Category: Food

A Better Cheddar?

Posted on by

napadairyjz.jpg
George Raine:

On the outskirts of Modesto, John Fiscalini, with an assist from cheesemaker Mariano Gonzalez, makes the world’s best extra-mature traditional cheddar.
You can look it up. In the World Cheese Awards held in London in March, an 18-month-old cheddar from Fiscalini Cheese Co. was awarded the trophy in the category, the first time in the contest’s 20 years that a British entry didn’t win.
Down the road from Fiscalini Farms, in Hilmar (Merced County), Hilmar Cheese Co. operates the world’s largest cheese and whey-products manufacturing facility. The company makes 1.4 million pounds of cheese every day and will make 500 million pounds this year. It produces 1 out of every 8 pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack made in the nation.
California cheese production is on a roll. The state is about to pass Wisconsin — America’s Dairyland — as the nation’s leading cheesemaker.

Stornetta’s – Northern California.

Cooking:Low, slow and succulentTurn the heat way, way down, then relax — for deliciously tender results.

Posted on by

Regina Schrambling:

A new oven is being billed as the greatest invention since the discovery of fire itself. This high-tech contraption, seemingly a cross between a furnace and a microwave, allegedly can roast a whole rack of lamb in 6 1/2 minutes flat. Which sounds impressive if all you want is chops on the table in less time than you would need to set it.

If you want an almost transcendental experience, though, the only route is low and slow, no special equipment required.

Cooking meat, or seafood, slowly and at extremely low temperatures does more than get the job done. It changes everything for the better — the texture turns more tender, the flavor becomes more concentrated — which is why chefs around the world, such as Ferran Adrià, David Bouley and, closer to home, Govind Armstrong, are so enamored of sous-vide. They seal food in plastic, then poach it at super-low temperatures. But it’s astonishingly easy to get the same effect using only the appliance you have, not the one you dream of: Turn the oven to a setting just above what you would use to keep pancakes warm, or on the stove, bring a pot of water to just below a simmer. Insert ribs or sea scallops or whatever.

And in very little time you will be biting into the most true-to-itself pork or shellfish you have ever experienced.

Garlic Does Not Lower Cholesterol in Study

Posted on by

Carl Hall:

Garlic may be good for a lot of things — spicing up your diet, for sure — but it seems to be no good at all at lowering your cholesterol.


After conducting one of the most elaborate studies yet on garlic’s effect on cardiovascular health, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine said Monday that they could find no benefit in terms of reduced levels of LDL cholesterol, the “bad” form linked to heart disease.


Christopher Gardner, a Stanford assistant research professor and lead author of the six-month study, said he was disappointed by the results, describing himself as a garlic lover whose office is an hour’s drive from Gilroy, the generally acknowledged “garlic capital of the world.”


“We really thought this was going to work,” he said. “I was going to get the key to the city of Gilroy. I was going to get ‘Dr. Garlic’ license plates.”

Another balloon pops. Perhaps the garlic farmers will need a subsidy of some sort to recover?

Ethanol: Very, Very Big Corn

Posted on by

Opinion Journal:

President Bush made a big push for alternative fuels in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, calling on Americans to reduce gasoline consumption by 20% over 10 years. And as soon as the sun rose on Wednesday, he set out to tour a DuPont facility in Delaware to tout the virtues of “cellulosic ethanol” and propose $2 billion in loans to promote the stuff. For a man who famously hasn’t taken a drink for 20 years, that’s a considerable intake of alcohol.
A bit of sobriety would go a long way in discussing this moonshine of the energy world, however. Cellulosic ethanol–which is derived from plants like switchgrass–will require a big technological breakthrough to have any impact on the fuel supply. That leaves corn- and sugar-based ethanol, which have been around long enough to understand their significant limitations. What we have here is a classic political stampede rooted more in hope and self-interest than science or logic.

The Case for Artisan Meats

Posted on by

The Economist:

The artisans themselves also continue to use the same methods they have always used. At some point after the second world war, as food production across Europe became industrialised, making hams in the traditional labour-intensive manner ceased to be a necessary way of life and became a wonderfully tasty two-finger salute to all the boiled, pink, anaemic, mealy, tasteless hams sitting on supermarket shelves and in refrigerated cabinets.


Curing meat celebrates heterogeneity like no other culinary process. McDonald’s manages to make hamburgers that taste the same from Cape Town to Novosibirsk; cured meats, with almost identical ingredients from region to region, taste wildly different. Italy produces six denominazione di origine controllata varieties of prosciutto, all of which are made from the whole leg of a pig, salt and perhaps a bit of sugar or spice. But by virtue of the airborne yeasts and moulds native to the particular region, variations in humidity, temperature and air quality, the diet and care of the pigs and the storage of the resulting hams, each of them tastes and feels quite different from the rest. The only other product for human consumption that varies so greatly from one area to another is whisky, which also relies on tradition, fanatical attention to detail and environmental alchemy. Just as Suntory can buy all the disused stills it wants, mimic the chemical and mineral composition of Scottish water and still produce something completely different from a Highland single malt, so a prosciutto from Parma will be softer, pinker and milder than a prosciutto from Modena, and a Lyonnais saucisson will have a tang that a salame Piacentino lacks.

Related: Fra’Mani:

Our mission is crafting salumi in the finest Italian pastoral traditions, using the highest-quality, all-natural pork.

Our pork comes from family farmers committed to the well-being of their animals and their land. The hogs are never given antibiotics, artificial growth hormones, growth-promoting agents or meat by-products. They eat only the finest grains and natural feed. This old-fashioned way to raise hogs produces pork of outstanding quality, which is the essential ingredient in all Fra’ Mani salumi.

Politics & Philly Cheese Steaks

Posted on by

The Economist:

The Philly cheese steak is serious business. Ordering etiquette must be adhered to. Customers must state their preferred type of cheese and whether onions will or will not (“wit” or “witout”) be added. John Kerry, when campaigning for president in 2004 in Philadelphia, botched it badly, asking for Swiss cheese instead of the more traditional Cheez Whiz, a processed cheese spread. Even provolone or American cheese would have been better. George Bush ordered “Whiz wit” like a local.