The Bialy and Pletzel

Have you ever heard of a bialy (or pletzel for that matter)???  Everyone knows bagels, but bialys… not so much (aside from Mel Brooks hanging the name on his naughty Max Bialystock in the Producers) and that is a crying shame.  The bialy is the ‘other’ NYC roll -- flatter but with attitude since it’s got a savory onion poppy-seed filling that is just too delicious for words.  The bialy has such a great back-story that Mimi Sheraton wrote an entire book about it called The Bialy Eaters. For 8 years (1975-83) Mimi Sheraton was the food critic for the NY Times and if anyone knows NYC food, this is the lady.

Mimi Sheraton

The book is a great read, and opens with a sage observation: “few aspects of life inspire such persistent nostalgia as the foods of one’s childhood, reminders of the joyful security of home and family.”  This nostalgia (could it be saudade?) was acknowledged by the Chinese poet-statesman, Lin Yutang, when he wrote “What is patriotism but the longing for the foods of one’s homeland.”  The book covers the history of the bialy or bialystok kucken from their birth in the Jewish Quarter of the small Polish town of Bialystok (decimated by WWII) to the lower east side of NYC where they became a favorite in NY delicatessens (always eclipsed by the more popular bagel). This may have been because they have a very short shelf life and must be eaten or frozen within 6 hours of baking (old timers would pass up rolls that were less than an hour old for those just out of the oven).  They are easy to make however and a minute (or less) in the microwave and they are thawed and ready to toast for a perfect breakfast.

Sheraton actually went to Poland to separate fact from legend.  Bialys were hard to track down even with rock-hard samples brought from NYC, but many people had small glimmers of recognition and a 1939 film showed local children eating them… they were from Bialystok!

Although they may have been related to the Polish tsibele pletzel  (the sheet version is called an “onion board” in America and the name of the Jewish ghetto in Paris— with a texture like crisped pizza), it had none of the earmarks of the flatbread save the onion poppy seed topping.

The extra dusting of the dough with flour may have had something to do with the name since bialy means white in Slavic languages and the coat of arms of Poland is the Orzel Bialy or white eagle (chosen by Lech, the founder of Poland) so white is a popular appellation in Poland… but that is pushing it.  I think it’s just named for the place that invented it. 

The bialy is soft and chewy when fresh.  Delicious split, toasted and shmeared with butter or cream cheese and/or stuffed with smoked salmon (from Russ & Daughters if you can manage it), it is a rough tough little guy from the old neighborhood that makes the well-upholstered bagel seem so… bourgeois.  Pletzels were a huge hit in my household. Try bialys and pletzels for your next NY style brunch, oy, you’ll thank me!

  Jewish Quarter in Bialystok, Poland in the 20’s.

Bialys (based on Mimi Sheraton’s Bialy’s with a little help from Kossar’s Bialys in NYC) 
Makes 12 - 3 ½ to 4” bialys

1 ½ to 2 Lbs (5-6 cups) bread flour

3 cups cold water

2 T kosher salt

1 package yeast

Topping

1 m onion, finely chopped (do not process)

2 T coarse toasted breadcrumbs

salt to taste

2 t oil
3 T poppy seeds

Mix the crumbs into the onion and set aside for a few hours till there is no liquid… add more crumbs if this doesn’t happen.  Add the salt and oil and the poppy seeds.  Some people sauté the onion first… your call.

Put the yeast in a bowl with ½ c of the water and blend, then add the rest of the water.  Put the flour and salt in a mixer and blend for 8 minutes… it should be sticky.  Put in a clean bowl and allow it to rise till double in volume 3 to 3 ½ hours.   Then knead the dough with a dough hook for 10 minutes and by hand 5 – 10 minutes.  Allow it to rise for 1½ hours till it springs back when touched lightly (I let mine rise overnight).

Preheat oven to 450º with pizza stone or sheet pan upside down. Make 4 ropes of dough and cut each into 3 rounds.  Make a circle out of these and make an impression using your thumbs… make the bottom thin, if it isn’t it will blow up and you will lose the filling.   Sprinkle the filling on each bialy and put them on the preheated baking surface.  I put mine on parchment and slid them on the baking sheet on the parchment… if well floured on the bottom you can just use a spatula to move them.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes.  Cook and freeze or eat.

