Sunday afternoon, midwesterners packed a small independent movie theater in Kansas City, Mo., for a screening of the new documentary "Fresh," which takes a close and at times disturbing look at factory farming in the United States. Along with its director, Ana Sofia Joanes, "Fresh" (click the trailer above) is wending its way across the country in the hopes, Joanes said at a panel discussion between two sold-out screenings, of "changing the misconception that we need the industrial food system." This isn't the first new anti-BigFarming flick to hit the silver screen, so we're calling a trend.
"Fresh" follows the lives of four farm families, including a Missouri hog farmer who exterminated his industrial stock after being gored by one of his hogs and doctors found that he was resistant to most antibiotics. Michael Pollan and John E. Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, make cameos as talking heads.
The real star, however, may be the swoon-worthy (if you like the rugged type) sustainable Virginia farmer Joel Salatin, who has the vocabulary of a professor and no shame about embracing "the chickenness" of his hens when greeting them with a "Good morning, girls!" each day.
One writer searches out the best Chicago-style hot dogs in Kansas City and finds them at Miami Ice, Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill, Fritz's Superior Meat and elsewhere.
A couple takes their love of cooking and history to new heights by digging up historical recipes for antiquated dishes like World War I Potato Salad.
There is a new product out in Japan that I would love to get a hold of. It's an instant, fresh matcha tea, two words that usually aren't paired together when talking about tea, especially the bottled kind. The unique bottle design allows the tea to be both.
The design makes it so that when you twist the air tight cap a portion of matcha tea is released into mineral water. All you have to do is shake it up. Matcha is a traditional Kyoto (Japan) green tea that is very green and is usually the go-to flavoring for anything "green tea". It's made from leaves that have been covered so that it grows more slowly, which makes it a little sweeter.
As a big fan of tea, I would really like to be able to try an instant, fresh matcha tea. Does anyone know if this is available in the US?
Okay - one more grilled bevvy before the sandwich drink I'd teased earlier (seriously -- it's worth the wait). Like so many of my mixology experiments, it was inspired by some fresh produce I had on hand. There was an untouched honeydew melon left over from a bridal shower I'd hosted the weekend before (luckily, they keep well), and I happened to be grilling/smoking a beer can chicken anyhow. It all just came together organically, and the grill's flames added a pleasing touch of caramelized sweetness. I've a feeling I'll be chilling with this fizzy, fruity cooler all summer long.
Grilled Honeydew Sorbet Sparkler
1 honeydew melon 1 1/4 cups sugar 3 tbsp fresh lime juice (approx 2 limes) 2 tbsp vodka Club soda, prosecco or cava Lime rind
Split a honeydew melon in half, remove pulp and seeds, and grill face-down on the top rack until insides are softened and the surface is caramelized. Scoop out insides and chill in a bowl in the refrigerator.
Once chilled, use a food processor or immersion blender to combine the sugar, lime juice and vodka into the melon, and liquefy. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and prepare according to the manufacturer's instructions. Then transfer the sorbet into an airtight container and chill into the freezer until uniformly hardened.
Fill a goblet with several scoops of sorbet, and top with club soda, prosecco or cava. Garnish with lime rind twist and serve immediately.
Walk into the cheese section of any market, especially at an upscale gourmet-type store, and you are going to see a tremendous variety of cheeses available. And that selection doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of the number of cheeses that are out there. It can be difficult to figure out the differences between each product until you've tried all of them, but here is a quick guide to cheese terminology that might help you sort through the basic types of cheese.
Fresh - High moisture cheeses that have not been aged, like cottage cheese, cream cheese, feta, mascarpone and ricotta.
Soft-Ripened - These have hard rinds and soft interiors, like brie and camembert. They often have edible rinds made by "spraying the cheese with Penicillium candidum mold before a brief aging period."
Semi-Soft - Cheeses that are neither hard, nor runny, but that are high in moisture and creamy in texture, like Monterey Jack, fontina or havarti. They are often easy to grate and slice.
