Please Excuse Eddie From Blogging....

Dear Readers,

I'm going to be posting a lot less frequently here, due to the fact that I'm now officially in the midst of OPENING A RESTAURANT.

Yes, it's official. I've posted fleetingly about this here because I didn't want to get too ahead of myself, but we closed on the purchase of the existing restaurant last Friday, the lease is in place, the brown paper is covering the windows, and I'm officially working full-time toward getting the place open early-to-mid-September.

I'm still going to be blogging...in fact, I may pick up the pace a bit, but not here. I've been using a different blog to document the buying-a-restaurant process for a while, and now I'm going to use it to document the opening-a-restaurant process. I plan on trying to write over there almost every day. It's a much more train-of-thought, journal-style blog, so it's a lot easier to crank out a quick post in a half hour.

So, given these circumstances, I would like to now take this opportunity to notify all of you that I probably won't be reviewing bacon, analyzing the difference between using half-n-half vs. heavy cream in homemade ice cream, or reviewing Julie & Julia any time soon (ok, I made up that last one--I am SO FREAKIN' SICK of hearing about that damn movie. Can it open already so people can stop prattling on endlessly about it? Damn!)

So. In conclusion. If you want to keep reading me, go run over to my burger blog and check me out over there. I'll still post here, but probably only a few times a month for a while. And mark your calendars to start counting down towards the opening of my burger, fries, and shakes joint in Evanston.

The concept? The short explanation I've been giving everyone is "Hot Dougs meets Five Guys". That works. We're going to be grinding our own beef fresh every day for burgers, cutting potatoes fresh throughout the day for fries, hand-dipping corn dogs and beer battering onion rings, and mixing up shakes and malts on the old fashioned spindle mixer. It's going to be low-key, non-chain-feeling, and inexpensive. We'll also do classic Chicago style dogs, Maxwell Street style Polish sausages, beer-simmered brats, and some fun toppings for the fries.

Anyway, thanks for reading, see you after the hiatus, and come find me over at the burger shop blog.

See you there!

Me to Michael Pollan; "You're an Elitist Gas-Bag"

Yep, that's right. The ethical-eating authority, best-selling author, and Food, Inc. star muffed one. And I'm calling him on it. I'm no authority on anything (except maybe Italian Beef sandwiches), but there it is.

I'm actually a big fan of Pollan and his writing. I loved The Omnivore's Dilemma, recently saw Food, Inc., and have kept current by following articles he publishes every now and then. The guy's really well-informed and has a lot of worthwhile stuff to say about how we eat and how we should change our approach to food.

But in his most recent article, published last week in the New York Times, Pollan screws the pooch. Big time. Not only is he just flat-out factually wrong in about six different places, but in his attempt to find a scapegoat for the current sad state of affairs in how Americans eat, he targets feminism. Specifically, Betty Friedan.

(Not that feminism, broadly, or Friedan, specifically, is above criticism. They're not. But neither are they guilty of what Pollan tries to pin on them. More to follow.)

That's not all, though. In his (mostly justified) rants about The Food Network (Lord knows I've made my feelings about the network known), he gets enough details about the shows wrong to allow careful readers to realize he doesn't actually know what the fuck he's talking about. It seems like he had a research assistant watch a few episodes and report back or something, so he wouldn't have to lower himself to actually watching "low culture" like Iron Chef or Triple D. Who knows... maybe he switched the network on and left it running in the background while he flipped through the recent issue of The New Yorker.

And, really, that's where Pollan's article rubbed me the wrong way. The whole thing has this condescending, scolding, elitist tone that really muddies the message. The article is hung on the framework of discussing the recent film Julie and Julia, but he uses the film's subject matter as a jumping-off point to continue the national discussion of our broken, dysfunctional relationship with food and eating that he's been prodding us to have for years. Most of what Pollan's got to say is right on the mark. All his major points are true and, yes, need to be written about, discussed, and changed.

But having a Long Island born-and-bred, Northern California-dwelling Berkeley-tenured ivy tower male like Pollan lecture middle America about why they're morons for watching The Food Network isn't a great way to move that discussion forward or get people to listen. And blaming Friedan's Feminine Mystique for re-framing our approach to cooking causing generations of women to view it as "drudgery" isn't a great way to get feminists, stay-at-home-moms, or working women to take what you're saying to heart.

I'm going to quote liberally from the article and simply respond, since this is what I found myself doing as I sat in front of my computer screen reading it. Overall, it's a thought-provoking piece containing lots of valid points and valuable insights. But in the name of a good rant, I'm going to focus just on the parts that really got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, starting with the one that's drawing so much ire all around the net:

Curiously, the year Julia Child went on the air — 1963 — was the same year Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique,” the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression.

This is the quote that's gotten Pollan into trouble with the feminists and has bloggers and twitterers of all stripes buzzing. I don't take issue with the sentiment behind it--neither Friedan nor feminism is anything approaching a sacred cow with me--but it's just flat-out factually incorrect. Dead wrong. Bzzzzt! Thanks for playing, Mike, you can pick up your parting gifts on the way out.

Saying that Friedan's book "taught millions of women to regard housework...as drudgery" is just drastically, laughably, misleading. The post-war years prior to 1963 saw women emerging as a huge sector of the workforce and factories that had been geared up for the war effort re-tooling as production facilities for all manner of convenience food products. The booming advertising industry was quick to jump in and assist in the food industry's effort to convince women that food preparation was drudgery to be avoided at all costs, and did so with incredible effectiveness. All of this was well-underway by the time The FM was released in 1963. There are entire books dedicated to documenting this phenomenon and what gets me is that I'm confident Pollan is not only aware of them, but has read them.

Which means that his scapegoating of Friedan and feminism is lazy at best. Perhaps he didn't want to stretch an already-very-long article to more fully flesh out the various parties who really were responsible for this negative re-frame of cooking. A less charitable read, though, could view Pollan's choice as a cynical attempt to co-opt negative sentiment towards feminism to bolster his cause, or maybe just as a way to drum up some controversy and get people talking.

Regardless of which explanation is accurate, it's some weak-ass shit from a guy I expect far better from. Incredibly enough, a few short paragraphs later, he says:

Many of these convenience foods have been sold to women as tools of liberation; the rhetoric of kitchen oppression has been cleverly hijacked by food marketers and the cooking shows they sponsor to sell more stuff.

So Pollan acknowledges here that other forces were working to portray food prep as "drudgery", not very long after trying to blame the whole thing on Friedan. But who had more influence in the early 60's? A feminist writer or "food marketers"? Which enjoyed more circulation--The Feminine Mystique or magazines like Women's Day and Family Circle?

I spent an enlightening if somewhat depressing hour on the phone with a veteran food-marketing researcher, Harry Balzer, who explained that “people call things ‘cooking’ today that would roll their grandmother in her grave — heating up a can of soup or microwaving a frozen pizza.”

Another cheap shot in an attempt to make a valid larger point. I admit to having more limited knowledge than this Balzer guy, but I've never heard anyone refer to microwaving a frozen pizza as 'cooking'. It just seems like Pollan is taking the easy way out to make his point.

...you do have to wonder how easily so specialized a set of skills might translate to the home kitchen — or anywhere else for that matter. For when in real life are even professional chefs required to conceive and execute dishes in 20 minutes from ingredients selected by a third party exhibiting obvious sadistic tendencies? (String cheese?) Never, is when. The skills celebrated on the Food Network in prime time are precisely the skills necessary to succeed on the Food Network in prime time. They will come in handy nowhere else on God’s green earth.

This comment misses the mark for me on two levels. First, the shows he's discussing--Iron Chef America, Chopped, and Top Chef--do not claim to be instructional cooking shows. They're billed as entertainment. Although the recipes are often made available online after the show airs.

