well-fed animals

Those are exactly the type of animals we like to make a fuss over when visiting a country fair.


These photos are not from the same fair I've posted about in the past — that was the Durham fair, which happens September 26th - 28th this year. These are from the Chester Fair, which is even smaller and more rural. It's been taking place since 1877.


Photo from the Chester Historical Society, via the via the fair's web site.

We arrived in Westbrook on Saturday morning and went for a hike at Salt Meadows, which is part of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge.


Salt marsh, Westbrook CT

Salt Meadows is a stopping place for many types of migrating birds, and visiting naturalists record their sightings in an observation log.


Too bad they weren't all together.

We went to the fair on Sunday morning, and the first thing we encountered was a picturesque cattle barn filled with picturesque cows.




There were also plenty of goats (both in a petting zoo and in competition), chickens and rabbits.




These two thought my camera was examining their new egg. And they were totally right.




Piglet, born July 28th.
There was a mesmerizing horse pull competition, in which pairs of work horses pull a sled loaded with cement blocks. The horses are often ready to go before their harness can be linked to the sled, and have to be led back to it in a tense circle.

pancakes for the skinniest skinnies

It has come to my attention that some of you could eat a plate of pancakes with no harm to your adorably scrawny physique, so I am taking the unprecedented step of publishing one pancake recipe after another.

Last week we saw Jeremy Jay at Mercury Lounge, and then on Tuesday we saw Jarvis Cocker at Terminal 5. They were each in their own way "as charming as the top of an apple-tree above a wall,"¹ but the sometimes-Mr. Tiny Banquet, who went with me to both shows, and who is himself tall and skinny, couldn't help noticing the similarities in body type. We know Jeremy Jay eats something once in a while because he said he dug John's Pizza earlier that day, but I suspect that Jarvis — a generous soul who did two encores, and who gave his glass of wine to an audience member who insisted it was her birthday — might actually be giving away the small amount of food that ends up on his plate.


Jeremy Jay, above left; Jarvis Cocker, above. This might seriously be the last time I have to apologize for crap iPhone photos because my real camera is in for repairs RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
Maybe Jarvis is just shake, shake, shaking the weight off. It's difficult to find a video of him dancing with decent sound and image quality and he's pretty subdued in the one below, so you'll just have to take my word that he's a hard-working man. Sheffield's own James Brown, in a way.


Fat Children.

The next concert we're planning to go to is a performance of Scott Walker's recent work at the Barbican this November. Scott is not going to be on stage because he's a reclusive genius, but if he were, he'd be tall and skinny too. He's gained a couple pounds since his Walker Brothers days but not many, and surely he could put away a plate of pancakes with butter and syrup without busting the seams on his pants.


I am not in the habit of flying across the pond for a single show but I can't explain what happened; I read about this event when it was announced and the next thing I knew I was looking at a seating chart. There were only two available seats next to each other in the stalls for the last night and I couldn't not take them.



The recipe below for crispy cornmeal pancakes is based on this one for blueberry pancakes, which I wrote about way back in the olde-timey days of 2006.

If you live or vacation in a place where people keep cows, do try to get fresh, local butter for your pancakes. It's the right thing to do.




If you are not on tour right now shaking your peaches all over the world, then I recommend the Swiss yogurt from Gregory's Coffee: low-fat yogurt, skim milk, cold cooked whole oats, and some chopped apple, banana and almonds. It's not as good as these pancakes but I think it's a decent alternative, and it doesn't smell weird like egg whites on whole grain toast.

crispy cornmeal pancakes

serves 2

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tbsp. sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 tsp. vegetable oil, plus a little more for cooking
butter and maple syrup for serving, and sliced strawberries would be nice too

Sift the flour into a medium-sized bowl and stir in the cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Beat the egg with the milk and the teaspoon of oil and stir this mixture into the dry ingredients with a fork until everything is thoroughly blended.

