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Chocolate and Spice, Pork Tenderloin... Nice!

As recounted to me by a very wise man...

So I saw this recipe in the most recent issue of Food & Wine, the grilling issue, and I says to myself, "That sounds pretty darn tasty."

The interesting thing about the recipe, see, was the rub: cocoa powder, ancho chile, and brown sugar. I says to myself, "Cocoa and ancho and brown sugar... That sounds pretty darn tasty."

But this recipe, see, it called for pork chops. And, you know, I just wasn't in the mood for no pork chops. So I says to myself, "You know what might work even better? Pork tenderloin! That could be pretty darn tasty."


But, you know, this recipe, see, there was something else that bugged me about it. This rub, it was dry, because those chops were supposed to go on the grill, I guess. But I was doin' tenderloin, now, and the weather outside, see, it wasn't so good. Cold, rainin', and, you know, I don't like to cook in no rain. Messes with the grill temperature... and my hair!

So I says to myself, "Why not add a little olive oil and salt to the rub, make it more like a paste, you know? Might be good. Then you could throw it in a really hot pan with a little more olive oil, brown it all over, throw in the the oven for, I don't know, like 10 minutes or somethin'. That would work. And I bet you that would be pretty darn tasty."

There's something else, though. See, I'm all into sauces these days. You know, a sauce, it makes everything better. So I says to myself, "Go get a little bit of white wine -- some stuff I been drinkin' called Cupcake, a Frenchy kinda name, a sauvignon blanc or something like that -- and keep it handy."

And when those tenderloins were done, I rested 'em for a few minutes, you know, 'cause they had just done some serious work in the oven. And then I poured in a little of that wine, gettin' all those little chocolatey spicey bits from the pan, watching the wine get brown and thick on the hot stove top. That sauce, it looked pretty darn tasty.

And then I stuck the tip of my forefinger in, you know, like those fellas and ladies on the TV do it, and put it in my mouth. And, by gosh, it was tasty.

But, then, see, I says to myself, "That sauce, it needs just one more thing. Something else, you know, to give her a little what they call silkiness." And there it was. Butter. Just a little, see, dropped right into the sauce, watched it melt away in there. And that really did the trick.

Cut that tenderloin up, on a plate, drizzled some of that there sauce on it. And let me tell you, man, that pork, it was REALLY, really darn tasty.

I understand that the specifics of this said recipe went something like this.

Cocoa & Chile Pork Tenderloin

Rub

• heaping tablespoon or so of cocoa powder
• tablespoon of ancho chile powder
• heaping tablespoon of brown sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, enough to make it like a paste
• teaspoon or so of salt

Two pork tenderloins

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix the brown sugar, cocoa powder, ancho powder, and salt in a small bowl. Add a little olive oil at a time and stir until you have a fairly thick paste. Smear the paste over both tenderloins until they are completely covered.

Get a large enough, oven-proof pan very hot over medium-high heat. Add a drizzle of olive oil and add the tenderloins. Brown on all sides.

Put into the oven and roast until temperature of tenderloin is 135 degrees, then remove. Put tenderloins on a plate/cutting board to rest. Put the pan on a burner on medium/medium-high, add a half-cup of white wine to the pan and start stirring up the bits from the pan bottom with a wooden spoon. Let it bubble away for about 3 minutes or so, until reduce by about half.

Remove from heat, drop in a small pat of butter and any juices from the tenderloin plate, stir until it's melted, add salt if you think it needs it, slice up the tenderloin into medallions and serve with sauce drizzled generously over each serving.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... San Fran Style

A few things to share today...

To start with, as the (few/none) regular readers of LBoN know and appreciate, I regularly mine the New York Times food section for recipes, food news, etc. And while the Times' Mark Bittman and Melissa Clark tend to offer recipes that are more suited to the average home cook, I've found that the San Francisco Chronicle, which also does a bang-up job covering food-related issues, takes a different route.

The Chronicle's recipes, by and large, are geared toward the hard-core home cooks and foodies, those that don't mind putting in some tough time in the kitchen chopping and blending and transferring ingredients from a saute pan to a plate to a roasting pan to the oven to the stove top. So while I don't have as much time these days for meals that require long prep, given my affinity for chicken thighs, this Spanish-influenced dish totally got my tongue wagging. (Hint, hint... the recipe following this one on the page, "Chicken, Lemongrass, and Potato Curry," ohohohohoh my!).