And second, the ability to improvise and construct a dish or meal from random ingredients *constantly* comes in handy in real life. I do it ALL THE TIME. It's a great skill to have and shows that give contestants a basket of unlikely ingredients and challenge them to compose a tasty dish with them can, yes, be instructional, but--and this is even more important--they can be inspirational, especially to home cooks who find themselves fishing around the bottom of the freezer with a hungry family due to arrive home any minute.

I guess a guy like Pollan, who probably only shops at organic-humane-eco-friendly-localvore farmer's markets hasn't ever found himself in that situation. Must be nice.

We learn things watching these cooking competitions, but they’re not things about how to cook. There are no recipes to follow;

Arrgh! HUGE pet peeve! Learning how to cook isn't about following recipes! Are you KIDDING me, Michael? This statement actually makes me wonder if *you* really know how to cook.

Or as a chef friend put it when I asked him if he thought I could learn anything about cooking by watching the Food Network, “How much do you learn about playing basketball by watching the N.B.A.?”

Um....tons? But besides all that's learned by watching, the more important point is that watching often inspires people to get out there and PLAY. What a dumb, dumb comment.

What we mainly learn about on the Food Network in prime time is culinary fashion, which is no small thing: if Julia took the fear out of cooking, these shows take the fear — the social anxiety — out of ordering in restaurants. (Hey, now I know what a shiso leaf is and what “crudo” means!) Then, at the judges’ table, we learn how to taste and how to talk about food. For viewers, these shows have become less about the production of high-end food than about its consumption — including its conspicuous consumption. (I think I’ll start with the sawfish crudo wrapped in shiso leaves. . . .)

And the hits keep on comin'. It was at about this point in the article that I became really aware of Pollan's insulated bi-coastal sensibility. I'm not saying that he comes off as a totally out-of-touch, holier-than-thou elitist, but...um...yeah...actually, that IS what I'm saying.

Listen, I've barely ever even seen crudo or shiso leaves on menus and I've been a chef for 15 years. I had to go look up sawfish to find out what the hell it is and the first thing I find out is that it's critically endangered and is completely banned from international trade. Where the hell is this Pollan guy eating? What's next? Is he going to drop a reference to the last ortolan feast he went to?

His point here his valid, but it gets completely lost in the underlying messages he's cluelessly broadcasting about himself and the perspective from which he approaches his work.

Sure, Guy Fieri, the tattooed and spiky-coiffed chowhound who hosts “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” ducks into the kitchen whenever he visits one of these roadside joints to do a little speed-bonding with the startled short-order cooks in back, but most of the time he’s wrapping his mouth around their supersize creations

Again, Pollan doesn't allow reality to stand in the way of his scapegoating. I happen to watch D,D&D almost religiously and I can attest to the fact that Fieri almost always speaks with the owner or chef, that he's sincerely respectful of their success and their "creations" and that he possesses a solid enough kitchen background to know exactly what the folks he's interviewing are talking about--something that probably couldn't be said of Pollan. Fieri doesn't usually interview "short order cooks" and his characterization of the restaurant staff as "startled" reveals Pollan's ignorance of how the show is filmed (restaurants featured on the show close down on the day they do the "kitchen shoot" so no one is being caught unaware).

“I love that after a day where nothing is sure — and when I say nothing, I mean nothing — you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” How many of us still do work that engages us in a dialogue with the material world and ends — assuming the soufflé doesn’t collapse — with such a gratifying and tasty sense of closure? Come to think of it, even the collapse of the soufflé is at least definitive, which is more than you can say about most of what you will do at work tomorrow.

Ok, I haven't seen the movie and I assume Pollan has, but I'm not sure how he gets souffle from egg yolks, chocolate, sugar and milk. Maybe that's what Julie Powell was talking about, but soufflés, which do usually contain some egg yolks, are more characterized by the presence of egg whites, which are whipped stiff and then folded into the mixture to give the soufflé its essential poofy rise. I've also never seen a soufflé recipe containing milk. When I hear a recipe described as "yolks, chocolate, sugar, and milk getting thick", I think chocolate mousse, not chocolate soufflé.

I'm telling you, I think this Pollan guy DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO COOK!

Since 1967, we’ve added 167 hours — the equivalent of a month’s full-time labor — to the total amount of time we spend at work each year, and in households where both parents work, the figure is more like 400 hours. Americans today spend more time working than people in any other industrialized nation — an extra two weeks or more a year. Not surprisingly, in those countries where people still take cooking seriously, they also have more time to devote to it.

Oh, but it's all Betty Friedan's fault that women view cooking as drudgery and reach for Rice-a-Roni or canned soup. Gimme a freakin' break!

Shapiro shows that the shift toward industrial cookery began not in response to a demand from women entering the work force but as a supply-driven phenomenon. In fact, for many years American women, whether they worked or not, resisted processed foods, regarding them as a dereliction of their “moral obligation to cook,” something they believed to be a parental responsibility on par with child care.

Gosh, I just can't imagine why feminists like Friedan would portray this sort of mindset as a form of oppression. Uh....maybe because it IS one? Sheesh, Pollan, can you contradict yourself MORE?

Chunks of animal flesh seared over an open fire: grilling is cooking at its most fundamental and explicit, the transformation of the raw into the cooked right before our eyes. It makes a certain sense that the grill would be gaining adherents at the very moment when cooking meals and eating them together is fading from the culture. (While men have hardly become equal partners in the kitchen, they are cooking more today than ever before: about 13 percent of all meals, many of them on the grill.)

Yet we don’t crank up the barbecue every day; grilling for most people is more ceremony than routine.

Ugh. The dreaded use of "barbecue" as a synonym for "grill". A bigger pet peeve doesn't exist in my world. More evidence the guy's not a cook. Attention, fancy, multi-degreed writer guy; "grilling" is cooking food quickly directly over live flames. "Barbecuing" is cooking food slowly with low, indirect heat. They aren't the same. You grill a burger. You barbecue a pork shoulder. Look it up.


Rant over. I'm done here. Read the article and lemme know what you think. My take on it is that Pollan didn't do his normal standard of due dilligence. Maybe the grad students that usually do his research for him are all on summer break.

Either that, or he's trolling.

Visit Number 10,000

That's a direct cut and paste from my sitemeter in the title above. Hooray for me, ten thousand visits have been logged to this site. Nice of the folks over at Wrigley to notice. When can I come sing the 7th inning stretch?

All things considered, I'm not even sure that 10,000 is a lot for the amount of time we've been open for business, but it feels like a big number and we're celebrating and feeling festive about it over here at C&EinC corporate HQ. Bourbon and blackberry ice cream may soon be busted out.

I'd like to take this opportunity to now thank a very special person, the distinct individual who was my 10,000th visitor; to you, person in unknown state, country, and city, someone who apparently did a Google image search on the term "SMOKEHOUSE" and somehow got linked to my site, and whose visit consisted of 1 page view lasting zero seconds, I say....

Thanks. Nice knowin' ya. Come on back, now.

The bloggers know all about the statistics and analytics that are available. I just have what they offer for free. It's crazy stuff. Mr. SMOKEHOUSE's info wasn't there, but about 75% the visits do give me info about the person's state, city, country, and often their ISP and/or the name of the business. I've checked my sitemeter and discovered that my wife or my mom is reading *right at that very moment*. Spooky.

It's kind of voyeuristic. I don't have that many visits (50-70 a day) that I can't recognize some of the individuals who come through fairly often. You get to imagining what that person in Auckland or Bettendorf is like, checking in nearly every day, using their XP or Safari operating systems, and I can't help but fantasize about how after that person from Kraft or Panera reads my site and becomes a big fan, they'll be calling me up to offer me a high-paying job any moment. More likely, though, it's just some staffer loafing on the job.

