286482 Thu Aug 03 16:10:46 -0700 2000 46 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1536234 Howler wrote (in a thread on the Manhattan board): "I'd disagree rather strongly with "True talent is to stand aside, and let the quality and freshness of the ingredients be the star." there are geniuses creating masterpieces with everyday, boringly normal, averagely fresh ingredients, and they do this by investing everything they do with a particle of their souls. would you deny them 'true talent'? " Yes, Howler, that's a good point (although Steve's point could have encompassed it with a slight change of wording). But I'd like to add that those working (and doing great work) with less wondrous ingredients aren't necessarily doing so out of deprivation. First of all, ANY good chef hopes to imbue his food with soul, by whatever method. Whether by letting ingredients shine or by doing lots of stuff. Either way, it ain't to extol if it ain't cooked with soul. But, that said....everytime I hear a chef talking about the utter necessity of using the finest ingredients, I think of pambazos, the Mexican snack of chorizo, grilled with potatoes, and served on a torta roll that's been fried with the sausage (so it's red and crunchy) with cheese and crema. When done right, it's one of the most intrinsically delicious things you can eat. But if you used GOOD chorizo, it wouldn't work. If you used excellent parmigiana cheese, it wouldn't work. If you got the roll from Ecce Panis, it wouldn't work. Fancy ingredients, like fancy restaurants, have their place, and can be exquisite in the right context (or not). But just as a restaurant needn't have linen tablecloths and fine china to be worth our complete respect, there are times when humbler ingrededients are the best choice to provide optimal deliciousness; they're not necessarily consolation prizes. Just as it'd be a shame for us, as chowhounds, to miss deliciousness because of stubborn concepts of what is or isn't Proper Food (from either a snob or a reverse-snob point of view), it's a shame when chefs limit their palette by their ingredient snobberies (not picking on you here, Steve...I'm just riffing in general!). ciao Thu Aug 03 16:10:46 -0700 2000 0 Jim Leff 1 1536245 Perhaps I mis-stated it. We're not talking black truffles here. Or while dining in manhattan, red rouget from the mediterranean. Its very simply the quality and freshness of ingredients, not the rarity or costs, i.e. have you ever had a bolillo (torta sandwich loaf) baked in a wood fired oven, with 3-day floor-proofed sourdough (the baker can't really afford yeast)? Or as simple as tomato, lettuce or cucumber picked that day? Fri Aug 04 10:58:56 -0700 2000 1536234 0 Steve Drucker 2 1536259 Steve--I realize that I slightly muddled my point by talking about a few things at the same time, but if you'll read my message again, you'll see that I wasn't talking about rare fancy ingredients "Have you ever had a bolillo (torta sandwich loaf) baked in a wood fired oven, with 3-day floor-proofed sourdough (the baker can't really afford yeast)?" sounds great. I'm sure I'd love it. But a good chef can also make a semi-stale torta role from Brooklyn taste heavenly...and there are contexts in which the wood-fired torta roll would not be an "improvement". I would NOT want a pambazo made from one. It'd taste good (fresh, high-quality ingredients can't, of course, add BAD flavors), but it wouldn't be a pambazo. It'd be something else that's different, not better. It would upset the all-essential balance. Many preparations depend for their balance on relatively non-characterful, non-super-fresh ingredients that don't have a lot of intrinsic personality. It is not necessarily true that (as you put it in another thread) "True talent is to stand aside, and let the quality and freshness of the ingredients be the star". That's just one possibility. There are chefs who don't stand aside whose food is wonderful. And there are chefs whose ingredients are not fit to star yet whose work produces deliciousness that could not have been enhanced by better ingredients. Great ingredients singing out pristinely can make for great food, but that school is just one of many routes to deliciousness. In fact, it happens to be my least favorite. While I appreciate it when it's done well (one of my all-time favorites, Bo, cooked that way), I generally prefer chefs who do lots of things to their ingredients; who consider them to be mere raw material/fodder. I love to grasp the chef's personality from the edible traces of all the zillions of miniscule micro-decisions that went into the preparation. John Thorne has actually written the definitive description of this dichotomy. Hopefully I've at least made the point that there IS a dichotomy. ciao Fri Aug 04 20:04:10 -0700 2000 1536245 0 Jim Leff 3 1536277 This whole ingredient vs talent thing--Here's how it started: I travel a lot, and I'm constantly challenged to find real food in strange cities. Also, some of our traveling companions have parochial preferences. Before I get on a plane, I do a lot of research, and menu studying. One of the most valuable razors I use is the ingredient thing. It works pretty well, but its not the only method that can work. Another is to extensively read an individual critc's reviews, and determine how closely a reviewer's judging criteria match mine. Another is to evaluate a menu design for freezer