Toby

This is a wonderful thread -- I love Mexican food -- think it is a deep and complex cuisine. I've never been there, so all I know about it is from cookbooks, what I've been able to eat in restaurants in San Francisco and NY, and what friends who've lived in Mexico have told me -- essentially, acts of imagination. I moved from San Francisco to NY 5 years ago. In SF, I lived in a Mexican neighborhood and was able to get ingredients easily, so I could at least cook a lot from Bayless, Kennedy. When I got to NY I was amazed at the invisibility of anywhere-near authentic Mexican food here. Trying to cook it involved complicated travels to many places to get basic ingredients (a day spent looking for piloncillo). New York had been overrun with fake taquerias run by Chinese cooks that are a travesty and now a Chevy's has opened that is just awful. In 1997 and 1998 I had this little fresh salsa business and I sold them at our stand at a farmers' market. All I made were 5 or 6 different types of Mexican table salsas -- green (with avocado) , red, tomatillo-chipotle, habanero, black bean (with avocado and serranos and a little tomatillo) and a chipotle-tomato-corn one, and sometimes I made chipolte en adobo. Most customers were completely unfamiliar with these fresh salsas and wanted the stuff that comes in jars with big chunks and thick tomato sauce. But, I think that just as Chinese food used to be chop suey and sweet and sour pork, the sheer number of Mexican immigrants in NY may have begun to reach critical mass and more authentic Mexican food will become available. More people know more, more authentic ingredients are available in more places, there are more small restaurants run by Mexicans. (A great deal of the food in our upscale restaurants is actually cooked by people from Mexico, Central and South America.) Last summer a regional Mexican (Veracruz) restaurant, Danzon, run by Zarela Martinez, opened. I had one meal there and was pretty happy with it -- we had deep fried green plantain chips; tamal de cazuela -- a masa casserole stuffed with shredded pork and flavored with hoja santa leaves; grilled octopus; and I had a big bowl of black beans cooked with chayotes, pork cracklings and pumpkin seeds that were the best beans I ever ate. We even had Mexican Zinfandel. (It was OK.) (Most of these dishes are in her Veracruz cookbook.) I recommended it to a number of people and they all hated it. I don't know if my meal was an aberration or if they ordered the wrong things on the menu; in any case the restaurant failed and has been converted (by Zarela M.) into a bocadito place. I think they actually put out a statement that they felt NY wasn't ready for regional Mexican cuisine. Wow, I've managed to depress myself. But, if Ms. Martinez could think NY was ready for authentic regional food, maybe it soon will be. Meanwhile, I've located a number of neighborhoods in Manhattan with Mexican groceries and small, inexpensive restaurants run by Mexicans. My friend is about to pot an epazote plant out of her garden for me, so that dilemma will be solved -- I hear it grows like weeds. Also, Stellabella, if you've managed to read through this endless post, I like texture in salsas also. What I used to do was pound up the roasted chiles and garlic in the mocajete and separately blend (on pulse) the tomatoes or tomatillos and then combine them in a bowl. Please write more about dishes you ate in Mexico, Central America. I love to read about what people ate in places I've never been.

I make a cordial called cherry bounce with sour cherries. Sorry, but I'm not quite sure of proportions, because I usually make several bottles and never write down what I did; this should give you maybe enough to pour into 1 liter bottle (?). You crush up about 4 cups of sour cherries (stems, pits and all, leaves too if you've got them) with 1/2 cup sugar and let stand for a few hours. Then add 2 or more cups bourbon -- I used Makers Mark and it was worth it (also used Knob Creek one time, but Makers Mark was probably better in this). I put this in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks, then strain it, pour into a clean bottle and put back in refrigerator for another month or more before drinking. It keeps for a long time if you don't drink it up first.

I used to work as a proofreader.

Jaymes, getting the mojacete smooth: I tried rice too and it didn't work. Then a Mexican worker on my nephew's farm told me to pound up raw corn kernels cut off the cob and that worked. At least I think it did -- I had a little salsa and hot sauce business at the time and we were busy pounding away at huge quantities of roasted jalapenos and serranos and roasted garlic over a period of several months. Maybe sheer volume finally did it. The rough ones are very beautiful -- I don't know that I've ever seen the smoother ones.

