Recent Foodsville publications by Pinckney

Not your everyday tuna fish

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:15:25

This is straight from Marcela Hazen's, Marcella's Kitchen.

Tuna spread with capers.
"A painter friend who is as gifted a cook as he is an artist asked me to have tea with him at a smart new Italian place on Madison Ave. With tea we had little soft rolls with a buttery spread. My friend marveled over the spread, asked what it was and could I get him the recipe. 'But it's so simple,' I said. 'It's just good canned tuna beaten with butter and capers.' 'Why have you never put it in a book?' he asked. 'It's so simple that I paid no attention to it.' I explained, 'but if you like it that well, I'll put it in my next book.' This is that book. The recipe is for Hector"

I make this somewhat regularly these days for small gatherings, when asked to do something as a house guest and sometimes just to have around. Marcela says if you put it in the refrigerator, bring it back to room temeprature before serving it. She likes to serve it already spread on crackers or bread. That's fine, but I usually let people help themselves. They start out light, like it, go to a heavy dollop and realize that's it's pretty rich and come back to a self regulated reasonable amount until it runs out. She allows as how it makes "a memorable tuna spread for sandwiches." It does, indeed, do that.

Farmer's Markets. IT'S TIME!

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:13:25

    The stalls at the farmer’s market are getting bigger each week because they have more and more stuff to sell. Being as how we are in the high season of the farmer’s markets here in the lower Hutson Valley when the produce starts to overwhelm the farmers, the vendors and the consumers the time seemed right for a completely local dinner.

   Thirty minutes at the Hastings market provided us with the following; two young chickens fresh from a chicken yard, Several pounds of heirloom tomatoes, red, green striped and yellow; A half dozen ears of corn, two pounds of “The country’s best mozzarella”, a locally baked baguette, several pounds of bright green beans, some raspberries and blue berries and some Jersey peaches. The one thing I would loved to have found, but haven’t ever seen at these markets, is butter. The butter came from I know not where.

   Not available at the market, but still local, were two Magret of Duck from the Hutson Valley. Pantry items included onions from who knows where, olive oil from Fairway and alledgedly from Italy, sweet garlic from France and some little odds and ends, like walnuts, flour and parmesan and Romano cheese. Heinz produced the cider vinegar.

   The garden came through with an abundance of basil and rosemary as well as some parsley and sage. The feral cherry/grape tomatoes produced a quart of nice pre-prandial bites rolled in sea salt. Okay. The salt was from France and is a pantry item.

   So dinner for six – all local. H’ors d’houvres consisted of lightly toasted thin slices of the baguette topped with smoked maggret with a tiny nubbin of sweet soft goat cheese. Other little nibbles were made from the same toasted baguette with pesto from the garden and some toasts with just duck or goat cheese.

   The salad was made with chunks of the local tomatoes tossed with a glug of cider vinegar, salt, local cucumbers, slivers of onion, corn kernels and a little basil. This combination makes it own dressing and a piece of white baguette dipped in the residual liquor is a thing to remember.

   We pushed limbs of rosemary under the breast skin on the chickens and placed some more in the cavity along with a head of garlic sliced through the equator; Lots of salt in the cavity, too. The chicken fat was placed on top of the chickens and the whole thing sprinkled with smoked paprika – a pantry item. After about an hours roasting time, potato wedges from the valley were added and cooked in the chicken drippings along with some more rosemary and salt.

   The market had produced some beautiful local corn. That was briefly exposed to boiling water and brought out to the table with butter.

   Desert was the cobbler I wrote about a few days ago from the food channel’s Paula Dean. It can be found here. It was made with the Jersey peaches and the New York State blue berries. This time I used the correct ingredients and as good as it was the last time, it was better this time around. The out of town addition was Hagen Das vanilla ice cream although whipped local cream would have been good, but like butter, I am not seeing any whipping cream in the market.

   Several folks requested a dose of espresso afterwards and I was too happy to oblige. I think espresso can be enjoyed after dinner as much of the caffeine has been cooked off in the roasting process. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I’ m sticking with that belief as it works for me.

   This is the time to get to the markets. The foods are fine and fresh. The fruits and vegetables are exploding. Come on – go get yours while it’s out there.

