Twain's Feast: My New Favorite Book

We’re all looking for the next good read and last week I got a review copy of Twain’s Feast, absolutely a good read. Andrew Beahrs, an anthropologist and writer, takes a look at foods loved by Mark Twain and rediscovers and eats them in their natural locales. It’s travel, history, food and locavor-osity all mixed into one book that keeps you mesmerized with its effortless yarn spinning.

Beahrs doesn’t write with a big ego or with annoying fake bravado, and he doesn’t smile at everything he eats and repeat ‘good stuff’ or ‘delicious’ – when it’s bad he says so and in a way that’ll make you laugh.

Feeling romantic about stewing raccoons? Beahrs tells of Coon Suppers in Gillett, Arkansas where the smell of the animal’s fat made him nauseous as it bubbled in the outdoor cooking pots. Dogs won’t even eat raccoon fat. At the supper Beahrs attended, a local nodded at the kettles of coon stew and said, “Yeah, we’re gonna eat real well but it won’t be coming out of there.”

Slow cooking with onions and vegetables eventually tamed the beastly flavor and yesterday in Seattle (one leg of his book tour) Beahrs said the flavor was hard to discern and compared the texture of slow-cooked raccoon to pot roast, which for some may be as close as they get to trying raccoon stew.

What did he like? When he tried Olympia oysters grown by Washington’s Taylor Shellfish it put him in Twain’s shoes. “Those Oly’s were a Twain moment for me.” Sheepshead fish in New Orleans and maple syrup made his like list too, though he guessed he’ll never know what prairie chicken tastes like (a Twain favorite) because they are almost extinct now.

“Twain appreciated the best of what was there,” says Beahrs, “and when something was good he knew it.” Beahrs shares that with Twain and between the two of them this book is food writing at its very best.

Moonshine and Everclear Taste Test

I don't know exactly why I bought the corn whiskey. I was curious about moonshine, and it's moonshine corn whiskey made by Junior Johnson, a Nascar driver whose family has been in the moonshine business for a long time. This bottle is legal for some reason, and a friend told me it tastes much better than the moonshone he drank as a kid in Aberdeen, Washington.

The Everclear is something I keep around to make holiday fruit explosions and bitters, and it's fun to offer to people at a party.

The taste test between these two revealed:

• The corn whiskey was an abhorrence. Cleaning chemical nose, blistering on the palate and with a faint cheap whiskey note. It made the Everclear look good.


• The Everclear was wild tasting, with an acid nose, incinerating on the palate and with no flavor notes at all. From here on out I'm only using it with blueberries and kiwi.

I will be looking for other ways to get rid of the corn whiskey, and right now it is in the running for a birthday gift for my brother, maybe made into sweet jelly for his morning toast.

Apple Clafouti - a Recipe from a French Girl

Apples are bliss for me. I buy a box or two of rose-and-gold farm apples in the fall, mixing up the varieties as much as I can. Then I have lots for thick apple pies, almond hazelnut crisps, rich homemade applesauce and this clafouti. I can make an apple something at the drop of a hat.

This clafouti recipe is an old French country dessert with a batter that holds together whatever fruits are ripe in the back yard. It’s one of those recipes that everyone asks for. When I bring it to family parties, sweet old Uncle Phil has as many helpings as he can nab. When I ask him if he’s had a bite his eyes just twinkle and he shrugs his shoulders and then looks over at empty pie plate. I’ve worked it over from a recipe I found in Savuer by Sally Schmitt, who owned The French Laundry until 1994. I leave out the cinnamon, much of the butter, and the cream becomes milk, but I don’t skimp on the brandy.

It is an aromatic and plump, heady dessert, so let it glow in your favorite deep dish pie plate. I use a10-inch Emile Henry, but if I had an old French oval pottery dish I’d switch to that. The batter creeps gently between the apple slices so in the end each slice is held lightly against its neighbor, in a state of sweet creaminess.



Apple Clafouti
by Alicia Arter

Batter:
3 eggs
1 cup low-fat milk
4 Tbsp. butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
¼ tsp. salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

For the apples:
1 Tbsp. butter
4 apples, using three or four different types
½ cup sugar
3 Tablespoons of brandy

For the pie plate:
½ teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Apples:
1. Peel and core the apples, then slice in ½-inch thick pieces (so they cook uniformly).
2. In a large frying pan on medium heat, melt the butter and then add the sugar and rum. 3. Stir to blend. Add the apples and stir to coat. Cook for 10 minutes covered until apples are beginning to get softer. When done, reserve the juice in the pan to glaze the clafouti just before serving.

Pie Plate:
1. Grease the pie plate with the butter then coat with the sugar. Put it in the oven to warm while you make the batter.

Batter
1. While the apples cook, put all the batter ingredients in a food processor and blend thoroughly. There will be no lumps in the batter.

Assemble:
1. Take the hot pie plate out of the oven and fill with about 2 cups of the batter. Put the apple slices in the pie plate and then cover with the rest of the batter. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of sugar over the top. Bake in the center of the oven for 30 minutes until golden and the center is set. When done, remove from oven and pour the pan juices over the top. Serve warm or cooled.

Recipe (C) Alicia Arter 2009. Do not publish without permission

Hand Churning Butter

Last week I ran into the old glass and wood Dazey butter churn from the family farm, so I decided to try it out with a pint of non-homogenized cream from a local dairy.

