Fat Guy

Everything is gas now. If I had a better memory I'd tell you the manufacturers -- they're very brand conscious there.

totally agre on the peanut oil... ← I don't want to be too dogmatic about that 300 degree reading. First of all, it would not likely be appropriate for peanut oil or for any commonly used frying oil. My personal experience with using animal fats for frying is that you need to run everything a bit cooler than with vegetable oil. Secondly, it's very hard to get an accurate temperature reading on a quarter-inch of fat. Latkes aren't really supposed to be a deep-fried item. They're "shallow fried," to carry over a popular term from eG Forums discussions of fried chicken. So, you know, 300 is what my thermometers say when I do this, but the real temperature could be a little higher for all I know. Certainly, if using peanut oil, you're going to want to be closer to 350, though.

What did they serve it with? ← This isn't an area in which I have a lot of knowledge, but what I've read in various Jewish food-history chapters in books here and there is that latkes predate the arrival of potatoes in Europe altogether. So the latkes fried in goose fat by European Jews in the middle ages would not have been potato latkes. That would probably have made the whole condiment project somewhat different, if indeed there were condiments served with latkes back in the day.

At least according to this New York Times article, it is illegal to serve sushi (or raw fish in general) in the US that has not been previously frozen. I've never actually seen the regulation, can't find it in any quick searches and am not exactly sure how it works. According to the article, though, the FDA leaves enforcement to the states.

Right. The members of the New York City Board of Health are not elected directly, but they are appointed by the mayor, an elected official, and confirmed by the City Council, also elected officials. This is similar to the way federal judges are appointed and confirmed (I'd have to look up whether there's a term of service for the Board of Health or if you just stay on it forever). Regarding a point that was raised earlier, most members of the Board of Health are either MDs, MPHs or PhDs, though I believe there may be one uncredentialed hospital administrator on it. The Board of Health was created in 1866, actually, so it's nothing new (it has changed a bit since then, but it's similar).

I confess I was shaken up by Daniel's post. A lot of folks don't know how much Gully does behind the scenes here at the eGullet Society. For example, Gully wrote the eGullet Society anthem, every week he spends 50 hours standing in Grand Central Station with a tin can raising funds for the eG Scholarships program, and he was instrumental in arranging our partnership with the International Association of People who Dine Over the Kitchen Sink (SINKIE). As I considered the magnitude of his loss, I felt the hot flush of imminent tears and sobbing . . . and then I heard a knock on the door. I had never been so happy to see Gully in all my days, and I've had many days when I've been happy to see Gully. The amazing thing is that, aside from a chicken schmaltz stain on his eGullet Society BBQ Apron, there wasn't a mark on him. Gully, speaking in Korean, recounted how he had awakened in the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, disoriented and bruised, with a missing hand. He stumbled around Staten Island a bit, looking for the ferry and mulling over the unusual coincidence that the Outerbridge Crossing from Staten Island to New Jersey is actually named after a person named Outerbridge, until a homeless fellow named Lawrence observed, "Hey Mac, what's that phone number you've got tattooed on your ass?" Gully borrowed Lawrence's cell phone (which had, it turns out, been stolen earlier that evening from Mario Batali at a Wines of Spain industry party at Sumile) and dialed the number. "You have reached Dave Scantland. I'm not here right now. Please leave a message . . ." Gully left a cryptic message for Dave (the Cook) and collapsed. All Gully remembered after that was a montage involving the searchlight of a helicopter, a stone archway with the words "eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters World Headquarters" chiseled into it, the lights of an operating table, and someone saying "We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability . . . . Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster." Gully cooked me some bi bim bap before heading out to hit some clubs. As usual, he didn't clean up after himself so it was a real bitch scrubbing the crust off the stone bowl the next day.

You assume incorrectly. But in New York City you're going to get about as far in the trans fat debate with libertarian arguments as you'd get by showing up at a Klan meeting and defending the Jews. We'll always have New Jersey, though.

