Accidental Hedonist

I’m not sure that Pete Wells what is trying to say in his most recent piece in the New York Times.

Last week’s episode of “Top Chef” ended in a volley of profanity, as half the contestants cursed the other half.

The first line of an article about the chef David Chang in The New Yorker last month contained a profane quotation from Mr. Chang. So did the last line. So did many of the lines in between.

But even Mr. Chang at his most vivid comes across as an instructor at vacation Bible school compared with Gordon Ramsay. On his shows “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Kitchen Nightmares,” Mr. Ramsay leaps outside the bounds of broadcasting rules so often that the Web site Television Without Pity begins its summaries of each episode with something it calls (give or take a word here or there) Gordon Ramsay’s Bleep-O-Meter.

The issue from my point of view (and as Mr. Wells alludes to), is less about the chefs, and more about the media that allows and highlights the colorful vocabulary. At some point in the past ten years, highlighting the machismo and the aggressiveness of the folks in the back of the restaurant. The question is, why the change?

Perhaps it’s because of the aura of the 5 star chefs over the previous generation, where the kitchens were perceived as the pinnacle of perfection. This aura included, not just the food, but the professionalism of the staff.

Since the time of the arrival of Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential, this has aura has been changed. Now it seems as if there’s this expectation of colrful characters making the food.

My guess (and it is a guess, having not been in the back of a restaurant in almost twenty years now), is that the reality is somewhere in between the two extremes. As with every profession, you’ll have bullies and professionals. What the press seems to want to promote is the former, while the latter still work in relative obscurity.

But are chefs too profane? *shrugs*. Does it matter? Are rock stars too profane? Cabbies? Steel Workers? I’m not sure why the question is relevant.

Telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat is cultural imperialism — and deeply disturbing. That a group of people could say, “You know, how you eat and how you’ve been eating for hundreds, if not thousands, of years — traditional Jewish cuisine, Western European food since Roman times — that is wrong and should not be allowed.” I find that offensive. Ethnically insensitive, jingoistic, xenophobic, anti-human and disrespectful of the diversity of cultures on this planet, and for human history. But that’s just the kind of law that has passed — in Chicago, our second city, no less. It’s a win for the forces of darkness, willful ignorance and intolerance.

I’ve not much more to add to that. Read the entire article on Salon for a full accounting.

Via Megnut

Technorati Tags: Foie Gras

If this rumor about foie gras is true then I have the following question:

Is Michael Panter…

a) an idiot?
b) clueless?
c) looking to score ‘easy’ political points?

According to Anthony Bourdain, freshmand New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Panter (who happens to be a vegetarian) will introduce a bill making production and sale of foie gras in that state a crime. Mr. Bourdain explains that “D’Artagnan, the premier supplier of foie gras and foie-gras related products for New York tri state area restaurants and retail would be forced to go out of business or move elsewhere”.

Look, I’ve mentioned this before. This isn’t so much an issue about foie gras as it as about having a government dictate choices based on morality…a morality, by the way, that not everyone shares. Imagine if an assemblyman wanted to ban veal or horsemeat. Oh wait, too late for that one.

I would like to point out that many New Jersey farms were dealt a serious financial blow with the latest Spinach/E. Coli outbreak. They paid a financial penalty for a problem in which they were not the cause. I would love to hear how much attention Assemblyman Panter is giving that issue, and whether that issue is more or less important than the foie gras one. I, for one, would be thrilled to know how Panter would like to prevent tainted spinach from other parts of the country reach his constituents’ tables, and how much effort and work he is putting in to reach those ends.

Technorati Tags: Food Politics, Foie Gras

According to the NY Post, world traveler and cult chef icon Anthony Bourdain is stranded in war-ravaged Beirut yesterday after Israeli forces bombed the city’s international airport and blockaded all of Lebanon’s ports. Mr. Bourdain states:

“Our network, our friends and our families just want us out of here as soon as possible,” Bourdain told Page Six yesterday afternoon, as Israeli shells exploded in the distance. “We’re not getting a show out of this . . . I just wanna hang out and drink at the bar. The mojitos here are great.

I’m not sure, but I think somehow, somewhere, Papa is smiling.

Technorati Tags: Beirut, Anthony Bourdain

If you look at the picture to the right, you’ll see a pile of a substance sitting next to the egg. At the mere mention of this product people have been known to shudder, gag, and deny its right to exist.

What you see there is a Pennsylvania Dutch product known as scrapple. As you can guess, it’s fairly popular in Pennsylvania, and can be found throughout surrounding states and the Mid-Atlanitc region with only a minimal amount of searching. But once you end up west of say, Cincinnati, it’s near impossible to locate.

