October 7, 2016
Days Until. . .
Halloween 24
Today's Flavor
This is National Bacon Day. Good bacon is so intensely delicious that the temptation is strong to overeat it. Fry up a whole pound of it and leave it on the kitchen counter, and it's gone within minutes. Breakfast buffets are popular mainly because they offer unlimited bacon.
Bacon comes from the belly and sides of a pig. On pigs, as on our own bodies, fat is concentrated in those areas. The fatty pork belly is first cured in a combination of sugar, salt, and pickling spices--usually by injecting a brine solution. Then it's smoked.
At several points in the curing process, decisions about quality are made. Bacon can be dry-cured like prosciutto, or injected with salt brine. It can be cured with honey or molasses, or with cane sugar. The smoke can come from a real smokehouse with fruit or nut woods, or liquid smoke. That's what makes some bacon better (and more expensive) than others.
About three-fourths of all the bacon eaten in America is eaten at breakfast. That's a habit we picked up from the Brits. Bacon is a British invention, consumed even more avidly there than here. Almost nowhere else is bacon such a breakfast staple.
To accommodate our urge to overeat bacon, restaurants overserve it. Almost any dish sells better and at a higher price if bacon is included. This is why atrocities like the bacon cheeseburger--which ruins bacon, cheese, and ground beef simultaneously--has become so universal. The same mechanism works in the gourmet segment. Every time you see bacon wrapped around a scallop, note that the bacon piqued your interest. Even though it's a better dish without the bacon.
Deft Dining Rule #59
The addition of bacon doesn't improve every dish.
The Old Kitchen Sage Sez
Before assembling a dish that will be broiled or grilled with bacon wrapped around it, fry the bacon until it curls before you start. This is only unnecessary when the assembled dish is then deep-fried (as in oysters en brochette).
Gourmet Gazetteer
Bacon, Indiana is in the southern part of the state, some fifty-seven miles from Louisville, Kentucky. It's a junction in gently rolling farming country, with a few farmhouses nearby. The nearest place to get some bacon with your eggs or in a sandwich is Marcy's Kitchen, four miles away in the slightly larger town of English.
Annals Of New Orleans Hotels
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel New Orleans opened today in 2000. The location was ideal: the former Maison Blanche Building, which for nearly a century was the most prominent building on Canal Street. It was fortuitous that the building's facade featured lion's heads similar in design to those on the Ritz-Carlton's logo. In the previous two decades, the Ritz-Carlton's hotels nationwide were almost be definition the top of the industry. That the hotel would include a top-tier restaurant was a given. This was clearly the aim of Victor's, an historic restaurant name from the 1800s in New Orleans. Its menu featured an all-evening wine dinner created at the whim of the chef, featuring extremely dear ingredients and astounding plate presentations. I enjoyed this dinner on two or three occasions as the place tried to establish itself. That was not to be. The magic that the Ritz-Carlton created in other cities refused to occur here. It was not due to any deficiency in the food, wine, or service, but in two trends in the restaurant scene in those years. The first was that any customer sophisticated and wealthy enough to get Victor's program was the kind of person who knew that you don't go to a hotel restaurant when you're in a great restaurant town like New Orleans. Second, the young adults coming of age in that time were clearly rejecting formality in dining. They knew good food when they ate it, but they were more likely to go for simple, fresh food from the emerging local food markets. Victor's never did well, and then its original chef left, the promise of the early years was gone. Today, the Ritz-Carlton's flagship restaurant M Bistro (in the space that was Victor's) is not much more than a convenience for hotel guests, with ordinary Creole eats at high prices.
Edible Dictionary
diner, n.--A uniquely American kind of a restaurant, the roadside diner began as a stationary version of the dining cars carried on long-distance passenger trains. Some diners really were retired railroad cars, but most of them were built as restaurants and never rode the rails. They were often built by companies specializing in diners, and trucked in to the place where they'd open for business.
Like railroad diners, roadside diners are much longer than they are wide, and frequently are built in a sleek Art Deco style, with much use of fluted stainless steel inside and outside. The classic diner menu begins with traditional American breakfasts, sandwiches, hamburgers, soups, and desserts. It goes on to feature inexpensive complete dinners in a decidedly American home-cooked style.
The quality of diner food is much romanticized, and really unpredictable. But the appeal of a shiny diner is so strong that there's been a revival of the idea, with brand-new diners being built once again. A few books have been written on the subject.
Physiology Of Eating
Rudolf Leuckart, a German zoologist, was born today in 1822. He undertook the study of worms, particularly very small parasitic worms that can causes diseases. He figured out why eating undercooked pork can cause a problem: it admits the parasitic trichina worm into the body. He also did a lot of work on liver flukes, tapeworms, and other disgusting invaders. We don't have to worry about them much now as a result of Leuckart's research.
Annals Of Chain Restaurants
PepsiCo, the maker of the perennial second-place cola, ceased to be the world's largest restaurant operator today in 1997. It spun off its restaurant unit--which included Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell--into a new company now misnamed Yum! Brands.
The Saints
This is the feast day of St. Bacchus, a former high military officer in the Roman army. When he converted to Christianity, he soon became a martyr. He was beaten to death in 303. A saint named for the Roman god of wine, he has a church named for him in Rome.
Music To Eat Turtle Soup By
Today in 1962, the Four Seasons' song Sherry made it to the top of the pop music charts. It became the group's most distinctive record, with the falsetto lead vocals of Frankie Valli and good harmonies by the other three singers. Sherry, baby.
Food And Drink Namesakes
Actor Dylan Baker, who was in two Spider-Man movies, came out of the oven today in 1959. . . Pakistani cricket professional Salman Butt (almost a rare double food name) stepped up to the Big Wicket today in 1984. . . Tang Wei, an actress in China, auditioned for life today in 1979. She passed.
Words To Eat By
"A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of temper and promoters of domestic harmony."--William Cobbett, nineteenth-century British political writer.
Words To Drink By
"A drink is shorter than a tale."--Unknown.
