Large food corporations are responsible for a lot of our eating. As much as I like to rhapsodize about "fresh" eggs, and lashings of cream, this isn't what's happening across the country. Therefore, I like trying out the new products these companies put out occasionally. Even among processed foods, people deserve a decent product.
With that in mind, I picked up Nestle's new "Sugar Free" Baby Ruth candy bar over the weekend. Obviously, the bar is a creature of the Atkins craze - a serious point against it. But how does it taste, and does it make sense to buy?
Well, first, even though FDA has required the label to say so, I just want to reiterate that there's nothing low calorie or low fat about the bar. A normal Baby Ruth, weighing in at roughly 60 grams, provides 280 calories and 12 grams of fat. The sheer numbers on the sugar free bar are indeed smaller (140 calories, 8 grams of fat), but that's because the bar itself is smaller - a mere 36.8 grams. One wonders if Nestle (and its consumers) wouldn't be better off just making their normal bar a little smaller, and leaving it at that. I should also note that you pay a lot more for the privilege of eating Nestle's sugar free offering - I noticed a premium of about 40 cents over the larger sugar-filled Baby Ruth, but it might differ elsewhere. I suspect the price difference isn't purely marketing - the artificial sweetener Nestle uses, sucralose (brand name Splenda) is much more expensive than even good sugar.
As for taste, it tastes exactly how you would imagine sugar free chocolate might taste, but with an unexpected (label warned) threat of laxative effect - flat, insipid, slightly sickly - with a few nuts strewn within. It certainly doesn't taste of chocolate. As people who read my writing realize, I can't imagine the mentality that drives people to eat this horrible thing regularly. Eat one square of real chocolate and give the rest away - buy an apple - drop a spare few blueberries into a pot of full fat yogurt - anything but this.
I sometimes wonder whether I'm being unfair to this kind of product. The bar tastes kind of sweet, after all, and there are some nuts in there, and the brown stuff covering the filling does kind of look like chocolate, even if it doesn't taste anything like it. And anyway, the chocolate of the normal Baby Ruth doesn't taste like chocolate either. Am I just sneering at something people want to eat? Well, yes, but I think my sneer is deserved. If even one person reads this and decides to put aside the sugar free Baby Ruth and do something else instead, I'll be glad. We don't all need to suddenly become yoeman farmers - but if we can put the person who invented this candy out of a job, then we'll have done something good anyway.
1/24/2005
Today is Championship sunday in the NFL, and two great games bookend the afternoon. As much as it pains me to say something nice about the despised AFC, however, the class of the games today is clearly New England's visit to Pittsburgh - the two best teams in the league, both tough, and nasty, and happy to play outside on a freezing, snow filled Pennsylvania evening. This kind of game is why I'm a football fan.
And, coincidentally, the games give me a great excuse to make one of my favorite stews (chili), and accompaniments (cornbread). Read below the fold for recipes
Football Chili
I don't put beans in my chili, and I don't use ground beef. I know some people do both those things, and the chili tastes great, but I think of chili as a normal beef stew with some different spices - and for that you need good, fatty, cubes of beef. I had some wonderful chuck, but a number of other cuts would do as well. I also always try to add some bony meat for its fat content and for its gelatinous properties, which help thicken the stew. The chili I'm eating today is flavored with a great looking lamb neck bone.
I brown the beef in olive oil until crusty and caramelized, and then take them out of the pan to sautee my thinly sliced onions and crushed garlic in the mix of beef fat and the vegetable oil until soft. Then the beef gets put back into the pan, is salted and peppered, and gets spiced by 5 chopped habanero peppers. I know the conventional wisdom is to seed the peppers before cooking, but I like my food spicy. Others will disagree.
I then add a tin of good diced tomatoes to the pan, and then a bottle of decent beer - I like to use German or Eastern European lagers. If you need more liquid, some water or chicken stock will do fine. I add cumin that I've ground from the seeds, and also add some herbs tied up in a cheese cloth - I used thyme, coriander, and parsley today. From then on, the chili is easy. Let it bubble at a very low simmer for three or four hours, until quite thick. Let cool, and refrigerate for a night. Chili (and all stews) are always better slowly reheated the next day.
"Easy" Corn Bread
I found this cornbread on a bag of cornmeal, but it's remarkably good. normally, I eat much rougher cornbreads (that is to say, with higher ratios of corn to flour) with very little sugar, but I was in the mood for this one today. If you want a slightly more authentic experience, instead of pouring the batter into a prepared pan you can put the pan with oil and butter into the oven, and pour the batter into this sizzling fat before putting back into the oven.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Combine 1.25 cups of self raising flour with .75 cups of cornmeal (and this can be adjusted as you like). Add up to .25 cups of sugar, though I like a lot less. Finally, stir in a cup of whole milk, a beaten egg, and .25 cups of olive oil (though less will work too). Mix throughly and pour into a prepared (i.e, oiled) loaf pan. Bake for about 25 minutes until golden and done.
And, coincidentally, the games give me a great excuse to make one of my favorite stews (chili), and accompaniments (cornbread). Read below the fold for recipes
Football Chili
I don't put beans in my chili, and I don't use ground beef. I know some people do both those things, and the chili tastes great, but I think of chili as a normal beef stew with some different spices - and for that you need good, fatty, cubes of beef. I had some wonderful chuck, but a number of other cuts would do as well. I also always try to add some bony meat for its fat content and for its gelatinous properties, which help thicken the stew. The chili I'm eating today is flavored with a great looking lamb neck bone.
I brown the beef in olive oil until crusty and caramelized, and then take them out of the pan to sautee my thinly sliced onions and crushed garlic in the mix of beef fat and the vegetable oil until soft. Then the beef gets put back into the pan, is salted and peppered, and gets spiced by 5 chopped habanero peppers. I know the conventional wisdom is to seed the peppers before cooking, but I like my food spicy. Others will disagree.
I then add a tin of good diced tomatoes to the pan, and then a bottle of decent beer - I like to use German or Eastern European lagers. If you need more liquid, some water or chicken stock will do fine. I add cumin that I've ground from the seeds, and also add some herbs tied up in a cheese cloth - I used thyme, coriander, and parsley today. From then on, the chili is easy. Let it bubble at a very low simmer for three or four hours, until quite thick. Let cool, and refrigerate for a night. Chili (and all stews) are always better slowly reheated the next day.
"Easy" Corn Bread
I found this cornbread on a bag of cornmeal, but it's remarkably good. normally, I eat much rougher cornbreads (that is to say, with higher ratios of corn to flour) with very little sugar, but I was in the mood for this one today. If you want a slightly more authentic experience, instead of pouring the batter into a prepared pan you can put the pan with oil and butter into the oven, and pour the batter into this sizzling fat before putting back into the oven.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Combine 1.25 cups of self raising flour with .75 cups of cornmeal (and this can be adjusted as you like). Add up to .25 cups of sugar, though I like a lot less. Finally, stir in a cup of whole milk, a beaten egg, and .25 cups of olive oil (though less will work too). Mix throughly and pour into a prepared (i.e, oiled) loaf pan. Bake for about 25 minutes until golden and done.
Phoebe disagrees with my post on French Women Don't Get Fat below. She makes two points - first, that I overstate the French health advantage, and second, that "incidental walking", as I describe it, is ineffective in producing weight loss. I suspect we agree on more than not, but I do want to address these two points.
As to the magnitude of the French obesity advantage, it is broadly true that the French are slowly getting fatter. As Phoebe concedes, however, the extent to which this is true can be pretty closely tied to their increasing abandoment of the lifestyle I was lauding. No, it's not true that literally all French people are lean and trim - I overstated the case. But obesity in France in at least half of what it is in the US according to the statistics I've seen, which is astonishing for a country so singularly unobsessed with weight. I've lived with French people at universities, both men and women - I've spent a lot of time there as well. Weight loss is simply not on the agenda in the way it is here. And that's because the people are leaner - not because wine is some sort of mysterious de-fatter, but because they eat less and exercise (in a broad sense) more.
Second, incidental walking is indeed effective in burning calories and fat. The article to which Phoebe links makes no claim otherwise - it merely says there are better ways of burning calories, and that walking doesn't create muscle. Those are both true, but a constant burn of even 300 or 400 calories per day (an hour or so of brisk walking) will have powerful effects on weight. I hate pulling out personal anecdotes, but it certainly worked for me. Do I now do other sports as well? Of course - that's how you develop cardiovascular fitness and muscle tone. But walking will help, and it will help because if you design your life right, you can't avoid doing it.
As to the magnitude of the French obesity advantage, it is broadly true that the French are slowly getting fatter. As Phoebe concedes, however, the extent to which this is true can be pretty closely tied to their increasing abandoment of the lifestyle I was lauding. No, it's not true that literally all French people are lean and trim - I overstated the case. But obesity in France in at least half of what it is in the US according to the statistics I've seen, which is astonishing for a country so singularly unobsessed with weight. I've lived with French people at universities, both men and women - I've spent a lot of time there as well. Weight loss is simply not on the agenda in the way it is here. And that's because the people are leaner - not because wine is some sort of mysterious de-fatter, but because they eat less and exercise (in a broad sense) more.
Second, incidental walking is indeed effective in burning calories and fat. The article to which Phoebe links makes no claim otherwise - it merely says there are better ways of burning calories, and that walking doesn't create muscle. Those are both true, but a constant burn of even 300 or 400 calories per day (an hour or so of brisk walking) will have powerful effects on weight. I hate pulling out personal anecdotes, but it certainly worked for me. Do I now do other sports as well? Of course - that's how you develop cardiovascular fitness and muscle tone. But walking will help, and it will help because if you design your life right, you can't avoid doing it.
This week's installment involves Japanese food, the Oxford Companion to Food, any my desperate efforts to find bonito flakes in a Japanese supermarket. Great fun, from my perspective
What I'm Reading [About Food] this Week: The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
The English do a great job with quirky, long gestating, writing. My great favorite, the Lord of the Rings, of course, took decades to complete - and the Silmarillion was never finished. The Oxford Companion to Food, similarly, has been in the works for twenty years, groaning slowly towards completion. The finished product, however, was worth the wait. This is a terrific reference.
It's not that Davidson has produced the most comprehensive food reference possible. The entries are often incomplete in an objective sense, and as the author notes in introduction, "there were to be no recipes, and there are none". But the breadth and of Davidson's work, and the unexpected directions in which he takes entries more than make up for any shortcomings. Take, for example, his inclusion of "Noah's Ark", and his short musing on what the inhabitants might have done for food - or his description of the combat between two hotels for title to the veritable Sachertorte in the early 19th century. These aren't meant to be part an encyclopedic collection of everything about food, but things one particular man found interesting, and I think the final product is better for it.
This isn't to say that The Oxford Companion to Food isn't good for reference. The number of topics covered is impressive, and Davidson even squeezes in an entry on our favorite ortolan, noting that Alexander Dumas favored drowning them in vinegar to killing them otherwise. To tell you the truth, however, I still think the best part of the whole book is the extremely full bibliography. Ever needed to find out who wrote The Confectioner's Oracle? - I don't, but the answer is William Gunter. For information of that kind on hand at all times, ready for dipping into at random, I'm willing to pay the cover price of $49.95. And you should too.
What I'm eating this week
So, it turns out that shopping in a Japanese supermarket is harder than it looks. I thought I was doing well by looking for a fish logo when I needed bonito flakes for the basic Japanese stock (dashi), but that's less helpful when there are 8 tubs of fish logo-ed flakes of one sort or another in a row, all shouting indescipherable Japanese slogans in the same lurid purples and pinks After a quick check of the notes I had brought along, I found the ones without sesame seeds, or peppers, or strange other things i didn't know anything about. From there, it was a pretty straightforward thing to find the Aka (Red) miso, and not the Red miso with all sorts of things simmered as well, or the white miso that looks more beige than white. I'm still not sure all the ingredients I got were the right ones, but they'll have to do.
