MooMooFoodie

FT: Pleasures of ekeing out

The use of leftovers is a thing of the past. Affluence has not just made us extravagant, it has also made us neurotically hygienic.

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Pleasures of ekeing out

By Rowley Leigh

Published: November 7 2009 01:21 | Last updated: November 7 2009 01:21

We don’t do a lot of leftovers any more at our restaurant. The use of les restes is a thing of the past. Ekeing out has been replaced by eating out. It is not just that affluence has made us extravagant, although that is certainly the case. Affluence has also made us neurotically hygienic.

Our beautiful fitted kitchens with their multicompartmented fridges don’t encourage the saving of little bowls of leftover Bolognese sauce, a cupful of béchamel or a couple of lamb chops. In a mania to be tidy, we bin them. Of course, in our affluence, we are so busy that we are probably better off chucking out these bits and pieces because we don’t have the time or patience to potter around making rissoles, stews and soups out of these trifles.

I don’t miss the rissoles – a word that struck fear in a schoolboy heart. A lot of economy cooking was truly dire and our children don’t know how fortunate they are to be spared it. However, good cooks use their ingredients with care. It is not simply a question of using “cheap cuts” as is much vaunted at the moment. Ekeing out is more a case of working out how to make half a dozen sausages feed a family of six, or make two fillet steaks serve four (tagliata).

The cabbage cake is one of my favourite vehicles for this economical cooking. The first time I made a cabbage cake it was rather grand, being a variation on a chartreuse of partridge with game birds and sausages. I experimented with mozzarella, tomatoes and anchovies marbled through the ribs of cabbage. Another time I studded my cabbage with pheasant, sausage and slices of truffle but this drifts away from the economy theme – although ekeing out truffles is always fun.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais
rowley.leigh@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/leigh

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Cabbage and sausage cake

This is a very simple way of making, moulding and serving chou farci, a much loved but rarely seen piece of French peasant cookery. Quality of sausage meat is essential: a good Toulouse sausage or the Italian luganega will both do well, simply taken out of their skins. Chestnuts, or well-soaked dried ceps, can be added for extra depth of flavour. Serves six.

Ingredients
1 large Savoy cabbage
½ tsp fennel seed
500g very lean, well-seasoned sausage meat
25g unsalted butter
30ml olive oil

Method
● Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and wash them well in cold water. Drop these leaves into a large pot of boiling water and simmer gently for two minutes. Lift out the leaves carefully and refresh them in cold water to fix the colour. Cut flat the central stalks and dry the leaves very well on kitchen paper. Cut the cabbage hearts in four and wash them carefully before cooking them in the same water for three to four minutes. The cabbage should be tender but the stalks still hard. Drain the hearts and refresh them in cold water. Cut away the stalks, discarding them, and gently squeeze the cabbage dry. Separate the leaves of the hearts in a bowl and sprinkle with sea salt, milled black pepper, the fennel seeds and dress with one tablespoon of olive oil.
● Take a round, flat-bottomed and ovenproof dish about 20cm in diameter and grease it well with half the butter. Put the most handsome leaf on the bottom. It should practically fill it. Overlapping bountifully, line the sides with the rest of the leaves so that they overhang the sides of the dish. Lay a third of the leaves on the bottom of the dish and cover with half the sausage meat. Repeat the process, finishing with a third layer of the cabbage hearts. Push well down into the mould to compact the cake and remove air pockets. Bring over the overhanging leaves to cover and dot the surface with the remainder of the butter.
● Bake in a medium oven (Mark 4, 350°F, 180°C) for one hour. Remove from the oven and let the cake stand for three to four minutes before inverting a plate over the top of the dish and then turning the cake out on to the plate. Serve with a simple tomato sauce.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

FT: Kyoto's haute cuisine

Kyoto’s haute cuisine

By Gwen Robinson

Published: October 30 2009 23:33 | Last updated: October 30 2009 23:33

A waitress relaxes in the Japanese garden of Kicho Arashiyama Honten in Kyoto

In the hushed, private tatami rooms of a gracious, old wooden building in Japan’s cultural capital of Kyoto lies an exclusive and arcane world of elite gastronomy: kaiseki ryori, or Japanese haute cuisine.

Served by kimono-clad waitresses over several hours, the painstakingly prepared dishes of new-season vegetables, costly seafood and other prized ingredients are arranged like precious artworks on hand-crafted ceramic and lacquerware vessels.

Kaiseki cuisine was first developed in the 16th century to ward off hunger during protracted tea ceremonies, but this version, known as cha-kaiseki, then gave rise to a fuller, banquet form .

Even today, all forms of kaiseki are rooted in ritual and seasonality, and while a new generation of chefs is dispensing with some of the old rules, the structure of a full, traditional kaiseki meal remains strict. Chefs have some leeway with ingredients and preparation methods, but only within a rigid framework.

A single dish in a top kaiseki restaurant can require many hours’ work by four or five people, though it can also be as simple as one I once had in Kanda, a three-Michelin-starred Tokyo restaurant: shin-wakame, or young seaweed, parboiled and served with only a citrus-soy dipping sauce.

That single dish exemplified kaiseki’s central rule: whether simple or elaborate, the key is to focus on the freshest and best-quality ingredients.

The time, cost and labour required to produce a kaiseki banquet demands a high price. In a traditional Kyoto ryotei (a large, established restaurant) a full kaiseki course, usually nine to 12 dishes, can easily cost from Y20,000 (£133) to Y58,000 (£383) per head or more – for food alone. 

Over such a meal at an old Kyoto ryotei, one gets the feeling that not much has changed over the centuries. Indeed, adherence to tradition is, for many kaiseki devotees, the key attraction.

This is the world that Michelin finally penetrated after numerous rejections by Kyoto restaurants. Two years after launching its inaugural Tokyo guide, Michelin earlier this month published its first on Kyoto and Osaka, bestowing 189 stars on the cities’ restaurants and hotels – second only to Tokyo’s haul of 227.

But, despite enthusiastic validation from Michelin, there is a dark side to the kaiseki tradition – one that patrons almost never get to see. It lies in the sometimes Dickensian kitchens of some of the top and outwardly most elegant establishments, yet even here there is a fin de siècle feeling of an ancient tradition slowly breaking down.

In one ryotei , which employs more than 20 kitchen staff, the day begins virtually at dawn and ends nearly at midnight for younger staff. Many toil 80 to 90 hours a week, starting in their first year at 6am each day and working through until 11pm or midnight. Junior kitchen staff get a half-hour break; more senior workers might get an hour off and start, say, at 8am.

In the first five years, a kitchen worker typically gets leave only at new year, for a week. Juniors are assigned the most menial, grinding tasks – gutting fish, cleaning floors, washing dishes and dealing with garbage. They barely touch food for their first few years on the job.

Even as they climb the hierarchy, ­the traditionally compartmentalised nature of kaiseki cuisine means that a worker might spend several years doing only garnishes, say, or grilling fish. In this paternalistic system, most kitchen staff live on the premises, in crude dormitories with shared bathrooms. They eat cheaply prepared staff meals – a far cry from the elaborate creations they help to turn out for customers. For all this, they earn little more than Y100,000 (£672) per month for the first five years, said a senior employee who declined to be named – the amount a customer might drop on a single meal in a top ryotei.

