First please let me apologize for my absence from this space. I'm renewing my commitment to blogging here starting today. And now:
A pre-election letter to the editor of the Big Timber, Montana, Pioneer. I am omitting the writer's name to spare him the embarrassment that a less congenial fellow would say he damn well deserves:
CITIZEN OR SURF:
THE CHOICE IS YOURS
ON ELECTION DAY
The current administration has vowed that if it is put back in office, they are going to take away our second amendment rights. An armed man is a CITIZEN and an unarmed man is a SURF. On election day you will have the chance to decide which one you would like to be.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
BABBO GETS ITS JUST...DESSERTS
As is said, a dish best served cold:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-mcnamee/babbo_b_1879042.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-mcnamee/babbo_b_1879042.html
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
BABBO. ITALIAN FOR BAD JUJU. OR: WHEN THE PERSON AT A RESTAURANT PODIUM USES THE WORD "POLICY," YOU MAY JUST WANT TO LEAVE RIGHT THEN
BABBO in New York (Mario Batali's baby) is everything you don't want in a restaurant--disorganized, unfriendly, and stupid. After half an hour waiting for the table I'd been promised "in ten minutes," I was told that "policy" forbade seating single persons. And now that I'd waited half an hour, and tables were obviously available? No, sorry, policy. Policy. This is a place that persons of sensibility should assiduously avoid--and please tell your friends.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW
The audiobook of THE MAN WHO CHANGED THE WAY WE EAT has just gotten an unbelievably great review in Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4526-0812-9
Thursday, August 9, 2012
RAISING HELL ABOUT RESTAURANT NOISE
Grrr. (That would be a quiet little growl....)
Originally published on ZesterDaily.com, now picked up on Huffington Post. The original's a bit better because of the comments. Plenty of room for comments here, too, of course, so please have at it. http://zesterdaily.com/opinion/soapbox/turn-down-the-volume-on-restaurant-noise/
Originally published on ZesterDaily.com, now picked up on Huffington Post. The original's a bit better because of the comments. Plenty of room for comments here, too, of course, so please have at it. http://zesterdaily.com/opinion/soapbox/turn-down-the-volume-on-restaurant-noise/
Monday, July 23, 2012
VEAL IN MONTANA?
Here at the Langston House in Outer Greater Metropolitan Melville,
Montana, I can look out my window and see just shy of three hundred calves and
their almost three hundred mothers. That's a lot of veal on the hoof. They're
still nursing, but grazing a bit too, so I'm not sure whether they
qualify as milk-fed veal. At this point they may be vitellone. The scene is repeated hundreds of times to the north, south, east, and west of me. Gigatons of goddam veal.
So you might think you could buy some in the supermarket. I called and called and called. One butcher said he could get some in a couple of weeks and would be glad to call me. I had folks coming for dinner in three days, and I wanted to give them Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne's Côtes de Veau Pavillon--one of Pierre's great dishes from the days when he was chef of America's greatest restaurant, Le Pavillon in New York. In desperation I went to the one supermarket I hadn't called, in Bozeman--a hundred miles from Melville--and sho nuff if the young butcher didn't say, "Yeah, I think we've got some in the freezer." Loin chops? "I think so."
He never showed them to me, as a normal butcher would, but I was so grateful I just took them blind. When I got them home and unwrapped them, agh! Butchered is precisely what they were: uneven of thickness, apparently hacked with a dull knife, and with a long stringy sort of tail hanging from them, consisting mainly of fat.
Now, browning veal is never that easy. I didn't want to use flour because the dish calls for a slick vinegar glaze at the end and any sort of thickener would ruin that. These damned little chops just wouldn't brown. And the whole point of the vinegar déglaçage was to pick up the yummy crunches of fond that the caramelization of meat ordinarily creates. Meanwhile my dinner guests were talking to me constantly, and I just couldn't concentrate, so while I kept on trying and trying to brown the chops, I forgot entirely about the cherry clafouti that should have been in the oven at the same time. Well, finally, after a longish simmer in stock and vinegar, a reduction of that down to a glaze, and a slip of butter to make it shine, I had some veal chops that really looked like hell.
I had started with an avocado soup, by the way, which was no masterpiece either. For dessert we had to wait quite a while for our clafouti. Luckily I had already pitted the cherries or it would have been midnight. Well, and it was good. It was downright delicious.
My guests were non-drinkers. This particular evening I was perhaps exceptionally not.
A couple of weeks later, the other butcher called me. Said he had some beautiful veal chops. Which he did. Which he cut properly. Which browned just fine. Which produced a just-right and abundant bunch of fond in the pan. And which turned, in due course, into an excellent rendition of Côtes de Veau Pavillon.
And where had that veal come from? The butcher didn't know, but we agreed that it almost certainly didn't come from Montana. The three hundred calves out my window are going to grow up into red meat.
