#79 | Everyone Loves A Good Restaurant Scandal
Frozen Tofu Update
Hello!
SPRING IN WARTIME
I feel the spring far off, far off,
The faint, far scent of bud and leaf—
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
To a world in grief,
Deep grief?
The sun turns north, the days grow long,
Later the evening star grows bright—
How can the daylight linger on
For men to fight,
Still fight?
The grass is waking in the ground,
Soon it will rise and blow in waves—
How can it have the heart to sway
Over the graves,
New graves?
Under the boughs where lovers walked
The apple-blooms will shed their breath—
But what of all the lovers now
Parted by Death,
Grey Death?
—Sara Teasdale, from A Treasury of War Poetry (1917)
By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. Welcome new subscribers and thanks for joining us!
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Russia’s Sinister Intent Is To Starve Ukraine: "The food supply chain is broken, so the processing doesn't work, afterwards the distribution doesn't work, then the shops become empty." Ukrainian Farmer, Kees Huizinga for ABC Austrailia
Turning A Global Breadbasket Into A Battleground: From the challenge of feeding millions of refugees to rising food prices and disrupted wheat crops, the war could have an outsized impact on the food system. Civil Eats
Corn Hole: Time to abandon the preposterous Ethanol subsidies program, and rotate U.S. farmland back from corn-for-fuel to food crops because it has strengthened Russia’s grip upon the world’s food supply. The Atlantic
Take Out The Trash: Stop investing in or buying the food products of these companies which are still operating in Russia, according to The Washington Post:
Diamond Crystal salt {note: we use San Francisco Salt Company’s Pure Sea Salt}
Cinnabon (or Carvel ice cream, Schlotzsky’s sandwich or Auntie Anne’s pretzel)
Dunkin Donuts
General Mills
Mondelez (Oreos and other Nabisco products)
Candymaker Mars
Yum Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell)
Subway
Frozen Tofu Update: In last week’s newsletter, we mentioned Bettina Makalinta’s technique of freezing tofu to remove excess moisture for recipes that call for frying. It’s not quite a spur-of-the-moment recipe as it takes a day to freeze and a day to thaw, but we’re here to report the amount of water you can squeeze out of a previously frozen block of tofu is astonishing—like squeezing out a kitchen sponge! And since the water molecules expand as they freeze, the tofu is transformed into a larger and more absorbent block (ideal for marinades). We tried to tear it into large pieces as the recipe suggests but found that too many small pieces shagged off, so the yield was substantially less—next time, we’ll just cut it into cubes. But the taste and texture? Very chicken nugget-like, according to those at the dinner table. It didn’t taste like regular pressed and fried tofu and instead was deliciously crispy and chewy. Here’s the recipe again: Crispy Glazed Tofu.
7 Cookbooks for When You're Tired of Following Recipes: Including Nik Sharma’s The Flavor Equation, and Samin Nostrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Stained Page News
We’ll Take Door #2: That’s a natural wine label on the right. Nothing but grape juice and maybe a little SO2. What’s in your glass?
How Dirty Is Your Martini? Pretty, if it’s an MSG Martini. Punch
Everyone Loves A Good Restaurant Scandal: Sarma Melngailis was once regarded as the vegan queen who ruled over the pioneering raw food restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, in NYC. Netflix’s new four-part series, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. takes viewers on a journey more bizarre than fiction, including her belief that her pit bull, Leon, was on the cusp of being made immortal 🤔
Watch the trailer Netflix
An Oral History of Pure Food and Wine, the ‘Bad Vegan’ Restaurant Netflix Tudum
Melngailis says she'll be paying back the employees she swindled Glamour
What to know before watching Bad Vegan Grub Street
How Saram Melngailis became a runaway fugitive Vanity Fair
Flashback to the ‘80s: Via Ruth Reichl’s La Briffe newsletter (note her bio). At the time, Williams-Sonoma only had 11 stores and relied on their mail-order catalog for the majority of their business. La Briffe
Pain At The Pump: Rising gas prices could force food banks to scale back pickups and deliveries. Eater
What’s In Your Trash? "Waste, it’s part of the ideology of being in the US. It's just so second nature to throw things out, it's like we've lost a lot of culture around preserving or anything like that. It's just, I can get whatever I want at any moment. And that's the basis of our food culture." Alicia Kennedy for the Foodprint Podcast
Free Fish: The whale word is out. Watch sperm whales poach sablefish from fishing lines. Scientists researching this behavior, known as depredation, say whales are increasingly eating lucrative catches right off the hook instead of foraging naturally. There’s no easy way to stop it, and the behavior is spreading through whale culture. Hakai Magazine
In Broccoli Breeding News:
Help On The Vegetable Aisle
On repeat this week: The Xprt from legendary hip hop producer Pete Rock.
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–Bruce
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"Despite its artistic intentions and its many accomplishments, humankind owes its existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." —Anonymous