MarketStEl

And these are...? They do look cute. Any self-respecting gay man could have warned you about drinking a beer that calls itself "the fruity pink"! Pink is for chi-chi "martinis," not beer. Pink may be for wine, sometimes, especially if the pink is a retro-'50s-chic box (who cares then that the wine inside is mediocre?). Pink is never, never for beer. It could have been worse, though: You could have been blogging in March and stumbled across someone engaged in the bizarre American practice of coloring the beer green for the 17th.

Just checking in from the office to say "Hi, Klary!" And congratulations on your wedding anniversary! May the two of you have many more years of wedded bliss. The usual barrage of questions and trivia will have to wait until I've gotten home and have time to give this blog the attention it deserves. A bunch of our Psy.D. students are headed to Amsterdam over the US Memorial Day weekend along with a professor with whom I work closely. Maybe I should go back through your prior blogs to give them recommendations for eats while they're over in your part of the world.

I'm working on pitching a story out of our Hospitality Management program to area food writers and thought I'd get some outside opinion before running it up the flagpole. We have a couple of students who will be participating in an educational program at Castello Banfi, the Mariani family's estate vineyard in Montalcino, Italy. I'm reviewing the materials the director of wine education puts together for the educators who will accompany the students, and this place looks like an outstanding operation, with a bunch of ISO certifications for quality (ISO 9001), environmental responsibility (ISO 9001.2000 and ISO 14001) and social responsibility and involvement in the community (SA 8000). The materials also claim that this family estate, assembled over several years beginning in the mid-1970s, has led to renewed interest in the wines of the Montalcino region. The company this family owns got big by selling tons of Riunite to my generation, but it also imports Concha y Toro and Stonehaven, among other well regarded names, into the United States. What I want to know is: Is the wine produced at Castella Banfi as good as their track record on responsible management appears to be? I've heard from some people around here that a visit to the estate is an unforgettable experience. Can anyone back this up?

I thought he said it was barbecue season. What are we doing talking about steak? You grill those. Where are the ribs? The brisket? --Sandy, ducking

Sotheby's has a lovely Italianate building just two doors down on the block already; the building's been pretty much vacant since Bauman Rare Books left it last summer. And there's that burned-out shell of a condo conversion catercorner. I hope it sells quickly, but fear it may not.

...um, vinegar is a perfectly acceptable real ingredient for a barbecue sauce. (In fact, in parts of North Carolina, it's the base ingredient.) Given that tomato paste is used instead of tomato puree, I think I might even be less critical of water being so high up on the list than I otherwise might. That said, I think that most home cooks whipping up a batch of Kansas City-style sauce would probably use tomato puree rather than tomato paste. However: Tomato paste is sweeter than tomato puree thanks to the concentration process, and using it instead might be a good way to introduce sweetness into a barbecue sauce without having to go hog wild with the molasses or brown sugar (which is merely refined sugar plus molasses). It's probably not sweet enough to permit you to dispense with the sweet stuff altogether, though.

Would this be the same demographic Burger King courts with its campy "I Am Man" ads for their Angus humungoburger?

No artificial colors, just artificial flavors. Those are the fifth ingredient from the bottom of the list. Funny thing is, if Frito-Lay got rid of those, they'd be able to sell these puppies at Whole Foods. (I don't know what tocopherols are, but they're not on WFM's list of banned ingredients; nor is disodium phosphate, the only other ingredient on the list that looks vaguely suspect to me.* All the other chemical-sounding ingredients on the Flat Earth label are derived from natural substances.) BTW, Frito-Lay makes pork rinds too, and has the complete nutrition label on its Web site (use the link in this sentence). If you ate equal amounts of pork rinds and Flat Earth crisps by weight, there's no contest -- you'd do way better nutritionally eating the crisps: less of all the bad stuff, plus a bunch of vitamins and minerals to boot (2% of the RDV of calcium, iron and zinc, 4% of niacin [vitamin B3], phosphorous and magnesium, 6% of thiamin [vitamin B1] and vitamin E, 8% of riboflavin [vitamin B2] and vitamin B6, 10% of vitamin C, 20% of vitamin A). Where pork rinds get a reprieve is that an equal amount by weight represents way more by volume, as pork rinds are at least 50% air by volume IME. Note that the 1/2-ounce (14g) portion of Baken-Ets represents 9 pieces; 9 Flat Earth crisps would probably be more than 1/2 ounce by weight and a great deal less by volume. Anyway, as the marketers would say, both can be "part of a balanced diet." *Edited to add: But should it be? Disodium phosphate is a salt formed by combining phosphoric acid with sodium. Most of its uses are industrial. However, it is used as a water softening agent and as a stabilizer in condensed milk and instant puddings.

