The Seasonal Cook

Better butter Part III

2011-08-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Recipes

For testing purposes, we used the simple recipes below. All butters performed remarkably well in both applications, so be sure to experiment freely with your own favorite recipes.

Nutty Banana Smoothie
Makes one small glass.
1/2 banana
2 tablespoons nut butter
1/2 cup milk

In blender, combine banana, nut butter, and milk. Puree until smooth.

Nut Butter Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen.

(adapted from Simply Recipes Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies, www.simplyrecipes.com)

1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup nut/seed butter

Sugar, if needed, for coating fork

1. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine butter and sugars. With a stand mixer with a blade attachment or an electric handmixer, beat together on medium for four minutes. Add nut butter and egg, and beat two minutes.

3. Add flour mixture to bowl and mix on low until well-blended.

4. Form dough into a ball and wrap tightly. Refrigerate for two hours or up to two days.

5. Set oven at 300 degrees. Line sheet pans with parchment paper.

6. Roll dough into balls 1 1/2 inch across, and arrange on sheet pans. With a fork or potato masher, press the balls flat, dipping utensil in sugar between cookies if necessary to keep from sticking.

7. Bake for 16-17 minutes or until just barely colored at the edges. Remove from cookie sheet immediately.

Better butter Part II

2011-08-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Way the Cookie Crumbles (How do they bake up?)

Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter

Delicate, thin and crisp, with a slightly soft center, these would be best nibbled with tea. Make sure they have enough room to spread in the oven.

Organic Once Again Sunflower Seed Nut Butter

These keep their shape and have both depth and sweetness: a perfect choice for grade-schoolers who want something that looks – and tastes – surprisingly like the real McCoy.

Nature’s Promise Natural Cashew Butter

Dense and mild, these call out for dark chocolate chips and a tall glass of milk

Artisana Organic Raw Pecan Butter

Toasted aroma is reminiscent of Mexican wedding cakes, but the pale, flecked cookies are appealingly chewy. Excellent with a cup of coffee, the test batch disappeared quickly.

I M Healthy SoyNut Butter

Sandy texture and flat flavor somewhat like a sugar cookie – the store-bought kind. Not terrible, but not recommended.

Superior Sippers (And how about smoothies?)

Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter

The winner, smooth enough to deserve the name and well-balanced with the sweetness of the banana.

Organic Once Again Sunflower Seed Nut Butter

The savory sunflower notes overpower the fruit, but reducing the seed butter by half would make for a robustly satisfying sipper.

Nature’s Promise Natural Cashew Butter

An unbelievably rich and frothy treat, but banana overshadows the cashew.

Artisana Organic Raw Pecan Butter

A pallid blend that isn’t worth wasting an expensive ingredient.

I M Healthy SoyNut Butter

Mild at first swallow, but progresses quickly into objectionable.

Better butter Part I

2011-08-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Poor peanut butter. Once found in lunch boxes everywhere, increases in food allergies and concerns about fat have made this childhood favorite practically taboo. But there’s a silver lining to our old friend’s fall from grace. Grocery stores have started stocking a plethora of goober surrogates. Whether you’re hunting for a nut-free substitute for your favorite cookie recipe or just a new twist on your midnight snack, there’s a spread out there. To help navigate the plethora of choices, we put these alternative treats through the paces, testing them in cookies and smoothies, pairing them with preserves, and, of course, tasting them straight off the spoon. The results might just inspire you to find a new companion for jelly and bread.

Better Butter? (Overall results)

Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter (16 oz, $5.99, Stop & Shop)

Long the favorite of dieters, this may be the best overall contender, with a sophisticated, truly nutty flavor. With just over half the saturated fat and twice the fiber of natural peanut butter, this is the nutritionists’ darling. Extra points for the good dose of magnesium. (180 calories, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 4 grams fiber, 10% DV magnesium)

Organic Once Again Sunflower Seed Nut Butter (16 oz., $5.99, Whole Foods)

The sleeper of the bunch; earthy, rich flavor and texture is the closest match to natural PB. Loaded with magnesium and folate. (180 calories, 2 grams saturated fat, 0 grams fiber, 30% DV magnesium, 20% DV folate)

Nature’s Promise Natural Cashew Butter (16 oz, $9.99, Stop & Shop)

Extremely creamy, but with very mild flavor that might disappoint cashew fans. A whopping 14 grams of saturated fat explains the unctuous mouth-feel. At least it’s a good source of zinc and magnesium. (188 calories, 14 grams saturated fat, <1 gram fiber, 21% DV magnesium, 11% DV zinc)

Artisana Organic Raw Pecan Butter ( 8 oz.,$11.99, Whole Foods)

Gritty and thick, pecan paste is blended with cashew to make it spreadable, but the final product still has a home-ground texture. Unlike other butters, this one tastes strongly of its raw material. While others are widely available in supermarkets, finding this pricey specialty item might require a trip to a natural foods store. The highest calorie choice, pecans are also the nut that provides the highest level of antioxidants. (213 calories, 2 grams saturated fat, 3 grams fiber)

I M Healthy SoyNut Butter (15 oz, $5.29, Stop & Shop)

Has the whipped, plaster-of-Paris texture of highly processed brands of peanut butter. Certainly a welcome product for parents of kids with allergies, other will likely find its blandness and unpleasant aftertaste off-putting. Only slighter lower than PB in saturated fat, but three times the fiber. Contains added sugar.
(190 calories, 2 grams saturated fat, 6 grams fiber)

PB&J Redux (How well do they play with preserves and bread?)

Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter

Take a page from the traditional pastry chef playbook and pair with “fruits of the woods” - raspberry or blueberry preserves make an elegant match.

Organic Once Again Sunflower Seed Nut Butter

True to its hippie roots, this spread is best graced with a drizzle of pure honey. Or, go full-Berkeley and partner it with avocado and sprouts.

Nature’s Promise Natural Cashew Butter

Its lushness serves as the ideal foil for the bitter edge of orange marmalade – or the spicy ginger version, for a more exotic combination.

Artisana Organic Raw Pecan Butter

Try with sweet, chunky apricot jam or crack open a jar of maple cream
.

I M Healthy SoyNut Butter

Stick with the old stand-by, Concord grape jelly, which is strong enough to carry the sandwich.

Can Boston Be a Soul Food Town?

2011-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

(I must admit, I really hoped to get this one published somewhere, but I've had no bites. Mostly, I wanted to offer the publicity to the Webster family, who are lovely people with a great business. Thanks to them for talking to me.)

Sometimes it takes a moment to realize that something is better than you are anticipating. Much better. The first thing you notice when you open the Styrofoam container is that the food is hot, like it came straight from the pot and not off a delivery truck. You bite into a chicken leg – the fried skin is crisp and crackling, the meat pulls free of the bone and coats your fingers in juices. You turn your attention to the black-eyed peas, which are tender but not mushy, and rich with smoked turkey. It’s when you first taste the candied sweet potatoes, not just coated in brown sugar, but imbued with its flavor of molasses, that you find yourself thinking, wait, am I still in Boston?

The man who just exploded your expectations is Gary Webster, owner of Down Home Delivery & Catering, Dorchester’s newest purveyor of soul food. In their spacious, open kitchen in Four Corners, Webster’s brother Willie and Tennessee-born son-in-law, Darren Payne, whip up collard greens, ribs, meat loaf, and potato salad using family recipes. The homespun meals and the friendly greeting at the take-out window might give the impression that this is a great neighborhood eatery. But Webster has set his sights a bit higher. This entrepreneur believes he can make Southern cuisine – his family's version – a cornerstone of the Boston culinary scene.

“We did not come into this to be a soul food place on the corner,“ asserts the Georgia native, who moved to this city when he was just six years old. Playing what he calls “old-timer basketball” keeps him looking younger than his fifty-two years, an impression reinforced by the track suit he wears and the energy he exudes. He leans forward in his chair, eyes glittering, and chooses his words with deliberation as he describes how the business came into being. His brother Willie had been laid off, and the job market was bad. Webster himself was working in neighborhood services for the mayor’s office, his most recent position in twenty-five years for the city. He wanted something more.

“I said I can stay in the job where I am the next fifteen years, twenty years –geez, I couldn’t see sixty-five down the road.” He shakes his head and smiles.

Webster knew his family had some serious culinary chops: they have long done all the cooking and baking for the clan's massive get-togethers, including an annual Labor Day reunion that draws over a hundred people and lasts all weekend. That’s a lot of corn bread.

“We do things that people always enjoyed the food from – even after the events were over, people would come to us and say, who made the macaroni and cheese?” Webster brags.

His brother has large-scale production experience from jobs as a cook at Pine Manor and Boston College. Webster’s own background – a degree in business administration from Newbury College in addition to his long tenure in city administration – provides a business-savvy he believes will set his family’s company apart from the small chicken and rib joints that remain unknown outside their particular corners of Roxbury or Dorchester.

“I just want us to be able to take it to the next level beyond that, because we have the capacity to market a product, a food, to an audience that may not traditionally reach out to it and get it. We do a lot of business in West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale. We’re now going to branch into South Boston,” the self-starter declares. In a city of culinary diversity, he wants Southern cuisine to become a staple for weeknight takeout. “We want to be able to compete on that end with the Italian foods that are available – the Italian foods, the Greek foods, the Indian foods.”

This businessman has his work cut out for him; Boston has not been kind to purveyors of Southern home-style cooking. Legendary spots Bob’s Southern Bistro, Chef Lee’s, and Poppa B’s are all gone. The J’Way Cafe in Jamaica Plain disappeared almost as soon as it arrived, while tiny Mrs. Jones restaurant in the quiet neighborhood of Lower Mills is not well-known outside of walking distance. The community of black displaced Southerners in Boston is small, so instead of soul food restaurants, the city has a thriving barbecue scene, one dominated by white owners and cooks, with restaurants located in predominantly white neighborhoods and suburbs.

Jessica Harris, author of several major books on African-American cuisine including the recent High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, describes the success of barbecue restaurants as grounded in discomfort over issues of race, “No one is comfortable with that on the plate. BBQ restaurants neutralize that, and that’s part of their popularity.”

On the other hand, Cherelle Webster-Payne, Gary Webster’s daughter and catering manager, just sees barbecue as soul food’s little brother – one with a lot to learn.

“There’s a big difference, I think, between Southern soul food, traditional Southern favorites, and barbecue. People think of them together, but they are two different things,” she insists. “Barbecue also too is easier than soul food. Anybody can barbecue, go out there and barbecue some meat, put some nice sauce on it, but when it comes to soul food, there is a difference. There are intricate recipes, a slow process of doing things.”

One distinction lies in the value placed on side dishes in soul cooking, Webster-Payne says. “Each piece is the star dish, so it’s like the macaroni has to be just as good as the fried chicken.”

“People will judge you on your mac and cheese,” she adds emphatically.

Down Home also offers Sunday dinner favorites rarely seen in barbecue outfits, like roast chicken and pot roast.

To introduce the largest possible audience to the joy of perfect collards, tender meat loaf and rich bread pudding, Webster began strategically in 2010 with a catering and delivery operation out of a rental kitchen in Jamaica Plain. Soon the surrounding neighborhoods were crisscrossed by vans bearing the jaunty Down Home logo - a black chef holding a covered dish out the window of a speeding red truck. The company also pursued and won contracts for catered events with government agencies, where its certification as a Minority Business Enterprise is an asset.

Harris describes catering, a relatively low-capital start-up, as a “classic African-American business model“ that has historically allowed blacks entry into a competitive market. There used to be a saying in the community: “if you're in catering, you're in the swim; if not, you're in the soup”. Of Webster, who started this venture with his own savings, she says, “Obviously, what he is doing is taking a traditional business plan and modernizing it.”

The foundation laid, Webster moved the business into its permanent home in Four Corners, where a take-out window was added. But this go-getter wants to ensure that growth won't affect quality. He insists on testing and retesting Down Home's recipes – and tasting his competition's. Every new customer is asked for feedback; comparisons with Grandma are invited. Webster also monitors the online buzz, reveling in the accolades building up about the red velvet cake, pork chops, and especially that fried chicken on Yelp and other sites where the meal-obsessed go to share their latest finds. Ultimately, he believes the key to success lies in the excellence of his product and, just as importantly, the strength of his tight family bonds.

“At the end of every day, we come together as a family, pray as a family, and just be thankful for what we’ve been able to accomplish for the day,” says Webster, who wears a tiny gold cross on a chain around his neck. In addition to his brother, son-in-law, and daughter, the businessman employs his sisters, nieces and nephews. Working together has not always been easy, particularly in the first months, when no one made a penny. Arguments can break out, too, particularly over important issues like whether Tennessee or Georgia-style banana pudding is better. But this close-knit family shares a vision, led by a man who knows all too well the story of those who have come before him, but is determined to beat the odds - and more.

The dynamo spills over with ideas for potential new projects, including a sit-down restaurant and a website to sell their sweet-potato cheesecake nationally. Franchises someday, perhaps? Webster’s ambitions, for his food, his family, and his company, are summed up in his favorite dictum, which he repeats often: “We’re not just looking to survive in this business, we’re looking to strive.” If he prospers, Boston baked beans may just have to move over and make room for some black-eyed peas.

A Tough Nut to Crack – But an Easy One to Like

2011-06-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

It hits you the moment you open the bag: a sweet, toasty aroma like the hot caramelized nuts sold by street vendors. The little treasures inside look like pygmy pecans, but they’re nothing so tame. These are wild hickory nuts, one of America’s most distinctive and delicious foods – and one that is in danger of being lost forever.

Such an idea would have been unimaginable a century ago, when Americans knew well the fragrance and rich flavor of these sweet beauties, which have been called “a walnut in a tornado.” In those days, cracking the smooth, hard shells and carefully extracting the small, toothsome meats was a job given to children armed with hammers and patience. Their reward came in the form of delicious cakes, fudge, and pies. The nuts were a central flavor in the young country’s developing palate: Thoreau gathered them at Walden, and hickory cake was famously President James Polk’s favorite treat.

Today, a group of Slow Food activists and innovative chefs have taken on the job of reintroducing hickories to the table. Unlike their Southern brother the pecan, the smaller, rougher-looking wild hickories have never made the transition from foraged food to crop. The tree’s slow growth habit is one deterrent, but the bigger problem is the nut’s unyielding, half-inch thick shell, which defies industrial processing equipment. These tasty nuggets can only be cracked by hand, one by one.

The nut’s fate has consequently been left in the hands of a few dedicated gatherers and hand-crackers who sell at farmers’ markets, through craigslist or in classified ads. But their numbers are dwindling. Among those who remain is Ray Pamperin of Wisconsin, a retired dairy farmer who offered hickories at farmers’ markets for 25 years. Now he sells exclusively online at Rayshickorynuts.com, mostly to older people like himself who are nostalgic for a taste of their childhood. He gathers some of the nuts himself from his own land or, with permission, from the trees left standing on other people's properties. Some he buys from those willing to forage, but not crack. Linda Schaalma, Ray’s daughter and manager of his business, sees her father as one of the last protectors of an American treasure.

“As the older crackers give it up, one way or another, the supply will become even less. Unless the younger generations see the time investment like the older generation does, it may become a lost food,” Schaalma says.

Pamperin gets more orders than he can fill, but others can’t find a significant market for their product. Patrick Kompf of Vermont’s Native Nuts sells just a few hundred pounds a year, primarily around Thanksgiving and Christmas and mostly to customers over age 50.

“They’re probably one of the best tasting nuts out there, but people aren’t really aware of that,” Koomf says. “The typical customer is 50 or 60 years old.”

Despite the aging of hickory’s fans, the future for the species may not be so bleak. New technological innovations have led to effective processing equipment, removing the most significant barrier to larger-scale production. But unless there are enough customers, the financial return on foraging will not warrant an investment in machinery, let alone spur a movement to plant trees.

Gary Paul Nabhan hopes to create the necessary demand. Nabhan is the driving force behind Reviving America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), a project dedicated to the protection of heritage foodstuffs. RAFT includes the hickory on its endangered foods list, along with heirloom apples, tomatoes, and breeds of livestock popular over a century ago. The organization sponsors events that allow chefs and consumers to sample these goods, on the principle that tasting is believing. RAFT’s efforts have been successful in convincing growers to invest in over 150 of the foods they champion, a victory that Nabhan describes as “huge.”

Nabhan is convinced that RAFT’s work holds hope for a hickory renaissance. And, indeed, adventurous chefs are beginning to showcase the rarities on their menus, exposing a new generation of eaters to their pleasures. At the West Town Tavern in Chicago, chef-owner Susan Goss creates elegant dishes that combine the nuts with other traditional American foods, like a salad with roasted hickories and maple vinaigrette, and pork shoulder with hickory-wild rice pilaf and a blackberry barbecue sauce.

“I like to feature hickory nuts in salads or as a garnish on meats or fish,” she says. Despite the traditional association with sweet foods, Goss prefers savory uses. “I don’t cook the nuts into cakes and pies; the delicate crunch and flavor comes out best when simply prepared.”

Other chefs use the nuts for entrees and desserts alike.

“Hickory nuts are worth searching for at the market because of their unique taste and aroma,” says Chef Tory Miller of Madison’s L’Etoile. He prepares these old-fashioned favorites for a wide range of uses by salting and toasting. “We always start by drizzling them with a tiny bit of vegetable oil and then a liberal dusting of kosher salt, then they go into the oven at 375 for about 6 minutes. Then they are free to be used in pies, crackers, as a topping for sundaes, in salads.”

Hickories are not an acquired taste – they share the sweetness of pecans, with a better crunch and a little more depth. They’re easy to like and easy to cook with, which bodes well for their advocates. If the RAFT activists and the committed foragers and chefs succeed in their mission, the nearly-forgotten nut might return to its place of honor on the American table. Search out these wildlings – in the fields on or the internet – and serve them with slices of heirloom apples and wedges of crumbly Vermont cheddar to experience a plate Thoreau might have eaten. Gustatory time-travel can be delicious.

Food Hacker

2011-06-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

Below you can find another early piece from my food writing class, a profile of food writer Ike DeLorenzo. What I didn't say: I found Ike's lightning-fast move from "I think I want to try food writing" to "I'm a regular at the Globe and the Atlantic" to be inspiring, intimidating and inducing of envy to the point of queasiness. In manner and looks, he reminded me of Rob Morrow, but I feared the instructor wouldn't know who Morrow was, so I didn't mention that. Also, Ike seemed really, really nice, like someone I would want to be friends with, except that he clearly had money. Quite a bit, I suspect. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to make friendships that bridge the ever-widening gap between income levels. With old friends, there can be enough history to fill the space. But new friendships just don't spring up between people who live in nice condos in the stylish part of town and people who live in rental apartments in the frumpy neighborhood. If the basis for the friendship would be a shared interest in food, the problem become even more complex. Food can be marvelously democratic - the best apples in the world can be purchased by all but the poorest - but five-star dining is simply not a possibility for most people. When your idea of an indulgent, celebratory restaurant meal is a $20 entree, how do you talk food to someone who considers that weeknight fare? It's a conundrum. Anyway, that's a huge topic I'm not going to delve into now, but do read about Ike. He's pretty cool.

The Food Hacker

Only three years ago, computer-geek-by-day, foodie-by-night Ike Delorenzo submitted his first story to the food pages of the Boston Globe. Today he is a regular contributor to the section, as well as to the online Atlantic Monthly Food Channel where he rubs virtual elbows with such culinary world luminaries as Corby Kummer and Marion Nestle. His meteoric rise reveals readers’ continuing hunger for fresh and unique voices: in his case, a gastronomical sensibility that owes as much to Silicon Valley as Napa Valley.