Speaking of the Times, did you know that Lays potato chips qualify as "local food." Well, I didn't. And, really, they don't. But Lays thinks so, and is beginning to market it as such. As Michael Pollan said of the big food and grocery companies...

“They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food. You’ve got to hand it to them.”

Now that we're talking about local food, this is really, well, nice.

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato was on one of the top floors of the Grant Building a few months ago when he looked below and noticed the expansive roof of the nearby County Office Building on Forbes Avenue.

"I looked over and the idea came to me: We can use this roof as green space," he recalled yesterday as he unveiled plans to create a plant garden on the roof of the building at 542 Forbes Ave., and a water garden in the courtyard of the county courthouse.

The county, he said, plans to use half of the roof of the County Office Building for a green roof. The 8,400-square-foot area will be covered with waterproof fabric, soil and plants native to Allegheny County.

Speaking of gardens, the Post-Gazette also unveiled this great interactive map of farm markets in the area.

Speaking of the Post-Gazette, while I'm not personally a fan of the garbage-bag headed restaurant reviewer Munch - not sure why you need Munch and a more, I guess, professional reviewer like China Millman - the brown-faced one recently visited a new Vietnamese restaurant in the Strip, Vietnam's Pho.

I know that Tram's in Lawrenceville is supposed to be the area's best Vietnamese restaurant, but, despite Munch thinking that a quail egg was a particularly adventurous ingredient - does he not watch the Evil Food Channel ever? - the review really got me jonesing for some pho, vermicelli-style noodles with grilled meats that have been bathed in lemongrass, and this...

Cari Ga ($7.50), a chicken curry with potato and onion served with a small baguette.

The curry was sweet and delicious, similar to a Thai yellow curry but slightly chunkier. But the real revelation was the bread, which sopped up the extra curry sauce so well that Munch's plate was sparkling clean when the friendly waitresses cleared the table.

Hockey game food blogging - This was good!

I love pesto. Love it.

McGinnis Sisters had some fairly big bunches of basil, so picked up two, some arugula, and, with the help of a curly-haired 4-year-old, made an arugula-basil pesto.

Also had some cherry tomatoes, which we had put in a flank steak salad (recipe coming on that one). Being that they're not in season, hadn't really had any tomatoes, and really enjoyed them in the salad. So wanted to use them again. Some sweet, roasted tomatoes sounded good. So, tossed with a little olive oil, balsamic, salt, pepper, into a 450 degree oven for 20 minutes.


Fusilli would be the pasta of choice this evening. Topped with pesto and a spoonful or two of roasted tomatoes. It was a successful pairing. My highest recommendations.

Yes, I know the picture stinks. UPDATE: Picture removed. It was just too ugly. New picture courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Carbs, Carbs, and More Carbs, Baby!

It's been a while since LBoN's has had a worthy Fast Food Abomination of the Week. But we have a worthy winner this time.

Domino's new Bread Bowl Pastas! That's right, pasta, no doubt plastered with a ton 'o cheese -- such as the 3-cheese pasta -- in a bowl of bread. It's double the carbs for $5! Woohoo!

Other options include allegedly Italian favorites, like the Chicken Alfredo and the Chicken Carbonara, because pasta just isn't pasta without some chicken in it!

Point deductions, however, for the fine print explaining that these delightful past dishes are available in a regular, inedible bowl. How health-conscious of Domino's. Pshaw.

Beautiful Words... and Beautifully (profane) Words

Two good, quick reads.

First, with a tip o' the hat to The Ethicurean, the words of acclaimed chef/sustainable food advocate Dan Barber, at a recent food conference in Brooklyn.

Well, actually, his words had been there a day or so ago, in the form of what appeared to be a mostly complete transcript of his talk. They have been replaced with this:

We hope to publish Dan Barber’s speech pending his review of the transcript.

One always wonders what happened in these situations. Did Mr. Barber get a little pissed off that this transcript was made and blogged about without his knowing? Was there some sort of legal agreement by which this was not supposed to have happened? Hard to speculate, but disappointing that it's no longer there. Hopefully, Mr. Barber will quickly review the transcript and give his okey-dokey.

