Mindful Eating & Slow Food | Page 10 of 44

The Big Apple on a Budget: Tocqueville, a New York Restaurant Review

Published by Leonor White + Thursday, April 18, 2013 Permalink 0

The Big Apple on a Budget: Tocqueville, a New York Restaurant Review

by Leonor White

I discovered Tocqueville last New Year’s Eve, and it’s been my go-to place ever since when special people come to town. My latest visit to this understated yet elegant Union Square New American-French restaurant with a French flare and amiable, well-trained servers brought rave “reviews” from the entire table.

Seven days a week, the restaurant offers an excellent value prix fixe menu ($29). The menu consists of three courses — appetizer, main course and dessert — as well as an amuse-bouche and interesting housemade bread à go-go. In the evening, Tocqueville offers a pre-theatre menu at $44, as well as a full à la carte menu. We went for Saturday lunch, when the restaurant was unusually uncrowded, so we sat on the ground floor from where we could enjoy a view of the restaurant’s refined décor. The dining room was pleasantly quiet with tables set widely apart and well-designed acoustics, allowing us to concentrate on the marvelous food and have good conversation too.

As mentioned, the prix fixe offers three courses, with two choices per course. From the appetizers, everyone tried both offerings, the “creamless sunchoke soup” and the “salad with mushroom terrine”; both dishes were flawless, the flavors bold but balanced. Prior to our appetizer arriving, we were served an excellent “roasted asparagus and beets” amuse-bouche, a great start to our culinary adventure. Throughout the lunch we were also able to enjoy an assortment of homemade bread, namely, brioche, focaccia filled with olive chunks, and crusty, white sourdough with homemade butter (you heard me right, homemade).

Interview with Najat Kaanache, The Pilgrim Chef from El Bulli

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, April 3, 2013 Permalink 0

Interview with Najat Kaanache, The Pilgrim Chef from El Bulli

One Woman’s Tireless Pursuit of the Whimsical Spirit of Food: An Interview with Najat Kaanache

1. Do you remember the moment when you became interested in food?

I was just five years old and my grandma finally trusted me to help make the bread. Each grain was so precious and I was as focused in the kitchen then as I am now!

I remember making bread with my mother and the respect she taught me for the whole process of growing and cooking nutritious food for the family. Simple, natural food was the standard at home. We were so poor that a small piece of hard, crusty bread with a bowl of lentil soup was a luxury. We grew almost all of our food on our property and only went into town to buy flour.

2. Who influenced you most and did they teach you about cooking and food?

Ferran Adria taught me to give my brain and my hands the freedom to create magical dishes. At el Bulli, we practiced the “art of doing” and everything Ferran has achieved came from hard work; none of his innovations was accomplished by accident.

3. Do you think with your taste buds?

I feel with them…my hands, eyes, heart and soul all have taste buds!

4. Where did you start your culinary studies (a little history)?

My first technical training was at Culinary School in Rotterdam, but I’d been butchering, foraging, harvesting, processing and cooking daily since early childhood. Food has always been my way of life.

5. At what point did you become interested in molecular cuisine?

I was working in Rotterdam when I started reading about Grant Achatz and Ferran Adria. I set my intention to do my next training with them, and although I knew it would be next to impossible, I worked every day to make it happen. I dreamed of making crazy sexy food and these two chefs introduced me to a new paradigm of creativity, using science and technology in the kitchen.

6. There are those who say molecular cuisine is unhealthy. What are your thoughts on this?

Food can be prepared in so many ways. For me, it’s unhealthy to eat packaged and processed foods without regard for where they originate or what additives they contain. Molecular gastronomy is an experimental way of cooking, but master chefs use only the highest quality organic ingredients and utilize technology just to present the best of each product to the guest. This modern style of cooking really boils down to a measure of creativity, not health. The so-called “chemicals” used are very common, benign food-safe chemicals and only trace amounts are used. What worries me are all the “natural” blueberry products that contain absolutely no blueberries, just Modified Corn Starch, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Red #40, Blue #1 and Blue #2!

7. You often talk about your dreams and how you are in the process of making them into reality. You seem to have already realized many of your dreams. Which ones do you still have left to fulfill?

I haven’t even started, but I have just a few humble dreams. I would love to be able to offer a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato to every child in the world who’s never had the chance to taste something so vital and naturally delicious. I would also love to stop big multinational companies from mass-producing horrible GMO foods.

I dream of making “clean” food available for everyone, but for that to happen people have to take an active interest and demand to know how their food is made. People will pay so much for a pair of shoes, a car or a handbag, and then they give so little thought and attention to the most important thing in their life, which actually becomes a part of their body, FOOD !!

8. You once told me you’d always been a nomad, even with your parents. Can you talk to us a little about that?

My soul was born free and I remain a free spirit, home for me is everywhere. I live simply and make my home anywhere I am. I learn from people and I always need new people around me. I need to see, feel and experience in order to understand the world in which I live. I’m from the Atlas in Morocco and I grew up between there and San Sebastian. I feel so fortunate for the unique mix of cultures I was exposed to throughout my life; it was just amazing.

9. You’ve done internships with many famous chefs I believe? Can you tell us about your adventures?

Each of them gave me all I needed to become the best chef I could be. Grant Achatz made me believe that I was not crazy with my focus and intensity in the kitchen. Rene Redzepi made me believe that yes, I can create elegant, interesting dishes with just the products I had around in nature. I already knew that deep inside, but it was great to see it in the context of a three-star Michelin setting. Thomas Keller taught me that I was correct in having an insane sense of urgency, and being determined to execute perfection for each guest. And Ferran Adria gave me the chance to free my mind. I don’t have rules and regulations in my brain, only freedom. Everything I can visualize in my brain I can bring to life with my food. Once I’ve seen it in my brain, I just need to find the way to make it happen! That is the magic of creativity, freedom and hard work.

