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Sometimes you feel like a nut... Image courtesy of Flickr user tamaki

When I was in New York City earlier this week, I decided to check out Eataly, the Italian food emporium slash gastronomic theme park that opened near the Flatiron building a year ago. (There are also locations in Italy and Japan.) Aside from a large selection of imported products—pasta, anchovies, olives, oils, spices and much more—the complex includes six restaurants. Rather than specializing in different regions, each eatery focuses on a different kind of food: pasta, pizza, seafood, salumi, etc. Chefs Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich are partners in the venture.

At first, the atmosphere reminded me less of Italy—one of my favorite places—and more of a high-end and very crowded food court. It wasn’t until I ate something that I was transported. I sat at the counter of the pasta/pizza restaurant and ordered the daily special, half-moon spinach ravioli in a lemon sauce, sprinkled with pistachios. It reminded me of something I had tasted in Rome years ago, at dinner with an American expat acquaintance and her Italian friends that has crystallized in my memory as my quintessential Roman experience.

Afterward I roamed the food aisles, not buying anything because it was mostly too expensive. Then I spied the candy counter. At the end of a row of chocolates was something I hadn’t encountered since that Rome trip: marrons glacés, or candied chestnuts. These ultra-sugary confections are popular in France and Italy, and although I don’t always like overly sweet sweets, I remembered liking their earthy, nutty flavor when I tasted them more than a decade ago.

But they were $4 apiece for something smaller than a golf ball—two or three bites at most. I could have gotten a whole dish of gelato for the same price. Then again, gelato is relatively easy to find in the United States—if not always of the same quality you’d find in Italy—but a marron glacé is a rare sight. I decided to go for it.

It was worth it. As I bit into it, I was immediately hit with a sugar rush. The finely granular, almost creamy texture was similar to some Mexican confections (also very sugary) made with sweetened condensed milk. But then there was the unmistakable warm chestnut flavor, which anyone who has tasted roasted chestnuts from a New York City cart in winter (or elsewhere) would recognize.

For a piece of candy, it was expensive. But for a one-minute mental vacation to a favorite memory, it was a bargain.

The reason candied chestnuts are so pricey is that it takes a long time to make them, plus the cost of importing them—I don’t know whether anyone makes them domestically. You can make them yourself, if you have four days to spare this winter, when chestnuts are in season. There are also shortcut versions that take only an hour, but that seems like sacrilege.

As for me, I’ll probably just wait until the next time I encounter one—even if it takes another 15 years.

Richard Nixon's last meal at the White House. Photo by Robert L. Knudsen, courtesy of the National Archives.

The National Archives’ show What’s Cooking Uncle Sam? takes a look at how the government has shaped the American diet. Offhand we think of an alphabet soup of bureaus and organizations—the FDA, USDA, etc.—as being the predominant federal entities that regulate our food. But as another influence on how we eat is found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue here in Washington, D.C. The presidents have their favorite dishes or foods that define them in some way, and here are a few highlights from exhibition of the nibbles known to satisfy a commander in chief’s stomach.

Dwight Eisenhower: This administration is represented by Ike’s meticulous recipe for vegetable soup—an affair that takes two days to complete. But I love the tone of the instructions, with the warm timbre of an advice columnist rather than the detached tone of your standard cooking recipe. “Your vegetables should not all be dumped in at once,” he writes. “The potatoes, for example, will cook more quickly than the carrots. Your effort must be to have them all nicely cooked but not mushy, at about the same time.” (Though personally, when I think of this era, my mind goes to Mamie’s Million Dollar Fudge.) Also on display from this era is a letter from Queen Elizabeth II, sending her regards to the president along with her recipe for scones, which he apparently enjoyed during a 1959 trip to England. (I stood in the exhibition hall scribbling down the recipe, I neglected to notice that some of the measurements—teacupfuls of this and that—don’t translate to American measurements. And she also didn’t indicate the temperature at which to heat an oven or the cooking time. But thankfully this blogger took the guesswork out of making this teatime quick bread.)

John F. Kennedy: An episode of The Simpsons lampooned JFK’s love of chowder. Freddy Quimby, whose mop of red hair and thick Boston accent evokes the 35th president, ribs a French waiter for pronouncing chowder with, well, a French accent. In real life, New England-style fish chowder was one of Kennedy’s favorite dishes, the recipe for which is currently on display at the National Archives. You can also see a digital copy and make it in your home kitchen.

