Food Boom

The Theme is Discoloration

2008-11-02T07:36:00.004-05:00

How do you cook for good friends you doesn't often see? Is it better to wheel out an old stalwart-- and thereby devote more time to socializing-- or to throw caution to the winds and tinker out something new? The conclusion seems foregone. Throw something in the oven and join 'em.

The logic certainly stacks up. The well-oiled machine produces fewer anomalies. The new, after all, is not necessarily the good. Why risk the suddenly sated appetites and delicate words that follow a failed experiment: "so— you're still cooking these days, I see. I guess you enjoy it?"

There's a social component here, too. When old friends come to visit, there's far more to an evening than simply the display of competence. To fritter away all one's time in the kitchen would be a disaster far more grave than any undercooked chicken or underwashed salad.

All the same, Saturday night found me spurning my own better judgment. I cast my lot with the new. Is there not something in friendship that refuses to be measured in terms of either aesthetic quality or, for that matter, time spent? Is not the very thing one enjoys about one's friends a certain élan, a flair for excitement and experiment? To fall back on practiced efforts risks reducing one's friends to mere company: it presumes that aesthetics precedes intentions.

With B. and L. visiting from Lower Appalachia this weekend, we made a meal whose theme was, however, based on an aesthetic glitch: the theme was discoloration. This was not a design realized in the planning phase. The theme, shall we say, emerged.

First came a salad with tiny beets from the season's final CSA box. The beets added a much-heralded purple hue to the lettuce and bacon they accompanied. A royal stain.

The theme continued with the side dish of "Turnips Anna" we served. (The title is a double homage: it is, first of all, a regular old shout-out to Potatoes Anna, which it mimics. Second, it is an homage to L's and B's friend Anna, whose casual remarks last December inspired this blog). Turnips Anna was made cheese-free for H's benefit, with a touch of mustard added to the Béchamel sauce for piquancy. And there was a stain, too, if ever so faint: amid the sliced turnips was a layer of purple potatoes— the vestiges, again, of the season's final CSA box. I thought the purple potatoes might dye the otherwise lily-white dish a garish blue. Yet the effect was subtle, even slight; just enough to continue the theme.

The true engine of the meal consisted of cod fillets braised in a red wine reduction. The recipe, which was adapted from James Peterson's Fish and Shellfish book, calls originally for salmon. I was in the mood for something less particular in flavor, however, so I used cod instead. And the cod stained triumphantly. The fillets were so purple that they might as well have been salmon. Nobody would have known the difference.

The preparation, which I will certainly use again, is simplified from the original recipe: combine 2 cups of fish stock with a bottle of red wine in a large saucepan, and add 2 cloves garlic, 2 bay leaves, a bouquet garni, and some chopped onion and celery, and reduce until you're left with about a cup of liquid. Then pour the strained liquid over 4 fillets in a roasting pan, and cook at 375° for 10 minutes per inch of thickness. When the fish is cooked, remove and keep warm; then, in a saucepan, reduce the sauce even further at high heat, adding 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and a dose of parsley.

We served this with the turnips and a side dish of roasted asparagus and red onions.

Now, really, none of this was especially experimental: it's basically beef-n'-two-sides with fish standing in for the beef. And the discoloration was strangely accidental, though at some point I must have noticed all the purple ingredients. And there was even time to chat with the friends. For the best part about braising and roasting— and this is precisely why such preparations are stalwarts in our kitchen— is that they require remarkably little oversight. And thus we could direct our attention elsewhere, where it belonged.

Some notes on, about, and toward Turkeys

2008-10-31T22:40:00.004-04:00

November is "novel month," which makes for an amusing play on words. There are few months less novel than November. The other principle offender is December. Mind you, January and February never feel especially new either, in spite of the calendars they require us to buy.

All the same, November is the month during which we are asked not only to stomach a lack of novelty, but also to issue forth novels of our own. I was working in the local café today and noticed a sign advertising something called "national novel month." The plan is for everyone (!) to write a 50,000 word narrative within a single month. The design here is less to advance the progress of literary history than to promote bookish loitering in places such as cafés and bookstores. Needless to say, I'm utterly in favor.

Yet this announcement prompted some uneasy reflections on the blog format. Although the proposition of writing a "food" novel on this blog was fleetingly entertained, the parties responsible have been silenced. And besides, it's impossible. The temporality is all backward. There's simply no way to read it in order. Chapter one, no sooner written, would be treampled underfoot by chapter two. Chapter three, in turn, would spread itself leisurely atop chapter two, only to await the inevitable heft of its successor. And chapter four, flush in the prime of its creation, would have but a brief tenure before it, too, bent its head in deference to chapter five. And so forth, into obscurity.

This temporal difficulty goes beyond the novel form. A similar problem arises any time one attempts to pursue an older line of inquiry: last week, I began speculating about Thanksgiving menus, only to grow distracted. Rather than postponing the post indefinately, I cut bait, and posted it. And there it lies, half-baked, yet fully formed. To continue the same line of inquiry is impossible. I was trying to make some plans for Thanksgiving dinner. But now the whole proposition seens unsettled.

I'm wondering if the same kinds of tricks can be played on Thanksgiving itself. We'ere having friends over, so the sky's the limit. Why not tinker with the whole danged meal, and not simply tackle the turkey problem I was so concerned with last week?

Here's a possible menu:

Starter:
Turkey roulades: braised turkey thighs rolled with sausage/chestnut stuffing and cranberry sauce. Served sliced on a bed of dandelion greens?

Next:
Trio of autumnal soups, served in, you know, precious little cups of some kind:
1) white: turnip and leek soup
2) orange: squash bisque
3) red: borscht

After that:
Sweet potato soufflé with roasted brussels sprouts

And, to conclude, perhaps it's best to keep dessert last. So cheeses, naturally, and pumpkin pies or custards.

This is all just a fanciful thought, but I'm just sick, sick, sick of brown food at Thanksgiving.

Now, there's a whole other line of inquiry to pursue, here, which would involve swinging the doors in the other direction and make things much more, er, colonial. Open fires, lots of roasting, things cooked in coals.

So many decisions to make. So many decisions. And so much time.

This is why it's never too early to think about Thanksgiving.

It's Never Too Early...

2008-10-25T10:01:00.002-04:00

It's never too early to start planning for Thanksgiving. With the holiday just over a month away, October 25 seems comically late. Imagine if one waited until this point before deciding to breed or even to fatten a turkey. Or to dry some corn. No dice. The whole thing would be a wash.

We lack, of course, the means to breed a turkey, and our back yard has no room for corn. We are humble consumers, and not farmers. And so such decisions regarding when and how to plan the harvest do not fall on us. Our greatest concerns are more banal: whether the bird has defrosted in time, or whether the meal should include soup.

Much of the colonial New England desperation implicit in this holiday meal is thus, frankly, lost on us. One year we spiced things up considerably by deep-frying the turkey outside. With a gas flame raging under a pot of hot oil, we felt, if only fleetingly, a shiver of Pilgrim fear.

More interesting still would be a thanksgiving dinner cooked and eaten entirely out of doors, with guest huddled together on the frosty ground. This wouldn't necessarily be authentic— the Pilgrims did, after all, have houses— but it would certainly feel old-fashioned. Such a plan would work better, though, if Thanksgiving were celebrated at its proper time: that is, in mid October, when the harvest occurs, and not in late November, when it's already winter.

This year I want to focus on the menu rather than on the danger. Thanksgiving dinner is rarely anything more than a buffet, a fatigue-inducing assortment of brown foods. Must this be the case? Might it be possible to choreograph the meal a bit further without losing sight of the seasonal ingredients, most of which are, it should be said, either brown, or roots, or both.

The central problem— as every cookbook will tell us— is the turkey. The fact is, I'm indifferent to it, finding the roast bird utterly humdrum and, what's more, a caricature of Early Modern cuisine. Yet the idea of matching savory roast fowl with rich forcemeats and spiced confectionery is deeply appealing. The problem is that the regal turkey has been propelled beyond its means. The dressings are now afterthoughts, or ornaments. This hubris has, for me, proven fatal: the bird, bloated from additives and adulation, can no longer soar to the heights to which it aspires. Bulky and swollen, falsely tenderized by a lifetime of captivity, it has little more appeal than a 15-pound potato.

Here, then, is the first thing to revise. Why not bring back the chestnuts, the citrus peel, the cranberries, and the forcemeat as the key elements of the presentation? Turkey is, after all, a game bird, not an institution. I've usually sneered at "alternative" preparations, as they tend to address the problem of tenderness (i.e., how do we avoid the dryness of roasting) rather than the dullness of the breed itself. I, for one, enjoy a good roast.

I love the image of a dozen or so small, scrawny wild turkeys roasting on a spit: this would necessitate the myriad flavoring agents and tenderizers used to mediate the strong flavors of the game. But this just isn't practical.

Here are two possible alternatives: the first is a recipe from the Dean & DeLuca cookbook for stuffed drumsticks with bacon, brandy, and thyme: this dish maintains the roasted flavor and dark, complementary richness of game, but in microcosm.
-----

This is where this post left off, about a week ago. Nothing earth-shattering; the ending simply never came to pass. What was that second alternative? I don't even remember.

It seems it's never to early to stop thinking about Thanksgiving.

A Note on Carrot Jam

2008-10-20T23:15:00.002-04:00

Much of our cooking these days has been rushed off the stove, short-order style. After a while this becomes depressing: some of our recent meals, stretching into last week, have been decidedly monochromatic. A warm French potato salad with bacon and red onion. Tasty, sure, in moderation. But it's a side dish. So when there's nothing else to accompany it, it grows tedious P.D.Q. A bowl of potatoes can only take you so far.

So it was with no small relief that we broke out of our funk this past weekend and made a few things.

I even invented a recipe. This may be a first.

The dish even has a name. It's called "Pork with Carrot Confit." (Pork with Carrot Jam sounds peculiar, after all). The idea began with the details for a "Breakfast in Cairo" from Rozanne Gold's Recipes 1-2-3 Menu Cookbook, which is perhaps the most minimalist cookbook I've ever come across. Every dish uses only three ingredients, save salt and pepper. Pretty remarkable, especially since this allows plenty of room for experimentation.

Along with strained yogurt and Ful Madammas, beakfast in Cairo included a carrot jam: this is essentially a marmalade made from grated carrots, lemon, and sugar.

We now have a jar of it in our fridge.

For the pork recipe, I braised 4 pork ribs in carrot juice and garlic: first browning the ribs on all sides in a little olive oil, and then adding two cloves of chopped garlic and about two cups of carrot juice to deglaze the pan. I kept the temperature very low so as not to scorch the juice. The meat simmered, covered, for two hours or so.

Meanwhile, I made the jam by combining 2 pounds of grated carrots with six cups of sugar, two cups of water, and the juice of three lemons (to make 1/2 cup of lemon juice). This simmers for about an hour and a half, until the liquid thickens.

I then added about half a cup of the jam to the simmering pork chops; I also added a few whole miniature carrots, which were peeled. (The carrots had arrived with our farm share, and consisted of a mix of sizes and shapes. The tiniest were annoying enough to peel, and simply impossible to grate. So I tossed 'em in whole).

The addition of the jam makes the pork rather sweet, so one is advised to be judicious at this point. I wanted to be bold, but found that the pork could handle more jam than I'd suspected. I finished the dish by reducing the braising liquid to a fairly thick consistency and adding about a 1/2 tablespoon of sherry vinegar.

To complement the glazed pork I served it with tomato rice and some swiss chard sautéed with raisins and pine nuts; the chard added a useful note of bitterness to the plate.

All in all, not bad. Some ginger might have complemented the carrots nicely, and I wonder how else I might have finished the dish; in concept, the whole thing wasn't far off from many of the meat recipes in the Silver Palate cookbook, which make ready use of jams, jellies and compotes.

And now the next question is how best to use a jar of carrot jam.

Nostalgia-Free Cookies

2008-10-11T08:39:00.003-04:00

First of all, there's no such thing.

That, at least, is what everyone told me. "The nose," Coach Taylor explained, "is the organ of nostalgia par excellence." Her paramour, whom I'll call A/V, agreed. "Smell and memory are inextricable," he said.

But herein lay my opening. "Nostalgia and memory are not the same thing. Memory has to do with events that actually happened; nostalgia is fictional sentiment."

Across town, my friends P. and J-M concurred. "Nostalgia refers to something that never took place." But then a slight correction: "Or at least, it refers to something that has become fictionalized, even if it was real to start. You turn it into myth."

I was in Philadelphia for two evenings this week, and I used the occasion to bore my friends with a question that had occurred to me as I was reading about the world financial crisis. The crash, as everyone knows, stems from the surfeit of McMansions. And we've all heard, of course, about the real-estate sales ploy of baking cookies in otherwise soulless houses; the smell of baking was designed to counteract this. Fanned throughout the empty husk of home model A, this smell induced a sense of homeyness that prompted potential home-buyers to ferret out desperate mortgages they could not afford. The smell of cookies drives us homeward; yet in driving madly homeward, we arrive to find little more than fumes.

This may seem more prosaic than any Proustian involuntary memory, but for a spell it was a whole lot more profitable. Until now, of course. No superabundance of cookies can offset global panic.

All the same, it comes back to cookies. If you ask me, the global financial crisis has to do with the unfortunate bond between cookies and nostalgia. (What a sad fate for such an unassuming pastry. First it was heart attacks, and now this. It simply isn't fair!) But since there are fat-free cookies, might it not be possible to develop nostalgia-free cookies as well?

This was the idea.

For Coach T. and A/V, who are marvelously rational people, the proposition would call for a massive shift in cookie composition. The olfactory agents would have to change entirely. What is it we smell when we bake cookies? The caramelization of sugar; the browning of butter; the melting of cocoa butter. These elements— so fundamental to our sense of the familiar— would have to go. Cookies could be made instead from savory ingredients. "Why not meat?" A/V offered. But by this time it was becoming clear that my inquiry had overstayed its welcome: it was, after all, time for dinner. And attention was turning toward meatier things.

For the ever tactful P. and J-M, the question soon shifted into a discussion of nostalgia itself; this spared me the embarassment of conversational overkill. Was nostalgia purely a fiction? Or could it refer to something specific? To put the question another way: do realtors bake cookies in order that the smell remind homebuyers of their actual homes, or only that it remind them of an idea or ideal of home they carry around with them?

I'm no Des Esseintes; but I'm wondering all the same whether the whole emotional register of cookie baking might be pried open entirely. Why limit the exploration of scent to the narrow margin between memory and nostalgia, when the whole range of sentiment can provide a terrain for exploration. Might it be possible to bake cookies whose scent made everyone sad, or eager, or triumphant? What about a batch of brownies that reduced one's guests to speculation, or to uneasiness?

We're straying ever closer to molecular gastronomy here. But this is not simply a matter of synthesizing olfactory effects. If a batch of cookies were to give off the odor of tobacco, or of burning leaves, would this alter their ties to nostalgia? Or would it be simply a different nostalgia? The real question— kidding aside— is whether the activation of our sense of smell is tied simply to memories (whether "real" or imaginary), or whether, like tastes, it's possible to access other forms of cognition, whether conscious or unconscious. Are there smells to which we might react in terms of danger, for instance?

Imagine what "danger cookies" might taste like.

Or perhaps realtors have been baking danger cookies all along, and we simply haven't learned to react to them properly.

Easy Targets

2008-10-03T00:04:00.009-04:00

One of the great autumnal pleasures— other than raking leaves, which comes later in the season— is staying up late to make tomato sauce. I'm now on my third batch. Two weeks ago, as batch #2 simmered happily away, I suddenly realized that time had escaped my grasp: it was 2:30 in the morning. And on a work night! My mind must have been wandering.

What snapped me to attention— and what directed this attention, in turn, to the lateness of the hour— was the cavalcade of sirens wailing down the street outside. One of the houses nearby was on fire. The house had been an 1870s miracle, a Queen Anne stone mansion whose fate now hangs on the scales of the insurance companies.

My sauce, however, bubbled along contentedly, even as I padded barefoot over to the next street, straining to determine which house was burning. The cause of the fire, it turns out, was an electrical malfunction. But it could just as easily have been a kitchen fire— an unwatched stove, say, left burning too far into the night. So I rushed home to turn off my own stove, lest those flames get any wild ideas.

My hope tonight— needless to say— is that the new batch of tomato sauce will bring no such drama, and that the pleasure of late-night sauce-making will be unmarred by disaster or tragedy.

One might even say that the entire home cooking industry shares my hope, or at least bases its marketing upon it. What is a cookbook, after all, other than a bulwark against failure? Why resort to trial and error when a trial can be so trying, and when an error— in a situation wherein high heat, sharp instruments, and perishable foodstuffs are involved— can be dangerous as well as unsatisfying.

So, too, does the technology of the home cook serve a prophylactic function. Whether against waste, or strain, or lost time, or ineptitude, these instruments line our counters and cabinets like enamel soldiers primed for battle. Just look at the young lady on the cover of the Hamilton Beach food mixer cookbook, above; notice how keenly her face radiates pride, and how staunchly her unmarred apron testifies to the machine's efficiency.

Books like this are easy targets; indeed, it's far too easy to snicker at such a portrait of the 1940s domestic goddess, brandishing her cake like a toddler beaming after a successful trip to the potty.

Nor is it any real fun to marvel at the mixer's place in the tableau: how it quietly dominates the scene, a magician soliciting applause for his tireless and lovely assistant. The mixer takes its bow, too; the domestic goddess has distracted us just long enough for the mixer to pull off its sleight-of-hand.

Again, all this is simply too easy. The real pleasure here lies in following these protestations of joy as they change over time. I recently came across a number of such pamphlet-sized cookbooks (or cookbooks-cum-instruction manuals) at a local antique store, shortly after the night of the fire. They were all remarkably cheap, which is why I bought them. And they are remarkable documents. But documents of what?

Of gender, certainly. The calm, smiling grandmother of the 1930s gives way to the eager hausfrau of the 1940s and 1950s, suggesting slight alterations, but no major ones, in the picture of domesticity they present. The womenfolk help the machines cook all that food, and the experts at Syracuse University safely test the recipes.

One cookbook (to the right) offers a slightly different spectacle, depicting a curious hybrid of grandmother and infant, grinning girlishly out at us over her bifocals. She seems to have leapt over adult sexuality altogether. The book is dedicated to "carefree cooking," suggesting that the recipes are simple enough for our quaint little humunculus to prepare the dishes herself— no need for technology here! She holds the cookbook upside down, of course.

Again: easy targets. But there's something more to these little books than their ham-fisted identifications with the pre-war status quo. For other titles are more straightforwardly hortatory, appealing to their readers to "Be Original" or to "Cook with Cheese." Here we have a paean to the aesthetic sensibility that home kitchen products— whether instruments, implements, or condiments— can introduce into our lives. Technology offers more than just efficiency; it can fulfill cooking's appeal to pleasure.

Here, to the left, is a book that became an immediate favorite of mine, a pamphlet put out by the makers of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce sometime during the 1970s. A real marketing gambit, for certain: the versatility of a condiment made from fermented anchovies, raisins, garlic, molasses, and tamarind may not seem immediately apparent. But this obscure condiment, the book claims, can become a vehicle for unfettered creativity.

And I can imagine no vehicle more perfect— and certainly no more original!— than a meat loaf train. Chugging along on its carrot-disk wheels across a landscape of mashed potatoes, it bears a salutary cargo of vegetables to the good little boys and girls around the table.

"Just the dish to enchant the youngsters at any party," the recipe claims.

The dish enchants because it offers us, rather than the perfect dish, an incarnation of the perfect train. Its cargo notwithstanding, the train delivers because it was designed to careen off the tracks, to break into bits, to disappear. Railway accident— normally the stuff of tragedy— becomes a raison d'être, and, in doing so, becomes the stuff of pure entertainment. The meat loaf train, which serves 8-10, titillates the youngsters with its spectacle of immanent consumption, who tear into it like a roomfull of pre-teen de Quinceys running to gape at a fire.

Perhaps this, rather than the more pastoral pleasures of late-night sauce, represents the epitome of home cooking technology: disaster is not so much avoided as embraced, transformed into the very purpose of cooking itself.

Mollycules and Gastropods

2008-09-28T20:25:00.009-04:00

H. has been out of commission this weekend with a stomach flu, but the kitchen has been busy all the same. For some reason— perhaps as a means of passing the time until the second shoe inevitably drops— the level of activity in our kitchen has intensified. Does flu strike in pairs? In threes?

H. has more of less recovered, thank goodness; she was fit enough this evening for a dinner of beef shanks braised in white wine and celery. But even as the shanks bubbled happily away in their pot, I noticed that the big blue Hubbard squash we'd picked up at a recent fair was starting to develop soft spots. It, too, was showing signs of disease.

Sadly, Old Hubbard would not be recovering quite as quickly as her human counterpart(s); to my knowledge there's no remedy for vegetable illness other than a swift execution. I decided to act fast.

The squash is now simmering away in chicken stock, on its way to becoming tomorrow's soup. I have a peck of tomatoes awaiting a similar fate: when their moment approaches, they will become a short batch of marinara sauce, destined for the freezer.

Two long-stewing dishes in one night, with a third in the wings. Hardly a feat, yet it has brought about a certain philosophical calm. Or, more precisely, a deadpan reflection on the nature of transformation.

Onward, then, to transformation. A recent New Yorker article — whose title escapes me — assesses the career of Grant Achatz, a Chicago chef who was diagnosed with tongue cancer after living for nearly a year with painful lesions similar to the blackened sores on my now- butchered Hubbard squash. Achatz's diseased tongue is strongly metaphorical, connoting far more than simply the vegetables decaying in my home kitchen. What makes the Achatz story truly remarkable is that his illness has transformed the chef's cancerous tongue into a metaphor for his own food as well.

Achatz has undergone numerous courses of chemotherapy and radiation in order to save his tongue, which is, of course, one of his principal professional assets. The procedures seem to be working (although the story closes inconclusively, in classic New Yorker fashion, so we never know for certain). Achatz is a living pharmakon; his tongue is the focus of myriad scientific procedures. The point of the article seems clear: the barrage of chemicals and techniques to which the chef's body has been subjected is uncannily similar to the battery of chemicals and procedures to which Achatz subjects his food.

Achatz, you see, is a practitioner of molecular gastronomy.

Now, it strikes me that the way one reacts to— or even describes— the phenomenon of molecular gastronomy serves as an instant determinant: call it a fad, and you're already a grumpy traditionalist shaking your fist at those fussy, foam-blowing gastropods and longing for a simple snack of pig's trotters and snouts, just like grandma used to make. Or, at least, just like they make 'em at your favorite Parisian brasserie. You know, where they really know how to make onion soup.

Call it "the future of cooking," however, and you're already entrenched in the other camp, lecturing to the infidels about the fact that the culinary arts were once on par with the world of science. Remember the good old days? Lavoisier! Rumford! Recall Brillat-Savarin, who wrote in The Physiology of Taste that

"Gastronomy is a part of: Natural history, by its classification of alimentary substances; Physics, because of the examination of the composition and quality of these substances; Chemistry, by the various analyses and catalyses to which it subjects them; Cookery, because of the art of adapting dishes and making them pleasant to the taste; Business, by the seeking out of methods of buying as cheaply as possible what is needed, and of selling most advantageously what can be produced for sale; Finally, political economy, because of the sources of revenue which gastronomy creates and the means of exchange which it establishes between nations."

"It rules," he concludes, "over our whole life."

In the interest of teetering on the brink of a disease without succumbing to it, I will suggest simply this: molecular gastronomy is a manner of food-production that treats its food and seeks to cure it.

For indeed, it might seem unfair to all parties to deem it mere cooking. As a science of transformation, it surpasses in degree what happens to a tough shank of beef, say, when you stew it for several hours in a savory broth. But does it surpass this in kind? Flatly, no. The history of gastronomy dictates otherwise: the science of gelatin was no paltry affair, after all.

So it's cooking, and, in the right hands, it's good cooking, too. Just look at the kinds of mollycules they serve up at a restaurant like Alinea. Scroll through the pictures and tell me those little morsels don't look delicious. This isn't just a matter of using food as the brute matter upon which to excercise a series of techniques; here, each concept seems to derive expressly from the ingredients themselves.

I say this, of course, with utterly no authority— since restaurants such as Alinea tend to be prohibitively expensive, and there are scandalously few culinary equivalents of the public art museum. Let's not forget to read those last lines of Brillat-Savarin: gastronomy, molecular or otherwise, is never far from political economy.

Perhaps I'm coming down with something after all. For I've run my feverish course through the basic concepts of the molecular gastropods, and all this without ever having the pleasure of their mollycules running through me.

So does this mean that I'm a fan? No: it just means that I would suggest that we recall the tendency of arts and sciences alike to benefit mutually from a salutary catholicism of taste. To claim that mollycules are the future of all cooking is a bit like suggesting that Futurism represented the future of all art. This is more than just foolish; it's dangerous. There are plenty of ways to experiment, and technological advancement is but one of them.

To consider molecular gastronomy as little more than a fad, however, seems no less troublesome. Imagine standing irrevocably by the claim that eggs should never be beaten or separated. In the case of livestock, or of children: yes, certainly. But to deny the "molecular" properties of egg proteins, and thus prohibit that a soufflé never come to pass, or that a meringue never take shape? Futurism, for all its political rants and affiliations, still referred to a kind of painting; and molecular gastronomy, for all its alembics and gases and fairy-dust powders, is no less a kind of cooking.

So in short, my point is this: I've done a lot of cooking this weekend. It wouldn't kill me to try out one of these molecular-gastronomy restaurants, now, would it? Certainly not. Especially if you pay for it.

Damn Those Two Little Gardeners!

2008-09-24T23:59:00.003-04:00

It's an ugly truth. Margaret Wise Brown, beloved children's author and master of the soporific line, has kicked my ass.

This has nothing to do with her magnum opus. With its bowls of mush and quiet old women whispering "hush," Goodnight, Moon leaves me cold. For the book's faux- Flemish interiors lend it an air of religious quietude that relegates it firmly to the realm of infancy. This is especially true for the board-book version, which (I admit) does stand up rather well to the ravages of early childhood.

Our daughter, for one, has moved on to more sophisticated fare. Dr. Seuss is a favorite, of course. Ever more popular is the inimitable Everyone Poops, with its sublime gesture toward universality.

Yet the past months have been dominated by The Two Little Gardeners, a hitherto-unknown work in the Margaret Wise Brown canon. I started reading the book to A. in late July. By mid August I had to force it out of the rotation. But it was too late. I was utterly stricken: I could no longer write. I could barely enter the kitchen. What happened?

It was those damned children.

