Japanese Sushi Chef Ken Kawasumi with his Sushi Obama creation

The mid-term elections are fast approaching. I’ve been wondering why candidates running for high political office seem to feel it is necessary to eat what the locals eat. I suppose it’s a way of establishing solidarity with the voters.

When politicians fly to Buffalo they make a big deal about eating a wing. They become “ein Buffalo-er,” which is the next best thing to being ein Berliner or a Philadelphian — when they gather together together to scarf down a cheesesteak.

It’s the same deal when we declare our brotherhood by eating a hot pastrami sandwich.

Toss down a couple of belts of hard liquor and the world applauds. There’s nothing like beer to solidify a candidate’s credentials. Wine is another thing altogether.

JFK and Jackie O. received high marks for their elegant state dinners. That was then, though.

Eat French food today and the other side will make a mockery of you. Admitting to enjoying chardonnay and arugula has become shorthand for a lack of patriotism.

French food is only O.K. only when it comes to fries. Fried is probably the best bet for almost everything, especially chicken.  KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is wildly popular throughout the world, or many parts of the world. Forget about quiche.

Throw a barbecue on your million acre ranch and what are you?  Why, you are a man: A REAL MAN!  A red-bloodied American man.

Declare your favorite food to be caribou stew or moose burger and you pass muster in certain necks of certain woods. Right on!

You are pretty safe if you can eat whatever is offered to eat with your hands, or if worst comes to worst, a plastic fork is sometimes allowed (or forgiven).

Mention you are a vegetarian and you’ll be confessing to ‘wimpitude’. (Hitler was a vegetarian.)

Pastor Rick Warren recently pondered whether an atheist, even a non-practicing atheist, could become the Commander in Chief. He didn’t reflect about whether a vegetarian had a prayer.

If I was a campaign adviser I’d suggest that my client stay clear of all cheese except Velveeta or when campaigning in Wisconsin.

It’s odd that desserts don’t carry any weight in this public display of togetherness chomping.

While some foods are considered cool, others pose a problem. For instance, sushi would have been taboo in years past. Now sushi is sold at Wal-Mart, in supermarkets and food courts everywhere.

Sushi is the new pizza. It’s become a kind of upscale fish finger.

The galloping popularity of sushi opens up splendid new career opportunities for chefs. Sushi culinary schools have opened in California, and we can confidently expect to see more MASA restaurant derivatives. MASA in New York occupies a place in the restaurant stratosphere where dinner for two can cost as much as $1,000 before tax and gratuities.

Fish is gold.

Fish ‘n rice clearly occupy a far more exalted status than fish ‘n chips, so this seems like a fine time to sashay into sushi and sashimi.

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Blueprint of the first dishwasher, approximately 1850

The unforeseen consequences of the introduction of the dishwasher at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair is the loss of intimacy between mothers and daughters.

It was a time to talk: when Mom washed the dishes, one daughter dried them,  the other put them away — and the son went to the bathroom.

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Ron Ben-Israel Cake, photo by Monica Stevenson

The Chicago Sun Times tells us about the sensitive guy who announces to his beloved that before they go any further he needs to tell her something. That something turns out to be his revelation that he plans to serve pie on his/their? wedding day.

“So?,” as former Vice President Cheney, another sensitive charmer, is said to have asked. “So!” “Why Knot?” seems to be the reaction of the affianced…

Weddings are very sexy occasions — not only for the bride and groom, whose passion is on display for all to see, but also for those who are invited witness the joining of two into one. The occasion of the marriage ceremony gives us all a lot of great ideas as once again we turn our attention to matters of food and drink in general, and wedding cakes in general, and now — pies in particular.

Fashions change. Today’s wedding cake master designers like Sylvia Weinstock, Ron Ben-Israel, and the Ace of Cakes, no longer, (or mostly no longer), look with favor on those old-time tacky plastic bride and groom figures standing stiffly on the top cake layer.

Pedestals and pillars have been jettisoned and cascades of fresh flowers have gained favor among the eco-friendlies. Now five or even six cake layers are placed one on top of another, each one composed of a different symphony of flavors.

So if pie it is to be, what’s the big deal?  If pies and cup cakes don’t quite jell with the glamour of the occasion, there’s yet another alternative. Krispy Kreme tells us, doughnuts can be created into a  stunning make-believe wedding cake when festooned with cascading ribbons and real, or almost real, certainly life-like, flowers. Thoughtful brides are handing out boxes containing two-for-the-road-doughnuts to their departing-but still-hungry-after-the-reception-guests. The doughnut favors are $2 a box plus $50 to have them passed out by a Krispy Kreme representative.

