THE KONGQUEST

Beautiful presentation on how our modern cities are connected to the world community of arable land and how we are on an unsustainable path at upkeeping our food distribution and consumption.

I just watched this great video on the history of American Chinese food. It traces back the origins of how the fortune cookie isn’t actually of Chinese decent and who the real General Tsao is and who made the General Tsao’s chicken. Interesting stuff for those who want to be in the know.

Hey everyone. Here’s a little inspiration to start cooking today! Don’t forget to cook by the book.

Image via Wikipedia

Cheap food is about to end and when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil calories and spewing greenhouse gases. Michael Pollan writes an open letter to the future president purposing some solutions for new food policies. He says that we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine. If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence on oil and successfully resolarized, surely it is food. These new policy suggestions will simultaneously improve the state of our health, our environment and our national security.

In drafting these proposals, I’ve adhered to a few simple principles of what a 21st-century food system needs to do. First, your administration’s food policy must strive to provide a healthful diet for all our people; this means focusing on the quality and diversity (and not merely the quantity) of the calories that American agriculture produces and American eaters consume. Second, your policies should aim to improve the resilience, safety and security of our food supply. Among other things, this means promoting regional food economies both in America and around the world. And lastly, your policies need to reconceive agriculture as part of the solution to environmental problems like climate change.

Here are some paraphrased notes from the long letter:

1. How We Got Here
   1. Diversified Farming -> Cheap Energy, WWII, & Government subsidization of commodity crops -> Farming Monocultures -> Cheap Grains -> Animal Farming Monocultures -> Two Problems: Fertility problems on the farms & Pollution problem on feedlots
   2. Cheap Energy -> Global Transportation Networks -> Global Food Economy
   3. Now when the era of cheap energy is over, both massive farming monocultures and the global food economy will collapse. We need reform!
2. Resolarizing the American Farm
   1. Commodity farmers should instead be encouraged to grow as many different crops — including animals — as possible. Why? Because the greater the diversity of crops on a farm, the less the need for both fertilizers and pesticides. Begin with the subsidies: payment levels should reflect the number of different crops farmers grow or the number of days of the year their fields are green — that is, taking advantage of photosynthesis, whether to grow food, replenish the soil or control erosion.
   2. The F.D.A. should ban the routine use of antibiotics in livestock feed on public-health grounds, now that we have evidence that the practice is leading to the evolution of drug-resistant bacterial diseases and to outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella poisoning. CAFOs should also be regulated like the factories they are, required to clean up their waste like any other industry or municipality.
   3. The sun-food agenda must include programs to train a new generation of farmers and then help put them on the land. The average American farmer today is 55 years old; we shouldn’t expect these farmers to embrace the sort of complex ecological approach to agriculture that is called for. Our focus should be on teaching ecological farming systems to students entering land-grant colleges today.
   4. We need to recognize the value of farmland to our national security and require real-estate developers to do “food-system impact statements” before development begins. We should also create tax and zoning incentives for developers to incorporate farmland (as they now do “open space”) in their subdivision plans; all those subdivisions now ringing golf courses could someday have diversified farms at their center.
3. Reregionalizing the Food System
   1. Four-Season Farmers’ Markets. Provide grants to towns and cities to build year-round indoor farmers’ markets, on the model of Pike Place in Seattle or the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. To supply these markets, the U.S.D.A. should make grants to rebuild local distribution networks in order to minimize the amount of energy used to move produce within local food sheds.
   2. Agricultural Enterprise Zones. Food-safety regulations must be made sensitive to scale and marketplace, so that a small producer selling direct off the farm or at a farmers’ market is not regulated as onerously as a multinational food manufacturer. This is not because local food won’t ever have food-safety problems — it will — only that its problems will be less catastrophic and easier to manage because local food is inherently more traceable and accountable.
   3. Local Meat-Inspection Corps. Expanding on its successful pilot program on Lopez Island in Puget Sound, the U.S.D.A. should also introduce a fleet of mobile abattoirs that would go from farm to farm, processing animals humanely and inexpensively. Nothing would do more to make regional, grass-fed meat fully competitive in the market with feedlot meat.
   4. A strategic grain reserve, modeled on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, would prevent huge swings in commodity prices and at the same time provide some cushion for world food stocks, which today stand at perilously low levels. Governments should buy and store grain when it is cheap and sell when it is dear, thereby moderating price swings in both directions and discouraging speculation.
   5. In the same way that federal procurement is often used to advance important social goals (like promoting minority-owned businesses), we should require that some minimum percentage of government food purchases — whether for school-lunch programs, military bases or federal prisons — go to producers located within 100 miles of institutions buying the food. We should create incentives for hospitals and universities receiving federal funds to buy fresh local produce. To channel even a small portion of institutional food purchasing to local food would vastly expand regional agriculture and improve the diet of the millions of people these institutions feed.
4. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture
   1. Changing the food culture must begin with our children, and it must begin in the schools by making lunch, in all its dimensions, a mandatory part of the curriculum. On the premise that eating well is a critically important life skill, we need to teach all primary-school students the basics of growing and cooking food and then enjoying it at shared meals.
   2. To change our children’s food culture, we’ll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunchroom ladies (and gentlemen) who can once again cook and teach cooking to children.
   3. The surgeon general should take over from the Department of Agriculture the job of communicating with Americans about their diet. That way we might begin to construct a less equivocal and more effective public-health message about nutrition. Indeed, there is no reason that public-health campaigns about the dangers of obesity and Type 2 diabetes shouldn’t be as tough and as effective as public-health campaigns about the dangers of smoking.
   4. In general we should push for as much transparency in the food system as possible. The F.D.A. should require that every packaged-food product include a second calorie count, indicating how many calories of fossil fuel went into its production. Oil is one of the most important ingredients in our food, and people ought to know just how much of it they’re eating. The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced.

