The image above doesn't scream "dinner" to most -- especially those who spent childhood summers grubby-pawed and overheated, plucking them out of the cracks of walkways, driveways and wherever else they lurked.
But as this timely Wall Street Journal story reports, weeds are spreading to places other than just your garden, including the dinner table. Dandelion greens, purslane, burdock and lamb's quarters are becoming staples of both haute restaurants and homespun summer salads. They can now be procured both high-end ($9 per pound in one farmers market) and low-end (via elbow grease).
But can one waltz down a Brooklyn street and pluck a handful of dandelions from the edge of a vacant lot to pop in a pan for dinner? The short answer, says 27-year veteran forager and author "Wildman" Steve Brill, is "no." He quickly follows that it's not as hard as one would think, and that hunting for a free dinner "is like learning how to swim, dance or drive a car. Learning to recognize very tasteful, very healthful wild food is no different than any other skill."
His tips, a weedy poll and an additional "expert" opinion after the jump.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that increased tariffs on Roquefort have been dropped. The news comes as a relief to the many gourmands and cheese enthusiasts who were bracing for what could have been a frightening, extended period bereft of the luscious, pungent fromage bleu.
The tariffs that were initially going to be imposed on Roquefort were a retaliatory move in reaction to the European Union's ban on hormone-treated beef. But after a provisional agreement, officials from the EU and the United States decided to drop both measures. So, while the U.S. removed threats of tariffs on Roquefort, the EU has gotten rid of bans on imported beef from the U.S.
Frank Bruni is leaving the New York Times dining section. And food bloggers are freaking out.
In a world where restaurants live or die by the awarding of Bruni's stars, blogs like Eater declare this no less than an "Apocalypse." Bruni will be turning his attention to his new memoir come August, and will be a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine.
Now the hunt (and speculation) begins to locate a food critic with the ability to carry Bruni's swagger: Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg, one of the few fairly anonymous critics left in town? Perhaps the L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila is waiting by her phone, since the Times has pulled from our rival city to the west (a la Ruth Reichl) in the past. Grub Street wonders if (gasp) a blogger will be chosen. And does anonymity, so hard to preserve in the Internet era, matter any more to Pete Wells, the dining editor at the Times?
Perhaps the most curious quote in Bill Keller's announcement is that Bruni "will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials." Uh, could someone get us a copy of those? Is there, like, a laminated round of foie gras passed from critic to critic? Frank, just drop us a line and let us know.
We'll be live-Twittering tonight's James Beard Media Awards and Monday's Restaurant Awards, so follow along @slashfood. Meanwhile, snack on these links to the nominated articles, recipes, reviews, food sections, sites, blogs and books.
Journalism Awards
For articles published in English in 2008.
Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants And/Or Chefs
The life of a golden beet isn't really a very glamorous one. We don't get out very much, we tend to be a bit grubby and we've got this embarrassing dry skin problem.
So imagine how surprised I was to find out that I've somehow become a symbol of everything that's wrong with food these days; according to this funny lady Carla Spartos, I'm nothing less than a nightstick in the hands of the food police, the so-called "Gourmonsters" who are trying to bully us all into eating our vegetables and threatening to steal our Ho Hos.
I'm typing this from under the kitchen sink in my triple-bolted Brooklyn apartment where I'm cowering in fear of Chef Alice Waters. If the New York Post's Carla Spartos and the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd are to be believed, the founding Slow Foodista and her hench-polemicist Michael Pollan are hell-bent upon mugging every last McNugget-lovin' American of their free will, hard-earned cash and bags of pre-shredded iceberg lettuce.
It's my fault. I didn't speak up the first time they came and forced me, at Shun-point, to trek to Dan Barber's Blue Hill Farm and choke down sun-warmed, newly picked cherry tomatoes that tasted of summer and promise and the few times my grandfather was kind to me.
I remained silent when they dragged me hemp-bound to the Union Square Greenmarket to spend several dollars less than I would at my local C-Town grocery store to meet the folks who got their hands dirty growing ridiculously delicious heirloom peppers, beans and squash with more Earth-friendly farming practices. And I cried hot, sloppy tears when they pointed and laughed at my insufficiently grained bagel. See, according to Spartos' recent N.Y. Post editorial "Gourmonsters," Officer Waters and her ilk are out to shame us all.
"They're the food police and their patron saints -- Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, chief among them -- are on a crusade to tell you not just what you should eat, but how you should eat it.
Like an exclusive clique of anorexic cheerleaders, they think they're better than you."
Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week.
Memo to the First Lady: That's the nicest-looking gardening outfit we've ever seen! Take this quiz and find out how well you know what the Obamas are planting this year.
A pretty dang delicious-looking milk chocolate and peanut butter cookie recipe.
Edamame in linguine? They make it look tasty over at YumSugar.
A writer is entranced by the simple charms of homemade tortillas. Have you tried it? Take their poll.
McDonald's joins the upscale burger trend with one-third pound Angus patties, coming this August.
Our pockets empty while our bellies fill with booze: "Canadians boosted alcohol sales by 4.3 percent [this year], funnelling more than $18.8 billion into the economy."
SeaChoice now offers a downloadable sushi guide about locating sustainably sourced fish, but brace yourself -- the beloved unagi and hamachi are on the list.
Laiterie Charlevoix's Le 1608 cheese -- the "pleasant tang of the long finish clinches this cheese's spot as a new Canadian favourite."
Miga restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario, a favorite due to "wannabe luxe comforts."
