Category Archives: Features

Stalking the Wild Tortilla Chip

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cavemanWhile eating breakfast tacos at our heavenly neighborhood taqueria, Gueros, this weekend, I began to muse on fat. After all, I could think of many reasons why the tacos were delicious (The tang of those pickled onion! The salt of that queso fresco! The bite of that habanera sauce!), but the plain tortilla chips were just as irresistible, and I had a feeling that it was because of the sheen of glistening oil that they wore after their bath in the deep fryer.

I formed an extemporaneous theory that this must be because of some evolutionary phenomenon. After all, it’s not that fat is bad, necessarily, just that it packs a huge wallop of calories and energy all at once, which was probably quite helpful if you were trying to, say, survive a famine. Jason was skeptical of this thinking—if fat was actually good, then why did his stomach feel so lousy after eating all that grease? If he had stalked a wooly tortilla chip across the icy tundra for four days, I retorted, his stomach would probably feel just fine.

While little information is available about the elusive wild tortilla chip, I did find some interesting evidence that scientific thought about fat is still evolving. Continue reading →

Our Newest Contributor Is…You!

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fifties cookSure, we love writing for the blog, but it’s not just about us, us, us. One of the reasons we started PitchKnives is so we could hear your stories about food and gardening. So in our second month, it’s time to make your voice heard. All you need to do is write to us at submissions@pitchknives.com

Here are some easy ways to get involved:

  • See one of Jason’s Concrete Jungle signs? Snap a picture or tell us about how you found it.
  • Have a great restaurant you’d put up a fight for? Tell us about it and you might just get picked for Grub Match. Next up are NYC brunch favorites, but other themes and cities are already in the works, so elect the place you love most.
  • Need a lunch date? Convince me that there’s a spot near your subway stop that I have to try, and you could be part of our Lunch at the End of the Line series.

But that’s not all. You (yes, YOU) possess the power to write an awesome food feature. Did you just make a rad new chimichurri sauce? Did you just discover the secret to growing the perfect carrot? Did you put together the perfect picnic? Send your ideas to submissions@pitchknives.com. We love photo galleries, too.

So, go on! Make our mouths water!
–The Editors

Name that Cooking Utensil

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I like gadgets as much as the next person, but I can honestly say that I don’t own a single one of the objects pictured below. Can you guess what each of these historic utensils was used for? (I am aware that a dog is not actually a utensil, but give yourself a bonus point if you can guess that one.)

The answers… Continue reading →

Breakfast on the Go

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New York, as the City of Immigrants, is the City of Coincidental Comestible Revelations.  And I’m not just talking about the Ethiopian restaurants or the kimchi tacos. I’m talking about Hispanic fare, the cousins of the common taco and burrito that everyone in the country has experienced.  The Mango-on-a-Stick, in which the fruit is carved into a petaled flower shape and rubbed in lime juice, salt, and hot sauce, was an early discovery in my life here.  Recently, I have discovered Mexican drinkable oatmeal. Continue reading →

A Date with Ginger Rogers

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Amongst the foods we can now enjoy (and pay for) in health-conscious, unprocessed, community-minded, brand-as-political-statement form is granola.  And folks charge an arm and a leg for it once it steps off the industrial-agriculture train.

But granola is easy, cheap, and quick to make at home. PitchKnives’s lowers cholesterol, contains lots of omegas and vitamins, and is a fiber powerhouse.  It contains significant protein, iron, magnesium, and zinc.

We’ve dubbed one of the versions I’ve developed A Date with Ginger Rogers.  It includes dates and ginger.  And it’s tasty as hell.  Ahh yes, we are clever. Continue reading →

What Will Oscar Eat?: Spring Greens Edition

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what will oscar eat?My cat Oscar has always had rather peculiar tastes for a feline. The smell of white beans has the same effect on him as catnip. In summer months, he answers to the nickname Tomato Slayer because of all the mornings we have woken to find heirlooms that have been rolled from a high shelf in the middle of the night and gruesomely mauled on the kitchen floor. If any sauce is left foolishly unattended on the stovetop, Oscar is sure to come slinking into the living room with a guilty little beard of it staining his white chin fur. And though all of these habits are exceedingly irritating, I won’t pretend that they don’t also fill me with a strange kind of pride: maybe my pet is special, a feline gastronome.

