Fish fries, food and folk

Janet Gilmore reads food as folklore

Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in Brava Magazine
April 2008


RECIPE

In the spirit of the alternative storylines of folk tale, Janet provides a parallel telling of three ways to stuff and bake a big fish. One comes from her fieldwork among the commercial fishing families of Green Bay -- from a woman there named Eileen Behrend -- and one comes from the recipe on p. 230 of the 1946 edition of The Joy of Cooking. The third is Janet’s own method, which is, turn, influenced by her childhood. “When I was growing up, a family friend regularly went charter fishing off the Oregon Coast,” Janet remembers. “He sometimes offered us a nice, big, whole salmon -- a cause for celebration.”

However you choose to follow the narrative below, start with Janet's recommendation of “a fresh, whole, big-bodied fish like Lake Michigan whitefish, Lake Superior lake trout or a wild-caught salmon from the Pacific Northwest,” and don’t stop till you get to the happy ending: a splendid main dish that’s brown and crispy outside, and delicately flaky within.

Baked and stuffed whole fish

One whole 3- to 5-pound fish, cleaned (Janet keeps the head and tail on; Eileen doesn’t)
A few strips of bacon (Eileen only)
Stuffing:
1 1/2 cups bread stuffing cubes (Janet uses sourdough or rye crumbs)
At least 2 tablespoons chopped onion (Janet uses more; Eileen uses “a lot”)
1/2 cup chopped celery (Joy, and Eileen)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley (only if it’s on hand, says Eileen)
1 or 2 eggs, beaten (Joy, and Janet)
Salt, black pepper and sage to taste (Eileen)
1/8 teaspoon paprika, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (Joy, and Janet)

Combine stuffing ingredients. “Stuff the fish loosely and mass any extra along the opening to the cavity,” Janet says. Eileen sews the sides together with a coarse needle and thread. Place fish on a generous length of heavy-duty foil laid over a shallow baking pan. If head and tail is on (they can extend past the pan’s corners), loosely wrap foil around them. If you’re using bacon, lay it over the body of the fish.

Bake at 400° F for 1 to 2 1/2 hours, depending on fish size, until, as Eileen described, “nice and brown and crispy on the outside” and “white opaque all the way through.” Joy says 350°, but “I suspect [400°] will more effectively dry out the fish,” says Janet. “I look for a flaky, dry texture.“ Transfer to serving plater, foil and all.

ARTICLE

What is folklore? If you just thought of embroidered vests, flowing skirts and circle dances, or tales of talking trees and fairy princesses, forget it.

Folklore is everything that you and your folk know and do and make that nobody else quite gets.

Janet Gilmore, who teaches courses at the UW-Madison that explore food as folklore, explains: “It’s traditional artistic expression in small groups. Every group you can think of – a school group, work group, church group. A family. In every one of those environments there’s esoteric information, insider knowledge, that you learn in order to navigate. You usually learn this informally – across generations or from peers – and you use it in artistic expression of who you are.” And how we deal with food, she says, both in daily life and on special occasions, “is definitely folk knowledge.”

Originally from the state of Oregon, Janet earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. There she met her husband, Wisconsin native and fellow folklorist Jim Leary. For decades, the pair travelled through the Upper Midwest on contracts with organizations like the Michigan State Museum, Manitowoc’s Maritime Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, gathering information about customs and culture, working with museum collections and exhibits and presenting their findings at folklife festivals and academic conferences.

Today both are faculty members at the UW-Madison, where Jim, now the director of the Folklore Program there, helped create the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. Janet, who’s published a string of papers in peer-reviewed journals based on her fieldwork among commercial fishing families of Wisconsin and Michigan, is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and folklore. She’s also been featured on radio and in print as an expert on the history and social meaning of Wisconsin’s Friday night fish fry traditions.

VVK: How is food a form of folklore?

JG: Food is expressed through a bounty of expression, through stories, words, sayings, songs. There are the religious rituals that use food symbolically, whether it’s Holy Communion or the Passover, where you deal with a series of symbolic foods as you reenact the story of Exodus in your home. The bitter herb for slavery, the ground nut mixture for the mortar of the pyramids -- these things transport you to a different time and place.

Then there are the material traditions involving food. Food is something that we need. But how do we make decisions about what’s going to be acceptable as a foodstuff? How do we extract it from nature? How is it presented on a table? What’s the fast and feast cycle?

VVK: Isn’t that pretty much uniform across the country?

JG: If you interview people you’ll find out pretty quickly they don’t all follow the same routine. For instance, there’s a perception that everyone celebrates Thanksgiving about the same way. In my Festivals and Celebrations class last semester, we talked about three or four main ways just of dealing with the turkey. Some families have the big table-side carving ritual. Who carves the bird says something about the family hierarchy. Some will focus on how the turkey is cooked – they’ll try all sorts of techniques for making it more juicy and flavorful, brining, deep-frying. Immigrant families will get a turkey, as part of becoming American, but they might not know quite what to do with it, and it can end up a little strange. It’ll be over on the side, a symbol, and the real feast will be their own ethnic celebration foods. Then there are families where they have a turkey because they feel they have to, but it’s not featured. They might cook it the night before, to free up the oven. They might even slice it up and serve it on a platter.

VVK: What! They won’t have a whole bird on the table? I find that disturbing, somehow.

JG: Yes, and that’s what happens in my class. Students are so emotionally involved with their family food traditions, that it becomes difficult to separate out their feelings and approach this subject objectively. That’s what attracts people to food – it’s emotional. Students look at their family and their food experiences, and they start to see all the expressions of loving relationships. But also, food has this fundamental purpose. So I say to them, OK, if all you’re doing is expressing love, can you take the food out of the equation and still express the love? And that really bugs them.

But that’s what I like about studying food. When you start talking about food in an academic way, it doesn’t distance you from the food. It just engages you more. What feeds me is that my students are interested in all this, too.

VVK: I’ve heard you say that we’re unaware of a lot of our folk food knowledge. Like when someone gives us a handwritten recipe card with basically just a list of ingredients, a temperature and a time. My friend shared with me her mother’s carrot cake recipe, and it occurred to me that people from a different culture might have a hard time ending up with carrot cake from just that card.

JG: Exactly. Most cookbooks leave a lot out, but you don’t notice that. You bring your own knowledge to it, your esoteric knowledge of what the food is supposed to become. People think a recipe is all you need, but it really isn’t. The more experience you have, the more you can figure out. When a cookbook tries to fully explain everything, there’s so much writing. Yet it never has quite enough information.

VVK: Do you ever get tired of giving talks about Wisconsin fish fries?

JG: Never. I love it. Except that people expect me to be able to tell them what’s the best fish fry in Wisconsin. I tell them, it’s your favorite fish fry. Because it’s not really about the fish. It’s about seeing the people you know, socializing while you stand in line. Your tavern, your church, your VFW hall. Find one where you feel comfortable, and keep going. It will become yours. I know people who go to a different fish fry each week, looking for the ultimate. They’re missing it.

VVK: What draws you to working with the commercial fishing families of Wisconsin and the U.P.?

JG: The joy they have in that life, like nowhere else. Pacific coast fishing families would tell me, “My kids hate fish,” or “Fish is the last thing I want to eat after a day on the boat,” or that they won’t eat fish for days before an event, so they don’t smell. Here, everyone eats fish, everyone cooks, everyone fishes. They figure out how to cook fish out on the boat, using the heat of the engine. They go ice fishing. Children know when the streams will run with different types of fish. It’s a reason for a party, to have a fish boil, or to get the smokehouse going and smoke a hundred pounds of fish, share it with everyone, and wind up with just ten pounds for themselves. They can it, they pickle it. They’ll set out a jar when company comes. It’s wonderful. Families stay in that region, even though times are hard, economically, because they love the life. It’s an inland maritime culture.

My goal is to write some books about these fish foodways, as much for the people I’ve interviewed as anything. It’s their lives. And so many European immigrant traditions that haven’t been researched, and the fish foodways of the indigenous peoples. I’m probably not going to be able to do all of this in my lifetime. I hope I can inspire my students.

VVK: What’s the state of folklore today?

JG: It’s accepted as an academic subject more and more. Folklore is about looking at artistic expressions that aren’t endorsed by the official culture. At what’s expressed by people who aren’t powerful. Everybody participates in folk culture. As long as there’s a group, there’s folklore, because it’s how people interact and how they express themselves.

Jan Deadman: The new look of Home Economics

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

Column: Around the Table
Recipe: Spaghetti Squash with Meat Sauce
A version of this article was published in Brava magazine, August 2007

Until this spring, Jan Deadman used to be what used to be called a home ec teacher. But let’s back up a little.

