Fat Guy

I'll be the first to agree with you that the distinction between natural and artificial is, to a great extent, artificial. And that lots of taken-for-granted ingredients and processes, ranging from sugar to fermentation, are pretty artificial. But I'm talking about a leap forward from all that. If you make a chicken out of sugar it still tastes like sugar. I'm talking about the fake chicken that tastes just like a chicken.

The whole notion of "soul" probably deserves some parsing. But one thing I can say for sure is that Nathan M. and his crew -- and this is the case in every modernist restaurant I've visited -- are emotionally engaged. To wit, they are having a ton of fun.

Exactly, and there are other fairly simple items that are being made from lab-created ingredients or from soy-derived protein or whatever. Bacos, for example. But these are a far cry from replicating a chicken. Still, I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time.

It seems to me that, eventually, we will live in an age of truly artificial food. In other words, it will be possible to replicate any combination of flavor, texture, color, etc., using laboratory-created materials. Like the replicators on Star Trek. Forget sous-vide cookery. We will have absolute control over culinary outcomes. When it becomes possible to have any food with the push of a button, what will it all mean for cuisine?

I think if one is talking online about food, recipes, restaurants and cooking, one has already broken from tradition pretty emphatically. I also think it's helpful to understand Modernist Cuisine as a philanthropic project -- a gift to gastronomy. Without a willing and able benefactor (is there another such person on the planet?) the project could never have happened. Even if you spend $500 on the book, you are getting the benefit of several thousand additional dollars worth of subsidy. It reminds me of dining at the old Lespinasse when Gray Kunz was the chef. Sure, a meal there was expensive, but the restaurant was losing a couple of million dollars a year. In effect, the St. Regis hotel was paying me to eat at Lespinasse.

I need to re-read the part about Trotter in the new book, but as I recall the basic story is that Achatz went to work for Trotter and then wanted to move on after just a few months, and Trotter said if you haven't been here for a year don't even think about putting us on your resume or saying you worked here, you're nobody to us, etc. And what Achatz said on Monday night is that, as a chef-owner now, he sympathizes because he gets stagiares in his restaurant who stay for four days and later he gets a Google News alert that says that person worked at Alinea.

I saw Achatz and Kokonas give a talk about the book earlier this week and they did not seem at all like they were feuding with Trotter. Kokonas spoke of Trotter with reverence and Achatz was sympathetic to Trotter.

I'd have trouble reviewing the book, for a few reasons. Aside from it feeling like a conflict of interest (I derive personal and organizational pride from the book's genesis here), I'd be very wary of appearing sycophantic. The trouble with Modernist Cuisine from a review standpoint is that it's so categorically amazing and superior to any other cooking work ever written, it's very difficult to come up with any criticism of the type one needs to make a review seem balanced. The only avenues of criticism I can come up with are the populist angle and the information-overload angle, since the only things wrong with the book are that it doesn't cost $13.95 and it can't be read and comprehended in an afternoon, week or year.

Perhaps a happy ending here. This just in from USHG:

Getting the protein down in price is a major ingredient in a good, cheap dish. For example, I make a dish that people love which consists of braised beef and lentils. The cost comes down to whether brisket, short ribs or some other braising cut is on sale. Once I have my meat situation sorted out, the rest is easy: braise the meat (in beef stock if you have it, or water plus mirepoix if you don't), cool (preferably overnight), defat the braising liquid, cook lentils in half of the braising liquid (plus water or stock to top off) with mirepoix. Dice some of the meat (preferably the parts that don't make beautiful servings) and mix in with the lentils towards the end of cooking. Meanwhile reheat the braised meat in the other half of the stock. To serve place a scoop of lentils in the bowl, top with some of the meat, and pour a little of the braising liquid over.

What dish do you make or know about that represents the best combination of excellence and frugality?

He's absolutely entitled to his opinion. I've spent almost a decade putting up quite a few posts in our forums and being taught by all of you, time and again, that "I'm entitled to my opinion" is only an applicable statement in the context of an opinion that meets the minimum criteria for reasonableness. Alton Brown's comments regarding Modernist Cuisine are so completely indefensible and nonsensical that I'm comfortable saying that, in this instance, he does not have an opinion deserving of any deference just by virtue of it being his opinion. In addition, as a public figure, he has to meet a higher standard than a random person. He's making statements that will be published by mass media, and he himself has a platform that reaches quite a few people. In that situation, when you're asked about something and you don't know anything about it, you should just say no comment. I expect that, at some point, Alton Brown will have an encounter with either the Modernist Cuisine book or with Nathan Myhrvold, at which point he will get his opinion straightened out.

