Augieland

Drink your-self some cider

Bridge brought over two hard ciders Monday night, both by West County Cider. I don't know a lot about cider, so I started looking around on the web. Turns out cider is a pretty artisanal product and I love artisanal products.

To start, you pound the hell out of some apples. This is called scratting and the resulting product is called pommace. The pommace is formed into cakes, which are called cheese. The cheese is stacked on slatted racks with cloth on them and pressure is applied to the stacks to squeeze the juice. The juice is then strained and the cheese discarded.

The process of fermentation is the same as for wine: yeasts, either natural or added, consume the sugar and turn it into alcohol. To add the sparkle to cider, near the end of fermentation the juice is racked off the dead yeast cells while some sugar and yeast still remain, and is put in an airtight vessel. The carbon dioxide that results from the remaining fermentation is trapped in the solution, creating the effervescence.

Here are some cider facts:

• Cider can be bottled right after fermentation or aged in casks.

• Various apples are often blended for different characteristics.

• Apples that taste good to eat are often poor for cider because you need more tannin and acid in the fruit to translate to the beverage.

• Oxidization is a big concern while extracting juice from the cheese; exposure to air taints the product.

• Fermenting at colder temperature preserves subtlety in the resulting juice.

• European apples tend to be more tannic.

• If you put cider in an open bucket and leave it out on a cold night you can make Applejack by skimming the frozen water out and leaving a more concentrated alcohol.

The first Cider we drank was Heritage Apple. It is made from Baldwin, Roxburry Russet (which was America's first-named apple variety), and European apples. It was crisp and light with very nice acid; the predominant scent on the nose was that of a carton of white button mushrooms and reminiscent of the forest floor. A very interesting drink

The second was Baldwin, which I assume contains all Baldwin apples. It is slightly sweeter and more straightforward apple on the nose and palette. I imagine it would go very well with roast pork at a Christmas dinner, but that may just be the season taking hold.

Cider seems pretty cool to me.

'00 Portteus Zin

Thursday night I played “go ahead grab any bottle you like,” with Bubby. He pulled a 2000 Portteus Zinfandel that Wife and I bought on a trip through the Yakima valley in 2002. (Stay here, and go here). I think we bought it at around $26 and it was amazing. A big, heady red with great integration of black pepper and black fruit, Bubby, Wife, Cop and I all agreed: If you have any drink it, it is drinking perfectly right now. If you know how to get some more, please tell me.

The good news is that, thanks to repeals or changes or redistricting or whatever it took, wineries may now ship directly to consumers in New York. I know not every state has ended its Mafia-like rules regarding liquor distribution, but mine has, so I found Portteus on-line and ordered a mixed case of current vintage wines. Alas, Pataki and the boys got around to changing the rules too late for me to lay in a deep row of ’00 Zin, but at least I can try the new stuff and boy do I intend to.

There are awesome little guys making wine out there, wines where the guys making the decisions are the guys that live on the farm, not some beer company in Australia. You can now support them by buying direct. Try it, your business may give some little guy the ability to resist a buyout offer he otherwise couldn’t and then we will all be a little better off.

Alinea 90044 stars

I recently had the best meal I have had in my life so far. When I say this, I am only comparing it to meals at restaurants I walked into knowing no one, with a reservation I obtained myself. So included in my comparison are places like The Fountain, Charlie Trotter's, and Per Se. Excluded are places like Morimoto, Cru, and Gramercy Tavern that I feel I can evaluate honestly but, having developed strong relationships with them all, through regular visits, feel I may see a level of service even beyond their already amazing standards which makes it unfair for me to compare them to new places.

 

I first heard of chef Grant Achatz when he was at Trio, and decided I had to try his food some day. After he opened Alinea he would pop up quite a bit in articles about what I call "the new food," the chefs that fall into Ferran Adrià's school of experimental cuisine.