based or out-of-season ingredients. Zagat is problematical (as has been noted elsewhere here, and rightfully so). http://www.restaurants.ca (reader ratings for Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, and Vancourver) is pretty good, since confidence level (i.e. how many posts over what period of time) is part of the rating. None of these are sure things, just some methods with which our success rate rises to about 70%. Which means about one third of the time we strike out. Sigh. Now that Chowhound suggestions have been added to the mix, maybe I can push the success rate to 80%. Regular reports will follow... Sun Aug 06 12:13:38 -0700 2000 1536259 0 Steve Drucker 4 1536286 FWIW, the close attention to ingredients is what I'd consider a "foodie" trait. It's one of the things that distinguishes chowhounds. We tend to plunge into the gestalt of edible experience and glean whatever there is to be gleaned rather than deconstruct and dissect. Less materialistic. My favorite analogy is that at puppet shows I very seldom pay attention to the strings. Even if I were a professional puppet critic, I'd still watch the puppets. That's all that matters. ciao Mon Aug 07 14:06:54 -0700 2000 1536277 0 Jim Leff 5 1536288 What are those of us with "perfect pitch" (ingredient wise) supposed to do--retreat to Zagat's or the abuse of Gourmet? Oy. Where is your compassion :) ? Mon Aug 07 15:38:34 -0700 2000 1536286 0 Steve Drucker 6 1536289 Heh. Please (this goes for everyone!) don't ever mistake my enthusiasm or the vehemence with which I sometimes deliver my points as any sort of negative energy addressed at you. I just get all excited about this stuff, and it's nothing personal! And you are totally totally welcome here, even if you do show some occasional foodie propensities! (G, D&R) ciao Mon Aug 07 17:04:57 -0700 2000 1536288 0 Jim Leff 5 1536346 <<the close attention to ingredients is what I'd consider a "foodie" trait. It's one of the things that distinguishes chowhounds. We tend to plunge into the gestalt of edible experience and glean whatever there is to be gleaned rather than deconstruct and dissect. << Jim, don't you perhaps mean that the "foodie trait" isn't attention to ingredients, so much as it is an obsession with ingredients being whatever the current definition of "the best" is? Being in the food biz in the San Francisco area, I come across lots of people with very twisted attitudes toward food -- right now the new thing is to buy only cheese that's never been wrapped in plastic. Apparently it's no longer enough that the cheese is made from the milk of virgin goats, collected under the first full moon after the summer solstice; now it can never touch plastic. I doubt the people who insist on that could tell the difference in a blind taste test, but try telling them that? Ha! When ingredients become a status symbol rather than simply being ingredients, that's ridiculous. But to say that is not to deny that the quality of ingredients can make a big difference in the quality of the dish one cooks. I think of the first time I ever used fresh snapper rather than the previously frozen kind I was used to. Snapper Vera Cruz made with the frozen stuff was fine, but when I used fresh, all of the sudden it was fantastic. It takes an amazing amount of skill to make something good using mediocre ingredients. Of course, it can be done and it is done all the time. But when you have really good ingredients (by "good" I don't mean rare or expensive, just fresh and flavorful) you're that much farther ahead. You can afford to let the ingredients "speak for themselves" if you like, or with more effort, you can take them to uncharted heights. Sun Aug 13 14:10:04 -0700 2000 1536286 0 Janet 6 1536347 Hey, don't get me wrong! I'm not against finickiness...quite the contrary! If virgin goat cheese that never touches plastic tastes better, and it's what a chef needs to evoke maximal deliciousness in a given context, so be it! But I don't want that melted over a hamburger. When I'm eating a cheeseburger, I often don't want to revel in the pure essence of ingredients. I want a cathartic edible gestalt. That said, I'll also revel in the pristine harmony of great ingredients with the best of 'em. Just not all the time. It's not the only way. It's not "better", it's just one style of cooking (for which I willingly pay more...not 'cuz it's BETTER, but because it's more costly to prepare). "It takes an amazing amount of skill to make something good using mediocre ingredients" Ok, here's my point in a nutshell. You are right. BUT...it ALSO takes great skill to make something good using great ingredients. It takes an amazing amount of skill to make ANYTHING delicious, period. Well...skill and CARE (gotta have both). In both schools, as in most pursuits, the overwhelming majority of practitioners don't have that skill or care. So the mediocre chefs working for Pure Expression of Prime Ingredients tend to lean too much on their ingredients as a crutch. They don't put in the work and ingenuity and inspiration, and they rely on ingredient porn to carry their weight. The mediocre chefs from the school viewing ingredients as fodder to be tamed into submission tend to baffle 'em with bullshit, as the old phrase goes. Lots of perky, heavy-handed tricks standing in for deliciousness. Neither school renders true deliciousness more reliably. They both have their pitfalls. And done