Food (Section) Fight!: Week 14

Food (Section) Fight! is my weekly look at The Washington Post's Food section and The New York Times' Dining section with my verdict on which section had the better content for the week.


Washington Post
I think maybe Tim Carman and I aren't on the same wavelength. Today's Food section starts with his feature story about how Washington doesn't eat breakfast anymore, a story I read while...perusing the Food Section over breakfast. I eat breakfast everyday with none being more special than Wednesdays (since it's breakfast with the Food Section, duh). In addition to telling us how restaurants like the four-star  Michel Richard Citronelle have ditched breakfast, he quotes a nutritionist who seems to think it's healthy to skip breakfast, and that the mantra to eat breakfast was a cereal marketing ploy. Perhaps. But I feel like these are examples in search of a narrative. There are plenty of restaurants in D.C. that offer breakfast. There's also plenty of evidence that eating breakfast is healthy. It's an interesting story, but I'm highly skeptical of its generalizability.


The other cover story, by Candy Sagon, is also amusing, but not very illuminating. It's about how bad food smells in a house for sale could keep buyers away. She talks about how she and her husband went without home-cooked broccoli, cabbage and organ meats (who cooks organ meats at home?) while they were trying to sell their house. Ultimately, she suggests keeping store-bought cookies warm in the oven to make good smells in the house. I suppose that's good advice, but I think you could just as easily open some windows and run your kitchen fan and everything would be fine.


Among the things I liked in today's Food section: this recipe for Lemon and Honey Chicken, which despite the fact that it's supposed to not make your house smelly, but just sounds really tasty. Stephanie Witt Sedgwick's Nourish recipe also sounds really good: Red Wine Chicken and Mushroom Stir-Fry, which she likens to a stir-fry version of coq au vin. Beer Madness concludes, and the winner is Maui Brewing Co's Coconut Porter. Good luck finding that! (Rodman's has Maui Brewing Co. beer, but I didn't see this particular one there this afternoon.) Finally, Jason Wilson has an interesting story about blending cognac, including a discussion about his own experience blending one, which revealed his rather expensive taste. Here here Jason.


New York Times
I really enjoyed Patricia Leigh Brown's lead story about a conference at the Napa Valley Culinary Institute of America Greystone Campus for healthcare professionals to learn how to cook. To me, that makes a lot of sense. If obesity is linked to a lot of health problems, then teaching doctors how to cook will allow them to give better advice to their patients. Telling people to eat healthier is not effective advice when you don't know how to do so yourself. 


Andrew Scrivani's story about repurposing leftovers into new dishes is amusing and his Greek-style dinner pie made with leftover greens looks quite tasty. Melissa Clark's Pink Grapefruit and Radicchio Salad with Dates and Pistachios sounds good too. Looking at the picture, I thought there was bacon in it, but I guess those are just dates (but wouldn't bacon be good in this too?). Lastly, I was pleased to see a mention of a Portland, Oregon, restaurant, Pok Pok, whose chef, the James Beard Award-winning Andy Ricker, is opening a New York City outpost in Brooklyn, Pok Pok NY. 


Verdict
The New York Times. Although it's not a knockout week for the Times, I found more stories that interested me in the Dining section this week than in the Post.


Score
The New York Times: 8
The Washington Post: 6