190,000,000 Omelets
I don’t believe in the three-egg omelet. Two-egg omelets are vastly superior. But we can save that argument for another day.
But perhaps you heard, 380 million eggs were just recalled in a salmonella outbreak. If you brought all the recalled eggs to Washington D.C. you could hurl 875,563 at each member of Congress for their ridiculous lack of oversight in a much too consolidated industry.
Did I mention that all of these eggs came from a single producer? Let’s give credit where it’s due. The producer in question is Wright County Egg of Galt, Iowa.
Never heard of them? Well, they produce eggs for:
Read more…
Whipped
There are no two ways about it, whipped cream is heaven on earth. It’s cool, light and refreshing, but at the same time it’s rich, silky and sweet. And provided that you can find cream that is actually cream, you don’t have to be a master in the kitchen to make it.
If you are willing to put in a little elbow grease, you don’t even need to own a mixer. Cold cream, a bit of sugar, a bowl and a whisk are all you need. A little pure vanilla extract or a teaspoon of a favorite liqueur never hurt either.
However, it is whipped cream’s silkiness that can be elusive. Here’s the rundown.
Cream, is obviously a liquid. You can pour it. But when you start whipping air into it, the cream starts to become textured. Beaters will begin to leave light traces on the surface of the cream. It will increase in volume, and start to form soft peaks. If beaten further, those peaks will stiffen.
But if beaten any more, your silky cream is gone as it has passed the whipped cream stage and is on a new path to become butter. Now, that’s fine if you are making butter. It is decidedly not fine if you are making whipped cream.
What kills me—absolutely kills me—is how people who should know better don’t.
Regime Change
It’s times like this that I really miss Mrs. Fussy. There is some important and timely local food news to comment upon, but unchecked, my tone may come off as smug, pompous or self-important. Perhaps even a combination of all three. Luckily I’m aware of my tendency towards self-promotion. So I will try to keep this subdued.
Most likely the recent changes at the Times Union had nothing to do with what I have written in the past about Ruth Fantasia nor the policy of which restaurants receive starred reviews.
Here’s the executive summary. We have a new sheriff in town, and her name is Cheryl Clark. She is taking over restaurant reviews from Ruth Fantasia and Celina Ottaway. Ruth Fantasia will stay on as features editor, so I suspect her hand may still be felt in the restaurant reviews for the foreseeable future.
I’m excited for the change, and have high hopes for the reviews to come. There are pros and cons to every potential reviewer. My biggest concern given Cheryl’s close relationship to the restaurant community, is does she have the fortitude to pan a restaurant that sorely under performs, or will she look for the silver lining. In my mind it makes no sense to have a four-star scale and only use three of the stars.
But I digress, because beyond the change in the reviewer, there is also a change in policy which I think is even more notable.
Died and Gone to Providence
A year ago this week, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area on vacation. Today I am in Providence, Rhode Island. Not exactly in the same league, but still I’m very glad to be here.
In the past I’ve been unjustly criticized for wanting to make Albany more like San Francisco. My reply at the time was, “I’d be happy if Albany were more like Providence.” After all, on my master chart of Neilsen DMAs, Providence is only ranked 53. Albany is very close behind it at number 57.
Yes, I understand that the Albany metros population covers a much larger geography, so it is not quite as dense. But there are a lot of similarities. We are both state capitals, we both have a bunch of universities, and we both draw tourists from major metropolitan areas. But regrettably, I do not believe it is those things that are what makes Providence such a good food city.
To give you a sense of it, here is a snapshot from the past couple of days.
Fire in the Barrel
Most people don’t look at an oak tree and think, “Mmm, that’s tasty stuff.” When I used to take half and half in my coffee, I didn’t even like mixing it with a wood stirrer, because it would impart an unpleasant and distinctly woody flavor.
But ask any vintner, distiller, or even brewer, and they will tell you just how tasty good oak can be. Not all oak is created equal. But we will get to that in a few moments.
Did you ever wonder how wines made from grapes can taste like vanilla or chocolate or smoke? I mean after all it’s just grape juice that’s gone bad. There are certain flavors that actually come from the grapes themselves, some come from the yeast, and others come from the oak.
