My father designed the BRUTE during the sixties, the Golden Age of plastics. It came out in 1968, just one year after movie goers heard Mr. McGuire, in The Graduate, give Benjamin Braddock the career tip of a lifetime in a single word: plastics. At that time, the then glamorous material was the promise for the future: it could answer all design problems, more inexpensively, and make the world a better place.

Today we know that’s not true. We know the opposite is true—that plastics are the source of many of the earth’s problems, affecting the health of the planet and her inhabitants on a macro and micro level.

The BRUTE would be a fitting object to include in a Smithsonian exhibit contrasting the zeal for plastic in that era with the present fallout. What was thought to be an inherent good by many leading ultimately to unintended consequences. Can we solve the problem of plastics? This problem we created for ourselves.

Now that the Commander-in-Chief has become a curator of the Smithsonian Institution, that exhibit would surely not occur. It’s too negative, too realistic, and too anti-business. The ideologically correct exhibit would be a look at the innovative Golden Age of Plastics, celebrating iconic design achievements, like the BRUTE, and that is all.

Ironically, this new development of President-as-Curator could help to give my father’s innovative design more time, maybe permanent time, on the museum floor. Since it’s big, it could help to fill up holes in exhibition space created by the removal of other objects that tell the problematic history of America. Such as a “White’s Only” public bathroom sign, a relic from America’s apartheid past.

In the aim of focusing entirely on objects that tell a positive story of the United States, perhaps President Trump will issue an executive order to bring all BRUTES off the Smithsonian’s loading docks and inside the institution’s walls, where they can live out their slow-to-degrade 1,000-year lifespan in complete inutility.

The post The Brute appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

BASQUE CHICKEN HAS LONG had its Nashville hot chicken moment. To get it, you no longer have to go to its place of origin, the Pays Basque in the southwest corner of France. It is a beloved national dish, so commonplace that it’s easy to find as a convenient, grab-and-go food in grocery stores all over France.

Last winter, my husband and I ate a lot of the stuff. We were living in France, in the Loire Valley, some 560 kilometers northeast of the Basque region. We spent much of our time redoing the kitchen in a sixteenth-century house my husband bought more than twenty years ago. To eat, we set up a makeshift kitchen in a small, unused room on the top floor, equal in height and number of steps to climb to a fourth floor in a modern American house. It was a hike.

During the nearly two-month-long renovation, I grew fond of the room’s rustic charm. Its uneven floor is laid with terracotta tiles, now desiccated, with many cracked or near to crumbling, all very old. Some of the 6-inch-square tiles show the clear impression of paw prints, capturing a moment in dog’s life centuries ago.

The two outer walls of the room, facing west and north, are constructed of off-white to light gray stones of various sizes: most large, and some extra-large, from the days of giants, but small ones, too, put here and there to fill in irregular-shaped gaps. The white plastered ceiling angles in, running at a quick pace up the 50-degree-pitched roof to the 40-meter-high ridge.

During the short, often cloudy winters days, light filters in dimly through three fenestrations: first, through a skylight in the east side of the roof, the highest opening in the house, illuminating a fourth-floor loft space before it works its way down to the small room; through a skylight in the west-facing side of the roof, placed lower down from the one on the east side and located in the room itself; and third, through a seemingly whimsical 6-inch-square opening punched high up into the north side of the foot-thick masonry wall, an ancient vent from the time the room was used to store food, now glazed.

The “kitchen” consisted of a piece of plywood resting on saw horses, on which we arranged a toaster oven, microwave, electric water kettle, and two-eye countertop burner. We ate at a counter set up against the opposite wall, made from one of the long planks of board that had served as a shelf in the old kitchen. A dorm-size fridge allowed us to keep meats and other perishables chilled. Down the hall, an unheated room served as pantry, produce bin, and cheese and wine cellar. We washed dishes on our knees in a plastic basin set inside a bathtub one floor below.

The Super U supermarket in Chissay-en-Touraine, France, where I discovered Basque chicken.

My reduced cooking circumstances led me to a previously ignored food source: the prepared foods counter at the local super market. It was there that I discovered Basque chicken, or Poulet basquaise, a braised dish made of chicken pieces, bell peppers, onions and often garlic, tomatoes, Bayonne ham (the traditional smoked ham of the Pays Basque), and the Basque chili pepper known as piment d’Espelette. Using our countertop burner, I’d make some riz de Camargue (a flavorful rice grown in the Camargue region of France, south of Arles), heat up the Basque chicken in the toaster oven, and voilà: a complete meal with meat and vegetables in one.

Thanks to the surprisingly good quality of reasonably priced prepared foods available at French supermarket chains and the even better quality of prepared foods at the small, artisanal shops known as charcutiers/traiteurs, I learned that you can eat very well during a French kitchen renovation, even with just a toaster oven.

But you can eat better yet if you’re lucky enough to have a generous neighbor who is an excellent cook. Knowing we were without a working kitchen, our neighbor Odette Podevin brought us serving after serving of whatever beautifully prepared dish she had made extra of for that day’s lunch for herself and her husband, Roger. Thanks to her, we ate rabbit stew, a creamy casserole of endives wrapped in ham and topped with béchamel and Gruyère, veal stew with tomatoes and mushrooms (Veau Marengo), beef bourguignon, leeks in vinaigrette, dauphinois potatoes (a creamy and lightly garlicky potato gratin made with crème fraiche), and so much more on that plank of wood set up on saw horses in the attic.

1990 edition, the one Odette owns

Odette is a true goddess of cooking and my inspiration for learning French home cooking, or la cuisine familiale. She is also the reason I came to know of the cookbook Je Sais Cuisiner, or I Know How to Cook, by Ginette Mathiot. It is the one and only cookbook she uses and after coming to love her and her cooking (I’m not sure which first), I wanted to own the very same edition of the exact same book. I placed a special order for the out-of-print 1990 edition Odette owns at a bouquiniste (used book seller) in the nearby town of Montrichard. (Odette’s edition has been eclipsed by three editions now, and will soon be eclipsed by a fourth.)

When Odette first showed me her copy of Je Sais Cuisiner, I had no idea of its importance in French home cooking. Much like our Joy of Cooking, it is considered the bible of French home cooking, comprehensive in scope and practical in approach, and, like The Joy of Cooking, it has never been out of print. (Another synchronicity: the two books were first published in the early thirties, just one year apart.)

For added insurance against my imperfect comprehension of French, I picked up a copy of the 2009 English translation of the book, published by Phaidon and overseen by food writer Clotilde Dusoulier. (I secured my copy from Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, my favorite American “bouquiniste” specializing in cookbooks.)

English translation, published 2009

BACK IN THE STATES, looking for a recipe to use up an opened bottle of white wine lingering in the back of the fridge, I turned to my editions of Je Sais Cuisiner, first the 2009 English translation, and then the 1990 French edition. In the index, listed under white wine, I found a recipe for Basque chicken, and immediately recalled the comfort the tasty, hot dish provided, eaten while huddled in our French attic kitchen on gray winter days.

I noticed a couple of differences between the two editions. First, placement: In the 1990 edition of Je Sais Cuisiner, the recipe for Basque chicken is stuck at the back of the book in a special chapter devoted to the regional specialties of France, organized alphabetically by place name. In the 2009 English translation of the book, the recipe is moved front and center to the poultry chapter to claim its place alongside of other popular fowl dishes. Was this move made to reflect the dish’s new nation-wide popularity? I assumed so.

The second difference, a small but notable change, is in the recipe itself: In the 1990 edition, the cooking medium used is lard (saindoux). In the 2009 edition, it is changed to olive oil (huile d’olive). Was the change in the English version made to reflect changes in attitude about lard, or perhaps to make the recipe more authentic? I assumed so.

From left to right: 1990 Fr. ed., 2009 Eng. transl., 2013 Fr. ed. Besides the reorganization of some recipes, one of the other differences between the French and English editions is the greater page count and overall size of the latter. Bulked out with photographs and more white space on the text pages, the English edition weighs about 5½ pounds, more than four times that of the bricklike French edition, and balloons out to 7½ by 11 inches, from the 5 by 7¾-inch trim size of the French.

CAN YOU USE THE LIFE STORY of a book, published in numerous editions over the course of eighty-seven years, to tell the story of a dish? In this case, to pinpoint when Basque chicken had its Nashville hot chicken moment, and to pinpoint when changes in attitude about using saturated animal fats led to dropping lard in favor of oil, presuming this is the reason for the change. This is what I had to find out.

Is Mathiot’s choice of lard traditional? I really can’t say, since everything I know first-hand about Basque chicken is thanks to the prepared foods counter at Super U in Chissay-en-Touraine, France, and the recipe in Je Sais Cuisiner. From where I sit right now, in Richmond, Virginia, it’s difficult to know for sure. Most online recipes use olive oil; when I Googled “Basque chicken” and “lard,” not a single reference came up to confirm the use of lard, save one in a Rough Guides description of Basque country cuisine, which describes Poulet basquaise this way: pieces of chicken browned in pork fat and casseroled in a sauce of tomato, ground Espelette chillis, onions, and a little white wine.

But trustworthy food authorities like Paula Wolfert, Elizabeth David, and Waverly Root all suggest lard as a traditional cooking medium of the Pays Basque, except along the coast, David adds, where olive oil is used to cook fish and seafood. Root says animal fats, butter, and oil are all three used in the Southwest region of France, which befuddles his neat and tidy premise for understanding the cooking of France in his book The Food of France via the type of fat used.

I vote for sticking with lard. That’s how I made it, and it was delicious and lent the sauce a luscious velvety texture. The 1990 edition was the last one published in Mathiot’s lifetime (she passed away in 1998). I like to think of her holding out for lard, against the “health food” naysayers, to stay true to tradition. I suppose that if it weren’t for Mathiot, the change from lard to oil would have likely occurred earlier. In the very next edition published after Mathiot’s passing, the cooking medium was changed to oil, though not to olive oil, simply oil.

To confirm my hunch that Basque chicken rose in popularity sometime between 1990 and 2009, I had only to get my hands on a copy of the 2013 French edition, the first one to come out after the 2009 English translation. If the French editors moved the recipe to the heart of the book, then I’ll know the location change had been made to reflect the recipe’s new status as a favorite throughout France, and was not just a whim of an American editor.

2013 edition

But I was wrong once. The recipe for Basque chicken is still in the back of the book in the Regional Recipes (Recettes Régionales) chapter.

Then it dawned on me. I was thinking like an American. Presented with recipes in a special chapter at the back of a cookbook, I would tend to think of them as ancillary, of secondary important to the recipes in the main part of the book. As a result, I might overlook them entirely. It must be for that reason that in the English translation the recipe for Basque chicken was moved from the back of the book. In fact, perhaps that explains why the entire chapter of regional recipes vanished from the English version, and other key recipes, like Cassoulet from Languedoc, were uprooted and moved front and center to their appropriate chapter, such as Fish, Meat, Poultry, and so on. (Ironically, a new chapter called “Menus by Celebrated Chefs” is added to the back of the English edition; it features menus and French bistro-style recipes from “some of the world’s best chefs.” This addition seems out of character with the cuisine familiale spirit of the book, but in keeping with America’s obsession with celebrity chefs.)

But the French care about terroir. Regardless of how popular a dish has become throughout France, the recipe for it, in this case Basque chicken, the sole representative of the cuisine of the Pays Basque in Je Sais Cuisiner, remains at the back of the book, lodged to its place of origin and its story. A new edition of Je Sais Cuisiner comes out next week. My guess is that a regional recipes chapter will be included at the back of the book, and that that is where you will find the recipe for Basque chicken. Unless, that is, me and my little webs of cross-cultural assumptions are once again proven wrong.

Since the book’s organization won’t tell me when Basque chicken became a national hit, perhaps tracking the edition in which the recipe first appears is the way. Because it’s not there from the start. At some point, Ginette Mathiot and her editor at Éditions Albin Michel must have decided Basque chicken deserved a place in Je Sais Cuisiner. But when? A phone call here, and an interlibrary loan there, and eventually I’ve was able to verify that the very first Je Sais Cuisiner to include a recipe for Basque chicken is the 1965 edition. That means Basque chicken had its Nashville hot chicken moment more than fifty years ago, that is, if you can use the life span of a book, now nearly as long as its author, to tell a story about a recipe.

