Placenta

Last night I gave a little talk to our local Pacific Italian Alliance and my students who came about Roman agriculture and Cato the Elder. I decided that rather spend the afternoon cobbling together some images, I would cook something fun, and Cato's placenta beckoned. OK, not that kind of placenta, though the shape is the same, and the biological use of the term apparently comes from the name for the cake. Or is it a cake? I am inclined to think otherwise now.

I have tried to folow Cato's directions using emmer groats, assuming Dalby's translation is correct. Alicae primae in older translations (Brehaut) is spelt grits. But I still fail to see how they can be worked into the flour dough without making impossible lumps that prevent the tracta from holding together. If anyone has ideas about this, please let me know. This time I used just flour. The filing between sheets is just washed sheep cheese (to remove the salt) i.e. feta, and honey.

It resulted in a really nice sort of sweet lasagna. Everyone ate it and said it was good. By chance my olives were also ready, and they turned out quite nice, with a pleasant crunch. I also had my own sapa to taste - the entire year's harvest (10 gallons or so) reduced to about a bottle and a half. About 4 hours of slow simmering, which yeilded a gorgeously musty syrup. A little vinegar for fluidity in one bottle resulted in a fine balsamic-like product.

Again, any suggestion for making tracta with alica, would be most welcome.

Ken

Bambismo

It was not without some serious trepidation that I listened to a harried call from the Goddess of Meat and All Things Wild informing me that an entire specimen of Odocoileus hemionus (i.e. mule deer) would be imminently delivered to my doorstep. Luckily he, or she, arrived bereft of the more ungainly purtenances, bisected, and thoroughly chilled. I will kindly spare you, my gentle readers, the grisly snapshots, but I hope will trust my words to capture the moment when burnished steel met quivering flesh in an unprecendented feat of cisorifaction. To be frank, the experience was exhilarating. To hack through haunches, sever sinews, mince massive muscles, and dissect dainty dollops of dark red deer meat. There was nothing especially mysterious about rending steaks from the round, stew meat from the forequarters, chop meat from chuck, nor elegantly tying a roast of loin, or tiny sawn sections of osso bucco from the calves. With the staltward arms of two compatriots, we dispatched the beast in about 2 hours, plied with rum, and frantically filled freezer bags. That evening there were burgers and steaks (marinated in vermouth and juniper, a passing nod to the martini) on the barbecue. What possessed me to roast the bones, which could not possibly fit into my biggest stockpot, I can't say, but the choicest femurs went to Oonaugh, the wonder dog.

So if you happen to pass the intersection of Yale and Lucerne where the resident tribe of carnivores hold their august sacrifices, be sure to stop by and pay your respects to the beast. We will keep the flesh pots burning.

(With apologies to Cardinal Pietro Bembo, master of the Latinate style known as Bembismo, or in English, Euphuisms.)

New Wok

After a killer conference this past weekend at the CIA in Napa on Asian cuisine, it dawned on me that I hadn't seen my wok in ages. Could it have been lost in a move? Stolen by marauders? Vanished. So I sallied forth to my local Asian grocery store and rifled thought the piles of teflon coated flat bottomed travesties and found a shiny new hammered steel wok. The biggest I could fit on my stove (though they had even bigger ones).

On a whim I decided to season it with duck fat, and the results were truly spectacular.

Here's the method: wash the wok and dry thoroughly. Put the whole thing in the barbecue grill, mine was just barely big enough, and crank up the heat, covered. Let it heat for about 15 minutes. Then rub a few tablespoons of fat all around the interior surface and cover the grill. Repeat 4 or 5 times, using nearly a cup of fat. The result is a gorgeously laquered vitrually non-stick surface, as shown above.

For the maiden stif fry I did a simple medley of broccoli, carrots, baby corn and other sundry vegs. I also had to break out the steamer and made some shrimp ha gao, which I haven't done in ages. As well as a lovely red-cooked short rib dish with chilies, star anise, black cardamom and tangerine peel. Lush.

