Maggie's Farm

We promised that we would bring the Dylanologist, who is stationed in Rome for the summer, a supply of peanut butter. I guess the Italians don't have it. It's their loss. You would think the southern Italians would get sick of tomato sauce. I am, for sure. They would quickly learn to appreciate a PB&J on white.

Fortunately, they do not use much pasta or really any tomato sauce in northern Italy where I am headed tomorrow.

Despite the glories of Italian (non-pasta) cuisine, sometimes a fellow just needs some peanut butter - and not the unpleasant organic kind. Skippy's ultra-chunky always hits the spot. I will squeeze two large things of it into my bag for the guy.

Hope Italian Customs doesn't give me a hard time for this act of smuggling. After all, it would be easy to suffocate somebody with a face full of Skippy's Creamy.

Wellfleet Oysters and Wellfleet Littlenecks. My cocktail behind them is a Cape Cod Marguerita (cranberry juice added). Refreshing and healthily salt-restoring.

I have Wellfleet architecture in the pipeline, but my photos don't want to upload to the site right now.

Fried Squash Blossoms are a wonderful summertime Italian treat. I harvested this platterful of them last night and we fried 'em up. When served hot, and lightly browned and salted, they leave French Fries in the dust.

On summer squash like Zucchini and Yellow Squash, the blossoms on the stalks are the males, and thus expendable. However, I use both because there's always too much squash anyway.

This site explains how simple this is, using Marcella's method. We do not wash them at all, just check them for bugs inside. Photo below from that site -

Is the Mojito really the national cocktail of Cuba? This drink seems to be enjoying a craze recently. Sounds like a Mint Julep but with rum.

I have never tried one, but I steer clear of hard booze. I like anything with mint in it, though.

Here's how to make it.

The real cocktail of Bermuda:

2 oz Gosling's® Black Seal rum
4 oz ginger beer
Lots of ice and a twist of lime

Best consumed on a Bermuda beach or the veranda of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club after sailing down from Newport.

Not just for the Derby. This source, which explains why we can thank the Arabs for the basis of this refreshing adult beverage along with inventing Algebra, notes:

Mint Julep first appeared in print in 1803 described as a "dram of spirituous liquor that has mint in it, taken by Virginians in the morning."

A breakfast tonic to tone ye olde brain. Healthy herbs. You can use either homemade sugar syrup or confectioner's sugar. Here's one. Use a chilled julep cup or collins glass. I grow a mint called "Kentucky Mint" which is quite intense, but close to Spearmint, just for this purpose, but I haven't made a batch in years. I should. Unlike Southern families, I do not own any heirloom Julep Cups. I am tempted by these on eBay ($500 for a pair). Nice Sterling cups seem to run between $100 to $1000 apiece. I am not in the market for these right now.

It could not be simpler. Remember the protagonist in Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins who lived on them? Dr. Tom More. His brain was constantly fizzing and fizzling.

There's also the Royal Gin Fizz (with an egg), and, of course, the Sloe Gin Fizz if you can find any Sloe Gin around - or any loose Sloes to soak in your gin. Looks like a Beach Plum. Beach Plums would probably work just fine.

Photo is the Royal.

For summer get-togethers, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.

A Pimm's Cup Cocktail is a good example, a bit unusual in the US, and one you can serve by the pitcher-full.

How anybody can drive up Route 91 through Vermont without stopping at Curtis' place (just west off the Putney exit, next to Ron's gas station) for some authentic Mississippi barbecue is beyond me. Curtis is a Mississippi-born and bred barbecuemaster, but he spends spring to fall in Putney, VT (of all places), cooking over hardwood smoke all day long, with his pet pig following him around the smoky pit. Now he sells his own Curtis' Root Beer and Barbecue Sauce too - but only at his place.

You do not see many places like this in New England.

