will read for food

Tomosas

I’m in the middle of a small war right now with the neighborhood stray cat. He has decided that the best place to hang out while stalking rabbits is in the middle of my tomato plants. This is an issue for me because a) I like to see bunnies on my lawn and I don’t particularly want them killed and b) the cat does a little more than just sit in the garden, if you know what I mean. And while I’m all about homegrown food and organic gardening, finding cat droppings in the middle of my tomato patch is a little TOO organic for me.

My mother has always been an avid gardener. I’ll never forget the year she planted–in a fit of misguided enthusiasm–not one, not two, but SIX hills of zucchini. I believe our backyard accounted for about 5% of the world’s production of zucchini that year. But once I left home I lost whatever skills I might have gleaned. I lived in a series of run-down and dark apartments and tended to be more concerned with finding the money for dinner than trying to actually grow it. My thumb never got any greener than a few pots of herbs on a kitchen windowsill.

This changed when I moved south. Suddenly I was living in houses, not apartments, and living in a climate with a 286-day growing season, not a 120-day one. I became what you might call a “Darwinian” gardener–the plants in my garden must survive in a climate of benign neglect, with rare attempts at weeding or pruning, and only infrequent watering. Lettuce is allowed to bolt and re-seed. Compost is left to its own devices. I currently have a rather vigorous pumpkin vine growing where last year’s jack-o-lantern fell from the porch and was allowed to return to the earth unhindered. But there is one type of plant that is exempt from my general mistreatment–the tomato.

I still remember the first time I ever tasted southern Sweet 100s cherry tomatoes as one of the defining foodie moments of my life. Tomatoes that you could eat like candy! I was beyond shocked, and immediately went looking at farmer supply stores for plants. In an unconscious imitation of my mother’s earlier enthusiasm, I bought six. I think I was responsible for about 5% of the world’s production of cherry tomatoes that year. Since that time, I have always had tomatoes in my southern garden–in a full vegetable bed if I had the space and time, or in large pots on the porch if I didn’t. I grew Sweet 100’s for their taste and Better Boys because that is what the neighbors grew. And then one day I saw a picture of a Costoluto Genovese in a seed catalog. It was a princess of a tomato, an heirloom with a lovely lobed shape so that when sliced, each slice had beautifully scalloped edges. It was supposed to be an excellent slicing tomato, and an excellent sauce tomato, but not a tomato with a long shelf life. This last caveat did not phase me because I lived, at the time, in a tiny house with no air conditioning. So in the summertime nothing had a shelf life longer than about six hours.

For the first time in my life, I fell in love with a food–with a specific kind of food. With a specific variety of a specific kind of food. It was the mere sight of the Costoluto Genovese tomato that made me decide to try growing tomatoes from seed. I started combing seed catalogs for other heirlooms. Suddenly tomatoes were not those mushy, watery, tasteless things you slid off your burgers. They were fun and exciting and pretty and–oh yeah–tasted good. I tried a rainbow of cultivars from Yellow Pears to Brandywine Pinks to Cherokee Purples (which get my vote as the ugliest tomato ever). I grew San Marzanos and Principe Borgheses with the idea that I’d do a lot of canning (I never got around to it). I grew a few yellow and orange tomato varieties and ended up with the most lovely tomato salads. I toyed with the idea of growing “Green Zebras” and “Russian Blacks” but lost my nerve.

It isn’t always clear what the term “heirloom” means. In general, the term implies that the cultivar has been around for more than fifty years. It also implies that the plants are open-pollinated (you know, by bees and things). But this isn’t always the case–some hybrids (which require controlled pollination) like yellow pears are considered heirlooms, possibly because they are simply so pretty. Open pollination comes with its own set of considerations. Heirloom tomatoes can’t be bred for disease resistance, for example. Their yield is more unpredictable since they depend on a supply of willing and happy pollinators. Heirloom varieties also must be picked before they become fully ripe, since they are not bred for long shelf lives and once ripe, must be eaten almost immediately.

There are an astonishing number of “heirloom” tomato varieties available–some of them with stories as colorful as their skins. My favorite is the “Mortgage Lifter”, aka “Radiator Charlie.” It sounds like a thug from a Chicago mob but it was so named, apocryphally, by a man named MC Byles, who sold the cultivar for a dollar a plant to pay off his house when his radiator business went under during the Depression. Alas, Mortgage Lifters and Brandywine Pinks–the two heirlooms that may be responsible for the current craze in heirloom varieties–defied my gardening skills. They are “beefteak” tomatoes–the kind with very large fruit that is very solid and meaty, with small seed cavities. I learned after several frustrating years that I did not have the mentality to grow goliath-sized beefsteak tomatoes–I invariably lost them to the bugs, worms, moths and caterpillars that flourish in the south as easily as do the plants. I also found, through trial and error, that cultivars that tend towards odd shapes–the pointed San Marzanos, for example, and even my lovely lobed Costoluto Genovese–often developed cracks and spots if, as often happened, I was not too diligent about watering.

The tomatoes the neighborhood cat finds so useful for stalking (among other things) are Tomosas and Sweet 100s; what I think of as my “old reliables.” (A term I adopted from a children’s book called Junket about a city family that buys a farm without knowing anything about farming).  I planted them because it is a new house and a new garden and there was nothing established. They are more forgiving about watering (or the lack thereof) and they are quite forgiving about wildlife. It is a struggle just to keep the beds relatively cat- and rabbit- free without fussing over a tomato that came from a plant someone found in a holler somewhere in the Appalachian mountains.

