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Summer News and Notes
(First Published in the St. Augustine Record on 21 August 2008)
Chicken and WHAT?
While visiting college friends recently in Washington, D.C., I stopped in for a meal at Marvin, a new restaurant in the up-and-coming U Street Corridor that once thrived as one of the nation's premier centers of African American culture and is now having fresh life breathed into it with new jazz clubs, galleries, boutiques and restaurants popping up everywhere.
What drew me to Marvin (which is named in honor of the late Soul singer Marvin Gaye) was the most interesting item on the menu: chicken and waffles. Lovers of soul food may be familiar with the whimsical dish that was popularized at Well's Supper Club restaurant in Harlem. According to tradition, people stumbling out of jazz clubs late at night were hungry but were tardy for dinner and too early for breakfast, so the cooks at Well's came up with chicken and waffles to satisfy both cravings. The dish was then taken cross-country to Los Angeles, where Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, which has a loyal following by celebrity fans, made the combination a mainstream American sensation. The dish sometimes consists of a waffle topped with chopped chicken meat and gravy, but by far, the most common preparation is fried chicken on a waffle.
The latter is the version you will find at Marvin, where it is expertly prepared and artfully arranged on a plate with a side of greens. I wasn't really sure what to expect from my initial bite, as this was my first time ordering the dish anywhere, but what I found was an extraordinary combination of complementary flavors and textures -- the savory, crispy chicken melding in my mouth with a warm maple syrup-topped morsel of buttered waffle. It was down-home goodness.
If you can't make it to Marvin, try making it at home the next time you aren't sure whether you've got a hankering for breakfast or something heavier -- it's really the best of both worlds.
Marvin
2007 14th Street ,Washington, D.C.
(202) 797-7171
Authentic Pie
It would be a rotten crime not to mention to you the gem of a pizzeria I discovered in the East Village of New York City this past June. It's called Una Pizza Napoletana, and that's exactly what it is. If you are looking for the most traditional Neapolitan pizza on this side of the pond, hotfoot it to this small, casual restaurant owned by Anthony Mangieri, a young pizzaiolo who spent time in Naples perfecting his craft. There are only four pizzas from which to choose -- each one wood fired and baked in a custom-made brick oven, but you are guaranteed to leave very happy no matter which you choose, as long as you get there early enough. The place closes down when they run out of fresh dough.
We ordered a Margherita and watched as Mangieri performed his magic in front of us, as he lovingly does with every single pizza ordered at his eatery, one by one. With a deft touch and the finest, freshest ingredients, he assembled our pizza and placed it in the oven as the wood hissed and flared, adding its own smoky, slightly charred personality to the masterpiece. We devoured it in a matter of seconds, praising its crisp yet chewy crust, all the while planning our next trip to New York City.
Una Pizza Napoletana
349 East 12th Street, New York, NY
(212) 477-9950
The Great Cookie Caper
(First Published in the St. Augustine Record on 17 July, 2008)
Cookies are humble, comforting treats no kid (or kid at heart) can resist. We have Sixteenth Century colonists to thank for bringing cookies to America, though the term “cookie” did not appear until later, when the Dutch word koekje was Anglicized into “cookie.” Early colonial cookies included gingerbread and macaroons, but soon enough, all manner of ingredients, some New World and some Old, were being added to the mix. Today, such things as peanut butter and M & M’s are common ingredients found in the cookie aisle. Yet, the modern cookie, loaded with sugar and butter, did not appear until the 1800s when America began its love affair with these simple indulgences.
Though everyone seems to have their preferred type or recipe, perhaps no other cookie is as celebrated in our country as the chocolate chip version. In fact, it is estimated that half of all cookies baked in America today are chocolate chip cookies. Interestingly, the recipe for this cherished cookie came about by accident in 1933 when Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, dropped chocolate morsels into her famous sugar cookie batter. The details of the origin of the chocolate chip cookie are unclear because there are two versions, one by the Nestlé Company (now the owner of the Toll House cookie recipe) and the Toll House Inn. In Nestlé’s version, Ms. Wakefield ran out of baker’s chocolate for her chocolate cookies and substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, hoping it would melt evenly into the batter. It didn’t, and what resulted was a cookie with chocolate “chips” that became so popular that even the soldiers stationed abroad became obsessed with them when their families sent them care packages filled with the cookies. As word of and demand for the cookies spread, its popularity was cemented. In the Toll House Inn’s version, semi-sweet chocolate dropped from a shelf and shattered in the sugar cookies’ mixing bowl, and not wanting to waste the batter, Ms. Wakefield, who was a well-regarded baker and already had her own cookbook at the time, baked and sold the accidental cookies to approving patrons, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Recently, I asked a number of friends to make the supreme sacrifice of participating with me in an unofficial blind taste-test of 24 locally baked cookies of all shapes, sizes, and types. We scoured several local shops, restaurants, and bakeries in search of the perfect cookie. I know, it’s a tough task, but somebody’s gotta do it. Though perfection can be unattainable, a few came pretty close. Here’s what we discovered:
Best Chocolate Chip Cookie:
If you are looking for a cookie loaded with deep, rich chocolate, look no further than Claude’s Chocolates. The artisanal chocolate shop on Hypolita Street in downtown St. Augustine has two types of cookies they bake, and true to their specialty, chocolate is the supreme star of both. There is certainly nothing plain about their chocolate chip cookie, which comes studded with their homemade semi-sweet chocolate. Try heating it slightly in the oven at home for a crispy, gooey cookie experience. But for true chocolate lovers, splurge and go for the double chocolate pecan cookie, a rich and decadent combination of semi-sweet chocolate dough and dark chocolate pieces with just enough pecans to give it a nutty, crunchy texture. This cookie, which reminded us of a crispy brownie, leaves you in a semi-conscious state of euphoria for hours.
Best Traditional Cookie:
Just around the corner from Claude’s Chocolates on St. George Street, the Bunnery serves up a number of old-fashioned cookies hot from their oven. We sampled rich and buttery pecan shortbread cookies, intensely flavored ginger cookies, crumbly peanut butter cookies, and simple sugar cookies. But the clear winner was the delicious oatmeal raisin cookie, which had a buttery flavor complimented with hints of vanilla and cinnamon and enough plump raisins and rolled oats to hold the cookie together. If you can’t decide on which cookie to sample, do like we did and buy one of each!
Best Original Combination Cookie:
Out at the beach, Café 11 bakes homemade cookies daily and surprises diners with a variety of interesting ingredient combinations. We fell in love with the chocolate chip-coconut-macadamia cookie which juxtaposed tradition (gooey chocolate chips) with laid-back coastal attitude (coconut flakes and macadamia nut pieces). This addictive cookie displayed everything we were looking for: soft texture with a crispy ridge and bottom—perfect for dipping in milk; rich, complimentary flavors that hit us with childhood nostalgia; and a balance of both lightness and substance on our fingers and in our mouths. If you are looking for a completely satisfying cookie experience, this is it.
Postcard from Panama
(First Published in the St. Augustine Record on 15 May 2008)
Dear Readers,
Greetings from paradise! It’s a rough life down here near the equator—all these pesky Panamanian waiters pushing piña coladas and deliciously fresh ceviche in our faces, all the while insisting we take it easy and nap in the afternoons. Don’t they know we’re on vacation?
After a few days of snorkeling and several uninterrupted hours of lounging in hammocks in the San Blas islands, we flew back to the mainland and drove west to the spectacular Chiriquí Highlands. We based ourselves in the town of Boquete, which is the epicenter of Panama’s coffee industry. The warm days, cool nights, volcanic soils, and rugged slopes of the mountains and cloud forests are ideal for producing some of the world’s best coffee. Some of Boquete’s coffee estates have won numerous awards for the high quality of their products. In addition, many of the coffee plantations in the area are also known for the wildlife they support, since a good number of them use only minimal applications of chemicals (if any) to ward off pests, preferring to use birds as a deterrent. We are staying at the lodge at Finca Lérida, which is home to hundreds of bird species, including the elusive Resplendent Quetzal. People travel from across the globe hoping to get a peak of a quetzal in the cloud forests above Boquete. We were lucky enough to spot four quetzals on our first hike alone, including a beautiful male, which is more brightly colored than the female and has a dazzling tail it uses to attract a mate. Finca Lérida is home to so many bird species that it is even suggested in Robert S. Ridgley’s A Guide to the Birds of Panama as a place not to be missed. But of course, the estate isn’t just a great place for bird lovers, it is also a top destination for those of us looking for an excellent cup of coffee and an intimate introduction to the daily workings of a traditional coffee plantation. Finca Lérida’s award winning coffees are roasted daily and can be sampled on site at their charming café.
While staying at Finca Lérida, we were treated to their unique version of Tres Leches, the popular Latin American cake that decadently combines whole milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk for an irresistible ending to any meal. In this adaptation, espresso is added to give unexpected depth and flavor to this delightfully engaging dessert. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have!
For more information about staying at or visiting the coffee estate, please visit www.fincalerida.com.