The best edible wedding day advice yet comes from a couple who, having lived together for a few years, decided to march down the aisle holding a dozen hard boiled eggs that they decided to put all in one basket.

If you want a career in wedding cake designing and decorating or pie making or cake art, you can read more in  FOOD JOBS.

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For a special treat, Mother produced her only specialty: baked beans on buttered toast topped with a poached egg, smothered with a cheese sauce and crowned with a thick slice of tomato. The entire thing was assembled on a saucer and broiled until the sauce was bubbling and the tomato was burnt.

I loved the way the runny yolk seeped onto and into and all around the baked beans and how you had to be quick about sopping  up the entire mess before it overflowed the sides of the saucer and dripped onto the kitchen table. I remember how colorful it was and how hot it was and how careful you had to be not to scorch your tongue on the tomato.

Other culinary delights of my childhood include Toad in the Hole (pork sausages baked in curdled custard topped with ketchup) and Bubble ‘n Squeak (lumpy mashed potatoes and leftover cabbage cooked in bacon grease until the cabbage bubbled and squeaked in the frying pan) and Spotted Dick (steamed pudding with “spots” of raisins with treacle syrup) served once a week in every boarding school alternating with tadpole eggs (tapioca).

I mention these things because people tend to make fun of British cooking, ignoring the fact we have made huge gastronomic strides. Mediterranean countries eat many vegetables and we do too. We English have three vegetables: two of them are Brussels sprouts.

“They” say France is a country that has 300 kinds of cheese but only one religion. England has 300 religions but only one cheese. This isn’t true at all. We have Stilton and Cheddar.

And now, we have Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal and The Naked Chef, so it looks as if the tables are turning.

We just have to pray that we don’t run out of baked beans.

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Grasshopper

Four years ago I met Doris Friedensohn at a conference that was jointly organized by The Culinary Institute of America and New York University. Several faculty members from both colleges presented papers ranging from intensely boring to soaring brilliance.  For me, Doris was the shining star of the entire shindig.

Doris is a specialist in American culture with an interest in food and foodways in the US and elsewhere. She is a woman of enormous grace, charm and scholarship who has a unique role in the food world and who is leading a life filled with doing exactly what she wants to do. She told me how she does it.

“Irena, I talk about eating bugs and other cultural matters; what I like to call the satisfaction of an unpaid food job.”

“In the U.S. we don’t eat bugs,” I say. “We spray them. We swat them. We stomp on them. And we spray ourselves to stay bug-free. We also don’t eat horses, as the French have done, or dogs, as the Koreans still do. Eating is cultural. That is, we eat what we have been taught to eat and what powerful food industries pressure us to eat.”

“In Mexico – - and especially in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca – - fried grasshoppers, chapulines in Spanish, are a favorite snack. For many Oaxacans, they are an addiction, like peanuts or Fritos.” Chapulines (pron: chap-u-leen-ace) are eaten after the rains begin and through early autumn.

Forty food service students are still with me, still paying attention. I couldn’t be certain they would. After all, I’m not a chef. I’m a writer. I’ve asked them, “who’s interested in the impact of this free, fourteen-week program on their lives.”

Ever since I began visiting the Food Service Training Academy (FSTA) at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, more than five years ago, I’ve been worrying about the absence of cultural matters of the curriculum. Students are taught knife skills, weights and measurements, proper temperatures for cooking and chilling various foods, sanitary standards and a basic culinary vocabulary.

In the kitchen, they learn to fry, sauté, and grill; they make soup and pizza, vegetables, rice and potatoes; they bake cakes, cookies and fruit pies. They are asked to plan menus and act as sous chefs for a day. They are assigned a foreign cuisine and compete for prizes in an international food jamboree.

But at no point in their program are questions raised about the origins of their own foodways or the nature of eating in America. At no point are their own attachments to burgers, fries, grits, well done meat and rice pudding treated as anything but “normal.” Students know they can’t afford a diet of sirloin steak and lobster. But beyond the limitations of the pocketbook, neither they nor their teachers ask: why they eat as they do – - why do Americans generally eat as we do?

“Where’s the food in food services?” I remember asking the chefs at the end of an international food competition. How come no one mentions of cultures of rice and potatoes or cultures of butter and olive oil? How come students don’t wonder why hundreds of running feet of supermarket shelves are devoted to dried cereals that are almost indistinguishable from one another? How come no one asks why fresh vegetables in ghetto food shops look limp and packaged meats are often gray at the edges?

What could I do, I wondered? What could I contribute to the (liberal) education of food service students?  Selfishly, I wondered what I might do to enrich my connections with students – - and advance my own writing project. I imagined a series of “five-minute mini-lectures.” The abbreviated talks that I had in mind, illustrating the cultural contexts of eating or the politics and economics of foodways, would have to be carefully scripted – - for clarity, liveliness and pace. The talks would have to be entertaining: more like stories than lectures.

