eG Foodblog: balmagowry - Back to the future....

[balmagowry]

Was it Tuesday that I was BAD? Must have been.

And Wednesday was the day of the Microwave Misadventure.

Also on Wednesday, BTW, I made a small Expotition downstairs to the bunker where I hoard all my hedges against obsolescence.

Here, for instance,

are my extra MiniChops! One NIB, one Nw/oB, and one spare bowl/blade, also new.

And here

is my spare Mixmaster; identical to the one I actually use - if a bit grubbier. I keep the beaters upstairs - if I'm in a hurry and making several different things, it's often much more convenient to switch to a second set than to wash the first - but the rest of it lives down here for spare parts... Just In Case.

Somewhere around here I also have a duplicate of my Singer Featherlight sewing machine.

Hey, don't look at me like that! What am I supposed to do? I go to garage sales and I see these things for $5 or $10 (a mere $3, in the case of the MiniChops!), and I should, what, ignore them and walk away? Who else appreciates or needs them as I do? Well, OK - you guys, a lot of you. But you're not here, and I am, and I have room for them, and there's nothing wrong with having an extra... or two... or three... of anything you love and may never find again.

So there.

Blessings on that Boy and his leftovers!

Thanks to him I eat a nice substantial lunch.

Also thanks to him,

we come to a decision about dinner: there's definitely enough pork to do Kitchen Sink Fried Rice tonight.

(And those potatoes will be sure to come in handy for... something.... )

Edited May 2, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Pan]

Pan, I loved your story about the merchants and the king--reminded me of my favorite noir fairy tale "Great Claus and Little Claus" from HC Andersen. Too long to tell here, but one of the best lines is "Who'll buy my dead grandmother for a bushel of gold?" You definitely have to read it to know how funny this is.

I don't remember that story, but I'm glad you liked the one I told. I translated that story into Italian when I was in Italy, and the Italians loved it. They said "That should be an Italian story!" My Chinese and Korean friends have also found it amusing.

[balmagowry]

Kitchen Sink Fried Rice is simplicity itself. As its name (which I think I must have stolen from Kitchen Sink Soup... not to be confused with Cream of Refrigerator Soup, which of course is quite a different thing) implies, it includes a little of everything - that is, everything I happen to feel like putting in.

This always includes pork, and when possible it always includes shrimp. Tonight it also includes:

onion, celery, cabbage, snow-peas, un-snow-peas, water chestnuts, and whatever sprouts the Fruitery happened to have.

And eggs, of course, and ginger.

Also some sherry. And soy sauce. I think that's it.

And, oh yeah... rice.

This is where the infamous antediluvian cooktop stands me in good stead: one of the burners is improperly adjusted, and produces a much higher and more powerful flame than it is supposed to. Every man who has entered my orbit in the past 14 years has kindly offered to fix it for me; to every one of them I have said the same thing: "what are you, CRAZY?!"

Not that it quite measures up to those fabulous conflagrations they have to work with in Chinese restaurants - but it's at least a closer approximation than I've been able to squeeze out of any other stove.

Out comes the trusty wok (I have two or three of them - four if you count the one downstairs in the bunker - five if you count the leetle one - but this one is my favorite, mostly because of the handle), and the assembly line begins.

First,

the ginger.

Then,

the onion, celery, and cabbage... and when those are almost done they are joined, briefly briefly, by the snow-peas and sprouts.

Next,

the pork. It was already fully cooked, of course (a bit too fully, actually - sorry, Mr. Boy ), but it'll look and feel and taste happier when it's browned.

Even I am not quite They-Call-Me-Chief enough to photograph the frying of the rice and the addition of the eggs - though for the record I should like to announce that for the first time in my life I got the eggs exactly right.

Anyway, once that's done,

the Kitchen Sink gets dumped back in!

It all gets smooshed around together and flavored up with sherry and soy,

and it spends a short time covered, over a low fire, to make sure everybody is heated through,

and then...

... it gets et.

Edited May 1, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[bleudauvergne]

That looks so good, Lisa. I have that exact knife. Wierd. Did you add any eggs to it? I just sent 4 guests home, sorry I'v been missing in action.

