Hunger

In the streets of Port-au-Prince, one hears on TV and news stories, people have no food, water, shelter. Many have been sleeping in the streets, side-by-side with the bodies of those who did not survive the earthquake. At night, some sing hymns. It must be the saddest and most eerie sound ever. With the port destroyed and the small airport damaged, it's taking days for food and water to reach the blasted neighborhoods of the city. A few examples of looting -- such as the theft of bags of rice from a supermarket -- have been reported.

What would people in other countries do? Would they starve before they broke into warehouses or markets? Would men push women and children aside to grab supplies from the sporadic deliveries by truck as one TV report showed?

I think here in the US, should such a situation arise, people with guns would be defending their right to be first in line. Those of us who have no guns might be shot for whatever food we have. Isn't that why people defend their right to own guns?

I have a feeling that perhaps the people of Haiti are patient and trusting. But the information is as scarce as anything else. Grasping the extent of the disaster in Haiti is overwhelming. TV news gathering seems to reflect the chaos, not make sense of it.

This morning the NY Times had a graphic map with descriptions of the neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince and what happened there: The Magnitude of a Disaster.

Opera in the Market

I wish they would do this at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market!

Secret Recipes

One of the Nero Wolfe books I read recently had a sub-plot about Wolfe's quest for a secret recipe of one of the famous chefs in the detective story. This made me think about secret recipes and how they are hyped. I really wonder if having the recipe for a dish one has eaten in a restaurant truly enables the reproduction of that dish in a home kitchen. You have to cut the quantities, and lots of restaurant equipment is more powerful or just different than what one has at home.

I don't just mean a secret ingredient or technique -- some huge percent of recipes claim that something secret about them is for the first time being revealed. And I don't mean the repeating urban legend about the authentic recipe for Mrs.Fields cookies or some recipe from a hotel in New York or more recently, a recipe from Neiman-Marcus (this link to Snopes explodes a whole list of such legends going back 50 years). These were supposedly bought accidentally and then in revenge for the high price disseminated in chain letters (before the internet) and in email chain letters (from the dawn of the internet).

I know that many newspaper food sections and magazines (such as the LA Times and the late, great Gourmet) often obtain and publish restaurant recipes, sometimes with warnings that the necessary adjustment of for home kitchens may produce somewhat different results. Obviously, the publication of a recipe may give some help to a competing restaurant. But I really wonder if a home cook (or even Nero Wolfe's private chef) could truly duplicate the flavor one experienced in a restaurant. Or if the pleasure of eating a dish in a restaurant is irreproducible -- after all the perceived taste may be affected by candle-lit atmosphere, attentiveness of the server, beautiful arrangements of food on the plate, and even the expectations created by special cutlery, china plates, and whatever else contributes to the totality of eating the dish.

The other meaning of secret recipes of course involves commercial products such as Coke or Twinkies. Lots of recipe writers have claimed the ability to reproduce Twinkies -- I don't know why you wouldn't be satisfied to buy Twinkies when you wanted them, but that's not important now. I googled "secret recipe" and found offers of all sorts of books and websites with recipes for commercial products (love them or hate them). I've never seen a home recipe for Coke or Diet Coke, which seems realistic, but there are a huge number of others. As with Twinkies, I really wonder why anyone would bother if you can so easily buy it at Kroger's, 7-11, or anywhere.

"Strange News: The Truth Behind Secret Recipes in Coke, KFC, Etc." by Benjamin Radford is an interesting article I found on the website Live Science. He implies that the idea of a "secret recipe" is mainly an advertising trick. He says: "Coca-cola has one of the most famous secret recipes in the world; ads whimsically claim that only two men know the ingredient list, and describe the dire consequences that would befall the planet if the secret was ever lost, including a hole appearing in the fabric of the universe."

Radford asks this important question: are there really any secrets in this day of sophisticated laboratory analysis and legal requirements for a list that covers all ingredients? He says there may have been real secrets in the past --

But these days, any laboratory worth its sodium chloride can tell pretty much what chemicals and ingredients appear in what quantities of a given sample. It's food science, not rocket science.

