mistercomedy's Open Salon Blog

if you know what's good for you...

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:01:30 -0500

As the de facto menu planner for our non-traditional quasi-family unit, I try to make sure The Girlfriend and I eat a healthy, balanced diet. Granted, our definition of 'balanced' might be different than yours.I believe that, if you had a salad for dinner, you can, and probably should, have a gigantic apple fritter for dessert. You know, for balance.

In general, though, we eat healthy food. But what IS healthy food? Now, even ravenous meat-eaters would probably agree vegetables are involved, in some way. And growing up, I never had a problem eating my vegetables, because if they were on my dinner plate, I was supposed to eat them. Of course, Mom never exactly challenged our palates -- the Great Kale Experiment of 1971 being the only exception, and thankfully that didn’t last more than a week or so.

I was a vegetarian for two weeks in 1987, a commitment which, in retrospect, lasted longer than a lot of my relationships in 1987. Would have stayed with it, too, except that in the eighties, I was on the road all the time doing the comedy thing, and options for the aspiring herbivore were limited at your various Perkins and Stuckey’s locations. You get really tired of Cobb Salad.

I don’t imagine there were too many vegetarian dining options in the seventeenth century, but in 1622, the first ‘health food’ cookbook was published by Tobias Venner with the title, "Via Recta ad Vitam Longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the Nature, Faculties, and Effects of all suche things as by way of Nourishments and Dietetical Observations made for the Preservation of Health."

This translates as either ‘The Straight Road to Long Life’ or ‘Avoid Eating at the Olive Garden’ (my Latin is sketchy at best). His advice: “Cut down on heavy sauces, meats and desserts” and “Avoid eating at The Olive Garden, for it will surely lead to ill humours, despite the unlimited breadsticks.”

Ellen Swallow Richards is credited with the first American health food cookbook, called "First Lessons in Food and Diet," in 1904, building on the success of her earlier books, "The Adulterations of Groceries" (which sounds like the title of a Merchant-Ivory film) and her runaway bestseller, "The Effect of Heat on the Digestibility of Gluten."

I did some exhaustive research on Ms. Richards, and I'm not trying to turn my little column into a post-feminist screed here, but I have to ask...

HOW IS THIS WOMAN NOT MORE FAMOUS?

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842 - 1911)

First woman admitted to M.I.T. And its first female instructor. And the first American woman accepted to any school of science and technology. First American woman to earn a degree in chemistry. And, for good measure, introduced the word ‘ecology’ into English. Of course, the fact that her maiden name was 'Swallow' is unfortunate. But seriously, history books could give us one less paragraph on, say, the Monroe Doctrine to make a little room for Ms. Richards.

About a century after Ellen Swallow Richards, the USDA introduced the first 'food pyramid,' but it was doomed to failure. C'mon, people -- Americans don't remember their high school geometry! For the average American, you might as well have called it a Food Dodecahedron.

Recently, the USDA replaced the Food Pyramid with the even more remedial 'Choose My Plate.' But there will still be confused people wondering, "Do I have to have dairy with grains?" and "Are you only supposed to eat red fruits now?" and "Is this part of that socialist takeover of the government Fox News mentioned?"

Other countries have tried to get creative with the whole "If we draw a picture of what they should eat maybe they won't get fat like Americans" thing. In France they have twenty-five separate nutrition guides, NONE of which are followed by the French. And Canada has a Food Rainbow. Of course they do.

The Chinese use a Food Pagoda, whereas in Japan, it's a spinning top. Too bad the Japanese couldn't find a way to use anime, because a hot alien chick with a machine gun could get a lot of teenage boys on the right nutritional path.

Forget foods you should eat -- I'm just glad there aren't many foods I can't eat. I don't eat much dairy, but I don't say I'm lactose intolerant, because, frankly, I'm a liberal, and I feel I should stand up to intolerance. So I have a little cheese once in a while, just to make a statement.

There is definitely a place where politics and food choices intersect. Take the 'locavore' movement. I am so supportive of this idea that I will only eat Chilean sea bass at local restaurants. Hmmm. I wonder if there are people on the opposite end of the sourcing spectrum, who only eat foods that have to be shipped over great distances...

If there are 'locavores,' why not 'locovores,' who only buy their food from crazy people? Or maybe we could call people who only eat bland, boring foods 'bori-vores.' And if you keep strictly kosher,you're a Torahvore! I got a million of 'em!

Of course, in addition to vegetarians, there are vegans and then there are 'fruitarians,' who I can only imagine are even more judgemental than vegans. And if the only animals you eat are seafood, you might be a 'pescaterian.' Or are the 'Pescetarians' a religious cult devoted to annoying people?

Every few years we find out something is bad for you that we thought was just fine. It was easier to be healthy when I was younger, because we didn't know as much! Why, when I was your age we only had ONE kind of cholesterol, and we weren't sure whether it was good or bad for you!

There's always some new healthy grain or super fruit or must-have amino acid. I can't keep up, and I figure I'm as qualified as anyone to toss out random diet suggestions. If these work for you, great. If you get sick, I'm not liable.

THE LEXICOGRAVORE DIET: You only are allowed on a given day to eat foods that start with that day's letter. So the first of the month, you can eat apricots, artichokes, avocado...you get the idea. Day two you've got your bacon, maybe some blueberries--even brisket! After Day 26, you can eat what you want until the first of the month, when it's back to arugula, or maybe alligator. Also, on Day 24, you can eat what you want because no foods start with 'x.'

THE CARTOGRAVORE DIET: Get out your placemat with the big map of the U.S. on it, because, on this diet, you will only be able to eat official state foods, and you'll be eating them in the order the states were admitted to the Union! You could lose fifty pounds in fifty days -- or you might gain a bunch of weight! No one knows! But you will learn obscure facts about our wonderful country!