I am in total agreement with your discard discord. How can anyone do such a thing?

[balmagowry]

That looks so good, Lisa.    I have that exact knife.  Wierd.  Did you add any eggs to it?  I just sent 4 guests home, sorry I'v been missing in action. 

Two eggs. They were a little shy, so they tried to hide behind the bowl of snow-peas - that's probably why you didn't notice them in the second picture.

I think the knife is a lot like the one Anna N wrote about in the Cheap Nasty Asian Knife thread - no? IAC, this is what it made me think of. Much more useful and maneuverable, for light cutting like vegetables, than my two big steel Chinese cleavers.

I am in total agreement with your discard discord.  How can anyone do such a thing?

And yet it's done all the time. It irritates me so much that I have made a point, in at least two recipes I can think of, of writing "... and do not throw the [whatever] away!..." In our second attempt at Warden Pie, we poached the pears whole in a vinegared ginger syrup, and when they were done we squabbled over who would get the larger "half" of the piece of ginger - it was so good! So of course that went into the instructions for the recipe. "Remove the ginger. Eat it. It is delicious." Because you know that most people would just throw it away without even thinking about it if it isn't actually a component of the finished dish. I think the next time I find myself writing such a recipe I will say something like: "this is too good to share with your guests, no matter how much you may like them; keep it for yourself and enjoy every bite - haven't you earned it?"

[balmagowry]

This is almost it - the antepenultimate post of the Glob, as my father calls it.

Before moving on to the pen- and the -ultimate, I want to shift gears for a moment and tell you about a few exciting events that occurred during the week, which was racing by so fast that I didn't then dare take the time to report on them.

One day around the beginning of the week, The Boy called me from his house in CT, and asked me, in an elaborately nonchalant manner, how to hard-boil an egg. Mindful of recent eGCI courses (which I hadn't actually had a chance to study yet) as well as certain scholarly discussions on that subject, I was more wary about my reply than I would ordinarily have been. Took it far enough to establish that what he considers hard-boiled and what I consider hard-boiled are by no means the same thing. Left it at that. That was the last I heard about it until I received an e-mail from him under the subject heading "Those EGulleteers who have no faith in television." What th'? Attached without comment to the e-mail was this picture:

I still had no idea what he was on about, and I'm afraid I dismissed the whole thing from my mind as "another of The Boy's wacko notions" and didn't give it another thought. Until...

... he got home a couple of days later and said, "Well? Did you get my e-mail? Did you send my message to those eGullet people?"

I of course looked him in the eye and told him he was off his rocker. He is used to this. He didn't bat an eye. Instead, he beckoned me into the dining room and proudly displayed the following items spread out on the table:

I'm a little dense, sometimes. I still didn't quite make the connection. I had to go up and look at his e-mail again, and even then he had to explain that not only had he ordered the Eggstractor (!) - which I did know, though I had forgotten about it - he had ordered two of them, one for CT and one for here, and all those other jobbies had... wait a minute, did they come with it? no, they didn't, he had been tempted into ordering them at some wonderful discount (YOURS for only x.99 if you order two Eggstractors NOW!), and here they were, and... uh-oh, I don't even remember what the shiny-topped one is, but the white one is a miniature rice cooker, and the main thing is, The Boy's message to YOU is:

(yes, I know I already said it above, but apparently it bears repeating) - and he also says, "Oh ye of little faith, it does work... if you do it right!"

Thus The Boy, in great glee.

(Once upon a time, someone said to The Boy, "You don't go shopping; you go buying." She was right.)

That is Event # 1.

Event # 2 was the arrival of River Road II - the second volume of the cookbook of the Junior League of Baton Rouge. This is important because it contains one of the supposedly definitive recipes for Red Velvet Cake. (I shall have more to say on that subject, one of these days....) So important that I feel a bit guilty for lumping it in, photographically, with Event # 3.

