Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and…
Continue reading ➞ Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour
From the first gasping breath, when tiny hands claw at air, reaching futilely for an anchor, a rope, air feeds us. Even fish of seas and lakes and rivers seek that building block of air --- oxygen. Fire roars when coddled by oxygen and whimpers like a teat-deprived newborn lamb in its absence. Steam, the…
Continue reading ➞ Eating the Wild Air …
"Carnival is a Butterfly of Winter whose last mad flight of Mardi Gras forever ends his glory." ~ Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin Theo Fabergé, grandson of Carl Fabergé, created this dazzling egg to commemorate Mardi Gras in New Orleans:
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
For those seeking examples of culinary fusion, Hawaii provides a very deep well to peer into. Rachel Laudan discovered this while teaching at the University of Hawaii and wrote an award-winning book about the subject: The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage.* One of those fusion dishes which Laudan mentions, albeit briefly, is a…
Continue reading ➞ De-Constructing Hawaii’s Loco Moco
[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
From Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society, Volume 4, published in 1896, by the American Folklore Society, folk beliefs about Halloween from early America. Most U.S. Halloween practices came from Scotland. 311. On Halloween put an egg to roast before the fire and leave the doors and windows open. When it begins to sweat a…
Continue reading ➞ Saints, Souls, and Haints: Eggs
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]* *Demon eyeballs, click on photo for recipe. Note: for the next two weeks, I'm working on a couple of intensive writing projects, so "Gherkins & Tomatoes" will of necessity be brief, with a look at "Saints, Souls, and Haints" in honor of the ancient traditions of Halloween,…
Continue reading ➞ Idylls of Cuisine, #34
Cooks cook eggs in a plethora of ways. And vendors sell eggs in a myriad of ways. The following photo essay celebrates the ingenuity of egg vendors across the globe. Egg storage and preservation methods vary.
A few days ago, I thumbed through the brand-new, hot-off-the-press version of Larousse Gastronomique. You know, Julia Child's bedtime reading. At least according to the movie, “Julie & Julia.” After all, Julia once remarked that, “If I were allowed only one reference book in my library, Larousse Gastronomique would be it, without question.” First written…
Continue reading ➞ The Chicken or the Egg? 4. Egging Us On
Eggs a guilty pleasure? There's a reason for that. Thanks to Dr. Thomas Royle Dawber’s research team and the famous “gold standard” Framingham Study,[1] eggs morphed into things to be eaten on the sly, enjoyed alone, like a whole bag of foil-wrapped Dove chocolates. Based on the weak statistical correlation between cholesterol levels and heart…
Continue reading ➞ The Chicken or the Egg? 3. Instructions to the Cook
There is reason in roasting of eggs! ~~~ James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides In nineteenth-century America, giddy with conquest and Manifest Destiny, domestic science denizens rose up, called themselves home economists, and jumped on the bandwagon of cleanliness and right thought. The results of that movement set the stage for today’s…
Continue reading ➞ The Chicken or the Egg? 2. The Cooking of Eggs
Living as I do in the heart of moonshine [white lightning] country, I just about dropped the cookbook when I saw the word “Moonshine.” If it had been a Southern cookbook or a Foxfire book, I would have turned the page without a second thought and been done with it. But this reference to “Moonshine”…
[A photograph and nothing else, for silent contemplation.]
Omne vivum ex ovo. "All life comes from an egg." --Latin Proverb-- Eggs and Easter go together like...ham and eggs? Well, it hasn't always been that way. Christians first celebrated Easter in the second century A.D. and the Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine, set the official date for Easter.…
Continue reading ➞ Ham and Eggs
I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger? Paul Newman Paul Newman's death brought up many memories of his films. Since I am a "foodie," one scene in particular popped up in my mind. Yes, that gut-wrenching "meal" in "Cool-Hand Luke," when Luke (Paul Newman) stuffs himself with fifty hard-cooked eggs. Ouch. Thanks,…
Continue reading ➞ The Eggs Had It: Goodbye, “Cool Hand”
