The Ruminative Cook

2006-01-29T17:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome

Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending a management retreat at which the facilitator asked the following question: “Name three things you will almost never find in a professional kitchen.” The answers were potholders, measuring spoons, and recipes.

His point was simple, but telling — “It’s not the recipe that matters, it’s the cook.”

Good managers use management gurus for inspiration, nothing more, much as good cooks use recipes.

People are always asking me for the recipe to this or that. My answer is inevitably “Uh-uh-uh.”

I own over 600 cookbooks, yet very seldom follow a recipe completely. They inspire, they do not dictate.

This newsletter, then, is for what I call The Ept Cook — those of you who can take an idea and go have fun with it, confident that it will turn out just fine. Ept Cooks. Ruminative Cooks. That’s us.

Have fun.

What We’re About

· Food Inspirtations
· Food Stories
· Comments on Cookbooks
· Food Sources On the Internet
· Finding Things On Sale
· Food Presentation
· Trucs

A Fishy Ode to Joy

2005-12-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

Taken from the CD “An Ode to Joy: Christmas, 2005”
as read by Peter Hartjens

A few weeks ago, Sherry Thomas, the wonderful town manager here in St. Michaels was in our store. As people seem to have a wont to do, Sherry asked me for a recipe. “Peter,” she said, “do you have a nice Bouillabaisse recipe? You know, one that I could do?” I promised her one. Here it is, Sherry.

There are a million variations on bouillabaisse. The original does not have shellfish in it. It was just a fish stew based on what was left over from the market. Most today are a bit more gussied up.

What you are getting here is the base recipe I use all year, and even it varies depending on what I have around. Ready?

The first step is to never throw out any leftover fish, crab, or shrimp – especially bones and shells. Toss them into baggies and chuck them in the freezer. I also cheat and throw in chicken backs and other pieces that give the broth a bit of body. When the freezer fills up and you need room for something else, make some fish soup base. Here’s how.

First, cut up some onions. Don’t throw out the skins; they add color.

Put some olive oil in a pot and heat it. Put in the onion pieces for a few minutes until they soften, but don’t brown.

Cut up a head of garlic – a whole head. Throw it in. Let it stew for a few minutes, also.

Add some Herbes de Provence or whatever fresh or dried herbs you have around that you like. Bay, thyme, oregano, are pretty standard. I always add some chopped tomato or tomato paste – not too much. I also throw in a piece of orange or lemon peel. Stir this a few minutes. Add some white wine and cook for a few minutes longer.

While that is cooking, go to the freezer and pull out all of those baggies. Cut them open and dump them into the pot. Add any fresh fish scraps or bones and shrimp or other shells. Stir this around until things are thawed and take on a bit of color. Don’t add salt or pepper.

Cover the whole mess with cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook gently for no more than an hour or until the kitchen smells wonderfully fishy. Skim as necessary. If you don’t want the kitchen to smell fishy, you are making the wrong soup. Fishy is good; bland is bad.

Strain the broth through a sieve or colander lined with cheesecloth or paper towels into a bowl. Wash the pot. Return the broth to the pot.

At this point the bones and stuff are out of the picture so you can increase the heat. Boil the broth until it tastes rich and the kitchen smells even fishier. Now you can add some salt and a bit of pepper.

Taste it. Is it divine? If not, either boil it down a bit more or add some fish or chicken stock. My basic rule is that if I can smell it 50 feet away, it is getting there.

I read somewhere that saffron does not like to be boiled, so I don’t add it to my base until after I am really happy with its flavor and richness.

And don’t be cheap with the saffron. I know it’s expensive, but buy the biggest jar or tin you can afford. It is much cheaper that way. If you can, buy the threads, not the powder. With a whole bunch on hand, you can feel more extravagant and not think “God, I just put $5 worth of saffron into this soup!” Put in at least a teaspoon. Let it steep for a few minutes and taste it. Save some saffron to add at the last minute later on.

Now, I make this stock whenever I have the stuff and the inclination. I often reduce the broth way down (before adding the saffron) and then freeze the concentrate. It takes up much less space that way. Then, when I want to make bouillabaisse, all I have to do is reconstitute some of the concentrate and add fish and other goodies.

Hang on, Sherry, we’re almost done.

You now have the basic broth. That’s the hard part.

A Quick Aside: While you have just made the base for a veddy French Bouillabaisse, you can play riffs on this to your heart’s content. For example, when we were just in Jamaica, I made a Caribbean Bouillabaisse. To the basic broth, I just added some sliced ginger, a few allspice berries, a sliced Scotch Bonnet pepper and a cinnamon stick. You can make a Thai version by adding Kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, a bit of fish sauce and galangal. It’s easy.

Okay, back to the French version

To make the final soup, we start over from the top.

Cut up a couple of onions (no skins). Sauté in olive oil and then toss in a couple of tablespoons of chopped garlic. Stir around a bit and then add your soup base. Bring to a simmer and let steep for a few minutes. Taste. Died and gone to heaven? Good. Turn off heat and keep warm on stove while you prepare the fish and shellfish.

First, this is basically a fish soup. So get two or three kinds of white fleshed fish – like rockfish and snapper. Cut into bite-sized cubes.

If you are using mussels or clams, go ahead and steam these. Strain the liquid in the steamer pot and add to your broth on the stove. Set mussels and/or clams aside.

Now you have to make a choice. You can either sauté your shrimp and/or lobster pieces until golden or you can just set them into your broth to poach. I prefer the former as I find most of today’s freshwater shrimp rather dull. Sautéeing them in oil just makes them taste better. Scientists say this is a function of something called the Maillard reaction.

The same is true of your fish. These I tend to poach directly in the broth, but if they are boring (or have been frozen), I might fry them up a bit also.

Now it is simple. You just heat your broth. Add you fish pieces. After a couple of minutes, add the shrimp, then the crab, mussels, or clams. That’s all.

Ladle into bowls and top with a slice of toasted baguette spread with spicy mayonnaise – what the French call rouille.

Here’s one recipe for rouillel

Put two egg yolks into your food processor with a tablespoon of lemon juice and ½ teaspoon salt and a piece of hot pepper or a few drops of hot sauce (you can always add more at the table). Whirl around until pale. Very slowly, drizzle in a cup or so of olive oil. My Cuisinart has a hole in the bottom of the feed tube thingamajig so I just pour the oil into the top and let it drip in. When the rouille is thick and the oil is incorporated, add 1 tablespoon of warm water to set the emulsion. That’s it. If the sauce “breaks,” put in another egg yolk in a clean bowl and then beat in the broken sauce drop by drop with a whisk until it comes together again.

Then eat it.

Now making bouillabaisse requires the right kind of music to get you into the mood. On NPR, I recently heard a cut from a CD by Richard Galliano, on which he took a traditional French café music called musette and combined it with some classic jazz tunes. The CD is called Ruby My Dear (from Thelonius Monk. Try it. Great music to make bouillabaisse by.

Huh, you know it’s funny. Right here is where I was going to end this section. But, when I went back to read over the recipe, I realized that I spent an awful lot of time talking about making the broth and very little about the things that most people think of when they eat bouillabaisse – the shellfish, the lobster, the varieties of fish.

There’s a lesson here. Soup and people have a lot in common. It’s their broth that’s really important, isn’t it? Sure, the cars and clothes are nice, but without a solid broth to provide a backbone, both soups and people can be shallow and dull. Personally, I’d rather go with gutsy.

I just saw an ad on the back of a magazine for Seiko watches. It shows a beautiful, half-clad woman. The text says, “It’s your watch that tells most about who you are.” Wrong sweetie, it’s your broth.

Crab Puppies

2005-09-24T12:01:00.000-04:00

Tidedancers Crab Puppies

These have become an institution at parties we throw at our store, Tidedancers (tidedancers.com) and at our house. Guests must to love them. They disappear faster than shrimp.

