June 15, 2017
Days Until. . .
Father's Day 3
Food Calendar
In Key West, it's Conch Fritter Day. Conch is a highly local ingredient, not found often outside Florida. It's the meat of the animal whose shell lets you hear the ocean waves when you put it up to your ear. It's notoriously tough, and a predator on oysters. (For that reason, I hold some animus against conchs.)
It's also National Arugula Day. Arugula is a weed, really, and for my money it's the most delicious weed there is. It grows wild all around the Mediterranean, and has been eaten since time immemorial by people from the Riviera to Sudan. (Interesting that the impoverished people of Sudan may well be eating the same thing that the wealthiest people in America's most expensive restaurants, at the same time.)
In 1988 I was in a hotel in Udine, Italy with a group of Italian-American restaurateurs. We were to have a lunch in the hotel. I went down to the lobby and entered the restaurant. Just inside the door was a gigantic glass bowl filled with arugula leaves. My only thought was of how fine a meal it would be to have nothing but that, olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, and chunks of Parmigiana cheese on the side. I was very disappointed when the maitre d' pointed me to the banquet room where the lunch was to take place. (Fortunately, we had a little arugula.)
You can grow your own arugula, but since it's only good when the leaves are small you have to constantly plant it to have fresh young leaves constantly. (The big ones taste strong, in the direction of horseradish.) Unfortunately, it is not nearly available enough in markets. Arugula also goes under the names "rocket" and "rouquette" and "rucola." How about a big salad bowl of it right now with a zippy vinaigrette?
Gourmet Gazetteer
Two places in Missouri are named Gumbo. Both are near St. Louis--one of them in the western suburbs of the city. That Gumbo was a small farming community a mile and a half south of the Missouri River. The site is now in the center of light industrial plants, with the Spirit of St. Louis Airport just west. A cluster of convenience restaurants--mostly pizza and Asian--are near dead center of where the old Gumbo once was. The other Gumbo is a better-defined community, although its old school and general store--both long abandoned--give it a ghost town aspect. This Gumbo is still a farming area. The rich alluvial soil appears to have been more intensively farmed in the past than now. The area was settled as early as 1823. The most appealing nearby places to eat in Gumbo now are two miles east on State Highway 8: Homestyle Cafe in Leadington, and the Whistle Stop Cafe in Park Hills. It is seventy-six miles from one Gumbo, MO to the other.
Edible Dictionary
kohlrabi, n.--One of the strangest-looking of vegetables, kohlrabi is a much-altered cultivar of cabbage. The part usually eaten is a pale green bulb formed by the bulging lower ends of the stems. Despite its appearance, this bulb doesn't grow underground. The flavor of kohlrabi is often compared with the stems of broccoli or cauliflower. The bulbs are most often peeled and then shredded into an ingredient for a salad, but sometimes they're cooked. Only people who grow them are wild about kohlrabi, really. The name is much like the German word for rutabagas, which are related only distantly.
Music To Eat Sushi By
In 1963 on this date, Kyu Sakamoto had a Number One record on the American pop charts. It was unique in being entirely in Japanese. The real name of the song is Ue O Muite Aruko ("I Look Up When I Walk"). But its American title was Sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a Japanese beef dish, one served in only a few of our Japanese restaurants. It is to modern Japanese cooking what beef Wellington is to French cooking. The beef is stewed (at the table, classically) in a sauce of soy, onions, and a few other things. The song returned to the charts to at Number Three in 1981, performed this time by A Taste of Honey.
Music To Blow Bubbles By
Today in 1968, the bubblegum song Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've Got Love In My Tummy) peaked at Number Three. The Ohio Express did it, and was never heard from again.
Music To Listen To My Radio Show By
Today in 1910 was the birthday of David Rose, a composer and bandleader whose biggest hit was The Stripper. He did much better work than that, notably an instrumental called Holiday For Strings. It's the theme music that opens each hour of my radio show. I have about a dozen versions of it, including the original recording in 1941 by David Rose and his orchestra. Many people recognize the tune as the theme music for the old Red Skelton Show on television. David Rose also wrote the themes for Bonanza and Sea Hunt.
Food Inventions
In an effort to stabilize a surplus of milk, dairy farmer Jacob Fussell experimented with making ice cream on a large scale. Production and sales were good enough that on this date in 1851, in Baltimore, he opened the first commercial ice cream plant.
The Saints
Today is the movable feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For a long time a restaurant named for that veneration was a Salvadoran cafe on Belle Chasse Highway in Gretna. It recently reopened in beautiful new premises. And on the wall is still a painting of the Sacred Heart. . . Today is also the feast day of St. Vitus, for whom the nerve ailment chorea--it makes people appear to be dancing--is named. St. Vitus is also the patron saint of comedians. I am on my knees, needing all the help I can get in that department.
Food Namesakes
This is the day in 1992 when Vice-President Dan Quayle told a student in a spelling bee that "potato" was spelled "potatoe.". . . The rap singer Ice Cube was thawed today in 1969. . . Dusty Baker, the manager of the Giants when they won the National League pennant in 2002, was born today in 1949. . . The unrelated Gene Baker, who played second base in the 1950s and 1960s, was born today in 1925. . . And on the same day, yet another man with that name, British broadcaster Richard Baker, was born.
Words To Eat By
"'Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers."--William Shakespeare.
Words To Drink By
"May you always have red-eye gravy with your ham, hush puppies with your catfish, and the good sense not to argue with your wife."--Unknown, except that he is probably from Tennessee.
