Canned Foods in French Restaurants?! What Would Escoffier Say? Let's See...

A law should stipulate

that in a restaurant

food that has been cooked

on site with fresh ingredients

is served to customers.

Didier Chenet

President of French restaurant union, Synhorcat

Yesterday in the online edition of the German magazine Spiegel, Stefan Simons wrote that French restaurateurs are rankling under an onslaught of prepared meals and ingredients in places that serve food. With shorter lunch breaks, a greater emphasis on healthy eating, and a tighter economy, fast food joints and kitchen shortcuts are becoming increasingly common in the land known for boeuf Bourguignon and cassoulet. A slice of pizza for lunch might not at first blush seem "healthy," but compared to the traditional options at the long, drawn-out lunches of old, it's quicker, cheaper, and may have fewer calories.

What specifically upsets restaurateurs, though, is the crush of canned, bagged, bottled, and otherwise preserved or pre-made dishes and ingredients in so-called restaurants. Many argue that places that serve such food ought not be called "restaurants" at all. Simons writes:

A recent poll of culinary professionals in France by restaurant union Synhorcat found that 31 percent of French eateries are now often looking to the can for their culinary inspiration. Increasingly, this means salads out of bags, industrially produced French fries and potato wedges, canned vegetables, flavor concentrates, vacuum-packed fish as well as sauces and dressings out of the bucket. One-quarter of meals are no longer cooked -- they are simply stirred together or warmed up with nary a mention on the menu that what the customer is getting isn't fresh. As a result, half of customers no longer trust the restaurants that serve them.

Horrible. Simply horrible. Sauces from buckets! Canned produce! Such degradation of French cuisine. Can you imagine what the sainted Auguste Escoffier — the king of chefs and the chef of kings — would say if he weren't so busy turning in his grave? What sputtered indignation could he offer us?

We don't have to imagine. Escoffier actually wrote about such things. From Auguste Escoffier: Memories of My Life:

Since I created Pêche Melba, which now enjoys world wide renown, demand for tender peaches, both fresh and preserved whole, has increased considerably. To ensure the high quality of such peaches, the fruit must not be too fragile. Montreuil peaches were excellent, but in recent years that quality of peach became difficult to find. I noticed that in the Rhone valley there grew a peach that was very similar to the Montreuil peach. I tested it and was very happy with the results. The next year, in 1911, 15,000 of these peaches were canned. The year after, 30,000 peaches were canned, and the third year the figure had reached 60,000. The producer was planning to can 100,000 of these peaches when the war broke out. This kind of incontestable success would never had [sic] existed without the creation of Pêche Melba.

Escoffier did not merely tolerate canned and bottled goods cooked off-site, he embraced them. He encouraged producers to bottle, can, and ship overseas produce and sauces. He even later owned a company to manufacture canned and bottled goods. Although the codifier of haute French cuisine developed an improved tomato purée around 1874 (when the custom among cooks was to pour the purée in Champagne bottles and sterilize them), he could not convince a manufacturer to can the product until about 1892, when he took the entire 2,000 can run for his kitchens at the Savoy. The year after that, the manufacturer canned 60,000 kilos of crushed tomatoes. Today, some of the best restaurants in the world use canned tomato products.

From truffles to tomatoes, Escoffier knew that seasonality and adverse local growing conditions could make certain foodstuffs occasionally unavailable. Granted, he maintained high standards, but there was — and remains — no reason that high-quality preserved foods shouldn't be in anyone's kitchen larder. Do you truly want to mill your own grains, make your own pasta, pickle your own capers, grown your own cotton, stitch every bit of your clothing, build your own bike, forge your own knives — and create by your own hands every single thing you want to eat, drink, wear, or use every single day? There comes a point when we must rely on others who do good work so that we can get on with doing our own good work.

So, yeah. Despite some pretty schlocky examples on the market, canned, bottled, and jarred products don't bother me in and of themselves. I know how to make whiskey and homemade butter couldn't be easier, but frankly, it's a lot more expedient to buy those things from others who know what they're doing.

I sympathize with their frustrations, but clinging to notions of authenticity centered on fresh ingredients cooked in-house is going to be a slippery prospect for France's restaurateurs.

Goes well with:

• Auguste Escoffier (1997) Auguste Escoffier: Memories of My Life. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
• Escoffier isn't the only French chef we like around here. Henri Charpentier — who worked with Escoffier at the Savoy — credibly claimed to have invented Crêpes Suzette...and Eggs, William S. Burroughs.
• Stefan Simons' Spiegel article, Foodies Fight to Protect the Term 'Restaurant'
• Speaking of food that's not prepared to order, here are a few recipes I like: House Pickles with Pimento Dram, Pickled Shrimp with Blood Orange, Watermelon Pickles, and the ever-popular Mexican Pickled Carrots.

Mexican Pickled Carrots (o: zanahorias en escabeche)

The radishes that appear on the table at chips-and-salsa type Mexican restaurants appeal to some, but the more common pickled jalapenos and carrots are my own weakness. Give me that, a continuing supply of cold beers, and no particular place to be and I don't care how long it takes for lunch to come.

My regular eating buddies have dainty and tepid appreciations for chiles, so the bowl invariably is left to me alone — and it always gets emptied, leaving just a little pool of oregano-flecked juice at the bottom. Sometimes the chiles are shockingly hot; other times, they're duds, no hotter than a garden-variety bell pepper. Part of the fun is finding out which kind I just popped in my mouth. Whether you know them as pickled carrots, Mexican carrots, zanahorias en escabeche, or (upping the chile quotient) chiles encurditos, know this: they're simple to make and they go fast.

For the vinegar, you can use the plain white stuff or a mix of half white and half rice vinegar, Filipino cane vinegar, or homemade pineapple vinegar.

Mexican Pickled Carrots

24 oz/750ml water
24 oz/750ml vinegar (see above)
1/3 cup/80ml canola or corn oil
5 bay leaves
1 Tbl oregano
1 tsp crushed black pepper
1 head of garlic, halved across the equator
2 lbs/1kilo carrots, sliced diagonal
4-5 jalapeno chiles, sliced diagonally
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced thinly

Bring the carrots and enough water to cover them by a finger width or two to a boil in a large pot. Cook at a low boil for 5-8 minutes, until tender but still with a bite. Cooked them too long? They're mush now? Feed them to the dog and start over.

