Sauce for Thought | Page 2 of 2 | The Rambling Epicure

Welcome the newest member of our team, Alice DeLuca

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, November 7, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Alice DeLuca writes the column Sauce for Thought and the popular website Gf-Zing!, noted for its fine gluten-free recipes and do-it-yourself sauces. She started acquiring cookbooks in 1964 (with a 49 cent paperback) and now has a collection that threatens to overtake her home. She weaves her fascination with the history of food into her writing about modern recipes. She is automatically drawn to any book with a one-word title – Salt, Cod, Tea, Spice, Potato etc. – and proudly wears food-themed earrings.

Alice has trained “on the job” in restaurant kitchens, once as the only American, only female cook in an Indian restaurant. She has cooked over 32,000 meals “from scratch” for her large extended family and friends, and has lived and traveled in many regions of the United States and Europe, adding recipes from the cuisines of France, Italy, India, the American Southwest, Midwest, Northeast and Hawaiian Islands to her extensive repertoire. She translates French and Spanish recipes so that she can bring the indigenous recipes of the Americas to her readers.

Eve Tempted Adam with an Apple

Published by Alice + Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

I stopped by the gourmet cooking shop this week and idly asked the proprietor the identity of their best-selling item. Without hesitating, she said “towels.” I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t towels. Is everything wet, that it must be dried? Is everything dull, that it must be polished? Where are the cooks, the armies of well-intentioned flavor-mongers inspired by a reality-chef show to go out and purchase a kugelhopf pan, individual casserole dishes for pastel de choclo or half-pint canning jars for tiny gifts of strawberry guava compote? I myself have dozens of towels at the ready, and only one steel crepe pan that will last a lifetime, so maybe the disposable nature of towels is the explanation.

I am reminded of flour-sack towels, which were, obviously, made from actual flour sacks. They were very large, and are still available, although not as a cost-recovery measure from the Depression, but as a new purchase from the Vermont Country Store. Frankly, the flour-sack towels are not as good for drying glassware as the new microfiber towels. But, they led my mind down the garden path a ways, and I was reminded of why a cotton pillow case is of great value when making jelly in the home kitchen.

When we were young we made a lot of apple jelly. I am not talking about a few jars of apple jelly; I am talking about gallons. We made this jelly from antique apple varieties, Stark, Baldwin and Hurlbut varieties that grew on tall, old, gnarly apple trees you had to climb. We were drawn to these apples like moths to the flame; I learned later that one or our great-grandfathers, someone I never met and never knew, actually died after falling out of his favorite apple tree, getting hurt and contracting pneumonia. Coincidence? I think not.

There are thousands of varieties of apples, of which hundreds are now available. The Baldwin apple originated in 1750 or so, and is good for making cider and pies. According to Tom Burford[i], it was once the most popular apple in New England, until a very cold winter in 1934 took a terrible toll on the Baldwin orchards. Today, there are fewer than a dozen apple varieties in our local grocery store, even though the farm stands on all sides sell many other kinds. The popular apples in the grocery store are “crisp” and juicy and, like any movie star, an apple popular this season may not be so sought after the next, prompting orchardists to change the apple varieties they grow. None of the modern grocery store apples is as highly flavored as antique varieties like Golden Russet, Ashmead’s Kernel or Calville Blanc d’Hiver.

Today’s apple trees are dwarf trees, apple varieties grafted to root stock that cannot produce a tall tree. The apples on a modern dwarf tree practically walk in to your hands. Conversely, to obtain apples from the top of the antique tree requires planning, cunning and athletic activity. In coastal Maine, you may have to compete with industrious porcupines that sit in the tops of the trees, moving slowly around as they munch the crop.

You can use a strange-looking ladder (narrower at the top than at the bottom), a picking pole resembling a lacrosse stick (with a basket at the top), or risky climbing techniques, to pick the apples in a really tall apple tree. You can shake the tree, causing the apples to fall on to a waiting tarpaulin, but if you plan to make fresh cider from the apples great care must be taken not to include any wind-blown “drops” that have been lying around accumulating bacteria from local wildlife.

