You don’t really have to go very far these days to find some really obnoxious writing. If you subscribe to one of the big national newspapers - say, perhaps, The New York Times - you’ve probably been subjected to some pretty atrocious critical reviews. Maybe I really am that much of a snob to be nitpicking this, but, more often than not, I find reviews - particularly those of literary, gastronomic, or musical subjects - generally overblown, hackneyed works written by people who probably have no idea what they’re talking about. As a matter of fact, you can dispense with the reviews altogether. A French literary professor has already published a book that will help you sound like an expert literary critic without even knowing what you’re talking about.

I was driving back from school to visit my parents last month and happened to tune in to “Whad’ya Know” as I pulled out of Madison. Joe Queenan was a guest in the first hour, and he spent nearly twenty minutes riffing on “astonishing” literature. If you’ve got the time (and RealPlayer), take the opportunity to listen to that section of the show. I think you’ll be amazed at Queenan’s quick wit and virtuosic improvisation. You can stream that portion of the show via the archive for 27 January 2007. Select “Part A” and cue it to about the 9:00 mark. If you know you have RealPlayer, just click here for the stream and cue to nine minutes.

Dating back to my days in culinary school, I couldn’t help but chuckle when reading restaurant and wine reviews. It might just be an opinion derived from my personal breadth of experience, but the foodies seem to be far and away the most prolific offenders. A delectable article condensing what I’m complaining about has already been written, so I’ll merely state that my step-father mentioned to me last weekend that he’d recently read a wine review in a well-respected wine publication that claimed a wine exhibited “hints of tar” in a course of the article.

Now, I understand that the sense of taste is closely linked to the sense of smell, but why anyone would state a wine tasted of tar is beyond me. Licking tar isn’t something I would consider appealing, but Pa told me that a number of the reviews in that article mentioned “tar” as a flavor component. Maybe it was the hot word of the month. Or maybe these people have no idea what they’re talking about.

When I think of the reviewers pounding out these articles, what springs to my mind first is a sort of semi-pro literary Jackson Pollock. Instead of flinging blorps of paint, raspberry preserves, and motor oil at a canvas like Pollock, these absurd abecedarians delve deep into their numerous thesauri and sling random nouns at their articles, waiting to see what sticks and what runs down the page to pool in a sticky puddle at the bottom. Whatever clings to the page makes it through the final editing. The Pollock Method of writing is what gives you notes of tar in wine. Either that, or sections of freeway built through vineyards via eminent domain.

I’ve actually had a solution to the review problem for quite a while, though I’ve kept it under my hat. My friend Rob and I were discussing wine at one point and hit upon the idea of comparing vino to music as a method of imparting a more accurate sense of what a wine actually tastes like. Reading that a wine “is dominated by floral notes” really doesn’t tell me anything because, generally, I don’t eat flowers. But if a reviewer were to tell me that a wine should be consumed in situation appropriate for listening to Nat King Cole sing “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer,” well, I’d know what he meant. And even if I didn’t, I could snag the song digitally via various legal and illegal means.

I could be easily induced to try a California Pinot Noir that was the distillation of “Come on, Let’s Go” by Ritchie Valens. If I read a review of a Rioja that was compared to The Gipsy Kings‘ “Trista Pena” I’d probably buy a case. Claim a fresh Patrimonio is akin to Alizée singing “Gourmandises” and I would probably scratch my head and wonder what exactly that was supposed to mean.

Of course, not everyone listens to the same music. Comparing wine to music is as silly as comparing it to flowers if the reader doesn’t know a particular artist or song. Fortunately, CDs, or even DVDs, are so cheap these days that a pre-recorded or even interactive guide could easily be compiled. Along with a description of the wine the customer gets an mp3 of the song best suited to that wine. Make the guide a website with a subscription base after a year or so of sales and such an enterprise could turn a nice little profit while being much more intuitive than searching out tobacco aftertones in a bottle of Beaujolais. The guide could even be tailored to the musical tastes of various audiences, such as The Classical Wine Companion or Wine Country! (and Western). Marketing opportunities abound.

I’ve wanted to head such a project for as long as I’ve had the idea, but I don’t possess the knowledge of wine, or the budget (or liver function) to attain such a knowledge. I’d like to see it take off, but of course I’d also like to see it take the form I’ve envisioned.

You see, I don’t want to waste the three comparisons I’ve already hit upon.

For that dynamite mid-price Chenin Blanc that should be drunk early, I’ve selected Chet Baker and “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

The expensive Cabernet Sauvignon centerpiece of a good wine collection would rate The Alan Parsons Project performing “Old and Wise.