The story portrays two rosy-cheeked youngsters who, for all their alleged youth, comport themselves like an old married couple. Sporting floppy sun hats and high-waisted pants, they look octegenarian rather than eight. Perhaps someone miscarried a decimal point. In the early moments of the book they till the soil and plant seeds. In subsequent pages we follow the garden's progress as its vegetables begins to grow and flower. We learn about the challenges of drought and garden pests. Later, with all such conflicts resolved, our protagonists witness the garden's teeming splendor.

The story reaches its denouement in a flurry of alliteration: "The corn tassels bloomed/ And the pumpkins got fat/ And the beans grew long/ And the carrots pushed up through the ground/ And the cabbages looked like great green roses all in a row./ Day after day something was ripe and ready to pick."

To this point, I'm fine with the whole proposition. The garden grows, and produces vegetables. Dandy, I say. I get a CSA farm share delivered to my door— more or less the same thing. Just without the tilling, or the toiling, or the smug pride of a season-long agricultural project.

It's the next part that kills me. Our plucky heroes cook and cook and cook, boiling and baking everything in large casserole dishes. Then they get all gussied up in their Sunday best and gorge themselves.

But does this satisfy our little do-gooders, those apple-cheeked savants who bear the wisdom of the ages. No, far from it.

The little bastards go to work canning and preserving everything else. And here Brown's endless litanies become tauntingly matter-of fact: "So they put up some things in cans and jars and bottles/ and stored them away on the shelves."

Look at the picture! Onions hanging in bunches. Carrots plunged into barrels of sand. Potatoes and pumpkins heaped up in bins. Squash splayed out like Phoenician soldiers on the battlefield.

It's downright humiliating, I tell you.

Now, I've tried; I've tried. First it was the cordials: capturing the essence of summer fruit in liquid form, like bugs under a bell. And during the past few weeks, we've made an extra effort to keep abreast with the season's bounty.

One week it was giardiniera— cauliflower, radishes, green beans, carrots, and broccoli, lightly brined— of which there remain two Ball jars somewhere near the back of the fridge.

The next week it was fresh dill cucumber pickles, made without vinegar; these disappeared within days.

And recently I tried my hand at making tomato jam, to modest success (the jam is tasty although the consistency isn't quite right: it's a bit too runny to qualify as jam). Will any of this last beyond next Wednesday? Fat chance. Will it fill a larder with tidy rows of jars and bottles to last all winter long?

Margaret Wise Brown has, in short, left me a quivering wreck. Damn those two little gardeners! But I smell a rat (and, out of spite, I might add that the little dog in the illustration above might be smelling a rat as well). Is it really possible for a simple little garden plot to yield quite as much as it does in this accursed little book?

And can such quaint little children really be relied on to sterilize their jars and bottles properly? Just think of the bacteria! I'm just relieved that Brown didn't decide to follow the Two Little Gardeners into the Fall, when they begin potting tripe, pickling pig's feet, and making blood sausage.

CSA + Farmer's Market = Bliss

2008-08-16T11:54:00.004-04:00

A Saturday in mid-August with a temperature of 85° is a gift, if ever something so public could be considered a gift.

In the "Victorian" hamlet of Bellefonte, PA (last I checked, the U.S. was never part of the Victorian Empire) today is ArtsFest. It's a good day for the town: people are walking, rather than driving, up and down the hills. The sun is sparkling in the sky, and the light plays off the leafy trees along the town's streets. For a day, at least, business is booming in the local restaurants and coffee shops. And this is in spite of the myriad kettle corn stalls, gyro stands, and pulled-pork sandwich carts that arrive with the fair.

Today is also market day in town: there's a growing farmer's market in Bellefonte, which takes place in the center of town every Wednesday and Saturday. It seemed to struggle a few years back, but recently it has benefited from an influx of patrons and dealers alike. There are even a few new farms; one, Setter's Farm, is a tiny acre or so outside of town that specializes in salad greens.

For lunch, minutes ago, we had a salad made from the farm's specialty green mix-- a combination of lettuces, herbs, baby greens, and edible flowers-- served with sliced heirloom cherry tomatoes and quartered hard-boiled egg. Alongside it was a secondary salad of micro-greens, dressed simply with a walnut oil vinaigrette.

How easy it is to forget that salads have flavor. But what a pleasure to be reminded. When a salad is more a bouquet than a bed of greens, this becomes increasingly possible.

What's more, there are still plenty of vegetables left over from our weekly CSA box, too. Thus tonight we're having P2 and S. over for a garden barbecue: I have fresh basil and tomatoes for a salad, and, for the grill, sweet corn and summer squash, as well as various shapes and sizes of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I also picked up a round loaf of dutch oven bread; sliced, grilled, and rubbed with garlic, it might make for a nice accompaniment to all those grilled vegetables.

P2 and S. will bring some pork chops and-- they claimed, mysteriously-- some vegetables from their own garden. I didn't know they even had a garden. A miracle!

I Want a General Store, Too

2008-08-09T22:58:00.004-04:00

The village of North Hero, Vermont lies on the Eastern shore of Grand Isle, looking out over the broad expanse of Lake Champlain. On a warm August day, the lake is alive with boaters, swimmers, and water-skiers. Sun-baked piers stretch out from the shore. And in the village the cottages and farmhouses all boast rows of Adirondack chairs lined up on the lawns, waiting for the diurnal spectacles of sunrise and sunset. The gardens are alarmingly well-kept; they spill over with black-eyed susans and tall white phlox.

At the heart of this little village on an island in the middle of a lake is a general store. It is a very impressive general store. There are nice things to buy there. I want one.

Some might covet the New Englandy wonder of the tumbled-shale beaches, perfect for strolling upon with linen suits, skipping stones into the lake at sunset. Some might covet the tidy colonial houses with their cottage gardens and covered porches.

They can have it. I want the general store.

Vermont has a knack for fancy, well-groomed general stores; one of the ways you can sniff out the influx of New York- New England tourist money is by poking through the merchandise in these local stores. Wine, designer cookware, imported cheese, freshly baked breads and pastries, local crafts, and, of course, the myriad permutations of maple syrup.

In central Pennsylvania, by contrast, most the country stores I've seen look like they're holding their breath. Cluttered, depressed, and out-of-date, they're waiting to let go and follow the light, beckoned up to heaven as the last of their customers head off to Wal-Mart. In the meantime, they're stocked with nonperishable pantry items, and with chips.

In Vermont, though, the general stores don't compete with Wal-Mart. This is largely due to the fact that there aren't any Wal-Marts in Vermont. But it's also because Vermont general stores have tourists to entertain, and not just a loose handful of cigarette-buyers and lottery-players to sustain.

But here's my question: which comes first? Must the tourists preceed the store-- or might it be precisely the general store that makes passers-by feel, suddenly, like tourists?

And thus I ask: might it be possible to transplant a Vermont general store to a state that isn't Vermont, and to have it thrive?

Can I have one, please?

The general store in North Hero, named "Hero's Welcome," seems to have found both a niche and an expert store buyer. Sited in a keenly-refurbished historic building, the general store bears all the qualities of the well-rounded generalist. A generalist, that is, in the strong sense-- not in the sense of dilettante.

The store opens first into a small café, with a few wooden tables, lots of newspapers, and an array of freshly-baked pastries-- savory as well as sweet. Further down is a sandwich counter and a wall of bottled-drink coolers; on the facing wall is a scaled-down wine store, and, adjacent to it, a sweet-shop display of penny candy displayed in wide-mouthed jars (we bought some horehound candies, lemon drops, and molasses mints. Straight out of the nineteenth century... but more on nostalgic sweets anon, I hope).

After that, the room widens, and to one side lie shelves bearing the standard provisions (canned goods, ketchup and mustard, medicine, and the like). To the other side is a clothing shop, with a standard array of regionally-themed t-shirts, fleeces, windbreakers, and cowboy hats. Beyond that the store becomes truly particular. The next room boasts a cathedral ceiling and a loft. In the loft are a few shelves of whimsical toys and games, as well as local maps and a small but meticulously-chosen selection of books. With a substantial collection of books by Vermont authors and plenty of titles on Vermont history and the geography of Lake Champlain, the bookstore's real standout is the cooking section. Lots of books about canning and preserving; on garden-to-table cuisine; the L.L. Bean book of game and fish cookery; and so forth. I bought a book about Prairie food there.

Beneath the loft is a wide selection of cookware and tableware, similar to what you might find at a small but upscale cookware boutique. One wall of the store featured strange forms of cutlery, including dental equipment and an assortment of scissors, magnifying glasses, and binoculars. Then, out back in an outbuilding, there's an outdoor outfitters, with fishing gear and various boating equipment for sale or rent. Out! Out!

The point is not that these types of displays don't exist anywhere else (although the petite-yet- competent bookstore is becoming rarer and rarer). What's remarkable is that each element of this general store represented its genre well: no part of the store could claim to be exhaustive, but what you found was singular enough to seem almost unique. Of course, nothing was particularly cheap. But herein lies the store's genius: you don't go there for cheap things. You go there for good things.

Yes, a little Martha Stewart. And given the locale, the idiom fits.

But I hardly think that the inverse mode of general store-keeping is any more proletarian. Just because a store's depleted stock looks like it dates from the era of Stalinism doesn't mean that the store is somehow keeping it real.

So can I have one? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeease?

CODA:

As we were driving home from Vermont yesterday we stopped at another general store near the Grand Isle Ferry. Coincidentally, in the Burlington free city newspaper, Seven Days, was a cover story on General Stores. The article is a review of a new book by Dennis Bathory-Kitsz entitled Country Stores of Vermont: A History and Guide. One key feature of this book-- which makes it especially worthy of purchase-- is its discussion of the business plans of a number of successful stores. The article, like the book, aims to dispel the mythology of the stores as nostalgic curiosities, and instead to focus on the economic realities they face-- How and why they survive; the challenges they face; and so forth.

I will gladly this book for anyone who wants to open a proper general store in my town.

Attack of the Late-Night Munchies

2008-08-06T20:22:00.004-04:00

Some years ago there was a fair amount of press coverage devoted to a curious spike in early-morning laceration cases throughout the US. Suddenly there were all kinds of middle-class bank tellers, lawyers, and schoolteachers rushing to the emergency room with bloody palms and sliced fingers.

The culprit? Frozen bagels. At the height of the "bagel craze" of the early 90s-- itself a by-product of the coffee chain explosion-- people who weren't from New York City were buying bagels and freezing them.

The problems arose when it came time to un-freeze them. How do you toast a rock-solid frozen bagel? In our own enlightened era, of course, we know the secret: it is essential to split bagels before freezing them.

In the early 1990s, however, such wisdom had not yet made itself known. And thus the early morning found the D.I.Y. crowd struggling to cleave apart their still-frozen breakfast fare. Chef's knives-- themselves a popular gift item during this same era-- presented a ready option. But carving into a solid toroid-shaped object is no simple task. Thus the slicer's task is a treacherous one : left hand grips the bagel, right hand holds the knife. You know the rest.

Frozen or not, it was a recipe for laceration.

The injury became so common, in fact, that it spawned inventions like "the Bagel Guillotine" and the closely-related "Bagel Biter" (pictured). The principle of such devices, it seems, was to exact a measure of revenge upon the offending pastry itself. Take that, abuser! One could either execute it in swift yet definitive fashion (i.e. with the guillotine), or anticipate, in technological form, its slow, painful digestion (i.e. with the biter).

None of this is especially new. Here, for instance, is an article from franchising.com about the bagel industry's progress since those dark times. It's called "You've Come a Long Way, Bagel."

But are there any articles out there about late-night frozen pesto injuries? I think not. Yet the hazards of frozen pesto should be made known all the same.

I, for one, am the victim of a pesto injury.

It all started when K. across the street presented me with a little tupperware cup of homemade basil pesto. It was delicious. We were about to depart for Colorado, though, so I placed the tub in the freezer. It would be waiting for me when I got back.

And indeed, upon our return, there it was. On Monday night, just as I was about to go to bed, I found myself feeling somewhat peckish. The fridge was empty-- shockingly so-- since we'd only arrived back that day. There was food in the pantry, certainly. But there was no reason to do anything rash. I just needed a quick bedtime nosh, as the bagel crowd might say.

My thoughts turned to the pesto. It was frozen solid, but this was hardly a deterrent. In that sordid, bedtime way, I was ready-- eager, even-- for a few shards of pesto gelatto.

It was just a small tupperware tub, so I started hacking at with a steak knife. No need for anything heavy, I thought. No: a long, sharp, serrated blade would do the trick.

And it did.

An hour later, as I sat on a gurney in the emergency room waiting for stitches, I realized that the story I was telling about my injury sounded a bit louche. Hardly the stuff of sympathy.

"An unfortunate pesto incident," I'd explained to the triage nurse. "The blade hit mostly webbing, I think," I added, trying to sound tough. "Just between the fingers. I don't think there's any nerve damage."

"On the pain scale," the nurse asked, pointing to the diagram before me, "how much pain would you say you were in?"

This gave me pause. If I said "none," I'd be a laughing stock. One is a happy face, utterly content. Was I content? Certainly not: it was one in the morning, after all, and I never did manage to find the chunk of pesto that had popped out of the container as the knife pushed through the plastic and, in turn, my hand. I was still peckish.

"Two," I offered. That would make me look tough: yes, it was a pesto injury. But I was owning up to my pain. The injury might have been the kind of culinary disaster to befall the likes of Fraser Crane; but I was facing it like Patrick Swayze.

The doctor and I chuckled, indeed, about the classic Swayze vehicle, "Roadhouse," as he stitched up the front and back sides of the puncture.

"Imagine that," I said. "Telling the doctor he didn't need anesthetic."

"Hm," the doctor concurred. "Imagine that."

I chuckled, waiting for the anesthetic to take effect. And then I drove home and made some toast. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

A-Hole and Balls

2008-08-01T16:22:00.004-04:00

It's all about keeping it classy, after all. Thus I promise: it's not as rude as it sounds.

It's a hot, sunny Friday afternoon in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We've just returned from splashing around in the principal spring itself, a bubbling, sulphuric pool that trickles into the Yampa river. At this junction in the river is also a small waterfall that empties into a deeper pool beneath. This, we are told, is the A-Hole.

The A-Hole smells like sulphur.

There are numerous other holes along the Yampa river as it passes through the town of Steamboat Springs: the B-Hole, the Peep-Hole, and so forth. If you rent an inner tube you can float downstream through all these sites; at each you will find kids jumping off the rocks into the deep water. It's really fun.

After diving over the falls at the A-Hole, we went to lunch at one of the older restaurants in town, Double Z's. It's the kind of place where you expect to hear George Thorogood on the stereo, and do. (Seriously!). They sell t-shirts featuring two pigs having sex, bearing the motto: "Best Pork in Town."

The B-Hole has been renamed the ZZ-Hole in honor of this Steamboat institution.

After our plunges through the A-Hole, we visited the Double Z for lunch, because this, of course, is the restaurant in Steamboat known for serving Rocky Mountain Oysters.

And the verdict? A) the good part: bull's testicles, sliced and flattened, are similar to sweetbreads in both flavor and consistency. Thus, as I had hoped. Not only were they inoffensive, they hold the promise of being delicious. A delicacy rather than a dare.

B) the bad part: as the photo we took illustrates, the "oysters" were deep-fried virtually beyond recognition. And fried food tends to taste, well, like fried food. So if we reached a saturation point in our testicle-munching, it was less for the peculiarity of the organ than for the limitations of the preparation.

But there's a world of possibility here-- and I wonder which adventurous western chefs have explored this organ for its highbrow possibilities. Not that I think it requires a highbrow preparation. I wonder if, just like real, aquatic oysters, there's a way to enjoy them simply. Not raw, of course. But perhaps roasted over a prairie fire?

Quickly, Green

2008-08-01T10:17:00.002-04:00

Two nights ago at Camp E-Colo we celebrated taco nite. C.W. made some fabulous shrimp tacos, marinating the shrimp in tequila, lime, and salt before pan-searing them. The other revelation was to serve the shrimp with shredded red cabbage and a salsa verde-sour cream sauce. A keeper, for sure.

I made carnitas from that wonderful recipe I've used over and over these past few months-- here, again, is the link. There was enough meat not only for the tacos but for pork po' boys last night as well.

The other element of the taco dinner was an improvised pork chili verde I'd made earlier that day. I am sure there are recipes out there for chili verde, but I refuse to look at them. Imagine composing a song in your head, only to realize that the song you'd composed was in fact something you'd heard subliminally. I find such revelations unnecessary and somewhat depressing. Besides, wasn't there a Bugs Bunny cartoon about this once?

So no need to go through the process of researching the recipe to uncover any accidental plagiarism. The idea does, in fact, have a source: one day, perhaps a year or so ago, I found myself watching a show on television about a Western-style covered-wagon cook-off competition. It was riveting, like a traffic accident. The chaps. The frontier dresses. And, perhaps most of all, the mustaches!

The essential point was that everything had to be cooked over an open flame, and to involve, it seemed, a Dutch oven. So there was a lot of cornbread, and a lots of chili.

Someone, I recall, made a green tomatillo and pork chili, and the image stuck with me. It became a fantasy. I wondered about the contents, before realizing that it was a matter of cobbling together all the green things I could think of. And what better place to experiment with such cowboy fare than in sunny Colorado?

Here, to the best of my recollection, is the recipe.

Starting with a pork shoulder (I couldn't find a boneless one, so the first step involved removing the awkwardly-shaped shoulder blade), cut off any hard fat and then cut the meat into a 1/2 inch dice (or so). I used about 2 1/2 or 3 pounds of meat. Salt the meat. (This can be done in advance, too, as in the carnitas recipe).

In a heavy bottomed pot, sear the pork cubes in vegetable oil, which will require several batches.

Reduce the heat to medium, and, in the accumulated fat (unless there's more than a 1/2 inch of fat in the pan, in which case, drain off the excess), sweat 2 chopped onions, 3 chopped green peppers, 2 chopped serrano peppers, and 6-8 cloves of garlic, diced. After about 5-7 minutes, add about 1 1/2 pounds of chopped tomatillos, and continue to sweat the mixture until the vegetables are soft.

Add the pork, as well as healthy doses (1 tbsp or more) of chili powder, cumin, black pepper, oregano, and ancho chili powder. Add water to cover the meat.

Simmer for several hours, until the meat falls apart and the flavors are melded. Add salt, tobasco, and additional chili powder to taste. I also added, at some point, a small amount of honey and a small amount of cider vinegar to bring out the sweetness.

Serve with diced onion, cilantro, and sour cream (or C.W.'s brilliant combo of salsa verde and sour cream).

In Search of the R.M.O.

2008-07-30T00:11:00.005-04:00

So here we are at "Camp E-Colo," the 2008 incarnation of the immortal Camp E-Coli.

We're comfortably ensconced in a gorgeous mountainside house in Colorado (courtesy of Ron T. and Pat T.), and each night's dinner so far has surpassed its predecessor: on our arrival, we fired up some simple hot dogs and corn. That was Saturday. Sunday's dinner was a lovely set of green enchiladas. Monday's dinner was "Cowboy night," which consisted of cowboy steaks and cowboy beans, with cornbread and more corn. (I should say that this meal didn't so much surpass the enchilada dinner as involve more lubrication beforehand). And tonight we had a massive spread of Indian food-- saag, chick peas, samosas, and rice-- prepared by the almighty E. I'm still feeling bloated and content.

But there's still something missing. The feeling of contentment is no less real; but beneath it, waiting, building up pressure, there's the ever-building urgency of an unfulfilled quest.

Balls, to put it bluntly. I'm in search of balls.

It started out as little more than chit-chat. Traveling to the Rocky Mountains? Then surely you'll be trying the Rocky Mountain oysters? "Sure," I would offer, but my heart wouldn't quite be in it. For the culture of the Rocky Mountain oyster-- based on what I've learned from the internet, at least— has less to do with gastronomic pleasure than with unfettered machismo. Daring. Extremity. And, let's say, something like a homeopathic quest for a testosterone turbo-boost.

How tiresome. But I hold out hope that the victual itself might surpass its unfortunate aura. Imagine if the culture of oysters— real, aquatic oysters— focused on their aphrodisiac qualities alone.

At first it was all talk. But then we arrived in Colorado, and between the woozy air of high-altitude living and the heady excitement of collective dining, the quest has become more realistic.

Coach Taylor and A. V. were the last ones left awake on that first night; the others, travel-weary and full of corn, had long since retired for the evening. Conversation soon turned, naturally, to the matter of beef testicles. "Are you in?" "Sure, I'm in." "Me, too." "Let's do it." We made a pact.

But A. V. had only a brief window of opportunity to honor the pact; saddled with an early departure date, we had only Sunday to work with. And it must be remembered that Sunday and Monday are tough supply-chain days for local restaurants. Herein lay an important consideration: if there's anything less appealing than sub-par oysters, it's sub-par Rocky Mountain oysters.

The opportunity passed. A. left us, only to suffer through a 5.8 earthquake the next day.

So we wait. Will tomorrow be our day to strike? Coach Taylor has found a restaurant that serves them for lunch. Will our schedules permit? Will we lose our nerve?

Or will the whole quest simply turn out to be boring, and fade away entirely?

Chi Cken?

2008-07-18T23:21:00.002-04:00

One of the more amusing ways for people to alienate themselves from others is for them to talk about their favorite experiences in Paris. Viz:

"It's the modest things about Paris that strike you most: aren't the street markets just adorable? And that crêpe stand near the Bastille is to die for."
or:

"Oh, you know, seriously, I think the best part about Paris is not the whole café or brasserie thing but the rhumeries, where they have lines of infused rums on a shelf above the bar. That's the real Paris."
or:

"Of course, this is an experience you can't really get from a short visit. You really have to live there."

Perhaps you already see where this is heading. Yep: we're those people. It's a shameful, gruesome fact, but there's no sense in denying it. I've uttered versions of all those sentences. "One of my favorite things to do in Paris..." You know, one of my favorite things. As in: there are so many; it's hard to decide. But I'll regale you with my current favorite.

Of course, the years are starting to pile up in the empty space between the present and the actual time we spent in Paris. Which was, you know, so very fleeting. (But even such nostalgic sentiment is itself disgusting, is it not? Perhaps most disgusting of all. "Oh, it's been so long since we were last in Paris. When will we ever return? It's been, like, forever").

To brush aside such sentiments: here is a story of, let's say, our Salad Days. Back in the day-- you know, before the Euro-- I was on a fellowship, living on the Rue de Lappe in the 11th (if you've just nodded in recognition, you're one of those people as well. Say five Hail Marys and pour yourself a glass of Pernod. I know you own a bottle. Or is it Ricard?).

During this séjour, H. would visit me from time to time, but otherwise I was dreadfully lonely. And hungry. Aside from the hours each day I'd spend trolling the city for food and books, I was reduced to contemplating the idea of strangling the busty-looking pigeons in the jardin de Luxembourg and braising them in a port wine reduction. Not because I had to. But because these are the sort of things you think about.

But most of the time I was just in the library.

The problem with the library, though, is that they had a nice cafe but really sub-standard food. (The food was still better than the food in your library, of course).

When H. first visited me in Paris, we realized there would be some issues with the cuisine. H. has an aversion to richness-- meaning unguent, creamy fattiness-- and is downright allergic to cultured milk products. Even on a normal day, this renders a surprising amount of food off-limits, between sour-cream sauces and pasta dishes sprinkled with "just a little bit of Parmesan." It's especially damning in the context of Parisian snack food, which consists of various dishes made with the inescapable combination of ham and gruyère cheese: omelettes, croques monsieurs, croques madames, sandwiches, crêpes, salades composées, and so forth. You name it, and it seems to have gruyère in it, and not just that "tiny little bit." But a whole hunking mass of it.

Upon reflection, years later, I wonder if this simply wasn't the result of my own preference for cafés and crêpe stands that served masses and gobs of melted gruyère cheese, which happens to be one of my stalwart favorites. Might there have been a slight prejudice at work here?

After several days of generally fruitful experimentation, we realized that the one meal for which we'd found no solution was the luncheon meal to be consumed at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Now, if you've never been to the new BN-- pour yourself another glass of pastis if you have; you're among friends-- then it should be mentioned that it is a strange, abject place, of which we're perversely quite fond. This is the new library I'm talking about, not the charming old one where Georges Bataille used to work as a coin-collector, and which is, you know, in the middle of the city. This is the one designed for Mitterand, and it's situated more of less in the middle of nowhere. The design features four giant glass towers that look like books, and then a big swimming pool in the middle, filled with trees. The symbolism of the books I comprehend. The tree-filled swimming pool less so.

This new site, in the middle of an old warehouse district, may by now have become the mecca of culinary experimentation. Who knows. But in the waning days of the French franc, and for several years afterwards, it was pretty much a gastronomic wasteland.

We tried the "Buffalo Grill," a western-themed steak (0r buffalo?) restaurant too horrific-- or really, too horrifically banal-- to describe. We tried the "Quick" hamburger chain, which we immediately renamed as the "Suck" hamburger chain. Nollo contendere.

And then there was one poor, tired little bakery, which carried some sandwiches made, of course, with ham and gruyère cheese. They did have some other French delicacies which (for me) could easily make my day: rillettes, the ground meat-and-fat spread that is unspeakably delicious for anyone who doesn't have a problem with rich, unguent, lardy food; and pâté, which is the closest that meat can come to being cheese without actually being cheese.

We needed another angle. And thus we settled on Chicken.

So here it is, the truth: one of the best things to eat in Paris-- that is, without going to a restaurant or involving cheese-- is a rotisserie chicken. You go down to your local butcher or, if you're lucky, to a specialty rotissière, and pick one up. The butcher pulls a chicken off the rack and places it in a foil-lined bag and then, if you ask, will spoon in some potatoes and vegetables that have been stewing in the juices beneath.

To this day the rotisserie chicken remains a cornerstone of our diet; we still refer to the chicken itself with the initial admixture of awe and questioning. "Chicken?" It's always a question, but again, a question mixed with hope, and wonder.

Upon its arrival home, chicken resolves itself very simply: pull off all the meat, and make a baguette sandwich. We've experimented with various sauces, fillings, and dressings. But the rules of the game have been set: spread a sliced half-baguette with Sriracha chili sauce, add the pulled chicken, and perhaps a little of the rotisserie sauce. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

And then wrap the sandwich in a paper towel and tinfoil, and bring it to the library.

They make good espresso there, by the way. Of course they do.

Be, Cordial!

2008-07-14T10:01:00.005-04:00

The making of fruit cordials operates on a principle of thrift analogous to ethanol production. Beyond their high alcohol contents, the two procedures share the same tendency toward hidden costs. Who knows what kinds of resources they consume in the name of "preservation." But the results? Is it all worth the trouble?