Much to do about pigs

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:23:05

If you have an interest in how the food you eat is grown and processed, especially pork, you will find this link of interest.
I recieved a Googlealert for Evergreen State College, the school my son is going to attend this fall, and it led to this site. It should be of parrticular interest to the porkers.

Fruit Cobbler EASY and the time is right

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:48:29

    This recipe is straight from the Food Network and can be found here.
    However, if you don't do links it is reproduced below. With fruit being so available right now there won't be as better time to make this although we sometimes make it with frozen fruit in the winter.
    A niece made it on Edisto Island and it was great. I messed with the recipe in NY and I shouldn't have. I substituted maple syrup for one of the cups of sugar and that made it too runny and I didn't have self rising flour so used King Arthur White Whole Wheat. The cobbler part was a bit dense and heavy as a result. I did add some blue berries to the peaches at the last moment and that was a happy addition as were the few remaining fresh figs. I did NOT peel the peaches and everything was good with that.

Eat your greens, hear me!?

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:46:21

    Maybe fifteen years ago, we were invited to a lake in New Hampshire. That’s where I think it was, anyway. It’s been a long time and I have unfortunately and regrettably lost all contact with the people who invited us. It was somewhere close to the Canadian border and as far north as I have ever been while remaining in the U.S. It was very hot in the day and quite chilly at night. Being from the south, this was a new phenomenon to me.

    It was old family sort of place in that the only people who owned land around the lake had been in some way connected by family or money. The lake was so cold that I couldn’t swim in at all. Our hostess, being a very tough woman, swam the length and breadth while I sank, rock like and had to hitch a ride behind the canoe to get across the water. It is the only time in my life that I thought I might drown. I simply couldn’t stay afloat.

    The water was so pure and mineral free that in the days of steam locomotives this water was carried around in tanker cars to be used like today’s NASCAR fuel. It had no detrimental effect on locomotive boilers. (That’s what they told me. I was a guest and who was I to question the assertion)

    There had been good fishing on the lake at some point judging by all the big fish mounted on the various walls. There didn’t seem to be any fish in the lake at all when we were there and the word was that the water had become too acidic from acid rain that fell all around the place. So the water was cold as ice, clear as glass and practically sterile.

    The first night we were there was the last night of the season that the patriarch was in residence. He left the next day, but because he was there that night, the place was all staffed up with cooks and housekeepers. When he left the next day, so did the staff and we did our own cooking for the remainder of the week, I don’t remember what we fed ourselves, but I vividly remember the first night feed as it was something I had never encountered before, but which I prepare to this today.

    There was a grand pork roast and I have made myself well known on the pork front. There were home baked breads that were marvelous, but the dish that took me by surprise was the beet greens. The beets themselves were essentially Harvard Beets, just like you find them in the Joy of Cooking. Along side of the beets were the beet greens, cooked spinach like with their chopped stems adding color and texture.

    I cook beet greens whenever I get them and have been known to scavenge the greens that customers have the vendors tear off at the farmer’s markets.

    Here’s what I do. I sauté’ them in butter or a little oil with some chopped onion and maybe a little garlic. When they are good and wilted, I add the par-boiled stems (chopped in 1” lengths) some chicken stock and let them cook for a bit until they are tender. When done, I cook off the remaining liquid and add a tablespoon or two of cold butter and stir it around, off the heat, until it melts.

    Tonight’s experiment will include the greens from radishes along with the beet greens. These greens taste peppery in their raw state and I am excited to see how they cook up with the less assertive beet greens.

    Anyway, when you get fresh vegetables with greens attached, try eating them. Often they’re really good…. Not carrot greens, they were nothing to get excited about – so much so that I don’t remember what they tasted like – just the resolution to not bother with them again.

Deer Tenderloin

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:53:27

Not everyone has access to venison and for those who don't, this could be done with beef. I am fortunate to have a ready supply of deer meat. Many people find venison dry and tough and sometimes gamey. If it's gamey, it probably wasn't handled right and something was cut that shouldn't have been, but there is really no excuse for it to be dry or tough. Venison is beyond lean so attention must paid and the cooking time carefully monitored. Cooking just a little too long will flash the meat over to well done and a few seconds longer and you have tough.

