August 24, 2017
Days Until. . .
Coolinary Summer Specials End: 7.
Annals Of Popular Cuisine
Chef George Crum invented potato chips today in 1853. He worked in a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. The chips were meant as an insult to a customer who complained that Crum's fried potatoes were too thick. The chef sliced them paper-thin, fried them, and sent them out. The customer loved them, and so did the chef. And they took off in popularity from there. Few restaurants serve freshly-fried potato chips locally; more ought to.
Gourmet Gazetteer
Riceville is in southern Mississippi, twenty-five miles northwest of Gulfport. This is in a sparsely populated, heavily wooded, occasionally marshy countryside, and in the bend of Riceville Road where USGS maps show the town of Riceville there is no sign of present habitation. Numerous streams through area fight a battle over which route water will flow to the Gulf of Mexico, with the forces of the Wolf River on the west and those of the Biloxi River on the east. Over time, these streams have torn up a lot of the lower Appalachian Mountains, and created large deposits of gravel. Those are mined here and there around Riceville. No rice fields in evidence, though. The nearest restaurant is nine miles away in Kiln. It's called the Halfway Cafe, although which road it cleaves in twain is hard to tell.
Deft Dining Rule #125
A fish and chips vendor without malt vinegar is like an oyster bar without Tabasco, an Italian restaurant without Parmigiano cheese, or a sushi bar without wasabi.
Today's Flavor
It is National Gyros Day--but only in the United States. Gyros, pronounced any way you like but most commonly "ghee-rho," is a staple of American Greek restaurants. It may have been invented in this country, although that's not certain. It is uncommon in Greece, except where American tourists congregate. No classical Greek dish is like it, although Lebanese shawarma is similar. It's certainly not old; no mention of it has been found earlier than the 1970s.
Gyros is a processed blend of finely-chopped lamb and sometimes beef with seasonings, pressed into a tapering cylinder which is then mounted on a vertical rotisserie. Assuming the stuff is sold at a reasonable pace, the outside of this cylinder gets a little crust from the flame it passes on every rotation. The chef slices it off from top to bottom.
Gyros is serves as either a platter or a sandwich. In either case, it's accompanied by pita bread, tzatziki sauce (a white sauce of yogurt, cucumber, and dill) lettuce, and tomatoes. If it's a sandwich, sometimes it's stuffed into the pocket of the pita, and sometimes the pita is wrapped around it like a taco shell. Despite its processed, fast-food aspect, gyros is pretty good. It's certainly a great change of pace from the hamburger, which it resembles in enough ways to become popular.
Edible Dictionary
Creole cream cheese, n.--A moist, white variation of cottage cheese. A staple at the breakfast table throughout New Orleans for decades, Creole cream cheese contains no cream (unless you add some at the table), and it's just barely a cheese. The word "clabber" captures it exactly. It's made by triggering the separation of milk into curds and whey. Most (but not all) of the latter is poured off. The most popular way to eat Creole cream cheese in its golden age (the middle of the 1900s) was with fresh fruit and sugar. For some reason, the taste for Creole cream cheese did not pass on to the Baby Boom generation, and the popularity of the product plummeted in the 1980s. All the diaries who once sold it stopped making it. There was a revival of interest in Creole cream cheese in the 1990s, when some chefs started using it to make cheesecakes.
Disastrous Interruptions Of Dinner
Mount Vesuvius's most famous eruption--the one that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum--occurred on this date in 79 AD. From the excavations in the lava we've been able to learn much about the lifestyles of the Romans at that especially rich time in their history. What a strange coincidence that the earthquake that hit Italy overnight last night (2016) should have occurred on this date.
Annals Of Breakfast
Today in 1869, Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York patented a waffle iron. Although waffles existed for hundreds of years, and Thomas Jefferson brought a patterned waffle iron back from the Netherlands (where they have long been popular), Swarthout's breakthrough was in creating the grid pattern we now identify with waffles. In those days before electricity, the iron was heated over an open fire or in an oven.
Movie Restaurants
Alice's Restaurant, a movie about the place where "you can get anything you want, excepting Alice," premiered today in 1969. It grew out of a long, folky, humorous song performed by the movie's star, Arlo Guthrie. The recording was better than the movie, a prime piece of pop culture of the late 1960s.
Looking Up
Today in 2006, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of its status as a full-fledged planet. Back in the days when New Orleans had five-digit phone numbers, we dialed PLUTO to get the correct time. Before you got it, you'd hear an ad for Coca-Cola. Example: "Take five! Coke brings you back alive! Four thirty-one p.m." To this day, whenever I think of Pluto I think of an ice-cold six-ounce bottle of Coke. What a great ad buy that was! And how antique such a service seems to be now!
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Bartholemew, one of the Apostles. He is much revered in Italy, and in Florence he is the patron saint of cheesemakers and salt merchants.
Food Namesakes
Baseball outfielder Tim Salmon was born today in 1968. . . British comedian Stephen Fry was born today in 1957. . . John Cipollina, guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service, a major band in the Summer of Love in San Francisco, was born today in 1943. . . Max Beerbohm, a British artist of caricatures, was born today in 1872. . . . Kenny Baker, who played R2D2 in the Star Wars movies, hit the Big Stage today in 1934.
Words To Eat By
"Lyon is full of temperamental gourmets, eternally engaged in a never-ending search for that imaginary, perfect, unknown little back-street bistro, where one can dine in the style of Louis XIV for the price of a pack of peanuts."--Roy Andries de Groot, American food writer. Substitute "New Orleans" for "Lyon" and "joint" for "bistro," and the sentence remains true.
Words To Drink By
"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
Their shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
--Alexander Pope.
