At the market

It's the season again, finally, for buying vegetables from the people who grow them. The East Town Market, in Cathedral Square park smack dab in the middle of downtown Milwaukee, is my favorite local Saturday a.m. destination in fair weather. It boasts not only stalls offering produce and other good things, but also live jazz and a playground for the amusement of youngsters.



It's still way too early for any of the crops that really excite a cook. We can still dream of sugarsnaps, asparagus, corn, tomatoes, squash, melons, berries, even cauliflower and carrots and turnips. But in early June the best we're going to get is radishes, onions, and greens. That's good enough for now, though, after a long winter of nothing but storage crops and imports from Cali and Latin America. These folks from Willoway Farm (their sign says "est. 2007"--is that not awesome?) were offering juicy, spicy radishes, and several varieties of greens.



One was this mizuna, which looks prickly, and which I photographed but didn't take home. We did have their mesclun, which included some rather sassy arugula.



And there are always fresh cheese curds at a farmers market in Wisconsin. They're worth the trip all by themselves, and are best if you can wait to eat them until the chill is gone, which no one can do. Then they really squeak between your teeth as they yield their salty, fresh, cheesy flavor.



It is, as ever, my pleasure to live in the dairy state.

Wanna be my friend?

If the posting here is too infrequent for you, come check out my twitter, the latest craze in internet communication. I'm updating it all the time, and it even has Important Information about my preparation and ingestion of food. Like just now, I told twitter that I'm making spaghetti and meatballs. You know you want it.

After getting your feet wet with twitter, you will want to check out twittervision, which tracks new tweets (those would be posts to twitter) across the globe. Ease your twittering using Firefox add-ons to post from the search box or from the address bar of your browser, or from a sidebar. If you use a Mac, download twitterific, a fantastic little widget that sits on your desktop.

And as for the meatballs: 1 lb. ground chuck, a microplaned shallot, an egg, about two or three tbs matzo meal, pinches of oregano + thyme + and basil, and salt and pepper. Mix 'em up, brown 'em well, simmer in red sauce for at least half an hour, and serve with spaghetti. Don't let Mario Batali tell you not to eat meatballs with your spaghetti because that's not now how the Italians do it. This is America, baby! We eat meatballs with spaghetti here, and we gotta own it.

No War But Class War

The sausages that race at Miller Park during Milwaukee Brewers games showed up on campus today. There was a sausage sale on during the lunch hour and I guess they were there to hawk the meat, though mainly they just seemed to be posing for pictures. I first noticed them horsing around through the window of the library-café Grind, where I was sitting reading a book. Everyone I saw who caught a glimpse of them instantly began to smile.

The top photo is the Polish, hot dog, and bratwurst, left to right. The Italian was there too, but chorizo must have flown south for the winter. Maybe he's at spring training.



Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away, the anarchists were selling their books at half price at a table in the Union.



I don't know what the Jolly Roger has to do with their cause, but it sure makes them seem badass.

Racing Cheeses

You know about the sausage race during Milwaukee Brewers games. But did you know that between periods of Milwaukee Admirals (AHL) games, there is a race held in which Merk's cheese spread tubs on skates speed around the Bradley Center ice? If I'm not mistaken, the flavors are original cheddar, cheddar beer, port wine, and Swiss almond. Port wine won the race on Friday night, the Admirals beat the Hamilton (Ontario) Bulldogs 3-2 in a shootout. After the game, REO Speedwagon played an assortment of forgettable songs from their new album and all their 1980s hits, too. As I have said here before, it is my pleasure to live in the Dairy State.



More pictures at my Flickr.

(Also, "I Can't Fight This Feeling" may be the worst. video. ever.)

He lives!

Previously I asked, Does W. G. Sinclair, a reviewer on Amazon.com, exist? The very same Sinclair, alias The Duke of Prunes, has left a comment on that post boasting of his existence and linking to his website.

Now that Amazon reviewers can be tracked using RSS feeds, a whole genre of mock reviews has sprung up. I mention some of these satirists in the Sinclair post. Another is the prolific, absurdist Mister Quickly. MQ has this to say about Joanna Newsome's recent album Ys:

My friend Roger Custom recommended this album to me. I was suspicious, because upon his recommendation I also picked up an obscure album called "Sword Cutting Through Meat" ,the debut by the artist Sword Cutting Through Meat. I can't think of how to describe its content except referring you to the album title. Some time later, Roger Custom played me Sword Cutting Through Meat's sophomore album, "Babies Crying", which is only marginally better than his debut. The third release, "Stepping on Salmon" is an improvement that while sometimes having soothing tactile noises, on the whole is too slippery and falls short of its sporadic promise.

