Thou Shall Not Snark

With statements like “I hate mayonnaise, ketchup and people who enjoy food carts”, aren’t you worried about sounding like an elitist?

No, I am not worried about sounding like an elitist – Nothing wrong with being an elite, working to be the best of the best. There is a lot wrong with being a snob and I hope I don’t sound like one. Because as much as I don’t like ketchup - to me it is salted, red corn syrup. Yet every one I know and love pours ketchup on their fries because they like the flavor – I don’t think less of them or their human potential when they do so. One of my favorite people in the world says if her pantry drops below 2 full jars of mayonnaise she gets twitchy wants to go to the store – she is a really good cook and an exceptional baker. And I said the cart culture is what kills me: I love a good burrito, I just don’t have an attitude about what eating a burrito means culturally. I operate believing it is good to be engaged, passionate and opinionated. Better still when you can express yourself with learned conviction based on fact, experience and thought instead of opinion and theory.

Through the combination of being an autodidact and not having too many social obligations – I read a lot. I love books and can talk about great literary characters, how reading keeps my mind full of ideas and how the act of reading fundamentally makes me a more thoughtful person – yet when I talk about books, I tend to vent about grown men who read comic books and call them ‘graphic novels’, the navel-gazing, onanistic state of modern letters and the unhinged, guano crazy scribbling of Glenn Beck. Such is the nature of passion – it is easier to talk about what you hate rather than what you love. You certainly spend more time thinking about the things you don’t like than do like.

I am equally passionate about food and cooking - What I try to do here is be promote food. Encourage people to go into the kitchen and cook for themselves. Mostly, I am successful in my attempt to arm people with the knowledge and confidence to try it themselves. I do fail though and when I come up short, it is usually because I override my personal commandment: sincere is the new snark. The peril of expressing fervent beliefs is sounding bombastic. Rest assured when I state an opinion, I am not trying to be all Charlton Heston as Moses about [stuff] - if you don’t agree, don’t hate me, engage me. 

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Magna Carts

The 3rd annual food cart festival wrapped up over the weekend - Portland has around 500 legal food carts. The food cart has evolved, what used to be the ‘roach-wagon’ is now the low-rent darling of the foodatistas. This is a turn of events that I should embrace. Financially, the carts are all the things you want - A low-overhead, cash enterprise based on a product rather than a credit driven derivative; a business that doesn’t rely on marketing expertise and one that has a low enough capital investment that gives people a chance to realize the long hours of physically demanding, mentally repetitive work before they buy a restaurant of their own. Culinarily, proprietors must focus on a narrow if not singular menu options. Make the best Korean beef, curry, noodles, bahn mi or burrito – you don’t need 20 additional items to round out your menu – do one thing, do it very well and focus on your strength in order to grow and be successful. For consumers – the carts might be the last bastions of the affordable lunch. As an added bonus, the carts are a thorn in the side of restaurant association and chamber of commerce types who publicly decry any government oversight until they want to drive the carts out of existence through selective enforcement of regulations.

I should be a booster of these particular small businesses but something gets lost in the translation. If you love food there is an unspoken belief that you must love all things about it. Worse still, if you love food, you are supposed to love what is new and creating a buzz but love is fickle though and I just don’t love the carts.

I don’t hate the carts - I hate ketchup, jars of mayo, personable waiters, flavorless chicken and tasteless produce – what I almost hate is the cart culture. Ever since a developer built a ‘cart-pod’ 100 feet from my apartment - J’accuse cart enthusiasts of 3 great crimes – the attraction to skinny jeans is unforgivable; their general lack of interest in cooking wounds me but the cartsters speak highly of foods that are just salt and fat wrapped in an indie/DYI attitude, rolled into a burrito shape and dipped in Sriracha. Liking foods that come out of the fryer isn’t that difficult - keep eating like that and your jeans aren’t going to fit – sorry, they are going to fit less than they already do.

