Year: 2024

Cool Food, by Robert Downey Jr. and Thomas Kostigen

Cool Food, by Robert Downey Jr. and Thomas Kostigen (Blackstone Publishing, 320 pages)

The actor Robert Downey Jr. was at a bookstore in London when he asked a clerk where to find the books on climate. The clerk’s reply: “Oh, the bummer section? It’s over there.”

When Downey later told this story to the writer Thomas Kostigen, with whom he was developing a TV show, Kostigen responded, “We need to do a food book and make it fun.”

An ordinary person not immersed in climate activism might wonder what climate and food have to do with one another. But the growing of food and the tending of animals that will become food are almost as large a part of this conversation as fossil fuel, because, well, carbon.

And to Downey and Kostigen, one way to combat a warmer planet is to eat cooler food — “cool” food is climate-friendly food, they say. And to promote it, they’re out with a bulky, hard-to-hold cookbook that doubles as a climate manual, irritatingly populated with cartoon-style sketches of themselves. Cool Food isn’t sure if it wants to be a cookbook, a graphic novel, a fourth-grade science book or a press release, and so there are elements of all four.

To be fair, I am a boomer, and not the target audience of this book — in fact, to climate change activists, my generation is the villain. And young readers of physical books prefer manga and graphic novels, recent studies have shown. So that concludes my grumbling about the physical presentation of the book, and we can move onto the actual content, which is — not terrible. Well, it’s also not great, but as Books Written By Celebrities With Co-Authors go, Cool Food is surprisingly useful at times. I learned things, things which you may already know, but somehow I did not: like what the numeric codes on produce at the grocery store tell us other than the price (five-digit codes that begin with 9 indicate the produce was organically grown and codes that begin with 8 indicate genetic modifications) and where I could buy jellyfish and how to cook one if I were inclined to eat one for dinner. (I am not.)

Also, I learned that in New Mexico there are Native American restaurants, and apparently nowhere else, and that 95 percent of yams are grown in Africa while most sweet potatoes in U.S. supermarkets were grown in North Carolina.

The first half of the book focuses on foods that the authors say are climate-friendly because of how they are harvested or grown: ancient grains, fruits, vegetables, sea vegetables (yes, they will tell you how to grow your own seaweed), nuts and, most important for New Hampshire residents, syrup, although the authors are shilling for Vermont syrup here.

Also this section of the book gave me a lot of new things to worry about that I’ve never known I should be worrying about, such as whether grain crops are seasonal or perennial. “When a seasonal crop is harvested, it loses all of its carbon intake and depletes the soil of 40 percent of its carbon content. All that carbon is released into the air, adding significantly to climate change,” the authors write.

We’re hearing a lot about regenerative agriculture these days, but a lot of the foodstuff mentioned here was unfamiliar to me: kernza flour, loquat fruit and pigeon pea shrubs. Nothing you find at your typical drive-thru. The recipes, accompanied by color photographs, run the gamut from intriguing (maple and chili glazed sweetcorn) to the bizarre (cashew stir-fry with puffed amaranth, which contains something called vegan fish sauce).

It was a relief to move on to the second section of the book, which contains no small amount of proselytizing about things like the farm-to-table movement, eating seasonally and organically, and cutting down on food waste. Not until the end does Cool Food address in any serious way whether all these foods are good for the human body — most of the talk is about what foods are good for the planet. When the authors finally give a nod to this, it’s in an effective takedown of the federal government’s dietary guidelines, once known as the food pyramid, now known as MyPlate. Well, actually, it’s Harvard University’s takedown, but they reprint it here in a chart that points out what the government says are healthy foods and ideal portions, and what Harvard nutritionists say. Let’s just say that there must be government lobbyists for potatoes and hot dogs.