Former Vice President for Product Design at Genius.com and still employed as a consultant in the field, DeLorenzo incorporates technology into each step of the writing process. He utilizes digital cameras, recording devices, organizational software, and an automated transcription service to write his stories, then tracks his success through Twitter and Facebook. And when it comes to cooking, he continues to think like an software engineer.

“Food is the newest thing you can hack,” the writer declares.

For one of his most popular stories, De Lorenzo bought every espresso machine offered for sale on Craigslist for under $100. He then tested them with a range of beans and came to a surprising conclusion: freshly ground beans from the local coffee shops were not as good as the pre-ground Italian brands, and technique mattered more than equipment. With the right grind and the right skills, cheapo espresso makers could make a cup to match any barista.

It was a typical techie’s approach to a problem: lay out the possible factors, test them one by one, and let the conclusions fall where they may. The fact that the results were unexpected clearly delights DeLorenzo, who looks for the counter-intuitive when hunting down a story. When his mother’s Wesson-oil-based piecrust recipe won out over traditional lard and butter crusts in a Globe writer contest, he scored another point for evidence-based cookery.

“I like to find out about new, crazy ways to do stuff,” DeLorenzo says.

He is hardly the first foodie to treat the kitchen like a laboratory. Alton Brown and Christopher Kimball have built careers on nebbishly fastidious application of the scientific method. But this enthusiastic geek brings the methodical approach to culinary journalism, a field dominated by two poles: the warmly effusive and the comically wry. In contrast, his anything-goes hacker enthusiasm is tempered with Gen X skepticism about the food establishment. On his personal blog, The Ideas Section, he eviscerates sacred cows of the restaurant world, describing the clientele at LA Burdick’s, the wildly popular Cambridge chocolate shop, as “Harvard hangers-on” and “windbags.” He was unafraid to expose Yelp’s dubious practices around restaurant reviews and even challenged world-famous chef Marco Pierre White, taking him to task in the Atlantic for using his celebrity to hawk unhealthy and, worse, unappetizing products, like Knorr’s bouillon cubes.

“He would say things like ‘I always made bouillon with Knorr’s bouillon cubes. It’s easier and better than making homemade stock,’” DeLorenzo says with disgust. “Things that were manifestly false.”

DeLorenzo seems more offended by the offense to the public’s palate than to their blood pressure; he mentions the high salt content, but his real outrage is reserved for the poor flavor. For all his attachment to technology, he remains at heart a man who loves food. Fortunately, he has found a way to indulge both his passions.

“A lot of my stories have a technology thing, because that’s what I’m natively interested in. I think people bring their own native interests to food, because food is so big.”

Summer in May

2011-05-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

After weeks of grey, cold, and drizzle, Memorial Day weekend was sunny, hot and humid. Of course, window ACs were not yet installed, so we had to conquer the heat with low-tech methods.

I broke out the rocket pop molds, one of my most-used kitchen items during the summer months. Regular old store-bought popsicles are just sugar, water and food coloring: no flavor, no nutritional value, no point. Homemade are easy, fast and really worth the minimal effort. Starting with a very ripe banana is always a good idea, since it will usually give you enough sugar to ensure both sweet flavor and appropriate texture. I added some pineapple and a little pineapple juice, plus a couple spoonsful of coconut milk, whirred it all up until smooth, and then froze for four hours. Working prep time was five minutes. As you can see, these no-sugar-added treats were a hit with big and small alike. Score one for laziness.

Beyond basic black

2011-05-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

(This was my first submission in the food writing class I just finished. My instructor informed me in her final evaluation that it was a "snore" and made her fear I would be "competent, but dull." Fortunately, I improved over the course of the semester. But it does offer some useful information, and so here it is.)

Freshly ground black pepper is the culinary equivalent of the little black dress: always respectable, exceedingly useful, and as predictable as mill-wielding waiter at a white-cloth restaurant. Every roast or chop gets its rub; every plate of pasta is duly sprinkled. But peppercorns come in a rainbow of colors, each with a different personality, and even basic black offers more exotic variants.

This array of pepper choices can inspire new ways of seasoning. Add a fresh grind to foods traditionally finished with salt – roasted nuts, fries, crackers or popcorn. Quick bread favorites like biscuits and popovers gain sophistication with the addition of some spicy bite. A bit of fiery buckshot has a place at the dessert table too, offering its kick to a deeply spicy gingerbread, warm fruit compote, surprising and addictive lemon cookies, or in the classic Italian combination, to a dish of strawberries anointed with aged balsamic vinegar. Cooks who experiment with other options may discover a whole new wardrobe.

Black peppercorns are the dried, ripe berries of the Piper nigrum plant that most people are familiar with. Varieties are known by their place of origin: the unmarked bottles in the grocery store are generally the classic, bold Tellicherry, but adventurous cooks can also find Sarawak, Singapore or Malabar. These vary in complexity and heat level. Combining several in a grinder will provide a full spectrum of flavors, while using just one will highlight its particular personality. Some specialty merchants have started to offer peppercorns that have been smoked over hickory chips or in bourbon barrels, offering the possibility building layered flavors with a single ingredient.

White peppercorns are stripped of their dark skins and, with them, the characteristic taste of black pepper, revealing a nose-twisting musky aroma, as well as a powerful heat that fills the mouth with a slow-building burn. The French use tiny pinches of finely powdered kernels to give a hint of warmth to cream sauces like béchamel without marring their perfect whiteness, while other cuisines feature the spice front and center. Jamaican and Cajun spice blends both rely heavily on its characteristic intensity, combining it with cumin, cayenne and other spices to make aromatic and tongue-tingling blends. The most surprising use might be with nutmeg and allspice in a traditional English cake mixture.

Green peppercorns are the unripe berry, preserved by drying or brining. The dried version lacks much of the power and depth that ripening brings to its darker sibling, but does offer a clean, bright flavor in a softer shell that can be used whole. Preserved in brine, or rehydrated in water, wine or vermouth, these caper look-alikes can be used in many of the same ways as their doppelgangers: as the basis for sauces for poultry or rich-fleshed fish, such as mackerel, or in pork terrines or cheese spreads. Just a few atop a deviled egg add zing.

Pink peppercorns are not a true member of the pepper family, but their similar size and shape and their appealingly rosy hue make them the traditional partner of real peppercorns in glass-sided mills. Mild and just a bit sweet, this seasoning makes a marvelous infusion into vodka, producing a genteel cousin to the popular but brash chili pepper vodka. This blushing aperitif manages to be both demure and piquant, like the society doyenne who pairs her pearls with a leopard-skin cape. Some pastry chefs feature pinks in unusual desserts, such as meringues or compotes.

In the early days of the spice trade, Indonesian long pepper (sometimes called Javanese or Indian long pepper) was considered to be the same as true black pepper. In fact, these long pods come from the Piper longum plant, a close relative to Piper nigrum. Once found almost exclusively in Indian grocers, these fragrant treasures are now available atspecialty grocers and spice dealers. Resembling tight brown pinecones up to two inches long, these seed capsules need to be ground fresh. An ordinary table mill might not be up to the task, but an electric coffee grinder should yield a fine powder with a strong bite and a nearly floral scent. Try these in a pork rub or a lamb stew.

High on the Hog

2011-05-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Having just read Frederick Douglassm Opie's Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, I was afraid Jessica Harris' High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America was going to be a retreading of familiar material. I was pleasantly surprised. The two authors' styles are very different - while Opie tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to hold together personal reminiscences and academic history, Harris is a natural storyteller who uses the lives of black cooks, eaters, and entrepreneurs to enliven the larger cultural discussion of food and race. She brings to light nearly-forgotten figures who deserve to be widely known: the life of Hercules, George Washington's genius black cook, is just waiting to be turned into a novel or screenplay.

This book is a highly entertaining read, but I admit to wondering how accurate some of the material was. Harris chose not to include a professorial flurry of footnotes, which certainly keeps the book accessible, but also prevents it from carrying a certain authority. Popular history requires walking a very fine line - Harris generally does a good job, but might err a bit on the side of popularity. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, as the quantity of fabulous primary material she draws on tells its own story with clarity, and her lively prose will draw in any reader.

Pimento, otherwise known as allspice

2011-05-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

Last piece of culinary ephemera I picked up last weekend. The image here is lovely, one of a collectible series of cards featuring the spices sold by Bugbee and Brownell of Rhode Island. The company lasted less than a decade, closing in 1888, so that makes dating this pretty easy. I had no idea that pimento was ever used as a name for allspice, which is a pretty important thing to know if using old recipes.

More ephemera

2011-05-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

I like this because it encapsulates the romantic aura that developed around the idea of New England - even if the company using the name was based in Chicago. The region came to stand for honesty, traditionalism, Grandma, thriftiness and efficiency (that Yankee ingenuity!). That image remains in some ways - would the Vermont Teddy Bear Company have the same cachet if it were called the New Jersey Teddy Bear Company? I think not. But at the same time, New England is also thought of as the land of wild-eyed liberals, traffic jams, and bad clothing. Of course, both perceptions might be true....

Not exactly mother's bosom

2011-05-10T09:40:00.001-07:00

This is a somewhat morbid little piece of culinary ephemera I picked up at the Boston Book and Paper Expo this weekend. Those tubes the babies are sucking were known as infant-killers, and for good reason:

According to Valerie Fildes (1998), ‘it seems likely that the eradication of the long-tube feeding bottle was a major factor in the… fall in infant mortality'. Before 1900 a glass bottle with a long rubber tube attached was popular. The convenience of the tube was that the child could be left to suck unsupervised. The problem was that these tubes, and also the bottles, were difficult to clean. Accumulations of dirt and congealed residues were inevitable and it is no surprise that infections and deaths were much higher for babies fed with this method than with the newer, boat-shaped bottle, which had a rubber teat and was much easier to keep clean. Medical Officer of Health data indicate that tube bottles were used in about 78 per cent of cases of artificial feeding in 1904, where a child had died, falling to nil by 1925.

P.J. Atkins, "Mother’s milk and infant death in Britain, circa 1900-1940." Anthropology of Food, September 2, 2003.

Rox Star

2011-05-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

As a frail grey-haired gentleman slowly eases his way out of the booth, the waitress rushing past with a pot of coffee gently lays her hand on his shoulder, “Don’t hurry, dear,” she says. “Take all the time you need.” A toddler fusses at another table, and she offer the parents a bag of oyster crackers to keep him distracted. She fills a half-empty mug and delivers a hot plate of eggs and toast. Another morning at the Rox.

Located on a stretch of Centre Street in West Roxbury, where insurance agents and nail salons give way to bookstores, bakeries, and funky thrift shops, Rox Diner (formerly Auntie B’s) represents a curious blend of 1950s small-town and 2011 hipster locavorism. The waitresses, wearing t-shirts that read “I Was Born a Scrambling Man” or “Bread Zeppelin,” serve a clientele of families grabbing breakfast after Mass at Holy Name, aging bachelors socializing at the counter, and middle-aged ladies from the neighborhood fortifying themselves with gossip and a side of eggs Benedict. The regulars may not be aware that those eggs come from free-range hens in New Hampshire, that the beef is hormone-free and certified humane, that the bread is made at the esteemed Fornax Bakery. But the food tastes great, and so they return often.

All the morning standards are here, cooked with care: over-easies appropriately runny, bacon nicely crisped, orange juice freshly squeezed. More extravagant offerings include thick brioche French toast oozing with bananas and melted Nutella ($9.95) , blackberry, pecan and mascarpone pancakes ($9.95), and omelet with pear, goat cheese and avocado ($9.95).

The pancakes are especially well-executed, with the lightly crisped exterior that marks an exceptional flapjack. Specialty versions come with real maple syrup, but you have to request the good stuff with a basic stack ($4.95, plus a surcharge of $1.50 for the syrup). Unfortunately, Belgian waffles ($4.95) are not up to the same standard, too soft and floppy to merit the indulgence. Stuffed French toasts (stuffed $9.95, plain $7.50) are gloriously decadent, but the plain thick-cut brioche toast could stand a longer soak in the egg mixture. The center remains bready, rather than custard-like.

There are good options for the health-conscious, including the Juliana (named for a waitress’ daughter), a generous bowl of rich plain yogurt topped with ripe fresh fruit, granola, and a drizzle of honey, served with two eggs and toasted peasant bread ($9.95), and the health-nut French toast, made with multigrain bread nearly invisible under a deluge of pecans, blueberries, and bananas ($9.95).

Although the restaurant offers lunch, breakfast is draw here. On Thursdays it reopens for burger night, a favorite event with kids. The ground beef is certified humane and hormone-free, a full-flavored patty to be topped with standard options or some unusual ones, like smoked paprika mayo (basic burger, $6.25). Almost-too-thick-for-a-straw milkshakes and crisp onions rings can’t be beat.

The next time you’re in the mood for an all-American plate of eggs and bacon or a burger with the works, skip the chrome and neon flash of the mall diner chains and experience the real McCoy. Your maiden visit won’t be your last - and don’t be surprised if the waitresses say hello when you return. They’re like that.

Eating alone

2010-09-22T10:32:00.001-07:00

There's a bit of an online kerfuffle about a tumblr site called Table for One, which consists of nothing but photographs of people eating alone at restaurants Links have been posted to it from Metafilter and Andrew Sullivan both, and in both cases the posting has met with outrage. Most folks seem to feel that the site is mocking the people eating alone. It probably is, though it's hard to tell; no context is given. Maybe it's trying to give some sort of picture of 21st century loneliness? Who knows? Who cares? It's a pretty crappy site anyway; the photos are poor and in poor taste, given that the subjects clearly don't know they're being photographed.

The response to the site, however, is rather interesting. About half of the people who have commented on it seem to feel sorry for the people in the photographs and want to spare them further embarrassment. The other half don't see what the big deal is about about eating alone - particularly if they have a book.

Ah, yes, the book. I have eaten out along many, many times with a book. I worked as a temp in New York for a long time, and temps eat alone. But there is a huge difference between the lunchtime pizza with book in hand and actually dining out alone. The former is commonplace, but the latter can be scary. I suggest everyone try it - and don't bring a book.

One of the best scenes in the very food-aware movie Moonstruck comes when Olympia Dukakis's character, left alone for the evening while her husband is out with his mistress and her daughter with a new love interest, goes out to dinner alone at the local white-cloth restaurant. The waiter comes to greet her by name; she is known here. He asks whether anyone will be joining her. No, she replies, "I want to eat."

And she does. She orders a proper meal for herself, with a soup to start and a nice Martini. She doesn't pull out a book and hide in it. She looks around the restaurant. She watches people. She is completely and utterly self-possessed.

Many women of a certain age, having spent their lives cooking for others, are so relieved to have a night off from the obligations of the stove they would gladly eat cold leftovers standing in front of the fridge. That Dukakis's character chooses to go out and have herself a real dinner instead gives us enormous insight into the woman - she believes in doing things properly; she is sure of herself. As she tells us later in the film, she knows who she is.

I did quite a bit of business travel for one short period of my life. For a couple months, I ate endless subs and pizza slices and salads in plastic clamshell boxes. One night, unable to face another Formica tabletop or florescent light, I walked into the nicest restaurant I could find. I sat at my table for one near a roaring fire. I ordered a gin martini and a rare steak. I did have a book with me - a blank one. Now and again, I wrote in it. I got dessert and coffee. I lingered. It was a lovely evening, and I came away feeling like I had crossed some milestone of adulthood. I highly recommend the experience. It was as luxurious and self-indulgent as a massage, but more bracing.

Another reason to love New Orleans

2010-05-21T08:01:00.001-07:00

A grocery store/bakery offers satire in sugar.

Great news! Well, maybe...

2010-04-02T06:56:00.001-07:00

You gotta love the maple syrup folks for trying.

Pure Maple Syrup Contains Medicinally Beneficial Compounds, Pharmacy Researcher Finds

Of course, the story is a little less exciting than the headline. Maple sap contains these compounds (antioxidants, etc.) at really, really low levels. So next they're going to see if maybe boiling down to syrup concentrates them to the point where they're actually useful. They hope so, because after all, syrup comes from trees, and trees are plants, and plants are just chockful of healthy goodness:

"We know that plants must have strong anti-oxidant mechanisms because they are in the sun throughout their lives," Seeram said. "We already know that berries, because of their bright colors, are high in anti-oxidants.Now we are looking at maple syrup, which comes from the sap located just inside the bark, which is constantly exposed to the sun."

Oh, please.

I love maple syrup. It's a crop that is grown without chemicals (as compared to the astonishingly toxic array used on sugar cane) and over with minimal environmental damage. It's an industry with a backbone of small producers. Most importantly, it's delicious. I think that should be enough.

Quick sauce

2010-03-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

We had nothing in the house last night, and yet, a dinner emerged! I'm estimated quantities here, but I think this is a pretty good pasta sauce dependent almost solely on pantry items:

1 T olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large jarred roasted red peppers, diced
1 T tomato paste
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup light cream

Cook garlic in olive oil for about two minutes on medium. Add the peppers and tomato paste and cooked about five minutes. Add the paprika and cook another 2 minutes. Add the chicken broth and cook until reduced to a fairly thick sauce (about five minutes). Add the cream and reduce again (about five minutes). Salt and pepper rather generously. Serve on pasta, of course.

Yet another reason

2010-02-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

to know who grows your food.

Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food

Shudder.

America Eats

2009-10-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA - the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define

The growing interest in local food systems combined with the economic downturn makes for a good climate for books about American food of the Depression period. The rationing of World War II was followed by the transfer of wartime technologies for food preservation to the general marketplace, changing American food forever from a patchwork of regional cuisines to a national diet based on chain restaurants, frozen and canned food and, above all, homogeneity. The Depression period, for all the limitations that poverty brought to the tables of most Americans, can seem now like the last hurrah of real food.

So it’s a great time for the release of two new books about WPA food writing, a nearly-forgotten part of the great cultural projects of the New Deal. Though writers and editors were engaged to create a national guide to American food, the project was never completed and the writing produced never published, until this year. I haven’t read Mark Kulansky’s book The Food of Younger Land, which outlines the history of the project and then includes selections from the archive, focusing on writing from major authors like Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston. Pat Willards’s America Eats: On the Road with the WPA takes a somewhat different approach, interlacing excerpts from the original WPA pieces with her own reporting from church dinners, harvest festivals, and other food-centered gatherings that have continued from WPA days.

This is a somewhat disorderly, frustrating book, which may result from the sheer variety of material Willard includes. The writing that was done for the WPA project spanned a range of styles, from journalistic reports to sentimental sketches to fictionalized accounts. The quality of the writing is a varied as the style. Among the best Willard included are a sensitive short story from Iola Thomas of the Iowa office about a threshers’ dinner and a description of the conch-eaters of the Florida Keys by Stetson Kennedy. Some of the other selections tend toward the twee, in some cases condescending to the subjects to a degree that is deeply off-putting.

Willard’s prose is clean and straightforward and her interest in American food and cultural tradition seems genuine. Some of the limitations of the book seem a direct result of the limitations of the primary material. Some regions were neglected in the original project; many arbitrary decisions were made about which immigrant foods were to be included and which were not “American enough;” cities other than New York were completely neglected. Willard, in following in the footsteps of the project, is forced into some of the same limitations, and she acknowledges them. But perhaps the greatest limitation, one which Willard references only briefly, is the focus on food events, rather than broader food traditions. We hear about the fairs and festivals, church suppers, political dinners and funeral feasts, but not about daily home cooking or, for that matter, professional cooking done in small eateries. This would not be a problem if Willard didn’t try to make larger claims for the meaning of the decline of these events in terms of larger culinary and social history. When trying to discuss these issues, particularly in the final chapter, Willard is weak, making poorly-supported assertions and moving on quickly without any depth of analysis. She lacks the subtle sensitivity for regional food evidence by a writer like John Thorne and the scholarly comprehensiveness of someone like Waverly Root. But she has skill at drawing a scene. I very much enjoyed her portrait of the Basque Sheepherders Ball, the funeral feast of the Choctaw Indians, and the Mexican coaches of South Sixth Avenue in Tucson.