Not surprisingly, the burn-out rate is high, but this harsh approach to training is not confined to kaiseki. From baseball to sumo wrestling, Japan’s traditional system of “shugyo” – or apprenticeship – metes out brutal lessons over almost inhuman hours for pitiful pay. No one with less than 100 per cent commitment can survive.

Kyoto remains a culinary world largely closed to outsiders. Indeed, few top foreign chefs have set up there, preferring to focus instead on Tokyo for their flagship Japanese restaurants.

Still, there are changes afoot. Keiji Mori is the talented owner-chef of Maru, a contemporary Tokyo restaurant where dishes can be ordered à la carte and shared. Mori trained in Kyoto kaiseki restaurants for 10 years, working his way to the top before leaving nearly 20 years ago to travel and, eventually, open his own place. “Kyoto has changed. When I worked there, all the top ryotei were quite big, with beautiful gardens and large tatami rooms ... now many of the m have faded away,” he says.

Some top ryotei, such as Hyotei and Kitcho, are still highly rated, landing multiple Michelin stars. But there are fewer than a dozen big establishments left in Kyoto, and many were not included in Michelin’s guide. Instead, kaiseki restaurants, drawing customers and landing stars, are small and often innovative, says Mori.

“This type of small place is now very popular; it generally means the owner works with care . . . whereas 20 years ago, in Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ era, owners of large, famous restaurants became more like business people. Their food became more careless, more commercial.”

These days, however, some Kyoto chefs believe that aspiring kaiseki apprentices no longer want to spend five years gutting fish and cleaning toilets before being allowed to touch food, and the “new generation” of smaller places simply can’t afford to have one person who just prepares garnishes. Trainees at smaller restaurants learn a bit of everything – and far more quickly than in the old system. This phenomenon, in turn, is helping to break down the old system – and the prices charged.

The big establishments have large overheads, so the three-starred Hyotei charges up to Y42,000 for a dinner course and at least Y20,000 for lunch. But at Sasaki, a smaller, fashionable newcomer, dinner costs Y17,850, and lunch as little as Y5,500.

Among the thriving large ryotei, Wakuden, a relative newcomer with several branches around Kyoto, is innovating in its approach to kaiseki and its more progressive – and faster – training. Two of its three branches gained a Michelin star each but, in addition, at least five alumni have landed Michelin stars in roles elsewhere or in their own establishments.

Is the change a good thing? In the view of David Schlosser, an American chef who has been working in some of Kyoto’s top kaiseki restaurants, the city epitomises a precious tradition. “There are so many influences there, things always change. Kyoto to me means generations of chefs all working to perfect the same thing. That’s why it’s so good, because they have been doing it for so many years.”

Ultimately, diners – and the next generation of apprentices and chefs – will be the judges of that.

Gwen Robinson is an FT correspondent based in Tokyo

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Michelin picks in Kyoto

Katsuyoshi Nagata

Chihana’s owner-chef Katsuyoshi Nagata serves unconventional combinations such as a boiled green salad or mackerel and grapefruit, but maintains the integrity of dishes created by his father, who opened Chihana in 1946.

Tel +81 (0)75 561 2471; www.kyotochihana.com

More than 400 years old, Hyotei began life as a tea house in the grounds of Nanzenji Temple. Eiichi Takahashi, the 14th-generation owner-chef, upholds the traditions of his forebears.

Tel +81 (0)75 771 4116; www.hyotei.co.jp

Hyotei

Course dinners run to Y57,000 per head at Kitcho Arashiyama Honten. Third-generation owner- chef Kunio Tokuoka’s innovations include Japanese-style foie gras

Tel: +81 (0)75 881 1101www.kitcho.com/kyoto/english

Housed in an old-style house in Kyoto’s Maruyama Park, Mizai’s long wooden counter gives a traditional atmosphere. Owner-chef Hitoshi Ishihara focuses on cha-kaiseki, and the strict timing and structure of the meals here reflect this traditional spirit.

Tel: +81 (0)75 551 3310; www.mizai.net

Tsuruya’s elegant tea-house structure reflects both traditional and modern styles. The food, however, is focused on traditional seasonal, multi-course meals – a feature of the flagship restaurant and its four branches, including one in Tokyo’s Peninsula Hotel.

Tel: +81 (0)75 761 0171; www.kyoto-tsuruya.co.jp

Gion Sasaki landed just two stars, but it’s the place that Kyoto foodies flock to. Owner-chef Hiroshi Sasaki has made a mark with his inventive cuisine and bold presentation.

Tel +81 (0)75 551 5000

For a complete list of restaurants in the new Michelin guide to Kyoto and Osaka, see www.ft.com/michelinkyoto

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

NY Times: To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

October 23, 2009

By Degrees

To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food Administration, which was given the task last year of creating new food guidelines giving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”

Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the summer, may seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that Swedes favor carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike carrots, the latter two must be grown in heated greenhouses here, consuming energy.)

They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits, because Europe’s stocks are depleted.

And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising cattle.

“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are getting environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”

Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could say that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,” said Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board revealing that a chicken sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been better for the planet.

Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say, Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions released in their production.

While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in checking for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little idea of whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the climate.

Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.

Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental costs of transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced research shows that the emissions depend on many factors, including the type of soil used to grow the food and whether a dairy farmer uses local rapeseed or imported soy for cattle feed.

Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs as well as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to identify food choices.

Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen, Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on some categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal, barley and pasta.

Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by growing the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times those of little-used barley, for example.

Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and threaten profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being circulated for comment not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil growers, to name a few.

“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr. Bohman said.

Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic.

Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV.

For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.

Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels for heating. Dairy farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the food for their herds locally; many previously imported cheap soy from Brazil, generating transport emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for farmland.

The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions. Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.

The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally could have an enormous impact.

Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030.

To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide labels, scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products. These take into account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for harvesting machinery, packaging and transport.

They decided to examine one representative product in each category — say, pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus penne, or one brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is hugely time-intensive,” said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of sustainability.

A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the climate challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s burger chain, voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon footprint; 75 percent was created by its meat.

“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to putting emissions data on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals, installed low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.

Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people head to a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.

Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor table.

“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.

Sweden is drawing attention to emissions from food production by requiring new labels and encouraging farmers to adhere to greener standards in order to combat global warming. In order to be considered "climate-friendly" by KRAV, Scandinavia's leading organic certification program, dairy farms in Sweden will have to increase the amount of locally produced protein feed, rather than importing soy from the Amazon.

Some farmers have risen to the challenge of reducing their carbon footprint; however, in the north of Sweden, it is hard to grow feed locally and some farmers may have to drop out of the KRAV system.

Some packages of oatmeal already have labels that read "Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product," so shoppers can consider the environmental impact of their diets.

An estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized countries can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research in Sweden.

Frozen chicken was one of the first products to be carbon-labeled by Lantmannen, a farmers' group. The Swedish Food Administration encourages its citizens to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising cattle.

The environmental cost of raising cattle depends on many factors, including whether the farmer uses local or imported feed. Max, a Swedish burger chain, puts emissions data on its menu, uses low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.

Some diners at Max say they think twice before ordering a burger, when faced with the emissions information posted on every menu board. Sales of more climate-friendly products, like chicken fingers and veggie chili, have risen 20 percent since Max started putting climate information on the menu last year.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

FT: The Bagel

The Bagel

Review by James Urquhart

Published: October 19 2009 05:20 | Last updated: October 19 2009 05:20

The Bagel
By Maria Balinska
Yale £10, 220 pages
FT Bookshop price: £8

In Balinska’s anecdotal history of the Jewish roll with a hole, first references to the food appear during the flourishing of Jewish culture in 14th-century Poland. Balinska tracks the bread’s festive, religious and secular significances through the canon of Jewish folklore up to the Nazi horrors of the Warsaw ghetto.

