It’s been 100 years since Joseph Archibald Query created the magic that is FLUFF in his kitchen in Somerville, MA and sold it door to door.
He didn’t invent marshmallow. He just repacked and renamed it for immortality.
7 millions pounds of Fluff
were sold last year.
There is a recipe contest at the Fluff Festival..I’ve been thinking of Fluff….
I was reading Laura Shapiro’s What She Ate
In the introduction (no, she doesn’t mention Fluff….bear with me) she writes of Nell B. Nichols who published a food calendar in Woman’s Home Companion. For May 7, 1953 Nell offers a recipe that dips peanut butter sandwiches in an egg-milk batter and then fries them. That’s right – Peanut Butter Sandwich French Toast. And I thought….
FLUFFERNUTTER
FRENCH TOAST
That baked French Toast that I made a variation of, has been on my mind. My brain has been full of all kinds of bread and egg and milk things.
But, before I have a recipe to test, I have a few more thin gs to ponder. Like – what bread? It has to hold up, but fluffy white bread is classic for a fluffernutter…and maple syrup wouldn’t be assertive enough on top…..
Chocolate syrup on top would be better then maple. √
Or how about chocolate BREAD….now it’s officially dessert…and chocolate syrup doesn’t go on top of chocolate bread.
The same, real Brown Derby restaurant that Lucy and Ethel went to when they went to Hollywood. The Episode where Lucy dumps food all over a movie star – William Holden.
William Holden orders a Cobb Salad…a Hollywood Salad! A GLAMOUR Salad!!!!
Cobb Salad – named after a Brown Derby owner, Bob Cobb.
Of course, since Lucy is involved……and there was a pie…….
Before Lucy – After Lucy
It was a few years later that I found out what was in a Cobb Salad….
page from The Brown Derby Cookbook, probably the 1949 edition – here are several versions of the Brown Derby and it’s cookbooks
I recently had a Cobb Salad that was a variation on the theme. It was made with radicchio instead of greens, which was a little too warming for a summer salad, but for an autumnal one…..Mmm Mmmm Good!
And it was chopped up nicely. Somewhere in the 21st century we’ve forgotten that salads are eaten with forks in public places and that they’re supposed to be ready to eat and not need more knife work.
This version also had roasted butternut squash and turkey instead of chicken and dried cranberries, a Plymouthy version. Good, and got me thinking about a few more tweaks. I’d do chopped radicchio as the base, great color, nice change from KALE (hasn’t the clock ticked past that by now????)
Anyhow – turkey instead of chicken – but a roasted turkey. A roasty flavor would help here. Maybe toss a turkey breast in while roasting the butternut squash.
Now that the nights are cool – last night was downright COLD – a little “toss a sheet pan of something in the oven” action is NOT out of the question., and if it helps to stave off another night of not turning the heat on…more power to that!
I might use fresh cranberries, once they once they come in, instead of dried. Blue cheese. Hard boiled eggs – easy. Bacon? No hardship there. I also have managed not to start a jar of bacon grease, so get a jar ready….I’m going to go with black olives as the O…..I just don’t like raw onion, and since it doesn’t like me right back, we’re even on that score.
If I make an Apple/Maple dressing, a little chopped apple will temper it, give the sweet to go with the rich/spicy/…apple cider vinegar, chopped apple, maple syrup and a touch of oil….
The temptation to ‘pumpkin spice’ this is nearly overwhelming, but I’ll try to resist.
Wednesday is Food Section Day. I pick up both the Boston Globe and the New York Times.
Manage a fairly “on time” home arrival and even the signs put up by the Gas Company that the places where I usually park will be a Tow Zone starting tomorrow at 7 AM doesn’t prove to be much of a hindrance – I get a place even closer to my house than usual.
They’ve closed off three blocks of a five block street. And then there was Harvey in Texas, so did all the Utility trucks go there? They haven’t seemed to have started digging and the pile of pipes is as tall as it’s been…
Not sure what to have for supper. Had a big salad for lunch, so maybe some toast, or there’s more of the bread and cheese not Baked French Toast. (The real problem with eating food that has no name is the effort to have to describe it every time.)
In the Globe (I start with the food sections, headlines can wait – what is this about Red Sox stealing signs???? Applegate? No, Boys of Summer – steal BASES, not signs …)
There’s a “Sicilian pasta with Ricotta” and I remember that I bought some ricotta at the Farmer’s Market – last week, the week before?? Better check the expiration date.
All good – AND there’s the box of tri-colored rigatoni that I got on sale…
Put the water on, salt it like the sea.
