Ever wonder how the CDC traced the sources of the recent E. Coli outbreaks—one in spinach and another at Taco Bell? Computerworld has an article about the software the government used. Tracking DNA fingerprints sounds like an episode of Numb3rs, but our real abilities are almost as impressive as the fictional feats of mathematics from the TV show.
via Slashdot
Wired offers advice on sabering Champagne bottles—slicing off the top of the bottle, cork and glass and all. Too bad Wired couldn't find any actual sabering adepts to teach the flamboyant move. I can name a few people in the Bay Area who are experts at the technique, and I've done it once or twice (with mixed results). Instead, the technology magazine consulted one person at K & L Wines who has "seen the move in a movie" and then the author links to YouTube video demonstrations, which are fun to watch if you've never seen someone saber a bottle before.
I'm getting some hare next week as research for an article. But I'm not really sure how to cook it. I have tons of recipes for rabbit; hare is outside my normal repertoire. Most say that it's a different beast in the oven than its domestic cousin.
So once again I turn to you, my knowledgeable readers. I assume I should braise the tougher meat, but that's only a guess. I'd like to do the meat justice, so any ideas are welcome. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
I've never heard of Dallas confectioner Noka, but I found this wordy analysis of their high-priced candies to be an amusing read. The unidentified writer notes that the hefty price tag pays for simple confections made with common chocolate. Nothing in the ten-page article will surprise anyone who knows the basics of chocolate-making, but it's still worth a skim to see how the writer attacks their prices and their claims.
via boing boing and Jack
I don't know if chefs forage for seafood outside the world's first undersea restaurant, but wouldn't that be a great show for the tony dining room?
The restaurant serves the Hilton in the Maldives, and it's sort of a reverse aquarium: You don't surround the fish; they surround you.
via Wired's Table of Malcontents blog.
I invest a lot of time and effort into my culinary knowledge. Most of you know this, because this site chronicles the self-education I've pursued for the last few years—from competent cook to opinionated gourmet, from occasional wine drinker to wine educator.
But in the last two years I've also focused on becoming a better writer. Perfect writing may be an impossible dream for me, but I nonetheless dream it every day. Compare this entry to my early posts and I hope you'll see a difference. Some of you have written to me and asked for advice on enhancing your own writing skills, and I decided to put my private answers into this public forum. These thoughts come from my own experience; add your suggestions in the comments so that we can all benefit from the knowledge.
You need internal motivation to effect change in your writing. Careful writing is hard work, and there's no promise of fame and glory for competent wordsmiths. Indeed, given the large number of sloppy writers with legions of fawning fans, I might predict the opposite. I can only offer personal satisfaction, a lifetime of annoyed spasms whenever you see obvious mistakes and slipshod grammar, and a background irritation about published text that would be a notch better with one pass of red ink.
Get a Second Opinion
Find someone who knows how to write and will give you an honest opinion of your work. Everyone likes praise and flattery, but if a friend always says, "This is really great," you won't learn anything. A good editor—not all of them qualify—fills this role, but so does a writing group where the members speak freely, pointing out the good and bad in each other's work. Thoughtful editors don't just move and cut words. They tell you when you need to flesh out one topic or whittle down another. They identify problems in tone and style. They see the problems you don't. They represent all the readers who will have the same questions and reactions when they read your piece. Negative comments sting, but they make you a better writer.
Shape Your Text
Understand that "writing well" means "rewriting a lot." I edit and revise countless times before I submit any text, whether it's a full-length feature, a blog entry, or a 100-word assignment. The only exception to this rule is a post for my casual blog OWEE, where I edit and revise just once or twice.
When I rewrite, I focus on clarity above all else. Text should communicate. If your readers can't figure out what you're saying, you've let them down. A word-geek friend of mine sent around a line from an ad for a show called Wine Country: "Why beer might just go better with chocolate than wine." I couldn't have constructed a better example of a muddled sentence. The show wants to point out that beer may trump wine as a partner for chocolate, but you'd be forgiven for thinking they meant that beer and chocolate works better as a pairing than beer and wine. (As an aside, this blanket statement annoys me—some beers go well with chocolate but so do some wines.)
When I edit a sentence, I ask myself if every word has a clear meaning. I check my pronouns to make sure any reader could figure out the nouns they replace. Consider the sentence "Jane wanted to meet up with Sue, but she couldn't fit it into her schedule." Whom does "she" refer to? What does "it" replace? I push my main point to the front or end of a sentence where the reader will notice it. I try to keep all related words together in a sentence and all related sentences together in a paragraph, tricks I learned from Ed. I give specific examples if I think I've made too broad a statement and try to use the most specific word for a given context. "Lassie jumped through a metal hoop" works better than "The dog jumped through an obstacle."
I also strive for brevity, which often coincides with clarity. I smile when I figure out a two-syllable word with the same meaning as a four-syllable word in my text. I thrill when I cut words from a sentence. I give a mental cheer when I remove a sentence from a paragraph. Don't get attached to your words; nix them when they're pointless. As you edit, examine each word and phrase and ask what it adds to the text. Some critics suggest you cut all your adverbs, which I find too pat a rule. Many writers lean on adverbs, and the constant "-ly" sound wears on a reader, but they do have a place in the English language.
I try to add color, or flair, to my writing, though I'm not great at spotting drab text. David Kamp, of The United States of Arugula, and Rowan Jacobsen, from The Art of Eating, both have a controlled flamboyance in their writing that I look to for inspiration. My original draft of the Vinovation article mentioned natural yeast "drifting through the vineyard like morning fog," which my editors liked but didn't fit after we cut that debate from the piece. We left in my description of microoxygenation: "bubbles that tiptoe through the adjoining stainless-steel vat."
Books I Like - Writing Philosophy
When I set out to improve my writing, I couldn't articulate what I meant by "good writing." I knew it when I saw it—reading sits high above food and wine in my pantheon of hobbies—but I couldn't always explain why one sentence worked and another didn't. Fortunately, thoughtful writers like to write, and many have published books that will teach you to identify and explain these very concepts.
On Writing Well - William Zinsser
One editor described this to me as "the bible for modern nonfiction writing," and I'm sure other Zinsser devotees would agree. He writes in a warm, humorous style and gives example after example to illustrate his points. He covers writing in general but also focuses on specific nonfiction genres: sports writing, criticism, and more.
Writing Fiction - Janet Burroway
Don't let the title fool you. A story is a story even when the characters are real people and the events actually happened. Burroway discusses plot, character development, dialogue, and every major element of fiction writing. After reading through her book, I spotted and admired those elements in nonfiction pieces as well as the short stories I was reading at the time.
The Art And Craft Of Feature Writing - William Blundell
It's about time for me to re-read this book, based on Blundell's time as a feature writer and editor for the Wall Street Journal. He discusses every facet of features, from coming up with ideas to structuring your text for the best effect. Read it once, read it twice, read it often.
Books I Like (And One Podcast) - Mechanics
Art requires craft: Painters need to mix colors, woodworkers need to understand wood grain, and writers need to use proper grammar. You probably can't memorize all the rules, but once again, books come to the rescue. Got a question? Look it up.
Grammar Girl
About once a week, the Grammar Girl podcast presents a five-minute episode that clarifies some confusing grammar point, whether it's the difference between "affect" and "effect" or the reason for the unusual predicate in "Joy to the World, the Lord is come." I discovered the show a few months ago, and I've since downloaded all the back episodes. I just wish that new episodes came out more often.
The Chicago Manual Of Style
Style guides give all the usage rules that the authors thought to include. For my bacon toffee post, I used the Chicago Manual of Style to determine if I should write "1970's" or "1970s" (the latter). I get the sense that choosing a style guide is the writer's equivalent of the text editor battles among programmers, but I allied myself with the Chicago camp the same way I became an Emacs user: It was the first one I got to know. I own the competing AP Style Guide, but I always go to the big orange book first.
The Elements of Style - Strunk & White
If you think I'm a curmudgeon, try flipping through this tiny treatise. E.B. White touched up his university writing instructor's guide for students, and the result is a blistering assault on lazy writers that rings true decades later.
