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.
With all the recent talk about couscous here, I decided to find out what it was. I imagined it was some sort of healthy natural grain or something. All it is is a form of pasta. Empty calories.
Ran into two dads I know well at the market today, all planning their happy day at the grill and doing their shopping. So social and cheerful at the market it was hard to get out of there. Do dads do all of the weekend marketing these days? Seems like it. We'll have only 3 BD family dads here at the HQ with my own dad having died less than a year ago, but this dad Bird Dog will do the cooking because it's fun to do. I do prefer using firewood in the grill instead of charcoal, like camping. I don't understand why people use charcoal - or gas grills - because wood burns very well. I blame marketing. Wood makes good coals but they do not last as long as charcoal. That's the challenge.
A BD daughter has set up croquet. Perfect.
Antipasto: Grilled fennel with lemon (finocchio), grilled eggplant slices, grilled potato slices - grilled then splashed with oil, s and p, and chopped parsley. Yes, raw potato slices are easily grilled. Primi: Couscous with mint and zucchini (Sicilian-style) Secondi: Marinated butterflied leg o' lamb on my wood fire with home-made mint sauce. Charred on the outside (let the flames come, and never remove the fat), almost raw in the middle. Side: Steamed spinach with oil and garlic Good bread with hard crust
Apple slices and cheese for dessert. No, I am not Italian at all even though this is classic Italian/Sicilian cookin'.
All Dads need is a little appreciation, a couple of books, and butterflied lamb on the grill - cooked by Himself, of course. We do Costco for lamb.
I toss the lamb into a small garbage bag in the fridge overnight (we marinate everything in garbage bags) with olive oil, a pile of chopped fresh mint and rosemary, chopped garlic, salt and pepper. Wine is optional.
Next day, toss on grill, and let the herbs etc burn into it. Unless you are Irish, cook only until red in the middle. Overcook it, and you have made a very expensive dog dinner (or an Irish feast). One cool thing about butterflied lamb is that the variation in thicknesses permits all preferences of done-ness. The thick parts should be rare.
Serve with a mountain of mashed potatoes and salad, and a Cote Roti.
If you require mint sauce, do not use the store junk. Make this - it takes 2 minutes, assuming that your mint patch is already overflowing. No dessert - you don't want to ruin the experience. Just go straight to bed with your books, dogs, and wife because you have to get back to work in the morning.
In my opinion, it's the only grilled food that approaches burgers and hot dogs for pure grilling joy.
"Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion to me ever since. You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish. We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big marlin fast because there were sharks after him."
- Ernest Hemingway
I remember when we used those green 40s for .22 target practice down at the farm's dump pile standing up at 40-50 yards. Not so easy to find tasty beers in green glass 40s these days. Shooting glass is more satisfying than shooting tin cans, and the big bottles are a little easier to hit.
I have always liked this ale - or whatever it is. Classic label, too. Give it a try, and think of Hemingway. It's cheap and good, if you can find it.
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
In the eastern Med, it's a major herb. In Turkey and environs, they mix it with yoghurt for a sauce for roast meat and fish. In Sicily, they served boiled taters with chopped mint. Quite pleasant, and an improvement on parsley. No recipe needed.
An occasional Mint Julep is pleasant, too, and I like to dry the leaves coated with sugar for treats on top of ice cream. Have to give those arabs credit for what they added to Med cuisine - but even more credit to the food explorers of the Americas: tomato, potato, squash, maize, avocado, peppers, beans, cocoa, etc., etc. These things were worth more than the gold, in the end, from a culinary standpoint. What the heck did they eat without those things?
I'm not a huge fan of food truck cuisine. I know it's all the rage, though. There are even movies being made about them, trying to cash in on the obvious: food truck popularity and James Gandolfino.
I will grab at least one dirty water dog in the Spring, just so I remind myself that this staple is what it's always been - a nice reminder of life in New York City. The only other food I eat on the streets is the falafel or gyro made by Falafel King over by Lincoln Center. Good food at a reasonable price.
I was unaware that food trucks had a long history in the streets of New York, though. Here's another brief history.
