Maggie's Farm

Via The Decades-Long Comeback of Mark Twain's Favorite Food - When America's favorite storyteller lived in San Francisco, nothing struck his fancy like a heaping plate of this Pacific Northwest delicacy:

... newcomers to the city, including Twain—straight from the Nevada desert with its pickled oysters and an appalling coffee substitute he dubbed “Slumgullion”—developed a taste for the tiny, coppery Olympias. The Oly, as it was called, was the classic gold rush oyster, a staple of celebrations and everyday meals in San Francisco restaurants and oyster saloons. Olys appeared in oyster soup and stew, stuffed into wild poultry and, of course, raw. Perhaps the most distinctive local dish was a “Hangtown fry” of oysters, bacon and eggs.

Mark Twain loved good food. I've had the Olympia oysters, but prefer the Northeast mollusc. I once ate 72 of them in a contest with a friend somewhere where they had an all-you-can-eat raw bar. I lost, but I still love to eat them.

Photo is an Olympia oyster.

Many claim this is the best Italian antipasto. It is properly made with dandelion greens.

This alone is plenty of lunch for me, but I rarely bother with lunch anyway unless it is a fun or social occasion. The simple recipe here.

Tastes fine, or better, if the flattened meat air-dries a little bit. Maybe half an hour or so.

This one was served to me in a cute little restaurant in Todi last June, sitting under the grape vines. Glass of the local Orvieto - not a great vino but just right with this on a warm day.

We probably don't eat as many hamburgers as we should, here at the Farm, but I am planning a friends and neighbors cookout for around 30 people and thought I would do some research on the best burger recipes.

Seems like a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce per pound, salt and pepper, and some Cuisenarted red onions is the simplest way to prep the meat. My preference for grilling is fatty beef, not lean. From Costco, of course.

My reading informs me that some people stir eggs, herbs, and all sorts of other things into the meat, but that sounds more like meatballs than burgers to me. Plus I like a burger rare, and who wants to eat raw eggs?

My girls spent the weekend practicing skeet and trap at a friend's club (they like guns), then they had a jolly overnight in NYC gallivanting around wherever young folks gallivant these days.

Do they know the NYC subways? Do fish pee in your reservoir? Well, they know the Manhattan and Brooklyn trains anyway. I think they know the cool clubs too.

It's a pleasure to a Dad when your kids get along, because you want them there for eachother when you're gone. My lad is preoccupied with his own pleasant chores, although I could use some spare young muscle.

I spent the weekend doing what I enjoy most: heavy manual labor around the farm's decorative grounds (the decorative parts, not the rough parts). I dedicate a weekend each late Spring (and one day in March) to these seasonal jobs, before it gets too warm and all you want to do is to sit on a Farmall tractor with a cold one.  First the chain saw work, then the clipper work, then the hedge-trimming, then the major weeding. Mrs. BD does the less-heavy weeding and pruning, being more obsessional than I am. And she likes to tell me where to move plants. Not a bad deal to be my wife despite my occasional crankiness.

Then the damn clean-up. It's the work Americans supposedly won't do. Well, I could use some immigrant help to get everything done on my list...

So what's for Father's Day supper? My favorite meal, or close to it - Vitello Tonnato - cold sliced veal with tuna sauce (with arborio rice and salad - arborio rice isn't just for risotto. You cook it in chicken broth). Great, strong flavors in the sauce - capers, anchovy, tuna. Need to make it hours, or a day, in advance. Mrs. BD likes to make it.

That's real Italian.

Here's the Youtube:

An amusing article, and at least 50% accurate: Basta la Pasta!

In the USA, Italian food can range from the sublime to the inedible. Same thing in Italy. Fortunately, Mrs. BD and I know where to go and what to order, in both countries.

Even Domino's pizza beats the Italian stuff 90% of the time. And, as I have said many times, pasta with red sauce is only fit to be eaten to prevent death by starvation. They don't even like it in Italy, except in Naples which is not exactly known for haute cuisine.

I tried them. Chef friend sent me the recipe:

3 lbs. white, eastern or yellow flesh potatoes
1 1/2 lbs. Emmenthaler cheese grated
1 lb or ring of kielbasa - I use Hillshire Farms' pork, beef and turkey kielbasa
1 pint heavy cream
Salt and Pepper
9 x 13 or similar size casserole dish

Peel potatoes, cut into 5mm rounds, boil until firm - not soft. drain set aside cut kielbasa into 5mm rounds
Spray Pam on baking dish. season bottom with salt and cracked black pepper.
layer potatoes, kielbasa, cheese, repeat, final layer should be cheese on top
add heavy cream
cover with aluminum foil bake 350 about 1 1/2 hours
uncover, bake an additional hour or when the cheese has melted all the way through

If the oven is gas it may go quicker
the cheese should gratin on top
let stand 15 minutes to set
cut into square servings

It's still chilly up here in Yankeeland. 30s (F) at night, low 50s at midday. An Irish coffee is good way to begin - or end (or both) a celebratory day.