I like cooked potherbs, aka a "mess o' greens" -of any sort: collards, turnip tops, dandelion, kale, chard, spinach, cabbage. Especially fond of collard greens, even though they are far from typical Yankee cookin'. The Romans got their collards from the Greeks (along with everything else), so collards have a long history as food.

I will not prepare raw greens, such as salad, but have been known to eat that rodent food when placed in front of me. My theory is that greens are meant to be cooked, either with a bit of meat, or with garlic and olive oil. But collards require meat.

If there are no spare ham hocks in the fridge, I cook them with bacon or a couple of slices of ham, and I like them with bits of bacon and/or chopped onion on top. Collards are in the cabbage family, and I love cabbage in any form due to my northern European peasant roots (I'll try to remember to post my favorite cabbage recipes in the fall). Collards do not smell good when cooking, and you just have to put up with it.

Here's some collard history, and a basic Southern collard recipe. It's a given that collards and their juice have to be served with corn bread, even if you live north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Gimme some smoked short ribs or pulled pork, a bowl of collards, some corn bread, and a couple of beers, and this New England Yankee is close to heaven.

Photo: Collards

Addendum: Re raw greens, I forgot to mention cole slaw, known as "ragbag" among old timey Yankees. Home-made ragbag is a wonderful thing. I guess it's a salad, of sorts, and it works well with barbecue and just about anything else, including fresh fried codfish or a plate of fried oysters. Which reminds me that fried oysters were once food for the poor - hence the "poor boy" fried oyster sandwich. Yum.

One of my favorite chefs in town makes cucumber slaw. Slivered cucumber with slivered carrot with a vinaigrette.

Prof. B. explains why reds should be on ice a bit before serving, especially in the summer - assuming the bottles are not coming from your underground or temperature-controlled wine cellar. 55-62 degrees F, max. That's not "room temperature."

I think The Prof is absolutely right, but I had never thought it through. No good wine tastes good at 85 degrees. Hot grape juice (my Dad calls wine "grape juice" even if it's '81 Petrus. "A little more grape juice?" he offers when he pours) doesn't taste good either.

Same thing applies to old Ports, I think.

Rich folks have wine refrigerators that keep each type of wine at its own preferred temp. If you have one, surely you deserve to be more highly taxed.

Disagree? Let me know.

Few summer drinks are more refreshing than the Cape Codder.

I think it tastes best with a little lime squeezed into it, like this recipe. (Come to think if it, most things taste better with a little fresh lime.)

Try a Cape Codder today.

When you add some grapefriut juice, that's a Sea Breeze. Healthy. It would probably be just as tasty without the vodka, but what would be the point?

My mixology research revealed that the Cape Codder is one of a family of cocktails known as "New England Highballs." I didn't know drinks had formal categories. I am still learning about the world.

Are summer mixed drinks Chick Drinks, or for everybody?

To each his own. I, however, generally avoid mixed drinks and hard booze except for the rare Bloody Mary, Martini, Scotch or Bourbon on the rocks. Too much ethanol in them for me for routine consumption.

However, with summer coming on we will review a few popular cool drinks, beginning with the dangerously potent Long Island Iced Tea (there is no tea in it).

I am not a big fan of pasta dishes anymore (used to be, but have pretty much tired of them - especially with red sauce). Still, a favorite snack for me is pasta with garlic and oil - Pasta Aglio et Olio. Simplest thing in the world.

Tips: For this or any other spaghetti recipe, use thin spaghetti - never the full size. For this recipe, the amount of chopped garlic you use, and the extent to which you brown the garlic, is to your taste. I like tons of garlic and I like it brown. I do it with coarsely chopped Italian parsley, and plenty of it. Plenty of fresh ground pepper too. Lastly, make spaghetti the Italian way, by throwing the spaghetti into the hot saucepan and tossing with the sauce. That's the right way to coat the noodles and heat up the pasta at the same time.

A pal told me at a guys' night out barbecue dinner last night that his favorite pasta is Pasta alla Norma, the hamburger of Sicily. I've never had it.

Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.

