Friday, August 22. 2008
 Learn all about them, here.
Thursday, August 21. 2008
 Fall is coming. Today's B&G recipe.
Remember: Lots of gravy greases and smooths the insides of your arteries, and helps your brain think better too.
Sunday, August 10. 2008
It's the time of year when you send kids on the coast of New England out to the salt marshes and mudflats to dig Steamers, which are the most delicious seafood in the world. AKA Soft-Shelled Clams. Digging for Steamers takes a bit of skill and gentle use of the right tool (a clam rake or, better yet, a clam fork), because you don't want to crack their fragile shells. And you have to know where to look, because they cluster. The fun part is getting covered with black marsh mud. You steam up a giant pot of them, just long enough for them to cook but not so long that they get tough or fall apart. Then you pour everybody a mug of the broth from the pot. Essence of the sea and the marshes. And you give everybody a bowl of melted butter. I prefer them without the butter so you get the pure clammy flavor. You pull them out of the shell using their long necks as a handle, and I toss the necks to the gulls. These in the photo below are not Steamers. These are Littleneck Clams, which should never, ever be cooked for any reason - which they have been in the photo. It's a disgrace. Cooking them turns them into clam-flavored chewing gum. They should only be slurped down fresh and alive: 
These are Steamers. These precious critters are only eaten steamed, and I am convinced that God made them for that purpose: 
Sunday, August 3. 2008
 Bird Dog gave me some seedlings to try in the garden, warning me that they don't grow like squash, but like gourds. (They are an edible gourd, same as pumpkin.)
Vigorous doesn't describe it. These things are like Jack's beanstalk, and bugs leave them alone. You're supposed to pick them before they get much over a foot long. Americans may consider them to be an Italian heirloom vegetable, but they are grown all over Asia. You peel them and cook like summer squash. Sometimes people fry them, too. Photo: A cucuzzi, with an overgrown cucumber for comparison.
Thursday, July 31. 2008
 If you grew up in Yankeeland, along the coast, clam and fish chowders have been one of your staples. They are seafood cooked with milk or cream, and whatever else. Real simple comfort food, served with hunks of good bread.
Everybody knows Clam Chowder, for which there are 54,612 different recipes (not including the revolting "Manhattan Clam Chowder" which is poisoned with tomato. A good Yankee Fish Chowder is very similar to clam chowder. One of the best ones I ever had was on Grand Manan Island, where the chunks were huge - quartered potatoes, big chunks of onion, and 4" square hunks of fresh Cod. The key for chowder is the stock: fish heads and bones, a few lobster shells are good, low-simmered for a couple of hours with some chopped onion and celery, pepper, etc. You do need to use the salt pork. The actual fish (like clams in clam chowder), you only add at the last minute and cook briefly - just until it flakes. Haddock or Cod are the only fish you can use. Scrod is just small Cod. Some use Monkfish, but I disagree: Monkfish is not a tasty fish, and it has a poor, chewy texture. Bacala - salt cod - works fine for any cod dish if it is handled properly. I prefer fresh. Here's a Maine recipe. Here's another version. Bermuda Fish Chowder bears no relationship to the Yankee version. It is from England, has no milk, but is wonderful in its own way. I have never tried to cook it, but have enjoyed in on countless occasions on lovely Bermuda. FYI, Bermuda Fish Chower's history here, and recipe here. Image: Atlantic Cod. Overfishing has been a major problem - the wonderful Atlantic Cod is in trouble, and has been for many years.
Dr. Bliss' Blissful Fish Stock (Fumet) Clam chowder is very good, but cod chowder is great. Here's how I begin: Chop up a hunk of salt pork into 1/2" or 1" pieces. Bacon is a poor second choice. Plus some butter. Chop carrots or parsnips, onion, garlic, celery - easy on the celery, one or two stalks. Sautee in the pork and butter until soft. There's your mirepoix. Toss that into a stewpot, then a pile of fish heads and/or bones (from lean fish - no salmon, trout, tuna, etc. Heads are the best - your fishmonger has 'em). Add black crushed peppercorns, a bay leaf, some parsley, and one clove. A sprig of thyme is good. Cover with water and a cup or two or three of drinkable white wine, and simmer, covered, for an hour or two, while consuming the rest of the wine. Cool it, strain preferably through cheesecloth but I use a strainer, chill in fridge then remove any fat on the surface. Some people like to find some bacon or salt pork in their chowder, so you can salvage them from the strainer, or make new. You can reduce it or use as it is (I always thicken chowder with corn starch), as the base for fish soup or fish chowder. Don't use it as a base for New England clam chowder, though, because the fumet will overpower the delicate clammy flavor.
