Eat All About It

The endless cycle of the foie gras wars goes on in Seattle with weekly protests that, as far as I can tell, follow the same pointless cycle as I used to find in my years as a restaurant critic. Mentioning foie gras in a review brought on automatic form letters from protesters saying it was cruel to force-feed ducks to produce the dish, which I answered with my own form reply. No one’s mind was changed, or even challenged.

That’s part of why I tip my hat to Mark Caro, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, and his new book ”The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World’s Fiercest Food Fight.”

Caro is coming to town July 14 for a Words & Wine event (cost: $45, including the book, wine and nibbles). He knows his subject as intimately as only a guy who’s stuck his hand up a duck’s rib cage to pull out its liver can know it, and I’m looking forward to hearing him talk with Warren Etheredge about the facts, the morality, and the politics of this culinary flashpoint. (The event’s at the Pan-Pacific Hotel, by the way, not Lark or Quinn’s.)

As I wrote  here for the Christian Science Monitor, I admire how thoroughly Caro embraced “the moral whiplash” of his research, uncovering revealing facts on all sides. He avoids delivering absolute conclusions in the end, leaving readers to draw their own.

“I’m trying to tell you what I learned and what I know, but not tell you what you should do with that,” he said in a phone conversation last week.

He does, though, give readers as complete a look as they’re ever likely to get of the foie debate; enough information to draw conclusions, no matter which side readers choose in the end. Caro visited farms in the U.S. and in France for his research, observed the animals from force-feedings through slaughter, spent the time it took to understand the views of protesters and restaurateurs, politicians and veterinarians, and just about everyone else with a duck in this fight.  

Here are some highlights from our conversation: (more…)

Allons-y, bakers! Get set for the first “Francophile Fruit Tart Contest,” set for July 8 at Rover’s as a “pre-event” for that weekend’s Bastille Day Festival at Seattle Center. It’s sponsored by the local branch of the French-American Chamber of Commerce. (more…)

Pies By Jenny always flew under the radar, so it’s fitting that my first news of them came through word of mouth. An acquaintance had seen Hsiao-Ching Chou buying a stunning looking huckleberry pie at the University District Farmers Market, made with two pounds of wild berries from Foraged and Found. If someone with Hsiao-Ching’s taste and savvy was investing $35 on a king-size pie, my friend said, she figured it might actually be worth it. 

When I checked it out myself, I was too late for huckleberries, but found the most amazing deep-dish apple pie, made with 21 layers of heirloom Pirus apples from Wade at Rockridge Orchards, under an impeccably flaky crust. Jenny Christensen made smaller and less pricey pies as well, savory as well as sweet, buying up ingredients from her fellow market vendors to make poetry on a plate. 

You probably know where this is going. (more…)