First, how about carving up Delaware's state bird and enjoying some blue hen? Sure, it's not their state food, but if you cook it right...Day two means cheesesteak, and for New Jersey on day three, how'd ya like a big fat Jersey tomato? Huh? I'm talkin' to you, pal!

The rest of your first week includes Georgia grits (technically their official state 'prepared dish'), and you might as well have seconds because Connecticut has no state food, so on day five, you don't eat. Just be careful on day seventeen, because too much Ohio pawpaw probably isn't good for you.

The creepily named 'Center for Science in the Public Interest' (read much Orwell, guys?) recently put together a list of the ten healthiest foods. Strangely, none of them are pizza. However, fans of butternut squash (you know who you are) should feel vindicated.

Let's be honest. We all have a vague idea of what 'healthy' is, but we crave the crap. And to me, that's part of a balanced diet, too. But if I'm gonna eat something I KNOW is bad for me, I don't need to find out HOW bad. I've never understood why, for example, Hostess would bother to list 'nutritional information' for their 'fruit' pies.

I guess because it's important to know that if you eat one, you'll get two percent of the calcium and FOUR percent of the phosphorus you should be getting in your diet. So...if I just eat twenty-five of these a day...what? I don't want to develop a phosphorus deficiency!

What I love about this wrapper is that it's a "real fruit pie" (there's even a picture to prove it), yet the food wizards at Hostess realized it still needed to be "artificially flavored." I picture a meeting of suits and one of the product guys says, "I'm on board with the real fruit, but whaddya think of this --we take the fruit and whatever boring 'real' flavor it has and then we add more flavor artificially!

By contrast, the label on this organic pasta may be the ultimate example of truth in labelling. Much more than the nit-picky specifics of what the ingredients are, I just want to know they're 'real.' Nothing ruins a nice dinner like finding out that your food contains FICTIONAL INGREDIENTS! "Look at this! It's eight percent Flubber! That can't be good for you!"

I can't wait for the inevitable backlash, when it becomes hip and trendy to eat as badly as possible. Americans will be all over it. After all, we bought Jolt Cola ("All the sugar, twice the caffeine"), who's to say you won't start seeing chips advertised with extra salt.Or maybe Dunkin' Donuts will start adding trans fats to their pastries. You'll be able to order a hot dog and say, "Heavy on the nitrites, please!"

You read it here first. The next food trend will be deliberately unhealthy food-- food that says, right on the package, "This will mess up your colon."Look, I'm all for, in general, as a rule, for the most part, eating a healthy diet. All I'm saying is, occasionally, it's important to eat something ENTIRELY because it tastes good. For balance.

a splendid conversation

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:01:06 -0500

Sometimes I wonder, with the number of people writing about food these days, if anyone just eats food anymore. You might think that trying to appreciate food by reading about it is like trying to appreciate Mozart by looking at a painting of an orchestra.

Of course, at least if you're reading about food, you get the occasional picture to help you connect with the subject. But what could you possibly get from just listening to someone talk about food on the radio?

Turns out, a lot. 'The Splendid Table' is a weekly show on public radio, but you probably could have guessed the 'public part,' since I don't think the word 'splendid' gets used very often on commercial radio. And calm down, right-wingers--I know you started salivating when you saw the words 'public radio,' but there's no scary liberal agenda here.

The host of 'The Splendid Table' is Lynne Rosetto Kasper, author of an award winning book on Northern Italian cooking called, oddly enough, 'The Splendid Table.' Her show mixes interviews with food questions from listeners and they call it '"radio for people who love to eat." Or, I suppose you could call it...comfort radio.

When I set up our chat, I had two fears. The first was that I would accidentally refer to her as Lynne RISSOTTO Kasper, and then she'd get pissed, thinking I was mocking either her or the classic Italian creamy rice dish. Thankfully, that didn't happen. In fact, she was very warm and down-to-earth, with none of the stuffiness you might think of when you hear 'public radio.'

My second fear was that somehow she would know that, though I've listened to public radio for years...I've never been a 'paid member.' That's right--I've essentially been stealing great music and conversation for years!

I've been enjoying insightful political analysis AND Tibetan throat singing without paying for either! So I was afraid we might get to a really interesting part of the interview, and then someone from my local station would interrupt the phone call for twenty minutes asking me to make a pledge.

When I was still doing standup, I hated being introduced at parties as a comic, becuase there would always be someone asking me to 'be funny,' on the spot.

As a writer, it's not such a problem, since I'm rarely asked at a party to spontaneously crank out a thousand words of prose. When I asked LRK (as I like to think of her) if she constantly gets bombarded with cooking questions, she was refreshingly honest --

"I do, and quite frankly, I really don't mind it at all -- I rather like it. I have this job..on the radio...if people weren't interested, I'd be a bit surprised. It's fun to steer the conversation in other directions...but it's very flattering that people pay attention and have some idea what you do for a living. (Yeah, that would be nice, since I'm still not sure I know what it is I do for a living.)

She was understandably diplomatic when I wanted her to name a favorite guest ("It's hard to name names--it's like being asked to name your favorite restaurant"), but she did single out quirky writer Amy Sedaris, saying "she's just a hoot."

The more interesting answer, I thought, if only for how extraordinarily carefully it was worded, came when I asked for her least favorite guest--someone, let's say, whose cooking is more interesting than they are...

"I'm gonna put it this way...I'm not gonna name names -- (Again with the not naming names? C'mon, lady, I'm trying to write a story here! I want to expose the dark side of public broadcasting!)

There are some people that...lamentably...do not...sparkle with life...and do not generate...an immense amount of enthusiasm in others...(Got it--sort of the interview equivalent of powdered mashed potatoes).

I found it encouraging that she admits to having been stumped...