Editions and Book Covers

This table charts the history of the recipe for Basque chicken in Je Sais Cuisiner as well as in the 2009 English translation of the same title and in one edition of La Cuisine Pour Tous. This table represents just a portion of Ginette Mathiot’s prolific output. She took the “Je sais . . . ” theme and ran with it: There was Je sais faire la patisserie (I know how to make pastry), Je sais faire les conserves (I know how to do canning), Je sais cuisiner autour du monde (I know how to cook from around the world), Je sais cuisiner en vacances: camping, caravaning, yachting (I know how to cook on vacation: camping, caravanning, boating), and many other titles as well, totaling about thirty. It’s confusing, keeping them all straight. Adding to the confusion, it appears as though the earliest edition of Je Sais Cuisiner was reprinted with different covers, though the same edition. To top it all off, when you Google “Je Sais Cuisiner,” it brings up a Wikipedia page titled “La cuisine pour tous,” which the authors of the page suggest is the same book as Je Sais Cuisiner, simply retitled.

First edition, published in 1932 (Photo credit: Bauman Rare Books)

Printed in 1949. Is this a new edition, as claimed on the cover, or simply a reprinting of the first edition? I would assume the latter because 1949 is not one of the previous edition years noted on the copyright page in post-1949 editions of the book (the edition years jump from ’32 to ’59). It is confounding.

Cover for 1965 edition (cropped). This same photo seems to have been used in mulitple printings, including the subsequent 1984 edition.

1955 edition

1959 edition

2002 edition

Recipe for Basque chicken (poulet basquaise)

This recipe is meant for summer, when bell peppers and tomatoes worth eating pile up on farmer’s market tables. But the bit of sunshine Basque chicken brings to a gloomy winter day, in the Loire Valley or elsewhere, is always welcome. If making this off-season, the solution is to use canned tomatoes instead of the fresh that’s called for in Mathiot’s recipe. For the bell peppers, however, unless you live in a climate favorable to growing them year-round, the best solution is to tuck this recipe away until summer when tomatoes, peppers, and other “légumes du soleil” (“vegetables of the sun”), such as zucchini and eggplant, are abundant and have their best flavor.

Aside from using canned tomatoes, I added a few touches to the recipe to make it my own. Knowing how my neighbor Odette does things in the kitchen, I added the step of seasoning the meat well with salt and pepper before browning it (Odette uses so much powder-y black pepper when seasoning meat, that it often induces a sneezing fit), and, in deference to Odette’s tendency to brown her food well to extract as much flavor as possible, I added the step of browning the bell peppers and mushrooms before adding the braising liquid rather than adding them at the same time as the liquid. For convenience, I changed the meat from a whole chicken to thighs, saving the step of breaking down the chicken.

Mathiot’s recipe does not include onions or garlic, though both, especially onions, are usually included in Basque chicken. Her recipe doesn’t suffer for the lack of them, but adding some chopped onion or a little minced garlic or both would not be amiss.

Ingredients

• 3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
• Salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons lard (see Note)
• 4 large or 6 small green bell peppers, seeded and quartered (if large) or halved (if small)
• 6 ounces cremini or button mushrooms, sliced
• 5 ounces smoked ham, finely diced
• 1 pound fresh tomatoes, seeded and diced, or 1 (14½-ounce) can diced tomatoes (see Note)
• 2/3 cup white wine

For serving:

• Cooked rice
• Pan sauce (from above)
• Ground piment d’Espelette or homemade substitution (see Note)
• Finely chopped fresh parsley

Method

1. Preheat a braiser, oval Dutch oven, or large, heavy sauté pan with a lid over medium heat.
2. Pat the chicken pieces very dry with paper towels, then season them well on all sides with salt and pepper.
3. When the pot is giving off heat, put the lard or olive oil in the pot and turn the heat up to medium-high. When the fat or oil is hot, but not yet smoking, add the chicken thighs skin side down and pan-fry until the thighs are well browned, about 12 minutes, turning once. Fry the chicken in batches if needed so as not to overcrowd.
4. Remove the chicken from the pot to a plate and turn the heat up to high. Put the bell peppers in the pot and let them sit, undisturbed, for a minute or so, just until they start to brown and blister in spots. Flip the pepper pieces over and sear in the same way on the other side.
5. Stir in the mushrooms and cook until they begin to brown in spots (they will absorb much of the cooking fat in the process). Add the smoked ham, tomatoes and their juices, and wine and season lightly with salt and pepper. Give everything a stir, then return the chicken to the pot along with any accumulated juices. Nestle the chicken pieces down into the pepper and tomato mixture, then cover and turn the heat down to medium-low to maintain a gentle simmer. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 30 minutes. Remove everything from the pot, except the cooking liquid. Turn the heat up to medium and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, to make a pan sauce.
6. Serve the chicken and vegetables over rice with the rich, flavorsome sauce spooned over the top of it all. Garnish with a pinch or two of ground piment d’Espelette (or homemade substitute) and chopped fresh parsley. (Serves 6)

Notes: If you do not care to use lard as the cooking fat, olive oil would be an equally good choice, following the lead of many recipe writers and given that is used in the Pays Basque and that the land of olive oil is not too terribly far to the east.

The smoked ham and piment d’Espelette give the dish a subtle smokiness. To push the smoke profile forward, use fire-roasted canned diced tomatoes. That is what I did, to use up what I had in my pantry; the extra smokiness suits my American palate just fine. You could accomplish the same thing with fresh tomatoes by charring them under the broiler until the skins are blistered and blackened, then remove the skins before seeding and dicing them.

Piment d’Espelette can be special ordered, or you can make a rough approximation using a combination of Hungarian paprika, smoked Spanish paprika, and cayenne pepper, which is what I did (see below).

To make faux ground piment d’Espelette, blend together Hungarian paprika, smoked Spanish paprika, and cayenne pepper, using a ratio of about two-thirds Hungarian paprika and one-third smoked Spanish paprika and a miniscule amount of cayenne pepper. You want the blend to be sweet and lightly smoky with just hint of chili heat. The texture won’t be the same—Piment d’Espelette is coarsely ground, not powder-y like paprika and cayenne pepper—but all the same, it will enhance the flavor and appearance of the dish with a pretty dusting of color.

Resources

Reading

Online:

To read about Odette Podevin, click here, here, here, and here.

To view the entire contents of the 1955 edition of La Cuisine Pour Tous online, click here.

To read more of the Rough Guides entry on Basque country cuisine, click here.

Books:

The Food of France by Waverly Root

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

The Cooking of Southwest France by Paula Wolfert

Book stores referenced in posting

Kolkobook Bouquiniste (Montrichard, France)

Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks (New York, New York, USA)

Basque chicken in the movies

Basque chicken even gets a star place in cinema. In the 2015 film Lolo, when Violette, a successful art director of Parisian fashion shows, must come up with a second dish to woo her new lover from Biarritz, having already made for him her sole signature dish of Lemon Chicken, she picks Basque chicken. It turns out to be a good choice. To watch the clip, click here.

Merci Beaucoup

I owe a special thanks to several librarians in libraries far and wide who spent time scooping old editions of Je Sais Cuisiner off of library stacks, leafing through them and telling me their findings over the phone and with follow-up emails and scanned pages:

Renée Roger-Saito

Alliance Française Library, Chicago

Cecile Vivant

French Institute / Alliance Française Library, New York

Raven Fonfa

Conrad N. Hilton Library, The Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York

And at the Richmond Public Library in Richmond, Virginia, my local library, I owe a special thanks to Lynn Vandenesse who secured an older edition of Je Sais Cuisiner for me via interlibrary loan.

Thanks also to my friend, Rosemary Kneipp, who in late January ventured out on a wintery day to a bookstore in Blois, France, to answer my questions about the recipe for Basque chicken in the 2013, and then still current, edition of Je Sais Cuisiner, thereby saving me from having to buy another edition of the book. My hope was she’d be able to inconspicuously peak inside a copy, discreetly jot down her findings in small Moleskine notepad, and then relay them to me. Unfortunately, the book was out of stock. The book buyer had let the 2013 copies sell out, and had no plans to order more since the then not-yet-published 2019 was due out in in March. (A translator by trade [click here to go to her professional site], Rosemary shares wonderful commentary about France in her personal blog, Aussie in France.)

Finally, a big thanks to Odette Podevin for inspiring me to learn about French home cooking, and for taking me under her wing in her kitchen, where, through our shared love of food and cooking, we’re able to communicate, despite my elementary-school-girl command of her native tongue.

The post I Know How To Cook Basque Chicken appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

One Friday morning, in early December, Mike and I drove out of Richmond, Virginia, heading west and south toward Knoxville, Tennessee.

As we rode, we listened to Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, a novel set in Knoxville in the early 1950s. Its epic length requires more than a drive to Knoxville and back to hear the whole thing, even when taking a slightly longer return route, through North Carolina, to eat a barbecue lunch.

All of the writing in Suttree is vivid, overflowing its pages. Crossing over from Virginia into Tennessee, we heard a particularly visceral passage about Knoxville’s Market Street that made me long for a less sanitized America, the one before I was born:

Market Street on Monday morning, Knoxville Tennessee. In this year nineteen fifty-one. Sutt with his parcel of fish going past the rows of derelict trucks piled with produce and flowers, an atmosphere rank with country commerce, a reek of farmgoods in the air tending off into a light surmise of putrefaction and decay. Pariahs adorned the walk and blind singers and organists and psalmists with mouth harps wandered up and down. Past hardware stores and meat markets and little tobacco shops. A strong smell of feed in the hot noon air like working mash. Mute and roosting pedlars watching from their wagonbeds and flower ladies in their bonnets like cowled gnomes, driftwood hands composed in their apron laps and their underlips swollen with snuff. He went among vendors and beggars and wild street preachers haranguing a lost world with a vigor unknown to the sane. Suttree admired them with their hot eyes and dogeared bibles, God’s barkers gone forth into the world like prophets of old…

When we arrived in Knoxville that evening, we found a rainy city bedecked for Christmas, its lights reflected in its biggest ornament, the shiny gold Sunsphere thrusting 266 feet skyward, a remnant of the 1982 World’s Expo. The downtown and center city were populated with patrons and browsers of fine restaurants, brew pubs, “speakeasies,” juice bars, coffee shops, and a smattering of boutique-y retail shops, including a bookstore with copies of Suttree and other Cormac McCarthy novels on its shelves.

On Market Street, now a pedestrian mall, families skated on a holiday-themed rink to a D.J.’s selection of appropriate jingles. Just feet away was a huge block of stone with the before-mentioned passage inscribed.

My cousin Joseph’s wedding took us to Knoxville, but we gave ourselves extra time on either side of the event to eat at local restaurants and diners and to take in the town. During one of our wanderings, we ended up in a renovated brick-built train depot and met a photographer there, who, while waiting for Santa and children to arrive, had time to tell us about the town’s motto, “Keep Knoxville Scruffy,” and how it was born after a Wall Street Journal writer, visiting Knoxville in 1980 to report on the next World’s Expo Fair location, dismissed Knoxville as a “a scruffy little city on the Tennessee River.”

For dinner that Friday, the day before the wedding, we had burgers at Littons. It’s famous for them, and has been serving them on their homemade buns since the early sixties. Other things it’s famous for are pies and cakes and homemade blue cheese dressing; you can choose the latter to dress a salad or you can order it as a dip served with individually wrapped Caption’s Wafers crackers. The burger deserves a story of its own, as does the blue cheese dressing (just how did blue cheese dressing, especially Roquefort dressing, become a thing in Tennessee?). But it’s the pinto beans I want to talk about here: They were one of the sides, and were described simply as “pinto beans,” giving no indication of the preparation; I quickly learned that when you see “pinto beans” on a menu in the South, it means “soup beans”—not soup, but beans simmered with some sort of pork product for seasoning and served with their liquid-y broth, or pot liquor.

After the wedding, we fit in meals at a cafeteria-style restaurant called Chandler’s, known for its fried chicken and other traditional southern dishes, and at Pete’s Restaurant, a downtown spot popular for breakfast and lunch. Pinto beans showed up as side options at both places, and at Pete’s “white beans,” too.

