noodsletter #.0025
I got a new job; have a baingan bharta sandwich.
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Book Bit
What is required for chutnification? Raw materials, obviously—fruit, vegetables, fish, vinegar, spices. Daily visits from Koli women with their saris hitched up between their legs. Cucumbers aubergines mint. But also: eyes, blue as ice, which are undeceived by the superficial blandishments of fruit—which can see corruption beneath citrus-skin; fingers which, with featheriest touch, can probe the secret inconstant hearts of green tomatoes; and above all a nose capable of discerning the hidden languages of what-must-be-pickled, its humors and messages and emotions … at Braganza Pickles, I supervise the production of Mary’s legendary recipes; but there are also my special blends, in which, thanks to the powers of my drained nasal passages, I am able to include memories, dreams, ideas, so that once they enter mass-production all who consume them will know what pepperpots achieved in Pakistan, or how it felt to be in the Sundarbans … believe don’t believe but it’s true. Thirty jars stand upon a shelf, waiting to be unleashed upon the amnesiac nation.
From Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, who was brutally attacked recently.
Actual News, Again
I don’t plan on making a habit of having news to share, but a lot’s been going on lately!
I accepted a job offer from ChefSteps earlier this month, and I will start working there at the beginning of the next. My last day at work at Serious Eats was this past Tuesday. I’ve worked at Serious Eats now for almost 5 years, and while it has been a privilege—truly my dream job!—it’s time for me to move on.
I worked with so many talented and good people over the years, it would be impractical to list them all here, but none of this would’ve been possible if Ed Levine and Niki Achitoff-Gray hadn’t inexplicably decided to hire me. I owe these two people a whole lot.
Here’s a brief list of some of the work I’m proud of from my time at Serious Eats. I obviously did far more, particularly on the editing side (and all the myriad small tasks that are requirement of putting out a website with a small staff), but I think the list illustrates the core strength of Serious Eats: Letting food geeks do whatever interests them. There’s no place like it on the web.
Essays:
What Does Food Media Smell Like?: Diversity and the Beard Awards
Easy, Peasy, Japanese-y: Benihana and the Question of Cultural Appropriation
The 10-Minute Window for the Perfect McDonald’s Mash-Up
We Pit Cup Noodles Against Cup Noodle and the Difference Is Real
We Cooked Steaks Coated in Peanut Butter Sous Vide So You Don't Have To
Recipes:
Spaghetti With Canned-Clam Sauce
Chinese-Style Layered Omelette
Radicchio, Endive, and Anchovy Salad
Pressure Cooker Chintan Shoyu Ramen (this is a stand-in for all ramen-related stuff I did on SE. The book has better recipes, but without the stuff I did for SE, there would be no book!)
Crispy Cheese- and Kimchi-Topped Skillet Rice
Interviews/Other Work:
Obsessed: We Talk to Reddit's /u/Ramen_Lord
Jamelle Bouie’s Cereal Reviews
These last two are also illustrative of a core principle of Serious Eats: People who are food geeks are interesting as hell. For the Mike Satinover “interview,” I barely did anything, I just let him do his thing, and do it he did. For Jamelle Bouie’s cereal reviews, I also barely did anything: I just emailed him to see if he wanted to do the video cereal reviews he was already doing on his Twitter account for us, and he said yes. That’s it!
Baingan Bharta Sandwich
I got a new phone and deleted all my old photos, and since I’ve had covid I haven’t had that many opportunities to take snaps of my food. But I did make some bharta, which was very good because it is both eggplant and tomato season. If you’ve got bad eggplant and bad tomatoes, bartha is amazing; if you’ve got good eggplant and good tomatoes, bharta is indescribably good.
And as one of my Instagram followers said, if you put bartha—good or bad!—on a piece of good sourdough, it makes an excellent sandwich. Please try it.
Bharta to my mind is just fried onions, ginger, and garlic with coriander mushed up with charred eggplant, but if you need a recipe, this one looks good.
I put a little pickled chili condiment under the bharta, for oomph, and a little good olive oil and flaky salt on top, also for oomph.
“News”
The photos in this piece about Connecticut dining tell a story.
Cool NYT examination of restaurant pricing.
What the price of mayo reveals about inflation and how we measure it.
“Vegan Butcher”? It’s just a vegan restaurant. Recalls the brief tenure of the risible “vegetable butcher” at Eataly. (Has anyone ever shopped for vegetables at Eataly? They’re not good!)
“The Bear” boosts Italian beef sandwich demand. The irony, again, is that the whole show is about people who would give anything to not be making Italian beef sandwiches. (Someone has to make a show about a good ramen shop.)
An ancient recipe for bronze, deciphered.
Aristotle and the way chickens copulate (very interesting!).
Domino’s failed in Italy because, as other people have observed, Domino’s is a tech company that has been outclassed by the rise of delivery apps. (Italians will eat Domino’s happily! Or, as happily as anyone can eat Domino’s.)
(Sort of related: I lived in India when Domino’s entered the market in 1996. We were so thrilled.)
The man who created Yakult. (Also: “The name Yakult comes from the Esperanto word for yogurt, “jahurto.” Incredible!)
Did you see the chorizo planet?
I can’t tell if Bon Appetit has lost the plot or is just leaning into its intended demographic with this food diary series. I suppose it depends on what they mean by “regular” in “In this time of rising food costs, The Receipt reveals how folks—from different cities, with different incomes, on different schedules—are figuring out their food budgets. Think Refinery29’s Money Diaries but only food or The Grub Street Diet but regular people.” If “regular” is a 27-year-old who makes $225k base salary per annum, “figuring out their food budget” seems pretty straightforward!
If “palates don’t lie” is the logic for arguing Taiwan is part of China, basically the entire world is Chinese. Conversely, given the spread of McDonald’s and Coke, the world is also depressingly American.
NYT review of Lucy Sante’s new book, Nineteen Reservoirs, about New York’s water supply.
Drought leads producers of Salers cheese to halt production.
If you’ve got an invasive pig problem, get thee some endangered crocodiles.
Hakata Ton Ton is reopening after being bought by the group that runs NoNoNo. Seems promising, at least on the noodle front.
Lots to peruse in the Lapham’s Quarterly food-themed issue!
A cheese scandal at Dane County Farmer’s Market!
This is an incredibly bizarre article about K-Pop idol-inspired eating disorder culture, and the anti-eating-disorder culture that it generated. This paragraph is written/edited in a way that’s deranged:
For some fans with eating disorders, K-pop culture is a refreshing change from American media, which is increasingly embracing the body positivity movement on the surface while continuing to glorify thin, idealized bodies. The K-pop industry doesn’t hide its thin-centric culture. In fact, it’s entirely open about the strict beauty standards, which reflect what bodies are seen as ideal in South Korea; a study showed that South Koreans had the strongest bias for thin people over fat people out of people from 71 nations. Management companies are known for controlling stars’ portions and instructing members to lose weight. Fans, anti-fans, and the media alike keep close tabs on artists’ bodies in publicized rankings or as fan war fodder. In one YouTube video, an audience member on a talk show criticizes F(x) member Sulli, saying that she is fat and needs to lose weight. Sulli died by suicide in 2019 following years of intense media scrutiny.
There can be good reasons for pay disparities between people who hold similar jobs, but what happened to Patricia Escárcega at the LA Times was reprehensible.