Nice little interview over on the FriendsEat community website!

Read all about it….

 With my griddle of justice, I BASH the enemy in the head, or I burn them like so! I also have some truth syrup, which is low in fat.”

- The Waffler, Mystery Men (1999)

Adrian E. Miller is an ex-politico and lawyer turned food historian who has a forthcoming book on the history of soul food in the U.S. As an African-American (is that the currently correct term?) he sees the soul food culture as something to celebrate rather than be embarrassed about, and this week pens a piece entitled When Did Soul Food Get Too Hot to Handle?. Interestingly, the piece (based on the web-page titling as of right now, and the original report that led me to it) appears to have been formerly titled Is Fried Chicken an Insult to African Americans? I guess the editors over at Zester Daily must have thought that just the title, let alone fried chicken, was a risk. The piece reports on a couple of high profile incidents over the last two years where fried chicken was offered up on a menu celebrating one or another event having to do with Black culture, where one or another person objected to the serving of said fried chicken as culturally or racially insensitive or insulting, or was at least worried that it might be perceived that way by folk of color. His take on the matter is that soul food is something that the community ought to be celebrating.

“Some may continue to wield the stereotype to demean African-Americans, but that doesn’t mean that we should continue to give the stereotype power. Let’s take the lessons learned from these incidents and de-fang the fried chicken stereotype once and for all.”

Mine too. My response to the article: “While I understand and appreciate the residual feelings from past stereotypes, at what point do we move past those into celebrating a culturally connected food instead of worrying about those connections? And why single out this particular food and culture? Would these same people have gotten bent out of shape had tacos or rice and beans been offered at a celebration of a Latin American holiday or event (not only with their past negative connotations but the widestroke brush that such foods are assumed to be part of the culture of all Latin Americans), spaghetti and meatballs for Italians, or sauerkraut served at a German event, or matzoh at a Jewish event? All are foods that at some point in our history have had aggressively negative racial/cultural stereotypes – and there are so many more.

At the Washington Post, domestic policy, energy and environment columnist Brad Plumer decides to play up a “Harvard Business School” paper with the claim How Yelp is killing chain restaurants, noting that the study seems to indicate that chain restaurants have lost ground in revenue to independent restaurants due to Yelp opinions, and quotes the person who submitted the link to the paper (not the author) that this represents an improvement in our standard of living. Whether Plumer ever actually looked at the study, which is linked, is debatable.

First off, it’s not an HBS study, it’s a draft working paper from a college student that happens to be online during its editing/review process. Second, the “study” focused on a single city, Seattle, and notes upfront that the student, Michael Luca, is in essence ignoring other factors that might have had an influence on the data, instead looking to see whether point scores on Yelp correlate to changes in reported revenue by restaurants over a five year period. Sounds to me like someone with a preconceived notion of what the data will yield. Also, is revenue the most reliable indicator – what about number of customers who come through the door, number of restaurant openings and closings, etc., etc.?

Let’s see. Seattle, over the last decade, has become a mecca for foodies and chefs, so we might be able to also assume that the quality and variety overall of independent restaurants has improved, while chain restaurants likely are staying to their tried and true formulas. Because of the economic downturn we’ve faced over that same period, many chains have lowered their prices in order to keep customers coming in, which just might have affected their overall reported revenue, no? While Yelp may be the largest (and I don’t know that, it might not be) online opinion site for restaurants, it’s not the only one – Luca conveniently ignores Zagat’s, Chowhound, Dine, TripAdvisor, and other similar sites – let alone the simple expansion of people sharing information on places like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. In the end, the draft paper reads like a pretty typical graduate school level paper – lots of citations and very little actual “study” – who in college hasn’t written a paper like that? Shame on the WP for reporting it as if it was hard news.

Over at Esquire, perennial curmudgeon John Mariani (if Ratatouille had been made about NYC rather than Paris, he’d have been the model for the Anton Ego character) takes on the release of the 2012 Michelin guide for NYC, basically calling it a big yawn, and, as usual it is, something that food writers, bloggers, and restaurateurs have been saying since Michelin first showed up in the city in 2006. Still, he makes one very good point in a casual, off-hand remark – the need for Michelin to redefine what their stars mean. Three stars meaning “worth a trip” and two stars meaning “worth a detour” made sense for a guide that was about road travel on the highways of France. In NYC perhaps “worth hopping in a cab to get to” and “worth transferring subway line” make more sense….