The deer we get in SC are small by most standards. The tenderlons are really small. A small deer might give you a pair of tenderloins that weigh - between the two - a little less than a pound. It goes without saying that tenderloins are not loins. Loins are bigger and a bit tougher in a relative sense. If you have the bigger loins, this would work nicely, too; just pay attention to the internal temperature.

Tomato Road

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:07:35

    Let’s put the road through here because, whynot?! Let’s have an Edisto salad tonight, because – whynot?! We’re on Edisto, home of fresh, local tomatoes, cucumbers and all sorts of vegetables except there aren’t any, not anymore.

   The road has to be built to get to the field and there is what looks like a pretty good route; it avoids the ‘grand’ trees and is a mostly straight with just enough curves to satisfy the local aesthetic. Sure, it crosses the old farm road that runs that peculiar circuitous path through the woods. We’ll cross that old road midway between the original entry point and the other new access road to sister’s house.

   My favorite local farm stand doesn’t have local tomatoes. They come from North Carolina these days. They are okay, long keeping tomatoes; nothing special about them. They can be bought in any upscale grocery store in America like Wholefood. The farmer doesn’t grow heirloom tomatoes because he doesn’t and besides, the tomato season has passed here in SC. “Field tomatoes have moved on,” I say, “not heirlooms. You can grow those or any tomato for local use into November.”

   “These are from NC,” he says, again. I buy a few because that’s what he has and I really want the salad and maybe these will be alright when they are combined with the peeled cukes, the Vidalia onion, the corn and salt.

   There’s good high ground between the main road and the field. There are a couple of beautiful hardwood stands and there is that funny meandering road that has to be crossed. “Why?” I have wondered for as long as I have paid any attention, “does this road wander around like this?”. This has never kept me awake at night, but whenever I thought about it at all, I wondered why the old road fools around like it does.

   When did it become necessary to import tomatoes to Edisto Island? When did the farm stand start selling waxed cucumbers? Garden farming can be – probably is – as taxing and backbreaking as cotton farming. “You would think out of work people would jump at the chance to earn a wage,” someone says when we talk about the difficulties of modest commercial garden farming. Maybe some people would think that and some people would actually jump at the chance, but those people are mostly being hounded out of the country. It can be said that we have become a soft people and that may be true, but those who say so aren’t picking tomatoes.

This road, again … The old farm road comes off the main paved road and turns NE paralleling the paved road and then, after a hundred yards or so, turns north and runs along a ways until it branches; one branch goes east to a new house and the original branch continues straight out into the field. The new road, the one I just caused to be put in, comes off the main road and goes pretty much north through the hardwoods and pine plantation into the field. It is clear – NOW – that the old road ran its’ peculiar path because between the paved road and the field there is a beautiful stand of hardwood trees growing in a low, low section of ground about one hundred yards wide.

   The soil in this grove is very rich and moist; when it rains, the soil becomes slick and crossing it would be difficult. But cross it we did with thirteen massive truckloads of sand imported from the mainland side of the island. The old road, the meandering one that we crossed over runs along a sand ridge and avoids this beautiful boggy spot; goes right around it in fact. Who knew.

   So, there are no island tomatoes and sand has to be imported from several miles away to construct a road to get to a field that doesn’t have tomatoes in it and may never again because factory farmers only grow uniform, hardshell field tomatoes – when we grow any at all - for McDonalds and they come mostly from Mexico, Florida and other places.

   Yes. I am whining about changing times and the discovery process that shows me that old roads are where they are for a reason and that farmers need a reason to grow tomatoes and sell them locally - and the tomatoes they grow for burger joints are not worth selling locally because they are as uniform and bland as any standardized product can be. In order to make tomato flavored tomatoes available again a farmer needs to have the stamina and skills to plant, tend and market them. “They should be happy to have a job.” How about three or four? No wonder agriculture is in the factory mode.

   When we find people happy to do the back breaking part of this job, picking tomatoes for a living for several months in a hot, humid, buggy climate - someone let me know, please. OH! There are people that would willingly do this work, but they are Mexican/Latin American terrorists who are taking American jobs. We’ll just import some more tasteless MacDonald’s style hardshells from the world market – salmonella and all, but the tomatoes are cheap - to sell in formerly local farm stands because, after all, that’s progress in the widest free trade meaning and they provide calories after all, just like real tomatoes.