The authors did not want to write a “bummer” climate book, and have largely succeeded at that. They have instead created an eating manual for climate worriers (which is pretty much all of us after this “winter”) and may struggle to find an audience outside of the most fervent activists and Robert Downey Jr. superfans. That said, the future is on their side; labeling that indicates the carbon footprint of foods — e.g., the amount of greenhouse gasses released in their production — is already cropping up on menus and food for sale. Those labels, Downey and Kestigen say, offer “the biggest promise for change.” But also, eat more jellyfish. C

Album Reviews 24/04/11

Kartell, Everything Is Here (Roche Musique)

Debut LP from this French producer, who broke through in 2012 owing to his distinctly accessible electronic tuneage, which is possessed of warmth, soul and melancholia. The background is that he grew up as a lad listening to his dad’s soul, disco and early house collection, and his early stuff led to a residency at Paris’ velvet-rope Social Club and getting booked globally at all the ritzy places from California to South Korea. Opening track “Space Odyssey” is clamorous and epic, along the lines of M83 when it gets going at around the midpoint; it immediately proves he takes a lot of time cobbling his low-BPM compositions (yes, we need more of that in this world). We also have “Quest,” a disco/LMFAO-inspired afterparty joint featuring St. Lucia artist Poté that’s not near as annoying as it might look on paper. It’s no wonder this guy’s doing so well; this stuff is custom-engineered to fill floors with idle trust-funders. A+

Aves, Transformations (Kieku Records)

Retro futurism-informed album from this three-piece Helsinki, Finland-based outfit, its lyrics encompassing “all change; from man to woman, from adolescence to adulthood, from grief to hope.” Lot of dreamy synth pop goes on here, starting with “Silent Solitude,” a meditative, loop-filled ride built around a cloudy, barely discernible vocal that’ll make some listeners think of Sigur Rós (appropriate, given that all the contributors here — including Icelandic artist JFDR and Danish singer Lydmor — obviously cut their teeth on Nordic pop and adjacent genres); it’s a melancholy, sexless but expansively hopeful thingamajig that’d fit in fine on a neo-hippie coming-of-age film (they’re in talks to write the soundtrack for a film about conversion therapy, while we’re at it). The next song, “Gem Of The Ocean,” starts with the same sort of deep-reverb breathiness as the previous one but then takes a more in-your-face tack, the super-pretty vocal sounding more digitally present. More of this, please. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yikes, Friday, April 12, looks to be a real humdinger of a day for new albums, look at ’em all, folks. Yep, we’re gearin’ up for a hot summer of singles from bubblegum Taylor Swift wannabes, corporate hip-hop bros, disposable indie bands and of course heavy metal bands, because metal never rests, unless it gets too hot to wear suits of armor or whatever they’re doing now! But wait, it’s storytime, because look who has a new album coming out, that’s right, it’s New York City’s perennial arena-band-opening act Blue Öyster Cult, with a new “slab” called Ghost Stories! Yes, the band that gave us the unlistenable dentist-office classic tune “Burnin’ For You” is at it again, and for that I thank them, because they should be out and about making more albums that only five people buy, because they are fun-loving rascals! Years ago I was at some outdoor show in Loudon, New Hampshire, or whatever, where they were opening for Savoy Brown, and my date and I were standing around with the keyboard player and the drummer while some wicked-long-haired dude was trying to sell them a bag of herbs that he claimed would “bring their youth back.” Anyway, Eric Bloom — the guy with the cool voice who sang “Black Blade” and whatnot — comes walking up, grabs the bag and keeps going without paying this feller, and I started cracking up because I knew the guy wasn’t ever going to get paid for his bag of snake-oil lawn clippings or whatever they were. But anyway, I love the BÖC, even though they’ve done some really dumb songs, so I hope this album is totally rockin’, like they say. Ack, oh noes, the opening tune, “Don’t Come Running To Me,” is just a mellow version of “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” their big hit from a hundred years ago when Abraham Lincoln was president. I’m just glad I didn’t have my hopes up.

