THE GURGLING COD

Welcome to the Terroirdome

I suppose the pun in the title of this post was bound to come up sooner or later but I would not have guessed that I would be using it in reference to Vermont. First:

...a merry band of professors from Vermont colleges — a geologist, a sensory scientist, a cultural anthropologist and a conservationist — think there’s much more to [syrup]. In an informal study, they hope to show that syrups vary by region, with nuances that could help small-scale producers use their locations like a brand.

“Small syrup makers are still competing with Aunt Jemima,” said Amy Trubek, an anthropologist and assistant professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont who is coordinating the project. “Like Burgundy wines or Savoie cheeses, the terroir of maple syrups matters.”

This may be what happens when they let UVM professors read Wine Spectator, but I'm not sure it is good for syrup producers. Vermont, itself, is a strong brand in the specialty food market. The state, I believe, has a full-time employee whose job it is to monitor unauthorized uses of "Vermont." "Vermont Maple Syrup" already is a premium brand. To suggest that "small syrup makers are competing with Aunt Jemima" is preposterous, as a trip to the supermarket will confirm. Vermont syrup makers are competing with producers from Canada and New York. Quite literally Balkanizing the VT syrup brand seems like a bad idea. Also, we ran through this question with ryes a few weeks ago, but my guess is that terroir matters less for a product that undergoes such a radical transformation from raw produce to final form.

In other VT food news, the reborn Farmers Diner is expanding its "food from here" concept to embrace booze, under the rubric of "hooch from here." In the case of local beers, that's a promise; for local wines, perhaps more of a threat.

A Pair of Hams

It's been a good fall for Matt and Ted Lee. When Pat Conroy blurbs your Southern cookbook with "I goddamn love this book," you are pretty much playing with house money.*  However, the careful reader has to wonder if they are not collectively a ham gollem. In yesterday's DI/DO, the Lees sing the praises of the wet cured, or city ham. However, thanks to the keen eyed cinetrix, I learned they're on the record in 02138 (think Hello! for Harvard grads, if Hello! were relentlessly self-congratulatory) as traveling around the US with a (dry cured) country ham in a stainless steel case. If this were a campaign ad, this is where you would see the obligatory shot of a weather vane, and a voice intoning

"The Lee Bros. advocate one kind of ham for the unwashed masses who read New York Times, and another for their fancy Ivy League cronies.** The Lee Bros. flipflop on hams, which is unhygenic. Can you trust Matt and Ted Lee to choose your family's ham?
-Paid for by Citizens for a Honey-baked America."

Fortunately, despite trans fat legislation, we do not have ham elections. Yet. The article, its author, and its context are all pretty interesting, however. The lede runs like this:

TO Southerners like us, the apotheosis of pork is country ham — the hind leg of a pig that has been immersed in rock salt, hung in a smokehouse, then aged for many months to prosciutto-like firmness. We have hallowed country ham in national magazines, clucked over the decline of its mostly artisanal production and driven close to a thousand miles for a particularly fine Kentucky specimen. We have spent more on these hams in some years than we have on health insurance. We’ve even given them as wedding gifts.

So our dirty little secret, the one that may cost us our invitation to the next Southern Foodways Symposium, is that we are not, in fact, pork purists: we’re suckers for a glazed baked ham, those brine-plumped, brown-sugar-encrusted pork bombs that anchor the buffet line in all 50 states at this time of year. Their rosy sheen, firm salt quotient, flaky texture, sweet edge and bacony, clove-scented flavor invariably bring us back to the table for thirds and fourths. There, we’ve said it: we love regular baked ham.

In essence, the Lee Bros. are advocating the status quo -- at least in its more artisanal varieties, the kind of ham which is the only one available outside of the Southeast, is pretty good. As such, the article reads a bit like an ode to the familiar along the lines of Utz potato chips? Not bad at all! However, even though the article makes a variety of wet-cured New York hams sound pretty appealing,  the reader is left wanting to try country ham. If these "brine-plumped, brown-sugar-encrusted pork bombs"  are this good,  who would not want to try the real deal? These lads from Charleston are a canny lot, traditionally.

*Some guy named Mario also digs it.

**Ted actually went to Amherst. Which is totally different.

Have yourself a cranky little Christmas

If the media are to be believed, cooking is, like, so hot right now. How this distinguishes the current day and age from the intervening millennia since our species graduated from raw nuts and berries I do not know, nor do I know what will happen when bathing, or some other human necessity, becomes the thing, but under the circumstances, I thought I might presume to offer a few thoughts on cooking-related gifts.

Two  issues complicate giving gifts for the cook. First, a gift should be something the recipient wants, but would be unlikely to purchase for themselves. Health issues aside, a carton of Marlboros for the smoker on your list is a lame gift, because it is essentially like giving them cash. There are people who can give other people cash, but usually it is a gift that works better across generations or social hierarchies than between peers. Second of all, cooking is a pursuit where, if you are married, a large amount of the stuff you use comes to you via gifts. Two unfortunate circumstances can follow -- for married folks, the  batterie de cuisine is often a reflection of the whims of your wedding guests, and worse, there are single folks who are serious cooks, but absent the shakedown of a wedding registry, are forced to cook their way through The Cooking of Southwest France with a knife they found in an alley and pans from the hardware store.