In his book "Big Secrets," William Poundstone revealed a laboratory analysis of Kentucky Fried Chicken: "The sample of coating mix was found to contain four and only four ingredients: flour, salt, monosodium glutamate, and black pepper. There were no eleven herbs and spices — no herbs at all in fact... Nothing was found in the sample that couldn't be identified." So much for the "secret." In fact, the chicken's ingredient statement is available on KFC's Web site.

As for the secret of Coke, he says even that is on page 43 of Poundstone's book. I don't know what made me curious about this topic, but here it is.

Haiti

Before I write any blog posts on other subjects, I feel I should say I'm thinking about the people of Port-au-Prince. Haiti seems to have so many more natural disasters than anywhere else, it's hard to grasp. However, there's nothing I can say. I have seen a number of potential ways to donate money, and many governments (such as the US and Israel) are sending appropriate disaster aid, portable hospitals, and food. What a feeling of helplessness.

What's wrong with High Fructose Corn Syrup?

Yesterday we were having a breakfast conversation about the high fructose corn syrup listed as an ingredient in my favorite breakfast cereals -- even not so sweet ones like bran flakes. It's commonplace to classify that as a problem, but why? What's wrong with HFCS?

First, when you see it on the label it's a proxy for a highly processed food. HFCS is not found in corn. It results from an industrial process using centrifuges and enzymes. This process dates from the 1970s. HFCS is added to soft drinks, fruit juice blends, cereal, baked goods, candy, and almost any processed food you can think of.

What is HFCS? From Jane Brody:

High-fructose corn syrup is made by converting the starch in corn to a substance that is about 90 percent fructose, a sugar that is sweeter than the sugar that fuels the body cells, called glucose, and processed differently by the body. The fructose from corn is then mixed with corn syrup, essentially pure glucose, to produce one of two mixtures called high-fructose corn syrup: 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, which is used to sweeten soft drinks, and 42 percent fructose and 58 percent glucose, which is used in products like breads, jams and yogurt.

Neither substance is radically different from ordinary sugar, which is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. The main difference is that in high-fructose corn syrup, the two sugar molecules are chemically separated, and in sucrose they are linked. Whether this difference is meaningful to health is still debated. [From "America’s Diet: Too Sweet by the Spoonful" by Jane Brody, NY Times, February 2009.]

What's the worst thing HFCS does? It makes it very easy to consume a lot of calories. It's cheap, up to 70% cheaper than sugar. Manufacturers use it in many sweet beverages, which are often sold in "Big Gulp" or "SuperSize" containers. There's evidence that when you drink your calories you don't as quickly feel as if you've had enough to eat, and if you thus add lots of calories to your diet, you gain weight. The presence in the American diet of HFCS-sweetened beverages may have contributed to a rise in obesity.

HFCS calories may or may not be metabolized exactly the same way as glucose: there is a chemical difference, and fructose is “really not part of our natural diet. Fruit contains only tiny amounts of it. We’ve gone from a few grams of it a day to tablespoons of it," says Dr. Barry M. Popkin, a nutrition professor (cited in the Brody article). According to an editorial "How bad is fructose?" in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (October 2007):

Why is fructose of concern? First, it is sweeter than either glucose or sucrose. In fruit, it serves as a marker for foods that are nutritionally rich. However, in soft drinks and other "sweets," fructose serves to reward sweet taste that provides "calories," often without much else in the way of nutrition. Second, the intake of soft drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or sucrose has risen in parallel with the epidemic of obesity, which suggests a relation. Third, the article in this issue of the Journal and another article published elsewhere last year implicate dietary fructose as a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
...
Fructose differs in several ways from glucose, the other half of the sucrose (sugar) molecule. Fructose is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract by a different mechanism than that for glucose. Glucose stimulates insulin release from the isolated pancreas, but fructose does not.