right, both can make you close your eyes and feel glad to be alive. It's hard to find deliciousness out there, and chowhounds don't cut off avenues. We respect that tzimmes is not intended to make us flare our nostrils with the earthy goodness of baby organic carrots. That there are noble uses for stale commercial white bread as well as the freshest home-baked batarde. That said, we also respect the chefs who (to return to the quote that spawned this discussion) "stand aside, and let the quality and freshness of the ingredients be the star". Vive la difference. Remember the chowhound mantra: Delicious is delicious. However you get there. Sun Aug 13 14:50:34 -0700 2000 1536346 0 Jim Leff 7 1536348 Sorry--to explain for those who don't know, tzimmes is an Eastern European peasant dish consisting of grated carrots with any of a number of sweetening agents (depends on exactly where your family's from). It's cooked to a point about two steps short of porridge (tzimmes can also be made from other root vegetables, but carrot is the most common). Like all soul food dishes, it is a strategy devised by the impoverished to wrest deliciousness from whatever humble ingredients are at hand (and so you don't WANT it to taste like what it is!). And like most soul foods (think ribs, think foul madamas, think mofungo), the result, when well-prepared, can truly inspire. And wouldn't inspire MORE if fancier/fresher/better ingredients were swapped in. A potato knish is not waiting for organic Yukon Golds, Vedalia onions, French salt and great phyllo dough in order to reach its full potential. And if you add a touch of fresh tarragon I'll punch your lights out. Sun Aug 13 15:06:14 -0700 2000 1536347 0 Jim Leff 8 1536350 Jim, you supplied the primary definition of tzimmes, but neglected to give the second meaning: "a major issue made out of a minor event." (I had vaguely recollected it--the wording comes from a Yiddish Expressions site, link below.) Niftily, that secondary definition hits the nail on the head of this culinary issue--in cooking tzimmes (or pot au feu or pizza), one tries to make a major dish out of minor ingredients. And funny how often on these boards a casual remark (about the primacy of ingredients, for example) can turn pretty quickly into a tzimmes! Link: http://www.pass.to/glossary/gloz3.htm#lett Sun Aug 13 16:10:17 -0700 2000 1536348 0 Leslie Brenner 8 1536351 Interesting to me that most, if not all, "peasant" dishes were created before either the killer pesticides we have today or the vast corporate farm-type things that now bring bad produce to our supermarkets. The quality of the produce we consume has absolutely got to be at the all time low since the advent of farming. The carrots that the original tzimmes makers were eating were certaintly not shipped in plastic bags from 3000 miles away, then left to sit in a lukewarm bin under fluorescent lights for 3 weeks. They probably WERE organic! Bad food is bad food, and I'm not sure putting "soul" into it will change it into something delicious. Sun Aug 13 16:55:20 -0700 2000 1536348 0 Tara 9 1536356 Trust me, the carrots my great-grandparents were grating in Russia were non-wonderful. In fact, I'd bet next month's food budget that they tasted a heckuva lot worst than our irradiated ones. "Bad food is bad food, and I'm not sure putting "soul" into it will change it into something delicious." I've just spent a full minute considering that statement, and I'm afraid I'm completely unable to frame a response. I mean, does it actually SAY anything? I'm just seeing raw circularity. ciao Mon Aug 14 00:05:02 -0700 2000 1536351 0 Jim Leff 9 1536362 Its true we do not get the best produce in our supermarkets, but the midrange quality level is much higher, I feel confident, than what was available to our ancestors. Sure, bagged supermarket carrots may not reach the peaks of flavor available with freshly picked heirloom varieties grown in ideal locations. But if you have ever tried to grow carrots, you know that its darn hard to produce healthy, tasty roots. If youve ever grown apples, you know it is almost impossible to produce fruit of any quality without spraying. For better or worse, we can have produce grown under optimal growing conditions, raised free of insect infestations, in relatively fresh condition all year round. Sure, local and freshly picked produce grown from the best varieties is generally better than the uniform stuff shipped from 1000s of miles away and is worth seeking out. But local produce is only seasonally available, and we are very fortunate to have inexpensive access to quality foods our ancestors could only dream of, year round. Mon Aug 14 10:49:23 -0700 2000 1536351 0 jen kalb 8 1536372 The carrots in my Polish-Jewish relatives' tzimmes are always cut into chunks, not grated. I've never had anyone else's tzimmes, so maybe this is peculiar to our family. Seems like it'd be REALLY mushy with grated carrots. Tue Aug 15 14:28:56 -0700 2000 1536348 0 Lisa Z 8 1536418 For some reason, my family refers to two very different dishes as "tzimmes". One is a grated carrot pudding (which my mother made only for Seders, with matzoh meal) and the other is a stew involving (to the best of my recollection) beef, carrots, sweet potatoes and prunes. I guess it's one of those really flexible terms. Either that or it actually means "carrots again! Well, we can always cook the $^!