Flash in the Pan

Labels: calories, diets, scales

Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of China's food and drug administration from 1998 to mid-2005, was removed from the position. The reason? Bribery and corruption. And on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to the charges, he was given a death sentence.

Before writing this off as Chinese indifference to the individual and having an unbalanced view of justice, realize that this situation with bad products hitting the market has been serious. For all the problems the U.S. has seen with Chinese food imports and deadly pet food, it's nothing compared with the deaths that China has experienced as the result of bad antibiotics and drugs. Then a key ingredient in antifreeze appeared in cough syrup and tooth paste shipped to Central and South America, with 100 dying last year in Panama alone, according to the New York Times account. (However, USA Today puts the number at 51, once again showing the collective objective accuracy that is the United States press.)

Zheng got richer to the tune of $832,000 ($850,000, according to the Times), not that it will do him any good now. China is under huge pressure to reform its safety record. According to USA Today, "Zheng's sentence requires review by a higher court and approval by China's highest judicial panel before he can be executed."

It could be that this is window dressing, as USA Today reports:

Qiu Feng, an independent scholar and columnist for China Newsweek magazine, wrote on the website Southcn.com that Zheng's sentence would do little to end deeply entrenched graft.

There's also a problem of counterfeit food that the papers and some other accounts mention in passing. Counterfeiting of products is an enormous problem, and one of the big categories is in food, particularly packaged Asian foods. Those simply won't be touched by improved official inspections because, by definition, counterfeit products are outside the official manufacturing and inspection systems. The deaths and injuries we've seen will likely to continue until counterfeiting itself is reduced, separately from increasing regulation.

Labels: Asian, China, Chinese, counterfeit, food safety, government

Odd stories from the previous week:

• Where's the Beef? EwwwThe company that owns Carl's Jr. and Hardee's chains is suing Jack in the Box for suggesting that their Angus burgers come from bovine anus. (Miami Herald)


• WWI - Wheelchairing While Intoxicated A wheelchair-bound German man decided to drive himself home after a party in Pennsylvania - and a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. No news as to whether the police checked if he could roll a straight line. (Independent Online)


• Think of the Size of the Straw The Coca-Cola Company broke the previous world record for an ice-cream float. Theirs was 10 tons, sitting in a 15-foot high glass. But they didn't let the spectators consumer it ... spoil sports. (RedOrbit)


• McDonald's in a McSniff The Oxford English Dictionary defines a McJob "an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects." McDonald's is taking offense and launching a petition to change the definition. Next step is redefining the word food to mean "the McStuff they sell at McDonalds." (ABC News Online)


• But It's Just a Go Cup An Atlanta package store gets into trouble for selling cups of ice along with bottles of liquor at the drive-up window. The Georgia Alcohol Dealer's Association thinks it's ok so long as the cups have lids. (KMGC, Channel 7 in Denver)


• Quick, Pass the Fire A Cornish man claims a world record for sleep deprivation for saying awake 11 days and nights. He attributes his ability to a "Stone Age" diet of raw food. No wonder prehistoric people discovered fire - they were desperate for a good nap. (Anova)

Labels: alcohol, driving, McDonald's, raw, sleep, weird

There’s a lot to recommend the Premier food container line from Rubbermaid – you can heat them in a microwave, the smooth inside surface doesn’t take on food stains (think tomato sauce) the way many containers do, and it’s absolutely clear, so you can get a better sense of the state of your leftovers.

But I find that I just can’t warm to them. They use a type of plastic that is rigid and hard and the company claims that it won’t crack or warp over time, though it will take longer to see if that’s true. I know it’s an issue of psychological perception, but I can’t help getting over the feeling that they are brittle.

The only semi-malleable part is the top. It does provide a secure lock. Nevertheless, there is a feature of being able to attach the lid to the container’s base for convenient storage that I find rather silly. The rationale is that consumers complain about losing lids, and by attaching the lid to the bottom of the container, you can always find it. Maybe the people at Rubbermaid have cabinets with 3 feet of space between shelves, but everyone I know stores containers one inside the other. You can’t do that with the lids attached – and you’re going to need to detach them when washing, and that’s where they often get separated.

