Goodbye Fusion, Molecular Cooking, Fashionista Chefs, French soufflés….Tonight I’m going to dine on the ancient food of Persia, the great sprawling empire of the Middle East a couple of millennia ago – and the first global food power. a non-pareil food hub. I’m going to the source of so much of our food - What don’t we owe to Persia and the fertile triangle of the Middle East - starting with our mother food, wheat, and barley, pistachios, dates, figs, pomegranates, dates, leavened bread, don’t forget spinach and the saffron which tints the region gold or the apricots that Marco Polo so enjoyed. He was one of the travelers along the silk road from Europe to China which ran through Persia, a conduit for world wide trade that enhanced the local cooking with eggplant, lemons, oranges, rice….   more »

Any woman who read and despaired after reading Mireille Guiliano's 2004 book, "French Women Don't Get Fat," can now indulge in schadenfreude. "Obviously, French women do get fat!" Elsa Lafon, the daughter of the French publisher of the book, told Geraldine Baum of the Los Angeles Times .

Already, 42% of the French population is either overweight or obese, according to the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). The rate among children and adolescents has quadrupled in the last 25 years and has been growing almost as fast as in the United States.

"If you look at the statistical curve, we're now where the U.S. was in the 1970s," said Olivier Andrault, a food expert with the French Union of Consumers. "It means if we do nothing, in a few years the French will be as fat as Americans."

The country noticed its expanding waistline in the late 1990s, when a once-a-decade study by Inserm turned up a slight increase in the numbers of obese women. It was a statistical blip, but epidemiologists, aware of the pandemic elsewhere, launched more frequent studies -- and found a growing trend.

In fact, the Mme. Guiliano's title was changed in France to These French Women Who Don't Get Fat: How They Do it." No, they don't eat red wine, chocolate, foie gras. They diet. Same old same old. And while the book was a hit in North America, it sold only modestly to more realistic French women.

The Sri Lankan Fortress Resort is offering the ultimate verrine - the $14,500 Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence reflecting a centuries old fishing practice that can still be seen along the country’s coastline even today.

A combination of a gold leaf Italian kasata, flavoured with Irish cream and served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a bubbly-based sabayon is topped by an 80-carat aquamarine stone nestled on the handmade chocolate stilt fisherman.

Much is promised: the verrine will enhance relationships, give the eater foresight, courage and happiness, a long and happy marriage. And the recipient is going to be delightfully surprised. An understatement i think.

Romantics say all food is life. Correction: all food is politics. Once all food was loveable. Now the plate is cracked with controversy. Even pasta, pasta the mother food of Italy, is shadowed with doubt and fear. This time it isn’t coming from the likes of Marinetti, a futurist poet of the ‘30s, a Mussolini-ite, who declared “ “Pasta asciutta is anti-virile”, hoping to unleash the dogs of war. Marinetti’s fighting diet was drastic fusion - cooked salame immersed in a bath of hot black coffee flavoured with eau-de-cologne.

This time pasta is being threatened by biofuels! On September 13, almost half of the Italian population went on a pasta strike. Why? Because the price of pasta, the cheapest food in the country – and Italians eat 60 kilos of pasta a year - had risen 20% in the past year. The Italians don’t grow enough wheat to feed their passion and must import what they need. Now bad weather all over the world has jacked up wheat prices. Worse, farmers are planting less wheat and more corn to capitalize on the growing global demand for ethanol. Chew on this eaters. Food is now less important than the fuel for the SUV.    more »

“That’s hot” said the winemaker quoting Paris Hilton the savant of our age. And why not? We are sitting in the dining room of One which has just opened in the Hazelton Hotel, Toronto’s first five-star hotel – a temple of luxe with its own screening room. We too are enjoying a delightful show: we look out on the most inviting sidewalk café in town. Overnight, the corner of Yorkville and Hazelton has been transformed. And who do we see lounging on the sofas, adorning the lunch tables under the big black umbrellas, trolling the café that wraps around the hotel, why dozens of Paris Hiltons, long, lean, streaked blondes. Well this is TIFF after all. “Even the servers look like Paris Hilton” marvels the winemaker.

