The Food Almanac: June 17, 2011
In The Food Almanac, Tom Fitzmorris of the online newsletter, The New Orleans Menu notes food facts and sayings.
Eating Calendar
Today is Eat Your Vegetables Day. Because it's good for you, reduces incidence of mustache cancer, etc., etc. Most of us actually like vegetables. I could be a vegetarian if I didn't like steak so much. It's easy to understand why some people don't like their vegetables. It's because diners expect to get a vegetable side dish with their entrées at no added cost. Because it's free, restaurants and cooks feel little pressure to give the sides much attention. This is true even in some expensive, allegedly gourmet places.
Some restaurants, fortunately, take a different tack. They buy unusual vegetables (baby turnips, salsify, broccoli raab, pea shoots). They don't treat these with particularly more care than the neighborhood café does its peas and mashed potatoes, but it at least creates an illusion that they care. At the lower end of the prices spectrum, the few restaurants that try to make their vegetables special usually do so by melting cheese all over them. If you don't believe all of this, ask a vegetarian how tough it is to get a good vegetable plate in most restaurants. Such a thing is a collection of afterthoughts.
It is getting better. A few restaurants are going after locally-grown vegetables with much greater interest. But the problem remains: the typical diner is much more interested in the protein on the plate, which must be done well. He won't pay extra for vegetables (except, curiously, in a steak house, where the vegetables are no better than in the places where they're free). And so the pressure is down on the vegetables.
Deft Dining Rule #52
A restaurant with excellent vegetable side dishes probably does everything else excellently.
Appetizing Places
Sweet Potato Knob is in extreme western West Virginia, ten miles from the Kentucky state line. It is a classic Appalachian knob of bare rock rising to 1,143 feet. It's surrounded by woodlands. As is also the case in much of this part of the world, the nearest break in the woods is a strip mine for coal, about two miles away. This is wild countryside, ribboned with clearwater creeks. The nearest place to eat is nine miles up Highway 37 in Wayne: the well-named Pioneer Restaurant.
Edible Dictionary
edamame, [ed-eh-MAHM-ee], Japanese, n. — The Japanese name for soybeans. It literally translates as "beans growing on bushes." In this country, it refers to the lightly-boiled pods of soybeans served cool as an appetizer in Asian restaurants, particularly sushi bars. They seem uninviting until you squeeze the pod, pop a bean out, and munch it. After that, it's hard to stop eating them. The beans are underripe, green, and soft. The water in which they're boiled is quite salty, so the beans are too. It may be a plot to get you to drink more beer, with which edamame goes well.
Music to Eat By
Jimmy Buffett's song Cheeseburger In Paradise hit its high point on the charts today in 1978 at only number 32. It gets played a lot more than bigger hits of the time. It's the food reference, I tell you. On this date in 1972, the song Brandy was released by a one-hit wonder called Looking Glass. Brandy, I know you'll recall, was a fine girl. The last major hit by a classic big band — that of Jimmy Dorsey, no less — made it to number two on this day in 1957. It was a song about how to cook a steak: So Rare. The sax solo was by Dick Stabile, who led his own big band at the Blue Room here for many years.
Whiskey In The Funnies
This was the day in 1919 when the comic strip Barney Google premiered. It evolved over the years into Snuffy Smith, which is still being published. I hear that Snuffy lately has turned his skill at distilling "corn squeezin's" into making small-batch bourbons aged in oak for 12 to 15 years. But he still refuses to pay the "revenooers," so it's still illegal. I haven't tried the stuff myself.
Famous Restaurant Names
Mumtaz Mahal died today in 1631, from complications during childbirth. Her husband spent the next 20 years and a lot of his wealth (he was the Mughal emperor, so no problem) building her tomb. It is the Taj Mahal, one of the most photographed sites in the world. Its name has been applied to hundreds of Indian restaurants, including one here in New Orleans. The Taj Mahal on Metairie Road serves good food, but gives no hint of its namesake's grandeur.
Alluring Dinner Dates
While we're in India, let's ask Amrita Rao — model and actress — if she'd mind joining us for dinner at The Taj Mahal. She was born in Mumbai today in 1981.
Food and Wine On The Air
Today was the premiere, in 1942, of the greatest radio mystery series of them all, Suspense. The scripts, stars, and production were good enough that the shows still hold up today. It ran weekly for 20 years, until the last day of radio drama on CBS. For a long time its sponsor was Roma Wines, the biggest-selling wines in America at the time. It was generic plonk from California, made before California winemakers realized how good their wines could be. This is the day in 1994 that police followed O.J. Simpson's white Bronco around Los Angeles. The chase was on live TV, and it wound up in a fantastic trial that we ran gavel-to-gavel on WSMB. It constantly pre-empted my radio show, but it brought many new listeners to the show who had never heard of me.
Food Namesakes
David "Stringbean" Akeman, who played the banjo and did corny comedy on "Hee Haw," was born today in 1915. Actor Mark Linn-Baker stepped onto the Big Stage today in 1954. Jello Biafra, the lead singer for the Dead Kennedys on their album Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, was born today in 1958.
Words to Eat By
"An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh." — Will Rogers.
"Approaching the stove, she would don a voluminous apron, toss some meat on a platter, empty a skillet of its perfectly cooked a point vegetables, sprinkle a handful of chopped parsley over all, and then, like a proficient striptease artist, remove the apron, allowing it to fall to the floor with a shake of her hips." — Bert Greene, American food writer.
Words to Drink By
"With small beer, good ale and wine,
O ye gods! how I shall dine!" — Unknown.