Unthawed Bites

Zest

2011-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

I've been working my way through the alphabet, using each letter as a jumping off point and seeing where it would take me. Z brings to a close three years worth of letters.

Last weekend I was in South Burlington for another ending - my niece's graduation from 8th grade. The class speakers were quick to point out that graduating from 8th grade was also a beginning. The niece is moving on to high school. When I went on to "the big house" in 1980, it was scary stuff, from an 8th grade class of sixteen at Charleston Elementary to the huge and overwhelming North Country Union High School in Newport, VT. It was a new beginning and Z is a new beginning. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I may just work my way back down the alphabet; there's a lot more food.

Two weeks ago I made a pesto of radish leaves. I always used to cut them off and toss them. I'd tried cooking the things before but really didn't enjoy the taste - bitter - the pesto was another story. It got me to thinking about other foods I wasn't using to their full potential and so I immediately made the leap to zest (Z was already on my mind so it was a more of a short hop, kind of how I do the Electric Slide).

I don't usually bother scraping off the rind of lemons, limes or oranges. Usually it's about the juice. I squeeze the heck out of them, hoping I don't get any seeds into whatever it is I'm making and am done with them. Today I zested them and it felt positively zesty.

I'm sad that Zestfully has been used. Zestfully clean. Why can't marketing people leave good words alone? Apple, Windows, Zest, Coast, Dial, Irish Spring, Dawn, Clorox... Zest soap was the one that didn't leave a film. I went through a phase where I was using the deodorant soaps (didn't everyone?) I was mostly an Irish Spring guy who kept his brogue down to a whisper in the shower.

So, what do you do with zest? I'm still figuring that out. This zest went into some coconut flour muffins. I think it'll be a nice touch in beverages, on top of fish, on the side, on chicken, adding a bit of panache to vegetables. If you're left with lemons, make lemonade and zest them - the smell alone is worth it.

There's Z, an ending and a beginning.

Yampy

2011-05-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

Yampy Bin, C-Town, Inwood

I came across these little fellas in a bin close to the floor in the produce aisle of the Inwood C-Town (I do a lot of shopping there for whatever I can't get at the Farmer's Market or the CSA). The Inwood C-Town has a pretty good selection of vegetables and tubers for Caribbean cuisine. I'd just started experimenting with yams and sweet potatoes. "Yampy" sounded like a cute yam to me so I decided to see what I could do with them.

Knowing that just about anything works fine in a tagine (except for unsliced kumquats) I peeled (somebody went all out waxing these things) and sliced them up and added them in.

Raw yampi are described as mucilaginous which is not how I want to think of any food, especially during allergy season. I'd prefer to say they are slippery when peeled (there's a title for an album). Thankfully, this slipperiness cooks away, and in the case of a tagine, you are left with something like a boiled potato except yampis are even less tasteful. They do do a good job of taking on the taste of the food around them and are a nice change up texturally.

If you come across them, why not give them a try? Look for Yampy, Yampi, Cushcush, Indian yam, napi, Yampie (Jamaica), Maona (Peru), Mapuey (Puerto Rico), Aja (Cuba); Cara doce (Brazil) or if you want to get scientific, Dioscorea trifida.

Xató

2010-11-13T17:29:00.000-08:00

This is my take on xató, you know, the Catalonian salad. Here it is undressed....

and dressed.

The dressing is almonds, wine vinegar, garlic, an achovy, olive oil, salt, pepper and chili peppers.

White Bean Chicken Chili

2010-10-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

Stainless Steel Pot - got this at an auction.
Eureka Joe's was my favorite writing spot in NYC. Now it's a BCBG.

Two of my favorite tools for making chili.

I start out by putting garlic and onions in the pot.

Meanwhile, the chicken - legs & thighs.

Green peppers and chipotles.

More peppers - white beans are a food canvas waiting
for a splash of color.

Tomatilloes.

Chives.

A bunch of cannellini beans.

A little something something to counteract the acidity -
much more necessary when cooking with tomatoes
but I just love telling people there's NEK syrup in there.

Jalapenos and a somewhat hot red pepper - I didn't
catch their name at the farmers market.

White Bean Chicken Chili.

"Vittles!"

