Food – Page 26 – Into the Woods

Buffalo china: A sad American story

I wish I knew much, much more about a now-defunct American company named Buffalo China. Yep — they were in Buffalo, New York. The company started about 1901, making a mishmash of porcelain products. In the 1920s and 1930s, they started marking commercial porcelain dinnerware for restaurants and institutions. For decades, they made incredibly excellent commercial dinnerware. At some point, Buffalo China came to be owned by Oneida. In 2003 or thereabouts, Oneida sold the company to investors who changed the name to Niagara Ceramics, though Oneida continued to own the Buffalo China trademark. Finally, in 2013, the company closed. It was cheap imported china from China that killed the company. The last owner, Chris Collins, who was a congressman, issued a bitter statement about Buffalo China’s end:

“Niagara Ceramics consistently struggled because of unfair competition from Chinese manufacturers who benefit from China manipulating its currency at the expense of American jobs. As a member of Congress, I believe strongly that the U.S. must take a harder stand against this unfair practice by the Chinese government.”

During the last fifty years, I have been in countless antique shops and junk shops, and I’ve examined a lot of porcelain and china. In fact, the abbey owns a large set of 100-year-old fine china made in Limoges that has never been removed from the shipping boxes after I moved back to North Carolina from San Francisco. Using fine china is just too fussy to be bothered with.

Whereas heavy commercial china is a whole different story. There were other good makers of heavy American porcelain, but Buffalo China stands out.

When I first moved into the abbey seven years ago, having gotten rid of my everyday dinnerware before the move from San Francisco because it wasn’t worth shipping, I bought cheap glass dinnerware to use temporarily, planning on finding something nicer to replace it. I looked at a lot of heavy china at places like Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel. But it was expensive unless it was made in China, and I refused to buy Chinese china.

Finally I decided to go with Buffalo China. It’s easy enough to find on eBay, at wildly varying prices. I settled on the green stripe china, though Buffalo china made several other patterns for restaurant and commercial use. It’s not uncommon to come across new old stock Buffalo china on eBay, though the stuff is so durable that, if it’s used, it hardly matters. That’s the beauty of restaurant china — you can’t kill it. I don’t think I’ve ever broken a piece of restaurant china, and, if you ever did, it would be nothing to cry about (though it’s not exactly cheap anymore — more and more people know what it is).

These days, large plates are the norm. I admit that I like the current style of food presentation, in which small amounts of foods are presented on enormous plates. But, with the old restaurant china, it’s difficult to find a plate larger than nine inches. I’ll live with that, but I’ll keep watching eBay.

Meanwhile, I wish someone would write an illustrated history of Buffalo China. I’d buy it.

Update: Also see this newer post on the Buffalo China dogwood pattern.

Pasta salads

Are pasta salads more a summer thing? Pasta salads were never in my repertoire until recently, when I hired a caterer for a political event and one of the dishes was pasta salad. It was good, so I resolved to add pasta salad to the competencies of the abbey kitchen.

One of the cool things about pasta salad is that it’s a work of imagination. What have you got in the kitchen, and what can you do with it? The pasta salad above is artichoke hearts, a winter tomato, raw walnuts, roasted peanuts, and Roquefort. It’s dressed with a dressing that is sorta-kinda ranch.

The previous pasta salad was a warm pasta salad with seared shredded cabbage, walnuts, peanuts, and a dressing that included toasted sesame oil and brewer’s yeast.

Trader Joe’s, by the way, has canned artichoke hearts at a reasonable price. TJ’s also has proven to be my best source of affordable avocados that almost always ripen nicely. Even Roquefort (and other good cheeses) are affordable at Trader Joe’s. I’m aware that Trader Joe’s is disparaged by Californians as the Walmart of the grocery business. But shopping wisely at Trader Joes’ (lousy produce!) can really stretch the food budget.

Pasta salad should be a creative mixture of tastes and textures. Now if I can just stop myself from buying Bacon Bits…

Sinning more safely, at home

If you don’t love hot dogs, there’s something wrong with you. But of course you also know that hot dogs are one of the nastiest foods we can eat. I’ve been making alternatives to hot dogs for 40 years. Some alternatives are convincing, others not. But here’s a way to have an authentic hot dog experience without eating anything terribly nasty.

