Local tomatoes are in season here in New England.  Summer, of course, is the time to enjoy fresh, local produce of all sorts wherever you may be.  Except in Hidden Valley.

The folks at HV Food Products, makers of Hidden Valley Ranch dressings, say (in a barrage of TV commercials on the Food Network) that your vegetables aren’t “delectable” unless you slather them with sugar, MSG, and a raft a flavor enhancers and oily fats.

The company’s new campaign has the actress Jenny Garth explaining why fresh, in-season vegetables need all this, and healthy dose of calcium disodium EDTA preservative to keep them that way for — months.

The dining car at the Food Shark (image from the Food Shark).

Marfa is difficult to get to. Fortunately, you can eat quite happily once you get there. The two are connected, though the explanation requires a little patience on your part.

Way out in the high desert of Texas, Marfa is several hours of fast driving from the nearest major airport. I flew into El Paso and, on a tip from a jazz trombonist who knows his food, provisioned myself with some quite good green chile tamales from Pepe’s (just off Hwy 10) before leaving town and heading north north-west. The next three hours were filled with desert, big-rig trucks, Spanish-language radio, and the judicious use of cruise control.

Judd, the minimal
Before he passed away in 1994, the sculptor Donald Judd established a constellation of studios, living spaces, and art installation spaces in Marfa. He’d passed through the town years before as an enlistee in the US Army and been struck by its remoteness from everything else. As a successful artist showing mostly in New York and other major urban centers, Judd’s Marfa experiment began as an attempt to create art that would, by virtue of its isolation and placement, force the viewer to experience it mindful of its location and context. Judd’s largest works are installed here, at the Chinati Foundation which he established in a decommissioned military base on the edge of town.

One of the 15 untitled works in concrete on the Chinati Foundation's grounds.

As you drive into the town center on Hwy 67, you pass the southwest corner of the Chinati Foundation’s property. Here, sixty enormous concrete boxes arrayed in fifteen clusters of three to five boxes along a kilometer-long north-south axis. The boxes are of the same external dimensions but each cluster’s boxes have different faces left open.

A few of the hundred works in mill aluminum.

Behind the concrete works, in two retrofitted hangers, sit a hundred boxes fabricated of mill aluminum to the same external dimensions but with internal volumes permuted a hundred different ways. Both installations invite the viewer to explore the mutability and variety of light, shadow, and space.

Judd’s was a rigorous aesthetic of consistency and consideration in the making and doing of things. Those who were attracted to Judd’s Marfa shared or developed something of that same rigor. This is not to say that Marfa isn’t an art town, because it is. It just happens to be an art town that has only a minimal tolerance for fluff and tchotchkes.

Marfa food
And so we come to the food. Does the spirit of a place permeate its food, like a sort of genius loci? In Marfa, as in other places, maybe it does. For a town with a small population and only a handful of eateries, it was a happy surprise to find as many good places to eat as I did. Two in particular felt like they’d absorbed the spirit of place: simple but not simplistic, complex but not complicated, carefully considered.

The Food Shark at Ballroom Marfa (image from the Food Shark).

Food truck eating
The Food Shark is a food truck that shows up Mondays through Fridays under a canopy next to the railway line running through downtown Marfa. Krista Steinhauer and Adam Bork bought the truck for a small sum and keep costs down by prepping in a kitchen they built in their duplex. They recently installed a dining car—it’s a refurbished schoolbus parked right next to the Food Shark and the railroad track—to accommodate those who find the large tables designed by Judd too exposed to the elements. This is a quirky operation.

Food Shark food is simple and to the point. It’s not trying to be something it isn’t. It is what it is. Here’s an example. One of the best sandwiches I’ve eaten in a long time was a Food Shark reuben (a special that day): pastrami on dense toasted rye, with sauerkraut, swiss, and Russian dressing, served with dilled potato salad. As a list of components, this reuben sounds just like any other. As a gestalt, perfectly made and full of balanced yet distinct flavours, warm in your hand and incredibly unpretentious, it has a weightiness that makes you go quiet, eat it instantly, and then think about it for a long time. On reuben day, the town was empty and flooded in desert sun, and a windstorm was blowing eddies of sand and tumbleweeds about.