Jumping to immigrant America, she describes how this quintessentially Jewish bread “would come of age politically” in New York, where it “played a role” in the city’s harsh labour struggles.

The gossipy erudition of her earlier narrative gathers pace as Balinska records the innovations of a few bakers who, after late mechanisation in the 1960s, broke out of the ethnic Jewish market to mass appeal.

Balinska’s lofty claim that “the bagel emerges as an eloquent metaphor for east European Jewry” is slightly cheeky, but her eclectic, engaging and sympathetic account offers plenty to savour.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

FT: The benefits of vitamin D

The benefits of vitamin D

By Sam Apple

Published: October 23 2009 16:56 | Last updated: October 23 2009 16:56

Sunlight 10,000 IU from 15-20 minutes of midday summer sun Oysters 270 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per half-dozen Dried shiitake mushrooms 172 IU per 100g

Reinhold Vieth is frustrated. A thin, bald professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Patho-biology, Vieth is among the most knowledgeable people in the world on the subject of vitamin D. He began studying it as a graduate student in 1974 and hasn’t changed his focus since. “I stick with vitamin D and follow it where it goes,” he says.

In recent years, vitamin D has been going to some exciting places. Reports of new and promising studies seem to emerge almost weekly. A 2007 analysis of vitamin D studies found that individuals with higher vitamin D levels are significantly – as much as 50 per cent – less likely to develop colorectal cancer. Another 2007 study found that women who took 1,100 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day together with a calcium supplement reduced their overall cancer risk by 60 per cent. And the excitement is not only about cancer prevention. Low vitamin D levels have been linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, depression and rheumatoid arthritis, among other diseases. Perhaps not surprisingly, in light of the other studies, one recent review of the health records of more than 13,000 Americans found that individuals with the lowest vitamin D levels were 26 per cent more likely, in an eight-year period, to die than those with the highest levels.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Reportage - Nov-24

So why is Dr Vieth so frustrated? You might think he’d have cause for celebration. But for him and other vitamin D researchers around the world, the good news comes with a bitter aftertaste. They believe they can prove vitamin D could help millions live longer and be healthier and yet they have not been able to convince their own governments.

In the US and Canada, official vitamin D policy is set by the Institute of Medicine. And in the opinion of Vieth, the current recommendations – 200 International Units per day for people under 50, 400 for people aged 51-70, and 600 for those 71 and older – are outrageously low. Bruce Hollis, professor of paediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, calls 400 IU a day “a joke”. That’s because the best research suggests that to achieve the higher vitamin D blood levels associated with disease prevention, most adults in the US would need to take 1,000-2,000 IU a day: five to 10 times more than the current official recommendation for adults.

In the UK, the government’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy has declined to set a “Reference Nutrient Intake” value for people “leading a normal lifestyle”, arguing that you can get the vitamin D you need from food and sunlight. But they fall in line with the Americans where they do make recommendations: for people confined indoors, the elderly and pregnant women, they suggest a daily intake of 10 micrograms a day. That’s equal to 400 IU.

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Mackerel 643 IU per 100g. Halibut gives you 230 IU per 100g, pickled herring 113 IU per 100 Tinned sardines 23 IU per 12g fish. Tinned salmon gives you 550 IU per 100g, tinned tuna 270 IU per 100g

Vitamin D was discovered in the early 20th century as scientists searched for a cure for rickets, a disease that softens the bones of children, leaving them bowlegged and deformed. It had been known for some time that children in cities were more likely to suffer from rickets than those in the countryside. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists in the US and UK realised rickets was caused by a vitamin D deficiency, caused in city kids by lack of sunlight. We obtain our other vitamins from our food; but while it’s possible to get vitamin D from oily fish and some other foods, most of the vitamin D in our bodies doesn’t come from diet at all but from a chemical process that takes place when the sun’s ultraviolet light strikes our skin.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when American and other dietary guidelines first specified vitamin D intakes of up to 400 IU for adults, nobody understood that vitamin D could do anything other than regulate calcium. And since 200 IU is enough to prevent rickets in children – assuming they have at least a moderate amount of calcium in their diet – it was assumed that 200 IU was sufficient. It was only in the following decades, as scientists came to understand how vitamin D works in our bodies, that the picture changed.

After it forms in our skin, vitamin D undergoes two critical transformations. First our liver metabolises it, turning it into calcidiol. If you have your vitamin D blood levels checked, it’s the amount of calcidiol in your blood that will be tested. From the liver, calcidiol makes its way to the kidneys, where it is turned into calcitriol, arguably the most potent steroid hormone in the body. In other words, while vitamin D is lumped together with other vitamins, by the time our bodies are done with it, it has more in common with testosterone or oestrogen than with vitamins A or C.

If you have only a small amount of D in your body, it will all be used by the kidneys to produce calcitriol and maintain blood calcium levels. But when there is more vitamin D available, something very different happens. As scientists have discovered in recent decades, it’s not only the kidneys that can make calcitriol from the calcidiol produced in the liver. Many tissues throughout the body can as well. These tissues use the hormone locally, within the cells, to regulate their behaviour.

“Calcidiol is like a blank piece of paper,” Vieth explains. “And calcitriol is like the message written on to it. Calcitriol is needed by our bodies to convey many kinds of messages, and virtually every cell in our body has a receptor that can read and respond to it.”

The first real evidence for the cancer-fighting properties of vitamin D emerged in the early 1980s, when researchers found that if they added calcitriol to immature malignant leukaemia cells, the cells would stop growing. They could only guess why this was, but scientists have since shown that vitamin D interacts with an unusually large number of genes and has the apparent ability to turn them on and off.

. . .

Hard-boiled eggs 26 IU per egg; 25 IU per egg yolk Fortified cows’ milk 250 IU per pint Fortified orange juice 270 IU per pint

This new understanding of how vitamin D works in our bodies, together with a large quantity of evidence of the benefits of higher vitamin D levels, might make it seem like an obvious move for the world’s governments to adjust their recommendations for daily intake. But Vieth and other vitamin D advocates have good reason to think there will be minimal changes made to dietary guidelines. Last December, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer issued a 465-page report that concluded there was no need to raise vitamin D recommendations.

The reason is not a lack of research but a lack of the right kind of research, say vitamin D sceptics. Most evidence for vitamin D and health is based on epidemiological surveys. Many of these studies, particularly early ones, were based on geography. Epidemiologists have found, for example, that multiple sclerosis – a disease of the central nervous system – and a number of cancers become more common the farther you move away from the equator. In the US, you are four times more likely to develop MS if you live in a state that borders Canada than if you live in the south. The theory is that as you move away from the equator, you receive less “UVB” ultraviolet sunlight (UVB is a subtype of UV light and the most important for vitamin D production), and thus fewer opportunities to make vitamin D in your skin.

This may sound like persuasive research to lay readers, but for scientists, such correlations aren’t generally convincing, as there could be plenty of other possible reasons why people living at higher latitudes are more likely to suffer from MS.

