Watermelon

There is, perhaps, no food more perfect for summer than Watermelon. Picnicking yesterday, I ate some refreshing yellow Watermelon, which I see occasionally in stores and more often at farmer's markets during the summer. There are about 200 varieties of Watermelon, and a portion of those have yellow flesh, which to me has a flavor that is slightly more delicate and less sweet than red melon. Most varieties of yellow melon have fantastic names, like Yellow Crimson, Desert King, Willhites Tendergold, Yellow Fleshed Black Diamond, Tastigold, and Orange Sunshine.
The nitty gritty of picking out a melon: A good Watermelon is evenly shaped and heavy. A yellowish or white color on one side of the melon is where the fruit contacted the ground and does not affect quality. Slap the melon lightly with an open palm and listen for a deep-pitched tone. Avoid melons with a high-pitched tone or a dead, thudding sound. Don’t, however, be one of those annoying people who pick up every melon, hold it up to their ear, and knock on it, as if they are an expert in the subtle tonal variations of watermelon.
Random Watermelon Factoids: In Japan, farmers found a way to grow melon in glass boxes, forcing the melon into a square shape and making it easier to stack and ship. My sister once ate so much Watermelon on her lunch break that she made herself sick and had to leave work. Watermelon is the official state vegetable of Oklahoma, which perhaps happened after Vernon Conrad of Bixby, Oklahoma grew a Watermelon that weighed 255 pounds. Some proclaim him the Watermelon King, a fact disputed by Lloyd Bright of Arkansas who grew one that weighed 268.8 pounds.
Eating it:
The best place to keep an uncut melon is on your countertop (they usually keep for up to two weeks). Put it in a fridge to chill at least four hours before eating. My Dad sprinkles salt on Watermelon to heighten its flavor, my Grandma pickles it, and I’ve been known to soak it in a little vodka and sprinkle it with mint. Last summer, feta and Watermelon salads were all the rage with chefs, although it doesn’t sound particularly good to me. Watermelon isn’t really something I want to eat fancied-up in a restaurant; I want to eat it outdoors sitting at picnic table, where I can spit the seeds wherever I please.

Torta Aceite

I first tasted a Torta Aceite from Spain about five years ago and instantly loved it. Thin and flakey, Torta’s have the savory flavor of olive oil with the light sweetness of sugar and a subtle anise flavor. It is the perfect cross between a cookie and a cracker; it pairs well with soft goat cheese and a glass of sherry, and equally well with your morning cup of coffee. I have to be honest though, it took me quite awhile to find someone who loves Torta Aceite as much as I do. It seems to be one of those love/hate foods. People are either immediately taken with the light, flakey texture and the rich taste of olive oil with a sprinkling of sugar, or their face crinkles up in an expression that says quite clearly “Olive oil and sugar do not go together! And I hate anise!” Now, I don’t like anise either and I usually stay as far away from its licorice-like flavor as possible, but in a Torta Aceite it’s so subtle it’s more like a whiff of anise hovering over the Torta.
For a few years I would only see the Torta in a handful of stores, like Olivier & Co. (who offers them at the best price, $5.00) but now they seem to be everywhere. They do not, however, seem to be flying of the shelves of gourmet stores, mainly, I think, because people have no idea what they are. Next time you’re in your local gourmet store or Whole Foods or Olivier & Co., buy some and give them a try. When you open a package they are best eaten within a few days, as I’ve noticed the Torta’s losing their crispness when exposed to air. In my house, The Husband is one of those who’s face crinkles up at the sight of Torta Aceite, so eating the entire package is left up to me. It is a task I thoroughly enjoy.

Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz

I’ve always thought that when I have a kitchen to remodel the first thing I’ll install is an extra faucet on my sink to dispense seltzer water. I love bubbles in beverages. If boring flat water disappeared completely and the lakes and natural springs and every faucet in the country started running with only seltzer, that would be fine with me. You can understand, then, why a jar I saw today in an Italian market caught my eye. The shape of whatever was in the jar was too intriguing to pass up and one of the ingredients was sodium bicarbonate, which meant bubbles. The next ingredient was Zucchero, which meant sugar. I realized I was pretty much buying a cross between a sugar cube and an Alka-Seltzer. But for $3.75, I was willing to gamble that maybe the jar held something more exciting, something that would turn any beverage into a delicious, fizzy concoction. To get right to the point, my first instinct was right. When I threw a dozen white twiggy things into a glass of water it tasted exactly like sugary Alka-Seltzer. Then, although it clearly said on the package to add water, I couldn’t resist putting one directly on my tongue. Before I spit it out into the sink, it fizzed and foamed in my mouth and I realized that I had basically discovered the Italian version of Pop Rocks Candy. I can’t say that I would recommend buying “Effervescente Tortoroglio” to put in a glass or on your tongue, and probably the jar I bought will sit in my cupboard until December when I will use the white twiggy things as fake snow on a ginger bread house. The thought of an Italian grandmother dropping “Effervescente Tortoroglio” into everyone’s glass at the end of dinner to help digest the gigantic meal she just served is kinda heartwarming though. You can even buy the stuff in a keepsake glass, although why you’d want to preserve the memory of indigestion, I don’t know. The sugar was probably added to this product in an attempt to make it taste better, but when it comes to curing indigestion, bitter is really the way you want to go. A bitter flavor, whether it comes from herbs, or hops in beer, or an arugula salad, gets the salivary glands going and your stomach juices flowing. Bitterness sends a signal to the brain to get the digestive tract in gear. When I was waiting tables for awhile, a fellow server frequently came to work hung over. She always sipped on a glass of seltzer water with a heavy dash of angostura bitters from the bar and swore it was the best cure for an upset stomach. This girl was not the sharpest tool in the shed and when she started coming to work drunk instead of hung over, she got fired. But it turns out she was right about those angostura bitters. Also, the bitter, herbal flavor of a traditional cocktail, Italian Campari subdued somewhat by a squirt of seltzer, is also good for the belly, which means all those Italian grandmothers are on to something too.

Getting Pickled

Wedged between the cookbooks in my kitchen are pages I’ve ripped out of various magazines, a paper trail of culinary aspirations that I'll probably never get around to: cooking up a batch of mozzarella cheese, brewing ginger ale, making marshmallows from scratch, stocking my cupboard with jars of homemade raspberry jam and tomato sauce. Having these recipes lying around for years could be depressing, but I actually find them comforting. Every so often I flip through the articles and recipes, never losing hope that one day I'll fill my pantry with whatever it is I’ve finally canned or pickled. But in the meantime, I’m thankful for rick’s picks. Rick is a man who began making pickles as a hobby in his Brooklyn kitchen, somehow found and attended an international pickle competition, and walked away with six ribbons and a “Best of Show” Award. Understandably, victory at the pickle competition inspired Rick to think big, and now his pickled concoctions are showing up in stores across the country. Rick’s picks are available all over New York, at the Cheese Store of Silverlake in Los Angeles, A Southern Season in Chapel Hill and numerous others states.
Fresh, natural ingredients, unusual flavor combinations, and quirky product names set rick’s picks apart. Smokra is pickled okra with smoked paprika, Spears of Influence are cucumber spears in a cumin-scented brine, Bee n’ Beez are “turbocharged” bread and butter pickles and Phat Beets are beets pickled in a rosemary-scented brine. There are ten flavor combinations so far, and counting. I commend Rick for not only making time in his life to take up pickling as a hobby, but for going one step further and turning it into a full-fledged business. Supporting Rick's dream is simple: At your next BBQ think about how delicious some Mean Beans (green beans pickled in a cayenne-dill brine) would be next to a scoop of potato salad and how great those turbocharged pickles would be on a burger.
And by the way, if I do ever dig out that old recipe I have for brewing ginger ale, you all will be the first to know.

