Forrest Pritchard is a seventh-generation family farmer (skip this intro and read his guest post below if you’re pressed for time). His farm, Smith Meadows, is in Berryville, Virginia. The guy is clearly a lunatic, as his new book, Gaining Ground: A Story of Farmers’ Markets, Local Food, and Saving the Family Farm, shows (here’s the Publishers Weekly review of the book). He’s also started a blog (because he has so much time on his hands)—read this excellent post on What NOT to Ask the Grower at Your Local Market, it’s hilarious. Thanks to our mutual friend, Carol Blymire, Forrest offered to write a guest post I’m proud to put up here. I love to write about my region’s farmers, such as livestock farmer Aaron Miller and a record store clerk who got it in his head to raise chickens and taught me how to do process them—video here.

Forrest titled his own post, but if it were me, I’d have called it “The Importance of Lunatics” because the work is just too damn hard to rationalize. Or “Crazy People Are the Angels on Earth” because we need more people like Forrest. Or as he rightly notes: “Small Farmers Are the Real Heroes.”

Please read his guest post and his excellent memoir.

Do Family Farms Still Matter?

by Forrest Pritchard

In 1996, fresh out of college, I dreamed of returning to my family’s farm and becoming a farmer. After decades of eroding cattle prices, our Shenandoah Valley farm was barely hanging on. My parents had almost given up, taking jobs in the city just to keep the bills paid. I would be the seventh generation to work the land, dating back to the American Revolution, and took it upon myself to keep the farm alive.

As my friends headed off to graduate school, I pointed my dusty pickup toward the farm. My college advisors shook their heads with well-meaning disapproval. “Go ahead,” they admonished. “Get your hands dirty for a few months. But when you’re ready to decide on a career, the real world will be waiting for you.”

But this is the real world, I insisted. It’s a world of sunshine and rain. It’s a world of physical work and sweat, and the sweet satisfaction of nurturing life from the earth. A few weeks back on the farm, I was sunburned and filthy and utterly blissful. Most importantly, I was completely certain that I had made the right decision.

I projected our bills for the coming winter, and knew that we needed ten thousand dollars to carry us into spring. That summer, we planted the farm with corn and soybeans, abandoning our traditional cow pastures for the quicker financial return of grain. The meadows were killed off with herbicide, and the rolling hills cultivated.

In October, trucks whisked away our glittering corn and soy. I was so proud of what we had accomplished: We had saved our family farm. Later that week, I received our paycheck and tore open the envelope.

Staring at the check, I felt my knees buckle. The harvest hadn’t brought in ten thousand dollars. It hadn’t even cleared one thousand. After expenses, five truckloads of grain had made us a profit of eighteen dollars and sixteen cents.

How could this be? How could so much corn bring in such a pittance? Humiliated, furious, I nearly tore the paycheck into bits. At that instant, I realized how utterly broken our family farm was. I made up my mind that, somehow, we were going to fix it.

Seventeen years later, after triumphs and heartbreaks, our farm is stronger than ever. We now raise organic, grass-fed meats, and sell our free-range eggs at nearly a dozen bustling Washington, DC, farmers’ markets. Each weekend, I personally interact with hundreds of customers, answering questions and educating them about how we farm. Decades of debts are finally paid off. From where I stand, the future of farming has never looked so bright.

But our farm’s story is still the exception more than the rule. Late last year, when Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack challenged rural America to reinvent itself, I couldn’t help but take notice. He called for a new attitude among farmers, a positive message to inspire young people to pursue careers in agriculture. He went so far as to say that rural America is now politically irrelevant, and that we need a new identity for agriculture in the twenty-first century.

You know what? He’s exactly right. This is how our own farm survived, by reinventing our mission. When we reversed course, changing from commodity-based crops to direct-marketed organic food, we turned a profit for the first time in a decade.

Americans will always need farms, and our health and wellbeing will depend on the quality of food these farms produce. But today, high-yield industrial agriculture rules the field. Only 1% of the country still lives on a farm, down from 50% just two generations before. If we’re going to save more family farms, we must rewrite the old story, and do it quickly.

It’s time to ask ourselves: What do we value? Do we believe in transparent farming practices, humane treatment of animals, and providing our producers with a living wage? It’s easy to sit in our ivory towers, dismissing these issues as glorified talking points. But when you’ve stood on your family’s farmhouse porch, and are handed eighteen dollars for an entire year’s worth of work, you begin to understand how truly desperate the situation can be.

People are ready for their farmers to become heroes. Who can blame them? The world needs heroes, those who believe in something greater than themselves. A new wave of farmers can live up to these ideals, and sustainable agriculture can be the story of our time. With more local, sustainable food options than ever before, the opportunity is now right in front of us. The shopping choices we make today will alter the landscape for generations to follow.

***

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My recent post on Farm Transparency v. Farm Secrecy.
• Family Farm Defenders is a nonprofit organization supporting our family famers.
• Looking for the closest farmers and farmers’ markets to you? Visit Local Harvest.
• Civil Eats keeps up to date with all the politics in the American food system.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Michael Pardus’s Meyer Lemon Fig cocktail. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

This is a boldly flavored cocktail created by my chef, Michael Pardus, who teaches the cuisines of Asia at the Culinary Institute of America. Flavors galore—Meyer lemon, vanilla, ginger, American whiskey.

I especially admire the clever use of ginger from a chef who uses it all day long in class (he taught me to peel ginger with a spoon—works great; he sometimes adds fine julienne to the glass to chew on as he sips). All the elements swirl beautifully together (regular lemon juice will work too if you can’t find Meyers). For a light summer cocktail, he tops it off with a couple ounces of seltzer (and maybe an extra splash of whiskey if you’re Chef Pardus). The vanilla, delivered via a simple syrup, and ginger mix beautifully with the whiskey.

I chose Dickel Tennessee sour mash, my boon pal Blake Bailey‘s choice of American whiskey to have on hand (Pardus goes with bourbon, and I wouldn’t say no to rye). The flavor combo is so delicious I prefer it over ice, sans seltzer. Regardless, sparkling or on the rocks, it’s a fabulous cocktail.

Why the name Fig? You’ll have to ask Chef Pardus. In the meantime, enjoy this fine elixir.

Meyer Lemon Fig

• 4 ounces American whiskey
• 2 tablespoons vanilla simple syrup (see below)
• 2 tablespoons fresh Meyer lemon juice (or regular lemon juice)
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• Seltzer water and ice as needed or desired

1. Put whiskey, vanilla syrup, lemon juice, and ginger in a shaker with ice; shake well.
2. Fill a tall glass with ice, add shaker contents. Add seltzer to fill, and stir.
3. (Alternatively to steps 1 and 2: Divide ingredients equally between two lowballs, stir, and add ice.)
4. Rim edge of glass with a piece of cut fresh ginger.

Makes 2 tall sparkly drinks or 2 lowballs.

Vanilla Simple Syrup

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons GOOD vanilla extract

1. Combine the sugar and water, bring to a boil or heat in a microwave to dissolve sugar, and let cool slightly.
2. Stir in vanilla extract, place in a plastic container, and refrigerate until ready to use. This is also great in coffee or cappuccino.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My past cocktail posts with bourbon are the Boulevardier, Old Fashioned, and Mint Julep.
• What makes a bourbon bourbon?
• Headed south toward Kentucky and need something fun to do? Check out the Bourbon Trail.
• Emilia is not really into bourbon, but a friend introduced her to Angel’s Envy and she likes it.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Danger: salt is back. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

No, wrong. America has a serious THINKING disorder.

See that white stuff raining down from my fingers? It’s salt. And it’s the way you should salt the food you cook on your stove top or the chicken that’s going into your oven. But if you listen to the ABC Nightly News reporting about The Dangers of Salt, aka ABC News acid reflux, and then read today’s NYTimes page one story saying that salt is not bad for you, you must be wondering who to listen to. Well if you are, just stop listening and think for your fucking self.

I have a dear friend who prevents his kids from drinking any milk other than nonfat milk but thinks nothing of serving them Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Seriously. (The nonfat milk issue is not uncommon, judging from the fact that my son’s friends marvel at the amazing quality of the milk we serve at our house—2%—which I still find a hypocritical marketing scam since good old-fashioned whole milk is 3.7% fat, but they don’t tell you that). Another dear pal excoriated me in an email about the quantities of fat I eat (when he has no idea really what or how I eat, owing to the fact that he lives in Virginia and not in my house in Cleveland).

