Aroma Cucina

Celebrities and Roots

Rebecca Traister wrote a thought provoking article in Salon magazine about our waning interest in celebrities. She muses about our loss of interest in Britney, our collective shrug at the antics of The Famous.  At the same time, everywhere you look is an article about gardens, community gardens,  roof top gardens, container gardens, and blogs that even mention turning housing developments back into pastures.
Is there a connection? Are we as a nation actually tired of the trivial and the superficial and now looking to literally put roots in the ground? Planting a garden requires time, energy, you get dirty, sweaty, frustrated and occasionally rewarded. 
Two summers ago, my teen-aged nephew visited us in Italy. He had a ball helping us in the garden; he was totally entertained by the bizarre corkscrew carrots we grew. (Umbrian dirt is incredibly hard and clumped, the poor carrots had to grow their way through the spaces between the clumps.)  But, will that excitement lead to a lasting interest in gardening? Will having a  garden become a trend or a fleeting phase?  How serious are we about turning our backs on celebrity dirt and shoveling some real dirt?
Either way, for me, it will be more interesting to watch this evolve than it will be for me to read yet again about stains on Monica’s dress or Drew’s weight loss.

Emerging Voices, Food and Shelter

Cross training is invaluable.   I like to box and practice yoga to make me a better skier. Cross training the brain can be just as valuable. Last night we attended a lecture in the Emerging Voices series given by the Architecture League.  Our friends, the McDonald brothers, of Onion Flats in Philadelphia, were invited to speak about their projects and how they are not only working green, but also working holistically. The parallels to the food industry challenges were eye opening.  These are simple basic challenges: how to do the least damage to the planet, possibly even making the planet a better place, how to provide an organic/green solution at affordable prices, the recognition that food and shelter are the most basic of needs and that we are in urgent need of innovative solutions to safeguard our most primal requirements.  After the lecture, during the Q&A session, there was a discussion about partnering between the private and public sector, which for so long has been nothing but an adversarial relationship. The McDonalds proposed placing a water collection tank below a housing development, and this tank will alleviate flood issues in the neighborhood while providing water to sustain the green elements of the project. What a shocking, mind expanding concept: to be able to work with government and have it be mutual beneficial; which in these tainted, cynical times is something that we have not seen in a very long time.
Something as elemental as a community garden could make a huge difference in our lives.  This is what Tim McDonald referred to as a ‘little idea’ that snowballs into a grand idea.  The McDonald projects typically strive to create communities, not just housing complexes, their hope is to create and encourage communication and interaction between the inhabitants, much as you would find in a medieval village where it is quicker and easier to yell something across the street into an open window than to place a call or an e-mail.  Now, introduce a community garden into the project. You have urban dwellers who are growing things, taking back a bit of control over their food supply, interacting with neighbors as they discuss how to eliminate tomato slugs, sharing an abundance of zucchini, reconnecting people to the ebb and flows of seasons.
Listening to them talk and to Chris Reed from Stoss LU, a landscape design company that encourages community, flexibility, and respect for nature was an enlightenment and a cause for hope. These people are slowly working to make our homes and play spaces a more healthy and responsible experience, much like many of the growers, producers, chefs and cooks are doing. Little by little we can all make small contributions, or have little ideas that will take us, collectively to a better place.

Seems like I'm not the only one to make a food and architecture connection; while doing my morning crawl of favorite food blogs, I came across this post on pastry chef Michael Laiskonis's blog. Something blowing in the almost springtime air?

Spring Cleaning

It may be the dead of winter, but a hard drive crash will certainly make you take stock of what you’ve got stored and have you doing a Spring Clean. Which is my way of explaining the long break in posting. My hard drive took a tumble, my photos didn’t want to come back on to the freshly reinstalled OS and I’ve generally been pulling my hair out, interspersed with visits to the tech guys.

Happily the worst is behind me, and I’ve been inspired to do a little sprucing up of the blog.
Hope you enjoy.

Vienna Vegetable Orchestra

I don't usually get into the YouTube thing, but this is just too wonderfully strange not to share.
Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of playing with your food.

Here is a link to their home page.

Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies

If you have a taste for meat pies and the macabre, then I suggest going to see Tim Burton’s film version of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
This is a twisted, sickening, scary, nightmare of a film. Old skool, I can’t get the images out of my mind, scary. It’s  pretty disturbing to walk out of a film humming, “Try the Priest”. The meat grinding machine will stay with you long after you leave the theater, as will the thud that accompanies the bodies that slide down the chute from the barber chair. And watching Helena Bonham Carter make vermin infested meat pies is something that you won’t quickly forget, no how much you would like  that image to vanish from your  memory bank.

Oh, and I suggest eating before you go.  We wound up at an Afghanistan restaurant afterwards, and the whole, ground, mystery meat thing just was a little too much, too soon….

But it’s a gorgeous, stylish, chic, camp, scary film; the likes of which you haven’t seen before. And watch the way that they manipulate color in the film, simply stunning visuals that remind you just how powerful color is. Almost like you can taste the revenge baked into those meat pies.

You know your are getting old...

How to know when you are getting old: when you don’t head to your refrigerator to get the weather.
It seems that LG, who makes gorgeous appliances, won an award for their refrigerator that had a Weather & Info TV program built into it.  This year’s model will include some other nifty features like a digital photo album.  I can hear it now, “Mom….did you upload my birthday party pictures to the refrigerator??”  Why does this make me feel like I’m in one of those elevators with a newscreen, you don’t want to watch it, but you can’t pull your eyes away.

I missed out on attending the recent Kitchen/Bath Industry Show and Conference, in Las Vegas, and it seems as if the remote controlled singing bidet wasn’t the only hot product I missed out on.

How about Siemans ventilator hood that doubles as an entertainment center? You load your DVD’s and CD’s into the side of the hood, and voila`, here’s another opportunity to get distracted and burn the hell out of your hand, or slice off a finger! I love a good distraction while I’m cooking. And we all keep our ventilator hoods spic-span sparkling clean, right? A great place to store CD’s is right next to the stove.

Bertazzoni makes ranges that will make you weep with desire they are so gorgeous. They now also come in 8 gorgeous colors: yellow, green, white, red, beige, black, blue and burgundy. Now, come on fellows, who is going to buy beige? I mean really now. Beige?

Now, it wasn’t all silly stuff. Chef Charlie Trotter was demonstrating the latest version of the TurboChef Speedcook that roasts a rack of lamb in five minutes. Miele brought a new version of a rapid cycle dishwasher with specialized racks that will hold a full load of glasses, plates, silverware etc.  Now that is the stuff that my dreams are made of.

But, truth be told, I just want a stove that turns on, all the burners, and heats up quickly; a refrigerator that makes ice and water available in the door, but isn’t always leaking.  I’ll take a self-cleaning ventilator hood over the entertainment center variety, and I’d really like a sink spray that has some guts behind it. Is that too much to ask?

The Rat Man of Treviso

I’ve just finished reading The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt. It’s about Venice in the late 1990’s, right after the Fenice opera house burned down in 1996.  Mr. Berendt chronicles some of the people that he meets during his stay in Venice, and at a party, he met The Rat Man of Treviso.
Now, here’s something to think about.   The Rat Man, Massimo Donadon, is the worldwide king of rat poison, marketed under the name of Bocaraton. 
He insists that the secret to his successful rat poison is that he alters it according to where it will be used.  For instance, in Germany where people eat wurstel and Weiner Schnitzel, his rat poison includes 45% pork fat, his French rat poison includes butter, in America it includes vanilla, granola, popcorn and margarine, in Italy it includes olive oil, honey, pasta, espresso, green apple juice and Nutella.
A few years later Mr. Berendt runs into the Rat Man at another party, and Signor Donadon confides that he has had to change his American rat poison formula to include plastic. Seems American rats like the taste of plastic because that is what Americans eat: junk food, which according to the Rat King, equals plastic. 
See, I told you it was something to think about. Blech.

5 Second Rule

Come on. You know we all do it. Use the 5 second rule for food that drops on the floor. I first learned of the 5 second rule while camping, which is also when you are really hungry, and the 5 second rule makes total sense.
Jillian Clarke won an "Ig Noble" award for her research on the validity of this wisdom, and a team of researchers at Clemson actually tested and quantified their research.  I'm going to spare you the details and give you the conclusion: uh, yes, if you drop your bologna on a really contaminated surface, it will get contaminated, within 5 seconds.

Now, who is doing the research on the death of common sense?

