Archives for the 'Food Writing' Category
Review of ‘Gallo Be Thy Name’
My review (download PDF) of Jerome Tuccille’s recent release Gallo Be Thy Name: The Inside Story of How One Family Rose to Dominate the U.S. Wine Market, appears in the newest issue of the Journal of Wine Economics, just released today.
Tuccille is a good writer, and neither fawns over his subject nor takes needless swipes. He and the Gallo boys definitely grabbed my attention from the beginning, and held it until the end. A background snip:
The “inside story” of the Gallo wine empire and its progenitors, brothers Ernest and Julio, Gallo Be Thy Name is an engaging and thoughtful look at the making of the world’s largest privately held, family-owned winemaker. Jerome Tuccille, author of more than two-dozen books—including respective biographies of Donald Trump and Alan Greenspan, four novels, and several how-to guides—mostly succeeds in the endeavor. While readers of true crime and celebrity tell-alls will no doubt revel in Tuccille’s tales of murder, familial rancor, deception, and mafia dealings, devotees of wine economics will appreciate Tuccille’s faithful recounting of the Gallo family’s saga as a story of two sons of an Italian-immigrant family rebuilding the American wine market, one jug at a time. From exposing the Gallo family’s well-guarded successes during Prohibition to its post-Prohibition expansion and subsequent boom as the result of savvy marketing and distribution decisions, Tuccille shows Ernest and Julio together possessed a unique ability to respond to the demands of the American wine consumer across more than seven turbulent decades.
[...]
Perhaps the most interesting competitive advantage Gallo Winery enjoyed was the result of familial competition between the brothers themselves. It’s a story of specialization Adam Smith himself would love. Ernest’s goal, writes Tuccille, was to sell more wine than Julio could produce, while Julio’s aim was to produce more than Ernest could sell. When Ernest outdid Julio in this respect, the brothers began to buy grapes from other Napa growers so that supply could keep up with demand. While Tuccille makes clear that Ernest was a businessman nonpareil, it’s possible Julio, the expert winemaker, lost the competition because his heart was elsewhere. From early on in their venture, Julio had hoped that the American wine palate—dulled by the strong liquor and sweet wine prevalent during Prohibition—might recover its senses so that he could make the dry, high-quality, varietal wines he preferred. Still, the market forced Julio for decades to produce a stable of cheap, sweet, nondescript reds and whites. Julio’s lifelong wish would not come to fruition until near the time of his death several decades later.
Buy the book here. Subscribe to the journal–which has published some really interesting research (this, for example)–here. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I have consistently had a succession of 1.5L jugs of Carlo Rossi Paisano on my kitchen countertop since I read the book, and question your sanity if you, too, do not do the same.
Food and Horoscopes? Keep Your Chakra Out of My Peanut Butter
Food’s hot. Big news. Can’t get enough of reading about food, can you? Nope, else you’d be reading a knitting blog right now.
But, yeah, food’s hot. How hot? Hot enough that right at this very moment, food stories hold three of the top seven spots on the NYT’s most e-mailed list.
But that’s nothing. Food’s hot enough that the horoscope printed in the Fayetteville Flyer–the Arkansas city’s svelte and sickly free weekly–ties the current Virgo horoscope (my horoscope) to American food policy.
Does that make any sense? You be the judge. Here’s what horoscope author “Risa[, the] Founder & Director of the Esoteric & Astrological Studies & Research Institute, a contemporary Wisdom school, in Santa Cruz, California” thinks about “the present U.S. food situation,” courtesy the aforementioned horoscope, as posted at her Night Light News website:
If we research, examine and analyze the present U.S. food situation we quickly realize our food (Virgo) system isn’t working and that a restructuring (Saturn) of our food’s quality, sources and distribution is needed immediately. Let’s look at some information. It seems major U.S. corporations actually own much of our organic foods (farms); a handful of corporations own most of the seed companies; large organic health food stores may not be what they seem; many people are no longer cooking; and few families eat together. It is important for us to be informed. Below I have listed various websites to read concerning the state of our food industry.
