Your meat is marketing

Pax Arcana

Most of you did not have the privilege to attend Her Majesty’s Royal Academy of Butchery and Meatballing, so I imagine you may be a bit confused about the many different cuts of meat. I’m sure you’ve heard of T-bones, filet mignons, New York strips, ribeyes, top sirloin, chuck roast, rump roast, brisket, flank steak, blade steak, tenderloin, and other cuts of beef, but do you have any idea how they came to be?

After all, there are a million different ways to slice a cow. And as explained by my main man Bourdain, French butchers have an entirely different way of doing it than Americans. I’m sure the Japanese have their own way, which probably requires a blindfold, a samurai sword, and a monkey dressed like a space robot.

The bottom line is that dead cows don’t come with perforations on their insides to show you how to cut them apart. Someone has to actually figure it out.

The New York Times has an interesting article on how the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is using a test kitchen to “invent” new cuts of beef in order to boost sales. For example, test kitchen researchers recently came up with something called “the Denver steak,” which is carved from part of the normally used for ground beef:

The Denver was invented after meat and marketing experts spent more than $1.5 million and five years on the largest study anyone had ever done on the edible anatomy of a steer.

The point was to increase the $15.5 billion a year that people spend at the supermarket buying beef. The association thinks consumers may pay $5.99 a pound for a Denver steak. As ground beef, it’s about $2.99.

“This has been an evolution in the way we think about taking apart that beef carcass,” said Chris Calkins, a University of Nebraska professor who was part of the muscle study. “It’s a profound shift.”

So yes, your grilling options are currently being conjured by multimillion dollar marketing studies. And no, it’s nothing to get all worked up about. After all, London Broil is just a fancy name for flank steak invented by butchers to sell cheap cuts of meat.

Besides, I don’t see why anyone would shy away from the intersection of meat and marketing. For example, I think meat-based business cards are the coolest thing anyone has ever invented. Unless you do a lot of business with cows or people in India, obviously.

Same Cow, No Matter How You Slice It? [NYT]
Meat Cards [Home]

Friday Random 10: Killer Pigs Edition

Pax Arcana

Free range pigs are better for people because modern industrial agricultural practices that shove dozens of animals into tiny cages only breed disease and unhealthy meat.

Or not, according to Texas State University professor James McWilliams — who says allowing pigs to roam happily before slaughter will actually lead to less healthy pork chops:

The study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that brought these findings to light last year sampled more than 600 pigs in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. It discovered not only higher rates of salmonella in free-range pigs (54 percent versus 39 percent) but also greater levels of the pathogen toxoplasma (6.8 percent versus 1.1 percent) and, most alarming, two free-range pigs that carried the parasite trichina (as opposed to zero for confined pigs). For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.

The reason, he says, is that free range pigs come in contact with rodents, cats, and other things that carry diseases that are carefully controlled within the industrial pig piles that produce most of our pork. Furthermore, the idea that free range=natural is fairly easily debunked — as free range animals are generally kept in managed containment areas designed to produce a particular blend of characteristics from the final product:

Free range is ultimately an arbitrary point between the wild and the domesticated. That this arbitrary point is tricky business should come as no surprise. The long history of animal husbandry has been a fervent quest toward intensified control. Free-range pork boldly countered this quest, throwing it into partial reverse. The problem was that it went far enough to expose animals to diseases but not far enough to render the flesh truly wild. What people taste when they eat free range is a result not so much of nature but of human decision.

I think these arguments make a lot of sense. But then he ruins it with this:

After all, if clean and humane methods of production cannot be developed, there’s only one ethical choice left for the conscientious consumer: a pork-free diet.

THAT’S IT. GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN.

