Lunch in the Seventies

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

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

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!

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

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!