Cucina Di Pesce
- 3 stars -

Oh Cucina di Pesce,
you had me at hello…
Your reviews were glowing,
nice bottles of wine were flowing,

the service was excellent,
the decor was pleasant;
but when the food arrived…
I was awfully surprised!

I guess I got what I paid for.
Cuz you kept me asking for more…
I guess this must have been fate!
Cuz I found the best place for my cheap dates…

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I tried to exercise my poetic skills on this one. Hopefully I didn’t fail you. Cucina Di Pesce really wowed me with their atmosphere, service, and ability to seat our 20+ party with less than 24 hour notice. Things started great there, we ordered wine at the bar while we waited for the majority of the people to arrive. The house appetizer and bread that came while we were deciding on what to order were tasty. But I knew something was wrong when we were exclaiming how cheap the prices were for these yummy sounding dishes. Great food for great prices? That’s a diamond in the ruff or fool’s gold. Turns out that no one was fooled by pasta from the box and frozen seafood. I’ve got to admit that it wasn’t terrible but don’t expect the stars from great reviews online, exceptional atmosphere and service. In the end, we had a great time here with our party but the food definitely was not something to go back for. I’d say this is the best “Plan B” restaurant for a large group.

Image by Mark Sardella via Flickr

It pays to be smooth. I only know a small handful of people who have even dared to master the art of tipping to get better service, let alone enjoy paying for great service regularly. Well I’d like to educate and spread the wealth in the power of tipping. The following article by Bruce Feiler hits the nail on the head on the beauty of tipping to get only the best!

Here is an excerpt of the tips he offers:

Tips on Tipping

1. Go. You’d be surprised what you can get just by showing up.
2. Dress appropriately. Your chances improve considerably if you look like you belong.
3. Don’t feel ashamed. They don’t. You shouldn’t.
4. Have the money ready. Prefolded, in thirds or fourths, with the amount showing.
5. Identify the person who’s in charge, even if you have to ask.
6. Isolate the person in charge. Ask to speak with that person, if necessary.
7. Look the person in the eye when you slip him the money. Don’t look at the money.
8. Be specific about what you want. “Do you have a better table?” “Can you speed up my wait?” A good fallback: “This is a really important night for me.”
9. Tip the maître d’ on the way out if he turned down the money but still gave you a table.
10. Ask for the maître d’s card as you’re leaving. You are now one of his best customers.

Link: Pocketful of Dough

This is first post in the series for NYC Restaurant Reviews. I like to explore a wide range of restaurants in the city and Ko was the first to inspire me to write and express my feelings on delicious restaurants. I started writing on yelp but as like most of the things I say or do, there may need more explanation. This series will take my Yelp reviews and put a little more commentary and details to it.

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Momofuku Ko
- 5 Stars -

They say the harder you work, the luckier you get. Furiously clicking the refresh button at 10 AM and arduously searching 1st Avenue for a sign or awning, signifying that I have found the holy grail, may have actually got me thinking that I am lucky indeed.

For a hole in the wall kind of place, I was thoroughly impressed by the way Ko was thought out: the meal was ready to be made for you when you walk through the door, modest atmosphere, first class service staff, unique several course adventure with perfect enhancements through paired libations, and enjoyment for 3 hours, unrushed. What more can you ask for?

Maybe a discount… but such is life.

Every course was amazing with my favorite being the duck dish with the pairing of Ramirez de la Piscina, Reserva Rioja 2001. Your results will vary due to the ever changing menu.

At the end of the night, I felt comfortably satisfied and nicely inebriated. I was ready to go home, lay down, and dream about future meals at this amazing restaurant. Or was this all a dream in the first place?

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We went as a group of 4 and one person in our party was about 30 minutes late. Even though they claim to not allow tardiness, they were pretty laid back because we were the first table of the night. We opted to go for the $85 drink tasting and had the following dishes in our omakase style meal:

Appetizers
1. English muffin cooked with pork fat and sea salt, topped with chives
and Pork rind sprinkled with togarashi
2. Fluke sashimi in a spicy buttermilk sauce and poppy seeds
3. Bacon dashi soup with oyster mushrooms, chanterelles, fava beans, and turnip
4. Poached egg topped with hackleback caviar on top of a onion soubise, and potato chips on side
5. Sweet corn ravioli topped with cochita cheese, chorizo pieces, and pickled onions
6. Shaved frozen foie gras on top of lychee, riesling jelly and pinenut brittle

Entrees
7. Halibut drizzled with a pepperoncini puree
8. Sliced duck in a reduced red wine and cherry sauce with green beans, bean sprouts, and crushed water chestnuts

Desserts
9. Pineapple sorbet with candied pineapples
10. Yellowcake ice cream over peanut butter and strawberries over peanut butter crumbs

Overall, I have to say it was one of the best experiences in my life even though we had a $240 price tag to it.

No more excuses.
No more procrastination.
It’s time to be daring.
It’s time to make mistakes.
This is where the fun starts…