Does fat make you fat? Yes, if you eat enough of it, you moron. Is salt bad for you? If you live on KFC and Dunkin’ Donuts you’ve got a helluva bigger problem than salt intake.

To quote the Times reporter: “Those consuming the lower level of sodium had more than three times the number of hospital readmissions.”

I don’t see this latest news about salt as anything important or new (for godsake, you’d die without salt), but it does validate the fact that America has a serious eating disorder. Don’t listen to the Times (read it and think about it, yes), and don’t listen to the nightly news barfing up the latest studies.

(Jesus, it’s not good for me to get worked up in the morning, I know that for sure. This is how salt raises MY blood pressure.)

Is salt bad for you? No. Is lettuce bad for you? Damn fucking right it’s bad for you (if it’s the only thing you eat). Is smoking cigarettes bad for you? Of course it is, you moron, it will kill you. Have you seen the lungs of a smoker? We know for certain it’s a major cause of cancer. Is exercise good for you? Well, how do you feel after a good hike in the mountains or a workout in the gym? Is drinking alcohol bad for you? How do you feel after a bottle of wine with a good roast chicken versus 12 shots of tequila and a Jagermeister nightcap?

Sorry to have to repeat myself, but it seems one can’t say it enough: cook your own food or cozy up to someone who does (in which case offer to do the dishes or the shopping), and think for yourself. (It’s not easy, you have to teach yourself how, but it’s fundamental to our species.)

Or think about these words from Goethe that open the recent salt report:

Knowing is not enough, we must apply.

Willing is not enough, we must do.

In other words, pay attention, and then, as the wildly talented Kevin Costner put it in a long-ago movie, “Let’s do some good!” Kidding. (But not really.)

See, this always happens. I get worked up before ten in the morning and now I want a hot dog.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My past post on the “No Nitrites Added” Hoax.
• Carri Thurman’s guest post on harvesting your own salt.
• Mark Bitterman writes on how we should savor salt—it is an oldie but a goodie.
• Also check out Mark’s salt store called The Meadow.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Morning granola. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Just last week handed in the revised manuscript of the new book, considerably fatter than expected, still have manuscript afterbirth to contend with, and thus have lazily failed to whip up my typical monster batch of granola, which starts the morning off rightly, oats and nuts and dried fruit, plus some yogurt to enliven the gut bacteria. But wanting it nonetheless, I’ve now gotten into the habit of toasting some nuts in a small pan, adding a little butter, then some oats, stirring to toast the oats further, than adding milk to cover, bring to a simmer, serve with honey and yogurt, and it’s all so satisfying and quick I’m disinclined to make cold granola again. It was 39˚F this morning, though, so maybe when it warms up, I’ll change my mind.

Much to do today, including consider all those enormously helpful suggestions from you readers last week (thanks!), so off to the business of the day, fortified by the below.

I measure by the literal handful or by sight, but for those who like to see actual quantities, here you go.

A La Minute Granola

• 1/4 cup slivered almonds
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup milk
• 5 or 6 dried cherries or cranberries
• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon honey

1. Toss the nuts in a pan over high heat and add the butter. Swirl everything around in the pan until the nuts are cooked and the butter is about to brown. Add the oats and stir to toast them.
2. Add the dried fruit and enough milk to cover, allow it to come to a simmer, then serve with remaining milk (if you wish), yogurt, and honey. If this takes you more than 5 minutes, you’re not doing it right.

Serves 1

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My recent post on How to Cook Morels and my past post on making Apple Cinnamon Granola.
  
• Use my All-Strain Reusable Straining Cloths to make your own yogurt at home.
• Try making your own rhubarb jam from scratch this spring.
• Homemade muesli is another great breakfast item to make at home for your pantry.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Key Sunrise, Goddammit. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

So my oldest and dearest pal, Lester, feeling a bit fidgety several Fridays ago, texted to coax me off work early. I had cooking to do so I said, “Come over. I’ll make us some Clover Clubs while I finish prep.” After imbibing, I recalled the savvy note from Danny Guess of Fly Bar & Restaurant and video “host” of the iBook 25 Classic Cocktails, that if you add applejack brandy, you have a cocktail called a Pink Lady (all of which were covered in this post). Having finished our drinks and with more egg white on hand, I made us a second, this time a Pink Lady.

Killer cocktail, but such an unfortunate name! This is something you will never hear me utter: “Barkeep, I’ll have a Pink Lady, please.” Can you imagine James Bond ordering a Pink Lady? I can’t imagine Clarence the angel ordering one. I can’t even imagine Donna ordering one.

I’m hoping to fix the problem here by altering the lemon juice to Key lime juice, and calling it a Key Sunrise. Or perhaps maybe even a Key Sunrise, Goddammit.

The team that put together 25 Classic Cocktails notes that it has long been maligned as a “girlie drink.” It also notes that Jayne Mansfield was rumored to have lived on these things. But she was Jayne Mansfield, and Jayne could say whatever the fuck she wanted in a bar. Not me.

This uses an egg white for body. Always a pleasure, but I made a mess in front of Les trying to make two Clover Clubs in a single shaker (you’ve got to shake like mad to denature the egg white protein) and it wouldn’t all quite fit. What to do when making two or more egg-white cocktails? Blender, then ice, then strain into chilled coupes. (The Key limes were gnarly at the grocery store, so I got some Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key Lime Juice). And I am always delighted to pull out the little bottle of pomegranate syrup because it makes me think of the wonderful man who gave it to me as gift at Christmas.

Lester, if you’re reading this, perhaps I could interest you this evening in a Key Sunrise, Goddamit? Before shenanigans begin? Just don’t wear your blue seersucker suit or you’ll look like a Lily Pulitzer ad. A tuxedo, though, be lookin’ sharp with this cocktail.

Key Sunrise for Two

• 3 ounces/90 grams gin
• 1 ounce/30 grams applejack brandy
• 1.5 ounces/45 grams Key lime juice
• 1 ounce/30 grams simple syrup
• 1 ounce Mister Sugar pomegranate syrup or other quality grenadine
• 2 egg whites

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and blend till frothy, 5 seconds or so.
2. Fill the blender with ice and swirl the contents till the drink is very cold.
3. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into two chilled coupes.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My recent cocktail posts: El Diablo, The Man About Town, and the Sour Cherry Daiquiri.
• How to make your own grenadine syrup, by Portland, OR, mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler (though Anton’s, linked above, is superb).
• The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto, by Bernard DeVoto, a lovely meditation on that heavenly time of day.
• Check out  The Aviary in Chicago; they just won the James Beard Award for outstanding bar program.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

I’m giving away a personalized Twenty and two awesome Spankettes in return for your ideas. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Short version: I ask you, cherished reader, what book would you like me to write next?

Update, 5/9, 8 p.m.: A winner has been chosen using randomizer: Aaron Weiss, a journalist and TV news director in Sioux City, Iowa. Thanks for commenting, Aaron, and for cooking with your family! Thank you everyone. Frankly, I was astonished by all the ideas and fascinated by the patterns. Still making my way through the nearly 500 comments.

My favorite suggestion, got filtered out due to a spam issue, from regular reader and commenter, Bob Tenaglio:

I’d call the book “Time; The Secret Ingredient You’ll Never See On Iron Chef,” and it would delve into dry-aged meat, fermentation, enzymatic transformation, what constitutes “freshness” and “rot,” the role of rigor mortis in meats and seafood, “low and slow,” development of flavors.

…and now back to the original post…

Complete version, or here’s what happened Thursday at Bar Boulud, my favorite culinary landing pad when touching down in NYC. I was there to meet with my editor, Michael Sand, of Little, Brown, which will be publishing The Book of Schmaltz in August, and in the spring, my innovative exploration of the kitchen’s most versatile ingredient. These were the known factors when I decided to hook up with this venerable publisher.

This, too, was known: I would also write four shorter, single-subject cookbooks. And this was the main topic as Sand and I munched through salads and jambon beurre and a taste of boudins noir et blanc (exquisite, all). What should those books be?