While "researching" this post, I learned that it's commonly done in Turkey and Iraq. Our garden rhubarb came from China. The leaves are poisonous. There are lots of types of rhubarbs, most inedible.

Rhubarb is the most reliable edible perennial that you can have in your northern garden. Just throw some manure on them every Spring, and you're done. The only problem I have had with them (my last patch) was that the plants kept going to flower and seed without producing new stems. I guess I should have cut off the flowering stems sooner.

How to make a rhubarb patch.

A few fine Rhubarb recipes (don't talk to me about Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie which is an insult to both Strawberry and Rhubarb).

Rhubarb Crisp

Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb Custard Pie

A re-post from long ago-

Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic  tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.

That basic format relied on the importation of the tomato - originally a yellow fruit, the "pomi d'oro,"  from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s. Cortez brought more than gold to Europe.

From its Greek origins to Chicago's Pizza Uno, the story of pizza is about immigration, entrepreneurialism, and invention. Now, "93 percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month."

Modern pizza originated in Italy, although the style favored by Americans is more a friend than a relative of the traditional Neapolitan pie. Residents of Naples took the idea of using bread as a blank slate for relishes from the Greeks, whose bakers had been dressing their wares with oils, herbs, and cheese since the time of Plato. The Romans refined the recipe, developing a delicacy known as placenta, a sheet of fine flour topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Neapolitans earned the right to claim pizza as their own by inserting a tomato into the equation. Europeans had long shied away from the New World fruit, fearing it was plump with poison. But the intrepid citizens of Naples discovered the tomato was not only harmless but delicious, particularly when paired with pizza.

Cheese, the crowning ingredient, was not added until 1889, when the Royal Palace commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three contenders he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pie swathed in the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella).

Read the whole American Pie at Am. Heritage. 1960s image of Miss Rheingold (a bigger deal in NY than Miss America) from the article. Extra-dry Rheingold Beer - the beer of New York baseball, brewed on the east side of Manhattan until the 1970s.

This site has indoor and outdoor mushroom-growing kits. Given the prices of fancy mushrooms, it makes sense. Too bad you cannot grow my favorites at home: Chanterelles and Porcinis.

Here's Have you seen the mushroom man?

It's genetic, sort-of. In the NYT.

I think cilantro is a tired fad, but I do not dislike it. 

This sounds wonderful.

Maybe next year, because today's is already planned.

Dried salt Cod from the Grand Banks became popular in Italy, Spain and Portugal during the 1500s and 1600s, and naturally became incorporated into meatless fast days like Christmas Eve and Good Friday - and Fridays in general.

I stumbled onto some baccala at the market the other day as I was hunting for fresh mint, and, even though it is not a fast day, I will make a pile of these as an Easter appetizer.

Photo is Pew & Son Flake Yard, Gloucester, MA, 1899, from this site of old fishing photos. "Flakes" are codfish drying racks. That Atlantic Cod is, alas, being overfished to extinction. Mankind will be sorry. I remember when you could drop a hook with a clam on it into the Gulf of Maine and come up with a big Cod or Haddock for supper in about two minutes.

While I will confess that I do kinda like that overly sweet "mint" jelly they have at the supermarket, I have grown to prefer the much more interesting taste of homemade Mint Sauce with my lamb.

It's the simplest thing in the world to make.

Does it mean anything that so many Christians bring out the lamb for Easter? Is it like Communion, consuming the Lamb of God?

Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food Control.

Governments love controlling people, don't they? It's a mental disease. Power is a drug for those susceptible to its perverse appeal.

My sis asked me to post our favorite carrot recipe. It's Italian.

Peel a mountain of carrots. Cut them into roughly 3 inch lengths, then quarter them lengthwise - more than quarters for thicker ends of thick carrots. Regular carrot sticks, like a pile of split logs, with enough consistency of thickness to cook evenly.