The dish is worth doing. It's best with pale, milk-fed veal, but pink vitellone will do. It is actually possible, by the way, to get humanely raised milk-fed veal, but it may take a bit of a search even if you're in New York or San Francisco. (I knew better than to ask about mine.) It's easy, and it's extraordinarily yummy. Here's how:
Sauté your veal chops in butter till they brown. I don't think they'll ever get uniformly brown, but do what you can. Toss in one clove of garlic per chop (whole), a couple of bay leaves, a bit of thyme--not too much--and enough chicken broth (or veal stock, even better) to come a quarter-inch up the chops. Craig adds less than a teaspoon of vinegar per chop at this point, but I think more is better--say two teaspoons per. Cover and simmer till tender--maybe twenty minutes.
Season the chops to taste and keep them warm while you boil down the liquid in the pan, meanwhile assiduously scraping up all the brown bits. Get rid of the garlic, bay leaf, and thyme. Continue reducing until you have perhaps a tablespoon and a half of liquid per person, and swirl in a little butter. The sauce will be a rich dark mahogany in color, and almost syrupy.
A couple of tips. Don't use balsamic vinegar, it will be too sweet and too sticky. Do use really good vinegar. Be sure to reduce the cooking liquid down to very little, to bring back the intensity of the vinegar aroma which otherwise would seem to have boiled away. Oh, and back at the beginning: inspect your chops at the butcher's and be sure they're of even thickness and properly trimmed.
Mashed potatoes would be great with this dish.
So you might think you could buy some in the supermarket. I called and called and called. One butcher said he could get some in a couple of weeks and would be glad to call me. I had folks coming for dinner in three days, and I wanted to give them Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne's Côtes de Veau Pavillon--one of Pierre's great dishes from the days when he was chef of America's greatest restaurant, Le Pavillon in New York. In desperation I went to the one supermarket I hadn't called, in Bozeman--a hundred miles from Melville--and sho nuff if the young butcher didn't say, "Yeah, I think we've got some in the freezer." Loin chops? "I think so."
He never showed them to me, as a normal butcher would, but I was so grateful I just took them blind. When I got them home and unwrapped them, agh! Butchered is precisely what they were: uneven of thickness, apparently hacked with a dull knife, and with a long stringy sort of tail hanging from them, consisting mainly of fat.
Now, browning veal is never that easy. I didn't want to use flour because the dish calls for a slick vinegar glaze at the end and any sort of thickener would ruin that. These damned little chops just wouldn't brown. And the whole point of the vinegar déglaçage was to pick up the yummy crunches of fond that the caramelization of meat ordinarily creates. Meanwhile my dinner guests were talking to me constantly, and I just couldn't concentrate, so while I kept on trying and trying to brown the chops, I forgot entirely about the cherry clafouti that should have been in the oven at the same time. Well, finally, after a longish simmer in stock and vinegar, a reduction of that down to a glaze, and a slip of butter to make it shine, I had some veal chops that really looked like hell.
I had started with an avocado soup, by the way, which was no masterpiece either. For dessert we had to wait quite a while for our clafouti. Luckily I had already pitted the cherries or it would have been midnight. Well, and it was good. It was downright delicious.
My guests were non-drinkers. This particular evening I was perhaps exceptionally not.
A couple of weeks later, the other butcher called me. Said he had some beautiful veal chops. Which he did. Which he cut properly. Which browned just fine. Which produced a just-right and abundant bunch of fond in the pan. And which turned, in due course, into an excellent rendition of Côtes de Veau Pavillon.
And where had that veal come from? The butcher didn't know, but we agreed that it almost certainly didn't come from Montana. The three hundred calves out my window are going to grow up into red meat.
The dish is worth doing. It's best with pale, milk-fed veal, but pink vitellone will do. It is actually possible, by the way, to get humanely raised milk-fed veal, but it may take a bit of a search even if you're in New York or San Francisco. (I knew better than to ask about mine.) It's easy, and it's extraordinarily yummy. Here's how:
Sauté your veal chops in butter till they brown. I don't think they'll ever get uniformly brown, but do what you can. Toss in one clove of garlic per chop (whole), a couple of bay leaves, a bit of thyme--not too much--and enough chicken broth (or veal stock, even better) to come a quarter-inch up the chops. Craig adds less than a teaspoon of vinegar per chop at this point, but I think more is better--say two teaspoons per. Cover and simmer till tender--maybe twenty minutes.
Season the chops to taste and keep them warm while you boil down the liquid in the pan, meanwhile assiduously scraping up all the brown bits. Get rid of the garlic, bay leaf, and thyme. Continue reducing until you have perhaps a tablespoon and a half of liquid per person, and swirl in a little butter. The sauce will be a rich dark mahogany in color, and almost syrupy.
