Jamie Oliver: This Is Why You're Fat

Jamie Oliver apparently ate his $100,000 prize money

At the most recent TED Conference (technology, entertainment and design), celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver was given some kind of award for his work in food and obesity education. How that connects with technology, entertainment or design, I’m not quite sure, but he’s hip and telegenic so he fits right in.

To encapsulate his 18-minute talk: people are fat because they stopped cooking food and eat processed crap instead. Nothing groundbreaking, but the message is delivered with Oliver’s manic enthusiasm so it’s fairly watchable without being too sanctimonious. The presentation happens to coincide nicely with his upcoming TV show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” where he goes to America’s most unhealthy city and tries to get them to eat a green vegetable. He is so sucking in his gut.

He makes a couple interesting points: At the 11:15 mark he plays a clip from his show where kids in a kindergarten class are unable to identify beets, cauliflower, eggplants and even tomatoes and potatoes. He believes that people won’t eat food that they can’t identify and will therefore never eat healthily unless they’re better educated. Fair enough. A companion to Michael Pollan’s rule, “Don’t eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

an ABC promo for the show

Continuing, Oliver maintains that for the past three generations, the family tradition of cooking skills being passed down has ended. His goal as an educator is to get every child to learn 10 recipes so that they can live independently, healthily and economically as adults. Neat idea. As a kid, I learned to make soup from a can of V8 juice – add Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese from a green tube et voilà! In high school, I took Independent Living where I made an apron and learned how to make (bad) bran muffins. So by the time I turned 18 I could make really salty soup and greasy baked rocks. Two recipes - 20% of the way to an independent life according to Jamie Oliver’s vision.

Obviously, he doesn’t mean a specific list of exactly 10 dishes, but these are what I would choose:

• Spaghetti sauce – that just seems like a gimme. It’s cheap and easy and everyone likes it.
• Chili – Again, cheap and easy. Feed a family of 4 for a few bucks.
• Stir fry – I suppose this is more of a technique than a recipe but it’s healthy and has infinite variations.
• Rice – This could accompany the above two recipes, I suppose. Billions of non-Americans subsist on rice. We can, too.
• Roasted chicken – I’m not a huge chicken eater, but I like a good roast chicken. Plus, you can scale this up for a turkey and be the star of every Thanksgiving.
• Pasta – Here, I specifically mean the Italian method of sautéing a few ingredients and then adding pasta and some pasta water in the last minute of cooking. It’s one of the first things I learned how to cook well. Essentially the Italian version of stir fry.
• Steak – This is technique more than recipe, but good to know for cookouts and hot dates.
• Meat stew – Knowing how to braise is a cheap way to live well.
• Chicken soup – So people don’t waste their roast chicken carcasses.
• Macaroni & cheese – Yes, this is a dish that contributes to American obesity, but, come on, can’t we live a little? We have Chef Jamie's blessing.

Did I miss any?

Preparing for the Apocalypse (or Surprise Dinner Guests)

