Into the Woods – Page 108 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Dumplings

When I was a young’un, I was as intrigued with the word dumpling as I was with dumplings. There was something funny, archaic, and magical about dumplings — both the food and the word. I would have guessed that dumpling is of Germanic origin, but the Oxford English dictionary throws up its hands and says that the origin of the word dumpling is obscure, though the word was first detected in Norfolk around 1600. The word dump — which may or may not be related to dumpling — has cognates in Danish and Norwegian.

In any case, most cuisines probably have the concept of dumplings. Filled dumplings are particularly intriguing. Whether you call them pierogi or pot stickers, or one of the 453 words that Italian has for filled pasta (I’m joking), it’s only dumplings that I’d particularly care to make, because I tend to be pretty bad at imitating exotic cuisines, and I always do best with stuff that is pretty traditional and old-fashioned. I do exotic cuisines only by fusing them with Southern or California cuisine.

It was the sauce that led me to dumplings for supper. The abbey stocks many types of vinegar, but one type of vinegar that I had never previously stocked is malt vinegar. I bought some English malt vinegar yesterday at Whole Foods, and I started Googling for ideas about what — other than fried potatoes — might go well with a sauce based on malt vinegar. I used to love eating pot stickers at Asian restaurants in San Francisco. Pot stickers go nicely with strong sauces. So I ended up making dumplings just to go with the dipping sauce I had in mind. I made a dipping sauce of garlic, harissa sauce (an African pepper sauce that I have learned to always keep on hand), soy sauce, honey, and malt vinegar.

The dumplings were filled with mashed rutabaga, chopped onions, and grated Havarti cheese. The dough was made only with bread flour and water. The dumplings went nicely with seared cabbage (seared cabbage is frequently served at the abbey, especially in winter). I ate the dumplings with my hands and dipped each bite in the dipping sauce.

Two-personality pancakes

Even though it’s February, and even thought the yard smells like the 500 pounds of organic fertilizer that was spread yesterday, the temperature was in the 60s, and the deck and the grill were calling.

For breakfast I settled on pancakes with two different treatments. On the right is a chutney of roasted apples and tomatoes. There is onion and coarsely grated carrot in the chutney, sautéed on the stovetop. The seasoning is cinnamon and cumin, with a bit of brown sugar. On the left is a grilled banana with maple syrup. The pancakes are made from organic sprouted whole wheat flour, milk, olive oil, and baking powder.

I suspect that supper will be cooked on the grill, too.

Arbor vitae trees

The first trees I ever planted at the abbey were four arbor vitae trees, four feet high at the time. I chose them only because I like them. I think that arbor vitae trees have a kind of old-fashioned magic about them.

Now there are 13 arbor vitae trees at the abbey. I wish I had room for more. What I didn’t appreciate until fairly recently is just how important evergreen trees are to the birds. The number of birds that wintered over this year at the abbey has really impressed me. They sleep in the arbor vitae trees. At dusk, the arbor vitae trees all chirp.

The trees also provide hiding space for birds to duck into during the day. I’ve been spatting with a hawk lately that is stalking the chickens. The wild birds duck for cover if the hawk is around. The native cedar trees also provide a lot of cover. I have too few cedar trees, but I do have one very large one that fills up with doves every evening. The big magnolia grandiflora also provides lodging for lots of birds, as well as a hiding place for the chickens during the day.

I’ve decided to plant a kind of low-growing magnolia along the uphill side of the driveway. That should provide yet more bird shelter.

During the recent snows, I scattered seed on the deck for the wild birds. They ate it like crazy when the ground was covered with snow, but after the snow melted, they’ve ignored the seed. That tells me that there is no shortage of natural food for the ground-feeding birds and that more shelter may well raise the bird population even more.

By the way, don’t be tempted by Leyland cypress trees, which look somewhat like arbor vitae trees. The cypress trees (to my eye) are not nearly as beautiful. Plus I understand that they are slower-growing and more susceptible to disease.

Desperate for signs of spring

February is the grimmest month, and you have to look closely to find signs of spring. But they’re there.

