A book defending unfairly persecuted food groups doesn’t exactly leapt out from the shelves, but one with a campaign to end ‘the silence of the yams’, to reject everything you ever believed about nutrition and with three tantalizingly simple rules that will change the way you eat, and turn around major health crises of Western society sure does.
A call to arms in an age of packaged and processed food, ‘In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto’ by Michael Pollan tells us why Western society, with the most advanced scientific and nutritional information available, is still getting fatter and sicker and what we can do about it. The way we eat, he says, is the result of ‘a history of macronutrients at war’ where protein, fat and carbohydrates rotate as ‘demon’ foods.
The development of food science has led to our unhealthy obsession with healthy foods, a condition Pollan calls ‘orthorexia’. This, he says, has resulted in us turning away from natural food and instead relying on ‘edible food like substances’ such as margarines that can lower your cholesterol, omega-3 enriched bread and vitamin water. Health claims on food packaging, he says, ‘should be our first clue that something is anything but healthy’.
‘As a general rule it's a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound "whole-grain goodness" to the rafters.’
So what to do? Luckily Pollan is as much pragmatist as anything else, and lets the facts do the talking before he lays down a few guidelines for his manifesto, which is seven simple words:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Tantalizingly simple, no? And this is the solution to the obesity epidemic, soaring rates of heart disease and my own lard? There’s only one way to find out. I will qualify this section for you a little more, because unless you’ve read the book, you’ll be wondering what else you possibly could eat. Shit maybe? No, by food, I mean real food, not the processed crap that’s making big corporations lots of money.
Below are the qualifiers and some explanation to help you on your way. I know it all sounds a bit hippy to begin with, but it all starts to make sense if you join the dots between why you eat like you do, how you feel and what impact it has on society, the environment and your wallet.
How to: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly plants. (Adapted from In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto)
• Anything with a health claim – out. You won’t see a lovely ripe tomato or a bunch of bright green bok choy with a 99% fat free label, mainly because they’re less likely to be packaged.
• Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting. Ever seen Super Size Me and those fries from Macca’s? That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.
• In order to eat real food, avoid anything containing ingredients that are (a) unfamiliar, (b) unpronounceable, or (c) more than five in number. They’re all pretty good indicators of a ‘food like substance’.
• Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize. That’s the most recent time when people weren’t all fat and sick, so we’re aiming for the sort of food they were eating then too. If you’re pretty sure your great grandmother wouldn’t know whether to eat a tube of yogurt or apply it to her face, for example, don’t bother.
• If you’re in the supermarket, stick to the edges. All the packaged, preserved and processed stuff is in the shelves in the middle, while the fresh and refrigerated stuff is around the outside. You’re more likely to eat healthily just by avoiding the middle. Interesting, huh?
• As a side note, if possible stay out of the supermarket all together. We have a supreme choice of fresh food markets in Adelaide, so get on down to the Central during the week and the Adelaide Showground Farmers market on the weekend. The Brickwork Markets, Willunga…there’s one near you.
• Remember, you are what you eat, and what you eat eats too. So buy the best free range meat you can, because if your steak was fed crap quality food and antibiotics, you’re eating it too. You’re looking for grass fed beef and true free range chickens.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Friday, 21 March 2008
Restaurant Sixty Six (King William Road, Goodwood)
There’s a sense of doom that comes with forgetting your credit card when you’re supposed to be shouting someone a birthday dinner. Forgoing all the eateries up the ‘popular’ end of the street near the Hyde Park Tavern, we had zoomed merrily towards Restaurant 66 before I realised that my credit card was sitting patiently on my desk at home after making some pay-day eBay purchases earlier that afternoon.
Back home again on the other side of town with the required card now returned to its rightful top slot in my wallet, we called Restaurant 66 to ask them if we could still eat at the rather late (for Adelaide) hour of 9:45pm. ‘No problem’ came the reply, and so we sped back through the city to arrive to a nearly empty restaurant bar two women dissecting their relationships in great detail over some luscious looking desserts.