Books I Like - Inspiration
Writing is like any art, a swamp of disappointment and frustration lit up by will-o'-the-wisps of success and idealism. You need inspiration and hope, and these books provide it.
Best American Essays
(Note: If you clamber far enough up my company's corporate hierarchy, I work for the publisher of this and the other Best American books.)
Whenever I see the newest edition of Best American Essays, I buy it and bump it to the top of my bottomless reading queue. Essays are my favorite nonfiction genre, and the annual collection never fails to provide samples that intrigue, inspire, and instruct. The 2006 collection has an essay entitled "Why I Write" that regrounded my goals as a writer. I toyed with submitting some work to the James Beard Awards this year, but this essay pushed me back over the fence.
Bird By Bird - Anne Lamott
At some point, every would-be writer gets a copy of this book. Lamott talks about the reality of writing: It's hard work, the rewards are scant, and constant hopes mean constant disappointment. But few activities are more rewarding on a personal level. Knowing that a well-regarded novelist goes through all the same pain as I somehow makes it easier for me to bear.
The Writing Life
If Anne Lamott's musings aren't enough, this book collects essays from 50 writers who have contributed to the Washington Post's Book World. Each author gives insight into the weird world of writing. Ups, downs, lefts, rights, overs, and unders all find their way into this book.
Let me say right now that bacon toffee is not some new Derrick weirdness. Toponia Miller, co-owner of Fatted Calf, thinks it dates back at least to the 1970s. If that's true, we food lovers need to rescue this retro snack from oblivion. We've repopulated heritage turkeys and polished the passé from fondue; we can bring this candy back from the brink.
We can and we should. The unusual combination contrasts butterscotch sweetness with smoky saltiness and chewy texture with tooth-shattering caramel. It is a piece of heaven.
If you read The Ethicurean, you probably saw Bonnie's rhapsodic post about this same topic. Our convergence is no coincidence: She and I attended the same party. At an event overflowing with palate-popping delicacies, from paella-stuffed squid to olive-brine pickled eggs, the bacon toffee might have snagged more comments and satisfied lip-smacking than any other dish.
Doralice of Healdsburg's Cheese Shop, who brought the toffee but skedaddled before we descended on it, posted a full recipe in the comments on Bonnie's post. You could just follow that recipe, but where's the fun in that? I wanted to play with the idea and try to improve it. Toponia said that she once had a version with cayenne mixed in to the toffee, and it's not hard to spring from that flavoring to other spices such as pepper, allspice, or cloves.
But I had a different idea. Foreign Cinema offers a brunch item of bacon cooked in brown sugar, and the combination inspired me to swap brown sugar for white in the toffee recipe. I hoped the molasses in the brown sugar would add complexity to the candy.
And if I could change the sugar, why not fiddle with the fat? Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking explains that the milk solids in the butter provide the toffee taste, but the fat controls the texture. I interpreted that to mean that you can change one fat for another, but you sacrifice some of the typical flavor. I decided that 1Tb bacon grease mixed in with 7 Tb of butter would carry a subtle porky quality throughout the candy, not just in the bacon bits.
The results were not as dramatic as I expected. Melissa preferred the normal recipe to my pimped-out version because the light toffee and dark bacon made a sharper contrast to the eyes and tongue. My darker toffee had a more homogenous earthy flavor.
When she suggested that I add the brown sugar at the end, as a mix-in, I realized that I had used the brown sugar for the molasses character, and I could cut out the middle man by squirting molasses over the top of the sticky mass after I poured it onto the Silpat. This did add a subtle smokiness and the bacon-toffee contrast remained intact. Our friend meriko suggested crisping the bacon in brown sugar and adding that combination to the toffee, a variant I'll try soon.
I don't know what I would serve with this candy. A good stout came to mind, but I wonder if a Tokaji Aszú or Madeira would work, if you wanted to stay with wine.
Basic Toffee Technique (should scale well)
I use the proportions I learned in a candy-making class, but any good toffee recipe will work. And that sticky pot may look impossible to clean, so here's a tip: Fill the pot with water, and boil it until the caramel is all melted.
Do your mise en place. For normal toffee, break up nuts or chocolate chunks. For bacon toffee, crisp 5 pieces of bacon, drain on a paper-towel-lined plate, and chop into small squares; put molasses into a squirt bottle. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat liner.
Combine 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup water, a pinch of salt, and 4 oz (1 stick) butter. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring often. You don't need to worry about in-the-pot crystallization, because the butter's fat will introduce flaws that prevent the quick-as-a-blink switch from liquid to solid that sneaks up on the casual sugar cook. Continue to stir until the mixture reaches a temperature of 285°. Take off heat, stir in mix-ins, and pour onto the lined baking sheet. Spread the mixture quickly until it's about 1/4 in. thick all around. Squirt molasses over top in a decorative pattern. Set aside to cool for 2 hours.
Fold a paper towel into quarters and place it on a part of the toffee blob. Rap lightly with a hammer. Repeat at other parts of the toffee. You should see cracks forming throughout the candy. Run a spatula under the candy, and it should break apart into shards. Store the fragments in an airtight container at room temperature.
New York's wine regions have received good press, but it can be difficult to find the wines outside that state. Our friend Lenn, who champions the Empire State's wine regions in print and from his blog LENNDEVOURS, has started a wine club to showcase interesting New York wines. Each month he'll choose two wines, and the Green Grape Wine Company will send them to your door. Lenn's palate and interests should produce some great choices.
If you're one of the few people who read this food blog and no others, then you may have missed the announcement for this year's edition of Menu For Hope, an annual raffle organized by Pim in which bloggers and other notables contribute prizes to a giant raffle. People around the world buy "tickets" for the prizes they want in the form of donations. Each ticket costs $10, and all the proceeds go straight to a charitable organization, this year the UN World Food Programme.
You should see the phenomenal list of prizes that bloggers have donated. If I called out the best ones, this would turn into a post that's long even for me. Just go look and admire and buy a ticket or 40. (My donation is all the prizes, sort of, since I'm writing the program that will parse out the tickets and do the actual raffle. And no, I don't take bribes, unless they're really nice.)
Most of the bloggers mentioning the event have appealed to the kind and charitable streak in all our readers. I will appeal to your greed.
Consider this: Menu For Hope has raised twice as much money as it did last year. But because the ticket price has doubled, that means that there have been just as many tickets sold. Fine.
But there are many more prizes this year. That means your odds of winning something are better than they were last year. Many of the prizes have low ticket counts, so you can increase your odds even more. You just have to go buy a ticket. Or 40.
You have until Friday to place your bids. Go look at the prizes and make your donations.
If you have never found your way to Regina Schrambling's gastropoda, you're missing one of the best sources for pointed commentary on the food world, with not-so-occasional swipes at the current Presidential administration. She wields a skewer like an expert swordsperson, and nothing escapes her gaze.
It's a good thing I wasn't drinking my water as I read her commentary on Olive Garden; I might have shorted out my laptop.
Figuring out what caused the food poisoning at Olive Garden may be even trickier than it has been for Taco Bell. Investigators are asking diners to bring in both their doggie bags and their stool samples. The mystery is how they will be able to tell the difference.
Our new ice cream maker has an official model number, the Cuisinart ICE-50BC. But I started calling it the Glace-A-Tron 6000 after I unwrapped the hulking, stainless-steel appliance, a birthday present from my mom. I first played with this semi-industrial ice cream machine at meriko's house, where we made two ice creams on Thanksgiving morning; she in turn bought it based on David's recommendation.
The Glace-A-Tron 6000 features an internal refrigerator unit that cools the quart-sized container in situ. You don't need ice or rock salt. You don't need freezer space to pre-chill your bucket. You don't need 24 hours to refreeze the bucket between batches of ice cream and sorbet. The next time we have a dinner party, I plan to make a Frozen Trio dessert of some form, just because I can.
