On pubs and drunks

Where I grew up the beer was warm and the landlord cold. The beer was also flat and very bitter, in itself a control on binge drinking until I discovered lager.

Journalists can’t resist boozy stories and the New York Times crawls around Oxford’s pubs (Cambridge’s are just as sordid) while Book Forum stumbles through Kingsley Amis’s “daily haze of whisky and sweat alcohol”.

“A good pub is a ready-made party, a home away from home, a club anyone can join,” says the NYT. “A pub is a great leveler — not a workingman’s club, but an everyman’s club. The best are filled not only with the scent of yeast and hops, but also with banter and wit. Back in 1954, when the Rose & Crown on North Parade Avenue in Oxford was threatened with closure (inadequate toilet facilities), the defense that won the day called it a “home of cultured, witty and flippant conversation.”

There is no doubt Amis would certainly be cultured and his bon mots compelling but apparently he had no taste when it came to booze:

“Having thus elevated the role of drink to the highest status in human civilization, Amis proceeds with a series of disconnected essays on different types of alcohol, some dreadful-sounding cocktail recipes (see above), a good piece on the types of glasses and tools for making and drinking different beverages, some not very sage reflections on wine, and some even worse ideas about what should and should not be drunk with what food. All enjoyable to read, of course, but what is best in this book are the author’s perorations not on the taste of alcohol, but on its effects. No one who has read his novels could deny that he is the grand master when it comes to describing different levels of inebriation—feeling sober, that first drink, the sensations of getting drunk, blind drunkenness, and, of course, the hangover.”

Meanwhile, The Telegraph in the UK is running a series on great British pubs.

The belly of the critic: super sized Michelin style

More fat food writers and critics. While writing his latest book The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner The Guardian’s Jay Rayner did what any self respecting food writer would do. He ate at Gordon Ramsay pretty much everywhere in the world he could. He even took more than a bite out of Morgan Spurlock’s burger supersizing in Michelin starred restaurants for a whole month. The experience left him 132kg and with red welts around his tummy from his 43 inch belt.

As Rayner, whose agony aunt mum Claire used to spruik panty pads with wings on TV, said in The Observer:

“To finish the book I decided to test the luxury-restaurant experience to destruction by doing the high-end Super Size Me. Where Morgan Spurlock ate in McDonald’s every day for a month, I would eat in a Parisian Michelin three-star every day for a week. If I was invited to take the tasting menu I would have to say yes. Seven days; 21 Michelin stars. Like Spurlock, before and after I had a medical.

And so, the day after my return from Paris – my 41st birthday – I found out exactly what I weighed. At the time I was so horrified I could not bring myself to put the number in the book. Now, having done the work, I can. It was 132 kgs or – in language you understand – a shade under 21 stone. Cue sharp intakes of breath.”

Incredibly Rayner is still alive and lost weight.

My current weight: 105kg+

Curry Wallah out for an English

via Just Hungry
You’ve gotta laugh.

Is wine blogging good for wine?

WIne blogging takes a backseat to food. But still it attracts the usual debate and criticism. A Wine and Spirit investigation tackles the subject:

“… is blogging good for wine? The blogosphere seems to be at a crossroads, with an investigation by W&S revealing it is coming under increasing commercial pressures that threaten its very raison d’être as an informal, immediate and independent way of chatting about wine.

As well as major retailers and suppliers trying to get in on the act with their own blogs, the bloggers are being offered cash in return for favourable product reviews on their sites. And a US supplier that regularly posts favourable reviews of its own products on bloggers’ sites is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s becoming increasingly hard to distinguish which content is independent and which is commercially motivated.”

Via Spittoon

Cronyism in Farmers’ Markets while Slow Food only survives thanks to subs

The food world is a small one in Australia, tiny in Melbourne. The same goes for the food media. In these cramped conditions it is not difficult for cronyism to develop and you might look carefully when you visit the farmers’ market this weekend. I for one wonder why Phillipa’s a company that makes excellent bread is there. Her products are made in a factory and are available in over 400 outlets. It’s actually quite a large company keeping out smaller producers who need the trade. This issue will no doubt become as big as Phillipa’s.

As Stickfingers at Deep Dish Dreams said, attracting some controversial comments on the local Slow movement:

“Then the organisers of the market decide that the vendor has grown too big for the circuit and tell them that they are not to return. What does that farmer do when removed from their customers? In one case they have gone bust, have had to liquidate their assets and lay off staff at the farm. They have no other outlet for their product.
Perhaps I’m a soft touch, but once again I find myself questioning the qualifications of the people who make the decisions pertaining to the running of the markets.”