   It’s grow your own, I guess, if you have lost interest in uniform round, red, gas-ripened tomato like fruit.

   Sand, on the other hand, we have in abundance. Sand can be bought and spread on a road here by natives who have enormous earth moving machinery. Their labor is multiplied by thousands of horsepower and 100’s of cubic yards of dirt migrate from one side of the island to the other in a matter of hours. These machines can do the works of gangs of laborers, but – they can’t plant, harvest or bring to market a local tomato.

   When we free ourselves from the need to produce our food, we gain time to produce other things and have other experiences. Make enough money and we can hire someone to produce the tomatoes and cukes, and what have you. Maybe, when we have enough security/money we will find the time to grow our tomatoes and cukes again. When the production of food becomes a bottom line business all about calorie output the food produced becomes a bottom line product.

   The new road, despite being a new road where one wasn’t before, looks pretty good and serves its’ purpose well. It’s just a road, but it DOES go to a field that might, if I can find someone stronger than me, start making real Edisto Tomatoes again. That someone would have to be a lot tougher than me. They might not even like tomatoes. I might not like them myself if I were hand tending an acre or so of heirloom tomatoes ripening over a period of several months on hot, buggy Edisto.

   Any takers?

Farmer's Market Tomato Salad

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:44:01

This is a sort of universal Tomato Salad. You can modify it with whatever you happen to have at hand, herb wise, but it is only really worth making when the tomatoes are local, vine ripened and taste like tomato fresh fruits. You can use cubed mozzarella cheese or not. It can sometimes make for a bulkier, more filling dish and it doesn't detract from the salad; you might not always want to use it, though. Certainly the salad is lighter without it. In keeping with the premium quality of the tomatoes, use your best oil, garlic and what not.

The garlic will get stronger the longer it sits so you don't want to make this very far ahead of time unless you are going to use it the next day in a bread salad. If you are -DON'T ADD THE BASIL until the next day when you are going to make the bread salad because the basil will turn black.

Hastings Market makes me - and many others - HAPPY

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:40:10

    For the first time this summer I got to the local farmer’s market before everything had sold out. I was able to buy a brace of small, true free-range, scratch-in-the-dirt chickens, a tasty straw colored raw cow’s milk cheese and some astonishing goats milk cheese sold as do-re-mi which is spreadable and slightly sweet.
   A pound of local bacon made its’ way into the bag as did a hunk of “The Country’s Best Mozzarella Cheese – NOT KIDDING”. The same stand sold me a homemade baguette. The real goal, though, and the reason I went early was the tomato selection.
   The hothouse heirlooms are available now and I was able to get a couple of pounds of these wonderful fruits. I bought three green zebra tomatoes at one stand and would have bought more, but that’s all they had. I also bought several tomatoes shaped something like a plum tomato, but which has vertical striations of many colors. I don’t know what they are, but they are going to taste delicious. There were no purple tomatoes today, but one can’t have everything. I even bought three field tomatoes.
   There is copious basil in the yard and Laura brought back some garlic from France – to go with last month’s fresh farmer’s market garlic - so we will combine all this good stuff tonight for a tomato salad. Tomorrow, we will use the left over tomato salad to make a bread salad with the baguette – which should be stale enough by then.
   The salad will be simple sliced and wedged pieces of the four or five different tomatoes mixed together with some salt, a little smashed and chopped garlic, balsamic vinegar and a little oil. This will be allowed to macerate for an hour or so, Basil will be added right before serving so it doesn’t turn brown.
   The bread salad will be the baguette made into untoasted croutons tossed with the remaining tomato salad and it’s juices, some more tomatoes chopped just to fill it out and perhaps the “County’s Best Mozzarella – NOT KIDDING” cubed in half inch pieces. Sampling as we go, we might add some little salt, balsamic and olive oil. Certainly, there will be more basil. More garlic is a strong possibility, too.
   Now that I am into it, perhaps one of these half wild chickens would be a nice ‘go with’ tonight and an excuse to fire up the BGEgg. There is lots of garden rosemary, thyme, mint and sage – not to mention oregano and thyme – to season said chicken.

   I have to stop thinking about this now and go ride a bicycle or something to prepare for all this.