The issues are energy production, ownership and distribution. In the Transition Town Movement/Initiative (TTMI), emerging from Permaculture design, there is a focus on creative adaptations leading to a sustainable future and one of the major subjects is agriculture and food production.
Food quality, production and distribution and the changes needed fall under the jurisdiction of Virgo, Saturn in Virgo and Saturn in Virgo opposite Uranus…
Ah, Uranus. Holder of jurisdiction over food quality. Of course.
Actually, when it comes to food-policy analysis, about 95% of what Risa writes is well within the contemporary mainstream. In fact, it sadly reads just like a Michael Pollan piece. And that includes his nonsensical NYT op-ed on big food and big insurance–which currently holds the number one spot on that NYT most e-mailed list pictured above.
Reminiscing About Tea Times
Rachel Laudan, a historian and excellent blogger and writer who lives in perhaps my favorite place on earth (Guanajuato, Mexico), has a great post up reminiscing about her early childhood memories of tea-making. A snip, culled specifically for the Crispy audience due to its regulatory focus:
My grandparents always had at least a hundred cows in milk. But they were now all Friesians (Holsteins) because the British Milk Marketing Board paid by volume not fat content.
Well, now, we couldn’t drink that kind of milk, could we? So my grandparents had a dear little Channel Island cow that gave the most glorious rich milk. It was a bit of an indulgence, I realize in retrospect. An “old chap,” one of the farm workers who was now past heavy work, had to milk her by hand morning and evening. What the cost per pint can have been I cannot even imagine.
But if you just like evocative writing, too, there’s this:
My grandparents bought a selection of different teas from Stokes the grocer in the town three miles away. Depending on their preference for the day, different proportions were spooned from different caddies in a flat caddy spoon and added to the pot. Then came the boiling water, and water for the water pot too, and tea cozies to keep them warm.
Then the whole equipage was carried up the couple of steps to the breakfast room (they ate almost all meals in the breakfast room because the dining room filled up with farm paperwork).
I’ve got some of my own tea memories. My dad drank about fifteen cups of Salada per day from one of a variety of ample chowder-cup style mugs, two teabags per cup, steeped four minutes, with enough milk that the drink looked more milk than tea in the end. (He’s since switched to Earl Grey, but the routine’s the same.) My mom, on the other hand, takes hers with sugar in a proper teacup, one tea bag dunked fourteen times in rapid succession just after pouring so she could drink it just off the boil.
Me? I preferred coffee. (Still do.)
I don’t know Stokes or a flat caddy spoon from my arse, but all I know from reading Laudan is that I want to know them both. And the water pot and tea cozies. More here.
Notes from My ASFS/AFHVS Conference Presentation: Arsenic and Trans Fats
Yesterday I sat on a panel on local and state food policies at the 2009 Joint Annual Meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) at Penn State, in beautiful (really!) State College, PA. I presented a paper I authored on California’s mushrooming food bans and regulations, and the impact of these crackdowns on the future of American food. (Tremendously short synopsis: their impact is very bad.)
I think my presentation went very well. And I’m looking forward to sharing the paper with Crispy readers once it’s in finished form.
Though things went well, probably the most interesting moments of my presentation came as a result of the rather unpleasant man to the right. He sat in the back of the room during my presentation and interrupted me at least twice as I spoke. He seemed incredulous at some of my conclusions, asking at one point (as I discussed California’s foie gras ban), “Where’s your evidence?”
I later learned the heckler is Tufts University project developer and research associate Hugh Joseph, Ph.D. (nutrition). So much for academic freedom.
After my presentation ended, I called on Joseph first during the Q&A. Instead of asking a question, he offered a backhanded compliment and then went on a rather lengthy screed against my work. I requested that he please ask a question.
