Category: Eats

All matters gastronomical.

Brillat-Savarin’s Hot Chocolate

AS AUTUMN TURNS COLDER THE nights and days, a young (or old) cook’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of hot chocolate. And what better hot chocolate can there be than that described on page 88 of the Leete’s Island Books edition of 18th-to-19th-century gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin‘s The Physiology of Taste? Without further ado:

…So, to make chocolate, that is to say, for immediate consumption, take about one and a half ounces for each cup of water, and let dissolve gradually while the water comes to the boil, stirring gently with a wooden spatula; let boil for a quarter of an hour, to give the solution consistency, and serve piping hot.

Continue reading “Brillat-Savarin’s Hot Chocolate”

The Seven Don’ts (bagel reprise)

THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE is a “born and bred New Yorker,” but even here in the sticks some things are sacrosanct when it comes to that most iconic of Jewish foods. I agree with much of what she says, am unfamiliar with part of it (again, we miss some things in the Valley) and was frankly astonished by one (see: “rainbow bagel“). Your culinary mileage may vary, but if you were raised eating bagels (or even came to them later in life), it’s worth your while to check out this article for — to paraphrase Frank Herbert — the forms that must be obeyed. Smacznego, b’tayavon and bon appetit!

Behind the Avocado Curve

AS AVOCADO TOAST CEASES TO be a Thing (I understand the new Thing is “tomato toast”), I am unembarrassed to say I only tried this delectability for the first time last week, for dinner.

Verdict: Impressed enough to make the leftovers into lunch the next day. The crunch and earthiness of the toast (I used Safeway’s “Signature Brand 15-Grain Bread” as a base) perfectly balances the cool richness of the avocado. I didn’t even salt or pepper it at first (as the standard recipe advises), but when I did the flavors popped like a rose in bloom. The next day was even better with gomasio (a sesame/sea salt/seaweed blend) sprinkled over it.

I rarely follow food fads (in fact I am quite defiant about it), but this time the Hive Mind (or at least one guy in Australia) has devised something truly happifying. Mash avocado, salt and pepper to taste, spread thickly on good toasted bread, eat with knife and fork. As the man said, “Go thou and do likewise” — if you haven’t already.

Digital Vittles

ONCE UPON A TIME, I subsisted on frozen meals from Lean Cuisine and Amy’s Kitchen. Then I “got religion” via two sources: Tamar Adler‘s An Everlasting Meal — Cooking with Economy and Grace (which also contains one of the finest essays on cooking I’ve ever read), and the video version of Michael Pollan’s Cooked. Both preach the gospel of self-sufficient cookery and the evils of processed food, and filled me with the fiery zeal to cook for myself.

Of course, any budding home cook needs a bit of help. Fortunately, that help is only a click away. Here are some websites which send me daily emails filled with recipes, cooking tips and the various wisdoms of household management: Continue reading “Digital Vittles”

Cheap Thrills: Bantha Milk

Fig. 1.
GOOGLE RETURNS ABOUT 29,700 HITS for “bantha milk,” AKA “blue milk” — it’s of what Luke Skywalker poured himself a glassful in the original Star Wars, banthas being those giant horned elephants-in-costumes of the same film. Fans love banthas, and as fans also love snacks many have devised their own recipes for bantha milk. This is (so far as I know) original to me, although with 29,700 people writing about it there’s bound to be some overlap.

– 16 oz whole milk
– 1 banana
– 1 tablespoon peanut butter
– 1 egg (if the Force is strong with you)
– 1 drop blue food coloring

Put ingredients in blender. Blend at high speed for 1 minute. Pour into white plastic tumbler and serve.

When The Troll Sweats, Bottle It

Fig. 1.
IN THE STARS MY DESTINATION, Alfred Bester imagines a world peopled (in part) by a cast-off group of future savages who chant scientific formulae during their religious rituals. “Quant Suff!” they chant, in abbreviated imitation of “sufficient quantity.” “Quant Suff!”

At the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, I inhabited a world peopled (in part) by a cast-off group of fannish folk who sometimes chant together after consuming a quasi-alchemic formula during their quasi-religious rituals. “Trolle Sweate!” they chant, in inebriated consequence of quant suff. “Trolle Sweate!”
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Knubel Borscht: Adapting Memory

TUCKED INTO MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S BIBLE is a yellowed sheet of paper containing the flavor of living tradition.

