? Sell them expensive water. They are drinking expensive wine? Then they won't think twice about a $9.00 bottle of water. Given the presumed profit margins, I'm surprised no one opened a "Water Bar".

In my mind, a backlash began to occur. I thought to myself, "why am I being forced to pay for decent water? What are you cooking my food in?" In San jose, this is particularly bothersome because San Jose has just about the nastiest water I've ever tasted (that is known to actually be potable.) I bought a Brita filter shortly after moving to S.J. I'm surprised the charcoal didn't catch on fire. It's really bad. Even with a water filter in your refrigerator, the ice is usable only to chill the outside of a bottle of something. This struck me as being asked, "Would you prefer fresh basil, or dried from a jar? Fresh is more expensive." A better ingredient came with a surcharge?

For a while, the terminology was too much to resist. "Would you like still, sparkling, or tap water?" "Tap water" conjures images of leaking, lime-encrusted slop sink faucet with a mop sticking out of it. The word alone was a deterrent. To ask for it meant that you were cheap, or just didn't care about quality. "Would you like your food served on fine china or dumped on the floor?"

I have since moved to Mountain View where I remember the water being decent, but a Brita was still in order for that extra polish. I now marvel at the flavor of this substance that flows so freely from the faucet. I bathe in this luxuriously soft water. There's even a pool in my complex filled with this stuff. Good water feels so decadent, but only if you've experienced the alternative. I have also underestimated how much bad water annoyed me. Every time I filled a pot with water for pasta, I thought about the flavor of the water. Ice cubes were for shocking vegetables - briefly so as to not impart any flavor - or for chilling wine. I bought ice cubes and cherished them until they were devoured by the freeze-drying effect, or had run out of the useful sizes and was grasping at snowman material.

There are several shops in San Jose that specialize in "drinking" water. (Scary how they need to make that distinction.) Walking in, you see an impressive array of tanks and plumbing, filters and dials. Just down the street, Gordon Biersch converts water into beer using similar looking equipment. Here, they're simply making water appealing.

Where once, I took pride in drinking water from the other side of the world, its mineral balance a coincidence to our palates. Now, when servers use that formerly-effective marketing line, "Would you care for still, sparkling, or tap?", I volley back - "Filtered tap would be fine. You DO filter your tap water, right?" Few seem prepared, or anxious, to answer that question.

No subtitute for experience

2007-04-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

While adhering to the rule, "the more you learn, the less you know", I'd like to think I am an accomplished (if sporadic, impulsive, and disorganized) cook. I can combine ingredients well enough to achieve the desired flavors and textures most of the time. Yet, there's always more to learn.

A few years ago, a... let's call her a friend... was making a lemon meringue pie. In December. Try as she might, she just couldn't get the meringue to "cook". It remained steadfastly soft and sticky.While I lack the stringent measuring discipline required of a pastry chef, I thought I'd mosey over and see if I could help the little lady with the problem.

I suggested cooking the meringue for a little longer and even raised the temperature a bit to coax the moisture out of the meringue. Nothing worked.

As this pie was destined for a family gathering - her mother included - she was crushed that it wasn't working. She prepared it as well as she could and, as her parents arrived - removing their rain gear as they entered the house - she felt the need to pull her mother aside and confess the challenge she was facing. I was there for moral support.

I had thought, since the temperature and time adjustments, about various chemicals I'd been reading about and other sneaky ways of coaxing moisture out of the meringue after it had been partially cooked. As I pondered all of these elaborate solutions, I watched as she whispered the challenge to her mother. Before she had finished explaining the problem, her mother - in a less hushed voice - dropped some wicked food science wisdom on her, "You can't make meringue in the rain."

Her response was hardly the scientific one I had been formulating, but she was abundantly and frustratingly correct. A much bigger force was putting extra moisture in the air.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. My hunch is that she learned that lesson long before I began cooking; or eating for that matter.

