Girl Detective

We are not just what we eat but how we eat. The cultivation and consumption of our meals are activities as distinctively human as walking, talking, loving, and praying. Learning to regard the meal not merely as something that fills our bellies and helps us grow, but as the consummate exercise of beings carnal and earthbound yet upwardly and outwardly drawn, is a crucial step in the restoration of culture. The suggestion that the inculcation of such values might be an essential part of an adequate education ought to resonate beyond the confines of the doctrinaire Left.

At the American Conservative, “Food for Thought,” an argument that slow food and agricultural reform are not just trendy theories of the left.

Link from The Morning News.

I was fortunate enough to receive a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share last week and the week before, when a friend of a friend couldn’t pick it up. I just finished the last of the vegetables today, polishing off a white bean and garlic scape dip with kohlrabi matchsticks. It’s been a great learning experience to receive these boxes of local seasonal produce. It’s required thought, preparation (a LOT of lettuce washing; thank Gaia for the salad spinner), research, and trying new things, like sauteed radish and kohlrabi greens. But we ate the whole box of food.

And it was good.

Triptychs showing a packaged food from Germany, a closeup of the product on the packaging, and what the food looks like in real life.

Not for the weak of stomach. Or probably for the vegetarians out there. For example, “Fleischsalat” is what it sounds like. *shudder*

Link from The Morning News.

From Salon, a celebration of all things bacon:

Anthony Bourdain has called bacon the “gateway protein” for its astounding ability to lure vegetarians back to the carnivorous fold

Link from The Morning News
An earlier post with the same title

(Mostly unrelated, other than they all interested me)

When to wear sunscreen? Almost always. (Sheesh. Next they’ll tell us to wear it to bed.) (Link from The Morning News)

How to store bread? Only for a day or two, loosely in plastic, or in ceramic.

You can too wash mushrooms!

Josh Whedon’s internet comedy, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, is coming July 15, 2008. (Preview here. Link from Everybody Loves Saturday Night)

From the New York Times, “A Drink in Search of a Frosty Mug” (link from The Morning News)

Originally, root beers were more like herbal teas, bitter infusions of roots, vines, herbs and spices, including sarsaparilla, sassafras and licorice. Nowadays, the basic components include anise, wintergreen and vanilla, with the addition, perhaps, of flavors like ginger, cloves and mint.

Out of 25 brands (strangely not named), Sprecher of Wisconsin took the top slot. Sprecher is one of my favorites, along with 1919, made here in Minnesota.

Remember a few weeks ago when I celebrated a mother’s trifecta? Well, yesterday’s good fortune went on from there. Uninterrupted night’s sleep; hot coffee and pastry for breakfast; time to read in peace; kids playing independently so I could practice yoga; a double espresso (our machine’s still in the shop. Sigh) on the way to the park/pool; kids left pool without a fight; nap, reading and writing time; grilled Caesar, Duck confit and grilled duck on a date with my husband at St. Paul’s new Strip Club; browsing at the bookstore without buying; excellent chocolate desserts from Nick and Eddie’s excellent pastry chef. It was lovely.

Then last night was interrupted by 2yo Guppy crying for water in the wee small hours, and he was awake before 6am demanding love, attention and books. And today’s trip to the pool involved fights on either end. So life is more like usual. But yesterday was really great.

Spoilers below, as I discuss who won and who didn’t.

I found a lot of drama in the finale. I was surprised and impressed to see Lisa show us the chef she could be–not only getting along with her sous chef, but psyched to work with a pro, doing things she’d done badly before, but doing them well, like the prawns, the soup and the dessert, and overall having a sense of calm, and finally deserved sense of self confidence. She almost won; I don’t think ANYONE saw that coming .

I cry foul that they were required to do dessert. Dessert should always be extra credit for a chef.

I felt terrible for Richard. He’s a much more talented chef than his meal showed, and I think he put too much time into being clever (e.g., the dish titles) and not enough into making just really good food. His comment that he choked impressed me with its integrity, as it did Ted Allen. He didn’t bluster, he didn’t get defensive, he spoke out honestly in a way that probably was to Stephanie’s advantage.

Stephanie won for her pork, and in spite of her dessert. But I think her meal and her win show what we’ve seen all along–she’s a calm, steady, skilled chef, who impressed quietly with small innovations like the pistachios that Ted couldn’t stop talking about, rather than with big ones like Richard’s nitrogen and smoker. That she only won the one quickfire was an index of this, too. As far as I can say without having tasted her food, she deserved the win, and I think it’s weird that so many in the blogosphere assume shenanigans behind the scenes in the judging.