 

The pitfall with any new creative process is that for every ingénue there is a hack turning out technical approximations of the art but missing the soul. Getting to El Bulli in Rossas, Spain has long been a quest of mine but as far as its American counterparts are concerned, their chefs seemed to emulate the surreal aspects of Adria's cuisine, rather then the obsession with flavor people who have been to El Bulli attribute to Ferran. That is, except for Grant.

 

When people talk about Grant they speak of skill, precision, and wonderful experiences, as well as pillows of aroma and bacon on trapezes. So, looking for an opportunity for a nice meal with Bestfriend prior to his bachelor weekend, I decided it was to Alinea we would go.

 

The myth is that there is an umpteen month wait for reservations, but I called on a Wednesday afternoon, explained I was Bestfriend's best-man and would be flying into Chicago the following day and that, if we could, we would like to have dinner for two the following night, time of seating not being a concern. Christopher, the Matrie d' saw no problem with the two of us dining at 8:00 pm.

 

There is a tradition among fine restaurants, especially those in Chicago, of being located inside townhouses that in no way stick out significantly from the other edifices on the block. We walked past Alinea twice before deciding it had to be that nondescript brown brick building with the warm glow across the street. Once through the front door, though, the design aspects became quite unique. You enter into a gray hallway that diminishes as you proceed, ending in a short space with a sculpture comprised of a bunch of blunted steel needles in rows. About halfway down the hallway, a pocketed door opens on your left and you are in front of the host's stand, which is tucked under the staircase. To your left is the downstairs dining room, where larger parties are sat, and to your right is the wide-open kitchen. In the center of the very sleek, sensible kitchen stands a young man who looks more like an old boy. This is when it first occurs to you the guy who is probably the next, best American chef, is twenty-nine years old.

 

The staff is very proud to be working with a system of unique elements, that will be new to your dining experience and they take the time to point out to you aspects that are distinct to Alinea. What makes these speaches so unfeigned is that each detail is explained as a choice of the chef, with an explication of some of his logic behind it. When silverware is presented it is put on a small platform in the middle of the table. The stand is topped with a rectangle of white linen. The server goes on to explain that the aesthetic of the big black wooden tables was preferred to linen but the functionality of linen also makes sense so the chef designed this simple solution. Armed with this information you see the logic of the approach without experiencing any of the instinctive resistance that the thought of something being different just for the sake of being different inspires.

 

The menu consists of three options: One, Two, and Tour. Tour is everything, 26 courses on the night I went, and it never occurred to me to dig deeper into what the other choices were.

 

We opted to have Joe Catterson, the sommelier, choose our beverages per course. Before flying, Robert Bohr, the manager of Cru, said Joe was absolutely to be trusted, and I trust Robert absolutely. After agreeing to select our beverage pairings, Joe also suggested we wait till after dinner to see our menu, thus removing any preconceptions it might inspire. We agreed, and we were on our way.

I have attached the menu and you can refer to it for any clarifications. The wines are listed as well. What I find compelling, and what a lot of my food geek friends like to argue against (though not from experience), are those aspects of Grant's preparation beyond those accepted as standard at this point in the evolution in cuisine, that I believe to be better than what I have seen so far.

 

The wines were some very interesting choices from all over the world. Not enough people are using Lillet; and Movia makes great wines in Slovenia that your average wine guy is afraid to commit to because it is just too much work to explain that the vineyard is only 30km from Italy. Joe's selections favored whites and light-bodied reds, which made absolute sense with the food.

The Olive Oil was seared. Grant has what I visualize as a cold-plate as opposed to hot. It holds some incredibly low temperature like negative billion degrees or something. No matter what it actually is, what results when you drop some olive oil on it is solid olive oil. This is served on what resembles an acupuncture needle with a little black pepper and Parmigiano. The second it touches your tongue it liquefies so what is now in your mouth is the unctuous feeling of olive oil, black pepper and Parmigiano. So far, the next best way I have seen this done (bread to soak up olive oil, which changes the purity of those flavors) is a far distant second to this.

 

Maitake is a soup that comes stacked in a cylinder, giving you a chance to observe and comprehend the layers before the waiters make a whoosh sound as they pull the cylinder up and the soup spreads and mixes in to the bowl to become one thing, the soup.

