The Real Potato

Thanks, all, for your blog naming suggestions! There were some fabulous ones (No Pappadums came close) but I think I'm going with something from a little further back in my personal history:

The Real Potato.

When we were in high school, my friend Kara had a dream in which she was in a grocery store where all of the food was plastic, except for one real potato. The potato had a sign pointing to it that said "The Real Potato."

For years we've been kicking ideas back and forth about doing something with that name. I think, in addition to being easy to remember and spell, it conveys something about what I'm trying to do with this blog.

I know that it's a little much, sometimes, to be simmering dal for an hour and a half or spending an afternoon kneading dough or breading zucchini, although often I find the process as rewarding as the meal. But what I'm trying to do is to make real food-- Slow Food, if you will-- in the middle of a sea of plastic food.

I work full time, as does Joe, and we live paycheck to paycheck. We're not the sort of foodies you see profiled in the New York Times, sitting in their Upper East Side co-ops arguing over whose olive oil is best. I don't think that's what real food is about. It's about finding things that are fresh and local and authentic, however you choose to define that, and putting love into what you make. It's about getting recipes from your grandmother, and your friends' grandmothers from around the world. It's about paying attention to your food-- how it tastes, where it came from, and what goes into it. It doesn't have to cost a fortune or take forever.

I've eaten plastic food my whole life-- I'm a working-class American. But I don't think that being working class means you have to settle for plastic (or high fructose corn syrup and red #5). And while more and more of our food comes from fewer and fewer sources, food-related problems like food allergies, diabetes, irritable bowel and celiac disease are on the rise. More people are being forced to look beyond processed food-in-a-box and find new ways to eat. That's what this blog is about. I've been looking for better, tastier and less harmful ways to eat for a while now. I'm looking for the Real Potato. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Books'n'at

Name this blog!

I used a gift certificate from work to pick up two food-related books this weekend: The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, and The Indian Grocery Store Demystified by Linda Bladholm. Haven't cooked anything from the Mexican book yet, but it seems, in my limited understanding, like a reasonably comprehensive guide to Mexico City cooking. Should be fun. The Bladholm book...

OK, here's the thing about the Bladholm book. The introductory material is fairly Orientalist.
Here's an example of what I mean:

You pull open the door and a string of brass bells jangle, ushering you into
another land. The heady aromas of cardamom, black pepper, perfumed
incense, and rose-scented sweets fill the air. You are surrounded by
exotic provisions with colorful wrappers and labels. The strains of a
sitar resonate from a far corner. There is the rustle of a saree...

And so on and so forth. This is worthless at best and racist at worst. However, the explanations of various spices, their origins, uses and alternate names, are incredibly useful, as are the sections on cooking instruments and produce that are hard to find in the US. I'll at least stop confusing kalonji with black cumin!

If you're going to be in Philadelphia this weekend (and I am not), the White Dog Foundation is sponsoring a local food event at Yard's Brewery:

Yards Kick Off Event:

All Local Ingredient Cheese Steaks
(Pastured Beef and Veg.) * Hand Crafted Ales * Live Music * Dunk Local Food
Leaders in Dunk Tank

Sunday, July 15th 2:00pm - 6:30pm

2439 Amber Street, Philadelphia, PA. Located in the
Kensington neighborhood of Philly. The brewery entrance is on Martha Street
close to Hagert St.

There will be a dunk tank at the event in which Local Food
Leaders (including Judy Wicks) from Fair Food, Farm to City, Reading Terminal
Market, The Book & The Cook and The Food Trust will be submerged — that is,
provided you can hit the target.

Milk is $3.50 a gallon and rising-- that's way too expensive AND unrealistically cheap.

A quick tidbit: This article rightly condemns the fact that milk prices are soaring. It argues that this is the case because corn meal (cow feed, in other words) is rising in price due to the diversion of corn to the newly subsidized ethanol industry.

The article is absolutely correct in its argument that ethanol production is in fact not environmentally friendly. However, I would clarify that the overproduction of corn is so high in the US that it's not a matter of shortages; in fact, the push toward ethanol production is profitable because it allows agribusiness to grow the same amount of corn without the downward push on prices that is an inevitable result of overproduction. We produce too much corn; massive agribusiness producers receive huge subsidies from the federal government (subsidies originally intended to protect small farmers from the vagaries of the market); prices have to be kept artificially high in order to protect profits. Producers have for decades dumped billions of tons of grain (mostly wheat and corn) into the ocean in order to keep prices high-- an unforgivable crime in a world in which people still starve to death. But shipping free grain to, say, the Sudan wouldn't inflate prices; creating a new fuel industry that puts the grain glut to use does.