Dinner service at Cochineal

Calm under pressure
I stayed in Marfa for only a few days before heading north-east to Austin. The last night I was in town, I went to Cochineal to see what most people told me was the upper end of the local restaurant scene. Just a few years old and three years in the making, Cochineal’s kitchen staff is tiny and consists entirely of Marfa natives trained by proprietors Tom Rapp and Toshi Sakihara (previously of Etats-Unis in New York). There’s been no turnover in the kitchen in the two years they’ve been open. I sat close to the pass and watched the sous-chefs working in the open kitchen through dinner. The dining room filled up up quickly and orders began to filter in faster and faster, but the kitchen action remained precise, quiet, coordinated, and (most pleasingly of all) unfailingly polite. Making the food well was as important as making the food good.

And the food was good. It was really good, and didn’t call attention to itself with fancy pyrotechnics. Handmade pasta dressed with oil, anchovies, tomatoes, and capers, then showered with grated Parmesan was simultaneously tender and delicate, robust and meaty. A veal chop was grilled a textbook medium-rare, served with with black olives, crisp pan-roasted potatoes and parsley. Warm date pudding both dense and light at the same time, and mildly sweet with the complex flavour of molasses and dried fruit; the pile of gently-whipped, nearly unsweetened cream alongside was exactly what the pudding wanted. The food had a clarity rare in an age afflicted with fads: it was carried by classic flavor combinations and superb execution. With a crisp, cold Sapporo, this joined my short list of nearly-perfect meals.

Spirit of place
So, back to the question: Is Donald Judd’s Marfa connected to the Food Shark and Cochineal? My take: Yes. They all share the quality that comes from careful consideration and believing that the act of making of a thing can be as important to do well as the thing itself. Here in the thin desert air, under wide skies and far from the rest of the world, Marfa’s food and art seem quite at home with each other.

The search for a fashionable drink has led some to the Negroni, one part each of gin, vermouth, and Campari. I capitalize the “N”  here because the drink is the invention of one Count Camillo Negroni, who, in 1919, was bright enough to fortify the limp and then well-known Americano by replacing the soda-water with gin.  An orange slice was added to distinguish it visually from the Americano.

The OED sites Orson Welles comment on the drink in 1947: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”

The Negroni Sbagliato (“spal-yacht-oh”  translates as “wrong”, “mistaken”, or “misbehaving” ) has become so popular in Europe the drink is sometimes just called a “Sbagliato” for short. This latest twist is another substitution, prosecco instead of gin (maybe not as bad for you).

This time they have it right. The prosecco sweetens up the too-bitter Negroni traditionale, and lowers the total alcohol level so you can enjoy more of them.

Usually in a rocks glass, occasionally served in a wine glass:

The Negroni Sbagliato
1 ounce vermouth
1 ounce Campari
2 ounces prosecco
→ Stir over ice and garnish with the traditional orange slice.

Here, a Campari-produced ad recommends sparkling Pinot Chardonnay. I recommend a good dry prosecco.  For the vermouth, the barman here is using Cinzano Bianco, an Italian mid-sweet vermouth made by Gruppo Campari.

His writing is something to savor and enjoy, paragraph by paragraph, as you move from the subject he is ostensibly writing about, to all manner of related history, personal asides, and truths of life and culture.

Aldo Buzzi (pronounced “Boot-see”) is an urbane raconteur whose slim, brilliant volumes are mostly available only in Italian.  His books are sometimes classified — as booksellers and marketers are wont to do — as “food writing” or “travel writing”, but the brilliance of the prose — witty, arch, breezily erudite, and very funny — winds up transcending these genres.

Three have been translated into English: The Perfect Egg in 2005, (L’uovo alla kok, 1979), Journey to the Land of the Flies in 1996 (Viaggio in Terra de mosche e altri viaggi, 1994), and A Weakness for Almost Everything in 2006 (Un debole per quasi tutto, 2006) .

Oddly, and inspirationally, Buzzi’s wrote his first book, Quando la pantera rugge, at age 62.  He was first published in English when the New Yorker magazine ran his (long) short story Chekov in Sondrio in 1992.  Buzzi was then 82.

For the first 60 years of his life, Buzzi was set designer, costume designer, and, occasionally, on the scriptwriting team for various movies, mostly with director Alberto Latuada, and, early on, with Federico Fellini.  Trying to find the rather obscure films on which he has writing credit, most notably (if you are an Italian film buff) L’imprevisto (The Unexpected, 1961), is impossible in the US.

