Feasts in History

          Although some people disparage Thanksgiving as a gluttonous and gormandizing occasion, it seems almost frugal in light of historical feasts. The Romans, for instance, especially in the latter days of the empire, were infamous for their lavish spreads. At one ceremonial occasion, which Julius Caesar attended, the first course consisted of sea urchins, unlimited raw oysters, scallops, cockles, thrushes on asparagus, fattened fowls, and corn fish (both black and white). Then came cockles, mussels, sea nettles, figpeckers, haunches of venison and boar, fattened fowls cooked in pastry, more figpeckers, murex, and purple fish. After that came the main dishes: sow's udders, ducks, boiled teal, hares, roasted fowls, creamed wheat, and rolls. The emperor Elagabalus served his guests sausages, made from mollusks, prawns, oysters, squid, and crab, as well as camels' feet, the combs from live chicken, tongues of peacocks and nightingales, mullets' livers, the brains of flamingos and thrushes, and the heads of parrots, pheasants, and peacocks. Our dinner of turkey, dressing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pie seems paltry and mundane in comparison.

         We usually go to some trouble to set a grand table—linen tablecloth and napkins, napkin rings, the best silverware and serving dishes, the good china, crystal wine glasses. But during late Renaissance in Europe, tables were laid with several layers of tablecloths, each to be lifted in turn as new courses were brought in. Napkins were folded in complex shapes, such as flames, birds, columns, arches, trophies. At a banquet in honor of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici, each napkin enclosed a little bird, which flew way when the guest opened the folds. At one nuptials banquet in Brussels, the napkins were folded by famed napkin-folder Giovanni Milanese, who pleated the napkins to represent two castles compete with artillery, infantry and artificial fire in recognition of the royal groom's military career. The best sculptors were commissioned to make salt cellars and elaborate sculptural concoctions of sugar, such as those designed by Dorat for a banquet in Paris, depicting—in sugar, remember—the history of the goddess Minerva. At court, the most coveted jobs were those of the carver and of him who unfolded the king's napkin and laid it in his lap.

          We might decorate the Thanksgiving table with autumn leaves and tiny pumpkins, but entertainment is usually simply conversation—oh, and football on TV, of course. Renaissance banquets, on the other hand, became theatrical events in themselves, involving masques, processions, and allegories. At the Brussels banquet I just mentioned a masque was performed by "eight aristocratic children escorted by musicians and torchbearers" that ended with the presentation of posies of artificial flowers. Then the tables were cleared for the ball.

          Such elaborate dinners are but pictures in history now not even mimicked by royalty or heads of state, and we in our homes share far simpler feasts. The emphasis of our harvest celebration banquet is not on theater or decoration but on the food. To my way of thinking, that's where it should be.

Next week: "Emma Lou's Fried Apple Pies"

The End of the Story about Peppers

         For years I had to avoid peppers because of my allergy. I had to ask at every restaurant the ingredients of every food I might order. People who ate out with me got used to the spiel. For Christmas one year my sister gave me a script to hand to my waitperson: "I have an allergy to peppers—green peppers, bell peppers, hot peppers, pepper flakes, pepper sauce, cayenne, Tabasco, paprika—all peppers. But not black pepper. Black pepper isn't a real pepper. I can't eat food that has been cooked on a grill that previously had peppers on it. I can't eat off a plate that has peppers painted on it. If my waitperson is named Pepper I'll have to have a different one. Thank you for making my dining experience a pleasant one." Only the parts about the plate and the name are an exaggeration Everything else was a part of my spiel.

          Sometime waiters were careless. In spite of my having explained the peppers allergy to my waitperson at breakfast in a restaurant on the northern Oregon Coast, one bite of my potatoes alerted me that their reddish cast was paprika. I ate no more, but one bite was enough. Walking down the beach after breakfast, I suddenly felt the swords-in-the-stomach precursor to the bombs in the bowels. I turned back at once, walked fast, walked even faster, realized I wasn't going to make it, looked for something to shelter me on the long wide stretches of sand, made my way to a driftwood log, crouched behind it, and put on my ostrich mentality because what else could I do?

          Only once did a waiter berate me for being so hard to please. I never ate in that restaurant again. Most experiences were more pleasant and sometimes charming. At an Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, I looked at the menu in dismay. Was there nothing I could eat? When I told the waiter about my allergy, he corroborated that there was nothing on the menu I could eat. "The chef will make you something special," he said. So the chef did, and it was divine. At another restaurant in Tacoma, Washington, the waitress told me that next time I should let them know a day ahead that I was coming, and they would create something for me. At a small restaurant in Greece, I was invited to go right into the kitchen to make sure the cook, who spoke no English, understood about the peppers problem.