The more compelling evidence for the connection between vitamin D and disease onset comes from the wide range of studies in recent years that have actually measured vitamin D levels in blood. But even these studies only show correlations. They can demonstrate, as one Harvard School of Public Health study did in 2006, that the vitamin D status of healthy young adults can predict their future risk of developing MS, but they can’t definitively demonstrate that higher vitamin D levels prevent MS. It’s possible, for example, that there is another mechanism at work in the early stage of MS that causes vitamin D levels to drop during the first stage of a progressive disease (see box below for more on MS).

The link to MS

Multiple sclerosis is thought to be caused by a mix of environmental and genetic factors. And while scientists are still trying to unravel how these interact, a growing body of research points to vitamin D as a key environmental factor.

In people with MS, the immune system malfunctions and attacks the protective coating around nerve cells known as myelin sheaths. The disease can affect sight, balance, continence, speech and more, and reduces life expectancy. Vitamin D’s influence on MS – and other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes – is thought to be related to the vitamin’s ability to suppress autoimmune responses.

The link between vitamin D and MS was for many years thought to be wild speculation. Now more and more studies point in the same direction: people who have higher levels of vitamin D in their blood early in life are less likely to get MS later in life. Also, MS patients have been found to have low levels of vitamin D in their blood– and the levels appear to be even lower during relapses.

One small study published this year found that MS patients who took high doses of vitamin D – an average of 14,000 IU a day for a year – had significantly fewer relapses than those MS patients who took an average of 1,000 IU a day. Studies have also shown that vitamin D prevents experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the mouse model of human MS.

Few mainstream researchers would disagree that a single correlation study should not be given much weight in determining public policy. It’s only when looked at in aggregate that these survey studies – together with the many small clinical trials and our new knowledge of how vitamin D works at the cellular level – begin to make a powerful case for increasing the current vitamin D recommendations.

And yet, if the WHO report of 2008 is any indicator, such a case isn’t always strong enough to sway a sceptical committee. All the recent research notwithstanding, vitamin D is still missing the gold standard of evidence-based medicine: large, randomised controlled trials which can demonstrate its ability to prevent major diseases. The WHO report concludes that “we should wait for the results of new randomised trials” before changing vitamin D recommendations.

It’s a position echoed in the UK by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), which advises the government on whether drugs should be paid for by the state. After reviewing the vitamin D literature, in 2003 Nice pointed to the absence of randomised clinical trials and suggested that there was no need even to recommend vitamin D to pregnant women – a conclusion that was overruled by the government’s chief medical officer after paediatricians objected.

. . .

For Britons, the most alarming aspect of these government responses is that people living in the UK have so much to lose. For much of the year, it is impossible in this country to obtain vitamin D from the sun – for the same reason it is impossible to suffer sunburn. There is simply not enough UVB ultraviolet radiation in our winter and autumn sunlight. And unless you happen to consume a lot of oily fish, it’s very hard to get much vitamin D from your diet. (In addition to oily fish, eggs and fortified foods have small amounts of vitamin D.) It’s no surprise, then, that a 2007 study of middle-aged British adults found that 90 per cent had less-than-optimal levels of vitamin D during winter and spring. In the US, by comparison, three-quarters of teenagers and adults are estimated to be deficient in vitamin D.

Advocates of changes to the vitamin D recommendations in the UK and elsewhere don’t disagree that large, randomised control trials are important. The trouble is, trials that could convince policymakers to advise an across-the-board increase to vitamin D recommendations for all children and adults might never take place.

There are a number of obstacles to the research, but the simplest, and biggest, is money. Vitamin D is not a proprietary compound. It’s cheap and easy to produce. A bottle of 180 1,000-IU capsules can be purchased online for about £9. No pharmaceutical company is going to put up the many millions of dollars necessary to conduct the trials.

Michael Gleimer, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School who has no connection to the vitamin D controversy, notes that it is easy for a medical research fellow to do a small-scale study on something like vitamin D. “It is non-controversial, easy to get approval for, and popular-sciency enough that it may land you in the science section of BBC news,” Gleimer says. “But to do a large, definitive, long-term study, one needs cash. This is something a pharmaceutical company could do. But why would they want to push vitamin D? It’s cheap and there is no patent for it.”

Vitamin D also has to overcome the baggage of other vitamins. Asked for his thoughts on the US and Canada’s current daily vitamin D recommendations, Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said that “similar ‘signals’ regarding other vitamins and nutritional supplements – suggesting that they decreased the incidence of certain cancers – have not been borne out in subsequent randomised clinical trials.”

The main culprit here is vitamin E, which caused a great deal of excitement in the early 1990s. The enthusiasm for vitamin E at the time was great enough to convince the US government to invest millions in just the sort of large clinical trials that have yet to be conducted for vitamin D. But E turned out to be a disappointment, showing no benefits whatsoever in preventing cancer.

There’s a third obstacle in the way of large clinical trials with vitamin D. Like other nutrients, it faces a systemic problem. A typical clinical trial follows what Vieth calls a “pharmaceutical drug company model”, where a group of sick people are given a carefully selected dose of a drug to see if it makes a difference to their condition, compared with a second group of sick people who receive a placebo.

Fortified tofu 120 IU per 80g Vitamin D capsules 100-5,000 IU; most multivitamin pills contain 400 IU of vitamin D Cod liver oil 450 IU per teaspoon; capsule amounts vary

The drawback of this model is that it doesn’t work nearly as well if the goal of the study is not to determine if a person gets better but to determine if the substance can prevent you from becoming ill at all. “It takes a great deal of time and huge population to look at healthy people and see what develops,” says Mariela Glandt, an endocrinologist and the former director of the Diabetes Clinical Trials Center at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. “It’s just much more expensive and time-consuming.”

Not even the recent announcement of a $20m study by Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is enough to make Vieth optimistic. Funded by National Institutes of Health and other institutions, the research will look at vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids (which have also shown disease-fighting promise) in the primary prevention of chronic disease in adults ages 60 and over. If the results are good, they could help make the case for raising vitamin D recommendations for older adults. But Vieth believes it would still be difficult to persuade policy-makers of the need to raise vitamin D levels for everyone. “‘If you start with people older than age 65 and do clinical trials with them’, policy-makers say, ‘Why should we impose this drug on everyone in society?’”

And if it remains challenging to raise enough money to study prevention in older adults, it’s nearly impossible to find the money to study younger people; a younger population is less susceptible to disease, so any convincing study would require an enormous number of participants.

. . .

Then there is a problem that is more specific to vitamin D. The latest research suggests that it takes 1,000 IU a day or more to achieve vitamin D’s anti-cancer benefits. But often when a smaller vitamin D trial does receive funding, it is conducted with the current lower vitamin D recommendation – and then fails to prove effective.

These failures, such as a highly publicised Lancet study in 2005 that found 800 IU of vitamin D and calcium given in prevention trials (trials in which many participants did not take the supplements regularly) did not prevent bone fractures, are then used by review committees as grounds for leaving the current vitamin D recommendations in place.

It was precisely such studies that convinced the authors of the WHO report that there was no need for action on vitamin D. The report concluded that vitamin D recommendations did not need to be raised because there was not yet evidence that supplementing with 400-840 IU of vitamin D could prevent cancer. What the conclusion left out, as though the authors couldn’t imagine anyone taking more than 840 IU, was a randomised clinical trial which found that 1,110 IU taken daily is effective in preventing cancer in women.