Pletzel

The recipe for the Pletzel, comes from George Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker: Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World

Topping:

3/4 cup yellow onions, chopped
1-2 tsp. poppy seeds (more to sprinkle on pletzel
1-2 tsp. olive or canola oil
salt to taste (about 3/4 tsp.)

Mix all topping ingredients in a bowl and set aside.  Some people like to sauté the onions in oil before putting them on the top… the French like them soft and cooked and sliced in rings or half rings

Dough:
1 1/2 T. dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup ice water
2 large eggs
4 cups bread flour
2 1/4 tsp. salt
2 T. canola oil
2 T. sugar
2 T. malt syrup

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, stir. Add remaining ingredients and mix until dough forms a ball in the mixer. Add additional flour if needed. Knead for 5 minutes in a mixer. Let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes.

Oil two large cookie sheets. Divide dough in two, and roll as thin as possible, letting dough rest if it is hard to roll. Place dough on the cookie sheets. Brush with canola oil. Stipple all over with a fork, spread with onion topping, sprinkle with additional poppy seeds, and bake at 400° (with a pan of water for steam in the oven) for 20-30 minutes until brown. The texture will be somewhere between pizza and a cracker.  It is addictive!  You could also put some whole wheat in them if you want them a little healthier.  I might add, since they do not raise really, I am not sure why all that yeast is needed.... see what you think.

Thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodie Friday

The Penny Lick and Pomegranate Rose Ice Cream

Happy accidents often occur to Antique browsers like myself.  Whilst looking for something else, a new item will cross my path and bid me to bid and learn more about it.

Penny Lick Glasses

 One such item was the penny lick glass.  Fascinated by its Ebay description,  I discovered they came in 3 sizes: the halfpenny lick, the penny lick, and the two-penny lick, with the Penny lick being the most popular. In an article from The Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood (a very cool museum) on Edwardian Lives they wrote:  “The ice cream still often came as a 'Penny Lick'… a tiny portion to be licked out of a small serving glass which was (at best) wiped between customers. This was recognized as being notoriously unhygienic even then, and because of the thickness of the glass, often gave the customer disappointingly less than it appeared to. Then from the vendor's point of view the glasses were also liable to break or be stolen. No wonder that edible ice cream cones were such a success.” 

A pastry alternative to the Penny lick glass (penny licks were banned in London in 1899) was patented by Italo Marciony in New York in 1903, but this was a cup and not a cone. Many sources said the ice cream cone was invented by Syrian pastry makers based on the grid-patterned zalabia  (usually soaked in an orange-flower honey syrup) around the turn of the century at an American World's Fair… myth has it an ice cream vendor ran out of containers.  There are many who claim to have been the first to invent it but there are no clear winners for that title. To make it even more confusing, the field is very murky indeed with a difference between the restaurant or homemade cone with a long history and the street vender cone that appeared at the turn of the 20^th century.

On the Historic Food website, Robin Weir (who has spent years trying to get to the bottom of all things ice cream) said that Mrs. Marshall mentions an edible cone or cornet made with almonds that were “filled with any cream or water ice or set custard or fruits” in her 1888 Mrs A.B. Marshall’s Cookery Book.

Charles Elme Francatelli (Queen Victoria’s chef) in The Modern Cook: A Practical Guide to the Culinary Art in All Its Branches had a recipe for ice cream stuffed almond gauffres or cornets (very much like the tuilles of today) in 1859 in a dish called Pudding, A La Cerito: “cornets or cornucopia, each being filled with a little of the vanilla-cream ice and a strawberry placed on the top…” although these were part of a larger confection, the recipe for the gauffres mentions ‘garnishing’ the cornets with vanilla cream-ice.

Frascati's Restaurant 1807

A few years earlier, Weir has an engraving of Frascati’s restaurant in Paris from 1807 that he believes shows a woman with an ice cream cone… who can say?  His book,  Frozen Desserts: The Definitive Guide to Making Ice Creams, Ices, Sorbets, Gelati, and Other Frozen Delights is a killer.

