Smithsonian.com

Bottle of sriracha sauce, courtesy of Flickr user barron

As Smithsonian staffers rush to close our July issue, here are a few helpful links to get you through your day:

– The Internet Food Association, written by a coterie of D.C. think tank policy nerds who moonlight as foodies, directs us to a great new blog, Trader Joe’s Wine Compendium, which I highly recommend you check out before playing Russian roulette with the grocery store’s wide-ranging wine selection.

– My favorite hot sauce, Sriracha Chili Sauce, gets a lengthy treatment in Tuesday’s New York Times. Who knew it was not Thai or Vietnamese, but actually Californian? I remember being rather excited when I saw one of the Iron Chefs use it on Iron Chef America, but now that Applebee’s and P.F. Chang’s use it in their recipes, some of the allure has worn off. It’s still delicious for pretty much everything, however. Reporter John T. Edge also provides a nation-wide list of restaurants where chefs use David Tran’s sriracha.

– Also from the Times comes this obituary of the namesake behind Dannon yogurt, Daniel Carasso. Learn the history of the company, which was started by Carasso’s father in response to what he found to be the disturbing prevalence of intestinal disorders in Spain. From the article: “Early on, Danone [the original name for the yogurt] was marketed as a health food and sold by prescription through pharmacies. Gradually it found favor as a milk product that did not spoil in the heat.

– From Serious Eats, comes a helpful list of street vendors that use Twitter. And while I’m at it, make sure to follow Food and Think on Twitter as well.

– Amateur Gourmet brought in FaT favorite Michael Ruhlman today for a BlogTalkRadio podcast. Listen in, maybe while baking Ruhlman’s bread.

– And lastly, the New Orleans Audubon Insectarium opened recently and is entertaining kids of all ages with crickets, spiders, and more. But what you can’t get there is a cooking demonstration using crickets.

The White House, courtesy of Flickr user ~MVI~

The other day at the library I came across a copy of The White House Cookbook by Janet Halliday Ervin, from 1964. This is not to be confused with the 1987 version, a revised and updated centennial edition of the original White House Cookbook, by Mrs. F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann, which came out in 1887, during the Cleveland administration. Frances Cleveland, the trend-setting new First Lady, had a copy and, according to Ervin, “it was a book no fashionable bride or matron would be without.”

While the centennial edition updated the original recipes to conform to 20th-century sensibilities (lower in fat and less time-consuming), Ervin presents them as they were, in all their Victorian-era peculiarity. So, for instance, a recipe for turtle soup begins with the advice to “kill the turtle at night in winter and in the morning in summer,” then goes into a detailed description of how to process and cook the meat and shell. All that comes before the actual instructions for making the soup, which should “commence early in the morning” with the cooking of eight pounds of beef. Probably not a recipe the modern cook—much less the present First Lady—has the time or inclination to follow, but it makes for interesting reading.

There are recipes for Election Cake (offered with no explanation, though a 2004 article in the Washington Post says it was supposed to keep up people’s strength during what used to be a festive, multi-day civic affair), Hasty Pudding—the cornmeal mush, not the Harvard theatrical group—and some pretty exotic-sounding beverages, such as Koumiss, made from fermented milk.

The book also includes a section on 19th-century etiquette that seems a little harsh by current standards: “be genial, animated, sympathetic, and cheerful, or do not go into society. Dull and stupid people are but so many clogs to the machinery of social life.” And its health tips are a bit dubious: “both tea and coffee powerfully counteract the effects of opium, and intoxicating liquors.”

Aside from the original 1887 material, Ervin added a section on each of the presidents’ wives and hostesses, from Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (whose guests wondered if they should call her Your Elective Majesty) to Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Taylor Johnson (a Texan whose favorite recipes included pickled okra and Pedernales River Chili).

The centennial edition is said to include Hillary Clinton’s cookie recipe (the ones she famously didn’t stay home baking, I assume). Now that we once again have a trend-setting First Lady, I wonder how long it will be before a new edition of the cookbook comes out, complete with Michelle Obama’s healthy broccoli soup?

Amanda's first (edible) homemade loaf of bread.