Whatever method is selected, once the picking is done, you will be confronted with the hard facts – you will most likely have picked more apples that you know what to do with. After all, only 8 apples are needed for a single deep-dish pie. What will you do with bushels?

This brings us back to the subject at hand: the need for a pillow case in a modern kitchen. Save those old worn out pillow cases, just like they did in what now should be called “the Greater Depression.” Launder one well, using a minimal amount of perfume-free detergent and an extra rinse, and use it as a jelly bag for making apple jelly. I will tell you how in a minute.

Homemade apple jelly is like no other apple jelly. Due to the pectin in the apple skins, the juice of fresh apples will make a jelly that clings to toast and shakes, just like Santa’s belly[ii]. Real jelly made with just apples and sugar has double the flavor of commercial jelly. The commercial pectin allows you to jell a much more dilute, watery juice, and allows for the addition of a lot of sugar. The result of using the commercial pectin is a consistently-textured jelly with minimal flavor, requiring only a few minutes of time at the stove. If you can even find a commercial apple jelly in the market today, it will likely contain added pectin and corn syrup, and taste like apple juice concentrate found in the back of the freezer after a long winter. Instead, take your chances, spend some time making jelly with the pectin that is native in the fresh apple’s own peel and you won’t be sorry.

Homemade apple jelly on a Royal Copenhagen plate

Here’s how.

Recipe

Alice’s Apple Jelly

Ingredients: Apples, fresh water that is not chlorinated, sugar

Time required: 2 days

Results: Priceless

Make the Jelly Juice: Wash thoroughly enough strongly flavored apples to fill a jelly pot. Use apples that would make a good pie — sourness is desirable, and strong apple flavor is mandatory. They need not be “crisp” but they must be very tasty. Cut the apples in quarters, then use a paring knife to remove the stem and blossom ends and any worms that have taken up residence. To the apples you may optionally add 1/2 cup of cranberries or crabapples, halved, for color. Pour in un-chlorinated water, barely enough to cover the fruit.

Washing “antique” apples

Bring the apples and water to a boil and simmer until the apples are very soft.

To strain the juice: Open the clean pillow case and place it in a large, clean pot that will hold the whole pillow case and all of the cooked material. Pour the hot cooked apples material and all the juice in to the clean pillow case. This is hot material, so you have to be careful not to burn yourself, and you must keep small children away during this activity.

Pick up the top of the case and tie it up carefully with twine or rope. You will be hanging the pillow case full of cooked apples and liquid from a hook or knob that will hold this heavy weight. We used to hang the case from a cabinet door knob, suspended over a pot. You may have to study up on your knots so that the knot you tie will cause the bag will stay put. (Useful knots are demonstrated at Animated Knots by Grog.)

Hang the pillow case filled with hot apple mush over the pot and let the heavy, sagging bag drip overnight. Despite the strong temptation to do so, do NOT squeeze the bag or the resulting jelly will be cloudy. You will notice that the exterior of the bag is slimy – that is from the pectin in the apple peels.

The next day, take down the pillow case and discard the apple material – it is perfect for the compost heap. Wash the pillow case as before, using minimal detergent and no fragrance, and store it to use again another time. If you have used cranberries or apples with a lot of red color in their skin, the bag will be stained in interesting ways. The juice in the pan will be slightly cloudy, somewhat pink if you have used pink apples or added red-skinned fruit, and somewhat slimy from the pectin. The juice will be thicker than plain apple juice or cider. (You cannot substitute plain apple juice.)

To make the jelly, here is my recipe: for every 4 cups of jelly juice, add 1 or 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.

