Like Water for Choclate uses Magical Realism to capture the transformative qualities of everyday food and drink into something more. Also consider reading (and enjoying) Joanne Harris' amazing Chocolat.
On November 7, 2012 the Napa Valley Film Festival will launch its second year as a must-attend event. That gotta-be-there feeling is especially true this year as the Festival will be screening a new wine film, SOMM.
SOMM (slang for “sommelier”) follows four very talented young sommeliers as they get ready for the grueling, notoriously difficult Master Sommelier exam.
The exam, which only 200 people in the world have ever passed, requires a stunning knowledge of everything to do with the pairing of wine and food on a global level.
The film is well worth seeing for it serve as a reminder that the life we desire always takes dedication and courage to achieve. In short, never drink alone or in ignorance!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
It seems the world is a swirl with crisis and violent protest when peace would serve us all so much better.
Yet hate and prejudice are sadly nothing new. Great writers from Twain to Tolstoy have documented the lost such actions create.
Now even major food producers are asking consumers, through humor, to remember and consider the cost of hate and blind bias.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (and Kraft Foods), however, don’t have the final word on this subject. Americans have heard during the current election season a constant (but weakly documented) attack on the many benefits of mature government.
Maybe the best response to such a shortsighted barrage, a la The Scarlet Letter Mayonnaise Ad, is this memorable scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian:
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
It was a day of horror that none of us within the Hospitality Industry will ever forget. Hundreds of our colleagues, whose only crime was to go to work to create, to serve, were killed for no reason except to justify hate.
Yet as time passes it is so easy to remember only the pictures that broke our hearts of falling steel and explosing flames and forget the faces.
We must not forget our many friends and colleagues who worked within the Towers. Each and every one of them had a name. Catherine Hernandez has not forgotten.
She has said this, "My father, Norberto, was a pastry chef at Windows on the World in Tower One.
"For ten years, he made many fancy and famous desserts, but the sweetest dessert he made was the marble cake he made for us at home...
"Whenever we parted, Poppi would say, 'Te amo. Vaya con Dios.'
"I want to say the same thing to you, Poppi. I love you. Go with God."
If you can, call for a silent moment this September 11th and ask your staff to pause for a minute or two to remember these remarkably talented members of our Industry - how much they loved what they were doing and how we each have a responsibility to carry their legacy forward into a better world, one that we are creating by what we do each and every day.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
And you are correct, if it seems that there are almost as many sponsors for the Olympics this year as there are athletes. After all, the Games, which began in 1896, are expensive and the seemingly endless bills for lodging and arena construction have to be paid.
Indeed, heavy governmental funding for theUtah 2002 Winter Olympics, not to mention that the Olympic torches used were made in Burma, have been very stressful topics for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, in the current US presidential election.
So as you might have expected, commercial sponsorship has been a controversial element of the Olympics since its beginning. But did you know that its first official sponsor was the company that first offered soup made from bouillon cubes to tired athletes?
That's right – bouillon cubes, those invigorating little compact squares of concentrated soup.
Even less known is the fact that Nicolas Apperts, who first marketed bouillon cubes, also invented the process of canning as we know it today. A failed champagne producer and an unsuccessful innkeeper and chef, Nicolas Apperts was a man who collected talents to seemingly no benefit.
But when Napoleon announced he would award a huge cash prize to anyone who could develop a method to preserve food for his far-flung army, Nicolas Apperts knew his day had come
As an unsuccessful chef, he well understood spoilage. As a failed winemaker he knew bottling – especially champagne.
As a result, he developed a method so simple, so obviousit had been overlooked by everyone else. Just put the desired food in a bottle, top it off with a liquid sauce, seal the bottle like a champagne bottle and then heat the bottle until the internal liquid boils.
It worked! Nicolas Apperts received the award, got the huge government contracting and built the very first commercial bottling plant.
It was in the research lab of his newly flounded company, that he reduced soup to its most compact form to the delight of weary athletes and hurried chefs everywhere.
