a fool in the forest

Kunsten å koke et eggy-wegg

Easter means, inter alia, eggs.  As a reader service, here are some suggestions for preparing eggs in a variety of styles and textures, with and without their shells.

You have heard, perhaps, of Scotch eggs, reputed to have been invented not by Scots but by the wily London merchants at Fortnum & Mason.  A Scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg encased in a layer of pork sausage, breaded, deep fried and eaten cold, calculated to reinforce every unfortunate opinion Dr. Johnson ever uttered concerning the Scots.  But how, you may ask, does one properly hard boil those eggs in the first place?  For that, we must turn further north than Scotland and look into Norwegian eggs or, more accurately, the University of Oslo's "Kunsten å koke et egg" ("The Art of Cooking an Egg") which explains, in Norwegian, how to achieve exemplary results when boiling one's eggs.  If you don't read Norwegian but are able to convert sizes and temperatures to metric terms, the site provides a clever Flash-driven tool, shown below, to determine precisely how long to boil your particular egg to achieve perfection:

Whatever you may think of Scotch eggs, there is one anglicized Scot who knows a thing or two about the culinary arts, famously hot-tempered chef-restaurateur Gordon Ramsay.  Here, in his more charming mode, Chef Ramsay demonstrates how to prepare perfect scrambled eggs:

I had rather assumed that he simply glared at them and they scrambled themselves.  Viewers of the US version of Hell's Kitchen can only shudder when Chef Ramsay compares scrambling eggs to making risotto.  

The cooking of eggs for a full English breakfast requires the steady and attentive hand of a live chef, and should not be entrusted to unreliable, or mechanized, kitchen staff:

Let's see now.  Scotch eggs. . .  English eggs . . .  Norwegian eggs . . . What more do we need before we conclude?  The answer is obvious: 

Swedish eggs!

Bon appetit and Happy Easter.

~~~

Photo: "Eggy-weggs" by Flickr user cbcastro, used under Creative Commons license.  "Eggy-weggs" is a service mark of Alex DeLarge.

Sources: University of Oslo link and Gordon Ramsay video via lifehacker.

~~~

Hope: It's What's for Lunch

Festivities, festivities, festivities!

"Hope is the thing with feathers," says Emily Dickinson, so it is only right that the 44th President of the United States should begin his term of service by sitting down to eat a brace of formerly feathered things.  Frazer would understand.

This evening, there will be Inaugural Balls on nearly every theme, but there will be no Policeman's Ball.   This is because all of the police are so busy.

So, as we wait in Hope for the Change we Need, let us all join hands in a Spirit of Optimism and Sacrifice and sing along with Mr. Alan Price:

~~~

Nunc est Bibendum

December 5 of each year is Repeal Day, the anniversary of the adoption of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the repeal of the national policy of Prohibition.  This particular December 5 is not just any Repeal Day: it is the 75th Repeal Day, and thus an occasion for especial, if prudent, celebration.

So, with the famous spokescreature for Michelin tires -- who predates Prohibition and is, in any case, French and thus imbued with the sensible French attitude toward wines and spirits -- this Fool toasts you all.  Now is the time to drink or, as Horace would have it, Nunc Est Bibendum!

To conclude, a bonus tribute to Monsieur Bib:

Dr. Seuss and the Wisdom of Popovers

Dr. Seuss was already comfortably established as a children's author when I was in short pants*, so comfortably that it was and is easy to forget that he was an inveterate upsetter of apple carts and skeptic of received wisdom.

The National Association of Scholars has been running a series of articles on higher education reform, somehow built around themes from the Good Doctor's If I Ran the Zoo.  On her weblog, Critical Mass, Erin O'Connor has reproduced her contribution (with Maurice Black) to the discussion: an essay built around Dr. Seuss' graduation speech to the class of 1977 at Lake Forest College, the entire text of which speech is here reproduced:

My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers

My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them
with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
'To eat these things,'
said my uncle,
'you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT…
you must spit out the air!'

And…
as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.

Theodore Geisel became "Dr. Seuss," as Erin explains, while attending Dartmouth in the 1920s, in response to "Geisel" being banned by collegiate authorities from contributing to the school's humor magazine.  Variants on "Terwilliger" or "Terwilliker" had a recurring importance in Seuss World, including the authoritarian appearance of the latter, in the person of Hans Conried, as the titular "T" in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, the very "embodiment of the worst sorts of pedagogical abuse."  The young narrator of If I Ran the Zoo, she suggests, in his utopian glee is not necessarily an improvement, as "he sounds a great deal like that generation of academic reformers, now reaching retirement, that has worked so hard to do away with traditional ideas of what is worth knowing largely because they are traditional ideas of what is worth knowing."

When he reemerges at Lake Forest many years later, the now-avuncular Terwilliger achieves his most benevolent form:

Having mellowed over time, Uncle Terwilliger appears at the Lake Forest graduation not in the capacity of a teacher, but in the special incapacity of an uncle -- who by definition has no real authority over his nieces and nephews.  His graduation advice reflects his comfortably powerless position.  When he tells students to be wary of hot air, he is telling them to think for themselves.  When he points out that popovers contain hot air, he is urging his audience to recognize that the good and the bad come jumbled together, and that in order to get at the one you have to be able to identify and reject the other.  He is, in other words, going to the heart of what education ideally enables one to do: to think independently, and to come to one's own conclusions about what to do, be, and believe.

As Thomas Mendip mused, "What a wonderful thing is metaphor." 

Read the complete O'Connor/Black/Seuss essay at Critical Mass or (with illustrations) at NAS.