Sour cream does work really well -- it's luscious and cooling, what's not to like? -- however there are two further points to be made regarding sour cream: First, the sour cream available in most supermarkets is terrible, with Breakstone's being the least terrible American brand but still not very good. Really good sour cream is available in some ethnic markets, for example in New York the Russian places in Brighton Beach have sour cream that makes you say "Woah!" Second, if you can find a good specimen, creme fraiche is -- with my particular latke recipe at least -- even better than sour cream. The single most successful accompaniment I ever served them with was Ronnybrook creme fraiche. For a time, I felt that whatever condiments worked well with Belgian-style frites would naturally work well with latkes. That turned out to be a mistaken assumption. The onions, I think, change everything. Mayonnaise, ketchup and all that stuff just don't work very well with latkes in my opinion. Has anybody noticed that the "hash browns" served with breakfast at McDonald's are quite latke-like?

I've got some bad news for those who are worried about a slippery slope: we're already two thirds of the way down that slope, without brakes, accelerating at 32 feet per second per second and the slope happens to be a cliff. If regulators can muster even mediocre evidence that something is unhealthy (whatever that means), they can regulate it. And people are in favor of that. Anne, I'm sorry to say that in the case of the trans fat ban, there was little meaningful opposition. . . . . http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2006/pr114-06.shtml

To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, to me, if you can eat a lot of latkes, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you can eat a lot of latkes you're Jewish. If you can't eat a lot of latkes, you are going to be goyish even if you're Jewish.

That's not the prevailing theory, though. Regulators (and those who support the regulatory state, aka almost everyone) take for granted that a healthy lifestyle should not be a personal choice. They reckon that the taxpayers and society at large bear the costs of poor public health -- those costs are the "second hand smoke" of so-called bad dietary choices, justifying most any regulation, such as the ban on trans fats.

Plenty of them are medical doctors, and their mandate is broad. Here's a brief organizational overview of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:

We're pleased to announce that all Society donor members are now eligible to receive free eG Mail accounts. The eG Mail service, powered by the incomparable Google mail (GMail) system, provides a web-based email account with two gigabytes (!) of storage and an address ending in @egsociety.org.<br><br> An eG Mail account is a great way to show your pride in your Society donor status as well as a handy way to, for example, keep work and personal email separate. You can access eG Mail from any internet- capable computer.<br><br> To request an eG Mail address, you must be a Society donor member. (If you’re not a Society donor, <a href="http://forums.egullet.org/index.php? act=module&module=subscription&CODE=index"> upgrade</a> your membership already!) Then just send an email to <a href="mailto:accounts@egsociety.org"> accounts@egsociety.org</a> containing 1) your eGullet Society member name and 2) your desired email address @egsociety.org.<br><br> The new eG Mail service is one of many small ways we say thanks to our generous donors. Look for more special offerings in 2007. <br><br> With relish,

Labeling is easy to support in theory, because it tends to appeal to folks across a broad political spectrum. And I do believe that nutrition labeling in all restaurants is inevitable -- technology has made it possible because at this point computer software like NutriBase allows you simply to type in your ingredients and get back a detailed nutrition report that can satisfy the regulations (there's no need to test food in a lab in order to derive the nutrition information). At the same time, labeling doesn't have such a great track record. If your position is "Once it's on the label, if people eat it then too bad for them," then labeling is a solution. But if your position is "We need to reduce consumption of X" then labeling is kind of a joke. I mean, every fast food chain restaurant I know of already provides detailed nutrition labeling -- some of them are now actually printing the nutrition information right on the packaging (the paper used to wrap the hamburgers, etc.). Does this stop any significant number of people from eating these products? Doubtful. And I really don't think the lack of nutrition labeling at Gramercy Tavern is the problem. Indeed, when you combine labeling with the fact that nobody cares what labels say, it can actually wind up benefiting the manufacturers more than the consumers, by protecting the manufacturers from responsibility. The warning labels on cigarette cartons are the classic example. Public health regulators are quite aware of all this, which is why they don't see labeling as a real solution to anything. They don't see their jobs as providing information. They want to be in the business of getting results. And they don't really acknowledge personal choice as legitimate, because to them any choice that harms health has a public cost in terms of government-funded medical care, lost productivity, etc.

