The Food Almanac: June 10, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and sayings.
Eating Around the World
This is Portugal Day. The reason is unusual: it's the anniversary of the 1580 death of national hero, poet, and adventurer Luís de Camões. (Nobody knows when he was born.) Even stranger, Portugal lost its independence to Spain that year, and remained part of Spain for 60 years. But they and we celebrate, especially on the culinary front. Portugal's cuisine, although uncommon in American restaurants, is influential. It followed the peripatetic Portuguese sailors around the world. The most popular dishes are those made with beans and sausages, but the best involve seafood — Portugal being a country of fishermen. The most famous Portuguese-American chef is Emeril Lagasse, who grew up in a Portuguese community in New England. So let's toast Portugal with a glass of port — among the world's greatest wines, and the unique property of Portuguese vineyards.
Music to Drink Caipirinhas By
João Gilberto, Brazilian singer (in Portuguese and English) and guitarist, was born today in 1931. His is the male voice at the beginning of The Girl From Ipanema. The short radio version of the song cut his part out and goes straight to the sexy voice of his wife (at the time) Astrud.
Edible Dictionary
port, n. — Also called Porto and Oporto, for the large Portuguese city from which most port wines are shipped. Port is a fortified wine made from several varieties of red grapes grown in the Douro River valley in Portugal. The wine is fermented only partly, leaving a good deal of natural grape sugar unfermented. The fermentation is stopped when brandy (also made from the local grapes) is added to the fermenting barrels. This also has the effect of raising the alcohol content to about twenty percent — far above that of a conventionally-fermented wine.
Most ports are "ruby" ports, drunk not long after bottling. Some ruby ports are made in a darker, more robust style and called "super-rubies." These have become very popular in the last decade. Vintage ports — which rank among the world's best wines — are made only in superior years (rarely more than three per decade). They can be aged for many decades, improving all the way. Tawny ports start the same way ruby ports do, but are aged for years in barrels, making them lighter and browner in color, with a distinctly caramel flavor. All ports are primarily drunk after dinner, with dessert or cheese.
Eating Calendar
Today is National Iced Tea Day. Well, we certainly drink enough of that. Although there are times when iced tea hits the spot, in gourmet restaurants you're taking a chance by ordering it, especially when everyone at your table does so. Waiters register iced-tea drinkers as penny-pinchers and low tippers, and give less good service. Not all of them do, but the effect is widespread enough that we wouldn't recommend it. The restaurant doesn't care: nothing a restaurant sells carries a profit margin that can match that of iced tea.
The greatest improvement to iced tea in my memory was when classy restaurants began to serve simple syrup with iced tea. It obviates the need for long, clanky stirring of slow-dissolving sugar. I read an article a few years ago in Texas Monthly that investigates the proper making of iced tea in minute detail.
Deft Dining Rule #615
Bottled iced tea in restaurants is primarily a scheme to get you to pay for additional glasses, instead of getting unlimited free refills. The tea itself is not as good as freshly brewed.
Appetizing Places
Strawberry Mountain is 34 miles southeast of Missoula, Montana, in the John Long Mountains and Lolo National Forest — pure unspoiled wilderness, with only pack trails entering the area, and not many of those. Strawberry Mountain lives up to its name for passers-by on I-90 10 miles north. It rises to 6,810 feet, 3,000 feet above the Clark Fork Valley where the highway runs. Potato Gulch is on its southeastern quarter. If any of that makes you hungry, it's an eight and a half-mile hike from the summit of Strawberry Mountain to Ekstron's Stage Station, a genuine stage stop with the original 1800s buildings. They serve authentic pioneer meals, sez their website.
Moving Food Around
Today in 1869, a shipment of frozen beef from Texas arrived in New Orleans. It was the first long-distance shipment of frozen food in the world. It was a big deal, and occasioned celebration in the streets. (This is no joke.) The event was commemorated in 1989 with some kind of fuss at Brennan's.
Annals of Popular Cuisine
On this date in 1965, the first Subway sandwich shop opened in Bridgeport, Conn. Fred DeLuca, a 17-year-old, had the idea of selling sandwiches to earn money for college. There are now 32,996 Subway restaurants serving their mediocre sandwiches in 86 countries. I congratulate the outfit on its success, and scratch my head wondering why anyone would eat a Subway when they could have a poor boy.
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Brigid of Ireland. She lived in the fifth century, long enough ago that she heard St. Patrick preach. She is the patron saint of poultry farmers, cows, and milkmaids.
Annals of Teetotaling
This is the birthday, in 1935, of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Robert Smith started it by laying off the bottle for a full day. He and his friend Bill Wilson, who also had a problem, talked through the idea and launched it with zeal. I have several friends whose lives were saved by AA. I like the organization for that reason, and also because its only goal is sobriety for its members. AA turns up where it's needed. Every cruise ship, for example, has a scheduled AA meeting daily, under the name "Friends of Bill W." I hope neither you nor I will ever need to attend, but it's good that the help is there
Food and Drink Namesakes
Frederick A. Cook was born today in 1865. He was an arctic explorer who claimed to be the first person to reach the North Pole. His claim is not generally accepted as valid, but a society named for him says it was legitimate. It's still a controversy among those who care. Another explorer named Cook — Captain James Cook, a frequent visitor to this department — ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef today in 1770. Movie actor Russell Waters was born today in 1908. Fairfield Porter, an American painter, made his first strokes today in 1907.
Words to Eat By
"Portuguese, n.pl. — A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic." — Ambrose Bierce.
Words To Drink By
"A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for 20 years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning." — Samuel Johnson.
"If you are cold, tea will warm you–if you are too heated, it will cool you — if you are depressed, it will cheer you–if you are excited, it will calm you." — William Gladstone.