Tiny Banquet Committee

Things you might buy me for Christmas, or might buy for some other cook or foodist, if you must.

2012-12-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

I know you're a thoughtful and genial bunch of readers, and I understand you're experiencing acute compassion pangs right now at the thought of me not being surprised by your gifts. Pull yourselves together! Will it help you to know that my pretend-surprise will be almost certainly be convincing? I've got thirty-plus years of attentive gift-rattling, -sniffing, and general-sizing-up behind me and it's been ample time to practice my "hey, wow, this is great!" face, so you needn't worry. On to the goodies.

At the top of my list at the moment is Brendan Connell's Lives of Notorious Cooks, a very recent release from Chômu Press. It contains biographies for fifty one fictional cooks, and early reviews, though brief, are promising. I only had to read as far as "eel hash in the shape of slippers" before I was sold on it, but I have graciously held off on buying it for myself so that you may have the opportunity to delight me with it.

Lives of Notorious Cooks by Brendan Connell,

$12.50, available here.

This minke whale knife by Saikai Toki Trading Inc. also recently caught my eye. It's cast iron and made in Japan so it'll last forever, and how nice would it be to have a whale hanging out on your knife rack?

Minke whale knife,

$60 at Creatures of Comfort here.

My oven mitts are grubby and need replacing. I like these "Glove & Hate" ones by Stuart Gardiner.

Stuart Gardiner "Glove & Hate" oven mitts,

£24 at Howkapow here.

Is your person you're shopping for more of a snacker than a cook? Maybe a solid brass pretzel or a solid sterling silver pistachio is just the thing. Both are available as necklaces from Etsy seller Gold Teeth Brooklyn, who also has a piece of popcorn you may be interested in. All are cast from real snacks.

Brass pretzel necklace by Gold Teeth Brooklyn, $80
on Etsy here. Silver pistachio, $95 here.

Is your friend a lover of mushrooms? Eugenia Bone's Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms came out last year but I'm just making my way through it now. It's written in a warm, easy-going, narrative style but it's full of information about mushrooms and mushroom people. Jane Grigson's classic 1975 cookbook The Mushroom Feast would be an ideal companion for it. It's got more than 250 mushroom recipes, written in Grigson's erudite, opinionated, and stylish but relentlessly practical prose. (She's one of my all-time favorite food writers). A Swedish mushroom tea towel too? It's made of a linen-cotton blend so it'll age well, though I'd be more tempted to hang it on the wall rather than use it. What I'd most like to receive this Christmas is some dried candy cap mushrooms, which are often used in desserts because they reportedly taste like maple syrup. I've wanted them for ages now but I'm trying to put my foot down on my habit of buying every kooky ingredient I've fallen in love with. A Shrooms canister to keep them in — or my more prosaic boletes — would not be unwelcome.

Eugenia Bone's Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms, $17.15 from Amazon here; Almedahls wild mushrooms tea towel, $18, from Huset Shop here; Wineforest Wild Foods dried candy cap mushrooms, $17, available here; Jonathan Adler Shrooms canister, $98, from his shop here; Jane Grigson's The Mushroom Feast, $29.95 from Amazon here.

Any stylish mushroom-lover would surely be thrilled to receive a copy of Emily Taylor's zine Fruiting Bodies, which she describes as "[a] celebration of beautiful fungi forms, 26 different types of mushrooms and their proper latin names, combined with fashion-inclined illustrations and pattern work."

Fruiting Bodies zine by Emily Taylor, $12 Can. on Etsy here.

This Finnish mushroom knife with a little brush at its end for sweeping dirt away would be a very nice gift for someone, too. I've been meaning to join the NYC Mycological Society on one of their walks for ages now — did you know it was founded by John Cage? — and this handsome little knife looks like it would be a good companion. It's made of beechwood.

Finnish mushroom knife,

$75, at Mjölk here.

After a dozen or so years of more-or-less-OK-but-not-stellar service, I wouldn't be sorry to see my peppermill replaced. I think I've narrowed the field down to two potential replacements: this maple one by Muuto, which comes with a 25-year guarantee on the grinding mechanism, and this glossy black one from Unicorn, which has been making peppermills on the island of Nantucket for many years now, and which gets very favorable reviews. Both are available in other colors and styles and there are matching salt mills, too, so click through if you're interested in browsing.

Muuto maple wood peppermill, $89, available from the Finnish Design Shop here; Unicorn key-top peppermill, $27, available here.

I'm a big fan of Etsy shop knife in the water and already have some of her napkins, among other things. I think I also need these new ones, clementine, a bowl. They're made to order and the cotton is dyed with natural ingredients.

"clementine, a bowl" napkins, $20
from knife in the water on Etsy here.

Kiosk is always a good source of gifts. I'm fresh out of cocoa powder and they've got an appealing Dutch one, Blooker, that I'd like to find in my stocking, or sitting inside a big wonky mug. I used to buy Penzeys cocoa powder from their little shop in Grand Central, but since it closed I've been adrift. This one looks like the cocoa equivalent of Belbury Poly, which is a plus as far as I'm concerned.

Blooker cocoa powder,

$12, at Kiosk here.

The Meadow is another terrific little shop. I can't go there to buy someone a present without getting something(s) for myself. Salt, always a jar or two of salt, but they have an amazing selection of chocolate and bitters too. Right now a jar of hand-harvested lemon flake Mediterranean sea salt, some Djiboutie Cuties, and a Dolfin green aniseed chocolate bar would be very welcome in my household. If you're in the market for a special salt that isn't quite so challenging in appearance, I've been really enjoying their Shinkai deep sea salt over the past couple months; it's got a well-balanced flavor and an irresistibly snowy texture. The Meadow also carries my favorite smoked salt, which is from Cyprus and is hardwood smoked. I've made my own smoked salt several times (always Maldon, over various types of wood chips or tree bits), but this one has a sweetness and a wild-nighttime-bonfire quality that I'll never be able to duplicate at home without Cypriot assistance.

Lemon flake salt,

$5.50 for the smallest jar, at The Meadow here.

Djiboutie Cutie salt (!),

$11 for the smallest jar, at The Meadow here.

If you want to go all out this year with respect to kooky salts, consider this wild blueberry Alaskan sea salt from Salt Traders. It's hand made by a couple who started drying out their own sea salt on top of their wood stove. I think it could be amazing on seared scallops, among other things. Salt Traders also has some interesting spiced sugars right now. The first thing I'd make with this "winter warmer" set would probably be shortbread cookies with curry sugar. The "spiced gold" one is Hawaiian sugar flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice.

Alaska Pure wild blueberry sea salt, $12.50, and mini winter warmer sugar set, $8, both from Salt Traders here and here.

Speaking of salt, I have been searching for the perfect vessel for my basic, everyday mother lode for years now, and I think I've finally found it: 16 oz. capacity, and a nice big lid on the top rather than a troublesome little hand-hole.

Salt cellar, $24, at pot + pantry here.

How gorgeous is this Iittala platter? It's from their Korento collection by Klaus Haapaniemi, full of poppies and dragonflys, and it also comes in blue. Either color would look great peeking out from under some roasted cauliflower or whatnot in a blog post. I'm just saying.

Iittala Korento platter, $94

from Finnish Design Shop here.

Do you know any food people with pets? Think carefully about this, because there are some adorable food-themed presents for kitties on Etsy.

My cat Vivian's Christmas face.

Olive, plum pudding, and watermelon catnip toys, $6 -7 each, from Small Wonders Art on Etsy.
Catnip sardines, $12, from Miso Handmade on Etsy.

Dogs love to get presents too, of course. The artichoke below has a hiding spot for a treat, which will allow you to prepare your soon-to-be-famous artichoke with peanut butter before you leave for work in the morning.

Orbee Tuff Artichoke dog toy, $12.99, boiled wool carrot, $7, and veggie pizza, $17.99, all from Olive Green Dog.

No matter how many apps I experiment with, my favorite way to keep track of cooking and blogging ideas is to write them down on bits of paper. This partially explains why I still haven't gotten around to making, e.g., the salted nimbu pani sorbet I was so excited about scribbling down months ago, but realistically it's just not a habit I'm going to drop anytime soon. So, for me at least, notebooks are always a good idea. I like these mouthy ones from Etsy, but a small stack of Rhodia always has a stirring effect, and any decent stationery store has those, in both lined and graph paper.

Mouthy notebooks,

$13.50, from NotbookNotbuk on Etsy here.

Exciting neon enamel Caran D'Arche pens,

$20 each, from Ann Mashburn here.

I do cook from my iPad all the time though, and I could really use a nice stand for it. The one I have now is more suitable for doing desk stuff than kitchen stuff. The one below is made from reclaimed oak and can be mounted on the kitchen wall, out of flouring range. I've also been admiring these chunky ones from Block and Sons Co. because I'm a sucker for a live edge on a piece of wood.

iPad easel,

$50, from Peg and Awl on Etsy here.

How is it that I don't have a donabe? A donabe is a Japanese clay cooker that you can use for steaming, roasting, stewing, smoking, and stir-frying. And chilling. Oh right, a crammed little kitchen and no place to put one. The thing is, they're so versatile that in my mind I would be able to get rid of several other cooking vessels if I had one. Hmm.

Fukkura-san donabe,

$130, from Tortoise General Store here.

Something else I've wanted for a long time and don't really have a spot (or a need) for is one of these Thai tamarind wood cutting boards. The surface of my kitchen table is butcher block, the surface of my nearby desk is butcher block, and I've got several very nice cutting boards besides. I can chop and chop and chop before having to stop for washing, but still, it's only natural that my eyes should wander. They keep wandering back to this thing. A solid slab of end-grain tamarind wood! It's got a handle, and it's cheap too. There's no good reason why I haven't bought the damn thing for myself. I guess I've been holding out until I have a kitchen that can accommodate a whole stump, Thai street vendor-style.

Tamarind wood cutting board,

$35, from Import Food dot com here.

I've also been eyeing this Quadretti chopping board by artist and designer Francesca Iannaccone. It's made in Sweden from hardwood with a heat-resistant surface, and it's a good size for picnicking or for cutting up citrus for drinks.

Quadretti chopping board, £20

from Mrs Eliot Books on Etsy here.

I'm probably alone in wanting one of these Italian beechwood drying racks for Christmas. It's lo-fi and I'm into that. Drying your own foodstuffs is an easy way to preserve them, and how great would it be to open a jar of home-dried currants from the summer farmers' market and shake some into your winter oatmeal? Or to obsessively, compulsively tend to a batch of fascinating mushrooms or unusual, chance-encountered peppers, turning them over and repositioning them just so while making long-range plans for them? OK, just me then.

Lo-fi beechwood food dryer,

$38.99, on Amazon here.

Are there any lo-fi freaks who are into foraging on your shopping list? You should get them a tick-plucker-offer. I like poking around in the woods and I've known people who've had terrible experiences with undiagnosed Lyme disease, so I already have one of these. They're lightweight aluminum, fit on a key ring, and can be used to extract nasty little ticks from people and pets.

The Tick Key, $6. See website for retailers.

If you're in NYC, REI has them.

That same person would probably love a copy of Vivien Weise's Cooking Weeds, which I'm planning to write about soon. It's a slim little book filled with vegetarian recipes for things like spruce ice cream, comfrey-hazelnut butter, daisy soup, and nipplewort minestrone. It's somehow very Tiny Banquet Committee, actually — a friend flipping through it in my apartment said "this book is, like, 30 blog posts."

Cooking Weeds by Vivien Weise, $17.95

from Amazon here.

Guaranteed to please any kitchen-centric hippie, a set of durable cotton, hemp, and beeswax storage thingies to replace plastic wrap. They're good for cheese fiends too, because they allow cheeses to breathe a bit without drying out.

Abeego storage wraps, $11 to $15 from Branch Home here, via Remodelista.

For the outdoorsy hiker-cook, how about a camping stove by Biolite that can also charge their gadgets? I haven't tried one yet myself but I've seen several reviews of it, all positive. You don't have to bring any fuel into the woods with you because it's powered by kindling. Don't delay if you're thinking of buying one — the last date to order before Christmas is December 14th.

BioLite camp stove, $129 here.

For the drinks-maker on your list, a good muddler and a pewter jigger would probably go over well. This jigger is handmade in Italy and measures half an ounce on one side and one and a half ounces on the other, and it will retain its good looks forever. The muddler has a better design than most: as the seller explains, "[its] ends closely match the inside radius of drinking tumblers, which can be used as mortars when crushing peppercorns, parsley, rosemary, sage, etc. in home cooking. As the end sections are slightly smaller diameter than the central shaft, it's an excellent small rolling pin as well."

Pewter double-sided jigger, $95

from Kaufmann Mercantile here.

Hard maple muddler / pestle / rolling pin, $6.99

from Lee Valley & Veritas here.

For anyone and everyone: I've got three of these little knives and they're among my most-often-reached-for. They're perfect for picnicking or car trips, too, because they come with covers for their blades. If you're in NYC, Bowery Kitchen Supply in Chelsea Market has them in every color of the rainbow, temptingly close to the cash register. I always have to remind myself that I don't really need one more.

Kuhn Rikon paring knives, $9.95 each from Sur la Table here.

Buying things made in Maine makes me happy. I've got a well-established, long-standing thing for Maine. This organic linen tea towel is hand-printed with mussels by Mainers.

Hand-printed organic linen tea towel,

$18, from madder root on Etsy here.

They've got napkins too.

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that you have a gorgeous blue teapot shipped from Australia? I suppose the answer depends on where you are. It's hand-built and beautifully glazed and I can't stop looking at it.

Deep crystal blue teapot by Claystone Pottery, $120 AUD,

from Mr Kitly here.

The same shop has the most charming potholders I've ever seen, by a concern called At-Swim-Two-Birds, which I'm guessing is named after one of my favorite books ever.

At-Swim-Two-Birds pot holder #3,

$38 AUD from Mr Kitly here.

I haven't forgotten about getting the Japanese Candy Quarterly Review under way. I've scanned and munched so much candy, urgh! Coming soon. In the meantime, I recommend a box of Meiji Meltyblend Royal milk tea chocolates as a holiday treat for any and all candy enthusiasts. The milky tea flavor is spot-on, and the texture is really pretty classy, even compared to handmade chocolates — they're little cubes of firm (but also somehow fluffy) ganache with a silky texture.

Meiji Meltyblend Royal milk tea chocolates,

approximately $3.50 for a box of fifteen or so.

If you're in NYC, try Sunrise Mart or Katagiri.

I wouldn't refuse a box of Woodhouse Chocolate, either. I've sent their candies to people over the years and they've always been very well received, but I've yet to taste any myself. For the holidays they have Santa in various shapes and sizes and beautifully decorated trees, but I'm drawn to the friendly-looking penguins and snowmen. And the caramels with exotic salts. And the quatre epices hot chocolate, and the eggnog snowballs filled with bourbon and nutmeg ganache. Their year-round chocolates come in intriguing flavors too, like Thai ginger, and brown butter ganache.

Woodhouse Chocolates penguin, $12, and small snowman, $8, here and here.

Caramels with exotic salts, $48, and 48-piece mostly dark assortment, $90, here and here.

Woodhouse is based in California. Closer to home, I really like Li-Lac Chocolates. They've been making chocolates and other confections in NYC's west village since 1923. If I'm out and about anywhere near their shop, or their counter at Grand Central, I always stop by and pick up a little something(s), often malt balls, and a basic dark chocolate bar. Their chocolate always tastes very freshly made and it's just really, really good. Of course they do all sorts of holiday shapes and gift boxes, but what I'd most like to give or receive are the year-round ones. I'm particularly a fan of the cat, the t-rex, and the Jaguar. Sometimes they have these in the shop — and they're always available through the website, in milk chocolate, dark, or white — but if you're in the area and have your heart set on a particular one, call ahead. They used to have a brontosaurus and I've secretly always wanted one of those with a ribbon round its neck, but I don't see it on the site. Maybe it's still available?