Then there is the issue of the type of plastic and whether it’s safe. I know the FDA claims that all rated food grade plastics are safe, and I know that a number of university researchers have stated that there’s nothing wrong with them. And yet I keep seeing reference to studies that many of the plastics can leach chemicals, particularly if heated. Some of the sites claim that it’s only certain types of the plastics, identified by the number on them. (The Premier line is made of type 7 – often on the warning lists.) Other web pages say that there is no safe plastic.

I come down on the side that safe is better than sorry, so heat foods in glass or ceramic that is designed to withstand microwaves. We’ll use the test Premier containers the company sent for review, but I’m not sure that we’ll make the same choice when it comes time to replace them. They also aren’t cheap, compared to other plastic food containers. The sizes range from 1.25 cups to 14 cups, with prices $2.49 to $8.99.

Labels: container, product, review, Rubbermaid

If you didn't catch the report on today's Morning Edition on NPR, you should check it out. It has a reasonably comprehensive view of how much danger Chinese food imports could present and how the current situation got to where it is. Kudos to the reporting and research.

Labels: China, food safety, NPR

According to an Independent Online story:

Britons are obsessed with celebrity and addicted to junk food and ready meals, a new travel guide said on Wednesday, shedding a sometimes unflattering light on the country.

Ouch. Can't say as I've noticed that the rest of the world has shunned an obsession with celebrity, and real British food is pretty good. (For more on that, take a look at Jane Grigson's British Cookery, a hardback from the 80s that takes an authoritative English stride through regional foodstuffs, cuisines, and recipes.)

The guidebook seems to agree that there is great food in the country, but essentially says that it's not the favorite of all Britons. Oh, and let's not forget a mention of the "problem with alcohol." Is that Lonely, or Unappetizing?

Labels: Britain, guide book, junk food, Lonely Planet, U.K.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about Wal-Mart's participation in a forum about sustainable agriculture. I found one paragraph of particular interest:

The company is requiring shrimp farms that have been ravaging the coast of Thailand to change their aquaculture practices or lose the retailer's business. Under the company's new rules, the shrimp farms must be certified by Global Aquaculture Alliance or Aquaculture Certification Council as being farmed in environmentally sound ways, he said.

Now, part of this may be public relations, but there's no doubt that the company has forced many of its suppliers into changing their business practices. Many of these vendors have even said that the changes helped them enormously in improving their businesses. Wal-Mart literally could single-handedly change the face of world food production, making a far bigger impact than any Whole Foods could.

Labels: organic, shrimp, sustainability, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods

In the past I've tried making chapati, a grilled Indian bread made of whole wheat flour. Although I knew in theory that it took a special flour, I tried using ordinary whole wheat, and the results were indifferent. Recently we were in an Asian market in Hadley, MA and on a whim I picked up a 5 pound sack of atta, the "proper" flour made of whole grain durum wheat. What a difference a grain can make. My wife gave it thumbs up, and it approached the version we get at a great Indian restaurant in Boston, India Quality, we've been going to for a good 20 years (long before Zagat's ever dreamt of becoming a review arbiter). The recipe is easy: flour and water, kneaded to mix and then rolled out into disks. Grill on the first side for maybe a minute, grill on the second for 30 seconds, and then back on the first side for another 15.

Checking Wikipedia, I noticed that the same bread, held in an open flame, puffs up and becomes the Gujrathi or Punjabi phulka. Unfortunately, we're cooking on electric these days, so I'll have to try the microwave variation that can leave the bread a bit soggy. But I'd like to see the puffed version.

Now, if only I had a good recipe for the onion salad the restaurant carries.

Labels: atta, baking, Boston, bread, chapati, cuisine, India, phulka

According to researchers at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, the seafood in 11 coastal Chinese cities is heavily contaminated with organochlorine pesticides (DDT and similar products) as well as hexachlorocyclohexanes. Some of these :

are ubiquitous in the environment and may continue to pose health threat to both wildlife and human beings, due to their persistency, bioaccumulative
ability, and potential toxicity.

