Perpetual Carouse

For all you meatball fans, a couple of bonus recipes, courtesy of I Like Food, Food Tastes Good author Kara Zuaro.

One of my favorite meals to share with hungry touring bands is spaghetti with my Grandma Martha Zuaro's meatballs and sauce. This is so good that whenever my big, loud Italian family sits down to eat it, a quiet falls over the table. Then, Grandma always breaks the silence by asking, "So, how do you like my balls?" Or, if the little cousins aren't around, she'll say, "How do you like my freakin' balls?" See for yourself – but I think they're pretty freakin' delicious.
-Kara Zuaro

Grandma Martha's Freakin' Meatballs

• 1 pound chopped meat (I use 85% lean ground round)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup Italian-style breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino-Romano cheese
• 1/2 cup Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, chopped
• 1 packet of onion soup mix
• 1 teaspoon of soy sauce
• 1 capful of Kitchen Bouquet (browning and seasoning sauce)
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• salt, pepper, and garlic powder, to taste
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1 teaspoon basil
• olive oil, for frying

When all the ingredients are combined, roll into small, golf ball-sized meatballs, and set aside on a piece of waxed paper or on a cutting board.

Coat the bottom of a pan with olive oil, and place over medium-high heat. Fry the meatballs in batches until they are well browned. Don't fill up the pan to tightly – you'll need room to roll the meatballs around so they cook evenly.

You can test for doneness by cutting a meatball in half – if it's not rare inside, it's ready to go.

Drain meatballs on brown paper bags to absorb excess oil, and start making some sauce. My grandma makes her meatballs in the morning, and then simmers them in homemade sauce all day.

Yields 15-18 small meatballs

Grandma Martha's Sauce

• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• olive oil
• 4-5 (or more) cloves of garlic, sliced or pressed
• 4 28-oz. cans crushed Red Pack tomatoes (put through the blender for a smoother sauce)
• 4 28-oz. cans of water (measured after you dump out the tomatoes)
• 15-oz. can of tomato sauce
• 1 packet of onion soup mix (mixed with a little hot water to help dissolve it)
• 2 capfuls of gravy master
• salt and pepper
• red wine
• oregano
• basil
• 4 bay leaves

Sauté the onion in some olive oil over medium heat until it's soft and translucent. Add the garlic and stir for a minute or two.

Add the tomatoes, water, sauce, onion soup mix, and gravy master. Turn up the heat and bring the sauce to a low simmer.

Add the salt, pepper, red wine, oregano, basil, and bay leaves to taste, and adjust the seasonings as needed as the sauce simmers. Grandma starts early in the morning and lets it simmer all day – the longer it cooks, the better it tastes.

Lately I've been kind of obsessed with Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. That book, combined with the recent Eat Local Challenge is changing the way I think about food and food production in this country. Admittedly, I still fall short when it comes to eating totally locally/sustainably, but I'm certainly trying a lot harder than I ever did before, which has to count for something.

Via Ruhlman, I found an article about the National Animal Identification System. Ostensibly, NAIS is a plan by the USDA to track farm animals in order to reduce outbreaks of disease. Sounds like a good thing, right? Everyone wants to eat a nice clean rib-eye steak.

The jist of NAIS is that every location where livestock is grown would be assigned a numeric code, and every individual animal would also be given another code, via an implanted RFID tag. All this data gets pumped into some ginormous national database, and then the government could track disease outbreaks, and have the ability to find any other animals a diseased animal might have had contact with. Healthy food for everyone, in theory at least.

Alas, it turns out that NAIS is less about food safety than it is about presererving business interests: the interests of factory farms, and the interests of companies that manufacture the equipment that would be used to track the animals. The plan was hatched by a private organization that consists mostly of factory farming interests like Cargill, Monsanto, the National Pork Producers Council and the National Renderers Association. Oh yeah, the guys that make the tracking devices (Cattle-Traq and Digital Angel) are down with the plan too. There's a bazillion cows and chickens and pigs out there, and at about a buck a head, there's lots of money to be made microchipping our future food.

NAIS would definitely hurt the little guy. The costs associated with tracking are fairly fixed, but a small farmer with less livestock has fewer opportunitites to recoup that cost. The result? Prices go up, and it's one more way the small farmer can't stay competitive with the big boys. Factory farms, on the other hand, can spread the costs amongst thousands of animals they "process" every day, and the new systems are easy to integrate into tracking systems they already use.