Ruhlman Singles will be about one-third the length of a traditional cookbook. Like The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat, they will comprise 20 or so recipes, but recipes that might be short master classes on a specific idea and technique within that broader subject. In the Single for Roast, for instance, there would be a high-heat roast technique and recipe, a low, slow roast technique and recipe, a pan roast, etc., and it would explore all the finesse points, the techniques that take a dish from good to aaaawesome, recipes that gave my prose room to spread out, in a format that would allow photos of each dish and as many process shots as we feel needed. (Can’t tell you how many of you have thanked me, or Donna and me rather, for making you feel comfortable in the kitchen because of the process shots.)

The world doesn’t need more recipes, it needs more technique, and home cooks need more confidence and encouragement in the kitchen. (Because you’re not too stupid to cook, even though Kraft wants you to think you are.)

Sand and I mulled: should they be basic technique books, like roast? Or ones more suited to the ambitious home cook, like sous vide or fermentation (cooking with bugs!), or cooking with actual bugs, grasshoppers, and whatnot?! (As that’s Andrew Zimmern territory, I’ll probably stay out of the latter.)

Then Sand said: “Why don’t you ask your readers. What do they want?”

Well? I’d love to hear from you! I have a list of ten or so ideas already. But take a moment to tell me: if you could choose one subject for me to write and think about, to cook through and photograph, what would it be? As an enticement, I’m giving away to one of you, chosen by randomizer on Thursday, a signed and personalized copy of Ruhlman’s Twenty: Twenty Techniques, 100 Recipes, a Cook’s Manifesto, and two—yes TWO!—Spankettes, the middle-sized wooden spoon that is one of my most cherished and valuable tools in the kitchen. While the winner has to be chosen at random and live in the U.S. (postage issue, sorry Canada, England, Australia, India!), if I write about what you wanted me to write about, I will be eager to acknowledge and thank you by name (if you wish) in the book.

So, I ask you, with deep thanks for even clicking on this page, tell me, what should the next book be? I shall return to Sand today the revised manuscript on the world’s most versatile culinary ingredient, and photography will wrap up soon. What should I write about next?

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• Cook your own food. Eat what you want. Think for yourself.
• My recent posts on How to Cook Morels and the Final Word on Battle of the Spoons.
• Mac Dalton and I have created not only killer wood spoons, but a number of unique kitchen tools—full catalogue here.
• This coconut tres leches cake recipe from CHOW is pretty awesome.
• The LA Times introduces us to the cocktail called the American Poet.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Carbonara. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Michael just got back from an eventful James Beard Awards weekend in New York City, so today’s scheduled post has been delayed until tomorrow. So, I was looking back at the archives and I decided to rediscover his reflection on carbonara, his favorite pasta dish. Not only is carbonara a great pasta dish, but it is an essential staple dish. I like that Michael mentions using cured mangalista belly instead of common bacon—that addition elevates carbonara to a different level.

(And Michael wanted me to remind people there’s still a chance to join a relatively intimate phone conversation today at noon Eastern time set up by Michael’s publisher for those who preorder Schmaltz by 11:55 today and email the receipt to littlebrown@hbgusa.com or to him directly at michael@ruhlman.com, to talk about schmaltz or cooking or to ask him questions. The original announcement is here.)

—Emilia Juocys

Originally published on April 19, 2008

After posting a gorgeous fatty piece of cured mangalitsa belly I thought I should say how it first went to use. The other day I asked Donna to have lunch—one of the true pleasures of working from home. The house is clean and doesn’t thrum with kid energy, but most important, we’re not exhausted as we would be if we waited till the end of the day, so we can actually talk to one another about things that matter to us, reflectively and leisurely. I don’t want to spend more than 20 minutes or so actually cooking—a spinach salad with lardons, warm bacon fat and shallot dressing with a poached egg, or the above carbonara, which Donna clicked off before we sat down (she’d been shooting custards for me all morning so she was all set up). Carbonara is perhaps my favorite pasta, yet another variation of the bacon-and-eggs pairing, the simpler the better—don’t be snobby about the bacon cut (“Guanciale is the ONLY kind we use,” etc.—any good smoked bacon is excellent) and keep the frills like peas out of it. I think the only truly critical point is that you must use freshly grated reggiano. The fat is the pleasure in this mangalitsa bacon, so I wanted to use it all, tossing the strips of belly and all the rendered fat with the hot pasta, pouring the cream-yolk mixture over the hot pasta, which lightly cooks the sauce, tossing in some freshly grated reggiano, and finishing with chopped flat-leaf parsley. Serve it with a crusty baguette and a big zinfandel. Any couples out there with kids, I cannot recommend highly enough having lunch with your partner, in your home, in the middle of the week, on a regular basis.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My past pasta post on making agnolotti.
• Learn more about the Mangalitsa or the wooly pig.
• Pigstock TC is the place to be in October 2013.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

El Diablo is the perfect answer this weekend. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Cinco de Mayo is Sunday. How many of you know what it celebrates or why? Shaw Lash is one of the key cooks and brains in the Rick Bayless Chicago operations, places I really admire. Last year she wrote why, having grown up in Texas and later lived in Mexico, the Cinco de Mayo madness drives her mad. She wants you to know what it means and asks should we celebrate it at all. Her short answer: It’s a celebration of being Mexican. And it’s a brilliant American marketing gimmick.

Shaw Lash is one of those aware people I admire, so when my able cohort Emilia suggested a tequila cocktail, I emailed Shaw. Shaw suggested a Margarita primer. There’s an extensive discussion of all drink issues in Rick and wife Deann’s book Frontera: Margaritas, Guacamoles and Snacks (Shaw developed and tested all the recipes). If you want in-depth info and recipes, go there, it’s outstanding. But I’ve already posted on the classic Margarita (a drink to be revered), and Fridays are not “in-depth” days for me, with primers and what not.

Shaw said one of her faves in the book is the El Diablo.

Bingo! This is superlative cocktail. You’ve got to like ginger beer, though. Donna doesn’t. I’m a Dark & Stormy devotee, I’ll happily imbibe vodka in a Moscow Mule, and I love the El Diablo: good tequila, sweetness from the crème de cassis, balanced by the lime juice, and finished with bubbly ginger beer. It’s a refreshing Friday cocktail. The following is an easier variation of what is in the book, which calls for a homemade ginger beer syrup—I urge you to buy the book for the real thing. But right now it’s Friday. And I want a cocktail, so I’ve improvised (with Shaw’s approval).

The El Diablo

• 2 ounces reposado tequila (100% blue agave, preferably)
• juice of ½ a lime
• a tablespoon or 2 (½ to 1 ounce) crème de cassis, or to taste (it’s the main sweet in the drink.  Shaw highly suggests using Jules Theuriet Creme de Cassis de Dijon).
• ginger beer (spicy and also sweet)
• a 2-inch strip of lime zest, removed with a vegetable peeler

1. Combine the tequila, lime juice, and crème de cassis in a large lowball glass. Fill with ice and top with ginger beer (equal parts drink and ginger beer is optimal).
2. Twist the strip of lime zest to release the aromatic oils and slip it into the cocktail as a lovely lady would slip into a pool.

Yield: 1 cocktail

My pal Peter is having folks over tomorrow, so here’s the recipe from the book for lots of folks. Peter, just make it with 16 oz. tequila, 16 oz. ginger beer, no sparkling water, keep the rest the same. Wish I were with you.

Party Pitcher Size

• 1½ cups 100% blue agave reposado tequila
• ¾ cup fresh lime juice
• ½ cup crème de cassis
• 1 cup ginger beer
• 8 ounces sparkling water
• 8 cups ice
• 8 2-inch strips of lime zest, removed with a vegetable peeler

1. In a pitcher, combine the tequila, lime juice, crème de cassis, and ginger beer. Stir well, cover, and refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours.
2. Pour a scant ½ cup of the tequila mixture into 8 10-ounce rocks glasses. Top each with 1 ounce of sparking water and 1 cup of ice.
3. Garnish with a strip of lime zest and serve to your guests.

