Best Food Writing 2011

by Holly Hughes

  But why turtle meat to begin with? Well, such fare was considered quite the delicacy, and diamondback terrapins were de rigeur as a mainstay of many nineteenth-century menus. Around 1800, taverns served terrapin for supper for a modest two shillings, usually boiled in its shell. Terrapins were so abundant that they were even used as food for pigs. In Philadelphia, they were sold from wheelbarrows, as were oysters. But they were also highly prized around the Chesapeake, especially toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, when they had been overfished. By 1900, the price had risen to a high of $125 per dozen for counts—legal turtles that were at least seven inches wide.

  By the 1890s, Fannie Farmer was still suggesting that home cooks prepare and serve terrapin, the directions for which would make even an avid hunter and preparer of wild game slightly queasy. To begin, boil a live turtle for five minutes, remove the skin from the feet and tail by rubbing with a towel, then draw out the head with a skewer and rub off the skin. (One Philadelphia cook, Mrs. Rubicam, suggested that the terrapins be put alive in boiling water, “where they must remain until they are quite dead.” Yes, I think that there would be unanimity of opinion on this point.) This is only the initial preparation. To cook it, Fannie suggests placing it in a kettle and covering it with salted, boiling water plus carrot, onion, and celery. The turtle is cooked until tender—the test was pressing the “feet-meat” between thumb and forefinger—estimated to take up to forty minutes. Then, Fannie instructs, remove the turtle from the water, cool, draw out the nails from the feet, cut the body under the shell close to the upper shell, and remove. Finally, empty the upper shell and remove the gallbladder, sandbags (a remnant from the Triassic period), and the thick, heavy part of the intestines.

  Fannie was not offering anything new in the turtle department. Her basic recipe for Terrapin à la Baltimore was well known to any cook of the period and had been published in numerous cookbooks. The terrapin is boiled, the meat and selected entrails are removed and placed in a chafing dish, where it is finished with a roux, egg yolks, and Madeira. Wine, brandy, cream, and sherry were also used to finish the dish.

  We finally hunted up some frozen turtle meat, but I wondered about the diamondback terrapins and thought that a fishing trip to the Chesapeake might be in order. I called the Maryland Department of Fisheries to determine when the season opened and what the legal limit was. A hasty return phone call from Diane Samuels made it clear that I had made a terrible gaffe, as if I were inquiring joyfully about the season for clubbing baby seals. After being informed that there was no season for the turtles of the Chesapeake—she used the words “strictly prohibited”—I asked how long the ban had been in effect. “Oh, one year,” was the reply. Well, it’s always the last sinner in church who protests the loudest.

  To get a better sense of other preparation methods for turtle, I selected two recipes, one from Commander’s Palace and the other from Arnaud’s. They both used a stock—beef or veal—and roux for thickening. The Commander’s Palace recipe reminded me of a traditional terrapin recipe in which the turtle meat is sautéed in butter, seasonings are added, and, in the case of this soup, the stock is then thrown in and simmered for half an hour. The roux is whisked in, the soup thickened, and lemon juice, chopped hardboiled eggs, and parsley are added. A teaspoon of sherry for each soup plate is the final touch. Arnaud’s recipe is much lighter and, I might add, stranger. In separate pots, three-quarters of a pound each of turtle meat and ground veal are cooked at length—forty-five minutes—and then the meats are chopped and set aside. Veal stock is heated with seasonings along with two halved lemons and, to finish, the meats are added, along with sherry, chopped eggs, and some roux to thicken. Delicious, you ask? The good news is that turtle meat does have a distinctive flavor: slightly gamey, rich, almost as if the meat had been hung for a few days to ripen. It is also varied. Some bits are much like white meat, and the other pieces are quite dark, almost like duck. The bad news is that both of these recipes were disappointing: the Commander’s Palace recipe was heavy because of the large amount of roux, and the Arnaud’s soup wasn’t much better: thin, watery, and overwhelmed by the acidity of the lemons.

