The Personal & the Political in the Kitchen
AI recipes, politics and cooking, new tv shows, national dishes, Barbie-mania, Queer restaurants on keeping money in the community, a vegan landlord AITA. And of course some Barbie Cocktail Recipes!
Hello!
Welcome back to another Drink Seco newsletter! Apologies for the laps! Kate and I have been traveling so I missed posting some things I’ve written a bit :(
What’s been going on? It all seems to be a bit of a whirlwind at the moment but in this newsletter, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been reading. There are so many interesting and talented, people in the food and writing world, I thought I’d give you a little taste of what’s been filling my inbox and search history.
Before we begin though, I thought I’d give a moment to this couple. I mean, these two at Wimbledon, need I say more? The ultimate “we saw you from across the bar” haha. Also undoubtedly, Rachel Weiz wears a suit better than Daniel Craig (but that’s for another day).
The menu for this newsletter:
The Bear is back
AI Recipes
The kitchen computer
Am I the asshole, vegan landlord edition
The personal and the political in the kitchen
How Queer restaurants keep their money in the community
Drag Me to Dinner
Barbie-mania
Cocktail Recipes!
The Bear is back!
We have a new season of The Bear back on our screens!
A little while ago I wrote about what new shows like The Bear, Boiling Point, and The Menu say about hospitality and our changing view on chefs and the industry. You can read it here, certainly a lot to unpack as customers and people of the industry. Now we have a new season! This probably just means a whole lot more of ‘Yes Chef”s being thrown around the house and more memes like the one above.
For those big fans, Paula Forbe has dutifully created a list of all the cookbooks that feature in The Bear in her substack ‘Stained Page News’. This is true dedication and public service if I’ve ever seen one. Here’s the link.
Also… this clip.
AI Recipes?
Cooking and cocktail making at their core are a blend of science and creativity. Where then, does that leave the rise of Artificial Intelligence recipe generators? From providing recipes or dinner ideas from your list of things you’ve got in the fridge, to cocktail recommendations- AI is an exciting and terrifying development. For those who need to ask follow-up questions or simply skip the recipe ramble at the start, maybe AI is for you. How reliable and trusted these recipes are is a different question… Alternatively, is AI making cooking harder? Less enjoyable? More disconnected? It is definitely a far cry from the knowledge and expertise of professionals.
There are also ethical concerns about intellectual property (copyright does not extend to recipes), where are these recipes coming from? Artists have already taken AI developers to court over similar issues, but where does this leave chefs? Not only are recipe creators uncompensated they are uncredited.
The kitchen computer:
Funny enough, before we had AI-generating recipes we had the 1969 Honeywell Kitchen Computer (sold for $10,600—about $87,600 in 2023 dollars). Wired Magazine described the machine writing “If the lady of the house wanted to build her family’s dinner around broccoli, she’d have to code in the green veggie as 0001101000. The kitchen computer would then suggest foods to pair with broccoli from its database by "speaking" its recommendations as a series of flashing lights. Think of a primitive version of KITT, without the sexy voice.”
It didn’t sell and was largely impractical (not just because it was 100 pounds), you had to remember all the codes for the food and interpret the light pattern response. To this day we’re still waiting on a Jetsons-like kitchen computer. But AI Recipe generators are certainly part of a long line of people trying to cut corners with cooking.
If any of you have tried AI recipes let me know! I’d be keen to hear your success and/or failure stories.
Am I the asshole? Vegan landlord edition:
Who doesn’t love an ‘Am I the asshole?’ reddit post, (the answer is almost always rest) which then sparks an intense Twitter discourse and eventual doubling down of the person who initially wrote in!
This week I thought I’d bring the joy over to the newsletter from one that was picked up by the New York Times.
AMITA: I’m a Vegan Landlord—and I Banned Tenants From Cooking Meat
A brick townhouse in Fort Greene for rent with only one condition, “no meat/fish in the building” because the vegan owner lives in the building and “can’t stand the smell of carcasses being cooked”, so technically your sushi would be fine, however, before the owner’s ex-husband moved out they banned carnivores renting the place altogether.
You might be wondering, is this legal? Well, yes, technically. Out of the characteristics landlords can’t discriminate against, diet is not one of them. As per usual, reactions online were more outraged than the potential tenants themselves, however, it does beg the question of the ethics of discriminating based on diet. On one hand, it is the landlord’s building, but on the other, does that mean they can really tell you what to cook?
The personal and the political in the kitchen:
I’m always fascinated by what Alicia Kennedy writes, not long ago she wrote about the politics of food.
”Many incidents in recent memory should make clear the very real political implications of food: the use of the Defense Production Act to keep meat processing going at the height of the pandemic; vegetarianism as an excuse to surveil and punish in India; Italy’s right-wing government perhaps banning lab meat to protect its culture…; farmworkers are suffering in extreme heat, without the regulatory protections necessary to keep them safe; in Puerto Rico, reliance on imported goods increases food costs to some of the highest in the U.S. despite the high local poverty rate and low local wages.”
