In the New York Times Today: Cold in the kitchen, local in the supermarket

Harold McGee has done it again. His column today talks about how to freeze things fast and efficiently:
In the New York Times: Cold in the kitchen

Does hot water make ice faster than cold water? McGee isn't so sure. But he suggests some new ways to freeze ice cream fast.

Of course he can't resist starting with some way-out post modern foodie stuff, but it's a very interesting article.

And in another article, Supermarket Chains Narrow Their Sights, Marian Burros provides a very interesting discussion of the developing trend to have local produce in supermarkets -- even Whole Foods finds this challenging. One personal data point: my own Whole Foods in Ann Arbor several years ago said they couldn't manage local: now they do. A quote from this interesting article:

These [local] growers are used to picking the zucchini and bringing it to a stall at a farmers’ market. In order to sell to grocery stores, they have to learn pricing, invoicing and ordering systems as well as post-harvest handling techniques that include chilling, sorting and grading for size and color.

Big retailers have even more work to do. Used to making just a few phone calls to large produce distributors, often thousands of miles away, they do not have the setup or the personnel to deal with individual farmers who deliver to the back door.

Some of them are reluctant to do so and small farmers either have to join a co-op or find a distributor who can deliver to the supermarket’s warehouse.

The chains also have to change their purchasing practices to make room for seasonal local produce instead of being locked into a year-round contract with one source in order to insure the lowest prices.

Keei Cafe

On our way back from snorkeling, we had lunch at the Keei Cafe, an old favorite. The open doors let in a delicious breeze, and the menu is very appealing. The lilikoi sauce on the coconut flan was especially wonderful. For more about the Keei and Captain Cook areas south of Kona see Captain Cook. And for last year's lunch -- so similar! -- see Big Island Lunch at the Keei Cafe.

Coffee from Kona Lisa

Saturday at the Keahou Farmers Market here in Kona, we met Ron and Mary Lake, owners of the Kona Lisa Coffee farm. We've been ordering Kona Lisa coffee on the internet since last year, when we met their predecessors at the market; soon afterwards, Ron and Mary bought the farm and took over the coffee production and sales business. Today we visited them and learned about the way our coffee is grown.

We drove up the hill from our condo and in the direction of the area called Captain Cook -- because it's where Captain Cook was first welcomed by the Hawaiian natives, and then unfortunately met his fate.

Cornerstone Farms, the producer of Kona Lisa coffee, is around 9 acres, of which six and a half are planted with coffee. There are a few macadamia nut trees, lilikoi vines, bananas (also sold at the Farmers Market), papayas, and a big mango tree, as well as a house and large tent-like facility for processing and drying the coffee.

Coffee grows on pretty big bushes. Ron and Mary are planting some new coffee plants, as shown in the first photo. Most of the plants on the farm are mature, and have coffee berries at various stages of ripeness. When ripe, the berries turn from green to bright red. One of the reasons that Kona coffee is the smoothest-tasting of all coffees, is that farmers here carefully hand pick only the red berries, Ron explained to us.

One expert picker hired for the big harvests could pick 300 pounds of ripe berries a day on a farm in Kona, Ron told us. When picking coffee in Columbia, where red and green berries are stripped off the tree in bulk (sometimes by machine) this picker could get 800 pounds a day. Ron says he can pick up to 125 pounds in a day.

Once picked, ripe berries are put through a hopper to strip the flesh off, leaving the pale whitish-yellow bean which comes in a husk (third photo). The beans are fermented in a cement vat, then dried to a measured 11% moisture -- more will lead to mold, less to loss of flavor. The drying floor is underneath a large translucent tent with a cement floor.

At this point,the fermented and dried coffee berries can keep for quite a while, as long as the moisture is maintained. Special double plastic bags seal in the moisture.

The next steps are milling to remove the hull and roasting. These steps are outsourced to two facilities in the neighborhood. As we drove around the west-facing hillside near Captain Cook Hawaii, we saw many other coffee farms and processing facilities -- this is the heart of Kona coffee country, and has been for something like a century.

