I have such an admiration for Julia Child. So, no surprise that I wanted to read this new biography of her.

The author, Bob Spitz, was an unknown to me. He has made a name for himself in the book world. He published a 1000-page tome of The Beatles: The Biography. He’s written for several magazines as well, and now, with this newest book in his repertoire,  Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child he’ll likely continue in the genre. BTW, “Dearie” refers to the word Julia used for almost everyone – from waiters to bellhops or close friends. She called almost everyone “dearie.”

Bob Spitz was a huge fan of Julia Child, which led him to write this book. In the acknowledgements he says:  The genesis of this book sprang from my amazing luck, traveling with Julia Child in Sicily in 1992. For several weeks we crisscrossed the island, eating, of course, but talking every chance we got. She was already a beloved icon, larger than life in so many different ways, but perhaps the most down-to-earth celebrity I’d ever encountered. Inasmuch as I was writing about her for several magazines, we were on the record throughout the trip, but she never held back from speaking her mind, never shied from a tough opinion, never pulled her punches, never blinked She was exactly like her TV persona: warm, funny, outgoing, whip-smart, incorrigible, and most of all, real. If I have to admit to one prejudice confronting this book, it is that I had a powerful crush on her. Sorry. Deal with it.

From the first page I found myself picking it up at odd times because I found the story compelling. Bob Spitz writes interesting narratives. He gives you the facts, straight, and yet you can feel the drama behind so many events in Julia’s life. I found the history of Julia McWilliams, from nearby Pasadena, a daughter of a privileged family, quite fascinating. Her father rarely ever gave her an encouraging word – and maybe because from the get-go Julia was a kind of a maverick. She didn’t follow in her father’s ultra-conservative political path, and was forever ridiculed for it. She wasn’t driven to get good grades particularly, never felt herself a scholar, went to Smith College where she spent more time drinking and carousing than she did studying. Yet she graduated. At loose ends after that, she had no direction in her life, and her father, the ever present critic, didn’t encourage her much. Money wasn’t an issue. She did live in New York for awhile, took a menial job (about all she could find), but wasn’t particularly happy. She was a socialite, but not a fluttering butterfly. She wanted some meaning to her life, but just couldn’t quite figure out what or where it was. Her mother died and Julia ended up moving home to Pasadena as a companion to her father and she resumed her socialite role in her home town. He was not ailing, but she and her 2 siblings felt Dad needed some watching over.

When war loomed, she joined the OSS, eventually going to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). And later to China. She met Paul Child, a very scholarly type, who was also with the OSS. They were friends for a year or more, and then their relationship bloomed. Julia never felt she was Paul’s mental equal. Although he didn’t attend college, he was extremely well read and could debate philosophy, politics, poetry and social culture with the best of them. They married eventually (much to her Dad’s dismay because Paul Child was a social liberal, as was Julia, but Paul more so). These facts rankled Julia’s father until the end of his days. Family dinners were always fraught with argument about politics, so much so that Julia did her best to avoid visiting home at almost all cost. Julia and Paul were devoted to each other for life.

The picture below is Julia’s reconstructed Cambridge kitchen at the Smithsonian (I believe). Note the distinctive pegboard, something she and Paul worked out so they’d always know where everything was kept in every Julia kitchen. Having already read Julia’s grand-nephew’s biography of Julia’s years in France, My Life in France, I enjoyed reading this new book, Julia’s full-life history. I’ve come away with so much more respect for Julia. Her years of cooking in Paris, making recipes over and over and over until she felt they were perfect, has to be a testament to her tenacity. And her tendency to be a perfectionist. Actually, last night I went online and ordered the DVD set of The French Chef: Julia Child 10-Disc CollectionTV series Julia did. (It contains an interview with Julia, and supposedly all the recipes that accompanied all the shows.) Having read this new book, and knowing the kind of labor of love she put into the making of the shows – and more importantly – how she revised the long and tedious French recipes from her first book of the 2-book series Mastering the Art of French Cooking (2 Volume Set) I wonder if I’ll be more intrigued to try more of her recipes.  I only own one of her cookbooks, and have cooked very few recipes from it.

