Friday, September 08, 2006

FoodCrunch is Back

I have been away for awhile, but my sources tell me you are all managing and munching just fine without me. Also, who needs another restaurant review afterall.

SO--A New Direction

Going forward, FoodCrunch will focus on ingredients and ingredient-sourcing and recipes, more than on restaurant reviews per se. There are several reasons for the change. First, I am better at this, have more to offer, and greater passion for cooking than for eating out. Second, their is a paucity of practical information on exceptional ingredients, and on the purveyors themselves. Especially for those of us that can't afford to subscribe to Foody Newsletters like The Rosengarten Report, or no longer read the leading food sections of major newspapers (because we don't read newspapers) like the New York Times, L.A. Times and, yes, the San Francisco Chronicle, which I think is the best of the bunch. Third, my son and I love to visit farmers and farmers' markets and do so everywhere we go. These people are passionate about their food and love to talk about it.

Having said this, I will talk about restaurants occasionally, just not as much. For example, I will post in the near future on eating fish in New York, because two recent trips there have inspired me to declare 2006, the year of fish in the Matteucci household--much to the consternation of my Iowa-DNA'd spouse and carb-loving three-year-old. Luckily I have been able to recruit several of my neighbors into my picene experiments. I bring them steaming plates of wine-poached butterfish, or flattened lobster or miso-marinated black cod.

Another set of , near-term posts will cover our recent trip to Catalonia, which included partaking of the famous jamon iberico (pata negra), the black-footed, acorn-fed pigs cured in the style of italian and spanish cured meats. The trip also uncovered the best baby goat EVER at Drolma and our trip-defining pilgramige to 3-star elBulli, where we ate 30+ courses of Ferrar Adria's world-inspiring avante guarde food in a remote cove on Spain's Costa Brava. This post will include pictures! But if you can't wait, check out the excellent blog Chocolate and Zucchini.

Finally, I will be connecting this FoodCrunch blog to a new web site aptly called FoodCrunch shortly, which will also gather recipes, purveyors and links for those inclined to cook. You can check it out as I build it here, but I will let you know when it is ready for primetime.