Matters of Taste

Smile....and Say Cheese

Gotta love those Italians. They know what’s important in life.

While the U.S. Congress tussles today over a 15-billion-bucks bailout of the American auto industry, Italian lawmakers are busy trying to save the cheese. Parmesan cheese, that is.

According to a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the Italian government is buying some 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and donating them to charity. The move is designed to shore up an industry that is being shredded by a public unwilling to pay what it costs producers to crank out the hard, pale yellow, nutty-tasting cheese.

Apparently, demand for the king of grating cheeses is strong in Italy as well as in other European countries and the United States. But the cheese producers claim they’re spending about 8 Euros to produce a kilo of cheese (that’s about $10.50 for 2.2 pounds) and they’re only getting 7.4 Euros per kilo back from sales.  (In order to wear the official Parmigiano Reggiano seal, the milk must come from hay-fed cows that are milked twice a day; and the resulting cheese wheel must ripen for at least one year, being brushed and turned once each week.)

According to the WSJ: “At the root of the parmigiano problem is that the industry is made up of about 430 small, family-owned businesses that dot the plains outside the northern city of Parma….The fragmentation means that producers have little leverage in negotiating prices with wholesalers that buy the cheese and resell it to supermarkets and other retailers.”

When Parmigiano Reggiano producers try to raise the price of their cheese, wholesalers start pushing alternatives -- such as Grana Padana, which has a similar taste and texture but takes less time to make and is less expensive – into the marketplace.

First it was the banks that needed bailing out. Then the national airline, Alitalia. Now, it’s the parmesan.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s next.

“We’ve never received a dime in state aid,” complains Vincenzo Oliviero, the head of the association of buffalo mozzarella producers, who says that buffalo mozzarella sales have plunged 18 percent over the last year. (The decline is due to consumer skittishness about  cheese that’s made close to Naples which faced a horrific garbage crisis last year.)

Somehow I just can’t see Congress stressing out over a bailout for Velveeta.

SPAM on the Rise....and We Don't Mean Junk Mail

Hoo boy. You know times are tough when The New York Times splashes a story about SPAM across the cover of its Business Day section.

According to author Andrew Martin, production of Spam --  “perhaps the emblematic hard-time food in the American pantry”  -- is in overdrive these days. Employees at the Austin, Minn. Hormel plant are working furiously to crank out more of the gelatinous blocks of spiced ham and pork.  Many workers put in two shifts each day….and Darwin Sellers, a Spam “formulator” (the man who adds the salt, sugar and nitrates to each batch) says they are scheduled to work every day, except Thanksgiving and Christmas, for the remainder of 2008.

“Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table,” Martin writes. He calls it a “sign of the times” that Hormel is once again cranking up production of the infamous loaf.

Martin writes:
“Invented during the great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the company’s founder, Spam is a combination of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a “hint” of sodium nitrate “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color,” according to Hormel’s Web site for the product.

Because it is vacuum-sealed in a can and does not require refrigeration, Spam can last for years. Hormel says “it’s like meat with a pause button.”

For every hungry soul out there who prizes Spam as a source of protein, there are probably two who value it as a source of humor.  How can we forget the 1970s Monty Python skit  involving diners at a café ordering breakfast from a Spam-clogged menu while a group of Vikings sings heartily of  “Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam.” 

(Martin explains that this chaotic chorus was the basis of the Internet term “spam” to refer to junk email that “overwhelms other dialogue.”)

The NYT article goes beyond Spam in exploring the buying impulses of consumers in the present economic slump. Pancake mixes and instant potatoes sales are also booming. Rice, beans, beer and frozen pot pies are hot, too. Kraft Foods claims that such “value-oriented” products as macaroni and cheese, Jell-O and Kool-Aid are “experiencing robust growth.”

I have seen the future…..and I have heartburn.

What nationality is that nut anyway?

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the upcoming deadline for all steaks, potatoes and kumquats to flash their passports at the supermarket.

