Missing the Backyard BBQ 🎆 | Takeout Trash | Recipe: All-Kraut Latkes
Issue No. 47
Thanks to everyone who has helped us raise hundreds of dollars already for our Grow Roots Miami fundraiser!! If you want to participate, check out last week’s issue.
A PROGRAMMING NOTE: To celebrate summer’s arrival and Jackie’s move back home, we will be taking next week off. Happy Fourth! 🎇
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Hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, potato salad- to thee I say: No thanks I’ll pass. The best Fourth of Julys have been when I’ve been privileged enough to attend the Costa Family Backyard Barbeque, hosted by longtime family friends in my ancestral home of Staten Island. They always bring in this very intense guy who makes Long Island-style grandma pizza pies on the grill and THEY. ARE. EXQUISITE. So crispy.
But Independence Day is not the holiday for me. In early July in South Florida, the weather is always horrific. If it’s not a tropical storm, it’s a million and ten degrees outside. My dog freaks out over the fireworks, so I have to spend the night gently soothing her while she shivers in the bathtub. And honestly, right now I think the nation could do with a little less ra-ra we’re the best USA! and a little more sit quietly in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
I may be a Fourth of July grinch, but I sorely miss parties where the main activity is hanging out in someone’s backyard, eating and drinking. After a year away, I’m about to head back home to Stuart, and I’ll be moving into what I hope will be my forever home- a 100 year old Sears Roebuck kit house with Dade County Pine and a screened in front porch and an avocado tree, right in the middle of downtown.
Under normal circumstances, I would be in full housewarming party-planning mode. I’d make pizza on the grill, Costa family 4th-style. I’d get growlers of beer from Sailfish Brewing Company and a tray of cookies from Castronovo Chocolate. I’d try and convince my friend Mimi to make some of her incredible ice cream. There would be karaoke and lots of dancing and I would get to HUG people. Remember hugging? And I would make too much food and try to force leftovers on departing guests, but secretly be glad when they refused so that I could eat it all myself throughout the week.
The pandemic has reaffirmed many of the vital roles that food plays in my life- comfort, nourishment, routine. But what I sorely miss is food as a connector- the foundation for community, shared experience, and celebration. I anxiously await the future in which I can gather all of my people together and say I love you and I’m glad you’re in my life through a big, delicious meal.
love,
Jackie
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Watch This
To-go meals don’t have to be so messy for the planet
Takeout has been a lifesaver during quarantine, giving overwhelmed cooks a break from the kitchen. But oof! do to-go orders create a lot of trash (Matt, who has eaten way too much takeout this week, can vouch). And that’s bad for the planet. Celebrate Plastic Free July with some lessons from this eye-opening video on reducing waste.
Dr. M. Sanjayan, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles and the CEO of Conservation International, explains in the video how packaging makes up the largest category of municipal waste. Single-use items make the problem even more dire. To reduce greenhouse gases requires reducing waste, and refusing a lot more of the useless trash that restaurants like to hand customers.
-Matt
Fresh Links
🌎Who Gets to Host Food Travel Shows? | Food & Wine
Padma Lakshmi’s new food travel show “Taste the Nation” on Hulu has been released to rave reviews this week. Writer Khushbu Shah asks why it’s been so rare to find a food travel show hosted by a woman of color. Shah cites “Salt Fat Acid Heat” creator Samin Nosrat as another rare example of a WOC food travel host. And getting there was an uphill struggle for both, despite years and years of culinary expertise. Giving non-white hosts their own food travel show allows for fresher and more nuanced perspectives. And that’s what makes a show like “Taste the Nation” work so well:
What stands out about Lakshmi’s show, even more than the deployment of gut-wrenching history lessons, is the fact that this show about immigrants is one of the first hosted by a brown female immigrant herself. ([Marcus] Samuelsson, an immigrant, has also hosted a show about immigrant communities for PBS.) It’s a fact that Lakshmi regularly reminds you of — the intro features Lakshmi holding up a photo of her four-year-old self, the age at which she moved to the United States. It’s also one of her greatest powers. There is an ease she has on screen as she moves in and out of communities. The people she visits with seem to connect with her more, trust her quicker. They are more willing to talk about their pain. A Peruvian grandmother in Paterson, NJ says with tears welling up in her eyes, “Your mom was like me,” after Lakshmi shares her own mother’s similar struggles of having to leave a young Padma behind while she built a life in the United States.
😷🍝How will COVID-19 impact our future eating? We asked a food anthropologist | The Takeout
Food anthropologists exist! And they have fascinating insights into food and our habits and what the pandemic means for the way we eat. Marnie Shure spoke with “Smart Mouth” podcast host and food anthropologist Katherine Spiers about how the country has adapted “under stay-at-home orders amid our quarantine-related restlessness.“
There also are some insights from past pandemics. The 1918 Spanish flu actually pushed households away from home cooking because people became obsessed with hygiene and the emergence of hygienic products like canned, jarred and boxed items. And England’s historically bland food culture seems to have been influenced by the plague, with fears of disease leading to the notion that it was safer to boil everything to hell than eat fresh produce.
🍷Black Wine Professionals Demand to be Seen | NY Times
Eric Asimov interviews nine Black wine professionals on their experiences in the industry and their hopes for “a deeper conversation and understanding among their peers in the wine world.”
Those interviewed, like wine educator Julia Coney, spoke of how white people frequently ‘correct” things she already knows, like how to hold a glass of wine. And at restaurants, servers and somms will try to dumb down their wine offerings. She also is often the only Black person at wine events, and she’s created the database “Black Wine Professionals, in hopes that white gatekeepers who say they want to diversify will use this tool.”
There are also issues with the way wine is described that keep people of color outside the industry. South Africa’s first black female winemaker Ntsiki Biyela says that European wine lingo includes obscure flavor references that many Black South Africans aren’t familiar with. As food and drinks writer Tammie Teclemariam notes, wine is a world filled with “rampant class and generational issues.” It’s an old-boy network where racism is still prevalent. That’s exactly why listening to the Black writers, somms, retailers, farmers and winemakers right now is so important.
All-kraut Latkes
I happen to be working my way through several gallons of kraut in an attempt to free up cooler space for all the ferments I’ll be transporting across the state on my impending move. And so, it is with great pleasure that I present to you: The All-Kraut Latke.
makes about 8 latkes
Ingredients
4 eggs
6 tablespoons breadcrumbs
6 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sauerkraut
half an onion, thinly sliced
canola or other neutral frying oil
step-by-step
Place medium saute pan over medium-high heat and add a generous amount of canola oil. Latkes should be about halfway submerged during frying.
While oil is heating, whisk together eggs, breadcrumbs, flour, cornstarch, and salt until well combined. Then mix in kraut and onions.
Test oil by dropping a sliver of kraut in the pan. If it immediately begins to sizzle, it’s hot enough. Drop a clawful of the mixture (about 1/4 cup) in the oil, being careful not to splash oil on your fingers. Repeat to fill the pan, leaving space between each latke. Fry for a few minutes, until bottoms are brown and crispy. Then flip each latke and fry for another couple of minutes.
Remove from pan and pat latkes with a thin kitchen cloth to remove excess oil. Enjoy straight from the pan.
Trying to eat out under quarantine has truly broken our brains
And since we’re taking next week off, here’s one more bonus Just Dessert to keep you satiated! 🥔🐇
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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.