Firm/Hard - Less creamy than soft cheeses, but ranging in texture from slightly elastic to brittle. These are also good grating cheeses and tend to melt well. The category includes Asiago, cheddar, Gruyere, Swiss and Parmesan.
French toast always reminds me of bread pudding, albeit a single slice of bread pudding, because the bread is supposed to suck up the milk and egg mixture before it is fried, leaving a creamy, custardy center. Unfortunately, too many restaurants and chefs get so caught up in using outrageously thick bread that their custard never gets to the center of the bread and you end up getting served regular toast with egg and syrup, not french toast. I highly doubt that the talented Rachael, from Fresh Approach Cooking, made this mistake with her Holiday French Toast. A fan of decadent holiday treats, I'm guessing that she made sure that every bit of the vanilla-laced custard mixture was soaked up by the already rich challah bread she used, creating a perfect holiday breakfast. The toast is topped with honeyed whipped cream, lightly sauteed nectarines and fresh raspberries.
Since we heard about some chefs who are not exactly following the all-natural philosophy of the "Alice Waters school of cooking" yesterday, it seems only fair to take a look at one of her cookbooks today. The Chez Panisse Café Cookbook has a lot of material on her beliefs, her philosophies about food, ingredients and cooking, and even a few recipes to complement the text. Essentially, the core of Waters' beliefs is that food should be produced as sustainably as possible and served when it as fresh as it can be. Her recipes focus on highlighting the flavor of the ingredients in as close to a natural state as possible.
Chez Panisse Café is not exactly the same restaurant as Chez Panisse. It is actually a somewhat more casual restaurant above the Chez Panisse dining room where dishes are ordered a la carte, rather than as part of a prix fixe. Not that the less formal presentation detracts from the food or flavors. Instead it gives the chefs a bit wider range of dishes to work with, both casual and fancy. The recipes in this cookbook are some of both: Beef Carpaccio with Capers, Parmesan and Anchovies, Roast Pork Loin with Rosemary and Fennel, Meyer Lemon Eclairs and Pizzetta with Farm Egg and Prosciutto.
I have heard many, many trick for keeping fresh bread fresh. By fresh bread, I mean the baguette or boule or sourdough loaf that you can buy at a good bakery. These loaves should have a crisp crust, a moist and soft interior and a flavor that is unrivaled by anything that comes packed in plastic at the supermarket. The fresh breads tend to go stale in a day if not properly stored. One bakery recommended to me that I store the bread in a paper bag and reheat it in the oven for a few minutes to refresh the crispness of the crust. This has been a fairly reliable method, but if you eat a lot of bread, you'll go through a lot of paper bags.
Recently, I came across these reusable bread bags that are designed to do the same job and keep bread fresh. The bags are made of cotton and can be used in one of three ways, making them more versatile than a plain paper bag. They can be unfolded to support tall loaves, folded down to form a basket for rolls or muffins and the can also be sealed with the magnets hidden inside the lip of the bag, which keeps in heat if you are serving and generally keeps the bread fresher. The bags come in black, white/sand and red.
Unless you are planning on serving roasted pumpkin or squash where you really need the whole vegetable, the best way to use it in a recipe is by using canned pumpkin. This isn't necessarily to say that you will never get good results by using fresh for a cake or a pie, but there is a reason that chefs and cookbook authors tend to stick to canned. It is reliable in its flavor, consistency and texture, unlike fresh squash, which can be stringy, too wet or too dry.
The time needed to prepare fresh pumpkin is also substantial, since it must be cut, peeled and cooked before using, while canned is ready in seconds. To a really determined cook, the time needed for preparation would not be an issue if the flavor were so much better that it was worth the effort, but it is often the case that the canned pumpkin will have a stronger, better flavor. For some recipes that use canned pumpkin, try:
After busily cleaning out the pantry, I discovered two open, but only partially used, containers that I didn't know I had. One was baking powder and one was baking soda. It's always useful to have extra on hand in case of a baking emergency, but I figured that it would be a good idea to test them to see if they still worked, since chemical leaveners can lose their potency over time for various reasons, including poor storage conditions.
