The Food Almanac: May 25, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and sayings.
Food Festivals
The New Orleans Wine and Food Experience opens tonight for the 21st time, with a slate of 31 wine dinners going on around town. That's accompanied by the proud boast that all the chefs are local. Not even celebrity cooks from elsewhere need apply. The event continues tomorrow on Royal Street, the nexus of the city's art galleries and antique stores, many of which have open houses with winemakers and their wines, restaurants and their food, and jazz on every corner. Friday and Saturday are the Grand Tastings, each of which has about 75 restaurants serving food and about 1,000 wines.
Eating and Drinking Calendar
Appropriately enough, today is National Wine Day. But that's absurd. Every day is wine day. This is also National Beer Week and National Frozen Yogurt Week — plenty of time to honor both.
Of much greater interest is Worldwide Black Pepper Day. The dried berries of the piper nigrum plant are without question the world's most important spice, second in its use as a seasoning only to its tablemate salt. Its original home — both in terms of its growth and its use as a seasoning — is Southern India. In ancient times, the flavor it added to food made it so valuable that its trade created vast fortunes and altered world politics.
Even with all the other seasonings we now have, it's hard to imagine cooking without pepper. The berries (drupes, really, with one seed inside) grow in clusters of several dozen on stalks. They're picked when they just begin to ripen and turn red. After they ferment in a pile for three or four days, the berries are spread out in the sun to dry.
Black pepper comes from the fully-dried berries. White pepper is made by washing the skins off the black peppercorns, resulting in a milder flavor. Green peppercorns are the same berries, picked before they ripen, after which they're either dried or pickled. They too are milder than black peppercorns. While the uses of black pepper are so numerous it might be easier to make a list of savory dishes that don't contain it, the use of a great deal of black pepper in a dish is rarely explored. I love what happens when you really load the pepper on.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Peppers is a wide spot in the road in the Appalachian Mountain in extreme western North Carolina. It's 50 miles north of Asheville. Big Rock Creek runs through the place, cutting a valley about 1,500 feet into the 3,800-foot mountains on both sides. It suffered a bad flood in 1997. To say that the little farming community is tucked away is an understatement. A mix of woods and fields makes it quite scenic. You have to drive four miles for a bite to eat in Bakersville, where are both Helen's Restaurant and Dot's Coffee and Tea Shop.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
In honor of Worldwide Black Pepper Day, empty all your pepper shakers and peppermills into a container. Use that for cooking. Now wash the pepper shakers (how does that opaque residue build up so fast?) and refill them with fresh pepper from a newly-opened can. And put fresh peppercorns into the mill. Doesn't that make you feel virtuous?
Edible Dictionary
Szechuan pepper, n. — The husks of the fruits of zanthoxylum piperitum and related plants, all native to central China. When used in combination with other hot peppers (usually red chilies), Szechuan peppers create the distinctive hot flavors and sensations found in the dishes from the Szechuan region. The peppers are unusual in that the husks, not the seed inside, are used in cooking. It doesn't have much of a flavor, per se; it works on nerve endings to make them more receptive to other flavor sensations. True Szechuan peppers are not often found in American Chinese restaurants, which usually get by with only the red chili peppers.
Deft Dining Rule #176
If you find yourself in a Chinese restaurant that claims to use true Szechuan peppers in its dishes from that spicy cuisine, you are in luck.
Music to Eat Fried Chicken By
On this date in 1878, Luther "Bill" Robinson was born. He was more famously known as Mr. Bojangles, the one referred to in at least two songs. Years after he died, his name was taken up by a new fried chicken chain. It served hot biscuits with its chicken instead of the insipid white rolls that the chicken chains had always given. The biscuits were so good and popular that all the other chicken chains followed suit.
Food on the Road
Speaking of fast food, on this date in 1965, the Gateway Arch was dedicated in St. Louis. When I first saw it in person, my reaction was typical, according to my St. Louis friend and sometimes food writer Ann Lemons. I was surprised that its color was silver, not gold. "You're thinking about McDonald's," she chided me.
Condiment Corner
Unconfirmed sources report that on this date in 904 AD, prepared mustard — a paste made from the seeds of the mustard plant, with various liquids and flavorings added — was first invented in France. More details as they become available.
Sounds Food-Related, But Isn't
The Diet Of Worms ended today in 1521 when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V declared Martin Luther a heretic. Worms are edible, but have never caught on. Some years ago a rumor got started that McDonald's was substituting worms for beef in its hamburgers. They quickly proved this untrue by pointing out that the price of worms was much higher than that of beef.
Annals of Food Writing
New Orleans novelist Poppy Z. Brite was born today in 1967. Her most recent hit is Liquor, set in New Orleans (of course). She always has lots of New Orleans eateries and bars in her work. She's married to Chef Chris DeBarr, who operates the night-shift of a restaurant called Green Goddess. I think a pastry should be named for Poppy.
Food in Medicine
Andrew Moyer received a patent today in 1948 for creating a method of producing massive amounts of penicillin. Big deal. The multiple loaves of bread in my pantry do that all the time.
Food Namesakes
Cookie Gilchrist, tied for the record number (five) of touchdowns in a single pro-football game, was born today in 1935. He played for the Buffalo Bills. Raymond Carver, who was a writer of poetry and short stories, was born today in 1938. Popular guy at Thanksgiving I'll bet.
Words to Eat By
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, born today in 1803. Here's another line from him: "The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
Words to Drink By
"Wine is sunlight held together by water." — Galileo Galilei.