- 1 or 2 shots of Irish whisky
- 1 or 2 tsp brown sugar (I like that crystallized brown sugar called "Sugar in the Raw")
- strong, hot fresh coffee
- lightly whipped or shaken cream - not fully-whipped cream

Put brown sugar and Irish whisky into a coffee glass, or a wine glass with thick walls. Add hot, strong coffee up to 1 cm (1/3 inch) from the glass rim. (If you are cautious and don't want to risk cracking the glass, leave the spoon in the glass to absorb some of the heat.)
Carefully add the lightly whipped cream over the back of a tablespoon.

Alternatively, you can make it the way some Irishmen I knew in NYC did it: Pour 1/3 of your cup of deli take-out coffee into the gutter, and splash some Seagram's 7 into it to fill the cup. Tastes disgusting, but it is warming and the right combo of upper and downer.

Now to marinate our leg of lamb (7 lbs., bone in) overnight. Sounds like Easter dinner, not brunch. Roasting it medium-rare is always a trick, even with the meat thermometer. 130-135 is about right, but the dang thing always keeps cooking after you take it out. Nobody likes brown lamb except the dog.

We served only two side dishes at dinner last weekend: Wild Rice with Apple and Cranberry, and simple String Beans.

At our house, we only eat those skinny string beans that come fresh in packages. French String Beans, Haricot verts. No strings in them. We eat them like candy. Costco sells them in big packages, and our supermarket overprices them in smaller bags. We steam them all up and they are good green food for a week in the fridge. I feel that the full-sized string beans that I was raised on are not really fit for human consumption.

We do them the Italian way:

Steamed for a few minutes until tender but still bright green. Drain, then tossed in the best olive oil you have, with sea salt. In Italy, simple is the best when the ingredients are the best.

Delicious either warm or room temp.

I suppose I was raised on some foods you might term "Hotdish" - Shepherd's Pie, Tuna Noodle, Macaroni and Cheese, Lasagna, Seafood Casseroles, and the like - but it's not a New England term.

As his main course offering for our game dinner, my hunting pal brought his Oryx Moussaka over in his 18 qt. Nesco roaster oven. Just carried it into the kitchen and plugged it in to keep it hot.

(Being a Louisiana-born-and bred guy, he also made 4 Pecan Pies from his Mom's recipe. Made the crusts, too)

His Moussaka came out great, even though he had never made it before. (At our guy dinners, the men cook, the womenfolk are guests, and a helper cleans up. Mrs. BD does the flowers, of course.)

Point being, I'd never seen these roaster ovens before. Very handy. Waring makes a cheaper one.

If your oven is full, these seem to function as a spare oven, large enough for a 16# turkey, and their portability, their ability to keep food warm, and the inability to burn food in them, are useful features.

Can they give you an oven-like crusty or gratin surface if that's what you want? No.  To brown the top of something, you have to put the enameled insert under the broiler for a few minutes.

Do any of our readers use these things?

One of our hors d'oevres for a dinner we hosted on Sat. night was duck foie gras on baguette slices.

D'Artagnan terms this stuff "sinfully rich."

It is better than ice cream, thanks to the ducks.

Readers know that, in Southern tradition, "birds" means Bob White quail. I am not talking about four-and-twenty blackbirds.

Even if you don't have any around, you can get semi-boned (Hey, Bird Dog -have you ever boned a quail?) quail through D'Artagnan. Semi-boned means they leave the bones in the legs and thighs. Great first course.

One of the best first course recipes in the world: Boned Quail Stuffed with Foie Gras. Instead of pate de foie gras, you can use seared chunks of foie gras.

You can do a similar recipe with pheasant, adding some bread crumbs, onion, and apple chunks to the stuffing along with the chunks of seared foie gras. A semi-boned pheasant is good, too.

Your dinner guests will return for dining like this, even if they don't like you.

Regarding gelato, all you have to do is point at random. It's all good. The rule is just one gelato per day.

A friend is visiting northern Italy for the first time, in a couple of weeks. Great time of year to go. Asked for food advice. Here are a few of my suggestions (bearing in mind that no menus will be in English):

Antipasto

- Any norceria platter
- Any crostini - every place has its own versions
- carpaccio - delicious. Usually served on dandelion greens. Sprinkle a little oil on top.

