Pretzel Sunday

Have you ever given any thought as to why pretzels exist?

Luxembourg and America do pretzels entirely differently. In America, pretzels are mostly crispy and sold in every grocery store. They inhabit bowls of questionable cleanliness in bars all across the country. Desperate airline passengers nibble on them. When people gather to watch football on TV, pretzels are the Vice Presidents of the snack world--ready just in case something happens to the chicken hot wings. Special pretzel stores in malls sell chewy ones dredged in yellow processed cheese; sometimes dipped into mustard. Other special pretzel stores in malls coat them in multiple layers of chocolate and colorful sprinkles.

Most of all, there’s no story or tradition around them. Pretzels are like pigeons. They are nothing special; they just ARE.

Well, in Luxembourg, pretzels are fraught with meaning. Sure, one can still find meaningless crispy pretzels in the grocery stores. It’s the seasonal pretzel--that comes around only once a year--that is so interesting.

To set the stage, Lent is a 40-day stretch of sadness and repentance before the rejoicing of Easter morning. It starts the day after Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”), on Ash Wednesday (February 25th in 2009). During Lent, early Christians were not allowed to eat any rich foods, and particularly eggs, butter, milk, meat or cheese during this time. They could eat fish and bread made from flour and water, however. (Which is not so coincidentally the ingredients of a pretzel).

The Lenten pretzel tradition has Roman Catholic roots that date back over a thousand years. According to The History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, "...an Italian monk [in 610 A.D.] invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn their prayers. He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")". Another source maintains that they called it ‘Bracellae’, the Latin word for “little arms.” Over time the pronunciation turned into ‘bretzel’.

Are we to believe these stories? You make the call; I won’t. However, to stoke the fires of discussion a little more, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday I gave my wife Cammy a pretzel. It wasn’t any old pretzel. It was about a foot across, had the texture of a sweet roll and was topped generously with white frosting and sliced almonds. It was...a romantic pretzel.

What possessed me to do this? The fact that it was “Pretzel Sunday” in Luxembourg. Apparently a tradition that arose around suffering has morphed into a romantic tradition. According to accepted practice, the boy (Eric) gives the girl (Cammy) a pretzel on Pretzel Sunday. If she approves of my pretzel and my romantic attentions, then she is obliged to give me an egg on Easter Sunday. It could be a real egg or a chocolate one. It could be plain or richly decorated. It’s up to her. To add even more confusion, in leap years the girl and the boy switch roles! (Sort of a Sadie Hawkins arrangement, so the boys had better be on their toes).

As Easter approaches the pressure mounts. To make things more dramatic, I shall continue the discussion using Rumsfeldic Questioning (kind of like Socratic Questioning, but more recent and with goofy epithets included):

Will I get an egg? Good golly, I should hope so.
Will it be out of the carton? Perhaps.
Could it be hardboiled? Possibly, for gosh sakes.
Might it be dyed a pretty color? My stars, wouldn’t that just be dilly!
Could it be a fancy chocolate egg? You bet.
And what does it really mean either way? Heavens to Betsy, who on God’s green earth really knows?

All I know is that everybody knows that you’re supposed to do it, but nobody (I’ve talked to) knows why. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Which is what a lot of Luxembourgish men do. Starting at about 9 o’clock in the morning, when the malls open. Packs of them cluster around the little circular bars in the main mall walkways, like gamblers around a particularly generous blackjack table. When they are in full swing, there is much jovial chitchat and hoisting of beer. I call them the “Bofferding Boys”, after the local brewery.

But I digress.

On the surface, Pretzel Sunday sounds silly, maybe even sacrilegious. However, I would argue that it is far less so than the Easter Bunny. Or the gifting of live ducklings and bunnies, soon to be abandoned (or eaten). Not to mention plastic Easter baskets lined with plastic grass filled with the sugary horror of Cadbury eggs and the marshmallowy monstrosities known as Peeps.

