Hot Doug takes one for the team

Chicago's first foie gras citation goes to Hot Doug's.

Not a surprise, given Doug Sohn's in-your-face defiance of the foie gras ban, but still a disappointment.

On Friday afternoon, Sohn seemed to be considering whether to fight on. He took the duck-liver dogs off the menu and got ready to go on vacation. If anyone wants to reach him, he'll be considering his options over a plate of foie gras in France, where they are surely shaking their heads.

My earlier posts on the Chicago foie gras ban can be found here and here, and I wrote about Hot Doug's here.

Ugliest Vegetable Competition

A parsnip has won the accolade of 'ugliest veg'.

We are happy to announce that a parsnip grown in Bedfordshire, but resembling a creature from the abyss, is top of the crops in our Ugly Veg Competition to find the ugliest veg in England.

The overall winner, grown by Mrs Hilary Nellist in Bedford, stood out from the rest of the vegetables, its tangled shape giving it an uncanny similarity to a creature from the depths of the ocean.

I wish there were pictures of more of the runner-ups too, such as the "rhino-like tomato."

Zebra Milk

Top-flight London hotel manages to procure zebra milk for picky guest



And while we're talking about unusual milks, a classic thread from eGullet on why we don't have pig milk cheese.

"Guilt-Free Gluttony"

It has long been suspected that drinking red wine confers some health benefits, but researchers have recently pinpointed a molecule found in red grapes or wine that might be responsible. This BBC report entitled "Wine Allows Guilt-Free Gluttony," describes the role that resveratrol was found to play in the health of mice eating a high fat diet.

To investigate the effects of the molecule on mammals, the researchers looked at middle-aged mice fed on a high-calorie diet, with 60% of the calories coming from fat.

These mice shared many of the problems of humans on an equivalent diet, including obesity, insulin resistance and heart disease.

They discovered the mice given resveratrol alongside their food did not lose weight but they showed decreased glucose levels, healthier hearts and liver tissue, and better motor function compared with the mice on the same diet but without the supplement.

So, the article seems to be saying, perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too. As long as we eat it with a big glass of red wine.

Alinea named Best Restaurant in the US

Gourmet Magazine has just come out with their every-five-years list of the best restaurants in the country and Chicago restaurant Alinea has come out on top!

I've linked to Alinea before, referencing chef Grant Achatz as one of the Chicago triumverate of techno-chefs/ molecular gastronomists. I've got a post about molecular gastronomy in the works, but for now here's a quick definition:

Molecular Gastronomy applies the principles of chemistry and physics to cooking - by examining how foods react to different cooking methods, and which foods combine well on a chemical level, chefs are able to experiment with new food combinations and methods to create unusual menus with stunning results.

While Alinea and Achatz are firmly in the molecular gastronomy camp, they play with their food while also managing to make it taste good and providing top notch service. At least, that's what all the reports say - my first trip is coming up in little under a month. Having had the pleasure of eating twice at Achatz's previous restaurant, Trio, I've been eagerly anticipating a meal at the Alinea since the restaurant opened about a year and a half ago. Now I'm even more excited (and glad I made my reservation far in advance - it's always been a hard reservation to get, and will only get more difficult with this latest accolade).

From the Gourmet article:

Then the curtain goes up, and the fireworks begin. This is dining as performance art, and each tiny interactive dish teases, astonishes, delights. You pull out a pin and watch a little puff of cheesy hot potato drop into a tiny curved cuplet of soup that you slurp as if it were an oyster. A single perfect bite of lamb comes buried in smoldering eucalyptus leaves. A tiny ravioli is filled with the intensity of liquid truffle; it is almost impossible not to exclaim as it bursts inside your mouth. As you do, the servers smile, pleased by your pleasure; they too are participants in the experience, and they are there to help you enjoy the meal.

You can expect to see my write up of my meal (and my entire culinary sojourn to Chicago) in about a month. Until then, check out the massive Alinea thread on eGullet, filled with tantalizing descriptions and pictures.