Paris is perfect for One, which is an ubercountry club where the elite meet. I am sorry now I hadn’t advised the winemaker to wear his polo shirt because this is Ralph Lauren country, a throwback to the informal elegance of the equestrian class, strawhaired moppets and whippet-lean women.    more »

This week a New York judge struck down an NYC law that ordered all fast-food restos to post calorie accounts of its portions. The judge suggested that the law should include other restos.

A new battle in the Food Wars is exposed. The Food Police are out to get fast-food joints, easy targets because of their reliance on deadly transfats, so much so that they're overreaching. The dept of health and mental hygiene which promoted the law pontificates that consumers are being deprived of "important information" and accused the fast-food outlets of being "so ashamed of what they are serving that they would rather go to court than post calorie information where their customers can actually use it."

Absolute rubbish! The fast-food restos already VOLUNTARILY post calorie counts for their portions and right above the counter (I've seen them). Of course you do have to read and know how to count and it's often difficult to believe that the Food Police are able to do either.

Food police groups support the rule because obesity rates have doubled among US adults and tripled among children in the past 25 years and more needs to be done to make sure consumers know what they're eating.

OK Food Police, examine yourselves. For those past 25 years, nutritionists have urged complex carbs on eaters and demonized fat. In that period, and this is from the Chief of Food Police himself, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of PUblic Health, people have grown fatter by 20 lbs. All carbs, complex or not, are fattening. They're the most fattening food we can eat. Nutritionists also originally backed transfats, margarines etc, which belatedly, they were chagrined to discover, are the deadliest foods of all.

Now we're told alot of fat, ie fatty acids, are very good for us. 61% of pig fat is good for us. Yippee. We're not going to get fat on good fat moreover.

So instead of the Food Police targeting fast-food as the villain why don't they be logical?

If it's important that we all know the calories in what we eat -- then every resto should post a calorie count chart.

Writing today in the LA Times, Regina Schrambling defines the fate of restaurant reviewing: BG and AG, before and after Google. Before Google there was the individual print critic whose authority lay mainly in their wide distribution and the convention of anonymity. AG, everyone's blogging food criticism and anonymity is out the window. After all, what's prose beside a pretty pic of Danyelle Freeman, the former actress who started a blog restaurantgirl and found herself plastered all over the Daily News as their new resto critic. Now each review is overlaid by her face!

I feel sorry for Craig LeBan of the Philadelphia Inquirer who got outed when he was sued by a restaurant for doing his job - now every restaurateur knows for sure who he is. I don't feel so sorry about Jonathan Gold of the L.A Express whose face was broadcast after he won a Pulitzer. He looks the way a resto critic should look - ie, like someone who likes to eat.

The fact that food criticism won a Pulitzer may mean that America is going to take food more seriously. Maybe Gold's going to be promoted to politics the way one of a Sultan's favourite chefs was rewarded for a uniquely delicious dish by being made keeper of the Sublime Porte. It'd be kinda fun to see Thomas Keller as the next National Security Advisor. Far more likely alas would be the appointment of one of the Food Taliban, those who want to make us eat what they decree we should eat, ethically and nutritionally. Imagine putting the whole nation on a l00-mile diet.!

The downside of toiling in a wildly overcrowded, overexposed and litigious field is that resto reviewers are now targeted on blogs. I was accused of being a racist because I didn't like Chinese food and made a joke about it - that was however before the lack of Chinese food safety became a global scandal. I could have taken that up with my accuser -- but of course like most bloggers, he hid behind a cute pseudonym, something like fatboy or gutsforgarters or lovin' spoonfuls... Blogs are the first refuge of the passive-aggressive.