A 1963 graduate of East High school, Jan earned a degree in home economics at UW-Stevens Point. In 1972, she joined the faculty of her high school alma mater as one of seven teachers in the home economics department. By the time she retired this year, 35 years and several thousand students later, she’d lived through some enormous changes, both in her field and in the cultural – and culinary – life of Madison and the United States.

First of all, her department got a name change: it’s now “family/consumer education” – FCE for short. And, although its staffing has gone down to three teachers over the years, it’s evolved into one of the school’s most vibrant fields.

Once widely seen as a stodgy single-sex subject that prepped girls for homogenous, housewifely futures, today’s FCE teaches boys and girls a wide variety of life skills and professional development tools for the modern world. “It’s so much more than just cooking and sewing. It’s child development, medical occupations [including a CNA (certified nursing assistant) program], fashion and design,” says Jan. “I believe we have the strongest FCE program in the city.”

East’s foods classes are among the school’s most popular, although funding is a problem. “We had to drop about 200 students from taking foods next year because we don’t have the teacher allocation, or the budget for that matter. Foods is an expensive class to teach,” Jan explains.

Jan says the popularity is due in part to the new cool that cable’s Food Network has brought to cooking and the food trades – a new culinary arts course is debuting this fall. But it’s also because of changes in the classes themselves. Over the years they’ve come to celebrate creative cookery and ethnically diverse culinary heritages, appropriately enough at the school that Jan describes as having the most diverse student population in town.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1972, Jan remembers, “things were pretty regimented, not flexible at all. We had to wear aprons and hair nets. We cooked only very, very simple things: plain biscuits, plain muffins. Now, if kids decide they want to do a special kind of food preparation from their country or cultural background, in a sense, they’re the experts. We learn from each other.”

Let’s back up just a little more – about a century – to appreciate just how very far home ec/FCE has come with regards to kitchen creativity and ethnic food traditions.

Late in the 19th century, a pioneering New England chemist named Ellen Richards decided it was time to modernize one of the most crucial skills ever developed by humankind: the areas of knowledge and skill long known – and disdained – as women’s work.

This happened to be the era when the pantheon of serious academic disciplines as we know them today – biology, chemistry, history, mathematics and so forth– was being shaped in universities across the Western world. At the same time, science and sanitation promised to improve working-class life in cities that had become crowded and polluted over a century of industrialization.

Richards, the founder of home economics (she was also MIT’s first female student, and later its first female instructor), was determined to elevate the practice of clothing, feeding, and creating a comfortable and sanitary household. “Home economics stands for the ideal home life for today unhampered by the traditions of the past [and] the utilization of all the resources of modern science to improve home life," she said in 1904.

With the support of the chemists of the day, who were just discovering the existence of vitamins, early food processors, who were sharply aware of their own interests in a nutritionally aware public, and other social progressives, a new academic discipline was born, one centered around the household sciences. Unfortunately, the most logical name for this field – “economics,” Greek for “rules of the household” – had recently been taken by a bunch of money-focused men who had somehow managed to ignore everything about households that had anything to do with women. Hence the addition of “home” to economics, and the word was transformed into what, perhaps, its meaning should have been in the first place.

There was a dark side to the movement, though. In those days, as today, waves of immigration brought seemingly endless change to the American cultural landscape. But back then, ethnic culinary traditions (Iike spicy flavors) and customs arising from urban and rural working classes (like stews and other one-pot meals) – were believed to be unhealthy, unclean and downright ignorant. Home ec textbooks throughout most of the twentieth century featured straightforward dishes seasoned with little besides salt and pepper. Over the past several decades, mercifully, attitudes have changed.

VVK: What do modern FCE foods classes cover?

JD: We study global issues relating to food. Also, we prepare foods from the ethnicity of the kids in the class. One week this spring we did soul food: fried chicken, barbecued ribs, collard greens, macaroni and cheese from scratch. Dessert was sweet potato pie. After that, we did an Asian lab – we have a lot of Hmong students – with egg rolls, spring rolls, stir-fried rice and green papaya salad. Also, we have many students with Scandinavian roots. We get someone to demonstrate lefse [a traditional flatbread]. We make Swedish meatballs and have a smorgasbord kind of thing. Chef Sabi [host of a local television food show] graduated from East in the late 1980s – he comes in and talks about Mediterranean diets and does demos for the kids.

VVK: How do the students respond to unfamiliar foods?

JD: I think kids today are very respectful to trying new things. Madison has so many wonderful different kinds of restaurants – I think the kids take that for granted. Whatever it is, I insist that they at least try it. One dish – I’ll never forget this one – was from a Japanese family. Mother and student prepared an eight-course Japanese meal, including octopus marinated in soy sauce, a typical appetizer in Japan. That was a real stretch for me. I did try it. But because it was raw, I told the class they didn’t have to. I said eating raw meat or fish was something people in our culture had a real problem with. I didn’t want parents calling to complain that I was making their children eat raw meat! The student was grateful for the kids who did try it. He understood.

VVK: Besides more tolerance and more interest in cookery, what other changes have you seen in students over the years?

JD: Less time is spent in food preparation and we are distinctly at risk of losing favorite family recipes. Cultural specialties risk extinction. Plus, many families do not eat together. I see that as very sad – a huge loss for everybody.

A major problem, then and now, is that most students don’t read the entire recipe when cooking. Two boys were doing a final cooking project – a cake recipe – and they were not to ask me any questions. After about five minutes they came to me and said they were all done. I couldn't believe it. I went to their kitchen, opened the oven, and to my surprise, they had put all their ingredients in the cake pan and put it in the oven. There sat the whole egg, the chunk of butter, all the dry ingredients. Nothing had been mixed. They had just read the ingredients and thrown it all together! Many students then and today just don’t listen and that perhaps is the beginning of the problem. I do think it’s worse today.

It seems there were fewer people, especially young children and teens, with weight problems back then. People in general were more physically active. There wasn’t the total media overkill on appearance, especially for young girls and teenagers. The whole issue of thinness and eating disorders was unheard of back then. Therefore we must work even harder to … convey the understanding and practices that will promote wellness as young people choose the habits that will follow them throughout their lives. Unfortunately, many middle school FCE programs have been eliminated. I see the consequences when we get high school students who haven’t had any experiences with food preparation or nutrition concepts.

Now we have the emphasis on organic, and organic is expensive. At least half of my students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Food choices then become a matter of what is more reasonably priced and will feed the most.

VVK: What was one of the most memorable meals you prepared as a class?

JD: When the kids wanted to do a Thanksgiving meal. I agreed. Then I realized: I’m going to have to put this turkey in the oven at 4:30 in the morning! We had a full, sit-down, Thanksgiving meal at 8:30 a.m., with cranberry relish, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing. Just totally a traditional menu.

There were no leftovers. So many of the kids in the class weren’t going to have a meal like this for the real Thanksgiving. They couldn’t afford it. A lot of people in Madison don’t know that exists in our city.

Lemon Verbena with Peaches

Recipe from Herb farmer Jill Yeck builds a rewarding life of fragrant leaves and gentle living
In Brava magazine, July 2007
Column: Around the Table
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

“Lemon verbena is amazing!” says Jill of this, her favorite herb of all. “It makes a great tea, and it can be minced into fruit salads or tossed into the bath for a relaxing soak. I just love smelling it while wandering the garden. In tropical climates it’s a bush. It’s a tender perennial, so it needs to go in the house in winter.”

Desserts featuring the crisp, refreshing quality of this intensely lemony herb were all the rage in Victorian times. This example is “also great with blueberries, strawberries or other fresh fruits,” Jill says. If you can’t find lemon verbena, try substituting another lemony herb – or, in a pinch, juice and zest from a fresh lemon.

2 tablespoons fresh lemon verbena, plus additional leaves for garnish
1/4 cup honey
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
Fresh peaches

Process honey and lemon verbena in a food processor for about one minute. Add cream cheese. Process until smooth. Cut peaches in half and remove pits. Place a dollop of the cream cheese mixture in the hollow of the peach. Garnish with lemon verbena leaves.

The Wisconsin Supper Club Idea: A great state tradition thrives at Toby’s

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, March 2007
Column: Around the Table

Recipe: Toby's Supper Club's Super-Secret Salad Dressing

What’s a supper club? If you have to ask, you’re probably not from around here – and here’s what you need to know. No, supper clubs don’t have memberships (just like night clubs). No, they’re not open for lunch – they’re not called “lunch clubs,” now, are they? And if you want to look like an old hand at supper clubbing, head straight to the bar to order your meal. You’ll be seated when your salad comes out.

Supper clubs were born during the Prohibition Era, when alcohol was forbidden by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s right, for 13 long years sipping a beer was a federal offense. Not a popular law in Wisconsin. Soon, resourceful citizens throughout the state had opened out-of-the-way establishments along clandestine – er, peaceful – wooded roads, cleverly labeling them “supper clubs.” In those days, “club” evoked a respectable gathering spot for gentlefolk; just the opposite of the wicked connotation of “saloon” or “bar.” And supper sounded like a legitimate reason to go out. Thus was born a culinary tradition that still thrives throughout the region.