• Ugh, what else do we have, hopefully something fun, eh wot? Yikes, Bob’s your uncle, it’s that British sax player dude, Shabaka, of Shabaka and the Ancestors! He was in avant-Afrobeat quartet Sons of Kemet and jazz-tronica band The Comet Is Coming, none of which probably means anything to you, but he is an interesting music human, this feller. His debut solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, is out this week, and it is said to highlight his mad skills on such flute-related instruments as the Mayan Teotihuacan drone flute, Brazilian piano, Native American flute and South American quenas. Do you know what this means? I do not, but I’m going to listen to this balderdash right now, because anything’s better than a new Britney Spears album or whatever other horrors are in store this year! Hm, this is actually interesting, the single, “I’ll Do Whatever You Want.” It’s got an early techno vibe to it, some krautrock feel, sort of forlorn and underproduced like Daedelus, and whichever type of flute he’s playing does lend a soothing feel to it.

• Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard is from Cardiff in the U.K., and their newest is titled Skinwalker. Frontman/ and producer Tom Rees says the album is his attempt at “consolidating my 2020 obsession with Sly and the Family Stone with my 2021 obsession with David Bowie’s album Low,” so let’s see how that all panned out, that’d be great. OK, the single, “National Rust,” is a cross between Pavement and ’90s grunge, which, turns out, is a workable recipe. Lazy indie rock for sitting around while unemployed, that’s my take.

• Lastly we have another Englishperson, jungle/drum and bass singer/DJ Nia Archives, with Silence Is Loud. The title track is a rinseout, all right, with some from-the-mountaintop vocals and plenty of melody. I don’t mind this at all.

The Right Tie: A Cocktail Parable

Charlie was definitely out of his element.

Never mind that he’d worn a suit maybe three times in his life and one of those had been a rented powder-blue tux. This blazer cost as much as he earned in a month. He looked at his reflection in the mirror again, hoping he’d see something vaguely inspiring.

“Dress for the job you want.” Isn’t that what they say? But looking at himself, he could only hope that someone was hoping to hire a pudgy, nervous-looking kid on the verge of hyperventilating.

He looked at the price tag on the cuff of the jacket again, and tried to breathe deeply.

“I really don’t think—,” he started to say.

“Hush!” said the saleslady with authority. She was an older woman — of course, Charlie was still young enough that anyone over 35 was old, but she had clearly been doing this a long time and seemed to know what she was doing.

She turned him around, away from the mirror, then flipped up the collar of his shirt and quickly, with the ease of years of practice, looped a necktie around his neck, knotted it, then flipped his collar back down.

She turned him back to the mirror, but before he could take in any of the details of his appearance she tucked a pocket square into the breast pocket of the jacket, then stepped back and said, “How’s that?”

Charlie was stunned. It wasn’t so much that there was a dramatic change in who he saw in the mirror — still a young, round face — but this time it belonged to a better version of Charlie. It was a mature, confident Charlie. No, Charles, maybe, although only his mother had ever called him that and only when she was angry with him. This was a young man who knew what he was doing, a man who could get through an interview and wait for the person on the other side of the desk to explain what they had to offer him.

The saleswoman nodded with satisfaction.

“The right tie makes all the difference,” she said.

The Right Tie

  • ¾ ounce top-shelf rum – I used a 15-year-old Barbancourt
  • 1½ ounces apple brandy – I like Laird’s Applejack
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • ¾ ounce orgeat (almond syrup)

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake gently. You want to chill this cocktail — if possible, without breaking up the ice.

Pour into a rocks glass.

This is a serious, booze-forward cocktail. Even the small amount of extra-good rum makes itself known. The apple brandy fades into the background, giving just a hint of subtle fruitiness and even more of an alcoholic backbone. Lime and almond get along very well and will work with either of these liquors, to say nothing of both of them.

And yet.

The combination as a whole is very intense — a little more boozy/sweet/acidic than is strictly comfortable. A natural inclination might be to shake this over ice extremely enthusiastically, break up the ice, and chill it as much as possible, then serve it in a stemmed glass to keep it cold.

Or — hear me out on this — drink it over ice in a rocks glass like a grownup.

There’s something about drinking from a rocks glass that brings a sense of maturity to the proceedings. More to the point, a rocks glass lets you use rocks. The intensity of this cocktail will limit you to small sips at first, which will give the ice time to melt a little and bring the intensity down, while keeping everything ice cold.