Gin and Cheese

Let me first be clear that gin and cheese have nothing in common except for being two of my favorite things. I don't recommend pairing them together but if, for example, you were at a cheese and wine tasting and then later that afternoon needed something to refresh your palate, well, gin might be just the thing.
It all began this past Saturday at the Seattle Cheese Festival, a yearly gathering of cheese geeks at Pike Place Market. At the festival, cheesemakers from all over the Pacific Northwest sample and sell their products and seminars are offered throughout the day. I attended a seminar that paired six Pacific Northwest artisan cheeses with four different northwest wines and discussed the best cheese and wine combinations. At the very beginning of the seminar, one of the instructors said something that summed up my own personal cheese and wine pairing philosophy: "If you like the cheese, and you like the wine, you'll probably like the pairing."

As someone who has at various times made her living suggesting cheese and wine pairings to people, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: there are very, very few cheese and wine combinations that are so gastly they will ruin your night. At a cheese and wine tasting seminar people take a bite of cheese and a little sip of wine and furrow their brow and think very hard about all the flavors in their mouth. In real life, people don't eat that studiously. Since cheese and wine are such natural companions, most any combination you put together will taste pretty darn good. So what I found most enjoyable about the tasting at the Cheese Fest was not the pairing of the wines and cheeses, but the opportunity to taste cheeses that are difficult or completely impossible to find outside of Washington or Oregon. I can't refer you to stores across the country where all of you can taste these cheeses because most artisanal cheesemakers only make enough cheese to sell to a handful of local stores and restaurants. This, I think, is actually a great thing. It's exciting to witness the growth of regional foods and wines that have to be enjoyed in the place they are made. I also love that artisanal cheesemakers are committed to making small batches of their products by hand, rather than opening a huge factory so their cheese can be sold all over the country. If, however, you are ever in Seattle, you must stop at either DeLaurenti Market or Beecher's Cheese in Pike Place Market, which both offer a large selection of northwest cheeses.
The Seattle Cheese Festival is the type of event that inevitably leads to palate exhaustion. Too much wine and cheese can leave a girl parched, which leads to the gin... A friend I was staying with in Seattle served a thirst-quenching, refreshing cocktail that I highly recommend for summer sipping. If it wasn't raining so hard outside, we most definitely would have enjoyed our Basil Lavender cocktails sitting out on the deck. The base of the cocktail is Dry Soda, a lightly sweetened and subtly flavored soda available in lavender, rhubarb, lemongrass and kumquat. The company that makes Dry Soda is based in Seattle and currently sells their soda in the Pacific NW and California. We muddled minced basil leaves with gin, squeezed in some Meyer lemon, added ice and finished it off with the lavender soda. Any of the sophisticated Dry Soda flavors would pair well with either vodka or gin, and their low sugar content are a welcome change from syrupy-sweet mixers.

Lāloo goat ice cream

I’ve been wanting to buy Lāloo goat ice cream for about a year, but every time I reach for the half-pint the sticker shock dissuades me. Seven dollars is a lot to pay for ice cream, even if it comes from goats frolicking in Sonoma, CA in fields of “green grass and thistle berry in the warm Pacific breeze.” I haven’t decided if it’s cute or annoying that these goats have a better life than most of us, but there is something comforting about knowing the food you eat comes from a happy, healthy place. Also, the word on the street from cheesemakers I’ve spoken to is that raising goats is a little like having an entire herd of newborn babies, so if someone’s going to go through the trouble of raising goats, milking them, & then churning ice cream, they probably deserve every penny of that seven dollars.
As I get a little older and spoon-feeding myself Ben & Jerry’s is less of a pleasure and more of an instant stomachache, I’ve been keeping my eye open for ice cream that is a little more friendly to the digestive system. Lāloo Goat milk ice cream is exactly that. Goat’s milk is slightly lower in lactose than cow’s milk, which makes it easier to digest for the lactose intolerant crowd. Some people who think they are lactose intolerant are actually allergic to cow’s milk. The protein people are allergic to is not found in goat’s milk (or human milk). Goat’s milk is also naturally lower in fat and naturally homogenized, meaning the fat globules are small and remain suspended in the milk rather than separating out, again making it easier to digest. In cow’s milk, the fat globules are large enough that they will separate from the liquid. You may have noticed this before when you buy cream and have to shake it before pouring it so a lump of cream doesn’t drop into your coffee.