INGREDIENTS

6 cups peanut oil (48 fl oz), for frying
2 c. yellow cornmeal
1 c. all-purpose flour
2 T. baking powder
2 T. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 chopped Habanero pepper or ½ tsp. hot sauce (optional)
2 large eggs
1½ c. whole milk
6 large scallions, thinly sliced
1 lb. jumbo lump crab meat
Special equipment: a deep-fat thermometer

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over high heat until it registers 330°F on thermometer.

While oil is heating, whisk together cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Whisk together egg and milk in a small bowl, then add to cornmeal mixture and stir until combined. Fold in crab meat. Sauté scallions in a 1 T. butter until soft and stir into batter.

Using two teaspoons and working in batches, carefully add 1 rounded teaspoon of batter per hush puppy to hot oil and fry, turning, until golden, 2 to 3 minutes, then transfer with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain briefly. Transfer hush puppies to a shallow baking pan and keep hot in 250 degree oven while frying remaining batter. Return oil to 330°F between batches.

You can also cheat with this recipe by using any good cornbread mix. Just follow directions and add crab, scallions and hot pepper or sauce (if using). Test one to be sure batter holds together. If not, add a bit of flour.

These are relatively small hush puppies and the recipe makes a mess of ‘em. Plenty for a cocktail party – unless our Bernese Mountain Dog Freude has been invited!

P.S. They also freeze well.

Changing Diets Daily

2005-09-23T08:25:00.000-04:00

Balanced Diets

I figured this out watching my wife eat a plate of French triple cream cheese the other day.

Now Conni is a very diet and health conscious person. Her maintenance diet is basically low fat. But every once in a while, she will sit down and eat a plate of cheese. When she does, she simply announces that she is on a low carbohydrate diet. Then later in the day, she goes back to low fat. Conni finds nothing irrational in this. Neither do I.

Having lost over 600 pounds, I am no stranger to dieting myself. I have been on low fat diets, low carb diets, low calorie diets. You name it. I was even on an egg and wine diet once. It really worked. (You ate two hard boiled eggs for breakfast with black coffee. You ate two more hard boiled eggs for lunch – with a glass of wine. For cocktails, you had a glass of wine. Then for dinner, you made an omelet with whatever you wanted in it and then finished off the bottle of wine!. Two weeks, fifteen pounds! Just don’t tell your cardiologist!). Last year, I lost 12 pounds on a pâté and cheese diet. I am good at this dieting thing.

But Conni’s cheese trick was what really got me to thinking.

Basically, diets, like foods, fall into groups. There are the low fat diets (American Heart Association, Bahamian). There are the low calorie diets (you all know those – constant counting and boring, even if healthy and effective). There are all kinds of low carbohydrate diets (Atkins, etc.).

And there are what I call regional diets. There is the Mediterranean Diet. There is the South Beach Diet, (I always thought someone on the Western Shore should do a North Beach diet! It would have to be based on crabs and Bud Lite, though.). There is the Southwestern France Diet -- high in duck and goose fat. (I am not making this up. There really is.) There is the Baton Rouge or New Orleans Sugar Busters Diet. And there is my favorite of all – the Southern Sanity Diet – where two or three days a week you eat a breakfast with your favorite combination of grits, sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes, and, of course, biscuits. But on the days you eat this behemoth meal, there’s no Pabst before lunch.

So what you have then are four food groups and four diet groups. Just as one is supposed to eat a certain number of servings from each of the food groups daily, the happy dieter should eat a certain number of servings from each of the four diet groups daily. I’ll show you how it works.

Here is a hypothetical day in a diet I could enjoy. For each item, I indicate the diet or diet group from which it comes.

Pre-Breakfast

Fruit (Bahamian – low fat)
Coffee with milk (Southwestern French)

Breakfast

Your favorite combination of:

bacon, sausage, eggs (low carb, Sugar Busters)
biscuits, pancakes (Southern Sanity – low nothing)
grits (low fat, Sugar Busters – except for the butter)

Mid Morning Snack

There is no way I can justify pastry or donuts. Skip this or eat an apple (low calorie).

Lunch

Linguini with shrimp with arugula and basil pesto (South Beach, Mediterranean, Sugar Busters)

Salad (low fat, low calorie, Sugar Busters)

Wine (Southwestern France)

One cookie (South Beach)

Afternoon Snack

Forget it, unless you are really into fruit (low fat)

Cocktail Hour

Martinis (low carb)
Olives (Mediterranean)
Peanuts (low carb)
Pâté (Southwestern France, low carb, Mediterranean)
Shrimp cocktail (low fat)
Carrot sticks (low calorie)

Dinner

Foie gras (Southwestern France) with apples (low fat) sautéed in butter (low carb)
White wine (low carb)
Rack of lamb (low carb, Mediterranean, Southwestern France)
Rice (low fat)
Ratatouille (low calorie, Mediterranean)
Red wine (Southwestern France)
Salad (low fat, low calorie)
Cheese plate (low carb) with crackers (low fat)
Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberries (low fat, low calorie)
Biscuit (Southern Sanity)
Whipped cream (low carb)
Faux espresso (if you are over 50, otherwise real espresso – low fat, low calorie, Sugar Busters)

Post Prandial

Cognac (low carb)
Chocolates (Come on. Go ahead. You have to allow yourself some treat on any diet!)

There you have it – balanced diets. During this hypothetical day, we will have eaten ten servings from the low fat diet group, nine servings from the low carbohydrate diet group, seven servings from the low calorie diet group, and seventeen servings from the regional diet group (there is some double counting here as some dishes fit into more than one category) – a day of balance and harmony.

The point of all this is simple – you need to know what foods fit into what diet group. That way, whenever you are about to tuck into some particularly delicious morsel, you can say to yourself, “It’s okay to eat this. It’s on the _____ diet.”

I promise you will not lose ten pound in two weeks on this diet -- but you may shed some guilt and you may just find a little peace and enjoy life just a little more. And isn’t that a significant part of what keeps us alive longer?

Have a good one.

Dr. Peter

Excuse me, do you have a...

2005-09-22T09:39:00.000-04:00

In Your Drawers

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

C’mon, I know you’ve got one. We all have one.

OK, OK, I’ll go first. But then you promise, right?

Here’s how it happened.

On Thursday, we ran out of propane. When the guy came, he had to relight the pilots on our old Vulcan range. One of the burners had been giving me trouble. He said to check the holes on the side of the burner unit.

I should have thought of that. It had happened before, on our even older Vulcan in Kensington. That time, the nice guy from the Gas Company gave me a set of little reamer-like tools to get into the holes and get out the gunk.

I keep the set in the kitchen drawer. Not just any kitchen drawer, THE kitchen drawer – the one we all have, the one where we dump EVERYTHING!! You have one. I know you do.

Here’s what’s in mine – in addition to the set of reamers which I found after about 20 minutes!

7 clips that hold snack bags – all virginal -- does anybody ever USE these things?

1 cup to measure green coffee beans for roasting

1 brush for cleaning the coffee roaster

1 brush for cleaning a coffee grinder that burned up in our last house

2 coffee measuring scoops for roasted coffee

1 melon baller -- the rest of the set is somewhere else, I think.

5 packets of flower freshener

3 magnet clips for refrigerator – why aren’t the ON the refrigerator?

16 (count ‘em!) rubber Vacuvin wine stoppers – how many bottles of wine do two people ever have open at one time? Why do we need 16 of these things? How did we ever GET 16 of these things?

2 Vacuvin pumps to get the air out of wine bottles

3 champagne bottle stoppers

1 fancy rosewood wine stopper

1 old fashioned hand can opener – for when all the fancy ones can’t be found or don’t work

1 slightly more modern old fashioned hand can opener

1 really modern hand can opener that cuts the top off beneath the rim

3 church key bottle openers – for the two times a year when we open an imported bottle of beer without a twist off cap

1 antique bone handled bottle opener

1 silver plated bottle opener

another silver plated bottle opener

a faux ivory bottle opener and thing to punch holes in beer cans – sort of a fancy assed church key

1 wine stopper with an elephant on top – and we’re Democrats!