Toby’s Supper Club, on Dutch Mill Road near the intersection of Stoughton Road and the Beltline, which evolved into a supper club through the 1930s and ’40s, is a vibrant example of the form, serving authentic supper club eats alongside cocktails so classic they were in fashion when the old fashioned was a new fashion. (In fact, that happens to be Toby’s number one mixed drink.) This is no retro-chic retread: Toby’s is the real thing.

Sisters Roxanne Peterson and Rhonda Frank run the club, which has been in their family since the late 1960’s. We talked with owner Roxanne about Toby’s yesterday and today.

VVK: How and when did Toby’s Supper Club get started?

RP: In 1933 [the final year of Prohibition] Harden Davis and his wife, Iva, built a barber shop here. The rumors were that bootleg booze was sold out of this barber shop – Toby’s kitchen today. In 1939, an addition was made to the building and the barber chair was moved out into a quarter of the dinning room. I have a customer who lived across the street and remembers having french fries and getting his hair cut by Harden.

In 1940, it was sold to Lester and Ruth Galvin and made into more of a restaurant. In 1945, three couples – Weedpohl, Dohaney and Curtis – made it into a supper club and named it Toby’s. In 1950, Toby and Lila Curtis became the sole owners.

VVK: What was Dutch Mill Corners like in days past?

RP: It was Madison’s entertainment center! At that corner there was Simon’s Log Cabin, where the Park and Ride is now. Jack Simon was known as a bootlegger in Prohibition time. I remember riding my bike with my mom and sisters to have lunch during the day, and we had many dinners there. There was the Beacon, where Arby’s is now – a bar and dance hall owned by George Dunn. My dad frequented it in the 50s.

On the other side of 12 and 18 was Oren Rimes’ Supper Club, later known as Nate’s, then Baker’s Dutch Mill. Further down 12 and 18 were Charlie’s Bar and Noble’s Supper Club. There was also a bar called the Cat and the Fiddle, and the Old Dutch Mill.

VVK: How did your family come to acquire Toby’s?

RP: In 1956, my parents built a home around the corner. I still remember my first dinner at Toby’s. It was my fourth birthday. I had the shrimp and a kiddie cocktail, and I thought they were both awful! I love the shrimp now. I remember that my dad painted Toby Curtis’s car, and when he would come to see my dad he would always bring us candy. In 1960, Toby passed away. Lila ran the business until 1969, when my parents bought it. Lila worked with my parents the first year and passed away in 1971.

In 1972, my dad made an addition to the building. When he knocked down a wall to make the new addition, inside we found newspapers with headlines of Prohibition being lifted, Ringling Brothers Circus posters, two sealed, full, Prohibition gin bottles and an original Toby’s menu. The perch plate was 35 cents. – 75 cents for the dinner. A T-bone steak was 65 cents and shrimp was $1.35 Lobster was $1.75.

VVK: Did you always plan to make Toby’s your career?

RP: I went to school to be a nurse so that I wouldn’t have to work at the restaurant the rest of my life. But now I’m the owner! I also work as an R.N. at Meriter Hospital, and at the Lasting Skin Solutions clinic I do aesthetic procedures – lasers, dermal fillers, Botox procedures. Between these two jobs I probably work 50 hours a week. I’d have a hard time choosing which job I like the best. Nursing is very rewarding for me, as is working at the restaurant. People tell me I work too hard, and I say I work a lot but I have never worked hard. The day that I work hard is the day that I don’t like what I do.

I started washing dishes at the age of 11 when my mother worked at the restaurant. I never thought that I would still be here 42 years later. After my parents purchased Toby’s, I eventually moved up the ladder to waitress. When my parents divorced in 1972, I became the manager. At that time I was married with two children and had just completed my L.P.N. degree at MATC and was starting a new job at Madison General Hospital, which is now Meriter. In 1976 I went back to school at UW Madison for my B.S. in nursing.

VVK: What other family members work at Toby’s?

RP: Rhonda’s worked at the restaurant for the last 37 years. We’ve never had an argument. She says it’s because I‘m the boss, and I say it’s because we’re a great team and we’re great friends.

Rhonda’s son, Tony, has worked at Toby’s for 13 years. He’s been our icon bartender for the past ten years. If you’ve ever been to Toby’s, you’ll know Tony and he will surely remember your drink. Sara, Tony’s significant other, has worked at Toby’s for eight years. Rhonda’s daughter, Danyelle, has her own hair and massage therapy business, and she fills in at Toby’s when needed. My daughter Kelly has worked here for the past 23 years, minus the six years she went to college [out of state]. She fills a variety of roles and is the employee’s go-to person in my absence. My son, Chris, has worked at Toby’s on and off over the past 23 years.

VVK: How has the boom in chain restaurants affected your business?

RP: We offer an old-fashioned, nostalgic atmosphere that the new franchises cannot reproduce. At Toby’s we have never advertised. We’ve relied on word of mouth. I credit my dad for telling me a long time ago, “Don’t worry about what the competition is doing. Just take care of your own business and you’ll be fine.” We’re seeing the generation of adults coming to Toby’s because they had dinner here as a child. They’re now bringing their children.

VVK: How about the smoking ban?

RP: We’ve lost a few good friends and customers because they can’t smoke inside. But customers comment how much they love the smoke-free environment. We’ve been very fortunate that the smoking ban has not affected our business overall.

VVK: With all the fads in dining over the past few decades, how has Toby’s menu changed over the years?

RP: Thirty-eight years ago, we added pork chops, frog’s legs, and cod to the menu. We’ve added some appetizers, a New York Strip on Saturdays, and Rhonda’s Wednesday night special, which is different every week.

VVK: You haven’t felt pressure to update, to follow new trends?

RP: No. We use the same dressing recipes and food preparations handed down from the original owners. To this day we use the same cast iron skillets that have always been at Toby’s for hash browns. The same cast iron skillets for pan-fried chicken. We got a new grill and stove in 1996. At that time our cook Margaret remembered when Toby got his first new stove in 1956. She had cooked on that stove for 40 years, and continued to cook on the new stove for another four years. She passed away at the age of 72.

VVK: How about trends in cocktails?

The most popular mixed drink that we make is the old fashioned. In more recent days martinis and Manhattans have become more popular again. Tony is known for his famous key lime pie martini. He will not give out the recipe, not even to me. Toby’s offers a large variety of beer. In 1969 our biggest selling beers were Budweiser and Pabst. In 1972, when Miller Lite came out, it became our number one selling beer and remains so to this day.

VVK: What’s the secret to Toby’s continued success?

RP: We’ve maintained our quality and consistency in preparation of food. When people come to Toby’s they get what they expect and what they remember. They’re recognized by our staff. The same staff is always there. One Friday night, a couple had come in, who Rhonda had waited on for years. When they walked in the door they’d see Rhonda and nod at her, and she’d put in their order. On this particular Friday night, Rhonda wasn’t there. Tony and I asked if they’d put their order in – it appeared that they’d been waiting a long time. They replied that they weren’t sure what to do because Rhonda wasn’t there. They didn’t know how to put their order in. “Rhonda always knows what we want,” they said.

VVK: It sounds like you have a really solid community of loyal customers!

RP: We have people that have been coming to Toby’s since the 40’s. Last summer, some customers told me they were there for the 50th anniversary of their first date. One of our oldest customers, Charlie, passed away in 2006 at the age of 98. He was actively coming to dinner at Toby’s with friends. His wife, Lou Lou, lives at Skaalen nursing home and is 102 years old.

Linda Clash brings classic Soul to Madison’s South side

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Brava Magazine, February 2007
Column: Around the Table

Recipe: Fried Green Tomatoes

There’s something good cookin’ in the South Park Street area, one of Madison’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods. It’s home to a summertime farmers’ market, a variety of ethnic specialty grocery stores and great eateries offering authentic culinary traditions as far-ranging as Indian, Mexican, Vietnamese – and now, with the mid-2006 opening of Jada’s Soul Food, classic Southern Americana.

Offering down-home fare like fried catfish, smothered chicken, homemade baked macaroni and cheese, cornbread, sweet potato pie and more, Jada’s is packed with customers who long for a taste of the South, and for down-to-earth, wholesome, home-cooking quality.

Self-described “die-hard foodies” Jackie and Linda Clash (JAckie + LinDA = “Jada”) decided to open the restaurant only after they’d built themselves some security in the form of a first business, a residential and commercial janitorial service “that was easy to set up and get going,” says Linda. But serving up good food has been their target ever since they noticed Madison’s potential for soul food.