Thursday, July 24. 2008
 We stuck with the Piedmont's local Barbera wines during our Italy trip. Barbera d'Asti and Barbera d'Alba. That same grape has been grown up there at least since the 13th century.
I did not realize that the Barbera grape is the most abundantly-grown grape in Italy. These are basically good table wines, nothing too complicated or fancy, and far down on the wine totem pole from the great Northern Italian wines like Amarone and the Nebbiolo grape-based Barbaresco and Barolo. About Barbera d'Alba, this site says: In the hilly area around Alba, only vineyards in the hills with suitable slopes and orientations are considered adequate for production. The terrains must be primarily clayey-calcareous or sandy-calcareous in character. DOC recognition is excluded for terrains with northern exposures and the bottoms of valleys that are flat or semi-flat. The colour of the wine is intense ruby red when young with a tendency to garnet after ageing.
This site says: The high-in-acid Barbera Grape of north-western Italy is a chameleon-like grape which changes considerably according to yield. As an everyday variety, it is a juicy glugger but it can metamorphose into a concentrated, rich, plumy and cherryish wine with undertones of sweet vanilla and spice when aged in small new casks. In Argentina, it tends to the former style with a little less acidity thanks to plentiful Andean sunshine.
Photo: Barbera grapes
Sunday, July 20. 2008
 I love cucumbers from my garden in the summertime. I harvested my first few this weekend.
Is anything more refreshing? I guess I prefer them as a dominant component, and not as a minor ingredient. Mixing tomato with cucumber is an insult to Mr. Cucumber - except in a Greek tomato, cucumber and feta cheese salad - which is hardly a salad. More like a fine simple plate of food, with olive oil drizzled over it. Cucumber sandwich: 2 or three 1/4 to 1/2 inch-thick lengthwise slices of peeled cucumber - try to minimize the seeds. Sprinkle a little salt. Put on bread with some mayo. This version is definitely not a lady's tea sandwich. Cucumber and onion salad: My Granny made this all the time in the summer. Sometimes with shrimp in it as a light lunch, but I like it plain. I don't think she used the oil, but maybe she did. I make it without oil and with the clear-colored vinegar, sugar to taste, and definitely let it sit in the icebox an hour or so to absorb the flavor. Cucumber Slaw: This one has sour cream and vinegar Another cucumber slaw: Better to shred it in the Cuisinart than to grate it, in my opinion. Cucumber and Radish Slaw: Refreshingly cool, zippy, and unusual. Yet another cucumber slaw: A favorite. Peel and seed them. Shred in Cuisinart. Always drain shredded cukes in a colander with a bit of salt and some weight on top for 20 minutes before making slaw or it gets too watery. Shred some carrots too. Toss together in a vinaigrette with a little salt and pepper. Really nice with lobster and fish, but also terrific with barbecue. Cucumber and Dill Salad. A classic, and the only reason to bother growing dill in the garden.
Sunday, July 13. 2008
 Our regular readers know that I enjoy cooking meat in my smoker. For me, that is real barbecue. Not a grill - a smoker.
Mostly pork, sometimes beef. Unlike some of my pals, I do not believe in smoking game birds because their fine flavor is too subtle to hold up to smoke. I like to put on the hot rub du jour overnight, then start smoking it in the morning - or whenever I get to it. Pork loin, butt for pulled pork, ribs, beef tips, whatever. Sometimes I like to finish it off with a store-bought or home-made barbecue sauce on it while it finishes, sometimes during the entire cooking, sometimes on the side. For ribs, you have to cook with the sauce so they don't dry out. In Texas, it's on the side with the brisket - but I don't like brisket. What's your preference? Photo is my smoked pork loin. You need to have the sauce on the side for that.