2 wine drip catchers

1 six inch Finnish fish filleting knife in a leather sheath

1 ratchet jar opener

1 wrench-like jar opener

1 metal strap jar opener

1 old kind of poultry shears

1 new kind of poultry shears – ergonomic!

8 pairs of scissors

5 tail pieces of a four foot long wooden snake puzzle

1 baster (with assorted attachments)

1 citrus reamer – the other three are in another drawer. Why do we have/need four citrus reamers? Don’t go there!

1 vegetable peeler – don’t know how that got in here!?

1 knife, the sole purpose of which is to score chestnuts

1 gold tassel

1 specialty shears to trim and crush the bottoms of flower stems

1 Japanese scissors for trimming Bonsai -- of which we have zero!

1 permanent marker

1 meat fork

1 souvenir coffee spoon my mother brought back from Russia 30 years ago

1 souvenir coffee spoon my mother brought back from Salzburg in 1964

1 appropriately tiny souvenir pickle fork my mother brought back from Liechtenstein in 1956

1 lemon-lime tea bag

1 silver salad servers

1 plastic champagne bottle opener

1 metal champagne bottle opener

1 gold plated champagne bottle opening tool

2 crumbers – you know, the things waiters use to scrape the crumbs off of table cloths before dessert

1 tin of Stick-Um Candle Adhesive

2 prong type cork removers

1 egg pricker (been looking for that for two years!)

1 screw on thing that holds the cartridge for a seltzer bottle

1 cribbage pin!

2 waiters’ corkscrews

1 silver spoon – not quite long enough for an iced tea spoon but too long for coffee or sugar – in other words, useless

1 extra screw for a Screwpull cork screw

1 old family recipe for a black walnut cake

1 Scripto butane “match”

5 packs of paper matches

4 boxes of wooden matches from various restaurants – the other 117 boxes are in the living room!

1 set of pumpkin carving tools

1 wire baskets designed to “organize” the drawer -- Ha!

1 wrench to tighten the bolts on a cedar roasting plank -- I had to think for a few minutes to figure this one out!

1 two cup insert for an espresso machine we threw out three years ago

another champagne stopper

4 very large pot sized tea ball infusers – one with a Christmas tree on it so that it must have been meant for mulled cider – all but one virginal

1 suction cup used to unscrew the light bulbs in the range hood -- I knew it was in there somewhere, but couldn’t find it the last three times I looked

1 pack of popsicle sticks for some stupid gadget I bought last summer

1 plastic dog food can cover -- for a dog who won’t eat canned food!

1 sugar scoop --why this is not in the sugar, I do not know

another church key

yet another church key

the plastic top of a broom handle

2 wine foil cutters

17 foil caps off the tops of wine bottles -- why would anybody throw those into a DRAWER instead of the trash? I don’t know, but I guess I did it!

a glass thingie you put into boiling soups, stocks, etc. to keep them from boiling over – virginal!

one lip balm

one rubber ring to a Mason jar

one rubber ring to a French canning jar

a meat injector with extra needles

27 little plastic tie thingies that come on loaves of bread

another fancy rosewood wine stopper

12 nails, six screws, twelve rubber bands… and,

54 wine corks! That’s FIFTY FOUR! Why? I mean two or three, maybe. Corks come in handy once in a while, but FIFTY FOUR! Why?

OK, that’s it for me. All of this fit (and may again) into one kitchen drawer, and not a great big one – only 3 ¼ inches deep and 19” X 16.” That’s 988 cubic inches or .57 cubic feet – not very big at all! Here it is:

Now show me yours.

If you want to have fun some evening, take your kitchen drawer. Yes, that one, THE kitchen drawer. Dump it on the kitchen table. Gather everyone around, and play “What is it?,” “Whose is it?,” “Where did it come from?,” and “Why is it here?” Beats watching golf.

Then send me your list.

A Spin on Gougeres

2005-09-12T10:13:00.000-04:00

Old Dogs, New Tricks: Buñuelos

I have been making gougères (those crispy little puffs from Burgundy made with Gruyère cheese) for decades. It never occurred to me to change the ingredients – until I was reading a Spanish recipe for essentially the same thing into which they put bits of Serrano ham or chopped green olives, or slivered almonds, or anchovies. Wow! A whole new world. Old Dog, New Tricks.

Well the Spanish version uses all kinds of wonderful things in addition to cheese The Spanish usually fry these, but they also work when baked like Gougères — especially if you are frying seafood afterwards! I mean even I can only push this Frying Is Good For You theme but soooo far! Here’s the scoop.

Put 3 Tbls. butter, 1/2 tsp. salt, 4 fl. oz. milk in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add 1/2 cup flour, sifted. Stir until ball forms, then beat in two eggs until incorporated. Grate some Manchego cheese; chop up some anchovies, green olives, Serrano ham, or whatever you want. Divide dough into as many little bowls as you have ingredients. Mix. Using two teaspoons, put smallish balls on greased sheet and bake at 350 degrees until golden (+/- 15 minutes). That’s it. Of course, you could fry them if you really wanted to!

It's Not Mrs Paul's

2005-09-12T10:08:00.000-04:00

Batter Up!

I have been frying (yeah, you know, like DEEP FRYING) food for 50+ years and, by and large, I think the hoopla about fried food is exaggerated — if you do it right! I recently came across a batter recipe that sounded intriguing in a book called Recipes From A Spanish Village.

It is the lightest, most flavorful frying batter I have ever used. Plus, to my mind, it is pretty healthy. The other night, for example, I fried two pounds of shrimp, two octopus tentacles, and a filet of cod. We had a net loss of less than four tablespoons olive oil — and that was for three people. That is 130 calories per person — less than a puny sized martini. Try it. My only modification to their recipe is to use Wondra flour which has a nuttiness to its taste that I like.

Recipe: Combine 100 grams (3/4 cup) Wondra flour with a pinch of salt. Gradually work in 3 Tbls. olive (or other) oil and 6 fl. oz. water. Work to a paste and then a smooth batter. Add a pinch of cayenne if you wish. When ready to fry, whisk an egg white to soft peaks and fold in. Heat olive (or peanut) oil to 350 degrees and fry baby, fry.

It’s not Mrs. Paul’s

On Grapefruit and Boy Scouts

2005-09-12T00:17:00.000-04:00

Memories Of Things Best Forgotten

When I was a kid, I was not only a kid, I was also a Boy Scout — different animal. So we used to go camping and study comparative religions and other things that Boy Scouts do. On one of these camping trips, there were about 40 of us in a log cabin somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania near Gettysburg.

Even then I was an early riser, so the night before, the Scoutmaster asked me to please (actually he didn’t say “please”) start the fire and cut the grapefruits in half for breakfast when I got up. I did, only I cut 20 grapefruit in half the wrong way!

The Scoutmaster was not a happy camper. He didn’t even say “thank you.” I thought I was in deep trouble.

The Scoutmaster also had no idea what to do with 40 grapefruit halves cut the wrong way.

The scouts did though. They took them outside and threw them as far into the bushes as they could. I was a hero. I mean, who the hell had the dumb idea to make a bunch of pre-teen boys eat grapefruit in the first place? Probably the same guy who brought the oatmeal for the next morning!

Adults like grapefruit (until the get on certain medications). Kids don’t like grapefruit.

Disaster averted. Whew!

Confluence!

2005-08-31T10:13:00.000-04:00

Chocolate & Espresso: A Confluence

When I was 11 ½ years old, my parents took me on a whirlwind tour of Europe. You know, 16 countries in 28 days, one of those. We went when I was 11 ½ because at 12, I would have been full price. I didn’t care. It was great.