2010-07-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

I picture Granny Clampett in black and white, scowling and yelling, glasses perched on her nose. And then, a split second later, there's Jethro behind her. He's digging into the pot with a ladle and slurping up the possum dish she's been slaving over for hours. She's looking the other way, gives a start when she sees him. I'm sure she's pleased he likes the vittles she's been slaving over but she still gives him a whack. If they have company, the Clampetts are seated at their pool table, passing dishes with their sticks, remarking on how useful they are for passing pots (they only cook in pots that can be passed with pool sticks).

The other place they have vittles is on the Dukes of Hazzard. I wouldn't mind taking the General Lee for a spin over the Clampetts rig (though I would like to have someone chauffeur me about while I sat in the rocker) but if I had to choose between Uncle Jesse and Granny's cooking or the hooches each offered up, I'd go with Granny's on both counts. Besides, The Beverly Hillbillies is the only show I can think of until the Simpsons came along that had a Homer. I watched a lot of episodes, black and white to color and back again.

I'm a word guy. I like to know where a word comes from. Vittles surprised me. I looked it up in our dictionary and was referred to victuals. Victuals? Sounds like a ceremony. Turns out victuals and vittles are both from the same word, vitaille, which in turn eventually came from vivere to live. Of course. Which is why air is also...oh, it's not? Well, I was surprised that vittles was coined about a century before victuals. Victualia, victualis, victus. If I had just taken Latin I know my Scrabble rating would be better than 1291. I'll keep at it - who knew vicuna was a llamalike ruminant animal? Pluralize that and bingo, look out, buddy!

"Well now its time to say goodbye to Jed and all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin' in. You're all invited back again to this locality to have a heapin' helpin' of their hospitality. Hillybilly that is. Set a spell, Take your shoes off.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?." And let me know when you're serving up some vittles.

Underground

2010-04-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

The New York Times recently had a piece about tomato greenhouses http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/dining/31tomato.html . The article talks about a greenhouse operation in Maine that doesn't grow their tomatoes in dirt. The tomatoes look great but I can't help but wonder if they might be missing out. Can they possibly be getting all of the nutrients from the water that is piped into them that their roots would have searched out underground? I'm sure there are scientists there who have carefully calibrated the concentrations of identified nutrients and administer them according to computer readouts but that doesn't comfort me.

I want my vegetables natural. I want them dirty. I want them to still be dusty from the soil they grew up when they get to my kitchen, to bring a piece of their terroir with them. Yes, I know it means more cleaning. Yes, it adds to their weight so yes, they cost more but dirt helps to preserve them and more importantly, connects me with their past.

Tagine Time

2010-03-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

I've been working on being more in the moment, taking my time, slowing down. Yesterday climbing the PATH stairs at Exchange Place, for example; I focused on the burn, as I took the steps, rather than just wishing I was at the top already. I don't go to the gym so those stairs are about as much exercise as I get. I'm also concentrating on chord formations more when I play the ukulele - B♭ (the people's key), D (my El Guapo) and the nefarious E.

Being in the moment takes more time. Time certainly passes more quickly. And I'm taking my time in the kitchen (and took my time getting to the letter T but that's a little something called procrastination). I've started making bread, cooking with dried beans instead of canned and using the tagine more often. Tagines are all about taking your time, cooking low and slow and letting the ingredients get to know one another.

I got my tagine over a year ago, a gift from Melissa. Just getting it was an adventure. We'd show up and they'd be closed. After a couple tries (lesson: call ahead to make sure they'll be open because if it's slow they just might close), we were inside. They have spices galore in there but this was about picking out a tagine. They have a whole bunch - each unique. It took awhile for us to find the base/top combination that fit well together and was aesthetically pleasing. Well, what I ended up with was more about the fit than looks but I've grown quite attached to it and wouldn't trade it for another. It has delivered some delicious meals.
Tagines are usually made out of clay so cooking with them is a bit different than cooking with a Dutch oven, which, I'd say, they're most like. They're all about keeping steam and juices inside and cooking for a long time. Dutch ovens allow for that high heat initial sear which tagines do not tolerate so well. Try it and your tagine base might end up in two pieces.
So, why a tagine when you could use a Dutch oven? Well, you're cooking in clay. Clay. When was the last time you cooked anything in clay? The history. Clay is the stuff people have cooked in for millenia (actually I'm not sure how long but longer than cast-iron that's for sure). It's earthy. It's dirt you cook in. (Sure, glass was dirt but it doesn't smell earthy.) I use a tagine because it's earthy, has a cool top and makes for a nice presentation but more than that, it makes me slow down.