“Jackie was driving along Rimrock Road one day a few years ago when he saw a sign outside a restaurant that said, ‘Soul Food served Sundays,’ says Linda, a 36-year-old Madison native. “He went inside, but the owner said they’d discontinued it after the cook left. So Jackie volunteered. The response was overwhelming.”

Jackie was no stranger to the kitchen – he’d grown up working at his parents’ restaurant, Shorty’s Soul Food on the south side of Chicago, as well as cooking for his four siblings at home. He’s also an alumnus of MATC’s pastry arts program. “He’d been working on his recipes since his early days at Shorty’s and looking for ways to make it better,” says Linda. For her part, Linda had helped her best friend, the owner of the now-defunct Southern Flavor, with catering events in the early 1990s. The Clashes realized that with their experience and their love of food and cooking, they could take the soul food concept far beyond a weekly gig. They decided to work towards opening their own place.

Today, with their Dirt Destroyers business going strong, the Clashes work hard to keep up with booming business at Jada’s, where Jackie cooks and Linda manages catering and customer service. And right across the street, still cutting hair at Style & Grace at 83 years old, is Linda’s father, Taylor "Smitty" Smith. “He was the first African-American barber in Madison,” says Linda. “He and my mother, Helen, are still active members at Second Baptist Church. They’ve been in Madison 65 years!”

VVK: What has been your biggest surprise so far connected to this business? What have you learned along the way?

LC: Our diverse customer base! It is such a blessing to see people of different races and from all walks of life stopping at Jada's for a good meal. We understand and cherish the fact that Jada's was a God-given blessing from conception, and we know that lots of restaurants don't receive the kind of response we have so early on. We don't take anything for granted!

VVK: What do you think is the appeal of soul food, especially yours?

LC: When food is cooked with love, people respond to that. Every dish at Jada's has lots of love behind it. Every recipe is something Jackie and I love. It wasn't placed on the menu for any other reason. We will always serve food that has meaning for us. This resonates with our customers as well. I can't count the number of times I've had customers reminiscing about food they used to love as a kid, or something their mother used to make them when they taste our food. That's why we do what we do.

VVK: What do people encounter for the first time at Jada’s, and how do they respond?

LC: Greens! That has become our soul food icebreaker. Anyone that comes in looking to try something new, I always steer them in the greens direction. Our collard greens have so much flavor, and come three different ways – vegetarian, with smoked turkey, and with smoked pork – that there’s bound to be a connection with just about everyone. We occasionally offer a collard and turnip mix, but for the most part, we serve collards. Jackie and I love collards! We buy local produce from the farmer's market when it’s in season.

VVK: I read in Isthmus that Jada’s is the only place in town serving up chitterlings. You know, I’ve heard about them all my life, but I don’t really know what they are.

LC: For seasoned soul food eaters, the chitterlings (pronounced “chit-lins”) are the number one draw at Jada's. People are pleasantly surprised when they find them on the menu. We always sell out! Chitterlings aren't that complicated to prepare, they’re just time consuming. Most customers love that they don't have to do the grunt work at home – we've already done it for them. I'm going to keep the identity of chitterlings a secret, and encourage people to come in and ask! I find that just about every cuisine has its own type of unique item that you just won't find anywhere else.

VVK: Smothered chicken sounds delicious – what’s that like?
LC: Smothered chicken is fried fresh, and then smothered with gravy. It remains crispy in the gravy because we fry everything fresh at Jada's.

VVK: What’s the difference between your fried chicken and what people are used to these days from fast food chains?
LC: Our chicken is a wonderful, well-kept secret! Our technique is unique, and the reason you won't find any fried chicken like ours in Madison is because it never sits under a light. All of our meats, with the exception of chitterlings and ribs [these are slow-cooking foods], are prepared right when you order it. You can always call or fax in your order for faster service, but we will never change that particular practice.

VVK: Somebody on an Internet forum said your cornbread is Northern-style because it’s sweet, even though you specialize in Southern cookery. What’s your philosophy on cornbread?

LC: I'm not sure if it's a Northern or Southern practice, because I've been served sweet cornbread countless times when I visit the South. I like both sweet and savory cornbread. Our cornbread muffins are sweet, but our cornbread dressing in gravy is not. Our dressing is like Thanksgiving stuffing. The gravy is chicken- and turkey-based, and made from scratch.

VVK: What’s been the biggest challenge been in making Jada’s a success?

LC: The long hours. Jackie and I realize we need to be as hands on as possible in the beginning, so we make it a priority to not sweat the small stuff. We are committed to making sure we steward our time wisely. You may see our children playing at the restaurant!

VVK: What plans do you have for the future?

LC: We have so many plans for Jada's! There may even be a joint venture cooking up in our near future – stay tuned to find out. Jada's Soul Food and Catering has some wonderful things in store for Madison. We are here to stay!

Recipe: Quindins de Yá-Yá

Coconut upside-down treats

Recipe from Around the Table: Eat Smart travel guide series
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, January 2007

This Brazilian favorite is “like a rich, satisfying macaroon,” says Joan, “with rich, golden yellow tops.” Included in her first volume. Eat Smart in Brazil, it’s a delicious fusion of African cookery with the European sweet tooth. In Brazil’s colonial days “the young girls of the plantation mansions, or casas grandes, were addressed as Yá-Yá by the slaves,” says Joan, who suggests using the leftover whites in egg white omelettes. (Or, save towards Betty Arp’s 13-whites Angel Food Cake, given in “Around the Table,” June 2006!)

1/4 pound butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
9 egg yolks
1 cup coconut, freshly grated*

Preheat oven to 350° F. Cream the butter and sugar, mixing well. Add yolks one by one, stirring well after each. When the sugar is completely dissolved, gently stir in coconut.

Lightly grease a shallow muffin pan and fill to a depth of 1 inch. Set into a baking tray containing about 1/2 inch of water and bake for about 35 minutes, making sure the water doesn’t boil over into the muffin cups. The quindins will be lightly browned on the surface.

Cool. Carefully loosen the edges with a knife before inverting the muffin pan over a flat surface. For best results, Joan recommends unmolding each quindim (the singular ends in “m”) one at a time.

Fresh coconut? You can do it!
Sorry, but shredded coconut from a bag won’t work here. Says Joan, “It doesn't have the same taste, consistency or moisture.” Fortunately, fresh, whole coconuts are available in the produce aisle of nearly any supermarket, and armed with Joan’s simple – if a bit adventuresome – method for getting at the tasty innards, you’re on your way to a heavenly coconut flavor and texture that just can’t be matched.

Heat the coconut for 10 minutes in a 350°F oven to crack it. Using potholders, remove from oven and place in a large metal bowl on the floor. Cover with a towel and hit the coconut with a hammer to break it completely open. Separate the coconut meat from the outer shell, prying with a dull knife if needed. Use a vegetable peeler to scrape away the thin brown skin that clings to the white coconut meat. Grate the meat in a food processor. “Whatever you don't use of the grated coconut, you can freeze for later use,” Joan says.

Swiss Savings

How bakery buff Angela Anderson rescued New Glarus’s delicious legacy

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Brava magazine, December 2006
Column: Around the Table

Recipe: Original New Glarus Bakery pfeffernusse spice cookies

In 2004, re-opening the New Glarus Bakery was a dream come true for Angela Anderson, its new owner. But something was missing – something critical to restoring the true spirit of the old bakery.

It was the old notebook. Where was the New Glarus Bakery without it?

Filled with irreplaceable Old World recipes for breads and pastries, the book had passed down through the string of families who had owned the bakery since 1910. With its help, the sturdy ovens deep within the small-town storefront spent the twentieth century baking traditional Swiss and German staples and treats – pumpernickel rye loaves, potato bread, nut horns, springerli, honey stick cookies – for delighted townsfolk and tourists alike.

But during the brief tenure of the bakery’s most recent owner, the book had simply gathered dust in a desk drawer. Longtime recipes – and staff, too – were swept aside for a more modern, industrialized approach. That proved to be a losing strategy. Without dedicated artisans baking heritage goods from scratch, the small business sputtered and shut down.

Angela, an IT professional who had dreamt of one day owning the bakery ever since she’d worked there as a high school student in the early 1990s, now saw her chance to turn things around. Determined to revive the once-proud institution, she bought the business, then tracked down and rehired the previous crew. The shop was about to change hands; everything was coming together. But then the book disappeared.

What to do? The bakery had already failed once without its prized recipes. How could Angela succeed? The newly rehired bakers struggled to reconstruct the old recipes from memory. But the chance to completely restore the town’s beloved tradition – and it had seemed so certain – seemed to be lost forever.

Then came a call that changed everything. A computer whiz friend had deciphered the information on some old floppy diskettes Angela had found in the office.

It was the book! A previous owner, Harold Weber – with his wife, Nancy, he had run the shop for a quarter-century – had typed up every recipe. And a century of tradition narrowly escaped extinction.

Today Angela and the rest of the bakery’s skilled, enthusiastic staff supply the town, tourists and Internet shoppers from all over the nation with authentic, all-natural New Glarus Bakery goodies baked from scratch. “It’s my dream. I love it,” she says. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

Vesna Vuynovich Kovach: How did you get interested in baking, and in the New Glarus Bakery in particular?

Angela Anderson: When I was a child, I’d help my mother and grandmother bake. They would always make cookies, bars and cakes from scratch. I even remember rolling out cinnamon rolls one summer. My mother was always whipping up something in the kitchen.

During my junior year in high school, my sister-in-law, who had worked at the bakery, thought it would be a great idea for me to apply there. So I did. It was like becoming part of another family. We all worked very well together. Customers loved the New Glarus Bakery – for its products, service and cozy, warm feeling. People would drive miles, sometimes several states away to come here.

I realized early on that it was the made-from-scratch aspect as well as an image of high quality products served through many generations that made this bakery a strong, stable business as well as one of the focal points of New Glarus. Today, there are very few scratch bakeries. The ones I knew closed because the tradition in the family ran out.

VVK: The bakery went up for sale in 2001, after the Webers had owned it for some 25 years. Did you think about buying it then?

AA: I told my husband when we got married in 1997, “I have two goals in life: a house in the country, and to own the New Glarus Bakery.” He said, “Sure, whatever.” I knew someday the Webers would want to sell and the idea of having the bakery close just crushed me. But when it came up for sale in 2001, he didn’t want to move. We were living in Janesville and working in Beloit. He said it was either him or the bakery. I chose him. That time.

My mom bought me a little ceramic bakery. She said, “This is in remembrance of what your dream was.”

Then, in 2004, my mom brought me an article from the town paper. She told me, “I know your bakery dream is long gone. I don’t know if I should even show you this. But I thought you should know about it.” It said the New Glarus Bakery was going into foreclosure. I read it, and then I re-read it. I read that article for two days straight. I knew it was my one golden opportunity. I knew the next person to take it on wouldn't let it go. I couldn't bear the idea of non-traditional New Glarus Bakery products being made here, or worse, someone bringing in already-made products like at the grocery stores. It just wouldn't be right.

I wanted to see the bakery back to where it was when Howard and Nancy [Weber] had it. They continued to build an outstanding reputation for 25 years. I also saw what happened to the community when the bakery closed. It was a sad state.

Three weeks before the foreclosure sale, my husband told me to pick up divorce papers.

VVK: It sounds like you spent your adult life pining for the New Glarus Bakery. Why did you leave the area and go into a different field?

AA: I guess I went into information technology because at the time the IT field was a hot career. I also received my BS in business admin, and an Associate’s Degree in computer science. All my experience at the wheel plant, I call my boot camp for running a business. After about 5 years I had managed the systems that were the fundamentals of running the plant – production control, human resources systems, preventative maintenance systems, financial planning and accounting systems.

My closest friends knew I secretly wanted to have a business of my own – and that business was the bakery. I talked about it a lot. Business plans developed in my head over the years on how I would run it. I even planned out production schedules and devised sales figures based on the amount of items I remembered we would sell on a daily basis.

VVK: Tell me about your famous New Glarus Bakery stollen, your special holiday bread. It sounds just marvelous!

AA: We take light and dark raisins, and soak them in rum. There’s almonds and spices and a log of marzipan [almond paste] that runs down the center of the loaf. After they’re baked, we dip them in butter and roll them in powdered sugar. Then we shrink wrap them on a gold board and freeze them.

The freezing is an important part of the curing process It takes at least a month for the flavor to develop. We’ve eaten them right off the cooling shelves, but we just looked at each other and said, “This has no flavor!”

Last year we shipped 3,000 loaves all over the country, and Hawaii and Canada. This year we’re baking 960 – that’s 80 more than last year – for Byerly’s and Lunds, an upscale grocery chain in Minnesota.

VVK: Now that you’ve had the bakery for a while, what have you learned there?

AA: I have trained with mostly my bread maker in the traditions of making our hard-crusted breads, like you would find in Europe. I enjoy working with all my bakers and learning from them. Baking is definitely an art. You can throw somebody a recipe, but it’s the art, the skill, the creativity that you need to make a formula into something edible. It requires a sense of taste and above all, patience. It’s a work of art.

¡Qué maravillosa!

A tasty trip through Hispanic holiday foods By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach In Madison Magazine, December 2006
Recipes and shopping tips follow this article
Photo: Martha Busse

When Melania Alvarez tells me how to make cochinita pibil, a Christmas dish from her native Mexico, she gets excited just talking about it. “Oh, my mouth is watering!” she exclaims. She talks me through each step, and calls back a couple of times with some tips she forgot.

I must sound puzzled at her description of some of the more exotic ingredients, because the next day, I find them in a shopping bag hanging on my doorknob. There’s also an authentic comal – a steel griddle for warming tortillas. It’s a gift, for my efforts to share a dish that’s dear to her. The recipe comes out fabulous. The comal works great.

Holiday food customs matter to people. Here are some favorites of Madisonians from around the Latin American diaspora. ¡Que maravillosa!

MEXICO
Rosca de Reyes (wreath of kings) and Cochinita Pibil (barbecue pork soft tacos)
Alvarez, an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at UW-Madison, remembers fondly the holiday celebrations she grew up with. Dec. 16 kicks off Las Posadas, a nightly neighborhood-wide reenactment in song of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging, culminating in a party each night at a different neighbor’s house. Festive dishes include ponche con piquete (punch with sting), a fruity, alcoholic concoction. For the children, there’s a piñata filled with peanuts, oranges, tangerines, sugar canes and candy.

Presents arrive on Epiphany (Jan. 6) courtesy of the three Wise Men – not Santa – in remembrance of the gifts they brought Jesus. On that day is served the rosca de reyes (wreath of kings), “a big oval wreath of egg bread with dry fruit decorations and sprinkled sugar on top,” explains Alvarez. “Hidden inside, there is a little ceramic doll which represents the Baby Jesus.”

But the main feast of Christmastime in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, is held the night of Christmas Eve. The Alvarez spread was lavish: “We had tamales, romeritos [a green vegetable] with shrimp, pork with plum sauce, bacalao [salt cod with chili peppers], and lots more. Our family loves to eat. In Mexico, food is just an incredible thing. There’s so much variety.” Christmas Day itself is “low-key,” she says – lots of lounging and leftovers.

One of Alvarez’s favorite holiday dishes is cochinita pibil, a kind of tangy pork barbecue served taco style with pickled red onions. Although her family hails from Monterrey in Mexico’s north, this Christmas specialty from south Mexico – an area with a vastly different culinary style – was always on her family’s holiday table. Here’s how it came to be there.

Born in Yucatán in the 1860s, Doña Aurora Canto chronicled the marvelous foods she grew up with, and developed recipes for preparing them in a modern, urban kitchen. Her granddaughter, Melba Sanchez, and her husband, Alonso, opened a restaurant in central Mexico, serving these recipes.

In the 1960s, the Sanchezes befriended a family that had newly moved south to Mexico City. The clan’s matriarch bonded with their little girl – Melania – who loved to hear stories about life in old Yucatán. And Doña Aurora shared with Melania’s family her method for cochinita pibil.

The classic form of the dish involves marinating a whole suckling pig in spices and orange juice, wrapping it in banana leaves, and roasting it in a pit dug into the earth.
This stovetop version from Doña Aurora, however, is easy. “It’s a foolproof recipe,” Alvarez says. “No matter what you do, it’s very hard that you ruin this thing. Put some on your tortilla, add some onion. You close your taco and – heaven! It’s good.”

Cochinitas pibil make a perfect buffet food. Just keep the pork hot in a chafing dish, and put the red onions nearby in a pretty bowl. Warm a stack of tortillas and keep them hot in foil or in a tortilla warmer.

HONDURAS
Torejas (sweet corn puffs)
Christmas Eve dinner in Honduras, just north of Nicaragua, features nacatamales – pork or chicken tamales wrapped in banana leaves, rather than the corn husks-wrapped tamales of Mexico that Americans are more familiar with. And for dessert, there’s always torejas – delicate little spongey disks dripping with rich, sweet cane syrup.

“Everybody has torejas and coffee,” says DeStephen, who was a dentist in Honduras. She came to the States two years ago with her husband, a clinical engineer with Rayovac. “They’re served right after dinner at room temperature. They’re very popular, and very easy. Very nice.”