There is also evidence of HFCS being associated with heart and kidney disease, as summarized in an article from 2008:

End-stage renal disease rates rose following widespread introduction of high fructose corn syrup in the American diet, supporting speculation that fructose harms the kidney. Sugar-sweetened soda is a primary source of fructose. ...

CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that sugary soda consumption may be associated with kidney damage, although moderate consumption of 1 or fewer sodas does not appear to be harmful. Additional studies are needed to assess whether HFCS itself, overall excess intake of sugar, or unmeasured lifestyle and confounding factors are responsible. [From "Sugary soda consumption and albuminuria: results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2004."]

In another article in the NY Times, "Fructose-Sweetened Beverages Linked to Heart Risks," Nicholas Balakar reports that "a controlled and randomized study has found that drinks sweetened with fructose led to higher blood levels of L.D.L, or 'bad' cholesterol, and triglycerides in overweight test subjects, while drinks sweetened with another sugar, glucose, did not. Both L.D.L. and triglycerides have been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease." This study, published in April, 2009, tracked and controlled the food intake of subjects. It studied fructose, not HFCS, but the results suggest that consumption of fructose has serious risks; however, the findings "do not imply that anyone should avoid fruit, which contains only small amounts of fructose and has other important nutritional benefits."

Most of the articles that I read agree that more study is needed to make an unequivocal link between HFCS and disease. As for weight gain: it's no improvement to substitute beverages and foods sweetened with other calorie-equivalent sweeteners such as sugar. I suspect that the small additions of HFCS to packaged breakfast cereal shouldn't stop me from eating one bowl per day.

Very serious public health issues surround the continued consumption of high amounts of sweetened beverages and foods, and the cheap trick that HFCS makes things taste good has implications for the collective weight of the nation. Lots of experts have already said this, and I hope someone listens.

Resolution Accomplished

I have now finished my third Nero Wolfe book, Champagne for One. Although it's published these days in the same volume with Too Many Cooks, it has virtually no food themes at all. It's a pretty conventional private detective story about a relatively ordinary murder in a rich person's home. Rex Stout published Champagne for One 20 years after Too Many Cooks, and includes occasional timely details such as a 1956 model automobile. Interestingly, Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's chef Fritz, the hired team of detectives, and members of the police are all still involved, and seem to be exactly the same ages as before. Further, the eccentric details of Nero Wolfe's life seem unchanged by the flow of time. I think I'll leave additional reading of this mystery series for another time.

Clearly, Rex Stout was always interested in food and though it has no major role, there are occasional mentions of what the characters ate. In particular, Archie eats one very appealing snack while doing surveillance of one of the suspects from a place called Amy's Nook: "I ate five pieces of pie, two rhubarb and one each of apple, green tomato, and chocolate, and drank four glasses of milk and two cups of coffee, while seated at a table by the front window from which I could see the entrance to 87, across the street and up a few doors. ... The pie, incidentally, was more than satisfactory. I would have liked to take a piece home to Fritz." (page 155)

Real Nero Wolfe

Too Many Cooks, published 1938, is the foodiest of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe detective stories, as far as I can determine. It's an early one: the first Nero Wolfe mystery was published in 1934. Wolfe was an experienced private detective who lived in New York. References in the book suggest that his prime of life, before he became obese, sedentary, and crochety, was some time around World War I.

The basics of the story: in April, 1937, a group of 15 international master cooks, "Les Quinze Maitres," are holding a meeting at a resort hotel in West Virginia for a weekend of cooking and discussion. Each one brings one guest. Nero Wolfe and Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin, the book's narrator, are both chosen guests. Nero Wolfe's role as invitee is to present a scholarly paper of interest to the chefs. His private agenda is to acquire a secret recipe for saucisse minuit.

Needless to say, Wolf's role turns out to be identifying the murderer of one of the chefs, who dies during a tasting contest with a carving knife in his back. I'll refrain from discussing the murder, and stick to the food part, with only one comment: the racism of Archie Goodwin, and the anti-racist views of his employer were very interesting and maybe, in Wolfe's case, ahead of their time.