Heirloom Tomato Patch, June 3, 2009

Although, I believe I have one of those, because this year a good friend dropped off a flat of 16 different heirloom tomato plants–no single one alike.  They were the leftovers from some “combat obesity” drive, if you can believe it, although by the time they got to me they were all looking a little spindly and forlorn in their red plastic beer cups. Here’s a list of the plants:

Black (deep red)

Black from Tula- regular leaf, 8-12oz., purple-black, great flavor, loves heat

Black Cherry- black (deep red), regular leaf, abundant

Bicolor, white, green-when-ripe, yellow, or orange

Big Rainbow- regular leaf, deep gold with red splashes, good flavor, fair yield

Earl of Edgecombe- regular leaf, orange color, big producer, 6-12oz, grows in clusters, heat and humidity tolerant

Super Snow White- ivory, regular leaf, large, ~75days to production

Isis Candy- regular leaf, yellow-gold color, very large, low yield, ~80 days to production

Pink

Eva Purple Ball- regular leaf, deep pink, uniform color, disease and bug resistant

Giant Belgium- regular leaf, pink color, high yields

Good for Tomato Paste/Sauce

Rio Grande- regular leaf, red, very productive, great flavor, good for paste

Marianne’s Peace- dark pink, potato leaf, very productive, good for paste

San Marzano- a variety of plum tomato considered by many chefs to be the best sauce tomatoes in the world, gift from the Kingdom of Peru to the Kingdom of Naples in 1770, thinner and pointier than Roma tomatoes, first grown in volcanic soil of Mt.Vesuvius

Red

Red Calabash-regular leaf, fluted, red color, 69-80 days to production

Camp Joy- red, regular leaf, strong vines, ~60 days to production

Clint Eastwood’s Rowdy Red-really red, robust, 8oz. globes

Tondo Liscio- smooth, round, Italian eating tomato, red color

Cuor di Bue- red color, also known as the ”Bulls Heart” and ”Giant Ox Heart” tomato. Superb tasting, fleshy,”Ox Heart” beef tomato, so called because of its size and shape, a lovely slicing tomato due to it’s meaty flesh, and few seeds, unbeatable in salads or with slices of fresh Mozzarella and basil, fruits typically 150-180g each in weight, but can get much larger.

Heirloom tomato patch, June 27, 2009

Honestly. “Clint Eastwood Rowdy Red?” I wanted to grow these just because of the names.  So far, they are looking pretty good.

If you are interested in growing heirloom tomatoes, you are in luck. There are a couple of local nurseries that grow varieties especially at home here in the hot and humid Southeast. Shelton Herb Farm is where I go for my Sweet 100s plants. (Do not buy six plants unless you are trying to feed a small country).

Shelton Herb Farm
340 Goodman Road
Leland, NC 28451
(off Route 17)

The local farmers’ markets, such as the Riverfront market on Saturdays downtown, or the Pender County market on Wednesday mornings at Poplar Grove also have a few local farms who supply heirloom vegetables (I picked up a gorgeous bunch of multicolored carrots at the Riverfront Market last Saturday that were almost too pretty to eat). And while it is long past the time when you could start your tomatoes from seed, there are at least two seed suppliers that are excellent resources for heirloom varieties if you want to plan for next year:

Seed Savers Exchange
www.seedsavers.org

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
www.southernexposure.com

In the meantime, you can always raid your neighbor’s garden. The tomatoes will still be green for at least another two weeks, but even green tomatoes have their uses:

Fried Green Tomatoes:

2 lb Green tomatoes
4 ea Eggs
1 1/4 c Corn meal
3/4 c Water
1/4 c Minced chives
1 tb Salt
1/4 ts Pepper, fresh ground
1/4 c Butter or margarine

Slice the tomatoes 1/2 inch thick, but do not peel or core. Drain
well between several thicknesses of paper toweling until most of the
moisture of the tomatoes is absorbed. While the tomatoes are
draining, make a batter by beating the eggs until light, then mixing
in the corn meal, water, minced chives, salt and pepper. In a large,
heavy iron skillet, heat the butter or margarine until bubbly. Dip
the tomato slices into batter, and brown quickly on both sides. Serve
at once.

I’ve been re-reading Gatsby. And oddly enough, although I am quite convinced that this is the perfect novel, and despite the fact that I’m on my third or fourth reading, and that I am usually inclined to remember when a book talks about rooms full of books, I remembered almost nothing about this odd little scene in Gatsby’s library.

I suppose everyone who prides themselves on their personal library has secretly imagined their books as a kind of ultra-flattering self-portrait. Who hasn’t gazed at their own bookshelves and imagined, smugly, what impressive conclusions a stranger doing the same might draw about their their owner?  Fitzgerald has a rather biting, unkind comment about this sort of self-conceit in this scene, which occurs before the narrator has ever spoken to Gatbsy. Up until this moment, he knows his neighbor only from a late evening sighting on the lawn, and a collection of wild rumors about his exploits during the Great War.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.

“About what?”

He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

“About that. As a matter of fact, you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”

“The books?”

He nodded.

“Absolutely real–have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact they’re absolutely real. Pages and—Here! Lemme show you.”

Taking our skepticism for granted he rushed to the bookcasses and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too–didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

A woman describes her father’s bookshop, which “In the opinion of our bank manager, it is an indulgence, one that my father’s successes entitles him to. Yet in reality–my father’s reality and mine; I don’t pretend reality is the same for everyone–the shop is the very heart of the affair.”

A is for Austen, B is for Bronte, C is for Charles and D is for Dickens. I learned my alphaget in this shop. My father walking along the shelves, me in his arms, explaining alphabetization at the same time as he taught me to spell. I learned to write there, too: copying out names and titles onto index cards that are still there in our filing box, thirty years later. The shop was both my home and my job. It was a better school for me than school ever was, and afterward it was my own private university. It was my life.”

–Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale (Atria, 2006)

So at the beginning of this year I made a new year’s resolution to myself to see each of Shakespeare’s plays at least once during the course of the year–either live or on dvd.  It’s the kind of resolution that has been tons of fun to pursue, an exercise in self-indulgences, rather than self-restraint.

Some of the plays, however, are proving elusive. As it turns out, Pericles is not high up on anyone’s list of Shakespeare-that-must-be-performed. So to help keep my resolution, I procured for myself a copy of the Arkangel Shakespeare, a massive box of full audio productions of each play on CD.  And I’m going through them one by one, approximately in order of when they were written.

I’ve already written about some of them:

Henry VI, parts i, ii, and iii

Richard III

Richard III may well be my favorite Shakespeare play, my distressing introduction notwithstanding.

But now I am onto A Comedy of Errors, which after Richard seems positively fluffy.  And I made several discoveries:

First, in the Arkangel production David Tennant plays Antipholus of Syracuse, and even just listening to the performance, without actually seeing it, it was awfully hard not to think “That’s the Doctor!”  For a few scenes I amused myself with wondering where they would put the TARDIS in the set.

More importantly, though, was the discovery that Comedy of Errors relies heavily on visual cues and mistaken impressions and what my friend Lev calls “smart staging.”  I had already had trouble deciphering the fight scenes in the Henry VI plays, so you can imagine my confusion here.

Nevertheless, the play had its moments–the point where Dromio (of Syracuse) is describing to his master the “beauties” of a kitchen wench that is convinced they are to be married is pretty hilarious:

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

Then she bears some breadth?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip:
she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out
countries in her.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE

In what part of her body stands Ireland?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE

Marry, in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs.

Antipholus finds this a great joke, and goes on to name all the countries, to which Dromio responds with some awful insult against the lady’s looks for each.  America, “…embellished with/ rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich/aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole/ armadoes of caracks to be ballast…” is to be found on the poor woman’s nose. I’m sure by the end of the bit Shakespeare’s audiences were howling.  (You can read the full exchange here)

I did get to see an actual production of the play, put on by our Youth Shakespeare Company for our local outdoor “Shakespeare on the Green” festival. Everyone in the company is under 18. The actors playing the two Dromios were around 12. This took some getting used to–especially since the actors playing the two Antipholus’ were closer to 16 or 17. (And the girl playing the ugly kitchen maid was at least this old). So the physical comedy was a little strange. And the play had been edited slightly to get rid of some of the more salacious inuendos (including the entire exchange above), which did little to alleviate the oddity of the scenes in any case. But perhaps it was in keeping. Certianly in Shakespeare’s time many of the parts–especially the female parts–would have been played by young pretty boys.

In any case, I was glad to actually see the performance, and to have a visual in my mind for when I listened, for the second time, to the audio.  After becoming so involved with Richard III, Comedy of Errors was perhaps doomed to pale. But the ready wit, and the clever, playful language was still very much in evidence. I was not moved, but I was certainly entertained.

“Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.” –Dr. William Butler, 17th Century English Writer

It was maybe two or three weeks ago that I was driving back from a trip to the hardware store, my van weighted down with the bags of compost and mulch that were going into the garden when I first saw it–the little red wooden farm stand set up in the parking lot of the gas station on the corner of RT 17 and RT 210, with a banner that said Lewis Farms and a red painted strawberry. I didn’t even hesitate. I swung into the station and spent the last ten bucks in my pocket on two quarts of freshly-picked, locally grown strawberries.

I grew up in western New York state, which is known, aside from its snowy winters, as “the fruit basket” because of its extensive orchards and rich farm land. This was a bounty that my mother did not neglect to appreciate–she often took the family on trips to the farms in search of apples, pears, plums, cherries, and strawberries. As children my brother, sister and I could mark the passing of the year by the fruit that was in season. We visited smaller farms with”U-pick” orchards and fields, and Mom, blithely unconcerned about child labor laws, would turn us loose with baskets and bushels and tell us to fill them. I learned to climb trees by picking apples in the fall. I learned I was impervious to wasp stings picking plums in the summer. And I learned that spring was really here when strawberries were in season.

Of course, I know now that there are more economical ways to buy strawberries. When I was older I realized that the strawberries we were paying for the privilege to pick were twice as expensive as the ones we could buy already packed in their little plastic pint baskets. I was incensed when I discovered this, until my mother, ever practical, pointed out that we kids ate at least as many berries as we put in our baskets out on the field. I’m not sure why mom made all the extra effort to drag three kids out to farm country to get themselves dirty and exhausted picking fruit, but I am glad she did. Not only did these “u-pick” orchard visits give us a fair amount of exercise, but we learned first hand that not all cherries or apples were alike. I discovered the difference between a MacIntosh apple and a Yellow Delicious. And I came to associate the passing of each month with the smell of the fruit in the car as we drove home, hot, weary and happy, with baskets of berries on our laps–too full to eat any more, even if we wanted to. To this day, I have a very Proustian moment whenever I smell strawberries under the hot sun. It takes me right back to those days of kneeling in the sandy fields under a spring sun, floppy hat on my head, my grubby fingers greedily pulling at even the not-quite-ripe berries and cramming them into my mouth.

