We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Inside Park has taken over the great hall of St. Bartholomew's Church (St. Bart's) on Park Avenue. Inexpensive, good simple food in a cool location. I have had many jolly lunches there.
AOC near Bleeker St in the West Village. Mrs. BD and daughter rave about it. They say their steak tartare, assembled at your table by server to your specs, is dynamite. Country French, I'd call it.
I have never hunted rabbits (Beagles are the rabbit dog), but most supermarkets and butchers have rabbit. Rabbit is usually braised. I like the Italian ways, with or without tomato but preferably without. Tomato overpowers all other flavors in my view so it's best avoided unless raw and from the garden.
Focused on food after having been on a liquid diet for a week after some unpleasant oral surgery. Now I can at least have soft food. I want some Ricotta Gnudi with Wild Mushroom puree. That's Italian!
Gnocchi is boring and I don't really care for pasta. Gnudi is basically a ravioli innards, cooked naked. A fine Primi.
Most Maggie's Farmers love coffee. Most Americans love coffee, and do not fuss too much about how good it is as long as it is hot. Or iced. I drink plenty of Dunkin Donuts coffee. It's not very good at all, but it's a familiar routine. Just remember the rule "Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks."
My favorite coffees are Espresso (as made in Italy) with sugar. I have yet to find a decent espresso in the US - too watery. I like Iberian Cafe con leche. Also, a cappucino is a good breakfast. What I have enjoyed most, recently, is Arabic (aka Greek, aka Turkish) coffee.
Do you remember percolators? They still sell them, can get them on Amazon. They basically boiled the heck out of your Maxwell House coffee, but nobody cared. You put them on the burner, later plugged them in before Mr. Coffee was invented.
A pal and I have been volunteered to run the bar for a formally-informal Valentine's Day party that our wives' club is putting on. They expect 40 women plus their husbands - all friendly Indians. It's what is termed "heavy cocktails", not dinner.
We decided to keep it simple with just red and white wine, a few interesting beers, bubbly water, and coke. Lemons and limes, and plenty of ice.
Figured a case of red, a case of white, 5 cases of beer.
Then we just learned that the venue for the party (an art museum) does not permit red wine on the premises. Apparently many places have that rule. So I am thinking maybe we should have whiskey, Bourbon, rum, and vodka too - but no mixed drinks other than rum and coke. We don't want to have to be real bartenders because we like to schmooze with all our friends.
Aka Shepherd's Pie. Big family party tomorrow. I am making the innards tonight because these stew-like things are always better the next day. This recipe, basically, with ground lamb and doubling the recipe. I am adding frozen corn (maize to your furriners) and some wine, gibier sauce, and raspberry jelly to it, to enrich it. I'll simmer it 20 minutes longer to reduce the sauce and mingle the flavors before throwing in the peas and corn.
Winter peasant food. Moussaka is great too, same idea. A friend served us antelope moussaka a while ago. Delicious.
It's a cooking textbook and a cookbook. Unlike a recipe book, it teaches the fundamentals and the theory along with the recipe. It's the one text almost every professional and serious hobbyist has on the shelf or, more likely, in the kitchen covered with stains. A reference book.
If I had the time, I would take some serious cooking classes because I love to do justice to the earth's bounty. I know Mrs. BD and I would enjoy one of those 5-day courses in Amalfi or Florence. Or better yet, in some village in France. French country food is the best.
Snowed in now and happily so. House cleaning while mixing up a batch of winter stew for friends and family.
Mountain of sauteed onions, garlic, and celery in bacon fat and butter, all the bacon bits, big browned chunks of pork, chicken, and venison shoulder from the freezer. Lots of carrot chunks. A quart of my frozen gibier jus and a half bottle of cabernet. Half cup of crushed tomato, a few bay leaves, and some herbs. Tablespoon or 2 of raspberry jam and a couple of handfuls of frozen blueberries. A few twigs of snowy thyme from the frozen garden.
Porcinis if I had any dried ones in the pantry, but their flavor is thick in my special jus anyway.
A little thickening if needed.
6-8 hrs in the crock pot to tenderize the meats, then served on Pappardelle with some of my peach preserve on the side. Better yet - just in a bowl with that rich sauce concentrated instead of being spread around on noodles.
How to make Moroccan/Turkish/Greek/Arabian coffee. Delicious stuff even without any spices - just sugar. I prefer it to espresso. You need a dallah or ibrik or whatever it's called to make it properly. Alas, not available at Dunkin or Starbucks. Why not?
