Archive for February, 2008
For the cook who has everything…
From the Blurb: When all else has failed, succeed with these Onion Goggles, which have a comfortable foam seal that protects ones eyes from irritating onion vapors. Their hip design may result in a few giggles but you’ll have the last laugh. Comes with a storage case to keep goggles clean.
Now I’ve seen it all!
1 comment 27 February, 2008
‘Our Daily Bread’ - a film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Last night Producer Catherine and I went to see ‘Our Daily Bread’ at the ICA. Geyrhalter has filled his 92 minutes with ‘somewhere-in-Euroland’ vignettes of food production, from the growing of crops and rearing of animals to their eventual picking, slaughter and processing.
Geyrhalter explains it thus:
“In this film a look behind the structures [of food production] is permitted, time’s provided to take in sounds and images, and it’s possible to think about the world where our basic foodstuffs are produced, which is normally ignored.”
It takes a while to get into the pace of the film, and though it’s bloody and raw in parts, it’s never gory or sensationalist. Yet neither is it a traditional documentary. It’s like a moving Andraias Gurskey or something, and like the processes it shows it’s very mediated and rhythmic in places.
What I liked about the film was that it doesn’t judge. It doesn’t judge the producers, the employees, or ultimately, us the consumers. It just shows you industrial agriculture from around Europe and lets you draw your own conclusions. I know what mine are, but the important thing is that Geyrhalter doesn’t presume to tell us his.
Setting aside ethics for a moment, the design and industrialisation is just incredible. The machine for the evisceration of the farmed salmon is amazing - slit and gutted in less than three seconds by a set of slicers and suckers that wouldn’t look out of place at the end of Edward Scissorhand’s sleeves. We also see a machine for picking up live broiler chickens and putting them into crates unharmed and alive, and who had the job of designing the apparatus for castrating piglets?! Industrialisation, after all, is nothing but the physical manifestation of the thought ‘This is boring - there must be a faster way of doing this!’
Geyrhalter says of the processes:
“Plants and animals are treated just like any other goods, and smooth functioning is extremely important. The most important thing is how the animals can be born, raised and held as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, how to treat them so they’re as fresh and undamaged as possible when they arrive at the slaughterhouse, and that the levels of medications and stress hormones in the meat are below the legal limits. No one thinks about whether they’re happy.”
In one of Geyrhalter’s trademark tracking shots, we see sows unable to stand up in their farrowing cages. They were so cramped that in some cases their swollen udders were forced between the bars of the cage. This system was banned in the UK in 1999. The EU banned tethers from the start of 2006, although stalls will remain legal until 2014. More on farrowing cages here.
Geyrhalter also addresses the workers, most of whom aren’t part of some sinister grey economy, but ordinary and in some cases highly skilled people. They don’t appear to have any issues with the tasks they perform, and to criticise them would be hypocritical. We see them having lunch, taking cigarette breaks, and chatting on the way down the salt mines. These moments come as breaks for the viewer just as much as they do for the worker on camera.
Geyrhalter doesn’t really tell us which country each segment is shot in, “It’s irrelevant for this film whether a company that produces baby chicks is located in Austria, Spain or Poland.” So seeing it from a British point of view, one could be tempted to think that these are ‘Continental’ practices, along with veal crates and foie gras. That would be a mistake on two counts. One, much of the food produced in the UK is grown or raised in the same way, and two, as we saw with the recent Bernard Matthews bird flu scare, a lot of the food we eat in this country comes from Europe.
If you’re interested in food mass production - and you should be because we all eat some of it, after all - try and see this film if you can. It on at the ICA until the weekend. At least watch the trailers and have a root round the website, which is very good. http://www.ourdailybread.at. Here’s the Channel4 review as well. Also keep an eye out for this ‘Food Design’ by Martin Hablesreiter (and made by the same film Company), which is based on the book of the same name.
Footnote: The ICA was, as ever, full of white kids with wonky haircuts just like it was the first time I went there as an art student in ‘94. With my own wonky hair cut long gone, I still loved it.
1 comment 26 February, 2008
Oh, Delia, what can the matter be?