Sloppy Joes at Deer Camp

2009-11-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

Up at deer camp, my brother and I do the cooking. This year we had moose meat (we got a moose last month). We brought up some steaks, hot sausage and a shoulder roast.
When we were hunting for the moose, our guide always brought moose meat sandwiches. If he hunts deer, he brings venison. We're not quite the hunters he is.
I decided I'd make Sloppy Joes for our first night there. I didn't have a recipe but figured it couldn't be too hard to come up with something ground meaty, tomatoey, with heat and some sweetness. I picked up some ground pork to go with the moose sausage - moose is pretty lean.
I mixed the moose and the pork together in a cast-iron skillet with a bit of olive oil, things complicated a bit by the moose's frozen state. Separately, I cooked up some onion, garlic and bell pepper.
Kev and I had gone shopping at Hannafords in Essex. I'd picked up the pork there as well as Kaiser rolls and Bove's Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce - if it had been July I'd have made the sauce from scratch but given the season and Deer Camp being fairly rustic I went with the sauce. I added the sauce to the meat and then mixed in the peppers, onions and garlic. I then tasted and adjusted - adding a bit of sugar, cumin, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and then, after time for everything to get acquainted, over the rolls it went.

It wasn't exactly what I'd had so many Friday nights in East Charleston but it was g.d. tasty. Dad certainly liked it.

Raphanus Sativus

2009-08-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

Growing up we only had radishes raw. There was usually a bunch of them in a white bowl in water in the fridge. We ate them mostly with a sprinkle of salt. Sometimes they lent a spot of spicy color to a salad or crunch to a potato salad - a cold, refreshing crunch.

I've tried cooking up radishes and radish greens. No success so far with the greens. I just can't get past the scratchy feel of them which cooking them doesn't completely solve. (More shallots? Duck fat?) So far, the best luck I've had with radish greens is to scatter them about on a serving dish and then to place radish halves slathered with a watered down goat cheese spread on the halves atop them.

Cooking the radishes themselves, they lose their punch and become more like their turnip cousin. So I rarely cook radishes because they lose most of what I like about them. Last night I made a soup. I had decided a cold radish soup would be good. I googled and lo and behold found a recipe. It called for cooking up radishes, a leek and a shallot. I did (and ate several raw with salt while doing so). I added chicken stock, reduced it and then cooled it. Then the food processor for a rough puree. When it was time for supper I garnished it with radish slices and parsley. I'm pretty happy with it. It has taken its place in my limited cold soup repertoire joining gazpacho and cucumber. I need to make more cold soups.

The other thing about radishes I like is the blank stare I usually get when I talk about something having "had the radish." I've heard it has been used to refer to a person's being exhausted; though in my experience it was always about a thing, as in, this shirt has "had the radish," it's time for the rag bin. It's an expression I heard a lot growing up - my Dad's usually good for using it once every couple weeks or so. Not everyone is au courant though. I tried it out on my uncle who grew up in the same area last week. He didn't know what the heck I was talking about and he still lives in the Northeast Kingdom. Language is a funny thing. If you ever figure out where the origins of "had the radish," let me know. In the meantime, happy crunching.

Quinoa

2009-07-05T17:44:00.001-07:00

Since quinoa does not come from a grass it is not a grain. Corn comes from a grass so it is a grain though I think of it more as a vegetable that's really good with butter and salt.
Corn and quinoa both pop when you eat them kind of like caviar does. I'm OK with the corn's popping but having caviar and quinoa ricocheting around the inside of my mouth wigs me out.
However, it's supposed to be really good for you so I bought some and cooked it up. Cooking it is easy - like a pasta or like a grain. If you cook it like a grain then you don't have to feel like you're pouring a lot of good nutritious water down the drain.
It's usually used like pasta or rice but I'm thinking its nutty taste would work well with maple syrup or peanut butter - maybe that would put a damper on the popping.