The best Joseph could do was ask me how the hypothetical presence of arsenic in a food would differ from the presence of trans fat in food. I responded that arsenic is a deadly poison, while trans fat is a food ingredient that helps make tasty things like frosting.
Joseph clearly didn’t like my answer.
“I think you need to take a science class,” Joseph scolded.
“I think you need to learn some manners,” I responded.
Minutes later, Joseph left the room. Perhaps in search of the etiquette that clearly eludes him.
This Week in Bacon
Today’s the day, bacon fans. Heather Lauer’s long-awaited paean to bacon–which she may have announced publicly the existence thereof for the first time right here at Crispy–is released today.
To write the book, Lauer, proprietor of Bacon Unwrapped, traveled the country to learn the story of bacon from the people who raise the pigs, serve up bacon, and create cutting-edge bacon dishes.
Order your copy of Bacon: A Love Story: A Salty Survey of Everybody’s Favorite Meat today. Kindle it here.
Congrats Heather!
The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name
Obviously, I’m referring to the love of cilantro.
And now, one man has come out of the closet with a impressive blog defense of Coriandrum sativum. I give you: Fuck Yeah Cilantro.
The blog’s motto:
IF YOU DON’T LOVE CILANTRO WITH ALL YOUR HEART I WILL FIGHT YOU
NO JOKE
Enjoy.
Via The Agitator
The Solution to Childhood Obesity
My piece on last month’s SoBe Wine & Food panel on getting kids to eat healthy, which featured Rachael Ray, Tom Colicchio, and the superb Brian Wansink, is up at Reason.com. A sample.
On its face, a panel featuring a daytime talk-show host, high-end restaurateur and head judge on Bravo’s hit Top Chef, diet-book author, uber-rich foodie mom, and New York Times writer wouldn’t appear to pose any danger to the restaurants-make-us-fat myth. (This year’s panel at least had better myth-busting potential than last year’s, which featured celebrity chefs—and torrid food nannies—Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters.)
But the overwhelming message of the panel was that parents—not the government or restaurants—are ultimately responsible for what their kids eat.
Whole thing here.
Miracle fruit man
The Miami Herald devoted some space last week to Curt Mozie, the retired postman whose miracle fruit trees hit the big time a few years ago.
“There are two major reasons miracle fruit has become popular recently, and one of them is Curtis Mozie,” said Adam Leith Gollner, author of The Fruit Hunters, a book that devotes a chapter to the history of the miracle fruit. “The fruit languished in obscurity, until Curtis came along and decided there was a venture in making this available to the public.”
That’s one reason, but what was the other? I’d guess it was my friend David Barzelay hosting his first miracle fruit party in DC in early 2007. At the time it was very hard to find the berries, with David having to track Curtis down through comments he’d left on message boards. That party led to our blog posts being picked up by BoingBoing, my own parties ending up in the Wall Street Journal and the BBC, and a typically behind-the-times NYT trend piece a year later.
At the time, I think the berries were $1 apiece and Mozie had plenty on hand. Today:
Mozie now ships out roughly 3,000 miracle fruit a week, for $3 a pop and sometimes can’t keep pace with the demand.
Curtis is a nice guy and I’m happy to see him doing so well in retirement with these improbable berries.
I’ve also been meaning to review Gollner’s Fruit Hunters book. It’s entertaining throughout and very informative; until reading it I had no conception of just how vast the world of fruit is and how our markets barely scratch the surface of the planet’s wondrous offerings. It’s some of the best food writing I’ve read in the past few years.
I Like Herb
This morning’s Journal has a fun article sure to make the rounds of the foodie blogosphere:
After picking up a vegetable burrito on his way home from work, Mike Racanelli planted himself in front of his television and took a bite. The smell hit him immediately: cilantro.
Irate, the 29-year-old Chicago band manager drove 20 miles back to the Mexican restaurant where he’d bought the offending item, threw it on the counter, he recalls, and “raised hell,” demanding a cilantro-free replacement “immediately.”
