It’s Francis’s fault. She works at the store’s deli counter, and is a passionate dog lover who believes that dogs, being natural hunters and carnivores, do best on a diet of raw meat. Since Francis also believes in the value of organic food (even if the store’s management doesn’t), she drives around the state to various organic farms in order to make bulk purchases of frozen blocks of various cheap animal parts, like chicken backs and cow intestines. At the store, Francis has a little freezer set up near the checkout aisle in which she stocks her organic dog food, at such low prices she’s probably not making a penny.

One day I noticed some beef bones in Francis’ freezer. They had a good amount of meat attached, and were labeled organic. I bought them and baked ‘em till the meat was nice and brown, and made soup.

On my next visit it was chicken backs, which are what’s left after all the breasts, thighs, wings and legs have been removed. A chicken back is mostly fat and bone but there is a bit of meat attached (Francis says uncooked chicken bones, which are less brittle than cooked bones, are OK for dogs to eat). I removed the fat and gave it to the dog, apologized for eating the rest of her food, and proceeded to make a tasty pot of chicken back soup.

Standing in line at the store a few days later I noticed a three-pound bag of frozen beef cheeks in Francis’ freezer. At $1.67 per pound, it was some of the cheapest organic beef I’d ever bought, with no shred of fat or bone. The frozen cheeks were sliced into cubic rectangles about the size of chalkboard erasers.

Southwesterners may be familiar with barbacoa, a popular taco filling. Barbacoa is Spanish for beef cheeks that have been braised, baked, steamed or boiled to tenderness. This is no easy feat, as the cheeks are perhaps the toughest cut of meat on the cow thanks to the exercise those muscles get from all the chewing cows do. In addition to the dense, fine-grained muscle fiber, beef cheeks are also crisscrossed with gristly connective tissue.

This gristle renders undercooked cheeks virtually inedible to those without cheek muscles as strong as a cow’s. But when sufficiently cooked, the connective tissue melts into a creamy substance that, in terms of flavor and mouth feel, is nearly indistinguishable from fat.

Back in the day, the entire cow head was baked in a pit lined with mesquite coals. After hours of pit cooking the cheeks, tongue, brain and other bits of flesh were stripped from the skull and eaten. This practice, already on the wane, was buried for good when the threat of Mad Cow Disease turned anything in the vicinity of a cow’s brain into a potential biohazard.

To prepare barbacoa for tacos, many cooks simply sprinkle the cheeks with salt, wrap them in aluminum foil, and bake them for five to six hoursat 300F until the gristle melts. When the foil is opened the cook is rewarded with meat that’s crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. The meat is teased apart with forks or fingers and served in tortillas with cilantro, avocado, raw onion and a squeeze of lime.

I’ve been playing around with a recipe that applies the principle of boeuf bourguignon, aka beef braised in burgundy, to cow cheeks. Boeuf bourguignon can be an immensely involved recipe-Julia Child’s version includes 45 steps-but the French classic can be approximated as easily as putting meat in a pot with red wine and baking with the lid on until tender.

Start by placing the desired quantity of beef cheek, salted, in a pan under the broiler, turning often until browned on all sides. Put the browned meat in a Dutch oven and cover with a 50/50 mix of red wine and stock, with five bay leaves, a leaf or two of sage, and a cup of brewed coffee per pound of meat (if you wish). Braise in the oven with the lid on until tender (4-6 hours at 300F). Check the fluid level often, adding wine as necessary to keep the meat at least half-covered. When the cheeks finally become tender, taste and adjust seasoning with salt if necessary. Carrots, potatoes, whole red chile pods (with seeds removed), and whole cloves of garlic may all be added at this point, and are fabulous additions to thejoues de boeuf.

When the veggies are done, keep cooking until the liquid concentrates to your desired thickness - remember, it will thicken as it cools. Whatever you do, for the love of dog food, don’t let the liquid evaporate.

The softened meat absorbs sweet fruitiness from the wine, and a bite combined with a wine-soaked clove of garlic is heavenly. There will likely be chewy veins of gristle in the meat that haven’t completely broken down, and these can be set aside or given to the dog, who may be quite hungry if you ate its dinner.

It’s not like I’m trying to save a buck by wolfing dog food. I have a freezer full of meat from deer, elk, and a grass-fed cow named Wendell. It’s just that many so-called “off-cuts” of meat such as beef cheeks are so delicious I couldn’t care less if they strike some as depression-era food, or dog food. Steak snobs are welcome to their opinions-lack of demand is why I can buy organic beef cheeks for $1.69 a pound. On the other hand, if more people would eat these parts we could get away with raising fewer animals for slaughter. And if it came to that, I’d happily pay more for this delicacy.

