Underserved in Amsterdam

A few years ago, Amsterdam couple Rob Hagenouw and Nicolle Schatborn started a food truck they call "Keuken van het Ongewenst Dier" (“The Kitchen of the Unwanted Animal”) to sell the meat that nobody wants in an effort to reduce unnecessary food waste. They offer up goose croquettes, pigeon rolls, and muskrat, with plans to extend the menu to include fallow deer, black crow, and parakeet. But their most popular item is the horse meat burger. Hagenouw describes. "'Ah, they have My Little Pony burgers,' little girls will say. Most of the time the girls eat the burgers; it's the mothers who don't like it."

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Unboiling an egg

"Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,” says molecular biologist and biochemist Gregory Weiss of the University of California, Irvine, of his team of colleagues and students. The University has now filed for a patent on the process, which involves adding a urea substance to reliquefy the solid material. On a molecular level, a vortex fluid device developed in Australia is used to stress the thin, microfluidic films, untangling the lysozyme proteins and forcing them back into proper form. The team claims the discovery has the potential to transform industrial and research production of proteins, with food production applications for use in farming and cheese-making, and pharmaceutical applications for cancer study and treatment.

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Tarrare tucks in

To satisfy his unnatural hunger, 17th c. French showman and soldier Tarrare would eat anything – and I mean anything. In addition to vast amounts of meat, he had been known to down corks, stones, live animals (cats, snakes, lizards, puppies, and even a whole eel without chewing), a basketful of apples at a time, and a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting. Nothing was enough and he scavenged in gutters, through refuse piles, and outside butcher shops. Doctors tried to help him, but he attempted to drink the blood of other patients and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. When Tarrare fell under suspicion of eating a toddler, they kicked him out and a few years later he died and was autopsied (READ MORE HERE).

 

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Back in 2009, I expressed my view on the strange American tradition of pardoning turkeys from being slaughtered for Thanksgiving. Imagine my puzzlement when I learned that Seattle Mayor Ed Murray pardoned a tofu turkey last week. The stunt was intended to bring attention to hunger in the community ahead of the holiday season, but would not run afoul (sorry about the pun) of PETA, since their stance is that the pardoning of actual turkeys benefits the poultry industry. The "tofurky" was named Braeburn after the apple variety and will, according to City Hall spokesperson Jason Kelly, live out its natural life at the Rainier Valley Food Bank.

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Tutti-frutti tree

British horticulturist Paul Barnett was blogworthy for spending the last 24 years cultivating a tree in his backyard with a total of 250 varieties of apples growing on it. Now Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken is getting a lot of press for growing and maintaining more than a dozen trees, on each of which he has grafted 40 stone fruits. When in bloom, the result is sculptural (IMAGE ABOVE, VIDEO HERE), but the nectarines, peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries can also be enjoyed by mouth. Van Aken explains in an interview with Epicurious, "First and foremost I see the tree as an artwork....I want the tree to interrupt and transform the everyday. When the tree unexpectedly blossoms in different colors, or you see these different types of fruit hanging from its branches, it not only changes the way you look at it, but it changes the way you perceive in general....I would like to continue to place these trees throughout the country preserving these heirloom, antique, and native fruit varieties. Wherever I place them there is a sense of wonderment that they create through their blossoms, the different fruit, and the process by which they are created."

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Modern mead

I learned yesterday, while completing a crossword puzzle with my Dad, that the ancient honey-based beverage of mead has made a comeback. An estimated 165 meaderies in which the brew is distilled and bottled operate in the U.S. alone (REVIEWS AND SLIDESHOW HERE). Danish entrepreneurs Karin Sloth and partner Thomas Bredholt began brewing mead as a hobby on their farm at Tågerup in Roskilde and now offer it commercially under their Snoremark brand. Formerly the chief press officer for the Social Democrats when they were the biggest party in Denmark, Sloth says, apparently with no hint of irony, "It’s so different, having worked as a journalist and an adviser, to actually produce something.”

