Saveur magazine offers everything you ever wanted to know about butter ... and more. It describes the basic kinds of butter, 30 of the best, and a list of translations of the word in many languages. Have a read, and note the Minnesota entry on the Top 30 list: Pastureland Summer Gold.
When QEII has finished waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace and turns back into the room behind her to celebrate whatever occasion has brought her out that day, she is handed the same refreshment every time; one peculiar to her and, previously, her mother, the late Queen Mum.
The room into which she steps is a reception room and contains a bar. The royal barman gave the recipe for the queen's favourite drink in one episode of a recent PBS TV series, The Monarchy: The Royal Family At Work.
Get yourself over to Mim's on Cleveland Avenue in St. Paul and ask for a salad with chicken. It has no name but must be the nicest salad in the 55108 postal code.
Really just a pita-less shwarma and rather unassuming in its styrofoam box, this salad is made of cabbage and lettuce, topped with garlic-mayonnaise sauce and raw onions, but heaped with that delicious spit-roasted chicken normally associated with shwarmas and their cousins, gyros. Topped with raw onions and a slice of lemon to greet your nose as you open the box, it makes a great lunch for anyone on or near the U of Minnesota St. Paul campus around lunchtime. Tell Mahmoud that Ann sent you.
Along with religion and politics, tipping is apparently a subject that's impossible to discuss in civil tones -- at least internationally. A recent BBC story about tipping in America described how US waitrons rely on tips to make up a significant part of their incomes, which puts pressure on their customers to decide how much to tip. (For anyone who is not aware -- this is not the case all over the world!) When it comes to tipping, travelers beware! Local customs prevail, and it's up to travelers to work out what those customs are, how much they agree with them, and judge the performance of their particular server.
So here's a primer on tipping in Minnesota, for those who plan to visit, and don't want to offend:
The service charge is not included in the restaurant bill unless the group is large. In this case, the service charge will be noted on the menu. Fifteen percent is standard; leave 20% for excellent service. As noted in the BBC piece, do not be anxious if your server seems overly familiar; he'll stop as soon as you've paid the bill.
By the way, if anyone out there knows, I'd appreciate some guidance on how much to tip a bartender here in Minnesota? I'm not sure I've got that right yet.
When it comes to food blogs, The Heavy Table is in the big leagues, with a staff, contributing writers, starred restaurant reviews and ads.
Being a mere guppie in the foodie pond, Eating Minnesota recently entered HT's Create a Restaurant competition. Lo and behold, we made the list with the "Just around the corner" entry ! (Although we think the poem just below it knocked the ball out of the park in comparison.) The $20 gift certificate to Annano's deli will fund a weekend outing that may feed not only EM's family, but this blog as well.
Many thanks to The Heavy Table.
Two Scandinavian institutions in Minnesota have closed in the past year, due more or less to the state’s shrinking Norwegian population. The Royal Norwegian Consulate General’s closing last summer was well publicized. There were protests, a letter-writing campaign, much outrage and then, when the Norwegian government announced that the honorary consul would be Walter Mondale, acceptance.
Less well publicized was the closing of the Scandia Bake Shop in south Minneapolis’s Nokomis Village. For 18 years, it sold a wide range of authentic and not-so-authentic Scandinavian cakes and cookies. You could stop in for a cup of coffee and a piece of kransekake or a bolle. Boller (balls), sweetened bread rolls, look very plain Jane, but are a bit sweeter, and come standard with your coffee in Norway, and thus very authentic. You would almost certainly take with you a loaf of Knipe bread, your basic hearty wheat bread, excellent with a brothy soup, and sold unsliced.
An old cake recipe reminded me how the economy goes in cycles. Very few people living today really remember the depression of the 1930s, but when I was a child we lived next door to Ben and Cel, a retired couple who stretched every dollar into five. Ben was an auto mechanic all his life and Cel stayed home, working at the Minnesota State Fair some years for extra money. They grew up on farms in southern Minnesota, moved to town when they finished formal schooling, and built a new house when they retired. One of the reasons they died with millions was their frugality, which lasted 50 years after the Depression was over. I wonder how our current deep recession will affect all of us 50 years from now?
The index card read, "Cheap, Quick Cake." The ingredient list and directions were as terse as the title, and the only descriptive words spoke of elbow grease, not taste. "Beat like heck". I took the instructions literally and eschewed the electric mixer in favor of the authentic experience. i can't say it's the lightest fluffiest cake I have ever baked, but it definitely lives up to its name.