Dan Savage commented and linked to a nice defense of skinny jean’d hipsters last week at the Slog. I am too lazy to lookfor it but it went something like this – who cares if people who are the same age and like the same music and work industry jobs hang out together even if the girls wear a beehive and the boys have beards. But before he reached the plateau of compassion, Dan ranted about the boys beards much in the same way, I find myself ranting about what is wrong with the foods they eat. If I slow myself down – it isn’t the food: It doesn’t offend me they aren’t eating fine cheese but the cartsters drive to the food pod, that’s right they drive to the establishments with wheels – to eat fried food or ‘vegan’ sushi and act like they have invented something. Everyone is uniquely indie eating at the same carts, having the same number of tats, owning the same iphone – it is almost like their personal identity is all about what they own and consume to the point they have confused what they buy with what they do and think.

And yes I can tell all that from 100 feet away in my apartment - now get off my lawn. What happened to me? BTW- the winner of the cart festival, The Frying Scotsman. 

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Aye - O'Lee

At this point of your life do you ever learn anything new about cooking?

Food, always. Cooking, at this point I have the fundamentals down, so the learning curve isn’t quite the roller coaster it used to be, but there is always something new to discover.

A while ago I was reading a book where the author claimed extra virgin olive oil is too delicate for a whisk. I cringe when I see what Rachel Ray calls EVOO go into a machine - Despite what you read in books or see on TeeVee, never put good olive oil in a food processor or blender – both machines make strong emulsions; unfortunately, the flavor of the oil changes from fruity to more of a refined industrial oil type of taste.

When I read the whisk/olive oil thing, I dismissed it – especially since it came from a book that was good but spent most of its time on the border between fussy and pedantic. I didn’t believe a whisk could mess up olive oil, I also didn’t want to tsk-tsk a well-articulated idea only because I had a preconceived notion of how things work in the kitchen. So, I tried whisking the low acid olive oil in a Caesar Dressing and I made aioli in a mortar & pestle – tasting them side by side, the Caesar dressing had a little bit of that post-industrial flavor to it – the mortar & pestle I could really taste the pure flavor of the olive oil.

While one test does not make a scientific truth, the results were reinforced each time I whisked really good olive oil. Now, I won’t allow a whisk anywhere near extra virgin olive oil – I wish I owned a big French mortar and pestle like above, I know it is a dream I can realize but in the meantime I have taken to making aioli in a stainless steel bowl by pounding with a wooden spoon – a low-tech response to a quick and convenient society but the results are superior. Now that artichokes and asparagus are in season, I think the potent mixture of garlic, oil and egg is what every cook needs to be able to bust out.

Aioli

6-8 cloves garlic

1 egg yolk

2/3 – 3/4  cup olive oil 

Coarse sea salt

Peel garlic, cut root end off. You have a choice on how to proceed – 

You can add the garlic to a small pan and heat with a ¼ cup of olive oil over medium-low heat until the garlic softens but not browns; remove the garlic from the pan and add to a small bowl and beat until it is pasty. - By gently heating the garlic you retain the garlic flavor but loose that raw garlic bite. 

Or you can skip the warming of the garlic and just start beating the garlic in a bowl with salt and pound the garlic and the sea salt together until it is a wet paste.

Separate the yolk from white; add yolk to a small bowl with the garlic. Begin working with a wooden spoon – Slowly – begin add the oil – The first 3 to 4 Tablespoons should be drop by drop, literally drop by drop - the time you take here will save you heartache, it is worth the 120 - 150 seconds - if you warmed the garlic, use the warm oil to start. Drop by drop can be accelerated to a small stream – pour oil against the side of your bowl while continually pounding the mixture with a wooden spoon.

In theory an emulsion can hold any amount of liquid, recipes routinely advise for anywhere from a ½ to a full cup of oil per egg yolk. I find 3/4 cup of oil is the most true ration, start to slow down when you get to 2/3 a cup. The final result should have a nice thick consistency. Slowly add the oil to the bowl by drizzling it against the side. If you are feeling dangerous, keeping adding until you reach a cup - The thing is the aioli will stay thick until it breaks – separating the eggs from the liquid – there is no warning sign at all. 

