Today I received four work orders, I dont know what to reject. The morning I went to Tel Aviv, to the old Histadrut Building on Arlozoroff Str. (pic), and toured the underground passages under it. It has large anti-bomb refuges below, that are mostly used to house the organization's archives, which no one ever visits. Like all old Tel Aviv, it is built on a sand dune, and it is sinking and the old infrastructure is cracking. Two years ago (I think it is more recent) they made extensive improvements, but it was done badly and now they need to remake it. It is a lowly plumbing engineering job, not hi-tech nor innovative, but money is what I need. The restaurant was full of Knesset members, I took fish balls, not haute cuisine.
12 comments:
Gefilte fish IS haute cuisine. The French call them quenelles.
K
Well, homemade gefilte fish might be haute cuisine, but the store-bought stuff doesn't qualify. Have you ever eaten gefilte fish from a jar, K? Disgusting stuff.
The fish ball served in the Histadrut's restaurant has no resemblance to gefilte fish. It had a yellowish-green colour and did not smell or taste like fish. I took it because the schnitzel was clearly y synthetic manufacture, all of the same color, size and dripped soya oil. There was also a variety of boiled vegetales for vegetarians, but the vegetables looked as if someone had poured oil on them. The soda water was OK.
I agree about the jarred gefilte fish. My mother always made her own (and I still do from her recipe, though it is hard to find the proper species of freshwater fish (preferably whitefish and yellow pike). She always insisted that the main ingredient in jarred fish was rotten potatoes. I don't think that is literally true, but it may as well have been.
K
Not rotten but "processed" potatoes.
It would not surprise me if potato starch was used as a filler, although I think my mom was referring to the fact that the jarred fish has the same muddy grey brown appearance as a rotten potato (and somewhat the same smell).
There was a big op-ed in yesterday's NY Times by a S. African Jew who had been a partner at Goldman Sachs but now he has resigned because (beside the fact that he is now so rich he never has to work again) he feels that they are doing business without any morality or qualms on screwing the customer as much as possible within the letter of the law. This attitude pervades corporate America.
There was another article on "pink slime". Beef trimmings that would formerly have been used for pet food are now being processed in such a way that they can be used for human consumption (they are sterilized with ammonia gas, heated and spun in a centrifuge to remove the excess fat, etc.) The end result is a pink ooze that bears no resemblance to real meat, but legally qualifies as "100% beef" and can be mixed into ground beef without labeling (and once you mix it in, its presence is undetectable to the eye). The pink slime is a few pennies per lb. cheaper than real meat so naturally the supermarket chains have been using it without consumers being aware that they have been eating this disgusting substance. Some TV show did a big expose' and now that they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar the chains are backing away from its use.
K
I used to receive a free magazine called Food Processing, where meat massaging and injecting machines were promoted and discussed. Food Processors will do anything within the regulatory framework and that is the only consideration, they are constantly searching for loopholes in the labelling and so laws. But I think the meat products sold are of good quality and taste and healthy. One may be shocked by what goes into a pig ration, such as fish and feather flour and so on, but the pigs like it and put on weight fast. We are not much different from pigs and we would be healthier eating their scientifically balanced rations.
It is an issue of disclosure. If feather meal is safe to eat (it is high in protein) and processors want to add it to biscuits and list it on the ingredient list and you are willing to eat such biscuits (their motto would be "Lite as a Feather!") then go for it. But most people would not.
People are under the impression that ground beef consists of something like a steak that has been ground up. If in fact ground meat is made up of other things (and it is), the sellers should tell us. Maybe they should attach a photo of what the ingredients looked like before they were ground and mixed together.
Needless to say I do not buy pre-ground beef.
K
The South African Jewish guy who resigned from GS by op-ed may have been a mid-level cog rather than a partner. That's also apparently slow progress considering he's been there for 12 years given the prevailing up-or-out culture of investment banking.
“Some of this seems like obvious criticism that simply jumps on the anti-GS/Wall Street bandwagon (too greedy), and, cynically, it’s coming from an executive director (after 12 years?), not a managing director or someone who is particularly well-known around the firm.” — former Goldman analyst, who left the firm in 2011
"He’s the functional equivalent of a VP at Goldman, far from an “executive,” so the lede (referring to him as an executive) was misleading." - former Goldman executive, worked at the firm more than 20 years
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/former-goldman-employees-divide-on-controversial-quitter/
"Anything within the regulatory framework" will be the epitaph of Western society.
Under Jewish law you are supposed to "build a fence around the Torah". Rather than toeing right up to the edge of the law and possibly crossing the line, you keep well back from the limits.
K
And then they build fences around the fences, K, to the point of modern-day Orthodox codified OCD.
Either approach has its flaws but when it comes to tough like pink slime I would prefer that the food producers take a more Orthodox approach and declare it treyf.
K
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