THE CHEF FROM HELL

~ All The News That's Fit To Eat ~

What's the buzz?  Let's see....

I found this opinion piece from the LA Times on target:  "MEAT ROULETTE-- Nauseating as it was, last week's record-setting beef recall and the apparent feeding of meat from crippled "downer" cattle to our nation's children and others should come as little surprise. Although egregious to the point of obscenity, this latest meat scandal fits a pattern of regulatory anemia -- the byproduct of a decades-long bipartisan assault on "big government" -- that has opened the floodgates to all sorts of contamination shenanigans. The deregulated chickens, cows and pigs have come home to roost."   READ MORE...

Here's another item that caught my attention... from the ABC News site:  "Future Of U.S. Food Aid Programs In Peril-- The amount of emergency food aid the U.S. gives to poor countries is likely to be sharply reduced in coming months because of a steep jump in the price of basic commodities such as wheat and corn.  The U.S. Agency for International Development said that prices have increased 41 percent over the past six months, compared to a 34 percent increase in all of 2007 -- a hike that the agency estimates will cost it an additional $120 million, or roughly 10 percent of its total budget for food aid.  Much of the aid is distributed through the United Nation's World Food Program, which gets roughly 40 percent of its food aid from the U.S., and is facing a $500 million shortfall of its own. Overall, the U.S. supplies roughly half the world's food aid."  READ MORE...

Our last times is a report on how we taste our food that comes from the NPR site:  "Dinner Decodes The Mystery of Taste---  What do savignon blanc and urine have in common? That question and others you may or may not want answered were the subject of the 'How and Why Things Taste the Way They Do' dinner last night at Manhattan's Picnic Cafe. Professors Stuart Firestein and Terry Acree deconstructed just why diners enjoying chef Jean-Luc Kieffer's nine courses were experiencing the sensations they were.  A lovely Cream of Cauliflower soup served as a backdrop for discussion of how particle distribution influences our experience of creaminess. A mushroom, herb and parmesan polenta served as an example of umami, which joins salty, sweet, sour, and bitter as a taste for which we have a unique receptor.  Dessert, an Almond Cream, Raspberry and Lychee Tart, was served sans science. But just beforehand, diners tried what was called "A Taste of Pain": a splash of habanero sauce next to a teacup full of peppermint syrup. Diners learned the source of something they had certainly already experienced, the way peppermint and spicy foods stimulate hot and cold receptors chemically. As many hands reached for many glasses of water to cool burning mouths, Dr. Firestein explained that diners ought to be reaching for wine instead. The alcohol, of course, works as a solvent, a better fix for the pain-causing capsaicin compounds.

That's the news for this week!