Throw a proper Maine lobster bake–anywhere

from Tasting Table Everywhere, Jun 23, 2009

The water in New England is still a bit chilly for swimming, but no matter: When Yankees get sand between their toes, their first thoughts are not of sunscreen and snorkels, but of lobster and lemon butter.

Well-timed to coincide with the recent plunge in lobster prices, a new cookbook features a lobster-bake tutorial from the masters: schooner captains from Maine, the lobster capital of America.

Windjammer Cooking, by Jean Kerr and Spencer Smith, is a collection of recipes from the state’s windjammers: old fishing schooners that have been repurposed for passenger cruises. On every cruise, the captain anchors at a swath of sand and fires up an all-you-can-eat lobster bake.

Here’s how it’s done:
1. Cover the bottom of your largest pot or a galvanized-steel kettle with 2 to 3 inches of seawater (or lightly salted water). Position the pot over an open fire. Bring the water to a boil and add lobsters. Pile clams, mussels or other shellfish on top. Next, add a layer of onions, garlic and potatoes. Cover with a thin layer of seaweed and add corn (in the husk, but with the ends trimmed to save space).

2. Cover everything with a thick layer of seaweed, cover the pot and let steam for about 20 minutes. When finished, the potatoes should be tender, the shellfish should be open and the lobster meat should be white and firm. Serve with melted butter and lemon wedges.

A winemaker turns disaster into a delicious barbecue sauce

from Tasting Table Everywhere, May 22, 2009

In October 2005, an arsonist set fire to a wine warehouse in Vallejo, California, ruining $100 million worth of wine from 92 wineries. Most winemakers left their bottles to the bulldozer; Julie Johnson just couldn’t let go.

So Johnson, the owner of Tres Sabores, an organic winery in nearby Rutherford, threw on a Tyvek suit and gloves and rescued all the wine she could. Her wines were “cooked,” as they say (though quite literally this time), and undrinkable, but she took about 5,000 bottles home to see if she could do anything with their contents.

She boiled down some Zinfandel and added produce from her farm. A few trials later, she emerged with a sauce, ¿Porqué No? Fire-Roasted Zinfandel Marinade and Grilling Glaze.

Named after one of her perished wines, ¿Porqué No? has the berry aroma and smoky pepper of the Zin, complemented with pureed persimmon and pomegranate and a spicy dose of serrano chile. Johnson left sugar and tomato out of her recipe, so the flavor is tangy and complex–and not at all cloying.

As its name suggests, the sauce has multiple uses: Johnson likes to marinate pork or chicken in the mixture, then brush it on again as the meat grills. Or you can try it in her homespun recipe, a lusty, blue-cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped burger (click here to download).

¿Porque No? Marinade and Glaze ($14 for 500 ml) is available at tressabores.com

from Saveur Magazine, May 2009

THINK CONNECTICUT is one big suburb? Think again: its diverse immigrant communities, fertile farms, and vibrant university towns full of forward-thinking chefs add up to as rich a culinary landscape as that of many states three times its size.

Connecticut’s bounty is deliciously apparent on the menus of its most innovative restaurants. At the Dressing Room at the Westport Country Playhouse, the chef Michel Nischan offers classic dishes crafted with local ingredients. Our favorite: the chicken pot pie with jerusalem artichoke sauce.

LIFE AQUATIC

Whether hooked in the state’s rivers or coastal bays, Connecticut’s fish and shellfish draw crowds. Native delicacies include quahogs, the hardshell clams that star in New England clam chowder; plump bluepoint oysters; and bluefish from the Long Island Sound. In spring, Connecticut River vally residents welcome the season with shad bakes, at which the spawning fish is deboned, spread on oak planks, and roasted with salt pork over an open fire.

APIZZA!

New Haven’s Wooster Square has been synonymous with pizza (or as locals say, “appiza,” pronounced ah-BEETS) since 1925, when an Italian immigrant, named Frank Pepe opened a pizzeria that turned out thin-crust pies topped with just tomato sauce, oregano, and anchovies, perfectly charred in a coal-fired oven. In time, Pepe’s pies (shown above) became the gold standard in Connecticut (and, depending on whom you ask, the world); today, the signature version is topped with clams and chunks of garlic.

GREEN PASTURES

Connecticut has been a hub of dairy production since the 18th century, when its lush pastures supported cows that supplied milk and cheese to New York City and Boston. In the 20th century, many of the state’s family-run farms opened “dairy bars” serving homemade ice cream and diner fare; some, like the Prospect Dairy Bar, in Prospect, continue to draw loyal customers today. Between 1940 and 2009, the number of dairies in Connecticut dropped from 6,200 to 149; now many farmers are turning to a new product to keep their industry alive: farmstead cheese. Cato Corner Farm in Colchester and Beaver Brook Farm in Lyme are among the state’s best cheese makers.