All the above makes pretty clear that my theme for the week is Japanese food, and specifically miso. I'm going to brush it on salmon, and broil it till crisp - and eat that with miso soup made of dashi and miso. I've got some firm tofu to brush with more miso and grill with mushrooms, to be eaten with short grain japanese brown rice seasoned with miso. If I need it, there will also be miso soup with udon and mushrooms and kale. Sure, that's probably too much miso for one week, but that kind of immersion is probably a good way to start. I'll report back on my experiment next week.
What I'm Reading [About Food] this Week: The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
The English do a great job with quirky, long gestating, writing. My great favorite, the Lord of the Rings, of course, took decades to complete - and the Silmarillion was never finished. The Oxford Companion to Food, similarly, has been in the works for twenty years, groaning slowly towards completion. The finished product, however, was worth the wait. This is a terrific reference.
It's not that Davidson has produced the most comprehensive food reference possible. The entries are often incomplete in an objective sense, and as the author notes in introduction, "there were to be no recipes, and there are none". But the breadth and of Davidson's work, and the unexpected directions in which he takes entries more than make up for any shortcomings. Take, for example, his inclusion of "Noah's Ark", and his short musing on what the inhabitants might have done for food - or his description of the combat between two hotels for title to the veritable Sachertorte in the early 19th century. These aren't meant to be part an encyclopedic collection of everything about food, but things one particular man found interesting, and I think the final product is better for it.
This isn't to say that The Oxford Companion to Food isn't good for reference. The number of topics covered is impressive, and Davidson even squeezes in an entry on our favorite ortolan, noting that Alexander Dumas favored drowning them in vinegar to killing them otherwise. To tell you the truth, however, I still think the best part of the whole book is the extremely full bibliography. Ever needed to find out who wrote The Confectioner's Oracle? - I don't, but the answer is William Gunter. For information of that kind on hand at all times, ready for dipping into at random, I'm willing to pay the cover price of $49.95. And you should too.
What I'm eating this week
So, it turns out that shopping in a Japanese supermarket is harder than it looks. I thought I was doing well by looking for a fish logo when I needed bonito flakes for the basic Japanese stock (dashi), but that's less helpful when there are 8 tubs of fish logo-ed flakes of one sort or another in a row, all shouting indescipherable Japanese slogans in the same lurid purples and pinks After a quick check of the notes I had brought along, I found the ones without sesame seeds, or peppers, or strange other things i didn't know anything about. From there, it was a pretty straightforward thing to find the Aka (Red) miso, and not the Red miso with all sorts of things simmered as well, or the white miso that looks more beige than white. I'm still not sure all the ingredients I got were the right ones, but they'll have to do.
All the above makes pretty clear that my theme for the week is Japanese food, and specifically miso. I'm going to brush it on salmon, and broil it till crisp - and eat that with miso soup made of dashi and miso. I've got some firm tofu to brush with more miso and grill with mushrooms, to be eaten with short grain japanese brown rice seasoned with miso. If I need it, there will also be miso soup with udon and mushrooms and kale. Sure, that's probably too much miso for one week, but that kind of immersion is probably a good way to start. I'll report back on my experiment next week.
I'm also participating in the 50 Book Challenge. I think I'm going to do most of the blogging for it over on my own site, but I'll put up appropriate books here - and also, of course, many of my "What I'm Reading about Food this Week" entries will be involved. Anyway, you can see the first 4 books I've read this year over on my site . Here's a taste
Book #4 - French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano
I'm not the type of person who normally reads women's self help books. But this particular book sounded promising - I was hoping that Guiliano was able to distill my basic philosophy when it comes to food (which itself is largely French) in a way that people would like to read it. All of us want vindication sometimes.
I'll dispense with the book's weak points first. The recipes are lousy - you'd be much better off picking up a copy of any book by Richard Olney, and I'm surprised there's no such recommendation. Second, Guiliano's constant, unexplained, divergences into French are really very annoying. Yes, I know I do it sometimes too, and I know it's supposed to be cute and whimsical, but I would argue that any use of French in food writing ought to actually be necessary. Writing "moderation is the key" in French doesn't count. Third, Guiliani is personally really well off, as a big cheese in Veuve Cliquot America (incidentally, bits of the book come across as an ad for the champagne, but one ought to cut her some slack). That's obviously not a problem, but it does come through in her recommendations to eat a lot of oysters, or to adorn your potatoes with caviar. I agree that the vast majority of people can indeed afford oysters (say), in the way the French do (once a year, at Christmas). But shorn of that context, which she doesn't really provide, one is left somewhat with the impression that the lifestyle Guiliano recommends is beyond the reach of most people. That isn't true.
Having said all that, the book really does provide what it purports to provide - the secrets of why all French people, not just women, remain lean and trim. What Guiliano says largely corresponds to my experience. First, the French incorporate much more walking into their daily routines. And I don't mean the forced march of health walks that most people think of - decked out in sweats and those goofy ankle weights - but what Guiliano rightly calls incidental walking. That is, walking to work, because you live a mile or so from the office, or walking to the grocer, who happens to be down the way, because you've forgotten the cream. That's the kind of exercise that slaughters calories, and when Guiliano recommends moving to somewhere where incidental walking is unavoidable, I'm in complete agreement. Personally, I'll never live further than a mile and a half from work, or closer than half a mile or so. The health benefits of that daily treck are simply too important.
Second, Guilano's message of moderation is precisely right. The American intuition has always been to categorically eliminate one type of food or add another - fat, carbs, bran, oats, olive oil, wine. These are sometimes effective short term solutions, but they have nothing to do with long term weight loss and maintenance for the general population. I agree with Guiliano that the real solution is a matter of attitude - the belief that food is a special pleasure, and that preparing your own, delicious, meals well balanced between taste and health is necessary to a sustainable diet regime. I'm not sure she'll be successful in pushing the re-institution of multi-course meals in America (though that would be great), but the basic point is right - meals should be exciting opportunities to try something you're looking forward to eating. You owe it to yourself to make the effort.
I'm not sure if Guiliano's effort will make much difference in the obesity wars. But it's at least a symbol of how we should be approaching the problem, and perhaps a warning as to how far off track many of our efforts are. I wouldn't buy the book - it's far too short a read for long term use, but if you're interested in the modern problems of health and food at all, this is an excellent addition to the literature.
Book #4 - French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano
I'm not the type of person who normally reads women's self help books. But this particular book sounded promising - I was hoping that Guiliano was able to distill my basic philosophy when it comes to food (which itself is largely French) in a way that people would like to read it. All of us want vindication sometimes.
I'll dispense with the book's weak points first. The recipes are lousy - you'd be much better off picking up a copy of any book by Richard Olney, and I'm surprised there's no such recommendation. Second, Guiliano's constant, unexplained, divergences into French are really very annoying. Yes, I know I do it sometimes too, and I know it's supposed to be cute and whimsical, but I would argue that any use of French in food writing ought to actually be necessary. Writing "moderation is the key" in French doesn't count. Third, Guiliani is personally really well off, as a big cheese in Veuve Cliquot America (incidentally, bits of the book come across as an ad for the champagne, but one ought to cut her some slack). That's obviously not a problem, but it does come through in her recommendations to eat a lot of oysters, or to adorn your potatoes with caviar. I agree that the vast majority of people can indeed afford oysters (say), in the way the French do (once a year, at Christmas). But shorn of that context, which she doesn't really provide, one is left somewhat with the impression that the lifestyle Guiliano recommends is beyond the reach of most people. That isn't true.
Having said all that, the book really does provide what it purports to provide - the secrets of why all French people, not just women, remain lean and trim. What Guiliano says largely corresponds to my experience. First, the French incorporate much more walking into their daily routines. And I don't mean the forced march of health walks that most people think of - decked out in sweats and those goofy ankle weights - but what Guiliano rightly calls incidental walking. That is, walking to work, because you live a mile or so from the office, or walking to the grocer, who happens to be down the way, because you've forgotten the cream. That's the kind of exercise that slaughters calories, and when Guiliano recommends moving to somewhere where incidental walking is unavoidable, I'm in complete agreement. Personally, I'll never live further than a mile and a half from work, or closer than half a mile or so. The health benefits of that daily treck are simply too important.
Second, Guilano's message of moderation is precisely right. The American intuition has always been to categorically eliminate one type of food or add another - fat, carbs, bran, oats, olive oil, wine. These are sometimes effective short term solutions, but they have nothing to do with long term weight loss and maintenance for the general population. I agree with Guiliano that the real solution is a matter of attitude - the belief that food is a special pleasure, and that preparing your own, delicious, meals well balanced between taste and health is necessary to a sustainable diet regime. I'm not sure she'll be successful in pushing the re-institution of multi-course meals in America (though that would be great), but the basic point is right - meals should be exciting opportunities to try something you're looking forward to eating. You owe it to yourself to make the effort.
I'm not sure if Guiliano's effort will make much difference in the obesity wars. But it's at least a symbol of how we should be approaching the problem, and perhaps a warning as to how far off track many of our efforts are. I wouldn't buy the book - it's far too short a read for long term use, but if you're interested in the modern problems of health and food at all, this is an excellent addition to the literature.
I'm taking a course in food and drug law this semester, which has turned out to be a lot of fun. Reading the casebook, I came across this excerpt from a deposition. I think it speaks for itself;
Q. Mr. Konicov, does your firm still market a tape called "Astro Sounds"?
A. Yes, we do.
Q. How does it differ from the other tapes?
A. It's just a bunch of loud, squeaky noises.
Q. And what is it supposed to do?
A. I don't know.
Q. Why do you sell the tape if you don't know what it does or purports to do?
A. Why?
Q. Yes.
A. To give people a choice to buy it or not to buy it.
Q. Mr. Konicov, does your firm still market a tape called "Astro Sounds"?
A. Yes, we do.
Q. How does it differ from the other tapes?
A. It's just a bunch of loud, squeaky noises.
Q. And what is it supposed to do?
A. I don't know.
Q. Why do you sell the tape if you don't know what it does or purports to do?
A. Why?
Q. Yes.
A. To give people a choice to buy it or not to buy it.
1/15/2005
What I'm Eating this Week
So, putting aside the Booker excitement, which I think I finally understand after a lot of mucking about, it's time for this week's installment of "What I'm Eating this Week".
What I'm Reading about Food this Week: The Book of Miso:Food for Mankind, William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi
I have no real problem with the kind of glossy cookbooks so much in vogue at the moment. Nigel Slater's Appetite and Real Food are two of my favorite references. But there's a special pleasure in finding something quirky and unexpected in the bottom shelves of a bookstore, or in the forgotten backwaters of ebay. The Book of Miso is a perfect example.
Sure, there's forty pages of crackpot environmentalism at the beginning. Yes, the authors have a zealot's belief in the power of miso to cure every problem from world hunger to obesity. And no, most of the recipes aren't much good. Here's a hint to those planning books on little known ingredients - if we wanted to know how to make enchiladas with miso, we would have asked.
But none of that means that the book is without charm. It's only after the environmental screed, for example, that we learn that the American author spent six months doing a miso apprenticeship with a master in Japan, and only at the end of the book, tucked behind a brilliant history of miso, do we find instructions to do the same yourself. Lost amid the dozens of ludicrous Americanized uses of miso, furthermore, are some amazing, obviously authentic recipes - dengaku, or barbecued tofu brushed with miso; a variety of traditional porridges and gruels apparently typical of Japan; a neat mini-chapter on the art of broiling the miso itself.
I don't suppose that the The Book of Miso has had much staying power since coming out in the mid-70s. But it shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes, out of the unlikeliest of places, you can find some really interesting things to delight and educate. This book is one of those rare exceptions.
