Monday, April 07, 2008

Food in Media: Notes, and a Rant



Chef has given me an extra day off, which means that I have 24 hours of leisure time before worrying about packing for a short trip across the pond, making the apartment look like a civilized person lives here, and dealing with the bacon that I'm curing. Mostly, I've wasted it, though I made a nice dinner for a couple of good friends tonight. And then I started reading my Google Reader. And then I got my new issue of Food & Wine, in which Atlanta, yet again, got the shaft.

This month's issue included a "Go Guide" of places to go all over the world. The first entry in America's alphabetical list, as always, was Boston. And dammit, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of hearing about how Atlanta is a great place to live, a lousy place to visit. I'm tired of hearing and seeing Southern food disdained as nothing but fried chicken and chitlins. I'm dubious that travelers never find themselves in Atlanta wondering where to eat. We've got some great restaurants. Not just good, great, and although I haven't experienced enough of the world to say it confidently, I think we've got some world class restaurants. I work at Woodfire, which I consider one of the greats. Where else? Off the top of my head, I would say Pura Vida, Bacchanalia, Quinones, Agave and Five Seasons brewing There are plenty of others that I really like, but unless I've worked or eaten in them a few times, I won't give a pass. I'd like to eat a JCT, for example, and wouldn't refuse a dinner at Restaurant Eugene or Watershed.

But every time I get a national publication that purports to list the major American cities, and their best restaurants, Atlanta doesn't make the cut. I mean, Phoenix/Scottsdale qualified, despite the fact that none of F&W's choices served Southwestern food. In fact, there were two Sushi bars. Two. In Phoenix. American Express Publishes F&W, so surely their people have skymiles cards. Can't they come give us a shot?

RANT

Click on the link and read the article. Done? OK. Italians have a strong culinary tradition, to put it mildly. The one thing that has sustained Italians over centuries of political and economic uncertainty has been an amazing agricultural tradition, which argues for the resilience of a society with strong agricultural footing, economically speaking. They're proud-WAY proud-of their food. We get it. As an American cook reading this article, I'm unsurprised, but pissed off.

I've listened to servers bitch about Mexicans in restaurants, and wondered if they were blind or just stupid. I've heard laypeople bemoan that adults from other countries and not teenagers (the children who are our future) work the line, wash the dishes, clean the place, and do jobs that Americans, with our until-recently-famous work ethic, don't want. But I hate it.

I've recently wrote that in cooking "there are strict rules to follow." That's not a lie, and chefs are very clear about what those rules are. Anyone who is proficient in the language, willing to learn, and supervised can produce any dish that will please any grandmother of any nationality. Ever. It's ridiculous to refuse to eat at a place where the labor, or even the chefs, didn't grow up cooking your pasta carbonara. If the chef is well-trained, you won't be left wanting. I would guess that plenty of French and Spanish chefs make pasta in Italy, to the accolades that locals withhold from Turks and Jordanians.

Xenophobia pisses me off. Racism leaves me apoplectic. I don't care if you're talking about food or people in the streets. It doesn't fly. Ever. Cooking is science, and those of us who do it aren't that special unless we have a flawless palate and a genius for innovation. Dear Italy: You're not so special. Get over yourselves.

Friday, April 04, 2008

I Wasn't Gonna, Honestly



But, well, I posted it to an email list recently, and these two articles seem worthy of comment.

Article 1 gives encouraging news to those who've been insisting that surely organic farms could yield as much in the long run as non-organic, and that the richer (in available nutrients) soil would translate into more nutritious food.

Here's a simplified version of the argument: in order to produce vigorous plants organically, farmers have to cultivate the best soil possible for their crops. Soil that's rich in available nutrients for plants (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) not only encourages healthy, productive plants, it means that those same plants are able to make their fruit chock-full of the nutrients that we eat fruits and vegetables for: vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients which are the darling of nutrition studies lately. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that non-commodity crops are where organics really excel among production and nutrition.

Article 2 presents an imperfect version of an economic argument for non-industrialized food. Mine won't be great, but here goes: the government currently subsidizes crops such as corn, rice, soybeans and peanuts, crops traded as commodities and used to produce industrialized food. Commodities are designed to be identical regardless of the climate, area or methods used to produce them. Emphasis is on yield at all costs: dumping nitrogen into the water supply, producing a crop with low nutritional value and shipping and processing yields with fossil-fuel intensive methods are considered the norm.

Subsidies and the prevalence and profitability of industrialized food encourage monoculture, a type of farming that historically fails, decimates the soil and terrain, and requires greater and greater quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizers to be dumped on crops.

The farmers, the companies that sell their seed and buy their product (often the same, considering global ownership of multiple levels of production) and the consumers who buy industrialized food don't pay the costs of environmental damage from their methods, nor do they support farmers who produce ready-to-eat food in the way that subsidies support commodities.

In case it isn't evident, this is not an economically feasible model. The government must pay, via taxes, not only to produce commodity crops, but also to clean up the mess they make, and must pay more as commodity crops inevitably yield less and less.

Local food, sold ready to eat, usually at farmers markets or through CSAs receives no subsidies. The cost of transport to urban areas is built into the actual price of the food one buys. Further, the people who farm the food pay far less for seed, and little or nothing for distribution of their crops. Thus, while the cost for a bag of local sweet corn may be higher than that of a box of corn flakes, more goes to the farmer, stimulating the local economy and evening the keel in uncertain economic times.