Drain the carrots and give the pot a quick rinse. Mix the remaining ingredients except chiles and onion slices in the pot and bring to a boil. Add the drained carrots, the onion slices, and the uncooked chiles. Return to a boil, then take the pot off off the heat, cover, and let it rest overnight.

Pack into clean jars and store in the fridge.

Makes about 1.25 liters/5 cups.

Goes well with:

• Pork tenderloin in peanut sauce. It comes as a surprise to some Americans and Europeans that not all Mexican food is hot (though it was with glee that I saw a Frenchman clamp his hand to his mouth in shock and pain after sampling what I considered a mild table salsa). The recipe in the link above for filete de cerdo en cacahuate is one I adapted from Larousse de la cocina Mexicana.
• I make watermelon pickles with lemon and ginger. You should, too.
• Small batch half-sour pickles, a quick and simple recipe for making New York-style pickles when you don't feel up to cranking out a whole barrel of them or traveling to the city to enjoy them in situ.

Homemade Corned Beef

For some unknown reason corned beef does not receive the careful display it should get. Too many meat men merely toss the corned beef into a platter any old way. It should be remembered that corned beef is a big trade puller for people who will go miles out of their way to patronize a meat market that is known for good corned beef.

~ Albert Todoroff (1949)

Store Tested Ideas for Meat Men

Inspired by (a) St. Patrick's Day (b) Darina Allen's book and (c) the repugnant pink sludge enrobing vacuum-packed corned beef that started showing up on store shelves several weeks ago, I made corned beef this week. That's not to say that I merely cooked a piece of it — I sourced a fresh beef brisket, washed it, trimmed it, slipped it in cold spiced brine and let that mother sit in there for almost a week. The result was a rosy pink hunk of beef that was the centerpiece of a simple dinner last night: corned beef brisket, boiled fingerling potatoes, and — since I don't care for plain boiled cabbage — coleslaw. On the side: a pot of homemade mustard made with Filipino vinegar.

Simple, tasty, the precursor to both sandwiches and homemade beef hash. The following recipes may seem like a lot of work; they're not. They are super simple, just heavy on the words to describe it for anyone who's never tried making corned beef before.

Corned Beef

Beef brisket — about a 5-pound piece
1 gallon cold spiced brine (see below)
Pickling spices*

Wash and pat dry the brisket. Gently place it in a pot large enough to accommodate the piece in one hunk. Carefully pour the chilled brine over it to cover. Weigh it down, if necessary, with a ceramic plate or bowl. Alternately, carefully slip the brisket into the brine if it's already in an appropriate container. Refrigerate for five days, checking now and then to make sure it remains submerged. After 2 or 3 days, turn the beef over (overhaul it) and continue brining.

After five days, remove the (now shrunken and somewhat darkened) beef from the brine, rinse it, and place in a large pot or dutch oven with fresh water to cover. Add a small handful (say, somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of a cup) of pickling spices, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cover and simmer 3-4 hours until done.

Remove from the liquid and rest 15-20 minutes before slicing. Alternately, allow to cool completely before slicing for sandwiches or cutting thicker bits for hash.

Spiced Brine

1 gallon/4 liters water
2 c/450g kosher salt
.25 c/50g white table sugar
.25 c/50g brown sugar
1oz/25g pink curing salt (aka Prague Powder No.1)
Half a head (about 6-8 cloves) of garlic, peeled and minced
1 oz/25g pickling spices*

Bring all the ingredients to a boil, stirring until the salts and sugars are dissolved. Turn the heat off, let it cool, then refrigerate before using — you don't to start cooking the beef in a hot brine.

*Pickling spices are available at numerous grocers, spice shops, and ethnic markets. The dry mixture generally contains mustard seeds, black peppercorns, bay leaves, cinnamon, and hot pepper. The version below is cobbled together from several sources, including Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Poleyn's Charcuterie, Linda Ziedrich's The Joy of Pickling, and Quick Pickles, a collaboration between Chris Schlesinger, John Willoughby, and Dan George.

By volume (cups, tablespoons, sour cream containers, whatever constant comforts you), mix the following:

2 parts each — cracked black peppercorns, yellow mustard seeds, black/brown mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cracked allspice berries, Aleppo pepper (preferred) or crushed red chili, and cloves.

1 part each — ground ginger and ground mace

For every cup of the above mix, add a small handful of crumbled dry bay leaves (not fresh ones) and 2 or 3 4" sticks of Mexican canela, roughly crushed into large pieces. If you prefer to use the firmer, darker cinnamon sticks, use only 2. What you don't use for the brine and cooking the beef, you can use later for homemade cucumber pickles.

Capuchin Capers? Them's Just Pickled Nasturtium Pods

The first I’d heard of capuchin capers was in John Evelyn’s 1699 Acetaria. Subtitled A Discourse of Sallets, the book details the types and uses of plants destined for grand salads of 300 years ago. In recent years, we’ve become accustomed to more eclectic salads than those of, say, the mid-20th century. When once iceberg lettuce ruled America, we now don’t give a second glance at arugula, mâche, radicchio, and perhaps torn herbs tossed in the bowl.

Nasturtium seed pods

17th and 18th century salads — or, rather, sallets, salats, and such spellings — could be a riot of colors, vegetables, fruits, flowers…and seeds. Capuchin capers were nothing more than the seed pods of nasturtium plants preserved in the manner of more exotic — and pricey — Mediterranean capers.

Although many older sources mention the striking similarity between pickled nasturtium pods and actual capers (also a pickled bud), I gave them short shrift; it seemed just one more example of a foodstuff born of scarcity while users convinced themselves it was just as good as the real thing.

Turns out, capuchin and Mediterranean capers are surprisingly similar. The color is not quite the right green (too light), the covering (ridged and grooved) is off, but the smell and — more importantly — the taste is close enough that after running an experimental batch earlier this summer, I went into the fields to gather enough buds for a few pints.

