Say It Ain't Tso!

I can't believe it - my favourite Chinese dish isn't Chinese at all.

Turns out General Tso's Chicken is American, not Chinese.

(I must admit, I was always curious when I called the local Chinese restaurant here in Cambridge and they didn't know what I was talking about.)

Although this is (apparently) common knowledge to all but me, Jennifer 8 Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, went a step further and dug up some historical information about the actual General Tso - or, better, General Zuo.

My favourite quotation from the article, which includes a picture of the man himself, is this:

What I discovered. In America, General Tso, like Colonel Sanders, is known for chicken and not war. In China, he is know for war and not chicken.

Oh, well. I still love General Tso, whether he cooked or not.

At least I've still got the genuine Italian goodness of Pizza Hut pizza. Oh, wait...

Food Miles - A Primer

The BBC, in their estimable food section, have produced what might be characterised as a primer on food miles, or, more broadly, the environmental impact of what we eat - especially where it is grown and how it comes to us. It is a helpful and balanced presentation of the facts, including the importance of taking our carbon footprint into account as well as a sober look at all the sources of emissions related to our food (not just air miles). Check it out!

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net: royalty free stock photography for websites.

Why America Could Never Have Universal Health Care (or: That's FOOD?!)

O.
M.
G.

I just ran into, via Serious Eats, Paula Deen's recipe for - get this - fudge made using Velveeta.

It involves, well, Velveeta.
And confectioner's sugar and butter and cocoa powder; formed into balls, placed on sticks;
And dipped in caramel;
And dipped in white chocolate;
And rolled in nuts.

(Here is a link to a demonstration on the Ellen show - but I warn you, do not try this at home.)

Velveeta? What!?

As the Serious Eats blog says, she's trying to kill us all.

If that isn't enough, check out her recipes for fried mac and cheese wrapped in bacon, as well as - are you sitting down? - deep-fried butter.

Or perhaps you would prefer - as she moves from desecration to merely personal insult - her banana split brownie pizza?

Now, true, she specialises in Southern home cooking, and a number of her other recipes look like interesting versions of traditional favourites. (And I enjoy well-done Southern and Soul food it must be said.) But several of the recipes, especially those mentioned, just look like over-the-top creations fuelled by a Rococo too-much-is-never-enough aesthetic, like if Liberace had a bigger appetite and a less discerning palate. I nearly had congestive heart failure just reading the deep-fried butter recipe. Makes me want to eat nothing but consommé for a week.

All of which raises the interesting question: is it possible any longer to parody the U.S.?

Rat Eat Dog

I am reading in my spare time (pause to allow laughter to die down) Chew on This: Everything Your Don't Want to Know about Fast Food by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson. It is nothing too groundbreaking, most everything I have run across can be found in Schlosser's earlier work Fast Food Nation. But the two following quotes from Ray Kroc caught my attention:

"If you believe in it, and you believe in it hard, it's impossible to fail. I don't care what it is -- you can get it!" (p.30)

and, on competing with fast-food rivals:

"This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest." (p. 33-34)

There is so much that can be said about either of these quotes, but they seem especially jarring when juxtaposed like this. The venom of the second quotation makes the vapid ideology of the first just that much clearer: it doesn't actually matter what you want or what you believe in or how hard you work, because it is entirely likely that you will run up against someone who wants to 'kill' you. It is striking just how primal the myth of ultimate violence is in the second quotation; even more striking that this dispassionate 'killing' is likened to 'the American way'.

And, just in case the buzzcops out there think I am being one-sided, let me add: And all the more striking when one considers that Kroc's widow, Joan Kroc, contributed millions of dollars to the centers for peace and justice studies at Notre Dame University and University of San Diego, as well as a substantial contribution to the Salvation Army. When she was alive, she also contributed million for nuclear disarmament. So I suppose this poisonous ideology doesn't always have the last word.

Yet Another Turn Off: Give Me a Break Today

I love comments from folks on my posts (well,when they're not spam...). And ongoing readers will know that I am never averse to responding to comments. But there hadn't been many comments recently -- maybe I wasn't writing anything controversial, I don't know. Then I posted on Eric Schlosser and McDonald's, and what do you know? Four comments! I responded to them at some length, and then realised that I wanted to say a bit more, and say it as a post in its own right. So here we go.