Cover and refrigerate until your meal is ready – White fish, roasted potato and green veg either together or separately are all good excuses for aioli.

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La Cucina Manifesto

In 1891, after being rejected by countless publishers, a retired 71 year-old merchant and banker named Pellegrino Artusi decided to self-publish a cookbook. Weighing in at 790 recipes long, devoid of things like useful measurements and purposefully written in a Tuscan dialect at time when there was no singular Italian language, the book with the clumsy title Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well has never gone out of print. 111 editions, translated into 25 languages – the book so common, referred to only as L’Artusi, still shapes, defines and inspires Italian cuisine.

How is this so? Improbable doesn’t begin to describe the odds of a man who was born before his country - let alone an Italian identity - existed; lived at a station in life that did not require him to ever lift a cooking utensil would write the formative book on Italian cookery.

Italy, as it exists today, happened only after World War II. For the people now known as Italians, it took close to 60 years in the 19^th Century to form a nation out of disparate provinces overseen by the Bourbons, Hapsburgs, the pontiff and Napoleonic heirs. Artusi grew up and lived under the idea of unification and was himself an ardent supporter of Italian nationalism. As an intellectual, not a radical, Artusi looked to arts and letters as a way to forge the new Italian National identity.

Born in Romagna, which despite the sound of its name is not the home state of Rome and the Vatican, but a region stretching east from the Adriatic over the north borders of Tuscany.  In his 40s, he relocated to Tuscany to better learn the nuances of the dialect already considered to be the language of Italian literature. As book collector, Artusi had a fascination with cookbooks, owning works from pre-renaissance papal chefs. In l’Artusi, AKA scienza, the author often despairingly comments on the fussiness of these high dishes. In Artusi’s correspondence, he is rankled by the fact that cookbooks are either written in French or translated from French into high Italian. 

There is no polemic, no 19th century la cucina manifesto – laying out the importance of a national cuisine, instead a sole man collecting recipes from all parts of the Italian peninsula who regards the rice and fowl dishes of Venice with the same reverence as vegetables like the eggplant and tomato from the south – the first cookbook to call for what are now considered Italian staples but a 120 years ago, not so much – food indelicately thought to be of and for Turks, Jews and Spaniards (more on how Italian food became Italian in a future post).

While forward-looking writing explains how the book became popular, it does little to account for the book’s popularity over 120 years, considering food fashions change as quickly as couture and political ideas do. In the 1930’s one of Mussolini’s lieutenants, believing pasta made the Italians weak, once shot a plate of carbonara in contempt, yet L’Artusi remained in print through Fascist-modernist period.

When I pick up l’Artusi, I find an encouraging witty voice to cheer me on, gently challenging me to try new things in a strange way like Emeril Lagasse only more avuncular, less immediate. I find a man who approaches food like I do, not about calories and carbs but more as an occasion to tell a story to share ideas as much as food. Artusi uses ‘Il mangiare come metaphora del pensare’ – eating as a metaphor for thinking – some speak of a thirst for knowledge, Scienza has an appetite for life and I love to read it.

  

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Some Days are Earthier than Others

Here in the Pacific NW, the actual April 22 - with a near Mardi Gras like vibe to it, Earth Day is as earthy as you get. Guilt and celebration bound together like two strands of DNA - right down to people getting drunk and flashing each other their carbon footprints.

From land fill issues to energy consumption to processing - food plays a huge part in how we use our resources on this planet. All the energy that goes into feeding people and 40% of all food produced in the US is wasted. That’s right 4-0, over 1/3 of all food grown, processed and distributed is thrown out. Here the issue isn’t the fault of a giant faceless corporation.