The Songs:

Sea Legs — The Shins
Finer Feelings — Spoon
El Scorcho — Weezer
Every Picture Tells a Story — Rod Stewart
Anytime – My Morning Jacket
Come Together — The Beatles
Watch the Tapes — LCD Soundsystem
Fame and Fortune — Mission of Burma
Seen Your Video — The Replacements
Blitzkreig Bop — The Ramones

Bonus Video:

Woodfriend – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (Live)

The Rules: The Friday Random 10 is exactly that — random. We open up our iTunes, set the thing on shuffle, and listen to 10 songs. We are not permitted to skip any out of embarrassment or fear of redundancy. Commenters are encouraged to post their own.

Pour yourself a bowl of FAIL flakes

Pax Arcana

There’s an old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. There’s another old saying that the Japs are crazier than a tub full of boiled possums.

Some ideas just lose their flavor over time.

So thank God for cookbook author Giulia Melucci, whose new book “I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti,” strides valiantly on to the cutting edge of 1994. Basically it’s about how Melucci dated a bunch of dudes and then ate stuff:

You could call the book “Sex and the City” with recipes, and Ms. Melucci would agree — except, as she points out, with her it wasn’t ever about going to the hottest restaurant, it was about going to the best one; she isn’t about partying because she doesn’t stay out that late; and, unlike the “Sex and the City” girls, she cooks. Her romantic adventures in the book are interspersed with recipes like “Morning After Pumpkin Bread” and “Ineffectual Eggplant Parmigiana” (“Serves the two of you plus the three people you wish were there to keep the conversation going”).

In this age of perennial self-analysis and mass media run amok, it’s about time someone stood on the precipice of the next generation and screamed to the heavens one immortal truth:

WOMEN SHOULD ALWAYS EAT THEIR FEELINGS

At Home With Giulia Melucci [NYT]

Monday food for thought: Ratio

Pax Arcana

I enjoy cooking, which means I must be some kind of homo fruitcake communist — albeit one with a very satisfied wife*.

Sometimes people ask me why I like cooking so much. I tell them it’s because I consider it a creative exercise — and I find creative exercises relaxing. (That’s also why I have built an army of anatomically correct Liz Phair figurines out of papier mache. Well, partly.)

This line of reasoning is sometimes lost on people. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to think that cooking means finding a recipe and following instructions. By that reckoning, the best cooks in the world would just be those with the most encyclopedic memories.

This is completely wrong. However, you do have to build up a certain foundation of techniques and vocabulary before you can really start playing around and getting creative in the kitchen.

That’s why I love the idea behind Michael Ruhlman’s new book, Ratio. In it, he examines how a fundamental understanding of certain key ratios can be the springboard to a deeper understanding and appreciation for cooking:

I feel confident in saying there is no book like it, that it’s among the first to explore cooking in this way, cooking by understanding not a cup of this and teaspoon of that but how the proportions of major ingredients relative to the other ingredients make one preparation pasta and another preparation cake.

I like the bread dough ratio mentioned in the video (5 parts flour, 3 parts water) because it shows how a ratio takes the mysterious art of bread baking, and by paring it down to the essential balance of two ingredients, renders it the opposite of mysterious, and therefore, I hope, not so intimidating. With this bread dough ratio, you don’t have a single recipe, you have a thousand. Ratios are the launching point for infinite variations.

I love this concept. I love it so much I want to drizzle it with three parts olive oil and one part sherry vinegar and just shove the whole thing in my mouth.

*Except when I accidentally make pepper spray

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking [Ruhlman]

The New York Dolls will bring us together

Pax Arcana

The New York Dolls are one of the most influential bands of the rock and roll era — arguably the earliest progenitors of both punk and glam rock.

They are also the bridge that brings far flung enemies together.

Consider the case of Anthony Bourdain — irrascible travel show host and member in good standing of the Pax Arcana pantheon of greatness — and squawky dog food peddler and sloppy joe connoisseur Rachael Ray. For years, Ray has been the preeminent receiver of Bourdain’s sour scorn for all things dumbed-down in the food world.

