Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly: Recipes from Southern Appalachia.  Joan E. Aller.  Andrews McMeel Publishing.  $27.99.  (224p)  ISBN: 978-0-7407-7958-9

My mother gets very upset with me when I call our family ‘white trash.’  Despite her protestations I think her side of the family is as white trash as my father’s side.  And I know he was white trash.  He called himself white trash with pride.  He and his four siblings were born in Oklaholma City and lived their early years in poverty.  Life improved slowly once my grandmother brought her brood much like The Grapes of Wrath out to California in 1940.  But the white trash qualities never did quite disappear.  I follow in his footsteps and proudly identify as white trash myself.  You’d think with that background I’d be more familiar with southern cooking but my parent’s divorce left me living with my mother and her family who were more northern in heritage.  My mother does talk about the food my father’s mother used to make: navy beans and ham hocks, collard greens in bacon fat, and cornbread.  Food I didn’t eat much of growing up.

As I made my way through Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly I was reminded of my paternal grandmother and the food I knew she cooked.  Southern Appalachia and the people who live there are in kind to where my father came from, to the food and customs.  Distant eastern cousins I’d venture to say.  I found this book comforting in many ways.  It is not a book of high cuisine; in fact I think I can correctly say it’s all about low cuisine and that’s a good thing.  Author, Joan E. Aller, a transplant to southern Appalachia fell in love with the place once she was there.  Wanting to preserve a lifestyle that she saw quickly changing she set about collecting the best recipes southern Appalachia had to offer by traveling around the area and gathering up recipes, stories and histories from the area’s inns, hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, taverns and cafes.  The book is a lovely compendium of the simple yet hearty and heartwarming food of the region.  Full of beautiful color photography and a written history of the region, this is a book to pick up and read often.  Dishes like ‘High Country Breakfast Casserole’ served at The Buffalo Tavern Bed and Breakfast to ‘Appalachian Cider Beans’ (a personal favorite) come with an explanation, a story, before the recipe begins.  To wit cider beans are traditionally served at the local gas station which become de facto social centers.  Locals gather at the closest gas station, eat, and catch up on area news.

The recipes I tested all worked just fine; they were straight-forward and easy to make.  A few of my favorite dishes were the ‘Pork Chops Southern-Style,’ ‘Corn Pone, Tennessee-Style,’ ‘Grilled Okra with Pine Nuts’ and the ‘Appalachian Cider Beans.’  A fun chapter in the book is ‘Beverages’ where recipes for ‘Southern Sweet Tea,’ ‘Mammy Williams’s Dandelion Wine’ and ‘Southern Milk Punch’ (vanilla ice cream and bourbon!) can be found.  The final chapter is ‘Country Store’ and has recipes for pickles, relishes, jellies and jams.  A whole lot of good southern cooking is delightfully packed into the pages of Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly. If you are looking for some good southern comfort food grab this book and start cooking.  You won’t be disappointed.

Shout Outs! Fun, Cool, Interesting, Worthy Things Going on Around Town…

Magnolia Bakery (Los Angeles) ~ Purchase a Pink Ribbon Cupcake, (or several!) from Magnolia Bakery during the month of October.  Proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research.  www.magnoliabakery.com

Los Angeles Magazine ~ The Food Event: From the Vine 2010 ~ Sunday, October 24, 2010, 1 pm to 4 pm, Saddlerock Ranch, Malibu, California.  The 5th annual culinary extravaganza hosted by Los Angeles Magazine featuring celebrity chefs, top restaurants and wine tasting.  I’ll be there.  Hope to see you.  www.losangelesmagazine/thefoodevent

Artisanal L.A. ~ A weekend of shopping, tasting, workshops, and hanging out with local artisans.  A celebration of L.A.’s finest local handmade artisanal edibles.  October 23 & 24, 11 am to 4 pm.   I’ll be there (Saturday, 10/23), will you?  http://artisanalla.com/

Out of the Box Collective (Los Angeles) ~ A brand new business that home-delivers boxes of local, sustainably produced groceries.  The food items used in the boxes are sourced from artisans and farmers in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.  Boxes contain meat, dairy, produce, bread, conserves, and regional specialties.  They have a Thanksgiving Feast Box available for the upcoming holiday that will supply you with all the ingredients and a few suggested recipes if you don’t have the time to shop but still want to cook.  Come check them out the Artisan L.A. event on 10/23 & 24 (see above for info).  www.outoftheboxcollective.com

My Status:  Fall weather has arrived to SoCal.  Cool, wet even rainy.  More cooking, eating and blogging on the horizon as always.

News! I am now published!! My recipe ‘Chef Wally’s Baked Papaya’ was selected to be in the cookbook: ‘Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook: 100 Great Recipes, Photographs, and Voices,’ published on October 19, 2010.  You may pre-order it here.  I am thrilled.