Fence row nasturtium flowers and seed pods in San Diego

Evelyn notes nasturtiums ought “to be monthly Sown: But above all the Indian, moderately hot, and aromatick, quicken the torpent Spirits, and purge the Brain, and are of Singular effect against the Scorbute [scurvy]. Both the tender Leaves, Calices, Cappuchin Capers, and Flowers, are laudably mixed with the colder Plants.”

“Monthly sown” because nasturtiums are in their entirety such useful plants and a supply throughout the growing season makes good sense. For using the plants’ “hot and aromatick” properties into winter, Evelyn recommends candying the buds as strewing herbs (that is, strewn on the floors of homes to keep down the stink in pre-modern England). Haven’t tried that. But those capers are another story.

Evelyn’s cappuchin capers (also capuchin, capuchine, capuccin, etc) are named after capucine, the French word for nasturtium. One presumes the French name for the flower comes from Capuchin friars who may have grown them as medicinal plants in their monasteries. One is not, however, a scholar of French etymology, and will leave that that shit alone for now [edit 2 Aug 2010: see Tammy's note below for confirmation of my inexpert use of French].

Adapted from The River Cottage Preserves Handbook’s recipe for Nasturium “capers”, here’s

Capuchin Capers

5 tsp salt
7 oz nasturtium seed pods
2 bay leaves (see "Notes on aromatics" below)
2.5 cup white/rice wine vinegar

Add the salt to 2.5 cups distilled or bottled water. Stir to dissolve. Rinse and drain the seed pods, then add them to the brine. Allow to stand 24 hours at room temperature.

Drain and dry the pods well. Pack into sterilized small jars, add the bay leaves (and/or other aromatics, if using). Leave about half an inch of headroom, then top with vinegar. Seal with vinegar-proof lids and leave in a cool, dark place for at least two weeks.

Notes on aromatics: Poke around old receipt books and you’ll find seemingly unending recipes for nasturtiums and their buds. They do have a peppery bite and go well in salads, with steaks, etc. Historically, a broad range of aromatics have complemented that bite when preserving the seed pods: dill, tarragon, chervil, nutmeg, black pepper, mace, cloves, bay leaves, etc. I used bay leaves only, but play with the flavors that suit you.

Strew the “capers” in salads, use them in tartar sauce, make compound butters, season tapenade with them. They’re versatile, they’re cheap, and they’re a bit of the 17th century you can bring to your own table as easy as pie. Or, rather, pye.

Goes well with:

• Evelyn, John (1699) Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets. Prospect Books out of the UK has issued a handsome printing edited by Christopher Driver and with a forward by Tom Jaine — Powell’s in Portland carries it. (Prospect also released C. Anne Wilson’s laudable history of distillation, Water of Life).
• My take on The River Cottage Preserves Handbook.

Firing up the Preserves Pot

Helping me move to college when I was 18, my father lifted one appliance, stopped, and put it on the floor. "Matthew Rowley," he sighed, "You are the only person I know who would move a vacuum cleaner full of dirt." 

The lesson stuck. I remain, to this day, one of the most streamlined travelers you're likely to meet. With very rare exceptions, if it doesn't fit on carry-on, it doesn't come with me.

When it seemed we were moving to Louisiana, I put my tendency to can, bottle, and preserve on hiatus. After all, moving suits and kitchen knives to another state is one thing. Moving heavy, fragile jars of marmalade, of young ginger in syrup, of BBQ sauce, and piquillo ketchup...that's just foolish.

Now that we're committed to San Diego and summer is on us, I've fallen back to my old ways. This week, I made syrups from strawberries, cantaloupe, and Thai tea.

I also finally got around to making what 17th century texts called "Capuchin capers" from nasturtium buds. San Diego is blanketed with nasturtium plants — their flame-colored flowers running up and down canyons and fencerows. In the Spring and Summer once the flowers wilt, the crawling vines are spotted with hundreds of bulging little pods. In French, nasturtiums are called capucines, presumably after capucins, the Capuchin friars who — I'm stretching here — may have grown them in monastic medicine gardens.

Suspect francophone etymology notwithstanding, it turns out that, like capers, nasturtium buds may be brined, pickled, and used just as imported Sicilian capers. In fact, they're freakishly similar. Same peppery bite and very nearly the same smell. I plan to use them in salads over the course of the Summer.

The biggest obstacle to a little wild harvesting? Rattlesnakes in our canyons. Something those austere Capuchin friars never had to worry about in Europe while gathering nasturtiums.

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Rowley’s House Pickles with Pimento Dram

Every few months, I put up a few jars of mixed pickles for my lunches and occasional dinner if we’re grilling burgers or brats. Recently, I’ve begun spiking those batches with the Jamaican allspice liqueur called pimento dram. The change is good.

Pimento, as allspice is known in Jamaica, is the berry of a Caribbean myrtle tree (Pimenta diocia). It’s one of the few spices native to the new world and—in the US, anyway—is often included in baked desserts. Those who know it in cocktails, however, or in the cooking outside the US understand its savory role well. In fact, it’s responsible for the characteristic taste of Jamaican jerked chicken and pork, and can be found in sauerkraut, ham brines, pickled fish, jugged hare, picadillo, and Indian curries. I’ve also used it in shrimp ceviche and bread & butter bar eggs.

Here, I used a dose of it to oompf up our house pickles. If you don’t have any pimento dram on hand, you can either order some from Haus Alpenz here, substitute lightly toasted and barely cracked whole berries…or see Paul Clarke’s directions for making your own here at the Cocktail Chronicles.

Rowley’s House Pickles with Pimento Dram
(based on a recipe from Quick Pickles by Dan George)

Vegetables & Prep
3 lbs Kirbys or other small, thin-skinned pickling cucumbers
3 Tbl kosher salt
4 Tbl olive oil
1 lb mixed heirloom carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
3 bell peppers (red, yellow, orange) chopped into 1” chunks
1 large onion, peeled and chopped into 1” chunks
10 fat cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

Spiced Pickling Syrup
5 cups cider vinegar
3 cups brown sugar
2 Tbl Creole or Dijon mustard
1 Tbl each brown and yellow mustard seed
1 Tbl pimento dram OR 1 tsp dry toasted and cracked whole allspice berries
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp green cardamom pods
1 tsp whole cloves
1 4” cinnamon stick
4 bay leaves

Trim ends of cucumber and slice each into thick coins (about ½” thick). In a stainless steel or glass bowl, toss sliced cucumbers and salt. Mix gently but thoroughly. Refrigerate cucumbers and salt for 1-2 hours.