On average 20% of all fresh produce is wasted by consumers. That doesn’t even account for what grocery stores are tossing out because customers won't buy blemished goods – this is at home, out of the shopping bag waste. If the argument that fruits and veg are expensive - our choices are adding to the expense of eating fresh. Some of this is inescapable: Right now in my fridge, I have some cilantro decomposing…it was sold in a bundle that was way too big, not only for a single fella, but was too much for a largish family who host a weekly taco night. Would I have paid 3/4 of the price of a bundle 1/2 the size? You bet ya. In an industry driven by total sales, a smaller bundle means selling less, albeit at a better margin. For a grower getting paid for the total amount of cilantro they deliver, a realistically sized portion doesn’t offer quite the same benefit; by selling half as much, they would make half as much.

What is avoidable - the salad greens I throw out. Americans average over 3 trips a week to the grocery store. I do not need to purchase 7 days worth of lettuce/lettuces/lettuci on my main shopping trip, I will be back in the store within 2 days. I misoverestimate my appetite for greens – eating 3 salads and opting for a burger and beer instead of salad #4. Some people, who shall remain nameless, seemingly buy lettuce on the assumption the purchase will lead to a healthier eating habits - as if they are going to eat better simply by purchasing greens. Every week old lettuce gets thrown out, only to be replaced by new lettuce – it is the produce equivalent of buying a lottery ticket – playing not to win, instead spending the $1 to think about what it would be like to be rich.

I don’t really feel bad about that last salad until I throw the wilted leaves out, then I feel wasteful. Feeling bad isn’t a great motivation, if I had an earth day wish, I’d like to get to the point where I am a little more aware when I am shopping – now who checks that Earth Day list to see who is resourceful and nice, is it really Al Gore?


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Double Your Fun

The internet says to make pastry cream on the stove, shouldn’t it be cooked in a double boiler?

Here the internet is actually right – and I’m not just saying that because my kitchen wisdom is delivered via the magic that is the internet. Pastry creams are custards; very basic custards made of eggs/egg yolks, milk, a binding agent, sweetener and vanilla flavoring. Rather than a standalone dessert, pastry creams tend to be used as a building blocks - Ice creams, donuts, cake fillings - all call upon pastry creams to make a better dessert.

Pastry creams thicken between 175-185ºf. An electric stove heats at about 2,000ºf – Gas burns at a 3,000-3,500ºf, a double boiler is only going to warm up to 200ºf and some change – it would seem that a double boiler, a pan set over hot water, would be a safer bet for keeping the pastry cream within its proper temperature window between not thickened and curdled.

But the addition of the binding agent traditionally flour, more nouvelle recipes call for cornstarch, insulate the egg proteins and allow for the intense heat of the stovetop. Well that and constant stirring motion diffuses the heat.

A calibrated thermometer is the best way to keep track of the heat, remove from the stove at 170ºf  (the residual heat will continue to thicken the sauce) and pour into a cool bowl – if you let the mixture climb over 190, the sauce will start to break apart - first little puddles will form. Boiling the pastry cream will scramble the eggs in the dish, well it isn’t really scrambled eggs with all the sugar but that is what it will look like.

Some authors recommend not to touch the pastry cream after goes into the cool bowl because the additional stirring breaks down the starch matrix, other authors advise to stir constantly so the mixture cools – much like the internet there is a little inconsistency in information.

Perhaps here, the internet recipe was confused, there are similar custard sauces such as crème anglaise, zabaglione and sabayon that call for the use water insulated double boilers. Or maybe the web shares my near religious belief that the single biggest obstacle standing in the way of good home cooking is high temperatures – to the novice or distracted cook the high heat of the stove would cause the pastry cream to break/curdle.

I’m curious why you are looking up recipes on a medium you find suspect? Because it is acceptable to look at the internet at work; but no cookbooks in the cubicle – how unfair is that?  Saucyman is always double sourced for your protection, but largely unedited, so mistakes happen. On the book-side, despite legions of editors, my experience is not every cookbook is 75% accurate. As fun and easy it is to make fun of the veracity of interwiki information, I think any cook should be skeptical of recipe by an authors they haven’t tried before.

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Whack-a-mole

How did the Mole turn out? I’m intimidated by the recipe, is it really that hard to make?