I'm not completely certain of this, but I'm pretty sure you can find something sans animal protein on the menu at Upstares/Sotto Varalli at Broad and Locust. The place has been a favorite with concertgoers since it opened about 15 years ago, and there's a great view of the activity on Broad Street from the upstairs dining room. Oh, and the food is consistently good too.

If I understand the marketers at Frito-Lay correctly, if I were a parent exhorting my recalcitrant children to "eat their vegetables," I could now simply give them these crisps instead. They're called "Flat Earth" -- I don't know whether this is an homage to Thomas Friedman's latest book or some sort of wry commentary about things that aren't so -- and they come in three fruit and three vegetable flavors. These baked crisps claim to be something heretofore unheard of: snack foods that taste good and are good for you. The promotional materials say that each one-ounce serving contains half a serving of fruits or vegetables, and some of the varieties are touted as excellent sources of vitamin A and good sources of vitamin C. The brand's logo is a flying pig, purportedly because the women who came up with the line (we're not told their names) were told that we'd see tasty snacks that were also nutritious "when pigs fly." (I don't know about you, but I find most fruits to be very tasty snacks, and they're nutritious too. Perhaps the Frito-Lay people were too fixated on corn and potatoes to notice?) To underscore the health angle, the chips are sold from custom display racks placed in the produce section of your local supermarket. I've tried a bag, and they aren't too bad. But I wonder whether this bit of food engineering isn't also part marketing triumph. (The Onion, of course, sees other motives behind this new product launch.) After all, aren't potatoes -- one of the main ingredients in these chips -- high in vitamins A and C? Not really, it appears: the nutrition information on Utz Quality Foods' Web site shows that their potato chips contain some vitamin C (15% of the recommended daily intake) but absolutely no vitamin A. So maybe there is something to the claims made for these snacks made from dried potatoes and powdered dried vegetables and fruit. Still, something just seems a bit strange about these new snacks. Sort of like a flying pig. Maybe I should just stop worrying and munch away on my favorite flavor, knowing I won't get as fat off these as I would off potato chips while boosting my vegetable intake.

Perfect analogy, Judy. The only difference is that the San Francisco miller who invented Rice-a-Roni didn't have the temerity to open a restaurant there. (I think that Quaker Oats acquired Golden Grain Co. sometime around 1990.) An even better analogy would be the bakery on Fisherman's Wharf where I purchased a loaf of alleged sourdough bread on my recent visit. Especially if this bakery has ever been featured on a Food Network TV program.

Two comments since last I checked in: --Yes, the 100-yen store is the exact same thing as the US dollar store. In concept, these are the direct descendants of Frank W. Woolworth's "five-and-dime" stores, so called because all the items they sold were priced at either 5 or 10 cents. (In my high-school French class, I learned that such stores were called "Prisunic" ["prix unique" = "a single price"] in that country.) Although you can still find stores called "Woolworth's" in the UK and Australia, the original F.W. Woolworth Co. neither operates variety stores of this type nor does business under that name anymore. Now called the Venator Group, its primary business is a chain of sneaker stores called Foot Locker. None of Woolworth's competitors are around in their original form either, though one of them survives in the form of discount department store operator Kmart, and Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the US, began with a "dime store" in Bentonville, Ark. I imagine it's only a matter of time before "dollar stores" drop the single-price policy just as the "dime stores" before them did. --I note that your diet is certainly not lacking in meat -- and that the meat you buy appears far more richly marbled than what we would find in an American supermarket. How much do you pay for a kilo of pork cubes like those you used yesterday? (1 kg = 2.2 lbs, so the price per kilo is a little more than twice the price per pound.) For a kilo of the beef (it looked like strip steak) you cooked earlier this week? One of the reasons American meats are leaner these days is because (producers perceive) consumers demand leaner meat out of concern for their weight. Obesity and overweight have become serious health issues in the US since the 1980s or so. Is this a problem at all in Japan? (I know that it's a desirable quality for sumo wrestlers. )

Especially when you consider that both of them are not the best in town in their respective categories and survive partly on their reputations. However, neither of them are the worst, either. I really must visit OJ's when next I'm in town. Sounds like my continued regard for Gates' meat is unjustified. I will continue to praise their sauce, which I don't find all that cuminy.