Steakhouse Hell

2007-04-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

I love steak. I love it medium rare, I love steak tartare (where even a few minutes under halogen bulbs in the ceiling is overcooked), I even (God help me) love the thin, overcooked steaks my dad used to make. (I think his blend of German, Irish, and Scottish assumed "well-done" as a temperature.) And I love a good burger; hell, I even like mediocre ones.

But... (and you knew this was coming), when did every restaurant in town decide they needed to become some form of steakhouse? I don't mean that they simply added a wider choice of red meat to their menu, I mean all but abandoning the idea of standing out from the place down the street (or even across the street).

The first one that got on my nerves had to be Morton's. Any place that wraps sample cuts of meat in plastic and carts them over to your table to admire is already setting off alarm bells in my head and must surely be designed to tease that brain stem carnivore in you. The obligatory lobster is also occasionally paraded out, along with the rest of the carnage, to get you in the mood for the "cha-ching!" dish at any steakhouse - "Steak and lobster".

First of all, a 32-oz. Porterhouse steak, even if you subtract the "undesirable bits", is still more red meat than you should consume; unless of course you happen to be a grizzly bear. I'm content with about 4-6 ounces. Let's say half of that steak is bone and gratuitous fat - that's 4-TIMES the amount I can imagine eating.

The other number, aside from weight, listed in the menu is the jaw-dropping sticker price for such a slab of carcass. Prices for these Flinstonian-sized cuts of meat tend to be wallet-arresting On the menu in front of me, for example, 32 ounces of Porterhouse goes for $49.00. ALONE. You want a balanced meal? Gonna cost you extra. Want to add a vegetable and starch to the triad? $8.00 each for the non-animal substances.

I'm also seeing more and more that steamed spinach has been cast aside in favor of the pricier "creamed" variety. Never mind the fat and cholesterol in the main course, make sure you add butter to your leafy green.

I know that intelligent, talented, innovative chefs are forced (at financial gunpoint) to surrender to this mentality. Michael Mina's restaurant "Arcadia" in San Jose went from interesting (given the demographic of the convention center next door) to a steakhouse with Michael Mina side dishes. Likewise, A.P. Stumps (my first sign that living in San Jose might not be all that bad) went "Chophouse" upon reopening after a mysteriously-timed fire in their ventilation system. (I'm not about to suggest that the fire was intentionally set, merely well-timed given their transformation upon reopening.) A few items survived the "meat-amorphosis", but overall, the original soul seems to have gotten lost.

Picasso's? Another steakhouse with a touch of Spanish flare.

Obviously, there'd be no supply if there were no demand. I'm assuming a bulk of it is:

a. Convention traffic
b. Sharks fans (Ironic that fans of sharks would eat so much meat.)

This gets back to the age-old problem; taking care of the locals (with interesting food) while feeding (and profiting from) conventioneers in town from the midwest looking for exactly the same food they'd have at home. (I actually watched two guys leave Arcadia - a steakhouse - for Morton's, another steakhouse!)

Maybe it isn't even the adoption of the additional meat dishes that's bothering me. It might not even be the subtraction of some dishes on a menu to make room for these new beef-centric ones. It's that the entire restaurant, from name to steak-knife size, must be altered. A restaurant cannot simply change its menu to that of a steakhouse, it must become a steakhouse. If any of the other restaurants start that "meat on a cart" business, I'm staying clear of them too.

Olivetto's > "Guess what you're having?"

2007-04-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

I recognize, even as a mere spectator in the sport of restaurant ownership, that a menu is a key marketing tool. It's like a book cover for a restaurant, hung proudly (and ideally prominently) near the entrance to your establishment serving as a prime vehicle by which you lure patrons in. Maybe they’re looking for innovation, or maybe familiarity. A single ingredent may jump out at them, or the combination of a first and second course might be the key.

Once you’ve lured me in, I'll need to study the menu again and begin the sometimes agonizing decision over what the meal will consist of. This is where things went a bit haywire at Olivetto’s.