Tres Leches (Three Milks Cake)
(Courtesy of the Collins Family, Finca Lérida Coffee Estate, Boquete, Panama)
For Cake:
6 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk
2 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. vanilla extract
For Cream:
1 cup espresso coffee
1 can Evaporated Milk
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 ½ cup whole milk
For Frosting:
3 egg whites
1 cup sugar
3 cups water
1/4 cup of light corn syrup
For sponge cake: In mixing bowl, beat the egg whites at low speed first and then increase the speed to high until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually, letting it dissolve before adding more, and continue beating until stiff peak forms. Add the egg yolks one by one, beating well after each addition. Mix flour with baking powder and add to egg mixture, alternating with milk. Finally, add vanilla. Pour this batter in a large cake pan, greased and floured, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes at 350° or test for toothpick to come out clean.
While cake is baking, prepare the cream. Mix everything together in a blender and pour over the sponge cake immediately after baking.
For frosting: Place water, sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan and bring to a boil. In the meantime, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Add the hot syrup in a steady, slow stream and continue beating at high speed until all the syrup has been added. Beat until frosting is no longer warm.
For serving: Once the soaked sponge cake is at room temperature, cool in refrigerator. Once cold, spread the frosting and refrigerate. Serve chilled.
Nothing Says April Like Throwing a Fish
(First Published in the St. Augustine Record, 17 April 2008)
Last month’s Rhythm ‘N’ Ribs festival, an annual celebration of barbeque, the Blues, and everything else that’s good about the South, was again so hugely successful that it dawned on me that there is probably nothing better to bring people together than good food. Get a staunch Democrat and a fierce Republican in a room together and watch them tangle, but have them share a plate of pulled pork that was slow cooked all night long and all politics will be quickly forgotten as they help each other to seconds. Now that’s bipartisanship! Heck, I bet if people ate more peach pie together, we would have less armed conflicts in the world. Ok, that last bit might be a stretch, but seriously, who can feel angry when you are eating freshly baked pie, of all things? Even stuffy office meetings become instantly more tolerable when the boss buys a pizza or a dozen donuts.
So it’s no wonder that so many food festivals punctuate the calendar every year, and nowhere do people like to gather and share a meal together more than here in Dixie. It seems like south of the Mason-Dixon line people just can’t get their fill of church picnics, county fairs, and food socials all in the name of fellowship, good times, and commemorating our culinary heritage. It’s even said that it’s just about impossible to win a local election in most parts of the South without hosting a campaign barbeque! My favorite event in St. Augustine is the annual Great Chowder Debate, in which area restaurants compete for the title of best local chowder (Seafood, Minorcan red, and New England white are among the usual categories) with the money going to the Shriners organization. (I’m pretty partial to Kyle’s Seafood’s crab bisque and the blue crab and corn chowder from the South Beach Grill.)
It seems like everyone is getting in on the act these days. All over Florida, communities are celebrating their local foods with gusto, and boy can the Sunshine State throw a party. Fellsmere holds a Frog Leg Festival every January, while Tampa throws a Flan Fest in February. Folks in Plant City are treated to a strawberry festival in winter and a Pig Jam in November. That same month sees Bradenton’s citizenry enjoying the Taste of Manatee (the county, not the protected marine mammal!), while Pinellas County holds a Death by Chocolate festival in December (I’m sure it’s sweeter than it sounds!). People go wild at July’s Mangomania Tropical Fruit Fair in Pine
Island, let off some steam at Jacksonville’s Food Fight in June, and try not to offend each other at Delray Beach’s Garlic Fest in February. As you can see there is something for every kind of food lover imaginable.
But one particular food festival caught my eye recently: the Interstate Mullet Toss. What is a “Mullet Toss,” you might ask? It’s a spirited event held each April in Pensacola in which participants who pay the $15 entrance fee compete to see who can throw a one-pound fish the farthest. The bizarre contest is sponsored by the Flora-Bama Lounge, a bar whose property rests halfway in Alabama and halfway in Florida and bills itself as “The Last Great American Roadhouse.” Mullet, the much-maligned bottom-feeding creature (it’s the name of a bad haircut too) that is plentiful in Florida waters, is the only fish with a gizzard and some people believe that it has magical powers. In Mississippi, it is highly revered for saving the populace from starvation during the Civil War and many there call the smoked fish version “Biloxi Bacon.” Participants in the “Mullet Toss” throw the fish from Alabama
across the state line into Florida and the longest throws are rewarded with trophies, T-shirts, and general merriment. Animal activists, relax—the fish are already dead when being thrown and they are fed to birds afterwards. The registration fees are donated to local youth charities, so it’s all in the name of fun and service. Who knew playing with your food could be such a fine time and good for your community too?
The Interstate Mullet Toss
Held Every April,
Pensacola, FL(This year’s event is April 25-27, 2008)
For more information on the event please visit http://www.florabama.com/ or call (850) 492 0611.
Raw Food Turns Up the Heat
(First Published in Palm Coast Lifestyles, March 2008)
When I told a few friends I was going to dine at one of the local raw food restaurants, some of them replied with wonder. “So let’s get this straight—you’re going to pay someone not to cook your food?” I have to admit that the concept seemed a little odd to me the first time I heard about it, but the more I thought about it, the more it became obvious that the movement was really just a natural extension of vegetarianism. Several raw food restaurants had already sprung up in New York and L.A. a few years ago, but I wasn’t sure if Northeast Florida was quite ready to sink its teeth into the concept when the first eatery of its kind, The Present Moment Café in St. Augustine, opened last year. I consider myself pretty open-minded when it comes to trying new foods and my travels around the world have given me the opportunity to eat some things that might frighten most people—guinea pigs and alpaca meat in Perú, grub worms in South Africa, and larvae in Japan, among other things—and eating raw vegetables seemed fairly mundane in comparison. “I love salad,” I assured myself. “What’s the big deal?”
The concept of raw foodism is one which espouses the consumption of uncooked and unprocessed foods (primarily fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and some unpasteurized dairy products, although some raw diets also feature raw fish, meats, and eggs) as the primary source of calories in an individual’s diet. The movement has become somewhat popular in recent years, even spawning a documentary (inspired by Morgan Spurlock’s award-winning film “Supersize Me”) called “Supercharge Me,” in which writer/director Jenna Norwood “goes raw” for 30 days and viewers witness her weight loss and physical makeover. There are many different schools within the raw food movement, some more strict than others. For example, vegan raw foodists eat no fish, meat, eggs, or dairy, while instinctive raw foodists will eat meat in addition to the foods of the vegan diet, but will usually avoid dairy products. Primal raw foodists favor fatty meats, vegetable juices, and dairy products, yet “fruitarians” include fruits, nuts, seeds, and sometimes sprouted grains and legumes in their diets.
Despite the variety of philosophies available to those interested in trying this culinary concept, there exists one critical principle that binds all raw foodists together. Namely, food must never be “cooked” beyond 120 degrees Fahrenheit (some even say 110 degrees Fahrenheit), though dehydration is a common way to process some foods into crackers or thin breads. In addition, raw foodists generally believe that the greater the proportion of raw food consumed in one’s diet, the greater the nutritional benefits one will receive. They hold that raw foods contain a more abundant number of enzymes and nutrients than cooked or processed foods, and that the enzymes found in raw foods are also more easily digested and used by the body than those in cooked or processed foods. Some of these claims have been disputed in recent studies, which point to the fact that digestive enzymes are very sensitive to pH levels and many raw foods are active at higher pH levels than those found in the stomach, perhaps making the digestion of raw foods more difficult on the body. Some critics also argue that humans’ teeth and jaws, which were originally designed to chew raw foods, have evolved toward a disposition more favorable to cooked foods. Raw foodists point to the high levels of dental malocclusion among societies that cook their foods as evidence that humans are predisposed to eating raw foods, but dentists counter that malocclusion is an inherited trait and therefore not necessarily related to diet. Finally, raw foodists assert that their diet offers an overall healthier approach to eating, weight loss, and sickness prevention, though these claims too have been disputed or unsubstantiated.
Undeterred by the cloud of scientific arguments in favor and against the raw food movement, I was ready to give it a try. My first stop was the aforementioned Present Moment Café, owned by Yvette Schindler, a dedicated raw foodist herself whose diet consists of approximately 80% raw food. Three years ago, Schindler was inspired by the book Natures First Law: The Raw Food Diet by David Wolfe to give raw food a try and she has never looked back, feeling healthier and more energetic, even less anxious and tense ever since, as if she “had just gone home.” She describes the book as “radical” and containing “powerful statements” about nutrition and health, and she credits the book and her new diet with helping her arthritis subside, strengthening her immune system (she hasn’t been sick in three years), improving the quality of her sleep, and brightening her overall outlook. “I sensed a profound transformation and I wanted to share it with my community,” Schindler told me. “This is a kitchen with a mission.” Her restaurant (no fish, meat, or dairy) emulates many cooked food dishes, such as burgers, tuna salad, and pasta, because that’s what she and her clients were raised on. “This is a restaurant—I can’t just sell salads. Sometimes I crave a good patty melt. I wanted a menu that reflected things my customers would want to eat, but in a healthier format,” she commented. “We’re just moving one step at a time toward a healthier model of eating.” She views the raw food movement as an eco-friendly one because it not a chef-driven cuisine, but rather one that nature designed. Though she was adamant that it was “not a religion, not a political statement, just an ancient way of eating,” she described the raw food concept as a “peace movement” because it was less in conflict with the Earth. “We’re trying to be as inclusive here as possible,” she insisted. “Sixty-percent of my customers are meat eaters. I just want them to leave here smiling and feeling a little bit healthier.”