First, to you four: welcome to Gower Street! Allow me to register my surprise that all four of you seem to have taken my post as the opportunity to join blogger. What a surprise! (By any chance do you four know each other?)

Thank you for your thoughts.

I find it odd -- and rather dismaying -- that each of you decided to focus on Mr. Schlosser's 'background' (each of you used this very word). In terms of logic, this is called "argumentum ad hominem", a logical fallacy. That is to say, one cannot defeat someone's argument by saying bad things about that person; any number of things might be true about Mr. Schlosser, but that has no bearing on whether or not he is right. This kind of argumentation is a distraction. (For a biblical example of this, when Balaam's donkey spoke, Balaam did not discount it because it was a donkey; he did not "consider the source".) If Schlosser takes a position you disagree with and think is wrong (on decriminalising marijuana, for example), that does not mean that his facts (or motives) are instantly suspect when it comes to, say, the number of adverts on TV devoted to fast food. We need to focus on the truth of the matter, not distracting side issues.

I say that I am dismayed, but it is not just because you four -- independently of each other? -- slipped into the same problem. No, I'm dismayed because it seems rampant today. You hear this sort of thing all the time in relation to Bill Clinton, for example: because he lied about Monica Lewinski you can't trust him on anything. And this kind of sloppy thinking is not limited to those on the right, either: you hear the same sort of thing about George W. Bush: because he lied/ cooked the books/ was culpably misinformed about WMDs in Iraq, then how can we trust him on anything? And these two are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this (believe me, for me to even invoke their names makes me feel as if I've constructed straw figures).

More than that, I am dismayed that you four have changed a disagreement with Schlosser's arguments into insinuations about his moral character. And the allegations you make are unsubstantiated, or only vague and suggestive. Is Schlosser "sensationalist"? If so, does that preclude him from telling the truth? Does it mean he necessarily distorts facts? Or does it mean the topics he addresses are surprising, thus causing a 'sensation'? If he does indeed propose reforming the American justice system (v-v drugs, etc.), what arguments does he raise? How are those arguments right or wrong? Or does simply raising a question about the justice system make someone of bad character?

Moreover, I think that blaming the food industry is part of it. They are not merely "communicating their message". They spend millions of pounds, millions of dollars every year to persuade us to buy their food. My point about more people globally recognising the McDonald's arches than the cross: while that can be substantiated, the point is not to blame McDonald's, it is simply to put into perspective just how driven and effective their marketing is. I mean, gosh, we've had 2000 years; they've had, what, 60?

Or I'll tell you a personal story. We rarely eat fast food. My 4-year old daughter has eaten at McDonald's, maybe ten times in her life. Maybe a little more but not much. When she was something like one and a half or two she could identify the McDonald's golden arches, and say she wanted to go there. Is their marketing to kids effective? You tell me.

Like my brother said to me in an e-mail: we wouldn't even be having this conversation if, instead of every five minutes talking about a burger and fries, fast food marketers started talking about how cool it is to eat salads and how being healthy is fun and makes you popular. How awesome would McDonald's look in 20 years if they singlehandedly led a huge push for health for children?

Yes, of course we are responsible for ourselves as well. I'm pretty tired of the argument that says we shouldn't talk about or demand improvements from other parts of society because we ought to take responsibility for ourselves. I don't know anyone who is criticising a fast food chain and saying that it is all their fault. (And if anyone is, they ought to know better.) But to say that it is not all their fault doesn't mean that they have no responsibility for what they say and so. And part of being responsible for ourselves is being responsible for our cultural environment, making discerning choices and demanding changes when they're needed -- like marketing to impressionable children. And part of being personally responsible also means being moderate in your intake of certain things: fast food, tobacco, alcohol, sweets, and so forth.*

We are shaped as people not simply by our wills, but by our environments. So why not do something to shape that?

And if anyone is not yet persuaded at the size and power of the global culture industries -- McD is only the tip of the iceberg here, but a big one** -- then I heartily encourage you to read The (Magic) Kingdom of God by Michael Budde. He does an excellent job of describing the environment in which the church is trying to form disciples, and the pitfalls that we encounter in the face of media and marketing. (This was, you will recall, my major point in the original post.)