“After my opening comments on bugs, I describe how grasshoppers are netted in cornfields, killed in scalding water, deep fried in lard, and seasoned with garlic, chili pepper and lime juice.”

Woman Selling Chapulines Courtesy of http://mexkitchen.blogspot.com

“Chapulines, sold on the street by women wearing the traditional long skirts and blouses of their villages, are a deep bright red, salty, spicy and crunchy – - a little like crispy fried onions, with a bite. I confess to my audience that the first time I noticed the grasshoppers in Oaxaca, maybe 40 years ago, I couldn’t imagine putting a bug in my mouth – - not to mention a handful of bugs.”

“But, I’ve had a chance to rethink my squeamishness. What makes fried bugs so different from sautéed calves brains or stewed pigs’ feet or raw octopus — all delicacies that I love?”

“On a visit to Oaxaca in July 1995, I report, I sought out a local restaurant with chapulines on the menu. The owner served us beers, warm corn tortillas, guacamole – - and a platter of flimsy red objects that glowed in the afternoon light.  I grabbed a tortilla, covered it with a thick layer of guacamole and sprinkled a few chapulines on top. After folding the tortilla in half — with the bugs out of sight — I took my first cautious bite. The bland tortilla, the smooth guacamole and the spicy crunch of chapulines were like music in my mouth. Delicious! As good as a great BLT!”

“The story ends with a message. “Around the world,” I say, “millions of people regularly consume all kinds of bugs. Why? Because: they are local, easily trapped, cheap, simple to prepare, rich in protein, and tasty, too. Many Mexicans eat chapulines because their grandparents did and so do their neighbors. And because, they are passionately attached to the texture and flavors. Grasshoppers are a normal, seasonal and sustaining part of their diet.” ”

“Later, in the kitchen, several students ask me about other odd foods I’ve encountered, and whether I really liked them. I mention snake and wild boar; the snake rather dull, like chicken, and the boar unforgettably flavorful and rich. “I had snails,” one student says, “in a great garlic sauce.” “Everything depends on where you grow up,” another student says. “I wanna travel,” a third student comments, “and see how they eat in Asia.” “We can eat weird Asian foods right here in Newark,” a fourth student chimes in. “If we want to,” he adds.”

“I’ve given the chapulines talk – - and a half-dozen others – - to four classes now; and the chefs have integrated them into the FSTA program. They like the idea that I’m taking care of “culture” with my stories from Mexico, Tunisia, Nepal, Korea, Argentina, South Africa and the Obama election campaign.”

“With these presentations, I get closer to students whose lives are my subject and reason for being there. How fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this good, nonpaying food job!”

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Traditional Christmas Pudding

Hear Irena in her own words (MP3 download: 3.15mb) from WAMC

The holidays are upon us. Santa is arriving in the nick of time so once again we can strengthen old links in the chain of memories and forge new ones. We all like to conjure up Currier and Ives, real or imagined remembrances of skating on the just frozen pond followed with hot chocolate, spiced cider or mulled wine.

‘Tis the season to be jolly. Songsters raise their voices with sounds of in Dulci Jubilo, Adeste Fidelis and Silent Night. Other merry makers are more likely to hum, All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

We all yearn for a nostalgic holiday in which we symbolically hold hands from one generation to the next.

Of course it is memories of childhood that determine whether the holiday feast includes Swedish gravlax or Norwegian baked cod, Mediterranean roast goat or stuffed whale skin (if you grew up in Greenland).

My own earliest memories of Christmas dinner recall England during the war years, when, in order to help our country, in some way that was never entirely clear to me, we were all supposed to raise chickens.We were the only family in the neighborhood who heeded this particular call to patriotism.

Our chickens were always escaping from the hen house and running into the neighbors’ gardens. It was my task to try to corner them, cower them into submission and carry them home, quivering in my arms. They needn’t have been afraid — we never ate any of them.

One chicken in particular became our family pet. Her name was Lucy. She was very tame. I used to wheel her around in my doll’s pram. She would lie there quietly, her head resting on the frilly pillow, one beady eye watching me. I covered her with a soft blanket to keep her feathers warm.

We always had roast goose, not chicken, for our Christmas dinner. My mother, a woman of tradition if ever there was one, followed the hallowed custom by English cooks from time immemorial.