Heat a good, heavy pan or griddle (cast iron is ideal) over medium-high heat and grease it with the additional vegetable oil. (The instructions in the recipe linked to above are spot-on about using a paper towel to coat the pan with just enough oil so have a look at that).

Ladle or spoon the batter into the pan to make pancakes as big or small as you like. For classic, generous pancakes, use about 1/4 cup of batter for each. Let the pancakes cook undisturbed until small bubbles form on the surface and then flip them over with some confidence. They should be golden brown on each side and crisp at the edges.

Serve the pancakes with butter and real maple syrup, not the cheapo maple-flavored syrup. If you are trying to impress anyone (including yourself), heat the syrup until warm. Sliced strawberries are nice on top, too.

-----------------------------------

1. Firbank, Ronald. Vainglory. New York: New Directions Books, 1986.

A tale of two Seventies

In which we resume our occasional series of reviews of out-of-print cookbooks:
New York Entertains
by the Junior League of the City of New York (1974).

How was 1974 for you? What were you into? I wouldn’t be born for another two years, so I have to take the August 1974 issue of Viva magazine at its word:


Women are into:
total feminism
male nudes
pubic hairstyles
hash smuggling
great new fall fashions

I started collecting old issues of Viva after reading this appreciation of it at Vmagazine.com (no relation), which I urge you to take a look at if you have any interest in magazine publishing, or in a brief period of U.S. history during which even prime-time teevee stars weren't too uptight to pose for photos shoving their hands down the pants of a new friend.

Aside from the fascinating topics listed above, the August 1974 Viva also featured reviews of Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark and Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, an interview with Arianna Huffington, age 24 (then Arianna Stassinopoulos), and a profile of WNEW-FM DJ Alison Steele:


“She smokes tiny cigars, dismisses inconsequential people, and embraces maître d’s in restaurants, where she expects the best tables by virtue of her fame. When they are not given to her, she moves to them, glaring at the waiter.” The tiny cigars make it ok somehow, don’t you think? They’re perfect for her.
Meanwhile, the NYC Junior League published a cookbook to raise funds for its "community program." According to their website, their work in the Seventies focused on job training for women inmates, but for some reason the book doesn't even hint that the Upper East Side hostesses who contributed menus for "celebrating after the opera" and "[the] next time your husband asks you to entertain visiting businessmen" would ever have anything to do with Rikers Island jailbirds.


A detail from the inside back jacket of New York Entertains
by the Junior League of the City of New York, illustrated by Patricia Whitman.
My readers abroad might not know that in the States, the Junior League has a reputation as being an organization for brittle young socialites wearing pearls, a sense of entitlement, and a terrifying back-stabby gleam in the eyes. In London they might be identified as Sloane rangers, but the British have always allowed their upper classes a bit of kink, whereas Junior League girls are expected to have ice water running through their veins.

It won't be a surprise, then, that in 1974 they favored centerpieces that required a little too much effort.


And yet the recipes aren't as WASPy as I expected. Apparently NYC Junior League girls didn't share their New England comrades' affection for potato salad with mayonnaise deluge (and flavorless grocery-brand paprika sprinkled on top, if there was any gathering dust in the summer house cabinet), incompetent drunken clambakes, grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread, and canapés involving Ritz crackers, all washed down with truly grownup-size gin and tonics made with the second-cheapest gin available (often Five O'Clock, quite possibly picked up at the vile state-run liquor stores on I-95 in Vermont on the way to or from Maine).

In Memoirs of a Beatnik, Diane di Prima recalled a WASPy school friend's family she'd met in the early Sixties:

Her parents who had no more money than my own, lived beyond their means in expensive Darien, and shopped in a Gristede's where everything cost three times as much as it did in the local supermarket in Brooklyn, but where Tallulah Bankhead could be seen buying brandied peaches. Tomi's mother Martha was a handsome little woman in her mid-forties, Anglo-Saxon and proper, grim and laconic, a woman who did what was expected of her, and took no pleasure in it. It was a well-known—and frequently discussed—fact within the family circle that she was frigid. Her father was a florid Latin type, half French and half Italian, who drank emotionally, spent too much money, and was openly and despairingly in love with his wife. Their dogs were mangy, but thoroughbred; their heroes F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harry Crosby. Their house was much too small, their barn too big; they read The New Yorker and the Sunday Times, lived on peanut butter sandwiches and scrambled eggs, and drank endless martinis in front of the fireplace in their dark, crowded living room.