People have been baking bread for millennia, long before kitchen appliances or even cookbooks came along. I’ve read plenty of books and blog posts advertising “easy homemade bread” recipes, and I want to believe them—but personally, it’s always seemed like an unattainable goal, on par with cartwheels or whistling or being on time for parties.

A few recent developments have inspired me to change my mind, however. One, my impending marriage has brought a bounty of new kitchen toys, including a stand mixer and a dutch oven. Two, I’ve started writing a food blog, as you may have noticed. And three, I received a copy of Michael Ruhlman‘s new book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

According to Ruhlman, baking bread is as simple as four ingredients (flour, water, salt and yeast) and two numbers: 5 and 3. That’s the ratio of flour to water that will create a basic bread dough. How much yeast and salt you need is less precise, but he suggests at least one teaspoon of each in a batch based on 20 ounces of flour. (Actually, he suggests 1 tsp of salt per 20 ounces of flour on page 6, and then on page 10 offers a recipe with 2 teaspoons of salt and 20 ounces of flour, so I’m a little confused…)

Reading this book made me realize there’s at least one key kitchen gadget I’m still lacking: a scale. I never thought about it before, but apparently, not all cups of flour are created equal. Ruhlman became a self-professed kitchen scale evangelist after discovering that the amount of flour in a standard measuring cup can vary by as much as 50 percent depending on how you scoop or stir it. Still, he offers a grudging approximation in Ratio for those of us who need it—a cup of flour weighs about 5 ounces.

Although his book purports to “unchain you from recipes,” I was relieved to see that it does actually include some, including one for basic bread dough. Ruhlman suggests shaping the dough into a boule and baking it in a dutch oven, something I was eager to try since I’ve heard others rave about how moist and chewy it makes the loaf.

I made my first attempt a few weeks ago, before we had the stand mixer, or any kind of electric mixer. Despite nearly half an hour of fierce kneading, the dough never passed the “windowpane” test that proves the gluten has been successfully developed. And despite hours of hopeful waiting, the dough never rose.

At first, I blamed this on Ruhlman’s note that the yeast would activate just fine if it was dissolved in cold water (my mom always told me yeast needs warm water to activate). It might have been that. Or it might have been the fact that DC puts a lot of chlorine in its tap water at this time of year, and chlorine inhibits yeast growth. Or it might have just been bad yeast. Whatever the problem was, we ended up with an inedibly dense loaf of what tasted like Play-dough. Blech.

On the second attempt, we tried Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread recipe in the dutch oven. Maybe it would have worked great, but half the dough got impossibly stuck to the towel we left it on overnight (and yes, we floured it as the recipe said). We baked what was left, but it could hardly be called a success, especially after my fiance got a nasty burn from touching the dutch oven (those things can really retain heat).

So, last weekend, we crossed our fingers and decided to give it one more shot. This time, we used extra-pure water (filtered, then boiled and left to cool), and proofed the yeast first to test it. We tried the Ratio recipe again, this time letting the mixer do the kneading with its dough hook attachment. We referred to the book over and over, making sure we were doing it exactly as recommended—so much for being unchained from recipes, huh?

The result? A delicious success (though browner on bottom than top, which I blame on my strange little oven — the Inuyaki blogger got much prettier results)! I feel like doing a cartwheel, but, well, one thing at a time…

State of Louis Pasteur, courtesy of Flickr user NatalieMaynor

If you’ve never considered the connection between beet juice and rabies prevention, read on.

This is the first installment in an occasional series about important food-related events in history. I can think of no better subject to begin with than the scientist whose discoveries led to important innovations in both food preservation and prevention of infectious disease, Louis Pasteur. And although he can’t be credited with inventing the process that turns grapes into chianti and grain into amber bock, he was the first to explain the role of microorganisms in fermentation, and his work led to improvements in beer and wine making.

Pasteur was born in Dôle, France in 1822. He first gained acclaim as a young professor for his studies in how certain crystals affect light. He continued his work on crystallography at the University of Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France, where he concluded that asymmetry was the defining characteristic of the molecules of living things, while the molecules of minerals were symmetrical—an important contribution to the scientific understanding of life. He also experimented with the effect of heat on molecular structures, and made his first foray into medical applications, developing a new and more stable isomer of quinine, which was used to treat fever.