A sneak peek:

A "sustainable" farmed fish company that feeds lots of chicken parts to its fish vs. a fish farm in Spain that is more like an entire self-sustaining ecosystem, complete with tons of flamingos that fly 150 miles on a regular basis to eat some of the seafood being "farmed" there!

And, for those like me who can never get enough pizza talk, especially when it's replete with expletives, Chris Bianco, proprietor of the famed Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, lays forth with his f#%$ing philosophy on pizza and life.

A sneak peek:

“Don’t worry about eight hundred degrees, don’t worry about the bullshit of time, don’t worry about tripping out your fuckin’ home kitchen to reproduce something. Those things to me are not organic."

Whether Bianco actually said "tripping" or that was a transcription error and it was supposed to be "tricking," I don't know. Needless to say, they reiterate something I touched on recently: You Ought to Make Pizza at Home.

That Infectious Piggy Thingy

One cannot be a responsible (poorly read) blogger and not comment on the whole Swine... I mean, H1N1 flu outbreak. Nearly 300 schools have been closed in the U.S. There have been a handful of deaths. Millions are in a panic -- whether they should be, I don't know. Seems like a serious situation, but panic can just make things worse.

On some of the food blogs last week, reports surfaced that the outbreak may have started at an industrial pig farm in Mexico half-owned by Smithfield, famed antagonist of the famous Rolling Stone article a few years ago about stinky, filthy, disease-causing industrial pig farms in North Carolina.

The blog reports focused on articles in Mexican newspapers from towns near the pig CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) that were pinning the blame for the outbreak, or at the very least some illnesses, on the CAFO, but without providing any real evidence to support it. Nevertheless, those blog reports sparked a flurry of activity on other food and politics blogs, all pointedly faulting this CAFO for the current Swine... H1N1 flu outbreak.

It's easy to believe that this could be the case. In fact, Dr. Michael Greger from the U.S. Humane Society makes a very a good case that a pig CAFO is the likely origin of this particular flu.

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

This analysis, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology, has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the "godfather of flu research,"[1] is reported as saying "The triple reassortant in pigs [first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor."

This is a must-read column, well-supported by reputable references, often from the top peer-reviewed science journals, for anybody who wants to learn just one very good reason for why CAFOs are bad, bad, bad.

That said, it really does nobody any good to spread the idea -- minus any good evidence -- that this particular CAFO in Mexico was reponsible for this particular outbreak. Heck, as the Columbia Journalism Review reported...

...so far, authorities have yet to find an infected pig in Mexico, let alone at the Granjas Carroll farm. None of the pig farm’s workers appears to be sick, either.

On Grist, where the CAFO-Swi... H1N1 flu connection was first made, Merritt Clifton does a good job of explaining why, even with the best of intentions, its best not to go beyond what the available evidence supports.

Until the medical evidence is in, we just don’t know. And focusing prematurely on the presumed factory-farm connection could prove a dangerous distraction from identifying and responding to the actual source of a potential pandemic.

You've Seen the Commercials...

And this is why you should not take supplements that promise they'll make you slim and trim.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers to immediately stop using Hydroxycut products by Iovate Health Sciences Inc., of Oakville, Ontario and distributed by Iovate Health Sciences USA Inc. of Blasdell, N.Y. Some Hydroxycut products are associated with a number of serious liver injuries. Iovate has agreed to recall Hydroxycut products from the market.

The FDA has received 23 reports of serious health problems ranging from jaundice and elevated liver enzymes, an indicator of potential liver injury, to liver damage requiring liver transplant. One death due to liver failure has been reported to the FDA. Other health problems reported include seizures; cardiovascular disorders; and rhabdomyolysis, a type of muscle damage that can lead to other serious health problems such as kidney failure.

Nutritional supplements -- and I use the term "nutritional" with great disdain -- are minimally regulated and make claims that are simply unsubstantiated. Whether it's weight loss, muscle mass, male "enhancement," or happy mood pills, with most, it not all, of these things, it's too good to be true because it's too good to be true, plain and simple.

"You Ought to Make Pizza at Home"

So sayeth Sam Sifton in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. He is correct. You should.

Michael Ruhlman agrees. Where Sam Sifton says you need a pizza peel and a pizza stone, Ruhlman says you can do it in a baking sheet or even on the bottom of an inverted cast iron pan.

I have seen others still recommend cooking them on a grill on a piece of unglazed quarry tile. I have meant to try this.