Event # 3 took place in Gilgo. Event # 3 was the discovery of something I had never before seen, didn't know my mother had. It turned up at the bottom of a pile of things on a shelf and was an astonishment to all present. I don't know enough about the history of the Time-Life Cooking series to be certain (I have most of 'em, but I still can't tell for sure), but I wonder whether this might not have been their forerunner. It dates from 1958, the year after I was born,

and it's like them in many ways, but bigger, thicker, more ostentatious, more technicolor, more encyclopedic. (America's answer to the Larousse Gastronomique, almost.) And instead of the little spiral-bound recipe books comes this fabulous thing

which is nothing more or less than hundreds and hundreds of pre-perforated index file cards with duplicates of all the recipes (the salmon-colored protruberance at the right is some of the alphabetized dividers, which have come loose over the years). There is an explanation on the inside cover, ending with the discreet remark, "if you prefer some other method of organization, you can always write on the backs of the index cards."

Just look at the '50s opulence of the thing:

It's so... so innocent. So sincere.

In a way, it reminds me of the diner.

Edited May 2, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[balmagowry]

All right, my dears... this is the penultimate post of the Glob.

I almost almost almost made my last self-imposed modified and re-modified deadline. Here's how close I came. Behold, I shall show you the Collage du Village - my ode to some of the eateries and provideries of Babylon. And below it I shall place an open doorway, like the door to Sherry's from last Saturday's adventure. And as of now that doorway shall not yet be live - or rather, it shall be live, but it shall not lead anywhere. Because although according to my bizarre body clock it ain't midnight yet, y'know what? I'm tired. So for now I'm going to leave it at that, because I want to leave a clear field for my successor.

But if anyone is really dying to see any of the detail behind the collage... then come back here quietly in a day or two and try clicking the doorway again. I'm not going to mess with this post after it's up (and after I have then come back to edit the inevitable typos ), but as soon as I can (i.e., tomorrow, I hope, because it won't take long at all) I will finish the Babylon out-and-about page, off-site... just in case....

Here, then, I give you

and here, the doorway which will lead you to the answer...

to the age-old question...

How many miles to Babylon....

.

[balmagowry]

[bleudauvergne]

Thank you, it was a wonderful blog.

[ms. victoria]

That was a lovely passing of the torch, I am off to go start the new thread. Thank you, Lisa.

[andiesenji]

Here's a kotletkii bowl and chopper.

The bowl is just a plain wooden bowl. The chopper - I don't know what else these are ever used for. I don't like that little slit in the middle, nor do I have any idea what it's for.

The slit on the chopper is for slicing. Usually used for potatoes and onions.

I collect antique kitchen gadgets and utensils. I have quite a few choppers, single, double and triple, various types of handles.

This one was made in the late thirties for people who had limited means and small kitchens to combine two implements in one.

It is difficult to sharpen the slicer blade, some of the ones I have seen have been hammered flat.

It can be sharpened with one of the diamond nail files but it really isn't worth the trouble.

[balmagowry]

Here's a kotletkii bowl and chopper.

The bowl is just a plain wooden bowl. The chopper - I don't know what else these are ever used for. I don't like that little slit in the middle, nor do I have any idea what it's for.

The slit on the chopper is for slicing. Usually used for potatoes and onions.

I collect antique kitchen gadgets and utensils. I have quite a few choppers, single, double and triple, various types of handles.

This one was made in the late thirties for people who had limited means and small kitchens to combine two implements in one.

It is difficult to sharpen the slicer blade, some of the ones I have seen have been hammered flat.

It can be sharpened with one of the diamond nail files but it really isn't worth the trouble.

Thank you! I always figured it had to be for some kind of slicing; I just never figured out the relationship between that and its primary purpose, only knew that it was a pain because of stuff getting caught in it. I have a total of four such choppers, all the same shape and handle type, and thisis the only one with a slit. Since in my life the sole purpose of the implement is the one I showed up-thread, I think I grew up assuming that it had been invented for Kotletkii only. Funny the ideas you get, the inferences you draw, when you're little....

I also have a wonderful antique chopper - single blade, comfortably thick wooden handle, bigger than these - that I've never thought to use for this purpose. I should try it. I should post a picture; maybe you'll be able to identify it.

[andiesenji]

I have a two-handled mezzaluna with a blade that is about 10 inches long.

I did use it in a bowl but found that it tended to "walk" on the counter even if I had a pad under it.