What I'm Eating this Week
Rabbit (chicken) stew with green olives - With apologies for the shortened format, the centerpiece of my eating this week was a delicious stew of chicken and green olives. Actually, as the title above indicates, it's supposed to be rabbit, which itself was a replacement for the fattier duck. But my laziness predominates, and much rabbit these days isn't any more flavorful than the better types of chicken anyway.
Put in a stew moistened only by wine, and flavored by large, unpitted green olives, a diced tomato, and some finely diced onions (along with bunches of fresh thyme), chicken really does wonders. The key thing to remember, of course, is to sear the chicken skin side down before doing anything else, making sure to get the skin brown, caramelized, and crisp. I'm sure there are worse things to do to chicken than to stew it while grey and rubbery, but I can't think of them right now, and they're probably inappropriate for this blog anyway. Actually, it's in this searing that the lack of duck is most felt - chicken hardly ever renders enough fat to lend a strong flavor to the onions you saute directly afterwards. But it's a small enough loss compared to the dish as a whole. And the duck can always be saved for roast potatoes later.
So, putting aside the Booker excitement, which I think I finally understand after a lot of mucking about, it's time for this week's installment of "What I'm Eating this Week".
What I'm Reading about Food this Week: The Book of Miso:Food for Mankind, William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi
I have no real problem with the kind of glossy cookbooks so much in vogue at the moment. Nigel Slater's Appetite and Real Food are two of my favorite references. But there's a special pleasure in finding something quirky and unexpected in the bottom shelves of a bookstore, or in the forgotten backwaters of ebay. The Book of Miso is a perfect example.
Sure, there's forty pages of crackpot environmentalism at the beginning. Yes, the authors have a zealot's belief in the power of miso to cure every problem from world hunger to obesity. And no, most of the recipes aren't much good. Here's a hint to those planning books on little known ingredients - if we wanted to know how to make enchiladas with miso, we would have asked.
But none of that means that the book is without charm. It's only after the environmental screed, for example, that we learn that the American author spent six months doing a miso apprenticeship with a master in Japan, and only at the end of the book, tucked behind a brilliant history of miso, do we find instructions to do the same yourself. Lost amid the dozens of ludicrous Americanized uses of miso, furthermore, are some amazing, obviously authentic recipes - dengaku, or barbecued tofu brushed with miso; a variety of traditional porridges and gruels apparently typical of Japan; a neat mini-chapter on the art of broiling the miso itself.
I don't suppose that the The Book of Miso has had much staying power since coming out in the mid-70s. But it shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes, out of the unlikeliest of places, you can find some really interesting things to delight and educate. This book is one of those rare exceptions.
What I'm Eating this Week
Rabbit (chicken) stew with green olives - With apologies for the shortened format, the centerpiece of my eating this week was a delicious stew of chicken and green olives. Actually, as the title above indicates, it's supposed to be rabbit, which itself was a replacement for the fattier duck. But my laziness predominates, and much rabbit these days isn't any more flavorful than the better types of chicken anyway.
Put in a stew moistened only by wine, and flavored by large, unpitted green olives, a diced tomato, and some finely diced onions (along with bunches of fresh thyme), chicken really does wonders. The key thing to remember, of course, is to sear the chicken skin side down before doing anything else, making sure to get the skin brown, caramelized, and crisp. I'm sure there are worse things to do to chicken than to stew it while grey and rubbery, but I can't think of them right now, and they're probably inappropriate for this blog anyway. Actually, it's in this searing that the lack of duck is most felt - chicken hardly ever renders enough fat to lend a strong flavor to the onions you saute directly afterwards. But it's a small enough loss compared to the dish as a whole. And the duck can always be saved for roast potatoes later.
The True History of the Restaurant
The other day I mentioned that I had a few writing projects keeping me busy, thus explaining my slightly shortened "What I'm Eating this Week" posts. I thought I would post a little something on one of them here for perusal, though this one is way on the back burner at the moment.
The traditional story of the restaurant's birth is tempting in its romance. Some time in the late 18th century, we're told, a maverick cook named Boulanger set up an eatery where he served not only restaurant, a refreshing soup of the period, but also a dish of sheeps' feet in white sauce. Enraged, the guild of traiteurs brought suit in the Parlement de Paris, (a sort of hybrid court/legislature) alleging that Boulanger had trespassed into their territory. Sauces, they said, were the province of the traiteurs. After a series of appeals, the guild won, and Boulanger's naescent effort was condemned by the bewigged manifestations of the royal law. The story always concludes, however, by noting that the damage was done. Boulanger, and the restaurant as universal eating destination, were here to stay.
From the first time I heard the story, I knew it stunk. It just didn't sound like something that was likely to have happened in ancien regime France. Sure enough, a quick look into the subject demonstrated that the best historian of the restaurant, Rebecca Spang, had recently concluded that "this account is, to all appearances, largely unfounded . . . [N]o evidence in the judicial, police, or corporate archives substantiates the story of Boulanger's defeat at the hands of litigious caterers". Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant (2000) at 9. Surprisingly, the reason such a silly fable has lasted so long has little to do with French chauvinistic pride at having invented the restaurant. Rather, it seems that the image of overweening guilds crushing the small entrepreneur was a keystone of French Marxist historiography - an example of how the French Revolution brought capitalism (inevitably to be toppled) to the fore. In the face of that kind of motivation, actual evidence apparently had little weight, and dozens of books have repeated the story in one form or another.
The problem this leaves us with, though, is that we haven't actually done very much to show that the episode didn't happen. In the absence of that kind of proof, I suspect that both politically motivated historians and food romantics will continue repeating this nonsense for a long time to come. Since I don't want that to happen, my idea is to use a lawyer's perspective to get a little better handle on the subject. Specifically, I'm interested to discover if the "decision" as it comes down to us was even in the jurisdictional or legal purview of the Parlement de Paris at all. If, as I suspect, this just isn't the kind of thing the Parlement was likely to have decided, then I think we've got ourselves a pretty persuasive case that the whole thing never happened. Of course, my biggest obstacle is that though I know something about the Parlement de Paris, and I know something about law, I don't know anything about the former's use of the latter. It may well be, in the end, that the Boulanger story is plausible but still almost certainly false. But it's certainly worth a look, especially since, as people note in another context, the trying is a lot of fun.
The other day I mentioned that I had a few writing projects keeping me busy, thus explaining my slightly shortened "What I'm Eating this Week" posts. I thought I would post a little something on one of them here for perusal, though this one is way on the back burner at the moment.
The traditional story of the restaurant's birth is tempting in its romance. Some time in the late 18th century, we're told, a maverick cook named Boulanger set up an eatery where he served not only restaurant, a refreshing soup of the period, but also a dish of sheeps' feet in white sauce. Enraged, the guild of traiteurs brought suit in the Parlement de Paris, (a sort of hybrid court/legislature) alleging that Boulanger had trespassed into their territory. Sauces, they said, were the province of the traiteurs. After a series of appeals, the guild won, and Boulanger's naescent effort was condemned by the bewigged manifestations of the royal law. The story always concludes, however, by noting that the damage was done. Boulanger, and the restaurant as universal eating destination, were here to stay.
From the first time I heard the story, I knew it stunk. It just didn't sound like something that was likely to have happened in ancien regime France. Sure enough, a quick look into the subject demonstrated that the best historian of the restaurant, Rebecca Spang, had recently concluded that "this account is, to all appearances, largely unfounded . . . [N]o evidence in the judicial, police, or corporate archives substantiates the story of Boulanger's defeat at the hands of litigious caterers". Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant (2000) at 9. Surprisingly, the reason such a silly fable has lasted so long has little to do with French chauvinistic pride at having invented the restaurant. Rather, it seems that the image of overweening guilds crushing the small entrepreneur was a keystone of French Marxist historiography - an example of how the French Revolution brought capitalism (inevitably to be toppled) to the fore. In the face of that kind of motivation, actual evidence apparently had little weight, and dozens of books have repeated the story in one form or another.
The problem this leaves us with, though, is that we haven't actually done very much to show that the episode didn't happen. In the absence of that kind of proof, I suspect that both politically motivated historians and food romantics will continue repeating this nonsense for a long time to come. Since I don't want that to happen, my idea is to use a lawyer's perspective to get a little better handle on the subject. Specifically, I'm interested to discover if the "decision" as it comes down to us was even in the jurisdictional or legal purview of the Parlement de Paris at all. If, as I suspect, this just isn't the kind of thing the Parlement was likely to have decided, then I think we've got ourselves a pretty persuasive case that the whole thing never happened. Of course, my biggest obstacle is that though I know something about the Parlement de Paris, and I know something about law, I don't know anything about the former's use of the latter. It may well be, in the end, that the Boulanger story is plausible but still almost certainly false. But it's certainly worth a look, especially since, as people note in another context, the trying is a lot of fun.
1/09/2005
What I ate this week
Waddling Thunder at 01:31 PM
Hey, it's a new year - and, luckily for everyone out there, a new opportunity to hear me bang on mercilessly about food. For now, the format will be much the same as last year, if a little less detailed - I'm busy with some other writing projects.
What I'm Reading about food this week:On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
With the new edition of Harold McGee's seminal work on kitchen science just on the shelves, I went out and bought the now dated first edition. For one thing, the well preserved used copy I found is a lot cheaper than the hardback in the stores. But even more important, I like having older versions of food books around. As I've said before, my Larousse Gastronomique is from 1964, and it covers a lot of things missing from the newest version. Similarly, McGee's older work is tinged heavily with its native mid-80's. MSG, for example, the formerly ubiquitous chinese food additive, is discussed at surprising length. The American beer scene, now burgeoning in thousands of micro-breweries across the country, is lamented as "blander and more uniform than ever". I can't think of a better reminder of how far we've come.
But apart from historic interest, the book is an amazing compilation of basic kitchen science, none of which is likely to have changed in the past decades. McGee explains why people sear foods, how roasting works, the cellular make up of plants, and the reason avocados go brown when you leave them out. No, there aren't any recipes in here, but even in such detail McGee manages a lively energetic read. I've heard from Will that the new version is just as good. Whether you try to read it straight through, or keep it around as a reference when the mayonnaise insists on splitting, On Food and Cooking is a must.
What I'm Eating this Week
Like most other people, Christmas and the New Year have left me feeling bloated, over-fed, and frankly, fat. I know that a common reaction is to cut down on meats and saturated oils. But in this limited instance, I think the Atkins-zealots are right. The problem with the holidays, for me at least, is sugar rather than fat. Cakes, desserts, chocolates, hot sweet drinks, liquors, glazes ,icings - they're all part of our festive diet, and they're all stuffed with sugar. So this week I thought I would return to the roots of proper eating - butter, cream, eggs, and meat - and use them to dispel some of my post Christmas malaise.
Scrambled Eggs: I've written before about the jobs of scrambled eggs, in an early post on power breakfasts. Seeing that my local supermarket produced some good looking Mitake mushrooms, I fried them in high fat European butter, and then slowly leg my fresh eggs cook on a low, gentle heat.
Pan fried pork loin with salad - there's nothing special about pork loins. What I did want to point out, however, is how easy it is to whip up a quick pan sauce, that can often help the dryer supermarket style pork most of us commonly eat. Once you sear the pork, transfer it to the oven, let it finish cooking, and plate the meat. In the three or four minutes you should give it time to rest anyway, just deglaze the used pan with some sort of wine (I use vermouth, but anything is fine), making sure to pick up the delicious bits of caramelized pork stuck to the bottom, and then whip in butter to taste. The real upside of this method is that the pan is easier to clear. Sauce plus convenience!
Waddling Thunder at 01:31 PM
Hey, it's a new year - and, luckily for everyone out there, a new opportunity to hear me bang on mercilessly about food. For now, the format will be much the same as last year, if a little less detailed - I'm busy with some other writing projects.
