Food – Page 22 – The Hungry Philosopher

A recent law aiming to protect the quality of French food requires restaurants to identify dishes that are cooked to order (not frozen or pre-made). Philosophically, the question of what makes something “homemade” is worth considering as is the new logo (a casserole dish with a house roof) that will alert consumers.

The basic claim was that “homemade” supports local produce and labor needed to cut, chop and peel the local produce in addition to supporting the culinary craft. The negotiated law however, allows frozen and packaged produce and according to critics undermines the initial intent. The law differentiates and requires restauranteurs to identify industrially produced from locally crafted food. But the differentiation itself is proving difficult. Hence, the controversy.

How do we personally identify a home-made dish? Last night we had grilled salmon with lemon, garlic butter, salad and bread sticks. The salad was prepackaged, as was the bread sticks, we grilled the salmon and the mixed the butter with lemon zest, lemon juice and a clove a garlic. We also had brownies and ice-cream for desert made from a prepackaged mix. Was that a homemade meal? I don’t know. Our tolerance for industrial food products, perhaps particularly in the U.S. has risen to an almost naturalized level. When we go out, do we expect a custom made dinner? When so many of our favorite restaurants are represented in the freezer section of the local grocery stores, the myth of a local customized dinner is not only shattered but celebrated. What is the line between convenience and craft? Shouldn’t there be a line? The battle over standardization and industrialization against craft and localization takes place on our dinner plate every night. Who are we as 21st century consumers?

What is at stake in the “homemade” logo is the responsibility of thoughtful, aware and discerning consumption. I wonder if someone is planning to study consumer behavior related to the new logo. Will customers choose the identified “homemade” more? Would you or I?

The joys of Consuming (and capitalizing) Chance

July 10, 20142 Comments

http://www.npr.org/books/titles/151450134/how-the-hot-dog-found-its-bun-accidental-discoveries-and-unexpected-inspirations

Here’s my book report of the week on “How the Hot Dog Found its Bun” by Josh Chetwynd. The book takes us on a historical food tour of discovery that adds magic and meaning to mundane small meals like hotdogs, nachos, Caesar salad, Cobb salad, Mcdonald’s Filet o’ Fish and Tempura. Each is a lesson in cultural collisions (like Tempura, Chimichangas, nachos and Chicken Tika Masala), business (in the case of the Mcdonald’s fish filet sandwich) , morality (in the case of graham crackers, PEZ the anti-smoking mint), efficiency (like cookies and cream ice-cream or nutella) and such. All these short “origin” stories are worth the read alone.

For me, the theme of serendipity, chance and luck that tied the stories loosely together made for a larger philosophical claim: To be open and willing to convert the disruption of falling sales on Friday or unexpectedly late restaurant patrons, into something new and delicious. To turn a mistake (Molten Lava Cake) into something cherished. To defy the discomfort of an accident and turn it into luck. Its a difficult lesson to hold on to at the moment when we’re searching for a way out of an embarrassing mistake or of being unprepared, as window into something delicious. We do this everyday when we substitute ingredients with what we have sitting in the fridge. Yesterday, I sprinkled feta cheese over my chicken enchiladas with salsa verde…..the tart sharpness of the feta was so yummy with the hot bite of green chilies, cilantro and tomatillos. In my mental recipe database, what was accidental just turned into intentional……and my very own discovery. Small victories and joys.

Here is something I learned about the history of serendipity from the book besides a wonderful collection of surprising food stories.

Behind these lucky discoveries are usually acts of serendipity, a concept first coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. He’d read a book about Serendip (modern-day Sri Lanka) called The Three Princes of Serendip and was fascinated by the title characters, who “were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” Using that quote as a definition, he started describing some of his work as serendipity.

What makes serendipity so fascinating is the combination of the lucky find and the smarts (or to use Walpole’s fancier term sagacity) to capitalize on the breakthrough. As Albert Einstein once said about discovery: ” The really valuable factor is intuition….There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.” The intuition to turn what looks like a blunder into something special comes up often throughout this book.”