Effective September 30, federal law requires that supermarkets and other big food retailers label or otherwise display the country of origin for meat, produce and certain kinds of nuts.  According to the WSJ, “the labeling rule is welcome news for consumers who base their decisions in part on where foods were raised or grown.”

Consumer advocacy groups have been pushing for such a bill for years, saying it can help shoppers avoid foods from countries with lax safety regulations. China has been headlining that list.  (Though, of course, we all know that we can encounter problems with the domestic food supply as well.)

Labeling is mandated for meat from cows, lambs, chickens, pigs and goats, as well as for fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, ginseng, macadamia nuts, pecans and peanuts.

Foods that have been cooked or processed will not have the labels. Only retailers who sell at least $230,000 of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables annually are required to provide the labels.

Don’t expect to see everything stamped with country of origin on October 1st. Meat, nuts and produce packaged before Sept. 30 does not have to be labeled. And producers will have the standard six-month grace period to comply.

Though the folks at FMI (Food Marketing Institute), a trade group for food retailers, oppose the labeling law, saying that compliance money could be better spent on food safety issues, others, including the Center for Food Safety, see this as one giant step toward  ensuring accountability in the food supply.

I’m happy to call myself a locavore. I won’t touch a drop of imported bottled water; I shop farmers markets regularly; and I always check labels in order to buy local or at least, American, when possible.

However, I also realize the importance of being open-minded and flexible when making choices. Yes, I frequently buy Muir fire-roasted tomatoes instead of San Marzano;  and
However, I’m likely to choose an Australian Shiraz over a California Syrah because of the value. I haven’t found an American cheese that can hold a candle to the La Tur or Robiola from Italy’s Piedmonte region. And I know I have plenty of company when I opt for New Zealand rack of lamb over that raised in Colorado.

  Last year I wrote in The San Diego Union-Tribune about the party atmosphere that envelops the meat department at Costco’s Morena Blvd. location every Friday afternoon. On that day, sales of the warehouse giant’s New Zealand-raised racks of lamb and chops jumps through the roof.  Weekend cooks who buy them cite the down-under version’s superior flavor and texture. For recipes, including Griled Lamb Chops with Pomegranate Eggplant Relish, check out that story.

Restaurants Fight Back

Shitake mushrooms are subbing for morels.
Hanger steak gets the nod instead of strip sirloin.
Lump crabmeat garnish for that chilled gazpacho? Forget it.  Today the rosy soup will be garnished with paper-thin ribbons of daikon radish.

As Frank Bruni puts it in today’s New York Times story about how restaurants are handling the economic downturn, “It’s clear that it’s no longer business as usual.”

Across the country, restaurateurs and chefs are hustling to devise new strategies to make a buck at a time when consumers are increasingly reluctant to part with them.

Some eateries offer special twilight deals, more value meals, happy hour snacks and late night noshes that can stand in for dinner at half the cost. And extensive bar menus, with  comfort food at comfortable prices, are becoming the norm.

“A profusion of items with modest digits attached to them lures diners into the menu, reassuring them that they can navigate it without going broke,” Bruni writes.

Bruni’s article is primarily about restaurants in New York, a city that is notoriously impervious to the act of pennypinching.  In San Diego, some restaurants are opening on Sundays for the first time to attract a different clientele. Some are offering a special, price-wise menu mid-afternoon to capture the “ladies who shop.” Many are featuring smaller portions and a wider variety of appetizers for customers who want to make a meal of “small plates.”

The subject was discussed at length today on The Gourmet Club, a San Diego Union-Tribune Web site  talk show hour that I do every week with Robert Whitley and Caron Golden. 
Today our guest was the savvy, well-spoken Bernard Guillas, chef of The Marine Room. Long considered one of the most upscale and expensive restaurants in San Diego, the oceanfront Marine Room has its own arsenal of ploys to attract a skittish dining public.

Some of the best news in Bruni’s article is about wine service around New York, and, I suspect, around the U.S.