Robin Weir also mentions that cornets have been made since at least 1776 when they are mentioned in The Professed Cook  by Bernard Clermont (this is an amazing book, btw, and  I learned ice cream as we know it was still called  iced cheese or fromage glacé in 1776) but there was no instruction to use the gaufrettes for ice cream that I could find in the book.

What's Cooking in America says there were paper and metal cones in France, England and Germany in the 19^th Century and my favorite Charles Ranhofer was using "rolled waffle cornets" at Delmonicos in New York in the 19^th century!

It does appear that the cone came before the glass, doesn’t it? These are, however,  restaurants and cookbooks by professional chefs and not  street vendors. The glasses were only around for 50 years or so at best… the cone, well at least a few years before the glass!

I got my little penny lick glass from England (although they were made in the US) but think it may be a two-penny, since it has a deeper bowl than many I’ve seen. It is a little under 3” tall, so quite small but still heavy.  When I made my orange ice cream flowers I was inspired by a Taste of Beirut post to combine pomegranate and rose for an ice cream flavor and thought it would be perfect for my penny lick glass.

The pomegranate juice came from the lovely people at POM Wonderful  who sent me a box of 8 oz bottles.  The first I used for one of my favorite guilty pleasures, brown buttered popcorn washed down with pomegranate juice, it’s just insanely good and arrived at purely by accident so many years ago (salty popcorn, nothing to drink but pomegranate juice = heaven).  Three of my bottles went into the ice cream.  It is sweet and tangy and terribly delicious… I can imagine it with brown-butter salted almonds or shortbread cookies.  Although delicious, it is a muddy color on its own (all those lovely eggs took the red out!) so I did add a bit of red food coloring to give it the rosy glow that it deserved.  Grass-fed cow’s milk and pasture-raised eggs make all the difference in taste and are better for you, the animals, the farmer and the planet, FYI!

May I recommend a use for your rosy ice cream?  Try a Pomegranate Champagne Float.

It’s a float for grown-ups and very very tasty.

Pomegranate-Rose Ice Cream

3 c POM Wonderful pomegranate juice

1 ½ c milk (milk and cream from Milk Thistle Farm)

1 ½ c cream

½ c sugar

1 t vanilla

4 egg yolks (mine come from Grazin Angus Acres)

2 T maple syrup

juice of ½ lime

1-2 T Pama pomegranate liqueur (optional)

a few drops of red food coloring

2-3 drops Aftelier Rose essence (or 2 T rosewater)

Reduce 2 ½ c pomegranate juice to 1 c.  Toss in the remaining pomegranate juice and reserve. 

Combine yolks and sugar and whip together till a lemon yellow.  Warm the milk and cream and add to the yolk and sugar mixture, blend and return to the pan.  Bring slowly to 170º (about 5 minutes) stirring all the time. Remove from heat and strain.

Add the pomegranate, vanilla, maple syrup and limejuice.  Add rose to taste.  Chill and freeze in an ice cream maker.

Pomegranate-Rose Champagne Float, for 1

1 scoop pomegranate rose ice cream

1 glass sparkling wine (I used the Donati Malvesia)

Put a scoop of ice cream in a glass and pour the wine over it.  Serve with a spoon

 Get rose essence here: Aftelier Products

Cimmerian Shade Cocktail

Cim·me·ri·an 

[si-meer-ee-uhn]
–adjective
1.
Classical Mythology of, pertaining to, or suggestive of a western people believed to dwell in perpetual darkness.
2.
very dark; gloomy: deep, Cimmerian caverns.

One of the coolest things about creating a drink is naming it. My favorite cocktail book, ‘Professor’ Jerry Thomas’s The Bartender's Guide from 1863 has some real masterpieces like “The Blue Blazer” (nothing to do with clothing… it’s the artful toss of blue Scotch fire from one glass to the other - an arm’s length away!), the Black Stripe (rum & molasses), Rumfustian (a hot drink to warm after a cold hunt made of egg yolks, beer, gin and sherry with lemon rind and sugar) and Pousse l’Amour (egg yolk, maraschino, vanilla cordial and cognac).

