Hemingway 55: Gin & tonic with bitters

To paraphrase Julie Powell's year-long effort to cook all of Julia Child's recipes -- "365 days, 524 recipes" -- how about this: 52 weeks, 55 cocktails!

Philip Greene discussed his new book To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion in a presentation at the Washington Club last night that included an open bar and hors d'oeuvres. Greene, a scion of New Orleans' Peychaud family and a founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail there, has chronicled the various drinks in Hemingway's life and works. His engaging book devotes a chapter each to the 55 cocktails he tracked down (and one other chapter on a good way to drink cognac).

It seems to me to be a fairly easy challenge to have one or two of these cocktails each week for the next year. Few of them are new to me, but some are. This version of a gin & tonic is different, but actually quite pleasant -- it's the drink I got at the open bar last night. Hemingway seemed fairly fond of bitters in general (and Greene of course is not going to leave this out).

The two dashes of bitters rounds out the flavor of the drink. Bitters are a bit old-fashioned, of course, and the authentic Hemingway version with Gordon's gin and Schweppes tonic water may seem dated in this age of craft gins and homemade tonic, but it's hard to beat a classic. While I always think of gin & tonic as a hot weather drink and usually have it only in the summer, the addition of bitters helps make it palatable in cold weather as well.

Greene quotes liberally from Hemingway's work and the chapter on this drink features Islands in the Stream and the short story "The Denunciation," neither of which I've read. It would truly be a challenge to read the works cited each week but I won't commit to that.

It was quite a surprise when Greene said in answer to a question that his research had not taken him to Paris, which was a very long chapter in Hemingway's drinking life. You can't escape the writer if you go out drinking in Paris. I once met a prospective employer in the Hemingway Bar at the Hotel Ritz on Place Vendome. Harry's Bar, Closerie des Lilas, the Dome all have their memories of Hemingway.

During my own brief flirtation with bartending a few years ago (bartending school, two bartending gigs), I began a card file of drinks mentioned in literature just for the fun of it. I didn't get very far, but Greene's book appealed to me immediately for that reason. It turns out that Greene, who is an attorney at the Pentagon, is actually a neighbor here in Chevy Chase, and occasionally does guest bartending gigs in local venues, so chances are good I will run into him again as I count down the Hemingway cocktails.

Update: Perhaps reading the short stories is not too big a commitment. I found my Complete Short Stories and put it in a handy place. "The Denunciation" is pretty much as Greene described it. What struck me was how well Hemingway conjured up the bar, not only in its physical detail but in the esprit that inhabited it. As Greene says: "Here's hoping you've known a place like Chicote's in your life." It is a bit of a "Cheers" phenomenon -- you feel comfortable, everybody knows your name. The closest I've come, I suppose, is the Cafe de l'Esperance, my neighborhood cafe in Paris, but it was more of a cafe really than a bar. In terms of bonding with the proprietors and their longtime waitress, however, it had something of the same meaning for me.

Guinea fowl with marscapone

I keep coming across recipes for guinea fowl so I resolved to bring home one of these pintades whenever I saw them on sale. Perhaps because of the holidays, WholeFoods had a big case of diverse poultry the other day -- goose, duck, pheasant, turkey of course, and guinea fowl -- so I finally got one.

There were a couple of recipes for guinea fowl and savoy cabbage but I went instead with Anna Del Conte's recipe from Lodi in the Lombardy region. It appealed to me because of marscapone in the cavity and a combination of white wine and white rum as braising liquid. The recipe is simple -- put 4 Tbl (!) of butter, a cut up carrot, a cut up onion, and 2 cut up celery stalks and 4 whole cloves in the pot; spoon 2 Tbl marscapone into the cavity of the bird, salt and pepper, place in the pot on top of the vegetables, pour over 4 oz wine and 2 Tbl rum, bring to a boil, cover and put into 400-degree oven for 1 to 1-1/4 hours.

Though the recipe didn't call for it, I turned the bird halfway through since I had to put it in the pot sideways. When the bird is tender, remove and cut into 4 serving pieces. Remove the cloves (if you can find them) and purree the cooking liquid and vegetables into a sauce.

Guinea fowl, needless to say, tastes a lot like chicken. I find it a bit gamier, with a texture and color somewhere between chicken and duck. It doesn't have nearly as much fat as duck or goose. This came out tender and moist because of the braising and the marscapone. If you find yourself gravitating more and more to the dark meat in chicken and turkey, you will like guinea fowl. The sauce came out a surprising color of yellow and was delicious on the meat.

