#93 | 🍓Easiest Strawberry Sorbet Recipe Ever
#PeeTheChange
Hello!
CANNED FOOD DRIVE
We lived in the lucky world— not the far place where flies sipped at eye corners of children too weak to cry. A camera showed that world to us on posters. But we were children. We wanted most to not be those others, with their terrible bones. We spoke of them wide-eyed, with what we thought was tenderness. But our words came in a different register, as if to speak of such betrayal by the grown world could bring a harm of great immensity upon us too. We got to choose from the cupboard. We gave what we hated—beets, peas, mushrooms. Our dreams were not of rice. The moon laid light on our bicycles propped against the porch. Sycamores became our giants standing guard; the overgrown shrub, our fort. We thought we understood what was required. Even crouched beneath our desks during drill, we said one prayer for the fear, one for recess. McClellan Air Force Base sent forth big-bellied planes that rattled the windows of our houses. Evenings, we took to the streets shrieking with joy, rode madly fast around the block. We collapsed on the lawn breathless, the earth cool beneath us & pounding hard, as if it had one great heart. As if it was ours.
—Kathleen Lynch, First appeared in Poetry (May 2006)
By the way, 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 last week’s newsletter was this clip: “Pay attention to what farmers are saying.”
Do you know someone who loves esquites? Send them this newsletter!
The Easiest Strawberry Sorbet Recipe Ever
This is bareley a recipe, it doesn’t require an ice cream maker, and it delivers an intensely aromatic, lusciously smooth sorbet bursting with strawberry flavor. Adapted from Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand (Potter 2003). Bertolli, former executive chef at Chez Panisse, notes that sorbets tend to capture the essence of fruit more than baked desserts:
“the intensity is due to the low cutting action of the processor blades; the churning action of ice cream makers leavens the texture, and also the flavor impression of ices. Rather than sieving away all the pulp and seeds prior to freezing, use the whole fruit to make this sorbet. The resulting texture and flavor couldn’t be truer.”
INGREDIENTS
One quart fresh organic strawberries
4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup cold water
Stem and rinse the strawberries in a colander and blot dry on dish/paper towels.
Arrange the berries on a baking sheet (cut any large berries in half) lined with parchment paper and freeze for two hours or until frozen solid.
Put the frozen berries in a food processor, add the sugar, and pulse for a few times to roughly chop up the fruit.
Add the water and process the berries at full speed until smooth.
Taste to adjust seasoning and consistency, adding more sugar and water if needed.
Serve immediately or freeze for a couple more hours until firm enough to scoop.
We like to drizzle some aged balsamic vinegar on top followed by a pinch of black pepper. Bon appetit!
Have You Made This Yet? Hetty McKinnon’s take on saag/palak paneer is sliding into our regular dinner rotation. A velvety smooth spinach puree thickened with coconut milk and bumped up with a hit of heat from green curry sauce, this dish comes together quickly and makes for a filling and satisfying meal. We only wish we had a tandoori oven to make fresh naan to soak up all that green goodness.
The Farallon Island Egg Wars: On a clear day, you can spy the devil’s teeth (aka Farallon Islands) poking up from the horizon, 27 miles due west of Ocean Beach. But did you know that from 1849 to 1896, more than 14 million murre eggs were harvested from the Farallons and sent to San Francisco to feed gold rush settlers? And as rival gangs battled for turf on the islands, more than a few gunshots were fired. Listen in as The Kitchen Sisters recap the story of the Pacific Egg Company.