This is my second summer making fruit cordials, the bio-fuels of those who fancy a dram. Last year, inspired by a faint recollection of my father doing the same, I prepared four or five fruit cordials in mason jars.

Picture my father-- or anyone's father-- eagerly venturing down to the basement each afternoon to turn a glass bell he'd filled with raspberries and vodka. For him the dedication seemed to pay off: he spooned the berries over ice cream, and relished the liqueur for weeks. As for me, I started trotting out the cordials for guests a few weeks after my initial burst of activity. The results were, at first, uninspiring. And I subsequently became-- if not a laughing-stock-- then at least something of a pariah in the neighborhood. "Be careful," guests would warn each other, through sidelong glances. "He might try to foist some of those dreaded fruit cordials on you."

Hours of labor squandered. Pints of peak-season berries drowned in booze. And liters and liters of perfectly mediocre vodka and rum transformed into embalming fluid. Hidden costs indeed!

But then time (and, no doubt, chemistry) worked its magic. By November the same sundry neighbors and passers-by were clamoring for the stuff. "Any of the ginger one left?" "My favorite is the blueberry." "What do you mean, critical? I've always loved your cordials!" This wasn't hypocrisy; this was alchemy.

For the fact is that the classic "44 day method" for aging cordials is hooey. 44 days will make a fine limoncello-- and did, in fact. But limoncello is more an infusion than a cordial: the sugar is added later, so the effect is less about mellowing all the flavors than simply sweeting a well-infused pot of vodka. (The recipe is simple, though the internet is rife with tinkerers: place the peels (no pith) of 6 lemons in a one-quart mason jar and fill it with vodka. Wait 4 weeks, then strain out the peels. Add a simple syrup to fill the jar again, and place it in the freezer for another... oh, hell... drink it whenever).

Infusions, indeed, are quick: I recently experimented with a banana-infused rum, placing most of a ripe banana and a very small piece of vanilla in a jam jar filled with white rum. The banana almost instantaneously took on the aspect of a medical specimen. But after four or five days the rum was very flavorful, and before too long the experiment had come to an end: the rum had vanished.

Cordials take a wee bit longer. For the fruit cordials I've just made-- so far I've got one and a half jars of strawberry; one jar of black raspberry; one jar of blueberry with coriander; one jar of apricot (with honey); and one jar of limoncello-- the fruit and sugar go in at once. Indeed, I consider it best to macerate the fruit with sugar for a few hours before decanting it into the jar and adding the vodka. The fruit then stays in the jar for about two weeks or so. But then it needs time to mellow.

Does this mean that it evaporates? How does the aging process work? Part of me-- recalcitrant, obtuse-- refuses to understand the science.

Another part of me refuses to learn how to decant.

Yes, that was me-- not just another picture I stole from the internet.

Most of the fluid is young strawberry cordial. Some of it is tears.

***

Here is one of the first articles I read online about fruit cordials. Sadly, I don't own any books about cordial-making, although I hope soon to have something to say about the excellent Moonshine: Its History and Folklore, by Esther Kellner (New York, 1971).

Incidentally, another fluid currently waiting for consumption inside a mason jar is a bottle of farm-brewed Amish kombucha. A bacterial soda: literally. And quite refreshing, I might add. I'm about to pour a glass of it right now- - for unlike everything else, it's ready to drink.

A Bigger Box

2008-07-09T20:37:00.004-04:00

Today's CSA share didn't fit in the usual half-peck box; it arrived in an Tröegs beer box. This boded well, as did the feathery tips of carrot and parsnip greens peeking out.
The box consisted of the following:
- a quart of beautiful red potatoes, which were sweet and waxy when poached (and served with butter and parsley)
- four small but tasty carrots, quickly devoured. I looked up a number of recipes for carrot greens, but couldn't decide on anything.
- two small parnsips
- a pint of snow peas
- two round white onions
- a handful of various peppers, sweet and hot
- a bag of salad greens
- a whole bag (!) of broccoli crowns
- a head of purple cabbage
- a bunch of kale (no longer just a delicate nosegay. An actual bunch)
- a bunch of swiss chard

The swiss chard instantly became a swiss chard and parsley frittata, which was rather tasty. Here's a version of the recipe, which I more or less followed, albeit without the cheese. In southern France it's called a Trouchia, to which I say: gezunteit!

I think tomorrow will require a nice salade niçoise, with the greens, the remaining potatoes, and the snow peas. But finally, the true summer conundrum has arrived: what am I going to do with all that kale and broccoli? A purple cabbage? The moment of truth has arrived. So far, the pattern of pizza, pasta, pizza, pasta, pasta, pasta, pasta has proven to be a purely binary code. What next?

Things are starting to heat up.

Coach Taylor

2008-07-08T21:58:00.003-04:00

We've just had the pleasure of a visit from our dear friend "Coach" Taylor, who had planned originally to wing into town for our massive neighborhood 5th of July barbecue. (More on that to follow). But since her feet were tired from a cross-country hike, she delivered herself to us on Monday instead.

The exciting thing about the trip was less the food we made, than the food we planned; last night I bombed yet again in my attempt to make a decent pizza dough-- I'm cursed, I swear-- and made two pissaladières that felt like they were made out of baked library paste. "These pissaladières aren't worth the paper they're printed on," I heard Coach say.

Tonight we had carne asada tacos with store-bought corn tortillas that were, upon reflection, strikingly similar in texture.

But again, this wasn't the interesting part of the visit. By far more important has been the critical planning we've begun for "Camp E-Colo," which begins in a few weeks. For the uninitiated: Camp E-Colo is the Colorado incarnation of the more familiar Camp E-Coli, the annual core peeps retreat to inexpensive rental lodgings in Vermont and, perhaps increasingly, elsewhere (the possibilities, nearly endless, are fun to fantasize about: Camp E-Colini (Tuscany); Camp E-Cuador (Ecuador) ; Camp E-Cali (San Francisco); Camp E-Cholo (New Mexico), etc.).

The name originated one summer a few years ago, when we found that our nearby swimming lake was closed, thanks to the bacterial side-effects of heavy rains after a drought. It does not refer to the cooking, which, next to reading, drinking, swimming, and eating, is our favorite camp activity.

So with Coach Taylor on the premises, it was natural for some menu-planning to begin. "What," we asked ourselves, "best reflects the spirit and influence of Colorado-- you know, the ranches, the mountains, the swimming holes, the hippies?"

This is what we came up with. The list, incidentally, is courtesy of Coach Taylor:

Trout: grilled, smoked, or poached; for breakfast, with hollandaise sauce; trout tacos (if you know what I mean)
Elk and buffalo (but no moose. That's just not done.)
Spoon bread
Pork with tomatillo chili
Venison chili
Pancakes (but they must only be called "griddle cakes" or "flapjacks")
Fried catfish
Huevos rancheros
Moonshine

We also like to have theme meals at our camps, so we came up with some themes:

Taco Tuesday (coupled with the venison chili, the theme might be "Farty Friday")
Southern Extravaganza
Cowboy Grub, or Welcome to the Rodeo
A Taste of Iberia

-----
Two final notes:

1) In transcribing the list above from the original handwritten menu, Coach Taylor has edited out "grilled pizza." Dang. I think it's time to figure out how to make that dough, and properly.

2) What sentence isn't improved by adding "if you know what I mean" to the end?

Too Much Cooking, Not Enough Writing

2008-07-02T22:13:00.002-04:00

What happened? Here it is, the mid-point of the calendar year. Summer is cruising along at full speed: a regular drunken boat. The sun is shining, the strawberries have begun to wane, and the summer squash is on the rise, proliferating, as summer squash does. The farmers' markets are bustling, and our farm-share boxes are getting heavier, if ever so slightly.

So why is it that I can hardly bring myself to write about all this?

Aside from the fact that it's much easier to write about the idea of food than about actual food-- perishable, transitory, and often more functional than delicious-- it would be safe to chalk this reluctance up to a lack of necessary idleness. To put it otherwise: I've been spending so much time scrambling to figure out what to do with a single summer squash, a sole bulb of kohlrabi, or a handful of pea pods, that the aftermath of an evening's dinner and cleanup finds me wiped clean- - a blank slate, fresh out of ideas.

Some of the improvisations have been successful. Some have achieved merely subsistence-level adequacy. Perhaps this, too, has been a factor. Who wants to write about (let alone remember) yet another pasta-with-greens-and garlic dish?

But summer's bounty is upon us all the same. Last week's farm share consisted of the following:

a bag of mixed lettuce
a nosegay of kale
three green onions
a crown of broccoli
a crown of cauliflower
a baggie of snap peas
a bulb of kohlrabi

As ever, the vegetables were gorgeous, albeit rendered all the more precious by their limited quantities; everything arrived clean, delicately packaged, and pristine. Once again-- we had our dear friends J. and E. in town-- we made grilled pizzas with the sautéed greens. Only this time I completely botched the pizza dough, and so at the last minute, with the toddlers fast approaching bedtime, we had to scramble to get everything ready. H. ran out to buy dough from a local pizzeria, and I hustled to get the pizzas on the table before everyone's nerves unraveled entirely.

How humbling. I now realize my error: the water I used to activate the yeast was far too hot. I'm ashamed even now to admit it: the water was nearly boiling. I'd heated it in the electric kettle, watching it approach the boiling point with a dull, innocent gaze. Instead of waking up the yeast with a warm bath, I murdered it. The dough, which never rose, sat inert and massive on the stove-top, hardening slowly into brick. Later that evening, I threw it away.

The pizzas themselves were perfectly adequate, thanks to the new dough.

Somewhat more noteworthy was a frittata we made the next day with the remaining ingredients from the farm share box: sautéed cauliflower, kohlrabi, and some leftover rice. The frittate was pleasant, especially when flanked by a bright salad of micro-greens from the local farmer's market. I was especially pleased by the kohlrabi: what pleasant little bulbs they are!

Today's farm-share brought some new developments, and I've been straining to think about how best to use it all:

a bunch of swiss chard
four bulbous green onions
crowns of broccoli and cauliflower
a summer squash
a small green pepper and one hot pepper
two heads of lettuce

Come to think of it, I ended up using much of this share in tonight's dinner, a humble fried rice dish made with one of the green onions, the yellow squash, and the single hot pepper, along with some corn, egg, and rice. Heck, that's already a substantial portion of the share.

What both excites and troubles me about the farm share is the micro-managerial impulse it awakens. Much of this, I am sure, derives from the novelty of the experience-- again, this is our first time trying out this sort of thing. But there's an intrinsic structural difference as well. Indeed, how different it is to receive a half-bushel box of produce than to wheel a cart through the supermarket-- or, for that matter, to stroll through some open-air market, following your nose.

In the latter cases, after all, you're the one doing the selecting. With a farm share, you simply open the box. Yet having the challenge of selection removed from the act of buying vegetables adds a whole new set of challenges. It also-- perversely-- adds a whole new layer of selection as well. What needs to be used first? Which elements belong together, and which remain incompatible, demanding separate dishes, separate meals?

The experience is, in the end, one of basic husbandry: how do I get these vegetables to yield one, two, or even three meals? How can I swell their ranks with rice, pasta, eggs, beans, or dough? Like a cured meat product, the vegetables have been reduced-- and thus elevated-- to the status of flavoring agent.

Vegetables, in other words, are the new bacon. Now there's something to get excited about.

Carbon Schmarbon

2008-06-23T23:47:00.003-04:00

I've just finished reading an inane article on Salon.com by Roberta Kwok; it's typical of the phoned-in, shoddily-researched mumbo-jumbo that passes for left-leaning journalism (having taken its cue, perhaps, from the phoned-in, shoddily-researched mumbo-jumbo purveyed by the right wing as well). The article, "Locally Grown Food Is More Ecological? Not So Fast," points out that farmers markets and the like might not be as carbon-friendly as we think. Heck, in terms of fuel consumption, they might actually consume as much gasoline as supermarkets-- maybe even more!

Here's the logic: supermarket produce may travel further than local produce, but farmers truck the stuff in with much less mega-efficiency than the supermarkets. After all, how many farmers own 18-wheelers? And thus, Kwok comes dangerously close to launching a clarion call to Salon's self-hating pseudo-liberals: buy cosmopolitan! Maybe we're all not such bad people for wanting to enjoy our persimmons and off-season tomatoes at Whole Foods.

I recently heard Bruce Robbins, an English professor at Columbia, make a similarly narrow-minded point. His pseudo-environmentalist appeal to gastronomic cosmopolitanism had, however, a little bit of ideological bait thrown in as well. The "Buy Local" mandate, like the "Buy American" mantra, comes suspiciously close to replicating a form of cultural xenophobia; however good our intentions might be, "buying local" smacks of potential deception. We might think we're doing the right thing, but we're really acting like suckers.

Kwok, to his credit, isn't suggesting that we give up on farmers markets-- he concludes only that he should "leave his calculator at home" next time, in order to avoid getting himself all dizzy over the problem of carbon calculation in the first place.

I'm stunned, though, by the article's lack of consideration for the longer-term economic-- and thus environmental-- differences between the globalization of produce and the support for local farming. For every time a small farm goes under, yielding its land either to sub-developments or to industrial mega-farms, the effects are far more wide-ranging than simply the matter of how much gas it takes to drive to the market, or of how much greenhouse gas an actual greenhouse produces.

Farmers markets benefit farmers-- at least I hope they do-- as do programs that enable markets, restaurants, schools, businesses, and individuals to buy local produce. I'm sure, yes, that there's plenty of driving involved. But every time a farm turns into a "Fox Run Village" or a "Wayside Crest" piled high with eco-friendly McHouses, there's a new bumper crop of cars, traffic, and the inevitable highway-widening and mega-marts that follow.

And yes, the 18-wheelers that heave in the bushels of imported (and sometimes delicious) produce from California or Guatamala to the local Wegman's may be more efficient than Farmer Dan's old Chevy pickup. But I'll bet you dollars to donuts that there will be more 18-wheelers once those farms have gone.

Delayed Gratification... But Gratification

2008-06-21T20:20:00.003-04:00

Knowing in advance that we would be out of town for our weekly vegetable delivery, we authorized (read: cajoled) A. and K. to pick up our CSA box from the porch and do with it what they liked.

When we returned home yesterday, they gave us the contents. This, I guess, is what they liked. A. and K. have their own garden, you see. But it's an act of kindness all the same.

Judging from the contents of the box, it would seem that things are starting to pick up. The results remain similar to those of previous weeks:

A small head of iceburg lettuce
A bag of mixed lettuce
A nosegay of kale
A crown of broccoli
Four green onions
A bag of mange-tout snap peas.

In addition, I bought from the farmer's market today a dozen or so garlic scapes, a packet of micro-greens, and some fresh fingerling beets with their greens intact. I'm especially pleased with the garlic scapes, which I'd never used before. They're magnificent: imagine a long bean that tastes like garlic. Eaten raw, they're rather strong, yet much more edible than the garlic bulb. Sautéed, they become much milder and sweeter in flavor.

As a result of this produce surge, virtually everything we ate today was grown within 25 miles of us. We had salad greens with our lunch and dinner. We made an omelet with garlic scapes. And for supper we made pizzas on the grill.

Grilled pizzas are a summer favorite, and for the first time I actually bothered to make the dough. Please don't judge me: it's mighty simple-- especially for a crowd-- to pick up prepared dough from the pizza parlor, and it costs almost nothing. So there's never been much need to make the dough from scratch, and thus I'd never done it. Now I have. The earth still turns on its axis.

For unlike the fussiness of oven-baked pizza, with its algorithms and alembics, grilled pizzas derive their appeal from the intense heat of the grill. They cook quickly and effectively, with wonderful crispness and irregularity. They have, I am sure, a strong following, in spite of remaining one of those cookbook secrets tucked away somewhere in the back pages near the beans, or the desserts and novelty cocktails. But they're a summer marvel; David Rosengarten raves about them in the Dean & Deluca. Ditto Steven Raichlen in his Barbecue Bible. And rightly so: there's no home pizza, in my mind, that comes even close to the texture and flavor of the crispy little pizzas you can make on the grill.

Here's how it works: you heat half the grill to high and half to low. On the hot part you lay out a thin square or a triangle of dough and let it bake for 30-45 seconds, until the dough starts to bubble and firm up. Then flip the dough, and cook the top side for about a minute. Flip again, and move the pizza crust to the cooler side. Then add the toppings; the residual heat from the grill will warm them. We don't use a lot of cheese, so melting things isn't our priority. But it does work; you just can't load the thing up like some Pizza Hut leviathan. This is, shall we say, more subtle fare.

With our vegetable bounty we made four small pizzas. Beforehand I cooked some Italian sausages and roasted a few cherry tomatoes in the oven. I also sautéed up some garlic scapes with the beet greens, adding a little chicken stock and cooking until the greens softened. I did the same thing with the kale and broccoli. These became the toppings; later in the summer, when tomatoes are in season, we'll trot out the more traditional favorites.

Our menu tonight consisted of the following:

Pizza #1: sausage, beet greens, tomatoes, olive oil
Pizza#2: kale/broccoli, tomatoes, Parmesan, olive oil
Pizza #3: sausage, kale/broccoli, tomatoes, olive oil
Pizza #4: Parmesan, olive oil, black pepper.

Duds Day

2008-06-16T21:58:00.002-04:00

No, this is not a knock on Father's Day. We had, in fact, a spectacular day on Sunday; it started with a characteristically excellent brunch at the Elk Creek Café in Millheim. I ordered chicken liver toasts to start, which were rich and delicious, and, fortunately, delicately portioned. (This was no Barnie Greengrass-sized ice-cream scoop of chicken liver). Thus I still had plenty of room for a plate of local sausage and eggs. If you haven't tried 'em, you must: the locally-made sausage patties are perfectly-spiced and grilled; the eggs, produced by free-range hens that live down the road, have the darkest yolks we've ever seen.

Then we spent part of the afternoon at a lake, before stopping on the way back for soft-serve ice cream. A fine, fine day.

So I'm not knocking Father's day. What I am knocking are my two worst meals: two solid, hollow thuds that remain, however far away in calendar time, disturbingly present in the kitchen. SW's lament about a bad run-in with the skillet in response to the last post led me to reflect on these bad memories. It doesn't take much to remind me, mind you: the meals were that bad.

What went wrong? Like most disasters, it's rarely one mishap that lies at the source but many: disaster is the effect of overdetermination. I think of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, wherein the murder victim has been stabbed by everyone on the train, and thus by no single agent alone. Bad days in the kitchen are, I think, much like that.

For anyone can, based on a sudden mental lapse, dump a whole soup down the drain by forgetting to place the sieve over a bowl or pot; you end up saving only the useless bones and such. A split second mistake with major results. But the result is simply: no soup. By contrast, it takes a whole symphony of errors to achieve a truly gruesome meal.

I have two that come especially to mind:

The first is something I now refer to as "Pasta Dufresne":

The dish, named in hindsight after the escape scene from The Shawshank Redemption, might look innocuous enough on paper. But in person it was an utter shipwreck. The ingredient list was fairly modest, combining black olives, garlic, and, I think, asparagus in the sauce. And shrimp. Now, some of these ingredients might conceivably belong together. And who knows: with enough white wine and lemon, and no black olives, it might have worked.

But I simply cannot fully describe how utterly inedible this was. The strange thing-- I recall SW's own surprise here-- is that I improvise pasta throw-togethers all the time. At their best, the "throwing together" produces perfectly adequate results. Sometimes even elegant. (In such cases, I prefer to call the dish an insieme. It sounds better).

But this was an instant throw-away: a cestinare.

As I was writing this I asked H. if she could remember what was in it, just to make sure I had the details straight. She rehearsed the shameful litany as if it had just befouled our lips last night.

It had been at least a couple years-- and yet the trauma remains. Disappointments come and go; talent waxes and wanes. But hell, a real disaster. Now that's something.

Part 2: X-Mas Pudding
(to be continued. . . )

Slim Pickings

2008-06-12T14:03:00.004-04:00

I returned home yesterday to find our second weekly farm share box. As before, the box was suspiciously light. I instantly grew concerned: was the box going to be half full, as it were, or half empty?

Much as before, the contents of the box were indeed slight:

two heads of lettuce
three bulbous green onions
a small bouquet of kale (a nosegay of kale?)
a pint of strawberries

The strawberries were delicious, and the green vegetables look pristine and delicate. We should have consumed them on the spot, but they stayed in the fridge overnight. But they will soon become a salad that we'll bring to a summer social gathering later this afternoon.

But it's not really that much food . . .

I want to support the local farmer and all that. And I know it was a slow spring. But... but...
would it kill them to put in just a little bit more kale?

Next week we'll be donating the box to our neighbors, so we'll have to get a distant field report about its scope and contents. The following week I will be expecting at least a meal's worth of produce: arugula, spinach. . .

Otherwise I'm going to turn into something of a pessimist: the box will have to be overflowing in order to convince me that it not be mostly empty.

HOWEVER:
(added, 7:40 pm)

We're back to half full.

The limited palette has proven a spur to creative thinking, of a sort. With-- literally-- six leaves of kale to deal with, the usual boil-n-tumble versions of greens cooking would prove bootless. And so I resorted to scouring the fridge for bits and pieces.

There was a butt of salami in the cheese drawer, not enough to serve to guests, but enough to dice up as a flavoring agent. So this went in the skillet, and then the chopped kale. I then braised the kale with some chopped garlic, salt, and pepper. After about 10-12 minutes, I added the three cold potatoes (which weren't dried out, since I'd made them to be served cold in salad: bring to a boil in salted water, cover, and turn off the heat. The potatoes absorb the brine and cook slowly as they cool. The result is moist cold potatoes that don't have that funky used-potato flavor).

I also tossed in a rinsed can of cannelini beans, and some sage from the garden. Drizzled it with olive oil, and voilà: a tapas-like warm salad, the equivalent of sausage and kale soup. But without the soup.

So the kale was enough for a meal, after all. And the sun is shining.

Paradise? Paradise.

2008-06-10T21:01:00.002-04:00

Sunday was one of those edge-of-the-volcano days wherein you simply cannot believe that nature is capable of survival under such conditions. Had we stayed in the house, our fate would have been sealed: steam, sulfur, doldrums.

So we went to the beach. Central Pennsylvania lies entirely upon carved-out limestone, so the region is rife with swimming-holes, lakes, and springs. With some dear friends we drove to Black Moshannon, a park up in them thar hills with tea-dark water and a cool breeze. We passed a fine morning there, with the kids splashing in the water and the grown-ups standing, as grown-ups do, knee-deep in the lake, like watchful herons.

And then we started planning dinner.

"Let's make lobster rolls," I offered.

"No," X. replied. "Let's make them au naturel. Why make lobster salad when you can have lobster."

"Tell you what," I said, to complete the syllogism. "Let's cook the lobsters on the grill."

And this is what we did. And-- in the words of Hemingway-- it was good.

But first, there was grilled squid. The tentacles were better than the heads, but it was mostly heads: seared simply, with a little splash of olive oil before and after, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a healthy salting.

Then, later, with the kids bathed and put to bed after another round of splashing and frolicking in the yard, the next act. X. grilled some marinated shrimp, which he let cool and then added to a salad prepared by Y. The salad-- overwhelmingly avocado-based-- was a marvelous emulsion of garden lettuce, lime-juice dressing, and shrimp.

We served it with the lobsters, which had been split down the middle and seared, cut side down, for 6 minutes, and then turned over for another 6 minutes. I seasoned each lobster half with some butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper as they cooked.

Without a doubt this is how we prefer to eat lobsters, since the quick-kill slicing method effectively doubles the experience-- if not the amount-- of lobster meat consumed. You feel as though you've eaten two lobsters: magic? or miracle? Plus the meat has a smokiness unavailable through steaming-- and thus a more pronounced lobstery flavor as well. The only down side is that you pretty much lose the roe, and the other innards-- the tomally. It's worth it, though, I'd say. Although I'd never turn down a steamed lobster, or, for that matter, any occasion for a clambake.

And then H. made her delightful berry fool for dessert. It's adapted from Bittman: blend a cup of frozen berries-- blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, or a mixture-- with a 1/4 of superfine sugar, and pass the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds. Meanwhile, toss another 2 cups of the berries with another 1/4 cup of superfine sugar. In a mixer, whip a pint of heavy cream with a pinch of the superfine sugar. Add the purée to the mixer and blend for a pulse or two, and fold in the remaining berries. Garnish with fresh blackberries and sprigs of mint. This makes four servings, which is hardly enough, so if you really crave satisfaction, double the recipe.

And then go to sleep in an air-conditioned room. Feel just a little guilty. But sleep well.

A Pound of (Crab) Flesh

2008-06-08T09:07:00.002-04:00

Ahoy, Portia!

The weather here has been so hot and-- if you'll excuse my metaphorical Bouillabaisse-- so clammy that we've resorted to un-cooking.

What is un-cooking? A case in point: when we had some friends over for dinner the other night, the dinner consisted of a salade composée and a crab gazpacho. The crab had been cooked, but not by us. Hence, we un-cooked it. Everything in the dinner was served cool.

The weather remains stiflyingly humid; we feel more lugubrious and heavy each day. Yet the chilled gazpacho lingers fondly in the memory because in addition to its coolness, it offered just enough spice to invigorate our weary, burdened flesh.

Here's how to make the gazpacho; the recipe is adapted from the Silver Palate (based on the, er, "research" for my post the other day):

In a food processor, grind up 2 cups fresh bread crumbs (or grind up some slate baguette to make bread crumbs) along with 3 cloves minced garlic. Place this in a serving bowl.

Then, in the processor, add 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped; 2 red peppers, seeded and chopped (or green peppers); 3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped; 1 medium red onion, chopped; and some ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped. Or not seeded, if you're me.

Pulse this several times, until it's evenly chopped but still slightly chunky. Pour roughly half the mixture into the bowl and stir to combine with the breadcrumbs.

To the remaining mixture, add 5 cups tomato juice and the juice of 4 limes, and blend till smooth. Pour this mixture into the bowl and combine; then add 1/2 cup olive oil, or less. Stir, and season with cumin and salt. Chill

Before serving, add 1 pound lump crabmeat and 1 diced avocado; we served the avocado in the individual bowls, and then passed around a bowl of crabmeat for our guests to serve themselves.

The next day, we had some leftover crab, and made wonderful crab salad sandwiches: sliced heirloom tomatoes, avocado, and old bay-seasoned crabmeat in toasted baguettes.

The heat's worth the pound of crab, I think.

First Box of Summer

2008-06-04T17:56:00.002-04:00

Today I received the first delivery from my CSA farm subscription; the woman who delivered the box was a shade apologetic, since it has, as she explained, been a cold spring so far.