How peachy it must have been to be Gael Greene in the sixties! The courtly Southern francophile Craig Claiborne was at the NYT. He was the interpreter of restaurant to diner. At New York Magazine, Greene was a storm trooper who assaulted the old school of pretentious and snobbish restaurants where the maitre d's sorted the welcome from the unwelcome guest. In his book In Search of the Perfect Meal, Roy Andries de Groot tells an hilarious story about a maitre d' with no understanding of social nuances: he thought two well, rather dowdy women as just passable as customers and put them in back room. One of them was Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller.

Most good restaurants paste a pic of the critic at the waiters' station, easily available for darts and graffiti. I suspect most good restaurants knew Claiborne the moment he walked in. More difficult with his successor Ruth Reichl who dressed up like Dame Edna Everage in order to promote social justice for the average eater in beautiful people restaurants. She was disgusted when Le Cirque curried favour with her when she dined there with an NYT editor. When I compare the bottom line of a restaurant to the power of the NYT, I would simply call his behaviour survival tactics.

As I spent the last ten years writing about food, playing waiter to understand the extraordinary meanness of nice-looking people, following a French chef around to understand what it means to live food, and promoting my book Last Chance to Eat, I hadn't a chance to be truly anonymous. Then I realized it doesn't matter.

I book a table in someone else's name. If I'm recognized when I arrive , so be it. The chef can't change his ways. If the staff aren't cheerful and helpful to begin with, they're not going to improve much. You can tell what a resto's like by the way you're welcomed - I've been totally turned off a resto by a grumpy uncaring welcome. I know there are masochists who thrive on being dissed by a resto owner - in London I remember a Russian called Luba who routinely kneecapped her customers and they begged for more. But the food would have to be sublime to wipe out a bad first impression. Food is after all a shared experience.

Old school critics make much of going two or three times to a restaurant - as if they're Michelin critics. And they tick off dishes as a schoolmarm marks papers. I'm totally against that approach to eating out.

Unless the restaurant is a major one with a notable chef, I don't go back if I don't like it. I dine out to enjoy myself with my friends. I want to belong to the tribe of enjoyers -- I refer to Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher, A.J Liebling , Joseph Wechsberg, Roy Andries de Groot - who enlivened and enriched food - and life as well - when they wrote about it. I still remember David's visit Chez Barattero, Fisher eating fresh-killed trout in a Swiss village, Liebling's comment "No ascetic can be considered reliably sane", Wechsberg on Fernand Point, Roy Andries de Groot on types of diners. I love Anthony Bourdain's sardonic can-opener on food's underside, and I read AA Gill in the London Times religiously. I don't care that he doesn't write a consumer report about a meal or restaurant - he makes me laugh aloud.

Yeah to me, it's the way food is written about, rather than any implicit judgement, that has legs. A writer, however humble, yearns for an intimation of immortality. So I'm glad there are so many bloggers airing their opinions about restaurants even before the restaurants are open. The plethora of critics is a spur to focussing what I write, how I write it, to honing my voice, becoming I hope more interesting and entertaining to people who love food and the good conversation it inspires.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/fashion/weddings/09SOCCXN.html?ref=weddings

Yesterday the NYT solemnly ran this Correction

A report on Oct. 24, 1988, about the marriage of Amy Levine and David Abrams, misstated where the bride received her undergraduate degree. She graduated from Brown University, not Boston University. Amy Abrams only recently called attention to the error.

Do you think she now feels her life was fundamentally affected by this slip which is why she only now noticed it?

“Are you up for a verrine?” I ask the Bon Vivant and he replies “Red or white?” No, no verrine is food – the rage of Paris where verrines are called emotions which sparkle as desserts and appetizers. A verrine – a glass of food - is a spin on the stripey pousse-café, that showy after-dinner drink made with layers of jewel-coloured liqueurs which fin-de-siecle bankers bought for their Gigis at Maxim’s. In similar style, chefs now layer complementary ingredients into multi-taste sensations. The Patissier Pierre Herme’s emotion Ispahan layers lychees/raspberry jelly, fresh raspberries, a raspberry compote and a rose ganache.