I can also see how people enter and leave the site, so I get an idea of where my traffic comes from. I can tell when friends check in via my Facebook page, especially if they do it from work, where the ISP and IP address are more likely to tell me the company name. When people log in from home, it's almost always just "comcast" or "cox cable" or something, so it's harder to tell who's who.

I can see how all this info could be really useful to people trying to generate orders or business through their site, but since I'm not doing that, it all just comes across as kind of surreal and nosy. Is it really my business what screen resolution the guy using Road Runner in Temple, Texas is running? Is it worth my time to speculate about whether the person reading me over at the University of Pennsylvania is a professor or a student? And why does that same address from the EPA keep popping up? Are the feds monitoring my carbon footprint?

Oh, and then there's my most loyal customer...the one who comes back time after time, never missing an article, yet not bold enough to write a comment and try and break the plane of the computer screen by engaging in a discussion. Perhaps someday I can meet this person, my most loyal reader and fan. You know who you are.....anyway, thanks for reading from your home out there in Mountain View, California.

Country Ham--Finchville Farms, Kentucky

At a dinner party hosted by Sky Full of Bacon's very talented Mike Gebert a few months ago, I was served (among other delicacies) ham biscuits. Which, if you just do a quick google and look at, say, cooks.com, you'll see are just simple little biscuit sandwiches of sliced ham.

These were not just simple little biscuit sandwiches of sliced ham, though. They were amazing. Biscuits made with lard Gebert had rendered himself, part of his homemade bacon process, a country ham from Father's in Kentucky, and home-canned preserves to slather on the delicate yet rich biscuits before adding a thin slice or two of the smokey, somewhat funky ham. This elegant little sandwich literally melted in my mouth, and the ham made a strong impression on me.

I managed to latch onto the tag from Gebert's ham, which sat on my desk for a couple months. My intention was to order a ham from the same purveyor and try and replicate it for myself. I never got around to doing that, but as part of a recent road trip, I incorporated a visit to a different producer of country hams named Finchville Farms in Finchville, Kentucky.

Finchville Farms is a small, family-owned operation run by Bill Robertson, whose family has been operating it since its inception in 1947. I sat down with Mr. Robertson before we embarked on a tour of his facilities and, as we talked about ham, we both eventually asked the same question aloud, incredulously--"why not?"

See, we were taking about country ham as opposed to European cured ham products like Italian prosciutto or the Spanish jamons Serrano and Iberico. And we both wondered why American country hams haven't yet attained the same success or recognition as their European counterparts. I didn't have an answer. Part of the reason it's taken me a month or so to write this article is that I've been trying to come up with one.

For me, as a chef, I was always somewhat bewildered by country ham. I never worked with it, so didn't really know the process. I knew it needed to be soaked in changes of water for a few days, and then roasted like a "regular" (read; saline-injected commercially processed) ham, and the resulting product would have a firmer texture and a more pronounced flavor than the standard spongy salt nibbles that turn up in our everyday omelets and deli sandwiches.

But I'd never tried it, so I just wasn't sure. And could it be thinly sliced, raw, and used in elegant presentations as a homegrown stand-in for prosciutto? I'd never seen it done that way and it seemed like everything I read about country ham was a cooked preparation like Gebert's , so, again....it remained a mystery.

Bill's answer (that's him to the right, in his office at Finchville) was, yes. "Sure, you can eat it raw, thinly sliced, like prosciutto," he said. "But nobody does. "

Country ham is most often seen as "steaks"--thin leg cross-cuts with a round slice of the bone in the middle--and these are cooked quickly on a griddle or in a pan and served alongside eggs, toast, and hash browns for $3.95 at gritty little neighborhood diners throughout the South and Midwest. When I've had it this way, though, I haven't cared much for it; it's usually kind of tough and stringy and too salty.

So that's more or less where I've always been on it; I'm a big fan of the European cured ham products, sliced thinly and draped over cool, juicy melon slices or ripe figs, but I haven't been much for American hams, whether the clove-studded, pineapple-ringed, Dr. Pepper-glazed, spiral-sliced Easter variety, or the more gourmet-sounding, but still disappointing country ham.

I appreciated Mr. Robertson's hospitality and generosity, for sharing both his time and products (My intention was to purchase a whole ham, like the ones seen sitting on his store countertop, but Bill steered me towards the ready-to-eat or cook products and laid a trunkload of samples on me). I've tried a bunch of different ones, but I'm still don't think I'm fully appreciating or understanding the appeal of this product. The only really amazing experience I had with it was at Gebert's dinner party.

Maybe part of it is how Gebert cooked his ham, I don't know. Another factor to consider is the varied styles of curing and processing. Bill at Finchville doesn't use any nitrates or nitrites in his hams, only salt and sugar. Some producers add spices or herbs, or use different types of sugar like brown sugar, molasses, or maple. Oh, and Finchville hams aren't smoked, either. Most that you'll find are, like the Father's ham I had at Gebert's gathering.

The process varies enormously from one maker to the next, but the essential steps are that a fresh or "green" ham is dry cured for a period of 3-5 weeks, then is rinsed and hung for a longer period--usually 8 to 12 months. At this point the ham can be used, or it can be smoked. The smoking can also be done prior to hanging. Some ham producers wrap the hams in muslin during the hanging process, others leave them naked to the air.

Obviously this process was developed prior to refrigeration and these methods were originally motivated by the desire to preserve fresh meat. Pig slaughters were usually at the beginning of the cold-weather months as a way to further prevent spoilage, and the various parts of the animal would be cured, cooked, smoked, and/or hung so that the cooler temperatures would prevent spoilage during the crucial point, and once the warmer weather arrived, the hams would be sufficiently cured to last through hot summer.

In fact, the summer is said to be beneficial to the flavor of the country hams. Like cheese and wine, ham is a product of its environment. As they hang, the hams are exposed to hot temperatures on summer days, but cooler evenings, and this temperature fluctuation is said to be beneficial for the flavor of the meat. Locals speak of the "July Sweats" as crucial to a country ham's flavor development. Native molds form on the outside of the hams as a reminder that this is a living process, and white specks of concentrated protein, similar to what's found in superior long-aged cheeses like Parmigiano-Reggiano, appear in the meat. Essentially, this is controlled spoilage.

But, hey, controlled spoilage is where it's at. Beer, wine, stinky cheese. Spicy kimchee, sauerkraut.




So the ham I got from Finchville is more or less exactly the same as what they make in Parma, Italy...I'm thinking. Why can't it be served more like prosciutto di Parma is typically used?

Well, I'm not entirely sure that it can't. But the intended end use needs to be considered while the product is being processed. That is to say, if a country ham producer set out to make Kentucky Prosciutto, they'd have to employ a different process. The current products are heavily salted, because the end users are going to soak them in changes of water, and then either roast or boil in more water. If the ham were going to be served raw, sliced paper-thin, the salt content would have to be scaled way back, so as to allow the end product to be less salty and also softer and more full of moisture than current country hams, which are like rocks. Typically, prosciutto is left to cure for 15-20 days, while country ham sits soaking up salt for 35-50 days.

The other thing is that Finchville uses commercial pork. I asked Bill about it when I noticed some Swift boxes near the dumpster, and got a waved a hand in the air as a response. This appeared to be Bill's way of acknowledging to the heritage pork movement, so other than mentioning some of the attention heritage breeds are getting from Chicago chefs, I didn't press him about it.