So when Roger Custom recommended this album I felt he no longer had any credibility. Trying to sell me on Ys, he described it as the aural equivalent of barely pubescent girls flying giant swans in heart shaped squad formation across Henri Rousseau landscapes. I listened to it and agreed with him on this, but I'm more a Théodore Rousseau fan which is why I've given Ys 3 stars.

As for me, I have been blogging elsewhere about matters on which I am more expert than ice cream and SPAM. The new blog is called Zigzigger and I hope to see you there. I am not killing off Haverchuk but I don't know that I will have more than the occasional word or two to say here for the foreseeable future. Maybe in summertime, when the farmers markets are back and I feel like making ice cream, I'll be a more regular public foodster.

Errata

The year in media errors and corrections. The winner in the recipe category:

A correction in this column Thursday about a June 14 Taste section recipe for French coconut pie incorrectly suggested that the recipe called for a pint of vodka.

Some of the non-food ones are even better. via

"A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals"

WorldNetDaily:

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.

The culprit? Soybeans. Beware! via

Hair loss, cookbooks, fat people, meat chessboard, fashion

-Losing hair? (Isn't everyone?) Don't try to hide it.

-Ask MeFi: What are the best cookbooks in regards to technique and theory?

-My responses to the Implicit Associations Test indicate that I have a "a strong automatic preference for Thin People compared to Fat People." But as I would not trust anyone who capitalizes "Thin People" and "Fat People," I remain sure of my own total lack of prejudicial feeling toward anyone on the basis of weight. via

-Meat chessboard:

The steak is cut into 2" by 2" pieces, with 64 pieces cut total, half of them kissed by a frying pan and hence enhanced in color. The meat is then arranged on a 16" x 16" platform of clear acrylic and placed on top of a podium. On either side of the sculpture are LCD panels hung from the ceiling. Each panel plays a 20-minute loop of a butcher contemplating his next move.

-Let's try some fashion blogging: OMG! Shoes!, outfits, t-shirts.

(Some of these links are totally stolen from the excellent best-blogs post at Fimoculous.)

Coming soon to a Haverchuk near you: the new Joy of Cooking!

Culinary Metaphor Watch: Golden Globes Edition

Yes! GG hopeful Helen Mirren is a leafy green vegetable that might kill you! Or so Variety might like you to think. This image came in an e-mail linking to their Globes preview. When I clicked on Helen's face it took me to an article with this headline: "How do marketers switch from selling tasty tentpoles to fiber-rich fall films?" And a few paragraphs into the article: "In many ways, it's the difference between selling candy and spinach." Tentpoles might sell faster than deep-fried Oreos at the State Fair, depending on what they're dipped in, but I would say the distinction between summer and fall movies is more like the difference between Subway and Così. Both will fill your tummy but at Così you might encounter a few foreign words (does "gorgonzola" count as foreign?) and the clientele will be less likely to spill Sprite on the floor. Neither one is good or bad for you necessarily. Just like movies, food is essential for our survival. Even greasy meatball sandwiches are a suitable cure for hunger.

I give Variety a B- for Photoshopping and a D for culinary metaphors. Better luck next time.

I'm blogging

-YouTube so funny. via

-20-sided pecan pie. via

-Like Flickr, but without the photos. via

-I am sick of boring food blogs. This is a how-to (also a how-not-to) that encourages would-be bloggers to be...wait for it...original. I look forward to the next entry in this series: how to give would-be bloggers advice.

This lobster is huge!

Does WG Sinclair exist? He has reviewed three products for Amazon. The review that caught my eye was for a colossal ten-pound New England live lobster. (Yes, it can be yours for $149 plus shipping.)

This lobster is huge!

I bought this for my Aunt's 79th birthday, when she opened the container she go the surprise of her life when she was confronted with this monster. It took ten of us to lift it out of the box, which wasn't easy with all its squirming about but it was all good fun especially when the lobster snipped Jimmy's tie off, he was so surprised, he lost his grip and the lobster fell to the floor. It was a slippery beast to catch but in the end I managed to harpoon it and get it in the pot.