The planned title of Wolfe's scholarly paper is Contributions Américaines à la Haute Cuisine. Throughout the book Wolfe's preoccupation with this paper advances the idea that there's a solid and very serious American cuisine beyond family cooking. Another idea ahead of its time, I think.

The first response by one of the chefs, upon hearing the title of the upcoming lecture, sets the stage for the food themes of the book. Hearing the subject of Wolfe's paper, American Contributions to Haute Cuisine, the famous European chef responds:

"Bah! ... There are none. ... I am told there is good family cooking in America; I haven't sampled it. I have heard of the New England boiled dinner and corn pone and clam chowder and milk gravy. ... Those things are to la haute cuisine what sentimental love songs are to Beethoven and Wagner."

"Indeed." Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. "Have you eaten terrapin stewed with butter and chicken broth and sherry?"

"No."

"Have you eaten a planked porterhouse steak, two inches thick, surrendering hot red juice under the knife, garnished with American parsley and slices of fresh limes, encompassed with mashed potatoes... Or the Creole Tripe of New Orleans? Or Missouri Boone County ham, baked with vinegar, molasses Worcestershire, sweet cider and herbs... Or Tennessee Opossum? ... Or Philadelphia Snapper Soup?" (page 7)

Wolfe is passionate about American food and about defending it from its European detractors. Later, during the chefs' meeting, so is the chef who presents an American banquet to his fellows. Much about the circumstances of the banquet is fascinating. In particular, the actual hands-on cooks are all black men in the resort kitchen, directed by the restaurant chef who belongs to the Quinze Maitres, but totally competent and respected.

Another interesting thing in my view is how American cuisine has changed since the book was written. Many of the examples of American food, including the menu for the banquet and material in Wolfe's lecture are essentially obsolete. His discussion of the way American farmers raise remarkably superior meat -- by feeding peanuts to pigs and blueberries to poultry -- completely surprised me.

Here is the banquet menu (copied from page 157):

Les Quinze Maitres
Kanawha Spa, West Virginia,
Thursday, April 8th, 1937

American Dinner
Oysters Baked in the Shell
Terrapin Maryland..........Beaten Biscuits
Pan Broiled Young Turkey
Rice Croquettes with Quince Jelly
Lima Beans in Cream..........Sally Lunn
Avocado Todhunter
Pineapple Sherbet.........Sponge Cake
Wisconsin Dairy Cheese........Black Coffee

The points the author made through Wolfe's opinions, his fictional paper, and this American menu really interested me. I've heard that the same dismissal of the idea of an American Haute Cuisine was still current among chefs and serious food scholars as late as the 1970s. Maybe even since then. I'm sure tons has been written about this book as Rex Stout has quite a following, fan clubs, and for all I know, journals dedicated to him. However, I haven't read anything except the book itself.

"The Omelet Show"

We've been watching episodes of "The French Chef" on a Netflix DVD, and Len was especially taken by "The Omelet Show." This morning was his second round of making omelets as shown on the show. Watching Julie and Julia was another area of inspiration -- in fact we've been browsing Julia Child's My Life in France too. So we got out the old, stained copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Len's own omelet show began.

First, breaking the eggs -- Julia Child did one egg in each hand. You didn't see Meryl Streep's Julia Child do this! But here's Len:


And the paradigm:
The butter is just finished foaming when eggs go into the pan:

I didn't capture the moment when the eggs flipped (and you didn't see Streep do this either [correction, didn't see her do it right -- she flipped it onto the stove]) but here's the result:

Delicious!

Arbana, 1944

Ross MacDonald's early spy-mystery The Dark Tunnel (original title I Die Slowly) is set at Midwestern University in Arbana, Michigan, near Detroit.

"Although it bears a certain physical resemblance to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Midwestern University is, like all the characters in this story, a figment of the author's imagination," reads the disclaimer right after the copyright page.

Yeah, right.