And hey, despite the yawns that most folk feel about Michelin in the big apple in contrast to other more local guide options, I can’t not give a shout out (and I already did via Twitter) to friend and fellow Wisconsin native Michael White for his new collection of stars at Marea and Ai Fiori! Especially coming at the same time as top ratings from the new Zagat’s guide!

 Oh, did I tell you I have a cookbook? I have a cookbook deal.”

- Ted Allen, writer and food show host

Did I ever tell you the story of how I was almost Ted Allen? No, I know I didn’t, though once before I promised to. So here’s the story. I was living and working in NYC, as a sommelier at the time, with a small catering business on the side, plus occasionally running these Second Sunday Supper Club dinners I’ve been going on about recently. I also had this hobby. Standup comedy. I know, it’s a strange hobby, right? But there it was. And I was actually pretty good at it – performed a couple of times a month around the city, did some events, even thought about it as a possible career – well, actually more, I thought about comedy writing as a career, the lifestyle and demands of being a comic just weren’t what I was into – but, I love food and wine too much, so, back to the restaurants with me.

Anyway, I got a call from a friend who’d seen me perform, knew I worked in the food industry, and that he was with a team casting a part for a new reality TV series for Bravo where they were going to do makeovers of straight guys’ lives, did I want to audition? I thought it would be fun and showed up on the appointed day and auditioned for a group of a few folk sitting around, there were a bunch of us… and then they asked me to wait a little while while they went through some other auditions. Then they called me back up and asked me to, and I remember this vividly, do an on camera audition “as gay as you can possibly be and selling us on White Zinfandel”. Afterwards, I got a call from the guy who’d called me in the first place, who said, “Look, we like you and we really need someone who knows something about food, but it was down to you and this other guy, and you’re just not gay enough!” So Ted, if you’re ever sitting at a table in my restaurant, wherever it may be… well let’s just say, you might want to bring a food-taster with you. Maybe Carson. Not gay enough. Bah!

So Ted Allen has a cookbook too now, damnit. Oh, and so does Kerstin Rodgers. Better known to the world at large as Ms Marmite Lover through both her blog, The English Can Cook and her supper club as they’re styled in Jolly Old England, The Underground Restaurant. I knew the book was coming out – it came out at the end of April, I got my copy a couple of weeks ago when it arrived with a lovely thank you note from Kerstin – as quite awhile back she’d contacted me to tell me she was writing a book about the whole phenomenon of supper clubs and wondered if I’d contribute a typical Argentine meat recipe. Not something I cook here at Casa S, as I told her, but it was what she wanted, so my version of locro is enshrined in her pages.

So on to the book itself. First, it’s a weighty tome, coming in at an even 3 pounds in hardcover. Love the actual cover, not so keen on the dust jacket which seems to have been designed by someone else entirely (none of which was likely in her hands). It’s cutely illustrated with line drawings throughout, the few pages of photography are a little grainy, but show a glimpse into the behind the scenes of the subject matter – it’s subtitled “Recipes and Notes from The Underground Restaurant” – and, it turns out to be pretty much that – not so much about the phenomenon, but more directly her own place. There’s certainly mention of other places, she doesn’t short shrift anyone, but in the end, there is a focal point. And that doesn’t surprise me in the least, Kerstin has been a tireless promoter not only of the whole scene in the UK, but in particular of her own spot, and she’s quite good at it with ning groups, newspaper articles, radio and television interviews, speeches, council meetings, and anyplace else one might pop up. I wish I had 10% the marketing skill that she does. Sometimes I wish she did too. That’s not personal against her, it’s just usually when a visitor from across the pond is extolling her place and telling me how I should be grateful to her for the mere fact that I’m allowed to exist.

