In Which I Confess to a Guilty Pleasure

I've done a lot of mean things in a long life but I have never yet watched one of those TV shows where you get to invade some guy's privacy while he finds out whether he is the Father of the Baby (wonder if they have booked Prince William?).  Nor, now that I think of it, none of the other of those countless orgies of public humiliation where people get cut. chopped, slashed, fired, demoted where someone puts his/er most intimate moment under the glare of the white lights for us all to enjoy.

Until now, but I blame the gym.  The Precore bikes are arrayed across from a ban of TV screens and the Food Channel is the best of a bad lot.  I admit I am still beguiled by the Contessa, reigning champ of the cotton-underwear division and even little Rachel Ray, mistress of the art of being sexually unthreatening to a geezer such as myself.

But my shameful weakness is--wait for it, folks--Restaurant Impossible, where our protagonist shows poor duffers how to run their business.  Oh, I know, I know, he is a downmarket superhero,some kind of cross between Mr. Clean and the Man from Glad.  The catch is that he's really pretty good.  You can tell in the moment that most of these places are management train wrecks.  And his advice--well, I'm not the expert now, am I?  But most of his advice seems like sound good sense.  For this, they shed a tear.

But that's the kicker, isn't it?  Most of it is sound good sense, in the perspective but people really shouldn't have to be told this stuff, should they?  Yeh, right most people aren't there yet.  Rather, I think what we're seeing here is the reasons why restaurants have such a legendary failure rate: everybody eats, so everybody thinks they can cook, and everybody thinks they can run a restaurant.  Only the first three of those propositions is unequivocal.

There's also the matter of the cycle of failure.  With the ordinary retail store, there's just a pileup of bad inventory, or no inventory at all.  With a restaurant, it's cockroaches and spoilage.

So in this context, Mr. Clean looks, well, clean.   But I recall one more anecdote, this from my friend Ignota who works with small business all the time. I said--you're good at this, you ought to set yourself up as a straightener-outer, to get things organized and back on track.  They don't want it, she said.  They want you to come  in on Friday night and solve the problem by Monday morning, and then let them go on as before. Coming soon, I bet: Mr. Clean returns.

Yum, Sort Of

Tyler Cowen goes on and on about the virtues of strip-mall and food-cart food.  This has always struck me as delusive romanticism advise that needs to be handled with great circumspection.  In my youth they used to say "eat where the truck drivers eat," and if you followed that advice, you would wind up with the perfect-storm concatenation of salt, fat, Jack Daniels and Red Bull.  Fact is that lots of people survive on dreadful food (perhaps because they life has taught them humility?).  Moreover we know about the failure rate among restaurants (astronomic): everybody eats so everybody thinks they can cook so when nothing else is working take a flyer on food service: not a winning strategy, mostly.

Still, I will grant some basics: the overhead is low; some of the recipes are novel and diverting (at least at first).  But if you want to give Tyler's theory a try, here's an easy and accessible opportunity: Portland food carts.  Grant that Portland in general seems to have descended into an infinitely self-referential parodic echo-chamber, still the food cart is one avatar that seems to have retained its dignity and evaded the clutches of the hated corporate behemoths.  There's a conspicuous array of them at Alder and 10th Ave. (above), within easy reach of the tourist trade (except with no place nearby to sit, you suspect that most of this grub is being lugged back to the office buildings nearby).  And not just downtown:  the food carts website boasts a grand total of 475 which would seem to suggest they are more or less everywhere (the website has a Google map, and a Bing link).

One steady irony here: in the epicenter of our socialist future, it is a triumph of constrained capitalism.   Prices for lunch at the downtown pod begin at $5 (which we used to think of as money) because if you went to $5.01, you'd quickly run out of customers.    And this being Portland we observe at least one touch of exhibitionist self-deflation (at right).

For Surviving the Ravages of the Savages

I see they are now commercially marketing turducky, thereby destroying all its novelty and macabre appeal. Here at chez Buce, we be having camel stuffed with goat stuffed with raccoon stuffed with gerbil.  