The final stop on our 2-week driving travels was Syracuse. I neglected a lot of Sicilian food in my previous Sicily posts, but I will catch up with that below the fold along with other interesting stuff.
The links to my previous Sicily posts in the recent weeks:
Re-posted because I failed to follow my own instructions and my rhubarb patch bolted. Dealt with it today - a bit too late.
I am a fan of Rhubarb. It's tangy. Best rhubarb dish? Rhubarb cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Rhubarb won't grow much in the southern US. It requires cold winters and does not enjoy long, hot summers. A good thing about the plants is that they are perennial and last for many years. In fact, a rhubarb patch will last forever if you divide the plants every few years. They are fairly heavy feeders and like a good dose of manure regularly. The leaves are so dense that a patch doesn't really grow weeds.
When I was a kid, my Mom had the rhubarb patch right outside the horse barn, and she would routinely toss some horse poop on it. The fresh poop did not seem to bother the rhubarb.
The only problem I have had with growing rhubarb is its bolting and rapidly going to seed. That needs to be prevented by cutting off the flowering stalks promptly before they grow tall.
- My Paris-trained chef friend says that canned or jarred Cassoulet au confit de canard is better than you will ever have time to make. Says it is dee-licious. Recommends the brand with the rooster. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, heat up in oven until it begins to bubble, then some chopped parsley and it's ready.
- Does adding pasta water really matter? With some other excellent tips about pasta.
- Pasta with tuna roe. I had this in Sicily. Very pleasant. Nice with some squirts of lemon on it. I'd guess the best place to get that dried tuna roe is online, like so many good things.
- Sicilian classic primi: Pasta con Sarde. Sarde, sardines, are pretty much the same critter that we often call anchovies in the US, but not the canned brown overly-intense salted variety that most people (not me) hate on pizza. The dish is best with fresh sardine/anchovies, which you can find in some stores, or canned Italian sardines without the tomato. When I was a lad doing manual labor with mostly black and hispanic guys during summers, our favorite sandwich was sardines and onion slices with some mayo, on a hard roll. Maybe a leaf or two of lettuce.
- Another easy Sicilian one, ubiquitous in Sicily - Pasta alla Norma. You can use whatever type of pasta you like for that.
Not as sweet as American ice cream. Mrs. BD likes Pistachio best, I prefer Hazelnut (Nocello - and you'd better say Nocello or they won't know what the heck you are talking about) - but I'll try anything to try to keep my weight up.
I mailed a bottle of Sicilian Limoncello to Roger de Hauteville. Hope he likes this product of his ancestral homeland. Best when chilled in my view. My Italian in-laws are fond of it. Me? Not so much. And Grappa, I feel, is even worse but the Italians love that stuff too.
When it comes to lemon flavor, I can munch a big Sicilian lemon just picked from the tree as if it were an orange. Deliciously sweet zing.
Eggplant is such a ubiquitous food in Sicily that you would not expect that the name, in Sicilian dialect "moolinyan", would also be a disparaging word for those with dark skin.
We had eggplant in Sicily at least three ways:
- We were served it as part of antipasto plates at least twice, sliced fairly thin with skin on and wood grilled and blackened a bit the way I like grilled vegetables.
- We were served it in the form of caponata as a bruschetta, again as part of an antipasto plate. It was served on wood-toasted bread. Fire-toasted bread is the best.
- We were served it at least three times as a pasta sauce. It's a peasant staple. Annoying that they sometimes do it with skin on, but they do. Sometimes they add chopped olives to that, or spicy pork sausage meat or zucchini. Pignoli or raisins, too. It's pretty good but not great. The only great southern Italian and Sicilian foods are their fish. Just my opinion, of course, and I do eat all of this stuff sometimes even though I am not a big fan of pasta courses.
As in the different parts of Italy, in Sicily they use whatever sizes or shapes their local sub-regional version of (non-egg, in S. Italy and Sicily) pasta happen to be, which is made fresh daily at the corner market. It's generally sold out before it's fully-dried. In northern Sicily, a preferred pasta is Busiata. It's a thick, curly, hand-made and hand-curled pasta. There's a career: Busiata-curler.
