Not a trace of bitterness from the spinach leaf’s tip to its light, fragrant stem. Top chef Eric Briffard wouldn’t dream of cooking these crisp shoots, sourced for a small fortune from his treasured Japanese vegetable farmer.

“At first I sold my vegetables to Paris’ Japanese restaurants, but I found their standards weren’t high enough,” he said. “You know, if a Japanese chef leaves Japan, it means his career has been a failure.”

Yamashita grows around 50 varieties of vegetable, all of them Japanese—“even the tomatoes”—on a plot almost 3,000 square meters in size, half of it covered with greenhouses.

“What I’m aiming for is not rarity—it’s quality,” he said as he chopped slices off a kabu turnip with a machete, handing them over to taste.

Crunchy and juicy as an apple, firm yet tender, sweet with a hint of mustard at the finish. Yamashita can deliver 120 pieces per week at most.

“This is a guy who will tear out a bunch of corn cobs so that the ones that are left can grow better,” said Briffard, who holds two Michelin stars for his kitchen at the Georges V luxury hotel in Paris.

Passionate about Japan, and with roots of his own in the French rural world, Briffard has worked with Yamashita for years and often travels out from the center of the capital for a walk around his gardens.

“It is amazing how much quality is hidden here, behind his little house lost in the countryside, the density and depth and concentration of his vegetables,” Briffard said. “His sweet potatoes are a little transparent, and his tomatoes are smooth to the touch like peaches.”

The chef and his prized supplier talk on the phone several times a week.

“There are tiny seasons that you mustn’t miss, like the moment when peas are tender and juicy, before the starch comes in,” he explained outside one of the farmer’s greenhouses.

This winter, the chef’s team are serving up Yamashita’s daikon radish, his turnips and red Kyoto carrots, as well as his kabocha, a Japanese variety of squash with green skin and bright orange flesh.

“If you steam it you can eat the skin. Or you can mash it with a seaweed butter and a little ginger,” Briffard suggests.

Today Yamashita works with just six clients, including two of the world’s most innovative chefs—Pierre Gagnaire and Pascal Barbot—as well as rising star Sylvain Sendra, and with the Tour d’Argent, one of Europe’s oldest restaurants.

He recently struck two Paris luxury hotels off his customer list after their chefs failed to live up to his exacting standards.

One was “never in his kitchen, there was no exchange” with him, he said, while the other was simply cooking kabu dice in orange juice—“pointless” in the Japanese farmer’s view.

“I want to work with chefs who work hard with my vegetables, to find the very best recipes,” he explained.

And he can afford to be picky. “The quality is such that he can choose who and when to deliver, and at what price,” said Briffard, even at rates three to four times higher than typical Paris area farmers.

“This is what absolute rarity is about. You will only find Yamashita’s turnip in six restaurants in the world. White truffles, by comparison, are easy to come by,” said chef William Ledeuil, another member of the select Yamashita club.

 

And this is what we are talking about here. Vegetables are the great unappreciated gift of nature. We happily spend $50 or $60 on a bottle of wine, and sneer at the poor slobs getting by on $5 wines (actually that’s quite often me), yet we stomp out feet in protest when the price of a delicious head of lettuce goes over a dollar.

Which is more important to us?

Actually, it’s no surprise, since salt has been an essential part of the human diet from, well, the beginning. The anti-salt brigade will say, “Sure, but primitive people weren’t stuffed with process foods that are packed with ungodly amounts of salt.”

That’s true, but my advice still hold here. Avoid processed foods.

Dr. Daniels questions the deprivation we experience by not eating foods we like is really balanced by the theoretical extension of life. (And it is all theory and numbers – we don’t know that it will make a lick of difference in the end. Unless your last moments are spent glaring down the approaching headlights of a tanker truck, and wishing that you’d had a few more cheeseburgers when you wanted, you’ll never know whether your diet gave you so much as an extra day.)

