The Rake Magazine

Category: Food and Drink

  • The Gow Choy Express

    The average home cook, it turns out, has only about a dozen rotating specialties in his or her repertoire. Pot roast, meatloaf, spaghetti, you know the drill. This type of déjà vu dining becomes especially depressing in March. While the lucky few fly away to warmer climes and snack on fresh tropical fruit, the rest of us feel sentenced to a state of not-yet-spring, in which we’d rather eat a travel brochure than another baked chicken. Seeking out the fresh and new may seem daunting, especially as you lie on the sofa with the television clicker on your belly, but there is hope—inside the Asian markets scattered throughout the Twin Cities.

    Asian markets offer glimpses into other worlds, right when you need them most. For those who shop at them regularly, this is hardly a revelation. But if you are like I once was (hugely aware of my tendency to stammer when I don’t know how to ask for something, and frightened to death of being offensive), just stepping through their doors can seem daunting. It turns out that all it takes to get over yourself is one trip to Shuang Hur or Duc Loi. You’ll be mesmerized by the tightly packed shelves of interesting ingredients and overwhelmed by the hospitality of the people who work there. In an effort to reveal the delights of these and other local Asian markets, I undertook a whirlwind shopping spree with friend and food expert JD Fratzke, the head chef at Muffaletta Café in St. Paul.

    One of the best things about Asian markets is the availability of fresh and unusual herbs and leaves. You’ll find, likely near the vegetables, generous bunches of herbs that are less expensive than the plastic-boxed sprigs at the average grocery. Some of the most common are garlic chives (gow choy), which have a grassy top and pungent smell, and sweet Asian basil (bai horapha), with its slight anise flavor. More exciting are the leaves—la-lot leaves, kaffir lime leaves, and sword-shaped pandan leaves—which can be used to wrap fish and meats while they steam.

    Oddly shaped roots are also plentiful. JD proved once and for all that beauty lies within when he snapped open a squat, dirt-covered water chestnut root to reveal its perfectly creamy white inner flesh. The basics include taro root, a starchy tuber that acts like a potato but with a slightly sweeter flavor; spicy galangal, a member of the ginger family commonly used in Thai cuisine; and jicama, tumeric, ginger, and lotus roots. A tip from JD: If you’re looking for bamboo shoots, go easy on yourself and buy the ones that have already been peeled and rinsed.

    Enthralling, but confusing, are the many varieties of leafy greens. Of course there’ll be bok choy on hand, but why not try gai larn (Chinese broccoli) instead? The stems make a vibrant side dish, chopped and flash boiled in salted water. Choy sum is a flowering cabbage often crowned with little yellow buds; both the leaves and stems can be thrown into a stir-fry. Water spinach (kangkung), with its long, narrow leaves, is best wilted in olive oil with a bit of garlic.

    The meat cases in Asian markets are packed with the usual cuts of beef and pork, alongside more unusual offerings like pigs’ feet and snouts, beef stomachs, and what JD calls the Asian movie snack: chicken feet. Fish can be found frozen and whole or sliced and marinated in a traditional spicy chili paste. Many markets offer cooked meats like HOFO duck (head on feet on), or barbecued hog. Both make for very easy meals.

    One of the best treasure troves of all is the frozen foods section. Surprises from the far reaches of the globe can be found behind the glass doors: bags of pond snails, packets of air-dried fish, cases of quail eggs, boxes of Chinese sausages. Great deals can be had on bags of frozen mussels, scallops, shrimp, and other seafood. JD laughed aloud when he saw the same brand of frozen shrimp sold to his restaurant sitting on a shelf for markedly less. The big winner for me is the variety of dim sum treats. It’s so very nice not to have to leave home for a steamy breakfast of bao buns.

    Of course, the basics would only get you so far without the aisles and aisles of vinegars, sauces, noodles, rice papers, spices, canned lychees, and dried mushrooms. The selection of soy sauces alone can be exhilarating. JD is on the constant lookout for an exotic white soy sauce a fellow chef once lent him. The hunt is half the thrill. On one of our trips I found fine French butter, small production Taiwanese honey, and a can of bubblegum-flavored jackfruit.

    Strategywise, JD recommends starting with a recipe and a list of ingredients. And never be afraid to ask questions, he says. While we stood, obviously confused, in front of a meat case, a sweet older Asian man motioned in a gesture of aid. After a few minutes of pointing and a mix of odd linguistics on all our parts, we at last learned via pantomime that the gelatinous mass we’d been eyeing was beef stomach. We all smiled and nodded, feeling lucky to be in Minnesota. Even in March.

    United Noodles 2015 E. 24th St., Minneapolis, 612-721-6677

    Shuang Hur 654 University Ave., St. Paul,

    651-251-2196; 2710 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis, 612-872-8606

    Duc Loi 2429 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis,

    612-870-8684

    M&A Food Store 721 Jackson St., St. Paul,

    651-310-0109

  • A Winter Warmer

    These winter mornings, the sunshine shows things as they are. I was recently in Devon, the corner of southwest England where I was brought up, which was covered with a fine coating of frost that imparts sharpness to every detail of the landscape. “Proper rimey,” said my neighbor there, a man who lives in the house where he was born and has been digging the graves in the village churchyard for nigh on forty years. The frost (a.k.a. rime) gives each blade of grass a thin, sharp edge with the patina of brushed steel. A little warmth from the sun strikes the tousled twigs of the willows down by the stream and rows of water drops form orderly queues along the underside of each wooden wisp. All this ambient moisture freezes the fingers and, seemingly, each individual capillary within each finger. Thirty degrees Fahrenheit in Devon feels something like thirty degrees colder than it does in Minnesota.

    If the morning sun shows things as they are, it is the pale, slanting light of late afternoon that is the joy of the historian, for it shows things as they were. This narrow valley has become a palimpsest, a surface like a medieval sheepskin manuscript that has been written over by one scribe after another to record successive lives. Oblique light reveals the slightest lump or line in the landscape left behind by an old lane or hedgebank or by the walls of a building long since disappeared. Sunset has an ultraviolet feel.