Whatever could have lead to this long hiatus in Chinese cookery, I can't say, but the revival promises to be pretty exciting. If you haven't seen it yet, go out and buy Fuchsia Dunlop's new book on Hunan Cuisine. Absolutely fabulous.

Leg of Lamb

Does it get more gorgeous than this? I was literally stopped while mowing the lawn and asked if I wanted to help cook this beast, apparently hand fed 4-H project, though I never learned its name. Nor can I explain how it ended up in Christine's freezer, and then Dave's kitchen, then mine. Just so happens William Rubel was coming over this day, and alas he couldn't stay to eat it, but helped me tie it up, and start the fire. Here she is about 45 minutes into roasting before a serious conflagration, being turned slowly on my mechanical wind-up turnspit.

The word succulence doesn't even begin to describe it. Seasoned only with rosemary and salt, and as you can see there were practically no drippings; everything stayed within. If you have a yen for such cooking, I can highly recommend the spits sold by spitjack.com.

The leftovers became a really dandy chili last night too. Oh man, making me hungry again, first thing in the morning. But now I must go give a test. Ciao.

Almond Handling

I really do wish I brought a camera, but today I brought a few students to an almond orchard and handling factory near Ripon, CA. We spent about two and a half hours ogling at monstrous, loud machines designed basically to separate the almonds from rocks and twigs, then from hulls and shells, and then grade, etc. It dawns on me only after that all of this was only necessary because the nuts are shaken violently from the tree with a truck, that grabs them by the trunk with huge arms and drops them into the dirt. (Each of us got to shake a tree with the truck, was was serious fun - earthquake in sensurround) And then another truck needs to rake them into neat winrows, then another scoop them up, then another take them away. As all this was happeneing I was envisioning people actually knocking the almonds down with sticks, cleaning them on the spot and needing no machinery. Apparently it was done this way not long ago, on some of the same trees. But then there wasn't a global market, and the best nuts didn't go to Japan. I don't think it was immediately obvious to the student what his had to do with food history, but I hope it will sink in by the next class.

Ok, So in the meantime, Please leave comments! Either no one is reading this, or you're not finding my rants stimulating, in which case tell me what you'ld like to hear!

Ken

The purpose of writing and Freehold NJ

Gary Allen, cannibal, posted a thoughtful comment on my last entry: Why do people write? Of course to remember, when you begin to mistrust your brain to do it. But also to forget. I don't mean to distract you from everything else - though that is a very real reason I write. I mean to edit, to choose the things that stay in your memory so you can leave out the rest. Pictures do that in a very violent and artificial way. At least they decide for you the images that stick in your mind. But when you write things down, you can reconstruct them, creating your own personal history. Not for others, but for yourself. I say that now, realizing that I did in fact begin this blog for my own personal recollections. But I've kept a journal for 20 years now. Not really sure why I was doing it. To remember, and forget.

I am also spurred on by yet another really pathetic foodie book. An American eating adventure, or something like that, by a guy who made a few day trips outside of NY and then looked everything else up on line. How do these things get published? I know I am either in a really foul mood when I start scribbling violently in a book half way through and then throw it somewhere, or the book just sucks. It's a shame, the author seems like a really nice guy. Maybe food was not supposed to be his topic.

So I will take a moment, if you will indulge me, in a Proustian moment:

I grew up in a an unpronounceable place (Manalapan) just next to Freehold NJ. This is, despite what people think about Asbury Park, the hometown of Bruce Springsteen. And the people there have bumper stickers that say "My Home Town" and "Born in the USA" as if they'd never actually listened to the depressing lyrics of either song. Bruce and I lived near each other for many years I guess, and he's a year older than my brother. But listen closely to the way he speaks. Tidewater, the South. Two miles north is a NY suburb. My mutha says butt-uh. I of course learned to speak from the TV. Honestly, I could never stand Springsteen, only because everyone else adored him. I thank him, indirectly for my addiction to Bach.

