Today's Herald has a lifestyle story on fashions of the 50s and early 60s that are coming back as a result of the TV show Mad Men. Bill Maher wears skinny ties, and I have a large collection - though I began it 20 years ago - of Roosters. (Why the thin, straight-bottomed, horizontally-striped tie has not made a comeback both puzzles and pleases me.)
But my nostalgia for the period only goes so far, and usually stops at the table. True, people were better dressed before the Summer of Love, but they weren't better fed. When I was growing up, bread was pre-sliced and soup was canned. There were two types of ethnic restaurant in my small New Jersey town: Italian and Chinese, and the latter served spaghetti (yes, spaghetti, not lo mein) for diners who didn't like to stray. Even in sophisticated Manhattan, I suspect, it was difficult to find sushi or pad thai or chicken tikka masala. Practically every day of my life I eat some food that I didn't know existed when I was growing up: black beans, tapenade, salsa, miso, pesto, gazpacho, hummus, ciabatta, tortilla, empanada, arugula, mango, cilantro, risotto, ceviche, shitake, guacamole, kimchee, calamari, rapini, pierogi, wasabi. The stains on my Roosters now cover the world.
A young Indian journalist, working for the summer at the Sun-Sentinel, came for dinner Friday evening. Over fish tacos, Jaideep told us that he went to a Jamaican place the other week where a number of the staff were Indians from the island. He asked them what part of India their families came from and they didn't know. Their ancestors had come as slaves, and no records were kept of their places of origin. Jaideep said to them: "Tell me what you put in your curry and I'll tell you where you are from." They did, and Jaideep told them: "You're from Uttar Pradesh. You're from Gujarat." "The curry," he said to us triumphantly, "doesn't change."
I had my first panache of the season last night.
I discovered the drink in 1976, when I was a student in Aix-en-Provence. The last week of school I stopped for one on my way to class. The bartender took a glass and filled it half with beer and half with a carbonated soda similar to 7-Up (perhaps it was 7-Up). I took it to a table and wondered what I was going to do for the summer.
I ended up getting a job on a farm in Alsace. There the panaches were made in milk canisters and brought out to the fields where we toiled. (1976 was an unusually hot and dry summer in France). They kept us going.
When I returned to the States I improved the drink, first using Minute Maid lemonade, then limeade. I'd offer it to guests, who usually balked at the idea of beer and limeade, and then became converts upon taking a sip. There is something about the bitterness of beer, and the sweet and sourness of limeade, that makes the drink incredibly refreshing.
Last night I made my own limeade, squeezing four Persian limes and adding water and sugar. (I am trying to follow Michael Pollan's advice to avoid foods that advertise.) Then I took a cold bottle of Harpoon Summer Beer - I draw the line at brewing (besides, I haven't seen an ad for Harpoon; Hania found it at Total Wine). Then I filled a glass half and half. It wasn't half bad. But I need to work on the limeade.
When I lived in Philadelphia I had a friend from South Carolina who claimed that, as good as southern food was, it always tasted best at funerals. Having just come back from Georgia, I can tell you it's pretty good at weddings too.
But then, this was the wedding of a food writer. The evening before the big day a group of us went, on Susan's suggestion, to Watershed in Decatur. The locals in our party ordered pimento cheese and celery and creamy stone ground shrimp grits with pullman plank, which looked like buttered toast in the shape of a small cutting board, but it was to buttered toast what creme brulee is to custard. (Two days later, at the restaurant's Sunday brunch, I would be told - after swooning over the biscuits - that chef Scott Peacock made them on The Martha Stewart Show.)
For the main course a few people ordered the vegetable medley, which included fried cauliflower. I like that even serious restaurants in the south honor the region's affection for frying, though I ordered the shrimp, sausage and oyster gumbo.
The daughter of the man seated to my right arrived and ordered a plate of french fries. This started a conversation on ketchup, and hamburgers; the father told of a place in Atlanta that makes the absolute best hamburgers but only about 24 of them a night. The woman to my left said that she knew a place that served ice cream atop of hamburgers.
The french fries were so good the father ordered a plate of onion rings for the table. "As a palate cleanser," someone said. The rings were thin, and the breading delicate and salty. "What's the opposite of amuser?" the father asked, then explained to his daughter the term "amuse-bouche."
A number of desserts were ordered: my favorite was the Georgia pecan tart with shortbread crust.
At the wedding reception on Saturday I ate my first fried pickle and declared it better in batter, more instinctively at home, than calamari. The buffet included pulled pork and salmon croquettes (Ralph, the groom, grew up in North Carolina) and numerous cakes, as well as pralines and butter mints.
Any life together that begins with fried pickles and moves on to butter mints has got to be good.
Before it's over, I'd like to wish everyone a happy Fat Thursday, or Tlusty Czwartek as they say in Poland.
Poland's the only Catholic country I know of that celebrates the Thursday before Lent, but no Pole has ever been able to tell me why. People buy paczki (pronounced "ponchki"), delicous balls of fried dough (to call them doughnuts doesn't really do them justice) their moist and airy insides holding, ideally, small reserves of rose petal jam.
So, a paczek to the first person who explains to me the origin of Fat Thursday.