"Oh, let me count the number of times! Oh my goodness, yes! Absolutely -- I'm an expert at backpedalling. If you listen closely, a lot of what you're hearing is just logic, not 'knowledge.' If we spend time involved in something you get a tremendous amount of pleasure doing, or being challenged by, we learn enough that, when people ask us questions, we can extrapolate.

I'll have to remember, next time I'm entirely guessing at something, to tell people that I'm just 'extrapolating.' Anyway, I thought it was time to make the questions a bit less ordinary, so I asked her -- if a New York deli wanted to name a sandwich after her, what would you need to make a Lynne Rosetto Kasper (or as I call it, the LRK)?

"First of all, it would be made with a really, really chewy ciabatta bread. It would be -- oh god, I haven't had this in ages -- really, really, REALLY good New York deli liverwurst, with thin-sliced onion that has been marinated in a little...vinegar to get rid of the heat of the onion...

Those onions are shaved, they're piled on the sandwich, there's mayo on the bread, and mustard --now this is not a traditional liverwurst sandwich -- this is MY liverwurst sandwich. This is the sandwich I ate growing up.

And you have this really chewy, fabulous bread -- or, if you're on the east coast, you have a hard roll, which, unfortunately, nobody here knows what that is...it's cultural (I hear ya -- nobody can make decent egg salad in Minnesota either).

The thing you have to have with that sandwich, and this is where deli traditionalists will raise their eyebrows and say 'She's a heathen,' is a great sweet gerkhin -- NOT a kosher pickle-- I know, 'she's a barbarian'...

Wow, you're right -- that is crazy talk. So while she was on a roll (no doubt an east coast hard roll), I asked her to deal with this hypothetical dilemma: I have to make a romantic dinner for my girlfriend, but I'm broke AND I don't want to work too hard -- now..extrapolate!

"First thing you're gonna do is buy a potato...you're gonna buy an onion...and a carrot (and just hand them to her?) and we're gonna get one can of tomatoes...and I'm gonna assume you have some herbs in the cupboard (What if I'm so broke I don't have a cupboard? Huh? Didn't think of that, did you, radio lady? Okay, fine, I've got some herb. I mean herbs.)

Then she asked if I had some wine around the house (of course --that's how I cope with being hypothetically broke), and whether I had any stale bread (what is this, 'Let's Make A Deal'?)... some garlic, and some oil or butter...

"You are gonna make her the best peasant soup in the whole world, and it's gonna warm her right to her toes.

"You're gonna take a nice pot, put some butter in that pot..you're gonna slice up a lot of onion, and some of the carrots and put it in that pot, over medium to medium-low heat, and cover --

"Let it cook until the onions are soft, uncover it and let it brown...stir occasionally, a little salt and pepper, if you have some allspice (or) dried basil that goes in...

"Dice the potato and put it in, add some canned tomato to that, add some wine and enough water to cover just about everything...you're gonna let that simmer, and when everything's nice and soft, you can season it more...

"Now what you're gonna do is a really classy Euro touch...(not sure I wanted to go 'Euro' for this meal -- next I'll be cooking in a black turtleneck -- but go on...).

"You're gonna take your stale bread, heat (it) over a burner until it gets toasty...you're gonna rub it with a little butter, and a half a clove of garlic. Break up pieces of that in the bottom of two soup bowls, and ladle that hot soup over it --that is a big bowl of love!

Fine, I thought I could throw her a curve, and she nailed it. But the questions only get more challenging....See, she does this show from Minnesota, but she's also known for Tuscan cooking, so let's see if she can come up with a fusion of Northern Italy and Minnesota -- what might be called...Tuscanavian cuisine. I suggested she use walleye:

"First of all, it's a fresh-water fish, so it's really, really simple. In most of Italy, fish is done SO simply. It might be done with a few sage leaves, in a pan, with olive oil or butter --in Minnesota, you'd probably use butter (sure, and then we'd deep-fry it)-- anyway, you do a slow sauté of it, and literally just salt, pepper and maybe some slivers of garlic...You'd slow-cook it so you can be really careful of not overcooking, and you'd serve that with a few wedges of lemon and THAT IS IT."

Alright, she got that one, too. But if my questions didn't faze her, I figured there had to be a side of her that the listening audience never hears -- and I think deep down, we all want to imagine a cursing, angry Lynne Rosetto Kasper...

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...there's a very colorful vocabulary that lurks just beneath the surface. There are things that aggravate me...for instance that lovely pot of braising, slow-cooking loveliness? And you go to pull out the (oven) rack when the rack wasn't seated properly to begin with?

"I love doing stock. I do it every three or four months -- make a big quantity, and stick it in the freezer. I've got this down to an art. I leave it to sit overnight on the stove, very slow bubble...It's utterly delicious, it's like money in the bank, it's very easy to do...

"Right now, I have a bad knee, so I'm in pain when I'm moving around the kitchen. So, I got this together, it was done, the pot was really heavy... it was too big to fit in the fridge, and I wanted it cooled down really fast, and it was very cold outside, so I thought I'd put it on the back porch.

"I was trying to get the screen door open, and I slipped with this pot, and the grease was still hot from the stove...and this stuff sloshed over the threshold, onto the cement steps...now it's freezing fat on the porch, you are ice-skating on this fat...it's midnight and I'm chiseling the porch --you have NO idea..."

While I tried to get the image of this lovely woman 'ice-skating on chicken fat' out of my head, I learned some random things about LRK as a chef:

She generally doesn't listen to music when she's cooking, it's "just me and my food."

If she could only use one spice or herb for the rest of her life? "The thing I turn to most often...it's a tossup between basil and some member of the chili family, leaning toward basil because it's a 'blending herb.' And about 'umami' ingredients like soy sauce and fish sauce that 'lift' other flavors, she says, "You keep those babies around the house and a little bit goes a long way to make food taste good."