At least pretzel and egg drama has a Christian origin and celebrates love and romance, instead of just celebrating the dollar.

Luxembourg Farmers' Market

It’s a chilly mid-March Wednesday morning in the Place Guillaume--one of Luxembourg City’s two downtown squares. Like many squares in Europe, it’s a large flat expanse of granite cobblestone surrounded by old buildings and punctuated with occasional monuments. Place Guillaume, often empty except for strolling tourists and the more industriously-moving members of Luxembourg’s workforce, this morning is inundated with white tents and assorted vans and trucks. The reason for the hubbub (and our presence) is the city’s farmers’ market, which takes place every Wednesday and Saturday morning. 

I have long been a fan of farmers’ markets, though mostly for the spectacle and for wonderfully fresh produce. This started to change to a moral imperative over the years, especially after I started reading about our food supply. Two recent standouts that influenced me greatly were: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2005), and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007). This morning’s dual goal, and the reason I seek out farmers’ markets, is to get high-quality food and to support local, sustainable farming.

It’s not quite nine o’clock, and the market looks pretty slow. The pace will pick up later in the morning as grocery shoppers start to arrive, and especially around lunchtime, as downtown workers invade the square for sandwiches, baked goods and freshly roasted chickens. The weather is a little strange and strangely uplifting. It is brightly sunny, yet the sky is spitting tiny raindrops, though only intermittently. It’s just a few seconds of spatter now and again, more like standing in the bow of a fast moving sailboat than a rainstorm. The brilliant sun is tempered with a chilly west wind somehow gusting its way into the square.

We encounter the Place d’Armes first, a town square surrounded by restaurants, that features a band stage in the center. Heading toward the southeast corner of Place d’Armes and through a short tunnel, we arrived in Place Guillaume. 

As Tennyson might have remarked, you know spring is in the air when a young pigeon’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Mr. Romeo Pigeon is romancing Miss Juliet Pigeon. I’m half embarrassed to watch where this is going, until I notice the handful of farmers behind a nearby counter also watching, with nothing better to do. Like Christopher Walken as “The Continental” on Saturday Night Live, Romeo will not be denied. There’s a lot of cooing and strutting, as one might find in one of the local nightclubs on a Friday night. Then he makes his move. A lot of flapping ensues and a few feathers actually fly. But Juliet is having none of it, and successfully rebuffs the advances of her paramour. She grabs her pigeon purse, gets out her get-mad money and heads home. Or wherever young, single pigeon maidens go after a date gone awry.

With the drama over, the sellers now go back to whatever they were doing. They look more peaceful than bored, enjoying the sun. Here and there, one calls out, “Moyen!” to a scarce shopper. This “good morning” in Letzebourgish usually elicits the same response. The rest of the conversation is most often in German. Sometimes in Letzebourgish, sometimes in French.

Rolling over to the pastry cart, I buy a bag of beignets. Dusted with powdered sugar, they are chewier than American donuts and not quite as sweet. The dough is twisted into knots the size of a baby’s fist and baked instead of fried. The beignets keep Rebecca happy; she clutches a pastry in one hand and her ladybug doll (“Lady Dotty”) in the other. Behind the counter there are all kinds of “bio” breads, the European designation for organic foodstuffs. I eschew the sensible loaves and chew on an irresponsible beignet.

Next stop is the chicken vendor. This pleasant young woman has dozens of slowly-roasting whole birds rotating vertically on a rotisserie. The smell is overwhelmingly delicious. Surprisingly, I am able to walk right up to the counter. I’ve been here at 11 o’clock when the line for chicken runs twenty deep, and you have to search your soul to determine how badly it wants freshly roasted chicken. Depositing my chicken in my shopping bag, it takes most of my willpower to not tear a drumstick off and chew as I walk.