Put the juice in to a jelly pot – this would be a large heavy-bottomed pot that is wider than it is tall and that will hold the juice with plenty of room for boiling up. I use a 5-liter pot that is 9 inches in diameter and 5 inches deep. Bring the juice to a hard rolling boil, reached when all the juice is turning over and over as it boils (whereas when simmering there will be only little bubbles at the edges) and boil the juice for 7 minutes.

Then add 3 cups of sugar and boil the mixture “until it jells.” (The ratio of juice to sugar is 1 cup of juice to ¾ cups of sugar. Checking an historic recipe from the Settlement Cook Book 1940, recipes sometimes call for more sugar.)

How do you know when the syrup has reached the jelling stage? Take a large metal spoon, dip it in the boiling syrup and hold it high up over the pan, with the bowl of the spoon facing you and the handle parallel to the floor. If the jelly is ready, the syrup will “sheet” – as the syrup drips off the spoon, the drips will come together to form a band of syrup that falls off the spoon as a sheet, rather than 2 drips of syrup. You will know it when you see it, and it can take quite a while (15-30 minutes). Alternatively, a half teaspoon of syrup spooned on to a cold plate will jell; however this method is flawed because the syrup is still boiling while you test, making for a harder finished product.

Stir the syrup, removing and discarding any “scum” or foam that rises to the top. As soon as the syrup reaches the jelling stage, turn off the heat and skim off any last bits of unattractive foam on the top of the syrup. Pour the jelly in to sterilized jelly jars and cover the surface of each jar with melted paraffin wax, or if you are using canning jars you can process the jelly in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, per your Ball Blue Book’s instructions.

One note on the paraffin wax sealing method: If your house has a lot of carpenter ants, the ants will find the jelly and mount a campaign to help themselves to the jelly by damaging the paraffin around the edges. Sadly for both the jelly maker and the ants, these campaigns result in numerous ant casualties by drowning. So, it is advisable to store jelly that has been sealed with wax in such a way that ants cannot gain access.

If you have some organic rose geranium leaves (an herbal geranium variety scented like roses), you can flavor the jelly with these beautifully aromatic leaves, to obtain a rose-flavored medieval jelly. Rose geranium flavored jelly is found to be delicious by adults, but not generally appreciated by children.

2 different Rose Geranium leaf varieties on a reproduction Dedham Pottery plate with raised bunnies

When you spoon your homemade apple jelly on to toast, you will know why people used to spend so much time boiling down syrup to make jelly – the lovely texture and richly concentrated flavors are not obtainable in any other way. Your old pillow case will serve well for many years as a jelly bag, proving the old adage:

“Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.”

[i] Burford, Tom. Apples: A Catalog of International Varieties. Mr. Burford is also known as Professor Apple and his family has been involved in the Virginia fruit industry for 7 generations, since the early 1700s. Click here to listen to him on Meet the Farmer TV!

[ii] A reference to the children’s poem ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, published first in 1823, which contains the following description of Saint Nick’s (Santa’s) belly: “He had a broad face, and a little round belly that shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly.”

Ahoy Matey! International Talk Like a Pirate Day – September 19

Published by Alice + Monday, September 19, 2011 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

Musing over 16^th century drawings of highly specialized, obsolete cooking equipment from Il Cuoco segreto di Papa Pio V (The Private Chef of Pope Pius V)[i], I was prompted to remember the seasonal holiday, now over a decade old, that causes lots of fun-loving souls to pretend to be pirates. “Talk Like a Pirate Day” is a silly parade of all things pirate, associated with the violent pirates of the great age of sail, not the modern-day pirates in business suits. This holiday is now upon us, September 19, so we can give a little thought to what a pirate might eat.