Upcoming Posts: Cookbook Reviews ~Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room by John Ferrell; The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders.

Steak with Friends: At Home, with Rick Tramonto.  Rick Tramonto with Mary Goodbody.  Andrews McMeel Publishing.  $35.00.  (304p)  ISBN: 978-0-7407-9257-1

First off:  this is a really BIG book, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  Secondly, I learned a new trick from it that I wish I’d known years ago (to bake bacon rather than fry it).  Thirdly, in recipe testing for it I happily got to use my friend, Phil’s incredible bacon: All Natural Berkshire Pork Belly, Cured 10 Days, Applewood Smoked.  Phil is My Life as a Foodie, a great cook, a great curer of meats, and a very cool guy.  My experience with this book was a good one from start to finish.

Chef Rick Tramonto has been in the restaurant business for 30 years, and owns three Chicago area restaurants: Tru, Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood, RT Sushi Bar & Lounge.  A James Beard Award winner, a competitor on Top Chef Masters, Top Chef and Iron Chef; he was also named a Top Ten Best New Chefs by Food & Wine magazine in 1994.  He has published six cookbooks before ‘Steak with Friends.’  He’s already tested and proven his cooking mettle.  This book is meant to bring all he knows, and his experiences as a professional chef, to the home cook.  He succeeds quite well at doing so.

“The title of this book says it all:  This is about eating steak dinners with good friends and enjoying all that implies,” states Tramonto.  Except it doesn’t stop at steaks.  It also includes hot and cold appetizers, salads, soups and sandwiches, fish and seafood, sauces, stocks, dressings, marinades, and syrups, other meat and poultry, side dishes, and desserts.  Shew!  The book does devote a number of pages to steak, in fact, there are three chapters alone on the subject.  There are enough recipes in this book (150) to cook complete meals from starters to desserts for at least a year.  (I didn’t do the math so maybe it’s only six months.)

In addition to the recipes Chef Tramonto throws in many ‘how-tos,’ and ‘abouts’ such as ‘About Oysters,’ followed by ‘How To Shuck an Oyster,’ or ‘Notes on the Steak Recipes,’ with ‘How to Choose a Great Steak.’  Helpful color photographs and diagrams are also sprinkled throughout.  Cocktail recipes usually thematically tied to the recipe on the same page also pop up.  Music and cooking play an important part of Tramonto’s cooking process; something I understand as most professional kitchens I’ve worked in usually played very loud, heart-thumping music during the many hours of prep.  He is a proponent of cooking to music and periodically makes recommendations of specific artists.  His taste seems to be fairly run of the mill pop and rock.  For example his recommendations for cooking cold appetizers are:  Billy Joel, Elton John, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, The Goo Goo Dolls, and The Allman Brothers.  Hmmm, not exactly cutting-edge choices!  Still an interesting, and unique, addition to the recipes.

I was only able to try a handful of recipes, and since steak is the star of the book I tried those first: Filet Mignon with Béarnaise Sauce, Bone-In Rib Eye with Bordelaise Sauce, and Steak au Poivre.  The first two were cooked on an outdoor grill, and turned out beautifully; the old-fashioned French sauces included (separate recipes).  The Steak au Poivre was prepared on the stove top.   All three preparations are familiar steak standards.  Tramonto’s cooking instructions including how long to cook for medium rare, medium and well done were spot on.  It had been awhile since I’d make a Béarnaise, or Bordelaise, or even an au poivre sauce and it was fun.  There’s a reason eating beef this way is so popular — it’s really, really good.

Other recipes I tested were Twice-Baked Potatoes with Irish Cheddar, Grilled Broccoli Rabe, Cucumber Salad, Lemon Aïoli, Rick’s BLTs — the reason I chose this one was because it required bacon, and I had my friend Phil’s bacon to use.  Knowing I was using bacon that Phil had lovingly cured added to the pleasure of testing, and eating, the recipe.  On the same page as the BLT recipe was a break out box ‘Cook Bacon Like a Chef’ — a genius thing.  Turn the oven to 350°, put the bacon on a parchment lined baking sheet, and let it bake until done, no turning, no smoke, no popping of hot oil.  I love to learn new kitchen tricks (or re-learn forgotten ones) and this is a great one!  Tramonto and Goodbody know how to create dishes and write recipes.  All the dishes I tried worked very well, and tasted even better.

The food and recipes in this book are fairly traditional, straight forward meat and potato preparations.  There’s no breaking of new ground here — nothing molecular, no foams or CO2 canisters.  It’s simple and honest food which I think was Chef Tramonto’s goal.  If so, he succeeded and this is definitely a go-to book for a family dinner on the weekend, or a casual yet nice dinner with friends.