The Present Moment Café has a hushed, yet relaxed atmosphere and is tastefully decorated with cheerful earth tones that set the mood. I started my meal with two delightful appetizers. The first, a serving of chunky salsa and “Holy guacamole,” gave me a good sense of what to expect that evening: witty-titled dishes featuring extremely fresh ingredients without many spices or added flavorings to distract from the vivid taste of the vegetables themselves. The salsa was bright and light, while the guacamole burst with avocado and a hint of garlic. We followed with the “Middle East Peace” hummus, an interesting and creamy blend of cashews rather than chickpeas, topped with a drizzle of mint oil, and accompanied by crudités and homemade corn chips. For the main course, I sampled the creative “Tacos of Life,” which consisted of a pine nut-chili and walnut puree carefully arranged in two romaine lettuce shells, topped with coconut sour cream and jalapeño vinaigrette, with another side of the salsa and guacamole. In addition, my table ordered the herbed nut loaf, which emulated a meat loaf over pasta. The loaf was made with sunflower seeds, walnuts and pine nuts, and was blended with parsley, red pepper, and herbs. The loaf’s consistency was indeed similar to a meatloaf, though the taste was obviously quite different. It rested on a bed of zucchini noodles and was served with a curious Alfredo sauce and pine nut parmesan, one which I was not too fond of. It was accompanied by a massaged kale salad, that while a little chewy, was complimentary to the nut loaf with its tanginess. We finished the meal with the highlight: a decadent chocolate marble torte with “drunken” bananas. The dense, rich torte was made with raw cacao and had a hint of chile powder, while the bananas had been poached in rum. Who knew dessert could be this healthy? Overall, I felt the portions were a tad small and the prices a bit high, but the quality and freshness of the produce shined brighter than the shadows cast by these drawbacks. I had to admit that I did feel lighter (both physically and in the wallet—my meal cost me about $30) and healthier when I left, but I wasn’t sure if it was just psychological or if the small portions of high-fiber foods were already at work inside my belly.
My next stop was the Almond Blossom Café in Flagler Beach, where Kim and David Hostetter, self-described “health ministers,” preside over a brightly lit eatery decorated with biblical passages along the walls. I visited the establishment on a Friday night and the place was packed with diners and hopping to the music of a soulful guitarist playing in the corner. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable, guiding me through the night’s offerings and even suggesting a few favorites that weren’t on the menu, such as the vegetable pizza with a dehydrated nut and vegetable crust. The portions were generally larger than the ones at the Present Moment Café and the prices more affordable, though the presentation and creativity more lacking. The Mediterranean sampler platter, the best thing we tried that evening, was a flavorful assortment of garlicky zucchini-based hummus with sun-dried tomatoes, grape leaves filled with ground almonds, pine nuts, and mint, a tasty and authentic tabouleh, and a sprouted-seed “cheese” spread, which tasted pretty similar to the real thing. Crispy dehydrated veggie chips accompanied the filling sides. In addition, we sampled the stuffed curry avocados, which were fresh but offered a very underwhelming taste of curry. The pizza also fell a little flat—it was more of a salad on a cracker than a pizza. Again, the quality of the produce was befitting of what you’d expect of a raw food place and I left spending about $20, including a glass of organic, sulfate-free wine. Not bad for such a unique experience.
As the evening progressed I couldn’t help but get a feeling that there was a definite religious undercurrent present at the Almond Blossom Café. Self-help books and videos abound in the small market found in the corner of the eatery, many with Christian leanings, and motivational speakers regularly give “wellness education lectures” here. A cross hangs between the men and women’s restrooms. But it was in talking with the Hostetters that I got the biggest dose of faith-based nutrition. When I asked David, a former Navy man, what inspired him to open the raw food restaurant with his wife, he talked about how he had gotten a flu shot while serving in the military and had been subsequently bed-ridden for 13 years. Desperate to find a remedy to his illness, a friend told him about a book modestly titled The Cure for All Diseases, by Hulda Regehr Clark, a Canadian nutritionist and independent researcher. The book claims that all diseases are caused by a combination of a parasite and a pollutant in the body. In order to rid the body of these unwanted guests, the book teaches readers how to make a device called a “zapper,” which is a small machine that uses a nine volt battery and copper cylinders to shock the parasites in one’s body with a light electric current . Emboldened by what he had read, David created his own zapper, adopted a healthier diet and physical regiment, and soon began feeling better. He now sells his own zappers at the restaurant for $75. He showed me his copy of The Cure for All Diseases, which he holds in high esteem, and shared excerpts with me. According to the book and David’s own testament, the zapper can cure everything from the common cold to cancer. AIDS patients will be as astounded as I was to learn that after only 18 minutes of utilizing the zapper, their malady will have disappeared.
Our enlightening conversation continued as Kim, author of a self-published health/spiritual guide called a Whole-E Health Lifestyle: Making the Transition to a Healthier You, One Sprout at a Time, which credits “the Creator” as giving the couple the directions for their lifestyle, expressed her interest in expanding the business to include a more comprehensive “wellness center” that would include exercise programs in addition to the raw food preparation and educational lectures that the restaurant already offered. When I inquired whether they would have yoga or other meditation classes, David was quick to express his opinion that they would be “satanic” if such practices did not emphasize Christianity. Kim added that she would try to hire mainly Christian employees at the new center because it would make for a more cohesive message. The Hostetters are evidently passionate believers in their version of the raw food lifestyle, something they proudly demonstrated to me.
Religious beliefs aside, the meals at both the secular Present Moment Café and the more zealous Almond Blossom Café were unique and worthwhile. Though the amount of health benefits one receives from eating raw foods might be debated by scientists, I did leave both meals feeling much lighter than I often do after eating at many other restaurants. Taking the lifestyle that may or may not come with the diet (depending with whom you speak) with a grain of salt might make the food itself more flavorful. It’s not a cuisine that will satisfy every customer, but it is certainly one that deserves a try. It might not change your life, but at the very least, might be the most illuminating meal you’ve had in a while.
Food for the Senses
(First Published by the St. Augustine Record, 21 Feb 2008)
February in Florida is a time when I start to stumble out of my winter stupor and my taste buds begin to come back to life. Not to disparage winter's bounty of greens and root vegetables, which are deeply satisfying in their own right, but as warmer days become more common and we're teased with spring's arrival, my taste buds tingle in anticipation of the fresh new flavors of the approaching season. I'm a guy who likes to engage all of my senses of taste with dishes that provoke the palate with their complexity of layered contrasting flavors, some of which are most enjoyable simply because you aren't expecting them.
Take, for example, my favorite way to enjoy ripe mangoes: I slice the juicy flesh into pieces, place them in a bowl and dust them with salt, cayenne pepper and a drizzle of lemon juice. It's a simple preparation that is common throughout the tropical world and will astonish you with the way it delivers sweet, sour, salty and spicy sensations in every bite.
Another easy snack that engages the taste receptors in your mouth is popcorn sprinkled with a mix of Indian curry powder, cinnamon and sugar. Trust me, it tastes much better than it might sound and will have your taste buds leaping up and down like they just won the Fantasy Five lotto.
In the past, scientists believed there were four taste sensations: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. But most experts now add a fifth to the list: umami, a Japanese word that means "delicious flavor" and is used to describe the sensation found in aged or fermented foods such as soy sauce, fish sauce, many cheeses, some meats and meat stocks, and other protein-rich items. In English, it is often referred to as "savoriness," and indeed may leave you saying "Ooh Mommy!" just as it is pronounced in Japanese.
One of my favorite meals to get my taste buds out of their late-Winter doldrums is a Vietnamese dish called pho ga, a hearty broth-based chicken noodle soup that I first sampled in Orlando's thriving ethnic neighborhood appropriately called "Little Vietnam," which is centered at the intersection of East Colonial Drive and Mills Avenue. (The area is also sometimes referred to as "ViMi" for Vietnam-Mills.) Orlando's Vietnamese community sprouted during the years when the conflict in Vietnam brought thousands of refugees to Central Florida, which offered a booming economy and a similar climate to the one back home. Though numerous Vietnamese eateries abound in the area, the best place to try the dish is at a restaurant called Pho 88, which specializes in the soup and is so authentic you may be the only non-Asian dining there. Traditionally, the soup is made with beef and simmered oxtails and is called pho bo, though the chicken version mentioned above is quite common as well. It is accompanied by a side plate full of cilantro and Thai Basil bouquets, lime wedges and spicy peppers such as jalapeos, which the eater can add to his or her bowl to enhance the experience according to their preference.
Vietnamese cuisine is unique in that it marries the native spices and ingredients of Southeast Asia with French techniques and flavors for a completely new direction in cooking. Many food historians believe it was, in fact, the French occupiers who may have inspired the dish with their beef stew called pot-au-feu, and that pho may simply be the Vietnamese corruption of the French word feu. The simplified version of pho ga that follows below is my homemade take on the dish and one that will celebrate your senses of taste all five of them in a symphony of textures, aromas and flavors. It will give your taste buds a reason to wake up, and that's something that makes a lot of "sense" indeed!
