Reader Ronal Ellison requested that we provide some background and history for Puglia’s burrata, an über-trendy, decadent, cream-filled take on traditional mozzarella, at once a simple pleasure and an unctuous extravagance. While, as Mario Batali has often said, Parmigiano Reggiano is the “undisputed king of cheeses,” burrata is the undisputed queen. There’s even a Facebook page for burrata cheese with more than 6,000 devoted members, although, alas for many of us, it’s written entirely in Italian.

There’s curiously little on the subject of burrata cheese in English, with most mentions not much more than a few words in a restaurant review—although these mentions aren’t without merit. Firenze Osteria, in Los Angeles, features a fawning tribute to the cheese in three traditional appetizers: burrata with balsamic-marinated grilled vegetables, with prosciutto and melon, and as a twist on the classic Caprese salad. The Ritz-Carlton in Florida’s Key Biscayne combines the creamy cheese with blanched haricots verts tossed in a fruity olive oil. New York’s Dona takes a less traditional, more luxe route, melding caviar, sea urchin roe, and a purée of fava beans. San Francisco’s SPQR serves tortelloni stuffed with burrata and garnished with baby peas and mint. And at Phoenix’s Tapino, there exists an upscale last course of burrata with mascarpone and truffle honey, garnished with shaved white truffle.

As with other mozzarellas, burrata cheese owes its existence to the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), a large draft animal brought to Italy from its native Asia sometime in the 15th century. The milk of the water buffalo is richer and higher in protein than that of cows—which means more curds and less whey—although it lacks carotene, the yellow pigment found in cow’s milk. As a result, mozzarella di bufala is pure white. Originally all “mozzarella” was made with the milk of water buffaloes—and the best still is. In Italy, cow’s-milk mozzarella is distinguished by the legal name fior di latte, while most American mozzarella is now made from less-stellar cow’s milk.

Burrata cheese begins life like other mozzarellas, with rennet (usually animal-based) used to curdle the warm milk. Whereas for fresh mozzarella the curds are plunged into hot whey or lightly salted water, kneaded, pulled to develop the familiar stretchy strings (pasta filata), and then shaped into whatever forms, during the making of burrata the still-hot cheese is instead formed into a pouch which is filled with scraps of leftover mozzarella and topped off with fresh, rich cream, called panna. Burrata is traditionally, but not always, wrapped in leaves of asphodel (yes, these are the lilies that Alexander Pope said bloomed “in ever-flowing meads” in Homer’s Elysian fields, and should still be green when you serve the cheese, an indicator of the cheese’s freshness). The pouches are tied, each with its own little brioche-like topknot. The cheese is then moistened with a little whey and, for the sake of convenience in these modern times, often placed in a polietilene, or a plastic bag.

When burrata is sliced open, the luxuriously thickened panna flows out. It has a wonderfully rich, buttery flavor yet retains a fresh milkiness, and is best when consumed within 24 hours, and certainly within 48 hours, of being fashioned. Consequently, it’s only in recent years that burrata has traveled outside of Andria, let alone its native Apulia, save for rare exception (the Shah of Iran used to fly it in for special occasions). If you haven’t tried it, you really ought.

This unconscionably decadent cheese was first hand-crafted around 1920 on the Bianchini farm in the town of Andria, situated about two-thirds of the way up Italy’s heel to the spur of Apulia. In the 1950s, a number of local cheese factories began producing it, making burrata somewhat more widely available. At least one native of the region suspects that factories were interested in it because it was a way to utilize the ritagli (“scraps” or “rags”), which refers to the little bits that are left when cheeses are trimmed to uniform size. (There are leftover scraps in large-scale operations; when formed by hand, burrata doesn’t incur much waste.)

Yet even after burrata was being manufactured along a 130-kilometer stretch of Puglia from Andria to Bari, Gioia del Colle, Modugno, and all the way to Martina Franca (that’s about the equivalent of 80 miles, for those not familiar with the metric system), it managed to retain its premium-product status.

Very often, for Italians, dishes from the next town are “foreign food.” In Lecce, just 60 miles below Martina Franca, burrata is as foreign as brie. Burrata may be better known in the United States than it is in parts of Italy outside the area in which it’s produced. In fact, there’s now a producer of high-quality burrata in the United States: the Gioia Cheese Company, owned and operated by Vito Girardy, a native of Bari who opened the California factory in 1992.

Food historian Nancy Harmon Jenkins suggests that burrata may be an “invented tradition,” much like how corned beef and cabbage is considered a traditional Irish dish but is only served in Ireland because American tourists expect it. This theory may lend a clue to the relative scarcity of reliable information about burrata. The cheese’s reputation as an artisanal treasure—conjuring bucolic images of family farms in unspoiled Italy—might be diminished by mentioning an association with factories. This may seem trivial considering how delicious these cheeses actually are, but much of our appreciation of the foods we enjoy is based on what we imagine about them, and marketers are very reluctant to allow facts to interfere with what we think we know about the foods we love. Since anyone who has experienced burrata di Andria immediately recognizes the eminence of “La Regina dei Formaggi,” why quibble about mere facts, especially in the presence of nobility?

While there’s nothing quite like eating burrata with nothing more than a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of sea salt, and a few grinds of black pepper, you can enjoy it in a Caprese salad, on an eggplant sandwich, and even on a simple pizza.—LC eds.

Acknowledgements, References, and a Source for Burrata Cheese

This article could not have been written without the much-appreciated assistance of Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Janice Mancuso, and Clifford Wright—molto grazie a tutti.

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Gosetti, Fernanda. Il Grande Dizionario dei Formaggi. Milan: Istituto Geografico de Agostino, 1989.

Gioia Cheese Company
1605 Potrero Ave.
South El Monte, CA 91733
(626) 444-6015

When we received a query from Colleen Flood inquiring about the history of chicken fingers, nothing came to mind except silly jokes about chicken lips and hen’s teeth. After all, chickens don’t actually have fingers, do they?

Many of us have memories of “chicken fingers,” “fish sticks,” and other forms of mystery meat composed of who-knows-what portions of who-knows-what animal’s anatomy. It’s oddly discomforting to know that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-an agency that prides itself on creating lengthy definitions for cuts of meat and, for that matter, just about anything else we might consider consuming-has no definition for anything called “chicken fingers.” The term is clearly commercial in nature, but it’s an interesting story as to when it first appeared-and why.