Once it was cooked up this lobster was delcious, once of the best I've ever had. It tasted a bit like a cross between chicken and mutton with some anchovie. I even kept he shell of it and enjoy wearing to about the street, it fits perfectly and the giant pincers terrify kiddies and the ladies simply can't resist them.

I award this lobster five stars and a WG Sinclair double thumbs up.

I like this better than shooting David Hasselhoff in a barrel. But Sinclair might learn a thing or two from the people mocking Amazon's milk. And the best are these joke reviews by Jon Swift, all beginning with the phrase "I have not actually read this book." E.g., on Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary?:

I have not actually read this book but I want Ms. Dowd to know that men are very necessary. Without men, for example, I think we would be losing the War in Iraq. I used to like Ms. Dowd when she was attacking President Clinton for having sex but now she is attacking President Bush and there is no evidence whatsoever that he is having sex so I don't understand what the problem is.

According to Mr. Swift's blog, Amazon has begun to take down these gems, so he has compiled them there. (He also has a brilliant misreading of Battlestar Galactica.)

Coq au Vin

This pair of birds is a before-and-after like the venison rolls, and from the same source. Same moody lighting, same approach to framing and composition, same startling juxtaposition. I am not really sure what is going on in the background of this one. Is that white plumage trying to escape the fate of being slaughtered, plucked, and braised in Burgundy wine? And should the creature be comforted by the thought that in death it will return to the nest before being consumed by its hungry killers?

One commenter said of the venison shot that it is "provocatively somber." I gather she would say the same of this one, and yet I find both of them to be darkly comic as well. If pictures could talk, I think these would chuckle heartily and proclaim that it's good to be at the top of the food chain.

The New Complete Book of Cookery, (New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 146. Photo by Ben Ericksson.

foodphotographyofyesteryear

Orange Trifle

This image is so simply orangey-perfect that my words could not possibly add to its power.

Photo credited to Sunkist Growers, Inc.

June Crosby and Ruth Conrad Bateman, Serve it Cold!: A Cookbook of Delicious Cold Dishes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1968), 179. (previously)

(food photography of yesteryear)

Culinary Metaphor Watch

In the Nov. 13 New Yorker, Rebecca Mead reviews Alex Kuczynski's Beauty Junkies, a "memoir-exposé" about cosmetic surgery.

Over the course of a decade, starting at the age of twenty-eight, [Kuczynski] received Botox and collagen injections, microdermabrasion, liposuction, an upper eye-lift, and a shot of a mucuslike substance called Restylane, which left her blubbering into a mug of vodka while sitting on her bathroom floor, her upper lip accidentally inflated to "the size of a large yam."

Not just a yam, a large yam. But here's the good part:

A decade or so ago, for about a minute, Kuczynski and I moved in the same circles, and she once gave me a recommendation for a dermatologist, whom I visited for a single consultation. The doctor--possibly the same one who later gave Kuczynski the yam lip--was ten years my senior, and had clear, translucent skin that glistened pinkly, like prosciutto that had been sliced to an inviting, tissue-paper thinness, and she said that if I, too, started undergoing facial peels...

Would you take it as a compliment if someone compared your face to a slice of fatty, salty ham?

***

A little extra: I had a Culinary Metaphor Watch, Election Edition in the works but blogger helped me inadvertently delete it. Is anyone using the new blogger? Is the new blogger less likely to screw things up as the old blogger sometimes does? Anyhow, it was about how the right is associated with manly meat and potatoes and the left with girly-man food. I had a great quotation from a CNN Crossfire episode where Bob Novak talks about how much he enjoys burgers and Paul Begala proudly declares his love of Cobb salad. Then there was a right-wing editorial in the Chicago Tribune about John Kerry's moronic botched joke that contained a derisive line about Kerry existing on a diet of lentils and diet soda. And I was going to talk about the old idea of liberals as the "Brie and Chablis" set and refer to Geoff Nunberg's book Talking Right and Tom Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? Anyhow, I intended to recreate that entry but then the election came and went and the urgency isn't there any more. Now that the Dems have more power, it seems less appropriate to kvetch about Rove-style kulturkampf. Trust me, though, it would have been killer.