At the risk of sounding gastrocistic (narcissism + food = love of your own cooking), the mole was good. Similar to what damp, cold to chilly day does for soup and fresh bread - a sunny, warm to hot day would have made this specific food taste better but it is Oregon in April – so that one is on me. Still even with a little rain, spicy food, cold beer, good dinner company, I was happy.

As for the difficulty of making Mole Poblano; yeah and no. Depending on the particular recipe, there are 26-30 ingredients requiring all the stovetop skills: deep-frying, sautéing, toasting and poaching. Off the heat, there is a fair amount of hand work: cutting, dicing, measuring, deseeding, mortar & pestleing, pureeing and there really aren’t any shortcuts…Deep frying dried chilies causes the unique feeling that someone set off pepper mace in the kitchen but it has to be done this way. Like garam masala (curry), the spices come alive when they are dry sautéed/toasted/bloomed - they just can’t be measured into a pot. The spices, almonds and sesame seeds absolutely need to be ground in a mortar & pestle; blenders and food processors leave little chunks, which in this case, aren’t cool, not at all.

Mole is like another recipe that scares the bevishnu out of home cooks, puff pastry. People get the idea only skilled, master bakers can get the dough to rise. If you can make pie dough, you can make puff pastry – actually, because you don’t have to worry about keeping the butter properly sized, puff pastry might be easier to make. Similarly, Mole Poblano isn’t so much about skill, as it is about time and organization.

There is also the lesser issue of technique – If you can do more in your kitchen than reheat the food you bought at a cart, you can make mole. Deep-frying isn’t rocket surgery; the fryalator is the starting point for trainees out in the fast food enterprises. The mortar & pestle; turning things into a paste by repeatedly hitting them with a stick: if you can listen to the radio during a pledge drive, you understand the repetitive, slow-paced, dull rhythm necessary to complete this requirement. The hardest part of the recipe might be the dry roasting of the spices and the poaching – these two critical steps need to be done at really low heat. Everybody loves high heat, cooking is flame and fire and action and reaction, right?

If you want to get in the kitchen and reel off an exquisite dinner, this isn’t the recipe for that style of cooking. Much like genoise cake or candy making, tasks that require attention and high concentration, don’t really work to my strengths. But you can make a really good mole if you set aside a couple of hours for 2 or 3 days to complete the different tasks required by the recipe. 

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No Time to Write; Must Cook

And clean. People are coming over for dinner tomorrow. Chicken Mole, rice, beans – I’ll have Carl take time out from the poeming to hand roll some tortillas. To get started - Beer and Empandas of corn, cilantro, shallot, lime and fresh cheese; ice cream with tamarind caramel and coffee macaroons to finish.

Mole isn’t really one particular thing – it is a Nahuatl word meaning mixture or concoction – Guac-a-mole is the most prevalent type of mole, but generally when people refer to a Mole, they are talking about Mole Poblano – rich, chili based sauce that contains over 2 dozen ingredients. Because one ingredient is chocolate (and the sauce is a beautiful chocolate brown), the dish is sometimes described in a shorthanded way as - a spicy chocolate sauce, which really isn’t all that accurate. And I should really do a better job of explaining it. Besides if you were in Oaxaca feasting on the real, true, honest sauce, you would be getting cacao seeds instead of chocolate ground into your Mole.

There are many fantastical stories surrounding the birth of Mole Poblano…One known as  Meal Comes for the Archbishop credits the origin of the dish to Sor Andrea, sister superior of the Santa Rosa Convent, wishing to give thanks and praise to the clergy who funded her New World order invented this dish to honor the Archbishop. In another narrative, it is a Viceroy (or more probably, the Viceroy’s cook) who serves the dish to either Spanish nobles or high church officials. People love these food genesis stories…As I have mentioned before all the same elements are present – a big wig, a notable occasion and a middling scribe who records what a big whop this is.