    Nowadays, the stream, one of the little brawling brooks which eventually empties itself into the River Exe, runs straight through pasture into an ornamental garden. But a couple of hundred years ago, trenches and tributaries, long since dry but now apparent in the weak winter sunshine, ran in and out of it. These were excavated in order to irrigate orchards growing apples with names like Kingston Black, Sweet Alford, and Slack My Girdle, the fruit that made the fearsomely alcoholic farmhouse cider for which Devon used to be famous. I have known tough Scotch matelots, well acquainted with the strong waters of their own country, who have come ashore from their ships at Plymouth and found Devon cider to be more than they could handle.

    Underneath the vanished sylvan landscape of the apples is another—noisier, malodorous, industrial. Seven hundred years ago, mills here were fulling and bleaching woolen cloth, their wheels driven by the water power of leats laboriously dug out by hand and visible now as the merest shadows in the field-grass. These are not the product of the fey fancies that some folk associate with so-called ley lines. They were dug by hard graft to serve a serious business; like many modern developing nations, medieval Devon made its first efforts at industrialization by manufacturing textiles. One of the fields on the side of this valley is called Long Bolham; the name is that of a weaver, Nicholas de Bolleham, who on the eleventh of September, 1337, took on a lifetime lease of the land and mills from the Lord of the Manor—you can read the document in the Harvard Law Library. His industry has left little enough impression on the sedgy grass of these pastures. In the four centuries that succeeded him, however, the long, slow growth of the West Country cloth trade powered the enterprise of intrepid Devon seafarers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, not to mention the brave folk who sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower in 1620 and thus made a mark on a wider world.

    Teasing ghosts out of the frosty fields is a fine occupation for the dark time of the year, but it is chilly work. Too much contemplation makes one pale. You could put warmth back into your extremities with the 2001 vintage of a fine red Rhône from Domaine Sainte-Anne (Appellation Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages Contrôlée). True, the wine comes from near Saint-Gervais in the hill country west of the Rhône, so the vines that grow its grapes (principally Grenache and Syrah) are no strangers to cold. But lemon trees and the Mediterranean are within reach.

    This is wine with a good red color, strong, toothsome tannins, and fruity flavors reminiscent of cherries, neither flimsy (like bad Beaujolais) nor seriously weighty (like great Châteauneuf du Pape). Nor is it excessively expensive in Minnesota, at around $15 a bottle. And, as a vegetarian friend recently said to me, “Rhône goes with everything.” This would certainly be fine with all sorts of food, from hummus dip to roast pheasant. It is the kind of warming wine that inspires confidence. Maybe it could set 2006 in a somewhat rosier light.

  • Out of Your Shell…

    It’s hard to admit, but my real first encounter with escargot was at Bunny’s Bar and Grill in St. Louis Park, with a flock of hospitality bats. Some of my fellow bartenders thought it would be funny to order the strange appetizer—what was escargot Bourguignon doing there alongside nachos?—and someone else thought it would be even funnier to drop one in my mouth without telling me what it was. Once I understood that I was eating snails, I could no longer understand why this definitive dish in the cuisine of cuisines was so maligned. In truth, my initial taste of these slimy creatures was an odd sort of awakening. The earthy, buttery softness of this accidental escargot led me to oysters and sushi and other culinary adventures that might have been postponed for who knows how long.

    Piles of shells excavated from archeological digs across Europe indicate that snails have been enjoyed as a food by a number of ancient peoples. The Romans cultivated special vineyards where their snails could feed. By the sixteenth century, dining on snails was so fashionable that the Catholic Church classified them (along with frogs and turtles in France) as “fish” and they were therefore allowed on meatless days. But it wasn’t until the mid-1800s, when Alsatian-run brasseries proliferated in Paris, that escargot became a defining dish of French culture. Today the French consume some forty thousand metric tons of escargot each year, more than the country can produce. Just last year, the Burgundy Snail Festival was saved by the importation of Polish snails to handle the demand (to the delight and chagrin of the French). In fact, heliciculture, or snail farming, is becoming a popular economic solution for Eastern European countries as demands across the globe increase.

    Gastropod mollusks, snails occupy one of the largest classes of animals and can be found all over the planet in both water and land environments. Gastronomically, the most popular are Helix aspera (or petit-gris), the common garden snail, and Helix pomatia, the famed Burgundy snail. Spending their lazy days grazing on wild herbs and vineyard plants, wild Burgundy snails are not as widespread as they once were, due to land development and farming practices. Meanwhile, the garden snail is detested by green thumbs because of its insatiable appetite for plant matter and its prolific breeding ability. (It helps that most snails are hermaphrodites, and toggle back and forth between male and female.) Indeed, it must be hard to appreciate critters on your table that you curse in your garden. Other haters are usually people who have, shall we say, “textural issues” with foods. Just thinking of the slimy, gelatinous nature of a raw snail is enough to set off their gag reflex. And yet many of these people would happily wolf down a lobster, the cockroach of the sea, which is actually similar in texture to a cooked snail.

    The Slow Food organization, those champions of fresh and independently produced food, and of the meaningful and lengthy enjoyment of a meal, uses the snail as its logo. Puns aside, cooking fresh wild snails is a slow and laborious undertaking. Although gardeners may be inspired to boil up their nemesis as a tasty revenge, caution should be heeded as snails, more so than most animals, are what they eat—including pesticides and plant life that may be poisonous to humans. Therefore, preparing snails for consumption involves holding them in an untreated wood box while they fast for three to four days as a detoxifying process. It also may include burying them alive in rock salt to draw out harmful toxins, or boiling them at length while removing the frothy scum that gathers on the surface of the cooking water. Not surprisingly, canned snails are a popular alternative to the home-cooked variety; many brands use age-old French preparations and are becoming more readily available in the U.S. through gourmet websites.

