The Central Valley, agriculture, and water.
This was linked to on HungryOnion (The New Yorjer-The Great Organic-Food Fraud - Food Media and News - Hungry Onion):
Reminds of the multi-part investigative series âFarm to Fableâ from the Tampa Bay Times:
The once and future tuber
snicker Yep! Long may they reign!
Wow, thatâs article about Okinomiyaki in Hiroshima is one of the best food stories Iâve read all year.
If youâre looking for some great long-form pieces related to Chinese food, I highly recommend this site:
Great story. Not something Iâd ever heard of before. And I also thought the term hoagie was limited to PA and NJ.
It smelled like a hazelnut torte that had taken a tumble in the moss with a wood nymph. It was the prettiest piece of fungus Iâd ever seen, wrapped in a jewel-like burgundy coat. As I shaved it over linguine, waves of cocoa, clove cigarettes, and sweaty spice billowed up, as seductive as anything Iâd encountered in Europe. I thought: Has one of the worldâs greatest wild ingredients been sitting in our backyard all along, waiting for someone to notice?
Another article on the subject:
Interesting claim that Oregon truffles are better when theyâre hunted with dogs.
Kind of makes sense intuitively- they found those truffles in the Outdoor article without the dog but they had no smell and were unripe. I guess if theyâre pungent itâs more likely a dog would be able to locate themâŚ?
Dave Arnold mentioned a couple times he tried to train his dog to find truffles using truffle oil. I think he used the synthetic product but it seemed worth a try in case the âactive ingredientâ is present in the oil and the truffle (plus I think he wasnât about to bust out actual truffles to train his dog). That said, as I recall the dog got good at finding the oil but never ran into any truffles where he lived. Hard to say if it was because there were no truffles, the dog wasnât that great at finding them or if it just didnât work but kind of an interesting attempt all the same.
Artificial truffle aroma attempts to replicate the aroma of white Alba truffles (Tuber magnatum Pico). Most other truffles smell nothing like those. From those articles I donât get the impression that Appalachian or pecan truffles do.
Yup, thatâs certainly a likely explanation why it didnât work. He talked about that a little bit and it kind of seemed like more of a lark that he wasnât pursuing very seriously
(This is from 1967 and written by Nicholas Pileggi who also âGoodfellasâ and âCasinoâ - the books and screenplays.)
Warning that this is a disquieting read (as it should be, given the topic).
On a weekend afternoon in 2021, Blanca met with several trackers at a restaurant near a beach south of Los Mochis. Over grilled fish, ceviche, and aguachile, the women teased and argued and bantered. Mentions of forensics and visits to the prosecutorâs office were punctuated by the snap of Tecate beer cans opening.
âFeasting allows the loneliness and terror of existence to be forgotten, at least momentarily,â anthropologist Gina Rae La Cerva has written. âSuch pleasure brings us into that raw, mad, deep love of life.â Feasting can also be a venue for the sharing and salving of pain.
@robert posted this link in a thread discussing the lack of Fujian restaurants in LA.
Itâs well worth a read.
And, if you find that interesting, you might want to check out Patrick Radden Keefeâs âThe Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dreamâ:
I like the Murakami vibe.