Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Then, you would redistribute them, piece by piece, all through the
neighborhood.

"Who was that masked man, unmatching my place settings?"

"I don't know, but I'd like to thank him."


Saturday's dinner was the gingery crab pasta thing. Easy as pie, and with an
invigorating mashup of emphatic flavors. It's a real winner, and we'll do it
again. I'd be keen for you to address that matter of salt -- it's all a
matter of taste, yadda, yadda, yet yours are among the very few instructions
that say things like "salt liberally" at multiple points in the recipe.
Clearly, that's a taste signature of yours. Wherefrom, whyso, do you really
recommend that everyone cook that way?
  

    
Well, I'm of the firm belief that the cook gets to decide how to cook
stuff. You can and should of course take into account the preferences
of whoever you're cooking for, but the second you try to cook
*according* to someone else's palate, you've made a very bad move, IMO,
because you may have lost what made your food good in the first place
(then again, straying far from your own taste can be a good thing if
you don't have a lot of confidence in your own palate, because you
might discover lots of things you didn't know about yourself).

A lot of people might react negatively to authoritatively spiced food,
simply because they've never had it before and it feels unfamiliar and
kinda scary in the mouth. But you're never going to win over
everybody--it's just better to cook how YOU like to eat. The odds are
that it won't be so far off the radar screen that you'll be alone; I've
found that  people are curious and receptive when the cook is happy
with what he/she has made, and more cautious/tentative when the cook
downplays it. I don't think it's a good idea to apologize for a meal
you've cooked, saying that it didn't turn out that great or you made 
abetter version last week, or whatever. Better to declare victory, no
matter what happens!

People are so afraid of screwing up -- it never ceases to amaze me.
What's the absolute worst that could happen? It's inedible and you make
something else or go out. BFD. We feel so much pressure to produce
"restaurant" food, especially if we've got a good kitchen with good
equipment. That's one reason it's so liberating to have a crappy
kitchen with crappy cookware -- people are amazed you can boil water,
let alone produce something great.Not saying anyone SHOULD have a
crappy cookware, just that you can make great food with very basic
tools, provided you start with good ingredients, get to know your own
palate, and stop being afraid of mistakes and screwing up.
  

    
One of the worse meals I ever had was at Hunan when I was with a bunch
of spice wimps who ordered dishes "not hot".....instead of fiery
transcendence, it was greasy, heavy, lifeless.

Definitely better to pick the right recipe than alter one and destroy
it in the process--unless you really know what you're doing.
  

    
Emphasis on salt: at some point I figured out that table salt actually
made food taste bad. There is an odd chemically feeling that makes my
entire head/tongue taste weird, kinda metallic-y, kinda iodine-y;
unpleasant, however you describe it. But UNsalted food taste bleh, too
-- flavors just don't "wake up" unless the salt component is there. So
the first big salt discovery was salt other than table salt. For me
that was kosher salt, which I still love and use. It has a larger
surface volume, contains no iodine, and tends not to salt dishes in
toto -- you can taste individualized bursts of salt. Best of all, it
tastes good. And it's cheap as hell.

Then I started using "finishing salts," sea salts like fleur de sel,
sel gris, and many others. These have many flavors other than salt,
mostly oceany flavors like seaweed. These salts can be extremely
pricey, though I must say, it's so easy to blow ten bucks on just about
anything these days that it's hard for me to get worked up about the
high cost of sea salt, especially when it lasts for so long (you can
only put so many pinches of salt on finished food -- even a few ounces
are going to last many months, if not longer). 

From there I somehow made the leap of adding other crap to salt and
blending it, and discovered how good -- and EASY -- that can be. It's
the instant path to breakaway cooking. A pinch of saffron and sel gris
ground together in a coffee grinder, over grilled shrimp. Amazing! And
instant. We've talked about maccha salt over poached eggs. Smoked
paprika salt over steak -- totally different experience. Kaffir lime
salt on corn on the cob -- ethereal! Lavender salt on lamb chops, oh
my! All with no work whatsoever except 30 seconds of dumping x
ingredient with a quarter cup of sel gris and whirring it around for a
few pulses. These are the kinds of cooking discoveries that get me
fired up. I love evangelizing on this subject because the AHA! moment
for so many people when they learn about this is so . . . I dunno,
gratifying. It's a powerful way to get people to take better charge of
feeding themselves well, through EZ methods of coaxing wonderful
flavors out of everyday meals. Global flavor blasts are another. 
  

    
Kosher salt was definitely my starter salt.  One of my favorite early
salt discoveries is how much better pasta tastes when you follow the
time-honored instruction to make the water "salty as the ocean." 

I don't think anyone arround here has sel gris for less than a billion
dollars, but I'm starting to branch out a bit, encouraged by your
book.  Now if my family will just stop asking for the warm spicy corn
salad so I can try another recipe!
  

    

ha! You'll have to make the corn salad as a side dish and add another recipe
from Eric's cookbook simultaneously, mcdee.


<gower>, what's next? I mean, what do you think is next on the culinary
horizon for foodies? We've had the big plates/small portions California
cuisine, the "meat loaf and mashed potatoes home-cookin'" restaurant phase,
the deconstructed presentation fad. We've gone through raspberry coulis and
balsamic vinegars and currently the "culinary foam" from Ferran Adria of El
Bulli.

What is going to amuse our bouches now?
  

    
Mine!
  

    
Ah, foams are so over. Now comes encapsulation.
  

    

> foams are so over

wait, that can't be, I haven't tried 'em yet!