The Glace-A-Tron 6000 is not the frozen dessert's answer to a bread machine, a one-button start-and-forget factory. You must still assemble the ice cream base on the stove top. You must still freeze the ice cream after you remove it from the Glace-A-Tron. Do you need to cool the base before you place it into the cold embrace of the Glace-A-Tron? I don't know. Melissa, bless her heart, has urged me to experiment. A lot. I might put sorbet into the refrigerator before churning it; the transition from very cold to frozen produces smaller crystals, and thus a smoother texture, than when you move from room temperature to frozen. But I made salted caramel ice cream—a near-repeat of the version that meriko and I assembled—by pouring 185° custard into the Glace-A-Tron, and it came out very well, though it took just over an hour to freeze to the right consistency. Perhaps the fatty custard staves off large ice crystals?
I have eyed these machines before, but I have told myself that I don't make enough ice cream to justify the cost. This is the wrong argument. Once you have a Glace-A-Tron, which is cheaper than similar machines, you start making enough ice cream to warrant the expense, because all you need is a whim and a bit of time on a weeknight evening. Melissa and I each have lists of flavors to try. (Melissa's includes pistachio and mint chip. Mine, butternut squash sorbet and olive oil ice cream.)
That freezer space for the ice cream bucket? I think we'll be filling it up soon—with actual ice cream.
When Ed asked me to research Vinovation for The Art of Eating, I went to my first appointment with an already-formed opinion. Clark Smith's wine consulting company provides a host of services to a huge chunk of the California wine industry, but the press knows him best—and demonizes him the most—for reverse osmosis. This process allows New World vintners to push wine against a filter and extract its alcohol and water, which they add back to create a final product with an "adjusted" alcohol level. Nine months ago, I would have agreed with any wine writer who described it as one manipulation too many.
Three appointments, a host of phone calls, and a small storm of emails later, I've changed my attitude. I'm not for excessive manipulation, but Clark is doing interesting work. In fact, I believe that his empirical knowledge will overturn the curriculum of enology schools around the world. Now, when someone points out that reverse osmosis isn't natural, I ask, "What is?" Critics who vilify Vinovation often don't mention or even notice sterile filtration, temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, or cultured yeasts, all of which are commonplace and far from a grape's "natural" inclination. My article, along with Melissa's photos of Smith and his company, appears in the latest issue of Ed's top-flight magazine. My subscription copy arrived today, but I haven't yet seen copies in stores.
I often tell you, and anyone who will listen, to subscribe to AoE, which I consider the best informed, most thoughtful food and wine magazine in America. Even more than normal, I urge you to buy this special double issue, a celebration of the magazine's 20th anniversary. Other articles include Ed Behr's interview with himself about AoE and its philosophy, a baguette piece that I have wanted to read ever since Ed mentioned it to me, a large feature on California olive oil, an ode to mead, a look at black and white truffles, and the usual hodgepodge of book reviews, notes and resources, and letters (including ones from Jack and Kevin).
Then my mental merry-go-round brought an old memory to the front. Three years ago I saw Alain Sailhac's "Confit of Whole Foie Gras" in Michael Ginor's Foie Gras: A Passion. At the time, I thought it above my skill level, but since then I've gained confit experience and the confidence to work with foie gras. A whole foie gras poached in duck fat struck me as both crazy and daring—at least for any guest trying to dodge a heart attack.
A week before the party, I cured the intact liver for 24 hours. As with any confit, you can add your favorite spices to the cure; I kept it simple with the Basic Dry Cure from Charcuterie, an 8:4:1 blend of kosher salt, sugar, and sodium nitrite. When I did a trial run—opting for the spirit of the invitation's law instead of the letter—the liver oxidized to an unappealing gray. The sodium nitrite added a reddish, meaty tint; it noticeably improved the look of the final dish.
I poached the liver in 2 pints of duck fat kept at 185° Fahrenheit. Seven minutes on one side and four minutes on the other. I told the other guests that you could count the dollars as the liver shrank, its fat becoming one with the cooking fat. I turned off the heat and let the fat drop to 160°, at which point I transferred the quivering liver to a plate and let the cooking fat cool to room temperature. Finally, I moved the liver to a small container—a terrine mold—and poured the liquid fat over it, covering it completely. Then I moved the terrine to the refrigerator, where the liver developed flavor for a week in its solid fat tomb.
I turned my attention to the "something extra" the dish needed. The rich fat in foie gras coats and deadens the palate; an acidic add-on refreshes the taste buds. I made fennel ceviche to pair with the first batch, but the thin arcs were too crunchy. The night before the party, I stumbled upon the pickled beets from Quick Pickles. Boil beets, peel, dice, and cover in a hot syrup of red wine vinegar, brown sugar, and spices.
On the drive up to Jack and Joanne's house, and as the party started, I let the confit come to room temperature. The recipe implies that you should serve the dish cold, but that gives you little but a solid chunk of fat. At room temperature, the foie gras hovers somewhere between liquid and solid, a trembling mass barely contained by its cellular structure. Also, at room temperature it's easier to remove the pure fat you poured over the liver, which can be greasy and unappealing if left clinging to the foie gras. I upended the terrine and poured the duck fat into a bowl.
I cut the confit into small squares, and placed each atop a baguette slice. On to each square of foie gras, I placed a single cube of pickled beet.
I worried that I had assembled too many of these little appetizers. But the guests pounced on the dish and finished off the bites almost before I had cleaned up the aftermath. Even I, my harshest critic, couldn't find any fault with the combination. The earthy sweetness of the beet paired with the meaty liver, and its acidity cut through the rich fat. If I made it one more time, I might lightly toast the thin baguette slices, but this would be a minor edit on an almost-perfect dish.
I imagine you can rattle off all the good things about chocolate: the earthy, complex taste; the feel-good compounds so popular with women; the antioxidants and other healthy molecules in each bar.
But you might have a harder time describing all the bad things: child labor, impoverished farmers, the fallout of American economic imperialism. An exhibit running through February 17 at Intersection for the Arts promises to document the complex underbelly of the chocolate industry. Artist April Banks draws on her years of research and experience to create an exhibit that will inform you through artwork and stories.
I haven't been yet, but I plan to make time to head over. The chocolate industry embodies many of the issues with globalization and cavalier attitudes in developed countries about the plight of the Third World. I'm intrigued by anything that educates us and gives us the tools to make smart buying decisions. (My SFist colleague Mary went to the opening and wrote about her impressions.)
In addition to the exhibit, Intersection for the Arts will host a number of events and workshops. See the exhibit details for more information.
When I first discovered my passion for wine, I took class after class in UC Berkeley's Wine Studies program. But my favorite was a class then called "Components of Wine," a six-week course on analyzing wine. I took it twice, once as I began to learn about wine, and again more recently. One night we covered flaws and faults. Another we blended Bordeaux varieties together to come up with a master blend. Still another we spent sniffing at vials and wine glasses, trying to identify scents in isolation and mixed with wine.
The class has since been renamed to Fundamentals of Wine II: Sensory Evaluation of Wines and Their Components, and I'm over-the-moon excited to be its instructor in the spring semester. This is a fun class, and I encourage you all to sign up if you can. Enrollment opened today, even though the class starts in April.
I have some big shoes to fill: The class has always been taught by wine expert Rebecca Chapa. But given how much I respect her as a wine educator, you can be sure that her teaching style has influenced my own. Sign up now. Sign up your friends.
Catherine at Purple Liquid has posted her notes and pictures from my class's third meeting, where we discussed the wines of Austria's Kremstal, Kamptal, and Wachau regions. Sadly, Catherine missed the fourth class (Austria's Thermenregion, Burgenland, and Styria), but I'll let you know when she has the fifth and sixth classes up.