“People are spending less on wine right now, and they’re not spending to impress,” says Paul Bolles-Beaven, a partner of Danny Meyer of Gramercy Park and Union Square fame.  To that end, according to Bruni, servers are being coached to “spotlight affordable wines within diners’ narrowly circumscribed comfort zones.”
www.ushgnyc.com

Amen. As one who pretty much steers clear of restaurant wines over $75 (and even that kills me), I’m thrilled that something positive might come out of our sagging economy. There’s plenty of terrific wine out there that doesn’t cost 75 bucks a bottle. Maybe now we’ll all discover it.

I’d love to hear what restaurants in other cities are doing to keep happy customers coming in the door. Please tell us what you’ve found.

UPDATE: WATER

"America’s latest drinking problem isn’t about alcohol,” opens an article in today’s Wall Street Journal .

Instead, reporter Anjali Athavaley suggests, Americans are freaking out over their drinking water, both bottled and tap.

For the past couple years, consumers have been returning to tap water over the bottled water that costs a lot, adversely impacts the environment (in terms of shipping and waste), and offers no greater purity or security than municipal water. However, recent reports about the presence of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in local water have created a new reason to become verklempt about the whole issue.

Athavaley’s article covers the newest “pharmaceutical” scare, the types of filters that are available to consumers and the government regulations governing tap vs. bottled waters.

“A lot of bottled water is actually tap water, so there is no assurance that what is coming from the bottle is any safer than what is coming from the tap,” Sarah Janssen of the Natural Resources Defense Council says in the article.

Indeed, as this blog has often pointed out,  tap water is tested more frequently and held to more stringent standards by the EPA,  than bottled water, which is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Read more at WSJ, then hustle out to buy a Brita or PUR water filtration system.

No Talking Back to Mrs. Butterworth

I’ll sleep better tonight, knowing that the folks at Pinnacle Foods are working hard to make the world a better place.

That’s better as in a cake mix studded with real raisins and fresh carrots. Better as in lime-flavored pickles.

And my favorite….Better as in a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup that actually TALKS to me during breakfast.

“We looked at bringing her to life” with an audio chip, said Andy Reichgut, marketing vice president of Pinnacle in a USA TODAY article this week. “That’s the holy grail – if Mrs. Butterworth would really talk.”

Joking aside, Pinnacle is a pretty impressive operation where both management and food scientist types spend a lot of time and money responding to consumers’ needs and wants.  The company, based in Cherry Hill, NJ, owns or licenses more than a dozen food brands, including Duncan Hines, Swanson, Vlasic pickles and Celeste pizza.

The article refers to some successful new products and product upgrades:

** 100% pure maple syrup for Log Cabin
**  Lender’s Bagels in whole wheat varieties
**  Grilled entrees for the Hungry Man entrée line

and to a few flubs:

**  Breakfast syrups in neon colors
**  Angel food cake dotted with confetti that turned “Smurf blue” when baked

“Innovation is Pinnacle’s lifeblood,” says the article, which will give you an idea of the other “better” foods that will be coming down the pike soon. 

Wine, Bread and Blanket...on the Brooklyn Bridge?

There's a very cool article about dining “outside the box” – in this case “outside the house” -- in Thursday’s New York Times. The story, in the HOME section, describes a dinner party a couple of New Yorkers threw recently on the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes, on the Bridge, smack in the middle of pedestrian traffic.

According to the article, the party’s host, Calvin Tsao, considers the annual event – which this year featured fried chicken, Manchego cheese, French bread and iced tea -- “an act both political and personal, a conscious gesture of civic engagement, and a way to lay claim to a terrific party space.”

The concept of spilling outside into the neighborhood is nothing new to big-city dwellers during the hot, sticky summer months. Beach chairs and card tables, even mattresses and sofas have long been carted outside in an attempt to beat the heat.

But Penelope Green’s article focuses on “expansionist entertainers who are putting a new spin on an old practice, and domesticating public space in ever more elaborate ways.”