We traveled back to Richmond taking the southern route so that we could stop mid-day in Lexington, North Carolina, home of Western North Carolina–style’Que. We found a lovely, old-fashioned market in downtown Lexington that sells all sorts of regional specialties: liver pudding, pimento cheese by the pound, several brands of local breakfast sausage, chitlin’s, Moravian cookies, pickles and relish of all types, water-blanched North Carolina peanuts, and so on. A huge barrel filled to the brim with dried creamy-colored speckled beans sat near the check-out counter. Thrust down into the beans was a large metal scoop and a sign that read “New Crop Pinto Beans”—a sign to me that I needed to get some pinto beans and make a pot when we returned home.

I asked a friendly looking man at the store, the owner I sensed, to tell me all about “new crop” pinto beans. He said they’re dried, just like regular dried Pintos, but are a little faster cooking and their flavor is more delicate (and for this, he said, they have their devotees). He said that though he likes pintos prepared the traditional way, with a ham hock, lately he’s taken to cooking his pintos in a slow cooker with chicken broth.

After we returned home to Richmond, with my bag of new crop pintos, I searched in my Southern cookbooks and online for pinto bean recipes. For my first pot, I decided to go the traditional route, with the hock. I did, however, add two nontraditional touches: thyme and shallot. (I’ve come up with the notion of late that I want to create a blend of French and Southern home cooking, adding touches of one to the other.)

Reading up on pintos beans, I learned that, along with cornbread, chow-chow relish is a traditional accompaniment for the dish in many parts of the South, particularly Appalachian parts. While I did grow up eating soups beans from time to time at my grandmother’s in Akron, Ohio, the addition of chow-chow relish was news to me. My grandmother was from Smithville, Tennessee, and she made her soup beans with navy beans and a piece of some sort of smoky, fatty pork—in essence, what’s called “white beans” at Pete’s Restaurant—and served them with skillet cornbread and maybe some chopped raw onion. (In Cormac McCarthy’s novel Suttree, when Suttree sits down to a pot of beans with a poor family, it’s a pot of “white beans,” not pintos. The family is so poor, they can’t even afford a piece of fatty pork to season the beans: Suttree, “light-headed with hunger . . .,” and hoping for some meat, “ . . . stirred them, but no trace of fat meat turned up.”)

In search of some homemade chow-chow relish to go with my pintos, I went to the farmer’s market, heading straight to a vendor I’d previously bought bread-and-bread pickles from. She had several jars. Traditionally, chow-chow is made with cabbage; hers was made with summer squash and was bright yellow. I told the woman at the table what my plans were for her chow-chow. “That’s just how my father eats it. He piles it on his pintos.” Her father is from Virginia, she said, just across from the North Carolina border, toward the Appalachian side, not the Tidewater side. She said she was familiar with pintos, prepared like soup beans, but the further south you go, the more common it is to see them. Digging for cooking secrets, I asked “Does your father add some chili heat to his pintos.” “I don’t know. I just show up to eat.”

I get that, now that I’ve eaten my first bowl pintos with chow-chow. It’s just plain good, country cooking, but it’s very worth showing up for.

The Recipe

Soup beans, whether made with pintos or navy beans, require crusty cornbread for sopping, or breaking up like croutons across the top. The type of cornbread that’s needed here is unsweetened, made in a cast-iron skillet to create a nice crust. In the recipe below, I’ve linked to my recipe for this style of cornbread; it calls for Bloody Butcher cornmeal because that is what I was experimenting with at the time, but any stone-ground cornmeal can be used.

Topping your beans with chow-chow relish is optional, but it’s a good idea. Sweet and vinegar-y, chow-chow adds a great accent to the spicy, smoky, pork-fat seasoned pintos, creating a delicious mélange of flavors in every bite of soft beans, flavorsome broth, and crusty cornbread.

1 pound dried pinto beans

1 tablespoon bacon grease

1/2 large onion, finely chopped

2 shallots, minced

5 sprigs fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (see Notes)

1 large or 2 small smoked ham hocks

Coarse sea salt

Cornbread, for serving

Chow-chow relish, for serving (see Notes)

1. Pick through the beans and discard any funky ones or pebbles or anything that shouldn’t be there. Place them in a large bowl and cover with water by at least 3 inches. Soak overnight, then drain and rinse.

2. Heat the bacon grease in heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat.

3. Add the onion and shallot and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes.

4. Add the beans and pour in water to cover by 1 inch. Stir in the thyme, bay leaves, black pepper, and cayenne pepper, then add the ham hock, nestling it down among the beans so that it’s covered by the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface, then partially cover the pot. Maintain a gentle simmer to slowly cook the beans until they’re completely tender but not mushy, about 45 minutes to 1 hour or more. (The exact cooking time will depend on how dried your beans were to start with and how long you presoaked them). When the beans are softened but not yet fully tender, about 45 minutes, season them with 1½ teaspoons of salt. Continue to simmer until fully tender, checking for doneness about every 5 minutes or so.

5. Discard the bay leaves and thyme stems and check the seasoning, adding more salt as needed. Remove the ham hock, then pull the meat of the hock, shred or cut it into small pieces, and return the meat to the pot.

6. Serve with cornbread and chow-chow.

Notes: The aim here is to have just a hint of chili pepper in the beans. So, if you’re not serving your beans with chow-chow, I suggest you use 1/16 teaspoon cayenne pepper so that the heat isn’t too forward. The exact amount depends, of course, on the potency of your cayenne pepper. The sweetness of the chow-chow balances the greater heat of 1/8 teaspoon quantity of cayenne pepper nicely. The other option is to use a hot chow-chow and omit the cayenne pepper from the beans.

If you can’t find chow-chow where you live, you can substitute finely chopped bread and butter pickles, or some other sweet pickle. I realize this may seem sacrilegious, but what you want is a touch of something sweet and vinegary to complement the spicy, smoky, and pork-fat enriched beans. The resulting blend of flavors works for the same reason barbecue is beloved: smoky, sweet, tangy, salty.

Resources

Union Avenue Books, Knoxville, Tennessee

Litton’s, Knoxville, Tennessee

Chandler’s Deli, Knoxville, Tennessee

Pete’s Restaurant, Knoxville, Tennessee

Conrad & Hinkle Food Market, Lexington, North Carolina

Bundy Heirloom Farm, Drakes Branch, Virginia (Purveyors of produce as well as homemade chow-chow, bread and butter pickles, and many other fine pickled/preserved things)

McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree. Narrated by Richard Poe. Recorded Books, 2012. Audiobook.

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P.S. This posting is dedicated to my cousin Joseph; if it weren’t for him, who knows if I would ever have learned about pinto beans and chow-chow, or about the southern Jennings sisters’ tradition of making boiled custard at holiday time.

P.P.S. (February 2019). Recently, I had a dental appointment with my hygienist, Jeanne Crigger. She and I share a love of food. This results in a more pleasurable session, even though Jeanne, like every other hygienist, wields sharp objects. Because I can’t talk when instruments are in my mouth, I make sure to ask Jeanne my big food question before she begins to work. During the brief second when Jeanne removes the implement she is at that moment using, I sneak in a follow-up question, or a whole new question, to keep the food stories rolling.

I get to sit back and hear how Jeanne prepares this food or that, or how she ate growing up in the small town of Wytheville (pronounced WITH-vill), located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southwest Virginia.

In this way, I learned that Jeanne ate soup beans with cornbread growing up, and still eats the same meal today, often made with pintos but other types of beans, too. It is a meal very much associated with Appalachian Virginia. When Jeanne came to Richmond in the seventies to go to dental school, she couldn’t find pinto beans to save her life.

I asked her, while she was reloading the tooth polishing tool, how she liked to eat her cornbread and soup beans. She said she prefers to slather her cornbread—which is always skillet cornbread—with butter and alternate bites of that with the beans. If she gets to the bottom of the bowl and there is some bean broth left, she’ll crumble the last of her piece of cornbread into the bowl and enjoy the last few bites that way. This resolves the dilemma of deciding which taste you want to be the last.

Finishing up her work, she paused and said with an air of reflection, “You know, I love a good bowl of beans and cornbread so much that if I had to choose a last meal, I think that it would have to be it.”

The post Pinto Beans with Cornbread and Chow-Chow appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

Yesterday, I arrived in Inverness, Florida. I’m here to visit my mother and Gary. One of the first things we’ll do, as soon as I’ve published this posting, is to head over to a nondescript strip mall on Highway 44 West where one of the most unique ice cream establishments in America is found: Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles.

During a previous trip to Inverness, I spent several hours with the owners, Lynn and Rudi Weber, they answering my many questions so that I could write something about them for this blog. It’s amazing what the reward of eating some very good ice cream, waffles, and crêpes, and visiting with two very likeable Belgians, will do for writer’s block.

The First Scoop

Lynn and Rudi sell their ice cream not only from their location on Highway 44 but also from a truck at special events around the state of Florida (and sometimes beyond). The latter was how I first sampled their ice cream—at the annual “People’s Choice” Food Competition held in downtown Inverness along the lake in April.

It was the tail end of the event, and only stragglers remained: the ones happy on beer who weren’t quite ready for the fun to end, and us, looking for an ice cream fix. Mom, Gary, and I were the last customers of the evening at the ice cream truck emblazoned with a sign that read “Lynn’s Real Homemade Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles.” The man with the foreign accent who filled our cones came out from the truck to stretch his legs and chat.

I could hardly contain myself, just couldn’t wait to tell him what I thought of his vanilla ice cream—the gold standard, the true test of quality behind which no faults can hide. His vanilla ice cream wasn’t too sweet—had no cloying or odd aftertaste—and had plenty of the heady flavor you only get from pure vanilla. The texture was perfect, too: creamy and dense yet not hard, nearly the consistency of a gelato.

“This vanilla ice cream is very good,” I gushed, as he approached us. He smiled a big smile.

“I use Bourbon vanilla seeds and pure vanilla extract. It’s the most expensive flavor I make.”

His comment struck me as ironic considering a lot of people overlook vanilla ice cream, think of it as a nothing flavor, not worth considering; it also reminded me of news I’d heard about there being a vanilla shortage, and that prices would increase dramatically,

My mom and Gary complimented him on the flavor both of them had chosen—butter pecan. He said he was glad they liked it, and then let us in on a secret. “What makes that a really good butter pecan are the pecans. They aren’t ordinary pecans. They’re gourmet roasted and caramelized pecans that I special order.”

The Second Scoop

Standing outside of the ice cream truck, Rudi Weber had said a few things about doing business in the U.S. that intrigued me, and I wanted to hear more. A few days later, my mom and I visited his brick-and-mortar venue so that I could interview him. We had the place to ourselves; he had us over on the day of the week when he typically makes ice cream, when the shop is closed.

Rudi Weber of Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles, at his shop

It’s at the shop where you get a sense of Rudi’s creativity. In the truck, due to size limitations, he can offer only six flavors. At the shop, he has about 25 rotating flavors on offer, many unique. But the total number he’s developed so far is more than fifty.

When we walked in, he was finishing up a batch of ice cream. He showed me the fresh ice cream mix he uses, delivered weekly from St. Petersburg–based Dairy-Mix, Inc., and the all-natural flavoring and other high-quality ingredients he was using to make the day’s flavor. I felt a flash of disappointment, or was it the bruising of my ego: Do I have lousy taste buds? Not refined enough to tell the difference between with an ice cream made entirely from scratch and one made with a premade base? I long for the from-scratch version of everything in life, but I’m forced to acknowledge this: just because something is premade, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily of inferior quality.

Since the invention of ice cream, professionals today have a lot of short-cuts available to them, and premade fresh ice cream mix is one of them. Rudi takes advantage of this short-cut, without sacrificing flavor, letting someone else make the base so that he can focus on being the flavor-meister that he is, and to better manage, with the help of his wife, Lynn, all of the other details of running a business. Lynn’s domain is making the homemade cones as well as the dough and batter for the waffles and crêpes and cooking them when orders come in, as well as running the entire shop when Rudi is out at an event with the truck.