Eggs Benedict, homemade muffins

Is it that I don’t get out much, or are eggs Benedict not on many restaurant menus anymore? Once upon a time, when butter and eggs were considered much more unhealthy than we consider them now, eating eggs Benedict was extremely decadent. But the chickens have been laying extremely well lately in spite of the cold, so I have eggs to spare, and then some, for Hollandaise. Eggs Benedict are a heck of a lot of work, though, so that ensures that one doesn’t eat them too often.

Making English muffins is no big deal. I used the recipe from King Arthur flour’s web site and baked the muffins on a griddle on the gas grill. As for the Hollandaise, for years I have used Irma Rombauer’s classic recipe from the 1943 edition of Joy of Cooking. It comes out a little thick, though, which probably means that my home-laid eggs are much bigger than the eggs Irma used. The fake bacon is from Morning Star.

One more word about hot dogs

In a recent post on healthier hot dogs, I mentioned the Loma Linda canned hot dogs and that I’d had a hard time finding them. It occurred to me that the local Ingles store, which carries a lot of slow-selling products that many grocery stores don’t carry, might have them. Indeed they did. They were in a section that I don’t exactly frequent — canned meats.

The Loma Linda hot dogs are pretty good, though the bite is a little soft. I’d say that the Morning Star hot dogs are a bit better, but either makes an entirely convincing vegetarian hot dog.

Two random reviews: San Andreas, and The History Boys

San Andreas, Warner Bros., 2015

Readers of this blog know that I don’t make any systematic effort to review movies. Rather, my movie reviews are pretty random and occasional and reflect only what I happen to have been watching — stuff that left me thinking. San Andreas and The History Boys are about as different from each other as two movies could be.

When I saw the trailer for San Andreas, in which the front wave of an enormous tsunami is bearing down on San Francisco just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, I knew that I’d have to watch it. I’m a sucker for San Francisco movies, and San Andreas is a good one, even if an earthquake and tsunami wipe the city out.

When combined with a decent story, Hollywood special effects can be thrilling. But much of the appeal of San Andreas is in the script — though the disaster scenes and helicopter rescues are great fun. Hollywood well knows that if the plot for a screenplay involves a massive earthquake that wipes out Los Angeles and San Francisco, then you need to wrap that plot around some personal stories that get some emotion into it. Carlton Cuse’s fast-moving screenplay does this with six main characters: An earthquake scientist who figured out that the Big One was about to happen; a married couple in the process of getting a divorce; their daughter and the young man she meets in San Francisco; and the young man’s younger brother.

But oh how I love Hollywood panoramas shot over San Francisco. I haven’t been back to San Francisco since I left in 2008, so all those scenes from familiar places make me a little homesick. You can’t even visit San Francisco — let alone live there for 17 years as I did — without forming a permanent emotional bond with the place.

San Andreas is worth watching just as entertainment. It’s also a good script, with Hollywood special effects effectively used.

The History Boys, Fox Searchlight, 2006

The History Boys got so-so reviews in places like Rotten Tomatoes. I think that’s because the film goes way over the heads of most people. It’s based on a play by Alan Bennett that opened in London in 2004. I have watched this film three times, and I still can’t pick up on everything. Then I bought a copy of the script of the play and read that, too.

Probably only the English can truly follow all the snappy language and nuance. The dialogue teeters on a sharp edge between irony and sincerity, bravado and vulnerability. There is keen commentary not only on history, but culture in general and English culture in particular. The dialogue includes page after page of untranslated French. That’s a very bold thing to do — to an American audience, especially. This is a script that refuses to dumb itself down. The History Boys — both the play and the film — is unapologetically aimed at the few who have done enough reading in their lives to follow the dialogue and who can find jokes about, say, the subjunctive (whether in English or in French) funny.

I rarely use the word masterpiece, but I see The History Boys as a masterpiece of writing. Alan Bennett, in only a hundred pages of screenplay, manages to exhaust us with intellectual exercise, dazzle us with meaningful erudition, jerk us back and forth between pure silliness and profundity, and finally to break our hearts with his characters, who represent a broad range of the human condition.

I bought the film on DVD. Watching it should be an annual tradition, like the annual watching of Love Actually, at Christmas.

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.?