All the noise about Delia Smith’s comeback extravaganza has been like when Dylan went electric - the shock, the horror! Mainstream media highlights include an interview with Lynn Barber in this month’s Observer Food Monthly, a journalist well known for being dropped deep behind ‘party lines’, and she takes no prisoners in this either. I bet you could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a butter knife. Nigel Slater, being a more effete soul, chose to sit on the fence a bit in his leader article. Also, for reasons best known to the Guardian Art Director, the Guardian decided to Photoshop Delia’s face onto Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. Eh?
Anyway, what’s interesting is that Delia’s comments have dealt food media a sucker punch – in short, I think most of them feel betrayed. It’s a case of ‘et tu Brute?’ And this recipe is bordering on food blasphemy. As with the Rt Rvd Rowan Williams’ recent controversial speech, bits of what she said have been broken off and fashioned to fit other people’s agendas and opinions. Some people see it as a voice against the ‘food fascists’, the organic lobby, global warming - such is the modern multi-strata media space.
Delia, by her own admission, says she is ignorant of the politics of food. But oh dear, Delia sweetheart, that’s where the discourse now is! A lot has changed since the late 90s. There’s now a large part of the population that actually do care about how their food is produced and want to know about that, not just how to prepare it and how it ‘looks’. Providence is as important as preparation to swathes of today’s consumers. You can do a small test of this by looking at how many supermarket higher-end brands have a picture of the farmer who (may) have produced the product on the packaging. It may be poorly cooked, but at least it’s poorly cooked Gloucestershire old spot.
David Cameron spoke rather well on the subject of food on Farming Today last week, in a piece that the Radio 4 website soundbited as ‘hug a foodie’. Listen here (towards the end). He even name-checks his local butcher Martin Slater in Chadlington. Natch, being a Westminster man he managed to cover all bases, tickling the foodie trouts, value shoppers, local businesses and supermarkets at the same time. But at least he seemed clued up on the issues and had a genuine passion for well-produced British products and an understanding of what the consumer wants and how what we buy is a statement about our beliefs. Delia, if anything, is a throwback to a time when people were more ignorant of these issues; when it was all Abigail’s Party and the home was an impenetrable fortress unaffected by the outside world.
A foodie friend who I met for dinner last week said, “Have you tried the recipes? They’re awful. It’s not cooking, it’s just assembling your own ready meal from ready-made ingredients at twice the cost of the raw ingredients,” and the shepherd’s pie recipe above bears this out. Look, everyone cheats a bit - shortcuts, tips and tricks and such have been used in cooking since day one - but follow this to the extreme and you could say that even using recipes is cheating because someone’s telling you how to do it rather than finding out for yourself. But I just can’t shake the feeling that Delia’s cheats are somehow more… well, bordering on lazy.
I’ll end with an analogy for the young ‘uns. Most computer games come with cheat codes: infinite ammo, invulnerability, the ability to skip to any level, God mode, etc. From Commodore 64 pokes to Playstation’s secret combos, you can always cheat. The point is, if you’ve ever played a computer game with all the cheats on, it’s the most boring thing in the world. I think the same applies in cooking.
4 comments 24 February, 2008
Magic Beans and Hey Prezzo!
There are two snippets in this week’s Restaurant magazine business section talking about the fortunes of The Food & Drink Group and Prezzo. The former owns Henry J Bean’s and the Jamies Bar chain, and has announced a rise in turnover of 2.4% to £20.8m. In the second half of the financial year the company acquired seven properties from The Puzzle Pub Co., three of which it disposed of. The latter, on the other hand, has announced a “softening in consumer spending” in November, which it expects to result in lower-than-expected profits.
Why are these facts interesting? Well, as well as giving us a snapshot of the cut-throat nature of the casual dining sector (which is where most people in the UK eat), it also might explain the transformation last year of Crystal Palace’s very own troubled Puzzle Pub into Shecky’s Chicken Shack and then into a Prezzo. Crystal Palace already has a much-loved traditional trattoria in the form of Lorenzo’s. It also has an Il Ponte, another pizza-pasta joint, as well as a PizzaExpress. So a fourth one is asking a lot of our Italian-loving residents.
Furthermore, if indeed the old Puzzle Pub was one of those released by the Food and Drink group, I think they missed a trick. I’m sure they did their research, but there’s nothing like that in Crystal Palace. You can throw a stick and hit half a dozen Thai places, and Indian’s gone regional with Nepalese alongside more traditional Indian offerings. Joanna’s has got the classy modern European covered and there’s Mediterranean, tapas and Portuguese. It’s also worth noting that both McDonald’s and Pizza Hut both closed in CP last year.
So Crystal Palace has a thriving restaurant scene that punches well above its weight for the size of the area it covers. Yet the burger/diner market remains unchallenged. Granted, the trappings of Uncle Sam aren’t now considered as cool as they were in 1985 when Henry J Bean’s started on the Kings Road, but everyone at some point fancies a decent burger, right? Especially post-Maccy D’s generation 17-25-year-olds with cash to spend and no babysitter to arrange. All they’d have to do was turn down the Americana and big up the burgers, as Gourmet Burger Kitchen and new boy Byron’s have done. For a lot of people the burger remains a popular mid-week treat food format, so Lord knows why Prezzo went ahead last year with a massive refit to Italian when they knew they’d be up against three well-established competitors. Mind you, the page on their website that lists the company’s directors does a 404, which speaks volumes.
3 comments 18 February, 2008
62 days to go…
Just worked out that there’s only 62 days to go until I hit the road… gulp!
From and including: Sunday, February 17, 2008To, but not including : Saturday, April 19, 2008
Or 2 months, 2 days
- 5,356,800 seconds
- 89,280 minutes
- 1488 hours
- 8 weeks (rounded down)
Add comment 17 February, 2008
the size and shape of this project.
With apologies to Max Gogarty, medialand’s most short lived and most despised blogger - poor chap.
Hello. I’m Andrew Webb, I’m 32 and live on top of a hill in south London.
At the minute, I occasionally eat in restaurants with other hungry time poor people, I’m writing a book, and doing images for Skins; spending any sort of money I earn on food and comfortable practical jeans, and drinking my way to a financially blighted six-month trip to.. Britain.
I’m kinda sh**ting myself about travelling. Well, not so much the travelling part. It’s Ipswich that scares me. The cold, the roads, the snakebite and black, Australian bar staff. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited. And I just know when I get out of the car and into the maelstrom that is Macclesfield - well, actually, I don’t know how I’ll react.
etc. etc…
So Max got his fingers burned, and the Guardian should know better, but all of this raises the question about just how do you write a successful travel blog? Well you pick something that’s not dishwater dull and write about it in an interesting way for a start.
And how should this project work? I’ve now a sponsor on board - more on that soon - how much of an impact is that going to have? All I know is I don’t want to make anything like this pile of doggy doo, the Mercedes 2000 project. Hey, where’s the content? Wait, there it is, on a sub page squished right down the bottom. As for the design, the layout and quality - urgh! I have it on good authority that the people behind this had the audacity to submit it for a new media award. No what I want this project to be is somthing more like openroad.tv blogs, maps, photos, video, user submissions. wooo moma! I think Eating Albion is a fantastic idea and I’ve spent months planning and working on. It has cost me a great deal both emotionally and financially and all I want from this project is to produce something of quality that I can be proud of, and enjoy the experience of doing it. I wonder if Max started out with the same aspirations?
1 comment 15 February, 2008
What a tea/dinner/supper*
*delete as appropriate, depending on perceived class status. For me it’s tea.
I’d never boiled a chicken until yesterday. I’d fried, sautéed, wrapped in parma ham and made soups from leftovers, but why boil a whole bird when you can roast it, right? Wrong. I’d got a chicken in for the weekend, but as you found out in yesterday’s post, I ended up having a Christmas Sunday lunch. So, having got home at around 8ish on Monday night with the chicken still in the fridge, I was hungry and wanted something fast. Boiling rather than roasting is quicker due to the direct contact of the hot water. It also gives you a ready-made stock, and that means soup.
