Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

At least he can say his hearts in the right place... Season 2 of Jamie's Food Revolution in America is interesting, but does he have to be such a moppet?

My main issues with him:

-He's lost all his business sense. He got into a big argument with a diner owner over replacing 1.75/lb ground beef with 3.90/lb ground beef, and mislabeling yogurt smoothies as milkshakes. While his style of food may taste good (the diner owner and customers agreed), Jamie needs to realize there is a time and place for it. I also don't like his fast and loose ethics and general manner of forcing the changes.

-He leads schools to failure. In his first experiment with school lunches in England, he provoked a general revolt. The kids refused to eat the food, the lunch ladies were verging on striking because of 'overwork', and he was way way over budget. When he revisited the school, his lunch program was still poorly received and was in dire financial straights because of his extravagances and decision to close the schools profit center snack shop.

-Cheap scaremongering. The teaser on his first show shows him telling kids that they make ice cream out of beavers, and put ammonia into beef. Regarding beavers, an extract of beaver musk is used as a small component of some vanilla and raspberry flavorings. So what, we use animal derived ingredients in our food all the time, from animal fats, and animal broths, to extracts like cochineal and cà cuống. If you're telling people to tuck into a free range hamburger, you shouldn't be upset if your dessert has a little teeny tiny free range beaver in it. I just don't get it
Regarding the ammonia issue, the gaseous ammonia treatment for beef trim is essentially no different from the carcass rinses used to sanitize them after gutting and splitting. Further he ignores the all the naturally occurring ammonia in every day foods, ammonia production in the body, and its widespread use in food. Even oreo style cookies depend on ammonia gas for their unique texture.

-I don't like condescension. I don't think anyone does.





Will you still watch it?

Yup. I think improving school lunches is a good thing. And the show is pretty entertaining in its own right. I think he's going it about it in a bad way. I'd start by kick out these bad purchasing decisions where they are using microwave meals to feed kids, and start seeing what I can make in house with regular ingredients.

IT'S HERE!!!!!!

Just picked up the scale from the post office. It seems like a pretty good scale. Lightweight, fast read, and runs on AAA batteries rather then some exotic type. Here's the one I got and a link so you can get one too, if you want:
 http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-Digital-Kitchen-Capacity-Stylish/dp/B003E7AZQA/ref=sr_1_8?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1303329827&sr=1-8

I will test its accuracy later. It weighed my full water bottle (a recycled Powerade bottle) in at 1018 g. The bottle has a rated capacity of 946ml (or 946g of water), but I didn't tare out the bottle weight, and I overfilled it. All in all, my rough guess is that it's accurate. It amazes me you can really accurate scientific type scales at Amazon for about the same price or less, as well as calibration weights. Not sure when I'd need to measure out 0.001g of Salt though. Maybe if it was for molecular gastronomy...

Hopefully I'll get to see how it performs in the kitchen, tonight. Right now I'm weighing stuff in my office. It will also take a while to see how it fares, endurance wise. If  it craps out in less then a year, expect a post full of profanity and broken dreams.

The precious...(and my pasty palm)

Review: Kogi BBQ Food Truck

Around about 5pm today, I was surfing the web and hit on Kogi's website, http://kogibbq.com . According to their schedule, their truck would be my dad's neighborhood tonight. My dad's a sucker for Korean BBQ. It was one of his signature dishes (He swears by Ebara brand sauce/marinade). I knew he'd be down for it. One phone call and a couple hours later, my dad and I were standing in line. Kogi is one of the most hailed concepts of the Southern California food truck revolution. They feature a fusion of Korean BBQ meats and flavors, on a Mexican platform.

 The truck.

There was a decent sized crowd. Always at least 5-10 people in line, and about the same waiting for food. The wait wasn't too bad. I wasn't timing or anything, but I think we spent around 10-20 at the truck, and that included time to figure out the menu and waiting to order.

Here's what we had:

 Short Rib Taco $2.10 a la carte

The short rib taco was probably the best of what we had. The bbq was some of the best I've ever had, with some nice char. It was totally boneless very little sinew/cartilage bits, a nice bonus. The website menu calls the cut 'short rib trimmings.'

Blue Moon Mulitas $3 for one/$5 for two

 This was my least favorite. Basically it's a quesadilla filled with Korean bbq chicken and chedder cheese. It's topped with their orange flavored salsa, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. The flavors didn't really do it for me, and the mulitas were undercooked. They gotta be crispy folks!

Spicy Pork Burrito $5 

 Inside the burrito 

The burrito wasn't too bad. It featured some nice Korean style spicy pork. I think it was even char grilled a little, which worked well with the gochuchang marinade.

The Good:

- Really, really, really good korean BBQ. I'd be happy with a bowl of rice and some bbq.

- Accessible fusion food.

- Decent value. We each got a combo #2; 1 burrito, 1 taco, and a drink (canned soda) for 8 bucks.

The Bad:

- Everything was sweet. Oh so sweet. Just about too sweet too eat for me. This I think was unbalanced when combined with the Mexican elements. That lime wedge with the taco made a HUGE difference for the better.

- Meh salsas. I didn't like the salsa naranja much, but that might have just been in combination with the mulitas. I'll be sure to ask for some on the side next time so I can investigate them further.

- Undergriddled tortillas for tacos, so they didn't lose they stale texture and taste that tortillas get if they aren't super fresh. Already mentioned the under cooked mulitas.

- Where's my kimchi, bro?!?! That kimchi looking stuff is just a slaw of lettuce and cabbage with some sort of soy-sesame-chili sauce. I found out later, if you want real kimchi, the tangy fermented stuff, it's an extra charge.

The Ugly:

- Not real convenient. You can't just pop down if you're in the mood for a bulgogi taco. You need to plan ahead, otherwise the truck could on the other side of town or out of service for the day. You'll need to keep an eye on their website and twitter. This is a fault of the new wave food truck business model, not this truck in particular.

- If you want your food to go (and you will because it's a freaking food truck), you have to wrap the food up and bag it yourself. I counted 5-6 guys inside the truck. At least one of them could put a frigging lid on my tacos.

Would You Go Again?:

My dad liked it, and he'd go again. I would go at least once more. I want to try their version of a burger, and their desserts; a chocolate tres leches cake, and some sort of siracha flavored chocolate rice crispy turtle bar. I'd also bring some tea or beer to drink. The food is just too sweet to drink with the soda or juice they offer.

Review In One Sentence:

Good Korean style BBQ, the rest needs work.