I see the Palookaville zoning code contains no prohibition on camel slaughter.  Meanwhile, can somebody send me an anchovy?

Quintuplets

One down at the bottom looks like the runt of the litter.

Le Canard en Conserve

The great gourmand Waverly Root surely had more and better meals than most of us.  He lived on, mostly in Europe, to a sleek and well-fed 79.  In The Food of France, he compares notes on French food with "the American naval wife I meet in Ville-franche-sur-Mer on the day after Thanksgiving."

I asked if her if she had eaten turkey. She said no, that her family had settle for duck. Duck, I remarked, was a noble dish, but I had been brought up to associate Thanksgiving with turkey and felt cheated if I did not get it. She agreed, but explained she had been so later in ordering that only duck remained among the canned goods of the ships stores. I think I was shocked at this.

"Canned duck?" I echoed. "You mean that you ate canned duck for Thanksgiving? Why, the market at Nice is full of fresh duck--and chicken, goose, guinea hen, turkey--anything you want!"

"Oh, none of us buy anything here!" she told me. "None of the Navy wives do. We wouldn't dare! Why even as it is, we all have dysentery!"

"What do you attribute it to?" I asked.

"You know," she confided, "it's the strangest thing! We just can't think of anything we've eaten that didn't come off the ship."

That would have been aabout 1958, I think it is fair to say that attitudes have softened somewhat since.

At Last!

I finally learned how to caramelize a scallop.  The secret: brine it for ten minutes (I knew that part), and then let it rest uncovered for a couple of hours in in the fridge.  That way, you can get an (a) an exterior that is toasty-like brown; and (b) an interior that is almost transparent.


Why didn't I figure that out before?

[I'd show you a picture but we et em.]

Best Investigative Journalism of the Day

But hey, it's a slow race.  Link.

McYuk: Do Not Read This At Breakfast

It is said that Toyota is not a car company; it's a bank that happens to sell cars.  Comes now  Cory Doctorow (channeling Willy Staley) with news that McDonald's' sideline in food is just a cover for its commodities brokerage business.  Doctorow/Staley explain the point on its own terms, but dark forces  impel me to repeat Cory's passionate ode to the merchandising of  "protein slurry:"

I've long been fascinated with injection-molded protein slurry masquerading as some recognizable foodstuff. I once proposed a line of perverse vegan aerosol meat substitutes like "I can't believe it's not organ meat" and "I can't believe it's not marrow bones" that would come as a soy spray in a mousse can whose nozzle mated with a dishwasher/microwave-safe mold (with plastic "bones" as appropriate) that you could nuke for a minute before ejecting the piping hot reformed slurry on a plate and popping the mold right into the dishwasher.

Afterthought:  As you think of it, there may be less here than meets the eye.  Isn't everything these days a bank?  Wasn't it a defining moment for modern capitalism when GE discovered that metal bashing was for chumps and the serious moolah was in finance?  And wasn't Vinnie the greengrocer just a front for the bookies?  Deep Throat said follow the money.  Vespasian said money doesn't stink.  Just don't get it stuck in your throat.

Pesto

Pine nuts, with Brian's basil

I savor the story about the community so safe that the only reason to lock your door is to keep  your neighbors from smuggling in their spare zucchini.  Palookaville is not quite that safe but Brian across the street is a compulsive farmer (not here in town; he has a chunk of family land out in the country).  Anyway, they are a household of two (as are we), so at this time of year there is always plenty  good produce on offer.  Two weeks ago it was beets; last week it was beets again and I roasted up a bunch of them garlic and sage.  I offered a batch of the roastings to Brian's companion: she said okay  but not too much, she was already up to her ears in tomatoes and okra.


Today it was basil: a plastic garbage bag full.  Mrs. B, who likes cooking best when it comes in regimental proportions, spread out a counter full of work stations for leaves, garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan and oil.  We have now survived a morning of sorting, grinding, chopping and spinning.  We freeze it in muffin tins; should last us about a year.  Come to think of it, the last of the 2010 crop is still in the freezer.  

