The Slow Food Taste Pavilions: a Glutonous Display of Food

One of the other events I participated in during Slow Food Nation was the Taste Pavilions. My ticket for this event was a whopping $58 after getting a discount from the original $65 via the Whole Foods discount. When my friend Lora and I arrived at Fort Mason, where the Taste Pavilions were being held, however, we were taken aback by the abundant display of delicious foods and suddenly realized that our $58 was money well spent.

The organizers of Slow Food Nation convinced local architects to create designs to convert one of the Fort Mason warehouses into a series of food specific rooms or "pavilions" where visitors can taste and learn about artisan versions of their favorite foods. Taste wise, my favorite of all of the pavilions was, by far, the ice cream pavilion. There were two "flights" of ice cream scoops, and I chose the Dark Chocolate, Olive Oil, and Fresh Blueberry flight, which was most definitely the best of the flights. The chocolate was creaming and wonderfully flavorful, the olive oil subtlety sweet and extra creamy with the fat of the oil, and the blueberry actually tasted like blueberries--what a concept!

My other favorite pavilions were the Olive Oil, Chocolate, Fish, and Wine, each for different reasons. The Olive Oil pavilion was in my opinion the best designed of the pavilions: the designers used everyday construction materials such as orange netting, raw wood, and crates to create a beautifully lit space that truly transported you away from the rest of the pavilions. More specifically, the front of the pavilion was occupied by a tasting station while the back of the space was equipped with an educational space where trained olive oil experts told about how to properly taste olive oil, which is a process reasonably similar to wine tasting, just involving smaller tastes (I mean, would you really want to drink a glass of olive oil in one sitting?). This pairing of spaces made it nice to go back to the tasting part of the pavilion so that you could taste each olive oil, knowing which undertones to look for. The chocolate pavilion was great because of the variety of tasting they gave you; it was also interesting how the flavors of each chocolate changed as you ate the other pieces, your taste pallet changing with each bite of chocolate. The wine pavilion, while not a wonderfully designed space, was wonderfully fun to go to with my friend Lora who can look at an absurdly long wine list and pick out the most expensive bottles to try, and boy, were some of them amazing. The fish was also a delicious stop for the creativity of each dish and was especially tasty after the disappointing charcuterie pavilion.

And so yes, the charcuterie was very disappointing. While the prosciutto we had was tasty, but it's pretty hard to have prosciutto not be tasty. We were also given beef jerky (really?) and something that resembled pate, but wasn't. Each were fine, but none had any wow factor. Charcuterie truly was a pavilion with so much potential (just off the top of my head, why no lardo?) that was totally not taken advantage of, while also in the midst of other pavilions that were totally pushing the envelop of their respective food products.

One of the most fun parts of the night, however, was are mistaken crashing of the employee party. After the official ending of the Taste Pavilions at 9, people congregated outside the event in front of the beer pavilion, and Lora and I thought it appropriate to join them. Eventually, it went on past 10 and a lot of people had left, and those remaining started to ask us which pavilion we had worked in. After enough people asked us, we realized we were in fact crashing the staff party, which was more than fine with the good natured foodies. The great part about the party was that all the beer, bread, and opened bottles of wine not used during the event were now being given out for free for all to take, which we might have taken advantage of just a bit.

Relating this back to the Slow Food movement as a whole, Slow Food is often criticized for being an exclusive or bougie movement; due to the expensive price of the ticket for the pavilions, this point is valid. While it was a wonderful experience to taste such delicious food, the polished designs of the pavilions, the high end food products, and the well dressed visitors seemed a little removed from some of the movement's "roots". On the other hand, having such a celebration of food brings delicious food and the necessary steps to obtain this food (good, clean, fair being the moto of the slow food movement) to the attention of a greater public than it would have otherwise. In this manner, it is great that it is more prevelent to be a conscientious food consumer but I would agree with one of the speakers I saw in a panel during the weekend (which will be the subject of my next posting) who said that one of the greatest obstacles to the movement is fashion. As fashions change and flux, we do not want the slow food movement to be a fad that will simply pass with time.