Re-read the recipe to make sure there is no hidden ingredient or technique that will trip me up …so far so good.
SICILAN PASTA WITH RICOTTA
16 oz. short pasta shape (cavatappi, radiatore, mezzi rigatoni) I had tricolor penne. Prince. It had been on sale. It was also 12 oz. so I adjusted accordingly.
16 oz. whole milk ricotta – 2 cups. I scooped out half and then half of what was left.
¾ cup pasta water – I used 4 oz.
1 cup freshly grated pecorino Romano for serving
Olive oil, salt and pepper for serving.
Bring salt water to a boil. Add pasta, in this case 6 minutes (more or less. I stand over it, spoon in hand, scooping up single pieces, “Are you DONE? Are you Tender? Are you Ready YET??” I look and taste to al dente.
I have a measuring cup that fits under my colander, so when I drain I can have all the pasta water I want. If the water from a can of chick pease is acqua faba, shouldn’t past water be acqua pasta? Or acqua basta, as enough already!
Pour ½ cup of the pasta water back into the pan, toss in the ricotta, and stir it all around. Add the hot penne and stir some more.
Decide it needs more contrast, more bite, more zing than more cheese, so fish out a jar of Kalamata olives – just the thing.
On the plate – a soup plate, because – I put the pasta, top it with some olives and a nice twist of black pepper.
Claudia Catalano Boston Globe Wednesday September 6, 2017, p. G4
I eat at kitchen table.
The downstairs people get a Peapod delivery while I sit down.
Leftovers will be for lunch OR a supper frittata later this week.
Time to put on the kettle for a cup of tea. And to read the rest of the papers.
I read your essay in the New York Times , but I don’t have a phone with a camera in it, so please accept this blog post v. an Instagram of my home cooking.
This is not a recipe. Not really. Not in the written down sense, even when I’m done here writing it down.
Last week, I got a bag of too-crusty sourdough rolls at a deep discount from a bakery. I tossed them in the freezer. Saturday, while I was poking through, seeing what I had on hand before planning my midweek trip to the grocery store, Hmmm – I thought – better use those before I forget…..I took the bag out to defrost.
Sunday morning, I actually read the Baked French Toast recipe I was given as a way to use them up. The recipe was from the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummand.
Although I had the bread, and the eggs on hand (really nice eggs from a friend who raises chickens….Really nice eggs), some other the other ingredients I did NOT have on hand.
One was milk – I’m lactose intolerant, so I don’t keep milk on hand. And then there was the heavy cream…..I keep a little half and half for my coffee….And blueberry season is really over, but pears and apples, with a little prep, could work. That’s when the sugar amounts hit me – ½ cup of sugar, plus ½ cup of brown sugar plus another ½ cup of brown sugar…and then syrup on top?????? That’s a lotta sweet to start the day. Or end it. And at this point I was planning for something suppery.
I did have some buttermilk on hand (Kate’s – real buttermilk, not cultured)
because I was going to make a Chilaquile Casserole variation from Still Life with Menu (p. 177)
with leftover tortillas that I had planned to use in my lunchtime salads until I set one on fire in the toaster oven at work, deciding then never to bring them to work again, at least in living memory of anyone who was there that day. And some shredded taco cheese.
Yes, I had shredded Taco cheese on hand because that’s what they sell at the 7-11 down the street and I wasn’t going to drive over to the grocery just for cheese. No judgement.
So I cubed the bread into bite sized bits, covering the bottom of a non-stick 9×13 pan. I beat my six beautiful and darkly yellowed yolked eggs and added 2 cups of buttermilk, and some salt and pepper. I opened a can of Rotelle tomatoes with mild chiles and added that. Then 1 cup of the shredded taco cheese. Poured it over the bread bits in the pan. Most of the cheese and the diced tomatoes stayed on the top, so I re-arranged them to cover evenly. Put the lid on the pan and popped it into the fridge, went about my day.
At 6 pm I was back, took the pan out of the fridge, preheated the oven to 350° and popped the (plastic) cover off. There are several warnings embossed into the cover reminding you that it is plastic and it should not go into a hot oven. The contents seemed a little dry, so I poured another cup or so of buttermilk on top.
Oven ready, lid off, pan in, timer on for 45 minutes.
This is my timer. Awesomeness.
Looking good, smelling like eggs and chiles and tomatoes and a little bit of cheese good, tasting just fine. Something greens, something fruity – supper or lunch for several days/nights.
It took me more time to write this down then to make and eat it.
Foodways Pilgrim 