Channeling my inner Jerry Thomas, I wanted to make a drink of my own after I read an article recently in the NYT’s  about the ‘spritz’.

“Goodbye beer, it’s spritz time,” read one Italian newspaper headline this summer, gushing over the newfound popularity of the drink in Germany”, said the article.

I love adding things to sparkling wine, probably a leftover of the kir royales and spritzers of my youth. It brightens up wine and although it is not wise to use great vintages for the job, neither should it be used to make lousy wines palatable by masking the flavors. It is an additional flavor…an enhancement.

Bao Ong, who wrote the article said: “Venice, Padua and Trieste all claim paternity rights to the spritz, but its origins probably lie in the Austrian Empire, which took over Veneto in the early 19th century. Hapsburg soldiers, local legend has it, would water down the strong local wine with a squirt (spritzen) of sparkling water.” In Italy, bitter additions are the norm, things like Campari, Aperol or Cynar are combined with wine and soda or sparkling wine. Closer to home in Brooklyn, rhubarb and strawberry are added to the drink at The Clover Club (go to the website… it is very cool) while still keeping the bitter component for contrast.

Original 1863 Copy of Bartender's Guide

The idea for the spritz is not original. Professor Thomas has many recipes for wine and champagne punches – a style that goes well back into the 19th century. Even though the term spritz may be German in origin, the concept is universal.

And what of the name, Cimmerian Shade? I loved the sound of it and the sense of it!  Obviously Robert E Howard thought so too when he named Conan the Barbarian’s homeland Cimmeria. There were Cimmerians (from the Greek, Κιμμέριοι) listed in the Odyssey (Ὀδύσσεια) where Homer said they lived “in a land of fog and darkness, at the edge of the world and the entrance to Hades” according to Wikipedia and it was this myth that caused the definition of Cimmerian to be coined. In reality, they were equestrian nomads from what is now Russia who may have been related to the Welsh and Bretons. The dark murky purple of the drink seemed to ask to be named after the mythic race of men.

For my new drink, my new addiction, a rich, dark Concord grape syrup with a hit of Cremé de Violette  and Aftelier’s rose essence  . I had made a wonderful (if grayish) ice cream with it… then topped it with more of the grape syrup and a few toasted almonds. Divine. I noticed Concord grape is appearing all over town this fall in drinks and sauces, after you taste this, you will know why. When I made the drink, I used a favorite sparkling wine, Donati Malvesia (organic too!). This gives it an unusual zing and is perfect for this drink (and delicious on its own).

Cimmerian Shade

2 T Violet Rose Grape Syrup
½ c Sparkling wine (Donati Malvesia )

Put the syrup in a glass, pour the sparkling wine over all and stir to blend or leave as it is for an ombré appearance (very popular in fashion this year!).

You can add more crème de violette and rose should you desire.

Violet Rose Grape Syrup based on All Our Fingers in the Pie’s Recipe

1 pound Concord grapes
1 c sugar
1 T lemon Juice
3 T Crème de Violette
1-2 drops Aftelier Rose Essence

Remove the skins from the grapes. Process the skins with the sugar till a puree. Cook the grapes and the puree till the pulp dissolves. Put this through a food mill or strainer to remove the seeds and cook this mixture till thickened to a thick syrup. Add the Crème de Violette and rose essence when cooled and store in the fridge.

1810 English Rummer Glass

Ireland's Corned and Spiced Beef

Whenever I think of Ireland, I think of the Book of Kells (an illuminated Irish manuscript) that captivated me when I was a kid...

Book of Kells, Chi Rho monogram, Folio 34r, 800 AD

 green, green grass that made me ask  if the plane windows were tinted the first time I flew there…

Irish Countryside

and corned beef!

The theme for Oxford Food Symposium  in 2010 was “Cured, Fermented and Smoked” and this theme is right up the old Irish alley. A great treat was the rich and varied Irish Food spread cooked by Padraic Og Gallagher of Gallagher's Boxty House  in Dublin that showed off the best of Irish cooking and products (in case you are wondering, boxty is a traditional Irish potato pancake). In keeping with the theme, there was smoked fish (ooh, salmon doused with Connemara Peated Single malt whiskey… say hello to heaven!) as well as smoked and dried lamb, venison and even Irish Chorizo and revelatory Irish potatoes. Kathryn McGowan who has the gorgeous website Comestibles  did a wonderful post about

it with gorgeous pictures of the food (I was having too much fun talking and forgot about taking pictures, so bless her for recording it so well). 