(Basically, Bourdain is pissed that smart, sophisticated food shows like Molto Mario were unceremoniously dropped from the Food Network in favor of saccharine lightweight fare like Ray’s 30 Minute Meals and the abysmal Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee, who we have previously described as a “witless cyborg swamp monster.” Ray catches most of the shit from Bourdain in part because she has been a breakout success, but also because her relentlessly chipper personality is the perfect foil for Bourdain’s gloomy demeanor.)

But then Bourdain heard that Ray — who is apparently a huge music fan — was hosting yet another SXSW party this year. And that her guest list included the New York Dolls. On his Facebook page, Bourdain lamented that Ray also loved a band he considers central to his musical sensibilities:

“This development … following hot on the heels of Rachael saying nice things about me on ‘Nightline’ [she told interviewer Cynthia McFadden that she “absolutely loves” Bourdain and has “an enormous amount of respect” for him] has caused me no small amount of confusion, panic and misery. I don’t know whether to go out and shoot a puppy, or send Rachael a fruit basket. It just does me no good at all to think of Rachael as a Dolls fan. It’s really only a matter of time now until my daughter looks up from her grilled cheese and says ‘Yummo!!’”

Ray responded by sending Bourdain an actual fruit basket. Bourdain then posted a sincere note on his Travel Channel blog thanking her, and edging ever closer toward rapprochement:

My daughter quickly tore into the grapes, saving me from the humiliating business of doing an impromptu “Dancy Dance” from Yo Gabba Gabba (a strategy that has been known to work in situations of similar extremis). I thank you for your kindness to someone who has shown you no good reason for such a thing, your good humor — and for appreciating the New York Dolls.

Now, I’ve never hated Rachael Ray as much as Bourdain (or half of the other people I’ve known), but frankly I don’t know whether to feel joy or remorse at this development. As much as I love to see old enemies bury the hatchet, very few have ever wielded that hatchet quite as well as Bourdain. It was a joy to watch.

At least we still Guy Fieri to shit on. Man, fuck that guy.

Dear Rachael [Bourdain Blog]
Anthony Bourdain stirs up trouble with Rachael Ray [Daily News]

How to stop the egg smell

Pax Arcana

Atlantic Monthly food writer Corby Kummer — a demi-god of the Pax Arcana celestial hierarchy — hates that the smell of freshly prepared coffee is now forced to compete with the eggy scent of breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks.

I don’t share his opinion, but OK.

Anyway, Kummer reports that Starbucks has come up with an intriguing solution to the problem:

Starbucks’s food scientists mixed Parmesan cheese with the egg to prevent the smell from seeping into the stores and overwhelming the smell of coffee.

I welcome any new use of the one irreplaceable cheese, and have a sinking feeling that Starbucks isn’t using Parmigiano-Reggiano, which could help the cheese consortium’s own underwater problems. But the king of cheese as an egg deodorizer rather than what I know it as, an ideal egg enhancer? Smells funny to me.

My guess is that parmesan — even the low-grade stuff Starbucks uses — probably does more to mask the sour flavor notes of pre-prepared eggs scramblets than covering up the egg smell. But what do I know? I’m just a humble triathlete with a Ph.D. in quantum physics and a 100 foot yacht. OK, I’m none of those things but man — how awesome would that be?

A New Use For the King of Cheese? [Corby's Fresh Feeds]

May God have mercy on your seasonings

Pax Arcana

Have you ever thought that kosher salt, despite possessing a near-perfect balance of size, shape, and texture, was just too jewy or something?

If so, you’re an idiot. And congratulations, idiot, now you have options!

Meet Joe Godlewski, who was just durned tired of hearing all those fancy pants chefs on the TV recommending kosher salt:

“I said, ‘What the heck’s the matter with Christian salt?’” Godlewski said, sipping a beer in the living room of his home in unincorporated Cresaptown, a western Maryland mountain community.

By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available at http://www.memphi.net, the Web site of Memphis, Tenn.-based seasonings manufacturer Ingredients Corporation of America.

