Food forum - 10/04/14 09:42 AM
We have threads relating to the passions of FTM participants on coffee and tea, so why not a general food forum?
Here's a nice piece on fermentation:
We should all embrace the joy of fermented foods – for the sake of our taste buds and our health
And the final section in Michael Pollan's Cooked : A Natural History of Transformation (New York: Penguin Books, 2013. ISBN 978-0-14-312533-4) sings the palatal delight fantastic on fermentation – from wine and beer to cheese to sauerkraut and kimchi. A worthy read in its entirety, as are all of Pollan's treatises (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, etc).
Fermenting takes me to my happy place. I make my own wines, albeit from very good kits (to spare myself the exertion of preparing the grapes, many varieties of which I would be hard pressed to acquire otherwise).
I am also an avid aficionado of pickled products, although my one foray into kimchi (using pretty much the same recipe as Pollan provides on p 436) some 30 years ago wound up with a delicious end-product but with my being banned from a workplace refectory when its aroma permeated the space. But I'm planning to get back into it in near future – homemade is always better (once one acquires the basic skills and has a modicum of practice) than store-bought, in so many ways.
If you'd like to delve further into origins and evolution of food and its preparation, I recommend Margaret Visser's work, Much Depends on Dinner : The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal (1986), and her follow-up thereto, The Rituals of Dinner : The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, & Meaning of Table Manners (1992). The former delves into an 'ordinary' American dinner: corn on the cob with butter and salt, roast chicken with rice, salad dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, and ice cream.
Here's a nice piece on fermentation:
We should all embrace the joy of fermented foods – for the sake of our taste buds and our health
And the final section in Michael Pollan's Cooked : A Natural History of Transformation (New York: Penguin Books, 2013. ISBN 978-0-14-312533-4) sings the palatal delight fantastic on fermentation – from wine and beer to cheese to sauerkraut and kimchi. A worthy read in its entirety, as are all of Pollan's treatises (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, etc).
Fermenting takes me to my happy place. I make my own wines, albeit from very good kits (to spare myself the exertion of preparing the grapes, many varieties of which I would be hard pressed to acquire otherwise).
I am also an avid aficionado of pickled products, although my one foray into kimchi (using pretty much the same recipe as Pollan provides on p 436) some 30 years ago wound up with a delicious end-product but with my being banned from a workplace refectory when its aroma permeated the space. But I'm planning to get back into it in near future – homemade is always better (once one acquires the basic skills and has a modicum of practice) than store-bought, in so many ways.
If you'd like to delve further into origins and evolution of food and its preparation, I recommend Margaret Visser's work, Much Depends on Dinner : The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal (1986), and her follow-up thereto, The Rituals of Dinner : The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, & Meaning of Table Manners (1992). The former delves into an 'ordinary' American dinner: corn on the cob with butter and salt, roast chicken with rice, salad dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, and ice cream.