True story: I broke a front tooth on a hard piece of busiata and spent the rest of the trip with a missing front tooth. I told Mrs. BD that I was imitating a Brit, but also threatened to superglue a pebble in there. "Al dente" indeed. In Italy, they do serve pasta quite hard, pretty chewy with some hard and dry parts. I've broken a few front teeth, the first one playing hockey.
(A reminder about pasta: the authentic Italian way is not to put sauce on top, but to throw the pasta into the saucepan and to just lightly coat the pasta with the sauce. There is never very much sauce, just the flavoring really. After all, it's just a primi, pasta is a flavor-delivery system, but if you are a farmer you need those carbs.) I'll post on some very unusual Sicilian pasta dishes that we had, in the future. Some were more like soups.
I'd vote yes. If they used to be reserved for Brit royalty, they're good enough for me. Furthermore, Mute Swans are not even native to North America. They were imports to grace the ponds of 19th C Long Island robber baron estates - but they are not garden decor. They are royal food.
The painting tells me that working in a royal kitchen was a pretty good gig.
My sis asked me to post our favorite carrot recipe. It's Italian.
Peel a mountain of carrots. Cut them into roughly 3 inch lengths, then quarter them lengthwise - more than quarters for thicker ends of thick carrots. Regular carrot sticks, like a pile of split logs, with enough consistency of thickness to cook evenly.
Toss into lightly salted, lightly-sugared boiling water for several minutes until firm but no longer crunchy. When at the exact right point, toss them into ice water to arrest the cooking, and drain.
Sprinkle the carrot sticks first with red wine vinegar, then sprinkle to your taste with finely chopped garlic (I use a LOT - such that each carrot stick has 5-10 little pieces of garlic on it, but most people don't like garlic the way I do), then toss gently with good olive oil. Marinate thus in the fridge for several hours, or preferably overnight, then serve at room temperature with fresh chopped parsley on top.
It can also be done more properly, and less intensely garlicky, by holding off the chopped garlic and simply burying a bunch of halved or quartered fresh garlic cloves amongst the carrots to marinate with the oil.
Tuna and anchovy have a natural affinity. For those who enjoy intense Mediterranean flavors, here's the spaghetti sauce I made the other night:
Season and sautee in butter (to pink inside) a couple of fresh Bluefin Tuna filets
Dice an onion and sautee in plenty of olive oil until soft. Add 3-6 canned anchovy filets. Throw in a tablespoon or so of diced garlic. If the pan gets dry, throw in a 1/2 cup of the pasta water: you don't want the garlic to brown, you do want the anchovies to dissolve, and you want a sauce. Cut sides from the pit up to around 1/2 cup of Italian olives and toss them in, along with a tablespoon or two of capers. Season. Simmer for a bit, adding pasta water if needed to make sure you have a sauce. Then toss the tuna filets into the saucepan and crumble roughly with a fork to 1-1/2" chunks. Mix and serve over angel hair pasta with a good sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley on top.
You can also use the same sauce as a sauce for tuna filets themselves. Some might add a little tomato paste to the recipe, but I think tomato and tuna don't mix.
A Florentine Steak is generally considered the ultimate of Secondis in Tuscany cuisine, but it can be had in provinces close to Tuscany too.
It's usually a Porterhouse cut, but it's huge because it comes from the Chianina cattle - the tallest and heaviest breed of cattle. One steak feeds several people. They are all free-range, and no feed-lots, so they aren't as juicy as American steaks.
Florentine steak is cooked over a wood fire, and flavored with fresh Lauro - the Mediterranean Bay leaf which is nothing like the American Bay Leaf - and salt and pepper. Simple, and served rare.
