A display of cheeses

The food(ie) controversy du jour is the New York Times article last Sunday about USDA support and money spent surreptiously to encourage Americans to eat more cheese. Aaargh! Will cheese suddenly become as dangerous as high fructose corn syrup? Will there be a rush to de-cheese our diets? Or to push low-fat or diet cheese, one of the abominations of the dieters’ world.

Or, like so many other puzzle pieces in the American love/hate affair with food, is there an alternate view? As Walter Willett of HarvardPublic Health, the healthy food oracle for our times, says, cheese eaten in sensible amounts can be part of a good diet. However, when Domino’s Pizza and other chains are doubling down — cheese in the crust, more cheese on top, cheese hidden — we get the familiar American scenario. Instead of food as a life force and as a social joy, we seem determined to view food as an obsession or as a danger. 

If those of us who love cheese — definitely count me among them — can agree that cheese is not a diet food and should be eaten in moderation, couldn’t we join the French,  known for eating a lot of cheese, but not known for obesity? Enjoy cheese, really good cheese  – on your cheeseboard, in fondue, even on a pizza. But know what you’re eating. Cheese, glorious cheese!!

Hazelnut oil over veal crudo

After a week in Italy, most of it at Salone del Gusto/Terra Madre in Torino, I can safely say that artisanally-made, and sometimes a little eccentric, food is still the Italian way of life. We saw amazing products from small producer (check www.salumeriaitaliana.com where I’ll continue to talk about what we saw and what will hopefully turn up in the North End shop and in the online store). And met amazingly committed and articulate people.

But now a trend blast — Italy, even in landlocked cities and towns like Torino and Modena, is in the grip of crudo, both seafood and meat served raw. A fascinating restaurant in a Torino neighborhood, Al Grassi,  served course after course of delicious seafood crudo — my favorite was scallops sliced thinly and delicately over monkfish liver with a French olive oil. And in Modena, not only did I eat delicious crudo, but a favorite of the Italians at our table one night was steak tartare matched to a steak burger with a baked potato in foil in between.

But the very best was at the show. The Gava brothers, who produce lovely Piemonte wines, are also bottling 100 % hazelnut oil from their vineyards, where hazelnut trees are everywhere. To show off the oil, they improvised an antipasto by slicing raw veal sausages into chunks, making a hole at the top, and pouring in hazelnut oil. Magnificent!!