Drain and rinse the salted cucumbers under cold running water.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large non-reactive saucepan, then sauté the carrots, onion, garlic, and bell pepper pieces at medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to sweat and just begin to soften—about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a small frying pan, dry roast the mustard seeds, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and allspice berries (if using) over medium high heat just until you hear the seeds begin to pop. Transfer to a medium nonreactive pot. Break the cinnamon and lightly toast it. Add it with the remaining syrup ingredients to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Add the cucumbers to the vegetables in the large saucepan. Toss gently to combine. Bring the pickling syrup back to a boil. Pack three large preserving jars with the vegetables. Add pimento dram (if using) to the syrup, pour the hot liquid over the vegetables, and seal the jars. Set the jars aside to cool. Once cool, refrigerate.

Yield: slightly less than 1 US gallon/4 liters

Pickled Shrimp, a Lowcountry Ceviche

It’s hot in San Diego. Miserable hot. Playing in the hose hot. To escape the worst of the heat, I turned on the stove—briefly—yesterday morning to blanch shrimp for an old version of a cold ceviche that South Carolinians would recognize simply as pickled shrimp.

The recipes for both the shrimp and the spice mix for the boil are adapted from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, though I altered the proportions for a bigger batch. In heat like this, I’m firing up the burners as infrequently as possible, so the bigger batch gets us through two days with minimal extra hotness. Most of the batch got toted along to a poker game last night with a mess of sangria, but there’s still a few to throw in a green salad for lunch or a light dinner. They're snappy little appetizers for cocktail parties and handy to have on a picnic. Better with beer than wine, though: the residual acidity in the shellfish can clash with red wines in particular.

An ingredient note: the original recipe calls for sour oranges, but those are infrequent finds here. The mix of fresh juices below is an attempt to recreate that Seville/naranja agria taste. If you have blood oranges, then by all means use them for the orange juice component in the juice blend. They make a better-tasting pickle and I regret we had none on hand. Still, though, this was tasty. And house is cool as a cucumber today.

Pickled Shrimp

First make the pickling solution.

3 large dried bay leaves
1 oz pimentro dram or 5 whole allspice berries
1.5 oz coriander seeds, dry toasted for 30 seconds until aromatic
1.5 Tbl black peppercorns
1 Tbl kosher salt
1 Tbl sugar
1.5 tsp Aleppo or other red pepper flakes
1.5 cups rice vinegar
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup fresh grapefruit juice
1 cup fresh Valencia or blood orange juice

1. Grind the bay leaves, allspice (if using), coriander, peppercorns, salt, and sugar in a mortar or spice mill into a rough powder. Add this powder to a 3- or 4-quart nonreactive container.
2. Add the vinegar, juices, red pepper, and pimento dram (if using) to the container and set aside.

Second, blanch the shrimp.

1 gallon water
4 Tbl shrimp boil (see below)
3 lbs medium shrimp, heads off, peels on

1. Heat the water and shrimp boil spice mixture in a large stock pot. Rinse and drain the shrimp while the water heats.
2. Let the water boil 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the shrimp (in two batches if necessary) to the water, turn off the heat, and let it rest one minute. The shrimp will turn pink and firm.
4. Using a strainer, scoop out the shrimp and throw over ice to stop the cooking.
5. Peel the shrimp, slip them into the pickling solution, and cool.

The cooled shrimp are ready to eat within four hours and are best if eaten with 24.

The shrimp boil spice mix is also from the Lee brothers’ cookbook, though I prefer to make mine more of a powder than the rough grinding they call for. This is a decent all-purpose seafood boil and would be fine for crabs, crawfish, and other shellfish as well as broiled or grilled fish.

Shrimp Boil

1 Tbl peppercorns
1 Tbl celery seeds
6 bay leaves, snipped with scissors
½ cup kosher salt
3 Tbl ground cayenne

Place all ingredients in a spice mill (I use a Krups coffee mill for spices—and nothing but spices). Grind to a medium powder. Store in a jar.

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Quick Small-Batch Half-Sour Pickles

It has been a common saying of physicians in England,
that a cucumber should be well sliced,
and dressed with pepper and vinegar,
and then thrown out, as good for nothing.

~ ascribed to Samuel Johnson in
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
James Boswell (1785)

Small, knobby pickling cucumbers are generally sold unwaxed so that, with little more than a scrub and a trim, they’re ready for the pickle barrel. But who has the space or need for a whole damn barrel of pickles? Not me.

Unlike 19th century Americans or Soviet-era Russians, I don’t put up summer’s bounty to survive harsh winters. I make them because I like the taste. Instead of a big barrel or crock, I tend to make pickles—watermelon, jicama, eggs, carrots, lemons, beets, peppers, whatever looks good at the market—in quart-sized batches. Many can ferment on the kitchen counter and may be ready to eat within just a few days.

Half-sour pickles are one of those counter pickles. It’s worth pointing out that half-sours aren’t half-done or half-ready; they’re cured quickly in low-salt brines. More salt, longer ferment and you’ve got sours. Different recipe. We’ll tackle those some other day.

Food writer John Thorne suggests an easy method to combat the air exposure that can cause the pickles to go bad. In his 1984 pamphlet The Dill Crock, Thorne recommends a plastic bag filled with brine to exclude air from a fermenting pickle. If it leaks at all, the brine inside is the same strength as what’s in the container, so the pickle doesn’t get diluted. I use a Ziploc bag to the same effect.

Final note: we trim the blossom ends of the cucumbers. It’s not strictly necessary, but the blossom ends may contain enzymes that could cause the pickles to go all soft and mushy. Not what we’re going for.