Pesto

2009-06-30T04:17:00.001-07:00

When I asked the guy at the produce stand at the farmers' market if it was ok for me to take a picture of the garlic scapes he told me it was fine. Actually he said something more to the effect that he wouldn't ask them to sign a waiver. After I took the picture he wanted to take a look and then he asked me what I did with them. I told him I made them into a pesto. He said he used them in mashed potatoes and then we talked pesto. He asked me how the garlic scape pesto was different from regular pesto. I talked about the garlickyness of the scapes so then he asked how it was different than regular garlic.
What? A garlic pesto? Who's this crazy man?
I struggled and said something about how it would be more green a couple of times, more green, a green fluorescent color, as if that said everything about how it would taste. The taste of chlorophyll.
Actually, I had never thought to make a garlic pesto. When you say pesto it's usually taken to mean basil, olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and maybe a clove or two of garlic. Could be something else green but that only if you were cutting edge crazy like I thought I was. I had ventured into arugula, kale and scapes (not a fan of onion scape pesto). And here was this guy suggesting it could be bone white. I considered and decided to give it a go.
Later I found out that the word pesto comes from the Italian for pound, crush. I made pestos with both.
They were both spicy though the garlic pesto was hotter, the bring tears to your eyes kind of spicy, it would be perfect spread onto toasted bread or with a rare steak. It didn't taste quite as...green. I like the taste of green so will take the scape route while they're in season.

Peel Back the Onion

2009-06-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about onions.

I was curious about the layers. How many are there? Are they like tree rings? Is there a ring formed per week? Per month? Where's the logic?

This one had thirteen, counting the outermost paper layers. We don't eat the outermost ones though it seems that the only difference between them and the innermost is the amount of moisture they hold.

Have I missed my calling? Should I have become a food scientist? Or am I completely off base?

When the alphabet loops back around I may have to post something about my future experiments with hydrating onion skin. These outer layers might make a handy tapas delivery device.

Back to the layers - I've read that the number of layers is determined by the number of leaves an onion has. I'm still not satisfied - why thirteen leaves (if that is, indeed the case)? Aren't the leaves part of the ring anyway? And are they really called leaves?

Nightshades

2009-05-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

Spud Solanum climbed the soft hill to where the microphone waited, glinting in the moonlight. He cupped it in his left hand, “Ladies and gentlemen, in this corner…” To Spud’s left, Queen Aubergine, resplendent in lilac and green, the undisputed champion of the hill. Queen had successfully defended her title two weeks running, turning to pulp all comers. She had had a good run but Spud saw a soft spot, a brown bruise upon her shoulder and knew it would come to an end soon.

Spud was no tot himself. Before coming to the ring he had been in his dressing room trying to focus himself in the mirror. He squinted and splashed water upon his eyes but still could not see clearly. He rubbed them, felt the telltale nubs; he had heard of sprouting but never thought it would happen to him. He calmed himself and following some indecision, snapped them off. He could see clearly, so clearly he noticed folds in his earthy skin. He resolved to work more with the cucumbers; he would not go gently to seed.

“…from the next vine over, in the red trunks, weighing 163 grams, The Red Terror!” Except for the ripe blush of her skin, her name hardly seemed to fit her. Spud thought one good left jab from Queen and she’d be ketchup.

“OK, I want a good fight, a fair fight, now go back to your corners.” The fruits went back to their corners to await the bell.

Maple Sugaring

2009-04-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Lunch in the Seventies

2009-03-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Soup simmers while Richard Gallagher's mud-with-gravel voice delivers the news in the living room. Tomato soup; either Campbell's or one Mom made using the strainer with the red wooden handle. Mom's tomato soup had golden flecks of butter floating on its milky surface. A few slices of JJ Nissen white bread stacked on a plate, bologna, cheese and Miracle Whip to make sandwiches, potato chips, and milk are on the table. It's noon. It's a cool summer day. We'd been out working in the garden most of the morning.

Sandwiches made, soup poured, we go into the living room to watch Gallagher finish up the news on WCAX-TV and for "Across the Fence" to start. Tony Adams, who also covered sports, hosted the show. What range. In one day he could be out talking to a local 4-H club about their quilts and then later he'd file a report on UVM baseball.