          Yet inevitably, at some point, some kind of pepper would sneak into something I ate, and I would suffer the usual bout of sickness, the double-me-over swords in the stomach and the unending trips to the bathroom.

          One day, on my way to Eugene, Oregon, I bought a sandwich at a deli to eat on the road. I checked ingredients before I bought it, of course, but either "pepperoni" wasn't listed or I misread the placard, because when I had eaten about half the sandwich, I thought in alarm, "That tasted like pepperoni." So I stopped and opened the sandwich, and, yes, it was pepperoni, or what was left of it. Oh, god, I thought. Now I am going to be sick, and I hate being sick from peppers. Resignedly I folded up the rest of the sandwich, drove on to Eugene, and stoically faced an assured sleepless night.

          To my surprise I woke up the next morning, and—I hadn't been sick! That was interesting. So I ate the rest of the sandwich. I didn't get sick! It seemed miraculous. Could I eat peppers again? Cautiously, meal by meal, pepper by pepper, I experimented. Green peppers in a salad. Salsa with chips. I ate sausages again. I made the beautiful black bean and red pepper salad I had once enjoyed so much. I returned red

pepper flakes to my baked shrimp. Whatever peppers I had inadvertently eaten before I ate the sandwich with pepperoni were the last peppers to make me sick. I wondered with chagrin how long I had been able to eat peppers without knowing it. How many times had I unnecessarily asked whether there were peppers in a food I wanted to eat? How many times had I turned away from a Thai or Mexican restaurant when I didn't need to? How many times had I passed up scrumptious looking dishes at a potluck dinner because I didn't know what was in them?

          Such regrets are minor. Delight is foremost. I had discovered I could eat peppers only a month before a trip to Sicily. It was pure pleasure to be able to eat freely. As suddenly and mysteriously as it had appeared fourteen years ago, my peppers allergy had now disappeared. My culinary horizons have expanded again. I am free of the peppers allergy.

Next week: "Feasts in History"

Recipes from this post:

     Black bean and red pepper salad

     Baked shrimp, with pepper flakes

   

BLACK BEAN AND RED PEPPER SALAD

serves 8

Dressing

Ingredients:

1/2 cup water

16 dates (about 4 ounces)

2-3 limes

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons dried oregano

4 teaspoons honey

4 teaspoons ground cumin

4 teaspoons ground coriander

Preparation

Boil dates in water for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand 1 hour to soften. Squeeze the limes to yield 1/2 cup juice.

To make

Put the date mixture in a blender with the rest of the ingredients. Purée. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Salad

Ingredients

4 15-ounce cans black beans

1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper

1/2 cup chopped yellow bell pepper

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

1/2 cup chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Preparation

Drain and rinse the beans. Chop all the peppers, red onion, and parsley.

To make

Combine beans, bell peppers, onion, and parsley in a bowl. Toss with enough dressing to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Beautiful!

BAKED SHRIMP, WITH PEPPER FLAKES

serves 3

Ingredients

1 pound large shrimp

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine

4 large garlic cloves

2 tablespoons capers

1/2 cup Kalamata olives

2 medium tomatoes

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) feta cheese

1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes (or more)

1 lemon

Preparation

Peel and devein shrimp. Peel and mince garlic. Drain capers. Pit and slice the olives. Peel and seed the tomatoes and dice into 1/2-inch pieces. Chop the basil and parsley. Crumble the cheese. Zest the lemon. Preheat oven to 375º.

To make

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, then transfer to a 9 x 12-inch baking dish, spreading evenly. Bake until the shrimp turns pink, 15-25 minutes, depending on the size of the shrimp. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Confessions of a Picky Eater

          I hate picky eaters. When I offer someone my chocolate strawberry bavarian only to hear, "I appreciate the effort, but I can't eat chocolate and I don't like strawberries," or when a friend comes

Feat cheese tart

to lunch for which I've made my very best feta cheese tart, only to have him tell me he doesn't like mushrooms and isn't a big fan of feta, either—well, look, it's not like I'm giving them tofu and dulse. It's no wonder I'm contemptuous of picky eaters.