After 40 minutes of hand churning the curds appeared in a puddle of buttermilk. Draining the curds didn't make them look much like butter, so I grabbed a circa 1880 cookbook for instructions. Wash the butter in water. So I did and then stirred and pressed it.

How was it? Sweeter and creamier than any butter I've ever eaten, be it local, Plugra, Irish, French butter in Normandy, English dairy butter in Stratford, Polish butter in Lancut, Poland and what have you. And rather than the fatty mouthfeel and neutral taste of commercial unsalted butter, this all-Jersey cream butter was silky and ethereal.

Its pronounced sweet taste, though, was what surprised me most of all. The cream it came from wasn't sweet, the whey/buttermilk it made wasn't even tangy, so something really good happened during those long minutes of hand cranking. All that remains to see is if I can get the same effect with my standing mixer. There’s a good reason those old butter churns aren't used anymore.

Rum, rye and beer for the 4th of July

The signers of The Declaration of Independence were fervent beer and rum drinkers back in the day. In the European tradition, and with 18th century water purity often dicey, the new Americans knocked back beer for breakfast and rum as often as they could.
To this end cocktail savant James MacWilliams of
Seattle's Canlis Restaurant gives us a proper potion for the 4th of July: the Declaration Cocktail. So much more than a boilermaker, the rye, rum and beer are melded by the goodly amount of brown sugar syrup. Keep the rest of the beer in a pewter vessel and you’re very 1776.
If you can’t make it to Canlis for this jubilant quaff you can make it at home. Here’s the recipe in James’s own words. Here’s to America – Happy Birthday!



The Declaration:
In 12 oz glass, mug or glass drinking boot pour:
- 1oz. Pyrat XO rum (any fruity rum will do but we did commit mutiny after all)
- .75oz. Rittenhouse Rye Whiskey, high proof and spicy.
- .75oz. brown sugar syrup (simple syrup made with brown sugar)
- 6 oz. Ale ( I like something malty with some body. Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale is my choice, and is close to the beer Thomas Jefferson might have brewed. - James MacWilliams

Jersey Sweet Milk

Beautiful bottles of local Jersey cow milk – with the cream floating on the top – are at the local market and we’re on our first couple of bottles. The milk is pasteurized but not ultra-pasteurized, and that’s so good for flavor and for cheese makers.

But the fun thing is that it's not homogenized. There’s a good 1-2 inches of cream at the top of the bottle and so you get to shake it before you pop the cap. Even the 1% milk has a cream cap so that nearly-nonfat milk is an adventure instead of a penance.

The milk is rich in your mouth and you can taste a splash of green meadows in each sip, which makes me think of milk ages ago on our family farm in Harrah, Washington.

The dairy has Jersey cows, and this milk is a unique experience because haven’t we all wondered how pure old-fashioned Jersey milk tastes? It’s long had the reputation of being the finest in flavor, as long as you don’t ask a Guernsey fan.

All in all, on busy days when I hurry into the neighborhood market with a short list like MILK EGGS BREAD it’s nice to have this thoughtful choice. It’s not earthshaking but it makes an everyday food taste wonderful.

Rhubarb Pudding Pie for a rhubarb jones

Spring, actually every spring, is when this rhubarb jones hits, flattening me like a falling sequoia. Last Thursday I bought a piece of artisan rhubarb pie at a fancy pants market to quell my madness, but it was so good it only increased my longing. That night I ordered a grandmotherly rhubarb cobbler at dinner. It was so big I took half home and ate the rest the next day.

Yet the rhubarb love is still pestering me. I went to the market again and found others had the longing, because the market was sold out of local rhubarb.

Today I made this Rhubarb Pudding Pie that has its own sweet sea of lushness. The custardy pudding envelopes the tender rhubarb and lends comfort while keeping the sour pie plant from being too tart. It's a recipe I came up with a few years ago during my spring jones.

It's an old farm-style pie and it is a dandy.

Rhubarb Pudding Pie
Serves 8

It's easy to make – just mix and bake. The whipping cream and rose petals make it even prettier.

Ingredients:
1 unbaked pie crust in a 9.5” deep dish Pyrex glass pie plate

Filling:
1 cup whipping cream
6 farm egg yolks, beaten lightly
4 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 4 tablespoons warm water
1 teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups sugar
8 16” stalks of local red rhubarb (4 cups) cut in ½” pieces
Topping:
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup sugar
1 handful of fresh, unsprayed rose petals or pansies

Oven: 375 degrees

To make filling:
Blend the egg yolks and heavy cream with a fork.
Thoroughly mix corn starch and warm water in a small bowl until smooth. Add to the egg/cream mixture and stir gently, then mix salt and sugar in.
Add the rhubarb pieces to the egg/cream mixture. Pour filling into the unbaked pie crust.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Then cover pie crust edge with aluminum foil or a pie crust ring so it won’t get too brown. Turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake for 45 minutes, or until filling is just set. It will wiggle a little when shaken, but it should not be liquid. Cool on a baking rack for about an hour.

To make topping:
When pie is cooled, whip the cream at high speed on a mixer, or by hand. As it thickens, add the vanilla and sugar and continue whipping the cream until it is thick.
Spread the whipped cream on top of the pie, sprinkle with rose petals and serve.

Recipe and photo (C) 2005 Alicia Comstock Arter. Use only with written permission of author.