What happened to 005? Work got in the way. Maybe later.

30 June 2015

1. Hands up all those who thought the fish in sushi had to be raw? Nordic Food Lab has some news for you as it seeks “to reproduce a gravlax, in its old fermented version, that is delicious to us now – or let’s say, for this first trial, at least palatable”.
2. Could you make 1,000,000 good tortillas a day? Chipotle founder Steve Ells is working “to make artisanal tortillas on an industrial scale”.
3. I remember the concert for Bangladesh, but nobody seems to want to celebrate the good news with a big party at the Albert Hall. Bangladesh is no longer a basket case; it’s a food basket.
4. A guide to egg labels for the confused, which is all of us. I’d love to see cross-country comparisons.
5. Smaller peaches save water and taste better. No surprises there. So why aren’t people buying them? A sad story of one California farm family trying to adapt to climate change.
6. Bonus shameless self-promotion. Good thing the regulations that preserve Parmigiano-Reggiano say nothing about who works the dairies. BBC News reports on Punjab in the Po.

Bound to happen: a fake restaurant tops @TripAdvisor ranking in northern #Italy city http://t.co/hvEMqoLNse @TheLocalItaly @ItaliaaTavola

— Eric J. Lyman (@EricJLyman) June 23, 2015

One reason why a dedicated recommendation engine might be more useful.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:51 — 14.8MB)

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS | More

People looking for a good place to eat in Rome can choose from almost as many opinions as there are restaurants. Truth be told, though, a lot of those opinions have been shared by ninnies. Seriously, if you’re looking for some harmless entertainment as you wait for the bill to arrive after an excellent meal that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed, read what some of the people on some crowd-sourced websites have said about the place where you are eating. But I digress. Rather than wade through countless ninny-posts looking for a realistic recommendation, many visitors, and some residents, turn to one of the food writers based here. Among those, one person reigns supreme: Elizabeth Minchilli. Through social media, apps, books and tours, she tirelessly points people in the right direction. Her new book came out this spring. That’s a good enough reason for me to sit down for a drink with Elizabeth in her local neighbourhood.

Notes

1. The book is Eating Rome: Living the Good Life in the Eternal City. Her blog is here. Elsewhere, she’s @eminchilli.
2. We met at Urbana 47 which is indeed a fun place to hang out.
3. I captured the banner image, and the rigatoni a la gricia that grace the podcast cover on iTunes, at Perilli, immediately after Elizabeth and I met, and which, I swear, had been selected long before our conversation. The food is a lot more consistent than the typography.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:09 — 11.8MB)

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS | More

Day after day, week after week, special agents keep a look out for invaders that they really don’t want to find. And we, the ordinary public, give them barely a second thought. Worse, we sometimes provide the means for the invaders to get in. Of course when it all goes wrong, there’s an outcry, as there has been for the Mediterranean fruit fly, the European corn borer, the giant African snail and many other pests. Most of the time, however, we remain blissfully unaware. And most of the time, pests either don’t get in or are detected fairly quickly and eradicated.

I was lucky enough to hitch a ride on a field trip in Puerto Rico, organised by the local survey teams to show plant health experts how they go about the business of keeping pests from establishing.

An aside: I can remember, back in the 1980s, sitting on a plane at Sydney airport ducking my head as the cabin staff wafted through spraying us with insecticide. These days, I learned, aircraft are mostly treated with persistent pesticides, eliminating the spray but not the need to keep insects out.

Notes

1. The opening and closing music is Che Che Cole, by Willie Colón with Héctor Lavoe. I had no idea when I chose it that like some species of giant African snail, it’s original home is apparently Ghana. Some incursions are better than others.
2. The music in the middle is La Boriqueña, the national anthem of Puerto Rico, but the site where I found this version has apparently vanished in the interim.
3. The banner photograph shows two male Mediterranean fruit flies facing off, and is by Derric Nimmo.
4. The cover photograph of a giant African snail – no Photoshop – is by R. Anson Eaglin of USDA APHIS.
5. And those pathetic dead snail shells? They’re the ones I found, all excited like, but they weren’t the pests I was looking for.