Julia was a a fount of energy. Again and again through the book I read of her incredibly long hours in the kitchen from when she began cooking in Paris to her last days, almost. What I found new and interesting were:

• the life-long feud between Julia and Madeleine Kamman – you can read more about it here; she also didn’t get along all that well with Jacque Pepin either! Even though they co-hosted a series of cooking demonstrations for TV, behind the façade of smiles, they didn’t like each other much;
• Julia loved-loved men; even in her declining years she had a boyfriend, of sorts, even while her beloved husband Paul resided in a special home where he could be well cared for; whether any hanky-panky went on, I don’t know; this book doesn’t indicate so; Julia adored Paul unflinchingly, yet she craved male companionship once Paul wasn’t around;
• although most everyone who ever watched Julia knows she had an irreverent side – she could laugh at herself and others, but was a natural in front of the TV camera; she also could use that biting tongue now and then. She had a stubborn streak. So, I didn’t know that Julia walked off the stage of a little cooking segment she did with Regis and Kathy Lee because Kathy Lee refused to get in and help – and get her hands dirty. It was arranged and agreed upon, but once the camera started rolling, Kathy Lee refused. At the break, Julia and her team walked out;
• learning about her very assertive, abrasive lawyer she hired some way down her career path – she adored him – but oh, he made people mad. Yet he protected Julia’s interests, which was his purpose – I’d never heard about him before;
• how hard Julia worked (with Paul, and with her editors, and her attorney) to keep her momentum once she reached the pinnacle; Julia was ahead of her time, I think, in knowing and understanding that she had to stay front and center or people (us home cooks) would forget her.

The photo at right – I think – was in Julia’s Provence kitchen, where she spent months working on the recipes for the Mastering manuscript. Note her “signature” neck scarf.

The author is a good story-teller, for sure. There were some times that he used colloquialisms that bordered on hip, trite or trendy. They seemed a bit strange in a biography. Since he’s been a magazine journalist, perhaps that’s why. Yet I found the book a page-turner when, in fact, there was nothing about Julia’s life that gave it that kind of intrigue. I found it interesting that many culinary professionals (back in the 60s and 70s) ridiculed Julia for calling herself a chef – she never cooked in a restaurant so she had no right to the title. She never called herself that – the TV show folks devised the title of the show. And yet, I think she was every bit a chef as any restaurant one just because of the dedication to her craft. Her recipes have stood the test of time, obviously!

So overall, I found the book very readable. Am sorry I never took the opportunity to meet Julia Child when I could have at her many book signings or classes. During her 80th birthday celebrations she attended a cooking class in her honor at a restaurant near us, but the tariff was $500 for the privilege. I just couldn’t – wouldn’t – pay that much, as much as I wanted to meet her! But I lived her life vicariously through this very fascinating biography. If you’re anything of a Julia fan, you’ll be glad to have read it.

Tweet

It was just last month that I read an article in our local newspaper, written by Judy Bart Kancigor, about this book. [As an aside, I have one of Kancigor’s recipes here on my blog already – one of my favorites, a Layered Hummus & Eggplant appetizer.] Hardly before I’d finished reading the newspaper article, I went to my amazon account and added the book to my wish list. Thank you, Sara, for buying it for me for Christmas!

This book, Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival is a treasure; there just are no other words for it. I’m not Jewish, and I don’t necessarily cook Jewish food as such, but I am always intrigued about the stories behind ethnic dishes. One of Kancigor’s mantras is “you don’t have to be Jewish to cook Jewish.” Yes! Until now, I’ve never owned a Jewish cookbook. Now I do, and I’m glad of it. Not only because of the history contained within the book, but because I’m grateful in some small way – happy – humbled – to honor all those souls who didn’t survive the Holocaust.

So, what’s this book all about? The writer (editor and writer), June Feiss Hersch, interviewed countless families in the process of compiling the stories and recipes in this cookbook.  Earlier, she approached the Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage (in New York City), with the germ of an idea, to publish a cookbook of stories and associated recipes from Holocaust survivors. An aside: all the proceeds from the book go to the museum. It’s already into its 4th printing.

The recipes cover a broad Eastern European geography (ethnic and physical) including Poland, Austria, Greece, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Russia and the Ukraine. And at the back is a lengthy list of Yiddish words, pages I referred to often, since I didn’t know the meaning of words like schmuts (dirt), cholent (a sacred stew prepared on Friday, baked overnight in a community bakery oven, to be eaten on Saturday), shtikel (morsel); and bashert (fated). I loved learning some of these new words (aside from other Yiddish words I did know: schlep, maven, nosh, kibbitz, mentsh, and shul).

As I write this, I’ve only read about half the book – I’m not even through reading the chapter on Poland (obviously there are more Polish recipes than those from other countries). But I’m awed by the stories. The true stories of survival, about the Crystal Night (when over 1,000 synagogues were burned to the ground and over 7,000 Jewish business destroyed), about people who hid in cupboards, cellars, forests, barns and other places to avoid the ghettos and concentration camps. But it’s also stories about people who did survive concentration camps (mostly ones who were interned there later in the war) or work camps. About those few who had skills the Nazis needed and wanted so they were fed better than some. About how prisoners hid food for others. About how they kept their spirits alive. About how they survived. About meeting other survivors, about first loves, marriages, boat trips to Israel, or America or Canada. About the yearning to live and thrive. About how some survivors would never – ever – talk about their wartime experiences – or shared them only at the end of their lives. And about how these proud Jewish people honor their loved ones by preparing the family recipes regularly.

Each country chapter contains numerous stories  (told from the actual survivor or a spouse or grown child) along with a photo or two about the family. About where they were from, their years of trying to escape, and managing to survive either in the dense forests with virtually no food, or in the concentration camps. And, thankfully, about their liberation and emigration somewhere else. Then, following that is a recipe, or two. Most of them are the actual recipes from the Holocaust survivor, or a descendant; a few are creations or re-creations from celebrated Jewish chefs (like Faye Levy, Mark Bittman, Daniel Boulud, Gale Gand, Ina Garten, Jonathan Waxman, Joan Nathan, Sara Moulton, and others).

In my copy, several recipes have been yellow-stickied already, and this week you’ll read about the first one I made from this book – a braised red cabbage and apple dish. Nothing fancy, but oh, so very delicious. Next I plan to make a Chocolate Chip Cake, and a Citrus Rice Pudding. Then maybe I’ll try one of the cholent recipes in the book. I’m intrigued about a 24-hour, slow-roasted stew.

Obviously, I highly recommend this book. If you enjoy reading stories, then a recipe to go along with it, you’ll be mesmerized by the book, as I’ve been.

Tweet

This is the final post in the 3-part series about this new cookbook I own. After telling you all about how the book came to be, and the amazing process Amanda Hesser went through to get it accomplished, I thought I should share with you at least one recipe. Actually I’ve made one recipe from the cookbook – the Summer-Squash Casserole I wrote about recently. It was fantastic. I even got my first splotch of food on the page! Darn. I have way too many little yellow and pink stickies poking out of the book, all recipes I want to try. I think my next one will be the 1948 Green Goddess Salad.

In the cookbook Amanda wrote a lengthy headnote about the Purple Plum Torte:

This plum torte is both the most often published and the most requested recipe in the Times archives. By my count, Marian Burros (who was given the recipe by Lois Levine, with whom Burros wrote Elegant but Easy) ran the recipe in the paper twelve times. And when I asked readers for recipe suggestions for this book, 247 people raved about the torte. The plum torte happily lives up to its billing: crusty and light, with deep wells of slackened, sugar-glazed fruit.

I’ve thought a lot about why this torte struck such a chord with people: the answer, I think, is that it’s a nearly perfect recipe. There are only eight ingredients, all of which, except for the plums, you probably already have in your kitchen. There are just four steps, most of which are one sentence long. You need no special equipment, just a bowl, a wooden spoon, and a pan. The batter is like pancake batter, which most everyone is comfortable making. And baked plums are sweet and tart, making the flavor more complex and memorable than a hard-hitting sweet dessert.

It also freezes well. “A friend who loved the torte said that in exchange for two, she would let me store as many as I wanted in her freezer,” Burros wrote one year when she ran the recipe. “A week later, she went on vacation for two weeks and her mother stayed with her children. When she returned, my friend called and asked, ‘How many of those tortes did you leave in my freezer?’

“‘Twenty-four, but two of those were for you.’

“There was a long pause. ‘Well, I guess my mother either ate twelve of them or gave them away.’”

In later versions of the plum torte recipe, Burros cut back the sugar to 3/4 cup—feel free to if you like—and added variations, such as substituting blueberries or apples and cranberries for the plums (I haven’t tried either, but Burros was a fan). She jumped the shark, in my view, though, when she created low-fat variations with mashed bananas and applesauce. While I respect her enthusiasm for innovation, this is one recipe that needs no improvement.—Amanda Hesser

This particular recipe also contained several reader comments (presumably from the 6,000 emails and letters she received from her request for favorite recipes). Most recipes don’t have that much information. At the end of every recipe is the origin of it, the article title it came from, and the date. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading through recipes by the dozens, and noting the year it was published, like a sour milk cake from 1876 or a sauce for venison from 1880. Or even Dwight Eisenhower’s Steak in the Fire, from 1949, from one or more of his fishing trips to Wisconsin.