The apple stall is always alluring. I always buy the bottles of freshly squeezed apple juice when I find them. The juice taste so alive and delicious. The plastic bottle she hands me is recycled; it once held bottled water that the apple farmer likely bought at a grocery store. And rather than place it empty into her recycle bin at home, she has placed it full of apple juice into my shopping bag, and earned three Euros for her trouble. She gives Rebecca a Boskoop apple. Becca hands me Lady Dotty, clutches the apple in one hand and the beignet in the other, alternating bites.

I am sorely tempted by the cheese vendor. He is still hefting huge wheels of cheese onto his stall table and setting up his display. But he has his sampling knife ready and offers me a slice of what looks like Leerdammer. Picturing the half dozen cheeses in the refrigerator at home, I decline politely. We both know he is there to sell cheese and not feed the masses over light conversation. I’ve bought from him before, and will again. Just not today.

When I come to this market, it seems like my shopping bag is always bigger than my stomach. The temptation is to buy more produce than I can possibly cook before they start to wilt. With this in mind, I steel my determination and only buy two gorgeous eggplants at the next vegetable stall, even though I really want to get some kohlrabi, artichokes, celery root, delicate little Belgian endives not much larger than okra, and some curly green vegetable possibly related to frisee. I imagine it must be wonderful to be a chef who devises every evening’s menu based on what is available at the market. Is there such a thing as veggie lust?

I’ve been looking for my favorite goat sausage and honey vendor, but she isn’t here today. For the last few months, one of my favorite breakfasts has been to saw slices of bread off of a nice, crusty loaf from one of the local bakers. Then I toast them, slather on some very local butter (I can see the dairy from our apartment) and local honey from the market.

Notice the operative word “local”? It makes a huge difference, especially with some products. I know the dates and oranges at the market didn’t come from here, and I am okay with that. But honey is like oysters, fresh herbs and tea--it picks up evil-intentioned chemicals fairly readily. I have long bought my honey at farmers’ markets, even before the recent expose in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about tainted Chinese honey that is illegally relabeled and sold dirt cheap in U.S. supermarkets. In Seattle this meant special trips to Pike Place Market or the University District Farmers’ Market. Local honey doesn’t blow my budget and it tastes noticeably better than the mass market brands such as Sue Bee and its ilk.

There are many other sellers I haven’t mentioned. A couple fishmongers display a decent North Sea catch. Really cheap mushrooms can be found at the mushroom stand. There are egg sellers and a group of older women who make and sell fruit jams. Walking past the flower vendors, I am tempted by tulips, but I have only one shopping bag that is now nearly full with fruit, vegetables and bread. It’s time to walk home and get that chicken ready for lunch.

If there is a moral to this rambling story, it’s that wherever you are, there is local and sustainable food, most readily found at farmers’ markets. I happen to be in Luxembourg, and am blessed with abundant local food choices. Whether you realize it or not, you are likely similarly blessed.

Got Cod?

In Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, author Mark Kurlansky posits that the success that the Portuguese had as explorers was due in no small part to the cod fish. The ironic part of the story that few people know is that the Basques may have been even greater explorers. Their failure was that they didn’t tell anybody where they’d been. To them the value of a secret fishing hole was more important than the value of telling everyone they had discovered a great fishing hole. So before any other Europeans discovered North America, the Basques were pulling in codfish by the thousands off the coast of Eastern Canada.
What the Basques discovered was that codfish, which had almost no fat, dried beautifully when salted and left in the sun. And they would keep indefinitely. All one had to do is soak the hard planks of fish in fresh water to soften them up and to make them palatable again. So for many years the Basques made a mint by bringing back “bacalhau” to Europe to sell. And for many years nobody could discover the source of their bounty.

This was in the mid-1400s, before Christopher Columbus got all the publicity for finding Hispaniola. Who knows how long the Basques had been up to their little enterprise. The significance of this is that in those days, crews on ships would typically pack beef or pork in barrels of brine. As one would imagine, this would not keep for very long before turning rotten.