% out of 'em and do our best to disguise 'em." Mon Aug 21 16:13:27 -0700 2000 1536348 0 C. Fox 9 1536419 The only kind of tsimmes I knew of was the beef, root vegetables, and prunes dish. Mon Aug 21 16:39:24 -0700 2000 1536418 0 Bilmo 1 1536246 Many of us have experienced the kind of country cooking where the cook uses things like supermarket white bread, canned soups as ingredients, margarine, and very often the food turns out transcendentally delicious. But I don't think that those ingredient choices were made through a careful comparison with, say, butter and hearth baked breads. Those "fancy" ingredients never would have occurred to them. Like many country cooks, they use what's easily available, and the good ones somehow turn it into something special. And it's funny, when I try to cook that way, it just tastes like a collection of cheap ingredients. Fri Aug 04 11:12:05 -0700 2000 1536234 0 Bilmo 2 1536258 I think what you say holds true most of time, Bilmo, but not always. For example, Tom Douglas, one of Seattle's best chefs, insists that crab cakes are better when made with cheap supermarket white bread than when made with "good" bread. You can be sure that Tom's conclusion was reached through "careful comparison." BTW, Tom Douglas's crab cakes are legendary in Seattle. Fri Aug 04 19:39:27 -0700 2000 1536246 0 Tom Armitage 3 1536293 The bread is one thing. I would bet you dollars to donuts the crab is utterly fresh and the best he can find. They are after all "crab" cakes. Mon Aug 07 23:39:00 -0700 2000 1536258 0 Barbara S 2 1536260 Yeah, there are LOTS of people out there using lousy ingredients merely out of deprivation or ignorance, some of whom can wrest deliciousness out of them. These aren't the people I'm talking about. They'd do better if they were given better ingredients. I'm talking about the wide range of cuisine that is intrinsically built upon non-wondrous ingredients, for which the substitution of "better" ingredients might wreck a dish...or at least transform it into something other than what it's supposed to be. I'd love Valhrona chocolate pudding, I'm sure of it. But I wouldn't necessarily consider it an "improvement" over puddings made from less intense chocolate. I won't give up regular chocolate pudding because I will have "seen the light". It's DIFFERENT! Ingredients are for chefs what colors are for painters. The most vivid and intense hues are not necessarily "the best". And while it's true that if you ask an observer to pick the more compelling color (or torta roll) in isolation, they'll always pick the most vibrantly bright color (or the shmancy wood-oven torta roll). But stuff's got to work together, and sometimes Nebbishy Beige or Suburban Refrigerator Green (or a supermarket torta roll) is what's needed for a particular painting. ciao Fri Aug 04 20:17:25 -0700 2000 1536246 0 Jim Leff 2 1536322 Sitting at my desk eating a fried tripe sandwich, I'm musing on the primacy of ingredients. The tripe is tender though still springy and fried to perfection: very crisp and greaseless. The bread has to be Wonder, the mustard - yellow ballpark, the onions, sliced white, and the pickles, hamburger dills. This is the quintessential tripe sandwich here in St. Louis. And if one likes a traditional tripe sandwhich, it has to be put together this way. No fancy Pullman loaf, or Grey Poupon or other variation would improve it because it wouldn't taste right. Ingredients don't get much humbler, but in comibination I wonder about the genesis of this sandwich and just how perfectly everything goes together. I blush to admit that this is the first time I've ever posted so graphically about anything on this site. My sandwich just tastes so damned good. pat Thu Aug 10 13:58:22 -0700 2000 1536246 0 pat hammond 1 1536337 I know I'm getting into this late, but for the last week or so I've been really missing heritage variety tomatoes that this time of year would be flooding into the farmer's markets in the Monterey area. Some of those tomatoes were 50 times better than anything in a super market. I would say that they were as good as home grown--but truth be told I've never had a home-grown tomato that could hold a candle to them. And they were so good, that the least amount of preparation would make them a perfect appetizer or salad. And of course, you could surround the tomatoes with absolutely fresh red oak leaf lettuce leaves (for example). Damn, I'm starting to drool. One thing I've noticed about this discussion is that even those folks who denigrate the importance of ingredients are often extremely specific about what lousy ingregients are required for some dish in question, as when Jim writes: "if you used GOOD chorizo, it wouldn't work. If you used excellent parmigiana cheese, it wouldn't work. If you got the roll from Ecce Panis, it wouldn't work." A sentence like that sure sounds like the ingredients are, after all, primary. It's just that for some dishes the ingredients need not be expensive or hard to find. Sat Aug 12 16:14:46 -0700 2000 1536234 0 e.d. 2 1536342 I picked peaches last weekend up near Rochester, and they were so ripe that the skin would peel right off the ripest ones when we picked them. So, of course, we had to eat them right there in the orchard, and at the time, we were saying, well, these are pretty nice, but early - just wait for those Red Havens! Back in Manhattan, I see the sad, sad peaches in D'Agostino and even at the farmer's