Yesterday I participated in a live online chat with Kathleen Purvis, the food editor of the Charlotte Observer (a link to her blog, I’ll Bite, can be found on the menu on the left). Most participants asked questions pertaining to seasonal items, such as zucchini or peaches, or about local restaurants. A participant named John asked the best question of the day:
Is margarine safe to eat straight from the tub? Or is there some sort of special preparation you use? I like to wrap margarine in butter before serving. Is that recommended?
Ms. Purvis, I, and, presumably, the rest of the participants were not prepared for a question of this caliber. In the case of John’s question, the whole is definitely not greater than the sum of its parts. Each part is a beguiling question all its own. Therefore, I’ve decided to break down the whole and attempt to answer or, at least, offer my thoughts on each part.
Is margarine safe to eat straight from the tub? Margarine has been around for over 130 years. While it hasn’t been available the entire time in tub form, I, and most of you, grew up eating margarine straight from the tub, most notably on toast. When my niece was about 3, I saw her eating a spoonful of a thick yellowish substance, but couldn’t make out what it was. When I asked what she was eating, she replied, “Butter” (I wouldn’t expect a 3-year old to say “Margarine”). Rather than trying to convince a 3-year old that eating a spoonful of margarine may not be the healthiest option, I instead asked my mother why she’d given it to her in the first place. Her answer? “That’s what she wanted.” My niece recently graduated from high school relatively unscathed and without dying a horrible margarine-induced death. I am aware of arguments on both sides regarding the safety and health factors of eating margarine. Trans fats, no trans fats. The argument is basically whether or not to eat it at all. I have yet to hear an argument regarding the tub.
Is there some sort of special preparation you use? I wish John had elaborated on this point. I’m not familiar with a “special preparation”. Maybe melt it and then chill it to get it back to its hardened state? Sprinkle it with lard? Luckily, John does have an idea.
I like to wrap margarine in butter before serving. Again, John really could’ve elaborated on this one. This is, in fact, my favorite part of the question. I surveyed a couple people to see if they could figure out how John was accomplishing Butter-Wrapped Margarine. LA’s partner Joe and I both theorize that perhaps he softens a stick of butter, then wraps it around a chilled stick of margarine. My mother thinks he might soften the butter and just spread it on the margarine. Either way, I’d love to be in the kitchen with John when he’s wrapping his margarine. I’d also like to see how his guests react to this delight. Joe pointed out that John’s special preparation really does put you on the fast track for a massive coronary. Really though, more than knowing how he wraps the margarine, I'd like to know why.
Is that recommended? No. While I wouldn’t necessarily dissuade someone with John’s tenacity from wrapping margarine with butter, I cannot recommend or even endorse this solution. If you can really call it a solution. I would love to ask John where this suggestion came from in the first place. Is it an old family tradition? Did he hear about it on one of the morning TV shows that are always frightening my mother with how ubiquitous and relatively innocuous household products will kill or, at the very least, maim you?
John, if you’re reading this, please answer my questions, as I have answered yours. I eagerly await your response. Until then, I will be eating my margarine directly from the tub, as I am just too lazy to figure out how to go about wrapping it. Fingers crossed that it’s safe!
P.S. In case you're wondering, Ms. Purvis's response to John's question was "Why would margarine not be safe from the tub? I don't think it needs preparation. It's margarine."