Then Henry Cabot (an Italian explorer sailing for English King Henry VII) “discovered” Newfoundland in 1497. As any fly fisherman can attest, once you divulge a secret fishing spot, it takes no time at all before you are elbow to elbow with fellow casters. Similarly, it didn’t take long for Portuguese fishermen to take advantage of both the Basque fishing hole called the Grand Banks and how the Basques made their bacalhau. Soon, Portuguese explorers were able to sail much farther than other explorers who didn’t have as stable a food supply.

“Why the history lesson, Eric?” you might well ask. Well, a couple of days ago, when I wandered into my local Cactus supermarket (one of three local chains here), I was only partly surprised to see a table piled higher than my head with planks of bacalhau, each plank the side of a whole fish. It is a staple for Portuguese wherever they call home, and a lot of Portuguese call Luxembourg home. They are the largest minority in Luxembourg today. These “Lusoburgues” make up 13% of the population, or nearly 60,000 people. For many years they have done the work that the increasingly finance-focused native Luxembourgers didn’t want to do. Things like construction and working for the world’s largest steel company, Luxembourg’s Arcelor Mittal. And along with their work ethic they brought their love of seafood and their recipes.

After picking out the two-foot-by-one-foot slab that I wanted, the aproned lady (my first literal “fishwife”?) slides it into a contraption that looks like a heavyduty paper cutter. After a few muscular downward slams of the blade, she hands me a bag of neat cod crosscuts.

Inspecting my fish at home, I leave a trail of salt crystals across the kitchen just by handling it. Since every bacalhao recipe begins with soaking the cod in a pan of cold fresh water (to leach out the excess salt and to soften it), I slide my booty into the pan of water-- wait, that sounds bad.... 

I slide my cod pieces--no, that sounds worse.... 

The fish goes into the dish and I leave the kitchen.

Eighteen hours and two changes of water later, the cod still tastes a little salty, and still flavored of fish. It is neither hard nor delicately flaky. It has a soft resilience that makes it easy to chew and easier to handle. After this it is only a matter of 20 minutes to assemble the traditional Portuguese recipe below, which I adapted from grouprecipes.com.

Bacalhau A Gomes De Sa
1 day 20 min prep. Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

1 1/2 pounds salted dried cod fish
1/2 cup olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds waxy potatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick and cooked until tender
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
8 green manzanilla olives (or any green olives) , sliced
1 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

Soak the cod in cold water to cover for 24 to 36 hours, changing the water occasionally. The longer you soak the cod, the less salt it will have, but also the less flavor. Soak it too long and your fish may be bland. Take a small nibble after about 18 hours to check flavor and texture. Once it tastes the way you want, drain off the water.

Cut the cod away from the skin and bones. Flake the cod into small pieces, removing any bones. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

In a large sauté pan, over medium heat, add 1/4 cup of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté until slightly golden, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Grease a medium oven proof casserole dish with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the potatoes over the bottom of the prepared dish. Sprinkle half of the salt cod over the potatoes. Place half of the onion mixture over the salt cod. Top the onion mixture with more salt cod. Place another layer of potatoes over the top of the cod and top with remaining onion mixture. Drizzle the entire pan with the remaining 1/4 cup of oil.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on a serving platter. Garnish with the sliced eggs, sliced olives, paprika and chopped parsley.

This is only one of hundreds of recipes for bacalhau. The Portuguese reputedly have one for every day of the year. With my lifelong infatuation for Southeast Asian cooking, my next bacalhau project will be Bacalhau Fried Rice. Stay tuned.

In Praise of Shepherds and Goatherds

If necessity is the mother of invention, then loneliness and hunger must be the mothers of discovery. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a bored Bedouin goatherd named Mazra who was throwing rocks into a cave near Qumran, a dusty spot not far from the Dead Sea. The crash of shattering pottery led him to investigate the cave. Like Mayberry’s Opie Taylor throwing rocks into his fishing pond, Mazra was Palestine’s post-war Opie, doing the arid alternative.