To answer the first part of the question, we need look back no further than the early 1990s, when health-conscious Americans worried about consuming red meat but didn’t want to give up the convenience foods of which they’d become accustomed. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts seemed like the ideal dinnertime solution.

Now, if you’ve ever skinned and boned a split chicken breast, it probably wasn’t a perfect replica of the uniformly thin, boneless, skinless chicken breasts found in restaurants and in grocery stores. Yours, like mine, was probably thicker and rather uneven, with parts falling off in a most unprofessional manner. The reason for this can be found in the structure of this cut of poultry. A chicken breast is composed of two separate muscles: a large, flat piece, shaped like a longish rounded triangle, and a tapered narrow flap that’s not unlike the tenderloin in beef. In order to fabricate a chicken breast that is tidy, trim, and at an even thickness so that it cooks at the same rate, the two fillets must be separated.

Given that most Americans prefer to have pieces of protein on their plates that are large enough to cut, the larger, triangular portion lends itself more to dinner. But what of the smaller fillets, the tenderloins, commonly known as “tenders”? The savvy answer for chicken producers was not to try to make a dinner portion out of the tenders, but to sell them as something else: finger food.

Americans love to eat casually. Just about anything we can eat with our hands, we do. When someone saw that chicken tenders sort of looked like fingers, and could be eaten with fingers, a stroke of marketing genius happened. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Mad Men, you may be able to visualize the kind of brain-storming session that could lead to the creation of an anatomical feature that nature never intended.

Compare the two fillets: both are equally low in fat, both are equally tasty, and both cook almost equally fast-actually, fingers tend to cook more quickly. Yet the chicken fingers sell for approximately 7 cents more per pound, wholesale, than the larger cut. When you consider that between three and six million pounds of chicken fingers are sold each year by conventional chicken producers including Tyson, Purdue, and Pilgrim’s Pride, you can understand the drive to push chicken fingers. Essentially, it creates millions of additional revenue each year.

It’s at least comforting to know that “chicken fingers” are not in the same category as the dreaded mystery meats of our school days. Whereas nuggets are mass-produced out of various scraps and trimmings and then bound together with soluble protein and salt, just like sausage (at least we hope, although we have lingering doubts), the fingers are real chicken breast meat-which is why Jamie Oliver included them in his redesigned school lunch program. It was a brilliant idea, taking a junk food that children already liked and replacing it with a healthier, more natural item that they would not automatically reject. Chicken fingers also lend themselves to quick-and-easy preparation in a variety of recipes-a characteristic that helped Oliver wear down the resistance of the food-service personnel, which was essential to the success of his school lunch program as well as his Emmy award-winning television program, Food Revolution.

The fact of the food’s success is no mystery at all, not when you consider how simple it is to turn a chicken fingers recipe into a family-pleasing dinner And let’s just be thankful that your children will never have to wonder if real chickens have “nuggets.”

Resources

I’d like to thank Bill Roenigk of the National Chicken Council and Sylvia Small of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association for their help with this article.

Chicken fingers article © 2010 Gary Allen. Photo © 2007 hddod. All rights reserved.

Reader Marg Smart, feeling nostalgic for a cake from the days just after World War II, wrote in for help finding a British recipe for what she called “Allies’ Celebration Cake.”

My search yielded many, many celebration cakes of varying origins. It seems the British, like we Americans, tend to mark many an important occasion with cake—although not all cake-worthy occasions were celebrations, of course. There were funeral cakes, for example. And some intended-as-celebration cakes actually turned out to be, well, something else. In 1936, Alf Landon was so certain that he would defeat Franklin Roosevelt that he ordered a huge celebration cake, decorated in red, white, and blue icing, to serve his supporters. One presumes the cake was never served, since FDR won in the most lopsided victory in U.S. presidential election history.

As Marg no doubt discovered, there’s little mention of any particular cake specifically intended to celebrate the defeat of the Axis—that is to say, Germany, Italy, and Japan (you may recall that our previous president tried to link his cause to the victory of 1945 through the phrase “Axis of Evil”). There were, however, several mentions of cakes—albeit minus recipes, unfortunately—that had been created to celebrate the end of the hostilities. The search for “Allies’ Celebration Cake” was ultimately futile.

A search for “Victory Cake,” however, led to dozens of recipes. Victory cakes were essential both abroad and at home during World War I, and were revived a generation later for World War II. Their primary function was to make agreeable use of ingredients that weren’t rationed for the war effort. This allowed the folks at home to have dessert with their patriotism intact, knowing they weren’t taking food from the boys at the front. (It’s rather sad to think of all the fresh eggs converted to powdered for the troops.)

As an aside, the K-rations issued to our soldiers included Lucky Strike cigarettes and Hershey chocolate bars. Lucky Strike lost the green ink from their packages so the pigment could be available for whatever the Army needed. The cigarettes seem to have addicted millions, guaranteeing post-war profits. The chocolate bars, on the other hand, had a far more noble ending. Given how the GIs doled them out to civilian women and children, they became a symbol of wartime diplomacy.

Back to Victory Cakes. Most of the ones I found were American, although I did happen upon a British spice cake recipe, which can be found below. The note that accompanied the recipe alluded to the fact that many foods were in short supply at the time, among them sugar, eggs, fats, and chocolate—cake-making staples. As such, it seems a very lean cake, depending on plumped raisins for moistness and calling for only enough cocoa to provide a hint of color and flavor to round out the edges. Then again, this minimal chocolate presence may actually reflect British preference, as cakes in the old world generally featured spices and dried fruits, all the way back to the Middle Ages. (One of the first wedding cakes not to consist of these ingredients was served at the wedding of Queen Victoria in 1840.)

Many foods continued to be in short supply in England for some time even after the war ended, whereas in the United States most rationing—save for sugar—ended with the war. Interestingly, all of the American cakes that celebrated the victory were chocolate. The ingredient was readily available in the United States, given that shipping lanes from cacao-growing regions were safe and the American chocolate industry—like the automotive and aircraft industries—was still geared-up at wartime production levels. While chocolate cakes were not unheard-of in the U.S., before the war they tended to be reserved for special occasions. Celebrations, if you will. Chocolate pies, puddings, and cookies were considered far more everyday fare. I’ve included a wartime chocolate cake recipe from Swans Down flour’s pamphlet titled How to Bake by the Ration Book to give you a sense of the kind of cake popular during this era.