market - they're just no good, but everyone is snatching them up. I even tried to eat one recently (someone brought me one, knowing that it's my favorite fruit), but I had to spit it out. It makes me so sad to see all this bad fruit. In reference to the thread about ingredients, I find it impossible that anyone could redeem these poor specimens. Last summer at Babbo I had a peach something for dessert, and the man made a big deal out of how fresh and wonderful the peaches were, but frankly they were the letdown of the entire meal - mildly flavorful and mealy. Anyone else experience this sadness? Sun Aug 13 00:10:12 -0700 2000 1536337 0 Tara 3 1536343 Tara, Had some almost identical thoughts about peaches we picked up last weekend in the Finger Lakes (I think around Hector, on the east side of Seneca). Although we didn't pick, the grower just said to leave them for a few days - and they were great. We also had some nice (mostly organic, too) produce from the excellent Ithaca Farmer's Market. Cheers, Joe Moryl Sun Aug 13 10:54:47 -0700 2000 1536342 0 Joe Moryl 4 1536355 I feel lucky reading all these replies. I live in the SF Bay Area, and it has been a great season for stone fruit. I've been eating at least 2 peaches a day. Don't know if you guys would be into this, but here's a website for Frog Hollow: www.froghollow.com. They're organic farmers, and stone fruit specialists. I know they ship. Sun Aug 13 22:50:59 -0700 2000 1536343 0 MA 3 1536352 This problem isn't unique to peaches, but happens in all produce. Unfortunately, the mass consumer is not very sophisticated, and so shops only on the basis of price and appearance, neither of which are good guides to value. In most places, there are no merchants dedicated to carrying superior food and SELLING it to a clientele that they continue to educate. Farmers, almost universally, have no interest in their profession as a craft. They are not seeking the artisan life style, but rather to get rich quick and move to the city and live it up. Luxury, in America, is expressed mostly in its least intelligent and least mindful way. Mechanical perfection and ever increasing size are the only criteria acknowledged. It does not need to be so. Consider the Japanese, for example. A grapefruit can be an ephemeral work of art, coddled in a net bag, on a tree thinned to grow very few fruit, so it becomes sonething special, WORTH the $14 or so that it costs. A piece of Kobe beef, from an animal fed on beer, massaged by maidens, can be WORTH the $65 a half pound asked for it, which price can also help to keep the beef the special treat it ought to be. Members of my family grow and can hand peeled white peaches here in the San Joaquin Valley, and we have seen over 50 years the "competition" such as Tri Valley, Del Monte, and Contadina degrade the product year after year, until many people regard "canned" and "tasteless" as being synonymous. Certainly everyone over 40 can remember tomatoes that were NOT tasteless rocks, but sparked up the meal. Those tomatoes had enough acid to be canned in a hot water bath, and to render safe may stewed tomato combinations. Today's tomato has been bred down to the lowest common denominator, to the point where we will no longer buy them from a supermarket, and where they need to be pressure canned to protect against botullism. On occasion, someone will produce a product with some genuine taste, and it will sweep the market. Unfortunately, again, our business climate mitigates against finding a niche and filling it. The originator, eager to become a rentier, sells out, and the food conglomerate that buys it degrades the product, trying to maximize its sales. Until our incentives are somehow adjusted, I see little hope for any improvement in any of these areas. Sun Aug 13 21:07:33 -0700 2000 1536342 0 Ed 4 1536353 Wow, I'd love to know where to buy your peaches here in New York. The season is short, you know! Sun Aug 13 21:55:28 -0700 2000 1536352 0 Tara 4 1536357 Farmers are,as a group, just in it as a get-rich-quick scam? Is that why here in the midwest, I am constantly hearing of banks foreclosing on loans, there is a yearly benefit concert (Farm Aid), and John Mellancamp was inspired to write "Rain on the Scarecrow"? If anything, it's difficult for farmers to keep future generations of their families in the business, because their offspring see that for all the hard work (harder than you or I will ever work), the financial reward that results just isn't worth it all. Mon Aug 14 03:47:50 -0700 2000 1536352 0 Greg 5 1536366 Greg, I expressed that a little clumsily. What I was trying to get across was that the vast majority of American farmers live in an air conditioned house with a satallite dish. Any farm advisor will tell you that the vast majority never get more than 50 feet from the pickup. They are not yearning for the kind of artisan farming that allows a Japanese or Taiwanese full multigenrational family to make a living from 1 1/2 acres or less. Quality of food products, like quality in anything else, comes from hand labor and glory in the joy of one's work. Today's "family farmer" hasn't a clue. He's merely a factory farmer. Mon Aug 14 17:50:54 -0700 2000 1536357 0 Ed 6 1536379 I'll agree with you on that. A chef instructor at Johnson & Wales refers to this as the "human element". He considered it important enough to lecture on the subject for a good half-hour (that's when