She wouldn't say she hates any particular foods, but did say, 'Okra has yet to engage me." Oh, and she also mentioned that she no longer eats grains, and as much as she loves raw seafood, she avoids it, "because of problems I'm aware of -- it's very disturbing that I have to, with what's happening to our food supply -- don't get me started -- I know too much." (Yikes! All of a sudden my little fluffy interview has turned into a Robert Ludlam novel!)

For a bonus question, I like to ask chefs where and when in history they would like time-travel, and LRK gave me this:

"I would like to be in the early 1500s, in the palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy, during the height of their power...Lucretia Borgia had married into the family, and it was one of the great ruling houses of the Renaissance...

"To be the fly on the wall , to be both at those secret tables and observe what was going on in those kitchens...you would also be a first-hand observer of how poisons are prepared, all of the intrigue...(Cooking for tyrants AND making a basic poison, on the next 'Top Chef: Middle Ages').

And of course, to understand someone who cooks, you need to know what their favorite utensil is...

"It is my flat-bottomed wooden spatula, slightly curved at the bottom. Every time I see someone try to stir with a wooden spoon (wait -- are you watching us while we're cooking?) where it's like trying to move around food in a pot with the edge of a dime, and with my spatula you can sweep across the bottom of your pan quickly when something's threatening to burn...

"I keep four or five of these at all times. When they look like they're gonna crack I get another one, because they're like...four bucks. There are three things that, without changing anything else you do, automatically make you a better cook. The second one is an oven thermometer -- every oven in the world is off. When you think you have failed -- 'I can't roast!' -- it's because your oven is messed up, not you!

"And the other thing is, you get an instant-reading thermometer...that's gonna tell you (for example), if your steak is really medium-rare, it's 130 degrees before you pull it off the heat to give it a rest...and you're always in control.

Even though I've never really understood the idea of calling a cooking hotline for my cooking emergencies (opting instead to usually throw out what I've ruined and microwave a pizza), I figured our nurturing host had dealt with the occasional 'stressed-out' caller in a culinary crisis...

"Early on when doing 'Turkey Confidential' (her special Thanksgiving advice show), we had a young woman call in whose husband --they were newly married -- the husband announced to his family that she was going to do Thanksgiving dinner all by herself, that she didn't need any help.

"He was inviting his whole family over, and she had never cooked. My first thought was, ditch the guy. This poor woman called close to tears! I really was thinking, I wish there were some way I could send this woman the name of a divorce lawyer.

So are there ever people who call the show, and it's clear from their questions they shouldn't even be in a kitchen, that they should probably resign themselves to a life of ordering delivery?

"Well, we kid a lot, but my favorite line is 'Nowhere is it written that everybody is supposed to cook.' I can roast something and know, pretty much by instinct, whether it's done, but can I figure out my computer? Not my skill set!

When I shared with Lynne Rosetto Kasper my tentative steps as a novice cook, and how I started cooking to deal with my anxiety she offered some insight:

"When we're preoccupied with stress, or exhausted from work, to do something that occupies you physically -- cooking involves all your senses, and if you can give yourself up to the pleasure of cooking...the goal doesn't have to be 'Did I get it right?' or 'Does it taste fabulous?'

"That's very nice, but the real delight in this is that, for whatever amount of time you have, you can give yourself up to the taste, and the smell, and the touch...to trust in your senses, and trust in your common sense. It's allowing yourself to become totally engaged in something that is tactile."

And that might be the best two-paragraph description I've ever heard of what cooking really means. Of course, she had me at 'big bowl of love,' and 'slow-cooking loveliness.' And if you're curious, when I hung up the phone I made a donation to public radio. Not huge, but enough for someone to buy an onion, a carrot and a potato. And now I can enjoy my Tibetan throat singing guilt-free.

THE AUDIO OF MY CHAT WITH LYNNE ROSETTO KASPER IS AT MeatloafMuffins.com

You can buy LRK's books at Amazon.com, and catch 'The Splendid Table' every weekend on your local public radio station.

oatmeal for supper, with ice cream on top

Mon, 7 Nov 2011 23:11:15 -0500

I recently had a chance to talk to an inventive chef with forty years of kitchen experience--a web-savvy culinary veteran known for an adventurous palate and resourcefulness under pressure. Someone as comfortable preparing crème brûlée as they are wild game. I'm referring, of course, to my friend Carl's mom.

Carl is extremely Scandinavian. One of four children of a mixed-marriage (father is Norwegian, Mom is...if you can believe it...Danish), he looks so Nordic I always expect him to be skiing and carrying a rifle. Turns out, he's more Frisbee golf than biathlon, but he looks the part. He's from Willmar, Minnesota, doncha know....

Willmar is a town of about twenty thousand people almost exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. Machine Gun Kelly pulled off a notorious bank heist here in 1930. Big railroad town. According to the town's website, it's "the fastest-growing non-metropolitan area in Minnesota" (just a tip, city planners--when choosing a slogan, shorter is usually better--think in terms of 'City of...something').

We were talking about the book and Carl said I should talk to his mom and I thought, why not interview her? I figured I'd get a couple of cute homespun stories and a little local flavor. I ended up getting a cooking education. But it's weird interviewing someone's mom.

I figured I would dial down the snark a bit -- again, this is someone's mom...also, what do I call her? Her name is Mary, but that feels way too familiar. I guess I think of moms the same way I think of ex-presidents -- whatever I might think of the person, I always respect the office. So I think I'll go with 'Mrs. Olson.'

a real 'Top Chef' in action...

For you children of the tube, I don't mean the 'Mrs. Olson' from Folger's commercials who spent most of the seventies showing up at strangers' homes and pushing coffee on them. To be fair, she did tell me Folgers's is their 'everyday coffee' but that it's 'not for company.'