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Poop scoop

Yep, here I go again, bring another stinky story to light! Several years after the introduction of Kopi Luwak, coffee that has passed through the bowels of a civet, Canadian entrepreneur Blake Dinkin has – as NPR puts it – "supersized" the idea. The beans of his Black Ivory Coffee are mixed into a mash with fruit and fed to the elephants of Thailand's Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation. In 3 days, they have been processed and can be retrieved (IMAGE ABOVE). The beans are then meticulously cleansed, dried, and roasted. Because of the unique process, and because it takes 33 pounds (15 kg) of beans to make one pound of coffee, Black Ivory is not easy to come by. The expensive cups may be ordered in 5-star hotels and resorts in Asia and the Middle East and the grind may be purchased in a single tiny store in Comfort, Texas, U.S., with the profits going to elephant conservation. Dinkin insists that the experience is worth it, because elephants are herbivores and utilize an internal process of fermentation to break down all the cellulose. This brings out the sugar in the bean, instills the flavor of the pulp, and removes the bitterness. He explains, "I want people to taste the bean, not just the roast The aroma is floral and chocolate; the taste is chocolate malt with a bit of cherry; there's no bitterness; and it's very soft, like tea. So it's kind of like a cross between coffee and tea."

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Cocoa conclusion

For the first 3 years of my life, my Mom had me convinced that a Ritz cracker was a "cookie." When my aunt offered me a cookie and handed me an Oreo, my eyes lit up at first bite and my world was changed forever. Imagine how these cocoa bean farmers in Africa's Ivory Coast felt when they tasted a chocolate bar for the first time. Better yet, WATCH IT HERE on an episode of the Dutch TV program Metropolis. A commentor on the program explains, "I know it's weird, but in West Africa a bunch of the stuff we produce is for export only. It wasn't part of the traditional food, thus people never cared to eat it, or even knew how to finish production of it. The raw materials are just sent off. It's not just cocoa. We produce coffee but don't roast it or drink it. We produce mangos, but not mango shakes. Chicken, but the variety for export is considered 'too soft' for the local palette."

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Historical ham

My faithful readers know that one of my favorite topics (although not mentioned in the masthead) is old food. Well, have I got a winner of a story for you today! In 1902, a ham was cured at Gwaltney meats in Smithfield, Virginia, U.S., and hung in a packinghouse for 20 years. Once the overlooked leg of meat was rediscovered, owner P.D. Gwaltney, Jr., adopted it as his "pet ham" (IMAGE ABOVE) and opened the iron safe in which it was housed for guests to view. In addition, he fashioned a brass collar for it and carried the ham to shows and expos to exhibit the preservative powers of his smoking method. The meat got an even wider audience when it was donated to the Isle of Wight County Museum, where it currently resides (IMAGE HERE). The now 122-year-old ham would have been dry cured (salted and drained of blood), but after a few years the fat would have oxidized, imparting a rancid flavor. Still, there is some question whether the old ham – as ugly as it is – could still be safely eaten. But as the BBC observes, "To most people 'edible' means more than the ability to eat something without it killing you."

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Icky import

A post on the Wall Street Journal blog explains that the Chinese love to eat rabbit, particularly the residents of Sichuan province. Of the global production of 200 million pounds of the meat, 30% is consumed in China, with 70% of that – some 420,000 tons a year– going to Sichuan and the neighboring municipality of Chongqing. Nearly all the rabbits bred for their meat within the country itself are sent to Sichuan, but they are still not enough to satisfy the demand. At least one local supplier has begun to import rabbit from France. While the Chinese will eat it stewed or spiced, they prefer just the head and have raised the consumption of this delicacy to a fine art. Manager Yang Xiaomei of the Chengdu branch of the well-known Sichuan restaurant Shangliu Old Mother Rabbit Heads explains, “There are so many little bones. The more you suck, the tastier the rabbit heads are.” Click the link for how-to instructions…

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Stale

When the organ at Padiham Road Methodist Church in Lancashire, U.K., came to the end of its useful life, it was sold for £1,700 ($2,900) to a German bidder for parts. As the instrument was being dismantled, church organist Kathy Yates discovered some bread wrapped in an old newspaper. As you can see above, it actually looks edible and is said to be perfectly preserved. This, despite the fact that the paper – a copy of the Stockport Advertiser – dates from 1896 and was printed in the town where the organ was built. Conceivably, a craftsman had used the unfinished instrument to secrete his lunch. The organ was built, but the food was never finished. It may now be, however. Peter Yates, church property steward and spouse of Kathy, explains, "We hope to display the newspaper cuttings but we suspect that the bread will perish now it's been removed from inside the organ."

