File under ridiculous: due to a high import tax slapped on by the Bush administration, Roquefort cheese will no longer be imported into the United States. I last served the cheese at my Devil in the White City Dinner Party, and it saddens me that I will no longer be able to nosh on a Victorian favorite.
Murray’s Cheese (the best cheese store in New York) is holding a farewell party. Read the full story here.
Don’t know what to do before you get trashed on St. Patrick’s day? Head on down to the Merchant’s House Museum!!! From 6-8, they’re hosting a special St. Patrick’s day event, featuring *ME*, live and in person, and the opportunity to taste a variety of food from the 1850s. From the Official Press Release:
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Bridget Murphy Opens her Kitchen to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day
NEW YORK – Irish servant Bridget Murphy will open her kitchen on St Patrick’s Day for tastings of foods and drink from the 1850s — potatoes “on the bone,” and other traditional fare. You are invited to tour the servants’ quarters on the 4th floor, too, usually off limits to visitors. A bagpiper will play The Famine Song and other Celtic hits.
Food Historian and journalist Sarah Lohman of http://fourpoundsflour.blogspot.com will curate the tasting. She’ll serve potatoes “on the bone,” “Bridget’s Bread Cake” (thought to be the first Irish-American recipe ever published), carrot soup, and cider cake. Featured drinks will be “Green” Tea Punch (hot rum and brandy with green tea and lemons) and Jersey Cocktails (cider – graciously provided by Original Sin Hard Cider – with bitters and lemon peel shaken over ice) from The Bon Vivant’s Companion, 1862. Other light refreshments will be served.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., $30, $15 Museum Members. Reservations Strongly Suggested; call 212-777-1089.
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This is my first public gig as a historic gastronomist, so come out and show your support. And the Merchant’s House is around the corner from McSorley’s, the oldest bar in Manhattan. Abe Lincoln drank there! So finish up the night in the traditional fashion with a few pints.
Along with Josh Ozersky of The Feedbag, I recently got the pleasure of peeking in on the Zagat sponsored Vintage Dinner at Per Se. We caught up with Tim Zagat and chef Thomas Keller a little before the meal, and talked with them about the inspiration for the vintage dinners and the historic gastronomy movement. Watch the video below to find out who is looking at 100-year-old menus to inspire contemporary cuisine.
There are still more vintage dinners coming up, including a Vintage Cocktail Hour which features the Blue Blazer, a cocktail in which flaming whiskey is poured at great distances between two silver plated mugs. Yeah, awesome! And for any of you who saw me prepare a Blue Blazer last Saturday night, this bartender will probably not scald his hand or set a table on fire.
P.S.: The Vintage Dinners make me both simultaneously happy and furious. I’m thrilled at the attention historic gastronomy is getting, and salty because I’m not more involved.
I wanted to make mention that Lenell’s, my favorite liquor store in New York, is closing today. She wants to reopen in a new location sometime soon, and I hope she does. She’s the best supplier for hard-to-find historic cocktail ingredients, including an unparalleled selection of bitters, Absinthe, Old Tom Gin, and peach brandy for making traditional Mint Juleps.
Read the full story here: Last Call: It’s closing time for Red Hook’s cocktail rock star—for now
Come back soon, Lenell.
The Feedbag Visits the Duck Press at Daniel from The Feedbag on Vimeo.
If you’ve ever wanted to see a roast duck get pressed like apple cider, watch this video. Be warned! It’s pretty gruesome.
Zagat is sponsering a series of “vintage dinners,” featuring “great menus from the 19th century.” It’s like my dream come true. I spent a night at Daniel learning about their Carnard a la Press, a specialty at Tour D’Argent in Paris for the last 100 years or so. The Duck will be featured at their vintage dinner on Tuesday.
The Vintage Dinner series continues over the next two months, so if you’re in New York, make your reservations now.
Read more about the duck press.
Vintage Dinner Series Full Schedule
The pamphlet, according to it’s author Juliet Corson (founder of the New York Cooking School), is meant as a guideline for the poorest working class families to provide a nutritional meal on the cheap. She proposes a meal plan that can feed a family of six for three dollars a week, about $57 in today’s money.
In New York, a poor, working class family usually meant a life in the tenements. My curiosity stems from the desire to understand a small part of what life was like for these families by preparing and consuming the foods that made up their daily lives.
Although these families were also likely to be immigrants and were probably cooking some of the foods of their homelands, Corson assures her readers that the recipes are based around “…articles in common use among the working classes.”
I’m going to start my experience with Ms. Corson’s suggested menu. Here is my Bill of Fare for the next seven days:
I was struck by how efficient the menu is: the stock created at lunch has vegetables added to it for supper, then reheated for breakfast. Ms. Corson leaves an extra 62 cents ($11.94 our money) which she advises is for the purchase of “extra bread, milk and butter.” I’ve decided it would be wise for me to use this money to purchase apples (because I would like to poop sometime this week) and lemons (to prevent scurvy). I’ll also be taking a daily multi-vitamin.