Lunch was always at the same time so Mom could listen to the news, watch "Across the Fence" and then maybe a soap - "Guiding Light" or "The Young & the Restless." During the summer though it was usually back outside to the garden or onto other chores. I remember shelling a lot of beans - the wind from the breezeway would blow the chaff away from the wash tub we'd drop the beans into. The beans were cool and hard. In the winter they'd become baked beans; simmering in the cellar on the wood stove with salt pork and maple syrup (probably other things too since my attempts at baked beans haven't been edible) for hours, softening, the small amount of pork working its magic.

I ate lunch today at my desk while people worked around me here in midtown Manhattan but for a little while I felt like I was in East Charleston.

Kumquats

2009-02-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

I was recently introduced to these little guys as a fruity snack. It didn't take long before I started thinking about ways to cook them. So far I've tried roasting and braising - here I've put them into a tagine with chicken, tomatilloes and jicama.

Tasty, small, sweet on the outside, tart on the inside, pop them into your mouth unpeeled. It's up there with eating peanut shells, shrimp tails or lobster tamale for shock value. They're well behaved when traveling, unlike berries with their sensitive skins, prone to rupture and sticky juice before you get to where you're going, the kumquat is going to arrive intact, its sensible orange peel keeping everything inside. Having to peel these grape-sized things would be a pain in the keester though I'm keen to try something made with kumquat zest some time.

The same thick skinned (relative to berries) -ness that makes them good travel companions can cause problems when you cook them. Problems if you don't cut them up a bit first that is. If you're going to cook them I recommend cutting them in halves or quarters, removing obvious seeds. (No need to go crazy removing seeds if you can eat the thing whole in the first place.) This will allow the super tart insides of the kumquats to dissipate. I didn't do that with all my kumquats in the tagine and cold tart is pretty good but hot tart is not so tasty. Hot, tart kumquat juice will make you pucker.

Jamaican Hot Peppers

2009-01-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

A couple nights ago I was intent on julienning some jicama. But it was not to be. The Fine Fare had all sorts of tubers but no jicama. I was going to make a salad. I decided I'd still make one - without the jicama.

I picked up some cilantro, okra (why is it slimy?), tomatilloes, red onions, a red pepper and a package of Jamaican Hot Peppers - what little I know of Caribbean cooking could fit on a postage stamp and I thought the JHPs were going to be well behaved, something that might go into a jerk seasoning, maybe a little heat but not too much. Plus those pepps were priced to move so I moved them into my basket. What I didn't realize at the time was that Jamaican Hot Peppers go by another name - scotch bonnets. I'd crossed paths with those sb's before and wouldn't have knowlingly done so again.

Salad time. I chopped the goodies, I removed the seeds and ribs of the peppers. We tried a teensy taste. Hot. High pitched screaming hot. But too hot? We had cheese - a cheddar and a farmer's queso and tortillas - all good for dampening the heat of peppers. I thought we were good but what I hadn't counted on was that pepper juice getting on my hands. After a little while it became apparent that I'd gotten some of that pepper lava on the back of two fingers and a thumb. Three pinpricks of heat like three magnifying glasses of sun boring into me. Ow. I cursed myself for thinkng Alton Brown was a sissy when he'd chop peppers with latex gloves. I tried cold water. Soap. I applied cheddar cheese, queso, lotion but the burns burned. I went to bed with those three pinpricks of heat and by morning they were asleep though they stirred when I took this photo - maybe it was just my memory of them.

They say you can build up a tolerance to these things. (They being some web site I can't remember the URL for.) I have to wonder at what price though. If I am able to stand the heat would it mean my pleasure in the taste of something else would be diminished? I like how I taste things now - most things taste good, even beets now. I'm OK with my being a wimp when it comes to hot peppers - I prefer a smoulder over a fire.

The offending peppers are now in the freezer. I'm hoping that will cool them down.

In the Garden of Eden, Baby!

2008-11-10T10:56:00.001-08:00

When we lived at 27 W 27 Street we'd shop at the Garden of Eden on 23rd Street. It's small by Key Foods and Whole Foods standards but was big enough. Their roast chickens were awesome. You could have one of those over arugula and voila, delish meal. The roommates used to sing "In the Garden of Eden" to the tune to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." I have since found out that the song was originally supposedly "In the Garden of Eden" anyway. I've since learned the meaning of the word mondegreen.
The Garden of Eden isn't typical of a supermarket, it doesn't have that tile floor, lots of steel shelves look. Instead there are baskets hanging from the ceiling, nice lighting, lots of wood and a very helpful cheese monger.
Whole Foods moved into the neighborhood but so far The Garden of Eden persists. Its roast chickens thrash the Whole Foods ones and the lines tend to be shorter.