Finally, the (often implicit) argument that our concern should be primarily or solely on ourselves and our children and not on others (such as McDonald's) actually supports the idea of legalisation of drugs and the spread of pornography. (This is a common libertarian point.) After all, if my responsibility is for myself only, then why should I worry if someone else is getting smoked up or watching degenerate filth in the privacy of their own homes? If, on the other hand, you don't think this is just fine, then perhaps McDonald's -- or other places, too, I don't mean to single them out over, say, Burger King, or whatever -- might be fair game for legitimate concern, too?


* And lest any of this sound like I wish to outlaw fast food or some other non sequitur, I assure you, if you haven't gotten the point of my post it is this: 1) certain marketing practices ought to change and 2) notice the sort of environment that the church is in; how does it effect us in our formation as Christians? Although I don't tend to eat fast food, I have no desire to get rid of it, but rather to encourage moderation. Britons are learning this, thank God, as sales of fast food and greasy or sugary snacks have fallen, and sales of whole grains and fresh fruits and veg are up.

** How big? Last year, McDonald's reported revenues of $20 billion (£11bn), setting a record for the company. That sounds like a lot -- and it is: it's larger that the Gross Domestic Product of Costa Rica. If it were a country, it would have the 80th largest GDP in the world. (Of course, the real big boys like Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil dwarf McDonald's -- and most other nations, as well.)

Another Turn Off: You Deserve a Break Today

And just in case you're lacking for reasons to turn the set off, especially if you have kids, there was the essay in The Guardian's G2 section today by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation : What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World. The essay, which is an excerpt from his new book, targeted at children, entitled Chew On This : Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food. Here are some mouth-watering starters: (Click here for the whole thing.)

The relationship between big companies and small children has changed enormously in the past 30 years. Until recently, just a handful of companies aimed their advertising at children and they mainly sold breakfast cereals and toys. By 2002, however, the top five food advertisers in the UK were McDonald's, Coca-Cola, KFC and Pizza Hut. British food companies now spend £300m every year advertising to kids. Business people now realise that kids have a lot of money to spend and a lot of influence on what their parents buy. Every year in the United States children are responsible for more than $500bn worth of spending. Big companies want that money. And too often they are willing to manipulate kids in order to get it.

[further down the column...]

The latest scientific research is also being used to make kids buy things. At the Singapore conference, Karen Tan, representing Coca-Cola, discussed how to make children remember a company's ads and create "brand stickiness". According to Tan, research has found that one way to make a lasting imprint on a child's mind is to run the same advertisement over and over again. Repeating the same ad for a product is more effective than running a variety of different ads. The more times a child sees exactly the same ad, the more likely he or she will remember the product.

The average American child now spends about 25 hours a week watching television. That adds up to more than 1.5 months, non-stop, of TV every year. And that does not include the time spent in front of a screen watching videos, playing video games or using a computer. Aside from going to school, American children now spend more time watching television than doing anything else except sleeping. The average British child spends two hours and 20 minutes every day watching television and 25 minutes playing video games. In the UK, more than half of children under the age of 16 have a television in their bedroom.

During the course of a year, the typical American child watches more than 40,000 TV commercials. About 20,000 of those ads are for junk food: soft drinks, sweets, breakfast cereals and fast food. That means American children now see a junk food ad every five minutes while watching TV - and see about three hours of junk food ads every week. American kids aren't learning about food in the classroom. They're being taught what to eat by the same junk food ads, repeating again and again.

I think, given the all-out onslaught of commercial -- and other -- messages that our children are exposed to in a typical week, turning the television off might be a good option. Why?

I know many, many dedicated and hard-working people who work to catechize our children in the church, helping them to come to a full and mature faith. But knowing this, the extent and intensity of marketing messages that we are exposed to, it seems overwhelming. How can we possibly contend? They -- the fast food (and other) marketers -- are able to get in a word every five minutes on average, three steady hours a week. If we are lucky, in church, we might get one hour twice a week; sometimes less. They have £300m and the all-pervasive, persuasive medium of television; we have spare change and flannelgraphs.

I'm not suggesting that fast food and the church are antitheses. But I am suggesting that, as Christians, we are to be intentionally formed most deeply by God's story more than any other. And when any story, even the one about McDonald's, is as all-pervasive as that, there might be a problem. For example, more people in the world recognize McDonald's "golden arches" than recognize the cross. (This fact is from Schlosser's first book.) How far are we from replacing "Glory to God in the Highest" with "You Deserve a Break Today"?

Read the rest. And, while you're at it, do you dare to find out just what is in that "Strawberry" "'Shake'" that you crave?

My Hobby, My Art, My Obsession (part I)

(First, to regular readers of Gower Street who have developed an appetite for theology, cultural criticism, and so forth: please be patient. More is on the way.)

Many of those who know me beyond the boundaries of Gower Street know that I love to cook. Until recently, I did all the cooking in my home; although that was in part because of our work schedules, all other things being equal it would have been by choice. (Although my wife is a great cook, too. When we retire we'll have to come up with a schedule so we each get equal time in the kitchen.)

I often go through phases where I will cook one dish, or one type of food, and really try to become proficient at it. Once, it was cajun. Two summers ago, it was fish. I've been through a roast chicken phase. And for the last year and a half, my phase -- no check that, my obsession -- has been with pizza. It's the closest thing I have to a hobby, or an art, but it truly is an obsession. There was a time while I was trying to get my dough recipe down pat that we would eat 3-4 pies three times a week. It was nuts.

Someone a month or so ago called me a 'pizza snob', which I hope isn't true but I fear it is. But it's risible, too: pizza is wonderful, but it's a humble food. I mean, we're not talking about caviar or truffles or fine wine: it's just pizza!

(To be a pizza snob seems like being a Vauxhall/Pontiac snob. It's not that Vauxhall or Pontiac don't make a fine car that gets you from point A to point B (and on weekends, point C), but these are not makes of car that warrant snobbishness in any way. BMW, sure; Mercedes, perhaps; Pontiac? No way.)

And yet there is something about a great pie that is so completely sublime, so heavenly, so wonderful. These guys described a great pizza at DiFara's in Brooklyn like this:

It’s surprisingly substantive, a mouthful. It's a mess, an exaggeration, and an epic event. It was the best pizza we’d eaten in our lives. Please don’t make us try to describe it any more--it feels futile to do so. (Here)

I totally get that. And so many of the familiar chains, increasingly people's only exposure to pizza, can't even touch the real thing.

As author Peter Reinhard points out, our pizza memories are formed early and vividly, and seem to hold sway over us through our lives. For him, it was Mama's Pizza, just outside Philadelphia.

Me, I grew up with three pizzas, before the chains became prominent in my area: Potestas, Friar Tuck's, and Quonset Pizza.

Potestas I don't recall being amazing, altough it was a local chain frequented and recommended by locals. It was better by a mile than the delivery chains or anything with 'Hut' in the name, but I don't have a real, stand-out impression. They expanded in the 1980's, and then I thought they closed up shop, but I just found out they are still around. But now they're making things like taco pizza, which is just embarrassing.

Friar Tuck's was the paradigmatic dive. It was mostly a bar, and I remember it always seemed really dark inside, and we were usually seated near the smeared front windows. We tended to go early because it was a place frequented by sailors, and fights would often break out. (Keep in mind I was all of seven or eight at this time.) The last time we went there, the roof had partially collapsed, and they had a huge, sagging tarp hanging from the ceiling. Shortly after that they closed, but the sign for Friar Tuck's was still out front, and I would pass by wondering if they might still be open. It was that way for years. Then it burned. Then the back of the building fell down. Then they demolished the rest. Finally, after a couple more years, they took down the sign. It is now a nondescript, weed-shrouded vacant lot. Whenever I drive by, I still find myself hoping that they've somehow re-opened.

It was an awful place, but the pizza was astounding, especially the sauce; I still remember the sauce. It must have been a marinara sauce, I'm pretty sure it was cooked; it wasn't just a crushed tomato sauce. And my dad always said that what made it special was that the cook put red wine in it. That's probably right, that makes sense of my taste memory. But I've tried and haven't been able to duplicate it. (Of course, I don't usually do a marinara sauce, so that might be part of it.)

But the king of them all was the Quonset. The Quonset is unparalleled in Waukegan for memory and for pizza.

Walking into the Quonset (which I did again last August) is like walking back in time. And I don't just say that because there are so many memories for generations of people there, going out for pizza as a family, or together as teens, or on dates or whatever. One friend even proposed to his girlfriend there -- she had the good sense to say yes.

But it is like walking back in time because the furnishings and decorating of the place have, no exaggeration, never changed. The place opened in, I think, 1946. And inside it looks just like 1946. I swear those guys sitting at the bar are vets talking about their time in Normandy. The place doesn't change. This isn't faux-pastiche-ironic-nostalgia with a wink and a nod. No, they just haven't gotten around to remodelling. In 60 years. (Heck, they don't even have a website I can link to!)*

For them, not changing is good, because its pizza is superlative. Super-thin crust which I would call a Roman style; a robust sauce; creamy stringy fresh mozzarella. The bold flavours all work together in harmony. When I was there I tried to steal a look into their kitchen to see what kind of oven they were working with. Most of the ovens outside of the Northeast are electric or gas and just don't deliver the flavour and mouthfeel of a coal-fired or wood-burning oven, but I wonder if Quonset might not be using an old coal-fired oven.

And no fancy pizzas**. In keeping with the blue collar nature of this town, the ingredients are simple, straightforward, and delicious: in a word, classic. I say, why mess? After all, they easily deliver the best pizza experience of the entire North Shore, and they could give most anywhere in the Chicago area a run for their money -- and that is saying something.

The best pizza I have had recently is from Tacconelli's in Philadelphia. I went with my friend Jacob and his wife and newborn daughter while at AAR/SBL last November. It was amazing. It's reputation is as the best pizzeria in Philadelphia, which is no mean feat. And although I did not sample every pizza in Philly, I can't help but think that it must deliver on that promise.

If you read my first footnote below, I assure you Tacconelli's meets all the criteria. It is just north of the city centre in a working-class neighbourhood called Fishtown. Decoration is minimal: wood panelling and some homemade wall decorations. It was a little like eating in someone's basement. No website. They're off the beaten path a bit. If you weren't looking for them, you would miss the place. No off street parking. And you are expected to call ahead early in the day to order your dough balls -- they make a few extra, but dropping in spontaneously is a risky venture.

They have a coal-fired oven which you can get an easy peek at as you walk through the place. The pizza peel has an eight-foot handle to get the pizzas in and out; it's a joy to watch the pizzaiolo at work, especially because it is all about the pizza.

And the pizza, especially the crust, was sublime. We had a white pizza and a red with mutz; I think we had garlic and spinach on the white, and pepperoni on the red. (The white didn't have white sauce, like with clams; it was just the crust with garlic and olive oil on it. The red sauce was a well-balanced fresh crushed tomato sauce with what I think is the crucial 'brightness' to it. The crust was superlative: light, almost pastrylike, with the kind of blackened bits on the cornicione. I'm salivating just thinking of it.) I just remember thinking that it doesn't get any better. No exaggeration, I have twice since had such a jones, I have thought 'You know, I could get on a British Airways flight to Philly, and in less than 24 hours be eating at Tacconelli's again!' Our resources, alas, are a bit more limited than that, but trust me, the next time we are in any proximity to Philadelphia (say, 200 miles), we will be back there.***

I'd love to hear about your memories and experiences of great pizza and great pizza places, in the comments.

Coming soon: my pizza; and links.

* If you are dead set on finding great pizza, you begin to notice some commonalities among the true greats. One -- maybe the one -- is that it is all about the pizza. Great pizza restaurants don't have themes; often they don't even quite have what you would call 'decoration'. They don't advertise on TV. They don't specialise in customer service. They don't worry about 'marketing'. They have long-time employees, at least working as pizzaioli. Often, it's a family operation.

**Not that I'm against experimentation with flavours and toppings, I do it all the time and recommend others do, too. But I'm a strange combination of purist and inventor: somehow, taco pizza just sounds like a bad joke, but chicken satay doesn't. I don't know that I can explain it, and it may defy analysis.

*** Part of the moral of the story is that so much of the way we think business (and much else) needs to be run these days is completely overturned by this. These places don't do marketing analyses; they don't have vision statements or five-year plans; they aren't concerned to be up to the minute and 'relevant'. They have no plans to franchise or take over the world. They do what they do. They do it exceedingly well. Word gets around. And I and others are willing to pass by innumerable other chains to go there. Church -- mark well. (See, I got around to theology and cultural commentary eventually!)