We landed at Southampton, spent a day in London, went to Dover and caught the ferry to the Hook of Holland (That was it for England!).

The problem for an eleven year old on these trips was that you had to have your suitcases outside your room by 6:30 in order to eat a quick breakfast and be on the bus by 7:30. Hellish!

In any case, I survived the ferry crossing and found myself barely awake at breakfast in a gray old hotel in the gray (not old) city of Rotterdam. My dad ordered hot chocolate for me – and my life was forever changed! Not Nestle’s, not even Droste’s. This stuff was pure chocolate and pure cream. Oh, God, was it good. I just sat there and sipped, and slurped, and sipped some more. I ordered a second. I would have ordered a third, but the driver was giving me nasty looks. “Vee vill now go to Belgium, and tomorrow to Germany, and the next day to Switzerland.” Yes vee vill. And everywhere vee go, diss vee is going to order hot chocolate, cause diss hot chocolate is Veddydam good.

At the end of the trip my folks and I tacked on a couple of extra weeks and came back to the Netherlands and spent more time in England and Scotland. That one day just didn’t quite do it.

And yes, we did dress up like the folks in the picture. Actually, we are the folks in the picture. It was our Christmas card picture that year. The studio was in Volendam (and yes, the hot chocolate was Volendam good). After we finished, we asked the photographer if he would take some pictures of us out by the fishing boats with our camera. He said sure, so we went out in drag and stood there. Just about then, a little American boy came running along, yelling for his father, “Daddy, Daddy, come quick, come quick. Here’s a whole family of them.” My father punched me in the ribs with his elbow to shut up. The kid’s father came running, furiously winding his movie camera. We just smiled. I do believe that one of my father’s most fervent dreams was to be shown someone’s movies of their trip to Europe and see us in it. Sadly, it never happened, but that’s true of many dreams, isn’t it?

Well, if the discovery of hot chocolate was one of the highlights of my first European sojourn, the discovery of espresso was the other. It happened this way. We came out of the Austrian Alps down into Italy one afternoon and the bus stopped for a break.

Now, there are about 40 people on this bus and there is one man and one espresso machine in the little place where we stopped. Not only was there one man and one espresso machine, this was 1956 so it was one of those old brass espresso machines with tubes going everywhere.

Those of you who knew my father will have no trouble visualizing this story. For those of you who didn’t, I offer these sound effects. You know the ad that was on TV a couple of years ago for something awful like “International Coffees” probably from Borden’s. The one where the couple offers cappuccinos to their guests, then goes into next room and makes all those Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, sounds to emulate a machine. They copied my dad! To that he added Chaplinesque gestures from Modern Times – imagine a monkey in front of an espresso machine pulling levers and going Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, psst, tsssscht, shhhhh. Got it? That’s him. Then he says, “I don’t know why the hell they call it ‘espresso.’ It takes about five minutes (lever pulling, Psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, psst, tsssscht, shhhhh, more lever pulling) and then this guy puts a little tiny cup under there and the thing goes drip, drip, drip, drip. You get about eight drops and then he starts all over again for the next person. OK, one down, 39 to go.”

What was a little crazy making to me was that my dad also said, “Now Peter, you wait until all the adults have been served.” Thirty nine. Thirty eight. Thirty seven… Four (The bus driver glares.) Three. Two. One. Peter! YES! I got one. It was glorious. It was bitter and nasty and strong and unctuous and smooth and foamy and wonderful and unforgettable. Sort of like my dad and his story telling. God, I miss him.

Well, I told you this was a story about confluence. It is.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article in Good Food, the BBC food magazine, about something called Bicerin. Bicerin is a drink sold in a café in Turin with the same name (No, I won’t say eponymous!). Bicerin is basically a glass filled with 1/3 espresso, 1/3 hot chocolate, and 1/3 whipped cream.

CONFLUENCE! The best of all possible worlds. Candide’s garden. Peter’s Nirvana.

Well, the article said that the recipe was a secret, but then presented it’s version. I said, “Yeah, right. I’ll just Google it.” I did, but you know what? Each of the sites that talked about Bicerin said it was, in fact, a secret and then each of the sites proceeded to give its own recipe – each different, sometimes VERY different. For once, Google let me down.

So why should I be different? I have played around with this recipe a bit over the last weeks and have put on a couple of pounds in the process. This is the recipe for what I’m drinking as I write this. But it has been worth it. After all, that’s why they put these little panels in the waistband, isn’t it? Try this one. You may want to get out your wooden shoes and dance a tarantella. Now there’s an image for you!

Recipe for Bicerin

Get some really good dark chocolate. Personally, I love the stuff that is 70% + cocoa, but anything over 50% will do. If you want to be really ethnically pure, you might try the Italian chocolates made by Slitti. They have one that extra-bittersweet at 90% cocoa ( http://www.chocosphere.com/).

Now you have a choice, to go the northern or the southern European route. In the north, hot chocolate is made with milk or half and half (yes, you can add some heavy cream if you want). In Italy, they typically make theirs with water. My assumption is that Café Bicerin uses water.

That being said, melt some chocolate in some hot water until you get something that is still pretty thick, about like chocolate syrup. Now I have no idea whether they do this at Bicerin, but I like to get a little air into my chocolate mixture. You can do this with a handheld blender, a blender, a hand mixer, a whisk, or even a French press coffee maker.

All the recipes I read say to fill a glass or cup 1/3 full with espresso (sweetened if you wish), then add 1/3 of chocolate and top off with 1/3 lightly whipped cream. I sort of like my chocolate on the bottom. It make the last little bit taste more like dessert than breakfast. Try it both ways.

Confluence!

New From The Old

2005-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

Symphony No. 2 From The Old World, Klaus Wieken

For me, winter is a time for letting restaurant chefs nurture me. In spring and fall, I prefer to do the nurturing, to be at the stove.

But in Europe, spring can be a good time to visit some restaurants – especially the 20-30 restaurants that define the best, setting trends rather than following them. In spring, chefs are experimenting with new ingredients. The crowds have not yet arrived, so the pace is slower and the service often more relaxed. It is a good time to get to know the chefs and where they are heading. Here are some new trends.

At the moment, deconstruction seems to be the in thing in Europe. Deconstructed dishes are those where the major elements of an established dish (like a bouillabaisse, for example) are broken down and then those elements are cooked individually. The resulting presentation has some of the best of the old, but is often lighter and more concentrated in flavor. [See Will’s deconstructed clam bake in our posting called “Will’s Way.” Things like dry ice and noodles made from things like agar agar are showing up regularly in first class restaurants these days – to both enhance the presentation and tempt the palate.

And foams are everywhere! If you can purée it and put it into a whipped cream canister, you will find it on someone’s menu! Foie gras, vegetables, oysters, saffron cream are examples.

The amuse bouche is another example of trendy “things.” For years, these little “palate teases” were sent out by the chef to get people excited and to shorten the time between ordering and the arrival of the first course. Now they have taken on the form of an opera overture in which some of the elements of the main dishes ordered show up early in the amuse bouche.

In chef Jean Georges Klein’s restaurant L’Arnsbourg in Bärenthal on the Moselle, we were recently served the following amuse bouche – roasted rhubarb, a sorbet of bitter beer, a Parmesan cream between paper thin layers of pastry, a squab mousse with Szechuan pepper, two preparations of quail eggs, one with ginger, the other with mace, — the mace once served as a foam, another time as in infused oil.

These flavor notes showed up later in our meal, the nutmeg infusing a wonderful bouillon, the Parmesan intensely flavoring a dish of soufléed gnocchi. The bitter beer in the sorbet came back as a dessert sauce; the squab mousse as the roasted breast served with a coffee sauce — delicious.