Furthermore, the article is right that ethanol production doesn't do a damn thing about global warming. Its carbon emissions are slightly lower than those of gasoline, but such massive quantities of fossil fuels are used in the production of the corn that the net lessening of emissions is negligible. (Agriculture produces more carbon emissions than any other US industry.) The only claim to 'sustainability' ethanol has is that it is a renewable energy source, unlike oil.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's eye-opening tour through food production in the US, Pollan demolishes these claims-- and points out that the milk we drink, like other industrial food, is artificially cheap. Paying a dollar for a gallon of milk-- or even $3.50-- doesn't reflect the true cost to our health, our economy and the environment involved in the production of that milk.

So the next time you see a slick ad for BP or Shell telling you how very environmentally responsible and kind-hearted and lovable energy companies are-- don't buy it. And consider getting your milk from your local farmstand, where the cows might just eat grass, like their bodies are built to do. It'll be better for you, and the way prices are going this summer, it might just be cheaper.

Joe's Chuck Roast

So we bought this great big chuck roast from Livengood Produce's farmstand in the Reading Terminal Market. Livengood is one of the sustainably farmed, nature-based "grass farms" Michael Pollan discusses in his wonderful book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Their cows are raised eating actual grass and clover in a real pasture. They are treated humanely and killed humanely (to the extent that such a thing is possible), and the family who runs the farmstand sells only what is in season on their farm right now. They usually have a small cooler with whatever meat they have right now, and it is uniformly excellent. You know how sometimes, with commercial meats, the fat on the side tastes kind of gristly and awful? The fat on this meat tastes like... beef. And grass. And the meat is incredibly flavorful-- after you have a few of these, it's hard to go back to the nasty factory stuff. If you're in Philly, you need to check them out. The cute guy at the farmstand says they're having a customer appreciation day the last weekend in July-- who knows, if all works out, maybe we'll get CarShare for the day and head out there to check it out!

And now, the food. I had a really long day on Monday, so my wonderful husband did the cooking. He actually used to do almost all of the cooking before I started getting serious about learning, and he said he particularly enjoyed doing this roast.

Since we've stocked our spice cabinet with all manner of delicious seeds and powders, Joe decided to do a rub with some Indian spices, get the outside nice and seared, and keep it rare inside. It was delicious; we served it with fried potatoes, but I think it'll make excellent sandwiches. Here's his recipe:

Chuck Roast

Rub:
2 Cloves of Garlic
Black Caraway Seeds (1Tbsp)
Cumin Seeds (3Tbsp)
Teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper
Fennel Seeds (2 Tbsp)

I didn't measure the seeds. I just put what I though would be enough to cover the roast. I put approximates in parentheses.

Put in cuisinart for five minutes or until well ground.

Generously salt the roast. Wait 5 minutes. Pour rub out on foil or in a bowl and cover roast with an even layer of the rub. Cover as much surface area as possible.

(Credit to Alton) Put roast in a 250 degree oven until the internal temp reaches 125-128 degrees. Remove from oven and cover with foil. Crank up the oven to 500 degrees. After the oven comes to temperature, put the roast back in and bring the internal temperature to 135-140 degrees. Remove from oven. Let rest for at least 20 minutes. Roast should have a nice crust and be medium rare inside. The time period will vary depending on the size of the roast. Ours took a total of and hour and twenty minutes.

Two excellent articles

Two excellent articles on food and allergy-related subjects from Orion Magazine:

A Place-Based Malady
How we help create our allergic landscape
by Gregg Mitman
Published in the May/June 2007 issue of Orion magazine
The scream of chainsaws gnawing through full-grown oak trees abruptly announced summer’s arrival in 1987 in the leafy enclave of Lake Forest on the Lake Michigan shore north of Chicago. Most residents of the exclusive historic neighborhood treasured the trees that shaded their mansions, but Laurence Tureaud wasn’t like most residents. Tureaud, known to Americans as Mr. T, star of the 1980s hit TV show The A-Team and Rocky’s nemesis in Rocky III, had moved to his seven-acre estate the previous fall, when the hundreds of oaks and other native plantings lay dormant. That spring, as the trees came into bloom, the six-foot-tall, 220-pound, well-muscled actor suffered terribly. Pity the fool, or in this case the tree, that tangled with Mr. T. Saying that allergies to tree pollen provoked him, the man who wore gold chains to remind him of his slave ancestors took action. With a chainsaw in hand and the help of hired workers, Mr. T cleared the property of more than seventy trees, many of which had been planted in the early twentieth century under the direction of famed landscape architect Jens Jensen.

and:

The Tortilla Cycle
by Rebecca Allen
Published in the May/June 2007 issue of Orion magazine
Rosa can, and does, make tortillas in the dark. The ancient generator needs a new belt and a prayer and can’t always be counted on to power the light bulbs of Unión Victoria, the Guatemalan village where I live with Rosa and her two young daughters. Rosa’s husband works in Florida. In his absence Rosa carries on, feeding her pigs, hauling firewood, planting crops, and making three meals a day. In the midst of all this, she insisted on teaching me to make tortillas.