Back From The Brink: Coho Salmon, on the endangered species list and considered to be on the brink of extinction, have repopulated Lagunitas Creek in Marin as fish surveyors confirmed 330 coho egg nests this spring. SF Gate
The Bay Area Queen Of Boba: Alyssa Wang, who goes by the name Feed Meimei (605,000 subscribers on Youtube, 737,000 followers on Tiktok and 242,000 followers on Instagram) has turned her love of boba into a career. Wang is “a kingmaker of sorts whose videos, many which are filmed inside her car, often wind up having a real impact on a small shop’s business fortunes.” KQED
Got Gumbo? If you haven’t been to the Outer Sunset Farmers Market & Mercantile on Sunday mornings yet (9am–3pm, 37th Ave at Ortega), then you’re missing out 😉. Not only does the market boast a wide selection of farm-fresh produce, but there are also a variety of stellar food and drink vendors, including Sunset Roasters for your morning coffee fix and Gumbo Social, where Mr. Gumbo, aka chef Dontaye Ball, says “My thesis is that gumbo is the most important food to American culture.” SF Chronicle
Need A Drink? The best blanco tequilas for mixing, according to bartenders. Punch
🍗 Loss Leader: Two Costco shareholders are suing the company, alleging animal mistreatment and “claiming that the company and its top executives violated animal welfare laws and, in the process, broke their fiduciary duties.” Costco keeps its legendary roast chicken priced at $4.99 as a loss leader to draw customers into their stores. It even built its own $450 million poultry complex in Nebraska to cut out middlemen chicken processors. But a disturbing undercover video report in 2021 by Mercy for Animals revealed the horrendous conditions in which the birds were raised and prompted an editorial from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, who noted: “Torture a single chicken in your backyard, and you risk arrest. Abuse tens of millions of them? Why, that’s agribusiness.” Fearing the negative publicity will tarnish Costco’s reputation and negatively affect the demand for the roast chickens, plaintiffs (and shareholders) Krystil Smith and Tyler Lobdell filed suit this month. The Washington Post
🧄 Garlic Snobs Take Note: Minced garlic in a jar is an essential cooking shortcut for those with disabilities. The Walrus
#PeeTheChange: Peecyclers are saving their urine to fertilize crops. Human urine contains phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium—many of the same ingredients as commercial fertilizers. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also contributed to a worldwide fertilizer shortage, and prices have doubled in many instances, making urine an obviously less-expensive alternative. The New York Times
Ramen Rising: The war in Ukraine and floods in China have impacted the price of wheat from $260 per tonne to about $475 per tonne in mid-May this year. Ramen eaters and noodle lovers everywhere will see the prices of their favorite noodle dishes go way up. “The government in Jakarta is so concerned about a potential noodle shock that its economics minister raised the issue at the summit of the world’s movers and shakers in Davos last month.” The Guardian
😳 How The Sausage Gets Made (How The Beard Awards Are Really Decided): Brian Reinhart, restaurant critic for D Magazine in Dallas, dishes on the decision-making process that goes into choosing the James Beard Awards for Best Chef (h/t Family Meal):
I didn’t have to go to all five restaurants in order to vote. I wasn’t even supposed to…Then all the judges were meant to hop on a conference call and discuss their local places, and we were supposed to vote based on what other judges told us about their own cities. D Magazine
How Many Restaurants Closed From The Pandemic? The National Restaurant Association (NRA) originally estimated that in December of 2020, out of the 660,000 “food services and drinking places (includes businesses like street vendors, food trucks, doughnut shops, cocktail lounges, etc.) approximately 110,000 closed at least temporarily. They revised that number to 90,000 in April 2021, because some restaurants were able to reopen. And then it gets even more complicated. Tim Carman whips out his calculator, slide rule, and abacus to crunch the numbers for The Washington Post
Feel Good Food: Alicia Kennedy on limits of relatability and accessibility when it comes to food conversations:
"It’s a consistent refrain that local food is inaccessible—ok, now what? How do we make it so farmers and communities are connected? Who’s getting in the way of those connections? Why is it bougie to talk about local food and food policy but not to endlessly, breathlessly cover restaurants and cocktail trends? What is alienating, and for whom? From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
Down The Drain:
Uh Oh: Researchers estimate that carbon emissions from transporting food are about 6% of the global total, with fruit and vegetables the largest contributor. The Guardian
✨: Today would have been Anthony Bourdain’s 66th birthday. Here’s the New Yorker feature from 1999 that launched his career as a writer. Don’t Eat Before Reading This: A New York chef spills some trade secrets.
LISTEN: A classic on repeat this week, Summertime by Billy Stewart. You’ve probably never heard this version from 1966, and his scat-singing style is outta sight! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...uck Chuck a-chuck-chuck (huh! yeah!) A-summertime And the livin' is easy… YouTube
That’s all for this week.
We’re outta here. Be well and take care,
–Bruce
Do you follow us yet?
Instagram: 25K+ followers
Twitter: 52K+ followers
Facebook: 6500+ followers
In case you somehow missed that subscribe button: