Eat This Newsletter 103: speaking of which ...
Hello
I’m racing around a bit this month, having fun, teaching bread-making and preparing for the return of the podcast in three weeks or so. As a result, no pictures for these links. But I do have links, and quite a few of the topics have already had at least a bit of an outing here.
Our Daily Yogurt is not ‘Greek Yogurt’ The Greek in question is Aglaia Kremezi, who is a force to be reckoned with in Greek food. So why isn’t her yoghurt Greek yoghurt? Chiefly because it hasn’t been strained. Aglaia’s charming article – part memoir, part food history – is based on a piece she wrote for The Atlantic, but I’m linking to her website so that you can see all the other lovely stuff she has on offer.
Yoghurt is so easy to make, and to strain should you want something approximating store-bought Greek yoghurt, that I am amazed more people don’t do it. Let me know if you want super-simple instructions.
Ancient yeasts for modern brews Talking of fermentation, back in May Associated Press told the story of Israeli researchers who isolated living yeasts from tiny holes in the clay of ancient vessels, and successfully fermented a couple of brews.
I love what one of the archaeologists, Aren Maeir, said:
“In Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs eat the scientists. Here, the scientists drink the dinosaurs.”
Chutzpah, or what?
The beer, which benefitted from hops not available to brewers 5000 years ago, “had a thick white head, with a caramel color and a distinctly funky nose”. A mead, made from yeasts resurrected from a vessel known to have contained honey wine, “was champagne bubbly and dry, with a hint of green apple.”
Talking of tasting notes, Jeremy Parzen reflects that The wine world’s culture wars have left millennials behind. The article is his response to three posts about goings on in the wine world, each of which discusses the influence of Robert Parker Jr.
I am decidedly not a wine connoisseur, though I do enjoy drinking the stuff, so I have never been guided by Parker’s ex cathedra pronouncements. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Parzen’s take on the matter, and have to trust him when he argues that there is nobody for today’s students of wine (not Millennials, surely; they’re already worrying about college fees for their offspring) to emulate or rebel against.
Talking of wine – I’m on a roll here – my compadre Luigi drew my attention to the fact that the venerable Syndicat Viticole des AOC Bordeaux & Bordeaux Supérieur recently agreed to allow growers in the region to plant seven new grape varieties specifically to prepare for the climate crisis. The varieties are more disease resistant and better able to cope with warmer conditions. Merlot, by contrast, is not all that good in the heat. (I can relate.)
Fair Trade isn’t fair for all Talking of climate change, two crops that are predicted to be badly affected are coffee and chocolate. Paying a bit extra for Fair Trade is one way to try and help the growers to get a bit extra to prepare. Alas, a new study shows that while Fair Trade is good for small farmers, they don’t pass the benefits on to the even poorer people who labour for them. The Salt, on NPR, and NOVA on PBS both carried good articles on the topic. If the argument sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because you heard Lindsay Naylor (quoted in the Nova piece) making the same point in my episode Pushing good coffee.
Think of cocoa, and I automatically think of child labour, especially in West Africa. Intriguing, then, that Dan Charles on NPR specifically points out that the lead researcher into the conditions of cocoa labourers “didn’t observe [child labour] in the cooperatives that she studied”. Katherine Wu, on Nova, says that “more than 2 million children work the cocoa fields of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana alone”. As ever, we need more data.
Speaking of data and discrimination, Nathan Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki (who have also featured in a previous podcast episode) have a stunning new analysis out: How USDA distorted data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers. This is not some long ago story of discrimination during reconstruction or Jim Crow. Rather, it unpicks the happy claims made by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, that on his watch the USDA had secured a better deal for black farmers and that African Americans were returning to farming.
[N]early all of Vilsack’s claims – echoed by high-ranking USDA officials and taken at face value by the press – are extremely misleading or false.
It’s a long read, but an important one. I won’t even attempt to summarise; go read.
And that’s all I’ve got.
All the best,
Jeremy