I discovered Morning Star’s fake hot dogs only a couple of months ago. They are thoroughly convincing, with a proper hot dog bite and hot dog taste. We’ve all tried the tofu versions of hot dogs available in health food stores. They’re not very good, because they lack the hot dog bite and the hot dog taste.

We might complain that Morning Star’s products have too many ingredients. Yet I look the other way, because Morning Star’s products are bound to be healthier than the alternative. Not to mention that no animal had to live on a factory farm, or be slaughtered, to make Morning Star’s products. I’m confident that meat analogs will get better and better as the market demands it and as food engineers work on the problem. Meat analogs ought to cost less than meat. Probably the lack of government subsidies has something to do with it, plus the market is smaller. When will our government wise up and stop subsidizing meat and start subsidizing meat analogs?

Here are some guidelines for hot dogs as we make them here in the South:

• There is no alternative to a commercially made hot dog bun. Sure, I’ve made homemade buns, and they’re good. But I cannot make a homemade bun that gives a true hot dog experience. The bun must be lightly toasted in a little butter and served warm. Toast it in a buttered skillet, turning it to brown at least two sides. Restaurants brown the buns in a griddle press.

• It doesn’t matter what you put on your hot dog. That’s part of the fun. You could even make homemade vegetarian chili if you want. I’m partial to slaw or sauerkraut, onions, mustard, and relish. In the South, when you order a hot dog “all the way,” you get mustard, slaw, onions, and chili.

• A hot dog must be eaten with fries. I’m sorry, but that’s the way the world works. I don’t know what got into me (maybe lingering memories of Jim’s Grill), but I bought frozen French fries a couple of days ago for the first time in 30 years. My excuse was that I have a lot of page proofs to read this week and won’t have much time to cook. I also knew that this was the week that I was going to make some serious hot dogs.

Back in the 1980s, I used to buy Loma Linda’s hot dogs, which come in a can. Loma Linda still makes these, but they are not available in any local stores. You can order them from Amazon, but they cost a fortune by the time you pay for shipping. My recollection is that they are quite good.

Trader Joe’s sells a live, unpasteurized sauerkraut that is very good. You’ll find it with the refrigerated foods.

I’d love to hear from readers in the U.K. about hot dogs. It has been years since I had visitors from the U.K., but they always loved American hot dogs. Can you get proper American hot dogs in the U.K.?

Breakfast at home …

And remember, anything MacDonald’s can do, you can do better. And cheaper. And not have to eat off of paper.

This is a homemade sausage biscuit with Morning Star vegetarian sausage.

Lunch on the road …

Probably many of the people who eat at Jim’s Grill in Yadkinville remember when it was a hot spot in the 1950s — curb service, window trays, juke box, the works. It’s on U.S. 601, which runs north to south across most of North and South Carolina and which used to be part of a major route from points north to Florida.

I’ve had a sentimental weakness for roadside eateries for as long as I can remember. Some of them still remain along the old secondary roads. The sad thing, though, is that every time I’m in Jim’s Grill (I make pretty regular trips to Yadkin County), I never see any young people there. Younger people, I suppose, are sentimental about MacDonald’s rather than the old roadside restaurants.

One of the great things about old-fashioned fast food is that there is no waste paper, cardboard, or plastic to throw away. It’s a pity, though, that (as far as I know) they’re all using plastic dinnerware rather than the heavy diner china that they used to use.

Baltimore Road, about 10 miles east of Yadkinville

100% stone-ground whole-wheat biscuits: You can do it

I need some new food photography dishes, don’t I?

I love the taste of organic stone-ground whole-wheat. It tastes like wheat, and I love wheat. I also make no apologies to anti-gluten partisans, because I think that good wheat breads baked at home from good organic flour are not at all the same thing as commercial baked goods. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to Google for the difference between stone-ground flour and ordinary whole-wheat flour and how they are milled. But there is an easily detectable difference in taste. Ordinary whole-wheat flour often has a bitterness, or what country folks disdain as having a “whang” about it. Stone-ground whole wheat flour has no whang. It tastes like honest wheat, which is what it is.