The other item on the meat menu was Guinness and Cider Spiced Beef. This is where I am going to linger for a while.  You notice it is called spiced beef and not corned beef.  To Americans, this is our corned beef. To the Irish, corned beef is only made with salt and no spices.  The word corn originally comes from the “corns” or salt grains, used to cure the meat. It has nothing to do with the grain (that was probably so called because corn means grain and the name stuck for the Indian maize). I know this because of a wonderful lecture I attended given my Mr. Og Gallagher (the chef for our feast) and Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Boy can they tell a story! In it they explored the history of the much-maligned corned beef, and a fascinating history it is… most of it has nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day!

They tell us that an ever so sprightfully humorous twelfth century Irish poem, Aislinge Meic Con Glinne jests about corned beef in the lines:

Lard, my wife

Sweetly smiles

Across the kale top

Cheese-curds, my daughter,

Goes round the spit

Fair is her fame.

Corned beef, my son,

Whose mantle shines

Over a big tail.

The Irish rarely ate their cattle in their early history, eating mostly grains (until the introduction of the potato) and pork and milk products.  They had a reverence for the animals and wanted them for their milk rather than their meat.   In Darina Allen’s Irish Country Cooking (she is the doyenne of Irish cuisine) I read that in 1625 Fynes Moryson described: “They feed mostly on white meats and …they watchfully keep their cows and fight for them as for their religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk.” The exceptions were male calves and the herds of beef cattle of the aristocracy that were eaten or imported to England.

This all changed when the English outlawed the importation of live Irish cattle (1667). After the passage of the law, traditional Irish corned beef became an important commodity. You see, preservation began early in Irish history -- beef and butter were salted and buried in bog holes from early times, often using sea ash (salty burnt seaweed) and later imported salt to keep their food.  One of the reasons for the international success of their corned beef was the Irish had a light tax on imported salt that made it more affordable than in other countries.  The Irish used only top quality imported white salt and their salted beef was the best because of it.  Their beef went all over the world but most especially to troops scattered over the globe.

In Ireland, corned beef was considered a luxury and it is because of this that it became popular to the  Irish immigrants in America where it was no longer expensive and probably because it reminded them of home.  It was thought of so highly that Abraham Lincoln served it for his inauguration dinner with parsley potatoes, cabbage, mock turtle soup and blackberry pie for dessert on March 4, 1861.

I had always bought corned beef in plastic packages, pre-brined and spiced. Honestly, I didn’t know another way.  This time, I decided to change that policy and do it myself after the urging of some of my blogging pals who told me how easy it was (and then no mystery meat!). 

I got lean pieces of grass-fed brisket from my friends at Grazin Angus Acres  and used a combination of recipes from Darina Allen and English writer Eliza Acton for inspiration for my brining spice blend and my dry rub blend and the result was delicious.  The dry rub is especially fine with the addition of juniper.  Acton warns that pink salt will toughen meat.  The dry rub did not soak in the way the brine had and that caused a less red center.   Cooked slowly, they did not shrink as much as corned beef usually does.  I finished them in the oven with a mixture I’ve been using for years that I love and hope you will too.

Corned Spiced Beef (dry cure)

3 T  black peppercorns (I used 2 T black peppercorns and 1 T grains of paradise)

3 T allspice berries (I used 1 T ground allspice and 1 t cassia buds)

3 T juniper berries

2 t. mace

½ t nutmeg

¼ t ground cloves

¼ t cayenne

¼ c light brown sugar

¼ c salt

1 T smoked salt

½ t saltpeter (pink salt)

4 lb brisket, flank steak or rump roast

1 T spice mix

6 potatoes, halved

½ head of cabbage, quartered

¼ c brown sugar

¼ cup grainy mustard

1 T caraway seeds
1 T of Irish whiskey, optional

Grind the first 7 ingredients together and remove 1 T.  Add the rest to the sugar and salts and rub well into the meat ( if you have a fat layer, score it and rub in the spice, otherwise it will not penetrate as well) and refrigerate for 3-7 days (the longer, the spicier) you don’t need to use it all! 

