I will forever include prosciutto in lasagna

As much as I love eating cured meat by itself, when Sam and Laura gave me three pounds of cured pig, I quickly realized it would be necessary to find something else to do with all that pork. And while I wasn’t worried about it going bad (it’s cured, after all), it has been about a month since I popped the seal on the first pound of prosciutto Americano.

Something had to be done.

But what the hell are you supposed to do with prosciutto besides eat it in hunks? I haven’t really been served it any other way. Sure I’ve had it dressed up — wrapped around melon, stuffed in a fig, put with a salad — but not prepared differently.

But putting prosciutto in lasagna is apparently a real thing, though I’ve never had it that way before.

So we ground up around three-quarters of a pound of La Quercia prosciutto Americano (my 3-year-old thought meat wiggling around like worms as it came out of the grinder was one of the funniest things she’d seen in a while); threw in some speck — the smoked version of prosciutto — for good measure; and cooked some grass-feed ground beef with a little onion and garlic and tossed in the ground pig. We mixed together the obscenely creamy whole-milk mozzarella (and some part-skim to reduce the high-fat guilt) and the ricotta. And Laura whipped up some tomato sauce.

I have loved lasagna well enough and long enough to have carefully crafted a ceramic lasagna-specific dish in a high-school art class that my mother still uses. The prosciutto added a dimension — a smokey, cured depth — that lasagna usually doesn’t have.

I’ve struggled with an appropriate metaphor for this, but let’s try this: A couple years ago every body realized you could add foie gras to burgers made with good ground beef and have THE BEST BURGER YOU’VE EVER EATEN. It was sorta like that, only didn’t involve sticking a funnel down a duck’s throat.

Don’t look at the ingredient list

When my father returned from visiting his sister in southern New Jersey, he dutifully brought back scrapple. (I was told that Transportation Safety Administration employees at the airport were worried by the four foil-wrapped blocks he was transporting in his luggage.)

So breakfast this morning is quite the anticipated meal here, even if the ingredients are revolting and conjure images of The Jungle.

Tasty pork tongues. Surely rat hairs also slip into the mix.

Even with that list of deliciousness, scrapple brand is always a debate among aficionados. Two years ago, at a family gathering in Maryland, we had a scrapple tasting in an effort to end the family squabbles. I’m firmly in the Habbersett camp. But, sadly, my last trek east included scrapple from a sustainable Amish farm.

Sustainable, responsible, but not Habbersett.

I know I’ve essentially written this post before, but scrapple deserves some sort of pomp.

America’s Test Kitchen “grilling panel”

Some how I signed up to test recipes for America’s Test Kitchen, the publishers of Cook’s Illustrated, perhaps the best recipe magazine in existence. While I never actually manage to get around to testing the recipes, I would if I could. Really, I keep meaning to. Really.

Now they’re looking for people to form a “grilling panel” which might means grilling in the middle of winter. Never a bad thing to have an excuse to do. I’ll probably sign up for that, too, and, again, never get around to actually grilling.

The e-mail:

We’re starting a special grilling panel, and we need your help!  Because we test recipes six months before they are printed in the magazines, we sometimes ask our recipe testers to buy produce off-season or grill outdoors when it’s the middle of winter.  We want to create a new panel to which recipes that require grilling will be sent.

If you live in a climate that is conducive to grilling year ‘round and would like to join this panel, please fill out this survey.  You’ll still receive recipes from the magazine that you currently test for, along with the additional grilling recipes.

Might as well give it a try. Nothing to lose besides buying expensive out-of-season ingredients and using possibly incomplete and faulty recipes.

Update
Apparently you’ll have to lie if you live in Iowa and want the recipes.

What “new-media journalism” skills do you need, anyway?

Combing through my RSS feeds earlier this week, I came across a post from Rob Curley looking for interns. I posted a link on Twitter, which then goes to FriendFeed and Facebook (which, sadly, still makes it impossible to find permalinks), since the Las Vegas Sun is doing really cool things and thought my students would do well to apply.

One of my current multimedia students shot me a message:

Read the description of his internship openings in his blog and I definitely feel like the student he’s talking about, that can write but has no other “new-media journalism” skills. In your opinion, aside from what we’re doing in your class, what more can I do to get up to speed with what’s going on in the profession currently and make myself more marketable after graduating? Any pointers would be appreciated!

It’s a good question, and one that a few years ago wouldn’t have been asked. (I think there are fewer students who go into journalism because they want to be “a writer” these days, but I have no hard evidence to back that up.) I though it would be worth posting my answer here.

