By Tony Judt

Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap—and refills are free. Being largely without flavor it can be diluted to taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satisfaction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. It is not a drink; it is an artifact.

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Brian Fair, one of Toscanini's greatest musicians stopped by for a cup of coffee.  He and his band are heading out to South America for a tour.  They are still rockin', including stops in Russia and Australia.  Brian was famous for his music, his hair, being the president of his high school class and graduating from BU with a literature degree.  He used to make ice cream while doing phone interviews with Japanese fans and music writers. 

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The James Beard Awards are important in the broad world of food, foodies and eaters.  Chef Tony Maws of Central Square's Craigie on Main was nominated for best chef, Northeastern, as was Marc Orfaly of Pigalle in Boston and Michael Leviton of Lumiere in Newton.  Corby Kummer writes and edits about food in many places, including Boston magazine and The Atlantic.com and was not nominated this year.  The Globe's Sheryl Julien was nominatedf for editing the best food section. And former Cambridge resident and Sharon native Steve Solomon was nominated for the second year in a row.  Steve designed the vivid logo for the Food24fps festival of films about food.  He was cited for his work creating Terroir winestore in Manhattan

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Food on Twitter: The Beautiful Schizophrenia of @ruthbourdain

screenshot of @ruthbourdain's twitter page

​If you haven't heard of Ruth Bourdain, the Twitter mashup of food rock stars Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain, you need to. It's possibly the funniest thing we've heard in weeks. Months. Longer. To get up to speed on what you've been missing, read the tumblr, the tweets, and today's profile by Food News Journal.

@ruthbourdain hit Twitter two weeks ago, a hilarious send up of two very distinct personalities, who are–of course–as much-loved by the author of the tweets as the rest of us. Ruth Reichl, the legendary former editor of Gourmet, tweets; Anthony Bourdain does not, although he may just have to. No word on what the No Reservations host thinks of this, but Reichl, a very funny woman in her own right, tweeted back this morning: "@kimseverson Flo Fab as @ruthbourdain? Now THAT would be a surprise!"

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There is no better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than being featured in the Boston Globe in a nice story about green ice cream

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2010/03/17/the_green_streak_at_toscaninis_ice_cream_in_cambridge/

	THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

G FORCE | GUS RANCATORE He has a taste for green By Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff  |  March 17, 2010 Gus Rancatore isn’t Irish. At least I don’t think he is. But, with his sister Mimi, he runs Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge, and so we were not surprised to discover that he is a man for all occasions — including Saint Patrick’s Day. Q. It’s Saint Patrick’s Day. I don’t suppose you make any Irish-related ice cream? A. We make Baileys, which I think was invented by the Irish milk board. We make an ice cream variation on the Baileys and orange juice Dreamsicle. And we make Guinness, but not for “The Irish,’’ as they once were, who think this is an abomination. Guinness is sold all over the world. In Trinidad people make Guinness pies and Guinness ice cream. Guinness is sweet and has a distinctive molasses flavor to it. So we sell this flavor to people from the islands, and we sell it year round. Q. Are you sure it works as an ice cream? A. Yes, it works, as does wort, which we make with wort, the unfermented beginnings of beer, from Cambridge Brewing Co. Both flavors have grain-like tones that work well for restaurants when served with cakes and pies or tarts and tortes. Q. I’m liking this theme! Let’s stick with it. What’s the greenest ice cream you make? A. Green tea. I like green tea in almost anything. Green tea shakes are good. I had green tea waffles at a Vietnamese sandwich shop and they were good, as are the green tea Kit Kat bars eaten by Japanese students during exam season. We also make basil and fresh mint, which are pale in color. Q. What’s better: green tea, pistachio, green apple, or mint ice cream? A. Green apple sorbet is number one. Green tea is number two. Pistachio ice cream is usually not green, although the nuts may be tinged with green. Mint ice cream is pale green when made with fresh mint. Once a customer asked me why our mint flavors were not green. I said it wasn’t natural to have bright green or pink mint ice cream. He said if all the other ice cream stores made green ice cream, and we didn’t, then we were wrong. We remain wrong, in so many ways. Q. Would you ever make broccoli ice cream? I reckon I could sell that to my kids. A. Kevin Rafferty, our chef, said, “You can make ice cream out of anything, but that doesn’t mean you have to make it out of everything.’’ All of us think that broccoli is a bad idea for ice cream, even the people who love broccoli. We have made avocado ice cream, which is popular in Mexico and parts of the Pacific. It makes a wonderful creamy flavor, but Americans think of avocados as a vegetable and made so many stupid jokes that the servers begged us not to make it again. Some smart and clever chef like Heston Blumenthal in England will undoubtedly make broccoli. It will be delicious and it will never be popular. Interview was condensed and edited.

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Jenny White teaches anthropology  at BU, often writing about Turkey.  She also writes a series of detective novels set in the declining days of the Ottoman Empire.  The books are published throughout the world and the newest book in the series is The Winter Thief.

The book received a rave review from the Washington Post's Maureen Corrigan.  Jenny will be reading from the new book and greeting her fans on Monday night, March 15, starting at 6PM, at Toscanini's.  899 Main Street, Centrsl Square, Cambridge, Ma. 