Obviously, you can tell, I’m really enjoying this cookbook. If you need a gift for someone, this would be a perfect one. Especially if that person enjoys cooking as well as reading about it. Or buy it for yourself – I don’t think you’ll be a bit sorry you did! The book is a bargain at $23.52 at Amazon.com: The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century.

As a result of Amanda’s and Merrill’s collaboration on this cookbook, (they’re now business partners too) they have a blog called Food52, in case you’re interested.

printer-friendly PDF for the Purple Plum Torte

Tweet

As I explained yesterday, my friend Linda gave me this cookbook for Christmas. I’ve been so intrigued by not only the 12-page introduction to the book, but I’ve yellow-stickied about 40-50 recipes in it so far, and I’m only about a third of the way through.

Yesterday I posted the initial story about the Introduction. Here’s the continuing saga . . . the final phase of compiling recipes for this 1,104 recipe book (932 pages long), after she’d tested 400 recipe recommendations from readers (that took 2 years), and tested another 400 recipes spanning the 1850-1950 range, was to research the Dining section of every issue and the Magazine food columns too. She’s glad she did, because she added lots of other recipes to the book, including favorites like Stuck-Pot Rice with Yogurt and Spices (p. 351), Thomas Keller’s Gazpacho (p. 146), and Tangerine Sherbet (p. 734). Numerous stories about Craig Claiborne had her reading recipes from these other sources. In about 1974 Claiborne began cooking with Pierre Franey – once a week the two men would cook in Claiborne’s kitchen at his home in the Hamptons. Franey did the cooking and Claiborne sat at his trusty IBM Selectric typewriter and made notes which went into the weekly column. As the story goes, the parties they threw there were legendary, including the one where so many people stood on Claiborne’s deck that it collapsed.

New, up and coming chefs’ names began appearing in the paper – Alice Waters, Emeril Legasse, and then Mark Bittman. As Amanda read the recipes she tried to provide balance in the cookbook – the book couldn’t be all Osso Buco and chocolate mousse, so she added recipes for Oriental Watercress Soup (p. 111), Charleston Coconut Sweeties (p. 683) and Tuna Curry (p. 435), for instance.

Her test for whether a recipe would go in the book was simple: once she made it, would she make it again? In making sure she made raspberry granita 3 times, baked Teddie’s apple cake 4+ times, and she made stewed fennel at least 6 times.

Amanda does explain that almost none of the recipes originated at the New York Times. They were someone else’s recipe –whether it was Aunt Mable’s poundcake or a famous chef’s rendition of Cornish game hen. She phrases it thus: the newspaper was just a waystation for recipes, which pass through on their way from chefs and home cooks to readers. Therefore the archive (the cookbook) is a mish-mash of traditional, innovative and everything in between.

She notes, though, that in the process or writing the book several significant things changed:

1. The main improvement has been intensity of flavor. Recipes are much more aggressively seasoned now, with layers of herbs and spices.
2. Cayenne was the only chile-based heat up until about 1970; chiles, in many varieties, are now commonplace.
3. Meats, especially chicken, cook nearly twice as fast as they did 100 years ago because animals are raised more quickly and exercise less, which renders their meat more tender.
4. Egg yolks have either shrunk or lost their binding strength – old custard recipes that called for 3 yolks generally needed 5 to 6 “modern” egg yolks to set.

Sometimes she left the language of the day in the recipe. Other times she had to update the instructions or she added Notes for clarity. I just love reading Amanda’s notes – not only is she a very good writer, but she’s interesting and finds humor in the kitchen. Some recipes contain no headnotes, others contain a lengthy one. A few recipes include comments left by readers, or from the 6,000 responses she received to her query. They often suggest other changes they’ve made. Each and every recipe includes the date, origin of the recipe and the title of the column. What there is not in this cookbook are photographs of any of the food. With 1,104 recipes, it would have been a Herculean task to photograph them all as well as test them. I do love photos of the food, but the written word will give you a pretty good clue as to whether you want to tackle a recipe.

Needless to say, I’ve been very impressed with the cookbook. So far I’ve made just a couple of the recipes in the book – the Summer-Squash Casserole I made a couple of weeks ago was one of them. It was sensational. Next on my radar is to try the 1948 recipe for Green Goddess dressing. Stay tuned tomorrow – I’m going to give you the recipe for the number one requested dessert, the Purple Plum Torte.