Anyway, I still look forward to hearing what Eric predicts. Also to hearing
about any upcoming readings, since my personal experience at one of his
readings tells me that it will likely include Tasty Snacks a la Gower as 
part of the presentation.

I don't mean to stop the conversation, but I wanted to acknowledge that
we've just launched a new author interview, which means Eric and Scott have
fulfilled their promise to visit with us for two weeks. Thank you both for
joining us, and please know that if you're able, you're more than welcome to
stick around. This topic will remain open for further conversation and
announcements indefinitely, so please carry on if you can. If you have other
committments, then thanks, and come back when you can!
  

    
Who knows. But I'm reasonably certain that home cooking--as opposed to
the restaurant trends you described -- will always be our main source
of food, at least for 95 percent of the planet. I'm continually struck
by the world of difference between restaurant food and home food, and
how so many home cooks feel so much pressure to emulate restaurant
food, and how so many just throw up their hands and say screw it, let's
go out. "Great food at home, done quickly and easily" isn't that hard
to pull off, but many of us think it is, and don't bother trying. 

One trend that may stick: biodynamic farming. Some call it "beyond
organic" -- good intro to it in today's food section of the Chronicle.
  

    
Whoa! No kidding!  I've been reading about it in Acres Magazine for a 
while.  Also their website has books for sale about biodynamic farming.  
The Australians have really taken off with it.
  

    
In terms of restaurant vs. home, yeah, a home cook is unlikely to
match the French Laundry, but with a little bit of practice, it's not
hard to beat the vast majority of restaurant food.  

We still eat out some times -- just to relax, to experience foods that
are a pain to make at home, or to enjoy a specialty of the house
that's made really well.  But unless you frequent a very expensive
range of restaurants, you'll pass most restaurant food on the first
turn.
  

    

what's "biodynamic farming?"

Can I do it in my back yard?
  

    
From the article in the chronicle this week, it looks like a cross
between organic agriculture and homeopathy--at least, my B.S. O'Meter
was screaming at stuff like this:

"Two of the preparations, 501 and 500, involve stirring quartz and
manure respectively into water in a way that creates a vortex in the
water, reversing direction intermittently throughout one hour. The
mixture is highly dilute, and often described as "homeopathic" in
dosage.

Some other formulas include those injected into compost. One consists
of dried chamomile flowers stuffed into intestines (natural sausage
casings) and buried underground for six months. A yarrow compost
preparation consists of dried yarrow blossoms stuffed into the bladder
of a deer, hung from a tree for six months then buried underground for
another six months. Oak bark preparation, also used in compost, must be
placed in the skull of a domesticated horned animal and buried for six
months before it is used."

That's just plain nutso.
  

    
perhaps. but evidently the crops grown this
way are better and yummier than just plain
organic. i bet it's one of those things where one cant
really extract which are the useful bits and which
are the superstitions from a farming practice
that seems to A Good One.

that being said, i have had too much experience
with stuff that i cant explain that well, just is ---
so i just shrug and go 'well, that helped/worked/
was beneficial'. empircism of the most basic
kind...
  

    
Likely it has to do with extra care that someone willing to stir the
solutions one way and then another is willing to take with their crops,
and overall good organic practice.
  

    
probably. and there may be some -as-yet-we-cant-explain-it-but-20-yrs-from-
now-we-will phenom --- just as our understandings of the complexities
of ecological webs has grown in time...
  

    
I used to belong to a terrific CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
that was a Biodynamic Farm. While I know that woo-woo stuff seems to
be a part of the Biodynamic theory, this farm was all about being
organic and never mentioned the mystical stuff.

Brookfield Farm, http://www.brookfieldfarm.org/ , if anyone wants a
CSA in Amherst Ma (delivery to Boston area also)

(We stopped belonging because a farm less than half a mile from our
house went CSA)

I note that they did, however, have a few words about why they were
not calling themselves "Organic", having to do with how difficult the
regulations were for a small non-profit farm. There was something I
didn't quite follow about needing a mechanical compost turner, for
example. It is a cruel irony that small farms which do everything
possible right cannot get this certification, while large agribusiness
can get their monoculture wastelands stamped and approved.

BTW "The Omnivore's Dillema" by Michael Pollan has a terrific
description of a "beyond organic" farm, Polyface farm in Virginia

http://polyfacefarms.com/index.html
  

    
yeah, i know a lot of farms that -are- organic
just say their stuff is 'sustainably grown', if
the bureaucracy and hassle of getting the
usda organic cert is too much.
  

    
Pollan had a great piece in the NYT not long ago (someplace on the Well
someone drew it to my attention) about the dietary consequences of U.S.
agricultural subsidies (e.g., things made with corn syrup are cheaper than
they would otherwise be, ergo, people trying not to spend a lot of money on
food end up buying loads more things made with corn syrup than would be
best).

One of my two favorite parts of William Alexander's *The $64 Tomato* was the
chapter describing his efforts to grow apples organically and his dismal
conclusion (and realization about a childhood memory).
  

    
The first part of the Omnivore's Dilemma is all about corn. The book
traces four meals: a fast food meal which turns out to be all corn and
soy all over the place; a super-organic meal from Polyface Farm; a Big
Agro factory-organic meal ;and a meal Pollan hunts, gathers and kills
himself. I thought the fourth section was sort of weak, but the first
three were fascinating. I have been recommending the book to everyone. 
Some of Pollan's writing on corn here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p17s01-lihc.html
http://www.rethinkingschoollunch.org/publications/rsl/michael-pollan.html


Fat Land by Greg Critser traces the history of corn subsidies and the
marketing of cheap food to children. (Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation
does a similar job on the meat side of the equation)