But I am writing about food, damn it! Freehold was the place to go, for a real bakery (it was my father's only real weakness in life - crumb cake and sticky pastries - gevalt). Also Federici's - serious pizza, thin and slightly charred, I swear as good as Sally's or Peppe's in New Haven, and yes the same family of that guy in the E Street Band. But when I was young Atillio's was definitely the favorite, mostly because closer. Your standard 70s pizza by the slice. But who names someone Atilla? And there were restaurants: Vans, which I think is still there. A real "continental" operation from the 60s or long before, in a refurbished house. White bread and iceberg lettuce. But also the first place I ever ate olives. Still my favorite food. Oh and the American Hotel, long gone, which had black lawn jockeys lining the hallways and pictures of prize winning trotters and pacers. And my favorite painting, of the hotel entrance in the 1830s with news of the Mexican War being read in front. They had a buffet at which allegedy I scandalized eveyone by eating only lemons and rice at age 5 or thereabouts. My sister had her sweet 16 there too. And not to forget the kitchen at the Synagogue, where a one-toothed growling old troll by the name of Meyer turned out what adults conceded was some of the best food they had ever eaten. Cholent I can still picture and almost taste. There was also the place my high school friends hung out after we returned home, pathetically jobless after college to drink - Frebbles. Or at the Court Jester, which had sandwiches named after local lawyers, one of whom was the father of my girlfriend senior year. It was like bacon and spam with pickle relish or something like that. Then there was the mythopoetic Sorrento's Subs, out on Route 33 - enormous vinegary oniony behemoths filled with everything in the house - salami, coppa, cheese, ham, etc., enough to feed a whole family, or my brother and me. You could smell someone who had eaten it a block away.

But what I can't forget, because it is seared into my senses, is Battleview Orchards. On the field where the battle of Monmouth took place. Also a state park. It is still the first place I hit when I visit. Apples like none I have eaten on earth - winesaps and Macs, later Empires and McCouns. Only directly off the trees, preferably stolen, though now adays pick your own. Sour, ineffible crunch, no explosion of apple in your face. You have to eat at least a dozen per visit, because if you take them home, you might as well just make pie. Which works well too, with brown sugar and a splash of apple jack (made not in the south, but in Scobeyville a few miles away, since the 18th c.) There was also real unpasteurized cider at teh orchard years ago, and the best doughnuts on earth made from it. I have eaten only a few doughnuts in the past decades, only because I know nothing on earth could possibly compare. Crispy and hot right from the fryer, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The last few times I've gone, I could taste the apple juice in the batter. But the apples they can't fake. And the orchard is still there.

Ok, so next time we take venture from New Jersey, taking in "THE City" and DC, and lots of other places I've lived. Then across the globe. And at the end we make a book out of it. Any interested publishers or agents out there?

Beans: A History

Recently arrived on my desk is this lovely little thing. Time to crack open some bubbly. There are actually two different covers, this one for Europe and a noisier one with jars of beans on it for the US. Go figure. The latter fits the content better, but I have to say I've grown rather fond of this one.

The gestation of books is actually a really odd process. You turn it over complete and then it mysteriously reappears in the mail, in this case quite quickly only 6 or 7 months later. Sometimes its a year or more.

Having worked as a production editor one fateful year between degrees (and I ruined a lot of books for Garland Publishing too) I know exactly what's involved, but it still seems so mysterious when it suddenly shows up. Somehow you think - did I actually write this? Maybe the mind blocks it out, like childbirth. Ok, the metaphor is inept - as any woman who has given birth will remind me, but I do think of these like children. You just dont get to see them for a long time after you finish writing, proofing, indexing intensely. It disappears for a long time and then a stork drops it in your mailbox. As if a surrogate had given birth to your baby.

Enough. This is on amazon if anyone's interested. Being shipped across the Atlantic now I'm told and will be here in September. Another perplexing thing about publishing. But it's quite cheap and I think a fun read. Let me know what you think.