A couple of tips. Don't use balsamic vinegar, it will be too sweet and too sticky. Do use really good vinegar. Be sure to reduce the cooking liquid down to very little, to bring back the intensity of the vinegar aroma which otherwise would seem to have boiled away. Oh, and back at the beginning: inspect your chops at the butcher's and be sure they're of even thickness and properly trimmed.
Mashed potatoes would be great with this dish.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
THE DISH THAT CRIED, "WHY ME?"
Sorting through the thousands of recipes that Craig Claiborne published to come out with 100 or 125 "greatest hits" for a cookbook to come, I face an unruly host of hard decisions. I can't just choose Craig's own favorites--he already published those in his memoir, A Feast Made For Laughter--and there's no way to know which dishes have been most popular with his readers, so I'm left with subjectivity. That's fine with me. I'm picking some things that seem indispensable, others for their flair, and some just for fun.
In the last category came last night's Creamed Mushrooms with Dried Beef. This is the same thin-sliced Armour beef in a jar that is the main ingredient in Chipped Beef, a thing that generations of students and soldiers have abhorred, calling it Shit on a Shingle, but which I particularly liked when I was at Yale. Since the recipe began with a simple white sauce--equally essential to chipped beef--I thought, Hey, this may well be great.
Craig calls for cutting regular white mushrooms into julienne strips, which I found impossible. They break. So I ended up with some batonnets and some smaller chunks. These you sauté in butter. I was surprised that Craig didn't call for the stiff discs of reconstituted beef also to be julienned, but the recipe leaves them whole, and, obliged on first try to be faithful in every possible way to the original, so did I. The recipe also calls for prepared pimentos, the kind you also get in a jar, a little grated nutmeg, and a pinch of cayenne. Craig cautions you not to add salt, good advice, because the beef is stunningly salty. Craig doesn't tell you how long to cook it, but a little while suffices to soften the beef. What you have at this point is a gooey gray glop flecked with red.
At the end, off the heat, you stir in the cheese. I'm in Montana this summer, so I'm doing many of these recipes the way Craig's readers would have had to do them when they were published--you don't see many fancy foodstuffs here. At the Big Timber IGA you have your choice of Kraft Cracker Barrel Cheddar and Crystal Farm (since 1926) Sharp Cheddar. I'd never heard of the Crystal Farm cheese, but it had fewer non-cheese ingredients. Both are the unearthly orange-yellow of annatto. The result, once I added the cheese, ws one of the most revolting-looking things I've ever seen. You serve it on toast or English muffins. I chose the latter.
It didn't taste revolting, but it wasn't good. The meat was so salty it ruined everything. There was way too much of that godawful cheese, and good cheddar wouldn't have made it much better--a less lurid color, I suppose.
I love being wrong--I say this a lot--because if you're right all the time you never learn anything. Choosing this dish was wrong. I suppose I ought to have known that, but now I've learned.
In the last category came last night's Creamed Mushrooms with Dried Beef. This is the same thin-sliced Armour beef in a jar that is the main ingredient in Chipped Beef, a thing that generations of students and soldiers have abhorred, calling it Shit on a Shingle, but which I particularly liked when I was at Yale. Since the recipe began with a simple white sauce--equally essential to chipped beef--I thought, Hey, this may well be great.
Craig calls for cutting regular white mushrooms into julienne strips, which I found impossible. They break. So I ended up with some batonnets and some smaller chunks. These you sauté in butter. I was surprised that Craig didn't call for the stiff discs of reconstituted beef also to be julienned, but the recipe leaves them whole, and, obliged on first try to be faithful in every possible way to the original, so did I. The recipe also calls for prepared pimentos, the kind you also get in a jar, a little grated nutmeg, and a pinch of cayenne. Craig cautions you not to add salt, good advice, because the beef is stunningly salty. Craig doesn't tell you how long to cook it, but a little while suffices to soften the beef. What you have at this point is a gooey gray glop flecked with red.
At the end, off the heat, you stir in the cheese. I'm in Montana this summer, so I'm doing many of these recipes the way Craig's readers would have had to do them when they were published--you don't see many fancy foodstuffs here. At the Big Timber IGA you have your choice of Kraft Cracker Barrel Cheddar and Crystal Farm (since 1926) Sharp Cheddar. I'd never heard of the Crystal Farm cheese, but it had fewer non-cheese ingredients. Both are the unearthly orange-yellow of annatto. The result, once I added the cheese, ws one of the most revolting-looking things I've ever seen. You serve it on toast or English muffins. I chose the latter.
It didn't taste revolting, but it wasn't good. The meat was so salty it ruined everything. There was way too much of that godawful cheese, and good cheddar wouldn't have made it much better--a less lurid color, I suppose.
I love being wrong--I say this a lot--because if you're right all the time you never learn anything. Choosing this dish was wrong. I suppose I ought to have known that, but now I've learned.
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