Some menus hinder rather than help this process. Instead of a path, they provide an obstacle course. It’s like sitting at dinner with someone who, while trying to tell you a basic story, routinely quotes obscure references in foreign languages (usually French). It leaves you feeling left out.

To be sure, the restaurant is gorgeous, the staff knowledgeable, enthusiastic, if in our case a tad too eye-contact-demanding. The food was slightly above what you would have expected from the menu description if – and this is a big if - you could have figured it out.

Much like Thomas Keller and his ilk, there seems to be a new trend toward quoting items on the menu. “Oysters and Pearls”, where the oysters are as-described, the Pearls are actually tapioca sabayon. I don’t know this because I am as smart or clever as Keller, I know this because he (unlike Olivetto) tells you what it is on the menu.

In our case, the menu was riddled with the original Italian ingredient names. Breasaola was easy enough because I’d had it before (air-dried beef), Tagliarini I’d heard of, but then there was a host of other items we all struggled with. Mosciame, Vellutata, bottarga di muggine, Trompetti, Mostaccioli al ragu, Gobetti, Radiatore, Strozzapreti, you get the idea.

I took the terms above in order, and did a search for each. To my surprise, there really wasn’t a quick way to define what this was. I was a bit hindered by my inability to speak Italian, so my results pages were limited to those in English.

For Mosciame, I could only find it within a recipe for a dish - “Fillet of Tuna with Scrambled Eggs”. Mosciame is cured tuna (salted and air-dried). I’m not sure why a definition for it wouldn’t fit somewhere on the menu. To avoid further confusion, I added an entry on Wiktionary for it.

"Vellutata" was close enough to velouté for me to make the leap.

"Bottarga" - Salted, dried fish roe, usually tuna… I’m sensing a theme here.

"Di Muggine" - Grey Mullet Roe. This is a case where wording on the menu helps sell the dish.

"Trompetti" lead me to finally conclude that the Italians are more than willing to make up new pasta names without batting an eye. I imagine that this, like many other items in Italian cuisine, is specific to a region and region seems to mean a single city block in some cases. Trompetti looks a bit like a corkscrew that went wrong.

"Mostaccioli" is a variant on Penne which also resembles the tip of a fountain pen, but holds the distinction of being smooth on the outside whereas Penne are “ribbed” (presumably for your pleasure.)

"Gobetti"? You guessed it – another pasta shape. Ribbed, hollow-tubed corkscrew.

I was just beginning to sense a pattern; items ending in an I tended to be pasta shapes. Nope. Too easy.

"Radiatore" – Certainly looks like a radiator. These actually have more “ridges” than noodle.

"Strozzapreti" – “Priest chokers” (Apparently only when one eats too many too fast). Ricotta, spinach, egg, Parmigiano-Reggiano, breadcrumbs, formed into dumplings.

"Bottarga di tonno" – There’s that word again, this time from tuna eggs.

Maybe I am, without meaning to, stripping the romance of discovery from this menu. The practical problem arises when the server approaches the table and asks, “Do you have any questions about the menu?” I had almost nothing BUT questions.

I’m not likely to have navigated this without a search engine. If there were only one or two things I didn’t understand, a quick description from the server could steer me one way or another. In this case, I had no choice but to sit there with a pen and writing notes about everything on the menu that is not explained. A menu is there to communicate, not obfuscate.

It’s not a game of food trivial pursuit or “guess what this is”. It has a profound role – a menu is there to help you decide what you are going to put in your body. I’ll admit, I take a less than a “spirulina and green tea” approach to my intake. A really well-made Martini is occasionally snuck through the velvet rope toward my gullet, though more rarely with increasing years. And, every now and then, I’ll try something really new. I do, however, ask that I understand what it is before I eat it. I’m even more insistent this when I’m PAYING for it.

It’s never fair to offer criticism without a solution, so I’ll offer mine. In this case, all of the “native tongue” items were in italics. For every italicized item, give a definition on the back of the menu. Or, at least temper your use of “quoted ingredients” with a set of parentheses (to explain what the hell you’re serving.)