So, to Stephanie: good luck and well done! I hope to visit Chicago and eat in your restaurant someday.

To Richard: you are an honorable person and a great chef. You had a bad night, but you will have many more great ones.

To Lisa: you finally showed some positive spirit and some consistent cooking. Keep moving in that direction, and good luck.

Our Silvia espresso maker is in the shop to see if she can be repaired. My husband, G. Grod, and I miss her terribly.

From the Foo Fighter’s tour rider at the Smoking Gun, via ALoTT5MA. It is, not surprisingly, very funny and worth a look:

Bacon. I call it “god’s currency.” Hell, if it could be breathed, I would.
Bacon in any form is great. Not as an entree, but just in general.

Have other Top Chef viewers noted that bacon is like a secret power? Include it (well) in a dish, and you will win. And be thanked, more than once, for using bacon.

Former City Pages food critic Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl now writes for Minnesota Monthly. She had a great article on fish in the April issue. At current rates, most fished species will be extinct by 2048, and many fish contain unhealthy levels of toxic mercury. She uncovers a handful of fish, both wild and farmed, for guilt-free fish eating. Here’s a recap.

Local Stars:

Star Prairie trout from Wisconsin
Live tilapia from central Minnesota
Lake herring from Lake Superior

The Good Gulf:

Domestic catfish from southeast US
Crayfish from Louisiana and Oregon
Mussels Clams and Oysters from US and Canada
Domestic Crabs from US

Glamour Fish:

Wild Halibut and Salmon from Alaska and Pacific Northwest
Striped Bass from Atlantic Coast
Arctic Char from Iceland, Canada, Scandinavia
Barramundi, an Australian species farmed in the US

Jarred and Canned:

Lake herring caviar from MN
Domestic caviar
Sardines
Anchovies
Wild Alaskan salmon
Kippers
Herring

As for tuna, she recommends canned light and dolphin safe as the best bet for lower mercury.

Top Chef season 4, episode 7: Improv. Last night’s Top Chef contestants got a night out at Second City. Strangely, no one was suspicious that there was a hidden agenda.

Spoilers from here:

Only Nikki seemed to twig quickly to the upcoming challenge, three-word non-sequiteurs dishes invented Mad Lib style by the audience. I loved Richard’s idea of cooking tofu in rendered beef fat. Was anyone else reminded of the Buffy fast-food episode? But I find Richard a bit too aware of how clever he is. I think he’d do well to remember how he caved under pressure to produce a dish for 80. He’s a talented, innovative chef, but he doesn’t work in a restaurant like most of the others. Spike, also smug, redeemed himself by producing a perfect soup; he and Andrew did not get the onscreen kudos they deserved for making a pureed squash soup with just a food mill and no processor. As for those at the bottom, I found it discouraging to see only women on the chopping block. There’s a pathetic joke to be made about the lesbian not being able to pull off a phallic presentation of “orange turned-on asparagus,” but I won’t be the one to make it. I think Antonia and Lisa deserved their dressing down–doing a fish dish garnished with chorizo and a tequila sauce for “magenta drunk polish sausage” was extremely lame. Antonia did the same thing she did on the team challenge two weeks ago–refused to open her mind to something because it wasn’t to her standards. Jen did the same thing, sneering both at the polish sausage and the beer. I do think it’s fair that the quality of the food be the standard, I don’t think Stephanie and Jen got enough kudos for being more game to the challenge than Antonia/Lisa.

My guess is that Nikki and Mark, who held the middle ground, won’t be long for this show.

More commentary at The Kitchn but none yet at ALoTT5Ma.

The Kitchn is the dangerous food blog at dangerously cool Apartment Therapy, the site that featured those bookshelf stairs a few weeks ago. AT is dangerous because it shows all kinds of cool, covetable thing that I can’t afford. Kitchn is dangerous because it’s like foodie Alice down the rabbit hole–I see one recipe I like, then they link to another, and on and on. I only wish they had a good print feature for the recipes so I don’t have to cut and paste them into Open Office. Bonus points, as if needed, for their incisive recaps of Top Chef Chicago.

Bitten, on the other hand, at the NYT, has a very handy print feature. It’s the blog of Mark Bittman, patron cook of simple good food and a very knowledgeable commenting audience.

Third time’s a charm–my husband G. Grod and I FINALLY made it out to dinner to celebrate our birthdays from last month. We’d had to cancel the sitter twice due to the kids being sick, then our sitter went on Spring Break and, voila, a month had passed.