The procedure for testing these two products is simple. Get out two small glasses or bowls and fill one with 3-4 tablespoons of white vinegar and fill the other with 3-4 tablespoons of room temperature water. Add about 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to the bowl containing the vinegar and the same amount of baking powder to the water bowl. Each mixture should fizz up, with the soda/vinegar producing a bigger reaction. If they both work, mark the containers with the date and check them again in 6-12 months (if you haven't used them up by then) to make sure they're still active. And if they don't fizz up, you better stop by the store before the next time you want to whip up a batch of cookies.
In the EU, meat cannot be treated with carbon monoxide to preserve a look of freshness, so food scientists have had to look for other methods of keeping packaged meat looking pink and appealing to consumers. Spanish researchers recently hit upon a possible solution: rosemary. Their studies show that a rosemary extract added to the packaging will have the same effect as carbon monoxide treatment. This so-called "active packaging" could be the wave of the future as far as meat products are concerned, since beef steaks packed in the "rosemary-enhanced plastic film" remained fresh-looking for 14 days under supermarket conditions - an increase of two days over chemical preservation.
The downside might be for consumers, who could have difficulty discerning the difference between a 2-day-old steak and a 2-week old one, although the idea of getting chemically-treated meat off the shelves sounds like one that most meat-eaters could get behind anyway.
The Wall Street Journal (subscription) decided to put several food storage bags to the test to see if their claims that they would keep foods fresher, longer, really were true. They went out and bought fresh strawberries, a fruit notorious for spoiling quickly, and placed them in three different containers: Freshvac Pro containers, SimplySmart PrimeProtector Produce Bags and Ziploc Double Zipper bags.
As a control, some berries were left in their original container. Those molded quickly. The rest of the berries were checked at six and fourteen days in their respective containers. The Freshvac berries started to mold on day six, but the SimplySmart berries were still fresh and tasty at that time. Ziploc'd berries were kept mold-free for the entire 14 days, although the berries had shriveled "unappetizingly" by the end.
So, Ziplocs ($2.79 for 20 bags) are the way to go for short-term storage unless you want to pay 5 times as much for SimplySmart ($4.99 for 10 bags), but the best thing to do is try to eat the berries or other veggies soon after you buy them and not to buy more than you can eat.
Generally, to keep foods fresh longer, we wrap them up and place them in the refrigerator. Sometimes, we don't give much thought to how things should actually be stored or whether we're doing it properly. As a result, you are more likely to get food poisoning at home than when eating out at a restaurant where health codes are strictly enforced. Some of the biggest food safety violations have to do with the refrigerator, the catch-all of food storage. Here are a few tips to keep you, and your family, a little safer.
The refrigerator should be kept at, or below, 40°F. Keep in mind that the temperature can rise when the door is opened frequently and if the fridge is overcrowded and air cannot circulate.
Store raw meat that you won't be eating right away in the freezer, not the refrigerator. Defrost it in the fridge.
Milk is good for about 10 days past its "sell-by" date, although if it is left out to warm up, it can go bad before that time. It is better to keep it in the main part of the refrigerator than on the door.
Fruits and vegetables can be stored at the same temperature they are stored in the store, though cut produce should be refrigerated and eaten within a few days.
Hard cheeses can be stored, wrapped, for several weeks. If mold develops, the affected area and about 1/2-inch around it should be removed; the rest is safe to eat. Do not eat soft cheeses or dairy products, including cream cheese and yogurt, that have molded.
Fresh eggs will last at least 3 or 4 weeks in the fridge, but hard-cooked eggs will only last one week. You can always check your eggs for freshness if in doubt. Eggs blend better with other ingredients in recipes for baked goods and get more volume when beaten if they are held at room temperature for 20 or 30 minutes before using.