Homestyle Pho Ga
Adapted by Richard Villadniga
(Serves four)
For broth:
4 chicken thighs with skin and bone (preferably organic, free-ranged)
2 quarts of water
2 cups chicken broth
2 tsp salt
2 inches of fresh ginger, grated
1 stick of cinnamon
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2 Star Anise pods
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 tsp garlic, finely chopped
About 1/3 lb of flat rice noodles (Can be found at Asian markets and some supermarkets)
For Garnish:
1 jalapeo cut up into large pieces (seeds are optional)
2 limes, quartered
1 large bunch basil, preferably Thai
1 bunch cilantro or cilantro
1 package fresh bean sprouts
1 bunch green onions, chopped
Bring first 10 ingredients to a boil, stirring throughout. Reduce to high simmer for 30 minutes to an hour to develop a rich stock. The longer you wait, the better the stock. Adjust for saltiness if more is desired. When stock has formed to desired flavor and consistency, pull out the chicken thighs and let cool on a dish.
Next, remove the chicken skin and bones and discard. Chop the meat into strips and place back into the soup pot. Allow to simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the noodles to the soup, stir and return to a light boil. Carefully cook until the noodles are soft but not overdone, as they will become mushy. Ladle soup into bowls and serve at table with side dish of garnishes for each person to adjust the soup's flavor as desired.
From the Ground Up
(First Published by Palm Coast Lifestyles, Feb 2008)
Allen Whitham is a man who takes dirt seriously. He and his wife Mary are the owners of Bunnell Organics, a small citrus and persimmon farm in western Flagler County, where the couple grows some of the sweetest, juiciest all-natural fruits anywhere in northeastern Florida. “He’s always liked dirt since he was a child,” Mary informed me. “His mom told me about his first try as an entrepreneur. He found some soil as a little boy that he thought was so pretty, he tried to sell it to people,” she continued with a chuckle.
While that childhood story might be amusing to others, Allen still takes his soil today very solemnly. “Soil is the basis for all we grow here,” he explained as he and Mary gave me a tour of their impressive eight-acre plot. “And it all starts with our compost.” Allen meticulously researched composting methods, finding the very best ingredients to complement the Florida soil and the needs of their fruit trees. He imported basalt rock dust from Virginia , mounds of local mulch, even seaweed from off the coast of Maine, all to produce the darkest, richest compost to add to his soil. It takes nearly two years for the mulch to decompose before it can be added with the other ingredients, then another nine months or so for the compost to meld into the black gold that serves as the backbone of their garden. It’s a long process that requires patience and careful attention, but it’s all worth it to Allen. “We have a machine that breaks down our mulch into finer particles. I like to say that microorganisms have really small mouths, so the finer we grind the materials, the better the compost.” Allen also adds clay to the compost because he says it’s like “the glue that holds it all together.”
The Whithams try to maintain a sustainable farm with several low-impact practices, such as passive solar-panels that power a number of their machines and facilities. They utilize fresh water from their pond to irrigate the fruit trees because it carries less of the hard minerals that well-water contains. “Plus the algae from the pond adds nutrients to the soil,” noted Allen in an almost scholarly tone, one befitting of a biologist, but not really out of place here, the more I spoke with him. It didn’t take long to see how methodical and knowledgeable the couple is about every step of their agricultural practices. Though they are not organically certified (a process that has become prohibitively costly for many small family farms), they are “Certified Naturally Grown (CNG),” a certification process that requires monitoring and strict standards, without the high fees and prodigious amounts of paperwork that USDA Organic labeling mandates. The Certified Naturally Grown network now encompasses nearly 500 farmers in 47 states, according to their website. The Whithams were already doing many of the things that being Certified Naturally Grown necessitates, but they did it for their own health and well-being, rather than for commercial interests. Those came later. “We never use pesticides, but part of that philosophy is that we plant the right crop at the right time in the right location. I guess you could call that our integrated pest management!” Mary explained. “I’ve been working this garden now for about 20 years, and it’s just something I’ve always been passionate about—living a healthy lifestyle with minimal impact on the planet,” added Allen.
Though the main attraction of the farm is the citrus grove and the persimmon trees, the couple cultivates a number of crops for their own consumption in raised concrete beds Allen designed and built. The couple employs intensive agriculture and, of course, Allen’s fertile compost, and I witnessed broccoli, greens, onions, and other winter crops in full bloom, even during one of the coldest weeks of the year.
All of these carefully thought out plans seem natural, almost instinctive, for the couple. “Mary’s story about me selling dirt seems silly, but I guess I always knew I would end up working with dirt, one way or another. Working the land is restorative, it’s calming,” Allen remarked. “This place is more than a farm to us,” chimed in Mary. “It’s our hermitage, our refuge.”
Though this pastoral setting may transcend farming for the couple, for me it’s all about their marvelous citrus and persimmon crops. “I make the compost and Mary grows the fruit,” a proud Allen said, admiring his wife. I don’t know if it’s Allen’s studious approach to soil-building or Mary’s golden touch with fruit, but whatever the case may be, the two make quite a team and you can taste the proof. The trees in their grove bear a great variety of delicious fruits including satsumas, which are similar to tangerines, odd-shaped and puffy Ponkans (also know more casually as “zipperskins” for their easy peeling), juicy golden and red navels, fragrant Meyer lemons, amber sweet oranges, red grapefruit, and late-arriving Valencia oranges. In addition, their driveway is delightfully framed by two rows of persimmon trees that bear fruit in the autumn, a highly anticipated time of the year on the farm. In the past, the couple has sold some of their fruit to individuals, but they are looking to farm full time now and are searching for a group of customers to form a co-op or buy-in group to purchase their fruit. “While we are pretty content with the farming aspect of the operation, our primary goal is to eventually find some local folks that are interested in uniting as a group to buy our fruit,” Mary commented.
When I asked the couple to name their favorite fruits, Mary responded without hesitation that she loved her satsumas because they were easy to peel and eat, while Allen mulled it over and decided on the red navels because of their intense color and juiciness. “How can they be so red?” he asked himself. “They have got to be so jam-packed with nutrients!” It’s probably the soil, I though to myself.
I left the farm with a sack full of citrus and some dried persimmons the couple gave me to sample and as I drove home my car was filled with the loveliest of fragrances, as if I were being transported back to the grove where the breeze had been lifting the zest right from their peels. I couldn’t fight temptation, so I grabbed a Ponkan and easily peeled it without any resistance from the skin. The flesh was delicate, not fibrous at all, and the flavor was sweet, hinting of honey, while the juice exploded from within like a summer thunderstorm. It was pure citrus heaven. When I got home, I cut a few red navels in half and juiced them. There is something about juicing that I really like, something I can’t really explain other than to say that in a small way it helps me connect with nature. Maybe it’s the scent of the oranges, maybe it’s the spray of the juice, but mostly it’s a feeling that even though I didn’t necessarily grow the oranges, I still get to play a tiny part in making the final product. And what an incredible final product it was. In my glass I held a reddish-orange liquid, easy on the pulp, but heavy on flavor—floral and sweet to the last drop. I drank it down with such gusto that it was gone before I knew it. It was perhaps one of the finest glasses of orange juice I had ever drunk, but fortunately it won’t be my last. I still have a few more red navels in my sack for later.
If you are interested in forming a co-op to purchase their wonderful citrus and persimmons, contact the Withams at 386 437 5723.
New Year's Resolution: Eat Local
(First Published Jan. 23, 2007 in the St. Augustine Record)
Last year you gave up snack foods. Two years ago you joined the gym. And the year before that you promised yourself to be debt-free by year’s end. Each January, millions of Americans set goals for themselves, often focused on improving one’s health or finances or giving back to the community. This year, why not do all of the above by making a New Year’s resolution to increase the amount of food you consume from local sources? The idea of eating locally went mainstream in 2007 and shows no signs of letting up. Gourmet Magazine devoted its recent October issue to the movement, encouraging us to become a “nation of farmers,” while Barbra Kingsolver inspired readers with her highly-acclaimed book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which documented her year-long transformation from curious foodie to full-fledged farmer and locavore.
So what does it mean, exactly, to “eat locally?” Eating locally does not just entail supporting small, family-owned restaurants in your town. Let’s face it—while dining at a neighborhood restaurant beats heading to a chain, even local fast food franchises are technically locally-owned. Eating locally means going beyond that and seeking out local farms and farmer’s markets in your area, dining at restaurants that serve locally-grown foods, or shopping at businesses that distribute local meat, produce, and artisanal foods. It means taking direct action by going beyond simply being a consumer and becoming a producer of foods, even at the smallest of scales—starting your own backyard herb garden, for example.