Pizza Porn

Crust, courtesy of Buce's secret formula.  Mixed greens from Mrs. Buce's garden.  All rights reserved.

Where the Chickens Are

We had the curious fortune to find ourselves looking for a meal this (Sunday) midafternoon in Madera, California, one of the most unpromising venues in the whole vast swath that is the San Joaquin Valley.  Following Tyler's rule that you find good food in grungy places, we passed up the superabundance of chain offerings and betook ourself to a mom-and-popish (perhaps better a momish) little Mexican outlet, holding forth in the ruins of what I suspect was once a more pretentious operation.

At first blush, you might say that Tyler's principle was disconfirmed: this was lunch at its most elementary, down real close to "gimme a pound of food."  The chicken quesadilla was exactly that: a bit of shredded chicken breast on a bit of melted cheese inside a tortilla. The chicken tacos were a smidgen more upscale: a bit of chicken and iceberg lettuce inside a soft taco shell, with three half lemons to squeeze out for flavor.

But here's the thing: the chicken was actually pretty good.  Which is more than you're going to say about the chicken in virtually any chain restaurant, even the most formidable. Consider: mass-produced chicken almost always runs to soft and watery.  Too many chain places will fob you off with commercial-grade product: "government inspected," an old Army buddy of mine once said, "didn't say whether it passed or not."

But this stuff was none of that: it was a bit on the tough and stringy side, but it delivered an extraordinary quantum of actual flavor.  The words "free range" waddled through my mind; I wondered if, at the very least, I was dining ut of the proprietor's back yard.    So, not a five-star, not even by counter-culture standards. But so much better than what you would have got at the chains, it made the day worthwhile.

Stewed Marmot, etc.

Civet de Marmottes

Having killed some marmots sunning themselves belly up on the sun with their noses in the air one sunrise in September, skim them and carefully put aside the mass of fat which is excellent for rubbing into the bellies of pregnant women, into the knees, ankles, and painful joints of sprains, and into the leather of shoes.

Cut up the marmot and treat it like stewed hare which has a perfume that is unique and wild.

Écureuil

Having killed some squirrels in autumn, skin them the same day and empty them.  Roll them up in a piece of lard and let them brown with some good quality butter in a copper saucepan. When they are a good golden color, salt them, cover, and let them cook on a very gentle fire. One must use no spice of any kind which might entail the risk of taking away from the animal its exquisite nutty flavor.

 Poulets a Devenire Tendre

In order to make chickens immediately edible, take them out of the hen-run, pursue them into open country, and when you have made them run, kill them with a gun loaded with very small shot.

The meat of the chicken, gripped with fright, will become tender.  This method used in the country of  the Fangs (Gabon) seems infallible even for the oldest and toughest bird.

 All from Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant, The Art of Cuisine (Trans. Margery Weiner, 1966), found by the other David this afternoon at Back Alley Books in a basement in on the square in Chardon, Ohio

Oh Rare

Costco has white truffles at $84.99.  No, wait, that is $849.99.

About Your Friends at Open Table ...

Kottke  (channeling Mark Pastore) tells us that Open Table holds the restaurant by the short hairs, and twists.   Ooh, not nice.  We don't use it all that often (the best dining in Palookaville, aside from our house, is just around the corner), but it sure can be convenient.

The business model sounds like Quicken's: step into the thoroughfare between provider and customer; provide the customer with a service (mostly) free and squeeze the provider for the price.

Note to self, try to call the restaurant direct.

Thanks, We Just Ate

From the beef jerky package at the counterculture grocery:

Hand cut out of solid beef pieces

Afterthought:  I seem to be in a Google mood today.  A search for "vegan jerky" yields 2,460 hits, including recipes and retail ads.