In trying to find and report upon the closest equivalents to events described in the original WPA pieces, Willard also fails to look at newly developing food traditions. The resurgence in interest in local foods has lead to new celebrations of regional specialties. In my part of the country, there are maple syrup days, cheese festivals, harvest fairs and homebrewer competitions that may be recent in origin (some dating to the first “back to the earth” gatherings of the seventies, others part of the most recent local food revival), but are nonetheless authentic inheritors of the spirit of those festivals of the 1930s, social events truly centered on a shared love of good food. By ignoring new traditions, Willard paints an incomplete picture of the current state of American food and its place in community life.

Overall, the book may not provide a lot of insight into the changes in America’s food culture, but it is enjoyable as a kind of scrapbook of American food celebrations of the Depression and today.

Quick post - quick side dish

2009-09-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

I don't even have a picture. But I wanted to remember a side dish I pulled together the other night, because I found myself wishing there were more of it left over, even though at the time it didn't seem particularly special. Maybe it's not, but it's good nonetheless, and easy and fast and made up of stuff I almost always have on hand. The proportions here are approximate, I didn't measure:

Carrot-Orange Salad
About 3 cups of shredded carrots
One heaping tablespoon of mayo
One heaping tablespoon Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 canned mandarin oranges, drained well
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder

Blend mayo, yogurt, juice and cumin powder. If you are serving right away and don't plan to have leftovers, just mix in the rest of the ingredients. If you want a salad that will stand up, you should salt the carrots lightly and let them sit for at least a half-hour. Then come back, rinse off the salt and squeeze the carrots until they give up some of their excess juice. That way, they won't give off juice while sitting in the dressing, making it watery. Also, if you only have regular, thinner yogurt, you might cut back on the orange juice to just a 1/2 tablespoon.

The cumin gives a nice smoky edge to the simple carrot-orange sweetness, and of course there's the creamy-tangy aspect to the dressing. This is a very easy-going salad that would complement many other dishes. You could, of course, use segmented oranges instead of mandarin, but that's adding time and effort. And personally, canned mandarin oranges are a guilty pleasure, a weakness of mine. They're also good for the husband with Crohn's, since all the fibrous stuff is removed completely.

On a food imagery kick

2009-08-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

And I'm loving these posters, the United Plates of America, each one depicting a particular state map as a food item. Check out Massachusetts as calamari, Vermont as a carrot and (just to expand our horizons here), Michigan as bacon and eggs.

Of course, I would really have loved these if each state were represented by one of its more characteristic foodstuffs, but still very cool.

Great article

2009-08-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

This was really well done.

Contemporary Victory Garden Propaganda

2009-08-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

These posters are great.

The Haymarket: Strategies for a Recession

2009-07-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the suburbs, not in Boston, so I didn't go to the Haymarket until I was about ten or twelve or so. But I knew about it, because my father's job would take him into the city some days, and if he were there on a Friday or Saturday, he would come home with bags and bags of produce. I always loved fruit, so this was a treat, because he would buy things he didn't buy at the regular supermarket, like plums and cherries and black grapes.

The first time I saw the place in person made quite an impression, though. In high school I participated in a writing contest, and for the creative portion I submitted a piece about feeling agoraphobic at the market. It's still a rather disorienting place to be: far more people than space; sometimes overwhelming smells, particularly on hot days; lots of shouting. But it's been a big part of my food-buying life since I moved to the city, and I have great affection for its somewhat rough charms.

For those of you who don't know about Haymarket, let's first clarify what it is not. It's not a farmers' market. The guys who sell produce there are certainly not farmers. It might better be described a sort of outdoor fruit and vegetable outlet store, a last chance discount center for overstocked, aging produce.

The Haymarket has a long history, having started in the 1830s as an area of produce vendors selling from horsecarts. Now the vendors set up tents in U-shaped area about two city blocks long on Fridays and Saturday and sell produce they buy at the Chelsea wholesale market on the cheap before the new shipments come in for the new week. The prices are unbelievable. The quality is, to say the least, mixed.

Culturally, shopping the Haymarket is a authentic Boston experience. The vendors are mostly from Italian families who have owned their stands for generations. A few Asian families have gotten in on the act, too, which is nice. The clientele is far more diverse. There are lots of old Italian women from the North End, students on budgets, slow-walking tourists getting in everyone's way, and many, many recent immigrants from all over. I once heard a vendor tell his buddy, in a thick Boston accent, that he could name vegetables and count to ten in 15 languages. He didn't mention the number of languages he could swear in, but I bet it was impressive. The vendors can be rude or at least brusque, but if you smile and are polite, generally they're fine, and they might just call you sweetheart, which I always like.

But what about the goods? I go to Haymarket primarily when there are no local options (dead of winter), so I would be buying supermarket produce anyway, or when I need stuff that isn't possible to get locally, like limes and pineapples. This miserable, rainy, busy, exhausting pregnant summer, though, I've been going far more often. I'm not the only one. It's been crazy-crowded at the market since last fall, when the recession started to really hit a lot of people hard. But if you're going to get the most out of it, I suggest a few strategies:

1) Go early in the morning - preferrably on Friday, but early Saturday is better than late. The produce won't have sat out in the sun all day, so it will be fresher, and there won't be so many of the aforementioned slow-moving tourists.

2) Bring your own bags. Don't be a jerk and bring a shopping cart. Everyone will hate you. Just bring a bunch of tote bags, because you will buy more than you mean to, and carrying a bunch of heavy bags on your shoulder will be more comfortable than carrying a bunch of heavy bags in your hands. If you can find someone to come with you, do it - then you can get a watermelon.

3) Don't touch the produce unless the vendor tells you it's okay. Some things you can just pick up, like a pineapple or the top bunch of leeks. But the soft, delicate stuff, which unfortunately is just the stuff you would probably want to pick out yourself, is strictly off-limits. Is this a tactic to pawn off crappy produce on you? Yes, sometimes. But it's also reasonable - if every customer was allow to paw through the displays picking the perfect figs or tomatoes, everything would be bruised within an hour.

4) Expect rot. Have I mentioned that you will be paying a pittance? I used to say that you had to expect to throw away about 1/3 of what you bought here. Now, I would say I throw away less than a 1/4 (see strategy 6 - what to buy), but I still go through the bags when I get home and immediately toss anything that looks bad - one bad apple and all that. Also, if you're buying something that's likely to be delicate, plan on using it that day - don't even think about buying raspberries on Friday for a dessert Monday.

5) Take a walk through the market first. Sometimes only one vendor will have something you want, sometimes prices vary from stand to stand, quality almost always does. Walk through, then buy on your way back.

6) There are things you should buy here, and things you should not.

Great choices:

Limes. Standardly 8 or 10 for a dollar, usually in great shape. Lately they've been selling whole boxes for $2.50 - I'm guessing that's about 50 limes worth. If you're feeling ambitious, it would be smart to buy, juice and freeze in ice cube trays.

Lemons. Not quite as cheap or reliable as limes, but still cheaper than the supermarket.

Cherries and plums. My dad's favorites are very cheap here compared to supermarkets, and generally the quality is good, although sometimes the plums can be soft. I have been buying two two-pound bags of Bing cherries each week for about a month now, and have yet to get a bag that wasn't close to perfect, every last cherry. I will switch off to local plums once I see them at the farmers' market, but until then I'm stocking up here.

Bananas. My husband has all sorts of medical limitations on his fruit consumption, but he can have all the bananas he wants. I got a lovely bunch of about ten large bananas for a dollar this weekend.

Watermelon. Another fruit that can be hard to find at the farmers' market, and I have a hard time getting through summer without it. The little "personal-sized" ones have more edible area than you might think, because the rind is so thin, and they're easy to carry home.

Ginger. No local option, always cheap here and almost always of good quality.

Some things are generally okay and well-priced, so if your other choice is the supermarket, not a farmers' market, no reason not to save money on fennel, peppers, leeks, carrots, cabbage and other fairly long-storing basics.

Be careful, but consider looking for:

Tropical and Asian fruits and vegetables. The range of tropical fruits and vegetables has definitely increased in recent years, but the quality is questionable. Pineapples are usually a good bet, but a week ago, every pineapple I saw was rotten to the core (which was why they were selling for 50 cents). Sometimes you can get great mangoes; sometimes the mangoes look good, but inside they're rotten. But they generally have two types of papaya, and often you can find lychees, jicama, ripe platains and other things you might not be able to get at your standard supermarket.

Figs in season. I love figs, but only the most doting and devoted Portugese and Italian gardeners are able to nurse a tree through a New England winter. In supermarkets, the price is prohibitive, but figs at the Haymarket can be very reasonable. They can also be moldy, especially if you buy a little pint pack. Pick a weekend when you'll have company on Saturday, and go for broke with a whole case for 7 or 8 dollars. Eat them immediately.

Herbs. Generally, I would rather pick up dill, parsley, mint and so on at the farmers' market, but in the off-season, herbs are much cheaper at Haymarket.

Proceed with caution - or maybe just skip altogether:

Berries. I often give in for convenience if I'm there already, but the raspberries and blackberries will always be rotten. Strawberries are a mixed bag, but they will taste like supermarket strawberries even on the best of days. Blueberries are okay, and hard to come by at the farmers' market, probably your best bet.

Garlic. All they ever seem to have are those six-packs of garlic in the net bags. The garlic is always either dried or sprouting. Don't bother.

Bags of salad greens. Look, these are of questionable safety from the supermarket, let alone from a tent that sits in the sun for hours. It can be quite exciting to see a pillow-sized $3 bag of organic mesclun mix at Haymarket, where once organics were unknown, but the bottom half of the bag will be black mush. In season, you can get far better salad greens at the farmers' market. Off-season, the supermarket is still a better choice.

Pears. I don't really eat pears out of season; they just don't have the perfume and flavor of a real pear (rarely do I eat apples out of season, either, though sometimes I cook with them). The widely available commercial pears tend to rot from the inside out, making appearances deceiving. Get your pears from an orchard in the fall, and then forget about them until next year, or splurge on Harry and David of you're rich (and if so, why are you reading this?)

Potatoes. I don't know why the potatoes are so often bad. But they are. Again, farmers' market first, then supermarket.

Good luck. In this economy, we all need all the help we can get. A cheap bag of limes is a nice place to start.

New Orleans, again

2009-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

So my husband and I took a sort of belated long honeymoon (as compared to the short honeymoon we took after the wedding) to New Orleans. Basically, this was a huge excuse to ignore my pregnancy diet for a week and eat marvelously unhealthy things. Note I didn't go off the wagon completely - some fruit smoothies, cereal, and salads here and there kept me in vitamins and fiber, and I drank oceans of water, pulling my eyes away from the cocktail lists with a defeated whimper.

Notes and observations:

I never get tired of beignets. I could eat them every day. Of course, I would be enormous.

The best fried chicken I ever tasted was at Coop's. I have to work on my fried chicken technique.

Even the places that seem crappy are pretty good. At one point we needed to find a place to sit and eat in mid-afternoon, just because I got suddenly terribly hungry, the way the pregnant do, and it was hot, and I needed to sit down. We walked into the first restaurant we saw. It looked okay, but probably a bit touristy. Whatever- I had a fabulous plate of crawfish cakes and my husband had a huge and delicious muffuletta. The worst place we ate was a pub near the hotel, where we stopped for just a bite mid-afternoon, late enough that we were concerned about ruining dinner. We ordered three side dishes: mac and cheese, alligator sausage and jambalaya. The mac and cheese was pretty bad, the jambalaya just okay, and the alligator sausage pretty good. But the fellow served everyone out, making a plate each for my husband and myself, and after I downed two or three glasses of soda water, he brought me one in a to-go cup to take with me - without my asking.

I often find it's the little things I eat that stick in my mind the most, more than the meals. There was a woman selling fresh-squeezed fruit juices at the farmer's market - non-standard flavors, like watermelon lime. Mine was delicious.

Club soda with two types of bitters is better than club soda with only one. New England lacks bitters options.

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum is still a work in progress and comes off as a bit thin and probably underfunded. That said, it's got a lot of potential and it makes for an entertaining and very affordable hour or so.

My dream job would be curating a museum like that for New England.

Mandina's has the best fried oysters I've tasted.

I deeply appreciate the waitress there sending us up the block to Brocato's for ice cream, even when I was clearly going to order dessert at Mandina's until she recommended the gelato. That's putting customer service above self-interest, a rare virtue.

I had a scoop each of pistachio and gianduja. Awesome.

The bread is the secret to the po-boy's superiority over the standard sub.

The bacon brownie is interesting and good, but not exactly as delicious as I want it to be. But the Thai chili chocolate chess pie is, indeed, all that. AS were the smoked scallops.

It's hard to eat as much as you want when it's humid and over 90 degrees. That may be what keeps people in New Orleans from all being morbidly obese - no one can bring themselves to eat before sundown.

Also, tourism can get in the way of eating. Sometimes the things you want to see and the things you want to eat are not located right next to each other. This presents an unfortunate dilemma.

Someone noticed!

2009-05-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Headline in today's New York Times:

Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers

Yup. And they've been doing it more and more for years. Basically, food companies think that there's nothing inherently wrong with selling something that is contaminated as long as they tell you to cook the heck out of it first. And if you don't, that's your problem. It's just too bad that meat cooked as long as necessary to make it "safe" is tough and flavorless. Sorry that homemade mayonnaise is a completely different animal from the stuff in the jar - you'd better not make the good stuff, because we're just assuming you're planning to hard-boil those eggs into safety, so we're going to keep raising chickens in their own feces. It's all on you! Foolish consumer, not using your thermometer - didn't we tell you to always use a thermometer? I'm trying to imagine how one would use a thermometer on, say, the half-inch thick preformed hamburger patties so many people seem to throw on the grill. The New York Times wasn't even able to get the chicken pot pies they were testing to the right temperature without burning them.

I can tell you that from my explorations of the academic literature on food safety, the presumption that food safety is primarily a consumer preparation issue and not a production issue runs very, very deep. So deep, in fact, that I am just pleased as punch that the Times was actually able to see it; it is rare to see past the things we take for granted. But maybe, just maybe, after the salmonella in peanut butter and the contaminated pet food from China and the swine flu and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the contaminated tomatoes-whoops-we-mean-jalapenos, people are starting to realize that our food system is not really working. It's about time.

Overall, pregnancy?

2009-05-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

Not conducive to exciting culinary adventures. First there's the nausea. Fortunately, that has faded in the second trimester, but the exhaustion that makes tossing a salad seem like awful lot of work? That's still with me. So meals have been rather uninspired of late.

Instead, I'm reading about food. One of my favorite things about the end of the school year has always been regaining the freedom to read what I wish. Even in my current program - I enjoy the readings, I even want to read more about what I'm studying, but there's no time. Onward to the next week's lecture, the next assignment. Then, finals are over, and the books I've stacked up through the cold months can be browsed at my leisure. When I was a kid, I would go to the library and get armloads; now I've already got armloads in the house. But the exquisite pleasure of literary liberty remains.

I started off with the surprisingly good Apples to Oysters:

I've read more books than I like to admit that profile farmers and farms. Sadly, they're usually pretty boring. The earnestness tends to be exhausting, for one thing, and the farms tend to be boringly similar - organic, diverse, direct sales at farmers' markets, the sort of farms that interest the sort of people that buy these books. But Webb focuses on a diverse group of specific products - apples, oysters, scallops, ice wine, seaweed, and pastured pork, among others - grown in alternative ways by seriously dedicated farmers/fishermen/vintners/etc. in Canada. The profile of each business gives a good introduction to both the dominant method of production and the alternative the producer has chosen. She understands well how production choices lead to every other decision that follows, from marketing to lifestyle. There are damn good reasons more people don't try to buck the established food system. But we should be grateful for those who do, because these are the foods that retain a flavor of place. One thing I've enjoyed about buying food from local producers has been the absolute pride they show in their products, and that sense of investment comes through in the words of those Webb interviews.

Webb grew up on a family farm that has begun the common process of disintegration, and she reveals the details of her family's story throughout the book, revealing another aspect of the story of agriculture and fisheries in Canada. She's less sentimental, however, than Jane Brox, whose three books about her family's farm in Massachusetts have become classics of the genre. Webb might simultaneously be more optimistic than Brox, too. Her exploration of alternative farms seems to have left her hopeful that at least some part of the future may lie there. Maybe - if people are willing to pay more for better quality food that is produced in a sustainable way. I cross my fingers.

Tired of the snark

2009-03-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Michelle Obama sets an example for the country in planting a garden on the White House lawn, and what do we hear? Nothing but snark. First the people complaining that she was overdressed for the occasion. I saw comments on news article about the garden that complained that the chickens and the laundry line had to be coming next, because the trash had move in. Nice. (I bought a laundry line last year, and I would love chickens. So color me trashy.) Of course, on the other side, one of the women on Slate's XX Factor had to complain that growing your own food was elitist. (Tell it to the Italian, Latino, Asian and Portugese immigrants in Somerville, MA, who stuff every inch of their tiny yards with eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and greens, and grow grapes in hand-built arbors over their driveways - they wouldn't waste their money on pansies at Walmart's. Annuals, no less! Her "most people" is so clearly "the suburbanites that live around me.") Slate is on a roll with this one - today, they've added an article about how expensive gardening is - that tomato is NOT free! It's not even cheap!

I love this argument, because it just shows how much people take for granted. This woman actually argued that you might need a $3,000 irrigation system to keep your plants watered during your two-week vacation. Honey, I make a good living, and I haven't had a two week vacation since I graduated college. And some people have these things called "neighbors" or "friends" who might be willing to give your plants a water, assuming there's no rain during the two weeks you're lucky enough to be in Boca. Or on Lake Winnipesaukee, whatever.

Sure, you have to spend money on a garden. First, you need a hoe, a spade, a hand trowel, a pair of gloves, and ideally a pair of clippers, plus a hose. Of course, these things will last you approximately the rest of your life if you take care of them (except the gardening gloves, you will have to replace those - that's going to run you SEVERAL dollars). And none is exactly expensive - we're talking a whopping $50 investment here, total, assuming you can't buy them used at a garage sale or something. Then there's seed. I bought a lot of seed this year. Pinetree Garden Seeds sells smaller packages than most companies, so you can get more variety for less money. I went crazy and spent almost 15 dollars. I have enough seed to last a few years, even if I don't save seed from the plants, which, of course, I could. People have done been doing that as long as they've been growing things on purpose. Just don't buy hybrids, and you're good.

Okay, so now you're out $50 for tools and $15 for seed. What else? A fence? Sure, in some areas where deer and so on are a serious problem, this is a legitimate expense. But in many urban and suburban areas, a fence is hardly required. Some people have one anyone, for the sake of the kids, the dog, the property line, and so on. But a lot of the other stuff people bring up when they want to emphasize the price of gardening is bunk. Really. It's the habit of thinking about everything in terms of shopping. Pots? Not necessary. Pretty, but there are many, many containers that can serve as plant holders. Check your basement, the curb on trash day, the town dump. Starter pots? Even stupider. Try the yogurt containers in your recycling bin, or the paper cup you were going to throw out. Fertilizer? Compost is free. Coffee grounds are really good. Mulch? Please don't buy mulch. The best mulch around is rotted ground leaves - if you have or can borrow a lawnmower, you can push it back and forth over the leaves a few times, then put a nice thick layer over the garden in the fall. Straw is pretty cheap, if you're buying mulch. And pesticides? Please. My grandparents had a fantastic garden. The two big "pesticides" they used were 1) soapy water in a spray bottle for aphids and 2) little cardboard rings they taped around the bottom of the tomato plants. The best pesticide is the right plant in the right place, plus a good dose of not caring if one crop doesn't work out this year. Plant a lot of things, and you'll figure out what works for your soil and sun conditions. Oh, and you know where you can learn about gardening? Free at the library or on the internet.