This is Part II of this series. If you are motivated to buy the book, here’s the link. It’s a bargain at $23.52 at Amazon.com: The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century.

As a result of Amanda’s and Merrill’s collaboration on this cookbook, (they’re now business partners too) they have a blog called Food52, in case you’re interested in following their food travels.

Tweet

My friend Linda T and I exchange Christmas gifts each year, and we’ve gotten into the habit of giving one another a new cookbook. And this is the one she gave me this last December. What a gem it is, at 930+ pages. When I opened it she said “you’ve got to read the Introduction first – it’s really interesting.” Dutifully I did, and within a few short paragraphs I’d retrieved my little pad of pink stickies and began putting them on the recipe pages referred to in this Introduction. This section of the book is about 12 pages long and mostly gives a detailed explanation about how the book came into being, but mostly it’s about how Amanda Hesser and her assistant Merrill Stubbs accomplished the project.

It started one day in 2004 when Hesser was having lunch with a colleague at the Times. They were discussing what their next projects were. In talking over how food and recipe interests have changed over the decades a germ of an idea was born in Hesser’s head. She wanted to write a book that encompassed 150 years of the New York Times food writing (recipes). Not the time just since Craig Claiborne wrote his book, or any number of books since then. No, she wanted to go way back into the paper’s history and chronicle the best.

Her first step was to put a journalist’s query into the newspaper and the magazine, asking readers to send her a note (letter or email) about their favorite recipes published in the New York Times. She received nothing less than 6,000 replies! Yikes! It was there that she learned about Craig Claiborne’s Paella (p. 309) that took him 6 years to perfect; about Le Cirque’s Spaghetti Primavera (p. 314) that no fewer than 3 people claimed to have invented themselves; and a Forget-It Meringue Torte (p. 823) a meringue cake that “billows like a jib in the oven.”

The respondents mentioned recipes having saved marriages, or reminded them of their lost youth, or something that symbolized family gatherings. Once the list had been collated (on an elaborate spreadsheet, obviously) there were 145 single-spaced pages of recipe suggestions. Four of the top five recipes were desserts (in a couple of days I’ll share with you the #1 recipe – the most frequently requested recipe at the newspaper.

Those top 5 recipes are (and if you’re anxious to know about each recipe, just click the link – I found all of them online, but not necessarily from the New York Times’ website):

Purple Plum Torte (265 votes; p. 763)
David Eyre’s Pancakes (80 votes; p. 813)
Teddie’s Apple Cake (37 votes; p. 752)
Chocolate Dump-It Cake (24 votes; p. 781) and
Ed Giobbi’s Lasagna (23 votes; but the Lasagna on p. 342 edged out this winner)

For two full years, Amanda and Merrill began cooking together in the evenings to test the 400 recipes that they culled from the list. A few times each week they’d gather at Amanda’s home, cook, test, note-take, serve dinner about 10:30. The 3 of them (including Amanda’s husband) would weigh in on each dish and recipes were tweaked and adjusted until they got them just right. So, that 2-year stint covered the years from about 1950 to about 2004. Along the way they observed that we sort of stopped making extravagant desserts. We learned how to cook pasta correctly and how to sauce it properly. We also learned about roasting vegetables. We also left German food (mostly) behind, and we “largely failed to adopt Chinese cooking at home.” Yup.

The Introduction includes some very interesting food-related timelines, starting with 1860, when the first refrigerated car carrying strawberries were transported on the Illinois Central Railroad. In the 1920’s White Castle promoted hamburgers and its cleanliness. By minimizing its seating area, the chain established the notion of “take-out.” In 1930 the Boston Oyster House at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago popularized its “salad bar,” a concept that really didn’t catch on until the 70’s.

She assumed some readers would be mightily upset that their favorites weren’t included in the cookbook (including a recipe for “clams possilipo” that eluded the searchers – nobody could find the original recipe – so I assume they couldn’t include it because they couldn’t actually prove it was published in the Times), but Amanda hoped the inclusion of Cucumbers in Cream (p. 225) and Fontainebleau (a kind of dessert cheese, p. 829) would make up for it.

This is Part I of this series. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the next stage of the cookbook writing. It’s just as interesting. If you are motivated to buy the book, here’s the link. It’s a bargain at $23.52 at Amazon.com: The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century.

As a result of Amanda’s and Merrill’s collaboration on this cookbook, (they’re now business partners too) they have a blog called Food52, in case you’re interested in following their food travels.