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
He's a Real Fungi
When I was growing up, my parents were of the mindset that simply warning a child of the dangers of society is not enough. No, a far better option is to create a phobia. I will only begrudgingly go into the ocean, as the potential for a jellyfish attack is so great. Don’t even ask about hitchhikers, although my mother will gladly tell you all about that if you’re truly curious. These dire warnings even extended to the foliage in the backyard. “Don’t eat the mushrooms! You could die!” I was an intelligent child, but I was still unable to make a distinction between the wild mushrooms that would lead to my horrible and mouth-frothing death and the canned mushrooms that my mother put in the spaghetti. Mushrooms are mushrooms. Why take chances? In France, autumn brings to the forest scavengers for the best mushrooms. They then take their hard-won selections to the pharmacist, who tells them which are toxic and which are not. No, thank you. Everyone, be it a passing acquaintance or a dear friend, knows that I do not eat mushrooms. As I sat picking the mushrooms out of the above-mentioned spaghetti, my father would say, “I hope you don’t do that in public!” Well, Dad, if I’m given mushrooms in public, I will, in fact, still pick them out. If Thomas Keller handed me a plate of mushrooms that he’d sauteed especially for me, I would take a bite out of politeness. One bite. And I would probably spit it into my napkin when he wasn’t looking. I know many people who feel the same way I do, and many more who think I am crazy for the disdain I feel towards mushrooms.
I would like to clarify my true feelings toward the fungus. I am not generally offended by the taste of mushrooms. I am offended by the texture. I imagine an eyeball would have the same textural qualities. I do not eat eyeballs, therefore I do not eat mushrooms. I often make mushroom gravy to accompany meatloaf. While my dinner companions are raving about the gravy, I am busy pushing the mushrooms to the side of my plate. You know, where the parsley used to be. (Maybe I’m dating myself with that statement, but anyone my age or older remembers the sprig of parsley, and sometimes a lemon wedge, that was sitting at either 1 o’clock or 11 o’clock on the restaurant plate.) Beef bourgignon would not be the same without the mushrooms. But I don’t have to eat them. Stuffed mushrooms are delicious—I can often be found eating the stuffing and leaving the base.
“Have you ever actually eaten a mushroom?” I get asked this all the time. Yes, I have eaten a mushroom. The cause of this is usually someone who feels that they alone have the power to change my mind and cause me to love something that looks and feels like a small, spongy hat. They tell me that they can make me love a mushroom, that they have the recipe that will cause me to shout “Eureka!” and bless them and their mushroom strudel. To that I respond, “Better people than you have tried and failed.” In a battle of wills over mushrooms, I always win.
I wish I liked mushrooms. The variety is overwhelming. Wild mushrooms. Cultivated mushrooms. Dried mushrooms. Chinese mushrooms. The list goes on and on. The vegetarian option at most restaurants invariably involves mushrooms in some form. Even fast food restaurants are beginning to offer portobello “burgers”. That’s not a burger—it’s a salad on a bun. I just can’t do it. I have been told that your taste buds change every 7 years, so you may now enjoy foods that you detested a few years ago. While this may be true in some cases, my taste buds have gone through many revitalizations, and still I cannot eat mushrooms. With one exception.
I was flipping through a Japanese cookbook a few years back, when I came upon an odd-looking creature wrapped in bacon. It looked a bit like a space alien, or maybe an anemone like you would see on the Discovery Channel in a program about the weird and wonderful species living on the bottom of the Marianas Trench. But it was a mushroom. An enokitake mushroom, to be exact. I had never seen anything like it. They were so intriguing. I knew I had to find some immediately.
The enokitake get their name from the tree (take) on which they grow, the enoki (hackberry). In Japan, wild enokitake may still be found in markets. These look similar to the cultivated variety, but the caps are a darker color. In the US, wild enokitake are rarely available. The cultivated variety are much more common, with a flavor that matches the wild variety. Enokitake mushrooms are, in fact, very subtle in flavor. While often cooked in Japan, in dishes such as shabu-shabu, they are frequently eaten raw in the US. I have occasionally seen enokitake mushrooms in the supermarket, usually on the top shelf of the produce section, with many other foreign and infrequently-purchased items. They are more easily found in Asian markets. This is where I first was able to find the mushrooms. I bought them, as well as a package of bacon, so I could make obimake enoki. This is a wonderful and unusual dish that is great for parties. The unusual appearance will appeal to your guests, and the ease of preparation will appeal to you. I guarantee that even die-hard mushroom-haters will be impressed!
