28 March 2016

Fuzzy, and logical

1. This paean to Kampot pepper seems full of holes to me. (Not least that guff about “France’s Gruyere cheese,” which is well out of order and out of date.)
2. I’ve taken an interest in butter since before the very first Eat This Podcast. This comparison of Anatolian and Nordic butter scratches that itch.
3. Have we had enough of foraged food yet? Apparently not, but all foraged food is not created equal.
4. Is a rice cooker the smartest gadget in the kitchen? Maybe. (You’ll see what I did there once you’ve read the article.)
5. But is it smart enough to make any of 15 kinds of crispy rice bottoms?
6. Shameless self-promotion. Did you know I have this other thing, Pick of the Podcasts? This week, I’m showcasing three podcasts that are up for a James Beard Foundation award. So, that’s shameless squared.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:43 — 15.4MB)

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

When it comes to cradles of agriculture, West Africa does not often get a look in. The Sahel is better known as a place of famine than of feasting, but it wasn’t always so, and even today the Bamana people of Mali have a rich food culture.

Stephen Wooten – that’s him in the picture enjoying a meal with his friends and collaborators – is an anthropologist who has been working in Mali since the early 1990s. He gave a great talk at this year’s Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food, after which we had a chance to talk about food in Mali and how it evolved from gathering and hunting through herding cattle and sheep to settled agriculture, along the way domesticating some important cereals such as millet.

There’s a lot more to the food culture though. Women and men work separately but together to ensure that the community can eat, with a strict division of labour and equally strict sharing of responsibilities.

Notes

1. The banner photograph, by Stephen Wooten, shows the antelope headdress worn by dancers in the Ciwara performance, a celebration that recounts the mythical origins of Bamana agriculture and that, like Bamana food culture, requires the participation of women and men.

   Huffduff it

Having been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award last year, I thought I was chancing my arm trying again, so when I heard late yesterday afternoon, via Twitter no less, that I had again been nominated, I was amazed. Amazed, delighted, excited.

Podcast: @Food52’s Burnt Toast, @EatPodcast, @potlikker Gravy #jbfa

— Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) March 15, 2016

Of course, as I said last year, my secret weapon is my guests. They’re the ones with something worth listening to. I just find them, ask the questions and tidy up a bit afterwards.

I dithered like mad this time trying to select a suitable episode to enter, and in the end decided on a compilation of three different excerpts. So, if you haven’t already heard them, or if you fancy a repeat, do have a listen to:

• Peter Hertzmann on Just Mayo and emulsifiers.
• Rachel Roddy on her award-winning book on Roman food and cooking.
• Katherine Rinné on the waters of Rome.

I’m in pretty good company too.

Congratulations to Gravy (which is also enjoying its second nomination) and Burnt Toast. See you, with any luck, in New York.

14 March 2016

Crackers no more

1. BMI – body mass index – is nice and simple, and simply misleading. Fivethirtyeight offers a great overview.
2. Some UK dairy farmers are seeing the merits of micro-dairies.
3. While some drinkers question the need for – and, indeed, the meaning of – the label “natural wine”.
4. “A salame is a salume, but a salume is not necessarily a salame.” Confused? You need Salumi 101.
5. Rachel Laudan turns adversity into a thoughtful, thought-provoking and, perish the thought, potentially useful article on soft food.

If you listened to my most recent podcast you have heard me declare Indonesia the global leader in foods that crunch. I was particularly struck by a large square of tasty nothingness, an airy pillow about 10 cm square and 2 cm thick that was somehow vaguely familiar and yet utterly strange. I even guessed that it might have been made somehow from the starchy water left after washing rice.

Today I learned the truth, and I could not have been more wrong. The cracker in question is the bovine equivalent of porky scratchings, and as someone who, in his youth, had consumed a scratching or two, knowing that explains the vague familiarity.

Today I met Ibu Tima and her son Nico, who make smaller versions – 2 cm cubes – of these things 1 for a living. The process starts with the skin of a water buffalo, bought from the local butcher. That gets cut up into pieces and boiled (exact details are a little hazy) and then the hair and outer layer of skin are scraped off. The pieces are then boiled again before being cut into cubes of about 1/3 cm and placed out on a mesh frame under the sun. Tima or Nico stir them about every now and again, and after two days the skin cubes resemble light yellow amber.

Transformation into crackers starts with soaking the cubes in warm oil. They’re not really frying at this stage, just being warmed up a bit, although they do expand a bit too. Then comes the drama of chucking the warm cubes into really hot oil, where they hiss and spit and bubble and expand like that crazy foam insulation you squirt into big gaps around windows.

And that’s it, after a minute or two draining: cubes of tasty, crunchy nothingness.

I was suitably amazed, and of course I had to share my learnings. ‘Cos that’s what we do when we’re on mission.