I know not everyone can have a garden. I've been a renter my whole life, and I've only been able to have a garden in two of my many, many apartments. But this whole "gardening is for elite yuppie types" is just crazy. I have a friend who is a painter. For years and years he lived illegally in his studio, showering at the Y next door. He had a plot in a community garden and grew his own produce in summer. He made pickles in his girlfriend's kitchen and was able to eat some food from his garden all winter. There is no way that man was an elitist - and there was no way that garden didn't save him money. I have a friend with four kids who buys no vegetables at the store from late June to early October. Her garden explodes with great produce - and she doesn't spend money on pesticides. In addition to the produce that fed them, and us, through the summer season, my grandparents had a deep-freeze full of beans and peas and carrots. Freezing is not some arcane art; mostly you dunk vegetable in boiling water for a minute, then you, well, freeze them. I can't imagine how much all of that produce would have cost them. And as for the argument that "your time is money"? Bull. Your time is only money if someone is going to pay you for it. If you run home early from your hourly wage job to work in your garden, your garden costs money. If you work in the garden instead of watching TV, your time hasn't cost you anything. If you work in the garden instead of going to a gym, your garden saved you money.

Sometimes I think people just enjoy being contrarian. Screw 'em, Michelle - I love the garden. Gardening is for people who want some self-sufficiency. A garden will give you good food, good exercise, and a respect for the work farmers do. A garden gets you outside where you can meet the neighbors. A garden gives children an opportunity to learn some biology and some patience - and most kids will eat carrots they grew themselves. A garden gives you an increased connection to the seasons and the weather that can be deeply meaningful in a culture where we are so terribly divorced from the natural world. Gardens are good. The White House garden is a nice example for the American people. Let's drop the snark, okay?

Okay, I'm eight.

2009-02-09T13:23:00.001-08:00

But I find it hilarious that among the products involved in the FDA peanut recall are: Chicken Coop Poop, Cow Patties, Cow Pies, Deer Droppings, Bear Scat, Prairie Dog Pebbles, and Moose Droppings. I knew this whole trend of naming little chocolate candies after excrement was a bad idea.

Fry your leftovers

2009-02-09T11:11:00.000-08:00

Croquettes used to get fair representation in cookbooks. Chicken or turkey croquettes were a standard, ham was pretty common, and then there were the starch-based croquettes - rice, pasta and so on. (Except that back then, pasta was called macaroni.)

The primary driver for making croquettes was using up leftovers, something older cookbooks understood to be an elemental aspect of homecooking. Today's cookbooks are aimed less at people who intend to produce most or all of their meals at home and more at people who indulge in a cooking hobby on the weekends, while buying readymade meals or eating out during the week. Why plan for leftovers?

But as the economy declines, we will be returning to leftovers, whether we like it or not. Of course, reheating is fine for lots of things - no need to fuss with a leftover soup or chili, that's just getting better with age. But some things lose their appeal on the second or third showing.

Making croquettes is easy and the end product is delicious. But everything has its drawbacks - frying your leftovers does not improve your meal's nutritional profile. Moderation is key, and a small serving of croquettes can make a decent meal in themselves with just a nice leafy green salad or bowl of light soup on the side. Have fruit for dessert, and you can afford a little pan-frying.

The basic method for making croquettes is to mix up a rather thick white sauce (simple form - butter, flour, milk or stock), and use that to bind together the chopped meat, vegetables, rice or what have you. Odds and ends can be mixed in if you like (a bit of ham, cheese, some fresh parsley, scallion, that little bit of corn that wasn't finished up at dinner) just chop everything fairly small. Chill the mix until cold, then form into small balls or patties or oblongs and roll in bread crumbs. Chill again for at least an hour, and then fry until lightly browned. I don't deep-fry, I just put about half an inch of olive oil (not extra-virgin) in a cast iron skillet, and have at it.

If your base material is already fairly moist, like a risotto, you don't actually need the white sauce. An egg may be enough binder. Do use the bread crumbs, though, which will keep things from sticking to the pan.

Farmers and poets

2009-02-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

An interesting question from the Guardian: where are the farmer-poets today? I think the simple answer is that there aren't many. (Wendell Berry, of course, but who else?) There are few poets in the world, and now there are few farmers, too. And I doubt many of the people running concentrated animal feed operations are waxing poetic at the end of the day.

A new CSA

2009-01-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

Community Supported Agriculture programs have really taken off in the past few years, at least in the Boston area. Where once there were just a few CSAs to choose from, now there are many. Some require labor, others deliver. Some offer just vegetables, some vegetable and fruit, some even include dairy or meat. In fact, there are all-meat CSAs. There are winter CSAs. And now, there's even a yarn CSA.

Food tourism

2009-01-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

I have to confess something fairly shameful for a foodnik - I'm not all that excited about restaurants. Of course, I like a nice meal out, particularly the sort of meal that takes a lot of work at home. If I'm going to eat out, I want multiple courses, wine, dessert, coffee. I want to spend a couple hours eating things that need last-minute preparations while I sit lazily on my duff and let someone else do the dishes. And, let's face it, I can't touch the best food in a really good restaurant.

But generally, I can't afford that sort of meal out. And middle-of-the-road restaurants are a much more hit-or-miss affair. Sometimes I get lucky and find a dish that I might remember for years. But more often, I just think about how much it would have costs to make the stuff at home - or, if I'm in a different mood, think how glad I am that I don't have to cooks and damn the money. But overall I'm a home cook, and I'm more interested in home cooking than restaurant cooking - how people do it, what they eat, and so on. I'm more likely to buy books for home cooks from 1910 than I am to buy a restaurant cookbook.

So when I travel, what I really want are ingredients. I want to find out that there's some sort of local dried bean or locally grown and ground flour or what have you. I want markets and smokehouses and farm stands, even bakeries, but not necessarily restaurants (although of course I want those, too, just not as lustfully). But I find this information much harder to come by. If you want to find a high-end restaurant or the best dive in town, there are websites for that, but it's very hard to find out about food shopping (except for the high-end chocolates places that always seem to get a mention in shopping guides). Anyway, off to Montreal this weekend. There at least I know to head to Jean Talon, and we'll see where else I end up. Probably in a pub by a fireplace and nowhere else - it's supposed to be -20.

Not the most offensive choice of the Bush years by a long shot

2009-01-08T06:39:00.001-08:00

but still, damn, are the new White House china patterns ugly.

What is it with the White House china? They seem to update the patterns every twenty years or so, which means Jackie Kennedy left no record of her impeccable taste, and Hillary didn't have a go either. Of course Nancy went with the big bold red set - rather nice, actually, if you could just get rid of the gold seal in the center of the plate. Lady Bird picked out something really oddly frilly and old-ladyish for a state dinner. The eagle on those plates could pass for a barn swallow, and one half-expects some sort of garden-inspired inspirational phrase to be written around the outside edge: maybe "Thyme for God, thyme for prayer." Roosevelt's plates are very dignified and understated, the seal small located, for once, at the top on the plate, which seems better than covered with gravy in the center.

ERRATA: Turns out, as Michael comments below, the Clintons DID pick a china. I put together a news report that mentioned that not every first lady does get new china with that page I linked to above and assumed that the page showed all the presidential china. It did not.
Hillary's choice is here. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that pattern. It's interesting, which is a plus. I hate the White House image in the middle of the plate - as may be obvious, I'm not exactly crazy about stuff in the middle of the plate. And using an image of the White House itself seems awfully literal. But the rest of the pattern, that softly colored but elaborate design on the rim, seems, again, non-presidential. It's more tasteful than LadyBird's choice, but seems to err in the same direction. I would love to see this plate (minus the White House) on a long mahogany dining table set with white linen at a big elegant old inn on the coast of Maine. State dinner, not so much.

And did you know (I did not!) that china was long the exception to the rule that only American-made furnishings were to be used in the White House. American china was just considered too obviously inferior. Then Lenox came along, and Wilson used their china, the first American-made china to be used in the White House. They've produced china patterns for six presidents.

Oh, and that other resolution

2009-01-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

Like seemingly every other person on the planet, I'm also resolving to lose weight. Sigh. I resolve this every year. Usually I do lose a bit of weight, exercise more, eat better/eat less, and then I get busy or it gets hot out (I wilt in the heat), and suddenly I notice it's been a fe3w months since I actually exercised, and oh, yeah, I've put those ten pounds back on.

Really, it's not good.

I don't "diet" - not what the nutritionists mean by diet anyway. I don't hold myself to a strictly limited calorie level or cut out whole categories of food or anything. I take the right steps, the reasonable, moderate, lifestyle-altering steps everyone talks about as the good and proper way to make long-term changes to your weight. I do, and then somehow I don't, and I'm back where I started. Or I keep them, and it doesn't matter any more. Ah, yes, I remember well the switch years ago to lower fat milk, or last summer when I stopped putting sugar on my oatmeal or in my coffee, or when I switched to lean, grass-fed beef. Those seemed like important steps at the time, and I lost weight each time. But now I'm as heavy as I ever was.

Also, losing weight? SO much harder than it used to be. Once upon a time, I could lose weight be deciding to, essentially. I would decide, and make a few changes to my eating patterns, move a little more, and off the weight would come. Now, every pound has to be hard-won, and then it's lost so easily. Or hard-lost and then won so easily.

When I happen to be home during the daytime and I'm feeling sick or down, I indulge in British makeover television. My favorite is How Clean Is Your House? You get a little gawking at the horror of how other people live, a few useful cleaning tips, then a very satisfying reveal that shows how much a space can be improved without buying anything new except some cleaning supplies (mostly natural, too - I love those gals).* The weight-loss version - You Are What You Eat - cuts a little too close to the bone to be entirely enjoyable. I don't think I could ever live in the grime-encrusted homes the HCIYH ladies fix up, but I fear I am entirely capable of falling into a depression so deep I eat myself huge. (I'm probably not, but I fear it, perhaps because I feel like I have less control over my weight than over my home.) Anyway, what I find terribly depressing about that show is that some of these people are not REALLY that much bigger than I am. They are bigger, some much bigger, but some not tremendously. And yet they eat so much worse than I do it isn't funny. They drink oceans of soda, feast several time a day on fish and chips, never touch a vegetable or a piece of fruit, down multiple chocolate bars every day. I drink water more than anything else; I love fruit and vegetables; I start every workday with a bowl of oatmeal with dried cranberries and non-fat milk. Sure, I use cream in my coffee, I have a sweet tooth - but I'm talking about a few M&Ms from the reception desk, not 1/2 pound of chocolate a day. If I ate like they do, I would be dead.

Of course, that might be why the people like me who eat like that aren't on TV. They're all dead.

At any rate, new year, time to renew the health objectives. Move more. Eat less. Here we go again. Sigh.

*Best HCIYH tip ever - meat tenderizer mixed into a paste with a little water and left overnight on your casserole dish will take off that nasty brown discoloration that never seems to come off Pyrex. I had to buy meat tenderizer to test this out, but it really works.

Food-Related New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

Oh, how I love to resolve. I've got some serious all-American self-improvement tendencies, coupled with a dose of old-school Catholic self-deprivation-is-good-for-the-soul. I like to give things up for a while - television, coffee, alcohol, food (not really, but I've fasted a few times), non-local food (I did the Eat Local Challenge three years ago after reading Gary Paul Nabhan's book, before I knew that there were other crazy folks out there doing the same thing) and even once, reading. I lasted a whole week without reading anything (except the automatic reading of signs and so forth) and it was pretty much the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

So, new year. New resolutions.

Except that I've begun to believe that negative resolutions - no this, no that- are the least effective. I think the Eat Local Challenge, for instance, would be more popular if it were promoted as a challenge to eat as many different local foods as possible, rather than a challenge to eliminate as many non-local foods as possible. Resolving to do without something completely can shake you up, improve your awareness of how much a habit has infiltrated your life. But resolving to do something actively usually has longer-term benefits. Adding something to your life, that's the way to go.

I'm pretty sure I starting making stock regularly as part of a resolution a few years back. That was a positive change that improved my cooking, saved my money, and decreased my sodium intake (while possibly increasing my calcium - I put a little acid in the water to help leach the calcium from the bones).

So, what this year? Vegetables, I think. I want to pay more attention to my vegetables. I like vegetables, but I tend to give them less attention then I should. I roast 'em, or steam and lemon juice 'em, or braise 'em, and that's about as far as it goes. Sure, I'll stuff a pepper now and again, I'll make a sweet potato gratin, but do I lavish the attention on the nutritious darlings I do on the meat or even the starch? No, I don't.

Now, one of the issues here is the limitations of my companion in eating. The husband is not exactly going to make the cover of Vegetarian Life. He doesn't like a number of vegetables - some based on what I suspect is hearsay (beets), some on experience (dark cooked greens). There are others he just can't eat because of his Crohn's, including all the cruciferous vegetables, like cauliflower, broccoli, etc. That said, he probably eats more vegetables than most Americans, so I should really count my blessings. And he does try new things in small amounts, which is nice - he now likes fennel, which is great, and he didn't mind celeriac or parsnips. But my basic vegetable list looks like this:

Mushrooms
Onions
Peppers (green or red)
Sweet potatoes
Carrots
Winter squash
Raw baby spinach (in small quantities, because of the Crohn's he can't have a lot of anything raw)
Cucumbers
Fennel
Parsley (which I throw in everything, since it's one of the only dark leafy green things he eats)
Radishes
Avocado
Maybe parsnips, celeriac, green beans, peas or artichokes (if prepared well and not in large quantities)

Throw in some dairy and a couple boxes of cereal, and that's most of my shopping basket most weeks. I consider radishes, avocado, fennel and cucumber optional, and I buy winter squash and sweet potato in rotation, but the parsley, carrots, peppers, onions, and mushrooms are there every week, like milk and eggs. I'm getting so I can't look at a red pepper.

Really, it's not a bad list, though it's missing some of my favorites - zucchini, beets, kale, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, cauliflower, cabbage. I'm just tired of the sameness of it all. But it's a new year, and I am aiming at positivity. It can be a good thing to have limitations. I shall be forced into creativity. Or at least, into really using the resources of my gazillion and one cookbooks. This year, I am going to find out how many ways a person can prepare a sweet potato. And, as a small, secondary resolution, I am going to try to put a little more effort into making some vegetables just for myself. It's hard to get up the energy to decide to do more peeling, chopping, etc., particularly when I already have a vegetable ready for dinner. But for my own good health, I should really be revisiting my old friend kale.

Happy new year.

I hope

2009-01-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

I hope when it gets to this point, the starving graphic designers given employment by the government in the new "plant a garden for survival" campaign have as much style and verve as the artists who created these:

Let's talk about something else - how 'bout some yummy prison food?

2009-01-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

Prison is not supposed to be fun. I get that. I'm not saying that convicted rapists and murderers and the like should be dining on filet mignon while poor children don't have enough to eat. Obviously. But really, you can tell a lot about a country's priorities by the conditions in its prisons. And when it comes to food, the conditions in our prisons are dismal at best. The CDC lists cases of foodborne illness on its website, and a disconcerting number of them occur in prisons. Some of the reasons for this are obvious - poor quality food, large numbers of people to feed, close living quarters that can lead to contamination. But, as this fascinating article from Cyrus Naim at Harvard explains, one of the problems is responsibility and accountability - to be brief, it's no one's and there's none.

Consider this:

The current law of prison food is primarily a product of prison law, rather than of food law. That is, while there is some self-regulation, oversight occurs primarily through inmate litigation alleging violations of Constitutional provisions, such as the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, or often First Amendment freedom of religion claims demanding prisons supply inmates with food following their specific religious requirements.
Under current standards, this means that sanitation or nutrition conditions cannot be held unlawful under the Eighth Amendment unless two tests are met. First, the conditions must be objectively cruel and unusual, defined as violating “contemporary standards of decency.” Second, a subjective test is applied, looking to the minds of the prison administrators. Since only cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional, the Court reasoned that only those conditions that are known by those responsible would be unlawful. The precise standard is that inmates must prove prison officials were “deliberately indifferent” to the specific problems in the case. Both tests must be met before any conditions will be found to violate the Eighth Amendment.

He goes on to mention that "occasionally" food in prison is regulated under general food laws that apply to any place that food is served. However, inspection is generally internal and so is the responsibility for repairing any problems - no inspectors are coming around to check on anything. So basically, unless the food gets so bad that prisoners actually claim Eighth Amendment violations, anything goes.

Really, preventing food poisoning and ensuring nutritional adequacy of meals does not seem to constitute "coddling" of prisoners. One would think it wouldn't be hard to get to a basic agreement on that, but prison issues are pretty much completely ignored in the political discourse, while food issues are only beginning to really break through. So as a issue, I suspect prison food reform lies somewhere below, I don't know, conquering lint, on the nation's priorities.

But of course, there are always a few idealists willing to take on the most hopeless of causes. Prison gardens have starting springing up across the country, initiatives in which prisoners work for their own keep (an idea even the staunchest law-and-order type can approve of), while learning gardening and culinary skills. There's one at San Quentin, another in Maryland (pdf), and someone has even written a guide to starting such programs. Those of us who believe, however naively, that working the land can start to heal a broken person, must find hope in such efforts. Some preliminary studies also indicate that aggressive behavior in inmates can be linked to nutritional deficiencies and decreased with appropriate supplements and better food. Improving prison food may not just be the moral thing to do, but the practical one as well.

Holiday dinner party

2008-12-22T13:00:00.001-08:00

No pictures, alas - when will I remember my camera again? But I thought I would share the menu. This turned out to be a pretty low-stress, pleasant meal, even though I made a few things I had never tried before. But the ingredients were all things I feel comfortable with, so I wasn't worried. Except for dessert, I only used one recipe. What's funny is that I didn't notice that at all until after dinner. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this cooking thing.

Dinner

Roast pork shoulder: If you read my cheapskate's guide to the holidays, you'll know already why I picked this. $10, fed seven easily, we ate leftovers for dinner yesterday, and I suspect there's more lurking in the fridge. I marinated the roast in Sam Adams, dark brown sugar and kosher salt for two days, then cooked at 325 for four hours, turning twice and basting three or four times with marinade. About half an hour before I took the roast out, I brushed it with mustard and black pepper. Nice and juicy, well-flavored meat, could have been more generous with the mustard, but the edges were nicely flavored.

Barley pilaf: I loves me some barley. It is cheap, underutilized, keeps its chew even if it has to sit for a while before serving, and its mild flavor plays well with others. I minced an onion and a couple stalks of celery, cooked them briefly in a little oil, added the barley and cooked a few minutes more, and then covered in a good homemade meat stock (mostly chicken, with a few beef bones thrown in). One cup of the stock had been used to soak about 1/3 cup of dried mushrooms, which I minced and added. When the barley was cooked, I added some smoked paprika and fresh parsley, and that was that.

Parsnip and roasted chestnut puree: Be glad there are no pictures, because this looked like gruel. Tasted good, but not good enough to warrant the effort involved in peeling chestnuts. Next time, I'm trying parsnips pureed with apples.

Beets and carrots with a maple-horseradish glaze: Beet bunches are SMALL at the Stop and Shop these days. Didn't make enough, and this was the most expensive dish of the meal, weirdly enough. Provided some much-needed color, though. Glaze was just horseradish, syrup and butter, not too strong.

Marinated mushrooms: From Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook. Have made these so many time, I don't really actually use the recipe any more. But this is my recipe dish, and it is good. Should have made twice what I did.