Obimake Enoki
Enokitake Mushrooms with a Sash
Makes 24
Adapted from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Japanese Cooking, by Emi Kazuko (Anness Publishing Ltd., 2002)
1lb fresh enokitake mushrooms
6 strips smoked bacon
lemon wedges and ground pepper, to serve
Cut off the root part of each enokitake cluster ¾ inch from the end, making sure that you do not separate the stems. Cut the bacon strips in half lengthwise.
Divid the enokitake into 12 bunches. Wrap one halved strip of bacon around the middle of the enokitake, so you have an equal amout of mushroom showing on either end of the bacon. Tuck any short stems into the bacon . Secure the ends of the bacon with a toothpick. Continue wrapping each bunch with one halved slice of bacon. You should have 12 wrapped bunches when done.
Preheat the broiler to High. Place the enokitake rolls on an oiled wire rack. Broil for 10-12 minutes, turning as needed, until the bacon is crisp and the mushrooms begin to burn.
Remove the enokitake rolls from the rack. Cut each roll in half in the middle of the bacon belt. To serve, arrange the top half of the enokitake bunches standing up, with the lower half lying on the platter. Serve with lemon wedges and ground pepper.
“Have you ever actually eaten a mushroom?” I get asked this all the time. Yes, I have eaten a mushroom. The cause of this is usually someone who feels that they alone have the power to change my mind and cause me to love something that looks and feels like a small, spongy hat. They tell me that they can make me love a mushroom, that they have the recipe that will cause me to shout “Eureka!” and bless them and their mushroom strudel. To that I respond, “Better people than you have tried and failed.” In a battle of wills over mushrooms, I always win.
I was flipping through a Japanese cookbook a few years back, when I came upon an odd-looking creature wrapped in bacon. It looked a bit like a space alien, or maybe an anemone like you would see on the Discovery Channel in a program about the weird and wonderful species living on the bottom of the Marianas Trench. But it was a mushroom. An enokitake mushroom, to be exact. I had never seen anything like it. They were so intriguing. I knew I had to find some immediately.
Obimake Enoki
Enokitake Mushrooms with a Sash
Makes 24
Adapted from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Japanese Cooking, by Emi Kazuko (Anness Publishing Ltd., 2002)
1lb fresh enokitake mushrooms
6 strips smoked bacon
lemon wedges and ground pepper, to serve
Cut off the root part of each enokitake cluster ¾ inch from the end, making sure that you do not separate the stems. Cut the bacon strips in half lengthwise.
Divid the enokitake into 12 bunches. Wrap one halved strip of bacon around the middle of the enokitake, so you have an equal amout of mushroom showing on either end of the bacon. Tuck any short stems into the bacon . Secure the ends of the bacon with a toothpick. Continue wrapping each bunch with one halved slice of bacon. You should have 12 wrapped bunches when done.
Preheat the broiler to High. Place the enokitake rolls on an oiled wire rack. Broil for 10-12 minutes, turning as needed, until the bacon is crisp and the mushrooms begin to burn.
Remove the enokitake rolls from the rack. Cut each roll in half in the middle of the bacon belt. To serve, arrange the top half of the enokitake bunches standing up, with the lower half lying on the platter. Serve with lemon wedges and ground pepper.
Why is the mushroom the life of the party? Because he's a real fungi!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Happy Mother's Day!
Today we celebrate our mothers, grandmothers, and any special woman in our lives. I thought it would be appropriate for me to take a few minutes to look back at the women in my life and what they gave to me in the way of physical and emotional nourishment.