I’ll be working with 1/6th of Ms. Corson’s given budget, so I plan to eat this week for about $10. I’ll be keeping a running tally of the groceries I buy and each day I’ll post recipes and photos of the foods I cook.
Ms. Corson says that “The cheapest kinds of food are sometimes the most wholesome and strengthening…” A statement that does not seem to hold true in today’s society. The poorest classes are often the most obese, and the cheapest foods in the grocery store seem to be those that are the worst for you. Through cooking Ms. Corson’s recipes, I hope to tap into an older, and perhaps wiser, way of eating on a restricted budget.
Or I might just end up constipated. I begin on Monday.
(illustration: Jerry Thomas’ How to Mix Drinks)
I recently read an 1873 article on the celebration of New Year’s Day in New York. Punch was a major player in the day’s celebrations. So popular was the drink, that Professional Punch-Makers traveled house to house, mixing the brew:
“Punch is seen in all its glory on this day, and each household strives to have the best of this article. There are regular punch-makers in the city, who reap a harvest at this time. Their services are engaged long before-hand, and they are kept busy all morning going from house to house, to make this beverage, which is no-where so palatable as in this city.”
During the course of the day, ladies staid home to receive guests, and gentleman went from house to house visiting friends and, apparently, sampling the punch:
“Towards the close of the day, everything is in confusion–the door-bell is never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in a vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the same scene at some other house…Strange as it may seem, it is no disgrace to get drunk on New Year’s Day. The next day one half of New York has a headache…”
Punch was so important to Victorian Americans that it occupies the first chapter of Jerry Thomas’ How to Mix Drinks, the first bartending guide ever published. He offers these pieces of advice on the preparation of punch:
“To make punch of any sort of perfection, the ambrosial essence of lemon must be extracted by rubbing lumps of sugar on the rind, which breaks the delicate little vessels that contain the essence, and at the same time absorb it. This, and making the mixture sweet and strong, using tea instead of water, and thoroughly amalgamating all the compounds….is the grand secret, only to be acquired by practice.”
Here are a few of Thomas’ recipes; he has 86 in his book, so if you don’t like these, feel free to choose some of your own. If you choose to add some punch to your New Year’s celebration, please send me some photos and notes. I’m especially interested in seeing the sugar-rubbed-lemon technique and punches made with tea vs. water.
All notes in parenthesis are my own.
1 quart of Jamaica Rum
1 quart Cognac Brandy
1 lb. of white loaf-sugar (regular white granulated sugar should be used here)
4 lemons
3 quarts boiling water
1 teaspoonful of nutmeg (freshly grated)
The 69th Regement Punch
1/2 wine-glass of Irish whiskey (1/2 wine glass = 2 oz.)
1/2 wine-glass Scotch whiskey
1 tea-spoonful of sugar
1 piece of lemon
2 wine-glasses hot water
4 bottles of champagne
1 pint Jamaica Rum
1 pint brandy
1 gill of Curacao (5 ounces)
Juice of 4 lemons
4 pine-apples sliced (I think pineapples would be smaller. 2-3 should do you.)
Sweeten to taste with pulverized white sugar (confectioner’s sugar)
Put the pine-apple with one pound of sugar in a glass bowl, and let them stand until the sugar is well soaked in the pine-apple, then add all other ingredients, except the champagne. Let this mixture stand in ice for about an hour, then add the champagne. Place a large block of ice in the center of the bowl, and ornament it with loaf sugar, sliced orange, and other fruits of the season.
Egg Nogg
Use a large bar glass.
1 table-spoonful of fine sugar, dissolved with
1 table-spoonful cold water and
1 egg.
1 wine-glass of Cognac brandy
1/2 wine-glass Santa Cruz rum
1/3 tumblerful of milk
Fill the tumbler 1/4 full with shaved ice, shake the ingredients until they are thoroughly mixed together, and grate a little nutmeg on top. Hot Egg Nogg…is very popular in California, and is made in precisely the same manner as the cold egg nogg…except that you must use boiling water instead of ice.
The ingredients for this renowed (sic) punch are: —
3 bottles champagne
1 bottle Hockheimer ((sic) this could be replaced with another Riesling)
1 bottle Curacoa (sic)
1 bottle Cognac
1 bottle Jamaica Rum
2 bottles Madeira
2 bottles Seltzer
4 lbs bloom raisins (I have no idea what a “bloom” raisin is compared to a regular raisin)
To which add oranges, lemons, rock candy, and instead of water, green tea to taste. Refrigerate with all the icy power of the Arctic.
Further reading: Dip Into the Past: Rediscovering The Pleasures Of Punch (New York Times)