England

Fatty Melts and Porcupine Meatball Subs

When she isn’t work­ing, Kara reads food blogs. She reads them for hours at a time. She never rarely makes any of the food she reads about. But a few weeks ago, when she read about fatty melts on Se­ri­ous Eats, a so­cial in­for­ma­tion net­work for food­ies, they sounded crazy enough that I asked her for the link to the recipe page so that I could send it to my youngest brother, Ben­jamin. As I ex­pected, he went off‐the‐walls crazy about it (he’s eas­ily ex­citable, even for an almost‐eleven‐year‐old), and the more I thought about it, the more it did seem like a good idea. So I pledged that Kara and I would make fatty melts and tell him all about them, know­ing full well the im­prob­a­bil­ity that he would ever con­vince our fa­ther to make such a dish.

Here’s why. To make a fatty melt, one takes a ham­burger (Adam Kuban, the orig­i­na­tor of the recipe, rec­om­mends a quarter‐pounder.) and sand­wiches it be­tween two grilled cheese sand­wiches. That means one uses four slices of bread, two or four slices of cheese, and a quarter‐pound of ground beef, plus ac­ces­sories like onion, tomato, and let­tuce. My fa­ther, a man of wis­dom and econ­omy, never even makes a ham­burger patty with­out first hav­ing blended the beef with rolled oats. To him, the fatty melt would be a mere un­healthy ex­trav­a­gance, and un­palat­able to boot.

When we made fatty melts two weeks ago, we ended up chang­ing the recipe a bit. First, we de­cided to make cheesy west­ern fatty melts. This means that we added a fried egg on top of the burger. Nor­mally, one adds cheese as well, but since there was al­ready cheese in the grilled cheese sand­wiches, we de­cided to skip that step. Sec­ond, the meat we had avail­able was a blend of ground mut­ton and lamb which we had found on sale at Tesco. This re­placed the beef. Third, we didn’t use any­where near a quarter‐pound of meat. There may have been a quarter‐pound be­tween the two sand­wiches we made, but all the la­bels were in met­ric, so we aren’t sure. Last of all, we added jalapeños to one of the grilled cheese sand­wiches on each burger. This was to give the burger a lit­tle “kick”, but in the end, there was so much fla­vor, I didn’t re­ally no­tice them.

When we ate our fatty melts, they were so big that af­ter the first few bites we ended up eat­ing the fried egg on one sand­wich, and the burger patty on the other sand­wich. Nonethe­less, we were able to give Ben­jamin a very fa­vor­able re­port, and we plan to eat them again this com­ing week.

With the meat left over from the fatty melts, we de­cided to make meat­ball subs. But not just any meat­ball would do. We de­cided to make por­cu­pine meat­balls by adding cooked rice to the bread­crumbs, mut­ton, egg, and sea­son­ings. Af­ter Kara mixed them up, she shaped them, and we browned them in a skil­let. Kara says next time, some­body else (pre­sum­ably that means me) has to mix and shape them and deal with raw meat un­der the fin­ger­nails. We let the meat­balls sim­mer for a while in some tomato sauce, and then placed them on top of toasted sub rolls pre­pared with olive oil, salt, pep­per, sea­son­ing, and grated cheese. They went back into the oven to melt the cheese and get the sauce pip­ing hot. It turned out to be an ex­cel­lent way to use left­over meat.

16 November 2008

Andrew Shields

Sardines

When I was a lit­tle boy, my fa­ther would some­times open a pack of Saltines and a tin or sar­dines packed in mus­tard, and we would have a lit­tle snack. I re­mem­ber sit­ting in the din­ing room with my brother Michael — it must have been be­fore Nicholas was born — and my fa­ther sit­ting be­tween us, pick­ing though the yel­lowed fish‐flesh with a knife and fork to re­move the spine. He would pile a few lit­tle scraps of fish onto wait­ing Saltines and hand them to us, while we wrin­kled our noses at the fishy smell the mus­tard could not quite hide. I don’t re­mem­ber whether I liked the taste of it or not, but the mem­ory is strongly and strangely pos­i­tive, like many of the mem­o­ries from that time in my life. The al­lure of this mem­ory in par­tic­u­lar and the dis­til­la­tions it holds of the char­ac­ters of my fa­ther and brother, and even of the chairs and table, the yel­low light, the three door­ways which seal off the room in my rec­ol­lec­tion, the early dark of win­ter evenings, and, most of all, of sar­dines them­selves, were given strength by the unity that the priv­i­leged mem­ber­ship in those meals brought us.