Those childhood memories of fresh-picked berries made such an impression on me that for the rest of my life I have been disappointed by the taste of strawberries that I haven’t picked myself, or at least bought from some small roadside stand. I’m not above picking up a few pints of the one billion pounds of strawberries shipped out of the state of California now and then, but they never taste as good as the local ones. They are too clean, perhaps. Too sterilized. They never taste of the sun and sand and they never smell of the country. So I really only indulge myself in strawberries when they show up in the farmer’s markets, and once they are gone, I don’t eat them again until spring comes around the next year. And when I see the little red wooden stand show up at the 17/210 intersection, my heart gives a little leap of joy. I’m a little past crawling out in the fields for my berries, but Lewis Farms in Pender County is where I like to buy them (already picked). And if you are into picking them yourself–or you just want to tire out your kids–now is the time. Strawberry season peaks in May, and their stand out on Gordon Road offers homemade ice cream to hot and tired pickers. They also have a u-pick spot out on Castle Hayne Road, near GE. Both spots are open these days from 8-6 during the week, and 1-6 on Sundays.

There are thousands of recipes for strawberries–from the erotically-charged strawberries-and-champagne to the rather homey strawberry shortcake. I confess, I don’t know any of them. Strawberries to me are one of nature’s perfect foods–so delicious in themselves that I never can bring myself to waste them in some dessert recipe. Mom used to make sure we brought home enough berries that she could make jam, but eventually even she decided that was a terrible waste. Eight berries give you all the Vitamin C you will need for the day. A cup of berries is about 55 calories. You might as well just eat them plain, because anything else is just overkill. The people who chop up strawberries and pile them on those little gold cakes and spray them with that canned whipped cream are committing a culinary crime. (The original strawberry shortcake is a Native American thing–colonists watched the Indians mash up small wild berries with cornmeal to make little cakes. The colonists liked the idea, but had an addiction to sugar that haunts American cooking to this day.)

Besides, strawberries are a little like sushi–best if eaten within a few hours of being picked. They are not improved by refrigeration, and the pigments that make strawberries red, anthocyanin, are heat sensitive. They break apart and turn brown when exposed to heat or warm temperatures. So really, your best bet is to just eat them on the way home from the farm stand. Don’t wash them until you are ready to eat them, and eat them directly after you have washed them. In a pinch, you can wait until dinner, but not any longer than that. If you want them for breakfast the next morning, then put them in the fridge unwashed, and let them come to room temperature before you start cutting them up over your cereal.

And although I almost never eat strawberries anyway but right out of the bowl, I did make this salad once, and it was so good that it made my very short list of “approved uses for strawberries.” (The other approved uses are not exactly “recipes”):

Strawberry and Spinach Salad
1 pint fresh strawberries
2 bunches fresh spinach
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons minced green onion
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1. Wash strawberries under cool running water. Remove caps and set aside to drain.
2. Wash spinach and remove large tough stems. Tear large leaves into small pieces. Drain.
3. In a medium bowl combine remaining ingredients and whisk together.
4. Slice strawberries into halves or quarters and place in a large bowl. Add dry spinach.
5. Pour dressing over all and toss.
Makes 8 servings.

there is a whine, a high
pitched ringing in my ears
for days now and
I feel like an old radio
dials not quite lit
on the right frequency
for clarity

One of the things I did not prepare at last month’s Super Bowl party (where I got to watch my team lose in the last thirty seconds of the game, oh the agony) was the chips-and-guacamole. It was Fay’s job to bring the beer and the guac, mine to provide the chili, the wings and the nachos. Because Fay and I have been doing this column for ten years now, we have a pretty good understanding of what the other person likes and hates, so she is one of the few people I actually trust to send out to the grocery store. I expected her to come back loaded up with avocados, chili peppers, tomatoes and maybe cilantro (which she detests). I was more than a little shocked, therefore, to see her dump a case of beer and about five packages of pre-packaged, pre-made guacamole onto the kitchen table.

“What’s this?” I asked, my voice a little high in alarm.
“Trust me,” said Fay, “even you will love this stuff.”

“This stuff” turned out to be something called “Wholly Guacamole” (the spicy variety). It was cold, as if it had been kept in the refrigerated cases at the supermarket. In the box were two vacuum-sealed packages of green goop with little red specs. With a flourish, Fay grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the corner off one of the packages, then proceeded to squeeze the stuff out the hole into a bowl as if she were decorating a cake. When she had coaxed out the last little bit she tore open a bag of corn chips and handed me one with a flourish. I took a doubtful scoop, bracing myself for the metallic tang of preservatives that seems to come with every pre-made guacamole brand.

Needlessly, as it turned out. My eyes opened in surprise. The stuff actually tasted like perfectly decent guacamole. I could taste the clean smooth avocado, a little salt, a small amount of cilantro (a notoriously difficult taste to preserve) and – I choked a bit – a fair amount of searing hot chile pepper. The trick, according the to box and the company website, is pressurized preservation. (Actually, they called it “fresherized” so you’ll have to forgive their assault on the English language) Rather than rely on any chemical or acidic methods to keep the mashed avocado from spoiling, this company treats it to ultra-high pressure (about six times the levels found at the bottom of the ocean according to the website) which kills off most of the little critters that cause oxidization and spoilage. Unopened, it will keep in the fridge thirty days, in the freezer six months. I’m going to take their word on that because I can’t bring myself to try freezing anything with avocado in it. If you like your guacamole chunky then it had its drawbacks, but if you didn’t mind it served smooth like peanut butter, then “Wholly Guacamole” passes muster. And that means something, coming from me.

I’m something of a purist when it comes to avocados. They are on my list of “perfect” foods—foods that are so good in and of themselves it is almost pointless to try to dress them up or “cook” them. I still remember the first time I ate an avocado as one of the great culinary turning points in my life. I was visiting a friend in Montreal one summer and we were walking through the great open market. My friend owned a restaurant, and was quite well known to many of the merchants. One grabbed her and pulled her aside to show her a pile of just arrived avocados. So we bought a couple. My friend borrowed a knife and a couple plastic spoons from a sandwich vendor, and borrowed a little oil and mustard. She stirred the oil and mustard together in a paper cup, then balanced one of the avocadoes on the little table we had found and sliced it round the middle lengthwise, twisting each half in opposite directions until they came apart. She handed me the half without the pit, and deftly scooped the seed out of her own piece, then poured a little of the mustard dressing into the bowl-shaped indentation it had left. She did the same for my half, and handed me a spoon. “Mange!” she said, “comme-ça.” She took her own spoon and began to scoop out pieces of avocado, allowing the mustard dressing to season each bite.

