Mollycules and Gastropods

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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).