Li-Lac Chocolates kitty, $14, Tyrannosaurus Rex, $12.50, and Jaguar, $25,

available here, here, and here.

Do you know someone with a small foodist in training? This Pippi Longstocking pancakes tray would be great for sick-day breakfasts in bed, or for any day, really.

Pippi Longstocking pancakes tray, $28.50

from Huset-Shop here.

It's good to have a calendar in the kitchen so you don't lose track of your pickling projects. This "Buy Local" one by Claudia Pearson features seasonal fruits and veggies for every month.

"Buy Local" 2013 calendar by Claudia Pearson, $24.

Available on Etsy here.

Beer people get a calendar of their own by designer and illustrator Heidi Schweigert, with a beer and an ideal food pairing for each month.

BEER/FOOD 2013 calendar, $24,

available from redcruiser on Etsy here.

If you happen to know that your cook likes a clean, graphic, possibly Scandinavian-influenced style and has a bare spot on his or her kitchen wall, how about a print of winter fruits?

Winter fruit print by Claire Nereim, $50, on Etsy here.
It's 19" x 25" and there's a handsome summer fruit one, too.

I like this big pomegranate a lot, too. It's 20" x 27" and will fit in a poster frame.

Indigo pomegranate giclée print by anek,
$80 on Etsy here.

If your cook has a thing about breakfast, this print by painter/illustrator Becca Stadtlander will fit in an 8" x 10" frame and would look great propped on a kitchen shelf.

Breakfast Time print by Becca Stadtlander, $25
on Etsy here.

Cooking a lot is rough on the hands. My favorite cream for years now is L'annine because it's really effective and not greasy. I always get the one with mango oil because it smells amazing. The version with avocado oil does have an avocado scent but it isn't very strong, so that one's probably a better choice for guys.

L'annine hand cream for your favorite cook's stocking,

$16 at Beautyhabit here.

For the mango aficionado, how about this print by Ramalamb? It doesn't come framed but it will fit in an IKEA RIBBA.

Mango print by Ramalamb, $19,

on Etsy here. She's got a pretty great pineapple, too.

Last but not least, you know what makes me happier than just about any other box of holiday this-or-that? Other than really fancy marzipan? Impeccably candied fruit, glowing from within. These clementines from Confiserie Florian are plump and gorgeous. Might as well pick up a packet of candied angelica and some Provençal flower-flavored syrups at the same time, no? I have a feeling that bowls of vanilla ice cream drizzled with mimosa and violet syrup would make January and February a little easier to get through.

Confiserie Florian candied clementines,

€24.50, here.

Confiserie Florian Provençal syrups

(mimosa, rose, poppy, and violet), €20.50, here.

new thing

2012-11-03T09:10:00.002-04:00

I've got a new site and it's under my actual, real life name. As I explained over at Lunar Camel Co., I recently realized that my reasons for blogging anonymously were no longer meaningful to me. I also wanted a place where I could pull together the content from both my blogs, along with any other little projects I involve myself in. I briefly considered abandoning both blogs and urging all my readers to come over to the new site, but it didn't take long to decide against it: They each have their own distinct audience, and I'm fine with that. What I'll be doing instead is cross-posting new content from each blog over there. In other words, there won't be any changes here — it's just that whatever appears here will also appear on the blog over there.

Also new, the Alpine strawberries pictured above. Regular readers know that this is my first year growing them, and everything about them has been super-exciting for me. The surprise appearance of new berries this October is no exception. I assumed I wouldn't get any more until next June or so, but apparently they like the chilly weather in NYC at this time of year. The berries above appeared before hurricane Sandy blew through town but my fire escape is in sort of a protected area (there's another building fairly close to it) and they survived with no damage whatsoever. I'll be sure to keep you updated as to whether I acquire any Frankenpowers after eating my Frankenstorm fruits.

FINALLY.

2012-09-24T14:24:00.000-04:00

a brief, unscheduled update regarding emotional container gardening

My troubled, grouchy rocoto chile pepper plant has finally decided to get up off its plant-ass and make a pepper.

Naturally the pepper came out while I was away on vacation. Now that I'm back in town it will probably shrivel up and fall off within a few days, or develop some sort of exotic mold or infestation. I think I've finally gotten the plant food thing down, at least, because its flowers are a deeper purple than they were before.

My other pepper plant, a serrano, seems to be making up its plant-mind as to whether it ought to make peppers this year. It appears to have recovered from the period of malnutrition I apparently subjected it to, but I can't yet tell whether it's a full recovery or merely an "I'm not dead" partial recovery: there are a ton of new flowers, but no fruit yet, and it recently dropped a bunch of leaves. Either I brought on a freak-out by giving it too much nitrogen, or it was startled by the sudden appearance of its neighbor's vivacious new pepper.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here, here, here and here.

Festive GIF from I'm Revolting.

eat a tree

2012-09-21T18:53:00.000-04:00

I spent last week on the island of North Haven in Maine's Penobscot Bay, and while there are any number of delicious things to eat there — Nebo Lodge's sesame ice cream with orange blossom caramel sauce, for example — I'm going to kick off the first in an occasional series of posts about it with one of the less obvious: its trees.

I haven't (yet) done enough comparative tree-eating to tell you which ones have the best flavor, but I did at least identify the particular tree that caught my eye one morning as a young Norway pine. I think. I'm far from being a tree authority but I felt satisfied that, even if my ID was a little off, I wasn't consuming anything poisonous; there are more than a hundred species of pine and it's my understanding they're all edible. Please don't go munching on a yew or somesuch without consulting a reputable guide! Some trees contain toxins you shouldn't be snacking on.

My Audubon Field Guide to Trees: Eastern Region is very helpful in letting me know what I'm looking at, but it doesn't have anything to say about deliciousness. If you've got a favorite guide to scenery-chewing, please speak up in the comments section.

My first little project was to make some pine-smoked salt. I have a small stove-top smoker at home but it's easy enough to improvise a similar arrangement, even in a rented cottage's kitchen. All you need is something to suspend your salt (or whatnot) over your source of smoke, and a close-fitting lid to keep the smoke in. A metal steamer basket is ideal. I made a little salt-tray out of foil, but if you can find a dish or plate that fits nicely, go ahead and use that. Try to be a little neater than I was about folding down the edges of your foil, if that's what you're using, so that the smoke can evenly do its thing. You'll want to arrange whatever it is you're smoking in a shallow layer, such that all of it is exposed to the smoke you'll be flavoring it with. I also recommend tightly covering the lid of your set-up with foil. Otherwise smoke will inevitably seep out around the edges, and your fellow vacationers might be tempted to rub their irritated eyes and ask what you're burning.

I put a handful of pine needles in the bottom of the pot, arranged the steamer basket and its contents over them, and set it over a low flame for approximately 25 minutes. I've made several different kinds of smoked salt at home using wood chips — cherry and applewood are my current favorites, though I'm eager to get my hands on some allspice (pimento) wood, as is used to prepare Jamaican jerk chicken — and I've found that 25 to 30 minutes is usually perfect, but there wasn't quite as much tree flavor in this salt as I wanted. Rather than covering it back up and smoking it longer, I added a few fresh needles to the jar I'm keeping it in, snapping them in half so as to expose more of their essential oils. This did the trick. I started with Maldon salt because it's my favorite, but you can use any type of sea salt you like.

If you're curious as to what your tree parts ought to look like afterwards, they'll probably look something like this:

I made good use of the salt while we were there. One efficient and instantly gratifying little carrier of its flavor is homemade crackers. I seldom make them at home — the repetitive process of rolling them out as thinly as they should be and baking off batch after batch is pretty boring — but it's no coincidence that I made crackers during last summer's visit to North Haven too; the terrific cheeses made on the island by Turner Farm's creamery are demanding in this way. I'm going to hold off on telling you about last year's cornmeal crackers until I can find my recipe for the crabapple chutney I made to go with them, but the recipe for this year's buttermilk crackers with black sesame seeds and pine salt is below.

The salt also made an appearance atop some pine-roasted beets, both before and after cooking. I should've added more needles to their foil packet but they did nonetheless manage to take on a bit of tree flavor during the process, and were thoroughly enjoyed in a big salad with lettuce and cherry tomatoes from our rented house's garden, Turner Farm's Sparkplug (an orb of aged goats' milk cheese coated with vegetable ash), seared scallops, and maple dressing (a simple vinaigrette of dark maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, s&p). A 90s-ish salad, but sitting in front of the fireplace eating it, that was not on my mind. The beets came from Turner Farm too, and I was happy to encounter their cousins later in the week, at the very pink bottom of a pickled beet martini at Nebo Lodge. I can't drink much these days — my doctor has limited me to three a week, which is every bit as tormentedly inadequate as it sounds — but if I could, I'd definitely have experimented with drinking the tree as well. Last summer I had a successful go at drinking the garden's tomatoes, a simple matter of infusing some gin with their stems. (Sniff carefully and I'm sure you'll agree that it's the stems that carry the most sun-warmed-garden-tomato fragrance, not the fruit).

Turner Farm is an organic farm on the island owned by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who's been farming on North Haven (among other things, obviously) since she graduated from college. The farm itself has been a farm for over 200 years. They've been operating a creamery since 2010 and the milk for their cheeses come from their own herd of Oberhaslis goats. They also raise pigs, chickens, cows, and turkeys. They supply the Nebo Lodge, naturally, and operate a farm stand, in addition to selling their goods at North Haven's seasonal farmers' market. (There are several other farms on the island, of varying sizes). If you think it sounds like a ridiculously idyllic place to shop for vegetables, you are correct.

As delicious as the Sparkplug was in our dinner salads, my favorite cheese of theirs is the Whitecap, an aged goat cheese with a layer of local dulse seaweed in the middle. It's a little briny, it feels like the most appropriate cheese imaginable to eat while watching the sun disappear behind the Camden hills, and like their other cheeses, it's perfectly ripened.

But back to the tree-eating. My next project was pine shortbread cookies, and I started by infusing some butter with a handful of needles. Not nearly as many as I ought to have used, apparently, because the finished cookies didn't taste as strongly of tree as I wanted them to. I could have — and definitely should have — added more needles, and maybe even let the butter become browned, but for complicated reasons, I didn't. Instead I let it infuse for half an hour or so, strained the needles out, and put the butter back in the refrigerator to chill. It's hard to find the right balance when it comes to incorporating trees into one's diet. I bought a jar of pine honey years ago that was so strongly flavored I found it nearly unusable, and I'm sure it's still in my cabinet somewhere. (It's nice drizzled over suitably-strong cheeses, but I don't eat those nearly often enough to make much progress using it up). It's probably for the best that my cookies were under-piney rather than over- because they were extremely edible. The recipe is below, and by all means, use my photo as a reference: it needs more tree.

Buttermilk crackers with black sesame seeds & pine-smoked salt

Adapted from this recipe from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery, with very minimal changes. The original calls for unsalted butter, but I love salt so I use salted for nearly everything. There are hundreds of thousands of other cooks who will tell you that using unsalted butter "gives you more control," but if you know from experience how salty your favorite brand of butter is, you haven't lost any control. So use what you like.

Makes several dozen crackers, with the precise quantity depending on how thinly you roll them out and how big you cut them.

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon or so pine-smoked salt, plus more for topping the crackers (see instructions above)

1 stick plus 2 tablespoons butter (5 oz.), diced into cubes and chilled

1 1/4 cups buttermilk, plus a few more tablespoons

black sesame seeds (or beige, if you prefer)

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl (break the salt up with your fingers if it's flaky like my Maldon) and, using a pastry blender or a couple of knives, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal. (You can do this step in a food processor if you like, but I'm not sure it's worth dirtying it up for such an easy task). Stir in the buttermilk until thoroughly combined. You'll have a sticky dough. (I like using a silicone spoonula for tasks like this). Lightly dust your kitchen counter and your hands with flour and knead the dough for a few moments, until it comes together in a ball. Transfer it to a clean bowl, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and let it chill for a few hours. (I stuck with Ms. Silverton's instructions on this point because I wasn't in a hurry to bake my crackers, but I'm not sure how essential it is; my feeling is that an hour would be sufficient).

Heat the oven to 350° F. Dust the counter with flour again and, working in batches, roll out the dough. It should be thin, approximately 1/16". You can roll out and bake off however many crackers you like at a time but I think they're best when freshly made — I recommend cutting the dough into four equal pieces, and working with one or two at a time depending on how many cracker-eaters you've got. (The rest of the dough will keep well in the refrigerator for a couple days). Transfer it to your baking sheets using your rolling pin (a little more flour on top is helpful here), and slice it into cracker shapes using a small, sharp knife. (You'll do the actual separating later, after they've baked). Lightly brush it with a thin layer of buttermilk and scatter the smoked salt and the sesame seeds over the top. Gently pat them down a bit to help them adhere.

Bake the crackers for approximately 30 minutes, using the upper and lower oven racks and rotating the pans at the half-way point. Let them cool before breaking them up.

Norway pine shortbread

Adapted from this Food & Wine recipe for "Granny Wallace's Shortbread Cookies," which I was curious about trying due to its high proportion of corn starch. I was very happy with the delicate, fine-grained texture of the finished cookies and the not-too-sweet taste. When it comes to shortbread I'm forever experimenting (rice flour in place of cornstarch, etc.), but I'll make these again.

Makes approximately two dozen small cookies.

1 stick of butter (see my remarks above re: my preference for salted butter)

1 large handful of pine needles (see above)

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon powdered sugar (icing sugar)

pine-smoked salt (see instructions above)

Put the pine needles and the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Once the butter is melted, turn the burner off and allow the mixture to infuse for at least 30 minutes, preferably closer to an hour. Strain the needles out, pressing on them as you do to extract every bit of tree flavor, and chill the infused butter until shortly before you're ready to bake. (It will keep for a few days, tightly covered so as not to absorb other flavors from the refrigerator, and I'm sure it freezes as nicely as plain butter does).

Take the butter out to soften.

Combine the flour, cornstarch, and a pinch of the salt in a bowl. (If your salt is coarse, like my Maldon, crush it a bit as you're adding it). In another bowl, cream together the softened butter and the powdered sugar until they're thoroughly combined. Add the butter and sugar mixture to the flour mixture and stir (or mix with your hands) just until everything is combined and forms a crumbly dough. Pat it into a disk, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and let it chill for approximately 15 minutes. (Any longer than that and it'll be hard to work with; you can chill it for longer, but if you do you'll want to take it out and let it come to temperature before proceeding).

Heat the oven to 325° F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cut two more sheets of parchment paper and use them to roll out your dough approximately 1/4" thick: one sheet on the counter, one between the dough and your rolling pin. Cut it into cookies with a cookie cutter or a sharp knife. Sprinkle the cookies with the smoked salt to taste, gently patting it down to help it adhere.

Bake the cookies for approximately 30 minutes, using the upper and lower oven racks and rotating the pans at the half-way point. (The original recipe calls for lowering the temperature to 250° F at this point and baking the cookies for an additional 15 minutes, but I rolled my cookies out slightly thinner and found they didn't need it). The cookies are done when they're just starting to brown. Gently transfer them to a rack to cool.

_______________

Cross reference: I've blogged about the non-edible parts of North Haven a few times over on my other blog. Here and here, for starters.

gritty northern ice cream realism

2012-09-14T21:05:00.000-04:00

Grape Nuts ice cream is A Thing in New England.

When I blog about ice cream I have a way of capturing something grim about it (e.g.),

but this is not because I have something against ice cream.

I quite liked this particular ice cream. Its vanilla lacks presence, but

I didn't mind that; sometimes vanilla is not the point.

The texture: fluffy and milky (as opposed to eggy or custard-y).

It's home-made, befitting the signage below.