With so many factors weighing against a large vitamin D trial for anyone who is not old or sick with cancer or another serious disease, the best hope for advocates of higher vitamin D recommendations may be convincing the medical authorities and the public to take the epidemiology survey studies more seriously. (Even if a large trial did get off the ground, it would probably be at least a decade before there were results.)

It’s not an impossible task. In other instances, the medical community has been ready to recognise survey evidence: “The evidence favouring vitamin D is probably as good as the evidence that shows smoking is bad for you,” Vieth says, explaining that just as smoking is correlated with certain cancers, so are low vitamin D levels. “But when these government officials see the same kind of evidence that deals with vitamin D as they see with smoking they go, ‘Oh wait a minute. We can’t really trust this.’”

Vieth pauses, as though he can barely stand to talk about such a miserable state of affairs. “It’s easy to say ‘don’t do something – don’t smoke’. It’s very hard to say ‘take this. Take vitamin D.’”

Sam Apple is a regular contributor to the FT Weekend Magazine and founder and publisher of the news website TheFasterTimes.com

......................................

Can we overdose?

One of the debates surrounding vitamin D is whether too much can be toxic. The US’s Institute of Medicine’s recommendations – unchanged since 1997 – were influenced in part by a 1984 study concluding that 3,800 IU of vitamin D per day could cause hypercalcemia, or too much calcium in the blood. Symptoms include kidney stones, vomiting and muscle atrophy.

But the 1984 study was flawed: it failed to measure the amount of vitamin D administered; based on the findings of other studies, it now looks as though subjects were given 100 times more vitamin D than intended.Moreover, how could it be that 3,800 IU was toxic, when 20 minutes of midday sunbathing in the summer makes at least 10,000 IU of vitamin D in our bodies?

In 1999, Reinhold Vieth (pictured right) published a review of vitamin D research in response to the IOM conclusions. In it, he argued that there was no evidence that amounts lower than 20,000 IU a day could be toxic. “Throughout my preparation of this review, I was amazed at the lack of evidence supporting statements about the toxicity of moderate doses of vitamin D,” Vieth wrote.

Studies have since shown 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D to be safe. While any substance will become toxic in excess, vitamin D researchers today accept that the current vitamin D recommendations could be more than quadrupled with no fear of toxicity.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

FT: It's easy to tackle fish

I can relate to this... I am not confident when it comes to a proper piece of fish... with bones. Not so much about cleaning the fish but rather eating it :P

===

It’s easy to tackle fish

By Rowley Leigh

Published: October 24 2009 01:02 | Last updated: October 24 2009 01:02

We do well with fish at our restaurant. I don’t necessarily do a lot with it – simply grilled and served plain with no sauce being one of the most popular options – but I think diners trust me to give them good fish.

The other advantage of fish in restaurants is that the chefs do all that messy stuff, such as getting rid of the nasty, smelly wrapping and cleaning the pots and pans. Time was that housewives used to bring back a few herrings, scale them and gut them, fry the soft roes and put them on toast and grill the rest for the children’s tea. That was before we had designer kitchens and there is no point having a designer kitchen if it is going to smell of fish, is there?

I mock. There is a kernel of truth, however: a lot of people are a bit afraid of fish. They don’t mind a salmon fillet, a tuna steak or a few prawns, perhaps, but they are not so confident when it comes to a proper piece of fish, especially when it is on the bone. I was musing on this the other night when I bought some John Dory at my local fishmonger and cooked them in a trice. Below you can see what I did and, to paraphrase television’s Masterchef, cooking really does not get easier than this.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais
rowley.leigh@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/leigh

....................

John Dory with leeks and clams

The John Dory has firm flesh that will stand up to simple oven roasting.

Ingredients
4 small John Dory, weighing 400g500g each
4 small leeks
1 glass dry white wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
750g small clams or cockles or mussels
2 tomatoes
8 leaves basil

Method
● Remove the heads and fins from the fish. Rinse out the cavities and season well with sea salt and pepper. Slice the leeks finely and place in a large ovenproof dish or tray. Season with salt and pepper before putting the fish on top. Pour the white wine and then the olive oil over the fish and place in a very hot oven (250°C) for 810 minutes. The fish should be slightly undercooked. Test it by pushing gently on the spine: the meat should be reluctant to move off the bone.
● Rinse the clams very well, rejecting any broken or open shells. Peel the tomatoes (by dropping into boiling water for 15 seconds and then refreshing in cold water), remove the pulp and chop into small dice. Distribute clams and tomatoes over the fish and put back in the oven for five minutes or until the clams have just opened. Shred the basil leaves very finely and sprinkle over the ensemble. Serve with a bowl of boiled potatoes.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

Boing Boing: Taste Test - Togarashi

Lisa Katayama

POSTED AT 8:00 AM October 23, 2009

Featured • Food

Taste Test

Taste test: Togarashi

Image by zrim via Flickr

When I got a bag of chile peppers in our CSA delivery last week, I had a really hard time trying to figure out how to cook them. I tried putting them in pasta, but that turned out numbingly spicy. And then I remembered that chile peppers = togarashi in Japanese, and that they are a key ingredient in one of my all-time favorite spices — shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice mix commonly found at home dinner tables and yakitori restaurants that is designed to enhance the natural flavors of high quality meat and veggies. For this week's Taste Test, I thought I'd share a simple recipe for shichimi and give you some tips on other ways to use it.

An excerpt from my book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan, offers a toe-warming chile pepper trick.

Chile peppers contain capsaicin, a chemical that induces warmth, so you can stick it in your shoe or mitten to keep toes and fingers warm. It is apparently also useful for keeping rice from becoming bug-infested — a colleague of mine once sent me a plastic chile pepper with chile oil in it sold in Japan for that precise purpose. Capsaicin has also been tested on rats for things like pain relief, cancer cell reduction, diabetes prevention, and weight loss.

Okay, so here's how you make shichimi togarashi, a delicious seven-ingredient Japanese spice mix, at home, via a recipe I found on Chow.com:

1 tbsp ground chile pepper
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp dried tangerine peel
2 tsp flaked nori
2 tsp black sesame seeds
2 tsp white poppy seeds or black cannabis seeds
2 tsp minced garlic

Combine all the ingredients in a small container, then grind together using a grinder or a wooden seed-grinder.

Of course, there are many other ways to make the chile pepper a part of your diet — it's great in salsas, hot sauces, and on pizza — I'm sure many of you have your own favorite uses for the versatile fruit. If you just don't like the taste of chile peppers at all, it makes a lovely Christmas tree ornament.

Every installment of Taste Test will explore recipes, the science, and some history behind a specific food item.

Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/23/taste-test-togarashi.html

NY Times: Singapore's Culinary Melting Pot

October 18, 2009

Choice Tables

Singapore’s Culinary Melting Pot

By GISELA WILLIAMS

UNTIL recently, Singapore’s food scene was ruled by two very different eating experiences: the city’s venerated street stalls, appropriately glorified by food writers like Calvin Trillin; and upscale European-style restaurants like Iggy’s and Au Jardin.

But a small group of chefs is reinventing the city’s traditional food culture, finding a balancing point between the city’s cheap but hard to navigate street food and the expensive white-tablecloth spots.

This past May I dove into the city’s restaurant scene along with a food-loving college friend who has lived in Singapore for the last four years. I made a point of waiting until after my trip to contact K. F. Seetoh, the acknowledged rajah of the local food guidebook series, Makansutra, whom many food writers before me had followed around the city. I wanted to rely on my own instincts and not be influenced by his favorites. So it was especially remarkable to discover that restaurants from the two Singapore-based chefs he respects the most — Damian D’Silva and Willin Low — also ended up on the list of my favorites.