Me, I like whole roast duck. I used to use Marcella Hazen's method, which was influenced by Peking Duck technique -- as I remember, she plunged duck into boiling water for a brief time to open the pores in the skin, and then blow dried it while blotting up the fat as it was exuded through the pores. (Works better if 2 people do this together.) Of course, you lose all the duck fat that way, but you end up with a very non-fatty, almost game-like, duck. I like stuffing it with soppressata, herbs, parmesan and bread crumbs. When it's done, I follow Patricia Wells' tip of letting the roasted duck rest on an angle with neck down and tail in air for about 20 minutes -- she says "this heightens the flavor by allowing the juices to flow down through to the breast meat." And, for slow-cooked duck, Prudhomme (in his first book), has a wonderful 4 or 5 hour production, in which you get lots of cayenne-tasting fat and duck meat that just falls off the bone.

(Help, I can't get "quote" to work) -- Regarding Wilfrid's aforementioned problem with the leaky bison balls -- In Innards and Other Variety Meats they say (after cleaning and rinsing) to parboil in salted water, 15 minutes for beef. On the other hand, this could be a problem peculiar to bison. (The bison guy at the market made a real point about how low in fat bison meat is, but I'd always read that Native Americans considered bison very rich -- you think this could be because of different grazing conditions or simply rich compared to other game and their probably low fat diet anyway?) Another solution might be something I read on how to get rid of excess liquid in octopus, suggested for people who just can't hang their fresh octopi out to dry on the clothesline in the sun for a day -- put octopus in a dry pot after cleaning, and heat over a very low heat until the octopus has exuded all its liquid (about 45 min.).

Steve, It's A Cook's Tour of Mexico by Nancy Zaslavsky

And some chefs, no matter how talented, are just crazy. Remember the one who came out of the kitchen waving a knife at a newspaper critic, screaming at her? Her review was about his bizarre behavior, rather than his food.

John, do you know much about de Groot's background in food? And who he was associated with, in terms of influences? He never got the kind of recognition given to others of that era.

Adam, I'm drinking my morning coffee and I've reread your last post around six times, trying to picture that coming to the table. All I can say is Why? Was it really upright? Yuck. I have no problem leaving the heads on fish, sealing in the flavor, looking them in the eye, eating the cheeks, but this sounds visually disgusting. I buy fresh chickens and ducks in Chinatown, head and feet attached, and I save the feet for stocks, gumbos, but I always chop the head off and toss it right away.

The first cookbook I ever owned and that I taught myself to cook from was de Groot's Feasts for All Seasons, published in 1966. I cooked my way through it. It might seem a little outdated now (he uses msg, and suggests something called granulated instantized flour that always seemed weird, and there are now specialized books on ethnic and regional cuisines), but I'm looking at it right now and it's still amazing. Maybe because he was blind, he tells you how the food will sound, feel, smell at different stages of cooking up to doneness, so it was perfect for a beginner. And, as he explains in the introduction, "... for almost every food there was one time of the year when the highest quality was combined with the lowest price." He gives extensive lists of "the special pleasures of the season" -- fresh and saltwater fish, shellfish, fruits, salad greens, vegetables. And this was in 1966. His writing was lovely without being overblown. I have his Auberge book, but this one has always had a special place in my imagination.

Could baron be a typo for baton? (Is there such a thing?)

Stuffed goose neck (collo ripieno dell'oca) -- goose neck skin stuffed with veal, goose liver, pistachio nuts, egg, parmesan served with a mayonnaise-like sauce made with grated hard-boiled egg, pecorino, parsley, and olive oil simmered in broth. Or duck neck stuffed like a sausage (collo di anatra ripieno) -- stuffed with bread, duck liver, cheese... both Tuscan regional dishes. This whole topic is just glorious.