A final word on celebration cakes: The earliest reference I found for a cake meant to celebrate a military victory dated from 1683, and it bears a curious connection to the British cake just mentioned. According to former New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton, it was baked in a tube pan, much like today’s Bundt pans. It was supposed to resemble a turban, to mark the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in Vienna.

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British Victory Cake | Makes 1 10-inch cake
The note that accompanies this cake from 1950s Britain reads, “This is my Uncle Vic Abbott’s recipe, it has no eggs or milk and only uses a small amount of butter. Apparently it was used during the war to save on rationed food.” Unfortunately, the recipe didn’t list the amounts of the spices. Since tastes change over time, I consulted similar spice-cake recipes from the era to make the recipe as accurate as possible, although I’ve left the wording largely as it was to reflect the culinary sentiment of the day.—Gary Allen

LC Note: Some things are best left in the past—including this cake.

convert Ingredients
2 cups of seeded raisins, 3 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt [ground spices: 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. cloves], 2 cups of cold water, 3 tbs. butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 tbs. cocoa

Method
Prepare a 10″ tube pan, as described above. [No description was provided, but probably called for the pan to be buttered and dusted with flour]

Boil together for 5 mins.: butter, seeded raisons [sic], sugar, cold water. Let cool.

Sift together flour and all other [dry] ingredients [including the cocoa.]

Mix the boiled ingredients and the flour mixture together until blended.

Place the batter in the tube pan.

Bake at 350F for 1 1/2 hours. In the last 1/2 hour, cover with foil to prevent burning.

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Eggless Chocolate Cake
This recipe was found in How to Bake by the Ration Book, a helpful, albeit promotional, little pamphlet of wartime recipes published by Swans Down flour company. The note attached to this recipe reads, “They won’t believe you, but it’s true. No eggs at all and only 1/3 cup shortening in this tender, delicious, quick chocolate cake that took you only 1 minute to beat. The secret in two words.” The recipe also appeared in Swans Down advertisements in the early ’40s, with similarly persuasive lines such as “Who said ‘No cake’? Indeed you can make wartime cakes—minus eggs—with Swans Down! And what cakes…No ordinary flour could give such results.”

LC Note: We can’t say as we agree with what the propaganda says, at least not compared to today’s cake standards, although apparently it served it’s purpose at the time!

convert Ingredients
2 squares Bakers unsweetened chocolate
1 cup milk
1 3/4 cups sifted Swans Down cake flour, plus more for the cake pans
3/4 teaspoon soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening or butter, plus more for the cake pans
1 teaspoon vanilla

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 375° F (190° C). Grease and lightly flour two 8-inch cake pans.

2. Combine the chocolate and milk in the top of a double boiler and cook over rapidly boiling water 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Blend with a rotary egg-beater [LC Note: You could whisk it or beat it with an electric or standing mixer] and let cool.

3. Sift the flour once. Measure the flour, add the soda, salt, and sugar, and sift together 3 more times. Cream the shortening or butter, then add the flour, vanilla, and chocolate mixture and stir until all of the flour is dampened. Then beat vigorously for 1 minute.

4. Bake for 20 minutes, or until done. Let cool. Spread Easy Fluffy Frosting between the layers and on top of the cake. (LC Note: As was the fashion at the time, do not frost the sides of the cake.)

Variation: Substitute 1/4 cup Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa for chocolate. Sift it with dry ingredients; add cold milk with vanilla.

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Easy Fluffy Frosting
Makes enough to frost a 10-by-10-by-2-inch cake or the tops and sides of two 8-inch layers

convert Ingredients
1 egg white
Dash salt
1/2 cup light corn syrup or honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Method
1. Beat the egg white with the salt until stiff enough to hold up in peaks but does not seem dry.

2. Pour the syrup in a steady stream over the egg white, beating constantly until it’s of the right consistency to spread, 4 or 5 minutes. Add the vanilla. Use immediately.

References
Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Neil, Edna. A&P Everyday Cook & Recipes Book. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library (reprint, 2006).
Witchel, Alex. “The Way We Eat: Man with a Pan,” The New York Times, December 25, 2005.

Article © 2010 Gary Allen. Photo © 1945 BBC.com All rights reserved.

Absinthe, the drink of 19th-century slackers and ne’er-do-wells, had a moment a few years ago. Newly celebrated in the United States after a 97-year-old ban was lifted, the emerald-hued drink wasted no time in becoming the beverage du jour in neon-lit lounges with thumping house music. It took no time at all for a new generation to learn to dance with the Green Fairy, as the drink was known in its heyday.

No mere fashion or fad, absinthe is still having that moment. The storied drink continues to inspire a fascination among discerning drinkers. Today, nearly a century after it was scuttled from American liquor cabinets and 2,000 years after its inception, absinthe has settled into place at contemporary speakeasies as well as neighborhood restaurants and is once again a household term, if not a household stash. But it took a rather boisterous ride to get there.

Absinthe’s earliest incarnation was an elixir consisting of nothing more than wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) steeped in alcohol. The bitter herb’s etymology—Artemisia is a nod to Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and of all things wild, and the Latin absinthium is derived from the Greek word absinthion for “undrinkable”—tells us quite a lot about what the ancients thought of this bitter concoction. Its original use was, perhaps not surprisingly, purely pharmaceutical, a panacea of sorts. The mathematician and scientist Pythagoras prescribed the potion, as did the writer Pliny the Elder.

Fast forward to the late 1700′s. In the intervening one and a half millennia since absinthe’s birth, the bitter beverage with anise overtones quietly evolved to be one of a class of digestifs, an after-dinner liqueur of sorts intended to stimulate the flow of gastric juices. Like many “medicinal” liqueurs of the current era, absinthe drew upon an assortment of bitter but aromatic botanicals such as anise, chamomile, coriander, dittany, hyssop, lemon balm, parsley, spinach, and sweet flag. Yet unlike the rest of these modestly intoxicating sips, absinthe was fueled with high-powered octane—136 proof, compared to the more modest 40 proof of most digestifs.

Despite—or perhaps because of—its alcoholic content, absinthe was once again promoted for medicinal purposes, this time by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, a French expatriate living in Switzerland. Ordinaire generously bequeathed the recipe to Henri Dubied, the father-in-law of Henri-Louis Pernod, who quickly became the most ardent and prestigious purveyor of absinthe. Needless to say, absinthe experienced a resurgence. By 1834, the fervor for the strangely opalescent green drink was so profound—and Pernod so successful—that the company hired Gustave Eiffel, the engineering wizard responsible for the namesake tower that symbolizes all things French, to design the huge iron-vaulted Combier Distillery in the Loire Valley.