I don't know how the Grape Nuts stay crunchy, but they do. Some sort of

kitchen sink drama I'll probably never make sense of.

Dorman's Dairy Dream,

Thomaston, Maine.

Saturday Night and Sundae Morning (Dir. Karel Reisz, 1960)

is considered a classic of the genre.

end-of-summer miscellany

2012-09-04T08:32:00.002-04:00

Blackberries still attached to their branches,

Union Square greenmarket.

A bearded townhouse, in the west 70s, I think.

My best friend bought a Vespa at the beginning of summer.

The scooter expanded our breakfasting territory, among other things.
A buckwheat waffle at Village Natural, after a
morning jaunt to Partners & Crime bookstore next door.

Last night's lights in the west village Saturday morning.

Breakfast triptych: A chilly morning, early summer, at La Bonbonniere.

Other people's container gardening: street limes on East 9th St.

You should try a BLTD while there are still good tomatoes around. This sandwich was inspired by the pork belly bacon from Dickson's Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market, which is great but a little salty. A layer of sliced Medjool dates underneath balances things perfectly.

BLTD construction

(bacon/lettuce/tomato/dates).

Also recommended, sort of a ma-la hotdog:

Dickson's lamb and beef sausage with Sichuan pepper + spicy cabbage and carrot slaw

(dressed with Kewpie mayo, rice vinegar, more Sichuan pepper, red pepper flakes).

Not recommended just yet: My blueberry / red currant / black cardamom scones
need a little more work. Remind me next summer.

Abingdon Square greenmarket.

Thinly sliced and properly dressed — with a little olive oil, lime juice and salt — avocado squashes taste almost exactly like actual avocados.

Avocado squash with olive oil, lime juice and Turkish black salt on sourdough toast.

fruity miserablism

2012-08-30T09:57:00.000-04:00

all the latest news about emotional container gardening

I've been reading The Château de Résenlieu by Lord Berners on the train this week, having picked it up on impulse at the Cabinet magazine book sale, and in it Berners describes the proprietress of an unusual garden he encountered one summer in Normandy:

Madame O'Kerrins did not have much intercourse with the inhabitants of Gacé. There was one old lady who visited the Château fairly frequently. Her name was Madame Bonnet and she lived in a large, ugly house near the church. In her garden there grew the largest begonias I had ever seen. Madame Bonnet told me that their size and their beauty were due to their being manured by the corpses of cats. In the bedding out season she used to offer a small reward to anyone who brought her a dead cat and when a sufficient number had been collected they were used as a foundation for the begonia beds. It seemed to me a rather macabre idea and I thought that at night the garden must be haunted by the ghosts of cats miaowing and caterwauling. These flowers were in a way symbolical of Madame Bonnet herself.

I'm not likely to take Madame Bonnet's gardening methods as instructive, but on an intuitive level it makes perfect sense to me that all gardens reflect something of the character of their gardener. My container garden just now is wallowing in indolence. My Alpine strawberry plants stopped producing fruit not long after my last update, and with them a great deal of heart went out of my gardening. (It should be fairly obvious that when I characterized myself as "a highly emotional gardener but not a sentimental one," I was making a perverse little joke. Look up "sentimental" in the wonderful iPad dictionary and there's probably a link to this blog, along with an embarrassingly accurate illustrated cross-section of my innards, sliced into translucent ribbons by sentiment.) My pepper plants have been exiled but continue to torment me with their incomprehensible refusal to set fruit — more about this below — and my pineapple sage dropped dead for no apparent reason, after ailing for just a few confusing days. Unless it was an act of performance art, in which case its death was an effective commentary on the dark moods that have discomposed much of my summer. It may indeed have been; in conducting my postmortem I discovered, somewhat disturbingly, "[o]ne superstition was that the plant would thrive or wither according to its owner’s fortune." I prefer to think a nutriment deficiency was to blame, but doom seems to have no shame in being heavy-handed when it comes to call.

My Sorrento lemon tree seedlings, at least, are thriving. All of them, which is a lot! I re-potted them with an abundance of caution and expected to lose at least a few, but not one has died, drooped, or taken on a sickly color. Perhaps they've been buoyed by their early fame — my photos of them in their infancy will appear in a video about citrus produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics program, like these.

I have six pots of baby Sorrento lemon trees at present, scattered all over my apartment, of which the one below is representative. When I re-potted them I was reluctant to try separating the embryonic seedlings from the apomictic ones — I explained a bit about those here — and now that they need re-potting again, I find myself once again skittish about interfering with the mysterious relationships they have amongst themselves. I'm going to keep them together, since they appear to be getting along nicely, while presuming that at some point in their adolescence a dominant tree will take over each pot. If you're in the NYC area and would like to adopt a pot, email me; I wouldn't mind giving one or two away to a good home (i.e., to someone who doesn't look like a plant-murderer). They currently live on south-facing windowsills and don't seem to require any special care beyond the good light they're getting. I'm going to give them bigger pots this weekend, and probably some citrus fertilizer. They've done fine without it so far, but after seeing how my pepper plants responded to feeding I don't feel good about starving the others.

Baby Sorrento lemon trees started from seed, approximately three months old.

I wear my garden on my sleeve: my favorite swimsuit this summer.

Additional good news: I finally got my pineapple act together and my pineapple plant looks happy. I've written about my desire to grow a pineapple several times (here, for example), but I kept leaving the requisite pineapple parts on top of my refrigerator too long, intending to let them dry out for a couple days but forgetting to plant them before dessication set in. The instructions are very simple; basically you trim the crown and put it in a pot. Voilà, in a couple years or so, a home-grown pineapple. Bob Flowerdew of Gardeners' Question Time promises this:

I guarantee if you keep it warm and misted daily in summer and dry as a bone from autumn through to late spring, you will be rewarded with a spectacular flower and then a sweet, sparkling fruit. If you do a good job, you will get a fruit as big as a baby; if you do a bad job, you'll only have enough for a pineapple chunk or two. But that's gardening for you . . .

My apartment gets ridiculously dry in the winter months and I have high hopes that my pineapple will be the size of a very chubby baby. I've been bad about misting it, but writing these updates tends to get my gardening back on track, and in the meantime it doesn't appear to have suffered from my laziness. The instructions I linked to above say it's normal for the original leaves from the crown to die off, and the new growth in the center of my plant looks healthy. I started with an organic pineapple, by the way, and I think you should too. Conventionally-grown pineapples are drenched in creepy pesticides.

My pineapple plant. It's supposed to have brown bits round the edges;

that's the old crown dying off. Good riddance!

In related long-range container gardening news, my avocado tree got re-potted and looks happier than ever, though a bit droopy on the morning I photographed it. A good watering enlivens it. I started it from seed approximately three years ago, from a particularly delicious Haas avocado. Very clever of it to have decided to get bushier rather than taller after having reached the top of the window, don't you think? I don't happen to have any photos of it when it was younger, but it used to be just a single, spindly trunk. The smaller, second trunk appeared this spring, I think, and after I gave it a badly-needed new pot the whole plant became fluffier with new horizontal growth.

my avocado tree

As for my chile pepper plants, they have indeed been given the heave-ho, as I was contemplating in my last container gardening update, though I still see them regularly and will probably repossess them at some point. Rather than putting them out on the sidewalk I gave them to a close friend who had a bare windowsill and didn't mind filling it with non-productive greenery. They were already pissing me off, those plants, and soon after I last blogged about them things took a turn for the worse. (There was also a matter of needing to make room for an air conditioner in one window, but I could've chosen other plants to get rid of; my extremely boring Sansevierias had previously been at the top of my shit list). I gave my sulking pepper plants bigger pots and worm castings — nutritious turds, reportedly beloved by all plants — and still nothing. What the hell else did they want from me? It finally occurred to me that the reason they weren't setting fruit was that they just weren't getting pollinated. In my mind putting them on the fire escape had taken responsibility for this out of my hands, but a bit of research revealed that rocotos in particular are often unattractive to insects:

PLANTS MAKE FLOWERS BUT NO FRUIT? Most hot peppers and some sweet peppers require insect pollination to form fruit. If the proper insect is absent, or if the local insects are not attracted to your pepper flowers, you may see the plants flower, drop off and never set fruit. This is especially true for the blue-flowered Capsicum pubescens, the Manzanos or Rocotos, or hot peppers grown in a greenhouse.

Pollen is produced on the stamens by the anthers, and usually ripens between noon and 3 PM every day.

To hand pollinate, take a moistened water-color paint brush, and pick up some pollen on your brush and transfer it to the other flower centers. You can get close to 100% fruit set with hand pollination.

- Pepper growing tips from Redwood City Seed Co.

I'd read about hand pollination before, but there was never any mention of moistening the brush. A dazzling eye-opener for the novice gardener who was doing it all wrong! I diligently diddled their flowers every day. After about a week of this, during which time the plants were indoors on my windowsill rather than languishing on the fire escape, where none of the sexy insects passing by would give them the time of day, the ungrateful little bastards not only didn't fruit, they stopped flowering too.

I considered adding some companion plants to their pots before giving them to my friend. When I planted the borage on my fire escape I inadvertently learned a bit about this because borage is said to be good for everything it grows near. I looked at a list of companion plants but it was of little use; it indicates that tomatoes are good for peppers because their height helps to keep the humidity level high, but NYC this summer has already been plenty humid. And do you know what plants peppers help? Themselves, and marjoram. Themselves! For fuck's sake. It was then that I really started to wonder whether my particular pepper plants don't simply have a neurotic need for a certain kind of attention. Their reluctance to set fruit or even produce flowers despite appearing healthy and being well-cared for made me wonder if they weren't the plant equivalents of One Of Those Guys. You know, one of those guys who has mostly women friends and as a result seems cool with being equals? Then you get to know him better and a pattern emerges whereby it becomes apparent that they're all flattering him or making him feel important in some grossly retrograde manner reminiscent of a Victorian novel? I'd started to feel that that's what my plants wanted, endless bullshit flattery. "Oh you poor dears, let me get my little brush, just like I did yesterday, and the day before that!" Etc. It wasn't something I felt willing or even able to do, and that is why they're no longer living on my windowsill.

An important clue emerged shortly after they went to go live on my friend's windowsill, however, and I think I maybe had them figured wrong. I also cautiously think they might finally be on the mend. (A thought I've had before, but this time feels more for-real). What happened was that they started dropping leaves. Naturally my friend thought they'd taken an instant disliking to him, but I was grateful to see them finally articulate a little something about their health. Apart from their reluctance to set fruit, it was the first clear sign that they were not in fact as healthy as I thought they looked. And it told me enough to fix them up with what they needed, I hope: dropping leaves was a big hint that they weren't getting enough nitrogen. Tomato fertilizer is particularly high in this, so I went to my friend's place to mix up some organic (but pink!) tomato stuff in his kitchen. The plants showed immediate improvement. Their maddeningly aloof habit of appearing healthy while not doing any of the things I want them to do has historically brought out the very worst in me as a gardener, but here, finally, was something I could notice and respond to and, gratifyingly, see results from. Not only did they not drop any more leaves, they started growing lots and lots of new ones the very next day. One more day and they were flowering again. My friend — who has only ever kept cacti, which do just fine with neglect — was mystified by their responsiveness and has come to regard the pink water as having magical properties, and the plants as "a mysterious bunch." He reports that he is diddling the resulting flowers with great enthusiasm (being a watercolor painter, he's got plenty of brushes for this), and once a week or so I go downtown and diddle them myself. I don't believe any have set fruit yet, but surely at least one will finally cooperate? At this point one pepper would mean a lot to me.

lots of new flowers and new leaves, and
maybe a nascent pepper forming in the center-right?

The cover of Sunset magazine, Sept. 1904, featured a woman drying her

pepper harvest. I doubt I'll have as many. Image from the NYPL digital gallery.

My borage plants did everything they were supposed to do but have nonetheless been a disappointment to me. The leaves have a fishy taste! I think it's got to be coming from the modest amount of fertilizer I buried in their planter before sowing the seeds. Fish meal is a common ingredient in organic fertilizers (and possibly even in the organic soil I used?), and fishiness apparently ruins the delicate, cucumber-y taste of borage. I had so many plans for my borage leaves: muddling them in drinks, pickling them with golden beets, flavoring an ice cream studded with bits of diced, candied cucumber. Hmph. I probably ought to at least use them to wrap some salmon while it's curing, rather than letting them grow monstrous out there on the fire escape. I've got lovage in the same planter but it's not really ready to use yet, and I've held off on tasting it for fear it's fishy too. I'm hopeful that when mature it will have sufficiently strong flavor to knock out the fishiness. Lovage is a heavyweight and this seems reasonable to me.

borage flowers on my fire escape

Notwithstanding all the problems I've run into, I have a lot of hope about carrying on with my emotional gardening next summer. I'm planning to take a community garden plot to increase my Alpine strawberry holdings, and there are some encouraging signs that I'm not the only emotional gardener in the neighborhood. Far from it — there's a guy on West 105th St. who is sticking it to his landlord with a very impressive "mother garden," and at our nearest garden center there are people dancing the tango.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here, here and here.

Eating and Drinking: An Anthology for Epicures

2012-08-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

I recently picked up a copy of Eating and Drinking: An Anthology for Epicures (Ebury Press, 1961) for just a few dollars and have been thoroughly enjoying it. It was edited by Peter Hunt (presumably this same editor and critic, though I'm not certain), and consists of quotes, excerpts, poetry and illustrations about food and drink, cheerfully stuffed into a busy pink binding. Here, I'll let it tell you about itself:

The illustration on the binding is Dickie Doyle's The Wedding Breakfast, 1849;

the painting on the jacket is May Day Picnic by Pál Szinyei Merse, 1873.

A good number of passages in the Anthology have been familiar to me (e.g., the clam chowder from Moby Dick) but these are gratifyingly interspersed among those from obscure, unexpected, and out-of-print sources. There is, for example, a reminiscence of a meal with Ronald Firbank — who was apparently in a hurry, expecting local WW1-era military authorities to sweep him up like a butterfly in a net should they discover him lingering over lunch — from Grant Richards's Author Hunting.

I'd love to compile a contemporary anthology of similarly choice bits for a willing publisher. I suspect I am housing at least a third of said anthology in my mental attic and would very much like to clear it out to make room for new belongings.

Some of my favorite parts thus far:

This sound and concisely-put opinion marks the second time this week that Norman Douglas has appeared on my radar; he also popped up in my current subway reading (Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise), where he sounds very much worth reading.

A game involving a chicken's wishbone for you to try when you next encounter one:

Of special interest to Anglophilic eaters, a poem about Melton Mowbray pork pie:

Some of the most memorable passages in the book, like some of the most memorable meals in life, concern unpleasantries encountered while traveling. Here's one about an unsatisfactory vegetable.

Ways in which breakfast is like love:

I'm less sure about this next one:

I'm sure we can all agree, however, that many times wine causeth head-melancholy:

There are illustrations throughout the book, and a handful of color plates.

St Trinian's girls gathering mushrooms by Ronald Searle

The Oyster Luncheon by Jean François de Troy

In closing, a poem about halibut that may inspire us all to look at dinner more thoughtfully:

slow dessert: sour cherry + caraway fritters

2012-08-10T16:22:00.000-04:00

Two years is a damnably long time to wait for dessert, but sometimes these things happen. I don't know whether they happen to other people, but personally I have had experience. The summer before last, during the brief season for one of my favorite fruits, I had an idea about a dessert burrow deep into the dessert area of my mind: clumpy little fritters of sour cherry and caraway. I don't recall what inspired me to try pairing the two. I generally love caraway but rarely encounter it outside of rye bread; I generally love anything and everything frittered.

