Category Archives: Uncategorized

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• You gotta cook a lot of custards before you kiss the Flan Prince. 
• While, according to the  Daily Yomiuri in its  review of Kitchen Princess , “It’s nothing new to introduce food or cooking into manga…  The Kitchen Princess stands out as it allows readers to enjoy the feeling of being a little chef while following the story and trying the recipes Najika introduces themselves.”
• I was tipped off to the world of manga by Mike Rhode of ComicsDC . Not that I was completely in the dark, but I was definitely in dusk. One could rapel on the wall of manga at the closest big box book store, and wearing a helmet would not be overly prudent. Someone is reading this stuff. Make that someones.
• The Kitchen Princess series – there are four volumes in English and eight in Japanese – was especially interesting to me for obvious reasons, although I love the manga art and the fantastical stories. In each of these satisfyingly flippy paperbacks there are 4 recipes. The odds of finding a sandwich recipe? Well, who knows, I have not read the results of that study, but I would venture a guess at somewhere around 11.2% .
• The recipes tend toward fanciful, French and feminine. When mapping your way to a heart via the scenic gastro route of the stomach, does the food matter? Or is it simply a matter of aligning your compass deftly? My cook’s heart is warmed by the earnest motives sending Najika to the kitchen – “to assuage the sorrow of a friend or to win back the hearts of people who once rejected her.” 
• And why the sobriquet “Flan Prince”? While aspiring to become a great chef like her late parents, Najika also dreams of being reunited with a boy who saved her life when she was small. Despondent over her parents accidental death, she had been wandering tearfully along a riverbank and fell into the water. The boy who rescued her then consoled with a tasty flan. I told you it was fantastical.

• Once about a time there was a Frigid Queen and a Burger King.  November, 1967. Mattoon, Illinois, pop. 18,000. Gene and Betty Hoots, proprietors, take Burger King to court over a trademark dispute. Forty years later the Hoots’ Burger King is an island, protected from encroachment by the big guys -although the moat is only 20 miles wide.
• And the famous double cheeseburger? It’s the Hooter Burger. Says the Marketplace reporter, Jeremy Hobson, “You guys are a trademark disaster area.”
• Read or listen to the entire Marketplace story.

 And I always thought they were singing, “Judy’s in the Sky”!                                 Judy’s in Disguise!?! What the?!

 Small comfort, I know. A Bacon Bandaid boo boo strip can only do so much.

• One more post about bacon and I will have to change the name of this blog to the Pig ‘n Counter. 
• Attempting to comfort Dan Whipps, recent recipient of Cheese-of-the-Month as a nuptial gift, lamenting he was yet in need of Bacon-of-the-Month Club, I suggested Bacon Salt. Not that I have ever had it. Just a thought. Dan sez, ” You know, somebody was just talking to me about Bacon Salt. They said it was TERRIBLE. They used it once and threw it away. I’ll stick with the real thing.”
• I recently posted about Bacon Salt under The Salt Special. Had not tasted it, but thought it might be good on an egg sandwich. On second thought…I’ll take Dan’s word for it. 
• Joanna Preuss, author of Seduced By Bacon,  recently visited Lynn Rosetto Casper on her radio show, The Splendid Table. While at the mic Joanne mentioned three top-of-the-line bacon makers in the US, Nueske’s, from my home state of Wisconsin, among them.
• Better Cured Meat Begins On the Hoof at Home
• OR At Home On the Hoof, cause they roam at home, and are free to roam, and free to get FAT. And that is what makes a nice pig, if you are thinking about a pig as something nice to eat.
• I would like to get my cook’s hands on some good old-fashioned pork. It seems not that long ago that pork was lovely braised OR grilled, cause it was so moist, and juicy, and, yes! fatty. Lean, mean, white, pristine…..does not a good chop make. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are to the-other-white-meat pork loins are to textured vegetable protein. Blech, splect, yechtch. Let them eat acorns!
• Oh look! Your own pig from Wooly Pigs, or from La Quercia’s Acorn Edition (718-842-8700, you will need $3285.00 before they will even crack the barn door to you, whoa)  to cook or cure any way you you like. Some pork, some salt, a little dry curing, some sandwich fulcrum!