Apple-smoked gouda-onion tart: Still working out the kinks on this one, but the idea is right. Started with a half-cornmeal, half-white flour crust from Nick Malgieri's How to Bake. Caramelized some onions, put those in the crust first, followed by shredded smoked gouda and a layer of thinnly sliced apples. Poured a blend of sour cream/milk/egg over, sprinkled with a little more cheese and baked. Wasn't as pretty as I might have hoped, because the apples were still a little pale when the rest was done, but the flavors worked together well. I'll revisit this.

For dessert, molten chocolate cakes from The Best Recipe. The Cook's Illustrated folk get it right again, although the cakes needed two minutes longer than suggested, and my overn thermometer tells me my temp is fine. I've notices that ramekins can vary a lot in thickness and therefore heat transmission, so that can affect timing. Good anyway.

Best locavore presents: New England edition (Boston-centric)

2008-12-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll confess: I haven't given many locavore presents. Mostly because the folks I generally buy for wouldn't be that interested. But I do have definite ideas on the matter, like everything else.

Here's my list:

1) The one I have given, because it's a good all-purpose gift: maple syrup. Who doesn't like the real stuff? Although you can get the tins that look like sugarshacks or the bottles that look like maple leaves, the best choice, gift-wise, are the teddy bears with the little knit hats form Highland Sugarworks of Vermont. Throw in some decent pancake mix, and you've got a good present for families with kids. Pemberton Farms in Somerville carries them.

2) It may be too late to order, but the best mixed dried mushrooms I've ever had were from the Oyster Creek Mushroom company in Damariscotta. Bonus - you get to say "Damariscotta."

3) Sure, local honey is easy to come by, but how local? Massachusetts-local? How about Jamaica-Plain-local? Yup, some nut is crazy enough to keep bees in JP, bless his heart, and you can get the honey at City Feed and Supply in JP.

4) West Country Cider is very good, makes for a nice change from wine for the holidays, and usually fairly widely available. Last time I checked, you could get it at the Wine and Cheese Cask in Somerville.

5) There are too many great local cheeses to pick one. Wait - forget that, I'm going to - Great Hill Blue. Widely available at good cheese shops in the area.

6) Expanding from "locally grown" to "locally made," I would encourage people showing up to functions over the next few weeks to consider bringing: fig-vanilla scones from Petsi's Pies in Somerville, mohnflowers (poppyseed swirl pastries) from Carberry's in Central Square, homemade Oreos from Fornax in Roslindale (the husband loves these), brioche or chocolate-almond bread pudding from Blue Frog in JP, the clove ice cream from Christina's in Inman Square (great for serving with holiday pies).

Now I've made myself hungry.

Hard times all around

2008-12-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

I am dealing with the current economic crisis by 1) not looking at the statements from my retirement account, 2) holding onto my job like it's a life raft, and 3) panicking about relatively small expenditures, like holiday baking, while blissfully turning my attention away from recent big expenditures, like, ahem, graduate school.

Just in case you're approaching household finances with the same penny-wise, pound-foolish approach I've espoused, I have some suggestions:

1) Make marshmallows. Really not hard, as long as you don't get freaked out by using a candy thermometer; people love them; and the cost is minimal. Gelatin, sugar, egg whites, corn syrup, flavoring. That's it. The $2.00 box of gelatin is the big investment here, because you'll use the whole thing. (You might be able to find a bulk version at a health food store). The corn syrup will run you about $2.75, but you'll get four batches out of it. Sugar is cheap, and you only use two egg whites. A little peppermint flavoring, or vanilla, or coffee, or what have you, and you're there.

2) Make bread. Bread flour, yeast, water, salt. Even if you go for broke and make something with eggs, milk and dried fruit, it's going to be cheaper than cookies or cakes. Make fancy shapes and everyone will be very excited. You can find a video for making a six-strand braid here. If you're baking for kids, teddy bears are pretty easy, as are turtles, and parents will probably be happy to get something less sugary, particularly if you use a little whole wheat flour and maybe some raisins.

3) Go to Trader Joe's, if you've got one. Really, their prices on nuts, chocolate and dried fruit are fantastic. A pound of pecans cost me $6. Whee-hooo. An

4) I have found in the past the my two biggest expenditures for the Christmas baking extravaganza were butter and containers. It's not easy to get around butter, unless you go with bread or meringue-based options (if you aren't up for marshmallows, plain old meringues are always good.) But containers add up fast - baskets, tins, and so one don't come cheap. Really, I believe there are two basic cheap options, neither of which are particularly original, but so it goes. You can go with your basic goodie bag, bought in packs of 10 or 20 for a couple dollars down at the party store. Or you can go for the Chinese takeout container. These are found most cheaply as restaurant supply shops, or you might be able to ask the nice person behind the counter at your favorite Chinese takeout place. The party stores have them in pretty colors, but they're a little more expensive. I know some people are capable of folding paper into charming containers, but I can NOT do this. If you can, more power to you.

5) Speaking of restaurant supply shops, if you want to go all Martha on someone's ass, and do it on the cheap, restaurant supply shops are where it's at. They have dead cheap serving ware of all sorts, which you can put your cheap marshmallows or meringues in IF you're looking to fancy-up your gift so it looks like you're not just giving food. This is good for the person who is hosting a big holiday dinner. For co-workers, neighbors, and distant relations, stick with the cellophane bags.

6) If you're the person hosting the big holiday party, think pork. Pork shoulder or fresh harm or Boston Butt: these are delicious and very cheap cuts that too few people make at home because they require time. Since you're going to spend the day at home cleaning and cooking anyway, just use that long-cooking requirement as an advantage. Trim down on hors d'oeuvres. Olives, cheese, nuts and all the other delectable nibbles can quickly cost more the actual dinner. Pick one thing and stick to it. I like cheese puffs, pate a choux with Gruyere and black pepper and a bit of dry mustard mixed in. They are delicious, everyone seems to like them, you don't need too much cheese, so they aren't terribly expensive, and they freeze
well. Just take them out of the freezer right before serving and refresh in a hot oven for about 10 minutes. Marinated vegetables can be quite affordable, too, as long as you stick to the cheaper veggies. Yes to dilly beans and carrots and pickled beets, no to red peppers and artichokes.

6) Finally, be reasonable. I mean, be reasonable with yourself - how much you want to do, how much you can do. I, um, have some issues with this, as became clear to me last night. I'm having some people over for dinner on Saturday, and I started to plan a menu - not too elaborate (featuring pork, naturally). I was considering what I wanted for dessert and remembered I had some buttercream in the freezer from a cake I made about six weeks ago, plus a little ganache left over from Thanksgiving. My mental monologue went something like this: A bouche de Noel! Easy-peasy - I don't even have to make the filling. I'll just have to make the cake, fill and roll it, make some more ganache for the outside, then make the meringue mushrooms and the marzipan holly, and it will be all set. Of course, I still have to clean the house and make all the sweets for the gift bags and make the actual dinner, and - well, maybe I should. Maybe Yule log is a bit much. Really, the easy thing would be to make something like those molten chocolate cakes that were all the craze about five years ago. Just mix it up, stick the ramekins in the fridge, and bake off after dinner. But so passe! So lacking in holiday spirit! Maybe if I freeze the Yule log on Monday - but Monday I need to do laundry and send Christmas cards...I could finally try those chocolate souffle crepes! Of course, then I have to cook while everyone's there. Finally, my conversation with myself came to an abrupt halt when I realized that making the fancy-pants dessert was all about me, me, me. My guests won't care. Formerly trendy cake tastes great. There's a fantastic ice cream shop up the road. Everything will be fine.

Pie in the Sky

2008-12-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

The above picture (which is also below, forgive me for repeating myself) is in the way of a credential. I am a true lover of pie. Evidence: my wedding cake was a pie. That's a French silk chocolate pie my mom made, her specialty and my favorite growing up. I also liked pumpkin, a standard at Christmas, and the fall apple pie, and the summer blueberry and blackberry pies. I had to grow up to learn to like mincemeat, and I still have yet to cotton onto lemon meringue, my dad's mother's favorite. But I have been a pie eater all my life.

So you would think I would like American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads.

Instead it pissed me off.

Maybe I'm just cranky, what with the end of the semester and the lack of sleep and all. But this book, which I haven't even finished yet, is just so deeply annoying. The basic thesis seems to be that life used to be slower, it's changed, pie is a metaphor for some sort of idealized American past in which people had time for pie, the pie bakers are dying, and ain't it sad? The woman writing the book asks people for recommendations of great pie bakers, and then essentially shows up at their work or homes without calling first and hovers around, hoping to be asked to dinner. She likes to frame this as a sort of spontaneity born of a spiritual quest, but it basically seems pretty rude and inconsiderate. Would the pie-hunt be less vision-quest-ish if she used a damned telephone? Also, I know plenty of people my own age (37, hardly the "white-haired grandmothers with flour on their aprons" she is so fond of conjuring) make pie. My friends with kids make pies with the apples from their apple-picking; my friends with gardens use up the rhubarb; my baker friends make whatever's in season. Pie is delicious, pie is unpretentious, pie is home-y, but pie is NOT quaint. Damnit.

So I nearly killed my husband yesterday

2008-12-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

I didn't mean to. But this whole "cooking for Crohn's thing is really hard. And yesterday, I just got it wrong. You see, oatmeal is one of the few things that is officially considered a "good choice" for Crohn's sufferers, because it's high in soluble fiber and relatively easy to digest. It's also got some insoluble fiber, but almost everything with a nutrient does, so that can't be avoided altogether. I made oatmeal, but because I have been trying to up the nutrient content of everything we eat whenever I can, I decided to make pumpkin oatmeal. After all, he likes pumpkin and generally tolerates the orange vegetables well. So I cooked the oatmeal with half a can of pumpkin and some cinnamon and clove and topped it off with milk and a little maple syrup, which made for a delicious and balanced breakfast. I was rather proud of myself, really. A few hours later, he was in terrible pain. He spent the afternoon in bed, painfully digesting. We checked the fiber contnet of oatmeal - about 4 grams for the serving he ate, half of it soluble. That's all good, he's not supposed to have 5 grams or more in a sitting, and the more soluble the better. But then the pumpkin. Oh. Three grams of insoluble fiber. Who would have thought? It's all soft and mushy and not in the slightest bit fibrous, and it's cooked, which is supposed to help, but no. Full up of the wrong type of fiber. Shit. Back to plain oatmeal.

For those of you who CAN have all the fiber you like, and indeed probably need more than you get (most Americans don't get anywhere near the fiber they should), can I suggest adding pumpkin to your oatmeal? It's very good.

Sigh.

Wedding pie

2008-09-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

(Note: Thought I had posted this before. Turns out I didn't. So here's the "wedding pie" post.)

So we got married.

It was a lovely sunny September day at the beach, and everything was casual, relaxed, and beautiful.

This is our pie buffet. I've made a lot of wedding cakes in my life, but I don't really love cake. Cake is showy, cake has flash. A wedding cake is a diva, a showstopper, an attention whore. And there's nothing wrong with that. I love a bit of flash, myself, in the right context. An Art Deco wedding in the evening at a fabulous old hotel calls for a fantastic cake to match the bride's fantastic dress and oceans of calla lilies and the sparkle of the guests' jewelry.

But this was a different kind of wedding. We had our ceremony on the beach. We walked in together. Our "attendants" wore their own clothes. I carried daisies. We ate barbecue. Our friends' children spent the day climbing on the rocks. And what we need was pie. Homey pie, humble pie, delicious pie. Pie is the dessert of summer barbecues, of winter holidays, of family dinners after a day of picking apples or berries. Pie is love to me in a way cake could never be. And so we ate pie.

Our pie list:

Apple pie
Blueberry pie
Pear-cardamom crumble pie
Chocolate French silk pie
Sweet potato pie
Pecan pie
Chocolate peanut butter pie
Triple cherry pie
Peach pie
Pineapple cream cheese pie
Key lime raspberry pie
Whole wheat-Splenda sweetened peach raspberry pie (for the father of the groom, who is diabetic)

What did people eat the most of? The key lime, chocolate French silk, blueberry, chocolate peanut butter, triple cherry and pear-cardamom were wiped out completely. ( At least the first round, we had a few back up pies that didn't get eaten entirely). Only one slice remained of the pecan and apple, while the peach and pineapple were half-left (my mom loved the pineapple, though, so the remainder went home with her). Only one piece was missing from the sweet potato. That's okay - I got to take that home, and I love sweet potato pie.

The pies were almost all homemade. The sweet potato and the pecan came from our caterers, the wonderfully affordable and delicious Blue Ribbon BBQ. My mom made three French chocolate silk pies, her specialty, and I topped them with chocolate curls. That was the pie we cut and fed to each other. The chocolate peanut butter, key lime, and pineapple cream pies were frozen completed and just needed to thaw in the fridge the night before, while the fruit pies were all frzoen unbaked and baked off the morning before the wedding. Turns out you need to bake fruit pies almost two hours if they enter the oven straight from your deep-freeze. It's okay, the bottom crusts had time to brown, even in the aluminum pie plates. I tried to make each pie look a little different - raspberries piled on the lime pie, poached pineapple slices on the pineapple cream, the various fruit pies with different cutouts or edges or lattice. And then, of course, each one got a little bride and groom. I have to admit, dorky though it is, I loved those little bride and groom toppers.

Everyone is welcome

2008-07-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Everyone is welcome in the Real Food Revolution.

Worst. Chinese food. Ever.

2008-07-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

Cocktail menu from the worst Chinese restaurant I've ever had the misfortune of visiting. The menu almost made the threat of food poisoning worth it.

The rootbeer-flavored vodka ads

2008-06-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

They're freaking me out. If you don't like what alcohol tastes like you can 1) learn to like it, 2) not drink, or 3) become a master of the fresh fruit juice and cordial cocktail that packs a punch without tasting like alcohol. But root-beer flavored booze? Christ. What's next - bubblegum? Mother's milk with a kick? And it's getting this huge advertising campaign, too, as if this were a socially acceptable drink, and not something shameful, like pouring vodka into a Big Gulp of grape soda.

New Orleans

2008-06-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

I promised pictures from New Orleans, and here they are:

Making pralines at Southern Candymaker. (The rum ones are the best).

A rather blurry image of a beignet - it was the best I could do. Frankly, my mind wasn't on photography. Did I mention that they come hot?

My Jambalaya Supreme at Coops. I forget what Tami had, but she's looking rather bemused at my need to photograph lunch, isn't she?

At the farmer's market. It is almost physically painful to go to a place where you can buy alligator sausage, 57 varieties of tomato, and crawfish, and all sorts of vegetables - but be without a kitchen. I sulked and bought jam.

More later.

Odd, ends and updates

2008-06-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

What I've been doing, foodwise:
Eating in New Orleans. Okay, that was about a month ago. I still need to upload the pictures. But everything they say about food in New Orleans is true: the po' boys, the beignets, the jambalaya, it's all fantastic. My favorite dish (besides the powdered-sugar-covered Cafe Du Monde beignets I ate every chance I could get) was the oyster-artichoke soup at Mandina's. My. God. Strangely, I didn't really love the raw oysters I had in New Orleans. They were good, mind you, and quite large, but they didn't have the level of brininess New England oysters have, and I missed that zing. But the creamy oyster artichoke soup was another story entirely. I would never have though of that combination, and now I dream about it.

Dieting. Yes, heaven help me, I've been dieting. Well, kind of. More a question of tracking calories to figure out just exactly why I've become big as a house of late. I've been using Daily Plate, which has a very basic calorie-counting program that I find both useful and terribly frustrating. I'm sure it's easy to use if you generally buy food from restaurant chains, but if you cook, it's not simple. I don't use recipes most of the time, so I have to enter my approximations for the amount of tortellini, chicken sausage, red pepper, olive olive, parsley, tomato, and cheese that went into dinner, then figure out how many serving I got out of it. (Two, for dinner, and one more lunch so far). This is irritating. However, I've already learned a few things. For one thing, I overestimate the calories in meat, and underestimate the calories in baked goods like muffins. Score one for Atkins. I'm also better off having scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast than a whole wheat bagel with light cream cheese. Neither sounds like a bad option, but eggs and toast are lower in calories and keep me feeling full longer. So, that's a small change that makes sense.

Attending the big pig roast. My friends have a pig roast every year or so, and once again, I'm blown away by how much better pork is if you cook the whole damned thing at once. Something about all that melting fat saturating even the leanest cuts, I suspect. But damn is it good. I made the famous Chowhound Elvis Cake (banana cake, chocolate chips, peanut butter frosting). It rose wonderfully high and was quite moist, but almost too light for my tastes, with a crumb like a box cake. But I loved the peanut butter frosting, and the marzipan Elvis pig I made for the top went over well with the crowd. (And it shows just how far I've gotten away from blogging that I didn't take a picture. Someone did - maybe I can hunt it down).

That's all the food news, I think. In other news, I'm getting married September 20. Very exciting. Just to keep the announcement food-related, I'll tell you we're having barbecue from Blue Ribbon, a great local place, plus watermelon and lemonade and all that good stuff. Instead of cake (which I don't really love), we're going to have a pie buffet. The wedding will be on the beach, so it should be very casual and fun and lovely.

And that's all the news that's fit to post.

Encouraging

2008-06-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

A new Gallup poll finds a solid majority of Americans (62%) support "strict laws regarding the treatment of farm animals." 29% support strongly. That's actually pretty good, and the difference across political parties is not as great as one might expect - Independents and Democrats are the same (66% and 67%), while Republicans are lower, but not by a lot (53%). On other animals rights issues, the party split is much larger. A good sign for ethical farmers; the public is fairly supportive. Of course, if I were designing the poll, I would want to look at a few additional factors. There are probably some small-government types who object not to the goal, but to the method (strict laws), so it would be nice to get a general support measure - say, for a voluntary system of credentialing humane treatment, and how likely they would be to buy products with such a credential. Also, how much more would they be willing to pay. I would want to know how many people currently take animal treatment into consideration when purchasing food (watch that number drop to the single digits), and also what they think the term "free-range" means. Ah, to have a polling budget at my disposal!

Gettin' saucy!

2008-05-05T08:06:00.001-07:00

So my guy and I were doing the grocery shopping the other day. He decided we needed barbecue sauce - quite rightly, because the weather is getting nicer at long last, and I've started making pretty much every meal on the grill. Before the big move-in-together, I lived for three years in an apartment that was nice in every way but one - there was no access to the outside. (Oh, and the water pressure was terrible, and the girl upstairs starting turning tricks in her apartment about a year ago. But really, the no-outdoors thing was the biggest problem.) So, no garden and, tragically, no grill. During the hottest months of the year, I was loathe to use the stove for anything, given the way the afternoon sun would beat on the uninsulated roof of the kitchen. I ate nothing but frozen fruit bars and cereal for two months a year.

So, of course, I found a guy who owned a grill and convinced him to move in with me to an apartment with a porch. Problem solved.

Now, generally, I'm not crazy about the traditional barbecue sauce you buy in the stores. It's too sweet for my tastes. I prefer the vinegar-based sauce usually called "Carolina-style." But I don't object overly to the thick, sweet red sauce occasionally. I do, however, object to high-fructose corn syrup.

"What's the first ingredient?"

"High fructose corn syrup."

"Put it down. What about that one?"

"High fructose corn syrup."

And so it went, bottle after bottle. Finally, I spied a jar of Bone-Sucking Sauce, a brand I've tried before and liked. Ingredients: Tomato Paste, Apple Cider Vinegar, Honey, Molasses, Mustard, Horseradish, Lemon Juice, Onions, Garlic, Peppers, Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor, Natural Spices, Salt & Xanthan Gum.

