The Food Almanac: June 15, 2011

In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and sayings.

Eating Calendar
In Key West, it's Conch Fritter Day. Conch is a highly local ingredient, not found often outside Florida. It's the meat of the animal whose shell lets you hear the ocean waves when you put it up to your ear. It's notoriously tough, and a predator on oysters. I have some animus against conch.

It's also National Arugula Day. Arugula grows wild all around the Mediterranean, and has been eaten since time immemorial by people from the Riviera to Sudan. (Interesting that the impoverished people of Sudan may well be eating the same thing, simultaneously, as the wealthiest people in America's most expensive restaurants.)

In 1988 I was in a hotel in Udine, Italy with a group of Italian-American restaurateurs. We were to have a lunch in the hotel. I went down to the lobby and entered the restaurant. Just inside the door was a gigantic glass bowl filled with arugula leaves. My only thought was of how fine a meal it would be to have nothing but that, olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, and chunks of Parmigiana on the side. I was very disappointed when the maître d' pointed me to the banquet room where lunch was to take place. (Fortunately, we had a little arugula.)

You can grow your own arugula, but since it's only good when the leaves are small, you have to constantly plant it to have a ready supply of fresh young leaves. (The big ones taste strong, in the direction of horseradish.) Unfortunately, it is not nearly available enough in markets. Arugula also goes under the names "rocket," "rouquette," and "rucola." How about a big salad bowl of it right now with a zippy vinaigrette?

Appetizing Places
Greens Fork, Ind., is about halfway between Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio. It's on the Greens Fork River, a tributary in turn to the Whitewater, Miami, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers, which bring water from Greens Fork all the way to the French Quarter. The town of Greens Fork has a population of about 370, most of whom support the wide-ranging farms in this rolling countryside. The place to eat is the Greens Fork Diner, right in the center of town.

Edible Dictionary
vinaigrette, n. — A sauce or dressing served at room temperature, usually over salads and cool, crisp vegetables. It's an emulsion of oil in vinegar and water, often with other flavoring elements added. Mustard is almost universal in vinaigrettes. Herbs, onions, garlic, and ground pepper are common. Cheeses find their ways into some vinaigrettes. Other sources of variety come from the kind of vinegar used, with balsamic vinegar currently enjoying a vinaigrette vogue. A fading usage of the word refers to a cold dish — fish, poultry, meat, or vegetables — marinated in a vinaigrette or other tart, light sauce.

Music to Eat Sushi By
In 1963 on this date, Kyu Sakamoto had a Number One record on the American pop charts. It was unique in being entirely in Japanese. The real name of the song is Ue O Muite Aruko ("I Look Up When I Walk"). But its American title was Sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a Japanese beef dish, one served in only a few of our Japanese restaurants. It is to modern Japanese cooking what beef Wellington is to French cooking. The beef is stewed (at the table, classically) in a sauce of soy, onions, and a few other things. The song returned to the charts at Number Three in 1981, performed this time by A Taste of Honey.

Music to Blow Bubbles By
Today in 1968, the bubblegum song Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've Got Love In My Tummy) peaked at Number Three. The Ohio Express did it, and was never heard from again.

Food Inventions
In an effort to stabilize a surplus of milk, dairy farmer Jacob Fussell experimented with making ice cream on a large scale. Production and sales were good enough that on this date in 1851, in Baltimore, he opened the first commercial ice cream plant.

The Saints
Today is also the feast day of St. Vitus, for whom the nerve ailment chorea — it makes people appear to be dancing — is named. St. Vitus is also the patron saint of comedians. We will need his intercession for this joke: So this waiter is reading the special to a diner, who asks, "What's the soup du jour?" To which the waiter says, "I don't know. They change it on me every day!"

Food Namesakes
This is the day in 1992 when Vice-President Dan Quayle told a student in a spelling bee that "potato" was spelled "potatoe." The rap singer Ice Cube was thawed today in 1969. Dusty Baker, the manager of the Giants when they won the National League pennant in 2002, was born today in 1949. The unrelated Gene Baker, who played second base in the 1950s and 1960s, was born today in 1925. And on the same day, yet another man with that name, British broadcaster Richard Baker, was born.

Words To Eat By
"'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers." — William Shakespeare.

Words To Drink By
"May you always have red-eye gravy with your ham, hush puppies with your catfish, and the good sense not to argue with your wife." — Unknown, except that it's from Tennessee.

Check out other Food Almanac columns by Tom Fitzmorris.