Preheat the oven to 200º.  Rinse off the rub and rub it with the 1 T reserved spice mix. Place the meat in a dutch oven, fat side down. Cover the dish and bake for 4-5 hours or until tender.  Remove from the liquid that has collected and cover the top with the mustard, brown sugar caraway and whiskey mix.  Cover and put back in the oven for 20 minutes to glaze the beef.  Remove the cover and bake 10 minutes more.  Boil the potatoes and cabbage separately till tender.

If you would like to try the wet method for the beef here is the 2^nd recipe:

Corned (Spiced) Beef (wet)

Brining Spice:

2 T peppercorns

2 T coriander seeds

1 T mace

1 t nutmeg

2 T allspice

2 T juniper berries

2 t cloves

4 bay leaves

3 T brining spice

2 c kosher salt

½ c light brown sugar

2 t pink salt (optional)

3- 5 lb brisket, flank or rump roast

2 T brining spice

2 carrots,

1 onion

2 stalks celery

6 potatoes, halved

½ head of cabbage, quartered

¼ c brown sugar

¼ cup grainy mustard

1 T caraway seeds
1 T of Irish Whiskey, optional

Take the spices and grind them.  Take 1 gallon of water and add salt, sugar, pink salt and 3 T of pickling spice and bring the water to a boil.  Allow to cool then refrigerate. Add beef brisket and weight it in the brine. Refrigerate for 3-5 days (if you have a smaller brisket, go to as little as 3 days)

Rinse the beef and add enough water to cover.  Add the vegetables, spices and cook at a very low heat (Serious Eats recommended 180º for 10 hours) on top of the stove for 3-5 hours until tender.  A low heat stops the shrinkage. The last hour, add the potatoes.  The last half hour, add the cabbage.

Preheat the oven to 240º.  Remove the meat and vegetables from the brine. Pat the meat dry and make a paste with the brown sugar, mustard and caraway seed and whiskey if desired.  Rub this over the top of the meat.  Place the meat in a baking dish, fat side down surrounded with the potatoes and cabbage.  Cover the dish and bake for 20 minutes to glaze the beef.  Remove the cover and bake 10 minutes more.

Thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodie Friday

Hey guys, Barbara caught the extra directions for the dry rub.. it only cooks for 3 hours... recipe is correct now!

Wild Mushroom Chili

Will Rogers called chili “ a bowl of blessedness”.  Lyndon Johnson was so fond of the stuff, he confessed: “ One of the first things I do when I get home to Texas is to have a bowl of red”.  Diana Kennedy (goddess of Mexican cuisine) remarked: “The chili, it seems to me, is one of the few foods that has it’s own god.”

Chili Peppers

  

When the weather turns cold and rainy in the fall, I think of chili… something to warm and comfort.  I wanted to learn more about its history and went to What’s Cooking in America  to find out what’s what.

There I discovered that even though chilies may come from Mexico, chili did not.  A writer from San Antonio, Charles Ramsdell, wrote: “If chili did come from Mexico it would still be there. For Mexicans, especially those of Indian ancestry, do not change their culinary customs from generation, or even from one century, to another. It cannot be found in Mexico today except in a few spots that cater to tourists”.  From everything I read… Chili is from Texas( or rather, from what would become Texas)!

Sister Mary Agreda, 1602-1665

According to local Indian legend, the first recipe for chili came from the venerable Sister        Mary Agreda of Spain in 17^th century who wrote the controversial book, The Mystical City of God and who is credited with the evangelization of Southwest America … although she never left Spain and appeared to the native American Indians only as a spirit called the ‘Lady in Blue’ (supposedly making 500 ‘bilocations’ in the new world in 1624) encouraging them to find a missionary and join the church.