I also got it into my head that these particular fritters could be great with a sauce of more sour cherries, simmered in red wine and a vaguely medieval combination of spices, the inspiration for which is now apparent in my emails from around that time: a friend was going to a christening and we'd wondered whether the baby might be wearing one of those very long, vaguely medieval-looking gowns. I discovered this while rummaging Gmail to see whether I'd told anyone about the sauce in detail such that I might be able to reconstruct it this summer. Regrettably I can't tell you the proportions, but I see that I simmered the cherries in a syrup of rosé and sugar flavored with cinnamon and white pepper, a delicious combination ideal for spooning over ice cream. I had to content myself with eating it that way because I didn't manage to make any fritters that summer at all — I made the sauce without delay, but when I went back to the farmers' market for fritter supplies there were no more sour cherries to be found. Fritter-free summer No. 1 down the tubes.

Last summer came and went and I missed sour cherry season entirely, probably because I was busy screwing around. I wasn't going to let it happen again this year and I finally made the fritters. It's possible I'm biased but I think they were worth the wait. If you're a U.S. reader you probably won't find sour cherries in the market now, but if you're a long-range dessert-planner like me, bookmark this recipe and make yourself a lovely dessert in summer 2014 or so. Or try it now with regular cherries, which are more likely to still be available. I'm sure they'd be nearly as tasty.

Fritter innards with backdrop of rapidly melting
caraway ice cream. More on that below.

While there are any number of fritter recipes in my collection I could've used as a starting point for these, I began by Googling "sour cherry fritters" to see what was out there. One of the more appealing recipes was from Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking, which is curiously undated but looks 1940s or 50s-ish to me. Looking at it more closely, I noticed that the ingredients and proportions are nearly identical to a Thomas Keller recipe for apple fritters I had bookmarked, and I decided to more or less merge the two. (A third recipe from somebody's French grannie looked promising, but it calls for soaking the cherries in brandy overnight first and I didn't want any other strong flavors competing with the caraway I wanted to use). The Keller one relies mostly on baking powder to puff the fritters while the Pennsylvania Dutch recipe uses a two-pronged puff plan: baking powder, plus separating the eggs and beating the whites until stiff. I liked this idea better so I separated my eggs and used the lesser amount of baking powder. I stuck with the Keller recipe's use of milk instead of water, however, because all the other fritter recipes in my collection call for milk or buttermilk. I suppose I also stuck with Keller's recipe on the proportion of fruit to batter because I used two cups of pitted cherries rather than the stingy-sounding one the PD recipe calls for.

I departed from both recipes on frying instructions. Both call for deep-frying, which didn't seem necessary to me, and neither calls for lard, which I wanted to use. Yes, lardy old lard. Health-wise it's not as diabolical as it's made out to be, and in baking and frying it performs beautifully. Here, go read this if you're not convinced. I'd baked with it a couple times but somehow hadn't gotten around to frying anything in it yet, and my sour cherry fritters that were two years in the making seemed like as good an occasion as any to try it. There are great big tubs of lard for sale in East Harlem supermarkets ("manteca de cerdo" en Español) but they look pretty industrial, and I wanted to be sure of getting leaf lard (the highest grade) from not-industrial pigs, so I bought mine from Dickson's Farmstand Meats. Harlem Shambles is nearer to me and probably has nice lard too — it looks like they're using it in their pasties — but I frequently have doctor appointments round the corner from Chelsea Market so Dickson's it is. NYC readers can also find leaf lard at Union Square greenmarket, among other places, but I'm not certain it's rendered. Anyhow, the lard was magical for frying fritters. I almost never fry at home because it tends to stink up the place and, probably because I almost never do it, I seem to have a hard time keeping the temperature under control. I used maybe 1/2" of lard in a medium-sized copper pan and it gave me no trouble whatsoever. The fritters were excitingly crisp around the edges, cooked evenly all the way through, and didn't taste porcine. (I'm not sure if would have lessened them if they had; I'm just saying).

freshly fried fritters, minus a few sampled for quality control purposes

The other important ingredient here is, of course, the sour cherries. I buy them whenever I see them but they're seldom labeled as to what variety they are. In previous years the sour cherries I've found in the NYC area seem to have been either of two varieties, one very bright red, one darker. The latter look more like regular cherries but both types of sours have a translucent quality when held up to the light. A 2008 Gourmet article says that "Montmorencies and Morellos are the two types of sour cherries you’re most likely to find for sale. Montmorencies are bright red, slightly translucent, with clear juice; Morellos are purple with shirt-staining juice." The author describes the former as being more "complex, flavorful" than the more sour Morellos, but to me Montmorencies are less complex, sometimes to the point that they taste uncannily like cherry pie filling. (I nonetheless never pass them by; I like sour cherries, period). The sour cherries I found at the farmers' markets this summer were unlabeled and the probably-Montmorencies pictured below were less bright in color and less translucent than the ones I've encountered in the past, but I couldn't tell you whether that's because of the weather patterns we've had this year or because they're a different variety. My fritters were made with the darker, probably-Morello cherries below.

The brighter ones were destined for sorbet but somehow got eaten instead.

I considered trying to repeat my delicious, vaguely-medieval sour cherry and wine sauce from two summers ago to go with the fritters, but I'm still in the honeymoon stage of getting to know my ice cream machine and opted to make a caraway ice cream instead. I was willing to try my hand at improvising a recipe but I found one from a BBC show here and simply halved it. It was delicious, both with the fritters and, later on in the week, with fresh peaches for breakfast. Pairing these fruits with caraway brought out the woody qualities in each, in a good way. I used a heaping teaspoon of ground caraway seeds in my half-batch, and I toasted them before grinding to bring out more of their flavor. I used the same amount in the fritters, which had a more subtle caraway flavor, and I intentionally didn't grind them too finely, preferring to encounter a whole seed every now and then. If you'll be making the fritters without the ice cream I recommend increasing the amount to 1 1/2 or maybe even 2 teaspoons, depending on your love of caraway.

Fritters are just the sort of lumpy, homely-looking dessert improved by

a dusting of cocaine, for added glamour. Or confectioners' sugar.

sour cherry and caraway fritters

Adapted from Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking and Thomas Keller's apple fritters, as described above.

Yield: approximately 15 fritters

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 heaping teaspoon ground caraway seeds, preferably toasted before grinding
2 eggs, separated
1/4 cup or so milk (buttermilk would probably be great if you have some, or beer)
2 cups pitted sour cherries
leaf lard for frying, or a neutral-tasting oil if you're not into lard
confectioners' sugar for serving (optional)

Thoroughly combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk together the egg yolks and the milk in a smaller bowl. In a third bowl — sorry! — beat the egg whites until stiff. Stir the milk and yolks into the dry ingredients and, when blended, fold in the egg whites. Then add the cherries, stirring gently just until they're integrated. If the batter looks dry, add a splash more milk. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot fat and fry for approximately two to three minutes on each side, or until they're nicely browned. Let the fritters rest on paper towels for a few moments before serving, with another layer of toweling on top to absorb some of the grease. Dust with confectioners' sugar if you like.

The fritters are best when fresh but can be refrigerated and reheated in a 350°F oven for ten minutes or so.

when a food blog is napping

2012-07-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

. . . it might appear inactive but secretly be doing inner work, such as lucid dreaming about breakfast.

There are any number of reasons why it should want to attempt such things. To generate ideas by way of jiggling its usual frame of reference, for example. A Tibetan lama might say that lucid dreaming is "[a method] to directly reduce the coarse, rationally created reality, to touch upon and be able to perceive and appreciate a more direct and nonmanipulated relationship with reality, a step which in itself will further a nonrational contact with reality." This is a compelling pursuit, but extraordinarily difficult. The food blog might instead simply be replenishing its energies, or protecting itself from the fractural little stresses of what it perceives to be a dreary routine.

It is probably at least semi-consciously rooting around in its thoughts about things, the way a seemingly impassive NYC dog can suddenly unearth an arid, frozen pizza bone from under a foot of snow.

It might also be tossing and turning and idly thinking about briny snacks, in which case it will, upon waking, try and fail to remember whether it possibly dream-smelled a tin of salty little fish or merely had an evocative night-thought about them.

Suddenly the sun will be shining and it will be time to get to work.

I guess this is a way of saying I'll be back soon, hopefully next week.

_______________________________

Waffle and syrup sheets from Etsy seller and fiber artist Brook Abboud / B Fiber and Craft Emporium.

Egg costume by Carole Itter, 1974, via Creatures of Comfort.

Pizza sleeping bag also from Brook Abboud / B Fiber and Craft Emporium.

Sardine sheets from Australian shop Bed Toppings.

Scorched IKEA trivet from my kitchen, where it sneakily clung to the bottom of a pot I put on the burner and was not noticed by the distracted cook until it started to smell funny.

frozen lunch

2012-07-13T16:54:00.002-04:00

I was planning to return with a pineapple extravaganza but I'd feel foolish if I didn't tell you there's some very good ice cream visiting NYC from its native San Francisco today and this weekend. Humphry Slocombe! I've been wanting to try their ice cream for ages and it's at Paper mag's Superduper Market right now. I usually stay away from pop-up-shop-type-things because I'm a grouch and I don't like crowds, but this sounded manageable to me. Even if it didn't I would've ducked in for the ice cream anyhow. I had just a piece of toast for breakfast this morning in anticipation of cramming all sorts of stuff into my eatin' hole this afternoon but it's muggy today and I managed only a couple of frozen things.

Sorry for the grim, neorealist ice cream portraiture but it was a grey day.

Humphry Slocombe's Secret Breakfast ice cream = bourbon + cornflakes. It's got plenty of bourbon in it and it's damn tasty. The corn flakes have a nice crunch to them too, which I'm guessing comes from being baked Chex party mix-style before being stirred in? (I haven't seen their book yet; maybe it explains). They'll have different flavors each day at the market but I didn't ask about the weekend because I'm looking forward to going back and being surprised. I've got my fingers crossed for Candy Cap mushroom. Today the other flavors were Blue Bottle Vietnamese coffee (which was sold out by the time I got there around 2:30-ish) and Thai Chile Lime sorbet (which I tasted a sample of). The sorbet was impressively fresh-tasting and I tried to get my friend to order a cup so I could eat some more of it, but he'd apparently been binging on ice cream all week long and refused. FFS! I need to screen my eating companions for this sort of thing.

That's an Imperial Woodpecker sno-ball above: cotton candy (blue) and Mardi Gras king cake (purple). I secretly really like cotton candy and was pleased to discover that this tasted exactly like it. I've never had king cake so I can't comment on the accuracy of the purple side, but it did have a nice cake-y thing going on. I hope it won't be too disappointing if I explain that I wasn't eating ice cream and shaved ice at the same exciting time. I ducked outside to eat each because it was a little crowded inside.

I didn't do much shopping at the market because a lot of the stuff I've either tried before or know where to get year-round, but I did leave with a little sack of Salty Road's salty peanut taffy. I'm a salt fiend and after having such a sweet lunch I couldn't resist. It's not aggressively salty like a bag of chips but it's got enough crunchy, coarse sea salt in it to keep me happy, and I think it's helped me digest my frozen lunch.

your blogger-powered stock pot and messy love life

2012-06-27T12:31:00.001-04:00

One of the reasons I started blogging here again — the major one — is that it's a welcome distraction from health issues I've been struggling with for more than a year now. The problem with this, naturally, is that struggling with health issues often doesn't leave me with enough energy to do the actual blogging part; it's far more conducive to lying around, reading detective novels, and thinking about things I'll blog about when I'm feeling up to it. There is, however, at least a bit of amusement to be found regardless of whether I'm posting as frequently as I want to be or not, and that is my relentlessly weird search stats, the words and phrases that led readers (and harrumphing, chin-stroking, that's-not-it-at-all non-readers) here to my blog. I've written about this before, a couple years ago, but there are always new and unexpected delights among the prosaic "types of cucumbers" and "watermelon close up" searches. Such as:

"gonads smear in clams": I'm pretty nonjudgmental about people's private adventures but this sounds like a messy and terribly anti-climactic waste of clams to me.

"tartar's lips": Surely this person has mixed up the Cream of Tartar in their baking-supplies cabinet with the native peoples of west- and central-Russia, but there is nonetheless something romantic about their confusion. I like to think they were (and still are) looking for a particular Tatar's lips they once caught a glimpse of and are desperately hoping to see again, even if it requires hours and hours of fruitless image searching. Captivating lips are hard to find and encountering a pair of them can be as memorable and as ruinous as a Mongol invasion, so I wish this person the best of luck.

I don't know where the sexy, brooding Tatar lips are, sorry.

"sasha frere jones quinoa recipe": A quietly effective way to mess with a food blogger's head. The thought that I might be a pawn in some sort of insidious viral marketing campaign to launch this guy's new career as a protein diet guru annoys me, but what annoys me more is the thought that if SF-J does have a quinoa recipe, I might write about it here. Because in actuality I probably wouldn't be able to resist having a dig at it. The fact that I don't even really like quinoa makes me a little uncomfortable about that. Fucking hell. I fear that my overweening squeamishness about debasing myself could be contagious, too, because I had to search for this one myself to see whether there is such a thing.

"stock pot / soup kettle 'powered by blogger'": This really isn't a big deal because Google only makes you do it for the first month. No one bothered me about it when I returned from my big hiatus and I just assumed they don't eat a lot of soup in their famous cafeteria. I signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevents me from depicting the proprietary hardware, but check this out and you'll get the idea:

Blogger-powered stock pots are stirred much like this.

"mark e. smith eating habits": This must've popped up after I'd written that first foodmusic post. The older I get the more I appreciate not knowing too much about people, and I'm more interested in knowing what other people think MES eats vs. what he actually eats. So far readers commenting here think he probably eats a lot of fruit and seafood and I don't disagree; I suggested a cockle conspiracy myself.

"paintings of great banquets": I'd like to see these too, especially depictions of the moment Jeffrey Hudson was presented to King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria inside of a venison pie in 1628. He lived with them for the next eighteen years so he must've made quite an impression. Perhaps the lack of paintings of this event reflects a sense that 17th-century banquets were a snooze compared to the great banquets of the past; historian Linda Stradley writes that a 14th-century banquet for the Duke of Burgundy, for example, featured a pie with twenty eight musicians inside, plus "a captive girl representing the 'captive' Church in the Middle East." (This raises another possible reason for a dearth of great banquet paintings, beside the food spoilage problem: no one wanted to be captured for posterity while sweaty, disheveled, and wearing bits of pastry in their hair).

Jeffrey Hudson and Queen Henrietta Maria in a duller moment

from Wikipedia; Hudson's memorial from My[confined]Space.

"what kind of sauce did christine callahan use on her eggs in 'lucky jim'": Food descriptions in novels tend to stick with me for years but I didn't remember this and had to look it up. By "look it up" I mean rapidly flip through the book waiting for mentions of food to jump out at me, which they always do, the same way potentially dirty bits do. Stray toast crumbs, a bit of Alpine cheese idly unwrapped on a train, or a plate of kippers pushed to the periphery of a breakfast scene will catch my eye as reliably as an aereola, or a junior member of an orchestra nervously fingering his instrument while waiting for a more important character to arrive. Anyhow, the relevant scene in Lucky Jim is this one, fairly early in the book. Christine, you may recall, becomes the Love Interest, and for this reason I believe her sauce must be HP sauce. Because only savages put ketchup on their eggs.

"can you eat raw enoki mushrooms cooked": It feels deeply unfair that this question should tip me towards existential crisis while the person who needed an answer appears to have been untroubled by the deeply troubling aspects of its nature.

"things gatsby would associate with daisy": Someone had a paper due! But someone always has a paper due, so to answer this using only things that have appeared on my blog, I will point to the sea-side clam cakes from April, 2010. In the right context they're a very real pleasure but you can't take them out of that context and expect anything other than disappointment. It may seem worth the risk, but disappointment can be more hurtful than you ever would have thought because it has a way of spreading itself around and reaching into the parts of the past you'd most like to keep it away from. You shouldn't try to analyze meals like this within their context either, because they're simply not about ingredients or technique or any sort of methodology, and you probably shouldn't even spend much time remembering them in the off-season because pleasures can get so distorted that way. This sounds very depressing and indeed it is, but if you can connect it all up for your teacher I'm sure you'll get an A. Or at least a B+.