Now, that I could live with. I started to put it in the cart.

"Um, babe? It's $5.99."

And so it was. For 16 oz. I put it back, but not before I had looked again at the ingredients: tomato paste, onions, garlic, vinegar, sweeteners, and spice. Really, how hard could it be?

So I bought a can of tomato paste (ingredient: tomatoes) and another of crushed tomatoes (ingredients: tomatoes, salt), and was on my way.

Now, I can't really give you a recipe, because I was winging it. I looked online, but lost patience, because almost every recipe I found started with ketchup. You know what almost all ketchup has? You got it, high-fructose corn syrup. I was starting with tomatoes, damnit, and no one seemed to have pointers for doing that. Even my beloved Helen Witty, whose cookbooks have lead me through the home preparation of banana ketchup, real grenadine, and potted cheese, had nothing to say on the subject. I was on my own.

I started with mincing two onions and about six big cloves of garlic, then cooking them until translucent in a little olive oil. Then I add the can of tomato paste (12 oz) and the can of crushed tomatoes (28 oz). At this point I was pretty much making tomato sauce. I figured that barbecue sauce was just tomato sauce with different spices, vinegar and sweetener. Which turned out to be right, but I underestimated the importance, or rather the quantity, of vinegar and sweetener involved. After everything has simmered for a little while and started to reduce, I added some dry mustard, chile powder, black pepper, cumin and salt. I didn't want to use liquid smoke, because the whole concept of liquid smoke kind of freaks me out. Instead, for smokiness I used the sauce from a small can of chipotles in adobe and a goodly-sized spoonful of smoked paprika. Then I added about 1/4 cup of light brown sugar and about 1/4 cup of cane syrup I had left over from making a pecan pie, plus about 1/2 cup of white vinegar.

Then I tasted it. It tasted very much like tomato sauce that had taken a vacation in Texas. First you tasted tomato, then smoke and spice and heat. But mostly, tomato.

More sugar. More vinegar. Taste. More sugar. Simmer it longer. More vinegar. Simmer. Simmer some more.

At this point, J. started saying that the kitchen smelled delicious. And it did. But the sauce still didn't taste quite like barbecue sauce.

I added a little more sugar.

In the end, I ended up using about 2 cups of sweetener, plus somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2 cups of vinegar. I would have preferred a nice dark molasses to sweeten, but I was out. Instead, I used up some dried-out dark brown sugar that was no longer usable for baking, the end of the cane syrup and some light brown sugar.

The sugars were the most expensive part of the mix. The paste was $1, the crushed tomatoes $1.50, the sugars altogether about $1.50. Add another 50 cents or so for the spices and vinegar, and I estimate the whole batch cost less than five dollars. I filled three pint containers. Given the minimal work involved, I would definitely say it was worth the effort.

And the flavor? I like it very much. It takes some simmering for the flavors to meld. I would say I let it go on very low for two hours, total, stirring whenever I remembered to. But the end result was exactly was I was hoping for - definitely bbq sauce, but not so sweet as the supermarket variety, with more complexity of spicing and more tomato presence. I froze two containers and kept one in the fridge. Given the high sugar and acid levels, I suspect it will keep for some time. Of course, if the weather holds, it probably won't have to.

Fun new map

2008-04-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

I'll be putting this up on www.NewEnglandGrown.com soon, along with a piece about heirloom fruits and vegetables. But in the meantime, feel free to peruse. Each heirloom variety of fruit or vegetable is indicated on the map at the town where it was discovered or developed. If everything uploaded properly, you should also be able to read a short description and get a link to a seed catalog or other source of information. If you're in New England and planning a garden this summer, please consider planting one of these local lovelies. (Note: The map looks a little funny in the Blogger formatting. Clicking on it will enlarge, clicking on a marker will open up a small screen with the description/link etc.)

The coolest thing ever.

2008-04-17T06:32:00.001-07:00

Someone at the Danvers Historical Society must love me. I don't actually know anyone who works for the Danvers Historical Society; I don't even know anyone who lives in Danvers. But how else to explain this?

In case you don't feel like clicking the link (though really, you should), the Danvers (MA) Historical Society sells Christmas ornaments in the shape of heirloom vegetable varieties that originated in Danvers, including of course the famous Danvers Half Long Carrot. How cool is that? And who decided heirloom gardening and local food geeks made up a big enough demographic to be worth marketing tchotckes to? Whoever it was, bless you.

Last post - November 14?!?

2008-02-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I haven't posted in a long, long time. I'm sorry. I'm a bad food blogger. Also, I haven't taken a single food picture in months. Months!

I have been cooking, though, at least a little. More on that in a moment...

So, why the hiatus? Besides rest being good for the soul and all that, life has intervened. For one thing, I decided to move in with my guy, and we spent a month looking for affordable apartments in the Boston area (always fun), then we spent a month packing and moving (made far more complicated by the fact that we rented a "fixer-upper" that we had to clean and paint ourselves to make habitable), then we spent a month unpacking. In fact, we've spent six weeks unpacking, and we're still at it. I've decided that I'm never moving again. I'm going to grow old and grey in this apartment - which is becoming quite lovely, now that the walls are painted, the floors washed and the rabbit turds swept up. (Not kidding at all - the former tenant had free-roamin' and poopin' rabbits.)

While all this was going on, I was taking a college biology course and studying for and taking the GREs, all in preparation for an application to this program: the Master's Program in Food, Agriculture and Environment at Tuft's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Biology was hellishly hard (I'm a humanities girl all the way and took Rocks for Jocks in college to fulfill my science requirement), and I can't tell you how pathetic I felt practicing my algebra for the GREs. I was pretty certain algebra and I had parted ways forever back in my teens, and I did not appreciate the return of hated math mid-life. But I survived bio and math both, and I received my acceptance to the program this weekend. Three cheers! I hope that this education will allow me to make some difference in our food system. We'll see.

With all of that going on, I hadn't actually been cooking very much until the last couple weeks. It's hard to cook when all your pots and knives are in boxes. But the kitchen is set up now, and I have some free time again, so I've been back at the stove. Nothing spectacular, nothing unusual. In fact, I've been relying heavily on some tried-and-true favorites - tequila shrimp, steak salad, plain roasts, pumpkin lasagne, chocolate chip cookies, stuffed potatoes, glazed carrots. I'm also learning to cook for someone with Crohn's disease, which involves some significant limitations - not too much fiber or too many raw vegetables, no beans, no broccoli, no fruit/berries with seeds, no coffee, no chili peppers, and so on. The only experiment I've done in months was a chocolate steamed pudding that somehow came out dry. How could something cooked in steam come out dry? I ask you. That's what time away from the kitchen will do to you - you lose your touch. But I'm back. And I'm going to be posting. Really.

Word of the year!!!

2007-11-14T10:00:00.001-08:00

Locavore!!!!!!!!

Emerging technology and me!

2007-10-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a sentence I would never imagine I could write: last week I found myself addressing an audience* of cutting-edge tech types at a conference on emerging technology at MIT.

Huh? Me? The woman who still hasn't quite figured out how to switch her cellphone to vibrate? It isn't just emerging technology I have trouble with - hell, I just bought my first car in May. I'm still working out issues with technology that's a century old.

But, nonetheless, there I was. Di-Ann Eisnor, of Platial, the online interactive mapping site she calls the People's Atlas, asked me to come with her for a panel presentation on new media. I was her representative Platial user. Platial has allowed me to make maps for NewEnglandGrown, like this one of New England sources for exotic meat and game. Platial is a fun toy to play with - people make their vacations, their favorite coffee shops and so on - and it has potential to be a great community-building tool. I highly recommend you check it out, maybe build your own map. Great sources for cheese, the best places to pick apples, where to find wild mushrooms: the food-related possibilities are endless. You can add pictures and video, too.

And if you have an idea for a good map for NewEnglandGrown, let me know!

*If you read the piece at this link, I want to add that I did include a caveat that MOST farmers are even more low tech than I am, with some notable exceptions. Don't want to offend Walter Jeffries.

The ingedients we love best

2007-09-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

Are there ingredients that always draw you in - to a dish on a menu or to a recipe in a book? I used to know someone who would melt for anything pomegranate. Of course, we all know people who won't order a dessert without chocolate. And then there are the lemon people - some people are just batty over lemon. At one point I baked for a little gourmet take-out place which offered three or fours desserts at a time. The owner asked me to make a lemon cake, and I stared at him. " You mean the lemon cookies and the lemon bars aren't enough? You want three out of four desserts to be lemon?" It hadn't occurred to him, he just knew he loved that cake and those cookies and those bars.

Personally, I would say my hopeless sucker foods/ingredients are as follows: duck, scallops, bacon, sausage, blackberries, pecans, oranges, dates, figs, ginger, cornmeal, buttermilk, brussel sprouts, beets, molasses, and cardamom.* When I look back over the recipes I've included on this blog, I can't believe how many of them include one of the those ingredients. Not necessarily in the same way twice, mind you. Figs might show up in a fig and onion spread or a fig cake. But, still: figs. Lots of figs.

When you start cooking for someone, the big preferences become clear early on - heavy foods or light, traditional or contemporary, Asian flavors or European, hot or mild. But these small-but-strong preferences take a while to learn. I can only think of a couple people whose palates I know well enough to compile a list for - Mom, for example, loves pecans and walnuts, strawberries, cream, beef and lamb, shrimp, mushrooms. She likes traditional food, not too spicy, lightly salted, a little on the rich side. It can be such a pleasure to know someone's palate and plan a meal accordingly - the favorite food, spiced in just the right way. It doesn't seem like most people get to cook enough today to develop that kind of culinary intimacy. It's too bad.

*No wonder I like winter.

Slaying the monster

2007-09-19T12:45:00.001-07:00

Oaky, I don't have pictures, because I'm lame. But I did my best to conquer the monster zucchini. I fear that ultimately the marrow won. After three batches of zuchinni bread (five loaves and a dozen muffins), half the squash still sits in my fridge, mocking me. But I'll have the last laugh. It's gonna sit there until it shrivels or rots.

So, zuchinni bread. A use-it-up staple. A stalwart of the church bake sale. A less-guilt-provoking form of cake. Always pretty good. Always a little boring.

I did not want five loaves of boring in my freezer. So this is what I did. I pulled out the Silver Palate Cookbook for my baseline recipe (Silver Palate being the best go-to cookbook for 1980s favorites). I laid out three bowls and started measuring the dry ingredients into each one, replacing 1/2 cup of the flour with whole wheat pastry flour and adding 1/4 cup of toasted wheat germ into each one.
So each bowl got:
1 1/2 cup white flour
1/2 wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Bowl one then got 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon (heaping) of cloves, and a teaspoon of ginger. Bowl two got a teaspoon of fresh lemon zest. Bowl three got 1/2 teaspoon of dried orange peel and 1/2 cup of cornmeal.

Now for the wet mix. I reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup for all three versions. Otherwise stayed pretty much with the original.

1 1/4 cup sugar (Batch one got dark brown, batch two got 1/2 c light brown, 3/4 cup white, batch three got all white)
1 1/4 cup oil
3 eggs (omega-3 type, for increased nutrition)
1 tsp vanilla (skipped for batch three)

Beat the heck out of each of these, then blended in the zucchini. The recipe called for two cups - I increased that to three for batches one and two, and kept it at two, but added an additional cup of shredded carrots, to batch three.

Now, the zucchini part turned out to be a bit tricky. I usually shred by hand, because I have a tiny, irritating food processor with no shredder attachment. Or at least, no shredder attachment I can find any more. Maybe it came with one. I don't know. But I wasn't going to shred all that squash by hand. So I used the blade, and it kind of hacked the zuchinni into little bits. Which was fine for Batch One, because I started on the stem end and it was kind of narrow, so there was less moisture and the bits stayed relatively dry. But by Batch Two, the bits had turned into soup. I sort of strained them, but I pretty much ruined (in an aesthetic way, though thankfully not a can't-eat-it way) Batch Two. Those loaves came out really spongy, the result of WAY too much water. Having been observant enough to notice that the batter for Batch Two was as thin as my G&T, I squeezed the excess moisture from the zucchini for Batch Three. This batch was the winner, so I'm doing that from now on.

Back to the variations...

Okay, at the end, you get to fold in the fun stuff. Batch One (spices, dark brown sugar) got dates and toasted walnuts. Batch Two (lemon zest, light brown sugar) got dried cranberries and candied lemon peel (which fell to the bottom because the batter was wet, wet, wet and thin, thin, thin). Batch Three (cornmeal, orange peel, carrot) got candied ginger.

Batch one made a spicy, dark, good but relatively traditional zucchini bread. Batch Two suffered from issues unrelated to its flavors, which were fine. But Batch Three was a major winner. That 1/2 cup of cornmeal, which I feared would disappear, proclaimed itself, and played well off the classic carrot-orange-ginger combination. The color was lovely (sorry again for the lack of pics). And the whole thing was so unexpectedly non-zucchini-bread-ish. I will definitely make this again. And, as far as cake goes (because who are we kidding here, this stuff is cake), this version has at least some nutritional virtues - some zucchini, some carrot, a bit of whole grain, omega-three eggs. I could almost convince myself that it's good for me. It's good for my soul, at any rate, to have a freezer full of zucchini bread. Made stock this weekend, too, so my freezer at the moment, full as it is of baked good, stock, homemade pesto cubes and local pork and beef, has some serious happy energy. Good thing, too, because I'm going to have no time to cook for the next month.

Slate gets it wrong

2007-09-13T13:08:00.001-07:00

From Slate's In Other Magazine's feature, about a piece in New York magazine:

An enterprising New Yorker tells the hilarious, fascinating story of creating a tiny farm in his 800-square-foot Brooklyn back yard. To put to the test the arguments of the "locavore" movement—that people should eat only what's grown within a few miles of their home—he planned to live exclusively off the farm for one month.

Okay, I'm going to make this really simple so that everyone can understand: Locavores don't think people should eat only what's grown within a few miles of their home. Rather, locavores think that people should try, whenever possible, to choose food grown closer to home rather than food grown further away. That might mean making a number of adjustments to the usual American way of eating, such as 1) growing your own, 2) buying directly from local farmers rather than from supermarkets, 3) choosing local ingredients like honey or mussels instead of exotics like sugar or Chilean sea bass. What it doesn't mean is never eating a chocolate bar again, or drawing a five-mile-wide circle around your house and trying to live on what's produced within. Sure, people have done that sort of thing (although "a few miles" is usually 100 or 200 or 500), but as an exercise, a test, an exploration. That's why they call it the Eat Local Challenge. I fear that the Challenge has suffered from its own success and come to represent the locavore movement overall to a degree that is inappropraite. To say the locavore movement is about the Eat Local Challenge is like saying that being healthy is about running marathons. Not even marathoners think everyone should run a marathon. Most people who do the Eat Local Challenge don't really think other people should necessarily do the same. But marathoners probably do think people should get some exercise, and locavores do think that there are some pretty big advantages to eating food with a local flavor. Let's go through them again, just for the heck of it: transparency of agricultural practices for the consumer, connectedness to the farm community and resulting increased awareness of farm-related issues, decreased fuel dependency, the increased national food security that comes with having many farms over a wide geographical area, rather than just a few concentrated in a couple small areas, cultural preservation of both rural communities around the country and local traditional foods, preservation of at-risk open farmland and vital wildlife corridors, and, of course, really good, really fresh produce.

Are we all clear?

Another blogger

2007-09-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've really been enjoying reading Little Compton Mornings,
a blog out of Rhode Island focused on local food. Just a tip.

Recipe?

2007-09-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

Anyone got a good zucchini bread recipe? (Yeah, the cat's full-grown.)

Culinate

2007-08-29T10:11:00.001-07:00

I should have linked to this when it was the featured item on the front page last week, but it's still up anyway: my first freelance article in Culinate. Thanks to Helen at Beyond Salmon for suggesting I submit.

Odd and ends

2007-08-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Adam Gopnick in the New Yorker on a really local New York meal. Better than his stuff has become of late - I enjoyed him once, but have found the last couple years a tough slog through entitled yuppiedom. I am sure there are plenty of people who would put this essay in that category, too, but I can't resist the vegetables grown in manure from the Bronx Zoo.

I read so many food blogs, I've forgotten from whom I stole the idea of combining fresh corn, pancetta and sage, but whoever it was was onto something. The original version was based around butter, and lots of it, but, though I love butter with a true, deep and abiding love, I'm trying to drop a few pounds, so I went with olive oil. Of course, such dietary concerns did not prevent me from using pancetta, but one slice only, chopped tiny, browned and drained. Then four ears-worth of local corn, some minced sage, and heat. Put it to the side, then brown some scallops, and serve them on the corn. I liked this very much.

Made this summer's freezer pesto over the weekend, and threw the extra over tortellini last night. Was reminded yet again that I really prefer pesto in a secondary, not leading, role. Pesto and goat cheese as the stuffing for a chicken breast is great. But pasta with pesto-pesto-pesto is just too much pesto for me. Ah, well - it was quick.

Read Bananas last week, which I recommend. It's a quick read and pretty damned entertaining. The cultural history part is a bit weak - at points the author just lists songs with "banana" in the title and so on, but the history of the importation and selling of the fruit - the physical challenges, the political issues and the marketing aspects - was interesting and well-told. Just in case anyone doesn't know, bananas are by far the most popular fruit in the U.S. But not the most prized - people rarely cite bananas as their favorite fruit; they're just ubiquitous. People do love their banana bread, though. By far the search item that brings the most people here is "best banana bread recipe." Odd, don't you think, given how very many places on the internet likely claim the best banana bread recipe? Anyway, I finished the book with a powerful craving for banana muffins, banana cream pie, and the banana split at the East Coast Grill (roasted bananas with mango ice cream and raspberry sauce). I had to go read Fatland to prevent an outbreak of gluttony.

It worked: I ate a raw banana, then lay in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking of all the sugar I've consumed in my lifetime and waiting for the diabetes to kick in.

Youtube and Food

2007-08-24T08:08:00.001-07:00

I spent many sunny hours of my youth that probably would have better been spent riding a bike or throwing a Frisbee inside, watching cooking shows. Julia, of course, was the queen of all, and I can still waste untold hours in her company. (Buy the DVD box sets and keep them around for the next time you're stuck on the couch with a cold - you will NOT be sorry). But there was also the slightly-creepy-but-informative Jeff Smith, the loud Cajun guy with the suspenders, and some less-memorable and shorter-lived PBS on-air cooks. Today, of course, the Food Network is superhot, and sometimes I feel like a bad foodie for not knowing a damned thing about those people. I don't have cable, what can I say?

But I do have YouTube. And the cooking goodies there are not to be beat - in the best internet style, you can find home videos of people in their kitchens, snippets from the big cooking shows (probably illegally posted), old educational films about food, and random weirdness.

First, great actor, and amazing dancer, and cook? Why every girl loves Christopher Walken (despite finding him, you know, scary.)

Solar cooking:

Cooking terms - a 1950s educational film. Corny, but surprisingly practical and informative for a novice cook. My favorite line: "At some time during your career as a cook, you will decide to serve scalloped cauliflower." You will, indeed.

And finally, foods on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair:

Upside down, boy ya turn me

2007-08-19T05:27:00.000-07:00

I like making upside down cakes. I like eating them, too, but making them is just as pleasurable. I feel the same way about pies - rolling the dough, laying the top on the filling, all so soothing. Which is why the film Waitress was about pie, and not, say, Danish pastries, which is far more enjoyable to eat than to make. But upside down cakes are fun. You cook the sugar and the butter a bit, then lay out the fruit very nicely, then make a basic cake batter and pour it over, simple, then bake. Finally, the great moment, when you turn the completed cake out of the pan and the top is revealed, all sugary and glistening, the fruit displayed in all its glory.