The thing is, depriving yourself of processed foods is not deprivation at all. They are, by and large, crap that we have been trained to like.

I have a dachshund (named Sam) that never fails to nibble on any piece of leftover poop he sees when out walking. It’s highly embarrassing, not to mention disgusting. I seriously doubt he sees much difference between his healthy dog food and a fresh discovery of poop. He might even prefer the poop as far as I know.

And millions of people in advanced Western nations, particularly the USA, are not much different from Sam. Except that, rather than getting their crap for free off the street, they pay inflated prices for it – much more than it would usually cost to make a better dinner from scratch. And like Sam, all these people like their crap.

Hey, me too. I eat a Big Mac every now and then. But, I have noticed that it’s slightly addictive. If I haven’t indulged in a while, I eat one and wonder why I missed it at all. But, the next day I have a desire to eat another. And another. They start to taste better the more I eat them. That’s the miracle of junk food.

So, just don’t eat it. Salt problem solved, without consciously cutting back on salt.

Meanwhile, in a nation whose cuisine is practically defined by sodium, Yoshiaki Murakami has written a book saying that the sodium and high blood pressure link is mostly rubbish based on a couple small and inconclusive studies. He enlists numerous Japanese scientists to say that salt is not the health demon it is so often portrayed as being. The long Japanese life expectancy would seem to bolster their arguments.

So, I say enjoy your salt. As long as you know you’re eating it and it’s just being consumed as a hidden preservative in crap.

In moderation, as always.

Source

Research Link

Image via Wikipedia

Keynes is associated with the quote “in the long run we are all dead.” On its own, it’s pithy and reasonable, and a good response to people to try to plan too far into the future. Yet, I couldn’t help but think today, in view of economic policies that he would seem to favor bringing collapse around the world, “Well, maybe you’re dead Mr. Keynes, and whomever you were speaking to is also dead, but I’m here along with billions of other people witnessing the end-game of your policies.

It also occurred to me, as unfair as it may sound, that Keynes had no children. So two points come to mind.

1- It’s very easy to think of the world after we’re gone as being relatively unimportant when we have no skin in the game (usually in the form of  children we love). A good economic policy should consider the world beyond the time we ourselves our dead. It should consider our children and grandchildren.

2- Keynesian based policies of liberal government expenses, as Europe has shown, can go very well for several decades before the piper calls and the darkness is ushered in. The Europeans, and the US to a lesser degree (so far), have been living very well by borrowing against the future of their children and grandchildren. So, for many years, from the 1960s through the turn of the millenium, things looked pretty good for the enlightened European welfare state. It was “working.” But of course, that’s because the time-scale we use to measure success in these things is so short, and mostly based on 4 year  election cycles at best. It takes decades to see where the policy really takes us, and by the time that truth is revealed most of those who enjoyed the benefits of the policy will be dead.

This reminds me of the Chinese diplomat in the 1970′s, when asked whether he thought the French Revolution was a success, replied “It’s too soon to tell.”

There’s something to that, and we should well consider things that happen when we are all dead – but when our descendents may well have to clean up a mess we made. Keyne’s concept of the “long run” is way underestimated. We in the west think of the long run as being… well, until we are all dead. The very least we could do is to consider the lives of our children and grandchildren. To do anything else is to be self-absorbed and selfish.

I saw one girl in particular, shortish hair, flesh hugging lycra pants and a t-shirt. Not something that should be worn by most people. But, in her case, it was perfect. In fact, in her case, it seemed inappropriate for there to be clothes at all. She was that perfect.

I can survive that I guess. I can resist. I had my fun, and now I have a family. But there was one other thing….

Her t-shirt had something written on it. It said Fuck (something), Let’s Just (something). I couldn’t quite catch all the words from where I stood. Instead, I could just see Fuck…Let’s emblazoned across her perfect breasts.

This has nothing to do with anything – except that it’s hard to be good.