A machine can not make it. I think it could become more popular, for sure, than the crappy, watery espresso one is typically served in the US.
The original breakfast roll-up. McDonalds makes breakfast roll-ups, but they are not very good.
I like roll-up "sandwiches" for lunch of supper Especially with apple butter, turkey, mayo, tomato, lettuce. If I were a breakfast-eater, I'd try a jianbing any time.
The best cheese shop, by far, in the New World is the famed Murray's. The US has plenty of cheese shops, but Murray's is the big cheese. Since I enjoy discovering obscure stinky cheeses, a daughter and her boyfriend picked some out for me at Christmastime:
- Ossau-Trate Vieille - Ardrahan from Ireland (Whew! Mighty stinky, like old wet socks which have been left to ferment in a bog. Delicious and tangy.) - Chevre D'Argental - a recently-invented goat brie
That's cheese heaven for Bird Dog.
Murray's main shop is on Bleecker St., but they now have a handy outpost in Grand Central Station in that like totally cool Grand Central Market. Even better, they take online orders. Problem with that is that they have so many varieties to taste that it's difficult to select from a distance. However, you can talk to their cheesemongers on the phone.
Remember the...
Maggie's Rules of Cheese
- Cheese is health food - Stinky cheeses are the zippiest - Cheese has to be offered at room temperature - Never serve a cheese before a meal. Good cheeses are instead of dessert, maybe after a tiny scoop of sorbet. A savoury. A Cheese Board is the thing - a platter, not wood. - Cheese without a wine (or, in Stilton's case, a Port and in some cases, beer or ale) is never all it can be. Murray's recommends their beverage pairings and they know what they are talking about. (For example, their advice for a cheese board parmesan) - Cheese should always be offered with jams, preserves, pepper jelly, or fresh or dried fruits and nuts. Bread and crackers optional.
This weekend we traveled from Northern NJ to Philadelphia to see my cousins. As we approached their house, I said if anyone asked, we took the regular route. She laughed. She noticed a peculiar bit of slang which seems to emanate from my Philadelphia roots. Whenever anyone in my family goes anywhere, we will usually ask "How did you get here? Did you go the back way?" Obviously "the back way" is a shortcut or some alternative route which allows you to avoid traffic or other roadblocks that typically occur on the commonly used roads.
For several years, she insisted this was a saying that was distinctly Philadelphian in nature. This seems to have been confirmed when we were speaking with several friends of ours who were from Philly and she asked "do you know what the back way means?" They all nodded and the conversation then revolved around how "the back way" is defined.
Every region has some kind of slang. In California, it seems every highway has "the" in front of it. "The 405 to the 10 to the 110" was one set of directions I used whenever I was visiting clients. Visiting Boston College, I learned not to order milkshakes or subs, but frappes and grinders.
Being from Philadelphia, it took me years to stop asking for hoagies and asking after "youse guys", but I still go "down the shore" (another phrase which drives my wife nuts - living on Long Island, she always went to the beach and despite the beach being south of her, she "went to the beach"), and "Yo" is still part of my vocabulary.
For my wife, the torture of the regional slang is only made worse by the fact I've managed to convince both my boys to enjoy certain foodstuffs, like the Philly Cheesesteak (we take ours 'wit' - never 'witout') and Taylor Pork Roll (technically a NJ thing, but a staple down the shore). Of course, neither has succumbed to my great longing for Habbersett's Scrapple, the mere mention of which causes her nose to wrinkle in disgust.
What slang and/or foods do our readers enjoy wherever they are?
I have a few friends who have taken trips to France or Italy to attend 5-day to one week hands-on cooking schools. Generally, husband and wife participate although one is usually more interested than the other. Some also offer classes for youth.
Many of the schools run from around noon or 1 through suppertime, when the students eat their creations together. The meal planning and local shopping are part of most courses except for the ones sited on farms.
People have told me that these have been the most fun they have ever had while traveling because it gets you into the culture and away from the "sights."
Just for fun, you can google "tourist cooking schools near Paris," or "in Provence", or "in Italy," etc. As you know, each region of Italy has its own cuisine and its own different produce.
Gee, I still like those foods. And coffee jello with Miracle Whip. Good stuff. For the few Americans who still cook dinner at home (a rapidly-shrinking number partly because of the rise of women with day jobs), what they are fixing is more international and more sophisticated than 30 or 40 years ago.