Your guess is as good as mine If you were to look at my freezer, you’d think I was a really sloppy Mormon . In truth, I probably don’t have food for more than a couple weeks, but in those two weeks, I’d live like a goddamned king. I’ve got lamb stew, veggie chili, various meat stocks, frozen scallops, bacon, and tomato sauce, not to mention the dried goods – the saffron, chiles, porcini mushrooms and fermented black beans. My only issue is that I need to be more vigilant in labeling my foodstuffs. Too often, what I thought would be spaghetti Bolognese turned out to be brisket on noodles. No matter what the caption, you'll think salted duck eggs are disgusting but they're not. Honest I think this hoarding behavior stems from my mother who used to keep stores of brandied fruit and salted duck eggs in the cupboards so us kids would never be wanting for (weird) food. The brandied fruit really sticks in my memory. It was stored in this very ‘70s smoky purple glass jar – a fermenting mass of various canned and fresh fruits every week by equal amounts of additional fruit and granulated sugar. We’d have it on ice cream or on pound cake; it was a convenient and handy way to make a pedestrian dessert instantly exotic. Or at least alcoholic. As an adult, as I developed more of a taste for the savory over sweet, I decided to try keeping a store of duck confit. Basically, these are cured duck legs, cooked in duck fat and stored for several weeks in the fridge in duck fat. When done correctly, they are luscious, salty and gorgeous, with a fantastic depth of flavor that comes only from meats that are cured, cooked in fat and stored for several weeks in flavorful fat.This isn't the actual spice mix (it's one for bacon), but it's a pretty picture, no? Recipes abound. But the key elements are: cure the duck for a day or so in salt and very aromatic herbs, cook the duck in duck fat for a couple hours at a low heat, then store in the same duck fat in the fridge for at least a couple weeks. In my herb mix, I used coriander seeds, pepper, bay leaves and Szechuan chili peppers known for their distinct flavor and tongue numbing qualities. In the final result, the numbing effect was deadened, but the distinct floral-herbaceous notes were very present. Duck cooked in duck fat now crisped in duck fat. Jon Cryer beware But the biggest obstacle was keeping the duck legs in the fridge without eating them. While most recipes say that the legs will keep for up to a month, I read somewhere that Nancy Silverton (or was it Alice Waters? How embarrassing, but seriously, all you white women chefs look alike to me) liked to serve duck confit after three months or longer, as the legs become more tender and complex in flavor. Alice Waters, Nancy Silverton, clearly separated at birth I managed to wait three months at which point I served mine over blanched Brussels sprout leaves with a really gummy and lousy mustard/blueberry sauce. But any flaws in the presentation were mitigated by the reheating of the duck legs – crisped in their own fat to a golden brown on both sides. In my mind, this is the best way to serve them though you can also use them in a cassoulet or shredded on pizza or in stuffed pasta or some other chi-chi preparation. In the crispy incarnation, the sauce and bedding become completely cosmetic and superfluous. It's hard to go wrong.Please ignore the gooey smudge in the background The crisped legs were truly gorgeous, if I do say so myself. I’m sure some native from the Dordogne would scoff at my Asian treatment of the duck, but that was my choice. I’m Chinese. Bite me, François. I’d encourage readers to ignore the Frenchies use their own spice mix. It's really not that hard yet it's something you'll never get in a restaurant because, in general, they can't afford to keep food that long. Your results may vary but if you find a combo that works, please post.

Street Food Thuggery

Yay, civilization! Several friends emailed me about the Los Angeles Street Food Festival that occurred this past Saturday. With the explosion of gourmet food trucks – gourmet fries, gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, gourmet sundaes, etc. – it promised to be an exciting and trendy occasion. I had a friend visiting from out of town so I purchased us VIP tickets, which meant that we could enter all civilized-like through glass doors as opposed to a cyclone fence gate and use flush toilets instead of Port-O-Lets.

I picked up my friend, Steve, who did not have VIP tickets, but we stupidly figured it wouldn’t be a huge deal. As we neared the venue a few minutes after the event started, we started to worry as teams of hipsters swarmed in the same direction while sizable numbers of disappointed, but sensible looking people headed in the opposite direction. We found the VIP entrance first, a line 60-people deep and moving slowly. I waited there while Steve went to scout the loser line, but given the mobs of people, we figured it wasn’t likely he would make it inside before dinner time.

While I was waiting, I thought about why I was there. People told me, “I’m sure you’ve tried most of the food trucks already,” to which I laughed humbly and looked down at my feet. But the truth is, I haven’t tried any of them. O.K., awhile ago, someone brought me a plate from the Kogi truck, which started the whole craze in L.A., but they weren’t even at this event. If I were a 23-year-old out partying and needed a food fix, I might have made the rounds, but I’m not. I’m an old fart who likes to eat with metal flatware while sitting down. I like tables and napkins and not waiting in lines.

The other thing is, I can’t imagine that the food is that great. How can the slice truck produce pizza that is better than out of a wood burning oven at Mozza or Bollini’s? Putting kimchi on your cheese fries doesn’t instantly make them better. This isn’t to say that they’re not making good food, but I don’t want to wait in several lines in the sweltering February sun (um, yeah. It was really hot) to find out if I’m right or wrong.

But the biggest issue I have is that these cupcake/crepe/Asian-Latin fusion trucks don’t represent actual L.A. street food. I admit that’s a condescending thing to say and, in fact, they did have two Mexican food trucks at the fair, but neither of them represented the taco trucks from my life. For that, I recommend Daily Taco, which has a comprehensive review library of local taco trucks and I couldn’t find reviews of the two that were at the fest.

So when Steve reported back that it would be a 2-hour wait (two goddamned hours!) for the non-VIP ers to get in, I suggested that we abandon the lines and get some real food. I handed my tickets off to some friends I ran into and we went to Boyle Heights for some birria – stewed goat.

The restaurant was perfect: booths, beer, and an oral menu consisting of birria, quesadillas and cabeza tacos (made from cheek meat). That’s it. The goat was almost as delicious as the homemade corn tortillas and we were sitting down in Naugahyde booths, not like Neanderthals walking around eating out of flimsy cardboard trays. Sadly, a hungover Steve did not enjoy the talented table-side Mariachis as much as the rest of the clientele, but he enjoyed the meal otherwise.