Dover Sole always comes with butter and capers. Grant dries the butter to a powder and adds banana as a counterpoint.  Rather then have a sole made to taste like butter and capers; you can taste the sole, or the sole with butter, or the sole with capers and butter, or banana, each combination working to enhance your appreciation of the fish itself.

Pomegranate is a pomegranate gel with a small square of Explorateur, a tiny slice of a Thai chili, and a micro mint leaf. Of course the taste is fantastic. Pungent cheeses, sweet fruit, nip of capsicum, cooling effect of mint. Grant stacks them and serves them on a two-foot needle counterbalanced on the table. You are asked to eat the "dish" with no utensils and no hands, so you must move your open face towards the needle. As you approach and consider this daring move on your part and his, you can't help but think about what your about to eat, and I am attracted to things that make me think about my food.

Lamb is served in a bowl that is placed on a pillow filled with smoke from burnt star anise. The weight of the bowl causes the air to leak out of the pillow so as you eat, the closer you are to the bowl, and the more the aroma of anise affects you. With your head over the bowl, the lamb tastes like anise, while the anise flavors lessen if you sit back in your chair.

Those are my five best examples. Everything on the menu has something special about it, and it all is great. The only two down-notes for me were Blackberry and Quince. The Blackberry because the tobacco, although it tasted interesting, did not necessarily taste good, and the flavor lingered through the next four courses and the Quince because it tasted trite and like cumin.

If you have the opportunity and the roughly $450 it will cost for the food and wines, go. No one on this continent is being more creative with ingredients and presentation. At its base, Alinea is serving very fine food that tastes great and, in its execution, is stimulating to all of your senses (even your sense of fear as you stare down at that needle).

Subway: neither Sub nor Way, discuss amongst yourselves

I grew up in NJ. There are many things people that grew up in NJ take way too seriously (Camaros, cologne, and matching gold jewelry to patterned sweaters for example), however one of the things Jersey just gets right is the submarine sandwich.

A real sub (hoagie, grinder, torpedo, hero) is made either at a deli or a pizza shop. The meats and cheeses for a real sub are sliced when you order it. A real sub has more meat then bread and, even though the roll is of respectable size, it is offered in ½ or whole, not inches. The roll for a real sub is made locally at a small Italian bread shop, and is delivered by truck every morning. Into these otherwise inconsequential loaves of bread are stuffed cold cuts. Sub shops have at least 10 versions of an Italian sub, usually identified by number. My favorite Italian at my favorite shop is the #33: capicola, salami, and provolone. I like mine with lettuce, tomato, onions, oregano, oil, and extra vinegar. If you say "everything" you get all that with mayo. Mustard and hot peppers, although part of "everything," are usually a separate request.

Why am I on about subs? Well another unfathomable event has taken place here on the island I believe holds people who take food too seriously to support the banal, destructive, food of chain restaurants. Directly across the street from my office a Subway brand sandwich shop has opened up. Much as with the Domino's that opened three doors from Otto, and the Olive Garden that opened two avenues from Beppe, the fact that I have ever seen anyone inside completely baffles me.

The argument I hear is that it is familiar and is different than other sandwich shops. Now I will grant that NY delis are not as committed to sub excellence as their brethren across the Hudson, but this Subway sits between two delis, both of which make a far better sub then Subway. The other argument is cost, which just shows too little self-respect to discuss now.

Subway makes horrible subs. The frozen, half-cooked bread they reheat to doneness on-site is terrible, and they cut it open the wrong way. The ratio of bread to meat is absurdly disproportionate. I promise that their cold cuts which have been pre-cut and portioned at a factory somewhere are not as good as brands like Boar's head, not to mention the ones available at places that roast their own beef and turkey. The tomatoes Subway uses here in NY, in August, are crunchy and pink. It is a detestable thing.