  Now that we were singularly unimpressed with the real thing, we moved on to the mock version, which required a calf’s head. Two cups of brown stock are thickened with large amounts of butter and flour; the head stock is then added, with tomatoes, the face meat, and lemon juice. Madeira is used to finish. (A word about Fannie’s penchant for massive amounts of flour and butter for thickening sauces: she thickens six cups of stock with one-quarter cup butter and a whopping half cup of flour. We found a similar attraction to pasty sauces when researching other Fannie recipes. I checked Escoffier to see if it was merely the prevailing method of her era or Fannie herself. In this case, Ms. Farmer is to take the blame. Escoffier’s rule of thumb—his book was first published in 1902, just six years after Fannie’s cookbook—was three ounces of roux to thicken four and a half cups of liquid so, in this recipe, one would use about half the amount of flour that Fannie calls for. Did she actually test these recipes?)

  The problem, in retrospect, was the definition of “clean and wash calf’s head.” For Victorians, this may have been common knowledge, but for the modern cook, the directive is a bit vague. Almost nobody said, “Take out the goddamn brains, you idiot!” since this would be like saying, “Before logging on to Facebook, be sure to turn on your computer.” Well, I was in need of remedial calf’s-head preparation training, which I finally found in the pages of The Complete Cook, authored by J. M. Sanderson in 1846. In it, we finally achieve specificity: “Get the calf’s head with the skin on [another query of mine], the fresher the better, take out the brains [italics mine] and wash the head several times in cold water. Let it soak in spring water for an hour.” Thanks—now my computer is on! (As I continued my research, the refrain “take out the brains” kept appearing—a mantra of sorts to my abject stupidity. But it was noted that the brains must be removed “without breaking them,” a warning that implied a memorable scene from Young Frankenstein.) The tongue, however, was to remain in the water during cooking and then “cut into mouthfuls, or rather make a side dish of the tongue and brains.” Well, whatever. Then the head was cut into tiny pieces, five pounds of knuckle of veal were added, “and as much of beef,” and then a stock was made by boiling for five hours. Other recipes, I noted, also added salt pork, ham hocks, trotters, anchovies, smoked tongue, or bacon.

  As my research continued, mock turtle soup took on a life of its own, being an all-purpose starting point to which one added all sorts of culinary backflips and flourishes. My favorite was the following, which appeared in Jennie June’s Cookbook. “Brain-balls or cakes are a very elegant addition, and are made by boiling the brains for ten minutes.” A recipe from the 1877 Buckeye Cookery suggested that the brains be removed to a saucer. They are used later to make forcemeat balls (that would be brain balls to you), which started with a paste of hard-cooked egg yolks, to which the brains are added “to moisten.”

  As I started piling up recipes for mock turtle soup, other details came to light. The butcher was to remove the hair by scalding and scraping. The teeth and the eyes were also goners. One was also supposed to scrape “the interior of the nasal passage and the mouth.” The tongue was supposed to be removed as soon as it was tender, and the skin “stripped off.” The brains were to soak separately in salted water and then the outer membrane was to be removed, “being careful not to break the substance of the brain.” In other words, “Listen, you ham-handed oaf—handle the brains gently or they will turn into custard!” Then you boil the brains gently for ten to fifteen minutes, allow to cool wrapped in a wet cloth, and keep in a cool place. You bet I will! I’m not leaving gently simmered room-temperature brains right next to my 700-degree pizza oven!

  Now I had some idea of what the original recipe was like, as well as being up to speed on what to do with a calf’s head without feeling like some twenty-first-century culinary n
incompoop. So we ordered another batch of calf’s heads, cut into large pieces, the brains reserved, presumably for brain balls. They were delivered in a large cardboard box, somewhat bloody at the bottom, and wrapped with two bands of thick plastic strapping. The first dilemma was the eyes. Since they had not been removed, I was forced to perform an eye-ectomy. Remembering the final scene of Kill Bill, I thought that a well-performed plucking might do the trick, but sadly that was not to be. In case you have ever worried about your eyes inadvertently falling out or perhaps being popped into midair if you were given a sharp blow to the side of the head, you may now relax. Eyeballs—at least those of male calves—are sturdily attached. I next grabbed an oyster knife, but this was hopeless for attacking the thick, rubbery connective tissue that lined the socket and kept the eye firmly in place. Only ten minutes’ sawing with a very sharp paring knife did the trick, and that was just for one eye. (Don’t ask which one; the head was already in pieces.) We let the head rinse in cold salted water for an hour, and then we began cooking.