Verrines are taking time to find their niche on North American menus, so when I heard that Barbara Gordon was making pineapple verrines, I make tracks for Boba.   more »

http://environment.independent.co.uk/lifestyle/article2936712.ece

Chef Peter Gordon writing in today's Independent takes aim at the current food miles fad. Money quotes.....

"The phrase is used to promote the push for seasonal, regional, British food. It's always mentioned as the primary reason for boycotting imported foods – because their global transport is supposedly destroying the planet. ...."

Gordon then itemizes what a local diet really means :

No more ginger pound-cake, or Cornish saffron bread. No more espressos on your way to work, or champagne to celebrate the wonderful moments in your life. In fact, there'll be no more cups of tea in the afternoon and maybe, for those purists on the English mainland, no Irish whiskeys on a winter's day! All these things are brought in from afar, as well as everyday ingredients such as cinnamon, olive oil, avocados and maple syrup. Worcestershire sauce, containing tamarind, has food miles attached to it. Whatever, the purists would say – ban them all."

What's amazing to me is the wilful ignorance of the food faddists. Global trading isn't new, as food faddists try to insist, but as old as the hills. Without the Roman empire, Europe would never have met the chicken -- the egg being the best fodder for the travelling soldier. Without the Venetian empire's fleet, we wouldn't have the Eastern spices that created the cuisine of Europe. The British empire was a vast global market, and Britain depended on imported food for its existence. Before World War II, Britain imported eggs from Poland - and China. It had to. It wasn't able to grow enough food for its population.

Gordon underlines that things aren't that different now in Britain...."...take the humble onion. In order for the UK to keep the domestic market supplied year round without importing, it would need to grow huge acreages of them (requiring vast tracts of land that just don't exist) and then keep them in chillers for up to nine months (powered by electricity produced mostly from the burning of fossil fuels). Of course, we could all simply stop using onions for three or four months instead, but that's not really a viable option.

Considering the recent summer floods, the crops they destroyed and the number of animals lost in recent times to BSE, foot-and-mouth and bird flu, Britain is in even less of a position to rely solely on domestic food production and will have to turn to imported produce to keep itself fed this year. Globally, a macabre combination of floods and droughts, pests and viruses are rearranging our ability to produce a reliable supply of food.Every foodstuff has a carbon footprint, which is the only honest way to gauge environmental impact. However, this is often confused with food miles. Food miles are simply the distance the product has travelled to get to you – even a potato has food miles. A carbon footprint is measured by the amount of CO2 produced, and the total energy used, to get the product to market. According to a report from the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs in 2005, food miles are an inadequate indicator of sustainability.


It is also infuriating to hear that the Soil Association is thinking of removing the term "organic" from any organic foods flown into Britain. Perhaps we should also stop calling Argentinean beef "beef" , purely because it's imported. At some point this subtle manipulation of the English language, used purely in order to support a biased, protectionist and perhaps slightly xenophobic agenda, really has to stop. Organic has a meaning, defined before air travel (let alone air freight) existed, and air miles travelled shouldn't figure in that description. It has to be understood that the bulk of African organic farmers, mostly using renewable energy, will be disastrously affected by any restrictions placed on the export of their produce.



CO2 emissions and food

By Alastair Plumb

* The production of British lamb produces 2,850kg of CO2 per ton. New Zealand lamb shipped to Britain produces 690.

* Air-freighted food accounts for 0.1 per cent of food miles, but produces 13 per cent of CO2 emissions from food transport

* Sea-freight emissions are less that one-eightieth of those produced by air-freight. Road transport creates 7.6 times more emissions than sea freight does.

* A cheeseburger costs between 3.6 to 6.1kg of CO2 equivalent. According to statistics from Fast Food Nation, the average American will eat three cheeseburgers a week – producing up to 915kg of greenhouse gases a year.