Simply put, Subway does not make subs, Domino's does not make pizza, and most of all Olive Garden does not make Italian food. Giving them your money takes away from local people working to make an authentic product. I promise it will lead to heartbreak; independent, authentic sub shops don't have the backing of huge conglomerates and the drop-off in revenue that can occur from people grabbing a Subway "every now and then" can crush them.  You will lament the absence of the real sub shops when Subway is all that is left. Just drive an interstate and you will get a taste of the devastating sameness in store. It is bad enough that we can't find decent coffee any more thanks to Charbucks. Keep your money in your community, supporting the local ventures that make it unique and keep it a place to have pride in. But, most importantly, skip Subway because it sucks.

Bonnie's 741 cajrillian stars

I used to make wings all the time. I stopped because of grease; not the theoretical grease people like to talk about when they talk about eating foods that have been fried, but rather the grease that would stick to the walls of my kitchen when I would make them. I am very happy to report that my friends really like eating the wings I make and, what started as, “hey come to my place and I’ll whip up a batch of wings” out of my mouth one Friday night, became, “when are we going to do another wing night?” out of theirs. For most of ’02 and ’03, I had up to 15 people showing up an average of one Friday a month and I would cook about 250 wings at a clip.

I used one of those small home fryers that are to be found at house-ware stores. It accommodated about a dozen wing sections at a time. The timing I came up with for this small batch fryer was one minute per wing in a batch plus one minute, so the cooking time for 250 wings was four hours and fifty-one minutes. Add to this the fact that, in one of those amazing no-one-ever-built-a-kitchen-in-a-New-York-apartment-for-cooking stories I have no exhaust fan in my kitchen, and the result was a pretty serious skim of grease on the kitchen walls on the corner I kept the fryer in. One day, while scrubbing the grease off the walls with Comet again, I had had enough and threw the fryer out, ending Augie’s wing nights.

The regular visitors to my wing nights were thus set adrift wingless to search the bars of New York.

Spidey found some in Park Slope, Brooklyn of all places, at Bonnie’s, a 15-stool lunch counter with a couple of tables, right next to Blue Ribbon. When Schmoo and Spidey called and invited me and Wife to join them for the best wings they had had since mine, I had to go, if just out of flattery.

They were right. These were amazing wings.

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While waiting at the counter for a table to open up, I started talking to the guy behind the counter doing all the cooking, Anthony, about the restaurant’s choice of beers. They had a short selection of draft beers entirely comprised of smaller microbreweries. This led to a conversation on his wings, my wings, and great hot sauces. Anthony agreed to make me a separate set of truly hot wings using his special sauces. The wings were awesome, without giving up any flavor he managed to ramp up the heat to the point that, with breaks to regain composure, it took me about an hour and a half to finish ten.

Every now and then the occasion arises when the right thing to do is a little Saturday afternoon stunt eating, and this weekend was one of those times. So Bear, Fittsdoola, Bubby and I made our way to Bonnie’s to eat some seriously hot wings. We walked in as the doors opened at 1pm and took the four stools right behind Anthony,
was still wearing his Knoblauch T-shirt, just a little more threadbare from a year’s worth of trips through the wash. He looked over his shoulder and said, “How hot do you want them?” and we answered that we would start with 20 hot wings and then an additional order of 10, carefully choosing the wording “as hot as you could eat them.”

We devoured the first 20 in a matter of seconds, and this is honestly the way wings should always be. They are wonderful, with a strong, persistent heat that makes the beer more fun to drink. When you finish there is the lingering sensation of heat and that nice burning on your lips that makes wish you could drink from your pint glass while putting both your lips inside it.

it was time to eat the real hot ones. As if they weren’t threatening enough, these had a browner cast to them than that standard beautiful orange, and we smelled them about eight feet before they got to us. We loaded up a pitcher of the Honker ale, buckled down, and went to work. They had the same great flavor of the first batch with a new layer, that pure, or close to pure, capsicum to be found in truly hot, hot sauces, that I tend to liken to chocolate and bananas. There was a short (about five minute) period of silence while all we could do was eat. This was good because it allowed me to better listen to the wax melting in my ear canals.

