Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  Among the judges at a California wine tasting, they were assigned to share a spittoon. She was crushed when this man, whom she regarded as the best food writer on the West Coast, her native and much loved region, treated her with disdain and brutal rudeness. He complained that women should not be on wine panels and that she smelled. He insisted her perfume was interfering with his palate, and she argued that she was not wearing perfume. A day later he apologized profusely, realizing that it was the hotel soap on his hands that confused his delicate taste buds. The two became lifelong friends. Fisher referred to Pellegrini as “the great god Pan of this Western world.”

  He was an immigrant from Italy who moved to Seattle and became a professor of English literature, writing occasionally about food and wine and often about “the good life.” Known for his erudition and eloquence, he also notoriously enjoyed female companionship. Fisher said she was his friend, “with the full consent of his wife, and the tacit agreement of scores of other fellow females in every direction from Seattle.” Relatives remember his pièce de résistance as the day he brought Italian sex goddess Anne Bancroft home to meet the family.

  —M.K.

  I learned from my father to make a rather dainty omelet with the intestines of a fryer. Of all the men I have ever known, he had the most perfect sense of the value of bread and wine. Every week end he took charge of the kitchen. On Saturday afternoon he prepared the meat, usually rabbit, less frequently fowl, for the Sunday dinner. When the choice was chicken he always dry-picked it in order to leave undisturbed the precious oils in the skin which he considered, and rightly so, the most savory part of the bird. He was never impatient or in a hurry; and when he had cleaned the chicken with that care for which he had so much talent, it was smooth and glossy as a slab of marble. He cast away nothing except the feathers, beak, crop, claws, outer skin of the feet, and the contents of the intestines and gizzard. When he had squeezed out the excrement from the intestines, he would go to the kitchen sink and, by utilizing the cascading water, turn them deftly inside out. After they had been thoroughly washed he left them overnight in a pan in slowly running water.

  On Sunday morning, the woodstove was his altar and he the officiating priest. Clean-shaven, in white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow, he would go to the cupboard from whence he fetched his vermouth. He poured the measured drink, touched it up with Ferro China bitters, and gave it to his stomach, taking care to leave enough in the glass for me if I happened to be around, as of course I was. Then he would smack his lips, suck in at his mustache, and go to work on the omelet. The intestines, white as snow, were taken from the water, carefully dried, and cut into small pieces. They were then fried very slowly in a combination of butter and olive oil, with finely minced parsley, chives, thyme, a bit of lemon rind, a touch of garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne. After a final benediction of dry muscatel, they were folded into the egg and brought to the table. A basket of crisp bread and a pot of coffee, flanked by a bottle of brandy, were added, and he then proceeded to minister to the little flock that clustered about him. I have heard many sermons, Protestant and Catholic. None has impressed me more than my father’s reverent care for the food that sustains our body.

  I was once discovered by some friends while in the act of cleaning the intestines of a fowl. When I told them that I was going to use them in an omelet, they were first incredulous and then mildly shocked. For their breakfast they had had, very likely, link sausage, a dubious hodge-podge encased in tougher guts than would grace my omelet. Fortunately, what people don’t know, doesn’t hurt them.

  I do not expect my American friends to run to the poultry dealer and ask for a bag of guts. And of course they won’t; for even if they could get over the horror of eating such things, they would hesitate to undertake their preparation. One can’t just simply take the insides of a chicken—or of any other animal—and cast them into a frying pan as one does a cutlet. Tripe, kidneys, and sweetbreads must be prepared with special care, some skill, and with a reasonable indifference to time. And that, I suppose, must be another reason why the American housewife will not bother about them.

  —from The Unprejudiced Palate, 1948

  CHAPTER TEN

  Eating Your Vegetables

  CATO ON PRESERVING GREEN OLIVES

  Cato was a major Roman political figure in the second century B.C. He was known for his speaking skills and wrote numerous widely praised books, but On Farming is the only one to survive in its entirety into modern times. It is the oldest surviving complete book of Latin prose.