The box consisted of the following:

two heads of lettuce (which we will consume this evening)
five radishes (delicious: I even followed Fergus Henderson in making a salad from the fresh radish greens)
four small bulb onions (or fat green onions)
a small bouquet of Kale (for tomorrow, when we make smoked pork chops with onions and apples)

Not much-- and hardly the 25 pounds of Kale I expected when I signed up-- but it all looks perfect, and it's all been cleaned and presented beautifully. I am sure that in two months the 1/2 peck box will be brimming with all kinds of summer squash (there's much humor in the area about "drive-by zucchini hits": leave your car parked anywhere rural, or hell, just drive slowly enough, and you'll find zucchini in the back seat). For now, the yield is about a meal and a half.

Indeed, a slow start, but I have high hopes for the weeks to come. It has been a cold spring, after all. And we did only buy a half share.

Silver Palate vs. Dean & DeLuca

2008-05-31T07:50:00.005-04:00

Two of my favorite cookbooks-- from which most of "my own" recipes have been adapted— are based on stores that sell (or used to sell) prepared foods in New York City. The Silver Palate spearheaded a cooking renaissance of sorts in the US; Dean and DeLuca continues to stock the name-brand fancy foods of the world.

What distinguishes the two cookbooks is rather fascinating. The recipes in each book are determined by the foods primarily in stock at either store. In the case of Dean and DeLuca, this means that the recipes feature once-exotic and largely fresh, imported ingredients: the fruits, vegetables, and meats that the store tends to keep on hand. It is, after all, a supermarket first, a prepared-foods dealer second. Thus: shad in season; different varieties of potatoes, greens, and such.

The Silver Palate cookbook features recipes that use lots and lots of preserved foods: foods in jars, such as jams, jellies, mustards, dried figs, and the like.

This is especially useful for the home cook; the Dean and DeLuca cookbook (like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and the Larousse Gastronomique) is a marvelous resource when you find yourself the owner of a bundle of dandelion greens or sorrel. The Silver Palate is useful when you're trying to figure out what to do with a passel of chicken thighs.

For mother's day, for instance, we made an old favorite from the Silver Palate's "Good Times" cookbook-- Apricot and Currant Chicken, which uses nearly a jar of marmalade and several handfuls of dried fruit. It's even listed as a mother's day recipe, which helps matters considerably.

We made the recipe with chicken thighs instead of with quartered chickens, because they cook evenly and well under high temperatures, due to their high fat content. Here's a digest of the recipe:

Lay 5-6 pounds of chicken thighs (we used bone-in thighs, but boneless would be easy, too) in a roasting pan. Make sure they still have their skins, and position them skin side up. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle some grated ginger (a thumb-sized piece or so) over the chicken. Spread 1 1/2 cups of orange marmalade over the chicken, and pour 1/3 cup of orange juice, and 1/3 cup of apple juice, over everything. Roast for 20 minutes in a 375° oven.

Remove the roasting pan from the oven, and add two handfuls of coarsely-chopped dried apricots and the same amount of dried currants, making sure to submerge them in the liquid so they don't scorch. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through (this takes less time with thighs than with quartered chickens), and the skin is nice and browned.

Serve with couscous (as we did) or with some kind of rice dish or pilaf.

Such sweet-savory meats are the Rosso- Lukins specialty. But it was only recently that I realized the material nature of this flavor preference: it's remarkably savvy to base your in-store staple dishes on easily stocked goods. No need to worry about whether the flavoring agent for "Apricot and Currant Chicken" is in season. Imagine if it were based on fresh apricots. This would mean that either the dish would be available only in the fall, or else would require expensive (and perishable) imported apricots.

Mind you, the "Good Times" cookbook does feature seasonal dishes- -indeed, this is the principle of the follow-up to the initial Silver Palate book. But I admire the distinction of the first effort in particular: to use preserved foods is both economically savvy and delightfully old-school.

Preservation, after all, is an art form. But so is cooking that makes use of preserved foods.

Salad Cream

2008-05-30T06:48:00.003-04:00

We've recently returned home from a trip to Old Blightey to visit my grandmother. I should mention, as I have been explaining over and again since our return, that there was not "an internet" to be found anywhere. My dear grandmother lives on a farm in the rural south of England; access to the information superhighway is the least of her concerns.

In an effort both to digest and to provide a digest for this past week of British culinary delight, I will focus, uncharacteristically, on two restaurants we visited.

My grandmother "does not cook," which is to say that most of her meals consist of oven-ready specialty dinners from Waitrose's. The notable exceptions are her own casseroles: beef, chicken, or (this time) lamb stews made with her own tomatoes and onions (and her own carrots, too, I think) as well as a heavy dose of good wine. These are humble but quite spectacular. And let's not even talk about how marvelous it is to visit England during my grandmother's strawberry season (she grows them in a greenhouse): fresh strawberries with English pouring cream make my socks roll up and down.

But with our family of three visiting her for a week, she limited her non-cooking to the mornings and evenings, and we yanks found ourselves exploring the countryside for lunch.

Twice we visited a local pub called the "Boar's Head," an old family favorite; I characteristically ordered things like Steak and Kidney pie, which is, sadly, so hard to find in the US that I order it serially and obsessively every time I visit the UK.

I love kidneys. Really: don't get me started. Or else I'll sound like a bad audition for the part of Leopold Bloom in the stage adaptation of "Ulysses: the Musical."

But the grandest revelation of the pub luncheons were not the standard pub fare, but instead the humble little sandwiches we ordered for A. I naturally ended up polishing these off in a fit of plate-cleaning parental gluttony. The first was a crusty roll with bacon and brie. The crusty rolls were freshly baked; the brie was lightly melted on the inside. And the gammon bacon was deep fried, and thus, of course, unspeakably delicious. The second version was the crusty-roll rendition of the old pub favorite, the cheese-and-pickle. Grated cheddar with Branston pickle has never lit up like it did on a fresh, hot crusty roll.

The child was lucky that I didn't push her out of the way to get at her food. It never came to this, however, since there were more interesting objects for her to explore. For one, we dined in the pub's garden, which opened onto a pasture with cows and donkeys. Even in repose, farm animals are more dynamic than inert luncheon fare-- at least from the point of view of a two year old. At the table, too, she was more enchanted with the condiments than her food, and I can't say I blame her. For on the table was a box filled with brightly-colored packets, which included English and French mustard (we weren't all that far from Hastings, after all); various mayonnaises and tartar sauces; the almighty yet vaguely mysterious "brown sauce"; and, best of all, the unnervingly-titled "salad cream."
The salad cream found its reprise, incidentally, at a Sunday barbecue at the nearby home of Aunt V. and Uncle N., where we were presented with a garden table laden with British wonders: grilled country sausages, a slow-grilled local chicken, allegedly spicy kebabs, and a green salad garnished with boiled eggs from the family's hens. For some reason I forgot to dress the salad with "salad cream." Dang.

Our second flight of restauration (as the French call it) took place during our cheap-day-return pass through London.

H. had the marvelous idea of paying a visit to Wagamama's, the now-ubiquitous noodle bar chain that started near the British museum and, like those other clean-food chains such as Pret-a-Manger, have taken over the country. And rightly so, to a certain extent. The food is clean-tasting, rich and flavorful while refreshingly free from oversalting. The service, too, is stridently professional: efficient yet friendly. They handled a nap-bound two-year-old with panache and grace, providing not only a wonderful children's menu: not pandering to her with hamburgers and spaghetti, but offering simplified versions of their own dishes. And special child-friendly chopsticks.
A clean, clean restaurant. A franchise, yes. But a rhizomatic franchise: a flower that has spread throughout the garden. Has it choked out other flora? It would be more accurate to say that it has simply taken over some open space, and made it pretty.

Of course, given that the dollar has turned into the chump-change of Europe, such "reasonably priced" lunches as pub fare and fast-food noodles have become, quite literally, the kind of meals one writes home about: a simple lunch for two, with one child's meal, and no hooch, ended up costing something in the range of 85 dollars.

We should have smuggled out those packets of salad cream, just to get our money's worth.

Tuning the Fiddle

2008-05-17T22:14:00.004-04:00

I've never once succeeded in preparing fiddleheads to my liking. I lived in New Hampshire and Vermont for roughly six years, and each spring I marked the advent of fiddleheads with tremendous curiosity. And each spring I would buy a few handfuls, and then fail to cook them properly.

Yet this only augmented their mysterious appeal. Were these peculiar little snail-shaped vegetables overly subtle, or not subtle enough? What was it that made them resist my advances?

In theory, they taste like a cross between artichokes and asparagus. Their most pronounced quality is their quickly-oxidizing astringency. It is this cynarin-like bitterness that lingers on the palette, and which causes the cut ends to discolor so quickly. The ferns also bear a leafy, wild-plant flavor reminiscent of asparagus. And indeed, treating them like asparagus is the traditional rule of thumb. In theory, they're nothing short of delicious: sauté them in pancetta, with a bit of lemon juice and chicken stock, and you've got a marvel. Or steam them and toss them, chilled, in a vinaigrette.

In theory, it's a delicious pact with nature. But for me, there has been nothing but disappointment, year after year. Somehow the thrill of bringing home a pint or two of fiddleheads always sputters out as soon as they arrive on my dinner plate. I have overcooked them and undercooked them. The worst version involved onions: a chemical disaster. But I refuse to give up hope.

It was only fairly recently, after all, that I found a way to prepare asparagus to my liking, thanks to H.: drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and then roast the hell out of them.

So perhaps it's time to end the cycle of futility for fiddleheads as well.

Indeed, I've continued the pattern now for over fifteen years, only with ever-declining specimens. I now buy fiddleheads at the supermarket, where they've been shipped in from more northern states, either in plastic bubbles or in overpriced "wild produce" stock bins. I only pick them up, of course, if they're near the top of the bell-curve of decay; but they're a far cry from a hearty basketfull of fern tips foraged from the local woods. Not that I've ever done this; I consider foraging a metaphor.

Tonight, back from the supermarket with yet another produce baggie stuffed with fiddleheads, I may have taken a step in the right direction. Indeed, not only was H. willing to try them again, having found them creepy and undelicious in years past, but she actually enjoyed them this time. Nothing fancy, of course: a quick sautée in butter, and then a 5-6 minute braise in chicken broth, with a half-lemon's worth of juice to complement their astringency. Online recipes suggest blanching them first, which would dispel much of their bitterness, as well as to neutralize any number of alleged toxins. But the astringency is the very thing I want to retain, and this quick preparation husbanded it well.

Not there yet, of course. But a step forward. Tonight's experiment yielded merely a small plate of sautéed ferns: a side-dish without a meal. Time for something a bit less modest, I think. Next step: fiddlehead pie.

Here is an anecdotal recipe cited from American Food: The Gastronomic Story, by Evan Jones:

A fiddlehead pie, as served in Maine, is much like a quiche. To prepare one, beat a cup of milk, a cup of cream, two egg yolks, a teaspoon of salt, a half-teaspoon of sugar, and four teaspoons of minced green onion. Chop enough fiddlehead greens to make about one and a quarter cups, add them to seething butter, and cook for about three minutes; then combine with the milk-cream mixture. After it has set for about a half-hour, pour the fiddlehead custard into a partly baked pie shell, baking at 350°F. about thirty minutes.

I imagine that this minimal recipe could be aided greatly by "setting" the custard over a stove, since custard tends not to firm up by itself merely on principle. The green onion seems like a clever addition, though, lending the custard a savory and spring-like air. And I'm especially keen on the idea of chopping up the fiddleheads, which would give their unusual texture a bit more flexibility. Perhaps a bit of cooked bacon might also be amusing. Or would I be veering once again toward the path of disappointment?

More foolproof still, here is a recipe for fiddlehead pickles from the Alaska State Public Assistance web site. No joke! Can't get much more official than that.

The other option would be to roast the fiddleheads like asparagus: drizzle them with olive oil and salt, place them in a 400° oven, and overcook them profoundly.

Serve with trout.
-------

Coda: Sunday, May 18

We just polished off a fiddlehead pie made more or less according to the recipe above. Only I added sautéed pancetta along with the fiddleheads, and made the custard with a combination of half and half and whole milk, rather than with cream. To compensate I added two extra whole eggs.

A success, I think. Indeed, I recommend trying this out, if and when you have access to fiddleheads. A fiddlehead pie is, as David Letterman says, something.

Food Festivals

2008-05-10T20:32:00.005-04:00

A spartan post today.

A list rather than a bundle of paragraphs. But consider it research toward a series of future travels: here are some food festivals it would be fun to attend sometime soon. Who says we've utterly lost sight of regional cooking in the US?

NB: I'm striving to avoid reproducing a Food Network-style litany of endless BBQ contests, chili pageants, and fried chicken roundups; these are all, for the most part, harvest festivals of some sort or another. Some of them will have, I am sure, the inevitable bells and whistles. But in principle, here is a list of festivals organized in celebration of regionally grown foods:

1. The "Feast of the Ramson" ramp festival in Richwood, VA in late April/ early May. There are others, too, but this one seems like the king. Elkins, West Virginia also has one. Here's a master listing: http://www.richwooders.com/ramp/ramps.htm
And my, my, aren't those ramps delicious. I remember when the (now former) owner of Django in Philadelphia presented us with a raw-milk cheese and a bundle of fresh ramps. It warmed my heart.

2. The Morel Festival in Boyne City, Michigan around the same time (early May). See http://www.morelfest.com/
There are also festivals in Muscoda, Wisconsin; Grafton, Illinois; Nashville, Indiana, and elsewhere. Not to mention on our very own street.

3. The Oregon Truffle festival in Eugene, OR in late January. See http://www.oregontrufflefestival.com/
This one might be a stretch, in the sense of wish fulfillment. But who knows; maybe someone will figure out how to farm white truffles in the US.

4. The Vermont Maple festival, late April, in St. Albans, VT. See http://www.vtmaplefestival.org/
There are others, too: in NY, PA, etc. The Pennsylvania Maple Festival just celebrated its 62nd year; it takes place over two weekends in late March in Meyersdale PA (near Maryland). http://www.pamaplefestival.com/
I wish I'd known about this one-- it will be fun to attend this next year, and a good way to punctuate those bleak final days of March winter (or "mwinter," to coin a term).

5. The Maine Lobster Festival- -in its 61st year-- takes place at the end of July in Rockland, ME. http://www.mainelobsterfestival.com/
I'll even bring my own butter.

6. Seattle Cheese Festival-- in mid-May, in downtown Seattle. What fun to taste artisanal cheeses on the west coast. There's also an artisanal cheese festival in Sonoma county, CA. A worthy road trip.
For something closer to home, there are numerous festivals in NY and PA, including one in late September in Long Valley, NJ. Will there be one in 2008? http://www.valleyshepherd.com/cheese_Festival.htm
It's a digression away from regionalism, but a national event in support of regional cheesemaking is the American Cheese Society's annual conference and competition. This year the 25th anniversary convention will be in Chicago in late July. http://www.cheesesociety.org/

7. The Bethlehem Shad Festival, early May in Bethlehem, PA. http://mgfx.com/fishing/assocs/drsfa/shadfest.htm
There are others on the Delaware and Hudson rivers, too. I'm still waiting for a well-prepared fresh shad roe.

8. The Gilroy Garlic Festival, in Gilroy, CA at the end of July. http://www.gilroygarlicfestival.com/

9. The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, in Breaux Bridge LA in early May.
http://www.bbcrawfest.com/
There are also big festivals in Biloxi, Mississippi; Faunsdale, Alabama, etc. I would loooove to do this.

10. The Dungeness Crab Festival in Dungeness, WA in October. http://www.crabfestival.org/
Of all the places to hold a Dungeness Crab Fesival. I mean, seriously.

11. Blue Crab Festival in May in Little River, SC: http://www.bluecrabfestival.org/
Of course, simply heading down to Chesapeake City for a crab dinner is pretty danged fun as well. Here's our old favorite, incidentally: http://www.woodyscrabhouse.com/

12. There are a zillion Apple Festivals, but the National Apple Harvest Festival is in Arendtsville, PA (near Gettysburgh) in October: http://www.appleharvest.com/

13. The Wellfleet Oyster Festival, Mid-October on Cape Cod. http://www.wellfleetoysterfest.org/
One of dozens of oyster festivals. But this is a nostalgic one, as I grew up spending summers there.

14. Laredo Jalapeño Festival, in Laredo, TX in February.
This might sound like it's getting close to Food Network material, but check out the food photographs on this web site: http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=25

15. The Washington, LA Catfish Festival. Takes place in mid-March
http://townofwashingtonla.org/

-- another fun category are the gulf region Mullet festivals, which tend to take place in October. cf, for instance, the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival in Nicetown, Florida. http://www.cityofniceville.org/mullet.html

16. The World Grits Festival in St. George, SC in mid-April:
http://www.worldgritsfestival.com/

17. OK, here's something gleaned from the internet: the Annual Poke Salat Festival in Arab, Arkansas, in early May. What is Poke Salat? It's mountain-talk for the salad made from boiled pokeweed leaves (Phytolacca americana), which you've no doubt seen by roadsides and ditches. The weed is poisonous, incidentally.
http://www.pokesalatfestival.com/pokeweed.html

18. There are dandelion festivals in Dover, OH; Borculo MI; and Vineland, NJ, among other places. I think this would be utterly delicious. Fortunately we've started to see more dandelion greens at grocery stores, among the ranks of turnip, mustard, and collard greens.

19. The Prestwood County Buckwheat Festival in Kingwood, WV, in late September
http://www.prestoncounty.com/pcbf.htm
Regional? Sounds like it, at least.

20. The Alabama Butterbean Festival, in Pinson, Alabama. This takes place at the end of August. No doubt a fine time to walk around in the Alabama sunshine.
http://www.butterbeanfestival.com/

21. The Irmo Okra Strut Festival, in late September in Irmo, South Carolina. http://www.irmookrastrut.com/

22. The Circleville Pumpkin Show in Circleville, OH in mid-October. Among many, many harvest festivals, this seems to be a big one. And since Ohio begins with the letter "O"-- at once a circle and the general contour of a pumpkin-- Circleville seems like an appropriate setting for the event. http://www.pumpkinshow.com/

23. The Nantucket Cranberry Harvest Festival, on Nantucket Island in October. There may be a lot of bogs around the Northern US, but how lovely to visit Nantucket in the Fall...

24. The Copper River Wild Salmon Festival, held in July in Cordova, Alaska. This is a major event, and worth every ounce of effort to attend, I am sure. http://www.copperriverwild.org/

25. The Fiddlehead Festival in Randolph, VT in early May. Which reminds me that I haven't seen any fiddleheads for sale this season. I hope I haven't missed them!
http://www.fiddleheadfestival.com/

This is, of course, just a partial and preliminary list-- I've left out the innumerable strawberry, peach, blueberry, melon, tomato, and raspberry harvest festivals, as well as the countless wine events and grape stompings. A good source for such events is available at http://www.foodreference.com/html/upcomingfoodevents.html

It also has listings of local food celebrations based on cooking and cuisine, as well: "Taste of Cape Cod," "Taste of Fresno," and so forth.

None of this is especially new: there's a whole micro-tourism industry dedicated to these events, as a way at once to raise capital in small rural towns, as well as to stave off the disappearance of regional cooking. Cooking styles and traditions are one thing, but I'll continue to think about locally-specific (or reasonably locally-specific) foods themselves. Beach plums. Chokecherry. Geoduck. Rocky Mountain Oysters (for this, go to http://www.testyfesty.com/).

Incidentally, we'll be heading to the Rocky Mountains this summer. I see a few such "oysters" in my future...

O, Solo Morel

2008-05-08T21:36:00.002-04:00

At first, I thought it was a cruel twist of fate. Two of our neighbors-- A. & K. across the street, and J. down the block-- have morels growing in their yards. In ours, of course, nothing.

J. mentioned her discovery at a party the other night; my eyes narrowed with jealousy.

And then, two nights later, A. came bounding across the street. In his hand was a massive bee-hive of a mushroom. "The bastard," I thought to myself. "The lucky bastard."

Of course I smiled and congratulated him on his find. A. noted that morels tend to crop up in the same spot year after year, so this boded well for the future. I, for my part, rehearsed the popular wisdom that morels tend to flourish beneath rotting elm trees. And there was indeed a elm tree slowly dying in his yard. "How expensive for you," I offered in sympathy.

But A.'s spirits could not be dampened by a few spiteful words. And so he bounded back across the street to rejoin K. and cook the mushroom.

We went on with our evening, cleaning up after our forgettable meal of-- of-- literally forgettable food. Shortly thereafter, as I was mooning around, doing nothing in particular, I was surprised by a knock on the door.

It was A., and he had brought with him a dainty bipartite dish. In one half there were two small fragments of the morel, which K. had sautéed. In the other half of the dish there was a rich mushroom cream sauce. A. handed me the dish, dashing back to finish off his portion before it got cold.

It was an amuse-bouche like none other I've tasted.

I later asked them how K. had made the sauce; here is A's response:

"I liked the mushroom but LOVED the sauce. It was so mushroomy. K.'s
gone for the day, so I'll try to remember what was in it. Lemon juice, garlic, butter, the mushrooms, salt, and cream. But then she said it didn't quite have any zing. So she followed your suggestion of a wee bit of soy sauce, which made it sing."

That closing rhyme says it all.

Or at least, it says most of it. Central Pennsylvania is prime morel country. One can, on occasion, find withered specimens languishing on the supermarket produce shelves. And from time to time we've been snookered by such displays. But a fresh-caught wild mushroom is rare prey indeed. I once went morel hunting with a senior colleague of mine, tromping across moor and mire for hours. And though we were visiting time-honored mushrooming ground, we, like A., found exactly one specimen.

Only the morel we found was decapitated, a hollow tube with no substance. We left it where it lay. We've never since spoken of our adventure, as if this failed mission were too traumatic to bear.

But now this broken memory can be retired. And in its place is the image of A., grinning from ear to ear, bearing a tiny enamel dish. No longer a twist of fate, but an act of magnanimity.

---

In other news, I made carnitas last night from a recipe that can be found here.

Best tacos ever. I salted the pork overnight, as the recipe suggests, and this was certainly a good idea. Fresh-made corn tortillas also benefited the dish.

I'll cherish this recipe-- just as I will cherish the two little pieces of morels and their sauce.

Homework

2008-05-05T20:34:00.003-04:00

Jazz musicians call it woodshedding. It's a ritual of the art: you go underground for a spell, working out your chops, forging a new style. Then you come out to play.

Similar phenomena transpire in the other arts, no doubt. A painter locks herself in the studio to reinvent herself, her work, her oeuvre; another travels to the Continent to study the masters. A classical pianist hibernates in some dingy basement long enough to work through a new repertoire. A professor takes a sabbatical, tunneling from archive to archive in search of new research.

Chefs do this too, but mostly, it seems (from what I've read), when they get fired. Cooking school alone doesn't guarantee the makings of a true chef; to keep your job, or to get a better one, you need to put in some hard time working for a Master. Mario Batali will forever mine his year of kitchen-work in Italy for techniques and anecdotes alike; Bill Buford continues this lineage in Heat, his memoir about working for Batali.

Such apprenticeships are so fully woven into the mythos of chefdom that we have television shows dedicated to them. Programs like "Top chef," which I sometimes watch, and "Hell's Kitchen," which I don't, stage this career transformation as a survival game. The shows promise to catapult run-of-the-mill sous-chefs, caterers, and upstart "executive chefs" into the ranks of the successful restaurateurs. As a marketing ploy, it's good bet. A number of former contestants have opened restaurants, and their efforts have been welcomed by a hearty clientèle.

But is a game show any substitute for real apprenticeship? One could argue that the game show format, with its art-school panel judgments and celebrity-studded collective tastings— not to mention its arbitrary barrage of "challenges" — in fact offers something that culinary woodshedding doesn't. Judgment; teamwork; conflict. A constant pressure to invent.

Of course, being forced to invent is not the same thing as forcing oneself to invent. Woodshedding, it seems to me, involves a separation from the sphere of commerce, even at the expense of making a living. That's why it's called the woodshed, after all. Shouldn't the demand for invention, change, and development emanate from the art itself, rather than from the marketplace? Or is this asking too much of a practical art?

And besides, woodshedding is also very much about practice, unlike the serial format of the game shows: there's no invention without endless repetition and rehearsal. Mastery of form comes first. Only then comes the deformation of mastery. Herein lies the appeal of Batali's travels on the Continent: he didn't just make gnocci for the "quick fire challenge." He made it night after night. It was work that felt, no doubt, like work.

The thought of apprenticing oneself to a chef is daunting precisely for this reason. It heeds woodshedding's abandonment of the marketplace, yet renders its laboriousness all the more visible. When you apprentice for a chef, you do it for free, providing the chef allows you to work in the first place. Gone, however, is the image of a solitary musician or artist toiling away into the wee hours. To apprentice in a kitchen is to enter into the fray. It's more a firebox than a woodshed.

There is, of course, another option, that of the test kitchen. This is the road taken by the likes of Julie Powell, author of the blog that became Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. There's no need to beg for unpaid work, no need to perform for a paying clientèle, and no need to endure the mind-numbing stress of a busy professional kitchen. Under these conditions, apprenticeship becomes a formal problem that begins and ends at home.

Rather than yoking your art to someone else's professionalism, that is, you can develop your skills as an amateur. But there's a problem here: amateurs do not woodshed. There's no retreat from the sphere of commerce, after all. And there's no vow of poverty.

So let's call it homework, instead.

And I've got plenty of homework piled up. April was the cruelest month.

My first assignment will be to read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemna, which has been sitting on my bedside table since dear S.W. sent it to me some weeks ago. It's due for a good reading.

My second assignment concerns a somewhat longer-term project. This afternoon, we signed up for a CSA farm subscription from a nearby organic farm. Starting in early June, we will receive a box of produce every week for 22 weeks. We don't even have to go to the farm to pick it up; they will deliver it to us, as they have another client in our town.

A summer filled with homework assignments! I've been imagining this, indeed, as my own version of "top chef," only without the celebrity judges and bickering fellow contestants. Quick: invent a three course meal comprised entirely from kale! Find a way to administer ten pounds of cabbage!

The best thing is that I can't be sent home for failing to satisfy the demands of the assignment. I'm home already!

1913

2008-05-01T21:58:00.005-04:00

Is there-- or has there ever been-- a Marcel Duchamp of the kitchen?

Most of the cooking I know remains resolutely neoclassical. My own cooking barely crosses the threshold of figural realism: most of the time I struggle to make food simply taste like what it actually is. (Indeed, the challenge is to prevent, say, broccoli rabe from devolving into spinach, and spinach from devolving into shredded newspaper). But there are other kinds of cooking out there. Commercial cooking has all the integrity of a suburban bazaar: there may be everything under the sun for sale, but for the most part it's the same old shit. Chicken Caesar Salad. Wasabi mashed potatoes.