I bought one of the 3 1/2 thick end grain chopping blocks,

http://www.knifemerchant.com/products.asp?SRS=1 (My favorite knife man)

then took it to the local high school and had the wood shop teacher give it to the class to hollow it out on one side with an arc that just fits the mezzaluna.

I use it for chopping everything. I grow a lot of herbs and it is the best method I have found.

Nuts, meats, etc.,

I went to this method because I have arthritis in my right hand and it became difficult to grasp the regular type of chopper.

the mezz with the two verticle handles is much easier to hold.

[colestove]

THANK YOU-THANK YOU- THANK YOU One of the great joys of eGullet is the large population of facinating people with wonderful interests and marvelous insights. Your blog and all your posts are always eagerly read by me and I'm sure by many others. Thank you again for all the enjoyment you bring to me.

colestove

[balmagowry]

I have a two-handled mezzaluna with a blade that is about 10 inches long.

I did use it in a bowl but found that it tended to "walk" on the counter even if I had a pad under it. 

I bought one of the 3 1/2 thick end grain chopping blocks,

http://www.knifemerchant.com/products.asp?SRS=1  (My favorite knife man)

then took it to the local high school and had the wood shop teacher give it to the class to hollow it out on one side with an arc that just fits the mezzaluna.

I use it for chopping everything.  I grow a lot of herbs and it is the best method I have found.

Nuts, meats, etc.,

I went to this method because I have arthritis in my right hand and it became difficult to grasp the regular type of chopper. 

the mezz with the two verticle handles is much easier to hold.

A brilliant solution, even if one didn't have arthritis! And thank you for reminding me of the mezzaluna - I have a marvelous old one of those too, somewhere here. (Ahhhh, garage sales!)

EDIT to add: Funny, about putting chopping bowl on counter - I nver thought of that. The tradition for Kotletkii (at least, the only way I've ever done it or seen it done) is to sit and hold the chopping bowl in one's lap. Now I see why.

Edited May 2, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[balmagowry]

THANK YOU-THANK YOU- THANK YOU  One of the great joys of eGullet is the large population of facinating people with wonderful interests and marvelous insights.  Your blog and all your posts are always eagerly read by me and I'm sure by many others.  Thank you again for all the enjoyment  you bring to me.

colestove

And thank YOU. What could be more warming than an enthusiastic audience? (Only a big pot of rich soup, maybe, but that I can make myself! )

[andiesenji]

I seldom sit when I work in the kitchen - I have three roll around carts at various heights and different surfaces for different uses - they "park" under the center island which is a baker's bench. I bake a lot of bread and most standard counters are the wrong height for comfortable working with large batches of dough.

My kitchen is fairly large and it is easier to put heavy pans and pots and prepped foods on the carts then roll them to wherever I will be working next. One of the carts has a marble top and one end has fold-down racks for sheet pans.

I have a commerical Blodgett oven that holds up to 7 full-sized sheet pans (for shallow things such as cookies) and I needed a place to park the pans before and after baking.

I bought standard kitchen carts and had them cut down to the height I needed then had large casters put on them as the ones that came on them were not adequate for the weight.

One has a stainless steel top that is recessed 1/2 inch all around and is perfect for working with sloppy stuff as that lip keeps liquids from dripping off the sides. The third one, like the island itself has a butcher block top 6 inches thick. They are 24 x 42 and fit under the bench which is 48 in wide.

I buy the extra wide cushioned shelf liner in big rolls at Costco and use it for keeping things from sliding, particularly on the marble-topped cart. (after having a full glass bowl slide off after it stopped abruptly when I was rolling it across the kitchen and one of the wheels hit something that had fallen to the floor.)

Another reason I do not sit when doing any kind of prep is that my dogs would be right in there with me if it was within their reach. I have basenjis who are very intelligment and very curious about anything that is going on and they want to be in the middle of it if it has anything to do with food.

[balmagowry]

Oh oh oh andiesenji, you just reminded me of something silly. The verse habit runs strong in my family, and it doesn't always default to the elegantly Shakespearian, though it does try to pay proper attention to rhythm, rhyme and scansion. My uncle Blair (he of the Blair & Cookie story upthread) lives in Denver, but misses certain things you can (or could, some years ago) only get in New York. My mother once sent him a whole pastrami for Christmas, with a verse containing among other things this implied admonition to the express shipper:

...Bear your load of meat and pepper -

Onward, great pastrami-schlepper!

