We’re out on Cape Cod, so naturally I cooked up some Portuguese Kale soup.

The Portuguese were eating kale long before it was trendy. But much like chicken parm in Italy, Cape Cod’s Portuguese Kale Soup is hard to find in Portugal.

The original version in Portugal is known as Caldo Verde, the green broth soup. Linguiça and potatoes are more of accent to the flavors than the Americanized soup where these ingredients are part of the collaboration. In Portugal, the soup is really about the leafy green.

John Fitzgerald, writing at the Provincetown Independent, explains how he was surprised he couldn’t find kale soup in Lisbon, but he did track down Caldo Verde in the north of the country. He declared it “almost surely the original version,” of what is served on the Cape.

Domestic variations of the soup are often filled with whatever root vegetables are on hand. Some people add legumes, others use different styles of sausages. I’m surprised I haven’t come across a recipe featuring an Eastham turnip.

But how did Portuguese Kale Soup arrive on Cape Cod, you might be asking?

Portuguese immigrants have long been part of the Cape’s culture. The Provincetown Independent notes that by the 1855 census, they represented 2.5% of the towns population. And by 1895, that had jumped to 21%. These immigrants arrived for whaling and then fishing, and then they set down roots. Portuguese immigrants also settled in Falmouth and Martha’s Vineyard for the same reasons.

Each summer, Provincetown celebrates Portuguese heritage with a blessing of the fleet and a Portuguese festival. The Portuguese legacy can be seen throughout the community. Portugal’s flag flies alongside rainbow flags throughout the season. The Portuguese Bakery sells Malasada, fried dough, and custard tarts. And of course, Portuguese Kale Soup is pervasive on restaurant menus.

Portuguese culinary influences have have been integrated into the cuisine of the outer cape since the mid-20th Century. Gail Blakely at OnCape Magazine breaks down some of the cookbooks that go back to the 1950s featuring those Portuguese cooking traditions.

Kale soup is something of a misnomer on the Cape. While kale is part of the recipe, the stronger flavor today is typically the linguica sausage. The pork sausage is seasoned with onion, garlic, and paprika, and usually is smoked. I think of it as a spicy Kielbasa. The flavor is strong and dominates the soup. I would hypothesize that in the same way Italian immigrants arriving in America found an abundance of food, and reinvented cucina povera into a rich, meaty cuisine, the same evolution happened with kale soup. Meat became less expensive, more accessible, and now in the United States, has become the dominate flavor in this otherwise hearty peasant soup.

Many restaurants on the outer Cape have their own variation of kale soup, like PJ’s, the mid-century family restaurant in Wellfleet, or mainstays like The Lobster Pot and The Mayflower in Provincetown. It’s a dish that’s widely available, and all slightly different. So naturally I cooked up my own.

Cape Cod Style Portuguese Kale Soup (Ian’s Version)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 onion

• Two big carrots

• 1 bunch of Kale

• 2 linguica links

• 5 to 8 small potatoes

• garlic

• Chicken broth

• olive oil

• Half a bag of brown beans from Rancho Gordo

INSTRUCTIONS

• Cook those beans

• Finely dice the onions and garlic

• Simmer onions in oil until translucent

• Add medallions of carrot

• Add chunks of potato

• Chop kale and add to pot

• Slice sausage into medallions

• Check your beans. They still aren’t done, are they?

• Simmer the soup ingredients

• Add the broth and bring to boil

• Season with salt and pepper

• Check the beans. If they are cooked, add them to the soup. A little bean water can help with flavor and color

• If beans are uncooked, now is a good time to turn down the soup and let it rest while you wait for the beans.

• Cook the soup on a gentle boil for about 10 to 15 minutes

• Serve with crusty bread and parmigiana cheese

The Latest

Italian Culinary History

Over at Appetito, I interviewed Danielle Callegari about her book, A Bite-sized History of Italy, where we talked about the evolution of Italian cuisine. Her primary argument is Italian cuisine has bound the country together better than politics.

Connecticut Fast Food

When you’re sitting on I-95, fast isn’t what comes to mind. But there is a local, family-owned fast food mini chain that can be found along the interstate corridor — and is only in Connecticut. After the PEZ museum, we grabbed a quick lunch at this local mini chain.

My First (And Last) Cozy Soup

A few months back, I hit the town with and we had lunch at Cozy Soup N Burger. Little did I know this iconic New York diner was headed towards insolvency. It closed last month.

Space Food

Tamara MC writes about space food, actual food in space, not the chalky astronaut ice cream you can buy at the Smithsonian.

Spaghett!

The kids are discovering spaghett cocktails, reports . I’ve been drinking these for years, in part because my friends insist I look a bit like Spaghett, from this Tim and Eric Awesome Show sketch.

Enshittification for Pots

It’s not just the internet that tech bros and VCs are killing. Why are pots and pans so terrible? Keyana Sapp looks into why everything is terrible and comes up with a list of a few brands that might still be safe to cook on.

Becoming Anthony Bourdain

Laurie Woolever spoke with actor Dominic Sessa about his starring role in the Bourdain biopic, Tony. Woolever was a Bourdain friend and collaborator. I reviewed Woolever’s memoir, Care and Feeding. In it she discusses working for Bourdain and frames the finality of this life.

Taverns are Back

The hottest new restaurants in the city are all taverns, according to Matthew Schneier at Grub Street.

H Mart Cookbook

H Mart president Stacey Kwon wrote a cookbook featuring the ingredients sold in the Asian American marketplace, reports Ashlie D. Stevens at Salon.

I harvested some green beans.

In last week’s garden update, I noted some of the things I’ve been growing out on Cape Cod. I harvested this bowl of beans from the six plants we have growing (and since then another bowl about half this size). Needless to say I’m already plotting to expand our bean cultivating next year.

The great thing about beans is they help revitalize soil. Their root systems, and bacteria that attract to them, pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and add it back to the soil.

Beans have been around for a long time, showing up on every inhabited continent, and eaten by early humans thousands of years ago. What we think of as green beans — French beans, string beans, snap beans — have a more recent evolution. Green beans’ ancestor can be found in north, central, and south America where they were first domesticated. The New World, as the Europeans dubbed it, had many beans with big seeds — the “bean” as we think of beans today. With green beans though, we prize the pod rather than the actual bean.

Margarett Waterbury dug into the history of cultivation over at Medium. According to her, key part of the snap bean, the edible pod, was something that colonial powers began to breed into the snap beans after acquiring them in Mexico and Peru. Waterbury also hypothesizes the acceptance of these beans has more to do with European familiarity with lentils and chickpeas, unlike say, the tomato.

While most varietals of green beans today no longer have a fibrous thread stretched along the lengthwise portion of the bean, this trait was something bred out of the green beans in the 19th century.

C.N. Keeney, a plant breeder set out to grow beans without this burdensome string. He painstakingly searched whole fields of beans looking for plants without the string, snapping a single bean from each, and then harvesting seeds from the remaining plants. He was looking for a needle in a haystack.

The fact that we no longer sit around peeling strings from green beans should tell you he had some success. He developed 9 cultivars of stringless beans, and unsurprisingly these proved popular as fresh beans and in canned varieties.

My harvest arrived unexpectedly. One day I had bean plants with flowers, and two days later a harvest of beans. Clipping off the beans before they grow too long is supposed to help them continue growing beans all summer long. Hopefully I grabbed these beans before it was too late.

I had just enough for a small side dish for two people — perfect since our five-year-old does not eat green foods.

Garden Green Beans with Garlic

INGREDIENTS

• Green beans plucked from your garden

• Two bulbs of locally sourced garlic

• Zest from half a lemon

• Butter or olive oil

INSTRUCTIONS

• Snap the ends of the beans

• Finely chop the garlic

• On medium heat, combine butter, beans, and garlic

• Cook gently

• Add lemon zest

• Season with salt

• Taste and serve when desired consistency

The Latest

Gen Z Killing Bagels

PopUp bagel started out as the concept of a bored rich guy during COVID. Now its a hot new chain selling bagels and dip — cream cheese, sometimes with a cool collab mix-in. The big thing about this new bagel shop is that its all marketing. DJs, cool slogans, and lines. What it doesn’t have is a variety of bagels. Instead of multiple types of dough (pumpernickel, egg, blueberry, whole wheat, ect), there’s just plain white bread. There’s a choice of seeds, but that’s it. Grub Street looks into this new trend, and the scourge of bad bagels.