European hams are all made from pigs from the particular region, and the pump-it-full-of-hormones-and-saline-and-get-it-to-market-weight-in-half-the-time American factory farming model has, for the most part, been rejected in Europe. So, like with heritage breeds, the meat of the European pigs has a more fully developed flavor. It's fattier, and of a superior quality.

Now seems like a great moment to mention La Quercia, which appears to be doing just exactly what I just described over in Iowa, and their products are now being carried and touted by just about every pork-loving chef in Chicago.

So, after plunging headlong into this project, I find myself with more questions than answers. I'm kicking myself for limiting my experience with Finchville's products to the pre-fabbed steaks and ham biscuit slices, wrapped all tight and shelf-stable in their cryovack packs, and not bringing home a whole ham, as I'd planned.

Is the main reason that country ham isn't utilized similarly to prosciutto simply that it hasn't traditionally been done? American country ham producers have always included pre-cooking as a part of their process, and almost always market convenience products, like the ones Bill graced me with. As a result of the cooking being such a prominent part of their process, the USDA requires all uncooked country ham products to carry a label bearing cooking instructions, including the suggestion that pork always be cooked to an internal temperature of 160°.

So partly, it's a matter of it's always been done this way, and the government suggests that it continue to be done this way.

Technically, however, the USDA has no opinion about whether country ham can be eaten raw. They have not taken an official position. And the country ham producers haven't asked, for fear of having some stringent requirements slapped on them. So the mystery continues.

So, the next logical step for me is to buy a whole ham. Whether from Finchville, Father's, or somewhere else. There are now tons available through internet mail-order. And then maybe get one from La Quercia and do a taste test to compare how the various hams taste raw. Oh, and I'll need a profressional deli slicer to do these fine products justice.

Yup. Next time I've got a spare thousand bucks laying around, I'll be sure to do that. I guess that's part of the reason there hasn't been more experimentation with these products...the entry costs are high.

S0, there you go. Lots of valuable info about a traditional American product, some taste tests, a visit to the producer, an interview with the guy who runs the company, and still, the answer to the question that Bill and I asked in his office remains elusive.

"Why not"? I don't know.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Today's my 40th birthday!

I'm not one for big blow-out type birthday celebrations; I usually just work on my birthday and don't make a big deal of it. Today I'm packing up the family and going out for breakfast at an old-fashioned diner I've been meaning to try, and then heading over to the Kane Country Flea Market. My wife hates going to antique stores and flea markets so I try and drag her to one on my birthday, when she can't protest or complain about it.

Later, we'll all go out for dinner with my parents and the plan is to follow it up with a visit to Margie's Candies for some of their amazing ice cream, which, for me, is far superior to cake.

On days like this, I'm just happy to spend time with family, appreciate the fact that we're all healthy, relatively happy, and in a position where we can spend quality time together.

Thanks to everyone for the kind birthday wishes. And, since forty is "the new thirty" (or so I'm told), I'm not at all worried about being old. (Yeah, right!)

Ditch the Recipe and Just Cook!

I've written quite a few times about my disdain for recipes. I believe that recipes are a crutch that prevent people from learning how to actually cook.

For the most part, they're unnecessary. There are some exceptions, of course, but the overwhelming majority of recipes are simple techniques embellished with multiple flavor variations.

Case in point--my mother in law. She's a damn good cook who stows a file folder full of clipped recipes in her giant suitcase every time she comes for a visit. I snuck a look at it a few weeks ago, and, among other things, there were eight separate recipes for bread pudding and baked french toast. Eight different recipes for her to keep track of, all variations on exactly the same theme; some type of bread soaked with custard, with some sort of flavor and/or add-ins like fruit or nuts, which is then baked in a shallow dish.

She clearly likes this concept; she's making eight different versions of it. Think of the possibilities that might open up to her if she were to ditch the recipes and embrace the (really, very simple) techniques that these recipes are built around.

Most cooking simply involves hanging various ingredients on a template or skeleton. All the recipe does is name the specific ingredients involved, rather than leave that choice up to you. The great, gaping knowledge gap, which is what distinguishes cooks from recipe-followers, is an understanding of the template and how it works, and the realization that the options of what kind of bread to use, which flavors to add, and whether to use dried cranberries or raisins are infinitely malleable and really, rather arbitrary.

So let's take a look at one of my mother in law's bread pudding recipes--Cranberry Orange Bread Pudding--as an example. The template for this recipe is simple:

Bread + Custard + Flavorings + Other stuff + Bake it.

The only real knowledge one needs is what a custard is and how to work with it. Everything else is completely variable.

Here are the ingredients from this recipe, and, in paranthesis, the role they play in the template:

King's Hawaiian Bread (Bread)
Whole Eggs (Custard)
Additional Egg Yolks (Custard)
Milk (Custard)
Sugar (Flavorings)
Orange Juice (Flavorings)
Orange Zest (Flavorings)
Grand Marnier (Flavorings)
Vanilla Extract (Flavorings)
Dried Cranberries (Other Stuff)

So, by simply pulling back, understanding the role each ingredient plays in the dish, and then considering all the other various ingredients that can play the same role, you can write forty bread pudding recipes in about five minutes. Think about it:

Bread--how many different types of bread could you use? Brioche, wheat bread, challah, crusty baguettes, cinnamon-raisin bread, focaccia, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, banana bread, sourdough...the list is endless. How about a savory bread pudding with rye bread, caraway, crispy bacon, apples, and sauerkraut? Sounds weird, but that might be a pretty cool little side dish for grilled pork chops, no?

Flavorings--Again, the list is endless. Orange, lemon, lime, vanilla, chocolate, maple, honey, every extract you can think of, every liqueur you can think of, coconut milk instead of regular milk, savory, sweet, sweet and savory, etc, etc. Think of flavors that go together and reconfigure them into the familiar framework of the bread pudding. How about a key lime bread pudding with key lime juice, lime zest, and a rich bread like brioche with bits of broken graham crackers mixed in? Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread Pudding. Bananas Foster Bread Pudding. It's literally endless.

Add-ins--Nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, fresh fruit, cooked fruit, crunchy toffee bits, candy, vegetables for savory (or sweet, I suppose) bread puddings....

The only thing that might be even slightly unfamiliar here is the custard. But making custard is just a question of knowing the correct ratio of eggs/yolks to liquid.

That concept--of using ratios in cooking--is the subject of a new book about cooking (I'm not calling it a cookbook) by Michael Ruhlman. I'm a big fan of Ruhlman for both his excellent writing and the way he attempts to de-mystify cooking in his books. I haven't read or even checked out this book yet, but based on his other books (The Elements of Cooking is a really great resource for budding cooks), and the concept, I think it's bound to be good.

The book is called Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and the concept is similar to what I've described above. Ditch the recipes and begin understanding the simple underlying principles on which recipes are based. Then just mix and match the ingredients of your choice based on what you have on hand or what you feel like eating.

Ruhlman's book furnishes some of the basic ratios for various types of breads, quick breads, stocks, sauces, and, yes...custards, and allows readers begin to understand the basic principles of cooking in the same way that chefs approach the process. Alton Brown says that "having a ratio in hand is like having a secret decoder ring that frees you from the tyranny of recipes", and he's right, despite employing his typical science-geek frame of reference. It's a book I plan on reading because I enjoy Ruhlman's writing and the fresh approach he brings to the subject matter, but I'm even more interested in recommending it to novice cooks.

Ruhlman's blog has a post up about the book, and he's doing a giveaway promotion, in conjuction with Share Our Strength, which is a wonderful organization. Anyone who donates--regardless of the amount--by clicking through to Ruhlman's page on SOS will be eligible for the giveaway. You can win signed copies of the book, a fancy scale, and some other cool stuff, so I encourage everyone to check it out.