Bad Italian Food

The Milan based “L’Accademia Italiana della Cucina” has announced the results of its research: 60% of Italian restaurants abroad are awful.
Now, for some reason, this is news. This week, in English speaking news outlets, the recently obscure “Academy for Italian Cooking” is having its moment of fame. After their dedicated researchers combed the world, they announced that Italian cooking abroad is crap.  They were horrified to find pineapple on pizza; and frankly, so am I.  Pineapple on pizza is revolting. I don’t care if my son says that I’m closed minded!
I’m curious: why the hubbub?  Slow news day at the BBC?
I have a strong concern about this conclusion: the “researchers” were Italians who live in Italy. Could there be a more genetically biased group? They can’t agree on how anything should be made; neighbors will argue to the last drop of grappa in the bottle, about what goes into a ragu. And you are sending these ‘researchers’ into the bowels of London, traipsing across the US in search of ‘authenticity’? I have a vision of  Sancho Panza’s Italian twin: Sergio Pancetta on a horse named Quixote in  search of “Authenticity”.
For another point of view, Ted Asbaghi, goes to the wall defending the Italian-ness of the Olive Garden.  Far be it from me to argue with Mr. Asbaghi, unless, of course, he has a good bottle of grappa to fuel the conversation!

Leading the Way

I’m an old hippie. And I’m proud.
There, that’s my disclaimer.

I’ve been mulling something over and decided to do a little poking around on the Internet. Here is what’s been bugging me: Kraft Foods was a sponsor of the IACP conference.  They sent a representative to sit on a panel that discussed sustainable, local and organic food sources.  Why Kraft Foods? When I think organic, Kraft is not the first company that comes to mind. I literally cry when I see Kraft single slice processed cheese being advertised on Italian TV. 
But, I wanted to get beyond the knee jerk, “big corporation-bad” mentality. Maybe they were trying to change their tune. I wanted to be unbiased, but the memory of the lunch they served at the conference is still giving me nightmares. South Beach Diet Pasta with Chicken (no one ate it) Caesar Salad with Chicken (I haven’t tasted something so distinctly chemically flavored in a very long time) and my personal favorite: Cherry Flavored Jell-O Shots with Cool Whip.  They were cool, they bounced. You know when you are in a situation that is so bad, there is nothing left to do but laugh. We laughed all through lunch.

I found out why Kraft is so gung-ho on organic. On April 19, Kraft announced their first quarter profits, and guess who the shining star was: organic foods! The organic net revenue grew 3.6%, led by North American Snacks and Cereals and Convenient Meals. So snack bars are the $$ maker.  I’m not naïve enough to think that Kraft has the slightest interest in my eating healthy; one look at their product line is enough to convince me of that. Kraft Foods is a major, public company and they have a responsibility to their shareholders to make money.

Here’s a quote from a BusinessWeek article from March 2006: “And large companies have tried to use their muscle in Washington to their advantage. Last fall, the Organic Trade Assn., which represents corporations like Kraft, Dole, and Dean Foods, lobbied to attach a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill that would weaken the nation's organic food standards by allowing certain synthetic food substances in the preparation, processing, and packaging of organic foods. That sparked outrage from organic activists. Nevertheless, the bill passed into law in November, and the new standards will go into effect later this year.”

To be fair, the Organic Trade Association also represents some very grassroots, classically organic (read old hippie) companies. But synthetic food substances in my organic Balance Bar?? Hmmmm.

Organic started its marketing life as meaning healthy, whole grained and tasteless, eaten by braless women wearing Birkenstocks. Then concerned mothers, wearing Victoria Secret and Jimmy Choos starting worrying about what they were putting into their babies’ mouths. Now, large corporations are paying lip service to the principals of organic foods, so that they can cash in on the latest trend.

It’s not right. I’m worried about where my food comes from. I’m worried about how far it travels. I’m worried that all this bombardment with ‘organic’ as a marketing tool will lull people into thinking that they are eating healthy.  I’m worried that people won’t remember how to cook fresh vegetables.

And instead of compounding the confusion, wouldn’t it be nice if Kraft took a position that it genuinely wanted to promote healthy food choices and food sources?  If they took a principled stand and eliminated some of those very unhealthy, convenience snacks.  Right. I bet you want to know what I’ve been smoking.