The Cooks Illustrated recipe is great, and that's the one I use when I want a basic butter cake, though sometimes I just use their proportions and technique for the topping, then switch a gingerbread cake in for tha base. The fruits they expect people to use are pineapple, pear, peach, apple or, interestingly enough, mango. I've made the pear version many times (that's the one that always gets gingerbread), and the peach once, though I can't say that would be a favorite use for a good summer peach. Make cobbler. It's better. Anyway, Cooks's list represents the most popular choices for upside down cake.

The results of an entirely unscientific study of upside down cake, via Google:

Peach upside down cake - approx. 289,000
Pineapple upside down cake - approx. 207,000
Apple upside down cake - approx. 12,400
Mango upside down cake - approx. 2,320
Pear upside down cake - 753
Fig upside down cake - 179 (about to be 180! Take that!)

Besides the surprising fact that there must be places in world where peaches are used more often for upside down cake than pineapple is, what these results tell me is that 1) not enough people are making or eating upside down cake and 2) people who are making it are stuck in a rut. Try something new, people. It's easy. It's good for you.

I decided to use figs* because I'm so fond of them caramelized - just sprinkled with sugar and touched with a torch. I figured upside down cake is a more elaborate way to get that flavor of caramelized sugar together with fig. I also added 3/4 teaspoon of cardamom to the cake batter, because my only issue with plain butter upside down cake is that the cake part alone can be a little dull (I'm not a cake person, really.) Cardamom marries well with figs, so in it went. And I think it worked out well - certainly the people who were eating it liked it enough to go back for seconds. My friend's little girl gave her special finger-to-the-cheek signal for yumminess, the highest of accolades.

*Figs may not be in season in New England itself, where only a few stubborn Portugese and Italian immigrants nurse their potted trees through the cold winter, but they are in season. They only appear on the shelves here for a few weeks out of the year. Get them while you can. If you're in Boston, this is the time of year to go to the Haymarket, where you can get little plastic containers of seven or eight figs for a dollar, far cheaper than the 99 cent per fig price at the grocery stores.

Hey, it worked!

2007-08-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

I was watching a show at my parent's house in which a pair of British women go to disgustingly dirty homes and clean them. Which sounds dull as hell, but these houses are really, really dirty, and the voyeuristic pleasure is high. Also, the ladies wear rubber gloves with pink feather trim. And they give out little cleaning tips. I was mesmerized - I could have watched this for hours (I don't think the rest of the family had the same response). Anyway, one tip they gave out was so intriguing I had to get home and try it out right away. Here it is: use meat tenderizer to remove that nasty, baked-on, hardened grease that builds up on old pans. I tried it out on a Pyrex loaf pan that had become discolored from years of baking bread and, um, meatloaf.*

Not surprisingly, it didn't work quite so well as the British ladies implied, but it did work. The grease softened to the point of becoming removable, given a little soap and elbow grease. The pan actually looks almost new.

Never let it be said that television isn't educational.

*I don't do this any more - meat loaf comes out better baked free-form. But I didn't always know this.

Blog, blog, blog all the live-long day

2007-08-15T11:16:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to get back into the habit of blogging by doing daily diaries this week, but unfortunately I lack photos and content for today. So some random musings:

Mad Martha's article on pasta salad this month begs the question: what is a salad anyway? If all the vegetables are cooked, and even the sauce would taste fine warm, aren't you just eating cold pasta? I can't say that I'm enticed by the idea of cold wilted greens on pasta, but generally I'm a big fan of pasta salad. The secrets to a good one, in my opinion: lots of vegetables, preferably including a few unexpected ones (raw corn is good); lemon juice not vinegar; plenty of salt in the pasta cooking water; good oil.

The locavore purists hurt the cause. Fussing over whether spices count and so on looks like insanity to outsiders. Then you end up with people convinced that we're going to ruin the economy by not allowing for imports and exports - according to at least one person commenting on an article about the Vermont locavores, Floridians won't be able to buy maple syrup and Vermonters will end up with scurvy if these crazy liberals have their way. So, let's reiterate: it's all about proportions. Vermont should export maple syrup, and it's fine for them to import some orange juice. But why should they import apples? Why should Britain import and export almost equal quantities of lamb? A sane approach would be maximizing regional food security by maximizing local production and diversification of production for local consumption, while still depending on some imports (the quantity of imports needed will depend on the region's own resources). This seems pretty obvious, but clearly when people for whom local eating is a new idea hear about it, they assume the point is extremism. Don't feed their fears.

Plums are better than peaches, at least in New England. I can't stop eating the local plums.

I could give up everything else sweet as long as I could eat ice cream every day.

Tammy at Food on the Food gets funnier all the time.

The weather is starting to turn a little cooler - at least at night. That makes me happy. I'm starting to get the cooking itch...

Reclaiming the kitchen, Part Two: The Infestation

2007-08-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

I was in denial at first. When I opened the cabinet and a moth flew out, I was convinced it had somehow gotten blown off-course and accidentally ended up trapped in the cabinet. Alone. Without a single mothy friend.

Of course, deep down I knew. The single-moth-theory has the same credibility as the single-mouse-theory. Bad things come in groups. There's never just one ant or cockroach or mouse or moth or neo-con. Once you have one, you can count on an infestation.

In my apartment-renting experience, I have been mercifully spared cockroaches, ants and termites. But I have suffered from mice, the moths that eat your sweaters, the moths that eat your oatmeal, tiny gnats that swarm up from the sink drain in August, fruit flies, and even once, god help me, rats. Or rat. Actually, I believe that may have been the one case of a lone pest. I had just moved into an old house across the road from a stream, and when the landlord was finally convinced that I really, truly had seen a rat - no, not a mouse, a rat, damnit! - he set out poison, the rat was found dead in the basement, and I was bothered no more. But that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that I am no stranger to pestilence. And, while the ick factor and the I'm-going-to-stand-on-this-chair-and-scream-like-Lucille-Ball-until-someone-kills-that-thing factor are far lower with pantry moths than with rodents or even swarms of fruit flies, the fact is that pantry moths have it on everyone for tenaciousness. Getting rid of the things is hell.

First off, you have to throw out food. A lot of food.

(Why did I have three containers of oatmeal? I have no idea.) I find the tastes of pantry moths strange to say the least. I understand their fondness for oatmeal and popcorn. But Penzey's Northwoods Fire Seasoning? Isn't that a little hot for mothy palates? Several bags of good pasta and a couple boxes of cheap pasta were ignored, despite being open and available. But one particular bag of wide noodles was full of the little buggers. They didn't get into the wild rice, but they did get into the chocolate. They apparently love lapsang souchong tea, but not green tea or red zinger. I don't understand.

After you throw everything out, you have to wipe down every surface with a bleach solution and hope to kill off some of the eggs. Of course, you won't get them all. Some will be lurking somewhere, ready to come back and make Pantry Moth: Resurrection.

Since I had to clean out the pantry anyway, I decided it was time to do some other maintenance as well. Summer is a time of pantry-neglect - while vegetables and fruits are ripe and fresh, who thinks to restock canned goods? But then you end up not having the tomato paste that would liven up the dressing for the pasta salad or the capers you need for the tartar sauce for those crab cakes. So I wanted to do an inventory. Also, I had some stuff that was, um, old. Really old. There was a bottle of fish sauce three years past its sell-by date - which is bad enough, but it was also one of TWO bottles of fish sauce, which I use so rarely each one had only an ounce or so missing. Okay, away with the moth-infested and the ancient. Wipe down all the jars and cans. Vacuum inside. Lay some contact paper over the thirty-year-old unfinished plywood shelving. Then restock. Voila!

(Not the whole of my dry good back-stock, of course, but the main center of the operation. Baking is a satellite cabinet.)

In case you're wondering what I consider pantry essentials (and I would love to know what other people consider pantry essentials), I'll tell you:
Canned tomatoes, whole and diced
Canned and tubes of tomato paste
Capers
Chicken broth (for when I run out of frozen homemade)
Marinated artichoke hearts
Jars of roasted peppers
Cans of coconut milk
Cans of tuna (for sandwiches)
Jars of good tuna in oil (for salads and pasta)
Cans of smoked sardines
Cans of salmon (for desperation dinners)
Chickpeas, white beans, black beans
Chipotle peppers in adobe sauce
Pepperocini
A good array of vinegars
A few premade sauces/marinades (I always have a couple around, like the Carribean hot sauce sold at crafts fairs by a local woman and the local maple syrup and fig sauce I picked up somewhere - good when you lack imagination or time)
Rice, wild rice, steel-cut and rolled oats, kasha
Lentils
Pasta and lots of it
Vegetable oil, olive oil, toasted sesame oil, and those fantastic Boyajian citrus oils
Soy sauce, fish sauce
Honey, maple syrup
Salts
Peanut butter
And of course, all the baking stuff - sugars, flours, baking soda, etc. Spices, extracts. Cocoa, condensed milk, tapioca, cornstarch. Molasses.

Them's the basics. I also have a lot of odds and ends in my pantry, as I discovered while cleaning it out: a can of haggis (a gift from someone, and not meant as a joke, believe it or not), a bottle of birch syrup (so intriguing, but what do I do with it?), two cans of escargot, a tiny container of plum paste, a huge jar of Russian plum butter (I do love plums), a jar of chestnuts, a bottle of key lime juice.

I figure someday there's going to be a disaster of some kind - the avian flu pandemic or just a really big Nor'easter - and I will be sitting pretty. Admittedly, I'll have to figure out how to make a dish out of chestnuts, escargot and coconut milk, but I'm sure I'm up to the task.

5 second rule

2007-08-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post takes a look at the 5-second rule. Something to consider - when I was in culinary school, pretty much everyone was down with the 5-second rule. Except, of course, the people who had worked at big fancy-pants restaurants in New York. They preferred the 5-minute rule. It makes a gross sort of sense, actually - the more expensive the restaurant, the more expensive the ingredients. A cook can afford to toss a 20 cent hamburger because it touched the floor, but a loin of venison? No way. And this is why I prefer home-cooked meals.

Reclaiming the kitchen, part one

2007-08-06T13:16:00.000-07:00

So, there are a number of reasons I haven't been posting much, but the one big, overwhelming reason is that I just don't cook that much any more. It's summer. It's hot. I get grumpy and lazy. I've been hiding in my air-conditioned bedroom, eating cherries, cereal and ice cream, letting the kitchen itself bake under the beating sun. You see, my kitchen is a later add-on to a Civil-War-era building, and it isn't particularly insulated from the elements. In the winter, it's cold, in the summer, sweltering. So even cooking that's really just chopping - the gazpachos and salads and sorbets that make up the backbone of summer food - is rather unpleasant. Who wants to stand in a sweatbox and chop vegetables? I order pizza, eat it at my computer. Swear quietly. Remember that summer will eventually end, and there will be a day - good God Almighty, there will! - when I can braise again!

So of course, I figured it was time to paint the kitchen. I wasn't using it, after all.

The smart person might point out that painting a kitchen is a far, far sweatier job that making gazpacho in it. This is true. But my kitchen-resentment had reached a boil, so to speak. For my kitchen was not only hot. It was ugly.

"Ugly, you say?"

Yes. Truly, deeply ugly. Behold.

Now the heart of the hideousness is clearly the walls. Whatever possessed a whole generation of landlords to cover endless walls in plastic, brown, faux-wood-panelling? I can live with the always-dirty-looking-even-after-I-just-washed-it linoleum. I can live with the Office-Space-drop-ceiling-of-despair. I can even live with the rust-crusted stove that tips forward so much sauce pools in the front of pans (NOT SHOWN for the protection of your innocent eyes). But the panelling was making me crazy - a sort of Grossman's Discount Buildling Supplies version of the Yellow Wallpaper.

So I painted, heat and all. Generally, I'm not a big fan of the "slather everything in white paint and be done with it" approach to decorating, but given the limitations of my rental, this was the best option. I painted those brown walls white. I also used white paint on two bookcases and a cd rack that I had left neglected because the whole faux-wood-panelling thing left me too despairing to bother with trying to make anything else in the room nice. I painted the distressed blue cabinet (which had worked in an earlier apartment, but not here), the girliest of pinks. Why? Because I'm a girl who lives alone and I can, damnit! I threw out most of the stuff under the "sideboard" (really a desk I scavenged from the sidewalk and topped with a great piece of granite my old roommate got for me from some friend who worked at a quarry) and took off the tablecloth that had been hiding the mess. I took down some of the excess from the walls. I hung white shelves to match the white walls. I hit Target, TJ Maxx, Marshalls and AJ Wrights (nothing but the best 'round here) in a desperate search for affordable, decent looking curtains. I gave up and bought some calico for $3/yard and made the world's simplest cafe curtains. And here it is, my new kitchen, the $120 remodel, a fine example of nana-chic:

The current fad for kitchens is some weird boardroom/factory/Tuscan villa cross. Lots of expensive masters-of-the-universe materials like granite and cherry, combined with brushed steel appliances of a size and quality intended for 24-hour-a-day production lines, and everything "softened" by the application of a bit of yellow wash on the walls and a few cans of olive oil. The design magazines are full of these places, and they bore me to tears. The message they send is one of power and money - I can afford the same equipment I see in the restaurant kitchens featured on the Food Network, I can afford to put tropical woods in places that will daily get splattered with tomato sauce. Blah, blah, blah. In contrast, the message of the white-painted kitchens of our grandmothers was both more modest and more impressive: I can keep this shit CLEAN.

Ever since I painted the table white, I've been wiping paw prints. I had no idea the cats spent so much time on the kitchen table in my absence. Now I have the dirty, dirty evidence. I'm worried about anyone coming into the apartment without notice: Hiu, nice to see you, come right in, just give me a moment to wipe down the kitchen table, because you. Have. No. Idea.

It could send a girl running to a table made of wood from destroyed rain forests.

But overall, I really, really like my white kitchen. It's pleasant and bright and cheery. It says: want a cuppa? It says: there are cookies if you want one. It says: dig in. And I like that.
************************************************************************
Unfortunately, I wasn't done. There was another problem with the kitchen, something besides aesthetics that was driving me back to the pizza shop. And that was the pantry and, ahem, its resident moths.

Good article

2007-08-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

in Salon about local, seasonal food and who needs it most.

Sauerkraut - IT'S ALIVE!!!!

2007-07-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend visiting my friend Anna in Waterville, Maine. While driving along Route Three, we saw a sign for Morse's Sauerkraut. Strangely enough, both of us had recently heard about this place - me from Eating New England, Anna from a friend in her native state of Tennessee who had lamented his failure to tell her to bring him some sauerkraut on her trip home. Clearly, this is sauerkraut that inspires passion.

The deli itself is amazing, full of European specialities that can be hard to find even in big cities, let alone on a back road off a two-lane highway in Maine. They have sausages and candies and cheeses and stroopwaffles. But most importantly, they have their own homemade sauerkraut. This is not the pasteurized, lifeless stuff you get at the supermarket. Sauerkraut is made through a process of fermentation, and the supermarket variety has had the process ended through the application of heat. But Morse's sauerkraut is still alive. That means that you can store it for some time, but you have to "burp" the container, because the gases that are the byproduct of fermentation will build up. So why would you want the bother of living sauerkraut? Well, it tastes better, for one thing. And living sauerkraut contains active enzymes that aid digestion, making nutrients more available to the body. There's a reason that every culture has a traditional fermented product that is consumed with meals, whether that be sauerkraut, kimchee, miso, pickles, or kefir. Of course, modern processing has ruined most traditional foods, eliminating the beneficial active enzymes in exchange for shelf-stability and uniformity. You can make your own sauerkraut at home, and it's not difficult, but it's nice to know that some commercial makers still care about providing a geniune food. If you can't get to Maine, Real Pickles in Montague, MA also makes its pickles and sauerkraut in the traditional way. Both Morse's and Real Pickles source their base ingredients locally, too. And the people at Morse's were awfully nice - they kept the shop open for us even though we arrived just as they were closing.

An unconventional cake

2007-06-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

An unconventional cake for an unconventional wedding. Two dear friends were married this weekend - after 35 years together. They planned their wedding in five days, and it was more beautiful and loving and joyous than many weddings I've been to that have had over a year of planning and ten times the budget. Given the time constraints, I didn't have the opportunity to buy new cake pans in appropriate sizes to make a traditional three-tiered cake. I was worried about running out of cake, though, so I wanted to use up all the batter. What to do with the extra? I pulled out a stainless steel bowl and decided to make the cake a little, well, bohemian. Why not? The groom is a painter, the bride a librarian-intellectual. At the reception, she told the story of how they met, back in the early seventies. They met in the Port Authority bus station and spent a whole day exploring New York with one of the his friends. At the end of the day, they needed a place to crash, so they went to her cousin's house and all slept in sleeping bags on the floor. She said their first date was thirty hours long, and when they said goodbye, and he kissed her, she thought: "This has possibilities." Anyway, my point is that this couple seem to be prime candidates for a domed wedding cake.

And so it was. The cake was Cook's Illustrated's white cake, brushed with syrup, layered with raspberry jam, whipped white chocolate ganache and raspberries, and finished with classic vanilla buttercream. The flowers are made of marzipan touched in the center with royal icing. The butterflies are marzipan as well, held aloft from the cake on pieces of spaghetti. I had intended to make dragonflies and other things as well, but Amazon 's two day service is a big, fat lie. Apparently, that means "two days after we ship it, but we can ship it whenever we damn well please." So my insect-shaped cutters didn't make it on time. Fortunately, I did have one butterfly cutter I didn't even know I had - it had been in a bag of cutters I picked up for a dollar at a thrift store. So instead of a bride and groom, we had two fluttering butterflies. To me, that seemed just right.

Actual quote

2007-06-13T09:21:00.001-07:00

Actual quote from a friend's soon-to-be-seven-year-old:

"Mom, what's a Twinkie?"

Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it?

Yet more good stuff

2007-06-08T09:56:00.001-07:00

On food and class and pissing off your supporters with stereotypes...

Good stuff

2007-06-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Today's reads:
The rise and fall and rise (so to speak) of French bread.
Whole Foods, Wild Oats and government intervention in monolopies (or not)

worth reading

2007-06-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Food should be a pleasure, not just a necessity

Pork Pies

2007-05-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been on a bit of a meat pie kick lately, 'cause nothing says spring like a heavy mix of meat and spices wrapped in dough. (I don't understand myself either.) To my defense, I will say that it was pretty cold a few weeks ago when I made these. As usual, I made too much of everything, so my single 9-inch pork pie became one big pork pie, and about a dozen individual-sized pies (they froze nicely, thank god). Since I can't seem to find mini pie plates anywhere, I used little heart-shaped pans my sister gave me for Christmas one year. For the vents, I used a pig cookie-cutter, so the final product was something of a Valentine to pork.

The filling was mostly roughly ground local pork (a Tamworth-Large Black cross). I browned the pork, removed it from the pan, added onions and diced potatoes, got those nice and brown, then added some diced apple and clove, allspice, and loads of white and black pepper, a splash of Calvados for flavor and moisture and a little bread crumb. I liked the filling. The pastry was less successful, mostly because I was out of lard and substituted beef fat - I had had such success with duck fat, but the beef fat wasn't firm enough. The pastry was flavorful, but a bit tough.

I don't have a picture of the second meat pie I made, which was a great big lamb pie with spices, mint and raisins (Epicurious recipe) for a potluck of food bloggers. I used filo for that, which gives a very different feel. But in general I am a big lover of the meat pie, and I don't quite understand why the only one you ever see in the States is the chicken pot pie. Odd.

Celery root

2007-05-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

There's something about the weight and roundness of celeriac that just makes you want to cradle it in your hands.

Apparently in Montreal

2007-05-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

you can just buy quail eggs. At the big market.