Coffee was legendarily discovered by Kaldi, a goatherd who noticed his goats acting more frisky than usual after eating coffee cherries. Although scholars might consider the former discovery more critical to Civilization, the latter is more critical to my daily well-being.

Having covered boredom, let’s move on to loneliness. Roquefort cheese was discovered by a French shepherd who saw a pretty girl in the distance. Stashing his lunch of cheese and bread in a cave, he set out to follow her. The bad news is that he never caught up to her. The good news is that he eventually found his lunch again, which by this time had become covered in blue mold. In the “mold” of true adventurers through the ages, he took a bite, didn’t die, and actually kind of liked it. Thus an artisan cheese was born. Roquefort cheese, now one of the world’s best loved blues, is still made the same way, in the Combalou caves near Roquefort-Soulzon, just northwest of Montpellier on France’s Mediterranean coast. The only difference is that Lacaune sheep’s milk is purposely inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti and left to age naturally, and neither shepherds nor pretty peasant girls are involved in the process. As far as we know....

I adore blue cheese, yet I have only enjoyed them one at a time. As any professional taster will assert, the true measure of food or drink is how it measures up to its competition. In the spirit of trying to pick a favorite, I lined up Stilton, Roquefort, St. Agur and Gorgonzola. There are many more out there, but I chose four well-known, commonly available cheeses.

Stilton
I started with the most familiar, a wedge of Stilton. This English cheese from the villages of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire (and not Stilton, curiously enough), is recognizable for its tendrils of Penicillium roqueforti the color of spruce needles that weave their way through the parchment-colored cheese like lichen across granite. It has a pleasant, balanced saltiness and nice complexity. Its texture is very solid, a little crumbly and not particularly creamy.

Roquefort
Roquefort was one I had been looking forward to with anticipation. It is the cheese that baffled me when I was a child. Back in my salad days, the dressings I chose were fairly mundane, and my Grandpa Ted’s dousing of innocent iceberg lettuce with Roquefort was fairly-shudder inducing to my Thousand Island sensibilities. I’ve grown to love it since then. This sample didn’t disappoint. Creamy white with pockets, rather than veins of blue, it was the most intensely blue of the four. The texture was crumbly and slightly moist. The flavor was amazingly complex, with a sturdy saltiness and a slightly sweet fruitiness.

Saint Agur
Next up was the newcomer to my palate, Saint Agur. It is a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese from Monts du Velay, a village in the Auvergne region of France. It has a soft white base with blue-green veins of Penicillium roqueforti. Its 60% butterfat content makes it a double-cream cheese, beautifully spreadable. It is milder and less salty than Roquefort, with a subtle blue flavor.

Gorgonzola
Moving from Britain and France to Italy, the last cheese tasted was Gorgonzola. Made from cow’s milk, it comes from the village of Gorgonzola, near Milan in Lombardy region of Italy. Tradition says that the making of this cheese began in 879 A.D., in a process that uses the bacteria of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus along with mold spores of Penicillium glaucum and Penicillium roqueforti. My sample was smooth and buttery, with a milder blue character than the others. It was also more delicate and less salty than the others.

All four cheeses were delicious, especially for a blue cheese fan. Overall, Roquefort was my favorite. Its intense yet complex flavor won me over. I put Saint Agur second, due to its wonderful creaminess and delicacy of flavor. Gorgonzola was a close third. Surprisingly to me, Stilton came in last, which might come as a shock to my companions in our Friday night dinner group that I have attended regularly for years. One of the merry men, John, has the crucial responsibility of bringing cheese every week. Invariably it is Stilton, his favorite. After this unofficial taste panel, Stilton may have to relinquish its champion’s belt to Roquefort.

Thank goodness for shepherds and goatherds. These bored loners have been responsible for some of civilization’s greatest discoveries (and one of its most delicious). It just goes to show you what a pastoral setting and a lot of time on your hands can accomplish. So after all that dues-paying, getting the pale-pink-coated-little-girl in “The Sound of Music” is certainly their well-deserved earthly reward. And they no longer have to lose their lunch over her.