When I later asked Mr. Seetoh what he believed was driving the city’s next generation of chefs, he answered that it was Singapore’s rich food culture.

“Tomorrow’s flavors aren’t just about new or old in Singapore,” he said, “it’s about ingenuity for a market that’s very fickle, choosy and unforgiving.”

BIG D’S GRILL

The chef Damian D'Silva set up his shop, Big D's Grill, with an ambitious young team of sous-chefs in the middle of a small hawker center. He serves traditional Singaporean cuisine that incorporates Chinese, Malay and Indonesian ingredients and techniques.

Big D’s Grill (46 Holland Drive, No. 01-359; 65-9662-7040) is in a former coffee shop in the middle of a small hawker center. Although it has the same simple plastic tables and glaring fluorescent lighting that you’ll find at a typical Singaporean street food stand, there are obvious signs that something unusual is cooking: an ambitious young team of sous-chefs is squeezed together in the closet-size open kitchen; professional pots and pans hang from the wall; and a small crowd of conspicuously stylish urbanites is waiting in line or crowding in at the tables.

In the center of it all is Damian D’Silva — Big D himself — a barrel-chested bear of a man who towers above his assistants. Although the self-taught 50-something started cooking at a young age with his Singapore-born grandfather, Mr. D’Silva came into the restaurant business fairly late.

In his early 40s he abandoned his career as an aeronautical engineer, flew off to Europe and spent two years working in kitchens in San Sebastián, Spain, and in Sardinia. Back in Singapore he picked up more experience at several European restaurants before he opened his first cafe: the Soul Kitchen on Purvis Street.

Singaporean food bloggers still write rapturously of the Soul Kitchen; it was a cultish spot that served a mix of European and Peranakan food, a traditional Singaporean cuisine that incorporates Chinese, Malay and Indonesian ingredients and techniques. Mr. D’Silva still maintains that formula at Big D’s, and his fans have followed, even after Big D’s moved locations earlier this year.

Those fans appreciate the chef’s attention to detail, most notable in the intricate dishes that sometimes take a full day to prepare, like a “lost” Cantonese recipe from his childhood, loh kai yik, a stew of braised chicken wings in fermented soy bean sauce, which Mr. D’Silva might offer as an off-the-menu weekend special to his in-the-know regulars.

One of those regulars, wearing a tailored black suit and matching hipster glasses, was in front of my friend and me in line. He turned around to look at us with a curious, friendly stare and asked, “Where did you hear about this place?” When I told him I had read about it online, he responded: “You’re lucky to have found it. It’s the neighborhood’s insider secret,” and went on to rave about the fish and chips and the rib-eye.

A braised pork belly dish at Big D's Grill.

But we weren’t at Big D’s to eat steak. Instead I wanted to taste what the food bloggers rave about most often: spicy pastas and Peranakan dishes. We ordered the anchovy pasta (17.90 Singapore dollars, or $12.43 at 1.44 Singapore dollars to the U.S. dollar), crabmeat linguine (10.90 Singapore dollars) and sambal buah keluak (12.90 dollars), a Peranakan dish made with finely minced pork and ground buah keluak, an Indonesian nut with pitch-black meat with an earthy, rich flavor; it has been called the truffle of Asia.

“Mix some of the buah keluak sauce in with the anchovy pasta,” Mr. D’Silva suggested.

The combination was impressive — an explosion of salt and earth with a hit of spice — but almost too powerful to repeat more than two or three times. On its own, the anchovy pasta was perfectly balanced. Likewise, the sambal, served simply with steamed rice, was complex and rich and unlike anything I have ever tasted, and the crab meat linguine was thick with fresh meat and a rich sweet tomato sauce with a touch of peppery spice.

WILD ROCKET

Wild Rocket is in the designer youth hostel called the Hangout Hotel on Mount Emily Park. The out-of-the-way location requires searching, but restaurant regulars find the trip a small price to pay for the contemporary gourmet take on Singaporean and Western comfort food.

Thanks to its out-of-the-way location within a designer youth hostel, the Hangout Hotel on Mount Emily Park, Wild Rocket (10A Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6339-9448; www.wildrocket.com.sg) requires searching out. But restaurant regulars find the trip a small price to pay for the chef Willin Low’s contemporary gourmet take on Singaporean and Western comfort food, which he calls Mod Sin (modern Singapore).

The dining room at Wild Rocket.

During our visit, on a Saturday afternoon, all the tables were loaded with animated, well-dressed locals. Our view through the dining room’s floor-to-ceiling windows was of a parking lot, but once the food started to arrive we were fixated entirely on our plates. Having opted for the six-course chef’s menu (58 Singapore dollars), our first taste of Mr. Low’s cooking was a crispy espresso-size pastry shell filled with laksa mayo tiger prawns — a nod to one of his signature dishes, the laksa pesto linguine with Tiger prawns and quail eggs, which regulars have forbidden him to take off the menu. The pesto is made from the laksa leaf, an Asian herb that has an intensely minty, peppery flavor. This initial bite — a rich explosion of pesto and the prawns — was enough to let you know you were in the hands of a chef who, like Mr. D’Silva, wants to engrave the tastes of Singapore deep in your taste buds.

At Wild Rocket, one of Willin Low's signature dishes is the laksa pesto linguine with tiger prawns and quail eggs. Regulars have forbidden him to take it off the menu.

The next course, a refreshing and light peppercorn and sesame chicken salad with “pasta” made from thinly cut ribbons of cucumber, cooled things down before a bowl of crab congee soup, served with a tiger prawn and egg emulsion — a dressed-up version of local comfort food.

The highlight of the meal was an excellent fish dish: roast Chilean sea bass masak merah with kaffir leaves. Masak merah is a sweet and spicy Malaysian tomato-based paste typically served with chicken; Mr. Low draped his version of the sauce over the juicy fish fillet, which sat on a bed of green asparagus.

One of my dining companions had ordered another of the chef’s most blogged-about dishes: the crab meat linguine in chili tomato cream. It was creamier and richer than Big D’s version and left a lingering bit of spice on the tongue.

The dish is a somewhat Westernized version of one of Singapore’s most popular dishes, chili crab. Both chefs have translated it into an unforgettable pasta dish, despite the fact that both shudder at the mention of fusion cuisines. “Con-fusion cuisine,” Mr. Low joked.

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” Mr. D’Silva said. “I’m not a fan of fusion, but sometimes when I eat a dish I think, ‘This can be improved on.’ I believe something new should only be added when it truly makes it a better dish.”

RESTAURANT FIFTYTHREE

The diverse food culture of Singapore is driving the city's next generation of chefs. Michael Han, left, at right, from Restaurant FiftyThree, takes an avant-garde approach to his cuisine. Tracking down the best ingredients, he experiments with cooking and combining them until he creates a dish deemed innovative and successful enough to be put on the menu.

Michael Han, the head chef and a co-owner of Restaurant FiftyThree (53 Armenian Street; 65-6334-5535; www.fiftythree.com.sg), which opened in February, is a very different kind of local cooking talent. Singapore’s most exciting chefs tend to focus on one of two schools of cuisine: a style of cooking based on emotion, which involves perfecting and modernizing regional comfort foods; and the kind of cerebral, mad-scientist cooking popularized by the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Han, a 32-year-old Singapore native, is from the latter school. He started cooking in his late teens and apprenticed at two of the most famous avant-garde restaurants in the world: Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Britain and Andoni Aduriz’s Mugaritz in San Sebastián. And while these days it seems that every city has its molecular gastronomy specialist, Mr. Han stands out for both his ambition and innovation.