Wishing all of you Good-Luck (as chance favors the prepared..according to Luis Pasteur) and happy reading,

The Hungry Philosopher

Happy 86th Birthday Sliced Bread! (and, Poem on the Fridge) on Writer’s Almanac

July 7, 2014Leave a comment

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2358285/The-greatest-thing—A-look-history-sliced-bread-jeweler-inventor-celebrates-85th-anniversary.html

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Poem on the Fridge

by Paul Hostovsky

The refrigerator is the highest honor
a poem can aspire to. The ultimate
publication. As close to food as words
can come. And this refrigerator poem
is honored to be here beneath its own
refrigerator magnet, which feels like a medal
pinned to its lapel. Stop here a moment
and listen to the poem humming to itself,
like a refrigerator itself, the song in its head
full of crisp, perishable notes that wither in air,
the words to the song lined up here like
a dispensary full of indispensable details:
a jar of corrugated green pickles, an array
of headless shrimp, fiery maraschino cherries,
a fruit salad, veggie platter, assortments of
cheeses and chilled French wines, a pink
bottle of amoxicillin: the poem is infectious.
It’s having a party. The music, the revelry,
is seeping through this white door.

“Poem on the Fridge” by Paul Hostovsky from Selected Poems. © Futurecycle Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Ma’s Kachchi Biriyani

July 1, 2014October 21, 2015Leave a comment

In a previous post entitled “Bored with Biriyani” I had mentioned this dish. Here is my mom’s version of the classic Biriyani. https://hungryphil.com/2014/06/05/bored-with-biryani/

2 lbs goat meat

1 cup yogurt

1TBS ginger

1TBS garlic

1TSP red chili powder

¼ TSP nutmeg

¼ TSP mace

½ TSP white pepper

1 TSP Fennel Seeds

1 TSP Postodana or white poppy seeds

1 TSP salt

8 small whole red potatoes

2 cups sliced shallots (onion) fried in ¾ cup ghee

½ cup combination of pistachios and almonds sliced

1 TBS saffron

¼ cup rose water

6 cups Basmati or Chinigura rice

4 cardamoms

2 sticks of cinnamon

1 bay leaf

½ cup prunes

½ cup dried apricots

Raisins

½ cup milk

½ cup “khoa”, dried milk

Red or Green fresh Chilies

* The key to this recipe is a large pot with a tight fitted lid!

1. Marinate (one hour to overnight) goat meat in yogurt and a grounded mixture of ginger, garlic, chili, nutmeg, mace, pepper, fennel, postodana, salt.

2. Boil potatoes until halfway cooked. Fry lightly in oil until roasted. Red coloring can be added.

3. Soak the dried fruit (prunes and apricots) in milk.

4. Soak saffron in rose water.

5. Fry onions and nuts and raisins until golden in ghee.

6. Boil rice until half cooked in 12 cups of water, cinnamon and cardamom, bay leaf and 2 teaspoons salt.

7. Add strained rice to meat (reserve the water) mix.

Add fried potatoes, Add fried onions and nuts and the ghee (reserve a bit for garnish)…….mix gently.

Add dried fruit and milk….mix gently.

Add ½ saffron and rose water (reserve other half)

Add dried milk powder or mawa

Add reserved water

8. Simmer gently in a tight fitted heavy pot until the liquid evaporates, rice and meat is cooked.

9. Garnish with green chilies, fried onions and remaining saffron water.

Serve with salad, achar/ pickles or raita.

Small Chairs and the Olive Garden Diet of Discomfort

June 30, 2014Leave a comment

Sometime during the late 1980s — no one can pinpoint the exact date — Ron Magruder, the president of the thriving Olive Garden chain of Italian restaurants, received a telephone call from a dissatisfied customer. The call had been patched all the way up to Magruder because it was so……different. The caller, named, Larry, wasn’t complaining about the food or the service or the prices. Instead Larry was upset that he could no longer fit into any of the chairs in his local Olive Garden.

“I had to wait more than an hour and half to get a table,” Larry told Magruder. “But then I found that there wasn’t a single booth or chair where I could sit comfortably.”