Fajita Update

Joel and Kevin undertake to educate me on the concept of fajita.  Turns out that "fajitas," though descending from traditional habits and patterns, are not themselves really a traditional dish and are "Mexican" only if you ignore the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo--which is to say, more Tex than Mex, and in a sense created for its American audience.  Kevin routes me to the Wiki:

The first serious study of the history of fajitas was done in 1984 by Homero Recio as part of his graduate work in animal science at Texas A&M. Recio was intrigued by a spike in the retail price of skirt steak, and that sparked his research into the dish that took the once humble skirt steak from throwaway cut to menu star. Recio found anecdotal evidence describing the cut of meat, the cooking style (directly on a campfire or on a grill), and the Spanish nickname going back as far as the 1930s in the ranch lands of South and West Texas. During cattle roundups, beef were butchered regularly to feed the hands. Throwaway items such as the hide, the head, the entrails, and meat trimmings such as skirt were given to the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) as part of their pay. Hearty border dishes like barbacoa de cabeza (head barbecue), menudo (tripe stew), and fajitas/arracheras (grilled skirt steak) have their roots in this practice. Considering the limited number of skirts per carcass and the fact the meat wasn't available commercially, the fajita tradition remained regional and relatively obscure for many years, probably only familiar to vaqueros, butchers, and their families.

Sonny Falcon is believed to have operated the first commercial fajita taco stand at a weeklong outdoor event in Kyle, Texas, in 1969.  ... The food became popular in ... Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in Houston and San Antonio, Texas. ...In southern Arizona, the term was unknown except as a cut of meat until the 1990s, when Mexican fast food restaurants started using the word in their marketing. For a good period of time, McDonalds served chicken fajitas on their menu. In many restaurants, the fajita meat is brought to the table sizzling loudly on a metal platter or skillet, with the tortillas and condiments served on the side.

Link.  "Fajitas," then seem to me to fall into a class of lately-evolved cultural achievements, somewhat akin to Chicago deep dish pizza or bluegrass music or, going further back, the blues or chop suey. 

Danish Dietary Advice

• Assemble rye bread, herring, raw onion and aquavit.

• Top the bread with a slice of onion and a bit of herring.

• Take a bite, then sip a bit of the firewater.

• Chew.

• Yum.

Product placement note: there's a lot of inedible herring in the world. The stuff we sampled came out of a jar labeled "Skippersild Marinrede Sild," and it was super--mild but tangy, and not fishy. The swill was "Aalborg Taffel Akavit." The onions were fresh picked in the back garden.

Alfa-Betty Olsen Makes a Dog's Breakfast Tasty Meal...

...out of stuff she gets at Ikea (link). The Wichita bureau, with strong midwestern/Scandinavian roots, chimes in:

[For the holidays] we made Swedish meatballs (onion, pork and beef), lefse (bought at the store and like eating a paper napkin with butter), Jell-O (of course - that's salad in Minnesota), Swedish potato sausage (even the Greek won't eat it), Norwegian rice pudding, mashed potatoes made from real live potatoes, and corn. Corn has become a Swedish vegetable. At least in Minnesota. I'm sure my grandparents would have recognized most of those odd combinations of fish and potatoes (I note the absence of lefse - which Sue used to make on occasion when she couldn't find it - the stuff in the store tends to be tough; she has one recipe from an old Lutheran Church that starts with 'peel 100 lbs of potatoes') but the palate got cleaned up by the time that it got to my generation. There is one story about one cousin serving 'sil salad' - basically herring salad - as a main course and most of my mother's generation going on strike.

And as a kid, I endured the annual lutefisk dinner at church - where they served meatballs to the heathen of my generation - but it involved great quantities of drawn butter, lutefisk, meatballs, multiple courses of Jell-O in all colors imaginable (and with all sorts of canned fruit).

Actually, my own mother and I used to make Swedish pork (=bread) sausage together--one of the few things we did with complete amiability. But we drew the line at head cheese.

Lemon Harvest

Frost coming again tonight...

Mrs. Buce fought it off the last couple of nights with cuddly blankets, but tonight it's going to get even colder. Next up: zest 'em and juice 'em and save the hulls to stuff into roasting chickens.

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Fw: Collard Pie

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