My paternal grandmother, Bertha, (Grandma B.) was a farmer’s wife who raised three children and cooked for her family and all of the farm hands that worked for them. In the small community where she lived, Grandma B. was well-known for her cooking. Anyone attending a potluck or bake sale sought out the goods that Grandma B. had made. She was quite modest about her ability and would tell me, “Even bread and butter tastes better when someone else makes it.” To this day, I still hold up her potato soup as the pinnacle of the potato soup experience. When I visited as a child, she would make me hamburgers or fried egg sandwiches. The fried egg sandwich is still one of my stand-bys, and I even had one last night (while thinking of Grandma B.). Although she had six grandchildren, two of them are much younger than the rest of us. When the four oldest of us were kids, Grandma B. had a dog named Taj. Taj was a farm dog and only allowed onto the back porch of the house or into the kitchen. Grandma B. usually had a full cookie jar, and we would call Taj into the kitchen to feed him cookies. In retrospect, I think she actually baked the cookies because she knew we liked giving them to the dog. And he liked eating them. All of her cats lived outdoors, next to and under the rosebushes, and she would get up in the mornings to make a pan of gravy to take out to the kittens. As great as Grandma B.’s cooking normally was, though, she seemed to struggle with the holiday meal. The family still jokes about the scorched mashed potatoes and dry turkey that we happily drowned in gravy and inhaled every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Towards the end of her life, I asked Grandma B. for her recipe for cinnamon rolls. She was in failing health and was losing her memory, so I wanted the recipe while I could still get it. She brought out a cookbook from 1943, a copy of which both she and my great-grandmother had purchased from a door-to-door salesman during the war. She gave me this cookbook, as well as a locally-produced cookbook, and said that all of her recipes were in them. I later flipped through both books, seeing several different recipes marked “Good” in my Grandma B.’s recognizable script. I did find one for meatloaf that she had marked “Tried”. Grandma B. had a wonderful sense of humor, and, every time I see “Tried” in that cookbook, I laugh and think that it was probably her polite way of saying that it was a miss. Needless to say, I doubt I will ever make that recipe.
Not a cook like Grandma B., my maternal grandmother, Blanche, (Grandma R.) still provided some great memories growing up. In reality, I don’t remember Grandma R. making much of anything. When my cousin, Kari, and I would visit our grandparents, we usually subsisted on toast. Or, we would hold out until early afternoon, at which point Grandpa would say, “You girls want a weenie?” We would enthusiastically answer in the affirmative and find ourselves in possession of a hot dog wrapped in a slice of white bread, slathered with ketchup. For her lack of cooking, though, Grandma R. often had the oven on, with a pan of eggs inside. Not to cook them, though. To incubate them. We would sit in front of the oven like expectant mothers, waiting for the first chick to poke his way out of the shell. “Hurray! We have chickens!” Along with a zoo of furry and feathered friends, my grandparents also had a large garden, full of rhubard, grapes, and raspberries. Kari and I would be sent to the garden with two bowls and the task of picking raspberries. The harvest typically went something like, “One for me, one for the bowl. Two for me, one for the bowl.” We would be purple and nearly sick by the time we took our half-full bowls of berries back in; me covered with mosquito bites while Kari would be hardly touched. Grandma R. would freeze our harvest in 1-quart bags. In the winter, she would take a bag of berries out of the freezer for Kari and me to share. When the berries had only just begun to thaw, we would dump them in a bowl, cover them with sugar, then begin chipping away at the raspberry-ice block with our spoons, too impatient to wait for them to defrost. After the raspberries were devoured, we would fight over the sugary syrup left in the bottom of the bowl. Grandma R. would also make grape jelly, using the grapes from her garden. The jelly with the piece of wax inside the jar that you had to break and pick out to get at the grapey goodness contained inside. I miss that grape jelly. Grandma R. cooks even less now that she lives alone. The last time she turned on her oven, she forgot that she was using it for storage and had to call the fire department when smoke started billowing out. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s not cooking anymore.