Chili Verde Loves You. Don't Play Hard To Get.

I get regular cravings for Mexican food. Especially for the kind that I can’t have. Having lived in Colorado and California, and having tooled around the rest of the Southwest over the years, there are Mexican/TexMex meals that I still remember. Chili rellenos in Santa Fe. Tamales in San Antonio. Street tacos in Tijuana. One place I keep returning to, both physically and in memory, is Santa Barbara. We have friends there whom we regularly visit. And when we visit, there are two pilgrimages I make.

The first is to the Rose Cafe, where I take communion of the house rice. It has a beautiful balance of tomato, spice and roasted garlic. Everything there is incredible, but I could live on the rice alone. The second is La Super Rica, an unassuming storefront that can be identified by the lines of people waiting to get in. Everything on the menu is just spectacular.

Both restaurants have this in common: delicious chili verde. There is something about chili verde that is so simple, so memorable, yet so hard to do well. It is basically pork, green chili peppers and spices. Getting it right is a culinary journey. By way of contrast, red chili has more ingredients and is easier to make--you can almost throw everything into a cast iron Dutch oven and let it go for half a day. Green chili is hands on, requiring more tinkering.

The first part of the chili verde journey is choosing the peppers. Ideally I make it with a variety of green peppers to add complexity of flavor and texture. The artistry is in the proportion of peppers and spices.

I like to use large, meaty Anaheim peppers, squat Poblano peppers, fiery Jalapeno peppers and mild bell peppers. Look for peppers that are large, fresh and juicy. You are going to be roasting these and removing the skin. Little skinny peppers won’t leave much after the seed pod and skin are removed. Leaving the skin on makes the stew a little acrid.

What follows is a starting point. Your mission is to run with it and make it your own. An idealist’s chili verde, this recipe assumes that you have access to authentic ingredients and an afternoon in which to work your magic. If you don’t, work with what you have. It will still be good. Chili verde loves you and is very forgiving of your sins.

Ingredients:
2lbs. Pork Loin, 3/4-inch cubes
1 cup chopped fresh Cilantro
1 large white Onion, diced
1 head of Garlic, chopped
6 Tomatillos (or green tomatoes)
Enough large meaty Green Peppers to make 2 cups of chopped pepper flesh after roasting, peeling and seeding (Anaheim peppers, Poblano peppers, Jalapeno peppers and Green Bell peppers)
1/4 cup Olive oil or Vegetable oil (enough to brown the pork)
2 cups Chicken broth
1/2 tsp. White pepper
1 tsp. Cumin
1/2 tsp. Coriander
1 tsp. Salt
Optional: Jalapeno powder, raw jalapeno peppers or pickled jalapeno peppers in a jar
Optional: Corn tortillas
Optional: Sour cream

Process:
Remove the husks and scrub the tomatillos until the slippery residue is gone. Set aside. Chop onion and set aside. Chop garlic and set aside. Chop cilantro, discarding the stems, and set aside.

Cube pork & then brown over high heat (until medium rare) in a little oil in your chili pan. Set aside meat and pan juices.

Meanwhile, roast peppers. A barbecue grill works easily for this. You can even hold each pepper with tongs and sear them one at a time over the flames of a gas rangetop. A regular oven and a cookie sheet will work for this, just place them on the top shelf and crank the heat to 400 or 450. Once roasted, toss peppers into a paper bag, close the bag and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

Roast tomatillos (or green tomatoes) until soft and slightly browned. Set aside.

In chili pan, saute white onions in olive oil until they start to become translucent. Then add the chopped garlic. When the garlic starts to soften, add back pork and juices. Set burner to low heat. Add spices and salt. Add 1 cup of chicken broth.

Pulse the tomatillos in a food processor until slightly chunky. It’s important to do these separately because they breakdown much easier than the remaining ingredients. Add to chili pan.