Charities like SOS typically see a big decline in donations during trying economic times like this, so it's important to keep them in mind while we're all figuring out ways of cutting back and being more frugal. Think of it this way; learning to cook will actually save you money by allowing you to more easily utilize what's in your pantry or is on sale, and you can use some of the money you save with your newfound culinary skills to help feed hungry kids. Plus, you might even win a cool prize.

Peoria Packing Butcher Shop

I referred briefly to my recent visit to Peoria Packing in my review of the bacon I bought there, but didn't really get into the whole experience of the place itself, which is a real trip and very thought provoking.

Most Americans are pretty squeamish about meat, despite the fact that we eat more of it than any other country in the world. At this point, we are really insulated from the process. Meat is fully broken down into only the most desirable parts, fully trimmed, and ready to go from the shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray right into the pan. Or fully cooked on the plate, if consumed in a restaurant. It's been like that forever, for most of us, and we really don't think about it too much.

Until we're confronted with something different, like a European market where piles of offal or whole animals are just out in the open, for all to see. Even for someone like me, a chef who's been dealing with larger primal cuts of meat for years, these cruder, more "real" displays represent an off-putting paradox, because I find myself curiously attracted and also, at the same time, repulsed.

I think this is true for most Americans, with varying degrees of attraction/revulsion, of course, and most simply avoid the revulsion side of the equation, which results in a sad state of affairs. We've managed, as a society, to hide and sanitize the reality of meat. Perhaps that's why we eat so much of it.

A visit to Peoria Packing will cause one to ponder these things, because once you enter the butcher shop wing of this small grocery store across the street from their commercial packing house, you will be confronted with MEAT in a way that not too many Americans are accustomed to.

PP's meat section is a large refrigerated room with big long tables running the length of it. The various cuts of meat are just piled onto the tables and customers (wearing the required latex gloves) just kind of rummage through the piles until they find what they're looking for. The meat is very fresh, very inexpensive, and they carry cuts that are difficult to find elsewhere. I went specifically to get "packer cut" brisket for smoking. I also picked up some pork bellies (to make homemade bacon) and a few other things.

A lot of people have trouble handling this set-up. The online reviews of PP are mixed, with quite a few folks stating they'll never go back due to the way the meat is just right out in the open for anyone to sneeze or cough on. This is true, of course, but I didn't see this happening and I like to believe that people have enough sense not to do that. Most people do a pretty decent job of covering their mouths and not coughing or sneezing directly on me, so I'm not sure why expecting them to do the same in a roomful of meat is any more of a leap.

I think this sort of revulsion is how people deal with the fact that they are just not used to seeing meat displayed this way. It is jarring, I will admit, and seeing whole cow's feet, pig's heads, and other less common animal parts is definitely a bit of a shock as well. I think a lot of people are simply put off by the sheer real-ness of it, and so they use the "unsanitary" claim as a rationale for their revulsion, and as a justifiable reason to avoid that experience in the future.

Revulsion, however, is natural when confronted with meat. Revulsion is normal. Meat is a dead, decaying animal. It's bloody, gruesome, and serves as a reminder of our own mortality. Yet most people eat it every day. I'll go out on a limb and say that NOT feeling revulsion at the sight or thought of meat is what's, in fact, abnormal.

We're so unaccustomed, though, to this feeling, because the meat industry has done it's level best to eliminate any and all reminders of death, blood, and the idea that these are animals we're eating. And they've been very successful, with the full compliance of a willing populace, who values avoiding the cognitive dissonance of feeling both hunger and revulsion far more than it values coming to terms with our carnivorous impulses.

Up until recently, the luxury of not getting to know one's meat up close and personal just wasn't a real possibility for most people. It's only in the last hundred years or so that we've acquired this new found squeamishness, which has gotten to the ridiculous point where some people act all grossed out even by chicken served on-the-bone, or with skin. Grow up, folks.

The conflict intrinsic to eating meat has long attracted deeper thinkers. Cultural anthropologists and sociologists like Mary Douglass and Claude Levi-Strauss have written reams on this fascinating subject. It's human nature to be both repulsed and attracted by meat, and people have been dealing with it since back in the hunter-gatherer days. It's just that here in modern-day America, we've made a new art form out of figuring out ways to avoid dealing with it.

The flip side of this is the head-to-tail movement that's been steadily gaining momentum among chefs. In Chicago, chefs like Paul Kahan, Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds, and Paul Virant have been sourcing whole animals direct from the farmers who raise them and utilizing all of the various cuts, including the organs. There is no better way to pay tribute to an animal that has been slaughtered for food, these chefs say, than to ensure that nothing goes to waste.

These chefs feel it's their responsibility to close the awareness gap created by the commercial meat industry, and they're bypassing it entirely by going direct to farmers, buying whole animals, and doing the butchering themselves in their subterranean restaurant prep kitchens.

So the head is used to make pâté, the cheeks to make guanciale or braised for ravioli filling, the neck for coppa, the bellies are cured for bacon, and the feet used for cotecchino or for their natural gelatin. Blood sausage, tripe, and kidneys are making a comeback among foodies.

Before you wince and get all squeamish, stop and think for a moment that the bacon you enjoy is also attached to lungs, a heart, a head, and feet, and ask yourself what happens to all that stuff once you've eaten your ribs and bacon. If you're not a vegetarian, animals are being killed to support your meat habit, and if you're not eating anything but the prime cuts, you're wasting big chunks of the animals that were killed to feed you.

The Reader's Mike Sula did an extensive piece called The Whole Hog Project (scroll to the bottom and check out the reader comments to get a taste of how strongly people feel about the subject) which documents the paper's purchase of a rare mulefoot pig, and follows Dee Dee's (yes, they named it) life over the course of a year and a half, culminating in its slaughter. It was a fascinating and courageous exercise in journalism which cut right to the heart of America's schizophrenic relationship with meat, and it was recently nominated (along with Mike Gebert's Sky Full of Bacon video podcast that accompanied the Sula piece) for a prestigious James Beard Award.

It's extremely thought-provoking stuff, and it's a subject that most people would prefer to avoid thinking about. But it's also perhaps a subject that we must consider more often, considering our love/hate relationship with food, the growing national obesity issue, the extent to which we consume highly processed foods and fast foods, and the myriad other ways in which we're all dysfunctional in our relationships to what we eat. Myself included--I'm certainly no exception.

I'm not claiming, mind you, that I have the answers here, or that a visit to Peoria Packing will solve all your problems. But I do think that burying our collective heads in the sand and continuing to buy grocery store trays with shrink-wrapped beef tenderloin and BSCB is the exact wrong thing to do.

So, instead of mindlessly purchasing your animal proteins from the grocery store, take a trip over to PP and check the place out. Bring your kids and do your part to kind of de-mythologize the process for them, and start closing, if only by small increments, the awareness gap that the meat industry has spent decades building in their attempt to try and insulate us from the inner conflicts that are inherent in being carnivorous.

I was actually somewhat concerned that it might bother Henry, my four year old son, who made the trip with me, given that, in many of the books we read him, piggies and cows are cute barnyard animals that talk, sing, or drive the school bus. But it didn't. After we got back, my wife asked him what he liked best about the place and he said, enthusiastically, "the pig heads!"

Henry, 4, surveys the carnage

So there you go. This little field trip can be an opportunity to start grappling with these deeper issues of morality, mortality, and animal rights, or you could just look at it as a good, cheap option for bulk burgers, hot links, and ribs. Either way, Peoria Packing is worth a visit. Don't forget to bring a cooler.