The boundaries of Oscar’s tastes have never been scientifically tested, however, and if my claims of his spectacular feline palate are to hold any water, they should be well documented. So I set up a little experiment with some salad greens to see if Oscar would demonstrate his omnivorous tendencies. Here are my scientific observations:

in the laboratory

With red leaf lettuce, baby spinach and kale spread out before him, the subject headed straight for the kale. (The researcher initially attributed this to the fact that it was the only organic number in the bunch, but then discarded this hypothesis after remembering that the subject has been known to eat the puke of other cats. The kale was also closest to the subject.) Continue reading →

Community News: Big Government in Your Farmers Market

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Though few of us may stop to consider the fact, the modern farmers market is the true market of humanity.  The vast, fluorescent, all-in-one supermarkets where most of us buy our groceries are of a species only about 65-years-old.  They were born out of the boom of technology, cars, and suburbs that became the West’s reward for winning the Second World War.  They were a dramatic upheaval, and it’s a testament to their power that so many of us today see them as the default purveyor of food.

But the farmers market is the original market.  It’s the market that grew up along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.  It’s the market that still delivers the goods on most corners of Earth.  And—with a simple obviousness that should make us stop and consider just how marketing psychology and a buck have shaped America—it’s the market that provides poor people all over the world with good, healthy food.  Only in America are the poorest people the fattest.  Elsewhere, they pay their neighbors for vegetables picked this morning and a chicken killed last night.

But some unsung, heroic bureaucrats in D.C. are getting it together.  The Feds have committed $4 Million Dollars to equip the country’s 7,100 farmers markets with the apps and bandwidth to process food stamps.  Food stamps aren’t really stamps anymore, they are electronic credits distributed among a few acronymic programs like the EBT and WIC.  Right now, less than a quarter of those 7,100 markets are able to swipe plastic cards and send a series of digits zinging through wires to a database somewhere.  Enter Big Government and their aim to add another 4,000 markets to that list.  And enter a company named the Novo Dia Group that has developed an iPhone app to take the process wireless.

Continue reading →

Regulators’ Aggravators

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In honor of the death of the mighty Maurice Sendak, whose classic book In the Night Kitchen dared to include in one of its illustrated scenes the three-year-old hero’s wee penis, thus earning a ban in various pathetic circles, today’s feature contemplates banned foods.  There is nothing here as fantastic as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but we can nonetheless appreciate the process of changing sensibilities, gastronomic if not linguistic.

 

Jesus Rode an Eeyore, Not a Trigger

You’d have a hard time finding horse on any menus in the Western world these days (though I seem to recall an article in The Times a few years back trumpeting its inclusion among the quirky dishes served by a new restaurant debuting to some fanfare.)  In general, though, eating horse is taboo, just half-a-step away from eating a pooch.  Eating horse was a staple, however, for early Anglo-Saxon tribes, who surely relied on the animal to win battles, make clothes, and till earth.  Eating the horse was a way to honor its contribution to their human existence.  Popes Zachary and Gregory III consequently banned the practice in the 8th Century as a way to help eradicate pagan religious festivals.  The ban remains on the Vatican’s law books to this day, but President Obama signed into law a bill allowing the slaughter and consumption of horse meat last November.

Continue reading →

The Tofu Conundrum

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greek salad with baked lemon dill tofu

I understand the shudder that goes down some people’s spines whenever the word tofu is mentioned. Despite the fact that I, long a convert to the way of the bean curd, will eat tofu in any form under the sun, I have been known to eschew many foods on the basis of texture, so I can understand why some might quail at the thought of a watery or slimy white block. But if you are one of the many tofu-haters out there, fear not; there may yet be a preparation of tofu you can fall in love with.

Marinated and baked tofu is delicious, with a firm but juicy texture that is a perfect complement to crisp salad greens. What’s more, it’s easy to make. Here’s my recipe for Lemon Dill Baked Tofu, which I love to serve with a giant Greek salad. Continue reading →

Seedlings of the Night

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Cheeky little scamps! I recently came across some personal ads and glamour shots that our seedlings had been planning on posting in the local paper. And you try to raise ‘em right….

Morning glory seedlingMorning Glory

Long, leggy beauty seeks someone to wrap herself around. Enjoys sunrises and hopping fences. Shorties need not apply.

Pea shootEnglish Peas

Fancy a little British invasion all your own? Early bloomer seeks same. We could be like two in a…well, you know.

Rainbow chard seedlingsRainbow Chard

Me: A colorful personality who’s not afraid to be different. You: A connoisseur who won’t skimp on the butter when you saute me over a long, low heat.

Kale seedlingRagged Jack Kale

Tired of that limp-legged sissy chard? Right this way, baby, to the manliest of the greens. Don’t believe anyone who says I’m too tough, though—slide me into your oven and I’ll crumble.