Haggis

2008-10-27T14:17:00.001-07:00

Traditional recipes call for the sheep's pluck and lights (stomach, liver, heart and lungs). If I ever found myself in a place where I could get all these things and people were clamoring for a haggis I'd love to try to make it that way.

Haggis is like meatloaf or shepherd's pie or corned beef hash. Ground up meat with lots of savory spices. What separates haggis though is that it's prepared with oatmeal and it's steamed or boiled. That and it's also made with offal (see paragraph one). Any recipe that uses what might otherwise go to waste is a pretty good thing in my book.

I've made it. Sort of. If you stick to the spirit of the recipe (offal, oatmeal and boiled/steamed) and don't get hung up on using sheep's pluck and lights. Over the course of six months or so I had cooked three ducks, each time, freezing the heart, liver and neck (don't remember if there were gizzards too...) I thawed (almost wrote unthawed) these and then boiled, chopped fine and combined them in a bowl with roasted oatmeal, spices (primarily Allspice) and a bit of whisky. Knowing that a sheep's pluck would be hard to come by and be way too big for the minuscule amount of meat I was working with I decided I'd go with casings. Stuffing them was messy - I'm using a pastry bag next time... I ended up with these sausage looking thingies which I proclaimed to be duck haggis. Next time I'll probably go with a beef bung for the casing and serve it more like a hash than a sausage. Haggis isn't the prettiest dish going but I'm not too worried about presentation since it'll probably end up being a haggis for one (though I'm hoping for two).

Slainte!

Goat

2008-10-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just beginning to explore the world of goat. Even so I've come a long way. It'd be hard not to when it used to be that my two biggest exposures to it were the occasional log of cheese and my friend Andy telling me not to call him "goat head" after I'd say "go ahead."

Goat the meat - had a handful of times, almost always something stew-like. Is there a goat steak? How about a goat burger with goat cheese, really peppery arugula (forget the baby stuff) and sauteed red onions? Goat carpaccio with a drizzle of olive oil and sea salt and something green on top - rosemary? Sounds like it'd be pretty tasty.

And the ones I do know I'd like to get to know better - goat cheese - Saturday. Goat's milk ice cream - last night. (Supposedly this ice cream has less fat than cow's milk ice cream but it tastes so so much more decadent - I recommend the vanilla - put some maple syrup from the NEK on it.) Goat butter - forgot where that was from (picked it up in the Park Slope Food Coop) - it has its own taste and it melts more easily than cow's milk - a bonus if you keep your butter in the fridge. And tonight - radishes with goat cheese spread atop. (Mmm, thank you, M.)

And now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to goat head and have dinner.

Fries with Gravy

2008-09-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Burlington, VT, the late eighties - after going downtown and hitting the Last Chance, Rasputin's, What Ales You, Minerva's (later NRG later the Outback) or Hunt's we'd just about always stop off at Nectar's. We'd stop in for one last beer we didn't need and for fries with gravy we really didn't need.

Getting it to go from the take out window was not the way to go. You wanted to go in and order it from a thin man dressed in white with thick glasses. You wanted to say fries with extra gravy so you got gravy in a little heavy white bowl for dipping. You wanted it placed on a plastic tray or as my friend Thatchy once said, trastic play.

I haven't been back to Nectar's in years. I see the fries are called gravy fries on their menu, http://www.liveatnectars.com/static/liveatnectars/menu.php , but don't remember their being called that (otherwise I'd have to file this under G). Going back would be be like visiting a childhood home you had left ages ago. You go back and your memories of what was are changed a little bit by what is.

Just why did I like these fries so much? Al's Fries are awesome too, in a different way but I don't get all nostalgic over them. Nectar's were fairly soft, small steak fries smothered with a brown creamy gravy. You used a fork to eat them once you got to the ones that were completely covered and soft with gravy. Sometimes what makes a food special isn't the food but what comes with the food. You didn't want to get these fries to go in a big soft Styrofoam container and if you did you certainly didn't want to have them the next day when they'd be more like mashed potatoes than fries. You wanted to have them while they were hot and you were at Nectar's with the music in the next room with a Bud long neck. More importantly though, you wanted to have these fries with your friends. These fries are all about sharing. Three, four, five people in a booth or at a table sharing a large plate of fries going over the night's misadventures. It's communal like Thanksgiving and place-specific like sugar on snow. You could scoop up some snow, heat up some syrup and have it at home but there's only one place you should have that and that's in the sugar house while they're boiling. And Nectar's fries with gravy at Nectar's.