We know that the big trends are the ones that really shape the food industry and impact us over the long term, but the littler trends that make up those overarching categories are interesting to watch, too. And at the moment, consumers are watching two words: "fresh" and "global".
Research into all areas of food consumption, including stores, restaurants and homes, showed that customers valued freshness over convenience and predictability/reliability. This does not mean that consumers are turning away from packaged goods, just that they are being more discerning and looking for products that can assure them of their freshness, through innovative packaging or marketing.
The "global" aspect comes into play when you look at range of foods available to consumers. Plain potato chips are not the only option. Going out for sushi, or some carnitas, is about as normal as going out for a burger and fries. This is not to mention the fact that those same burger-and-fry places have expanded their offerings with Asian and Mexican inspired dishes, helping to bring previously unfamiliar flavors into the mainstream.
It can be difficult to gauge the freshness of dried herbs simply from looking at the bottle on the rack in your spice cabinet. Ideally, you should just periodically replace the herbs in your spice cabinet as just about everything will lose flavor over time. The easiest way to see how fresh things are is to smell them. If, for example, you dried basil or rosemary has little to no scent, it is likely that it is past its prime. It could even impart a slightly musty taste to your food, as you will have to increase the amount you're using if you want to get any flavor into your dish.
The best bet if you are in doubt is to replace the product in question, either with something fresh or a fresh bottle of dried herbs. If you find that you are often replacing full jars of spices, consider switching to fresh herbs for those ingredients. There is no sense in buying a new bottle of dried rosemary/ thyme/tarragon, etc. every year when you only use it for one dish. Buy the fresh herb on that day, get a better flavor in the finished product, and don't worry about it again for another 365 days.
Walk into the cheese section of any market, especially at an upscale gourmet-type store, and you are going to see a tremendous variety of cheeses available. And that selection doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of the number of cheeses that are out there. It can be difficult to figure out the differences between each product until you've tried all of them, but here is a 
I have heard many, many trick for keeping fresh bread fresh. By fresh bread, I mean the baguette or boule or sourdough loaf that you can buy at a good bakery. These loaves should have a crisp crust, a moist and soft interior and a flavor that is unrivaled by anything that comes packed in plastic at the supermarket. The fresh breads tend to go stale in a day if not properly stored. One bakery recommended to me that I store the bread in a paper bag and reheat it in the oven for a few minutes to refresh the crispness of the crust. This has been a fairly reliable method, but if you eat a lot of bread, you'll go through a lot of paper bags.
Unless you are planning on serving roasted pumpkin or squash where you really need the whole vegetable, the best way to use it in a recipe is by using 
After busily cleaning out the pantry, I discovered two open, but only partially used, containers that I didn't know I had. One was baking powder and one was baking soda. It's always useful to have extra on hand in case of a baking emergency, but I figured that it would be a good idea to test them to see if they still worked, since chemical leaveners can lose their potency over time for various reasons, including poor storage conditions.
In the EU, meat cannot be 
The 
Generally, to keep foods fresh longer, we wrap them up and place them in the refrigerator. Sometimes, we don't give much thought to how things should actually be stored or whether we're doing it properly. As a result, you are more likely to get food poisoning at home than when eating out at a restaurant where health codes are strictly enforced. Some of the biggest food safety violations have to do with the refrigerator, the catch-all of food storage. Here are a few 
We know that 
It can be difficult to gauge the freshness of dried herbs simply from looking at the bottle on the rack in your spice cabinet. Ideally, you should just periodically replace the herbs in your spice cabinet as just about everything will lose flavor over time. The easiest way to see how fresh things are is to smell them. If, for example, you dried basil or rosemary has little to no scent, it is likely that it is past its prime. It could even impart a slightly musty taste to your food, as you will have to increase the amount you're using if you want to get any flavor into your dish.
What Can I Get You Folks? - Eating Out for Thanksgiving
In Defense of Guy Fieri
'Top Chef Vegas' - And Then There Were Five