Photo: Ari LeVaux

As for moi? My focus is on lunch, so let’s talk “Let’s Make a Sandwich”. In this scene, Gaga and her fey dance crew bond slices of Wonder Bread together with squirts of Miracle Whip, opting to use the baguettes as phallic dance props. A natural choice. While Wonder Bread was part of Ms. Gaga’s vision, Miracle Whip paid for its appearance.

Miracle Whip has been working hard to lure the ‘hipster dollar’ and with lackluster results. Its recent campaign has been widely mocked and peaked with the Mayo-Miracle showdown on the Colbert Report last fall. Did they really think “That’s so mayo” would succeed as a catch phrase? The Zingr browser plug-in that was developed for Kraft Foods has failed to ‘go viral’ and the people that elect to engage with Miracle Whip on Facebook aren’t always nice. Miracle Whip encourages fans to ‘learn the language of Zinglish’ and to suggest new Zinglish on the page. One suggestion: “Zingleberries - What hangs off your ass after you eat Miracle Whip.”

Most recently, Steve Simpson at Adweek took aim in his “Revolution Diary”, which lampoons the radicalism sold by mainstream companies. He quotes the Miracle Whip mantra:

Don’t go unnoticed. Don’t blend in. Don’t be ordinary, boring or bland. In other words, don’t be so mayo. We are our own unique one of a kind flavor. We are Miracle Whip and we will not tone it down.

Only Gaga could take a product as white bread as Miracle Whip and infuse it with the masochism and kink I had never imagined the brand name could imply. For Kraft Foods, this was likely money well spent.

Jezebel and the Guardian were quick to question the effectiveness of these placements. Lady Gaga might get me to consider putting a bow in my hair, but to change my sandwich preferences? I am interested to see what happens with product sales. Mayonnaise is the status quo. Accordingly, the condiment is neither cool nor celebrated, yet people buy it regularly for sandwiches and ‘salads’. Made fresh, it is a revelation. Miracle Whip commercials sell a life without mayo as a multicultural rooftop party. I beg to differ. Even as Telephone promises to boost its visibility, the spread will never be hip and with good reason: it tastes like Miracle Whip.

* For what it’s worth, I think B does a nice job in Cadillac Records

The soul of Khmer cuisine resides in a murky barrel of a potent, fishy paste that graces every meal-prahok. It’s the odiferous spice of Cambodia, the protein-packed punch of grandma’s soup and auntie’s curry. Just a little dab will do, thanks to the olfactory power of fermentation. It takes the country’s blazing sun, it’s muddy waters and the sweat of its people to lug and crush, salt and dry, heaps and piles of tiny fish, which then rot into potent distinction. Prahok is indeed the heart of a nation; its juices, the blood that keeps Cambodia running.

Why, then, are some Khmers shunning this heritage?

“Now I don’t like prahok anymore,” says Keo Touch, who goes by the name of “Toot” and runs a Battambangcooking school with his wife, Nuon Nary.

His statement catches me off guard, so I start asking questions. The answers, I realize, I have heard many times before.

“Now I am a towner, I am no longer a farmer,” he says. “Some people look down on you if you eat prahok , because if you eat prahok , you are a farmer, you are poor.”

I understand his concern. Poverty is a pestilence that Cambodians everywhere aim to escape. This is a countrified state, with 13.3 million people scattered among some 14,000 villages housing more than 80 percent of the population. Read the other way: only 20 percent of Cambodians live in a city. Of those, many have ended up on the urban scene because they lost land, got sick, needed money or suffered some heinous tragedy that left them no recourse. The average Cambodian earns less than $2 a day. Marginally few are the people like Toot, who built a thriving business after years of destitution.

Toot says the scent of prahok reminds them of the farm. And the farm is a place that offers no easy life. Plus, it comes with the added baggage of memory-every Cambodian spent 1975-1979 as a farmer under the genocidal Khmer Roug. And every survivor harbors stories of slave-like labor, death and starvation. No surprise, people want to forget.

It’s as though Toot internalizes the acrid smell of prahok as a blemish on his character-untrue as that might be. “I am very ashamed if I tell about prahok to my students,” he says. “Because if I tell, and they smell, they run away.” Only if they ask do his recipes and market tours include prahok , that most fundamental of Cambodian ingredients. “Now I use shrimp paste. Shrimp paste is not very strong.”

Still, it’s Nary’s kitchen (she cooks while Toot peruses the market and chats up the students), so I ask her about prahok as she minces an almond butter-colored pad of the stuff. “Yeah,” she smiles, “I like.” No problem for her.

When I get to Phnom Penh-the throbbing capital of hustle, bustle and noise-I ask my longtime friend, Ke Monin, whether he can vouch for Toot’s ideas. “Yeah, sure,” he agrees. He is “100 percent sure,” if people have money, “they don’t want to eat prahok .” He says rich Khmers eat fish paste only once every few months. “When they don’t have money, they eat a lot.”