Menu board at Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles

The Big Scoop: It’s Much More than an Ice Cream “Shop”

Lynn and Rudi are from Antwerp, and it’s their Belgian roots that makes their establishment so special. First off is the concept of the place: It’s modeled after a European café where you might linger over a sweet treat in the company of others and cap it all off with a small cup of bracing, roast-y espresso.

Other differences: The ice cream is not stored in or scooped from a display case while you stand by; Rudi says the open air of a dipping counter promotes the formation of ice crystals. Instead, your order is taken at the counter, sent on a ticket to the kitchen, where it is prepared, and brought to your table on glass or ceramic dishware—no paper or plastic here. Ice cream cones are presented in an elegant stand.

Besides this being an entirely civilized way to enjoy a serving of ice cream, you avoid the always awkward money-for-ice-cream exchange at ice cream counters that nobody has enough hands for.

Serving of ice cream at Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles

The other way that Lynn’s Ice Cream and Belgian Waffles is not like a typical ice cream shop is the Weber’s policy on ice cream samples: there are none, or nearly none. Rudi told me that originally, they offered samples but in time saw too many people abusing the spirit of the free taste, trying ten flavors and then walking out, without deciding on one and making a purchase. After you’ve placed your order, however, they will happily bring you a generous sample size of that second flavor you were waffling on.

The Belgian touch can be seen throughout: in specific ice cream flavors, notably Black Licorice and Belgian Cookie (made with Lotus Biscoff Cookies); in the ingredients used (for example, for their chocolate flavor, they use Callebaut chocolate, a Belgian brand); and of course, in the homemade waffles and crêpes, made using traditional recipes and ingredients.

If you want to know what a good Belgian waffle is outside of Belgium, have a Belgian cook make one for you. Lynn makes two types, the Liège and the Brussels, each made in its own type of waffle iron. The latter is the type most familiar to Americans, what we call a “Belgian” waffle. Except that the Webers’ version—with its pale golden color and incredibly delicate texture and good flavor (thanks to the fresh yeast used in the dough)—far exceeds any Belgian waffle I’ve had in the States. When dusted with powdered sugar, de rigueur in Belgium, and perhaps topped with a dollop of whipped cream, popular in Belgium, eating the Brussels is like eating an éclair or some other fine pastry with an airy interior and lightly crispy exterior. (A photo of the Brussels waffle on Rudi and Lynn’s site shows its airiness far better than my snapshot quality photos [click here to see what I mean]).

The ethereal Brussels waffle

The Liège waffle is the dense cousin of the feather-light Brussels; I have to say I prefer its satisfyingly chewy texture and well browned exterior. It is made with a special ingredient: Belgian Pearl sugar, small balls of sugar that are mixed right into the dough and caramelize and sweeten the waffle from the inside out. No need to dust powdered sugar on this one. It’s perfect as is. On their site, Lynn and Rudi saythat the Liege waffle “can make the world feel right again on the dreariest of days.” I agree.

And the crêpes? They are crêperfect: thin, flavorful, and lightly sweetened and flavored with Belgian vanilla sugar. They are made on a crêpe plate, the traditional way. You can top the crêpes with American pancake syrup if you like, but I’d go for a drizzle of the much more interesting Belgian candy syrup called Candico. It very dark and thick and much less sweet than it sounds: the taste is a balance of sweet and bitter, making molasses the best comparison, but that’s not quite right; it’s subtler than that and has a taste all its own.

A Belgian crepe dusted with powdered sugar, with Candico candy syrup on the side

Naturally, the menu board also reflects Rudi and Lynn’s current home, 4,500 miles from their old one. Aside from the Belgian-focused flavors, the other ice cream flavors can be divided in three basic categories: the standard classics that everyone wants, such as vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, and so on; the old-fashioned flavors, such as butter pecan, maple walnut, candy cane, orange pineapple (many of these Rudi developed in response to requests from their older clientele); and the original “Rudi”-inspired flavors. These are clearly the work of a mad man mixologist. Many feature the use of liqueurs and liquors, like amaretto, Grand Marnier, Irish cream, Kahlúa, limoncello, rum. There is even a beer-flavored ice cream (Guinness). He adds plenty of touches to take his flavors from ordinary to extraordinary: For the Limoncello flavor, he uses his own house-made limoncello; for the Grand Marnier flavor, in addition to the liqueur, he uses fresh orange zest and juice; for the Rum and Raisins flavor, he soaks the raisins in Myers’s rum and then purees some of the raisins and adds that to the ice cream base, along with the whole raisins, to make sure customers get the flavor of the rum-soaked raisins throughout, in each and every bite.

Rudi’s process is that of a passionate ice cream zealot (an attribute I personally like to see in my local ice cream entrepreneur). Each new ice cream flavor undergoes lots and lots of trial runs, long before the public gets to taste it. Then, once Rudi is satisfied with it, he will take it out for a test drive, offering tastes to his regular customers. He will tweak it further based on their feedback, and then once again have his customers do taste tests. He does this until everyone feels the flavor is perfect. If just one person doesn’t like it, the flavor goes back to his test kitchen.

To get the full experience at Lynn’s Ice Cream, and to meet Lynn, the waffle- and crêpe-maker, we returned later in the week during regular business hours. I wanted to hear more from Lynn and Rudi about a particular challenge they are facing, one that no American-born ice cream entrepreneur would need to contend with.

Migrant Entrepreneurs

“Doing business is paradise here,” said Rudi. Here being the United States. He ought to know. Before coming to the States, Rudi already had 30-odd-years’experience working for himself, running various types of businesses back in Belgium, including restaurants.

Lynn and Rudi Weber at Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles

Rudi found it difficult, as a small entrepreneur, to run a profitable business in Belgium.  “The labor laws and taxation are crippling business owners,” he said. “It’s unsustainable.”

In search of a better climate for doing business, and sunshine (Belgium can be very gray in the winter, Lynn added), Rudi and Lynn came to the Florida at the beginning of 2013 on an E-2 Investor Visa. Their first visa was for good for five years. In December of last year, Rudi traveled back to Belgium to apply for a renewal, while Lynn stayed back to run the business. They assumed they would be granted another five-year visa. They had proven themselves: they’d opened a successful business, bought a home, employed Americans, and had been true to the promise that all E-2 visa holder must make—to not take advantage of charity of any kind. But they were given just a one-year renewal, too short a time to make any real plans for the business. Since then, they are in a waiting game, and feel their lives, and their plans for the business, are on hold.

Rudi and Lynn chalk up the change between 2013 and 2017 to the Trump administration’s much stricter immigration policies. They appreciate the need for border controls (they feel that is one of the issues that the European Union, with its open borders policy, has not got right), but only if implemented logically and on a case by case basis. They don’t understand why they are not being encouraged to stay: they pay taxes, they buy supplies for their business from other American business, they are law abiding. If at the end of this year they are granted another one-year visa, instead of the five-year visa they’re requesting, they say they may feel the need to leave the U.S. and start a business elsewhere, where they are welcomed. (Though they would not return to Belgium, they added.)

If they do leave the U.S. on account of the current administration’s immigration policy, that would be a real shame. I would miss their ice cream and waffles and dropping by for a visit when I’m in town. I know exactly what I’ll title my follow-up story: “Is ICE Freezing Out Ice Cream Makers?”

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Lynn and Rudi Weber, in front of their coffee board

My mother, myself, and Gary enjoying a smorgasbord of treats (including an espresso) at Lynn’s Ice Cream & Belgian Waffles in April of this year

The post Lynn’s Ice Cream and Belgian Waffles appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

From Turner Ham House in Fulk’s Run, Virginia, slowly cured ham, sliced luminescent-ly thin, salt and sugar preserved, deeply flavorful.

A gift for my family, by love and the color of blood, not skin.

Other gifts: a half-gallon of must-shake raw apple cider from Smith’s Fruit Market in Augusta, West Virginia, comfortingly tart; fresh-made biscuits from Bonnie Blue Bakery in Winchester, Virginia. Winchester, proclaimed apple capital of the world, is located in the Northern Shenandoah Valley at 39.1670° N, -78.1670° W, making it practically the most north-western spot in Jim Crow South.

To Bond Street, home of 95-year-old Mary Virginia Cook Cross, and her husband, Robert.

Mary is a black woman who made a life-long career of cleaning the houses of white families in Winchester, including ours. She cleaned our house in the early seventies when I was a girl of eight or nine. But house cleaning, though meticulously done, was not Mary’s true passion, and it’s not why I visit her today; it was, and is, children, and her love of them.

Mary married Robert Cross late in life, following a near-sixty-year-long courtship, having devoted several years of her adult life to caring for her aging parents. As a result, she didn’t have children of her own, but cared for the children in those same households where she worked.

Mary enlarged my life with her warmth. It was good to be around her, always something to look forward to. Mary made you feel special, accepted, valued. Her ways—kind, nonjudgmental, forbearing—allowed me to ask, shyly, if the color of her blood was the same as mine, and later to ask if I could attend church with her, at her church; ours was a white Presbyterian church, hers a black Baptist church.

During a recent visit with Mary, I recalled my memory of that Sunday service.

“Right. Mmmm hhhmmm. I took a lot of kids I worked with to my church.”

After a nanosecond flush of jealousy, and after the confused neurons in my brain fell back into place, the reality set in: Mary made countless children feel special and so at ease with her, that they too made the very same request, to go to her church, to know more about Mary and her life, her experience. We Winchester children are alumni, unknown to one other, all with the same vivid and warm memory of sitting beside Mary at her church.

I brought my voice recorder along for this visit—the ham, cider, and biscuits visit—with the plan to interview both Mary and Robert about their experiences, as African-Americans, growing up in the South in the twenties and thirties and into adulthood and middle age in the forties, fifties, and sixties.

During a previous visit in May, I’d interviewed Mary about her life, starting with her childhood, recording her easy-to-listen-to voice. I wanted this interview to be a follow-up to that one, this time asking pointed questions about racism.

But this visit, the recorder never came out the bag.

Now I’m glad it didn’t. The prompt: “Tell me about Racism, Mary” is like a sticking a video camera in somebody’s face at a wedding, with a headlamp directed on their face to illuminate it in a dim hall and the record button engaged, and saying “Do you have anything you’d like to say about the bride and groom.”

Without the recorder running, we casually talked about Winchester, family, and food. Mary finds Winchester not what it used to be. There is a problem with drugs, and a general lack of civility. “People used to treat each other nicer years ago, even blacks and whites,” she said. “I miss my parents, but I wouldn’t wish this world on them, not the way things are today.”

We returned to food. We always do. I recently purchased a quarter of a hog, and wanted her advice on preparing all of the cuts and odd bits and pieces. I knew from previous food talks, that Mary has eaten (and enjoyed) every single part of the hog, including things like the tail and feet and chitterlings—and knows how to prepare it all, too. Talk of country ham and biscuits followed. Then she dropped this jewel, “You know what’s really good on biscuits? Sausage and fried apples.”

Two days later, after we returned home to Richmond, I tried her suggestion for breakfast, using the method described for frying apples in the book SmokeHouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine. Mary was right: Browned sage-y and pepper-y sausage patties and fried tart apple rings—fried in the sausage grease and sprinkled with a little brown sugar to aid caramelization—are meant for each other, and very good stuffed into a hand-held biscuit.

The other thing I did after returning home was to sit down and transcribe, word for word, the interview I’d recorded during my springtime visit with Mary. I found she had said plenty about racism in the recounting of the details of her life. It was all there: the good stories of the way things used to be, of how her father would butcher hogs they raised in their backyard, of the immense vegetable garden they had (they always had something green to eat, every day, she emphasized), the fresh bread her mother made (they never had store-bought bread), and the special things her mother would make, like pound cake, but only when she had fresh churned butter; but also, the painful stories of the way things used to be, of going to the segregated Douglas School, of her and other black students picking up the used books each year from the white school, the handover taking place on the steps, outside, because they weren’t allowed inside, of having to go to the backdoor of restaurants in town to ask for a hamburger, and having to eat it on the street or in the alleyway, of being barred from using the town’s beautiful Beaux-Arts style library.

“We’ve come a long way, she said. But it’s still not right. It’s still – not – all – right,” she said with a barely audible sigh.