I toyed with the idea of serving Grunkohl, which I'm belatedly realizing is green kale, prepared in the German fashion (blanched, chopped and braised in onion and broth), but opted instead for a separate Anna Del Conte recipe for -- savoy cabbage! This recipe is from the Veneto region and starts with a soffrito of 4 oz. of pancetta, an onion, 1 Tbl rosemary needles, 1 garlic clove all chopped up together in a food processor then sauteed briefly in 2 Tbl. of olive oil. Trim and cut the cabbage into quarters, remove the core and cut into half-inch strips, add to pot and wilt, add 6 oz. white wine, cover and stew for 1-1/2 hours. It goes really well with guinea fowl.

I used a nice sauvignon blanc for cooking and accompanied the meal with the great Alsatian riesling we got at Iron Bridge, which manages to be bone dry and fruit forward at the same time. A bit extravagant for a weekday meal, but very nice.

Spices

I like to celebrate the fact that we are in a privileged place and time where we can cook virtually any world cuisine we want and fix a wonderful variety of dishes at home. I'm realizing belatedly that one drawback to all this diversity is that some of the staples used in cooking -- particularly herbs and spices -- are not as fresh as they would be if we stuck to one or another cuisine.

In Mexico or Morocco or India, the home cook would constantly use the same spices and these would be used up and replaced often so that they generally would be fresh. That's not the case for me, cooking different types of food just a couple of times a week for two people. With all the food habits I've changed in pursuit of good eating, there is one bad old habit I haven't shaken: I somehow think that I should be able to buy a spice or dried herb and keep it on my shelf for months, and often years, and that it remains a legitimate ingredient.

But it's not! Why should I think that I can be spared the expense of regularly replenishing oregano, for instance, that costs $6.95 in the little supermarket bottle or much less in bulk, when I routinely spend much more for fresh ingredients, including fresh herbs, for just one dish?

I went to make a tagine recipe calling for ras-el-hanout this week and ended up concocting an approximation of it from spices I had on hand. But I'm fairly certain none of them was fresher than 6 months and most of them were much older than that. So the dish lacked the zing you might expect from exotic spices -- big surprise!

I was proud of myself last year when I reorganized my spice shelf with generic bottles so I could buy spices in bulk. Two local stores at least, Broad Branch Market and the Silver Spring Co-op, sell spices in bulk and you can fill one of these little bottles with a $1.50 worth of spices. I vaguely thought of labeling the spices with a date and throwing them out after 6 months or a year, but I never followed through on that.

But I think I will make more of an effort. It would mean throwing out virtually all the ground spices and dried herbs I have. One approach would then be to buy ingredients only as needed, label them with the date, and replace them the next time I used them if they were no longer sufficiently fresh. I've ordered Herbs & Spices: The Cook's Reference by Jill Norman and will see what kind of suggestions she has about how fresh individual spices should be.

Beef tagine with sweet potatoes

I love turkey and we had our usual splendid Thanksgiving feast this year with Andrea's family. But after the wholesome American flavors, it seemed like some exotic food would be the perfect change of pace. Over the weekend we went again to Masala Art and had some of their sumptuous Indian food, and yesterday I dusted off my tagine and tackled this recipe from Ghillie Basan.

The full title is "Beef tagine with sweet potatoes, peas, ginger and ras-el-hanout," and clearly the key to whole recipe is the last ingredient, a Moroccan spice mixture. I thought I had found a bottle somewhere but it wasn't on my shelf, so I went online to find various recipes for the mixture, usually with only 10 spices, compared to the 30 or so in the real mix, which includes some ingredients not readily available here.

Not a big deal except it brought me to the realization, which I will discuss more in my next post, that my spices are not really fresh. Using Urban Accents Moroccan Road mix as a base -- according the website it is just coriander, cumin, cinnamon and mint -- I added an assortment of other spices -- turmeric, clove, white pepper, aleppo pepper, piment d'esplette, ginger, black pepper and maybe one or two others -- all in minuscule amounts to total the 2 tsp. called for in the recipe. It was fine, but lacked the exotic zing that fresh spices would have brought to it.

Tagines are a great weekday meal because the pot does the work. I sauteed chopped onion and shredded ginger in ghee, then added 2 lbs lean beef (I used chuck) in bite-sized chunks and browned it, stirred in the 2 tsp of spice and covered with water, covered the pot and simmered for 40 minutes. Then I added 2 cubed sweet potatoes and cooked for another 20 minutes. Then 1 lb of frozen peas (a lot!) and 3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, for another 10 min. It gets topped with chopped cilantro and preserved lemon (which I forgot). It worked great as a beef stew, producing a nice broth, but was missing that taste of the bazaar.

Iron Bridge Wine Co.