Do your friends ever look better then when they are flushed red, like an Irish girl from New Jersey that spent the first day of spring break in Florida trying to get a base tan using a new bikini and some baby oil? With huge clenched-teeth grins and a tear rolling from their right eyes? There were rapid knee bounces, there were some deep inward breaths through closed teeth, and there were even some faint wows, but that was about it.

When the wings were gone, I had had four, Bear three, Fittsdoola two, and Bubby one. I think Bear was the first one of us able to truly regain command of speech, followed by me, then Fittsdoola, and Bubby brought up the tail, after running to the loo to splash some cold water on his face. All agreed, as the endorphin rush subsided, that although almost unbearably hot, they took us perfectly close to the precipice. Sometimes you just have to get that close to the edge to look over and enjoy the view. We decided the way to go was 10 more standard hot, since only Bear and I were interested in more of the truly hot variety, and another pitcher or two of beer.

Bonnie’s is great because Bonnie’s is authentic. Anthony makes burgers and wings, both very well. There is no pretension, there is no sign outside talking about best this or real that, there is no stupid heart attack release to sign before you get the serious wings. Hell, there is a picture on the wall of Kirk and Spock. It is a great place to go if you love burgers and wings and good ale, or if you want to watch your friends cry without having to rent Rudy.

My wings

Most people call this style of wing Buffalo, and indeed my recipe is based on my experiences eating Buffalo wings. But as my version includes a couple of ingredients beyond the scope of standard Buffalo wings, I simply call them wings so as not to upset purists.

I start with a frozen bag of wing sections to be found at most supermarkets.
I fry in grape seed oil, for its neutrality, heat capability, and assumed health benefits.
I put the wings in the fryer in the largest batch it can accommodate without drastically reducing the oil temp (not more then 15 or 20 degrees upon submersion) and cook them one minute per wing in the batch plus one minute. 
I put them in the fryer cold and undressed. I consider anyone who breads or even flours his or her wings foolish; a big part of a great wing is the sauce sticking to the crisp, unadorned skin.
When I pull them out of the oil, I put the wings on a rack in a roasting pan with paper towels under it to let the skin crisp a little. If you have a basket fryer and can set them up out of the oil for a period of 1-2 minutes, this will have the same effect.
Next, I toss the wings in the biggest bowl I have with a small amount of sauce, enough to completely cover. The big bowl helps because you can completely coat the wings with a flick of your wrist and then the extra sauce stays behind for the next batch.
Then I just put the dressed wings in a big serving bowl and serve with bleu cheese dressing and celery sticks.

The sauce:
One stick of butter
Two large bottles cheap hot sauce, store brand is fine, you want it to be about chili peppers and vinegar, not much more.
One bottle Tabasco sauce
5 tablespoons cayenne pepper
2-3 tablespoons dried thyme
The juice of one lemon
A dozen grinds of black pepper.

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepot and bring to a simmer, then back off just enough to keep warm.

This is the base sauce; it is honestly not very hot at all. To jazz it up, when you put the sauce in the bowl with the wings add things like Dave’s Insanity, or Blair’s Death, or Da Bomb Final Solution, then toss like normal. It is up to you take it where you want it to go. The sauce is just about good flavor and the ingredients lay a good foundation of the various burns: the Tabasco attacking, the cayenne slow and building, and the black pepper little spikes.

Drink your-self a vertical

There are not many luxury items that people share as freely as fine wine. When a guy pulls up to a bar in a brand new Lotus and you say, "Wow what a car, I've always wondered what it's like to drive one of those," never does he throw you the keys and say, "go ahead, try it."  However, when you say to a wine drinker, "Is that a Jeroboam of '45 Mouton? How wonderful must that be?"  most true lovers of wine will ask the bartender for an additional glass, pour you a small taste, and send it over. Loving wine inspires a certain benevolence because the enjoyment of fine wine is simply enhanced by sharing it with people who appreciate it.