By an amazing coincidence, whilst rummaging through a musty old trunk in a spider-filled corner of the attic today, I came upon a weathered scrap of paper wrapped up in a bit of tarred leather. The picture drawn thereon is unlike the idealized food plate recently released by the U.S. government[ii], but illustrates the proper proportions of pirate foods as depicted in fiction and history books – a surefire recipe for scurvy and pellagra, ancient diseases now rarely encountered:

Pirate Plate:

PiratePlate_C2011_AliceDeLuca

United States Department of Agriculture Plate:

myplate_green_usdweb

If you haven’t recently read Treasure Island, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in the late 19^th century about 18^th century pirates, take it in your hands again – it is a wild adventure story, available as an ebook through Project Gutenberg, at no cost. There is some value to the book as a culinary guide, since Stevenson traveled at sea quite a bit, voyaging to Hawaii numerous times, becoming friends with Hawaiian King Kalākaua (the Merrie Monarch) and meeting his demise in Samoa. He was onboard ship only a hundred years after the period of his pirate story that holds our attention.

The first ten percent of Treasure Island is a riveting description of the family of innkeepers managing the Admiral Benbow tavern, as they are terrorized by a raging alcoholic in his last days. The buccaneer lodger’s drunken ravings and addiction to rum are a part of nearly every page. Pirates from the age of sail would have drunk beer, because that ancient drink is preserved by hops and therefore is safer than standing water, and they would have drunk great quantities of rum.

Pirates certainly appeared to “eat to live” instead of “living to eat” like a modern gourmet. Combing through the material in Treasure Island, I can provide a nearly comprehensive list of the drinks and foods mentioned in that tome, but I follow up with a proposal for a more appetizing menu:

Pirate Food enumerated in Treasure Island

Drink:

A bottle of Spanish wine and some raisins, strong wine (red or white), old wine, a pannikin of rum, casks of whiskey, brandy.

Starchy Food

Duff, plum-duff, bags of biscuits, bread-bags, biscuit and fried junk.

Meat

Goat or salted goat, kegs of pork, roasted oxen, hot bacon or bacon and eggs, oysters.

Pork, bread and brandy for the midday meal.

Fruits

Apples, berries, tropical fruits, pickled fruits.

Spices:

Nutmeg.

Other:

Notably, when the marooned Ben Gunn dreams of food, he dreams of

“Cheese toasted”, and would have preferred a piece of parmesan cheese and some Port to any dish of boiled, salted meat and “duff.”

Here is a much improved Luncheon menu for your consideration, loosely based on Treasure Island:

Pirate Menu_C_2011_AliceDeLuca_framed
Grog – The proper Treasure Island toast to make would be “Here’s luck” – as you down your diluted drink of rum and water. If we are to believe everything we read, rum was added to the stored, algae-contaminated water onboard ship, to make it more palatable. However, we also know that the British Royal Navy made rum a staple, and served the last official ration of rum to its sailors July 31, 1970 after a few centuries of providing daily rum rations. For a palatable drink that would ward of scurvy and please your guests, serve a Mojito made with rum, mint and limes, or a Caipirinha made from Brazilian Cachaça.

Main course – Barbecue, shared equally amongst all diners. The alleged origin of the word “buccaneer” is the French word boucanier that comes from the word boucan that referred to a wooden frame used in the Caribbean for smoking meat. This certainly seems like a plausible history, whether or not it is true. The character Long John Silver’s nickname in Treasure Island is “Barbecue,” as he is the ship’s cook.

A Ben Gunn Toasted Cheese Sandwich: In honor of all who are marooned, whether at sea on a deserted island or in a modern city apartment, serve a toasted cheese sandwich made with fine cheese.

Salamagundi: Salamagundi was somewhat similar to the modern-day Salade Niçoise or Cobb Salad. Richard Wilk[iii] gives a recipe that includes romaine lettuce, cooked meat and poultry, anchovies or other small fish such as herring, hard-boiled eggs, pickled vegetables, onions, watercress, palm hearts and parsley or cilantro, nicely arranged and served up with a familiar vinaigrette made with hot mustard.