    Most of us, however, think of escargot as de rigueur on the menu at any traditional French restaurant. At Vincent in Minneapolis, escargot is prepared in the classic Burgundy style, with garlic, shallots, and butter; when perfectly cooked in this way, it is amazingly soft and delicate—like a divine portobello. (You will know the overcooked snail when you meet it: Chewy and rubbery, they lose all magic.) For a departure from the Gallic, venture to Solera for a warm tapas of snails with mojo verde.

    While escargot may seem hopelessly retro, young chefs are rediscovering the dish. Over the last year, restaurants across the country featured such creations as escargot-stuffed figs, escargot with truffled parsnip puree and artichokes, escargot parfait with potato puree, and parsley pesto-dotted escargot pizzas. Escargot on the menu gives a restaurant a certain pedigree, since most everyone has heard of escargot, and many consider it a luxury item, whether they enjoy it or not. So perhaps these chefs are at the forefront of a new international trend, and soon enough, escargot will be as popular as steak frites.

     

    Escargot Pasta

    6 to 8 ounces linguine pasta

    3 tablespoons butter

    1 10-ounce can artichoke hearts,

    drained and sliced

    1⁄2 cup quartered mushrooms

    (such as baby portobello or porcini)

    1 7- or 8-ounce can escargot, drained

    2 to 3 cloves garlic, chopped

    1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage

    1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

    1⁄2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano cheese

    Cook pasta in water until al dente.

    While pasta is cooking, melt butter in large sauté pan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté until golden. Add mushrooms and artichokes and cook until mushrooms have softened and browned.

    Stir in escargot, sage, and parsley, cooking until just warmed. (Don’t overcook snails or they will be tough.) Remove from heat.

    Toss cooked pasta with half of cheese and place in serving bowl (or on plates) and top with escargot mixture. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and serve. Makes two large portions.

  • Heavenly Drinking

    Heaven, said the Regency wit Sydney Smith, is eating paté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. It sounds pretty piggy if you ask me, all too like the fellow who said that you should decide what to do in life by following your bliss. And rather odd doctrine for S. Smith, who made his name as a book reviewer but had a day job as a canon of S. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I have naturally no grudge against Canon Smith himself, but his apolaustic attitudes are a bit emetic. Were his sermons, one wonders, wholly concerned with the austere and lofty spiritual discipline of feeling good about yourself?

    Which was hardly an option for the geese from whom the paté came. I cannot imagine paté de foie gras without also imagining how it is made. The reverend canon was able to fill his face with the noted French delicacy because geese had been filled with grain till their livers reached the bursting point. However much you resent the mess wild geese make around the lakes, such bloating seems a pretty unpleasant fate. Their consumerism was involuntary; that of S. Smith was a matter of choice.

    Come to that, unmitigated trumpets might also get a bit trying, even if, like an earlier (and considerably more interesting) cleric from S. Paul’s, you posted the angels blowing them at the round world’s imagined corners. One must, I suppose, give Canon Smith credit for taking the trouble to be a hedonist. Any preference is better than none. But still, one asks, where is he in the heaven which he projects? In the Smithian assertion (or should it be “Smithic”?), “eating” is simply a gerund, or possibly a participle; it has no subject, and the person is absent. He makes it sound as if there is action occurring apart from the existence of the actor. In fact, you could say that the receptacle into which the paté de foie gras goes is less a Blessed Spirit than a Bottomless Pit. (Why does this all remind me of Christmas?)

    I guess the first step toward personality, and away from being simply a Black Hole of consumption, could be to discriminate between pleasures. Even a sensualist may refine his appetite; Lucretius, the most materialistic of Roman poets, is notable for the sheer sharpness of his physical observation. I would commend to Canon Smith—and to you, benevolent reader—claret, the red wine of Bordeaux, the thinking man’s wine (though, as a Whig, Sydney Smith probably preferred port).

    Specifically, try Château Greysac from the fine vintage of the year 2000, available around here for less than twenty dollars. The process of discrimination starts even before the cork leaves the bottle. This is French wine in a bottle with proper shoulders, so it is going to be from Bordeaux rather than from Burgundy or the Rhone (which have sloping shoulders, like your pin-headed correspondent).

    Now note the words Appelation Controlée. These are not an assurance that a wild man from West Virginia has been caught by the sheriff but official notice that the wine is part of a quota permitted to bear a particular name and that it has been made in a particular way from grapes characteristic of the region—in this case mostly Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc.

    The word that comes between Appelation and Controlée tells you which region it is. The lesser wines of Bordeaux will say simply Bordeaux or Bordeaux Supérieur (the latter merely indicates a slightly higher level of alcohol). Château Greysac, however, says “Médoc,” which is the area on the left bank of the river Gironde where many of the most famous Bordeaux wines come from—and yet not all wines made in the Médoc are allowed that appellation. It also says “Cru Bourgeois,” a title of honour Château Greysac acquired in 1978, only a few years after modern winemaking began there.

    Having exercised the mind on the wine label (and wished one were striding along the vine-clad gravel ridges of the Médoc), one can then exercise it on the wine itself. One encounters a clear bright red, a pleasing sharpness, and then a concatenation of tannins (the woody hardness) and the taste of oak (the pleasing sweetness redolent of turpentine). You can take mental exercise tasting this wine by racing these two tastes against each other, before swallowing and then maybe sipping a little more. The strength of the tannin shows that it has time on its side. Drink some now and keep some for later. Maybe it will make you a thinking drinker.

  • How the Doughnut Got Its Hole

    It’s time to celebrate the unassuming doughnut, the stalwart companion of countless cups of fresh-brewed coffee, the humble fried hoop that is everyman’s golden cake. Why now, you might ask? Because January marks the opening of a long stretch of winter contemplation; also, there has yet to be a holiday misgiving that can’t be quietly and sweetly wiped away by that first bite of sticky, warm, sugary dough. The doughnut is the perfect, simple reward for making it through another year and pushing onward into the next.

