Lo these many years ago, a UK-born boss of mine attempted to wheedle me into swifter production by offering me a small mincemeat pie if I finished a pressing task by 4 p.m. I begged to be allowed to take only half if I knocked it out by 3, and remain fully un-minced if I had everything squared away by 2.
In theory, I should love traditional mincemeat. I'm a huge fan of a meat 'n sweet one-two punch -- especially when there's cookin' booze involved -- but I've never been able to wrap my head around the flavor of suet. It's the hard fat from around the loins and kidneys of sheep and cows, isn't especially full and meaty like lard, and is possessed of a particularly high melting point, making it the perfect base fat for many classic British steamed puddings. It seems to be the definitive flavoring agent in all the mincemeat I've had, but I've not been able to convince myself to care for it. I tend to be a stickler when it comes to ingredient lists for traditional dishes from my vintage cookbooks, but I'm wondering if there's a fat I can sub in that would render a texture that would cleave closely to the original. Most suet-centric recipes I've come across warn that the use of butter, margarine, lard, shortening et al leaves the whole dish overly greasy and flat, but if any of y'all have met with a successful swap, I'm all ears. There may even be a bit of Spotted Dick in it for you.
Other Cooking and Traveling the Cape Cod Way highlights include Forefather's Day Succotash (look for that recipe on December 21st), Beach Plum Jelly, Irish Moss Pudding, Scootin'-Long-The-Shore, Skully Joe and a wicked lot of mouthwatering Portuguese cookery. I'm more than happy to share if there's any interest.
I really, really like community cookbooks. I like knowing what people are cooking in their homes and finding out what they see as their best or most crowd-friendly recipes. Sandra J. Taylor shares my love of community cookbooks and had taken the time to search, scan and study more than 100 of them published by small towns, churches, museums, historical societies, and civic organizations from across New England. She narrowed the field down to the 400 best recipes and those are what went into Hometown Cooking in New England.
I don't a copy of this book in my collection, although given my love of the community cookbook, it is now on my list of wants. However, here is a choice list of recipe names that the book contains: Quilter's Potato Salad, Poppy Seed and Maple Syrup Bread, The Reverend Hall's Clam Chowder, Apple and Walnut Scones, Yankee Pot Roast, Maple Baked Beans, Scalloped Oysters, Wellesley Fudge Cake, Beacon Hill Cookies, and Mother Shaw's Baking Powder Biscuits.
Anyone out there have a favorite community cookbook?
You best believe I was watching the Super Bowl all afternoon (with a few flips back and forth from AnimalPlanet to catch the Puppy Bowl) and though I was supporting the Patriots here all week in our very own Slashfood Bowl, it's the New York Giants who won today!
And since the Giants have won Super Bowl XLII, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino lost his bet with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Menino will send a package of Boston foods to New York: New England Clam Chowder, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, Boston cream pies, chicken sausages and Brigham's ice cream. The food will be donated to local food charities in New York.
It's Super Bowl Dessert day here at Slashfood, which means for the Slashfood Bowl, we're talking about Boston Cream Pie for the New England Patriots.
Though it's called "pie," the Boston Cream Pie is actually a layer cake filled with pastry cream and covered with a chocolate ganache. Why it's called a pie, we can't be sure, but reliable sources (and by "reliable" I mean I googled it) say that it was likely because pie tins were more readily available than cake pans to bake the cake layers.
I've only tasted the cake twice, and both times, I wondered why I didn't eat this cake more often. I mean, come on. It has pastry cream in the middle and is topped with chocolate that drips down the sides. Alright, I'll be honest with you all. I basically love the cake for that pastry cream.
I have to admit that when I throw a Super Bowl party, I don't usually serve foods on Super Bowl or football-themed plates and platters. It's usually enough for me to have the game on in the background and let the food just speak for itself. However, because we happen to be hosting the Slashfood Bowl this week, I thought it would be nice to show off Wincraft's Snack Helmets that come in the opposing teams' helmets. Since I play fairly, I'm representing Marisa's New York Giants in addition to the Patriots. (I didn't really care either way for anyone who cares - my heart belongs to the Colts).
The helmets hold snacks on top and in a small section near the face mask. Both are available on Amazon.com for about $45 (depending on the seller).
Lobster Pie? I've had chicken pie, and turkey pie, and beef pie, and once even a steak and kidney pie, an awful experience to say the least. But Lobster Pie? Now that I recently moved up to Mid-Coastal Maine from NY, I've started to run across quite a few Maine and New England regional food specialties. Everywhere I go it seems there is something new to try.
I was picking up some fresh shedders (soft shell lobsters) the other day at one of my local purveyors of lobster and fresh seafood, the Oyster River Lobster Company in Warren, Maine. (You may remember them from when I wrote about their rare Blue Lobster that they had on display last year, before they donated him to join a few other rare colored lobsters on display at the Portland Aquarium in Maine.) When I saw a hand written sign saying that they had fresh lobster pie for sale.
I just had to ask about the pie. The owner, Jeff , said that in each one was around a pound of sweet lobster meat in a buttery and creamy Newburgh style sauce, with a large splash of dry sherry to help it along, and then topped with crushed Ritz Cracker crumbs. It sounded interesting to me, so I got one and rushed home with it. The pie was frozen, so I put it into the fridge to slowly defrost, and went about the rest of my errands and work for the day.
Other than the fact that the company was started here in 1950, of course.