And that bottle of Bordeaux that is aging gracefully in the cellar, and though it isn’t quite ready to drink is ever-so-tempting to uncork? Easy. Guns N’ Roses and “Patience.”

If I tried hard enough, I could even work in Sinatra and “It Was a Very Good Year.” But I thought I should spare you.

Note to faithful readers: I’m sorry for my unannounced hiatus from Carriage Return. Between moving and starting school again I’ve been a bit more overwhelmed than anticipated. A few readers have been kind enough to prod me back toward posting, and while I can’t say I will be able to adopt a schedule just yet, I will be making attempts to update with greater reliability. If my buddy Stick over at Stick and Ball Guy was able to sustain a blog while studying for the bar exam, I sure should be capable of keeping things going around here as an undergrad.

One of the things I’ve gotten back into during my recent long absence is cooking. To my own mind I feel extremely rusty in the kitchen, fumbling around, burning roux (or worse, melting plastic spoons into it while stirring), generally being the opposite of who I used to be when I wore the whites.

It doesn’t help that I have high expectations for myself or that my sense of taste hasn’t atrophied in conjunction with my cooking skills. Nor does reading Kitchen Confidential to Jo make me enthusiastic about my moves, which would require a Rocky III level of training to recapture.

While I’m not particularly happy with my results to this point, I’ve come across some good recipes that have been fun to cook. There have been a few that I’ve been so impressed with that I’m willing to pass them on, and I decided that posting them here is the easiest way to do so.

I pull recipes and inspirations from a variety of sources, and the one I’m featuring today, Creamed Chicken with Corn and Bacon over Polenta, comes from the September 2000 issue of Gourmet magazine.

The recipe itself is pretty easy and doesn’t call for any ingredient more exotic or hard to find than polenta, which you can pick up just about anywhere. Jo and I aren’t millionaires, and we can’t afford to constantly eat food filled with fancy ingredients, which means that what I do cook is more straightforward and “honest,” as Anthony Bourdain says. We’re talking food for working people here, haute cuisine. Even if I am a whiz with the tin opener…

First, mise en place.

The equipment you’ll need:

1 large saute pan (or cast-iron skillet, if you can manage it)
1 small saute pan
2 medium sauce pans
tongs
whisk
spatula (non-melting type)
sieve
small bowl

medium plate
liquid measurement cups
dry measurement cups
table and tea spoons
paper towels

And now, the ingredients. I’ve made a few suggestions (in italics) and have annotated salt and pepper measurements with asterisks because I firmly believe each cook should season the food to their taste, not to any arbitrary measurement.

For the creamed chicken:

6 bacon slices
1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breast
2 cups corn (~3 ears, if you’re going the fresh route)
1 cup milk
2 Tablespoons unsalted (sweet) butter
2 Tablespoons flour (you’re probably going to need more)
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon ground black pepper*
1/2 teaspoon black white pepper*
1 teaspoon kosher salt*
3 large plum tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 large orange bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
canola oil, enough to coat the bottom of your skillet

For the polenta:

6 cups water (I’d go with half water, half chicken stock for extra flavor)
2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt*
1 1/2 cups polenta
1/2 lb Fontina cheese, diced (doesn’t need to be Fontina - pick something you like)

1/4 cup fresh basil

Starting with the bacon, cook it in the small amount of canola oil in the skillet, over medium heat, until it reaches the level of doneness you prefer in your bacon. The amount you cook it won’t have an effect on any later process - the bacon is going to be a garnish.

Once the bacon has finished cooking, transfer it to some paper towels for cooling and degreasing purposes. Retain about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the bacon fat/canola oil in the skillet. After the bacon cools, dice it into 1/2 inch pieces.

While the bacon is cooking, pat the chicken dry and season it liberally with salt and pepper. The idea is to get a nice coating of seasoning on the chicken so it cooks in when you toss it in the skillet with the still-hot bacon fat/canola oil. Be careful when you do this, as you’re going to get some splattering.

Cook the chicken over moderately high heat for around 8-10 minutes, or until it’s just cooked through and still nice and juicy. Take it out of the skillet and place it on a plate to cool. Later you’re going to want to tear it into bite-sized pieces.

The corn and the cream sauce come next. You’re going to pour the milk into one of the sauce pans, toss in the corn and diced peppers, and cook both about 5 minutes, or until the corn is crisply tender. Carefully pour the milk through the sieve into a bowl and retain both corn and milk separately.