Quick Half-Sour Pickles

1 quart of pickling cucumbers

Brine for one quart of pickles
2 Tbl kosher salt
3 cups water (filtered or distilled)
½ tsp black pepper, coarsely crushed
½ tsp coriander seed, coarsely crushed
I head of fresh dill
½ tsp crushed red pepper (Aleppo if you’ve got it)
1 bay leaf
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

Gently scrub the cucumbers under running water to remove dirt and any particularly prominent spines on the nubs. Drain. Trim a thin slice from the blossom end and pack the cukes into a one-quart non-reactive container, such as glass or food-grade plastic.

Stir the salt and water until the salt dissolves. Add the aromatic/seasoning ingredients to the container with the cucumbers. Put the container on a plate to contain any possible dripping once fermentation begins.

Pour in enough brine to cover the cucumbers. Push a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag into the container’s aperture, fill it with the remaining brine, and seal. Cover with cheesecloth and secure it with a rubber band to keep out fruit flies or other flying little beasties you may discover are drawn to this stuff.

After a few days, the brine may begin giving off tiny bubbles. Keep an eye on it and skim off any white foam that rises to the surface, giving the bag a rinse if necessary. The cucumbers will begin turning darker and to taste, well, brined after just two days. Let them go for a week and they should turn olive green throughout. Remove the bag, skim any new foam, close container fast, and put in the fridge.

These are meant to be eaten in fairly quick order and are not intended for long storage. Make yourself a sandwich, grill up some burgers, or snack on them Russian style, with shots of vodka.

Bread and Butter Bar Eggs

This Spring, my bread and butter pickles took a hard left turn. Bread and butters, after kosher-style dills, are arguably the most well-known cucumber pickle in the US. My recipe is pretty consistent from batch to batch, but this time I couldn’t leave well enough alone and got chickens involved.

As I’ve mentioned before, pickled bar eggs are a particular favorite of mine, even if they are a bit old fashioned (or just plain divey). Here and there, you still find bars that have a large glass jug with pickled eggs bobbing around in vinegar and bay leaves. Whether they really rise and fall with changes in the barometric pressure—as some flannel-mouthed bartenders claim—is a question for another day.

Some of my pickled egg experiments don’t turn out as well as hoped (the Cape Malay masala version needs work). Overall, though, eggs make great spiced pickles, exactly the kind I’d like to see more often grace back bars for hungry drinkers. The smack and tang of vinegar also make them a good mid-day snack when I’m peckish, but don’t want to eat a whole meal. A pinch of salt, maybe some Sriracha hot sauce, and I'm good.

When the latest batch of bread and butter cukes was down to just a few slices, the jar still held nearly a quart of pickle juice flavored with seeds of celery and mustard and the ubiquitous turmeric (the rhizome that turns ballpark mustard yellow). Rather than pitch it, I cooked a batch of eggs, slipped them into the spiced liquid, and pushed the jug to the back of the fridge. After two weeks, the eggs firmed, turned a luminous turmeric yellow, and took on the definite sweet-and-sour tang of the original pickle.

Here’s the shortcut to make them without the cucumber prelude. Remember, hardboiled eggs are a mistake. If you’re boiling them, you’re doing it wrong. See here for easy instructions on cooking eggs without that sulfurous, stanky green ring.

Bread and Butter Bar Eggs

2 dozen hard-cooked eggs, peeled
1 lb onion
1 ½ Tbl kosher or sea salt
1 ½ tsp celery seed
1 tsp powdered turmeric
¼ tsp cracked allspice (or 1 tsp pimento dram)
1 Tbl each brown and yellow mustard seeds
4 cups cider vinegar
3 ½ cups light brown sugar

Peel and slice the onions into half-moons, about ¼” wide. Toss with the salt in a nonreactive bowl and set aside for an hour. Rinse and drain.

In a nonreactive pot, add the remaining ingredients (except the eggs) and bring to a boil. Stir as needed to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer 3-5 minutes. Remove from the heat, cover, and let cool to room temperature.

Place the eggs in a nonreactive container, such as a big glass preserving jar or food-grade plastic, and pour the liquid over them. Cover and refrigerate. The eggs should be fully pickled in two weeks, but even a few days will make a dramatic difference.

Serve with beer, whiskey, boilermakers, a pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper. Get all fancy if you like and slice them into quarters lengthwise for adding to salads. Toss them in a picnic basket or a shoebox lunch.

Stink up the New Year with Tasty Cucumber Kimchee

A dish of kimchee has all the subtlety of an Israeli foray into Gaza. Today, I’m eating some. This isn’t any sort of political stance, yet it is problematic because, as I’ve mentioned, making kimchee at home is forbidden to me.

Capital for, lowercase bidden.

Yet here it is—kimchee. Right on the table. I’ve got the house to myself for 24 hours and this is the vice that whispers most compellingly. By morning, the place should be aired out and nobody will be the wiser.

It’s the smell. That’s what gets me in trouble. Some who make it at home actually keep separate refrigerators (even outside) in which to store these aromatic Korean pickles. Pungent and penetrating, nearly every variety of kimchee—from cabbage to radish—infuses the entire place with garlic and hot peppers. My gumbo and red beans are no strangers to garlic or peppers, but there’s no restriction on them because neither stinks up the place quite the same way. Those don’t ferment, you see. And that’s when the penetrating power of Korean pickles shoulders its way in.

Southern California kimchee lovers with home-pickling injunctions are in luck. While nearly any Korean market has kimchee for those who aren’t allowed or don’t want to make it, Zion Market has dozens (hundreds?) of prepared kimchees for take-out. Every now and again I head there to load up on red pepper paste and threads, cheap sea salt…and stinky-ass contraband.

When I have more than a single day alone, I will occasionally crank out a quick cucumber kimchee nearly identical to the one I picked at Zion along with a dried radish version (in the bowl, above). If all you know is the Napa cabbage type, give this fresh and crisp one a spin.

Cucumber Kimchee (Oi Sobagi)

10 Kirby cucumbers, about 5” long
1 small bunch of green onions (about 5), chopped fine
I entire head of garlic, chopped fine
2 Tbl. fresh ginger, minced
2 Tbl. red pepper threads or 1½ Tbl. New Mexican chile powder
2-3 Tbl. kosher or sea salt (plus extra for salting)
2 tsp white sugar

Wash the cucumbers and trim the blossom end from each. Cut each cucumber down its length almost to the stem end, but not all the way through. Turn the cucumber and make an identical cut at a 90° angle to the first. The cuke should still be held together at the stem end. Rub salt into the cuts and place in a colander to drain for an hour.

