lsanderson | Food Wednesday in the NY Times

For American Chèvre, an Era Ends
By KIM SEVERSON

SONOMA, Calif.

BETWEEN tastings of local foie gras and debates over the merits of biodynamic wine, talk at the recent Russian River Food and Winefest centered on the kind of gossip only the food faithful would engage in.

Would E. coli-tainted spinach shake people’s faith in organics? Just how upset was Alice Waters over her portrayal in David Kamp’s book, “The United States of Arugula”? And what’s the deal with Laura Chenel?

Ms. Chenel, a gentle animal lover who almost singlehandedly turned America on to goat cheese in the early 1980’s, has sold her company to a French corporation.

Zut alors! More

Ales of The Times
A Journey to the Dark Side
By ERIC ASIMOV

SIMPLY by conjuring up the different styles of beer and ale, a brew lover can travel the imaginary world without leaving the barstool. India pale ale stirs up the days of the British Empire, with long ocean voyages and kegs of sustenance loaded aboard ship. Trappist ale evokes images of silent monks expressing their serene devotion through brewing. Stout calls up comfortable leather chairs, a full belly and a warm fire, while lager, the German word for storage, can almost make you shiver in the chill of the cold caves where medieval brewers matured their wares.

By contrast, even the most creative mind would have trouble with porter, a word so humdrum that by the 1960’s it had practically disappeared from the brewing vocabulary. It was the ale, not the prosaic name, that stimulated the thirst and imagination of craft brewers in the late 20th century who resurrected a style far nobler than it sounds. More

Recipe: Fried Oysters and Sweet Potatoes

At the Farmers’ Market, a Carnivore With Qualms
By CELIA BARBOUR

ALWAYS, I hesitate for a split second before plunging my hands into the bowl.

Its contents — raw beef and pork, raw eggs, bread pulp, bits of onion — are as squishily appealing as a mud puddle is to a 5-year-old, but also, truth be told, a bit gross.

It isn’t squeamishness that makes me pause at this stage in the meatball-making process, however. Something else holds me back, a blip of moral uncertainty, as if I need to reconfirm each time I prepare meat that I do indeed feel O.K. about being a carnivore.

I am a carnivore in the voguish, Michael Pollan-sanctioned way, which is to say that I try to buy meat that is carefully and locally raised, and I serve it infrequently (at least by American standards). But what do I know of life and death? My brief moment of ethical self-evaluation is easy work. I let the meat purveyors at the Greenmarket do all the moral heavy lifting for me.

And heft it they do. More

Recipe: Finnish Meatballs

The Minimalist
Tiny, Simple and Flavor-Packed: A Bird With a Hint of the Wild
By MARK BITTMAN

THE quail is a bundle of contradictions in a tiny package. It’s a game bird that’s almost always raised in captivity, a bird that’s known more for its eggs than its meat, an innocuous-looking little thing that’s full of flavor, and a restaurant specialty that’s ridiculously easy to cook at home.
You can roast quail or fry them, braise, grill, broil or sauté them, and it’s tough to go wrong. And if you’re in a hurry, you can bring them from refrigerator to table in as little as 20 minutes. More

Recipe: Quail Roasted With Honey, Cumin and Orange Juice
Recipe: Grilled Quail, Tuscan-Style
Recipe: Pan-Cooked Quail, Vietnamese-Style
Recipe: Butter-Braised Quail With Carrots and Soy

Food Stuff
Chowdah? Lobstah? It’s New England in New York
By Florence Fabricant

Dinner, With Dawn as a Chaser
By PETER MEEHAN

UNDER a nearly full moon, a small crowd was clustered around a street cart that spewed charcoal-scented smoke into the night air. It was 4:30 in the morning, and customers were clamoring for the kimchi hot dogs, kalbi burgers and other Korean-accented bites that Sam Talbot, the cart jockey, was dishing out on the Lower East Side.

Once the glassy-eyed gentleman in line ahead of me had secured a marinated and grilled short rib sandwich, agreeing enthusiastically to Mr. Talbot’s offers of additional kimchi, he turned to his more lucid companion and asked, “What is this?”

But such late-night revelers, out to blot up the evening’s sins with whatever sustenance is at hand, aren’t the only ones looking for dinner after dinnertime. Scores of more sophisticated diners — many of them the cooks, waiters and workers who make the city’s restaurants run — are out on the streets around midnight and later.

Some notable restaurants that have opened in the past couple of years keep hours that cater to the late, late crowd, and this fall even more places will let you sit down to dinner well into the morning. More