In the course of doing some light research on plum varieties, I came across this gem online:

The Fruit Manual; Containing The Descriptions and synonymes of the fruits and fruit trees commonly met with in the gardens & orchards of Great Britain, with selected lists of those most worthy of cultivation

It was published in 1860 and is a collection of varieties of fruit, described in detail. There are over 20 entries for apples starting with ‘G’ alone, including the Golden Knob (Small, ovate, and a little flattened. Skin yellow, much covered with russet, with a reddish tinge on one side. Eye open, stalk very short. Flesh greenish white, firm, crisp, and juicy), the Gloria Mundi (of very large size, roundish, and flattened. Skin pale yellowish green, with a faint tinge of blush on one side. Eye large and open. Stalk short and stout. Flesh white, tender, and juicy) and the Geey Leadington (An excellent dessert apple).

All of which put me in the mind not of sultry hot weather fruits, but of autumn orchards, cooler breezes, and what sweater I’ll put on the dog for the first frost.

If you want to read a more contemporary, American catalogue of apples, check out Beyond the McIntosh, Corby Kummer’s article on the wild and the reclaimed from The Atlantic. 

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I was working a shift at the coop and found these on the shelf in produce:

GHERKINS! They look like watermelons for a dollhouse. I made cornichons; depending on how successful they are I’ll share the recipe. We’ll know in three weeks, after I make a pate and crack a jar open.

I dined at Per Se Monday night as the result of a very canny wager made with the Cook Crush almost a year ago. To describe each of our 20 courses, each an exquisite morsel, would be to attempt to capture the elegance of a butterfly by pinning it down. And it would be bragging.

BUT. Come on. It was by a long stretch the best meal I’ve ever had, and each individual component of the meal was the best of its kind that I’ve ever had. Best butter. Best salt. Best uni vinaigrette. Best corn bavois. Best truffles-on-truffles. Best blueberry sorbet. It gave me knowledge of a fruit entirely new to me: the rowan berry, pictured above, the fruit of the mountain ash known for its bitter alpine taste and as a folksy digestive tonic, which I enjoyed in its eau de vie form as the night drew to a close. Most romantic. Most comfortably attended. It gave me an opportunity to sit as though in a zepplin hovering over Central Park watching the sun go down and the lights come up around the perimeter of the lungs of the city.

My meal at Per Se affirmed my sense - so often challenged in this city of hype and empty labels - that some of the really big deals in life are in fact really big deals.

It was a hot day at the dog run, and I had to do chores at work in the afternoon, so when I got home and started pitting fruit for my annual batch of maraschino cherries, my mind got to wandering about how to use the excess maraschino liquor in a refreshing beverage. (You need more liquor simmering in the pot than you will use in the jars.)

My first impulse was to put a splash of it in some soda water with a wedge of lime, but I’d been hankering to use some of the spicy coffee flower honey I got at the coop. So I made limeade - 3 limes, 1 cup of water, 2 tablespoons honey - mixed it 1:1 with the cherry-stained maraschino left over from simmering and canning the cherries, and topped with soda water. Pink, tart, sweet, floral.

When you have plateaux de fruits de mer on your mind as the perfect dinner and you are served a disappointing plateau, it is only natural to remedy the state of dissatisfaction with a second dinner accompanied by a bottle of champagne to wash away the irritation piqued by a perfectly easy food presentation done wrong.

Take shellfsih. Open it or cook and chill it. Serve it prettily. Not an insurmountable challenge, especially for a seafood restaurant. 

On Saturday after a sweaty day of errands, I had an exceptionally good plateau de mer at Balthazar. It was a follow up to an exceptionally disappointing plateau de mer at Ed’s Lobter Bar.

A study in contrasts: Ed’s had 2 cherrystones, 2 littlenecks, 4 oysters (provenance unknown) and half of a lobster so frigidly frozen you couldn’t taste a thing, plopped on a plate of ice. Balthazar’s had two tiers of abundant crustacea and molluskery as well as a whole hard shell crab, was dripping with lovely sea beans and ice, perfect in temperature, and presented the extra special treat of periwinkles on the top tier (yes, it was a tiered affair).

Periwinkles are sea snails. They are firm, just a teeny bit chewy and dense. To me they are special however prepared unless utterly rubberized, because they are rarely found on menus and only sold at fish shops in Chinatown.  Balthazar’s periwinkles are extra fine: there is some genius in the kitchen who makes a tarragon-laden court bouillion in which he simmers the winks, perhaps one at a time judging from their perfect doneness.