  With plenty of water to cover, a ham hock, five pounds of beef round, a few vegetables such as carrot and celery, and the odd spice, including bay leaves, cloves, allspice berries, and peppercorns, we simmered the pot all though the day on the cookstove, strained it, and then let it sit overnight before we defatted the stock and moved on to make the soup. This was more like a traditional Escoffier stock, and it looked a whole lot better too. At least the liquid was thin, not goopy with melted brains, and it had a pleasant French stock odor. We reheated the stock after first cooking onions in butter, and then adding a julienne of carrots and turnips as garnish. The taste? Remarkably, the flavor reminded me of the turtle soups I had made a few weeks before, but substantially more delicious. How and why a calf’s-head stock would produce a flavor similar to turtle meat simmered in water is one of the culinary questions that is probably best not asked.

  Thinking that we were now done, I was rudely awakened to the fact that I had forgotten about the garnish, the aforementioned brain balls. (How many authors have had the pleasure of using the phrase “aforementioned brain balls”?) To see how the standard forcemeat balls (meat loaf mix, bread crumbs, salt pork, egg white, salt, and pepper) would turn out, we tested a recipe from the 1831 cookbook, The Cook Not Mad. (The title of this anonymously authored cookbook refers to a rational, rather than a helter-skelter, approach to the culinary arts.) The resulting balls were coarse, rough, and tough. They also lacked flavor and interest. So, thinking that we might as well go whole hog, as it were, and the use the brains, we turned to a recipe from The Good Housekeeper (1839). We simmered the brains for ten minutes in a court bouillon (the Victorian cookbooks were correct on this point—brains must be handled very gently lest they dissolve like broken custard) and then mixed them with dried bread crumbs, nutmeg, thyme, two eggs, salt, and pepper. Since the brains were still a bit warm, they turned to mush when chopped, so we took the remaining cooked brains and let them cool under a damp towel to firm up the texture. (We thought that soaking in cold water might make them looser and more watery.) When shallow-fried in a skillet, the crisp exterior retained its texture even when floating in the soup and the inside was uniform and tender. Brain balls were a success! (The final adjustments included allowing the brains to rest in the refrigerator to really firm up, and frying the brain balls in 350-degree oil, not in butter.)

  Mock Turtle Soup

  The “mock” in mock turtle soup is a calf’s head, which is simmered to make a stock for the soup. Be sure to remove the brains first (and the eyeballs), and have the head cut into pieces. Preferably, this is done by your butcher, not you. (Eyeballs are firmly attached—they won’t just pop out!) The recipe for Crispy Brain Balls can be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.

  STOCK

  1 calf’s head

  1 cup white wine

  1 smoked ham hock

  5 pounds beef round, cut into 2-inch pieces

  2 bay leaves

  5 cloves

  6 allspice berries

  24 peppercorns

  4 onions, chopped rough

  4 carrots, chopped rough

  4 ribs celery, chopped rough

  1 head garlic, halved across the equator

  8 sprigs parsley

  4 sprigs thyme

  1. Split calf’s head in half, remove the brains (reserve for the Crispy Brain Balls recipe) and eyes (discard), cut out the tongue, and clean well, including the nostrils. Cut the head into pieces, soak for one hour in a 20-quart stock pot in slightly salted water.

  2. Drain, cover with 6 quarts cold water, and add wine, ham hock, beef, bay leaves, cloves, allspice berries, peppercorns, onions, carrots, and celery, garlic, and herbs. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours or until the calf’s-head meat is tender, skimming foam as necessary.

  3. Transfer bones, meat, and vegetables to colander set in large bowl. Pour broth through the fine mesh strainer (adding any liquid given off through colander), let sit for 10 minutes, skim off fat, and use as needed (or cool quickly to room temperature and refrigerate until needed, removing fat from top before using). Yields about 4 quarts. Reserve the meat from the head along with the ham hock and tongue; shred into small pieces; this should yield about 3 cups. Discard pieces of beef round.