Experimental cuisine, from what little I know of it, seems to fall into two general categories.

The first is a mode of avant-garde cooking whose essential gambit is to alter food's basic form. Foams, chemically- forged tubes and unguents, aspics-- a new vocabulary of unexpected shapes, temperatures, and textures. Dishes come in forms never before witnessed: transparent meats; noodles made from fresh pea shoots; savory vegetables frozen into sorbets.

It's something, at least. It's certainly recherché. But I wonder about the extent to which the flavors remain devoted to a more or less classical sense of order. Things certainly look astounding: it's Cézanne; it's Braque, it's Picasso. But they still taste pretty.

The other mode is to invoke the foreign, the "acquired taste." Introduce the street cooking of Bejing, or the traditional diet of the Brazilian rainforest, and you've got a whole new palette of flavors that might challenge or even shock. This is precisely what the former category tends to leave under-explored.

The result is an experimentation on the very level of prettiness. The flavor of dried shrimp, or of fish sauce, ginko, abalone, lotus root: these are dark, peculiar tastes that might disturb the sensibilities of the classically Westernized palette. The acrid wince of rot, for instance, might be expected in a Roquefort or Camembert. But in a preserved fish? In pickled mustard greens?

There's an intrinsic limitation, however, to this mode of exploration. Each of these flavors derives from a specific geographic source. They're all native to a place far enough away for their unfamiliarity to register as a breach in expectation.

To put it otherwise: it's a kind of exoticism, or even primitivism.

In terms of culinary experimentation, we're still playing around like it's 1912. Our experiments generally either take place on the level of pure form, or else they derive their challenge to our notions of taste and pleasure from "foreign" places.

Is there an alternative? How about this: to what extent might it be worthwhile to consider the possibility of experimenting with the limits of taste itself? Not by rooting around for strange, odd, and funky flavors from other cultures. But by exploring possibilities already lurking within the sphere of culinary production we currently inhabit. What are our taboos? What are our limits?

I tip my hat to the Vosges chocolate company for becoming the first commercial venture I know of to experiment with flavor in such a way (Their site: http://www.vosgeschocolate.com). As a gastronomic chocolatier, this company doesn't tread lightly in its pursuit of intense but succulent flavors. Of course, a number of their "gourmet bars" fall into the orientalist/primitivist category: spice-trade derived combinations of spices, nuts, berries, etc.

But they've been traversing an even narrower path as well: not only do a number of their products feature salted chocolate (hardly a surprise in Mexican cooking, where sweet fruits, salt, and chili are a natural combination), but two more pronouncedly unusual combinations appear in their catalogue as well. The first: white chocolate with kalamata olives. Seriously! And the second, perhaps even more intriguingly: milk chocolate with bacon.

Milk chocolate with bacon! Sacrilege! Why, it's more shocking than having my chocolate bar fall into your peanut butter!

I remain mildly suspicious of whether such combinations merely sound startling in name whereas, in their actual flavor, they're reasonably tame. We've seems plenty of sweet/salty combinations before. Peanut M&Ms. Sugar-coated bacon. Sweet n' sour chicken.

But it's an intriguing start. And it suggests a direction worthy of further pursuit. Indeed, might it be possible to invent flavor combinations that really do challenge the very basis of our tastes? And wouldn't such challenges contribute to the very pleasure of eating itself-- or rather the excitement, the bliss, the jouissance of eating?

I'm eager for suggestions.

Here are a few, but they are only illustrations. I don't wish to think of them, even for a second, as attempts to find a static formula; I think this would spoil the idea. For the key seems, in my mind, to confront the expectations (to confront, I should emphasize; not to confound) implicit within any specific dining situation. Thus:

1) to experiment with the flavor of burnt things. Imagine an ice cream that tasted burnt. This, more than anything, could easily become an acquired taste.

2) Sulphur. We might tolerate it in an egg salad. What about in a pasta dish? We prize truffles for their earthiness-- an earthiness, moreover, that lingers almost oppressively on the tongue. To what extent might a sulphurous flavor take on similar properties?

3) Perhaps a misplaced fishiness. Everyone love salmon, it seems. But it's a surprisingly fatty, strongly flavored fish. Just as turkey, America's holiday meat, is remarkable in its gaminess. What would a chicken pot pie made with fish stock taste like? What kinds of challenges for the palette might fishy poultry induce? After all, oyster stuffing is a classic forcemeat for turkey. So we might not be all that far off.

Or are we? How far off might such a path take us?

Pasta Supreme

2008-04-28T20:11:00.003-04:00

If the kitchen were a horse...

... then I'd be on the other side of the steeplechase fence, covered in mud. And indeed: the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the grass is green. But I'm covered in mud. What happened?

And where's that bloody horse?

During the past few weeks we have resorted to subsistence cooking. Out with it! That's right: we've been eating grass!

Close enough, at least. Oat cereal, wheat cereal, breads and grains of various shapes and sizes. Like horses on a lean winter diet. And tonight it's come to a head. Tonight-- the dishes are still here on the table, next to me, reeking of processed garlic-- we resorted to our last line of defense. The last straw, if you will.

We call it "pasta supreme." This dish hast the honor of representing the nadir of culinary minimalism. The name itself bears a distinguished pedigree: it was coined by my old friend Dave, who, some years ago, earned two PhDs from Harvard. One was in Physics; the other was in the History of Science. This is, needless to say, no simple feat.

The beauty of "pasta supreme" is that it is.

Simple or no, let's break it down and rehearse the steps. Simplicity, after all, is a dish best served lukewarm.

First, boil some water.

"How much is some?" Dave would ask his roommates, as they offered to pass along their culinary knowledge to this fledgling scientific genius. "Some," they'd say, "is roughly two quarts. Half a pan. Not that one. The big pan."

Next, as the water is heating, salt the water. This does not so much help the water boil as to salt the pasta. Consider it a brine. It saves time.

As soon as the water comes to a boil-- aw, hell, you can cheat: as soon as the water looks like it might threaten to boil-- add some pasta. "Some" can be anywhere between half a box and 7/8 of the box. By no means should anyone finish off the entire box. How wasteful! Think of all the starving children! Besides, it's imperative that you leave a remainder that comes just shy of yielding another full portion.

Boil the pasta until it foams over and leaves a disturbing gray film over the surface of the stove. Wiggle the pan so as to suggest that you've made an earnest effort of it, at the very least.

Wait until the pasta is just about al dente. As a rule of thumb, "pasta supreme" works best if you crack a few jokes about al dente along the way. E.g. "That Al Dente, he owes me money, that bastard," or "That Dente should have quit after he finished the Purgatorio." Nobody will laugh at these jokes. But it will help pass the several tiresome minutes of "cooking."

When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander in the sink. Or else drain the water by pressing the lid tightly to the top of the pan and leaving a gap. The latter method is preferable if you're on a diet.

Return the pasta to the warm pot and add some spaghetti sauce. Wondrously, the residual heat of the pan and the pasta will warm the sauce. (n.b.: it cannot, however, "spruce up" a long- forgotten jar of sauce left for weeks in the back of the refrigerator).

Pasta supreme is now ready to serve! Now, if you want to get all sophisticated, you can add black pepper, olive oil, even some hot pepper flakes. Or even some Parmesan cheese. But the principle is the simplicity of the dish. Occam's razor, if you will.

If you're cooking for one, hell, you don't need to sully a single plate.

If you're cooking for two, well then, light some candles, amico!

I Heart My Slow Cooker

2008-04-09T14:39:00.007-04:00

There was a time, believe it or not, when the slow cooker was the 8-track stereo of the kitchen. Dumpy, tacky, and (of course) slow, it was designed for cooking things like beans, beanie-weenies, or even just weenies by themselves. Lil' smokies, we call 'em. Times have changed, of course, thanks to the likes of William Sonoma, Sur la Table, and the merchants and pushers of kitchen porn.

Thank goodness! In time, I hope all the vessels of kooky cookery will continue to make themselves available in overpriced -- albeit elegantly presented-- brushed-steel form. The electric griddle. The fondue pot. The chafing dish. The pressure cooker. The salad spinner.

Have I missed anything?

They're all back, it seems. And as P1 proved yet again on Saturday (and to marvelous effect, I should mention) the ice-cream maker has also returned with renewed force-- and with technological enhancements. We received one of our own as a "free" gift with our mortgage. Might this even be a new totem appliance of the rural bourgeoisie, second only to the Kitchen Aid mixer?

Surely it is the destiny of 1980s-vintage mode of useless kitchen equipment, which includes the likes of bread machines, hot dog cookers, iced-tea makers, and yogurt generators, to make similar advances. Perhaps this has already happened. Is there not indeed a brushed-steel Foreman Grill somewhere on the market? And, mark my words, such devices will appeal to more than just the desperate christmas shopper. These things will find their way into la cuisine légitime. Mark my words. I'm just waiting for the baguette-maker 3000. Although I admit that the name "BM 30o0" could use a little marketing savvy.

But to return to the vanguard of this culinary renaissance: I love my slow cooker. In the years since we received it as a wedding gift (of course), we've used it for tasks as diverse as mulling cider and stewing tripe. The latter was my clever super-bowl-party substitution for the more standard-issue batch of lil' smokies. It was a resoundingly unpopular decision.

We've used the slow cooker for other things, too, like preparing the morning's oatmeal before going to bed, and braising various shanks, chops, and ribs throughout the day. I alternate making pot-au-feu in the dutch oven and in the slow cooker; each works just as well as the other.

Our dinner these past two evenings offer representative uses of this now-stalwart kitchen apparatus. Last night I more or less invented a braised pork rib and napa cabbage dish. It was more or less successful. The braising liquid was seasoned with star anis and tangerine peel, along with garlic, scallions, hot bean paste, and a little bit of coriander. Were I to serve this formally, I might call it "Strange Flavor Pork with Cabbage," or possibly "Pork and Cabbage with Strange Flavor."

Incidentally, it never quite feels like cooking when you use the slow cooker. It's really more a question of assembly. Or assemblage, I should say. Last night was something of an exception, insofar as I reduced the cooking liquid in a separate pan; this, you might say, constitutes cooking.

But it didn't end there. This apparatus knows no limits. The following morning, as the crock-pot base lay drying on the rack, I thought twice about putting it back in the cabinet. "Why not make some beans?" I thought to myself. So I did.

A quartered onion, six cups of water, a splash of vegetable oil, and a bay leaf, all nestled in the pot alongside a rinsed pound of red beans. Eight effortless hours later, there were beans to be had. Beans that required salt, no doubt. But not the salt of labor, of sweat, or of tears. Just the salt of flavor.

We mashed them up in a skillet with some minced garlic and served them as the filling for soft tacos.

And tomorrow? Rice pudding? Split pea soup? Or maybe I should simply put it away and wait for someone to invent the BM3000.

First Rite

2008-04-08T22:32:00.002-04:00

It's easy to get one's timelines mixed up. With shoes, it's generally known that white comes after Memorial Day. Of course, the whole new category of "winter whites" has rendered this mandate unrecognizable.

With planting, it's generally considered that mid-April is safe-- at least in central Pennsylvania, where we hover between climate zones 5 and 6.

With gin and tonics, things get a bit more slippery. When, precisely, does G&T season begin?

There is, no doubt, an element of nominalism to the opening of this season. G&T season begins when one says so. But it's not just up to anybody to make such proclamations. One must have taste in order to be a bellwether. And thus judgment: G&T season begins, as we all know, whenever it must.

But the first outdoor meal of spring is a different matter altogether. It's possible, after all, to dine al fresco in almost any kind of weather, provided that one has access to the proper equipment. Look at the French. On the greyest February morning the sidewalk cafés remain packed. For there are awnings to shelter patrons from the drizzle, and heat-lamps to stave off the chill.

Nonetheless, it was with no small degree of seasonal affirmation on Sunday evening that we trotted out the barbecue grill, moved table and chairs onto the lawn, and ate dinner outside. We'd been flying kites with the N. family that afternoon, whereupon, as we ran barefoot across the still-dormant grass, the idea of a collective meal arose. We scrambled around the supermarket like it was Memorial day: hot dogs, ground beef, steak, asparagus, radishes, cherry tomatoes, buns, Rocky Road ice cream.

Then there was a mad rush to prepare the grill, whose gas canister ran out midway through the asparagus. We quickly fetched another, and managed to place food on the table while the evening was still bright. All the same, it was still a race. The food, and the diners, became too cold to continue outdoors beyond the initial rush. The meal ended as quickly as it had begun. And so, with A. in her bath, and with R. and her mother back home across the street, the two of us who remained finished our Rocky Road ice cream in the dining room.

But it was a barbecue all the same. An early effort, perhaps. But, like the shoots and tendrils coming alive in the garden, it was only the beginning.

Food and Memory

2008-03-31T21:28:00.003-04:00

Whether or not you've read anything by that Proust fellow, you're aware, no doubt, of the idea that Madeleines have a special place in the way we think about food.

This is a bit like saying that the Great War brought about, you know, a few changes in European life.

All the same, it may be worth dwelling on the question of how food induces us to remember moments from the past, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

It wasn't just Proust who was thinking about this around the turn of the century. The slightly elder Huysmans pondered, in fictional terms, the possibility of synthesizing experience altogether. His protagonist, des Esseintes, lives amongst a battery of perfumes and dyes, forging experience from bottles, pill-boxes, and alembics. Imagine Hemingway with his cabinet of empty bottles, but without the war.

Taste, smell, and the disorder of the senses: herein lies the true fabric of our experience. Do you buy it? This is all fine in theory, as well as in the literary practice of the late 19th century. But how does it work in terms of our own contemporary reality? Does food really invoke memory with the sharpness and clarity we often wish to ascribe to it?

I know my friend Emily Z. would have something to say about this, and I hope that she will. As for me, I admit upon reflection that I've been overtaken by a nagging suspicion: to what extent are many of our food memories discursive rather than sensory? If I harbor strong feelings for my uncle's jellied beef tongue, or for my mother's savory cheese pies, is this on account of the food itself? Or does it have to do instead with the exchange of ideas and excitement that surrounds them? I'm beginning to think that it has as much to do with the talk, as with the taste. Sacrilege?

But I ask you: when someone passes down a recipe, do we recall the taste of the dish, or the bounty of knowledge the recipe supplies?

I'm thinking of the time I learned to make blue (sorry: bleu) cheese dressing at Tonya's Restaurant. It was a filthy experience, yet no less gripping for its powerful inspiration of revulsion. I can't quite recall the exact scale of the operation, but it was huge: let's say we mixed the dressing in a 20 gallon bucket. It was white and monstrous-- the bucket, that is-- with gradations embossed on the side. Into this bucket we emptied a 5-pound bag of crumbled blue (sorry: bleu) cheese, followed by a 2-gallon jug of mayonnaise, a 2- gallon jug of sour cream, and-- now things grow slightly more vague-- perhaps a gallon jug of white vinegar. Then we stirred the whole thing. Slopping it all around until it all the pockets of blue (sorry: bleu) cheese were more or less evenly distributed.

There's something very powerful about this memory. More than just the sense of disgust with which I remember the sound of the mixture turning over as I mixed it, lugubrious and unguent, I recall the novelty of the recipe's absurdist scale. I did taste the dressing at one point, and it was piquant and vinegary, in spite of its obscene fat content. But more than anything I remember the sense of initiation with which I undertook the whole operation. This may have been a standard blue (sorry: bleu) cheese dressing, yet making it in a restaurant meant that you made it in bulk rather than purchasing it ready-made. This saved money, I guess. Most of all, the enormous scale of the venture was its most impressive element: one week's worth of dressing was more than a single person could, I presume, humanly tolerate in a lifetime of weeks.

This sense of scale, perhaps more than anything else, is what impresses me about Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining. The immensity of the kitchen in the Overlook Hotel, as well as of the corresponding exhaustion of forging a simple meal for three from its enormity, is overwhelming. Here lies the true sublimity of the film: how do you find a way to cook for three people (one of whom is utterly, murderously, bat-shit crazy) from 100-pound blocks of frozen ground beef?

This isn't the stuff of memory. This is the stuff of nightmare.

To what extent does eating enter the nightmare? Do we ever really remember food?

Chicken in a Pot

2008-03-29T14:20:00.004-04:00

It's mid-afternoon, and outside the weather is sunny and crisp. It doesn't quite feel like spring just yet. But it's close: it feels as if spring has sent along its representatives, who have come to survey the scene. This is fine with me. They're getting things ready.

As I sit here with A., with whom I took a brisk constitutional earlier this afternoon, I find my thoughts wandering toward the question of dinner. What to eat tonight. Something to reflect the mood of the season, the mood of the day: not quite spring, but hardly winter.

Like the hardy first shoots of the tulips and daffodils bursting from the ground, a vision appears. I see a chicken. And it's in a pot. The broth is light: delicate and pale in color. There are some vegetables around it.

This should not resemble coq au vin, with its November hues and warmth-inducing richness. Today's chicken— as I now realize— must be a spring chicken. Subtle and light, and fragrant with fresh herbs. It is to be a fulfilled wish: we lift the lid to find brightness and light. The promise of spring.

(To be continued...)

*** A Pornographic Interlude****

It's surely a sign of spring, too, when everyone starts shopping again. This photograph arrives courtesy of Mikey B., who enclosed it in an email this evening. The picture depicts a slab of pancetta, as well as the knife that will shortly render it comestible. The photo, he writes, was (I quote):

...taken shortly before it was cubed & fried up for a linguine/pancetta/asparagus/parmesean thing. delicious.

this is a northern italian kind of pancetta--it's smoky, a cousin of speck. it's awesome, of course, because it's bacon!

Thank you, Mikey B., for this little bit of food porn. It has enlivened the evening, and made me hungry to visit the Italian market.

*** Chicken in a Pot, Part II***

It's now 11 pm on the same Saturday night. There was a bat in our bedroom earlier this evening-- another sign of spring? Or perhaps merely a symptom of our own lunacy. We (or, more accurately, H., since I'm terrified of bats) opened the windows. Now the room is cool and fresh.

As I write this, the bat seems to have disappeared into the night sky, and the kitchen is full of dirty dishes. We did indeed make chicken in a pot, and it was perfectly amusing. I followed Bittman's recipe-- for a dish called, quite simply, "chicken in a pot"-- which is characterized by a combination of fresh thyme, leeks, and allspice berries.

The dinner's timing was thrown off somewhat by A.'s continued (albeit waning) nocturnal perambulations, as well as by the uninvited bat. As a result the vegetables were soggier than I would have liked. But the chicken itself remained, as anticipated, fragrant and subtle.

The best part of this dish is is bipartite nature: for the first course, you can serve the broth with oniony butter dumplings that have been steamed in the soup for ten minutes. For the second course, you serve the chicken and vegetables, which have been kept warm in a low oven. Chopped parsley ties the two courses together: folded into the dumplings and sprinkled over the chicken, it brightens both dishes with its powerful herbal presence.

Did the meal communicate the advent of spring? Certainly, the dumplings were fun. But I'll admit that by the time we got around to the chicken, the springlike air of freshness and buoyancy had abandoned us. I'll chalk this up to the lateness of the hour and the events that preceded dinner.

But I'd also like to tinker with this dish. I'd have preferred a lighter-colored, thicker broth-- or at least a lightly-thickened gravy for the chicken course. The leeks and carrots provided a nice flavor, but fewer onions would have rendered the flavor subtler. Perhaps some white wine might have been added. Or even some pancetta.

Amusingly, we did in fact buy some pancetta this evening, which will become part of tomorrow's salad. Did Mikey B. somehow know this, prompting him to send the pornographic image of the pancetta he'd bought? Or is this perhaps the true sign of spring, when everyone runs out for cured pork bellies? Maybe it's not about chicken, after all.

"A" Vegetables and Free-Range Babies

2008-03-27T20:31:00.002-04:00

The dinner would prove prophetic.

Intended as a way to fête H.'s book in advance of the launch party later that evening, our dinner on Saturday was composed almost entirely of "A" vegetables. I hadn't fully worked out the symbolism, but it seemed like an amusing way to give the book high marks. A for Awesome.

We were forced, however, to consume the meal in haste. And thus it became a sign portentous.

I shopped for the dinner with no small degree of glee. Artichokes, Asparagus, Arugula. I considered buying an Aubergine. They all looked sickly, however so I let them lie. The Aubergines reverted back to humble eggplants. Then I switched to fruit: Avocado, Apples, Anjou pears. As I wheeled the cart through the supermarket, I chuckled to myself. How could this go wrong.

A meal of "A" vegetables. I had in mind a salad of arugula, apples, and toasted almonds, with perhaps a bit of avocado on croûtons. Then we would turn to the steamed artichokes, served au naturel, with cruets of drawn butter. The artichokes is a vegetable that somehow signifies victory. Each leaf, dredged scandalously in butter, anticipates the great revelation at the thistle's heart.

As it turns out, we would only manage to unfurl one of our artichokes, with the other relegated to the fridge until long after midnight. Portentous indeed.

After the artichokes, the plan was to become a shade more spartan. We would follow, let's say, with a simple pasta tossed with roasted asparagus, accompanied by fresh bread. The dinner would culminate with poached Anjou pears.

It didn't quite happen that way. We ate the avocado for lunch, and there were no almonds. So the salad included apples and radishes: more of an "Arrrrr" salad than a true "A" vegetable salad. No matter. Who needs purity.

Short on time, and with our babysitter at the door, we roasted the asparagus and ate everything all at once, denuding only the first artichoke and leaving most of the salad unscathed. The pears were abandoned. And so was the second artichoke. We rushed to the party, where there was a great abundance of food.

Strangely, most of the food at the party began with "S." There was sushi; there were shu mai; there was sausage; there were snacks.

It seems that our earlier meal, rushed and compromised as it was, had little to do with the metaphorics of parties, books, or victory. Instead it gave us a hint of what the week to come would offer: Rushing. Compromising. And chasing after A.

On Saturday morning— the day of the meal, and the day of the party– we bought our free-range baby a "big girl" bed. A. had been climbing out of her crib for over a week, dropping to the floor with an enormous thump each time. The thump would inevitably be followed by a protracted wail. This would be followed, in turn, by the sound of parental footsteps rushing to the scene. We always expected the worst.

Luckily, the worst was only this: a thump, a wail, a rush to the scene. And then the spectacle of little A., stark naked, straddling the rail of her crib like a miniature Lady Godiva. Naked and wailing.

We bought her a big-girl bed that day. Ever since then, we've been chasing our free range baby around the house for hours each night. H. spent Sunday and Monday nights working three-hour bedtime shifts on her own, since I had to be out of the house. The past few nights have improved, if only by slow degrees. She climbs into bed with us each morning, touching our faces until we wake up.

Perhaps we should have stuck to "S" vegetables for that fateful Saturday dinner: Sorrel, Spinach, Squash, Seaweed, Salsify, Sunchokes. Anything to invoke sleep, sleep, sleep.

What Would It Be?

2008-03-20T21:28:00.003-04:00

I call them "sleepover questions." H., among many, finds them infuriating, and in many ways they are. That's why they're relegated to the wee hours of the proverbial sleepover. You know the genre, I'm sure:

"If you won the lottery, how would you spend the money?"
"If you no longer had to work, how would you pass the time?"
"If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"

As speculative inquiries, such questions purport to solicit deep insights about one's dreams and desires. But they are most often speculative only in form. The answers are, almost without fail, less pressing than the inducement to generate further questions. The game's true pleasure— if you ask me— consists in coming up with the most outlandish question just as everyone else is drifting off to sleep. That way, you never have to answer it yourself.

This post, though preceding sleep only by a matter of minutes, represents a preliminary attempt to resurrect the sleepover question by limiting it to the arena of food. After all, the mode of speculation that animates so much culinary chatter is itself essentially a sleepover question: the notion of the ideal meal. Is there such a thing?

For the sake of keeping the cheesy rhetoric of the late-night conversation alive, I'll put the question this way:

You have been sentenced to death, and you are mandated to request one last meal before your trip to the gallows. Based on some perverse adherence to moral law, you are guaranteed to receive whatever meal you demand, regardless of its rarity or expense. The meal will be made with the best and freshest ingredients and prepared by the top chefs in the land. What would you choose?

It was, I think, Lacenaire who ordered an exquisitely undercooked roast chicken, thus taking delight in consuming what might otherwise have proven fatal in itself.

Would your own choice extend to the otherwise unsanctioned or impossible? Why not a final exploration of taboo: at long last, a chance to discover cannibalism!

Would you choose the baroque route, demanding a banquet so sumptuous as to induce discomfort— or so far-fetched as to involve great nuisance on the behalf of the executioners— or, in the manner of Scheherazade, so prolonged as to stave off the execution itself?

Or would the meal be spartan, purist, nostalgic? A scrambled egg; a slice of cheese pizza; a masterfully-cooked omelet.

Here's where H. usually grows annoyed, and rightly so: having posed the question, I find myself at a loss when it comes to answering it. What makes this question challenging is that it strips dining of all its contextual elements: its environment, its company, its futurity. The hypothetical death-row meal is one you cannot share with anyone. Nor will you have occasion to remember it. The pleasure— provided such a meal could ever be pleasurable— would be limited to the immediacy of the consumption of the food itself. Aesthetics under pressure.

Immediately I find myself imposing conditions rather than menus: if the meal arrived in time to satisfy a great hunger, then it would afford visceral as well as aesthetic satisfaction. Come to think of it, such a precondition seems essential. How meaningful, how ideal, could a last meal possibly be if the penultimate meal— a gruesome trip the the slop-house— were to occur mere minutes beforehand?

Of course, one can start imposing all sorts of other conditions on top of this, death-row circumstances notwithstanding. Ooh, I hope I wouldn't be too cold, or too injured, or too ill, or have stomach cramps. I hope I'd still have the ability to taste and smell. Would the prison cell be too smelly for me to enjoy the meal?

Phooey.

You are mandated a final meal, and you must decide what to order. What would it be? Consider this a survey. I'll post my own answer as soon as I determine what it is.

I'm sure it will come to me as I drift off to sleep.

ADDENDUM: Friday, March 21

H. read last night's blog post and was, as expected, disgruntled. "This is my least favorite post," she said. "I know, I know," I responded, "I posed the question and then refused to answer it."

"There's an unfairness to this," she explained. "You demand that someone else answer first, but offer nothing." H. does, incidentally, use the subjunctive in her daily speech.

But I stand by what I said last night: the answer would, and did, come to me as I drifted off to sleep.