Berry Tech

Sustaining your toddler’s berry addiction is a modern marvel driven by R&D from Driscoll’s. The once fragile, seasonal crop — blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and my personal favorite, the raspberries — have become an international refrigerated commodity available 365 days a year, around the globe. The New York Times looks into the story of how the family-owned Driscoll’s invested heavily in creating new cultivars and building a global network to keep those berries on store shelves.

Tough Career Choices

John Devore, a James-Beard award-winning essayist started Ozempic. He makes the journey sound unappetizing, but also describes how it makes writing about food nearly impossible.

Chips and Salsa Go The Way of Bread Service

Restaurants have started charging for chips and salsa. Like the classic bread basket that was once gratis, inflation has driven up the price of gratis chips. That’s okay, and maybe a good thing, argues José Ralat, since it can mean better choices.

Waiting On Restaurant Lines is Now a Job

As viral foods drive restaurant lines, there’s now a cottage industry of line sitting. In what harkens back to the first iPhones, people love waiting on line, but also some people will pay big money to not. Line sitting makes me think of Marc Rebillet, who was first on line for the new iPhone, and sold the spot for $800 to a woman who planned on buying all the iPhones. She hadn’t bothered to read that Apple was limiting sales to each customer.

And One Last Thing

I baked this stone fruit tart with white and yellow peaches and a red pluot.

If you have been following along, I’ve been growing some green things for the last few weeks out on Cape Cod. We planted on Memorial Day and did a quick check-in mid June.

The green strawberries disappeared before we could claim any. They were fenced in on all sides and even topped off with a bird net. However I suspect some over achieving chipmunks may have slipped through the fencing. I saw one scurry into the garden when he thought nobody was looking. In either case, there’s now literally no evidence any strawberries existed, green, red, rotten, or otherwise. The plants continue to grow, and hopefully will fill in more this year.

This garden bed once had been filled with herbs, and then overrun with grasses and other weeds. We really cleaned it up in 2020 trying to remove the sadder herbs. An older rosemary plant had more dead branches than living ones. A few patches of the original thyme remain (out of frame), but it’s become a totally different garden now.

As a location, the bed is close to the kitchen. There’s no better place for fresh herbs than just outside the kitchen door. But it has also grown shadier over the years as the tree canopy has grown taller. The soil lacks nutrients even with the addition of compost and occasionally sewing in fertilizer.

I’ve tried different plant components over the years with the primary focus continuing to be edible plants. The strawberries, on the left, will ideally continue to fill in over time and maybe one day produce fruit. I’ve debated adding asparagus to this section of the garden as it supposedly shares space with strawberries easily.

This year I also planted some lettuce in this herb garden in the hopes that the slightly less sunny portion of garden will keep the lettuce alive beyond the heat of mid-July when many local lettuce plants wither. I’ve lost one to heat, but since extended the irrigation to cover this part of the garden.

I harvested some oregano and hung it to dry. Our neighbor suggested freezing some in herby ice cubes, but I suspect this is how you end up with an oregano infused negroni. There’s some parsley that has since perked up now that its regularly getting water, and sprigs of chocolate mint. Currently I have mint leaves drying as well.

The primary raised bed is thriving. I irrigated this back in June with a soaker hose. It was set on an automated timer set for 20 minutes once a day. This is half the watering we did in the bed the year before, and I think the plants are healthier for it. I’ve interwove tomatoes, basil and more tomatoes. There’s also a bit of sage. Along the left side I have green beans growing. I just harvested some of those and cooked them up with lemon zest and butter (more on that later this week).

The real story here are the tomatoes. I’ve scattered tomato plants throughout the garden to experiment with different locations. Sunlight is increasingly a problem as the surrounding trees grow taller. Luckily the rabbits don’t like the tomato plants.

Last year we cut down a small fur tree that was in the middle of the garden. It produced way too much shade and was a danger to the septic system. Cutting the tree pained me, but it had to go. It’s removal has created a bit more sunlight throughout the garden.

Last week I fertilized the tomatoes. The soil out here is nutrient deficient and they absolutely need to be fed, even when they are planted in rich compost soil. We over watered and under fed them last year. I’m hoping to address both those issues.

We should have our first tomatoes of the season in a few days. Earlier this week I pruned off some lower branches. There’s a lot of different ideas about how to prune tomatoes to maximize yields.

The majority of the tomatoes are plants we bought as seedlings. The varietals include an assortment of cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, “heirloom” tomatoes, and Rutgers tomatoes. The only problem is I’ve mostly forgotten where I’ve planted each one. I guess we’ll see over the next weeks.

Most of the plants I started as seeds were too small to survive the transplant in May. I plan on starting earlier next year. I do have one pot that is going strong, though the plants in it are not yet flowering.

The other bit of good news is that four smaller rose bushes that have been abused by the local rabbits have flowered or are about to flower. The tiny plants have been nibbled away down to almost nothing. I’m hesitant to cage them up but it might be the best protection. The large rose bushes don’t seem to to have the same defensive problem. I have added them to the updated map below.

Finally, one other change that’s currently ongoing in the garden is creating a path through the center of the largest flower bed. Our five-year-old decided we needed the pathway. Now that we’ve integrated some herbs and tomatoes in the main flower garden, I think it actually makes sense to have access. Also without the pine tree, and having cut back many of the ragosa roses over the years, there’s a lot of open real estate in the middle here.

Luckily there were no perennials on this route that were displaced. A few marigolds and a tomato plant are dangerously close to this path, but still out of the way. That made it easy to reconfigure. I moved a marigold, and called it a path.

The only problem is I would like to add some stepping stones. The stones would define the pathway and create clear safe place to step. However, finding some is actually more difficult than you might imagine. Most of the landscaping supply shops are designed to service contractors. You can order a pallet of flagstones and have it delivered, but finding someone who will sell you 6 or 8 single stones is daunting. When I went searching the internet I cam across my own Reddit post from 3 years ago asking the same thing.

I have some leads. And while it is not my first choice, the Home Depot in Hyannis has some natural flagstones. I’m hoping some of the local stone companies have small batch retail ordering.

Read all about our gardening on the All The Things We Grow tag.

Summer has started. We’re out on Cape Cod, where seafood is everywhere. So naturally I ate a fried oyster po’ boy.

Fried oyster sandwiches seems like a natural fit for Cape Cod where oysters are plentiful and fried seafood a defining part of any summer vacation. And yet, the oyster po’ boy is a southern import.

Oysters have been part of the New England diet, more or less, as far back as humans have inhabited North America. Shellfish are everywhere, or they were before we mucked up the estuary waters where they grow. A combination of dirty water and over fishing cut the stock of shellfish along the East Coast in the early 20th century. Luckily, better water and better management have seen that trend reverse. Wellfleet oysters are a cherished commodity.

One reason for the over fishing, is by the 19th century, the greater Boston area was eating a lot of oysters. According to Dialynn Dwyer at Boston.com,

“In the late 1800s, The Boston Daily Globe printed a bewildering variety of oyster recipes, instructing readers to serve them baked, stewed, curried, scalloped, with quail, in an omelette, or — for the truly adventurous — in a pancake.”

Ironically, the oyster Po Boy was not among the list. Instead, Boston had bread filled with creamed oysters. Yummy.

The oyster loaf was direct ancestor of the oyster po boy, named so for its construction from a whole loaf of bread.

The oyster loaf also comes from Louisiana. Or San Francisco. Both cities might have a legitimate claim, according to William Peebles at Mobile Bay. This early sandwich involved a loaf of bread scooped out like an influencer’s bagel and filled with fried oysters. The sandwich was also nicknamed as a peace maker. The name comes from the calming effect it had on domestic life when a husband brought one home.

An account in a newspaper based in Missouri, in 1889, describes how to make an oyster loaf:

you take a small fresh loaf of bread; cut one end so as to make a hinge out of it; tear out the soft inside of the loaf with your hand; then butter the inside of the shell, using good butter and plenty of it; then stuff in a dozen fried oysters

The article attributes the bread to an San Francisco restauranteur who will serve it with pickles. However, there are earlier references to oyster loafs, like one from 1887 in the Daily Astorian in Oregon. While these citations are a good indication the oyster loaf was widely consumed, there’s more evidence this precursor to the Po Boy can be traced to New Orleans.