"American" Cheese

2007-04-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

I stood at a bagel counter this morning eyeing the options available, and decided on an egg, sausage, and cheese bagel sandwich. The egg would be of the chicken variety, the sausage of the breakfast variety (Jimmy Dean or equivalent), which left the options for cheese. Rather than recite them through a thick accent and perhaps in an effort to get things done while I decided, the purveyor pointed to a list of the available cheeses. Cheddar is pretty straightforward, Pepper Jack is an odd combination but, given the fact that I've lived in a trailer park, not out of my realm of enjoyment (I normally don't like "things" mixed with cheese, with the glorious exception of black truffle shavings), which left two other categories for consideration.

The first has made me a bit batty for a while now; "Swiss" cheese. This is about as insulting to the Swiss as "American Barbecue" is to Americans or "French Wine" to the French. It implies that the incredible variety to be found in any of these places can be whittled down to a single variety. The Swiss have several cheeses to be proud of : Emmental (with or without the er), Gruyere, Tete de Moine, Raclette, Appenzeller, etc.

Obviously the version that most readily comes to mind is Emmental with its holes (or "eyes"). I wish it was the distinct, sharp flavor of Emmental which makes it memorable, but the reality is that the holes stand out most in people's minds. They are reducing the varied options available to a single representative. Fine.

Then comes the last option on the cheese list: "American".

I stared at the sign for a while pondering what the hell "American" cheese actually means. We don't really have a native cheese as such, though the image in my head of "American" cheese is orange.

Unlike the Swiss title, American implies not only a single variety, but a variety that is barely cheese. That's right. Our namesake cheese is a chemical mixture of the ingredients for cheese, but is not actually cheese per se. (It does meet the governmental definition of cheese however.)

I remember in the public television series "Cosmos" from the early 80's, Carl Sagan was describing how utterly unremarkable the human body is in terms of its "ingredients". Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, etc. However, upon gathering the raw ingredients in a beaker and adding artificial heat and lightning in the form of an arc, he didn't wind up with a human being. In short, unless the ingredients are put together correctly, you don't really have the same thing. The same is true for American Cheese. While the ingredients might be identical (with the exception of whey protein concentrates), they aren't magically "cheese" when assembled.

It's unfortunate that our namesake cheese is synthesized, manufactured, and touts its ease of melting more than its flavor or heritage. The aforementioned whey proteins are, however, imported from other countries, much like Americans themselves; perhaps there is a charm in American cheese after all.

Death of the Martini? Part 2 - The Dirty Little Secret

2007-03-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Some things in life are best the first time.

In March of 1997, I was in San Francisco visiting a restaurant/bar that some friends had been raving about named "Bruno's", a monument to the classic live crooner venue.

My companion and I ordered Martinis, Bombay Sapphire to be exact; a simple and clear request with (seemingly) little that could be misinterpreted. It is precisely because of this implied simplicity that a follow-up question from the female bartender was so puzzling.

"Would you like those dirty?"

She was not unattractive, mind you, and I must admit my mind wandered a bit with the potential for this inquiry. Given the scenario, I had to conclude that I'd misunderstood her. The puzzled look on our faces lead her to prompt,"Ah, you've never had a dirty Martini, have you?" We shook our heads.

"You'll like this." she responded.

For those of you that claim to be fans of dirty Martinis, let me assure you that what comes next is probably not what you're expecting. She placed two olives and a bit of ice in a pint glass, and beat the hell out of them with a muddler. She then added the gin, a splash of vermouth, shook it, and strained it into two glasses. Sure enough, they looked like dirty dishwater.

I sat in awe. Only once in my later Martini-sipping history would I be so enthralled with such a concept.* The flavor of olives were no longer peripheral to the Martini, they were integral part of it. I was hooked. This was, as far as I knew, the de facto standard method of making a "dirty Martini". She was releasing olive oil and juice into the Martini. How else could you possibly make one?