Even the humble old potato has taken on a “Life After Boiled Starch” in fine restaurants. Dishes like “Cappuccino of Potato Purée and Fresh Truffles” have become almost commonplace (well, I said “almost”). And there are variations that are relatively easy to prepare at home. Some substitute black olives for the truffles, or caviar, or other fish roes, or even squid ink – pictured below as served at the wonderful restaurant Le Calandre near Padova. (Aren’t those glass dishes cool?)

The secret of this dish is in the quality of the potato purée, the classic recipe for which is Joël Robuchon’s. You can find it in Patricia Wells’ book about Robuchon Simply French. I personally prefer this light version that was written down for me by Jean-Yves Crenn who serves it at his restaurant Le Temps de Vivre in Roscoff, in Brittany.

Steam 3 pounds of waxy boiling potatoes (like fingerlings or rattes)
Heat 12 oz. milk and 12 oz. cream
Peel potatoes while as hot as you can stand
Put through food mill or a ricer or tamis
Add mile/cream to potatoes and beat in about 12 Tbls. of very cold butter, cut into cubes

The trick here is to boil the potatoes in their skins in well salted water. Peel them while still hot and purée. The butter must be quite cold. What you get is a wonderfully light mass that is a wonderful foil for all sorts of “cappuccino” ingredients, like those listed above, or whatever sounds good to you at the moment.

Take good care and Tschüß for now.

Klaus

News From The Old

2005-08-30T14:48:00.000-04:00

Symphony From The Old World, Klaus Wieken

Frankfurter Grüne Sauce

As an amateur cook, spring is clearly my favorite time of year. After too many months of root vegetables, cabbage, and imported fruits and vegetables with too many frequent flyer miles before they ever hit my stove, I am ready for things that are grown locally and which can be purchased FRESH!

And one of my all time spring favorites is what we call the “Frankfurter Grüne Sauce” – a green sauce from Frankfurt, the recipe for which is at least 2000 years old! When we say Good Old Europe, we mean Good Ooooooooooooold Europe!

Roman legionnaires brought the basics of this sauce back to Rome from their exploits in the Near East and riffs on this green sauce have been played wherever the Romans went over the millenia.

The sauce was brought to the Frankfurt area around 1700 by two Italian traders named Bolongaro und Crevenna who simply couldn’t think of living in their newly chosen country without the company of their favorite hometown sauce.

The sauce which the cooks of these gentlemen prepared was, of course, not entirely identical to the one they left at home, as the cooks had to make do with the herbs that were available at local markets. Thus out of the Italian Salsa Verde evolved the Frankfurt version called Grie Soss locally.

By the way, one of the earliest fans of this new green sauce was Wolfgang Goethe who, while serving as a government minister in Weimar, had his mother prepare her version of the sauce and Fedex it to him. (Just kidding. He actually had it stagecoached).

A real traditional Frankfurter Grüner Sauce is made with up to ten different fresh herbs, all of which are finely chopped before going into the sauce. Among those frequently used are borage, dill, tarragon, chervil, lovage, parsley, pimpernel, sorrel, chive, and lemon balm. Here’s the recipe.

This sauce is exciting to eat with all kinds of boiled meats (veal breast, tongue, beef roast cuts) but also works well with a variety of poached fish. It is absolutely dynamite with new potatoes -- first boiled in their skins and then peeled.

If you can’t find any of the particular herbs from this list, despair not! After all, this is neither Rome nor Frankfurt. Try whatever is available locally and play with variations until you find your own favorite. After all that’s what those guys in Frankfurt did!

“Frankfurter Grüne Sauce”

Ingredients:

300 grams total of herbs (11 ounces) herbs
2 medium onions
4 hard boiled eggs
1 Tbls. white wine vinegar
2 Tbls. oil
1 cup crème frâiche
1 cup whole milk yogurt
pinch of sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Wash and dry the herbs. Chop herbs and onions finely; mix with yogurt, crème frâiche, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and let stand for at least an hour. Then chop up the hard boiled eggs (fairly coarsely) and mix into the sauce. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary and maybe even the pinch of sugar. Let rest another 15 minutes.

Asparagus Time in Europe

A second classic of German and French springtime gastronomy is one of my favorites, asparagus. Although one can now get some kind of asparagus from somewhere almost year round, Spargelzeit is still celebrated as a rite of spring in many countries.

Asparagus come in basically two forms – white (which are buried under the earth) and green, (which are exposed to the sun). The asparagus harvest is very closely regulated and the official season runs only from April until the middle of June. There are even tours arranged to restaurants close to the asparagus fields during this time.

The classic way to serve asparagus in our neck of the woods is with drawn butter, vinaigrette, or hollandaise sauce. Accompaniments are often boiled or smoked raw ham, smoked salmon, or veal filet. Starting in May, asparagus is often served with fresh new potatoes.

These are simple, yet refined preparations – elegant in their simplicity.
Variations can be played in a thousand forms on these basics. In Paris at this moment, for example, the Hotel Crillon is serving the following dish: Into a deep soup bowl is placed a layer of crème brûlée mixture. Cubes of fresh goose foie gras are stirred into the cream before it is flamed. On top come criss-crossed green and white asparagus. Then, just before serving, comes a large soupspoon of asparagus velouté. Absolutely delicious, but to my mind unnecessarily complicated. The simpler versions noted above are just as good – and easier to prepare at home!

That’s it! After all this writing and thinking about food, I’m hungry . Think I’ll run and get some fresh asparagus before the farmers’ market closes. Then this afternoon, perhaps I’ll serve them with some lightly smoked salmon – and maybe a dill vinaigrette or maybe a…. Hmmh! So many choices.

Dessert? How about some rhubarb spaghetti with a dollop of cinnamon cream? That certainly sounds spring-like, doesn’t it? Okay, I’m out of here.

Tschüss for now.

Klaus

A Thank You Note

2005-08-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

The Best Thank You Note Ever

One day last year, a young man of 13 named Will came into Jaleo, the restaurant which Conni’s daughter, Tonija, manages. They struck up a conversation and, over time, a friendship. It turns out the kid is a real foodie. He has seen almost every episode of every show on The Food Network. He subscribes to almost every food magazine out there. He has gone to most all of the good restaurants in Washington and most of those in New York as well.

Will takes regular cooking classes at the Academie de la Cuisine in Bethesda. He cooks passionately and does tasting dinners for friends and relatives. It also just happens that he goes to the same junior high school that I did and that he got interested in food at about the same age as I did.

Well Tonija got Will a couple of cooking gigs in her restaurant and at a couple of its affiliates in the Washington area. She also decided that it was time for Will and me to meet – and cook together.

On the weekend of April 30, it finally happened. Will and I went back and forth on the menu by e-mail. I ordered necessities (like the roasting rabbit) and a couple of special cheeses off of the internet and did some basic prep work.

Will and his mom arrived Saturday afternoon and he and I went to work. There were to be nine of us for dinner, so we had a lot to do.

The meal was great (the menu is presented below). The wines were good (no, he didn’t). The company was fun and I think a good time was had by all. The fact that nine bodies were strewn all over the house sleeping the sleep of the dead would so indicate!

A few days later, we got this e-mail thank you note.