It’s as if centuries from now historians promulgate the idea the Philly Cheese Steak was invented because Sarah Palin visited a Philadelphia establishment. Reporters, a Presidential Campaign, a visiting governor from the frontier – so the owner of the restaurant threw together a dish that would both reflect their local community and honor the common-folk nature of the dignitary. Stories like these are always nonsense. Cooks make food with the ingredients available to them. Again not to get all Howard Zinn about this [stuff], it is entirely possible for a dish to have existed before it crossed the lips of the Archduke of Inbredness. Just sayin.

Besides for tomorrow’s meal, there aren’t any nobles and unless Carl writes something as well, only I will be there to record the occasion. Plus, I am not inventing anything, I am using Rick Bayless’ recipe, although Diane Kennedy’s is both good and similar, the Bayless book is a tradition. Now I have to get to the kitchen, 26 ingredients don’t combine themselves.  

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Sunchoke Daydream

In my day job, the one I am constantly encouraged to not quit, I sell books. Somewhere in between my blogging life and book life, I advise Portland Farmers Market on how to use Social Media. It is the best, most, greatest gig in the world. How often to you get to work with people who want to be create the best of something? It is an inspirational environment to be in. Plus, through the power of Social Media, I get to promote area farmers, ranchers, growers and small businesses to potential customers, allowing them to focus on what they do best – growing and making food.

This week, the Market is hosting a contest over on Facebook and Twitter to see who can provide the best description of a sunchoke/Jerusalem Artichoke in 7 or fewer words. The winner gets a jar of sunchoke relish from the Market’s new vendor, Sassafras Catering. I don’t, I didn’t know all that much about sunchokes before the contest started, but keeping with contest’s guidelines, I will try to post sunchoke facts 7 or fewer words at a time…

•    Sunchoke is called as girasole in Italian
•    Relative of Sunflower, grown for enlarged root
•    Tuber isn’t from Israel, nor an artichoke
•    Native Canadians planted it as a crop
•    The sunflower is native to Peru
•    One recipe – roasted sunchoke & sunflower seeds
•    Popular veg in France, occasionally deep-fried in States
•    Shopping: sans sprouts & bruises
•    Select firm root, similar to purchasing ginger
•    Used in soup or pickled in Vinegar
•    Sassafras Catering likes theirs with sharp cheese
•    Pureed in Piedemontese sauce with garlic, anchovies
•    Inulin, sugar in sunchoke, gives people gas
•    Inulin, unlike normal sugars, is indigestible
•    Color: white, tan, silver, red - occasionally purple
•    Hippies serve with quinoa, call it tabouli
•    Risotto, dip, salsa and other variations possible
•    Usually cooked, try grating raw in salads
•    Flavor similar to artichoke, brazil nut, jicama
•    One enthusiast likens to truffle; he’s wrong
•    Americas eat very few, mostly in south





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Oh Mighty Xérès

What is the difference between cooking sherry, drinking sherry and sherry vinegar?

Sherry is a fortified, aged wine made from white grapes. The drink was the first Spanish wine to be designated Denominación de Origen, like the French system of appellations, sherry and only sherry comes from the province of Cadiz, near the area of Jerez, Spain. Legally, even if growers harvest Palomino grapes, they cannot produce true sherry outside this region - there is no such thing as an Californian, French or Argentinean sherry and the keepers of the sherry brand are litigious enough to slap that word off the bottle of pretenders. Proponents of terroir - the belief or science that microclimates and cultural traditions of a very specific area make a product unique to the very land it came from - claim that the chalky, white earth; the heat of the Spanish sun that speeds up evaporatation and white grapes grown in the arid environment all conspire to make sherry the exclusive province of southwestern Spain.

Sherry vinegar is a type of vinegar made from the same grapes used to produce sherry. Vinegar comes from the French, vin aigre = sour wine, but the acidic liquid isn’t always made from wine. There is Cider vinegar, Malt vinegar and Rice vinegar. Vinegar is a result alcohol oxidizing - aerobic bacteria, sets upon alcohol turning it to acetic acid. What was once the ancient’s curse of spoiled vintages, soon became the preserver’s boon. Although, the understanding of bacteria is relatively new, controlled cultures have existed for millennia. Even in the modern era of microscopes and Petri dishes - vinegar makers use a 'mother', bacteria from the previous batch of vinegar is added to a new lot to aid the growth of desirable cultures.