Tweet

My friend Yvette plunked this book down on my lap recently and said – “just take a look at the photos and recipes in here.” The book is huge – one of those coffee-table sized books. But was she ever right about the stunning photos. I could have gazed at each picture for awhile, just to study the arrangement of flowers, chocolate, ribbons, table scapes, interesting props, etc. I’d never heard of the book. I did take a photo of one recipe, a Chocolate Apple Cobbler. It just sounded so different, although there isn’t anything particularly unusual in the recipe. I don’t associate apples and chocolate (pears yes, strawberries yes, apples no). I’ll have to try the recipe and see how it tastes.

Most of the chocolate recipes contained in the book were quite elaborate. Perhaps more steps and processes than I’m generally willing to do for a dessert. That’s probably why the cobbler was appealing since it may have been the simplest recipe contained in the book. So, here are a few photos from the book – all photographed by Thomas Dhellemes. The book: The Seven Sins of Chocolate, by Laurent Schott. If you’re interested, it’s available for under $10 used through Amazon.

A year ago: Cream of Cucumber Soup (a favorite – a chilled soup, really nice for summer)
Two years ago: Apricot Ice Cream (have fresh apricots?)

Tweet

All the information here about green beans comes from one of the chapters in Russ Parsons’ book titled How to Pick a Peach.

What I learned:

• That cooks all around continue trying to find ways to keep green beans green. The chemistry involved is interesting: every green vegetable goes through three stages of green: (1) raw, the vegetable is a deep but dull green; (2) in the early stages of cooking the color turns bright and vibrant (this change occurs as the cell walls soften and tiny amounts of oxygen are driven off while other gases cloud the pure color of the chlorophyll); (3) the green turns to olive drab because of a chemical change in the chlorophyll – partly due to an enzymatic action, but mostly due to acids released during cooking.
• Some of the age-old methods for keeping beans green are myths (like using baking soda in the water – – makes the texture slimy, though; cooking in heavily salted water – – no scientific basis that that method works).
• The best method for keeping green beans green is to cook them in plenty of water (so less acids are released to each bean) – quickly – no slow heat-up here – the less time beans are in the water the better – cook just until they’re done to your liking – then plunge them into ice water. [This is the method I’ve used for about 15 or so years, I guess – probably learned it at a cooking class].
• Green beans we buy are actually immature beans – as a legume they grow for the seeds inside, which if left to mature, become nugget sized and the pods will toughen.
• There are two types of green beans – the round (Blue Lake and haricots verts), the more traditional green bean; the flat (like Italian Romano) are more meaty and assertive, and are cooked much longer. They even seem to improve with lengthier cooking.
• Green beans come in a variety of colors. So they really shouldn’t just be called “green” beans. The old term was “string beans,” but the strings were bred out of beans in recent years (except heirloom varieties). A more likely name is “snap beans.” If beans are fresh, they should snap (not just bend) in half.
• You should remove the stem end, but removing the tail-end is not necessary [I always leave them on because they’re very tender and look better].

How to Choose & Store:

Green Beans with Garlic (a real favorite of ours)
Green Beans with Shallots & Balsamic Glaze

Tweet

I’ll be doing some cookin’ in the kitchen later today, but no new recipes this morning. I still have plenty of recipes to post from my own collection, but I don’t have photos of them – – yet. Therefore, since it’s high season here for tomatoes, I’ll give you the low-down on them, with all the info coming from the book How to Pick a Peach, by Russ Parsons. This particular chapter has more chemistry-related content than most others I’ve shared with you. It may be a bit more scientific, but I found it very interesting.

