Eat This Newsletter 230: Chicken and tomatoes
Hello
Another spat in the world of recipe invention, a pointless campaign against cultured meat and a cruel dilemma for tomato breeders. All this and more for your delectation.
Pointless fear-mongering
Wired magazine is aerated about a Murky Campaign to Discredit Lab-Grown Meat, which it says is stoking consumer fear. I can see that it might. Being told that cultured meat “grows like a tumor” because it depends on immortalised cells might be frightening if you didn’t know that red meat itself can be carcinogenic, depending on how it is cooked, that eating immortalised cells is unlikely to cause cancer, and that there is a lot more to a tumour than being composed of immortalised cells.
Of course the PR company says it “is simply presenting existing research, the opinion of subject matter experts, and a commonsense perspective to Americans so they can make up their own minds. Consumers stand to benefit from a robust debate.” Classic technique, used in many similar campaigns.
I wonder why they’re bothering. What is the livestock industry afraid of? Falling sales, obviously, but I’ll wager a T-bone to a hamburger neither cellular meat nor plant-based “meat” will be affordable enough to make a real dent in meat sales any time soon. Or ever.
Who invented butter chicken? Or murgh makhani?
I was tickled to see a brief article in The Guardian about who “really” invented butter chicken, where, and when. Was it Kundan Lal Gujral, at his restaurant in Peshawar, before he moved that restaurant — Moti Mahal — to Delhi? Or was it Kundan Lal Jaggi, who worked with Gujral in Delhi and invented the dish in 1947?
Reputation and damages are at stake, but I think the more interesting story is how tomato, a recent crop associated with colonialism in India, made its way into butter chicken and other dishes, as explained in this episode of Eat This Podcast by Sucharita Kanjilal.
Less interesting, in my opinion is the hot take on the story at Language Log by Victor Mair, LL’s resident sinologist. He thinks the case should be thrown out of court, and it is hard to disagree with that. But he also is much more concerned with the dish’s name than its provenance.
[M]ost people seem to be referring to this dish as “butter chicken” (baṭar chikan बटर चिकन), whereas — if it really is an authentic Peshawar or Delhi dish — it should be murg makhanī मुर्ग मखनी (murg [”chicken”] and makhanī [”butter”])
I mean, c’mon. That’s a bit too pedantic even for me, and having seen both (with several alternative spellings of murg and makhani) on restaurants in Delhi and the UK, what difference does it make; one is a translation of the other.
It’s a fact the whole world knows, there’s no taste in cheap tomatoes
With apologies to Edward Lear, I ask you: how should a tomato taste? The question is prompted by an article in Ambrook Research, about the poor tomato breeders who are belatedly trying to replace the taste in modern tomatoes. Despite great strides in identifying the DNA sequences that contribute to a tomato’s taste and smell, breeding the desired qualities into a variety that can withstand the hardship of a modern, commercial tomato’s life remains very tricky. And there’s another hurdle too: different people have different ideas on what constitutes a great-tasting tomato. Sweeter? More acidic? More pulp? More gel?
The real problem, the article points out, is caused by concentration in the tomato-growing industry. That means the fruit has to be shipped, often long distances, and that means picking before they are ripe, even though it is in the final stages of ripening that most of the flavour develops. The solution, apart from growing them yourself and picking at peak ripeness, will probably depend on growing tomatoes closer to markets so that they can be picked later and spend less time waiting to be bought.
The sourdough whisperer
Some sourdough bakers will recognise the name Debra Wink. Others may not know the name, but they may well have been influenced at some remove by her work. She has spent more than 20 years researching sourdough cultures and sharing her results with everyone who needs to know how to create and care for cultures. Andrew Janjigian interviewed Debra Wink for his newsletter Wordloaf, and even if you’re not a baker, I’d like to think you might find it interesting. I found myself wondering whether I ought to try making different starters in different ways, just for fun, rather than relying always on the two I’ve had since forever.
Olive oil from the beginning
A thought provoking article from a publication I don’t recall seeing before. A Sea of (Olive) Oil is on a Polish site with a mission to “inspire positive change in individuals and communities”. Łukasz Modelski (translated by Nathaniel Espino) offers a long survey of olive oil through history starting, oddly enough, with an early Viking cookbook. Why? Because it does not include olive oil, although it does mention saffron, aframomum and ginger, exotic ingredients from far away. That, the author says, reflects the collapse of the Roman Empire and eventual rise of the Middle Ages.
Overall, the article is a bit of an olive-flavoured romp through history ancient and modern. I’m a little leery of some of the dates in the piece, especially with regard to olive cultivation, but as there are no references it is impossible easily to check. I don’t doubt that subject experts may find more to quibble with, but I enjoyed it. And I learned that there is a world olive-picking championship held on the island of Brač in the Adriatic, part of the famed Roman oil-producing area of Liburnia. Apicius gives a recipe to produce counterfeit Liburian oil with “a flavour that will fool anyone”. Plus ça change, I.
Biblical and religious stories and their variants are also not exactly history, although they do liven things up. I had no idea, for example, that it was only in the 1960s, with Vatican II, that any “natural oil, as similar to olive oil as possible” was officially permitted as a sacrament. “The direct cause of this change was the frequent counterfeiting or dilution of the oil supplied to the Church,” we are told. Plus ça change, II
Take care