The worst part is that, while factory farms are the only ones that would benefit from the system, (mostly in the form of better PR) they're the ones with the conditions that cause all of the nasty diseases that NAIS is claiming to try to prevent. And to add insult to injury, all NAIS proposes to do is track animals. There's nothing in the plan that attempts to address the problems with factory farming that would actually make our food safer. It's all just number crunching... and dollar signs, of course.

For more information on helping to protect the little guy, check out NoNAIS.org.

Inspired by Off the Bone, I recently whipped up a batch of pig candy. In the process, I learned a few things, namely that once it sits for a day or so, eating bacon is sort of like chewing on pencil erasers. Sort-of bacon-flavored pencil erasers, but stil....

That said, when the pig candy was fresh, it was pretty damned good. Sweet and savory and crunchy and bacony all in the same bite. Interestingly, after just a few hours, the bacon flavor seemed to dissipate, leaving what was essentially a good, if basic, toffee with a hint of smoke.

I interpret this unanticipated ethereal quality of bacon as further proof that bacon is something to be considered thoughtfully and understood for the wonderful and delicate gift that it is.

Anyway, if you want to make your own pig candy, a few pointers:
Start with good bacon. This isn't the time for the cheap supermarket stuff. I'd also recommend cooking your bacon in the oven on a wire rack over a half-sheet pan. That way all your slices stay nice and pretty and not all shriveled. Plus then you get nice clean bacon fat in the sheet pan to use for other things. You do keep a jar of bacon fat, right?

The original recipe called for stirring the bacon into the toffee mixture, but that ended up looking kind of gross, and the bacon all clumped together. If I did it again, I'd lay the cooked bacon on a sheet pan in a single layer, and pour the toffee over the top.

Pig Candy (or Bacon Toffee, if you prefer)

• 1/4 C. Water
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 heavy pinch kosher salt
• 1 # thick-cut bacon, cut into 2 inch pieces and cooked crisp

The pig candy can be stored for a few days in an airtight container, but you're really better off only making as much as you're going to eat. It's not nearly as good once it has sat for a while.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Pamela Low, creator of Cap'n Crunch has died. It's a sad day in cereal land. I have fond memories of eating bowls of Cap'n Crunch with my sister and watching Soul Train. It was either that, or Oscar Meyer liverwurst on saltine crackers.

Turns out the flavor of Cap'n Crunch was inspired by a rice dessert that Low's grandmother would make, which was flavored with brown sugar and butter. I always wondered what the hell Cap'n Crunch tasted like...and now reading that, it makes total sense.

By the way, I still dig on Cap'n Crunch. Oscar Meyer liverwurst, not so much.

Makes me want to go pick up some Fat Tire. Is it beer-thirty yet?

Aside from being just a cool idiom that ought to make a comeback, The Bee's Knees is also a most excellent cocktail. A recipe, courtesy of the cool kids over at Hangar One.

The Bee Keeper

(AKA The Bee's Knees)

• 2 oz. Hangar One Buddha's Hand Vodka
• 1 oz. Aqua Perfecta Pear Eau de Vie
• 1/2 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 oz. honey simple syrup (equal parts honey and water)

Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Somewhere, I've got a clipping from a magazine with a lavender version of The Bee's Knees. I'll see if I can dig it up.

In other Hangar One news, they've just released their Fraser River raspberry vodka. It only comes around once a year, and it's definitely worth seeking out. To quote the great Ferris Bueller, "If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up." Lucky for you, luxuries like this only cost about 30 bucks or so.

Inspired by a boudin run in Louisiana, Peter Jackson is throwin' down a "Back From New Orleans" Dinner on June 23.

Peter is one of my favorite chefs doing the whole underground dining thing. I got my first taste of his food last summer at at Ghetto Gourmet event, and then we met again sitting at the same table at another ghet event a few months later. Cool guy, awesome food... and his pickled watermelon rind blew my mind. Who knew the rind of the watermelon could be better than the actual melon part of the watermelon?

The Menu

• Cajun Liberty Duck Boudin Sausage with pickled watermelon rind and whole grain mustard
• She-Crab soup
• BBQ White Boot Brigade Shrimp and Sweet Potato Tart
• Organic Greens with Pumpkin Seed Brittle and Pumpkin Seed Oil Vinaigrette
• Summer Berry Napoleon with Caramelized Pecans and Lemon Bourbon Sauce

Go. Eat. Tell Peter I said hello.