I can still mentally follow the path of the brave narrator as he flees from both an evil cross-dressing Nazi spy and the local police who believe the frame-up job that's been done to him. Despite 65 years of growth and development, I recognize the campus buildings, the museum just to the north, the steam tunnels, the power plant, the hospital on a hill, and the rural area to the east (no longer rural now) where he tries to hide in a seedy roadhouse full of drunks.

I wanted to reread this obscure tale because I had forgotten most of it. I found it still very readable and suspenseful. I had always thought the seedy roadhouse was identifiable as a still-existing restaurant east of Ann Arbor. I'm not so sure any more. I don't think the distance the narrator runs after going past the hospital is necessarily far enough. I was hoping he would describe a little more about the place and what he ate there -- all he does there is order a fried-egg sandwich for thirty-five cents, served on a cracked plate along with some whiskey. And then go on fleeing and solving the mystery of who is spying and who killed his friend and made it look like suicide.

It's really not a food-themed book; the narrator eats one other egg while being held prisoner in the University hospital, and then is let go by an FBI agent who believes his story. He continues to help the FBI agent chase down the spy ring. Later he ends up in another hospital in Northern Ontario where he eats "a good dinner, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes and gravy and a quarter of a lemon pie" while waiting to finally do in the villain. Interesting menu. There are all kinds of interesting historical attitudes and details in the book, as well as the descriptions of "Arbana" which are so recognizable.

The Dark Tunnel was originally published under MacDonald's real name, Kenneth Millar, under the title I Die Slowly -- I located the image of an early paperback edition (right/above). Subsequently the author moved to California, writing a large number of successful books under his pseudonym.

Windex and a movie... no, not that movie

It's a snowy day, and Len has a bad cold (now being treated, no worries, thanks for the good thoughts). So we watched our current Netflick, Julie and Julia. Finally. I've been wanting to see it since summer.

I liked both story lines and the portrayal of all four major characters. In fact, my only reservation is that Julia Child's TV personality was extreme, but I have a little nagging doubt that she really talked that way all her life, every minute, even in bed. I bet she had a quieter more ordinary side. But let Streep be Streep (which is to say be everyone else larger than life). Yes I loved the part where she and her sister meet in the train station and do jinx just like Miriam and Alice.

As for the Julie part, I enjoyed the cooking efforts as they were presented. I have been a faithful Julia Child follower since the 1960s and my original copy is full of stains, as I've mentioned in a number of posts over the last few months. When something goes wrong I have a near meltdown. Though I've never actually gotten down on the kitchen floor, I knew how Julie felt.

When the movie finished, I went into the kitchen for a minute and THERE WAS A BIG GREY MOUSE CLIMBING DOWN FROM A SHELF IN MY PANTRY. AAAAAAAAAA. I always scream loud when I see a mouse. Lenny came running, got a broom, started thumping. We scared him under the refrigerator. When we moved the fridge he moved along, then ran across the floor and got under the stove. AAAAAAAAAAAA. I screamed again. I took out the drawer and started probing with a broom. Back to the fridge. AAAAAAAAAAAAA. We tried to poke him out with a yardstick. A lot of dust came loose from underneath the fridge (oops, I only move it out and sweep/mop under it, never try to clean the bottom). How to get him out?

WINDEX! I stuck the nozzle into the gap and sprayed. Back to the stove. AAAAAA. Does Windex conquer all? Not quite. If you hear me screaming again, wherever you are, it's because he's out again. We resealed the hole where we think he came in and set traps. And cleaned up the pantry.

UPDATE: We trapped the mouse. He looked smaller when not moving than he did when we were chasing him. We think he was alone, as the other trap stayed empty. Next step: caulk the outside of the house.

Bewildered

European football, Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, the Bible, Walter Benjamin, ancient temples of Aphrodite and other gods, the Cathars, the Templars, Catalan Nationalist plots, politically motivated thugs from Yugoslavia and elsewhere, and lots of other cultural, political, and local color from Catalonia -- the world of detective Pepe Carvalho includes all of them. In the book The Man of My Life these themes alternate with Carvalho's relationships (including fairly graphic love scenes) with two women that he had loved 20 years before, and one younger one, along with their husbands, pimps, sons, and dozens of other characters. And the time frame, the week before the beginning of the new Millenium, seems to have significance but I never quite saw what it was.