I’m always a bit nervous going to a new restaurant. You never know what might happen, especially as the last three months overseas had produced some Fawtly Towers like the time when I had asked for a spoon and been presented with two black coffees, spiked with whiskey. At Restaurant 66, the charming entrance down a lantern lit path and proprietor Greg’s friendly approach ensured we were in for a good night.
Offered the prime pick of tables in front of the window overlooking King William St, the atmosphere was cosy if a little quiet due to the lack of other diners. But no complaints, because it meant we had Greg’s full attention.
The menu showed somewhat schizophrenic tendencies, with elaborately sauced French style dishes sitting awkwardly alongside Asian style offerings including a pub-esque Salt n Pepper Squid, a Quail entrée which sounded more like a chocolate bar with its fruit and nut glaze, and a Massaman Chicken Curry that ended the list of French style main courses.
The special of the night ‘two things which turns into five’ was a red and green curry, which came with beef or duck for the red curry, and chicken, prawns or interestingly, salmon with the green.
The website describes Restaurant 66 as ‘Provincial French and Modern Australian’ but, on the night we were there at least, it was more accurately ‘Provincial French or Thai’. Don’t be fooled; there’s no fusion going on here.
Beginning with some sparkling mineral water and a bottle of Skillogallee Rose, which Greg told us was ‘in the style of Alicante’ and therefore our pick of the night, we pondered whether to go down the French or Asian path tonight before both settling on the European continent. I chose the Salmon Béarnaise ($30.50) with its asparagus, crushed potatoes, baby spinach and ‘66’s Sensational House Made Béarnaise Sauce’ while my companion went for the Duck Montmorency ($31.50), which appealed for the sour cherry and cherry brandy glaze.
On enquiring about how the salmon came (I have been wary ever since working at a restaurant where the default was ‘medium rare’) Greg assured me that Restaurant 66 was ‘traditional, not trendy’, and my salmon would be cooked through.
After an appropriate pause, say one or two glasses of wine, the food arrived on large, square plates. Now, decent plating will impress me anyday, but there was something special going on in front of me. Not only did my salmon proudly wear a corner of its crunchy crust under the béarnaise, but, perched on top of a few nicely crisped baby potatoes, it managed to still look like food, and good food at that. Extra points here in a time where artistically arranged titbits on a plate often masquerade as your meal.
The duck was similarly impressive, though a heavy note of rosemary, unmentioned in the menu, made it difficult for me to taste the sour cherry. Apparently it was splendid though. The ‘Snow White’ mashed potato was by all reports deliciously creamy, though it came moulded into a somewhat unnerving round shape. I prefer my mash served in a bit more of an anarchic fashion, sprawling across the plate so that it can do its job of looking after stray juices that escape from the meat.
After such an impressive meal, we were happy, pleasantly full and a little tipsy. The desserts we had seen looked luscious but looking over the menu Greg told us that our two choices weren’t available. ‘We just tried the pannacotta and it’s not set yet. It was horrible!’.
It’s not often that you’ll get such honesty from a restaurateur, but it was this charming candour form Greg that endeared him to us. Earlier, he had poured the wine in what he considered to be in the wrong order, and we assured him that we didn’t really mind about these things. Later, as we finished our mains, he rushed over looking a little sheepish. ‘It’s probably a bit late to ask, but is everything ok?’
With nothing else on the dessert menu that particularly appealed to us, we decided a cheese platter would be a good way to end the night, and our bottle of wine. It arrived with the heavy wooden board dwarfing the slivers of cheese. Now, it’s often the case that you feel slightly ripped off ordering a cheese platter – perhaps because it doesn’t seem like much effort or product for your money – but in this case, it seemed worse because the mains had been spot on.
Here we had a few slivers of cheese (including a delicious yet inexpensive cumin infused one I regularly buy at the Central Market) a single cherry tomato, a strawberry, a few sultanas, almonds and cashews, and some standard-issue crackers. It took us all of five minutes to inhale the morsels while we finished the wine.