I knew I was getting my money's worth!). It's the most important ingredient in any dish. Tue Aug 15 19:55:11 -0700 2000 1536366 0 Gregory White 6 1536398 Ed, You're still clumsy. First hand I can tell you why most American farmers why don't yearn for Artisian farming: They're working to damn hard day and night just to keep from going under. You say they never get more than fifty feet from their pickup, they generally never get more than 60 miles away from home in their entire lives, they are slaves to their farms. If it ever comes on PBS again, you should watch THE FARMER'S WIFE, a real tv documentry about 2 years in a farm family's life. That's what a real farmer is. To hell with that, you should rent a piece of farm land yourself, and see how far you'd get with your artisianal vegetables. Pete Sat Aug 19 07:03:08 -0700 2000 1536366 0 Pete Feliz 7 1536401 Pete: This is precisely why I miss you so much when you make yourself scarce. Reminded me of Maine relatives who farmed rocks more than crops. They lived about 15 miles from the coast but if they got there more than once a summer it was a huge event. The family farm has since been sold to a lawyer from Boston. pat Sat Aug 19 10:28:25 -0700 2000 1536398 0 pat hammond 7 1536406 Pete, Don't try to be obnoxious with me, you're an amatuer. Besides, Jim doesn't like full dress flame wars singeing the more gently reared. I own 9 1/2 acres of oranges which we farm organicly. It costs us about $16,000 a year to bring in a crop. In '99, we were frozen out after we picked $600. worth, and got an insurance check for $2247. The packing house has not yet paid that $600. Nor have they even told us how many bins they picked this year, let alone hinted when they might pay for them. Two years before, we calculated it out that, if a calorie were totally fungible, we shipped enough calories to market to supply all the food needs for 93 people for a year. Our GROSS proceeds were less than $300. Net loss, over $15,000. I came to the San Joaquin Valley almost 30 t3ears ago, and I have worked in every kind of crop there is. I have cut, turned, and rolled raisin grapes. I have picked peaches, nectarines, and my own oranges. I have driven a tractor and been an irrigator. I've been chased as a scab by UFW thugs. I've gone with friends to the morgue, to see if bodies found in the trunk of a coyote's car belonged to relatives. I've visited farmworker friends in their 60s who had the heat turned off in the middle of the winter, because they couldn't afford it. If you know more about farm life than I do, you'll have to prove it. Read Victor Davis Hanson's "Field Without Dreams". It'll tell you all you need to know about farming, and the people who farm. Sun Aug 20 00:05:25 -0700 2000 1536398 0 Ed 8 1536407 Ed, The first twenty some years of my life I spent on my family's farm. We grew cash crops of cotton and alfalfa. My father had neither the ambition or the illusion that he was going to get rich quick or move to the big city. He had to take on a full time job in town in order to support us and be able to keep the land. His working day began @ 4 am and ended @ midnight, 7 days a week. Vacation for him was not having to go to work in town, and being able to devote the twenty hour fully to farming. He finally decided to rent the land to more "prosperous" farmers. They too, had no desire to move to the big city, and being rich to them meant being able to farm next year. To this day he has neither an air conditioner or a satelite dish. I only knew one rich family farmer in my Arizona hometown, and he worked just as hard as my Dad--but he was much luckier. You're right Ed, I'm an amateur. The best I can come up with was that I was once almost taken in by the INS while bucking bales (Hey, it was 110 degrees and I needed the break). And I didn't read all of your first post, or else I would have known that you're an artisianal farmer. I just got really angry about what you wrote of "family farmers" and quit there. That was careless of me. But the picture you paint of the farmer no more than 60 feet from his pick-up, that's careless, too.... Well, we all have issues. Let's both be honest, farming's a tough life no matter what you grow. Sorry. Pete Sun Aug 20 07:09:22 -0700 2000 1536406 0 Pete Feliz 9 1536408 Pete, My target was the kind of narrow stupidity that makes farmers feel that just because the customer is ignorant, he has to stay that way. The farmers need to advertize and propagandize together on behalf of premium food and luxury food. As long as they continue to commoditize food, all they will get is scraps. As far as the "60 feet from the pickup" farmers, there are plenty of them here, especially on the West Side. J.G. Boswell is just the biggest and most obnoxious. They only come up here to the valley for dove and quail hunting. In their private planes. There are plenty of the other kind too. The small guy who works his butt off and never learned how to line up for the lion's share of the subsidies. And yes, you're right. If my wife and I didn't have off farm incomes, we could never afford to stand these kinds of losses. Good Luck, Pete. Sun Aug 20 16:20:07 -0700 2000 1536407 0 Ed 4 1536385 Tara, Ed, and all, This is a great thread! Thanks for giving me a forum to kinda rave/rant about this issue from the point of view of a Northern Califorinian (Sacramento) now living in Tokyo. (This is quite long, so if you want to