This place outside Columbia pretty much in the middle of nowhere looked like fun when our friends suggested meeting there and turned out to be even better than we anticipated. It certainly confirms my belief that the food revolution has penetrated deep into rural corners you wouldn't expect. We decided that it would be hard to find a place that combined the high quality of food with the energy of an unfussy ambiance anywhere in Bethesda.

Our friends had snagged one of the best tables, in the corner behind the fireplace, so that we benefited from the hubbub but could still carry on a conversation. The food looked so appetizing, we went whole hog with drinks, appetizers, main course, dessert and coffee -- and of course a bottle of wine.

Three of us took the special of the day -- braised lamb shoulder with Swiss chard and mashed potatoes -- and Andrea got the duck breast. I had the buratta with tomato and fennel jam as a starter, and it was very fresh and creamy with a slight tang set off well by the jam. The lamb was incredibly tender and very flavorful and perfectly complemented by the sides. Andrea's duck was also very good, tender and moist, and her house-cured salmon starter was excellent. The desserts were all good -- my bourbon pecan tart, Andrea's cranberry bread pudding and the flourless chocolate cake and creme brulee ordered by our friends. I tried the old-fashioned with bacon-infused bourbon -- not the most successful experiment -- and we ordered a bottle of Descombes Nouveau Beaujolais in honor of the season, and it may have been the best NB I've ever had.

The restaurant, which has a sister location in Warrenton, is also a wine retailer with an excellent selection (and the markups at dinner are quite minimal). We got some of the Beaujolais and an Alsatian Riesling to bring home.

It was such a pleasant surprise to find all this in what we tend to call BF Maryland that we resolved to meet our friends again soon in another such location. They live in Baltimore and have made a practice of exploring the hinterland for these hidden gems. Our next venture will probably be to the Bistro Blanc, a new restaurant started nearby by the former chef at Iron Bridge. Others on the list are Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore and Tersiguel's in Ellicott City.

Ici Urban Bistro

This relatively informal restaurant in the Hotel Sofitel provided what I wanted -- a place downtown that's easy to get in and out of but civilized enough to have a conversation. I was meeting an old friend from London who wanted to grab a quick bite before catching his flight and, since we were in Paris together, this French-type place filled the bill.

That said, I don't think I'd go here for the food. The menu was quite limited and it may be that both the ingredients and preparation are fresh but it would be hard to prove it by my baked red snapper, which was a tad overdone and not the freshest fish I've had lately (for instance, not nearly as fresh as the snapper I had at the Big Fish Grill just the week before).

The wine was good. My friend ordered it, so not sure what it was beyond that it was a crisp French white. The ambiance was pleasant enough, though it couldn't help feeling like International Hotel in the middle of anywhere. Le Bar next door is very popular and the foot traffic outside at the busy intersection of 15th and H supplied a certain energy and bustle.

Poached halibut with mustard sauce

I've had a hankering for halibut for several weeks. When we went to Pesce a few weeks ago, I was dreaming of the poached halibut they serve there, but it wasn't on the menu that night. When we visited friends at Beach Haven in September they said their fishmonger was bringing them halibut from the market on Long Beach Island, but he came back with grouper instead. At Rehoboth over the weekend, the restaurant where we had dinner had a halibut special but I didn't like the accompaniment (and someone who ordered it left the sides on the plate).

It turns out it's not that hard to poach halibut and this recipe from Mark Bittman fully satisfied my craving. Although he says this Dutch recipe works for any North Atlantic white fish, he thinks poaching is the best way to cook halibut to keep it from drying out. This comes out creamy and delicate and the understated mustard sauce does not overpower the sweet fish flavor.

For some reason, Bittman always specifies halibut steaks for his recipes, whereas we prefer fillets and that's what The Fishery sells. So I got a nice piece of fillet with the skin on and used the recipe's third option for poaching liquid -- 4 c. of water and white vinegar on an 8:1 ratio (the other two options were Court Bouillon or Fast Fish Stock). It did the trick and is a great option for a weekday meal. Bring the liquid to a boil in a skillet just large enough to hold the fish, put the fish in, adding more liquid to cover if necessary, and simmer at medium low until opaque throughout.

The fillet was not the same thickness and my skillet was too shallow for the thickest part, so I had to carefully turn the fish as it cooked. But this gave me a chance to remove the skin.