Ice Cream Personality Insights

The weather's been so amazing the last few days here in the Chicago area--highs up in the 70's yesterday--and when it's warm out, we start craving ice cream. We usually have a couple cartons in our freezer at home, but one of the joys of summer is taking a walk and going out for a cone or a cup.

We were talking about this the other day and kind of micro-analyzing our ice cream vehicle preferences. I'm a cone guy. My wife always gets hers in a cup.

The cup, says she, allows for greater control. She does not enjoy the anxiety-producing pressure of having to maintain the cone, so as to prevent the rapidly melting ice cream from dripping all down her hand.

For me, on the other hand, that's half the fun. I like the "challenge" of working the cone in just such a way that it prevents the ice cream from getting all over the place, and I've developed kind of a system that combines a steady lick-and-turn technique with the occasional large chomp off the top of the cone which I've found to be a rock-solid method of dealing with even the sloppiest of double-scoops.

What's interesting, though, is that these dueling mindsets are perfect insights into our respective personalities. I'm much more of a figure-it-out-as-you-go type of person, and this drives my wife crazy. She likes to be fully in control, to know what to expect and how she'll handle it. Conversely, her need to plan everything down to what seems to me to be the tiniest little inconsequential detail drives me nuts at times. So she finds the control and the ease of use of ice cream in a cup to be comforting and I find it to be boring, compared with the hands-on wrangling of random ice-cream drip patterns that typify summer cone-slurping.

There's even a product (of course) that attempts to solve this dilemma via a motorized rotating "cone". Ugh. How lame.

I will not be purchasing such a product, because I'm one who values attaining learned skills that take time to acquire. Cooking and playing guitar are both skills that took me a lot of time, effort, and dedication to become good at, but the learning process was enjoyable, and the skills, once attained, are useful and were worth the effort (in my opinion). It's really a basic philosophical difference about how one approaches life--do you want to do the work required to attain the ability to do things The Way They're Supposed To Be Done, or do you just want to take the easy way out and have your ice cream spoon-fed to you all your life?

Despite my clear opinion about which choice is superior, both are valid options. We're all entitled to order our ice cream in whatever form brings us the most enjoyment. Add kids to the equation, though, and things get interesting. Both of us engage in lighthearted "lobbying" to convince Henry that our preferred method of ice-cream delivery is superior, and the subsequent reasoning and explanation that derives from this is pretty hilarious.

I've opted out, to some extent, because in the rare cases that I've managed to sell Henry on the idea of getting a cone, I've found that the constant coaching that's required ("Ok...now turn it. No, turn the whole cone. And then lick. Keep going....good.") is somewhat exhausting and I tend to neglect my own cone. I also usually end up eating a good bit of his cone just to "help" him, which I really don't need to do.

He also seems to prefer the cup. Or maybe that's just my wife's doing.

But beyond the essential question of cup vs. cone, there are plenty of other choices involved with going out for ice cream that can also be viewed as a window through which to view one's personality; flavor choice, of course, is huge. Or the question of soft serve vs. scooped ice cream. Toppings as well. To jimmy or not to jimmy? That IS the question.

You may not have previously considered your ice cream choices as so completely elemental and indicative of your personality, but, really, think about it. Are you someone that always orders just vanilla, amidst thirty other nutty, chunky, rainbow-colored options? Do you (like me) always tend towards whatever flavor has the most "stuff" in it? Have you ever asked them to hold the cherry off your sundae? Or do you ask for extras? Does the instant gratification of soft serve do it for you, or do you prefer the denser, richer product that scooped hard ice cream offers? And how does Italian gelato even factor into the discussion?

I'm feeling like I've opened a can of worms here, and that this blog may not even be big enough to tackle the subject. Perhaps this is doctorate thesis material.

I lick, therefore I am. But what am I? And what does how I lick--and what I choose to lick--say about me?

Enjoy the weather.

Valentine's Day Sucks

Ok, just let me preface this by saying that I'm happily married and not entirely unromantic. I like love. Love is nice. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, it does.

Valentine's day, however, isn't about love. No, despite all the hearts and cupids and sexy innuendo, Valentine's day is about selling you stuff.

Most holidays are, these days, of course. But at least other holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas have some substance beneath the crassly over-commercialized surface. With Valentines' day, there's just no there there. At least, not anymore. The whole thing used to be kind of cool; back in the pre-Roman empire days when it was referred to as Lupercalia. But the cutesy teddy-bear laden, bouquet-bearing current incarnation has strayed so far from its roots that it has rendered itself unrecognizable, doomed to be discarded as a hollow, empty exercise in pressuring people to buy stuff, boosting the sales of greeting cards and cheap chocolates, and filling the reservation books of restaurants during an otherwise flaccid February.

But before it became the fuzzy feel-good Valentine's Day, this Hallmark holiday was a pagan fertility festival known as Lupercalia, where men donned goat skins and employed whips to spank women in hopes of increasing their virility. The festival was traditionally kicked off by a ceremony which included a sacrifice of male goats and dogs, whose blood was used to anoint the foreheads of young men. These men would then strip down naked, covering themselves only with the freshly-skinned pelts of the sacrifice animals, fashion whips out of these same skins, and run around town, delivering lashes to young women who would line the parade route, in hopes of receiving the ceremonial spankings, which were said to prevent sterility and stave off the pain of any future childbearing.

Damn. Now that's a party. Today, we get fondue by candlelight and Whitman's samplers.

As with many pagan holidays, the fun ended when the Christians co-opted the holiday and cleaned it up. The Romans did away with the trappings of the pagan craziness around the fifth century, and somehow the whole deal got latched to some guy named Valentine, a priest who reportedly flouted a law imposed by Roman Emperor Claudius II, which forbade young men to marry, thinking that single men would make for better soldiers. Valentine broke the law, married young couples, and, once this was discovered, Claudius ordered him to be put to his death. The church eventually bestowed him with the "Saint" tag, and the rest is history. Or lore.

Awwwww. Isn't that sweet? Makes me want to go spend a lot of money on mail-order lingerie and cute teddy bears. NOT.

If the whole thing was just about getting a card, a box of chocolates, and having a nice quiet romantic dinner somewhere, it would be bearable. But it's not. It's become this massive industry--Americans will spend about $15 billion this year on V-day related stuff, despite the poor economy--that aims squarely at our insecurities and baser instincts as a means to separate us from our hard-earned cash.

Have you seen (or heard) some of the ads these companies run? One that I've seen repeatedly this V-day season is run by a company in Vermont that sells teddy bears (I shan't link them) and the commercial is so chock full of cheesy gender stereotypes that it almost feels like an SNL skit. The virile-looking, cubicle-dwelling guy pumps his fist after ordering up the $70 stuffed bear that will surely enable him to score! The gaggle of women ooh and ahh over the cute widdle teddy bear as the trampy-looking lucky recipient lasciviously brags about how her man will be getting a "special surprise" later that night.

The cheaply-produced minute-long spot has been running on cable news channels all this week and, frankly, it left me feeling like I needed a shower. Men are all and only about getting laid. Women are all and only about using their sexuality as a means to getting gifts. Not to mention the whole infantilization thing that gifts of sexy leather-clad teddy bears conjures up. Gross.

Our culture already puts enough pressure on us to meet, mate, and reproduce without these companies using this impulse to sell schlocky made-in-China garbage. Although, who can blame'em, I guess? They're just doing what they can to make a buck. The real problem is our "I'm so special" culture which sends out repeated signals that we must all compare ourselves to celebrities and royalty. People watch these gossip shows and read People magazine and see what Brad gave to Angelina for V-day and feel compelled to try and measure up. And the media and advertising agencies are willing, enabling accomplices.