    Deeply embedded in American culture, the doughnut is believed to have arrived with the Pilgrims. Before they journeyed across the Atlantic, they spent time in Holland, where they partook of the northern European confection called oly koeks—literally, oily cakes of deep-fried dough that were usually associated with the celebrations of saint’s days and town festivals. On these shores, little nuggets or nuts of deep-fried sweet dough—more like today’s doughnut holes than doughnuts—were first mentioned in Washington Irving’s 1809 A History of New-York: “The table … was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough nuts, or oly koeks.”

    In fact, doughnuts didn’t acquire their ring shape until almost fifty years later. Legend gives a craggy Maine sea captain named Hanson Crockett Gregory credit for the innovation. Apparently, Gregory sailed off in 1847 with a stash of his mother’s delicious fried cakes. While navigating some particularly rough seas, he poked out the cakes’ centers in order to slip them over the spokes of the ship’s wheel. The setup allowed hands-free snacking without sacrificing an even keel. Another, perhaps more likely story has the Pennsylvania Dutch pioneering the shape for a less fanciful reason: more surface area led to a faster cooking time, a crispier crust, and a less gummy inside. By 1897, the common acceptance of the ring was evidenced by the Sears Roebuck catalog’s offering of a doughnut cutter.

    Of course, doughnuts have gone far beyond that original design. There are bear claws and braided twists, fritters and long johns, jelly-filled eights and bismarcks. These variations—and, in some cases, complete overhauls—come thanks to cultures from all over the world. Germans fill disc-shaped Berliner Pfannkuchen with custard or jelly. The olliebollen of the Netherlands, filled with dried fruits and nuts, are a traditional New Year’s treat. The Spanish dunk stick-shaped churros into morning chocolate drinks. Italians shake bomboloni cakes in paper bags with citrus zest and spices, while the French enjoy simple beignets with dark coffee.

    Just when it seemed that Americans’ love for doughnuts had waned, Krispy Kreme came along and reminded us that the best and truest time to enjoy a glazed doughnut is when it’s fresh and hot. When the first Minnesota outlet opened, traffic cops had to stem the tides of those eager to sink their teeth into these melty delights, which seem to magically disintegrate upon the first bite. Sure, Krispy Kreme has been perfecting its methods since 1937, but is that enough to create a national obsession?

    Apparently so, as the newfound fervor for doughnuts has escalated into gourmet territory. Innovative chefs have concocted individual doughnut bread puddings, topped grilled doughnut halves with sweetened mascarpone, and filled organic pastries with cabernet jelly. One of the hottest spots in town, Five Restaurant and Street Lounge, offers a dark-chocolate filled beignet accompanied by a black cardamom dipping sauce. Café Lurcat has long served a warm, dense, and crumbly cinnamon-sugar doughnut that beats a flourless chocolate torte any day.

    Of all the restaurants, cafes, and shops that serve doughnuts in the area, a few stand out. Tobies in Hinckley serves mammoth doughnuts with all the traditional toppings—if eating one on the way to a cabin up north isn’t a Minnesota tradition, it should be. If you keep driving north for several hours, you’ll reach World’s Best Donuts in Grand Marais, where you’ll encounter the most delicious moist and spicy cake doughnuts, along with amazingly beautiful surroundings in which to enjoy them. Back here in the city, you’ll want to try the warm, puffy rings of heaven at Valley Pastries in Golden Valley, whose raised doughnuts taste like bakery doughnuts instead of doughnut-shop doughnuts, meaning there’s no greasy tang that nags you for the rest of your day. The best time to get these, and most other doughnuts, is fresh out of the oven, at around 5:30 a.m. Hey, no one said you didn’t have to make an effort. Besides, there is no better reward for rousting yourself early on a dark January morning.

    Krispy Kreme Eight locations in Minnesota

    (plus Fargo, North Dakota and Onalaska, Wisconsin); www.krispykreme.com

    Five Restaurant and Street Lounge

    2917 Bryant Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-827-5555

    Café Lurcat 1624 Harmon Place, Minneapolis;

    612-486-5500

    Tobies Interstate 35 and Highway 48, Hinckley;

    320-384-6174

    World’s Best Donuts 4 E. Wisconsin St.,

    Grand Marais; 218-387-1345

    Valley Pastries 2570 Hillsboro Ave. N.,

    Golden Valley; 763-541-1535

  • In the Bleak Mid-Winter

    Our century has been remarkably efficient in the manufacture of wastelands. In Uptown you can still experience the sort of passageways down which Mr. Eliot smelt steaks, but nowadays they seem to have almost a period charm. It is the same reading about the Algiers described by Albert Camus; the delicious colonial loucheness of the setting tends to put a pastel patina on the jolly old alienation. It won’t be long before someone turns L’Étranger into a colorful Hollywood costume drama—what price the inner life when Passage to India can become a parade of parasols and solar topees?

    To be truly bleak, a landscape must be both familiar and fairly freshly created. The connoisseur might try standing at the entrance of Edinborough Park in midwinter and looking across the glass and concrete tundra of South Edina, all abandoned motorcars and dirty snow and the now-defunct cinderblock multiplex where you once saw flickering pictures of more colorful climes, some of them unspoilt (“Far Away is Close at Hand in Images of Elsewhere,” as the writing on the wall used to say as your train pulled out of Paddington Station, taking you from London to the good green meadows of the West Country).

    But for sustained depression, try one of those self-storage places. Concealed in a dip, to avoid blotting the landscape too obviously, ranks of abandoned garages provide the perfect setting for the unsolvable crime at the center of a detective novel. In the alleys between them rattle the skeletons of last year’s leaves. Cryogenics comes to mind. The only people around are keeping warm in the office, and perhaps a bloke working on his vintage Chevy. As you leave, the automated voice that thanks you at the barrier appears to be that of the late Count Dracula.