Saturday, July 12. 2008
A re-post:  I like this refreshingly hot, crunchy Chinese pickled salad in the summer. Here's how I make it:
Peel and then cut some raw turnips (real turnips) into small (1/2 inch) bite-sized chunks. Same with some carrots. I cut them in irregular shapes. Some cauliflower chunks. Being a turnip person, I make it about 50% turnip. Chopped cabbage, too, if you want. Blanch them all for a couple of minutes (separately, in order of color, or you will end up with orange cauliflower). If you want (unpeeled) raw cucumber chunks in it to add color and fun, great, but add those chunks at the last minute before serving because soggy cucumbers are not good. Mix a bottle of clear vinegar with some salt and a teaspoon or three of sugar (to taste). Toss in some of those very hot dried red Chinese peppers, also some red pepper flakes and/or fresh jalapheno slices, and some thin slices of fresh ginger root. It's OK without the ginger too. Throw the roots and vegetables in a garbage bag or bowl with the mixture, cover, refrigerate 8-24 hrs, stirring it up occasionally. It should be meaningfully spicy. Strain and serve refrigerator-cold.
Friday, July 11. 2008
 At this very moment. Chunks of Black Cherry wood from the woodpile, with a pot of water in there.
Short and regular pork ribs rubbed with brown sugar, various ground peppers, dried mustard and Kosher salt. Also a pork butt or two. Let me know whether the smell of the smoke comes through your computer screen. It smells good. If you cannot smell it, maybe your computer's smoke-blocker blocks it.
Tuesday, July 8. 2008
 What's the difference between Bruschetta (properly pronounced "bresketta") and Crostini? Here's one answer. And here's a quote from a piece in The New Statesman on bruschetta, Toast of the Tiber: "The relationship between bruschetta and "garlic bread" is a peculiar one. In principle, bruschetta is the honest, poor man's original -nothing but charred, oil-soaked bread rubbed with garlic-while "garlic bread" is the embellished pretender. But somehow things have got mixed up. British democracy has confused them. Garlic bread became genuinely democratised, sold in dispiriting packs of two, or even four, for 99p in the brightest freezer cabinets. Meanwhile, the monied torchbearers of democracy - in fact, the elite - went crazy for bruschetta, paying a small fortune for pane covered in broad beans or anchovies at the River Cafe. And so, bizarrely, buttery indigestible garlic bread has come to seem unpretentious "people's food", while bruschetta is the poncy snack of the People's Party. This is an unfortunate state of affairs. Everything that is best about bruschetta -- its power to bestow well-being in one crisp bite -- is betrayed by garlic bread. To begin with, as Marcella Hazan points out: "The most important ingredient in bruschetta is not garlic but olive oil." The garlic on bruschetta is rubbed on, so that you inhale the fresh garlic perfume as a backdrop to the olive oil, rather than eating great lumps of it. The origin of bruschetta was probably the ancient Roman practice of tasting newly pressed olive oil on a piece of bread, with or without garlic -- a practice that has continued in the oil-producing areas of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The name derives from bruscare, meaning "to roast over coals". Alice Waters's version of bruschetta involves frying country bread in large amounts of oil, until thoroughly impregnated, and Elizabeth David recommends baking slices of white bread in the oven."
Thus we learn that "garlic bread" is not really Italian. The whole piece is interesting, and makes me wonder whether we American garlic-lovers - me, anyway - use our garlic far more heavy-handedly than we should. I will do Bruschetta this way: Sourdough bread slices lightly fried in oil then garlic-rubbed, chopped fresh tomatoes barely warmed in a little oil with sea salt and maybe a touch of vinegar (plus maybe a little lightly sauteed onion) then fresh basil and parsley sprinkled on top. I think a sloppy Bruschetta is just fine if the oil and tomatoes are excellent, but I think I prefer a little plate of Crostini with a glass of wine. In Italy we were served Crostini that were simple thin toasted baguette slices (garlic-rubbed with a little salt) with oil and some herbs (including Rosemary), others with a very light smear of pesto or goat cheese, and some others with just a little bit of sauteed shallot. Clearly the oil is the main point - and the wine. The added flavor should be subtle. I think I prefer my Crostini lightly fried in good olive oil before the other flavor is added on top. If you Google "crostini+recipe" you can find a ton of ideas, most of which I think are excessive.
Saturday, July 5. 2008
 A re-post.
Surely some readers have cucumbers in their gardens by now. Not us, quite yet. We will not have tomatoes for a few more weeks, either. First one: two slices of good bread, one slice of Costco ham, plenty of mayo, a fat slice of a tomato from the garden, and generous slices/chunks of Costco goat cheese, salt and pepper. Mmmm. Or: bread, fat slice of tomato, skinny slices of warm cucumber from the garden, salt and pepper and mayo. Wow. Or, minimalist - the man's version of a lady's cucumber sandwich: bread, two or three fat slices consisting of an entire cucumber from the garden (sliced lengthwise, not in rounds, with or without the seed part), salt and pepper, mayo. Olive oil and vinegar dressing always substitutable for the mayo, but I prefer the Hellman's. Never build a sandwich without salt and pepper - learned that long ago from a chef friend. Except PB&J - or Fluffernutter, of course. Theo's inflated girlfriend, pictured, loves a good old Yankee Fluffernutter. She told me so. (Loyal Yankee tho I am, I cannot eat those things.) Anyway, I think this gal is pulling in her tummy for the photo.
Friday, July 4. 2008
A worthy re-post:  Is a Cuba Libre just a Rum and Coke? The Perfect Cuba Libre.
To my taste, squeeze in a whole lime, and go easy on the rum. The type of rum to use seems to be a subject of controversy.
Saturday, June 21. 2008
A re-post from August, 2006  It's the time of year when my family's food interests turn to mollusks and crustaceans. It seems to be in their blood.
Oysters preferably on the half-shell, and cherrystones only on the half-shell. About that red seafood sauce with horseradish, for shrimp and clams and oysters etc - it is vulgar, overpowering stuff, but we love it anyway. It is the American wasabi. Crabs: up north, we prefer them in their moulting soft-shell form, lightly sauteed in olive oil, butter, parsley, a touch of garlic, and white wine: three per person - it's the frugal way to eat the magnificent east coast Blue Crab because you eat the whole darn thing, shell, feathers and all - a perfect combination of crunch and succulence. I know how you pick at them on the Chesapeake - and that is damn good, but too much work. Lobsters: We eat them as a gala treat but not too often as it is easy to grow tired of them. Always buy the big ones - one 6 lb. lobster has double the meat of six one-lb. lobsters (which are mostly shell). If they have the big ones, get the biggest and let them steam 'em for you. The story that the big ones are tougher than the babies is pure myth and an evil lie - the only tough lobster is a live one without the rubber bands. Plus the big guys are as dramatic on the table as a Thanksgiving turkey or a crown roast of lamb. Oh, did I mention that you never boil a lobster - you steam them. Boiling them washes half of their favor out of them. Toss the shells in the freezer, afterwards, and use them in your next fish stock. Clam chowder - you have to have your own family recipe, but red clam chowder is disgusting. Steamers? The best. Just use a few cups of water, and keep the clams above the water. Don't overcook 'em, or they will get too chewy. And do not dip them in butter - it overpowers their salt-marshy goodness. Best part? That broth. When you drink that hot broth out of a heavy mug you feel like you are reuniting with Mother Ocean - and you are. Left-over broth? To the freezer, for fish stock, along with steamer clam shells, fish heads and bones, lobster shells, etc. Wow. Mussels: a steamed mountain of mussels is a thing of beauty but mussel soup is more interesting. And a simple oyster stew with heavy cream and paprika is nirvana - you must use large oysters, and never overcook them - just until they warm up and the edges begin to curl. The Oyster Bar (since 1913) makes the best oyster stew in the world in their custom-made, 100 year-old oyster stew steaming machines. Worth a trip to NYC and Grand Central Station just to sample their world-wide oysters - and that simple, heavenly stew. Poor-Boys and fried oysters? They aren't a bad thing at all, but only with those southern, less subtle oysters which come shelled in a container. The kind we use for oyster stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey. And what is the finest oyster in the world? That's right, the ethereal Wellfleet Oyster, bathed in the fresh water from the Herring River. But don't try to cook him - it's a crime to do so, or should be. But we have done it - shame on us. Oysters Rockefeller from Wellfleet oysters. Wines for these splendid delicacies from the sea? Champaigne is my first choice, and a Viognier is my second choice. Third choice - a French Chablis. Chardonnay with shellfish? No, no, no: try it and find out - they do not mix. Red wine with seafood? Certainly, if you feel like it. Who cares? Red surely is good with fish. I, for one, will not eat salt-water fish with white wine, but shellfish - for certain. Champaigne with steamers? Very cool; very refined. Many prefer beer, though. (Steamers are the East Coast Buffalo Chicken Wings - only better.) Image: a favorite Cape Cod salt marsh in Wellfleet, MA, full of steamer clams. You can fill a wire basket in 20 minutes, and come home half-covered with the black gooey happy marsh mud.
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