Congratulation, Alinea!

Coffee you can eat with a spoon

From Spanish molecular gastronomy mastermind Ferran Adria, comes Espesso. This "mousselike, cold solid sprayed right out of the canister" premiered in the US this week in Chicago. (A fitting location for it, given that most of America's own molecular gastronomist masterminds - Achatz, Cantu, Bowles - are located there.)

Espesso -- a play on the Italian word "spesso," meaning thick -- is essentially "taking coffee and solidifying it," said Joerg Oberschmied, vice president of operations for Lavazza, the 111-year-old Italian coffee company that is offering Adria's coffee creation.

Lavazza's three Chicago stores -- the company's only U.S. locations -- will be pouring or, rather, spraying espessos starting today. A serving costs $2.49.

Mechanical Sommelier

And I don't mean one who's so standoffish you doubt he could be human.

Researchers at NEC System Technologies and Mie University have designed a robot that can taste — an electromechanical sommelier able to identify dozens of different wines, cheeses and hors d'oeuvres.

"There are all kinds of robots out there doing many different things," said Hideo Shimazu, director of the NEC System Technology Research Laboratory and a joint-leader of the robot project. "But we decided to focus on wine because that seemed like a real challenge."

Read more here.

Update on the Chicago foie gras ban

The foie gras ban went into effect last Tuesday. The initial reaction wasn't necessarily what Alderman Joe Moore was looking for:

Chicago's immediate reaction to a city ordinance banning foie gras—the French dish made from the livers of force-fed ducks and geese—was to embrace the gray goo like never before, in flights of culinary imagination.

Rhetoric and pâté abounded on the first day of the City Council's ban, as restaurateurs and gourmands openly flouted the prohibition—cultured, giddy, goose-liver-fueled acts of defiance.

On Tuesday morning the Illinois Restaurant Association filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to overturn the ban, accusing the City Council of overstepping its authority.

At the same time, many diners tried the dish for the first time, drawn to the outlaw pâté out of curiosity or desire to chomp on the wild side.

That's right - so far the biggest result of the ban has been to encourage people who've never tried foie gras before to try it so they can see what all the fuss is about! Woo-hoo, Chicago.

The city Public Health Department has been put in charge of enforcement, but purposefully let restaurants have free rein on that first day. There are questions as to whether the department even has the resources to enforce the ban, and they have made it clear that they will only respond to complaints, not seeking out transgressions.

Even after Tuesday, though, the possibility of foie gras raids appears remote. City officials will respond to citizen complaints, Mr. Hadac said, first sending a warning letter to restaurants, then demanding a fine — from $250 to $500 — for second offenses.

One of my favorite responses to the ban comes from Doug Sohn, proprietor of Hot Doug's, and a conniseur of encased meats.

...Sohn offered three variations of a foie gras-laced sausage despite the prohibition. In April he named the foie gras and sauternes duck sausage (with green apple mustard and goat cheese) "The Joe Moore" in honor of the proposal's sponsor.

Sales have been brisk, Sohn said, and he doesn't plan to stop selling it until more clarity about the law arrives.

Unfortunately, today brings news of the first official complaint.

A daily special at a Lincoln Square restaurant has triggered the first -- and only -- official complaint stemming from Chicago's controversial ban on foie gras.

A caller to the city's 311 non-emergency system complained that foie gras was being served over the weekend at Block 44, 4365 N. Lincoln. The restaurant is not refuting the claim.

The restaurant received a warning letter. Only time will tell if this is an isolated report, of the first in a series to be made by masked foie gras crusaders...

The fight is on for foie gras in Chicago

In April of this year, the Chicago City Council voted to ban the sale of foie gras within the city limits. One wonders that the City Council didn't have more pressing issues to think about, but "The fact that there are these other issues that are crying out for attention doesn't mean that we can't take a bit of time and address this issue as well," said Alderman Joe Moore, sponsor of the ordinance.