  SOUP

  4 tablespoons butter

  2 large onions, diced medium (about 3 cups)

  2 tablespoons sage, chopped fine

  3 tablespoons flour

  2 quarts calf’s-head broth

  ¼ cup dry white wine

  1 bay leaf

  Salt and pepper

  1 medium carrot, 2-inch julienned (about ¾ cup)

  ½ turnip, 2-inch julienned (about ¾ cup)

  1 medium leek, white only, cut into 2-inch lengths, cut in half length-wise, and julienned (about ¾ cups)

  1 tablespoon sherry

  ¼ cup chopped chives

  1. Heat butter in large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat; when foaming subsides, add onions, and sage and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 8 to 12 minutes. Add flour and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Whisking constantly, gradually add broth and wine; bring to boil, skimming off any foam that forms on surface. Reduce heat to medium low, add bay leaf, partially cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until flavors meld, about 20 to 25 minutes. Strain through fine-mesh strainer. Season to taste.

  2. In two batches, blanch julienned vegetables in 2 quarts seasoned stock, 1 to 2 minutes each. Shock in ice water. Reserve.

  3. To serve: Reheat soup base and finish with sherry. Prepare Crispy Brain Balls. To each bowl add equal portions of room-temperature vegetables, 1 to 2 tablespoons pulled meat. Pour hot soup over garnish. Finish with 2 to 3 brain balls per serving and chopped chives.

  NATHAN MYHRVOLD’S METHOD MAKES SCIENCE OF COOKING

  By Sophie Brickman

  From The San Francisco Chronicle

  Nathan Myhrvold’ six-volume Modernist Cooking, published in 2010, may be the cookbook to end all cookbooks. Chronicle food reporter Sophie Brickman, armed with her own training from the French Culinary Institute, takes it out for a test drive.

  This is how Nathan Myhrvold scrambles his morning eggs:

  He starts by putting an immersion circulator in a water bath and sets the temperature to 164 degrees; the machine will regulate the temperature to a fraction of a degree.

  As the water is heating up, he cuts a square of Gruyere into small dice, then takes another square and shaves it against a Microplane grater, to ensure melted cheese nuggets and fluffy melted wisps throughout the eggs.

  He then whisks the cheese with two whole eggs and one egg yolk—what he’s found to be the perfect ratio of fat to protein to achieve ultimate creaminess—pours the mess into a Ziploc bag and places the bag in the water bath. Then he takes a leisurely 15-minute shower as the eggs cook.

  I ate those eggs. Without getting into details, they’re the platonic ideal of cheesy scrambled eggs. Put a slice of Myhrvold’s 72-hour short-ri
b pastrami next to them and serve it to a young Plato, and we might never have had his ideal, Academy, Dialogues, Republic ... only a fat Greek man.

  Myhrvold, author of Modernist Cuisine—the new six-volume, 2,400-page, 46-pound, spectacularly photographed book that retails for $625 and covers the history, science and technology of modern savory cooking—stopped by The Chronicle’s test kitchen recently to cook breakfast and talk about his newest contribution to the world. He sported a beard, short-sleeved chef’s jacket and boyish grin.

  Remarkable Resume

  People call Myhrvold, the 51-year-old former Microsoft executive, a polymath—someone well versed in a wide range of subjects. But people also call James Franco a polymath.

  We are dealing with an entirely different order of magnitude here. By the age of 23, Myhrvold had received a master’s degree in mathematical economics and a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, after which he studied quantum field theory with renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. He was Microsoft’s first chief technology officer, dabbles in paleontology and reducing global climate change, is an award-winning wildlife photographer, helped a team win the 1991 World Barbecue Championship and is currently the CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a privately held company that develops patents.

  For the past five years, he has channeled part of his epic nerdiness into the culinary realm, writing—with chefs Chris Young and Maxime Billet, along with a team that totaled 48—what is being hailed by chefs as perhaps the most important culinary book in our lifetime.

  Modernist Cuisine touts the benefits of contemporary techniques that allow the precise regulation of temperature. These include sous-vide cooking—the process of vacuum-sealing food in a plastic bag, immersing it in water and, with the help of an immersion circulator, cooking it at exceedingly low temperatures to ultimate deliciousness. Other Modernist Cuisine-approved appliances include CVap and combi ovens that can steam, roast, poach, bake and broil all at once.