Cooking wines are low-grade wines, made from second and third pressings of grapes. Truly bottom of the barrel stuff - made with extra salts to help preserve them for the many months/years they will spend stored waiting to be used. The general rule of thumb with wines is if you wouldn’t drink it, you shouldn’t cook with it. I actually like the extra flavor that comes from younger, non-vintage, mixed variety wines (read boxed). Sweet and young in the kitchen is fine but I cannot abide by the saltiness of cooking wines. Despite being lower grade - ounce for ounce, cooking wines cost 3 to 4 times more than vintage wines. I find that sherry itself, because it is fortified (brandy is added after the fermentation is complete, moving the alcohol content up to 30 proof), keeps really well. However, I am fairly unique in this view: In Jerez, sherry is served in what would be considered ½ bottles (350ml); what is untippled is said to be poured out, not worthy of saving. 

Both wine and vinegar are made from grapes and both are acidic, but the products aren’t really interchangeable. Wine, including sherry, contains about ½ - 1% acid by volume, not really all that acidic, especially compared to vinegar’s 4-8% acid (pickle brine comes in at 18% acid). If a recipe calls for sherry vinegar and you are out or have never owned sherry vinegar, feel free to substitue white wine vinegar, or a vinegar made from white grapes like champagne or chardonany.


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Kombucha My Lord, Kombucha

I cringe a little when I hear the phrase “it’s good for you”. Foodwise, nothing is really that good (or that awful) for a person. Mostly, the phrase is used to sell a reluctant eater on trying a food, it is like saying “This isn’t any good, now take a bite/sip”. It is the selling point of last resort – Spinach, is good for you, rather than it tastes good. Chard likewise is good for you. Lately, Kombucha is what does a body good.

Kombucha tastes like sweetened-fungal-tea –  flavors are noticeable in that order – so the phrase “it’s good for you” might be the drink’s only selling point. Kombucha’s adherents take “good for you” to a unique level. In a culture where the value of fact and opinion are conflated, treated with equal reverence, personal convictions about detox brews, liver health and anti-microbial properties might seem like universal truths solely because you feel strongly about them. If you maintain 16oz of sweetened Kombucha negates a half pack of cigarettes – fine, just don’t tell me about it.

There is little scientific research supporting the idea you can detox your body by eating certain foods. Sure not smoking, doing drugs, drinking or eating red meat for an extended period of time does the body good, just don’t think it is the brown rice, organic zucchini and Kombucha that is doing the work. Likewise, the theories about probiotics and anti-microbial activity are just that, theories.

Boosters of probiotics claim by ingesting cultured foods, like yogurt, that good enzymes will inhabit your digestive system, leaving no room or food for bad agents to colonize in your body. There is some evidence supporting this, not to the extent that it is promulgated, but nascent findings coupled with an absolute authority like Jamie Lee Curtis hinting that probiotics keep you regular, well what more evidence do you need? The hypothesis of anti-microbial activity is roughly the same – good Kombucha microbes live in your body so bad ones cannot establish themselves

A recent Cornell study, found drinking Kombucha, “demonstrated no anti-microbial properties”. Is a study that contradicts the specific issue enough to deter Kombucha partisans from believing their drink has anti-microbial properties?

Because modern, western medicine treats symptoms and not the underlining cause of a disorder, it is derided for its lack of virtue and wisdom. Without dismissing the possibilities of the regenerative strength of your own body and the power of a healthy diet, I pose this question - Whose advice would you follow - a western doctor with 12 years of training or somebody who has done ‘research’ on the internet and recommends you to treat a flare up of chlamydia with poultice of clove and pear and drinking cranberry infused Kombucha?





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