The three of us ate those meals alone be­cause my mother could not and can­not stand the smell and sight of fish, let alone the taste of it. And out of no de­sire to ex­clude her, but only to take ad­van­tage of her ab­sence, we ate those tins of sar­dines. On other nights when she was away we might share fried cat­fish nuggets, but the sim­ple, un­pre­pared na­ture of those sar­dine and cracker snacks meant that we all sat down to eat to­gether, hud­dled at the table around the lit­tle tin dish of fish. The beau­ti­ful still­ness and po­tency of that mem­ory is the mod­ern ben­e­fi­ciary of that close­ness.

Two weeks ago I ended up vis­it­ing the gro­cery store by my­self — a pre­ma­ture visit nec­es­sary be­cause I had eaten the last of the bread. Like my fa­ther, I mar­ried a woman who does not like fish, so that it was only in her ab­sence that I con­tem­plated buy­ing a tin of sar­dines. They called to me as I walked the aisles, and when I left the store, I had a lit­tle blue tin of sar­dines in the bot­tom of my bag.

They lan­guished in their tin for two more weeks. Some­where on the way home, their call had died, and be­sides, I had no crack­ers. But to­day, at a lit­tle be­fore 1 PM, I peeled back the lit­tle tin lid and laid bare their three glis­ten­ing sil­ver bod­ies.

I was not able to find sar­dines packed in mus­tard, but only in brine, oil, or wa­ter. Of these three I had cho­sen brine as the clos­est to mus­tard and as the least likely to be un­palat­able. With­out the mus­tard I found the sight of the fish in­con­gru­ously vivid com­pared to mem­ory. Sar­dines are tinned with­out head, tails, or fins, but they are still un­mis­tak­ably the dead bod­ies of fish. I poured off some of the brine into a bowl and mixed it with a lit­tle bit of mus­tard pow­der. I toasted the last of this week’s bread, and poured the mus­tard liq­uid over the top. I cut a few slices of Camem­bert and gin­gerly lifted out one of the three sar­dines onto the plate.

As I cut into the fish, it was im­me­di­ately ap­par­ent that I had botched the job. By hav­ing cut into it the way it lay nat­u­rally — on its side — I had ren­dered it al­most im­pos­si­ble to re­move the spine in one piece. I suc­ceeded in re­mov­ing it in six or seven, and I ate it with the nag­ging dread that I would swal­low a ver­te­bra, or, worse yet, feel it crunch grainily be­tween my teeth — the one blot on my oth­er­wise happy mem­ory. I man­aged to avoid this calamity, though a few pieces stuck awk­wardly in my throat at the thought. I helped them down with my toast soaped in mus­tard, and re­turned to the kitchen to fetch a sec­ond fish.

This sec­ond fish posed a bit of a prob­lem: when I had gath­ered the meal, I had only planned to eat one and to eat the last of the bread more slowly. But I was still hun­gry and liked the sar­dine bet­ter than I thought I would. I lifted the sec­ond out onto my plate and looked around for some­thing to eat with it. There re­mained only two bready op­tions at my dis­posal — two hot dog rolls which we were sav­ing for meat­ball subs and a half‐eaten pack­age of Garibaldi bis­cuits, long wafers the thick­ness of gra­ham crack­ers, but softer, stud­ded with tart, crushed cur­rants, and creased for break­ing. About two fifths of one of these lat­ter had been eaten, so I took the re­main­ing part, added a few more slices of Camem­bert, and poured a glass of milk. In this fash­ion, I dis­posed of the re­main­ing sar­dine in short or­der.

When I told Kara about my lunch she said, “That sounds hor­ri­ble.”

11 November 2008

Andrew Shields

Dals and Soups

Dal… is the com­mon name in the north­ern part of the Sub­con­ti­nent for a dish that is made of split beans, peas, or lentils. Dal may be like a thin soup, or it can be a very thick puree. Of­ten its tex­ture is be­tween the two, so that it’s a lit­tle like split pea soup. In most parts of the Sub­con­ti­nent, the main meal in­cludes dal, bread or rice, and a veg­etable, so dal is one of the es­sen­tial culi­nary cat­e­gories. It’s a very flex­i­ble and cre­ative one, too.

Dal dishes are very easy to cook, nu­tri­tious, and in­cred­i­bly ver­sa­tile and in­ex­pen­sive, like the eas­i­est of soups. For trav­el­ers in the Sub­con­ti­nent, dal, like bread in Eu­rope, can feel like a great friend, al­ways avail­able, sus­tain­ing.

