Household Opera

In search of the elusive Nesselrode Pudding, or, menu digitization rocks!

How much do I love the New York Public Library's What's on the Menu? project? Inordinately, that's how much. They're dealing with a fairly common problem among libraries with digitization projects: a big collection of image files of interesting documents; the need to capture the text from those documents into a usable, searchable form; the impossibility of just OCR-ing it all; and the immensity of the work of transcription. So they built a transcription program with a super-simple front end, and invited the world to help them transcribe the collection. (See also the Transcribe Bentham project, and Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders initiative.)

The result is surprisingly addictive: you pick a historic menu from their constantly-updating list, start clicking on the names of dishes and typing transcriptions into the little box, and before long you're thinking "Hey, I should go back and look at all those descriptions of restaurant meals in The House of Mirth and figure out how pricey they actually would have been for someone in Lily Bart's financial straits." And then you marvel at the fact that travelers on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1901 could order a caviar sandwich in the cafe car.* And then you start surfing the still-growing database of dishes from the menus and wondering when, exactly, broiled plover on toast went out of style.

Which brings me to the other thing I love about this project: food history is the coolest thing ever, and I'm adding "food historian" to the list of things I would do if I had whole other lifetimes to do them in. And I also love how, when you look at the pages for individual dishes, you're presented with links out to recipe search sites, book search sites, Wikipedia, and even Flickr and Twitter. The NYPL folks evidently realized that this project could appeal to lots of people: food historians, fans of retro cookery (Gallery of Regrettable Food,** anyone?), random passersby curious about what Nesselrode Pudding was,*** home cooks who might be inspired to replicate some of the dishes on the menu.

It's a really lovely instance of making primary sources accessible to an audience that's both academic and non-; it's also a lovely example of simultaneously opening up library collections to a wider audience and involving that audience in improving the collections. As a librarian and an alt-academic (and as a foodie), I approve. And I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with the data.

 

 

* I confess that, however much of a delicacy they were considered at the time, the idea of caviar sandwiches makes me gag a bit. Which is another thing I love (well, not the gagging): the glimpses these menus offer into one area of the past that looks, in some ways, like the present, and in other ways, like those caviar sandwiches and plovers on toast, notably different.

** If you haven't yet discovered the Gallery of Regrettable Food, go now. Just be aware that it'll probably make you laugh until your ribs hurt.

*** Apparently it's a molded chestnut ice cream. I kind of want to try my hand at making it now.

Recipe post: the joy of lentils

This week I tested out a recipe first encountered at my family's Christmas dinner, via my uncle and aunt, two of the best cooks in the family. They themselves found it somewhere on the internet (possibly at Good Housekeeping) and tweaked it to their liking. Technically, it's a thick lentil soup studded with butternut squash, but really it's more of a casserole, as most of the liquid gets soaked up by the lentils while they cook.

I made this without the leeks, and with a mixture of leftover vegetable stock that needed using up and Seitenbacher vegetable broth. Nearly everything came from my local food co-op, including all the vegetables, the broth, and the lentils (I used little French green lentils). It was exactly the thing for a freezing January evening, and it made an excellent leftover for lunch today.

The roasted squash is one of my aunt and uncle's tweaks to this recipe: the roasting concentrates the flavor. You can roast the squash ahead of time if you prefer. If you want a vegan variation, you can substitute olive oil for melted butter. If you're a carnivore, you could add a little rendered bacon fat.

Lentil and butternut squash stew/casserole

• half of a medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1" chunks (about 1 lb. altogether)
• 2 large stalks celery, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 3 scallions, chopped
• 2 leeks, diced (optional)
• 1 large carrot, shredded
• 3 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 1/2 lb brown or green lentils
• 1 can (14 to 14 1/2 ounces) vegetable broth
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) dried rosemary or two fresh rosemary sprigs
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup loosely packed fresh parsley leaves, chopped

First, preheat the oven to 400F while you prep the squash. Brush the squash cubes with some of the melted butter and a bit of salt, and roast for about 20 minutes, until they start to brown. Once squash is done, reduce the oven temperature to 300F.

Meanwhile, rinse the lentils. Boil 2 cups of vegetable broth vigorously and cook the lentils in it for 2 minutes. Take the lentils off the burner.