Mix the spring onions, garlic, ginger, pepper, and sugar in a nonreactive bowl. Add 2-3 tablespoons of kosher or flaky sea salt to taste (remember: not subtle).

Rinse and drain the cucumbers. Stuff them lightly with the mixture. Pack the stuffed cucumbers carefully into a big glass jar or two. Let ferment at room temperature for at least one day, when they’re begin to sour slightly from the fermentation. Refrigerate once they reach a point of sourness you like, then eat them all within a week.

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Bookshelf: Pickled

A popular conceit holds that only the freshest in-season foods should grace our tables for proper, healthful and, let’s face it, morally sound meals. Unchecked, such policies might leave us bereft of such preserved pleasures as martini olives, colonial-era rum shrubs, country hams, lowcountry atjar, chow-chows, and pickled okra to grace bloody mary cocktails. Lucy Norris soundly plugs this philosophical bunghole with Pickled, her paean to the brined, fermented, and otherwise mildly rotten foods we can’t live without.

Pickled weaves oral histories gathered for New York’s NY Food Museum project among some eighty family recipes documenting ethnic picking traditions. The celebrated pickles of Eastern Europe’s winter larder—dills, beets, sauerkraut—bob to the surface, but Norris successfully dips deeper for fried dills, watermelon flesh (the other watermelon pickle), Korean kimchis, pickled fish, and preserved lemons.

Whether you regard them as summer in a jar or corruption in the cupboard, do yourself a favor: Make pickles before winter sets in for good. None of Norris’ recipes holds universal appeal—pickled duck tongues, anyone?—but the book is a gem for sensible cooks willing to buck a trend that implies pickles are déclassé, too much trouble or, worst of all, just plain make you a bad person.

Instant Pineapple Pickle

Korean and Indonesian cooking will stop me in my tracks, though I am forbidden from making kimchee at home and, in San Diego, it’s the occasional soto, rendang, or sambal on a supposedly Chinese menu that hint at an Indonesian influence in the kitchen.

At one of our occasional shindigs, both Mama Charlie and Dr. Smokesalot (whose respective mothers are Korean) brought bulgogi for grilling. Some call bulgogi Korean barbecue. I call it a very good night for me. The thin-cut sirloin was marinated in garlic, rice wine, sesame oil, red pepper, soy, sugar, and lords knows what else. Rice was a given.

Last night, with a batch of bulgogi waiting for the grill to heat, I veered off-course and cranked out an Indonesian-inspired pickle to go with the beef. You could just as easily call it a sambal. The recipe is loosely adapted from Rosemary Brissenden’s classic South East Asian Food and is best in the first 24 hours. If you buy your fresh pineapples trimmed and cored, this won’t even take five minutes to throw together.

The stuff goes great with bulgogi, of course, but it turns out also grilled chicken and fish, carnitas, and pork chops. It's lightly salty, kinda pungent, but sweet at the same time. Break open a beer or three while you're at it.

Don’t be scared of the fish sauce; it is an essential foil to the sweetness of the pineapple. I’m tempted to say it’s optional, but if fish sauce skeeves you, eh, just skip the recipe and open a can of pork and beans.

Instant Pineapple Pickle/Pineapple Sambal

One pineapple, peeled, cored, and diced into ½” to 1” chunks, plus all its juice
1 Tbl crushed red pepper*
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
one ½” piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 Tbl brown mustard seeds
1 large pinch turmeric
1 tsp coarse grey sea salt
1 Tbl Thai fish sauce
4 oz white vinegar (rice, champagne, or plain ol’ Heinz)

Grind the red pepper, garlic, ginger, mustard seeds, and salt together, using a bit of vinegar if necessary to make a loose paste. Combine the paste with the remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

* I used Crushed Aleppo pepper from Penzey's: hot, slightly oily, but not so pungent that you can't taste that the pepper is actually a fruit.


Goes well with:

• Korean Favorites—Bulgogi, a YouTube video laying out the basics for a marinade. After a rest of a few hours to a day or two, beef prepared like this would be grilled over high heat to give it a hint of char.
  

Moonshiners’ Toolbox: The Mason Jar Turns 150

Be it known that I, JOHN L. MASON, of the city, county, and State of New York, have invented new and useful Improvements in the Necks of Bottles, Jars, &c., especially such as are intended to be air and water tight, such as are used for sweetmeats...

~ John L. Mason's jar patent, 1858

2008 is the sesquicentennial of the Mason jar, the iconic container of 20th-century moonshining (the pottery jug, complete with its triple-x rating, is arguably an emblem of distilleries—licit and otherwise—from the latter part of the 19th century). Though I’ve seen homemade brandies and whiskeys stored in repurposed empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s, Crown Royal, Bacardi, and Voss water, most of the examples with Appalachian appellations that’ve been pressed into my hands come in old school Mason jars with two-part, screw-on lids.

See, Mason jars, for distillers of a certain mindset, are part and parcel of an authentic moonshine experience. For some, it just isn’t really shine at all unless it comes in crew-top jar. In fact, there’s an old joke in distilling circles that you can tell the confirmed corn drinkers because they have a permanent indentation on the bridges of their noses, right where the rim of a jar might bump during deep quaffs.

I’ve found homemade liquor in such jars in New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, the upper and deep South, the Midwest and mountain states ~ even here on the west coast. It’s especially true of illicit spirits said to be from the South. Hell, if it’s from the South AND in a Mason jar, it’s GOT to be the real deal, right? Right?

Well, sometimes that’s true, but I’ve also seen local whiskeys passed off as Southern far, far away from any former Confederate stronghold.

Whence the Jar?

Philadelphia-born metalworker John Landis Mason (1832-1902) patented his jar in 1858 and promptly sold the rights to produce it to several companies, thus hosing himself out of a lot of future earnings. The trade-off? His name is synonymous with the jarring industry and even if Ball, Kerr, or some other company manufactured the containers, we all know that, as a class, they are Mason jars.