Eating locally has several positive consequences for your health, your wallet, and your community. Let’s take the simple act of buying Hastings potatoes instead of their Idaho counterparts. By making the choice to purchase local potatoes, you will be financially supporting families in our neighboring communities, many of whom have farmed for generations but are now faced with the financial pressures of having to compete with cheaper markets overseas and soaring real estate values. You can meet some of these fine folks tilling the soil right here in our county and find out not only where your food comes from, but what’s in it as well. Everyone’s talking about lead in Chinese toys, but have you stopped to think about the mercury in your farm-raised seafood or the pesticides (many of them illegal here in the USA) found on your imported fruits and vegetables? By offering economic incentives to local farmers, you will be encouraging the preservation of one of our most treasured resources in St. John’s County—open space. Take a short drive out into the country and you’ll quickly notice the farmland that is being gobbled up by the land development interests. Each dollar you spend on locally-produced food is a vote to curb urban sprawl and reduce the county tax burden that new developments bring, all the while preserving the rural lands and wildlife corridors that are currently being threatened. In addition, buying locally is good for our environment because it reduces the transportation miles needed to deliver products. Imagine the fossil fuels saved and the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses if everyone in our county bought Hastings potatoes rather than Idaho Russets. It all adds up to a stronger community, a healthier understanding of our food supply, a cleaner environment, and a fresher potato.
Now you’re asking yourself, “He’s got a good point, but where do I start?” Eating locally is much easier than you think and doesn’t involve huge lifestyle changes. Simple acts have tremendous impacts when you add them all together. Start by shopping at places that feature local meats, seafood, or produce. The County Line Produce Stand in Hastings, in continuous operation for 42 years, sells only the freshest, seasonal produce available, most of it coming from the owners’ farm, located right behind the roadside landmark. The produce is so fresh you can still smell the dew from that morning’s pickings. Don’t have time to drive out to Hastings? Several establishments around St. Augustine, such as Curry Bros. Produce, Kyle’s Seafood, and Stewart’s Market, offer items that are usually proudly labeled as being produced in our community.
Sounds good, but you just have no time to cook? Head to Johnny’s Kitchen, where Johnny Barnes is leading the Hastings renaissance with his soulful home-cooking featuring mostly local produce, the majority of which he purchases daily at the County Line. Proving that a good restaurant can succeed in downtown Hastings, Johnny’s Kitchen has become the focal point of the rural community where farmers, sheriff deputies, retirees, and all others in between, gossip about local happenings and compete for a seat during Wednesday’s fried chicken rush. “I buy whatever I see is freshest and cook it the next morning. And when we run out, we’re done,” the charismatic Barnes told me recently.
If you are dining out elsewhere and want to eat locally, but you aren’t sure if anything on the menu was produced in our area, simply ask your server. If the eatery’s supply of local food is limited or non-existent, encourage the owner or chef to consider acquiring more of their ingredients from local sources. Take direct action by planting a garden. If you have no space at home, sign up for a 30X30 plot at the St. Johns County Agricultural Center’s community gardens space.
Finally, if you value the principles and benefits of eating locally, then please consider becoming a member of Slow Food First Coast, a local organization of which I am a founding member. One of the primary objectives of this organization is to create a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) project, a subscriber-based program in which members would receive a weekly installment of fresh, seasonal, local produce directly from a farmer in our area. If you are interested in this project or in becoming a member of Slow Food First Coast, please contact me at rvilladoniga@yahoo.com. Happy New Year!
Have Chestnuts, Will Roast
(First Published Dec. 20, 2007 in the St. Augustine Record)
Nat King Cole’s famous rendition of The Christmas Song opens with the magical words, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire….” and every year, the 1944 classic announces the beginning of the Holiday Season. Though actually penned by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells, it was Cole’s version that most people are familiar with today. Regardless of who made a hit of the song, each time I hear the tune, I can’t help but wonder where all the chestnuts roasters have gone. Once a central part of holiday festivities, roasting chestnuts is no longer a winter mainstay in America.
Every late autumn like clockwork, my father Eusebio reminisces about the chestnuts he cherished so much as a boy in northern Spain and how much he pines for them again today. He recalls his walk to school every day and the chestnuts that covered the path from home to the schoolhouse—all free for the taking and a treasured after-school snack. He talks of the traditional breads that the women would bake in their stone ovens and of the hot cereal his mother would make for him on cold mornings, both using homeground chestnut flour. Apparently, my father is not alone in his wistfulness. Here in the USA, though not as popular as in days of past, when colder weather arrives and Jack Frost starts “nipping at your nose,” chestnuts begin showing up in grocery stores everywhere and many people nowadays think of them with fond nostalgia, even if they have no idea what they would do with them once they took them home.
So what was it that inspired the famous line in the song? Roasting chestnuts was once a typical sight on the sidewalks of cities of the Northeast, such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, where pedestrians looking for a warm snack could pick up a sackfull and carry it along with them as they continued their Holiday shopping or their walk home from work. Today, chestnut vendors are not as common as in the past, though the tradition of roasting them in autumn and winter is still practiced in some parts of the country and throughout Europe and Asia.
Numerous cultures have been consuming chestnuts for centuries. In fact, the trees were growing wild in Asia long before the Romans introduced them into Europe from the region of Turkey called Kastanum (thus the Latin word for chestnuts—castaneas). By 37BC, the Romans were harvesting and grinding chestnuts as a mixture with wheat flour for bread. In Europe during the Middle Ages, groups that lived near forests used chestnuts as their main source of carbohydrates because of the scarcity of wheat flour. Chestnut trees are a particularly impressive food source because they can produce 6000 nuts per tree. Today, Italians are once again making cakes, breads, and even pasta out of chestnut flour, a rediscovered ingredient that is being employed increasingly thanks to a renewed interest in traditional foods. Meanwhile in Spain, roasting chestnuts continues to be a winter custom on the sidewalks of cities like Barcelona and Madrid.
Back home in the U.S., Native Americans relied on chestnuts as a significant part of their diets well prior to colonial times. But chestnuts largely fell out of the public’s eyes and tastebuds in the modern era because of a blight on the American chestnut tree at the beginning of the 20th Century. First discovered at the Bronx Zoo, the fungus, which was carried on imported Asian chestnut trees, spread quickly and decimated the country’s native chestnut population in less than 50 years. On the eastern half of our nation, which was once covered in mighty chestnut trees that stood over 100 feet tall, few chestnuts remain, almost all having been wiped out by the disease. Since then, the American Chestnut Foundation has led efforts to restore the native population by crossing them with Chinese and Japanese chestnuts, which have proven resistant to the fungus. The hope is to increase the number of chestnut trees in America over the next 30 to 50 years to near the healthy level found in the past, when it was said that a squirrel could travel all the way from Maine to Florida by hopping from one chestnut limb to another without ever touching the ground. They are slowly making a comeback, though the U.S. still gets the bulk of its chestnuts from Italy.
Inspired by my father’s memories, I decided to start tinkering with chestnuts. A quick internet search led me to the discovery of a handful of enterprising chestnut producers here in America. One of the remarkable farms selling high quality chestnuts domestically is Allen Creek Farms of Washington State (www.chestnutsonline.com). To my Dad’s delight, I purchased stoneground chestnut flour from the farm and found it to be a versatile ingredient. In a period of a few weeks, I had made everything from chestnut crepes (nutty and good filled with fruit preserves) to chestnut cornbread (a little dry and too dense for my taste) to castagnaccio, a traditional Italian cake that has been around since the times of the Romans. Made with chestnut flour, olive oil, raisins, pine nuts, walnuts, and rosemary, it turned out to be a memorable sweet and savory experience. But it’s not for everyone—although I enjoyed it, others I shared it with didn’t care for the mélange of flavors. Finally, I decided to enjoy chestnuts in the traditional ways they have been consumed for centuries, either boiled or roasted. Boiling chestnuts leaves them slightly moister than roasting them, but I like the earthiness that roasting imparts. And roasting chestnuts is not as daunting or time-consuming as one might think. Simply preheat the oven to 350°, cut an X across the flat back of the chestnuts, place them on a baking sheet (or even better, a preheated cast iron skillet), and bake them for 15 minutes or so until the skin of the chestnuts begins to burst along the cut lines. Let them cool a bit, then while still warm, peel off the skin and fuzz that surrounds the sweet flesh and indulge. It’s an honest and simple winter pleasure and a trip down Memory Lane. Who knows? Maybe next year you’ll catch me on a sidewalk somewhere selling roasted chestnuts and whistling that familiar tune of old.
American Traditions: How Certain Foods Became Holiday Classics
(First Published in Palm Coast Lifestyles, Holiday Issue, 2007)
Ever wondered why Nat King Cole sang about chestnuts roasting on an open fire or why kids are so addicted to candy canes come winter? Every year, as Americans of all backgrounds sit at the table surrounded by family, we feast on traditional foods that reappear each Holiday Season. The following is a short list of classic Holiday foods and some interesting facts on each:
Heritage Turkeys
Turkeys have come a long way. Ever since Ben Franklin proposed making the turkey our national symbol (a sentiment not shared by bald eagle fans), the American turkey has played a central role in the traditional Holiday banquet. Known for their intelligence and ferocity in the wild, turkeys have been dumbed-down and have had their distinct flavor eliminated by the processes of industrial agriculture. Though there were once several native varieties found across America, today commercial turkey farming relies largely on one single type—the Broad Breasted White, aptly named for its unnaturally high amounts of white breast meat. The demand for “healthier” white meat has led to the transformation of one of nature’s tastiest birds into an insipid, dry, mass-produced fowl.