By Maureen Corrigan
Monday, March 8, 2010; C03

THE WINTER THIEF

By Jenny White

Norton. 400 pp. $24.95

Jenny White's new historical suspense novel, "The Winter Thief," is set mostly in Istanbul in 1888, but throughout my reading of it I kept thinking of Ken Loach's award-winning 1995 film, "Land and Freedom." Loach's look at the Spanish Civil War focuses on an idealistic young Brit who joins the International Brigades to fight the fascists. I remember seeing the film with a friend who was uncharacteristically silent afterward. Eventually, he shook off his mood to say one thing in response to the story: "I would have been killed." My companion wasn't being self-aggrandizing; in fact, he was probably right. Loach's movie brought home the fact that our lives are pawns to our convictions as they intersect with the whims of the historical moment. That, too, is the message of White's ambitious novel, which is more interested in exploring the unforeseen consequences of political and personal loyalties than it is in fully cranking up the machinery of the standard thriller.

The novel opens on a scene of passionate naivete that, of course, comes to no good end. Vera Arti is a new bride who has defied her wealthy Armenian family and secretly married a communist organizer named Gabriel. On a snowy Christmas Day in Istanbul, Vera makes her way to the office of an Armenian publisher. In her hands is a copy of "The Communist Manifesto," which she implores the publisher to print so that "the Armenian people will find the strength to resist oppression . . . by joining the International Movement, by standing shoulder to shoulder with other oppressed peoples around the world."

Vera has only an elementary understanding of the rhetoric she's spouting. She gravitated toward communism out of compassion for the suffering masses and because of her love for Gabriel. The newlyweds are merely stopping in Istanbul before they journey to a utopian commune called New Concord, situated in an abandoned monastery in the mountains, where some of their comrades have already settled. Unbeknown to Vera, Gabriel has arranged for a contraband cargo of guns to be shipped to the commune. And, oh yes, he also has robbed the Imperial Ottoman Bank of a sultan's ransom in gold and jewels in order to keep the commune afloat. When Vera is nabbed by the secret police after her foolish excursion to the publisher, Gabriel has to decide whether the needs of the many outweigh the needs of his hapless young wife.

Enter Kamil Pasha, the hero of this story, as well as of White's two earlier suspense novels set in 19th-century Turkey. Kamil is a special prosecutor in the secular courts. A moody loner attracted to modern culture, he is drawn into the search for Vera, which puts him at odds with a fiend named Vahid, the head of a rogue branch of the secret police. For vile reasons of his own, Vahid has convinced the sultan that the New Concord commune is allied with a secessionist movement and must be wiped out — along with the neighboring villages. Realizing that a massacre of innocents is in the making, Kamil charges off with a small contingent of soldiers to do battle with Vahid and his forces.

That's just a skimming summary of the busy plot of "The Winter Thief." White, a professor of anthropology who specializes in Turkey, adroitly tosses in period detail as well as romance, political intrigue and brutal battle scenes. But "The Winter Thief" really distinguishes itself by the intelligence of its smaller moments, when characters take stock of their limitations against the larger demands of history.

During the siege at the monastery, for instance, a philosopher-turned-commune-dweller ruefully reflects on how ill-prepared to fight he is. "I'm a philosopher," he tells an admiring young woman. "We collect the cream clotted at the rim of every civilization. We don't need to see it milked and churned." By the end of the novel, Kamil's own modernist self-doubts about his actions in the aftermath of battle become close to crippling: "He had chosen life over honesty, one kind of justice over another, but he knew not everyone would agree that he had chosen well."

Out of the purest of motives — a desire for social equality, a yearning for personal happiness, a wish to share a book with a larger audience — disaster can ensue. That vivid opening image of the ingenuous Vera clasping her incendiary book stays with a reader long after the shooting stops and an uneasy peace has been restored.

Corrigan, the book critic for the NPR program "Fresh Air," teaches a course on detective fiction at Georgetown University.

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Meatpaper is the coolest magazine in the world.  They make Tyler Brule’s expensive Monocle look like the Saturday Evening Post.  And part of why they are so cool is they have parties that none of us can attend, usually in the Bay Area but sometimes in Brooklyn.  We will never be cool enough to attend these events.  In fact we are not even cool enough to receive our subscriptions.  Subscriptions plural is correct.  I always give away issues of Meatpaper so I have several subscriptions.  I got one copy of the new issue but another subcriber didn’t even get her single copy.  They do have the best parties. 

Here is the latest.  And therer will be bacon.

    Join Meatpaper and Blue Bottle at the SFMOMA Rooftop Garden to taste two of our favorite things: meat and coffee. Yes, there will be bacon.

    Meatpaper and Blue Bottle Coffee are coming together at SFMOMA’s Rooftop Garden café to kick off the museum’s third Thursday springtime event series.

    WHAT
    An evening of coffee-inspired charcuterie, meat-inspired desserts, and Blue Bottle coffee!

    Charcuterie by Morgan Maki of Bi-Rite, Chris Kronner of Bar Tartine, and Staffan Terje of Perbacco and Barbacco

    Coffee and desserts by Blue Bottle

    WHERE
    Rooftop Garden & Cafe at SFMOMA
    March 18, 6-8pm

    WHEN
    Thursday, March 18
    6-8pm

    COST
    Event is free with half-price museum entry. Tasting plates $5
    
    © 2010 MEATPAPER 

 

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The new issue of Edible Boston is quite handsome.  Michael Piazza is the art director.  There is a good story and good layout about Adam Simha, who invented Burnt Caramel, knives, furniture and lovingly dissolved chocolate ice cream mixtures.  The head shot looks like it belongs to Adam's yet to be released collection of greatest hits, featuring music from Chelsea on Fire and Dead Man's Booty.  Other stories feature Chef Will Gilson from The Cellar and naive lambs.

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