Toss into lightly salted, lightly-sugared boiling water for several minutes until firm but no longer crunchy. When at the exact right point, toss them into ice water to arrest the cooking, and drain.

Sprinkle the carrot sticks first with red wine vinegar, then sprinkle to your taste with finely chopped garlic (I use a LOT - such that each carrot stick has 5-10 little pieces of garlic on it, but most people don't like garlic the way I do), then toss gently with good olive oil. Marinate thus in the fridge for several hours, or preferably overnight, then serve at room temperature with fresh chopped parsley on top.

It can also be done more properly, and less intensely garlicky, by holding off the chopped garlic and simply burying a bunch of halved or quartered fresh garlic cloves amongst the carrots to marinate with the oil.

When I was a kid, Kedgeree was my favorite breakfast. My Mom was taken by it on all of her trips across the pond, and we kids just did not go for blood sausage. I think I first had it in Scotland.

This Indian-inspired Brit meal is as rare on US menus as Shrimp 'n Grits is on Maine menus. It's great thing for kids in the cool weather, or anytime. Supper too.

Rice, curry, haddock or smoked haddock, etc., and sliced egg on top. I like it with regular haddock, and even the frozen is OK with this. Wonderfully filling, tasty, and rib-sticking.

Here's one recipe, but it need not be so complex.

I learned about Poutine from NRO.

Best food in the world? I would need convincing. The freshness of the curd seems to be key.

This makes the best cornbread I've ever had - and I have had plenty of cornbread. I'll never bother with another brand. What makes it special is the sort of corn meal they use: coarse-ground with corn hunks so it comes out chewy but with a crunchy crust.

They sell it at Costco. Also, I was surprised to see, at Amazon. Try it.

Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.

• About the tree: Click here: Sugar Maple


• Sap flow: Click here: How to Explain Sap Flow


• Grading - Many of of us like the intensity and gnarliness of the lower grades , but you won't find them  in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though.  Click here: Maple Syrup Grades


• FAQs: Click here: Massachusetts Maple Producers Association


• $ - We pay retail in the $20s/gallon, but the farmers get between $2-$3/gallon, usually. More in a "bad" year.


• When it looks like it has gone bad, it hasn't. Give it a light boil, skim it, and it's fine. Better yet, use it before any mold grows on the surface.


• Besides on waffles, French Toast, and pancakes, what can you do with it?

- Put it on oatmeal like the Pilgrims did.
- Pour some into winter squash halves with a pat of butter and bake, like my Indian ancestors probably did.
- Drizzle some over fresh-fallen snow. Instant Maple popsicles with the power to pull out all of your fillings and crowns.
- Drizzle some over Pumpkin Pie. Wow. Tom taught us that.
- Drizzle it over salmon before baking

Butternut squash, halved lengthwise and a wide shallow groove cut out of the pithy part, with butter, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Brown sugar would substitute for maple syrup. Good simple Yankee food. I would happily eat all of them. If one is not being proper, a spoon works well.

A friend was thoughtful enough to give us a year's subscription to Zagat's online for Christmas. Zagat's has gone global now.

A (free) alternative to Zagat's is Yelp. Pick your city. I have been warned, however, that a 3-star rating on Yelp in NYC is equivalent to a 5-star rating elsewhere. New Yorkers are highly critical and demanding about dining - and about everything else. "If I can make it there..."

For example, we were in the city this weekend at the Irish Repertory Theater and were looking for Venetian restaurants in the neighborhood. We tried Le Zie in Chelsea on 7th Ave. Not pricey. Zie had some rough reviews on Yelp (people love to bitch in reviews) but the place was better than any neighborhood trattoria in Italy. The ten "small plate" seafood appetizers were wonderful, and the Venetian calf's liver with onions and vinegar sauce was a fine treat.

It was fun checking out Zagat for Venetian restaurants in NYC. Here are a few of them, for your amusement.