Photo by Renee Comet Foodstyling by Lisa Cherkasky 

• Picturing this on a favorite channel of the cable package that is my collective unconscious:Hitchhiking in Denmark in the 70’s. I’m 17 and my boyfriend, who’s a year older, is Apache with black hair flying. While we did not do the bait and switch, I was dangled closer to the shoulder than he. August, height of Danish summer. It’s a moderate height. Short sleeves and long jeans.
• We prayed for a Citroën cause we had never been in one. I wanted to experience the hydraulic suspension. The closest we came was a Jaguar and that was good. Bucket seats so I sat on his lap, my face pressed up close to the windshield. I have yet to ride in a Citroën.
• Danes will always feed you. Or they would then and I suspect 30-some years has not changed that. Perhaps this has changed, but back then we ate 6 times a day. Breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, evening tea. Drop in on someone and the odds were good they would be eating.
• Many of the meals were smørrebrød. Buttered bread, open-faced, with something on top. Unlikely for dinner, but most likely at all other times.
• Some memorable meals:In a farmhouse, outside Copenhagen, breakfast. Warm from the oven, bumpy-textured brown bread, butter at a spreadable temperature (Danish summer, perfect for butter, cool but not cold), last night’s potatoes. Butter bread, slice potatoes, stick potatoes to butter. Eat and repeat. I have no memory of ever being full when I was 17…………………………………………………………………………Morning after a blow-out party, bedroom doors open, folks emerge in jumbled pairs, breakfast is served. Bread – brown, thin and densely crumbly + white “Franskebrod” – butter and what’s in the fridge. Tubes of mayonnaise and remoulade, canned liverpostej, cheese, smoked fish, other odds and ends. AND – bottoms up in tiny, icy glasses – aquavit, caraway flavored. It went down easy that a.m. when I was resilient as a trampoline. 
• And now, here in DC, every Veterans Day weekend my extended family lines up early for the Danish Club of Washington’s Christmas Bazaar. We are Danes, after all, or at least partly so. Lots of family Christiansens behind, beside and yet to come. We go for lunch, not so much for shopping. The smorrebrod have become bigger (Americanized?) over the years, and some of the shrimp have been replaced by macaroni, but the combinations remain the classics, and we love them. Three would be plenty, but I always take four – and feel just a teeny bit older than 17.

• A spatchcocked turkey going upright?! “I am looking for verticality”, said my editor. Only he could use that word and compel me to add it to my vocabulary. My vocabulary has been verticalized by him. I am a taller woman for it. “Some height in the holiday table landscape,” he said. “Ai yiiee yiiee”, I mumbled. 
• No bones about it, this turkey used to be flat. Not as flat as roadkill, but flat. Some people call it butterflied, but it was not anywhere near that dainty. 
• They cook fast this way and fast means juicy. And juicy means the leftovers are worth leaving over. Over to the left in my fridge Thursday night? Turkey, cranberry sauce, crunchy lettuce, mayonnaise. Bread around here somewheres, waiting for its calling. I’ll be down around 11, once my appetite picks up. 
• Just in case you’d actually like to read the recipes below: Butterflied Turkey and all the sides.
• And, if your turkey makes it to day 2 or 3 or 4, you may need to call in The Rick’s Picks Enhanced Condiment Utilization Task Force to rescue your leftover Thanksgiving turkey from the dark nether regions of your refrigerator.

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• We may have missed it but we can still read about it.  The Rosendale (New York) International Pickle Festival, 10th Annual.  For your Thanksgiving Relish Tray you may need this Turkey Time Sampler, all very pretty on your so-called cut crystal. You gotta have pickles with your cold turkey sandwich. Salt is the antidote to all that gravy lacing your system.
• Speaking of salt, that most perfect of foods, here is a way to Have Your Bacon and Eat It Too, Bacon Salt. Who needs to chew anyway? What a waste of energy you could be putting towards slopping the hogs. I, for one, hope to find a bottle or two in my Hanukah stocking.
• While you are NOT chewing (good thing, seeing as your tongue is going to be raw from salt overload), a soundtrack from The Squishees who, come to find out, were formerly The Slurpees until those party poopers at 7-11 ordered them to cease and desist.

Cezve

• Stopped by the Cosmopolitan Bakery and Cafe for lunch last week, and it was all it was cracked up to be and more. It may be a take-out, but we stayed in to soak up the atmosphere. There was no eaves-dropping for us because there was not a word of English spoken. Plenty of smoking by sturdy men in broad-shouldered coats.  
• When it comes to names, almost all of us have a cross to bear. Cherkasky looks so simple to me. Cher-kas-ky. Phonetic. Plenty of hard consonants to guide you. One glance, though, and people panic. Or, fresh ears hear t’s and j’s and extra s’s. After a trip to Moscow with my father I considered tarting up Cherkasky, Eastern European style, to Tzjcherkasskiijy. Give ’em what they’re looking for.  
• We compare ridiculous interpretations of Cherkasky in my family. Stuff you see on junk mail envelopes. Funniest to date IMHO – Cher Kasky. They ought to stick to “Resident”. You may call me Cher.
• Some of the menu items at the Cosmopolitan Cafe cause me to go blind actually. One glance and I panic. Cevapcici translates to “I’ll have the sausage thing.” 
• There is a grocery store attached to the cafe stocked with loads of intriguing stuff.  As I type I’m sipping a cup of Turkish-style coffee made with powder- fine grounds purchased there.  There is no drinking this without sugar. At the bottom, a sludge of wet coffee dust. 
• WordPress has revamped its system and I cannot figure out how to make paragraphs anymore, so I have resorted to these dumb dotty things. Ugh. I detest relearning some simple task that becomes a headache. 
• Also cannot figure out how to add words between the pictures. The bread you see below – flat and chewy.  So right for meat and an avalanche of raw onion. Cevapcici (damn, can’t spell it without checking) in the top photo and a slab of grilled veal scallopini below. The tomatoes were superfluous. Just wet and that’s about all. I closed my eyes, dreamed of the Bosnian countryside and pretended they were otherwise. Terrific sandwiches though. I could bathe in the sweet red pepper condiment that came with the veal. 
• Gave one last ditch effort to understanding the myriad of little symbols on this page for my convenience. Ha ha ha. All I can understand is bold,  italic and the dotty doodads. Ack. Ack. Ack. Excuse me while I pitch my computer out the window.