Scrapple is one of those farm products made to use every bit of a downed pig. Back in the day (say, before the era of supermarkets and readily available foodstuffs) a farm had to make food last. It makes use of those parts of slaughtered food animals that can’t be eaten on their own, such as the meaty parts of hog heads, hearts, some liver, and other scraps.

It’s for this reason that scrapple is looked upon with much disdain. It is of my own opinion that those who do the disdaining have never sat down and actually, you know, eaten the stuff. It is typically eaten at breakfast in place of other pork products (such as bacon or sausage). It is often cut into thin slices, fried until the outsides form a crust, although I must admit to not having enough patience to let it remain a slice. While frying in the pan, I often poke and prod it often enough to have it become more of a pile of scrapple rather than a slice.

What does scrapple taste like? Think Bacon and sausage mixed with corn meal, and you’ll have a good start. Typically salty like most cured pork products with a fair amount of pork fat mixing ever so lovingly in the corn meal. Depending on who makes it, you can tasteeverything from sage and hungarian paprika, to the more basic salt and ground pepper. It’s one of those dishes that you have to taste before you truly understand just how good it is.

Back to the fear that scapple causes. It’s this use of hog parts often left on the butchers floor that cause this irrational distaste of scrapple. This is a recent development, probably started over here in the States, as it used to be common practice to use every bit of every animal, whether as food or as some other product. This is something that many chefs realize, and now you find chefs such as Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali and Fergus Henderson all advocating the use of bits and pieces that we often throw away. In fact, if you pick up Chef Henderson’s book “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating“, you’ll find ingredients such as warm pig’s head, ox tongue, roast bone marrow, calf’s heart, brawn (headcheese), jellied tripe, rolled pig’s spleen, duck neck terrine, duck hearts on toast, many recipes for lamb’s brain, sweet breads, blood cake (made with 1 quart of pig’s blood), pig’s cheek and tongue, gratin of tripe, haggis, deviled kidneys, and lamb’s kidneys.

I place the blame of our disdain for these parts squarely on the shoulders of supermarkets. Most of these products do not have a lond shelf life, nor do they fit the aesthetic image that the meat counters wish to display. As such, one would often have to ask for these parts. Before long, they were quickly forgotten and tossed aside.

It’s a tradition we can get back quite easily. If you wish to see if it’s worth it, I highly recommend starting with scrapple, in order for you to see just exactly what can be done with these parts.

SIDE NOTE: Major Kudos to Tara, for not only trying scrapple, but for liking it. She and I have discussed scrapple before in which she raised some concerns. When I was able to procure some, there was a little bit of anxiety surrounding it’s place on our breakfast table. However, once tasted, the majority of the anxiety vanished. Another scrapple fan created!

How cool is this?!? I was unable to make it to Sur la Table to exchange sardonic barbs with Msr. Bourdain, but one of my spies was able to make it in and convinced the Chef to autograph his latest and greated Cookbook…his first.

What can you say about a cookbook author who introduces his gigot de spet hueres this way:

“That’s right: seven hour leg of lamb. That leaves you plenty of time for prepping additional courses, a long nap, and catching up on the taped episodes of The Simpsons you’ve been meaning to watch.”

There’s much to like in the book, including the intro chapters. Instead of explaining the food and history of the food, he instead pummels you with basic philosphy of cooking.(Deep prep, prep and Final Assembly). He gives you a head up on how to score good ingredients.

He talks about knives: The sharper the better, and if you use a dull knife, you’re bound to ruin your dish.

He also tells of the importance of stock, and why it adds that extra “pow” to your soups and sauces.

The book is not surprisingly filled with meat recipes (There’s even a chapter called “Blood & Guts”). It gives you recipes on all cuts of meats and he gives special improvisational advice on possible recipe alternatives. I think I’m gonna dig this.

Oh.. he added a cassoulet recipe!

Yes, I’m definately gonna dig this.

Many thanks to Tara who stood in line to get his autograph and also managed to pick me up a Hum-Bow while down at the Pike Place Market. Life is good.

Curse my job in Redmond!

Anthony Bourdain, writer of two of my fav Food books (Kitchen Confidential & A Cook’s Tour) will be at the Sur la Table at the Pike Place Market next Monday, November 8th between noon and 2pm.

He’ll be pimpin’ his new cook book,impressively titled Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking.

It’s a cliche to call him the bad boy of the food industry, but he is blunt and has informed opinions. It’s certainly worth the time to see him.