Given that China has become a major seafood exporter and that the US is one of its big collective customers, you might want to put that shrimp in a decontamination chamber before putting them on the barbie.

Labels: China, health, pesticides, shrimp

According to Reuters, the Mars company, one of the world's biggest chocolate makers, apologized for a previous decision to start using rennet, an enzyme from calf stomaches, that the story says "is used in traditional cheese and chocolate making." Lots of vegetarians didn't like hearing this.

But forget about them for a moment. So far as I know, chocolate making is by definition supposed to involve cocoa solids, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder, and sugar. Since when do you add rennet as you do with cheese? Are they trying to create curds from the milk to reduce the amount of cocoa they need? Why are companies always trying to find ways to cut corners? How about doing something well, for heaven's sake? At least the company received 6,000 emails and phone calls after the initial announcement that it would make the change.

Labels: chocolate, Mars, rennet

India's Supreme Court has banned street vendors from cooking on New Dehli sidewalks, in an attempt to clear the crowded streets, according to this Reuters story. There is one exception: tea vendors. There are some people challenging the order, which suggests that the Supreme Court in India isn't the same as in the U.S. According to the story:

Critics say New Delhi's policemen would be reluctant to enforce such a ban as extracting bribes from street vendors is seen as a job perk.

And maybe they don't have doughnut shops. What's an officer to do?

Labels: India, New Dehli, sidewalks, street food

I've seen and tried different ways of cooking shrimp - sauté, boiling, baking. If you want something like boiled shrimp, here's a way to get the results in a more controlled way. The problem with boiling is that the heat is too intense making it easy to overcook the shrimp and end up with crescent-shaped pieces of rubber.

My wife had picked up a pound that she needed cooked without fat for a recipe. I was going to boil, but tried an experiment. I rinsed the shrimp and put them into a small pot with enough cold water to cover. Then I put the pot onto the burner and turned it to medium. As things were taking a long time, I switched to high. The shrimp cooked gently as the water heated, so that by the time is was short of a simmer, they were cooked through.

Although at first thought it seemed longer than boiling, I was measuring the time badly. In boiling, I had never counted the time it took to get the water up to temperature. When you do that, it's clear that the total cooking time (TCT - ahah!, my own acronym!) is shorter. Yet the shrimp technically does cook over a longer period of time, so there's better control and it's easier to rescue them before they tip over into a vulcanized state.

Labels: boil, shrimp

A Canadian teen allegedly hid a lighter, pipe, and bag of pot in a Happy Meal, which, presumably, accidently went to an 8-year-old at an Ottawa McDonald's drive-through window. Her father went to the police. I think it was probably a case of the teen planning in advance, anticipating a wicked case of the munchies.

Labels: McDonald's, police, potato, teen

Gordon Ramsay's F-Word show in England had an episode in which he served horse meat. Apparently PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - objected and dumped a metric ton of horse manure in front of Ramsay's restaurant Claridge's in tony Mayfair. Obviously they weren't horsing around.

Labels: dung, horse, manure, PETA, Ramsay

We've had more time with the Pamered Chef apple peeler, and experience has not been kind. We tried the unit on small apples, unlike the ones I used in originally testing it, and the results were misery. I kept trying to readjust the peeler blade, but it repeatedly bit too deeply into the apples, removing too much pulp. Eventually my wife gave up and moved back to a hand peeler and a knife to cut the apple. She's already planning to return the unit, so you might say that the first blush is off the apple. Maybe that explains why some were many times more expensive. Sometimes you don't get what you don't pay for.

Labels: apple, gadget, kitchen, Pampered Chef, peeler

Some stories are almost too weird to run. And this one on MiamiHerald.com was on the border. There is an annual Testicle Festival in Wisconsin where people pay $5 a ... um ... head for all you can eat deep fried goat, lamb, and bull reproductive organs:

Butch Joubert, 58, likes the parts sandwiched between bread with tartar sauce. They're not so different from regular meatballs also served at the festival, he said.