The book is a fun read, and the text portion, The Notes, that take up the first 80 pages of 300-some, are written in style that’s basically like reading her blog or having a chat with her over tea. It’s in a casual vernacular, filled with references and slang that for a non-Brit sometimes take a moment to register. She covers everything from how she got started, to bits about her childhood, to her thoughts and recommendations on how to start your own. For that alone, it’s worth a read, even if I’d have given different advice here and there – but then, it’s all a matter of opinion and location – hers is based on the view that people open supper clubs because they’re primarily anarchists or anti-establishment, which may be true in London, but isn’t necessarily so elsewhere, like here for example. The book moves on to the recipes, laid out nicely and each with a little intro. They’re easy to read, easy to follow – I haven’t tried any of them out, but reading through them, they make sense and I think would to the average home cook. And much of the food is just for that purpose, it’s food that someone with a good basic kitchen skill set could jump in and reproduce, and uses, for the most part, ingredients that are probably found in many a pantry.

Now, if Kerstin will permit me, not that she has any choice, I’m going to poke a little fun. Not negatives, just some momentary amusements on my part….

She talks here and there about the whole anarchy of the movement and sticking it to the man and that sort of stuff. Which, to me anyway, contrasts with all the public appearances with corporate media, a book publishing gig, and, the one thing that I noted in more than a fair share of recipes, the reliance on tinned and boxed ingredients. Likewise, Kerstin is a vegetarian, well, pescetarian, but has offered up a section of red meat recipes – not of her own, this is where some of the rest of us in the supper club world came into play, but I found myself wondering why – why not take that stand if that’s what you believe in? (Assuming an ethical basis for her pescetarian-ism, which of course, may not be her reason at all.)

Having spent a good portion of my life writing and editing, proofreading mistakes tend to glare at me (in other people’s writings, for some reason they never stand out in my own when I proofread, so there you have it). The two that stand out in my mind this morning are “course salt” and “chilies en adobe” – the latter striking me with a giggle when I read it and having conjured up an image of popping the lid off a can of plaster to find spicy little vegetables mucking about in the white goo. It’s “adobo”, a tomato, garlic, onion and herb sauce that chilies, more often I would assert, come in. Likely, that was a program spell checker auto-correction that just wasn’t caught.

Blackening. It’s a process of cooking that comes to us from the Cajun cooking world. And, it doesn’t involve coating fish in spices and then baking it in the oven or frying it in oil. Really. If you’ve ever seen it done or done it, you know how it gets its name – the spice rub is fine, but the process is to have a cast iron skillet heated pretty much to glowing hot (when I worked at the Sazerac House we used to put a skillet on a flame when we got in first thing in the morning and it would be “ready to use” by lunchtime) into which you place the fish (or chicken or meat) without any oil or other fat, just dry, for long enough to char the herbs and spices, i.e., blacken them, and it was hot enough to cook the meat through at the same time.

And the last note was on her nod to Latin American traditions of closed door restaurants. Despite our having had a conversation about it, she stuck with the party line that she’d come into the conversation with, that it all started in Cuba in response to government restrictions and the American embargo (more anarchist rhetoric, I guess) with the paladar movement, and that it was a response to economics, as it has been recently in the UK. Sorry, but just not the case. First, puertas cerradas (as they’re called everywhere else in Central and South America except Cuba, where the name is based on a soap opera that was popular in the mid-1980s) have existed in Latin America stretching back as far as I’ve been able to research it – they’re just part of the culture, not economic (which is not to say there aren’t economic factors, it’s just not the driving force historically). There are places here in BA that have been open 30 and 40 years and I know of some in Lima and Mexico City that have been open as long. The paladar movement in Cuba didn’t really come into being until 1988, and was not in response to either restrictions or embargo (which began 28 years earlier in 1960), but to the start of the reversal of some of that – it was when the Cuban government made, more or less, a peace offering to its struggling populace and passed a law that allowed for paladares to open as long as they met a set of rules (limited to 12 seats, no advertising, and limited to certain dishes served, among other things). There’s a really well written history here. Paladares may not be state-run restaurants, but they’re not underground either, they’re very heavily regulated.

So that’s the book. Overall worth the investment for a combination of the interest factor, and being the first onto the shelves of what will no doubt be a slew of supper club cookbooks (hey, I’ve been working on one for over two years, but after losing the publisher who initially contracted for it, it just hasn’t been my focus). The recipes look like fun, and there are plenty of them, and like ones that any good home cook could tackle with aplomb and produce good results.