  This recipe for curing olives remains the standard practice even today. There is a substance called oleuropein, unique to olives, which is extremely bitter. The olives are soaked to remove it before being fermented.

  —M.K.

  How green olives are conserved. Before they turn black, they are to be broken and put into water. The water is to be changed frequently. When they have soaked sufficiently they are drained, put into vinegar, and oil is added. ½ lb. salt to 1 peck olives. Fennel and lentisk are put up separately in vinegar. When you decide to mix them in, use quickly. Pack in preserving-jars. When you wish to use, take with dry hands.

  —from On Farming, second century B.C.,

  translated from the Latin by Andrew Dalby

  PLINY THE ELDER ON ONIONS

  Onions do not grow wild. Cultivated ones provide a cure for poor vision through the tears caused by their very smell. Even more effective is the application of some onion-juice to the eyes. Onions are said to be a soporific and, eaten with bread, to be capable of healing mouth-sores.

  The school of Asclepiades claims that eating onions promotes a healthy complexion, and that if they are eaten every day on an empty stomach they maintain good health, are beneficial for the stomach, and ease the bowels by moving gas along; when used as a suppository they disperse haemorrhoids. Finally, added to that extracted from fennel, onion-juice is marvellously efficacious when used in the early stages of dropsy.

  —from Natural History, first century A.D.,

  translated from the Latin by John F. Healy

  M.F.K. FISHER ON THE DISLIKE OF CABBAGE

  The waitress, fat and silent, staggered in under a tray, her knees bending slightly outwards with its weight. She put down a great plate of steaks, with potatoes heaped like swollen hay at each end. We looked feebly at it, feeling appetite sag out of us suddenly.

  Another platter thumped down at the other side of the table, a platter mounded high with purple-red ringed with dark green.

  “What—what is that beautiful food?” Mrs. Davidson demanded, and then quickly mended her enthusiasm, with her eyes still sparkling hungrily. “I mean, beautiful as far as food could be.”

  My own appetite revived a little as I answered: “That’s a ring of spinach around chopped red cabbage, probably cooked with ham juice.”

  At the word spinach her face clouded, but when I mentioned cabbage a look of complete and horrified disgust settled like a cloud. She pushed back her chair.

  “Cabbage!” Her tone was incredulous.

  “Why not?” James asked, mildly. “Cabbage is the staff of life in many countries. You ought to know, Mrs. Davidson. Weren’t you raised on a farm?”

  Her mouth settled grimly.

  “As you know,” she remarked in an icy voice, with her face gradually looking very old and discontented again, “there are many kinds of farms. My home was not a collection of peasants. Nor did we eat such—such peasant things as this.”

  “But haven’t you ever tasted cabbage, then, Mrs. Davidson?” I asked.

  “Never!” she answered proudly, emphatically.

  “This is delicious steak.” It was a diplomatic interruption. I looked gratefully at James. He grinned almost imperceptibly, and went on, “Just let me slide a little sliver on your plate, Mrs. Davidson, and you try to nibble at it while we eat. It will do you good.”

  He cut off the better portion of a generous slice of beef and put it on her well-emptied plat
e. She looked pleased, as she always did when reference was made to her delicacy, and only shuddered perfunctorily when we served ourselves with the vegetable.

  As the steak disappeared, I watched her long old ear-lobes pinken. I remembered what an endocrinologist had told me once, that after rare beef and wine, when the lobes turned red, was the time to ask favours or tell bad news. I led the conversation back to the table, and then plunged brusquely.

  “Why do you really dislike cabbage, Mrs. Davidson?”

  She looked surprised, and put down the last bite from her bowl of brandied plums.

  “Why does anyone dislike it? Surely you don’t believe that I think your eating it is anything more than a pose?” She smiled knowingly at my nephew and me. He laughed.

  “But we do like it, really. In our homes we cook it, and eat it, too, not for health, not for pretence. We like it.”

  “Yes, I remember my husband used to say that same sort of thing. But he never got it! No fear! It was the night I finally accepted him that I understood why my family had never had it in the house.”