Pichon and Helmet are wine lovers/collectors. Pichon has a deep collection he has put together over some time that he has rounded out by cherry-picking his father's cellar, which is set up in much the same way. It is great and shows that methodical collecting over time leaves you with some delights as time passes. Helmet is a young, big-game hunter. He has tasted a lot of wine and has great exposure to some of the most respected wines in the world. He has a concept of value for those bottles considered to be great and it is fun to watch him stalking all over the web, sighting up wines in his range, and taking them down.

One night, while out with these two, they mentioned what a great idea it would be to put together an assortment of the different vintage Latours they each have and do a vertical tasting. When they said that it would be fun if I joined guess what I said?

The beauty of a vertical tasting, of any wine, is that you can get an appreciation for how vintage affects the final product.  Ideally, each house is using the same fruit from the same place and making wine with the same ideals in mind, so the variations from year to year will be the result of weather. If you want to take your connoisseurship to the level where you discuss good vintage vs. bad, a vertical is the best way to examine these differences.

So we all met at Pichon's house. Pichon was providing an '86, '90, and '93. Helmet brought a '64 and a '98. Pichon Sr. decided to join and brought a magnum of '89. We tasted, standing around the kitchen counter, and kept the food we intended to eat after tasting out of the way.  We tasted the Latours in the order they are listed below.

1998 had a deep garnet color and bruléed sugar, raspberries, lilac, white pebbles, blueberries, chocolate and anise on the nose. It had great focus with very up-front tannins; very juicy.

1993 was garnet with a brackish hue around the rim. The nose was green bell peppers, red fruit, minerals and cinnamon. The palate was green and very thin in the middle.

1989 (out of magnum) the color was a mature garnet. There was decomposing meat and red fruit on the nose and the palate was flattish and hollow in the middle. (Read on for notes on the evolution of this wine).

1990 was a light garnet color with cinnamon, leather, dry-aged beef, and macerated fruit on the nose. The palate was very well structured with a solid backbone. It was quite complex and was consistent from attack to finish.

1986 God, we did not want this wine to be corked. We smelled around it and claimed spice, dry herbs and wood. We called it funky and let it sit, hoping it would blow off but, alas, this wine was corked, just slightly, enough to let you know that it probably could have been a great wine if the Bordelaise would accept responsibility for quality control and test their corks for TCA.

1964 The conditions of this wine's storage were suspicious from the get go. The ullage was high shoulder and the label was very discolored, so we were not surprised that it was shot. It was totally maderized and smelled of blood, iron, sourdough and Port.

I think the '90 was the big winner. The fascinating thing about a vertical tasting is that we never would have thought to call the '89's mid-palate hollow until we tasted it in a flight of it's siblings.

Then the real hedonism got underway. With the tasting officially finished, we left the remains of the bottles to give them a chance to open up and went to the dining room table with our tasting glasses to sit, and drink, and eat.

Because tasting never really gets going until after a little wine has been consumed, I had brought and an '01 Marcassin Three Sisters to be used as a warm-up. Helen Turley may make America's best white wines, so I figured it would be a fair starter for such an amazing line-up. The wine had started all lemon, toast and minerals with amazing focus. Coming back to the half glass I saved a few hours later, it had become hazelnuts. It was so rich and great and it served again to refresh for what was coming next.

For the second round, we added a '70 Cos d'Estournel and an '82 Pichon Lalande, figuring that the Latours wanted some time to evolve. They were fantastic. The Pichon was blueberries and leather, with a huge attack that tapered away through the mid-palette and finished forever.  The Cos was detritus and blackberries, not as huge as the other wines of the night but solid and good.

We also added a plate of sliced prosciutto, three dried sausages, and four cheeses. The first of the cheeses was an Affidélice, a pungent cows milk cheese that has had its rind washed with Chablis. It was very stinky and the runny paste was amazing. It was everyone's favorite. Tete de Moine from Switzerland, an intense, semi-hard cows milk cheese, was second.  Third was Fourme d'Ambert, a semi-soft blue that is great in taste without getting overly blue-y on the wines. Fourth, in the starring role, was a real Camembert. God, there is nothing like Camembert and Bordeaux. The most ridiculous thing in the world is that that cheese is illegal in this country.