This is a tricky question. A few years ago, knowing how to do a little bit of everything — writing, video, audio, photography, coding — could land you a job at a pretty plum news organization (I remember seeing a multimedia job at The Baltimore Sun a few years ago that was an entry-level position, for example), even if you weren’t great at any one thing. But multimedia production has become more specialized. Photographers tend to be the videographers and audio gatherers and SoundSlide producers. Lots of organizations have specialized data teams that include some heavy–duty coders (and talented journalists in their own right). But there is no such thing as “just a writer” anymore, for better or for worse, except for people such as The New York Times‘s re-write man Robert D. McFadden.

I think you’ll want to practice, hone and refine the skills we’re teaching in multimedia introduction (a five-week, 1 credit-hour course required of all majors that touches on HTML, video and audio collection and editing, blogging, social media, writing for the Web and multimedia packaging). You’ll want to understand cross-platform news production, how to package and re-package news for different platforms and products. Knowing how to code HTML/CSS/JavaScript would be helpful, too, as would learning how to put together an audio slide show. Understanding social media and how to use tools like Twitter and Facebook to find sources and stories — as well as promote your own work  —  is important.

J-schools don’t have the resources to teach all the new media skills you’ll need, so willingness to learn on your own will be key. But much of what you learn in school will be obsolete in a few years, anyway. Things will continue to change as technology changes. The move to mobile phones as the main news delivery device is getting closer and with that will come more stuff to learn.

So keep learning. Read industry blogs and follow interesting journalists and professors and college students on Twitter (and maybe even the crazy ones). Read, watch and listen critically. Be hungry. If you want it, you’ll find a place in this new media landscape.

Of course, a lot of it depends on what, exactly, you want to do. Photographers don’t need to know how to code in ActionScript, but some do. And the more you know, the easier it will be to get a job that you actually want when you’re finished school. But don’t forget the basics, the foundations. You’ll still have to know how to report, how to interview and how write. That’s not going to change.

Follow-up on foodies and farmers unite against “The Man”

The end of the story, for now, anyway.

----- Forwarded message -----
From: David Miller
Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: Foodies and Farmers Unite Against “The Man”

It was standing room only at the Johnson County Planning and Zoning Board meeting last night. I think it is safe to say that the numbers of e-mails sent to board members and the number of people who showed up to support Susan Jutz had a lasting impression on every policy maker in the room.

It is now clear to the board and administration staff that local agriculture is changing, and is no longer confined to the realms of corn, beans and hogs. Most importantly, they realize the relationship between farmer and consumer is not always protracted and abstract.

It took nearly two and a half hours for Susan and her supporters to explain to the Board what a CSA is, how small farms fit into the big picture, and how it is important for people to build a relationship with a grower–which includes on-farm tours and activities.

At the beginning of the meeting, the majority of board members seemed on edge and very negative about Susan’s appeal. By the end, however, the board voted unanimously to overturn a previous ruling. That ruling placed punitive financial constrictions on small farmers and made it nearly impossible to have those on-farm grower and consumer connections.

Just as seed dealers are allowed to invite people to their farms for seed-trials, small vegetable farmers are now allowed to invite people to their farms for educational and promotional events.

The vote was precedent setting, not only in Johnson County, but for the entire state of Iowa (and perhaps even in neighboring states) as many locales struggle with the same question: “What is a farm and who should receive farm exemptions?”

*Changing the minds of the board members could not have happened without your support.*

Thanks.
Farmer Dave

Fwd: local foodies and farmers unite against “The Man”

I don’t usually do board-meetings-and-politicians politics here, preferring to deal with abstract food politics that don’t involve so many messy specifics, but this came to me via Matt Steigerwald of Lincoln Cafe. I haven’t done any fact-checking or looked into the background at all — nor do any really know any one involved — so take this for what you will.

----- Forwarded message -----
From: David Miller
Date: Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:14 AM
Subject: Local Foodies and Farmers Unite Against "The Man"

Hello.

I just wanted you to know about a very important opportunity to stand up for local small farmers.

Tomorrow, many of us foodies, market gardeners and grain farmers will attend a Planning and Zoning Board meeting in Johnson County to show support for Susan Jutz.

Susan operates a CSA near Solon and every year she has held an educational event on her farm. Farm events are typically exempt from required “festival protocols” like big-fee permits, perimter fencing, crowd control. etc.

However Johnson County has suddenly decided that Susan does not grow on enough acres to constitute a “real farm.” Therefore, politicians there demand she follow festival protocols.

It is key that the board’s decision be reversed because it sets two very bad precedents in the state:

  1. the decision could affect the availability of future ag-related educational events (not good); and
  2. the decision allows a planning and zoning board to decide what is, and what is not an existing farm (a conflict of interest and really, really, really not good).

Tomorrow evening, Susan will appeal the board’s decision. Support from the public and fellow farmers is very important.