However, Mr. Peebles points to a 1878 church cookbook, Gulf City Cook Book, as having an oyster loaf recipe. James Karst at Times-Picayune found another reference to an oyster loaf as early as 1851. That would make the oyster loaf part of NOLA cuisine several years before it made it to the west coast.

The oyster loaf is a clear forefather to the poy boy. The sandwich known as the Peacemaker Po Boy combines fried oysters and pickles, much like the description of oyster loaf.

However, the original Po Boy has a distinctive origin in New Orleans, and it wasn’t always made with oysters. The legend describes the Po Boy as a product of sandwiches fed to the striking union workers. Bennie and Clovis Martin had opened a restaurant in the French Market. A few years later the city’s trolley operators went on strike. The Martins supported the working men by feeding them sandwiches.

The sandwiches were made from half a loaf of French Bread, and then loaded up with whatever items the hungry men wanted.

However, the term “poor boy” is derived from an ironic reference to the union workers, who were generally seen is better off than other laborers in town. But because of the strike they now taking handouts. As for the Martins, handing out free sandwiches was a great way to gain some free publicity.

Po Boys have come and gone and come back around again when it comes to trending foods. Po Boys trended a few years ago in Brooklyn in the 2000s and early 2010s with the fried chicken and barbecue joint trends. Catfish Po Boys were more common than oyster po boys. Ultimately the term Po Boy on a menu today comes with a description so you know what it has on it because the filling can vary.

Close to a century later, I was on the wharf in Wellfleet overlooking the harbor. The harbor pier has long had a seafood shanty perched on the edge of it. In more recent years, that shanty has been occupied by Mac’s on the Pier, part of a local chain of seafood markets and restaurants ranging from shanty to table service.

I’ve had plenty of po boys over the years stuffed with fish or inspired by bahn mi, or simply some kind of gentrified southern sandwich. But until this week, I’d never had an oyster po boy. I usually consume my oyster raw. The sanwich was altogether pleasant, and surprisingly light. I would order this again.

The Latest

Ode to the Chicken Cutlet

Everyone suddenly loves chicken cutlet. The fried chicken has become an Italian American staple. Rose Palazzolo over at Slate looks into why. And smartly, she chatted with me, since

The All-American Hot Dog

It’s almost time for the annual Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, and so its the perfect time to look into the iconic food’s history. Over at Ravenous, Jaya Saxena looks into why hot dogs have become so iconically American.

Mozzarella Yarn Art

Check out this mozzarella stick made from yarn.

Are Piadina “The Sandwich of Summer?”

The New York Times has discovered Piadini, and Italian flatbread we’ve been enjoying since 2012 when Testo first opened. My wife even said: I wonder if they know about Testo? as she opened the article. And of course, the author finds his way there in the third paragraph.

Catching up With Ketchup

Some food trends come and go, but Heinz Ketchup has stuck around for 150 years. The key, it seems, was using ripe tomatoes. Plus a great marketing campaign.

Barbecue Week

Bon Appetit has a whole spread on barbecue this week — and not just the cookout kind of barbecue. There’s a look at Kansas City Style, Carolina sauce, Central Texas, and New American. This seems like a great time to point out I’ve been chronicling barbecue in New York City over at the sister-blog, All The Things I Eat.

Bye, Bye Blue and Brown

The two M&M colors are going away thanks to the efforts of RFK, Jr. to ban some food dyes. But hey, we’re still spraying Teflon directly onto food crops now, so we’re definitely going to be healthier.

It was Taco Monday so naturally I decided to make some fresh pico de gallo

One problem: It’s not really tomato season. Luckily there’s other strong flavors in pico de gallo, so we don’t need the perfect tomato. Normally I shy away from eating tomatoes out of season, but actually using delicate garden tomatoes in a salsa like this might be a waste of a sweet tomato.

Garlic, onion, hot peppers, and cilantro all contribute a flavor punch that overwhelms the subtleties of a good tomato. Besides, the lime juice helps soften them, even if the tomatoes are rock hard.

Tomato-based salsas date back to Aztec-era Mexico. Their work cultivating the fruits created the tomato as we think of it today (although more orange and yellow than red). The marketplaces in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan were filled with vendors selling salsa when the Spanish invaded. Unfortunately, teh Conquistadors ended up destroying or neglecting many of the recipes originating in that era, including the medicinal products.

Pico de Gallo is a type of fresh salsa, salsa fresca and raw salsa, salsa crude. It’s just chopping up the vegetables and combining them. There’s a simplicity in the recipe, but like so many dishes that seem simple, their creation are much more complicated.

While Pico de Gallo may be related to the fresh salsa made by the Aztecs, the recipe is distinctively a product of the Columbian Exchange. One key ingredient, cilantro, originates in the Mediterranean basin. The herb, cilantro, is the leaves of the coriander plant, and is thought to have its origins in the middle east. Coriander and cilantro only arrived in the Americas in the 1600s, so although its common in Mexican cuisine today, it’s a relatively recent addition.

The recipe for Pico de Gallo salsa is mainly credited to Sonora, Mexico. The Mexican state sits along the border of the southwest United States. But while it feels like one of those dishes that has been around since the dawn of civilization, it’s introduction into American cuisine is much more recent. The earliest recipes in American media that I came across are from the late 1970s and early 1980s, mainly in Texas.

Some of the earliest references to the salsa are not as a dip for tortilla chips, but as a topping for fajitas. A 1984 menu advertisement from Bonita Steak Ranch in Chula Vista, California lists pico de gallo as a topping for sizzling fajitas. A 1987 article, “The Most Requested Recipes,” from the Ladies’ Home Journal, includes a fajita recipe and simple version of pico de gallo to go with it. Other restaurant ads pair the salsa with fajitas and guacamole.

A 1984 article on fajitas from Paris, Texas, refers to Pico De Gallo as “Texas Hot Salsa.” At the time, the cilantro may have been one of the more difficult ingredients to acquire. The article notes Cilantro is also known as “Chinese Parsley,” and suggests substituting Italian Parsley if no cilantro is available.

So why was nobody eating chips and salsa? In a 1977 Red Book an article, “Keeping The Old: A Celebration At Norma And Marino De Leon’s,” there is a reference to tortilla chips and pico de gallo, referring to it as a “spicy fruit appetizer.” But Americans still weren’t snacking on tortilla chips with salsa yet. The nacho had only just been invented in 1943, and Tostito’s weren’t brought to market until 1981. The idea of tortilla chips and salsa was something Americans had to learn.

Today, pico de gallo is a standard condiment for tacos, burritos, nachos, fajitas – ant dish really with some kind of connection to Mexican, Tex-Mex, Baja-style, or Cal-Mex cuisines. But it wasn’t always.

It’s worth noting that there will certainly going to be examples of home cooks making pico de gallo outside of these broad general timelines. And to some extent, there might be examples of pico de gallo showing up in newspapers or magazines that aren’t included in the databases I referenced. But generally speaking, it appears safe to say that pico de gallo really is a recipe that entered into American culinary traditions in the 1980s.

One more thing worth mentioning is the term itself and the direct translation to rooster’s beak. Dating back to the 1970s articles there are references that the phrase comes from the shape of the serrano pepper. There’s also an actual pepper known as the pico de gallo, identified in The Field Guide to Peppers by Dave DeWitt and Janie Lamson. It’s long and thin.

However, while this is a long held mythology that follows pico de gallo around, there’s no real agreement. Other claims include one by food writer Sharon Tyler Herbst who suggested the phrase describes eating the salsa with hands by pinching two fingers together. Rick Bayless and Deann Groen, authors of Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico, suggest the finely chopped salsa looks like bird food.

Personally I suspect it has more to do with pepper shape than anything given the numerous references over the course of fifty years.

Pico de Gallo (Ian’s Version)

INGREDIENTS

• 4 to 5 vine-ripened tomatoes

• 1 to 2 white onions

• 2 jalapeños

• 1 serrano

• 1 lime

• 1 bunch of cilantro

• Olive oil

INSTRUCTIONS

• Finely chop the tomato and onion

• Add an extra tomato if there is too much onion, about 60/40 in favor of tomatoes

• Finely chop peppers; you can control the heat by limiting the amount of seeds you include

• Finely chop the cilantro and toss

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Squeeze the juice from one lime and stir

• Squirt a splash of olive oil in there for texture and flavor

• Allow to sit for 15 to 20 minutes for it become juicier

The Latest

Who Would Have Guessed Olive Garden Wasn’t Sprinkling Parmesan

Olive Garden’s liberal application of grated cheese to pasta is unsurprisingly not the expensive Parmigiana Reggiano you might expect. Its not even Wisconsin Parmesan. But in actuality, its not as bad as this headline makes you think — its just a Romano cheese, a lower cost product, from the Lotito brand.

