v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Food as an Obstacle

Interview with Harvey Levenstein from The Coffin Factory:

The Coffin Factory:  Fear of Food focuses on conceptions of food which you prove to be “groundless or at best unduly exaggerated” by the media, corporations, and our government. Do you see this authoritative manipulation as a trend in America that extends beyond the food industry?

Harvey Levenstein: To see that, sadly, this is indeed the case, you don’t have to look any further than Paul Krugman’s columns in the New York Times, which regularly show how the ridiculous ideas propounded by the media, corporations, and all-too-many politicians and are not only taken seriously, but often become the basis of government policy.

The Coffin Factory:  Has your research for this book affected the way you eat, and the way your family eats? For example, have the discoveries of “pink slime” deterred you from trips to McDonalds with your grandchildren, or have you stopped eating American meat after learning that the sloppy practices on the kill floor facilitate fatal bacteria like E. coli.?

Harvey Levenstein:  When I wrote about “pink slime” (before it was labelled that) in my book, I remarked on how unappetizing it looked. I also wrote about hot dogs, whose slimy, gray, extruded ingredients look even worse. However, since neither of these pose a health risk, I rarely allow myself to think of this. Indeed, I enjoy a good hot dog (particularly in Pittsburgh and Chicago, and I still eat hamburgers when I travel in the States (“pink slime” is not allowed here in Canada.) E Coli. is, of course, a much more serious threat, and although I also enjoy a good hamburger (including, occasionally, a not-so-good one at McDonalds) I no longer buy ground beef, or any other meat, in supermarkets. I am lucky enough to have a reputable local butcher whose meat comes from identifiable farms and is not processed in the huge “finishing” and slaughtering operations where the problem originates. As for my grandchildren, not to put too fine a point on it: my daughter would kill me if I ever took them to McDonalds.

The Coffin Factory:  Advocates for the Pharmaceutical industry have argued that the rise of obesity in America is a new “disease,” which they are hoping to cure with a pill. There are other arguments that obesity is a result of irresponsible parenting, or lack of self awareness, or the processing of food (particularly corn), or the privatizing of government responsibility. What do you think is the major cause of obesity in America?

Harvey Levenstein:  One thing I find interesting about the obesity scare is how it parallels our reaction to hearing that someone has contracted a serious illness. It is hard not to blame it on their doing something that we don’t do—smoking, of course, being the best example. So, exercise enthusiasts blame obesity on lack of exercise, habitual dieters blame it on overeating, leftists blame the giant food processors, right-wingers blame the lack of self-control of the poor, and so on. My wife, who is fiercely anti-smoking, likes to point out that Americans’ weight rose at the same time that smoking decreased, something that I, as an ex-smoker who put on the 8 pounds after quitting, cannot readily dismiss. Obviously, there is no single major “cause.” One must also be suspicious of those who have exaggerated the extent of the “disease.” As with the heart disease “epidemic,” those with a stake in scaring us about it lowered the BMI for “overweight” so that it would include all kinds of people (such as me) whose weight would seem to pose no health risk at all. Yet, in order to gain support for whatever solution they are pushing, they normally confound us with the minority who are truly scarily-obese to conclude that a huge percentage of Americans are “overweight or obese.”

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At La Mar in Lima, Miraflores

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- Sundat afternoon snacking

Top Trends in Peruvian Foods

After a flurry of eating in Lima's great restaurants over the last couple of weeks, here's an article by Nicholas Gill from his instructive blog, New World Review:

Peruvian food is becoming a global phenomenon. The culinary scene in Lima and the rest of Peru keeps improving. Food festivals, such as Mistura, are expanding. Young chefs who have trained in top kitchens in North America and Europe are returning home to open restaurants. In the same regard in North America and Europe Peruvian chefs are being called upon to a greater degree to launch new restaurants. Gastón Acurio is not holding back on his expansion plans. Culinary ideas are being refined from every angle. Here’s what to expect from Peruvian food and restaurants in 2012:

1.) Amaz Opens: Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, in my opinion the best chef in Peru right now (he’s the chef of Malabar in Lima and has also had a hand in La Pescaderia and the menu aboard the MV Aqua riverboat in the Amazon) is opening this Amazonian bar and restaurant in Miraflores. Expect his already adventurous cocktails and food to be the most talked about restaurant in Peru this year. Av La Paz 1079 (entre Av La Paz y 28 de Julio,) Miraflores.

2.) Organic Produce and Sustainability Will Be Emphasized To a Greater Degree: Peru’s agricultural industry is booming, partly in thanks to the rapid growth in exports of organic produce. Farmers are opting to grow organically as they are seeing the long term benefits, though chefs are pushing hard too. At Nanka, Australian chef, Jason Nanka, and his Peruvian wife Lorena use mostly locally sourced organic produce and even have a small kitchen garden, in which grow many of their own herbs. Central has a rooftop garden as well. In Callao and now Barranco, La Pescaderia is showcasing sustainable seafood, including utilizing the otherwise discarded bycatch.