Summer ONLY Tomato Sauce - Madelines way

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:48:03

This is a very nice fresh, easy sauce for summer time when the basil is getting tall and the tomatoes are fresh and local. If you can find local garlic, use that as well. If you live in California you can even use local olive oil. We don't have any that I am aware of on the east coast.
Ingredient amounts are impresise as this is a very casual dish and you can't hardly get it wrong - unles you substitute 10w30 for the olive oil and use canned tomatoes from the local odd lot store. EVERYTHING HAS TO BE FRESH. It isn't something you can do in December. Don't try unless you live in deepest Mexico or the like. Make it off season and you will be disappointed. Promise.

Unearned Tomatoes and Local Garlic with Yard Basil

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:43:38

    For many years I have planted tomatoes in big green plastic grow boxes from Gardener’s Supply and been frustrated with the results. Some years the dogs ate them. I mean, who knew that dogs would love tomatoes – any kind at all?! Some years the squirrels and birds got into them and sometimes the weather didn’t cooperate and the plants would get blasted all to hell and never recover from the sudden thunderstorm micro burst in the front yard. When they weren’t interfered with so much, they didn’t really produce all that well and certainly nothing like the bounty seen in the catalog.

    So this year I decided not to bother and left the boxes behind the house in big plastic bags pending the next yard sale. The local farmer’s market usually has great heirloom tomatoes and the standard hard shells as well. Over the years, though, I have planted some heirloom tomatoes and some cherry tomatoes and several kinds of plain old garden center tomatoes.

   Apparently some of these tomatoes have been escaping – making the leap - from the boxes on the porch to the rose garden just below. This area – about six feet long and two feet wide was dug out years ago for Hydrangea Bushes that failed to thrive - gets about half a day of sunlight with southeastern exposure. Roses have done well where the Hydrangea failed to thrive, but about four weeks ago I noticed what looked like little tomato plants crowding through the spring layer of mulch. I left them alone and lo and behold they have turned into tomato bushes.

   And what bushes they are. I have no idea what variety they are, but they are certainly aggressive and have crowded out most of the roses in that bed. They must mostly be some sort of small tomato as they are growing like Brussel sprouts in rows along long branches. So far, all they are is green, but they are moving quickly and I have never had such serious and healthy plants before with so much fruit. It feels somewhat illicit.

   On other fronts, the over wintered mint has gone all to seed as has the sage. I have been cutting the sage back down to the ground and it is coming back after a fashion. Not so the mint, but I have not been as ruthless with it yet as the bees and butterflies are making good use of the flowers. The lavender has done quite well and the rosemary is in fine super strong. Sage that has gone to seed smells – weird.

   I planted several patches of Basil around the place and all of those are doing well. I have to get the yard pesto going soon. I am disappointed in the compost heap garlic; no garlic has come up there for all the garlic cloves and sprouted heads I have tossed onto the pile. I guess it doesn’t get enough sun. We did have several very nice Morrels there this spring and early summer so I can’t complain. One day I hope the spores will become so comfortable as to produce a couple of dozen, but so far we get only a few each year.

   A great summer favorite around here is a fresh and barely cooked pasta dressing consisting of just garlic, tomatoes and basil warmed in olive oil until fragrant and tossed with pasta and cheese. This year we will have two of the four ingredients from our own yard.

   Do it like this;

   Smash and chop several cloves of sweet, fresh garlic – local if you can get it.
   Warm the garlic in a quarter of a cup of good olive oil. Use as much garlic and oil as you like. Both are good for you. Don’t sauté it; just let it steep until it softens. Depending on the thickness of the pan, this might take a while. Thin pans get hot fast on even very low heat. Thick ones take some time. You do not want to brown or overcook the garlic, just allow it to release the flavors.
   Add a couple of cups of fresh coarsely chopped tomatoes. You can peel and seed them if you want. I don’t. (On the rare occasion where I do seed the tomatoes, I do so into a fine sieve and bowl to retain the tomato juice, which is then added with the chopped tomatoes)
   Combine the tomatoes and garlic and let the tomatoes warm through, but DON’T COOK THEM.
   When the tomatoes are warmed through, add some torn basil and salt and pour over pasta.
   Add cheese and toss together.