At first I imagined that my death-row meal would be dim sum, the perfect serial meal. How can one not fantasize about the possibility of steam-dish after steam-dish of elaborately prepared dumplings and tit-bits, from tripe and tendon to sticky rice? But I then realized that part of dim sum's pleasure is its appeal to infinity. You can only eat so much on a single visit. But there's always another visit. Such a possibility falls away in the case of a final meal.

As I was drifting off to sleep, it came to me: my death-row meal would be high tea. A testament to my residual Englishness? Though a decision perhaps tainted by the attendant stoicism of the British Empire— we shall face death and refuse to quail!— I realize that high tea affords a near-perfect combination of exquisite preparation, variety of flavor, and, perhaps most importantly, an implicit finitude. It's a tea, after all; not a dinner.

Lapsang suchong tea, finger sandwiches, pastries, clotted cream, fresh jam, and petits-fours. That's what I'd end with, given that one final choice.

Coins of the Realm: A Confessional

2008-03-18T22:53:00.006-04:00

When it comes to food, and especially to dining out, the term "embarrassment of riches" takes on distinctive physical properties. You get fat. You feel bloated, conspicuous, profligate. There are biological consequences to a surfeit of fine dining: the hiatal hernia acts up; the metabolism grinds to a halt; the back pains increase their intensity.

Such are the effects of the past five days. I'm glorying in them. Such marvels! But oh, such consequences.

There's little else to do than offer a litany of my earthly delights. Thus, with an added mea culpa for this double indulgence: On Thursday, hot thin-crust pizza in New York with S.W., G., and baby Neko). On Friday, a massive corned beef and tongue sandwich at Nana's deli in Livingston, NJ. That was lunch. For dinner, a lovely carne asada at Lolita's in Philly.

I'll stop for a breath here. The dinner at Lolita's began with a tamale made with huitalacoche, one of my favorite edible corn fungi. The meal ended with a prickly-pear flavored crème brulée, bright fuschia in color. This was only the start of things. Lunch the next day was at Sazon at 10th and Spring Garden, a friendly Venezuelan restaurant H. and I visited with J., G., and her brother Felipe. They're regulars. Arepas and café con leche were the stars of the hour. And speaking of hours, it was but a scant hour or so later that we met up for drinks and oysters with our friend J. at a remarkably faithful rendition of a French brasserie at 5th and Bainbridge called Coquette. First oysters of the year. And what a revelation: the oysters were served with a shallot vinaigrette that complemented their freshness perfectly. But it didn't end there.

Soon after that we headed to M. and E.'s place around the corner. It was M's 40th birthday, and we'd soon be heading to a party in his honor. But when we arrived at their apartment, we faced a spread of delices from Claudio's market: hot ham, soprasetta, a pair of fine cheeses, a selection of herrings and olives, and several loaves of Sarcone's bread. And then there was the ham. Imagine a fine, light pink ham with a flavor so paradoxical that it might only be described as aggressively delicate. The story goes that when E. first tasted the ham, she cried out, "Dear God, what animal is this ham made from? Unicorns?" E., it should be said, is a poet.

Any litany that has gone on so long as to include unicorns is surely reaching its conclusion, but this one isn't over yet. The party was catered, and the hors-d'oeuvre were themselves remarkable. This was, however, the sole occasion throughout the long weekend that I didn't embarrass myself through gluttony— but I can explain. My gluttony of food was, on this occasion, trumped by my gluttony for books. The party, you see, took place at a bookstore. And the bookstore (Brickbat Books, on 4th and Bainbridge) is owned by PR-G. PR-G's taste in books makes me weak in the knees, so I spent much of the party piling up books to bring home with me. Of course, one can never truly attend a party without a bit of late-night grazing as a nightcap. So when we returned to M. and E.'s apartment that night, I polished off the remainder of the unicorn ham. Please don't judge me.

Sunday might seem to have promised a reasonable return to asceticism, as we spent much of the day driving. But we drove rapidly, breathlessly, back to central PA in time to attend a brunch at our dear colleague J's house. After a bracing pitcher of Bloody Marys, we tucked into a vegetable quiche that beckoned us to welcome in spring; this was complemented by a host of bagels, cream cheese, and smoked salmon. We meandered home well beyond A's bedtime, feeling vague yet content.

This brings us, at last, to yesterday. Yesterday was St. Patrick's, and dear St. Patrick (P1) had us all over to his chateau for corned beef and cabbage. St. Paddy corned the beef himself, and it was a revelation. The beef, and the cabbage, carrots, and potatoes that accompanied it, were perfumed with cloves. No boiled dinner has ever come close to this: normally, "boiled dinner" tastes about as subtle as it sounds. This, of course, is part of its pleasure. But St. Paddy elevated the dish to saintly new heights.

I'm surely going to hell.

Best Part of the Cow?

2008-03-12T19:20:00.002-04:00

It may not be in especially good taste to suggest a body-parts contest for cattle. All the same, I've long fancied the aesthetics of the beef chart (and shall thus, in the same breath, recommend Stanley Lobel's classic The Complete Book of Meat). So why not launch a hypothetical contest, at least: what's the best part of the cow?

I think one's choice of beef cuts reveals much about one's preference as a cook. My uncle, for instance, makes a jaw-droppingly terrific jellied tongue. It may very well be the best thing I've ever eaten, full stop. (N.B.: we'll be visiting him this May, so perhaps he can be convinced to make it again). The recipe, like my uncle, is time-consuming and elaborate, but well worth the wait.

Were it possible to induce all the meat-eaters I know to cast lots for their favorite cut of beef, how would the spoils be divided? Who would sprint for the tenderloin, and who would scramble to get their hands on the liver, or the sweetbreads, or the tripe? The game would prove revealing, I'm sure.

Incidentally, our neighbors M. and J. recently purchased a quarter cow from a local farm. One hundred and thirty one pounds of frozen beef. They've got the whole thing on ice in their basement. Or rather, in their freezer lies a quarter-cow's worth of choice cuts; most of it is ground chuck. They didn't have to race to claim their share of my imaginary cow: they bought up the lion's share. That's one way around the problem.

My own interest— at least this week— has settled on the humble oxtail. This choice, dare I say, says a lot about me. First, I'm cheap. Oxtails are often sold as soup bones— like shanks, but with more cartilage.

Second, I like braising meat, since this appeals to my aesthetic as a cook: the longer a dish cooks, the farther in advance it can be prepared, and thus the more time there is to socialize with dinner guests. And oxtails are a braising meat par excellence. In fact, there's little else you can do with them.

Nothing makes a better ragout than oxtails. They're composed almost entirely of cartilage. So the same unguent richness that makes them a fine soup base makes them an even better ragout. Over time, the cartilage breaks down, which both flavors and thickens the ragout.

Here's the dish we made last night; the recipe is adapted from Marcella Hazan:

In a heavy pot or dutch oven, sweat two small chopped onions, three chopped carrots, and 3 cloves garlic in some olive oil. Meanwhile, brown 3 pounds of prepared oxtails in some olive oil. When the oxtails are browned all over, place them in the dutch oven amongst the vegetables. Deglaze both pans with a healthy amount of dry white wine-- about 2 cups-- and pour everything into the dutch oven. Add a can of plum tomatoes, chopped, along with a healthy grind of black pepper. Simmer, mostly covered, for 1 1/2 hours, turning the meat occasionally. If the braising liquid gets too dry, add a cup or so of water.

After the oxtails have been simmering for 1 1/2 hours, add 3-4 stalks of celery, coarsely chopped. This gives the dish a crucial brightness (and prevents it from developing the same lugubrious stew flavor to which so many braised meat dishes are prone). Simmer for another 45 minutes. When the meat is falling off the bone, remove the oxtails, cool slightly, and pull off the meat. Return the meat to the pot and discard the bones.

In a pot of salted, boiling water, cook a box of pasta (penne rigate, for instance) until it's al dente; drain, and add the pasta to the ragout. Simmer for a few minutes, check for seasoning, and serve.

A.O.C. in the U.S.A.?

2008-03-09T21:34:00.003-04:00

Last night H. and I shared a bottle (the shorty kind: 375 ml) of Banyuls dessert wine. I still have the empty bottle in front of me. For future reference, it's a Domaine du Mas Blanc, Rimage 2004. Banyuls is one of the rare red dessert wines-- with the notable exception, of course, of port. We're forever on the lookout for it, ever since our friends B. and L. introduced us to it a number of years ago.

So I was delighted to happen across a bottle while playing hooky from a conference this weekend in Washington DC. I brought the bottle home with me. It took something of a miracle not to have drunk it on the spot.

Incidentally, I also had great sushi while in DC. But more on that some other time.

Banyuls, in addition to being a delicious dessert wine, is also a geographical region. That's the whole point of the "AOC" denomination, of course: the French appellation d'origine controllée (like the Italian Denominazione di origine controllata, the Spanish Denominación de Origen, and so forth) demarcates regionally-specific products whose standards of quality are protected by a national institution. This is not, however, simply a administrative organ for maintaining quality control, such as the USDA. For it is also a system of regional support and specialization. Thus, for instance, if you want to find out more about the Banyuls region, you can go to the Banyuls web site: www.banyuls.com

Short of exercising some misty-eyed Europhilia, I wonder if there's a way to develop a system like this in the US. To a certain extent it already exists. There are, for instance, a number of US wine regions, as legislated by some tax-based department of tobacco and alcohol. But the very fact that this bureaucracy derives from taxation already makes me suspicious. Especially given the lingering traces of the Prohibition movement in the way states determine their blue laws. What about a broader sense of regionalism, devoted as much to food as to wine?

Let's side-step the problem of administration for the moment. It strikes me that a system for regional specificity in the US would first have to come up with a sense of how the country breaks down on regional lines. No easy task. Where would we start? Would the regions be derived from the products, or the products from the regions?

For one, not every region bears the same set of products. New England clam chowder has a cream base. Manhattan clam chowder has a tomato base. Rhode Island clam chowder (also native to parts of Connecticut) has a clear broth base. Aha! A regionalism! Indeed, there is no Minnesota clam chowder, since they don't have clams. San Francisco has clams, but do they don't have a native chowder.

Alternatively, some artisinal products are themselves regionally specific: scrapple, as far as I know, is limited to the Amish and Mennonite regions of central Pennsylvania and Ohio. Steam beer is a San Francisco product.

What might a regional map of the US look like? Cruising around the internet yields numerous attempts to derive some sort of overall coherence, from the silly—

— to the drily bureaucratic

But does a region have to conform to the outlines of a state? According to the Alcohol and Tax and Trade Bureau web site, an appellation of origin can be as small as three counties (although it then becomes a "multi-county" appellation). Lines of political demarcation might have something to do with US regionalism-- the Mason-Dixon line comes to mind here-- but I can't imagine that they're so significant as to determine the contours of every region.

Another possibility might be to use the USDA climate-zone map as a model for regions that gain their specificity from temperature fluctuation. It's a starting-point, at least. After all, this map helps determine what kinds of plants can be grown in various parts of the country. It might be a helpful way to think about what kinds of produce, and thus also of regional food products, come from various parts of the country.

We're not raised to think this way. Think of your grade-school social science classes: it's all based on economics and raw materials, not on artisanal products made with these raw materials. Idaho= potato. California and Florida= oranges. But what do local folks make with them?

I'll come back to this idea from time to time, as it's both a concern and an interest of mine. I also welcome any thoughts.

Blade!

2008-03-04T23:01:00.005-05:00

I'm procrastinating: I should be working. I've got an essay to write, and, whether through alchemy or incantation, that essay must find a way to complete itself by Friday. I'm placing my bet on incantation; alchemy demands too much work. Better just to shout out a few words and wait for the puff of smoke.

So I'm not writing that essay. Instead, I'm using the time to reflect on why I chose this career in the first place, rather than, say, working in a kitchen. I harbor no illusions that I might have been happy, or successful, as a cook. Rather, as I mentioned in a post the other week, it's because I spent just enough time working as a line cook to develop a complex about it.

Why do we work? We sell our time, our labor, our youth, in order to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. Right? Yes, but the more successful we get, the more we allow ourselves to forget these basic reasons. We psychologize; we aestheticize. We love our jobs because they make us feel smart. Or rich. Or loved. Or important. Or like we're saving the world. Or at the very least, they give us something to grumble about. This is how we enter the happy bourgeoisie.

Working as a line cook brings the equation back to its essentials: there is little illusion that what you do when you work in a kitchen is anything other than selling your labor. The work pays for the roof, the food, and for the margin of excess beyond that. This usually means booze.

I'm not getting all Marxist here. On the whole, kitchen labor is hardly proletarian, despite what George Orwell suggests in Down and Out in Paris and London. In return for working in a kitchen— and this why I have a complex about it— you get a little share of what it is you're helping to make. I don't mean the food, or the profits, or anything quite so literal. Rather, what you get is an experience of the restaurant-machine itself— the line— in which you play a part. You're a grunt, but not a cog. Your peculiarities play a part in the machine, and the machine adapts itself to you, just as you're forced to adapt to it. This is a pretty wild ride, as tiring and as short-lived as it may be.

To be more specific: when you work on a line, your personality falls away in a flash as soon as there's a rush of orders. Once you get slammed with orders, you're nobody. And if you can't keep up the pace, you're replaceable. But the difference from any true assembly-line is that this pace isn't constant. As soon as the pace shifts, the whole workplace changes. Before the rush, there's one system: preparing, chopping, stocking, and the like. It's like a band tuning up for a performance. Here, personality and peculiarity are tolerated in moderation, provided that they're an accompaniment to work. After the rush there's an entirely different system. When all that remains is to clean, to break things down, to regroup: this is when personality rears its head again, and opens its lungs.

This lifestyle of varying speeds works like a drug. The other elements of your life recede and fade in importance. What looms instead are the immediacies of the evening ahead: the impending rush, and the impending release. What might otherwise be mere embellishments take on supreme importance: banter, gossip, harsh words, pranks. This forms the fabric of experience, turning your thoughts back to the immanence of work. You go home afterward, but for what? To rest up for another day. To drink off the stress. To pay bills.

There is no question like "do I really love my job?" No; you hate the job. It steals your life. But it owns you, it possesses you, and you live for it. This is a wonderful way to spend a summer, or a few romantic years. It's a tough way to grind out a living.

There was a loud-mouthed, slop-bellied chef at Tonya's Roadhouse who was my hero. His name was Jim, but everyone else required a new, better name than the ones they had. My nickname was derived all too conveniently from my surname: Burn! A swell tag for a greenhorn fry cook.

"Burn! Drop another Fristo!" You get the idea. Jim was the perfect kitchen organism: he was well-trained and could more or less sleepwalk through an evening of baked scrod and prime-rib dinners. The rest of the time he was as high as a kite. Some people can handle the cycle of addiction. As a result, Jim's adaptation to the diurnal rhythm of kitchen work allowed his mind, and his mouth, to roam freely throughout the evening. He played air guitar, he played jokes, he befriended all the waitstaff. In his spare time he showed me how things worked.

My friend Todd, who joined the staff as a dishwasher during my second summer at Tonya's, never graduated from the dishwasher station. It was awkward; I could see him to my left as I worked on the line, observing him at work from my position of relative privilege. Jim had trouble nicknaming him.

One day, though, Todd either cut himself with a chef's knife, or— my memory's a bit cloudy here— was perhaps talking about knives. Todd had an extensive collection of sharp things: butterfly knives, throwing stars, and various other flea-market ninja gear. So perhaps he was talking about knives. From this moment on he became "Blade."

Now, whereas the cry of "Burn" was uniformly followed by a set of instructions or a list of orders, a dishwasher is a dishwasher. There's neither need nor profit in instructing a dishwasher to do anything; he simply does his job. So Jim would simply yell out Todd's nickname at random. "Blade!" he'd should when Todd arrived at work. And whenever the rush of orders risked becoming overwhelming, or whenever tempers started to mount, Jim would simply should out "Blade!" at the top of his lungs.

Todd loved this. He started calling himself Blade during our off-work hours. He even said it with Jim's special inflection. This might sound silly, but it's part of the drug.

Fresh and Clean

2008-03-03T22:04:00.004-05:00

The New Yorker recently published a lovely personal essay on nicknames by a fellow named David Owen. At once a memoir and a meditation, the article was a perfect February read. It was breezy and yet tightly crafted; and whereas it did contain a number of poignant moments, the essay scrupulously avoided melodrama, instead remaining defiantly light-hearted.

There's little place for such subtlety on this humble blog. Around here it's all cutlass-waving and damp handkerchiefs. All the same, it's hard to pass up a chance to talk about nicknames, given that the compulsion to rebaptize seems especially acute in the field of cookery.

We all know how judgments of taste can quickly turn into epithets. "Greasy spoon" fondly delineates a whole genre of classic diners. The appeal of working at a greasy spoon is that one can aspire to become a hash-slinger. On the less generous side, there's a street in the 5th arrondissement in Paris known to tour books as "bacteria alley." Analogously, yet no less unfairly, my father referred to the tin-clad snack trucks that came to the factory as "roach coaches."

Fast-food restaurants often find a special place in a family's basic idiom. In their capacity as surrogate nannies or cooks, they're recast as intimates. Unsurprisingly, McDonald's yields a host of polynyms and epithets, from the inocuous "Mickey D's" and the (often-ironic) "Golden Arches," to the imitative cry of "MaDonnads!" we remember from Eddie Murphy's stand-up days. In France, it's "MacDo"; in Germany, I am told, it's "McDoof."

And that's only one fast-food chain. Try listening to a Spanish-language radio station and not suddenly having the desire to go to "Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrger King."

Far more interesting, though, are the nicknames people give to food itself. A large number of them are nauseatingly cute; the British are masters in this category. "Bubble and squeak" is the English term for a mash of leftover potatoes and vegetables; in Scotland it's the ever more precious "Rumbletethumps." Like the game of mumbletypeg, this dish couldn't sound any more homespun. Both have disarmingly cutesy names, although the latter is far more dangerous.

My dear cousin grew up referring to boiled eggs as "noddies." My aunt would draw little faces on the eggs, and set them in little porcelain egg-cups. Then my young cousin would crack the egg with a spoon and cut off the top, first lobotomizing the poor thing and then scooping out its middle. Upon reflection, perhaps "noddy" wasn't a nickname at all, but instead a euphemism for the egg's unnatural fate– just as putting an animal to sleep means that it won't be greeting you at the door when you return home.

The crasser food nicknames tend to fall to the US military: given that soldiers dine in mess halls and that the food is cooked by "slop jockeys," this is hardly a surprise. Calling hot dogs "tube steaks" has always made me chuckle. More cringeworthy are the names for creamed chipped beef on toast, known most famously as "shit on a shingle." This is infinitely preferable, though, to the other name I once heard for it, which was "Skinned Injun." No joke.

Not all food nicknames, incidentally, are brief. At our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Philadelphia, the Vietnam Palace ("The Palace") on 11th and Race, H. would order her favorite soup by means of its description. There was a children's soup they'd serve off-menu, which consisted of a clear chicken broth with noodles, greens, and steamed chicken. It was, in other words, chicken noodle soup.

A miraculous cold remedy and general spirit-raiser, this soup was notable as well for its clean, fresh flavors. So this is how H. would order it. "I will have," she would ask, with an eager pause, "that clean, fresh soup. You know, the one that's fresh and clean." The waiters always knew what to bring.

What's Going to Happen

2008-03-02T11:45:00.007-05:00

Here is what will happen this week. Foodwise, that is. (Other predictions might be a shade more risky: a surprise stock-market surge? A Hillary comeback? I've no business getting involved in any such prophecies). But here are three virtual certainties:

First, I'm going to try my hand at making gnocci. I've been inspired by A.N.'s words about the difficulty of the venture, as well as by my own recollections of gummy, heavy dumplings. According to Marcella Hazan, whose recipes I enjoy but who knows no fear of mystification, the key to success is the potato itself. One must use "boiling" potatoes, rather than the more waxy salad potatoes or the starchy Idaho baking potatoes. It just so happens that the two-for-one bagged potato sale some weeks ago concerned the anonymous boiling variety. So we might be in luck.

Second, it's been a long time since we've had pumpkin and bacon risotto. So why not this week? One of the peculiarities of this dish is that I refuse to call it what it actually is. There's no pumpkin involved. It's really a squash and bacon risotto. But this sounds less profound, somehow. Calling it pumpkin adds an element of mystery, and perhaps a hint of the regional, the teroir: can you really get hold of a tasty pie pumpkin with as much flavor as a winter squash? No. But it's fun to pretend.

Third, H. recently forwarded me a Bittman recipe for a fish stew with fennel and Pernod. In other words, it's a Bouillabaisse. But a simplified, middle-of the week version. I've toyed with a number of similar recipes, so this should be quite familiar. More importantly, it's delicious-- and thus a savory means for riding out the last leg of Winter's tortuous journey. We can dream of warm Mediterranean air and al fresco dining.

You know the scene already: the table overlooking the bay. The sun-bleached seaside architecture rising up against a background of deep Mediter- ranean blue. The bottle of crisp, dry white wine at the table The smells of lavender, salt air, and anisette. Straight out of a travel brochure. (Literally, in this case. Welcome to Monaco).

Whatever it takes to survive the last few weeks of winter in central Pennsylvania. Who cares if it's someone else's fantasy!

Fifteen Ways to Eat Potatoes

2008-02-28T19:46:00.004-05:00

They're staring at me. It's been like this for weeks. I've tried to ignore them, but it's become impossible.

The eyes of a potato come out to get you. They send out tendrils, prehensile shoots. If you wait too long, who knows what they might do.

It's not just thrift, in other words, that has directed my attention toward the unused potatoes beneath the counter. It's self-protection.

The two-for-one bagged potato sale at the supermarket those weeks ago seemed innocent enough at the time. Surely it would be possible to consume two five-pound bags just as promptly as one. But the real course of events have responded with a resounding and definitive no.

The weeks have passed, and the potatoes have grown restless. This is entirely my fault: I've long considered them as little more than the raw materials for an occasional side-dish. The frites to accompany a bistro steak. The accoutrement of a pot roast, or a pot-au-feu, or a New England boiled dinner. I've dismissed the potato as a mere filler, a sideshow performance. But my prejudice has come to light now that there's nothing at center stage: we don't eat pots-au-feu every day. In fact, we haven't eaten this way for weeks.

So I've resolved to broaden my approach to potato cookery. Over the past few days, we've reprised some of our favorite potato dishes, and we've now worked through the first five-pound bag. But another remains. The problem is that most cookbooks share my former prejudice in relegating potatoes to the margins of dinner: fried, mashed, roasted, sautéed, or boiled, they remain at once naked and supplemental.

As a first step, here are fifteen simple dishes-- indeed, they're far from fancy-- that feature potatoes centrally rather than peripherally.

1. Latkes
One of the simplest and most satisfying recipes comes from H.'s mother. Grate up a couple of potatoes along with an onion. Beat in an egg, and add enough flour to absorb any excess liquid. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in hot vegetable oil until crisp on the outside and fully cooked on the inside. Serve with applesauce.

2. Home fries with eggs
Though H. and I both prefer corned beef hash, this is goodly fare, if profoundly lazy. I've yet to develop a satisfactory home fry recipe, although mashing, rather than simply chopping, the boiled potatoes is a useful start.

3. Potato-tomato galette
This one comes from Louise Pickford's Book of Vegetarian Cooking. Though preferable in late summer when tomatoes are in season, this is still pleasant with many of the better cultivated tomatoes-- whether grape tomatoes or the fancier "Campari" variety. This recipe involves slicing the potatoes with a mandoline, which is always amusing. In a greased (and ideally non-stick) cake pan, arrange a layer of potato slices in concentric rings to cover the bottom of the pan. Brush with melted butter, add a second layer of potato slices, and brush again. Cover with foil and bake in a 450° oven for 30 minutes, until golden.
Arrange a layer of thinly sliced tomatoes over the potatoes, season with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and heat under the broiler until the tomatoes are bubbling. Garnish with basil or, alternatively, add fresh rosemary during any part of the cooking process.

4. Curried potatoes with chick peas
I cheat on this one. I've been using a store-bought jar of hot curry paste, which I supplement with various other spices: cumin seeds, black onion seeds, coriander. This is the dish we had tonight. Melt some ghee in a large saucepan, and sautée some chopped onion along with the spices (cumin seeds, onion seeds, coriander). When the onion is translucent and the spices are fragrant, add several diced potatoes and sautée for about five minutes. Then add the spice paste, along with a large can of diced tomatoes and about a cup of water. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes. Rinse and drain a can of chick peas, and add them to the pot. Cover and cook until the potatoes are tender and flavorful, about 10-15 minutes longer. Serve with basamati rice.

5. Baked potatoes with lime-chipotle butter
Nothing much to explain here-- though tasty, it's a bit limited. It's a little less depressing, however, if you serve it with refried beans on the side, along with a fresh salsa. But this is really more of a side dish; it would go nicely with a summer barbecue.

6. Pommes Dauphine
Fried mashed potato balls. Yes, this is really another side dish. But they're so delicious that you could really just serve them with a little bit of salad, and be perfectly content.

7. Potato soup
There are two versions of a basic potato soup: one is to make clam chowder without the clams-- a creamier soup with a fish, clam, chicken, or vegetable stock. The second is more of a purée, with the same principle as virtually any other basic vegetable soup: sautée some onions (along with celery, if preferred), add some diced potatoes and six cups of stock, and simmer until you get bored.

8. Gratin Dauphinois (in theory)
This one's really just here for the sake of fantasy, since H. doesn't eat cheese. But ah. I could eat a whole tray.

9. Warm potato salad with bacon
This is the recipe from the Silver Palate Cookbook. I won't bother to repeat it. It's magnificent.

10. Salade paysanne
Café salads are always a lot of fun, since it's like having a picnic on a bed of lettuce. Fried diced potatoes pair nicely with lardons or bacon, beets, and poached eggs on a bed of frisée, or even on crisp romaine. Add some sautéed gizzards and you've got yourself a mighty feast.

11. Gnocci
By far the simplest ingredient list: a boiled potato and some flour in equal parts. A dumpling made to absorb your favorite sauce. Is there any leftover tomato sauce in the freezer? Any of that summer pesto stashed away somewhere? Now's the time.

(Addendum, March 1). A.N. wrote me an email with the following comment, with which I agree : Delightful post, but your glossing over gnocci is misleading. While the ingredients list couldn't be simpler, I believe it's extraordinarily difficult to make. I've had gnocci in dozens of restaurants and homes and am far more often disappointed than dazzled. I've never been able to discover the secret, though I was once told after a transcendant experience that the key is to used potato flakes (as opposed to whole potatoes) to ensure consistency. That being said, when the appear as fluffy pillows of starchy love, no pasta can share their bed.