I Primi

- pappardelle al funghi
- Any gnocchi
- Any polenta, but especially al tartuffo
- Any risotto
- Sometimes you can find a Spaghetti alla Bolognese - it's nothing like the American version
- Bean soup/stew with pasta - Pasta e fagioli
- in springtime, Risi e Bisi if they have it on the menu (rice and fresh peas in broth - a Venetian classic primi)

Secondi

- Tuscan steak (they are very proud of that Bistecca alla Fiorentina, generally grilled on a wood fire with lauro or rosemary - rare is best)
- Venetian-style liver (fegato)
- Brasato - Braciole (stewed beef)
- Veal with tuna sauce (vitello tonnato)
- Ossobuco
- Cinghiale (wild boar) - however they make it is great
- Fish and seafood. Easy to forget that Florence, for example, was a major seaport before the Arno silted up. So was Pisa. (One way Florence became wealthy in the Renaissance was by importing shiploads of wool from Britain and turning it into nice stuff. Also, from being a financial center, of course.)

Another tip: Order one antipasto, one primi, and one secondi - and share them. That's really all you need. They are used to people doing that these days. They understand "to share."

Another: If you want a vegetable or green, like spinach with garlic or asparagus, or a salad, it's a separate order as a side dish. In Italy, a secondi is never contaminated with random vegetables on the plate. Except, sometimes, roast potato. You are supposed to savor just one taste at a time.

Another: Barbera is the local and popular table wine up there. Cheap and pretty good.

Feel free to add your northern Italian favorites in the comments -

Here's our game menu for this year's dinner for 24-28 friends that I and two of my buddies put together every March (we guys do all the cooking). We try to vary the menu each year.

We'll have fires in the fireplaces, and Mrs. BD will do the flowers. I think we'll do two tables for 12-14 this year, and, as we often do, change the place settings after the main course to mix things up.

Hors d'oevres: Smoked pheasant, wild venison filet on crouton with horseradish sauce, maybe something else too

Main buffet: Moussaka made with Oryx (yeah, my buddy shot an Oryx and has a freezer-full, and we are certain nobody here has ever had Oryx Moussaka), wild venison Bourguignon with noodles, rare sauteed Mallard breast with olive and cherry tomato gibier sauce on wild rice.

Dessert: Our traditional Apple Crisp with vanilla ice cream

After-dessert Cheese boards:  A good assortment of France's stinkiest, unpasteurized cheeses and baguette with walnuts, dried fruit, grapes, and sliced pears.

I have some family visiting midday on Saturday en route to pay homage to a newborn member of the clan, and figured we'd provide soup and sandwiches for the crew.

Somebody happened to mention turkey-mango sandwiches to me. It's a wonder how mangos have taken over in the supermarkets in Yankeeland, for good reason (I'll give y'all my mother in law's mango salad recipe some other time.)

Here are two versions, but I suppose one can mix and match. These could either be sandwiches or roll-ups (I have come to prefer roll-ups - less messy, less bread, and you don't need to eat as much if you cut them into 3" lengths).

Thin slices of fresh mango
lettuce
slice tomato
swiss cheese or provolone
avocado slices
couple of turkey slices
mayo

or

slices of Stilton
slices of turkey
arugula
fresh mango, mango salsa or mango chutney
lemon juice

or (if one is fresh out of mango)

turkey slices
any cheese
lettuce
tomato
very thin apple slices
apple butter on one side (or prune butter. I love both of those old-timey things.)
mayo on the other side

You can't get these at Subway. OK. I am hungry now.

Looks like a good place to try:

You go to a small town in Umbria and find your way to some modest trattoria, or maybe a market with a few tables. Then lunch arrives, and the top of your head comes off. Meanwhile everybody around you has their elbows on the table and is acting like food this good is no big thing. And you say, why not? Why couldn’t we have a place just like this back home?

There are a few Italian pasta dishes that I am very fond of. One is the old reliable spaghetti - best made with spaghettini, I feel - with garlic and oil, with parsley on top. But the best is Pappardelle al Funghi.

The fungus, of course, has to be Porcini, either fresh if you can get it (and afford it), or dried. Dried is almost better, because you use the soaking water in the mix, and the flavor of the dried is more intense. I cannot find the exact recipe that I make on the internet, but it's something like this.

However, I don' know why it needs all that wine and chicken broth. Too soupy. Also, no Parmesan - no reason to add another flavor to distract from the earthy richness of the Porcini.