It wasn’t just absinthe’s powers of intoxication that made it compelling. The bitter potation’s primary ingredient was wormwood, which in turn contained the compound terpene thujone, a purported hallucinogenic that was rumored to heighten clarity, increase perception, and foster astounding creativity. Little wonder, then, that by the close of the 19th century, pale-green absinthe was not only the most popular drink among high-society in Paris, but among the ragtag groups of bohemian poets and painters of the Rive Gauche, among them Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Ernest Hemingway. The artists often portrayed the drinkers and the drink in their works, while writers extolled the mind-expanding qualities of their muse in words.

Although absinthe was pretty tame by comparison to modern mind-altering drugs such as LSD and mescaline, it was nonetheless the 19th century’s boldest leap into altered states. In 1872, a French newspaper quoted a doctor who had subjected himself to absinthe—purely for purposes of research, of course. “The most curious thing about this transformation,” he explained, “is that all sensations are perceived by all the senses at once. My own impression is that I am breathing sounds and hearing colors, that scents produce a sensation of lightness or of weight, roughness or smoothness, as if I were touching them with my fingers.” He prescribed small doses.

The Green Fairy was, for good reason, summoned only after it was diluted with water and a soupçon of sugar. A special spoon was required, the neck of which had a distinctive kink that allowed it to rest on the edge of a pedestal glass without danger of slipping. The bowl of the spoon was nearly flat and decoratively perforated. Once the spoon was set in place, a lump of sugar was placed on the perforated bowl. Ice water was slowly poured atop the sugar, only to drip slowly, mesmerizingly, into the emerald-green absinthe below, causing the liquid to take on its characteristic cloudy appearance. Known as “surprising the spirit,” this act was repeated until the spirit was diluted three to five times over. The ritual, not something that could be rushed, no doubt lent much to absinthe’s mystique.

Absinthe’s powerhouse gut punch—some would say rotgut— made it the earliest casualty of the prohibition movement seething at the beginning of the 20th century. Belgium was the first country to ban absinthe, followed by Switzerland, Holland, and the United States. It was eventually outlawed everywhere except England, France, and Spain (where the brands Absenta and Ojen have been sold continuously for decades).

Not surprisingly, absinthe-like beverages tried to lay claim to absinthe’s fan base. Among the many replacements were Pernod and pastis, which contained most of the herbs found in the original absinthe recipe, save for wormwood—and, hence, no offending terpene thujone. Ouzo, Greece’s pseudo-absinthe, was drunk like the original—diluted with water—except it turned milky white instead of green. And vermouth, which contains a close relative of wormwood known as mugwort, drew attention not as something to brandish over a martini but as a proper drink all of its own. Mugwort was also a component of several other beverages both bitter and bittersweet, among them Amaretto, Altvater, Benedictine, Campari, green Chartreuse, and Fernet Branca.

The Combier Distillery recently began producing absinthe again, anticipating heightened interest following the ban. It was not disappointed. Bottles of what was once contraband flew off American liquor shelves in 2007, the first time any absinthe had been sold stateside—at least legally—since Prohibition.

Of course, today’s absinthe drinkers consider old-fashioned traditions, such as the absinthe drip, through post-modern eyes. Just as this younger generation reformulated its parents’ cocktails into newer, hipper versions, it’s made absinthe into a newer, hipper ingredient. Today’s mind-bending cocktail menus are far more likely to feature absinthe as an undertone, with concoctions such as gin, Lillet blanc, Cointreau, and lemon with a simple absinthe rinse, or even a few drops of the emerald alcohol floated on top of just about anything. Two millenia after its inception, absinthe is still going strong.

Perhaps the hippest of these new—or newly rediscovered—cocktails is one that tips its hat to Hemingway. He reportedly invented the iconic drink Death in the Afternoon not by pouring absinthe into water or wine, but something a little more lively. “Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.”

References
Allen, Gary. The Herbalist in the Kitchen. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Conrad, Barnaby III. Absinthe, History in a Bottle. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.

Lanier, Doris. Absinthe, the Cocaine of the Nineteenth Century: A History of the Hallucinogenic Drug and its Effect on Artists and Writers in Europe and the United States. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1995.

Article © 2010 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.

Reader Ann Drak recently wrote us with the following request: “I’m looking for foods of England from the early 1900s, particularly the foods of the Virginia Woolf set.”

In reading the diaries and letters of author Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury friends, it’s pretty apparent that meals were little more than an excuse for interesting people to gather. Comestibles were beneath consideration and played a secondary role. Woolf was curious about the actual food and understood its importance to her work, yet she was also keenly aware that in the writing of her day, too much attention to such seemingly mundane topics would be regarded as de classé. Bear in mind the context in which Woolf lived. She and her social friends were of the educated class and had servants who did the cooking. She and her literary friends were products of British universities, where the classics—whose epic authors rarely mentioned the preparation of meals—were regarded as the foundation of literature.

Woolf, clearly torn between what she knew to be significant and what she knew to be literary decorum, lamented this conundrum in A Room of One’s Own: “It is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance.” Still, when food was mentioned in her novels, it was only in passing or in tandem with female characters, who were naturally involved in things of the table. There are, however, three notable exceptions:

In Orlando, she writes about the time that Orlando spends with gypsies in Greece and how he discovers that the Greek language had no word for beautiful. To describe a sunset, Orlando instead exclaims the closest approximate: “How good to eat!”

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf famously compares the dinner fare served at male and female colleges. While the men eat sumptuously, the women must make do with bland, dreary foods. “A good dinner is of great importance to good talk,” she complains. “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

In To the Lighthouse, the reader encounters countless small domestic scenes including coffee cups and ordinary meals. We also see a sharp departure from this restraint when Woolf passionately serves up two pages of a rapturous description of boeuf en daube, contrasting its succulence with the abomination that “passes for cookery in England.”

It’s tempting to think that Woolf’s appreciation for French food came from writers like Elizabeth David, but Woolf’s suicide occurred a decade too early. Nonetheless, David’s books can provide an outline of what was considered to be good cooking at that time, at least in the south of France and Italy, places that people of Woolf’s class would have known well. Here are two of David’s recipes over which Woolf may very well have swooned.