Read the recipe:
Growing up in a dairy state, we learned all about milk fat, cheese production and calcium in primary school. We did not learn about gourmet cheeses (yellow and non-yellow was the limit back then, really) but even as fifth graders, we knew that whole milk was about 4 percent fat, and that skim was not really fat free, even though it looked blue.
With friends coming for a casual dinner on Saturday night, my young assistant and I made up a batch of Italian cornmeal cookies. The amount of butter worked out to about a half-tablespoon per cookie, so they they were definitely not health food. But the scratchy presence of the cornmeal added fiber, making their texture more interesting than shortbread or plain butter cookies. The liberal use of lemon zest also lightened them up. Dusted with baker's sugar, embedded with pine nuts, and optionally dunked in Cointreau or Vin Santo, they were, if I say so myself, just the thing in front of a big fire on a damp late winter's night.
I have noticed that the recipes in most fashionable cookbooks these days call for unsalted butter. The reasoning is that the salt content can vary among brands or countries, and that with unsalted butter the cook can control the amount of salt completely. Being no control freak myself, I have rejected unsalted butter as unnecessary in my kitchen. Unsalted butter tastes terrible on its own, and adds nothing to the taste of a slice of toasted bread -- without a bit of salt, it's just fatty milk. Salted butter does not contain enough salt to make a difference either way. So I've made it a rule to keep salted butter and margarine in the house. Margarine is for my fellow householders who watch their dairy intake, and butter is for baking. Both taste good on toast.
Don't get me wrong, I like Minnesota winters. But having lived in a mediterranean climate for a couple of years, one thing I miss about the Bay Area is my kitchen garden. My rosemary bush thrived, except in the coldest part of the rainy season, and I could snip off a couple of inconspicuous limbs to stuff into a roasting chicken. In my first house, the 30-foot-high lemon tree outside bore fruit constantly -- very convenient when the odd drink or dish needed some lemon juice. For anyone who doesn't know what I mean, have a look at -- and be seduced by -- the northern Californian's pornography: Sunset magazine.
I attempt to keep a kitchen garden inside my kitchen here in Minnesota, but have had no luck this winter. the lavender bush from last summer is reduced to a small brittle clump. I have not attempted to keep basil plants, knowing how they love heat and sun, and how cold it is next to my kitchen windows.
The other day, hope arrived in the post: it is time to fill in the form to claim a plot in the community garden. By sending off a check for $20 and signing my name, I can now look forward to a summer of fresh produce. The yield from this plot will never be enough to feed the family, and it will not be very close to my kitchen, but I should be able to produce the little lovelies that make everything else taste a bit special.
An impromptu office celebration, partly in honor of a recently returned student worker from India, featured lunch from India Palace down the road. A discussion about Indian versus Minnesotan food ensued. What's the difference, apart from the spices? Mumbai, being a coastal city, has fish as a staple food. Minnesotans are also fish eaters, but the difference of course is the water and the climate. Mumbaians eat seafood from a warm sea and Minnesotan eat freshwater fish from cold (sometimes frozen-over) lakes. For variety, and for those of us who prefer to buy fish rather than catch it, Minnesotans ship in fish and seafood shipped in from all over the planet.
A post-lunch Google search turned up confirmation of my lunchmate Cat's recollection: that an Asian warm-water fish called tilapia is farmed in large quantities in Renville. They are raised in waters warmed by the heat that is a byproduct of sugar beet production, and the fish waste is used to fertilize the sugar beet fields. It all sounds very sustainable and lovely, except that the fish is shipped off to Chinese customers in Vancouver! Does anyone know if this Renville co-op still exists? If so, wouldn't it be nice if they could develop a local market?
It being winter in Minnesota, last night's dinner was what is known as "Del Monte cooking". Adapting freely from a recipe from MPR's Lynne Rosetto Casper, I threw together two cans each of white beans and kidney beans, garlic, bacon, lemon juice, parsley and, as it turned out, not nearly enough salt and pepper. Instead of fresh parsley, I used a dried bunch of last summer's CSA parsley. Winter on the cold prairie, and all that. Casper's recipe was for a salad, but I had no greens and thought maybe it would be good on warmed-up white rice.
This is no reflection on Ms Casper's recipe, but more on my free adaptation and lack of fresh ingredients. The verdict: bland and a bit gloppy. The kids were very kind and said they liked it. I now have a very bland leftover lunch to look forward to tomorrow.