“If you invite us, we will come back. Thanks. Will”

Out of the mouths of the young… I love it and will treasure it. Don’t worry, Will. We shall. Here’s what we ate

Smoked Wild Goose Breast; Goose Foie Gras En Terrine; Nuts, Olives,
Cheese Biscuits En Humidor; Boquerones;
Buñuelos With Manchego, Olives, and Herbs;
Baby Lamb Chops With Moroccan Spice Rub; Savory Jell-O Beans
Charbaut & Fils Champagne; Papirusa Light Manzinilla Sherry, Emilio Lustau

Spring “Pea”chysoisse Martini With Seranno Ham Tuile
Shrimp Boat De Mariscos (Fried Shrimp, Oysters, Clams, Squid); Romesco and Alioli Sauces
Prosecco di Conegliano Carpenè Malvolti

Sorbet of Chamomile, Lavender, Roses

Râble De Lapin Farci Au Four À La Richard Olney
Sautéed Ramps, Wild Mushrooms, Potato Galette

Jan Kris Crossfire Estate
Paso Robles 2003

Salad

Chaource, Cypress Grove Purple Haze Goat Cheese; Walnut Red Wine, Almond Orange Honey Conserves
Domaine de Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, 1985

One Degree of Freedom Cake
Pierre Sparr Tokay Mambourg Grand Cru, 1990

Will's Way

2005-08-30T14:02:00.000-04:00

Holy Smoke, This Kid’s Good

Folks, we’re beyond Chutzpah here. We’re talking about balls! Brass balls!

Remember Will, the 13 year old in the last posting who came to St. Michaels and worked with me to make what I thought was a pretty fancy dinner?

Well Will outdid that performance big time! On June 19, Will invited the chefs from some of his favorite restaurants and some big time amateur cooks (like me) to dinner. He prepared the following dinner — by himself! for nine people! It was amazing! Amazing! There, in his little white “Executive Chef” jacket he did the whole thing. He was unflappable. Absolutely calm, smiling the whole time, obviously in his element.

Everything was beautifully plated and truly delicious. Amazing.

Look at this menu. It’s amazing, what else can I say. Amazing

“Well done, Will!”

Will’s Chef’s Dinner
Sunday, June 19, 2005

Amuse Bouche
“Eggs and Bacon”
crispy confit of Kurobuta pork belly with caviar

Corn Soup with Truffled Whipped Cream

Duo of Foie Gras
tempura fried foie gras with sweet soy sauce and
pan seared foie gras on peach tarte tatin with basil oil

Deconstructed Clam Bake
butter poached lobster with Osetra caviar crème frâiche
tempura clams, confit of chanterelles
truffled tapioca risotto with a clam/saffron emulsion

Olive Oil Poached Artic Char
on a spinach almond purée
sautéed spinach topped with corn nuts, chives and almond milk froth

Duo of Squab
roasted honey glazed breast and braised leg of squab
served with a sweet potato foam

Duo of Kobe Beef
braised short ribs with Yukon gold potato purée
pan seared strip loin cube with bordelaise sauce
truffled Jerusalem artichoke puree
crispy bone marrow gnocchi

Brûléed Fig with Mascarpone Cream and a Drizzle of Saba

Chocolate Coconut Pudding Cake
Coconut Emulsion
Coconut Sorbet

On Evolution

2005-08-30T12:58:00.000-04:00

Taking Shape

(Ir)Regular Columns

Things are starting to come together here at The Ruminative Cook. Thanks in part to your responses to our request for things you would like to hear about and in part to my own ruminations, we have come up with some regular and some irregular columns. What to look for:

If I Do Say So Myself
We all have mothers and so we all have things that our mothers did/do that made/make us crazy. In my case, it was when my mother would sit down at the table, take a quick bite of what she had prepared and, before we even had a chance to lift our forks, say “This is pretty good – if I do say so myself.” So, in this column, I shall tell you about things I have recently prepared that turned out really well “if I do say so myself.”

Memories Of Things Best Forgotten
Like my aunt’s tomato aspic salad with sliced green olives and mayonnaise. Or, like the chili I made in Chapel Hill into which I put one chile pepper (not much effect), then another (still not much effect)… until I had used the whole string. Then I let it cook for three hours. Three of us drank a whole case of beer just trying to get the stuff down! But disasters can be fun. Well, at least they make for memories.

Symphony From The Old World
My former brother-in-law, but still best friend, Klaus Wieken (aka “Bro”) wrote from Germany to ask if he could write some pieces for The Ruminative Cook reporting on what is going on in Europe these days and things that he has been trying. We are delighted.

Slurp!

Soups often get the short end of the stick in food writing. I guess too many people are watching their weight – so they cut out the soup course when they entertain. We don’t. Even if we just serve an espresso cup of something in the living room before we go in to dinner, we most always have some kind of soup on the menu. Personally, I’d rather throw out the salad course than the soup.

Man Overboard!

It’s my blog, so once in a while I think it’s OK for me to go off the deep end (like my diatribe against that awful stuff called bay seasoning.) In any case, this is where I get to vent and be outrageous. For example, I think macadamia nuts and cashews are really boring. I suspect people claim to like them because they are expensive. Neither of them stands up to a really good roasted Virginia peanut. Seriously. Taste them side by side and see if you don’t agree. (Try Whitley’s or Hub’s – without the Bay Seasoning!)

Old Dog, New Tricks

You know, even at my age, we can learn new things or, at least, new ways of doing things. For example, I have been making gougères (those crispy little puffs from Burgundy made with Gruyère cheese) for decades. It never occurred to me to change the ingredients – until I was reading a Spanish recipe for essentially the same thing into which they put bits of Serrano ham or chopped green olives, or slivered almonds, or anchovies. Wow! A whole new world. Old Dog, New Tricks.

Decapods

Crabs are a major part of life here on the Eastern Shore and so are lobsters (yes, we catch them in Maryland) and shrimp (no, we don’t). So, every once in a while, I will pass on a recipe for using one of these tasty critters in a new way (or in an old way – but without Bay Seasoning!).

The “S” Word

I love to shop the internet. And the places I haunt the most are the Sale, Clearance, and Outlet sections of food, cookware, and entertaining sites. So one regular feature of The Ruminative Cook will be a listing of sites with good sale sections (like Crate and Barrel – which really understands the “S” word) as well as things currently on sale that you might want to check out.

What I’m Reading

There’s at least one good recipe in just about any cookbook. In this section, I’ll report on books I’ve been reading and give you a recipe or so to try on your own.

Thanks for all your suggestions. While still a Work In Progress, we’re getting there.

Out On A Limb With Crabs

2005-08-30T09:21:00.000-04:00

Out on a Limb with Crabs

Last summer, the brother-in-law of a co-worker was crabbing off a pier in the Choptank River over here on the Eastern Shore.

Chickennecking next to him was a family of tourists. Every time these folks netted a legal-sized blue crab, they looked at it for a moment and then throw it back. After a while, the brother-in-law could stand it no longer and asked why they were throwing back these perfectly good, legal-sized crabs.

“Well,” the father responded “these blue crabs look pretty, but we were kind of hoping to catch some of those orange ones like we had for dinner last night.”

Not missing a beat, the brother-in-law told the tourists “Well, you’re right. Those orange crabs are good, but I’m kind of partial to the blue ones as well. So, if you get any more you don’t want, you can just put them right here in my basket.”

The tourists were from Baltimore. You would think they would know better. But then again, Baltimore is also where Old Bay seasoning comes from.

Speaking of which, did you every wonder why people inflict bay seasoning on something as wonderful as a crab? I mean, we don’t inflict bay seasoning on lobsters. We don’t inflict bay seasoning on clams. We don’t inflict bay seasoning on oysters. Why do we single out the poor crab? I don’t think it’s fair.

Think about it for a minute. We take a perfectly fine piece of shellfish. Then we sprinkle this stuff on the part of it we don’t eat. We cook it. Then we pick up the crab, eat the meat, getting the spices all over our hands. Then we rub the stuff up our noses and into our eyes. Why do we do that? I don’t know.

All I can think is that some brewer in Baltimore must have been having a bad year. So one night he had this thought. “Let’s get some really hot pepper and some weird spices and dump them all over crabs while they cook. Then people will burn their mouths and put the spices up their noses and into their eyes and they’ll drink more beer!” The whole point of this stuff is to sell beer. That’s all it can be!

Did you ever taste the stuff? I mean seriously taste it – like right out of the can or bag? Do you have some in the pantry? Go get it. I’ll wait.