   This is good at picnic temperature and left over from the refrigerator the next day although the basil won’t look so good.

   The tomatoes and garlic are great on bruschetta, too. Onions and Balsamic can be added and do no harm, oh, no.

   Other herbs like oregano and thyme find their way into the mix frequently. Salt is important here, I think. Tomatoes benefit from salt. If you had some Mozzarella cheese it would go nicely with this, either as a foundation for the tomatoes or chunked and warmed slightly with them.

   Oh, summer is so grand.

Pinckney's review of One Hundred & One Ways of Serving Oysters

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:55:29

    This is a wonderful little book and will prove very useful to anyone who loves oysters. Beware, however, that the recipes can be more than a little vague by the overwritten cook book standards of today. Experience in quantities and amounts will get you through most of the recipes. Some would seem to be divine while others give me pause. "Al Fresco" is an example of the latter.
    "String the oysters on a small wire, bent like a hairpin, putting first an oyster then a very thin slice of salt pork, the size of the oysters, and so on until the wire is filled; sprinkle with cayenne. Fasten the ends of the wire into a long wooden handle and broil before an open fire."
    I am not sure that this wouldn't result in over cooked oysters and undercooked salt pork or a bunch of oysters slipping free from the wire. The combination sounds good, but I would be uncertain in the excution. Fritters, on the other hand, look like something most of us could do, producing an interesting and somewhat unusual preparation.
    "Scald small oysters in their own liquor; remove and drain. Separate two eggs; beat the yolks and slowly add two tablespoons of olive oil, salt, white pepper and a cupful of flour; when well mixed stir in a half cupful of the strained oyster liquor, a little at a time, and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Beat thoroughly and set aside for two hours or longer. When ready to use stir in the oysters and the beaten whites of two eggs. Drop a tablespoon at a time into boiling fat, and brown. Drain on blotting paper laid just inside the oven door. Serve very hot on a hot folded napkin and pass with them cabbage salad."
    The book is divided into twelve chapters, called "Classifications" according to prep methods. It is unlikely that I will ever make oyster scones or something called "Surprise" which essentially a potato knish stuffed with oysters and baked, but one never knows. It might just seem like a great idea one cold night when I have a bunch of oysters and leftover mashed potatoes.
    There is a recipe for Oysters "Villeroi", which I am certain I will never make as it calls for stuffing oysters with chopped chicken and truffles. Aside from a dearth of truffles in my neighborhood an oyster large enough to 'stuff' I have rarely, if ever, encountered. I have read about box oysters, so named for their large size but haven't met one. I guess our oyster pickers take a standard raw bar size thse days and that's pretty much all I see in markets.
    On Edisto Island there are some oyster beds with venerable oldsters that seem to be about a foot long, but it is not considered safe to eat them. This is unfortunate as the water they grow in is considered to be the cleanest on the east coast. An oyster bourne illness can be about as uncomfortable - not to mention life changing - as it gets.

The Berries

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:27:48

    Sometimes living in a mature suburban area has real charms. You don’t have to go much beyond the kitchen door to barbeque or snatch some basil off the stem. The every-now-and-again eatible fungus pops up on a stump or the compost pile. The wild flowers grow no matter what happens. You can string a clothesline or collect the mail in your underwear if you want and you can hunt for wild berries if you have a certain tolerance for weeds, especially the old growth kind found in old, semi tended gardens.
    This time of year the wild berries almost come looking for you. Tiny strawberries grow under the grass across the yard and through the Iris stems. There is a tangle of raspberry brambles behind my house along the otherwise ugly stockade fence a nervous neighbor installed many years ago. A neighbor down the street after battling with her raspberry bushes for years decided to simply contain them in the area around the maple tree in her front yard.
    Late yesterday afternoon I took the dog and the visiting dog for a walk and when I came back this neighbor was out there picking raspberries. She caught up and said, “These are for you.”
    “No, they’re not! You’re kidding me.” I said, not believing my good fortune at being handed a quart of straight-from-the-bush jewel like, perfectly ripe, bright translucent ruby raspberries. “They are, too. Look at the bush. Even the birds can’t eat them all.”
    I wish I could say that I did something marvelous to them, but it’s hard to improve on ripe raspberries straight from the wild bush.
    We didn’t wash them; they were right off the bushes after all and it had rained the day before. Besides, washing these delicate little things would have taken so much away from them. They were a little sticky and clumped together.
    The ones we didn’t eat bear-like by the paw-full - little green hopper type bugs and all - were served up with a small measure of cream for dessert. Raspberries don’t get, I think, any better than this. The handful remaining this morning went on the granola with a little milk.
    Not trusting my spell checker concerning the spelling of raspberry – I thought it was spelled ras not rasp – I looked it up and find that raspberries are “the small, juicy, eatable, aggregate fruit of various brambles of the ROSE FAMILY, consisting of a cluster of red, purple or black drupelets…” Well, good on that.
    Maybe, if I can score some more, I'll spend a splash of Balsamic Vinegar on them. HiHo for suburban heaven.