Heat up the remaining melted butter in a skillet or similar (I used a Dutch oven for both this step and the rest of the cooking). Saute the celery, onion, leeks (if using), scallions, and carrot shreds until the onions are soft.

In a Dutch oven or large oven-proof casserole, combine sauteed vegetables, lentils, butternut squash, herbs, and salt and pepper to taste. Add just enough extra vegetable broth or water to cover the lentils. Cover the pot with a lid or some tinfoil and bake in the 300F oven for about 90 minutes. Test for doneness and correct the seasoning. Do not, as I did, burn your tongue.

Makes a nice big pot of lentils. Serve as a hearty soup, a side dish, or a main dish in its own right, perhaps with some potatoes or crusty bread.

Other recent culinary successes: orecchiette with cauliflower, adapted from this recipe; boeuf Bourguignon; Christmas lima beans with caramelized onions and bacon. This is the time of year when you really want an excuse to run the oven for hours.

Project sourdough update: Lessons learned

I just made two more loaves of bread from my sourdough starter, after many weeks of trying miscellaneous sourdough things that didn't require kneading. This time, apart from some loaf-shaping issues that I think can be fixed next time around, the end product was immensely to my liking. And I think I just learned a bunch of key things about sourdough baking, to wit:

• Long rising times are key. The first time I made bread, I only let it rise for about 5 or 6 hours, at which point I judged it sufficiently risen to go into the oven. And it was fine, but a little on the heavy side and not as sour as I hoped. This time, I let it rise for about 12 hours, starting the night before, and the bread had a lovely texture even though the loaves fell as I was transferring them from their bowls to the baking sheet. And the sourness was perfect.
• "Doubled in bulk" means "the dough is muscling its way right out of its bowl and threatening world domination." It is an awesome sight to behold: the Yeast Culture That Ate Connecticut! (Or would've tried to, if I hadn't eaten it first.)
• If you're going to do it right, you have to plan ahead. My bread-baking schedule now runs from Saturday midafternoon (feeding the starter) to Saturday evening (making and kneading the dough and putting it on the counter to rise) to the middle of the day or early afternoon on Sunday (baking the loaves). It takes less time than one would expect, but one does have to keep track of when to move onto the next stage of things.
• The "pan of water on the bottom rack of the oven while the bread is baking" trick really does put a lovely crust on the bread.
• I need a better method for shaping my loaves. If I let them free-form, they just kind of sprawl; if I let the dough rise in bowls, it sticks, and deflates on removal — especially if I forget to oil the bowls first. I still want to get my hands on some bannetons and see what happens.

Next up: sourdough breadsticks!

My summer cooking adventure: Project Sourdough

Although I do a lot of cooking, I've never been much of a one for baking my own bread. Foccaccia was pretty much the only yeast-raised bread I'd seriously attempted, and I'm more of a cook than a baker, anyway. But I'm also a bread snob who was hopelessly spoiled by five years of living a few blocks away from Zingerman's, and New London doesn't have all that many bakeries, so finding bread that isn't a square squishy plastic-shrouded oblong has been something of a challenge. The DIY approach started to look a lot more appealing.

So about a month ago I acquired some sourdough starter from a colleague at work, and set to work cultivating it. Sourdough starter, if you've never made your own, is a colony of wild yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria that can be maintained in the refrigerator as long as you periodically feed it flour and water. It smells oddly like glue, but with a strong acidic whiff after it's been fed. When you feed the colony, it gets frothy (from the yeasts producing carbon dioxide) and doubles in size. You put half of the starter back in the fridge and use the other half to bake something; the yeast, once activated, raises the bread, and the lactic acid from the bacteria produces the distinctive sour flavor. It's like having a pet that's also a biochemistry experiment.

So far, this is what I've made:

• Sourdough bread loaf #1, part whole wheat. An abject failure: it didn't rise, and I don't think the gluten developed properly either. The result was a sad, bricklike object. I chalked it up to experience and moved on.
• Sourdough bread loaves #2 and #3, mostly white flour. Much more acceptable: they could have been a bit rounder and fluffier, but they had the right texture and made an agreeably dense, slightly sour bread. The feel of the dough was much more like what I remembered as the way bread dough should feel while you're kneading it.
• Raspberry sourdough muffins. Sadly, they didn't rise; I suspect I overbeat them. They were still edible, though, and I may repeat the experiment with the remainder of the frozen raspberries.
• Sourdough coffee cake. The sourness is barely perceptible amid the cinnamon and brown sugar topping, but it made an excellent breakfast.