No, this Mrs. Olson took some time out from a vacation to give me a little insight into the world of an unheralded chef / caterer / party planner who has spent decades in the cooking trenches. And you want authentic? During the course of our half-hour interview, she gave me two "there ya go"s, one "oh my word" and a "you betcha." So have a seat, get your elbows off the table, and pay attention to Mrs. Olson.

At least twice a month for forty years, Mrs. Olson has made some version of what we call 'hotdish' (state law requires any interview with a local chef to include a question about 'hotdish'). That's over a thousand freaking casseroles and at least a thousand cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, but when I asked her if the thought of all that made her tired, she just said, "Noooo, it's part of motherhood.'

Do the math -- this woman has prepared at least two meals a day for almost half a century. Oh, and she's been doing it without a lot of gadgets. Sure, she owns a food processor, but she bought it to make one specific thing (a British shortbread recipe) and that's all she uses it for. When I asked her what her favorite utensil would be, she thought for a few moments, and then said "It would have to be my wire whisk."

Mrs. Olson learned about cooking at a young age.

My mother cooked absolutely fabulous...and (she was) a baker! I used to envy the kids that could have Wonder Bread—all our bread was homemade.

She was a fabulous cook. She was happy in the kitchen…she was ten when her dad died and there were nine children in the family, and she said she got stuck in the kitchen and learned to love it…"

Carl's maternal grandma may have been a 'fabulous cook,' but to hear him tell it, she made one horrible mistake. Allegedly, one day she made beet jello. Now I'm with you -- the words 'beet' and 'jello' should never be that close to each other. I don't even want to hear someone say "I had some beets, and the later had some jello." There should be at least a paragraph between those two words at all times. But let's have mom address the issue...

"She knew he liked beets, and she found a recipe for it—it wasn’t beet jello it was beet gelatine (oh, now it sounds much more appetizing)…it was formed, and to him it was jello...she was just so pleased when she brought this to the table, and he couldn’t eat it."

In the spirit of full disclosure, I asked if she tasted it...

"No, no, no...it had chunks of cucumber, and diced celery…it's like she had cooked them and ground them up…almost like an aspic? And it just…ohhhhhhh. (By the way, in print you can't tell, but it wasn't a good 'ohhhhhhh.')"

Before I talked with his mom, Carl told me that "she was at the vanguard in bringing ethnic cuisine to small-town Minnesota," and I love having friends that use the word 'vanguard.' However, Mrs. Olson was quick to deflect any praise --

"Noooooo, that was his take on it...but one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the grocery store, and if there's something I haven't seen before and I don't know what it is...then I look at the package (for) any directions, and if there's not I buy it, bring it home, and go online --the internet is indispensible!" I didn't have the heart to tell her that some things on the internet aren't true.

In addition to her cosmopolitan (and seemingly random) approach to meal planning, she hasn't lost touch with her Scandinavian roots. She mentioned römmegröt, which I've since learned is a porridge made from sour cream, whole milk, wheat flour, butter and salt. Apparently, you can add cinnamon to it to make it more like...food.

And not many people rave about lefse, a traditional Norwegian flatbread (probably because it's traditional, Norwegian, and flat), but Mrs. Olson told me, "There's nothing better than soft, fresh right-out-of-the-pan lefse with butter and sugar..." She makes the dough, but the boys still do the rolling and baking..."It’s the kind of thing, when everyone’s together right before Christmas, you like to keep people busy…"

For many years, her husband "wasn't around a lot --he had a very intensive, demanding job, so he would show up for meals and take off again." This quote really makes me want to believe that her husband was some sort of spy, working dangerous undercover missions under an assumed name, but I have no proof of this.

Even without an espionage subplot, I figured with four kids, there had to have been some drama at mealtimes, so I asked her how she handled the inevitable 'finicky eater' ...

"I don’t have a lot of patience with that. You know, you say grace, you bless the food...and you don’t wanna eat it?"

And to the age-old problem of getting kids to eat their veggies, there's this:

"You can put vegetables in places where they don't take 'em out so easily ("LOOK OUT--THEY'RE IN THE LEFSE DOUGH!")...you can sneak 'em in places. And even the most finicky eater will eat them raw with a dip. I always figured they had to take three bites of something, and if they didn’t like IT, I didn’t push it…because sometimes kids have a definite aversion to something...I wish you were my mom--I couldn't have gotten away with telling my mom I didn't want to eat something because I had an aversion to it."

I thought I'd turn the tables and ask Mrs. Olson if there was anything she wouldn't eat. When I mentioned my antipathy toward beef liver, it seemed like I touched a nerve...

"Yeah, I don’t eat that anymore…we had to eat it once a week when I was growing up and…I will never eat that again."

As adventurous as she might me, Mrs. Olson knows her limitations. Here's a lovely, pastoral story of a Carl's brother, a fox, and a crockpot...

"One day he did shoot a fox and he skinned it and he says, 'Mom, you gotta cook this — it was like skinning our dog!" He said 'I just hate to waste it'…and so I called several of the older women whose husbands hunted and said, 'How do you cook a fox?' and one of them says, 'Mary, I’ve never heard of anybody cooking a fox. I don’t know if it can be done'..

So, I put it in the crockpot, with lots of…celery, and onions, and tomatoes, and it wasn’t too long and the smell of wet fur filled the house. I brought the fox out and I said to Mark, 'You take the first bite,' so he did, and he said 'Mom, why don’t you just take it outside. Just…take it outside.'

Years later, I read 'A Year in Provence'—and there's story of an old guy who would tell people how to cook fox—and it was a joke! You cannot cook fox."

We went to happier memories when I asked her about a dinner for Carl's groomsmen. There were about forty people (I'm assuming not all groomsmen), and she prepared a whole twenty-five pound salmon. Of course, she also made baked potatoes with rosemary, lemon, and balsamic vinegar, and a whole head of cauliflower that was on a bed of baby peas with a smoked gouda sauce, and two kinds of salad, and four kinds of pie--you know, like anyone would...anyway, back to the salmon...