An expert (in bananas) says.....

The Guardian ran yet another media hit-piece against the apparently formidable Sarah Palin. I say formidable because this woman, who is after all just a private citizen and, as everybody knows, a ditzy right wing nutcase, seems to inspire absolute fear in all on the left. Witness the AP assigning no fewer than 11 reporters just to dig up mistakes in her book. That kind of attack is unprecedented, and makes me think there must be something about Sarah that makes her worth keeping around.

Now to the point. The media is very skilled at misleading the reader while often avoiding anything that can be called a flat out lie. Of course, the flat out lies are there too, but they try to be a bit more sophisticated. After all, these are mostly graduates of journalism schools, where 4 years are spent in indoctrination and learning how to write with sophistry. They are part of the reason why there are no more Mark Twains in the media.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/15/michele-bachmann-president-sarah-palin

This article purports to be another balanced and objective look at Republican women. In between a few bits of fatuous praise, the article sprays on the fascist paint.  You are meant to walk away believing this stuff. So, let’s look at how to read the Guardian’s non-lies. The boldface is mine.

“a darling of the so-called Tea Party movement, which has campaigned vociferously against healthcare reform”

That’s like saying abortion rights activists campaign against children. Or that a mother who doesn’t want to use her limited funds to buy caviar for her children is against feeding here kids. This takes a very narrow target (the current healthcare bill hastily and secretively being jammed through congress), and calls it something much broader. This is a constant tactic. Though it is tangental to the article, these are sprinkled throughout to paint the broader canvas that supports the Guardian’s ideology. The reader skips right pasts this, but it rests in their subconscious. The next time a tea party story comes along, a little voice in the reader’s head will say “oh, those are the wicked people against reform.”

“frequently appearing on the conservative Fox News channel”

I am still waiting for the day when I hear the words “liberal news channel.” There must be no such thing. This sets the reader up once again, with the subtext that these are not mainstream people.

“notable syndicated commentators such as Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter, whose dislike for liberals has grown ever more shrill in recent months”

Shrill? Ann Coulter. Whatever you think of her, she’s anything but shrill. Again, I never once heard Bush critics called shrill, much less hysterical (which so many of them were).

“All these women express a mood of conservative discontent that is becoming increasingly vocal and, some experts warn, extreme.”

Ooh….danger! Now we get to the meat. These right wing women are promoting extremism. Of course, the author can’t just say that without backing it up. So he uses the word of unnamed and unquoted “experts.” “Experts” are the bogeymen of mass media. Since we are all experts in something, we can all offer similar expert opinions. Of course, experts is what, we don’t know. Not even one was named, much less quoted.

So, when an author claims “some experts say,” they are about to express their own personal opinion without any facts to back it up. Hopefully the reader will swallow that whole as well.

“The (Republican) party is becoming more white and southern”

Oops, they let a lie slip through. Basically, the author wanted to say “racist and ignorant.” He might have used “experts say” before such a slander, but that was already taken up in the preceding paragraph. So instead, he used “white and southern” to say the same thing. It comforts leftists to think of conservatives as all white male rednecks. This is part of the reason they are so hard on female or non-white conservatives. The left’s cartoons portraying Condaleezza Rice were straight out of the Jim Crow era.  Now they were racist.

“But out in the crowd the ugly face of some modern conservatives was not hard to find. There were 12 arrests. One protester wore a mask of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with handfuls of bloody foetuses. Another protester held up a picture of piles of Jewish corpses from Dachau concentration camp.”

Funny that they weren’t bothered by 8 years of Nazi imagery used to describe George Bush. Why the sudden attack of delicacy and sensitivity?

“She has said Obama holds socialist views.”

And he doesn’t??

“what makes liberal Americans laugh or cry has got the conservative wing of the Republican party extremely excited.”

And why not “liberal wing of the Democratic party” and “conservative Americans?” Words are chosen to make one view seem isolated and the other seem.. well, American.