For the sauce, cook 1 Tbl flour in 1 Tbl butter for 3 or 4 min until brown, then add 1 c. of the poaching liquid. Cook and thicken for another 4 to 5 min. then add salt and pepper and 1 Tbl Dijon mustard. Serve the sauce over the halibut and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Bittman recommends boiled potatoes to accompany (it is a Dutch recipe, after all), but we had lentils. I used a preparation I found in an Epicurious recipe (from Gourmet) for Sauteed Cod with Lentils. It calls for French green lentils, and we used the Zursun Idaho heirloom lentils that we bought at La Cuisine in Alexandria. Bring 1 c. lentils to a boil and cook 12 to 25 minutes until tender, then drain, reserving the liquid. Cook 1 c. chopped onion and 1 chopped garlic clove in 2 Tbl. butter in a covered pot for 10 min., stirring occasionally, then uncover and cook another 5 or 10 min. Add the lentils and 1/4 to 1/2 c. of their cooking liquid to moisten, heat through, then add 1 Tbl. lemon juice, 3 Tbl. chopped parsley and 1 Tbl. olive oil. Lentils were delicious and paired perfectly with the halibut.

Big Fish Grill

I may have visited this Rehoboth institution once before but too long ago to remember. Our lunch there this weekend with a group of 10 was very enjoyable. We sat in the annex where the bar is rather than in the main dining room and had a large table at bar-stool height. The favored option was one of the fish of the day on a salad and I got a grilled red snapper on a chophouse salad. The fish was great -- fresh, grilled just right, and the salad with a garlic ranch dressing was a perfect fit.

The Big Fish Grill is on Highway 1 just down the street from our host's house, so it was a convenient spot for those of us who had convened for the weekend. In a thoughtful move, given that most of the better restaurants were closed for off-season, our host thought it would be fun to eat dinner at the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel, where the dining room is right on the boardwalk. Though the faux-Victorian decor inside was a bit over the top, the view was very nice -- even in the dark since floodlights illuminated the boardwalk and dune grass -- and the food, while not imaginative, was quite good. I had the New York strip with wild mushroom risotto and roasted asparagus -- hit the spot! Several bottles of wine made the whole meal quite convivial.

Chicken in piquant tomato sauce

Another stewy, tomatoey dish from Italy, this time courtesy of Domenica Marchetti. It benefits from the rich, hearty flavor (and economy) of chicken thighs, though I think I inadvertently downplayed the piquant part.

The recipe calls for 10 thighs to serve 5 or 6 people. My value pack from WF actually had 11 bone-in, skin-on thighs of various sizes. The chicken gets browned in two batches, starting skin side down for 5 min., then flipped over for another 5 min. Marchetti says to drain off all but 2 Tbl. of the rendered fat afterwards and then saute 1 big or 2 medium chopped onions for 5 min., add a clove of minced garlic for a couple of minutes, then sprinkle 1 or 2 Tbl of flour over it and pour in 3/4 c. white wine. Boil this down for a while, then add 4 chopped anchovy fillets and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

Here's were I downplayed the piquancy. The recipe calls for Rizzoli anchovies packed in a piquant sauce or any other anchovy fillets. So of course I got any other, and didn't think about compensating for the lack of piquant sauce by adding more red pepper flakes. So the sauce wasn't too piquant, but still very delicious.

The final ingredient is a 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes, mashed up to crush. Add the thighs back to the pot. Marchetti recommends taking off the crispy skin, arguing that it has made its flavor combination and that if you leave it on it will just turn flabby and make the sauce fatty. So I did and I think she's probably right. (Cook's bonus: Crispy chicken skin tastes really good.) Put the covered pot into a preheated 350-degree oven and after half an hour take the cover off and cook for another hour. It looks quite outstanding when it comes out (alas, I neglected to take a picture). Serve over polenta. So easy and cheap for a hearty weekday meal, with, obviously, plenty of leftovers.

Pork stew with paprika

This northern Italian version of goulash is easy and delicious and gave us several good meals. I used pork shoulder (Boston butt) to cut into stewing chunks, rather than the "pork steaks" called for by Anna Del Conte. Also, tomato passato is apparently something you can find in Europe but not here, so I used crushed tomato. In any case, the stew was meaty with a rich tomato sauce.

My pork weighed in at somewhat more than her 1-3/4 lbs so I increased the other ingredients proportionately. I had no luck finding smoked pancetta so I used guanciala, which is probably a little fattier. The recipe calls for 4 oz., which is cut into cubes and sauteed in 2 Tbl. butter for 5 min. Then you add 8 oz. sliced onion and cook for 20 min. Then mix in the pork and brown for 10 min. before sprinkling in 1 Tbl. paprika (I always use sweet unless the recipe specifies hot) and 1 Tbl. flour. Cook for another minute then add 7 oz. wine and bring to a boil and cook for a couple of minutes before adding 10 oz. of the crushed tomato, a dozen fresh sage leaves snipped into pieces and 2 bay leaves. Cook for 1-1/2 to 2 hrs. Del Conte recommends serving with polenta, but we accompanied with creamed purree of cauliflower.