One thing we might take from all this is that the classics of WASP gastronomy are fundamentally ill-suited to appear in cook books, and that is because they are embarrassing for several reasons. Stumbling across a recipe for an authentic WASP lunch or cocktail happening in a Junior League fundraiser cook book would be like stumbling across a photo of a grown man in diapers.

So, instead we get modestly stylish suggested menus for structured social occasions: An Easter Luncheon for Six, Derby Day Luncheon for Sixteen, A Theater or Benefit Supper for Twelve, The Bicyclers' Back-pack Picnic for Four.


The menu for the committee lunch for twelve (i.e., fundraising, but "lovely enough to serve as a bridesmaids' luncheon"): vitello tonnato (veal braised in white wine, with a sauce of Italian tuna, capers, anchovies, mayonnaise and lemon juice), leeks vinaigrette, sesame seed toasts, apricot ice, and chocolate chiffon cookies.


The menu for the bicyclers' picnic ("Everyone is biking now, more than ever") includes a chilled lemon soup, salad niçoise, sesame bread sticks wrapped in prosciutto, radishes and carrot sticks, and fruit and cheese for dessert.



If you are curious about the caviar soufflé from the menu for a sans souci lunch ("simple but chic"), note that it calls for four ounces of caviar to serve two people. Hey, some landlords are ok with you being a month behind.


The crêpes Gravetye Manor sound much better: apple, bittersweet chocolate, and cream.


I was going to try that one, but I ended up making the Dutch apple pancakes instead. Yes, I know the part of the recipe with the instructions has a stain on it. It's not mine.



I couldn't bring myself to use 4 tablespoons of butter to sauté the apples so I used about 3, or a little less. That was plenty, even for sautéing in two batches. I used a salted, cultured butter and I added approximately 2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh rosemary to the cooked apple slices, which I made in advance and set aside in the refrigerator. (If you do the same, take them out of the refrigerator about 15 minutes before you are ready to cook the pancakes. The pancakes don't take long to cook, and if the apples are still cold when you begin they might not be heated through by the time the pancakes are done.) Also: I used the lesser quantity of sugar, I added a pinch of fine sea salt to the flour, and I used Negra Modelo beer.


My camera is on strike so we'll have to make do with a couple of hazy iPhone photos.

We ate the pancakes for dinner with tofu sausages on the side. The pancakes were terrific, very light and crisp around the edges. I'll definitely make them again, but next time I'll slice the apples very thin. I sliced them thinner than the recipe calls for and they were still too clunky, which made the pancakes clumsy to flip (too much weight, poorly distributed) and to eat.


I doubt the Viva crowd made pancakes often, unless for a really special morning-after breakfast. One thing everyone could agree on in the Seventies, presumably: the right capes and tweeds can be hot shit.

cape and tweedy skirt by Luba, Viva magazine, August 1974

Previous posts in this series:
Corinne Griffith's Eggs I Have Known and Mona Bazaar's Cookbook in Solidarity With the Symbionese Liberation Army;

Helen Gurley Brown's The Single Girl's Cookbook

YES WE CAN sell all these cookies

What are you doing reading a blog when all the cool people are at the bake sale? Come down to Hanger Bar on East 3rd between B and C for cookies, cookies, cookies, focaccia, empanadas, spring rolls, and just about anything else you'd want to munch on with drinks. Get there before 8, but if you want an empanada you'd better get there sooner because we're eating all of those.

hey hello, is there anyone here?

It's mercifully easier to end my unscheduled blog-hiatus with a brief announcement rather than an epic post about what I've been up to during the past six months. So, I'm inviting you to a bake sale.