What I Learned About Tomatoes

• Tomato flavor or lack thereof, is one of the biggest complaints in the produce world.
• Scientists who study flavor chemistry have identified more than 400 compounds that go into the taste of a ripe tomato. And more than 30 of those are regarded as essential (as low as one part per million). The human nose can detect some odors/flavors in parts per trillion. [Now that’s a statistic we foodies need to remember. Really.]
• Here are the four compounds found in greatest concentration in tomatoes: Z-3 hexenal – a fresh green fragrance (like cut grass); Beta-damascenone – generally described as fruity and sweet; Beta-ionone – fruity and woody; 3-methylbutanal – nutty-cocoa facets (it’s happens to be in Parmesan cheese)
• Flavor compounds present in a whole tomato change when the tomato is altered (cut).
• When a tomato turns from green to red, it’s caused by the development of coloring chemicals called carotenoids, which have flavor-causing chemicals attached to them.
• As a tomato ripens, the amount of sugars build
• As a tomato ripens, the acids change, from malic to citric
• As a tomato ripens, a whole host of aromatic chemical compounds are formed: hexanal (winey), alanine and leucine (meaty), and valine (fruity. Furaneol (pineapple aroma) is also created.
• Tomatoes can be picked green and will continue to ripen, especially if exposed to ethylene gas (that’s what nearly all tomato producers do).
• Even vine-ripened tomatoes (that we consumers pay a premium to buy) are picked at a stage that most of us would consider green, when only the very first traces of a tan, yellow or pink blush appear on the tomato’s base.
• The biggest challenge with tomatoes is to produce a fragile, temperamental product on an industrial scale. The same problem exists for nearly every agricultural producer.
• Unfortunately, taste has been the least of anyone’s concern in the industrial side of the business, and as a result, breeders have developed tomato strains that resist all manner of cankers and wilts and very little on flavor.
• Temperatures below 60 degrees F reduce the aroma-creating volatiles in the fruit.
• If you ever go to a grocery store and see tomatoes are being refrigerated, don’t buy them. (Industry experts are still trying to educate grocery stores in proper storage, and it’s not in the cooler.)
• Eighteen states grow tomatoes here in the U.S., with California and Florida leading the parade. But, a third of all sold here come from overseas (Mexico, Canada and the Netherlands primarily).

How to Choose and Store Tomatoes:

• Avoid tomatoes with any flaws – nicks, dents or cuts.
• Choose tomatoes that are heavy for their size.
• Other than looking at the color (more red than green) disregard color unless you’re going to eat it immediately.
• Over-ripeness can be just as much trouble as under-ripe. Over-ripe tomatoes are mealy with off flavors.
• Trust your nose.
• Do not EVER put a tomato in the refrigerator – it’ll kill flavor faster than anything.
• Do not store tomatoes in direct light.

Russ Parsons’ Favorite Simple Dish: Dice seeded (cut a tomato in half and squeeze gently to remove most seeds), unpeeled tomatoes as finely as you can. Dress them with a little olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Taste them, and if they need a little red wine vinegar, add that. Place a log of fresh goat cheese on a plate and spoon the tomatoes around it. Parsons says “you may never go back to tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.”

The book also included recipes for an Heirloom Tomato Tart, Golden Tomato Soup with Fennel, and Seared Scallops with Tomato Butter.

When I did a search within my own recipe collection posted here at TastingSpoons, my list was huge. But tomatoes may have played a very minor part of most of those recipes. Here are the ones where they played a starring role, or contribute some significant flavor: sorry to harp on the combination of watermelon and tomatoes, but here are the two I’ve posted about that, watermelon and tomato salad, and watermelon and Feta salad. Then there’s my favorite BLT Salad, Strawberry Gazpacho, Pasta ala Puttanesca, Bacon & Tomato Dunk (an appetizer), Creamy Tomato Soup (from canned tomatoes), Siciliana Sauce, and Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce.

Tweet

If you’re anything like I am, you take zucchini for granted. It’s available almost year ‘round, and it’s a very easy and quick go-to vegetable. Today’s post is another installment in my series about fruits and veggies, based on Russ Parsons’ book, How to Pick a Peach. I buy a lot of zucchini and yellow crookneck squash every month of the year. I avoid the baby squashes and scalloped squash because I think they’re bitter. The baby varieties are very bitter to me. The scalloped squash not as much.

What I Learned:

• Grown all over the world, zucchini and the other summer squashes account for 6 million TONS of product a year.
• Consumption of squash in general has increased 33% in the last decade! 40% of zucchini sold in the U.S. comes from Mexico.
• Zucchini is actually a fairly modern invention – the first mention of it is from a 1900 Italian seed catalog. It probably made its way to the U.S. after World War I, brought by Italian immigrants to California.
• There are drawings and paintings of a zucchini-like squash from prior to 1900, but they’re two other breeds of summer squash: Cocozelle, an Italian forebear of today’s common zucchini (Cocozelle are thinner and longer than zucchini with a small bulb at one end. They’re richer in flavor and are generally about 8-9 inches long); Marrow squash (paler/greener and tapered in shape, are denser, so work well/better in soups/stews).
• More than a hundred varieties of zucchini are grown today.
• Most commonly known squashes besides zucchini are crookneck (yellow, with narrow bent necks and bulbous bodies), straightneck squash (like crooknecks but with straight bodies), and scalloped squash, which can be either yellow or green and in a flattened shape with scalloped edges.
• Golden zucchini, introduced in 1973, is also becoming more popular. At some farmer’s markets you may find round varieties (Tondo and Provencal Ronde de Nice), but they’re not actually squash but a pumpkin variety.
• Don’t forget to try squash flowers – oh so delicate – must be eaten the same day – chopped up or battered, stuffed and fried.