I think Cajun food can then be divided into bayou food (using seafood) and "prairie"-type Cajun food, grown in parts of Louisiana more suitable for farming and raising livestock. In Paul Prudhomme's Family Cookbook, he focuses more on the dishes made with meats, game, freshwater fish and garden vegetables, but the methods and seasonings are the same. In the end, of course, a cuisine can be subdivided enough so it can end up being indigenous to single households. I had a friend who was adamant about not using green bell peppers in gumbos, etoufees. It turned out that his mother didn't grow them in her garden so they never had them. Les Blank's Louisiana films are delightful and have lots of food and cooking (mostly Cajun) in them -- Always for Pleasure and (I think) Let the Good Times Roll.

I'm looking for any wine stores in NY that might have Peachy Canyon Zinfandel Port (or anything close to it). Any ideas?

Suvier, "food multiplies" post was beautiful, and has given rise to a multiplicity of thoughts in my mind. Thank you.

I drank a cider from Vermont, called Original Sin (I think) at Fleur de Sel. Anyone heard of it, know where to buy it in NY?

When you drive down south, you could stop at Bonny Doon, I think in Felton (near Carmel). I haven't been there in a while, but whenever I've been there, you could taste just about everything, and there were lots of wines not sold in stores. It's a pretty drive and they had a couple of tables in the back under a tree to picnic at. At the time, very uncrowded. Several other wineries in the area, but never got to them -- kind of mountainous, hilly road as I remember.

Wonderful post, Wilfrid. I was afraid someone was going to bring up testicles, but bison balls is just great. The disks. The liquid. The horror. The bison guy is there during the week also. I know he's there on either Monday or Wednesday (or both) and maybe Friday too. He's there a lot. (Off the subject, have you cooked any of his ground bison meat? He gave me one of his meatballs to eat and it was good and then I made some and mine came out just dry. I don't know what I did wrong or how to correct it. I think he used a lot of bread crumbs.) I sometimes deep fry chicken livers when I fry chicken. Fry each by itself, not in clumps, with lots of salt and black pepper. One time I made a loaf of monkey bread with a potato dough (it was almost like a brioche there was so much butter in it) and we had leftover chicken livers eaten with bites of monkey bread (which is like bubble bread). I actually don't believe in cholesterol. If the chicken livers come from free-range, maybe organic chickens, are the livers still toxic? Is it just that livers, by their function, are toxic?

Thank you for the cassoulet recipe, John. It sounds so delicious and I like that you didn't confit the goose; confit always taste too salty and tough to me. What exactly does a cassole look like? There's a line drawing in E. David's French Provincial Ckg. but it's for one portion and looks like a shallow flowerpot. She refers to another drawing in the book which isn't that helpful. Is there a cover? Why does the bottom look smaller than the top--is it for exposure of all ingredients? The NY Times had a recipe quite a while ago for an Italian cassoulet-like dish that I cook (with some changes to the recipe) for dinner parties. You cook cannellini beans with chopped-up pancetta, a little celery, garlic, onion, carrot, thyme in some chicken stock until the beans are tender and most of liquid gone. Meanwhile really brown well-seasoned cut-up duck (or I think goose would also be good) in a little olive oil. Then brown pieces of Italian sweet sasage in the fat. Drain off most of the fat, deglaze pan with red wine and then put that and the duck pieces, sausage, beans, the rind part of a piece of parmesean (and more stock if too dry) in a pot that can go in the oven. I use a French earthenware casserole with a handles on the side and a cover. Then bake in oven, covered for a while, and then uncovered to get a little crusty till everything is blended together, duck is very tender, and most of liquid is gone. I've made this in September with grilled figs wrapped in pancetta, diced-up heirloom tomato salad with basil and mustard dressing, and a clafouti-cake with peaches and raspberries for dessert (or other fruit combinations). (Recipe for that is in Michael Bauer's The Secrets of Success Cookbook; it needs to be overcooked, almost burnt. In the winter I'd think of something else to start and make Patricia Well's pear tarte tatin.

Oh, this is making me drool.

There's a wonderful book in the old Time-Life series called Creole and Acadian, very informative, charming and evocative text written by Peter Feibleman. And the recipes still work.