Blessed Christian Salt will be blessed by an Episcopal minister, Godlewski says, and at least some of his highly unlikely profits will go to Christian charities. Meanwhile, at least one rabbi says Godlewski completely misunderstands why kosher salt is called kosher salt. It’s not that it’s been blessed by a rabbi, says Sholem Fishbane:

He said coarse-grained kosher salt is named for the way in which it was traditionally used – to draw blood from freshly butchered meat, because Jewish law prohibits consuming blood. Chefs often favor kosher salt because it’s crunchy and easy to pinch.

Still, though, Godlewski wants more Jesus on your french fries:

“This is about keeping Christianity in front of the public so that it doesn’t die. I want to keep Christianity on the table, in the household, however I can do it.”

See, it’s not that Godlewski is explicitly anti-Jewish. He’s just pro-Christian. Frankly I don’t see anything wrong with his approach.

Oh wait a minute. Scratch that:

If the salt takes off, Godlewski plans an entire line of Christian-branded foods, including rye bread, bagels and pickles.

I wonder if the rye bread is baked over a burning cross.

Christian salt seller hopes to shake up market [Baltimore Examiner via Boing Boing]

Cooking is important

Pax Arcana

Last night I made one of the sparkly and art deco Mrs. Pax Arcana’s favorite dinners — baked orzo with shrimp and feta cheese. It is a fantastically easy thing to make and requires very few ingredients from outside an average pantry, yet the simple combination of crushed tomatoes, tangy feta, olive oil, white wine, garlic, shrimp, and tiny nuggets of pasta is among the tastiest things on earth.

That I am fond of cooking surprises some people. Yes, I look like the president of the young Republicans. Yes, I watch baseball and drink beer –  occasionally scratching my balls in the process. Yes, I have a Hungarian manservant who would gladly prepare my dinners upon request.

But to me, cooking is a fundamental human activity — as much as speaking, singing or dancing. According to one Harvard professor, it’s even more than that.

In a recent address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Dr. Richard Wrangham argued that cooking is more than just a commonality of experience between human cultures. Instead, it is the thing that underpins much of human evolution.

I could not attend the conference since my own group, the Grand Council of the Great and Serious Men of Science, convened on the same day to elect a new Steward of the Bunsen Burners (congratulations Dr. Himmelstump!) — but the Economist summed it up this way:

Humans became human, as it were, with the emergence 1.8m years ago of a species called Homo erectus. This had a skeleton much like modern man’s—a big, brain-filled skull and a narrow pelvis and rib cage, which imply a small abdomen and thus a small gut. Hitherto, the explanation for this shift from the smaller skulls and wider pelvises of man’s apelike ancestors has been a shift from a vegetable-based diet to a meat-based one. Meat has more calories than plant matter, the theory went. A smaller gut could therefore support a larger brain.

Dr Wrangham disagrees. When you do the sums, he argues, raw meat is still insufficient to bridge the gap. He points out that even modern “raw foodists”, members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weight—and they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved.

Cooking, on the other hand, made meat more easily digestible — allowing humans to absorb more calories and nutrients with less substance. Cooked food is also digested almost entirely in the stomach and small intestine, where it can be absorbed easily — whereas only about 50% of raw food is absorbed there.

There’s also the fact that cooking makes food softer, and therefore easier for the body to process:

Another telling experiment, conducted on rats, did not rely on cooking. Rather the experimenters ground up food pellets and then recompacted them to make them softer. Rats fed on the softer pellets weighed 30% more after 26 weeks than those fed the same weight of standard pellets. The difference was because of the lower cost of digestion.

In fact, Wrangham thinks our current obesity problem has less to do with overeating than with the pervasive softness of processed foods. So once again, the bottom line is to PUT THE VELVEETA DOWN, FATTY.

What’s cooking? [Economist]

Even our cook books are getting fat

Pax Arcana

For those who are clueless in the kitchen — insert slow nod with one eyebrow lifted at Father Scott  — there is no better resource for self-education than The Joy of Cooking.