How Does Food Become American?

Historian Ashley Rose Young looks at how ethnic enclaves began influencing American cuisine, and how their recipes became part of the national American menu. She has a new book Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans that looks at how food shaped the culture of New Orleans. Somehow in the bon appétit article, she avoids any mention of spaghetti, which as you may have guessed, I take personally.

The Taco Road Trip That Will Get You To Drive to Texas

Taco-king José R. Ralat lays out an itinerary at Texas Monthly for some of the state’s best tacos.

Philly’s Iconic Foods

I guess they couldn’t find 250 foods for the 250th anniversary, but they did find 76. The staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer lists off the foods to eat when you’re in the city of brotherly love.

Yellow Mustard Taste-off

Food & Wine tasted different yellow mustards to find the best one, which is incredible because the best one is actually dijon mustard.

I was invited to a press event to learn how to make Pici pasta. So obviously I said yes.

Friday was hot. I rode the subway to Little Italy for a celebration of Tuscany and a lesson on making pici. I was the second person on the scene, and soon I was sipping a spritz made with rhubarb flavored amaro.

Pici pasta is a common handmade pasta dish served across Tuscany. It’s just about everywhere, and when we were touring the countryside last year with a four-year-old, he ate a lot of it, usually with butter.

Pici goes by other names, because why would Italians agree on something simple as what to call a pasta shape. According to Oretta Zanini de Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta, in Montepulciano its known as pinci. In Montalcino, it also goes by ciriole, strangozzi, and stringozzi. And if you head down to Lazio, it’s known as umbrici. Pici was popularized in Sienna and spread from there.

The pasta making class was being held at Evento, an event space on Canal street, on the border of Chinatown and Little Italy. The afternoon lunch and cooking class was sponsored by All About Italy and Toscana Promozione Turistica to celebrate Tuscan products and travel to Italy. I was maybe the least influential influencer at the table.

Chef Andrea Belfiore, co-owner of the event space, led the class. His recipe called for equal parts of semolina and 00 flour. He described the recipe as a high hydration pasta, and then added another part of lukewarm water so that the dough was 50% water by volume.

Then we knead.

Not to brag, but I kneaded that dough so well chef asked me to hold my bowl up as an example.

After the dough comes together and has been worked to the consistency of pasta (if you know, you know), its best to allow it rest for at least 10 minutes, though I find allowing dough to rest for 20 to 30 is better. Since we were in a classroom setting, we kept working through it.

The process of shaping the pici begins with small nodules of dough clipped from the larger ball. Then these are rolled on the hand, starting from the center and gently increasing the length. The dough moves outward. Each sting should look like a little worm.

I smartly captured the motion of Chef Belfiore’s hands.

I rolled a small box’s worth of pasta. I had shared the dough with Melcabey, an Instagram travel and food influencer who encouraged me to roll out as many pieces of pasta as could from our dough ball.

After we finished up making our pastas, we were all served a lunch.

But wait, there’s more.

I carried my box of handmade pasta home. In the heat of the afternoon, some of the pasta I had made melted back together into a large ball of dough. Oops. At home, I set about re-rolling the pasta. This is probably not the best thing to do to dough, but it was definitely better than boiling a solid ball of sticky pici.

For the sauce, I decided to recreate a lemony pasta dish we were served at for lunch at Panzanello Chianti Winery. The pasta dish was a creamy, lemon-infused pasta course. In truth, I was attempting to reconstruct a dish I had tasted only one time, a year ago.

It worked.

The pasta came together perfectly and the lemony sauce was the perfect compliment to the fresh pasta.

Lemony, Buttery Pici Pasta

INGREDIENTS

• Fresh handmade pici pasta

• 1 lemon

• 2 tablespoons of butter (or maybe three)

• Black pepper

• Parmesan (serving suggestion)

INSTRUCTIONS

• Add pasta to rolling boil and cook

• In a sauce pan, melt buter

• Zest lemon and add to butter

• Taste the pasta, its probably done already

• Drain pasta when cooked

• Add to butter

• Add the juice from the lemon

• Stir

• Season with black pepper

• Garnish with parmesan to serve

The Latest

Don’t Try This At Home

Satirical website, The Onion, posted a Gatorade casserole recipe. Well, somebody decided to cook it. TLDR: Gatorade is not ready for hot dish.

Sea Urchin Harvest Threaten Ecosystem

The demand for sea urchins is leading to unsustainable poaching. Divers are stripping hundreds of small creatures from the sea floor leaving the entire ecosystem endangered.

Adult Nuggies

Chicken nuggets are kids’ food, but adults still kind of love them. So some food processors are looking to create a new kind of nugget that’s adult-friendly with added protein and other things grownups crave.

The End of Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?

Yum Brands spun off Pizza Hut to private equity which is bad news for lovers of the chain as the track record of private equity buying beloved brands is not good. Das Racist really captured a moment in time.

How About Those Knicks?

Things are great for lovers of oddly colored food. To celebrate the Knick’s winning streak, there’s been a lot of blue and orange themed foods. Even New Jersey got in on the fun.

Last week I attended a press event sponsored by Toscana Promozione Turistica and All About Italy. It was hot, and I was hot, and then I arrived and they plied us with spritzes made with Santoni Amaro.

I love amaro. If you’re wondering, an Amaro is a bitter, alcoholic drink Italians insist helps with digestion. Amaros are made by combining botanicals like magic potions. The flavors range from slightly bitter to practically medicinal, and the tradition dates back to medieval monks mixing digestive potions. Every region in Italy has some variation on amaro made with a unique combination of ingredients.

Amaro has experienced a boon in recent years. Restaurants like Rolo’s in Ridgewood, Queens offers several different varieties on their drinks menu, and has crafted cocktails with it. And in the East Village, Amor Y AMargo, a bitters shop and bar, celebrates amaro in various cocktails.

Much of our collective love for Amaro is from the efforts of the Campari Group, an Italian-based multinational beverage company. Besides Campari, they own amaro brands like Cynar and Aperol. Each has been reintroduced to Americans with big marketing budgets. It was no accident that Aperol Spritz became the drink of European summer holidays. The aggressive marketing made it happen.

Another draw of Amaro, though, and the reason it persists beyond a refreshing summer drink, is the ability to experiment. Similar to gin, the botanicals, herbs, spices, zest and other infused flavors offer an endless combination. The result is unusual, exotic, and quirky. Bitterness can hide imperfection.

New York distilleries have also jumped on the amaro trend. Forthave Spirits has some downright medicinal tonics, like their Marseille Amaro with notes of eucalyptus, cinnamon, rhubarb, and honey. Another Brooklyn-based brand is Faccia Brutto, intentionally creating Italian-style amari.

I experiencing the different flavors of Amari, both from Italy and from right here in New York City. Not only are these medicinal drinks good for digestion, but they’re typically lower in alcohol (although not always).

Campari has helped create the market for Amaro brands, and smaller producers have benefitted. Twee liquor stores in Brooklyn often have at least one or two smaller producers stocked. For a wider selection though, I end up at Astor Liquor in Manhattan where there is a large selection of exotic Amari, both domestic and imported.

If you’re interested in exploring more about Amaro, literally wrote the book on them, Amaro The Spirited World of Bittersweet, Herbal Liqueurs, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas.

Meanwhile, it’s Italian Aperitif Week in New York City. All About Italy magazine is celebrating Italian cocktails and liqueurs by drafting 10 bar tenders at 10 bars around the city to develop cocktails. Participants can even vote on their favorite.

Santoni is a Florentine amaro, and so it makes sense that it was the star cocktail at Tuscany-sponsored event last week. The botanical flavors include iris flower, olive leaf, and rhubarb, providing a rich red color and bitter flavor. The original recipe was developed by Gabriello Santoni in 1961.

I came across Wendy Holloway’s Flavor of Italy Podcast (She and I spoke last year about Red Sauce) where she chatted with Luca Missaglia, the managing partner at Amaro Santoni.

Missaglia explained that Santoni can be served not just as a digestif, but also an aperitif because the formula is bitter-sweet. It works well with sodas and other sweet drinks.