Also, I should mention that Alice Waters was there. She signed my ticket. Swoon.

The Alarming Cleaning of Soft Shell Crabs

A few months ago, Mark Bittman published, in his weekly New York Times food column, an article about Pasta with Soft Shell Crab. I got really excited when I saw this recipe as I had just seen soft shall crabs at the San Francisco Fish Company in the Ferry Terminal Market and had wanted to figure out a way to cook them; thanks Mark Bittman!

The next week, I went ahead and bought the little guys, four as the recipe suggested. I was told at the fish counter that I shouldn't clean them until right before I cooked them as they would loose water and was then demonstrated how to clean the crabbies. The process involves cutting off their eyes, pulling out their lungs (really gills, but they were referenced as lungs at the time), and then snapping off their tails (called an apron, technically). Right as I was leaving, the guy at the fish counter proudly showed me that the four crabs I had just purchased were still alive, as demonstrated by the foaming liquid near their mouths. At first glance, this fact illustrated the crab's freshness, it was, in fact, foreboding of the upcoming crab cleaning.

Later that day, when I brought the crabs out of the refrigerator to prepare for cooking, I placed them on a plate for about twenty minutes. During this time, the crabs warmed up and began to wake up, so to speak. When I picked the first one up, the claws and legs began to move around. Oh god. I then brought my scissors to the eyes of the crab, as instructed earlier at the Fish Market, avoiding the now moving appendages. After I snipped the eyes, however, the crabs claws and legs continued to move. At this point I, embarrassingly, shrieked. I was now going to have to pull out the lungs of a moving creature. And so I did, after some squeamish moments and thoughts of calling off dinner.

I eventually got through the cleaning of all four crabs and cooked one my most favorite meals ever. The soft, creamy texture of the crab meat coupled with the crunch of the shell is pretty darn sexy while the pasta brilliantly absorbs the excess olive oil and garlic infused juices of the soft shell crab. Beyond the tastiness of the final product, however, I found the experience of cleaning the crabs to be a significant one; understanding where your meat comes from is important knowledge but also being accountable for killing your proteins feels, well, responsible.

Here's a not so great picture of the final product:

4th of July=Grilling fun time!

This past weekend, I went down to Los Angeles to visit my friend Ethan; as it was the 4th of July weekend, and Ethan lives in a home with a great backyard equipped with a grill, I had fun 'q-ing my way through my dinner...

Saturday morning (Ethan's bbq was on on the 5th), Ethan and I went to the Silver Lake farmer's market; while slightly smaller than the Saturday Ferry Terminal market, I was vastly impressed with the quality of the foods I was able to find. Most notably, the peaches, golden raspberries, and shrimpies I bought were especially encouraging of the salivary glands.

So, early in the afternoon, it was grilling time. First up, I grilled the peaches, both white and yellow--make sure they are free stone!--that I had bought at the farmer's market. Grilled peaches have a wonderful smoky flavor coupled with a caramelized exterior. I then added the grilled peaches (still warm) to sliced buffalo mozzarella. The combination of the slightly acidic peaches with the creamy mozzarella is amazing; the cheese cutting through the slight bite of the fruit. I then sprinkled the peaches and mozzarella with crushed walnut pieces, salt, pepper, and olive oil.
I then went on to grill the amazing shrimp I bought. Having cleaned a lot of shrimp lately, and been slightly grossed out about how dirty the animals I was about to eat actually are, these shrimp were a rare treat. Apparently fished (if that's the right word) the day before I bought them and never frozen, they were easy to clean and the meat seemed crisp, if that word can even be applied to shrimp. Anyways, I marinated the little guys in olive oil, cilantro, basil, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, garlic, and ginger, and let them sit for a while. They were pretty tasty, although the red pepper flakes I used (from Trader Joe's) were not as potent as I had hoped...Still, fresh shrimp is pretty awesome. I would recommend.