"weather ganache recipe bonbons": Anyone who has ever worked with ganache knows the value of doing ganache stuff in an air-conditioned kitchen. So maybe this person was searching for a recipe for bonbons filled with weather rather than a magic formula for controlling ganache in miserably hot conditions. There aren't a lot of genuinely weird flavors left in the dessert world these days — lemon, banana and priprioca ravioli? ho hum — but I think weather has been relatively unexplored. Wet gravel after a summer storm, for example, is as distinctive a scent as any other, and a creative, hard-working chocolatier could surely find a way to capture something about it in bonbon form. And many people will admit that snow has a smell, even if most of the pleasure we take in noting it in the air is merely a pretentious attempt to sound outdoorsy.

"pictures of movie stars with pizza": Of course there is a Tumblr of celebrities eating pizza, though reality show harpies seem over-represented compared to proper movie stars. I blame disgraceful pizza paparazzi.

Sophia Loren making pizzas

from Felix in Hollywood.

"jazzercise old saybrook": I have family in Connecticut very near to Old Saybrook and would not be surprised at all if there is still Jazzercise there. There are some jazzy people in Connecticut, and there are also pockets of the state seemingly untouched by modern times. Many of the restaurants there serve prime rib, for example, which has got to be at least thirty years more out-of-date than Jazzercise. I've repeatedly hit up the thrift stores in and around Old Saybrook in an effort to score the coolest elderly WASP clothes but all the elderly are still wearing them and I come home empty-handed every time.

"chanterelle terrarium": I would like one of these too but chanterelles are notoriously difficult to cultivate. Should someone let the Pinterest community know that?

"what is the meaning of pop rocks": In a Saussurean sense? If I was going to go in that direction I'd pick something other than Pop Rocks. The whole 70s-childhood-nostalgia thing has been picked apart to death.

"what happens when you put an irish potato in salt water for three days": It's hard to be sure but I think this searcher is a bit misguided. You've got to leave the potato in there much longer than three days if you want to keep your selkie lover from high-tailing it back to the sea. It takes more like a fortnight and there are other steps too, but this is not the place to discuss them.

"pubic hairstyles for mature people": This topic seldom comes up on food blogs. I've only ever almost-mentioned it myself, that time I wrote about my vintage 70s Viva magazines. I am all for mature people having active and fulfilling lives in every respect but I'm not really qualified to give advice on this matter. Probably best to stay away from anything billy goat-ish, though.

"why my recipe won't work anymore": As deeply interested in food as I am, if I thought the internet could answer questions this nebulous without me having to reveal any embarrassing details about my reasons for asking, I would be asking it about things other than recipes.

"amazing company turns lowly sandwich into rich banquet": The technology behind this sort of thing seldom interests me but I'm having a hard time understanding the basic idea here and could use a little help from the rich banquet engineers. I'm picturing a long sandwich that has cocktail shrimp filling at one end, pies-and-cakes filling at the other, and all the other usual stuff in the middle. Not all that amazing really. You could do it yourself with a very lengthy baguette.

"tiny bits banquet": Now this is far more appealing to me, a banquet comprised of idiosyncratic little whatnots, like thumb-bits. It's hard to know where to begin because the best way to compose these is to stand in front of an open refrigerator. It would be really fun to prepare a whole banquet this way, starting with a well-stocked commercial fridge.

"emeril layered leftover stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes or yams, cranberry sauce and i think put a corn meal topping on all": I'm intrigued by the notion of internet-as-conversational-memory-repository (and actually it is that), but why bother tracking down a memory that's already so complete? Not to mention the casserole sounds slovenly. If I were to search for half-forgotten teevee meals this way I'd want to know more about what people were eating on public access cable in the 80s and 90s. I had a boyfriend once who had a NYC cable access show and when we'd get to the studio, we'd always have to wait a few minutes for the previous show to clear out. It was a mother and daughter chat show, both topless. I've long since forgotten their names but it would be fun to know what dinnertime at their place was like. They were both blonde but neither was the same as the topless blonde woman who would stand in a field and talk about Jesus. She was on very late at night, I'm sure of it.

"dessert suitable for anaemia": This is interesting because I seldom think about food this way. My own health issues haven't really affected my eating habits at all. Cooking in cast iron pans does add iron to your food, and the same source reports that vitamin C enhances the amount of iron you can absorb, so for anaemics I prescribe classic crêpes with lemon and sugar. I think it will probably take a lot of dessert to really help, though, so maybe it's best to also bake a fruit crumble or pie in another cast iron skillet and serve that along with the crêpes.

"for gastronomy crystal bells": I'm a big fan of lo-fi hippie-dippie stuff in small doses but this is too much for me. If you want to hang some crystal bells outside your pop-up yurt restaurant in the vacant lot where all its ingredients are foraged, fine, expect me around 8, but let's not pretend there is a gastronomic reason for them to be there. Maybe I'm just too jaded about hippie stuff and this person was looking for a cloche instead, to prepare pheasant under glass. There's a gastronomic reason; keeping the scent in is Doing Something. But what's the matter with ordinary glass unless you're trying to tune the vibrational frequency of the crystal to the chakras of the diner? Clearly the proper use of these obscure gastronomic devices is not going to be settled without an affable, grubby hippie vs. rich, high-strung hippie Yurt Rumble of Death. The drum circle doesn't stop until a winner has emerged.

"15 minute desserts apples chocolate powder": So specific. This person must have drawn the cooking straw in a poorly-stocked arctic research lab. It sounds stressful enough without the time constraint. Listen, no one is expecting culinary fireworks from you and things will be alright. Just make some cocoa and serve the apples on the side and people will enjoy that.

"tiny kabobs on toothpicks meat": I don't care what sort of meat you use, these sound really annoying to eat. One chunk at the end of a toothpick I could deal with, but any more than that and I'd feel like a hors d'œuvre victim.

Vietnamese take-out party in yr mouth

2012-06-20T14:24:00.000-04:00

It's disgustingly hot in NYC today, currently in the 90s, and if the little weather box in my iGoogle is to be believed we could reach 102° F. If you are the type to fight heat with heat — as many people living in hot climates do — you should know about V-Nam Cafe's spicy bánh mì. It's made with sriracha and both jalapeno and serrano peppers and I opted to take a couple spoonfuls of yogurt afterwards, something I almost never resort to. Had I bothered to consult any reviews before trying it I would've seen the flaming-hot warning cartoon sandwich in the Village Voice, but it caught me by surprise and was all the more appreciated for it. I'll definitely order it again soon. The non-spicy foods seem well worth exploring too. So far I've only tried the vermicelli with spring roll, which could've used more herbs but was springy, fresh-tasting, and crisp in all the right places. I'm not perverse enough to go for pho today but as soon as the weather cools down a bit I'll try it.

spicy bánh mì with optional fried egg

vermicelli with spring roll

a new you at the Indian grocery

2012-06-19T10:22:00.001-04:00

Developing your personality is important but don't forget the fattie pills.

Kalustyan's is great of course but I still enjoy shopping at the Indian grocery in my old neighborhood, which is smaller, dustier and more cramped. It's in the East Village, on 1st Ave between 5th and 6th Streets. I've always called it "the Indian grocery" because it's had a series of names. It's presently called Dual but it was Dowel before that, and there are at least two other names I can't recall now. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't Dial or Duel but wouldn't wager on this). I went there this past weekend to pick up urad dal for the half dozen or so varieties of sundal I want to make right now, but don't get too excited because my fresh coconut (and my appetite) will likely be exhausted by two or three. As ever, I found myself distracted by the wide selection, and also came home with a fresh supply of cardamom (both green and black), asafoetida, Kerala vadu mango pickle, and "super Darjeeling." I didn't go for the digestive pills, though I do wonder if they banish momentary feelings of tubbiness. Instead I picked up a little jar of Tibet Snow, which I hope will give me a remote, frosty, mystical air on sweltering subway platforms this summer.

Tibet Snow front and back. Related (and quick, short story) reading:

"Tebic" by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

If you are naturally remote and frosty and really only care about the groceries, you should know that Dual stocks my favorite rice, Lal Qilla basmati. (Kalustyan's has it too but only in ten-pound bags). I'm not a particularly skilled cooker of rice but it always comes out with perfectly separate grains like this, ready for its close-up.

strawberry letter 23

2012-06-14T11:46:00.000-04:00

all the latest news about emotional container gardening

My SPACE-GROTTO should be here any day now.

Botanical monsters via JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium.

My Sorrento lemon seedlings are full of surprises. They keep coming, like clowns out of a clown car. It's been several weeks now since the first ones germinated, but every time I look at their little pot there's another just starting to make its presence known. At this point I have more seedlings than I had seeds! I started with twelve seeds, and as of yesterday morning I have sixteen seedlings. Look:

There's no Catholic funny business going on, I can explain, sort of: They are apomictic. One of my sources of information on how to germinate the seeds tipped me off that this might happen:

A interesting thing about citrus seeds is that you may get several seedlings from each seed. One of these will be from the embryo formed due to pollination in the orchard, but the others will be 'apomictic' seedlings which are vegetatively produced. That means that the apomictic seedlings will be exact genetic reproductions of the tree on which the fruit was formed, they are clonal seedlings. The one seedling produced by pollination will not be clonal as it will carry genetic material from the pollen parent (father) as well as the seed parent (mother). In any case, you should have a lemon tree, and it will very likely produce tasty lemons in about 15 years!

- New Mexico State University College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences q&a

Whoever the father is, he has really outdone himself. The oldest and tallest of my vigorous Mediterranean brood are very mature for their age too; they already have lemon-scented leaves (i.e., they're wearing plant-aftershave). I have no idea what I'll do if all of them survive infancy — raising just one lemon tree by myself in Harlem would be a challenge, and here I am with a whole fucking grove — but fortunately they seem to grow pretty slowly. This other blogger's two year-old lemon tree looks manageable, which means I have plenty of time to get things sorted out before harvest time. The same q&a I linked to above says that grafting a seedling on to a mature lemon tree can reduce fruiting time from fifteen years to five or so, but realistically I'll probably need more than five years to get myself settled somewhere more suitable for growing exquisite Italian lemon clones. In the meantime I'm thinking about spritzing their soil with chamomile tea, which I understand they like. After having learned a little something about their incredibly strange sex lives nothing surprises me anymore.

Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens at AbeBooks.

The lion is something I picked out at 1st Dibs. Let me know if you see a matching one

someplace because garden lions should be in pairs. I don't need it right away.

Have you thought about giving your seedlings chamomile tea? It prevents something called
damping off because it's got anti-fungal properties. I don't believe the tea needs to be
the same nationality as the seedlings; this is just my tea.

My window box full of berries is moderately less productive than my magical everbearing lemon plant pot, but there's nothing disappointing about it. In fact I'm going to hold back in describing the way they taste, for fear of sounding like an annoying Alpine strawberry-munching asshole. I can't really hide it though: They're sensationally, toes-curled-up good. The best among them have been as good as my finest hypothetical mental strawberries. There haven't been many of them yet, and they've been a bit mushy because of all the rain and humidity, but they've been tremendously exciting. I'm guessing that the mushiness is due to the weather because the farmers' market berries I've bought to supplement my small harvests have been mushy too. And, unlike my berries, insipid. I would go so far as to describe my strawberries as the most exciting breakfast to be had in all of Harlem but one never knows what neighbors are up to.

I've been getting a lot of berries that ripen while still very, very small, but just now I'm starting to get larger ones. I've read about other people's home-grown strawberries magically starting to do this in June too.

My Yellow Wonder strawberries have been the slowest producers so far but
the arrival of June seems to have had an effect.

Shuggie Otis, "Strawberry Letter 23"

There's a fruit vendor on a corner of 57th St. who often tries to get me to buy some fruit on my way home by calling out, "hello lovely miss lovely fruit!" It puts a smug little spring in my step to think that if he had any idea what sort of fruit I'm getting at home he'd blush at the inadequacy and futility of these overtures.

I've been so excited about harvesting a few berries every other morning that I haven't been observant about comparing the various varieties I'm growing. Now that they're producing more and larger berries I should be able to do a thoughtful taste test soon.

My borage and lovage are doing well too, though not anywhere near ready to harvest yet. I planted them in the same bucket-bag a couple weeks ago and had long since lost track of which side is what, but yesterday I spotted some borage cress adorning dumplings in the Times and realized that the bigger leaves must be the borage. I'd never heard of borage cress and wondered whether it wasn't simply immature borage — the Times photo only shows its leaves, which look identical to what's on my fire escape right now — but apparently it is indeed a separate thing. A specialty grower in the Netherlands says that full-grown borage leaves are "simply too hairy to use in dishes" and the cress "only has the good parts from this beautiful herb." I've mostly only got the good, hairless parts at present but as you can see I do have some hairy leaves. I went to the fire escape for a taste and they're very cucumber-y! And semi-surprisingly, kind of mushy. Hopefully at some point this summer it will stop raining every single day.

borage seedlings

lovage seedlings

My success with lemon seedlings inspired me to try germinating some other seeds I happened to have sitting in a little dish on my desk — a hint, they rhyme with merry sauna — using the same paper towel method I used for the lemon seeds. I started them just the other day and I already have one small seedling! I don't think these are particularly difficult seeds to germinate; my excitement stems from the fact that these are very distinguished seeds. And that I'd never before found so much as a single one in this particular merry sauna. To have found four of them during a spell of perfect germinating weather strikes me as an auspicious sign. I'm not planning to grow them myself, I'm much more likely to see them through the seedling stage and give them to a botanically-experienced friend, but who knows. Regulation of merry saunas is changing rapidly these days, and I remain hopeful that by the time my itsy-bitsy seedling(s) have gotten big enough for anyone to care about, it will become OK in NY State to have one's own merry sauna for personal medicinal use. In fact I would like to become an advocate of merry saunas on behalf of the emotional container gardening community. It's something I believe in.

Now the bad news. Naturally there is a bit of it; life in the Tiny Banquet Horticultural Subcommittee Lo-fi Gardening Research Center isn't all sunshine and peppermints.

notebook for keeping track of stuff
via AnOther mag

My chile pepper plants are acting like little assholes. And this time it maybe isn't me. There are flowers all over the place on both of them, but they don't set fruit. Instead the flowers simply drop off, over and over again, as coy as can be. Both plants are steadily getting bigger and they look perfectly happy, but it's all just a tease.

Coy bullshit flowers. They look perfectly capable of setting fruit

and even give the impression they might be into it, but don't be fooled, this is
nothing more than posturing. You can tell that busted, crumbly-looking little flower
on the left there is going to drop right off. Presumably out of ennui.