With some time for them to open up and some food to put with them, we went back to the Latours and the biggest notable change was that the '89 it had found it's balance and was all kirsch liqueur goodness. The '86 was still corked, the '93 was still really just flat, the '98 had not changed much, and the '90 was still the most noteworthy sample.

That the '98 didn't really go anywhere is an interesting conundrum because that is the exact opposite of how Bordeaux should act. After 3 hours in an open glass, wine (Bordeaux especially) should either evolve or decompose, it should not still taste like it did when opened. I am suspicious that there has been some manipulation by the winemakers here to give it a certain flavor to appeal to a certain palate, forgoing the fundamentals of the French ideal of terroir. Only time and verticals will tell.

Foie Gras

Have you ever seen a cattle feedlot?

The Foie Gras debate is rearing its ugly head again because the city of Chicago is talking about banning Foie from being served within the city limits. I can't figure out what upsets me more -- people arguing about torturing animals while Cheney argues to torture humans, the anthropomorphizing of yet another animal based on zero actual biological fact, or Charlie Trotter being the poster boy for this cause.

The reason people have fattened ducks livers for the last 5000 years is that, at some point 5000 years ago, some genius realized that the livers of ducks and geese killed in late fall tasted much better then they did the rest of the year. With hindsight and current biological understanding, we know that this is because the fowl themselves would fatten their livers in preparation for their long migratory flights.

Once fowl were domesticated, people realized that if you overfed them, much as they overfeed themselves in autumn, you could always produce this fatter, better tasting liver. Since these birds evolved with no gag reflex (so that they could engorge themselves when the time was right), and the lining of their throats is more comparable to a fingernail than a soft palate, it meant you would do no damage by putting a tube past their esophagus and overfeeding them (a practive called gavages).

Now I have heard stories of geese buried up to their necks in sand and force-fed to the point of bursting, but this makes no sense in today's reality. Feeders are penalized for feeding to the point where a duck dies simply because it's bad business, leaving one less duck for sale at market. The reality is that Hudson Valley Foie Gras loses 3.5% of its ducks a year, which is right in line with the 3% Tyson claims annually in chickens, and the ducks get the privilege of keeping their bills and not having the duck that lives in the cage directly above them shitting on them all day. All of the duck is used, at least at Hudson Valley, the feathers for down, the breasts served in restaurants, etc. At the moment Del Posto is planning a pasta dish that will have duck testicles as a main component. 

I have no comprehension of how we can live in a world where, in the interest of national security, we have a VP arguing for the torture of humans, and people dehydrating on rooftops while bureaucrats preen in emails, yet Foie Gras is such a subject of public policy.

What is happening to our world is that we are legislating good, small, successful businesses out of work, in response to critics who have not bothered to look into the science of the practices beyond the childish argument that "if I was a duck I would hate it." Dr. Elliot M. Katz, the president and founder of In Defense of Animals, likes to show pictures of mishandled ducks in France to people on their way into restaurants, as if he were scaring a thirteen-year-old girl on her way to an abortion clinic out of what he considers to be a bad choice. That is his right, and I say power to him and his group. If those tactics can work on someone who believes a picture is worth a thousand words, and can shame them out of a dining choice with little more than uninformed claims, so be it.  To paraphrase Paula Wolfert, I would rather be one of [Hudson Valley Foie Gras'] Michael Ginor's ducks then a Tyson chicken, or even a Simplot potato.

I see this as the political cause version of the rather-than-fail courses in college. Who is going to come out in defense of overfeeding animals in an America currently dealing with how much it overfeeds itself?  Alderman Joseph More is saying things like ''our laws are a reflection of our culture, and in our culture it's not acceptable to torture small animals." The fact is we torture all kinds of creatures and support far more detestable practices then gavages. If you look at these farms, compared to every other level of acceptable farming practice -- milk cows, Perdue chickens, fur farms - American Foie farmers are models of what people should aspire to to help free us from the holes we have dug ourselves with mass agriculture today. These councilmen are picking on the little guy (the amount of ducks fatted in America every day is infinitesimal -- Hudson Valley Foie Gras raises 250,000 ducks a year and that is 60% of the market) because it is easy. If these people really want to do some good and change food in America for the better, they should write letters to their elected officials about the ridiculous raw milk policies.