With a nudge, this could have been a tiki drink, and probably a good one, but the right glass, much like the right tie, brings maturity and the faintest of confident Mona Lisa smiles.

Featured photo: The Right Tie. Photo by John Fladd.

A pint of jalapeños

A springtime tradition at Concord Craft Brewing

Dennis Molnar, co-owner of Concord Craft Brewing, says weather plays a bigger role in running a brewery than you might think.

“Most people, unless they’re die-hards, are pulled toward lighter beers,” he said of spring beer drinkers. Which explains the Jalapeño Cream Ale.

Molnar said one of the challenges of making specialty seasonal beers is knowing how much to make, and when to make it.

“We get people getting in touch with us all the time, asking, ‘Why can’t you make the Jalapeño year-round, or why can’t you make that very rich, heavy porter all year round?’ It’s hard to know what the right amount to make is, before people’s tastes change,” he said.

The Jalapeño Cream Ale originally started as a tribute to Cinco de Mayo, Molnar said, but after several years customers started to think of it as a generally springtime beer.

“It’s a Golden Ale,” he said. “It’s on the lighter side, which makes it popular for warmer weather. We use real jalapeños and let it age [with the chiles] for several weeks. There’s a little bit of spice there, but not so much that you can’t finish your dinner or anything.”

Before the Jalapeño this year, there was the maple-season-themed Logger Lager.

“Most years, in the late winter/early spring, we make a bourbon barrel-aged maple brown ale,” Molnar said, “but we had trouble getting barrels this year.” Instead the brewery put out a mazen, a German-style, medium-bodied golden ale with maple syrup. “We liked the name,” he said. “Also, small brewers [like us] make unpasteurized beers. That means that the yeast ferments out the maple sugars, and you’re left with a more subtle maple flavor.”

One of the advantages of running a small brewery is having the freedom to test out new ideas, Molnar said.

“We can make a small batch and see how it works out,” he said. At the moment, he and his team are thinking about something new for the summer, a cherry wheat beer.

“It should be a fun, light, bright-colored beer,” he said. “We’ve finally got a good source for cherry purée.”

During the summer the brewery’s customers drink beers that are lighter in color, texture and percentage of alcohol, but in the fall they start drinking heavier porters and stouts.

“Our Squirrel Fights Nut Brown Ale is really popular,” Molnar said, “and Apple Crisp — like the dessert — Porter is one of our most popular fall beers. We almost always brew a pumpkin beer, too. Some people really like pumpkin beers around that time of year. A lot of them don’t actually like eating pumpkin, but they love seeing it in a glass.”

Right now, the flavor of the moment is jalapeño. Because it has become identified so strongly with springtime, it will be around for the rest of the season.

“We’ll have it in stores until the beginning of June,” Molnar said, “and on tap for a little longer.”

Featured Photo: Photos courtesy of Concord Craft Brewing.

A great French baking contest

This year’s theme is plays and musicals

How much do you know about the French-speaking world other than France or Quebec and could you express that knowledge in a cake?

On May 18, 10 teams of amateur bakers will have an opportunity to do just that at the Franco-American Centre’s Third Annual Fleur Délices, a cake-decorating competition dedicated to spreading knowledge about the Francophone world. Teams will bring everything they need to build elaborately decorated cakes with a French or French-influenced theme.

“This goes hand-in-hand with our mission at the Franco-American Centre,” said Nathalie Hirte, the event’s organizer, “to introduce people to the world outside the France/Quebec box.”

For the event’s first year the Fleur Délices’ theme was French-speaking countries around the world, Hirte said.

“Last year, it was fairy tales; this year our theme is Plays and Musicals of the French-Speaking World,” she said. “What’s happened in the past is the contestants have looked at our suggestion list, then gone and picked something else completely. As long as their cakes meet our criteria, they’re good.”