          Children are the worst. I didn't expect my friend's adolescent son to eat my corn and cheddar cheese soup, but I figured I couldn't lose with a carrot cake, especially my sister's fabulous version. I was wrong. Kyle turned up his nose at it—that much a picky eater. I was not a picky eater as a kid. I ate heartily and was easy to please, and, later, when I traveled, I ate all the local dishes—blood sausage in France, kefir in Russia, boiled pudding in England. One of the best feasts of my life was a vast array of burritos, tamales, enchiladas, chili rellenos, salsas, and two dozen other dishes I couldn't name spread down a long outdoor table at a private hacienda in Mexico. No picky eater I!

Corn and cheddar cheese soup

          Until now. To my rue and my shame, I could now be called a picky eater

          Actually, I've always disliked coconut, but one dislike of an infrequently used ingredient can be forgiven When I became vegetarian, I never expected any cook to cater to my diet. At any meal, I simply ate everything except the meat. Well, unless it had wild mushrooms in it. After becoming nearly deathly ill from the "safe" shaggy mane mushroom, I swore off all wild mushrooms.

          So—no meat, no coconut, no wild mushrooms. And then one night a few years ago I got horribly ill on cabañereo peppers, so I thought, okay, no cabañeros, either. Not too long after that I was driving home after a fabulous dinner at the Jacksonville Inn when severe stomach cramps had me biting my knuckles and screaming in pain, and I would have been doubled over, too, except the steering wheel kept me upright. By the time I was driving through the dark and empty forest, I was suffering from such severe and sudden diarrhea I was glad the forest was both dark and empty.

          The common ingredient was red pepper flakes, so now I thought I had an allergy to hot peppers, but soon after that incident I met a woman who mentioned she had an allergy to all peppers (the capsicum family). When I asked her what happened when she ate them and she said, "Swords in the stomach" (followed, in my case, by bombs in the bowels), I knew I, too, was allergic to capsicum.

         Now I scrutinize all food labels and inquire about ingredients of restaurant fare. Eating out has become difficult. I might as well not even step foot inside a Mexican or Thai restaurant, and because the biggest fad in contemporary cuisine is hot peppers, a typical conversation with a waiter goes like this:

          "I think I'll have the eggplant burger—if there are no peppers in it."

          "Oh, the peppers are blended into the sauce; you'll never notice."

          "No, no. this is an allergy—and you don't want me getting sick here."

          "What about the pasta salad, then?"

          "No, it has chicken in it, and I don't eat meat. What's in your Chinese stir-fry?"

          "Cashews, tofu, coconut …"

          "No, thank you. Does the garden burger have any peppers in it?"

          "I'll check….The cook says it comes in a package and we can't say for sure."

          "Can't do it. Isn't there anything here I can eat?"

          "I'll tell you what. I'll fix you an avocado sandwich special." And then—this really happened—he came back and said, "I'm so sorry. We're out of avocados."

          Contempt returns to haunt me. I would like to apologize now to Kyle and Lee and Tom and Sylvia and anyone else who is a picky eater. I apologize to all of you who won't eat onions or can't eat wheat or hate strawberries. I understand, now. I am one of you.

Next week: "The End of the Story about Peppers"

Recipes from this post

     Feta cheese tart

     Chocolate strawberry bavarian

     Corn and cheddar cheese soup

     Celebration carrot cake

FETA CHEESE TART

serves 6

The crust

Ingredients

1/3 cup butter

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

(1/4 teaspoon salt if you're using unsalted butter)

3 tablespoons (or more) cold buttermilk

To make

Cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or two knives (or whatever electrical implement is suitable). When the mixture resembles cornmeal, add enough buttermilk that the dough comes together into a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it chill on the back porch or in a refrigerator.

The tart

Ingredients

Pastry for 10-inch tart pan

1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Preparation

Remove the dough from its chilling spot and let it sit for 10 minutes. Lightly flour a working surface and a rolling pin. Preheat the oven to 300º.

To make

Roll the crust out to a 12-inch disk. Put the pie crust into a tart pan and prick the bottom and sides of the crust. Brush it with the egg wash. Bake the crust at 300º for 20 minutes, until it is golden brown. Cool.

The filling

Ingredients

1 pound fresh mushrooms

4 tablespoons butter, divided

3 medium tomatoes

1/2 pound fresh spinach

2 ounces feta cheese

1 tablespoon dried whole oregano

2-3 eggs, to make 1/2 cup

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

Preparation

Halve the mushrooms (or quarter them if they're big). Cut the tomatoes into 8 wedges each. Wash the spinach. Crumble the feta cheese. Whisk the eggs and cream together. Preheat the oven to 325º.