“But I guess some time God will change it. He’s trying to, you know. He’s trying. He’ll get tired after while . . .

He’s mad at all of us, you know. We should try and get along.

We’re supposed to help each other, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to help each other, regardless of color or age, we’re supposed to help wherever we can.”

Snippet of Conversation between Mary Cross and me

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Links to resources mentioned in posting:

Turner Ham House

Smith’s Fruit Market

Bonnie Blue Bakery

P.S. (April 2019). This February, on my birthday, I went to church with Mary, coming full circle. Being there at the Mt. Carmel Baptist Church with Mary and her husband, Robert, repeating the experience I’d had as a young girl some forty-five years earlier, made me feel blessed. The generosity of spirit of the congregation, and the warm welcome I received, touched me to my core.  As did the question of one church member, asked as Mary and I entered the church, “Is this your Holly?”

Mary Cross and me in front of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, Winchester, Virginia (February 17, 2019)

The post The Best-Ever Mid-Term Election Breakfast During Divisive Times: Sausage & Fried Apple Biscuits and the Wisdom of Mary Cross appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

Fresh river herring roe

Fresh river herring roe. Now that is a Christmas gift to satisfy even the most jaded food lover. It’s available in a small can, the perfect size for a Christmas stocking, and there’s no need to wrap it—it’s quaint vintage-looking label is part of its charm. As an added bonus, it comes with plenty of built-in Christian symbiology, being a fish product, for those who care about such things.

Fresh river herring roe is perfect for the food lover who wearies of fads and romanticizes the diversity of America’s eating past. It’s also perfect for anyone who enjoys word play: Canned fresh river herring roe . . .  how can it be “fresh” and “canned” at the same time? It’s not an oxymoron, or worse a marketing ploy to convince you that what you’re getting is “fresh,” though “canned.” Here, the word fresh refers to the type of herring from which the roe is harvested: Once a year, in the springtime, fresh river herring leave their marine home to return to the very same river where they were born, traveling up, up, up until they reach the river’s head and can find a suitably gentle spot—in science speak, a “low-flow” area—to securely lay their eggs, and repeat the cycle.

My guess is that the food lover in your life will not have heard of fresh river herring roe, canned or otherwise. Even in Virginia, a one-time hotbed of fresh river herring roe consumption, not many people eat it anymore. Those who do generally have sixty years or more of life behind them and grew in the mid- and South Atlantic states. I am not writing this story for them because they already know what to do with it when they run across a can of it. I am writing this story for the rest of us, who could easily go a lifetime without hearing of, running across, or eating fresh river herring roe.

Yet this food—the fish itself or the roe or both—was, from Colonial times and up until not that long ago, a commonly known and enjoyed food.

Back in the day, prior to the invention of canning, enjoying roe would have been a once-a-year delicacy, available in the early spring when the fish swam up river, from the ocean, to lay its eggs. The fish itself would be eaten fresh, as well, or salted to be preserved for later. For people living along the rivers, river herring and shad were one of the first pleasures of spring eating.

With canning, the roe became available year-round. I suppose, back in the last century, it’s possible that the year’s supply of canned roe may have sometimes ran out before the fish once again swam up river in the spring, reminding everyone that though canned, roe is a highly seasonal food. But I doubt it; the supply was just too plentiful.

But that is exactly what happens today. With just one company remaining that cans the roe and only one remaining mid-Atlantic or Southern state that permits fishing of fresh river herring, supply is tight and its future as an edible commodity in peril. That company is Cowart Seafood of Lottsburg, Virginia, and the state where is can still be fished, for now anyway, is South Carolina.

Lake Cowart, owner and president of Lake Packing Co., said that canned roe used to be so common and inexpensive that it was at the top of the list of popular cheap eats in Virginia and neighboring Maryland and North Carolina and was a staple food for the working classes. Today the cans are half the size they used to be and several times more expensive.

Their cost explains why when I first saw cans of the roe, in Cross Bros. Grocery in downtown Ashland, Virginia, they were under lock and key in a glass case, next to the packs of cigarettes. The security was no doubt mainly to keep minors’ hands off of the tobacco, because no minor would have interest in nabbing a can of fresh river herring roe for themselves, unless it were to go into a black-market scheme selling roe to grandparents.

Canned herring roe under lock and key at Cross Bros. Grocery, holiday season, 2016

Cross Bros. Grocery is an old-fashioned market catering to old-fashioned tastes. When it’s available, the owners like to stock canned fresh river herring roe for their older and loyal clientele, but the supply is inconsistent and varies from year to year. That is why on the day we visited the store there was a handwritten sign that announced, “We have Herring Roe” taped to the front door. I hadn’t noticed the sign when we walked into the store, but once inside, I did notice the small cans of roe—who wouldn’t have been intrigued by their unique shelving spot, regional-sounding brand names (“Tidewater” and “Chowan’s Best”), and anachronistic label designs showing a plate of small cakes or croquettes abundantly garnished with curly parsley. Their small stickers with a high price also caught my eye.

The 105-year-long history of Cross Bros. easily intersects a time when canned river herring roe was a common, inexpensive food. A 1967 newspaper coupon section for the grocery store, pinned to a back wall of the store along with other memorabilia, advertises two 16-ounce cans of roe for $1.00. This past holiday season, when I made my “discovery” at Cross Bros., an 8-ounce can of Tidewater went for $11.59. The Chowan’s Best brand was slightly less expensive option at $8.79 a can. This holiday season Chowan’s Best is priced at $10.99; they’re all out of the Tidewater brand.

With the ulterior motive of learning how to prepare the roe, I asked Cathy Waldorp, then one of the store owners, if she eats the roe. “Not anymore, not at $10 or $11 a can!” In her early sixties now, she grew up eating roe cakes prepared by her mother. Except to say that there was some egg and flour or meal mixed with the roe, Cathy couldn’t recall exactly how her mother made the cakes. But she could recall how inexpensive roe used to be and can’t stomach paying the current price.

Today’s price doesn’t scare everyone off though. Not unlike cigarettes, canned herring roe is considered a must-have product among its devotees, and they’re willing to pay most any price for it. In fact, some of their older customers, Waldorp said, will buy out their entire supply. It makes you wonder who or what will go first—the dwindling market for the roe or the supply itself.

The cashier, who looked to be in her thirties, said she’s never eaten the roe herself, but suggested I scramble it with some eggs for breakfast. “That’s how most people eat it,” she said. “Six eggs to half a can,” she added.

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Lake Cowart loves fresh river herring roe so much that he eats it directly from the can.

“I think it’s delicious that way,” he said, during a phone chat, early in the year. “Some people may not care for it that way, but over the years I developed a taste for it straight from the can.”

Lake Packing Co. packs river herring roe under the Tidewater label, an old Virginia brand that has been around, Cowart estimates, for about 100 years; he purchased the label about 12 years ago.  Lake Packing Co. also co-packs roe under the Chowan’s Best label, an old North Carolina label named for the Chowan River.

I called Lake Cowart not just to find out about herring roe and the Tidewater and Chowan’s Best brands, but also to get detailed instructions for preparing the roe. I was having trouble finding recipes online or in books. I hoped to get my hands on the official Tidewater brand recipe for the cakes, the ones pictured on the charming label. No such luck.

“There’s one on the label, isn’t there?,” he said. And then a moment later, after having clearly turned the can about in his hand, answered his own question. “No, I guess there’s not.”

Cowart’s assumption wasn’t misplaced; before nutritional facts and bar codes forced their way onto label designs, forcing out nonessential niceties like recipes, the label would have included one. I found at least two examples online of competing, now-extinct brands from back in the day with recipes printed on their labels. Unfortunately, the images are small and the recipes too difficult to read.

While roe cakes are what was, and still is, illustrated on cans of herring roe—probably because they’re prettier than an amorphous mass of eggs—it’s the simpler dish of scrambled roe and eggs, eaten for breakfast, that seems to have been the most common preparation. Cowart said he grew up eating the roe scrambled, not as cakes; so, though he could walk me through the basics of scrambling them and tell me what he feels is the ideal ratio of egg to roe (1 egg to one 8-ounce can), he couldn’t tell me how to make the cakes.

Though Lake Cowart was perfectly polite and patient when answering my many questions about how to prepare the roe (including the most embarrassingly basic, such as “Do you drain off the liquid in the can?”),  it was clear that he doesn’t get too many calls, maybe none, about what to do with what’s inside the can.

“Most of the people who eat this product have been eating it for years, and they know what to do with it,” he said. “So, there’s not a lot of information out there telling the consumer how to consume it. We haven’t worked hard to increase the market beyond our traditional market, or promote its consumption with recipes, because we don’t have the product to supply it.”

His company does get lots of phone calls or emails, however, from people looking to buy canned fresh river herring roe who can’t find it in retail stores near them. (If you live in a state other than Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, or North Carolina, it’s a near certainty you’re not going to find it on a grocery store shelf.) Lake Packing Co. will ship the roe directly to customers, if he has the stock.

When we spoke in mid-January of this year, he’d just sold out of the 2016’s catch, which translated to 300 cases of roe. At that time, he said he wouldn’t have more until the spring, when the herring return to the rivers to spawn, assuming all goes well. When I checked back in with Lake Cowart, a few days ago, he told me that 2017’s catch was even smaller than the year prior: 200 cases total. Compare that, he said, with the amount they canned annually in the mid-eighties through the early nineties: 6,000 to 9,000 cases. And, he added, they weren’t the only company canning herring roe at the time; there were at least two others, that he knew of. Not surprisingly, he is already out of the 2017 catch.

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I can forgive Lake Cowart for not having a roe cake recipe on hand to share with me. As the sole remaining American packer of fresh river herring roe, he is doing the important work keeping a highly regional and traditional food from disappearing completely. That makes him a hero.

Still, I was disappointed. By all rights, I have no rights to be nostalgic for fresh river herring roe, but I am. Even before opening my first can and giving it a try, just on principle, I was nostalgic for it. Eating fresh river herring roe, I decided, is like slipping through a time portal. For now, the door is still open, but just a crack.

The information on preparing river herring roe is so scarce, that if the fish were to disappear from our rivers tomorrow, it would almost be as if the food had never existed, even though it is described as once being very common. I did find a tantalizing reference to the popularity of canned river herring roe in the lesser-known 1941 title Look Before You Cook: A Consumers Kitchen Guide. The authors, Rose and Bob Brown, two of a once well-known author trio Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown, give guidance on herring roe in the “Canned Goods” section of their book:

“Herring Roe, the delicacy that ranks in popularity with shad roe (which also comes in cans), is not so expensive as most fish eggs and its economy can be stretched out with eggs in appetizing recipes printed on the label.”

Other cookbooks from the forties referencing canned herring roe have recipes for fish roe, if not herring roe specifically.

After searching online and looking in at least thirty old or classic cookbooks, many of them focusing on the foods of Virginia and many in the collection of the Library of Virginia, I’d found a total of two recipes using canned river herring roe, both for the scrambled preparation. (Recipes for preparing shad roe, on the other hand, though not nearly as popular as it once was, are much easier to find than the more regionally localized herring roe.)

I feared my trail would go cold. Herring roe was turning out to be a cliquish “who-you-know” food; if you know a Virginian who knows a Virginian who knows how to prepare canned river herring roe, you’re in luck. (In hindsight, a visit to a nursing home, with a can of roe in one hand and a notepad in the other, probably would have rendered results.) Perhaps it’s because canned herring roe was so common, and so regional, that, in a time when basic cooking skills were assumed and passed down, mother to daughter, published recipes for how to prepare it are nonexistent, or seemed to be.

I didn’t give up. I returned to the Library of Virginia, which is known for its large Virginia-focused cookbook collection, and in particular community cookbooks. The latter turned out to be my windfall. In a thin, leather-bound, twenties-era community cookbook, titled The League Cook Book and compiled by the Ladies of the School and Civic League of Crewe, Virginia, I found seven recipes for using canned herring roe. The Crewe ladies had clearly been resourceful in finding sources of funding for their publication: strategically located among the recipes for Tidewater roe is a half-page ad for Tidewater brand herring roe. Among the recipes for roe was one for croquettes and one for potato cakes. Armed with what I was after, it was time to open my cans of roe.