Boeuf en Daube a la Niçoise
Elizabeth David, from whose files this recipe comes, suggested accompanying this meal with a hearty red wine from the Rhone region, such as a Gigondas or Châteauneuf-du-Pape. She consented that a Vin de Pays from  Mt. Ventoux or the Ardeche may work well should a budget be in place.

For the marinade
Olive oil, 1/2 cup
Onion, 1 sliced
Carrot, 1 chopped
Celery, 1/2 stalk chopped into small pieces
Shallots, 4 chopped
Red wine, 2/3 cup
Garlic, 3 cloves
Parsley, 2 sprigs
Peppercorns, to taste
Herbs*, to taste
Salt, to taste

For the daube
Round of beef, approximately 3 pounds
Carrots, 1/2 pound cut in 1-inch rounds
Garlic, 3 cloves
Herbs*
Slab bacon, 1/2 pound
Black olives, pitted, 1/2 pound
Tomatoes, 3 peeled and chopped

Directions
1. Heat the oil in a small pan, then add the onion, carrot, celery, and shallots. Sweat them for a minute or two.

2. Add the remaining marinade ingredients and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool, then strain the marinade before using.

3. Choose an earthenware or other flameproof casserole with a lid that is just large enough to contain the beef. Arrange the beef in the casserole and the carrots, garlic, and herbs around the beef.

4. Pour the cooled marinade into the casserole, then top with the slab bacon.

5. Cover the casserole with oiled paper and the lid.

6. Cook in a slow oven (300°F/150°C) for 2 1/2 hours.

7. Remove the lid, add the olives and tomatoes, and cook for an additional 1/2 hour.

8. Remove from the oven. Slice the beef thickly. Cut the bacon into cubes and serve atop the beef, which should be served moistened with a bit of the cooking liquid.

*Note: David suggests bay leaves and the typical blend of herbs de Provence (thyme, marjoram, and rosemary). She says they may be fresh or dried; consequently, the measurements are “to taste.” Note that all temperatures and measurements have been adapted for use in American kitchens.

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Aigrossade Toulonnaise
This simple garlicky aiöli was commonly served in the South of France, often with vegetables and chickpeas. It’s included here because it’s typical of the Provençal dishes that Woolf and her friends might have known.

For the aiöli
Egg yolks, 2
Garlic, 2 or 3 cloves crushed to a paste
Dry English mustard, 1 teaspoon
Salt and pepper, to taste
Olive oil, about 1 cup
Tarragon vinegar, a few drops
Lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon

For the aigrossade
Mixed vegetables, approximately 3 pounds steamed or boiled, such as artichokes and green beans, dried beans, or chickpeas

Method
1. In a heavy bowl or mortar, combine the yolks, garlic, mustard, salt, and pepper. Stir until uniformly combined.

2. Slowly add a few drops of the oil and stir until all the oil is absorbed. Slowly add a little more oil, a few drops at a time, stirring all the time. Continue to add the remaining oil in this fashion. From time to time add tiny amounts of tarragon vinegar, and then — when almost done adding the oil — add the lemon juice. Ms David says you should “Stir steadily but not like a maniac.”

3. Strain the cooked vegetables, coat with the aiöli, and serve in a warmed dish. Do not attempt to reheat.

References
David, Elizabeth. A Book of Mediterranean Food. London: John Lehman, 1950. (reissued in Elizabeth David

Drummond, Jack Cecil, Sir, and Anne Wilbraham. The Englishman’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet. London: Tralfalgar Square, 1993.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Massimo Montanari. Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Hartley, Dorothy. Food in England. London: Warner, 1999.

Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. (rev. ed.) New York: Crown, 1995.

Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Anthea Bell, trans. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.

Wilson, C. Anne. Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to Recent Times. London: Constable, 1973.

© 2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much in the way of side dishes. I was, however, sufficiently intrigued by this curiously named Beefsteak Stanley to procure a recipe for it. But first, a little background information on its purportedly healthful precursor, the Salisbury steak.

Long before Dr. Atkins and even Dr. Kellogg became household names, people looked to famous physicians to help them lose weight and, presumably, attain spiritual purity through their diets. Dr. James H. Salisbury was one of these early diet gurus. Dr. Salisbury believed that a corrective diet could cure everything from anemia to tuberculosis. His approach included the avoidance of almost all vegetables and starches in favor of—you guessed it—minced meat. Lots of minced meat. One pound, three times a day, to be exact. It’s hard to imagine that a hearty, meaty staple of middle-class dining rooms has its origins in a strict dietary regimen, but it’s true.

The recipe for what came to be known as Salisbury Steak appears in his book, The Relation of Alimentation and Disease:

“Eat the muscle pulp of lean beef made into cakes and broiled. This pulp should be as free as possible from connective or glue tissue, fat and cartilage. The ‘American Chopper’ answers very well for separating the connective tissue…The muscle should be scraped off with a spoon at intervals during chopping. Simply press it sufficiently to hold together. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and season to taste with butter, pepper and salt; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired.”

And the doctor’s beverage of choice? A somewhat less suspect dose of three quarts of plain hot water a day.

Over time, Americans grew bored with Salisbury’s bland, monotonous diet and, it appears, were anxious to move on to newer, more ridiculous diets—such as those requiring adherents to restrict themselves to grapefruit or sauerkraut. But the Salisbury Steak lived on, gradually acquiring homier sauces and garnishes such as flour-thickened gravies and mushrooms—indulgences our good doctor would never have countenanced. Eventually, Salisbury Steak acquired a garnish, and a new name, that must have been beyond the doctor’s wildest dreams: sauteed bananas.

No one seems to know the origins of the name “Beefsteak Stanley” anymore. One story says it was invented by Sir Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr. Livingston, I presume” fame). I have my doubts about that. Stanley was pretty famous when he died in 1904—famous enough to have things named after him—but other than the bananas, there’s nothing to suggest that an African explorer had anything to do with the dish. I suppose we could make up our own story. If so, I’m going with the Stanley Steamer connection, as a harbinger of the culinary weirdnesses published in Manifold Destiny.

I found this Beefsteak Stanley recipe in Cooking Instructions for the Preparation of Dishes Served in Dining Cars Throughout the System, a dated guidebook for cooks on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Books like this typically dated to the 1940s, but this one includes no date at all. My guess is that it comes from the 1920s or 1930s, by which time Salisbury Steak had long ago become an American staple.