When I was a kid growing up in New England, I thought that America had always run on Dunkin'. In my small world, I thought that there were Dunkin' Donuts shops all around the world, from Chelsea (in Massachusetts) to...well, Chelsea (in England). But it was more of a regional thing. The rapid expansion across the country didn't really start until the past five or 10 years. In fact, there still aren't that many Dunkin' Donut shops on the west coast.
This Boston Phoenix article tells how the company started and how it became such a big part of New England's blue collar community. Now they're putting their coffee in stores and going after the Starbucks and Krispy Kreme crowd too. Krispy Kreme isn't doing too well around here (let's face it, the donuts are overrated), while Starbucks is still opening around 300,000 new places a day and changing the look of their cafes. Let the coffee wars begin continue!
Ask the barista how much milk they go through in one day then next time you go into Starbucks for a latte. At some stores, the baristas probably far to busy to take note of the number of gallons used, but it is safe to say that it is a lot. And with over 5,500 stores in the US, Starbucks must be one of the largest consumers in the country, so the dairy industry will feel the effects of Starbucks decision to drop all dairy containing the artificial growth hormone RBGH. So far, the coffeehouse has hormone free milk at stores on the west coast (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, New Mexico and Northern California) and in New England, or roughly 37% of all of their dairy products. The company is still developing their plan to phase out the milk from the rest of their stores and it is safe to say that it will be a gradual process when it begins.
Representatives from the dairy industry who support the use of the hormone say that it is only a matter of time before Starbucks passes increased costs onto consumers, but supporters of the switch say that more dairy farmers will stop using the hormone as consumers and businesses look for dairy produced without it, keeping prices under control. Starbucks has not said how this change has affected their operating costs, but will say that they are not planning to raise drink prices as a result of the switch.
Hannaford Bros. operates 150 grocery stores in upstate New York and throughout New England and is implementing its own system, perhaps in lieu of a nutritionist at each location, to let customers know the nutritional value of the foods they're planning to buy. Their rating system assigns stars to food items based on USDA guidelines, adding points for nutrients and taking away for high levels of fats and sugars, but not taking calories into account. The system is:
1 star: good choice
2 stars: better choice
3 stars: best choice
0 stars: no nutritional value
The store stocks over 27,000 items and only 25% of them got one or more stars. Some staples, like cooking oil, were not evaluated. Is it a perfect system? No, but it does accomplish its goal of giving consumers a general idea of the nutritional value of foods without requiring "a nutrition degree to understand." A store survey said that 8 out of 10 customers wanted some form of nutritional guidance and they're trying to deliver it in a basic form.
As is often the case, I found myself perusing the shelves of a specialty beer store the other day when I spied a bottle of Harpoon Brewery's Kellerbier. No, the brew doesn't take its name from Chef Thomas Keller, but I'm pretty sure the man behind The French Laundry would appreciate it.
Kellerbier, as it turns out literally translates to cellar beer in English. The unfiltered, unpasteurized lager was first brewed by Germans in the Middle Ages. Harpoon's version is the 13th entry in the New England brewery's 100 Barrel Series. I couldn't wait to try it since the beers in this line are all made in batches limited to 100 barrels. Small-batch bourbon, sure. But small-batch beer, I could hardly contain my glee as I walked home with the bottle.
I'd never had a kellerbier before, but Harpoon's was fine as kind as they say in New England. The cloudy brew has few bubbles coursing through it, almost like a bitter. It pours with a delicate head, which in spite of its lightness leaves trails of Belgian lace on the glass. Aside from being quite refreshing and packing a nice little kick at 5.5 alcohol by volume it's delicious. There's not much pronounced malt flavor, but whatever hops they used gave it some mighty complex notes. I was reminded of sweet tea and orange. Further investigation is in order.
Strolling through a casino, especially a newer one like the Tropicana in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is always fun. You can admire the
architecture, shop in cute but overpriced stores and people-watch to your heart's content. The two other major
attractions of casinos are, of course, gambling and eating. I'm not too lucky when it comes to the slots, but I lucked
out by picking Cuba Libre for brunch.
Now, there are many restaurants around the country that share the name, but this particular restaurant has but two
locations, in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. I hear that the Philly location has dancing, but the Atlantic City one
serves brunch seven days a week. The brunch menu
is packed with options, but isn't overwhelming. The black bean hummus is excellent and the plantain chips are a
nice touch with the tasty sandwiches.
There are many things I've never really thought of doing for a living. Math teacher, airplane
pilot, personal masseuse for Star Jones. And I guess you can add pickle maker to that list, too.
But I love pickles, so this Boston Globe
piece about two small, Boston-area pickle companies was rather interesting to me. Sometimes we think that there's
no way that anyone could compete - or even thrive - in a world filled with large, well-known food companies, so it's
great to see companies like Real Pickles and Moonbrine Pickles actually making
it.
Like the article says, I never considered pickles as a job or as a means to social change, but they sure are
tasty.
This
Other than the fact that the company was started here in 1950, of course.
Ask the barista how much milk they go through in one day then next time you go into Starbucks for a latte. At some stores, the baristas probably far to busy to take note of the number of gallons used, but it is safe to say that it is a lot. And with over 5,500 stores in the US, Starbucks must be one of the largest consumers in the country, so the dairy industry will feel the effects of Starbucks decision to 
Hannaford Bros. operates 150 grocery stores in upstate New York and throughout New England and is 
As is often the case, I found myself perusing the shelves of a specialty beer store the other day when I spied a bottle of 
Strolling through a casino, especially a newer one like the 
There are many things I've never really thought of doing for a living. Math teacher, airplane
pilot, personal masseuse for Star Jones. And I guess you can add pickle maker to that list, too.
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
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