Roasting is evidently a kind of an art. Juanita is the name of Kona Lisa coffee's expert roaster. She uses a drum roaster; medium roast is achieved at 427º and French roast (dark) is at 455º -- with an air roaster, temperatures differ, and the smoky flavor of French roast isn't attainable. As the coffee roasts, it expands and cracks -- sort of like popcorn. Medium roast is also called "first crack," and dark roast, "second crack," Mary told me. Dark roast takes up more space per pound as a result. Sometimes the 8 oz bags can barely be sealed when filled with French roast coffee.

The many processing steps each reduce the weight of the coffee. For 100 pounds of ripe red coffee berries in the hopper, the farm produces 14 pounds of roasted coffee to sell to coffee lovers like me.

At the moment, only a small amount of coffee is ripe for picking, so there isn't much activity around the hopper and drying floor -- a few macadamia nuts are drying instead. The mac nut is very hard to crack, so Ron and Mary only process a few for their friends and relatives, not for sale along with the other produce of the farm.

They also showed us a lilikoi plant with beautiful blossoms as well as both green and ripe fruit. This morning, they had made lilikoi juice -- next time they pick them, Mary said she would make syrup. She crushed a ripe fruit, which had a fabulous lilikoi odor, fresher and more pungent than any flavoring I've had.

We also asked if the pervasive volcanic fog (or vog) that hangs everywhere on this side of the island was affecting coffee plantations, as we had heard it was affecting other agriculture. Evidently Captain Cook and the hillsides facing down this side of the island aren't as severely affected as the flower farms and other farms closer to the volcano.

If you want to try fantastic, smooth-tasting coffee, here's the place: Kona Lisa coffe.

Kona Brewing Company

We had lunch at the Kona Brewing Company, one of our last year's favorite restaurants; see A Brew Pub in the Middle of the Pacific. Today we tried the tuna appetizer, fish sandwich, and lilikoi cheesecake. The local ahi tuna was very good -- they humored me and cooked it a little more than raw. The fresh fish in bun is swordfish. I hope that these local fish are more sustainable than the long-distance sushi fish I was reading about in The Sushi Economy.

Lilikoi is Hawaiian for passionfruit, and it's wonderful. I just checked on the history of this plant: it seems that no one knows its native origin. It's popular in climates like this, but the plant species can be invasive. Here in Hawaii, besides the delicious cheesecake, I've enjoyed lilikoi salad dressing, lilikoi cream cheese, and lilikoi-flavored ice cream and fruit drinks.

Hawaii always offers a multi-ethnic dining experience. Even the brewpub offerings point to Hawaii's complex history. Here's an example: Aloha-brand soy sauce, which -- the bottle says -- has been made here since 1948.

Other items on the brewpub menu include pizza, quesadillas or sandwiches with local-style pork, and various sandwiches, along with the beer, of which some is brewed on premises. It's a nice outdoor atmosphere, with shade provided by overlapping orange umbrellas, and waiters in (what else?) Hawaiian shirts.

Thinking about what's global and what's local is a real conundrum in Hawaii. Everything is both!

"The Sushi Economy" by Sasha Issenberg

"More than any other food, possibly more than any other commodity, to eat sushi is to display an access to advanced trade networks, of full engagement in world commerce. It also demonstrates faith in the local authority of safe food-handling, a vote of confidence in the responsibility of government and the credibility of local business. ... Consumption of sushi has become an indispensably conspicuous display of a modern economy." [p 267]

On the plane coming to Hawaii Friday, I read The Sushi Economy. This quote summarizes one of the most important points of the book: the global reach of sushi -- no matter where you eat it, you are eating fish that came from around the world.

A more accurate title for the book might be The Tuna Economy, as most of the economic material is about fishing for tuna to supply sushi bars -- the development of air transport to bring fish to Tsukiji market in Tokyo, the development of a global market for sushi bars, the development of tuna farms, global stress on tuna fisheries, attempts at regulation, falsification of origin papers, etc. I would like to have learned more about a few of the other components of sushi -- like rice, whose importance to sushi cuisine was scarcely noted. In fact, if I hadn't read Trevor Corson's The Zen of Fish, I wouldn't even have been conscious of this omission.