A.N. is right-- I haven't made gnocci in years, and wasn't impressed with my efforts then, either. So this will be a fun challenge in the days or weeks to come: making good gnocci. Thanks, A.N.!

12. Pierogies and 13. Samosas
I'm still in the R&D phase here, so more anon.

14. Potato and Onion Tart
Quick notes: in a pre-baked (weighted, 400°) pastry crust, make a bed of sliced onions that have been sautéed in butter with caraway seeds and chopped rosemary. Cover with a layer of sliced boiled potatoes. Then add a basic savory custard (two eggs, cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg) and bake in a 450° oven until the custard sets, about 15 minutes.

15. Frittata
An old standby. I like making frittate because they're even better at room temperature (with a salad, or as an hors-d'oeuvre) than they are hot.
The key for a potato frittata is to cube the potatoes quite small so that they fry quickly. Peas pair well with potatoes, as do fried onion slices and thawed artichoke hearts.

Doesn't He Need Tortillas?

2008-02-23T23:36:00.003-05:00

We've just returned, moments ago, from a lovely dinner at our friend C's house. During our trip back, H. mused that the house's exquisitely coordinated decor makes her want to throw away everything we own and start anew. I know what she means. My fantasy goes one step further, however: I'm compelled to buy a whole new house. That way there's no need for the tedium of disposal. We can start developing our new design sensibility right away, on a fresh canvas.

The meal C. prepared began with a tortilla soup that was both delicious and storied. I plan to blackmail him for the recipe; if this proves successful I will subsequently add it to this post.

We've had the pleasure of enjoying many notable soups in recent months, from Alex's top-notch Slovenian consommé to P1's now-legendary truffled oxtail soup. My enthusiasm for C's tortilla soup is not intended to slight these--or any other-- soups of the recent past. What excites me most about the tortilla soup is that it is designed to be supplemented, and C's version seems destined to accumulate countless anecdotal and culinary extras in the future. Especially once I get my hands on the recipe.

The soup came out in a large terrine with a gorgeous, rough-hewn wooden serving spoon. I helped C. bring in the various accoutrements, which were to comprise a bowl of diced avocado and some shredded cheese. C. couldn't find the cheese, though, so we abandoned this. Striving to be helpful, and having noticed that the tortilla soup was smooth in texture, I asked if I could bring in the tortillas.

Evidently-- or so I presumed-- C. had forgotten to add tortillas to the soup. My helpfulness was thus one step shy of meddlesome, and one step beyond pedantic: "Where are the tortillas?" I thought, fortunately, to myself. "Doesn't he need tortillas? Surely one needs tortillas to make tortilla soup." I suppose I'd been expecting to see a flotilla of Doritos bobbing in the soup.

I later discovered my error. The tortillas, see, were already in the soup. Once roasted and shredded, they had been blended into the very essence of the broth itself. The result is remarkable: a thick vélouté that isn't the least bit starchy, but which possesses a complexity of flavor made possible by the (now invisible) fried tortillas.

The recipe came to C. via his Aunt Barbara, who used to travel to Cancun just for the tortilla soup. The possibilities for embellishment are legion. But in short, it seems she wrote to the restaurant which served her favorite version, and this is the recipe that she passed along to C. I've noticed that several of C's dishes have been attributed to his Aunt Barbara-- I even joked that "Aunt Barbara" might in fact be an invented personae, the name C. uses for that part of himself that cooks so well. Either way, she sounds like a remarkable person. So here's to Aunt Barbara, and her soup research.

And, thanks to C., here's the recipe; which I cite verbatim from his email:

As to Aunt Barbara's recipe, it's totally easy. You cut corn tortillas into strips and fry them in olive oil in the soup pot. Once they're slightly crispy, remove them. Then put a jalapeño pepper, a medium sized onion, and a clove of garlic in a food processor and blend, and then add that to the soup pot, simmer for 5 minutes, then add the tortilla strips, simmer another 5 minutes. Then add 16 oz plum tomatoes (although I like my soup tomatoey, so I usually put a bit more), 3 tsp of cumin into the pot and let simmer another 15 minutes. Add 2 1/2- 3 quarts of chicken stock and cook until it reduces by about a third. Then blend it all until its smooth. The recipe recommends garnishing with cheddar cheese, cilantro, and avocado, and that's the part I screwed up tonight. Easy breezy.

Thank you, Aunt Barbara! And thank you C.!

Tonya's Roadhouse

2008-02-19T22:48:00.005-05:00

Some people are very good at getting themselves employed. Naturally there's more to this than simply brandishing a snappy résumé or an efficiency of manner. In high school, I'd marvel at the kids who seemed to secure gainful employment effortlessly, as if through osmosis. H., unsurprisingly, was one of those people. She was a police matron in high school. Police matron? How does that happen?

My theory is that it's their sense of direction: some people know where, as well as how, to look for work. When it comes time for them to find a job, one realizes that they've been laying tracks all along. They've met people along the way; they've noticed possibilities; they've weighed their options.

I'm not one of those people. I've always had enormous difficulty finding work. I chalk this up to a poor sense of direction. This, in fact, is one of the reasons I chose a "career." A career, you see, has a path. All it requires is for you to follow it. But even this has proven something of a challenge.

As a teenager, my method of looking for work was one step short of hoboing. This step, I should add, was fairly substantial: privilege, for one. And a car. So it was really nothing like hoboing at all, save for the chronic waywardness.

Though earnestly keen to sweat and toil, I spent many days driving from local business to local business, knocking on doors. I didn't have a script. "Uh, do you have any openings?" would have been all I'd have said. One of the jobs I eventually landed-- through a temp firm-- involved loading doors onto trucks: in that instance openings were at a premium. Of course, so too were closings.

Despite its almost unerring failure, this practice continued for many years. The result is an employment history that reads like a litany of the banal. My first gig, at age 14, involved "landscaping" for a Texaco station in my town. This involved clearing trees and brush from what I remember to be an exceptionally large and dense swathe of forest. I had poison ivy for weeks.

None of this, of course, had anything to do with food. But the summer following my high school graduation brought about a change of scenery and a new set of businesses to solicit. That summer, I lived on Cape Cod. On a sailboat. Tough times.

The first businesses I called upon were those near Mashpee harbor, a little village halfway between Falmouth and Hyannis. Failing that, I hit up all the shops in the then-developing Mashpee Commons. There was an upscale pizza restaurant in the plaza, in which I felt a glimmer of possibility. No dice. But the idea of working for a restaurant began to take hold, and I started cruising all the local restaurants.

I recall visiting an upscale French restaurant with a name that sounded impressive, but was really only an everyday word translated into French. Let's say it was "Mushroom." I spoke with the owner (or so he claimed) about washing dishes and, at his request, wrote my contact information in the logbook. Next to my name I added my job description: plongeur.

But I was going to college. Surely I could embellish this even further. So I added: extraordinaire. They never called me. This is perfectly understandable: who wants an extraordinary dishwasher? Dishwashing is one of those fields in which ordinariness is an ideal characteristic. Dishes need to be cleaned, not embellished.

But the restaurant idea had now taken on the allure of the inevitable. Just down the road was a sprawling surf n' turf restaurant called Tonya's Roadhouse. It was the first establishment I'd visited in which the service entrance actually brought you near the manager's office. So rather than braving an awkward chain of encounters with prep-cooks, sous-chefs, dishwashers, and stock-deliverers, I walked right in and spoke with the restaurant's manager.

That summer I became a dishwasher. Eventually, I graduated to stocking the salad bar. The following summer, I graduated one step further to fry cook. I learned just enough about working in a kitchen to develop a lifelong complex about it.

Yeah, I was a line cook. But not really.

Two Gifts

2008-02-15T23:12:00.007-05:00

Lucky me! What a treat: last night, a Valentine's day dinner courtesy of Mark Bittman. Tonight, just shortly ago, a portage dinner of salmon nabe. The latter was courtesy of my friends C. and E., who came over for a visit and brought an entire supper with them. What a lovely way to close the week. Two gifts, two nights in a row. In each case, a magical influx of energy and ideas.

Yesterday, H. forwarded Bittman's February 13th "Minimalist" column on short ribs braised in coffee, red wine, and chilies. Since we often have leftover coffee these days— we don't work at home much any more, so we rarely finish a pot— this dish virtually begged us to make it.

Braised beef chunks often end up tasting like Beef Bourguignon, regardless of your intentions. You can select different sizes and shapes of meat, and you can add various degrees of aromatic fanfare. But in the end, you wind up with winey-flavored beef.

I like winey-flavored beef; don't get me wrong. But it does lean toward the monochromatic.

The coffee and chile solution is a welcome intervention. I thus recommend this recipe for any occasion that calls for a modest change of pace. I recently made short ribs braised in ginger and porter, and there's a similar bitterness at work here. But in the Bittman recipe the chilies-- smoky chipotles and pasillas-- complement the coffee's bitterness with a rich bouquet of spice and warmth.

The recipe-- here it is-- is quite simple, so I won't bother reiterating it. One thought for the future, though, is how best to accompany this dish, since its braising liquid cries out for starchy accompaniment. We served it with beans and rice, but that was determined largely by circumstance: the beans and rice were holdovers from the previous night's dinner. I would think that homemade corn tostones would work nicely, or even something involving plantains. A flavorful starch— smoky tamales, even— would frame the ribs well.

*** Part II ***

With H. off to visit C-Spice and Schooly in Cincinnati for the weekend, I had been facing the prospect of cooking for one (or for 1.5, with little A. nibbling at the corners). Such conditions often yield empty dinners of cereal and beer. So it was with no small amount of pleasure-- and relief-- that my evening guests C. and E. came equipped with the makings of a marvelous nabe.

Nabe, in its highest form, is Sumo food. In principle it's a Japanese bouillon made from three simple ingredients: water, sake, and miso paste. The flavor becomes increasingly complex as additional ingredients are added to the pot. Tonight's featured additions were daikon radish, fingerling potatoes, carrots, onions, and shungiku (chrysanthemum greens); tofu; and assorted seafood.

In C.'s preparation, the ingredients arrived pre-cut and beautifully arranged in a bountiful mise-en-place. After bringing the broth to a boil in a traditional earthenware pot, she added the root vegetables. Then, about ten minutes later, she added the greens, as well (I think) as the tofu. Ten minutes later, she added cubed salmon and shrimp, simmered the whole dish for about five minutes, and brought it to the table.

In the collective Sumo-workshop mode of cooking, items can be thrown into the bouillon at will, since the broth is still cooking actively throughout the meal. It's hard to replicate this at home, especially given our relative lack of floor space. So C.'s nabe was a singular event, rather than an odyssey of dunking and boiling that might unfold throughout an evening. Yet it was no less playful for its simultaneity-- nor any less delicious. Poor H. missed out: these were the "clean flavors" she so heartily enjoys.

All the same, H. won't mourn. Thanks to a canceled flight, she's stuck in Philly tonight, and can thus go to Tacqueria Veracruzana instead. So she can find consolation in carnitas.

Deep Freeze

2008-02-12T19:38:00.000-05:00

I'm conflicted.

Snow continues to fall outside; it's been snowing all day. The roads are quiet, save for the intermittent plow. Earlier this evening, before dusk, we took A. for a walk in the snow. It was picture-perfect, one of the few picturesque winter moments we've had this year. And now I'm sitting inside with a cup of hot tea. It's warm inside. The dishes are clean.

I'm conflicted, though, because I made steak frites tonight under troublesome conditions.

The steak, you see, was frozen.

I'd purchased a thick-cut Delmonico steak on Saturday. But when it became clear that we weren't going to manage it then, I shifted it into the freezer. The steak went back into the fridge this morning, but by cooking time it was only superficially thawed.

"Don't do it!" you say. "Order pizza!"

I'm conflicted because it wasn't a total disaster. Indeed, had I been just a wee bit more patient in my preparation, the experience might even have been revelatory.

I followed more or less the same general procedure as for a "normal" steak. I superheated a cast-iron skillet, and heated up some oil for the fries. I then added some olive oil and a pat of butter to the hot skillet, and seared the meat aggressively. I was especially thorough with this step tonight, as the steak was nearly two inches thick. And, of course, frozen. When it was seared dark brown on all sides, I placed it in a 300° oven until the thermometer showed me signs of warmth.

Meanwhile, I double-fried some matchstick potatoes and onion slices. To conserve oil, I cooked the fries in small batches. I also made a quick sauce with some sautéed shallots and a little tub of P1's marvelous demi-glace. This demi-glace lives in the freezer, in a tower of little tupperware tubs. In an ideal world, I would have made a proper sauce (a little red wine vinegar early on would have brightened things considerably). But tonight's was a quick dinner, dammit, and I wasn't about to go noodling around with fancy reductions and vinegars. Phooey.

But this same lack of patience led me to slice the meat before it had enough time to rest. And, given that the meat had been frozen, the consequences were a little more significant than usual. While quite serviceable, the steak slices were just a touch too bleu through the center, and perhaps a shade less tender than they might otherwise have been. But not a disaster.

Intriguingly, the meat was evenly pink throughout, in contrast to the seared exterior. This is a good thing. The logic for bringing steaks to room temperature is to preserve precisely this kind of evenness. I'm far from advocating the habit of cooking frozen steaks. But with a few moments more in the oven, and a longer rest, it might have worked. Who knows. Let's send a letter to the folks at Cook's magazine.

Here's an additional caveat: there are far more appropriate dishes for a snowy night than steak frites. This is café fare, after all, and it accommodates itself better to evenings when the air is crisp, rather than cold; and when the accompaniment of choice is, say, a Southwestern red rather than a duly Northeastern hot chocolate.
For on such crisp evenings, the house won't fill with greasy smoke from the skillet, as it did tonight. You can open a window.

Simple Foods, Clear Fluids

2008-02-10T21:18:00.000-05:00

Central Pennsylvania has recently been cited as the hub of a multifarious flu outbreak.

Our household, while hardly a crucible of sickness and misery, has not been spared. The stomach virus hit us mid-way through the Super Bowl party we attended briefly last weekend. Not only did this bring our partygoing to an abrupt close, but it also torpedoed the post I'd been planning to write ("Supper Bowl"). Perhaps this was for the best.

Since then, our diet has fairly dwindled. Campbell's soup, Cheerios, crackers: foods that begin with the letter C have characterized our week.

Some notable exceptions: several job-recruitment dinners at various local restaurants; a tasty Gumbo last night at a friend's house; and, on Friday, a delicious garlic soup by A. and K. I've since renamed "AUM Shinrikyo." Follow the link if you like.

After a full week of sensory deprivation, and after many weeks of toil and burden, I was primed for a return to form this evening. My plan was to sear up our favorite Frenchie standby, steak frites, with a little roasted asparagus on the side. But alas, order has not yet been restored to the universe. So the café steak, and the frites, will have to wait.

So perhaps in the week to come I will dedicate some blog posts to reminiscences. Why dwell on the present when you can moulder in the past?

Save Your Heads

2008-01-30T18:14:00.000-05:00

I once read somewhere-- I can no longer recall where-- that it is a good idea to save your shrimp heads. This means buying shrimp that haven't already been deveined and decapitated. Whenever possible, start a collection of heads and shells in the freezer. That way, when the moment strikes, you've got the makings for a shrimp stock.

It just so happens that our nearby pan-Asian market sells proper frozen shrimp, the kind that look like the aquatic bugs they really are. A few weeks ago, having made something-or-other involving shrimp, I saved the heads and shells. They've been in the freezer ever since, staring out mutely from inside their ziploc bag.

Such uncharacteristic foresight has made possible an excellent new discovery. The frozen heads formed the basis of a Brazilian shrimp stew we made the other night for our friends. The stew features a ginger-infused shrimp stock spiked with coconut milk and cashew butter. The recipe is adapted from James Peterson's Fish and Shellfish, which rightly describes its flavors as similar to those of a Thai curry, only without the fish sauce and lemon grass. With its striking pink color, the stew looks magisterial, yet is simple to prepare; its combination of flavors is deeply comforting. The key is that the rich saltiness of the stock is modulated by the last-minute addition of lime juice and cilantro.

The fun part involves chopping up the shrimp heads in a food processor. To make the broth, you churn up the heads and shells from 2 or 3 pounds of shrimp. (I used the frozen heads as well as the shells from the 2-pound bag of frozen shrimp I bought for this recipe). Keep the peeled shrimp-- the bodies themselves-- in the fridge while the broth cooks.

In a heavy pot, sauté the chopped heads in a little peanut oil, along with a chopped onion, 2 chopped garlic cloves, a goodly piece of ginger, grated, and two seeded, chopped chilies. The finer you chop everything, the more efficiently the stock will accommodate the flavors. Sauté all this until all the shrimpy bits turn red.

Then add a large can of diced tomatoes, and about three cups of water. I supplemented this with some prepared fish stock, but that's only because I had it around.

Simmer for about 30 minutes. At this point the dish is essentially made.

Strain the broth, using a fine-mesh strainer, and discard all the debris. Return the broth to the pot. Then, mix together 1/2 a can or so of coconut milk with several healthy tablespoons of cashew butter. The recipe suggests peanut butter as an alternative, but how many recipes call for cashew butter? What an opportunity. Whisk this mixture into the broth.

When it's nearly time to eat, drop the raw shrimp into the simmering broth. Then add the juice from 3 limes, and season with salt and pepper. The shrimp will be done within 3 minutes. So by the time you're ready to serve it, the shrimp will have cooked.

Serve in a shallow soup bowl with a tower of rice in the middle, and garnish with a healthy dose of finely-chopped cilantro. For a lighter meal, or as a starter, you could nix the rice.

------

When we made this for our friends the other day, we started off with a "Brazilian" salad. What, one might ask, constitutes a "Brazilian" salad?

According to the internet, the recipe is similar in form and content to "salad." The difference is that you then add some hearts of palm, sliced into little coins.

Needless to say, Brazilian salad is delicious.

Baby Tray

2008-01-28T22:56:00.000-05:00

Gourmandise returned for a brief stay this weekend, as if we were nothing more than a rural pied-à-terre. "Helloo!" was its cavalier greeting, as it breezed through the house and made itself comfortable, leaving an disastrous mess in the kitchen. "Let's eat!" And then, just as abruptly, it vanished.

But more on this anon. We did make a fish stew of sorts this weekend, and I'm very pleased with the recipe. And the pannetone bread pudding that followed was also quite fun. Again, though, this was just a short visit: gourmandise was merely passing through.

I would like to dwell, however briefly, on the more familiar sight that meets us every evening. This, as much as anything else, is what the word "dinner" tends to signify:

Harsh is the landscape we traverse each night on the road through dinner!

The meal itself is assembled according to a precise formula: chicken nuggets, green beans, spaghetti-O's, cheese, hummus, and the inevitable and highly-anticipated cup of applesauce. Each soft food is to be accompanied by its own corresponding spoon, per A's instance ("New 'poon? New 'poon?"). Yet the aftermath varies nightly. Each new tray yields a new terrain of crags and furrows. And any effort to wipe A's hands and face clean only further redistributes the gray paste she creates anew at every meal.

Gourmandise thus tends to make house calls later in the evening, as a rule.

Which at least partially explains why it's so easy to poach snacks from the Baby Tray. Is that an unsullied portion of a chicken nugget? Are you going to finish that cheese, kiddo? Daddy gets hungry, you know.

Empty Larder

2008-01-25T19:31:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy week. The sink is full of dishes. The house is strewn with coffee cups. And there's nothing in the pantry; nothing good, anyway. It looks like a half-hearted yard sale in there: a jar of honey; a bag of tangerine rinds; some dried mushrooms; rice.

The fridge, too, smells increasingly suspicious. But the hint of rot, of abandon, pervades the entire house. Our kitchen, at the center of it all, has become a subtracting-machine. There's no bread, no eggs, no fresh vegetables. Before the weekly delivery came yesterday, we'd even run out of milk. How did we fall so far?

The notion of a more-or-less empty larder can, of course, be perfectly romantic. Imagine yourself alone in the Yukon tundra, cold, bored, and starving. You forge ahead, losing hope as you go. And then, a miracle. You happen upon an abandoned cabin, nestled amongst the snowdrifts. Once inside, you build a fire, boil some water, and search the pantry. There you find some basic imperishables: flour, olive oil, a can of tomatoes, honey, baking soda, tuna, beans, and four sealed jars of Bovril. Suddenly, it's a game, and you're Crusoe: what can you cobble together from these carefully-husbanded elements? An array of fresh pita, accompanied by a savory bean purée? A simple fish stew with flour dumplings?

Phooey.

Our kitchen hasn't fallen out of time. We've fallen out of it. Each sidelong glance into the kitchen this past week has been cast with a growing sense of distance. There is no longer time for gourmandise. There is only avoidance, and breakfast cereal.

-----------------

Tomorrow, though, we will arise, clear-eyed and better-rested, and go shopping. Some friends are crossing the tundra for a visit, so we'll have to sweep out the cabin, stoke the fires, and add some fresh straw to the mattresses.

Fish stew with dumplings? Perhaps, but not from the larder.

The Whole Cow?

2008-01-20T22:32:00.001-05:00

Having recently purchased five jars of Bovril, I was challenged to determine whether this might be enough of the beef-bouillon concentrate to reconstitute a whole cow. (This is all thanks to Elizabeth's excellent post comments the other day). It would have been a good idea, though, to have read the labels before purchasing the jars: I am now the proud owner of five utterly beefless containers of the stuff, part of the Bovril brand's dark years (2004-2006). The jars are also past their expiration dates of December 2007.

To say that no cows were harmed in the production of these beefless Bovril jars would, however, be true only in the narrowest of senses. In the old days, OXO, Bovril's parent company, rode upon the broad shoulders of the British Beef Industry, whose scraps and bones formed nearly 40% of the unguent yeast extract's ingredient list. ("Alas! My poor brother," sighs a mournful steer as it contemplates an interwar-era bottle of the stuff). This all changed, if only briefly, during the height of the Mad Cow scare. For a two-year period between 2004 and 2006, Bovril's new parent company, Unilever, removed the beef in order to counter trade restrictions on British meat products.

This is the Bovril I ended up with. So it's beef-free. This doesn't mean, however, that no cows were harmed during its production. All it takes is to recall the massive cattle and sheep purges throughout agricultural Britain, and the notion of "beef-free" suddenly becomes a bit more harrowing. Alas indeed: my poor brothers and sisters.

The consequences of this purge chez nous is a bit more banal: an overstock of now-antiquated yeast extract. Needless to say, the experiment of reconstituting cows ended before it ever began. We have put away our alembics and specimen jars.

But am I unhappy? Am I disappointed? Not in the least.

Because the fact is that it tastes exactly the same. I can spread it on toast with impunity. Maybe I'll even boil up a mug of beef tea, to fortify myself after a bracing constitutional. And I can certainly pooh-pooh the fact that the jars are past their prime. The sell-by date on an imperishable product like Bovril, after all, is about as specious as a sell-by date on diet soda. One of the joys of the product is its relative infinitude: it's built for the larder.

My conclusion: Bovril does not even taste like beef, and it never did. If one were to describe the flavor, one might say that it tastes, well, brown. And salty. If cattle have anything to do with Bovril's flavor, then this is more a matter of distinguishing it from Marmite-- that other brown yeast extract-- than of reproducing the essence of cattle.

I'm not sure where this leaves us, except to marvel at the Bovril brand's remarkable hold on the British consciousness. And thus, in turn, on my own. Will Bovril restore your vigor? But of course. Will Bovril guide you through the lean years of your life? Naturally. Will Bovril cure your hangover? Why, yes. Yes it will. And will Bovril keep the British Empire running strong? We all know the answer to this:

If you keep it in a thermos, you can take it with you almost anywhere. And so, in a sense, yes.

Salt of the Earth

2008-01-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

A quick note on the joys of baking in salt.

Provided one has access to salt, of course, there are few more economical ways to transform one's range of flavors. The salt-- as I now understand it-- has little to do with seasoning; it instead forms a specialized temporary oven molded around the food inside. It thus allows the food to season itself.

In other words, it's a bit like cooking in the ground, except that the salt provides a cleaner indoor cooking surface than, say, sand. But the principle is the same: the salt forms a tight seal that retains moisture and distributes heat evenly.

There are two basic ways to bake in salt (again: as I understand it). The first achieves what might more readily be called a salt crust, rather than a salt oven. You mix kosher salt with beaten egg whites, and spread this around a seasoned piece of meat or fish; as it bakes, the egg causes the salt to stiffen into a firm cake around the meat. This protects it from direct heat and locks the moisture and aromatics inside.

The second method, which we tried last night for the first time, involves more salt but less difficulty. (The recipe is adapted from Eileen Lo's The Chinese Kitchen, a book I'm enjoying more and more each time I use it). The basic principle here is to stuff the chicken loosely with aromatics, wrap the bird in lotus leaves, and then suspend the leaf-wrapped bundle in hot salt. If the package is tight enough, you have the basic principle of a luau. But again, this is something that doesn't require you to dig a hole outdoors, or risk having sand drift accidentally into the dish. If a few errant flecks of Kosher salt fall onto the chicken, so much the better.

The prep:
It's best to use a small chicken here. Tidy up a 3 1/2 pound chicken, and massage it with 1/4 cup of Kosher salt. Let this rest while you preheat the oven to 450°. You'll need two additional 3- pound boxes of Kosher salt; empty one of them into a dutch oven large enough to accomodate all the salt and the bird. Empty the other box into a baking pan. Heat both in the 450° oven for 1/2 hour or so. Meanwhile, soak a piece of dried tangerine rind (available in an Asian grocery, although in a pinch any aromatic rind could, in theory, work) in hot water until it softens.

Rinse the salted chicken and pat it dry. Then rub it, inside and out, with a mixture of powdered ginger dissolved in Chinese cooking wine-- about 1 tsp dissolved in 2 tablespoons. Then insert a generous slice of fresh ginger and some crushed scallions into the cavity. Wrap the whole thing tightly in interlocking lotus leaves.

I couldn't get lotus leaves. So I didn't have the chance to figure out the art of wrapping the bird (do you need string? how fragile are the leaves?). But I did get banana leaves, which offered a much different flavor combination: instead of the earthy funk of lotus leaves, there was the more tropical perfume of banana. This substitution was, in the end, serendipitous, since it opened up the possibility of further substitutions. (I could imagine, for instance, a combination with lemon grass and ginger on the inside, and with banana leaves on the outside. But why not a cilantro, lime, onion, and chili combination as well? What other kinds of broad leaf could be used; and how would it taste without the leaves at all?).

Cooking:
When everything's ready to go, make an indentation in the bed of salt in the dutch oven and place the leaf-wrapped bundle in it. Then pour the other tray of hot salt over the package to cover it. Bake the whole thing in the 450° oven for an an hour and ten minutes, and then let it rest for 15 minutes, or even longer.

