Food + Stories | Bad Apps | Recipe: Peanut Sauce
Issue No. 42
Welcome to Issue No. 42 ,where you might not find the answer to life, the universe and everything, but you will find a fantastic peanut sauce recipe.
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I’m currently interrupting my full day marathon of the first season of “Ugly Betty” (hot take: melodrama is THE BEST narrative structure) to put fingers to keyboard for the first time in a while. One thing you may not know about me is that I watch a prodigious amount of television. My friends are often mystified by how I manage to hold down a fulltime job, maintain social connections, and still binge full seasons of shows in a couple of days.
I studied experimental theater in college and graduate school. I love a good six hour minimalist opera or a radical, interactive puppet parade. But at the end of the day, what really gets my heart racing is a good linear narrative. Ever since I picked up that first Harry Potter book at 11, I’ve been hooked on stories. I love getting lost in another world, and TV is my preferred mode of transport. The last decade or so has been dubbed the golden age of television — incredible actors and writing, insane production values. Television is the emotional weighted blanket that’s getting me through the pandemic, along with my top notch therapist and wonderful family and friends.
When I’m not watching stories (or reading them...I do that too I swear), I’m in the kitchen. Feeding myself in quarantine has been variations on a few themes: sauteed greens or roasted veggies with a crispy, sunny side up egg; a big bowl of beans with lots of garlic, tomato, and spices; and cheesy, buttery pasta. In other words, peasant food.
I know, I know. Actual peasants were incredibly malnourished and survived on beer and rock-hard bread filled with chaff. I’m talking peasant food as we understand it from the culinary lexicon — simple fare built around seasonality and thrift. A lot of fresh veggies and seasonal fruit, whole grains, legumes, and the occasional off-cut of meat. Flavors were coaxed out using well-honed kitchen skills, and nothing was wasted. Basically, how my ancestors were eating in rural Italy before crossing the pond, or how any working class person anywhere in the world ate before the industrial food revolution in the early decades of the 20th century.
And that, my friends, is how I want to eat right now. I want the edible version of an absorbing linear narrative. Just a big bowl of familiar comfort, carefully produced with the best ingredients available to me. It also seems to be the direction the food world is moving in. The places on my bucket list showcase creativity, but within a more modest framework. There’s Larder in Cleveland, a classic Jewish deli that also happens to be the nation’s epicenter for koji experimentation. The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine is all about down-home Americana, and it’s pretty much impossible to get a table. Pizzeria Beddia in Philadelphia is an old school pizza joint with a bit of hipster flair, plus a private, omakase-style hoagie room.
Right now, the food that I’m eating and the television I’m consuming are serving a very similar purpose. It doesn’t surprise me, because food and stories are two sides of the same coin. They both comfort and nourish. More importantly, they connect us to our shared humanity. How we cook and share food is what makes us human, and stories serve to remind us that we’re all going through this circus together.
love,
Jackie
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What’s Stewing in the Food World?
Deliver us from crappy apps
Food delivery apps like Grubhub, UberEats, Postmates and Doordash charge exorbitant fees to restaurants. The situation is so dire that John Stamos — not the actor, but an owner of a Greek restaurant in Brooklyn — has started including a note about how Grubhub is killing his business with every delivery order, according to NBC News:
"Small businesses like us need your support in this time of crisis," Stamos writes in each note. "Online apps such as GRUBHUB ARE CHARGING US 30% of each order and $9 or more on orders made using phone numbers on their app or website … please help save the restaurant industry by ordering directly with us."
As Stamos’ notes point out, those fees can be avoided if a customer orders delivery directly from the restaurant. Unless of course an app builds a knockoff website, without the restaurant’s permission, to trick customers into ordering through their service. That’s how this absurd and totally delightful story came about where a pizzeria owner turned a profit by ordering pizzas for himself off his own “fake” website:
The big takeaway from this article is that these VC-funded food delivery apps are all massive money-losing platforms. None of them are close to profitable! They are killing restaurants without even helping themselves (plus treating their delivery drivers like hell). And with UberEats trying to buy GrubHub in a move that would give them 48 percent of the U.S. market, there’s bound to be less competition to drive down prices.
Some cities have started capping food delivery app fees. Still, the easiest thing anyone can do to support a favorite restaurant operating during the pandemic is delete the apps, pick up the phone and call in a delivery, and tip the driver well. And if you can help restaurant owners scam a delivery app, by all means, do that too.
-Matt
Fresh Links
💡Stewed Awakening | Eater
Food star Allison Roman (who is white) recently went full mean girl on two extremely successful women of color, Chrissy Teigan and Marie Kondo. Writer Navneet Alang explains the drama, but more importantly, examines why it matters and what it means for the food world and U.S. culture at large. What does cultural appropriation even mean in the context of the porous boundaries of global cuisine? Why do we seem to like ethnic food more when it’s presented to us by a hip white lady? These are questions people of color have been grappling with forever, and which white people must take to heart.
Like every damn thing else, the solution lies in structural reform, not policing individual behavior.
[T]he question here is much less about what we do in private than what public representation does and means: if or why it matters when a white person popularizes ghee, or Nashville hot chicken becomes a big thing but the work of African-American cooks and chefs is still ignored. In the circuits of culture, there are routes to legitimacy and fame, and the problem we have in the food world is that the most reliable path seems to center whiteness again and again.
🛒Comfort Food | The Nib
A poignant comic by Victoria Ying on how she has eaten more of the foods she grew up with— congee with pickles, green onion pancakes — since quarantining. But there’s a darker side to why she’s turned to these foods. She reflects on comfort and shopping at Asian supermarkets to avoid the anti-Chinese racism that others have faced at local grocery stores.
🌽How Native Americans Are Fighting a Food Crisis | NY Times
Native American reservations have been some of the worst epicenters for covid-19 outbreaks. In places like the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Oglala Sioux Tribe members already struggle with food insecurity, high diabetes rates and government neglect. Grocery stores can be as far as a two-hour drive away. In these lands, coronavirus makes access to food even more difficult.
Many indigenous producers have turned to traditional practices (seed saving, canning, dehydrating) as a way to survive with limited supplies. Native organizations like the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, a group that collects and grows heirloom seeds, has seen a huge upswing in seed requests, according to program director Rowen White:
Ms. White used to receive about a dozen requests for seeds every few months, but that number has grown to 600. She is packaging seed collections that include the Native American staples corn, beans and squash (known as the “three sisters” because they are often planted and eaten together), and teaching online gardening classes.
A Very Gringo Peanut Sauce
Above: peanut sauce mixed with black rice noodles, sauteed red onion, katuk and thai basil from the garden.
I made this from ingredients I already had in my pantry. It’s reminiscent of a Thai peanut curry, or a Malaysian satay, but less nuanced. It is, however, very delicious and the only step is “put everything in a blender”. To turn it into dinner, make rice or noodles, saute or roast some veggies, toss in sauce, and top with herbs. And that’s all she wrote.
Or just dip your celery sticks in some!
For excellent Asian recipes created by women of color, I love the sites Rasa Malaysia, Hot Thai Kitchen, and Maangchi.
makes 1 1/2 cups, or enough for 3-4 main servings
Ingredients
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup coconut milk
3 tablespoons soy sauce
4 teaspoons lime juice (or lemon or yuzu)
2 teaspoons rice vinegar ( or other light vinegar)
2-3 garlic cloves
1-2 inches peeled ginger
1-2 teaspoons hot pepper
1-2 teaspoons salt
step-by-step
Blend ingredients together until smooth. Taste and adjust flavor as needed.
Thank goodness for small quarantine miracles : )
Talk to Us
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.