"After a few beers, you can't really tell the difference," Joubert said.

Well, no difference except that afterward you get the urge to drink beer, belch, and watch a football game. It really does take balls to serve some kinds of food.

Labels: fried, weird, Wisconsin

My daughter loves frozen hot chocolate from an espresso bar in western Massachusetts called Mocha Maya's. So I started working on my own version:

• 2 TBS. cocoa


• 3 TBS. sugar


• 1 cup milk


• 1/2 cup crushed ice

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. You can add more or less ice to make the drink more or less thick.

Labels: blender, chocolate, drink, iced

There is a term called jumping the shark. A reference to a particularly low moment in the 1980s sit com Happy Days when the character Fonzie (Henry Winkler) wrestles a shark, it's when you know that something will be all downhill from then. Well, I think Zagat Survey has jumped the shark, or at least started nibbling on it, as it is now rating fast food chains. Here's a graph from the New York Business story:

“Not all fast-food restaurants are created equal – nor were they meant to be,” said Zagat Survey Chief Executive Tim Zagat, in a statement.

Thanks for the insight and, yes, I will take fries with that.

Labels: fast food, jump, shark, Zagat

I had turned off comments because I quickly got tired of what seemed to be PR attempts to deflect the point of a product review. However, having this be a completely one-way conversation is pretty boring, so I'm turning them back on, moderated, with the caveat that anything smelling of marketspeak will never hit the board. If I toss the occasional real remark that would be a pity, so make sure that you provide your email address if you're not registered so you can get word of a remark getting posted.

Labels: comments, moderated, posting, remarks

There are times that a garbage disposal can become assertive in an olfactory fashion, and Phelps Industries offers its product Plink for such occasions. So we gave it a shot when the sink did stink. You drop a marble-sized capsule into the disposal and the liquid within it is supposed help break up food particles and fats to help prevent clogs and provide a pleasing scent. However, the lemon odor lasted one use. The second time we tried the disposal, the pleasant smell was gone and things were back to usual, and the unit's tendency to clog at times didn't seem to lessen. At about $3.99 for 10 capsules (or $12.99 for 30), the price isn't a killer, but still seems to be, if you'll pardon the pun, money down the drain.

Update: I had the pricing wrong, so have changed it when I heard back from the PR people. (I can only plead exhaustion from some late nights on a Newsweek Japan assignment.) The person suggested that "your disposal needs a little more help in the beginning" and might need a recommended treatment of twice a week. The only problem is that the citrus smell didn't last past the first day. I have a feeling that some orange or lemon peels might offer another source that's already on hand, assuming you've been purchasing citrus fruit. I'll give it a shot and report back.

Labels: disposal, garbage, plink

I've found an interesting collection of odd food stories from the last week:

• Will Watch for Drink Japanese will start getting free drinks from vending machines for the price of watching a 30 second commercial. (Independent Online)


• Eat It, It's Good For You Some Polish Benedictine monks are opening a chain of food stores where you can buy jams with such names as Angelic, Unfaithful, and Prayer Book. (AFP)


• Fast Food Debtor Nation A South Carolina woman went to a Burger King drive through and was charged $8,648.64 for her order, bringing new meaning to the term "super size." (WGAL)


• Eat and Elope An entire Austrian wedding party ate at a restaurant and then skipped out before paying the bill. (Independent Online)


• Food Tops British Most Hated Brands Topping the list of Britain's most hated brands, according to a recent study, are instant noodle product Pot Noodle, McDonald's, and the drink Sunny Delight. (Independent Online)

Labels: Britain, Burger King, fast food, McDonald's, monks, news, Poland, Sunny Delight, weddings, weird

Associated Press writer J.M. Hirsch has this advice on using tea in cooking, with a recipe for brining shrimp in a tea and salt water mix. I haven't tried it yet, and I'm not sure that I'd agree that a brine would add moisture (it should actually dry some moisture out through osmosis - a good thing probably for shrimp that have been frozen and are now water-logged). But this does sound interesting. I'll try experimenting with an appropriate dipping sauce and report on the results.

