Nero Wolf: I kept my resolution

I resolved to read at least one Nero Wolfe book in 2010, and I've kept that one: I read The Second Confession. Obviously, my goal is more insight into the role of food in detective fiction. Author Rex Stout thoroughly described two meals in this book.

The first meal is brought up to the room at a fine country house outside New York where Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin are detecting. Archie, the narrator, explains:

When we were called to dinner at seven o'clock I was conscripted for courier duty, to tell Mrs. Sperling that under the circumstances Mr. Wolfe and I would prefer either to have a sandwich upstairs or go without, and it was a pleasure to see how relieved she was. But even in the middle of that crisis she didn't let her household suffer shame, and instead of a sandwich we got jellied consomme, olives and cucumber rings, hot roast beef, three vegetables, lettuce and tomato salad, cold pudding with nuts in it, and plenty of coffee. It was nothing to put in your scrap book, but was more than adequate, and except for the jellied consomme, which he hates, and the salad dressing, which he made a face at, Wolfe handled his share without comment." (p. 67-68)

I admire the many ways this food serves to delineate the household (classy), the hostess (conventional), and Nero Wolfe as a diner (picky). Now, sixty years from the book's publication, this food also represents a kind of old-fashioned luxury -- from the professionally run kitchen of a 21st century rich person, one would expect a very different meal.

Most comments about Nero Wolfe's gourmet and gourmand tendencies focus on his Swiss chef Fritz, who doesn't appear often in this book. Towards the end, though, Fritz comes up with a steak dinner for a person whose good will Wolfe is seeking. Archie helps Fritz serve what he feels is a most appetizing offering:

It was really a handsome platter. The steak was thick and brown with charcoal braid, the grilled slices of sweet potato and sauteed mushrooms were just right, the watercress was high at one end out of danger, and the overall smell made me wish I had asked Fritz to make a carbon. (p. 205)

I plan to seek out the Nero Wolfe books that have food-oriented plots and murders in them. This one had a very retro plot that turns on proof of someone's being a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party. Wow! More retro than jellied consomme, watercress, and private chefs.

Top Food Issues

Marion Nestle's top food issues for the year are very interesting. See: Hot food issues ready to boil over this year for the full list. I'm most interested in her predictions and questions about

• Hunger: "Will Congress do anything this year to strengthen the safety net for the poor? It needs to."
• Food safety regulation: again, Congress is waiting to act, but may put in stronger regulations.
• Food advertising and labels: will there be better front of package labels? Regulation of ads aimed at kids?
• Dietary guidelines: a new version of the government list will be published this year.

Dim Sum Sunday Morning

We arrived so early that the Dim Sum cart workers were all standing and waiting for the kitchen to load their carts. It was so cold that they had let us wait inside instead of lining up at the door as they would have us do in summer.

We started with sticky rice -- Alice's favorite. We also had lots of other buns, steamed clams, fried and steamed dumplings with shrimp, crab, and scallops; turnip cakes, Chinese broccoli, crab balls, pineapple buns, green honeydew pudding, almond tofu pudding with fruit cocktail, and sesame balls. We saw lots of other dishes that we didn't manage to eat like green beans, duck, pork, and many more.

Tracy at the Ft. Myers Farmers' Market

From Arny and Tracy's recent trip to Florida. This market is every Thursday under a freeway overpass.

Lemon Layer Cake

My sister, Elaine, wrote me to be sure to read Maira Kalman's latest op-ed. We are all fond of her work. Elaine said:

"I was particularly struck that her family always celebrated the birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette with a lemon layer cake. I don't know why her family had this particular celebration, but having shared Maira Kalman with Evelyn, lemon layer cake with the rest, and living in Lafayette, I thought I'd suggest September 6 (which seems to be his birthday, but there are different ideas online) as a new holiday to be celebrated with lemon layer cake."

Thanks, Elaine, we should do that!

Food and Art

In the basement of the Hirschorn museum (next door to the restroom and coat room) they are showing a video by Phoebe Greenberg called "Next Floor." A group of diners (I assume they are Canadian, since that's what she is) appear in the movie. Excuse me, I mean film. At first they eat with relish, then more and more greedily. Their table repeatedly falls through the floor. The person who wrote the blurb felt obliged to explain that this was an allegory about modern consumption. Gosh.