And that’s why it worked so well as a spritz. Luxe magazine published a spritz recipe back in 2024 — 2 parts Amaro Santoni to 3 parts prosecco, garnished with an olive. We were served a tumbler with ice and amaro, topped with prosecco and garnished with an orange slice. I had two.

We planted things. If you’ve been following along, you’ll recall I’ve been growing some Rutgers Tomatoes from seedlings. Those little guys are still growing, though there pot is a bit bigger now.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we cleared out our Cape Cod garden beds, added some compost, fertilized, fixed the fencing, and planted some store-bought seedlings.

Here’s a rough layout of the garden:

The main garden area does get quite a lot of sun. The smaller bed on the left is a partial shade area. In retrospect, the trees around the yard have grown taller and ultimately created more shade in the yard over the last decade. Who would have guessed?

We also had to cut down a fur tree that for many years was a petite stick, a hint of dark green. Unfortunately, it was growing too big and became a threat to the septic system, as well as shading large portions of the garden.

Meanwhile, the seedlings we planted have been in the ground about two weeks now. In the above bed, what had been an herb garden, we have strawberry plants creeping along on one side. We put them in the ground two years ago, and they are slowly taking root. Since this portion of the garden has been fortified to prevent Peter Rabbit from snacking on the berries, I decided it was also safe to plant a few lettuces. We’ll see how that works out as there isn’t any irrigation over here, and we’re going into a stretch of time where I can’t tend to them every day.

We are starting to get some strawberries. Last year the plants were fairly new, but birds and rabbits feasted on the fruits. Now they are well caged in surrounded by chicken wire and a bird netting. Over Memorial Day, they were nothing but little buds. Now they’re turning into green fruits. Unfortunately, I suspect they’ll mostly ripen before I return to pick them.

The main raised bed is looking good and installed an automated watering system. It comes on once a day for about 20 minutes using the soaker hose. Last year we were watering twice a day, but I think it was probably too much water and stunted the plants.

I’ve also planted a lot more tomatoes overall and added in som marigolds. The marigolds are supposed to be good for thwarting pests. The basil and other herbs hopefully with augment the tomatoes’ growth.

I fertilized the bed over Memorial Day, and I probably should have done it again this past weekend.

We also have garlic, planted over the winter on the left that hopefully will be ready to harvest in July. Along the bottom of the photo I have green beans growing along the edge of the raise bed, hoping it will use the fencing for climbing.

Read all about our gardening on the All The Things We Grow tag.

If you ever wondered: does the guy who writes about red sauce joints have a red-checked tablecloth, the answer is yes.

I have two, actually, but one of them is the “good” tablecloth that I only bring out for book events where there’s a low risk of permanent stains.

Earlier this week, we cooked up a simple red sauce with pasta, but ended up with far more sauce. So what does one do when you have too much sauce? Eggplant rollatini, obviously.

You won’t find an Italian menu with rollatini on it. In Italy, the dish is better known as involtini di melanzane. The di melanzane indicates involtini made of eggplant (And if you’re wondering, Eggplant Parmigiana is Melanzane alla Parmigiana), distinguishing them from involtini of meat or fish.

Involtini di melanzane is a southern Italian dish, more common in Naples or Sicily. In Sicily, the eggplant is often stuffed with breadcrumbs, following a long tradition of boosting the calorie counts of foods with old, stale bread. Fillings vary though, with cheese and meat also common. In the United States, rollatini is typically filled with a ricotta cheese mixture that includes an egg as a binder.

Involitini are made across Italy with meat or fish as the wrapper, and as with any Italian dish, variations based on regional preference and availability. Saltimbocca, veal rolls with ham, are a type of involtini for instance.

Italian American braciole is another form of involtini. Americans used thin strips of pork or beef and either grill the rolls or cook them in a Sunday gravy. American braciole may also be served on a hero roll as a sandwich, as is common at festivals like San Gennaro or the Giglio festival in Brooklyn. However, in Puglia, “brasciole,” is a type of involtini typically made from horse meat.

In the United States, eggplant parmigiana was more widely known than rollatini in the early 20th century, and by the 1940s and 1950s, widely recognized by name. (Veal parm was already a popular dish by this period too).

It wasn’t until the 1970s that eggplant rollatini was being widely advertised by name, and recipes don’t start showing up in the casual domestic magazines until the 1980s with a recipe in Good Housekeeping in 1985 and Redbook as late as 1993.

That isn’t to say rollatini didn’t exist before then; eggplant rollatini almost certainly was being cooked by Italian Americans. But it wasn’t until the 1970s the phrase was well enough known to have it advertised widely. And even then, it wasn’t cemented as an eggplant dish. Cosmopolitan actually references rollatini di vitello — veal — in a 1971 article, “How to Order at an Italian Restaurant.” Again, the term rollatini is an Americanism. But by the end the decade, eggplant rollatini would become a mainstay.

What eggplant rollatini eventually became was a common luxury. Something fancy, but not so fancy it couldn’t be mass produced. What buffet dinner would be complete without a tray of rollatini? Certainly no wedding buffet in New Jersey. And how many holiday parties features a tray with a Sterno underneath?

The meatless dish is a favorite precisely because it can check the box for vegetarians, though since the rollatini is stuffed with fresh ricotta vegans and those who are lactose intolerant are not so lucky.

There are many ways to prepare the eggplant. Personally I believe in the trick is pre-cooking the eggplant enough that the skins will soften while baking, before the cheese dries out and the sauce begins to burn. My preference is to fry the eggplant in olive oil after dredging the slices in rice flour.

The rice flour, much like corn starch, dries out the vegetable, and creates a thin, crispy crust. The eggplant can still bend, but crunches a little bit. Some recipes call for a full flour-egg-breadcrumb batter, but this makes the dish heavy.

The other choice I make is skipping the egg in the ricotta filling. Plenty of recipes suggest that’s a great way to firm everything up, and it will. But I find the texture is better with creamy cheese spilling out than the sticky, clumpy cheese.

We served the eggplant with leftover penne and Tuscan-style white beans.

Eggplant Rollatini

INGREDIENTS

• Two Italian eggplants

• 15 oz ricotta cheese

• Freshly ground parmigiana cheese

• Dash of onion powder

• Dash or two of garlic powder

• Black pepper

• Pinch of dried parsley

• Hazan’s tomato sauce from earlier in the week

• Rice flour, about half a cup

• Fresh mozzarella cheese (or low moisture; chef’s choice)

• Olive oil for frying (avoid other oils as eggplant likes to absorb oil)

INSTRUCTIONS

• Slice the eggplants into long strips, like heavy wooden blinds

• Soak the eggplant slices for 30 minutes, draining and refilling water once

• Salt and rest for a few minutes

• Soak up excess moisture

• Dredge the eggplant in rice flour

• Gently fry in olive oil

• When strips are golden and tender, rest on paper towels

• Combine ricotta with parmigiana cheese, garlic, onion, black pepper, and parsley

• Allow the eggplant to cool

• Layer sauce on the baking dish

• Scoop a spoon of cheese mixture onto the end of a strip of eggplant.

• Roll the eggplant around the cheese and place seam down in the tray

• Arrange in rows until eggplant and cheese is used up

• Leftover cheese can be spread on bread or crackers (aren’t you glad we didn’t add an egg?)

• Top the eggplant with a layer of sauce

• Grate mozzarella on top of the sauce (for a lighter dish, sub in a sprinkle of parmigiana)

• Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 375F

• Serve with pasta

The Latest

American Cheese Shortage Strikes Japan

If you’re looking for American cheese on the shelves Costco Japan, you’re out of luck. That’s putting pressure on Tokyo’s Philly cheesesteak scene. Reactions were mixed, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer, but whiz and provolone are still available.

Corn Twinkie Is Austin’s Newest Breakfast Pastry

Taco expert José R. Ralat looks at the origins of a Twinkie-style pastry made from Mexican masa. The log-shaped sweet is made from corn and filled with cream, a yellow version with orange buttercream and a blue corn version filled with chocolate. The sweet treat piqued the interest of Sam Stone back in 2025 at Bon Appétit.

Ramps!

dives into the world of ramps, the wild onion delicacy. The demand is driving ramp clusters towards extinction.

The World Cup Is Cooked, So Why Not Cook the World Cup?

Tim Murphy at Mother Jones took on a project of cooking foods from each of the World Cup countries.

Jell-O Shots Are Getting an Upgrade

Mixed cocktail Jell-o shots are so hot right now. Megan Krigbaum at Taste looks at how bartenders are mixing up, and solidifying these little treats. I had my first cocktail Jell-o shots about twenty years ago at a house party. Friends Oscar and Sarah had concocted sidecars and gin gimlet Jello-shots and they were absolutely fabulous, and as it turns out, just like a regular cocktail, they can really mess you up.

Scotch Bonnet Shortage

Spicy scotch bonnet peppers used in some of hottest hot sauces are facing a shortage. Essential to Caribbean cuisine and a huge cash crop of Jamaica, the peppers have faced some troubles in recent years. Hurricanes and extreme weather events are the primary driving forces.

Is That Enough Cheese?

Microsoft’s Copilot suggested between 1,600 and 2,400 pounds of cheese would be the correct amount for a gathering of 80 people.

Traveling across Tuscany, Cannellini beans populate every menu as a minor side dish. Their absolutely worth tasting, and a great way to fill out a meal. It’s also a simply recipe drawing from pantry staples. Cannellini beans are ideal, but as is the case here, I happened to have northern beans on hand. If you have seasonings in your spice rack, this side dish is an economical one that can be pulled together for just a few dollars — with the majority of that cost going into a fancy can of beans.

Pantry Tuscan-Style White Beans

INGREDIENTS

• 1 can of cannellini of great northern beans

• A healthy splash of olive oil

• Dash of onion powder

• Dash of garlic poweder

• Crushed black pepper

• A tablespoon of truffle butter or a few drops of truffle oil

• A tasteful amount of Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

INSTRUCTIONS

• Drain and rinse the beans

• Add to a ceramic baking dish

• Splash in the oil, butter, other seasonings and grated cheese

• Stir

• Baked at 350F for about 20-30 minutes; top should be crusty, and most of the moisture evaporated

“Spanakopita! You hungry?!” ask Aunt Vuolo, immediately after telling the story of how the lump in the back of her neck was really her twin. Aunt Vuolo is perhaps better known for the line: “What do you mean he don’t eat no meat? That’s okay, I make lamb!” in the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. However, the lamb last week was $18 a pound, so I made spinach.

Spanakopita is the formal name for Greek spinach pie made with phyllo dough and feta cheese. This iconically Greek dish has its origins in the Medieval period when spinach arrived from the middle east by way of the Byzantine empire. Unsurprisingly, similar spinach pastry pies are found in Lebanese, Syrian, and Turkish cuisines and elsewhere the empire ruled over.

Phyllo dough, the delicate pastry, also has origins in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire controlled portions of Turkey and Greece and the eastern Mediterranean (with some fluidity) for nearly 1200 years beginning in 306 CE. The empire, and the region it controlled, was largely the eastern remains of the declining Roman Empire, a fact worth remembering as we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Today, it might seem as though Greek-style spinach pie is available in every diner along the east coast, but it wasn’t always that way. While spanakopita probably arrived with Greek immigrants, it wasn’t well known in the United States until the mid 20th century.

Greek immigrants arrived in the United States in large numbers at the end of the 19th century. Many took jobs washing dishes. By the 1930s, first generation immigrant restaurant owners were ready to sell on, and Greek immigrants were in the position to buy up the businesses they worked in.

In the post-war period, another surge of Greek immigrants began arriving, fueled in part by the disruptions in Europe of World War II and the Greek Civil war between 1946 and 1949. The resulting influx of Greeks led to many joining family members and friends already in the restaurant business, or using those networks to enter the industry themselves. That legacy remains evident in diners in the northeast and “house of pizza” restaurants in New England – and why spinach pie is often on the menu at all these places.

Spanakopita is widely available in the United States today, but that wasn’t always the case. Even in the 1950s and early 1960s, there are few references to the dish in American newspapers and magazines. That changes though by the middle of the decade.

In 1964, Woman’s Day put out a publication, The Collectors Cook Book: Greek Cookery with Spanakopita recipe featuring “filo” dough. The booklet helpfully includes a recipe for the dough, as well as numerous other Greek specialities like grape leaves.

From around 1965 onward, spanakopita recipes abound. Newspapers and magazines offer different methods, though many feature frozen spinach as the primary ingredient. Plenty of these recipes include cottage cheese in place of or in addition to feta. But the frequency of the appearance of the dish reflects the change in the way Greek cuisine was perceived among American consumers.

By the 1970s, restaurants featuring Greek cuisine (rather than simply having Greek owners operate a restaurant with an existing menu) were becoming more common. “Greek restaurants, plain and fancy, have been mushrooming in cities across the United States lately,” notes Tom Hoge, writing for the AP in 1973. He also includes a spanakopita recipe. The spinach pie offered an easy gateway to access the ethnic dish.

By the 1980s, spinach pie triangles became a popular appetizer. And the recipes promoting them no longer needed the pretense of an explanation. Readers knew these were Greek. They ceased to be exotic.

And that commonality is probably why when I did a quick internet search for spanakopita recipes while standing in the frozen food aisle looking for phyllo dough, I came across what seemed like an infinite number of variations.

I had never worked with phyllo dough, frozen or otherwise. I wasn’t sure what to expect, whether it would be more like sheets of puff pastry or the hard shells of a premade pie crust. I was surprised it was more like delicate sheets of paper.

As I typically do, I looked over a bunch of different recipes. I didn’t do a great job of keeping track of them. I felt a little bit like Rachel making English trifle, combining the best of multiple variations.

The main alteration that I made was I added in some ricotta cheese instead of cottage cheese. I make no claim about authenticity. I prefer ricotta’s sweetness over cottage cheese, and whether or not spanakopita should include cottage cheese at all was not an issue I was concerned with. I’ve had spinach pie where the filling is too dry, and the ricotta ensures it’s not. I also didn’t include an egg in the mixture because I prefer a softer filling and didn’t want it to get, as Prue Leith might say, stodgy.

I baked it up and served it alongside Greek-style meatballs (pork, not lamb), potatoes with feta, a little cucumber and tomato salad, and tzatziki sauce that I made myself, swapping lime juice for lemon, since that’s what we had on hand

.

Spanakopita (Ian’s Version)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 bunches of fresh spinach

• 1 shallot

• 1 bunch of scallions, about 8

• Two big scoops of ricotta cheese

• 6-ish ounces feta cheese

• 2 squirts of lemon juice, using the last of it so you run out before making tzatziki

• 1 bundle of frozen phyllo dough

• Olive oil

• Sesame seeds

INSTRUCTIONS

• Defrost your frozen phyllo dough per the packet instructions (definitely read those instructions before you decide to start cooking, about 3 hours)

• Finely chop the shallot

• Begin cooking in a dash of olive oil

• Wash and chop the spinach

• Add the spinach to the shallots and slowly wilt

• Cook on low medium heat to remove the water

• Finely chop the scallions and add them to the spinach

• Squirt in some lemon juice

• Salt and and pepper to taste

• Allow to cool

• Break up the feta and add to the spinach mixture

• Add in the ricotta and stir

• Taste filling

• Unroll your phyllo

• Layer phyllo down in your baking pan (stoneware works best)

  Hang the phyllo over the edge of the pan so that it can fold over

• Between each layer, brush with olive oil

• Fill the pie

• Fold over the phyllo

• Brush with olive oil and dust with sesame seeds

• Bake at 350 F for 30 to 45 minutes; rotate in the oven if yours is uneven

The Latest

Influencers Cause French Cheese Shortage

Online influencers have gone gaga over Cancoillotte, an obscure French cheese product. Made from skim milk residue, and combined with butter, salt, and occasionally flavorings like onions, the cheese was known mostly only in the region around Franche-Comté, near the Swiss border. Then the protein bros and health fanatics discovered the gooey cheese and created a shortage.

El Nino’s Food Shortages

Turns out that having a very hot ocean isn’t great for food production. The super El Nino that’s predicted in the Pacific could lead to 10% to 50% increase in food prices.

The End of Soup N Burger

Jason Diamond wrote a love letter to Soup n Burger, which is set to close at the end of the month.

Tomato x 2

The latest issue of ’s Tomato Tomato is out.

Basketball Foods

If you haven’t heard, the Knicks have been doing really well this year. Thanks, Mamdani. The New York Post highlights all the blue and orange foods that are here to help you celebrate.

Strawberry Season

It’s that brief window in seasonal fruit when good tasting strawberries will become available. The delicate little fruits can’t ripen after they are picked, which is why good strawberries typically have a shelf life of a few hours, not that they last that long when I get them from the farmer’s market. Serious Eats has a guide to finding actual good tasting strawberries. Personally I’m hoping to pick a few straight out of the garden this weekend.

Spiritus Pizza in Provincetown is notorious as a late night snack spot for after the bars are closing down. It’s drunk food in a town without too many late night options. We happened to drop in late in the afternoon, stone-cold sober with a hungry five-year-old.

The cash-only shop has been around since 1971, but until last weekend, I’d never been. In the height of summer, there are always crowds of people lingering around the front of the shop chomping on slices.

But pizza, on Cape Cod? Look, it’s never going to be great. Spiritus was passable.

The regular slice was good enough to please a picky five-year-old. That’s a plus. But it’s also a slice that’s good enough — I’m not going out of my way to grab one of these, but I’d eat it again. This is never going to actually compare favorably to a slice of pizza from a local pizza parlor in Brooklyn, but its not bad when you’re 300 miles for an actual pizzeria.

The slice folded well and held its shape without falling apart. That’s hard to do anywhere, and the flavor was, if not remarkable, good enough.

The crust has some whole wheat flour added to it, enough that you can see that its darker and browner than white flour dust. Its enough to feel like you are eating something healthy without detracting from the flavor.

The Greek Slice topped with feta, black olives, onions, and spinach, was better than expected. This is not to be confused with Greek-style pizza (aka New London style pizza) common around the New England, and referred simply to the toppings. The flavor combination was good, sort of like eating a Greek salad without lettuce and a slice of pizza underneath it.

The Greek, regular, and pepperoni are the only pies available regularly as slices, but the shop has other pie combinations that include chicken, pesto, artichokes, and linguica. If there’s any place that epitomizes the spirit of Cape Cod, its the flavors of 1980s America combined with Portuguese influences. Every bite tastes like nostalgia, which is incredible considering I’ve only eaten this pizza as an adult.

Spiritus Pizza

• 190 Commercial Street

• Provincetown, MA

• Website

We spent Memorial Day weekend on Cape Cod, and that means it was planting season. But the process started a few weeks ago when I planted some tomato seeds in old yogurt cups and started growing seedlings.

Tomato prices are rising. The costs are up 40% since April, thanks to war, tariffs, and energy prices. And there’s not much to do about it.

I recall a joke someone made on social media a few years back about harvesting $20 worth of vegetables from $400 in gardening supplies. That’s a real trap, even if the price of tomatoes is rising.

I do have about a dozen tiny seedlings I grew from seed that were too small to plant, so of course I headed over to the hippie grocery store and nursery and loaded up a tray with bigger seedlings.

Gardening isn’t actually about saving money. I’m not homesteading here. I just want some very fresh vegetables, and the opportunity to resurrect long forgotten plants, like the local Eastham turnip seeds my brother was gifted from a local barber a few years back. They never did sprout, but I’m not a huge turnip fan.

Tomatoes on the other hand, are sort of my thing. And they have been undergoing some serious innovation ever since they crossed paths with humans in South America a few thousand years ago. The tomato’s ancestor was probably first found in Peru or Ecuador. They looked nothing like modern tomatoes until Mesoamericans began cultivating them.

The Aztecs selectively bred tomatoes into edible fruits resembling what we eat today, though they were more likely golden in color. When the Spanish invaded, they stole seeds and plants and imported the tomato to Europe. Initially it was ornamental, the yellow flowers added to English gardens. But slowly Europeans adapted to eating them, and once the fruits became food, farmers began selectively breeding them.

Some of these changes happened accidentally, like the San Marzano varietal which is thought to have arisen from a natural mutation. Other changes have been achieved through intentionally choosing characteristics that were deemed desirable.

One of the earlier challenges was that tomato crops ripened and then rotted relatively quickly. Preservation was essential, but also limited access to fresh fruits. Breeding programs set out to address the problem. For instance, an early pamphlet on growing tomatoes in Texas advised farmers to collect seeds from early ripening and late ripening tomatoes, and growing those seeds in an effort to spread out the growing season.

In the 20th century, tomato breeding was industrialized, and the tomatoes designed for commercial purposes often selected for qualities unrelated to flavor. A labor shortage encouraged tomatoes with thicken skins that could be processed by machines. Mass consumption of tomatoes on hamburgers encouraged producing perfectly spherical red balls that looked pretty and shipped well.

More recently, tomato development has turned back to improving flavor. Grape tomatoes, developed in the 1990s, offered a balance of taste and portability, and modern varietals, grown in hot houses, picked ripe, and packaged under brandnames in plastic clamshells command a premium price. They also offer fresh tomato flavor out of season.

But growing your own garden tomatoes means selecting fruits that don’t necessarily do well on the supermarket shelves for one reason or another. My favorite of these is the Rutgers Tomato.

New Jersey has a long history of growing tomatoes — thus the moniker, the Garden State. A lot of factors contributed to the tomato crop in the state like the arrival Italian Americans, favorable growing conditions, and local demand for the fruits. But also the Campbell’s Soup Company’s location in Camden meant industrial production fueled tomato fields.

By the 20th century, New Jersey had a vested interest in the success of tomatoes. The state funded research into the plant through Rutgers University. The first Rutgers tomato premiered in 1934 and has become a cherished heirloom varietal.

The Rutgers is a great beefsteak-style tomato, a thick, juicy tomato slice great for sandwiches with tasty pulp. It’s not great for sauce, and a waste of a tomato that does well when eaten raw. Part of that is the tomato ripens from the inside out, so when the exterior is red, you know its ready to eat. Not all varietals are like that though, which is why some tomatoes are not ripe all the way through (another reason is tomatoes are often picked green, before they are matured and gassed to turn them red).

However, the great flavor, soft skin, and slow interior ripening of the tomato meant it was not a great fit for industrial farming, though it was beloved by tomato enthusiasts. For years, the Rutgers was hard to come by except at out of the way markets. n

Rutgers re-released an updated version in 2016. The Rutgers 250, as it was called, sold out of its initial 5,000 seed packets. The seeds were derived from a cold vault kept by the Campbell’s Soup Company of the original 1934 strain.

I bought a pack of Rutgers Tomato seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Company. Their Rutger’s tomato seeds are derivative of the batch released in the 1970s, which is when the tomatoes became less popular commercially.

I actually bought the seed pack last year and wasn’t sure if it would even germinate since the package had just been sitting on my desk, but of the three seeds, I got three sprouting plants.

I potted them in La Fermiere ceramic yogurt cups and placed them under a grow lamp. They popped up about 4 days later and spent two weeks growing before we headed up to the Cape.

The seedlings were too small to transplant this past weekend. Note to self: start plants earlier next year. I did transfer them to larger pots, and hopefully in a week they will be ready to go in the ground. The seedlings from the nursery will have a head start on these plants, but it also means when those plants have exhausted their flowers, these other plants might just be fruiting.

The Rutgers isn’t the only heirloom in the garden this year. Several of the seedlings were labeled as heirloom, but what exactly they will look like, I’m not quite sure. At least one plant should be a black tomato, a dark heirloom varietal. I’ve also planted plenty of plum tomatoes which are ideal for making sauce, but at this point most of them aren’t well labeled and it will be a mystery that unfolds in July as to what might bloom.

I’ve done a better job of planting the tomatoes near complimentary plants like basil and added some marigolds that the internet told me we will help keep away pests. I’ve also added a good amount of tomato-specific fertilizer with plans to keep the plants on a more regular schedule of feeding.

When the harvest comes in, there’s plenty of tomato-focused recipes I plan on eating from tomato tarts to fried zucchini sandwiches topped with fresh slices of tomato. The Rutgers tomato is ideal for topping sandwiches alike a tomato, mozzarella, and fried zucchini sandwich. Expect a future update. But there’s one recipe were the tomato really shines: heirloom tomato salad.

Heirloom Tomato Salad

INGREDIENTS

• Mix of heirloom tomatoes (maximize varietal, shape, and color)

• Coarse sea salt

• The very best olive oil you can afford

INSTRUCTIONS

• Slice tomatoes into chunks

• Gentle salt and let sit for about 10 minutes

• Drizzle with olive oil and serve

The Latest

Industrial Farming is Killing Flavor

If you didn’t believe me that commercial farming preferences cheap harvesting and cheap shipping and pretty looking vegetables over good tasting food, here’s an article from the Guardian about the problem.

