The dining room of Blue Hill New York

Embellishing their rep as the coolest couple, the Obamas not only went to dinner and a show the other night in New York, but chose to eat at Blue Hill. Dan Barber’s dedication to organic, sustainably-raised and  local food is well-known, and having the President and First Lady at your table will only burnish that.

But it seems a tease that in this restaurant-obsessed country we don’t  know what they ate. I bet even the Republicans fulminating about how inappropriate the Obamas’ date was would like to know?  Will Dan tell all?

Tomorrow is the second date of my Dine Like a Critic in Central Square with Elderhostel. It’s amazing what the participants — last week there were 21 — and I learn about restaurants,

Tony Maws in his kitchen

environmental issues, and ice cream. To top that off, the lunch on these sessions is at the new Craigie on Main. How cool is that? Having Tony Maws,one of the hottest chefs in the Boston area — and believe me, he’s on his way to national stardom — cook for you and then explain what went into the sauces and how he picked the produce is really special. Here is Tony preparing Arctic char with a brothlike sauce that truly tastes of the sea.

Added to that, Steve Johnson explained how he ran Rendezvous and why he picked Central Square; Daniel Goldstein outlined how a coffee business like Clear Conscience Cafe can help save the environment, and Gus Rancatore explained how he thinks up ice cream flavors. All in all, a great day. I can’t wait to see how tomorrow’s group reacts to all this information (the third date for Dine Like a Critic in Central Square is June 2). I’m hoping this program has legs.

Grandma Doll's rhubarb pie

Yesterday I made my grandmother’s rhubarb pie. Grandma Doll was a shy woman, well-known in our small Western Kansas community for her cooking and baking. Like many shy people, she was possessed of a steely will and uncompromising standards. When she baked, the eggs had to be days from the hen, the butter had to be fresh, the rhubarb from her garden patch. Bigger projects, like her chicken and noodles, called for more drastic measures such as fattening the chickens from her parents’ farm in a pen in the yard, butchering them, plucking them (I got to help with that) and making the noodles by hand. Nothing was too much trouble, but the point was freshness, not gourmet cooking (not that she would have known what that was).

So when I wanted to bring a pie to friends’ house for dinner, I found the little card entitled “From the kitchen of Dora Doll.”  The pie starts with eggs whipped with sugar which lightens the rhubarb and cuts its tartness. And a lattice top makes the pie pretty. And as I read to the end of the recipe, I realized that Grandma had carefully noted the recipe’s origin. She had adapted it from Mrs. W.H. Webb of Lyons, Kan., whose recipe had run in a local paper.

Much of today’s world would baffle my grandmother, who died in the late 1980s. But the new appreciation for eating locally and knowing the source of ingredients would have seemed no more than common sense to Grandma, a locavore before her time.

Sticky TOffee Pudding

Dessert crazes are often a little mystifying, but woe to the restaurant that tries to defy them.  Deep-fried Twinkies-Snickers bars-etc. didn’t really stretch from carnival to fine dining, though a few chefs tried them. But is there any place, with any kind of cuisine, that escaped the molten chocolate cake craze? Diners demand them, no matter whether they’re good — a magic moment when your fork hits the liquid middle — or bad. Chocolate sludge, anyone?

The latest is a spate of sticky toffee puddings. I first saw this English sweet in Boston at Croma, the offshoot of a Manchester, England, spiffed-up pizzeria. It made no sense on this menu of salads, pizzas, and a few pastas. But then the place didn’t make much sense anyway — nice design, good patio and nothing much else to recommend it. Croma is long gone.

But the sticky toffee pudding has migrated all over the place — to Sportello in South Boston, another odd perch. To Le Patissier at Troquet  in the Theater District, and at the Sherborn Inn with Robert Fathman  (who also did a deep-fried Twinkie at the now-defunct Anthem near North Station).

As you might be able to tell, this dessert doesn’t do it for me — too sticky, too sweet  and usually the cake part gets overwhelmed by the toffee part.  The Le Patissier version by Sarah Woodfine which includes a date puree does sound promising, though.  But I protested the ubiquitousness of the flourless, molten chocolate cake in many reviews, and it’s still going strong. Maybe, dessert-wise, I’m missing something. Can anyone enlighten me?

It’s beem a tough couple of weeks for the pig. For a couple of years now, the pig has been the darling of gourmands and the talk of chefdom. Pig cheeks, fatback, lardo, trotters, Berkshire black pigs, head cheese — a veritable litany of culinary piggy obsessions.

Now we’re in the midst of hysteria about swine flu, and no matter how many authorities (CDC, medical writers, etc) say that eating pork does not give you swine flu, the questions keep coming. Then, a National Institutes of Health-AARP  decade-long study came out this week, saying that overconsumption of red meat can hurt your health and shorten your life span. (Yes, I know the National Pork Board calls pork “the other white meat” but the USDA and nutritionists count it as red because of its fat and cholesterol content.)

Still, we can learn from the pig. As Jane Brody of the New York Times points out, the study is not saying don’t eat any red meat. Just cut back to a hot dog every once in a while or a burger a week. Vary your diet, eat more fish, fruit and vegetables, throw in some lentils and beans plus some whole grains. As any farmer knows, pigs eat anything and everything. No mono diet for them. So though we wouldn’t want to shovel in the feed like they do, porcine variety could be a good thing. In other words, maybe we should eat like a pig.