Another thing I achieved with Ferran Adria was to completely kill my ego. That’s perhaps the most special lesson he imparts on his chefs (we call them Los Chicos del Bulli – The Boys of el Bulli, most of whom started very young and spent over 20 years working side-by-side with him). These boys, now men, create magic with food and carry the “World’s Best” title, but they have absolutely no ego and nothing to prove; they simply are who they are…chefs.

Najat Kaanache
http://www.najatkaanache.com
The Pilgrim Chef at http://elbulli-arco.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NajatKaanache%20″
Twitter: @ThePilgrimChef http://twitter.com/#%21/ThePilgrimChef

Food Poetry: Ancient Mexican Wisdom on Land, Plants and Self Development

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, April 1, 2013 Permalink 0

Poem in English and Spanish

by Adriana Pérez de Legaspi

Care for things of the earth; cut some firewood, cultivate the earth, plant prickly pears, plant yucas.
You will have to drink, eat, get dressed.
Thereafter you will be standing, you will be your true self, you will walk on your own two feet.
Thereafter you will be well spoken of, you will be praised.
Thereafter you will be known.

Ten cuidado de las cosas de la tierra; haz algo corta leña, labra la tierra, planta nopales, planta magueyes.
Tendrás que beber, que comer, que vestir.
Con eso estarás en pie, serás verdadero, con eso andarás.
Con eso se hablará de ti, se te alabará.
Con eso te darás a conocer.

Jonell Galloway: Mindful Eating: Farmers, the Land, and Local Economy

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, April 1, 2013 Permalink 0

Mindful Eating: Farmers, the Land, and Local Economy

by Jonell Galloway

Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, “What can city people do?” “Eat responsibly,” I have usually answered. Of course, I have tried to explain what I mean by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt there was more to be said than I had been able to say. Now I would like to attempt a better explanation.

I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as “consumers.”

—Wendell Berry, The Pleasures of Eating, Center for Ecoliteracy

The Times They are a-Changin’: Move Towards a Local Economy

After a few very difficult years, we are now only starting to talk about the importance, and even necessity, of maintaining and supporting a local economy. This is important not only to our health and taste buds, but also to our vital economic self-sufficiency. It is perfectly in line with the concept of Mindful Eating, and, by definition, involves local farmers as well as others who contribute to eating and drinking.

Food Art: Rumanian Painted Easter Eggs, The Resurrection

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, March 31, 2013 Permalink 0

Food Art: The Food of the Dead for the Living, painting by David Olere

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, March 30, 2013 Permalink 0

“What is of note, is the survival of the arts within the walled ghetto. John Hersey’s masterpiece novel, The Wall, based on actual diaries (Emanuel Ringelblum), show the arts being practiced; theatre and music and fine art within a ghetto atmosphere mortified by repetitive eve of destruction. The record left by ghetto dwellers, camp internees, and displaced persons create snapshots of life and death under Hitler. Inmate drawings and paintings were legitimate articulations of man’s inhumanity and cruelty,” says Dave in Art of Insurrection and Resurrection.

Documentary: Building a Slow Food Nation

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, March 29, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

The Atlantic‘s Corby Kummer interviews Wendell Berry, food philosopher, poet and advocate as well as farmer; Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation; Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food; Vandana Shiva, philosopher, environmental activist, eco feminist, and advocate in the domain of agriculture and food; and Alice Waters, American chef, restaurateur, activist, and humanitarian.

Part 1 of this movie-interview lasts 1 hour 21 minutes, but is broken up into shorter segments, consisting of interviews with the people listed above. Part 2 lasts 53 minutes.

Click here to view documentaries Building a Slow Food Nation, Part 1 and Building a Slow Food Nation, Part 2.

Food Art: Still Life with White Asparagus and Lemons, by Maria Vos, The Asparagus Series

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, March 25, 2013 Permalink 0

Maria Vos was a Dutch still life and landscape painter who lived from 1824 to 1906.

Daily Food Quotes: Farm Philosophy from Wendell Berry

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, March 24, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Wendell Berry, “in the op-ed piece he published with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson, shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008.” (Michael Pollan, in introduction to Wendell Berry’s Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food).

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

Food Art: Still Life with Flutist and Fruit, by Italian painter Cecco del Caravaggio

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, March 23, 2013 Permalink 0

Cecco del Caravaggio (1571-1592) was born in Milan, from which he fled in 1596 to avoid the plague. He worked as apprentice for the Lombard painter Simone Peterzano for four years. His contract there listed that he was a pupil of Titian. He lived in Rome from 1592 to 1600, forging many great artists. The realism and dramatic intensity of many of his paintings was thought to be vulgar by many Romans, and even painters were divided by its distinct nature which opposed that of most other Roman artists. Nevertheless, between 1600 and 1606, he was considered Rome’s most famous painter.

Caravaggio was known for getting into scuffs, even in a time where this was commonplace. On May 29, 1606, “he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Previously his high-placed patrons had protected him from the consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio, outlawed, fled to Naples.” He went from becoming the most highly regarded painter in Rome to being the most highly regarded painter in Naples. Soon after, he left for Malta. The rest of his life was darkened by brawls and scrapes with the law.

A wonderful biography of Caravaggio’s life can be read here.