But the problem with stone-ground whole-wheat flour is that it is very hard to work with. The bran is rough and dry. Unless you use baking techniques optimized for stone-ground flour, your baked items are likely to end up hard and dry. The easy and fast method is to combine the stone-ground flour with whatever portion of unbleached flour your conscience will permit.

Artisan bakers of yeast and sourdough breads who work with stone-ground flour insist on soaking the flour before using it. That softens the bran, encourages some beneficial chemical processes, and makes a tastier, better-rising bread. You also need to get as much moisture into the bread as possible. Surely, I thought, the same concepts can be applied to quick-breads like biscuits.

As usual, I apologize for not usually giving specific recipes here. Part of the reason is that I rarely use exact recipes for things that I make frequently. Another reason is that this is about a concept — the concept of making quick-bread with stone-ground flour. I’m assuming that you’re already an experienced biscuit-maker and that you already have a method or a recipe.

The night before you make the biscuits, mix your stone-ground whole-wheat flour with milk (or buttermilk). We’re going to add more liquid in the morning, so use only enough milk to satisfy the thirst of the flour while keeping the mixture fairly stiff. Also add a teaspoon to a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, depending on how large a batch of biscuits you’re making. Put this in the refrigerator, covered, overnight.

The usual method of mixing biscuits completely falls apart if you’re starting with wet flour. I suppose you could mix your shortening into the flour before the soak, but I don’t. Take your flour mixture out of the refrigerator early to let it come to room temperature. Cut your shortening into small pieces (I use butter) and use your hand to mix the shortening into the flour mixture. This will take some patience, but small lumps are OK.

Now the objective is to get a bit more liquid mixed into the dough, along with the salt and baking powder. Cutting the dough into pieces (leave it in the bowl) might help here. Add the baking powder and salt. Add more buttermilk if you used buttermilk, or heavy cream if you used milk the night before. The thickness of the buttermilk or cream helps get more moisture into the dough. You should end up with a moist biscuit dough. Shape the dough into biscuits as you usually would.

I bake the biscuits at 450 degrees using the bread function of the Cuisinart oven, which injects steam into the oven for the first seven minutes of baking. This helps keep moisture in the biscuits and improves oven spring. If you don’t have a steam oven, flinging a little water into the oven or having a shallow pan of water in the oven during pre-heating can’t hurt.

Biscuits made this way are some of the tastiest, most tender biscuits I’ve ever made, no lie.

By the way: Over the years, when I’ve discussed biscuit-making with inexperienced or casual bakers, I’m surprised how many people are completely unclear on the concept of what “self-rising” flour is. Some people think that there is something magical or special about self-rising flour and that it’s the only kind of flour from which biscuits can be made. But self-rising flour is just flour to which leavening agents such as soda and baking powder already have been added. Any biscuit recipe that starts with “plain” flour will tell you how much soda or baking powder to use per cup of flour. King Arthur makes an unbleached self-rising flour, but I have never used that, or any, self-rising flour. Self-rising flour seems like a useless convenience, as far as I’m concerned, especially since I use potassium-based, no-sodium baking powder like the baking powder sold by Hain.

4 eggs down, 2 dozen to go

I had not made ice cream in well over a year. But the chickens have been laying well lately, so I start thinking about how to spend some eggs. Ice cream was a start. If you want to make ice cream, you have to crack some eggs. Proper ice cream has egg yolks in it.

Here’s a basic recipe for vanilla ice cream with a whiff of lemon. You could add whatever you like to this recipe to make different flavors.

Rich, old-fashioned ice cream

4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract

In a double-boiler, whisk everything together except for the extracts. While whisking over steam, heat the mixture to about 175 degrees. Then pour the mixture into an ovenproof glass bowl, cover it, and chill it to refrigerator temperature. This will take several hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready to make the ice cream, add the extracts (or other flavorings) and pour the mixture into your ice cream freezer.