Back in '94, when I was just out of school and saving money for a six-month European backpacking expedition, I was working as a waiter in one of New Jersey's many "Bistros" (think un-franchised Fridays that dotted the country back then). In the kitchen was a recent graduate of the CIA, so when I was headed to Chicago for a weekend to visit Bestfriend, I asked him where we should go. He told us "there is this guy out there named Charlie Trotter everyone is talking about," so off we went to Trotter's. This was my first real exposure to fine dining and started me down the path that leads me to rant on and on about cuisine on this very blog. I went on to make periodic, pretty much yearly visits to Trotter's every time I could get the money together, for about eight years. I remember his stab at a red wine menu and have gone out and attended cooking classes Charlie hosted. I am what you could call a fan. That all ended in '03 when I finally brought Wife, (then GF).

The first time I happened into Trotter's I had no idea what to expect, along with no idea of what fine dining could cost. When I explained to the waiter that we may have bitten off more then we could chew, and wanted to enjoy the experience as much as possible while keeping it on the cheaper side of what I expected they were used to, the amazingly talented server went on to sell a glass of wine from a bottle she expected would pair up with our first four courses to a regular at another table and sold the remainder to us for a deep discount since she figured it would not sell again, not being on the list of glass offerings. We got off cheap and they earned our 10-year allegiance. That's good business.

On another visit, I remarked to my waiter that I noticed Sister had three slices of antelope tenderloin on her plate while Bestfriend had four and I had six. She explained that the waitstaff report to the kitchen on how dinner is progressing and the portions are adjusted so that everyone will be able to see their way to the end of the twelve courses. I have many stories like this and, in addition to the food, was continually wowed by Charlie's innovative and original solutions (such as having his servers wear  double-sided tape on their shoes to pick up grey lint on the dark carpets without distracting diners during service). I was always very impressed.

That all ended one night when I finally brought Wife (then GF), to Trotter's, and the service some how seemed off the whole evening. Our waiter was much more proud of his association with the respected greatness of Trotter's than in possession of the passion for fine food that had seemed to pervade every inch of the place on past visits.

The whole problem can be summed up in the exchange over our Triple Seared Beef. When I asked what type of beef it was the server went on to explain, "you have heard of Kobe??? Well this is from a smaller Japanese island. The cow lives its whole life confined to a very small area, never being allowed to walk, being constantly massaged by young women and fed nothing but rice and beer in order to fatten it nicely." Which put Wife right off it, and consequently the whole meal. What is so frustrating is the meat was red, so obviously at some point it had been fed something containing chlorophyll and not just his described diet.

Wife has had a tour of Hudson Valley Foie Gras Farms and sees nothing wrong with their treatment of the birds, so it is not like she is against processes that make food taste better. The irony is that Charlie Trotter, the guy now calling Foie "grisly" had an employee of his flagship restaurant erroneously touting the torture of Japanese cows because he thought it would add to our dining experience.

In all of the meals mentioned, Foie played a role in Charlie's Grand Menu. The guy is a genius, no one doubts that, and he may have moved on from Foie because he no longer sees a need for it on his menu. But that is because he has done everything he can imagine to do with it, not because he has had some epiphany. I think the chef likes being a "benevolent" authority now, in spite of the fact that when he was making the gamble to open a two menu, all or nothing, restaurant in the middle of the "brat" town, he leaned on Foie for its role in fine dining and used it for all it was worth.

If I lived in Chicago right now, rather then choosing topics easy to debate because no one bothers to understand the reality of the processes involved, I'd be calling a re-vote of the entire council for wasting time on such a silly, inconsequential subject, and tell the next set to pay attention to things that actually effect people every day, like the city's exorbitant sales tax. Maybe they could be at 9.5% if they weren't wasting time debating things settled 5000 years ago.