Category: Cucina

I miss eating Silver Queen corn, which we used to get in Pennsylvania in the summer when I grew up. Or at least I think I miss Silver Queen; this article in the New York Times Dining & Wine section suggests that the sweet white varieties being offered commercially—and even being grown by small farmers—in the Mid-Atlantic aren’t Silver Queen at all, but several modern descendants of the sweet, white-kerneled corn. (Apparently the real stuff converts its sugars to starches within 24 hours of being picked and stored in hot weather, which makes it unsuitable for grocery sale.) How disillusioning. Kinda. Whatever they’re selling still tastes good.

Bloomberg (and others): Julia Child, TV’s Gourmet ‘French Chef’ of ’60s, Dies. Thanks, Julia, for teaching us all that it was OK to have fun while cooking insanely complex and luxurious dishes—and to drink wine while doing it.

Update: Beautiful reaction from Julie Powell: “… she created feisty, buttery, adventurous cooks, always diving in to the next possible disaster, because goddammit, if Julia did it, so could we.”

New York Times: With a Bit of Love, the Blues are Just Fine. Discusses the fine art of handling and cooking bluefish, which are in abundance on the east coast in summer but which tend to, erm, get really stanky unless handled properly and cooked quickly.

Reading the level of precautions needed to get good bluefish (for instance, plunge fish into icy brine immediately upon capture), I start to wonder about other fish. For instance, when we were living in Cambridge I bought a bag of mussels at Whole Foods and cooked them in gueze (Belgian lambic, which doesn’t mean fruit flavored, just naturally fermented). Unlike the delicately-flavored wonders that I’ve had in so many restaurants, these were unpalatable. After three years I don’t remember the details, but it was definitely a taste problem, not a texture problem (which I would have written off as overcooking). It makes me wonder how one actually finds a good fish market other than by trial and error. Any Boston area readers have recommendations?

(Incidentally, this article showed up in my aggregator three days in a row. I’m grateful that the Dining and Wine RSS feed is back, but less happy if it keeps re-posting old content as new.)

I missed my customary “bachelor chow” post the last few days. Normally when Lisa is out I end up cooking stuff that she would never eat if she were there; this time was no exception, although she was only out two days.

Last weekend as we cooked with Charlie and Carie we grilled vegetables, including fennel, and I was reminded of how little I do with vegetables these days. I resolved to address that. So Monday I spent working on my first ever ratatouille.

I learned to eat this stuff in Norfolk in a little pub whose name I’ve forgotten; the beer was always varied and good (I had my first Harpoon IPA there) and the cuisine was mid-90s American bistro. I think ratatouille was the side dish for every other entrée, and I loved the stuff: the eggplant’s slight bitterness countered by the sharp edge of the tomato, the overall mouth feel full without being heavy; perfect vegetarian comfort food, in fact.

My version was pretty good, and tasted good cold (a mark that I had the recipe pretty close). I had bought ingredients without looking at a recipe, so ended up with a yellow squash instead of the customary bell peppers, and with no basil. I had the right mouthfeel, though, and by swapping these ingredients around I think I could arrive at a pretty good recipe—and a surprisingly easy one. I ate the ratatouille with a ribeye that I coated with coarse-ground black pepper and seared in a cast iron skillet until just past rare.

Yesterday was a working day, so I couldn’t linger as long in the kitchen. I opted for a single ingredient dinner of broccoli rapini with garlic and cheese. I trimmed the tough stems from the rapini, blanched it in salted water, drained it, dunked it in cold water to stop it from cooking, and drained it again. Then I sliced garlic thin and cooked it in olive oil over moderately high heat, stirred the drained rapini in, and tossed it until it was heated through. I grated fresh pecorino over the rapini and ate it with a bratwurst that, to save time, I had just boiled. Good, simple, and Atkins-friendly.

Tom reviews a rauchbier, apparently the original rauchbier: Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier from Munich. I have to confess not being that much of a fan of rauchbier, too much of which tastes like liquid Slim Jims for me to really have the taste.