As a married guy with a spouse who agrees with me about this, it's easy enough for me to turn my back on it--the most we do is buy cards and I make a nice dinner. But the folks I really feel bad for is those who are single on days like New Year's and V-day. The buzz over these couple-centric holidays becomes so pervasive in the weeks leading up to it, that it really makes people feel bad about being solo, so it ends up just being a big stressor.

And for couples this is true as well. Expectations are so built up, and there's so much pressure to be lovey-dovey, that what actually happens is inevitably a let-down. Break-ups and fights are all too common. A bouquet of a dozen roses and a few chocolate-dipped strawberries would be a wonderful surprise on most other days, but on V-day, many guys would be seen as not going the extra mile if this is all that they came up with. Too cliche. Yawn. Not enough effort or thought put into it. She just watched on TV about how Tom gave Katie a rose-petal-strewn, chocolate-covered Bentley that releases doves when she opens the moon roof....

Even if things do live up to the hype--what then? Life goes back to its un-romantic, humdrum, bleh normalcy the very next day for the next 364? What kind of weirdness is that? It seems so strange to somehow distill all the symbolic romance and sexiness of our relationship into one officially-sanctioned day where we are forced to compete with all the other couples' relationships and strive to measure up. Wouldn't it be better to spread it out over the longer-term? And to go to the romantic restaurant on a Tuesday night in June when they're perhaps not so crammed full of nuzzling two-tops?

Even worse is the strangeness of selling this adult holiday to children. My kid's pre-school is having a V-day party and has been making construction paper hearts for the last week. What is that about? He's four, fer Chrissakes! Does he really need to be getting messages about romance and love from his school? I realize that adults find it cute to see four year old boys giving cute little chintzy paper valentines to four year old girls all dressed up in their cute little red velvet outfits, but I find it freaky to be pushing these kind of messages about love, coupling, and (implicitly) sex onto four year olds. And I'm not even going to address these creepy daddy-daughter dances people go to. Whoa. I mean, I love my daughter. Just not that way.

Is there a name for someone who's this Grinch-like and Scroogy about Valentine's Day? If there is, I'm it. I don't know if I'm coming off as curmudgeonly or just generally misanthropic, but it is what it is. Think of me what you will.

Our go-to V-day tradition has, in past years, been the heart-shaped pizzas over at Barnaby's Family Inn in Niles. You don't even have to ask for it--all pizzas sold that day are heart-shaped. I happened to stumble onto this one year and we've tended to do it every year. They don't charge extra or anything and the dark, spooky-feeling pub filled with screaming kids running around is somehow a perfect anti-V-day setting that suits me just fine.

That's where we tend to go for V-day, although maybe there's something to be said for trying to get back to the roots of the holiday and embracing the whole Lupercalia gestalt. We'd have to get ourselves some goats, I suppose. And it might get a bit too messy, what with the sacrificing, and the blood ritual and all.

On second, thought, maybe instead of sacrificing a live male goat, we'll just go get some birria, and instead anointing myself with blood, I could, uh, smear some of the broth all over my chest or something. Probably best to not even bring up the whole spanking thing to my wife.

Fruit vs. Vegetable

When you've got kids, and you're doing your best to be actively, engagingly parenting at all times, everything is a "teachable moment". And when you're a foodie like me, meal times are especially fraught with opportunities to inform, enlighten, and just generally inflict my personal worldview onto my progeny.

But sometimes, even though I consider myself pretty well informed about food and all matters relating to food, I find myself saying stuff that I'm not even sure is true.

And so it was, the other night, when dinner included dishes featuring spinach, cucumbers, mushrooms, avocados, and grapes.

"Grapes! I like grapes!" says Henry.

"That's nice"

"Grapes are a fruit!"

"Yep, they sure are."

From there, we started breaking down the relevant categorizations of the other foodstuffs of which our dinner was comprised.

Spinach is an easy one. Clearly it's a vegetable. Grapes, we know are a fruit.

What about mushrooms? "Neither", I said. "Mushrooms are a fungus." I think.

Hmmm......

Cucumbers? "Cucumbers are a fruit", I confidently announced. "And so are avocados. If it has a seed, then it's a fruit."

But I wasn't so sure, and found myself doubting this analysis, since, if this is the case, that means there are really a lot of vegetables that are really fruits.

So I looked it up.

The official scientific definition is that anything that is produced by a plant for the purpose of reproduction (so seeds and the stuff that contains/holds/protects seeds) is a fruit. Any other part of a plant (stems, leaves, flowers, roots) is a vegetable.

Crazy, no?

We tend to think of anything we tend to eat with our meal, in a savory preparation, as a vegetable, and things we eat on their own or as part of dessert as fruits. But that's just completely ass-backwards.

Olives and avocados are fruits, just like peaches and plums. They are all drupes. Other examples of drupes are mangoes, apricots, and almonds. Blackberries and raspberries are actually clusters of tiny drupes called "drupelets".

Cucumbers are fruits. Which makes sense, since, if you think about it, they are really similar to melons. Try eating a not-so-ripe green melon and see if it doesn't remind you of a cucumber. Squashes are part of this same "family" as well. Winter (or hard) squashes like acorn, butternut, and pumpkins, as well as summer (soft) squashes like yellow squash or zucchini are all fruits.

(Incidentally, the designation of "winter" or "summer" squash is fairly meaningless in today's horticultural world, although we do tend to eat the winter squashes much more during the cold weather months. Basically, winter squashes are long-keepers and, before the advent of refrigeration and flying in produce from South America, people would keep them in their cellars and eat them throughout the winter, whereas "summer" squashes would rot quickly and needed to be eaten soon after harvesting.)

Tomatoes, as most people know, are fruits. I think people are more open to this one, since good tomatoes do have a lot of sweetness, even though we wouldn't eat them for dessert or out of hand like we do an apple. But many people don't realize that eggplant and peppers (both spicy and sweet, or "bell" peppers) are also part of the same group, the "nightshade" family (Solanaceae).

This family also includes the poisonous belladonna plant, and, because Europeans knew of the belladonna before tomatoes were brought back from the new world (all Solanaceae are native to the western hemisphere), people in many parts of Europe were very slow to embrace tomatoes as a foodstuff. They were used as decorative items for years before they began to be incorporated for culinary use. In fact, the Italian word for tomato, pomodoro, (literal translation; "apple of gold") derives from what was basically a marketing campaign to get Italians to eat the foreign fruit that many associated with a poisonous plant. Considering how ubiquitous tomato products are in Italian cooking, it's pretty amazing to consider that they weren't really widely used in Italy until the 1700's.

Incredibly enough, the question of "fruit or vegetable" as it relates to tomatoes once came before the US Supreme Court. The Tariff Act of March 3, 1883 imposed a duty on vegetables, but not fruits, and so, the case of Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304), in which the Nixes sued to recover back duties paid to the port of New York under protest, the Supreme Court was forced to weigh in on the question.

The court ruled against the Nixes, claiming that the culinary categorization of a tomato as a vegetable based on the way it was used overruled the scientific designation that it was a fruit.

The court got it wrong, of course. Tomatoes are a fruit. This is the precursor to Ronald Reagan's infamous declaration that "ketchup is a vegetable". So the government has a history of (and some would argue, a vested interest in) getting it wrong.

Another yardstick some use to answer the question is; does taking the item and eating it kill the plant? Fruits are totally regenerative--plucking them off and eating them hurts the plant not at all. In fact, that's just what the plant wants you to do, since doing that effectively spreads the plants seeds around and aids in reproduction. This is, in theory, why many fruits are brightly colored and taste sweet. So eating fruits clearly doesn't kill the plant, whereas when you pull a carrot up out of the dirt and eat it, that carrot plant is no longer with us.