Brenner offers some inspiring portraits, but the choice of subjects mystifies me. Where is Jancis Robinson? Or European wine makers such as Austria's Heidi Schröck, still working in a traditional culture ripe with sexual stereotypes? The book's subtitle mentions "the world of women who make, taste, and enjoy wine," but Brenner seems to think that that world ends at the state boundaries of California. Even so, where is Karen MacNeil, director of the Culinary Institute of America's wine studies program, author of The Wine Bible—which I heard one editor describe as "a genre buster"—and a woman who holds fierce opinions about the treatment that women face in the wine industry? Where is Helen Turley, one of the most sought-after wine consultants in the state? Anyone in California can probably add their own Missing Persons reports. Brenner no doubt faced tough choices about whom to include and whom to cut, but do we need two profiles of women from the Gallo dynasty? I get the sense that Brenner chose women that would be easy for her to meet.
This take-the-easy-road approach also shapes the stories that Brenner chose to tell. These profiles will look good in the publicity packets handed out to future writers, but they lack depth that would give a full portrait of each subject. In a book whose theme is the rise above sexism, Brenner should have questioned Wine Adventure publisher Michele Ostrove as she explained her "for women" audience: "One thing we say is that women share information, whereas men look at it more competitively. It's kind of one-upmanship for them." And then: "They want to know how to go traveling to wine country and where they should go and where they should stay and what place has the best spas." But Brenner lets these sexual-stereotype marketing decisions skim past, even though Wine Adventure's "for women" slant was a last-minute tactic change from an egalitarian "for everyone" approach (a point barely mentioned in the profile). How about asking Stephanie Browne, founder of Divas Uncorked, about the double prejudice heaped on African-American women? How is she treated in restaurants now versus twenty years ago?
And if my inner reader looked for answers that never appeared, my inner editor found more than enough to keep it occupied. "Show, don't tell!" I kept shrieking in my head, the same phrase my own editors have sent back to me on more than one occasion. Of Stephanie Putnam, wine maker for Far Niente, Brenner writes, "Stephanie has always been the take-action type and loves outdoor and physically challenging hobbies." Show her being a take-action type. Use a quote from Putnam about loving wine making because it keeps her outdoors more. Of Merry Edwards, wine maker for her own winery, Brenner notes, "Merry was indignant and rightfully so. The notion that a company would discriminate against an entire gender was outrageous." She follows it with Edwards's own quote about her reaction, which would have sufficed to describe the outrage and would have made her passion and fury more immediate, rather than trailing after a screeching halt in the text.
I think there's an interesting story to be told about women in the wine industry. It would use the industry as a lens into the changes brought about by second-wave feminists throughout the country. It would discuss the way that modern young women take their rights and opportunities for granted. It would discuss the role of women wine makers in European cultures, and how that differs from the American model. It would look at the shift in men's attitudes; what men used to refuse to buy wine made by a woman, and what made them change their mind? It would weave the narratives of these women together to look at the big picture of what happened.
It would not be a series of puff pieces that leave more questions than answers. It would not be Women of the Vine.
This book was sent to me as a review copy.
I learned of the FarmPolicy.com newsletter from The Ethicurean, but I just caught up on the emails the other day. Keith Good pulls key news items off the web and summarizes them in a daily message, providing an ongoing snapshot of the national debate about the state of American farms, which are of course the source of American food.
The newsletter is required reading for anyone who cares about the domestic food supply and the policies that shape it.
Rowan Jacobsen took the managing editor position at The Art of Eating about two years ago. He's a good editor, pushing me in different ways than Ed, and he has a colorful writing style that I like. One of his recent articles for the magazine covered umami, the fifth taste that Westerners have just begun to discuss and study in an overt way. The Restaurant Guys had Rowan on their show to discuss the subject. That would be reason enough to listen, but the first 15 minutes focus on vinegar-making, a subject dear to my heart.
A mini-rant from my inner culinary curmudgeon. Think you felt drowsy yesterday because of all the tryptophan in your turkey? Well, you're wrong. Tryptophan only causes heavy eyelids when you eat a huge amount on an empty stomach.
It won't take long to figure out my favorite item in the guide: my byline as one of the contributors.
Photo by John Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle
Melissa's friend Novella has a nice piece at Salon.com about killing the turkeys she raised at her Berkeley home last year. I believe that everyone who makes the choice to eat meat should, at least once, do the slaughter himself or herself to understand that choice at a deep level. On the other hand, I doubt that our neighbors would appreciate a chicken farm in our living room. But once we have a yard, I want to raise rabbits or chickens.
"Why are you tired," asked a co-worker as I stumbled into a meeting.
"I was up every two hours last night." (Plus, I was up late.)
"Why?"
"I was rendering lard for our Thanksgiving pies and I had to keep an eye on it."
A short pause, and then a burst of surprised laughter.
Well, it made sense at the time.
I have a back-burner plan to tour New York's Finger Lakes region. I want to visit the closest thing I have to a holy place, and I want to taste an abundance of what many critics consider America's best Riesling.
The state's deep lakes, scratched into the planet's surface with glacial claws, moderate the temperature on the hilly shores, warming the air in the winter and cooling it in the spring, delaying bud break until the danger of frost has passed. It's the kind of almost-too-north climate where Riesling shines.
But good luck finding these wines in the Bay Area. Our wine stores overfloweth—until you want to purchase a wine from a state that doesn't border the Pacific Ocean. Even two of those pose a challenge. So mad props to the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant for including a Finger Lakes Riesling in a recent wine club shipment.
Tom & Marti Macinski bought their historic vineyards and started Standing Stone Vineyards in 1991, pursuing a dream to produce great wine in this up-and-coming region. Their 2005 Riesling evokes an alpine meadow, with evergreen, flowers, and a splash of petrol minerality. It's not a complex wine, but its bracing acidity and medium-long finish make for a nice dry Riesling. It would go well with white fish dressed in a creamy sauce or mild charcuterie.
Run, Forest Glen, Run!
They call the Marathon du Médoc, through the vineyards of Bordeaux, the longest marathon in the world. But no one comments on the difficulty of finishing a full marathon where you drink wine at the rest stops. Maybe that's because red wine builds stamina, according to this New York Times article. Sure the findings look tentative, but when it comes to wine, I'm willing to take my chances and drink more.
Thanks, Jeff
Mixology Monday 9
Our friend Dietsch has posted the round-up for the latest edition of Mixology Monday, a cocktail-themed blogging event that brings out everyone's inner bartender. How civilized. IMBB may be a thing of the past, but its descendants continue to thrive.
What Am I Pouring in Class, Part 2
Catherine posted her notes on the wines I poured at the second meeting of my wines of Germany course. I focused on the Nahe, Rheinhessen, and Pfalz, with some extra wines thrown in for comparison purposes. I got my students closer to a coveted membership in the Wine Century Club by pouring Scheurebe, and we found a good German Pinot Noir.
I don't have the energy to participate in the they're/their, your/you're, and it's/its battles. I have resigned myself to flinching at the homophonic hiccups that pepper everyone's text, flying under the radar of spell checkers and the quick scan that everyone no doubt does before they press Publish.
But I will sound the trumpet for one small grammatical campaign. A campaign that every food writer can fight. We can make a difference. Where do you shop for produce? At a farmers' market.
Not at a farmer's market. And certainly not at a farmers market, unless you're shopping for personal growers. [UPDATE: Tana points out that the AP style guide says "farmers market," so maybe I'll just campaign against farmers' vs. farmer's. Though I don't understand the "farmers market" usage.]
I, too, have shopped at a farmer's market, choosing common usage over common sense. I understand the urge to succumb to the mass's will. But don't be deceived by the single market; multiple growers sell at a farmers' market. You could visit a farmer's roadside stand, and I imagine the one-stall market we saw in Robion could be a farmer's market. But these are exceptions.
I've made my decision: I hereby swear to you to drop farmer's market from my prose. Who's with me?
Sorry for the repeat, OWEE readers.
Chestnuts have started to show up at local farmers' markets, and I decided to write about them for my latest SFist column.
Most wine lovers don't know Clark Smith's name, but he probably helped influence a California wine you enjoyed recently (not to mention a host of others). He runs a company called Vinovation, which I talk about in-depth in the upcoming issue of The Art of Eating.