Another sting came when the bill arrived. It turned out that my 300mL bottle of sparkling water, from some all natural granite source or other in Victoria, had cost me ten of my hard earned dollars. The bottle of wine we had enjoyed, which sold for $16 or so down the road shop had enjoyed a 100% mark up at $34. Though probably not uncommon in the restaurant industry, after the cheese platter and alongside a $10 bottle of water it didn’t slide down so well.
Win some; lose some. Restaurant 66 was a bit hit and miss for us, but the food is damn good, doing justice to its style, and worth the outlay for the mains. Assuming the Modern Australian sector performs equally well, then this restaurant has all the ticks where it counts – pricing issues and cheese portioning being issues only for those of us who are poor and starving – probably not Greg’s usual clientele. It’s friendly, not fussy, and certainly worth a visit for a special night out or a celebration.
Back home again on the other side of town with the required card now returned to its rightful top slot in my wallet, we called Restaurant 66 to ask them if we could still eat at the rather late (for Adelaide) hour of 9:45pm. ‘No problem’ came the reply, and so we sped back through the city to arrive to a nearly empty restaurant bar two women dissecting their relationships in great detail over some luscious looking desserts.
I’m always a bit nervous going to a new restaurant. You never know what might happen, especially as the last three months overseas had produced some Fawtly Towers like the time when I had asked for a spoon and been presented with two black coffees, spiked with whiskey. At Restaurant 66, the charming entrance down a lantern lit path and proprietor Greg’s friendly approach ensured we were in for a good night.
Offered the prime pick of tables in front of the window overlooking King William St, the atmosphere was cosy if a little quiet due to the lack of other diners. But no complaints, because it meant we had Greg’s full attention.
The menu showed somewhat schizophrenic tendencies, with elaborately sauced French style dishes sitting awkwardly alongside Asian style offerings including a pub-esque Salt n Pepper Squid, a Quail entrée which sounded more like a chocolate bar with its fruit and nut glaze, and a Massaman Chicken Curry that ended the list of French style main courses.
The special of the night ‘two things which turns into five’ was a red and green curry, which came with beef or duck for the red curry, and chicken, prawns or interestingly, salmon with the green.
The website describes Restaurant 66 as ‘Provincial French and Modern Australian’ but, on the night we were there at least, it was more accurately ‘Provincial French or Thai’. Don’t be fooled; there’s no fusion going on here.
Beginning with some sparkling mineral water and a bottle of Skillogallee Rose, which Greg told us was ‘in the style of Alicante’ and therefore our pick of the night, we pondered whether to go down the French or Asian path tonight before both settling on the European continent. I chose the Salmon Béarnaise ($30.50) with its asparagus, crushed potatoes, baby spinach and ‘66’s Sensational House Made Béarnaise Sauce’ while my companion went for the Duck Montmorency ($31.50), which appealed for the sour cherry and cherry brandy glaze.
On enquiring about how the salmon came (I have been wary ever since working at a restaurant where the default was ‘medium rare’) Greg assured me that Restaurant 66 was ‘traditional, not trendy’, and my salmon would be cooked through.
After an appropriate pause, say one or two glasses of wine, the food arrived on large, square plates. Now, decent plating will impress me anyday, but there was something special going on in front of me. Not only did my salmon proudly wear a corner of its crunchy crust under the béarnaise, but, perched on top of a few nicely crisped baby potatoes, it managed to still look like food, and good food at that. Extra points here in a time where artistically arranged titbits on a plate often masquerade as your meal.
The duck was similarly impressive, though a heavy note of rosemary, unmentioned in the menu, made it difficult for me to taste the sour cherry. Apparently it was splendid though. The ‘Snow White’ mashed potato was by all reports deliciously creamy, though it came moulded into a somewhat unnerving round shape. I prefer my mash served in a bit more of an anarchic fashion, sprawling across the plate so that it can do its job of looking after stray juices that escape from the meat.
After such an impressive meal, we were happy, pleasantly full and a little tipsy. The desserts we had seen looked luscious but looking over the menu Greg told us that our two choices weren’t available. ‘We just tried the pannacotta and it’s not set yet. It was horrible!’.
