Recipe for Walnut Catsup, 1781 (photo: Tania deLuzuriaga)

Take a look-y here. Tania of The Musing Bouche has just posted a *wonderful* piece on the treasures preserved at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library in the form of historical cookbooks.

History buffs, cookbook collectors, and any/all cooks among us are free to visit Schlesinger any day by appointment to peruse the archive and feast sumptuously on the writings and ingredients of, say, German Kosher Jews from the 1880s, early 20th-century Mexicans and Americans of the WWII generation. Plus, Julia Child devotees, you’re in luck! Her personal copy of  The Joy of Cooking, first edition, is at the Schlesinger!

Whet your appetite with The Musing Bouche post and Tania’s beautiful photographs of several the cookbooks, then get your fill at Harvard. Tania also links you to information about the week-long seminar offered by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, the Schlesinger’s honorary curator of its culinary collection, on how academics can use culinary texts to inform their research.

Happy President’s Day, everyone.

What’s on tap for today? We’ve had our eye on this one for a while.

American Public Media produces a weekly program called The Splendid Table–“the show for people who love to eat”–which airs here on WBUR each Saturday at 6pm. It’s a gem.

Food writer, cooking teacher and radio personality Lynne Rossetto Kasper has been the host of this Minnesota-based, award-winning show since its beginnings in the mid-90s.

More a conversation about food than a recipe fix, The Splendid Table is a great resource for what’s going on in the culinary world all around the world, plus a peek into the kitchens of ordinary folk and the kinds of thorny problems they’re running into. This latter comprises the call-in section of the program; you ask, Lynne answers. It’s kind of like Car Talk’s ‘what do I do about…?’ without the thigh-slapping humor and Tom’s cackle. Continue reading →

Photo: blmurch/Flickr

You read that headline correctly: the Boston Tree Party. What once would have just been a punny name has taken on a strange weight in these days of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. But never fear – though the Tree Party may be political, it’s hardly controversial. In fact, founder Lisa Gross says the project is an attempt to bring the community together. How? By planting 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees in publicly accessible places across Boston – a goal she hopes will be used to spark a city-wide dialogue on civic involvement and the environment.

When I spoke to Gross, she put a heavy emphasis on the symbolic importance of apple trees. Apparently, the first apple orchard in America was planted in Boston – right on Beacon Hill. Then as in now, apple trees need to be grown in pairs so that they can cross-pollinate and bear fruit – a fact Gross uses as a quick analogy for the necessity of an interconnected society.

Perhaps more enticingly (for PRK readers, anyway), the heirloom apples that the Tree Party will grow are truly special. You won’t find Roxbury Russets and Black Oxfords in most grocery stores, but maybe now you’ll be able to pick them on a walk around town. For a revolutionary touch, maybe you’ll even get a taste of Esopus Spitzenburg, an apple that was supposedly Thomas Jefferson’s favorite. Continue reading →

Photo: Flickr/dichohecho

You like to cook. But most importantly, you like to eat. And you like to talk about it.

Here’s the issue: you’re hardly alone.

If you want to make a career of this, your toe-hold into the world of food is likely to begin with a food internship. Helene York of The Atlantic recently wrote about how to land one. Food interns, she says, range from new graduates to those mid-career, and there are a variety of opportunities for all. No matter your food passion, there’s an internship that can help you explore it. Farming? Nutrition? Hunger-related issues? York gives suggestions on where to look. Continue reading →

Photo: Flickr/D H Wright

LOCAL BITES

Boston Public Market
If you haven’t walked by the empty building space, 136 Blackstone Street, near Boston’s Haymarket, you might not know that the city has proposed to install at that spot a year-round, indoor market of local foods – produce, meats, fish and more. Cities such as Seattle are famous for their public markets; Boston has that potential. Voice your opinions and make suggestions at the Boston Public Market Community Workshop February 23, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. The Boston Globe reports that the market could open as early as 2012.

Hello Again
Learning to cook gluten-free can be tough – no wheat flours, no rye, no barley. Say ‘hello, again’ to favorites like brownies and chicken potpie with a lesson with the very famous Pastry Chef Jim Dodge. He will demonstrate a gluten-free dinner at Boston University March 3. Tickets are $50. Past events seem to have sold out quickly. FYI, Dodge baked chocolate buttermilk fudge cake with crystallized rose petals with the late Bostonian and food heroine Julia Child on “Lessons with Master Chefs.”

Souper Bowl III
Head to Roxbury Sunday to benefit the Haley House. For $25, you get soup made from local ingredients in a clay bowl you can take home at the annual Souper Bowl. There will be two seatings: 1-3 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. at the Haley House Bakery Café, 12 Dade Street. Continue reading →

Courtesy Photo

My own big brother spent serious time commercial fishing in Alaska after graduating from college but a group of fisherwomen profiled on WBUR’s Here & Now, sisters Tomi and Kiyo Marsh and their friend Laura Cooper, took their fishing experience to an entirely new level.

Imagine this concoction: one part fishing adventure, one part ingenuity, one part killer cooking skills.   That will get you the fisherwomen’s new book, “Fishes and Dishes: Seafood Recipes and Salty Stories from Alaska’s Commercial Fisherwomen.”

Here & Now spoke with Cooper and Tomi Marsh about their project, and included some pretty fantastic recipes.  Check it all out HERE.