But I’ll enthusiastically take Tom up on his offer of a beer, especially since I still haven’t been to the Stumbling Monk. Tom, ping me and we’ll make it happen. Or you can just help me drink some surplus Belgians and odd porters I have around…

Our beloved culinary sweetheart, Julie Powell, reappeared in my RSS aggregator today. But rather than showing up in her old haunts at the Julie-Julia Project, she’s in the New York Times under this misleadingly dry description: “Using recipes from the major food magazines, the author puts together a completely absurdist Thai-Scottish-Southern fusion menu.”

My wife, who was reading the paper version of the article next to me, commented, “She can certainly write, can’t she?” I wasn’t certain whether this was in regard to the note about starting the ice cream maker at 7:30 am on a Saturday “like every other American family,” or another note, but I said, “She certainly can.” I’m waiting for that book, too.

Tom Harpel of Tandoku.org: “Beer is an affordable treasure,” spoken about St. Bernardus Abt. I wrote about the ale back in 2002.

I almost let it slip without comment, but I linked one of Tom’s albums with Onalaska from the Current Listening section on Friday. You can download the album from his site.

How and where did hot cross buns come to symbolize Easter? And for whom? I know that, growing up, hot cross buns weren’t something we regularly had, but my mother in law makes them every year and they were an important part of Lisa’s traditions.

This site claims, variously, that they date back to pagan times or only 150 years or so. Neither claim cites supporting evidence. A Gannett news service article cites Sister Schubert’s cookbook Secret Bread Recipes in claiming a medieval origin for the buns (incidentally, “Sister” Schubert is not a nun). The Wikipedia agrees and points to another article which gives the most detailed origin for the buns, fixing a year (1361), a place (St. Albans), and a name (Father Thomas Rocliffe, also spelled Rockliffe) to the story—meaning that the origin is almost certainly fabricated. Other sources agree with the pagan origin claim; this one cites Charles Kightly’s The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain. Yet the earliest reference the OED finds for “cross-buns” is a 1733 mention in Poor Robin’s Almanac.

Oh well. At least they’re healthy.

New York Times: Whiskey’s Kingdom (Pop. 361). Following on the heels of the MeFi discussion of bourbon, the NYT article does a pretty good job of hitting the bases of native American styles of whisk(e)y, including a great discussion of commercially available rye whiskeys. (Who knew there was a Potomac or Maryland style of rye whiskey?)

(Incidentally, it’s whisky if it comes from Scotland, Canada or Japan; whiskey anywhere else.)

Incidentally², Lisa and I visited Lynchburg, Tennessee on our post-wedding trip (not our honeymoon; that happened six months after the wedding and was to Rome and Florence) (along with other Tennessee destinations). What they say in the article about not being able to sample the product on the premises is true; Lynchburg is indeed a dry county. However, one can buy “souvenir” bottles there thanks to a special waiver from the state.

Incidentally³, the title of this post alludes to a classic folk revival song that I first heard performed by Peter Sellers on the Muppets. I kid you not.

Tom Harpel at Tandoku gives a shout out to St. Peter’s, the British microbrewer, for their porter (which I haven’t yet tried). I first tried their Fruit Beer in 1998 or 1999 in a small pub in London, but most of the sources of their beers I’ve found in the States have been, unfortunately, skunked. I’ll have to try his sources.

Ironic that Metafilter considers the story of bourbon nothing more than a battle between two producers. I think a lot of the story is the independents that have entered the market in the last ten to fifteen years, particularly Labrot and Graham (makers of the incomparable Woodford Reserve).

The New York Times puffs specialty salts as the major new secret ingredient of chefs in the know. What a bunch of hooey. Everyone knows salt is where it’s at. Even a simple home cook like me has four different kinds of salt in the kitchen—regular Morton’s table salt and kosher salt for dishes I don’t care about or cases where I need fine salt (I don’t have a salt grinder), a can of La Baleine Sea Salt for intermediate uses, and a bag of Flower of the Ocean sea salt from the Baker’s Catalog for truly advanced recipes.

Okay. Maybe I just made their point.