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The day that I discovered river herring roe began portentously: At the Bass Pro Shop in Ashland, Virginia, staring face to face with a humongous fish that nearly outsized its two-story tank. Its grotesque size was unsettling, as if something was not right in the natural order of things; yet its slow, lumbering movements, weightless and astronaut-like, were mesmerizing and oddly quieting in the hub-bub of holiday shoppers.

As I stood there transfixed, the caretaker of the fish told the crowd about the 23,000-gallon aquarium and the fish it contained. The monster-truck-size fish, he said, is a record-setting, 100-pound-plus blue catfish, caught in Virginia. It is estimated to be forty or fifty years old.

The blue catfish, I would learn later, was introduced to Virginia waters in the 1970s as a recreational game fish. Initially a boon to fisherman, this new species, a veritable eating machine, quickly upset the balance of predator and prey in Virginia waters. It became one of several factors in the “perfect storm” that has led to the fresh river herring’s dramatically dwindling population. One by one, beginning in 2002, states up and down the East Coast have put moratoria on fishing it, commercially and recreationally. Virginia’s full moratorium on fishing river herring began in 2012 (a partial ban had been in place since 2007).

Something just had to be done. “The feeling was don’t kick the species when it’s down,” explained Joe Cimino, during a telephone chat this spring.

I called up Joe Cimino, the Deputy Chief of Fisheries Management in Virginia, to learn why the river herring is threatened. The answer he gave me is that it’s hard to say why, as of yet anyway, because the scientific data recording on the fish in Virginia began only since the fishing moratorium went into place. The reasons, he explained, will no doubt be multiple: water quality, off-shore fishing of adult herring, imbalance of predators, and urban run-off. The latter problem, I sensed, was the weightiest to him—the one that would be the most complex and complicated to resolve. It’s one thing to fix issues in the waterways themselves; it’s quite another to effect what people do on the land near our waterways.

“Clearly,” he said, “It’s going to take more than a moratorium on fishing river herring to improve its population.”

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River herring is one of the first fishes to spawn, even ahead of shad, and its yearly journey inland gave Virginians something fresh to eat when the provisions of cured meats and root vegetables from the fall had started to thin, and the body tire of heavier foods. According to the Larousse Gastronomique, when caught after spawning, “the herring is said to be ‘spent’: it is only half the weight and flesh is dried.” People living along the rivers would have known this—that it’s right before they lay their eggs, when their sacks are full of roe, that their flesh is most succulent and fatty. And of course, it is before they lay their eggs that you want to catch them for harvesting roe, as well. (Lake Cowart said the prime time is a week or two before they lay their eggs.)

One early spring day, nostalgic for the centuries-long tradition of a river herring-rite-of-spring, I got caught in an unusually heavy downpour, following a spate of unusually warm days. I had just exited the freeway in downtown Richmond, when the deluge began in full force. Turning left, I headed uphill on 7^th Street, which had become an impromptu river bed. A torrential flow of water sped unimpeded past my tires, grabbing cups and bags and other debris in its rapid, asphalt-lined course toward the James River.

I immediately visualized the next generation of the small, once mighty, fresh river herring—the same fish that fed Washington, that fed the revolutionary War troops—being flushed away, in a blink of an eye, by the sudden gush of water.

The spring prior, being witness to urban run-off and its efficient street cleaning service would have been enough to put me into a state of melancholy reflection, let alone the thought of herring roe eggs being blasted hither and yon. Am I contributing to the river herring’s ill health by publishing this story, and in particular by promoting the roe as the perfect stocking stuffer? If we eat the delicate pin-point-sized eggs that would otherwise turn into herring, aren’t we adding to the problem?

In theory yes, but this time, with this product, nature has thrown a mirror up, and set her limits. Then I realized, with relief, that since my blog readership is very small—“low-flow” you could say—I can sleep at night knowing this story will not cause a  stampede through the time portal for canned fresh river herring roe.

But if you do manage to fish this story out of the flooded Internet, and you manage to find a can of roe, I’ve included a recipe for roe cakes for you below, assuming you’re a green roe eater. If you already have an acquired taste for roe, like Lake Cowart, then you might enjoy eating it straight up, from the can, which will save you a lot of time and effort.

P.S. Since originally visiting Cross Bros. Grocery last holiday season, the ownership of the venerable grocery has changed, but they still sell canned fresh river herring roe (though I don’t know if it’s still shelved next to packs of cigarettes).

Tidewater Roe Potato Cakes

If you enjoy the flavor of all types of fish, including the deeper, richer flavor of oily fish, sardines or anchovies or blue fish, for example, then you will enjoy the flavor of these roe cakes. When making roe cakes, it’s more common to mix the roe with bread crumbs or cracker meal (or perhaps flour) than mashed potatoes, but I love the pillow-y texture they give to the cakes and enjoy the more mild and subtle taste of potato-based cakes. Other than the addition of some chopped cooked bacon and a hint of cayenne pepper to the cakes, and opting to coat them in bread crumbs, my modernized version of this circa 1926 recipe is faithful to the Ladies of the School and Civic League of Crewe, Virginia. I find these cakes absolutely delicious served with squeeze of fresh lemon.

For the cakes:

• 1 (8-ounce) can herring roe
• 1 cup cold mashed Russet or Idaho potatoes (1 medium potato, 8 to 9 ounces, see Note)
• ½ cup finely chopped onions (about 1 small onion)
• ¼ cup finely chopped cooked bacon, fat trimmed (optional) (see Note)
• 1 egg, well beaten
• 1½ tablespoons extra-fine cracker meal, extra-fine bread crumbs, or flour
• 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh parsley (about 2 sprigs)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 pinches of cayenne pepper

For the coating:

• 1 egg, well beaten
• 1 cup bread crumbs

Bacon fat, for frying

Lemon wedges, for serving

1. Mix all of the cake ingredients together until well combined. Place in the refrigerator to chill up and allow flavor to marry for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
2. Form into 14 small cakes, about ¾ inch thick, or croquettes. If you have time, place them a wax paper-lined tray and set them in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up; this will make them easier to handle in the skillet.
3. When you’re ready to fry the roe cakes or croquets, heat up a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat until it is very hot and beginning to smoke, about 5 minutes.
4. Dip into the egg, then into the bread crumbs.
5. When the skill is hot, put 2 to 3 tablespoons of bacon fat in the pan.
6. When the fat is hot, fry the croquettes until golden brown on both sides (or all sides if making croquettes), turning them gently. Fry them in batches if needed so as not to over crowd the pan.  Serve with lemon wedges. Makes 14 small cakes or croquettes.

Notes:

• You will need about 2 thick-cut slices bacon to end up with ¼ cup finely chopped bacon.
• To prepare mashed potatoes for croquettes, peel and quarter potatoes and put in a pot. Cover generously with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to about 3 quarts of water, lower the heat to medium-high, and continue to boil until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and let cool to room temperature, then mash.
• To make your own cracker meal, put saltine crackers in a heavy plastic bag and rolling them with a rolling pin or place crackers in a food processor and pulse until the desired texture is achieved.

Gallery of other roe preparations:

Scrambled roe with egg, the most common preparation. It’s tasty enough, but I think probably a favorite of folks who grew up eating it this way. If you’re new to eating roe, I suggest you make roe cakes. It’s delicious that way.

My invention: A large roe cake served over mixed salad greens and a topped with a poached egg. It makes for a very good looking and tasty meal, but I think the croquettes served simply with lemon wedges is even better. The subtle flavor of the roe cakes shines more clearly with less going on on the plate.

The roe made into croquettes with cracker meal only, no mashed potatoes or cracker meal coating. While prettier than the cracker coated, potato-based version, I prefer the flavor, consistency, and texture contrast the potatoes and meal coating provide.

The potato-based, meal coated cakes, my favorite version, shown with a lemon wedge. Don’t forget to serve the cakes with lemon; it’s crucial.

The post Fresh River Herring Roe appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

It is with guilty pleasure that I write this: pleasure because it’s an ice cream fable; guilt because it has diverted my attention from Odette, a dear French lady with decades of cooking skills whom I’ve written about three times so far.* There are so many more Odette stories to tell and Odette recipes to share.

For the last couple of months, in a spare hour here and there, I have been slowly transcribing and translating what Odette said about her life in an audio interview I did with her this summer. I’m particularly keen to decipher what she says about living and eating in Nazi-occupied Paris when she was a young girl. She recounted a war-time food story that is impressed upon her memory. One day her mother returned home from the marché noir (black market) with the only thing available that day: un gros chou (a large head of cabbage). As Odette watched, her mother proceeded to do something unusual with that head of cabbage. I can’t make out what happens next in the story, but I can guess.

A few summers ago, Odette had me and my husband, Mike, over for one of her formidable lunches, which always consist of at least three courses and often five. That day, the perfectly dressed green salad was made with the most tender and flavorful escarole imaginable. I made a few “mmm” sounds and, pointing to the salad and using the simplest form of compliment in French, the only one I was capable of, I expressed my satisfaction: “C’est délicieux” (“It’s delicious”). Odette’s usually bright eyes took on an extra glint of excitement. She leaned in to convey a secret that is shared with an inner circle of food devotes, and said, “I made the salad for you with only the best leaves. The tough, outer leaves are for the rabbits.”

I suppose Odette’s mother used every part of that head of cabbage, parts that in better times would have been for the rabbits. Since it is just at the point where Odette relays the pivotal part of the story that my poor French fails me, I’m going to have to call in the professionals.

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When a long-haul project moves at an escargot’s pace, such as a two-in-one transcription and translation job, I find myself looking for some faster diversion that, in its completion, gives me the momentary satisfaction of having accomplished something.

Enter Jamot the rabbit. Last summer Odette presented us with one of her prized embroideries. This one pictures a rabbit. But not just any rabbit doing any old thing. This rabbit is wearing plaid pants and a solid brown jacket and sports a splash of peacock-patterned fabric, which is . . . . a shirt, a scarf, a jacket lining? I’m not sure.  When you turn the embroidery over, there on the back, handwritten on a piece of tape, is an account of his activity, which explains why he is carrying a basket: Le lapin va au marché à Pontlevoy (The rabbit going to the market in Pontlevoy). (This is clearly a French rabbit because no American male rabbit would be comfortable enough with his masculinity to carry a basket to market.)

Since this rabbit shops in Pontlevoy, the village that Odette her husband, Roger, call home, Mike and I assumed that he is from Pontlevoy, as well. This, and his name, was later confirmed in a drawing we received that shows Jamot engaged in another of his favorite activities: scootering. The following, written by Jamot and translated here for you, was jotted down in the upper left corner of the drawing: My name is Jamot—rabbit of Pontlevoy.

Taking Jamot’s sprightly lead, I took a nosedive down the rabbit hole of herb-infused ice cream. I was already partly down it, having just come off the high point of making from-scratch mint chocolate chip ice cream using fresh mint. That experiment put me into an herb and ice cream frame of mind, and got me to looking about my courtyard at the many other pots that contain herbs, which lead me to consider rosemary. Though perennial in the right conditions, I haven’t yet been able to get a potted plant through the winter here in Richmond, Virginia. It begged me to choose it for my new herb-infused ice cream experiment before the first hard frost. (Around here, rosemary planted in-ground is another story; I have seen plenty of established bushes, nay, hedgerows, of rosemary with gnarled trunks the size of small trees in my neighbors’ front yards.)

It was Jamot who suggested the addition of hazelnuts. He ought to know; rabbit and hazelnuts is a classic pâté combination in France. Authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, in their book The Flavor Bible, are who gave me the idea of throwing apricots into the mix. So was born Rosemary Ice Cream with Roasted Hazelnuts and Apricot Swirl. Now back to figuring out what exactly Odette’s mother did with that head of cabbage.

Recipe for Rosemary and Toasted Hazelnut Ice Cream with Apricot Swirl

Makes 2 quarts

I love it when recipe testing reveals some simple truth in absolute, unequivocal terms, such as this one:

Hazelnuts want to be toasted.