Afterwards we visited El Mercado de Los Angeles, a three-story marketplace where you can buy everything from Disney knock-off toys to cowboy boots to exotic culinary ingredients. I got the stink eye when I took this delicious photo. Unfortunately, the vendors didn’t care for me taking pictures so I only have a few, but the moles looked just as delicious as the toys looked creepy.

Again, for some reason I got the stink eye when I took this photo. I appreciate that a sorbet truck arriving outside a night club at 1:30AM has a certain mystique but to me, a bakery that sells heart-shaped loaves of bread for Valentine’s Day has way more street cred. Can you feel the love? I'm interested to know what food trucks readers would like to see on their street. Thoughts?

Back in the Saddle

Many apologies for not being more vigilant in my postings. The new goal is to try to post shorter bits with more frequency with a weekly in-depth posting. Today's a shorty. Several years ago, I joined a cookbook club to expand my culinary knowledge and to help fill an appallingly empty bookshelf. This club has a great selection of famous cookbooks and so I stocked up and now I have a fair-sized library covering the essentials and a bunch of regional cookbooks and some celebrity chef tomes with pretty pictures. Problem is, I don't really read any of them. It could be because I'm not a big reader (ergo empty bookshelf) or it could be that I didn't pick the right books. I actually like his show, despite his sometimes cloying enthusiasm. Gastronerd, Alton Brown today listed his top five cookbooks. I thought I'd weigh in on them briefly to see if I could gain any insight on my own cookbook illiteracy.

1) Joy of Cooking - I remember my thumbing through my mother's tattered edition as a child. I used it a few times and it gave me the impression that all cookbook recipes involved condensed cream of mushroom soup and/or mayonnaise and could be made in either a casserole dish or a bundt cake pan. I might get it today but only for kitsch value. Does that make me sound like a snob? Yeah, well...

2) The Frugal Gourmet - I watched his cooking show once and it was about truffles. He boiled a batch of spaghetti and drizzled a bit of truffle oil and said, "That's all you need to do." I watched half an hour of PBS for that? He did not earn much kitchen cred for that. On the other hand, he did dedicate one of his cookbooks to my grandmother so I have to give him some props.

3) Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - This was one of the books I bought from the cookbook club but when I tried making Marcella Hazan's bread, I ended up baking flour bricks. She listed some weird technique of slamming the dough on the table which seemed scientifically dubious. I think the bigger problem was that there was a paucity of pictures. For me, cooking technique is better learned visually. But aside from technique, the recipes look tasty enough. I should try one someday.

4) Outlaw Cook - I'd never heard of this book, but it seems more my style. Its goal seems to be to stimulate curiosity in the home chef as opposed to guiding them with a series of instructions. It looks to be as much a book of essays as a book of recipes so because I'm a pedantic twat, I don't think this qualifies as a cookbook.

5) Ratio - This book looks right up my alley. Geeky and technical, where you learn the basic skills of cooking so that you can move beyond recipes. I should check it out. That said, in my previous experience with Michael Ruhlman, his recipe said that 8 grams of coriander was the equivalent to a tablespoon. He was off by a factor of over 2.5 so I can't help but scoff at the book's title.

Here's what I think: Alton Brown listed the five books that were seminal in his personal development as a food lover but not his technical development as a food professional. I don't think any of these are necessarily essential for one's library. With the exception of the Hazan and Ruhlman books, I'll bet he hasn't cracked any of them open in the past decade. In my library, I consistenly refer back to two books: McGee, which I've written about earlier, and the CIA's The Professional Chef . Yes, I know On Food and Cooking is not a cookbook, but it's an essential guide to understanding the cooking process. The CIA cookbook, however, contains great recipes that thousands of CIA grads use on a daily basis. I've used it to make mother sauces, identify cuts of meat, make croissants, desserts, stocks, etc. The no-nonsense photos make understanding technique straightfoward and it's organized very intelligently.

The recipes are sized for restaurant service so you have to scale them down but that's easy to do with a spreadsheet, if not in your head. Also, they eschew volumes (i.e., teaspoons and cups) in favor of masses (grams and kilos), which results in greater accuracy ([shaking fist] Ruhlman!) so I'd suggest investing $20 in a kitchen scale, too. It's a chunk of money to invest along with the book, but it's a helluva lot cheaper than enrolling in the CIA.

I'd be interested in hearing about other people's thoughts on essential cookbooks, which is my subtle way of saying, "Please leave a comment."