Despite the technicality of much of this, the book held my interest, especially the point that sushi is a totally global food phenomenon, constantly changing as it moves from market to market, yet viewed as somehow more authentic than other global cuisines. "The narrative of a perfected past debased by the homogenizing pressures of integration is a convenient fiction embraced by reactionaries of all stripes. Yet sushi's history shows a foodstuff always in flux, remaking itself over centuries due to shifting pressures of economics and culture." [p. xxi]

Finally, a point that I found fascinating connects to another book I read recently, D.T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture. I was struck by the way that Suzuki described the Japanese love of nature, which I felt really was more a love of gardens and of human control of nature: even when it's a love of Mount Fuji! Issenberg quoted a Japanese economist as saying this: "Most Japanese don't think of aquatic products -- fish or seafood -- as part of wildlife. ... For the Japanese, fish are something to eat." [p. 247] As a result, it's difficult to convince the Japanese consumers or government that their demand for fish, especially for large tuna, puts unbearable pressure on the sea. (Not that Americans or Europeans are that much better on the whole.)

In a way, the conclusion one draws from the book is sad: tuna is vanishing as are many other sea products, and the collective ability of governments and other organizations to take effective action is very weak.

Our kitchen in Hawaii

Here we are in Hawaii. There was coffee in the kitchen, which we ate with granola bars we brought from home. We have our priorities right: before we do anything about food, we are off to snorkel! This condo also has the best view we've ever had. The iron shore is just beyond a little strip of lawn below our lanai, which is one floor above ground level. At dawn it looked like this:


See the snorkeling photos at New Camera, First U/W Photos

BBQ Technique

All summer, ever since we replaced our ancient Weber grill with a new one, we (mainly Len) have been working on barbecue techniques.

A meat thermometer is one of our new devices -- it is extremely effective. We actually bought it to use for the espresso machine, to see that the foam comes up to the right temperature (also Len's department).

Google helped too. We found a handy table of meat types and required temperatures here. You can see that the lamb steak in the picture has not yet reached 125º -- shortly after the photo, we ate it very rare and it was delicious! Len says next time he will poke the sensor in closer to the bone, for better measurement.

For the record: before we cooked the lamb, I basted it with hoi-sin sauce, soy sauce, and a bit of lemon juice for around an hour. And we used the chimney-like lighter to get the hardwood charcoal going. That's all the new techniques from last night.

My Dollhouse Kitchen

Sometimes the dolls keep a lot more food, dishes, and utensils out in their kitchen and pantry. Right now, it's pretty bare, but you can see their 1920s style refrigerator and sink, their wood stove, and behind the stove, the old pie safe.

The last photo shows a kitchen from a 1950s doll house like the one I had as a child.

Thomas Jefferson's Kitchen at Monticello

Thomas Jefferson is famous for his love of food and especially wine. When he returned from his stay in France, he brought back 86 crates of kitchen equipment, and completed a state-of-the-art kitchen in 1809. A long cooking surface, heated from beneath, occupies one wall, with workspace and storage in the remaining areas of the room. (The current materials on display represent a 2004 reconstruction.)

The wine world recently was shocked when it appeared that some wine claimed to have once been in Jefferson's cellar -- and sold at predictably high prices -- was actually a fake. The wine was not even old, much less ever owned by Jefferson.

At the Monticello website, you can learn about Jefferson and his home. To see the kitchen, which was attached to the main building as a "dependency" pull down the "House" tab and pick "South Dependency/Kitchen." The site explains that dependencies were independent buildings used for service, and connected to the main residence by cellars underground. I hope to go and tour Monticello some day. Meanwhile, the website offers a lot to explore!

Got Milk?

Got Milk?

Even caves have kitchens...

... or at least they have dining rooms!

From Alice's Kitchen

Last night my friends Alice and Ellen made a wonderful dinner to celebrate various important things. For a starter, Alice made a remarkable melon soup. It was lightly flavored with cooked onion and white wine and garnished with prosciutto. I didn't photograph the main course of beef, asparagus, and barley pilaf. For dessert, Ellen brought a cake from Zingerman's bakery.