It was less encouraging to discover how easily the nose can be led astray by the eyes. For his next stupid human trick, Wysocki produced two jars, one labeled "Food," the other "Body." I was told to sniff each. I actually was one of the few people not fooled by the experiment: I said both jars smelled like vomit. In fact, both jars contained the same chemical compound, butyric acid, which can be perceived as vomit but also as perspiration or Parmesan cheese. Wysocki told me he often conducts this test at seminars and that, on average, 60 percent of the people in the room will claim they enjoy the aroma in the "Food" jar, with most saying it's redolent of Parmesan cheese; but when he asks if anyone found the "Body" jar pleasant, no hands go up the participants invariably claim that it smells of puke or body odor. He mentioned similar work done with wine by Frederic Brochet, a French cognitive psychologist. Brochet has shown that people given a white wine that has been dyed red will describe it exactly as they would a red wine. He has also found that if he serves the same wine in two different bottles, one labeled a cheap vin de table and the other a pricey grand cru, people invariably lavish praise on the latter and scorn the former. Brochet has dubbed this phenomenon "perceptive expectation."
I have no interest in being a "super-taster." I want to continue to enjoy red wines under $25/bottle.
A fine old New York carnivore's delight, on W. 36th St. since 1885. Actually, it was a club before that, back when Herald Square was NYC's theater district.
Keen's is famous for their mutton chops (photo). How do you like your mutton done? (don't say "Dressed as lamb").
I'm getting hungry. Need to get back there soon. Remember when manly pubs were termed "watering holes" and hearty meat-eaters were termed "trenchermen"? The good old days, before wimpy metrosexual scaredy-cat men, and before we had a President who eats arugula. (Confession: I like arugula, and dandelion greens too, but I could happily live the rest of my life without salad or vegetables.)
Everybody in the NY metropolitan area has his own favorite steakhouse, and NYC has tons of them. It's a guy thing. Wives prefer their favorite Italian or French bistros, and those are fine with me too.
I have a buddy who will not eat roast chicken, or any poultry, without homemade Cranberry sauce on the side.
I understand that. I love roast chicken, but it needs some zip. Readers know that I freeze many bags of fresh cranberries in my freezer every fall.
My Dad, who loved to travel around Scandinavia, was a Lingonberry fan. When we cleaned out his house, we found his stash of around ten jars of Ikea Lingonberry preserves. They are as good as cranberry, tart and lively.
I posted on the important subject of the Chef's Knife a couple of months ago.
Pretty much all anybody really needs is a good paring knife, a good bread knife that won't mutilate bread, a Chef's Knife, and a meat carving knife.
It's time to post about meat-carving/slicing knives. We have a few of them around, old fancy bone-handled ones, newer supposedly-effective ones, etc., but I have never had a knife that could slice beef, steak, ham, turkey, or lamb as well as this one. It's like a butter knife through butter, as thin or thick as you want it to be.
The pros buy much more expensive ones, but this one is excellent. The 10" would have sufficed, but what the heck.
I understand now why chefs keep their knife collections in metal cases. They are fine tools.
I'd try any of them, but there's still nothing better than a fat 2" Costco ribeye coated generously with salt and pepper and thrown on a hot iron skillet with some butter. No need to crank up the charcoal. Crusty on the outside, blood-red in the center.
Mashed taters and some garlic spinach on the side (lightly brown garlic in plenty of olive oil, then pile on a mountain of spinach and cover, let it wilt in its own steam, and stir a bit with salt)
In reading the piece, I had to look up sous-vide cooking. I do not like the sound of it.
All Dads need is a little appreciation, a couple of books, and butterflied lamb on the grill - cooked by Himself, of course. We do Costco for lamb.
"Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion to me ever since. You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish. We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big marlin fast because there were sharks after him." 
It's still Spring trout season in the northern hemisphere.
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
Is there any difference, other than the surroundings in which you eat it - and the flavors? 
Eggplant is such a ubiquitous food in Sicily that you would not expect that the name, in Sicilian dialect 
My sis asked me to post our favorite carrot recipe. It's Italian.
Tuna and anchovy have a natural affinity. For those who enjoy intense Mediterranean flavors, here's the spaghetti sauce I made the other night:
Moonshine, as all of our southern readers surely know, is colorless like vodka.
Wine tasting, and taste in general: a quote from 
A fine old New York carnivore's delight, on W. 36th St. since 1885. Actually, it was a club before that, back when Herald Square was NYC's theater district.
I have a buddy who will not eat roast chicken, or any poultry, without homemade Cranberry sauce on the side.
I posted on the important subject of the 
Hot