The Food Almanac: August 11, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and saying.
Today's Flavor
Today is National Green Onions Day. Green onions are miraculous, especially when used as a last touch to a dish that needs a certain something. They don't work universally (nothing does), but I find myself sprinkling green onions almost as often as salt and pepper when I'm finishing a savory dish.
Green onions are nothing more than the first shoots of regular onions. They have a good taste, but not especially a strong one. Certainly not as assertive as mature yellow onions or garlic. In their raw or near-raw state, they have a pleasing sharpness accented with a peppery quality. Their magic lies as much in their fresh crunch as their flavor. They enliven the food they garnish without really altering its flavor.
Crispness and vivid fresh flavor is what you want from green onions. The smaller the stalks, the better the taste. The flavor and texture of green onions change from top to bottom. The top parts are tough; be ruthless about disposing of them. By contrast, as you approach the white end, the flavor sharpens dramatically.
Green onions were once commonly called "shallots" around New Orleans, but that's dying out as we use more real shallots in our cooking. "Scallions" is another, more accurate word for them.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Onion Hill would strike anyone who doesn't live in coastal Louisiana as a complete misnomer. It's on the edge of Mud Lake, with the Intracoastal Waterway running just north, with Bayou Misere just east. Everything else is marsh. But Onion Hill pokes up with a few feet of dry land, and that makes it stand out in its surroundings. A few more similar rises are in the area; all of them are the tops of salt domes, buried far underground. The nearest place to get something to eat (likely some fish or crawfish from the wetlands) is Aucoin's Cajun Restaurant, 12 miles north by pirogue in Hayes.
Edible Dictionary
darne, French, n. — A steak of fish, cut crosswise into a thick, usually U-shaped slab, with the major bones still intact. This presentation is most common in this country for use with salmon, but the vogue is moving away from that in the direction of fillets. The fish can be cooked in almost any way, from grilling to braising or steaming. If there's a sauce, it will not be many steps away from a fish stock.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
Green onions should never be put through a food processor if you're using them as garnish; you must slice them, as thinly as you can, using a very sharp knife or kitchen shears, immediately before adding them.
Food Inventions
Today in 1742, Benjamin Franklin introduced what became known as the Franklin stove. It wasn't really a stove, but a fireplace. It used fuel more efficiently and radiated more heat into the room. His original had smoke problems, but they were resolved by other inventors. The Franklin stove was in wide use by the turn of the century. Franklin intentionally did not patent the invention, wanting it to go immediately into the public domain. When's the last time you heard any inventor do that?
Food in Politics
Today in 1995, President Bill Clinton ordered full diplomatic relations to resume between the United States and Vietnam, thereby opening the way for bubble tea to be introduced to American eaters.
Annals of Food Research
This is the birthday, in 1858, of Christiaan Eijkman, who discovered that a lack of vitamins in your food can make you sick. Specifically, he found that people who ate a diet mostly of polished white rice got a weakening disease called beriberi. It could be prevented by eating brown rice. Or taking Vitamin B.
Food Namesakes
Jim Kale, the bass guitarist with the rock group Guess Who?, was born today in 1943. . . Speaking of leafy, thick greens, Catherine Collard, a classical pianist, was born today in 1947. . . David Rice Atchison, who organized the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, was born today in 1807. He was a U.S. Senator, and president pro tempore of the Senate. He was officially President of the United States for one day, when Zachary Taylor, not wanting to be inaugurated on a Sunday, caused a vacancy in the chief executive's office. . . Richard Mead, a famous London doctor of his day, was born in 1673 today. . . Pro hockey player Floyd Curry hit the Big Ice today in 1925.
Words to Eat By
"Banish the onion from the kitchen and the pleasure flies with it. Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest delicacy to hopeless insipidity, and dinner to despair." — Elizabeth Robbins Pennell, author of A Guide For The Greedy in the early 1900s.
Words to Drink By
"A small amount of wine, such as three or four cups, is of benefit for the preservation of the health of human beings and an excellent remedy for most illnesses." — Maimonides, Talmudic scholar of the 1100s.