The Splendid Table

HEY Folks, Starting Tomorrow Night you can download an interview with me on NPR's The Splendid Table with Lynne Rosetto Kasper. I think it's the best food show out there.

http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/listings/101002/


ALSO, just in today, a very nice review on culinate (that really sounds like a dirty verb to me) nonetheless:

www.culinate.com/books/book_reviews/is_real_cooking_a_lost_art

and another on www.thegastronomersbookshelf.com/8177_the-lost-art-of-real-cooking-ken-albala-2010-us

BTW, the effect of these was immediate. Sunday afternoon the book is #496 on amazon. Only behind Pollan in this category. THANKS LYNNE! And Kind Reviewers.

nope make that #398 as of 5:30

Serendipitous Fall

My larders had been largely cleared out midsummer for tastings, talks and parties. So I started a lot of projects, all of which appear to have come to fruition at exactly the same moment, on a single plate for breakfast, on an ordinary weekday.

Clockwise from 6, there's my first bread made from hand milled flour. Dense, a little gritty, and lightly sour, it is actually phenomenally tasty. Then there's the last batch of pickles, which did indeed make it through the summer heat on the counter. Still crunchy. Then the coppa, actually not sure what it should be called. Cured pig parts, stuffed into casings. Chewy but sweet and a little smokey from something else in the wine fridge. And taste a little like the GoG's fingers. Then my last cheese, rather hard, a little like kashkaval I think. Piquant and crumbly too. Incidentally oiling the rind (after Vincenzo Tanaza's 17th c. directions) does work. And lastly an experiment. Kimmy and Brett's mission figs, a whole shopping bag, boiled down with a little sugar, spread on parchment paper and left outside to dry to a solid paste. Rolled up and sliced. Serious fig mojo.

Is it serendipity or planning? A little of both. Be sure to stop by for a nibble before it's all gone, that's all I can say.

Melon Mojito

Do you remember about 20 years ago there was a popular drink called a melon ball? Horrid. Midori Liqueur, Vodka, I think even pineapple juice. Let's banish that thought. But the idea of a melon drink is still singularly appealing. And refresing, especially after a run in serious heat. Another story.

This happened mostly because I went to visit the operation of a friend who breeds melons. Yes, I mean breeds. DID you know that each individual flower must be hand pollinated - you must manually faciliatate sex with melons? It was dizzying.

Out in the field she cut a big box full of melons for me last Wednesday and I have been eating melon, a LOT, ever since. Then today it occured to me. AH, a melong drink. Bought some rum, and someone broke my blender. Will be no mango daquairis today.

So here's the recipe. YES, I will do it. In the standard recipe format, lest someone accuse me of never writing recipes. OK?

1 large lemon, juiced
1 small lime, juiced
1 tablespoon sugar, preferably white, but organic raw fair trade sustainable demerara mayy be subsititued
1 knob ginger*
1 green fleshed melon, the best you can possibly imagine. These were netted skinned cataloupes and kind of honeydew that makes you faint with pleasure. Firm but sweet. Oh, sorry. Back to stilted recipe format.
Yo ho ho. (i.e. a bottle of rum) If you can afford no better, use Bacardi, unless you're snob.

Mix the first 3 ingredients. Stir well, in a counter-clockwise motion, twelve times. Grate the fourth ingredient into the palm of your meticulously sanitized hand and squeeze the juice into the citrus mixture. That's ginger juice. Cut the best part of the melon into chunks. Without the seeds. Preferably the interior, the outer rind is relatively flavorless. But do save the rinds and squeeze them into your citrus-ginger juice. You will be amazed at how much melon juice somes out. A cup at least.

Mix all the previous ingredients with the final ingredient. Exactly 3.4 ounces. Any deviation will result in poisoning an immediate asphyxiation and painful death.

Actually add a shot, or two. I may have added three. Put some melon chunks, a handful of ice cubes (which as always was not mentioned in the original list of ingredients because anything to do with water is not an ingredient) and all the rest in a nice big wine glass. Makes two drinks.

Drink.


* ginger is a root that can be bought in most Asian groceries and some other stores.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575453470935556784.html?KEYWORDS=Ken+Albala

https://email.pacific.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575453470935556784.html?KEYWORDS=Ken%2BAlbala

Shall We Play Barley Break?

Fa la la, la la, Say dainty nymphs? No, none of those. But I did have some lovely red barley I've been playing with lately. Whole grains. Partly inspired by picking tender grains of barley, rye, oats, wheat, etc. in Finland last week. And discussing these very same in class today.

So why do people say you need wheat to make bread? This is about 80 percent barley, and the rest sourdough wheat starter. Rose nicely, though dense, and quite pungently sour. But this is SUCH luscious bread. Exactly what I was looking for.

And here's the weirdest part. I have no grain mill. Someday I want a rotary hand quern. Anyone know where to get one, has to be stone, please let me know. I never really wanted an electric flour mill - that's the only reason I still don't own one.

So I soaked the barley for a few days and hand ground the grains in my big stone mortar. No big deal. Not gritty in the least. I wonder why people in the past without mills didn't do this. Much easier than dry grains. And of course with corn in MesoAmerica, this is exactly what they did. Why is there no wet milling for bread in the West??? I am perplexed.

Absence

Makes the heart grow fonder. Or was that Absinthe? Well, I hope you will excuse my recent sojourn. I was in Finland. Feasting on unfathomably rich rye bread, smoked eels that can only have descended vertically from the heavens, and reindeer tongue and liver. The food was marvellous. Koskenkorva is what we need to start importing, soon. Yxi, Kaxi, Kolme.

But what strange delight upon my return to find oddments left behind. What was I thinking?? What is this anyway? There were pickles agog. Bubbling tubs of unidenifyable vegetation. Why didn't I write anything down?


Well, as it turns out, here were two bizarre experiments that I suppose I didn't expect to work, but did. The first is a sausage not in a casing but in parchment. Lamb, spices, hunks of fat. It dried out quite a bit, but thinly sliced is quite fetching. I expect not that different from the same mixture in a sausage casing.

Then this mess. Would you believe a short cut hash? One pound of stew meat chopped finely and thrown into a ziplock with the cure, in the fridge of course. Two weeks. I honestly forgot about it entirely. It emerged sweet smelling. So I tossed it in a pan. See how it stayed red? Added herbs and a little mustard powder. And a really lovely hash. I'd throw it in eggs, or with some potatoes and onions. Maybe even a steamed bun. Very lean and crumbly, but definitely the taste of corned beast without the hassle. Try it, you'll like it.

German Salami

Folks, If you happen to be in the Bay Area tonight around 7:00, there's a signing/tasting at A Great Good Place for Books in Montclair, just above Oakland and Berkeley. And yes, I shall be serving this gorgeousness. I had to taste it first right? Along with some nice sour caraway rye. And pickles. Thinking Germany I guess.

Here's how I made it: Take one pound of beef round. I suppose you could start with ground beef too. Then beat the living daylights out of your meat - in a capacious mortar. The only way to get this fine texture. Add a clove of garlic, salt, pepper, the tiniest smidgen of instacure #1 and a little fine sugar. Keep pounding. Put in a medium width beef bung. Hang in a cool place. Wait three days. Then smoke gently over applewood for about an hour. Hang for another 2 weeks, or until desired stiffness. This is one of the tastiest salamis I have ever made, and I think maybe the second I have ever made of beef. Give it a shot.