What I'm Reading about food this week:On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
With the new edition of Harold McGee's seminal work on kitchen science just on the shelves, I went out and bought the now dated first edition. For one thing, the well preserved used copy I found is a lot cheaper than the hardback in the stores. But even more important, I like having older versions of food books around. As I've said before, my Larousse Gastronomique is from 1964, and it covers a lot of things missing from the newest version. Similarly, McGee's older work is tinged heavily with its native mid-80's. MSG, for example, the formerly ubiquitous chinese food additive, is discussed at surprising length. The American beer scene, now burgeoning in thousands of micro-breweries across the country, is lamented as "blander and more uniform than ever". I can't think of a better reminder of how far we've come.
But apart from historic interest, the book is an amazing compilation of basic kitchen science, none of which is likely to have changed in the past decades. McGee explains why people sear foods, how roasting works, the cellular make up of plants, and the reason avocados go brown when you leave them out. No, there aren't any recipes in here, but even in such detail McGee manages a lively energetic read. I've heard from Will that the new version is just as good. Whether you try to read it straight through, or keep it around as a reference when the mayonnaise insists on splitting, On Food and Cooking is a must.
What I'm Eating this Week
Like most other people, Christmas and the New Year have left me feeling bloated, over-fed, and frankly, fat. I know that a common reaction is to cut down on meats and saturated oils. But in this limited instance, I think the Atkins-zealots are right. The problem with the holidays, for me at least, is sugar rather than fat. Cakes, desserts, chocolates, hot sweet drinks, liquors, glazes ,icings - they're all part of our festive diet, and they're all stuffed with sugar. So this week I thought I would return to the roots of proper eating - butter, cream, eggs, and meat - and use them to dispel some of my post Christmas malaise.
Scrambled Eggs: I've written before about the jobs of scrambled eggs, in an early post on power breakfasts. Seeing that my local supermarket produced some good looking Mitake mushrooms, I fried them in high fat European butter, and then slowly leg my fresh eggs cook on a low, gentle heat.
Pan fried pork loin with salad - there's nothing special about pork loins. What I did want to point out, however, is how easy it is to whip up a quick pan sauce, that can often help the dryer supermarket style pork most of us commonly eat. Once you sear the pork, transfer it to the oven, let it finish cooking, and plate the meat. In the three or four minutes you should give it time to rest anyway, just deglaze the used pan with some sort of wine (I use vermouth, but anything is fine), making sure to pick up the delicious bits of caramelized pork stuck to the bottom, and then whip in butter to taste. The real upside of this method is that the pan is easier to clear. Sauce plus convenience!
Charlie Trotter, Ultimate Leader
cross-posted at Crescat
I've taken to watching Charlie Trotter's food program on my local public access station - my 13 inch TV isn't hooked up to cable. Before I saw the show, I had put Trotter mentally into my list of over-hyped celebrity chefs, for no real reason. Having watched a few episodes, I have to admit that I was wrong. Charlie Trotter is obviously a master. Whether his skill extends to his restaurants is a question I can't answer without a visit.
Good as he is, however, I get the impression that Trotter is a distinctly odd man. Today, in a little spot between two recipes, Trotter was shown taking aside one of his cooks after a bad day. I expected him to administer the blistering reprimand we expect from our famously hot-headed chefs. Instead, Trotter stared soulfully into his subordinate's eyes, and said - "I want you to become your own ultimate leader. Can you do that for me?". Hey, if it works, it works.
cross-posted at Crescat
I've taken to watching Charlie Trotter's food program on my local public access station - my 13 inch TV isn't hooked up to cable. Before I saw the show, I had put Trotter mentally into my list of over-hyped celebrity chefs, for no real reason. Having watched a few episodes, I have to admit that I was wrong. Charlie Trotter is obviously a master. Whether his skill extends to his restaurants is a question I can't answer without a visit.
Good as he is, however, I get the impression that Trotter is a distinctly odd man. Today, in a little spot between two recipes, Trotter was shown taking aside one of his cooks after a bad day. I expected him to administer the blistering reprimand we expect from our famously hot-headed chefs. Instead, Trotter stared soulfully into his subordinate's eyes, and said - "I want you to become your own ultimate leader. Can you do that for me?". Hey, if it works, it works.
1/05/2005
Masa
Waddling Thunder at 09:57 PM
crossposted at Crescat
Obscured by Christmas, I missed the fact that Frank Bruni over at the New York Times has dispensed an exceptionally rare four star rating, for the Japanese restaurant Masa. What's remarkable about the review is that Bruni readily admits that one might easily spend as much as $1000 per person at the restuarant, if one lets the chef flex his muscles. So, once again, we're confronted with a perennial food-ist question. Where precisely is the line between obscenity and luxury? Would you spend even half that sum on a meal?
I think I would, but that answer deserves an explanation. There's no sense in which the pleasure I would derive from the meal itself, at that moment, would be worth anything like $500 to me. But as someone who occasionally skipped meals to save up for semesterly blow outs in college, I'd say that it's not that meal you're paying for necessarily. It's the memory of the food for months afterwards; the taste that even a year later haunts your own efforts in the kitchen. If Masa is anything like people describe it, it might well be a bargain. And yet - the number is so very high.
I've enabled comments, I think.
Waddling Thunder at 09:57 PM
crossposted at Crescat
Obscured by Christmas, I missed the fact that Frank Bruni over at the New York Times has dispensed an exceptionally rare four star rating, for the Japanese restaurant Masa. What's remarkable about the review is that Bruni readily admits that one might easily spend as much as $1000 per person at the restuarant, if one lets the chef flex his muscles. So, once again, we're confronted with a perennial food-ist question. Where precisely is the line between obscenity and luxury? Would you spend even half that sum on a meal?
I think I would, but that answer deserves an explanation. There's no sense in which the pleasure I would derive from the meal itself, at that moment, would be worth anything like $500 to me. But as someone who occasionally skipped meals to save up for semesterly blow outs in college, I'd say that it's not that meal you're paying for necessarily. It's the memory of the food for months afterwards; the taste that even a year later haunts your own efforts in the kitchen. If Masa is anything like people describe it, it might well be a bargain. And yet - the number is so very high.
I've enabled comments, I think.
12/09/2004
As I've said before, exams are no reason to eat poorly. In the middle of my own exam period, therefore, here's this week's effort.
What I'm reading [about food] this week: In a Shaker Kitchen: by Norma MacMillan
Shakerism is one of these creeds that I can't quite believe anyone ever invented. The worst part of it all, of course, was the celibacy - I have no objection to religious abstinence, and there are some good reasons why it exists, but it seems more sensible from a keeping the sect extant perspective to cabin the celibacy norm to a priestly class. Still, there's something honorable about staking the life of a whole religion on its continued ability to attact converts. And that sense of simple honor permeates the Shakers wholesome, country fare. No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a Shaker - but eating with them would have been a treat and an honor.
And Norma MacMillian's gentle treatment of these anachronistic wanderers of history only adds to the pleasure of leafing through their recipes. I hadn't previously thought of a double crusted lemon pie, for example, but there's a recipe here. There are rough quick breads, and honey soaked cakes, reminding us of the Shakers reliance on natural ingredients. The sect's flirtation with mandatory vegetarianism is celebrated with a delicious chapter awash in country cheese and cream and vegetables, while meats are treated with care - I can't wait to try chicken breasts in cider sauce with butter roasted apples, for example. As a child, I remember romantically wishing I could have sat at table with the honest country Englishmen James Harriot wrote about in his stories of veterinary practice in the farmland of middle England - to keep pace fork for fork with the kind of doughty men who Harriot describes spending an hour sitting silent as their evening entertainment. I'll never have the chance to do that, even if those people ever existed as Harriot described - but Macmillan's book at least gives us an idea of what they might have eaten. I'm a fan.
Easy Peasy Apple Tart - I was invited to a small shin-dig on Friday night. It was supposed to be more civilized than the usual HLS affair, which tend to run towards alcoholic binges most fraternities only dream of. Anyway, I made an apple tart to take with me by using a narrow sheet of puff pastry, adding 2/3 inch borders of pastry after brushing with egg, and finishing with thinly sliced apples brushed initially with olive oil and sugar. They get honeyed after baking.
Lunch:
Smoked Salmon and Avocado - The supermarkets have recently started selling fillets of smoked salmon at about 3 bucks a pop. They're good, and more substantial than the usual thinly sliced smoked salmon. I top them with a a few slices of ripe avocado for a filling sandwich. The on ly thing missing is a little crisp bacon, but I usually manage to control myself.
Dinner:
Goat Cheese parcels - I've read that a lot of recipes developed because of the cooking utensils people had on hand. If you've never heard of an oven, you're likely to have good stews. Well, my cooking is driven somewhat by the fact that my fridge (and especially) my freezer are exceptionally unreliable; to the extent that the former freezes and the latter defrosts. What that all means is that I wanted to use leftover puff pastry from the apple tart above as soon as possible. The obvious solution is crottins of goat cheese wrapped in the dough, with the cheese left open at top. Just put the cheese in the middle of a pastry square, and pull the sides up around, brush with egg, and you're ready to go.
Shaker Asparagus and Cheese pudding - Just a bread pudding of asparagus and sharp English cheddar cheese, moistened with a mix of full fat milk, cream, eggs, and mustard powder. The pudding puffs up brown and crisp, and is especially good eaten with a thick piece of ham.
What I'm reading [about food] this week: In a Shaker Kitchen: by Norma MacMillan
Shakerism is one of these creeds that I can't quite believe anyone ever invented. The worst part of it all, of course, was the celibacy - I have no objection to religious abstinence, and there are some good reasons why it exists, but it seems more sensible from a keeping the sect extant perspective to cabin the celibacy norm to a priestly class. Still, there's something honorable about staking the life of a whole religion on its continued ability to attact converts. And that sense of simple honor permeates the Shakers wholesome, country fare. No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a Shaker - but eating with them would have been a treat and an honor.
And Norma MacMillian's gentle treatment of these anachronistic wanderers of history only adds to the pleasure of leafing through their recipes. I hadn't previously thought of a double crusted lemon pie, for example, but there's a recipe here. There are rough quick breads, and honey soaked cakes, reminding us of the Shakers reliance on natural ingredients. The sect's flirtation with mandatory vegetarianism is celebrated with a delicious chapter awash in country cheese and cream and vegetables, while meats are treated with care - I can't wait to try chicken breasts in cider sauce with butter roasted apples, for example. As a child, I remember romantically wishing I could have sat at table with the honest country Englishmen James Harriot wrote about in his stories of veterinary practice in the farmland of middle England - to keep pace fork for fork with the kind of doughty men who Harriot describes spending an hour sitting silent as their evening entertainment. I'll never have the chance to do that, even if those people ever existed as Harriot described - but Macmillan's book at least gives us an idea of what they might have eaten. I'm a fan.
Easy Peasy Apple Tart - I was invited to a small shin-dig on Friday night. It was supposed to be more civilized than the usual HLS affair, which tend to run towards alcoholic binges most fraternities only dream of. Anyway, I made an apple tart to take with me by using a narrow sheet of puff pastry, adding 2/3 inch borders of pastry after brushing with egg, and finishing with thinly sliced apples brushed initially with olive oil and sugar. They get honeyed after baking.
Lunch:
Smoked Salmon and Avocado - The supermarkets have recently started selling fillets of smoked salmon at about 3 bucks a pop. They're good, and more substantial than the usual thinly sliced smoked salmon. I top them with a a few slices of ripe avocado for a filling sandwich. The on ly thing missing is a little crisp bacon, but I usually manage to control myself.
Dinner:
Goat Cheese parcels - I've read that a lot of recipes developed because of the cooking utensils people had on hand. If you've never heard of an oven, you're likely to have good stews. Well, my cooking is driven somewhat by the fact that my fridge (and especially) my freezer are exceptionally unreliable; to the extent that the former freezes and the latter defrosts. What that all means is that I wanted to use leftover puff pastry from the apple tart above as soon as possible. The obvious solution is crottins of goat cheese wrapped in the dough, with the cheese left open at top. Just put the cheese in the middle of a pastry square, and pull the sides up around, brush with egg, and you're ready to go.