I must have been thinking of this some 10 years ago when I sent him (in the wake of a divorcing wife who had taken much of his batterie de cuisine with her when she left town) a new wooden bowl and Kotletkii chopper. Don't have the whole thing handy, but it was this sort of thing:

...Chop the mixture with the chopper;

Should the chopper come a-cropper,

Strop the blade upon a stropper...

... and so on.

Silly times.

EDIT to add: I don't sit for anything but this one operation, but it's a tradition I've never seen reason to break, especially as it gives me good control over the bowl. My dog can always be closed into another room for the few minutes it takes...!

Edited May 2, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[balmagowry]

NEWS FLASH of a sort! had I but known. I am just catching up on a week's worth of missed newspapers (thanks to The Glob That Ate Babylon), and only now do I discover that Ed Lowe, the quintessential Long Island writer, used his column from a week ago today to talk about the rebuilding of LI downtowns, especially Babylon - and in the process referred specifically to quite a few of the establishments in my Collage du Village, soon to be expanded on a web page near you. I don't know whether you can still even get this piece now if you're not a Newsday Premium Member, but if you want to try it's at this link. And please tell me if you try and can't get it; I have taken a copy of the text and am writing to Mr. Lowe about getting permission to reproduce it, or at least quote it heftily, on the Out-and-About page. It is just too fortuitous.

[andiesenji]

Basenjis are not fond of being shut away from the action. They are known as "the barkless dogs" but that does not mean they are mute - and, they are very clever at getting into things.

I now have a large 2 door fridge but a few years ago when I had a single door everyone who came to my home wondered why I had a large velcro strap near the top. It was to fasten the door closed because one of my basenjis learned how to open the door. Unfortunately she never learned to close it.

I love family traditions and recipes. I grew up in a household of very elderly people. My great grandmother who lived to be almost 105 - she was born in 1844 and died in 1949 when I was 10.

She came from England in 1919 with my grandfather and all of her life she kept journals and was an avid collector of recipes, and interested in the preparing of foods, unlike most Victorian ladies of her society.

She was a wonderful storyteller and often described foods she had enjoyed on her travels in Europe, Egypt and other parts of North Africa.

I have developed a couple of recipes from things she mentioned in her journals and for which I have found no references in any of my large collection of cookbooks.

Andie

[Pan]

I really enjoyed your blog, Lisa. Thanks for taking the time out to share all of that with us.

[Anna N]

...

I think the knife is a lot like the one Anna N wrote about in the Cheap Nasty Asian Knife thread - no? IAC, this is what it made me think of. Much more useful and maneuverable, for light cutting like vegetables, than my two big steel Chinese cleavers....

Almost exactly like my cheap and nasty asian knife - mine is missing the hole (for hanging) and the handle is black but the pattern on the handle is the same and the blade looks to be the same size and shape. I still consider it the number one in my small arsenal of knives and cleavers.

Many thanks for a fascinating blog with much information, many laughs and few quiet tears of empathy. Hang in - that is all we can do.

Best wishes

[balmagowry]

And thank you both for saying so. It all felt very natural to me, including the degree to which I overdid it and wiped myself out... :small wry grimace: ....

BTW Anna, it's an awfully long time ago, but I don't think that knife or indeed any of my cleavers had the hangy hole when I got them; I'm pretty sure those were added (or do I mean subtracted...?) after purchase! Otherwise how does one store them? Too big & heavy for a magnet; a drawer would blunt them in no time. In Gilgo the two big ones fortuitously happen to fit in the tiny gap between the counter and the fridge, held up by the thickness of their handles - but one can't hope for that in most places.

[paul o' vendange]

Been away for several days due to a move across country. Just wanted to say, Lisa, what a profoundly enjoyable piece of work you and your mother created in Lobscouse & Spotted Dog. "Enjoyable," to which I would add "important," except that as it is written with such lightness of touch it belies any encumbrances of grave weight (there - how's that for ponderous writing?). Thank you for the great piece of work, and for this blog.

Paul