That said, a few more specific thoughts. Cookbooks are safe,  but kind of like ties. You can always have more, but you probably already have more than you need. If you go this route, at least create the illusion of doing more than wandering into Barnes and Noble and grabbing the shiniest one from an end cap. If you know that you ave a chef with specific ambitions, a selection from the doorstop-ethnic category of cookbooks, bundled with appropriate spices would be nice. The doorstop-ethnic is my name for the largish cookbook that promises a more or less comprehensive coverage of a world or regional cuisine. Diana Kennedy for Mexico, Madhur Jaffrey for India, Marcella Hazan for Italy, and even Julia Child for France, plus appropriate epazotes, curries, oreganos, or quatre epices would be a reasonable combination. If you live in a regular part of America, or have been banned from Dean & DeLuca for fighting, Penzeys offers a solid array of spices.

One surprise hit for me last year was a digital platform scale. The one I scored was square,  rather than round, but it is a real convenience to have -- in the kitchen, we're making meals, not vaccines, but it is helpful to have recourse to weight as well as volume measurements. Better still, this variety takes up almost no space, and can be stored with your cutting boards. Speaking of which, you could do worse than to give an active cook a new cutting board or two. Even the theoretically more sanitary plastic ones do not improve with extended use.

If you think that two people who love each other and decide to form a household deserve support, even if they cannot or choose not to celebrate a marriage, consider knives. It is sad that in more and more states, domestic partners are not eligible for health insurance. Compounding this injustice, unmarried cooks are 37% more likely to injure themselves using the aforementioned crappy, dull knife they found in an alley. More than most things in the kitchen, knives are all or nothing. Either you have a rusty Ginsu, or you have a brace of Wusthofs chilling in a tropical hardwood block on your counter, because you are married. There is a middle ground. Dexter-Russell likely makes the knives they use in your favorite restaurant. I've had one for about a year, and have been really impressed with it. You could get judicious selection of them for less than what a fancy bottle of whiskey costs. And, inexplicably, now available with a camo handle. The bachelors, bachelorettes, and homosexuals on your list will thank you.

And lest we forget, the clam ram.

That's all I have-- feel free to share your own ideas in the comments.

Where have you gone, Tina Fey

This is off topic, but it is my fucking blog.  I would like to share my hope that Tina Fey got on the elevator at 30 Rock this morning and went to Amy Poehler's office, and broke off some smelling salts under her nose. Poehler's impression of Nancy Grace commenting on the recent developments in the Duke lacrosse case was reprehensible. Technically, the impression was solid, based on my limited contact with Nancy Grace. However, the premise of the skit, that Nancy Grace is fighting for the rights of those who falsely report sexual assault plumbed new depths in a story that I did not think could get any sadder or sordider. We may never know what happened in that house that night, but it seems clear that even in the absence of felony convictions, there is plenty for Duke lacrosse to be ashamed of.

You would figure that Tina Fey's ex sidekick would know better than to make light of falsely reporting rape. In the Fey era, we had ads for the Woomba, Old Skool Kotex, and Mom Jeans -- inasmuch as there was a feminist discourse on broadcast TV, it was happening in SNL fake ads.   

Not so much these days. As a national problem, false allegations of rape are right up there with toddlers attacking pitbulls -- it happens but not as much as the other way around. If the women involved are in fact making false allegations, they do women, especially college women, no favors. But Amy Poehler should know better than to ridicule these women on national television. In the context of the majority of rapes that do happen that do not get reported, five minutes making light of false rape allegations is not responsible. Humor, and even SNL, is supposed to be "edgy," and all that, and there is plenty of offensive humor that I think is funny, but I suspect that this performance will have the material effect of discouraging real rape victims from reporting real rapes. Thus, more rapists will be walking the streets, thanks to this skit. I recognize that Amy Poehler is the performer, and not necessarily the writer, but she had to choose to speak these words. I bet it would have gone down differently on Tina Fey's watch.

Ipsophagy

Well... maybe not.
On a related note, one of the few treats of listening to a Jets game on the radio in the car so you can get updates on the game you care about is when the Jets' announcer explains that one of the Vikings defensive linemen was "coming in Chad Pennington's face." I looked for that highlight on ESPN, but I must have missed it.

There goes Tokyo...

F irst some clown brings a hatchet to New Orleans -- not to chop his way out of the attic of his flooded house, but to write a piece for Esquire to the effect that dining there was vastly overrated. And now the Hungry Cabbie is lamenting the state of New York pizza. THC writes a much smarter rebuke than the guy from Esquire, who takes a dimwitted contrarian posture -- think Joe Queenan with a lobotomy.  Instead,  in the span of a few paragraphs,  THC writes the first food blog post I can recall that takes the form of a jeremiad -- we have a covenant, we have not kept up our end, we need to get our act together, or we will be visited by a terrible wrath. Two pieces does not make a trend, but the Godzilla approach is obviously tempting:  stomp on a city's cherished institutions, sit back and watch the buzz grow.

