"As long as you stay on this side of the sweet-savory line, the meat and chocolate trend is a great one." Chocolate-covered bacon from Roni-Sue's. [Photographs: Robyn Lee] Chocolate and meat may have started with the Aztecs (in their thick, chocolate-tinged mole sauce) but the food marriage has been spreading to the artisanal candy aisle and non-Mexican restaurants like Blue Hill in New York. At first I was very wary of this combination but knew I'd have to give in—if for no other reason than to say I’d at least tried it. My first foray into chocolaty meat, probably like many others, was the Vosges bacon chocolate bar. I picked it up about a year ago and my impression was...
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Duck parts. [Photograph: Chichi Wang] According to chef and food activist Dan Barber, we don't know a lot of things. We don't know where our meat comes from, we don't know what the animal we're eating ate, and we sure don't know how to get behind the stove and take control of what we put in our mouths. In this article in The Nation, Barber writes about the "protein paradox," or the huge waste of edible animal parts such as liver, kidney, and tripe. Barber really wants us to like, or learn to like, organ meat—the bits and bobs typically saved for hot dogs, sausage links, and yes, dog food. He hopes that people will eat meat modestly, and...
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Last week,
Dan Barber (Blue Hill) won this year's Outstanding Chef Beard Award. This video of him at the
Taste3 conference in Napa Valley last year focuses on the politics of foie gras.
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The Ethicurean, a blog devoted to the organic and sustainable eating ethos, is predisposed to love a film like Food Fight (not to be confused with Foodfight!), where the premise rests on the same mantra. But get ready for a plot twist—they didn't love it. Here’s where I bite the nice hands who fed me the DVD review copy. We three found ourselves squirming restlessly in our pews. Too many putative saints were being paraded past us on litters of glistening lettuces, and the familiar hymns sounded off key in their new arrangements. Ethicurean founder Bonnie Powell watched a preview copy (screenings are just in Los Angeles currently) and while she found it beautiful visually, said it could have...
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On weekdays, we try to bring you a short food video you can get through quickly during your busy day. But seeing how it's Saturday and you have more time, here's a longer, more weighty, but nevertheless interesting video in which Michael Pollan, Joan Dye Gussow, and Dan Barber talk about whether we can eat all the good stuff we love while still being green and healthy. Sit back and enjoy....
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Blogging has ousted political leaders,
written dialog for Samuel L. Jackson, and
forced Doogie Howser out of the closet. Food blogging is just beginning to gain power. Restaurateurs and chefs are starting to take notice of the strange quiet types scribbling notes and taking pictures of their food.
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We love chefs who write (Tony Bourdain, Michael Ruhlman). We love restaurateurs who write (Danny Meyer). We love farmers who write (Wendell Berry, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Andy Griffin, David Mas Masumoto, and our favorite Arkansas homeboy/Slavok Zizek devotee, Ragan Sutterfield). But we LOVE writers who happen to be all three rolled into one, and cute to boot. Dan Barber's latest in the NY Times: Amber Fields of Bland....
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5:57 PM: Mario Batali is not nervous. 6:01 PM: Jean-Georges Vongerichten looking dapper as usual. 6:05 PM: Cokie Roberts is an extraordinarily gracious and charming host....
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