Jakob's Bowl

A Vegetarian Winter Skillet

A close friend is in the first of a six week diet that excludes meats, grains, dairy, processed sugar, and alcohol. His main sources of protein during this diet are fish, eggs, and legumes. I decided to offer him a few improvisations with some healthy seasonal members of the ‘vegetable’ kingdom to help ease his culinary pain. I found great organic braising mix composed of young Brassica greens, mainly kales and collards, and I decided to improvise a one-skillet dish with them and the organic Chickpeas of Spello from Ayers Creek Farm that I began soaking Saturday afternoon. After the 24-hour soak, I simmered the chickpeas with half an onion, a clove, a bay leaf, a few cloves of garlic, and some black peppercorns until they were just slightly al dente, about 1-3/4 hours. I reserved the chickpea liquor since it is rich in flavor and nutrients, and in the absence of meat stocks, it acts as a good flavor base.

We Are What We Eat: Soylent Pink

FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD

Animal Farm
George Orwell, 1945

A second helping of ‘cultured pork’ anyone? The Associated Press' January 15th piece, Scientists turn stem cells into pork, is the second article in just over six weeks about scientists who are trying to help the starving masses and save the environment using some cutting-edge genetic and biological engineering. The first article, Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory, appeared in the TIMESONLINE at the end of November, and didn’t have much in the way of details. The latest article, also emanating from London, presents significantly more in the way of who, what, when…and it makes me think that we are in the initial stages of an unfolding PR acclimation project.

It appears that projects of this nature are in progress in Europe, in Japan, and here in the USA sponsored by organizations like The In Vitro Meat Consortium and New Harvest. Basically, the object of the game is to take pig muscle stem cells, put them in a “nutrient-based soup” and create large quantities of ready to eat entrées in “bioreactors.” This will alleviate the need to raise pigs on an industrial scale. Right now, the sorcerers, and their apprentices, have been able to produce one-centimeter strips of pork with the consistency of scallops. They claim that this is because the ‘cultured pork’ is only 80% protein whereas actual pork is 99% protein. While this article indicates that the “nutrient-based soup” is made up of “amino acids, fats and natural sugars,” the earlier article indicated that at present the “nutritious “broth” is derived from the blood products of animal foetuses.” It appears that the texture isn’t the only problem to overcome.

Why is all of this brainpower being devoted to creating a ‘better’ sausage and pepper sandwich? Well, the article indicates three essential needs that ‘cultured pork,’ could alleviate, global hunger, lower greenhouse gases and water usage, and the usual artery-clogging fats found in livestock meat. Of course, since most of the problems created by our ‘meat’ supply began occurring when we allowed it to be turned into a series of industrial processes, it probably makes that we let science and industry solve these problems. I think that the very first paragraph is most telling:

Call it pork in a petri dish — a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.

It isn’t clear from what follows that the author sees the irony in this paragraph or that it is these scientists who don’t see the irony. By selling ‘cultured pork’ as a “green alternative to raising livestock” there is an implication that all agriculture is industrial agriculture. It is as if farming in its very nature is anti-green, a part of Original Sin.

Heaven forbid that we should try and cure the disease, when we can side step it with the aid of technology - it has always solved our problems. But, as with most new ideas in their nascent stages, this technology is long on promise and short on details. What happens if the scientists can’t develop a ‘synthetic’ soup to culture their hot dogs in, won’t it then take millions and millions of pig fetuses to produce that soup? But, what if they are able to grow the Soylent Pink in “amino acids, fats and natural sugars,” where will these come from…the same soybeans, corn and agricultural and food processing waste that they are feeding to our pigs now?

Are we just being promised some 21st Century alchemy, that riches will be created from base materials, or is this just a shell game? Big Ag has devoted countless resources over the last half century trying grow pigs faster using as little feed or as low a quality feed as possible, and in the process it has created a product that is as tasteless as it is unhealthy. Since they’ve proven that their customers will literally eat anything, are they now just trying to shortcut the process further, and oh yes, do it without the oink and all the shit.

The Super Bowl's Two-Pound Minimum

I applauded the newly opened The Swinery last fall for its philosophy of “no boxed meat” and purchasing “whole” locally pastured animals, but, after my first visit, I wondered about its future success. I was especially concerned about its West Seattle location and whether Seattle was a big enough market for its program and the pricing that necessarily entailed. At the time, I crossed my fingers hoped that it did, and visited the shop regularly.