go on to something else, no offense taken). Kobe Beef - It is sublime!! One would never, and I mean NEVER, imagine that beef could taste this exquisite. Is it worth 6800 yen, (approx $65.00) per 272.6 grams? I'd say "yes". Ed, the only thing that you missed in your description of their pampering is the variable of "classical music" (mainly the three B's - Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms - piped into the stables during daylight hours) soothing the relaxed beast. As my own note: The purchasing of Kobe beef in the market should not be undertaken by the faint-of-heart, (some pun intended) since the marbleing(sp?) on these cuts of beef runs about %50 meat/%50 white stuff. And, also get accustomed to a steak that is 1/4" - 3/8" deep (as opposed to the 1/2" - 1 1/2" regular steak cuts one is accustomed to in Califorina). Grapefruit: If one was looking to do a still-life painting of a grapefruit, look no farther that a bowl full of Japanese grapefruit. Aesthetically, these are the epitome of what a grapefruit should look like. Unfortunately, their taste is no better or worse than any grapefruit that you can get in most No. Cal. supermarkets any time of the year. I was NOT happy spending 1280 yen ($13.00) for my grapefruit. Sorry, but, it tasted like the grapefruit that I've grown up with all of my life. Now, on to peaches... First, let me preface this portion by letting it be known that I LOVE to make pies. And my friends, American and otherwise, think that I'm actually quite great at it. I learned my recipes from my Grandma. Growing up in the heartland of Nebraska, she first learned to make pies. Then, as the wife of a Methodist minister in Red Bluff, CA. (up in one of the large agricultural centers of California - Northern California), she perfected her recipes - apple, peach, cherry, lemon, rhubarb, blackberry, boysenberry, strawberry, prune, and of course, (from her parent's roots) pecan pie. My grandparents, both being from from farming stock, had 500 acres of walnuts, almonds, peaches, plums, and cherries in Red Bluff (also, they had the two largest pecan trees in all of Tehama County in the oval of their driveway). Now, 104 [yup, she is 104 years old!] years later, she stills loves the stuff, but leaves it up to her grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) to carry on the family legacy, and love, of making her pies, and bringing her samples any time we can. Peaches are now in season here in Japan. I have no idea what the species name is - red and white mottled skin; very white, sweet tasting, flesh...about the size of a softball. These are the only peaches available in Tokyo, at any time of year (at least that I've found). Anyway, I went to a potluck picnic last weekend with some friends, and they asked me if I would provide the dessert...5 peach pies (40 people). Using the exchange rate as of last weekend... 1 peach = $4.00 6 peaches per 8" pie = $24.00 5 pies (30 peaches) = $120.00 40 slices (8 per 8" pie x 5) = $3.00 per slice BTW: These peaches made a FANTASTIC peach pie. This was actually a BARGAIN. (Anna Miller's, the only restaruant chain in Tokyo at which one can obtain pies, is charging about $49.00 for a fresh fruit pie right now). Well, there you have it. I've gotten the chance to rant and rave, and clue y'all into the prices that we expats in Tokyo get to pay for a (good?) pie. BTW (at the current exchange rates): Today at the market in Tokyo... Watermelon - $45.00 (5 lb) Honeydew melon - $32.00 (2 lb) Cantoulope - $18.00 (1 lb) Bing Cherries - ($8.80 15 piece package) I am so jealous of your choice of produce in the supermarkets right now (no matter how inferior they may be to what you may be able to cull out of the orchards). I am even more envious the fact that you can go into an orchard and pick your fruit off of the tree. Please, don't ever take that gift for granted. Thank you so much (domo arigato gozai mashitu), Andy Wed Aug 16 12:36:18 -0700 2000 1536352 0 Andy P. 5 1536386 What a fascinating post!! I cannot believe that fruit is that expensive in Japan. I mean, I believe you, but that just blows my mind. I think we paid $.60 a pound at the orchard - yes, sixty cents. We picked about thirty pounds of peaches and thirty of apricots, which were a little more expensive - maybe eighty cents. I made a wonderful cobbler the other night, the peaches I picked were nice for it. My mom is a pie fanatic and I've never had better than her blueberry. For peaches, I prefer cobbler, the dough made with molasses, nutmeg, allspice and ginger. This guy at the farmers market today was trying to sell me some peaches when I stopped to smell them. He cut one up for me, and it was indeed sweet, but had a mealy after-mouthfeel. For $1.75 a pound, call me spoiled, but I'm not interested. Especially since after spending the day in a truck then with a bunch of New Yorkers, nearly all of them were pretty badly bruised. Which leads me to my next pet peeve. I see people squeezing the peaches and nectarines at the market as though they were Charmin or something. They literally press their thumbs into them, HARD! Then they put them back - what, leaving thumbprints means they aren't ripe enough? You wanna have a fistful of peach when you're done? Funny that this is my favorite time of year, chow-wise, and it leaves me so grumpy! Wed Aug 16 21:18:48 -0700 2000 1536385 0 Tara 6 1536422 Ah hah! I can tell you why the fruit