Actual kneaded breads are something of a time commitment, and require advance planning, but I'm very pleased that one can also use the excess starter in everything from quick breads to pizza crusts (haven't made any yet, but they're on the list of Things to Try). And someday, I'll manage to acquire a banneton so I can make properly beautiful boules.

On library anxiety and not knowing enough about wine

Yesterday I finally went to a wine tasting at Thames River Wine and Spirits, which hosts these evenings every week. It was a nice event, and I love their cavernous underground cellar space, which looks like a stage set for a prison scene in some Verdi opera or another, only with wine racks lining the walls. All the same, I could feel my Wine Store Anxiety ratcheting up: the feeling that I really should know a lot more about wine that I do, the dread of revealing my wine ignorance to other people, the fear of being laughed at by more knowledgeable oenophiles, the sheer baffling information overload of all those bottles and regions and names and types of grape. (Plus I didn't know anyone there, which, for me, creates anxiety of a different kind. Maybe I'll find someone to take with me next time.)

It's ridiculous, because I know there are plenty of people out there who are happy to help, but Wine Store Anxiety still plagues me every single time I try to pick out a bottle of wine. I always feel like I should be able to teach myself about it on my own, but I never know where to start, and the prospect of asking for help makes me want to run and hide. Most of what I do know about wine I've learned from knowledgeable friends who were willing to give me pointers; I think if I had more conversations like that, or maybe a little semi-formal instruction,* I'd probably feel less intimidated by wine stores.

It occurred to me that this is probably how students with "library anxiety" feel when they walk into a library: overwhelmed, ashamed of their ignorance, afraid to ask for help, and in over their heads. It's not a perfect analogy, of course, but I suspect that many of the same approaches might help both types of anxiety: friendly outreach, a bit of class time, the chance to work with a peer and feel a little less alone, small manageable assignments (only one database at a time; only red wines from northern Italy) rather than trying to learn everything at once.

None of these ideas are earth-shattering. But it's probably good for someone in my job, with years of library-related education, to know how it feels to be a panicky newbie.

* I always meant to take a course at the Wine School of Philadelphia back when I lived a couple of blocks from it, and I never had time. Ah well. Someday.

The return of the pastoral

Interesting:

• Michael Pollan, in Sunday's New York Times, writes an open letter to the next president about the need for a complete overhaul of our farming and food system. (It's long, but it's well worth reading.)
• There's a petition for an organic farm to be planted on the South Lawn of the White House (a gesture Pollan also endorses).
• Colleges have begun teaching about agriculture and "ecogastronomy."
• There's apparently a movement afoot to revive the World War II-era "victory garden" in the age of climate change, fuel scarcity, and food shortages.

I'm of two minds about all of this. Part of me sees the emphasis on a renewal of localized, traditional agriculture in the light of 2000-plus years of the pastoral poetry tradition. And there is a nostalgia for an idealized rural past behind a lot of the discourse about local food: not a past where preternaturally literate shepherds piped on oaten straws, but a pre-factory-farming past, when people knew where their food came from, when oranges and bananas were a luxury if you didn't live in a tropical climate, when families sat down to dinner together, and so on.

But the other side of me, the side that loves farmers' markets and fully expects that we'll be in for a nasty shock when oil supplies really start to run low, is deeply interested in learning how to grow my own food, especially with the economy circling the drain. That same side of me is weighing the options for doing some container herb and vegetable gardening on the little deck outside my apartment next year, and wondering if anyone else in New London is interested in getting a community garden going. I suspect part of it is a sign of wanting to learn more practical skills in the face of doom and gloom. Call it a victory garden or call it an apotropaic gesture; I just want to do something tangible to deal with the free-floating anxiety, even if it's only planting some tomatoes. (And green onions! And salad greens! And rosemary! Of course, this also has something to do with my preexisting fondness for produce.)

Recipe post: A pie made of grapes

I'm having one of those blogger's block weeks. It's probably due to the beginning-of-semester rush at work; my brain's been a bit fried lately. (In a good way—I had an absolute blast teaching a class today—but nonetheless in a way that leaves me disinclined to write long blog posts.) So in lieu of anything thinky, I'm going to post my favorite pie recipe. Not that pastry doesn't require thought, but you know what I mean. Anyhow:

Concord grape pie

This is kind of like a cross between traditional fruit pie and homemade grape jam. I only make it this time of year because you can't really substitute other grapes, and Concord grapes aren't in season for all that long. It's kind of labor-intensive, but the end result is so, so worth it if you like grapes.