Magruder, a heavyset man easily moved to enthusiasm, was sympathetic to Larry’s plaint. And, as president, he could do something about it. He had his staff contact the company that manufactured the chairs for the chain and order a thousand large sized chairs. He then had these distributed, three each, to every Olive Garden restaurant in the nation. It was, as Magruder later told the eminent restaurant business journalist Charles Bernstein, a perfect example of his management philosophy: “We’re going to go the extra mile for any customer, no matter what the situation.”

………the chapter “World Without Boundaries” ends with the conclusion of this story.

About after two months after he first heard from Larry, the customer who had complained about how small all the chairs were in his local Olive Garden restaurant, Ron Magruder, the chain’s president, received another call. It was Larry again. He was calling in response to a follow up query from one of Magruder’s staff. The staff had been busily making sure that all of the chain’s restaurants now had at least three chairs that could accommodate the more amply endowed and had wanted Larry to report what he thought of their efforts.

Well, he was happier now. Indeed, Larry’s message was entirely conciliatory — even thankful. But it wasn’t because of the bigger chairs. It was because of the old small chairs. Largely because of them, Larry explained, he had been spurred to finally confront the extent of his weight problem. Why, in the seven weeks since he had spoken to Magruder, he had lost almost fifty pounds.

The tight little chair — that had been what Larry needed after all.

What a “Gift of the Magi” kind of story!

From a design perspective, the role of small and big chairs in supporting American eating habits are worth noting and from a personal perspective, the story made me change out of my “fat jeans” and into my uncomfortable jeans as incentive to loose those pounds gained over winter. I wonder if this new diet of uncomfortable snug clothing (or chairs) will work? It did for Larry.

The story comes from Fat Land (2003) by Greg Critser.

“Here too the gods dwell”……….

June 26, 2014June 30, 20144 Comments

Heraclitus was warming himself by a stove when a group of visitors arrived hoping to meet the great philosopher and was surprised to see him in such mundane circumstances. Responding to their obvious disappointment, Heraclitus famously announces, “here too the gods dwell.” His simple statement locates meaning…..”here”…….by the stove, by the fire, where we feed and warm our bodies. Heraclitus, reminds his visitors and us that the philosophical self-examined life is not lead apart from everyday needs. In doing so, he shatters the ideality and the celebrity of the tranquil philosopher. Heraclitus’ statement has been closely examined by many scholars, most notably by Martin Heidegger.

I simply invoke this statement as an ancient recognition that the “mundane” is the un-thought, unexamined, unattended, unfelt and that everything, everyone, everyplace harbors the meaningful. A philosophical life is not one of removed, meditative, tranquility apart from human struggle. On the contrary, a philosophical life begins with the simple gesture of warming oneself and attending to the warmth, the fire, the pleasure, the heat, the glow, the light that makes us see, ourselves among and against things in the world.

We can find moments of self-examination and awareness even when we buy a blender or when we boil a pot of pasta. It is ordinary and mundane when I buy the cheapest or most expensive blender with no thought to how it affects my life, it is philosophical when I consider where the blender will live in my home when not in use, why I need it, how often will I use it. Boiling a pot of pasta is ordinary if it becomes an mechanical exercise of producing an efficient dinner. It becomes a human moment when I consider the heat, the water, the pot, the family, the pasta itself, dinner time, the host of variables that converge when I make dinner. This attention doesn’t mean, I’m pausing to ponder….it just means that when I’m boiling pasta, I’m boiling pasta…..I’m attentive and in the moment. Food can be easily be relegated to mundane meaninglessness. That’s why, to me, Heraclitus’ statement that “here too (by the stove) gods dwell” seems so poignant.

Counting calories, intellectualizing, carefully designing menus to meet allergies, nutrition, brand etc, is not the attention I’m talking about. Anthony Bourdain describes the moment of awareness and successful eating in Medium Raw (2011), as follows,

If cooking professionally is about control, eating successfully should be about submission, about easily and without thinking giving yourself over to whatever dream they’d like you to share. In the best-case scenario, you shouldn’t be intellectualizing what you’re eating while you’re eating it. You shouldn’t be noticing things at all. You should be pleasingly oblivious to the movements of the servers in the dining area and bus stations, only dimly aware of the passage of time. Taking pictures of your food as it arrives — or, worse, jotting down brief descriptions for your blog entry later — is missing the point entirely. You shouldn’t be forced to think at all. Only feel.