Like the food, the intimate décor at Restaurant FiftyThree is modern and multitextured.

FiftyThree, which opened early this year in partnership with Singapore’s prestigious Les Amis restaurant group, is in a charming two-story colonial-style wooden row building. There’s a private dining room and a semi-open kitchen on the first level, and a wine cellar and main dining hall with five tables on the second.

The intimate restaurant’s décor, like the food, it turned out, is modern and multitextured, and you can sense that Mr. Han, who is behind both, is a perfectionist obsessed with the smallest detail.

Mr. Han’s technique is to research feverishly and track down the best ingredients he can get his hands on and then experiment with multiple ways of cooking and combining them until he creates a dish that he and his close-knit team deem innovative and successful enough to put on the menu. The obsession with detail makes the expense (198 Singapore dollars) of the mandatory seven-course dinner menu a little easier to swallow.

One course, titled Potato and Duckweed, Coffee and Parmesan, appeared to be potatoes on a bed of earthy soil served on a large, smooth stone. In fact the “soil” consisted of coffee, Parmesan and grated chestnuts, while the potatoes (heirlooms, of course) were first oven baked, then cooked sous vide. It may not have been the kind of dish you find yourself craving daily (like Big D’s anchovy pasta), but it was memorable nonetheless.

Even the petit fours were an unexpected adventure. We were each offered a jelly wafer, served on a smooth dark stone, by Leandros Stagogiannis, the restaurant’s sous-chef and pastry chef. He described them as the perfect gin and tonic. “You can decide on how strong you want it,” Mr. Stagogiannis said. “Just let it dissolve on your tongue until you’re satisfied.”

Someone at the table wondered about the restaurant’s fixation on stones; another of my dining companions answered: “But of course! It’s a gin and tonic — on the rocks!”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

FT: Feed the world

Feed the world

By Tristram Stuart

Published: October 17 2009 00:31 | Last updated: October 17 2009 00:31

A drought-hit paddy field on the outskirts of Chongqing, China – one of the countries fuelling demand for greater meat and dairy production

The End of Food: The Coming Crisis in the World Food Industry
By Paul Roberts
Bloomsbury £12.99, 390 pages
FT Bookshop price: £11.99

The Food Wars
By Walden Bello
Verso £7.99, 186 pages
FT Bookshop price: £6.39

The Constant Economy: How to Create a Stable Society
By Zac Goldsmith
Atlantic £16.99, 200 pages
FT Bookshop price: £13.59

The Environmental Food Crisis: The Environment’s Role in Averting Future Food Crises
Edited by Christian Nellemann
UN Environment Programme, 104 pages (free)

The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century
By Alex Evans
Chatham House, 59 pages (free)

Modern methods are so much better than the old ways,” growled Frank Gervais, an 80-year-old farmer I worked for in my teens in a remote part of southern France. “C’est mieux!” he repeated in his broad accent, wagging his finger to rebuke me for my romanticised notions of pre-industrial farming, before tractors emptied the fields of labourers.

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I visited Frank again this year. His only grandchild has moved away, and his village now has only eight full-time inhabitants. I asked Frank if he had any regrets that the small, rocky hill-farm he has cultivated for eight decades might soon be abandoned or absorbed into a larger farm. But Frank, who spent most of his adult life doing back-breaking manual labour, is the most adamant advocate of progress I have met. “Before”, he told me, “we sweated all day and lived on potato soup with pig lard. Now my granddaughter is hoping to become a vet: what is there to regret?”

The competing claims of small, labour-intensive farms and large, fossil-fuel intensive agri-business is just one of the battles now raging over how the world will feed itself in the future.

The situation looks grave. There are 6.7bn people on earth; by 2050 there will be a further 2.5bn mouths to feed, on current growth trends. Nearly 1bn people are already malnourished. Aquifers and rivers have been sucked dry to irrigate parts of the world parched by global warming, and the rich show no sign of relinquishing gastronomic luxuries to alleviate the hunger of others.

Rather, as the world’s affluent grow in number, particularly in China, desire for more meat and dairy products has diverted cereals to feed animals, further straining food supply. Volatile oil prices afflict farmers’ bottom lines; and now, with the advent of subsidised biofuels, when oil prices rise, food becomes more attractive as an alternative fuel, leaving less to nourish the poor.

This has long been a controversial subject. Now, five new publications wade into the fray, each with theories about the problem’s sources and potential solutions.

The tremors of fragile food supply have been particularly acute in recent years. In 2007, a squeeze on global supplies contributed to an average food price rise of 23 per cent; last year prices jumped a further 54 per cent. According to Walden Bello, professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, to understand the impact this phenomenon has on the global poor, we must consider three decades of interference by international financial institutions, principally the World Bank.

In a controversial polemic The Food Wars, Bello argues that these financial institutions dismantled developing nations’ state support for local agriculture, and forced them also to open up to liberalised international food trade.

The result was that heavily subsidised cereals from the US and the European Union were dumped on the market for less than the price of growing them. Developing world farmers could not compete, so indigenous food production lagged behind demand – leaving countries addicted to overseas imports. Last year, as a result of US policies – including subsidies for biofuel production – an estimated 90m tonnes of maize was used to manufacture ethanol. This shrunk global supplies and increased prices; in the last three years there have been food riots in countries across the world, including Haiti, Egypt, Mexico and the Philippines.

The solution, says Bello, is to quell the power of international food giants in poorer nations and instead foster small-scale subsistence farming. Peasant farming, as he proudly calls it, is conducted “in benign interaction with the biosphere”. Small farmers can use new technologies, but only where appropriate.

A world populated by healthy, independent farmers growing food for themselves and surplus for the world’s urban populations is an idyllic prospect. Bello vehemently denies that this is mostly a romantic dream. However, the credibility of his vision hangs largely on the veracity of his claim that that small, mixed farms produce “three to 14 times more food per acre than their larger competitors”. Yet Bello cites only two studies to support his case.

Evidence is a problem in this field. The Constant Economy by Zac Goldsmith, nephew of The Ecologist magazine’s founder, has no notes or references. And it also selects research claiming to show that going organic can double yields, though even Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, the most active UK group campaigning for organic farming, argues that cereal production would halve if Britain went organic.

What Goldsmith lacks in referenced statistics, he makes up for with a clear, realistic plan of action: tax products and activities that harm the planet; use that money to support less harmful alternatives. If Goldsmith is elected as a Tory MP, he will have to persuade parliamentary colleagues.

Journalist Paul Roberts is more equivocal in his fact-packed and penetrating exploration of the food industry, The End of Food. Like the other writers, Roberts valorises small- and medium-sized farms. He also cites a study, however, suggesting that yields would reduce by a quarter if all US agriculture became organic.

Roberts predicts that reducing productivity would be unacceptable, although this conclusion is based partly on mistaken belief that existing US food supply is just “44 percent more than we need nutritionally”. A correct understanding of US statistics shows that America’s supply exceeds nutritional requirements by more than twice that amount.