Man­goes and Curry Leaves, Ar­ti­san 2005

Curry is the na­tional British food, far sur­pass­ing pizza, ke­babs, or burg­ers as a take out food. It is even more pop­u­lar than fish and chips. That hav­ing been said, we haven’t had any In­dian food out yet, we’ve been mak­ing our own. While we don’t know if our In­dian dishes are au­then­ti­cally fla­vored, we have re­al­ized why their warm, spicy, and fill­ing recipes are wel­come in the cold months of late au­tumn in Britain.

On a stu­dent bud­get of an ever shrink­ing size, the eas­i­est and most in­ex­pen­sive meals we make are In­dian dals, which we eat about once a week. Our dals are toor dals, that is, they are made with yel­low split peas. While we usu­ally spice our dals with turmeric, curry, mus­tard pow­der, salt and pep­per, we have on oc­ca­sion added bay leaves or cumin. The fla­vor and the tex­ture of the dal de­pends a great deal on how long it cooks both prior to the ad­di­tion of wa­ter and af­ter the ad­di­tion of wa­ter. The peas will toast slightly in a small amount of grease ei­ther with gar­lic and onion or by them­selves be­fore be­ing im­mersed in wa­ter which causes them to swell and slowly break down. The longer a dal is cooked the darker and thicker it will get. Some­times milk or yo­gurt is added to­ward the end of the cook­ing process which lends the dal a creamier tex­ture and a bit of tang. We usu­ally eat our dals over rice which has cooled to room tem­per­a­ture en­joy­ing the con­trast of the very hot dal to the cool rice.

An­other dish we eat weekly is soup. Soup is com­fort­ing af­ter the cold British rain which will driz­zle all day or tor­rent briefly and then threaten men­ac­ingly all day with­out re­sult. It is also con­ve­nient to leave sim­mer­ing while we work up­stairs, pop­ping down­stairs to give it a stir every fif­teen min­utes or so. Our fa­vorite soups are potato and cau­li­flower. The cau­li­flower soup we make has such a creamy taste and is noth­ing like the flo­rets you would dip into ranch. We were first in­spired to make cau­li­flower soup back in Sep­tem­ber when read­ing the Becks and Posh blog on the de­ci­sion be­tween olive oil and but­ter in cau­li­flower soup. (We use but­ter.) Becks and Posh is mod­ern cock­ney rhyming slang for ‘nosh’, as the blog so named is writ­ten by a Brit liv­ing in the SF Bay area. She gives a recipe in the ar­ti­cle, which we fol­low… roughly. Ba­si­cally we put oil, onion (when we re­mem­ber), and cau­li­flower in the pan and cook for a lit­tle while, then we cover it with wa­ter and leave it cook­ing for twenty min­utes. The we add more wa­ter and cook for an­other twenty min­utes. If we were be­ing fussy we would im­mer­sion blend it, but gen­er­ally by that point we find that we are too hun­gry to bother. Be­sides, lit­tle bits of cau­li­flower which re­tain their tex­ture are kind of nice, a rus­tic ad­di­tion to the recipe, like mashed pota­toes which are still slightly lumpy.

Our potato soups some­times fea­ture a bit of shred­ded braised cab­bage or some “cook­ing ba­con” which ap­pears to be the “oops we cut that rasher wrong” shreds which are stuffed un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously into plas­tic for a half pound less than the reg­u­lar rasher. British ba­con rash­ers are not the same as Amer­i­can ba­con slices, they call those “streaky strips”. The dif­fer­ence is one of size and fat con­tent, British rash­ers tend to be wider and to have fat along one edge, as op­posed to the mar­bled ap­pear­ance of Amer­i­can ba­con, they are also what would be la­belled as “thick‐cut” Amer­i­can ba­con. Nonethe­less, the adage re­mains true, al­most every­thing is bet­ter with ba­con.

A new soup we tried re­cently was a sum­mer squash and pol­ish sausage soup, which called for the named in­gre­di­ents, heavy cream, and a hand­ful of spices. We didn’t have any of those (ex­act) in­gre­di­ents, but we did have a squash that was name­less and kind of old, some sale sausage that had been liv­ing in the same con­tainer as the ba­con for sev­eral weeks, and some rather wa­tery plain yo­ghurt. So I fried the sausage, roasted the squash, and boiled them to­gether with salt and pep­per. Af­ter a trip through the blender and a quick re­heat, I dol­loped the yo­ghurt on top and ended up with a strik­ing and tasty dish.

9 November 2008

Jon Kara Shields