Labels: brining, shrimp, tea

Scientists in Australia are working with beer company Foster's on a project to power a giant fuel cell with brewery waste water. Researchers expect the 660-gallon fuel cell to generate 2 kilowatts of power - enough for the average household down under - while acting as a waste treatment plant and producing clean water as a byproduct. Holy Vats of Volts, Batman! It's just a way that people get juiced at the same time they get juiced.

Labels: Australia, beer, Foster's, fuel cell, power, science, water

The cookbook Fonda San Miguel: Thirty years of Food and Art seems to be one of those titles you see from time to time, when an established restaurant puts together a collection of recipes and a publisher hopes that name recognition will move copies. But open the cover, try some of the recipes, and you find a culinary gem.

Fonda San Miguel is a well-regarded restaurant in Austin offering Mexican cuisine. Author credits are co-founders Tom Gilliland (runs the front of the house) and Miguel Ravago (the chef) as well as “text by” Virginia B. Wood, whom is an Austin writer. The foreword is by noted Mexican cuisine expert Diana Kennedy, who apparently is a friend of the founders and whose work has inspired some of the dishes.

From first glance, the book is visually sumptuous: all color photography of the recipes and art in the restaurant with attractive design, hardbound. And here comes the first of my few quibbles: even though the publisher, Shearer Publishing, may have bought the rights to the photography, or even done it in-house, it should have given full credit to the people responsible for the actual photographic and food styling work. [UPDATE: I heard from the publisher who notes that there are full credits on page 239 toward the end of the book. My apologies for having missed it.] There also should have been better photo editing; I noticed a few out-of-focus images, one of which seemed planned and appropriate although the others looked like mistakes.

The recipes, though – marvelous. I tried four for a family dinner: guacamole, Sopa de Elote (a smooth corn soup served with roasted chiles and cheese), Adoba Sauce (pork marinade made with ancho chiles, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, and black peppercorns), and Comote Y Piña (baked sweet potato puree with pineapple). The results were uniformly excellent. Unlike many cookbook recipes, I found that I could use each of these without modification or even adjusting amounts, which is pretty rare. I do wish that when a recipe referred to a preparation or technique elsewhere in the book that there was a page number associated, but, again, I did say quibbles.

The book originally came out in 2005, which does have me wondering why the PR firm that sent the copy is promoting it now, but it’s nice to see that someone is taking an active interest in promotion this excellent volume.

Labels: Austin, chiles, cookbook, cookbooks, Fonda San Miguel, Mexican

Domestic diva and sharp businesswoman Martha Stewart is going to deliver "good things" to the masses by lending her name to Costco. The warehouse retailer will put her image on fresh and frozen foods. As the New York Times article notes, the company had a first quarter loss evne larger than the same time last year. Revenues went up, but so did spending to launch Blueprint and to renovate the company web site. What's coming from Martha's kitchen? No one is saying, yet, but I'm betting that it comes with a built in clock and that it nags you if you are late to put it on the stove.

Labels: Costco, food, groceries, Martha Stewart

In a press release I read a claim that "Turkey's leading specialty coffee roaster and retailer" is called ... John's Coffee.

John's? does that mean soon I'll learn that England's premiere supplier of meat pies will be Mustafa's Pasties?

Labels: coffee, Turkey, weird

I was looking forward to reviewing A Taste of Challah (Feldheim Publishers; New York; 2007) by Tamar Ansh. The bread is traditionally served on Shabbat (Sabbath) meals by Ashkenazi Jews. It generally includes eggs and, at least in the U.S., comes in a braided loaf form for most of the year, and a round turban shape for the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

There was much good I found in the book. The author is a religious Jew and offers a lot of information on the theological and culture links. There is also more information than I've ever seen in one place on how to handle and shape the dough, including variations like a braided round challah that I've never seen. We'll get to some more good points in a moment.