 Cooking Light is America’s recipe for healthy living, dedicated to helping readers eat better, feel better and look their best. Each issue celebrates light cuisine via more than 75 kitchen tested, beautifully photographed recipes. Our editorial focus is to provide fitness from a common sense angle as well as a reachable/user friendly exploration of delicious better-for-you food. Our mission is to be embraced by readers as a part of their daily rhythm; our goal is to help each individual reader keep a better lifestyle balance. (Eat smart. Be fit. Live well.)”

- Mission Statement from Cooking Light magazine

Through a very round-a-bout process (which took them from Alabama to New York to Oregon to California to Uruguay and then I picked them up there while visiting the friend who’d snagged them in California), I recently received a couple of cookbooks from the publishers of Cooking Light magazine with the intent on their and my part to give them a test drive and review. The two books are, I gather, collections of recipes that have been published over the years in the magazine, plus, perhaps some additional ones specifically for the books – I’m not sure, there’s no indication in either book one way or the other on the latter.

Let’s start with my “problem” with Cooking Light and just get it out of the way with, because on a practical level, it’s irrelevant. The recipes that the magazine and books offer up have always relied much more heavily than I would like on canned and jarred goods – particularly sauces – and frozen vegetables. That’s it. The reality of daily life, however, is that that’s a step up from how most people cook – which consists of mixing prepackaged ingredients together or heating up something premade and frozen, or more likely, giving it up as a bad move anyway and ordering out Chinese or picking up fast food drive-through. I realize Cooking Light is focused on the food aspects of things, but really, “cooking spray” instead of just a little rub of oil on something? Part of living healthy is keeping the environment healthy too.

While from my personal perspective, I’d much rather have a stalk of fresh broccoli sitting in my kitchen than a bag of cut, blanched and shocked florets sitting in the freezer, I have the skewed viewpoint of someone whose workplace is in the kitchen. It’s not the place I’m forced to head to after putting in an 8 hour day at the office, or running kids around to all their after school events, or whatever it is that takes up the majority of people’s lives day in and day out. I actually enjoy cutting up the broccoli and doing the whole process to get it ready. And, it doesn’t cut into my day.

Nine times out of ten I’d rather chop up tomatoes and onions and garlic and peppers and all the rest to make myself some salsa that will only keep in the refrigerator for a few days instead of a jarred one that is preservative laden and will last for months, or even, buying a fresh one made by someone else. But that’s my passion – most people just want to get dinner on the table without exhausting themselves. So in the end, on a practical level, I am content that the books and magazine push people to use some fresh ingredients and actually spend time learning how they go together.

I don’t use cookbooks as recipe books directly in the kitchen. By that I mean that it’s rare that I would ever have a cookbook sitting on the kitchen counter, open to a page, with, likely, something holding down each side of the book so it stayed open while I refer to it back and forth. It’s just not the way I cook, but that gets back to what I do for a living and how I approach it. So it took me a moment to realize that the design of this book as a ring binder had multiple positive things about it as opposed to just taking up extra space over a normally bound book. You can open it and the pages lay flat, you can remove a single page and just have that in the kitchen with you, you can add to it with additional pages if you want, though the last, with 700+ recipes already in the binder, might be a bit of overstuffing. It’s eminently practical.

Cooking Light: complete meals in minutes is a straightforward recipe book. There’s no text, no prose, no reasons given for any of the recipes. In the context of the magazine there would be reasons given for certain choices, here the assumption is, just trust us, we’ve done the work. And that’s fine. It’s like the laboratory workbook that accompanies the textbook – when you’re in the lab, in this case the kitchen, you don’t need all the extraneous detail. A bit is provided – at the bottom of each recipe is a nutritional analysis of the key things people on a healthy eating kick might be concerned about – calories, fat, protein and carbohydrate content, cholesterol, iron, sodium….

