BingoFest

3 September Saturday

Here´s another one for ya: Take the last of the pepperoni bread, gently yet persuasively coax it open, spread it with herbed goat cheese, top that with thinly sliced oh wait, wait, I am getting way ahead of myself.

It began, as many pleasant things must, I imagine at the Santa Barbara Farmer´s Market. This is a magical place indeed. I was in search of big whole bunch of tomatoes to take home in the cooler I brought down with me. Bingo, bingo, bingo, bingo-fest. We found very large quantities of tomatoes. Heirlooms, cherries, grapes, baby grapes, but there were the early girls. Where did these perfect tomatoes come from? What early girl? How early was she? Oh and the melons and the fresh dates. It was an absolute paradise, accompanied by two young people playing cheerful Mozart tunes on a pair of violins. It was as unrelentingly sunny as well, the sun in Santa Barbara.

All that strolling and looking at fresh salmon, fresh caught mussels, the world´s largest shallots, enormous bulbs of garlic, mountains of figs and peaches, carrots, celery, potatoes, lamb, beef, goat, chickens, fresh eggs. Everything. Lunch wasn´t too far in the future, but another adventure, was even closer.

The little air-conditioned car climbed into the mountains, into Los Padres National Forest, as the temperature quickly rose twenty-some degrees until we reach 107F. Mercifully, we went a little further on and the temperature dropped to 99F. We pulled over behind a large line of cars in either direction of a little mountain tavern:

Cold Springs Tavern has been here since 1868. I don´t know if they were slinging their marvelous tri-tip sandwiches back then, but they hit the spot today. How can you eat a hot trip-tip sandwich on a 99F degree day? Well, first enter the darkest log cabin you can ever imagine, your eyes need to adjust to the darkness, and it is significantly cooler in there. Also, get the potato salad.

The ride back down to the coast was accompanied by Saint-Saens Piano Concerto in C minor, which was perfect with the views of sweeping, hot mountains with the living blue ocean below. We had one more adventure in store.

The long and winding road, that leads to Neverland Ranch, one time home of popular music star Michael Jackson. This has nothing to do with food or cooking or anything, really, except it was amazing to be here, and I attach the following photo with gratitude. It is so far far out in dry and barren fields, thirsty horses, no gas stations, no corner stores, no cell service, or anything connecting us to the bigger world. It felt strangely like the loneliest place imaginable. Of course, we didn´t see the house, just the front gate and various memorials. I took a picture of the intercom system that has probably been there for decades. It was the most harrowing and unassuming equipment on the property. It somehow seems fitting that the photo was mysteriously deleted.

We made our way down the hill, back to civilization we call it. The scent of the tomatoes and melon from the market filled the car with a heavenly scent. What is it about this little strip of land between the mountains and the sea that is so seductive? Is it the privilege of setting ones self apart? The little tavern in the mountains? The gated hillside houses with immaculate gardens? What draws the pilgrims to the distant home of a singular man way out here in the hot desert mountains?

Now, Now you may read the first paragraph again, the one where we put the fresh sliced tomatoes on the end of the butterflied pepperoni bread with the goat cheese. This is singular, this will call pilgrims.

3 September Saturday

And just like that, my toes had touched two waters, Lake Erie and the Pacific Ocean, inside of a week. The lake was warm and still and clear. The ocean, a chilly, foamy, briny, jungle. Whenever I get sea water in my mouth, I taste olives, warm martini maybe. The lake tastes like something that tastes like water or has some properties of water, or maybe a liquid you might find on another planet that robots did a tinkle in. When you accidentally swallow Lake Erie water, a jolt goes through the mind. Is this the fatal drink?

Aside from sampling the local water, there is much to be enjoyed from the local foods here in northern Southern California. There have been a lot of honey stands and shops opening up and a number of local honeys in grocery stores; I´ve decided to use honey exclusively as the sweetener in baked goods this month, isn´t that precious? OK, so anyway, I mentioned this to the lovely person behind the counter at Santa Barbara Hives, and I was allowed to sample their four honeys. Of the four, I really liked the avocado honey and bought a small jar of it.

My travel companion and I then went to get a frosty pint as it was a sweltering 78F, and on tap was an Avocado Honey Ale from Island Brewing Company. For the sake of the experiment and your entertainment only, I will sample the two back to back and together. Btw, I don´t know if the ale is made with exactly this honey.

First, the ale. This is heavenly smooth, not sweet or cloying at all, it is very mildly herbaceous with a toasty nutty finish. It is so good. Now the honey. The honey has a very similar quality and that is it has a smooth creamy finish that coats the throat, there is no ¨flowery¨ tang at the back of the throat that many wildflower or clover honeys have. It is magic in the mouth. Now, together.