Peel skin off the roasted peppers and discard. Carefully remove the seed cores and discard. Chop the roasted pepper flesh.

Combine cilantro and 1/2 cup roasted pepper flesh in food processor until it is a bright green liquid. Add a little liquid (chicken stock) if needed. Add to chili pan. Add remaining roasted pepper chunks to chili pan.

Add remaining chicken broth. Let simmer for 30-45 minutes. Don’t cook it for too long or the pork will become dry. Adjust spices and salt as it simmers, to taste. If you need more cilantro freshness, add a little coriander, which is the seed from the same plant.

If not spicy enough, add jalapeno powder, diced fresh jalapeno (seeded), or diced pickled jalapeno to taste.

Serve with warm tortillas. Add a dollop of sour cream if you like.

Celery Root As Big As Your Head

You never forget your first geoduck. As a new transplant to Seattle in the mid-90s, I brought one home from the Pike Place Market, still alive and neatly rubber banded together. After getting all my other ingredients together--potatoes, celery, milk and so on--I started butchering the creature. The situation became a little unsettling very quickly.

First, the visuals of this clumsy looking bivalve are either funny or lasciviously evil. Maybe both. The comic part is the two shells that fit like tiny clown hats on that enormous fleshy body. Picture Jabba The Hutt wearing a yarmulke. The evil part is the the disturbingly ERECT foot that moves around the cutting board like an aardvark nosing around a termite hill. Wincing a little, I made the first cut. Almost immediately it became clear that I didn’t know which parts to throw away and which parts to keep.

Celery root, aka celeriac, is similarly awkward. Not because of any shlong-like appendages, but what to do with it. Celery stalks? Pretty straightforward. A humble and indispensable vegetable--where would turkey soup be without it? Bloody Marys crave celery. Even spread with cream cheese or peanut butter--a staple of my plaid lunch box in elementary school (yes, my friends all had Spiderman or The Hulk on their lunch boxes; I had an exuberant red tartan)--celery has long been ubiquitous in the American diet.

However, once in a while the curious shopper encounters a lump of celery root in their produce section, usually about the size of a softball. I’ve seen people hefting it in one hand, silently asking themselves, “I wonder what they do with this?” before putting it back. The intrepid few who bring one home are often faced with a woody, spongy and altogether unappetizing vegetable. And after cutting it open, they might remark, “Now what? Which parts do I keep?”
Things are different in Luxembourg. The celery stalk appears to be subservient to its root. Most of the celery stalks in the produce section are a couple of feet long, and a mature, deep green color. They don’t fit in a refrigerator, especially a European one, without drastic pruning. This dearth of celery stalks is balanced by a vast quantity of celery roots.

These are no spongy little softballs, either. The one I bought recently was actually larger than my head. The entire mass, upon being cut open, was as bright and crisp as a jicama root, though more firm than juicy.

After cutting away the rind, the “Now What” issue arose. At a restaurant in Bouillon, Belgium a few days before, I was served a yummy salad consisting of shredded celery root and carrots, served on a bed of frisee and dressed with a simple vinegar and oil. It took only minutes to recreate this dish to good effect.

Next, I julienned it into strips to munch on while exploring further options. The assertive celery flavor (much more than the stalks) tasted good dipped in either cream cheese or peanut butter. Whew! Passed the lunchbox test.

A common way of serving celery root in both Luxembourg and France shredding it and dressing it in a remoulade sauce, akin to coleslaw in the United States. The remoulade took a little longer, but turned out well. But enough of this raw stuff! Time to turn on the stove.

Luckily, I was making homemade chicken soup at the time. Cubes of celery root contributed nicely to the stock as well as being an interesting companion to the carrots and onions.

Still having plenty left, I made mashed celery root from the remainder. To follow along, chop the root into large chunks and simmer in salted water until soft. After draining, mash as you would boiled potatoes, adding butter and cream, and salt to taste. Whip until creamy and lump free, and serve hot. The final dish had a gentle non-celery “root” flavor that was quite delicious.
With the remaining celery root in my pantry, I have designs on a root vegetable gratin, featuring carrots, parsnips, beets and celery root. I may have to face my fear of turnips and rutabagas. Thankfully they’re not likely to nuzzle me on the cutting board.