In short, it’s my mom’s recipe for knubel borscht (pronounced “k’nubble”): beef simmered in beet soup and garlic. That’s it: three ingredients, plus heat and time. Perhaps in part due to its simplicity, or that I’ve been eating it for most of my childhood Pesachs, knubel borscht is satisfying on a soul level. It fills the house with a scent at once sweet and savory, fruity and meaty, and which may in fact prove to be the smell of Gan Eden should the requisite air-sampling technology be designed and utilized.

The recipe originally comes from “the old country” (in our case, my Polish g’g’father or his Romanian wife); the original calls for a large pot, 5 quarts of borscht, 7-1/2 pounds of bone-in chuck roast with a packet of soup bones, and a large head of peeled garlic. Add everything together, simmer three hours or more, skimming off the foam; serve on plate and in bowl.

For our Seder Monday night, I created a lower-portion variant which is just as pleasing in all the essentials and doesn’t really suffer for the lack of soup bones. Four ingredients counting the pan:

9″ Pyrex baking pan
1 pound brisket
Quart of borscht
Head of garlic

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel and chop garlic. Put brisket in pan fat side up (trim excess fat first). Sprinkle garlic on top, pour over borscht, seal with aluminum foil. Three hours later, you’ll need a knife to cut through the aroma and open the oven. Put the meat on a plate, the soup in a bowl, and revel in the small blessings by which G?d or the quantum membranes thereof sustain and nurture the world.

One Conversation

WE WERE DISCUSSING SYNAGOGUE FUNDRAISERS, and I suggested an egg toss.

E. G., who knows who he is but may not want you to, looked at me with the sad seriousness of the ex-military and first responder. “Eggs aren’t for tossing,” he said. “They’re for eating. It debases us to play with something that half the world is starving for.”

That was ten years ago. To this day, the sight of someone playing with or otherwise wasting their food still makes me itchy inside.

One conversation was all it took to change my mind about something I had never seriously thought through. What will it take to change yours?

Eats: Leisurely Eggs

IN ANOTHER LIFE, THIS DISH is what saved Prosatio Silban‘s buopoth from being the main ingredient in someone else’s meal(1); in this life, it’s what ballasts me at table long enough to read the Sunday morning papers. Leisurely Eggs assumes that the cook knows how to simultaneously brown a variety of different ingredients in a single pan, the denser the longer. (If you don’t know how, this is a good way to learn.)

Leisurely Eggs (Serves at least two, or one who won’t eat again until dinner)

First, arrange some nice background audio (Django Reinhart, say, or NPR’s “Weekend Edition”). Then add to a large medium-hot pan in the following order, and as art and experience dictates to balance facility with substance:

– Olive oil and/or butter (one keeps the other from smoking)
– Potato (diced)
– Onion (likewise)
– Sausage (sliced. I like chicken-apple and chicken-artichoke. Add this first to forego the olive oil/butter)
– Mushrooms (sliced or quartered)
– Capers
– Olives (kalamata or pimentoed, sliced or quartered. Stuffed with garlic is also good)
– Artichoke hearts
– Spinach
– Green onions (chopped)
– Garlic
– Black pepper
– Anything else as palate and physics suggests.

Meanwhile, scramble at least two eggs with a complementary cheese or cheeses (I prefer either very sharp cheddar or the “Italian blend” of fontina, asiago, mozzarella and Parmesan).

When everything smells and looks right, pour in the egg/cheese scramble and lower the heat. Stir briskly for less than a minute (to coat; you don’t want a frittata, although those are also tasty); just before the eggs are cooked to your liking, turn all onto a plate and garnish with rye toast (or sourdough or whole-wheat or English muffins) and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee(2) — tea or milk won’t stand up to the flavors — and don’t forget the newspaper!

– = – = –
(1) From the yet-unpublished “Light Breakfast”:

The dish could be thrown together in any fashion, and indeed looked that way on the plate no matter how talented its maker, but was also a time-honored test of skill. A bad cook would toss everything into the pan and hope for the best (including a forgiving palate); a good cook could use as many ingredients as obtainable in such order as to bring out the purest and most complementary flavor of each. So well-known was this principle and so beloved its application that Uulians frequently cited it as suitorial standard (“She’s beautiful, son, but how Leisurely are her Eggs?”).

(2) Actually, seltzer will clear the palate and aerate the esophagus. I like to have both coffee and seltzer, with sometimes maybe a glass tomato juice to honor the practice of the grandparents who taught me the importance of a leisurely Sunday breakfast. (I have no idea why they were into the tomato juice.)

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