And what better place to first demonstrate the "Cube's" restorative powers to the public than at the 1908 Summer Olympics, where Dorando Pietri, the couragous Italian Marathon Runner AND pastry chef, enjoyed its nurturing and resorative powers. (And what chef would not identify with his final push in their own effort to make it through a long and seemingly endless day of effort).
Video Text by Sir Arthur Conan Doyale, Famed Author of Sherlock Holmes Novels
So let us never underestimate the power of the small, the few, be it a single world-class athlete or a tiny little bouillon cube in the hands of a creative chef who can inspire us all!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
Soon the U.S. will be celebrating its Independence Day. No president is more associated with American ideals than George Washington. Yet, similar to the current presidential campaign rhetoric, myths equally abound regarding the nation’s first president and Colonial War hero. Just consider...
Childhood
Then: George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree.
Then: George Washington refused his general’s salary of $48,000 while serving for 8 years as commander of the Continental Army. Instead, he billed Congress only for his expenses, which totaled $447,220!
Now: Mitt Romney has accepted no public campaign donations, choosing instead to rely on Super PACS funded by millionaires.
Human Rights
Then: George Washington was the only slave-owning President who ever freed his slaves – all 124 of them.
Now: Despite current political ads, illegal immigration is down 60% since 2000.
Religion
Then: George Washington never knelt at Valley Forge or anywhere else. He occasionally attended the Episcopal Church but was known to never kneel with the Congregation or to receive Communion.
Now: Barack Obama is a Christian. Period, end of discussion.
Temperance
Then: Washington operated one of the new nation’s most commercial successful distilleries at Mt Vernon, producing rye whiskey, apple and peach brandies.
Now: Religious guidelines aside, the White House needs to continue to represent the bounty of America to its many international guests, including California’s wines and Kentucky’s legendary whiskeys and bourbons.
Hospitality
Then: George Washington hosted a nearly endless stream of guests. He also belonged to many social clubs and service organizations such as the Fish House Club and Masons.
Now: Mitt Romney often restricts press and public access, limits questioning and won’t release multi-year income tax filings.
As you can see, the U.S. has come a long way, and yet, still has further to go. So, why not skip the patriotically named red-white-and-blue colored cocktails this Fourth, and drink what Washington drank, the famed Fish House Punch, matched with his favorite Colonial Hoe Cakes.
It’s a strong drink, but it’s honest – the way we still long for our politicians to be.
Fish House Punch
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
3 ½ cups water
1 ½ cups fresh lemon juice (6 to 8 lemons), strained
1 (750-ml) bottle Jamaican amber rum
12 oz. Cognac (1 1/2 cups)
2 oz. peach brandy (1/4 cup)
Lemon Slices
Special Equipment: Half Gallon Cardboard Juice or Milk Carton, Top end cut off
Directions
To make ice block, fill carton with water and freeze until solid, about 8 hours.
Stir together sugar and 31/2 cups water in a large bowl or pot until sugar is dissolved.
Add lemon juice, rum, Cognac, and brandy and chill, covered, at least 3 hours.
Put ice block in a punch bowl and pour punch over it.
Colonial Hoe Cakes
Ingredients
1 ½ cups self-raising cornmeal
¼ tsp baking soda
1 ¼ cups buttermilk
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 Tbsp melted shortening
¼ cup melted shortening
Directions
Combine cornmeal and baking soda in a medium bowl.
Add buttermilk, egg and 1 tbsp melted shortening.
Stir until just moistened.
Heat ¼ cup of shortening to 365 in large cast iron skillets. (Originally baked on a hoe’s metal surface, hence the name).
Pour ¼ cup batter into skillet for each hoe cake.
Fry 1 to 2 minutes until golden brown.
Serve with butter and honey.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012
Post Note, June 27, 2012: If you are looking for a great movie to honor the 4th that is historically accurate and entertaining, check out 1776, the Musical. It's a patriotic must.
Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 2:09PM 