Our regular pizza lineup includes:

- Margherita
- carmelized onions, fresh mozz, arugula, prosciutto
- House special, aka, red sauce, Moroccan olives, grated parmesan (see picture)

Most recently we made what will now be added to the regular line up:

- Grilled radicchio and onion with fontina and toasted walnuts (an adaptation of a Dinette pie)

The recipe in Sifton's column called for a mix of bread flour and all-purpose flour, and to put it in the mixer for a short period of time. My wife, the pizza dough maven in our household, uses only double zero flour, which I believe is an all-purpose flour, and does not use a mixer. If she does, I have been blissfully ignorant of this activity.

Speaking of grilling pizzas, taking a cue from Mark Bittman, several times my wife has made a few extra doughs on pizza night and we freeze it. At some later point, I:

- defrost the dough
- roll out the dough
- get the grill very hot
- brush the dough with olive oil
- top the dough with plenty of salt and pepper and some chopped rosemary
- put the dough on the grill

About 4-5 minutes later, we have a wonderfully crisp and chewy flatbread to eat with a salad or meatballs.

The point being: You Ought to Make Pizza at Home.

On a grill or in an oven. On a pizza stone or a quarry tile.

Use the Google or go to Food & Wine or Epicurious and find a recipe.

It is likely to taste better than any pizza you order.

It is likely to be much healthier than any pizza you order.

And, particularly with some red wine, it is fun to make and drink.

"Patchwork" Might be Kind

One thing that kept sticking in my craw -- if, as a soccer-loving, arugula-eating, martini-drinking (Bluecoat, please, on the rocks, 3 olives, if you don't mind) western Pennsylvanian, I can say that, which I probably cannot and should not -- after reading the LTE from the Penn State Ag professor in response to my PG op-ed last year about beef safety, was the insinuation that I was being alarmist and overstating the issue.

While it's not focused on beef per se, this article from the New York Times about food safety in general seems to support my general contention that the food safety net in this country is desperately lacking.

Congress and the Obama administration have said that more inspections and new food production rules are needed to prevent food-related diseases, but far less attention has been paid to fixing the fractured system by which officials detect and stop ongoing outbreaks. Right now, uncovering which foods have been contaminated is left to a patchwork of more than 3,000 federal, state and local health departments that are, for the most part, poorly financed, poorly trained and disconnected, officials said.

Minnesota, unlike many other states, the Times' Gardiner Harris reports, has a top-notch surveillance system for investigating food safety-related illnesses. And the rest of the country is very fortunate that's the case.

In these and other cases, epidemiologists from Minnesota pinpointed the causes of food scares while officials in other states were barely aware that their residents were getting sick. From 1990 to 2006, Minnesota health officials uncovered 548 food-related illness outbreaks, while those in Kentucky found 18, according to an analysis of health records.

Which brings me back to this line from the aforementioned LTE:

The incidence of E. coli-related illnesses has remained at a very low level according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Don't get me wrong. I have great respect for the CDC. I think they do a great job. But when, as the Times article details, you've got such an uneven, patchwork approach to food safety, combined with what I think anecdotal evidence would suggest is a significant amount of underreporting of food-related illnesses, there are serious limitations on what you can take from CDC data in this area.

I guess I could be accused of being alarmist. That will be until more than just a few people die from things like Salmonella-laced peanuts.

Local Mustard: Mmm, mmm good

Several times over the past few days I have spent 10 minutes or so dipping chunks of pretzel into Miller's Mustard.

Now, it's nothing like your traditional mustard, whether that be Gulden's, French's, Dijon, Hebrew National deli mustard, or what have you.

That said, it's quite good. Spicy, tangy, with just enough traditional mustard taste to rightfully call itself a mustard.

And it's made in Gibsonia. You can find it at Save on Beer in Cranberry and McGinnis Sisters in Seven Fields.

Hard to make homemade pasta...

... if you can't get the dough right!

Tried twice, failed twice. Followed the Mario Batali recipe, illustrated nicely here.

Used 4 eggs the first time, didn't come close to getting something resembling a nice rounded ball of dough.

Second time, with 5 eggs, was on the verge of something I could take for a maiden voyage on my pasta maker, but then all it went to heck.

I'll try again, soon.