It’s not often that you’ll get such honesty from a restaurateur, but it was this charming candour form Greg that endeared him to us. Earlier, he had poured the wine in what he considered to be in the wrong order, and we assured him that we didn’t really mind about these things. Later, as we finished our mains, he rushed over looking a little sheepish. ‘It’s probably a bit late to ask, but is everything ok?’
With nothing else on the dessert menu that particularly appealed to us, we decided a cheese platter would be a good way to end the night, and our bottle of wine. It arrived with the heavy wooden board dwarfing the slivers of cheese. Now, it’s often the case that you feel slightly ripped off ordering a cheese platter – perhaps because it doesn’t seem like much effort or product for your money – but in this case, it seemed worse because the mains had been spot on.
Here we had a few slivers of cheese (including a delicious yet inexpensive cumin infused one I regularly buy at the Central Market) a single cherry tomato, a strawberry, a few sultanas, almonds and cashews, and some standard-issue crackers. It took us all of five minutes to inhale the morsels while we finished the wine.
Another sting came when the bill arrived. It turned out that my 300mL bottle of sparkling water, from some all natural granite source or other in Victoria, had cost me ten of my hard earned dollars. The bottle of wine we had enjoyed, which sold for $16 or so down the road shop had enjoyed a 100% mark up at $34. Though probably not uncommon in the restaurant industry, after the cheese platter and alongside a $10 bottle of water it didn’t slide down so well.
Win some; lose some. Restaurant 66 was a bit hit and miss for us, but the food is damn good, doing justice to its style, and worth the outlay for the mains. Assuming the Modern Australian sector performs equally well, then this restaurant has all the ticks where it counts – pricing issues and cheese portioning being issues only for those of us who are poor and starving – probably not Greg’s usual clientele. It’s friendly, not fussy, and certainly worth a visit for a special night out or a celebration.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Gastroporn (or, Why I Want To Be a TV Chef)
It was all over in just one minute. I had expected things to take a bit longer considering his experience, but apparently the creamy substance wouldn’t wait any longer. This lemon curd tart was ready.
“Gastroporn” is a word I first heard used in my anthropology lecture. I can’t actually remember how the lecturer defined it, but I liked the expression so much that I have adopted it to refer to any televised food related show which favours overly enthusiastic presenters, scripted jokes, producers with emotional connections to their food, and a reliance on trivial, insignificant details in order to make a dish sound more complicated than it actually is.
The gratuitous use and abuse of food on our screens is present everywhere; look no further than the primetime slots these sorts of shows are often afforded; much like real porn, gastroporn allows the viewer to substitute actual interaction with the subject matter for an exploitative, illusory relationship with screen bound fantasies of improbably buoyant soufflés and impossibly short cooking times, ever assisted by that magic phrase ‘… and here’s one we prepared earlier…’.
I feel that it's this over-abundance of tv food shows that are ruining our appetite and spoiling our palates when something decent (and hell yes, that means anything starting with Jamie) comes along. Most tv food shows are just repackaging old information, sometimes with a promotion that mentions the associated magazine which jsut happens to be sold in your local supermarket. But that's not what food shows should be about; they should, like sex, be fun, be funny, and be flawed. No one likes to see someone else prepare a perfect dish; it's not human. It was pointed out to me that one of the best things about Hughey's Cooking Adventures is the lack of script, meaning that sometimes he completley forgets to add an ingredient before realising at the end and telling us 'whoops, we'll just throw that in now then'.
Just to clarify and appease the fans out there, Ready Steady Cook escapes this categorization by maintaining an underlying yet tangible sexual tension between the somewhat homophobic French chef Manou and the effeminate and charmingly naïve Peter Everett. But this is also an example of a show where imperfection makes it endearing; despite the blatant Coles product placement, the show manages to keep fresh by choosing contestants that are unfailingly exploiting their five minutes of fame to tell Australia (or at least the dole bludgers, students and pensioners who watch the show), their grandmother's secret recipe/tradition/bunion treatment as part of the 'family origin' approach heavily favoured by the producers of the show in order to inject some personality into these highly made up, overly chatty women.