"I did not think ahead…I didn’t have a pan for anything that big—so I had to construct a pan...I put two jelly roll pans together with layers of aluminaum foil…filled up the whole oven, so of course then the air couldn’t circulate, and the salmon took forever…GAAAH...so embarrassing...but it tasted fine."

Even the most seasoned chefs have their stories of dining debacles. Mrs. Olson shared a few of hers, along with one of the benefits of making everything from scratch...

"My most favorite thing to make is a scratch thirteen egg-white angel food cake…Once I took it out of the oven too soon, and you tip it over a bottle, and the whole thing just fell, all over the countertops…but I decided, well, there ya go…so I scooped it in dishes with fresh raspberries, and it was something no one had ever had before.

"My daughter was having a birthday party in fifth grade…so I thought, what I’d do with all these girls is I’d put them in teams of two, and I put all the ingredients for a cake on the table, and they would have to put the cake together without a recipe…

Well, one of the girls got the garlic powder out…The whole house smelled very strange…and because there was no proper measuring of the leavening agent, the oven--there were flames in the oven, smoke in the house…that was a wonderful disaster."

"Soon after we were married, we invited some of the relatives over…and I had never, as a single gal, put together a meal with various courses, and nothing was ready together--some things were overcooked and some things weren't started, and it was so embarrassing…"

Forty years, and those are your worst cooking disasters? None of those stories even involve injuries, or things blowing up! But she gave me some insight into one of the biggest advantages to making things from scratch, despite the risk of mishap...

"To keep it interesting, I used to make my own graham crackers, for example, and all kinds of fun things...You know, when you’re home all day, and you have four kids in five years…you just give em each a bowl, and go to it… it’s a mess, but it’s two hours killed…"

Even when talking about making a romantic meal for her husband, Mrs. Olson demonstrates old-fashioned heartland practicality and thrift. Phil's favorite dessert is crème brûlée, and I mentioned that I'd like to make it, but I don't have one of those blowtorch thingies --

"I was at a kitchen shop, and they are thirty-five dollars -- the cheapest one I found! After its chilled, I just put it under the broiler with sugar on it….and they all get done at the same time—you have to watch it, (but) that’s the way they do it in France. It's just something more to sell at the kitchen store."

Putting my usual irony aside, I can unequivocally say that meeting Mrs. Olson was, as they might say in Willmar, a hoot. But what I appreciated the most about her was that no-nonsense, heartland logic. It's helped her cook at least fifteen thousand meals (I did the math). You wanna talk about a healthy perspective on life? Check this out:

""My dad was a letter carrier (no doubt a cover for his spy activities), and my mother never worked outside the home, so money was tight. But I remember meals when it was time for a paycheck to come, and we’d have oatmeal for supper with ice cream on top, and we all thought we were kings…"

___________________________________________

I'll leave you all with a recipe for Mrs. Olson's 'Piccadillo Chile' (which earned her a runner-up in a Betty Crocker contest!) but remember, this is from a woman who told me, "Any recipe is just sorta the beginning..."

Piccadillo Chile

1 lb ground turkey
1/2c sliced green onion
1(4oz) can undrained chopped green chilis
1 clove garlic ( minced)
1/2 c raisins
3T almonds
1 1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground cloves
2 ( 8oz) cans tomato sauce
1 ( 14.5 oz) can whole tomatoes
8 pimento stuffed olives ( halved)

Brown meat, stirring and adding onions, chili and garlic- cook 3 min, add raisins and remaining ingredients, cover and reduce heat, simmer at least 15 min.

i know it when i see it...

Wed, 2 Nov 2011 21:11:57 -0400

You really don’t want to over-analyze some cliches. For instance, if ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ that just means I’m working WAY harder than I need to on this book–all told, I’m at about thirty thousand words, so you’re telling me I could have simply taken thirty pictures to make my point? Hell, I could put thirty pictures in a little novelty book and sell it in a rack by the register at Walgreen’s.

I recently realized that our camera has a special setting for ‘food,’ which tells me there are far too many people writing about food these days. Not sure what the setting does, exactly, but I’m sure, without using it, my pictures of food would all look like…well, I don’t want to imagine what the photographic consequences would be. But though I might take the occasional suggestive shot of a skillet meal, what I do could never be considered ‘food porn.’

Unfortunately, just typing that phrase and publishing it online means that anyone who searches for the word ‘porn’ could, if they scroll down far enough, find my website. Then again, there may be people actually searching for ‘food porn’ — you know, your hardcore fans of “9 1/2 Weeks,” and people who enjoy committing unspeakable acts with gourds.

The term food porn was coined in 1984 in the book “Female Desire,” and the author claimed, “Cooking food and presenting it beautifully is an act of servitude…a symbol of a willing participation in servicing others.” Now granted, I only took one Women’s Studies class in college, but I think that’s a little extreme. I also think food photography can be a little over-the-top. I’m just sayin’, it’s not porn.

Some commonly used food terms don’t help — succulent…decadent…simmering…oozing……drizzling. Sounds like excerpts from a letter to Penthouse. But no matter how you define it, pictures of food do not qualify as porn. Here’s a test–would you be mortified if your mom walked in on you looking at a a picture of food?’ “Honey–I thought you blocked the Food Network in Bobby’s room! The boy’s DVR is full of ‘Iron Chef’ episodes! He’s watching people make…a chiffonade!”