Lindsey Nair lays out Mason’s story in her Roanoke Times article Well-preserved: The Mason jar turns 150.

The prime innovation in his design was a threaded neck that allowed a metal cap to be screwed directly onto the jar. Before his invention, home preserving jars might be clamped down, not unlike a swing-top closure such as Grolsch beer’s, or merely sealed with waxed paper. Spoilage rates were higher than summer cotton, Snoop Dogg, Harold, and Kumar all rolled together. His jars were a boon to home preservers because the design helped lower the number of put-up vegetables, fruits, and condiments that went bad.

They were also a boon to liquor haulers. Before the canning jars were taken up by moonshiners and bootleggers, pottery jugs—especially those from Ohio kilns—were one of the favored containers used to transport liquor. But they were thick and heavy. When the crew-top jars came on the scene, they turned out to be lighter and thinner, so a hauler could fit more of them in his wagon and, later, sedan, truck, or van. Plus, you can also look right through their clear glass to the spirits within to make sure no obvious contaminants are afloat. It’s no guarantee of purity, but it was an improvement over jugs.

So in honor of John Landis Mason, go put up some peaches with brandy, house bitters, or good old mountain dew. Or, you can follow my recipe for piquillo ketchup on Lindsey Nair’s blog for decidedly kick-ass ketchup for your grilling this weekend.

Goes well with:

• The text of patent 22,816, Mason's 1858 original description of his invention
• Jarden Home Brands, manufacturer of Kerr and Ball Mason jars.
• Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby’s Quick Pickles: Easy Recipes for Big Flavor
• Sue Shephard's Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World.

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Bar Food: Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs

(Pickled eggs after one day: note the the pink color hasn't yet penetrated the entire white.)





Luke: I can eat fifty eggs.

Dragline: Nobody can eat fifty eggs.

~ Cool Hand Luke (1967)

It’s a bit disingenuous to call the startlingly scarlet pickled hens’ eggs of Pennsylvania “bar food.” After all, these are more home-style cooking typical of Amish country than the pickled eggs Charles Bukowski might’ve wolfed down in nameless demi-fictional California watering holes.

But, man alive, I’d love to see ‘em in more real bars. That is, assuming the kind of joints that serve pickled eggs don’t fade into memory under an onslaught of appletinis, Jäger bombs, and vodka whatevers. You can tart them up if you want to with chichi toppings or fancy presentation, but the plain fact is that pickled eggs have been drinkers’ fodder for centuries and they don’t need fancification. These are a particularly delicious example.

The Linkery, one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, has a small bar where you can plop down, order some of the house-made sausages and local beers and wines (keep in mind that “local” in these parts might well include wines from Baja California’s Valle de Guadalupe) and—if the night is right—you can order an egg from a big-ass jar of brine behind the bar. Now if only they were beet-pickled…

Growing up in Kansas City, I knew about foods such as Lebanon bologna and scrapple that weren’t indigenous to the land of steaks and barbecue because my father’s family hailed from Philadelphia and he brought a taste for Philly food with him. Beet-pickled eggs were one of those odd things my dad made that nobody else ever brought in their school lunches.

The recipe below is derived from my father’s and that of Fritz Blank, a former microbiologist turned chef who ran Deux Cheminees for many years in Philly. From Fritz I learned a simple method of cooking eggs to get them to just the right point.

A common—hell, nearly ubiquitous—problem with hard-boiled eggs in the US is that they are, in fact, boiled. We shouldn’t boil eggs—it’s too easy to overcook them, giving that characteristic dark green mantle to the yolk and a sulfurous stank “like dog farts,” Blank says.

Hard “cooked” is another way to put it. In French, it’s oeufs dur (“hard” eggs). Just taking away the word “boiled” could do wonders for improving the cooking methods of cooks everywhere. The easy way is to bring the eggs to a boil from cool tap water, then pull them off the heat, let them sit in the hot water until cooked through at just the right texture, and plunge them in an ice bath. See the bottom for the full skinny on Fritz’s hard cooked eggs method. Since I started making eggs that way, I’ve never overcooked a single one.

Serving

If you’re serving the pickled eggs home-style, cut them into quarters lengthwise and scatter among salad leaves for a purple and yellow, but tasty, protein boost.

Fancy bar style? Impale one all the way through with a bamboo toothpick, suspend it in a large crystal shot glass, or precious raku dish, then sprinkle the top with freshly-cracked Tellicherry black pepper and coarse fleur de sel, hand-harvested from the saline pools of the Breton coast. Charge $1.50. Better make it $3.

Dive bar style? Serve on a paper napkin, maybe a clean shot glass. Salt shaker on the side. Charge no more than six bits.

Bachelor pad style? Sprinkle with salt and eat out of hand, or squirt it with Sriracha or another hot sauce that won’t overwhelm the taste of the pickle and eat them over the sink when nobody’s looking.

Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs

You can switch this recipe up by swapping out the rice vinegar for malt, sherry, or raspberry vinegars, throwing in a habanero pepper to the solution, adding bruised lemongrass, strong tea, star anise, garlic, etc. Those may or may not be delicious contributions to the art of pickling eggs—but they don’t make Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs. For those, this is the method to use.

Peel and place two dozen “hard-cooked” eggs made according to the directions below in a large jar covered with water ~ keeps them from drying while you prepare the pickling solution. Procede with the pickle.

Pickling solution

14-16 oz jar of sliced beets—beets and all
2 cups white wine vinegar (I’ll use Marukan rice vinegar or Champagne vinegar)
1.5 cups water
2 three-inch sticks of cinnamon
4 or 5 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns roughly cracked into 2-3 pieces each
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
5-6 peeled small red shallots (optional)

Place all the ingredients except optional raw shallots in a nonreactive pot, bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to bloodwarm. Drain the eggs and add the crimson liquid and shallots (if using) to the jar with the eggs. Refrigerate.

Eggs are ready to eat after full day and keep refrigerated up to three weeks, during which time the reddish color will more deeply penetrate the white. After that, they’ll grow kinda rubbery and too firm.

Once pickled, the shallots are tasty with a piece of decent cheddar cheese and a chunk of good bread. Bit of a ploughman’s lunch as a treat for the cook.