American wine drinkers tend to love oak. But that has been changing, and personally, I think that’s a good thing.
What I really want to talk about today is the role of oak in the world’s best wines, how this practice has been corrupted in lower priced bottles, and why it’s good for both true wine lovers and bargain hunters to look for unoaked wines.
Drinking and Shooting Stars
If I had known how socially small Albany was a couple of years ago, I might never have dared to start the FUSSYlittleBLOG. This is what I’m talking about, and let’s see if you can keep this all straight.
ElizabethEss tweeted yesterday:
Suggestions on drinks for stargazing? (I’m espec. lookin at you, @my50cheeses) Pondering champagne: “tasting the stars.” I do love a theme.
She was one of the judges for the Boston cream donut tasting many months ago, and she used to write on Eat in Albany with her special gentleman friend bk. Now she blogs on Elizabeth Likes, which is how I know she wants a cocktail not just for stargazing, but specifically for watching shooting stars.
I met bk separately after he won the Chipotle burrito giveaway. We had a great conversation about eating in Albany.
Elizabeth recently went to Harvest Spirits and picked up something special for bk who has been taunting me with it for the past week or so. His taunts actually inspired me to go to Harvest Spirits and pick up something special for myself. Actually Derek, the distiller and all-around great guy, beat me to the punch and sent me home with a half bottle of something maybe even more special than what Elizabeth got for bk.
But while I was there, Derek told me about how people out of state can buy some of their delicious applejack, which I had mistakenly thought wasn’t even legally possible. I guess that’s why I didn’t become a lawyer.
So what does this have to do with anything? I’m getting to that.
Ask the Profussor – Phase Two
Well, there are no responses yet to the Open Letter to Chefs, but it’s just been up for a day. Every new day I’ll be sending out emails to capital region chefs as I uncover their email addresses. If you would like to help, and you have the email address of a local chef, please forward it along.
Regardless, I feel like this effort is the beginning of a new chapter of the FUSSYlittleBLOG. We’ll have to see how it goes.
In the meantime the drumbeat of questions and answers continue. Thank you all for your continued participation, your comments keep this blog rolling. And for those of you who are reading and have yet to comment, I will patiently wait until you are ready. Don’t forget, you can always email me your questions or comments directly.
So without any further ado, here are the answers to questions that have been unceremoniously ignored since the last installment of Ask the Profussor.
An Open Letter to Capital District Chefs
Dear Chef:
I could never do what you do. While I may be a tough critic of restaurants, I also maintain a high level of respect for those who put their hearts and souls into their food. After all, nobody goes into cooking to get rich. Most get into it because of their love for food.
Over a year ago I started a project called the FUSSYlittleBLOG, which evolved out of writing restaurant reviews on Yelp. It is an advertising-free environment whose primary purpose is to elevate food in Albany at all levels of dining. The focus up until now has been an attempt to raise people’s standards about what should be considered good food.
But I have been fairly criticized for not inviting local chefs into the conversation.
There are a lot of positive things local restaurants are doing with quality ingredients, and I’d like to do my small part to help publicize the good stuff. So please consider this an invitation. If you think your restaurant is doing something that is in keeping with the FUSSYlittleBLOG’s mission of promoting the use of high-quality ingredients, let me know. Send me an email. Put me on your press release distribution list. I would love to highlight what you’re doing and help get your efforts out to a few more people.
Here are some examples of the kinds of things I’d love to help promote:
Read more…
Stick Around
Recently I wrote a piece for Simpler Living about cookware basics, and the comments were really eye opening. It seems a lot of people have a problem with food sticking to the bottom of their pans.
I say it is eye opening because this isn’t a problem for me. Really, for two reasons:
1) Food generally doesn’t stick to my pans.
2) When it does, I put it to very good use.
And the answer is not that I am using super-secret non-stick technology. It’s not even that I’m necessarily using a non-stick pan. It is just that I have a good working understanding about when stuff sticks and why. And subsequently, what to do about it.
So I thought I’d share.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 