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My brother Bill lives right on Tomales Bay, near Pt. Reyes National Seashore in Marin County. West Marin is a phenomenal locus for local food. His house is steps away from Manka's, and right across the bay is Tomales Bay Oysters. I hope to lead a group of kayakers across the bay for an oyster BBQ as an Element Spice culinary event this spring or summer. Two other oyster farms, including the renowned Hog Island Oysters, are also in the area.Oyster farming is consider the height of ecologically sound aquaculture practice, in addition to being a real treat. Since oysters are sessile organisms in the wild anyway, they are just as good, if not better, farmed. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch gives farmed oysters a green rating.
Bill went mushroom foraging this weekend, and got quite a haul of funnels, funnel chantarelles (yellow foots) , honey mushrooms and hedgehog mushrooms (the good are in this picture). Mushroom foraging is a bit scary, but he's a level-headed guy and plays it safe.I picked up a copy of Marin Farm Families, Stories and Recipes, which was published by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) last time I was in the area (at Toby's Feed Barn, in the town of Pt. Reyes Station). Much more on the culinary treasures of West Marin later.Speaking of foraging, this video shows one of my favorite ways of getting a meal in Northern California, abalone diving. It's actually pretty easy for me, as I can hold my breath for six minutes.
I stayed in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf last night. Yeah, it's a tourist trap, so I won't say much about it.
The Boudin Bakery at the wharf does make sourdough loaves in the shape of Dungeness crabs which I find quite amusing, since I am crazy about the little buggers. The recent oil spill in the SF Bay threatened the local crab harvest for a while.
I also had dim sum at Yang Sing in
Rincon Center, which is historic downtown Art Deco building cum food court. The center has some Diego's Rivera-esque murals, though as a culinary blogger, I do have to nitpick the Atlantic lobster shown under the Golden Gate bridge. :)
INGREDIENTS:
hard crystal sugar2-3 cinnamon sticks4-5 pieces sugar cane4 fresh tejocote5-6 jamaica3 guava2 apples (green and red)dry prunes3 tamarindo2 quarts water(1) place half the crystal sugar cone and cinnamon sticks into boiling water until sugar is dissolved(2) chop up all other ingredients except the prunes (note: you should peel the outer layer off the tamarindo)
(3) add all the ingredients into the boiling water
(4) bring temperature down low and simmer until the color goes out of the apples...about 1 to 2 hours
(5) enjoy!
it is traditional to enjoy Mexican Pnoche with a little tequila added
I've been spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley recently. I know that the smartest and most innovative people in the world are here, but it's also an interminable, featureless suburb. I've been staying in Menlo Park, and the best thing I can say about my area is that it is right next to a huge Mexican enclave. The area centers around Middlefield Road and is anchored by
Chavez Supermarket. There are all sorts of Mexican restaurants and shops, including several Mexican seafood joints within a stone's throw of each other. After a late night at the office, I often stop by Tacqueria El Grullense, the local late-night burrito chain and browse the bilingual newspaper El Reportero, which has all articles in both English and Spanish.
The local gourmet grocery mart, Sigona's, carries a whole host of dried fruits, as well as Mexican produce such as tejocote, nopales (cactus), mescal (sugar cane) and tamarindo. They recently featured a recipe for the Ponche (see next post). Menlo Park also features the ultra-gourmet supermarket Draeger's, which is famous for purveying balsamic vinegars costing hundreds of dollars.
I lived in Berkeley for many years, and always enjoy going back, as I did this weekend. Whenever I am there I can't resist stuffing my face-- it has so much to offer the foodie. I will write a lot more about Berkeley in this blog. One of the newest additions to Berkeley's gourmet ghetto is the Epicurious Garden, where I had ivory salmon nigiri at Kirala. On this trip I also stopped by Vik's Chaat House for samosas and picked up a kulich loaf (Russian Easter Bread) at Acme Bread Co. Vik's has associated warehouses. both retail and local, where most of the local Indian restaurant get their supplies. It's where I get my spices for the time being. On this trip I scored cassia and true cinnamon, black sesame, brown and yellow mustard seed, cloves, fennel, black pepper and cardamom seed (w/o the pods).
I just learned about a new place in Berkeley called Three Stone Hearth, which is a community supported kitchen/catering service. I can't wait to check it out, maybe volunteer for a day in the kitchen or attend a full moon feast.
While I am all for low or non-polluting renewable energy, the recent hype with biofuels should give us pause. Regarding corn ethanol in particular, we should realize that anything having to do with corn is more about federal boondoggles than it is about producing food or anything else useful. Some believe that the fossil fuel inputs to corn (fertilizer, tractors, transport cost) actually mean it takes more gasoline to produce corn ethanol than the ethanol can replace. Rolling Stone often publishes great articles on non-music subjects, and The Ethanol Scam is one of them. Another such article is the one on Pork's Dirty Little Secret.
The recent rise in the price of oil has resulted in a significant rise in the cost of food for those in extreme poverty (by Jeffrey Sachs' definition, those living on less than about US$1 a day), as discussed in The Economist and The New York Times. Did you know, by the way, that NYT has a permalinking function aimed primarily for bloggers but open to everyone (just go to the share menu next to each article)? Many of the articles in NYT are archived after a week, after which access must be paid for, unless the article is permalinked by an outsider. The permalinking function shows that NYT is ambivalent about charging for content. Are they wrestling with The Pirate's Dilemma?