In other Hispanic countries, “torejas” is a word meaning French toast, or sometimes just toast. But in Honduras, it specifically means these tiny fried corn flour cakes. (Fans of Indian food can consider these gulab jamun for the Western hemisphere.)
The most exotic ingredient here is piloncillo, a cone of evaporated cane syrup, a staple at Latin markets. The label IDs it as “brown sugar,” but it’s not quite the same as American brown sugar, which is just white sugar with a little molasses stirred in. This is the real thing – the pure, unrefined juice of the crushed cane. Compared to our brown sugar, the flavor is rich, hefty, whole.

CHILE
Pan de Pascua (holy season bread) and Cola de Mono (monkey’s tail)
Fruitcake and monkey’s tail: it’s the instant Chilean Christmas celebration kit. “If you say this combination to any Chilean, they will say, ‘Oh, my, how did you know?’” says Paulette Berthelon. “Everywhere you go, everyone offers it to you. You just keep eating and drinking that through New Year’s Eve.”

Pan de Pascua, or Chilean fruitcake, translates as “bread of the holy season.” Dense, rich and bready, it’s sort of a cross between our fruitcake (less sweet, and not phony) and German stollen.

Cola de mono, meaning monkey’s tail, is the Chilean cultural equivalent of eggnog. This sweet drink is made with spiced milk and coffee and spiked with aguardiente, a Chilean liquor distilled from sugar cane.

Eaten in tandem, you’d think the two sweet treats would just cloy and cancel each other out, but in fact they combine in transcendent spicy harmony. “You eat and drink these two together, and – I don’t know, it’s just right,” says Berthelon.”It’s so good.”

Pan de Pascua is thought to originate from regions in the south of Chile settled by Germans in the early twentieth century, and Berthelon’s favorite recipe is the family treasure of a friend whose great-grandfather arrived in Chile around that time.

RECIPES AND SHOPPING TIPS

Rosca de Reyes In Madison, the Panaderia Marimar (270-0711; 1325 Greenway Cross) bakes delicious roscas de reyes in time for Epiphany. You can call ahead to reserve one, and arrange to pick it up at any of Marimar’s three mercado (market) locations around town.

Here’s a group of party-friendly recipes: every one of these can be prepared days in advance, and most get better with time. Enjoy!

Mexican Cochinitas Pibil
Alvarez recommends making cochinita pibil a day or even a week ahead of time. “It gets better and better,” she says. The pickled onions mellow and improve with time in the fridge, also.
Achiote is a garlicky condiment made chiefly from crushed annatto seeds. Annatto’s flavor is mild, but its color is a spectacular orange. (Used in tiny amounts, annatto gives cheddar and other orange cheeses their familiar ruddy hue.) Achiote is easy to find at any Latino food store. It comes in a little box about the size of a bar of soap, usually sporting a jaunty drawing of – a roast suckling pig.

Banana leaves are also uncommon to the American kitchen, but readily available at a mercado.

In Yucatán, a special orange, the naranja agria (bitter orange), is juiced for the marinade, but, says Alvarez, “You can only get it in Yucatán.” This recipe uses vinegar plus orange juice to duplicate the super-sour quality of naranja agria.

Tortilla warmers, cases to keep your heated tortillas hot, are available inexpensively at most Latino specialty mercados and tiendas (stores). Yue Wah (2328 S. Park St., 257-9338), a multiethnic supermarket, is also an excellent source for Latino groceries and accoutrements.

Cohinita Pibil Recipe

3 pounds pork shoulder butt roast
3/4 bar achiote (annatto) paste
2–3 feet banana leaves
5 oranges, juiced (or 1 1/2 cups OJ)
3/4 cup white vinegar, plus more cups vinegar
1–2 red onions
1 lime
1–4 serrano or habanero peppers
plenty of corn tortillas

Pork
Combine juice and 3/4 cup vinegar. Dissolve the achiote into the liquid. Cut the pork into six or more pieces. Marinate the pork in the achiote mixture overnight. A zippered freezer bag – inside another bag or a bowl just in case – works well.

Transfer the meat and marinade into a heavy pot. (Iron or enameled iron are perfect; uncoated aluminum is not a good choice, because the acid will pit it.) Loosely wrap the meat into foot-long lengths of banana leaf. Add water to cover. Simmer, covered, 3–5 hours, until very tender – enough that you can easily tear it into little strips with a fork. (Some people like to use an electric crockpot for this slow cooking; others say it just isn’t the same.) Discard the banana leaves. Shred the pork. Keep the lid off and cook liquid down until it’s juicy, but not soupy. Keep in mind that when it cools, much of the liquid will be absorbed. Mash another teaspoon or tablespoon of achiote with a little vinegar and stir it in, to freshen up the taste. Excellent right away or reheated. Be careful not to let this get scorched: “Burnt annatto tastes terrible,” says Alvarez.

Onion condiment
Slice the onion into thin rings. Place in a glass bowl or other container suitable for fairly long-term refrigeration. Add the juice of a lime. Add vinegar to cover. Slice the pepper(s) lengthwise and add them – as many as you think you will want the heat of! Refrigerate at least a day before serving. The sharpness of the onions mellows over time.

To serve Over low heat, warm tortillas on a griddle or an authentic flat steel comal (available at mercados). Make a soft taco by putting some pork on a tortilla, adding red onion (lift it out of the vinegar), and folding the tortilla in half.


Honduran Torejas

3 eggs, separated
3 tablespoons corn flour (finer than corn meal)
3 piloncillos
3 cups water
Oil for frying (about 1 quart)

Woodman’s carries big, cheap jugs of peanut oil. With its high smoking point and unobtrusive flavor, is a good choice for frying. It can easily be strained and reused after frying torejas.

Beat yolks till thick and creamy, like mayonnaise. Beat egg whites till stiff peaks form. Stir whites and yolks together. Stir in corn flour.

Fry in 1" of hot (375º) oil, dropping batter from a teaspoon. Fry torejas until golden brown, flipping once. It doesn’t take long. By the time you fill the pan, it’s time to flip the first ones you dropped in. By the time you’ve turned them all, it’s time to start removing them to a rack. Cool on rack, then remove to paper towels for better drainage. At this point, they’re feather-light, mostly air – the better to soak up the delicious piloncillo syrup.

Place in the syrup. Refrigerate overnight. Serve about three torejas at room temperature in lots of syrup in a little dish.

Piloncillo syrup In a saucepan over low heat, place piloncillos in water and cover. The dried cane syrup will dissolve into a thin syrup after several minutes.


Pan De Pasuca
Holy Season Bread, or Chilean Fruitcake
Most Panes de Pascua are yeasted breads, time-consuming constructions involving various kneadings and risings. This one, however, is leavened with baking powder, so it’s much simpler to make. It’s legacy, however, is authentic, dating back generations in a German family of southern Chile.

1 cup of butter, room temperature
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs, separated
2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon anise extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (not too small, break every piece in half)
3/4 cup almonds (optional, broken in pieces as you do with the walnuts)
1 1/2 cups golden raisins
1 cup mixed candied fruit
1/2 cup brandy or rum
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Preheat oven to 325º. Grease two deep 9" round cake pans or one 9" springform pan. Spray pan(s) with cooking spray. For extra nonstick-ness, line the bottom and sides of the pan with foil, then spray.

Combine the fruits and nuts in a medium bowl. Toss in a handful of flour and mix to coat. The flour keeps the fruits and nuts from sinking to the bottom of the cake.

Beat butter in a large bowl until creamy. Add all the sugar and beat until
light and fluffy. Add honey. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, beating well at each addition. Add vanilla. Stir in lemon peel and egg whites. Add some of the milk.
Sift flour, baking powder and spices and add to butter mixture alternately
with brandy or rum, beating just until blended. (Get someone to do the adding while you do the beating, and it will be much easier!) Add the vinegar. Now add enough of the milk to make a batter no thinner than an average cake batter. This might mean adding all the milk. Thick is OK, but you don’t want it too thin. Fold in reserved fruit and nuts mixture.

Spoon into pan(s) and smooth top. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake is firm. (It might take up to fifteen minutes longer.)

Cool completely on wire rack. Cover with foil and refrigerate or store in a cool dry place. Pan de pascua keeps for several days.

Chilean Cola de Mono
Monkey’s Tail

1 quart milk
8 tablespoons sugar (or more to taste)
4 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon grated cloves
sections of peel from 1/4 orange, white pith scraped away
1 1/2 cups freshly brewed coffee.
3/4 to 1 cup aquardiente

Aquardiente, a cane-based spirit that predates rum, is difficult to find stateside, but rum or tequila are serviceable substitutes. Paulette cautions against using vodka: “It gives a bitter taste. Don’t even try it.”

Place the milk, sugar, vanilla extract, grated nutmeg, grated cloves, and
orange peel in a two- or three-quart saucepan. Over medium heat, heat the mixture to just before to the boiling point, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat just as it’s about to boil. Stir the coffee into the hot milk. Let it cool at room temperature. (If you prefer to use instant coffee, dissolve 4 teaspoons in a cup using a little bit of the hot milk mixture, and then add it to the rest of the mixture.)