Nevertheless, Roberts is aware – and wants us to be scared – of failings in industrial agriculture: its intercontinental ability to spread deadly pathogens such as E.coli, salmonella and flu; and its reliance on the finite resource of oil. Modern agriculture depends on fossil fuels to produce nitrogen fertiliser, to drive machinery and to transport food across the world. When oil becomes too scarce or too expensive, how will such farms continue, let alone expand?

Moreover, how will such an agricultural system reduce carbon emissions? Agriculture emits between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gases produced from human activities.

This is the subject of The Feeding of the Nine Billion, a report by Alex Evans, a scholar of food supply and climate change at New York University. Evans outlines an agenda to increase global food security while reducing negative effects on the environment. The question, as Evans recognises, is not how much one acre can produce in one year. The vital issue is how much one acre can produce for a millennium. Fostered well, soil can give forth food indefinitely. Over-grazed, relentlessly ploughed, drenched in chemicals and repeatedly forced to grow the same crops annually, soil inexorably turns to dust.

Meanwhile, although genetic engineering hasn’t yet produced crops with substantially increased yields, it’s too early to dismiss this technology. Aside from Evans’s anomalous and extraordinary call to spend $8.4trn helping the oil industry extract ecologically devastating oil-shales and tar-sands, his policy recommendations present a plausible compromise between organic purists and the short-termism of monoculturalists.

While all of these publications address the horror of potential food shortages, only the United Nations Environment Programme’s 100-page report The Environmental Food Crisis focuses adequately on food waste across the world. UNEP optimistically estimates that if we used agricultural residues and other food waste as livestock feed, rather than fattening animals on cereals, we could rescue enough food to sustain an extra 3bn people.

This is a swipe at the EU, which bans feeding most food waste to livestock. But the EU ban is only one source of waste in the modern food system. It is difficult to see the current food crisis as a problem of insufficient production: it is a problem of management and distribution.

A fundamental question remains. Is a global population of 9.2bn people by 2050 inevitable – and is it desirable? The world may be able to produce enough food for this many people. But at what cost?

For most of history, the main way to boost food supplies has been to increase the amount of land under cultivation: when global population multiplied five-fold from 1700 to 1961, global cropland also grew by five times. Thanks to industrial production of nitrogen fertiliser and high-yield crop hybrids, however, in the next three decades population rose by 80 per cent but cropland increased by only 8 percent.

Now that technologically induced yield increases have almost levelled off, we’re relying again on traditional methods of boosting production, clearing millions more hectares of tropical rainforest.

The greatest impact humans have had on nature is the invasion of agriculture into natural habitats. Today more than 80 per cent of endangered species of birds and mammals are threatened by unsustainable land use and agricultural expansion. Protecting forests is clearly one essential measure. Equally important, however, is to curb consumption and population.

Distinguished environmentalists, including David Attenborough, Jonathon Porritt and Jared Diamond, have called for the global agenda to emphasise population restraint in both poor countries and richer ones. Yet for most commentators it remains a source of embarrassment and confusion. Evans is complacent about existing measures to curb population, and instead of calling for more urgent action, he attacks the unpopular arguments of a 1960s Malthusian who advocated authoritarian population controls. Meanwhile Goldsmith ducks responsibility. He gets the growth rate wrong by a factor of three and claims “there are no obvious or ethically acceptable solutions to population growth”.

According to the World Health Organisation, unwanted pregnancies exacerbate land scarcity and water shortages in countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, where only 10 per cent of adults have access to contraception or reproductive healthcare. A recent study commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust found that satisfying just the existing unmet demand for family planning services might curb population by hundreds of millions – and prevent the emission of at least 34 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2050. I can think of no more obvious or ethically acceptable way to deal with such problems than providing facilities for healthcare and sexual hygiene that developed countries take for granted.

All these publications could have given more space to discussing whether increasing food production encourages population growth – or whether population growth encourages greater food production. The two clearly work in combination. The former assures people that there is enough food for more children; the latter convinces people they need to grow more to survive. There are innumerable other variables, as well as counter-trends, but without awareness of the dynamic interaction between these, there seems little hope that geopolitical analysis can identify the root causes or potential solutions.

People will keep having babies, and keep expanding their fields, until there is no room left for anything else. This will assuredly bring the current anthropogenic mass extinction event to its logical conclusion.

Tristram Stuart is author of ‘Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’ (Penguin)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

FT: The art of accompaniments

The art of accompaniments

By Nicholas Lander

Published: October 10 2009 00:33 | Last updated: October 10 2009 00:33

Henry Harris prepares seasonal vegetables at Racine restaurant

Henry Harris is chef-proprietor of Racine, a restaurant in the Knightsbridge district of London where for the past seven years he has been producing authentic and wonderfully-executed French bistro cooking. One of the things I admire most about this restaurant is that each dish comes with what, in the chef’s opinion, is the most appropriate accompaniment. The dish is served complete.

This makes Harris the perfect chef to ask about the importance of having the right accompaniments. I have a particular interest in this because my wife [Jancis Robinson] has the habit of choosing not from the main protein elements on a menu but from the accompanying ingredients. She is far more excited by the prospect of broad beans, beetroot, braised endive or a Bearnaise sauce than she is by a fillet of fish, a hunk of red meat or a piece of chicken, however organic or expensive.

So I took her and three of her female friends to put Racine’s menu to the test. Thus, the hot foie gras won fans because of the griotte cherries served with it. The endive, a once-unpopular vegetable, was caramelised and proved so enticing that three of us ordered the wild duck with cassis that it accompanies, while another guest was drawn to the comfort of the haricot beans with lamb – a dish so popular that it is a permanent feature on Racine’s Sunday lunch menu. I chose celeriac remoulade with Bayonne ham and then skate – the latter because I was intrigued by the accompanying piperade and wilted chorizo.

The following morning, I shared a pot of tea with Harris at a table covered with menus old and new, and we discussed his approach. We took apart the meal I’d eaten the night before. Harris said that the macerated cherries appeal because they bridge the gap between the richness of foie gras and the sweetness of the pain d’épices (spice bread) that is served with it. “I was taught that fruit and savoury do not mix, but I saw how much redcurrant jelly goes into game sauces and I changed my mind. This recipe works well because all the ingredients can be cooked in one pan. The foie gras is cooked first, the pan is wiped down, then the pain d’épices is toasted and finally the cherries are added with a little duck stock and a tiny bit of butter.”

The dish I had eaten the previous evening, of three slices of chorizo on top of the skate wing, proved not only that unlikely ingredients can make an exciting combination, but also the importance of restraint. A mere three slices of chorizo, quickly sautéed in the pan after the fish has been cooked and then placed on top, permeates the skin and allows it to develop an extra range of pungent flavours.

As for caramelised endives, Harris says a Belgian chef taught him these. “Endive is now a popular vegetable but if you ask 12 different chefs how to cook it they will give you 12 different recipes. This chef saw my complicated way of preparation and told me quite firmly that if there was one vegetable Belgians knew precisely how to cook it was endive. He simplified the whole process. Now I just trim the ends and roast them for up to an hour in the oven with butter and nutmeg and it works very well with anything from salmon to a veal chop.”

Harris said that one of the most challenging aspects of his role is to teach his chefs how to use vegetables properly: “It’s quite scary how expensive good vegetables have become. They do add so much to any dish – but I have learnt now that if you can’t afford it, then don’t add it.”

Racine, 239 Brompton Road London SW3
tel: +44 (0)20-7584 4477 www.racine-restaurant.com

nicholas.lander@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/lander

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.