Eggplant

2008-08-17T17:08:00.001-07:00

Was never much of a fan of eggplants either, didn't have them growing up and when I did later they were either served up in eggplant parmesan (when chicken parm was so much more satisfying) or served up as part of a summer vegetable mix, dripping with what was a half a step up from bath water.

A few years ago I decided I was going to give to try preparing them myself. I followed Alton Brown's advice (I followed a transcript from his eggplant show) to draw as much water out of them as possible and then to treat them like a steak http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/eggplant-steaks-recipe/index.html I salted the bejesus out of them, squeezed out the water and ended up with these limp dishrags of pale vegetable. I like the taste of Worcestershire sauce but not so much that it could compensate for the bland eggplant. And referring to these things as steak was generous, tuna steak and portabello steaks, those I can see. My eggplant dislike had been reconfirmed.

A couple weeks ago I decided they would make a good letter E. I could complain about them, refer to them as vapid waterlogged sponges, it was going to be good. So I bought the three in the picture, the big one at the Grand Army Farmers Market and the two little shavers at the Park Slope Food Coop and was going to make something. It would further prove how bland and watery these things are. Their time arrived. When I went to prepare them the big one was growing some white fuzzies out of a dent I hadn't noticed before. The big one had had the radish so I tossed it out and turned my attention to the two little ones. I decided to cut them into slices and sautee them up with garlic and duck fat. I usually cook with olive oil but decided I'd pull out all the stops. I cooked the eggplant and garlic for 30 minutes and then poured them (soft soft eggplant and brown crunchy garlic, just shy of burnt and just shy of bitter) over arugula and sprinkled on some goat cheese. The eggplant had soaked up lots of duck fat deliciousness and the garlic gave it crunch, the arugula's pepperiness and the goat cheese joined in. Mmmm. Maybe I could have fried up discs of cardboard and they would have tasted as good. Doesn't matter - eggplant is pretty good and it won't be five years before I cook it next time.

Dos Equis

2008-08-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

I always used to think Dos Equis meant two horses. The two exes on the label along with the complete absence of horses should have tipped me off but they didn't. In hindsight I thought of those exes the way you see three exes on a bottle of granny's moonshine on "The Beverly Hillbillies" - it meant hooch, somewhat old hooch with a storied past. It was the first Mexican beer I ever tried and the exes gave it history and made me feel it might have a higher alcohol content. In college we would make Brador runs - trips over the border to get the 6.2% Molson Bradors. After college I moved to Boston and took Spanish classes through an extension class. It was there that I discovered Dos Equis were Two Exes. Humbling and mind opening.

I've had a few similar moments.

As kids we didn't have much control over what we'd watch on TV. I remember "The Lawrence Welk Show," "Hee Haw," "The Flip Wilson Show," The Carol Burnett Show" and "The Beachcombers" over on CBC - some were more painful than others and some kept using a word as they'd go to a break or come back from one. The word I heard was brochtoyubied. I never saw it spelled out so that spelling is mine. A few years later I found it was four words - "brought to you by."

Home in East Charleston, whenever we would take meat out of the freezer, it wasn't to thaw it but was rather to unthaw it. You would unthaw food but there would not be a spring unthaw - that was a spring thaw. Again years passed before I ever figured out that I was thawing instead of unthawing. I took the name of the blog from this unthawing of food. I like the idea of learning through food or remembering through food.

Corn

2008-08-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

I don't know where to start. Corncob pipes, popcorn, corn flakes with hot milk and sugar in France, corn on the cob (delicious Jersey corn two weeks ago), high fructose corn syrup or the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. So I'm going to go further back.

I used to live next to a cornfield. This one was used to feed the cows, the cows that lived at the farm on the other side of the cornfield. It was the same farm my Mom grew up on.