Remember when you didn’t have to deep fry, brine, marinate, or do much of anything to coax flavor out of a turkey? Those days sound like distant memories now. Industrially farmed turkeys receive little exercise or sunlight, are fed a monotonous corn-based mash so as to increase the rate at which they fatten up (despite being naturally picky eaters with a varied diet), and are often pumped with high levels of antibiotics to prevent illnesses under the crowded conditions in which they are confined. All this has resulted in admittedly higher production numbers, but at the cost of flavor, quality, and animal health and welfare. What this all means to human health is yet to be determined, but one thing is certain: relying on one variety or strain of any food is not good for the environment. When we reduce our genetic diversity, we make our food supply more vulnerable to disease and pests.
That’s where heritage turkeys come in. Perhaps the darlings of the sustainable agriculture movement, heritage turkeys are older, pre-industrial turkey breeds, such as the Bronze, Jersey Buff, and Bourbon Red, which are being grown on small family farms the way turkeys used to be: outdoors with a healthy diet and plenty of exercise. Groups like Heritage Foods USA (www.heritagefoodsusa.com), the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (http://albc-usa.org), and Slow Food USA (www.slowfoodusa.org) are coordinating efforts to ensure their survival. You can even go to the Heritage Foods USA website and upon ordering your turkey, monitor its growth and development on the farm with their turkey webcam! Talk about transparency! As for me, I can vouch for Amish turkeys, having made them the centerpiece of my Thanksgiving table on more than one occasion. This year I’ve ordered mine from Blackwing Quality Meats (www.blackwing.com). I’m looking forward to my organic, free-range bird that was raised humanely on a small Amish farm in Illinois. But just as importantly, my family can’t wait to sink their teeth into our delicious, succulent bird!
Candy Canes
With almost 2 billion sold each year during the Holiday Season, candy canes are the classic Christmas confection. The original candy canes were not canes at all, but rather straight white sticks made by French priests in the 1400s. The first cane-shaped candies are believed to have been made in 1670 by a choirmaster in Cologne, Germany who bent white sugar sticks into canes (symbolizing the shepherds that visited baby Jesus) as Christmas treats for the children attending church services. As the tradition of decorating trees with foods (candies, cookies, sweets, etc.) for Christmas spread across Europe, candy canes were used as ornaments because of their functionality. Peppermint sticks with red stripes did not appear until the mid-1800s in Granna, Sweden.
Eventually, European immigrants brought the tradition to the United States. In particular, a German-Swedish immigrant named August Imgard of Wooster, Ohio decorated his tree for the holidays with candy canes in 1847. His simple act would inspire a nation to start a new tradition. By the 1900s, the red-striped variety common today was introduced into America and began its commercial domination when Bob McCormack of Albany, Georgia began producing them for friends, family, and local shopkeepers and his brother-in-law invented an automated machine that was capable of mass-producing them. Though red stripes and peppermint are the most common characteristics of the modern candy cane, other colors and flavors are often produced as well.
Some people hold strong religious associations with the candy cane. Not only does the cane still represent a shepherd’s staff, but for many people the three traditional red stripes embody both the Trinity and the blood of Christ. The color white and the peppermint flavor symbolize purity, while the hard texture of the candy represents the “rock” or foundation on which the Church is built. Finally, the staff, when turned upside down, resembles a “J” for Jesus. Regardless of religious convictions, the candy cane is the most widely associated candy of the Holiday Season and shows no signs of losing its popularity—just ask any six year old.
Sweet Potatoes and Yams
Having candied yams for Thanksgiving? How about a sweet potato soufflé for Christmas? Almost every year without fail, someone at the table will ask what, if any, are the differences between sweet potatoes and yams. (Usually, it’s the guest that nobody can figure out who invited.) Here in the U.S., the two root foods are often mislabeled in grocery stores or incorrectly have their names used interchangeably. The reality is that the two foods are similar to the casual observer but actually unrelated crops.
The sweet potato is a crop planted commercially in the United States and is by far more common than the yam. A member of the morning glory family, the sweet potato is added to a variety of traditional dishes, particularly in the South, including pies, mashes, biscuits, and pancakes. Sweet potatoes are native to the tropical regions of the New World and were called batatas (hence the word potato) by the Taino Indians of the Caribbean, in whose diet they played a significant role. Columbus was so impressed, he took them back to Spain and they became known as Spanish potatoes throughout Europe. Sweet potatoes can range anywhere from yellow with a dry flesh to orange with a moist flesh. It is this latter, more common, variety that is often confused with yams. The Beauregard, with its high moisture content, sweet flavor, and rather consistent size and shape, is the most widespread type of sweet potato found in produce aisles.
Yams, unlike sweet potatoes, are tubers of the lily family and African in origin. They are usually, though not always, larger than sweet potatoes, growing even up to 7 feet in length and weighing 120 pounds! Yams tend to be reddish in color, and denser, sweeter, and moister than sweet potatoes. They are not widely cultivated in the United States, though I am partial to Garnet yams grown in California, with their deep red color and sweet, moist flesh. They are often available for purchase at Whole Foods stores.
So how did sweet potatoes come to be casually referred to as yams? African slaves took comfort in the sweet potatoes of the Americas because they reminded them of the yams they ate back home. The word yam likely comes from the West African word nyami, which means “to eat.” In the 1930s, farmers in Louisiana decided to market their sweet potatoes as “yams,” so as to differentiate their moist, dark orange products from their yellow-fleshed, dry counterparts being sold in the North. The term “yam” quickly spread and today the vast majority of “yams” purchased in supermarkets are actually sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes/yams are still big business in Louisiana, which holds an annual festival each October called the Yambilee to honor the root. In addition, Creole families still slowly roast whole sweet potatoes in the hot ashes of a fire for hours for a traditional treat creatively named patates douces, or “sweet potatoes.” No matter what you call them, sweet potatoes and yams are sure to please both the sweet-tooth and the health nut of your family.
Chestnuts
Though not as popular a winter snack as in days of past, chestnuts have been forever memorialized by Nat King Cole’s rendition of The Christmas Song, in which he croons the opening line about them being roasted “on an open fire.” The song was actually penned by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells in 1944, though it was Cole who made the song a classic. Still, when winter arrives and Jack Frost starts “nipping at your nose,” the nuts start reappearing in supermarkets and many people today think of them with fond nostalgia, even if they have no idea what they would do with them.
So what inspired the famous line in the song? Roasting chestnuts was once commonplace on the sidewalks of cities of the Northeast, such as New York and Philadelphia, where pedestrians looking for a warm snack could pick up a sackfull for just pennies and carry it along with them as they continued their Holiday shopping. Today, chestnut vendors are not as common as in the past, though the tradition of roasting them in autumn and winter is still practiced in some parts of the country and throughout Europe and Asia.
Chestnuts have been consumed by numerous cultures for centuries. In fact, chestnuts were growing wild in Asia long before the Romans introduced them into Europe from the region of Turkey called Kastanum, thus the Latin word for chestnuts—castaneas. By 37BC, the Romans were harvesting and grinding chestnuts as a mixture with wheat flour for bread. In the Middle Ages, groups throughout Europe that lived near forests used chestnuts as their main source of carbohydrates because of the scarcity of wheat flour. Italians are once again making cakes, breads, and even pasta out of chestnut flour, a rediscovered ingredient that is being employed increasingly thanks to a renewed interest in traditional foods.
Back home in the U.S., chestnuts largely fell out of the public’s eyes and tastebuds because of a blight on the American chestnut tree at the beginning of the 20th Century. A fungus carried on imported Asian chestnut trees spread quickly and decimated the country’s native chestnut population in less than 50 years. On the eastern half of our nation, which was once covered in mighty chestnut trees that stood over 60 feet tall, few chestnuts remained, almost all having been wiped out by the disease. Since then, the American Chestnut Foundation has led efforts to restore the native tree population by crossing them with Chinese and Japanese chestnuts, which have proved resistant to the fungus. The hope is to increase the number of chestnut trees in America to near the healthy level found in the past, when chestnuts were the dominant tree of the East and it was said that a squirrel could travel all the way from Maine to Florida by hopping from one chestnut limb to another without ever touching the ground. They are slowly making a comeback, though the U.S. still gets the bulk of its chestnuts from Italy. Two remarkable farms selling chestnuts here in America are Delmarvelous Farms of Delaware (www.buychestnuts.com) and Allen Creek Farms of Washington State (www.chestnutsonline.com). I recently purchased chestnut flour from the latter farm and made light and delicious chestnut crepes—a new twist on an old Holiday ingredient. Who knows? Maybe I’ll roast a few on the sidewalk next year and sell them to my neighbors.
Hanukkah Delights
The story of Hanukkah, or the Jewish Festival of Lights, is a fairly well known one, though the foods that are traditionally eaten to celebrate the feast are not as widely recognized. The holiday dates back to the year 165 BC when the Maccabees, a band of Jews fighting for liberation, recaptured the Holy Temple of Jerusalem from the Syrian-Greeks. When they went to light the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum, they soon discovered there was only enough olive oil to keep it lit for a day. Astonishingly, the menorah continued to burn brightly for eight days. Because of the central role of olive oil in the event, Jews all over the world traditionally eat fried foods as a way to remember and celebrate the miracle.