A word about beef broth

I posted last night about my experience making the delicious-smelling (and -tasting) Sweet Rice recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's "An Invitation to Indian Cooking," my textbook.

When I made it, the recipe called for beef broth or stock. We didn't have any on hand, and I had no way of transporting my carless self to Trader Joe's and back quickly. Instead, I went to our corner market (like a bodega, minus the Dominican coconut cookies and beer). I bought two cans of College Inn beef broth, made right in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.

Here's what was in them:

Beef broth, less than 1% of the following: monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed corn protein, hydrolyzed soy protein, hydrolyzed whey protein (milk) and wheat bran protein, natural flavor, onion poweder, hydrolyzed wheat protein, autolyzed yeast extract, caramel color, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, thiamine hydrochloride, salt, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate. Contains: soy, milk, wheat.

Now then: why isn't that list two words long? You know what I want to find when I open a can of beef broth? Beef broth! Maybe, maybe, if you want to get fancy, toss an onion in there, some salt, maybe a bay leaf. What is all that shit doing in my beef broth?

Furthermore: thanks to the Food Labeling Act of 2006, possibly the only worthwhile thing George W. Bush has ever done, foods produced in the United States must clearly state whether they contain any of the top eight food allergens: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (almonds, cashews, pecans, pistachios, walnuts, etc.), fish, shellfish, wheat, and soy. This product, ostensibly made of the cooked, lightly seasoned blood and rendered fat of a cow, contains soy, milk and wheat. Why? Why would you take a perfectly allergen-free food and put it out of the reach of millions of potential consumers? (I'll write another post, at some point, about why I think food allergies are on the rise.) What flavor or textural qualities do wheat, corn and soy bring to beef broth?

The thing is, they don't contribute to the taste of beef broth, and I suspect their contribution to its texture is marginal. Perhaps they contribute to its shelf life. It's probably the thiamine hydrochloride (which sounds to my thoroughly unscientific ear like an acid) that keeps anything in the broth from reacting with the metal of the can. So what do they add? My guess is profits for Del Monte Foods, maker of College Inn and one of the top ten polluters of the Pittsburgh area. Wheat, soy and particularly corn are overproduced in the US, and the agribusiness producers which grow most of these crops are always on the lookout for ways to use them in their manufacturing businesses in order to sell crops and keep prices up. That is why it's really, really hard to eat in the United States without consuming a whole lot of high fructose corn syrup. (For a much fuller and better explanation, check out The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan and Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle.)

So here's my question: what does it take to eat a diet composed of real food? I mean, things that are recognizable as having come from plants and animals (and fungi, which aren't real plants)? There was a great piece in the New York Times (I'm trying to find it, but without luck-- anybody?) that talked about trying to eat "things your great-grandmother would have recognized as food." I'm willing to broaden that to things that somebody's great-grandmother would have recognized, since I seriously doubt that my dear, wonderful late great-grandmother Dandeen would have been up for a nice fish curry, but the point stands.

We live in a society in which things are increasingly processed to death. We rob food of all of its foodlike qualities, and then we "fortify" our Coke and Oreos with vitamins so that we can pretend it's healthy. But here's the thing: a century or two ago, nobody knew about vitamins. We're finding out new things about food all the time-- one year it's "good cholesterol," the next year it's omega-3 fatty acids, etc. What do we not know about? What's in a potato that we're not putting into our fortified imitation potato flakes? There is more to a potato than is dream'd of in your philosophy, General Mills...

So these are the questions I'm trying to figure out. How can we human beings start eating like human beings again? How do we get food to the people instead of dumping grain at the bottom of the ocean to keep prices up? How do we grow what we need instead of just lacing everything we eat with high fructose corn syrup? How do we reclaim the homemade flavors we learned from our grandparents (if we're lucky)? How do we treat food as a way to connect across cultures, to bring friends and families together, to polish our skills and nourish our bodies and our planet?