When we moved to Charleston, VT we lived with Grammie at that farm. It was a farm without animals when we were there. I was six. I realized later that a farm without animals is a sad thing. My grandpa, who used to stuff grass down the backs of us kids' shirts, had recently passed so there was just Grammie there . We lived there a couple years until the house was built on the other side of the field. Grammie then sold the farm and bought a small house across the road from us.

One of my fondest memories of that time, besides how soft Grammie's cheek was when I kissed her good night, was my brother and I riding our red tricycles in the white-washed empty barn. We weren't used to riding on anything smoother than a dirt driveway so a smooth cement floor in a barn was a nice change. Not only did we have a fast surface but there were also the slopes from up where the stanchions were down to the middle of the barn along the gutters. We couldn't drive into the milk house because there was a step but otherwise we'd zip all around that barn. My trike was faster than his - probably because mine was tricked out with stickers from Wonder Bread - Peanuts characters.

A few years later, after we'd graduated to two wheels, we'd ride our bikes in the cornfield that now belonged to the guy who had bought the farm (purchased is probably a better way to put it - I think he's still with us). There was a path along the corn we'd follow and then we'd dive off and ride along the rows as far as we could go, our handlebars barely fitting amongst the rows, leaves slapping us, tassels waving, a cloud of pollen in our wake.

I'll get up there again at the end of this month.

Beets

2008-08-02T13:10:00.001-07:00

I'm not a big fan. Mom would pickle up a bunch of beets. We kids had to eat them. In my distant memory I can hear her saying "President Nixon says you have to eat everything on your plate." No option of saying "No Mom, thanks, no beets for me tonight." If that had been an option I would have avoided many a slab of beef liver and hogshead cheese.
I would have a pickled beet sitting on my white plate, its dark red juice advancing on the boiled potatoes I had just mashed, pats of butter melting into the fork tracks. I don't think anyone else in the family except Mom liked them but she kept on making them. I was always wondering why not use those Ball canning jars for more dill pickles? Or pickled eggs. Mom likes beets. She was in charge of the garden, did the cooking, controlled what went on the table so we got beets. She'd boil them, too. That would mellow out their colors a bit but there was still this earthy beet smell about them. Can you saute' them, make into beet tempura? Is there any way to make them taste good besides masking their beetiness in a soup?

I bought some beets today at the Grand Army Farmers Market. I believe that your sense of taste changes as you grow older so make a point of going back and trying things I didn't like in the past. Eggplant, zucchini, Chardonnay, your turns are coming.

A is for Apple

2008-07-29T20:35:00.001-07:00

The apples trees up on the Crowe had been planted years earlier. We used to climb them. These days I'd worry more about knocking their dry bluish white moss/lichen off them or their just giving up the ghost and snapping. Climbing these trees I used to think they had to be related to roses what with their knobby thorns that broke off, marking your climb.

We had a potato piece with the apples off to the sides up on the hill shared by my aunts and uncles. I'd always thought that potatoes were something you grew with other families and that everything else you did yourself. Now there is no shared piece. The families do their own thing, grow their own things or buy them.

I didn't like working on the potatoes. It was so dry. There'd be us kids who'd walk along the dusty hills scouting the leaves for the nefarious speckle-shelled potato bug and then plinking them into a coffee can. The rows seemed to go on forever and it was thirsty. You don't plant potatoes in the shade.

The piece was along a stone wall, it's largely overgrown by trees now. It's the same wall where three years ago when the weather was so warm that instead of going out hunting I went out with a chainsaw and an over/under (just in case). Of course I saw a deer then. By the time I'd set the chainsaw down the bouncing white tail was out of sight.

We used to ride up to the potato piece on a wooden trailer towed by Uncle Elvin's tractor. You couldn't get there in a car - the road wasn't very accommodating that way.

After we'd worked in the potato piece we kids would climb the trees. Cousin Bucky and I would climb up into the apple trees, we'd eat the apples, mainly light green-skinned and sour - I know of stomach aches. Mom would make pies, the apples would fill the two crisper drawers of the fridge, she would cut them up and freeze them into bags she kept in the fridge in the cellar.

Not all apples were destined for pies - my cousins, brother and I would find saplings and use them to launch apples. Every time I see the sticks people use to throw tennis balls a long ways for their dogs I'm reminded of launching apples.