…
But few foods elicit such heated negative reactions. Many people say it tastes soapy, rotten or just plain vile. Just a whiff of it is enough to make them push away their plates.
Cilantro lovers say it has a refreshing, lemony or limelike flavor that complements everything from guacamole to curry. It’s a key ingredient in a range of ethnic cuisines, including Mexican, Indian and Chinese.
Worth reading in full. And, for the record, I’m firmly in the tastes-like-lemon-who-loves-it-on-Mexican-food category. IIRC our own Baylen stands in the polar camp. Pistols at dawn!
UPDATE: OK, so Baylen does like it. Good to hear. Together we man the cilantro ramparts, brothers-in-arms!
Food and Books–These are a few of my favorite things
I’ve been on a blogging hiatus for a couple of months because December was occupied by cooking–the morning hour that I typically devote to blogging/internet wandering was consumed by cookie and bread baking–and January was devoted to moving.
It was in the process of laying my hands on everything I own that, even though I have purged them from time to time, I realized I own a lot of cookbooks. There were few I was willing to purge, but I virtuously boxed the majority of them for storage, keeping back only essential volumes.
This moderation though is I fear a matter of perspective. When I moved into my new digs, the oldest daughter of the family unpacked and shelved my books for me.
“You have a lot of cookbooks!” she said in awed and somewhat intimidated tones.
“Rather,” I conceded and then added, “There are another two or so boxes in the attic. And two boxes of magazines.”
She stared at me blankly. You could see that she was not quite sure what to do with this information about my character. Being a sensible child though, she decided to focus on her enlightened self interest and started to read The Cake Bible and suggest what cake I should make for her upcoming birthday.
I own a lot of cookbooks, but not as many as I would like. True, I think the cookbook industry is a tad out of control. (I am informed for example that Sweden produces a cookbook a day for a nation of not quite 9 million people. Go figure.) But then that’s why we have the market to sort these things out. Also true, I could get rid of 90 percent of my books and still have more recipes than I could ever use, and yes the Internet is a great resource that I use all the time. But for me there’s still nothing like a book.
And thanks to the Internet, from time to time I am going to inflict some of them on you.
Diners Hash Out Plans to Weather Recession
I love me a good diner. And I’m even willing to tolerate a subpar one if the structure is as ancient as the waitresses–who must be named something like Bertha, and the kitchen staff something like Hank–and they’ll let me sit there for a while.
Thus I was pleased to see the Washington City Paper’s Tim Carman has a nice piece up today on the place of diners in tough economic times. Right off the bat, Carman nails why anyone worth knowing loves a diner:
There’s something about sitting in a diner, sipping coal-black coffee and shoveling down a syrupy stack of silver-dollar pancakes, that makes you want to spill your guts for hours.
Carman points out that though diners aren’t totally recession-proof, they are (like McDonald’s) capable of and experienced at weathering the financial storm.
If you’re the owner of a restaurant in a recession,” says [American City Diner's Jeffrey] Gildenhorn, “you want to own a diner.”
My favorite diner of all time–my favorite place of all time, ahead of, say, the Duomo in Florence, or Fenway Park–was the old Post Office Diner in Beverly, Mass., where I grew up. I’d go every Sunday morning, without fail, with my grandmother.
Best eggs, toast, home fries, and coffee–which I started drinking at age six–ever. Some Sundays, I’d make my parents take me back for a lunch of lightly salted tuna on a top-split hot dog bun, fries, and a coffee frappe.
I have vehemently hated the French (all of them) since the local Franco-American Club–the landowner–evicted the P.O.D. to make room for parking.
After French people ruined my childhood, I’d have to settle on the Agawam Diner in Rowley, Mass., or the Portside Diner (in nearby Danvers, where my parents now live).