A Create a Cook birthday party in action. Photo: Courtesy of Create a Cook

Not to start some generational warfare on this mild-mannered food website, but listen up, Baby Boomers – you’ve created a generation of young adults who don’t know how to cook beyond the microwave. It used to be that everyone (or at least every woman) grew up learning how to throw together a casserole or a stew; now, when I tell my fellow millennials that I cook, they treat it like an exotic hobby instead of the everyday necessity that it is.

At least one company is working to reverse this trend – Newton’s Create a Cook, owned by local food blogger Jo Horner, which teaches children as young as three how to make corn chowder and biscuit tortoni (to use two examples from this week). Founded by Renee Cavallo, a former Newton school teacher, she noticed students going to sports lessons and music lessons and art lessons and thought – why not food lessons?

“[…]This is a pretty competitive town,” Horner said. “And she [Cavallo] wanted an activity for kids to do who weren’t sports-oriented or weren’t musical or didn’t have some kind of niche.”

For all those busy moms and dads out there, I imagine this program is a dream come true. Not only is little Frankie involved in a supervised and creative extracurricular program, he’s bringing home dinner as well. It’s like having your own miniature personal chef! Or, less cynically, it’s a good way to teach him about math and fractions, measuring, health, foreign cultures – all those wonderfully complex ideas and issues that come together in the food we eat. These lessons can even be a bonding activity – the pre-schooler classes are for parents and children to enjoy together. Continue reading →

Photo: flickr/Rob Marquardt

Every day, a fresh batch of emails appears in the Slow Food Boston inbox. They usually run along the lines of… “We’ll be visiting in April. What restaurants do you recommend?” (We don’t certify restaurants, but here are a few we like personally.) “I’m a recent graduate of Emerson College and about to launch my career as a food blogger. Do you have an internship program?” (No, but we’d be happy to connect you to one of the many excellent food-related groups in the area.) “I have an idea for/would like to help out with a Slow Food event. What should I do?” (Eureka! Another volunteer! Please contact us.) But this one was a bit different. Written in the relentlessly peppy tone of the seasoned marketer, it told us about an organization that was, like ours, “fiercely passionate about food with integrity,” and that wanted to donate refreshments, host a discussion, sponsor an event or talk about other ways we could “work together and strengthen our shared mission.”

Yup, Chipotle had reached out.

The restaurant chain has much to be commended. The founder, Steve Ellis, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is passionate about from-scratch cooking, a major accomplishment in an industry that often relies on partially or fully cooked foodstuffs provided by giant food service companies such as Aramark and Sodexo. In 2000, after visiting a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), Ellis vowed to serve only humanely raised pork in Chipotle’s burritos. Forty percent of its beans are organically grown. And recently, the company committed to sourcing 50% of at least one produce ingredient from the regions in which it has stores.

But as laudable as all these practices are, Chipotle is still a fast-food restaurant. Begun in 1993 with a single location and an $85K family loan, by 2004, under the tutelage of Daddy Deep Pockets, aka McDonald’s, it had exploded to 500 locations across the US. A 2006 initial public offering (IPO), the 2nd most successful ever for a restaurant chain (share prices doubled), fueled further growth; today Chipotle has over 1000 sites nationwide and is looking to expand abroad. With such outsized ambition, it’s probably inevitable that some ugly issues have popped up. Continue reading →

My boyfriend and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year. On Saturday, we absconded from the outside world with triple cream brie and wine drenched goat cheese from The Meat House, truffles from Beacon Hill Chocolates – basically, all our favorite hedonistic foods in one night. I woke up the next morning still feeling full and not at all prepared for my PRK assignment that day: covering Chinatown’s lion dance parade.

Growing up in the suburbs, my only conception of Chinese food involved a general named Tso, and when I moved to Boston I found that Chinatown had more than enough offerings to fit my fast food expectations. But this visit, I made something of a Chinese New Year’s resolution: I’d find a light and healthy lunch amid all the parade revelry (never mind that the Chinese New Year was weeks ago – the parade was still ostensibly held in the holiday’s honor).

This endeavor was made difficult for a number of reasons. First among them was the sheer selection of yummy-looking foods. Like any holiday, the Chinese New Year has its own set of traditional meals, depending on the country it’s being celebrated in (quick history: “Chinese New Year” is a misnomer in much the same way Boston’s Chinatown is – both actually encompass a wide array of Asian cultures that have been influenced by China’s enormous cultural sway. The lion dance itself, in fact, is not uniquely Chinese). These include dumplings, fried vegetable cakes and various noodles – as well as some decidedly more wholesome dishes like Buddha’s Delight, one of a handful of authentic dishes with a name that may be familiar to Americans. Continue reading →

Sean Frederick of Citizen Public House (Photo: Susanna Bolle)

Sean Frederick of Citizen Public House & Oyster Bar is a relatively new kid in town, a member of a new generation of talented young bartenders in Boston. And though he may mix a mean drink, he is as kind and welcoming as can be behind the bar. Whether you want a elaborately crafted cocktail or a simple vodka straight-up, he’ll serve it with an equal measure of grace and skill.

He’s also rather modest, even self-effacing. “When you first called, I thought you must have the wrong person,” he says with a laugh as we sit down to talk before the beginning of his shift on a gray winter afternoon. “I haven’t been in this town long enough.” While he may have been tending bar in Boston for a relatively short time — he started at Citizen when it opened this past fall — he’s been a cocktail enthusiast and ardent admirer of Boston bartenders for many years. Indeed, he’s positively rhapsodic when describing his first Sazerac cocktail at Eastern Standard: “It’s what a great cocktail should be, where the whole is greater than its parts,” he says wistfully. “I fell hard for that first Sazerac. It’s like that old flame; it always seduces you.”

Continue reading →