Heritage Radio is the food-focused internet radio station that broadcasts from a studio attached to Roberta's in Bushwick. Every week, many of the big players in the food world host and appear on shows, and oftentimes they reveal interesting tidbits about their work. Here's a guide to five notable pieces of programming from the last week:
1) Union Square Cafe and Whole Animal Butchery: Patrick Martins of HRN and Heritage Foods talks to chef Carmen Quagliata of Union Square Cafe about offsetting the cost of quality local meat through whole animal butchery. He discussed changing the menu at the iconic cafe to meet the expectations of regulars and to utilize a broader swath of lamb parts:
The last big change is that we, for the first time ever, pulled the lamb chops off the menu and went through a whole lamb. Now we hope to get full lambs in to the restaurant five or six times a week...My favorite cuts of the lamb are the shoulders and the neck, to be honest with you. It's just amazing; we bone it out, off the vertebrate, and I do this dish where I roll it with breadcrumbs and herbs and pecorino cheese, like my grandmother did when we were kids.
2) HRN Evolutionaries: Marion Nestle: Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University and author of the seminal books Food Politics and What to Eat, gets her own half-hour radio documentary in this week's installment of "Evolutionaries." Nestle reviews a career of groundbreaking writing on food policy and advertising, and talks about helping start up NYU's Food Studies program, which at the time was the only one of its kind:
It was very difficult for me at first to figure out where to even start on improving the curriculum, professionalizing the department and cleaning up the kitchen. I had a pretty good idea in 1995 when we first started working on it that this was something that would work...When the program was approved by the state in the summer of 1996, the New York Times wrote about it the next week, and we had students in our office that afternoon, holding copies of the clipping, saying "I've waited all my life for this program," and of course now everyone has them!
3) Artisanal Dorito Powder: On "Cooking Issues" this week, Dave Arnold answers listeners' questions about carbonated bubble size, 3D food printing, and more. Here are his tips on the best ways to make homemade Doritos:
Doritos are applied not as a powder but as a slurried spray. They make a 40 percent oil, 60 percent spice mix slurry and then spray it on to the chips, which is why they get such an even coating over such a fine thing?.Here are the basic ingredients for Doritos: cheese powder, whey, and milk powder. Whey because they want to be cheap and not use as much cheese, so you can add more cheese powder if you want, or if you want it to be more milky without more cheesy flavor, you can add milk powder and whey protein. Tomato powder if you want it red, and then they add various pepper powders, salt, and everybody's favorite ingredient, MSG.[Photo: Brent Herrig]
4) Local Mexican Ingredients on Staten Island: Liz Carollo of GrowNYC talks to HRN about which purveyors you'll find trading homemade pies and amenities at the Staten Island Mall Greenmarket, including Family Farm, Augustin Juarez's Staten Island farm that mostly grows foods indigenous to Mexico: The Juarez family has 1.5 acres near the Staten Island Mall where they grow cilantro, lettuces, tomatillos, epazote?it's one of the few places, if not the only place, on the island that sells locally grown Mexican produce, so it attracts immigrants in the area looking for familiar ingredients from home.
5) Farm to Glass Brewing: I used sweet potatoes from Sang Lee farms in a Sweet Potato Saison. As a home brewer years ago I brewed pumpkin ales. Everybody's got terrific pumpkin ales out there and I figured, well, if I add another pumpkin ale, is it worth it? Like IPAs, there are so many great ones out there, why not add something a little different to the conversation? So the Sweet Potato Saison is my version of that kind of a beer.
— Peter Henry
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