Food fetish

Diversity in dining

Sausage for vampires

Two Germans facing court martial for trying to make sausage out of the blood of their fellow airmen.

One of the soldiers posted pictures of himself on a popular German website siphoning off their blood and adding it to a recipe for the traditional Blotwurst sausage using onions, bacon, spices and breadcrumbs.

The incident only came to the attention of senior officers after one of their fellow soldiers reported the fact that he had been asked to donate some blood for the scheme.

The man is reported to have said: “I have been asked to give blood for sausage-making and I want to know if this is against regulations.”

...

The recipe for the sausage, which apparently came from one of their grandmothers, was found in the belongings of one of the men after they were arrested.

It read: “Make sure the blood is fresh and the bacon cubes diced finely with a nice proportion of fat to lean. Do not use too many breadcrumbs but if the blood starts to curdle stir in a teaspoon of wine vinegar.”

A well-rounded eater

Hillary Clinton likes lamb, very buttery popcorn, ethnic food and ... Boca Burgers?

Next, I interviewed Walter Scheib, who worked as the White House chef for the Clintons (and, briefly, for the second Bushes). Scheib recently published a cookbook memoir, White House Chef, which offers many clues to Hillary's preferences. Had she ever asked for an Oliveburger or Hillaryburger, I asked?

"No, but I always kept Boca Burgers in the freezer," he said, referring to a brand of soy protein patties. "She liked them for snacking." When I obtained some Boca Burgers and pan-grilled them, as directed, they turned out to be miserably limp, grassy-tasting little disks that might have been produced by Rubbermaid.

They are truly disgusting. But I suppose Hillary was trying to eat healthy. Still, not a mark in her favor.

But what about the rest of the candidates?

Barack Obama looks like he hardly eats at all, but that could just be his metabolism. Likewise, I'm already committed to John McCain, but he would lose a smidgeon of my respect if I found out he was a fussy eater. Or one of those pains in the ass who quiz the wait staff about whether the food is trans-fat-free. But I don't imagine that a man who spent five years in the Hanoi Hilton would let a little trans fat get to him. He probably laughs in the face of peanut butter, too.

Top 10 food myths

James Oliver Kury lists his:

1) Searing meats seals in the juices
2) You have to refrigerate butter or it will spoil
3) Oysters must be consumed during "r" months only
4) Boiling veggies eliminates all vitamins and minerals
5) Cold water boils faster than warm water
6) A potato will absorb excess salt in any soup or stew
7) Adding olive oil to boiling water keep spaghetti from sticking
8) Alcohol burns off entirely when cooked
9) Lobsters scream when dunked in boiling water
10) Never eat fish in a restaurant on a Monday

I'll add another: Kids get hyperactive from eating too much sugar.

'Horrible, cannibalistic balls of faeces and feathers'

Chickens. Mick Hume doesn't like 'em and he's not crazy about Planet Chicken by Hattie Ellis, which is about factory farming.

Globally, chicken now account for the majority of the 50billion animals eaten every year. As Ellis notes: ‘The world is currently in the middle of what is termed a “Livestock Revolution”. This is the animal equivalent of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, which spread chemically sustained crop farming around the globe. In this case, it is about the rise of industrially farmed creatures.’

Now, to me this sounds like a fantastic human success story. Through the increasingly industrialised farming of chickens, producers are feeding the world by turning meat that, even in Britain, used to be reserved for special occasions, into an inexpensive everyday source of protein. That, surely, is something to crow about.

The message of Chicken Planet, however, is that the rise of ‘industrially farmed creatures’ is a bad thing. It assumes that there must be something morally suspect about ‘cheap’ meat produced by factory methods. More broadly, it is an attack on the development of industry and human society, and its separation from the animal world.

Foodie agonistes

The dog-eat-dog world of the competitive dinner party circuit exposed.

“Entertaining and cooking have become an integral part of how certain people demonstrate their cultural cachet,” said Joshua Schreier, a history professor at Vassar College who lives in Harlem and says he is a victim, and a propagator, of culinary anxiety. “There is a specific cachet that only a fiddlehead fern can convey. Saying, ‘I got this olive oil from this specific region in Greece,’ is like talking about what kind of car you have. And people don’t want to be associated with the wrong kind of olive oil. It becomes less about having people over and more about showing off your foodie credentials.”

Colleen McKinney, a freelance food writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, said: “Food is cocktail party conversation. You cook it and then you talk about it all night long.”

Ms. McKinney is generally confident in the kitchen, except when it comes to one particular couple. When they have her over, dinner might be asparagus three ways, fresh pasta with sausage they made themselves and rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream — homemade vanilla ice cream. When they go to her house for dinner, they take their own pickled ramps.

I hate winter

But I love wintry foods. Roasts, stews, soups and braises.. Most of these methods are time consuming so I confine my winter cookery to weekends. Last weekend I made leg of lamb with garlic, rosemary and mint. This weekend, I'm going for short ribs. I have a great recipe for short ribs made with chipotles in adobo that's fabulous, though this one made with Guinness also looks good.

The most important meal of the day

Breakfast is the fastest growing sector in the fast food industry. And the competition is heating up. First McDonald's upgrades its coffee, then Starbucks introduces a McMuffin clone, an advance made possible by a super duper, high-heat oven.

In samples from around New York City last week, both the Starbucks sandwiches and Egg McMuffins offered the virtues of any good egg sandwich: the salty, savory contrast of soft egg, molten cheese and chewy bread. Both the ham and the sausage patty at Starbucks were meatier and less greasy than the meats at McDonald’s, and there was surprisingly little difference in the taste of the eggs — both had almost no flavor.

As the Starbucks sandwiches cooled, the texture changed noticeably (as is often the case with microwaved sandwiches), leaving tough bread and bacon, rubbery cheese and spongy egg.

“Starbucks is making a big bet on those ovens,” Mr. Miner said. About 20 percent of its stores now have the ovens. “They are not cheap, and it’s a big hulking thing to put on the counter, not to mention training your staff to use it.” At one Manhattan Starbucks last Friday, workers were so busy heating sandwiches that the store actually ran out of drip coffee.