The WHO recently reported that the number of people malnourished from overeating has surpassed those that are malnourished from under eating. Neither is good, but at least those of us that have too much food to eat can choose to eat less. And to eat better. Slow food and local food can be a big part of this. And if we make growing, foraging and cooking, as much of the process as eating as possible, we'll be eating and living healthier, and eating better tasting food too. Mindful eating is better for you and the planet than stuffing your face. I recommend Gary Nabhan among others, for furthering reading on slow and local food. Oh, and I just read this article about Martha's Vineyard in the NYT.
That is the pithy and rather complete advice that Michael Pollan gives about easting in the beginning of his NYT article, Unhappy Meals. This article is the best existing narrative on how industry, science and the media has has taken the acts of preparing and eating food, which should be simple, joyful, and nourishing and appropriated them for their own ends. In Defense of Food is an expanded book version of the article, though if you don't have time to read the whole book, the article will suffice. Pollan's The Botany of Desire, however, is a must read.
One of the food hegemonies that Pollan's dissects is what he calls nutritionism. Foods are complex and wonderful things. Since we don't really understand them, we should stop adding supplements to and making dubious health claims about foods, especially since the very act of modifying/manufacturing foods makes them something less than real. Marion Nestle calls the majority of products that crowd our supermarket aisles these days "edible food-like substances."
The coffee chains in India are Barista and Cafe Coffee Day. The last often has free wireless. The Coffee Day next to McDonald's/across from Cottage Emporium is particularly cozy.
Cottage Emporium (officially Central Cottage Industries Emporium), a government run store on Janpath, is the best place for one-stop shopping. Cab drivers will try to take you to a fake Cottage Emporium with a very similar sounding name so they can get their commission. You'll know if you are at the right one because it is across from McDonald's, has multiple stories, and the prices are marked. It's a great place to get moderately-priced quality gifts, as well as more expensive ones. Also good are the State Emporia such as Orissa's nearby (across from the Hanuman Monkey Temple), and the Dilli Haat open air market, also with food stalls and cultural shows from around the country.
My top sights in Delhi are Humayan's tomb, the Gandhi Ashram and the National Museum.
In Indian English, "bucks" means rupees, not dollars, so 100 bucks is a 100 rupees, or $2.50. A friend of mine likes to keep them straight by saying "Hindi bucks," which evokes a William Gibson cyberpunky global-age Zeitgeist for me.
Having spent several months in New Delhi, I'll give you my take on eating out there. As in most Indian cities, dining out is still a bit frowned upon, though this is changing as the cities modernize, meaning that Mumbai, and then Bangalore, have the most interesting dining and night life opportunities. Therefore, the best Punjabi cuisine in Delhi is not to be found at the restaurants, but at homes. And certainly there is not much good ethnic/global cuisine to be found there, except maybe the Tibetan and Nepalese immigrant-derived options.
Street food can also be an interesting affair in Delhi, but you need to be very careful about that throughout all of India. It is one of the few places in the world (and I have been to many third-world countries) where I am very circumspect about eating on the streets (let me know if you survive a pani puri encounter).Old Punjabi standbys include Moti Mahal, where murg makhani, a sort of alfredo-like butter chicken, was supposedly invented, and Karim's (Mughlai). For haute cuisine, Haveli and Bukhara are oft-cited, though I think they are a tad overrated, and both expensive even by Western standards.What do I recommend for the visitor? For great South Indian veggie food, try Sagar Ratna, which has outlets all over the city and will run you US$2-3. Chor Bizarre (Kashmiri) and Punjabi By Nature offer good veg and especially non-veg options and will set you back about $10 (both have locations in London, by the way). For a splurge, and one of the few modern/fusion options, try Masala Art, which cooks everything in olive oil rather than ghee. Mark Bittman, the Minimalist, agrees with two of these choices. There isn't a standard dining guide for all of India. The Hindustan Times Dining Guide is good for Delhi and Kingfisher Explocity is good for Bangalore. Both are available in bookstores.
I spent the New Year in LA. I had a vanilla cupcake at Yummy Cupcakes in Santa Monica, part of the current LA cupcake craze. As the locals know, LA has epidemics of food fads, perhaps most notably, in recent memory, Pinkberry (is it really yogurt?). I also went to Malibu Seafood, which is a nice cheap fried-fish/taco shack combined with an upscale fish market.
Greetings everyone, this is first entry in the ELEMENT SPICE culinary blog!
While many of the entries will relate specifically to the spice compounds made by ELEMENT SPICE, there will also be various culinary topics and musings. ELEMENT SPICE, as a concept, was born out of Robert's experience living in India, on and off, for the past couple of years. While participating in the new Indian economy, I found myself enraptured with the Indian way of eating and cooking. I took cooking classes in Delhi, visited a spice plantation in Goa, a tea plantation near Ooty in Tamil Nadu (Kaikatty Indco Collective), and spice markets in Cochin, Kerala, including the world's last remaining pepper exchange. The way that Indians use spice is quite an art form, and heck, they were the original reason that foreigners traveled there. Sail an empty ship to India, fill the holds with spice, and if you made it back, you were rich!