What's not very prominent in this bewildering pastiche? There's incredibly little about the murder that the detective is supposed to be solving. Sometimes he seems to be pursuing some clue but it's usually buried in all the references and distractions. Towards the end, among all the sinister plots and intellectual showing off, there's a cursory explanation of the political motive for the crime and the ID of the perpetrator, which had been kind of obvious if not central to all the other goings-on.

Author Manuel Vazquez Montalban is pretty obscure -- and he deserves his obscurity! This book made me really appreciate Dan Brown's ability to focus on a single plot in The Lost Symbol, where 12 hours of action take 500 pages without a deviation from the central conspiracy theory.

Of course, the reason I read the book is that Carvalho is famous (insofar as anyone has heard of him) for his gourmet meals, his choices of restaurants, and his personal cook Biscuter. In The Man of My Life, a number of meals and foods are described in great detail, sometimes for several pages with every nuance of preparation. Like the intellectual, political, conspiratorial, cultural, and sex stuff, the recipes ultimately distract one from whatever might be central to the plot. But they do sound delicious and interesting, even when interspersed with other thoughts. Some examples -- more or less each with a different girl friend and sometimes a bit of politics involved:

• "...then she allowed herself to be taken for a lobster and rice in ... a restaurant that had stayed faithful to the aesthetics of a fisherman's village... Its owner occasionally called Carvalho when he had espardenyes [sea cucumbers] on the menu because they gave the final touch to a substantial rice dish with squid and browned onion. Margalida obviously liked her food and her drink." (p. 57)
  
• "Carvalho had discovered another interesting restaurant in Plaza Real one day when he went looking for a taxidermist's shop he remembered and found it no longer stocked stuffed birds but sardine tarts, terrines of foie gras with quince cooked in port, rice with clams, or vegetable 'brick.' The restaurant was called El Taxidermista and was run by another woman ... Nieves by name... a lifelong republican through all the post-war years... as she confessed to him when she cooked him a special dish of arros amb fesols in naps [rice with beans and turnips]. Perhaps he would take Yes [another girlfriend] to El Taxidermista one day." (p. 115-116)
• "And along with the truffles they were soon engaged in the inevitable discussion of why white Spanish truffles could not compare with the Italian ones." (p. 135)
• "Biscuter had insisted on preparing the first course from a recipe he had found in Sobremesa magazine: duck foie gras with winter vegetables and yogurt with fermented grape juice. It was the specialty of a young chef whose name could only be Basque... He showed Carvalho the magazine in which he had found the recipe... Charo [another girlfriend] had promised to bring the turrones for dessert, and Carvalho was in charge of the main course, a boneless carrre of lamb stuffed with Spanish ham and cooked over the embers, garnished with slices of sauted potatoes perfumed with slices of white truffle." (p. 197)

In the case of the meal based on the recipes of the Basque chef, the description of the details of cooking goes on for several pages interspersed with his relationship with Charo etc. The vegetables and herbs included asparagus, leeks, cauliflower, Chinese shitaki mushrooms, spring onions, parsley, thyme, and mint. The marinade includes shallots, olive oil, coriander, black pepper, white wine, lemon zest, mushrooms, raisins, and tomato. And when it's not clear how to use the marinade, Biscuter finds the phone number of the restaurant and asks the chef-recipe author for advice. Finally, Carvalho roasts the lamb and chooses a wine -- Soneto de la Rioja red, which surprises Charo.

Well, I like detective fiction with a good serving of culinary details. But I really prefer when all the details support and advance the story. Montalban's style is just too diffuse for me.

A quiet dinner with word study

We didn't go to Florida as planned for this weekend.
Going on an airplane with a cold? No. We had to wish Jack happy birthday by phone.

So we had a quiet dinner. A pasta casserole with goat cheese and breadcrumb topping. And some blueberries (not quite satisfactory winter ones) and very good shortbread cookies from Whole Foods.