The menus give a good idea of what Venetian cooking consists of:

Cipriani

Osteria al Doge

Antica Venezia

Osteria Laguna

REMI

All good fun. Here's inside Le Zie:

I visited Venice for a few days many years ago, and do not feel driven to return - it's a giant tourist trap with a pickpocket team on every block - except that I wouldn't mind catching the Venice Regatta in August:

On further thought, I wouldn't mind getting a little more experience with Venetian cooking. All I know about it is Risi e Bisi, which doesn't look like much but which is killer delicious when Mrs. BD makes it.

Here's When I Paint My Masterpiece live with The Band in 1971:

This is an annual re-post.

With hunting season coming to a close, it's time to get cooking what we have in the freezer. It all begins with the sauce:

Uncle Bill's Jus de Gibier (mixed game) sauce, aka Brown Game Stock, aka Clean out the Freezer Sauce

This will be the tastiest sauce base, or sauce, you have ever had in your life, for chicken, game birds, turkey, venison, pork, veal, pasta, ravioli, etc. It's an ideal base for pheasant, chicken, venison or goose bourguignon. It has an earthy richness to it which is remarkable. We like to make a woodcock ravioli with black truffle, and this sauce is essential for that.

Gibier refers to mixed game, but we do it with mixed meat too, but not beef, which would overpower the subtler flavors. It is the best use of freezer-burned game and other stuff in the freezer. It's fun to make (but it takes a while), and you can clean out the freezer and the fridge at the same time. I freeze the used carcasses of Thanksgiving turkey, ducks, goose, random deer bones, etc. to use when I make this, once or twice a year, along with freezer-burned chicken, pheasant, etc. You could do this with entirely store-bought stuff if you lack a hunter in the family. The more stuff, the better.

You need a 10-12 (or larger) quart stovepot to make this, if you have a lot of stuff to use, but it freezes fine when made. It's good for a few months, at least.

Bake in oven until browned (not necessarily cooked-though) your saved carcasses and freezer-burned game meat and meat, especially pork and pork bones are good, and veal bones, (even if they have already been cooked). Yes, you bake the bones too. Do not burn them in the oven. I tend to use freezer-burned venison, pork chops, all my game bird carcasses, venison bones (cracked with a mallet), a bunch of veal bones and veal scraps if I can get them nowadays (it doesn't hurt to hit up the butcher for some stuff for this), turkey carcass, woodcock carcasses, and a pile of chicken wings. Chop this stuff roughly with a cleaver into 3-6" chunks and toss in the pot. Try to crack the bones.

As I was considering some dinner plans, naturally the idea of foie-gras-stuffed quail came to mind.

Quail, around here, are Bob Whites. (Hunters in the South call them "birds," hence the origin of the term bird dog.) Habitat loss and development is the main reason that these Eastern US birds are approaching endangered status in parts of their range. You can read about them here. 

I have heard them calling their name out on Nantucket, Long Island and on Cape Cod, but nowhere inland in New England.

Fortunately, they are readily pen-raised and thus easily available at supermarkets - and for preserve shooters who typically, even in the South, release thousands of pen-raised birds for the pleasure of the sports.

This site has 91 quail recipes.

That's supper for our friend the ex-blogger Hog on Ice (I like that raw sweet onion on the plate) whose book we'd like to plug.

Got any Woodock in the freezer?

The USA is unusual because wild game meat can not be sold in stores. All "game" meat sold in the US is farm-raised, whether venison, quail, pheasant, duck, or whatever.

That is the correct and righteous legacy of the devastating, 12 month/year market hunting of the past which devastated the seemingly endlessly abundant American wildlife populations.

There is no bird as special for the table as Woodcock, but you have to shoot them yourself. One way to do justice to this diminutive bird (smaller than the European Woodcock) is a ravioli dish I learned from my Cordon Bleu chef friend.

Take a few Woodcock, and cut all of the meat off them - breast, thighs, etc. Chop the meat into roughly 1/2" pieces. Throw in a bowl and mix with a bit of sauteed very finely-chopped shallots and carrots, salt, pepper, a bit of fresh thyme and parsley and a little bit of truffle oil.