To make

Sauté the mushrooms in 2 tablespoons butter until they are brown, about 8-10 minutes. Drain them. Set them aside. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter to the skillet and sauté the tomatoes until they render juice and no longer look raw. Drain them well and set aside. Wilt the spinach in a small saucepan over medium heat. (Do not add any liquid.) Into the pastry shell put half the crumbled feta cheese. Top that with the mushrooms, then the tomatoes, then the spinach, then the oregano, then the remaining feta cheese. Add salt and pepper to the whisked-together eggs and cream, whisking afresh, and pour this mixture over the filling, whisking while pouring. Bake at 325º for 1 1/2 hours, rotating the pan after 45 minutes to allow the tart to brown more evenly. Cool 30 minutes before serving.

CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY BAVARIAN

Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

1/3 cup water

1 2/3 cups milk

2 eggs

3 cups ricotta cheese

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Preparation

Sprinkle gelatin over water in medium saucepan. Let stand 5 minutes. Separate egg. Divide sugar into two portions: 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons. Butter a 9-inch springform pan.

To make

Combine milk and egg yolks till well blended. Add to gelatin mixture. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, till gelatin dissolves. Mix cheese, 2 cups sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and one-third gelatin mixture. Blend well. Combine remaining gelatin mixture and cheese mixture in a large bowl. Chill to consistency of unbeaten egg white.

Beat egg whites 1-2 minutes. Gradually add 2 tablespoons sugar, beating till stiff peaks form.

Gently fold egg whites into chilled chocolate mixture. Pour into prepared pan. Chill 3 hours.

To finish

Ingredients

Chilled bavarian

1 (1-ounce) square unsweetened chocolate

2 teaspoons butter

1 1/2 cups small strawberries

 Fresh mint (optional)

Preparation

Remove cake from pan and place om serving platter. Cut strawberries in half if necessary. Combine chocolate and butter in small saucepan. Cook over low heat until melted.

To serve

Place strawberries decoratively on cake. Drizzle chocolate mixture over in diamond patterns. Decorate with a sprig of mint if desired.

CORN AND CHEDDAR CHEESE SOUP

serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 large potato

2 cups boiling salted water

1 bay leaf

1/4 teaspoon dried sage

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

3 tablespoons butter

1 onion

3 tablespoons flour

1 1/4 cup heavy cream (or 3/4 cup non-instant milk powder plus 1 1/4 cups water)

kernels of 2 ears of corn

chives and parsley

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

salt and pepper

1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese (4 ounces)

4-5 tablespoons dry white wine

Preparation

Peel and dice the potato. Chop the onion and the parsley and chives. Cut the corn kernels off the cob. If you use powdered milk, mix it with water to yield 1 1/4 cups double thick milk. Grate the cheese.

To make

Boil the diced potato in the salted water with bay leaf, sage, and cumin seeds until potato pieces are just barely tender (15-20 minutes). Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the chopped onion until translucent. Add the flour to the butter and onions to make a roux and cook for 1 minute to get rid of the raw taste. Remove from heat and gradually add the cream (or double milk, for less fat without sacrificing too much of the richness), stirring all the while with a whisk. When it is smooth, pour this sauce into the potatoes and their water, adding the corn kernels, then the parsley, chives, and other seasonings. Simmer the soup gently for about 10 minutes. Then stir in the grated cheese and the wine and stir until cheese is completely melted. Correct the seasonings and serve.

CELEBRATION CARROT CAKE

Topped with sunflower seeds

services 15-20

The cake

Ingredients

4 eggs

3/4 cup honey

1 1/2 cups oil

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

4 cups grated carrots

Preparation

Grate the carrots. Grese a 9x13x2-inch pan. Preheat the oven to 325º.

To make

Beat the eggs. Add honey and oil and beat again. Add the dry ingredients and beat till blended. Do not overbeat. Fold in the carrots. Spoon the batter into the greased pan and bake at 325º for 40 minutes. Turn off the oven, but leave the cake in it until it is nearly cool.

The icing

Ingredients

7 tablespoons butter

8 ounces cream cheese

Honey

Chopped nuts

Preparation

Be sure the butter and cream cheese are soft. Chop the nuts.

To make

Beat the butter and cream cheese till fluffy. Slowly beat the honey into the butter and cream cheese till the mixture is sweetened to your liking. Add as many nuts as you like.