OK, now Benji, that´s too much. It´s too much Benji, too much!!

I was able to correct it with an additional teaspoon of honey. It almost takes on the quality of an adult soda where is the honey is the syrup.

Hmmm…I don´t know that the folks at Island Brewery intended for their beer to be drizzled with the honey it is made from. At any rate. Here´s an invention I do recommend:

take some of deeeeeelicious pepperoni bread leftover from yesterday that is still unbelievably soft and fresh tasting, spread a slice of that with some cream cheese, then spread a little fig jam on that, then munch on that with a tankard of creamy coffee. I am determined, god as my witness, to make pepperoni bread a breakfast staple across our nation. This is my first goal.

1 September Thursday

A friend of mine comes to water the plants when I´m out of town. When I came home yesterday there was not only a beautiful decorative cutting board of the State of Ohio with the all the cities (Tiffin!), but a lovely pepperoni cracker plate from him to celebrate my return. Momma mia, that´s a lot of pepperoni!! As I infrequently experience the intersection of taking a road trip tomorrow and coming into a large quantity of pepperoni, I decided to put it to use by making pepperoni bread as a bad breath treat for the car ride. I remember this snack from childhood, but had no idea where its come from.

It seems to be the official food of West Virginia, what do you think about that? More, Fairmont, West Virginia was the home of Giuseppe Argiro who combined two favorite foods into a portable meal for coal miners. I can imagine that it was among the profession´s very few perks. There´s a plaque in town for the sandwich, but not for poor Joe. I´ve never made the bread myself till today. I like it, but it´s always had one problem for me.

The original pepperoni bread does not have cheese in it, and the one I am making today will not have cheese in it. When the bread cools down, the cheese becomes a very stiff, dry disc around the pepperoni. Also, the slices of pepperoni can adhere to one another unhappily even if the cheese has been omitted. So, I´ve found another recipe which instructs us to leave out the cheese and finely chop the pepperoni and mix it into the dough. Now before you shout Vafancul!! , let´s give it a chance. The dough is rising now.

Judith Jones was not only the famous editor of Julia Child´s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, later in her career she wrote a few cookbooks of her own. One that she wrote with her husband Evan is The L. L. Bean Book of New New England Cookery. Their recipe for Pepperoni Bread I used as the basis for my own, though I did make some changes. Now, there is some irony, a book of New England food having a recipe for this and one that is so very very different than Signore Argiro´s. I can not find anything in my research to suggest that ever was there a variant of pepperoni bread in the original thirteen colonies, but if there were, I´d bet ten bucks it came from Rhode Island. Lots of Italians lived and worked there. But not as coal miners. They mostly worked at sea which is a terrible place for soft bread.

The distinctive feature of this recipe, as I said before, is that the pepperoni is diced and added to the dough. I didn´t tell you that it is also sautéed in olive oil for a couple of minutes, then left to cool. This is key because when you toss the pepperoni and its infused oil into the dough, it imparts the smoky spicy flavor into the dough itself. Yummy yummy yummy. The little pinch I took tasted strong of fennel.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This bread hit every spot exactly. The bread was dense spongy, light airy, the pepperoni was really a nice little spicy note, the meaty equal to raisins and apricots in sweet spiced loaves. The bread was not greasy or heavy, I really can´t believe how delicious this bread is. As I said, I made a few adaptations, I substituted sugar with equivalent honey, and lessened the salt by .5 tsp. The real credit in the ingenuity of this recipe goes to the Jones however.

I´ve put the completely cooled bread into plastic bags. I´m going to pick up some sparkling water and fig jam to spread on the pepperoni bread tomorrow. There are a few dishes to do. I please advise, even if you had a glass or two or wine, do the dishes and put them away every night. A clean kitchen in the morning is a good way to lift your spirits first thing. Coffee helps.

1 September Thursday

It´s not a long, long time from May to December, and the days are growing short now that it´s September. Even though we are expected to have a wide-spread, killer heatwave this Labor Day weekend, it feels like a fall heatwave, not a summer one. I´m back in San Francisco, and from the tedium of the local gym treadmill I watched some early leaves fall onto Valencia Street. By the way, If you want to see beautiful fall foliage, California is not the place. Still and all, fall seems to have arrived and arrived early all across the country.

September is a great food month. We can start eating fresh shellfish again. September is oyster season, mushroom gathering, honey harvesting. The beginning of the month especially is the height of tomato season. Persimmons and apples. Quinces and plums. The end of sweet corn, summer squash. It´s an interesting time between berries and stone fruit but before pumpkin and cranberry.