Yield: 8 cocktails

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My recent cocktail posts: the Man About Town, Donna Paloma, and the Sour Cherry Daiquiri.
• Become a member of the Tequila Interchange Project.
• Mathilde and Jules Theuriet are two other brands of cassis.
• A classic kir is a cocktail composed of cassis and white wine, while the kir royale is made with champagne.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Fresh ramps and the coolest edible to grow out of the ground, morel mushrooms.
Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

No surer sign of spring, this lovely photo above. And when wild edibles grow together they’re often great cooked together. Last week for one of the final shots for the new book I ordered fresh morels from a fabulous company in northern Michigan called Earthy Delights (thanks, Chip and Ed!). I love the food of Michigan—the stone fruit, the eau de vie made from their skin, the tart cherries, the mushrooms. Same as the Great Lakes territories of Ohio, which booms with ramps right now. We get so many wild ramps that Jonathon Sawyer, who turned 13 today, spiritually (good luck at the Beards, JS, kick those Chicago bastards’ asses!), used them as centerpieces that diners could take home when he chefed at Bar Cento before opening his Greenhouse Tavern.

What did Donna shoot for the new book? An omelet with creamy morel and ramp sauce. Kind of a no-brainer. So no-brainer, in fact, that I woke to find the wonderful chef and writer David Tanis also pairing ramps and eggs (no morels). Ramps are a bit harsh on the palate raw, but give them some heat and they’re an elegant flavor somewhere between garlic and leek. The Times shows them whole, but I find them tough and stringy this way. I thinly slice the whites and chiffonade or mince the tops.

Having an excess of morels, I asked my friend Lee if she wanted some (she was preparing a b-day dinner for my oldest pal, Lester). She said she loved morels but wouldn’t know what to do with them. Hence this post. Because they’re so good, and so easy.

Morels, the coolest food to raise out of the earth, “Gift of God” food that I can sometimes find in woods not far from my house (thanks, JD!), when the lilacs bloom, are one of those foods that are good just as they are. The less you do, the better.

But you do have to cook them. My mushroom guru, Connie Green, who forages in the mountainous woods of the Napa Valley, says they contain a poisonous compound (I love dangerous food!) “similar to rocket fuel,” in her words. It blows off quickly in the gentlest of heat (Connie doesn’t even sweep the aroma her way when cooking). But don’t ever add raw morels to salads or the like. (In the years since I wrote about her in The French Laundry Cookbook, Connie has opened an online store selling wild food, called The Wine Forest, and she’s published an excellent book called The Wild Table.)

So while you must cook morels, you don’t want to hammer them with heat as you do white button mushrooms. A little butter, a little shallot or sliced ramp, halved morels, a little cream just to reduce and coat, and that’s it. Put them in a small bowl and eat, just to enjoy the pleasure of the mushroom itself. If you want it to look dramatic, add another spring wonder, the fava bean. If you want more, put it on some scrambled eggs (this will be lunch for me and Donna today). For something hardier, I made a bechamel sauce, enriched with Emmantaler cheese for some pasta and topped it with abundant morels.

To make a creamy morel sauce:

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan over medium heat, sauté some minced shallot or sliced ramp whites, add the morels, and cook just till heated through. Add about a quarter inch or half inch of cream to the pan, simmer and reduce it by half, adding salt and pepper to taste. Toss in minced ramp leaves if you have them. Serve as is and eat very slowly. Or spoon over an equal quantity of gently scrambled eggs. Very gently scrambled, as described in Ruhlman’s Twenty; almost no one scrambles eggs right these days.

And that’s it. Happy May Day to all!

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My past posts on the amazing morel and farm transparency v. farm secrecy.
• Earthy Delights has fresh and dried morels.
• So does Connie: watch her in this superb video.
• Morels.com is a popular website linking all those who love and seek this luscious mushroom.
• Here are some more morel recipes from Midwest Living.
• Try making this ramp pizza from the Smitten Kitchen.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Baked eggs with salsa verde. Photo by Patricia Tracey.

People call me a chef (even says so here). I’m not a chef. Ted Allen is not a chef (as if his round wood spoons didn’t say as much). Rachael Ray is not a chef. None of us ever said we were. (I have on occasion, claimed to be, but that was just to piss off Michael Symon, who is a chef, or was—now he’s a TV cook, entertainer, and successful restaurateur. I cooked at Sans Souci, a Marriot-owned restaurant, ages ago, but I wouldn’t last an hour on the line today.)

Terms matter. I say this because today’s guest poster, Patricia Tracey, is and remains solely a chef. Not a celeb chef like Symon or Bobby Flay (both of whom are superlative cooks, btw, another and more meaningful term). She’s a cook’s cook, a woman who cooks for a living because a professional kitchen is where she’s happiest. Jersey born, educated at Johnson & Wales, she’s cooked on the east coast, cooked at a Hyatt, continued to grow, opened restaurants for the highly respected Kimpton hotel group, which seems actually to care about its restaurants.

When my San Fran acquaintances, Scott Raymond and Rachel Luxemburg, asked me to have a look at her quest to open, at long last, her very own place, Myriad Gastro Pub, with the help of the crowd-funding site kickstarter.com, I donated (because I like to support professional cooks and entrepreneurs), then I asked her for a guest post.

As it turns out, Trish lost her mom, Joan, the same year I lost my beloved dad, both to cancer. She fell into a deep funk I know all too well, the kind where you wake up in the morning and think, “Shit. I’m awake again. Still fucking here.”

She has, at age 46, begun to feel the sunshine again, and has the spirit and gumption to give the grueling work of chef-restaurateur a go. Please watch her video (below, or here) and if you like it (and especially if you live in or travel often to SF), kick in a few bucks (it will make you feel happy, seriously). But first read about her salsa verde; it rocks.

What I asked her was, what does she like to cook for herself, what does a chef cook when he or she is not earning the daily bread or cleaning out the grease trap, or dealing with heating and cooling guy, or trying to figure out what to put on the menu since the fish delivery never showed?

Eggs, of course. I knew I liked this woman.

What This Chef Eats at Home!

by Trish Tracey

People often ask me, “What do you cook at home?” The quick answer from many chefs, myself included, is that we never cook at home because we are always working. While that answer may be popular, it’s not true.

The truth is that I do enjoy cooking when at home, whether it’s for a large holiday gathering, for small groups of friends and family, or even if it’s just for myself—which is what happens more often than not.

No matter the occasion, it’s not too difficult to make a quick and easy meal look and taste like a gourmet dish.

One of my favorite staples that I always try keep on hand is my own take on salsa verde, a simple, yet amazingly versatile, condiment that can elevate the flavor of many dishes.

My salsa verde is a blend of chopped Italian parsley, chopped capers, minced shallots, lemon zest, and extra-virgin olive oil. Depending on what the salsa verde is going with, I may add boquerones, Spanish-style anchovies marinated in lemon, or some type of complementary olive.

Though salsa verde can be added to any number of dishes, I do have my favorites. It can be drizzled over a tasty open-faced egg salad sandwich on rye toast, giving it big and bold flavor.

Want another easy, zesty breakfast/lunch/dinner idea? Simmer or bake eggs in a light marinara and then top with shaved Reggiano and salsa verde. Serve this over toasted or grilled sourdough bread or even luscious polenta.

Looking for something a little more substantial? Rub sliced garlic, fresh cracked black pepper, and a little paprika on a rib-eye before grilling. When it’s done, slather the steak with salsa verde and finish with a little flaky Maldon sea salt.

It goes equally well with a roasted hearty fish, laced with pimenton and lemon, or topping a beautifully roasted chicken.

Make a batch of this salsa verde and keep it on hand. You will not tire of it and it will make you look like a rock star in the kitchen when you turn a simple dish into something big and bold and made with love.

(Here’s my kickstarter video; if you like, visit kickstarter.com to donate; I hope to cook for you there one day soon. And thanks, Michael, for letting me share this!)

Marinara Baked Eggs with Salsa Verde

• ½ cup light marinara sauce (if you don’t have homemade, you can use Rao’s)
• 2 large eggs
• Salt and fresh black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons shaved Parmesan cheese

1. Heat the marinara slowly over medium heat, in any small cast-iron or steel skillet that you would like to serve in. (You can also make this in any pan and slide it onto any pretty bowl or plate you like.)
2. When the sauce is warm, crack the eggs into the middle of the sauce and season with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Shave Parmesan over the top.
3. For the stovetop method, cover with a lid and simmer on low for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how well you like your yolks cooked.
4. To bake in the oven, leave uncovered and place in a 375°F/190°C oven for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how well you like your yolks cooked.
5. While the eggs are cooking, toast or grill some hearty sourdough bread slices and butter.
6. Drizzle the baked eggs with salsa verde and serve with toast.