This, of course, calls into question the designation of a few "vegetables". Specifically, those that are essentially flowers (squash blossoms, broccoli, cauliflower) and those where the plant isn't killed when the vegetable is harvested, like asparagus. But flowers, while part of the reproductive process, are not, in and of themselves, reproductive in the way that seeds are.

So I'm sticking with my first definition, concerning reproduction and seeds, for the sake of sanity.

Getting back to the first definition, then, peas are a fruit. All peas, in fact--pea pods, English peas, snap peas, and blackeyed peas. Oh, but blackeyed peas are not actually peas, they're beans. But that's ok, because beans are in fact fruits as well. They're seeds contained in a seed pod which you can pluck off the vine and eat. Or, if you plant them, they'll grow a whole new bean plant. So, they're a fruit.

This is pretty crazy stuff once you start getting into it. Nuts are also fruits. They are the reproductive organs of trees like almond, hazelnut, pecan, and walnut. Same thing with nuts that aren't normally eaten by humans, like acorns, beech, and hickory nuts. Cashews are also a fruit, but don't grow on trees. Peanuts aren't really nuts at all; they are legumes. But, since legumes like lentils and soybeans are reproductive, they're fruits. So, a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut, but it is a fruit.

Corn, too, is a fruit. Each kernel contains a seed which can be planted and grown into a whole new corn plant. Which brings the question of grains into the discussion. Grains (rice, wheat, oats, etc) are seeds of certain grass plants. So they are also fruits. Almost everywhere I look on the internet disagrees with this, and most seem to be claiming that "grains" is a whole 'nother category, separate from fruits or vegetables, but that creates all sorts of gray areas with regard to "pulses" like lentils, beans, and, as noted above, corn. So I'm calling them fruits.

And, if that's not enough to really send your mind spinning, consider this; an argument can be made that a potato is actually a fruit. The eyes sprout and are reproductive. If you put a potato in water or the ground, a new plant will grow. Leave it long enough and the sprouts will flower and produce seeds. But, harvesting a potato kills the plant. And potatoes themselves do not actually contain seeds.

Similarly, one can find arguments made that strawberries are not a fruit, because the seeds are on the outside, and because the plant actually reproduces by sending out "runners", not via the seeds on the outside of the strawberry (another tangent; separate arguments exist that claim that strawberries are not actually berries either).

Crazy stuff. My mind is reeling. And, just think; all this started because I wanted to make sure I was giving my kid the right answers at the dinner table. Damn. I liked it better when cucumbers were vegetables simply by virtue of the fact that they go in salad. But it's not like I could claim that blue cheese and crumbled bacon are vegetables.

This parenting stuff is a real pain in the ass sometimes. Next time, I'm just going to take the easy way out and lie. "Yep. You got it. Cucumbers are vegetables. Now, quit squirming and eat your vegetables, Henry."

Chocolate Pudding

I've stated many times on this blog that I don't do recipes. And I don't. Usually. But when it comes to desserts, I break my own rule.

In professional cooking, there's a clear divide between the sweet and savory sides of the kitchen. It's a completely different mindset. Line cooks and chefs cook by feel, smell, sight, sound, and intuition, grounded solidly in classic technique. But they generally don't utilize recipes, because the products are not always exactly the same, and adaptations have to be made on the fly.

In contrast, pastry chefs almost always use recipes, and not only do they use them religiously, but they scale everything, weighing their flour and sugar on a digital scale to account for slight atmospheric and product variations that might throw off their precise formulas. Cooking pastry is like science whereas cooking on the savory side is like, um....basketball? or improv jazz, maybe? or...I don't know. Something.

Anyway, my point is that when I make desserts, I usually use recipes. Here's one that I've made a few times recently and is very good.

Chocolate Pudding

1 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup cornstarch
pinch salt
8 ounces Baker's semi-sweet chocolate
3 Cups whole milk or half and half
2 egg yolks
2 T. butter (unsalted)
1 vanilla bean

Mix the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a heavy saucepan.
Chop the chocolate and add it to the mixture in the pot.
In a bowl, mix the milk and egg yolks together and then add them to the mixture.
Split and scrape the vanilla bean and add the pods and the bean to the mix as well.
Put the pan on the heat, over medium-low heat and bring gently to a boil, whisking constantly.
Allow to boil for about a minute, until mixture thickens, continuing to whisk.
Pull off the heat, remove vanilla bean, add butter, stirring to incorporate.
Divide into ramekins. Allow to cool before covering with plastic and refrigerating.
Serve cold topped with whipped cream.

This recipe was adapted (yes, I copped it) from one I found on The Food Network's website, credited to Sara Moulton of Gourmet Magazine. I made a couple minor changes, but it's essentially the same recipe.

The technique is kind of interesting. Usually pudding involves heating the dairy and flavorings, and then adding the starch and tempered eggs to the hot mixture, much like making pastry cream. This can be kind of dicey, as there's always that question about whether your mixture is too hot, whether your starch has thickened as much as it should have, and you have to be careful not to scramble your eggs.

This recipe avoids all that by simply dumping everything into the same pot and bringing it all up to temp at the same time. The eggs warm slowly so there's no danger of scrambling, and once the mixture boils for a moment, the starch thickens and it's done. No muss, no fuss. Plus, less clean-up. I love it.

Even better, this recipe employs a pretty large quantity of high-quality chocolate, rather than using cocoa powder, as many pudding recipes call for. I've detailed my disdain for the choice of cocoa powder over real chocolate in the past. Suffice to say that I strongly dislike the 'dusty' taste that using cocoa powder in lieu of chocolate imparts. Frankly, I'm not sure I understand why anyone would choose it if using chocolate is an option.

So, thanks, Sara! Good recipe.

As a gossipy aside, the fact that Sara Moulton isn't on the Food Network any more speaks to the demise of quality and the embrace of lowest-common-denominator pandering that the network has recently employed. Moulton was famously told that the network wouldn't be renewing her show, Cooking Live, as part of a still on-going effort the network was making to move away from using professional/classically-trained chefs as hosts of their shows in favor of more camera-genic, cleavage-sporting "personalities" like Rachel Ray, Giada Giganto-mouth, and--feh--Sandra Lee. This whole deal is well-chronicled all over the web. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

I'll stop here in order to ensure that this post doesn't devolve into an all-out rant about The Food Network and how much it sucks, save for a few decent shows. That topic really deserves its own separate entry. [This space reserved for link to future blog post]

Suffice to say that while Sara and her pudding recipe may not have been the direction that The Food Network was going, I like her--she's got a show on PBS, a network where the focus is on cooking instruction rather than catch phrases and cleavage (if any proof of that is needed, this guy is the host of what appears to be their most popular show right now)--and I like her pudding recipe. 'Nuff said. Let's make some pudding!

Dry ingredients go into the saucepan.


Everything in the pan, applying heat.

Color gets darker, milk begins to froth. Keep whisking!

Mixture thickens very quickly.

Presto! I now pronounce it to be pudding. Portion into ramekins.

After the portioned pudding cools down to room temp, cover the ramekins with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Opinions vary, of course, on the appeal, or lack thereof, of pudding skin, which forms on the top of the pudding when it's allowed to be in contact with the air. In our house, we hate pudding skin, so I place the plastic wrap over the ramekins and then gently press it down so it's in direct contact with the surface of the pudding, ensuring no disgusting skin forms.

And that's that, really. It's a deceptively easy recipe. It is a bit thicker and denser than your average pudding recipe--almost like a pot de creme. But that's a good thing in my book.

Top it with whipped cream and enjoy it--it's a classic comfort food indulgence, which, even though it's served cold, somehow seems appropriate for cold winter weather.