Those are the samples I tried. Not bad.

We're talking about a local regulation, not an exercise of federal power. So the "general welfare" clause of the United States Constitution would not be relvant here, even if it meant the federal government had carte blanche to regulate. I don't know that these appeals to liberty mean much in the real world anyway. On the issue of whether New York has the lawful authority to regulate food safety in restaurants, the train has left the station. We should also try to be clear on what the trans fat "ban" actually is. Trans fats have not been banned in New York. You can still go buy a zillion products in the supermarket that are made with trans fats. Trans fats have been banned from restaurants. Now, I don't think that makes the regulation any less stupid -- it may even make it more stupid -- but that's what it is.

Hershey recently purchased some German (I think) chocolate maker, and has released some premium bars that are quite nice. So, it's more like the trend of big beer companies getting into microbrews. I had some samples but ate them and discarded the packaging. I'll see if I can find the press materials.

In general, states are free to exceed federal standards for food safety. They're just not allowed to drop below those standards. Hypothetical example: federal government says cheddar and Swiss cheeses are unsafe and therefore banned, but does not act against any other types of cheese; no state can allow cheddar or Swiss to be sold, however it's fine for a state to ban mozzarella too.

No, it is not.

Fear not, they were just Solo red plastic plates. Do you want them?

Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winner and father of the "green revolution," has been making this point for years. As he explains over and over again in interviews, industrial farming methods have allowed crop yields to triple in the past 50 years without a significant increase in the amount of land under cultivation (about 10%); whereas, if we went back to pre-green-revolution (or organic) farming methods we've need to farm three times as much land to get the same amount of food.

Those are a lot of links to articles I can't access, however some of the abstracts read more like editorials than like studies -- indeed I think they may be editorials, especially the ones by "Willett WC." I also followed some of the sidebar links and found this abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...st_uids=7661131 In terms of an article I can read, the New York Times -- at least in this article -- does not concur with the conclusion that there's a consensus: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/weekinre...=rssnyt&emc=rss

Right, and there is also a mountain of evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease ← Is there really a "mountain" of evidence linking trans fats to heart disease? While there have been a few studies, I wouldn't characterize the evidence as anything near mountainous -- or near conclusive. It has been repeated so many times that trans fats are toxic that few people are even bothering to question that claim anymore. The whole discussion has moved off that point and into the territory of personal choice/freedom -- like that's an argument likely to persuade a bunch of unelected officials. We should be going back to the basic scientific proof and asking if it's really strong enough to justify intrusive public regulation: 1- Are the health risks of trans fats really well documented enough, 2- Is the evidence conclusive that the replacements for trans fats are more healthful, and if so how much more healthful, 3- Have conclusive-sounding claims about trans fats been made in the past, and accepted by the government, and have they turned out to be true?

Danny wrote the book, so he gets to tell the story his way. And it's a New York Times bestseller so that's the way a lot of people will hear it, though I'm sure Gael Greene and others have their own versions. I thought on the whole he did come across as too sensitive, but he also made some points that needed to be made not only about critics who can be bought for the price of a free meal but also about critics who have agendas. Danny isn't the world's greatest writer, and he wears his heart on his sleeve in a way that can sometimes make him seem like a whiner, but his chapter on the critics goes right up there with the must-read literature on the subject.

One of the only groups more sensitive to public criticism than restaurateurs is . . . critics. In the mid-1990s, when online writing about food was really starting to penetrate into the mainstream, critics of all kinds were reeling from the erosion of their pulpits. What you see in Time Out now in print rarely happened anywhere before it started happening online. Now that so many print publications are playing catch-up in the race for relevance, you see it there too. But this is nothing new -- there has been better and better-informed criticism of the critics online for a decade.