Now comes the bad news. I have since discovered exceedingly few bartenders that understand this approach. In fact, I can only recall two; one was at Bruno's, the other was a bartender at the hotel Sagamore in Miami Beach. That leaves about 2600 miles in between of bartenders doing something different. In fact, they do what I consider unthinkable; put olive brine in the Martini.

I can't believe it's fallen to me to explain this, but brining liquid isn't meant to be ingested. If you brine your turkey for Thanksgiving, you don't then pour the brining liquid into a punchbowl for all to enjoy, nor are you likely to, at your grandmother's funeral to all do a shot of the embalming fluid that preserves her through the send-off.

A young woman I sat next to once quipped, "Oh, I love them made with olive juice". I had to explain to her that the "juice" didn't come out of the olive. Quite the opposite. (We'll do away with the osmosis exchange that takes place in brining for this blog entry.)

"You like them that way? Okay then, let's do a shot of 'olive juice", I challenged.

"Eewww, I wouldn't drink it by itself", she clarified.

"If you won't drink it by itself, why in the world are you drinking it mixed with vodka?"

She glanced back at her Martini and, as far as I know, is still pondering the answer to that question. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who can answer it.

* At Veritas in New York city, I requested a Martini, but was in the mood for a more exotic garnish. Exceedingly rare, but brilliantly appropriate, is a caper berry (the fruit from the same plant that gives us capers; capers are the budding flowers, caper berries are the fruit which grows later. Both are pickled the same way.) But I also kinda wanted olives.

Tim, the maître 'd, posed another brilliant idea - "How about olives stuffed with capers?"

My jaw hit the bar. I didn't know if it would work, or if it was even possible, but my stunned silence at the idea told him what he needed to know.

Minutes later, he was standing behind the bar, in a suit and tie, hand-stuffing capers into olives for me.

Where have all the Caesars gone?

2007-03-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

I'm trying not to begin this article with pure criticism. I truly want to understand the situation at hand, to understand the background and the future.

The classic Caesar salad has descended into such mutant variations as adding "creamy" to the dressing description, "with chicken/shrimp", and - the worst offender of all - the non-adjective"garlicky".

It's not rocket science, it's salad dressing. Going back to the presumed original recipe; garlic, olive oil, salt, anchovies, dry mustard, an egg, lemon juice, Romaine lettuce, grated Parmigiano Regiano, and black pepper. Then, of course, you get into variations - with or without Worcesteshire, Dijon mustard vs. dry, etc.

But as far as I'm concerned, there are a few ingredients that cannot be substituted. In particular and most frequently violated, is the "vinegar for lemon" trick.

Clearly restaurants are doing this for a very specific reason - vinegar is FAR cheaper than lemon juice, especially fresh lemon juice.

I don't care if it’s more expensive. You need to use it.

Then they add a similarly distorting ingredient - with "chicken or shrimp". As there isn't much in the way of protein in a classic Caesar salad, this is a pretty obvious (and profitable) way of adding it. Both chicken and shrimp happen to go nicely in a Caesar since they both go well with lemon (assuming it's used) and garlic making them a natural, if uninvited, addition. Those lumps of protein are not automatically included, they are options available for an extra charge.

Some restaurants throw a bone to the obligatory Caesar fans with "romaine leaves tossed with a lemon/anchovy dressing and garlic croutons". Smells like a Caesar to me. I can't figure out, though, why some choose to not simply put "Caesar Salad" on the menu, especially those restaurants which make a salad most closely resembling the original. It's those that venture into creamy, garlicky, often untossed, with chicken and/or shrimp and some other random ingredient sprinkled on top that dare use the name Caesar. In short, the more the distortion, the more likely they are to bastardize the name.

Yet another classic is being threatened by mediocrity and people not caring, or not knowing, what a classic can taste like. Once you've had a well-balanced classic version, the other adjective-laden versions will never taste the same again.

Death of the Martini?

2007-03-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

I sat uncharacteristically quiet at the bar of a brand-new restaurant in San Jose, taking in the scent of a newly-polyurethaned bar and fresh paint, admiring the gleam of surfaces that would all too soon become dull and worn.

It was a new steakhouse and, despite most other steakhouses being barren wastelands of culinary originality, my carnivorous urges were calling. The portions are insane and every vegetable “side” is laden with fat of some kind, but I must respect a place that focuses so purely on flesh.

I've never quite understood why Martinis and steaks go together so well. Perhaps it's because each is a celebration of a single “master” ingredient enhanced only by extreme temperature and dash of a few other ingredients to hone and enhance that core flavor. In the case of beef, a bit of salt and pepper, and the right combination of high then low heat to create a scarcely-cooked collagen-softened interior and a complex, charred exterior; the perfect marriage of raw and cooked.

Likewise, a Martini is Gin or Vodka (a much bigger discussion), vermouth, and a dash or two of bitters creating a critical combination of ingredients. Like salt and pepper on a steak, they don't need to be present in abundant quantities, but they do need to be present.

I ordered a Martini made with Ketel One vodka.

The bartender poured what seemed like 11 ounces of vodka into a cocktail shaker filled with ice, capped it, and shook for a whopping third of a second. He then removed an enormous Martini glass from a freezer and poured my “Martini” into it. I'd been in the restaurant for all of 4 minutes, and already two things had gone terribly wrong.

First of all, the only universally-agreed upon ingredient in a Martini is cold. Shaking alcohol from a room-temperature bottle (outside of the Ice Hotels) for anything less than 5 seconds in ice will not lower the temperature sufficiently. Some claim that Martinis are best made in sterling silver cocktail shakers because silver is a good conductor of heat; a highly-suspicious argument given that the ice is providing the cold from the inside, and a good conductor of heat means your hands are warming the shaker. Knowing little about physics, I still know that cold is not leaving the shaker, heat is entering it. Besides looking cool, silver also conveniently and coincidentally tells you when the Martini is ready by becoming too cold to handle. Silver also manages to develop frost on the outside while stainless usually just gathers condensation. Regardless of the material used, he needed to shake that drink longer. Much longer.

Second, he didn't put any Vermouth in the shaker or in the glass. No Vermouth was even involved or mentioned. Somehow, this single ingredient has been gradually reduced to the point of extinction. Having omitted one of the only two (or three) tangible ingredients from a delicate, century-old recipe, one can hardly consider it the same thing.

The glass sat before me, fresh from the freezer, brimming with vodka, served with a bit of flair and a pair of skewered olives. He stood with his hands on his hips and gave a slight nod to acknowledge that the ceremony was over. Unfortunately, I then had to ask him where the hell my Martini was. He seemed puzzled.

“What you have there is four shots of lightly chilled vodka which is hardly a ‘cocktail’.”

To his credit and despite his youth, he instantly understood what I meant. The twin-decade gap in our ages was bridged by my protest that a cocktail is the careful blending of multiple ingredients, not the preponderance of a single one. Then, he said something that terrified me.

"So many people these days like a really dry Martini. In fact, the official recipe for a Morton's Martini calls for no vermouth." I nearly screamed.

Somehow the goal has become to put as little vermouth as possible in a Martini while still retaining its "cocktail" status. This generated such useless products as vermouth “misters” and silly (and messy) procedures like swirling it in the glass and throwing the rest on the floor. I'll grant that the original recipe (something like 3 parts gin to 1 part vermouth) was a tad heavy, but I'm a firm believer that a good recipe such as this is born out of thoughtful testing and consideration, not stumbled upon. Something just short of magic happens when the balance between vodka or gin and vermouth is achieved and bitters step in to add a complexity; the individual ingredients cease to exist and a new substance created.

How am I to proceed then? Will I forever need to watch every single bartender to make sure they have some concept of what makes a Martini? Or could there be a revival, a resurgence of awareness of just what a cocktail really is? It turns out, there is. I can sleep again.

Speakeasy Culture is getting back to basics. Check it out.