Yes, indeed—only after toasting do they really shine. Before then, they don’t taste like the iconic nut that made Nutella famous or has Italians reaching for a biscotti. Compared to a toasted hazelnut, the flavor of a raw hazelnut is muted and one-dimensional: it trundles along, sort of flatlining, and then exits the same way it came in. The flavor of a toasted hazelnut builds, rewarding patient mouths with the sought-after hazelnut flavor only in the last moment. What’s more, the texture of a raw hazelnut is a little mealy, and not crunchy in the least. I learned all of these things while developing this ice cream recipe. But that is not all.

I also learned that since hazelnuts skins are slightly bitter, hazelnuts want their skins removed, or to be precise, they want about 50 percent of their skins removed. This is the amount you’ll be able to remove when you use the toasting method to remove hazelnuts skins. And that is the method to use. (I’m convinced that the remaining 50 percent of skins that stubbornly cling to hazelnuts after toasting are part of a master plan; it’s a known fact that a bit of bitterness adds welcome complexity to foods and is a natural balance to fat, which hazelnuts have plenty of.)

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to use the boiling water and baking soda method to remove hazelnut skins. With a 99.9 percent skin removal success rate, it’s an impressive technique, but you’ll lose 100 percent of the classic hazelnut flavor you are after. I suppose it ends up in the boiling water. Even after toasting the nuts after boiling and skinning them, which is a requirement, they never become as crunchy as the toasted, never-boiled, hazelnuts.

INGREDIENTS

For the ice cream base:

• 1 large sprig fresh rosemary (8 to 10 inches long)
• 1¾ cups whole milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• Healthy pinch of coarse sea salt
• 6 large egg yolks
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ cup mild-flavored honey

For the apricot swirl:

(Makes 1 cup)

• ¾ cup Muscat wine, or other sweet white wine, such as Riesling
• ¾ cup water
• 1 vanilla bean (about 6 inches long), split and seeds scraped
• 2 wide strips orange zest
• 5 ounces dried apricots (about 1 cup)
• ¼ cup mild-flavored honey, plus more for the apricot syrup

• 3½ ounces raw hazelnuts (about ¾ cup)

For garnish:

• Apricot syrup (from above)
• Apricot syrup-infused whipped cream (optional)
• Chopped toasted hazelnuts (from above)
• Flake sea salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Make the ice cream base:

1. Cut the rosemary sprig in half and place in a heavy bottom saucepan along with the milk, cream, and salt. Heat slowly over moderate heat until small bubbles form around the edge of the pan and steam is rolling off the surface, then remove the pan from the heat, cover, and infuse for 1 hour.
2. Pour the steeped milk and cream mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean heavy bottom saucepan. Press against the rosemary to extract any remaining liquid. Discard the rosemary.
3. Return the infused milk and cream mixture to medium heat and heat until steam is rolling off the surface and bubbles appear around the edge of the pan.
4. Meanwhile, in a heatproof mixing bowl, vigorously whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until pale-colored and foamy, 2 to 3 minutes.
5. Whisking constantly, gradually add, ladleful by ladleful, half of the hot milk-cream mixture into the yolk-sugar mixture to temper the eggs.
6. Add the tempered yolk-sugar mixture to the saucepan with the remaining milk and cream mixture and whisk to blend.
7. Set the pan over medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly, with a wooden spatula in a figure eight motion, until it reaches 170°F. At this point the cream will coat the back of the spoon and be noticeably thickened. (To sterilize the egg yolk, keep it at 170°F for 1 minute.) When stirring the custard, be sure to get the spoon into the bottom corners of the pan as that is where the egg will coagulate first. Do not let it come to a boil; if the mixture is heated to 180°F it will curdle.
8. Strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, then add the honey and stir until dissolved. Set the bowl with the custard in a bowl of ice water. Stir until cooled, then refrigerate for a minimum of 8 hours (or overnight) to chill thoroughly.

Macerate the dried apricots: 

1. Bring the wine, water, vanilla, and orange zest to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Continue to boil for 5 minutes to allow the flavor of the vanilla and zest to infuse the liquid. Add the apricots and lower the heat to maintain a simmer for 2 minutes, the remove the pan from heat. Add the honey and stir until dissolved.
2. Let the mixture cool, then bottle and place in the refrigerator for a minimum of 8 hours (or overnight) to chill completely and allow the flavors to infuse further.

Toast and skin the hazelnuts: 

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a mixing bowl with a clean towel. Place the hazelnuts on a sheet pan and toast in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, shaking the pan one or twice during baking, until the hazelnuts are highly aromatic and the skins have turned dark brown (don’t let them blacken). Dump the nuts into the center of the towel and wrap the ends around it; let sit for 5 to 10 minutes.
2. Vigorously rub the nuts against each other in the towel to loosen the skins. This will take several minutes of rubbing and, at best, you will remove about 50 percent of the skins. Once the skinned nuts have completely cooled, chop them and place in the refrigerator until ready to use.

When all of the components are prepared and fully chilled, process the ice cream base in an ice cream maker, following the manufacturer’s instructions.

While the ice cream is churning, make the apricot swirl: Remove the apricots from the macerating liquid and put them and 3 tablespoons of the macerating liquid into a food processor and pulse until you have a thick puree, about the consistency of a thick semi-chunky applesauce. If the mixture isn’t coming together into thick puree, add up to 1 additional tablespoon of the macerating liquid. Reserve the rest of the macerating liquid to make a syrup for the ice cream.

During the last couple minutes of churning, add all but ⅓ cup of the chopped hazelnuts to the ice cream; set the reserved hazelnuts back in the refrigerator for use as garnish.

Once the ice cream is churned, scoop about one-third of it into a 2-quart freezer-safe container and spoon about one-third of the apricot puree on top of the ice cream. Immediately swirl in the puree, using a chop stick or a skewer. Repeat twice more.

Place in the freezer to set up, or “cure,” for at least 4 hours.

While the ice cream is curing in the freezer, make a syrup using the leftover macerating liquid: Strain the liquid into a small saucepan; discard the vanilla and orange peel. Bring the liquid to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat to medium and simmer until the liquid is reduced by two-thirds and lightly coats a spoon, about 10 minutes. Taste and add a touch of honey to sweeten the syrup, keeping a sweet-tart balance; stir the honey until it is dissolved. Allow the syrup to cool to room temperature, then bottle and place in the refrigerator to chill.

To make infused whipped cream using the apricot syrup, add 1 tablespoon of the chilled syrup to ½ cup heavy whipping cream and whip until soft peaks form.

To serve, remove the ice cream from the freezer and allow it to soften for 5 or 10 minutes. Scoop into bowls and drizzle on some of the syrup, then add a dollop of whipped cream, if desired. Sprinkle on some of the reserved chopped hazelnuts and finish with a tiny pinch of flake sea salt.

Tip: Here is a strategy for making this ridiculously complex ice cream recipe come together easily the day you want to make it and become one of a select number of I-will-go-to-any-length ice cream fanatics to enjoy this unique and fanciful flavor: The evening before you plan to churn the ice cream (or the morning of, if you’re an early riser), make the ice cream base, macerate the dried apricots, and toast, skin, and chop the hazelnuts.

*To read the three stories I’ve written previously about Odette, click here, here, and here.

The post Rosemary and Toasted Hazelnut Ice Cream with Apricot Swirl appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

Compare and despair. That is what my friend John Camilleri said to me after I sized myself up this way: So and so is more successful than me, more confident than me, more charming, more fashionable. That exchange was had years ago, on a subway platform in New York, where we both lived at the time. Those three magic words still resonate.

In cooking, however, most everything that’s learn-able—techniques, flavor pairings—is done by direct comparison. In the kitchen, comparing isn’t despairing, it’s illuminating. Take mint and dark chocolate. When do you ever get a chance to fully appreciate why those two ingredients are a classic pairing? When you buy a peppermint patty, thin mints, or mint chocolate chip ice cream, the flavor components are already combined and inextricable. Besides, the hard, waxy chocolate chips found in most store-bought versions of mint chocolate ice cream barely taste of chocolate at all. (As a chocolate lover, I say “Why bother?”)

Kentucky Colonel Mint

Last week, to beat the first hard frost of fall, I set out to make mint chocolate chip ice cream as a means of using up two large pots of Kentucky Colonel, an heirloom variety of mint. I was determined to see if I couldn’t improve on the drab chocolate chips of store-bought ice cream, to give my mint a worthy partner. The result was far better than I could have imagined: My homemade version has a pale green color and fresh minty flavor that is subtle and lingering yet powerful enough to hold up to the assertive notes of dark chocolate. Best of all, the chocolate tastes like chocolate, like very good dark chocolate.

But what I loved as much ending up with a very good bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream to enjoy was discovering, first-hand, what dark chocolate does for mint. You can do the same: After completing the recipe below, you will have some ice cream clinging to your ice cream maker (the bowl or the other parts of the machine or both) and you will have some chocolate clinging to the inside of the bowl that you melted it in. First, eat a spoonful of the remaining plain mint ice cream, then take another spoonful of the ice cream and anoint it in the bowl with the residue of melted chocolate, and then eat that up. You will immediately see what dark chocolate does for mint: It brings it to life and even make it more minty. I think Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream should be renamed Dark Chocolate in the Service of Mint ice cream.

The other thing I loved about this whole grand experiment is that it reminded me how worthwhile it is to make homemade versions of old-fashioned favorites at home. When food companies, especially big corporate ones, get a hold of a classic food, over time, it becomes a pale imitation of its former self, leaving anyone with good taste to wonder why it was so popular in the first place.

If you have a lot of mint that you need to harvest and are looking for something to do with it, please try my recipe. And please especially try it if you think of mint chocolate chip as an artificial-tasting, chocolate-lite flavor more suited to children than adults, and definitely not worth your time. Because that is exactly what I used to think, too.

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P.S. My goal was to post this story yesterday, by October 1. But I’m glad that I missed my own deadline because last evening and this morning I saw and heard two things that make writing about mint chocolate ice cream seem very frivolous. The first was a documentary film about the American writer James Baldwin, called I Am Not Your Negro, that tells the story of his significant and lifelong effort, through writing and activism, to counter racism in America; the second was the news that a “lone wolf,” from his hotel room perch, had, as of last count, slaughtered nearly sixty people, and wounded at least 500 more, at a country music concert in Las Vegas. In the face of all of the emptiness and meaninglessness of so many acts of hatred and violence, my search for a genuine mint chocolate chip ice cream is my counter act. I’m not talking about eating out of the angst caused by emptiness and meaninglessness—like the so-called “sheet-caking movement”—but making meaningful food that is connected to a meaningful way of life, and to life as a whole.

The daily act of seeking genuine flavor in food might seem benign, at worst, self-serving. In fact, it is an act of subversion: it is anti-corporation and anti-agribusiness and pro–small family farm, pro–animal rights, and pro-environment. All, or nearly all, of the ingredients I used to create my batch of mint chocolate chip ice cream were produced outside the “system” and procured either directly from the producer or, because I believe in something called Main Street, at small locally owned shops and markets. I try to buy from the “ground” up, buying heirloom varieties and heritage breeds, not just for best flavor, but also to ensure the diversity and long-term vitality of our food supply, rather than the dividends of a shareholder. I’m not saying making mint chocolate chip ice cream isn’t frivolous, because it is. But it’s what I’ve got. I’ll just have to keep making frivolous things with as much meaning and genuineness as possible.

Harvest Time Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

To develop this recipe, I referenced a number of sites online to get an idea of how much mint and how much chocolate to use relative to my now perfected ice cream base. It was from David Leibowitz’s site that I got the idea of melting the chocolate and adding it to churned ice cream as the best way to add the “chip” component. And from the writers at food52.com, I learned why melting chocolate first, rather than simply adding chips or chopped pieces of even the best quality chocolate bar to ice cream, is worth doing:

Melting the chocolate destroys the chocolate’s temper, lowering its melting point and diminishing its ability to harden except when chilled. This just means that the chocolate will be brittle and crunchy in cold ice cream, but will soften in the warmth of your mouth, releasing its flavor more quickly than do frozen bits of a chocolate bar.

Ah hah.