in Tokyo is so expensive; huge amounts of it come from New Zealand and Australia. Our most pampered apples, citrus fruit, apricots and cherries head over there. Here in NZ I saw a cherry farm on TV that had been set up specifically for the Japanese export market; meticulously pruned trees, some in climate-controlled greenhouses, producing perfect, immense cherries, gathered gently and packed in special little baskets. Of course, we never see these in our supermarkets over here.... Mon Aug 21 21:20:58 -0700 2000 1536386 0 Emily Cotlier 5 1536387 Speaking of expensive watermelon in Japan...when I was there ten years ago, it was even pricer--$100/per. And this reminds me of a mystery I've never been able to solve. I was over there for a gig with a nearly all-black big band. The fat-cat producer (Japanese) greeted us with a huge table of watermelon. I've never been able to work out in my mind whether he was indulging the corniest imagineable stereotype or paying us a heartfelt tribute by serving us such a hyper-expensive treat (there must have been $5000 worth of fruit in this room; completely ridiculous to me, of course, since we'd just arrive from NYC where the stuff was 20 cents/pound!). There are lots of conundrums like this in Japan... ciao Wed Aug 16 23:47:24 -0700 2000 1536385 0 Jim Leff 5 1536831 I lived in Japan for nine years, moved to the SF Bay Area about a year and a half ago. Andy, do I ever hear you about the grocery shopping! A few Tokyo shopping tips for you that you've probably already discovered: * If you want reasonably priced fruit, don't look in the department stores or the gaijin specialty stores (Kinokuniya, National Azabu) -- fruit there is priced to be given as gifts. Go to your local supermarket or market. Even better yet, check out the discount supermarket chain "Niku no Hanamasa" for *very* reasonable imported meat, seafood, veggies, etc. Since berries (other than strawberries) are often not available in Tokyo, you can get large bags of frozen berries & fruit at Niku no Hanamasa as well (good for when you've got a craving for blueberry pie). There's one in Shimbashi, another in Sangenjaya, etc. * There's a reasonable street food market on the weekends in Ueno (check one of the "off-the-beaten-path" guide books for location) that sells really really cheap crab legs for nabe, etc. There used to be a large Middle Eastern/SE Asian immigrant population that did their shopping in that area. Lots of fun for a Saturday morning. * And, of course, the Tsukiji fish market is reasonable & amazing. Best, Deb Mon Sep 11 20:24:29 -0700 2000 1536385 0 Deb 6 1536951 Hi Deb, Thanks for the tips!!! I'll be checking them out this weekend! Geez, I just love this site. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, Andy Wed Sep 13 07:03:15 -0700 2000 1536831 0 Andy P. 3 1536359 The link below will undoubtably be of interest to you peach-lovers out there. Link: http://www.masumoto.com/ Mon Aug 14 09:36:17 -0700 2000 1536342 0 marion 4 1536361 Great link. I read Masumoto's book "Epitaph for a Peach". It was a love letter to peaches, I think. I was also lucky in that I got a couple of his peaches from Monterey Market. Had one after a good, long hike. Thems good eatin' is all I have to say. Mon Aug 14 09:54:44 -0700 2000 1536359 0 MA 3 1536360 Treelicious Orchards from western NJ has an excellent variety of peaches, yellow and white, at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza farmers markets - probably others, too. However, farmers are at the mercy of the weather, and the lack of sun and the surplus of rain result in a less excellent flavor. Also, particular peach varieties have a very short season or are adapted to different types of seasons, so local growers grow a range of varieties to cover the season and assure they have a crop to bring to market. We have had delicious peaches from Treelicious for the last few weekends, but you have to ask about the peaches on offer - which ones are better - and have reasonable expectations. Its really important to support our local orchardists, if we want to continue experiencing variety, freshness and the most delicious possible produce. Mon Aug 14 09:38:59 -0700 2000 1536342 0 JEN KALB 4 1536382 Just to chime in, while I empathize with the lack of truly great peaches on the markets, I was very pleased with the ones I bought at the farmers' market at the World Trade Center (Tuesdays and Thursdays) yesterday. Made them into an excellent peach cobbler last night--I had been worried they wouldn't be "peachy" enough, but they were perfect. They were from the farm whose stand is right at the bend of the "L" shape in the market. Farmer said that this next week or so is going to be the height of the season. Wed Aug 16 11:19:31 -0700 2000 1536360 0 Mary 3 1536397 Tara, I rue the day I said "I never wanna see a peach again." I was a child and I had just peeled my third 5 gallon bucket of our orchard peaches. Now, I'd give anything for one of those buckets. Jen is right about Treelicious (Friday @ Union Sq, Sat @ Grand Army Plaza). Also @ Grand Army Plaza is Kernan Farms, whose freestones are slightly better than Treelicious (they also have good Tomatoes). But sadly, this year's peach and tomato crops are more watery than sweet. For subway directions: simply take the #2 or #3 train to Grand Army Plaza and you're two blocks away from it. Pete Sat Aug 19 06:48:56 -0700 2000 1536342 0 Pete Feliz