"Choose any book
from the Penguin Books Great Food series"
I have had the this collection for some
while but have been loathe to read any of the books because they are such
pretty little things and it seems a shame to risk damage by opening them. I've done it now though; I chose "Eating
with the Pilgrims and other pieces" by Calvin Trillin and I selected it
for purely selfish reasons which are that he once said:
"The most remarkable thing about my
mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers.
The original meal has never been found."
Leftovers and their numerous delicious uses
are close to my heart (indeed, I have written a handbook of leftovers and how to use them ~ Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers)
and I've been looking for an excuse to quote that for ages!
To the book ...
Calvin Trillin is a famous and amusing
writer who has been contributing to the New York Times since 1963. He has often been called a "food
writer" but disagrees with this saying "I don't cook. I don't know
anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant." He does, however,
appear to know about American food - as do I, a bit!
My first job in the Caribbean was at the Tamarind
Club on Tortola (as was my second and my fifth!) but after a few months I had to
return to the UK and asked an American friend if she would be interested in taking
over the kitchen. She was but told me she was bit dubious about cooking
"creatively" because of the Brits. This surprised me as I had been holding back because of the Americans
being so narrow in their tastes! I doubt either of us were right. Calvin
Trillin makes a fair few digs at English cooks in this little book andI am now
going to dig back!
The first essay is "An attempt to
Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Wing". Well! For non-Americans who are not in the know this is a "classic"
dish of spicy chicken wings which are served somewhat incongruously with celery
sticks and a blue cheese sauce. I have
never thought that blue cheese and chicken were a good combo and indeed Mr.
Trillin says "I later learned that nobody in Buffalo has figured
out for sure what to do with the blue-cheese dressing." I'm not at all surprised.
In the second and title essay, "Eating
with the Pilgrims", he states that the Pilgrims were from East Anglia
which was, he says, "glad to see the back of them" and "put on
some Brussels sprouts to boil in case any of their descendents craved a veggie
in 1981"! In this essay he is
primarily putting forward the case for celebrating Thanksgiving by eating
Spaghetti Carbonara rather than turkey. His argument being that it is far more traditional than turkey having been introduced by
Christopher Columbus who the Indians, he claimed, called "the big Italian
fella". So, as you see, creative
and unusual writing.
Next comes a chapter on Barbecued Mutton
which is not as strange as it sounds and I do like the sign he mentions seeing
outside a barbecued mutton purveyors;
"Mary
had a little lamb, won't you have some too?"
In "Missing Links" he writes of boudin
(Jim, but not as we know it) by which he means a spicy rice mixture a bit like
dirty rice, often containing pork or beef but sometimes based on shrimp or
gator, shoved into a sausage skin. The boudin I know is either a dark blood
sausage, Boudin Noir which can be likened to black pudding, or bloodless Boudin
Blanc which is like guess what? White
pudding! Serving suggestion - the Louisiana Boudin of
which he writes is, apparently, best eaten "whilst leaning against a
pickup".
Later in the book there is much talk of
bagels.
I have always been amused by the American
interpretation of dishes eg. apple pie (which we invented before
we invented America) a la mode ie. with ice cream (see here for more on this strange terminology) and biscuits (by which they mean scones but even so this is a strange combination) with gravy. Really I think Mr. Trillin is of a like mind, in 2007 when being
interviewed he said:
"The
sort of eating I’ve always been interested in is what I guess you’d call
vernacular eating. It has something to do with a place…. The fact that people
in Cincinnati have something they call authentic Cincinnati chili, and seem unaware that
people in the Southwest eat chili, let alone Mexicans, and think that chili is
made by Macedonians and served on spaghetti, that’s interesting to me."
I like Mr. Trillin's style and hope to read
more of his work and, as the little book has survived my womanhandling so well I might read another in the Penguin Great Food series.
Speaking of Books
In other news ...
Lovely day here in Cornwall, we went to
Bedruthan Steps for a walk.