    It is warmer inside these small storage rooms than out in the alleys. One imagines them (for one has seen only one’s own) strewn with the remains of lives, things ugly in themselves (the hideous lampshades, the awful ornaments), which might once have meant something if someone had made them mean it—the gewgaw given as a Christmas joke. Here lies the Nachlass of the maiden aunt whose relations have never got round to sorting out her things; here men (it must surely be mostly men, because the women have the houses) hoard the keepsakes from failed marriages, furniture which no longer lends help or comfort because the couples who owned it are unable to forgive. And the cardboard boxes in which all this is kept give off the sweet but unmistakable smell of decay, as if the things inside were slowly losing the warmth they once acquired from being associated with human life, and are reverting to a mere mineral existence.

    Such gloomy ruminations suggest the need for some concentrated sweetness to share with those you love this Christmas. Try liqueur glasses of a 2003 Muscat from Bonny Doon Vineyards in California; it is called Vin de Glaciere, and a small flask will cost you about eighteen dollars. There is a pleasant goldenness and a sweet nose, then, as you sip, a smooth velvety sensation of dried apricots and slight oiliness.

    This is not sticky sweet wine; the taste reminds me of nothing so much as Setubal, a fortified wine from Portugal made from a different combination of Muscat grapes, which I favored as a dessert wine in my misspent youth. The Bonny Doon would make good dessert wine in the American sense of dessert—not fruit and nuts nibbled after the ladies have withdrawn to the drawing room in the eighteenth-century manner that so annoyed Virginia Woolf, but “afters”: mince pies, plum pudding, even something creamy like bread-and-butter pudding (with many plump golden raisins, known in England as sultanas from their resemblance to sultans’ wives) or a crème brulée.

    Here is no false promise of spring, simply a level winter sweetness. Rabbie Burns walked by the original Bonnie Doon river near Ayr in Scotland and wondered why the birds could sing so sweetly when he was so weary, full of care, having lost his girl (though he seldom seemed to have any trouble finding another). If the bleakness is inside and not simply in the landscape, this Muscat taken as a cup of kindness might cheer things up. What sweeter music can we bring?

  • Ugly, Expensive, and Very, Very Tasty

    The month of November is the prime of white truffle season. Never mind black truffles—the whites are where it’s really at. The most prized fungi in the world, they fetch up to fifteen hundred dollars a pound and look exactly like clods of dirt. Shaved thinly over a dish of hot pasta, their elusive flavor lies somewhere between wood smoke and brown butter, or roasted meat and overripe cheese. With a primal aroma that in its muskiness both seduces and repels us in the same instant, truffles hold a special, outlaw place in the collective taste. Unable to characterize the scent, gourmets throughout history were relieved to call it “aphrodisiac” and leave it at that.

    To that point, scientists have since discovered that truffles produce a chemical identical to the one present in the saliva of wild boars, the very stuff to which the wild sow is attracted. The chemical likeness to boar pheromone would explain the attraction for wild pigs and their usefulness in finding truffles amid the tree roots.

    Technically, they’re a kind of mushroom, species name Magnatum Pico. Most mushroom systems, or plants, reside beneath the humus layer of the forest, decomposing roots and such. At one point in this process, and in some cases in the space of an hour, they give birth to a fruiting body, which is the mushroom itself and the part we eat. Truffles never get that far. They remain below deck, compressing into something of such gastronomic value that it’s almost mineral. Like the first person to find the rust-colored ore so essential to making iron, the original truffle hunter must have had the same squinting ability to divine the hidden value inside a dirty chunk of earth.

    Although people are taking to the woods and hunting them down in Oregon, the bulk of truffles used by restaurants in the U.S. still come from Europe, mostly from Italy’s Piedmont region, where they claim to produce a truffle with special, delicate flavor. Although the demand for truffles has grown in recent years, the supply hasn’t, and the precious harvest has become even more dear.

    Just as a squirrel climbs to the tops of trees and gnaws off the freshest, tightest pinecones to add to his nest, it’s human nature to covet special, limited harvests. In New York, where everything is available for the right price, and where decadence never goes out of fashion, they clamor for the rare and hard-to-get. White truffles, trumping even foie gras, argan oil, and rare beef, are the bling of the food world. This explains why, though cost-prohibitive to most Americans, fresh truffles are so common in upscale Manhattan restaurants that cooks handle them with an offhand nonchalance which belies their price. A simple truffle sauce, from the French repertoire and common in four-star kitchens, begins with caramelized onions, garlic, a bottle of Madeira, veal sauce, and thick cream. It is finished with a generous grating of white truffle, costs hundreds of dollars to produce, and garnishes perhaps a mere two dozen plates.

    As if the kitchens weren’t hectic enough in the fall, what with cooks hustling to make it through the busy season, insert a bunch of flashy truffle salesmen into the mix. Starting in mid-October and continuing until just past the New Year, these purveyors of the delicacy tromp through the dining rooms and into the kitchens, trailing small black leather valises. For the most part they’re slick dressers and partial to very expensive sunglasses that they tend to wear well past the hour when they need to do so. Speaking somewhat brusquely, with (usually Italian) accents, they locate the chef and lift their mysterious black leather valises onto the countertop. Ducks and fish are pushed aside. A very fancy scale, generally shiny with chrome, appears. It conducts the business of measuring the truffle weight, gram by gram, with an exactitude usually reserved for the weighing of other controlled, precious substances. The black-clad European unzips the case and releases an unmistakable and essential truffle odor so strong that it takes perhaps ten seconds for the aroma to reach every cook in kitchen. Like dogs, their noses lift in the air. Sous chefs set down their knives and move in closer, as if they were needed in the bargaining process. Ambitious cooks peer over the pile and have something to say. Managers stop by in passing to offer their own vacuous observations. Meanwhile, everyone in the room is dumbly thinking, Wow. Truffles.

    The chef, however, is thinking about the sale and how to get the best price from the wily salesmen. He chooses the finest three of the bunch, the most firm and aromatic knobs, and signs an agreement to pay nearly two thousand dollars. Taking the stairs two at a time, he immediately begins to envision additional courses on the truffle prix fixe menu.