The most evil company in the world

Wal-Mart? Close. Well, not really. I mean, don't get me wrong. I really don't like Wal-Mart and think it's generally a very sleazy company. But the good ol' Walton family enterprise is nothing compared to Monsanto.

And I'm not even talking about that old milk-labeling thing (shameless self promotion alert). And I'm not even talking about the thing where they hire people to go around harassing family farmers in middle America, falsely accusing them of using their genetically modified seeds without paying for them, with nothing more as their motive than putting out of business all farms that don't use Monsanto's genetically modified seeds.

I'm talking about the 1,500 dead farmers in India. They all committed suicide. You'd think that, even with all of the other messed things going on in the world, that might make a blip on the big broadcast and cable networks.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

Ah, but see, if you just read this, or some of the other articles about all of these dead farmers, you'd think it was just about water -- which in and of itself is a huge issue in many developing countries, if not the biggest one -- and dirt-poor farmers. But it's also about that really motherf@#$ing evil company, don't ya' know...

Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.

Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out. ...

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

Read the whole story. Really, it's disgusting beyond belief. You'll learn that these farmers were, in the end, nearly forced to use the genetically modified seeds instead of traditional seeds. That the GM seeds require twice as much water. And that while they've been genetically modified to resist certain pests, the few crops they produced were devastated by others. And that the 1,500 farmers are just a pebble in a barren cropfield of 125,000 dead in what has been dubbed India's "suicide belt."

Two other important things to note here. One I hope to look into further. One needs no further investigation, and that is this: genetically modified crops don't have superior yields to traditional crop varieties. Shocking, I know.

[Union of Concerned Scientists'] Doug Gurian-Sherman searched the scientific literature for side-by-side comparisons of conventional and genetically engineered lines of corn and soybeans. He found that in almost all cases, genetically engineered crops did not produce larger harvests. The one exception was insect-resistant Bt corn, which produced higher yields only when neighboring plots of conventional corn suffered infestations of a worm called the European corn borer. Crop yields have increased significantly over the past decade, he says, but almost all of that increase was due to traditional plant breeding or other agricultural practices.

Pssst. Don't tell many of the ag researchers at our state's premier land grant university, Penn State. They love them their bioengineered food stuffs.

There's also this little nugget that, on its face, sounds all well and good:

In London after the G-20 summit yesterday, President Barack Obama called for Congress to double U.S. agricultural aid to developing countries in 2010 to $1 billion. ...

Some U.S. senators are already moving in this direction. This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill called S. 384 that would increase the authorized funding levels for U.S. foreign aid to $750 million in 2010, reaching $2.5 billion in 2014. Authorizations for university partnerships and international agricultural research centers would also rise.

It's that last little bit that makes my little tinfoil ears get all buzzy.

So then I go to the bill itself, S. 384. And right at the very top, what do we see?

Section 103A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151a-1) is amended in the first sentence--

(1) by striking `, and (3) make' and inserting `, (3) make'; and

(2) by striking the period at the end and inserting `, and (4) include research on biotechnological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including genetically modified technology.'.

Monsanto didn't double it's federal lobbying outlay from 2007 to 2008 (from ~$4 million to ~$8 million) for nothing, ya' know.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Welcome Back Neko Style

So much news, so little brain power to process it all...

I don't know if this will have the legs to get through the sausage-making process, pun intended, but Rep. Louise Slaughter has introduced a bill that would put tough limits on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics on farms raising pigs and such for consumption by, well, consumers. This is aimed directly at factory farms, you know, those kind that don't smell too good.

Who knew you could learn so much in an actual piece of legislation...

(5)(A) an estimated 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the United States are fed to farm animals for nontherapeutic purposes, including--

(i) growth promotion; and

(ii) compensation for crowded, unsanitary, and stressful farming and transportation conditions; and

(B) unlike human use of antibiotics, these nontherapeutic uses in animals typically do not require a prescription;

(6)(A) large-scale, voluntary surveys by the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in 1999, 2001, and 2006 revealed that 84 percent of grower-finisher swine farms, 83 percent of cattle feedlots, and 84 percent of sheep farms administer antimicrobials in the feed or water for health or growth promotion reasons, and many of the antimicrobials identified are identical or closely related to drugs used in human medicine, including tetracyclines, macrolides, Bacitracin, penicillins, and sulfonamides;
...