As you know, you never serve a sauce on top of pasta - you toss the pasta in the hot pan with the sauce. Photo below looks like it's made with fresh porcinis not cut quite into 2" pieces, and somebody forgot to garnish it with chopped parsley and some pepper. Otherwise...

Many would claim that Sicily is not really part of Italy (they even speak Sicilian, not Roman Italian). However, the tiny country of Italy contains many regions with separate cultures, genetics (northern Italy is full of lovely blondes), foods, languages - parts of northern Italy speak German or French or Veneto - and accents, etc. that it seems like an artificial nation. Well, it is.

Languages of Italy. Many Italians speak a regional language or dialect, maybe plus the official Roman Italian, especially if they are urban.

The nation turned 150 years old in 2011, so it is still young and culturally divided.

Anyway, this post was meant to offer a sample of classic Sicilian cooking. We had something very much like this Swordfish outside Agrigento two years ago. However, the filet of swordfish, sliced horizonally, was neither pounded nor rolled - just stuffed with the herbs and pignolis, with the other slice laid on top before baking.

It was topped with a wine and white raisin sauce and served on a bed of - you guessed it - Italian-style mashed potatoes (ie with oil not butter, plus garlic). That's Sicilian cooking.

Sicily is on our list of places to spend more time in the future. Due to its relative poverty and its corruption (from what I have read, it's still basically run by the Cosa Nostra, and what we would term "sociopathy"in the USA is normal there), it hasn't changed much in the past century.

If you go, don't forget the Cannolis (they are a Sicilian dessert).

Photo on the right is a couple of charming Sicilian gals

Tried a good Italian restaurant the other day, and I decided to see what they could do with a simple Braciola - Braciole - (made with flank steak in this case) with a Barolo sauce.

Readers know that I am an obnoxious Italian food snob, but it's not my fault. I never ate Italian growing up, so I never heard of spaghetti and meatballs. Between Mrs. BD's cooking, and many trips to Italia, the two things often thought of as Italian in the US that I can do without are tomato sauce (this good place had no tomato sauces on the menu), and pasta (mostly, with rare exceptions for clam or porcini, or near-starvation with nothing else in the pantry). Another tip: never order a pizza in Italy. Terrible stuff. Only Americans know how to make good pizzas. Furthermore, you can get a better bruschetta in America than the lame, stingy ones you get in Italy.

Italian red wine sauces for meat are simple: briefly sautee a glass of good wine, a hunk of butter, salt, and a little flour to thicken. In Sicily, they add some raisins to it and a little sugar. That is pleasant.

They served the Braciola on a bed of soft, creamy polenta with a splash of oil on it. I think there was a touch of parmesan in the polenta. These are the simplest of foods. For me, that's Italian cooking. You cook that Braciola until it almost falls apart.

At our house, we make polenta as a primi, firm and knife-cuttable with a sauce on top - black truffle or Porcini - but this saucy polenta was a good choice by the chef. Soft polenta. My chef friend disparages firm polenta, but I think it's fine for the right purpose and it's real Italian - thanks to the American Indians who genetically-engineered corn (maize, to you in Yorba Linda Europe).

Like Italian potatoes, tomatoes, squash, polenta (corn meal) were all recent imported products from the New World, and their risotto from Asia. Pasta? It's a topic of debate.

Feel free to tell me how much you like spaghetti and meatballs, and soggy penne with red sauce!

Dining in a clam shack can be cheaper, and far better, than eating at home. I love rickety little clam shacks. This one has a more extensive menu than the usual. Place is famous for the best Lobster Rolls in the world (in their opinion).

Why Sea Scallops cost more than Bay Scallops, these day, is a puzzle to me. The little Bay Scallops are much tastier, but the big Sea Scallops make a better presentation, I guess. Lots of people just don't know their seafood. I don't know much, but I think I know my seafood.

Beurre Blanc is for seafood. Dynamite simple sauce for baked cod, haddock, scrod, or scallops. The trick seems to be the (unnecessary for flavor, but useful for the process) dollop of heavy cream in the saucepan.

Our hunting friends all must have pheasants in the freezer at this time of the year.

This may be my favorite Pheasant recipe: Pheasant Braised with Red Cabbage and Apple. I plan to make some soon. A simple dish, but a treat for dinner guests. The meat must be pink in the middle but the skin crispy. Forget the legs - pheasant legs can only be consumed in a confit.

I like to throw a splash of reduced gibier sauce on top, to finish it off. A Pinot Noir is a good idea too - a white wine is always wrong with poultry and/or game birds.

If you have a favorite Pheasant recipe, let us know.