Vinovation provides a lot of services, but the most famous is de-alcoholization through reverse osmosis. Whether you agree with this practice or not, Clark's exploring interesting realms of wine science at his company, and I won't be surprised if his work overturns the curriculum of enology schools around the world.
I recently discovered that he has a blog named GrapeCrafter, with ongoing conversations about wine science. I guarantee you'll find thought-provoking material on his site, which averages an update a week.
My students and I talked about older Grüner Veltliner when I poured some 2002 and 2003 bottles from Austria's Kremstal and Kamptal regions, the result of a close-out sale at K & L Wines. I have always assumed that GrüVe, as the in-crowd calls it, does not age well, but the reader for my class includes articles from David Schildknecht and Terry Theise wherein they assert the opposite: "If it's under ten years old, it's young," says Terry. The "old" wines I poured two weeks ago had trace elements of the characteristics I associate with aged whites: a certain mellowness; more complex, hard-to-define aromas; a cohesive quality.
But our in-house storage rack is not ideal—nor even all that good—and I worried that the 1998 Grüner Veltliner I pulled from the curved slots would be far along the road to sherryville. As I extracted the dark green bottle, I muttered to myself that I should have moved it long ago to our cellar. The bottle is from Martin Nigl, one of the best producers in the Kremstal if not all of Austria, and its grapes were grown in the Senftenberger Piri vineyard, a terraced bank of urgestein, the local name for a number of primary soil types such as granite and basalt. The bottle deserves better than the temperature fluctuations in our closet.
So you can imagine my sigh of relief as I sniffed the sunshine-yellow wine and found, not excessive oxidation, but a fascinating blend of funky earth, spice, nuttiness, and that rain-washed-mineral character often described as petrol. Flowers, spices, and minerality flavor the wine and its long finish. This wine convinced me that a good GrüVe can sit in a cellar for a long time, though I still wouldn't recommend a setup like ours, where the rack backs onto a wall whose other side sports a radiator. I can only imagine the complex flavors this wine would develop in a decades-long rest under its cocoon of searing acidity. I enjoyed the wine with takeout Vietnamese food from a nearby favorite.
An amusing side note: When I googled this wine, I found myself.
The PR folks at This Old House sent me a note about this photo gallery of decked-out small kitchens. I always like to look at kitchens—on the theory that one day I'll get to remodel my own—and this little gallery offers 13 looks at diminutive kitchens that use space efficiently.
Jack impelled me to catch up with my Bloglines backlog and read this detailed Frank Bruni post about the "wild" items you find on a restaurant menu. Guess what? They're not.
Ice wine is something that shouldn't exist. The description alone—wine made from the juice of frozen grapes—suggests a topsy-turvy world.
Look at the pictures. Pickers tromp through snowy vineyards at dawn in late December. They are swaddled in a closet's worth of clothes, not only to keep themselves warm but to keep the grapes cold. In Germany, pickers must bring in the grapes for ice wine before the temperature climbs above -7°C (19°F). This is not a job for the Polish contract workers who work the normal harvest, but for friends and family who view the snow-covered grapes as a miracle bestowed by the wave of an ice fairy's wand.
Peer into a glass of ice wine, and you understand a truth about humanity: We will not be swayed from the path of madness. This liquid peek into our own soul motivated Kitchen Chick to choose ice wines as a theme for this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the monthly virtual tasting group.
Germany's frigid temperatures and high-acid Riesling grapes make the country the king of the world's ice wine regions, but a court of knights and dukes eye the throne: Austria, Germany's southern neighbor and cultural mirror; Canada, unusual for its predictable annual ice wine harvest; Washington, the some time home of stunning ice wines; Slovenia.
Wait. Slovenia? Yes, Slovenia. The Eastern European nation now shares a border with Austria's Styria region, but it used to be part of the sprawling Austrio-Hungarian Empire before it became part of Yugoslavia and then split off to its own destiny. Inevitably Germanic wine making habits sifted through the former Habsburg holdings.
But not German grapes. Noble Riesling doesn't fare well this far south, so Slovenia has filled its vineyards with Laszki Rizling, which is the same grape as Austria's Wälshriesling. No matter the guise it wears, this rustic grape shares little more than phonetics with the more famous variety.
But it can produce a decent ice wine in its own right, as demonstrated by Zlati Gric's slender half-bottle. Germany need not worry about a new dawn of Slovenian Laski Rizling ice wine domination, but this bottle is, at $50 from Blue Danube, one-fourth the cost of an elegant German example. I wouldn't call it complex—the straightforward aroma encompasses resin, minerals and oats, while the mellow acidity serves as a soft backdrop to a flavor that starts as menthol and ends on quiet apple notes. But I would say it's a good way to explore ice wine's compelling mix of sugar and acidity without mortgaging your home, and I'd happily drink it alongside an apple galette.
What wines am I pouring in my Berkeley Extension class? The general answer is: Anything I can while trying to stay within the meager budget I get. This has involved a fair amount of begging for discounts and working contacts, but I think it's been worth it.
But if you're looking for specifics, wander over to Catherine's site for a list of wines from the first class. I don't get to write tasting notes, of course, because I'm up in the front jabbering away. So I'm glad to see her notes.
That first class I felt nervous and unprepared, but I'm more comfortable with the class now, and the pacing is—I think—much improved.
I find the average wine tasting note to be boring, and I constantly strive to write better descriptions. David Schildknecht has served as my model until now, but I'm tempted to try my nose at erotic wine tasting, like Ray in this Achewood comic strip.
Mildly risque—perhaps crude is a better word—if such things bother you.
Thanks to Phil for the link
A common joke has an overweight woman stepping up to a fast food restaurant's counter and saying, "I'll have a bacon double cheeseburger, large fries, and a Diet Coke."
We have a complex relationship with food and weight issues. Millions of years of evolution have not adjusted to the abundance of food we now enjoy, and our bodies still respond to food at an unconscious level, causing us to overeat. Marketers study these biological buttons and push them to sell more product—a reality that clouds the free-market/libertarian notion that consumers should take responsibility for their overeating instead of pushing for corporate ethics or government controls on how companies can advertise.
You can probably guess some of the deeply rooted motives that food companies exploit. We're more suggestible when we're hungry. We eat more when food is close to hand. We eat more when we're in a group of overeaters. We enjoy food more when it's presented nicely.
But Brian Wansink's recent book Mindless Eating will stun you with its detailed looks at our urge to overeat. The book draws from his extensive research at Cornell's Food and Brand Lab, where scientists study eating patterns and find surprising results that Wansink narrates in a straightforward tone. Put the word "soy" on a label, and people will like it less than the identical product without the word, even when there's no actual soy in the ingredient list. A wine with a California label gets more praise, and generates more positive feelings about the meal in general, than the same wine with a North Dakota label. Add adjectives to food names—from "succulent" to "free-range"—and diners will prefer the menu, even when it's the same food as the ungarnished text. Serve five-day-old popcorn to two groups, and those with the larger containers will eat more of it as they watch the movie. And like the weight-conscious diner in the "Diet Coke" joke, Subway customers eat more calories than they think because the lean sandwich advertised by the chain provides a "health halo" that blesses the mayonnaise, cheese, and fattier meats a customer adds. Every section is a revelation about the subtle cues that affect our attitudes about the food we eat.
Think knowledge is power? Not in this case. Even if you read the book, your body's subconscious will trap you. Wansink spent a day drilling students with the knowledge that larger containers will cause you to eat more, only to have the students fall for that exact trap a few weeks later. Of course, this is good news for marketers, who leverage these unconscious reactions to sell more product.
But here's the saving grace: You can use the same tricks to help you eat better. At the end of each chapter, Wansink suggests strategies for altering your food landscape in a way that will steer your unconscious to healthier eating. If you have a candy bowl on your desk, move it far enough away that you have to break out of your task to visit it. Buy smaller containers of food, or break a large container into smaller ones, because a serving size is whatever sits in front of you. Improve your dinner parties dramatically by setting the mood, and describing each dish with some extra adjectives. (Which makes you wonder: Do Chez Panisse and its kin make extraordinary food, or does your mind look at the nice setting and per-ingredient provenance and add its own spice?)