Sometimes one longs to say to a plant, "fine, go live on someone else's windowsill then," but where is the satisfaction in it if the plant is already, in its passive-aggressive little way, doing its best fuck-you-too? I might do it anyhow though. Get rid of them, I mean. It's an unusual step to actually get rid of a houseplant by choice rather than by accidental murder (for me, at least), particularly one started from seed, but my ex-boyfriend put the idea in my head the other day and now I keep visualizing myself putting the pepper plant pots outside on the sidewalk. And I feel free and good when I think this thought! He wasn't suggesting that I get rid of my pepper plants but my avocado plant instead, which he thinks is monstrously large. (It's five feet tall not including its pot, which I think is perfectly appropriate). This same ex once had a pencil cactus that grew bigger and bigger and bigger until it blocked an entire window, at which point he found a cactus weirdo on Craigslist to come take it away, so I understand his concern about my avocado. But the avocado — which I also started from seed, about three years ago — is doing exactly what it's supposed to whereas the pepper plants aren't doing squat. It seems altogether possible that months and months of inattention and animosity on my part have permanently withered their natural pepper-making impulses. Botanically-speaking I'm not sure exactly how that part works, but it seems intuitive to me that one can't throw shade on a plant for such a long time and expect a little friendly attention and a modestly more spacious new pot to just magically make everything alright. The other possibility is that all the humidity my lemon seedlings seem to be thriving on is making the peppers unhappy. I've read conflicting things about chile peppers and humidity and I have a feeling my particular peppers actually aren't all that fussy about it. But maybe I'm wrong; the consensus does seem to be they don't like it. (Exhibit A; exhibit B). I don't think I've been over- or under-watering them because the leaves look healthy. I'm going to try repotting them both again, more generously this time (they do seem to need it), and I've started spritzing their leaves with a bit of Epsom salt diluted in water, which lots of other growers say they like. (It's the magnesium). If they still don't have their shit together in another month or so they're probably going to get the heave-ho. I'd really like to get them to make some peppers but right now the reality is they're taking up a lot of space and requiring a lot of effort I'd rather give to plants I like more, and that like me more. I'm a highly emotional gardener but not a sentimental one.

Epsom salts have all sorts of gardening uses I didn't know about until recently.
I'm hoping they make my grouchy pepper plants ecstatic but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting on it to happen.

The Secret Life of Plants, a 1979 documentary on the sentience of plants.

It's on Netflix too. Via Dangerous Minds, which also reports that chile peppers send each other mysterious signals. More information here. I could hardly be less surprised because mine are obviously conspiring against me, in their half-assed way.

Related reading: What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz, via Brain Pickings.
I haven't read it yet so I can't tell you how it is that my pepper plants know
that I know that they know precisely how ambivalent I feel about them.

My smallest plant is non-edible and lives between other, bigger plants.
A hopeful note to end on: I think that fluffy little ball of needles
on the right is going to become a new appendage.

Previous posts about my container gardening are here and here.

foodmusic no. 2

2012-06-12T13:07:00.003-04:00

FYI if you're on a device that won't load Flash, there's a player here.

Lio, "Le Banana Split." Ba-na-na-na, ba-na-na-na. Apparently this song was a hit in Europe in 1979. There's a pretty good video for it but the only copy of it on YouTube begins with an ad so I didn't want to embed it. By "pretty good" I mean that another blogger who saw it as a 14-year old boy fondly recalls that "[r]ight after the song ended I suddenly had to run upstairs to my room." Put on your vintage European banana hammock and watch here.

Smell the top banana! I can't understand why so few other bloggers are

using Google's scratch-and-sniff technology. I feel it really adds something.

The latest banana music is produced using actual bananas. BBC News reports that MIT students Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum have released a kit called MakeyMakey that can turn any object that conducts electricity into a keyboard. Naturally cats have been early adopters of this technology ("[a]n animal-rights group contacted by the BBC did not express concerns"), but at present we are focused on bananas. Here is Stanford grad student Beau Silver rehearsing for the first public performance of his bananamaphone:

If you're interested in making your own bananoog or bananatar or just a basic bananapiano, he's generously shared info and links on YouTube here. I think this is an excellent use for bananas because taste-wise most of them are disappointing. I do like a good banana — remember the banana salsa? — but the ones we get here in the U.S. are mostly all the same, and they're flavorless compared to the bananas people elsewhere on the planet are eating. I discovered this when I was studying in India as a college student. After completing my work there I did a period of independent study in Nepal with a handful of other students, and rather than fly into Kathmandu we chartered a little bus. Roadside restaurants were few and far between so we ate an awful lot of bananas along the way. Nearly every time we pulled over for a stop, whether to eat or pee or wait for the driver to fix our grubby bus, someone would hand us bananas, excellent, creamy bananas full of flavor, bananas that made me wonder why the bananas at home were such crap. Other people have wondered about this too, and if you're curious about the reasons for it I recommend this article by Dan Koeppel in Saveur. (The short answer is that the vast majority of bananas destined for the American market are the Cavendish variety, a hybrid favored more for its disease-resistant properties than its taste). There's an interesting list of select banana varieties that goes with the article but good luck finding them at your local grocery store. Related additional reading: "Spaces of Banana Control" at Edible Geographies, which explains how NYC bananas are ripened. I've been keeping an eye out for good-looking bananas for a couple months now and the only ones I see regularly are the red ones and the little baby ones. I tend to buy my usual bananas at Commodities because they always have organic ones and I think they taste marginally better than non-organic. I think it's time for me to start going on banana-hunting expeditions to Latino and South Asian neighborhoods to see if anything more interesting has turned up in the two years since the Saveur article was published.

In the meantime here's a recipe for kitchen sink banana muffins. (In addition to bananas they've got carrots and candied ginger in them, and can probably happily handle whatever complementary ingredients you'd like to add). It's based on Mark Bittman's recipe for whole wheat muffins from the Feb. 5, 2010 New York Times.

I feel like I get the best banana flavor in baked stuff if the bananas are frozen first. Specifically, if I wait until they're good and ripe — meaning quite brown and black on the outside, full-on ugly in the way that prissy banana-eaters seem to have a problem with — and freeze them then. They're even uglier when I pull them out of the freezer and I just don't care.

Cuter bananas in syrup form, €12 at Colette.

The original recipe calls for 1 cup of mashed fruit but I don't think there's any need to actually measure it for something like this. I used two ordinary bananas and two little bananas because that's what my banana stash contains, but if you just have two ordinary bananas I'm sure that's fine. Three might be pushing it in terms of fruit content but I feel like that would probably be fine too. (I've made these muffins with various spontaneous combinations of fruit and have never had a problem yet, though my pumpkin-blackberry ones were a bit too dense for my liking).

kitchen sink banana muffins

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, depending on taste (I like a lesser amount)
1/4 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B (it has a stronger flavor)
2 regular bananas, or more to taste (see above), mashed with a fork
1 heaping cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup finely chopped candied ginger
1/2 cup melted butter, plus a bit more for greasing your muffin pan if needed [ the original recipe calls for unsalted butter but I use salted for pretty much everything these days ]
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk

for optional but recommended crunchy topping:
1/4 cup oat or barley flakes
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 teaspoons melted butter
2 teaspoons honey
pinch of fine sea salt

Heat the oven to 375°F and grease your muffin pan with butter if necessary. (I use a silicone pan so I don't bother with this step). Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl until just combined. Stir in the bananas, carrots, and everything else until ingredients are thoroughly combined. Don't over-stir because supposedly that's bad for muffins.

If you're making the optional crunchy topping, stir all the ingredients for that together in a small bowl.

Fill your muffin pans and spoon a half-tablespoon or so of the crunchy mixture on top of each muffin before baking. Bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the center of your test-muffin comes comes out clean.

alternatively, just eat the crunchy mixture with a spoon

Makes at least a dozen muffins, possibly more depending on the size of your pan. (I use a "mini" muffin pan that isn't very mini at all and I got seventeen).

Foodmusic no. 1 is here.

meiji bananas, coming soon in Japanese Candy Quarterly Review

fête de la carotte

2012-06-08T12:10:00.001-04:00

My apologies for seemingly drifting off again; I've been feeling under the weather. A phrase I almost didn't want to use, but in a rained-upon sense it is correct. Let's take a carrot-centric field trip to the west coast of France while I'm recovering.

Créances, Normandy is the site of an annual fête de la carotte in celebration of the uncommon carrots grown there in sandy soil, A.O.C. carrots cultivated under the influence of salty seaside air and nourished, somehow, by the proximity of seaweeds. (In this respect I identify deeply with these particular carrots; seaweeds do something for me too). The fête happens in August so you've got plenty of time to plan your trip.

Créances carrot elders at the 2009 fête

via The World Carrot Museum

sandy carrot display, carrots for sale, carrot medal, and carrots growing

in Créances also via The World Carrot Museum

fête de la carotte 2011

I don't speak French but I believe this says that proximity to

green seaweed elevates the flavor of even industrial pork, and

is engaging for boys on vacation.

From Greenpeace France.

carrot women from Elizabeth Gordon's

Mother Earth’s Children: The Frolics of the Fruits and Vegetables
via City Farmer News

Cooks who wish to hold their own carrot festival may be interested in the recipe for Rikers Island Carrot Cake, which calls for twenty five pounds of the carrots of your choice. In lieu of inmates to grate them, why not make the festival-goers do it? People will do pretty much anything if there's a prize given at the end.

Rikers Island baker by Michael Appleton for The New York Times.

I'd like to think the carrot cake-baking inmates are the only ones

who get to wear orange striped jumpsuits but the article doesn't say.

Less ambitious carrot-munchers may be interested to hear that spicy carrots are very nice in a sandwich. I'm not talking about a few shreds in your bánh mì, I'm talking about a proper carrot sandwich. I'm a huge fan of the recipe for Tunisian carrot puree (omi houriya) in Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food, which calls for boiled carrots to be pureed with harissa, ground caraway, cumin and ginger, and a splash of both olive oil and wine vinegar. You could certainly use the same treatment for grated or sliced cooked carrots if those seem more suitable to your sandwich needs. Cozying up to leftover grilled lamb, for example. (I do think the carrots need to be cooked for most sandwiches, even if grated, even if only blanched for a few moments). I also like this recipe from Gourmet for sandwiches of Moroccan carrot salad, goat cheese, and green olive tapenade. The sandwich below was made with the carrots from that recipe — spiced with cinnamon, cumin, cayenne pepper and sweet paprika — and squeaky little pillows of fried halloumi cheese. Mint leaves on top and whole wheat sourdough below.

As long as we're on the subject, I feel compelled to mention that my all-time favorite carrot recipes are: Marcella Hazan's braised carrots with Parmesan (yes, they really do take so long to cook, just try it), Madhur Jaffrey's carrot cake with cardamom and pistachios (with more pistachios for sure, plus some grated coconut if you're into that), and this simple-but-incredibly-good crème crécy, all of which I have been making for many years. If you make the soup don't be tempted to use vegetable or chicken stock in place of the water; I've tried that and it muddles the flavors.

relentlessly emotional container gardening

2012-05-29T09:48:00.000-04:00

* I'm an idiot and accidentally deleted my May 2102 post on 'relentlessly emotional container gardening' while trying to update the link for the Jesus & Mary Chain video embedded below. The Blogger platform did save a draft of it, though, and I think it's a good read for all the weirdo gardeners out there, so I'm reposting it (more or less) as it was.

yours in springtime,
Madeleine
April 2016

*****

Again? Yes because my last post on this subject focused on the stuff I've grown to date and this one's about what I'd like to grow. It's a long list but many of these plants are for next year. I've been quite restrained about my plant ambitions lately. Yes really! My apartment faces south and I get good light, but with the recent addition of a large pot of cinnamon basil and the seed germination projects described below I've run out of window sill and fire escape space. I have hanging plants too but I can't have too many of those, and I nearly have too many of those now.

Casa Hortícola, a seed and bulb shop in Porto, Portugal,
from World of Interiors July 2011. It's been in its location
in the Bolhão market since 1921. See more photos here.

Items on my to-grow list:

Pineapple grown from old pineapple parts. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. I've tried it before, a couple times actually, but things kept happening, things that distracted me during the crucial stage of planting the pineapple parts after they've dried out a bit and before they've dried out too much. This is entirely my fault and not an inherent difficulty; the instructions for growing "a healthy, attractive pineapple for your home" couldn't be simpler. I'm going to make another attempt. I only want to use organic pineapples for growing (and for recipes that use the peel, like making tepache) and they're kind of hard to come by. If you live in NYC, Fresh Direct has a reliable supply of them. Commodities on 1st Ave. next to Momofuku has them too sometimes.¹

Oyster leaf (mertensia maritima), as shown looking totally fascinating here. This is a plant that grows wild in the Hebrides and reportedly has a briny, oyster-like flavor. It is of great interest to my semi-secret subcommittee for the development of oceanographic snacks, which has become curious about the idea of icy cold oyster-y lemonade accompanying an elaborate beach-going packed lunch.

Radishes. I understand they grow quickly and without torment to the gardener, and I love them fresh, pickled, or in a soup. I'm starting two varieties from seed right now: Jaune D’Or Ovale Radish, a French heirloom variety, and German Giant Radish ("I think it has just the right amount of spice to it, perfect for eating with salt & a beer," says a reviewer I'd like to have a beer with). I've got another variety of seed on hand, Chinese Green Luobo, but the instructions say to start them nearer to autumn because they only grow well in cool weather. (Summer has barely arrived and already I'm thinking about how nice it will be when I need to put on a woolly sweater for my fire escape radish-harvesting . . .). Radish sprouts are delicious and beautiful but I think they need to be germinated from a different type of seed (e.g.). I'm not growing them right now because I don't want to go apeshit with the whole radish thing.

More chili peppers. Now that I've put my foot down on the obstinate (at times, truculent) mismanagement of my pepper plants I'm kind of excited about growing more varieties. On my wish list to start very early next spring: Tunisian Baklouti (I don't think I have ever met a Tunisian foodstuff I didn't like); Shishito (a favorite for eating grilled or broiled, but sometimes expensive and less-than-perfectly-fresh when bought in Japanese groceries); Bulgarian carrot peppers (bright orange, fruity and hot); Pequin peppers (my favorite store-bought dried pepper flakes are Pequin and I'd love to try them fresh); and Black Hungarian peppers (attractive little things with reportedly very good flavor, and interestingly they sound as temperamental as actual Hungarians, which I partially am so I can say that). I've also been eyeing these lumpy, pendulous, purple Cajamarcas, "a beautiful fruit that begins a vibrant violet unique to C. chinense and then changes to a rich red. The wonderfully fragrant aroma of ‘Cajamarca’ captures your attention with an intense, spicy-citrus fragrance and the classic habanero fruity undertone. Very Hot," according to The Chile Pepper Institute, which is selling the seeds.

Cajamarcas from The Chile Pepper Institute

Black sesame. Is it madness or genius to grow yr own sesame seeds? I can see something going terribly wrong at the harvesting stage in particular. Like, a strong gust of wind. But I love, love the flavor of black sesame in both sweet and savory dishes and I'm not likely to have a chance to taste their leaves unless I grow my own, am I?

Cucumbers. I'm so intrigued by these brown Russian cucumbers ("hands down the best tasting cucumber I have ever tasted" says the seed store cucumber-eater) and these bright green Parisian Pickle (Improved Bourbonne) ones, but sadly I don't think cucumbers are a good container crop. I'd only give them a try if I had more space for bigger containers. Do you have such a space and would you like to experiment with Skype gardening? I would provide advice and instruction in my uniquely dissolute lo-fi gardening technique and you would send the cucumbers. Think about it.

Osmanthus. I bought a jar of sweet osmanthus sauce in Flushing on impulse a couple years ago and have been crazy about its sweet, salty, floral flavor ever since. I'd love to have a supply of fresh osmanthus flowers for experimenting with. TopTropicals.com says "it is a slow growing medium size shrub or smaller tree that can easily be kept in container as a compact plant for years. You can create your own little Fragrant Valley . . ." I'm out of window sill space but if I can get a suitably large hanging pot I'll try that. I couldn't help but notice the same seller also carries something called Popcorn Cassia, which "smells like fresh cooked, buttered popcorn when you run your fingers through the leaves" but has "the distinct scent of peanut butter" when flowering, but it's a shrub and there's no more room on the fire escape for one of those.

sweet osmanthus sauce

osmanthus flowers

Borage. Little blue flowers with a nice cucumber-ish flavor, and bees like them too so it's a good plant for the whole gardening area. Borage has been on my mind since I found some atop a memorably beautiful and delicious plate of sashimi I ate last summer. (I didn't feel a need to snap a photo until after I'd eaten the most beautiful parts, sorry). I'm starting some from seed now.

Innocent Beauty borage from Kensitas Flowers

(1930s cigarette cards) from the NYPL.