5 STATE SANDWICHES

1. A Connecticut-style hot lobster roll (shown right) is sublimely simple: lobster meat, lots of butter, and a split-top hot dog bun. Try the one served at Lenny and Joe’s Fish Tale in Westbrook.

2. The steamed cheeseburger has a cult following in central Connecticut. Ted’s Restaurant, in Meriden, prepares its burger in a custom-designed steaming cabinet and serves it bubbling over with cheddar.

3. Connecticut may have more hot dog stands per capita than any state in the union; Rawley’s, in Fairfield, is beloved for its deep-fried hot dogs wrapped in bacon.

4. The Marcus Dairy Bar, in Danbury, serves the perfect old-school open-face turkey sandwich: thick slices of roasted meat and gravy on white bread with a generous helping of cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes.

5.  For 87 years, the Nardelli family of Waterbury has stacked salami, cappicola ham, and provolone on fresh rolls with a homemade pickle, pepper and onion marinade that has made the Italian grinders at its store famous.

Ben Conniff

from Saveur, April 2009

Traditional Mexican chocolate, with its intensely tannic, spicy flavor, is an essential ingredient for complex moles, or sauces, like the ones chef Rick Bayless makes at his Chicago restaurant Topolobampo (see page 70; a recipe for his pork with mole negro sauce appears on the previous two pages). Unlike European-style baking chocolate, traditional Mexican chocolate is never conched (rolled together with vanilla, sugar, and cocoa butter until it becomes smooth). Instead, the cacao beans are coarsely ground, toasted, and combined with cinnamon and ground almonds; then the mixture is molded into cylinders or disks. While the best Mexican chocolate is still handmade on a grinding stone, there are several good commercial brands widely available in the states. The most popular is Ibarra ($4.25 per 18.6-ounce box). -Ben Conniff

from Saveur, April 2009

December 13 Anniversary: Delmonico’s Opens

New York City, 1827

Italian immigrants John and Peter Delmonico helped introduce fine dining to America when they opened their first cafe, Delmonico and brother, at 23 William Street. Their Empire grew to nine locations but could not outlive Prohibition. The restaurant was raided by “dry” agents in 1921 and 1922; by 1923 it could no longer afford to operate.

from Riffin.com

For fans of Reggae, Ska, Dance Hall, and Dub, there’s no better way to trace the lineage of your favorite tunes then with the recently released Randy’s 50th Anniversary from VP Records. The album mines the best recordings to come out of Vincent “Randy” Chin’s iconic Kingston record shop in the 1960’s and 70’s. The fifty tracks paint a clear portrait of the process by which Jamaican artists melded American pop music with Caribbean rhythmic sensibilities to create genres all their own that have continue to flower into new manifestations to this day.

The influence of U.S. pop recordings is clear in early tracks like Alton and Eddie’s “Let Me Dream,” a fairly straightforward doo-wop, covers like Bob Marley’s laid-back, matured (and overall better) version of the Archies’ bubble gum hit “Sugar Sugar,” and later Alton Ellis’s bright, syncopated cover of “Too Late to Turn Back Now,” originally by the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose.

But a clear Caribbean vibe is also present from the start. The appropriate opening track, “Independent Jamaica” glides atop Caribbean percussion. A heavy Ska backbeat propels Rico Rodriguez’s “Rico Special.” By the end of the first disc, the social critiques of Peter Tosh and romantic plaints of The Gaylads are set to a rhythm like nothing to come from the U.S.

If there’s a weak element of the collection, it’s the disconnect between the two discs. When you pop in disc 2, it feels as though you’ve skipped a few years stylistically. The album booklet explains that during the late 1960’s, the “rock steady” period, Randy was focused on building a studio above the shop at the expense of putting out current recordings. When the second disc picks up the story, the songs move at a slower pace, and feature more studio production and effects. But the later tracks still equal their predecessors in romance and good humor, particularly in the closing track, Carl Malcolm’s “Fattie Bum Bum.”

Take a couple hours to relax and soak up this album, not just to learn about the evolution of a genre, but to be transported to a different age and a warmer place.

from Uinterview.com

The last thing you’ll learn from Gran Torino is that Clint Eastwood is not a good singer. But on your way to this less-than-stunning revelation you’ll learn many more pleasurable lessons. You’ll find out that even at the age of 78, Eastwood is still an uncompromising badass. You’ll also see that age has brought even deeper introspection and a good deal more humor than he typically puts on display.