It's this Saturday at Hanger Bar (3rd Street between Avenues B and C) from 1 pm until 7. I will be contributing herb focaccia and maybe some cookies too, if I can really get my shit together. If you can't make it to 3rd and B, go to MoveOn.org and see if there's a Hungry For Change bake sale in your neighborhood.

I wasn't going to do a 2nd annual post on gifts for cooks, but . . .

according to my beloved StatCounter, a disconcerting number of you are in the market for a pair of fancy dishwashing gloves. (These misguided souls among us are landing on this post from July 2006, which does not endorse fancy or proletariat dishwashing gloves. I suspect they're looking for something like this. I've been reading a lot of Evelyn Waugh lately and I've been so, so good in not repeating the phrase "sick-making" as often as Agatha Runcible, but: those things are too sick-making to crumple into a ball under one's sink, let alone wear.) If you need to buy a gift for a cook or—ugh, hate this word—a foodie, and you've already considered the suggestions I posted last Christmas, here are some more presents I would not return:

For the cook who has a healthy appetite for both cheese and kitsch, a fromage board and knife ($40 for both).



For the cook whose "cooking" is limited to making tea, a shiny gold teapot ($27 for 1-liter size and $33 for the 1 1/2-liter);



a sugar shaker named "sweet talker" (£29; let's not think about how many $$);


and a couple of graph paper mugs that might inspire post-tea scribbling ($12.95 each).

Or, if your tea drinker has been caught with their pinky in the air, a pair of grey-brown cups and saucers with gold rims to match the teapot ($28 per set).



For the cook who is basically competent but slightly inattentive, an adorable milk saver ($29).



It's not often that I cook something that requires me to heat up milk or cream, but nearly every time I have I've gone beyond scalding. The problem is that it can go from a gentle simmer to a volcanic mess in just a few seconds, and as that's happening it doesn't make any noise. You can't set a timer, either, because you don't know how long it will take. The solution is a milk saver, a little ceramic disk that rattles against the bottom of your pan just as the simmering begins. This one's got a brilliant red flag, to catch even a glazed-over eye.

For the cook who needs to work on having more friendly thoughts about pigs and fewer covetous thoughts about bacon, a pink salt pig with ears and, reportedly, a curly tail ($7.95).



For the cook who you don't know very well but want to buy a little gift for, a set of gleaming gelato spoons ($2.49 each). A cheap gift indeed, so you'd better at least tie them up with some thrillingly gaudy ribbon ($1.80 per yard).



For the cook who, when they're not cooking, eats even more toast and yogurt than you think they do, a bird-like honey pot ($44)




Or, if you've got more scratch to spend, a set of porcelain Mad Hatter dishes to hold jam, sugar, etc. ($250). Who doesn't want to be reminded of Hatty Town while having breakfast?



For the cook with raggedy post-it notes sticking out of their favorite cookbooks, Mark my Words for Cooks ($5.95) a kit for flagging recipes one would like to try, or tried and loved, or tried and hated.



For the cook who has knocked over countless glasses of red wine while getting dinner ready, stubby, old-fashioned café wine glasses ($40.50 for a set of four) for drinking exactly 23 francs worth of wine without spilling a drop.



For the cook who frequently comes home from the grocery store with a big bag of lumpy lemons, a lemon seed necklace ($280) or a copy of The Golden Lemon ($14.95). I have this book and I haven't tried any of the recipes yet but they're almost all appealing.


For the cook who has occasionally served you over-cooked pasta, a stainless steel spaghetti tester ($48). I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this—I can think of better uses for $48—but if someone gave me one I'd end up using it.



For the vegan, an obscure Dutch vegan cookbook ($12). I'm curious about the "Devilled Eggplant in Tulips."



For the Anglophile baker, a "Made in England" rolling pin (£39).



Finally, for any cook with ambitions beyond a single burner, a fancy new timer ($29.95). Said cook might set up to four independent timers at once (!!) and the numbers are BIG. The result could only be a happier relationship between arroz and frijoles.