I saved the best for last: my mother, Carolyn. My mom enjoys baking, but admits that cooking isn’t her favorite task. It’s pretty obvious if you know her at all. Every Christmas, my mom makes up huge batches of anise-flavored pizzelles, Chex Mix, and banana bread. At a craft sale a few years ago, my mom spotted a vendor with all of her breads baked in small jars. Since that time, my mother always makes hers in mason jars, too. My mom’s jarred banana bread was one of the only things that Grandma B. would eat in her final months. The beauty of baking it in jars is that the bread is sealed and lasts indefinitely. Not that I know how long that is. The bread usually doesn’t make it until the end of the week before it’s gone. My friend Vince raves about it, and he hasn’t had any in several years. To make it, she simply makes up a batch of her favorite banana bread (or any quick bread recipe), then fills the jars half-full, bakes according to the recipe, then puts on the lids while they’re still hot from the oven. I make it this way now, as well. We lived on a farm while I was growing up, my mom worked, and we didn’t have a lot of money, so I learned to appreciate the humble casserole. If memory serves me, one that Mom would make was with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, green beans or corn, and a layer of tater tots to top it. Just thinking of that now makes my mouth water. My mom’s real claim to fame, in my immediate family at least, is a casserole known as Creamed Tacos. Every naysayer who has taken just one bite has found it to be delicious, albeit a bit unappetizing in appearance. We have creamed tacos on Christmas Eve, birthdays, and any other day that my dad complains loudly that he never gets them. She then calls me to say, “I’m making creamed tacos for your father, since he says I never make them for him.” Don’t feel too sorry for my dad and his pitiful casserole deprivation, since I get the creamed taco phone call several times per year. If I were asked to come up with my best memory of my mom, it would probably be an incident that occurred when I was around nine years old. My mom was driving a tractor, and I was along for the ride. Our dog was running behind, barking, until we eventually stopped to pick him up and let him ride, too. If you know my mother, I’m sure you’ll get a laugh at the thought of her driving a tractor, especially with a kid and a dog as passengers. I know I still do. I love you, Mom!
Creamed Tacos
Serves 6-8, depending on the gluttony of the diners
Adapted from a recipe in the 1975 Karval Country Cookbook.
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced
2 lbs. ground beef
1 14-oz can condensed low-sodium cream of chicken soup
1 14-oz can condensed low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
1 14-oz can green enchilada sauce
1 jar medium taco sauce
1 4-oz can diced green chiles
Non-stick cooking spray
8-10 corn tortillas, torn into pieces
1-2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
Preheat the oven to 375°.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft. Add the ground beef, then continue to cook until the beef is no longer pink. Add the soups, enchilada sauce, taco sauce and green chiles to the pan. Stir until thoroughly combined.
Spray a 9”X13” baking pan with the cooking spray. Ladle a small amount of the beef and soup mixture into the bottom, just to cover it. Top with a layer of tortillas. Ladle enough beef and soup mixture on top to cover the tortillas, then continue alternating layers of the beef mixture and tortillas. The final layer should be the beef mixture. Top with the cheese. (I get very heavy-handed with the cheese, since I like mine extra cheesy and gooey.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bubbling. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
My paternal grandmother, Bertha, (Grandma B.) was a farmer’s wife who raised three children and cooked for her family and all of the farm hands that worked for them. In the small community where she lived, Grandma B. was well-known for her cooking. Anyone attending a potluck or bake sale sought out the goods that Grandma B. had made. She was quite modest about her ability and would tell me, “Even bread and butter tastes better when someone else makes it.” To this day, I still hold up her potato soup as the pinnacle of the potato soup experience. When I visited as a child, she would make me hamburgers or fried egg sandwiches. The fried egg sandwich is still one of my stand-bys, and I even had one last night (while thinking of Grandma B.). Although she had six grandchildren, two of them are much younger than the rest of us. When the four oldest of us were kids, Grandma B. had a dog named Taj. Taj was a farm dog and only allowed onto the back porch of the house or into the kitchen. Grandma B. usually had a full cookie jar, and we would call Taj into the kitchen to feed him cookies. In retrospect, I think she actually baked the cookies because she knew we liked giving them to the dog. And he liked eating them. All of her cats lived outdoors, next to and under the rosebushes, and she would get up in the mornings to make a pan of gravy to take out to the kittens. As great as Grandma B.’s cooking normally was, though, she seemed to struggle with the holiday meal. The family still jokes about the scorched mashed potatoes and dry turkey that we happily drowned in gravy and inhaled every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Towards the end of her life, I asked Grandma B. for her recipe for cinnamon rolls. She was in failing health and was losing her memory, so I wanted the recipe while I could still get it. She brought out a cookbook from 1943, a copy of which both she and my great-grandmother had purchased from a door-to-door salesman during the war. She gave me this cookbook, as well as a locally-produced cookbook, and said that all of her recipes were in them. I later flipped through both books, seeing several different recipes marked “Good” in my Grandma B.’s recognizable script. I did find one for meatloaf that she had marked “Tried”. Grandma B. had a wonderful sense of humor, and, every time I see “Tried” in that cookbook, I laugh and think that it was probably her polite way of saying that it was a miss. Needless to say, I doubt I will ever make that recipe.