Now go ahead, take a pinch. “Place it between you cheek and gum…”

It’s awful, isn’t it? Does it remind you of anything? It does me.

When I was a kid in Washington, D.C., on hot summer days the coach made us suck on salt tablets. I was a skeptical sort, even then. I mean there are a lot of dead deer out there who fell for that trick. So, instead of salt tablets, I used to suck on chicken bouillon cubes. I got my salt fix. They tasted better than salt tablets. And, I didn’t have to worry about getting shot.

Chicken bouillon cubes! That’s what bay seasoning reminds me of. Chicken bouillon cubes with cayenne instead of chicken. Look at the ingredients, if you don’t believe me.

The Knorr chicken bouillon cube box is not terribly explicit about which dehydrated herbs and spices are in there, but salt is the first ingredient and onion, parsley, tumeric and “spice” are also mentioned.

Now this from the side of a can of Old Bay Seasoning:

“celery salt (salt, celery seed), spices (including mustard, red pepper, black pepper, bay (laurel) leaves, cloves, allspice (piment), ginger, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, and paprika.”

The list of ingredients in the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Seasoning from Penzeys Spices is similar:

“sweet paprika, salt, mustard, celery, ancho, black pepper, cayenne red pepper, dill seed, dill weed, caraway, allspice, horseradish, cardamom, thyme, ginger, bay leaves, mace, savory, and cloves.”

They’re from Wisconsin. We forgive them the caraway, dill, and horseradish. They think everything needs some Oom Pah-Pah. Wisconsin! What do they know about crabs?

Fred Thompson’s delightful book Crazy for Crab (Harvard Common Press, 2004) suggests starting with the following and then “play with the spices.”

3 tablespoons paprika, 2 tablespoons kosher salt, 1 to 2 tablespoons garlic powder, 1 tablespoon each of onion powder, cayenne pepper, dried oregano, and dried thyme, plus 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

But am I not right? All those dehydrated herbs and spices are just like a chicken bouillon cube without the chicken.

But eventually, I grew up. I don’t suck on chicken bouillon cubes. I don’t even use chicken bouillon cubes. So why are we still putting this stuff on crabs? It’s awful.

Okay, Okay. Maybe I got carried away a little bit. I’m sorry. Right now, somewhere out there, one or more of you is thinking. “Well, a lot of spice mixtures don’t taste very good raw – like curries, for example. They need to be heated to bring the flavors out and bring them together.” Yesterday, I tested this theory.

First, I just heated a bit of oil and cooked a teaspoon of bay seasoning in it for a few minutes – long enough for the flavors to meld. Still awful.

Then I made two curries – crab and chicken – using bay seasoning instead of curry paste. The results: Worse than awful!! You know what it tasted like? A chicken bouillon cube with cayenne, garlic, lemongrass, galangal, and ginger! Yuck.

Then I got to thinking about all the paprika in bay seasoning. Maybe curry wasn’t the best test. Maybe something Hungarian would be better – so I tried a chicken paprikash and a crab paprikash. The results -- underwhelming at best! You know what it tasted like? A creamy, pink chicken bouillon cube with cayenne. Yuck.

End of story.

All right, now. Have I been fair or not? I tasted this stuff on crabs. I tasted it raw. I tasted it heated in oil. I made two dishes with it that had a chance of being palatable. The bottom line is that, to my mind, like really bad pornography, there is simply no redeeming social value to bay seasoning.

So, what does one do with crabs if one doesn’t want to anoint them with cayenne, dried spices and salt?

We live in St. Michaels, Maryland. At this moment, I am watching the crabbers bring in their daily catch at the dock across the street. What I am about to write will probably get me run out of town.

Some thoughts for enjoying crabs sans bay seasoning

First, decide what white wine you are going to drink with your crabs. “WINE!!!” I hear you scream. “Whoa there cowboy! You don’t drink WINE with crabs; you drink beer!” Now think about that for a moment. There are a lot of people who drink wine with crab cakes, right? Why not drink wine when picking crabs? Come on. It’s OK. Try it. Please. Well, yes, the glass does get kind of yucky looking, but the wine is still good. Use cobalt glasses if the yuck gets to you. Please try it.

The wine I choose depends pretty much on the sauce I am using. If the sauce is spicy, I tend to drink a Riesling. If it is herbal, I go with a Sauvignon Blanc (a nice grassy one). If it’s a snail butter, I often opt for Chardonnay. Even a pretty rich and buttery one works well.

The reason I try to use the same grape variety as I will be drinking is that crabs really do pick up the flavor of whatever they are steamed in. So do shrimp for that matter.

Now, put about a third of a bottle in the bottom of your steamer. Add as much water as you need to make sure the pot won’t dry out while the crabs steam. Bring to boil. Add crabs and steam until (Yes) Orange! And done. This will take about 25 minutes, depending on how many crabs are in the pot and, thus, how fast the water gets back to a really full boil after you add the crabs. I usually start counting when I see steam coming out the top of the pot. At this point, I also turn the heat down to medium-high for the duration.

Take the crabs out and serve with one or more of the following sauces:

Basil Butter: Melt as much butter as you think you will need. Chop up some basil and heat in the butter. Serve.

Snail Butter: Melt butter. Sauté a mess of garlic in it. Add chopped flat leaf Italian parsley. Heat. Serve.

Habañero Butter: Melt butter. Seed and finely chop one habañero pepper. Add. Heat for a bit. Serve. [See, I am not against spice or heat with crab. I just prefer fresh herbs or heat to powdered versions.]

Okay, get ready. I am about to go off the end of this limb. I’m sorry, Mom. I tried to be normal. I really did.

What we have been enjoying with our crabs this year most of all is Truffle Butter (black or white). I know, it sounds really, really weird. But, it’s also really, really good. It started this past winter when we tried truffle butter with lobster. To die for. So why not crabs? We tried it. It’s great.

But of course, you have to drink champagne with truffle butter, don’t you? [There he goes again! We were just getting used to the idea of wine. Now we have to think about good champagne? Whoa cowboy! Whoa!] To me, though, champagne just seems right. Besides, at something close to $60 a dozen, I think crabs warrant truffle butter and champagne – and so do we! [The truffle butter comes from D’Artagnan and can be found in selected specialty food shops or ordered directly at http://www.dartagnan.com/.]

I can see it now – the ultimate crab feast – a symphony in black in white.

Men in black tie, women in white gowns and long white rubber gloves. The candelabra are aglitter. The long table is set only with champagne flutes, crab mallets and/or knives, and crystal finger bowls. In front of each diner a stack of placemats cut with pinking shears from the major newspapers of the world (black and white only, of course – no Financial Times). In front of each diner, a silver bowl of truffle butter.

The only color is the swath of orange crabs down the middle of the table and the platters of al dente white asparagus carried by liveried waiters. The Dom flows. The mallets and knives fly. The glasses are raised. Asparagus glide from fingers to gullet. No sneezing. No pepper up the nose. No weeping eyes. Just great crab.

Ah yes, I can see it now…

Oh, well. Back to reality.

I suspect it will be a while before the crab shacks of the Chesapeake Bay drop bay seasoning in favor of truffle butter. But, life is a bit like dancing. You can lead or you can follow.

People eat our crabs and ask where we got them. The words “These are the sweetest crabs I have ever tasted” have crossed the lips of many a guest. They’re the same ‘ol crabs. We just don’t abuse them with salt and cayenne/paprika gunk.

Tomorrow night is trash night, right? Why don’t you throw out that can or bag of bay seasoning. Get some crabs. Open a bottle of your favorite white. Try something fresh and new in the way of a sauce. Make up your own if the ones above don’t appeal. The crabs are the melody. Play your own riffs with the sauce.

Why not? You have nothing to lose but your family, your friends, and your reputation as a cook. You can always go back to following if you choose. What the hell! Let’s dance.