Richard Nixon: This president was eating his share of humble pie when he resigned his office in the wake of the Watergate scandal. But his actual last meal at the White House was a simple affair: slices of pineapple arranged around a plop of cottage cheese, paired with a glass of milk and served on a silver tray. Somehow I don’t think this particular dish will catch on in popularity, at least given the context in which it was served.

Ronald Reagan: This former commander in chief started eating jelly beans in the late 1960s as a means of helping him kick a smoking habit—and his affection for the candies grew to the point that, in 1973, he wrote to the chairman of the Jelly Belly company saying “we can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around the jar of jelly beans.” Video on display shows Reagan heading a cabinet meeting with his hand perpetually dipping into a glass jelly bean jar.

Michelle Obama: One of the closing images of the show is of Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden on the south lawn. First planted in 2009, it was the first vegetable garden to grace the executive mansion’s property since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. (The Clintons kept a small garden on the White House roof, but were told that planting a bona-fide garden on the grounds would break with the formal aesthetic of the White House property.) The 2011 garden includes a melange of vegetables such as spinach, peas, broccoli and lettuce. The produce will be used in the White House kitchen.

School lunch program poster. Courtesy of the National Archives

When Thomas Jefferson visited Lombardy, Italy in 1787, exporting rice in the husk was illegal on pain of death. Such trivialities didn’t keep this founding father from secreting illicit grains in his pockets and taking them back to America. “The greatest service which can be rendered to any country,” he later wrote, “is to add a useful plant to its culture.” (Indeed, he considered his introduction of European rice and olive trees to the Americas as one of his greatest life accomplishments alongside writing the Declaration of Independence.) That attitude was adopted and maintained by the United States government, and a show on view at the National Archives explores how Uncle Sam affects how we eat. Through paper ephemera, sound recordings, posters, the show illustrates how the government influenced food on the farm, in the factories, in our homes and in the overall American diet.

I think most of us are at least somewhat aware of the ways in which the government guides how we eat. If you went to public school, you were probably exposed to the federally subsidized lunch program (for better or for worse). You may have noticed the recent unveiling of the plate-shaped infographic designed to help Americans plan balanced meals. And then there are FDA food recalls. Those facets are certainly represented here. But this show is a revelation (at least for me) for exhibiting the breadth of Uncle Sam’s involvement in our food. Beginning in the 1830s, the USDA started a seed distribution program in which they gave free seeds to farmers in an attempt to figure out which plants would fare well in a variety of soils and climates. And when food production became industrialized—with factories and canneries cranking out prefab products—the USDA had to step in to set quality guidelines when Americans were getting sick from ill-prepared foodstuffs. It got to the point where a “poison squad” was appointed to test suspect additives and preservatives to determine which ones were actually safe for human consumption.

Steady readers know of my love of food-related crime, so it was fascinating—if not slightly bizarre—to see mug shots of men who did time for violating the oleomargarine act by selling margarine that was colored to look like butter. Another display—attractively housed in a doughnut-shaped frame—talks about how World War II-era studies showed that B1 promoted energy. Since the nation was mobilizing for war, one food manufacturer responded with vitamin doughnuts. The poster on display hawking the product promises plenty of “pep and vigor” as evidenced by the pair of grinning, rosy-cheeked children who are noshing on vitamin B1-fortified pastry. The government stepped in saying that this and similar products could be marketed only as enriched flour doughnuts. I also loved seeing sample recipes for federally subsidized school lunches from circa 1946. Liver loaf, ham shortcake and creamed vegetables seem a far cry from the sentimental favorites from when I was buying school lunch. Any other fans of the chicken fillet on bun out there?

In the show, stereoscopic viewers let you take a look at vintage 3-D photographs, mocked-up radios allow viewers to “tune in” to food-related radio programming, and there’s a hearty helping of snippets of government-produced movies—everything from short silent movies promoting the nutritive merits of milk to informational films featuring flustered housewives who need some words of wisdom to put a healthful meal on the table. My favorite was the clip from the Mulligan Stew informational films from the 1970s, a trippy series in which the kid stars not only dispense dietary advice but also have a rock band. (I was also quite taken by the themed wainscoting, with carvings of corn stalks in the farming gallery, canned goods in the factory gallery and so on. Even the paint on the walls made the show a vibrant and fun experience. Were photography allowed, I’d go back with the Sherwin Williams app on my iPod to get some digital paint swatches. But I digress.)

The show covers a wonderfully wide swath of territory, and I heartily recommend that you make a point of visiting the National Archives, where “What’s Cooking Uncle Sam” will be on display  until January 3, 2012.