Take my advice – fix a sandwich. You need not Google. I already read all the results. This is my fave: Leftover Turkey Fat Powers Texas’s Bio-diesel Cars! The story is not nearly as fun as the headline and the accompanying picture…whoo eeeeee. This’ll make you want to throw your turkey under the wheels of a moving bus.

All that aside, here’s my shameless plug for the week.

From Flat to Fabulous
Click on Gallery

Malcolm Riviera (of 8-Track Heaven fame) stopped by for lunch and a chat. He was in a story telling mood, and he tells a good story. This one goes well with a sandwich that is pristine – made at home with well-scrubbed hands. Anything else? You might have trouble getting it down.

In the late 70’s, while a student at NC State in Raleigh, I took a job at the local drive-in movie theater in concessions. Even back then drive-ins were down at the heels, and the Forest Theater had seen better days. Still, it was cool to me. Even at minimum wage.

The snack bar was old, at least 25 years and showed every minute. What a circus, too. High school delinquents, adult trailer-park dwellers and country folk. The menu was simple, and simply awful. Everything was freezer fresh – hamburgers, fries, hot dogs, corn dogs and pizza – and of the lowest quality. Just the pizza approached edibility, as it was “homemade”. A frozen dough disk topped with canned sauce, frozen cheese and pepperoni. Our specialty? Pizza deluxe, made when the boss was away, and covered crust to crust with a thick layer of pepperoni.

The kids working the snack bar hated their jobs and their boss, and took it out on the food, dropping it on the dirty floor purposefully, randomly squirting stuff with mustard and ketchup, burning fries intentionally. Food was returned constantly by complaining customers. I felt sorry for them for patronizing the drive-in, let alone the lousy snack bar.

The lone adult cooking there was too burned out to bother with the grill. If she used it she would have to clean it, so she didn’t! Everything was deep fried (yum, deep-fried burgers and dogs) and everything was the same color, sickly gray. Luckily, the food was all eaten in the dark.

The popcorn was good. Freshly made in a real old-fashioned popper and doused with “seasoning”, a thick, yellow, buttery substance. The perfect popcorn medium. That and superfine salt made exquisite popcorn, the likes of which you simply don’t find in today’s theaters. Why was the popcorn so good and the other food so bad? Who knows.

The Forest Drive-In was closed in the early 80’s and became a weekend flea market briefly before being razed and replaced with an industrial park. I imagine it was a fine place in its prime, but not during my stay. It survived its final days on bad kung fu and porno, which seems to be the natural evolution for drive-ins.

I did read recently that drive-ins are on the rise again in the US, with new construction and preservation. Should you find yourself at a drive-in snack bar however, I still recommend sticking with popcorn and beware the corn dogs!

It’s almost a movie waiting to be made:

Starring:

— The projectionist’s junkie daughter, who ended up in prison on a drug
charge and left her 4 yr old son for dad to raise. The 4 yr old’s father was
black, the projectionist’s daughter was white, the projectionist was the
biggeset racist of all time, and of course drugs were involved:: the whole
thing was pretty shocking in 1979.

— The 4 year old kid. Too young to go to school, this kid used the drive in
as a playground. He was there every night, running around, watching
everything. The boss’s wife tried to take care of him but she was pissed off
that it had falled in her lap, and of course she was a racist, too, and
already some some nice WHITE KIDS of her own.

— The other projectionist, who was an illiteratre hillbilly from West
Virgiina the size of a refrigerator, who also carried a gun, and LIVED AT
THE DRIVE IN. He had no car, no home, nothing. He would sleep on the
stainless steel counter at night and use a stack of those little cardboard
food trays for a pillow, and lived on drive-in food.

— The customers: most of whom were either having sex (and leaving their
condoms all over the field for us to pick up the next day) or doing drugs
and drinking and raising hell. That’s when they would send the Hulk
Projectionist with his gun out to settle people down.

— The movies: the best Grade B cinematic swill of the 70’s, like “Swamp
Girl,” “Master of the Flying Guillotine,” and “Chain Gang Women”

— Me, who eventually was promoted out of the grill to the box office and spent my nights selling tickets and snorting coke while watching the same movie over and over for weeks on end.