Gran Torino is not a comedy. Yet for the majority of the movie I was laughing. The plot centers on a crotchety, stubborn, conservative racist whose good old white neighbors have all fled an incursion of Hmong immigrants. At the start, we see him as his children, grandchildren, and neighbors see him: as a bastard. But he quickly reveals that the old donkey is in fact quite smart, quick with a joke, and shockingly not petty—he befriends the teenager who tries to steal his beloved classic car. While many of the movie’s jokes are at the expense of Eastwood’s character, Walt, at least half feature him as the comedian.

If you believe psychologists who say that the most open-minded of us are implicitly racist, then Walt is the outlier. He’s quite vocal in his disdain for the Hmong, and the Irish, Italians, and African Americans. Yet in action he is perfectly even-handed, even if that means evenly cold. Eastwood’s performance is nuanced, funny, and graceful, making you smile with admiration even in some of the movie’s saddest moments.

He’s supported by an excellent cast that convincingly portrays the situation of a struggling immigrant family, but also the heterogeneity of its members: a kind-hearted know-it-all girl (Ahney Her), a shy loner in need of a father (Bee Vang), and a traditional Hmong grandmother as crotchety (and funny in her own way) as Walt, played by Chee Thao. The innocence of these characters inevitably warms Walt as much as it does the audience. Inevitably, the tale turns dark. The question then becomes whether Walt’s lack of innocence is enough to tear the fabric of their family and the audience’s psyche completely to pieces, or whether we get to escape with a scrap of hope in the end.

from Uinterview.com, 12/29/08

The sweeping Pitt/Blanchett Christmas blockbuster is generating big Oscar buzz, but most of the buzz I heard during the show was generated by a uniformly gray-haired crowd, striving to explain to one another what was going on. As the show progressed, they inched ever closer to the screen in hopes that they might catch Benjamin Button’s curious reverse-aging disease (or at least their spouses would).

But you don’t have to be geriatric to enjoy Button’s saga. Even the pure visual spectacle was enough to hold my attention for the 2 hour and 55 minute running time. If no one else is a shoe-in for the Oscar, Pitt’s makeup artist certainly has it nailed down. He presents us a very convincing 70-year-old Pitt at the start and subtly freshens him, taking him past the youthful lad he was in 1992’s A River Runs Through It to a scrawny teenager (who, being Brad Pitt, still gets laid). Cate Blanchett’s aging is almost as impressive, and the cinematography is full of sweeping historical panoramas, softly lit, but not quite to the schmaltzy saturation of Titanic.

There are many occasions when the film veers close to Titanic-itis, but pulls back just in time. Weighty goodbyes occur without climax. An ending sequence that I worried would close with a platitude was in fact elegantly short. A series of amusing bit characters and vignettes helps to keep the film’s tone bright. The best is Mr. Daws (Ted Manson), who tells Button of the seven times he’s been struck by lightning, with illustration.

The film certainly has its faults. Button is far too perfect and innocent. The peachy relations between blacks and whites in 1920’s New Orleans are similarly delusional. Blanchett’s Daisy in her young dancer days seems a bit too insipid for Button, or anyone, to truly pine for, and the pounding of Hurricane Katrina as Daisy lies on her death bed clutters without adding any significance.

Still, director David Fincher and the talented cast maintain a light touch throughout Button’s marathon length. The resulting film may not make you any younger but, like a few glasses of good red wine, it will leave you feeling pleasantly warm and whimsical about life. It’s a welcome feeling.

from Health.com

Getty Images

TUESDAY, Dec. 23, 2008 (Health.com) — With more than a dozen college bowl games left to play this season and the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl on the horizon, sports fans may be focusing on couch surfing, beer, and nachos. But they might want to take a second look at the exercise habits of the sports teams they support.

A new survey suggests that die-hard sports fans weigh more, eat fattier foods, and have worse health habits in general than folks who don’t care as much about sports.

“The irony is seeing unhealthy people watch athletes at the peak of physical fitness,” says Daniel R. Sweeney, PhD, an assistant professor of sport management at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), who conducted the survey with Donna Quimby, PhD, an associate professor of exercise science.

The researchers conducted an online survey of 14,000 people at UALR, including faculty, staff, and students. They divided 515 respondents into two groups—die-hard fans and those who were less devoted to sports teams. About 70% were students.

“Those that highly identify with a team are more emotionally involved and personally committed,” says Sweeney. “They usually spend more time, energy, and resources on rooting for their team.”