I ask one more source, the notable photographer Heng Sinith, a longtime friend and confidante. Sinith is the most knowledgeable Cambodian I know. He has Access with a capital A. He makes friends with everyone, singing karaoke with cops and shmoozing with bodyguards while taking his liver to the outer limits. Meanwhile, secrets emerge in the blur of inebriation.

Sinith doesn’t think Khmers willingly forgo the fish of their identity-least of all, he. “I really like real Khmer food,” he says. Nonetheless, he insists prahok will disappear as quickly as the fish in Cambodia’s ailing lakes and rivers (diminished fish stocks are a growing worry).”The people will never deny prahok ,” Sinith says, but ” prahok will be finished because there are no more fish.”

And that is a story for another time.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. Read more on Rambling Spoon.

Directed by Catherine Gund and starring her daughter, Sadie Hope-Gund, and her daughter’s best friend, Safiyah Kai Riddle, “What’s on Your Plate” is a solution-oriented movie that gets children to ask the basic question “Where does our food come from?” In an unpreachy way, the film introduces kids and tweens to concepts such as “food miles” as well as to locavore solutions such as farmers’ markets and CSAs. (For more info on the film, see my blog for the Atlantic Monthly’s food channel.)

If you live in New York City, you’ll have two chances in the next week to see it: tonight at 6P.M. at the Neighborhood School in the East Village (located on 3rd Street between Avenues A and B) and on March 20th at El Museo del Barrio at 4 P.M. (Future screenings, including one at the Hammer Museum in L.A. with actors/activists Ed Begley, Jr. and Esai Morales, can be found here.) Chipotle (the healthy Mexican restaurant chain) will also be hosting private screenings of the film in elementary schools, libraries, and after-school programs throughout the year.

I sat down with Catherine, Sadie, and Safiyah to talk about “bad” vegetarians, how to get kids excited about farming, and why good food should not be a luxury.

H: What inspired you to make this film?

Sadie: I had become a vegetarian at the end of 4^th grade. And a lot of my friends were vegetarians but they didn’t eat vegetables—they ate pasta and pizza all the time. I was like well, if they’re eating these things and they’re vegetarians…it doesn’t really add up. We were originally going to make the movie about bad vegetarians.

H: Safiyah has been a vegetarian from birth and Sadie has a genetic predisposition to having high cholesterol, but were you both healthy eaters prior to making the movie?

Sadie: Well, yeah, we had salads every night and stuff like that.

H: So making a film in which you traced the food chain didn’t spur you to change your eating habits at all?

Sadie: Well we did a little bit. We joined a CSA.

H: In the film, activist and author Anna Lappé tells you that there are more people in prison in the U.S. than there are farmers. How can we encourage young people to be farmers?

Safiyah: I’m not sure how this would work but it would be cool if you had a program where if city kids who wanted to try working on a farm did a week of farming but they paid for it. So the farmers made money, and the kids learned how to farm and cook— like a day camp. That’d be cool. I would do that. During harvest would make more sense.

Catherine: And also, growing in the house. Whether it’s in a window garden or in your backyard, or however it is—in a pot. (See the Action Points in the Family Cook-In tool kit.)

When you say, “Do you want to be a farmer? “—maybe not. But I could imagine both of you having gardens where you grow all your herbs.

H: Despite your activism and despite various reforms to lunchroom food in New York City (Rachael Ray, Wellness in the Schools, etc.), an article in the Daily News just charged the New York Department of Education is still serving foods such as chicken nuggets and packaged grilled cheese sandwiches that contain high-fructose corn syrup. Have public school lunches really gotten better since you started this project?

Sadie: At our school (Manhattan Academy of Technology) nothing has changed that much. Not yet, at least, because we haven’t shown the movie there.

H: Do you guys eat school lunch?

Sadie: No, we bring our own.

Safiyah: There’s not a very good salad bar. I mean, it’s OK, but it’s not well advertised. Nobody really gets the salad bar. It’s just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. On Friday’s there’s pizza, there’s hamburgers, chicken nuggets…

H: And the vegetables that SchoolFood orders are rarely local. In the film, you interview Richard Ball, at Schoharie Valley Farms in upstate New York, who eventually wins the contract to supply carrots to the NYC public school system (over bigger farms in California, Canada, and Mexico). Yet it was a big challenge for him to get that contract and the whole process was so bureaucratic.

Catherine: But then this year, it’s gone again. I walked in to the kitchen in November and saw the bags—and they’re not Ball’s.

H: I’m curious to know what you say to those critics out there who say that the sustainable food movement, Slow Food, etc. is somehow elitist, and not geared towards those who are low income?

Safiyah: Well, I’ve never heard that before.

Sadie: But, what about the food stamps at farmers’ markets? In Harlem they get organic food with food stamps!

