Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 022

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25 January 2016

Combination platter

  1. For starters, this week on the podcast, a second helping from 2015: talking to Anissa Helou at Koshari Street in Lonodn about koshari and street food.
  2. Somehow everybody seems to be dissecting “Indian” food. This time, it’s the turn of Shylashri Shankar to trace the journey From An Imperial To A National Cuisine.
  3. And if that makes you long for different ways of eating rice, The Old Foodie has lined up a selection of Variations on a Theme of Fried Rice.
  4. Sticking with cereals, at last, someone who actually understands the different hulled and heirloom wheats.

There’ll be another second helping next week. Let me know if there’s anything you think should be heard again. And then, back to normal programming.

Podcasts

Egyptian street food in London Second helpings from Eat This Podcast 2015

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koshariAs promised, another second helping from one of 2015’s episodes, before we get to the new stuff. This time, I’m remembering my trip to the little place in St Martin’s Lane in London that serves a couture version of koshari, the iconic street food of Egypt. And one trouble with these second helpings is that there’s not much new to say about the topic or the episode, so I’ll just point you to the full episode from March 2015 and let you explore there. (I will also repeat the relevant show notes below).

Speaking of new stuff, a couple of weeks ago, I was depressed about not being able to go to the Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food this year. Thanks to the great generosity of a friend, I was able to go, and the first new episode of the year will be one I recorded there. There wasn’t any tulip bulb soup on offer this time, and perhaps that’s just as well.

Notes

  1. Koshari Street is at 56 At Martin’s Lane, London, WC2N 4EA. And online
  2. Anissa Helou is also online and her book Mediterranean Street Food is still available.
Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 021

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18 January 2016

Dig deep

  1. What ails the British curry restaurant.
  2. Maybe Pushpesh Pant – The chronicler of Indian food – has an answer.
  3. But don’t let Bruce Palling know about Pant inspiring contemporary chefs. Palling says Don’t mess with traditional dishes.
  4. Speaking of traditions, here’s an exhumation and autopsy of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. You can’t keep a good myth down.
  5. Discarding an ill-deserved good reputation is probably just as difficult, but one professor says the sun has set on vitamin D supplements.
  6. Self-promotion slot: I learned about a database that links art and artefacts, many of them kitchen kit.
Extra Matter

The kit in kitchens

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I’m just back from the 3rd Annual Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food, with a bulging notebook and a couple of interviews. While those come to a boil, I wanted to share a wonderful new (to me) website from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. As the website explains:

ALMA links these depictions of pre-industrial objects, dating from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, in paintings and prints to examples of similar material objects. The ALMA database can be searched extensively for the relation between object and depiction. Research results are published in the ALMA showcases.

At the Symposium Dr Alexandra Gaba-van Dongen presented a selection of examples from the ALMA showcase, including this thorough examination of some Van Gogh still-lifes.

Fascinating stuff, that I think could be a very useful resource for anyone interested in food culture as depicted in art.

Extra Matter

Just Mayo lives

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IN late December 2015, ((Sorry, I missed it then.)) the Food and Drug Administration agreed to let Hampton Creek call its eggless emulsion of fats and liquids Just Mayo, as long as the company also tweaked the label to comply with other rules. For one, the nutrition guidelines on the new label are in a black box, just as they are supposed to be. ((Peter Hertzmann mentioned this in our podcast on the topic.)) Also gone, for reasons unexplained, the words Dairy-free, Lactose-free and kosher. Here’s hoping no lactose-intolerant observant Jews are affected.

One big change is that the label now describes the contents of the jar as a “spread & dressing”. The old label didn’t actually have such a description. Maybe some people thought is was, er, just mayo.

And that’s the other change. Hampton Creek has explained that just relates to “justice,” rather than “only”. As the New York Times explained:

[T]he label will define the word “just” in the brand name to mean “guided by reason, justice and fairness” instead of suggesting that it was an exact replica of mayonnaise.

And, as I pointed out last November, all this is about an ingredient present in such small quantities that it doesn’t even figure on the label. I wonder whether Vegenaise will now change it’s brand. Not if it listens to Josh Tetrick:

“Number one, never use the word ‘vegan,’”