October « 2010 « Justin Dunham - 's journal about making things

Rabelais’ quarter hour

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: rabelais — Justin Dunham on October 26, 2010

François ("Frank") Rabelais.

I recently finished reading a wonderful cooking classic, “The Physiology of Taste: Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy”. It’s by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, one of the famous historical gastronomes, and the originator of the phrase “you are what you eat” as far as I can tell.

There are many things I like about this book, and here are 2:

One is that it concerns cooking, and has lots of little bits of lore (did you know that the French dinde, “turkey”, comes from coq d’inde, “Indian chicken”?), interesting historical notes and stories, and advice.
Another is its style, which Brillat-Savarin has in common with other French writers I enjoy reading. He’s not afraid to just write down his thoughts, as if he were writing a diary.
- There is something very natural and pleasant about this way of writing as a way of teaching, because it (a) encourages and shows curiosity, (b) suggests other avenues of exploration, (c) makes for interesting reading, and (d) most of all, treats the reader as an adult.
- The implied expectation seems to be that you, the reader, are a thinking adult and can decide what you’ll pay attention to and what you won’t, what’s important for your purposes and what isn’t. (Informed readers will know that my almae matres think differently, with mixed results.)

One day I might write a much longer entry about this book. For now, there is one specific thing I wanted to talk about, which is Rabelais’ quarter hour (le quart d’heure de Rabelais).

According to Brillat-Savarin, this is a phrase to refer to the period of time during which the host pays the check, and the other guests sit around (un)comfortably waiting.

The story goes that French Renaissance humanist François Rabelais once didn’t have enough cash to pay the bill himself, so he rolled up some ashes in three bundles paper, marked them as “poison,” and wrote on them “for the King,” “for the King’s brother”, and “for the King’s son”. This was enough to get him carted away to Paris for interrogation, which left someone else with the bill… and got him a free trip back to Paris. I guess this all may have taken place in… fifteen minutes?

Anyway, I look forward to causing a scene the next time I go out to dinner, to avoid paying the check. Thanks Frank.

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Hillbilly Gatorade

Hillbilly Gatorade.

Just a quick entry here on a drink I recently enjoyed over at Percy Street Barbeque.

It’s called the Hillbilly Gatorade – Miller High Life, pickle juice, and barbeque sauce. Generally, if I see something on a menu that looks interesting, I have trouble not ordering it. Sometimes this works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

This drink was really, really good. It was kind of like drinking a burger and beer combo, since the pickle juice and barbeque sauce give you the “burger” taste really strongly – picture the flavor sensation, leaving the burger texture aside, naturally. Formulating the drink so that it recalls something else (in this case, a burger) is clever, and the salty / sweet / smoky combo works really well.

Something to keep in mind for those times when I order a drink and it doesn’t work out. Cranberry-ginger cooler at Pod, I’m looking at you.

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Philly farm tour

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: beets, farms, philadelphia — Justin Dunham on October 17, 2010

A typical scene on the tour.

A more typical scene on the tour.

Cows, less than 20 minutes from Center City.

Check out the gallery that goes with this post!

In late September, we went on the Philly Urban Farm Tour. This was a 15-mile bike ride to check out former vacant lots, parking lots and Superfund sites.

Which had all been turned into incredible, productive farms. (I’ve included a couple photos from the trip with this entry, and you can check out the full gallery here).

The first stop was Greensgrow farm in Kensington. Taking up most of a city block, and located in the middle of a residential neighborhood, they grow all sorts of stuff. Greenhouses with basil and tomatoes, a chicken coop, lots of beautiful squash and giant pumpkins. They have beehives. They have all kinds of other programs too, including green roofs, biodiesel, and a kitchen incubator. It was vaguely miraculous to see this highly productive little farm in the midst of a bunch of rowhouses.

Next, we rode to a small farm elsewhere in the city. This was actually a vacant lot that the people next door had decided to grow on. They had a cob oven and were growing small quantities of a number of crops that I can’t remember at the moment. Despite being a tiny plot of land (about the size of a house), they were apparently able to sell produce within the neighborhood, host block parties, and run a number of other small programs.

The following idea kept recurring: A farm is an immensely productive place. This is true both agriculturally, and also in the number of farming-related activities that the farmers seemed to be coordinating: community programs, food education, food banks, renewable energy, marketplaces for local crafts, lots of other things. Everything just seemed very entrepreneurial.

We went to two other places, as well. The first was a receiving and distribution warehouse for area farmers. I can’t remember everything they did, but they acted as a marketplace for area farmers, a food pantry, a receiving point for certain types of food donations, as well as a distributor to restaurants in Philadelphia and even New York! Just across their parking lot was another tiny farm. In the shadow of a giant billboard for Checkers (the burger chain), beets, peppers, kale and other vegetables were growing. I had never actually seen a beet growing right out of the ground… it’s thrilling!

That was the last truly urban farm we saw on the tour. We then made a (harrowing) five-mile bike ride, most of which was uphill, to Henry Got Crops. This is a more traditional farm just on the outskirts of Philadelphia, that was teamed up with a local school. It didn’t excite me quite as much, but it was pretty amazing to see cows less than a half-hour from Center City.

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Philly farm tour gallery

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: beets, cactus, cows, farm, lettuce, limes, peppers, philadelphia, salad — Justin Dunham on

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Apple tarte tatin, lamb stew and stuffed peppers

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: apples, breadcrumbs, corn, ice cream, lamb, leeks, peppers, potatoes, stew — Justin Dunham on October 12, 2010

Lamb stew with some leeks, potatoes and Trader Joe's jalapeno bread. Not at all seasonal!

This pepper is stuffed with cheese, corn, scallions and tomatoes.

Tarte tatin with some homemade vanilla ice cream.

This entry is about a meal that I made in September, but didn’t get around to writing about, until now. Basically I wanted to take another shot at a tarte tatin, and I thought it might be interesting to try a lamb stew as well. (The stuffed peppers were an easy addition).

The tarte tatin came out really well. I still had to do the dangerous work of inverting a 400-degree pan, but I solved some of the problems I faced last time (the dough melting over the hot apples before I could get it back in the oven). For some reason, the recipe suggests putting a glaze on the top of the dough after it’s placed over the apples. I’m not sure why this is, since you don’t see the bottom at all after it’s gone in the oven.

I had never made a whole bunch of stew, and then frozen it, and eaten it later, but now I understand why people do this! It was hearty and went well with some jalapeno-cheese bread that we bought at TJ’s, and we’ve been eating it from time to time ever since. Stuffed peppers are, well, stuffed peppers, I’ve written about them a few times before.

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