May 2007 Archives

Near the end of April, the Food Network's popular Iron Chef America program featured a contest between two Italian Chefs, Mario Batali of Manhattan's Babbo and Chris Consentino of San Francisco's Incanto. The secret ingredient was garlic—after all—what could be more Italian? The contest was a close one with Batali edging out his West Coast challenger by only two points (and they weren't important points - "plating" of all things).

Soon after the show was aired on April 22nd, Incanto announced they would be offering the Iron Chef Menu from May 18 to June 30 on Friday and Saturday evenings. I sent out a call for action to the local Gourmet Corps and made a reservation for four. Last Friday the Corps arrived at Incanto at 7:00 p.m. expecting an interesting experience. One of the highlights of the Food Network show had been watching Consentino persuading Jeffery Steingarten to suck out the squab brains. I was really looking forward to the evening.

Billed as Wild French Asparagus, these wheat-stalk like green beauties were irresistible. Far West Fungi had them, and although I had no idea what I was going to do with them, I snapped them up.

As it turned out, they ended up as breakfast, flavoring for my newest Spanish Food discovery: Revueltos, which are supercharged scrambled eggs, adding olive oil and interesting flavorings. Americans scramble eggs in butter and put some salt and pepper in the dish and think they've got something. The Spanish sautée flavorful things in olive oil and then softly scramble eggs around that ingredient, and they really do have something.

I cut the wild asparagus into 1-inch pieces and sautéed it with some chopped garlic in olive oil. I added some smoked paprika, salt and pepper and broke two eggs into the pan and started scrambling, looking for soft curds. Less than I minute later, I turned the eggs out onto a plate and breakfast was served. It would have been better with some mushrooms and chopped chives. I'll try that next time.

A New Yorker cartoon by Alex Gregory.


It's funny, but it makes you think. How much of the current fad for "natural" food is driven by facts, and how much is driven by ideology? Almost all of the issues in today's culture wars remind one of the old disagreement between Rousseau and Voltaire. Today's version is: "Will science and technology kill us or save us?"