Rather, the shows that I am referring to all featured on the Lifestyle Channel, and included such delights as a show about fat people having to poo to the satisfaction of a tiny pink-clad dietician. Following this, a huge American lady showed us how to arrange a few morsels for a cocktail party before – get this – flying across the Atlantic to give exactly the same party, with the same food, presumable to reinforce the notion that as long as you’re somewhere civilized, darling, you should be able to manage a bit of pate on a plate without looking like too much of a pleb.
It was the third show that broke me. In the drone of scripted, pre-worked dialogoue, this twenty something, personality-less presenter failed to have any opinions whatsoever during the whole fifteen minute construction period of his eggplant lined mug’o’coucous other than his choice of onions was ‘because he finds them a bit sweeter’.
Foxtel; what’s going on? Even my friend would do a better cooking show, and she lives solely on pasta and cheap tomato sauce, day in, day out. At least she’s got some sort of personality, like the way she bursts into a room shouting ‘No pants!!!’ before proceeding to boil water and heat sauce wearing precious little more than a pair of Bonds and a t-shirt.
Words cannot describe the injustice of the boringest man on the planet getting his own tv show when there are plenty of people out there (and, lets be honest, I include myself in that) willing to replace this guy and his eggplants with the perfect combination of acid sarcasm, proper food that you would actually want to eat and dashing good looks.
Call me Foxtel and give me a show.
“Gastroporn” is a word I first heard used in my anthropology lecture. I can’t actually remember how the lecturer defined it, but I liked the expression so much that I have adopted it to refer to any televised food related show which favours overly enthusiastic presenters, scripted jokes, producers with emotional connections to their food, and a reliance on trivial, insignificant details in order to make a dish sound more complicated than it actually is.
The gratuitous use and abuse of food on our screens is present everywhere; look no further than the primetime slots these sorts of shows are often afforded; much like real porn, gastroporn allows the viewer to substitute actual interaction with the subject matter for an exploitative, illusory relationship with screen bound fantasies of improbably buoyant soufflés and impossibly short cooking times, ever assisted by that magic phrase ‘… and here’s one we prepared earlier…’.
I feel that it's this over-abundance of tv food shows that are ruining our appetite and spoiling our palates when something decent (and hell yes, that means anything starting with Jamie) comes along. Most tv food shows are just repackaging old information, sometimes with a promotion that mentions the associated magazine which jsut happens to be sold in your local supermarket. But that's not what food shows should be about; they should, like sex, be fun, be funny, and be flawed. No one likes to see someone else prepare a perfect dish; it's not human. It was pointed out to me that one of the best things about Hughey's Cooking Adventures is the lack of script, meaning that sometimes he completley forgets to add an ingredient before realising at the end and telling us 'whoops, we'll just throw that in now then'.
Just to clarify and appease the fans out there, Ready Steady Cook escapes this categorization by maintaining an underlying yet tangible sexual tension between the somewhat homophobic French chef Manou and the effeminate and charmingly naïve Peter Everett. But this is also an example of a show where imperfection makes it endearing; despite the blatant Coles product placement, the show manages to keep fresh by choosing contestants that are unfailingly exploiting their five minutes of fame to tell Australia (or at least the dole bludgers, students and pensioners who watch the show), their grandmother's secret recipe/tradition/bunion treatment as part of the 'family origin' approach heavily favoured by the producers of the show in order to inject some personality into these highly made up, overly chatty women.
Rather, the shows that I am referring to all featured on the Lifestyle Channel, and included such delights as a show about fat people having to poo to the satisfaction of a tiny pink-clad dietician. Following this, a huge American lady showed us how to arrange a few morsels for a cocktail party before – get this – flying across the Atlantic to give exactly the same party, with the same food, presumable to reinforce the notion that as long as you’re somewhere civilized, darling, you should be able to manage a bit of pate on a plate without looking like too much of a pleb.
It was the third show that broke me. In the drone of scripted, pre-worked dialogoue, this twenty something, personality-less presenter failed to have any opinions whatsoever during the whole fifteen minute construction period of his eggplant lined mug’o’coucous other than his choice of onions was ‘because he finds them a bit sweeter’.