More Piggy News and Cawcaw Creek

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:09:02

There is a fine piece on pork at salon.com,

The Fine Art Of Mixing Drinks or how I spent the summer of 1974

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:39:17

One of my all time favorite jobs is that of bartender. I haven’t held this position in many years and I never held down a real New York City job as bar man. I worked in some theatre concession stands on occasion, but most of my experience came in the hinter-lands and at private parties and at home.

The first place I ever worked was in West Virginia. There was a little tavern near the Greenbrier Hotel and Resort and somehow I got a job there tending the bar. In the day I went around to houses in various hollows and on mountaintops selected at random by a computer and marked on a topo map. I and another person interviewed people about their access to health care. Mostly they didn’t have any access to much of anything much less health care. That’s a different piece, though, isn’t it?

Recording people’s lack of access didn’t pay very well and I needed another job to enable myself to earn enough gas money to get back to college when the summer was over so I got a job as assistant bartender at the Cabin Club. I didn’t know diddly about mixing drinks. I was just old enough to get the job.

I didn’t really know how to run the cash register either so every time I made a mistake I would just close the drawer and start over. One night shortly after I started the owner came to me and said, “I thought you were stealing because nothing works out right, but now I see you are just an idiot on the cash register – don’t ring up anything anymore – let whossits do it.” Whossits was fired shortly thereafter for stealing and someone taught me how to void a sale and do it right.

I got this job not knowing how to do anything in a bar except to pay attention to the customers and use a jigger to measure. As time went by I got to be okay without the jigger. After the first night I realized that I knew even less than nothing and went to the bookstore at the Greenbrier and bought a copy of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. By David Embury

We didn’t have many calls for mixed drinks, but we did have a few. Even though not many people were calling for Sidecars and Montreal Gin Sours, I learned how to make them. One night, a mother and daughter came in and they were very upset about something. I don’t know what it was but they wanted to chase the blues away and didn’t know what to order so one of them asked for a Pink Squirrel

The bar had a beat up copy of Old Mr. Boston Cocktail Book, but I don’t think it had a recipe for the famed Pink Squirrel. The older woman sort of remembered what the thing was made of and I mixed them up more or less to her specifications. After about a dozen of this highly sugared and strangely colored cocktail, they were ready to leave. They left a quarter tip. They didn’t know anymore what to do in a bar than I did.

The most important thing to come out of that particular summer job was becoming acquainted with the book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. I still have it and needed to refer to it the other day for something on this site. Out of curiosity, I looked the book up on-line and found that if I had kept mine in better condition it would be worth many hundreds of dollars. Sadly, I didn’t, but it remains quite serviceable and I hereby recommend getting a copy to anyone who likes to tend bar at home or who has a professional interest. It is scheduled to be re-released shortly and used copies sometimes show up on line at auction sites.

The book, while loaded with recipes for just about every cocktail known to imbibers as of 1961, is also a philosophical treatise on cocktails and the consumption of spirituous liquors. It touches of the Basic Principles of cocktails, Glassware, Gimmicks and Gadgets, the six basic cocktails and the infinite variety derived there from and tons of precise recipes using the many kinds of liquors and spirits.

“Six Basic Cocktails.