"Twecipes¹" are the moment's micro-obsession and we ♥ the New York Times' Dining staff -- certainly active and useful Twitizens² themselves -- for flying into the eye of the storm in conjunction with today's profile of Twitter's marquee recipe condenser Maureen Evans, aka @cookbook. Still, must all prose now be condensed for optimal Tweetability³? Yup, it's been an addictively (though ADD) good time watching the 140-or-fewer-character Challenge responses stream into #nytrc⁴:
Perhaps it's terribly 2008 to think this way, but there's a near visceral joy in the reading of Melissa Clark's Stuffed Artichokes with Lemon Zest, Rosemary and Garlic recipe in its original form. The title alone (55 characters) vividly evokes the action and sensory experience of crafting, then savoring this dish in a way that spare, if technically correct Tweets can not. It makes for excellent editorial muscle flexing -- like a digital lipogram -- and it's an efficient way to circulate links, but we can't help but hope that Nigel Slater and his ilk of culinary poets never sign up for an @ handle.
1. Twecipe: 140 character recipe 2. Twitizen: Participant in the Twitter community 3. Tweetable: Expressible in a 140 character Tweet, or Twitter message 4. # : Hashtags are added in front of terms to make Tweets including them more easily searchable.
A lot has changed over the last 102 years, both in and out of the kitchen, and nothing makes that hit home more than this gem, published in the New York Times in 1907. It's a letter to the editor, written by Gabrielle Stewart Mulliner, entitled: "Women Enjoy Cooking, A Pleasure, Not a Drudgery, Once the Art is Acquired."
Gabrielle was inspired to write her letter after reading an article that discussed training women in the art of domestic service -- you know, cleaning, cooking and doing all those other house things for your man.
Her claim: Women wouldn't hate cooking and serving men if they were trained properly. Man, if only men knew this ... they could have quashed that annoying Women's Lib movement in a blink! It wasn't about liberation, but an organized outcry of mediocre frustration! They just needed to learn how to do it right.
I'll let you read the letter in all its glory yourselves, but here are a few highlights:
"As long as the race exists, men will have to eat, and some one will have to do the cooking."
"Housework done intelligently is not drudgery."
"Anything a woman can do well, she enjoys doing."
2009 suddenly has a wonderfully sweet ring to it. 1907 can stay well in the past.
The Times delves into the world of goat meat with an "I ♥ Goat" essay by a man who uses the term "sexytime" with his butcher.
It's almost time for Passover (it begins at sundown on April 8) and the Gray Lady offers a slew of recipe ideas from the archive as well as a meal with a Mexican accent.
The Times gets jiggly with the British jelly mongers -- men of letters who prefer to work in the gelatin arts.
Dissecting why "The Chopping Block" got chopped from the NBC lineup.
Macao Trading Co. gets one star for Chinese-Portuguese fare that's a little mixed up.
As several media sources have noted, there has recently been a surge in vodka sales. While these increases have occurred across the board, there has been a particularly large spike in so-called "value" and "popular" brands, which cost less than $9 per bottle.
In addition to the obvious price benefit, there is also the matter of flavor. As The New York Times noted, the premium vodka fad was largely an artificially created phenomenon, and the cheap stuff often tastes just as good as brands that cost five or six times as much.
Of course, as the comments in last November's Top Shelf Vodka post demonstrate, Slashfood's readers have known this for quite some time.
While you may not want to resort to Popov, as the Timesseems to suggest, it's worth noting that Smirnoff, Luksusowa and Svedka are all outstanding, low-priced tipples. And, just in case the Times decides to copy us yet again, remember that you heard it here first!
I have always been a huge fan of deliciously rich and creamy whoopie pies. So, when I read the recent New York Times article about its current popularity among New Yorkers, I was not too surprised.
The article traces the history of this delectable to pockets of New England, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And, it explains that due to their gaining popularity, supermarkets like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and (specialty deli) Zingerman's sell them. But, my favorite spot for whoopie pies is at One Girl Cookies in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
As food historian Sandra Oliver states, the cake part that sandwiches the cream is not especially sweet and is often dry, because the frosting, the heart of the whoopie, is full of sugar and a gooey consistency. This characterizes One Girl Cookies' luscious whoopie pies. There is an amazing balances between the frosting in the center and the light fluffy dry cookie/cake.
Perhaps, one of the reasons why they're so special is that cream cheese frosting is sandwiched between pumpkin cake (see the photo above).
You can purchase a dozen whoopie pies from One Girl Cookies online for $27. The Times mentions another pastry shop in Brooklyn with whoopie fever called Trois Pommes Patisserie.
If the answer is yes, then you are considered to be part of a minority, or so claims a recent study of 3,000 eaters by the NPD Group, a marketing-research company. According to an article from the Chicago Sun-Times, the reason why people are not using recipes is because the No. 1 food for dinner in the U.S. is the sandwich. Can this really be true?
Perhaps, a lot less shocking is the trend towards using online recipes instead of cookbooks. Fellow blog, The EpiLog is also surprised by NPD Group's "sandwich theory" to explain the fact that people are not using recipes. The EpiLog states that people may not be using recipes, because they are cooking family meals from a "basic stable of a few standard dinners that are familiar, easy, and keep everyone happy." But, to me, what also seems a huge factor is the little time that people have to devote to meal planning.
Just because someone is not following a recipe that does not mean we should assume that this person just eats sandwiches. Perhaps, people are cooking omelets, pasta and a number of other dishes that do not necessarily require a recipe. Check out the poll below and let us know what you think.
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