Beefsteak Stanley
Make 4 portions

Ingredients
2 cups of finely ground beef
1/2 cup of fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup of cream
1 egg
1 small onion minced, washed and sauteed
Salt and pepper

Preparation
1. Mix ingredients well together and form into oblong steaks, fry in pan on both sides nice and brown for about 10 minutes.

2. Cover the bottom of dish with Horseradish sauce, set steak in sauce, top garnished with 2 halves of glaced banana (see Note). A little tomato sauce poured around.

Horseradish Sauce: Make a roux with 1/2 cup of flour, 1 kitchenspoon of butter. Let cook 10 minutes, then add 1 quart of boiling strained broth, stirring constantly, and 1/2 cup of cream. Cook 20 minutes, strain in jar, then add 1 kitchenspoon of grated horseradish (if bottled horseradish is used, squeeze dry).

LC Note: To make “glaced banana,” slice a banana lengthwise (as for a banana split), then saute it in a little butter. A “kitchenspoon” is what we call a teaspoon nowadays.

References
Cooking Instructions for the Preparation of Dishes Served in Dining Cars Throughout the System. n.p.: Pennsylvania Railroad, Dining Car Department, n.d.

Salisbury, James H. The Relation of Alimentation and Disease. New York: J. H. Vail and Company, 1888.

Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies & Fat. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

© 2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved. Photo © 2008 skinnyde

Until the advent of modern drugs like Viagra, aphrodisiacs were construed as folk medicine. Because of that, they were divided into two basic categories: weird stuff that we take as potions, and stuff that we eat, bizarre or otherwise. For our purposes, let’s ignore all but the remedies we take some pleasure in eating, either as regular fare or on special occasions.

What we’re looking for are true aphrodisiacs, magical ingredients that can succeed in provoking lechery, either because of some kind of intrinsic biochemical characteristic or placebo effect, when other methods have failed. They must be able to seduce where all other seductions have fallen short, to inspire the objects of our lust with such longing that they find us irresistible, and to allow us to rise to the amorous occasion when it presents itself.

Yohimbe, a tropical vine, is said to work like a natural Viagra—but it’s closer to potion than foodstuff, so it’s not what we’re seeking here. That said, there are some foods that contain compounds that may actually aid sexual performance—albeit somewhat indirectly. These work by providing vitamins and minerals needed to maintain normal bodily function. Since they’re not exactly titillating, we’ll ignore them, too.

Chocolate contains substances that mimic the sensation of the well-being we feel when falling in love, but it’s not exactly an aphrodisiac, either. Alcohol reduces inhibitions and makes a person feel heated by dilating blood vessels near the skin, which tends to make us shed clothing—both acts that could be construed as encouraging sexual intimacy. As Ogden Nash said, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

The famous Spanish Fly (Lytta vesicatoria) is not truly an aphrodisiac—it is a kind of blister beetle that causes a burning and itching sensation in the urinary tract of anyone unfortunate enough to eat one. No doubt the painful writhing of the victim was mistaken for passion. This brilliant green beetle is occasionally found in the Moroccan spice mixture called Ras el Hanout—but then, Moroccans don’t always make a clear distinction between spice, perfume, and aphrodisiac.

If a food bears a physical resemblance to a sexual organ, it’s suspected to have aphrodisiacal properties. This form of analogous thought is known as The Doctrine of Signatures. While oysters contain trace minerals said to enhance sexual performance, it’s their resemblance to the vulva, their briny taste, and their reputation that do the work. Several foods shaped like the male sex organ—carrots, cucumbers, bananas, etc.—are routinely considered to be aphrodisiacs. Cloves, and parts of the clove root, are vaguely phallic in form. Because of the level of joyful expectation—or immoderate optimism, depending on one’s vantage point—even a vague resemblance is, it seems, resemblance enough.

Similarly, there is what could be called The Linguistic Rationale. Clavo, clove in Spanish, means “nail.” Nails are phallic, both in form and function. It’s no coincidence that an American slang term for sexual conquest is the verb “to nail.” (Oddly enough, oil of clove is used in some salves designed to delay the male orgasm. It does this by anesthetizing the skin of the penis.)

Closely related (to the rationale, not the anaesthesia) is what may be known from here on as The Assumptive Method, in which someone who consumes a certain food assumes the characteristics of animal or plant. A large juicy steak is assumed to confer the lusty attributes of a bull. Likewise, the randiness of rabbits and goats is said to be acquired by eating their flesh.

Ultimately, though, aphrodisiacs are not to be found in our food but in our “sweet little imaginations.” The Moroccans may have the right idea, after all: Anything that arouses our senses, arouses us. So, bring on the spices and perfumes! Ras el Hanout, that variable blend of warm and fragrant spices, typically includes allspice, cardamom, coriander, mace, nutmeg and various peppers, among them black pepper, cubebs and long pepper, all of which suggest sweet passion. It also features a seduction that is considerably more subtle than Spanish Fly: dried rose buds.

While foods rumored to be aphrodisiacal may not work literally, serving up oysters and chocolate to a potential lover this Valentine’s Day sends the message that we want them to work, which may be all the aphrodisiac we need.

And to help you in your amorous pursuits, consider some of these:

Oysters
Oyster Stew
Pacific Oysters with Asian Vinaigrette
Broiled Scallops and Oysters with Watercress

Beef
Côte de Boeuf with Caramelized Shallots
Medallions of Beef with Foie Gras and Truffles

Rabbit
Portuguese Rabbit Hunter Style
Rabbit in Red Wine in the Style of Ischia

References
Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

© 2010 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.

When on Christmas morning Scrooge wanted to mend his ways, he sent an errand boy to buy the biggest turkey available, “not the little prize turkey, the big one.” In Victorian times, as today, nothing said holiday like a big roast, and Scrooge’s surprise for the Cratchit family conveys the ultimate in celebration. But how did these long-held beliefs about holiday food take root?

To understand the importance placed upon such types of meals, we turn to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. According to him, the fundamental difference between the ordinary meals we serve to our immediate families and those we make for company or during holidays is that everyday fare is boiled not roasted. Going back to at least the Middle Ages in Europe, the large cuts of meat, deemed suitable for roasting were seen only in the kitchens of the most wealthy—at that time, the nobility. Consequently, to offer roasted meat to guests was to confer noble status upon them.