Here’s what I did. Kettle on, and whole chicken into my largest stockpot with chunkily chopped-up carrot, celery, and parsnip. To that I added a bay leaf, four cloves of garlic, one segment of star anise, and a few sprigs of parsley, plus a peppercorn. The chicken was cooked in about 30 mins. Just like with roasting, use the juices from around the thigh as a guide to whether it’s cooked through. A word of warning here, though - take great care when lifting it out of the boiling water as it can drop back into the pot easily and splash hot stock everywhere. You might be better chopping it up raw and cooking in sections (this improves speed, too). You can go anywhere from this basic recipe. Add fresh chopped chillies and udon noodles and you’re in the Orient, a handful of pasta takes you to Italy, and the addition of leeks sets you on the high road to Cock-a-leekie.
I added cubed potato chunks to thicken the base, and after the chicken was cooked I let it cool before shredding the breast meat and straining off the root veg. I ate this too, but you can chuck it if you like. Into the still-hot broth I threw the shredded chicken meat and some very finely shredded pointed cabbage and put it back on the boil. Mmmm.
So that was yesterday, and today was the left-over soup. I also had an English Camembert that needed eating up (I ‘ve spoken about the joy that is hot cheese before). So far, so naughty, but the addition of half a head of raw broccoli ought to bump up the goodness value…
This is good for me… honest.
2 comments 5 February, 2008
Christmas dinner in February
A last-minute invitation to a Christmas Sunday lunch at the weekend was too intriguing to turn down. Drew and Maggie are friends of my friends Sarah and Thad, and because they were both working over Christmas they missed out on the proper dinner. And so they decided to upgrade their Sunday lunch to a full-on Christmas affair: turkey and all the trimmings, crackers, roasties, Christmas pudding with brandy butter, Stilton, and some nice wines. And here’s the thing… I really enjoyed it. Eating a Christmas dinner without Slade running through your head and on top of the other excesses of the season was an really interesting food experience. When the first mouthful of a boozy Harrods Christmas pudding went in, my taste buds didn’t know what was going on: ‘What? That time of year already?!‘ It helped that it was on a cold Sunday in February, however. I’m not sure it would have worked in August.
1 comment 4 February, 2008
Even when you don’t book, there’s always hope
At the end I chatted to a waiter about what another table was eating. ‘Oh, they’ve got a special for three,’ he said. It was a pot-roasted duck that the chef had just happened to make, in a Le Cruset dish. So another tip: ask about the specials. There are also a few ‘for two’ and ‘for four’ dishes at the Anchor and Hope and its sister restaurant. I think they’re a great idea, as it means chefs can use larger and more interesting cuts of meat, and you get a carving knife and serving spoon with which to carve it up with yourself - excellent.A bottle and a half of wine, four mains, three sides, three desserts and a coffee came to £104, which I thought was a bargain. I know I’ll be back to the Anchor and Hope, and I also know to get there at 5:30…
Add comment 3 February, 2008
Scottish beef videos
There are some great instructional videos on how to butcher the main meat breeds on Quality Meat Scotland. Getting up there in the summer and getting my hands on some of the beef there will be great… apart from the midges, perhaps.
In the beef one he describes the carcass as an ‘R4L’. Yeah - had me stumped too. It’s explained on this page and is to do with the conformation (as in chunky or more scrawny) and the fat content; L meaning leaner. A bit more Googling turns up this PDF (HTML version here - go to page 7) that goes on to talk about costs and how different markets (supermarkets, traditional butcher and catering suppliers) require different types.
The preferred classification for different markets is highlighted in red. For example, an R4L carcass would attract the supermarket base price and would be acceptable for all three markets illustrated.
I could sit and watch these for hours. OK, so you’re probably never going to butcher down an entire side of beef, but there’s still useful stuff like how to make a French trim rack of lamb.
1 comment 2 February, 2008
The future - why aren’t we eating soya on the moon?
The future seen from now…
I’ve had this post on a slow boil since New Year, and as we’ve (just) seen the end of January, it’s sort of topical. It’s about the future. When the calendar clicks over another year, most of the media do a review of the past 12 months. Occasionally a few periodicals, particularly in America, ask a selection of laymen, pundits and thought-shapers to speculate what the future might look like 50 or a 100 years from now. The writers often focus on physical things like technology, transport, medicine, and sometimes diet and food.