I don’t waste the egg whites. When I have leftover egg whites, if I can’t think of anything else to do with them, then I cook them and feed them back to the chickens. Chickens certainly should not eat chicken, but eggs are good for them if you cook the eggs and mix them with other scraps so that the chickens don’t know what it is.

Leftover grits

As long as you’re making grits, make too much. Bring the leftovers back the next day as fried grits.

Grits and polenta are notoriously hard to brown. But if you shape the grits into patties before they cool, wrap the patties in a paper towel to help remove excess moisture, and put them in the refrigerator until the next day, they’ll brown reasonably well.

As long as you’re firing up the grill to roast a winter tomato, why not grill everything but the egg? The grits above were grilled, as was the fake Morningstar sausage.

It’s actually kind of nice being out on the deck in January weather, cooking over a hot grill. It’s particularly nice to have a breakfast with a campfire flavor.

Putting up with pale: Winter tomatoes and winter eggs

The tomatoes above were grilled on a gas grill. The sausage is Morning Star fake sausage.

Those winter tomatoes almost look real in the grocery store, don’t they? Then you get them home, and they’re tasteless and mealy. They’re barely fit for salads. I know of only one way to get some taste into them — grill them.

Yesterday I broiled the tomatoes in the oven, with some parmesan. This morning I grilled them, with nothing but salt and pepper. The grilled tomatoes, by far, were tastier. Luckily, the grill is on the deck just outside the kitchen door, so getting to the grill is convenient for small jobs like grilling tomatoes for breakfast.

It’s sad to see the eggs go pale in winter. It’s the grass and green things the chickens eat that make the yolks so deeply colored. It’s not that there isn’t some grass in the orchard in the winter. Rather, it’s that the turf is very vulnerable to damage in the winter if the chickens scratch too much. So in the winter the chickens stay mostly in the bare garden, where they can do no harm. Getting orchard time is a treat for the chickens during fine winter weather.

About those grits. I feel like a salesman because I’m always promoting the Cuisinart CSO-300 steam oven. But it’s the best way of cooking grits I’ve ever seen, by far. Just put the grits in an uncovered ovenproof bowl, 3 parts water to 1 part grits. Cook them on “super steam” at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Then let the grits sit, covered, for about 10 minutes before serving. The grits come out perfectly cooked without any need for stirring and dealing with grit splatter.

These tomatoes were broiled in the oven, with parmesan

One food that is not pale in January: the New Year collards. December was warm and wet, perfect for collards. I got these collards at a local grocery store. They were grown in South Carolina.

The (distant) future of eggs

Home-laid abbey eggs

It has been nice to see a number of stories in the past month about major restaurant chains switching to cage-free eggs. But it’s a slow process. There’s an awful lot of industrial chicken infrastructure that has to be changed. And even hens that aren’t in cages are not exactly living in chicken heaven. The majority of cage-free hens will still be packed into big, crowded barns with no access to the outdoors.

Wendy’s restaurants announced yesterday that they will go cage-free by 2020. Starbucks and Panera also have promised to go cage-free by 2020. McDonald’s and Subway will take 10 years to go cage-free — 2025.

This is a start. Surely it was the market, or “consumer sentiment,” that demanded this change. People are becoming increasingly aware of our cruelty to animals kept on industrial farms. However, I suspect that, for psychological reasons, most people have less denial in thinking about chickens raised for eggs, because laying hens aren’t slaughtered (not, at least, when they’re still young). It’s easier to think about the lives of laying hens than about the short lives of broiler chickens.

Here’s a link to a nice Chicago Tribune story on cage-free egg farming. A farmer is quoted as saying that he keeps his hens for over seven years before they’re sent off to be made into soup. I’m a bit skeptical that hens are kept that long.

Though I love knowing that all my eggs are laid just up the hill, I’m very aware that having chickens is not for everybody. If I were buying eggs, I’d just pay extra for the most hen-friendly eggs I could find.

Given a choice on a January day between a grassy orchard and the woods, the girls prefer the woods, though they also spend time in the orchard to get the clover and chickweed.

Green grass and chickweed from a warm and wet December