Nick and Eddie was my first choice based on recent good reviews in City Pages and Minnesota Monthly, which is the new host of my favorite local food writer, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl.

Loved: Our quiet table in a nook. One of the two breads–the lighter, sweeter one. G. Grod’s spicy steak entree over mashed potatoes and collard greens. My poached salmon. (While the potatoes with it weren’t done, the server was very nice about it, and comped my dessert.) Both our desserts: my butterscotch pudding, his chocolate roll up. The friendly, attentive but not intrusive service.

Liked: My pate appetizer, borscht, and the other, denser bread.

Regrets: Cold butter tore up the very good bread. I had to warm it over the candle. And I was very sad to choose between the butterscotch pudding and the spice cake, so I’ll have to go again and get that dessert.

Overall, good service, good meal, fabulous desserts.

I finally made it to Spoonriver, the newer restaurant of Minneapolis foodie legend, and genuinely nice person, Brenda Langton. A friend and I chose it over Cue before seeing Jane Eyre at the Guthrie.

Loved: The mushroom terrine appetizer–perfect for a winter evening. The beet ravioli with braised kale. Getting my veggies was a delight.

Liked: My friend’s special of a butternut squash enchilada was too heavily spiced for me, but the accompanying slaw was delicious and cool.

Regrets: We ran out of toasts before we ran out of terrine, and we ran out of time before we could order dessert.

Next time I’ll make time for dessert. And there will be a next time. Spoonriver was lovely.

From the Consumerist, 8 Worst Foods in America. (Link from The Morning News.)

From Best Life, 8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day (long-ago link from Blogenheimer.)

A seamless transition from Project Runway 4 to Top Chef 4. There’s a thread for comments at ALoTT5MA.

Watching food shows at night makes me hungry. Wait, MORE hungry.

Did you know that the little plastic spatulas in Play-doh sets are excellent for loosening cakes, brownies and muffins from “nonstick” pans?

Last week I was struggling to put on 2yo Guppy’s fuzzy snow suit.

Me: I do this because I love you! You want love, right?

Guppy: No!

Me (puzzled): What do you want, then?

Guppy: Tooh-tees! (Cookies)

I must admit, sometimes I want a cookie instead of love. Especially if it’s a Thunder Cookie from Positively Third Street Bakery, or a McVitie’s Milk Chocolate HobNob, which one of our grocery stores now carries. (I prefer plain chocolate to milk, but I’ll take what I can get.)

For Guppy’s birthday, I chose to make an old-fashioned double-layer chocolate cake with fluffy chocolate frosting. I’d not used the recipe before, and it was not easy. Things were further complicated because I was baking with the boys (”Drake! Don’t lick the spoon till AFTER it’s in the oven. Guppy, stop eating the flour! Get your hand out of the egg whites!”), an activity much better suited to simpler recipes that don’t have so much hanging on the finished product.

Only after the layers took forever to bake did I realize I’d used the wrong size cake pans–the recipe called for 9″; I only have 8″. I let the long-baking layers cool overnight, then attempted the frosting in the morning. The recipe called for it to be cooled in an ice bath to 70 degrees F, then whipped to a fluffy consistency. This all went fine until I stopped the mixer. The frosting immediately seized, because the room temp was about 65 degrees, as our 1917 boiler struggles to keep pace with the below-zero outside weather.

What to do? The cold, unyielding mess would tear apart the tender layers if I attempted it. A birthday cake with no frosting? I asked G. Grod to take the boys out of the kitchen so I could think. I then replaced my ice bath with a hot water bath, and asked G. Grod to get me the hair dryer. With a frosting spatula in one hand and the hair dryer in another, I frosted Guppy’s cake, while Drake watched quietly. The cake was saved; we all enjoyed it soon after that.

My anxiety tendencies are directly proportional to my caffeine intake. I love coffee, but I limit myself to the two cappuccinos my kind husband makes for me every morning. Last week, though, I had friends coming over for a playdate. I made a pot of coffee. I had one cup beyond my usual. I told myself that was it. But when they left, I found 12 ounces left of coffee. And because nothing succeeds like excess, I heated it up, added a tablespoon and a half of the fancy French cocoa mix a friend gave me, and I enjoyed every drop.

I also enjoyed how energized I was that afternoon. I wrote entries for this weblog. I read all my feeds. I did the dishes.

And then I crashed, just as 22mo Guppy woke from his nap, and 4yo Drake finished preschool. I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in a post-sugarbomb fugue. I was so fatigued I felt ill. So I’m back to two capps a day. I’ve learned my lesson. But I can’t promise how long I’ll remember it.