Anyone else have a favorite diner? (Hint: if you are worth talking to, the answer is “yes.”) Where’s it at?
What are you Dudes Cookin’ for ‘National Men Cook Dinner Day’?
In honor of today being National Men Cook Dinner Day, I give you manly con carne, courtesy of AskMen.com lifestyle correspondent James Raiswell.
Also featured are XXX ribs and the very, very, very disturbingly named man-sized meatballs in tomato sauce.
As Ask Men’s Johnny Testa noted in an email to me, these meals are mainly manly, yet enjoy broad enough appeal that “even Grandma” could and would fix ‘em up for Biff, Chet, Rex, or any manly man so graced with a manly name. And who eats with a machete and rope (pictured at right) easily at hand.
But at least for today, fellas, in honor of the holiday, why not get your skillets at the ready and show Grandma your “golf-ball sized meatballs”? She’ll love you for it.
Edible Googly Eyes Made of Malted Milk, Atheism
The New York Times food section is always a joy, with its declarations that a $65 sushi prix fixe is “affordable” dining, its demands that we schlep to Brooklyn for the authentic experience of drinking beer made in Utica, and articles titled things like “Vinegars Hear Muses of Long Ago.” (All this, just in yesterday’s edition!)
But the good people at the NYT have let me (and Serious Eats) down. In an article about food-based science projects, they failed to property identify a flying spaghetti monster, captioning it: “Malted milk ball eyes atop a noodle monster.”
But some of us know anti-creationist humor when we see it. reason’s Jesse Walker explains:
Behold the Flying Spaghetti Monster, noodle-god of the Pastafarians….The monster was created—or revealed?—by Bobby Henderson when Kansas decided to teach “intelligent design” alongside evolution. “I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” he wrote to the state board of education in 2005, urging that this theory receive equal time.
For an brilliant, obsessive account of how to make your own edible googly eyes without a single drop of divine intervention, go here.
For a comprehensive source on flying spaghetti monster sightings, go here.
Lunch Buffet
–Gym’s new bacon smell not conducive to client’s austere treadmilling, reports the Bolton News.
–Why fake foods? “Because we can,” says a food marketing professor, thus explaining Tofurky and Bacos, in the Chicago Tribune.
–Happy National Pretzel Month!
–Cooking in a restaurant (shocker!) harder than it looks for home cook/reporter, notes Miami Herald writer.
–Demand in China is fueling turtle poaching in the U.S., laments the Lakeland Ledger. (Thanks, Brad, for the tip.)
I Made Mooseburgers, Sarah Palin!
I have an article up today at Culture 11, which has been called “a more right-oriented version of Slate,” on the quest to get to know the real Sarah Palin by seeking out, making, and eating mooseburgers.
My quest was fruitless for a time, and eventually successful thanks to the wonder that is Craigslist, and the kindness of strangers. A snippet:
In desperation, I placed an ad on Craigslist in Vermont under the “barter” section. I figured if moose meat isn’t legal to sell, maybe I could instead legally barter for it instead. My pitch:
Need Moose Meat ASAP (Washington, DC)
I am a DC writer and will trade you fame (I’ll mention you in my article) in exchange for enough edible moose meat to make me some burgers. I need it ASAP. Moose meat is illegal to sell, so I cannot offer you any money.
In less than 24 hours, I received a response from hunter extraordinaire Phyllis Campbell, who asked for my address so she could FedEx me some moose meat.
[...]
Campbell described the seven-hour ordeal of hauling the behemoth to her truck in a detailed letter she sent me along with the meat. She paints a scene filled with brawny imagery — power winches, a marine battery, chains, a 16-foot trailer, and a Ford F150.
But she also told me that “part of the joy of hunting is sharing what I get.”
And now Campbell’s hard work and joy were in my grateful hands, ready to meet the fire.
I discuss the recipe I developed in the piece, and hashed it out below.
So what did I learn about Palin? Read the article and find out.