The reportedly quirky documentary he directed and co-wrote, America Pagana (1995) promises “a mystical journey to the land of the feathered serpent” — Mayan Mexico.  [If any reader has access to a copy of this documentary, please e-mail me.]

Aldo Buzzi passed away last October (2009) at age 99.  In Parliamo d’Altro he wrote:

“Quello che si prova a 95 anni è quello che si provava anni fa a 85. E quello che si proverà, fra un po’ d’anni, a 105″

“What we try to do at age 95, is what we tried to do at age 85, and what we will be trying to do, a few years later, at age 105.”

Along with a body of marvelous writing, a memorable lesson:  Success is no impediment to trying again.

A couple years ago, in San Francisco, at a certain open-late diner on Market Street, I had a question about the maple syrup.  “Do you serve real maple syrup with the pancakes?”  Our waitress was tattooed, blond-pink, pierced, and dismissive. ”Yes,” she replied.

I’ve heard this before.  I persisted.  “I mean, its is natural maple syrup?  Like from a tree?”  The waitress is getting annoyed.  In San Francisco its not necessary to defer to customers, or even be nice to them.

“Look, ” she began, exasperated and actually looking up from the pad now, “we make the maple syrup right here, in the back.  We made it like one hour ago.”

Natural and homemade!

Each year, for Christmas, my mother makes rosettes. Rosettes have only 5 ingredients, yet they are nearly impossible to make. The recipe (if there were a standard one) is different for each particular oven. Timing when combining and mixing the ingredients is so critical that a single minute in either direction before cooking can result in collapsed, inedible discs after cooking.

Even if you manage them to bake the rosettes correctly (congratulations), frosting the cookies is another gauntlet. Frost too early, and the hot cookie will ruinously liquify the frosting. Frost too late, and the cold, hardened frosting will rip the cookie apart as you spread. About 30 seconds separates these two states, so make sure to frost each cookie as it comes out of the oven individually. What fun!

Additionally, the process often fails, partially or completely, for no discernible reason. Witness my 10-year-old niece (the assistant cook) crying over a suddenly and inexplicably gluified mass that cannot be extracted from the mixing bowl.

In short, rosettes are the perfect holiday cookie.

Growing up in our small Italian-immigrant community, I had always believed the traditional set of holiday cookies (wand, pizzelle, dischi, rosettes, taralle …) were the pinnacle of taste and artistry in Italian baking. It seemed that, as such, these marvels of taste-as-pleasure should be enjoyed at most once a year (imagine you are Catholic and this might make sense).

Now I know the truth. The rosettes, for example, are good but are simply one cookie-type. There are certainly many easier-to-make, better-tasting, and festive Italian cookies that come out wonderfully for the first-time maker. Why make rosettes, wand, dischi, and the other half-dozen Italian-American Christmas traditionals?

Making rosettes is a yearly trial for even the most experienced cook. It took my mother (a rosette expert) two discarded batches this Christmas to produce an acceptable third batch of rosettes. The first was destroyed by the Northeastern ice storm that cut her electricity in mid-bake. A few days later, the second batch was flattened by a forced substitution of butter for margarine due to closed roads between her and the supermarket. (butter can collapse the rosettes)

Ok. Why even try? Isn’t there a toll house recipe somewhere on the Food Network web site?

Each Italian woman in my family (or naturalized-Italian wife) has a specific cookie she makes every year. In most cases the same cookie her mother (or mother-in-law) made. The arcane subtlety of preparation that results in an acceptable cookie is passed down from mother to daughter through years of pre-adolescent cookie-bonding in the kitchen.

The tradition is the desired result, the cookie is a side-effect.

With this in mind, I give you a full year to try to master the rosette. My mother’s recipe is below, with her quite valuable but certainly incomplete advice unedited in parentheses.

Ironically, the most colossal failures provide the best memories. Who can forget the 2001 rosettes when she accidentally added salt instead of sugar. Miraculously the right shape, a few rosettes were grabbed by 6-year-old Sarah before anyone else could taste them. Every year, we do an impressions of little Sarah’s shocked face: “Aaack! They don’t taste right!”

Brave readers, let us know how you do.

Rosettes

3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp vanilla (some people use anise)
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine (don’t use butter)

mix to medium softness
shape into balls (use a spoon and flour your hands)
place on a greased sheet pan
bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes

frosting
mix confectioners sugar and milk. keep a fairly stiff consistency. dip or spread (and add sprinkles immediately or frosting will harden).