First published in 1931, The Joy of Cooking is basically the gold standard of American recipe volumes. It won’t have saffron and demi glace braised lamb’s tongue, but it will show you how to cook a brisket or bake a strawberry/rhubarb pie.

But according to nutrition researchers, the recipes in The Joy of Cooking have gotten just as fat as we have:

Published as a letter Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the report examined 18 classic recipes found in seven editions of the book from 1936 to 2006. It found that calorie counts for 14 of the recipes have ballooned by an average of 928 calories, or 44%, per recipe. And serving sizes have grown as well.Take beef stroganoff: In the 1997 edition, the recipe called for three tablespoons of sour cream. The 2006 edition calls for one cup.

Then there’s waffles: In 1997, the basic recipe made 12 six-inch waffles; in 2006, the same ingredients made about six waffles.

Overall, the scientists found, changes in ingredients and serving sizes led to a 63% increase in calories per serving in 17 of the recipes between 1936 and 2006.

In my opinion, the problem here is not that The Joy of Cooking is publishing more fattening recipes. The problem is that they are pretending they are the same recipes that have always been there. That’s why I prefer a little-known cookbook called Modern Applaychian Cookery and Taxidurmy: Furst Addition. Did you know you can suck the cream out of a Twinkie with a syringe and replace it with a slurry of mayonnaise and diced Funyuns? It’s true! Six or seven of those and you’re ready to meet the workday, my friend.

‘Joy of Cooking’ or ‘Joy of Obesity?’ [LA Times]

No, your kid is not allergic (probably)

Pax Arcana

In every classroom in every elementary school across the entire nation, your children sit in mortal danger of spiraling into a terrible, violent death. The cause for alarm? Peanuts. And wheat. And milk. And cherries. And glucose. And shellfish. And anything else that can accurately be described as “food.”

Don’t get me wrong. Food allergies exist, and can be very dangerous. Even deadly.

But they are also incredibly rare. And there is no way in hell they affect as many people as it appears.

For long time, I thought parents were simply overreacting to a perception epidemic — that they were claiming food allergies simply to guard against the worst-case scenario. Or they were simply gaming the system to ensure that little Schuyler didn’t ingest anything in school that mommy wouldn’t approve of.

But still, I’ve met more than my share of young parents whose children have legitimately tested positive for certain types of allergies. What is to explain this?

The answer may be partly environmental or biological. But also, according to this, it appears some food allergy tests may be total bullshit:

The culprit appears to be the widespread use of simple blood tests for antibodies that could signal a reaction to food. The tests have emerged as a quick, convenient alternative to uncomfortable skin testing and time-consuming “food challenge” tests, which measure a child’s reaction to eating certain foods under a doctor’s supervision.

While the blood tests can help doctors identify potentially risky foods, they aren’t always reliable. A 2007 issue of The Annals of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology reported on research at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, finding that blood allergy tests could both under- and overestimate the body’s immune response. A 2003 report in Pediatrics said a positive result on a blood allergy test correlated with a real-world food allergy in fewer than half the cases.

In one case mentioned in the article, a young boy was given a feeding tube (!!!) because blood tests indicated he was allergic to just about everything. Doctors gave the kid the old taste test and found at least 20 types of food he could eat.

And then there’s the common doctor’s warning against giving your kid peanuts and other common allergenic foods. A 2008 study of 10,000 British babies found that exposure to peanuts lowered the incidence of allergies.

Some doctors even advise against giving your kids food allergy blood tests, because they are more likely to return false positives than actually spot a problem.

If only there was some foolproof way to know whether you or your kid is actually allergic to food.

“The only true test of whether you’re allergic to a food or not is whether you can eat it and not react to it,” said Dr. David Fleischer, an assistant professor of pediatrics at National Jewish Health.

Well okay then, Dr. Smarty Pants.

Telling Food Allergies From False Alarms [NYT]