The term may be new, but food porn has been around for centuries. C’mon, that describes half of the ‘still-lifes’ in any museum! Take a look at this medieval obscenity, courtesy of Cristoforo Munari (1667-1720) –

'Vasellame di terracotta, zucca, verza, spalla di maiale e piatto con coltello Piatti,'

which I believe translates as "Still Life With Unfortunately-Placed Cabbage"

I know–that’s ballsy, right? Or how ’bout this Monet from 1864, which is nothing but shameless exploitation and pandering –

note how Monet objectifies his subject, treating a piece of meat as if it were just "a piece of meat"

I imagine that what’s considered food porn varies depending on where you live. Maybe in the Ukraine, it’s a soft-focus image of a bowl of borscht. Maybe, in parts of the Deep South, a cellphone picture of a stick of butter is pornographic — “Yeah, baby–I need that emulsification…gimme that bad cholesterol!” Incidentally, that may be the first time in the history of the written word that ‘pornographic’ and ‘emulsification’ have appeared in the same paragraph.

"I am strangely attracted to beets."

Having read more than my share of food blathering (there are only so many ways you can describe a tasty meal, people), I want to offer some suggestions to anyone out there considering getting all ‘bloggy’ about food…

If you’re writing about food, use words that at least, in some tiny, tangential way, relate to FOOD. Very few salads are actually ‘ethereal’ (celestial; heavenly; of or pertaining to the upper regions of space), and you need to stop calling things ‘TOOTHSOME.’ That’s like ‘American Idol’ judges saying something is ‘pitchy’– it’s not an real term!

No matter how well your duck confit turned out, do not write that you had a ‘foodgasm.’ I enjoy food. I’ve had some amazing meals in my life. None of them have been as good as sex. If you are in fact having ‘foodgasms,’ you need to see your doctor.

Enough with the EXTREME CLOSEUPS! It’s the photographic equivalent of YELLING! If I want to experience the ‘essence’ of a dish, I’ll cook the freaking dish. I don’t need to see a picture that makes me feel like I’ve been miniaturized and trapped inside a freakishly large bowl of risotto. No matter how ‘rustic’ or ‘artisanal’ it is.

I like to take pictures of things that that I write about, but I’m still learning. As you can see in this one…

It’s safe to say that one didn’t benefit from a close-up of Imax proportions. I believe it was some sort of cobbler, but it might as well be an aerial view of an archaeological dig.

The Girlfriend typically takes the pictures, which I guess makes her my on-staff ‘food stylist’ (Hey–I’m a job creator!”) That’s as it should be, since I tend to take pictures like the next two

They both give you some idea of the dishes (“He clearly wanted to emphasize…brown”) but they don’t exactly make you drool.

We usually only shoot things that turned out well, but there have been exceptions. I’ll leave you with this shot, which I asked her to take, so that I can, on short notice, remind her of the Tragic Tale of the Burnt Peas, the next time she offers to take over the cooking.

fear, loathing, and porridge

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:10:18 -0400

If I told you I knew a chef who has created the most decadent and exquisite porridge from locally sourced ingredients, full of sublime flavors and textures, would you think that this chef:

A) Trained for years at Le Cordon Bleu in France, is probably named 'Jean-Michel' and might be a little snooty OR

B) Trained at a flapjack house in Ada, Oklahoma, dropped acid "a lot," was stabbed at a Van Halen concert, likes to "blow fire just for kicks," owns a herd of buffalo, and has a tattoo that was hand-drawn by Hunter S. Thompson's illustrator.

If you answered 'B,' then you must know Mitch Omer, co-owner and executive chef at Hell's Kitchen, who has been following his mischievous (and sometimes destructive) muse for thirty-five years. We sat down to chat in a booth toward the back of his restaurant, and when our server came by, I couldn't help but thinking, "That's gotta suck to have your boss seated in your section.

Mitch, instructing his kitchen staff on fire safety techniques...

A few things on the menu jumped out at me, and most of those involved bison. There's bison sausage...there's even a bison 'Sausage Bread,' which I guess is for people who just don't have the time to eat their sausage and bread separately. Anyway, I ordered the Bison Benedict and a Bloody Mary. And I hate to say this, Wheaties people, but that's your 'breakfast of champions'.

Yep, there's nothing like biting into a hunk of majestic buffalo to give you that 'top-of -the-food-chain' feeling. Meat is a big part of the menu here, and a fairly generic question about fois gras (which he keeps at home but doesn't serve in the restaurant) led to this --

"I’m sorry—I don’t give a fuck—its great! They been doin this for what –centuries? Look…if we can get free range, great, but—they're bred to be killed…" (My vegan readers will probably be quite upset by all of this, but thankfully, due to their meat-free diet, they won't have the strength to write me an angry letter.)

The first thing you notice when you enter the basement restuarant / bar / music venue known as Hell's Kitchen is the decor. Thankfully, unlike a lot of basement restaurant / bar / music venues, the decor isn't just a tease--the food is as good (and as interesting) as the art.

Specifically, the art of Ralph Steadman, who has drawn iconic caricatures since the days when Rolling Stone was actually counter-culture, and is best known for illustrating the drug and booze-fueled narratives of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.' The walls at Hell's are covered in Steadman's dark, bold lines, including an original called 'Big Head #5.'

And Mitch Omer has two Steadmans inked on his right arm, one of them autographed. Now, I don't think I was ever such a big fan of someone that I would have had their work burned into my flesh. Probably just as well, because my tastes in music weren't very adventurous when I was younger, and I wouldn't want to have to explain a tattoo of Barry Manilow.

Talking about Steadman naturally led us to Hunter S. Thompson ("his stuff was a Bible for me in the seventies"), so I asked Mitch to improvise a sandwich in Hunter's name that would be suitably 'gonzo' --

"You gotta start with a decent bread, you gotta look at a foccaccia, or something like that…and then I suppose I’d just put some mayonaise and vicodin in there and wash it down with some scotch—make it like a french dip—and...you dip the fucker in scotch. So there you go, you got the Thompson Dip."

Mitch spent some time working concert security (hence the aforementioned stabbing), but instead of making him jaded, he seems wistfully nostalgic about his ass-kicking past. That same past, and a concerned roommate, led him, oddly enough, to try LSD --

"I was working as a bouncer during this time, and I started working third shift as a baker. I'd kick the shit out of bikers through the night, and roll in dough until the morning. I was fighting every night, and absolutely loving it. My roommate told me one night that he was afraid I was going to kill one of these bastards, and well, 'this might mellow you out a little bit.'

"I was still tripping on acid one day before work. It was wild; the dough was convulsing, the colors on the walls were running, and I had to take very slow, deep breaths to keep it under control. It was cool, but I would never let that happen again. I wasn’t giving my employer my best work, and I’m all about quality. I’ll just stick to pot." (Of course, as any aspiring pastry chef knows, you have to knead the dough until it completely stops 'convulsing.')

Since I knew that Mitch wasn't exactly a fan of celebrity-chef culture, and since he brought up fighting, I asked who would win if he fought celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who has fashioned something of a bad-ass image for himself (of course, how much of a bad-ass can you be when you're featured on the Travel Channel?) --

"That's actually a good question. I've met Bourdain -- he's 6'5", and I'm 6'4" , and he's younger than me by a ways, so he's got that going for him -- what I've got going for me is a history of fighting..."

In addition to fighting random goons at rock shows, Mitch Omer has had to battle himself. He talks (almost proudly) about 'finally' being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and seems at peace with who he is now. And if obsessive-compulsive disorder ever had a telethon, Mitch could be its spokesman.

He actually sent his book, "Damn Good Food--157 Recipes From Hell's Kitchen back to the publisher because on first printing, it had 156 recipes, and he doesn't like even numbers (readers with OCD will appreciate this, once they're done counting the number of words in the preceding paragraph). He also acknowledged that his OCD can be an asset in the kitchen --

"Oh, God yes! When I'm cooking, I'm dialed in. And if I go into the walk-in cooler, and that shit isn't the way I want it, with the handles turned that way, or if anything's not facing forward, with labels and dated...I've actually had the health department take photographs, for their training..."

I decided it was time for the lightning round. A bunch of odd questions I like to ask every chef, looking for 'off-the-top-of-your-head' answers...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Meatloaf Muffins: What was the first meal you cooked for someone important to you?

Mitch Omer: A chateaubriand I made for my mom and dad.

MM: What music do you listen to when you're cooking?

MO: It's gotta be movin'...Led Zeppelin, or Allman Brothers off the first two albums, because you lose Berry Oakley and Duane Allman it's not the Allman Brothers...or blues -- electric slide blues, someone like Sonny Boy Williamson...

MM: What's your favorite utensil?

MO: Fuckin' knives! I've got a couple of gems in my office, and I've got some surgical tools (which included a bizarre finger-amputation doohickey that looked like a cross between a cigar-clipper and a gun...it was comforting to remind myself that he doesn't drop acid anymore).

MM: If you had a time machine, where and when would you like to have cooked?

MO: Fifteenth century Italy…When Catherine De' Medici left Italy to go to France, she took her whole retinue with her, including her retinue of cooks. They felt the French were coarse, backward people, and she was NOT gonna eat that food. So the Italians came with all their talents, and they trained the French chefs --

Now France is known as this gastronomic capital…they owe every fuckin' bit of that to Catherine De' Medici…She invented high heels—Jesus Christ, she did everything! She was a great chick—she took a bunch of knuckle-dragging neanderthals and taught 'em how to cook. (Author's note: She was also a tyrant who was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Hugueots. I'm just sayin'...).

MM: Would you put a gourmet spin on the classic Minnesota 'hotdish?'

MO: Fuck that! These guys do that, take classic food and 'deconstruct' it -- "Oh, we're doing it with some different cheese or we're doing it with homemade this and this or whatever, and I’m like, that isnt it! Wanna talk comfort food? Go down to Winona and talk to the women there that do the funerals. Everytime somebody dies, they get the call….they bring hot dish—that’s what they do! And they're not using venison,or, my God, heirloom tomatoes. Fuck that.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I mentioned the porridge, and I'm not alone--Senator Al Franken's a fan, and Nora Ephron. It's a concoction of maple syrup, blueberries, craisins, hazelnuts, heavy cream and Native American hand-parched wild rice, and it's also a great lesson in committment.

When Hell's Kitchen opened almost a decade ago (that's three hundred years in restaurant time), people weren't buying the porridge. They also weren't buying his shrimp and grits ("NOBODY fuckin' bought it--I mean NOBODY!"), which might have been because, as Mitch puts it, "It's the Midwest -- nobody knows what a grit is."He eventually gave up on the grits, but he believed in the porridge--and at one point he started giving it away to get people to try it. Now, thanks to the same business model my pot dealer uses, the porridge "has taken on a life of its own."

I learned a lot in the hour I spent with Mitch. For instance, if you want pecans in your cinnamon rolls, you should sautee them in a pan with salt and butter and add them to the dough after it rises, or your nuts will be mealy (and how many meals have we all had that were ruined by mealy nuts). Oh, and I learned that bear meat is "stupid lean" and "sweeter than venison."

I also learned about a chef's creative process. I mentioned to him that it seems every time I 'create' something, I discover that a hundred thousand amateur chef's with internet connections came up with the same idea, he told me

"Look, it's like our lemon ricotta pancakes--I don't remember ever hearing about lemon ricotta pancakes, I just remember thinking 'I want to put some lemon and ricotta in a goddam pancake!' Bottom line is we did create these things, and if a million other people created the same thing, big deal!"

I also told him about my accidental turkey burgers with maple syrup in the middle of the patty, at which point he made my week by saying "I would have never thought of doing that."

That led to his homemade maple-bison sausage, and the smells that come off the grill from the sugars breaking down, and suddenly-- for just a moment -- I was no longer an unpublished writer interviewing a big-time chef. We were just a couple of cooks, swappin' stories and talkin' about caramelization.