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Eaten by Intruders

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- the art of culinary philanthropy

Me gusta

From bon appetit in 2009:

"JUST TRY TO IMAGINE ITALIAN FOOD WITHOUT TOMATOES, Mr. Duane. Or spanish cooking without chiles. Really, face it, my friend, the Inca domesticated fowl, so there would be no foie gras in France without the food of Peru." Arturo Rubio's voice begins to rise now, and he swings his soft hands around to illustrate his point—that every great culinary tradition on earth owes a debt to Peru. "No chocolate in Switzerland," he cries, laughing at himself now. "No potatoes in Ireland." Pausing to gulp a Peruvian beer, he nearly spits his next line with glee: "The Irish would've starved. New York would have no cops. My God, it was Portuguese traders who brought South American chiles to the Asian subcontinent; there would be no curry in India. No spices in Thailand!"

Worldly, portly, impeccably dressed in Paris-by-way-of-Oxford upscale casual, Rubio is both the owner of Restaurant Huaca Pucllana, which is located near a 1,500-year-old ruined pyramid in the Miraflores district of Lima, Peru, and the impassioned former president of the Committee for the Promotion of Peruvian Cuisine. Which explains not only his harangue but the four appetizers suddenly set down by his waiters: Italian-Peruvian grilled baby octopus with lima beans, Afro-Peruvian-Creole beef heart rubbed with dried chiles and then grilled, Japanese-Peruvian tiradito of raw sole marinated ceviche-style in lime juice and chiles, and Chinese-Peruvian lomo saltado.

Peru, Rubio now wants me to know, doesn't just have great ingredients; it has one of the world's great culinary fusions.

"Because you see, the first people who came to the New World from Spain were not only Catholic Castellanos," Rubio says with the intensity of a scholar, "they were Spanish Jews and Muslims fleeing the Inquisition. So our gastronomy has Sephardic and Arabic Mediterranean roots. And then the European diseases wiped out all of the indigenous peoples in Peru, so the Spanish brought in West African slaves and put the women to work in plantation kitchens, and voilà! African Creole cooking becomes and remains the essential home cooking of Spanish-Indian Peru."

And there was more: emancipation of those slaves leading to importation of Chinese indentured servants and, with them, Chinese culinary influences; Italian immigrants fleeing Garibaldi's 1861 reunification of Italy; Japanese immigrants fleeing the shogun wars. "That was in the early 20th century," Rubio tells me. "And was maybe the most important [event], for our gastronomy. You can see how it happens, all these Peru-born Japanese children begging Mommy to add maybe a little hot chile to the nightly sashimi so that it would taste like the food from those African-Creole street carts. And this is how you get what we Peruvians call the Nikkei style of restaurant. And you must know Nobu, yes? In New York? Well, Nobu worked in Peru."

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Food confusion

From Carolyn Jung interview with Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio:

Q: Are most Americans confused about what Peruvian food is?

A: Most are. Peruvian food has five big influences: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, African and Inca/South American. Cebiches are our flagship like sushi for the Japanese. Our stews are European-like. Our sauces are like African ones. And herbs and chilies are very important in our cuisine.

Q: With your partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you will have ‘Seafood Watch Guides’ available for the public at your restaurants and you will serve only sustainable seafood at all of your restaurants? How challenging will that be?

A: I had been serving Japanese octopus for a year that I just found out was endangered. So now, I won’t use it. For the last two days here, I’ve been tasting all kinds of fish that I have not eaten much of before. Things like smelt, which we fried to make the most amazing chip you can get.

I hope that in a year we will change all of our menus, so that they will no longer say, for example, ‘Halibut Clasico Cebiche.’ Instead it will just be called ‘Clasico Cebiche,’ because each day we will use only the best, local, sustainable fish in it that the waitstaff will tell you about.

Q: So, the La Mar in Lima is quite different in that it is only open for lunch? Why is that?

A: It’s very interesting, but in Lima, we don’t eat cebiche at night. People think it’s too heavy even though that doesn’t make sense. You see, years ago, when there was no refrigeration, cebiche would be made by marinating fish with lime for two hours. It would sit out until dinner and when people ate it, they would get that ‘heavy’ feeling. So, cebiche places would only open for lunch instead.

We’re trying to spread the idea that cebiche places should be open during the day and at night now. But can you imagine if that happened all at once? There are 2,000 cebicherias in Lima. There’s probably 2,000 rotisserias, too. If all the cebicherias started to open at night, it would be like having 2,000 new restaurants.

Q: When was your father prime minister of Peru?

A: In the 1960s, when he was only 30 years old. He served for three years, then resigned because he didn’t agree with the oil policy of the government at the time.

Q: Your father sent you to law school, but you dropped out without telling him?