Mediterranean Salsa Verde

• ½ cup chopped Italian parsley
• 2 tablespoons chopped, drained capers
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1½ tablespoons finely minced shallots
• ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• ¼ cup pure olive oil or other mild oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Mix all ingredients together and taste for seasoning.
2. It’s best to make it at least an hour before you need it so the flavors can develop. You can keep this stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a week or so and spoon it onto almost anything.
3. Enjoy!

Variations for the salsa verde:

• Chopped boquerones or other anchovies
• Minced garlic
• Any type of chopped olives
• Minced sundried tomatoes

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My recent posts: On Schmaltz and Digital Publishing and The Book of Schmaltz: The Hardcover Edition.
• Don’t forget about our 20% off Dalton-Ruhlman Essentials for Mother’s Day.
• Support new local businesses such as Honey Butter Fried Chicken or The Butcher & Baker.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

A rum Negroni, otherwise called a Man About Town. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

I pay for a service called SaneBox to deal with email overload, so much of it mass PR mail. Somehow a diligent soul, Sally Alfis of M Booth, who represents the company’s spirit clients, got though the barricades. Having seen my Friday cocktail hour posts, she asked if she could send me some premium hooch. I never turn down free premium hooch. Thus, the most excellent rum in the photo (it’s very good).

Surprisingly, though, she continues to read Friday posts and, following my hasty Negroni post (no link, Donna unhappy with photo), sent me a new cocktail made by Scott Fitzgerald (no, relation, though he does beat on, like all the rest of us boats) of the Mulberry Project in NYC.

What got me about Fitzgerald’s lovely cocktail was its variation on a personal fave, the Negroni (thus Sally’s clever suggestion—she gets Scott to create a rum drink featuring her client’s rum, then gets me to post on the drink; it’s all an incestuous little mingle, isn’t it?). But I loved the cocktail. First, I’m a sucker for variations on a theme (I wrote The Making of a Chef obsessively replaying these, specifically the 1955 recording, though I love the slow open of the 1981 version), and this, like the Boulevardier, is a Negroni variant. But! Not a simple swap-out of spirit for spirit like the Boulevardier (whiskey for gin), but rather a more thoughtful riff, this including three bitter elements, all of which I’m fond of.

By chance, @wisekaren alerted me this morning, that just yesterday seriouseats did a feature and slide-show on negroni variants in the city, which is excellent; though the beet negroni seems a tad ridiculous, I would rather have that than the Red Rooster variation, which is a Boulvardier (noted by seriouseats in the caption), not a Bourbon Negroni as they call it (I’ll lay odds they make an awesome vodka martini as well).

Without further adieu, with thanks to Madam Sally and Scott Fitzgerald, this week’s cocktail is the finely balanced Man About Town.

Cheers, and have a restorative weekend!

Man About Town

• 1.5 ounces good white rum (OK, Sally, Brugal 1888; I wouldn’t, and didn’t, turn it down.)
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 0.75 ounce Campari
• several dashes orange bitters
• several dashes Angostura bitters
• orange peel for garnish

1. Stir all ingredients in a mixing glass. Strain and serve in a frosty coupe.
2. Garnish with an orange twist.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• A few of my other rum-based cocktails: Key Lime Daiquiri, Between the Sheets, and the Dark and Stormy.
• Try making your own rum at home.
• Portside Distillery here in Cleveland makes various types of rums; and Cleveland Whiskey makes bourbon; small spirit companies are booming throughout the country.
• Vermouth 101 is a site that educates us about this aperitif wine.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

The official cover of The Book of Schmaltz.

Begging everyone’s forgiveness for this promotion-oriented week—it just happened, I don’t plan anything. (For those hungering for food posts: cool tomato-water/sauce technique video, pretty Donna picture and my favorite veg to grill, or if in the mood for a food rant; and check back in for a brand new cocktail tomorrow, for The Hour.)

As promised, my Schmaltz app is no longer available and won’t be till sometime next year, but that is because my new, beautiful, full-color book THE BOOK OF SCHMALTZ: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat is coming soon to a bookstore/eTailer near you. The book will hit bookstores in August. It will be available in print and eBook formats.

While August might seem far away, I very much want you to pre-order it now (and dare I suggest that a printed copy of THE BOOK OF SCHMALTZ would be loved by all of your nondigital relatives (especially that bubbe who still adores you).

To encourage pre-orders, my publisher has come up with an intriguing suggestion that I agreed to: if you preorder the book by Sunday and send your receipt to my publisher at littlebrown@hbgusa.com, they will send you a dial-in code to an exclusive pre-orderers-only call that I will be doing with you on Monday, May 6, at noon Eastern Time, 9 a.m. Pacific. I’ll talk a little about schmaltz, but if you wish but we can talk about cooking generally and you can ask any cooking questions you’d like during an hour-long chat.

The first 100 people to send in their receipts will get an exclusive dial-in pin code and a signed bookplate. The next 100 people who send in their receipts will get a signed bookplate.

Though gentile to my core, with my schmaltz mentor, Lois “Queen of Schmaltz” Baron, I’m eager to spread my love of schmaltz far and wide!

Pre-order the hardcover of The Book of Schmaltz at the following venues:

Pre-order from IndieBound.

Pre-order from Amazon or Amazon Kindle version.

Pre-order from Barnes & Noble.

Pre-order ebook from iTunes.

Long live schmaltz! Cook for your family and friends!

If you liked this post, check out these other links:

• Looking for more books on Jewish cuisine? Check out Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited.
• Chabad.org has an entire forum dedicated to kosher dishes.
• My recent post and promo for Mother’s Day—dads, don’t forget to plan! (Moms who cook, sneak this link Red Ryder–style into husband’s emailbox.)

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Schmaltz, chicken fat rendered with onion, an initial “cover” photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

By contractual agreement with Little, Brown, venerable publisher of so many of my favorite authors, I will be UNPUBLISHING The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat tomorrow morning, so that Little, Brown can roll out the book in hardcover this coming August. So, if you want it for your iPad or iPad mini at the lowest price you’ll ever see it, get it now (it’s received nothing but critical raves, I’m proud to say, and is being offered at half the price it will go for electronically in August and for one-quarter its hardcover jacket price). If you already own it, don’t delete it from your device and you will continue to be able to use it (see note at bottom of post for more info). It will be republished after the hardcover is out.

I’m happy to unpublish what Donna and I and others worked so hard on because I think it’s best suited to being a hardcover book (many, many have asked for this). Hardcover books are what mainstream publisher do well: print, warehouse, and ship books (a case of which has put my back out more than once). For those who prefer electronic books (I adore the search function in the digital cookbooks I own), it will also be available from the publisher for all devices as an ebook. Again, I will republish the app, perhaps with additional material, video, additional recipes that I might come up with, etc., at an appropriate time that I’ll decide on with Little, Brown. Apps are organic, a fact that makes them so appealing to me—I’ve wanted to put in video and a better recording of the wonderful Lois Baron, who sparked the book.

I feel very lucky that my experiment in self-publishing has gone so well, and I never expected this quirky work on a great but maligned animal fat in fat-phobic America would be desirable to a mainstream publisher (their purchase of something I was about to publish on my own is unprecedented my editor told me). The truth is, schmaltz—chicken fat and skin rendered with onion— is one of those amazing essences that makes all food better, and it’s an ingredient that you simply can’t buy (like mayonnaise and veal stock).

More and more authors are self-publishing as more people are reading digitally (I actually prefer prose books this way; cookbooks, no denying there’s something about holding a hard copy, flipping through it, browsing; you don’t browse a digital book). See last week’s story on David Mamet self-publishing, above the fold on page one of the NYTimes (is there a fold in the digital version?). I’m fascinated by what’s happening in publishing. I published The Main Dish as a Kindle Single, my 35-page essay on how I became a food writer without really trying (my title, The Accidental Foodwriter, was nixed). On Tuesday the NYTimes printed an article on David Blum, Kindle Single’s editor/gatekeeper, as singles gain serious traction. I’ve written a long novella/short novel unrelated to food that I might publish electronically since fiction is so hard, its length makes a hard copy tricky, and I’m not known for Nicholas Sparksian chick lit (who’d have thought?!). Digital publishing makes it possible for a doctor, Frank Huyler, who wrote one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, The Blood of Strangers, to publish his own novella, Castaway, through a company called Byliner as a Kindle Single.