The book is sort of a diet book, though not a traditional one. Wansink urges readers to lose weight by eating 100-200 fewer calories a day. He calls this range the "mindless margin," because your body doesn't notice the slight dip in intake, unlike deprivation diets where you starve yourself for short-term weight loss. The standard strategy just makes you crave the foods you gave up, so it's no surprise that 95% of the time, you regain the weight you lost. Or, as Wansink puts it, "The best diet is the one you don't know you're on."
Wansink's weight loss plan will get you back into those tight jeans, but not for next month's party. His diet will only shave 10-20 pounds per year, and it's hard to know how our society's love of instant gratification will mesh with this long-range plan. Former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton carved off a ton of weight, but publishers lost interest in her story when they learned it took three years of hard work.
It is a testament to the revelations in this book that I wanted more. I wanted tables that would give me a look at the raw data so that I could make my own judgments. And some concepts get relegated to the endnotes. He mentions a scientific basis for Thomas Keller's "two-bite philosophy" but doesn't elaborate. He says we make 200 food decisions a day, but doesn't provide the background for how he came up with that number.
Paradoxically, perhaps, I noticed the book dragged as Wansink described studies that seemed like subtle variations on points he had already established. When I started the book, I read it at every opportunity; towards the end I kept checking to see how much text was left.
I feel like Wansink gave a pass to companies for their marketing practices, no doubt because they help fund his research. To my mind, there is such a thing as corporate responsibility, but Wansink has no problem with allowing companies to use our brain chemistry for their profit. At least he's willing to teach us how to undo the damage those strategies create.
This book was sent to me as a review copy.
My cookbook library is well-stocked, should I wish to make any Western European or American dishes. But I often find myself scratching my head while hunting down Chinese, Japanese, and Indian recipes, not to mention a host of other national cuisines.
I want to pick up some basic books for various cuisines, but I'm at a loss. Thankfully, I know of a whole host of food lovers who are passionate and well-informed: you. I'd like your recommendations. If you read my list of technique books, you can get a sense of the type of book I like: technique over dogmatic recipes, a book that treats me as a curious student and not an automaton.
Any cuisine is fair game, but I most often notice my library lacunae when I look for Asian (including Indian) dishes or Central and South American recipes.
Through a convoluted series of events, I found this recent radio interview with my writing idol, Ed Behr. My food blogging friends worship chefs, I worship the publisher of The Art of Eating, the world's best food and wine magazine (an attitude I held long before I started writing for it). The Restaurant Guys start their interview with Ed about 15 minutes into the program (and occasionally interrupt him with ads, so stay with it). Ed discusses the history of his magazine, small producers and their personalities, farming trends, molecular gastronomy, and various specific articles that have appeared over the years (with a big segment on Nicolas Joly and biodynamics).
I note that a couple weeks later the Restaurant Guys interviewed Rowan Jacobsen, now the managing editor of AoE and another writer I admire, but that show doesn't seem to be up yet. (The show has had a number of interesting guests, and I might pull down some other interviews, which are available as a podcast.)
Theodore Gray revels in borderline catastrophic chemical reactions, at least when he's not building a wooden Periodic Table Table that has compartments filled with pure samples of each element (where possible). His latest sodium-fueled stunt? Salting popcorn by bubbling chlorine gas through liquid sodium. The smoke is pure, fresh table salt, but this is hardcore lab work, not like the relatively banal liquid-nitrogen ice cream.
I'm waiting for El Bulli or Alinea to replicate this as the molecular gastronomy equivalent to Cherries Jubilee.
via Ed
Regular readers have no doubt noticed the increased number of book reviews, a trend which is likely to continue. To make it easy to find past reviews, I've added a "Book Reviews" pop-up on the right, just under the "Favorite Posts" pop-up.
You know how everyone says the seafood industry will collapse if we keep overfishing? It always seems hard to believe, because you can still find fish, right? Not after 2048, according to a report in Science that CNN summarized in a recent article. Scientists looked at a number of ecosystems, and the portrait is grim.
The seafood industry has adopted a predictable stance, arguing that seafood populations fluctuate in natural ways. Objective observer or financial interest? Who to believe?
Spotted on eGullet
A great moment for cooking geeks everywhere. Harold McGee has a blog. His On Food and Cooking is one of the few books that I believe should be on every cook's shelf, so I'll be adding this one to my RSS reader.
Thanks to Tana for mentioning it on her site.
In a literal sense, I'm a professional food and wine writer; I earn money from my articles. In a figurative sense, it's a bit more vague; it's not my day job, and I've only been doing it for a few years.
But I'd like to offer some advice to fellow bloggers who have begun to write for pay. These are of course guidelines, but worth keeping in mind.
Don't Write For Free
It's a Catch-22. You need clips to get clients, but you need clients to get clips. Lots of writers solve the problem by writing for free, or pennies. We've all done it.
Stop. As soon as you can. A year ago, a potential client told me their fee for articles, and I balked. The publisher told me that they had writers willing to write for a lot less than a reasonable rate. (My retort—to the editor who pushed for a higher fee for me—was "Are those the writers they want?") This is the fight you will face. Every time you work for free or close to it, you propagate a system that you will come to hate. For the record, my first assignment was paid work that I got in part from writing samples from this site and a food writing class I took.
I do have some clients who don't pay me what I'm worth, but I have other motivations in those cases.
Don't Write On Spec
Let's say I asked you to do a day of labor-intensive yardwork for me, but told you that I'd only pay you if you met some criteria that I wouldn't reveal. Would you do it? Probably not. (If so, send me an email.)
But lots of writers send in pieces on spec, which means they write the entire article, send it into the publication, and hope that the publication will buy it. In the world of fiction and poetry, maybe this makes sense, but in the nonfiction realm, this is a waste of everyone's time. Editors don't get to steer your story in the direction they need, and writers waste time by writing a piece that might not get bought. Pitch an idea, get an assignment (ideally a contract), and communicate with the editor to get a clear idea of what s/he wants.
I refuse to write on spec. Every time I meet a Wine X editor at a tasting, I ask if they still only take articles on spec. Every time they say yes, I say, "Too bad. I have so many good ideas that I think would work for you. Oh, well." (It's the publisher's call, but I figure if I keep telling editors, the message will bubble back.) I've heard of publications that will ask different writers to submit a piece on spec for the same subject. Then the editor chooses the best, and all the other writers get shafted. I don't want to support that system.
Treat Your Client with Respect
You want good money and a real agreement? Be a professional.
I have a succinct description for my job as a writer: Making my editor's life easier. They have to edit my work and several other pieces. They have to coordinate the production of a periodical with paying subscribers and advertisers, keeping to a tight deadline. They're overworked and underpaid. Editing isn't just red ink on your draft.
Edit your piece, check for typos, and read it out loud from a printed page before you send it. If an editor gives you a date, turn in your work on that date. If they give you a word count, hit as close to the mark as possible.
If an editor wants the impossible, say so. When I sold my first piece to The Wine News, they asked me to turn it around in a week or so. I couldn't do it, but we negotiated for a date that allowed me to deliver a quality product and allowed them to print it in a relevant issue. Two months ago, a magazine wrote me to ask if I could write a piece about dessert wines. The assignment overlapped my trip to France, and the editor and I tried to figure out an arrangement that would work. No can do. I lost the assignment, and maybe a new client, but I will not lie about it if I can't deliver a good product on the given date.
Protect Your Rights
MS-NBC pays well on a per-word basis. I've had fun with my assignments for them, and the staff seems like a good group.
But I don't do any work for them beyond the small blurbs. Why not? Because MS-NBC buys all rights to your work. I can't reprint it, and if they want to reuse it in other realms, they don't have to pay me any more than they did for the initial work.
My work is an asset. I want to retain the ability to republish it in my much-anticipated memoirs, and I want to get paid extra if a magazine wants to put my content onto the web along with the magazine.