Potato pancakes, or latkes in Yiddish, are perhaps the food most often associated with Hanukkah in America. This is because potato pancakes were very common in Eastern Europe, home of the Ashkenazi Jews, who were the dominant Jewish group to immigrate to the U.S. Latkes are fried cakes usually made with shredded potatoes, eggs, and butter, and are often flavored with onions. Some people care to eat them with savory toppings such as cheese or sour cream, while others prefer sweet toppings such as applesauce, sugar, cinnamon, or fruits. Though they are regularly consumed during Hanukkah, latkes do not play a fundamental role in the holiday, but are simply a favorite dish because they are fried and flavorsome.
Another typical, yet less known, Hanukkah treat are sufganiyot (in Hebrew, or ponchkes in Yiddish), which are small, round donut hole-like sweets that are fried then filled with all manner of jellies, creams, chocolates, or even dulce de leche, and then sinfully dusted in powdered sugar. Unlike latkes, these sweet delicacies were dreamt up not by Ashkenazi Jews, but rather the Sephardic Jews that live throughout Southern Europe, Israel, and the rest of the Mediterranean Rim. They are considered more “Israeli” in tradition than latkes, though both are eaten in Israel during Hanukkah. Sufganiyot are indeed so popular that bakeries in Israel compete for customers by offering exciting new fillings. Angel Bakery, the biggest in all of Israel, claims to fry up more than 250,000 of the fried dough balls each day of the Hanukkah holiday. Italians make a very similar treat called bombolones which I tried this past summer at I Preferiti di Boriana, an Italian gourmet foods store in the San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace. The dark chocolate-filled bombolones proved simply irresistible, and I returned to the shop twice more to indulge. But I would just as easily fly to Tel Aviv to try some authentic sufganiyot!
Black Eyed Peas
For many Southerners, no New Year’s meal would be complete without black eyed peas. It is commonly held that the legumes, which are actually not peas at all, but rather lentils, will give eaters good luck. The most universal tradition calls for eating a full 365 black eyed peas—one for each day of the calendar to ensure prosperity for the coming year! It is believed that even as far back as ancient Egypt, black eyed peas were considered a symbol of good fortune. Interestingly, Southerners never ate black eyed peas for many years (they were given to the cattle as feed), but everything changed when, during the Civil War, the city of Vicksburg, MS was under siege for 40 days and the populace was facing starvation as supplies neither entered nor exited. Left with no other choice, they survived the battle by eating the black eyed peas destined for the livestock. For this reason, black eyed peas are also said to represent humility, as they are a simple and modest food.
Black eyed peas are most frequently simmered in water with a ham hock or a ham bone for the meaty, salty flavor the pork imparts. On New Year’s, some Southerners will also eat greens or cabbage as an accompaniment to the beans. The black eyed peas on one’s dish represent coins and the greens or cabbage symbolize paper currency. So believe it when they tell you money doesn’t grow on trees—it doesn’t. It grows in Southern gardens! I have even heard of a family tradition in which a penny is placed in the pot of black eyed peas and the lucky person who finds the copper coin in his or her dish wins a prize for New Year’s. I guess that’s one way to get your kids to eat their veggies!
Hispanic Holiday Beverages
If it is said that America’s immigrant groups make our society a “melting pot” of cultures, then during the winter we must turn it up a notch and become a “blender of diversity,” because our numerous ethnic groups have each played a part in making their respective Holiday beverages our own American classics.
Take Mexican hot chocolate, for example. The ancient Mayan civilization of Mexico made the first chocolate drink, called xocoatl, for special occasions and important ceremonies. In those days, chocolate was a luxury item, and cacao pods were often traded as currency throughout the Yucatán and Central America. The Maya added spices to their frothy concoction, including vanilla, chile pepper, and achiote. It was seen as a remedy for fatigue and prized for its energy-inducing effects. Mexicans today still enjoy a much spicier version of hot chocolate than we do in the U.S., but Mexican hot chocolate is gaining in popularity thanks to our large Mexican workforce and the spread of Mexican cuisine into the American diet. Nowadays, you can even find Mexican chocolate tablets in most supermarkets to make your own hot chocolate drink at home. I like a brand called Ibarra, which has cacao nibs and a nice cinnamon flavor to it. But you can easily prepare your own chocolaty elixir at home with a mixture of dark or bittersweet chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, and for the more adventurous, a little cayenne pepper, to spice up your winter nights.
Coquito is another Hispanic beverage that is commonly consumed during the Holiday Season. This egg nog-like drink has its roots in Puerto Rico and is a celestial combination of coconut cream, milk, vanilla, egg yolks, condensed milk, evaporated milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Usually imbibed around Christmas, it would not be an authentic Puertorican beverage without the national obsession—rum, of course. The name coquito might be derived from either one or two sources. The Spanish word for coconut is coco, and coquito could be a more affectionate take on the fruit’s name, which is common on the island. Another origin of the word might be the coquí, the beloved tree frog that resides in Puerto Rico’s tropical forests and serves as the island’s unofficial mascot. The frog produces a constant “coh-kee” sound that inspired its name, and perhaps the creamy beverage borrows its moniker because it is equally as adored. Though the sound of drinking an amphibian is not appetizing, I have never seen a person say no to a second glass of coquito after trying it once. Nat King Cole may have been singing about chestnuts, but if he had tried some coquito, he would have been belting out salsa tunes instead!
Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit (First Published in the St. Augustine Record on 15 November, 2007)
It’s November and you know what that means in North Florida: our first cool nights have finally arrived. Yes indeed, the mercury is dipping below the 70s in the evenings and panic and pandemonium have broken out in the streets! Ok, not really, but the first chilly evenings around here are bittersweet like a Meyer lemon. On one hand, you realize that summer is now officially over. (I know, I know. Folks up North are laughing out loud right now. “It’s November, and the guy is lamenting the end of summer. Let’s throw him a pity party.” True, but it’s not our fault we have such terrific weather in Florida.) On the other hand, it’s time to pull out the jeans and sweaters and start cooking autumnal comfort food, and that is welcome news to me.
Recently, I decided it was time to make the first bean stew of the season. This summer while in Napa Valley, I discovered an heirloom food company called Rancho Gordo (www.ranchogordo.com), which specializes in antique varieties of vegetables that are not commonly found at the supermarket. Many of their foods are rooted in history and hard to come by, and I was particularly impressed by their grand variety of heirloom beans, with all manner of odd names like Goat’s Eye, Yellow Indian Woman, Santa Maria Pinquito, Black Valentine, and my personal favorite—Ojo de Tigre, or “The Eye of the Tiger” (an excellent choice if you are a fan of the 80s band Survivor or the third installment of the Rocky movies). I picked up a few bags of various Rancho Gordo beans and have been waiting for cooler weather to sample them in stews or soups.
The other day, at random, I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bag of Rio Zape beans, which according to Rancho Gordo, was the bean that started the whole heirloom craze for them. The company describes Rio Zape beans as being similar to pinto beans but more complex in flavor and even having a hint of chocolate. These beans, sometimes also referred to as Hopi string beans, were originally cultivated by the Anasazi cliff-dwelling peoples of the Southwest and today appear on Slow Food’s Ark of Taste (http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/rio_zape_bean.html), a list of threatened and disappearing foods, because of their endangered status. The beans stand out immediately with their dark, almost maroon, color and their curious black stripes.
Eager to get to know these beans personally, I soaked the beans overnight and then simmered them with a ham hock to give them a slight smoky, meaty flavor. (If you are looking for a little more substance, drop some pieces of cut up pork loin in with the ham hock.) Now, anyone who knows anything about beans knows that a good potlikker, the liquid Southerners use to simmer beans and greens, is the foundation for a good bean stew. (Please don’t dare call it “pot liquor” as Yankees do.) Simmering a good ham hock with the beans will enrich the stew and give it personality and substance. Let the beans soak up the essence of the pork for a long while on low to medium heat, and you will later be rewarded with a true taste of the South.
When I decided that the beans and the ham hock were on a first name basis, I sautéed peppers, onions, and garlic (my version of the Cajun Trinity) along with tomatoes in olive oil, and stirred them into the pot. I added dried oregano, a little cumin, sea salt, and the prized spice in my pantry: authentic ground Chimayó chile pepper from New Mexico. Also called the native New Mexican chile, Chimayó peppers, though once common throughout the state, are now only commercially grown in two little towns north of Santa Fe: Chimayó and Española. These rare chiles pack a potent punch in flavor with medium heat. They are often used pureed green in sauces or sundried red and ground into a bright orange, robust powder. The latter is the condiment that I used for this stew and it imparts a piquant, bold flavor to the dish. It is important to note that many purveyors will attempt to sell you imitation chile powder that is labeled as Chimayó, but is not authentic. Most of New Mexico’s chiles come from the city of Hatch in the southern part of the state, and none of these can compare with the quality and uniqueness of the Chimayó chiles. The handful of farmers that cultivate Chimayó chiles are beginning to band together in an attempt to trademark their peppers to eliminate the fraud of the cheap counterfeits that are commonplace. One way to tell if your chile powder is authentic Chimayó is simply by the color (which should be bright orange, as opposed to the brick red of most chile powders). To purchase authentic Chimayó chile powder, visit http://www.nativehispanic.com/. Depending on how much one adds to the dish, the Chimayó chile powder will impart a level of brightness and depth to the dish, as well as heat that can range from mild to sinus-clearing. But what’s impressive about the powder is that one can control the spiciness much more easily than with other chiles because Chimayós offer more flavor than heat. If your family loves heat, pile it on. If you like the taste of chiles, but you’re not such a fan of heat, go easy on the Chimayó and you’ll still get great flavor.