But Pasteur’s most famous discoveries were made after he became dean of the science department at the University of Lille, in a region known for its beet juice distilleries. In 1856, a local industrialist approached him about the quality problems some manufacturers of beet root alcohol were having. Pasteur set about studying yeast under a microscope.

Patrice Debré writes in his 1994 biography Pasteur, “Indeed we are indebted to fermentation for some of the most powerful symbols of our myths, at least in the Western tradition. The ancient Egyptians brewing beer, the ancient Gauls making their bread dough rise with yeast—these images evoke ancestral practices. Yet scientists, including the earliest chemists, from Paracelsus to Robert Boyle, had no convincing explanation to account for the phenomenon.”

In Pasteur’s time, Debré explains, yeast was thought to have only a passive role in fermentation. His experiments showed that yeast was not only the cause of fermentation, but that it was a living microorganism and that fermentation was the result of a biological rather than chemical process. His research became the basis for the new field of microbiology. It also paved the way for a number of other important advancements in science, including his debunking of the centuries-old and widely held idea of spontaneous generation—that some life forms, like rats and flies, could arise spontaneously from non-living matter under certain circumstances.

Pasteur’s promotion of the germ theory—which proposed that many diseases, such as anthrax and rabies, are caused by microorganisms—led to a new understanding of how infectious disease spreads, and therefore how to prevent it. Sanitary practices in medicine followed. The capstone of his long and fruitful career, according to Debré, was his role in the development of a rabies vaccine. This led to the establishment of the Institut Pasteur, in 1887, which continues to research the prevention and treatment of infectious disease.

Of course, the achievement most obviously associated with Pasteur, and most relevant to this blog, is the process of pasteurization. In 1863 Pasteur received a letter from one of Napoleon III’s aides, commissioning him to study the spoilage of wine—a matter of great urgency in France, where wine was vital to the nation’s cultural life and economic prosperity. The aide wrote, “The Emperor is firmly convinced that it would be of the highest importance that you turn your attention in this direction at the time of the grape harvest.” Drawing on his earlier research, Pasteur developed a method of heating wine to slow microbial growth and prevent spoilage, without destroying the beverage in the process. Pasteurization, as it came to be known, is still used to treat wine, milk and other perishable liquids.

So next time you enjoy a pinot noir, or chocolate milk, raise your glass to Louis Pasteur.

French spice market, courtesy of Flickr user gavinbell

I attended a Smithsonian Resident Associates lecture this week by Fred Czarra, author of the new book, “Spices: A Global History.” I can’t say I came away with a clear overview of the global spice trade, but I did gain a sprinkling of loosely connected facts. I’ll pass them on to you, in case it comes in handy next time you play a trivia game:

• Black pepper used to come mostly from India’s Malabar coast; today, most of it is grown in Vietnam.
• In the 16th century, Portugal provided Europe with most of its pepper, probably because they had the most ambitious explorers, most notably a guy named Afonso de Albuquerque (who, incidentally, is the namesake of an especially delicious mango, the Alphonso).
• In the 17th century, the Dutch became power players in the spice trade when the various provinces of the Netherlands united their trading ventures to form the Dutch East India Company. Their center in the “spice islands” of Southeast Asia was called Batavia, present-day Jakarta. The penalty for stealing spices in the Dutch empire was death.
• Americans made their first foray into spice trading in the late 18th century, starting with an enterprising Salem, Massachusetts sea captain named Jonathan Carnes.
• In the mid-20th century, a Baltimore-based comany named McCormick changed the rules of the game by eliminating middlemen and setting up subsidiary factories in dozens of spice-growing countries.
• Some spices are believed to have health benefits. In the old days, people thought they could ward off “noxious vapors” and diseases like the plague. These days, they’re touted as a source of antioxidants. (Czarra eats cinnamon every morning to lower his blood sugar. “I don’t know if it helps, but it doesn’t hurt!”)
• Prince Henry the Navigator was not a dumb bunny. (That’s a quote from the lecture. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what it has to do with the spice trade.)
• Chilies are the dominant spice of our time.