“The average host, who makes no pretense of being an expert on liquors, can get along very nicely with a knowledge of how to mix a half dozen good cocktails. In fact, if he can make only two or three and always makes them well he will stand in much higher regard of his guests than will the indiscriminate chop-suey dispenser who throws together a little of everything that chances to be lying around loose with no regard whatsoever for the basic function to be performed by each ingredient. Let us therefore start off with just six cocktails and learn to make them well. They are the Martini, using gin and The Old Fashioned, using whiskey; the Daiquiri, using rum; the Side Car, using cognac; and the Jack Rose, using applejack.”

I don’t know many home barmen - or pros for that matter - who could turn out a Jack Rose without referencing a book. Mr. Embury offers the following as

“The Jack Rose DeLux”

“1 part Grenadine*

2 Parts lemon Juice

8 parts Apple Brandy

Shake vigorously with plenty of cracked or crushed ice and strain into chilled cocktail glasses. A twist of lemon may be used and the peel dropped into the glass if desired. Otherwise no decoration.

* If you use plain sugar syrup instead of Grenadine, you will have an Applejack Sour, also called a Jersey Sour.”

Another informative chapter is entitled, “Roll your own.” And starts out offering the following five guidelines:

“1. The essential ingredients of a cocktail are (a) the base and (b) the modifier. To these two basic ingredients there may also be added special flavoring and coloring ingredients if desired.

“2. With few exceptions, the base consists of one or more spirituous liquors such as gin, vodka, rum, whisky, brandy, etc. The base must always comprise upward of 50% of the total volume of the cocktail – usually much more. In the case of cocktails where the modifier consists solely of bitters (such as the gin cocktail) or consists of bitters and sugar (such as the Old Fashioned), the base will constitute practically 100% of the total volume. With Sour-type cocktails, the base will usually average from 80 to 90% of the total volume, depending upon whether or not special flavoring and smoothing agents are used and, with cocktails employing an aromatic wine modifier, from 65 to 85%.

“3. While there are numerous varieties of modifiers, such a citrus juices, aromatic wines, bitters, cordials, cream, eggs, etc., all but a very few cocktails irrespective of the liquor employed for a base, can be divided into two types depending on the modifier used: (a) the aromatic type and (b) the Sour type.

“4. The aromatic type of cocktail employs, as a modifier, bitters or one of the various aromatic wines – French vermouth, Italian vermouth, Dubonnet, Myrrh, etc. - or both. Since a dry sherry is sometimes substituted for French vermouth in Martinis and similar cocktails, such cocktails, although not strictly aromatic, may, for the sake of convenience, be grouped with the aromatic type.

“5. The Sour type is so named not because it tastes sour but because it is patterned after the various Sours; i.e., it consists of lemon or lime juice, sugar or some sweetening, and a spirituous liquor. If you will examine practically any book of cocktail recipes you will find that a very large percentage of the recipes are of this type. That is because the citrus juices blend well with all kinds of spirituous liquors and all kinds of cordials and fruit juices. The vermouths and other aromatic wines, on the other hand, do not blend well with most cordials or other sweetening agents. If the cordial is itself an aromatic liqueur, such as Benedictine, Chartreuse, Van der Hum, or Liqueur Strega, it may be blended with an aromatic wine, but a mixture of aromatic wine with plain fruit flavors, such as apricot, peach, maraschino, grenadine, etc., results in a brackish, unpalatable taste. The combination is analogous to sprinkling sage or poultry seasoning (both of which are aromatics) on your raspberry sherbet.”

A great favorite of mine from this book was the Montreal Gin Sour. It is very pretty and quite tasty, too. Mr. Embury says the following, “During prohibition it was my good fortune to be have to make frequent business trips to what was then the great oasis of the North American Desert – Canada. At Montreal I was regularly entertained for luncheon at that magnificent old institution, the St. James Club, and there the standard cocktail was called simply a Gin Sour. Actually, it was Gin Sour embellished with egg white – that, and nothing more. It is a splendid drink, smooth, palatable, easy to take, and yet dry enough not to dull the appetite….”

Montreal Gin Sour

1 part Sugar Syrup

2 parts lemon juice

8 parts Gin

1 egg white to each two (2) drinks

Put all ingredients except the gin in the shaker with cracked ice. Shake vigorously until thoroughly blended and creamy. Add ¼ to ½ the gin and combine, then add the balance of the Gin and shake. Strain into chilled cocktail glasses.

There is no better way to take an egg white.