Add the liquor after the liquid has cooled. If it’s still warm, the alcohol will evaporate! You can add the liquor by stages, to adjust the strength to your taste. You might even want to add the liquor later, to suit individual tastes and so that children and other non-drinkers can enjoy it.

Remove the orange peels, strain the cola de mono and decant into bottles, using a ladle and funnel. Cover tightly and chill before serving. Keeps several days refrigerated.

Chili Changes: Old traditions and new

Old traditions and new mingle in a bowl of spicy comfort food
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
(unpublished so far -- except for on this blog)

Chunks of meat stewed with chili peppers: that’s the essence of traditional chili, a dish with ancient origins in Mexico and points south. Some accounts credit the cattle drivers of the Old West with inventing chili – as the story goes, cowboys pounded together dried beef and chili peppers, then stewed up the mix while on the trail. But as chef and writer Rick Bayless, widely regarded as this nation’s foremost authority on Mexican cuisine, points out in his book “Authentic Mexican,” the idea is farfetched – both ethnocentric and sexist. For millennia, human beings on the American continents have been eating both meat and chili peppers. The first one to put them in a cooking pot together was assuredly not a white male.

Chili does come to us from the Southwest border regions where Mexican and American cultures and cuisines mingle, but its roots go back centuries, through generations of cooks who learned how to soften both the toughness of meat and the chili pepper’s fierce flavor with hours of slow cooking.

History has the demimondaines of old San Antonio dishing out chili from nighttime open air stalls near the Alamo. By the late 19th century, the fiery hash was a Texas specialty, and the state sponsored a chili exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. This became the venue through which chili – like the Ferris wheel, diet soda and Juicy Fruit gum – entered the American mainstream.

Beans, tomatoes and even ground beef are twentieth-century, middle American introductions. Authentic or no, I like beans in my chili. Their starch thickens the broth, and they add a wonderful, creamy flavor. But when there’s time for the additional prep and the slow cooking, the traditional chunks of beef have a lot over ground. Chunks add a rustic quality, and they’re fun to eat and prepare. I enjoy the sensuousness of cutting a big slab of meat into pieces, of seeing how individual and distinct each piece remains, how impossible it is to make them perfectly uniform. Note that you need a good, sharp knife for this to be fun instead of toil. A heavy cleaver is ideal, but a 6" or 8" chef’s knife will work well, too.

[The recipe]
Here’s my favorite chili recipe, a full-flavored stew I’ve tinkered with over the years to incorporate various elements from Mexican cookery. Note the absence of commercially mixed “chili powder”! About the ingredients: Chiles anchos aren’t hot; they add a dark, gentle sweetness to long-cooking dishes. In Mexico, the rich, dusky flavor of cocoa is used in many dishes, not just in sweet desserts; here, it plays against the chiles anchos beautifully. The earthy, faintly tangy herb epazote (available dried from Penzey’s) goes well with beans. Masa harina is a finely ground corn flour. And the red pepper flakes are the only hot ingredient: adjust according to your preference. For me, the amount of heat given here is pleasantly peppery. However, sensitivity to capsaicin, the hot stuff in chili peppers, varies among individuals and through time.

2 pounds beef, cut in 2" cubes. You want a tough, cheap cut, like shank, chuck or brisket, for a slow-cooked, tender stew.
2 Tbs. oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1-2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 Tbs. epazote, dried and fine
1 Tbs. Mexican oregano
1 Tbs. cumin, ground
1 Tbs. cilantro (fresh or dried)
1 Tbs. cocoa powder (unsweetened)
5 (or one package) dried chile ancho pods, stems removed
2 (15 oz.) cans kidney beans, including juice
2 cans (14 oz) tomatoes (Diced, stewed, whole, or whatever you like)
1 cup hot water

2-4 Tbs. masa harina ( or corn starch) mixed in some cold water (optional)

In a big (six-quart), heavy pot set on medium-high heat, add oil and brown the meat in batches, transferring to a bowl. Reduce heat to medium-low, add onions and garlic and return the meat to the pot. Simmer 10 minutes, covered. Add all other ingredients (except the masa, which is used for thickening at the end). Simmer gently, covered, another 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally. When the meat is tender, stir in the masa harina and water and simmer for a couple of minutes. You can garnish the servings with a sprig of fresh cilantro. This is a delicious one-dish meal in itself, but for a super-hearty repast that’ll keep you satisfied for hours, ladle over a wedge of your favorite corn bread.

Brown rice, good and easy – long version

This is a lightly edited early draft of a much shorter article that was ultimately published as my Table Talk column in Madison Magazine in the summer or fall of 2001. Although it's not as polished as the published version, this draft contains a lot of info that didn't make it to press. I came upon it when posting the Table Talk column to this archive blog, and thought it was worth dusting off to post alongside. In truth, the need to abbreviate so severely for mainstream publication has been, for me, one of the most painful things about freelance writing.

To read a version of the rice article closer to the published version, click here.

– VVK, October 1, 2009

It's easy to make a perfect pot of brown rice, fluffy and appealing as a bed or side dish for just about any main course. What's not so easy is finding out how.

You wouldn’t expect this to be so. Brown rice is practically a symbol of the whole natural foods movement. It’s available everywhere, from the tiniest co-op to the slickest supermarket. Yet, I can’t count the times that friends – good cooks, whole foods enthusiasts – have told me that brown rice just won’t cook up right for them. It always seems to end up mushy, or scorched, or underdone, or somehow otherwise yucky. “I hate brown rice!” cried a vegetarian friend. Why? Because it always comes out just awful.

Really, this is as much as can be expected. Many published directions for plain brown rice – even those printed right on the packages, strangely enough – are literally recipes for disaster. As an experiment, instead of preparing rice the way I usually do, I tried following the instructions on the bag of Tsuru Mai California Brown Rice, my usual brand. Sure enough, I wound up with a insipid, soupy, crunchy, unpalatable mess.

I did some more investigating, and I was appalled at what I found. Most of the recipes I checked out include at least one feature guaranteed to wreck the rice. Like, they don't include salt – which you need to bring out brown rice=s marvelous, but mild, flavor. Or they have you turn down the heat to the lowest possible simmer – thereby guaranteeing a pot of pulpy sop. Or they have you cooking a single cup of rice in an enormous pot or pressure cooker.

Sometimes there's simply not enough information. For instance, one recipe, which doesn’t even tell how much rice to use, just stipulates “enough water to cover the middle finger to the middle of the second joint as the fingertip rests lightly on the top of the rice.” No wonder some people decide, after a few bouts with it, that brown rice is for the birds.

Why are the instructions so often so wrong? I can't even guess. But after about twenty years of practice, I do know how to make brown rice so that it's: tender (not mushy), moist (not soggy), and agreeably firm to the bite (without aggravating little hard spots). And so can you.

Brown rice is a little trickier to cook than white rice. But you can learn the tricks. And it's worth it.

Brown rice makes a hearty, tasty foundation for any high-fiber, low-fat, whole foods diet. [Author’s note, 2009: I no longer follow, espouse, or believe there are any benefits to a low-fat diet. Nor do I believe anymore that grain is an optimal foundation for a human diet. See this manifesto on lowcarbarama.com, my low-carb site, for a more current representation of my views on the matter.] It’s got two to four times the fiber of white rice, and is a richer source of naturally-occurring B vitamins (white rice is usually enriched artificially), Vitamin E, essential oils, and minerals like magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium and zinc.

Rice naturally has a loose, tough, inedible hull which is easily cracked and winnowed away, even with a hand tool like a wooden pestle. What=s left is the whole grain that we call brown rice – though depending on the variety, it can be brown, red, or even white. More pounding with a pestle will shatter off the edible, nutritious layer of rice bran, leaving only a white core consisting mainly of carbohydrates. This remaining core of white rice can be stored longer – important in low technology societies without modern packaging and storage – and cooks faster – important when fuel is dearly obtained. Also, although rice is not a high-protein food, research shows that what it has is more available when the rice is polished – important when protein is scarce. All these reasons put together may be why white rice became the predominant way of preparing rice the world over.

Ironically, then, brown rice seems to be a true modern health food, rather than the iconic back-to-nature fare it seems to represent. California's Lundberg Family Farms introduced brown rice to an American market in the late 1960s, in response to requests from the blossoming natural foods community. In this light, perhaps it's not so unusual, after all, that we're still figuring out how to get it right.

So what’s the secret to perfect brown rice? It all comes to combining a few ingredients in a suitable container, applying heat for an appropriate length of time – and otherwise leaving it all alone.

Stripped to the essentials, here's how to do it, followed by what you need to know to make it as easy as it should be.