"An assortment of international cheeses"

Since this photo has only the caption in the title above, we are left to play Name That Cheese. The ones in packaging help us out (Breakstone cottage cheese, Oka, Bel Paese), as do the ones with names printed on the rind (the biggest is called Cellasco). You can see the cheeses better if you view the photo large. Where is Parmigiano-Reggiano? Is it (or something like it) next to the pasta and the cheese grater? Where is fresh mozzarella and goat cheese? I'm not saying these things aren't there, I just can't identify them. But it seems possible that in the early 1960s, one didn't often find these items in the U.S. What else is missing?

What I like best in this photo are the little extra items planted among the cheeses. The papaya, of course, and the fondue dish. The open bottle of wine. And the garlic, back when garlic was almost taboo.

Craig Claiborne, ed., The New York Times Cookbook (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 629

(food photography of yesteryear)

"The seven basic ways of preparing fish"

If this image from the original (1961) edition of The New York Times Cookbook had been captioned "the basic ways of serving fish" then there would have been only four dishes: fish with lemon, fish with parsley, fish with lemon and parsley, and fish with neither lemon nor parsley. The actual description reads, "Top to bottom: baked stuffed bass, breaded haddock fillets, broiled porgy, poached salmon with Hollandaise sauce, trout meunière, sole in white wine sauce, deep-fried smelts."

Everything on that table looks good enough to eat even after more than forty years, though I'm guessing some of you would pass on the fried smelts. It's too bad that they have such a dirty, industrial name. Would they be more tempting to you if we called them something sweet and made-up, I don't know, say, tilapia?

The blustery confidence of suggesting that there are exactly seven ways of preparing fish is utterly charming. Of course fish can also be put in a soup or stew, a mousse or pâté; they can be smoked (hot or cold) or steamed. One might add "grilled" but I think "broiled" was supposed to cover that territory.

Aside from the lemons and parsley, my favorite thing in this shot is the fishnet. I especially like how the haddock plate and the Hollandaise boat are cut off to make room for it. I would like the captain's wheel better if it looked real.

Craig Claiborne, ed., The New York Times Cookbook (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 244.

(food photography of yesteryear)

Béchamel sauce

Some might regard this as the triumph of tasteful over tasty. Perhaps this includes my new friends from Epifurious, who share my interest in old food photos. (Their Thanksgiving dinner shot from the Mondale Family Cookbook, link, is the sort of thing you might contemplate for hours.) But only ignorance of culinary history and practice could produce a true horror of béchamel (or of mayonnaise, its cold cousin in French white sauciness). Without béchamel we would have no proper tuna casserole, macaroni and cheese, moussaka, lasagne, chicken pot pie, and a hundred other classics I cannot live without. Just because some people make it badly doesn't mean it's always bad.

The photo might not make your mouth water. I don't think you're supposed to fantasize about breaking off a rib of celery and dunking it in. But the effort to show off this essential item deserves a little admiration.

The New Complete Book of Cookery (New York: Weathervane, 1970), page 49.

(food photography of yesteryear)

Penguins

These Penguin paperbacks published in 1975 (Grigson, Fish Cookery) and 1969 (Hanbury-Tenison, Soups and Hors d'Oeuvres) might at first glance seem simply understated, eschewing the the lush, evocative scene-setting--the fireplaces aglow, porcelain tureens brimming, tables spread with outlandish bounty--of so many food photos of yesteryear. But their restraint is deceiving. These covers have in common with many non-food Penguin editions of the same era the signature sans serif type, a fondness for bold colors (though not the Grigson so much), and a playful sort of geometrical abstraction. Compare with this, this, or this. A whole photoset of Penguin covers is here (thx IW). I don't know if the same person who designed other Penguins did these too, but they certainly share an aesthetic. I would call it sophisticated rather than simple. I like the way the subject matter warms up the modernism of the abstract form.

I can't imagine a book about fish cookery today having so many fish heads on its cover, so many dead eyes staring down the prospective buyer. I was thinking something similar the other day while watching the Bouillabaisse episode of The French Chef. Julia starts with fish heads to make her stock and proceeds as well to cook and serve some of the fish for the stew with their heads on. I can't think of a contemporary cooking show that would spend so much time on fish heads except perhaps for Iron Chef. And thinking about fish heads reminded me of that Dr. Demento chestnut: "Fish heads, fish heads/Roly-poly fish heads/Fish heads, fish heads/Eat them up, yum!"

More:
-An article in the Guardian about Germano Facetti, who was art director at Penguin from 1962-1971.
-Penguin by Design, a book of Penguin covers from 1935-2005 by Phil Baines.

(food photography of yesteryear)

"Let the children cook..."

The General Foods Kitchens Cookbook, written by the women of General Foods kitchens (New York: Random House, 1959), has a chatty, helpful tone and an Eisenhower-America notion of normative race, gender and class that I would hardly bother mocking. Opening more or less at random I find this on page 49:

When there's a great stack of ironing to do, or you've promised yourself to clean out the closets, do you sometimes just open the refrigerator door at noon, grab the first thing you see, and gulp it down, so you can go on with what you're doing?

You're making a big mistake if you do. With your full and busy schedule, it's important for you to take time off in the middle of the day to relax and simmer down. Those few minutes will mean a lot to you after the baby wakes up from his nap, or the children come whooping in from school, or it's time to start dinner.

Well, who can argue with that?

The book's photos, when they contain human subjects, invariably portray girls and women cooking and boys and men consuming. The general feeling, as in so many of these books, is that taking care of the food is an essential mission that guarantees a person's proper femininity. I don't care for the ideology but at the same time I get a kick out of kids working in the kitchen.

Now the picture. I have always thought of spaghetti and meatballs as a quintessential 1950s dish but in this combination of pasta, red sauce, and meat the meat is cooked as burgers. I would never think of eating spaghetti with hamburgers or hamburgers without buns, but these old cookbooks remind you of how notions of what goes with what change over time. Alternatively, it could be "cute" that the kid prepares a dish that's a little bit funny. Or it could be that the people who wrote this book were wacky.

With the exception of the meat, the meal that the girl has prepared is virtually all "instant" in some way. The peas and carrots surely came from a can, the pudding from a mix, the sauce from a jar, the cookies from the box on the counter. One reason for thinking so is that there are no recipes to accompany the shot. It is assumed that the housewife will know enough about how to make these easy dishes to teach her daughter. I wonder if a cookbook today would get away with that.

There are several details I especially like in this image. One is the grease in the pan, as if to insist that the young model has actually sauted those patties just before arranging them in a circle around her platter of spaghetti. Another is the carving fork used to serve the pasta. And there's the color-coordination of the apron and the pudding, the pitcher of wholesome milk, the kid's rolled-up sleeves, her bright red smile...

The caption next to this photo on page 53 reads, "Let the children cook...its fun for them and a help to you. Start off with an easy menu...and just see them shine!"

(food photography of yesteryear)

Introducing Vintage Retro Old-School Food Photography of Yesteryear: Venison Rolls

I have decided to begin posting new old food photos on a regular basis, perhaps even daily. I'm not going to stop posting about other things but this should make for more regular content on the blog, which might please those readers who have been frustrated by the lagging pace of my posting. I was going to start a second blog for these pictures but I decided against it purely on a gut feeling that it's better this way. I am too lazy to type in recipes to accompany all of these shots but if you want one just send me an e-mail and I'll take the trouble for you (if you'll be my best friend, natch).

If the point of all this isn't immediately evident from the image above, here's why I'm doing this: I love, nay, lurve vintage food photography, especially in color. I don't think it's kitschy or ridiculous. I'm not into the so-bad-it's-good thing. I love irony almost as much as the next overeducated wannabe hipster, but this ain't the place for it. I wouldn't post a picture of food I wouldn't eat just to show you how outrageous it is. If something is outrageous, it has to be that delicious, impressive sort of outrageous. (For the record, I have no idea when yesteryear ends and the present begins. Feel free to opine in the comments.)

This picture is in The New Complete Book of Cookery (New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), p. 159. I am in total awe of the before-and-after motif, with the mounted deerhead bearing mute witness to a feast of its very flesh. If you think selective focus is some newfangled idea in food photography, this should convince you otherwise. I'm also impressed by how dark and moody the lighting is, a quality shared by many of the shots in this book, which are credited to Ben Ericksson.

(food photography of yesteryear)