Right after watching "Next Floor" we went to the American Indian Museum to have lunch. I am very fond of the Indian-themed food there. We had salmon and a salmon patty sandwich, and then saw an exhibit by Brian Jungen who uses sports equipment and other objects from modern life to make wonderfully imaginative Indian-themed sculptures. The whale skeleton below is made from plastic lawn furniture. The mask is obviously made of athletic shoes.

Just before midnight...

We all stayed up and watched the ball drop, after watching the Wizards of Waverly Place movie. Very exciting.

Here was our dessert -- Ice Cream Cake made from Evelyn's home-made ice cream:

Fondue Dinner

A tradition new to us: fondue for New Year's Eve dinner. Broth with marinated meat, various vegetables, bread, and Miriam's suggestion: shrimp. And a huge selection of dipping sauces. If I photograph our dessert, I'll post it next year.

Happy New Year!

My Favorite Restaurants -- 2009

Happy New Year to all: may you enjoy many wonderful meals in 2010. I resolve to continue blogging what I eat as well as what my favorite fictional characters eat, and what I cook and read in the newspaper. How about you?
From Amsterdam Falafel in Washington D.C. (above) to sushi in Maui, from Ann Arbor to San Diego -- we've had some very good meals this year!




They really make great burritos here!

Murder -- with recipes?

The Body in the Ivy by Katherine Hall Page was recommended to me because I love to interpret the meaning of food in mystery and detective fiction. Page takes this to a new level -- Faith Fairchild is an amateur detective and a caterer. The details of her meals and food ideas are far beyond what I think one needs to set the stage for several murders and their detection.

As far as I'm concerned, Fairchild's cooking is more believable than her detecting, which isn't much more penetrating than Nancy Drew. In the back of the book, in fact, one finds recipes: Asian Noodles with Crabmeat, Boeuf Bourguignon, Fennel Soup, Rhubarb Crumble, and Pelham Fudge Cake (named for Pelham, the fictitious women's school at the center of the story). These are among the very dishes Fairchild made for the island visitors who were gathered in an Agatha-Christie-country-house-like setting to solve a murder mystery leftover from their college days in the 1960s.

Yes, the author dropped Christie's name often. She is obsessed with brand names and what their users mean by using them. See the book cover I included with this review? That's what I kept thinking about: The Preppy Handbook, from 1980, which describes the Ivy-league millieu in which the original murder took place, the types of people who are guilty or suspected, and their brands of clothing, shoes, cars, depatment stores, and sports equipment. I recognized most of them. It's more than just stereotyped. The modern day parts of the book are nearly as brand-conscious as the flashbacks, but it seems slightly less forced. Faith Fairchild's food is also stereotyped -- sounds like the Silver Palate Cookbook.

My main problem with the book isn't the excessive stereotyping, as that's a common feature of some detective fiction. It's the lack of a clear point of view. In the middle of a passage about Fairchild's catering decisions, there's a reference to page 322 where you can get the fudge cake recipe; later, reference is made to the other recipes. This isn't a post-modern book, so the self-referential "this is a book with book apparatus" thing is very distracting. And instead of having Fairchild-as-detective pry stories out of the gathered suspects -- brought together artificially by the owner of the country house -- the author has alternate flashback chapters. These cover the college lives of each character, told omnisciently. Another viewpoint: the murders that take place during the story are told as experienced by each victim, but the passages don't reveal who the murderer was. I hate authors who do that, though I admit Agatha Christie was one of the worst.

All that trendy food just doesn't do enough for me to make up for what I see as the other deficiencies of the book. But I'm nevertheless grateful to my friend who recommended it. Next year, I resolve to try some additional food-themed mystery authors.

Dinner and a Movie

We ate at Coastal Flats, a very large restaurant specializing in seafood. My grilled fish with spinach, red pepper, and mushrooms was very nice. The busy kitchens are open to the large dining room. After dinner we saw "Avatar" the world's most successful movie of the moment. Many reviewers have noted that the visuals are beautiful -- true, but they aren't particularly imaginative. Nor are the plot, the characters, nor the predictable allegory of militarism, corporate greed, and selfish science vs. new age spiritual chanting and trees. Not my kind of movie.

Lemon Tart

New Yorker Article on Whole Foods

Food Fighter: Does Whole Foods’ C.E.O. know what’s best for you? by Nick Paumgarten is an interesting profile -- typically, a very long one. I read it online; it also appears in the current New Yorker. I didn't really want to know a lot of the stuff that was in it, but read through the whole article in a sort of transfixed uncomfortableness.

