Dulce Torinese

Torino, Piedmont

Torino, or Turin - a city, in the eyes of non-Italians, now synonymous with the Winter Olympics - lies in Italy's northwest, where it is the cultural, economic and political capital of the Piedmont region. A border region, a crossroads, Piedmont sits sandwiched between the ancient port city of Genoa (in the Liguria region) to the south and France and Switzerland to the west and north respectively.

The landscape of Piedmont includes the most towering mountains and the best rice growing floodplains in Europe. It is a place with tremendous wines and cheeses. It is known for its hearty mountain food: filling pastas and deeply flavored meats. It is also home to one of the most elusive, sought after and excessively expensive foods in the world: the white truffle.

The white truffle - which can fetch anywhere from $1,200 to $2,300, or more, per pound - frequently grows a few inches below the surface of the soil, often around the roots of oak trees. (I've never eaten a truffle and have only had white truffle flavored olive oil, which is wonderfully earthy, nutty, peppery and garlicky: a real exciting, lively blend of flavors.) Tartuffo, or truffles, are also often found growing in the ground beneath hazelnut trees.

Hazelnuts and chocolate

Nutella, that most prized of jarred delights, features the dual flavors of chocolate and hazelnut. During World War II, a pastry maker in Piedmont - looking for ways to extend his product in a time of cocoa shortages - decided to add hazelnut paste to his chocolate. The rest, they say, is history. But he was not the first to combine these two ingredients.

Reay Tannahill, in Food in History, informs us that by 1631, chocolate, which had come from the Americas in the hands of returning conquistadores, had become commonplace in the Spanish diet. Some preparations were complex and included "Mexican peppers...Indian peppercorns...aniseseed...flowers known as 'little ears' or vinacaxtlides...roses of Alexandria...logwood...cinnamon...almonds...hazelnuts...sugar...annatto" (242).

So, the pairing of hazelnuts with chocolate has a much lengthier history than merely its twentieth century story, and considering that hazenuts of different varieties existed both in Afroeurasia and the Americas prior to the Columbian Exchange, it's possible that the blending occurred in the Americas long before it hit big on the Iberian Peninsula.

Dolce Torinese

The dessert below, a chocolate and hazelnut terrine, hails from Torino. It is unbelievably delicious. And decadent. It is light and airy, which allows your mouth to really take in the subtlety of the flavors. (When you taste wine, before your first sip, you often inhale, drawing air across the surface of the wine in order to lift up those flavors. The effect - brought about here just by the consistency of the food - is the same.)

Ingredients

3 separated eggs
1/4 cup of sugar
1/2 pound of creamed butter
1/4 cup of brandy (Rum is generally used, though I used brandy and it was still darn tasty.)
10 ounces of melted chocolate
1/2 cup of toasted, chopped hazelnuts
1/2 cup of heavy cream

Procedure

Ribbon the egg yolks and sugar together. Next, add the creamed butter one tablespoon at a time. When that is all mixed in, add the brandy and mix well. Add the melted chocolate and then stir in the hazelnuts. Beat the egg whites until stiff; they should overhang off your whisk like little powdery snowy cornices. Stir 1/4 of the whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten and then fold in the rest of the whites. Beat the cream until soft peaks appear. Fold the whipped cream into the already lightened, aerated chocolate mixture. Pour the mixture into whatever type of mold you'd like. (I used a loaf pan.) Make sure that the mold has been lined with plastic wrap to allow for wicked easy unmolding. Place the terrine into the refrigerator or freezer to set. Eat. If you wanted, but I found it a wholly unnecessary addition, you could eat it topped with even more whipped cream.

Going, going, gone...

Mess Julia

Just yesterday, I watched Julia Child's The French Chef for the first time. First aired in 1962, Child's show was a huge hit for Boston's WGBH, and it quickly sunk its teeth into the nation's culinary consciousness. It is, in a word, brilliant.

In addition to providing a superb culinary education to the viewer, the show is fascinating for its personality: Julia Child. Tall, lanky, passionate, quirky, bumbling, singular looking - kind of mannish and not traditionally beautiful, and decidedly knowledgeable. According to television standards today, she is the anti-star, the anti-personality. She is certainly no Rachael Ray.

She's messy.

Pots and pans get misplaced, if only for a moment. Dishes don't always work out as planned, but Child always lands on her feet. She stumbles, blinking heavily, through some of her monologue. She looks excited but uncomfortable.

I love it.

Penelope Green, in "Saying Yes to Mess," which recently appeared in The New York Times, writes about our current national state of messiness: both the anticlutter movement and the anti-anticlutter movement. Alongside increasing, massive sales of home organizing equipment and accoutrements - it seems as if there is a Staples around every corner here in the Boston area - "studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat 'office landscapes') and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts."

In addition to messy creativity, Child exhalts the common and the traditional. In her Boullabaisse la Marseillaise episode, she encourages her audience to use whatever fish is handy, no matter what the supercilious chefs would like to have "us ordinary people" believe. With that invocation of "us," she immediately brings the culinary arts down to the level of the common; she invites us into the conversation; she is one of, well, us. She also champions the traditional. Often this means liberal use of butter and cream. In her episode The Spinach Twins, she suggests, for a spinach sauce, using milk instead of the cream "if you're on one of those hideous diets."

Brilliant. Embrace the mess. And the butter. I've gotta keep watching.

Hotdish: Part 2

It's time to make true on promises...

Back in September, at the end of a previous posting called Hotdish: Part 1, I wrote, "In the near future, I will step into the kitchen, create my own tater tot hotdish, sit down, eat and see just what memories flood in."

Well, last weekend - just about two months after assigning this task to myself - I did just that. Cooking for my friends Melanie and Life, who over the past months had both made numerous requests for tater tot hotdish, I finally dove into making the Minnesotan treat of treats.

I broke out the following ingredients: canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, ground beef and tater tots. In a twist, though one which I believe did not compromise the integrity of the original dish, I also broke out some scallions to add after baking off the whole mess.

In a frying pan, I browned the ground beef and cooked it mostly all of the way through. I then took it off the heat and placed it into a glass baking dish. On top of the ground beef, I laid a layer of canned green beans, then poured in a can of cream of mushroom soup. A thick layer of frozen tater tots were placed on top and the baking dish was placed into the oven, which had been preheated at 350 degrees. About an hour later, I pulled it out of the oven. The tater tots were crusty and crunchy, though they could have been moreso. The cream of mushroom soup had begun to climb up through the casserole, trying to poke its head through. Finally, a mound of scallions sauteed with olive oil and a pinch of garlic were tossed on top of the hotdish, and it was proudly served.


Now, I had intended for this meal to open a pathway to memory, to childhood, to the past. But it didn't. It was just a meal, a damn good one - yes, I'll admit it - at that. Transcendent experience cannot be contrived or planned, I suppose.

I'll just have to wait to be caught off guard.

Industrial Meat Plants Raided

Timing is everything.

About two weeks ago, I finished reading Eric Schlosser's utterly fascinating, enlightening, maddening, inspiring and important book Fast Food Nation. (Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a bit tardy in getting it read.) In addition, about a week ago, I went to a movie theater in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA to see the film Fast Food Nation, which Schlosser cowrote with Texan auteur Richard Linklater. There were less than 15 people in the theater; it was an 8 o'clock showing. The film was - how to put it? - underwhelming.

In the early morning yesterday, U.S. immigration agents burst into Swift and Company meatpacking plants in six states. One was in Greeley, Colorado, a city featured heavily in Schlosser's book and most certainly the city that the fictional film city is based upon. Another was in Marshalltown, a central Iowa city about 30 miles away from the town in which I attended undergraduate school - Grinnell; it is also a town in which, on a number of Sundays during college, I spent hours tutoring Mexican immigrants in English; we would gather in the basement of a Catholic church following that morning's Spanish mass. Another was in Worthington, Minnesota, a town in the southeastern part of the state, towards where Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota meet, greet and shake hands.

Today's New York Times article "U.S. Raids 6 Plants in ID Case" will tell you that "More than 1,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared at 6 a.m. at the Swift plants with warrants to search for illegal immigrants." It will also tell you that "hundreds of immigrant workers [were rounded up] in what the agents described as a vast criminal investigation of identity theft."

If you move past the New York Times - as much as I use and refer to it - you get more of the story.

The Worthington Daily Globe website features tons of articles on the raid, in addition to hundreds of comments and responses posted by readers, local and not. Predictably, these discussions include perceptive, angry, happy, inappropriate, juvenile and thoughtful comments: the whole spectrum. Browsing through them was incredibly interesting. Continue. You find out, reading in the Daily Globe, that 1,282 people were arrested in the raids, 230 of them in Worthington. You also find out that "65 were charged with criminal violations related to identity theft or other violations, such as re-entry after deportation." You also learn that Swift and federal Immigration officials had been in discussion about a potentional raid before it actually took place: "Immigration officials in November told Swift unauthorized workers would be removed Dec. 4, but Swift asked a federal judge to prevent the raid, saying it would cause 'substantial and irreparable injury' to its business. The company estimated a raid would remove up to 40 percent of its 13,000 workers." When the federal judge refused Swift's plea, the raids were given a green light.

Looking at articles on The Marshalltown Times-Republican website, you learn that concerns about the raid's effects on school attendance is significant, that some are quite concerned about the fallout of the raid on the lives of some families. "One second shift Swift employee who works on the “kill floor” — who wished to remain anonymous — said she was most distraught about the affect the raid would have on Marshalltown families. She said even though she and her husband have the proper documentation, she was worried thinking about the families that would be torn apart because of one or both parents being deported" (source).

If you, like me, live in a world utterly and frighteningly disconnected from both the daily realities of industrial food production and from the lives of the people who do the work that allows most of us to put food on our plates, I recommend reading Fast Food Nation. Heck, I even recommend watching the film, as incomplete and faulty as it is. I also recommend following the story of these raids. Read the local papers. Check out the links above.

Fungus Foment

There's mushroom controversy fruiting in New York.

Just yesterday, reporter Rachel Gotbaum reported on the controversy for NPR's All Things Considered. In addition to covering this controversy, she also reported from - of all places -Russo's, a spectacular food market (one of my favorites, anywhere) in Watertown, Massachusetts, in an effort to get a sense of the changing culinary-fungal landscape in the United States. No longer do Americans think of mushrooms as merely tasteless button mushrooms. There are shitakes, oysters and porcinis. And enokis.

And maitakes.

The Yukiguni Maitake Manufacturing Corporation of America wants to build a massive maitake mushroom factory in Sullivan County in New York's Hudson River Valley, a region that served as divine-like insipration for many of America's great landscape painters of the mid to late 19th century. The company, which grows its mushrooms in a mixture of sawdust, corn and oat bran, hopes to produce up to 30 tons of the mushrooms daily.

And, of course, there is debate.

The building of the plant may bring over 200 jobs to the region, inject millions of dollars into the local economy and provide chefs around the country with a steady supply of the sought after edible. At the same time, some (primary the Basha Kill Area Association or BKAA) worry about the environmental costs of the factory on the region, including the impact on the Basha Kill Preserve, a wetlands area of significant beauty and ecological vibrancy. On its website, the BKAA claims that "This major development proposal will have very serious environmental impacts on the Basha Kill watershed and the Shawangunk Ridge if it goes forward."

Making the story more complex is the fact that maitake may have immense value beyond mere gastronomy. Extract from the mushroom has been used to treat cancer patients in Asia, and increasingly, elsewhere. In fact, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, one of the world's premier research and treatment centers, is conducting studies of the extract's efficacy at boosting the immune system.

This controversy is an old tale, an ever-present tale, a ubiquitous tale and one which this time features that most bizarre, interesting and curious of creatures: the mushroom.

(Other Sources: Judge dismisses challenge to environmental reviews for mushroom company; Mushroom factory triggers controversy in small US town)

Fruit Salad

"I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say, 'I like this, but I don't like that.'"

--James Baker, co-chair, Iraq Study Group, to the Senate Armed Services Committee, regarding how he would like the panel's report to be received (source).

Here we go again. Let's slam the fruit salad shall we. To treat the Iraq Study Group Report like a fruit salad is to disrespect it, to not pay heed to its urgent suggestions and recommendations, to pick in and around it, pulling out the desirable from the undesirable.

Why is it that fruit salad is so maligned? Have decades and decades of canned fruit cocktail beaten us into submission? Beaten us into believing that a mixed bowl of fruit should taste and feel as if it's been in storage since 1493 when Columbus brought citrus to the Caribbean and to the "New Word" for the first time? Sure, for those of us without teeth, such fruit is a godsend. For the rest of us, it is tyranny.

And who says it's just ok to pick and pluck and pull parts out of the whole, leaving the rest by the wayside? Would these be the same people who cut the crusts off of bread or leave the crust of the pizza on the plate, alone, desperate and scared?

Like all salads, a fruit salad is a composition of complimentary fruits - with their collection of textures and flavors - intended to be eaten together, intended to be consumed and experienced in unison.

Below is a brilliant recipe for fruit salad. Try it. You won't prod and pick at a fruit salad again.

Ingredients

5 fresh apricots, quartered
5 dates, quartered (I prefer soft ones with high moisture and less sugar content, but use whatever's good.)
2 bananas, sliced into 1/4 inch discs
2 oranges, supremed (pith, seeds and membranes removed)
1 ripe advocado, cut into 1/3 inch wide slices
2 TBS lemon juice
1/2 cup toasted coconut (Use unsweetened shredded coconut, or buy a coconut and shred the meat yourself.)

Directions

Toast the coconut in a frying pan on the stove or in the oven. It's done when you can smell it and when it starts to brown, like nice roasted marshmallow brown. Keep it warm. Juice your lemon. Prepare the fruit. (Cut open the advocado last, so that it doesn't sit and brown.) Toss the fruit into a bowl. Pour the lemon juice over it and toss. Pour the warm toasted coconut in and toss. Eat immediately. You'll be taken away to tropical beaches, sand between the toes and all that.

This is just too wicked simple, but it's so darn delicious.

There's what in my food?

What if, after a nasty fit of paroxysmal convulsions, I die? What if the food that I just shoveled into my waiting mouth is contaminated with some horrendous, awful bacteria or virus? Or, god forbid, a spore? (What the heck is a spore anyway? Spore?) Will that spinach salad be the death of me? Literally?

Bring it on. Bring it on. It's all we've got left.

Allow me to explain myself. In full.

One of the more interesting questions posed by David Quammen in his 2003 book Monster of God: The Man Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind has to do with the following: If, as he predicts, large human eating animals such as big cats, bears and crocodiles vanish from the wild by 2150, what will this mean for the human conception of nature and of its relation to it?

Exactly. When I am no longer considered lunch, when I - Homo sapiens sapiens - find myself finally at the top of the food chain, all dressed up with nowhere to do, what am I going to do? Without all the threat and pressure (read attention) placed upon me by blood thirsty animals that wish to tear me apart limb by limb, am I really going to feel good about myself?

Hey, look at me! I'm over here! I've got your…lunch!

In this present day and age, it's rare that a day goes by when I haven't found myself ducking and running for cover to escape the lacerating tusks of a rampaging saber toothed tiger. A couple of grizzly bears had me cornered next to a Dunkin Donuts the other day at about 7:30 in the morning. Somehow, they managed to get a few Boston Terriers – the little bastards - in on the attack; the terriers nipped at my feet, while the grizzlies swiped at my face. Man, I barely got out of there alive.

So, as I'm thinking, I'm trying to imagine what life will be like without these guys around, without these constant, ever present threats to my very existence. What doesn't kill me, only makes me stronger, right?

I don't like what I see. This Quammen guy's painting a pretty darn bleak picture, I must say. What's one to do with no means of continually proving one's mettle in the face of adversity?

But…wait.

You know how there are a few people who die every year after eating those dented cans of sauerkraut and beets that sit on sticky shelves in the dimly lit section of the grocery store? Predator. Prey.

That's it!

Bring on the bacteria. Send over the viruses. Pile me up a plate of toxins. Foodborne illness, here I stand! Bloodthirsty megafauna, we don't need you any more. Go die for all I care! Make like the dinosaurs and just expire already! Jack in the Box, are you there?! Taco Bell, fill me up with your burritos and taquitos!