Using the same sauce pan (you might want to wipe it out quickly in case some of the milk is still adhering to the pan), melt the butter over moderately low heat. If your heat is too high, your flour will cook too fast and your roux will become too powerful. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir!, allowing the roux to cook about two minutes. This is going to be key - if your roux is too strong, it’s going to turn your sauce into a thick gravy (like mine sort of turned out to be).

Gradually whisk in the cream, then the milk from earlier, along with additional salt and pepper to taste. Bring the lot up to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer for three minutes, whisking all the while. Stir in the peppers, corn, and chicken. Cover and keep warm over low heat. Stir occasionally if needed.

Finally, the polenta. While the other things are starting to cook, bring the stock/water/salt (watch your salt if your chicken stock is salty to begin with) combination to a boil. Stir in the polenta and cook over moderately high heat. Keep stirring the polenta as it cooks, or it’s going to stick to the bottom and taste horrible (something along the lines of burnt cornbread). It should take about 5 minutes to cook. After the polenta is thick and pulling away from the sides of the pan, turn off the heat and stir in bits of the cheese, a few chunks at a time so you avoid an enormous cheese curd in the middle.

Divide the polenta into bowls (the recipe says it serves six, but I’d guess it’s more of a real world four, especially if you’ve got hungry folks on hand). Stir the basil into the chicken/corn/peppers mixture and spoon that over the polenta. Garnish with the bacon you cooked and diced earlier.

I didn’t think this a bad recipe, and without serious gaffes it should take only about 40 minutes from start to finish. With all the polenta and corn it can be a bit bland, so if you’re feeling like experimenting, cooking the chicken with some white wine would fit in nicely and add some flavor, as would other spices of a Southwestern persuasion that you enjoy. I didn’t have the peppers on hand - I came up with that idea after eating half the meal. If you drink beer, I’d suggest a brown ale with this meal - I happened to have some Goose Island Christmas Ale that went down well.
If this post piques enough interest, I’ll make a cooking supplement a semi-regular feature here. I cook every night and have already run across three or four recipes of relative ease that I can share for those interested.

The recent ban of trans fatty acids (commonly known as “trans fat”) by the City of New York is such a mockery of the American public and our system of government that it would require more space than I have available to address each flaw in the collective judgment of the New York City Board of Health.

The health effects of a quantitative intake of trans fat aren’t really debatable - once one considers the fact that until as recently as the early 1990s trans fat wasn’t viewed as a significant threat to the physical well-being of the ever-consuming public - but that really isn’t the issue I care to raise. If sufficient evidence indicates that trans fat is dangerous when consumed in significant quantities, I can understand a need to inform the public about the detrimental effects of a diet rich in trans fat. What I don’t agree with is the need to ban the consumption of it entirely.

What concerns me most, what annoyingly chafes my libertarian (please note the lowercase “L”) sensibilities, is that any government, no matter if it is city, state, or federal, feels it has the authority to legislate what may justifiably be consumed as food by the consenting populace. What we eat, beyond the questions of pesticides on produce and the handling of actual foodstuffs prior to the purchase by the consumer, should be matter of personal choice. With the exception for ensuring the general public is not poisoned by unsanitary conditions at the processing plants or during shipment, the essential freedoms engendered by the Bill of Rights should allow Americans the choice - whether ill-advised or not - the food they eat.

One can raise several questions which take into account various aspects where this freedom may be dangerous to the consumer, and naturally such situations require attention and appropriate action.

Nutritional education is essential and should be started at an early age. Schools have become the easiest way to disseminate such information, just as most schools now handle the sexual and drug-awareness education of children, matters once reserved to the attention (or inattention) of parents. While there is a dietary education system already in place for much of the country, the effectiveness of that program is certainly open to debate, especially as the rates of dietary-related disease continue to rise. I submit that this is a failure of the system as it stands and not an opening for the encroachment of the government into the civil liberties of Americans in regard to their food consumption. If an American citizen chooses a diet rich in fast food and other products of questionable nutritional value, it should merely be the duty of the government to inform that individual in advance, through prior education and requiring the posting of nutritional information by food purveyors, of the danger to their health posed by such activity.

Of course, there are children to consider, particularly children of parents incapable of providing them with proper nourishment. Unfortunately, with or without the trans fat legislation, this will always be the case until: a) an application and approval process is established for an official license to have children (which might not be such a bad idea after all), and b) a proper oversight and enforcement agency is developed to ensure all parents provide their children with the proper level of nutrition. The likelihood of either of these suggestions coming to fruition is of course minuscule at best.