As she notes, over the past 50 years food in the US has taken up a diminishing proportion of the family budget. Thus the boom in prepared food, fast food take-out, and restaurants in general. McArdle: The Economics Behind Grandma's Tuna Casseroles:
We were the sort of people who did our grocery shopping like a trade caravan moving from oasis to oasis. You started, perhaps, at Fairway Market in the 70s, for produce, and then you moved methodically up Broadway from point to point: Bruno’s for fresh pasta, Citarella for meat, Zabar’s for cheese and deli sundries, H&H for bagels, the Korean vegetable market on the corner for staples you might have forgotten to grab at some earlier stop. Then you cooked. Unless it was her busy season (my mother sold real estate when she was not simmering blanquette de veau), we had a fresh cooked meal from scratch every night.
If this sounds unbearably precious, it wasn’t, because the great blessing of my life is that my mother did not let me become a food snob.
Our popular Maggie's Classic Mommys of America Comfort Suppers series reminds me to do a series on classic old-timey Mommy's Desserts. Most Moms today don't make dessert except for special occasions, but it was a nice touch and popular with the kids.
Furthermore, growing and physically-active kids need sweet and sugary treats - for health, energy, and peace of mind - and to feel the love.
Moms never used to buy desserts. People lived on strict budgets, and only the prosperous went to restaurants other than the hot dog stand, which was fast food. People raised in the Depression, or raised during WW2 or the 1950s and 60s, did not buy stuff, and a linen-napkin restaurant was very special, unlike today. They got off their butts and made stuff - even my Mom with 5 kids. I remember some my favorites:
Coffee Jello with Jiffy-Whip (that's how I learned to love coffee in my youth)
Apple Pan Dowdy or whatever version of that sort of apple thing
Blueberry Cake with Hard Sauce (she'd only make it if we picked the wild berries at the Farm)
Yellow Cake (from the box) with Mocha frosting for birthdays. Mom never bought a cake in her life (except for the annual Buche de Noel)
Indian Pudding for winter holidays, with ice cream or whipped
Bread Pudding +/- rum, and English-style custard or rum sauce on top
Apple Pie, from our apple trees, with ice cream.
Cherry pie, from my great-aunt's amazingly-productive cherry tree.
Home-made vanilla ice cream, hand-cranked machine. Sometimes, with home-made chocolate sauce, sometimes with rhubarb sauce, sometimes with butterscotch stuff out of a can or bottle.
Peach Melba, with canned peaches
Trifle with rum- or wine-soaked pound cake - for special parties
Strawberry Shortcake, made with Bisquick
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Brownies, occasionally with ice cream on top
Rice Pudding with raisins. Might be good with dried cranberries too.
Root Beer or Sarsaparilla Floats in hot weather
I'll get to work on an Official Mommy's of America dessert post, but only if you tell me what some of your favorite Mommys of America home-made desserts were. Since we are read all around the world, the whole world will appreciate, and benefit from, our homey memories.
Either of these tomes is great fun to read, and all chefs use one or the other as foundation for recipes and technique. There is a lot to learn. Chefs know everything, but cooks know how to make it. Chef is architect/engineer, cook is carpenter.
That is our version of regional haute cuisine and I am sure it is government-approved. However, I still prefer a grilled cheese with ketchup. Cheddar, please, white bread, and tomato slices in it. Yum.
Lobster is overrated. It's just a big bug, but I am happy to promote Yankeeland's Clam Chowda, Cod Chowda, and baked beans. Especially Cod Chowda. With hot biscuits on the side.
A classic, cool weather Southern Italian dish. Easy. I am not a big fan of southern Italian, but this is a standard for those many who enjoy this sort of thing. Use chicken thighs only.
Saw this on Food Channel yesterday morning while chained to the stair machine, so at Costco yesterday I picked up a big package of ribs to make today.
Long and low - that's how to do baked ribs.
Those at Costco were not exactly short ribs, but whatever. Ribs are delicious, and for me polenta is as good as grits - or better. Basically, very similar. This has cheese polenta. Nice, but plain is good enough for me if there is a great sauce.
There is roast beef, mutton chops, fish and chips, and steak and kidney pie, but #1 is this good comfort food. But who has these spices in the cabinet?
I have never hunted rabbits (Beagles are the rabbit dog), but most supermarkets and butchers have rabbit. Rabbit is usually braised. I like 
Aka Shepherd's Pie. Big family party tomorrow. I am making the innards tonight because these stew-like things are always better the next day. This 
Snowed in now and happily so. House cleaning while mixing up a batch of winter stew for friends and family.
The original breakfast roll-up. McDonalds makes breakfast roll-ups, but they are not very good.
There will only be 13 or 14 of us this year, so it's easy.
Most kids in New England are raised on 
Saw