When ready to serve, dump off the salt, and then remove and unwrap the package. You serve the chicken cut into pieces, accompanied by a mild dipping sauce made from ginger, scallions, soy sauce, peanut oil, and Chinese vinegar. The cutting style depends on your preference: you can carve it up in European fashion; or serve it hacked up neatly with a cleaver; or, once it cools slightly, you can simply pull the meat off the bone.

The jury's still out about how best to accompany such a dish. It might perhaps best be served as an appetizer, since the flavors are complex but quite mild. Last night, for instance, the dish was overwhelmed by the others we served alongside it.

Alternatively, this salt-baked chicken would match nicely with clean flavors that would foreground its earthy complexity : steamed Chinese vegetables, for instance, might work nicely.

What is most exciting about this whole experiment is that it's not simply a dish; it's a method. It thus goes without saying that salt-baking can be adapted to prepare all kinds of foods: whole fish (with or without the leaf wrap); beef, pork, chicken, lamb. Lee How Fook's in Philadelphia's Chinatown (11th and Race), for instance, serves a legendary salt-baked spareribs dish. There are numerous recipes for salt-baked snapper, which I will try one of these days. And here's a link to a blog post on salt-baked potatoes, even. I wonder if salt-baked eggs might work.

I am the Cheese

2008-01-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

No, this is not an autobiography.
This is a tribute to a fellow turophile (is that a great word, or what!), the late Robert Carlton Brown.

If you cruise the cookbook aisles at old bookstores, you may have come across any number of his late works, from Let There Be Beer! to 10,000 Snacks. My favorite, though, is his delightful 1955 tome The Complete Book of Cheese, a characteristically playful little book bound in a bright yellow dust-jacket.

Chapter one, "I Remember Cheese," rings with the air of nostalgia familiar to cheese-lovers virtually anywhere. Though hardly Proustian, this nostalgia is no less acute: no sooner has the most wondrous mouthful of cheese passed one's lips, no sooner has the most perfectly ripened, unpasteurized local brie been found and savored, than the sky clouds over. The moment has passed. It suddenly becomes the day after the parade. Ribbons of sorrow drape the world; it's time to sweep up the confetti and start dreaming again.

Bob Brown understands this. Here's what he writes: "I remember another market day, this time in Lucerne. All morning I stocked up on good Schweizerkäse and better Gruyère. For lunch I had cheese salad. All around me the farmers were rolling two-hundred-pound Emmentalers, bigger than oxcart wheels. I sat in a little café, absorbing cheese and cheese lore in equal quantities. I learned that a prize cheese must be chock-full of equal-size eyes, the gas holes produced during fermentation. They must glisten like polished bar glass. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its flavor must be nutlike. (Nuts and Swiss cheese complement each other as subtly as Gorgonzola and a ripe banana.) There are, I learned, 'blind' Swiss cheeses as well, but the million-eyed ones are better."

Bob Brown, who in the 1920s and 30s was one of the more interesting experimental poets of his generation, displays his characteristic modesty in this remembrance. Standing in for his own judgment— the experience of tasting these cheeses, impossible to replicate— are the qualifications for prize cheeses. We learn what Emmentalers must taste like, not what they happened to taste like that day, to a passing visitor. Gone is the absurd eye-rolling and tummy-rubbing behavior that forms the food writer's bluntest instrument. We are left instead with the passing memory of a market day, of farmers and Swiss cafés. Through his nostalgia we learn something of the timeless.

Now, I don't place a lot of faith in the timeless, as a rule. It's an effect, a literary trick created by this clever poet-turned-hack-writer of popular cookbooks. All the same, I don't know if there's another way to account for the turophile's relationship to the ever-receding experience of the perfect cheese. Perhaps it's the hack writer who gets it straight, in the end.

The best part of The Complete Book of Cheese, though, is that it indulges this nostalgia only fleetingly. A work of profound optimism, it devotes only a few of its pages to such remembrances; it instead looks intently to the future. With chapters dedicated to recipes for rabbits (rarebits), fondues, and soufflés, the book projects its readers into the future of endless possibility: here are recipes you can try tomorrow; here are lists of cheeses upon which you can base your travels throughout the world. You can enjoy cheeses here, today, at home. And you can enjoy cheeses tomorrow, next year, anywhere in the world, as long as you live. And Bob Brown has provided a glossary of cheese varieties as your Baedeker.

There's more to be said here: Bob Brown, whose circle of intimates included the likes of Gertrude Stein, Nancy Cunard, Kay Boyle, Harry and Caresse Crosby, and Crazy Uncle Ezra, wrote just about everything, from mock-Whitmanian poems of America to professional pulp. Most interestingly, perhaps, he's best known among modernist circles for developing the notion of printing "readies," a literary counterpart to the somewhat better-known notion of "movies." But all this will have to wait for another post.

----
In my next post I will see whether it is indeed possible to reconstitute a whole cow from Bovril alone. We shall see.

Gimme a "B"

2008-01-12T23:47:00.000-05:00

Here are three things I like to do with bacon:

One: fantasize.
"Aha!" you might say, as if catching me in a logical inconsistency. "If you have bacon, then you don't need to fantasize about it. You can only fantasize about bacon you don't have."

Wrong, and wrong. I have four and a quarter pounds of Millheim bacon in the fridge— and the store, incidentally, is Penn's Valley Meats, and not "Bierly's," as I mistakenly mentioned in an earlier post— and I have been fantasizing about it all day. I'm going to give a pound to P1, and a pound to P2; I'm going to freeze a pound; and with the rest, I'm going to make things. And like the astrological animals lining up to visit Buddha, the possibilities are out there, waiting. They're starting to form constellations.

Two: engineer the test slice(s).
This is about as close as our kitchen gets to the scientific method. As a lifelong anti-positivist, I cannot stress fully enough the urgency of reversing this bias when it comes to bacon. Testing is very important. One doesn't want to make any mistakes. So before starting any recipes, fry up a slice, to check for smokiness, sweetness, fat content, cooking time, and so froth. Go on, fry up two.

Three: go for it.
The French call it passage à l'acte. What is one to do with all this fantasizing and preparation? Let it run its course.

The first and, let's face it, maybe even the best, thing we did with yesterday's bacon trove is to make B.L.T.s. Given, it's winter. Trying to find a good off-season tomato is about as close to quixotic as anything I can imagine. (see item One, on fantasy, above). All the same, on a warmed, buttered baguette everything took flight. The home-smoked, home-cured Millheim bacon came to life, with a decent tomato and a few leaves of romaine lettuce keeping the sandwich bright and cheery. I can only imagine what this will taste like in the summertime, with some of the local tomatoes at the height of their season. (or would this be a T.B.L., and thus a wholly different affair?)

This bacon is pretty spectacular stuff. There is other local bacon, too: Nittany Meats in Zion, PA also has excellent bacon (and sells whole slabs and bacon ends, too, which helps for recipes). But what distinguishes the Millheim bacon is its particular combination of sweetness and smokiness; and the pork bellies themselves seem also to be of an extraordinarily high quality: lean and flavorful. There's an experiential dimension, as well: one of the benefits of driving out to buy some is that you pass through some magnificent farmland along the way, with Amish horses-and-buggies trotting down the road as you go. Magic.

For the sake of future reference, here are my five favorite bacon dishes, a list subject, of course, to adjustment.
N.B. this does NOT include uncured pork-belly recipes, and the like. How could it?

1. Pumpkin-bacon risotto. A household staple, so we'll make this sooner or later.
2. Pasta with peas and bacon. Should be pancetta, but hey, we're in Pennsylvania.
3. Frisée salad with lardons, sautéed potatoes, and poached egg.
4. B.L.T. panzanella (courtesy of Alton Brown).
5. Spiced nuts with sugared bacon, a New York Times recipe we made for a party in December. And wow. Hell, skip the nuts; the sugared bacon is a revelation. Here's the recipe, adapted from the NYT.

First, the nuts. In a largish bowl, beat an egg white, and add about two cups of good roast nuts-- mixed, or just almonds or cashews-- along with 2 tablespoons of sugar, and then garam masala (homemade is best, of course, but you can buy it pre-ground), cumin, cinnamon, allspice, and a little pinch of cloves. This is all to taste, but best to go in descending order. Also add salt and cayenne. Toss everything together.

Spread the nuts on a baking sheet, put in a preheated 325 oven, and roast for about 15 minutes, tossing early and often to avoid mini-omelettes from forming. When toasty but not scorched, transfer to a bowl and raise the temperature of the oven to 350.

Meanwhile, the bacon. On another baking sheet covered with parchment paper sprayed with Pam (the sugar will caramelize and make for a dreadful cleanup otherwise), spread out 3/4 pound of bacon in a single layer, using two pans if necessary. Sprinkle on both sides with about 1/2 cup of light brown sugar. Bake this until the bacon is crisp and dark golden, 20 to 25 minutes. Now, the bacon is DELICIOUS if you take it out before it gets too crispy, but for the sake of the recipe it's important to get the bacon quite crisp, since it will be mixed with the nuts. Use your judgment here. But the phenomenon of turning a meat product into confectionery is eye-opening. Heart-stopping, too, but what the hell: this is a seasonal treat, for winter only. Make it in December. Diet in January.

Finally, cool the bacon on a wire rack over newspaper. Break the slices into bite-size pieces and mix with the nuts.

When we made this in mid-December, we found that the party guests had picked out all the bacon, and that there were still nuts left over in the dish. So don't be skimpy.

------
As a little post-script, I visited Hout's on their last day of business. Very depressing. The owners seem to have torpedoed the business in order to make a profit from the land.

I did, however, buy five jars of Bovril.

Hout of Time

2008-01-09T19:41:00.000-05:00

I've just learned that O.W. Hout's, a State College, PA institution since, I think, 1920, will shut its doors on January 11. It seems they have simply run out of customers.

While somewhat unsurprising, this closure is deeply significant: it represents the final stroke in the transformation of the State College area into yet another friendlyville. No longer rural farmland, the counties surrounding Penn State University are now commercial subdevelopments. And, as in the case of most rural or ruralesque parts of the United States, other businesses have arrived in tandem with the contractors. These businesses are coeval with, and designed for, the kind of sub-suburb this part of the world has become.

Hout's never failed to frustrate me, but this wasn't for its outdatedness. Far from it. I'm an ardent supporter of the untimely and the slow, especially when it comes to food. The problem with Hout's is that it didn't fully grasp what the specifics of its appeal might have been. Or if it did, it simply didn't have the resources to act.

Hout's is a relic. A true country farm store, it sells everything from furniture, hardware, and lumber to garden supplies, kitchen equipment, and "gourmet" food. In recent years, the limitations of the form became sadly apparent: although the butcher was never anything other than excellent, the store's efforts to sell local produce fell flat. After all, whether local or not, vegetables just aren't appealing if they're left to rot on the shelves. Of course, other attempts at small-market produce retail tend similarly to struggle. Short of the low-overhead farmer's market, it's hard to compete with the food giants.

And who went to Hout's for its furniture? From visit to visit, the store seemed to become emptier, if ever so slightly, as it sold off old stock and didn't replace it.

A farm store can't be a farm store if there are no farms. It would be easy to feel nostalgic for the loss of a store that represents a once-prominent but now quaintly overshadowed form of rural capitalism. Imagine a door-to-door salesman hocking encyclopedias in the era of the internet. As the news stories will surely declare, Wal-Mart and Lowe's have crowded out the farm-store niche: they offer a scale (and thus a price) better suited to the hard-up "rural" folk who shop there. But don't get me started on Wal-Mart.

But is this really just the passing of a dinosaur—a casualty of the highway of Progress? There is something more at stake here; and nostalgia aside, there's no need to tell the same old story of mega-capitalism.

Hout's is a victim of another historical force, just as real, but more complicated than commercial Darwinism alone: not an inability to modernize, but an inability to de-modernize. A failure, that is, to recognize the particularity of what it does well. Butchery, lumber-cutting, housewares, hardware: these are all valuable, necessary, services. But they can't be jumbled together in the same haphazard way that renders scale the only way to compete: whenever bigger is better, the Wal-Marts will always the "advanced" form and Hout's will always be the "antique" form. These reliquary trades need a new logic.

If someone's going to be a door-to-door salesman today (and why not!), he can't just sell the same old encyclopedias. If someone wants to sell encyclopedias (and why not!), she can't just do it by going door-to-door. The appeals of traveling salespeople and encyclopedias is no longer obvious; it has to be invented rather than taken for granted.

Hout's, for one, needed to cut bait. They sat on their inventory-- useful when one is looking for, say, cedar siding to match the boards on a 1930s cottage. But awkward when it comes to an entire floor dedicated to (really!) showcasing furniture at once too expensive, and too out of date, to appeal to most everyone. And even more awkward when it comes to, say, apples or cucumbers.

If someone decides to take the business over and give it another run-- and I hope they will-- I hope the best elements of the farm store can be retained. Oddity, for certain, is a wonderfully nostalgic characteristic. But what the store really needs now— other than an infusion of cash— is an ideology, a raison d'être.

If only they could sell wine...

Sometimes the Bar... It Eats You

2008-01-06T21:23:00.000-05:00

For starters, the Elk Creek Café was wonderful. But today's post isn't about that. We're going for dinner there again this week, so I'll write about it then.

This post is about my failed bacon mission.

It's become something of a legend 'round these parts: there's some mighty fine bacon to be found in Millheim. And this is said with the recognition that Central Pennsylvania is already renowned for its Amish bacon. So it's safe to say that there's something pretty special happening in Millheim. You might not know this, though, from looking at the humble façade of Bierly's Meats, a nondescript country butchery on Rte. 45 in downtown Millheim. But their home-cured sugar bacon will make your socks roll up and down.

Like many of the storefronts along Millheim's main street, Bierly's powder blue siding has seen better days. This is so much the case that when H. and I would visit Millheim in years past, we never once acknowledged that Bierly's Meats was an extant market. There are a number of businesses like this in central Pennsylvania. One wonders: are they ever really open for business? Or are they relics from some indeterminate war-era past? It's a happy moment when the former is the case; and there are often some wonderful things to be discovered within.

Bierly's meats, by all counts, is one such cabinet of wonders. The problem is, I've never managed to get there while it's open. A few Sundays ago we drove out to have brunch at the newly-opened Elk Creek (which was lovely), but the side-trip was in vain: the meat market is closed on Sundays. It is open on Saturdays, so when we made our way to Elk Creek's art opening/tavern menu event at around 4:30 yesterday afternoon, I had high hopes. But alas, I should have done my homework: Bierly's closes at 4 on Saturdays.

I have tasted bacon from this market, so I know it exists: P2 kindly brought us back some from a pilgrimage he made over the summer. Now it's my turn to repay the favor. Bacon for everyone in the neighborhood! I will go this week. Perhaps even tomorrow. Ah, but are they open Mondays?

I can't handle another disappointment of this magnitude!

---

On a separate note, I did add bacon (ah, but workaday supermarket bacon) to the bread salad I described in yesterday's post.

It was fine. Whatever.

I Have a Confession...

2008-01-05T13:50:00.000-05:00

So I was just at the local Y, wonder of wonders. The gym was nearly empty. It seems I am one of the few in my town still clinging idealistically to their post-New Year's workout fantasies. But perhaps there's a reason for the attrition: the TV in the gym was tuned to the Food Network, which, if you ask me, is downright sadistic.

To make matters worse, Giada de Lauretis was on. So much for my "low impact" workout.

So here's my confession: one of the recipes looked marvelous. It was for a panzanella— which is fun to make in the summer, and deeply satisfying (as mushy, oily, salty bread would naturally be)— but with artichoke hearts added to the mix. She used the frozen variety, thawed to room temperature. The masterstroke involved toasting the bread cubes and artichoke hearts on a grill-pan with a little olive oil.

If I can find some good off-season tomatoes tomorrow, I'll make this salad tomorrow night. Tonight, see, we are driving to the recently-opened Elk Creek Café in Millheim, PA, for some "Nouveau Dutchie" cuisine. I'm very excited. And we will, I hope, have time to buy some of the excellent Millheim bacon while we're there.

Ooh-- now, bacon in the panzanella would be fun. Take that, Giada! Take that, YMCA!

Shall I Compare Thee to a Vietnamese Hoagie?

2008-01-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

Aside from a few dusty historians of Famous Roads and the odd admirer of columns and plumbing, there aren't as many people crowing about the marvels of colonialism as there used to be. Except for Sarkozy and the French right wing, perhaps. Which brings me to my point: here we are marking fully sixty years of active decolonization, and the foodies seem to be caught living in the past. For like mushrooms after a forest fire, foodies thrive in the aftermath of colonial encounters. From the Gin and Tonic to Thanksgiving Dinner-- I won't even mention atrocities like wasabi mashed potatoes and tunaburgers-- the creolization of kitchenstuffs is the by-product of all kinds of international pillage, whether mercantile borrowing or downright invasion. Empires expand, invade, and crumble. And the gastronomes are there, devouring the residue with ethnophilic glee.

How is one to feel about this?

I say: give praise to the Vietnamese Hoagie.

I have a theory here. The Vietnamese Hoagie, a hybrid of French baking and Vietnamese flavor management, is more than a simple colonial fancy. Rather, its presentation of the freshest indigenous ingredients— daikon, cucumber, basil, cilantro, mint, lime, and fish sauce— in tandem with a French pâté sandwich can be seen as a sub rosa response to the French occupation of Indochine. A long, thin, missile of flavor with the portability of a Parisian worker's lunch-on-the-go, this is a sandwich that shows the battle of appropriation to be two-sided.

Colonial administrators tend not to be the most reliable cooks, after all. In the kitchens, prep-cooks and minions rush around, thinking on the fly, finding ingredients where they must. I'm not saying that all kitchen workers, colonizer and colonized alike, share the same experience and thus form the heart of the global proletariat. Simply this: in all the hubbub, what comes to the fore is the question of available resources. Whenever Frenchie imports, or imposes, a cadre of professional bakers, this becomes a new resource for Vietnamese cooks. A new sandwich is born. Thus the French colonial policy of assimilation doesn't just work in one direction here: Vietnamese cuisine could, and did, rummage through the cultural belongings of the French. And they found the baguette.

I've been making a version of this Vietnamese hoagie for some years now, and I must say I'm looking forward to eating one made by someone else; but that will have to wait. Tonight, I've assembled the makings for my own bowdlerized version of this majestic artifact, and I will be putting them together shortly. It's become something of a staple around the house, and it's one of H's favorites.

There are three basic steps, each of which can be simplified or elaborated depending on resources, fatigue level, etc.

1) The fish sauce. Make a couple of tablespoons of simple syrup-- the microwave is fine for this. Add the juice of a lime, and a tablespoon or two of any good nam pla-type fish sauce, to taste. You can then either add a pinch of shredded pickled carrots and daikon, and/or peanuts, which would be more or less traditional. Or you could whisk in a dollop of a store-bought chile sauce with peanuts I use out of abject laziness.

2) The bread. Warm a good baguette in the oven at 300°, but not for so long as to make the bread brittle. And seriously, it has to be a good baguette. If you don't have a good baguette, then the whole deal is off. Get rice noodles instead and make a Bún.

3) The fixings. Assemble the meaty bits: a pâté of some variety, and/or tofu skin, and/or the lovely little spicy tofu chunks we use, and/or other fillings (shrimp, ham, head cheese, etc). With a mandoline, thinly slice daikon and peeled cucumber to line the sandwich, and clean a handful each of mint, thai basil, and cilantro. You can also slice some green onions lengthways and lay them across the top of the sandwiches.

The assembly is quite simple, but the trick is limiting the fillings so that the hoagie remains elegant and intact, or at least manageable. This almost never happens at home. But then almost noone is watching us eat at home. Slice the bread lengthwise, spread with a little butter and pâté (note that in our case tonight this will be the leftover pâté from the other night's Beef Wellington). Line the bread with the sliced vegetables, add any additional meat or tofu fillings, lay the herbs across the top, and season with the fish sauce. Or feel free to drown it with fish sauce at table, if this happens to be your fancy.

As with a lot of street food, the assembly is easy if the ingredients are all in place beforehand. Indeed, the whole dish might be considered a sandwich composed entirely of leftover meat and the standard mise-en-place for much Vietnamese cooking.

In all, an honorable sandwich. And thus:
Remember Dien Bien Phu! Remember Saigon! But remember the sandwich vietnamien!

A Polemical Afterthought:

Gastronomes are, of course, beginning to exercise their own form of anti-colonialism, but one more fitting their immediate needs. The invasion of fast-food chains into lush gastronomic paradises like New York, Paris, and the like may indeed be a form of colonial invasion in its own right (viz. the "McDonaldization" or "Starbuckization" of the world). But I would say-- perhaps a bit cynically-- that the foodies are getting excited largely because the indigenous economies being supplanted tend to be delicious. It's a politics based, we might say, on flavor rather than fervor. I'm not against them-- I'm all for slow foods, locally grown produce, fresh-killed and hand-fed meats, and the like-- but I do mistrust the tendency for much food journalism to label this a "trend" rather than a movement. The measure, ironically, of this movement is its ability to produce tasty food over a sustained period— which means, joking aside, something quite real: an economic commitment to learning the crafts of cheesemaking, baking, brewing, organic farming, and cooking. At this point it's no longer just a fad, but a way of life.

Professor Wellington, I Presume

2008-01-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

Welcome, core peeps! It's New Year's day, and, though still bleary-eyed, I am going to write about food. This--the writing part, that is-- is all thanks to C-Spice and her remarkable baby blog.

But how do you write about food? A baby is a living organism, who grows and changes from moment to moment. Food, on the other hand, is just a category. One meal is replaced by another, in succession. One day you've dedicated yourself to a hamburger; another day it's a beet salad. Apples and oranges. Food doesn't accumulate or remember itself, except around the muffin-top.

And food doesn't speak. If, once upon a time, it had ever mooed or clucked or bleated, such activity will undoubtedly have ceased in the process of its transformation into food.

One could, of course, speak on food's behalf. But if we speak for it, whom does this benefit?
No: a food blog must remain content with taking note of the passing of food itself-- its transformations, its consumption, its digestion.

Which is, let's face it, the best part.

Today, before I forget, I want to dedicate some script to the memory of Arthur Wellesley. Not the Waterloo part, but the beef part.

I'll say this: It's hardly foolproof, but Beef Wellington remains a possibility.

Provided you're looking for a way to blow sixty or seventy bucks on a single dish, the old B.W. is something to consider for a party of non-vegetarians looking to dine on something festive. The trick is cooking it properly. As the (new) Joy tells us, getting the pastry shell crispy and golden without overcooking the tender beef inside is something of a challenge. Last night, that wasn't really the issue, though the meat was far from rare. The problem the other night was instead that I was rushing, and the supermarket had run out of pastry sheets. So I used two 9" round pie sheets, joined in the middle.

I don't recommend this. Not only did the seam not hold, but the pastry barely met in the middle when I wrapped up the beef, and thus the edifice crumbled in a few places. The visuals were compromised. It was still quite a tasty dish, though, and worth trying again. I thought it might be cloying, but with a little bordelaise sauce underneath the slice, and with a nice fruity red to accompany it, it didn't seem over-rich at all. But that's because we had another course to follow, and were sharing a four-pound piece of meat between seven people.

The assembly promises to be the easy part, which it is, provided you either make your own pastry dough or buy the right fricking shape. Here's a quick recitation:

First, there are the duxelles. What a fortuitous discovery-- these little buggers are pretty tasty all on their own. Chop up some mushrooms in the food processor and squeeze them through a kitchen towel; after all the pinkish liquid drains out, you have a big dry bolus of mushroom mulch. This process makes the mushrooms taste more, not less, mushroomy. You then add them to a pan of sautéed shallots in butter, cook for 5-6 minutes, add a little madeira and season, and you've got a delicious mushroomy paste. This might be nice on, say, a sandwich or something. Better yet, you could stuff it under a chicken skin before roasting it, perhaps with some butter to keep it from drying out.

You then mash this mushroomy goodness together with some liver pâté (or, if fortune is smiling, foie gras) and a wee bit more madeira and you've got the traditional filling for Beef Wellington. Or so I gather; this is all from the Joy. I bet truffles would fare well in this mixture as well, or at least a little truffle oil. Something to add a little brightness might also be welcome, but the vinegar in the Bordelaise sauce worked well here, too. Brightness isn't too much of a trouble if you don't overcook the meat.

The big player here is, of course, the beef. The ideal way to proceed here would be to buy only the true tenderloin itself, the heart of the cut. But the tenderloin I bought wasn't from a butcher, as I would have preferred. Instead it came in a sealed fridge-pack that looked like a little football. It was a center cut piece, which ended up having essentially two parts, the inner and the outer, with the outer part slightly more fibrous than the inner. But both were fine-- both pieces went into the pie, laid end to end. But I would imagine that the true tenderloin would have the finer texture.

Having admired the $44 cut of beef-- its fat, gristle, and silver skin lovingly removed with a sharp (or sharp-ish) knife-- you sear it VERY briefly in a hot pan (having brought a mix of butter and oil to the smoking point). When it cools, you spread out some pastry dough wide enough to wrap around the tenderloin (this requires foresight), spread a layer of the duxelles-pâté mixture under and around the beef, and wrap the whole thing up.

Again, here's where things went a little wobbly last night: the pastry didn't cover the meat fully enough, and it felt like wrapping a present with too small a piece of wrapping paper. So the dough got a little stretched. Also, the outer piece of the loin had a tendency to flap open like a butterfly, and as that gap opened up, it pulled against the dough and caused problems. So in the future, I would a) get the right piece of beef, and b) get the right piece of pastry dough.
So even though I'd vented the pastry, it created its own natural vents as well.

I cooked it for about 30-35 minutes in a 400 oven; the dough looked close to being golden, but by then the meat was well on its way-- already 120 when I checked. And since it continues to cook within its pastry shell even after it's left the oven, it should come out by 115 or so. I think an oven temperature of 425 for a shorter period of time would work better, at least for a smallish loin piece.

A well-constructed Beef Wellington, with pastry decorations and the like, would look marvelous on the table, a Spanish galleon brimming with treasure. And since the meat is really tender, it would be easy to carve. But I served up this sloppy mess in the kitchen, adding sauce to the plate and chopped parsley to the top, in order to spruce things up as much as possible. It really was quite tasty, especially since we didn't eat too much of it. Counter-intuitively, I might suggest this as an opening course, much like beef cheeks-- rich, but served in small portions.
We then had boiled lobsters (served out of the shell) and a lovely mâche salad made by A., the salad master.

This meal, incidentally, will cause you to gain over four pounds in one evening. It did for me.