To assemble

Frost the cooled cake with the cream cheese icing.

     

A Boiled Egg in the Wilderness

          One day last summer on a hike in the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, I had a hard-boiled egg for lunch. Maybe the spectacular setting, fresh mountain air, and good exercise influenced my taste perceptions, but I couldn't stop exclaiming over how good that egg was. Finally one of my hiking partners asked if that egg was really any different from any other.

          Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it was. I buy my eggs, in season, from Bill and Mary, down the road. They have a mingled flock of several breeds, about 60 chickens in a large fenced-in yard to keep dogs and foxes at bay. The roosters strut about the yard with their sleek iridescent black tails gracefully arched and their necks protectively stretched as chickens cluck and peck around them. These days the chickens give about three dozen eggs a day. Pretty soon that'll be up to five dozen. Bill complains when customers buy more than a dozen eggs at once, leaving none for the next customer.

          "It seems they would want to buy another dozen later, anyway," I said, "to have fresher eggs." Bill agreed but said that even two weeks later, these eggs are more fresh than anything you could buy in a supermarket. 

          Their shells range from creamy white to deep beige to pale green. When I break an egg into a dish, the dark yellow yolk domes high in the translucent white. My scrambled eggs are a deep yellow. Over-easy eggs keep a thick yolk that runs creamy over toast. Bill told me about one customer who uses the eggs to make pasta. "The pasta is so yellow people ask if she put food coloring in it," he told me.

          In the eighteenth century a chef was not considered worth his salt unless he could cook eggs a hundred ways. Could I do that? I came up with about thirty ways—various ways to fry, boil, scramble, poach, or coddle eggs; recipes for soufflés, quiches, timbales, meringues, and custards. At that point, out of ideas, I consulted the cookbooks.

          In The Joy of Cooking  I found that if I whipped egg whites and baked them with the yolks inserted in indentations, I would have eggs in a nest. My Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking through the Ages gives a recipe for marbleized tea eggs (boil the eggs, crack their shells, reboil the eggs in their cracked shells in tea) and one for Scotch woodcock, a rich concoction of butter, cream and egg yolks that is, the editors claim, "no less delectable for want of a genuine woodcock." The same cookbook has a recipe for the beautiful-sounding oeufs a la neige: snow-eggs.

          How many ways is that? Maybe if I count asparagus quiche different from broccoli quiche, ginger soufflé from cheese soufflé, and so forth, and if I add things like chess pie and angel food cake, which aren't included among egg recipes but might count because they are mostly eggs, maybe I could think of a hundred ways to cook an egg. But however I cooked it, I would know that, if I used eggs from the farm, all those dishes would have all diners exclaiming, "How good that was!"

Next week: "Confessions of a Picky Eater"

Recipes from this post: 

     Eggs in a nest

     Oeufs a la neige

     

EGGS IN A NEST

(from Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker)

serves 1-2

Ingredients

2 eggs

Salt and pepper

chives (optional)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350º. Separate the eggs. Chop the chives. Butter a small ovenproof dish. 

To make

Beat the egg whites till very stiff, then transfer them to the buttered dish. In the center of this mound make two indentations. Slip the egg yolks into these cavities. Bake until the eggs are set, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with chopped chives to enhance the presentation.

OEUFS A LA NEIGE

(I haven't actually made this recipe, but it sounds so good I thought I would pass it on to you, from the Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking through the Ages.)

serves 5-6

Ingredients

5 eggs

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 teaspoons sugar

2 cups milk

1 2-inch piece vanilla bean (or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)

2 tablespoons cognac or rum (optional)

Preparation

Separate the eggs. Scald the milk in a deep, wide saucepan. Prepare a double boiler with simmering water.

To make

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar and salt to the point of soft peaks. Beat in 3/4 of a cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, to make a very thick and stiff meringue. In the scalded milk add 3 tablespoons of sugar and the vanilla bean. Shape the meringues with a large tablespoon and poach in the milk over a very low heat for about 3 minutes. Use two forks to turn them gently and continue poaching on that side. Remove with a slotted spoon to a serving dish.

       Beat the egg yolks until very thick and pour into the hot milk in a thin stream, beating constantly. Scrape vanilla seeds into the custard, or, if you're using the extract, add it now.  Cook the custard in the top of a double boiler over 1 inch of barely simmering water, stirring with your favorite wooden spoon until the mixtures coats the spoon. 

          Cool. Add cognac and pour around the meringues. Caramelize the remaining sugar and dribble it over the meringues.