Posted by Lynsie Watkins
Mon, 19 May 2008 13:31:00 GMT
Just an observation…
The other day I was in the grocery store (Harris Teeter) and I noticed something odd. Over the past few years, but especially the past few months, I’ve noticed the grocery chain’s introduction of locally made food items. I’ve seen things like jams and jellies, mostly. There’s Route 11 chips, of course…and lately, there’s even been an artisanal bread maker from Richmond selling sandwich loaves. It’s pretty fantastic to see at least some locally made foods for the choosing.
Sadly, I’ve noticed something else-quite appalling, really. The locally produced food has been moving, slowly and methodically, to the back of the store. In one case, there’s even a stand of jams that’s currently sitting in a dark "employees only" entrance. (Specifically next to the fish counter, on the right hand side closest to the juices and "fresh" fruit.) If I were deciding between my cheaply priced Smuckers jam and the normally priced locally made jam, there’s no doubt that the latter’s creepy location would deter me entirely from even approaching. This, to me, is devestatingly sad. As far as I’m concerned, what the grocery store is saying to me is, "We don’t care about this local food because the markup isn’t as high, so let’s sell as little as possible so that we can drop the account and stick with our cheap ingredient-based staples." Sigh. It really does make me sad. What are we going to do when gas prices get so high that Smuckers will inevitably have to raise their prices? I don’t want our turn to purchasing local food to be one of obligatory action, but instead one of well-thought out choice in an effort to support our local farmers.
What can we do? We can start by approaching the manager of any grocery store, and requesting specific brands of food. We can ask our friends to do the same. The way it seems to go is that the manager/buyer will respond to a collective request. But be sure that if we ask for it, and then we don’t make an effort to buy it, "it" will be gone quicker than you can find it!
Posted in Sustainability | Tags artisanal, bread, food, grocery, in, jam, local, season, store | no comments
Posted by Lynsie Watkins
Mon, 12 May 2008 13:49:00 GMT
In the June 2008 issue of Food & Wine, Jeni Britton was featured in the magazine’s “Master Cook” section. For those of you who don’t know Jeni, she makes gourmet ice cream in Ohio. Her business is Jeni’s Ice Creams. I’m really glad to have seen her in this prestigious magazine, but not because of its notoriety and her potential fame. Instead because the article, and her recipes included in the article, epitomize the crisis we have currently in the food industry: a crisis of industrial food and sadly, some gourmet as well. It’s the use of unnecessary ingredients, like corn-based sugars, starches, etc. It’s Food Fakery, as Julia might say. Using an ingredient not intended in the use of ice cream, to replicate the smooth texture that real ingredients are meant to provide is sad. We should be angry, or at the very least, upset about this.
In the article, which briefly discusses Jeni’s use of “in-season” produce and “locally pasteurized milk,”* there are included a number of ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet recipes that, according to Food & Wine, took Jeni 75 tries to get right. Hmmmm….I guess she’s been producing her ice creams in massive quantities lately, because if Food & Wine asked me for a recipe for the home cook, I’d just use the one I use now.
In Jeni’s recipes I found the material that really got me heated. She suggests using ingredients like cornstarch, gelatin, and corn syrup in her creations because she doesn’t like the taste of eggs in her ice creams, and also because the gelatin “gives an appealing whipped texture” to the yogurt. Stop the bus! Since when did gourmet belong in the same sentence as factory food??? I am here to prove to all of you that you need none of the above to make incredible, dare I say, healthy ice cream and sorbet. How do I get around the great puzzle that is ice cream making?
Easy. I use real ingredients and let them speak for themselves. In fact, my recipe for french custard contains the same ingredients as Thomas Jefferson’s. He was, after all, the person who introduced ice cream, the ice cream maker, and the vanilla bean to America. As for corn syrup? Yes, there are recipes that I use that call for corn syrup…my solution? I use my homemade simple syrup instead. I combine organic evaporated cane juice and water to form a pure, unadulterated syrup that works as a perfect substitute. Check out my recipe for simple syrup, as well as my recipe for strawberry rhubarb sorbet. I just made some today and it was the best one yet!
Lynsie’s Simple Syrup (use, by weight, as a substitute for corn syrup in any recipe)
2 cups water
1 ½ cups organic cane sugar
optional: a vanilla bean, scraped. (All parts-the caviar (black tiny dots) and the shell-can be added.)
Bring the water and sugar to a boil, whisking occasionally. Boil for 5 minutes and remove from heat. Cool and place in an airtight container. The syrup will keep for up to 3 months in the refrigerator.
–note: this recipe can be doubled, tripled, whatever you like. Just remember, it’s two parts water, 1 ½ parts sugar. To tone down the sweetness of the sugar while maintaining the syrup’s viscosity, add fresh rhubarb juice, 1 tablespoon at a time. To make rhubarb juice, which is much better for the environment than lemons shipped from across the country and world, simply macerate chopped rhubarb with 1 tablespoon salt and three tablespoons sugar. Let sit in the fridge for at least one day and up to three. Remove, blend and strain. Leave the pulp behind and take the juice.
In-season AND Local Virginia Strawberry Rhubarb Sorbet
2 ½ cups strawberries, hulled and halved
2 ½ cups fresh rhubarb, chopped
Simple Syrup recipe (yields approximately 2 cups)
Combine all and let sit overnight in the fridge. The next day, blend in a blender or food processor, strain, and freeze juice according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. If you do not have an ice cream maker, freeze this sorbet in popsicle molds, or pour unfrozen sorbet in a container, cover and repeat this process until frozen: freeze for one hour, remove from container and blend, refreeze for one hour, remove from container and blend. Repeat until lighter in color and mostly frozen.
*As an aside, Jeni neither sticks to the use of local, in-season produce nor is she really capable of controlling the pasteurization process of her milk. I know she’s not using in-season, local produce because I receive her email newsletter and in December, her customers were encouraged to purchase ice creams with ingredients like strawberries, figs and cherries, none of which are in-season in Ohio at this time.
Also, regarding her mandate that her milk be “gently pasteurized” according to the article, I really don’t see how she can have any say into how her milk gets pasteurized. We pasteurize our own at Perfect Flavor, which means we know and understand the rules and regulations regarding pasteurization in the state of VA backwards and forwards. Pasteurization is pasteurization. The only difference is what kind of machine is used. At Perfect Flavor, we have a batch pasteurizer, which pasteurizes our milk in small 15 gallon batches for 30 minutes at 145 degrees Fahrenheit. The alternative would be a flash pasteurizer, which pasteurizes milk for two minutes at a temperature of 175 degrees or more. This, in our opinion, damages the milk, so we don’t do it this way, not to mention the fact that using a machine this large would be cost prohibitive to us. For Jeni or anyone else to say, however, that their product is “gently pasteurized” is bending the truth, because what they really mean is that they’re using a batch pasteurizer instead of a flash. Doesn’t it seem unfair as a consumer to be fibbed to?
On one more note of worth, my guess as to the reason why Jeni does not use eggs in her recipe for ice cream is simply because she would have to pasteurize them, and she doesn’t have a pasteurizer. Interestingly enough, in her press kit for the last two or more years she has stated her imminent purchase of a pasteurizer as “news” for the business. Somehow I have a feeling we shouldn’t hold our breaths. It costs A LOT to do things the right way, but for Perfect Flavor, the right way is the only way.
Posted in Business, Ice Cream, Recipes | Tags cream, food, gourmet, ice, industrial, recipe, wine | 2 comments