28 August Sunday

Someone once told me that in San Francisco there are two types of restaurants, fabulous and closed. This sentence is true when a broad definition of fabulous is used. There is a wide sliding scale that can include places like – The best of the crappy diners, the BEST bakery that get shut down for health violations, or other holes-in-the-wall where the only meat option is ¨meat¨. Nonetheless, there are many good restaurants there, and there are some in my hometown Akron Ohio too. Restaurants do what they must to attract customers and make their overhead. There are key differences as to how this success happens, and they very much depend on the type of person you are serving, what they want, what they expect.

In the Buckeye state, and throughout the Midwest, there is a certain pride that the diner takes in knowing exactly what they want to taste and designing the flavor profile themselves instead of the chef. I have always found this odd, especially because it happens at higher end dining as well as middle establishments. I will describe two events, one each from the respective states.

An exchange I recently had with the good wait staff at a restaurant in San Francisco:

¨And what can I get for you sir?¨

¨I¨ll have the salmon.¨

¨Thank you.¨

A similar exchange with great wait staff at a restaurant in Akron, Ohio:

¨And what can I get for you sir?¨

¨I¨ll have the salmon.¨

¨Great, would you like the soup or the salad with that?¨

¨What soup do you have?¨

¨Chicken Chili, Butternut Squash, Broccoli Cheddar, or Clam Chowder.¨

¨Hmm….I´ll have a salad.¨

¨House, French, Italian, Thousand Island, Ranch, Blue Cheese, or Raspberry Vinagrette?¨

¨House.¨

¨Great, would you be wanting the potato or rice pilaf?¨
¨I¨ll have the potato¨

¨Boiled, baked, steamed, roasted, steak fries, curly fries, twice fried, au gratin, or Hasslebacked?¨

¨Baked.¨

¨And that salmon, did you want that, fried, grilled, steamed-in-the-bag, poached….¨
¨Grilled, please.¨

¨And with that salmon did you want the Teriyaki, Southwestern, El Diablo, Old El Paso, German Gypsy, or Sweet Poughkeepsie sauce?¨

¨German Gypsy.¨

¨And that comes with an additional side from the bottom back of the menu.¨

I am now tired. I also feel a little anxious because I didn´t quite understand that I´d have to make so many decisions. I mean I knew that when the menu arrived, and my hands became moist when the waitress approached. But I didn´t know how it would feel, this interrogation. I wondered if she approved of my choices. The menu I had created for myself. I guess the expectation is that the guest puts the disparate particles together and the chef´s job is to make it work. I need the wait person´s help.

¨What do you recommend with the German Gypsy salmon?¨

¨Well, a lot of people really like the sizzling corn husks, or dig deep in yumbo town with a bucket of hushed mutton cuttins. If you go with the griddle flipped zucchini cakes, I would swap out the Clam Chowder for the salad because the salad already comes with the griddle flipped zucchini cakes on top of it. A lot of people do that.¨

¨Oh OK. I´ll do that. Does that sound good?¨

¨Yeah, it´s good.¨

Perhaps what it is is that there is a maximal quality to that Midwestern restaurant, everything is available and the customer is king. In California I´ve seen a number of menus that explicitly say ¨no substitutions¨ and we obey. Yes, fussy, picky, snooty, have-it-my-way California kiddos will line up in obeyance behind the Chef de Maison. It is an act of trust, perhaps because as my friend was saying, if you can´t read people´s palates, your restaurant ain´t gonna last. Fabulous or closed.

Even though it is still August, the change has taken place and Fall is wrapping their wide arms around us. Here´s one little fella that wasn´t quite ready to let go and managed to attach themselves to their tree. Hang on tight. It´s gonna be a long, cold winter.

25 August 2022

When it comes to dishes inspired by US states, we could lay quite a spread:

We’d start with California Rolls, Maryland Crab Cakes, then move on to Kentucky Fried Chicken with Texas Toast, finish with a nice slice of New York cheesecake and wash it all down with a Blue Hawaii.

I can’t think of another state that has several dishes with its name in it, and the one I can think of is Mississippi. Mississippi Mud Pie/Cake. Mississippi Mule cocktail. Mississippi Pot Roast. It is this last that concerns us here, for herein lies a tale, so horrifying, so bafflingly improbable, that I caution you not to read it before bed or after taking caffeine. Proceed with caution.

Last Sunday our family was gathered at my brother’s house for Mississippi Pot Roast, a dish I remembered having lots of Pepperoncini in it, and perhaps some vinegar. I have a recipe in a newish cookbook featuring American Regional food, and I recall not only making it, but inviting a friend from the South (assuming he’d had it before?) to eat it with me.