~~~

Photo: "Popover with Ocean Backdrop" (at the Cliff House, San Francisco), by Flickr user Cameron Maddux, used under Creative Commons license.

~~~

*  Yes, I actually was in short pants.  There exists a photo, which I'll not reproduce here because it's not been scanned in to digital form, showing me in my bow-tied and short-pantsed Sunday Best in the company of my long-suffering Bear.  We were both of us much younger, and much closer to the same height, in those days.

Making the World Safe for "Two-Buck Chuck"

The Los Angeles Times today has an obituary for Robert Berning, an unsung but important figure in the recent history of California wine.  Formerly the principal wine buyer for the Trader Joe's markets, Berning was the man who spearheaded that company's long-running effort to sell good quality wine, particularly California wine, at the lowest possible price. 

Much of the material in the piece comes from an interview with "Trader Joe" himself, founder Joe Coulombe.  In large part, it is a rousing story of clever free-marketeers working their way over, under, around, and through outmoded protectionist pricing statutes -- so-called "fair trade" laws -- with the beneficial side effect of publicizing the quality of California "boutique" wineries at a time (the 1970s) when most of the world thought that "California Wine" meant little more than Gallo Hearty Burgundy.

Coulombe said 1970 marked the beginning of Trader Joe's 'aggressive wine merchandising' -- offering wines at lower prices than had been common in the trade.

'Basically,' he said, 'this state had fair trade on alcoholic beverages, so it was against the law to break price on Gallo or any other branded wine, and under Bob's leadership, we learned to get around fair trade.'

As head wine buyer, Berning built Trader Joe's private label wine program, in which various wines from around the world were sold under Trader Joe's own labels, for which it could set lower prices.

'It was a huge success,' said Coulombe, adding with a chuckle that 'it caused our competitors a lot of distress.  They tried to stop us, but we fought our way through the battles until 1978 when fair trade was thrown out. . . .  After that, we and anybody else could price wine any way they wanted to.'

But after eight years of offering wine under their Trader Joe's Winery label, he said, 'we had a head start.'

A grateful wine bibbing public salutes them.  Hic!

[Via LA Observed.]

~~~

Of related interest:

In an e-mail last week, Rick kindly passed along a link to a consumer friendly Trader Joe's-related item from the San Francisco Chronicle:

• The Sommeliers' Guide to Buying Cheap Wine

And previously on a fool in the forest:

• P'Shaw!
• Art Imitates Wine
• Chuck the Shaw in Favor of a Cuppa Joe's
• Hey Joe, Where You Goin' With That Cheap-But-Drinkable Merlot in Yer Hand?

Photo: "Chuck Wine" by Flickr user Refracted Moments™, used under Creative Commons license.

They've Got an Uninfringeable Urgh! (Devo Makes Plans for "New Wave Nigel")

In April, during the most recent season of American Idol, McDonald's restaurants offered a series of product tie-in "Happy Meals" containing small toy figures representing various popular musical genres.  USA Today provided this description at the time:

None of the toys is patterned directly after a specific Idol, yet a couple of the names are oddly suggestive.  You'll pick 'em out -- the genre-specific lineup of toy characters comprises Disco Dave, Rockin' Riley, Lil' Hip Hop (surprised there isn't already a rapper by that name), Hippie Harmony, Country Clay, Soulful Selma, Punky Pete and New Wave Nigel.

Here are three of the figures -- Nigel, Selma and Pete -- courtesy of Flickr! user DaylandS:

Notice anything, hmmm, familiar about young Nigel? 