My Status: Enjoying the coolest summer we’ve seen in Los Angeles in years (apologies to all readers living east of the Rockies).  Eating, cooking, restaurant-ing, blogging and writing.  A food-filled trip to San Francisco to join my friend, Chef Jeremiah Tower, coming up next week.  The IFBC at the end of August (see below), and a trip to Sonoma County in September: returning to Zazu & Bovolo…

Coming Up: International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC), August 27 – 29, 2010, Seattle Washington.  So much fun last year that I’ll be attending again this year.  Are you?

Upcoming Posts: Cookbook Reviews ~ Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly by Joan E. Aller; Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room by John Ferrell.

There’s something about a good, fresh, ripe, right-from-the garden cucumber. Bright green, a sort of forest green, small prickly bumps like cucumber acne, firm to the touch if picked properly. When you slice into it with a sharp knife there’s a snap, and the unmistakable aroma that rises up quickly. The smell of a cucumber. I’m not sure how to describe it but it’s distinctive. To me it’s the smell of a garden. Actually the cucumber is a fairly simple fruit when it comes right down to it. One that always reminds me of summer and of my great-grandparent’s garden.

I have wanted to write about my cucumber memories for awhile now but needed to find the right cucumber. I knew those over-ripe, too big, coated-in-wax ones at Gelson’s would not be right. In fact they are all wrong. I looked at Whole Foods and nothing doing there either. I even checked several farmers’ markets and came up empty. Now I hope the lack of product at the farmers’ markets is due to the cucumbers normal May to August growing season but I doubt it — not in this day and age of hot houses, hydroponics and God knows what else. I kept my eyes open for the right cucumber. I knew it was out there somewhere.

When I was growing up we often ate the fresh fruits and vegetables that my great-grandparents grew in their garden. I realize now that I didn’t know any different. Going into the garden, pulling up a carrot, washing it off with the hose, and eating it on the spot was no big deal to my sister and I. The freshness and garden flavor we took for granted. It wasn’t until I was older that I became aware of how different a carrot bought at the local Safeway and a carrot pulled from my great-grandparent’s garden tasted. It was then that I fully appreciated their amazing garden.

Now back to my cucumber. At the family meals, usually midday on Sundays, when seven or eight of us all sat down together my great-grandmother quite often put a bowl of sliced cucumbers soaking in vinegar on the table. It always seemed to be there. We all helped ourselves. I guess it might be considered a side dish, or a condiment. What they were to me were little bites of garden freshness. Cucumbers picked that morning, sliced and put into a bowl with vinegar and salt. Simplicity at its best. A sort of faux-pickle: crunchy, greenly bitter, mouth puckering and refreshing. I loved them. And as simple as it is, the dish is a standout in my childhood food memories. I think in part because the simpleness of the dish is evocative of who my great-grandmother was; hardworking, self-sufficient and uncomplicated.

This past weekend Robert and I went to see the new farmers’ market at the Americana — a popular, outdoor shopping mall in Glendale, California. I’d heard they were starting a farmers’ market but I was also in no rush to go to one in a shopping mall. It turned out to be quite delightful. It’s called Gigi’s Farmers Market, happens every Saturday, and is easily on par with other local farmers’ markets. As we wandered through my cucumber radar was up. As we rounded a corner to the next produce stall, I saw them sitting there in a small stack. The right size, the right green, with cucumber acne. I picked one up, it smelled like a cucumber. It felt like a cucumber. It looked like I’d found my cucumber. I asked the growers where they were from: Oxnard — about fifty-nine miles away. Organic? Yes. Waxed? No. I bought six.

When I got home I made my great-grandmother’s faux pickles and Robert and I ate them with our lunch. As I peeled and cut into the first one that cucumber smell rose up to meet my nose, and memories of our long ago family meals came rushing back to me.

Herewith…

Print Recipe

My Status: International Food Blogger Conference: I leave for Seattle on Thursday, May 14 and return home on Monday, May 18. The conference is Friday, May 15 – Sunday, May 17.

Robert and I leave for Paris, the Languedoc, Barcelona and Madrid on Sunday, May 24, returning home on Saturday, June 6.

Upcoming Posts: The Wedge Salad: a recipe, the origins of the salad and of Iceberg lettuce. France and Spain: if all goes well technologically, and time allows, I’ll be posting blogs from Europe. ]]> http://www.100miles.com/cucumbers/feed/ 1 http://www.100miles.com/recipe-grandma-oras-faux-pickles/ http://www.100miles.com/recipe-grandma-oras-faux-pickles/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 23:58:40 +0000 Charles Thompson http://www.100miles.com/?p=660 Grandma Ora’s Faux Pickles

Serves

4 – 6

Preparation Time

45 minutes

Ingredients

4 medium sized cucumbers, garden fresh, organic, or farmers market

Apple cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

Method

Peel the cucumbers and slice into 1/4 inch rounds. Place in a serving bowl, just cover with vinegar, add salt. Salt may be adjusted depending on personal preference. If possible allow to sit at room temperature for a 1/2 hour before serving.

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