That's not always possible, but I negotiate for whatever I can get. On another note, check out Neil Gaiman's advice to get a literary will.
Writers? Editors? What advice would you give?
Most people aren't wine geeks. Most people shouldn't be: That way lies madness.
But even casual wine enthusiasts enjoy learning a bit about the bottle they're drinking. For the bulk of the wine-loving population, Karen MacNeil's The Wine Bible is a good book, despite being out of date and not always as thorough as one might want. It gives casual wine enthusiasts solid answers to most of the questions they might ask.
For the nerds among us, there is The Oxford Companion to Wine, recently gussied up with a new edition. Wine writer extraordinaire Jancis Robinson edits the exhaustive and monstrous volume, which includes contributions from specialized experts: David Schildknecht, probably the English-speaking world's foremost authority on German and Austrian wine; Kym Anderson, Lead Economist of the World Bank's Development Research Group; and a host of Masters of Wine and other entrenched grape gurus (including Tyler Colman of Dr. Vino).
I wouldn't normally think the book needs a review; it's the ultimate resource for the vinous expert in the household. But I've been using it quite a bit in recent weeks, boning up on arcane bits of data I might need for my class, and I'm struck anew by its depth of information. Some of my books could tell me the name of the red-tinted soil under the vineyards in the Rheinterrasse portion of Germany's Rheinhessen region (Permian red shale) but few could also tell me Hungary's name for Grüner Veltliner (Zöldveltelini).
Like any good reference book, this encyclopedia's cross-references—paper hyperlinks, if you will—can take you on a journey of exploration that will last as long as your eyes stay glued to the book. Oddball grape varieties, every trellising system known to wine growers, and of course larger portraits of regions and general subjects fill the 800+ pages. As I've surfed the tome, I've learned new things about the regions I thought I knew so well. If you ever have a wine question that other books can't answer, take a look at this book the next time you're at your local independent bookstore. If you use the old edition with any frequency, it's probably worth shelling out the $65 to upgrade. The new volume has current information and discusses recent discoveries in wine science.
This book was sent to me as a review copy.
The state of Arizona is considering a law that would require larger pens for pregnant pigs and calves being raised for veal, according to this article at the Arizona Business Gazette. Not large. Just larger. Industrial producers are nonetheless battling the bill, for obvious reasons.
The article quotes Jim Klinker, the executive secretary of the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation, which opposes the bill. "'The idyllic Wilbur image of the free-running pigs, the free-ranging chickens, the free-ranging dairy cattle is not the way that production is occurring in this country,' he said. Klinker said operating that way would cause food costs to rise to more than 10 percent of average wages." So he can't give a subset of his livestock room to lie down, because then food production costs would skyrocket?
Later in the article, we get another look at the gulf between Klinker's views and those of ethical eaters. "Klinker said it's not a conspiracy to keep the meat-eaters ignorant of where their food comes from. 'Maybe they don't want to know where food supply comes from,' he said. He maintains that factory farming is the only economical way to produce food."
Last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big ad for Riedel stemware, disguised as an article about the way that the shape of a glass affects the taste the wine. I love my Riedel glasses, but author Richard Hacker forgot to ask some interesting questions.
What of the research that Daniel Zwerding described in Gourmet two years ago, when a clinical, scientific trial found the Riedel claims to be bunk?
What of the superbly untested and unquestioned Riedel claim of a tongue's "flavor map?"
If glass shape is so specific, why didn't Riedel change the Spiegelau shapes after acquiring the competitor?
For that matter, why do Riedel's many product lines have different shapes? Todd Wernstrom, my editor at The Wine News, once noted that the same wine tasted different in each of the lines. And not necessarily better in the better glasses. So does Riedel actually know what they're doing?
Finally, does the world need another Riedel puff piece?
Numerous people have mentioned yet another wine tasting in which California wines beat out the French. What I keep wondering is not "why do the French keep losing" but "why do this at all?"
Napa Cabernets. Bordeaux. Despite some surface similarities, these are different beasts and should be judged within context. Napa Cabernets will be single-variety bottlings instead of blends. Each region will have different ripeness levels for the fruit, different climates, and different soils.
I've heard one theory that higher alcohol levels always show better in these tastings, and so, what a shock, California wines keep winning. Should we congratulate them for having monstrous alcohol levels that seduce a wine critic but don't go with your dinner?
California wines tend to be more sculpted than their French counterparts (though this is less true when you're talking about high-end Bordeaux estates; reverse osmosis shows up in France the same way it does in California, though it's used to concentrate must before fermentation instead of de-alcoholize the final product). Should we praise that?
What were the alcohol levels in these wines? Which of the wineries use Vinovation's reverse osmosis or Conetech's spinning cone to adjust alcohol levels in the wine? How many use Enologix to custom-tailor their wines to a critic's taste buds? Or their predecessors, since the wines were from the 1995 vintage (though Vinovation existed by then and Leo from Enologix was actively consulting as well). Does this tasting prove that California's a better wine region if everyone on the list had to fiddle with the wine's profile? (I should note: I think these companies are doing some interesting things, which is perhaps obvious in light of my upcoming article about Vinovation).
I understand tastings that try to identify the best in a group, but these inter-group tastings baffle the mind. Why not compare Zinfandels and Alsatian Rieslings? California Chardonnays and New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs? Think of the possibilities.
How about you? Do you think these results mean anything?
Scheurebe is one of Germany's most successful attempts to cross the noble-but-finicky Riesling grape with a high-yield variety, in this case Silvaner. It makes a pretty, floral white wine that I enjoy quite a bit.
I'm pouring some tonight in my class, and I remembered this amusing page on Weingut Lingenfelder's website. The estate, which has tirelessly promoted the charms of this grape, interviewed famous figures in the international chapters of the worldwide German-wine-loving community.
Possibly Melissa and I found this site funny only because we know some of the people behind the voices, but everyone can appreciate Terry Theise's rendition (his cat's, not so much). Those who know Bill Mayer will laugh out loud at that version.
Dashe Cellars, based in Oakland, has finally opened a tasting room. Michael and Anne Dashe have been building the tasting area for most of the year, and I plan to visit as soon as possible.
The Dashes make some of my favorite Zinfandels, keeping the alcohol to a "low" 15% or so. If you like California Zinfandels, often with high alcohol and jammy fruit, the Dashes tend to make well-balanced versions.
From the announcement: "Beginning October 28 (yes, that's next Saturday!), the Dashe Cellars Tasting Room will be open to the public 12pm to 5pm, Thursdays through Mondays."
I imagine the new tasting room will also pour wines from JC Cellars, another great producer in the same building. Jeff Cohn, the wine maker and owner, produces wines more akin to the Rosenblum style (where he served as the wine maker until recently). Jeff's Ventana Vineyards Syrah won the Syrah Shoot-Out at the Hospices du Rhône two years in a row.
Here are some tasting notes that I wrote when I researched the two wineries for my "Legacy of Rosenblum" article.
Note: I don't usually involve OWF in these PR things, but I liked Culinary Artistry, an earlier book by the authors, and decided to agree to be a stop on their "virtual book tour."
Review
I'm wary of books that promise to teach the reader how to pair wine with food. I work off the belief that a few simple rules give everyone the tools they need, and that anything more intimidates and confuses.
But Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page's new book What to Drink With What You Eat offers an interesting middle ground. Less a book-length primer—though the first chapters offer general advice—and more a catalog of proven pairings, the bulk of the book lists foods or cuisines and the drinks that go with them, or drinks and their complementary foods. A batch of ripe figs called your name at the market? Open a bottle of Vin Santo to accompany the dessert. Someone gave you a bottle of Madiran and you don't know what to eat with it? Try duck confit. Fans of Culinary Artistry will find the book's layout familiar: simple lists under easy-to-find subheadings, with bold entries indicating well-worn pairing classics. I couldn't find any pairings I disagreed with, when I knew enough to assess the idea myself.