It is difficult to miss that his jumpsuit and his ziggurat-emulating head gear -- indeed, even his choice of fashionable eyewear -- resemble nothing so much as the ensembles commonly sported by the members of Akron, Ohio's gift to American music, Devo, two of whom are seen here courtesy of Flickr! user zioWoody:

Now, as you might suppose, those trademark Devo Energy Dome hats are, well, trademarked.  And copyrighted. 

And what do we do when we want to use someone else's trademarked and copyrighted work in a large scale product promotion? 

We ask and obtain permission, don't we?  We certainly do. 

Unless we are McDonald's. 

In which case, we can expect to find, as McDonald's has done, that the be-domed and bespectacled holders of the intellectual property rights in question will make a speedy transition from jumpsuits to lawsuits:

Devo bassist Gerald Casale -- who designed the trademarked energy dome headgear-- is quoted as saying, 'This New Wave Nigel doll that they've created is just a complete Devo rip-off and the red hat is exactly the red hat that I designed, and it's copyrighted and trademarked.  We're in the midst of suing them . . . they didn't ask us anything.  Plus, we don't like McDonald's, and we don't like "American Idol", so we're doubly offended.'

None of the available reports sees fit to give more details of the litigation, such as identifying the court in which it has been filed, so I am unable to give you further details on the allegations or procedural status of the case.  Since making the statement quoted above, however, it seems that Gerry Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh and company have been directed by the Court to withhold comment until the case reaches its conclusion.

In the meantime, if you want a "New Wave Nigel" to call your own, there are still a handful of the figures available on eBay -- although in light of the latest $61M judgment Louis Vuitton obtained against eBay for serving as a conduit for counterfeit goods, who knows how long that will last?  (Of course, these aren't counterfeit fake Devo figures, they're real fake Devo figures.  So the cases are clearly distinguishable, are they not?  Discuss.)