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Bat broth

As you may be aware, there is an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the West African nation of Guinea. The frightening disease has killed 63 people so far, and is transmitted by bats and by animals that have eaten fruit contaminated by bat feces or saliva. Because the local cuisine includes bats - usually cooked in a peppery soup or smoked over a fire – the government has officially banned selling bats and consuming bat soup, which is also eaten in Asia and the Pacific (IMAGE ABOVE). Even though boiled bat meat may be safe, butchering the animals for the table and eating their smoked meat may still transmit the virus. Remy Lamah, the country’s health minister, said, “We discovered the vector agent of the Ebola virus is the bat. We sent messages everywhere to announce the ban. People must even avoid consumption of rats and monkeys. They are very dangerous animals.”

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Corndog crash

A load of corndogs bit the dust Tuesday on I-220 west near Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S. The driver, who won't be cited, flipped his semi, shutting down the highway from 3:40 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. "while crews cleaned up the delicious, fattening mess" (FOOTAGE HERE). For the uninitiated, a corndog – arguably invented by Cozy Shack – is a hot dog dipped in cornmeal batter, deep-fried, and served on a stick. I can attest to the yummy taste of these treats, which are a staple at state and local fairs. Even now that I don't get out to those events, my friend Donna comes bearing corndogs every now and then when she visits, allowing me to cross that off my cravings list!

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Pompeii buffet

For the last 20 years, a team of classicists and archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati has excavated and studied a small area of Pompeii with the goal of uncovering the structural and social relationships over time between working-class Pompeian households. The Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia is concentrated inside one of the busiest gates of the ancient city, and includes 20 shop fronts that mostly sold food and drink. By examining fossilized waste from drains, cesspits, and latrines – which includes charred food scraps from kitchens and human excrement – the researchers have unraveled the infrastructure of food consumption and dispelled long-held beliefs about the diet of the average ancient Roman. The material from the drains showed a clear socio-economic distinction between the homes, although grains, fruits, nuts, lentils, fish, and eggs were inexpensive and widely available to all classes. Some households had consumed more expensive cuts of meat and salted fish from Spain. The residents of one property in particular had imported a variety of delicacies, including spices, shellfish, sea urchin, and a particular cut of meat. Archaeologist Steven Ellis relates, "That the bone represents the height of exotic food is underscored by the fact that this is thought to be the only giraffe bone ever recorded from an archaeological excavation in Roman Italy. How part of the animal, butchered, came to be a kitchen scrap in a seemingly standard Pompeian restaurant not only speaks to long-distance trade in exotic and wild animals, but also something of the richness, variety and range of a non-elite diet."

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Trophic tally

Ecologists from the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea calculated the trophic level of numerous species based on the amount of energy it takes to make them food. At the bottom of the scale are plants and algae which get their energy from the sun. At the top are the meat-eaters that don't have any predators, including polar bears and orcas. In between are herbivores (rabbits, cows, deer), omnivores (eaters of plants and herbivores, like us), and the rest of the carnivores. They analyzed the food supply for 176 countries from 1961 to 2009 and found that, although our meat consumption has been rising for decades with economic development in India and China, people get an average of 80% of their daily calories from fruits, vegetables, and grains. Lead author Sylvain Bonhommeau remarks, "We are closer to herbivore than carnivore. It changes the preconception of being top predator." Their careful analysis found that in the food chain we humans rank between pigs and anchovies (IMAGE ABOVE).

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Paleo diet reconsidered

In 2012, an international team of researchers published a study after examining the plaque on the teeth of Neanderthal skulls. They reasoned that the early humans – known for their big game hunting skills – did have a nuanced understanding of vegetables and plants, and prepared and ate them for both medicinal and nutritional reasons. A pair of British scientists has now reexamined the data and offer a slightly different theory. They suggest that the Neanderthals ate the animals they hunted and killed stomachs and all. The plant compounds that turned up on their teeth could have originated as partially-digested stomach contents. The researchers point out that the practice – which is still carried out by cultures including Australian Aborigines, who eat the stomach contents of kangaroo, and Greenland Inuit who consume the stomachs of reindeer as a delicacy - may go back to our origins. While nutrition may be a simpler explanation, this does not rule out ritual behavior by the Neanderthals. Lead author Dr. Laura Buck of the Natural History Museum in London states, “It shows a level of dietary complexity not always appreciated before.”

 

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Chocolate yesterday, chocolate tomorrow

"Earl of Sandwich Blended Frappes Long Before Starbucks," reads the headline about University of Leicester historian Kate Loveman's accidental discovery of the first English recipe for a frozen chocolate dessert:

"Prepare the chocolatti [to make a drink] ... and Then Putt the vessell that hath the Chocolatti in it, into a Jaraffa [a carafe] of snow stirred together with some salt, & shaike the snow together sometyme & it will putt the Chocolatti into tender Curdled Ice & soe eate it with spoons."

The instructions were noted in the 350-year-old diary of the first Earl of Sandwich (not the eponymous one, but his great-grandfather). The image above is from the same diary and depicts a cacao-grinder. While that was cutting edge in the 17th c., the makers of 3-D printers are turning their eyes toward food and - in particular - chocolate. Avi Reichentall of 3D Systems has already configured his machines to create cakes and candy, and wants them to become the next must-have appliance: "We are working on a chocolate printer. I want a chocolate printer in my kitchen. I want it to be as cool as a Keurig coffee maker."

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Potato pathogen

"...I saw the dying, the living, and the dead, lying indiscriminately upon the same floor, without anything between them and the cold earth, save a few miserable rags upon them. To point to any particular house as a proof of this would be a waste of time, as all were in the same state; and, not a single house out of 500 could boast of being free from death and fever..."– Irish artist James Mahoney, 1847

The blight that struck the potato crops in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 was caused by Phytophthora infestans, a fungus-like microorganism that attacks through the leaves. Using specimens of leaves from that time period, found in the Botanical State Collection in Munich and Kew Gardens in London, British scientists were able to extract DNA from the plants and sequence their genomes to track the spread of the pathogen. They discovered that the strain of P. infestans which devastated Ireland had diverged from the strain that originated in Mexico and spread to the rest of the Americas. It spread to Europe in the 1800s, but – unlike some of the strains which continue to affect crops to this day – died out in the early 1900s. More than 1 million people died as a result of the Irish potato famine and another million emigrated to England, America, and Australia. That amounted to as much as 25% of the population, from which Ireland (now consisting of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) has still not recovered.

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Petri meat

My Mom and I were just talking about the medical and scientific goal to increase the human lifespan by decades. She mentioned how it would affect the already skyrocketing costs of health care, and I pointed out that at some point the earth will no longer be able to support the expanding population. Physician and tissue engineer Mark Post of Maastricht University thinks the answer to environmental concerns is the production of meat in the laboratory as well as on the hoof. He has developed a technique to grow in vitro or cultured beef from a particular type of stem cell removed from cow necks. The result of billions of cells differentiating, merging, and putting on protein is 20,000 thin strips of fat-free cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post plans to make them into patties, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, grill them, and serve them up in the coming weeks to make his point about the viability of these techniques. But our minds may not be as quick to change as the technology. Social scientist Neil Stephens of Cardiff University in Wales advises, “This is something very new. People need to wrestle with the idea of whether this is meat or not.”

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Giraffe jerky

With Europeans in the midst of a scandal about horsemeat being found in processed foods, South Africans have issues with the air-dried meat snack they call biltong (pictured above). Biltong is made from game caught in the wild or raised on any of the more than 10,000 wildlife farms across the country. Researchers at the University of the Western Cape tested 146 biltong samples from major retailers and small butchers, with the following results:

• Beef biltong was labeled correctly.
• Antelope biltong was actually made of horse, pork, beef, giraffe, or kangaroo.
• Zebra biltong contained meat from the mountain zebra, a species threatened with extinction.

"It started with curiosity and suspicion because one piece of dried meat looks like another," says Maria Eugenia D'Amato from the University's DNA Forensics Lab about the testing they did 4 years ago. Research conducted just last month determined that two thirds of hamburgers and sausage contained donkey, water buffalo, and other unconventional ingredients.

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