Konichiwa, Beard Papa

Why are 28 to 35 year old urban hipsters lapping up faux-French cream puffs and virally pass-along marketing this product/experience? Um … unknown. The charmingly clumsy marketing of “Beard Papa” and his cream puffs by Japanese multi-restaurant franchiser Muginoho may be to blame.

“Beard Papa” is a transliteration of the French “barbe à papa”, meaning “cotton candy”. I guess in some tangential way it does suggest the artificially cloying and unrelenting sweetness Muginoho delivers in both the cream puff and the store environment. And everyone loves a clumsy Japanese translation. No, they do not serve cotton candy, only cream puffs and a few precious pastries that look like they are designed for Hello Kitty’s consumption. The company has about 250 stores in Asia, and about 30 now in the US — with many more planned here.

The Beard Papa web site offers an apocryphal (and creepy) animated origin of the Beard Papa Cream Puff, involving cute cartoon children entranced by the beard of a elderly baker named Beard Papa. “The cream [puff] is just a fluffy and lovable as my beard!” insinuates Beard Papa, as the gathered cute children express what I assume is intended as delight — though their expressions look more demonic than delighted. You can judge for yourself.

So how are the cream puff at Beard Papa? Good, but very ordinary. Most local bakeries will make as good or better. But local bakeries don’t always have cream puffs.

The new, purportedly Asian-fusion restaurant “Boston Public” throws us into an environment that has been drained of all color, and most of the light, apparently as an intended contrast to its attempts at bold flavor and presentation. Unfortunately, the drab and soporific interior draws all too clear and tragic a parallel to the food served.

Perhaps the Eastern European owners are attempting a nostalgic plaisanterie with the grey oppressive environment. But, despite the strained and worried smiles tenuously clinging to the lips of the well-intentioned staff, no element of the evening afforded the slightest pleasure or comfort.

We hope that these efforts are simply the result of amateur and untried menu design, rather than an attempt to “fuse” the taste of Eastern Europe with the grey and solemn days of Asia during World War I, when the Chinese subsisted on large piles of grey, pickled vegetable matter as an appetizer, followed by flavorless meat, nearly raw for want of cooking fuel.

I ordered the eggplant with mint leaves as an appetizer. An intriguing combination on paper, I imagined a warm, fragrant, braised aubergine anointed with shredded fresh mint. Instead, what arrived was a shock of cold grey mechanically-shredded canned pickled “eggplant”, injected with a toothpaste-like mint overlay that did little to conceal the chemical taste of this would-be war ration. The enormous mass served, if ingested in toto, would no doubt cause cause severe gastrointestinal distress. As my father would say, a “belly bomb”.

Inexplicably, similarly pickled vegetable preservations invaded every dish we were served. Perfectly innocent wild salmon, Kobe beef, and free-range chicken could not run from the assault of unwanted pickled preserves, randomly bitter and unpleasant spices, and dry soured goat cheese that overpowered each dish, repulsing the diner, as its undercooked blood ran down the furrows of the plate.

Your correspondent will not be able to report on dessert, as were were forced to make a retreat from “Boston Public” shortly after the main course. Even so, the heavy toll of nearly $400 for four was a terrible and unwarranted cost to pay for such an atrocity.

Zero stars.

Highbrow or just cheesy?

If there are still lingering questions about the forced-gentrification of the American palate by the Food Network and other culprits, Kettle Chips is not in doubt.

Kettle chips has introduced perhaps its most pretentious flavor, “roasted red pepper with goat cheese” (all in small letters, like the e.e. cummings poem potential buyers may have been asked to read in 9th grade english).

Kettle Foods invites you to discriminate this goat cheese from its “TUSCAN THREE CHEESE” (in all capital letters, probably because they were forced to capitalize “Tuscan”) and its “NEW YORK CHEDDAR WITH HERBS” (all caps here too). Without the added HERBS New York Cheddar might seem like the unsophisticated American cousin of the other two flavors.

The fact of the matter is they all taste pretty good. And they all taste essentially the same.

The flavorings for all three are pretty much identical: cheese solids and “natural” flavorings (micro-amounts of HERBS and/or roasted red pepper). The flavor that tastes best to a given buyer is probably more strongly correlated to the buyer’s self-identity than the negligible/arguable difference between these three “flavors”.