As to the implied purpose of the book, it’s hard to say – “complete meals” are certainly possible out of this book, it covers everything from appetizers to desserts – but what was missing for me were any kind of suggestions like “hey, if you’re making this here on page 273, it goes really well with such and such on page 419.” (Those are random numbers, I don’t necessarily think that you should pair Country Captain Chicken and Grilled Nectarines with Blue Cheese.) You still have to do the menu planning yourself and figure out what you already have around the house and what you need to buy. The recipes are well thought out, easy to follow, and each includes an estimation of how much time it will take to complete them, the “in minutes” part of the subtitle, and they’re pretty accurate – if you decide to go the route of fresh vegetables rather than frozen in some, you’ll add in the few minutes to prepare them, that’s about it.

I tried out a good handful of the recipes, more or less selected at random and all turned out tasty. None was complicated to make. Here and there I have some quibbles about the choices of ingredients – for example, Chicken Paprikash, a favorite dish, is traditionally made with sour cream – what was behind the decision to use whipping cream in the recipe which not only takes away that nice tartness, but doesn’t lower the calories, fat or cholesterol in the dish? Why not light cream, or half and half, or better yet, yogurt? No doubt there was some sort of explanation in the original magazine article, but it isn’t here in the book. And a few things are probably well-known to the average norteamericano homemaker but that I haven’t a clue what they contain – “1 16-ounce package frozen bell pepper stir-fry” – is that just bell peppers? Does that have other stuff in the mix? What is actually in a “24-ounce package refrigerated sour cream and chives mashed potatoes”? I didn’t even know they made such a thing and really wish I didn’t now – and of course, the pushing of particular brands – I assume they’re advertisers – is a little annoying, and probably irrelevant to anyone outside of the U.S.

Overall, if you’re looking for a good, solid recipe book with lots of quick (I think every dish is 30 minutes or less) and easy to make dishes that are healthier than that frozen pizza (really? you have one of those in your freezer?) or snagging takeout from some fast food joint, this is a great choice.

The second book from the same publishers I both like more and less than the first. The book itself – Cooking Light: way to cook vegetarian is a straightforward hardcover. Now that I’m enamored of the ring binder that is the first book, this one loses points, but only in comparison. On the other hand, it’s not just a recipe book. It’s a book to sit down and read, because it’s got some good material in there – so it gets those points back.

Many of the same things could be said about the recipes that are in the book – the ease, the frozen, canned and jarred thing, the advertiser pimping (do I really want to know what “1 12-ounce package meatless fat-free crumbles” are?). The recipes here are more of a mix, some simple and some more complicated, and they don’t have that helpful “in minutes” part for the harried homemaker. Many of them require a bit more planning, but it’s all well spelled out. Visually, it’s a quite beautiful book, with not just great photos of the dishes, but also step-by-step how to sections on various topics like making ricotta, preparing certain specialty vegetables and making omelets; sidebars that explain the differences between grains, tofus, tempehs, and many of the other things that a budding vegetarian might want to read about. It’s like a really cool, well illustrated “for Dummies” book. But better.

It falls down in a couple of places. I found myself searching the index with no luck for many of our current fall vegetables – cauliflower, brussels sprouts, parsnips and cabbage, somehow or other not one of these make it into the book, or at least aren’t listed – yet at the same time, it delves into things like celeriac, lemongrass, jicama and quinoa, with gusto. Even broccoli gets short shrift with only three recipes, two of which are variations on “in cheese sauce”. The focus seems to be on grain based dishes – whether the grains themselves in one guise or another, or things like pastas, sandwiches (or other similar dishes like bruschettas and pizzas), and a whole lotta stir-fries on rice. And why tout seitan as a great protein alternative and then only offer one page and two recipes using it while tofu warrants a 25 page section and tempeh, which is probably harder to find, a 10 pager with lots of recipe options each?

Although the index parses out the vegan recipes, and they’re marked in the text as well, there’s no explanation of the differences between vegetarian eating and a vegan lifestyle, or even that the latter isn’t, generally, just a diet. And even in some of the vegan marked dishes they use honey, which for the majority of vegans is a no-no.

Overall – visually a great book, and well, well worth it for the techniques and sidebars – some of which will likely clear up all sorts of mysteries for the kitchen novice, particularly someone exploring a vegetarian alternative, or who just wants to expand their repertoire of vegetable recipes. It’s not, as the subtitle asserts, “the complete visual guide to healthy vegetarian & vegan cooking” – it’s far from complete, but it would be an excellent library addition to anyone with those goals in mind.