Brown Rice
1 cup short grain brown rice
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt

Rinse rice. Combine all ingredients in a one- to two-quart saucepan (smaller is better), Bring to boiling.
Reduce heat, cover, and cook 40 minutes at a high simmer/low boil. Do not stir.
Remove from heat and let sit at least fifteen minutes before serving.
Yield: about 3 cups cooked brown rice.

Use short grain brown rice, at least to start. Long grain is trickier to pull off; it=s more likely to become mushy. Look for the chubby little grains of short grain brown rice. They stay firm and delicious for days after cooking.

The best pot for this job is a thick-walled, two-quart saucepan. I use a clear glass Corning Visions pot. You can see right through it, without lifting the lid, to check how hard the water is boiling. The bottom is clear, too, so I can look through the bottom of the pot to check for scorching. Newer Visions pots, though, have opaque nonstick linings on the bottoms, so they don't feature the bottom view. The uncoated ones do turn up often at places like Goodwill – that's where I got mine.

If you don't have a glass pot, try stainless steel, enameled iron (with no chips), or some other nonreactive surface. That way, you can store your cooked rice in the same container you cook it in. (Caution: Don't store cooked food in a reactive material like iron or aluminum. Iron rusts, and aluminum pits and can leach aluminum oxide, which is toxic.) And here's another advantage of glass: not only can you stick the pot in the fridge, but you can pop it right into the microwave to reheat!

If you bought the rice from a bulk bin, pick over it carefully for any pebbles you might find. Occasional green grains are normal, but discard any black, spoiled grains. Rinse the rice to get rid of any field dust.

Place rice in pot and add water and salt. From this moment on, do not stir! As the water boils, the rice grains will arrange themselves into a network of nooks and crannies through which the water bubbles up. In this way, each grain gets its own little space to plump up to perfection. You'll be able to see the passageways when you look inside the pot. I tried stirring the rice partway through cooking once, as an experiment. I suppose it was for the good of science, but I felt sorry for the sodden mass of rice that made the sacrifice.

Now, turn the heat all the way up to get a good rolling boil. Leave the pot uncovered for this step, so it doesn’t boil over while you're not looking. It helps to set a timer. On my stove, nine minutes brings me back just as the boil is getting started.

Once you’ve got the boil going, set your timer for another forty minutes, cover the pot, and adjust the heat until it's bubbling lightly, checking in now and again on the activity level. If you can't decide whether to call it a simmer or a boil, you’ve got it where you want it. The rice should be done in about forty to fifty minutes, but take note of how long it actually takes on your stove and with your cookware (check again if you change pots next time), and adjust your timer, or perhaps your flame, accordingly the next go-round.

As it gets closer to time, check in to make sure there's still water in the pot. Since you're not allowed to stir the rice, how can you tell when the water's all gone? Simple: tilt the pot. If you can see water pooling, it needs to cook some more. If no water pools, take the pot off the heat. Right away. Even if the rice looks very moist. Otherwise, it's going to scorch. Fortunately, rice is among the more forgiving of foods in this way; even if the bottom gets moderately scorched, the rest of the rice does okay. (I’ve known people who swear by the supposed fiery energy bestowed by the singed so-called “yang layer” peeled from the bottom of their cook pot. When life gives you lemons, I guess.)

After you take the pot off the heat, leave it alone – tightly covered – for at least fifteen minutes. Longer is fine. But if you serve it now, it'll be wet and droopy, and will lay flat on the plate. Some recipes call for "fluffing" the rice with a fork or paddle at this point, and then covering with a bamboo mat to let the steam escape. Wrong on both counts! This is a critical moment: the hot steam in all those little tunnels and chambers is now quietly finishing up the job of puffing up those individual rice grains. Let the steam do the fluffing. Let time do the work. I can’t stress enough, this isn’t extra time added to the cooking; this is an essential part of the cooking time.

Now your rice is ready to serve. A bamboo or plastic rice paddle, sold at Asian food stores, is the perfect tool for this: the wide, relatively flat, bowl section can pick up a good amount of rice, while the short, stubby handle gives your wrist the right leverage to hoist it.

Brown rice does take longer to prepare than white rice. But the active preparation time is really the same; it's only the total time frame that's longer.

Also, once it's cooked, it's terrifically convenient: it keeps for a few days in the fridge, and reheats easily in the microwave. It comes in handy all day long. For instance, for an easy breakfast that will power you through to lunch, try this: In a bowl, microwave some rice – anywhere between a half cup and a cup – till it's steaming hot. Make a one-egg omelet stuffed with some crumbled feta and perhaps (if you've a few extra minutes) some sauteed mushrooms and onions, and serve over the rice. With all those complex carbohydrates providing a steady supply of blood sugar, you won't be craving doughnuts mid-morning. [Author’s note, 2009: I am no longer under the impression that plenty of carbohydrates, complex or otherwise, stave off hunger. In fact, it’s the fat and protein in the meal describe that wards off the doughnut cravings. See this article by Barry Groves to learn more about this effect.]

At dinnertime, when the rice is freshly made, I like to serve stir-fried veggies and tofu over it. Rice from the refrigerator is better stirred in during the last few minutes of cooking. (But go ahead and take it out of the fridge at the beginning of your meal prep, so it has time to lose its chill.) A handful or two of cooked rice also goes great in soup for a stick-to-your-ribs one-dish meal.

Enjoy!

Low Country Boil

In Madison Magazine, June 2001
Column: Table Talk
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach and Don Kovach

The trees! The birds! The sun! What is it all saying? Have a cookout! You want to make a big heap of food and share it with your friends and family. And you want to be able to relax and enjoy your own party. Celebrate the summer with a Low Country boil.

The Low Country is the expanse of island-dotted salt marsh that makes up the coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Time there is marked by the tides, rather than the hands of a clock. The culture is intimately tied to the life of the sea and the salt water.

Low Country boil is a synthesis of life in that part of the south: shrimp from the sea, potatoes and carrots from the farms, and sausage from the pigs people keep. The simple act of boiling these everyday ingredients in seasoned water creates a lively, eloquent harmony. Low Country boil is also called Frogmore Stew, for the St. Helena Island community where it’s thought to originate. But it isn’t a stew as we know it—a stew is slow-cooked to soft, thick, inseparability. In a Low Country boil, the ingredients all stay separate, though they come together in the pot and get served in a massive heap on the table. Folks just reach in and pull out what they want, as they want it: a shrimp, a potato, a hunk of corn.

Low Country boils are so popular in coastal cities like Savannah and Charleston, and the territory all around them, you’d think this was an ancient custom. In fact, historians have been able to trace it back only to around 1940, about the time sausage in casings (as opposed to sausage patties) were introduced to the region. Maybe it became so popular so fast because it it’s so easy. It’s a lot of fun, and it brings together so many good things. The salted water, when it boils, evokes the smell of the ocean. There’s a fragrant rush of seasoning as you pour out the food. It’s a big meal, a big thing, and it takes the whole of the outside to hold it.


RECIPE: Low Country Boil

A Low Country Boil is great for outdoor gatherings of eight or more people. It doesn’t scale down well below that.
To serve, just dump the food onto a wood or metal picnic table that’s covered with newspaper. No plates are necessary—people can gather around and eat straight from the heap, shelling shrimp and cutting off hunks of sausage as they go. Cleanup couldn’t be easier: put away any leftovers, and roll up and throw out the rest.

Tools:
This is an outdoor cooking project. You’ll need a six-gallon pot with a basket insert and a propane burner with a sturdy stand (the same equipment used for deep-frying whole turkey—Table Talk, November 2000).

Multiply these amounts by the number of people coming. These are the ingredients per person:
1/2 pound raw shrimp, shell on (thaw if frozen)
1/2 pound kielbasa, smoked sausage or ring baloney
1 ear corn, husked and broken in half
3 new potatoes, scrubbed but unpeeled
3 baby carrots (or one pound for up to 16 people)
1/3 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1/3 bay leaf
1 peppercorn

For the whole pot:
4 gallons water
1 bag crab or seafood boil
2 tsp. salt

Put the seasonings—crab boil bag, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt—in the water and bring it to a boil. Put the potatoes, carrots, and sausage in the basket, and lower the basket into the pot. Cook for a few minutes until the potatoes are almost done. Add the corn and cook for a few more minutes. The fresher the corn, the shorter the cooking time needed. Add the shrimp, and cook just until they turns red, about 3 minutes. Don’t overcook the shrimp, or they’ll be tough. Lift out the basket, and serve immediately.

Corn bread, cole slaw, green salad, and great Wisconsin beer go well with this meal. Watermelon is a natural to finish.

Vesna Vuynovich Kovach writes this column regularly. Don Kovach grew up in Savannah, where he loved to go shrimping and fishing along the salt rivers with his family.