Would You Eat Human Cheese?

Posted by Robyn Lee, January 18, 2011 at 7:00 PM

Human-cow blend. [Photograph: itp.nyu.edu]

And by "human cheese" I mean cheese made of human milk. In case that could be misconstrued as anything else. (I don't want to know.)

Miriam Simun, a student of New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), began her human cheese project last October to explore issues of sustainability, health, ethics, food systems, and biotechnology. You can view photos of the cheese and surveys with the milk donors at itp.nyu.edu/livingsystems. In her project statement she poses these questions on serving human cheese:

As we navigate the complex landscape of technologically modified food production, how do we understand what is natural, healthy, ethical? If we reject all technologically modified food in favor of what is 'natural,' how far back to do we go? If we are to welcome new technologies into our lives, how will we continue to redefine what is natural, normal and healthy? How will this change our relationship to each other, the natural world and ourselves? If we are determined to continue to enjoy our cheese, perhaps it is most natural, ethical and healthy to eat human cheese? And if not, what other biotechnological processes does this force us to reconsider?

At the ITP Winter Show last December, Simun shared three kinds of cheeses made of human milk mixed with goat or cow's milk—you can read more about the ingredients' origins and flavors and sign up for future tastings at miriamsimun.com. And if you want to help out Simun, the project is ongoing; in a recent interview at Food+Tech Connect, Simun says, "I am currently looking for more New York City based women that are interested in working with me."

Would you eat human cheese? If you're a woman, would you be interested in turning your milk into cheese?

[via Metafilter]

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Sake School: Misconceptions About Sake

Posted by Monica Samuels, January 18, 2011 at 6:15 PM

Editor's Note: Welcome to Sake School! Your professor will be Monica Samuels, who has trained with American Sommelier Association and the Sake Education Council. She was part of the first group to pass John Gauntner's SPC II Advanced Sake Specialist exam in 2008. She is also a Sake Educator for New York Vintners in Tribeca. Before her current role as Sake Ambassador for Southern Wine & Spirits of New York, Monica was the National Sake Sommelier for the SUSHISAMBA restaurant group. —The Mgmt.

[Photo: Hisashi Kobayashi]

Sake has been available in the U.S. for many decades; however, only in the past 20 years or so have we gained access to premium sake, which has opened the category up to a world of possibilities in food pairing and ways of consumption. Still, many myths about sake persist. Today, we'll debunk four very common ones.

Sake is alcohol made from a fermented grain. The evolution of starch to sugar to alcohol in sake is most similar to the process of making beer. Sake is made in sake breweries, and sake producers are referred to as brewers. Not only is it incorrect to label sake as rice wine, but it creates the impression that sake belongs in the ranks of cheap cooking wines like mirin and michiu.

If you've been to college-town sushi restaurants, you've probably seen kids getting wasted after one too many "sake bomb." They perch a sake glass on two chopsticks laid across a glass of beer. Everyone seated at the table pounds their fists on the table in unison and the glass falls into the beer. The whole drink is then consumed as quickly as possible.

It's also common to see sake served hotter than a cup of coffee, in a ceramic carafe with thimble-like vessels designed to knock the sake back in one gulp, boiling hot and devoid of all flavor. It's my firm belief that both these pastimes originated due to the lack of decent sake in the U.S.

We are now fortunate, though, to have access to hundreds of delicious premium sakes, and it would be a shame to serve them in a way that masked the flavor. It's a bit like choosing wine for sangria: when you make sangria, you mask most of the flavor of the wine with fruit and brandy. There's no reason to use a terribly fancy bottle. Similarly, if your sake is going to end up in the microwave or drowning in a pint of beer, you won't really taste it. But when you're lucky enough to be drinking the good stuff, take the opportunity to savor the flavors.

Excessive drinking of any type of alcohol will eventually cause a hangover. But there seems to be quite a bit of confusion regarding the alcohol level of sake. Sake yeast is only capable of fermenting a beverage until it reaches 20% alcohol, and the sake is usually diluted afterward to bring down the level of alcohol to 14 to 18% (closer to wine than to vodka, which is usually 35 to 70% alcohol.) This helps make sake food-friendly (and a beverage more suitable for sipping than slamming, which you should keep in mind if you want to avoid a hangover.) Premium sake also has no sulfites, additives or preservatives. Some people seem to be sensitive to sulfite presence in wine, but can avoid it by drinking sake instead.

Large format bottles of table sake are pretty inexpensive, but the same is not true for premium sakes, which are very expensive to produce.

Consumers who purchase sake in stores should expect to pay an average of $25/bottle (720ml) for a premium sake. It should be remembered that while a bottle of wine is considered by most to yield four glasses, a bottle of sake generally yields at least six. Also, while a bottle of wine should be consumed as quickly as possible and generally spoils within a few days, sake is more forgiving. If it is re-capped quickly after each opening and stored refrigerated, sake can be enjoyed for a couple of weeks after opening without too much change in flavor.

The best way to make yourself more comfortable around this exotic brew is to taste, taste, and taste some more. If you have sake questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. I'll have lots of answers for you in the coming weeks!

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Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge, 1

Posted by Andrew Janjigian, January 18, 2011 at 11:00 AM

[Photographs: Andrew Janjigian]

27 Church Street, Cambridge MA (map); 617-576-1111; cambridge1.us
1381 Boylston St., Boston, MA (map); 617-437-1111
Pizza style: Grilled
Oven type: Charcoal grill
Notes: Full bar
Price: Full pizzas, $13 to $30; half pizzas, $7 to $16

Cambridge, 1 is located in the heart of Harvard Square, in what used to be the the city's original firehouse, with a newer, much larger second location near Boston's Fenway park. Appropriately enough for a former fire station, this hip, minimalist bar, as popular with the locals as it is with Harvard glitterati, serves pizzas grilled over a charcoal fire. With its bustling, noisy atmosphere, capacious booths, and pizzas served on family-style oval plates, it's the kind of restaurant you can go to with a large crowd. Last week I headed over there to put Cambridge, 1's pizzas through their paces.

Because grilled pizza is cooked not in an enclosed oven, but over an open fire, with all of the heat coming from below, the sauce and toppings tend not to meld into a unified whole. At Cambridge, 1, the naked dough is cooked briefly on one side to set it and give it a touch of char, then flipped over before toppings are applied. Some toppings, such as the oil-and-vinegar dressed arugula, are placed on the pie right at the end of the bake, to prevent over-wilting. And the cheeses, which never see direct heat, are only minimally melted. As a result, the pizza at Cambridge, 1 is something of a hybrid between a pizza, an open-faced flatbread sandwich, and a salad.

Such caveats aside, these pizzas are very tasty. The crust gets a nice, smoke-flavored char on its underside, and despite its cracker-thin depth and crisp skin, it retains a soft, pliable, slightly dough interior. And the pies are, thankfully, never overcooked, an all too common occurrence with grilled pizza.

The most basic pie at Cambridge, 1 is the 'tomato, fontina, romano, garlic, basil'. Since the wafer-like crust cannot sustain a typical wet pizza sauce, the sauce here is simply drained, crushed canned plum tomatoes, with other seasonings applied separately. For the same reason, toppings too are applied minimally. The overall result is a light but intensely flavored pie, with slices that can be consumed in a few quick bites. Nearly every pie is garnished with a few piquant curls of sliced scallion.

The quality of the ingredients used at Cambridge, 1 is high. The lobster on the 'lobster, roasted shallots, mascarpone' pie (a surprisingly successful combination) was fresh-tasting, moist, and perfectly cooked. And, even in the dead of winter, the tomatoes on the 'spinach, artichoke hearts, chevre, slow-roasted tomato' pie were tangy and sweet.

The 'potato, fontina, rosemary' pie boasted thin slices of waxy new potatoes, a generous amount of rosemary, and a touch of fontina to bind it all together. For the 'arugula, fontina, parmigiano' pizza, the most salad-like offering on the menu, the lightly melted cheeses are placed under the lightly-dressed greens, the crust serving as crouton and plate at once.

My one minor complaint about Cambridge, 1's pizzas is that, because they draw upon a short list of toppings, used in a variety of permutations, one pizza can seem to blend into the next. That minor quibble aside, the grilled pizza at Cambridge, 1 makes for a very satisfying meal, and is well worth a visit.

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Reality Check: Burger King's Jalapeño and Cheddar BK Stuffed Steakhouse

Posted by John M. Edwards, January 18, 2011 at 11:15 AM

[Photograph: Business Wire]

Burger King's recently released "Stuffed Steakhouse Burger" looks like pimento loaf. The posters might be some of the worst I've seen; who would want to eat a hamburger that looks like fruitcake? I've eaten some delicious onion-packed burgers, but something about the green and yellow chunks in a Burger King burger didn't seem appealing.

The BK Stuffed Steakhouse is the King's "Steakhouse" patty with jalapeno bits and cheese bits inside it. It's topped with "crisp" iceberg lettuce, "ripe" tomatoes, and a spicy poblano sauce, on a corn-dusted, toasted bun. Here's how the real thing stacks up to the advertised version.

Though I'd expected the burger itself to be the worst part of the creation, I was surprised. When I bit into it, I realized the burger wasn't that bad—but parts of the creation were. The lettuce was not crisp, as advertised; the pink, mealy tomatoes didn't taste like anything, and I stripped them from the burger. (Why do fast food joints offer toppings that don't add flavor?) Finally, the spicy poblano sauce wasn't very spicy; it tasted more like ranch mixed with ketchup.

The burger itself, though, wasn't bad. It has a lot of heat, more than the Whiplash Whopper and more than the Wendy's Spicy Chicken. You don't really notice the jalapenos texturally; they blend in with the rest of the burger. The benefit of having the cheese inside the burger means you actually get hot, melted cheese, as opposed to a refrigerator-cold slice of American, which happens all too often in fast food.

Some burger lovers might have trouble getting around BK's ever-present artificial smoke flavor, and if you don't like Burger King, this isn't going to convert you. But if you do like the King, it's worth a taste. I think it opens a lot of doors in fast food; I could see it leading to other stuffed burgers. I'd consider getting another Stuffed Steakhouse, but I'd order it plain.

Has anyone else tried it? What did you think?

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Dinner Tonight: Vinegar-Glossed Chicken

The word "vinegar" doesn't have the best of reputations in every circle, and adding copious amounts of it to your dinner may not sound very appealing. It makes me think of harsh flavors, of wine gone off, or something under the sink used to sanitize my cutting board.

Why would I want to serve a chicken dish "glossed" with the stuff? Because not all vinegar is made the same, and because when you cook with vinegar, its hard tones tend to disappear. It becomes pungently sweet and balanced. Such is the case with this staple from Mad Hungry, which author Lucinda Scala Quinn reports has been in her weeknight rotation "for at least 20 years."

It adds glorious depth and acidity to what would otherwise be a ho-hum sauteed chicken dinner. Reduced to a glaze all over the chicken (along with the pan juices, garlic, rosemary, and chicken stock) it becomes sticky, sweet, salty, and delicious. A bed of polenta is perfect for catching all the extra juices so they don't go anywhere but in your mouth.

1/2 cup best-quality red-wine vinegar2 to 3 garlic cloves, minced3 sprigs of fresh rosemary leaves3 1/2 pounds bone-in chicken piecesCoarse salt and freshly ground black pepper3 tablespoons olive oil3/4 cup chicken broth, plus more as needed3 cups cooked polenta

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