Alice's kitchen:

Eating Local Foods

For breakfast this morning we had blueberries from yesterday's trip to the Farmers Market. Lunch yesterday was buttered corn and a plate of sliced tomatoes and radishes, all from the market. Dinner: a tabouli salad that used parsley and tomatoes from the market, and some French-style eggs with mayo. We also snacked on red and yellow cherries from Traverse City via the market.

(Full disclosure: we ate the cherries with home made brownies while watching 6 of the 12 episodes of the rediscovered Gene Autry sci-fi series "The Phantom Empire," from 1935. Autry and other cowboys from Radio Ranch meet the inhabitants of the deep-underground Empire Murania, including robots in tin fedoras. The cowboys defeat both the underground enemies and a group of evil scientists trying to obtain Murania's valuable radium supplies.)

Still to be eaten this week: peas, lettuce, and the first peaches of the year. And there were so many things we didn't buy!

Corn is getting cheaper

Ten days ago when I photographed the corn from this farm, it was 75¢ an ear. Oddly, the Farmers Market was much less crowded today than on my most recent Saturday trip. Not all the stalls were occupied today, while several weeks ago every one was taken and many were in the parking lot. Fewer buyers, easier parking: altogether quieter. Wednesdays, when I have been going more recently, are always less busy.

Art Fair Food

I am fond of the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I spent two mornings this week browsing many booths. The one thing I do not find at all appealing is the food. What a pity that all they have is trailers with the least-common-denominator of carnival food. I'm in a minority on this one: I know a lot of people who love corn dogs and funnel cakes!

See also: "Art Fair Dolls"

Mona Lurks in the Kitchen

In 1911, an Italian workman stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Two years later, with great fanfare, she was returned from Italy -- where he had been keeping her in his house. Many Mona Lisa parodies and sketches spun off from this event. The artist Gary Kelly painted this imagined view of Mona Lisa in the kitchen of the thief.

Gabi's Kitchen, Ann Arbor

"Midcentury Modern" Kitchen in the L.A. Times

If you are amused by over-the-top 60's decor, don't miss this article in today's L.A.Times:
Home of the Week: Swinging '60s pad in Hancock Park.

Especially don't miss: Photos: Midcentury Modern
-- the image at right shows the kitchen (of course) in the photo essay.

If you can afford it the asking price is $2,695,000.

My imaginary kitchen in Medieval England

While we were in Cambridge some years ago, we had delicious meals in various inns, such as the Swan, which is in a village not far from Cambridge (High Street, Clare, Sudbury, Suffolk). These institutions preserve historic signboards as pictured below: The Swan claims to have the oldest signboard in England. Most of them serve a modern version of old English food: often roasts, Yorkshire pudding, and retro desserts like sticky toffee pudding. They very often have a big, open hearth fireplace that a person could stand in, and a selection of antique cooking tools, benches, and chairs around the fire.

These inns present one with an opportunity for fantasy about life in a medieval home. I've looked up a few things about what it must have been like. The fireplace and chimney were innovations, for one thing -- in early medieval homes, a fire was made in the middle of the main room, vented through a hole in the roof. The resulting air quality probably compared to that beside a modern freeway.

Early English cooking equipment supported boiling, spit-roasting, and toasting over the open fire. An iron pot or cauldron hung by chains on a stand over the fire for stews or soups. Cooks used long-handled spoons to stir the pot or to whack the kitchen boy. Skimmers and fork-like flesh hooks served to tend the pot and pull out pieces of meat. Additional kitchen and dining utensils included wooden bowls and spatulas, ceramic and copper vessels, and iron or copper trivets, plates, lidded drinking vessels, and flat spoons. When a metal or ceramic item began to wear out, a tinker could mend its holes with solder or an iron plug.

Fire was always a danger with a floor strewn with rushes in a house made from wood and thatch. Servants or cooks who tended the fire took careful measures to avoid dangerous bursts of sparks. At night, a family member or servant inverted a heavy ceramic fire cover with handles and small vents over the hearth, to prevent the embers from either going out or causing a fire. This fire cover was called a curfew, and the law dictated that it was to be in place when the evening bell — also called the curfew — sounded at around 8 PM. To start a new fire, a medieval Englishman or woman struck a flint on a fire steel, or brought some embers from another fireplace in a ceramic firepan. Utensils like these appear in museums, as well as in inns like the Swan.