Foxtel; what’s going on? Even my friend would do a better cooking show, and she lives solely on pasta and cheap tomato sauce, day in, day out. At least she’s got some sort of personality, like the way she bursts into a room shouting ‘No pants!!!’ before proceeding to boil water and heat sauce wearing precious little more than a pair of Bonds and a t-shirt.
Words cannot describe the injustice of the boringest man on the planet getting his own tv show when there are plenty of people out there (and, lets be honest, I include myself in that) willing to replace this guy and his eggplants with the perfect combination of acid sarcasm, proper food that you would actually want to eat and dashing good looks.
Call me Foxtel and give me a show.
Saturday, 8 March 2008
A Note on Couscous
Today in the Weekend Australian food writer David Herbert suggested that 'couscous is the traditional accompaniment' to Moroccan and North African food in general, but more specifically suggested it should be served alongside fish tangine, for which a recipe was placed in this week's edition.
Below is an email that I fired off to him in something of a huff immediatley after reading the article. Perhaps the writer has been informed differently; maybe the rest of North Africa or ever other parts of Morocco DOES see this fluffy grain as nothing more than a side dish, but for now, I suspect that he simply got his facts wrong. I keenly await a reply and will post it here when (or if) it arrives.
Hi David,
I was excited to see a recipe for fish tangine in this week’s Weekend Australian Magazine. I have just returned from Marrakesh where I participated in a cooking school and amongst other things, prepared a wonderful monkfish tangine. However, one of the biggest surprises I had was when the chef told us that Moroccans never eat couscous as an accompaniment to tangine - he told us that it is always a main course in itself and indeed this appeared to be the case in every restaurant we ate in during our time there.
Whenever we ordered a tangine it would be accompanied by plain, flat, chewy Moroccan bread only – not a grain of cous cous in sight. An order for cous cous was a main meal with a big hunk of chicken or other animal creating the protein part of the dish. It wasn’t possible to order it ‘plain’ or as side dish, per se.
On the other hand, in Australia, I understand that cous cous has taken on a ‘side dish’ role in the general scheme of things, so I have not an objection to it being suggested as the accompaniment to the tangine (it being quite difficult, if not impossible to source proper Morcoccan style bread here), but I was hoping to see it mentioned that this isn’t how it is used traditionally in Morocco at least, if not the rest of North Africa.
Thanks for your time. Incidentally, I’m really looking forwards to making the Cinnamon Chicken.
Regards,
Hannah Frank.
Below is an email that I fired off to him in something of a huff immediatley after reading the article. Perhaps the writer has been informed differently; maybe the rest of North Africa or ever other parts of Morocco DOES see this fluffy grain as nothing more than a side dish, but for now, I suspect that he simply got his facts wrong. I keenly await a reply and will post it here when (or if) it arrives.
Hi David,
I was excited to see a recipe for fish tangine in this week’s Weekend Australian Magazine. I have just returned from Marrakesh where I participated in a cooking school and amongst other things, prepared a wonderful monkfish tangine. However, one of the biggest surprises I had was when the chef told us that Moroccans never eat couscous as an accompaniment to tangine - he told us that it is always a main course in itself and indeed this appeared to be the case in every restaurant we ate in during our time there.
Whenever we ordered a tangine it would be accompanied by plain, flat, chewy Moroccan bread only – not a grain of cous cous in sight. An order for cous cous was a main meal with a big hunk of chicken or other animal creating the protein part of the dish. It wasn’t possible to order it ‘plain’ or as side dish, per se.
On the other hand, in Australia, I understand that cous cous has taken on a ‘side dish’ role in the general scheme of things, so I have not an objection to it being suggested as the accompaniment to the tangine (it being quite difficult, if not impossible to source proper Morcoccan style bread here), but I was hoping to see it mentioned that this isn’t how it is used traditionally in Morocco at least, if not the rest of North Africa.
Thanks for your time. Incidentally, I’m really looking forwards to making the Cinnamon Chicken.
Regards,
Hannah Frank.
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