In comments:

“Your story about the markets is a great example of what goes on in slow as well. You not quiet “slow enough” kinda crap. Which is very funny really. She who must be admired and is also dull can be tiresome but power will corrupt.
The politics are hard “you are either with us or against us” type of deal. Are you willing to risk your business’s reputation (income) by rocking the boat? I was not. If you are not in the inner royal circle it can be very confusing and even then it is hard, you never really know what is going on…
The fundamentals of slow in Australia are flawed, 35% of the subscription fee go to Italy ( a lot of that used to end up as “Admin fees” (but by good they were good dinners) and free subscriptions to the “right kinda people” I am very sure that doesn’t happen now of course. One of the previous el presidents was sacked by the state government because they could not work with her highness. The whole slow food festival is dead with out Government funding. “Culinary welfare for the well fed” very odd really when you think about it.”

Food pairing: Frankenstein cooking?

Some food pairings speak for themselves. I ask you, who is going to squirt chocolate sauce on beef? And do it so that you’d want to eat it? Okay, Heston Blumenthal may and he’s certainly proved that blue cheese matches with chocolate. This useful site of foodpairing trees offers some pretty whacky combinations. Like I said it’s useful although many of the pairings I expect should be avoided.

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Truffle hunting trips this winter in Western Australian

Local truffle growers have as many rivalries and secrets as their European counterparts. A few years ago there was a certain amount of biffo in a Tasmanian pub between two of the industry’s pioneers Duncan Garvey of Perigord Truffles and Tasmanian Truffle Enterprises’ Tim Terry. No doubt none of that is in the past.

Back in 2004 Hazel Hill Farm in Western Australia, the first to bring the truffle spores to the Australian mainland, yielded 4kg of Perigord truffles. In 2005 it was 26kg and 2006 about 100kg. The 2007 harvest didn’t live up to some of the hype. Nevertheless the WA farm is producing enough truffles and has trained enough dogs to offer truffle hunting tours from $55 a person, reports the Kirkfood blog. Advanced booking is recommended and “with some luck and persistence, you can experience the exhilaration of finding the gourmet French black truffle and smelling its pungent and unique perfume fresh out of the ground”.

Harold McGee spears the microwave myth with a metal fork

If you haven’t heard of or don’t have Harold McGee in your kitchen then I’m afraid you are not a serious cook. McGee on Food and Cooking is definitive guide to the science behind most of his subect matter and you should buy it now. I need to as my edition is out of date. But for nothing you can read his column in the New York Times or visit his blog. Last month he enlightened us on how to ensure octopus is tender. For April it is on what and how to cook in that much maligned appliance the microwave. That polenta is best cooked in one is a revelation and I’d never really thought about the dehydration and therefore dryness it causes of meats. Even for reheating he recommends removing meat from sauce.

And on metal in microwaves:

“Despite general warnings against using metal, metal containers and aluminum foil aren’t dangerous. They reflect microwaves away from foods and so slow their heating. That’s sometimes useful for preventing the edges of foods, like fish fillets or asparagus tips, from overcooking. Just don’t put foil or bowls too close to each other or to the oven walls, since that can cause sparking.”

ACCC food price investigation begins

So we all know food prices are up. And it will get worse, rising perhaps by 50 per cent over the next five years. But how bad is it?

Today The ACCC Inquiry into food prices began and all submissions can be found on its site here.
The Victorian Farmers Federation’s submission is revealing:

“These increases in food prices, sometimes referred to as ‘ag-flation’, are going to change the world as we know it. Over the last 12 months, vegetable prices have risen 21.5%, cheese by 8.5%, bread 7.9% and milk prices up 5%.
Growers have informed the VFF that there is a mark up of around 120 per cent on farmgate prices for vegetables; while lettuces fetch between $1.00 and $1.20 at the farmgate, they were retailing at $2.78 in supermarkets this week; parsnips attract $50 per 10 kg box at the farmgate, but retail at $9.99 per kg which equates to $100 per 10 kg box, or a 100 per cent mark up.
Growers are price takers and not price setters. Transparency, competition and fairness through the supply chain must be addressed, in order to ensure that the farm sector, as price takers, does not incur the major impacts of any price reductions at the retail end of the chain.
The price of bread has risen up to 70 cents a loaf in the past twelve months. However, only 14 per cent of this is accountable to higher grain costs. The remaining 86 per cent is the costs of marketers, flour millers, bakers and transporters.
Calculations on additional returns to wheat growers from these price rises only amount to around 10 per cent of the 70 cent rise per loaf, much of which have been reduced through increased farm input costs such as fertiliser, fuel and herbicide. Clearly the drought is not to blame for the price rises.
According to the ABS, the retail price of milk rose over the period December 2006 to December 2007, while the price of beef and lamb remained unchanged. However, the ABARE measure of farm gate prices from July 2006 to July 2007 recorded no change for milk and a 10 per cent and 11 per cent reduction in the price of beef and lamb respectively.”

The food crisis is a global one, a global food catastrophe some say that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen.

“The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club’s 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto recently, according to the Financial Post:

“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” he warned investors. “It’s going to hit this year hard.
“The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it’s getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we’ve got to expand food output dramatically,” he said.

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