Ingredients:

• Pastry for a one-crust, 9" pie
• 3 cups Concord grapes
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp. flour
• 2 tbsp. butter

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Pop the grapes out of their skins (this is easy to do with Concord grapes, because they have loose skins). Set the skins aside in a bowl, and put the grape insides in a saucepan on top of the stove. Bring the pan to a low simmer and let it cook until the seeds start to come loose.

Now strain the grape pulp through a sieve. Your goal here is to separate the pulp from the seeds so you can add it to your bowl of grape skins. Once you've reunited the component parts of the grapes (minus seeds), add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and stir until everything is mixed.

Pour your bowl of pie filling into the crust and bake for 40 minutes. Cool, and eat in small slices, because it's intensely grapey and richer than you'd think.

Soup for a heat wave

This recipe is courtesy of my friend R. We made it this weekend when the temperature was hovering around 90 degrees, and it's guaranteed to make you feel at least a little bit cooler.

Hungarian Cucumber Soup

Peel, de-seed, and finely dice 2-3 medium cucumbers. Mince up 1 garlic clove, and chop up a bunch of dill (how much will depend on how much you like dill). Toss all of the above together in a bowl with a bit of salt and black pepper. Stick the bowl in the fridge to get it as cold as possible.

While the main ingredients of the soup are chilling, lightly toast a generous handful of walnuts and chop them up finely. Set them aside until it's time for dinner.

Right before you plan to serve the soup, take out the bowl of cucumber, add about 8 ounces plain yogurt, stir until mixed, and then add cold water until the soup is your desired consistency. Correct the seasoning, as the Joy of Cooking always says. Stir in the chopped walnuts. Put a couple of ice cubes in each bowl and ladle the soup over the ice cubes. Serve immediately. The ice cubes keep the soup cool while you're eating it, and the whole thing is a lovely balance of crunchy and refreshing.

In other news, I am (re)discovering that the puzzle-solving feeling of slotting books into boxes is almost an antidote for the sorrows of moving. Let's hope I still feel that way when it comes time to wrap each of my plates, mugs, and wine glasses in tissue paper and box them up.

Department of small culinary miracles

It's a little embarrassing that the La Dominique crepe cart has been in business right next to Drexel's Hagerty Library for four months already and it took me until today to discover it and try their crepes. One can get crepes made with buckwheat flour and a greater range of fillings at Beau Monde Creperie down in Bella Vista — but at La Dominique, you get to watch while the owner makes your crepe by hand, steaming vegetables under a little lid on a grill and pouring batter onto a round crepe-sized cooking surface and decorating everything just so. And then you go off to sit down outside with a fabulous lunch. And it's right next to where I go to classes.

Now I'm already regretting the fact that I'm only going to be at Drexel for another month or so. To make up for lost time, I'm going to try as many of La Dominique's crepes as I possibly can.

101 things to do with a butternut squash

Last week I brought home a prodigiously large butternut squash from the Fair Food Farmstand. I had in mind a recipe for squash in a spicy yogurt sauce from Bharti Kirchner's The Healthy Cuisine of India. So earlier this week I de-skinned, de-seeded, and cubed the squash; I needed four cups of it for the recipe, which turned out beautifully. (It's quite simple: you fry up some Bengali five-spice in a bit of oil with grated ginger, hot pepper, and turmeric, throw in the squash, add some water and a little salt, cover it and let it simmer for half an hour or so until it's soft but not too mushy; then you stir in plain yogurt and garam masala to make the sauce. Great winter comfort food.) But I still had just over half of the original Monster Squash. Into the refrigerator it went while I considered what else to do.

More of the squash found its way into a pot of chicken with root vegetables I was planning to make on New Year's Day, but ended up making yesterday night because all the stores were closed on New Year's and I couldn't go get a bottle of white wine. The squash went very nicely with the carrots and parsnips and garlic, and added an agreeable note of sweetness. But most of the leftovers were still left over.

So I think there's only one thing to do now: roast the remainder of the Monster Squash until it's soft and make a pie out of it. Anybody got a recipe?