The Laws of Breakfast Dynamics

(Or: On the Glory of Chicken Fried Steak)

I flew back to the U.S. last fall to attend the wedding of two friends--Damon and Laura. Although they live in Seattle, the wedding took place in Ithaca, New York. On a side note, if there is a prettier campus than Cornell, I don’t know of it. I spent a summer there taking some classes at Cornell, and I spent a lot of time exploring gorges and hiking trails that I should have spent studying. I’m sure that this is a common hazard among those who attend Cornell or Ithaca College.

Although this beauty is undeniable in the summer and fall, I am glad I’m not there right now, a few days after Christmas. I picture a scene from the third circle of hell (courtesy of Dante), where people wander in a frigid slush of freezing rain, hail and black snow. Dante reserved this place for gluttons, and though there are probably a few gluttons in Ithaca, I’m sure the whole town doesn’t deserve to suffer for the sins of a few. If there are Ithacans out there who can vouch for your town’s charms during the bleak December, please chime in.

Turning from damnation back to the story, the wedding was really cool. Fun people, wonderful food, great music, decorations glorifying small woodland mammals--all the things you expect from a memorable wedding. But back to the point of this story: diner food. Not far from my hotel was a nondescript diner. I didn’t really notice it until I was casting around for a place to eat on the morning I had to drive back to Newark International Airport.

As far as diners go, it probably wasn’t exceptional, but for a guy living in a diner-free zone, namely all of Europe, it was pretty cool. I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak with gravy, hash browns, eggs overeasy, English muffins. The only thing missing was grits. During my breakfast, I discovered that I really miss grits. Something about that corn flavor with butter, salt and pepper. I could eat of tub of that for some reason. And decent coffee. But then I remembered the First Law of Breakfast Dynamics: the quality of diner coffee is inversely proportional to the quality of its food. 

The Second Law of Breakfast Dynamics also applied, which states that Chicken Fried Anything is mysteriously Delicious and Comforting for breakfast. I’m not sure what goes into the average Chicken Fried Anything, but there is something epiphanal about greasy meaty breading smothered in spicy gravy. When Martin Luther did his business on the Wittenberg Door, it was probably after a meal of Chicken Fried Mutton or something. (I know that sounds bad, but NO, it wasn’t THAT kind of business. Look it up.) There is a corollary to the Second Law that takes effect in the presence of Loco Moco--the Hawaiian breakfast mess that is equally delicious and comforting. This nascent area of study is starved for further investigation. 

The Third Law of Breakfast Dynamics is the Sweet Vs. Savory Breakfast Conflict. I refer to the instant regret that arrives with your plate of food. If you ordered the short stack of pancakes, it is assured that you will suddenly crave the bacon and eggs of your dining companions. If you get the farmers’ scramble you will covet your neighbor’s warm cinnamon roll. The only solution, of course, is to get both.

Regretfully, I didn’t remember the Third Law in time, a shortcoming that befalls most patrons of the breakfast arts from time to time. I could have and should have ordered that cinnamon roll. Fortunately, I hit upon the Fourth Law of Breakfast Dynamics almost by accident: Always make your last bite a flavor that you would like to keep tasting over and over until lunchtime. As it was, I was tasting chicken fried steak (in a good way!) all the way from Ithaca to Newark.

As I was blasting toward Newark at 90mph, I attributed the lack of speed traps to the Fifth Law of Breakfast Dynamics, which only applies to law enforcement officers: a body at rest in a booth tends to remain at rest in a booth. If you doubt the Scientific Method of this (being Observable, Measurable and Repeatable), my brother Randy (a Denver Police Sergeant) has been testing a proof of it every morning for twenty-two years. But he’s another story.