Shaker Asparagus and Cheese pudding - Just a bread pudding of asparagus and sharp English cheddar cheese, moistened with a mix of full fat milk, cream, eggs, and mustard powder. The pudding puffs up brown and crisp, and is especially good eaten with a thick piece of ham.
As I've said before, exams are no reason to eat poorly. In the middle of my own exam period, therefore, here's this week's effort.
What I'm reading [about food] this week: In a Shaker Kitchen: by Norma MacMillan
Shakerism is one of these creeds that I can't quite believe anyone ever invented. The worst part of it all, of course, was the celibacy - I have no objection to religious abstinence, and there are some good reasons why it exists, but it seems more sensible from a keeping the sect extant perspective to cabin the celibacy norm to a priestly class. Still, there's something honorable about staking the life of a whole religion on its continued ability to attact converts. And that sense of simple honor permeates the Shakers wholesome, country fare. No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a Shaker - but eating with them would have been a treat and an honor.
And Norma MacMillian's gentle treatment of these anachronistic wanderers of history only adds to the pleasure of leafing through their recipes. I hadn't previously thought of a double crusted lemon pie, for example, but there's a recipe here. There are rough quick breads, and honey soaked cakes, reminding us of the Shakers reliance on natural ingredients. The sect's flirtation with mandatory vegetarianism is celebrated with a delicious chapter awash in country cheese and cream and vegetables, while meats are treated with care - I can't wait to try chicken breasts in cider sauce with butter roasted apples, for example. As a child, I remember romantically wishing I could have sat at table with the honest country Englishmen James Harriot wrote about in his stories of veterinary practice in the farmland of middle England - to keep pace fork for fork with the kind of doughty men who Harriot describes spending an hour sitting silent as their evening entertainment. I'll never have the chance to do that, even if those people ever existed as Harriot described - but Macmillan's book at least gives us an idea of what they might have eaten. I'm a fan.
Easy Peasy Apple Tart - I was invited to a small shin-dig on Friday night. It was supposed to be more civilized than the usual HLS affair, which tend to run towards alcoholic binges most fraternities only dream of. Anyway, I made an apple tart to take with me by using a narrow sheet of puff pastry, adding 2/3 inch borders of pastry after brushing with egg, and finishing with thinly sliced apples brushed initially with olive oil and sugar. They get honeyed after baking.
Lunch:
Smoked Salmon and Avocado - The supermarkets have recently started selling fillets of smoked salmon at about 3 bucks a pop. They're good, and more substantial than the usual thinly sliced smoked salmon. I top them with a a few slices of ripe avocado for a filling sandwich. The on ly thing missing is a little crisp bacon, but I usually manage to control myself.
Dinner:
Goat Cheese parcels - I've read that a lot of recipes developed because of the cooking utensils people had on hand. If you've never heard of an oven, you're likely to have good stews. Well, my cooking is driven somewhat by the fact that my fridge (and especially) my freezer are exceptionally unreliable; to the extent that the former freezes and the latter defrosts. What that all means is that I wanted to use leftover puff pastry from the apple tart above as soon as possible. The obvious solution is crottins of goat cheese wrapped in the dough, with the cheese left open at top. Just put the cheese in the middle of a pastry square, and pull the sides up around, brush with egg, and you're ready to go.
Shaker Asparagus and Cheese pudding - Just a bread pudding of asparagus and sharp English cheddar cheese, moistened with a mix of full fat milk, cream, eggs, and mustard powder. The pudding puffs up brown and crisp, and is especially good eaten with a thick piece of ham.
What I'm reading [about food] this week: In a Shaker Kitchen: by Norma MacMillan
Shakerism is one of these creeds that I can't quite believe anyone ever invented. The worst part of it all, of course, was the celibacy - I have no objection to religious abstinence, and there are some good reasons why it exists, but it seems more sensible from a keeping the sect extant perspective to cabin the celibacy norm to a priestly class. Still, there's something honorable about staking the life of a whole religion on its continued ability to attact converts. And that sense of simple honor permeates the Shakers wholesome, country fare. No, I wouldn't have wanted to be a Shaker - but eating with them would have been a treat and an honor.
And Norma MacMillian's gentle treatment of these anachronistic wanderers of history only adds to the pleasure of leafing through their recipes. I hadn't previously thought of a double crusted lemon pie, for example, but there's a recipe here. There are rough quick breads, and honey soaked cakes, reminding us of the Shakers reliance on natural ingredients. The sect's flirtation with mandatory vegetarianism is celebrated with a delicious chapter awash in country cheese and cream and vegetables, while meats are treated with care - I can't wait to try chicken breasts in cider sauce with butter roasted apples, for example. As a child, I remember romantically wishing I could have sat at table with the honest country Englishmen James Harriot wrote about in his stories of veterinary practice in the farmland of middle England - to keep pace fork for fork with the kind of doughty men who Harriot describes spending an hour sitting silent as their evening entertainment. I'll never have the chance to do that, even if those people ever existed as Harriot described - but Macmillan's book at least gives us an idea of what they might have eaten. I'm a fan.
Easy Peasy Apple Tart - I was invited to a small shin-dig on Friday night. It was supposed to be more civilized than the usual HLS affair, which tend to run towards alcoholic binges most fraternities only dream of. Anyway, I made an apple tart to take with me by using a narrow sheet of puff pastry, adding 2/3 inch borders of pastry after brushing with egg, and finishing with thinly sliced apples brushed initially with olive oil and sugar. They get honeyed after baking.
Lunch:
Smoked Salmon and Avocado - The supermarkets have recently started selling fillets of smoked salmon at about 3 bucks a pop. They're good, and more substantial than the usual thinly sliced smoked salmon. I top them with a a few slices of ripe avocado for a filling sandwich. The on ly thing missing is a little crisp bacon, but I usually manage to control myself.
Dinner:
Goat Cheese parcels - I've read that a lot of recipes developed because of the cooking utensils people had on hand. If you've never heard of an oven, you're likely to have good stews. Well, my cooking is driven somewhat by the fact that my fridge (and especially) my freezer are exceptionally unreliable; to the extent that the former freezes and the latter defrosts. What that all means is that I wanted to use leftover puff pastry from the apple tart above as soon as possible. The obvious solution is crottins of goat cheese wrapped in the dough, with the cheese left open at top. Just put the cheese in the middle of a pastry square, and pull the sides up around, brush with egg, and you're ready to go.
Shaker Asparagus and Cheese pudding - Just a bread pudding of asparagus and sharp English cheddar cheese, moistened with a mix of full fat milk, cream, eggs, and mustard powder. The pudding puffs up brown and crisp, and is especially good eaten with a thick piece of ham.
12/07/2004
In my recent post on the Academy of the Sierras, I promised an exposé on the fattiness of restaurant food. Here's what I meant:
The problem with restaurants for the person watching their weight is twofold. First, the portions are far too large. Yes, all portions - I'm not just talking about inhuman feed baggeries like The Cheesecake Factory here. Second, a lot of the food is a lot fattier and more caloric than one would expect, given what it looks like. For the average chubby eater who wants to eat something tasty and relatively restrained (that is, they refuse to be corraled by the designated 'low fat' options), restaurants are therefore terrifying obstacle courses. You don't believe me? Well, how about the Chicken Tarragon and Field Greens Sandwich at Au Bon Pain, a nationally growing chain of supposedly artisanal "bakeries". Sounds relatively healthy right - chicken breast, herbs, and greenery? And it should be. But in reality, as you'll see if you click here, the sandwich has an astounding 800 calories and 42 grams of fat. That, you should know, is 240 calories and 12 grams of fat more than a Big Mac, almost twice as many calories and more than twice the fat of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even beats a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is serious stuff.
The real question, however, is how they managed to make a relatively innocuous sandwich that outrageously fatty. So I set out to make my own the other day, using FoodTV's calorie and fat counter as a guide.
I started by grilling a chicken breast on my cast iron grill, setting off the smoke alarm, and using 141 calories and 3 Grams of fat - I shouldn't even count that much, because Au Bon Pain clearly uses less chicken, but let's go with it. The quarter tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil I brushed on the chicken was more than enough to make it crisp and juicy, and brought me up another 50 calories and 4 grams of fat, rounding up. A quarter of ABP's large foccacia gets me another 2.25 grams of fat and 185 calories. That brings me to a running total of 376 calories and 9.25 grams of fat. The tarragon and the field greens are essentially calorie-less, but let's throw another 50 on for good measure, and we're still at a mere 426. There isn't any cheese in the sandwich (I asked) so all that leaves is mayonnaise. For my sandwich to equal ABP's in fat and calories, I would have to add an astonishing 3 tablespoons of Hellman's (100 calories/11g of fat per tb), way more than I've ever put on a sandwich, and way more than ABP adds. If you added a little mustard and one full tablespoon of mayo instead, you'd still be at about 20 grams of fat, and under 600 calories for a clearly larger sandwich. So how does ABP do it? I haven't the slightest idea.
But what I do know is that that one sandwich contains more than half the fat and a substantial portion of the calories someone should eat in a day. Now, I'm not a calorie counter, usually. Cheeses, cream, great swathes of pork with back fat - I eat them all. But that's because when I cook at home I know exactly how much and what I'm eating, and I have no reason to eat the entire plate if I know I've had enough. But at a restaurant, uninhibited by the need to keep some for tomorrow, encouraged by the sign of roasted chicken and field greens, I'll eat that entire pitifully unsatisfying sandwich, over and over again. And then wonder why the pounds keep coming on and on. In any case, the above is why I don't often go to restaurants, and haven't since I discovered how I personally ought to eat 7 years ago. I don't claim that I've got all the answers - but when people wonder where our obesity problem is coming from, this is at least one source.
The problem with restaurants for the person watching their weight is twofold. First, the portions are far too large. Yes, all portions - I'm not just talking about inhuman feed baggeries like The Cheesecake Factory here. Second, a lot of the food is a lot fattier and more caloric than one would expect, given what it looks like. For the average chubby eater who wants to eat something tasty and relatively restrained (that is, they refuse to be corraled by the designated 'low fat' options), restaurants are therefore terrifying obstacle courses. You don't believe me? Well, how about the Chicken Tarragon and Field Greens Sandwich at Au Bon Pain, a nationally growing chain of supposedly artisanal "bakeries". Sounds relatively healthy right - chicken breast, herbs, and greenery? And it should be. But in reality, as you'll see if you click here, the sandwich has an astounding 800 calories and 42 grams of fat. That, you should know, is 240 calories and 12 grams of fat more than a Big Mac, almost twice as many calories and more than twice the fat of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even beats a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is serious stuff.
The real question, however, is how they managed to make a relatively innocuous sandwich that outrageously fatty. So I set out to make my own the other day, using FoodTV's calorie and fat counter as a guide.
I started by grilling a chicken breast on my cast iron grill, setting off the smoke alarm, and using 141 calories and 3 Grams of fat - I shouldn't even count that much, because Au Bon Pain clearly uses less chicken, but let's go with it. The quarter tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil I brushed on the chicken was more than enough to make it crisp and juicy, and brought me up another 50 calories and 4 grams of fat, rounding up. A quarter of ABP's large foccacia gets me another 2.25 grams of fat and 185 calories. That brings me to a running total of 376 calories and 9.25 grams of fat. The tarragon and the field greens are essentially calorie-less, but let's throw another 50 on for good measure, and we're still at a mere 426. There isn't any cheese in the sandwich (I asked) so all that leaves is mayonnaise. For my sandwich to equal ABP's in fat and calories, I would have to add an astonishing 3 tablespoons of Hellman's (100 calories/11g of fat per tb), way more than I've ever put on a sandwich, and way more than ABP adds. If you added a little mustard and one full tablespoon of mayo instead, you'd still be at about 20 grams of fat, and under 600 calories for a clearly larger sandwich. So how does ABP do it? I haven't the slightest idea.
But what I do know is that that one sandwich contains more than half the fat and a substantial portion of the calories someone should eat in a day. Now, I'm not a calorie counter, usually. Cheeses, cream, great swathes of pork with back fat - I eat them all. But that's because when I cook at home I know exactly how much and what I'm eating, and I have no reason to eat the entire plate if I know I've had enough. But at a restaurant, uninhibited by the need to keep some for tomorrow, encouraged by the sign of roasted chicken and field greens, I'll eat that entire pitifully unsatisfying sandwich, over and over again. And then wonder why the pounds keep coming on and on. In any case, the above is why I don't often go to restaurants, and haven't since I discovered how I personally ought to eat 7 years ago. I don't claim that I've got all the answers - but when people wonder where our obesity problem is coming from, this is at least one source.
12/02/2004
The Route des Cassoulets lies in Southwest France, on the wild Basque borders with Spain. It sounds helplessly romantic, like so much in Europe – one imagines that it must be a sort of savage jaunt through hamlets and hills, maybe ending at a ruined castle, or the tattered remains of a saint’s reliquary. But in truth, it’s nothing so elevated. A cassoulet is a stew of white beans and pork, cooked for hours at low heat. And the route des cassoulets isn’t ancient at all, but the recent fruit of a typically French group who calls itself the Universal Academy of Cassoulet, a hikeable road of restaurants who serve the authentic article. Still, I’d like to head down there some time, and take the walk along its 130 miles – I can’t think of a better thematic holiday to obscure the monotony of a chilly fall, or a more sustaining meal for a daily trundle across the rugged foothills of the Pyrenees.
But why all the melodrama about a stew? Well, first, the cassoulet takes a long time to make. Not all of us are required to be as fanatical about it as Anatole France’s favorite cook, a certain Madame Clemence, who kept hers simmering for twenty years consecutively - but even so, the stew takes at least a whole day of effort, and another day of waiting for the beans to soak. The French, like many Europeans, intuitively understand the relationship between effort and respect– I’ve always chuckled derisively about the German habit of deferring to the oldest members of their upper legislative house, but when you see how those ideas ripple through society in dishes like this, I wonder if I’m too quickly dismissive. But cassoulet not only takes effort to make, it’s ancient and venerable as well. We’re not sure for how long people in France have married beans and pork and other ingredients to make a long simmering, unctuous stew (cassoulet is known as “haricot cream” in some parts, and for good reason), but I know that the efforts man has made to make beans taste better are of mythical vintage. Even with all this, had cassoulet been just the work of Languedoc, it might yet have wandered away into the sands of history unlamented. But cassoulet is a deeply local dish, bound to memory by villages and towns, and micro-regions, and the brutal rivalries of trivial men. There’s not one cassoulet, but dozens, and three greats ones that stand above all the rest like so many heads of a declining French culinary Rushmore – the cassoulet de Castelnaudary, with fresh pork, ham, knuckle, and bacon, the cassoulet de Carcassone, with all the above and mutton and partridge, and the cassoulet de Toulouse, with sausage, and preserved goose or duck; and you can taste them all along the route the local cooks have laid out for you.
To me, all that sounds very fine, and delicious. But really, when you think of it, when you put aside my rhapsodies above, the cassoulet is a stew. It might well be, as Richard Olney puts it, a “voluptuous monument to rustic tradition”, but in the end, it’s also just pork and beans. And that’s the real point of all my meanderings above, for we Americans also do pork and beans, and when we let ourselves make the effort, we do it well. No, even our most elaborate version isn’t the masterpiece that they make in fairytale Carcassone, seat of the medieval cathars. But they’re honest, good meals, and before we introduced sugar and molasses into the mix in the mid-19th century, they were every bit a match for the Europeans’ best. This fact has two messages for us – first, we ought not shy away from making cassoulet for ourselves. The meal requires neither wizardry nor decades of mastery, but just some effort. And second, we needn’t be ashamed of our dishes just because they don’t wind their way through enchanted foothills and around ancient villages steeped in local history. Beans and pork are our heritage too. Let’s make the most of them.
Cassoulet
Put a litre of dried white haricot beans in cold water overnight. The next day, put the beans, some salt pork if you have it, some bacon, a carrot, an onion, some cloves, and a bouqet garni (bunch of herbs in a sack) in a pot with enough water to cover. Simmer on very low heat for about an hour (the beans should be squooshable between your fingers).
In another pan, brown 1.5 pounds of pork loin and a pound of lamb (actually, the recipe is for mutton, but lamb will do in these dreary days of agricultural monotony). Add two chopped onions, another bouquet garni, and garlic. Cook with beef broth for an hour, adding occasionally when necessary – you’re trying to make a sort of sauce for use later.
Take the meat from its sauce and add to the beans along with a garlicky sausage and perhaps some confit de canard (preserved duck). Simmer for another hour, together.
Remove the pieces of meat from the beans, and cut into even portions. Line a casserole with a layer of beans, add a layer of meats, some of the sauce made of the broth, good pepper. Repeat until the ingredients are all used, and top the entire cassoulet with white bread crumbs. If you have it, pour a little goose fat over the whole thing.
Cook at very low heat for another two hours or so. The traditional recipes say that you should allow a crust to form and break it with a spoon seven times before you eat. In any case, by the end you should have creamy, incredibly flavorful beans, and tender meat, all topped with pungent sausage. Eat with crusty bread, and if possible, serve in the casserole in which it was cooked.
Pork’n’Beans
Soak beans of your choosing overnight in cold water, which you can reserve if you want. The next day, cook the beans for one hour in different water, which you can also reserve. Place beans in an earthenware casserole with a large amount of salt pork, some of the reserved liquid, a whole onion, and a little dried mustard – the liquid should be enough to just cover. This also is when you add maple syrup or molasses if you want it. Cover, and bake at low heat for 3 hours, adding more liquid as necessary to keep the beans from drying out. Bake for additional half hour, uncovered. Remove the onion before serving with bread (preferably steamed Boston Brown Bread).
Boston Brown Bread
Get a one pound coffee can, wash it well, and butter heavily. Mix 1/3 cup of molasses with about 1 cup of milk or buttermilk. Stir until fully combined. In a different bowl, mix ½ cup of rye flour, ½ cup of whole wheat flour, ½ cup of yellow cornmeal, a little salt, and some baking soda. Add the buttermilk/molasses mix, and half a cup of raisins. You should have a thick batter. Pour the mix into the coffee can.
This can either be baked for an hour and a half, at about 300 degrees, or can be properly steamed in a pot filled somewhat with water for two hours. If you’re steaming, make sure to cover the top with foil
But why all the melodrama about a stew? Well, first, the cassoulet takes a long time to make. Not all of us are required to be as fanatical about it as Anatole France’s favorite cook, a certain Madame Clemence, who kept hers simmering for twenty years consecutively - but even so, the stew takes at least a whole day of effort, and another day of waiting for the beans to soak. The French, like many Europeans, intuitively understand the relationship between effort and respect– I’ve always chuckled derisively about the German habit of deferring to the oldest members of their upper legislative house, but when you see how those ideas ripple through society in dishes like this, I wonder if I’m too quickly dismissive. But cassoulet not only takes effort to make, it’s ancient and venerable as well. We’re not sure for how long people in France have married beans and pork and other ingredients to make a long simmering, unctuous stew (cassoulet is known as “haricot cream” in some parts, and for good reason), but I know that the efforts man has made to make beans taste better are of mythical vintage. Even with all this, had cassoulet been just the work of Languedoc, it might yet have wandered away into the sands of history unlamented. But cassoulet is a deeply local dish, bound to memory by villages and towns, and micro-regions, and the brutal rivalries of trivial men. There’s not one cassoulet, but dozens, and three greats ones that stand above all the rest like so many heads of a declining French culinary Rushmore – the cassoulet de Castelnaudary, with fresh pork, ham, knuckle, and bacon, the cassoulet de Carcassone, with all the above and mutton and partridge, and the cassoulet de Toulouse, with sausage, and preserved goose or duck; and you can taste them all along the route the local cooks have laid out for you.
To me, all that sounds very fine, and delicious. But really, when you think of it, when you put aside my rhapsodies above, the cassoulet is a stew. It might well be, as Richard Olney puts it, a “voluptuous monument to rustic tradition”, but in the end, it’s also just pork and beans. And that’s the real point of all my meanderings above, for we Americans also do pork and beans, and when we let ourselves make the effort, we do it well. No, even our most elaborate version isn’t the masterpiece that they make in fairytale Carcassone, seat of the medieval cathars. But they’re honest, good meals, and before we introduced sugar and molasses into the mix in the mid-19th century, they were every bit a match for the Europeans’ best. This fact has two messages for us – first, we ought not shy away from making cassoulet for ourselves. The meal requires neither wizardry nor decades of mastery, but just some effort. And second, we needn’t be ashamed of our dishes just because they don’t wind their way through enchanted foothills and around ancient villages steeped in local history. Beans and pork are our heritage too. Let’s make the most of them.
Cassoulet
Put a litre of dried white haricot beans in cold water overnight. The next day, put the beans, some salt pork if you have it, some bacon, a carrot, an onion, some cloves, and a bouqet garni (bunch of herbs in a sack) in a pot with enough water to cover. Simmer on very low heat for about an hour (the beans should be squooshable between your fingers).
In another pan, brown 1.5 pounds of pork loin and a pound of lamb (actually, the recipe is for mutton, but lamb will do in these dreary days of agricultural monotony). Add two chopped onions, another bouquet garni, and garlic. Cook with beef broth for an hour, adding occasionally when necessary – you’re trying to make a sort of sauce for use later.
Take the meat from its sauce and add to the beans along with a garlicky sausage and perhaps some confit de canard (preserved duck). Simmer for another hour, together.
Remove the pieces of meat from the beans, and cut into even portions. Line a casserole with a layer of beans, add a layer of meats, some of the sauce made of the broth, good pepper. Repeat until the ingredients are all used, and top the entire cassoulet with white bread crumbs. If you have it, pour a little goose fat over the whole thing.
Cook at very low heat for another two hours or so. The traditional recipes say that you should allow a crust to form and break it with a spoon seven times before you eat. In any case, by the end you should have creamy, incredibly flavorful beans, and tender meat, all topped with pungent sausage. Eat with crusty bread, and if possible, serve in the casserole in which it was cooked.
Pork’n’Beans
Soak beans of your choosing overnight in cold water, which you can reserve if you want. The next day, cook the beans for one hour in different water, which you can also reserve. Place beans in an earthenware casserole with a large amount of salt pork, some of the reserved liquid, a whole onion, and a little dried mustard – the liquid should be enough to just cover. This also is when you add maple syrup or molasses if you want it. Cover, and bake at low heat for 3 hours, adding more liquid as necessary to keep the beans from drying out. Bake for additional half hour, uncovered. Remove the onion before serving with bread (preferably steamed Boston Brown Bread).
Boston Brown Bread
Get a one pound coffee can, wash it well, and butter heavily. Mix 1/3 cup of molasses with about 1 cup of milk or buttermilk. Stir until fully combined. In a different bowl, mix ½ cup of rye flour, ½ cup of whole wheat flour, ½ cup of yellow cornmeal, a little salt, and some baking soda. Add the buttermilk/molasses mix, and half a cup of raisins. You should have a thick batter. Pour the mix into the coffee can.
This can either be baked for an hour and a half, at about 300 degrees, or can be properly steamed in a pot filled somewhat with water for two hours. If you’re steaming, make sure to cover the top with foil
Again, I’m late. No matter – Let’s put it down to end of semester nerves rather than anything else.