(9) the United States Geological Survey reported in March 2002 that--
(A) antibiotics were present in 48 percent of the streams tested nationwide; and (B) almost half of the tested streams were downstream from agricultural operations;

On the local tip, Pines Tavern in the northern 'burbs, not too far from Casa de Fillippelli, is having these monthly beer dinners. They are, on the whole, affordable. This month's dinner, which began tonight and runs through Friday, features beers from Peak Organic Brewing and some local pork. Unfortunately we had things going on all three nights. Next month, though, as long as the beer offering is decent, I'm there, kids in tow.

Speaking of local, CSA season is not too far away. If you haven't signed up for one, better do it soon.

The Times weighs in on food politics with a semi-strange article, "Is a Food Revolution Now in Season." I didn't find it as off-putting as some. It provides some good general background on the growth of the sustainability movement in the U.S., and it also highlights one of the biggest problems with ag policy in the U.S.: the obstinance and, in my view, corruption of the legislators from the farm states that have been doing big ag's bidding for far too long.

Of course, [Agriculture Secretary] Vilsack will need the approval of Congress for any major changes in farm policy, and therein lies his greatest challenge. Congress passed a farm bill last year that details farm policy for the next five years, and farm-state legislators say they are not interested in starting over.

When the Obama administration recently proposed a budget that would cut subsidies to the nation’s largest farmers and bolster child nutrition payments, it was greeted with hostility in Congress, even by some Democrats.

And, finally, as for the title of this post, Neko Case, she of the glorious pipes, is back with a new album, complete with first single. And, yeah, it's live. No production. Enjoy.

So much news...

Amid the outrage over what seems like epidemic levels of white-collar crime and white-collar chicanery and just plain ol' white-collar irresponsibility, there has been a ton o' food and agriculture-related news.

It's hard to stay on top of it all. Sadly, I have not.

So, for those interested, here are some links that may prove useful:

1) Obama continues to send mixed messages on food-related issues. Names an FDA commissioner with extensive food safety/regulation background, but is apparently looking to name a guy to head a Food Safety Working Group who helped Monsanto get its genetically modified veg onto grocery market shelves and into humans with effectively no requirement for clinical testing. This guy is the epitome of the revolving door between industry and government and everything Obama has railed against. Just like in a college basketball game, all I ask for is consistency.

2) Tainted peanuts scare the bejeezus out of legislators. Or, at the very least, makes them think it's a political winner, 'cause there's all sort of food safety legislation that's been introduced. If the feedback I've seen from the local sustainable ag community is any barometer, there is concern that these bills won't effectively differentiate between small, family farms and small-scale meat processors and the big factory farms and their often co-owned massive meat-processing/packing facilities. The latter, for the uninitiated, are the ones linked to things like spinach and beef recalls.

3) NAIS. It's hard to get a grip on this thing, but the small farmers hate it and it appears to be with good reason. A lot of action has taken place and it's unclear to me what can be done at this point about it. I wrote about it last summer. But a lot has happened since them.

4) And, finally, Nickolas Kristof at the NY Times is opening eyes to antibiotic resistance and the gross overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. Must read graphs:

The peer-reviewed Medical Clinics of North America concluded last year that antibiotics in livestock feed were “a major component” in the rise in antibiotic resistance. The article said that more antibiotics were fed to animals in North Carolina alone than were administered to the nation’s entire human population.

“We don’t give antibiotics to healthy humans,” said Robert Martin, who led a Pew Commission on industrial farming that examined antibiotic use. “So why give them to healthy animals just so we can keep them in crowded and unsanitary conditions?”

The answer is simple: politics.

New & Improved Strip by 2010?

I make no excuse about my love for Pittsburgh's Strip District. It's one of the destinations that makes Pittsburgh a great city. It has something for everybody, particularly those who like to eat.

Whether it's Lucy's banh mi, Penn Mac's great selection of cheeses, La Prima's unparalleled coffee drinks (and sfogliatelle from Colangelo's next door to it, or the freakin' fantastic popcorn from Pittsburgh Popcorn Company right next t0 that! Talk about a trifecta. Mamma Mia!), Penn Avenue Fish Company's always outstanding selection of fresh seafood (not to mention it's kick-a#$ fish tacos). I could go on and on, and could eat my way down Penn Ave for a few days with little problem.