Most butcher shops in days of yore were neighborhood operations, passed down generation after generation from father to son, or daughter for that matter. I thought that opening a butcher shop today in a part of town not typically known as a food “destination” by the rest of the city would make the shop doubly reliant on the neighborhood. Sure, West Seattle had a thriving weekly Farmers’ Market, but would these customers also regularly pay the true cost of having skilled artisan butchers buy animals raised locally on small farms and breakdown them down into cuts of meat when most of their meat options in the neighborhood over the last decade or so have been cello wrapped and priced to move. Trying to convince all of the potential ‘local’ customers of the truly significant value being added in the freshness, quality and variety of meats offered would take time, and time is money - money well spent to my mind.

Who Screwed The Salami?

I was on the road a few weeks ago when the hourly news announced a recall of over one million pounds of salami and “ready to eat sausages” due to a serious outbreak of Salmonella. Daniele International  from Rhode Island manufactured the suspect products, which were then sold under its own labels and others including “Boar's Head All Natural Salame Coated with Coarse Black Pepper” and “Dietz & Watson Artisan Collection Baby Genoa Pepper Salame.” (The emphasis is mine.) Later that evening it was on the local news because some of the products were sold by locally headquartered Amazon and Costco. On the heals of the major recall of hamburgers a few weeks earlier, I kept wondering ‘is anyone really out there watching our backs?’

A few days later when the press leaked the Administration’s planned three year freeze on discretionary spending, and I didn’t even occur to me to consider the impact this might have on USDA and FDA inspections. It wasn’t but 12 hours later that the short piece, Salmonella Strikes Again, by Professor Marion Nestle appeared on the Atlantic Food Channel. It was an update of sorts with new information including the fact that the cases of Salmonella had been steadily reported since the previous July - yes, six months ago - and that Daniele International was indicating that ‘black pepper’ might be the source of the outbreak. Professor Nestle provided a link to updated statistics on the cases attributed to this outbreak and a link to the Daniele website - the CDC website now puts the number of cases at 204, the largest number concentrated here in Washington. It's difficult to know who's playing 'hide the salame' this time, but one thing is for sure, the consumers always seem to get it in the end.

It’s In the Bag(uette)

“Wheat, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whiskey can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.”

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Ambrose Bierce

Back before I started this blog, I had envisioned doing at least one post, if not several on the ‘artisan’ bread situation here in the Pacific Northwest. I even considered some comparative tastings between the bakers here in Seattle and those in Portland, but over the last eight months it seemed like it would be a waste of time and effort given the ever shifting variables involved in the contemporary ‘artisan’ bakery scene here. The growing number of bakeries in the Seattle over the last four years has had me on quite a rollercoaster ride between expectations and realizations, the variability in the quality of bread has tied my mind and my palate in knots.

Things had gotten so estranged that my routine for much of 2008 was to bring back a rustic loaf from either Ken’s Artisan Bakery or the Pearl Bakery or a focaccia slab from little t american baker in Portland every other weekend while I enjoyed Pain de Campagne from Seattle’s Dahlia Bakery in between. This bread stasis was disturbed early in 2009, when I got my first totally mediocre loaf from Ken’s Artisan Bakery - the country brown loaf had a poorly formed crust. This made me realize that there was obviously a difference in skill or quality control from shift to shift. Even more distressing was the fact that the Dahlia’s Pain de Campagne started coming out flattened and dense on a regular basis, suggesting problems similar to those at the have been plaguing the Tall Grass Bakery for years. Needless to say, I ate less bread last year.

Vulcan's Sicilian Legacy: Carricante

My first exposure to the white wines of Sicily this past year were two IGT Sicilia from the southeast of Sicily in the region around Ragusa - COS Rami, a blend of Inzolia and Grecanico, which was unimpressive, and Gulfi Carjcante, a blend of Carricante and Albanello, which was most impressive in its richness and complexity. Carricante is believed to be indigenous to Sicily and today can mainly be found cultivated on the slopes of Mt. Etna in eastern Sicily. The Carricante vines used to produce the Gulfi wine were grafted over a decade ago from the best Carricante vines growing on the slopes of Mount Etna. Since the Gulfi wine was given the name Carjcante, ‘Carricante’ in the local Sicilian dialect, I was under the impression that it was the grape providing most of the substance to the blend. As it turns out, this isn’t necessarily the case, but Carricante is considered the more important of the two grapes. As a matter of fact the Etna DOC region requires Etna Bianco to have at least 60% Carricante and Etna Bianco Superiore at least 80% - so Carricante was added to my list.