Ed’s plateau cost $45 and was worth $15 Balthazar’s cost $60 and honestly, was worth twice that for the fun elegance and various taste thrills. It ended up being a very delicious date (and I could go on about how 10 years on Balthazar is still a champ). The bartender at Balthazar even bought us an Armangac after our meal.

I bought a jar of fair trade raw coffee flower honey (from the Bird Mountain Zapatista cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico at the food coop). It is imported by “Cafe Rebelion” and sold online, along with lots of other Zapatista products, at Rebel Imports. I like honey a great deal, and like to compare the different flavors imparted from the pollen of different flowers in dominant varietal honeys - I came back from Paris a couple of years ago with a bag of 7 small jars for comparitive tasting. So support of indigenous rights, flavor research and the quest for deliciousness were certainly behind the purchase of this rebel honey, but mostly I got it because it is the toughest looking food product I’ve ever seen.

It has a mahogany color, low viscosity, and a spicy caramelized taste. It majorly enhances ginger tea, but isn’t ideal for a PB&H sandwich.

Trace of still-edible honey was found in sealed jars when pharoahs’ tombs were opened in Egypt in the 19th century. Honey lasts forever, which is good as this is a very large jar.

I still enjoy Young Adult fiction from time to time, in part for nostalgia’s sake. I like learning, and rereading a favorite from my childhood allows me to remembering learning, which is a sweet memory indeed.

One of my favorite authors of all time is E.L. Konigsburg, and one of my most beloved books is From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler. In that book Konigsburg describes happiness as “excitement that has found a settling down place.” (But she the goes on to note that “there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around.”)

Job. Dog. Cook crush. All in place. Settled in the best way. I’m back.

Did you know that carrot sticks and celery mixed with 1 part apple cider vinegar/4 parts water and allowed to marinate for an hour, ar a great snack for a puppy? Especially when they are healing from eye surgery.

In medieval Scandinavia fish was preserved by being buried in salty sand on the shoreline. The salt would extract the moisture in the fish flesh, and allow the fish to be kept longer. The hole that was dug and filled with fish was a “grav” - you can see the etymological roots of our “grave” - and the fish itself (usually fatty salmon capable of standing up to a salty profile) lax. Gravlax. Buried salmon. Funny that a dish received as so celebratory and elegant should have such a sepulchral, earthy origin.

The process of making gravlax is not at all difficult except that it takes foresight and time. You don’t have to prepare it on a whole side of salmon or anything crazy like that; you can make a pound or two to use as an appetizer for a dinner party or as a brunch at home.  The steps are as follows:

• Get yourself a salmon filet
• Cover it with a dry cure of salt, sugar and spices
• Let the fish sit out until the salt and sugar disolve 
• Wrap and refrigerate
• Wait for 2 days for the moisture to be extracted from the flesh and for flavor to be imparted
• Rinse off the cure
• Slice as thin as possible on an angle, against the grain of the salmon flesh.

Cooking for Engineers, which has a delightful convention for displaying recipes, recommends freezing the fish prior to curing to kill and lurking parasites, but if you use fresh, high-quality salmon, it isn’t necessary. You are already preparing this at least 2 days out, for goodness sakes. 

The gravlax we made used 2 cups of salt, one cup of sugar, caraway seeds, aquavit, no dill. Mark Bittman collected recipes for both basic and more elaborate flavor profiles in a Minimalist piece on gravlax from a decade ago. Rather than the traditional mustard-and-dill sauce, we served the fish with what amounts to a tartar sauce prepared with crème fraîche instead of mayonnaise. Shallots, capers, cornichons and cream: I could eat it by the spoonful. 

The silky, dense, salty fish with its tart, creamy cloak of sauce was heavenly with René Geoffroy “Rosé de Saignée” Brut champagne, dry and redolent of orange peel. Incedentally, the champagne is called “saignée” because of the process by which it gets its pink color, wherein the grape skins are left to imbue the wine, literally “bleeding off” color as well as flavor.

Gravlax, the buried fish, is perfectly complimented by a bloody wine.

I have tried one final time and now must admit defeat - I do not like tinned salmon. I like tinned tuna - love is probably more accurate - and I subsist on tinned sardines. But tinned salmon is gross. There is an unnatural slime to it, and there are lots of little cartilage bits that make me think of eye sockets and it doesn’t matter how much you dress it up, it still tastes like something you would get in an airport. I’ve tried salmon cakes, and fakey nicoise, and all manner of mayo- and olive oil-based salads. No good. Unfortunately I recently purchased a selection of cans from Trader Joes, to do a tinned salmon taste-off. I only made it through the first (wild Alaskan) and still have unused cans of wild Red and Pink. If you want them just leave me a comment to that effect and I’ll bring them over.