No sooner was the goose committed to the oven than the Brussels sprouts were set to cooking. (In England, it is said, we have only three vegetables and two of them are Brussels sprouts.) How, now, I yearn for those lumpy mashed potatoes, greasy gravy and gooseberry relish…

Plum pudding is the symbol of an English Christmas. It represents the good and abundant earth. The attendant holly berries symbolize the blood of Christ, the flames of doused brandy are the flames of hell that are rapidly burned away as goodness triumphs over all. Or, at least that is what is supposed to happen.

Some families still make their own plum pudding, remembering to stir it clockwise, as the earth moves on its axis, for this will bring good luck and a wish may be granted. And even more good fortune will come to the diner, who finds in the pudding a coin of the realm or a ring or a silver charm. The notion is that a coin will bring a year of wealth, a ring forecasts a wedding in the future and a thimble predicts a happy life, though a solitary one as a spinster.

Queen Victoria was the monarch who introduced the idea of burying assorted trinkets in the pudding, (an early British version of the fortune cookie perhaps).

A new recipe for plum pudding was created to celebrate Queen’s Victoria’s 50th year on the throne. The recipe required:

• 50 sweet almonds, equal to the years of Her Majesty’s reign,
• 5 ounces of bread crumbs, representing Her daughters,
• 4 ounces of flour, numbering Her sons,
• 3 ounces of coconut, cut into 32 pieces, being the number of the Queen’s grandchildren,
• 2 ounces of sugar, being the number of Her great-grandchildren,
• 5 ounces of suet, chopped into as many pieces as Her Majesty has subjects in every town,
• 5 eggs, well beaten, representing England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and our Colonies—now, alas, our former Colonies.

All the ingredients were mixed together with ½ pint (4,980 drops) of milk representing the ages in months of Her Majesty and Her children. Boil 2 hours, 16 minutes or twice 86 minutes, the age of Her Majesty in her Golden Jubilee Year.

The current Queen’s Christmas pudding will be borne blue and blazing with brandy by Her Majesty’s principal page to the dining table at Windsor Castle. It will be made this year as is customary from a 17th century recipe. Ours will be bought online.

However you celebrate the holiday feast, may I wish you merry. As Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim exclaimed, “God bless us every one”—especially those who are watching over the stock market!

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I brushed aside my little children’s pleas of “Mommy, Mommy, can I do that!?” In our family there are no photogenic, heart string moments when the tiny tots climbed onto the kitchen counter to stir the pot.  No magical memories of baking and decorating cookies for us. I was far too intent on testing recipes and writing cookbooks to teach my own children how to cook.

But unlike other years, this year…this year my daughter Hilary and I did the whole Thanksgiving dinner together.  We shopped together, cooked together, shared the dinner with our friends together — and Hilary washed the dishes entirely by herself.  (She offered and I gratefully accepted when I tottered off to bed.)

In a way, the day was entirely her’s. She supplied the recipes. I can’t begin to tell you how many cookbooks we have in our house: a few thousand, I’d guess. But this year, our Thanksgiving menu came entirely from Williams-Sonoma, a charming, little 2000 recipe booklet, a giveaway Hilary had picked up in one of the stores when she lived in San Francisco.

The message on the first page, written by Chuck Williams, the founder of Williams-Sonoma, says, “This year we are honoring Thanksgiving as it is done in New England where our forefathers held their first celebration in the early 17th century.  Our menu comes from three old traditional inns and a small hotel from the region.” (As we live in the Hudson Valley, this sentiment fitted right in with our plans.) Thus the Thanksgiving Menu:

Cream of Butternut Squash & Apple Soup

Roast Turkey

Yukon Gold Mashed Potatoes

Creamy Giblet Gravy

Maple-Glazed Acorn Squash

Pear, Chestnut and Sage Dressing

Brussels Sprouts with Crispy Bacon & Walnuts

Popovers

Cranberry Chutney

Creamy Pumpkin Pie with Poached Cranberries

It was a feast indeed! I resisted (almost) every urge to change the recipes, well…except for the drop of Madeira that I sneaked into the giblet gravy, the sip of triple sec that found its way into the cranberry chutney and the little splash of fine bourbon that added a spirited touch to the pumpkin pie.  Some little touches that added a whisper of enchantment to each dish.

I’ve now had a moment to reflect on Thanksgiving, 2008. While we faithfully followed the traditional recipes I realize how much stays the same.  With each feast day in the calendar, we symbolically hold hands from one generation to the next. But this year there were a few changes. Gathered together, we all were a little depressed about the goings-on in the stock market.

Yesterday you could buy 25 shares of General Motors or 12.5 shares of Citibank for the same price as an organically-raised, free-range bird, free of hormones, additives and preservatives.

The good news: today our turkey stock will make a lovely, nourishing soup. Tomorrow is another day. Hilary and I are already planning the menu for New Year’s Eve.

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