The ban was originally set to go into effect in June, but the wording of the ordinance was so poor that it needed to be rewritten to avoid numerous loopholes. The Whereas section of the ordinance references the results of a (rather biased) Zogby poll and outspoken foie gras adversary and Chicago chef Charlie Trotter among its justifications. But of course, the primary reason cited for the ban is to prevent the unethical treatment of animals.

Foie gras, for those who may be unfamiliar, is the fattened liver of a duck or goose. It is produced by a period of forced feeding prior to slaughter. The forced feeding is, of course, at the heart of the controversy. Advocotes say that geese and ducks in the wild naturally will gorge themselves on food prior to migration periods, that the esophagus of the goose or duck is tough to enable it to do things like swallow entire fish, and that birds on foie gras farms can be observed happily waddling to the trough to be force fed. Here's a link to the Sonoma Foie Gras page describing their foie gras production process.

Opponents, on the other hand, claim that foie gras birds suffer high rates of pre-slaugher mortality because of ruptured esophaguses and suffocation and that birds have literally exploded from the volume of force food.

I eat foie gras and enjoy it. In fact, it makes my eyes glaze over and I swoon a little. It's incredibly rich and unctuous and utterly decadent. I've read about the major foie gras producers in the US, and am comfortable with their animal husbandry practices. Especially in comparison to the way most meat is raised in the United States, through factory farming.

I've known for some time that factory farming was objectionable, but it wasn't until I read Peter Kaminski's Pig Perfect that I understood what is really involved, and became even more committed to buying my meat from the most humane suppliers I can find. But I understand that in the end, they are still raising and slaughtering animals for me to eat. And as an omnivore near the top of the food chain, I'm okay with that.

So my first reaction to hearing the news from Chicago was to think "if they're so concerned about animal cruelty, why aren't they looking in the issues around factory farming?" Ten billion chickens every year are raised in factory farms every year, compared to some much smaller number of ducks being raised for foie gras. If you want to make a difference in the lives of poultry, why not target the big picture?

But of course, taking away people's 99 cent chicken nuggets would generate a lot more opposition than banning a food that most people have never eaten. Although from that perspective, I have to give the Chicago City Council credit for their recent proposal to ban the use of trans-fats - if they're going to try to control what city residents eat, that's certainly a ban that would have more far reaching effects.

The real issue, expressed really well in this NY Times article, is why the City is so driven to "manage residents lives in mundane ways." Whatever happened to personal responsibility and personal choice? I'm making an educated choice to eat foie gras - how many people can say that about their factory farmed bacon?

Consumers and chefs in Chicago and around the country have protested or spoken out in various ways. There's a petition. Several chefs in Chicago joined together for a "Foie Gras Dinner and Freedom of Choice Fundraiser." Chef Graham Elliot Bowles at The Avenues featured a tasting menu with foie gras in every course. And now, there's a lawsuit.

Next week, the Illinois Restaurant Association, an ad-hoc group known as "Chicago Chefs for Choice" and the major foie gras producers that make up the newly formed Artisan Farmers Association will join forces to challenge a foie gras ban poised to take effect next Wednesday.

"The argument is that this [ban] violates interstate commerce and the city is usurping the federal government's power by banning a product that's federally approved for shipment across state lines," said a source familiar with the lawsuit.

[snip]

"What's at stake is the ability of adults to order legal products, the production of which has been overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, when they choose to dine out in Chicago," said Chris Robling, a spokesman for the Artisan Farmers Association.

I'm glad there's an organized and active opposition to the ban. The Chicago Council decision has opened the way for other localities to enact similar bans - Philadelphia has introduced similar legislation. A successful lawsuit against the ban would help to shut down similiar "copycats." Legislation like this isn't good for restaurants and it isn't good for diners.

Lots of other people have written great stuff on this issue. Here's a couple of links, and searching "Chicago Foie Gras Ban" on Technorati generates pages and pages.
eGullet thread
The Slippery Slope of Foie Gras