Posts by Russell Brown
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British food culture has always been more diverse that the sterotyipical boiled cabbage of the Mrs Beaton variety. I reckon Britain became more 'Un British' long before NZers returning from their OE cottoned to the trend but if you want to live with blinkered stereotypes then ...
I know what you mean. We had a very established tapas bar around the corner from us in Vauxhall in the 80s, before tapas arrived in NZ. But New Zealand certainly made up for lost time.
But by the same token, New Zealand was serving much better brasserie-style food than most places in Britain at the same time -- I recall some real horrorshow meals. It was another 10 years before British restaurants broke out of their rut, I think.
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Hallelujah.
After three weeks in at Espresso Engineers, our Domobar machine is finally ready to be picked up in half an hour. I had been getting a bit tetchy about it ....
But I am very glad I took the plunge on day one and bought a Presso non-electric espresso maker on day one, on the recommendation of the EE guys.
You just add grounds, then boiling water, and squeeze.
It took a day or two to refine the process, but it really does make a convincing cup of coffee. Our will be coming on holiday henceforth. It's actually light enough that you could take it tramping if you wanted to be a flash bastard.
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The New Zealand Coffee Festival Hall of fame paints an interesting picture.
The top awards quite often go to small roasters like Max Coffee in Kerikeri, but also to the likes of Orb, which is owned by Cerebos-Greggs, who also own Robert Harris. Likewise, Burton Hollis needed a better premium brand, so it created Gravity, which emulates the vertical model of the independent cafe-roasters.
It's been interesting to see the way the big brands have plated catch-up. In recent years Cerebos-Greggs has acquired both L'affare and (iirc) Atomic. They're not interested in the cafes themselves (in both cases, the original owners have been allowed to keep trading), but they had to do something about the way the locally roasted brands were hurting them in the supermarkets.
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onathan Chait seems to be an apologist for Milton Friedman, who has attempted to simplify and ridicule Klein's anlysis so that we'll all look the other way, while the neo-cons get on with the job.
Er, hardly. These are the opening paragraphs from his article from September last year, Feast of the Wingnuts:
American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago--that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government--are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.
The result has been a slowmotion disaster. Income inequality has approached levels normally associated with Third World oligarchies, not healthy Western democracies. The federal government has grown so encrusted with business lobbyists that it can no longer meet the great public challenges of our time. Not even many conservative voters or intellectuals find the result congenial. Government is no smaller--it is simply more debt-ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites.
It's a great read.
OTOH, he was one of those liberals who supported the Iraq war then almost immediately changed his mind.
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as for oil, for cooking, use anything
Sort of. Virgin oil lacks much of the nutritional goodness of extra virgin, and olive pomace oil is muck that actually no one should eat.
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What's the real reaon behind the hatred of Starbucks? I suggest that its democratization of coffee opened access to gourmet coffee for the rabble, not the shitty coffee itself.
But that didn't happen here at all. There were flat whites being served the length of SH1 by the time Starbucks arrived, and a lot of local roasting going on. People were genuinely shocked by the quality of the coffee when Starbucks turned up.
Remember when the Starbucks president came here and dissed the local coffee as "green and a little bitter"?
People weren't impressed.
I've resorted to Starbucks in several countries, and it's varied from acceptable (Singapore) to vile (London). But it clearly fills a different role in the US -- I was the odd one out amongst my travelling companions in actually drinking coffee, rather than those weird concoctions of semi-solid fat they sell.
As if the boycotters of SB really care about exposing another evil brand. What it's really about is old-fashioned coffee snobbism.
Er, well, yeah. If you mean preferring better coffee ...
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Mr Brown, I could not help but notice, while enjoying your excellent hospitality, that you had a bottle of Home Brand olive oil; and verily I was impressed that the Brown family put common sense before oil snobbery. I stopped buying Italian Extra Virgin when I found the Home Brand to be just as good in cooking.
I picked Home Brand when the other everyday brands were out of stock at Woolworths one day, pretty much on the colour of the oil in the bottle.
And, as you say, it's not bad! It's Spanish extra virgin.
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Your local butcher is probably closer to me than any of the New Worlds listed on the Freedom Farms website. Would you care, please, to share their location?
That would be here.
There's a lot more than pork, too.
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Those Yarrows are good peoples. I suppose a large part of their philanthropy is possible because they are still a family owned business, but even so, it's impressive.
Yes, and their stand had a really nice vibe -- younger family members on the job and all. I had toast this morning from the soy and linseed loaf they gave me, and it was really nice. Good packaging design too.
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Just getting this over to System, seeing as it's taken so long to get posted. Have a happy weekend, folks. And eat well.
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