What I’m Reading [about food] this week: The Road to Wigan Pier; George Orwell
Not all food reading consists of cookbooks and memoirs. Some of it is a little more socially significant – though with my belief in the foundational import of food to human experience, it pains me to say that. In any case, as World War II drew inevitably closer, George Orwell was commissioned by the so-called “Left Book Club” to write a polemical defense of socialism as the great hope of humanity in the face of German fascism. The result was The Road to Wigan Pier, a striking description of the life, and food, of the British working class in the late 1930’s. The book has several astonishing moments - a description of the least expensive diet that could possibly keep someone alive particularly stuck in my mind – I never knew that beef dripping and wholemeal bread went quite so far.
continue reading "What I'm Eating This Week" »
But perhaps the most important thing Orwell says for us today, however distasteful its “class” based snobbery, is his explanation of why people insisted on eating the kind of processed rubbish they ate to their own detriment. As he put it,
“Would it not be better if they [the poor] spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and whole-meal bread . . . ? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. . . .When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. You want something a little bit “tasty”. . . . White bread and margarine and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread and dripping and cold water”.
What’s striking about Orwell’s observation, of course, is that the same fundamental problem afflicts us today. Yes, the misery of the 1930s is long past, and our world is infinitely richer than the one Orwell describes. But our people still put aside natural and wholesome foods in favor of things that are that “little bit tasty”. It’s still our trendy, richer, populace that poured oat bran into their breakfasts in the 80’s, and embraces the Atkins lunacy today. And we still haven’t been able to persuade people to do otherwise, all the efforts of various zealots aside. One wonders if we’ll ever prevail on this point, or whether a century from now the eating of natural, homemade foods will have retreated ever further into the confines of elite hobby.
Ultimately, Orwell was thankfully wrong when he wrote that “nothing but Socialism can save us from the misery of the present or the nightmare of the present”. Both Nazism and then Communism were thrown back from the gates of civilization’s Vienna despite the dubious aid of the Socialism dream. But devoid of its ideological nonsense, what remains is still a valuable book; and read today, a glorious repudiation to the myth of a zero sum world. I recommend a quick leaf through.
4 pm snack – a lemon-poppy quick bread, with lemon zest. Unfortunately, I ate all of it by yesterday (Wednesday) and was forced to satisfy myself with the new candy bar size Lindt brand dark chocolates I’ve been seeing around.
Lunch:
Pseudo-Japanese soba noodles: This is a really great, quick recipe. Just get some Japanese soba style noodles, boil them in plenty of water, and toss quickly with a little honey, rice wine vingar, and soy sauce. I’d use more of the last, and less of the first, if you see what I mean – otherwise, the noodles sugar overnight. Also, toss in some sliced scallions or green onions while you’re at it.
Rices: I have a great love affair with rice. In part, it’s because of how I was raised; rice is a big deal in a household that eats a lot of middle eastern food. But rice has intrinsic values as well – it’s soft and filling, and serves as a neutral canvas for your best efforts to gussy it up. This week, I used beans and chickpeas (garbonzos) combined with a mix of white and brown rice. Delicious.
Dinner:
½ poussin and potatoes x 2 – okay, so I didn’t actually have a poussin, but a Cornish game hen. Nonetheless, I prefer the British word in this case, even though whether you call it a poussin or a game hen, you basically end up with the same thing - a small, entirely linear, chicken. They make great dinners, though my one complaint is that they don’t produce enough fat to properly roast potatoes. A tin of goose fat would have been a nice addition. But alas – my wallet forbids.
Butternut Squash soup x 2 – what is fall without some kind of squash? Just roast a butternut squash, drop into some chicken broth season with onions fried in butter, and puree the whole affair with a little light cream. You can leave out the cream if you want and add noodles, but in either case the resultant soup should be eaten with crusty bread and gales of freshly ground pepper.
Smoked Salmon - is there a better ready-made meal than a packet of lightly pink smoked salmon? Well, yes - a fresh brie balanced on your lap in a Parisian garden, jabbed with a hastily torn baguette. But failing that, smoked salmon is magnificent. If you insist on strewing a few capers and sliced cornichons on top, you’re welcome to do so – but naturally smoked Scottish salmon needs neither.
What I’m Reading [about food] this week: The Road to Wigan Pier; George Orwell
Not all food reading consists of cookbooks and memoirs. Some of it is a little more socially significant – though with my belief in the foundational import of food to human experience, it pains me to say that. In any case, as World War II drew inevitably closer, George Orwell was commissioned by the so-called “Left Book Club” to write a polemical defense of socialism as the great hope of humanity in the face of German fascism. The result was The Road to Wigan Pier, a striking description of the life, and food, of the British working class in the late 1930’s. The book has several astonishing moments - a description of the least expensive diet that could possibly keep someone alive particularly stuck in my mind – I never knew that beef dripping and wholemeal bread went quite so far.
continue reading "What I'm Eating This Week" »
But perhaps the most important thing Orwell says for us today, however distasteful its “class” based snobbery, is his explanation of why people insisted on eating the kind of processed rubbish they ate to their own detriment. As he put it,
“Would it not be better if they [the poor] spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and whole-meal bread . . . ? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. . . .When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. You want something a little bit “tasty”. . . . White bread and margarine and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread and dripping and cold water”.
What’s striking about Orwell’s observation, of course, is that the same fundamental problem afflicts us today. Yes, the misery of the 1930s is long past, and our world is infinitely richer than the one Orwell describes. But our people still put aside natural and wholesome foods in favor of things that are that “little bit tasty”. It’s still our trendy, richer, populace that poured oat bran into their breakfasts in the 80’s, and embraces the Atkins lunacy today. And we still haven’t been able to persuade people to do otherwise, all the efforts of various zealots aside. One wonders if we’ll ever prevail on this point, or whether a century from now the eating of natural, homemade foods will have retreated ever further into the confines of elite hobby.
Ultimately, Orwell was thankfully wrong when he wrote that “nothing but Socialism can save us from the misery of the present or the nightmare of the present”. Both Nazism and then Communism were thrown back from the gates of civilization’s Vienna despite the dubious aid of the Socialism dream. But devoid of its ideological nonsense, what remains is still a valuable book; and read today, a glorious repudiation to the myth of a zero sum world. I recommend a quick leaf through.
4 pm snack – a lemon-poppy quick bread, with lemon zest. Unfortunately, I ate all of it by yesterday (Wednesday) and was forced to satisfy myself with the new candy bar size Lindt brand dark chocolates I’ve been seeing around.
Lunch:
Pseudo-Japanese soba noodles: This is a really great, quick recipe. Just get some Japanese soba style noodles, boil them in plenty of water, and toss quickly with a little honey, rice wine vingar, and soy sauce. I’d use more of the last, and less of the first, if you see what I mean – otherwise, the noodles sugar overnight. Also, toss in some sliced scallions or green onions while you’re at it.
Rices: I have a great love affair with rice. In part, it’s because of how I was raised; rice is a big deal in a household that eats a lot of middle eastern food. But rice has intrinsic values as well – it’s soft and filling, and serves as a neutral canvas for your best efforts to gussy it up. This week, I used beans and chickpeas (garbonzos) combined with a mix of white and brown rice. Delicious.
Dinner:
½ poussin and potatoes x 2 – okay, so I didn’t actually have a poussin, but a Cornish game hen. Nonetheless, I prefer the British word in this case, even though whether you call it a poussin or a game hen, you basically end up with the same thing - a small, entirely linear, chicken. They make great dinners, though my one complaint is that they don’t produce enough fat to properly roast potatoes. A tin of goose fat would have been a nice addition. But alas – my wallet forbids.
Butternut Squash soup x 2 – what is fall without some kind of squash? Just roast a butternut squash, drop into some chicken broth season with onions fried in butter, and puree the whole affair with a little light cream. You can leave out the cream if you want and add noodles, but in either case the resultant soup should be eaten with crusty bread and gales of freshly ground pepper.
Smoked Salmon - is there a better ready-made meal than a packet of lightly pink smoked salmon? Well, yes - a fresh brie balanced on your lap in a Parisian garden, jabbed with a hastily torn baguette. But failing that, smoked salmon is magnificent. If you insist on strewing a few capers and sliced cornichons on top, you’re welcome to do so – but naturally smoked Scottish salmon needs neither.
11/23/2004
What I'm Eating This Week
So, this week's edition is late, largely because I'm lazy. I make no apologies.
What I'm Reading [About Food] this Week - As I intimated earlier, this week's reading selection is Waverly Root's The Food of France, a compact tour around France by province. Compared to the same author's history of American food, this is a much superior book - written with passion, and verve, and the occasional moment of real sentiment. One gets the impression that Root really loves France, even with its idiosyncracies and illogics, in a way he doesn't his native home - that's not a bad thing, but if the last month has taught us anything, it's that connecting with a country that you don't appreciate elementally is hard. That's not at all a problem with Root's work on France.
But the book still has its faults. Most striking, Root doesn't do a great job of telling us what these foods are, what they look like, and why people eat them - rather, he presents an annotated list of things that can be found in each province. That's helpful enough, I suppose, and certainly interesting - but it's not a great way of introducing French food to someone who doesn't already have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The example that jumps out at me is his explanation of the clafoutis, which he tells us is rather like the milliard, which he tells us is a sort of cherry tart. But to call the clafoutis a sort of cherry tart is deeply unhelpful - it's a cherry tart in the way ravioli is a type of pasta. One presented a cherry dessert in Alsace or Auvergne, the places where Root tells us we can find the doughy treat, has no way of knowing from The Food of France whether they're faced by a normal cherry tart, or a mendiant (a cherry tart made of stale bread rather than batter), or a milliard, or a clafoutis, or a cherry flan with dessert rice, and I wish Root had done a better job of it. But enough niggling. Short of dragging my Larousse Gastronomique around France with me, Root's book would be my first choice for a itinerant wander around the ancient country. And that, I think, was the author's goal.
4 p.m snack - I had 4 leftover tangerines from the week before. They weren't very tasty, so I didn't eat them. Boiled for several hours, whizzed into a cream, combined with sugar and walnut meal (The recipe is really for ground almonds, but walnuts do as well), and baked slowly for an hour or so, though, and they make a great syrup doused cake. And anyway, what better than citrus to remind you that winter arriveth?
Dinner:
Yogurt Soup with bourghul meatballs - 2x - I suppose I should explain this; it's odd enough that most people won't have eaten it. Soak bourghul wheat in water for ten minutes, drain, and then mix with ground lamb. Knead together with salt for ten minutes, and then roll into marble sized balls. Drop individually into simmering chicken broth, cook for five minutes, remove, and reserve the broth. In a different pan, combine 32 ounces of yogurt with a beaten egg, heat on a low flame while stirring constantly (otherwise you get scrambled eggs and yogurt. Not ideal.) When the yogurt is smooth, and the egg well incorporated, slowly introduce the chicken broth until you have a soup. Add the meatballs again, add chopped mint, salt, and pepper. Serve. Rice or noodles can be added for a substantial lunch the next day.
Basil grind pasta - 2x? - I didn't plan the second part of the week very carefully because of thanksgiving. If I feel like eating anything but a little hummous on Friday, I'll be surprised. In any case, if I want anything else I'll just grind some basil, salt, and garlic in a mortar and pestle, and then drop it all on some linguine with a bunch of olive oil. Dinner doesn't have to be complicated.
So, this week's edition is late, largely because I'm lazy. I make no apologies.
What I'm Reading [About Food] this Week - As I intimated earlier, this week's reading selection is Waverly Root's The Food of France, a compact tour around France by province. Compared to the same author's history of American food, this is a much superior book - written with passion, and verve, and the occasional moment of real sentiment. One gets the impression that Root really loves France, even with its idiosyncracies and illogics, in a way he doesn't his native home - that's not a bad thing, but if the last month has taught us anything, it's that connecting with a country that you don't appreciate elementally is hard. That's not at all a problem with Root's work on France.
But the book still has its faults. Most striking, Root doesn't do a great job of telling us what these foods are, what they look like, and why people eat them - rather, he presents an annotated list of things that can be found in each province. That's helpful enough, I suppose, and certainly interesting - but it's not a great way of introducing French food to someone who doesn't already have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The example that jumps out at me is his explanation of the clafoutis, which he tells us is rather like the milliard, which he tells us is a sort of cherry tart. But to call the clafoutis a sort of cherry tart is deeply unhelpful - it's a cherry tart in the way ravioli is a type of pasta. One presented a cherry dessert in Alsace or Auvergne, the places where Root tells us we can find the doughy treat, has no way of knowing from The Food of France whether they're faced by a normal cherry tart, or a mendiant (a cherry tart made of stale bread rather than batter), or a milliard, or a clafoutis, or a cherry flan with dessert rice, and I wish Root had done a better job of it. But enough niggling. Short of dragging my Larousse Gastronomique around France with me, Root's book would be my first choice for a itinerant wander around the ancient country. And that, I think, was the author's goal.
4 p.m snack - I had 4 leftover tangerines from the week before. They weren't very tasty, so I didn't eat them. Boiled for several hours, whizzed into a cream, combined with sugar and walnut meal (The recipe is really for ground almonds, but walnuts do as well), and baked slowly for an hour or so, though, and they make a great syrup doused cake. And anyway, what better than citrus to remind you that winter arriveth?
Dinner:
Yogurt Soup with bourghul meatballs - 2x - I suppose I should explain this; it's odd enough that most people won't have eaten it. Soak bourghul wheat in water for ten minutes, drain, and then mix with ground lamb. Knead together with salt for ten minutes, and then roll into marble sized balls. Drop individually into simmering chicken broth, cook for five minutes, remove, and reserve the broth. In a different pan, combine 32 ounces of yogurt with a beaten egg, heat on a low flame while stirring constantly (otherwise you get scrambled eggs and yogurt. Not ideal.) When the yogurt is smooth, and the egg well incorporated, slowly introduce the chicken broth until you have a soup. Add the meatballs again, add chopped mint, salt, and pepper. Serve. Rice or noodles can be added for a substantial lunch the next day.
Basil grind pasta - 2x? - I didn't plan the second part of the week very carefully because of thanksgiving. If I feel like eating anything but a little hummous on Friday, I'll be surprised. In any case, if I want anything else I'll just grind some basil, salt, and garlic in a mortar and pestle, and then drop it all on some linguine with a bunch of olive oil. Dinner doesn't have to be complicated.
11/17/2004
Will and I recently had a pair of posts on the Ortolan, a small apparently delicious French bird eaten whole off the grill. Reading through Waverly Root's The Food of France, which I'll talk about in more length this weekend, I find this additional information on the delicacy:
"South of Bordeaux, the Landes provide a number of typical dishes of their own . . . The region is known for its ortolans, a small bird of the yellowhammer family which is considered the most delicately flavoured of all birds in France, and has provided a household word for the utmost refinement in eating, ortolans sauce blanche, generally used jocularly. Thus a Frenchman reaching the table and finding it set with a particularly economical repast may observe sarcastically: "Eh Bien! Ortolans sauce blanche encore une fois?" (Roughly, "Ortolan again?")
One of the reasons why the ortolan is so prized is that it is not simply shot and served, as are most most wild birds. It is caught during the autumn migrations in traps called matoles, which possess some screening ability that enables them to catch ortolans rather than other birds of the same caliber, and is then caged and fattened on millet . . . Ortolans a la landaise are cooked by an open fire, either spitted or, preferably, each in a little heavy paper box set close to the flame, in which the birds sizzle in their own fat. No other liquid is tolerated, but the guest may be invited to apply salt and pepper to his own taste as the cooking progresses before his eyes. When the bird is done, pick it up in your fingers and eat it without ceremony, as hot as you dare. They are so small you can put away half a dozen of them with ease".
"South of Bordeaux, the Landes provide a number of typical dishes of their own . . . The region is known for its ortolans, a small bird of the yellowhammer family which is considered the most delicately flavoured of all birds in France, and has provided a household word for the utmost refinement in eating, ortolans sauce blanche, generally used jocularly. Thus a Frenchman reaching the table and finding it set with a particularly economical repast may observe sarcastically: "Eh Bien! Ortolans sauce blanche encore une fois?" (Roughly, "Ortolan again?")
One of the reasons why the ortolan is so prized is that it is not simply shot and served, as are most most wild birds. It is caught during the autumn migrations in traps called matoles, which possess some screening ability that enables them to catch ortolans rather than other birds of the same caliber, and is then caged and fattened on millet . . . Ortolans a la landaise are cooked by an open fire, either spitted or, preferably, each in a little heavy paper box set close to the flame, in which the birds sizzle in their own fat. No other liquid is tolerated, but the guest may be invited to apply salt and pepper to his own taste as the cooking progresses before his eyes. When the bird is done, pick it up in your fingers and eat it without ceremony, as hot as you dare. They are so small you can put away half a dozen of them with ease".
11/15/2004
What I'm Eating This Week
I'm pleased to announce a new feature this week, which I've un-inventively titled "What I'm Reading [about food] this week". My goal, you see, is to eventually have the largest private food library in the world, which I've decided to accomplish by adding a book or so to my collection each week through Ebay. Sure, it'll take me a millenia or so to get there, but what's a thousand years between friends?
In any case, the book for this week is Eating in America, by Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont. I bought it mostly on the basis of the former's reputation for French cookery - for those interested, I'll be discussing Root's contribution to that subject next week. But I also needed a general history of American cooking - I have the odd European tome, but nothing covering home, and I hoped this would fit the bill. Unfortunately, I haven't got much good to say about this piece. Compared to Calvin Trillin's bright, dancing prose in The Tummy Trilogy, a contemporary of Eating in America, Root's work is turgid and uninteresting, progressing in series through an inevitable paean to Native American cooking and the usual denounciations of The Jungle era meatpacking before settling into a repetitive screed against American cooking in the mid-seventies. The entire work, to my mind, is a terrible warning to those contemplating co-authored books, and I was sorely disappointed.
Still, I do like a good gluttony scene, and Eating serves up several memorable ones. My favorite demonstrates what happens when religious leaders stick to the letter rather than spirit of their spiritual admonitions. As most people know, Catholics are meant to eat no meat on Fridays during Lent. The fast is supposed to be particularly strict on Ash Wednesday. But when Cardinal Mercier of Belgium visited New York at the start of Lent in 1919, the Waldorf Astoria served the following meal - I'm not quite sure this is what the Church fathers had in mind:
. . . fish and vegetable hors d'oeuvre, canteloupe filled with fruit salad, potato soup, lobster Thermidor, salmon steaks with mousseline sauce, potato balls, hearts-of-lettuce salad, Port Salut cheese, peach Melba, and petits fours".
As to the my menu for the week, I have to admit to being little inspired this week. Thankfully, there was a large loaf of good bread slowly going stale on my counter, so following my own advice a while back I decided to base my meal around that.
Breakfast:
Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal (the texture differs considerably from the usual Quaker Oats) with Canadian maple syrup.
Lunch:
Cheese & Spinach Triangles x2 - I had some cheese mixture and filo dough left over from last week's cooking, so the obvious answer was to stuff the dough with the cheese and spinach, brush the pastries with olive oil, and let them loose in the oven.
Taboulleh x 3 - I've noticed that people in America make this middle eastern salad with far more bourgul wheat than parsley. That's entirely wrong - taboulleh is a parsley salad, and even if you're making it as a main dish, as here, the bright green herb should still dominate the wheat, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lemon.
4 pm snack:
I've been on a blueberry kick recently, perhaps out of nostalgia for the summer, so I made 6 blueberry muffins. Unfortunately, as happens sometimes, I, umm, ate them. As self-punishment I went to the gym for a 3 mile job, skipped my traditional Sunday night pizza slice, and bought a box of Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bars for snacks the rest of the week. The last is by far the worst indignity.
Dinner:
Grey sole with breadcrumbs x 2 - delightful, light, fish topped with a crust of breadcrumbs, pecorini romano, and butter to bind. Served with leftover lentil and spinach soup from last week.
French Toast x 2 - what better use for stale bread than this eggy, syrupy treat?
Pasta with breadcrumbs x 1 - ground breadcrumbs fried in olive oil, enriched by pancetta, and tossed with linguine and more olive oil. Odd as it sounds, breadcrumbs have always been the traditional poor man's substitute for parmesan in Italy, and I think they work rather well.
I'm pleased to announce a new feature this week, which I've un-inventively titled "What I'm Reading [about food] this week". My goal, you see, is to eventually have the largest private food library in the world, which I've decided to accomplish by adding a book or so to my collection each week through Ebay. Sure, it'll take me a millenia or so to get there, but what's a thousand years between friends?
In any case, the book for this week is Eating in America, by Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont. I bought it mostly on the basis of the former's reputation for French cookery - for those interested, I'll be discussing Root's contribution to that subject next week. But I also needed a general history of American cooking - I have the odd European tome, but nothing covering home, and I hoped this would fit the bill. Unfortunately, I haven't got much good to say about this piece. Compared to Calvin Trillin's bright, dancing prose in The Tummy Trilogy, a contemporary of Eating in America, Root's work is turgid and uninteresting, progressing in series through an inevitable paean to Native American cooking and the usual denounciations of The Jungle era meatpacking before settling into a repetitive screed against American cooking in the mid-seventies. The entire work, to my mind, is a terrible warning to those contemplating co-authored books, and I was sorely disappointed.
Still, I do like a good gluttony scene, and Eating serves up several memorable ones. My favorite demonstrates what happens when religious leaders stick to the letter rather than spirit of their spiritual admonitions. As most people know, Catholics are meant to eat no meat on Fridays during Lent. The fast is supposed to be particularly strict on Ash Wednesday. But when Cardinal Mercier of Belgium visited New York at the start of Lent in 1919, the Waldorf Astoria served the following meal - I'm not quite sure this is what the Church fathers had in mind:
. . . fish and vegetable hors d'oeuvre, canteloupe filled with fruit salad, potato soup, lobster Thermidor, salmon steaks with mousseline sauce, potato balls, hearts-of-lettuce salad, Port Salut cheese, peach Melba, and petits fours".
As to the my menu for the week, I have to admit to being little inspired this week. Thankfully, there was a large loaf of good bread slowly going stale on my counter, so following my own advice a while back I decided to base my meal around that.
Breakfast:
Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal (the texture differs considerably from the usual Quaker Oats) with Canadian maple syrup.
Lunch:
Cheese & Spinach Triangles x2 - I had some cheese mixture and filo dough left over from last week's cooking, so the obvious answer was to stuff the dough with the cheese and spinach, brush the pastries with olive oil, and let them loose in the oven.
Taboulleh x 3 - I've noticed that people in America make this middle eastern salad with far more bourgul wheat than parsley. That's entirely wrong - taboulleh is a parsley salad, and even if you're making it as a main dish, as here, the bright green herb should still dominate the wheat, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lemon.
4 pm snack:
I've been on a blueberry kick recently, perhaps out of nostalgia for the summer, so I made 6 blueberry muffins. Unfortunately, as happens sometimes, I, umm, ate them. As self-punishment I went to the gym for a 3 mile job, skipped my traditional Sunday night pizza slice, and bought a box of Kellogg's Nutri-Grain bars for snacks the rest of the week. The last is by far the worst indignity.
Dinner:
Grey sole with breadcrumbs x 2 - delightful, light, fish topped with a crust of breadcrumbs, pecorini romano, and butter to bind. Served with leftover lentil and spinach soup from last week.
French Toast x 2 - what better use for stale bread than this eggy, syrupy treat?
Pasta with breadcrumbs x 1 - ground breadcrumbs fried in olive oil, enriched by pancetta, and tossed with linguine and more olive oil. Odd as it sounds, breadcrumbs have always been the traditional poor man's substitute for parmesan in Italy, and I think they work rather well.
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