She talks about the way food is used as a political tool to deflect from talking about bigger issues of climate change, capitalism, racism, fascism, colonization, etc.
I also thought I’d share Alicia’s reading list on food and politics, a few weeks ago I shared on one colonisation and cooking.
A Foundation for Inquiry
To read: Cuisine & Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan; Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney Mintz; Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics by Fabio Parasecoli
Defining U.S. Food, Politically Speaking
To read: The Taste of America by John and Karen Hess; Hippie Food: How Back-To-The-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kauffman; Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry by Warren Belasco; Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-To-Table History of How Beef Changed America by Joshua Specht; Dinner with the President: Food, Politics, and a History of Breaking Bread at the White House by Alex Prud’homme
Mixing the Personal and Political
To read: Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing; Paladares: Recipes Inspired by the Private Restaurants of Cuba; National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home
Is a Leftist Recipe Possible?
To read: Rebellious Cooks and Recipe Writing in Communist Bulgaria by Albena Shkodrova; Ingredients for Revolution by Dr. Alex Ketchum; Soy Not ‘Oi!’ by the Hippycore Krew
How Queer restaurants keep their money in the community:
I came across this interesting article in Eater mag and since we’re coming off the back of Pride Month and this newsletter is all about sharing what I’ve been reading I thought I’d talk about it! As someone who is queer and hires a lot of queer people in my businesses this article talking to Eric See, Kelly Fields, and Erik Borg expresses a lot of the material ways to support our community.
Because of restaurants’ visibility in the community, they are in a unique position to change norms and have people who wouldn’t normally interact meet each other. Further than visibility, hiring other queer staff or supporting queer businesses to directly empower and uplift our community.
According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, “LGBTQ+ workers earn about 90 cents for every dollar that the typical worker earns,” with queer people of color, and trans and non-binary people earning even less.
“But restaurants and bars provide visibility, and while visibility isn’t liberation, restaurants can be places where queer labor and creativity is experienced: Your food, cooked by a queer chef, brought to you by a queer server, in a booth a queer person built, under a photograph a queer person took… You can build a strong financial center in a restaurant and redistribute ... [it] back out in your community, and it just becomes this cycle where the money stays in our pockets a little bit longer.”
Drag Me to Dinner:
If you’re a fan of drag queens and cooking I’ve got a show for you: Drag Me to Dinner. Created by husbands Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, this tv show with your favorite drag queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race follows two teams of queens in a dinner party cooking competition. “The queens must also create one-night-only entertainment that delights and dazzles their party guests.”
You can be guaranteed a hilarious, drama-filled, over-the-top dinner party and a night of entertainment. For all you Drag Race enthusiasts, this will be right up you’re alley, in all its unscripted delight.
Barbie-mania:
And finally, unless you’ve been living under a rock the past 6 months you’ve probably noticed the onslaught of Barbie content and genuinely impressive Barbie marketing. Latest on the Barbie train is Barbie’s themed food!
Burger King has a Barbie burger (and Ken potatoes).
Barbie ice cream, Barbie yoghurt, Barbie donuts, Barbie shakes, you name it. Even Barbie Pennette Rigate!
In honor of Barbie, I thought I’d give you three Barbie pink cocktail recipes to get in the mood, bring to your Barbie parties, or sneak into the premiere.
Pink Lady Cocktail:
1 egg white
1 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz grenadine
1 oz gin
1 oz applejack brandy
Ice
Lemon peel or a maraschino cherry
Pour the gin, brandy, and grenadine into a cocktail shaker, then fill with ice. Shake and strain into a coupe then tip the egg white into the shaker and pour in the gin mixture. Shake well until the egg white is frothy and then pour into a coupe.
She’s everything:
1 ounce rose gin (preferably Glendalough Rose Gin)
½ ounce elderflower liqueur
½ ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
3 ounces cranberry juice
Sparkling wine, to top
Lemon slice, for garnish
Edible pink or purple flowers, for garnish (optional)
In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, add gin, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, and cranberry juice and shake to combine. Strain into a large rocks glass. Add ice to the glass. Top with sparkling wine and garnish with a lemon slice and flowers.
Spicy Strawberry Margarita:
1 strawberry
2 slices jalapeño
1 oz fresh lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup
2 oz tequila blanco
In a shaker, add strawberries, jalapeño slices, simple syrup, tequila, and lime juice. Add ice and shake well for about 10 to 15 seconds. Fill the glass with ice and strain the cocktail into a glass. Top with fresh strawberries and the remaining jalapeno slices, for garnish. For the rim: Combine the salt, sugar, and lime zest and rub the edge of the glass with a lime wedge and dip the glass into the mixture.
That’s all for this week folks, enjoy, and dance the night away!
Don’t forget there’s still time to sign up for my Tulum retreat!
Carlie xx