September 29, 2017
Days Until. . .
Halloween: 32 Thanksgiving (Nov. 23): 55
Today's Flavor
It's National Bay Leaf Day. We use bay leaves like crazy around New Orleans, but few people are sure what bay leaves taste like, what they add to a dish, or why we drop a leaf into every pot of gumbo or beans or gravy.
It's easy enough to find out. Crack a bay leaf into some hot water and let it steep like tea for a few minutes. What you'll taste is subtle--less assertive than most dried herbs. There's something like cinnamon and vanilla in there, plus a flavor that can only be called herbal.
When I tried this, my first thought was to just put a leaf in my mouth and suck on it, but then I remembered stories of people choking to death on bay leaves. This is a farfetched danger, but it is real, because one of the properties of bay leaves is that they do not break down easily. Swallowing a whole leaf might cause a problem. Remove them from the pot before serving the food in it, just in case.
Bay leaves come from the same laurel tree that supplies the crowns for Olympic winners, and they've long been used in cooking. I wish I had such a tree, because bay leaves do lose flavor over time. Use them sparingly, because the flavor does seem to jump to the foreground otherwise.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Rockefeller is a township--a division smaller than a county but larger than a town--in the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. It's fifty-six miles north of the state capital, Harrisburg. Rockefeller is a mix of rolling farming country and rather steep hills rising to 900 feet. The flatter parts were created by the Little Shamokin River, a tributary of the nearby Susquehanna River. The restaurants nearby are all in the town of Sunbury, a mile north. Lenig's comes recommended. Whether they serve oysters Rockefeller is doubtful.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez:
If you can't remember when you acquired your current supply of bay leaves, scatter them on the lawn and rake them up with the rest of the dead leaves.
Edible Dictionary
kibbe, kibbeh, [KIH-bee] Lebanese, n.--Ground beef (sometimes lamb) mixed with cracked wheat, parsley, onions, pine nuts and spices. In the most common version of kibbe, this concoction is made into small football-shaped morsels and fried. Less common in restaurants but often made by Lebanese people at home is kibbe naye, which is essentially the same recipe but eaten raw, usually with pita bread, olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Restaurants no longer serve kibbe naye much, out of a fear of possible contamination from raw meat.
The Saints
Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael, the Archangel. He is the patron of bakers, greengrocers, and Pensacola. The lore about Michaelmas is that if you eat goose on this day, you'll always have enough money the rest of the year.
Food Through History
The Battle of Salamis began today in 480 BC. Let's dwell a moment on the image of soldiers trying to beat each other senseless with long bludgeons made of hard-cured pork. That done, we note that this was a sea battle, in which the Greek navy managed to defeat the Persians in a small strait between Piraeus and Salamis, near Athens. The Greeks were badly outnumbered, so it was a heroic victory--if not one that resulted in the making of muffulettas.
Food On The Air
Today in 1974, the television sitcom Alice premiered. It was about the woes of a waitress working in a place called Mel's Diner. . . Also making its first appearance on TV today, in 1953, was Make Room For Daddy, which ran quite a long time. Whenever I so much as think about its star, Danny Thomas, I think of red beans and rice. When I was a boy, the show came on Monday nights, and my mother never failed to have the beans on the table that night.
Food Namesakes
On this day in 1985, Deron Cherry of the Kansas City Chiefs made four pass interceptions in one game. . . Olympic synchronized swimmer Heather Pease was born today in 1975. . . Oilman John D. Rockefeller, the man for whom oysters Rockefeller are named, became the first certified billionaire in the United States today in 1916.
Words To Eat By
"The worst steak in New Orleans is better than the best steak in Texas."--Bum Phillips, Texas native, former coach of the New Orleans Saints, born today in 1923.
Words To Drink By
"In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria."--David Auerbach, film director.