Fage TOTAL 0% Plain Greek Yogurt has 120 calories per 8 ounces. Stonyfield Farm 0% Fat Plain Yogurt has 110 calories per 8 ounces. Similar numbers track for most any plain nonfat Greek-style yogurt and most any plain nonfat regular yogurt. How is it possible that there is only a 10-calorie difference between these products? I thought Greek yogurt was just regular yogurt minus a lot of the water. It seems twice as thick, so shouldn't its calorie count be around twice as high? (Or if it's 1.5x as thick it should have 1.5x a many calories, etc.) What am I missing?

A recent New York Times piece by Kim Severson about truffle farming in North Carolina got me thinking about the difficulty of growing truffles. You'd think with modern scientific understanding of plants it wouldn't be so hard to grow a particular fungus. Yet, truffles have never really been tamed by humankind. I wonder why that is.

There's a nice piece on this in the New York Times today, by the excellent writer Bruce Feiler. "Take Back the Trash"

I missed this brewing California controversy until I saw this story in the New York Times. Apparently, California is on the brink of outlawing the importation and sale of shark fins, which most notably impacts Chinese restaurants that serve shark-fin soup. The article, filed from San Francisco, contains this choice piece of language: "in a city where food and the environment are perhaps equal obsessions, the politics of soup has also highlighted a generational divide between eco-conscious children and their tradition-bound elders."

I just did some googling and a lot of sources say it's just a boneless half of a turkey breast. I have a hard time seeing how that's possible, given the even thickness I experienced carving this thing last night. Hmm.

Definitely. It has a much more even thickness throughout, like first-cut brisket.

I have never ordered the "soup and half sandwich" combination on offer at lunchtime at many a a casual American restaurant. But the other day my friend did. Now putting aside the issue that half a sandwich isn't enough for me, I noticed something interesting: this half sandwich really was half a sandwich. In other words there had been a whole sandwich that was cut in half to make this one. I would have figured the half sandwich was a menu fiction used to describe a smaller sandwich. But from looking at the cut face of this half sandwich it was clear that its mate existed somewhere in the back of the house. How is that possible? Can they possibly have enough certainty to know someone will order the other half soon? Does it just get thrown out? Do the cooks eat it? What's the deal?

So let's say I have a whole turkey breast. How do I proceed to fabricate a turkey London broil? Does anybody know?

We have some friends we visit occasionally and they regularly serve something their butcher calls "turkey London broil." It's a large maybe 1.5" cut of turkey breast with seaonings on the outside. I've actually come to like this item. Has anybody else seen it around or is it unique to these folks?

I finally saw these on offer at the Chick-Fil-A chain, so I grabbed about 20 of them and have been testing them on friends and family. Let me say that my friends and family are mostly 99th-percentile, highly educated and intelligent people. Yet, as a group they are not smart enough to use these ketchup packets properly. They can't grasp that there are two ways to open them. They either notice one or the other and do that. Explaining the choice makes no difference, and isn't understood anyway. I almost came to blows with one family member over the definitions of dip and squeeze.

The cheeses will be on the level of Cabot cheddar. Because the event is at a synagogue, choices are limited to cheeses being produced with kosher supervision. That narrows the field but does still leave options. But I think it's safe to say there won't be anything wildly exotic or even Epoisses. I haven't figured out the chunks/toothpicks versus cheese board issue yet. If one encourages less consumption than the other, that may be the way to go.

By far the best meal we had was at Diamond, the classic and now-renovated diner in Charlotte. I have a couple of photos somewhere and will try to post them. Also really enjoyed a regional chain called Mellow Mushroom, visited in Hickory. There's a whole 'nother topic about fish camp near Gastonia, I'm sure. We made several visits to Chick-Fil-A and are really enamored of the place. Other chains we hit were Subway, Five Guys and Golden Corral. Two of the three places we stayed had kitchens so we did our own cooking for a bunch of meals, and had two meals at people's homes. In our hotel we had a breakfast buffet, which was like eating four meals before 9am. I wish we'd visited more interesting places but this wasn't really a food-centered trip.

I've been tasked with acquiring the cheese for an event that is being called a wine tasting but is really more like a wine-and-cheese cocktail party with wine not cocktails. There will be a bunch of different wines, cheeses, crackers, olives, etc. Not a meal. How much cheese for 50 people in this format?