Mint. A must-have for people who like the way it tastes, or who have people over for drinks. I didn't think I had any more room for plants but I brought home some Swiss mint anyhow — chosen from the Stannard Farm stand at Tompkins Square Park greenmarket for its clean, icy smell and taste — and created a spot for it in The Hanging Mint Garden of Harlem. (A big, light-weight hanging planter with a built-in drainage system, found at Saifee Hardware).

my Swiss mint

Lovage. I've been banging on about how much I love lovage for a while now. Sadly my efforts to grow it at home haven't worked out for me in the past. The plants I've brought home have withered in the sun before I could even manage to re-pot them. In hindsight I think it was a combination of neglect and . . . honestly it was probably all neglect. I'm trying again and this time I'm starting my lovage from seed. By the way, my borage and my lovage live in the same bag planter. (I've read that lovage improves the health of everything it grows with so I'm not worried about the borage). I thought those planters were a great find because they're only $15 and they're very light in weight. I'm using them to grow the radishes too, and some secret salad greens I'll show you another time.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Sowing Seeds"

Purple tomatillos. I keep missing the window for starting these. They're meant to be started six to eight weeks before the last frost. Next year, etc.

organic purple tomatillo seeds

from Etsy seller cubits

Sorrento lemons. I mentioned Sorrento lemons recently and I was very sad when Manhattan Fruit Exchange said they didn't have any more and weren't sure when they'd get them again. They're a special variety grown on the Amalfi coast and the ones I bought had such a beautifully bright and true lemon flavor. I've loved lemons all my life, ordinary grocery store lemons, but I don't want to go back to them after having tried these. I want to say they were perfectly tart without being acidic but that would probably sound strange. Anyhow, I saved all the seeds I could (which wasn't many because they had relatively few) and ended up with eight or nine to try to germinate. Unfortunately I'd already planted them according to these instructions when I discovered that other people recommend peeling the seeds first, but I remained hopeful, and for at least two weeks I gazed at their little pot daily with tremendous concentration and affection. I got so impatient that I considered gently exhuming and peeling them, but then I found one more Sorrento lemon in the bottom of my refrigerator, elderly and denuded of its peel, and got an additional four seeds from it. I peeled them carefully as per the new germination regime and tucked them away under a layer of damp paper towels, and covered their plate tightly with plastic wrap. The exciting news is that after one more week of waiting, an exceptionally humid week here in NYC, both batches of seeds have sprouts! I'm going to give them a little more time, and if more of them succeed I'll seek a good home for the seedlings here on my blog and on the food bloggers' mailing list. For now I'm going to keep making encouraging eyes at what I've got. I'm not sure if anyone else would want them anyhow. Trying to grow Sorrento lemons in Harlem is right down the narrow, bat shit-splattered alley where my container gardening takes place.

my Sorrento lemon seeds sprouting

________________________

1. For the record, I take exception to that link's description of the "fairly large selection of organic, freshly-spritzed vegetables and unbruised fruit" at Commodities; it's expanded over the years and they now have a large selection, period. I've bought all kinds of great produce there, things like fresh tumeric root and little red bananas and seasonal oddities such as ramps and fiddleheads.

The adventure of the late-night duck

2012-05-25T13:17:00.002-04:00

I apologize for the small and cramped photos in this post but do you have any idea how much trouble glistening duck skin and artificial lighting pose for my mercurial {expensive!} food stylist Marjorie "the finger-licker" von Mushing? I roasted a duck very late at night due to the sort of grocery-fuckery that has troubled my cooking for years: I got excited about an idea I had, while trimming my pineapple sage plant, to cram its leaves under the skin of a whole duck, and the next day a lovely 5-pound Long Island duck appeared in my kitchen in addition to all the other things I wanted to eat that week. Not only did I already have enough food to eat without the duck, I'd forgotten I had a medical procedure coming up and could count on feeling too tired to cook in the days to follow. The label on the duck said it could be frozen but it seemed too moist not to suffer badly from freezer burn and too special a thing to put in there anyhow, so . . . I had to cook the duck, pronto. As in, after dinner, which also had to be cooked that night.

I cook duck breasts kind of a lot — to the extent that I cook any meat "a lot," being a former vegetarian who has never been all that excited about cooking creatures at home — because they're easy and delicious and produce floods of flavorful fat that can be strained and used to cook all sorts of interesting things, from eggs to baked goods to what-have-you. I'd never actually roasted a whole duck before and felt a little intimidated by the process. How much fat might come out of it and where would it all go? Must the thing be cut into pieces to cook properly? Should it be cooked one way and then another? I have a Chinese cookbook with an intriguing recipe for duck that I've been eyeing sporadically for years and that was the one I planned to rely on, but when I consulted the book I remembered that what intrigued me about it is that it calls for unusually robust interaction with one's duck:

click on any image to enlarge

Someday, maybe, but it was too damn late and I didn't feel up to breaking any bones. (I've seen ducks like that for sale in Chinatown, by the way, festively hung up for passers-by to sneeze on, though I think they look more like duck-pillows rather than "badly carved wooden duck[s]"). A brief search led me to a simple and quick recipe from Saveur. All I'd have to do was cram my herbs under the skin, cram some oranges into its tummy — I thought that would be nice — and roast it for about an hour and a half with minimal attention. I skipped the trussing step because I don't mind slatternly birds sprawling about in my oven (also because I can never find my twine), and I skipped the soy sauce rub-down because I'd be giving it a herbal one instead. I'd already rinsed the duck and patted it dry and seasoned it well with salt and pepper inside and out in the morning. I always have better luck with birds when I leave them to chill in the refrigerator all day before cooking, uncovered so they can dry out.

As one sometimes does when cooking late at night, I let out a brief, internal shriek when I got to the middle of the recipe. How idiotically romantic it is the way one's eyes glide over that part before getting started! In this particular recipe that part is where the cook turns the duck over. The half-cooked duck, resting in a pan of plentiful and furiously hot fat. How, exactly, had I been thinking I would do that? How would I do that? I don't mind asking for help when I really, really need it — I once shut myself in the bathroom and called an ex-boyfriend about a waterbug, for example — but I felt personally responsible for this duck. And there's nothing one can do in such moments besides grab the tongs and move decisively to do what has to be done. A fork in the other hand for luck and stability. This step, happily, turned out to be not a big deal at all: the duck really wasn't that heavy, my tongs are good and strong, and I kept my range of motion small, lifting it only as much as needed and keeping it centered over the rack it was to rest on. Voila, right-side-up duck, ready to be basted and shoved back in the oven all casual-like.

Look, Aladdin's cave! No, this is just where I keep my oranges.

Of course it tasted good when it was finally done. Having a freshly-roasted duck for a past-midnight snack is a welcome novelty, and it wasn't over-cooked inside the way it sort of looks in the photo. (Ms. von Mushing demurs at this suggestion and reminds me that my "incomprehensibly crass" kitchen lighting needs a blog-friendly overhaul). I don't think the pineapple sage did much for it, though; the bites I had without a bit of its greenery didn't taste herbal at all, and the bites that did were only gently pineapple-ish. Pineapple sage does taste and smell like pineapples but it's much less aggressive than regular sage, much less capable of shouting over the other flavors around it. It had been a long time since I'd tasted it and I foolishly did not nibble on any leaves while trimming it, despite my belief that cooks should taste their ingredients whenever possible to do so without threat to health. Sometimes it's just not the sort of thing one remembers to do unless reminded by a bossy but smart recipe-writer. In the future I'll find ways to add it raw at the end of cooking and I'll urge you to do the same.

my pineapple sage plant

I used this many oranges and leaves

a peek inside my duck

If you're wondering how much fat I did get out of my duck: an entire 14-ounce jar full. (I'm linking to the type of jar because I like to see other people's jars and these ones have good lids). So much nice, golden fat to cook with. I'm a big fan of duck fat popovers in particular (e.g. these ones) but they don't seem right for this time of year. Do any of you have ideas about what I should do with my big jar of duck far? I'm thinking pastry for a savory picnic pie but I don't need quite so many pies.

food couple

2012-05-23T16:51:00.000-04:00

Madame Gougousse and Hot Titus. I don't know if these two are a new thing or just new to me. They live in the same aisle of the Fine Fare on Lenox Ave. near 116th St. and are obviously doing it. Madame Gougousse has caught the eye of other bloggers, who've seen her looking gorgeous on some rice, but none of us know where she comes from. Hot Titus is Moroccan and unfortunately is known for leaving his lovers with a mouth full of scales.

foodmusic no. 1

2012-05-22T14:07:00.002-04:00

The Fall, "Eat Y'self Fitter"
recorded in Austurbæjarbíó, Reykjavik, Iceland, May 6th 1983

A sentimental choice for me to begin this series with; I fucking love the Fall. The amount of Fall in my iTunes is measured in days rather than hours. I'm not sure what to point you towards if you're not familiar with them. The band's Wiki page isn't bad; it succinctly explains, for example, that Mark E. Smith's lyrics are "abstract poetry filled with complicated wordplay, bone-dry wit, cutting social observations, and general misanthropy." This interview with Smith in the Independent last year is really good, actually, as reading and as a snapshot of what the band is about, but it's long. Likewise this Taylor Parkes essay in the Quietus about his lyrics. This review from Sasha Frere-Jones is relatively short and actually pretty good. (Smith "apparently imagines that the Fall is the only band that matters, and it’s a view that bears examination.") The best thing I've recently read about the Fall is this interview from Wire in the mid-90s, which opens with a quote observing that MES's "constant love-battle with his goblin-muse always leaves him stronger."

I'm not going to have recipes accompany all of my foodmusic posts, I don't think, but I'm going to be very literal with this one and use it as an occasion to discuss home-made granola, which I've just started making. (There must be something in the air). It's granola-ah when the Fall is playing in the background. (Cf. Mynah (n): "Belonging to Mark E. Smith."). It's got to be the most un-Fall thing one can eat, this shit breakfast for soft middle class barley-bothering assholes, unless that dubious honor goes to the quince aioli I'm making later this week.

What do your new running friends put in their granola?

I got all ascetic about my first batch of granola and cut way down on the oil. It's generally made with a lot of oil, both store-bought and home-made, but I'm reducing for summer. I've also tucked away some portraits of tubby food bloggers in my attic for good measure. Do you know what happens if you're stingy with the oil in your granola? Your granola is dry, dry and healthy-tasting. It's not quite mean granola but it's an acquired taste, like the Fall. I'm kind of into it right now but I'm assuming you won't be, so there's an alternate choose-your-own-granola-adventure quantity of oil in the recipe below. My dry granola is too dry to eat happily on its own but for me it's fine with yogurt because I tend to add wetter things with it: fresh fruit and a squeeze of sorghum syrup or a spoonful of honey.

If you're using coconut flakes in your granola,
add them before the last 5 minutes of baking.

The recipe is an adaptation of this one from Hungry Hippie (what kind of hippies do you get your granola recipes from?) and as I mentioned above I used way less oil. As in, half of what the original recipe called for. That's why mine didn't clump in that clumpy granola way. If you want clumps, double the oil. Note too that I left out the nuts — I cook with nuts a lot and always have different types on hand, and I prefer to add whatever needs using up when it's granola-eating time. If you have nuts you want to use, by all means, add them along with the other dry ingredients. I left out the dried fruit as well. Sliced apricots, figs, and dates are particularly nice, alone or in combination, but as I mentioned I tend to eat my granola with fresh fruit. If you want to use dried fruits add them at the end, after your granola has cooled and is ready to be transferred to the granola jar. I used coconut oil in this batch because it's rather a hip grease and I like the way it boosts the flavor of the coconut flakes, but my next batch will be coconut-free and made with olive oil like this.

homemade granola

makes 1 big jar of granola

1 cup whole rolled oats
1 cup barley flakes (I get mine from these people)
1/3 cup red quinoa (any kind of quinoa is OK)
1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup coconut oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup (I like Grade B for cooking because it's got a stronger flavor)
2 tablespoons agave syrup
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 teaspoons cinnamon
a generous pinch of fine sea salt
a generous grating of nutmeg
parchment paper for lining your pans, or a bit more coconut oil for greasing them

Heat your oven to 225º F. Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl except the coconut and the cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. Add the coconut oil and the sweeteners — feel free to use either one singly instead, or honey — and stir well until the dry ingredients are thoroughly coated. Only then should you add the spices and the pinch of salt. Reserve the coconut flakes until later. Give everything in the bowl another good stir to make sure the spices are evenly distributed. Bake the granola on two sheet pans lined with parchment paper (or lightly greased with more coconut oil) for approximately one hour, rotating the pans and stirring the granola half way through. Five minutes or so before the end of the baking time, scatter the coconut flakes over the top of the pans. (The coconut would burn if baked along with the rest of the granola.)

something for your intriguing-restaurants-that-no-longer-exist file

2012-05-18T10:25:00.000-04:00

London's Zoological Gardens Restaurant, 1937. Old-fashioned zoos with animals living in cages rather than habitats were terribly sad places but probably far less so when floodlit, by the sound of things. This efficient little description is from the July 8, 1937 issue of Night and Day magazine, a short-lived English take on The New Yorker edited by Graham Greene. I wrote about it on my other blog recently and plan to do a follow-up post or three because there are so many wonderful things about it I left out. It was vividly, admittedly, affectionately New Yorker-ish, though not officially affiliated, and had many of the same features The New Yorker still has, as will be apparent to any "Goings On About Town" readers whose eyes turned into cartoon question marks upon noticing the "London by Night and Day" scans below. A list of "philanthropic shareholders" in a footnote to the introduction in the 1985 Chatto & Windus Night and Day anthology includes one Mr. William Maxwell but I have no idea whether it was that William Maxwell. I read his correspondence with New Yorker contributor Sylvia Townsend Warner last summer (The Element of Lavishness, highly recommended) and don't recall any mention of it, but they didn't start writing to each other until July 1938 and Night and Day folded in December 1937.

The restaurant listings above were presumably written by Night and Day restaurant critic and Corvo biographer A.J. Symons, who deserves his own separate post or three sometime soon-ish. I've got a crumbly old Penguin paperback of his Vegetable Grower's Handbook on my desk right now because I'm hoping to grow radishes suitable for bon vivants on my fire escape.

The bottle parties are possibly even more alluring than the zoological table d'hôte, no? Particularly those "English and Hungarian bands alternat[ing] in a South Sea Island setting" at the Cocoanut Grove. Maurice Richardson — unfamiliar to me, but almost certainly the same "manic-depressive, ex-amateur boxer and journalist who hung out with a pretty low-life crowd" mentioned here — wrote about them in the July 1, 1937 issue of Night and Day ("The Bottle-Party Belt") and they do indeed sound like a good time. Frisco's, for example, was decorated with "some livid red globes which may remind you of what your eyeballs will be like next morning," while The Nest was "full of minor curiosities, like a provincial museum," and had an atmosphere "very friendly, quite democratic, very international. Left-wing poets can be guaranteed a dusty puff of afflatus here." The Nest was open as late as 7 AM on Sundays, in high contrast to "the dreamiest, most swelegant places" with their "lobster-pink old men and half-tight old women in funny dresses." Richardson's two-page distillation of London nightlife is almost painful to read for someone who remembers pre-Bloomberg NYC, long before the tweeting mixologists slash consultants with theme facial hair. If I had a time machine I'd send him straight to Kokie's and Save the Robots. The latter was a bit before my time but the former was not.