    That seven-course menu, at $250 a pop, begins to make a dent in the seasonal truffle debt. (I don’t think they make all that much on the truffles: Providing them is more like a service, or for publicity.) For that kind of money there are truffles tucked between the milky slices of raw, live, sea scallop; truffles with potatoes and brin d’amour cheese; truffles shaved over fresh tortellini in capon broth; truffles balancing atop tender pink veal loin.

    But it’s a telling irony that truffles are best with the plainest, most elemental ingredients: potatoes, eggs, bread. Any great chef will tell you this: If you have a great truffle, eat it with scrambled eggs. Shave it into potato salad. Or, to call up the image of Italian peasants in little stone houses, sit in front of the fire, alternately chipping at a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano and a crumbling chunk of white truffle. Mop up the bits with a crust of bread thickly spread with good butter.

    At the end of the night the chef stores what’s left of the gnarly globe in a small varnished cigar humidor, nestled into a bed of vialone nano rice alongside a half-dozen eggs. It doesn’t take more than a full day for the truffles to impart their fragrance to the eggs and the rice, which are then turned into “truffled risotto” and “truffled sabayon.” This truffling, now a verb, seems a wondrous trick of nature, but it really does work.

    Maybe it’s this trickster quality of the truffle that we desire. Animal or vegetable? Right or wrong? Like or lust? We like it because the first taste of a dish with white truffles never fails to unsettle us. During those first seconds, before you have determined whether it tastes good or bad, the brain nonetheless craves more. And we will pay good money for that.—Amy Thielen

     

     

  • A Tisket, A Tasket

    There are happy gift baskets, and there are sad gift baskets. The sad ones are given by well-meaning souls who see shrink-wrapped fruit and think, “Oh joy!” Oftentimes these come year after year, stuffed with salamis and tissue paper, implying nothing other than, “Happy holidays, have a snack.” Worse yet is the revelation, upon stopping at the local gas station, that your basket was possibly purchased in conjunction with a car wash and a Slurpee. The happy gift baskets are usually hand-packed by the giver with specially selected items that the receiver will love, or that the giver wants to share. Where a sad basket would feature corporate cheese product encased in thick red wax, a happy basket might include a wedge of Roquefort that the giver knows is marvelous with your favorite Pinot Noir.

    Mind you, it’s not about food snobbery—caviar isn’t the be-all, end-all among food gifts, especially for those of us who think it’s overrated. I dream of baskets that have a pedigree applied by the giver: a favorite maple syrup and a fantastic gingerbread pancake recipe. The saddest baskets come with no thought or care to the eater: Vegetarians get steak sauces; timid palates are overwhelmed by ethnically themed baskets. My favorite December pastime is to stroll through specialty markets, latte in hand, and discover a spice blend that would complement my sister’s elk steaks or the ideal dark chocolate for a friend who loves port. In truth, I hoard these little discoveries all year, waiting until the eating season is well under way to share my finds. I believe that the happiest baskets should imply, “Happy holidays, eat well, celebrate living.” So I’ve devoted this month’s column to the kinds of gems that I dream of getting (and possibly giving). These five items became my obsessions this year, and all are, in their own way, simply fabulous.

    The newest one has me standing at my local cheese counter, advising complete strangers in an attempt to convert them to its pleasures. It’s not that difficult, either: Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold, a farmstead cheese created in California, isn’t a heavy, stinky cheese that only the brave will love; it’s semi-hard, with a lovely straw coloring and soft, buttery flavor. Because it is a farmstead cheese, you know that the Fiscalini family, which has been in business since 1914, controls the entire process; they care for the cows and personally process the milk to their standards of quality. The true beauty of this cheese is its versatility: It grates like a dream onto risotto, melts easily on rosemary crostini, and is tremendous eaten directly from the fridge.

    If you feel that hot chocolate is reserved for children at sledding parties, skip this paragraph. If you understand that it was this beverage that caused the magnificent cocoa bean to make its first journey across the ocean from the New World, then come with me to breakfast in Madrid. It was there that I first tasted the way that this type of chocolate was intended to be enjoyed: gulp after gulp of warm, thick, creamy loveliness that made it impossible forevermore to even consider Swiss Miss. The generous people of Schokinag, a German company with nearly eighty years of expertise, have delighted my chocolate-loving heart with the introduction of their European Drinking Chocolate. Open the twelve-ounce tin and you will find tiny chips of chocolate—there’s a triple chocolate version that has both milk and dark chocolate chips dusted with cocoa powder, a white chocolate with natural vanilla, and a dazzling Moroccan Spice flavor. You simply melt five tablespoons of chips with a tablespoon of milk, and then add milk (along with cream or half and half, don’t be shy) to create the consistency that’s tastiest for you. You can find Schokinag at Whole Foods Market (where you might also pick up some hand-cut vanilla marshmallows, if you must) and at Chocolate Celeste.

    I understand that processed sugar isn’t all that great for you, but I have never cottoned to sugar substitutes like Equal or Splenda. Beyond the commercial test-tube nature of their origins, they impart a metallic, chemical twang that does nothing to sate a sweet craving. However, since weighing 754 pounds is not on my list of lifetime goals, I have embraced agave nectar. Derived from the heart of the agave cactus, the sweet syrup has a low glycemic load, which means it doesn’t give you the blood-sugar rushes that processed sugar does. This translates into a healthier heart and trimmer figure. Agave’s mellow, honey-like flavor is actually sweeter than regular sugar, so you use about half as much. I’ve poured it on pancakes, mixed it in cocktails, made ice cream with it, and baked cookies that my little ones never suspected were “healthy.” Intelligent Nutrients in Minneapolis has its own brand, which can also be found at some Juut Salon Spa locations.