Lévi-Strauss’s notion also reflects the reality of French kitchens at this time: most didn’t contain ovens. For such special occasions as Christmas or the arrival of honored guests, large stuffed birds or carefully larded haunches would be carried to the local boulangerie, or bakery, for roasting in the huge, bread-baking ovens. In light of this, I would argue that it isn’t the cooking method itself, but the extra effort expended that indicates the higher status of special-occasion meals.

One of the primary functions of holidays is the promotion and affirmation of group cohesiveness. The shared memories and rituals that define our families—and our societies—are renewed and restored during the preparation and eating of traditional foods. The essential ingredient in any Thanksgiving meal is its invariability. Other holidays, like Christmas, allow for some experimentation, but the Thanksgiving meal is a ritual that must be performed with absolute adherence to a family’s traditions.

It’s curious then that the menu for Christmas dinner, a mere month after Thanksgiving, often repeats certain foods. Some items appear on both menus precisely because they’re family favorites, but others take their place on the table due to societal traditions that extend farther back than the immediate generations. For example, many details of American Christmas celebrations are based upon English models such as the Yule log, the repetition of seasonal songs, and, of course, the annual retelling, or re-televising, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But because the English don’t celebrate the American Thanksgiving feast, a roasted turkey at Christmas isn’t redundant in England as it is stateside.

In addition, though the pairing of sweet and savory on the same plate is unusual—the English usually keep them separate—it isn’t unknown. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, immediately preceding the age of exploration and the colonization of America, such sweet-savory combinations were common. So if your Christmas meal is intended to serve as a ritual reenactment of ancient ways, cranberries make perfect sense. In western tradition, only roasted meats are normally served with a sweet side dish: leg of lamb with mint jelly, glazed ham with pineapple, or roast goose with red currant jelly. While these aren’t always holiday meals, they’re generally reserved for special occasions. Likewise, it should be noted that these celebratory meals often end with another ancient pairing of sweet and savory, fruit and meat: the mince pie.

In recent years, the pairing of fruits and meats has become more common, largely because of the increased popularity of non-European cuisines. The Chinese, for example, don’t usually save room for dessert because each of their dishes balances the four basic flavors: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Most Americans order sweet-and-savory dishes at ethnic restaurants, and they’re beginning to enjoy them at home as well.

Perhaps in keeping with this broadening of the American palate, and of a more general interest in our history and cultural genealogy, adventurous cooks are experimenting with much older cuisines. Historical re-enacters strive to create “authentic” foods at mock Revolutionary and Civil War battles, and members of Society for Creative Anachronism reproduce as accurately as possible the cooking of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The image of ancient eating habits is changing. Most of us now know that historic meals didn’t consist solely of gruel for the peasantry and giant haunches of roasted game for the royalty. The food of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was rich and varied with exotic ingredients, elaborate preparation and presentations, and a level of conspicuous consumption that could be the envy of today’s fashionable foodies.

Just as our knowledge of our kitchen heritage is increasing, today’s cookbooks are beginning to look for ways to incorporate that knowledge into modern cooking. A perfect example is Francine Segan’s book, Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook. Ms. Segan has sought out period recipes, which she includes, but rather than slavishly re-creating them, she’s made them anew for modern tastes. This isn’t geographical, or cultural, but rather chronological-fusion cooking. This is our own culinary heritage, revived and recharged after 400 years.

What better way to celebrate Christmas and reconnect with our collective past than by making some classic English recipes? The extra effort spent on these dishes communicates to family and friends that they’re special and honored. It says, as did the Bard of Avon in As You Like It, “Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.” However, in keeping with modern tastes, let’s set aside the huge steaming roast—with apologies to the reformed Scrooge—and revisit some ancient treats, at once savory and sweet.

Recipes
Prime Rib Roast with Orange-Glazed Onions
Individual Meat Pies with Cointreau Marmalade
Scallops in Berry Glaze

References
Segan, Francine. Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook. New York: Random House, 2003

© 2009 Gary Allen. Photo © 2003 Tim Turner. All rights reserved.

LC reader Mary Cannon wrote in, asking if we had a recipe for manchup. A quick search of the Web told me that manchup is a dish from the Cape Verde Islands, but nothing more. Additional searches found very few recipes from Cape Verde, and none of them for manchup. Suspecting that the dish’s name might have variant spellings, I tried looking for anything that sounded reasonably close to manchup, on the Internet and in books on West African cuisine (since I couldn’t find any Cape Verdean cookbooks).

No luck.

Human nature being what it is, food writers can usually count on the nostalgia that people feel for the cooking of their homeland. A query was posted to a bulletin board for Cape Verdean émigrés. Four people read it, but none answered. There was still one avenue of hope: Cape Verde’s embassy in Washington, DC. An appropriately desperate e-mail was sent, explaining the problem.

An hour later, Jose Brito, the Republic of Cape Verde’s ambassador to the United States, wrote back. According to Brito, “Cachoupa [is] translated here in the US [as] manchup.” This was a significant clue. Going back to the Cape Verdean recipe sites, finding an answer became a relatively simple matter — although cachoupa’s name does indeed have a variant spelling: cachupa. But where did the name manchup come from? It’s apparently a corruption of munchupa, a name for cachupa that is used on Brava Island, at the southwestern end of the Cape Verde archipelago.

Cachupa is the national dish of Cape Verde. Like other great rustic dishes, such as the cassoulet of France and feijoada of Brazil, it uses highly seasoned meats in relatively small amounts together with grains and beans, and is slowly cooked to build a great depth of flavor. And like those dishes, it is even better when reheated the next day.

Cape Verdeans created one of the first fusion cuisines, incorporating the tastes and ingredients of Europe (livestock), Africa and Asia (sugar and tropical fruits), and the Americas (beans, chiles, corn, pumpkins, and manioc). They were able to do so because of their location: Just off the west coast of Africa, they were ideally suited as a stopping point, first for Portuguese explorers, and later for slave traders.

Cachupa can be very simple — barely more than samp (hominy), beans, and some salt pork, much like old-fashioned succotash. This simple peasant fare is known as cachupa povera. Wealthier Cape Verdeans — or even the poor, on special occasions, such as weddings — add more ingredients, such as a little meat or fish, in which case the dish is known as cachupa sabe, a more savory dish, like Brunswick stew. At the other end of the spectrum you’ll find cachupa rica — the richest variation. Like feijoada completa, it’s a long way from the simple peasant dish of legumes and grain. Here are two recipes for cachupa rica.