I am amused when individuals develop a sense of self-righteousness about the “poison” in the food their children are exposed to and yet who would not stop to consider much of the mental poison that permeates our culture. In reality, which is more dangerous to the development of a child - the harmful ingredients in certain foods, or the glamorization of a life of crime, violence, abuse of women, and illicit drug use through certain types of popular music or motion pictures? As a parent, which would you rather give your child, a Krispy Kreme doughnut or the latest 50 Cent album? Which product is more dangerous? Which should be more strictly regulated?

As a matter of legality, we cannot ban 50 Cent and his cronies from making and selling albums because their rights to do so are protected under the First Amendment. They are using their freedom of speech to make an “artistic” statement in the form of music (although the musicality is considered open to debate by some). We can control, to an extent, the distribution of these products through a ratings system, but a complete ban on the expression of such “artists” would never hold up in court.

I suggest, then, that any company or individual involved in activity that would be endangered or altered by this trans fat ban file suit against the City of New York for a violation of their First Amendment rights. Common consensus is that culinarians - the bakers, butchers, chefs, and restaurateurs who provide us with the (edible) products of their self-expression - are artists of a certain degree. To infringe upon the artistic expression of an individual or group of individuals would constitute an unlawful suspension of such rights, particularly as it applies to the restaurant sector of the industry.

Why not parallel the regulation of the food and beverage industry with the “regulation” of the motion picture and music industries by developing a ratings scheme for food stuffs, restaurants, and bakeries? If that seems a daunting suggestion, I suggest that the enforcement of the trans fat ban hardly is an easy one, either.

A ratings system would not only allow the food providers the latitude to use whatever foodstuffs they required (with subsequent effect on their rating), but would create several niche business opportunities for restaurateurs interested in filling the demand for healthy eateries. A top rating in a variety of categories would be a selling point for chefs and restaurant owners, much as high scores in crash tests are for automobile manufacturers. The roll-out of such a ratings system would also be an opportunity for organizations like the FDA and American Heart Association to educate the public on their intake of the food available to them.

In the end it comes down to how much we care to allow the government to influence our lives. Do we tolerate regulations and legislation that provide a safety net for individuals incapable of fending for themselves, despite the restriction they create in the lives of the rest of the citizenry? Is there a certain level of food safety that we as a society need to ensure is met by all food providers, just as we require emissions and safety regulation for vehicles?

At what point do we draw the line, or do we continually allow the government the latitude to decide what is best for us, collectively, with no respect for our greater rights as individuals? When do we say that the needs of a group outweigh the rights of each individual?

Like it or not, this is about more than just food. This is another battleground in the struggle with the government for control over your body and your personal freedom.

I first read one of my favorite books, Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, when I was working pastry at a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. In the book, Chef Tony used the term “pirates” to describe a particular band of cooks he once worked with in Providence, Rhode Island, and that particular comparison sat well with me when I looked at the crew I was a part of.

We came from all different walks of life. Pete, the sauté guy, was the most pirate-like of us. He lived the hardest, cursed the loudest, cooked with the greatest frenzy, drank the most, and had a glorious strawberry-gold beard and curly hair which was always disheveled. Pete was completely self-taught, having worked his way up (as so many do in the industry) from washing dishes to premium-level line talent.

LeeAnn was, like Pete, self-taught, but she was newer to the game and compensated for a lack of experience with a financier’s attention to detail. She was the tallest cook in the restaurant, with gorgeous curly black hair that the chef required her to wear up under a hat, though her hair was actually shorter than mine at the time. On her days off she would help her boyfriend restore his Austin-Healy Sprite. She also could make a wickedly good cup of espresso.

Don was the super star. He’d graduated from a very prestigious culinary school in London, done a dream internship, and had come back to Minnesota. He worked the fish station, right next to Pete in the trenches. Don could drink nearly as well as Pete, but he didn’t give into his emotions quite as much, managing to remain somewhat more aloof. He was also a pretty cool cucumber under fire, and for this he was the unofficial leader of our band.

Anthony was the hotshot kid of the group. Fifteen times more confidant and boisterous than I was, he was also the better cook, owing mostly to an earlier start and more self confidence. Anthony would mess up from time to time because he was still learning, but everyone knew that one day he’d be just as good, if not better, than Don and Pete. Anthony was also the most caustic with the waitstaff, openly mocking them and needling them to the point of near exasperation.