Hard-Cooked Eggs—Notes by Chef Fritz Blank

1. Place the fresh whole “extra large” chicken eggs in an accommodating sauce pan and cover with cold water exactly one-inch above the tops of the eggs.
2. Place the pan over HIGH heat and bring quickly to a full rolling boil.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and cover it with a lid.
4. Set a timer for 10 minutes (NB below). Prepare an ice slurry bath using plenty of ice and just enough cold water to allow the ice to move freely.
5. After the eggs have steeped for ten minutes, remove them quickly from the hot water with a large slotted spoon or a “spider,” and immediately plunge them into the ice bath.
6. Keep in ice water until ready to peel.

NB: The size of the eggs will determine the steeping time.

USDA “Jumbo” = 12 minutes
USDA “Extra Large” = 10 minutes
USDA “Large” = 8 minutes
USDA “Medium” = 7 minutes
USDA “small” (aka “pullet eggs”) = 6 minutes

Helpful Hints Regarding Hard Cooking Eggs:

If the number of hard cooked eggs wanted is 12, start with 13, and subtract one minute from the steeping time. So for example, when cooking USDA “extra-large” eggs, set the timer for nine minutes rather than ten. When the timer goes off, quickly remove ONE egg and place it onto a carving board, and deftly cleve it in half, shell and all - Wack!! This will serve as a test to determine whether to remove and plunge the remaining 12 into the ice bath, and immediately stir them about, so that the ice bath shock is quick and complete.

If the yolk of the test egg is still runny, allow the remaining 12 to steep in the hot water for another minute, before proceedng with the ice bath shock.

Eat the hot test egg with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper - an epicurian pleasure reserved exclusively for cooks!

Watermelon Pickles

Jessica Harris has written more cookbooks than I own pairs of shoes, testament as much to her literary output as my somewhat limited sense of fashion. Yet I was happy to oblige when she asked me a while back for recipes to include in a book she was working on concerning side dishes and accompaniments. The piquillo ketchup, a killer recipe I adapted from an early canning manual, made the cut, and I’ll post images and notes when I make my next batch.

The watermelon pickle recipe she included, though, lends itself more readily to cocktails, so we’ll start with that (and get to the cocktails in a later post). Watermelon pickles, or preserves, using just the rind are a Southern standard, if maybe just a hair old-fashioned these days. I still whip up an occasional batch to accompany sandwiches, roast pork, and other savories that could use a little pep. More recently, I’ve been playing with them in drinks. Hey, those who don’t mind less gin in their martini do the same thing with olives, so no grief on that front, please.

Start with a 6-7 pound melon. Make your life easier by peeling it with a slingshot vegetable peeler before you make your first cut. Some recipes tell you to scrape off all the red flesh as well as the peel. The peel needs to go, but leave a little red on the rind. It certainly doesn’t hurt the flavor and it gives a fancy rose collar to the pickles. These make a slightly softer pickle than older recipes that call for impregnating the rind with lye or alum. You could take that route, but…meh. Too much hassle for minimal return.

8 cups of watermelon rind, cut into ½” squares
q.s. kosher salt
4 (770 g) cups sugar
2 cups (470 ml) cider vinegar
12 whole cloves
1 tsp (2.5 g) ground cinnamon
2 small lemons, either untreated or scrubbed, sliced into very thin rounds
2 oz/60g (about a finger’s length) of ginger, sliced into very thin coins

Generously salt the chunks of rind, place in a colander, and set inside a stainless steel or glass bowl overnight. They’ll throw off a bunch of brine. Rinse, drain, and throw out the brine. Place rinds in a non-reactive pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Boil for ten minutes. Drain in a colander, but do not rinse. Add the sugar, vinegar, and the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Add the drained chunks, return to a boil and boil gently for ten minutes.

Ladle into sterilized canning jars and process for long-term storage or allow the whole mass to cool in the syrup and ladle into plastic quart tubs for short-term fridge storage.















Goes well with

• Jessica Harris’ On The Side
• Pickled by Lucy Norris
• Fine Preserving by Catherine Plagemann (with MFK Fisher’s snarky annotations)
• Christine Ferber’s Mes Confitures

Lagniappe: Watermelon Aqua Fresca

Occasionally, you’ll get a dud melon with flat-tasting flesh, even if the rind is perfectly usable. If you’re the hog-keeping type, I suppose the flesh'd make good slop. Compost it if you’re so inclined. I feed mine to the Disposall. When the flesh is firm, ripe, and dripping, there’s no better way to enjoy it than sitting on the porch and spitting seeds as far as you can. Your neighbor’s yard, for instance.

But when you’ve got something in between—or just an overabundance of fantastic flesh—treat yourself to a fruit cooler the Mexicans call agua fresca. These aguas frescas (or “fresh waters”) are generally fruits or vegetables reduced with a blender to chunky liquids, bolstered with water and some sweetener such as honey or sugar, then served maybe with bigger slices of the fruits floating. In Mexico and northern Mexico (e.g. San Diego, where I live), you’ll see tables at markets loaded with huge jars called jarras of maybe 3-4 gallon capacity partially filled with cucumber, tamarind, strawberry, jamaica, mango, kiwi, and other flavors. In absence of any tequila, mezcal, or gin, you can even drink them straight.

4 cups chunked watermelon flesh
3 cups cool water
½ cup 2:1 simple syrup
q.s. salt (up to ½ tsp)

Don’t bother seeding the flesh. We’re taking the easy train on this one. Put all the flesh into a large blender with enough water (up to three cups) to fill it to ¾ capacity. Cover and blend. The seeds—some worse for the wear—will float to the top. Just skim them off. Strain into a pitcher, top off with any remaining water, and stir in the syrup and salt. Stir to dissolve. Add some chunks of watermelon flesh either to the pitcher or to individual glasses, depending on how you plan to serve it.

Pour over ice. If you plan to use it as a mixer, ease off the water (using maybe only two cups) and fortify with your spirit of choice.


Goes well with

• Gin or tequila
• The Art of Mexican Cooking by Dianne Kennedy
• Larousse de la Cocina Mexicana
• Baja: Cooking on the Edge by Deborah Schneider
• Lazy-ass days

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