Pickled Fruits:

plums and apricots make nice pickled fruits

According to Richard Wilk[iv], the pirates who worked in Central America had access to pickled foods. Perhaps the modern pirate, a hedge-fund trader betting against the success of some hopeful entrepreneurial company, would prefer some other pickle, but an old-time pirate would have had access to pickled fruits:

Modern Recipe for Pickled Fruits, (made using the convenient refrigerator):

These pickled fruits are delicious, and if you prepare them now and refrigerate them instead of “canning” them, they will be ready for your Thanksgiving table without a great deal of fuss. The Italian Prune Plum, only available for about 3 weeks each September, is the right fruit to use, so make the pickles now. For each pound of firm but ripe “Italian prune plums” or apricots (shown in the picture above), allow the following:

1 ½ inches of cinnamon stick

2-3 whole cloves

1 cup sugar

1 cup vinegar

These measurements are for one pound of fruit. Leave the fruit whole. Wash all the fruit and prick the skin of each whole fruit in three places with a wooden toothpick. Put the fruits and spices in a large bowl that is safe to use with vinegar – stainless steel, glass or modern food-safe ceramic. Boil the vinegar and sugar to make a syrup, cooking until the sugar dissolves. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and spices and let sit until completely cool. Then cover to keep out fruit flies and allow to sit for 2 days. A thin white scum may rise to the surface; just scoop it off.

Drain the plums, reserving the syrup. Bring the syrup to a boil and pour it back over the plums. Let the plums cool again, cover and let sit for 1 day covered (room temperature.)

On the 4^th day, bring the whole mixture (plums and syrup) to a boil in a heavy pot, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Do not overcook the fruit. Drain the fruit again, reserving the syrup. Using a large spoon, pack the fruit in to a sterilized quart jar, then boil the syrup until reduced to 1 cup. Pour the boiling syrup carefully over the fruit, then seal immediately (there may be leftover syrup) and let stand in the refrigerator for 2 weeks before serving.

Plum Duff – don’t bother with Plum Duff, read on, and you will see why:

Recipes for plum duff (dough) call for kneading flour, suet, salt, water and raisins or currants in to a ball, placing the ball of dough in to a pudding bag and suspending the bag in boiling water for a period of hours, turning the bag from time to time so that the material in the bag does not burn from extended contact with the edge of the pot. This apparently makes a sort of dumpling-like creation that can be sliced and eaten with boiled salt pork or beef. As my own diet does not include flour, I am spared from recreating this nasty recipe for a staple of antiquity.[v]

Instead of plum duff, you could create Pieces of Eight – I am imagining a shortbread 8-reale coin-shaped cookie that can be broken in to eight “bits”. I think that any shortbread recipe would be suitable for this project. Just score the cookie into 8 wedges with a knife before baking as you might a giant shortbread. Sounds like fun, and I just may try it!

It might be fun, if one owned an Inn or a Bed-and-Breakfast, to offer a “Talk Like a Pirate Day” meal. But take great care to recall the difficulties of the family managing the Admiral Benbow, an Inn overrun by drunken buccaneers tipping each other the black spot, helping themselves to rum from the bar, stroking-out in the main dining room and convalescing in bed. You never know who may rent a room.

[i] Gillies, Linda, Anita Muller, and Pamela Patterson. A culinary collection; recipes from members of the Board of Trustees and staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973. Print.

[ii] http://www.choosemyplate.gov/images/MyPlateImages/MyPlate-green300x273.jpg

[iii] Wilk, Richard R. Home cooking in the global village: Caribbean food from buccaneers to ecotourists. English ed. Oxford ; New York: Berg, 2006. Print. P.49

[iv] Wilk, Richard R.