 Eating is one of the only socially acceptable ways we can share vulnerabilities. We would never get together with strangers and use the bathroom together, but it might have the same affect. No sense putting on airs, we’re just human.”

Donald Miller, author

No question I’m late to the party on this one, but then, it wasn’t as if copies of Michael Steinberger’s Au Revoir to All That are just laying around in bookstores in Buenos Aires. Were it not for my eReader, I doubt I’d yet have latched on to it. But, I did get around to it this last week. And I’m afraid I’m going to be the curmudgeon at the party. The book has received glowing reviews from virtually every person who has written one. And, I don’t get it.

It’s not that it’s a badly written book. Steinberger is an engaging writer, and he’s writing about food, one of my favorite topics. I even enjoyed the book. But his premise seems to be one that is touted left and right about French gastronomy, that it is spiraling into the abyss with little if any hope for rescue. He brings up lots of examples to illustrate his viewpoint, some of them repeatedly. But unless I’m missing something, not one of those vignettes proves his point, they’re completely subject to interpretation.

The book is written as a series of what seem to be separate essays. There’s little tying them together other than the over-arching subject matter of French Food and the French Restaurant Business. Each purports to delve into one aspect of this subject matter, with hands thrown up in despair at the state of the union. They just… well, don’t.

Steinberger brings up repeatedly through the book the disappearance of a few virtually unknown artesanal cheeses, and the decline in the number of raw milk cheeses being produced. At no point, however, does it seem to occur to him that this is a worldwide phenomenon in places that produce cheese. Raw milk and obscure cheeses are on the decline in Italy, Spain, Germany, the United States, amongst others.

He notes that there are now more Michelin starred restaurants in other countries in comparison to the numbers of them in France. But he glosses over that until relatively recently, Michelin simply didn’t offer guides to many of those other countries. Likewise he laments the chefs who no longer spend time in the kitchen of a single restaurant but have spread themselves thin with eateries not only across France, but in, dare we say it, other countries. It’s not unique to the French – chefs from all over the world have begun to do the same as they’ve realized that they can actually become rich if they don’t focus on a single restaurant – plus travel is now far easier than in days past – they’ve become businessmen. It’s the way of the industry these days.

He talks about the restaurant that turned him on to French cuisine, oh so many years ago, and uses the fact that decades later it just wasn’t all that, followed by another visit a few years later to find that it had closed, as more evidence…. Really? It couldn’t just be because it was under new ownership, with a different chef, and that it simply didn’t work out, this one restaurant. It was, after all, by his own statement, decades later. How many restaurants, Michelin starred or not, stay in business and maintain their quality levels over that time period?

And the straw that seems to be breaking the backs of the French is that, horror of horrors, people don’t seem to have the same regard for the Michelin guide that they used to. He dives into this topic with gusto in several parts of the book, noting how there have been internal changes at the company, a different vision and direction, politics, and other, well, rubbish. At no point does he note that “back in the day” when Michelin was king of guides, it was also pretty much the only guide. These days there are more guides for travelers and foodies than I’d care to undertake, and that doesn’t even touch on the rise of restaurant reviewing in every daily newspaper out there, in monthly and weekly magazines, Yelpers and Chowhounds and a zillion food blogs. Michelin doesn’t even review the restaurants, they just give a rating and expect that that’s enough. In the modern age of information, it’s not. And Michelin is not France. It’s just a book published there.

So, I reached the end of the book wondering, “what was the point of all that?” Yes, it was enjoyable, yes, there were a few points here and there that were even thought provoking, but overall, did it demonstrate anything with regard to the level of French cuisine? No. At best, it showed that other places now have equivalent or better – that’s not the same thing as a decline. Is the book worth picking up for a read? Meh. I’m not going to recommend against reading it, but if you do, think about the arguments Steinberger’s making and whether or not they make sense in the modern world.

There’s just nothing right about this, other than perhaps being a cute play on word pronunciation in Spanish…

…and the ads are inane. Just sayin’.