The Food Almanac: April 25, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and sayings.
Your Luncheon Obligations
This is Administrative Professionals Week, formerly known as Secretary's Week. It started as Secretary's Day (still celebrated on Wednesday), but the restaurants like it better when the secretaries and office assistants are taken out to lunch on the other days too. It will be a big day in the lunchrooms downtown and in the French Quarter. The appeal is obvious to the administrative professionals, but their employers seem just as eager. Why? Because it gives codgers who run businesses the perfect excuse to go out on a date with a young woman, or a bunch of young women. (I know I'm playing with stereotypes here, but this one is more true than false.)
Edible Dictionary
razor clam, n. — This is a well-named bivalve. It has a long body with a muscular foot, all not quite stuffed into an equally long, thin shell. It's named not only for this long shape, but for the fact that the shell can indeed be sharp enough to cut like a razor. They are edible and quite good, but are hard to market because they can't close their shells the way clams, oysters, and mussels can. The foot is rather tough, but the rest of the animal is soft and good. It grows in the North Atlantic along both American and European coasts.
Drink and Topology
Felix Klein, the inventor of the Klein bottle, was born today in 1849. A Klein bottle has no inside or outside; the two merge into one continuous side. Problem: it requires four dimensions. If you find yourself drinking from a Klein bottle, you've had too much to drink (or really nothing, as a Klein bottle has no volume). Klein bottles have their own web site, with pictures of projections of Klein bottles in three-dimensional space.
People We'd Like to Have Dinner With
This is the birthday, in 1940, of Al Pacino. Of course, we'd go someplace Italian, but which place? It would have to have cannoli. We'd also invite Talia Shire, the sister of Francis Coppola. Talia also has a birthday today (1946). Both Pacino and Shire were in The Godfather, and since Francis himself might be in town for the Jazz Festival, he could come too. What an unforgettable dinner!
Deft Dining Rule #520
In a restaurant, the person who sits with his back to the wall is the one most likely to pick up the check for that table. If he doesn't, he's a fraud.
Music to Dine By
Ella Fitzgerald was born today in 1917. "The only thing better than singing is more singing," she said. The same is true of listening, if it's to her. She was one of the creators of scat singing; her records with one of the other scat masters — Louis Armstrong — are delicious in their contrasts.
Annals of Canned Milk
Today is the thirty-first anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, which changed Portugal from a dictatorship to a liberal democracy. Although the first thing I thought of when I saw this was a famous rhyme allegedly sent in by a contestant for a contest put on by Carnation Milk. Maybe you've heard it:
Carnation Milk is the best of all
No teats to pull, no pails to haul
No barn to clean, no hay to pitch
Just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.
Eating Calendar
Zucchini Bread Day sounds appealing — for about ten seconds. That's why it's evolved in Louisiana into Crawfish Bread Day. Crawfish bread is made by covering an underbaked loaf of French bread with crawfish, cheese, a sauce like crawfish étouffée and herbs, then baking it. It is not widely available except at festivals — notably the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival, which begins this Friday.
Gourmet Geography
Crawfish Branch, Tenn. is a small stream that backs up from a dam into a recreational reservoir in David Crockett State Park. It's about midway between Memphis and Chattanooga, in the south central part of the state. If you don't picnic in the park, you can find the Chaparral's steakhouse and Fiesta Mexicana Restaurant two miles away in Lawrenceburg.
The Saints
It's the feast day and birthday (1270) of Louis IX, king of France. He achieved sainthood for his exemplary life and devotion to the Church. On the other hand, he was captured during the Eighth Crusade by the Egyptians, and had to be ransomed for one and a half times the annual income of France at the time. St. Louis Cathedral, the focal point of New Orleans, is named for him, as is the city of St. Louis, Mo.
Food Namesakes
In 1932, the most famous player in the history of the Harlem Globetrotters, Meadowlark Lemon, was born. Stu Cook, bassist with Creedence Clearwater Revival, was born today in 1945. Fish, a Scottish progressive rock singer and composer, was born today in 1958. His real name is Derek Dick. Karel Appel, a Dutch painter, was born today in 1921. C.B. Fry, ace cricket player and one-time holder of the long-jump record, was born today in 1872. The United States lease on the Corn Islands, off the east coast of Nicaragua, came to an end on this date in 1971. Italian poet Torcuato Tasso died in Rome today in 1595 (Tasso ham is a specialty of Cajun cuisine).
Words to Eat By
"Eating at a new, highly recommended restaurant is like a Very Important Blind Date, a contract with uncertainty you enter into with great expectation battling the cynicism of experience. You sit waiting, wondering about the upcoming moments of revelation. Somewhere in the back of your head is the dour warning that disappointment is inevitable but you don't really believe it or you wouldn't be there. The best eaters are always optimists." — Stuart Stevens, American author.
Words to Drink By
"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." — Edward R. Murrow, CBS news reporter, born today in 1908.