Food (Section) Fight!: Week 39

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.

New York Times

(1) "Hollywood Ending, With Meatballs," by Frank Bruni. Stanley Tucci doesn't just play a foodie on screen (Julie & Julia, Big Night, PBS's Vine Talk), he's one in real life too, with a long family history of making and sharing good Italian-American food. The release of his new cookbook, The Tucci Cookbook, is the occasion for this playful portrait of a food-loving family. The accompanying recipe for Tucci Ragù Sauce sounds great; I wish they'd printed the recipe for the Timpano, which looks like quite a feat (you can get it online).

(2) "Snacks Worth Their Salt," How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Bittman turns his attention to edamame, the salty-fresh soybean snack that is extremely easy to make (you just boil and salt them) and affordable, with edamame available in most supermarkets now. He also offers some variations on the dish, generally involving soy sauce and sesame flavors.

(3) "Good Bordeaux For $50 or Less," Wines of the Times by Eric Asimov. Is there a more classic wine than Bordeaux? The bold French red that typically blends grapes like cabernet sauvignon and merlot. One would think not. Given that my personal taste runs toward cab, merlot and syrah, you'd think I'd be a big Bordeaux fan, yet when I buy it, I'm almost always disappointed, and I've never had a Bordeaux that really blew me away. So I appreciated Asimov's look at how the wine has gotten very expensive, but that there are some lower priced quality buys available (and for Bordeaux, lower priced means under $50).

Washington Post

1) "Cider's reach," by Dave McIntyre. Sure Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors make cider, but I doubt it's anywhere near as interesting as the product made by artisans at Flynt's Foggy Ridge, profiled here as Virginia's first producer of modern hard cider. His cider is made from a blend of apples to produce balanced flavors, even tannins. McIntyre describes Foggy Ridge's Serious Cider as "winelike" and similar to prosecco.

2) "Long given cold shoulder, lagers get bolder," Beer by Daniel Fromson. Not using the beer column to write more about cider was a missed bit of synergy, but nonetheless, I enjoyed Fromson's column on lagers, which he finds are upping the flavor game to better compete against craft ales. As a die-hard IPA fan, I'm interested in trying some pale lager to see how it compares.

3) "Poach and egg or two, then feel free to riff," by Regina Schrambling. I'm not much into poached eggs, although if I could make a good one, I'd probably try it. I'm more interested in hollandaise, which is explored in this article, including how to make eggs Benedict interesting by adding other nontraditional flavors. And how cool is it that the Post got someone whose last name is almost "scrambling" to write a story about eggs?

Verdict

The Washington Post. I wouldn't say either section was really in top form this week. I did really like the Times' Tucci story, but overall, I thought the Post's stories were more interesting this week. None of these were written by the usual suspects, which is interesting (Benwick, Carman, Hagedorn, Touzalin, etc.). With the Post pulling back from a recent deficit, the score is once again tied.

Score

The Washington Post: 19
The New York Times: 19