On a more earthly plane, in the 18^th century 56 immigrants (forced to emigrate by King Phillip of Spain to block the incursion of France into the territory) came from the Canary Islands to San Fernando de Béxar (San Antonio today).  Robb Walsh discovered “the Canary Island women made a tangia-like stew with meat, cumin, garlic, chile peppers, and wild onions that they cooked outdoors in copper kettles in their settlement, La Villita. Their peculiar, chile and cumin-heavy spice blend resembled the Berber seasoning style of Morocco.”

Texas, 1939

By the 19^th century chili was firmly entrenched in the Texas psyche.  Ministers were preaching about ‘soup of the devil’ and warning their parishioners about indulging in such wickedness but the delicious chili was already on the trail in chuck wagons (supposedly ranch cooks “planted chilies, oregano and onions in mesquite patches” along the trail so the cows wouldn’t get them but they could pick them as needed) and a staple in Texas prisons.

San Antonio Chili Stand

The biggest controversies in chili seem to be whether to add tomatoes or not and whether to have beans or not and chili lovers can be extremely opinionated about these issues.  I like all the styles, and since I'm not from Texas I have no stake in the argument!

19th Century Chili Stands

I did love Robb Walsh's story about “Chili Queens”  in the Houston Press.  They served their chili in San Antonio’s Military Plaza as early as the 1860s. A 1927 issue of Frontier Times revealed that: “a big plate of chili and beans, with a tortilla on the side, cost a dime. A Mexican bootblack and a silk-hatted tourist would line up and eat side by side, [each] unconscious or oblivious of the other." The tradition continued for nearly 100 years until the health department came down on the “Chili Queens” for their sanitary standards and they were forced out of the square.

I got an incentive to make chili because of a challenge from MarxFoods and a little box of goodies containing dried mushrooms and dried chilies that they sent me.    Chili powder, invented in 1890 by DeWitt Clinton Pendery (or in 1894 by William Gebhardt), made chili easier to throw together and all of us have been known to use it with abandon. Being contrary, I wanted to make my own blend and MarxFoods has gorgeous, dried chilies. I liked the idea of a mushroom chili… vegetarian and meaty good -- without necessarily having meat (you can throw chorizo into the mix if you are so inclined).  Dr. Lostpast liked it best as a dip (so he could eat all the homemade tortilla chips that were supposed to be a garnish), but I thought of it as a stew.  Either way, the avocado-tomatillo crema is great with the hot chili and those mushrooms are super and you can get nearly everything to make it from MarxFoods!

Wild Mushroom Chili

1 oz dry lobster mushrooms 

1 oz dry masutake mushrooms 

1 T Scotch (I used Lagavulin--- the peatiness is great)

2 cups Fresh or 1 c dry cranberry beans (also known as borlotti beans)

2 T butter

Smoked Salt to taste

4 small turnips or Navets, optional

2 T olive oil

1 small onion, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic

1 c chopped chorizo (optional) 

1 t cumin

1 T Aleppo pepper

2 t fresh oregano, chopped

Chili Sauce*

1 oz New Mexico chili 

1 oz smoked serrano chili 

2 T raisins

½ banana, sliced

1 t cinnamon

s & p to taste

Avocado/Tomatillo Crema **

10 tomatillos

½ avocado

juice of 1 lime

1 t honey (if needed)

Put lobster and matsutake mushrooms in water with a few Tablespoons of a Peaty Scotch and microwave or heat for 2 minutes.  Remove, and soak for a few hours then drain and chop, reserving liquid.

If using fresh cranberry beans, shell and cook in salted water for ½ hour or till tender.  If using dry cranberry beans, soak them for a few hours then cook ½ hour to an hour  -- they can take  longer depending on freshness.

Sauté the mushrooms in 2 T butter and smoked salt to taste and put to the side (you can add more Scotch if you would like a smokier flavor).

Take 4 small turnips or Navets (thanks to the Old Foodie for giving me this name) and roast them in a 375º oven for ½ an hour, then peel and chop).

Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil (add chorizo if desired).   Add chili sauce, cumin and mushrooms and some of their liquid, the turnips (if using),  smoked salt, 1 T aleppo pepper (or to taste) and oregano and simmer for 20 minutes.

