The Food Almanac: August 3, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and saying.
Food Calendar
It's National Watermelon Day. The National Watermelon Promotion Board seems to know nothing about this. However, they do have a wealth of information and recipes. Watermelon is my daughter's favorite flavor of hard candy. However, watermelon has only occasionally showed up in gourmet settings. I suppose this is because the fruit conjures up images of sitting outside in the grass and eating huge hunks of it, not caring how messy you get in the process. You can't eat just a little bit of watermelon.
As much as we consider watermelon a major local eating presence, it's not from around here. The vine originated in Africa, almost certainly in the Nile Valley. It spread all over the world from there. The Chinese have been growing and eating it for at least a millennium. One last fact about this refreshing fruit: the rid is as nutritious as the sweet flesh in the center.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Turtle Creek is an incorporated suburb of Pittsburgh, Pa., on the eastern side of that city. About 6,000 people live there, down from a peak of about 10,000 in the 1940s, when it had a major Westinghouse plant. It was the hometown for a soft-rock group called the Vogues, who I thought were pretty good. (Five O'Clock World was their best song.) The town is named for a 10-mile-long tributary of the Monongahela River, which not far downstream joins the Allegheny to form the Ohio River. The most intriguing restaurant in Turtle Creek is the Electric Avenue Cafe, in the center of town.
Edible Dictionary
Persian melon, n. — A variety of muskmelon that looks much like a cantaloupe on the outside, but whose flesh is much paler in color. It's also a bit larger than a typical cantaloupe. Like other muskmelons, this one has a netted skin. You can pick out a nice, sweet, ripe one by noting a little give at the skin and a brown (rather than green) background behind the netting. They're grown mostly in the Southwest United States and in South America, too. You find the former in mid to late summer.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
You can tell whether a melon was picked at the right ripeness by fingering the spot where the stem was. If it's jagged, it was picked before it should have been, and will never get really ripe.
Annals of Elegant Dining
Martha Stewart was born today in 1941. A great deal of her advice involves creative ways to serve food and lots of recipes, although whenever I read such articles in her magazine I get the idea that everything is conceived more for effect on the brain and eye than on the palate. Still, her ideas have certainly changed the way food is served in American households with ambitions to elegance.
Annals of Bad Food
This is the day in 1975 when the Superdome was dedicated. It has since been part of many unforgettable moments in New Orleans history. But nobody in the Superdome's management ever seems to say, "Why don't we offer something really good to eat in here?" I once heard one of the operators of the Dome's food services claim that for Saints games, they have to start frying the chicken fingers at the midnight before. Boy, I'll bet those are good.
Some good food infiltrates anyway, as during the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience's Grand Tastings in May. Maybe it will inspire something permanent. Like, how hard could it be to find a vendor who will serve a great po'boy? Or great pizza? Or a great hot dog? If Zephyr Stadium can do it, why not the Dome?
Music to Eat Rice-A-Roni By
Today is the birthday, in 1926, of Tony Bennett. Only Frank Sinatra is heard more often in Italian restaurants. Sinatra himself said that he thought Tony Bennett was the best interpreter of the American popular song. Although he has recorded better songs, his most famous hit — I Left My Heart In San Francisco — sends a chill of longing to be in that city there down my spine. I think I'll listen to it now.
Food Namesakes
Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State in the Grant administration, was born on this date in 1808. Did he come from Roe? No, but... Reginald Heber Roe, early proponent of education and tennis in Australia, served himself up today in 1850. Boxer and martial arts fighter Eric "Butterbean" Esch started putting on weight today in 1966. He weighs almost 400 pounds.
Words to Eat By
"Some people kiss as if they were eating watermelon." — Saadat Hasan Manto, Pakistani writer of short stories.
"If I can't have too many truffles I'll do without." — Colette, French writer on living well. She died today in 1954.
Words to Drink By
"To Gasteria, the tenth muse, who presides over the enjoyments of taste." — A toast by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a french checf and cooking authority of the 1800s.