I am guilty of taking pictures and blogging…..but I also remember many moments, the best moments when I completely forgot to do so and just enjoyed what was placed before me. Philosophical self-awareness includes the Bourdain receptive sense of giving yourself over to your needs and wants as it meets what is given. It may seem like a contradiction, how can one be both self-aware and self-negating? But that edge between thinking and feeling, control and reception is the philosophical moment of living of life of meaning, whether buying a blender or boiling a pot of pasta. Think and feel. Heraclitus, wasn’t just thinking. He was feeling the heat.

DHUA’S CHICKEN PULAO (American Kitchen Update)

June 24, 2014October 7, 20141 Comment

Chicken 1

Yogurt ¼ cup

Onion Puree 2 tbs

Ginger Paste 1 tbs

Garlic Paste 1 tsp

Mace ¼ tsp

Nutmeg ¼ tsp

Salt 1 tsp

Cardamom 3 or 4

Cinnamon ½ inch stick

Bay leaf 1

Shan Morog Pulao or Biriyani spice 1 tsp

Dried Plum/ Prunes 6 or 7

Butter / Ghee 4 tbs

Eggs 6

Potatoes 4

Onions/Shallots 1 cup (sliced and fried)

Saffron 1 tsp

Rose Water 1 tbs

Vinegar 1 tsp

Rice 2 ½ cups

Green chilies 7/8

1. Quarter chicken and marinate at least half an hour in yogurt, onion, ginger, garlic, mace, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, bayleaf, plums, Shan Biriyani spice and 1 tablespoon ghee.

2. Soak saffron in rose water.

3. Half potatoes. Boil potatoes and eggs.

4. Lightly fry eggs and potatoes (add yellow coloring, if desired)

5. Fry onions or shallots until golden brown. Reserve a portion of fried onions for garnish.

6. Add 1 tsp vinegar and another tbs ghee to marinated chicken and simmer for 20 minutes until liquid is reduced. Add ½ tsp sugar.

7. Rinse and strain the rice.

8. Heat on tbs of ghee, add rice and ½ tsp salt, cook until opaque.

9. Add 5 cups of hot water to rice. Cook until half done.

10. Add half cooked rice to chicken. Stir. Add more water if needed to fully cook rice.

11. Add potatoes, eggs and green chilies.

12. Stir in saffron infused rose water and garnish with fried shallots. Serve.

YUM! Thank You, Dhua for sharing your recipe!

RECIPE UPDATE!

I tried the recipe recently and here a few notes of adjustment for the American kitchen.

1. I used two cornish hens quartered and skinned instead of one regular roast chicken.

2. Instead of whole spices that my daughters do not appreciate biting into, I added 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and cardamom each.

3. I used 4 medium yellow potatoes (halved).

4. I added 6 cups of water. The rice was almost done by the time I added it to the chicken.

5. I added another tablespoon of ghee and simmered until the oil separated from the chicken in order to gently fry the pieces in the spices.

6. I also added 1 teaspoon of salt in the rice water.

It was moist, delicious and so aromatic with the spices, the rose water and the saffron. Truly a special occasion treat!

Jackfruit, revealed

June 23, 2014Leave a comment

First, a confession. (For those of you who enjoy jackfruit, I apologize if my comments offend you.)

I’m not the biggest fan of jackfruit……..something about the heavy scent, stinging sweet taste and slimy mouth feel. Occasionally, I have enjoyed a piece or two of the fleshy sweetness that seems to cross a banana, mango and a taste totally its own. Despite my ambivalent enjoyment, the jackfruit is a marvel. One fruit can feed many, the skin and husk is used as feed for livestock, the trees are beautiful and majestic, the seeds can be roasted and eaten like nuts or cooked like potatoes, and the wood of the tree is highly prized. No wonder its the national fruit of Bangladesh. Here is a demonstration of how its opened by Tofajjal Hossain in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

These giant fruits hang from the trunk of big trees. The thump when tapped and change in color to light green and speckled yellow show when its ready to eat.