There were a few others who worked with us on a consisent basis, but as a general rule you could find any one of the above individuals in the restaurant on any night the place was open. We’d go drinking at the downtown bars after the shift, occasionally we’d have parties at one apartment or another, and generally things were always smooth between us.

The thing is, we weren’t really that close as individuals.

The complete opposite has been true with my colleagues in the Marine Corps. To be honest, I don’t hang out with them perhaps quite as much as I did with the chefs I worked with four and a half years ago, but despite that, we’re a much tighter group.

Each one of us has individual strengths and weaknesses, but we’ve managed to tailor those into a cohesive fabric that serves our unit well. We don’t always agree, and occasionally we get quite hot under the collar with one another, but in the end we pull together in ways the pirates I used to work with couldn’t.

We look out for one another and for one another’s families, drive each other to the airport, treat one another to lunch, and address the concerns of each guy as best we can.

Lately it’s been a time for celebration.

Marty, our focal point and the longest-tenured guy in the office, departed in the early spring for civilian life after four years of service. We keep in occasional touch with him, and there are many days around the shop where his presence is missed. Sure, we’re glad he’s off pursuing his life free of hindrance - we just wish he could have done that here with us.

Sean, as I’ve mentioned before, has a brand new little boy at home. He was the first of three guys in the shop to announce his wife was pregnant, and as the second youngest, he tends to get the most ribbing. I like to joke with him that he’s “everyone’s kid brother,” but he’s shown me a lot of guts and taught me a few lessons over the past few months.

Chris, who hosts this site, is going to be joining Sean with a promotion to “Daddy” very shortly, a position he’s well suited for, and one he’s going to love. Chris is my resident source for any technical information regarding computers, a sort of one-stop shopping center of knowledge. He’s a former roommate of mine, too, and we joke about nerdily holing up in our room on Friday night with all the necessary foodstuffs and not emerging until late Sunday afternoon to get a haircut before returning to work on Monday. My thoughts have been with him, his wife, and the new life they’re about to bring into the world since early yesterday afternoon, and as such, I didn’t really have much in mind for an update today.

When I visit the hospital and have a picture to put up, I’ll post it. Until then, please keep a good thought out for Chris and his family.

Beer Lists

Greg, a friend of mine out in Chicagoland, introduced me to a really cool website earlier last week.  RateBeer.com is something I’ve been looking for, on and off, for quite a while now - a place to keep track of and evaluate the beers I’ve sampled.

Part of it, I guess, plays into my love of lists.  I attain a great bit of satisfaction from putting items into order - debating within myself (or with others) the merits of each particular item, ordering them, and then fine-tuning the list.

As an aside, my friend Sean (yes, the one who recently became a daddy) and I took the majority of an afternoon at work hashing out, in our minds, the greatest rock bands of Classic (1960 - 1985) and Modern (1985 - present) times.  This was brought on by our discovery that Syd Barrett (the founder of Pink Floyd) had died, and we actually wound up staying late to use the entire white board in our office to write out lists and eliminate candidates.  We went about this quite dispassionately, and I may or may not eventually post our findings.

Back to the subject at hand, I’ve spent part of the last week rating the beers that were at my immediate disposal.  My fledgling list (some of the guys at rate beer are up in the thousands of beers) is just what has been at hand for me to try, and neither comprises staples of my larder (Alaskan Amber) or beers I’ve specifically grown to dislike (any Anheuser-Busch products).  I’m also pretty excited about the site because it’s going to allow me to really pinpoint my tastes in beer.  There are a few hard and fast rules that I’ve already established, such as wheat beers generally making me sleepy, but part of the lure of the site will be learning more about myself.

If any of you are already using the site, or if you’re interested in joining me over there, let me know.

Tallahatchie Bridge

Remember the 1967 Bobbie Gentry hit “Ode to Billie Joe”?  One of my most vivid memories from early childhood is hearing that song for the very first time.  The song has always haunted me, and I’ve always thought the Tallahatchie Bridge looked something like this.  I bring this up because the song became a massive hit in late July of 1967, and as such, birthday wishes are in order.

A Plug

I’ll occasionally peruse Arts & Letters Daily, which is a a great place to find some of the best thought-stimulating writing available on the Interwebs.  On tap today: 27,000 year-old Modigliani-style cave paintings, why we secretly hate Garrison Keillor (which was interesting for me to read for my own purposes), why we read the novels we do (which features this quote: “We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life’s journey, as consolers or guides, as women do… They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals.”), and finally, The Tyranny of Blog: Enemy of Thought.

I’ll see you all here Monday morning.  Hope you’re having a great weekend.