The next time you're in a Jewel supermarket, take a look at the Essensia line of barbecue sauces. (Essensia is the premium store brand sold in stores operated by the former Albertson's, Inc., now part of SuperValu. In the Philadelphia area, these stores go by the name Acme.) The brand name is a derivative of the word "essence", and Essensia products all carry on their labels a legend reading "What's essential is [insert name of ingredient or quality specific to the product here]." Essensia makes four varieties of barbecue sauce: Texas, Southwestern, Memphis and Kansas City. According to them, for the Kansas City sauce, "what's essential is the molasses." You can't even find molasses in either Bryant's or Gates' sauce. Fie on Rich Davis again!

Truuuuuuuue story. The same can be said for our cheesesteak. ← Some of us, it appears, are inclined to tempt fate anyway, with predictable results. In my own defense, I had not planned to seek one out while in the Bay Area. This occurred purely by chance.

I never ask to have liverwurst sliced at the deli counter. I always request it in a chunk and slice it with a cheese slicer (NOT planer) at home. You can't slice liverwurst thin enough on a commercial slicer; the friction against the rotating blade will cause the slices to fall apart or mush up. (Or maybe it's that most people aren't skilled enough to do it.) You can with a cheese slicer. I think that liverwurst also tastes better sliced thin, if you haven't figured that out already. I usually don't specify thickness when ordering deli meats. The Amish deli I frequently patronize in the Reading Terminal Market sells everything pre-sliced, and except for their shaved ham and corned beef, everything is of a uniform thickness, and that thickness is a little thicker than I'd like for cheeses and just about right for Lebanon bologna.

You're not photogenic? Rubbish, I say! As I expected, it's fascinating to compare and contrast our cultures. I know you haven't gotten to them yet, but -- especially at current exchange rates -- I will wager that the "100-yen store" is the Japanese equivalent of the American "dollar store" both in the type and quality of merchandise carried. I await your exposition on these places to see if my suspicion is correct. For your information: One liter = 33.8 US fluid ounces, a little more than one quart, which is 32. Prices per liter will not be appreciably more than prices per quart. That restaurant looks lovely -- I think that Japanese domestic architecture is elegant in its simplicity and love the warmth all that wood provides. In the US, lactose intolerance is more common among African-Americans than among whites. I'm not sure that I'm not lactose intolerant--I've never bothered to inquire with my doctor about the symptoms beyond gas. Besides, there's no way on God's green earth I'm going to give up cheese! You and I share that passion. So: what kind of cheese was that?

Tell me more about natto. It looks like ramen in your picture. Bear with me. I'm probably going to pepper you with lots of questions like this as your blog progresses.

I often tell people interested in pursuing a writing-related career, "You must first learn what the rules are in order to break them properly." Cooking differs from this in that it's the processes and the reactions -- the chemistry -- that matter more than the rules (except those governing sanitation and food storage. There the writing analogy holds). In culinary school, they teach rules. The graduates then head into the real world and learn about the processes and what happens after they've run their course. I'm surprised there aren't more peer-reviewed papers on sauces and cooked food in biochemistry journals. (There was such a paper, "Sauce Béarnaise," published in the journal Biochemistry in 1985.)

That is not only a very neat fridge, it's also well designed! Especially the separate doors for the ice compartment, barely-freezing storage for meat and fish, and vegetable crisper. You say Japanese cooking really doesn't require an oven. I thought that, like most Asian cuisines, it made no (or next to no) use of dairy products either. Yet those look like milk cartons in your right-hand bottom door shelf, and there's something by Kraft right above that -- I can't tell whether it's cheese or some other dairy product, but it sure looks like something made from milk. Do you drink a lot of milk? Are these used in cooking at all? Do dairy products figure into Japanese cuisine in some way?

Please accept my best wishes for a full and speedy recovery for your wife, and for the strength to carry on for you. As I almost never set foot in the Japan forum, all of this will be an education for me. I look forward to receiving the lessons. Your teaser photo, however, leaves an opening for one of my other big areas of interest and curiosity, which those who've read my own foodblogs and posts on various boards already know. So to get this out of the way so we can get on with the food: Yuzawa station is on the Japanese (National) Railways, I assume? Regular service or bullet train? Is this the closest station to where you live?