    Along with the sweet, it’s always good to put something salty into your gift basket, too. Now, some scientists will tell you that salt is salt, NaCL is strictly NaCL, no matter where it’s harvested or what color it takes. And there are other people who will tell you that salt unlocks very subtle things about the universe, and that a red crystal from Hawaii carries a different notion of the ocean than a grayish cube from France. The magic held within this simple, elemental compound is one of my favorite earthly mysteries. While there are many fascinating salts around the globe, the most intriguing one for me lately is Balinese sea salt from Big Tree Farms. The crystals, made using an ancient week-long process involving saltwater, sand, and troughs made from palm trees, develop into miniscule hollow pyramids. The flavor is light and briny, but the crunch is the thing. For those who love to snatch a fingerful of the stuff here and there, this is the ultimate. Of course, you’ll also want to use it to adorn baked pretzels, scrambled eggs, or ice cream with caramel sauce (try it). Locally, Williams-Sonoma and the Kitchen Window are stocking boxes.

    Finally, my love for peanut butter and mustard sandwiches may not be as odd as you think (cringe if you must, but I dare you to try it before you knock it). Look beyond the sugared-up jars of Jif in your cupboards, recognize the relation of ground nuts to pesto, and appreciate the tender balance of savory and sweet that can come from a good almond butter. Then the fact that nut butters are more than just a base for fruity preserves will not seem so surprising. Kettle Foods, of snack chip fame, makes an unsalted hazelnut butter that, if you let it, will expand your horizons. Yes, you can spread it on toasted bread or mix it into a cookie recipe, but you can also throw it in a pan with garlic, rosemary, and olive oil and then toss your pasta in it. Whisk it into a simple vinaigrette for a salad, or mix with honey mustard and smear over a pork roast—it will change how you look at ground nuts.

    Remember that anyone can throw some cans and jars in a basket with some raffia to make a passable gift. But what does that say about you? I believe that food should be one of the most personal gifts you can give—after all, you are sharing your taste. In the end, if it’s the thought that counts, make sure it counts.

     

    Open-Faced Sandwich With

    Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold Cheese

    The perfect quick lunch while wrapping gifts.

    2 thick slices of crusty bread

    Olive oil

    2 slices prosciutto

    2 slices and 2 tablespoons grated

    Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold cheese

    1 cup baby portobello mushrooms

    2 tablespoons butter

    1 tablespoon chopped thyme

    Brush one side of each bread slice with olive oil and top it with a slice of prosciutto and thick slice of cheese. Place on cooking sheet under a broiler for a few minutes or in a 250-degree oven for about 7 minutes or until cheese melts.

    Meanwhile, melt butter in pan, and sauté mushrooms with thyme until dark and soft. Pile mushrooms on bread slices and sprinkle with grated cheese.

  • Fine Bright Red

    The Orient, said Metternich, begins at the Ring. It is hardly surprising an Austrian statesman of the early nineteenth century should think the Near East was as close as the suburbs of Vienna. The Ottoman Turks besieged the Austrian capital at least twice and the favor was returned each time an Austrian army, arrayed boldly by batteries, besieged Belgrade.

    Not that the symbiosis of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires was all horror and confrontation. Even their hostilities had some cheerful consequences. After the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 (the year before Bach was born), the retreating armies left behind sacks of black beans the size and shape of rabbit droppings, though a good deal scrunchier. A Viennese entrepreneur ground them into a powder and opened Europe’s first coffeehouse. Can you imagine Vienna without Kaffee und Kuchen? Would you not think J.S. Bach just a polyphiloprogenitive sobersides (like Organ Morgan of Llareggub–it’s organ, organ all the time with him) if there were not those bubbly bits in his Coffee Cantata?

    In any case, distinctions between west and east are always arbitrary–they vary as you go round the globe, whereas those between north and south are absolute. And this part of MittelEuropa, whether ruled by the Hapsburgs or the Turks, is a magnificent macedoine of ethnic eccentricity.

    Read all about it in the trilogy of travel books by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts, Between Woods and Water, and a third volume eagerly awaited by admirers. This is the record of a young man who set out, in 1933, to walk from Canterbury to Constantinople. He meets all sorts of men, from barons and rabbis to gypsies and the country gentry of the Pannonian Plain, who are said to enjoy the best partridge shooting in the world. The more spirit one has oneself, the more one finds other people original. The author is the same P. Leigh Fermor who kidnapped a German general on Crete during the Second World War and solemnly exchanged with him lines from the Odes of Horace as they passed by the snow-capped summit of Mount Ida on their way to a British submarine and safety. In Austria and points east, the Leigh Fermor liveliness matches that of the people whose land he was passing through.

    For the Romans, it was certainly the north-south distinction that mattered. The beautiful Blue Danube was their frontier facing north toward Central Europe and its ferocious Iron Age warrior aristocracies. Romans, naturally, drank wine; the folk beyond the Roman border liked beer or mead (though they would do as Romans whenever they could get wine). Emperors and armies campaigned along the Danube to keep the empire safe. Marcus Aurelius, after a hard day’s soldiering, would come back to the stronghold of Carnuntum, withdraw into himself, and stoically compose his Meditations. (The opening scenes of Gladiator are as good an evocation as I know of the hard business of campaigning in these dank northern forests.)

    Carnuntum today is the center of a thriving wine region, making both red and white wine from French varieties as well as from grapes that have grown in the long hot summers here since the Middle Ages. Production is protected by particularly strict purity laws, introduced twenty years ago, after it was discovered that some Austrian wines contained a chemical called diethylene glycol, added to increase body and sweetness (not to be confused with ethylene glycol, a substance that belongs in the radiator of your motorcar). I cannot imagine why anyone ever thought such adulteration desirable, given the excellence of what they make here naturally.

    Try, for instance, a 2003 red from Weingut Glatzer made from the Blaufrankisch grape, available locally for about twelve dollars. Blaufrankisch is the grape Germans call the Limberger; its name comes from the blue of the berries and frankisch, a term used since the Middle Ages to indicate superior quality. The wine is lively, clear and bright with an initial bite like mild black coffee and a fine fruity flavor, concealing hints of that pleasing wateriness that comes from really ripe blackberries. One can imagine it in the company of anything you might eat with a rather alcoholic Pinot Noir–even a Thanksgiving turkey. Though perhaps it might feel more at home with a Pannonian partridge. Prost.