That's when it got interesting. We began wondering why "short pastry" means pastry having a lot of fat, and why "shortening" means fat of all kinds, as in strawberry shortcake, shortnin' bread, or vegetable shortening.

I googled and found a lot of people speculating that shortening refers to the effect of fat on the molecular gluten chains in pastry. The chemical process during the rise and kneading of dough is to form molecular chains that create the texture of bread; with fat present the gluten supposedly forms shorter chains, which changes the texture of the pastry. This explanation of the term short is an obvious anachronism: shortening is an old term, knowledge of gluten molecules comes from modern chemistry. I read more.

McGee's On Food and Cooking says the term shortening has been used since the early 19th century "to mean fats or oils added to baked goods that supposedly 'shorten' or break up masses of gluten, thus weakening the structure and making the final product more tender." (p. 302) McGee says that the repeated folding and rolling of dough with butter between the layers results in "a stack of separated flakes rather than an integrated, breadlike matrix." However, he doesn't really try to explain why the term short is used or where it originated; he focuses on the role of shortening -- liquid or solid -- in bread dough and cake batter.

A more historically oriented write up of the term was in a blog post: The origins of shortening? This traces the use of the word short back several hundred years. The post quotes the following dictionary definition of the word short:

Of edible substances: Friable, easily crumbled. Phrase, to eat short: to break up or crumble in the mouth. a. of crust, pastry, etc. Cf. SHORTBREAD, SHORTCAKE, SHORT CRUST.

In other dictionary examples given, short just means fat, as "1648 GAGE West Ind. 143 This is the Venison of America, whereof I have sometimes eaten, and found it white and short."

The conclusion: the usage of short and shortening for fat in pastry has been used for centuries, and arose from the meaning crumbly, first applied to the ingredient that created crumbly or flaky pastry, later expanded to mean all fats. The recently-described molecular process might create short gluten chains -- McGee, however, says the process isn't well understood, undermining this claim.

Another look at food issues

In the food section of today's L.A. Times Russ Parsons writes his list of suggestions for "a national conversation about food -- not just the arcane techniques used to prepare it and the luxurious restaurants in which it is served, but, much more important, how it is grown and produced."

Parsons addresses both farmers and reformers, suggesting ways to improve civility and create common goals that could lead to progress. My three favorites out of his twelve points:

• "Agriculture is a business. Farming without a financial motive is gardening. ... Any plan that places further demands on farmers without an offsetting profit incentive is doomed to fail."
• "There's no free pass on progress. Just because you've always farmed a certain way does not mean that you are owed the right to continue farming that way in the future. The days of a small or medium-sized farm making a decent profit growing one or two crops and marketing it through the traditional commodity route are long past."
• "Quality is more expensive than quantity. Farming fruits and vegetables that are not just healthful but also have great flavor takes a lot of time and work and usually means not growing as much as a neighbor who doesn't focus on flavor. So when you're shopping, don't begrudge a good farmer a little higher price -- that's what it takes to keep him in business."

Read them all here:

Civil dialogues about food can lead to understanding and change

Nero Wolf: I kept my resolution

I resolved to read at least one Nero Wolfe book in 2010, and I've kept that one: I read The Second Confession. Obviously, my goal is more insight into the role of food in detective fiction. Author Rex Stout thoroughly described two meals in this book.

The first meal is brought up to the room at a fine country house outside New York where Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin are detecting. Archie, the narrator, explains:

When we were called to dinner at seven o'clock I was conscripted for courier duty, to tell Mrs. Sperling that under the circumstances Mr. Wolfe and I would prefer either to have a sandwich upstairs or go without, and it was a pleasure to see how relieved she was. But even in the middle of that crisis she didn't let her household suffer shame, and instead of a sandwich we got jellied consomme, olives and cucumber rings, hot roast beef, three vegetables, lettuce and tomato salad, cold pudding with nuts in it, and plenty of coffee. It was nothing to put in your scrap book, but was more than adequate, and except for the jellied consomme, which he hates, and the salad dressing, which he made a face at, Wolfe handled his share without comment." (p. 67-68)

I admire the many ways this food serves to delineate the household (classy), the hostess (conventional), and Nero Wolfe as a diner (picky). Now, sixty years from the book's publication, this food also represents a kind of old-fashioned luxury -- from the professionally run kitchen of a 21st century rich person, one would expect a very different meal.