Catherine: But so many people don’t realize that. That was one of the very first basic questions for these guys. They weren’t saying, “Where can we shop at Union Square or what can we buy that’s the fanciest thing.” They were just saying, “How can everyone eat better?” That was their question.

H: Do you guys find yourselves trying to get your friends who eat in the cafeteria to eat less processed junk?

Sadie: A lot of kids don’t eat it. And they’re like, “Do you have an apple or something? Or, “Can I have half of your orange?” And I’m like, “Sure!”

Safiyah: Some of them eat badly, but well number one, they all exercise a lot. And number two, we can’t really—the thing about the movie, we don’t actually tell people how to eat. I would feel hypocritical if I would tell someone like, “don’t eat that.” They’ be like, “you’re not my mom!” So it wouldn’t help.

H: Are you guys both still vegetarians?

Sadie: Yeah. Definitely.

Safiyah: I have these weird moments where I’m like, I really want to try meat. And then, like, five minutes later, I’ll just be like “I love being a vegetarian.” This is what I’m meant to do!

I’m not opposed to meat. People are like, oh, I’m sorry, I don’t want to eat this in front of you. I’m like, I’m not allergic to it. It’s just, I choose not to eat it. It’s my choice, you have your choice. I’m just as opposed to bad eating. I’m just as against a vegetarian who doesn’t eat well, as a meat eater who doesn’t eat well. The only thing I really don’t like is baby back ribs. I mean, it’s baby. Back. Ribs. I mean, it’s a baby! You’re eating his back ribs! It might taste good, but I’m just like “ewww!”

H: What’s your weakness, when it comes to processed and/or fast foods?

Catherine: You should tell her about Michael Pollan’s rule, the one you mentioned yesterday.

Sadie: You can eat junk food as much as you want only if you make it yourself. Cookies, ice-cream, scones.

Catherine: There’s never packaged cookies in our house. But we make cookies every couple of weeks. I always think, “Oh, that’s so bad—we make way too many cookies!” But when she told me that, I felt so good about it!

Safiyah: My mom makes these types of french fries, it isn’t fried exactly, it’s sort of like scalloped potatoes. But they’re still really good. I’ve also always had a weakness for pretzels.

H: At the end of the film, you lay out the specific projects you’ll keep working on—raising money for Harvest Home Farmer’s Market, pressuring politicians to give more money to school lunches, helping the Angel family organize a CSA —to ensure that your younger brothers will have access to fresher food. Have any of these things panned out?

Sadie: The Angel family got a CSA!

Catherine: We did it last year. We did it at the Neighborhood School — it went last year from May through to November. There were 30 families, and two classes.

But then, wait until you get this.

Sadie: The Angel family also bought their own land

Catherine: Look—I’m getting little goose bumps! With the money they got from the CSA, they bought ten acres of land, right near the land they rent. We hooked them up with Just Food—they’re incredible. They also got them a second CSA. So last year, their first year, they did two: one in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. And now they’re going to have chickens and there will be eggs and some type of fruit. We’ve said we’ll go up to fifty shares this season.

Safiyah: That was my favorite thing about the movie. Wow—I actually did that. Like, I did that. All the hard work and all the complaining—like, “ah, more voice overs!” Now we just get to look back and be like, this is what I did.

An Asian bar, I believe, is a private corner in hell for any man from the Czech Republic. Consider the setting: balmy nights, dim lights, beer pouring forth from brassy taps-all good signs on the surface. But then, the Czech man lifts lips to glass and the local lager slips across his tongue. Perhaps a bit flat, possibly sour, often skunky. And always followed by a vague but perceptible sensation of something likely toxic. It offends any connoisseur of worldly beers.

It is among such brews and shared lamentations that my husband, Jerry, and I meet Ota Veverka one night in Siem Reap, on the edge of Cambodia’s exalted Angkor temples. Four years with mediocre beer in these climes, and Ota still maintains a smile. I later learn he has no intention of living at home again; life is short, and he wants to view it from an unfamiliar vantage. He chose Asia, moving first to northern Thailand, where he met his now-wife; then Siem Reap, where they can live amid the spiritual aura of the Angkorian colossus.

We chat pleasantly, and exchange addresses and numbers. Later, when the night has ended and the beer taps drool their last, I see on Ota’s card that he runs the Angkor Harvest Family Co. He is a self-described peanut man. What does that mean? I want to know what this Czech man does with his nuts!

So we meet again, in the same quiet bar with pale yellow light, and this time Ota brings samples to munch as we sip and chat. His company consists of him; his wife, Nadchalee Chantakarana; and a young Khmer cook named Amouy, in a small kitchen beside the couple’s apartment west of the Old Market downtown. The Angkor Peanuts label is stuck on 100g packages sold at shops around Siem Reap, and the nuts are served (complimentary) with beer at several local bars. The company produces four flavors of sweet caramelized nuts (coconut, ginger, white sesame and black sesame), as well as the drinker’s favored savories-spicy salted peanuts with garlic, herbs and chiles.

Nadchalee learned the recipes from her mother in Chiang Mai. I know well the addictively hot-salty-crunchy-crumbly-garlicky good little nuts, which are sold by the kilogram across Thailand. Something extraordinary happens to shaved garlic when you drop it in oil and fry it to just the right crispness, before it turns too bitter. Something equally phenomenal happens to Thai bergamot leaves when you do the same. Mix them with nuts, and suddenly Asian beer tastes better.

When Nadchalee brought her recipes to Siem Reap, she also brought a few new ideas. “In Thailand, they have just one or two flavors,” she says. “Not coconut, not ginger,” both of which add complexity to the sugary-sweet nuts.

Ota invites us one afternoon to their little purple kitchen in a Khmer neighborhood that falls somewhere between city and village. A giant wok rests upon a gas burner full of peanuts and long, white shavings of coconut with the thin brown edges of their shell. Nadchalee gets to work, preparing a 2-kilogram batch, which Ota will deliver by motorcycle to customers in town.

“Everything is handmade,” and the nuts are prepared to order. “We are not a factory. We always make fresh,” Ota says. “Call the day before, and the next day you will have fresh peanuts.” Order a special ingredient-palm oil, cashews, brown sugar-and they will try to accommodate. “Because we are small. A factory won’t do that.” They’ll even ship overseas, if someone asks, though no one has ever asked.

They buy their ingredients from the local markets, though Ota suspects the nuts are imported from Vietnam (he’s trying to find Khmer suppliers). They purchase dried red chiles, then sort them by hand, removing impurities and sad specimens. Eventually, Ota hopes their garden will supply the herbs-but alas, their little bergamot (Kaffir lime) tree stands just a foot tall.

It’s a hot day, and the room grows toastier. I watch Nadchalee sweating and stirring a mountain of nuts, margarine, coconut and white sugar. It smells like a carnival, with a childlike sense of sweet warmth.

“It’s not easy. It looks easy but there is a timing that is very important,” Ota says. A good batch requires careful balance over the flame. “You are one minute late, and it’s burnt, and you can throw it away.” Plus, the skins must remain on the nuts. “It is very important. If there is no skin, the sugar won’t hold.”

When Ota first arrived in Asia, he ate raw peanuts by the handful. He quickly learned the consequences in his digestive tract. “You will fart a lot,” he says. Nadchalee agrees. He farted a lot.

“OK, done,” she says after half an hour on the burner. Ota’s fresh nuts (freshness, he says, is key to his product’s quality) sizzle like Rice Krispies, smothered in a coating of sugar and butter transformed. The crescent-shaped coconut has tanned, like thin slivers of pencil shavings. I have never before tasted such a fresh, warm handful of nuts.

But these aren’t Nadchalee’s favorites—and neither are they mine. It turns out, we’re all partial to the spicy type. She prepares an alluring plate of peanuts with curled green leaves and golden garlic, topped with rufous chiles on long stems. It’s a snack that calls for beer.

Which is exactly why Nadchalee says she prefers salty over sweet. “I like spicy more because I’m a drunker.”

Ota laughs. “This is the reason she loves me-because I am from the beer country.”

Angkor Peanuts are sold and served at about 20 Siem Reap outlets, usually less than $2 for a 100g bag. Email Ota at otakarv@volny.cz or call him in Cambodia at +855-11-380-421 for more information. He is willing to entertain individual requests, and to negotiate overseas shipments.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. See more images from the story on Rambling Spoon.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/03/01/czech-out-these-angkor-nuts/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/26/the-french-paradox-starts-in-preschool/ http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/26/the-french-paradox-starts-in-preschool/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:55:49 +0000 Hannah Wallace http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/26/the-french-paradox-starts-in-preschool/ If I seem stuck on the subject of school lunch reform lately, I apologize. The issue is in the air, that’s for sure. The other day I read about a public school teacher in the midwest who is eating her lunch in the cafeteria every day as a form of protest. (She’s blogging about it and posting photos here.) She starts the project by saying, “It’s very challenging to teach students when they are eating school lunches that don’t give them the nutrition they need and deserve. Oftentimes what is served barely passes muster as something edible. And after a meal high in sugar and fat and low in fiber, they then must pay attention in a classroom.”

But I want to talk about something more cheering, which is how much money and time they pour into public school lunches in France. Journalist Vivienne Walt, writing for Time, shares her son’s experience of eating multi-course gourmet meals in a Paris preschool. I kid you not.

Each day, her son gets an hors d’oeuvre, salad, main course, cheese plate and dessert. “The variety on the menus is astonishing: no single meal is repeated over the 32 school days in the period,” writes Walt. “One day, when I arrived to collect him, a server whispered for me to wait until the dessert course was over. Out in the hall, one of the staff shouted for ‘total quiet’ to a crowd of 4-year-olds awaiting the next lunch seating.”

According to Walt, this deference paid to food from such an early age is as good an explanation as any for the “French Paradox” (i.e. the mysterious fact that French people, who eat a lot of butter, good quality meats, and even dessert, don’t get fat or have nearly as much heart disease as Americans do). She writes:

“In a country where con artists and adulterers are tolerated, the laws governing meals are sacrosanct and are drummed into children before they can even hold a knife. The French don’t need their First Lady to plant a vegetable garden at the Élysée Palace to encourage good eating habits. They already know the rules: sit down and take your time, because food is serious business.”

America’s school lunches will probably never achieve this level of sophistication, but it brings a smile to my face to be reminded that some cultures still revere food and bring their children up to take pleasure in eating fresh, proper meals.

During his 18 minute TED talk, British chef and anti-obesity crusader Jamie Oliver illustrates America’s obesity epidemic with photographs of morbidly overweight young Americans who are “eating their livers to death.”

It sounds melodramatic until you realize he’s right. And if his statistics don’t persuade you (”10% of our health care budget is currently spent on obesity-related diseases,” he repeats like a mantra) maybe the photograph of an XX-size coffin will. Or maybe you’ll be convinced by clips from Oliver’s upcoming reality T.V. show, where he shocks families in Huntington, West Virginia (America’s unhealthiest city) out of their fast-food, white-bread lives.

But for a truly shocking reality (and one that Ms. Caitlin Flanagan would do well to watch several times), skip ahead to 11:17 minutes into his talk.  It’s a clip of Mr. Oliver quizzing elementary school kids about vegetables. One kid confidently identifies a bunch of tomatoes as potatoes. Another has no idea what a cauliflower is, and yet another brazenly announces that it is, in fact, broccoli.  Dangling a leafy bunch of beets before the children, Mr. Oliver says, “And what do you think this is?”

“Celery?”  one little girl asks, unsure of herself.

“Noooo….” says Mr. Oliver.

The audience at TED titters nervously.  I suppose it is, after all, important (and necessary) to spend some time educating our kids about fresh fruits and vegetables in the public schools. After we do this, and after we revolutionize lunchrooms around the country (and yes, maybe even plant hundreds more edible gardens), maybe then kids will have the brain energy to study Shakespeare and focus on higher math.

Most Austrian wines resemble the Austrians. They aren’t about frivolity and lightness and obvious pleasures. They’re rarely cheap. Instead, they require the application of patience and thought in order to be understood. They are wines for adults. Even Riesling, the most familiar of the country’s varietals, has neither the Gothic lift and pinpoint focus of the German versions nor the breadth and viscosity of the Alsatians. What are these wines like? If we’re to rely on adjectives, I’d try subtle, inward, stolid, mysterious. And that brings me to Blaufränkisch.

Last month I was happy to be invited to Gramercy Tavern for a  Blaufränkisch tasting organized by the writer David Schildknecht. My experience with the grape was minimal and the little I did know I hadn’t particularly liked. Here’re some things I learned: A) Its name dates back to the time when most people and things in Middle Europe were classified as either “Hunnish” or “Frankish.” The Franks had a better publicity department. B) Blaufränkisch is considered Austria’s most promising red. C) All but  a handful of the best examples come from Burgenland, a region southwest of Vienna that looks like a gopher doing push-ups. Once known as German West Hungary, it’s home to the hottest and sunniest summers in Austria. D) Attempts to impress the winemakers with stories about my visit to their country made them titter politely; it turns out that Carinthia is not exactly renowned for its wine. E) Like Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir and few others, Blaufränkisch is at heart delicate rather than powerful, marries felicitously with oak, tends to improve with age, and can be unusually expressive of the site and climate where it’s grown. And some of it, as it turns out, is fascinating and delicious.

High-quality Blaufränkisch is a work-in-progress. “Only in the late ’90s did Austrian wine lovers really come to respect and appreciate pure Blaufränkisch,” says Schildknecht. “The focus has come as Austria has become increasingly supportive of her own wines and at the same time increasingly active in exporting.” The newness of the project showed in the different approaches used by the winemakers in attendance. Like certain vintners of new-wave Valpolicella, Josef “Pepi” Umanthum adds shriveled grapes to beef up the ripeness and sweetness of his wines. While his is the Blaufränkisch most likely to appeal to fans of big Zinfandels, the approach struck me as counterproductive and steroidal. The charming, self-effacing Sylvia Prieler brought promising, hard-edged reds that, for me, were overpowered by the flavors of small oak barrels. Uwe Schiefer, a pioneer of serious Blaufränkisch, opened wines that, on the other hand, reveled in the grape’s savory flavors, a facet that promoters of the varietal are understandably eager to downplay. After all, vegetal notes are commonly seen as a liability in red wines; for me, they’re an important part of Blaufränkisch’s appeal. (Think of Cabernet Franc.) Schiefer’s ‘07 Reihburg tasted of dried tomatoes and fennel with the stewed notes of an old-school Sicilian red; it came off as loopy and original as an Alice Neel portrait.

The lunch was intended to show off only the most ambitious Blaufränkisch and many of the wines poured turned out to be expensive. Roland Velich of Moric (pronounced Moritz)—probably the best known among the Blau-gers—brought two single-site examples, both ‘02s from old vines in Neckenmarkt and Lutzmannsburg. They were elegant, restrained, complex and stony, already classic somehow, with the leanness and smokiness of Syrah from the Northern Rhône; perhaps not surprisingly, in the current vintage these retail for around $110. Luckily, Velich’s basic bottling from ‘07 can be found for just under $30 and is nearly as pretty, albeit conceived on a more modest scale. I also admired the biodynamic wines of Paul Achs, especially his Blaufränkisch Heideboden ($28); it smelled like a clump of violets growing in damp soil and may have been the least typically Austrian in its exuberance and lighthearted take on the grape.

My far-and-away favorite among these wines came not from Burgenland at all, but from further north, in Carnuntum. When Dorli Muhr decided to forsake PR for a tractor, she travelled widely looking for a suitable plot and even bought land in Tuscany. Eventually she returned to her childhood province and, along with her husband Dirk Van Der Niepoort, of the famous port shipping family, began to work a patch of Blaufränkisch she’d inherited on the steep slopes of Spitzerberg in the foothills of the Western Carpathian mountains. The two are no longer married but their wines show no trace of struggle. The most commonly dropped term at the tasting may have been “Burgundian;” sure enough, the Muhr-Van Der Niepoort ‘07 Spitzerberg was the palest and lightest wine of the bunch, with a texture as delicate as only the very best Burgundies. A glance at the other writers in the room was enough to see that it was among nearly everyone’s favorites. The Spitzerberg costs a very fair $45. For a measly $22, Muhr’s Carnuntum—a fuller yet still ethereal Blaufränkisch—will probably show you more of what good Burgundy is about than a comparably priced bottle from the Côte d’Or. I even poured it for my friend John; he couldn’t remember tasting a better red from Austria. “Most wine drinkers would call this watery and thin,” Dorli Muhr told me, tasting the Spitzerberg. “It’s been my experience that few individuals truly appreciate finesse.” If you count yourself among them, try one of these wines.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/19/fantastic-mr-blaufrankisch/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/13/the-future-of-food-journalism/ http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/13/the-future-of-food-journalism/#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:05:37 +0000 Zoe Singer http://thefastertimes.com/food/2010/02/13/the-future-of-food-journalism/

At a recent panel entitled The Future of Food Journalism, the future proved, once again, to be unknowable. Will it, as panelist Francis Lam over at Salon.com is hoping, look like longish format (you know, long for today’s attention span, like 500 words) experiential food writing that allows for immediacy and flexibility? For Lam, this means that one day he can post about General Tso’s chicken, because he’s thinking about it; the next day he can knock on a neighbor’s door and beg a cooking lesson, notebook in hand; then he can crowd-source, calling in recipes for a quirky contest and publishing the winners.

Perhaps the future will look more like panelist Gabriella Gershenson’s experience at Time Out: print readers who also become web readers hungry for more content; readers who crave up-to-date, hyper-local, consumable information that will allow them to go out and have experiences with food by trying a new product or restaurant or participating in a foodie event.

According to panelist Brian Halweil of Edible Manhattan, Edible Brooklyn and Edible East End, food politics and sustainable/local are the future of food writing, and those topics are booming. Edible reflects these issues in their successful business model, which has a stay-small, focus-local, grassroots mentality.

Panelist Nick Fauchald of The Tasting Table describes the future of food journalism in terms of giving readers the sex up front (a concept he laments but uses). His daily emails are short (200 words) and offer plenty of opportunities to get the goods by trying recipes, using discounts or getting in on the ground floor of the newest food and drink trends.

The worried audience members seemed to be bottom-line-focused. Who can afford to be a food writer, and what kind of food writing will sell? The democratization of the internet means that everyone’s a food writer, and this had the restaurateurs in the audience wondering who’s in charge if anyone can post a negative online review. While most food bloggers make bupkiss, moderator Andrew Smith pointed out that some, like Heidi Swanson, pull in six figures from their blogs. Then there are the issues of authority and integrity: do you know what you’re talking about when you pan a restaurant? do you accept bribes? Panelists seemed to hope that readers would continue to become more discerning while the unworthy simply lose out to more trustworthy writers and publications.

One of the more interesting concepts for me came up in observations the panelists made about tangibility as it relates to the past and future of food journalism. Once upon a time, food writing fell into two camps: there were the “home ec” newspaper food sections (often referred to as ‘the woman’s sports pages’), which focused mostly on the practical aspects of cooking; then there were  long-format, well-crafted pieces published in magazines. The latter offered escapist entertainment in the form of writing about places, traditions and destinations that readers might didn’t need to experience themselves to enjoy reading about. Over time, these camps have essentially merged: readers want well-written, transporting and evocative recipe pieces, and they want to read about places, traditions and destinations that they can reach out and experience for themselves. The desire for tangibility has created readers so hungry to grab what they’re reading about that they’re unlikely to plow through a whole long mouth-watering essay on the topic.

Francis Lam began the panel discussion on the topic of tangibility as it relates to print. The late-lamented Gourmet, where Lam got his big career break, was most certainly something to hold in your hands and flip through for the sensual experience of looking at the gorgeous photography. It was a magazine with pieces long enough to read before bed, and recipes to dog ear for future endeavors. It was also hemorrhaging money, so it folded. Will its readers get over print, Lam wondered. Will the internet, with its attention-span-shortening sensory overload and endless free content, change how we enjoy food writing forever? Is 500 words the new 20,000? Or will magazines, like the gorgeously yet economically and environmentally-produced Edibles, soldier on as a respite from the noise online? Will the same urges that send us to the web to find recipes or obsessively follow restaurant world gossip also keep us loyal to magazines we can hold, take with us out of internet range, read in the tub, display on a coffee table and save on a bookshelf? Or will the vestigial habit of reading off-screen fade in a generation?

Either way, the encouraging fact remains that our gluttonous society is hungrier than ever for food news, recipes, information, inspiration, legislation… This is a thrilling time to read and write about food—and if you are interested in either activity, you’ve got plenty of company. What emerged from the panel for me is the sense that market forces will stabilize the field of food writing…eventually. Writers who have the backing—be that a trust fund, an employer, a wildly successful ad-supported blog or even just a day job and a lot of drive—will continue to create well-written, well-researched and well-tested or fact-checked food content, even without the benefit of extensive editorial and art departments. And the humbling gods of internet traffic will give and take away accordingly.

Whoever is left food writing when the dust settles will once again have a shot at making a living doing whatever food journalism becomes in The Future. Personally, I hope to see less ‘this is what you should eat right where you live right this minute,’ less ‘this is why everything you eat will kill you’ and more ‘this is how food culture makes our world a larger, more beautiful place.’ The real question though is not so much what The Future of Food Journalism will look like as when that future will arrive. Some of us would really like to know.

Photo by DerrickT

I am not a lover of pickles. But I recognize that many people are, and I respect that choice. Every Sunday at my local farmers’ market I see that the pickle man’s stand has a crowd around it, everybody jostling each other to point out which barrels they want their pickles drawn from. They all seem happy. (Well, at the very least they seem loud.) This past weekend I decided to get myself a quart and see what all the commotion is about.

Here is what I discovered: Pickles are salty, crisp, and sour as hell. They ruin your appetite for chocolate. There is not a wine around they can pair with. They smell strongly of vinegar. If you eat three or four in one sitting (I try to be thorough in my research), the inside of your mouth will burn, not in a pleasant way.

But the fact remains tons of people go wild for pickles. And I hate not liking things that everybody else likes. I’m thinking specifically of certain movies shown at the IFC Center, playing pool, and Guinness (beer or book of world records).

I do like cucumbers. Especially when they’re thinly sliced and placed on petite little triangles of buttered bread served with a nice pot of tea. Followed by cream scones. And I like salt, particularly when it’s coarse and crunchy and sprinkled on roasted almonds drenched in dark chocolate.

The stand at the market sells their pickles in sour, half sour, and three-quarters sour batches. They’re all sitting in the same brine (vinegar, dill, mustard seed, salt, salt, salt), the designations depend on how long they’ve been pickling – half sours, which are most crisp and cucumber-like, have only been in the drink a few days; sours have been soaking up to a three weeks and are the pickliest, a bit on the soggy side and just about to cross the threshold from sour to bitter on account of prolonged exposure to the mustard seed. Three-quarters sour seems kind of a b.s. label – those pickles were sour as could be, if you ask me. Okay, they were slightly more crunchy than sour proper. After four days of sitting in my fridge, the difference between sour and three-quarters sour became imperceptible. So buy from the three-quarters sour barrel, if you’re into marketing.

It’s possible I’ll learn to like pickles – I’ve still got a bunch left, getting sourer and less tempting by the day. But I doubt it. I think I expended too much effort in the years I tried to like Guinness, sipping it with a forced smile, pretending that warm beer isn’t gross. I’m over that kind over pretense. Though I still long to be one of the crowd.