So buy Schmaltz for your iPad or iPad mini today or early tomorrow in the iTunes app store before it vanishes from the marketplace in this app form ($8 now; it will be $12 in ebook form, with a $27 cover price for the book book).

And if you don’t have an iPad or simply prefer hardcovers, I assure you, The Book of Schmaltz will not disappoint. Pre-order now to make sure you get your copy! (My last solo effort, Ruhlman’s Twenty, sold out in three weeks and wasn’t available for four months after—something that breaks an author’s heart). Please know that pre-orders are huge help to the author, a fact I only just learned.

And regardless of all this, beloved readers of this site, cook your own food and think for yourself. Have a good time. Life is short, so make it sweet.

Pre-order the hardcover of The Book of Schmaltz at the following venues:

Pre-order from IndieBound.

Pre-order from Amazon or Amazon Kindle version.

Pre-order from Barnes & Noble.

Pre-order ebook from iTunes.

A note to readers who own the Schmaltz app: You’ll be able to use your copy as long as you don’t delete it from your device. See this article for details. Be sure it’s backed up on your computer (if it’s not go to the iTunes store on your computer and download it; if you’ve already purchased it, you won’t need to pay for it again; this way you can put it back on your device or add it to new devices). When I re-republish it in early 2014, you can simply update to your device automatically and it will include any additional material I’ve added. Feel free to ask me questions in the comment sections below).

If you liked this post, check out these other links:

• My recent post on matzo ball soup made with schmaltz.
  
• A few recipes from Schmaltz appear on Epicurious.com.
• Visit my store to see my various kitchen tools.
• Shiksa in the Kitchen is a food blog I admire that also features various Jewish dishes.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

So here’s the kind of Mom my wife and collaborator, Donna, is. On Saturday, at 5:30 she had just showered and was getting ready for a 6:30 party when her 17-year-old daughter asks if she, Donna, can take her to get that smart phone upgrade as hers, daughter’s, is broken. The teenaged daughter is not the most appreciative member of homo sapiens, remember, and Donna would not be unreasonable to say “I’m not dressed and we’re going out soon; this can wait till tomorrow,” but instead, she says, “Sure, hon, but we have to hurry.”

Here’s the kind of wife Donna is. For Mother’s Day a few years ago, I bought her a really good wheelbarrow. She was ecstatic, and made googly eyes at me. I felt so lucky. A wheelbarrow!

Mom’s Day is important. If your wife is happy and makes you and the kids happy in the kitchen by cooking good food, Mac Dalton and I have put together a special bundle we think all cooking moms will like (no meat grinders and stuffers and smokers). Moms, since you’re the one probably reading this, feel free to send this link now to husbands (generally a knuckleheaded member of the species if I’m any indication), who tend to wait till the last minute. The Mom’s Day Bundle—2 spankettes (the best wood spoons ever), a badass (aka egg) spoon, a set of offset basting tasting spoons, a bamboo scrubber (no more sponges gunked up with cheese, dough, egg, scorched milk!), and the new offset serving spoon (rests on the pot, won’t slide in, holds about 8 ounces)—separately cost $144 (cringe, sorry), but Mac wants both to reduce the bundle to $124 and, further, to give anyone reading this post 20% off to get the cost into double digits (not including shipping, sorry). Get 20% off Mom’s Day bundle (or any of my own selection of D-R Essentials) by using this promo code: mom (be sure to hit the “apply” button. Shipping AND frigging taxes still apply but the whole bunch delivered to your doorstep (in USA only) will be less than $120—taxes and shipping vary).

It’s Mom’s Day! And she’ll love it! And you. And these things will last longer than the children we’re really celebrating on that day; our goal is that your grandkids will be using most of these things.

For a less expensive gift, don’t forget my how-to-think-about-cooking cookbook, Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, a Cook’s Manifesto. It’s cheap at Amazon! Or I can sign a personal note to the mom herself, but you’ve got to tell me her name and order before May 1 so we can be sure to get it to you in time. Click here if you want this, or if your search-engine cookies are turned off, go to my Books page and click on “Buy a signed copy.” But please please please tell me who to sign to in the “notes to seller” field!

Or if you’re a mischief-maker and want to both make her laugh and piss her off at the same time, get her the Rollie Eggmaster, as sure a sign as any that the human race is nearing an end.

Till then, here’s a suggested meal for the loved mom or moms you’re celebrating. This is for two people; increase amounts as needed for more.

Mom’s Day Salad

I make this when Donna and I want to relax and talk and have a leisurely lunch.

• ½ pound bacon, lardons or strips cut in pieces
• 1 pound arugula/spinach (either or both, her choice)
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• ½ baguette, toasted with butter

1. Sauté the bacon slowly till crisp and all the fat has rendered.
2. Put a pot of water on to boil.
3. Put the salad into a bowl for tossing.
4. When the bacon has rendered, add the shallot.
5. When the shallot is tender, turn off the burner; when the water has come to a boil, turn off that burner as well.
6. Crack two eggs into the hot water (they’re best if you let the thin part of the white drain through a perforated spoon—see Badass photo above).
7. Spoon the bacon, shallot, and bacon fat (to taste) over the greens, season with salt and pepper, and toss to coat; then sprinkle with vinegar, taste, and add more vinegar if you wish. Divide the salad between two plates.
8. When the eggs are done (the whites fully cooked, the yolk fluid), lift them from the water, hold a towel below the spoon to drain, then rest one atop each salad.
9. Serve with toasted baguette.

If you liked this post, check out these other links:

• My post on making your own flaky biscuits. 
  
• My interview on NPR’s Splendid Table about Ruhlman’s Twenty.
• Try making some pickled ramps this spring.
• Martha Stewart always has great ideas for Mother’s Day.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Sour Cherry Daiquiri. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Some cocktails are spontaneous given what’s at hand. I happened to be making nougat, the French confection created by pouring cooked sugar and honey into whipped egg whites, then folding in nuts and dried fruits. The pix were so stunning in the Bouchon Bakery book, I simply had to give it a go and attempt a paired down version for the home cook. I considered adding rum-soaked dried cherries and so prepared these. But by the time the eggs whites and sugar had cooled to glossy perfection, I worried that the red-tinted rum, attracted by the sugar, would leach into the stunning whiteness of the nougat.

When the shooting was done for the day, I had a bowlful of rum soaked cherries. Hmmm. How to put to use? “Donna! Don’t put your camera away!” I shouted, post-work cocktail selfishly in mind.

I quickly grabbed my mortar and pestle and pulverized seven or eight soaked cherries and the rum (2.5 ounces in all) in the mortar, then strained it over ice (you don’t have to strain if you like your cocktails chunky), added equal parts lemon juice and simple syrup and had an uncommonly fine drink on my hands, a variation on my Traverse City Zinger.

The painful, truly painful, part of shooting these cocktails is that Donna takes forever to shoot! I watch, salivating like a Pavlov dog.

(A word about the mortar and pestle, which I sell at OpenSky. Seriously, if our house were robbed by a desperate cook, and they took this, I would be seriously bummed, I would swear at them most heinously. I grind toasted peppercorns and coriander to rub into beef—it’s the main spice mix for these killer pastrami short ribs—and pork and lamb. I make fabulous guacamole in it, and salsas. It’s big and heavy enough to make an aioli in, old-style, but not lava-rock-rough like a molcajete, which I find are too coarse for my needs. )

Without further delay, then, the Friday Cocktail:

one, two, drink

Sour Cherry Daiquiri

• 2.5 ounces rum
• 5 to 10 tart dried cherries
• 1 ounce lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
• Lemon peel

1. Soak cherries in rum for at least 5 minutes (and for up to 5 years). Pulverize cherries thoroughly in a mortar and pestle.
2. Strain into a glass; add ice, lemon, and syrup.
3. Garnish with a twist and more cherries if you wish.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• A few of my other rum based cocktails: Key Lime Daiquiri, Between the Sheets, and the Dark and Stormy.
• Watch how Richland Rum is made outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
• An interesting website that covers the history of rum.
• Looking for something sweet? Try making a boozy rum cake.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

A perfect crème anglaise. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

The television personality and cookbook author Ted Allen stirred up a shit storm this week by calling me out on my hatred of the round wooden spoon, which he apparently has the hots for. He happened to mention our exchange at a City Harvest event to Eric Ripert, executive chef of Le Bernardin, one of the finest restaurants in the country, with whom I’ve worked closely, who added a little more caca to the pot by tweeting “Crème anglaise? Since the days of Escoffier, stir with a wood spoon, Ruhlman.”