Perhaps inspired by this litigation, Mark Mothersbaugh has created a limited edition image entitled "Devo and the Docket."  Only six signed and numbered originals exist.  Slightly more numerous but still limited (edition size < 100) is the genuine "Devo and the Docket" t-shirt.  It's what all the most nouvelle vague IP lawyers will be sporting this summer.

~~~

For further study:

• View Devo performing "Uncontrollable Urge" in both jumpsuited and Energy-Domed versions.

• So far as I can determine, Soulful Selma's geodesic hairstyle has not yet triggered an infringement action by the R. Buckminster Fuller estate.

Rattus Cordonbleuvicus

At least since the Reese's Pieces in E.T., we have gotten used to the notion that when food or drink products turn up in a Major Motion Picture, it is almost certainly in the name of product placement.  One of the many satisfactions to be had from Pixar's Ratatouille, which the family caught up with over the past weekend, is the fact that the only branded comestible in the entire film is a (shamefully abused) bottle of 1961 Château Latour (100 pts, pace Robert Parker and others).

Might Ratatouille be The Best Food Movie Ever Made?  Indeed it might, among many other things.  It is certainly the most "adult" film Pixar has yet produced, touching on themes such as art, beauty, love, loss, mortality, memory, and the need to keep guns and poisons out of the hands of astigmatic French peasant ladies.  It is also full of sterling bits of physical comedy and silent expressiveness worthy of Chaplin or Keaton, and boasts a collection of Parisian colors, textures and sounds so appealing that the French government should be pinning medals on all concerned.

The non-childishness of the film may account for its (actual or perceived) box office shortfalls compared to other Pixar pictures.  The business aspects of Ratatouille -- and what they say about the rough patches in the supposedly idyllic marriage of Pixar into Disney -- are being covered in depth by animation/Disney specialist Jim Hill, in stories such as this one and this one. 

That last Jim Hill item is worth a scroll for the sake of the lovely photograph of Peter O'Toole, at work recording his role as the fearsome -- but ultimately surprisingly Proustian -- food critic, Anton Ego.  Which serves to remind that in Ratatouille, as is usual with Pixar, voice casting contributes immeasurably to the film's success.  O'Toole is unsurprisingly wonderful, but Patton Oswalt's turn as Remy, the Rat Who Would Be Chef, provides the spine from which all else depends. 

Fans of Mr. Oswalt, including those such as myself who encounter him for the first time in Ratatouille, should hasten to pay a visit to Daytrotter.  The online artistic pride of Rock Island, Illinois, recently launched a spoken word venture, "the Bookery," to complement its ever-growing cache of live music recordings, and has this week posted a 7 minute MP3 of Patton Oswalt reading "The Chaser" by John Collier -- a story I first encountered long decades ago in a 6th or 7th grade English class, when I was far too young and unsophisticated to appreciate its witty macabrerie.

Any number of well-respected chefs have remarked on the high accuracy of Ratatouille's portrait of life in a professional kitchen.  I, however, spotted one important gap in all that verisimilitude: the absence of cigarettes. 

As anyone knows who has watched the contestants on Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen, or who has spent time in the vicinity of a culinary school, chefs and aspiring chefs as a class tend to smoke like coal-fired power plants in Ohio -- and, mind you, the chefs in Ratatouille are French! -- yet there's not a Gauloise or Gitane to be seen.  Incroyable!

The explanation is obvious: Pixar, with typical foresight, anticipated this week's decision by Disney to ban depictions of smoking in its films.  And further research discloses that in any case, zut alors!, even in France the Gauloise is extinct.  Poof!

These Spuds for View

Consider if you will the humble potato, that progenitor of a plethora of chips, crisps, mashes, purees, gratins, and bakers, and consider in particular the fondness with which these earthy starch factories are regarded in the arts.

The Guardian, writing on a showing of work by Argentine artist Victor Grippo, begins by wandering far and wide in an overview of the potato's proper artistic place:

In a brief 1996 memoir on his artistic development, the German painter Sigmar Polke wrote what amounts to a love letter to the potato.  His description of the sprouting tuber is almost worthy of Albrecht Dürer.  Polke talked of going to his cellar one day, and finding there 'the very incarnation of everything art critics and teachers imagine when they think of a spontaneously creative subject with a love of innovation: the potato!'  He went on to ask: 'Why doesn't the public turn its attention to the potato, where ultimate fulfillment awaits?'  Why indeed.  Certain of Polke's images are hymns to the potato.  In 1967 he built a Kartoffelhaus, or Potato House, based on the scientific principal of Faraday's Cage.

Among Polke's pomme de terre-ific pieces are the above-mentioned Potato House (Kartoffelhaus - 1967), the Duchampian Apparat, mit dem eine Kartoffel eine andere umkreisen kann (Apparatus Whereby One Potato Can Orbit Another), 1969 [which can be seen in action at that link in a brief, poor quality video], and even a joint potato-portrait of Krushchev and Nixon.

Later in the Guardian piece we learn of "pre-Hispanic Andean cultures' practice of rehearsing open brain surgery on potatoes," leading to the observation that

The human brain and a potato can be about the same shape and size, and both are mostly water.

Examples of Victor Grippo's potatoworks include Analogia I, which the Guardian reports to have upset the "burghers of Birmingham" who, when it was displayed in their city, "complained of Lottery money being spent on it and anyway, why didn't Grippo give his potatoes to the starving?"  Analogia IV involves fewer potatoes than its predecessor, combining real ones with a matching set of antimatter plexiglass doppelgangers.  This page (in Spanish) shows another view of Analogia IV, as well as the use of potatoes as an electrical power source, and expands the consideration of Grippo to his use of beans.  Another electrical potato, 1972's Energy of a Potato (or Untitled or Energy) [Energía de una papa (o Sin título o Energía)], is in the collections of London's Tate Modern.

Potatoes also come up in an interview published this week in the Raleigh-Durham Independent Weekly with musician/composer/artist and founder of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh, who concludes a discussion of the term "spud" with this summa of potatoes' virtues:

They're rough and they grew underground, but they had eyes all around so they saw everything that was going on.

Mothersbaugh's recent art work -- some of it directly Devo-related, some of it less so, none of it actually involving potatoes -- is surveyed at mutatovisual.com -- ::-- the visual art of mark mothersbaugh --::.

~~~

[Guardian potato link via 3quarksdaily; Mothersbaugh interview link via Hit & Run.  Photo: "Potato Heart" by micro (Mikael Cronhamn, Malmoe, Sweden) via stock.xchng.]

Tiki'd to Ride, or, "Look on My Works, ye Mai Tai . . ."

Earlier this year, I noted the sad news concerning the impending closure of the Trader Vic's restaurant in the Beverly Hilton Hotel.  The redevelopment process moves on, with the slow but steady pace typical of Los Angeles-area projects.  A discussion thread in the forums at Tiki Central is following the story.

Via Arts & Letters Daily comes a link to a fine overview article by Wayne Curtis in the current American Heritage magazine on the wonderful world of all things Tiki.  In particular, the article covers the fons et origo of Tiki culture in the twinned figures of Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, aka Donn Beach, aka "Don the Beachcomber," and Victor Bergeron, aka "Trader Vic."  Here is an excerpt covering Donn Beach's happy postwar ensconcement in Waikiki:

His restaurant became an instant landmark, more Hawaiian than most of Hawaii itself.  Beach amplified the faux-tropical theme with palms and thatch and a sweeping shingled roof, part space age, part ceremonial Polynesian meetinghouse.  The popular arranger and composer Martin Denny played at the restaurant’s Bora-Bora lounge for nine months straight.  Beach was often at the bar, a genial host wearing a gardenia lei that, he was quick to reveal, was for sale in the restaurant’s gift alcove.  A myna bird presided over the premises, trained to blurt out, “Give me a beer, stupid!”  In the boozy intimacy of late evenings, a gentle rain would often begin to patter on the corrugated metal roof over the bar — thanks to a garden hose Beach had installed.  (Always the businessman, he had observed that late-night drinkers tended to linger for another round if they thought it was raining outside.)

Why all that Caribbean rum in supposed "South Seas" drinks?  The practicality of Donn Beach supplies the answer:

He approached his drink menu the same way he approached his décor: with an eye toward frugality. Rum was the least expensive of the spirits, and Gantt had sampled a variety in his travels.

Just who invented the Mai Tai -- Beach or Bergeron -- remains a matter of dispute.  (Quoth Trader Vic:  “I originated the mai tai. Anybody who says I didn’t create this drink is a stinker.”)  A good recipe for same is included with the article.  Read it all to appreciate yet again the glory that was Vic and the splendor that was Don.

And now, Music  . . . . 

This is not a Tiki song, or even remotely Polynesian, but it is a bit of permanent no-smudge sunshine that fits here as well as it will anywhere else.   

Craig Bonnell of the songs:illinois weblog maintains that the semi-Swedish band Herman Dune has produced "the best song of the year" with "I Wish That I Could See You Soon" from their upcoming album, Giant.   I don't know that I will go that far, but they have certainly produced a confection that deserves a place in the permanent pop pantheon.   The tune has all the charm, and I would hope it will earn the permanence, of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl."  I t seems totally dispensable at first, but if you are hearing it on the radio (where it surely belongs) in forty years, it will still make you smile for hours afterward.   

Here is the video version, seemingly set in an alterate-world Sesame Street.   You can't argue with the angels, now can you?

[Tiki photo by booshe (Brett Mathews), via stock.xchng.]

You've Gotta Fight! for Your Right! to Pââââté!!

The dubious Chicago Foie Gras ban takes effect next Tuesday, August 22, and the toddlin' town is toddlin' to its high-priced restaurants for a final taste of the soon-to-be-forbidden avian organs.  Illinois restaurateurs are responding to the ban in the traditional American fashion, by filing suit to overturn it:

'The argument is that this [ban] violates interstate commerce and the city is usurping the federal government's power by banning a product that's federally approved for shipment across state lines,' said a source familiar with the lawsuit.

Chef Allen Sternweiler of Allen's New American Cafe will be a named plaintiff.  While other Chicago chefs were hesitant about signing onto the legal battle against the city, Sternweiler said, 'If the city wants to send a health inspector to my restaurant every other day for the next five years, let them do it. I have nothing to hide.'

'What's at stake is the ability of adults to order legal products, the production of which has been overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, when they choose to dine out in Chicago,' said Chris Robling, a spokesman for the Artisan Farmers Association.

Of related interest:

• Powerful Chicago Alderman Edward Burke has since proposed a citywide ban on cooking methods involving trans fats, asserting as a rationale: "If we can ban foie gras, we can ban this."

• Michael Krauss at PointofLaw.com points to the on again/off again love affair between the arch-nutitionists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and trans fat-laden vegetable oils.

• The Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro spins a tale of horrorshow videos and name calling behind the foie gras ban, while wondering whether foie gras-bound ducks and geese aren't better treated than the typical chicken.

• On July 25, Nick Gillespie hissed in gooselike fashion at the aldermanic sissies of Chicago with a catalog of their recent misdeeds.

• California will implement a ban in 2012 on the production, but not on the sale, of foie gras.  I wrote about the California legislation in the long-ago days of the 2004 presidential election campaign, and noted one candidate's fondness for the controversial foodstuff.

[Illustration -- Bark Drawing: Palmated Goose, (Kakadu Tribe), showing internal anatomy, from Baldwin Spencer's Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914), "Chapter XIV: Decorative Art," via the Internet Sacred Text Archive.]