Notes: These recipes don’t indicate the number of portions or portion size; they have been edited, but not tested.

Cachupa Rica I
Ingredients
Olive oil, as needed
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 bay leaves
4 cups dried hominy, soaked in plenty of water overnight
1 cup dried kidney beans, soaked plenty of water overnight
1 cup dried large lima beans, soaked plenty of water overnight
2 pounds beef or pork spareribs
1 chouriço or linguiça sausage, sliced
1 blood sausage, sliced
1/4 pound lean bacon, diced
1/2 cup fresh green beans
2 pounds cabbage, coarsely chopped
2 pounds plantains, peeled and sliced
2 pounds fresh yams, peeled, 1-inch dice
2 pounds fresh sweet potatoes, peeled, 1-inch dice
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, 1-inch dice
1 chicken, cut in 12 serving pieces
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 pounds tomatoes, quartered
Sofrito (a seasoning paste of sauteed garlic, onion, and tomato paste), to taste
Cilantro, chopped

Directions
1. In a stock pot, combine 6 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the onion, garlic, and bay leaves. Bring to boil. Add soaked hominy and beans. Simmer until nearly fork-tender.

2. In a separate pot, brown the spareribs, chouriço or linguiça, blood sausage, and bacon, then add the green beans, cabbage, plantains, yams, sweet potatoes, and squash. Set aside.

3. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then cook in skillet filmed with olive oil until lightly browned. Add the tomatoes and the meat-vegetable mixture to the stock pot of hominy and beans. Cook on low heat for approximately 40 minutes. Add the sofrito to taste, and simmer 20 minutes longer. Turn off the heat and let rest, covered, for at least 30 minutes.

4. Arrange the meats and vegetables on platter. Garnish with the chopped cilantro. Serve the hominy and beans in a separate bowl.

Cachupa Rica II
Ingredients
4 cups crushed dry hominy
1/4 pound dried kidney beans
2 onions, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, chopped
Olive oil, as needed
Salt
1/4 pound beef, cubed
1/4 pound bacon, diced
1 pig trotter
4 sausages (linguiça or chouriço), thickly sliced
Paprika, to taste
2 potatoes, peeled, 1-inch cubes
1/4 pound savoy cabbage, coarsely chopped
2 cassavas, peeled, 1-inch dice
Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Directions
1. Add the hominy, beans, half the onions, one of the bay leaves, 1 garlic clove, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, and a pinch of salt to a stock pot. Cover with water and boil 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.

2. In large pot or Dutch oven, heat 3 tablespoons of oil over low heat and add the beef, bacon, pig trotter, sausage, the rest of the onions, the remaining garlic clove and bay leaf, paprika and salt to taste. Cover and let stew for 3 hours. Add a splash of water if the pan threatens to dry out.

3. Return the beans and hominy to a boil. Then add the meat mixture. When the beans and hominy are nearly tender, add the potatoes, cabbage, and cassavas. When the potatoes are fork-tender, remove the pot from heat. Allow the dish to rest 30 minutes before serving. Garnish with the chopped cilantro.

Cachupinha
Here’s a similar dish, more quickly prepared and brighter tasting, as it substitutes fresh ingredients for the dried ones usually found in cachupa.

Ingredients
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
1/4 pound linguiça, sliced
2 peppercorns, crushed
5 ears of corn
1/4 squash, sliced
1/2 pound fresh fava or lima beans
2 ripe tomatoes
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Directions
1. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, linguiça, and peppercorns and cook gently until the onions are softened.

2. Cut corn kernels from the cobs. Add the corn, squash, beans, and tomatoes to the linguiça-onion mixture. Add just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the vegetable are tender and the water has been absorbed. Taste for seasoning and garnish with chopped cilantro. Serve.

References
Cape Verdean Foods
Cape Verdean Cooking

© 2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.

Every year, around this time, food writers fill thickets of pages—actual printed pages or virtual pages like this one—with recipes for turkey.

There are traditional New England turkeys, stuffed with bread and sage and onions and studded with everything from sausage to chestnuts. There are southern turkeys, with dressings made from cornbread that never visits the nether regions of the accompanying fowl. There are instructions for deep-frying, replete with warnings about all the terrible things that can befall a neophyte attempting to prepare the bird indoors. There are endless instructions about the proper way to thaw a giant turkey—and phone numbers to call if, on the morning of the Big Day, readers discover that they have neglected a task that should have begun three days earlier.

Certainly, those people who have never prepared a Thanksgiving dinner might benefit from the experience of others. However, the idea that experienced cooks might actually try one of the countless new recipes for the holiday is fundamentally flawed.

Think about it: Thanksgiving is one of the most traditional meals of the year. During the rest of the year, zany combinations and concoctions are fair game, but on this, the holiest of holy culinary days, traditions stand firm. Which is why editors pull their hair out trying to come up with something new. And while the holiday itself has been officially recognized only since the Civil War, it’s part of a harvest tradition that’s at least as old as agriculture itself, which is, give or take, some 10,000 years. The turkey part is somewhat newer—it dates to the colonization of the New World in the seventeenth century—but the idea of serving meats with fruit, as we serve cranberries with turkey, was popular in Europe during the Middle Ages. The spice mixture that creates the characteristic scent of most pumpkin pie (cloves, nutmeg, and ginger) are also Medieval favorites—and were traditional even then, though the tradition was borrowed from Arabic traders and medical writers. This stuff is in our DNA.

When we pull up to the holiday table, we expect to be comforted by really familiar flavors and aromas. Most families would be horrified to discover that the cook had decided, willy-nilly, to mess with their traditions by indulging in all these fancy new dishes splashed across magazine pages.

Some of these articles serve a purpose, beyond filling all that dead space between ads. Some readers may not be saddled with family traditions and may be interested in try something new. Some may be dreading yet another dried-out turkey—and are willing to try anything, once. Some may have just recovered from the experience of Thanksgiving past and want to banish the specter, once and for all.

In any case, you won’t be getting any turkey recipe from me. I will, however, steer you to a discussion of another troublesome part of the Thanksgiving experience: the somewhat bizarre, yet fully expected, utterly 20th-century combination of sweet potatoes and marshmallows.

© 2008 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.