When our party walked into the house on that rainy Sunday afternoon, our nostrils filled with a rich, savory, marrow scent. I asked the Chef de Cuisine the secrets of her recipe, which was a slight alteration of the “original” recipe, which is itself an alteration of an earlier recipe that dated from the late 1990s. I was surprised to hear that Ranch Dressing packet is a typical ingredient, and something clicked in my head. Something was not quite right. Hmmm….well, maybe the recipe I was using made its own Ranch spices, because I can’t recall buying a packet of Ranch.

The finished product was marvelous. Sapid. It was much more balanced and beefy than the one I’d made, which was piquant and tangy. Hold a moment, just as an aside, if I ever start my own children’s puppet theater, my flagship characters will be called Piquant and Tangy. OK, back to the mystery.

Later that evening, when children and parents were snuggling into their beds, I sat at the bar, nursing a icy glass of Rosé, formulating my thoughts for this very essay. I was concerned, for the Mississippi Pot Roast tasted nothing like what I remember and was so good surely I would have remembered. Then what could I have been thinking of that had beef and pepperoncini and the word Mississippi attached to it? I quickly referenced the website where I keep all my cookbooks organized and indexed. I typed in Mississippi Pot Roast and got back zero results. What? i thought. I have made this dish, I have made a dish like it, right? Mississippi Roast. Nothing. Pot Roast brought forth several dozen recipes none with pepperoncini as an ingredient. Finally, I just typed the word, Mississippi.

This brought up the very cookbook I thought the Pot Roast I made was from. It had two recipes with the word Mississippi in it, mud cake and mud pie. Next to the Mississippi Mud Pie title, was a check mark, meaning I had designated it made, and apparently enjoyed it. I gave it 4/5 stars. I have no recollection of making this dish whatsoever.

The nearest I can come to it, is that I read an online recipe for Pot Roast, intended to make it, described it to a friend and something or other, but Oh my stars and gardens I don´t know what made me think I made that pot roast. So, you see, the moral of this story is that that psychiatrist is right, we do forget things and make other things up in our minds and decide that they really happened exactly the way we remember them happening, but they didn´t really happen that way, right? Get it? Anyway, make the Mud Pie. It´s good.

22 August Monday

I once heard an interview on NPR with a psychiatrist who is an expert on memory. She said that we begin to forget an event around ten seconds after it happens. After that, much of what we remember is invented by the brain. A great experiment is to recall the scene of a movie that you really love and try to play it in your head. Then, go watch that movie. Did you it look like you remember? Were the characters in the same place? Was the furniture arranged correctly, to the best of your recollection?

This psychiatrist went on to recount an amazing story about her being convinced by a family member that she witnessed a tragedy as a child, when in fact she was not there. An amazing story that is hers and not mine, and so I won’t tell it here. In part because, well, I’ve forgotten some of the details. The point is that many of our memories, or our memories of memories are supported by our senses. They can flashback to the very scene.

Smell, I’ve been told, has the longest memory of any of the senses. Summer rain may remind us of childhood, or moth balls remind us of a certain aunt’s house. The scent of cured meat like hot dogs remind some people of baseball. The smells of Christmas: cinnamon, orange, mint, the alcoholic breath of old people.

Some cooking scents remind me of certain people. The smell of cooking onions and celery reminds me of my mother. Peppers, tomatoes, and tex-mex spices I associate with my maternal grandmother, buttery pie crust and potatoes with my paternal grandmother. All real things, real and true, for me at least.

End of Part One. Part two is even better, this was a preamble. In Part Two, I’ll discuss the sense memory of cooking a dish, and I will misremember something that is annoying me.

19 August Friday

Having recovered from illness, having managed to fly across country, I find myself at my childhood home and with children no less. A niece and nephew. Fun fact- being in your own childhood home with children can throw a man into a psycho-spritual labyrinth of memories, hopes, fears, and curiosities. The toys that I played with as a child which I had long forgotten about suddenly appear on the bedroom floor, and in the mind, suddenly appear memories of family or friends or events from the distant (to me) past. This is especially true if the kids are playing with something that had been a gift from someone that is now dead. The little ones create new experiences with the toys, and some day they may remember me when their children or grandchildren play with some of the same toys. In the meantime, we all have work to do.