After slow cooking the pot for a couple of hours, the ingredients melded together to create the type of stew that the whole family will love on a crisp evening—even at a frigid 65 degrees outside.
13 November 2007: If you miss the boat, you might miss the RAFT!
Last week I was scheduled to head up to the Chapel Hill, NC area to attend the 30th Anniversary Conference of one of my favorite organizations: the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (www.albc-usa.org). Even days before the event, I had my bags packed and my mouth watering, as Lisette and I had signed up for the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) picnic, to be held on the grounds of the Inn at Celebrity Dairy (www.celebritydairy.com). There are only seven RAFT picnics held throughout the country each year and I was as excited as a school boy on Halloween night to learn that we were among the lucky few that would be able to attend the annual celebration of endangered foods. Each RAFT picnic spotlights local chefs and farms and utilizes foods that are threatened both at the local and national levels. The Inn at Celebrity Dairy is a restored homestead on a 300-acre working farm. It is open to the public year-round, as it has been for over a century. On the farm, guests and visitors will find the “Goat Hilton,” home to the dairy’s herd of 100 Alpine and Saanen goats, as well as the production area of numerous award-winning artisanal goat cheeses. Many of the other items produced on the farm are featured in the Inn’s menu.
Unfortunately, Lisette and I both became ill the night before our trip up to the Carolinas. Needless to say, we were very disappointed not to be a part of the gala. Our good friend Don Schrider of the ALBC sent me an email describing the various foods he sampled over the course of the conference, just to make me jealous:
“Hello Richard and Lisette,
Sorry to hear you were unable to attend. The picnic went off beautifully and was a good success. The food was very good but a number of the vegetable dishes were not on the menu because of crop lost to the drought.
Dinner consisted of Buckeye chicken, deviled Buckeye chicken eggs, meat loaf made with Pineywoods beef, meat balls in cream sauce made from Myotonic (Tennessee Fainting) goat meat, Carolina Gold Rice grits, and dessert was apple crisp made from Stayman apples with goat milk ice cream.
My personal favorite was the apple crisp because the Stayman apples had such a wonderful rich and tart flavor with just the right amount of sweetness.
Friday night's meal was good and a great success, but Saturday night's meal (not a RAFT menu at all, simply featuring rare breeds) was the best catered meal I have ever had - it featured Ancient White Park beef over rice, a Black turkey strudel, Red Wattle ham with an apricot glaze, and Red Wattle pulled pork BBQ - with a side of locally grown roasted vegetables in balsamic vinegar, sautéed spinach and white beans, and roasted potatoes. Yum! We also had a special 30th Anniversary Birthday cake made of real, dark rich chocolate.
Another aspect of this conference was the cooking clinic with chef Mark Williams of KY. Featured at this workshop were Cayuga duck, Tunis mutton, Red Wattle pork chops, and Pineywoods beef. I understand that the participants, who also got to dine on these dishes, had a fabulous time and the food was outstanding. I wish I could have been at that session, but was assigned to help at our Tunis sheep breeder clinic which ran at the same time.
Hope you both feel better soon.
Best Regards,
Don Schrider”
Maybe next year, Don. Maybe next year.
Autumn. The very word evokes a magical transition from the heat of summer to the crispness of winter. Gone are August’s steamy days, and the frosts of January have not yet arrived, allowing us to partake in the Rights of Fall: our first day in jeans and a sweater after what seems like endless months of beachwear, opening our homes to young (and old) Trick-or-Treaters, and gathering with family for a traditional Thanksgiving feast. If there is one food that is most commonly associated with the season, it is the pumpkin. Whether used in the Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns that adorn our front doors or as the main ingredient in flavorful holiday pies, the arrival of pumpkins in grocery stores and roadside stands ushers in autumn’s celebrations of family and harvest.
But despite their abundance on every corner and in every supermarket, these ubiquitous pumpkins are not from Florida. They are trucked across the country from northern states where drier, cooler summer weather allows them to flourish, something the humid subtropical climate forbids here in the Sunshine State. But that may change as agricultural researchers at the University of Florida are experimenting with a few varieties that may bring the pumpkin closer to home. “It would be a great opportunity for farmers who are looking to extend the growing season after the potatoes have been harvested,” explained Tom Donovan, head of UF’s Agricultural Research Center and test farm, located in St. Johns County. “They have the potential to be a major cash crop in Northeast Florida’s farming communities, such as those in Flagler, Putnam, and St. Johns Counties.” The potato season ends in late July, just the time that pumpkins are normally planted.
According to Donovan, the Hastings research center has been tinkering with over 30 pumpkin varieties with great success. Recent heavy rains may have damaged some of them, but overall, the crop has thrived in the five years the UF specialists have been testing them. Last year’s dry summer season was particularly fruitful. “That’s the trick—wet weather is the greatest challenge to us developing a successful pumpkin crop here. If you get some bad storms in the fall, a hurricane or something like that, it can devastate your pumpkin production,” commented Donovan. “Plus if we get too much heat, the pumpkins produce more male flowers than female flowers, and they don’t fertilize well.” Other than hot and wet summers locally, infrastructure costs are also a hurdle for area farmers, who have most of their equipment and worker training invested in other crops, such as cabbage and potatoes. In addition, pumpkins must be grown on a plastic layer above the soil to minimize the chance of mildew or rot. This is an expensive start-up cost for farmers willing to give pumpkins a chance.
But researchers believe they can overcome these obstacles and make growing pumpkins more cost-effective for local farmers because they have found that several miniature ornamental pumpkins are growing well even in very hot conditions. Such varieties as the Jack Be Little, Baby Boo, and Munchkin have shown great promise. Though they could not be carved up as Jack-O-Lanterns (bigger pumpkins require colder temperatures than possible in Florida), they make excellent decorative pieces. Some can even be cooked and eaten, though they would mainly be used to embellish homes and tables during the holiday season. Many of these ornamental pumpkins are already sold in supermarkets everywhere in Florida, but growing them locally would reduce the shipping costs, as well as the fossil fuel consumption, that currently come with delivering and selling them here. That’s an attractive idea to both farmers and retailers.
In addition to the ornamental pumpkins, the researchers are also investigating edible pumpkins, called calabazas, which are very popular in Latin American cooking and can handle more tropical weather. They are featured in several Latin dishes and even in candy recipes. Calabazas are planted extensively in the Caribbean and Central America and are already being grown in South Florida. UF researchers believe they can have similar success in Northeast Florida with the tropical gourd, which is similar to butternut squash in flavor. It is sweet and has a smoother texture than big pumpkins. Home cooks that have used canned pumpkin in recipes should have no trouble switching to calabazas because they are close relatives.
Even more than the ornamental pumpkins, growing calabazas offers many advantages to local farmers, besides being an alternative to having fallow fields in the fall. They can withstand both wet and dry conditions, heat, and many pests. In fact, calabazas are so resilient that they require few fertilizers and pesticide applications, making them a very environmentally friendly crop. The only time they can not be grown in Northeast Florida is in mid-winter, leading the UF researchers to believe that they are a nearly ideal choice for local farmers. With such possibilities on the horizon, it may not be long until pumpkins even compete economically with the dwindling potato and cabbage harvests of Northeast Florida, which have seen a downturn in recent years. “We’re working hard to give our farmers options, and pumpkins are certainly one of them,” noted Donovan.
For more information on The University of Florida’s agricultural programs in Northeast Florida, please visit their website at http://stjohns.ifas.ufl.edu/agriculture.shtml
For the best pumkin pie I have ever tried, go to the Recipes section.
17 October 2007: Corn, Magical Corn
When it comes to fresh produce, it’s hard to beat the last days of summer and early days of fall. I’ve been stopping every other day at the local produce stand on my way home from work to pick up everything that’s in season—okra, tomatoes, cantaloupes, squash, you name it. But what’s most caught my eye of late is the fresh corn that’s been coming in. Some of it is local (yes, we do grow corn in Florida, believe it or not), and some of it has been coming from Georgia. The light yellow Florida Candy Corn is, as the name implies, as sweet as you can imagine, while the Silver Queen Corn from Georgia is a shimmering white and when you cut the kernels off the cob, bursts with sugary milk. I always give in to temptation and try a few kernels raw and I’m rewarded with the glorious taste of the season.
I’ve been sautéing the corn a lot lately, not just because it’s quick and easy, but because it just comes out so well. Corn is one of those things that, when fresh, needs little coaxing from a cook. I brown a little butter in olive oil, toss the corn in with some