Fish, Food, and Finery

It’s not Sunday, it’s Monday. And a special one, as it marks the (unofficial) end of summer, certainly not too soon for me. C’mon fall! Although when I was complaining the other day about the hot summer, somebody replied; “You don’t have to shovel high temperatures”. True enough… Anyway some random stuff from over the weekend..

Denizens of the Deep

No doubt you’ve seen the newspaper (or at least Facebook postings) that were rocketing around cyberspace last week about the bull sharks that were “caught” off Point Lookout. They even made the Channel 4 news. Well, fine, but what I didn’t understand is why they had to dispatch the beasts. I think there was a quote of “fought for hours”. I dunno, it just sort of struck me wrong. A little research shows that they can be a threat to humans, so I guess their bad luck was being in the wrong place at the right time. I have never heard of a shark attack around here however. Sharks of one sort or another have plied the waters around here for eons and long before us, just visit Calvert Cliffs State Park, or all the little vendors beside Route 4 selling shark teeth to those dimwits (like me) who can search the beach for hours and never find one/any.

Let’s get together…

One of the plethora of food mags I get is Martha Stewart’s little Readers Digest size (dates me, eh?) “Everyday Food”. It occasionally has some interesting recipes and great cooking tips like three fully illustrated pages on “Boiling Water Effectively”. Emeril has also snaked his way to a couple of pages. Anyway the September issue has a recipe for One-Pot Chicken with Sausage and Potatoes with the tag line: “Cooking a few Ingredients Together is an Easy Route to A Great Supper”, along with a picture of a pot of golden chicken nestled on a bed of onions, potatoes and celery. Great concept! “Cooking a few Ingredients Together?”. Not so fast. The recipe calls for you to: brown the sausage, and then transfer to another dish; put chicken in, brown that, then transfer to the dish with the sausage. So far, that’s two transfers.. Then add onions, potatoes, and celery to the pot, and cook them. This togetherness thing isn’t going too good! After the veggies have softened, you add back in the chicken and sausage, add some water and simmer. Together at last! Well, not quite. Now you transfer the chicken to a platter, add some vinegar and oregano to the pot, and stir to combine. After all that, you then transfer the veggies on top of the chicken. Done? Nope. Transfer the sauce to the gravy boat. How many “transfers” can you have in a “Cooked Together" dish? I'm dizzy. Thanks, Martha, now go make some wooden hand blocked place cards…

Glass houses

Somebody (I know lots of "somebody’s”) sent me a link to an article by some guy named Will Lyons in the Wall Street Journal, called “Telling a Wine by it’s Glass”. It was another of those pieces you see from time to time about Riedel’s special glasses (at hefty prices per stem, he quotes 100 Pounds!) that are designed to enhance a particular varietal. Old Bordeaux, Young Bordeaux, Alsatian, New World Chardonnay, Old World Chardonnay, Burgundy, you name it...probably 25 different ones. The theory is that the glass is constructed so as to direct the wine to the proper part of your sensory system to enhance the nuances of that particular wine, allowing full appreciation. A large number of those kinds of articles de-bunk that theory as a classic case of marketing to snobs. This article however, was exactly the opposite. He extols the virtue of the “right glass for the right wine”, and tells about how he poured the same wine (2003 Chambolle Musigny) in several different glasses and discovered “In each glass, the wines taste changed dramatically”. I’ve never done it, but I largely think it’s a load. Maybe an experiment, but I don’t know anybody with a brace of Riedel Vinums. He does, however report that there are lower cost alternatives, from such well know manufacturers as Schott Zwiesel, Zalto Glasmanufaktur, Dartington, and Eisch. Jelly glasses work fine.. Good wine is good wine...Bad wine is bad wine, silk purse sow's ear kind of thing.

Coming attractions: Crabs Two.

we made a second attempt at summer hard crabs, but we’ll rest your eyes and do that later…and I have to admit that for crab picking, there might be a little leniency in

DFD