Green beans. Image courtesy of Flickr user Wally Hartshorn

Green beans are a workhorse vegetable: nothing flashy, rarely the star, but always dependable in a supporting role. They’re versatile, too—they’ll work well with just about any cuisine—which is a good thing, since I am probably not alone in having a mountain of them growing in my garden right now. They’re also abundant at the market, farmers’ or otherwise.

To prove their versatility, here are five out-of-the-ordinary ideas for cooking with green beans, each from a different culture:

1. Southern. Bacon grease “brings out the best in folks—and beans,” writes Christy Jordan on her Southern Plate blog, in a recipe for sweet and sour green beans that also includes vinegar and sugar. Unless you’re a stickler for authenticity, you don’t even have to “cook the living mess” out of them, as Jordan explains that Southerners are wont to do.

2. Greek. Ask three Greeks how to cook green beans and you’ll get three different fasolakia recipes, as recounted in an amusing tale at the site Mama’s Taverna. Most of them (including this one) involve stewing the beans in tomatoes, onions, and sometimes potatoes until sweet and tender.

3. Persian. In Iran, a kuku (or kookoo) is a popular frittata-like egg dish, packed with herbs and/or green vegetables. The Persian food blog Turmeric and Saffron uses those signature spices in a recipe for green bean kookoo.

4. Indian. The Book of Yum compiles gluten-free vegetarian recipes from around the globe. But an Indian-inspired dish of “ambrosial green beans,” with a spiced cashew-yogurt sauce, would appeal to even those without dietary restrictions.

5. Chinese. Dry-fried green beans or long beans are a common feature on Chinese restaurant menus. The cooking method results in ultra-flavorful beans that retain their snap— Cooking with Amy explains how to make them at home.

An old kitchen can still have its charms. Courtesy of Flickr user ga3lle

For this month’s Inviting Writing, we asked you to share a story about your kitchen. So far we’ve read about dorm kitchens and the importance of kitchen boundaries. Today’s entry, like last week’s, is a reminder that great food can come from lousy kitchens.

Sarah Wortman lives in Seattle and is the Executive Director of Marketing for NAC|Architecture. She blogs at MidEast Meets Midwest and is currently taking a cheesemaking course.

Our Semi-Satisfactory Linoleum Playground

By Sarah Wortman

My husband and I relocated halfway across the country a while back and, once again, we found a fabulous place with a lousy kitchen. It’s stunning to me that two gastronomically obsessed, “the-only-time-I’m-not-thinking-about-food-is when-I’m-under-anesthesia” people like us keep finding places to live with small, inadequately appointed rooms for food prep.  This one, at least, has a window.

My current kitchen is an antiquated 6-foot-by-8-foot pass-through. The 1940s hand-built cabinets squeak every time you shut them, and the porcelain sink needs reglazing. It sports about four linear feet of beige laminated counter space, a backsplash made of cracking porcelain tile and a floor of dingy, yellow, peeling linoleum tile. Recently a floor board in front of the sink has begun to squeak every time we step on it. We have repurposed a coat closet in the front hall into a pantry and much of our cookware sits on the floor in the dining room. And yet, the most tantalizing, magical, restorative things happen in that bizarre little room.

This closet-sized space is a virtual meditation center for me on Saturday mornings. While my husband slumbers I put on a pot of tea, then pour yeast and honey into warm water in the bowl of my stand mixer.  Over the next half hour or so flour dances in the air like fairy dust as I work out a work week’s worth of frustration on a lump of dough, with nothing but the occasional sound of the Food Network in the background. At these times that dumpy little room is my own slice of serenity.

My husband is one of those mad chemists of the culinary world who fling ingredients around with reckless abandon.  He will spend a few hours and use almost every pot in the house concocting the most magical meals. After we enjoy them I will spend a half hour swiping the back ends of vegetables into dust pans and sponging spices and olive oil off of every flat surface, vertical and horizontal. The way he cooks, trust me, it’s worth it. I can’t think of a place on earth that he seems more completely himself than in our kitchen.

Once a year we fly to my sister’s house to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her family. She has one of those amazing gourmet kitchens that I often find in the homes of people who hate to cook. The island alone has more square footage than my entire kitchen and she has two, count them two, ovens. We love this annual ritual of spreading out and spending several days cooking a feast for a dozen or more people. Yet, for all the gourmet appointments her kitchen offers, I’m always happy to return to mine.