Yup, pictures from Easter

2007-05-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

I said it was a backlog. Love the rooster, very elegant, but the two big bunnies on the top scare me. It's the round, disturbing eyes....

More meat

2007-05-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

Another Montreal photo

2007-05-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

A window of porky goodness. This is just a regular butcher, mind you, not a specialty store.

Assorted pictures 2

2007-05-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here's my brother, enjoying breakfast in Montreal. Note how lovely the presentation is. In general, I find restaurants in Montreal, even the relatively low-end ones, put a lot more effort into presentation.

Assorted pictures

2007-05-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

I'm cleaning out my blog photo backlog. Here's a perfect cappuccino in Montreal.

Usually

2007-05-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

I skip articles by or about big-name chefs. I'm really not all that interested in restaurant cooking - I care far more about what regular people cook every day than what people who can afford $200 for dinner get to stimulate their jaded palates with. Restaurant food can be great, but it's not the backbone of most people's relationship with food. I'm thrilled to have the chance to eat it, but I don't really care much about reading about it.

That said, I liked the interview with Marco Pierre White today in Salon:

What do you think of the American food scene right now?

I think America is very exciting. I've never seen anyone who obsesses about produce more than the Americans. Their love for produce is extraordinary. And that's where it all begins. Mother Nature is the true artist. Even when I was in Seattle, walking the markets there, just the pride with which people present their food, just the way they stack it and present it and show it off, it's fantastic. I think America, the future of America, is fantastic.

It's interesting, what you're saying about the produce. Because it seems like when I go to France, even in the lowliest shop or restaurant, everything is good, but here you have to seek it out.

Well, [the French] take it for granted because it's all around them. It doesn't ignite their imagination. In America, the produce ignites the imagination. I'm sure when you go to France, it fucking blows your brains.

What's the official ethical blogger stance

2007-04-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

on reposting on your blog something you posted on a discussion board? Technically okay, but tacky? Well, I'm risking it, because there's a fun conversation going on about food snobbery over on chowhound, and I want to repost my contribution:

The Eight Types of Food Snob

1) The Four-Star Snob (Or Classical Form)
No meal which costs less than $50 is worthwhile. They like to drop the names of fabulous places they've eaten. They have no idea where to get decent pizza. And don't get started with the wine.

2) The Exotic Food Snob
More commonly male than female, the exotic food snob will mention frequently how good the street food is in Thailand or Malaysian, but will snub mac and cheese, classical French cuisine or a good roast. The fewer Americans who have tasted a particular cuisine, the more status it holds. Scorns home-cooked food. Closely related to, and overlapping with the

3) Spicy Food Snob
Exotic is better, but chili and barbecue are okay, too, as long as the food is HOT!HOT!HOT! Heat is directly related to "authenticity," so the spicier the food, the more authentic (even if the dish is traditionally not that spicy), and people who have a problem with heat are to be mocked.
And speaking of authenticity...

4) The Authentic Food Snob
No substitutions accepted! The authentic food snob doesn't care what s/he eats, as long as it represents in the purest form a dish once eaten by a peasant somewhere. Is certain that there is ONE authentic version of every dish. If the authentic food snob cooks as well as eats, will worship Paula Wolfert.

5) The Reverse Food Snob
Believes that anyone who prefers "fancy" food is just putting on airs and needs to be put in place. Gets pissed off by unfamiliar foods. Insists that everyone really likes like Hellman's and Jif better than homemade mayo or natural peanut butter, but won't admit it.

6) The Fresh And Local Snob (Guilty!)
"I only eat food grown within 100 miles of home, except for spices and olive oil." "Oh, I do only 50 miles and I've given up olive oil - I only cook in local lard now." "I only eat food grown within one mile of my front yard. I've lost eighty-five pounds."

7) The Healthy Food Snob
"No meat, and you know what? I don't even miss it. No rich sauces for me - I really like things light. Only fruit for dessert. Maybe a single square of dark chocolate once a week or so, but generally, I don't have much taste for sugar any more. No, not fat either. You know, once you break your addiction to unhealthy food, you just don't want that stuff any more. You should try it."

8) The Trendy Food Snob
Genuinely thinks that someone's knowledge or interest in food can be gauged by their level of devotion to the NYTimes food section. Often cooks as well as eats; if so, owns very expensive kitchenware. Thinks that has something to do with one's abilities as a cook. I'm sorry, "chef." Thinks that formerly trendy foods like sundried tomatoes are kind of, well, funny.

Farming the City Conference

2007-04-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the Farming the City Conference sponsored by The Food Project. I attended, in my effort to educate myself as best I can about local agricultural issues. It was interesting. I was older than most of the participants by at least ten years and certainly the only one wearing pantyhose. I stuck out like an old, overdressed thumb.

I exaggerate, but only a little. There were probably twenty people there older than I am, and SEVERAL of these were attendees, rather than presenters. And I saw one other person in a skirt (no hose, though). (I carry the remnants of my Catholic upbringing with me even when I think I've rooted them out. After ten years of having to wear a skirt to school every day, and of course a dress to church on Sundays, I still am convinced on a deep level that jeans are suitable only for hanging around the house and doing grocery shopping - anything that involves meeting people calls for a proper outfit. Yeah, somehow I managed to attend high school in both the 1980s and the 1950s simultaneously. ) Anyway, to co-opt Elvis Costello - I used to be embarassed, now I try to be amused. And the sight of all those earnest college students, in their fleece and denim, devoted to the ideals of sustainable agriculture and food justice, eager to change the world in really positive, concrete ways - well, it warms the cockles of your heart, you know?

The day opened with Sandor Katz and Mark Smith (campaign director from Farm Aid). Now, here's the disappointing story about Sandor Katz - I was supposed to get to hang out with him, and I was pretty excited. I know - that's pushing the geek-o-meter to eleven. But I love his books. Wild Fermentation got me started making my own sauerkraut, and I read The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved through practically in one sitting. He's obviously a complete kook, and I mean that in the best of ways. So when I find out a co-worker knew him and would be attending his talk with plans to hang out afterwards, I was eager to tag along. Alas, my co-worker was a no-show, so I just got to hear the talk.

Which was very good, if a bit short (the same complaint I had about Mark Smith's presentation - the organizers really should have planned more time for both of these guys, who had a lot to say). Here was Katz's big message (stolen from someone else, though I've forgotten whom, because I never remember to take notes): Sustainability is participation.

I'm still mulling it over, because I think there's a lot there. His general point is that the role of consumer is a limited one. If we're going to stop the tide of destructive materialism, we need to be creators and nurturers and growers, each of us, and not just consumers. Not exactly a new concept, but still an important message, one that needs to be repeated over and over to be heard for even a moment in the din of the overall culture and its constant insistence that we buy!buy!buy!

I think that my grandfather was a relatively happy man. In no way did he live off-the-grid. His life was not exceptional for his time. He and my grandmother had a chicken farm for a while, and he worked in a lumber yard. After he had advanced in the company, they sold the farm and move to the "streetcar suburbs" of Boston (Roslindale). Then they retired to a truly suburban home in Wakefield, MA.

Sounds like a not-uncommon American life and hardly some sort of model for sustainability. After all, he sold the farm - it's probably a condo complex now. And he moved to the suburbs, where he became very attached to, of all things, Days of Our Lives.

But that suburban house had an apple tree in the yard and some blackberry bushes. My grandparents planted two big gardens and grew lettuce, spinach, zuchinni, summer squash, carrots, rhubarb, peas, green beans, yellow beans, radishes, tomatoes, and probably some other things I don't remember. My grandmother made jam from the blackberries and froze beans, peas, rhubarb and carrots for the winter. Of course, she made their meals, simple good food, nothing fancy, but all from scratch. In the basement, my grandfather had a workshop where he fixed things and built things from wood: shelves and small things for the house, dollhouse furniture for his granddaughter. I don't ever remember my grandparents playing a record, but my grandfather pulled out his guitar or his harmonica on most visits. My grandmother made quilts. And every morning they walked around the lake that sits in the middle of the town, visiting the neighbors along the way, stopping to pick up a newspaper, their mail at the post office.

In other words, their lives were defined more by what they made or what they did than what they bought. They made important contributions to their household through the work of their own hands. They had a community with whom they interacted on a regular basis. And I think their lives were so much more in balance than most people's lives are today, when spend-watch-listen has largely replaced make-play-do.

Cooking is the primary way that I participate, though I also make woodcuts and paintings. I wish I could grow things. I used to, I had a garden in my last apartment. But I made a strategic error. In my desperation to find an apartment in Cambridge that was affordable and not terribly depressing, I gave up on access to a yard. I knew that I had loved my garden, but I didn't think it was essential. I also thought that this apartment was a short-term, temporary thing, for a year or so, until I was able to find a job outside the city. Well, I was wrong. It's been three years, and I'm still here. And the loss of the garden has been very difficult. Rather than moving forward, into a life of greater participation, I have moved back, into a greater reliance on being a consumer.

It's okay. I won't make that mistake again. And I've used this time to learn some other skills - I've learned how to knit (at least a little), I've improved my jam-making and canning, I've learned how to make fermented pickles (thanks, Sandor), I've assisted in beer-making, I make my own vinegar. Since I still don't know when I'm going to leave this place, I've decided this summer I'm going to focus on pickling, drying, and freezing local produce. And I'm going to learn the harmonica, because, as Maude said, "Everyone should know how to make a little music."

Hmm, I seem to have wandered from the Farming the City conference. What else to say about that? A lot of great projects are going on. I was particularly impressed by the projects described in the morning session that were aimed at getting farm produce to food-insecure communities. The problems seem insurmountable, but these projects seemed to have great success by starting very, very small and growing slowly until they are helping a lot of people. Which is its own lesson - small steps matter.

Okay, Sunday morning sermon is over. The Mass is over, go in peace to participate as fully as you can in your own life.

You're going to have to imagine

2007-04-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

the photo, because I am so out of touch with blogging these days that I forgot to take one. It didn't help that I was at a friend's house for Easter; there's something so awkward about photographing your food in a strange environment. So, I'll help you picutre it: a rectagnular tart, covered in rosettes of lightly browned meringue. The filling was not the expected lemon, but passionfruit curd, and there was passionfruit sauce on the side. Very elegant, a little exotic without being intimidating. Several people had seconds, and given that the dessert table also included a ricotta pie and a special Italian dove (a sweet yeast bread with chocolate filling), that was a good sign.

I used Maury Rubin's tart crust recipe, because, as I believe Jeffrey Steingarten pointed out, it's perfect and there's no need for any other recipe for tart shells. I didn't use his recipe for passionfruit filling, though. It looked a little lacking in eggy goodness. So I found a recipe online for passionfruit curd, then looked at Helen Witty's lemon curd recipe, which is my standard go-to recipe for lemon curd. I determined that the Witty recipe would work, as long as I decreased the sugar (tart though passionfruit is, it's sweeter than lemon juice). I also wanted to use Rubin's idea of including vanilla bean to add another layer of flavor. So this is what I came up with:

3 egg yolks, plus one whole egg
1 cup sugar (or 3/4 cup - I'll explain in just a minute)
1/2 cup passionfruit pulp/juice (I didn't use fresh, though that would have been great. Goya*, god bless 'em, sells frozen pure pulp. It's excellent in cocktails, smoothies and this recipe.)
1 stick plus two T butter, cut into pieces (whoo-hoo! eggs and butter! bring it on!)
2-inch piece vanilla bean

Beat the eggs and sugar together thoroughly. Add the juice, butter and vanilla bean (scrape the seeds into the mix, then throw the pod in while you're at it), and put your bowl over some simmering water. Cook and whisk seemingly endlessly, but really only for about 10-15 minutes (I recommend you put on NPR before you start) until it's nice and thick, then put through a strainer into a bowl and refrigerate.

Blind bake your tart shell, let it cool, then brush it thinly with a bit of melted white chocolate. This will seal the shell from the moisture of the filling and keep it from getting soggy. Fill the tart - you should have exactly enough for a standard tart shell.

Now, here's the question: meringue or whipped cream? For eating purposes, I prefer whipped cream, but for the baker, meringue has two advantages. One, it uses up those perfectly good egg whites. Two, you get to use the blowtorch. For me, the joy of playing with fire trumps the pleasure of butterfat (just barely), so I went with meringue. And therein lies the error I made with the recipe. It was just a little too sweet. With lightly sweetened whipped cream, the curd would have been perfect, but it wasn't quite tart enough to stand up to meringue. Therefore, I would suggest that if you want to serve the curd plain, or with raspberries (which would look and taste great) or with cream, you use 1 cup of sugar, but if you want to to cover the curd with meringue, drop the sugar down to 3/4 cup.

The sauce was my way of dealing with the overly-sweet tart. Passionfruit pulp, a little sugar, heated together, a little cornstarch to thicken (my arrowroot had something blue in it - I have NO idea), then a glug of rum. Fine, nothing exciting, but brought the sweetness back into balance. Unnecessary if you follow the sugar guidelines above, I think.

I will definitely make this tart again; it's pretty easy, the components could be made ahead, and it's a little unexpected. Plus, I think it will be fun to play around with fruit pairings. Raspberries are obvious, because raspberries and passionfruit have a special synergy, but kiwi might be nice as well, or strawberries or even possibly peaches. We shall see.

*If there's one big brand I love with a pure and untarnished love, it is Goya, maker of the only canned beans that are neither chalky nor mushy, purveyor of otherwise unattainable ingredients, my one true Goya.

I love

2007-04-04T07:39:00.000-07:00

the Onion.

Okay, not much of a post for the first in a month, but really, click the link. It's funny.

Buttermilk sherbet warning

2007-02-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

I love buttermilk. Biscuits need buttermilk; so do pancakes. Mashed potatoes taste better (and are lower-fat) with buttermilk. Buttermilk pannacotta can be made in minutes, but with some fruit on top, looks and tastes snazzy. Buttermilk ice cream is the very best thing to put on peach pie.

And then there's buttermilk sherbet.

I make buttermilk sherbet more than any other dessert. I often have buttermilk left over in the fridge, and the sherbet comes together in minutes. I just add enough sugar (sometimes honey) to make the buttermilk sweet-tart, then add a little something, and in the ice cream maker it goes. Ten minutes later I have a nice little dessert, low in fat, not too high in sugar, with a little protein and calcium to keep it from being totally nutritionally reprehensible. This is one of the only desserts I ever make just for myself; usually, dessert is a company phenomenon.

Now, that "little something" I add is fruit-based, but it changes with what I have in the house, from a tiny dash of lemon juice to a mess of pureed fruit. I have successfully made blackberry-buttermilk sherbet, lemon-buttermilk sherbet, lime-buttermilk sherbet, raspberry-buttermilk sherbet, peach-buttermilk sherbet and blueberry-buttermilk sherbet. Last night I made pink grapefruit-buttermilk sherbet, and I just want to share this advice with you: don't. Grapefruit-buttermilk sherbet is bad and weird. Just. Don't.

This has been a public service announcement.

New issue

2007-02-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

The new issue of NewEnglandGrown is up. This month, we're talking about herbs.

I love this

2007-02-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

Stephen Colbert's very own ice cream! I think Ben and Jerry's should name ice creams after all my big liberal/political crushes: Patrick Fitzgerald's Hunka-Hunka-Burning Justice (Caramel ice cream with chunks of chocolate), Russ FeinGold-en Honey Crunch ( Honey ice cream with graham cracker crunch), and General Clark's "International Respect" Swirl (Nutella swirl in hazelnut ice cream, of course).

Overheard in Cambridge

2007-02-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

I overheard some Harvard students talking about Michael Pollan's article in the NYT Magazine last week.

"It was pretty good. The basic idea was that nutrition is really complex and we don't know as much as we can, so you shouldeat based on humanity's accumulated knowledge about food you find in traditional cuisines, instead of just eating whatever nutritionists say you should this week. So, eat real food, like what your grandparents ate. You know, don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, like Powerbars or Oreos or yogurt."

Yogurt. Cracked me up.

A little something

2007-02-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't been writing a lot here, because the website has been tkaing a lot of time, and because I haven't been cooking really exciting things. No big projects, so fancy meals. Just simple, straightforward meals. I made liver this weekend for the first time, but I just cooked it with bacon and onions, nothing unexpected. Who wants to hear about that?

Well, I do. At least, I do when I'm reading other peoples' blogs. I love to hear what people really eat, day to day. What did you have for lunch, for dinner? I want to know. I want to know where you get your groceries, what you splurge on, and where you pinch pennies, what your fall-back meals are and what's in your pantry and what big-brand foods do you still eat all the time even though you're not really a big-brand-eatin' kind of person (Grape-Nuts). But I never feel like I have enough to say unless I can offer up something different. Isn't it always that way? We want greatness from ourselves, but love other people if they just smile at us.

So, here's what I had for lunch: lentil salad. This is a good salad, simple and tasty enough to eat three days in a row. I used to make it all the time, but then I stopped because the boyfriend doesn't like feta, and feta is key to this salad. Then I realized that feta is only key for me - he likes really plain food. So I made a batch and removed his portion before I added the feta.

I don't measure for this. I don't even know how many cupes of lentils I used, because I made the lentils for a side dish on Saturday night, just boiled firm-tender with some mushrooms over. The next day I mixed the leftover lentils with chopped red pepper, parsley and feta cheese, and dressed it all with a combination of lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, salt and a spoonful of tomato paste. Of course, you can skip the red pepper, or use green, or add red onion or chopped sundried tomatoes,or cucumbers or regular tomatoes or scallions. The basic requirements are lentils (not overcooked), parsley (the salad will taste dull without it), feta, and enough salt and pepper in the dressing to really give it some flavor. Though you could substitute vinegar for the lemon juice, I wouldn't recommend it - the bright citrus serves as a good counterpoint to the earthy lentils. But you can skip the tomato paste if you wish, particularly if you do add some tomatoes, dried or not, to the salad.

BUZZBUZZBUZZ

2007-01-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

I used to have a friend who made coffee with caffeinated water. (Do they still make that stuff? Crank2O?) Anyway, now he can use that concoction to wash down a nice, caffeinated donut. Bliss.

If I knew then what I know now....

2007-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

A few things I wish someone had told me long ago - or at least that I had listened when someone did ( a list primarily culinary):
1) Throw away ceramic pie plates, no matter how cute they may be or how many you might receive as gifts. They are useless.
2) Oven-roasted potatoes take at least twice as long as it seems like they should. Short of actual burning, it's almost impossible to overcook a roasted potato.
3) You will never, ever use frozen spicy chicken broth. If there's a chicken carcass with lots of spice on it, just pick it bare and toss it out.
4) Always buy two bottles of glass cleaner, two cans of scrubbing cleanser, two rolls of paper towels. Keep one each in the kitchen and the bathroom. See how much cleaner your rooms stay.
5) Put all the bits and pieces for stock in ONE freezer bag, dummy.
6) Don't waste your vote on a third party candidate.
7) Refrigerate your apples.
8) Those weird "produce storage" bags with the tiny holes? They work.
9) Buttermilk freezes perfectly.
10) A small food processor is a waste of space. Buy a big one or skip it.
11) You will not grind meat as often as you thought you would.
12) If you like a cookbook writer, buy everything s/he ever wrote. You'll probably use those books twice as often as any other additions to the library - unless you luck on another favorite. At which point, repeat.
13) On a similar note, you will never regret buying another Tom Waits album.
14) A kitchen drawer needs scissors, binder clips, paper clips, rubber bands, and note paper. Having to run to the desk for these items is annoying.
15) Every home needs a cat.
16) White pepper is freakin' delicious.
17) Celery seed helps out a lot of dishes - anything with mayo, anything with beef.
18) Really good dried pasta (bronze-die) is actually worth the money.