Fleur Délices — the name, which indicates “delicate and delicious,” is a pun; it sounds like “Fleur de Lis,” the symbol of France — is inspired by The Great British Baking Show, a television baking competition known for its creativity and kindness. Like its inspiration, Fleur Délices will require competitors to make and present cakes, but unlike the television show, there will be no baking on site.

“None of the venues we’ve held the event at have ovens,” Hirte said. Competitors will bake their cakes at home, then bring them to the event along with frosting and any edible elements they need to put their finished cakes together. Teams can have one or two participants. Single-person teams will have an hour to decorate their cakes; pairs will have 45 minutes.

Each cake must have a minimum of two tiers, and one of them must be a sponge. (“That’s another influence from the British Baking Show,” Hirte said.) The icing must include at least one buttercream. All cakes must have a 3D element that is made from an edible material. Other than that, the organizers have not been overly specific about their requirements.

“We didn’t want to limit the bakers’ creativity,” Hirte said. “We just want them all on a level playing field.”

Two or three judges will walk around during the competition, visiting teams at their stations and asking questions. They will judge individual cakes on taste, texture, overall appearance, creativity and their representation of the theme. The overall winner of the competition will be chosen from an average of the judges’ scores and will be presented with an engraved cake platter.

A People’s Choice winner will be chosen by the spectators. Because it will not be possible for every spectator to taste each cake, the People’s Choice winner will be based almost entirely on appearance.

“We guarantee that everyone will get two to three samples,” she said. “The last two years, nobody has left hungry. We always get positive feedback on the event.” The People’s Choice winner will be presented with a charcuterie board.

Fleur Délices is open to bakers 16 and older.

“The past couple of years we’ve had some French teachers and their students compete,” Hirte says. “That’s been fun.”

Registration for competitors is $20 per team and is open until Friday, April 26, on the Franco-American Centre’s website. Tickets for spectators will go on sale within the next week or so through the same website.

Featured Photo: Teacher and student team. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 24/04/11

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd
[email protected]

• Chocolate and wine pairing: Learn to pair chocolate with wines so they both taste even better. Tuscan Brands Wine Director Joe Comforti and Chocolate Educator Maggie Prittie of World Wide Chocolate will teach participants how to taste and source fine single-origin chocolates, and how to pair them with complementary Italian wines, Friday, April 12, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Tuscan Market at Tuscan Village (9 Via Toscana, Salem, tuscanbrands.com, 912-5467). Tickets are $70 and available through the Tuscan Brands website.

• Children’s cooking class: Very young cooks (ages 5 and up) and their grownups can make homemade pizza and decorate cupcakes on Friday, April 12, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St., Derry, culinary-playground.com, 339-1664). Each adult-and-child pair will make a personal pizza topped how they like and decorate a themed cupcake. The cost is $45 per pair. To register, email [email protected].

• Spring flowers cookie decorating class: On Saturday, April 13, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., release your inner florist at LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, labellewinery.com, 672-9898) at beginner hands-on cookie decorating class led by instructor Keli Wright. Participants will be given step-by-step instructions in mixing icing and piping intricate designs. Refreshments will be served. Tickets are $69 and are available on LaBelle’s website.

• Organic gardening: The Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire (84 Silk Farm Road, Concord, NOFANH.org, 224-5022) will kick off its 2024 gardening series with an online class, “Native Perennial Food Plants For Your Edible Landscape,” on Tuesday April 16, from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. This is the first of a series that includes four remote lectures and one in-person class. Registration for this series is available at nofanh.org/gardeningseries. The cost is $12 for each online class or $40 for all four. NOFA members will receive a 25 percent discount.

• Beer and yoga: Pipe Dream Brewing (49 Harvey Road, Unit 4, Londonderry, pipedreambrewingnh.com, 404-0751) will host its monthly Flights and Flow yoga class on Sunday, April 14, from 11 a.m. to noon. The class costs $30. Attendees should show up at 10:30 a.m. for registration and to get settled in and should bring their own yoga mats and water. Flights of four Pipe Dream beers will be served at the end of class, just in time for lunch. RSVP by emailing Pipe Dream at [email protected].

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