If you would like to overturn this bad decision, there are two ways you may help:

  1. Attend the P & Z meeting tomorrow night at 5:30 p.m at the Johnson County Administration Building (913 S. Dubuque St. in Iowa City); or
  2. Send e-mails to board members:

Rick Dvorak [email protected]
Terrence Neuzil [email protected]
Larry Meyers [email protected]
Sally Stutsman [email protected]
Rod Sullivan [email protected]
Pat Harney [email protected]

Also copy Susan on these e-mails so she may keep them in a file for future appeals/litigation. Her e-mail is: [email protected]

Feel free to pass on this e-mail (but please don’t do a broadcast spam). Thanks for your time and support.

[signed]
Farmer Dave

Lincoln Cafe is one of the bright spots

The problem with using Casey’s General Store as a landmark is that every small town in Iowa has one. So when I was told I needed to turn right, down one of the many straight side roads running between corn and soy fields, when Casey’s was on my left, I wasn’t sure if this one or another.

I probably shouldn’t have been driving. It was dark and I was distracted by the sparse lights from the fields and houses. And the half bottle of wine I’d had with dinner. And the belly full of food.

Oh, yes, the food. Lincoln Cafe‘s food. Lincoln Cafe, a Mount Vernon spot offering a few locally focused dishes every evening, doesn’t count as a hidden gem anymore. At night, when the kitchen rolls out the small menu of features — usually three plus an appetizer — that extends the menu past burgers and fries, it’s still hard to decide what to eat.

Matt Steigerwald, the cafe’s chef and proprietor, is adamant about the local focus of his menu, preferring to pay a premium for locally produced ingredients. He’s part of the foundation Iowa needs to cultivate if we’re to move towards becoming a destination for foodies. (Matt graciously gave me a plate of house-cured meats, including a smoked duck breast, prosciutto and a particularly delicious coppa.)

As more locally focused restaurants and producers and markets pop up around Iowa, we’ll see fewer Casey’s and more unique spots worth traveling for.

I suspect Matt would love the competition.

Pigs and “superbugs”

In The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof writes about the practice of giving pigs antibiotics to prevent diseases even when they are not sick

More antibiotics were fed to animals in North Carolina alone than were administered to the nation’s entire human population.

And if that’s true of North Carolina’s hogs, it’s true of Iowa’s hogs, simply because we have more. Overuse of antibiotics can lead to pathogens that are immune to our antibiotics; more diseases we can’t fight or cure. So-called superbugs.

Really, it’s the problem of cheap meat. It’s cheaper to pack pigs (and cows and chickens and …) into small spaces, load them up with drugs and feed them the waste products of our industrial food system than it is to care for them in some sort of humane way.

The production of (and demand for) cheap meat creates more problems than it solves. We consume more meat, causing rising cholesterol and obesity in the human population. We end up with a food system — a system so big that it can’t be properly overseen — that fosters the sale of diseased animals as food. It creates environmental pollution. It encourages the overuse of fossil fuels for farm chemicals (to feed the animals) and for transportation (to later ship them, living and dead).

The creation of superbugs is just another reason to reform our meat industry.

(Thanks to Sam for the quote)

La Quercia unboxing (La Quercia, part 4)

My birthday is on Monday and look what happened to show up today: a perishable birthday present from Laura and Sam. Hmm, what could it be? (I figure that if techies can post photo sets of them unboxing their new toys, I can post photos of me opening pig meat.)

It seems to be from La Quercia. There’s only one thing that I know they sell.

Salted pig. Very delicious salted pig.

A pound each of three different kinds.

Their original specialty, prosciutto Americano: salty and ever so slightly sweet.

Speck, a lightly smoked prosciutto.

Prosciutto piccante, sort of like spice speck but not quite.

Cutting it open.

Getting ready to pop some in my mouth.

It was delicious and I still have a lot left.

Earlier posts on La Quercia can be found here, here and here.

Iowa’s new old thing

Yesterday, Jim Duncan posted a brilliant essay that I linked in the Daily Slop, a section in the sidebar to your right. But reading his piece again, I wanted to talk about it here so that more people would see it.

He argues that we Iowans spend a lot of time and money trying to both attract people to our state and convince those from elsewhere that we’re just as with with it as, say, New York or Seattle or San Francisco.

We aren’t, and so we do it at the expense of something we do very well.

His suggestion:

Mainly, Iowa needs a new attitude, one that chauvinistically acclaims the quality of our best foods rather than resuscitating tired rhetoric about record-breaking harvests and largest-in-the-nation hog populations. More than ever, travel is food oriented. Yet Iowans seem ashamed of their agriculture roots and do little to promote some of the best tasting things in the world.

I’ve always thought of Iowa the way of thought of my little brother: I’m allowed to make fun of it, but you better not.

But no matter what credit Jim gives me at the end of the piece, I’m partially at fault here; when ploting a foodie weekend, I think of going four hours east to Chicago instead of two hours west to Des Moines.