The Cure for Misguided Food Laws

Thank you Peter Hoffman! Peter is the chef/owner of the Savoy in New York City, who has written an excellent op/ed in the New York Times about the silly laws that prevent restaurants and other establishments from curing their own meats without refrigeration.

The best home-cured meats have always been made at around room temperature. If you've traveled in Europe, then you will know what I am talking about. The reason French charcuterie is so delicious is because of the process by which it is made. Is there a safety risk? No more so than there is in serving cheese, for example. The risk is not that there might be bacteria, but that there might be the wrong kind of bacteria. Trained chefs certainly know the difference. And there is no way you can convince me that my home-made organic charcuterie is less healthy than the mass-produced supermarket stuff, which are loaded with nitrates to ensure that they pretty much never go bad.

A lot of food safety laws are meant to protect us from the legitimate dangers associated with mass-production. The problem is that food inspectors (like the ones Peter mentions in his piece) aren't trained to understand how artisinal curing actually works. But just because they don't know, doesn't mean they have to say "no." The impetus should be on them to learn about emerging (or should I say re-emerging) food trends. As our local/organic/slow food movement gains momentum, government agencies are going to need to re-think how they are applied to the more artisanal side of the food industry. Hopefully, Peter's op-ed in the newspaper of record will get the ball rolling on this issue.

Viva Oaxaca

It saddens me to hear about the violence in Oaxaca, Mexico. My visit to that city 10 years ago with my brother and our good friend Amanda Dates was unforgettable. Mostly, what struck me about it was how completely peaceful it was, so reading in the news about rioting – and now the death of a journalist – creates such a jarring image.

I won’t try to pretend that I understand the complexity of the issues at the heart of this tension. Many people are blaming the “leftist” protesters for destroying the beautiful city, cutting off its vital tourist industry. I understand why people react negatively to such acts of violence, but I suspect this issue is more complicated than a simple “good guys vs. bad guys” story. This protest began innocently enough as a teachers strike, but even noble efforts can turn ugly sometimes. Our culture has a long history of branding activists – particularly in South and Central America – as troublemakers, as rebels. One of the things I remember from my psychology major is that if you tell someone enough times that they are a troublemaker, eventually they may start to act that way.

Why am I writing about this on my blog? Don’t worry, I can relate anything to food… Here’s why: I hope that once peace has been restored in Oaxaca, you will visit, if you haven’t already been. It certainly sounds like they will need your tourist business. Here are my recommendations:

1. Go to the local outdoor market and enjoy a fresh corn tortilla filled with crispy fried grasshoppers.
2. Sit outside in one of the bars on the Zocalo (town square, pictured here in happier times), sipping a cold, refreshing Sol beer.
3. Visit any local restaurant and try the mole sauce – it’s the local specialty.
4. Visit a mescal distillery, if you can stand the stuff.
5. And finally, take a drive to the tiny village of Teotitlán del Valle to eat at Tlamanalli, a world-class Zapotec restaurant. It is surreal, being seemingly in the middle of nowhere, eating at a restaurant that has reviews from Saveur and the New York Times on the wall. I can still remember the squash blossom soup to this day.