Wilfrid, was it your suggestion to move this into its own thread? If so, thanks, this is great. I think I mentioned an old cookbook called Innards and Other Variety Meats by Jana Allen and Margaret Gin, 101 Productions, San Francisco, 1974 that is a trove of information on this topic, with good instructions on how to clean various parts. They have a glorious recipe for crisp roasted pig's head with oyster sauce, bourbon and honey. (Does anyone know where to get pigs' head in NY?) Actually I know almost nothing about Dominican food and only a bit about Puerto Rican food. I used to be able to get salted pig feet at Puerto Rican meat stores around Ludlow, Forsythe, but I bet they've been gentrified out of existence. Dominican sancocho sounds so delicious. No, mofongo is different than stewed-type cuchifrito. And, I think they really use green bananas -- they're left whole and they're too small to be platanos. I love pork more than anything, but I've read recipes and descriptions for some sort of stew made with lamb insides in Greece? Maybe in Wright's Mediterranean book? Any idea where to get that? Queens? 9th Avenue? The butchers on 9th Avenue? And what about tongue? I thought it was gross when I was a kid, but I had some in a port and raisin sauce that changed my mind.

Mamster, actually I think the recipes in Cracking the Coconut may end up focusing on central Thailand (although I'm not quite clear what central Thailand encompasses; I thought Bangkok was in S Thailand, but maybe it's central?). I'd just finishing drinking some very lovely Australian dessert wine with a high alcohol content when I posted last night and was a little fuzzy. I looked at the book more closely today and the recipes for pastes, sauces seem to be a progression from the simplest and earliest to those used today both in north and center. This is becoming both pedantic and tedious, but I just want to add that while I may have made it sound so, this isn't a food history but a very useable cookbook (with lots of recipes) that shows the logic behind the cuisine that people cook at home in Thailand today. It also has a whole section on pounding ingredients for pastes in a Thai mortar and pestle, and a wonderful explanation and recipe for sticky rice and how to use the strange spitoon-shaped pot and straw hat contraption you cook it in. Is there a sticky rice thread anywhere? It was fascination with sticky rice eaten with your fingers that got me interested in Thai and Laotian food to begin with. I used to see Edna Lewis in the Union Square Greenmarket and she was so beautiful. A Taste of Country Cooking was one of the first cookbooks I ever owned; I love her descriptions of her life growing up in Freetown, VA. She supposedly is writing a cookbook on Southern food in collaboration with Scott Peacock, but I haven't heard anything about it in a while. I hope she's still in good health. Does anything know anything current about her?

I liked Cracking the Coconut because it tries to give a historical background to modern Thai food. It emphasizes techniques and ingredients found more often in north and northeastern Thailand, where you get a mixing of Thai and Lao peoples and where the food is probably more like Ur-Thai food. She stresses salt and black pepper rather than fish sauce and chiles in her introduction to the seasonings chapter because originally Thai food used salt (salt was an important trade commodity) and a rather yucky concoction of fermented fish and salt called padek that's still used today in the north and NE; fish sauce was a later introduction and is still favored more in the south than the north (where they still use padek); and chiles were introduced by Europeans. Originally, instead of chiles, Thai peppercorns were prized. She says "in ancient times...Thai pepper chile paste, or seasoning paste, consisted only of salt, wild onion and Thai peppercorns, diluted with fermented fish. From this humble formula comes a magic potion.... This seasoning paste was and still is the basis for all Thai dishes." Later in the chapter she has pages and pages on what she calls "the supporting cast: chiles and fish sauce." Truly sorry to be so pedantic, but I love this book and feel it gives the best real background and explanations to Thai food. Parts of it are very dense and the recipes for main dishes may seem secondary to all the pastes and sauces; she really is trying to teach the logic behind a cuisine. I once tried to write a Laotian cookbook with people from NE Thailand and was so excited when I found Cracking the Coconut because it seemed to unlock so many mysteries of the why behind the food that my nonexistent Lao and my friends' sketchy English had left unexplained. I think the other Thai book you mentioned focuses more on southern Thai food -- I've looked at it but I don't have it It would also be kind of funny if we someday find out that the food we get in many Thai restaurants in America now is somewhat like the Americanized Cantonese food that used to be the norm in the U.S.