Choice Cuts
Page 29
They give needed bulk to food rather than nutriment, and, lacking in proteid, should be used in combination with meat, fish, or eggs.
Potatoes contain an acrid juice, the greater part of which lies near the skin; it passes into the water during boiling of potatoes, and escapes with the steam from a baked potato.
Potatoes are best in the fall, and keep well through the winter. By spring the starch is partially changed to dextrin, giving the potatoes a sweetness, and when cooked a waxiness. The same change takes place when potatoes are frozen. To prevent freezing, keep a pail of cold water standing near them.
Potatoes keep best in a cool dry cellar, in barrels or piled in a bin. When sprouts appear they should be removed; receiving their nourishment from the starch, they deteriorate the potato.
New potatoes may be compared to unripe fruit, the starch grains not having reached maturity; therefore they should not be given to children or invalids.
—from Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896
SHEILA HIBBEN ON AMERICAN POTATOES
Sheila Hibben, a food writer for The New Yorker, was the original critic for its “Restaurants” column. Her work, both books and articles, showed a deep interest in preserving authentic American cooking.
—M.K.
Mashed Potatoes
(Emporia, Kansas)
SERVES 6
Pare, cut in quarters, and boil 6 medium-sized potatoes; drain and shake over heat to dry. Mash with a wire masher, add 2 tablespoons of butter, beat hard, and add 1½ cups of scalded milk gradually while beating. Sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of chopped chives, add salt to taste, and continue beating until as light and fluffy as a soufflé. Add a little more scalded milk if needed. Pile up lightly in an oven-proof dish and put in a hot oven (400° F.) until the peaks of the mixture just begin to color.
Scalloped Potatoes
(Maine)
SERVES 6
4 medium-sized potatoes
3 tablespoons butter
flour
salt and pepper
milk
Peel raw potatoes and slice very thin, crosswise. Butter the bottom and sides of a deep baking dish; put in a layer of potato slices, sprinkle with pepper and salt, dredge very lightly with flour, and dot with butter. Repeat twice. Pour over enough milk barely to cover. Bake, covered, in a moderate oven (350° F.) for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking another 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender and well browned on top.
Stuffed Baked Potatoes
(Illinois)
6 potatoes
4 thin bacon strips, fried
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
½ cup top milk, scalded
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon finely chopped chives
salt and pepper
melted butter
Select smooth, moderately large potatoes of uniform size. Wash with vegetable brush and place in shallow pan in hot oven (425° F.). Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until soft. (Test by taking up with a cloth and squeezing; if soft the potato is done.) Cut a ½ inch slice off top; scoop out inside and mash with crumbled bacon, butter, chives, parsley, and milk. Season to taste with salt and pepper and stuff shells with mixture. Brush with melted butter and arrange close together, stuffed end up, in shallow baking dish. Bake in hot oven (400° F.) just long enough to brown the tops.
Potato Charlotte
(Ohio)
SERVES 6
1 medium-sized onion, chopped fine
3 tablespoons butter
3 potatoes
2 eggs, well beaten
½ cup milk
salt and pepper
Fry onion in butter until it just begins to color. Grate the raw potatoes and combine with the onion; season with 1 teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Combine eggs with milk and mix well with potatoes. Grease and heat a heavy frying pan, pour potato mixture into it and bake in hot oven (450° F.) until well browned on top. With the aid of a spatula and pancake turner slide onto a hot platter and serve with pot roast.
—from American Regional Cookery, 1932
PABLO NERUDA ON FRENCH FRIES
Between the years 1954 and 1959, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), the 1971 Nobel laureate in literature, wrote four volumes of odes to mundane everyday objects. Many of his “common things” were foods.
—M.K.
Ode to French fries
What sizzles
in boiling
oil
is the world’s
pleasure:
French fries
go
into the pan
like the morning swan’s
snowy
feathers
and emerge
half-golden from the olive’s
crackling amber.
Garlic
lends them
its earthy aroma,
its spice,
its pollen that braved the reefs.
Then,
dressed
anew
in ivory suits, they fill our plates
with repeated abundance,
and the delicious simplicity of the soil.
—Odes to Common Things, 1954,
translated from the Spanish by Ken Krabbenhoft
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Pinch of Seasoning
PLINY THE ELDER ON THYME
There are two kinds of thyme: the pale and the dark. Thyme flowers about the period of the summer solstice, when the bees collect from it. It offers a rough guide to the yield of honey, for beekeepers hope for an abundance of honey if the thyme flowers profusely. Thyme is damaged by rain and sheds its flowers. The seed is invisible to the eye; but the seed of wild marjoram, although very small, is large enough to be seen. But what does it matter that Nature has hidden the seed of thyme?
We know that it is inside the flower itself and that a plant grows from the flower when sown. Is there anything with which men have not experimented? Attic honey has a greater reputation than that of any other kind in the whole world. And so thyme has been imported from Attica and, as I am informed, grown with difficulty from the flower. But another characteristic of Attic thyme proved a hindrance: survival depends on a sea breeze. The same view was held in olden times about all kinds of thyme, and people believed that this was the reason why thyme did not grow in Arcadia. They also thought that the olive was found only within 35 miles of the sea, whereas we know today that thyme covers even the stony plains of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, and this is almost the only source of revenue for the inhabitants. Thousands of sheep gather there from distant places to graze on the thyme.
—from Natural History, first century A.D.
THE TAMLUD ON GARLIC
Five things were said of garlic:
It satisfies your hunger.
It keeps the body warm.
It makes your face bright.
It increases a man’s potency.
And it kills parasites in the bowels.
Some people say that it also encourages love and removes jealousy.
—from the Babylonian Talmud, A.D. 500
PLATINA ON BASIL
What the Greeks called okumon we also call ocimum [basil], with the first syllable long, that is, in my judgment, what is commonly called “princely.” It is sown in spring and is transplanted in summer because it flourishes better from a slip. It flowers at the bottom first, then at the top, as Theophrastus says, and it remains in flower a long time. The doctor Chrysippus gave basil harmful properties because it is bad for the stomach, dulls the eyes, brings on insanity, and obstructs the liver, so that a she-goat never touches this sort of herb. Especially, if it is ground and covered with stones, scorpions will be generated from it. Chewed up and placed in the sun, it makes worms and nourishes lice. Among the Africans they also think this has been established: if anyone eats basil on a day when he is struck by a scorpion, he cannot be saved.
All these stories really are found through experience to be
false, since she-goats eat basil, and the minds of men who smell it are not altered. Also, it heals the bites of both land and sea scorpions when a little wine and vinegar is added. It has also been discovered by experience that, when it is flavored with vinegar, it is healthful for the faint. Galen affirms that a scorpion is wonderfully pleased by the smell of basil and therefore goes willingly toward its stalk, but it must be used sparingly because of its excessive force, which comes from its warmth and dryness.
—from On Right Pleasure, 1465,
translated from the Latin by Mary Ella Milham
PLATINA ON SAFFRON
I would justifiably add to the spices saffron [crocus] since it grows with their characteristics, with the color with which it is quite often adorned, and with its savor, in which there is no small amount of strength. We have wild and cultivated saffron. It has roots like an onion but is not in every way of the same productiveness and pleasantness. The first rank is ascribed to the Cilician variety, both there in the Taurus mountains and in Tmolus; the second rank, to the Lycian; and the third, to the Italian, although varieties grow everywhere.
When the best saffron is touched by a hand, if it is brittle, it rustles. Another test: if it has been conveyed from hand to mouth, it lightly stings the face and eyes. The best everywhere is that which is oiliest and instantly fragrant. It blooms at the setting of the Pleiades and for a few days is green in flower and leaf. It is gathered in winter and dried in the shade. Moderate use of saffron, whose force is warm and dry, is beneficial to the lungs, chest, liver, and heart. When drunk with wine, it creates drunkenness because it has a strong odor. The tales of poets tell that a youth named Crocus was changed into a flower of his name. There are others, though, who think that it is called crocus from the town of Corycus in Cilicia.
—from On Right Pleasure, 1465,
translated from the Latin by Mary Ella Milham
KARL FRIEDRICH VON RUMOHR ON SORREL
Sorrel leaves can enhance the flavour of stocks, they can flavour a variety of sauces and can be consumed as a vegetable, either alone, or mixed with other herbs.
Sorrel is especially mild, with a pleasant bitterness, in winter and spring and it is therefore particularly important at this time of year not to deprive it of this fine acidity by blanching it before cooking. It becomes more robust in summer and the pedantic German habit of blanching it before chopping and cooking is then less damaging to it.
Some people, being unable to stand any assertive flavour, like to add sugar to their sorrel dishes. I have reason to believe that sweetened sorrel actually engenders acids whilst the unsweetened version eliminates them.
It is quite appropriate to thicken steamed sorrel with an egg yolk mixed in a little stock.
A sauce can be made by boiling freshly chopped sorrel in meat stock and a variation is made by steaming tender sorrel leaves in meat stock, diluting this a little and then thickening it with a few egg yolks.
—from The Essence of Cookery, 1822,
translated from the German by Barbara Yeomans
THE AOBO TU
ON SALT MAKING
The Aobo Tu was written between 1333 and 1335 by a man named Chen Chun from Yuan, who served in the Chinese government salt administration, the yansi, at the salt works of Xiasha in a marshy area along a tributary of the Yangtze. His stated goal was to inform the government of the latest in salt-producing technology so that the government could improve the life of salt workers. At times highly technical, at other times poetic, this book was intended by Chen Chun to be the definitive government guide on salt production.
—M.K.
Through the bamboo tube the brine is released and begins to flow into the pan.
Today the fire is started in the whole unit.
Daily boiling and refining month after month, no rest can be taken, fearing that the fire is too fierce and that the pan would easily get [too] dry.