  We waited silently. James filled her glass again.

  “We missed the last train, and couldn’t find a cab, and of course Mr. Davidson, who thought he knew everything, wandered down the wrong street. And there, in that dark wet town, lost, cold, miserable—”

  “Oh, night of rapture, when I was yours!” James murmured.

  “—cold, miserable, we were suddenly almost overcome by a ghastly odour!”

  I repressed my instinctive desire to use the word “stink” and asked maliciously, “A perfume, or a smell?”

  “A dreadful odour,” she corrected me, with an acidulous smile at my coarseness. “It was so terrible that I was almost swooning. I pressed my muff against my face, and we stumbled on, gasping.

  “When finally I could control myself enough to speak, I murmured, ‘What was it? What was that gas?’ My husband hurried me along, and I will say he did his best to apologize for what he had done—and well he should have!—by saying, ‘It was cabbage, cooking.’

  “ ‘Oh!’ I cried. ‘Oh, we’re in the slums!’ ”

  —from Serve It Forth, 1937

  CATO ON CABBAGE EATERS

  In addition, store the urine of anyone who habitually eats cabbage; warm it, bathe the patient in it. With this treatment you will soon restore health; it has been tested. If you wash feeble children in this urine they will be weak no longer. Those who cannot see clearly should bathe their eyes in this urine and they will see more. If the head or neck is painful, wash in this urine, heated: they will cease to be painful.

  Also, if a woman foments her parts with this urine, they will never irritate. Foment as follows: boil in a basin and place under a commode; the woman is then to sit on the commode, covering the basin with her clothing.

  —from On Farming, second century B.C.,

  translated from the Latin by Andrew Dalby

  ELENA MOLOKHOVETS ON BORSCHT

  Elena Molokhovets, in the tradition of Le Mésnagier de Paris, wrote A Gift to Young Housewives for Russian newlyweds in 1861, the year that the serfs were freed. Through political upheavals and revolutions it continued to be revised until 1917. In the years of Communism, her book went out of print, but pirated editions appeared on the streets as soon as Communism had fallen. Molokhovets wrote about the great Russian bourgeois cuisine that, like so many bourgeois things in Russia, was at its height in the nineteenth century and now has vanished.

  —M.K.

  Ukrainian borshch

  (Borshch malorossijskij)

  Prepare bouillon from 3 lbs of fatty beef or fresh pork, or from beef with smoked ham. Omit the root vegetables, but add a bay leaf and allspice. Strain the bouillon. An hour before serving add a little fresh cabbage, cut into pieces. Cook, stirring in beet brine or grain kvass to taste or about 2 spoons vinegar. Meanwhile thoroughly wash and boil 5 red beets, but do not peel or cut them; that is, boil them separately in water without scraping. Remove them when tender, peel, and grate. Stir 1 spoon of flour into the beets, add them to the bouillon with some salt, and bring to a boil twice. Put parsley in a soup tureen (some people add the juice of a grated raw beet) and pour in the hot borshch. Add salt to taste. Sprinkle with black pepper, if desired, and serve with the sliced beef, pork, or ham; or with fried sausages, meatballs, or mushroom buns. This borshch may also be served with fried buckwheat kasha, pancake pie with beef stuffing, or plain pancakes.

  —from A Gift to Young Housewives, 1897,

  translated from the Russian by Joyce Toomre

  JAMES BEARD ON RADISHES

  From my earliest years I have adored the crispness, colorfulness, and spicy tang of radishes. I can recall my first feeble efforts at gardening, when I planted little rows of radishes and was so thrilled when they came up, and even more thrilled when it was time to pull them and eat them fresh from the ground. Very few things in life have ever tasted better to me.

  Then I remember that on my first trip to France I was introduced to that perfect combination of good bread, sweet butter, and the firm, brilliantly red radishes the French always include on their hors d’oeuvre list in the spring, when the radishes are at their finest. I found the contrast of flavors and textures very interesting and satisfying to the taste buds. In England one sometimes finds radishes on the breakfast plate with toast and butter, and that’s extremely good, too. I often serve a plate of early spring radishes with their leafy bright green tops still on (I like to eat the tops if they are fresh and tender—there’s a lovely bite to them), accompanied by homemade bread and butter, as a first course.

  Willy Ronis, Untitled (Willy Ronis/Rapho)

  As my palate and I grew more sophisticated, I went to a cocktail party where I encountered a delicious hors d’oeuvre of an anchovy fillet wrapped around a red radish, which I thought was something really extra special.

  Although we are most familiar with the tiny red globe radishes or the more elongated ones we buy in the markets, radishes do vary considerably in color, shape, and size, and in flavor from mild to peppery hot. The long white icicle radishes, less strongly flavored, are wonderful eaten freshly pulled and crisp, with a sprinkling of salt. Then there are the huge black radishes which, peeled, grated, and mixed with chicken or goose fat, make a delectable spread for bread. The Japanese use an enormous white radish called daikon which grows 2 or 3 feet long and has a sweet and tangy flavor unlike any other. These radishes are usually served as a garnish, thinly sliced in soups, or grated and served in a tiny bowl to be eaten with or stirred into the dipping sauce for sashimi, those tender little slivers of raw fish, or tempura, batter-dipped, deep-fried vegetables and fish.

  Radishes have been cultivated for thousands of years in the Far East, and they are one of the most flavorful of vegetables. As a salad material, their pungent, peppery taste gives piquancy to otherwise dull fare—and it’s always nice to know that 3½ ounces of radishes are only about 17 calories.

  While radishes are a familiar ingredient in a mixed green salad, recently I found an exciting new way to use them when I attended some classes in Middle Eastern cooking given on the West Coast by my great friend and co-worker, Philip Brown. He made a salad with oranges, I believe Moroccan in origin, that I have since adapted and served to many people. It’s very good with lamb, and sensational with curry or other dishes that have a hot seasoning or are rather rich in butter or oil.

  Nothing could be simpler and more beautiful to look at than his Radish and Orange Salad. Peel 4 good-sized navel oranges, and either section them or slice them very thinly, being sure to remove all the bitter white pith. Arrange these on a bed of washed and dried salad greens—I prefer the crisp leaves of romaine or iceberg lettuce. Now wash, trim, and shred 1 bunch red radishes. I use a Mouli shredder, a little gadget with a handle that cuts vegetables into lovely, long shreds, but you could use the shredding side of a hand grater. Then kind of drape the radish shreds around the fruit, so you get a glorious color contrast of deep
orange, bright green, rosy red, and snow white. Or you can make a wreath of radish shreds around the oranges, or pile them in a mound in the center—here’s where you can give your artistic instincts free rein.

  Although the original dressing for this salad is made with lemon juice, sugar, and salt, I like to use a vinaigrette, made with 8 tablespoons olive oil to 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, and 1 to 2 tablespoons orange juice. Taste the dressing before adding it to the salad and tossing—you may need more lemon juice, or lime juice, which is excellent with it. You’ll find this vinaigrette has a quite different flavor that enhances the mixture of fruit and vegetables.

  Sometimes I vary the salad by alternating sections of orange and grapefruit, or orange and grapefruit sections and avocado slices, which combine with the crisp piquancy of the radish in a most subtle way. So next time you’re feeling a bit bored with your standard salad, try one of these.

  —from On Food, 1974

  KARL FRIEDRICH VON RUMOHR ON CUCUMBERS

  I hardly dare include these strange vegetable fruits in the nutritious category because they are coarse textured and indigestible and held by Southerners to be fever-inducing. Despite this, their insipid sweetness makes them equally unsuitable for inclusion in either of the next two categories. Therefore, in view of their excellent juice, which clears the blood and strengthens the lungs and liver, we shall place cucumbers in this first group of nourishing vegetable plants.

  Unripe cucumbers are normally peeled and sliced raw, and eaten in salads. Their juice, the only useful part of these indifferent fruit, is usually pressed out on these occasions.