*Take 1 oz of New Mexico chilies, 1 oz of smoked Serrano chilies and 2 T raisins and put in water and microwave for 2 minutes.  Allow to stand for a few hours to soften.  Toast 2 T sesame seeds in a skillet. Slice the banana and sauté in 1 T olive oil. Puree the seeds, a teaspoon of cinnamon, the banana and the chilies with some of the soaking liquid and ½ a small ripe banana and salt and pepper.

**Take 10 tomatillos, split in half and roast, face side down, in a 375 oven for 20 minutes.  Puree in a blender with ½ an avocado, juice of 1 lime and smoked salt to taste. Add 1 t of honey if lime is especially sour. Add cilantro if desired, cumin and salt to taste.

Serve beans with swirl of avocado cream and tortilla chips (homemade are best, just cut fresh tortillas into quarters or sixths and sauté in salt and oil till crisp).

Jean-Georges' Shrimp in Spicy Carrot Juice

How many things do you have in your cooking repertoire that merit being called classics? I know that I have very few and I’m going to share one of them with you today. I have been thinking about making it ever since Sarah at All Our Fingers in the Pie got me thinking about carrot juice a few months ago. I figured out how to grow chervil for this dish (sandy soil in a flagstone patio) and got a juicer so I could make it when I wasn’t in the city (carrot juice isn’t available in small towns in upstate NY) -- that’s how good it is. Ok, ok what is it?

Shrimp in spicy carrot juice

from Jean Georges Vongerichten.

Vong, NYC

For those of you who do not know of him, he appeared in my culinary crosshairs as a chef at his first NY restaurant, Lafayette in the 80’s followed by his own JoJo bistro but it was Vong in the early 90’s (sadly it closed in 2009) that rocked my world. It was new and full of fresh flavors inspired by his tour in Asia working at hotels in Singapore and Hong Kong –flavors that he re-tuned and personalized. He turned French style food on its ear, replacing stocks and buttery sauces with flavorful fruit and vegetable juices. The first time I tasted his food I was knocked down.

Jean Georges, NYC

I have been to his 4-star Jean Georges (with great pastry maker Johnny Iuzzini ) and the Spice Market (where I discovered Pichet Ong — another sensational pastry maker) and still bow in awe at the food that comes out of his kitchen. He now has restaurants all over the world so many can enjoy his cuisine.

Carrots

I found the NYT’s recipe from the early 90’s that started my relationship with my now classic dish and got me to buy his cookbook Simple Cuisine: The cookbook that redefined healthful four-star cooking. As I compare the original to my handwritten version in my sauce splattered “Black Book” I can see the evolution that has occurred over nearly 20 years of making it. For instance, I started finishing the shrimp with a splash of Madeira and losing the extra butter very soon after the first time I made it. Deborah over at a Doctor’s Kitchen will be proud of me for that. But honestly, it doesn’t need it. The flavors just sing. I also fried julienne carrot and zested lemon peel for garnish because I love the sweet and bitter bites. If you put it on a bed of whole-wheat couscous, it is a spectacularly healthy and flavorful dish.

Shrimp in Spicy Carrot Juice serves 4

1 ¼ pound shrimp, peeled and de-veined

s & p to taste

1 shallot, minced

2 T butter

1T Madeira

1 cup carrot juice

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

½ t curry powder

pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice

cayenne pepper to taste (pinch to ½ t)

chervil or parsley, chopped

½ carrot, julienned ( I used my oxo zester to do this… works brilliantly)

1 cup whole wheat couscous

1 ½ c water

1 t salt

Put the couscous and the water in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Turn off the heat and cover. Fluff with a fork before serving.

Sauté the shallot in 2 T butter till translucent, salt and pepper the shrimp and add to the butter for a few moments. Turn and toss in the spices, the zest and the julienne and sauté for a few moments (or sauté the zest and julienne separately for a fresher look). Add the carrot juice and turn down the heat. Add the lemon juice.

Put the carrot and zest over the shrimp (I had gorgeous burgundy carrots and couldn’t help using a few in the dish sliced razor thin) and sprinkle with the chervil or parsley.

Serve on top of the couscous.

thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodie Friday