Casual wine drinkers will probably get the most from the book, as the listings make connections between wines that might not be obvious. Muscadet has similarities to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, but that kinship is only obvious when you've tasted each, not when you're staring at an unfamiliar bottle in the wine store. Each drink's subheading gives a quick primer: "Dolcetto (Italian light-to-medium-bodied red wine from the Piedmont region)." But even obsessive wine enthusiasts with our own opinions about pairings will enjoy the ideas for food to serve with tea, sake, beer, and more—even water. Wine dominates the book, but these other listings offer some interesting tidbits. I wouldn't think to pair root beer with foie gras, for example.
I do wish that the authors had been able to print the rationale behind individual pairings. I don't know how they would have fit that into the format, but without a thought process from one of their experts, it feels like a missed educational opportunity.
Overall, though, this is a useful tool for someone looking to fill glasses with as much care as they turn to their plates. I've already recommended it to friends and acquaintances. Dornenburg & Page have provided an extensive list of pairing suggestions that will inspire rut-bound pairers and comfort casual drinkers.
This book was sent to me as a review copy.
Q & A
As part of their virtual book tour, the authors agreed to answer some of my questions, and I've reproduced that e-mail interview here.
What prompted you to do this book?
We wanted everyone to be able to experience and enjoy the same peak pairings of food and drink that have blown our minds while dining out or even eating at home. We also wanted to create a book that you didn't have to be a master sommelier to get something out of—one that allowed even an inexperienced wine drinker to glean some ideas by simply looking up various ingredients, dishes, or cuisines, with the same ease with which they might look up a word in the dictionary or a thesaurus.
Our book Culinary Artistry, which is the first known reference on culinary composition and flavor compatibility, used this format to effectively communicate compatible flavors, although its emphasis is primarily on food as opposed to beverages. (We were pleased to hear that Gourmet magazine's #1 restaurant of the year Alinea's chef Grant Achatz cited Culinary Artistry as his #1 most-used culinary book in Chicago magazine.) What to Drink with What You Eat is essentially "Culinary Artistry for food and beverages."
And since eating and drinking is something that most of us already do three times a day, we thought, "What could bring the average person more pleasure than being able to turn every meal — breakfast, lunch and dinner — into a peak experience?"
Isn't a good wine and food pairing largely a subjective experience?
Absolutely—just like everything from art to sex. Who's to say that what one person finds appealing will be found appealing by another? Yet there are classic paintings, and even classic sexual positions. We've gathered pairing recommendations that include many classic "Holy Grail" pairings we think every self-respecting foodie might want to try at least once in their lifetime.
But not even the experts always enjoy a classic pairing. For example, cheese guru Steven Jenkins of NYC's Fairway Market—who brought Epoisses to the United States—doesn't like the combination of foie gras and Sauternes. He prefers Calvados (which is less sweet, for any readers who aren't familiar with this dry apple brandy). But in deference to the popular classic match, he'll have sweet wine on hand to serve to guests who might not share his taste.
How did you choose your experts?
Based on our previous books and our dining experiences, we knew which professionals were responsible for some of our peak pairings in a restaurant setting. We interviewed many of them first, then asked each of them who they thought were some of the best pairers they knew. When some of the same names started being mentioned over and over again (e.g. Joe Catterson of Chicago's Alinea), we sought them out for interviews. We ended up interviewing arguably the largest group of sommeliers (60+) and master sommeliers (10) that has ever been interviewed for a wine book. Most wine books reflect a single expert's opinion (whose personal taste you may or may not share); ours features a synthesis of more than 70 experts' opinions, so you're far more likely to find recommendations that are in line with your own.
What were your biggest surprises pairing-wise?
We've both earned sommelier certificates (Andrew through the Sommelier Society of America, and Karen through the Court of Master Sommeliers), and consider ourselves to be wine lovers first and foremost. But while researching this book, we developed tremendous respect for the pairing potential of other beverages—including beer, sake, cocktails, and non-alcoholic beverages, all of which are covered in What to Drink with What You Eat.
After interviewing Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewing Company, we ordered in enchiladas mole from our neighborhood Mexican restaurant and paired the $10 with a $2 bottle of Porter that we bought at the deli on the corner. The Porter and the mole were absolutely magical together! We'd like to see it become commonplace for people to take two minutes to think about what they should drink with their meal to create this kind of magic three times a day.
What's your advice to someone who's trying to pair a wine with a dish that has a number of elements—protein, side, etc.?
In the past, the general rule was "Red wine with meat, and white wine with fish." That worked in the days when foods were served simply and unadorned.
But in this day and age, it's even more important to look to the dominant flavors of a dish—whether they're in the form of the protein, the sauce and/or a side dish. It's typically the sauce, or the herbs or spices or other flavorings that accent it. For example, if there are habanero peppers in a dish, we'd imagine that counterbalancing that kind of heat is going to be a lot more important than virtually anything else!
One problem with wine-pairing books is they often encourage people to fall into dogmatic ruts. This goes with that, and that's all there is to it. How do you work towards giving readers creativity and courage to try their own pairings?
We designed the book to be as useful to a novice as to an expert in serving as an idea generator for pairing options to consider. Roget's Thesaurus is an extraordinarily useful reference book, but its usefulness is largely determined by the writing talent a novice or expert brings to it. The same is true of What to Drink with What You Eat. Novices without much depth of experience will probably tend to use the book literally, relying on the most popular pairing recommendations (which are indicated in bold and/or CAPS and/or with an asterisk). Experts with greater food and drink memory can use the book more intuitively, reinterpreting recommended pairings ("Oh, these are all fruity reds listed...I think I'll try this with the fruity Merlot I picked up around the corner last week....").
What do you think of the trend towards higher-alcohol wines, with regard to their ability to pair with food. And the kinds of food they can pair with.
In general, we think this is a disappointing trend. It's especially sad to see it happen with delicate wines such as Pinot Noir, which lose the essence of what makes them great when they're pumped up with too high of alcohol levels.
In general, we suggest that readers avoid pairing high-alcohol wines with either very subtle (e.g. delicate) dishes, which are overwhelmed by them—or with very salty or spicy dishes, which clash with them.
In issue 64 of The Art of Eating, Ed Behr wrote this in response to a letter from David Schildknecht that commented on Ed's earlier statement "most wines don't go particularly well with food." He intended it to be provocative, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts:
"Not that there is a better drink with food than wine, but the two don't complement each other nearly as much as we are almost everywhere led to believe. Yes, some foods go extremely well with wine: a roast chicken goes with almost any wine. But perfect matches are extremely rare. If, at a meal, you take a bite of food and pay close attention to its flavor, and if you pause to clear your palate and then take a sip of the wine in your glass and carefully note its flavor, and then if you taste the two together, you'll find that each usually diminishes the other."
Hey, Derrick, remember those "Magic Eye" pictures that were all the rage in the early 1990s? You'd stare into them a certain way, and some people could see an almost "magical" 3-D image. Other people could stare and stare and never see anything more than the colors and shapes on the surface of the paper. We ourselves make no value judgments for or against people who can or can't see the 3-D image. But others who can't see the image might argue that it doesn't exist.
Our personal gastronomic experiences are most in line with those of the late Italian wine critic Luigi "Gino" Veronelli, whose words open What to Drink with What You Eat: "The flavor of a food almost always reveals the quality of a wine and exalts it. In turn, the quality of a wine complements the pleasure of a food and spiritualizes it."
We hope that What to Drink with What You Eat helps to open the door for everyone to experience more pleasure than they might have previously thought possible through pairing food and drink. For those who'd like an educational and entertaining first-hand tasting experience, we invite them to join us on October 30th at Draeger's - San Mateo; November 6th at Dahlia Lounge - Seattle; and/or November 9th at Cru - Vancouver for a taste of some extraordinary food and beverage pairings that just might make a believer out of anyone!
And, by the way, Derrick, many thanks for hosting us today on our "Virtual Book Tour." We're grateful that you extended the courtesy as a gesture of your appreciation for Culinary Artistry. Thanks for making it such a pleasure!
