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| Rereading an old bestseller — Foucault’s Pendulum. Unberto Eco’s magnum opus is not as compelling now as it was when it was new. I may not finish it. |
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| The pendulum swings…24 hours a day. In the dome: a classic mural, shared with Sami’s Monday Murals. |
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| Evelyn and Tom have all new doors and door handles, and a new white paint job in their kitchen. I’m featuring their kitchen this month because it’s much more interesting than my own kitchen! |
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| Seared tuna, bread, and salad. |
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| Turkey breast, stuffing, and roast vegetables in Evelyn’s kitchen. |
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| Fantastic Mr. Fox lives in the back yard. (Tom’s photo, shared with Saturday Critters), |
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| Also at Evelyn’s: we watched the semifinals of the Great British Baking Show. |
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| Earlier in November, we visited Elaine and Larry; she had baked some of her wonderful pies. |
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| This is Sherry, one of the original Historians, with her potluck contribution: her grandmother’s sausage, apple, and squash casserole from the 1930s. |
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| The theme of the dinner was APPLES. My Waldorf Salad is a classic American dish. When first introduced at the Waldorf Hotel in New York in 1896, it had only apples, celery, and mayonnaise. Now it has lots of other ingredients as well. |
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| Len made Conchas: Mexican sweet rolls with a crunchy topping |
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| Miriam waited in line for 45 minutes to try the famous tacos at this taqueria, which was awarded a star last month in the first Michelin Guide to Mexico. |
From The LA Times May 23, 2024:
“The taco guy didn’t quite get the fuss. ‘I didn’t realize the magnitude of the whole thing,’ recalled Arturo Rivera Martínez. ‘I had no idea of what a Michelin star was.’ He does now.
“El Califa de León, the modest taquería where Rivera has labored over a sizzling grill for more than two decades, was awarded a star last week in the first-ever Michelin Guide Mexico, instantly turning him and the rest of the staff into epicurean heroes.” (link)
Food and Wine magazine also covered the unexpected star for the taqueria:
“‘The secret is the simplicity of our taco. It has only a tortilla, red or green sauce, and that's it. That, and the quality of the meat,’ Rivera Martínez told the AP, adding that ‘Coke’ is the perfect pairing to his Michelin meals.” (link)
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| Miriam’s lunch — she tried all of the four choices. Liked them! |
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| Breakfast (also dinner): churros and chocolate. |
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| Dinner with a view. |
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| A mezcal bar. |
“Is it possible to sit down to a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce and reflect on the meaning of roots, identities, and origins? That is what I have tried to do in these pages” (A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, p. 9)
“The Italian pasta tradition has been influenced by other histories, other ‘roots,’ which evoke other cultures and other regions of the world. The search for ‘origins,’ in this case, takes us to the Fertile Crescent, the Middle Eastern regions to the east of the Mediterranean, where, ten to twelve thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began, and with it, the culture of wheat and its derivatives—first among them, bread, which became the symbol of that revolution.” (p. 19)
“Original to the western coasts of South America, where it still grows wild, the tomato enjoyed an extraordinary success among the Maya and the Aztecs. It was in Mexico that it met up with the Spaniards of Hernán Cortés, when they occupied the country between 1519 and 1521. It was immediately taken to Spain and that’s how the tomato came to be grafted onto the gastronomic culture of Italy. Naturalists and botanists are the first to mention it, starting with Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1544) who cites it in his commentary on the pharmacological text of Pedacio Dioscoride. … In 1548, Cosimo de’ Medici received a basket of tomatoes from the Florentine gardens of Torre del Gallo, and this is the first evidence from the ‘field’ of an Italian interest for the new plant.” (pp. 55 & 57)
The Aztecs invented tomato sauce, among other things. A traveler to the New World was one Francisco Hernández, physician at the court of Philip II of Spain. During his travels from 1570-77, he wrote sixteen volumes concerning American plants and their uses. He wrote about a Mexican dish: “a delicious sauce or intinctus (dip) that ‘is prepared from sliced tomatoes and chili pepper, which enriches the flavor or almost all dishes and almost all foods, and reawakens the appetite.’” (p. 60)
However, tomato sauce took a long time to become the classic accompaniment to the highly traditional pastas of Italy. Author Ippolito Cavalcanti finally mentioned pasta with tomato sauce in the 1839 edition of his influential cookbook: a first! “The sauce is made from crushed ripe and deseeded tomatoes, placed to cook in a casserole together with their juice (acquiccia) and stirred continuously until, once cooked, they will be milled and cooked down ncoppa a lo fuoco (over the fire). At the end, salt and pepper are added and the sauce is ready, very simple and truly ‘popular.’” (p. 64)
Pellegrino Artusi, author of the most important 19th century Italian cookbook, provided a recipe for tomato sauce “seasoned with onion, garlic, celery, basil, parsley, olive oil, salt, and pepper.” He wrote that it would “lend itself ‘to innumerable uses’… It will be good with boiled meat,… but above all it will be ‘excellent when served with cheese and butter on pasta.’” Artusi’s recipe is also the first instance of using onion and garlic in the tomato sauce! (pp. 66 and 76)
Going onward to other ingredients, Montanari describes how peppers quickly became a staple ingredient of European food after their import from the New World. He explains that olive oil has been made since early antiquity, but its use in pasta is startlingly recent: “Dressing pasta or tomato sauce with olive oil became ‘normal’ only in the second half of the XX century.” (p. 75)
Similarly basil was long considered to be inedible; it became accepted as a culinary herb in the 16th or 17th century. Along with other herbs, it was included in the 19th century recipes cited above. “Over time, basil has become an inevitable ingredient of our dish, an identifying element, to the point of acquiring in the iconography of the media an immediately understandable symbolic value.” (p. 79)
In his conclusion, Montanari summarizes how the iconic plate of spaghetti that seems to represent Italy and the Italian identity actually has a variety of multi-cultural roots. “The history of our plate of spaghetti, the search for its origins and its roots—economic, social, political, cultural—has forced us to travel to multiple lands and to come to terms with eating habits, ways of production, and culinary procedures distant from each other in time and space. A long series of innovations, developed in different times and places, have contributed to creating this tradition so typically Italian.” (p. 82)
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| These are the basics for Puttanesca tomato sauce along with canned tomatoes as well as fresh. Note that the wine is to be drunk with the meal, not used in the dish. |
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| Pasta, garlic, tomatoes, anchovies, olive oil, pepper flakes, olives, capers, and basil for a garnish. I mainly followed the New York Times recipe by Mark Bittman (link), adding the fresh tomatoes. |
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| Heading into Washington, DC |
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| This weekend the museum had a special event with lectures and demos about the history and uses of cacao, including interactive mural painting. The aroma of chocolate was everywhere! |
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The artist creating the murals is Joaquin Alejandro Newman, a Yaqui Indian from Mexico. |
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| Kids could help paint the mural, which is deigned in Aztec style. |
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| The display of chocolate-making, starting with the raw beans and processing them with traditional equipment, was presented by Jose Reyes and his family, who are Mixtec. |
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| Grinding cocoa beans and pressing cakes of chocolate in the traditional way. |
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| Preparing a Mexican chocolate beverage. |
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| The chocolate demos were on the main floor, while all the exhibits are upstairs. After looking at the people preparing cocoa beans and mole, we spent quite a lot of time in the main parts of the museum. From above, we could see the chocolate expo. |
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| The American Indian Museum is one of the Smithsonian museums on the Mall in Washington, so you can see the Capitol Building from the windows. |
