Archives for Food
24 June 2004
As one of my few self-perfected recipes, this has a slight chance of offering information not found elsewhere, unlike most of my collection. It makes a rich cocoa that leaves a pleasant chcocolate film in one's mouth.
Spoon into a saucepan 4 tablespoons each sugar and cocoa, and a pinch of salt, per person. Cover with water to moisten and stir until dissolved. Then heat over a medium-high flame until the mixture begins to bubble thickly (as distinct from the frothy bubbles that form when the cocoa is stirred). Remove from heat and swirl pot to cool.
Then, add as much milk as needed to total liquid enough to fill desired mugs (estimating this correctly is the hardest step of the recipe). Heat until steam rises above the edge of the pot, or the milk hisses when the pot is tilted. Remove from heat and add a splash of vanilla extract per person.
Serve in narrow-mouthed mugs to retain heat.
15 February 2004
Beware all green-colored mint chocolate chip ice cream. Too often, the
color is a substitute for a real mint flavor. Breyers's is really the only choice.
Also, never serve coffee in a glass. It cools too quickly, and looks ugly besides.
05 February 2004
Every book about food needs a Proust number – that is, the number
of pages it manages before referring to his Madeleines. Letters to a Young
Chef, which I just finished, gets an 18. Maida Heatter holds off until page
206 in her Book of Great Desserts, where she provides a recipe for
the cookie.
My brother claims this particular Proustian reference proliferates because it
occurs very early in Remembrance of Things Past. I've never read
the book, but a flip through my brother's copy reveals that the madeleines
(“petites madeleines” in this translation) appear on page 48,
30 pages later than Boulud's mention of them, and 10 more than that pages
past my bookmark. I hope there are more food memories later on, so that
my future cookbook can include a rarer allusion.
11 January 2004
My dad's collection of ice cream sheet music includes the following dialect for
“I Scream – You Scream – We All Scream for ICE
CREAM”:
I scream, you scream, ve all scream for Ice Cream, RAH RAH RAH
Ve're not caring if it smells from herring, SHA SHA SHA
It's malicious – in big dishes
Ve like it covered with – gefillte fishes
Iceberg, Lindberg, and Goldberg and Ginsberg, Ice Cream COHN!
Not particulary politically correct, I suppose, but funny, and we're allowed to
make fun of our own heritage, right? I have to say, however, that despite
my willingness to eat fish from a jar, I hope never to be served ice cream
topped with gefillte fish. One right after the other, maybe, but not together.
11 January 2004
If you only buy one cookbook, and you'd rather learn to cook than
look up particular dishes, this is the book to get. The Joy of Cooking
has more recipes but won't teach you as much. In The Way to Cook,
Julia Child has distilled and modernized the techniques and recipes of her
other books. You'll find French classics like Coq Au Vin, Puff Pastry, and French
Bread, but the book has an American feel. There's even a recipe for New
England Corn Chowder. The pictures are decorative enough
to inspire, but with enough shots of Child's wrinkled hands in action to help you
through the complicated recipes. The chapter on bread is particulary thorough.
As are the directions for a Duck Pâté Baked in Its Own Skin, which
Child assures us, is nothing more than a “dressed-up meat loaf”.
The Way to Cook is arranged in traditional chapters (Soup, Poultry,
Meat, etc.), but within each chapter, recipes are grouped by method of
preparation. Leg of lamb follows roast beef, for example, and all the braised
vegetables come together. This arrangement allows Child to spend more time
on technique – ideas that apply to more than just the recipes in the
book. She also explains many common tricky recipes (like soufflés,
hollandaise sauce, caramel, and omelettes) well enough that you'll be able
to make them without the book.
The only section where you might find yourself wanting another cookbook is
in the desserts. Those chapters seem more French than the rest of the book,
despite several recipes from old American cookbooks. There aren't any
chocolate chip cookies here, or an apple pie (I don't count the apple tart).
Still, you can have fun making truffles, meringues, caramel custard, and, if
you're feeling ambitious, a bûche de Noël.
Despite all that, if French cooking is what interests you, I'd recommend
Mastering the Art of French Cooking over The Way to Cook.
It seems more authentic, and it's more comprehensive. But if you just want
to learn to make good food with French flair, The Way to Cook is the
way to go.
22 November 2003
The first thing I wanted to do when I finished these books was to read them
again. Of course, I had already begun to bake bread before I finished them.
Fisher writes less conclusively than many essayists: she gives
the story, but not the moral. It frustrates at times – why won't
she get to the point? – but it forces you to read more
carefully, to form your own opinions.
Which should not imply that Fisher has no opinions of her own. She does.
For instance: that the most perfect meals are
those eaten alone on a couch or a hillside, or by a couple in love and in a
restaurant, or by six in a home; that timidity can ruin any meal; that
waiters are nicer than people; that fruit should never serve as an
appetizer. But most of all, she believes in the sacredness and power of
food. Eating is for all of us a necessity; for Fisher it is a rite. It shields her
when she is alone, enchanting the cooks and stewards who protect and
respect her, and serve her unadvertised delights. It is a means to challenge
the habits and prejudices of others. It is the foundation for remembrance
and nostalgia, a reminder of family and friends.
Fisher has known meals and restaurants of envious quantity and quality.
She has eaten foods I've never heard of, and some I can only dream of.
What inspiration her words are to that basest and subtlest of needs! What
a hunger they inspire!
06 November 2003
Some researchers at Harvard surveyed the country to find out where the
folks who don't call it “pop” live. See the results.
Also, note that Chicago is, indeed, the second city.
Thanks to Jason for his
link to the survey.
05 November 2003
Another book read in a day. This one reminded me, as I'm sure it reminds other, of Nabokov – as one reviewer put it, “John Lanchester, reading reviews of his book, is going to get mighty sick of the adjective ‘Nabokovian.’” It's all there: labrinyth sentences, purposeful interjections – (Dentistry, the compact disk) – (picnic, lightning) – mushroom hunting, even midges. A wonderful book for anyone who's already read all of Nabokov's (though I haven't come close). It combines the obsessions, refinements, and deviousness of Humbert Humbert,
the careening ramblings of Charles Kimbote, and the nostalgia of Nabokov himself in Speak, Memory. Besides, it's built upon a foundation of food, including a selection of menus, recipes, and long discussions of such regional specialities as fish soup. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or frightened at recognizing some of Lanchester's culinary references – such as the succesful treatment of an English couple (and their baby) who had accidentally consumed a cache Death Cap mushrooms. Lanchester's allusions, while sharing Nabokov's eclecticism, are neither as obscure nor as hidden.
Here, in any case, is a particularly Nabokovian selection from the end of the first chapter:
In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all
exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a
book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds
of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its
overfilled ashtrays and vomitting children, is as good a
place as any to reflect on the angel who stands with a flaming
sword in front of the gateway to all our yesterdays.
Thanks to my brother for the unknowing loan of this delight.