The skin is prickly. Almost jurassic looking. The outside hints at the many pods hiding within.

First, he cut a line down the middle with a knife.

Split open to reveal in soft interior.

Once the interior is exposed, he scoops out the individual pods.

The seeds are dried, roasted and cooked.

Visually, the fruit is fascinating in its pattern, color and texture. The contrast between interior and exterior is dramatic, as is the cushioned natural packaging of each pod. In the context of poverty, it has the look of plenty, of generous sharing and of multiple uses. Despite its special taste, I am visually drawn. Perhaps, there’s a design lesson here………. in its ability to combine functionalism, surprise, sharing and transformation.

Eating Glocal

June 14, 2014June 14, 2014Leave a comment

My lunch in Dhaka, Bangladesh today. It was surprisingly good. Fried chicken meets South Asia…chopped, stir fried with onions, green chilies, cilantro and served with rice. Did it taste like something from KFC? Not really. But, the packaging insisted otherwise. By the end of the meal I was almost convinced that it was an “authentic” KFC experience. Share your experiences of eating “glocal.” What did you have? Was it good?

The Self-Examined Appetite

June 6, 2014June 6, 2014Leave a comment

“To put it concretely, I am suggesting that critical self-awareness about food relates in fundamental ways to central issues of personal meaning in the life course of any person. From childhood onward, our ability to control what we eat, or whether we eat at all, is the single, most basic aspect of life in which we have full power to assert autonomy. When a young child refuses food, or spits out something disliked, he or she is taking a first important step toward self-determination. Viewed in this philosophical light, every child’s highchair can be seen as the site of a small-scale struggle for existential freedom.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from How We Eat by Leon Rappoport (ECW Press, 2003).

The quote also reminds me of an earlier blog post (forgive the self-reference) about Yummy Wet Noodles.

Rappoport argues that food habits as a form of self examination negotiate competing ideologies of hedonism, spiritualism and nutritionism. Each food choice contains our philosophical comportment towards pleasure, morality and health. This choice changes in response to our existential struggles. For example, when we are young we look more to the pleasure of eating, as we age we become more attuned the needs of our dying body and in between, we struggle with social conformity. The child in a highchair throwing or sharing food is taking the first steps towards autonomy, in how he/she responds to what is given. How we eat, as the title of the book suggests, determines how we individually and autonomously receive the world and its offerings. In examining our food habits we examine our style of being in the world.

There were so many highlights in the book that I want to briefly mention. Related to childhood autonomy there is a section that follows the in utero development of taste, as well as breast milk as the medium of early tastes. There is also a discussion about gendering of food and the determination that chicken and oranges are bi-sexual. Marketing is a strange reductive activity. The discussion of war rations as possibly predictive of future trends, as well as historical references to Betty Crocker and others, made the book both entertaining and fascinating.

In the spirit of self-examination (and confession) I had a breaded chicken sandwich for lunch today. It was definitely a weak decision fueled by pleasure over spirituality or nutrition. I was looking for something, quick and easy in my freezer. It was easy to eat on the porch on a beautiful Indiana summer day while I read my book on how to eat. It made me think of my kids and nephews, who could live on chicken nuggets. I remember the moments when I popped a few in my mouth as I handed them their plate. Its a familiar taste. Certainly not a gourmet meal. Being self-reflective about what we eat doesn’t require a constant stream of deeply critiqued and crafted meals, it just requires receptivity, to yourself and your connection to others. Maybe, the chicken sandwich wasn’t a weak decision after all.

Category: Food

(De)sign for Homemade

The joys of Consuming (and capitalizing) Chance

Happy 86th Birthday Sliced Bread! (and, Poem on the Fridge) on Writer’s Almanac

Poem on the Fridge

Ma’s Kachchi Biriyani

Small Chairs and the Olive Garden Diet of Discomfort

“Here too the gods dwell”……….

DHUA’S CHICKEN PULAO (American Kitchen Update)

Jackfruit, revealed

Eating Glocal

The Self-Examined Appetite

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