Take some wonton squares and brush some whisked egg on the edges as glue. Put a teaspoon or two of the mixture inside, then seal the squares tightly to eliminate any air inside, and place carefully into gently boiling water until done. It only takes a few minutes.

Serve the raviolis drizzled with somewhat reduced gibier sauce, with a few shavings of black truffle on top.

Can't be beat.

This is a repost:

We respect and value - with a deep sensitivity to cereal differences - hot breakfast cereals from strange, exotic, far-away cultures like Montana, etc. Here's what we like (besides English muffins):

1. Cream of the West, from Montana
2. Red River, from Manitoba
3. McCann's Oatmeal, from Ireland

Being Yankees, we are also partial to Apple Pie for breakfast (that's what it used to be made for), but you must not buy that at the store - there are some things in life you would never buy.

Readers know that we also love Chipped Beef on toast, but a quarter of an Apple Pie (a multicultural tarte tatin will work, too), two coffees and a couple of smokes will get anyone ready for a cold, rugged day of work in the drafty old office.

This is an annual re-posting.

The global cooling we are experiencing inspired me to consider some truly fine cool-weather all-white breakfast eats which are not easily found in Yankee-land. The good stuff that sticks to your arteries ribs and warms you from the inside.

Creamed chipped beef on toast is the fine old Yankee version of the southland's biscuits 'n gravy. Both have done wonders for warming the hearts and narrowing the arteries of generations of American boys. Add some potatoes and you have the perfect meal for a lumberjack or hunter.

While apple pie is an old-time Yankee breakfast staple, it has been replaced long ago by eggs, toast, and bacon, maybe a chunk of fruit, and preferably home fries with ketchup on them. Not Heinz 57, though - it's not my job to feed John Kerry.

Some people eat cereal for breakfast. Why? Because Dr. John Kellogg, a health-food charlatan in the 1800s, told them to. Zero nutrition. Breakfast cereal is a fraud and a scam, unless it's plain grits or cream of wheat or oatmeal. The crunchy granola stuff? Well, I thought the guy who discovered that you could sell people plain water was a genius, but the people who decided to sell guinea pig food to humans was his creative equal.

(At Maggie's Farm, we are also fond of fish for breakfast, like the Brits. Kippers. Or a lighty sauteed trout someone has caught early, sprinkled with parsley. Or left-over broiled salmon.)

The chipped beef was always a boarding school standard, and half loved it and half barfed to look at it. It does look like vomit, but it's great stuff. It's a gourmet's delight, but nobody makes it anymore.

When I did my time south of the Mason-Dixon, a local favorite was hot dog gravy on biscuits. Grits on the side, of course. Everything white. Not a refined breakfast, just gravy made with supermarket hot dogs instead of sausage. A truly revolting flavor. I prefer my Sabretts on a bun at Yankee Stadium. But other sorts of southern gravy, made with ham or sausage, are just fine. I won't presume to offer a biscuit 'n gravy recipe, because every Southern Mom has her own. Well, here's a Virginia one from someone's Grandma.

Biscuits 'n gravy, and grits. Food for the soul.

Image: New Hampshire chipped beef on English muffins - with home fries. They don't do grits up north (except in Italian homes and restaurants, where they like to call grits "polenta") and it's a damn shame. Good stuff.

Wines for fast food. Prof B

Nutrition and Tradition The Science of Food and the Culture of Cooking

A small Canadian seaside town in New Brunswick has been warned lobsters that wash ashore cannot be eaten because they weren't caught under license.

Whole Foods' John Mackey: Food Fighter

How school lunch programs manage to promote obesity and hunger at the same time.

Photo: Butterflied lamb from the grill. There is nothing better. Lamb must be cooked rare or it isn't worth eating, and the butterflied leg in the photo looks overcooked for my taste. Costco has great butterflied leg of lamb.