Now, the PG's Brian O'Neill reports, the organization Neighbors in the Strip is inching closer to making an expansion of the shopping possibilities in the Strip a reality. And, importantly, it doesn't sound like it's the kind of expansion/gentrification that's seen in many American cities these days -- that is, one dominated by chain restaurants and stores.

The answer may be taking a sixth of the big, old produce terminal on Smallman Street -- now owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and almost strictly a wholesaling complex -- and making it a public market. ...

More than 30 potential merchants have expressed interest, and they haven't even begun advertising. A big part of this will be local farmers providing meat and produce in season. Jamison Farm of Latrobe, which sells about 5,000 lambs a year to top restaurants from New York to Las Vegas, is interested, and Ms. Cassell says she's already found a guy who grows 15 kinds of garlic, about 14 more than I knew existed.

The market house likely would open four days a week. About 12,000 square feet would be devoted to fresh and prepared foods, and another 5,400 square feet, a block down the walkway, would offer flowers, crafts and such.

The only guy I'm aware of whose that into garlic is Farmer Troy! However, an inside source tells me it's not him... and that there aren't 15 kinds of garlic.

Sounds like there is a wee bit of a funding gap - to the tune of a million smackeroos -- slowing things down, and that the earliest this could happen would be next spring. Nevertheless, it's an exciting prospect that I hope comes to fruition.

For the Record

Last year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was kind enough to publish an op-ed I wrote about beef recalls and beef safety. The bottom line message, I suppose, was that the rash of beef recalls was disturbing and that purchasing beef from local farmers was a good way to take personal action that could -- in addition to getting some good meat and supporting local food systems -- help spur much-needed change in beef cattle farming and processing.

Some time later, my wife's aunt (my aunt in-law?) informed me that a LTE had been published in response to my op-ed (link here, scroll down). Authored by Mr. William R. Henning, the Emeritus Professor of Animal and Food Science at Penn State University, the letter basically said U.S. beef is extraordinarily safe:

Strict and numerous government regulations along with strong industry leadership protect the safety of our beef. For example, each of the 100 million animals that enter the human food supply annually is closely inspected by veterinarians and trained inspectors. (emphasis mine)

I had been meaning to respond to this letter on my poorly read blog for some time. This finally got me to do it:

President Obama on Saturday nominated Margaret Hamburg, former New York City health commissioner, to head the FDA, and announced he is taking new measures to address food safety.

During his weekly radio address, Obama said a lack of funds and staff at FDA in recent years have left the agency with only enough resources to inspect just 7,000 of 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses annually. (emphasis mine)

Now the USDA is responsible for the safety of beef via inspections, etc. But surely the experience of the FDA couldn't be that different than the USDA, could it? Um, no, it couldn't:

The legal requirements for inspections, combined with a reduced force, mean that the inspection goals have not been met for years, according to inspectors. They say the workload is unrealistic, reducing their duties to cursory checks of company records, not the physical examination of meat, poultry and eggs. ...

But one of those inspectors was responsible for a total of five processing plants.That means spending one hour and 36 minutes each day in each plant, she said.

“This is a problem we’ve been pointing out to them forever,” Nestor said.”There are vacancies and shortages all over the country. In a lot of places, the patrol assignments are doubled and tripled up.” (emphasis mine)

[The story linked to above is admittedly a little old. But I think it's safe to say that little to nothing has changed since then.] Am I saying that the U.S. beef supply is irrevocably tainted? No. Dr. Henning claims that cases of E. coli have been low and steady. A quick search of the CDC Web site didn't turn up any statistics along those lines, so I still have to confirm that. Even if it's the case, the massive beef recalls in 2007 and 2008 really did, in my mind, underscore that there are some serious shortcomings in the beef safety net.

Given the points above about significant "vacancies and shortages" among beef processing plant inspectors -- a far cry from Mr. Henning's "closely inspected" -- would it be safe to say there might be many more recalls if there were an adequate number of inspectors? What do you think?

Disturbing Food Recall of the Day

The title only tells part of the story:

California Firm Recalls Poultry Products Imported From an Unapproved Source

It's the actual "poultry product" that I find more disturbing:

Khong Guan Corporation, a Union City, Calif., establishment, is recalling approximately 2,858 pounds of chicken drink products that were ineligible for import to the U.S., the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. ...