Suzanne Seggerman, co-founder of a non-profit group, is one of them. Two or three times each summer she hosts “Chez L’Hydrant” in front of her Bond Street apartment building. She says the evening event involves six or eight friends sharing a one-pot dish such as bouillabaisse and “lots of rose wine.” (She insists the dinner be simple; “risotto would obviously be a disaster.”)

But these novel al fresco affairs do more than just feed the invited guests. Green suggests that they also inspire other neighbors to get creative; and they provide theatrical entertainment to passers-by.

This seems to me a perfect summer to explore the idea of dining outside the box. With economic realities forcing vast numbers of Americans to forego vacations, it’s a good time to “stage” whimsical dinnertime events that will bolster community spirit, create a sense of playfulness and adventure, and, well, make you feel like you’re on vacation.

The scene can be a busy sidewalk or a quiet cul-de-sac, a local pocket park or seaside parking lot, a driveway, empty lot or alleyway. (In New York City,  “a rule of reasonableness” governs such activities in public spaces. Check your local street signs for regulations regarding hours and alcohol use.)

You can even create something unique at home by spreading a blanket or setting up a card table in a space where you wouldn’t ordinarily dine. I’m thinking about doing just that in the rickety old potting shed with latticed roof that I just finished painting.

C'mon. I bet you can come up with a new twist on al fresco dining. Please share your ideas with us so I can do a follow-up post.

Cow Pooling Anyone?

A bride planning a wedding reception at New York City’s famed Plaza Hotel no longer has to content herself with such prosaic selections as fish-meat-or-chicken.  According to an interesting story in yesterday’s New York Times, brides can now opt for a “100-mile menu.” Author Kim Severson reports that “for as little as $72 a person,” a dinner can be crafted of ingredients from upstate New York’s fields and farms.

Exploring the phenomenon known as “lazy locavores” – “city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination  to get their hands dirty,” the story also tells of a San Francisco gardener who’ll install an organic garden in your backyard, weed it every week, and harvest the bounty, leaving a box of veggies on the doorstep when he leaves.

Whether they’re driven by the desire to be trendy; the urge to avoid stratospheric food and gas costs; or simply by taste, more and more food lovers are turning to farmers markets, home gardens, organic produce delivery services, and even to “sharing” cows.

Read more about “cow pooling” in Severson’s story.

Rehab for Diners and Dreams

Nothing like an upbeat, feel-good, hope-springs-eternal kind of news story to start the week.

Today’s was a New York Times tale about incarcerated juvenile offenders in Rhode Island restoring four vintage New England diners. Apparently the defunct diners, including Hickey’s Diner which was hooked to a 1954 Chevy truck in the middle of the town “green” in Taunton, Mass., were schlepped behind the razor wire of the Rhode Island Training Center, a detention facility, by preservationists for the New Hope Diner Project.

“The whole poetry behind it is that these are kids who have been pretty much cast away emotionally and criminally, getting a chance to restore beloved eateries that have been cast off from society, too,” said Daniel Zilka, the acting director of the American Diner Museum, who rescues decrepit diners and helps run the project.

Not only do the old-fashioned diners get spiffied up for a second act at locations around Rhode Island, but the kids stay out of trouble, gain valuable training in ceramic tiling, plumbing, electrical and sheet metal work, and discover ambitions they never knew they had.  Some inmates also take culinary arts classes and receive food-handling certificates.

According to the story by NYT's Pam Belluck, the diners' menus will be a mix of old diner stand-bys such as corn beef and cabbage, and items that are popular with the jailhouse population. Those include spicy chicken and  a "strawberry mousse" that' s made with Cool Whip and instant strawberry pudding.

The cost of the program is being covered, in part, by a partnership of the American Diner Museum and New Harvest Coffee Roasters in Pawtucket, R.I. The coffee company sells their New Hope coffee (organic, fair trade and shade grown) for $11 a bag, and donates $4 of each bag to the diner re-do project.