  • The "It" Fruit

    During my childhood, the whirl of the eating season that begins this month was usually ushered in with that most agreeable social function, the potluck supper. Friends gathering, sharing food of their own making–it is a humble community feast where everyone gives and takes and huddles against the encroaching cold. In the car, I always held the bowl containing my family’s offering–I was the reliable and steady one, at least when it came to this task. Looking down at my mother’s green salad laced with mandarin oranges, almonds, and pomegranate seeds in my lap, the little red orbs seemed nearly to glow beneath the Saran Wrap. The pop and flavor of those juicy seeds were one of the things I associated with holiday functions, a treat of the season.

    On the potluck table, my mother’s salad always stood out among the Tater Tot hot dishes and green bean bakes. People were interested, but hesitant. I remember looking at those who pushed the oddly tangy seeds to the sides of their plate and assuming they were saving the best for last. When I witnessed the jewels tumbling into the garbage along with the remainder of some unfortunately selected goulash, I would grow almost despondent. How could you throw away a ruby?

    In recent decades, few people have understood the allure of this ancient food. The leathery, round, amber-colored fruits quietly bided their time in the shadows until, once again, they could rise to the forefront of food culture. And that time is now: The pomegranate is hot, hot, hot. Celebrities inspire the rest of us to sip pomegranate juice cocktails, and star chefs are using the fruit in daring and innovative ways: pomegranate salsa! pomegranate caramel sauce! Meanwhile, physicians can’t seem to stop talking about the amazing health benefits that accrue to a life that involves pomegranates. The buzz shows no sign of abating.

    It’s quite fitting to call the current fascination with pomegranates a rebirth. For centuries, this fruit has been a symbol of fertility and regeneration: Opening a pomegranate reveals a lush bounty of blood-red seeds nestled in soft, white flesh. Along with olives, grapes, figs, and dates, pomegranates were among the first domesticated crops; the tree on which they grow is believed to have originated in ancient Persia. As it spread throughout the world, the beautiful fruit rose to a place of importance in many cultures. Buddhists see it as one of the three sacred fruits, along with the citron and the peach. The Chinese gave sugared pomegranate seeds as wedding presents while decorating the bridal chamber with the fruit to encourage fertility.

    The pomegranate also figures prominently in the story of Persephone. When the smitten Hades, god of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone, her grieving mother Demeter, the goddess of nature, plunged the world into a famine. Zeus agreed to help free her, as long as she hadn’t eaten anything from the underworld. Alas, the depressed Persephone had allowed herself six pomegranate seeds to quench her thirst. Thus, she would be allowed to return to earth for only six months of each year, spending the other six in the underworld. Demeter celebrated each return with spring and summer and mourned her daughter’s eventual departure with fall and winter. It was this connection to death and rebirth that led Christians to later make the pomegranate a symbol of the Resurrection.

    Its current rebirth as a medicinal holy grail is being fueled, oddly enough, by coin collectors. Roll International Corporation (the company behind the Franklin Mint, Fiji water, and Teleflora) is driving the country’s desire for pomegranates through POM Wonderful, the breakout fruit and juice company that has quickly become a supermarket staple. The pomegranate’s dark garnet juice is thicker and bolder in flavor than that of the cranberry, and offers a dusky sweetness with a tart finish. While the purists will slug the nectar directly from its distinctive, bulbous bottle, the stylish set chooses to dilute it, say, with vodka in a Pomtini or rum in a Pomojito. Plugging the powerful antioxidant properties of pomegranate juice, POM Wonderful has literally bet the farm on the future of pomegranates, planting thousands of trees in California’s San Joaquin Valley over the past five years. By investing more of its millions in cardiovascular, cancer, and other types of medical research than it does in marketing, the company seems to be planning for the long haul.

    As trendy as the pomegranate is, it’s still a relative oddball to the home cook. Extracting the sparkling arils (the correct term for the seed, which is actually encased in a pouch of liquid) from the fleshy white pith can be a bit laborious. The best method is to cut off the crown, score the flesh into four sections and break the fruit apart over a bowl of water. Under water, you can gently roll the arils out from the cottony pith, which will float as the arils sink. Strain the water and claim your treasure. Eating the capsules whole will give you a burst of juice and small crunchy seed to chew. There are those who would spit the seed out, thus missing out on both fiber and fun, but they dare not dribble as the juice will stain.

    In season from October through January, the fall fruit’s robust flavors are a perfect match for the heartier foods of the season. The concentrated paste known as pomegranate molasses (available in some specialty stores) makes a tangy addition to sauces for roasted meats, especially duck, as in one variation on the traditional Persian stew known as khoresh. Adding the juice to a fig-and-olive tapenade makes an easy dip or poultry paste. Freezing the juice in an ice cream maker can make an earthy sorbet that is healthier than pumpkin pie. As a longtime fan of foods that can make the jump from antiquity to modern times with flare, I’m betting on the pomegranate to be more than trendy. I believe its alluring flavors will seduce the world once again and it will become revered–if not in a sacred sense, then by holding a secure place in the mainstream diet. At that point, maybe Tater Tot hot dish will seem exotic.

    Chicken Pomegranate Stew
    (a version of Persian khoresh)

    2 cups fresh pomegranate juice (or 1/2 cup pomegranate molasses)
    1 cup ground almonds
    1 cup ground walnuts
    3 teaspoons sugar
    1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
    1/4 teaspoon saffron (dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water)
    Pinch of cinnamon
    1/4 teaspoon thyme
    1 small yellow onion
    3 tablespoons olive oil
    1/2 teaspoon turmeric
    Salt and pepper to taste
    4- to 5-pound fryer chicken, cut up, skin removed (or 4 – 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts)

    Combine pomegranate juice, nuts, sugar, and spices (except turmeric). Set aside.

    In a medium pot, saute onions in oil until translucent. Add chicken, just searing, then turmeric, salt, and pepper. Add 1 cup of water and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

    Add pomegranate mix and simmer for an additional 30 minutes, adding water if necessary.

    Remove from heat and cover for 10 minutes before serving. Serve over couscous.