delectation

Liver on my Mind

...and other random food links...

I had my first taste of ankimo at Tsunami Sushi a couple of months ago, and this article just revived a craving for it...

While training as a sushi chef in Japan before opening Okoze, his restaurant on San Francisco's Russian Hill, last year, chef-owner Jason Kim learned a few different ways to serve ankimo.

When customers ask him for something special, he batters and deep fries the liver before layering it with minced hamachi (yellow-fin tuna) and toro (tuna belly). He serves it in white wine vinegar and ponzu, and tops the tower with fried shiso leaves.

Foie Gras: there's a lot going on in foie gras discussion this week, since on the 30th of Sept. California's Guvernator signed into law legislation that would outlaw production and sale of foie gras (or rather, any food item made from a force-fed bird) in 7 years. There's a small loophole that would permit commerce of foie gras that's not produced from the force-feeding of ducks or geese. In other words, if current foie gras producers (California has one -- the doughty Sonoma Foie Gras) can find a different, more "humane" way, between now and then, to produce foie gras, its sale would be permitted.

Here are some links, and quotes, of note:

• New York Times:

  Dr. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and the author of "Food Politics" (California Press, 2003), said: "The governor is on a slippery slope. If he thinks ducks are treated badly, he needs to go visit a slaughterhouse."
  
  She asked: "Are we going to have bootlegged foie gras? Are we going to see celebrity chefs jailed along with Martha Stewart for selling foie gras?"
  
  Paula Wolfert, the author of the classic cookbook "The Cooking of Southern France," put it another way: "These Hollywood people need a trip to the Dordogne. I'd rather be a force-fed duck than a Tyson chicken."

• Derrick Schneider, (An Obsession with Food) writes about an article he's spent about a year researching and which is due to be published soon.
• Juliette Rossant, (SuperChef) and her take on the subject.

I tend to side with Derrick and Juliette above.

Finally, here's Bruce Cole's very funny take on the foodie/ eGullet-er/ ChowHound/ blogger:

I'm going to the (insert 4 star restaurant) for dinner, and I haven't told any of my foodie friends, and I'm not bringing my digital camera, and I'm not going to take detailed notes of every single dish I eat, and I'm not sharing a damn thing from my plate with anyone else at the table, and I'm not going to drink any Napa chardonnays or cabernets or any Burgundies or Bordeaux, and if the waiter asks if I'd like to tour the kitchen I'll roll my eyes and bite my tongue but nod OK, and if the chef asks if I'd like a signed souvenir menu, I'll hold out my hand and have him sign it instead and never wash it again (yeah right), and when I get home the first thing I will not do is to sit down at my computer and write about my whole fabulous dinner and publish it on the world wide web, because frankly, it's my very special foodie memory and not yours. Harrumph.

On that note, my parents are visiting next week, and Im taking them to dinner at Fleur De Lys on Saturday night. The weekend's bound to filled with lots of eating and shopping, methinks, and I don't think I'm going to be able to resist blogging about it... Posted by claudine at October 7, 2004 01:16 PM