* Food and drink only accounts for 5 per cent of the average person's carbon footprint, compared to 19 per cent from transport, and 9 per cent from power used in the home.

Today's Guardian (Food & Drink) has a story about the explosive growth of the biofuel industry and its impact on food prices. Are we North Americans losing the plot, obsessing about iorganic, ethical, fresh, local food and the need to pay more for better food, when something much more significant is happening?

John Vidal's report begins "Land that was once used to grow food is increasingly being turned over to biofuels. This may help us to fight global warming - but it is driving up food prices throughout the world and making life increasingly hard in developing countries."

Vidal calls it the global green rush "one of the greatest shifts that world agriculture has seen in
decades."

"While this may be marginally better for carbon emissions and energy security, it is proving horrendous for food prices and anyone who stands in the way of a rampant new industry. A year or two ago, almost all the land where maize is now being grown to make ethanol in the US was being farmed for human or animal food. And because America exports most of the world's maize, its price has doubled in 10 months, and wheat has risen about 50%.

The effect on agriculture in the UK is price increases all round. "The world price [of maize] has doubled," says Mark Hill, food partner at the business advisory firm Deloitte. "In June, wheat prices across the US and Europe hit their highest levels in more than a decade. These price hikes are likely to trigger inflation in food prices, as processors are forced to pay increased costs for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat."

On the same day, the makers of Hovis bread announced an 8p rise in the price of a loaf due to rising wheat prices. Consumers are now facing price increases on food across the board, from meat to milk, cheese and bread.

Beer and whisky could be next - last week drinks group Diageo warned that it was also feeling inflationary pressures on commodities, with significant rises in barley, corn, glass and aluminium.

I'm cooking my way through Roy Andries de Groot's In Search of a Perfect Meal and I've reached a peak or as de Groot says The Most Luxurious way of serving Potatoes:French Gratin.

He takes his recipe from the Trois Gros brothers whom he regarded as the best cooks in France. The recipe is simple, just potatoes and cream. The technique is slow gentle cooking so the potatoes absorb all the cream.

l lb potatoes
one enamelled iron baking dish
2 cloves of garlic
2 medium yellow onions
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream
salt/pepper

You take a pound of russet potatoes, slice them thin with a Benriner, drop into ice cold water.

You pick a 2" x 9" enamelled iron baking dish.

Preheat the oven to 275F

You take 2 whole unpeeled cloves of garlic, half them and rub each half thoroughly over the baking dish

Spread 2 tablespoons of unsweetened butter liberallly over the baking dish

Take two medium yellow peeled onions cut into chunks and along with the remains of the garlic cloves put them in the bowl of a food processor. Mash them to a puree.

Then add a cup of heavy cream and puree again.

Drain and dry potato slices with cloth, arrange them in overlapping layers in the pan.

Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, and pour the onion-cream mixture over them.

Place on low heat on stove and simmer the potatoes for l0 minutes exactly.

THE KEY to success is to keep the heat gentle.

Dot the potatoes with the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter.

Place in middle of oven. Don't let cream bubble up, and it if does lower the heat.

Taste potato after 90 minutes. If quite soft, turn up heat to 425F to brown the gratin to a golden crust. Takes up to 10 mins.

Bring to table and serve the gratin ALL BY ITSELF on hot plates.

Food is the newest movie star --- Ratatouille, No Reservations with Catherine Zeta Jones morphing into chef. So you imagine the stars themselves, their agents, producers etc. are gourmets? Of course not. Remember almost every person in showbiz is dieting. Still, dining out is part of the schmoose at TIFF. Only their handlers know where George Clooney, Woody Allen, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, Michael Moore or Michael Douglas will be hanging out and even they can’t be sure because a star’s trajectory may be arbitrary even in the matter of eating. But thanks to Barbara Hershenhorn, aka “Party Barb”, TIFF’s event planner for the past 22 years, here’s a rundown of the places where you’re most likely to spot a star chowing down.   more »