A: I dropped out after one year. But I didn’t tell him for three years. He probably suspected it, but he will never admit that. I finally had to tell him when I finished culinary school at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. He wanted me to go work as a lawyer at his friend’s corporation and I had to tell him I already had another job –- in a restaurant.

Q: Was he furious?

A: He was disappointed in the beginning. He imagined me working at McDonald’s. He said, ‘You went to the best schools; you could do so much more.’ Now, he says, ‘Wow, what a lesson you gave me!’ (laughs) Now, he is very proud.

Q: How did your love for cooking develop?

A: I’m the only one in this profession. I am the youngest. I have four older sisters, who don’t know how to cook.

I think I was born for it. When I was 7 years old, I would ride my bike to the store. I didn’t go to buy chocolate. I bought squid that I would take home to fry.

We had a cook in our house. My sisters were always with their friends or boyfriends, so I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with this great lady who cooked for us. I would taste, smell and read all the recipes books she had. Maybe that’s what started it all.

That curiosity I had then is the same as the one I have now. I think it’s important to keep that same kid inside of me with that same passion.

Q: You met your wife, who is of German descent, at the Cordon Bleu?

A: My wife was a student, too. It’s funny -– I left law school and she left medical school. My father was a politician. Hers was an entrepreneur. I have four older sisters. She has three older brothers. We met and fell in love from the first moment.

Q: After graduating, you and your wife opened a small French restaurant in Lima that slowly became more Peruvian?

A: Yes, each year, we left more and more of the French flavors behind and became completely Peruvian after six years. I thought, ‘Do I want to be a Peruvian chef making French food in Peru? Or do I want to take these ingredients to create a Peruvian experience that could compete with any great French experience in the world?’

Javier Wong y el mejor cebiche del mundo

Yemanjá

 
Vallejo Nocturno 2010-Restaurant

Ruminations in the dark

To be concrete and sure, I've been in Lima to visit my mother who at 92 has taken a turn for the better.

After a year, a turbulent year at that, I managed to creep my way back to Lima after trips in the previous weeks to London, New York, and Columbus.

My frail vision has been fractured and to add to the complexity of our human travails my family is undergoing trials and tribulations at every node.

Outside wailing sirens sing jubilantly in the distance in a Winter that seems like a nice Spring.

Peruvians complain that this Spring is not nice.

A vibrant but turbulent city, full of innovations and intelligence others can't see. Some of it enveloped in the transcendental taste of the its food, much like the Caribbean music complex yet familiar like yesterday's afternoon, that manages to exert a philosophical answer=salty and sweet combination in that existential embrace known only to to our South of the border buds.

Here, like in Vienna, the advancements are through one of our intelligent senses.

You guess which one. But it is advanced.

Roots food

Now I am in Lima and close to the Peruvian culinary delights that should be better known through out the world-here's an article on the the type of restaurant that overachieves and makes Peruvian food such a great passion for those of us who grew up enjoying it-learn to read Spanish my northern friends:

Con un chilcano de pisco de uva negra criolla de Caravelí, Esly Salinas y su madre Nelly Chávez Segura se disponen a inaugurar su Rinconcito Gourmet, un salón de su Rinconcito Arequipeño (la clásica picantería de Lince creada hace 42 años) que está listo para independizarse y presentar a los comensales “una nueva manera de ver mis raíces”, según confesión del risueño chef. La propuesta nace luego de seis meses de prueba, de la elección del servicio de vajilla y mantel blancos, de las copas de vino para solo seis mesas, apuntando a ofrecer una carta con platos que han sido definidos como “gourmet, pero generoso”, como les gusta a los hijos del Misti desde la entrada hasta el postre, sin olvidar el pisco.

Así, llega a la mesa, de cortesía, un bien servido pastel de papa, para abrir el apetito. Luego la recomendación apunta a compartir un “mix” de rocotos rellenos de adobo de pura carrillera de cerdo, de jugosos camarones y el clásico de carne, para luego probar el escribano presentado en quenelles coronadas con sarsas típicas, de lapa, de camarones y de machas. Cocina hecha al momento, de justos tiempos y atentos cuidados, que requiere, eso sí, llamada previa para reservar.

EL MENÚ RECOMENDADO
Esly Salinas atendió los gustos de sus comensales hasta encontrar el punto exacto del estilo gourmet arequipeño, que celebra desde hoy el insumo y sabor de la tradicional cocina mistiana.

Como aperitivo nos propone un chilcano de pisco. Para la entrada nos ofrece un solterito de queso. Como plato de fondo un locro de punta de pecho (carne de lenta cocción y presentada en sus jugos) para terminar disfrute de un delicioso queso helado, que puede ser acompañado con un toque de pisco arequipeño. Y si desea compartir un piqueo, Esly recomienda un generoso ‘mix’ de rocotos rellenos.