How to Choose & Store:

• Choose firm squash, free of wrinkles and nicks.
• Really fresh squash will bristle with tiny hairs
• Cook them within a week.
• Seal in plastic bags to keep them moist but not wet.
• Do not wash until just before preparing them.

Recipes included in the book: Zucchini frittata, and Garlic-and-herb-stuffed tomatoes and zucchini.

Here are the zucchini recipes I’ve posted so far:
Ina Garten’s Zucchini Gratin – a real favorite
Shepherd’s Pie with a Latin Twist
Calabacitas con Crema – a real favorite
Adobe Stew – a delish winter soup, but with a bit of zucchini
Sopa de Calabacitas (Mexican Zucchini Soup)
Zucchini Ribbons
Chilled Zucchini Soup

Tweet

This is another installment in my so-called series on fruits and veggies, all based on the book “How to Pick a Peach,” by Russ Parsons. Here in California, peaches and nectarines are in high season. And they are delicious this year, I must say.

What I Learned:

• Peaches and nectarines are nearly interchangeable (other than the obvious: the nectarine has no fuzz) from the consumer’s point of view.
• White-fleshed fruit is better and sweeter than the golden fleshed (yes, really).
• As consumers we seem to prefer red-toned skin of the fruit, but really the best P’s and N’s are those with a golden tone to the skin. The red is a breeding technique (a genetic variation actually) and doesn’t indicate anything; in fact, it hides whether the fruit is ripe or not.
• Parsons tells an interesting tale about a marketing experiment: A tasting panel was given two nectarines: one a fairly tasteless red variety, the other a great-tasting gold. Sitting around, tasting and talking about the fruit, the consumers unanimously agreed that the gold was a much better nectarine and that was the one they would buy. Then, on the way out the door, the panelists were offered boxes of nectarines as a thank you. One held the preferred golden fruit, the other the red. To a person, the consumers picked the red fruit to take home. Red sells.
• Growers have bred out peaches with the tiny beak at the bottom – it tends to break during packing and shipping, which can cause the entire case to rot.
• All nectarines are grown in California; peaches come from 28 states, but more than half from California.
• The greatest demand for white-fleshed fruit is from Asia – used to be that more than 80% of the fruit went to Taiwan. Not true any longer as we’re tending to recognize the value in the white-fleshed fruit.
• The difference between a nectarine and a peach is simply one gene. They’re so closely related, though, that sometimes peach seeds will sprout a nectarine tree. [Isn’t that amazing?]
• Nectarines are a slight bit more acidic with a lemony top note. Peaches tend to be muskier and richer in flavor.

How to Choose & Store:

• Remember, red doesn’t mean better. Choose from the background color – golden, not green. If it’s hung on the tree to near maturity, it should have a distinctive orange cast.
• If they are still firm, leave out on your counter until fully ripened, then refrigerate. Do not chill under-ripe fruit – it will turn mealy and dry.
• Don’t peel nectarines, but peaches should be peeled. Cut a shallow X in the blossom end, then blanch quickly in boiling water, then place in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. The skins should peel right off.

Parsons gives recipes for Peach Gelato, Nectarine-Cardamom Ice Cream plus Nectarines and Blackberries in Rose Geranium Syrup. But he mentions his favorite (no recipe), which is merely fresh peaches and shortbread.

– – – – – –

Or how about a peach shortcake? I had some buttermilk golden raisin scones in the freezer – I baked those, smeared on some Devon Cream (both of these items left over from the luncheon tea about a month ago) and sliced the peaches on top. And then I drizzled about a teaspoon of heavy cream over the top. My market doesn’t have any white-fleshed peaches (yet), but these yellows were just fabulous. I searched for the ones that had less red on the skin – they all were quite red, but I spotted a few with less red than others.

Here are the recipes I’ve posted so far for peaches or nectarines:

Southern Peach Cobbler

Peach-Raspberry Streusel Cake

In case you’re interested, the photo at the top was taken in my kitchen, but the nearly setting sun happened to be narrowly slotted right into my photo area. I re-arranged the peaches with that lovely warm highlight on the center of the bunch. Makes it almost look like they are luminous, doesn’t it?

Tweet