127 | An MSG Manifesto
America, Your Food Is So Gay
Hello!
Ode to Hunger How I crave the strawberries we bought on a road in Cyprus the day we got married. Their scent was divine & we forgot to eat them.
Hey there - I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. If you’re new here, welcome to Eat.Drink.Think., a newsletter spotlighting seasonal recipes, the latest SF Bay Area food news, poetry, and more!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from our last newsletter was Dan Bransfield’s Bay Area Burrito Poster.
CHASING THE KING
California king salmon season has been canceled entirely this year, and from the docks to the tables, we’ll be missing the king this spring. Becky Duffett talks to fisherman Matt Juanes of @fv_plumeria about plans to replace his usual spring salmon bounty. Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish Market on how the absence of salmon will impact local restaurants. And Chef Nico Pena of Octavia strategizes what seafood will replace salmon on his menu. Read the story from our latest issue: Chasing the King.
Dutch Crunch: Rocky Rivera sings the praises of Roxie's, the corner store whose San Francisco-style, old-school deli sandwiches she’s been eating since she was a teen. The Old-School San Francisco Sandwich That Stole My Heart. KQED
How to Incubate a Neighborhood Movement for Food Sovereignty: DragonSpunk, a community gardening and food-access nonprofit, helped launch a weekly Farmers’ Market at the Southeast Community Center in the Bay View; it debuted on June 1 with 15 vendors offering fresh fruits and vegetables. “Organizers of a new farmers’ market kicking off in San Francisco’s Bayview hope to start a food revolution in the neighborhood.” SF Chronicle (gift article)
🍅 An Early Girl Near You: As we anxiously await the arrival of early girl tomato season, here’s a brief history on the infamous tomato, including how Joel Schirmer of Dirty Girl produce bred his own variety. Kitchen Detail
Support Our Local Restaurants!
Bypass the apps and order direct! It’s not just you: With food delivery apps, it’s hard for anyone to come out ahead. The Washington Post
IN EGGULAR ROTATION
Watching a Lucas Sin cooking video is like attending a cooking class; it’s not just the recipe; you also get the historical relevance and hows and whys the dish works. Sin is also an unabashed user of MSG as an essential flavor enhancer to Chinese dishes, and you should be too. No, seriously. Here’s Andrea Nguyen on the subject from her latest book, Ever-Green-Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea:
What is MSG’s magic? Based on the flavor properties of seaweed and created in 1908 by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, MSG is concentrated, commercially made glutamic acid, which, when dissolved in food, adds savory deliciousness—umami, a term coined by Ikeda. Glutamic acid is a nonessential amino acid produced by the human body; it is also naturally present in many ingredients and foods {Doritos!}. Our bodies do not identify MSG’s glutamic acid as being different from its natural kin.
Is MSG harmful? On a daily basis, we eat about 13 grams of naturally occurring glutamate versus roughly 0.5 gram of added MSG, as reported by EatingWell magazine. Research spanning from the 1970s to today shows no definite link between MSG and reported symptoms, such as heart palpitations, headaches, and sweating. Read Andrea’s treastise on MSG here.
ALISON ROMAN’S FRIZZLED CHICKPEA SALAD
A new video from Alison Roman with a recipe from her first book, Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over. A more accessible and more satisfying dish than her infamous chickpea stew that broke the internet. Frizzled Chickpea Salad. A Newsletter
America, Your Food Is So Gay: The Annotated Version. John Birdsall updated his queer food classic from 2013, first published in Lucky Peach magazine’s Gender issue. “If there was a gay sensibility, you could find it on the cold line when I was cooking, where every plate I put up had a fierce edge born of imposed isolation.” Highly recommend. Shifting the Food Narrative
Fancy Frosting: I'm Gay & I Bake. But Does That Make Baking 'Gay'? Eric Kim for Food52
Name That Most Beloved Food Blogger/Author: I don't like sheet-pan gnocchi. I feel like it gets really chewy and hard. I must be doing it wrong, because there's a million recipes on Pinterest for it. I don't like “spa water,” you know, when there's stuff floating in water? Like a cucumber? It's so gross. It just tastes like dirty water to me. And I'm like, “How long has that stuff been floating in there?” I have so many little things that drive me crazy. Any guesses before you click? David Lebovitz? Deb Perelman? Heidi Swanson?
Almost Only Counts in Hippos and Hand Grenades: How the U.S. almost became a nation of hippo ranchers. Smithsonian
A Big Dill? The official cocktail of the summer is… Jezebel
THE UGLY UNDERBELLY OF THE ANIMAL AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM
The Civil Eats James Beard Award-Winning series on elevating the voices of those unseen and unheard who produce our food:
Animal Agriculture Is Dangerous Work. The People Who Do It Have Few Protections
Tyson Says Its Nurses Help Workers. Critics Charge They Stymie OSHA
Absent Federal Oversight of Animal Agriculture Safety, States and Others Step Up for Change
Danger Will Robinson: Don’t believe the backlash. Saturated fat actually is bad for you. The Washington Post (gift article)
Told You So: Indoor vertical farmer Aero Farms files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Roanoake Times
As Tamar Haspel noted: Energy is expensive, and lettuce is cheap.
IF YOU HAVE TO ASK 🤔
Don’t Forget! Kick off a month of celebrations at #Juneteenth on the Waterfront on Saturday, June 10, 9am-2pm, with the Port, @megablacksf @foodwiseorg and @SFHumanRights. Celebrate local Black-owned businesses with a day of delicious food & food.
On Repeat This Week:
Hit that corner booth and revisit a classic in “Tom’s Diner”: First released by Suzanne Vega in 1984, shot into the stratosphere by an iconic DNA remix in 1992, and now, cradled lovingly by the voice of Silvana Estrada. One to watch, the 26-year-old hailing from Xalapa, Mexico is already pretty prolific, with five albums and a slew of creative collaborations under her belt, and her espresso-smooth vocals and playful take on a capella layering are a fabulous fit for this familiar track… kinda like when your cool teenage niece looks great in your vintage threads. KCRW
Thanks for reading EAT. DRINK. THINK. from Edible San Francisco!
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
—Bruce
“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
—Gary Snyder