Read it yourself, and ask why the words were chosen. In fact, I even wonder about how leftist reactionaries co-opted the term “liberal,” when they are anything but. But that’s for another day.

Brand-washing

What is it about brands that makes people stupid? That can’t be answered here. It would take several books, many of them already written. It’s a flaw in our DNA is the short answer. In fact, some very smart people get stupid about brands.

To have class is not to have brands. This should be obvious. And common sense should be common, so let me explain. There are many aspects to having class, among them manners, decency, generosity, kindness, humility, appreciation….I could go on, though I hope I don’t have to. These, too, should be common sense. But to keep on track, let’s talk about the kind of class that might otherwise be said “He really knows how to live in style. He’s got Class!“

By this we mean taste and money – the ability to attract envy rather than snickers. Of course, this is not really class. I am of the opinion that even an old bum in a shack on a bubbling volcano. Look at Harry Truman, not the President. The one who lived on Mt. St. Helens. He went with the mountain, refused to leave. Went out with a bang, not to be too painfully coy about it. He had class.

Some guy with a 100 meter swimming pool and a Jacuzzi filled with champagne and naked girls, meanwhile, does not have class. He might be having fun. He might not (he might be gay). Champagne Jacuzzis and naked girls are symptoms of the need to feel envied.  So let’s keep it straight. There’s class, and there’s envy points.

Nothing wrong with seeking envy. We all need a bit of it, at least at first. Then, as we outgrow that, we may still need it…as a business expense. If I’m a get-rich-quick guru, I want to to attract envy. I want people to want what I have. Why? Because I will promise to sell it to them, thereby getting even more of what I have.

So, there are 2 reasons to brag about our taste in Champagne or what brands we buy. One reason is insecurity. The other is strictly business. Either way, the advice that follows will help you.

First: You have to know whose envy you want

Second: You have to know what that target group desires, but doesn’t have

Very simple, and it works like this. The typical rich newbie will say that he loves Dom Perignon champagne. One was even so smug recently that he added “If you know what it is, you know why I like it.” That last part eliminated any good will he might have had up to that point. The fact is, almost everybody knows what Dom Perignon is. It’s not exactly an obscure brandname. And therein lies both its benefits and its problems.  DP, as they call it in Japan, is the Mercedes of champagnes. It’s not a bad champagne, it’s quite good. But, it’s the most commonly known kind of good.

That’s a good thing when the people you want to make envious are mostly not all that sophisticated. It does no good to prattle off the name of an especially rare and prized champagne when the people who hear about it think “Isn’t that the red stuff at the local 7/11?” You’re aim is too high. Save your money and your breath. Buy Dom Perignon, and the same people will coo in admiration at your elevated taste. Bulls-eye.

On the other hand, if your target is someone who has been rolling in money since they were old enough to crap, you may want to aim higher. The thing is, unless the person is a champagne aficionado (whew, I needed the dictionary for that one), you may miss the target there, too.  Ah, but the ones who do get it will quietly bond to you, that rare person who really appreciates the truly fine things in life. So, here’s a brief guide to how to impress, whether aiming low, middle or high.

Champage:

Low- Asti-Spumante

Average- Dom Perignon

High- Tattainger Blanc de Blanc

Very High- Cristal Brut 1990 “Methuselah”

And, for our upcoming post on watches, I will add the following:

Low- Swatch

Average- Rolex

High- Patek Phillipe

Very High- Breguet Double Tourbillion

Photo source: http://www.worth1000.com/cache/gallery/contestcache.asp?contest_id=1645&display=photoshop

“She’s a classy dame.”

Words from movies, when movies had class. Before they were called films. And before that bane of the late 20th century…..

‘TUDE

The thing called ‘tude, or attitude when somebody could be both literate and motivated enough to say the whole word out loud. “Tude” was the death knell of Western civilization. And that, for those who don’t know, is a bad thing.