Results tagged “alicewaters”

Does the corn grown on Iowa farms affect the way the five boroughs eat? The almost universally agreed-upon answer is yes, and two recent Times articles highlighted two separate root issues affecting the future our country’s food policy. The Business section featured a beaming Alice Waters, the organic food proponent, buying cabbage at a farmers' market. The death knell for agribusiness and corporate food has once again sounded, the article intoned, as production is moving toward smaller and more sustainable business models, and the organic vegetable garden being installed on the White House Lawn is only one indication of the trend's momentum.

How fitting that Anthony Bourdain’s controversial interview with DCist, in which Bourdain called organic food proponent Alice Waters’ agenda “very Khmer Rouge,” took place in our nation’s capital. Welcome to Alice Watersgate, a brewing chef on chef scandal that (potentially) has the unexpected benefit of bringing ideas about our country’s food policy to a much wider audience.

Chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain, who moonlights as a relentless crusader against perceived food world injustices, has apparently dropped the hammer on grassroots food revolutionary Alice Waters in an interview with DCist:

“Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic.”

Bourdain added:

“I'm a little reluctant to admit that maybe Americans are too stupid to figure out that the food we're eating is killing us. But I don't know if it's time to send out special squads to close all the McDonald's.”

Crankiness aside, Bourdain was likely referring not only to Waters’ recent open letter to the Obamas, but also her offer to serve in a entirely non-cheeky food policy position in the new administration, a so-called “kitchen cabinet.” Meanwhile, Bourdain, who has a habit of talking about serious things while exhorting people not to take anything too seriously, also told DCist, “The threshold for celebrity is so low these days,” referring to his own celebrity status. “Those people on The Hills make a f**king living off it. So I don't think I should be patting myself on the back about anything.”

28 year-old chef Ignacio Mattos started work at 6 am today to get the coals hot enough to roast a pig in the middle of Bond Street this afternoon. The annual Sagra del Maiale event at Il Buco is a celebration of the autumnal equinox and at its center is a whole roasted heritage breed pig. From 1-6 pm, $20 gets you a plate of cross-Ossabaw meat and sides like panzanella with greenmarket vegetables, sausage made from Flying Pig Farms pork, and apple fritters doused with saba. From 6pm to midnight, the festival moves indoors and the menu expands to include charcuterie plates and pasta with walnut pesto. Beer and wine are extra, but look for apple wine from local Wölffer Estates. We asked Uruguayan-born chef Mattos about his mentor Francis Mallman, being a vegetarian, and what it might be like to go live amongst the pigs on Ossabaw Island.

Some of us might think that New York is the center of the world for many things, including food. The point is debatable, but at least for a few nights a year, it will be.

Here is an absolutely luscious, rich winter dish. We started off working with an Alice Waters recipe, but then we were inspired by Michael Ruhlman's love of veal stock to meat things up a bit to great effect.

Chef Jonathan Waxman is known for many things, but the benchmark of his cooking over the years has arguably always been his roast chicken. The cover of his new cookbook A Great American Cook depicts Waxman slyly drawing a Lavazza espresso cup to his mouth, wood-burning oven full flame in the background and a sliced open cheese pumpkin in front. The book also features the chef’s roast chicken recipe. “My culinary anthem,” Waxman waxes in the recipe’s preamble. “There’s nothing else like it,” we were told by a stranger at a party last week celebrating the release of said book. “You really have to make it,” said someone else, emphasis on really. And so we did (results pictured here).

Alice Waters is considered by many to be a revolutionary. She opened Chez Panisse in 1971 and began awakening America to the benefits of local, sustainable agriculture by changing her menu according to what was available seasonally. She has taken this charge beyond her restaurant through her books as well as through her Edible Schoolyard program, which enables public school children to explore the connection between what they eat and where it comes from through...

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week?

- Ed Levine has a short round up of the Il Buco annual pig roast; looks like it should be on the calendar next year.

More stone fruit abound this week at most farmers markets in the NYC metro area. Over at the Union Square Greenmarket, Locust Grove Farm had a wide variety of plums available with even more slated to come to market this week. While driving back from a Sunday farm visit, our friend Kate talked the car through her favorite plum recipe when the conversation came up. Simple, satisfying and always successful - here it is...