Not a cook like Grandma B., my maternal grandmother, Blanche, (Grandma R.) still provided some great memories growing up. In reality, I don’t remember Grandma R. making much of anything. When my cousin, Kari, and I would visit our grandparents, we usually subsisted on toast. Or, we would hold out until early afternoon, at which point Grandpa would say, “You girls want a weenie?” We would enthusiastically answer in the affirmative and find ourselves in possession of a hot dog wrapped in a slice of white bread, slathered with ketchup. For her lack of cooking, though, Grandma R. often had the oven on, with a pan of eggs inside. Not to cook them, though. To incubate them. We would sit in front of the oven like expectant mothers, waiting for the first chick to poke his way out of the shell. “Hurray! We have chickens!” Along with a zoo of furry and feathered friends, my grandparents also had a large garden, full of rhubard, grapes, and raspberries. Kari and I would be sent to the garden with two bowls and the task of picking raspberries. The harvest typically went something like, “One for me, one for the bowl. Two for me, one for the bowl.” We would be purple and nearly sick by the time we took our half-full bowls of berries back in; me covered with mosquito bites while Kari would be hardly touched. Grandma R. would freeze our harvest in 1-quart bags. In the winter, she would take a bag of berries out of the freezer for Kari and me to share. When the berries had only just begun to thaw, we would dump them in a bowl, cover them with sugar, then begin chipping away at the raspberry-ice block with our spoons, too impatient to wait for them to defrost. After the raspberries were devoured, we would fight over the sugary syrup left in the bottom of the bowl. Grandma R. would also make grape jelly, using the grapes from her garden. The jelly with the piece of wax inside the jar that you had to break and pick out to get at the grapey goodness contained inside. I miss that grape jelly. Grandma R. cooks even less now that she lives alone. The last time she turned on her oven, she forgot that she was using it for storage and had to call the fire department when smoke started billowing out. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s not cooking anymore.
Creamed Tacos
Serves 6-8, depending on the gluttony of the diners
Adapted from a recipe in the 1975 Karval Country Cookbook.
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced
2 lbs. ground beef
1 14-oz can condensed low-sodium cream of chicken soup
1 14-oz can condensed low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
1 14-oz can green enchilada sauce
1 jar medium taco sauce
1 4-oz can diced green chiles
Non-stick cooking spray
8-10 corn tortillas, torn into pieces
1-2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
Preheat the oven to 375°.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft. Add the ground beef, then continue to cook until the beef is no longer pink. Add the soups, enchilada sauce, taco sauce and green chiles to the pan. Stir until thoroughly combined.
Spray a 9”X13” baking pan with the cooking spray. Ladle a small amount of the beef and soup mixture into the bottom, just to cover it. Top with a layer of tortillas. Ladle enough beef and soup mixture on top to cover the tortillas, then continue alternating layers of the beef mixture and tortillas. The final layer should be the beef mixture. Top with the cheese. (I get very heavy-handed with the cheese, since I like mine extra cheesy and gooey.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bubbling. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
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