The flavor of Lāloo ice cream has none of the tanginess you might expect from goat's milk and tastes pretty much the same as cow’s milk. The main difference is the texture. The lower fat in goat’s milk is evident in the somewhat icy, rather than creamy, mouth-feel. I tried the Deep Chocolate flavor, but for me, chocolate is rarely at its best in a low-fat setting and it tasted a little cocoa-powder like. I recommend trying a flavor that will shine with less fat, such as Black Mission Fig, Strawberry Darling, or Lemon Chiffon. The line is sold at many natural food stores and larger gourmet grocery stores, and you can even get a coupon for $1.00 off if you visit the Lāloo website.

Coffee Snobbery

Admittedly, years of working in gourmet foods stores have given me somewhat of a particular palate. Still, I’ve never really considered myself a food snob. I enjoy a grocery store chunk of jalapeño Monterey Jack Cheese paired with a cheap beer, I still crave the hotdish my mom made out of ground hamburger and tater tots, and I’m certainly not above buying $5.00 olive oil at Trader Joes. But there is one area where I have to confess to full-fledged snobbery.
My name is Jenny and I am addicted to coffee.
Being that I still consider Seattle my hometown, this isn’t a big surprise. Some rumors about Seattle are not true (it really doesn’t rain everyday) and some are (people do wear fleece and running shoes to nice restaurants). And the rumor about the coffee? Completely true. Of all the cities I’ve lived in it is by far the easiest location to find a really good cup of coffee or a perfectly made espresso. For better or worse, this snobbery has been passed on to The Husband who has embarked on a personal mission to teach all baristas he encounters that a latte and a cappuccino are not the same thing. When we visit (or move to) a new city, the first mission is always staking out a good coffee joint. When we moved to Manhattan I thought the biggest challenge would be mastering the subway system. Contrer, Mon Frere. Turns out, finding a good cup o’ Joe in the big city is much, much harder. (so far, Think Coffee and The Tasting Room win) Thankfully, an influx of Pacific Northwest-trained baristas on the east coast have lifted the bar, especially in Brooklyn where The Husband finally found his perfect cappuccino (try St. Helen Cafe, or Gimme). On a recent visit to Chicago, I finally had the chance to visit Intelligentsia coffee shop, which also has a location in Los Angeles. I’d heard about Intelligentsia’s commitment to high quality coffee and espresso and to their growers around the world. They form personal relationships with their coffee bean growers and pay them at least 25% above the fair trading price for beans. What most astonished me about my visit, however, was when I was buying beans and the barista asked me what qualities I like in coffee, I stuttered and said, “Uh, I like it strong?” Me, who can think of hundreds of words to describe flavors in cheese and wine and who has been drinking two cups of coffee a day for most of my adult life, could not articulate the characteristics I love in a measly little coffee bean. The barista then said to me, “Strong isn’t actually a flavor” and I was officially humbled. He threw some words at me – fruity, smoky, chocolately – and somehow I still could not translate these words into tastes that came out of a cup of coffee. Did smoky mean that bad burnt flavor that Starbucks sometimes has? And fruity…have I ever tasted fruitiness in my morning cup? Chocolate…that sounded good, I guess.
I left with a pound of beans he recommended and a vow to start attending some of the Cupping seminars I’ve seen advertised at coffee shops like Peets and Victrola in Seattle. Cupping coffee is pretty much the same thing as wine tasting. It involves sniffing, slurping, comparing, and committing to memory what your senses have experienced. At this point, I may know how to taste when Pinot Noir is from Burgundy and when it’s from Santa Barbara, but I have no clue how tell if coffee is from Guatemala or Kenya. Since I am completely committed to being the coffee snob that I thought I was, hopefully this is something my palate will be able to pick up after some Cupping sessions. After that, the only remaining coffee mystery will be figuring out why coffee shops in New York don’t let you put your own milk in your coffee….