Despite sports fans’ religious-like devotion to their heroes on the field, the researchers found that they didn’t appear to emulate their health habits. In fact, devoted sports fans had a higher body mass index than non-sports fans, and were more likely to be overweight, with an average BMI of 27.4, compared with the nonfans’ more slender 25. (A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.)

They also ate junk food and fast food more often and drank more alcohol per sitting than their peers, according to the study, which was presented at the Arkansas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance conference in November. About 26% of the sports fans consumed vegetables only one to three times a month, compared with 19% of non-sports fans; 21% of fans almost always ate high-fat food compared to only 13% of their peers.

“A good percentage said they never get any aerobic exercise,” adds Sweeney.

Sweeney and Quimby say that since fans are so interested in sports and competition, it should be possible to persuade them to adopt healthier habits.

For starters, here are six ways fans can keep game days healthier:

• Cook your own game food. Make pizza with whole-wheat dough, and top it with tomato and basil instead of pepperoni, or chicken sausage instead of pork. Grill or bake your wings instead of ordering deep-fried. Put more beans and less meat in your chili. If you’re actually at the game, try to avoid or limit your consumption of the unhealthy fare served up at most stadium concession stands. (Check out this healthy pizza recipe.)
• Keep your food out of the TV room. Ouch, right? But according to Quimby, if you’re distracted by the game, you tend to eat more. If you make a conscious effort to get up for food, you may end up eating less.
• Bet exercise instead of money. “Lap around the block says the Steelers convert this 3rd and 4!” is healthier than betting $5. You can put some other types of exercise on the line too—what’s more satisfying than having your buddy struggle though some push-ups, crunches, or deep knee bends?
• Weigh in on game day. Set weekly weight loss goals and when the guys all get together before the game, check your progress. The guy who’s furthest from his goal buys the beer.
• Speaking of beer, drink less. Keep a water bottle nearby. For every sip of beer you drink, take a swig of water. It will slow your consumption, help reduce your calorie intake, and keep you hydrated during those push-ups.
• Keep a ball handy. If you have a backyard, play touch during halftime. If not, hit the park before game time to earn some of your own gridiron glory. Then when you shout, “I could make that throw better than that bum!” you’ll have some proof.

“We’re not trying to get people to stop being sports fans here,” says Quimby. “We just think that this is a population that we might be able to target knowing something of their existing behaviors. We think we might be able to use that to get across the message about eating appropriately and getting appropriate exercise.”

from Uinterview.com, 11/30/08

In Quantum of Solace, James Bond is stripped of his credit cards, his passports, and his mission. Why didn’t they strip the name James Bond while they were at it? The creators of the most recent two Bond films have removed just about every vestige of the character I once knew. The high-tech gadgets are a thing of the past, as are Bond’s standard sidekicks, Q and Moneypenny (though Daniel Craig is lobbying for Q’s return). Bond’s bevy of willing women shrinks with each new installment. His only successful venture here is with the facile (in every sense of the word) Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton). The fiery, complicated Camille (Olga Kurylenko) is just the kind of woman with whom Bond should end the film locked in a passionate embrace. In Q of S [SPOILER ALERT] the girl just doesn’t give a damn.

Perhaps it’s because this Bond sorely lacks a sense of humor. Bond’s boss, M, claims that Bond is damaged by his lover’s betrayal in Casino Royale (this film picks up where that one left off). But Bond doesn’t mope about his lost love, nor does he allow it to affect his duty, which he performs with ruthless efficiency. Rather, it seems that the new Bond just isn’t any fun to begin with. He doesn’t flirt, crack jokes, or deliver deathblow one-liners. He embraces nihilism instead. “He wouldn’t care,” says Bond as he deposits a friend’s body in a dumpster. If Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are supposed to show how Bond became the 007 we’ve all known for decades, then the next installment must send him back to college, where a British John Belushi schools him on how to take life a bit less seriously.

In the meantime, Bond breaks things, kills people, and gets blood everywhere with none of his predecessors’ joie de vivre. The fight and chase scenes are impressive, particularly the opera house melee in which Bond’s maneuvers are juxtaposed with battle scenes from Puccini’s opera, Tosca. But they burn up so much of the movie’s clock that little time is left for character or plot. Daniel Craig, Kurylenko, and Mathieu Amalric, who plays villain Dominic Greene, do an admirable job with the time and script they’re given, but that’s not much.

Anyone who hated Bond movies for their formula and escapism will undoubtedly appreciate the new installment. But when I want to feel depressed and nihilistic I can pick up a newspaper. For me, the real Bond inhabits an imaginary world in which government at its core is good, there’s always enough time for a romp and a martini, and women value witty comments over silly things like job security and emotional stability. And in the hour when I need him most, he is gone.