Last summer, John Mackey, the co-founder and current chief executive of Whole Foods, published a particularly nasty op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I was so turned off that I stayed away from the store for several months. I knew that no actual boycott was functioning, but just could not stand to enrich a man who said that people would not need health care if they only ate right -- that is, bought their food at Whole Foods. And who said that the whole country didn't need to reform our health care system. (I'm not thrilled with the current status of that issue though I feel that it's going to improve, but that's not relevant here, really.)

The New Yorker article doesn't make me like John Mackey any better than I did before. If he would only shut up and stay out of my face, I'd be much happier shopping at his store. As I've probably made clear on this blog before, I find much to like about the fish, produce, dairy, and bakery products that Whole Foods stocks. And I'm quite aware that many people whose politics I don't like are enriched by my other shopping decisions, including grocery shopping decisions. Also, I think eating healthfully is a reasonable suggestion -- just that blaming everyone for every disease they might have is heartless. But Mackey's combination of arrogance, wing-nut ideas, and obnoxious theories really infuriates me.

So I wish he'd shut up or quit his company.

Lunch in Baltimore

After a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, we walked to Fells Point for lunch at Bertha's, where the specialty is mussels -- these days, the mussels come from Maine (I bet they were once from Chesapeake Bay).

In the lobby Bertha's has a couple of miniature rooms on display.

Bertha's mussels are delicious. We ordered the plain steamed mussels with garlic butter -- mine had added basil. The building is very old with wainscotting, old-fashioned tables, and many old black and white etchings on the walls.

Bertha's kitchen is quite modern.

Just down the block is a gelato store. On the walk back, we stopped at Barnes and Noble, which is in a fantastic re-purposed power station. It reminded me of the Tate Modern. Alice posed in front of the display advertising "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

I had affogato -- coffee with a scoop of chocolate gelato. Miriam and Alice had lemon and strawberry sorbet.

Christmas Dinner

Evelyn made a leg of lamb with mustard sauce from the Julia Child recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We ate it with salad, followed by freshly cut-up pineapple with strawberries and a few Lebkuchen. All delicious! Miriam and Alice wore their special dresses, though later Alice added a pirate hat, just in case she seemed to serious.

What do princesses eat?

"The Princess and the Frog" is a great fairy tale. The characters include the beautiful young Tiana (a girl with a dream), her hard-working parents, an evil New Orleans voodoo man, cajun fireflies, a jazz-playing alligator, a handsome prince, and magical Mamma Odie who can reverse an evil spell and ensure that Tiana becomes a princess. A complete fairy tale -- visually, musically, and magically. AND a culinary fable as well.

Tiana's dream -- to have a splendid and successful restaurant in the best part of New Orleans. At the very beginning of the movie, as a very tiny child, she cooks gumbo for her parents, and seasons it perfectly -- with Tabasco sauce!

After the brief introduction, we jump forward in time and she's a young woman, working overtime in a restaurant and saving money to buy a decrepit waterfront building where she imagines creating her restaurant. Reality is harsh -- she seems to have little chance to succeed. But she imagines cooking etouffee, gumbo, jambalaya, and all kinds of New Orleans dream food for people from all over, and imagines (in beautiful jazz-age imagery) the atmosphere of her wonderful restaurant.

But this is a fairy tale! A handsome though penniless prince arrives on a luxury liner, just in time for a big Mardi Gras party. Her first challenge: to make hundreds of beignets for her rich friend's party. Of course the movie then presents a great adventure -- lots of magic, voodoo, danger, characters of all species from human down to firefly, and comic action. For me, the emphasis on lots of New Orleans food and cooking is what makes it most special of all.

Disney is up to his usual tricks. Of course there's lots of merchandise for sale -- even a cookbook.

Christmas Eve

Tom's tradition for Christmas Eve is sausage and sauerkraut. Here it is cooking (the sausage is reflected in the sauerkraut pot). Once on the table, it looked like a lot of sausage -- and it was. We enjoyed some Kona Brewing Company beer as well -- reminding us of our times on the Big Island. There's also lots of Lebkuchen waiting for us.




Earlier in the day, we visited the Terra Cotta Warriors at the National Geographic Society and walked to the White House to see the Christmas tree and Santa's workshop.

After dinner, Miriam and Alice gave and received a number of gifts. Among them were four puppets from the Augsburger Puppenkiste: der Lowe, Princess Li Si, Ursel the baby dragon, and Mikesch the cat.