[v] http://www.britishfoodinamerica.com/Our-First-Nautical-Number/the-lyrical/Food-at-sea-in-the-age-of-fighting-sail/

Rosa’s Musings: The Last Of The Summer Days Have Arrived, Indulge In Tomatoes while You Still Can

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, September 14, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

Spontaneous Cuisine: Raw Tomato Sauce

I don’t know if you have the same uncomfortable feeling as I, but I have the impression this year is flying by, and that we are more than ever racing against time, without being able to get a grip on the present moment or connect with the now. It is insane and quite confusing…

As incredible and shocking as it might seem, September has already arrived and so has autumn (and by the way, just in case you have already got the creeps, we are dangerously approaching Christmas – only 3 1/2 months to go before the ludicrous craze!). Even if you try “lying” to yourself, you cannot do anything other than confirm that the hot season is over and the slow decline of nature is taking its toll. As sad as it might sound, we have no other choice than to bid goodbye to the joys of summer and to the delightful sensation of lightness as well as worry-free days, it is a harbinger for the cold, dark, gloomy days that gently weasel their way into our lives. All those changes are real, visible and can be perceived very clearly.

That’s So Corny, Irene!

Published by Alice + Friday, August 26, 2011 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

A Brief History of Creamed Corn and What to Pack in Your Hurricane Survival Kit

This season, our thoughts turn to hurricanes and the darker part of the year. My own thoughts wander quite a bit, as a matter of course, and I find myself thinking about creamed corn, and specifically canned creamed corn, a staple of the American baby boomer childhood larder.

Creamed corn and a particular type of silver-labeled canned peas are tied to deep memories of preparations for stormy weather. We always had cans of corn, peas and baked beans, and kerosene and candles, in case of emergencies, storms, and power failures.

Sauce for Thought: Fish-flavored Funk for your Sauces – from the sunny parts of the world

Published by Alice + Tuesday, August 23, 2011 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

In the early 1990’s we camped at Maleakahana State Park on the windward coast of Oahu Hawai’i. In the heat of the day I came upon a Hawaiian man who was busy reaching in to an ironwood tree to hang up a plastic grocery bag half-filled with something heavy, soft and squishy. It looked like what it was, a bag of guts, and I was somewhat apprehensive. He saw me watching him and offered politely that the bag’s contents included fish guts, salt, and chilies, and that after a few days of hanging there in the sun, rotting, the liquid would be drained off to use as sauce. I must have wrinkled up my nose, because he quickly expressed his opinion that only a Hawaiian would appreciate this sauce. He was hanging the bag in the tree to protect it from animals that would eat the rotting contents, which would ruin his planned feast. I regret not speaking with him about how he would use his sauce, but that opportunity is now lost in the mists of time.

The Rambling Epicure Voices

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 7, 2011 Permalink 0

Jenn Oliver writes our column Culinary Chemistry. She has a Ph.D. in science, where she explains the scientific aspects of what really goes on when you cook (the next Harold McGee?). She’s been running a gluten-free blog, Jenn Cuisine, since 2008 and her kitchen is more like a laboratory than a kitchen. She’s focuses her chemical calculations and experiments on figuring out how to make traditionally glutinous food gluten-free.

Esmaa Self writes the Wild Woman on Feral Acres column. She lives on a small farm in Colorado where she employs organic and sustainable methods to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs, raise chickens, bees and fish and where she routinely turns out imaginative, healthy, guilt-free meals from scratch. One of her numerous blogs recounts her farming adventures: Backyard Eggs. She also writes novels and contributes to numerous organic farming and green publications, and runs a sustainable living site, Homeostasis.

Simon de Swaan is Food and Beverage Director at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City. He studied at the Culinary Institute of America and has an incredible collection of antique cookbooks and books about food and eating, from which he often posts interesting and unusual quotes. In his column Simon Says, he gives us daily food quotes from his tomes.

Jean-Philippe de Tonnac is an essayist, editor and journalist. He directed the special editions of the Nouvel Observateur for almost ten years and and has published twenty books. As preparation for publication of his Universal Dictionary of Bread (Dictionnaire universel du pain, Bouquins Laffont, 2010), he obtained a baker’s certificate (CAP) at the Ecole de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris in 2007, and traveled worldwide to countries where bread held a particular cultural significance.