Most comments about Nero Wolfe's gourmet and gourmand tendencies focus on his Swiss chef Fritz, who doesn't appear often in this book. Towards the end, though, Fritz comes up with a steak dinner for a person whose good will Wolfe is seeking. Archie helps Fritz serve what he feels is a most appetizing offering:

It was really a handsome platter. The steak was thick and brown with charcoal braid, the grilled slices of sweet potato and sauteed mushrooms were just right, the watercress was high at one end out of danger, and the overall smell made me wish I had asked Fritz to make a carbon. (p. 205)

I plan to seek out the Nero Wolfe books that have food-oriented plots and murders in them. This one had a very retro plot that turns on proof of someone's being a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party. Wow! More retro than jellied consomme, watercress, and private chefs.

Top Food Issues

Marion Nestle's top food issues for the year are very interesting. See: Hot food issues ready to boil over this year for the full list. I'm most interested in her predictions and questions about

• Hunger: "Will Congress do anything this year to strengthen the safety net for the poor? It needs to."
• Food safety regulation: again, Congress is waiting to act, but may put in stronger regulations.
• Food advertising and labels: will there be better front of package labels? Regulation of ads aimed at kids?
• Dietary guidelines: a new version of the government list will be published this year.

Dim Sum Sunday Morning

We arrived so early that the Dim Sum cart workers were all standing and waiting for the kitchen to load their carts. It was so cold that they had let us wait inside instead of lining up at the door as they would have us do in summer.

We started with sticky rice -- Alice's favorite. We also had lots of other buns, steamed clams, fried and steamed dumplings with shrimp, crab, and scallops; turnip cakes, Chinese broccoli, crab balls, pineapple buns, green honeydew pudding, almond tofu pudding with fruit cocktail, and sesame balls. We saw lots of other dishes that we didn't manage to eat like green beans, duck, pork, and many more.

Tracy at the Ft. Myers Farmers' Market

From Arny and Tracy's recent trip to Florida. This market is every Thursday under a freeway overpass.

Lemon Layer Cake

My sister, Elaine, wrote me to be sure to read Maira Kalman's latest op-ed. We are all fond of her work. Elaine said:

"I was particularly struck that her family always celebrated the birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette with a lemon layer cake. I don't know why her family had this particular celebration, but having shared Maira Kalman with Evelyn, lemon layer cake with the rest, and living in Lafayette, I thought I'd suggest September 6 (which seems to be his birthday, but there are different ideas online) as a new holiday to be celebrated with lemon layer cake."

Thanks, Elaine, we should do that!

Food and Art

In the basement of the Hirschorn museum (next door to the restroom and coat room) they are showing a video by Phoebe Greenberg called "Next Floor." A group of diners (I assume they are Canadian, since that's what she is) appear in the movie. Excuse me, I mean film. At first they eat with relish, then more and more greedily. Their table repeatedly falls through the floor. The person who wrote the blurb felt obliged to explain that this was an allegory about modern consumption. Gosh.

Right after watching "Next Floor" we went to the American Indian Museum to have lunch. I am very fond of the Indian-themed food there. We had salmon and a salmon patty sandwich, and then saw an exhibit by Brian Jungen who uses sports equipment and other objects from modern life to make wonderfully imaginative Indian-themed sculptures. The whale skeleton below is made from plastic lawn furniture. The mask is obviously made of athletic shoes.

Just before midnight...

We all stayed up and watched the ball drop, after watching the Wizards of Waverly Place movie. Very exciting.

Here was our dessert -- Ice Cream Cake made from Evelyn's home-made ice cream: