Food For Thought: Turkey Cake

Okay, imagine your guests sitting around the table, waiting for dessert, and you bring out this:

Wow! What drama! Here’s another look:

Now, while everyone is squicked out, you begin to slice the bird:

And… OMG! Is that blood?:

But wait:

That’s right, it’s a delicious rum cake made up to look like a raw bird.

Pretty cool, eh? That bird/cake was designed by Sarah Hardy and you can see more creations on her Facebook page.

The photos all came from Eat Your Heart Out, which is worth your attention.

Celebrity Plonk

Looking for a hobby? Got a few millions to spend? Why not buy a vineyard and bottle your own wine. You might make a profit, even better, you might turn out something good. Now I’m not talking about just licensing your name to somebody so they can put your image on a jug of swill and triple the price. I’m talking celebrities who actually like wine and have a bit of taste and, maybe, some business acumen.

The worst kind of celebrity plonk. Malcolm Young doesn’t drink any more and Angus never did. Bon Scott of course… Still, I might try that Highway to Hell Cabernet someday.

Surprisingly few celebrity chefs dabble in wine production. Mario Batali works with his business partner, Joe Bastianich (son of celebrity chef Lidia), who is a recognized authority on Italian wines, but that’s about it. Perhaps the chefs are concerned that a poor vintage might cause people to doubt their culinary skills or the restaurants they own. Or maybe it’s because these chefs already have sweetheart deals with wineries. Possibly I should mention Martha Stewart here who has partnered with Gallo to lend her name to wines sold through K-Mart. Or possibly not. Oh, and maybe there’s Guy Fieri, if he survives the awful reviews of his restaurant.

One of the few wines in this post that I’ve actually tasted. It was very good. Thanks, Jason Priestly. [more on Black Hills]

There are plenty of actors who have taken up vinting — Lorraine Bracco, Kyle McLachlan, Jason Priestly, Emilio Estevez , Sam Neill, Gérard Depardieu, all own some or all of a vineyard and and a label. Raymond Burr bought a vineyard but died before its first vintages were ready — the label is still run by his partner, Robert Benevides. Fess Parker started the winery and resort that bears his name, which was featured in Sideways.

Sideways wine-tasting at Fess Parker’s place.

Some actors are concerned that their personae may affect the reception of their wine:

Originally the winery was called Smothers Brothers, but I changed the name to Remick Ridge because when people heard Smothers Brothers wine, they thought something like Milton Berle Fine Wine or Larry, Curly and Mo Vineyards,” Tom explains.

On the other hand, Francis Ford Coppola has turned his estate into a movie museum where you can suck down some Black Label Claret while you look at Godfather mementoes.

Drew Barrymore’s Pinot Grigio which is supposed to be pretty good.

Dan Aykroyd isn’t afraid to market his own products and put his name on the label. “They asked me if I’d like to have my own wines…how good is that?” Aykroyd got heavilly involved in the selling of Crystal Head vodka (distilled in Newfoundland) and was dismayed when the Liquor Control Board of Ontario refused to carry it because the bottle was too pretty or something. Aykroyd finally won that fight and his vodka is on sale beside the Pátron tequila that he imports into Canada and his own line of Niagara wines. Aykroyd also has a surprising factoid about wine and celebrities:

Every hockey player I know has an excellent nose and an excellent tongue. Kirk Muller, for instance, has excellent taste. Dave Ellett – he called his dog Caymus [after the famous Napa Valley cabernet] Dougie Gilmour loves to have the big, full red wines. Wendel Clark and John Erskine, too. I’ve had some good wine parties with those guys.

Wow! Wait’ll Don Cherry hears about hockey wine snobs! And I really, really want to try some Wendel Clark In-Your-Face red — but it has to be made from Saskatchewan grapes. Or saskatoons or something. Meanwhile, maybe I’ll sample some of The Great Ones’ No.99 wines, especially since it’s now legal to transport wine across the border into B.C.

Cellar of Valeri Bure’s family winery. Note the hockey stick in the eagle’s talons. Bure says he learned about wine in Montreal.

There are a whole lot of athletes that have gone into the wine business — Tom Seaver, Mike Weir, Mario Andretti, Charles Woodson (who is not allowed to promote his product so long as he is active in the NFL) — just to name check four major sports besides hockey. Peggy Fleming had a winery but it seems to have closed.  And let’s not forget David Beckham who gave his wife a vinyard for her birthday. (I so hope they produce a wine called Posh Spice.) Hmm, no basketball wine. Well, Larry Bird has put his name on a few bottles (“surprisingly good for a white”) but he’s not really involved so far as I can see.

But aside from a few rockers like Vince Neil, the best celebrity wines are produced by actors. Richard Gere has teamed with a major Italian producer to put out what I hear are outstanding wines. And, of course, there’s Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt who are the latest celebrities to buy Miraval, a French château that has seen more than its share of celebrities. Sting (yes, he makes wine, too) recorded there as did Pink Floyd, who recorded much of The Wall at a studio constructed in the basement by jazz pianist Jacques Loussier. In fact, a reportedly excellent rosé from Miraval was named Pink Floyd by Pitt. Pitt and Jolie are to be married at Miraval and then will market their co-produced wines as Jolie-Pitt. They should be very very good.

Food for Thought: Fun with Bacon

Baconhenge with french toast stones. [ via Anticraft ]

 

Bacon bouquet. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat ]

Porkgasm: bacon wrapped sausage stuffed with sausages, etc. [via Porktopia ]

 

Bacon potrait of Kevin Bacon created by artist Jason Mecier. [via LaughingSquid ]

Bacon mug filled with cheddar cheese. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat ]

The Meatship, before and after cooking [via Supersized Meals ]

 

Bacon and chicken narwhal created by Christopher G. [via Incoherent Ramblings ]

 

Baconocopia filled with 20 hot italian sausages, 1 pound of scrapple, 4 pork chops, 1 black pudding sausage and 1 white pudding sausage, pepperoni and salami. [via ThisIsWhyYou'reFat]

Bacon van Gogh by Becky Stern with how-to-make-it instructions at Makezine .

Bacon Demon. One of several entries in a Neatorama contest.

Bacon Skyrim mask also from Neatorama

 

Bacon Mobius strip. [via Peeping Monster]

The End Is Nigh, Philosophize!

Mayan priests celebrating the beginning of new 5000 year cycle, December 19. [Moises Castillo/AP]

Well, somehow it seems like we escaped oblivion yet again. I say again, because this has occurred many times before and certainly will repeat. Now, recognizing that our existence will continue for a while longer, now is the time to sit back with a glass of something or other and ruminate on the notion of the End of the World. But if that’s too much work, then drain your glass while reading Brillat-Savarin’s meditation on the subject from The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy published in 1825:

Meditation 10

The End of the World

…Indubitable signs teach us that this globe has already undergone several complete changes, which have been in effect ends of the world; and I do not know what instinct it is that warns us that there will be still more of them.

Often before now we have believed these revolutions ready to happen, and there are many people still living who once hurried to confess their sins because of the watery comet predicted by the good Jerome Lalande.

According to what has been written on the subject, we seem only too eager to surround such a catastrophe with avenging fury, with destructive angels and the sound of trumpets, and other no less horrifying accompaniments.

Alas, we do not need such histrionics to be destroyed; we are not worth a funeral display, and if God wishes it he can change the whole surface of the globe without such exertion on his part.

Let us suppose, for instance, that one of those wandering stars, whose paths and purposes are unknown to any of us, and whose appearance is always accompanied by a legendary fear, let us suppose, I say, that such a comet flies near enough to the sun to be charged with a terrible excess of heat, and that it then comes near enough to us to cause a six-month period of a general temperature of about 170 degrees Fahrenheit (twice as hot as that of the comet of 1811).

At the end of this murderous period, all animal and vegetable life will have perished, and all sounds have died away, the earth will turn silently until other circumstances have developed other germs of creation on it; and still the cause of out disaster will lie lost in the vast halls of outer space, and we shall have passed no nearer to it than a few million leagues.

This happening is as possible as any other, and it has always been for me a tempting thing to dream upon, and one I have never shunned.

It is a strange experience to follow, in spirit, this unearthly heat, to try to predict the effects of it and its development and the way it acts and then to ask:

What happens during the first day of it, and the second, and so on until the last one?
What about the air, the earth, the waters on the earth, and the forming and mixing and exploding of all the gases?
What happens to mankind, according to age, sex,and strength or weakness?
What about man’s obedience to law, his submission to authority, his respect of other people and the property of his fellows?
What does he do about trying to escape from the situation?
What happens to the ties of love, of friendship and of kinship, of selfishness and devotion to others?
What about religious sentiments, faith, resignation, hope, et cetera, et cetera?

History can supply us with a few facts about the moral reactions; for the end of the world has already been predicted more than once, and even fixed on a certain date.

I really feel ashamed about not telling my readers how I myself have decided all these questions; but I do not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of doing it for themselves. It can eliminate a few insomniac hours for them, and even pave the way for some daytime siestas.

Real danger tears down all social ties. For instance, in the epidemic of yellow fever which struck Philadelphia in 1792 or thereabouts, husbands closed doors against wives who shared their homes, children abandoned their fathers, and other such phenomena were common.

Quod a nobis Deus avertat! [God keep that from us!]

[translated by M.F.K. Fisher]

Thus Brillat-Savarin laid out the conflicts that we are all familiar with when confronted by the question, How do we deal with survival and other people during or after nuclear holocaust? Killer meteor strike? Total climate collapse? Flesh-eating zombie apocalypse? Actually, Brillat-Savarin might have a few more words to say about the last, since his book is about food. I can visualize a chapter on the preparation of brains for example.

A free download of The Physiology of Taste is here, but I recommend the M.F.K. Fisher translation, because Ms. Fisher, a pre-eminent writer about food, lards the book with her own observations on cuisine: The Physiology of Taste: or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

Food for Thought: Eggplant Shoes

Photo by Fulvio Bonavia. [via Nag On The Lake]

Food for Thought: A Good Idea Gone Bad

Also:

 

Blueberry ice cream Oreo [via Mama Joy Mother Rocker]

Green tea ice cream Oreo [via cuhloe.travelerspoint.com]

Serious Eats taste-tests twenty-five different Oreos.

Deep fried oreos [via Nancy Sathre-Vogel]:

 

The Mother of Cuisines

There are several claimants to the title of World’s Premier Cuisine but the most influential cuisine ever created, one that has offshoots in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, is that of Persia. Around 550 BC, the Persians overcame their allies/masters, the Medes, and began a millenium of grand achievements. Among these, of course, was not defeating the allied Greek city-states — the Greeks did themselves in a few years later and Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the 330s BC. Alexander was quite taken with the Persian way of life, something which upset some of his fellow Greeks. 

Persian feast from iranian.com

The Greeks were a pretty rough-hewn people compared to the Persian invaders they resisted and could not compete in certain cultural areas. Herodotus has a little to say about Persian dining:

Of all the days in the year, one’s birthday is held in the most honor. On this day they claim the right to serve a larger feast than on any other day. The more fortunate among them serve the meat of oxen, horses, camels, and donkeys roasted whole in ovens, while the poor serve the meat of small animals such as sheep and goats. They eat few main dishes but consume many desserts, and the latter are not served as one course, but at intervals throughout the meal. The Persians in fact say that the Hellenes are still hungry when they finish eating, since nothing worthwhile is served after the main dinner, and they add, if something extra were to be served, the Hellenes would not stop eating so soon. [The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories]

So, right away, a culinary invention: dessert!

After the death of Alexander, his generals squabbled over leadership of the conquered area. Seleucis finally prevailed over his rivals circa 300 BC. Native Persian rule was restored by the Parthians about fifty years afterward. Parthian Persia lasted 500 years. During this period, the Persians pushed against India in the East and Rome in the west. Meanwhile, Persia had introduced a number of new food items.

Dried fruit market at Tabriz

Perians were particularly interested in fruit (probably for all those desserts) and brought peaches from China and developed oranges and lemons from the native citron. Dried fruits, such as raisins, were a specialty and used in all kinds of recipes. Spices, particularly cloves, cardamom, and pepper, were imported from Asia. Rice became a staple, the Persians developing various aromatic, non-sticky strains. Wheat and both leavened and unleavened breads were very important to the Persians. These items were traded west — Romans liked peaches, disliked lemons. All this was in addition to native Persian ingredients such as saffron, pomegranates, and basil.

The Parthians gave over to the Sassanids in the 3rd Century and Persian culture reached a peak period. Incessant war with Byzantine Empire took its toll, however, and left both nations vulnerable to Islamic Arab armies who, after 650, ruled.

Moroccan lamb tajine with almonds and prunes

The Arabs hadn’t much of a culinary history but they quickly came to enjoy Persian food and carried the cuisine west into North Africa and Spain and north and east into central Asia, then back south into India. A Persian cooking vessel, the tajine, became the favored device of North African cooks. In Tunisia, a tajine is an herbed omelet similar to the Persian kookoo sabzi. In Morocco, a tajine is a stew cooked with spices and meant to be served over rice. This sort of dish had been developed in Persia as khoresht (or any of many other local names) and was taken into India by the Moguls where it was named biryani.

Tunisian tajine and Persian kookoo with dried barberries and cilantro

The muslim invaders of Spain found a dry, undeveloped land that they quickly transformed by building irrigation channels and walled orchards for the fruit trees that they brought from the east along with rice and spices:

In the court kitchens of Córdoba and Granada, cooks could now produce the dishes of high Islamic cuisine. There were the pilaus, made by frying rice or thin wheat noodles and then simmering them in an aromatic liquid until it was fully absorbed. Another family of dishes consisted of delicate dumplings (albondigas) of meats pounded with seasonings. And there were the most characteristic meat dishes: meltingly tender spicy stews. Flavored with a variety of herbs and spices, these stews were cooked in earthenware pots nestled in circular holes in charcoal-heated masonry bench stoves. Some were green with spinach and coriander. Others were golden with saffron. And the most complex were flavored with cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, almonds and raisins and thickened with eggs or breadcrumbs.

Shortly before the Moguls began their expansion, European powers invaded the New World. Cortez found that Mexico had its own culinary tradition. From Prescott:

His meals the emperor took alone. The well-matted floor of a large saloon was covered with hundreds of dishes. Sometimes Montezuma himself, but more frequently his steward, indicated those which he preferred and which were kept hot by means of chafing-dishes. The royal bill of fare comprehended, besides domestic animals, game from the distant forests, and fish which, the day before, was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico! They were dressed in manifold ways, for the Aztec artistes, as we have already had occasion to notice, had penetrated deep into the mysteries of culinary science.

Cortez (the Killer) was a relatively enlightened and far-seeing conqueror. He saw that gold was not going to support his venture by itself and began investigating local agriculture. Cacao beans were being used as currency and Cortez shipped quantities of chocolate and native vanilla back to Spain where they remained royal perogatives for decades. Even after chocolate and vanilla escaped the royal grasp, they never spread out of Europe and were pretty much relegated to desserts. Much more important was the export of native tomatoes and chili peppers to Spain which then spread east. Meanwhile, Cortez introduced peaches, almonds, oranges, grapes, rice, and olives:

The importation of a European fruit or vegetable was hailed by the simple colonists with delight. The first produce of the exotic was celebrated by a festival, and the guests greeted each other, as on the appearance of an old familiar friend, who called up the remembrance of the past, and the tender associations of their native land. [Prescott]

At around the same time, Spain’s Portugese allies were landing on the west coast of Mexico where they off-loaded cargoes of cinnamon from their Sri Lankan holdings. They took back chili peppers and tomatoes, thus transforming the cookery of South East Asia.

In 1962, Mexico’s great writer, Octavio Paz, became his nation’s ambassador to India where:

…he quickly ran across a culinary puzzle. Although Mexico and India were on opposite sides of the globe, the brown, spicy, aromatic curries that he was offered in India sparked memories of Mexico’s national dish, mole. Is mole, he wondered, “an ingenious Mexican version of curry, or is curry a Hindu adaptation of a Mexican sauce?” How could this seeming coincidence of “gastronomic geography” be explained?

Well, by now you know the answer — the link between East and West (and the New World) was Persia. A mole is a preparation of ground spices or a sauce or a finished dish made with a spiced sauce. (Chocolate is only used in a few mole dishes.) The east-west sequence is khoresht/tajine/Spanish estofadas/mole while west-east goes khoresht/biryani/regional curries/mole. When a Sri Lankan curry features the New World’s tomatoes and turkey, you are looking at true fusion cooking.

Chicken: mole, estofada, tajine

Chicken: khoresht, biryani, Sri Lankan curry [recipe links below]

Recipes and credits: khoresht, biryani, sri lankan curry 

There are a good many other Persian influences on Mexican cuisine. Persians were (and are) fond of sharbats = sweetened fruit juices, and Mexico has its agua frescas. Need I add that intermediary North Africa has its own fruit drinks? And there is Spanish rice which has its Persian antecedents. But you can easilly find more correspondences. There has been a recent surge of interest in Iranian cooking with celebrity chefs picking up on the topic. And here’s some more stuff:

Rachel Laudan, “The Mexican Kitchen’s Islamic Connection”
Many, many links to recipes and sources from Pars Times.
Recipes, including a pomegranate khoresht and kuku, from Najmieh Batmanglij.
Batmangli’s Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies
My Persian Kitchen
Javane’s Kitchen discusses the spice mixture advieh, the Persian version of Indian masala or Moroccan ras-al-hanout.
KShar has a huge series of YouTube videos on Persian cooking including this rice tahchin that I mean to try sometime.
Donia Bijan, Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen

Food for Thought: Olympian Nosh

Via dietsinreview.com

Via  neatorama.com

Via Jo Romero

Via Ann Cutting

Via Kirsty Colquhoun

Via channel4.com

Via bedifferentactnormal.com

Via Amanda Rettke

Via ryanseacrest.com

Food For Thought: Möbius Bagel

Video demonstration of how to do it. [via Metafilter]

Famous Lady Desserts

Sometimes great dishes are named after the chefs who create them, like Caesar Salad, or the place where they are served, like Waldorf salad, but often they are named for people that the chef wants to impress or who impress the chef. Desserts are often named after women because sugar-and-spice and all that sexist stuff, but who can object to these sweet treats?

Peach Melba:

The great chef Escoffier created this dessert for his friend Nellie Melba, the Australian opera singer. Nellie loved ice cream but feared that the frozen dessert would damage her vocal cords. Escoffier added peaches to insulate the effect so that Dame Melba could eat ice cream without fear. The first Peach Melba was served in a huge block of ice carved in the shape of a swan to commemorate Dame Melba’s performance in Wagner’s Lohengrin. The raspberry sauce was added in version 2.o.

Nellie seems to have been quite a hypochondriac. At one point, when she was feeling sickly and off her feed, Escoffier invented a dry sweet bread for her called, yes, Melba Toast.

Peach Melba recipe from Nigella.

Pavlova:

Ballerina Anna Pavlova toured New Zealand in 1926 and Australia a few years after. Ever since, the two nations have been fighting over who invented the dessert named after her. The earliest known recipe to be called Pavlova is from a 1927 New Zealand cookbook and is a cake-based trifle rather than a meringue-based cake. In 1934 Australian chef Bert Sachse came up with his version that he adapted from a New Zealand recipe published in 1929. Seems clear to me that some unnamed New Zealand chef (or anonymous housewife) came up with this beauty. Is it still Australian if it’s made with kiwi fruit?

Authentic recipes call for tempering the egg whites with vinegar and adding cornstarch for structure.  New Zealanders can buy ready-made Pavlova shells.

Pavlova recipe.

Poires Belle Hélène:

Another dish created by Escoffier, this time to honor the 1864 Offenbach opera, La Belle Hélène and of course its star, Hortense Schneider, alias La Snédèr, whose prima donna attitude almost sank the performance. Maybe if she’d been easier to get along with this dessert would be called Poires Belle Hortense. 

Hortense and Poires Helene without violets.

The original recipe calls for a candied violet garnish. These are usually replaced by almonds in modern cookery but one cook who tracked down the candy flowers notes:

 I could have lived without them had they not been available, but aesthetically I would have been sorry to loose that Victorian, old-fashioned, garden-flower feel which so complimented the rest of the dessert.

But: pears poached in syrup, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce — flowers if you’ve got ‘em but if not, who can complain?

Recipe.