The products subject to recall include: [View Labels]

• Packages containing six 2.3-fluid ounce-bottles of "BRAND'S Essence of Chicken Drink"
• Packages containing six 2.3-fluid ounce-bottles of "BRAND'S Essence of Chicken Drink, with Cordyceps Extract"
• Packages containing six 2.3-fluid ounce-bottles of "BRAND'S Essence of Chicken Drink, with 4 Herbs"
• Packages containing six 2.3-fluid ounce-bottles of "BRAND'S Essence of Chicken Drink, with Lingzhi"
• Packages containing six 2.3-fluid ounce-bottles of "BRAND'S Essence of Chicken Drink, with Ginseng

What, pray tell, is a "chicken drink product"? Some Googling indicates that it's a nutritional supplement that the maker of one brand claims "helps to relieve tiredness and to restore both your mental and physical energy, by increasing your metabolic rate."


Perhaps it's just some form of chicken soup sold in the form of a child's juice box. If so, you'd think they could come up with something better than "chicken drink," eh? How about "Poultry Power Juice" or a "Bock Bock Box"? Those are free of charge for any of you entrepreneurs out there.

Sushi in 'Da Burbs

For whatever reason, I've eaten out more often than usual over the last two months. One place I've returned to several times is Yama Sushi on Rt. 228 in Cranberry/Seven Fields. Overall, the quality of the sushi and entrees we've had has been quite good.



First, the raw stuff. It's always been respectable, and at times has bordered on excellent. The yellow tail has been the most consistent performer. The tuna and salmon have been uneven, really enjoyable on one or two occasions and unremarkable on others. The fluke was particularly tender and tasty. The few rolls we've had have also been well prepared and fresh.

The apps and entrees. Again, these have been consistently good. The do bin mushi soup was really enjoyable: good portion of seafood and fresh, bright but tame flavors. Same for the nabe yaki udon noodles. Neither bowls you over, but simple and welcoming to eat.

I went for lunch one day and, for some strange reason, got the salmon teriyaki bento box. I say strange because I long ago stopped ordering salmon -- well, cooked salmon -- in restaurants. It's like there is a rule that salmon must be overcooked and underseasoned. And teriyaki just has come to be synonymous for overly sweet and sticky.

But, for whatever reason, on this day, teriyaki salmon sounded good. And it didn't disappoint. The salmon was moist. The teriyaki had a nice balance of tang and savory, and it really complemented the salmon instead of overwhelming it...

Food dork alert: On the Top Chef finale, Stefan just used a curse word and it was not bleeped out. I assume that will be edited out when it's replayed later this week in the middle of the afternoon. OK, back to your regularly scheduled food blog...

Accompanying the salmon were some perfectly steamed veg and a large "cup" of miso soup. An enjoyable lunch, indeed.

There aren't many options for sushi out this way, and Yama Sushi does its sushi and nonsushi offerings pretty darn well. Unfortunately, I've never seen it overly busy, so I hope it survives. I'll be one sad puppy if it doesn't.

A Bean by a Fancy Name...

In the summers, my favorite green bean dish has been grilled "Kentucky wonder beans" with prosciutto and some Parmesan.

Thanks to McGinnis Sisters, I think I've found my favorite winter green bean dish: Haricots verts (aka, skinny green beans) with fried shallots and sage.

Had these with some chicken thighs/legs that I coated in a mix of diced herbs, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a few splashes of balsamic and then grilled (gotta love those unseasonably warm February days).

Haricots Verts with Fried Goodies

• half-pound of Haricots Verts, cleaned
• 2 tablespoons of sliced sage
• 3 tablespoons of thinly sliced shallots
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• salt and pepper
• Quarter lemon

Get a small pan of well-salted water boiling. Put olive oil in a small sauce pan over medium/medium-high heat.

After a minute or two, add the shallots to the pan with the oil. After about 2-3 minutes, when the shallots are starting to look like they're moving past tender, add the green beans to the water and put the sage in the pan with the shallots.

When the shallots are starting to brown, approximately 2 minutes, remove from the heat. Beans should be in the boiling water for 2 minutes, max.

Drain the beans in a colander, put in a bowl. Remove the sage and shallots from the oil mixture with tongs or a slotted spoon and add to the beans.

Get about a tablespoon of the olive oil from the pan and add to the bowl. Add a squeeze of the lemon and salt and pepper to taste. Toss and serve immediately.