I won't make the argument that we shouldn't buy tropical fruit in winter, or that we must sort less- or non-perishables such as olive oil and flour from our neighborhoods. Trade is generally good for everyone involved, but when you're trading with a large multi-national company, you're not giving as much of the product price back to the producers. Since we arguably want the producers of food we like to continue making it, such tradeoffs should be carefully considered.

Furthermore, as less-processed food becomes more profitable and accessible to people with lower incomes, sustainable production will be more attractive in economically struggling markets where agriculture is a newly developing industry.

Many people believe that rising commodity prices are good for increasing the demand for local, sustainably produced food, particularly produce and meat; I'm among them. I would love to see fewer children raised to only drink their milk through cereal straws, fewer adults dieting via Lean Cuisine or Atkin's certified products, and more people taking a holistic view of their food. Why is it that colonics and intensive juice fasts are reasonable, but fresh fruits and vegetables a burden?

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The Tough Stuff: Softshell Crabs



We first got softshell crabs into Woodfire around last September. I was working cold station, so I didn't work with them much. They were still on the menu when I started training on cold station, but I didn't prep them, I just used them.

"Prepping" softshells is something of a euphemism. They arrive live, like many shellfish, and it's the cook's job to dispatch them. Oysters never really got to me, dumping lobsters in boiling water was old hat; we used to go crabbing every year on vacation, and somewhere my parents have a picture of my brother and I gleefully displaying Freddy, Betty, and Morris, a trio of post-boil blue crabs that we prepared when I was about 5.

Prepping softshells has three steps, in the eloquent words of our grill cook: "Face, ass, lungs." As in, that's what you cut off with a pair of scissors. First the face, across the front of the body, then the apron, then the lung sacs or "dead-man's fingers" as my sous chef was happy to inform me. I began to suspect that some of my fellow cooks were enjoying my inaugural crab-killing, especially the expected squeamishness: Chef even had one cook cry when she killed softshells.

I learned that I'd be working softshells about an hour before I got to them, so I tried to prepare myself. I asked exactly how I was supposed to do this, thought about it, and took the time to clear my station so nothing would be in the way.

The box down in the cooler was heavy, and too large to fit up the narrow stairwell with my knuckles, so I lifted from the bottom.

Crabs are cold-blooded, so their time in the cooler had them pretty lethargic, for which I was grateful. The sous walked me through my first. I cut parallel to the points, taking off the face. A green gel--with which, I informed the sous, I was not cool--oozed out. I turned it over, folded down the apron and cut it off as the legs and claws waved lazily. The top shell pulled disturbingly easily off of the bottom, and the lung sacs snipped out easily, leaving a little bit of sediment which wiped away.

The first few were tough. I know my crustacean anatomy well enough to know that they have a rudimentary nervous system, but probably don't have nerves equipped to feel pain. I have no qualms about eating pork or beef, which come from animals that are obviously far more sentient. I knew that if I worked quickly, they wouldn't warm up enough to be active, which I assumed was better for the crabs, and knew was better for me. None of these intellectual comforts made cutting off the face of a living creature sit easy with me. The crabs began to warm up and move more with each iteration. But it's true that unpleasant tasks get easier with each repetition, and eventually I was churning along like a pro. Chef came by, we chatted about the plating, and he examined the crabs, which he hadn't seen yet. At least I tell myself that that's what he was doing. He reached into the box and turned them with his hand, sing-songing "Wake up little crabs! Wake up for Stella!" I immediately wished that I hadn't mentioned my concern that they'd get "fiesty."

But I didn't cry, puke or get the shakes. The saute cook used to work fry station, and assured me that while it was initially difficult, she'd "made her peace" with it. It's not fun to kill something, but the reality of food is that for some of our favorite things, an animal must die. And in ten years, I'd rather be a chef who's aware of this through personal experience than one who's never done the hard thing.

I expect tonight to have nightmares about faceless zombie softshell crabs chasing me and squeaking in high, reedy voices "Braaaains! We want you giant mammalian braaains! Why did you kill us?" As with the killing itself, I tell myself that comfort lies in mental preparation.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Quickie: Top Chef and Catalan Salad




The cooks love to talk Top Chef. Love it. The shit-talking that goes on about the contestants is on par with the shit-talking that we do about each other, and the challenges are fun little intellectual exercises for cooks prepping the same stuff day in and day out.


But my attention waned over the past two seasons. The show became more slick, and while the caliber of the chefs has increased, so have the egos and the attitudes. I'm a low-key person by nature, so this has been a turnoff. But the challenges are fun and it's inspiring.


What bugs me about it lately is the amount of branding. The chefs now are transported in Toyota Highlanders, as Padma informs us, they await the verdict in the Gladware dry storage room while drinking beers that looked like Michelobs instead of the anonymous (and not profitable) glasses of wine. And I swear I heard the product placement guy gasp with glee when one of the chefs drew Velveeta as an ingredient. It seems unnecessary for such a popular show to be so committed to greater and more specific product placement.


For lunch I made the Catalan Salad recipe that I've shared. Despite having to prepare the dressing by hand when our blender didn't work, it was awesome-spicy, nutty, nice and thick, I nearly ate it with a spoon. I threw it on some frisee from Crystal Organics. I think I'm going to eat more than an entire day's worth of veg in one sitting. I'll also probably reek of garlic all night.