Michael Pollan -- You're no Julia Child
This will be brief because I have to cook dinner (another week in Venice, Florida, and supper will be permanently moved to 3:30 pm).
With the upcoming release of Julia and Julie, food pornographers everywhere are reminiscing about their love of Julia Child, widely credited with bringing French cooking to mainstream America.
Michael Pollan takes 8,272 words in tomorrow’s N.Y. Times magazine to say The Food Network appeals to eaters not cooks, that people wouldn’t be so fat if they had to make food with basic ingredients at home, and he’s nostalgic for his mother’s cooking.
Salon magazine has already driven a few trucks through the rather gaping holes in Pollan’s arguments and cherry-picked supporting evidence. About word 745, I recognized Pollan’s hypocrisy and wondered why I was reading this trash when I could be cooking?
And Dan Ackroyd at least deserves a cameo in the new movie for best Julia Child impersonation (although John Candy’s Julia on Second City TV, duking it out with Mr. Rogers in a boxing match during a satirical Battle of the PBS stars is a close second).
Ackroyd does the best Julia Child impersination
Meryl Strep as renowned culinaryist Julia Child? Sure. Some of the bloggers have seen the trailer and are not happy. Me, I’ll always prefer Ottawa native Dan Ackroyd’s take on Julie Child on an early Saturday Night Live.
When broccoli doesn't make you barf
My husband just sent me a link with a recipe for some amazing broccoli – The Best Broccoli of Your Life, in fact.
It was a blog post by The Amateur Gourmet, lauding the cooking style of The Barefoot Contessa.
The Barefoot Contessa loves roasting. Specifically, she loves roasting vegetables at a high temperature until they caramelize.
As the recipe for roasted broccoli is relayed, The Amateur Gourmet reveals a secret that the Contessa doesn’t share:
[D]ry them THOROUGHLY. That is, if you wash them.
I saw an episode of Julia Child cooking with Jacques Pepin once when Pepin revealed he doesn't wash a chicken before putting it in a hot oven: "The heat kills all the germs," he said in his French accent. "If bacteria could survive that oven, it deserves to kill me."
By that logic, then, I didn't wash my broccoli; I wanted it to get crispy and brown. If you're nervous, though, just wash and dry it obsessively.
USDA agrees that, "It is not necessary to wash raw chicken. Any bacteria which might be present are destroyed by cooking." Though the temperature is measured in the food – not the oven.
You can be sure chicken is safe if a tip-sensitive digital thermometer reads 165 F in the thickest part of it.
Not much is said about temps for vegetables, though. I vaguely remember the test for ServSafe certification a few years ago suggesting they reach 135 F, but that’s not even out of the 40 F – 140 F “danger zone” and I have no science to back it.
I have seen the science on the internalization of pathogens in some produce and in such cases washing will not make vegetables any safer to eat.
So I might just cook it unwashed. Or I might be “obsessive.” Either way, I’ve got what I need to make an informed decision; it’ll be my choice and not my ignorance that leaves the possibility for pathogens in.
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