Children and food. How do our food habits develop? When do we go from people that only eat noodles and Cheerios to raw oysters, unusual vegetables, spice? And when, if ever, do kids start to be curious about making food themselves? From pouring milk on cereal to melting cheese on tortilla chips in the microwave to pulling your first turkey out of the oven? Seven is a great age to start to learning to do the interesting things in life. Cooking science included. For a fun beginning, I recommend whipped cream. First timers marvel at the miracle of a liquid turning into a solid, watching Uncle Ben beat and whip the cream with fury, my niece being in charge of slowly adding the sugar. Then, we three take a taste for sweetness. More sugar, more firm, or just right? Maybe the most important thing for kids to learn is to connect their brains to their tongues.

Can you taste a dish and identify the ingredients? We start with yucky and yummy and evolve to salty, sweet, and bland as well as crispy, creamy and chewy. Many palates hit the glass ceiling there. Some grown ups can tell the difference for more sophisticated flavors and textures, but many people don’t think about what they are eating. For instance, when you eat a scoop of vanilla ice cream, can you tell if that scoop has been made with custard-base ice cream or not, or if the vanilla is extract or bean? Once, I was eating a famous brand of “higher end” ice cream and distinctly tasted alcohol. I looked at the label and noticed for the first time that it said, Vanilla Flavored Ice Cream. Indeed, Vanilla Extract. An informed tongue is a good thing, teach the kids while they are young to be discerning. For breakfast we enjoyed Doritos. Cool Ranch. And leftover whipped cream. Heavenly.

12 August Friday

How do you breakfast? Do you like it when people use breakfast as a verb or do you think it is pretentious? Do you do breakfast? Do you take breakfast? Where will you take your breakfast this morning Madame? Of course, getting breakfast is popular. Meeting for breakfast is good, though not as popular as meeting for lunch. I take my breakfast alone in the nook.

I do not like to eat anything “substantial” for a couple of hours of being awake. My appetite is not in focus and nothing sharpens it like suddenly becoming ravenous around noon. Doughnuts and sweets upset an empty stomach. Big Denver omelettes with toast and hash browns? Bring ’em on, but later. James Beard disliked the word brunch because most people ordered breakfast dishes and thought we should just acknowledge that we like to breakfast later in the morning and just call that breakfast. I kind of agree with this. It’s almost as though we view brunch as a slightly-guilty weekend pleasure instead of, perhaps, our body’s preferred way of grazing. Perhaps it’s the bottomless Mimosa.

It must have been our Puritan ancestors that instilled the idea that breakfasts should happen early and soon after waking. I am convinced it is the Protestants that did this. The Catholics encourage fasting before Mass, making the Sunday dinner pretty important from a blood sugar stand point. Second breakfasts have become popular. Breakfast for dinner is great. I think we should breakfast whenever we want, the only point being that we’ve not eaten for a long time before whenever we do it.

So what can I eat first thing in the morning? I am a toast and cereal kind of a guy, and today I stand in front of you as an advocate for homemade granola. First, it’s easy: 6 cups of grain, 1 cup honey, 1 stick’O butter, 1 medium-giant pinch of salt, used sparingly, nuts and raisins and whatever else. 325 15 mins, mix it around, another 10 mins or until it starts to brown slightly, take it out, cool completely (this is when it gets crunchy), and eat it.

This is what my breakfast looks like.

Second, granola (and its kissing cousin, Muesli) are the perfect balance of boring and filling and slightly flavorful and pleasantly crunchy chewy. Oats, either dry rolled or steel cut work in this, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Wheat germ, buckwheat, flax, pumpkin seed, Raisins, currants,walnuts, pecans, pistachios, orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, all or none of the above. Everything is elevated by tangy cold yogurt, this is well known.

11 August Thursday

I imagine that one of the most unfortunate things about being wealthy is that the world can bend to one’s every whim. There is no sense of relationship with a world that sometimes requires its inhabitants to change behaviors or make different choices. For instance, I imagine there are many people who are not thinking about the contents of the fridge the day they leave on vacation. Most people must. I must contemplate the contents of my kitchen to imagine what I can eat and invent to make the most of these ingredients. The rich eat the same things over and over. A world without necessity is a world without invention, seems. So, what’s cooking?

In my refrigerator at present, I have half an onion, six cremini mushrooms, one egg, half a container of buttermilk, a little regular milk, a few fresh herbs, three carrots, and that’s it. Also, that stub of bread, an avocado, and some granola. It actually sounds like a day’s eating. For breakfast: I’ll make a teeny omelette- mushrooms, herbs, egg, and toast. Perhaps some granola on the side. For lunch, a final swap at the tuna salad with a little granola for dessert. For dinner??? Granola with carrots and onion on top with tuna salad, drowning in buttermilk.

Yes, I’m right. Being of limited means is really a joy.