The blazing fire vault is more than three chi [high] from the ground [and is so hot that] the sea’s waves are instantly boiled down to salt.
During the boiling nobody cares about cold or hot [weather], because the hearth workers [zaoding] are sweating [their own] rain.…
When the firing term (huofu) is one of high quality, then the salt will easily crystallize.
As the sun is burning and the winds strongly blowing, [this period] is superior to other months.
[Salt] which is about to be formed, but is [still] wet and not yet dry is removed and loaded on the “bed for removing [salt]” where it will become [like] snow.
When the brine in the pan [is about to] dry up, [brine] is added again and again, [because] it is important that there is no interruption in [the operation of] the pan.
The workers’ faces are ash-gray and their sweat is like blood. During the whole day and from sunset to dawn no rest may be taken.…
The huge pan has not yet cooled down and the fire has just extinguished, [the salt] in the pan is being lightly shovelled, because the iron should not be scraped.
There are [salt grains] resembling the not yet full moon of last night,
which has been eaten and harmed by the magic toad and whose roundness thus has [some] deficiency.
There are also [grains] resembling triangular crystals or steamed bread with cracks in the form of a cross.
There is some anxiety that the weather is often cold and misty, but [also] happiness about the salty snow [produced] at the sea shore.…
Dead ashes (sihui) do not burn again,
while living ashes (shenghui) are not yet dead.
Yesterday morning they were still in the burning [hearth] vault,
today they are as cold as water.
Nobody objects to the heavy weight of the ash loads.
Heaping up the ashes, how could they be wasted.
Exposed to dryness and then leached,
they are [like] ghosts returning to life.…
How much is boiled within one day,
and how much is collected daily?
One is only afraid that [the quota] cannot be reached,
thus not only meeting with [the superiors’] sneering and scolding
[but also with beating].
The daily levies (ke) have their working schedule,
and for official affairs no wasting of time is [allowed].
Month after month, no false reports are presented,
and one does not dare to cause delays to the salt supervising
officials.…
The loose salt resembles heaped up snow,
and hundreds of heaps are spread on the ground.
The guarding might be somewhat lax,
or the doors of the unit may sometimes be open in the night.
[Therefore] a lot of buffaloes and ships are provided,
and also manpower is used for carrying.
The head storehouse has all under control,
it does not have to call for [the boats], they come by themselves.
—from The Aobo Tu, 1333–1335,
translated from the Chinese by Hans Ulrich Vogel
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Just a Salad
PLATINA ON LETTUCE
Apuleius thinks lettuce [lactuca] is named from an abundance of milk [lac], that is, of humor, or because it fills nursing women with milk. There are several varieties of this vegetable, but broad-stemmed, low-growing, and curly and are really praised before all others. They are planted all year in fertile, well-watered and fertilized places; it is therefore all right to scatter seed at the winter solstice, transplant or sow seed with the west wind and transplant at the vernal equinox. The white varieties tolerate the winter best. There is a chilling nature in all these, for they are considered cold and damp, and for this reason they take squeamishness away from the stomach in summer and stimulate the appetite for food.
They say the divine Augustus was preserved in a time of ill health by the use of lettuce, and no wonder, because it aids digestion and generates better blood than oth
er vegetables. It is eaten cooked or raw. You season raw lettuce this way if it does not need washing, for that is more healthful than what has been washed in water; put it in a dish, sprinkle with ground salt, pour in a little oil and more vinegar and eat at once. Some add a little mint and parsley to it for seasoning so that it does not seem entirely bland and the excessive chill of the lettuce does not harm the stomach. Put cooked lettuce, with the water pressed out, in a pan and serve to your guests seasoned with salt, oil and vinegar. Some sprinkle a bit of well-ground and sifted cinnamon or pepper on it. This food induces sleep, soothes a cough generated by a warm humor, moves the urine, slows passion and moves the bowels. Its frequent use, though, especially dulls the keenness of vigorous eyes.
There is another sort of lettuce which is called goat-lettuce. If this is ground and thrown into the sea, the fish which are nearest are killed immediately, and river fish do the same. There is serralia lettuce, a wild kind which is named for a so-called saw [serra], which they think it has on its back. This is perhaps endive.
—from On Right Pleasure, 1465,
translated from the Latin by Mary Ella Milham
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS ON EATING PILGRIMS IN SALAD
François Rabelais was a sixteenth-century cleric and writer born in Chinon, France, from whose writing has evolved two adjectives in English: gargantuan and Rabelaisian. Gargantuan means gigantic, from his five-volume story of a giant named Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. Rabelaisian means possessing the qualities of both wild imagination and crude language. Rabelais’s writing, of course, was Rabelaisian. Gargantuan appetites are a frequent theme. Rabelais was not only Rabelaisian but hedonistic, funny, ironic, and so deeply intellectual that it is almost impossible to find all the thoughts, references, and subtexts that are jammed into his work.