60 to 65 grams fresh mint leaves (about 2⅔ packed cups) (see Note)

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

¾ cup (5⅓ ounces/150 grams) plus 2 tablespoons sugar

Healthy pinch of coarse sea salt

6 large egg yolks

For the “chips”:

6 ounces dark chocolate (70 to 75% cacao), finely chopped

1. Put the mint leaves in heavy bottom saucepan along with the milk, cream, 2 tablespoons of the sugar, and salt. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, then remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let infuse for 1 hour.
2. Pour the steeped milk and cream mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean heavy bottom saucepan. Press against the mint leaves to extract any remaining liquid. Discard the mint leaves.
3. Return the infused milk and cream mixture to medium heat and heat until steam is rolling off the surface and bubbles are forming around the edge of the pan.
4. Meanwhile, in a heatproof mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the remaining ¾ cup of sugar until lightened and pale-colored and you reach ribbon stage, 2 to 3 minutes.
5. Whisking constantly, gradually add, ladleful by ladleful, half of the hot milk-cream mixture into the yolk-sugar mixture to temper the eggs.
6. Add the tempered yolk-sugar mixture to the saucepan with the remaining milk and cream mixture and whisk to blend.
7. Return the pan to medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula in a figure eight motion, until it reaches 170°F. At this point the cream will coat the back of the spoon and be noticeably thickened. (To sterilize the egg yolk, keep it at 170°F for 1 minute.) When stirring the custard, be sure to get the spoon into the bottom corners of the pan as that is where the egg will coagulate first. Do not let it come to a boil; if the mixture is heated to 180°F it will curdle.
8. Strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer and set in a bowl over ice water. Stir until cooled, then refrigerate for at least 8 hours to chill thoroughly.
9. Process in an ice cream maker, following the manufacturer’s instructions.
10. While the ice cream is churning, melt the chocolate either in a double boiler or in the microwave (see below).
11. Once the ice cream is churned, scoop about one-third of it into a freezer-safe container and drizzle about one-third of the melted chocolate on top of the ice cream. Immediately stir in the chocolate, breaking it up into random-sized pieces. Repeat twice more.
12. Place in the freezer to set up for 4 hours. Allow to soften for 5 or 10 minutes before serving. Makes 1½ quarts

Note: The heirloom mint I used, Kentucky Colonel, has a lovely, potent mint aroma and flavor. If the mint you’re using has a retiring flavor, use an extra 20 to 30 grams of it. To get 60 grams mint leaves you will need about 3½ ounces (100 g) mint sprigs, or two to three bunches mint, depending on their size. Better to have more than not enough; you can always use any extra mint to make a pretty garnish of candied mint leaves for the ice cream (see the photo below). To make candied mint leaves, whisk an egg white until foamy, lightly brush both sides of the mint leaves with the egg white, then sprinkle both sides with sugar. Place the sugar-coated leaves on a parchment paper–lined tray to dry, 3 to 6 hours. Store leftover candied mint in an airtight container, with a paper towel to absorb moisture, on the container for up to 3 days.

How to Melt Chocolate Using a Microwave:

Place the chocolate in microwave-safe bowl that ideally does not get hot to the touch. A thick-walled Pyrex bowl or liquid measuring cup is ideal. Heat on low power in 20- to 30-second intervals, stirring gently with a rubber spatula between intervals, for about 2 minutes total (exact time will vary; watch carefully). If your microwave does not have a spinning turntable, turn the bowl manually between heating intervals. Heat until the chocolate is nearly all melted, then remove the bowl and stir continuously until the chocolate is smooth, shiny, and completely melted.

How to Melt Chocolate Using a Double Boiler (or a heatproof bowl fitted snugly over a saucepan):

Make sure to the bowl of your double boiler fits very snugly on top of the pan holding the water. If any steam escapes around the edges and gets into the chocolate, it will seize up. Make sure the water level is below the bottom of the bowl. Bring the water to a simmer, then put the chocolate in the bowl. Pull the pan off the heat and allow the steam to melt the chocolate. When nearly all the chocolate is melted, remove the bowl from the pan and set it on the counter; stir continuously until the chocolate is smooth, shiny, and completely melted.

The post Harvest Time Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

I have to admit, I sometimes slip up and forget to be mindful; I forget to give that over-looked throw-away item a second life in my kitchen. When I do, I berate myself. But one type of missed taste opportunity that is never lost on me or my husband, Mike, are the remnants of dressing, sauce, or appetizing drippings in plates or bowls or pots or pans. A swipe of bread through these flavorful dregs becomes dessert (and if we’re out of bread, a spatula or index finger works).

At these savor-the-flavor moments, Mike often does the honors. He’ll rip off a piece of bread and run it through the serving bowl. Then, like a rooster finding the choicest bits of food for his favorite hen, he will hand it to me or put the morsel directly in my mouth. I am always touched by this gesture; perhaps it takes me back to my days in the high chair, when things really were very simple.

Earlier this summer, just after we arrived in France for a several-week stay, Odette Podevin, our French neighbor and my Patroness of Cooking, had us over for lunch. The first course was an especially flavorful tomato salad, served room temperature. (Later, I realized a key to the deliciousness of Odette’s tomato salad is timing: She makes it well enough in advance of serving to allow for an exchange of flavors—for the vinaigrette and chopped shallots and herbs to marinate the tomatoes and for the tomatoes to infuse the dressing.)

Bread on Odette and Roger’s dining table, at the ready for the mid-day meal.

Odette and her husband, Roger, are professional eaters; talk is sparse and they do not dally between courses. As soon as the tomatoes were cleared from the serving platter and our plates, Odette brought the main course to the table: a creamy casserole of endive en jambon gratinée (endive and ham gratin). By that point, all of us except Mike had mopped our plates clean, enjoying the last bits of the tasty vinaigrette with pieces of bread torn from a baguette. (Mike told me later he forwent the pleasure of mopping to avoid filling up on bread, anticipating, from past experience, the huge portions of food Odette divvies up, especially to her American “son.”)

Impatient to serve the dish, Odette tore off a piece of bread, reached over, and mopped up the remaining vinaigrette on Mike’s plate. Mike and I shot each other a knowing glance; knowing Odette to be warm and generous and spontaneous, we imagined her next move would be to hand the prized morsel to Mike, like a doting mother hen. Instead, she paused for a split second, as if considering what to do with the sauced piece of bread in her hand, then shrugged and unceremoniously cast it aside on the table, with a half-smile. (I think Odette takes secret pleasure in these small renegade acts.) She immediately placed an enormous portion of the main dish on Mike’s plate.

This made a forcible impression on me. Here was a whole new use for bread. Why bother to wash plates between courses when you can use bread “to clean” the plates. It saves resources—water and soap—and time and effort. Bread is indispensable to the French meal in more ways than I’d considered.

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P.S. Here is a photo showing yet more ways with bread.

Odette, gesturing with bread in an animated conversation with Mike, her American fils (son). Roger, her husband, can be seen in the background, in the kitchen.

The post More Ways with Bread appeared first on Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club.

Last Sunday, along with having the just-right ingredients, I also had the just-right occasion: a thank you dinner for our neighbors, the Huff Family, who looked after our apartment while we were in France, earlier this summer.

In addition to serving stuffed tomatoes, a traditional home-style French dish, I already had two key parts of the thank you meal, direct from France, stashed in the freezer: a Basque-style cake for dessert and two naturally leavened baguettes (called La Parisse). Cheeses, pâtés, roasted beet salad, and French wine filled the table, but it was Odette’s recipe that was the star. And we all agreed, it is a dish worth turning on the oven for, even in mid-August.

Thank your for the recipe, Odette! (From left to right: Peter Huff, Phoebe Huff, me, my husband, Mike [with a shout-out to Odette’s husband, Roger], Morgan Huff, and Bridgette Huff)

Tomates farcies au riz et à la chair à saucisse

Serves 6

Here is Odette’s recipe with a few minor modifications to account for differences in ingredients in France and the US. This recipe isn’t hard to make—no special skills are needed—but it does require a fair amount of prep work before the tomatoes can be stuffed and baked: the sausage mixture has to be made, the rice cooked, the tomatoes emptied and the tops chopped. You can lessen the work required the day of making it by mixing the sausage filling the night before, which is a good idea anyway to allow the flavors of the herbs, shallots, and garlic to infuse the meat. The rice can be made in the morning, and the tomatoes prepped ahead of time too.

Odette is not a fussy cook. She uses her hands for just about everything, measures only when absolutely required, and tastes as she goes to make sure what she is making is own track and is to her liking. You can do the same here, adjusting the herbs or quantity of garlic, for example, to your liking. But if you want this dish to taste quintessentially French, be sure to include tarragon and shallots, and don’t skimp on the butter.

• Unsalted butter, for the baking dish and tops of tomatoes and rice
• 7 medium or 10 small tomatoes (about 2¼ pounds)
• Fresh parsley, finely chopped, for garnish

For the rice:

• 1½ cups long-grain rice, cooked in water seasoned with 1 cup vegetable stock, 1 vegetable bouillon, 1 teaspoon instant vegetable bouillon paste, or 1 scant teaspoon salt (see Tip)
• Chopped tomato flesh and tops (from above)
• Fresh flat-leaf parsley, 2 tablespoons finely chopped
• Tarragon leaves (1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh or ¼ heaping teaspoon dry)
• Thyme leaves (1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh or ¼ heaping teaspoon dry)

For the stuffing:

• 1 pound ground pork with about 25% fat (or ½ pound ground pork and ½ pound ground veal)
• 2 to 3 shallots, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Fresh flat-leaf parsley, 1/3 cup finely chopped
• Tarragon leaves (2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh or ¾ teaspoon dry)
• Thyme leaves (1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh or ½ scant teaspoon dry)
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• ½ heaping teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 large egg
• Splash of whatever French wine you’re serving with the meal or water
• ½ cup cooked long-grain rice (from above)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Generously butter a large baking dish.
2. Cut the top quarter of the tomatoes off and set aside. With a spoon, gently scoop out most of the inside of the tomatoes into a large bowl, but don’t remove too much. You want about a 3/8-inch-thick wall remaining. Set the bowl of tomato flesh aside. (If you want to be fancy, deseed the tomatoes. To do that, take a very small or slender spoon, like an iced tea spoon, and gently scoop out the seeds from between the membranes, working over a fine-mesh strainer to catch the juices. Discard the seeds, then go back in with a slightly larger spoon to hollow out the tomatoes, reserving the pulp. Odette didn’t bother to deseed the tomatoes, and I believe most home cooks don’t.)
3. Put the hollowed-out tomatoes in the baking dish. Season the inside of the tomatoes with a little salt, then turn them over to drain.
4. Return to the reserved tomato tops: Remove and discard the center core and stem if there is one, then roughly chop them. Add the chopped tomato to the bowl with the scooped-out tomato pulp and any accumulate tomato juice.
5. Set aside ½ cup of the cooked rice for sausage filling, then add the rest of the cooked rice to the bowl with the tomato along with parsley, tarragon, and thyme. Mix everything together using your hands, then season to taste with salt, if needed.
6. Place all the ingredients for the sausage, except the egg and wine or water, in a mixing bowl. Using your hands, mix everything together until well combined. Add the egg and mix in, then add the splash of wine or water and the cooked rice and mix to combine. (For the best flavor, make this the day before you plan to stuff and bake the tomatoes, adding the rice the day of assembly.)
7. Turn the tomatoes upright and, using your hands, fill the tomatoes with the sausage stuffing. Dot the tops with small pieces of butter, then sprinkle them with finely chopped fresh parsley.
8. Using your hands, scoop up the seasoned rice mixture and place it in the empty spaces between the tomatoes.
9. Pour a little water in the baking dish, around the tomatoes. Dot the surface of the rice with small pieces of butter.
10. Put in the oven and bake for 50 minutes, uncovered, until the sausage filling is cooked through (it will feel firm to the touch when cooked). Serves 6.

Flavor Tip: For best flavor, Odette seasons cooking water with a vegetable bouillon cube, rather than salt. That goes for anything she cooks in water: rice, potatoes, green beans, and so on. I like this idea, though some, maybe all, bouillon cubes or instant bouillon pastes or bases include ingredients you may not like to have in your cooking. So, pay attention to the labels or, best of all, make your own vegetable bouillon paste. Here is recipe on the site 101 Cookbooks. This way of boosting flavor in food is not identical to, but shares a philosophy of seasoning with Salted Herbs.

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