Stand in the place that you were

By and large, the surge of relatively quick, relatively cheap places serving real food is a good thing. Ssam, despite my gripes, would be a regular stop if I worked nearby, and the newer Swich seems like it might be the beginning of something promising. I have not had the chance to eat there, but the concept seems made to be scaled, and I have a notion it may be American Apparel to Panera's Gap, albeit not decorated with emaciated runaways. However, good food served fast is a tricky thing, viz the incipient Stand:

Stand will serve a selection of 7-ounce made-to-order, hand-crafted burgers from meat ground fresh daily, with homemade ketchup and proprietary sauces. Signature burgers will include the Classic, Bacon-Egg Cheeseburger and Chopped Steak; fish and vegetarian burgers, salads, soups and a variety of sides will round out the menu. The extensive “Refreshments” program will feature regional draught beers, old-fashioned egg creams and contemporary sodas, among other selections.

Designed by Studio Gaia with custom-designed furniture by SoHo’s BDDW and graphics and branding by Base Design, Stand’s interior is best described as a “sophisticated mess hall.” Servers will be dressed by adam+eve.

Proprietary sauces? An "extensive 'refreshments' program" allowing the innovative pairing of food and beverage within a single establishment? Servers dressed by adam+eve? Why not add a kids' meal with a toy designed by Jeff Koons and call the place McDouchetard's? The pity of it is, in spite of these objections, the menu looks good, and I look forward to eating there.

Slack momofuku

I know, I know, it is Ssäm . In the beginning, there was Momofuku, a tiny noodle bar with much buzz. In an effort to capitalize accomodate demand, Momofuku spawned the Momofuku ssäm bar. I do not have the patience to eat at Momofuku, but folks seem to like it pretty well. I was in the area, hungry, and eager to try Ssam.

I seem to recall that there may have been some revision of this policy, but my understanding is that the Momofuku folks sought to capitalize on the popularity of their noodle place by, uh, not serving noodles at the new place. Instead... wraps. As culinary trends go, the wrap, with a chronology and trajectory similar to Oasis,  seems like a rather dim star to hitch your wagon to, but there may be some burgeoning culture of wraps in Korea that has escaped my attention.

The wrap was fine. By virtue of being made out of real food, I felt better after eating it than if I had gone to Subway. If I came across one of these in an airport, I would be glad of the opportunity to eat a meal that would not immediately shorten my life. However, it was a good wrap -- for a place that offers an experience that feels  like an upgrade from Subway, Ssam is getting more buzz than I would have imagined.*

I had higher hopes for the steamed buns. There was a long-ago summer on the corner of Canal and Ludlow where I basically lived on Midnight Dragon and pork buns from the adjacent Golden Carriage Bakery. That said, if ever there were a food ripe for a Schlesingerian makeover,** it is the pork bun -- cue ATK theme: "Pork buns are cheap, savory and easy to eat on the subway, but too often this Chinese treat tricks you with a bun tougher than Gabrielle Reese's, and a filling of liquid cornstarch studded with pig giblets....

When the buns came, I  initially thought  I'd ordered the wrong thing. In place of the enclosed bun containing  chunks of savory pork, it was a pair of wee sandwiches with relatively  insipid shredded pork on them. As I chewed, these strange little sandwiches began to seem oddly familiar. It was, right there on Second Avenue, despite the Sprockets-like furniture and Pavement on the stereo, pulled pork on a bun. Pulled pork is not my favorite type of BBQ, but it is best savored in situ. There are indigenous dishes for which Gotham is noted, but pulled pork is not one of thm. Indeed, in a home-and-home series, I would give the bagels of the Carolinas a narrow victory over New York pulled pork.

*The late (10:30-2:30) night menu seems to be where the action is, and I hope to have the chance to try it soon.
The warm veal head terrine, not to mention Col. Newsom's country ham, seem worth the disco pork nap that eating this food at these hours might require.

**Update: I meant Kimballian, not Schlesingerian. Cue Farleyesque blow to own head. There is room for more than one food guy from Boston named Chris. Even though Bruni went undercover at Schlesinger's East Coast Grill, still worth a stop.

A different kind of truck

Am I alone, or does the phrase "truffle truck" generally evoke mental images that are distinctly unwholesome, if not technically obscene?

Important news about your penis

Soy makes your penis smaller. It also makes you gay. Good to know. Most important, all those vegan Portnoys out there should be warned that cutting a hole in the side of a Nasoya package is no longer a safe alternative to the traditional liver. (Via Babble;* via Jossip; tip of fin to cinetrix.)

*A parenting website from the folks who brought you Nerve? Where have you gone, Richard Kern? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Truth to tell, Nerve always seemed to have about the same relation to sexy that Prarie Home Companion has to funny, but still -- it is like the "first comes love, then comes marriage, here comes n. with a baby carriage" for the post-dot com era.