Over at Eater, Mario Batali blogs (ahem!) about hating blogs.

If anything, Batali's rant makes me think the lady doth protest too much. First of all, he rails against "anonymous bloggers" but that strikes me as a "sky is falling" kind of dramatic overstatement. Yes, there are anonymous food bloggers, but any decent food blog isn't really anonymous, even if they don't necessarily post their name, address and telephone number in case Batali or anyone else might want to have a chat. For various reasons, there are several great food blogs that are, technically speaking, "anonymous" but they're generally developed to the point where they have a voice that readers grow to trust. We might not know their names, but that doesn't make them anonymous in any real sense of the word. And anyway, you could argue that food critics (the good ones, at least) strive for anonymity when they're working, whether it's a pen name to publish under, or trying to avoid being recognized while they're in a restaurant.

It seems Batali's big problem with food blogs is that they lack the "objectivity" and professional nature of traditional publications, and that once something appears online, people take it as truth "by virtue of the fact that it has been printed somewhere." While this no doubt happens, it seems to me that this isn't the fault of blogs, but the fault of people who consume things without even the slightest bit of analytical thinking.

Any jackass with an internet connection and some spare time can make a website; the proof of that is right in front of you at this very moment. That doesn't make that website factual or unbiased or worth your time. Anyone who doesn't recognize that by this stage in the game has bigger problems than missing out on a restaurant because some stupid blogger claims the food sucks. And anyway, the same argument could be levied against any food critic in the nation. Just because someone hates something and they write about it doesn't mean you should blindly take their word for it. I say this as someone who occasionally makes some coin giving my opinion about food.

I also find it amusing that Batali chooses to throw food-blogdom under the bus for their "snarky vituperatives" and then a few sentences later he jumps on "hapless NY Post real estate/food hack Braden Keil who has hated me for as long as I can remember, not that he has any value to journalism anyway". Snark on, Mario, snark on.

Anyway, I don't know. Misplaced blog issues or no, I still love Mario. Which is funny, because I always hated him on the Food Network. Then I read Bill Buford's Heat, and realized that the fake-feeling sweaty-Rachael-Ray-in-orange-crocs (personality-wise, I mean, not food-wise) is kind of a fake TV personality of Mario's. From what I've read in that book and elsewhere, he actually seems like a pretty cool guy.

Mario... if you're out there... get in touch. You can come over and cook for me any day, and if I think your food sucks, I'll tell you, non-anonymously and everything. But of course it won't, because you pretty much rule.

Why?

And what exactly is a "Cereal Water Straw?" A distant relative of "Processed Cheese Food," I presume.

The summer TV season is upon us, which means there's a bunch of food-related reality shows on right now. I still can't really take Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen seriously. The contestants just don't have the food chops (by design, obviously) and Ramsey himself alternates between whiny prima donna and fake reality TV caricature. Although, I'd probably be pissed too dealing with people who repeatedly can't grok the simple timing required to cook Beef Wellington.

Then there's The Next Food Network Star. For the first two seasons, I was into it, but this year I'm just not able to gather up the energy to pay close attention. It may be a larger problem I have with the Food Network in general of late. I just don't find myself being captivated by their programming anymore, which has everything to do with their shift away from food and toward food personalities. I get the feeling they're spending more time in meetings about branding their hosts than they are seeking out people who are actually doing interesting things with food.

Top Chef is hands-down my favorite. I would like to see more from Ted, but this is the one show that is at least truly focusing on food. I'm an episode behind in my viewing, but it seems like so far TC is getting less gimmicky with their challenges, which is good. The ridiculous product placement, and Padma having to re-dub practically everything that she says still drive me nuts, though. The bubbas need to quit bitching at each other and get to cooking. My money's on a showdown between Tre and Hung in the end.

Michael Bauer's got a great blog post about Mario Batali's recent anti-blog rant.

I couldn't agree more with what Bauer has to say, and I think there is a distinction between rantings on "ratings" sites vs. opinions posted on someone's food blog. I stand by my original point that the good stuff rises to the top, and that anyone who trusts something just because it's on the internet has bigger problems than missing out on a good restaurant.

Bauer sums it up pretty well when he says, "People have many sources of information, so they don't need to turn to the traditional media. Respect has to be earned." It's unclear if he's referring to blogs, or to restaurants/chefs, but it clearly applies to both.