an open cupboard

It pays to walk around your neighborhood sometimes, especially when restaurants like these are your neighbors. I was walking home after running an errand when I passed by two men on the sidewalk. One was leaning against his parked truck and the other was inspecting some sort of produce in a crate. They were standing in front of a restaurant. A buyer or a chef sourcing some veg, I thought, as I walked by.

Hold on, were those mushrooms? (Insert screeching sound and jerky whiplash head turn here.) I immediately turned around and walked over. I was right. These were very dirty chanterelles! And dirt typically means fresh, wild mushrooms.

“Hi! Are those wild chanterelles you’re selling?”
“Yes they are. Are you interested?”
“Definitely!”
“Oh, I don’t usually sell to individuals. How much do you want?”
“Um… half a pound? Actually, maybe a pound. How much do you want for them?”

Folks, I got half a pound of gorgeous, fresh, wild chanterelles for five US dollars. Five dollars! Meanwhile, the chef strikes up a conversation with me, giving me all sorts of tips on how to cook them. He tells me they sell chanterelles at most shops for $49 a pound! This sounds about right—I remember similar prices at local shops for chanterelles that aren’t nearly this fresh.

The mushroom guy says he likes to cook chanterelles with some fresh crab and eat it on a hot roll (mmmm!). The chef says he stuffs a pork loin or a chicken breast with sauteed chanterelles and shallots. For the chicken breast, he adds a bit of fresh mozarella. He also suggests slicing a round of brie lengthwise, sandwiching some chanterelle slices in between, and baking it in the oven (heavenly!).

I thank them both profusely, and ask the mushroom guy when he generally comes around. They both laugh and explain that he’s really not supposed to sell to people on the street, but how European of me to ask.

Stay tuned to find out what I did with the chanterelles!

In my haste to upload my thoughts about the recent Michael Pollan/John Mackey event, I neglected to say much about Pollan himself. Anyone who’s read anything by Michael Pollan knows that the man can write. While reading the first chapter of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan’s clear, turgid prose woke me up like a double espresso at dawn. “Wow,” I thought, “this guy can write.” His recent New York Times piece on what to eat had me doing cartwheels in my head while shouting “Yes, yes, YES!” Pollan had done a fantastic job of researching the issues and constructing a cohesive, persuasive argument. His piece resonated in my mind as it leapt from one related topic to another touching on recent articles and essays in the webosphere. Pollan has “a Mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things… and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differencies.”

The other night, however, Michael Pollan was at times a witty, polished speaker and an empathetic journalist. That is to say, he graciously ceded the stage to Mackey. I suppose this was only fair, as Mackey appeared on Pollan’s home turf, but the conversation would have been more interesting had Pollan posed more difficult, perhaps uncomfortable questions.

I enjoyed Michael Pollan as a speaker, nonetheless. With his sharp wit, goofy grin, and hipster glasses, he’s actually quite sexy in a Woody Allen/Patrick Stewart sort of way.

Thanks to the DairyQueen, I scored a ticket to the Michael Pollan/John Mackey smackdown in Berkeley the other night. I admit, I hadn’t really followed the controversial Pollan/Mackey dialogue on the web. Nor have I yet read the Omnivore’s Dilemma, although to my credit, I have purchased the book. Nonetheless, here’s a quick recap:

• Michael Pollan writes a book called the Ominvore’s Dilemma in which he discusses four meals, one of them prepared from ingredients obtained from Whole Foods. Among these ingredients are non-locally produced asparagus from Argentina, with which Pollan is not entirely pleased.
• John Mackey—founder and CEO of Whole Foods—reads the book and invites Pollan to his office in Austin, Texas. Mackey presents Pollan with an eleven page single-spaced letter in response to the Whole Foods chapter in Pollan’s book, as well as a $25 Whole Foods gift certificate to cover the asparagus.
• Over the course of months, Mackey and Pollan responsa are published on Mackey’s blog.

The beef:

• Pollan—Whole Foods supports “Big Organic”, huge factory farms that that adhere to loose organic standards and aren’t much better than non-organic factory farms in terms of humane, sustainable, biodiverse farming. By not buying enough from local farmers, Whole Foods is supporting the large producers rather than small local producers. Some products marketed with illustrious background stories at Whole Foods stores are not what they appear. “Free-range” eggs are packaged with illustrations of an old bucolic farmstead and a touching story about hens who are free to wander and peck outdoors. Some investigative journalism confirmed that these hens are indeed free to roam around the hen house, but have probably not set foot outdoors.
• Mackey—Au contraire. Whole Foods buys most of its produce from private local farms. The company has been instrumental in helping to set and improve USDA organic standards, and is launching a number of programs to improve the quality of organic farms and food. Mackey admits that Whole Foods mistakenly promoted and sold products from farms they thought were small, private farms based on the accompanying marketing material, which turned out to be products produced by large companies with imaginative marketing departments.

Some salient points from Mackey’s presentation:

• 78% of produce sold at Whole Foods comes from private family farms, while 22% comes from corporate organic farms.
• 100% of Whole Foods’ private label milk comes from private family farms.
• Whole Foods is establishing a 30 million dollar venture capital fund to promote local, artisanal products around the world.
• Whole Foods has started a program for loaning money to small, local producers.
• Along with Fair Trade and the Rainforest Alliance, Whole Food will launch the Whole Trade Guarantee—a program guaranteeing quality, price, fair labor, while reducing poverty and enhancing environmental sustainability.

Mackey skirted some issues I felt he should have delved into more openly, such as the high cost of healthy, organic food as a barrier to people who can’t afford it. His argument that Americans are getting richer is really beside the point. Perhaps the US GDP is growing, but I am loath to believe that this wealth is evenly distributed among US citizens. I’m no economist, but I’d bet that those who have money now have even more, while those who don’t still don’t. Mackey argued that Whole Foods can be affordable to those who shop intelligently. Maybe. How about a Whole Foods campaign to prove it? I’d like to see Whole Foods brochures explaining to low-income shoppers how to buy their groceries on a variety of budgets.

Mackey is a man of ideas. He talked at length about his vision for what he calls the ecological era. He noted the negativity of the current organic label—no GMOs, no pesticides, no chemicals, etc.—and called for a more positive organic vision promoting soil health, biodiversity, worker welfare, animal welfare. To achieve this vision, he proposes creating a new farm rating system. A nice idea, but one that will falter without sufficient attention to detail. Much like the idea of promoting small, local producers backfired when Whole Foods mistakenly promoted corporate products with misleading small farm packaging.

On the whole, however, I was impressed by Mackey’s intelligence and passion for ecologically grown food, as well as his openness to receiving and responding to criticism. It was refreshing hearing a CEO who seems to care about something greater than the bottom line. And what a joy to hear an intelligent dialog between people with differing views, instead of the pompous grandstanding that currently passes for debate in this country.

One of the lovely folks I met in Sweden recently pointed me to some great Swedish music. There’s a lively electronic music scene over there, which he’s into, and naturally the music that he recommends tends to lean in that direction.

I got a big kick out of this song in particular. Does it sound familiar? Here’s a Youtube video to refresh your memory.

Here’s another Swedish electronic song I’ve been listening to non-stop.
Links:

• Sci-Fi SKANE
• The Knife

Enjoy!

What’s a meyer lemon and how does it differ from an ordinary lemon? That’s what Sophie asked in the comments of my meyer lemon fettuccine post (Hi Sophie!).

The meyer lemon is a cross between an ordinary lemon and a mandarin orange, originating in China and imported to the United States by a guy named Frank Meyer. The meyer is a smallish, thin-skinned lemon that’s sweeter than than other lemons. The zest is more aromatic and easier to work with than an ordinary lemon, as the pith is quite thin. Meyer lemons are thus good for pickling, canning, and candying. Their thin, supple skins also make them easier to squeeze for juice. Given a choice between the thick-skinned lemons off the tree in the back yard and store bought meyers, I’ll take the meyers.

Ever go bobbing for apples in a huge plastic crate? How about filtering out bad oranges, revving up your pitching arm to toss them into a giant composting container? Last Saturday, thirty-odd foodbloggers got together at the San Francisco Food Bank to do just that. The San Francisco Food Bank is an enormous clearing house for food that is distributed to charitable organizations throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. Huge amounts of food come through the food bank every day, all of which needs to be sorted and packaged into cardboard boxes. These boxes are then stacked on a flat, wrapped in plastic to keep them in place, and finally loaded onto trucks for distribution. The whole operation is run by a combination of employees, part-time volunteers, and sporadic volunteers. It’s remarkable to see such a dedicated, hard-working staff process and sort all those massive crates of food.

Our task last Saturday was to sort and package green apples, oranges, and frozen corn cobs. This involved putting together and taping the boxes, sorting the good fruit from the bad, packaging the fruit, taping the boxes shut, and stacking the boxes neatly on a wodden flat.

We foodbloggers spread around the crates of fruit and went straight to work. Some people taped boxes, others lifted and arranged the boxes. Some were especially adept at picking out the bad fruit and throwing them dodgeball-style into the composting crate—I nearly got nailed three times. Our efficient work paid off: the kind folks at the Food Bank said we managed our task much faster than they had expected.

Afterwards, we headed off to Yield Wine Bar for some great nibbles and wine served by Sam—barmaid for a day—looking cool in her officer’s cap. Organizers Amy and Sam provided delicious cheeses and baguette slices, the Fatted Calf gave fed us thin-sliced ham, and Poco Dolce brought us their little sweet/salty wafers of chocolate. (As both Fatted Calf and Poco Dolce are right down the road from Yield, this was micro-local cuisine, as someone pointed out.)

But the stars of the show were the sunny chutneys and spicy Spanish chorizo courtesy of Alison McQuade and Ore Dagan of Fra’Mani Salumi, respectively. I’m not usually a great fan of chutneys as I tend to find them too sweet. But McQuade’s Celtic chutneys are something else entirely. These are complex chutneys brimming with taste and texture. You can’t pick out any one individual flavor–there’s the zing of vinegar, a ginger kick, and a warm, brown sugar sweetness. But there’s so much more, and damned if you can figure out exactly what else is in that chutney. All you know is it tastes fresh and alive, and goes very well with cheese and bread.

The Spanish chorizo was brought to us from Fra’Mani salumi, by way of Ore Dagan, chef and Responsabile Produzione. I could not get enough of it, but sadly, this particular salumi is not yet available in stores. I’ll wager that a small popular movement will soon begin protesting the absence of this chorizo from local shops. Slogans like “Chorizo now!” and “Fra’Mani, not war!” will become ubiquitous. So please, Ore, bring on the chorizo before you have an angry mob of hungry foodbloggers bearing poultry forks and carving knives.

You can find McQuade’s chutneys at the Cowgirl Creamery retail shop in San Francisco, and other fine shops (how about some East Bay locations, Alison? Market Hall, perhaps?). Fra’Mani salumi is sold at the Berkeley Bowl and the Pasta Shop in the East Bay.

Many, many thanks to Amy Sherman and Sam Breach for having organized this wonderful event. It was great fun getting together with other foodbloggers, particularly for a worthy cause.

Next time you buy a pound of chuck at the supermarket, think about where it comes from. If the FDA approves the sale of cloned meat and milk, you won’t know whether that roast was cut from a cloned cow. Similarly to GMO foods, the FDA has decided it will not label foods as products of cloned animals if cloned meat and milk is approved for sale to the public. But you may have already bought milk from a cloned animal. Despite the FDA’s request not to sell cloned animal products until they are officially approved as safe, milk from cloned cows has already been on the market for some time.

The research on the safety of consuming cloned animals does not appear particularly extensive, at least according to this article. The Center for Food Safety raises other concerns, such as the health of cloned animals and the ethical treatment of animals that are cloned.

I wonder what will happen when the clones are cloned? And the cloned clones are cloned? How will cloning only the most popular breeds affect biodiversity?

Once again, it looks like we’re jumping head first into a powerful, large scale experiment whose ramifications we don’t entirely understand.

Check out the full text of the FDA’s draft proposal, and submit your comments before April 2, 2007.

It takes only one holiday full of cooking, eating, overeating, and endless cleanup to smash a twenty two day NaBloPoMo streak. By the time the last dish was in the dishwasher and the kitchen counter was white again, I was thirty minutes past the daily deadline and several minutes away from collapsing into bed. But I’ve continued taking photos of all my meals, although, strangely, I only have a few photos of some of the numerous dishes served at the Thanksgiving meal.

breakfast

Welcome to breakfast on Thursday, November 23rd. This is my attempt at photographing the usual shake from a different angle.

snack

For my mid-morning snack, I ate a slice of sourdough bread dredged in a little bacon grease and spread with a bit of butter. I had just prepared the dressing for the turkey. The herbed bacon grease that coated the otherwise empty cast-iron skillet smelled so delicious, I had to taste it.

lunch

Lunch was a brief, hurried affair, consisting of a slice of buttered sourdough bread and the remaining tofu cilantro salad.

thanksgiving dinner!

The heritage turkey was gorgeous and delicious. I slipped herb-infused butter under its skin and stuffed the cavity with a quartered lemon, half an onion, some unpeeled garlic cloves, a carrot, a celery rib, and some sprigs of fresh thyme. The turkey baked for about an hour or so at 450° F (232° C). I baked it breast-side down, then turned it breast-side up about halfway through baking. The turkey was evenly browned all over, and had wonderfully crisp skin and succulent meat.

Vegetarian cornbread stuffing, made with Anson Mills cornmeal (great stuff!). I combined a few recipes to make this stuffing. It features pomegranate seeds, leeks, and celery. Tasty, but a bit crumbly. It might’ve needed more vegetable stock, or perhaps some MEAT to make it stick together.

These are chocolate birthday cake, flourless chocolate birthday torte, and pecan-crust pumpkin pie, all prepared by my brother d, all delicious. The chocolate cake is based on a very caramelly Callebaut, whereas the flourless torte includes a smokey Valrhona.

Stay tuned for more reports on Thanksgiving dinner…

Pies are all about the crust, which is to say they’re all about the dough. Well, not really. At least half the fun is eating the gooey sweet fruit that fills the buttery cavern of your pie. But the best filling in the world won’t save a poor crust, turning an otherwise tasty pie into an abject failure. Knowing this, and with Thanksgiving just around the corner, I signed up for Shuna’s pie dough class in Berkeley. Let me tell you, having been to that class, I now recognize all the horrible errors I had previously thought were standard pie-making protocol.

For example:

• Fancy, high-fat, European style butter isn’t necessarily better. If you do use fancy butter, cut back a bit on the amount you use (six ounces rather than eight is a rule of thumb).
• Processing the dough until it forms a ball is a very bad idea. If your dough has formed a ball, your crust will be be tough.
• Roll your dough from the middle outwards, not from the edge.
• Once a crack, always a crack. If your dough starts cracking as you begin to roll, the cracks will stay and grow. To fix the crack, gently mush together the cracked dough back together with the blade of your hand.
• Rotate pie dough frequently when rolling so as to avoid it sticking to the work surface.
• Lightly rolled dough produces a light crust. A large, fairly heavy rolling pin is preferable, and easier to use. It requires less physical effort on your part, resulting in a flakier crust.
• Use a whole lotta beans. When baking blind, fill the entire shell with beans.

These are just a few salient points. By touching the dough at various stages of processing, listening to it (a dough that makes lip-smacking noises is not only rude, it’s way too wet), tasting it blind-baked and non-blind baked, I began to see pie dough as its own unique creature. A professional pastry chef is a dough psychologist, gently coaxing the dough to wellbeing while working through its potential for multi-faceted neuroses. Warm pie dough is insecure, resulting in a melted, self-conscious crust. Over-working the dough results in an aggressive, tough pastry. A dough might look perfectly well-adjusted in the mixing bowl, but do anti-social bits of flour and butter lurk at the bottom?

The ingredients themselves have their own unique personalities. Flour must be aerated and weighed. Butter must be kept as cold as possible and chopped coarsely. Water must be absolutely ice cold. Understanding the behavior of each ingredient—and why it behaves the way it does—is just as important as understanding the whole. A pastry chef is both scientist and artist.

After all you learn about pie-making, Shuna’s pie is magic. How can flour, butter, sugar, and water produce such ethereal flakiness? And how do crunchy apples become sweet, buttery velvet in your mouth? To me it’s alchemy.