I did the same, and allowed myself on that sunny afternoon to simply sit and savor the mild, delicate, almost buttery taste of the fruit. Oh, I’d had guacamole before, I’m sure. But that day in the Montreal market was the first time I had ever truly noticed the avocado. It was so good, and made such an impression on me, that it was over a year before I could bring myself to eat one any other way.
These days I’m a little more flexible. I can put up with avocado appearing as filler in my sushi, in my wraps and burritos, and even on the occasional burger. It sure beats shredded iceberg lettuce in that regard. But there is always a part of me that thinks these uses are a waste of a good thing, and I never do it at home.
Guacamole, on the other hand, is one of my very few approved uses for an avocado. If you aren’t just going to scoop it out of its thick, rough skin and eat it plain, then making guacamole is an acceptable alternative.
It is a dish of ancient origins—invented by the Aztecs, who considered avocados to have aphrodisiac qualities. Their name for the fruit, ahuacatl, means “testicle” (try not to let that little tidbit spoil your appetite). Where the term “avocado” comes from is the subject of some debate. Most believe it to be a mispronunciation of the Aztec word—which the Spanish turned into “abogado” and the English into “alligator.” The English in Jamaica called them “alligator pears.” But the ingredients of guacamole have remained largely unchanged for over a thousand years: avocado, chiles, salt, onions, tomatoes, cilantro. Other ingredients have found their way into the mix in our modern, experimental era, but the one thing that absolutely does NOT belong in guacamole is garlic. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a philistine who wouldn’t know good cooking if they fell face first into it.

The recipe I use, (and thought I’d be using for the Super Bowl party) comes from Diana Kennedy, who is to Mexican Cooking what Julia Child is to French, or Marcella Hazan is to Italian. Kennedy is a stickler for authenticity in her recipes, which is a little funny because the Hass avocados she insists on using (with good reason) are actually an agricultural accident invented by a California grower, and not authentically “Mexican” at all. Still, she’s right to insist—they taste much better than the kind you get from Florida with the smooth, bright green skins.

The Perfect Guacamole Recipe
Excerpted from The Essential Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons finely chopped white onion
4 serrano chiles, or to taste, finely chopped
3 heaped tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro,
Salt to taste
3 large Hass avocados (about 1 pound)
4 ounces tomatoes, finely chopped (About 2/3 Cup)

To Serve:
1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped onion
2 heaped tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro

Directions:
Grind together the onion, chiles, cilantro, and salt to a paste. Cut the avocados into halves, remove the pits, and squeeze the flesh out of the shell and mash into the chile base to a textured consistency — it should not be smooth. Stir in all but 1 tablespoon of the tomatoes, onion, and cilantro, adjust seasoning, and top with the remaining chopped tomatoes, onion, and cilantro. Serve immediately at room temperature.

(a revisit from last year)

This morning as I was doing my grocery shopping, I found myself navigating round stock clerks pushing dollies full of massive boxes filled with potato chips and Doritos, jars of salsa and dip, cases of Budweiser and (because I live in a yuppie neighborhood) Blue Moon. The meat cases were piled high with packaged ground beef and Italian sausage. The frozen foods section was bulging with boxes of microwaveable pizza bites and just-reheat-me bags of “Buffalo-style” chicken wings. The aspirin aisle had stocked up on Tums.

Oh yeah, it’s Super Bowl season.

The most important thing about this time of year—after the current standing of the New England Patriots, which, I’m sorry to tell y’all, is MY TEAM—is what to serve on Super Bowl Sunday. I’m a couple weeks ahead as I write this, so the Pats haven’t squared off against Chargers yet. So while I’m planning out the menu for the big event, I haven’t done the shopping yet. If you are reading this and the Pats didn’t win the AFC, then just imagine me crying in my beer and my bowl of chili.

Chili, of course, is the main thing on the menu. And by chili, I mean Chili, not that stuff that comes out of cans that Southerners put on hot dogs.

Chili is a little like barbecue in that every region has its own ideas of how to make it, and arguments can get quite heated over what should and shouldn’t go in the pot. Its origins are lost in the annals of time, although some folks say that it first appeared at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago as the “San Antonio Chili Stand”. My favorite story is that chili was invented by cowboys at campfires along the early western cattle trails—where there the little meat available to them was tough and tasteless. So the cattle hands invented a stew that spiced up the unaged beef, and even took to planting oregano and herbs along the trails—partly to keep the cattle from grazing off the trail, and partly to have the herbs available when they made camp for the night. It’s a nice, but probably untrue story. The truth, I suspect, is more pragmatic; Chili is an excellent way to prepare tough cuts of beef, and to use up otherwise inedible parts of a cow, like the suet. It also makes a little beef go a long way and is tolerant of variation. Like all great peasant food, it goes well with almost anything you have to hand.

It is so tolerant of experimentation, in fact, that when the first chili contest was held (in 1967, according to Bernard Clayton in his fabulous book The Complete Book of Soups and Stews) people started to go a little overboard with “secret ingredients” that included things like chocolate (not so unusual), peanut butter, applesauce, artichoke hearts (perish the thought) and even goat cheese. One woman attributed the key to her winning recipe to the fact that she tied her chile peppers up in the toe of her discarded panty hose.

I do not wear panty hose, and have no hope of winning any contests. My favorite chili recipe comes out of a book called Chili Nation by Jan and Michael Stern, who are these people who somehow get paid to travel around the country and eat stuff. Each page in the book features a recipe from a different state—some of them quite weird. I use the recipe from Missouri called “Mule-Kicking Hot Chili.” I chose it firstly because I usually have most of the ingredients on hand, and secondly because it didn’t arouse any of my own prejudices. Nothing makes me quite as annoyed as being served un-natural versions of great dishes: Vegetarian chili? What’s the point? “White” chili? If I want white food I’ll have a slice of Wonder bread. I want chili that acts like chili, and doesn’t get too weird in the process. The Sterns’ Hawaiian Chili recipe uses macadamia nuts, the Arizona recipe–you’d think they’d know better–involves cream cheese. And the Alabama “Whistle Stop” chili uses, (good lord), rolled oats. By contrast, the weirdest thing in the Mule Kicking Missouri chili is a can of Budweiser. Which is only to be expected, since Missouri is the home state of Anheuser Busch.

Mule-Kickin chili is an entirely meat-based recipe; no beans, and no tomatoes. I am not one of those people who feel strongly one way or the other about beans and tomatoes in a chili. I know some people do. For some folk, the phrase “add a can of crushed tomatoes” is chili-fightin’ words—tantamount to finishing the sentence “well your mother was a…!” But not me. Missouri Mule-Kickin’ Chili has all the necessary things from my point of view—it has meat and lots of it, and it had chilies, and lots of them. The base is made by soaking dried chili peppers (ancho and chipotle) in hot boiling water until they are soft, and then pureeing them in a blender. Otherwise it is just browned cubes of steak and sweet sausage, a dash of mustard for some kick, and a little bit of onion and garlic. And a can of beer.

The first time I made Mule-Kickin Hot Chili I stayed true to the recipe and ended up with a spicy hot, sharp-tasting stew that really hit the spot. But it was even better reheated the next day, and even better the day after that, when I caved and dumped in a can of crushed tomatoes to balance out the beery flavor. It is perfect for a Super Bowl Sunday meal because you can keep it simmering on the stove indefinitely, just adding more beer as the liquid cooks down. Serve it with cheap corn chips and sliced extra sharp cheddar cheese, and more of the same kind of beer you put in the chili. To make it really, really three-alarm-fire hot, add a few dried cayenne or scotch bonnet peppers to the mix.

Jan & Michael Stern’s Mule-Kickin’ Hot Chili

3 dried ancho chilies
2 dried pasilla peppers
2 dried chipotle chilies
½ cup chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 lb beef round steak, trimmed of fat and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 1/2 lbs sweet Italian sausage
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
1 1/2teaspoons prepared hot mustard
1 (12ounce) can Budweiser beer (or your choice of non-yuppie brew)
1 tablespoon masa harina (dissolved in 1/4 cup water)

1. Put the chiles in a large heatproof bowl; add boiling water to cover.
2. Let stand 30 minutes, until soft; stem and seed them.
3. In a food processor, puree the chiles with some of the soaking water; set aside.
4. In a large pot, sauté the onion and garlic in the oil until soft.
5. Add in the beef; cook until browned; drain any excess fat; set aside.
6. Preheat the broiler; cook the sausages under the broiler until they are cooked through and crisp skinned.
7. Cut into 1 inch discs and add to the beef/onion mixture in the large pot along with the chile puree, sugar, salt, pepper, oregano, mustard, and beer.
8. Stir well and bring to a boil; decrease heat and cook at a simmering boil, partially covered, for 40 minutes.
9. Add in the masa harina mixture; cook for 10 more minutes.

I just discovered that my former landlord–a man with whom I was both neighbor and tenant for over ten years, passed away last month. He was a Southern good ole boy, a Baptist and conservative and a bigot in his opinions although not in his actions. I was a hippie liberal atheist. We fought like dogs over issues and politics and religion, and earned a measure of respect for each other by never backing down from our opinions and by helping each other at a moment’s notice when help was needed.

He, or rather his wife, actually once inspired me to write a poem–an impulse that is about as rare in me as the moon traveling with Jupiter and Venus is in the night sky. So here, in honor of Jack Alford, is the poem:

What’s beautiful

Mary Lou stands, round-shouldered,
frail fingers tearing
bits of bread and tossing
them as far as bits of bread
can be tossed.

Gulls sail down white-winged
alighting only long enough
to snatch a crust and lift away–
as if the ground flung them
back into the air.

Beauty is not in the waves of white birds
wings bright in the sunlight
of a perfect morning.
Their beating wings and open beaks
frighten her.

Beauty is in her tremulous hands,
holding out scraps and crusts.
In the good money she spends
on bread she won’t eat
to feed birds she doesn’t like

because Jack–after sixty years
of providing for her–is laid flat
from knee surgery, drowning
his pain in glass after glass of scotch.
Because he likes to feed birds
and can’t.

When he can walk, he’d walk
to the ends of the earth for her.
And beauty is in her quick, forced tosses,
the frightened way she snatches
back her hand and ducks
under the wings, flinches
under their cries, stands
at the ends of the earth
for him.

[originally published here]

Michael Pollan may have ruined my Thanksgiving Dinner. I’m thinking about showing up on his doorstep and demanding he feed me. Pollan, of course, is the author of the wildly popular book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, (Penguin Books, $16) an engaging and creative piece of investigative journalism that attempts to answer the question “What shall we eat for dinner?”

It is an age-old question that dogs every relationship at some point. My girlfriend and I must ask it of each other at least three times a week. My parents, on a night they decide to eat out, have long and frustrating conversations in the car that go something like this:

Dad: Where would you like to go?
Mom: I don’t know. Anywhere.
Dad: What are you in the mood for?
Mom: Anything. You pick.
Dad: How about Antonio’s?
Mom: No. Not there.
Dad: Mexican?
Mom: No, I don’t want Mexican.
Dad: Well, what do you feel like eating?
Mom: What do you feel like eating?
Dad: #$%!@!!!!!!

Go on, laugh. You can’t tell me you don’t have the exact same conversation with your parents/spouse/kids/significant other at least once a month.

But actually, the question of “what shall we eat for dinner” is much, much older than our dilemma of whether to go out for Italian or Chinese. Human beings are classified as omnivores—meaning, we’re open to eating pretty much anything–a fact that has been so well exploited by the food industry that you can now find blueberry pancakes, wrapped around a hot dog, ON A STICK in the frozen foods section of your supermarket. Thank you Jon Stewart for pointing that little culinary absurdity out to the entire nation. Omnivores have an evolutionary advantage over, say, herbivores (who only eat plant material) or carnivores (who only eat meat) or eucalyptus-vores (Koala bears, which will go extinct if all the eucalyptus trees die since they eat nothing else). Omnivores are adaptable in their diet, able to take advantage of new foods when the other things they have been eating become rare or disappear altogether. The down side of this evolutionary strategy, of course, is that we never know if a new food will kill us until we try it. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, then, is how we decide what foods are safe and good to eat, and what foods are poison. As it turns out, most of our decision making process is genetically hardwired into us: natural feelings of euphoria or disgust, attractions to sweet tastes and avoidance of bitter flavors—all these designed to reinforce and inform our decision about what is safe to eat.

Pollan suggests that these hard-wired eating habits have been so manipulated by the modern food industry that everyone in the country is suffering from a kind of national eating disorder. Our own instinctive ability to judge what is good food or bad has been undermined and rendered impotent, and we have, in turn, abdicated the right to make those decisions to “scientific experts” and “nutritionists” who advise us, give us conflicting but important-sounding facts, and basically put the fear of God and cholesterol into us until we would probably be afraid to put anything into our mouths without the stamp of FDA approval. Given the wild success of the diet industry, it’s hard to argue with Pollan’s contention.

Pollan accordingly set out to discover where the food on his dinner plate came from. His original idea was to follow his steak back to the original cow, his potato back to the original field, and his glass of wine back to the original grapes. But he soon discovered that path food travels from farm and field to supermarket and then dinner plate is not nearly so simple. Eventually, he was forced to divide his approach into three sections. The first part is an analysis of what Pollan calls (justifiably) the “industrial food chain.” Part two looks at the organic and local food movement and in part three—most amusingly—he explores what it means to go directly from forest to food. In other words, he attempts to hunt his own dinner.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is frequently described by critics and reviewers as “a life-changing book” and when this phrase appears, it is almost entirely based on the reader’s reaction to Part One, Pollan’s expose of the industrial food chain. The author provides a fairly devastating analysis of the environmental and social costs of industrializing agriculture—focusing for this book on the country’s dependency on corn—not the kind you eat on the cob with butter, but the kind you grow to make cattle feed and to process into about half the ingredients listed on your average can of soda. His condemnation of the way Big Agriculture—corporations like Archer Daniels Midland and a few others—force farmers to produce cheap corn in excessive quantities with utter disregard for the market or the environmental impact, and the policy of the government to subsidize a practice which is basically bankrupting farmers while concentrating profits in the hands of the corporations—is blunt and uncompromising. But it isn’t Pollan’s opinions on governmental agricultural policy that got readers all riled up. It was his lurid descriptions of a beef cattle feedlot, a chicken factory farm, and the fate of your average pig that got everybody’s attention. Pollan makes sure to fully engage his readers’ genetic inclination for disgust and he does it well. It took nothing more than his statement that chickens in egg-laying factories have their beaks clipped off with hot pliers (so they don’t peck and cannibalize the other half dozen hens crammed in their two-foot by two-foot space) to make me put down my usual carton of a dozen eggs at the supermarket, and pick up the ones next to them on the shelf, which were twice as expensive, but said “organic” and more to the point “free range”.

Pollan essentially gets the same reaction from his readers to his descriptions of cattle standing sick and wheezing, ankle-deep in their own muck, or pigs enduring a lifetime of suffering from their neighbors gnawing on their docked tails, or even the simple fact that any person who enters a factory farm animal shed usually has to wear a hazmat suit, as Upton Sinclair did when he wrote about the meat packing industry in his novel The Jungle. Sinclair, a committed socialist, was trying to engage the country’s sympathy for the immigrant poor. His aim was a little off. “I tried to hit Americans in the heart,” he is supposed to have said, “but I hit them in the stomach.”

Pollan, I think, has suffered the same fate. He wrote a book that calls for fundamental change in agricultural policy and in the way we regard our relationship with food, but readers are distracted from the complexity of his arguments (not all of which are convincing) by the sheer grossness and awfulness of parts of the story. We are, after all, basically good and kind at heart. We don’t like to read about cruelty, even (or especially) to animals. This is a country where it is a truism in the publishing industry that if you want a novel to sell, you can’t kill a dog in the story. We certainly don’t want to think about the fact that the chicken we just were handed through the KFC drive-through window spent its short miserable existence in a kind of living hell. By the time the reader turns to Part Two, he is desperate to think of something else.

In part two, after a brief foray into what Pollan calls “industrial organic”—these are the companies who provide the lettuce on the organic shelves of your supermarket produce sections, the author spends a week living on a small organic and “sustainable” farm in Virginia. The farmer is a member of what Pollan calls the “non-barcode people”, he produces food for local markets and has made his farm self-sufficient and self-sustaining; Orchestrating a diverse set of produce that includes raising chickens, beef and pork as well as organic vegetables. After the previous hundred and eighty pages, Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms seems like an idyll. Heaven on earth. The answer to all our food prayers. Pollan first encountered Joel when his steaks were recommended by a friend. Pollan lives in California. He called the farmer and asked him to FedEx a couple steaks.

“No.” said Joel. “You want to eat my steak, you’ll have to drive up here and get it.”

That answer is a fair indication of the kind of philosophy—bordering on fanaticism—that this particular farmer holds. Pollan faithfully arranges to spend a week on his farm to understand how it works, and what agriculture based on grazing and grass rather than feedlots and corn actually means. And it is hard not to be converted by his descriptions of the happy chickens in the fields, the cattle lowing on the pastures, the pigs rooting through compost (not to mention the vibrant grass and lush woods on the hilly farm). His first night at Polyface farms, they have farm-raised chicken and farm-grown broccoli in a casserole for dinner. There are deviled farm-laid eggs. The only things at the table that didn’t come from the fields outside were the can of mushroom soup Theresa Salatin used to make the casserole, and the paper towels she used to wipe the counter.

There was only ice water to drink.

And there, I paused. The fact that there was no alcohol in the farm house might be a function of the farmer’s peculiar brand of Christian libertarianism and fundamentalism (there were grape vines on the land). But there was no coffee. And the reason there was no coffee was simply because Polyface farms couldn’t grow coffee. I can appreciate the environmental benefits and impact of the farm, and naturally, after the horrors of the first part of the book I had no trouble converting and extolling the virtues of locally produced meat from happy animals. But something always stops me from completely accepting the local-only dictum that Joel Salatin preaches—to great effect, I admit.

I was drinking coffee as I read that he had none on his farm—“fair trade” coffee that comes from women growers in Peru. I drink enough of it that I’m sure I’m keeping at least one Peruvian family in clothes and cornmeal. In my pantry I have a variety of odd ingredients, included dried Asian mushrooms, walnuts from New England, Pecans from Georgia, and cranberries from some place in Massachusetts. There is chocolate from Belgium. In the fridge there is cheese from Switzerland and proscuitto from Italy. I have three kinds of olive oil, none of which was grown or bottled in the United States, balsamic vinegar, cans of coconut milk, Mexican cinnamon and mole sauce, and couscous from Morocco. And sitting on my kitchen table is a bunch of bananas that this week, anyway, came from South America. The most dire, fire-and-brimstone, impassioned preacher on the sins of importing food or the saving grace of local eggs could never make me give up my bananas.

I think it is because one of the best (and most enjoyable) ways we come to terms with and accept foreign cultures is by learning to eat and enjoy their cuisines. A shared meal has more potential to erase xenophobia and racism than almost any other social activity. The family on Polyface farm will never eat sushi, never enjoy pad Thai or Massaman curry because lemongrass and coconuts can’t be grown on their farm. They won’t have oysters because they don’t live by the sea. They won’t ever eat fish because no one on Polyface is a fisherman. I get a real pleasure from eating the things I grow in my garden. But I also get a real pleasure from exploring the world via its food. I’d hate to live in a world where I would have to actually go to Morocco to eat couscous. And I wonder about that farm’s self-imposed restrictions–when does their commitment to nurturing their own land become a rejection of the rest of the world at their doorstep?

Michael Pollan, it has to be said, does NOT wonder about this. But he wonders about many other things. He considers the ethics of eating animals and the point of hunting in a culture where food is provided for us. He contemplates the economics of cheap food and the devastation of world hunger, the never-ending struggle between providing profit and providing health. He describes, in great and searingly-self-aware detail, how it feels to kill something and how it feels to eat something you have killed. He struggles with his own personal prejudices and assumptions, and finds in the end a kind of redemption in his meal. And ultimately that tendency to wonder, to think about our food and why we eat the things we do is the great good thing about The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Wondering and thinking has seriously complicated my plans for Thanksgiving Dinner, thank you very much. I had just finished the part of the book where Pollan described exactly how many chickens can be crammed into a cage when my girlfriend called to say that turkey was on sale for twenty cents a pound that weekend. I felt not excited, but rather nauseous. “Let’s have oysters for Thanksgiving” I told her. I would have loved turkey. I had already been planning on what kind of turkey to cook. But if you want a happy, free range organic turkey from a local farm you have to order it ahead of time—like three to four months ahead of time, since that is how long it takes for a turkey to grow up. I’d obviously missed my window. Our Thanksgiving Dinner was going to require some careful thought.

“I had actually wanted to say something more,” Pollan writes about the final meal he cooks for friends who have helped him to hunt a wild pig (California is full of them, who knew?) and gather morel mushrooms, “to express a wider gratitude for the meal we were about to eat, but I was afraid that to offer words of thanks for the pig and the mushrooms and the forests and the garden would come off sounding corny and worse, might ruin some appetites. The words I was reaching for, of course, were the words of grace. But as the conversation at the table unfurled like a sail amid the happy clatter of silver, tacking from stories of hunting to mother lodes of mushrooms to abalone adventures, I realized that in this particular case words of grace were unnecessary. Why? Because that’s what the meal itself had become, for me certainly but I suspect for some of the others, too: a wordless way to say grace.”

And ultimately, if The Omnivore’s Dilemma does nothing else but this—if it never effects any change in agricultural policy, never convinces a single reader to buy an organic chicken, never even makes a single person attempt to grow their own tomatoes—if all it does is make us think of the food in front of us as a kind of grace, then it will have done enough.