Organic Scoops

I've been noticing lately that a number of places where I shop have separate receptacles for the scoops that go in the organic spices and the scoops that go in the non-organic ones. I've heard that this is a requirement for a grocery store to obtain organic certification.

And yet, no matter how hard we try, we can't control everything that goes into our bodies. I think about this each time I'm at a farmers' market and someone (often a farmer) starts a truck that spews a dark cloud of exhaust over all the organic produce. It strikes me as a metaphor for the quixotic nature of trying to eat an absolutely scrupulous organic diet, down to the scoops that you use to bag your spices.

The need to separate the scoops strikes me more as an issue of spiritual purity rather than a practical matter, much like the need to keep separate sets of dishes in a kosher household.

A Chef Coat

Last week I taught my first cooking class with PCC. Though I've had my share of issues with the organization in the past, I'm really impressed with the cooking program and I'm happy to be a part of it.

I wore a chef coat for the first time in my life. For years I've taken pride in the fact that I've come this far without ever having worn one. It's not that I don't take pride in my skills as a cook (chef?) I certainly do take pride in my work and my talent, if you will, but I feel that chef coats play up the difference between professional cooking and home cooking and I've always been more interested in playing that down.

As a cooking instructor, I want to teach people to trust their instincts and experiment. I want to show that simple food can be at least as appealing as complicated food and that there is almost never only one correct way to do anything, despite what the "experts" say.

Our collective body of cooking knowledge is broad, deep, and very, very old. It has developed in the hands of thousands of generations of ordinary and extraordinary people exploring the infinite possibilities offered by the countless edible and potentially edible substances that surround us. Each of us has the potential to continue building on that knowledge even today, whether it's for the purpose of finding simple recipes that work for our own families or designing award winning dishes at high end restaurants.

When I expressed my ambivalence, the folks who run the cooking program offered me the option of wearing an apron instead. I may take them up on it next time.

My Brazilian Cookbook

I picked up a wonderful Brasilian cookbook when I visited Belem earlier this month. The process of choosing it was a bit of a feat: all of the books at the bookstore were wrapped in plastic and the shelves were so narrow that if you removed two books, all the others fell on the floor. (Mortification is the same in any language.) The sales clerk saw that I was looking at cookbooks and began unwrapping them and bringing them to me. I was torn between "Dona Benta Comer Bem," and this one, which I eventually chose. I picked this one because Dona Benta promised international recipes, among other things, and I already have more than enough international recipes. I wanted a Brazilian focus.

When I brought it home and started looking through it, I found that I was having considerably more difficulty than I anticipated understanding the recipes. My Portuguese vocabulary contains a disproportionate number of food words. Nonetheless, even with the help of my small Portuguese-English dictionary, I realized that this was going to be a bit of a feat. For one thing, many of the ingredients aren't even available here, such as jambu, the spindly Amazonian green that numbs your tongue. Also, many of the words are used idiomatically, in food-specific ways. My favorite example is a "dende de alho," which literally translates as a "tooth of garlic," which we refer to as a "clove." (Also idiomatic, if you think about it.)

I'm going to work my way through it, because I really want to cook this food. My sweetie hates translating, but she's going to have to rise to the occasion sometimes if she wants to enjoy any of this wonderful cuisine at home. All in all, the experience has gotten me thinking about how useful it would be to have culinary specific cross cultural dictionaries, with food names, idioms, and linguistic conventions that appear in recipes. A limited market, to be sure, but a passionate one.

New York's Salt Policy

Monday's New York Times reported that Mayor Bloomberg is unveiling a new policy aimed at encouraging restaurants and food producers to use less salt in their offerings in order to address rampant health problems such as high blood pressure.

I love the fact that this guy has consistently shown that he is willing to address food issues with public policy, and that he understands the connection between healthy food and public health. But I also think that asking food manufacturers to use less salt in prepared food misses the point.

I've owned several companies that prepared food not intended for immediate consumption. I can tell you first hand that part of the reason most prepared food has such a high salt content is because food gets lets salty as it sits. We used to prepare everything so that it was just on the edge of tasting too salty, so that when we delivered it the following day it would taste just right. Very often I'll buy a convenience food product and feel appalled by the salt content listed on the label but when I eat it, it just doesn't taste that salty. Most convenience foods sit for so long that they need considerably more salt than they would if they were fresher, simply in order to taste salty enough. Salt also acts as a preservative, but that's a whole other story.

The solution? It's so simple, yet so complicated. Cook more. Eat more fresh food. Maybe someday we'll see a city policy encouraging that.

An Auspicious Beginning

I'm pleased to report that, so far this year, things are going very, very well for my business. Our sales at the 4 markets we've done have been double what they were a year ago. I'm tempted to think that it's a good omen and the entire year is going to be just as good. But I've been working this kind of business for too long to take that kind of thinking seriously. We've had a great 2 weeks. And that, in itself, makes me very, very happy.

A Trip to Brasil

I just got back on Monday night from a trip to Brasil, visiting my sweetie's family. She grew up in Sao Paolo which--from what I hear--is big, crowded, and dirty, but many of her family members now live in Belem, which is on the edge of the Amazon, virtually on the equator.

My first experience of Brazil was a 9 hour layover in Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon, in a tiny airport where we noshed on pao de quiejo, or cheese bread, warm dough nuggets the size of unshelled walnuts with melted cheese inside. How can you go wrong?

In Belem the first night we had pizza with the family. I reached for mine and my sweetie muttered under her breath, "Knife and fork!" They're very formal there, about some things, at least. The pizza had shrimp and a leafy green called jambu, which numbs your tongue. For lunch the next day we had--among many other things--a dish called tucupi, whose base is the greens of the manioc plant, which need to be processed and fermented for an entire week to make them digestible. Very tasty stuff.

We visited the Vero Peso open air market, which was probably the highlight for me. They wouldn't let me bring my camera because they said it would disappear, so the photo above is from Parqueamazonia.org, which also has some other great pictures of the area. The fish market had piranhas and sting rays, among many, many other fish. There were many familiar vegetables, and many unfamiliar ones. Greens, herbs, mangos, coconuts, cashews, acai berries, okra, pumpkins, chiles (pimentas), fresh black-eyed peas and so much more.

At some point this century someone had the lovely idea of planting mango trees along the major avenues. They're quite pretty but I hear that, during mango season, they fall and dent your car. I'm not much of a fruit person, but I tasted everything in my path. Graviolas, acerolas, guavas, cashew fruit. Three different kinds of fresh-squeezed juice with each meal.

I've never had much of an urge to travel because I'm fortunate enough to find my day to day environment consistently interesting. But this trip made me realize that, even though my day to day world may be big enough to keep me entertained, I should never lose sight of the fact that there's so much out there to experience.