You have to dine to sit outside, right? Good news: Summer hours at Widener begin June 4. That means I have Fridays off and can grace your bar at happy hour a little more often, funds permitting. In looking through the discussion -- both off- and on-topic -- a long-ago quote from a paragon of mediocrity came to mind. That paragon was Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska), who, in 1969, as President Nixon's nomination of Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court was going down in flames, was quoted as saying, "I think there should be a place for mediocrity on the Supreme Court." Obviously, Sen. Hruska was so far off base with this statement, he wasn't even wrong, but -- bringing this back to the topic -- if you're going to work at a volume establishment as opposed to a quality place, it seems to me that learning the basic mechanics and motions would save an employer the need to train you on the job, and that an employer at a volume establishment would appreciate that. But there is indeed no way you can learn about taste, or for that matter the intangibles like stage presence and conversational skills that distinguish the great bartenders from the rest, in a school such as this one, and in those matters, experience is the best teacher. In this scheme of things, places like "Houligan's" and Applebee's are volume establishments, no matter how much (or how little) they charge for meals and drinks. Pardon me for a moment while I comment on the brief but arch exchange between HD73 and Vadouvan. Vadouvan is right in saying that no one should settle for mediocrity. By extension, every diner or imbiber deserves the best food, drink and service possible at the price he or she is paying. But keep in mind that volume establishments of necessity operate at an industrial scale, and that very fact sets a ceiling on how high the quality will go. As I said about Aramark's foodservice here at Widener in my first foodblog, "It's difficult if not impossible to provide a) gourmet quality food, b) in large quantities, c) at low cost." Of those three variables, c) is the controlling one. I assume it's also a controlling variable for the large restaurant chains and high-volume bars, some of which install computerized equipment that meters out how much liquor goes into each drink and automatically communicates what was poured to the cash register. At this level of regimentation, the bartender merely becomes an assembly-line worker, and thus may as well be working with colored water anyway.

Paul DID e-mail me the results (along with a comment on my appearance in last Sunday's Inquirer "Image" section): Evidently, what I thought was a scrapple cheesesteak was the scrapple hoagie. The scrapple sashimi (topped with ahi tuna) was IMO the most elegant-looking of the day's creations. Thanks, Paul!

I think someone has already said this, but while it is a Louisiana hot sauce, original Tabasco is in a class by itself -- noticeably more vinegary than the typical Louisiana hot sauce, and with a more pronounced pepper flavor. I always keep a bottle of both original Tabasco and their much milder chipotle variety on hand. The latter can indeed be used as a condiment sauce. For Buffalo wings, there's no substitute for the more typical Louisiana and Louisiana-ish hot sauces. Texas Pete is my fave. I also like to splash some Louisiana hot sauce on cottage cheese. Currently, I have Louisiana Brand sauce in my pantry; sounds like I should try Crystal. I'm surprised it took more than 30 replies before someone mentioned Original Juan Pain Is Good sauces, the best thing to come out of Kansas City, Kansas, since Rosedale Barbecue opened. Pain Is Good Batch 112 Jamaican-Style Hot Sauce combines intense heat with a touch of citrus-y sweetness; I need to add this back to my collection. Thanks to those who explained the intricacies of sriracha. I'm never without a bottle of Huy Fong sauce either. And I too keep a bottle of El Yucateco on hand. So I guess that makes me like just about everyone else here. However, I find it difficult to limit myself to five sauces. (They also tend to accumulate, as I use them up partway, then let them sit after running across some new find like Valentina, a rather mild, somewhat grainy Mexican sauce that has an ancho-ish flavor.) The people who run Peppers -- who also owned a popular bar in Dewey Beach, next to which it was located before it moved up the road to an outlet mall in Rehoboth -- concocted a good hot sauce for Bloody Marys called "Another Bloody Day in Paradise." That lemon-lime-tinged sauce was one sauce that didn't sit in my pantry forever.

Since I've noticed some other Utz fans posting to this topic: Would you all be so kind as to state where you live, and whether you can just pop 'round to the corner store for a bag or have to either have them shipped to you or stock up when traveling in the Middle Atlantic states? (The company had an ad campaign in the 1990s pointing out all the places where you can't get Utz chips with the tag line, "Too bad for the rest of the world.") Of the major brands, Utz (the 4th-best-selling brand in the country) is my favorite, but I'm really liking what the Kettle folks and Target are doing with flavor, texture, crunch and (in Kettle's case) intensity of the potato taste.