He then phoned me to further faire caca into my cell phone until he conceded that it was the wood, not a round wood spoon, then was evasive, said a client had just arrived. But he handed the phone to his British-born, French-trained pastry chef, Laurie Moran, veteran of Per Se and Daniel in NYC and hired to fill the rather large shoes of chef Michael Laiskonis. Chef Moran’s response: everyone should use a rubber spatula. I did not disagree. He added that one needs a flat edge to fully sweep the bottom of the pot to lift the cooking egg yolk.

(Ted Allen, meanwhile, was tweeting that if I cooked my Anglaise properly, I shouldn’t need to worry about the bottom of the pan and therefore his round wooden spoon still wins.)

I asked Moran about a whisk. He said, as deferential as only Brits can be, that while one would certainly whisk the sugar and yolks thoroughly, you would never whisk the pot when all the ingredients were combined as he sensed—sensed meaning a cook’s intuition based on a lifetime of cooking—that a whisk would alter the texture of the sauce, something Eric also noted. He did stress the importance of the effectiveness of the spatula at sweeping clean the bottom of the pot as the custard sauce cooked (at which point I steek out my tongue at the venerable Monsieur Allen).

I hold firm that while even I feel a ’70s-ish nostalgia for the round wooden spoons that filled my childhood suburban kitchen, the round wooden spoon is an emblem of thoughtlessness of the American cook, an icon of kitchen ignorance and, in that ignorance, downright depravity, and therefore must take a militant stance on the stupid round wooden spoon, ask for a round wooden spoon intervention by Mr. Allen’s family and close friends, and suggest a burning of them in Cleveland’s public square.

From top: heatproof rubber spatula, flat-edged wood spoon, American emblem of ignorance.

But then—and I say this with a heavy heart, something not mentioned either in my my Stupid Kitchen Tools video nor Mr. Allen’s—a world in which someone has spent money to invent, manufacture, and advertise the Rollie Eggmaster, arguably the stupidest cooking tool ever invented, hilariously demoed by Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, well, it makes one feel fairly certain that human beings are not long for this world. The Rollie Eggmaster is the beginning of the end of our species.

Until then, make a proper crème Anglaise. Here are Chef Moran’s proportions, halved, to make 500 grams rather than a kilo.

Crème Anglaise

• 294 grams milk
• 73.5 grams cream
• 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
• 59 grams egg yolk
• 73.5 grams sugar

1. Bring the milk, cream, and vanilla bean to a simmer in a saucepan, then remove the pan from the heat and let the bean steep for 10 minutes or longer.
2. Meanwhile, set a bowl in ice and put a strainer in the bowl.
3. Remove the bean, scrape out the seeds, and return them to the pot. Put the empty bean pod in your sugar bowl.
4. In a bowl, whisk together the yolks and sugar thoroughly.
5. Bring the milk and cream back to a simmer. Pour about half of it into the yolks, whisking continuously, then pour it all back into the pan with the remaining milk and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously with a rubber spatula (or flat-edged wood spoon) until the sauce thickens to nappe consistency (when you lift the spatula out, you can draw a finger through the sauce).
6. Pour it through the strainer into the bowl set in ice, and stir with the spatula until the sauce has cooled.

Yield: 500 grams crème anglaise, a little more than 2 cups

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My post on making your own salted caramel sauce.
• If you are British, nothing goes better then crème anglaise and a steamed pudding.
• Modernist Cuisine has a few interesting takes on desserts for the home chef.
• Whip up a batch of banana fritters and dunk them in the crème anglaise.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

The above is, technically, an intro to the Chicago restaurant Alinea, led by restaurateur Nick Kokonas and chef Grant Achatz, whose story I recount in The Reach of a Chef. The question “Are chefs artists?” almost always annoys me. Grant told me he considers himself as such (and not without reason). His mentor Thomas Keller considers himself, the chef, a craftsman. In a long-ago post I reprint from Reach of a Chef my chapter on chef Masa Takayama, making a case I almost argue against: that the chef can, in certain instances, rise to the level of artist. That chefs are artists is a facile assumption that is almost always wrong.

To complicate matters in the funnest of possible ways, in walks Christian Seel, a chef as actual filmmaker, creating this, one of the most dramatic series of food, cooking, dining images I’ve encountered. If the Food Network/Cooking Channel/Bravo/Travel Channel ever gets its collective act together and discovers the balls to broadcast this kind of work, I’ll be there. Kokonas noted that Alinea patron, friend, and consultant Gary Adcock of Studio 37 was a consultant on the above film. Seel, a CIA grad who has cooked in some of the world’s best restaurants, is currently the media director for the Next/Aviary/Alinea group. I’ve asked him to discuss the film and his thinking:

By Christian Seel

I just read a great book by the Academy Award–winning film editor Walter Murch (In the Blink of an Eye). In it, he prioritizes the six most important elements of film editing. At the top of the list is emotional content. With any short, the first thing I personally do is try to identify an emotion and a story that I want to convey, and work from there. It sounds very obvious put like that, but its not always so, given that you start with something abstract and no characters or dialogue.

Music and sound are always critical with any production. As I’m behind the camera, it’s often difficult to simultaneously capture great images and record quality audio—fundamental aspects of a dining room or kitchen. With the Alinea Intro here, I was lucky enough to find a song that had the exact characteristics I was looking for—an experience larger than life, grandiose. When you have the right music, it does a lot to carry the emotional content. A short really starts to come together and have a life of its own. When you edit with the music, it kind of tells you what it wants to be. A good song or music will have kind of a “drive” to it. It carries or drives you along, which in turn carries the video. Good music/songs will also have emotion and obviously rhythm that you can play off.

I was lucky enough to be able to use a RED Epic camera recently. It records at 5K resolution—roughly five times the resolution of HD video. It’s a serious Hollywood camera used to shoot The Hobbit, Oz The Great and Powerful, The Great Gatsby, and dozens of other major productions. You can play footage from that camera on an IMAX screen and it would still look sharp. It’s really cool how far technology has come. From a practical standpoint, I can stabilize and crop footage and still maintain a very high playback resolution.

With this short in particular, I wanted to convey first a sense of excitement and anxiety that comes from sitting down at a highly anticipated restaurant meal. With Alinea specifically, there are so many hundreds of thousands of movements that go into the production of a meal. If you observe, you can see how all these movements have to fall into place in a very precise way, almost like a choreographed show or a symphony. It’s really impressive and amazing in my opinion. When I cut the piece together, I tried to convey that. The cuts in the video are based almost entirely on these individual movements—as if the employees themselves are moving to this internal rhythm. Each action in the restaurant is like a note being played on an instrument. I don’t pretend to take credit for this concept. I wanted to show bold and decisive movement, which is extremely agile and precise at the same time. With Alinea, the food is so carefully conceived and executed that I try to light it and shoot it as simply, honestly, and straightforward as possible, in hopes of doing it justice.

You can respond to Christian on Twitter: @XtianSeel

If you liked this post, check out these other links:

• My Had Something to Say Video on Stupid Kitchen Tools.
• Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple are the ones who made my Had Something to Say series.
• Emilia’s favorite Alinea movie made by Christian: 21st Century Ltd.
• Chef Brian Polcyn’s video on trussing a chicken.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Lemon Drop. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

A couple weeks ago, inspired by my BFF Blake Bailey’s latest bio, Farther and Wilder (boffo WSJ review here), I offered a Tom Collins, gin-lemon-soda. But on retrospect it was only OK—it would be the perfect libation on a hot summer evening, but it was March. Also, I could hardly taste the gin, and what’s the point of that unless you’re drinking the cheap shit? Just to check, I ordered one last weekend at a restaurant and it was so bad I didn’t even finish it (which is not like me, that’s how bad it was—how do you screw up something as simple as that?).

But I loved the idea of the heavy lemon. I loved the idea of, every now and then, not being aware of the alcohol in my drink. What does this lead to? Well the latter leads to using vodka, America’s go-to, boneless-skinless-chicken-breast default spirit. Yes, sometimes I have this, even want it (Moscow Mule!—need to invest in the sporty mugs next time).