When It's Hot & Hazy

2005-08-26T12:05:00.000-04:00

Lemon and Lavender: A Twofer

It’s hazy, hot, and humid. So what does dumb-dumb do? Go in the kitchen and start baking! I can’t help it. Our lavender has just finished blooming and summer just seems to scream for something with lemons and lavender, don’t you think? So here’s a twofer.

Lemon-Lavender Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

12 Tbls. unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar (I use lavender sugar which I make by throwing a bunch of lavender and a bunch of sugar into the Cuisinart and then store in a jar. You may want to sift out the lavender pieces before using.)

1 Tbls. dried or fresh lavender flowers (You can get these in bulk in most health food stores. Lavender also makes a great tea, which can be ordered from Harney and Sons). I find big pieces of lavender kind of bitter, so I chop them up pretty finely before using.

1 Tbls. grated lemon zest

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia (I love this stuff. It is a blend of vanilla, orange, and lemon essences. You can get it from The Baker's Catalog. I almost never use vanilla any more. This stuff is SENSATIONAL! Buy a bunch. It is wonderful in most sweet things Mediterranean. (Ah, Sophia!) Use vanilla while you are waiting for your order to arrive.

2-1/4 cups regular flour

PREPARATION:
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until it is light and fluffy. Stir in the lavender and lemon zest. Add the egg, vanilla and salt and mix briefly on low to combine. Gradually add the flour. Take a piece of plastic wrap. Put the dough on it and twist into a log. You do this by twisting one end of the plastic wrap in one direction and the other in the other – just like Little Egypt! Refrigerate for a couple hours until pretty solid.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Unwrap and slice the dough into about ¼ inch slices. Bake the cookies until they begin to brown around the edges, about 10-15 minutes. Store in a can if you have any left over.

Lemon-Lavender
1-2-3-4 Cake

[This is my adaptation of a recipe originally found in a Williams-Sonoma catalog.]

“1-2-3-4 cake?” I hear you asking.

This is a very old cake recipe, sort of like a pound cake, but not. 1-2-3-4?

Easy: 1 cup of butter + 2 cups of sugar + 3 cups of cake flour + 4 eggs.

The basic 1-2-3-4 is a good arrow to have in your quiver. Modify the seasonings any way you want, just don’t mess with the proportions. Okay, here we go.

To the above ingredients, we add:

4 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2-3 Tbls. chopped lavender buds

zest from two lemons (If you don’t have a Microplane zester or grater,get one the next time you have the chance. They are wonderful – much better than the old box kind.)

1 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia (there he goes again) or vanilla

1 cup milk Note on the sugar: For this recipe I use lavender sugar for an extra lavender kick. You can add a bit more lavender buds if you haven’t made the sugar.

PREPARATION:

Get your stuff together.

Oil a cake pan or loaf pan (my preference) and line it with parchment paper. Spray paper. (Or, you can butter pan and dust with flour. Your call).

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift and measure cake flour. Grate lemon peel. (A digression is in order. If you are like me and have just made the cookies and are now making the cake, you will have three bald lemons in front of you. You have a choice: Make a whiskey sour – remember those – to keep you company as you work. Good choice.

Or, you can squeeze the lemons, take some sugar plus a bit or water and/or hooch, like grappa and boil it down until it gets syrupy. Then add about a cup of sliced almonds and let them brown a bit in the hot syrup. Let cool and poor over cake after it has cooled. Not as good a choice as the whiskey sour, but it is better for the cake – and probably the baker.)

OK, digression over.

Add baking powder and salt to flour. Mix.

Separate eggs. Brown ones in one bowl, white ones in another. Just kidding.

Beat butter in mixer until fluffy. Add lavender sugar (or plain) and beat for a while until the mixture is light and creamy. Add egg yolks, Fiori di Sicilia (or vanilla), lavender, and lemon zest. Beat just a bit.

Add whiskey sour to baker.

Now add the flour and milk in three or four iterations. You know, a bit of milk, some flour, etc. Beat slowly. You are not trying to whip it into shape.

Now beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form.

Mix in about a third of the egg whites, then fold the rest in gently. Put in pan and bake.

This can take up to 45 minutes in a loaf pan. Test with skewer.

Let cool completely then, if you made it, pour lemon/almond syrup over top. Let rest and soak in for as long as you can stand, then eat it.

Potatoes and Pizza

2005-08-25T13:29:00.000-04:00

Of Pizza and Potatoes

Now I am not one of those people who is above standing in front of the fridge and eating cold pizza (or spaghetti for that matter, or corn on the cob, or lobster). Last evening, I couldn’t decide whether to serve the last jar of caviar Conni gave me for my birthday. So while I debated, I stood in front of the refrigerator and finished it. Now what’s wrong with that?

But back to pizza. I don’t know if everyone does this, but I have discovered that the absolutely best way to reheat pizza is in a skillet on the stove. Heat a skillet over moderately low heat. Put in pizza in one layer. Put on a lid. Cook until the bottom is brown and the top bubbly. Turns out the skillet makes a perfect stovetop oven, and on a hot day, it is a whole lot cooler than turning on the big one!

And as it’s summer, there’s a gadget out there that actually does what it says – and a whole lot more. My Aunt Mid had one for half a godzillion years. She lived alone and used it for all kinds of things. It is called a Stovetop Potato Baker, but it is really a mini-oven. Plus if you like your baked potatoes with a crispy crust and not flaccid, this is a good way to go – if you’re only doing a couple. You can buy one at Home Improvements. Usually $14.99, they are currently on sale for $11.99.

Speaking of pizza and potatoes, did you ever have a Pizza Paisano? I stumbled across them when I was studying in Freiburg in 1964. We used to eat a lot of pizza (because it was cheap) and one evening I just pointed at this one. It became a favorite. It was basically a white pizza with very thin slices of potato stacked on top. The tops of these became as crunchy as potato chips while the bottoms were soft and melting like au gratin potatoes. Sort of combined the best of Italy and Germany didn’t it? Return of the Axis. Sure was good. Sure would like one.

3-2-1 dough

2005-08-25T12:57:00.000-04:00

3-2-1 Easy as Pie – Thanks To The CIA

This turns out to be simpler than it has any right to be. 3-2-1, literally.

Pastry chefs work by weight because flours, etc. vary so much in volume due to humidity.

By weight the dough is three parts flour, two parts fat (butter & lard, your call on proportions), and one part ice water. 3-2-1.

I usually take three pounds of flour, one each of butter and lard, and remembering that “a pint’s a pound the world around.” 1 pint ice water. Add 1 tsp. or more of salt and 1 Tbls. sugar if you are making a sweet pie or tart.

Cut the fat into the flour until (as always) the size of peas. Add water. Smoosh together into a ball. Then take ping-pong ball sized balls and smear them onto a board with the heel of your hand. Use pastry scraper or spatula to lift. Pile these up. Then divide stack into 5 piles of same weight (+/- 20 oz.; just right for 10” tart). Form into disks. Wrap. chill, then freeze.

It is best to defrost the dough in the refrigerator overnight. If you are careful, however, you can defrost dough in microwave on low. If it feels warm, however, put back in fridge before rolling out.

Lemon Posset

2005-08-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

Lemon Posset: But Don’t Ask Me How It Works

I know some of you are going to say “oxymoron, oxymoron,” but there is a really good British food magazine out there — called Olive. At $6.50, it had better be good!

Anyway, in last April’s issue, they had this recipe for Lemon Posset. It is sort of a panna cotta without gelatin or a custard without eggs.

Ingredients: 1 pint heavy cream (more or less), 1/2 cup lemon juice (more or less), 1/2 cup superfine sugar.

Directions: Simmer cream and sugar for three minutes; remove from heat; add lemon juice; cool a bit; strain into dishes; chill; eat. I mean really!

I use tiny shot glasses and keep them in the fridge with a spoon so that… well, you know.

Just don’t ask me how it works.