Jim Rasenberger of the New York Times did just such a piece at the end of December, in which he consulted a broad range of people from schoolchildren to scientists. Here’s what chef Daniel Boulud had to say:
‘I think the children of today will have a big challenge persuading their children to take time to enjoy food. But restaurants will always be important in New York. People will see restaurants as a home away from home, where they feel secure…Genetically engineered food is something I don’t think anyone can escape, but the great chefs will still want a product that is natural… More food will be grown locally.’
They’re fairly conservative predictions – in fact I’d say they’re almost being met right now. Futurology is now a fully-fledged discipline, but nowadays future predictions tend to be more anti-Utopian and cautious. Why? Well, I think Leo McGarry summed it up best in the West Wing when he said:
Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised… Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh: The personal computer…
Leo: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the moon?
The future seen from 1900…
Rasenberger is by no means the first to solicit opinions from people about the future. This excerpt from The Ladies Home Journal did the rounds at Christmas last year, in which the author asked ‘most learned and conservative minds in America’ what the year 2000 would be like. You can read it in full here, but it’s worth pulling out the ones related to food, farming and nature:
“Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.
Prediction #12: Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does… Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.
Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.
Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.
Prediction #23: Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance.
Prediction #24: Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.
Prediction #25: Oranges will grow in Philadelphia. Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. The farmers of South America, South Africa, Australia and the South Sea Islands, whose seasons are directly opposite to ours, will thus supply us in winter with fresh summer foods, which cannot be grown here. Scientists will have discovered how to raise here many fruits now confined to much hotter or colder climates. Delicious oranges will be grown in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Cantaloupes and other summer fruits will be of such a hardy nature that they can be stored through the winter as potatoes are now.
Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.”
Some of this sounds like hell, and some of it sounds scarily like now. There are two things to take from this. Firstly, the assumption that the extermination of wild species seems to be a given – especially insects. If you look at the world now, important pollinating species like bees are under threat from loss of habitat, colony collapse disorder and suchlike, while flies and mosquitos are having a whale of a time living in our filth and killing millions worldwide.
The second point worth noting is that the food described in the excerpt is all massive. Farm animals are hornless and grotesquely deformed to produce more meat. Vegetables are all gigantic and climate-resistant. The prediction ‘Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence’ is like some unseasonal Alice in Wonderland image. Until you realise it’s actually very nearly true. The Dutch Elsanta strawberry is a whopper, grown more for its shelf-life than its flavour, and is available 365 days of the year in most supermarkets.
Prediction 15 has also very nearly come true , as a large amount of food today is shrink-wrapped and sealed. Think about walking round your average supermarket - vegetables and fruit are the only things that you can pick up and sniff. And Prediction 25 is bang-on in describing the concept of food miles.
The future seen from the 70s…
Fast-forward now to the late 70s. I’ve got a book called Future World, by Peter Goodwin. It’s the sort of annual young boys up and down the land got for Christmas along with an eagle-eyed Action Man, a selection box and a new bike.
It’s split into sections like space travel, communications, medicine and food. Here are some pages from the food section, the title being ‘Food – the quest for abundance’. It talks about the hazards of mono-culture environments and a return to some older mixed farming techniques, as well as the latest cutting-edge application of science to create fertilisers that are ‘a by-product’ from the oil industry’.
And take this example.
‘This deep-fried breaded chicken is in fact made from mycoprotein, a fibrous substance produced from mycrofungi’. Mmmm, perhaps it’s a case of just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
It’s also illustrated with those wonderful Syd Mead-style drawings, in which beautiful young people step from air-cars into trans-continental shuttle tubes, while a spacecraft roars upward in the background. In the one below a diver returns fish samples from a giant sea-fish farm. Like Leo, this was the future I wanted as a child.
So where now for the future of food? Locally grown fruits as big as your head, all year round? Or economic collapse and species extinction? Well, maybe both. Scientists at the University of Warwick have a selection of podcasts looking at producing better tomatoes and broccoli (actually the tomato one is really interesting), while other scientists are looking at species decline in everything from cod to bees. If all the apples in the UK disappeared overnight there would be outrage, yet slow losses of species and gradual price rises over decades mean people forget, lose interest or stop caring. Food still comes way down the list in a lot of people’s lists of things that ‘are important’ – that is until we all start to get a little hungry.
Add comment 1 February, 2008