So last weekend whilst looking for a cocktail using vodka that was worth making, I went to my sterling cocktail companion See Mix Drink, and found the Lemon Drop. I had been making lemon curds for the new book and had an abundance of lemons. Thus it was decided. And it is absolutely lovely. I will be making this very drink tonight before watching the finale of Season 5 of Madmen so that I am properly primed for Season 6. It’s alcoholic lemonade, a delightful cocktail.

Lemon Drop

• 2 ounces vodka
• 1 ounce lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup (one part sugar dissolved in one part water)
• Lemon peel

1. Combine all fluids in a shaker, fill with ice, stir or swirl for a minute or two, and strain into a coupe glass.
2. Garnish with lemon peel.

If you liked this post, take a look at these links:

• My other vodka cocktail post, besides the MM, is the Bloody Mary.
• A fascinating article on Harry’s New York Bar in Paris from the NYT—learn about its great history.
• The Vodka Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Learn how to make your own infused spirits.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

A foie gras farmer feeding her ducks during the brief period of gavage. The ducks at the bottom of the photo showed no signs of illness or discomfort (they were quite merry, actually, if that’s possible). Photo by Michael Ruhlman.

Last summer, on assignment for Condé Nast Traveler, I visited a farm that raises ducks for foie gras, driven there along harrowing roads in southwestern France by Kate Hill. I’d never seen the practice, vilified in America, of force-feeding ducks and, being in the land of foie gras and confit de canard, I had to see for myself. The farm, Souleilles, run by Yves and Geneviève Boissière, is wide, wide open in the town of Frespech. The husband and wife were warm and welcoming and watched me take an iMovie and iPhone pix of the practice while Yves spoke at length about the process. The ducks are pasture raised most of their lives, then force fed for 14 days, beginning with a little less than half a pound twice a day, increasing to less than a pound (400 grams) at the end. Granted, it’s a lot of food for that size animal, but I saw them in the final days of their mortal coil, and they waddled happily between the old lady’s legs, pointed their beaks skyward of their own accord as the woman popped the tube in and massaged the food down toward their gizzard, a process that took about five seconds. They then waddled away briskly, quacking and flapping, to the other side of the cage. They weren’t crowded, showed no evidence of sickness, had plenty of room, and lived in clean pens, behaving not at all like puking frat boys stumbling all over each other but rather more like Beatrix Potter’s Jemima Puddle-Duck. Again most of their lives are spent in a pasture the size of a football field. A better life than the millions of Perdue chickens enjoy surely.

Yves Boissiere, who raises ducks in Frespech, in southwestern France.
Photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

All this came to mind because of the news of the current bills lobbied for by Big Ag to make it illegal to try to record harmful farming practices in the United States. Which is hardly the exception in our factory-farming, cheap-meat country. If it were the exception, why would Big Ag be spending big money trying to prevent the harm from being broadcast?

Jedediah Purdy wrote an articulate op-ed two days ago in the NYTimes and the paper’s editorial board seconded it. America doesn’t need more farm secrecy, it needs more farm transparency. If you don’t want someone to be allowed to film inside your building where the food our kids are eating is being slaughtered, you should be shut down until you welcome the videographer.

If you want to eat meat, I believe you should be present—or, better, a participant—in the death of at least one of the animals that you eat. I took part in a chicken slaughter last summer. It was not easy, nor should it be. I cooked the chicken I killed and gutted. I took very good care to cook it perfectly. I witnessed a humane slaughter of a Mangalitsa hog the following fall and a demonstration of how it was debristled, gutted, and broken down. I’ve twice visited a slaughterhouse in Ashland, Ohio, where locally raised cows are dispatched and broken down for their muscle and bone, a federal inspector checking each one (they’re big animals and it’s pretty gruesome). I’ve written about why I believe it is ethical and yes, humane, to eat meat. I think vegetarianism is a healthy and good choice if that’s what you want and what your body wants. I believe that veganism is lunacy, and arguably inhumane (but a superb weight loss plan and, adhered to long enough, perhaps even an effective birth control strategy).

But regardless what I believe, we are a meat-eating country and the Perdues, McDonalds, Smithfields, Monsantos, and Cargills are going to keep it that way, have no fear. What we and, more importantly, our legislators can do is refuse to sell out to the Big Ag lobbies for their election cash and help to make animal husbandry as humane as possible nationwide and without exception. It’s very, very hard given the billions of animals we slaughter yearly for food. But surely the first step is transparency, not secrecy, which these new bills are trying to ensure so that you can have your tasty McRib and boneless Kentucky Fried for pennies. It’s good for big business and helps your senator and representative keep that glinting smile for the camera. But it’s certainly not good for the animals we rely on for our food, which means it’s not good for your family.

“These ducks are bound for the cassoulet pot tomorrow,” says Yves, “but don’t tell them, they’ll go on strike.”

These are happy, healthy ducks in clean uncrowded conditions. The 400,000 ducks raised for foie gras in this country enjoy the same. I wish this were true of the billions of other animals we kill for food (hello, California?!).

We, worms’ meat ourselves, in Mercutio’s memorable phrase, should do better. Though now that I think about it, perhaps Congress should outlaw worms?

If you liked this post, there’s something wrong with you; this post should piss you off no matter whose side you’re on. Keep reading:

• My recent rant Cook Your Own Food.
  
• Civil Eats is a great resource to learn more about food policy and politics.
• Support local farmers by finding the ones near you at Local Harvest.
• Take a look at Michael Pollan’s books and site.

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.

Regina Turner Simmons and her weekday minestrone. Photo by sister Donna.

Tuesday or Wednesday is usually soup day here, as it was last week when Donna’s sister, Regina, was here for Cakes 101, to teach me cake basics and all about the creams and curds that fill a cake and give it flavor. I wanted to be able to show what a proper cake could look like in the book we’re currently working on, and as Regina bakes wedding and special-occasion cakes in the Hudson Valley, we brought her in for a working visit.

We spend Thanksgiving with Donna’s family in Germantown, NY, and last year Regina had two big pots of soup on the stove as the family converged on the house, one of which was so beloved by my daughter that I asked Regina to make it while she was here. She asked only if I had some chicken stock; I told her that I’d made some from the chicken we’d had the night of her arrival. She said, “Oh, then the soup will be really good.”

Soup really is markedly better with your own chicken or vegetable stock, but in this case there are so many ingredients that water will do or, if you must, good quality store-bought “broth” (though I’d dilute it with water).

During a break in the action, Regina got the mise en place together (cut onions, herbs, tomatoes, etc.). It all fit on a small cutting board and was prepared long before the soup was ready (you could do it all a day ahead and refrigerate it if you need to get dinner on the table fast). The soup itself comes together in about 2o minutes. That and a salad and some good toasted bread made a hearty weekday dinner (and nourishing with all those vegetables and garbanzo beans). Thanks, Regina!

Auntie Reggie’s Minestrone

• 4 (15-ounce) cans garbanzo beans (or 1 pound of dried garbanzos, cooked separately, which is my preference but we didn’t have time)
• 1 onion, cut into small dice
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt to taste (a couple of teaspoons)
• 1 quart chicken stock or water
• 1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon minced rosemary
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• black pepper to taste
• soy sauce to taste (about a tablespoon)
• 6 plum tomatoes, cut into small dice
• 2 cups cooked little pasta, such as ditalini
• 2 tablespoons minced parsley
• grated Parmigiano-Reggiano for serving (optional)

1. Purée half of the garbanzo beans and set aside.
2. In a large heavy pot, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat, adding the salt as you do.
3. When the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes, add the liquid, tomato paste, rosemary, cumin, pepper, soy sauce, garbanzo beans (both puréed and whole), and tomatoes and simmer for about 10 minutes.
4. Add the pasta and continue to cook until the pasta is hot.
5. Serve, topped with the parsley and grated Parm, if desired.

This will feed 6 to 8, and leftovers are great.

If you liked this post, check out these other links:

• My recent posts on making French Onion Soup and Matzo Ball Soup.
• How to make your own consommé and clarify it.
• Food & Wine shares some recipes for spring soups.
• Of course I used the Dalton-Ruhlman offset serving spoon and set the table with the offset soup spoons!

© 2013 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2013 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved.