It’s a slow summer day here in Dubai. Summers here are hot and with Ramadan upon us the days are long as no food or drink can be consumed during daylight hours. Idle hands and time makes a chefs mind wander and today it is about the term organic.
Back in 1997 when I was running one of 2 breweries in the Bay Area we had a custom blended organic mesculin type salad mix on our menu. Custom designed by myself and Chef Jeff, we munched our way through Stone Free Farm trying to find that perfect balance of sweet, spicy, salty and neutral flavors. The term organic was not used much outside salad greens and some vegetables that were, for the most part out of the reach of restaurants like the one I was running, except for daily specials or special menu’s/events.
This made me recall the night when some guy, for lack of a better descriptor paraded around the small, live grasshopper he found in his side salad. “Can you believe I found this in my salad” is what he said time and again, to almost very table in the restaurant before we, and the San Francisco Police Department asked him to leave. With 3 vigorous washings at the grower and one by my talented DMO Fernando, the little guy was tenacious enough to hang in there, a sign that organics were something that I would be a proponent of for years to come…minus the grasshopper of course.
Over the years I have seen the term Organic land of every product from coffee to cotton, sea salt to black pepper. Some items, like beef, chicken, fruits and vegetables in my mind truly benefit from being raised/grown organic; you are what you eat, right? Then again, I think in the last 10 years or so we have lost touch with what is really organic, and what can benefit from the association with the term.
What brought this all on was while sitting at my desk (a rare event on any day) I happened across a doorknob hanger for a local Dubai gourmet grocer. Custom logo, great color scheme and a good choice of fonts makes it really stand out, enough so for a semi-bored chef to pick up and peruse. Touting the arrival of mini cupcakes, breads, pastries and sandwiches designed by a French baker and 24 hour deliveries I stumble onto the fuel of my ire….organic water.
Now, mind you they offer 4 types of water (to be fair);
- Organic
- Still
- Artesian
- Sparkling
Organic water…really? I thought that artesian water covered that, being it is taken straight for the source, unadulterated and bottled. Is this not so? Is there someone resembling John Muir wandering all of the springs worldwide dumping fertilizers into the ground water to help it grow faster? Or perhaps this John Muir look a like is injecting the water with a soluble solution of up to 15% water to increase the yield and weight at market. Does this mean a pint of water weighs more than a pound now? Is this long bearded man seeding the clouds to increase the yield of the spring, and passing these chemicals along to you and I?
Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for marketing and being creative about it. But the images in my mind of the indigenous populations of Indonesia hiking bags of fertilizers into the mountains to spread around the black pepper trees or the one of the French ladies with their sea salt rakes spreading dung onto the ocean to increase the yield of sea salt and now someone GMO’ing water I find ridiculous and it is making me start to wonder.
Of course water is organic, as is sea salt and black pepper. I do not recall ever seeing fertilizer at Home Depot or K-Mart for any of these 3 items the last time I was shopping nor would any such product be within reach of those who produce the products mentioned, but perhaps I missed something. Maybe what I have missed was not the fertilizers for these products but the exploitation of the term by marketers and a public that demands such nonsense.
Organic water, no thanks…just pass me a San Pelligrino with lemon and make that lemon organic!
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