Students at a local university are creating business plans for each diner. Angelo’s, an 84-year-old landmark restaurant in Providence will operate the diners, employing the juvenile offenders when they are released.

“Hopefully, one of them will be able to own one,” said Robert Antignano, president of Angelo’s.

The Salmon Gold Standard

When I was in New York recently for the James Beard Awards (presented to the country’s top chefs and restaurateurs), the chitchat at one animated cocktail party  centered on the coming Yukon River king salmon season.

“It’s the best fish in the sea, eating-wise,” said Jon Rowley, one of the most respected seafood consultants in the world and the man widely considered to have introduced Copper River salmon to the masses in the 1980s.

Michael Bauer, executive food editor of the San Francisco Chronicle nodded in agreement, while other foodie professionals within earshot of the conversation joined in with their “Yeah, we can’t wait for the season to open.”

They’re going to be waiting a long time. Like about 365 days.

This week, the fishery managers in the Northwest declared there would be no commercial fishing of Yukon River salmon this year. That means none in your local fish market; none on restaurant menus.

The fishery managers also ordered drastic cuts in the number of fish that can be taken from the water by the native Yup’ik fishing families, who rely on the fish for food and to sell in order to make money for other living expenses.

In the last year or so, Yukon River kings have become the “new” Copper River salmon, the most sought-after catch-of-the-day. They are prized for their unusually high oil content. Rowley says the fish is so rich, fatty and flavorful it practically melts in your mouth.

The fish build up this fat, along with the highest level of omega-3 fatty acids (linked to healthy hearts and the control of arthritis and asthma) of any salmon in the world, by swimming some 2,000 miles up the imposing Yukon RIver to spawn.

But this year, according to news reports, a significantly smaller number of  king salmon have returned to the Yukon River, spurring the fishing embargo.

Rowley has suggested that the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery is at fault. According to an account on Gourmet.com: “More than 100 giant trawlers drag the waters off the Yukon River for pollock, but their nets intercept migrating kings. The salmon, so valuable to the Yup’iks, are illegal for the trawlers to sell, so they get dumped back into the sea as garbage—dead.”

There will still be plenty of good Northwest salmon in the marketplace this summer, but it will be other species and not the gold standard Yukon River. Cynthia Nims, a Seattle-based food writer and cookbook author, wrote this week in her blog that there’s still a slim chance that some Yukon River salmon might swim into the marketplace.

"There’s still a chance some of the salmon make their way into retail and restaurant channels yet," she reports. "King counts are being reevaluated every day and it’s possible they’re just running late this year."

I don’t know about you, but just learning these ins and outs of the king salmon fishery have made me hungry for whatever type of wild salmon that’s out there. (There's still some Copper River salmon in the marketplace, but it won't be around for much longer. I bought a delicious piece this week for $30 a pound.)

So I’m heading out to to shop and whip up my favorite salmon creation: A simply grilled filet, served over a heap of roasted, diced red beets that are warmed in a pan with homemade vinaigrette.

I also love Wolfgang Puck’s Grilled Salmon with Black Pepper and Ginger that should be served on a mountain of garlicky mashed potatoes.

4 pieces king salmon, about 6 ounces each
3 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
3 tablespoons chopped black pepper
1 shallot, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tomato, skinned, seeded and chopped
½ bottle Cabernet Sauvignon
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 cup chicken stock

Heat 2 teaspoons butter in a saute pan until foamy. Add shallot, garlic and tomato and sauté for several minutes, or until shallot is translucent.

Add wine and vinegar and continue cooking over medium heat until reduced by half. Add chicken stock and reduce gain by half. Finish sauce by swirling in pieces of softened butter until desired consistency is achieved.  Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper. Keep warm.

Mix together ginger and pepper. Season salmon with salt and spread with ginger-pepper mixture. Sprinkle with olive oil and grill or saute salmon until medium rare.

Serve on a warmed plate, atop garlicky mashed potatoes.