Many of these clubs may be shut down at any moment, but each will figure in somebody's individual history as a landmark of the middle thirties. For many people some club or other in the Belt will be so closely connected with love affairs and sexual adventures that its image will linger in the mind, however blurred with drink. Outside in the street, alley cats are raking over the muck in the gutters with their expert paws. You buy the Daily Express and try to read it with hot eyes in the taxi. Meanwhile that very silly fat woman who had been mixing gin with brandy has slipped off her chair onto the floor. The two good-timers with her are tugging frantically at her arms, giggling a little. Always end on a moral note.

a use for the grubby, late-season ramps hanging round your vegetable drawer

2012-05-15T17:16:00.000-04:00

My suggestion: fried rice with ramps and sorrel next to roasted salmon with key lime and pineapple sage gremolata. This was a late (11 PM-ish) dinner at the end of a tiring and hungry-making day and it really hit the spot. I wanted nothing more / nothing less than a pile of protein and carbs and this was an appealingly fast and easy pile to make. Better still, the bright, citrusy flavors made it all feel light and vibrant and a bit celebratory, which was particularly welcome considering that the friend who came over to have a late dinner with me had just bought a very cool Vespa and couldn't wait to zip around on it.

new (used)!

I hope it doesn't seem high-handed to suggest throwing sorrel into your fried rice. I love its tart flavor and would be happy to encounter it anywhere and everywhere while it's in season, but it can be frighteningly expensive to buy (and maddening to find) if you don't grow it yourself. Having never grown it myself, I've never felt that I've been able to eat my fill of it. In NYC this year it's about $10/pound. I tend to buy a little bag or box of it whenever I see it and just use it however I see fit rather than coming home with a mound of it and looking for a recipe for $40 sorrel soup or whatever.

You need to have cold rice to make the fried rice with. Everyone says so. Here, for example. I've never bothered trying to make it with freshly-cooked rice so I can't be contrarian. It makes sense, anyhow, that the texture would be all wrong that way, that the rice would end up overcooked rather than heated through.

Neither of these recipes depend on precision, which is good because you probably don't just happen to have a pineapple sage plant in need of a haircut. It feels a bit wrong even calling them "recipes" because both were incredibly simple and straightforward to prepare. They're more assemblages. Use them as guidelines and let me know how it goes if you try something(s) else. Both serve two people.

fried rice with ramps and sorrel

peanut oil
a bundle of ramps, sliced into ribbons — keep the bulb-ends and the green parts in separate piles for cooking
a good handful or two of sorrel, sliced into ribbons (hopefully around 1 cup)
1 egg, beaten
enough cold cooked long-grain rice to feed you and your friend
salt, pepper, soy sauce

Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a wok or heavy skillet over medium-high heat and sauté the bulb ends of the ramps until they start to soften. Add the green parts and cook for another minute or two. Add the rice and give it a good stir, making sure it's evenly coated with oil. Let it cook for a few minutes, stirring every so often. When the rice seems to be heated through and you're just about ready to eat, stir in the sorrel — it will wilt right away — and push the rice to the edges of the pan, clearing a space in the middle to cook your egg. Add a bit more oil if desired, and quickly cook the egg while stirring to break it up. Stir the rice over it, stir a few dashes of soy sauce into the rice, and stir everything some more to combine all the ingredients. Serve right away while nice and hot.

roasted salmon with key lime and pineapple sage gremolata

Note: Do not substitute regular sage for the pineapple sage because it has a completely different flavor and strength. If you need a substitute try a mixture of parsley and thyme instead (and omit the additional thyme).

2 salmon fillets
5 or 6 key limes (or 2 regular limes)
2 to 3 tablespoons fresh pineapple sage leaves, sliced into ribbons
2 to 3 teaspoons thyme leaves
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
olive oil, salt and pepper

An hour or so before you want to eat, pat the salmon dry, season it with salt and fresh ground pepper, and zest a key lime over each piece. (The zest of one regular lime over both pieces should be plenty if that's what you're using).

When you're ready to eat, take the salmon out of the refrigerator and let it come down in temperature while you heat the oven to 425°F.

While the oven is heating, zest and juice your remaining key limes over a bowl. (Use the juice from the two you denuded earlier). Stir in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, the garlic, the herbs, and a bit of salt and pepper to taste. Don't worry about it not emulsifying because you're making a gremolata rather than a vinaigrette. Which means that as soon as it tastes good, you're done and can set it aside.

Roast the fish on a lightly oiled baking sheet according to the ten-minutes-per-inch-of-thickness rule. When it's done, spoon the gremolata on top.

grow yr own

2012-05-11T12:35:00.000-04:00

I've been experimenting with urban container gardening for many years now, with what is commonly referred to as "limited success." Meaning that I am perpetually enthusiastic about trying to grow edible stuff, in a series of NYC apartments ranging from ridiculously- to moderately-unsuitable for that purpose, and I tend not to research my little gardening projects before I get started. I don't know why but this is how it's always been. I happily research other things, probably over-research at times, but when it comes to plants I just get emotional. I fervently want to grow something, or I don't. I've written on my other blog that I find people's ambitions for their plants weirdly touching — e.g., the sort of little old ladies who call in to Gardeners' Question Time wanting to know how to grow bananas in Dorset — but I am so emotional about plants that I truly did not have any sense at the time that I may have been referring to myself.

I don't have a desire to grow bananas (well, not a serious one, apart from these pink ones, which surely you can understand) but I was dead set on growing mushrooms in componibili. I was going to have a whole mushroom farm inside my componibili and then, eventually, a very good excuse to buy more componibili units. The problem is it's damn hard to remember the mushrooms are in there and need tending. I ended up with a little box of mushroom dust. The accidental kind, not the kind one invites beardos over to sample.

My experimentation started with pots of herbs and for years I remained focused on those rather than attempting to grow any vegetables or fruits. I love herbs and will never have too many around for cooking with, but I wish I'd branched out sooner. My experience has been that a lot of herbs are actually rather fussy about how they are cared for — especially the ones I was most eager to have a steady home-grown supply of, like lovage and za'atar — whereas fruits and veg are maybe more tolerant of an inept, pale green thumb than I thought.

So, Alpine strawberries in Harlem, why not? So far they're thriving, more so than anything else I've ever grown. I ordered six varieties of "quick start" plants from The Strawberry Store and planted them in a white window box filled with organic soil. (My understanding is that strawberries don't like it if their roots get hot so a dark-colored planter should be avoided). They spent two chilly weeks on my fire escape while I worried about them being rained on too much, not rained on enough, and tormented by strong winds before the first berries started to appear. Hooray!

An updated shot of the same berry I showed you earlier this week.

These are the varieties I'm growing:

Madame Moutot: The Strawberry Store describes these as "[a] tried and tested French variety that was released in 1906. . . . The delicious red fruit of this variety doesn't ship well which is one reason commercial acreage has decreased in Europe. Gardeners in Europe still consider this to be a standard." Which all sounds very nice, but it was the name that drew me. I want Mesdames Moutot snuggling in my breakfast yogurt. It looks like I'll have that happening sooner rather than later because this variety has been the first to set fruit.

Yellow Wonder: I'd been eyeing these on other people's blogs for years but kept missing the window of time for germinating seeds, so I was really excited to find them in starter plant form. The Strawberry Store people say that "[i]f you are going to choose one non red variety, this is it." I hope mine turn out to be long and pointy and shaggy-looking the way other people's yellow ones are.

Fragola di Bosco: These are "one of the two Italian varieties [they] carry. The plants are vigorous and day-neutral and everbearing. They produce a nice quantity of larger than usual red fruit." Vigorous berries appeal to the beginning berry-grower. Italian strawberries are chic and appeal to everyone, no?

Reine des Vallees: These sounded like a must-have too. "The name of this very popular variety in English means 'Queen of the Valleys'. This one was very difficult to find. This variety is the commercial standard in Europe and has been for a number of years. . . . 'Reine des Vallees' is very productive and produces red aromatic fruit. We are impressed with this variety and think it should become the American standard."

Deesse des Vallees: "French for Goddess of the Valleys. To my knowledge this variety has never before been made available in North America. It is a patented selection of 'Reine des Vallees' which translates to Queen of the Valleys." Clearly I needed these for comparison purposes.

Regina: "'Regina' is an excellent variety. It is known in Poland as Poziomka 'Regina' and is a standard variety there. The vigorous plants produce aromatic red fruit." I just have a feeling that Poles know their strawberries and would not deem an undeserving variety to be the Regina of all the other strawberries. People who make fluffy butter lambs simply would not do such a thing.

Canadians have developed a monster of a strawberry, probably

using the same technology they grow their beards with,

but I'm sticking with little Alpine ones

The only vegetables I've grown with any success to date are chili peppers. Meaning that I have two pepper plants and last summer they produced one pepper, which I harvested and ate with the ponderous, quasi-mystical regard the occasion seemed to call for.

What the hell to do with one lonely chili pepper? I thought, I waited, I considered making a spicy cocktail, and then late one night I decided it was harvest time and sliced the thing over a couple of fried eggs, which I topped with home-grown (and far less troublesome) marjoram leaves. It was hot enough to be proud of and lovely to eat.

My pepper plants are one mystery variety (said to be habanero when purchased, but in actuality probably serrano) and one rocoto (which I started from seed, and which is actually two plants co-habitating in one pot). The mystery plant is the one that produced the pepper I ate, but it looks like I'll finally be able to harvest some rocotos this summer. I only recently realized that I should have re-potted the poor plants long, long ago. I was ignoring them (a long, depressing story involving love trouble, obviously) and now that they're in a bigger pot they seem much happier, growing rapidly and flowering with enthusiasm.

a rocoto pepper flower

The flowering part can be tricky because flowers need to be pollinated. I suspect the reason I only got one pepper out of my mystery plant last summer was because it spent all its time indoors, away from sexy insects, dependent on my amateurish little attentions with a watercolor brush. Other people on the internet will tell you that gently doing stuff to your pepper plant flowers with a brush is sufficient, but I don't think it is. This year my peppers are both spending some quality time outdoors on the fire escape, and getting some extra action from me too. I can't believe I'm telling you this, but . . . I have been rubbing their flowering parts together Barbie-and-Ken-and-Barbie's-friend-style, if you know what I mean. I'll be sure to keep you posted as to whether or not they seem to be into it.

Another music in a different kitchen

2012-05-08T15:50:00.000-04:00

Thus begins my tardiest blog post ever. Those of you who use RSS readers are probably wondering whether you have been personally apprehended by Father Time. Did you know that I've been blogging on my other blog the whole time I've been letting this blog grow an inscrutably bushy and unkempt beard? I'm going to continue blogging about books and music and trees over there, but I'm ready to pluck the crumbs out of my HTML, do a thoughtful bit of trimming, and get Tiny Banquet Committee back to being a food blog about town.

It very nearly charms the pants off of me that even while this blog has been dormant, you people have gone on doing the sort of things that the nice readers of an active food blog do, i.e. visiting and subscribing and sending me the occasional email asking interesting questions about recipes, which I secretly enjoy answering. One of you even sent me a recipe you thought I'd like, a bread made with a cup and a half of whisky. Yes I'm into that! So please keep doing that.

Coming soon / coming later:

Ice cream mania. There is at long last an ice cream machine in my kitchen. I'm excited about trying other people's ice creams (particularly pistachio, sesame, celery, Vietnamese coffee, and rum raisin) and about devising my own ice creams. Right now I'm working on a May wine ice cream, which is something I've wanted to make for a long time, long before I made an impulse decision to try my hand at growing Alpine strawberries. They're doing surprisingly well, and with a bit more luck should ripen in time for me to bring you May wine ice cream with home-grown strawberries right on time in the month of May. While sorting out the best way to get a lot of wine into ice cream and waiting for my berry crop to mature, I'm making a lemon ice cream with thrillingly tasty Sorrento lemons, a key lime sorbet with maddeningly small key limes, and an orange blossom honey ice cream with translucent orange chunks of baked quince. I've also got some salep a friend brought back from Turkey for me, so there will probably be an attempt at Turkish stretchy ice cream at some point. Before that happens I want to make a whole pile of tea-based ice creams, including a pine tree and forest fruits hikers' ice cream made with the Italian tree tea I wrote about on my other blog.

ice cream notebook for collecting psychedelic
tutti frutti ice cream thoughts from Heavy Eyeliner

how much longer from here?

Sorrento lemons are less expensive than they sound at Manhattan Fruit Exchange
right now and I recommend buying as many as you can carry.

Eating Maine. I've always been really excited about this subject, any and all of it: the vivid yellow butter, the road-side chard, the clams, the early morning snacking walks. I've switched islands but otherwise nothing has changed in this regard. I'll be posting recipes from my last visit while scheming about ways to spend more time there this summer.

from top: oysters that way, North Haven;

new lobster friends; afternoon snack in situ;

seaweed cheese from Turner Farm; foggy morning;

Turner Farm, North Haven; crab apple chutney

Japanese Candy Quarterly Review. The Japanese Candy Quarterly Review will be published on a "whenever" schedule.

Hikikomori print by Naoshi on Etsy.

Lesbo Kitchen. I told a lesbian friend I'm planning a whole series of blog posts on lesbian cookery and she asked whether that's even a Thing. I am making my own Things here! First in the series will be a look at the gastronomic lives of the Ladies of Llangollen, a pair of Irish lesbos who ran off to live together and, when their families stopped supporting them, borrowed money from friends so they could hire a gardener, a footman, two maids, and build a dairy on their property.

Lesbo at left via Jhlahl Drut. At right, the ladies of Llangollen at table
via the NYPL.

Dinner and a movie. I'm going to continue doing posts on this theme (e.g. this one about The Trouble With Harry). Next in the series will be The Landlord, a 1970 Hal Ashby movie starring Beau Bridges as a young rich guy who buys a brownstone in Park Slope thinking he's going to evict all the tenants and fix himself a cool place to live. (I don't think I'll spoil the movie for you if I tell you he runs into a bit of trouble). If you have any suggestions in the meantime regarding Park Slope soul food I'd love to hear from you.

What I've been smoking. In my stove-top smoker. Pecan-smoked pecans are not redundant; applewood-smoked carrots are delicious. I'll smoke pretty much anything. If there is something you want to see smoked and it'll fit in my smoker, I will consider smoking it. Think about it.

Foodmusic. Music about, for, and on special occasions emitted by food.

Pineapple mania. Pineapple is my favorite fruit and I've long been planning to grow a pineapple at home from discarded pineapple parts. I keep letting them dry out too long for that, but I remain hopeful that one day soon I'll get my act together. In the meantime I've been collecting interesting pineapple recipes (in anticipation of a bumper crop, obviously) and I can go through store-bought pineapples like no one's business. I'm feeling like now is a good time to start a batch of tepache, a lightly-fermented Mexican pineapple drink made with spices and beer, which Wikipedia helpfully tells us is "commonly made by inmates in Mexican prison" and is "sometimes" prepared by housewives.

Bromella ananas grows like this, whether in Hawaii or an apt. in Harlem.

Illustration via the NYPL.

Unpiling my pile of books. I'll continue reviewing of out-of-print cookbooks like this one (The California Artists Cookbook) and that one (New York Entertains by the Junior League of the City of New York) but I'm excited about branching out a bit and writing about newer books too. Not just cookbooks but food-related books generally.

In coming months I'll be blogging about my stack of vintage Time-Life books

from the series The Good Cook. There were some great contributors

who worked on this series (e.g. Richard Olney and Jane Grigson)

and they've got very chic endpapers too.

Making notes on The L.L. Bean Book of New New England Cookery,

which has to be one of Judith Jones's least-known books.

Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art

Other stuff. None of the categories above really reflect the way I've been cooking and eating and taking photos and making notes, mental and otherwise, the entire time this blog has been dormant. I've got a backlog that needs clearing! Don't worry, I won't try to make you eat Thanksgiving pies in August.

from top: strawberry-black pepper cookies; Barboncino leftovers for breakfast;

duck with gooseberry chutney; herb-y duck fat popover;

biscuit experiment; mystery cranberry dessert

________________

* If the title of this post rang a bell that's possibly because you've forgotten you have the Buzzcocks first album on vinyl? First if you don't count that EP. Now is a good time to dust off either one and have a listen.