But calling the volume A Comprehensive Guide to Challah and Bread Baking is overblown and inaccurate. For example, the only "regular" recipe for challah dough is called Always Perfect No-Egg Challah. The title alone suggests what anyone familiar with the bread knows: eggs are a normal component. I wondered whether strict kosher food laws might consider eggs as meat, and so something that could not be served with dairy, but a little research showed that eggs are considered pareve - neither meat nor dairy. Nothing wrong with variations, but I don't see how a book can be "comprehensive" without a version of the most traditional approach.

The basic recipe also called for 16 to 17 cups of flour for what it said were 6 large loaves. Three cups of flour are about a pound, adding the weight of oil, sugar, and sugar, I'm guessing that the "large" loaves would be about a pound each - not so large from my view. I didn't bother making this fundamental recipe because that's also far more bread than my family will go through before it goes stale, though under Jewish law you're supposed to eat three meals on Shabbat and start each with two loaves, so I'm guessing that's where the volume came from. However, those who are not religious Jews are likely to be overwhelmed by the amount.

Back to what I liked: I learned a technique of using a rolling pin to make perfect dough ropes which, in turn, helps create the proper braided shape. The only hint that I thought was missing was doing a double egg wash: once, letting that dry, and then a second time to help achieve the perfect color a good bakery can get. There's also an interesting collection of other recipes, ranging from bagels and pita (though either a long-baked or no-pocket type, again not the traditional one) to some Middle Eastern breads and dips that I've never before seen.

The upshot: some people, like me, will find a lot of good in the $35 book - and you can see that more money than usual went into a nicely crafted hardbound with abundant color photography. But if you're new to bread baking and want a traditional loaf of challah, you'd at least need to supplement this volume with a recipe from another source.

Labels: baking, book, bread, challah, recipe, review

According to the Associated Press, a Mexican restaurant owner in Utah is offering a 500 taco reward for help in apprehending the person who broke in and stole $3,000 from his establishment. Because his money is gone, the food is apparently all he can offer - valued, so he says, at $1,200. Let's see, dusting off my grade school arithmetic (and a calculator), that comes out to $2.40 for one taco. Sounds like the robbery at the restaurant is still going on.

Labels: crime, Mexican, restaurant, robbery, tacos, Utah

When my son was at a school function with each family bringing food from a particular region of the world, someone brought a good herbed hummus and a recipe for it. However, I fiddled with it to come up with a different one that is getting good reviews from people who had the first one.

Recipe

• 1/3 cup packed fresh parsley leaves
  
• 1/3 cup packed fresh basil leaves
  
• 1/4 cup grated fresh Parmesean cheese
  
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
  
• 1/4 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
  
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
  
• 1/8 tsp. ground pepper
  
• 1 (15 ounce) can garbonzo beans (also called chick peas), drained
  
• 3-4 garlic cloves
  
• 3/4 cup olive oil

1. Put all ingredients other than oil into food processor.
   
2. While processing, pour oil through feed tube. Process until smooth, periodically stopping and scraping down sides.

Yield: 2 cups

Labels: basil, hummus, parsley, recipe

We were on the list to provide hummos and pita bread for something my son was attending. I decided to make the pita from the recipe in Secrets of a Jewish Baker - my personal top choice in bread books and containing many professional tips that I've never found elsewhere. Unfortunately the results were uneven the first time around - browned them a bit too much so some ended up flat and crunchy. So I tried another batch two nights ago, and it got raves. There are a few things I found from a little experimenting - and from what I learned in writing the Complete Idiots Guide to Pizza and Panini (coming out in August):

• Keep the dough the tiniest bit sticky. You want moisture in it to puff up the pita, which should look like little domes when they're done.
  
• The steps about letting the dough relax are important.
  
• The book's instructions say to roll the dough out to about 6-inch diameter circles, but the real trick is keeping it about a quarter-inch thick.
  
• The baking instructions in the book are a bit off - when you put them onto the hot baking stone or tiles, let them sit for about four minutes and then check on their progress (keeping the oven mostly closed to contain the heat).
  
• They should be pretty pale. If they get to golden brown, they will be crunchy.

Careful when you put them between the towels to cool, as there is a ton of contained steam, and it's easy to burn yourself.

Labels: baking, bread, pita, recipe