Candle Lady Swaps Greens for Dairy

Gwyneth Paltrow, best known for her work with scented candles, revealed on national television that she adds arugula to her coffee instead of milk.

Cheese Thieves

Stealing fancy cheese has become big business. Olivia Potts at Longreads dives into the story of how organized crime got cheesy.

Cold Temperatures Cause Higher Broccoli Costs

California’s Broccoli crop has been hurt by colder temperatures. Cauliflower and Broccoli have had volatile pricing since last year when the price fluctuated 230%.

Breakable Drinks

Confused about cocktail glassware? Punch has a guide explaining what to use with what kind of drink.

Nutella Ice Cream

Nutella has released ice cream flavored with and made from the hazelnut spread. We somehow got ahold of a pint over the weekend, and it wasn’t bad, but it was definitely a novelty. It was not quite as good as hazelnut gelato in Italy, but it was uniquely creamy.

In February, Coca-Cola announced the end of Minute Maid brand frozen orange juice concentrate. Naturally, I went searching for a final can.

Minute Maid was first introduced in 1946 by Vacuum Foods Corp, a competitor to other frozen food companies like Bird’s Eye and Libby’s. The frozen orange juice concentrate was a breakfast-changing product segment.

Like so many good things, orange juice concentrate was actually an offshoot of a US military project designed to make vitamin C more palatable for soldiers. The goal was keeping the troops fighting in Europe healthy, and vitamin C pills just weren’t cutting it.

The frozen juice concentrate was good for farmers too. Oranges ripen and then rot, but juice means preserving the value of the delicate agriculture product. The frozen products were helped too by the suddenly wider availability of home freezers.

It’s easy to overlook how the home kitchen has evolved in the 20th century, and how that impacts the food products we have access to. Artificial electric refrigeration wasn’t universal until the post war era. In the 1930s, only around 8-10% of households had refrigerators, and by the start of World War II, that number increased to 44%. But by 1950, refrigerators were in close to 90% of households. Home freezers followed a similar trajectory beginning in the 1950s when only about 12% houses had them, but that quickly increased through the decade. Consumer goods followed the trend, with products like frozen meals and other convenience foods growing popular.

Convenience was the name of the game in the post-war period. Frozen, ready to eat meals, and juice that didn’t need to be squeezed out of the fruit. That’s why frozen concentrated orange juice was convenient. A can mixed with water in just a few minutes. Until then, making fresh orange juice required squeezing oranges, usually by hand, and that was assuming fresh oranges were even available. The seasonal crops could be transported around the country, but could still rot after they were picked.

Minute Maid changed all that.

The marketing in 1948 promised “Fresh, Pure Minute Maide” that was “quick frozen.” In an ad from Parents’ Magazine (July 1948), the copy explains the frozen concentrate costs less than the oranges “you’d have to lug home and squeeze.” This convenience angle was a big part of the appeal. Another ad in Good Housekeeping (January 1950) claims it was the equivalent of 9 to 12 oranges.

Sales increased fast. Minute Maid saw a 300% increase between 1948 and 1949, the equivalent of 735,000,000 cans of juice. And orange juice wasn’t the only product Minute Made had turned into a concentrate. There were other flavors like pink and yellow lemonade and limeade. These other flavors expanded the brand’s presence, but accomplished the same thing—turning delicate citrus crops into a stable product. All of these are being discontinued.

But in the middle of the century, the explosive demand for concentrate helped field the growth of the citrus groves in Florida.

Minute Maid’s main rival through most of its history has been Tropicana. The brand launched in 1947, but the challenge to Minute Maid’s concentrate came in 1954 when the company launched a “fresh” juice product. Italian immigrant Anthony T. Rossi delivered fresh juice locally around Manatee County, Florida. Rossi worked toward expanding his operation beyond local deliveries, and his breakthrough innovation came with pasteurizing the drink, and shipping it nationwide beginning in 1970.

Tropicana wasn’t just going after Minute Maid’s frozen cans that consumers mixed at home. Other juice brands were made from frozen concentrate, but full strength before packaging. As a commodity, the frozen concentrate could be bought and sold on futures markets while maintaining consistency.

By the 1970s, Tropicana was selling Americans on the idea that “not from concentrate” was intrinsically better and set itself apart from Minute Maid by pushing the “not from concentrate” tagline. The “Fresh-frozen” concentrate had lost its appeal with consumers.

The process that makes never-from-concentrate orange juice stable enough to ship around the country also removes most of the natural orange juice flavor. The juice has the flavor added back to it before bottled for consumers. The added benefit is a uniform flavor regardless of the source of oranges. And the source of oranges had begun to evolve too.

Orange juice became big business. Coca-Cola bought the Minute Made brand in 1960, adding juice to its portfolio of drinks. Pepsi eventually bought Tropicana (and has since sold it). But for a time, the superpowers behind the cola wars were also sparring in the juice aisle.

Oranges production has grown into a global business. Brazil, especially, has grown into a huge competitor to Florida’s citrus crops. The source of juice matters less when it’s either turned into a concentrate available as a commodity, or when it’s pasteurized and the flavor is curated by artificial means. Luckily we aren’t dependent on Florida today, since the state’s citrus crop is failing.

Florida’s orange crop in 2003-2004 hit 242 million boxes of 90lbs each (the record in 1997-1998 was 244 million), but has since been declining. This year, just 12 million boxes are projected.

Citrus is in trouble. Globally, but especially in Florida.

Florida’s housing boom a few years ago saw plenty of groves become rows of little boxes made of ticky tacky. The rough hurricane seasons haven’t helped. And of course, there is citrus greening disease. All of these factors are making oranges less local to Florida, and driving up the price of orange juice.

And maybe that’s just the reason the frozen concentrate from Minute Maid is going extinct.

As a very young child I can remember drinking orange juice mixed up from the frozen log. But those freezer aisle staples, the black label canister, soon gave way to Tropicana’s white cartons with their promise that it was not from concentrate. Decades passed since I had mixed up orange juice, and I wanted to do it one last time.

My wife wasn’t sure what to make of my experiment. She too had frozen concentrate as a child, and then never again. It was a product from a different time. We tasted it unsure what to expect. It was good, better than I had expected. I would enjoy drinking this.

And then the reality hit me. The bulbous glass pitcher would need a home in the refrigerator. It was a quaint throwback to a different time, but inconvenient. And then there was the price. Once a budget friendly item, Minute Maid’s frozen cans have been creeping up in price, an increase of as much as 13% since last year. And that’s exactly what I thought most about. The can was almost $5, a price that seemed twice as much as it should have been. I enjoyed it, but did I enjoy that much?

Orange juice has become a luxury product. Ready to drink orange juice still costs more per serving, and as pleasant as it is to start the day off with a sugar rush, we’ve all come to realize fruit juice isn’t as healthy as we have been led to believe. It’s a treat, like candy.

Nevertheless, all this made me think of the childhood cocktail that was a favorite of mine, which I’ve graciously decided to share.

Lemon-Lime Orange Juice Spritz

INGREDIENTS

• 7 UP

• Orange Juice

• Bendy straw

• Splash of artificial Maraschino cherry

INSTRUCTIONS

• Combine equal parts of 7 UP and Orange Juice

• Splash in some Maraschino cherry juice

• Add ice cube and bendy straw

• Garnish with as many cherries as you can get out of the jar before someone stops you

The Latest

Following the Trail of Johnny Appleseed

Folk legend Johnny Appleseed was an actual person, and he really did walk westward planting apple trees — more for making hard cider than for eating. More recently, decided to take a walkabout following in Appleseed’s shoes, and wrote about it in his new book, American Rambler. I had the chance to talk with him about the adventure for the Chicago Review of Books.

AI Is Coming For Baristas, Just Not Yet

Andon Labs in Sweden launched a test cafe where the manager was an AI robot powered by Gemini, that annoying Google AI that is ruining your browser. Big surprise, Mona didn’t do a very good job managing the cafe. She ordered eggs despite not having a stove, 300 cans of tomatoes, despite nothing on the menu having tomatoes, and then didn’t bother order bread, 86ing the cafe’s sandwich menu.

Rabbit: Its What’s For Dinner

A new series of Clarkson’s Farm, the reality show featuring petrol-head-turned-gentleman-farmer Jeremy Clarkson, will be released in a few weeks. Publicity for the upcoming episodes includes Clarkson discussing a new addition to the farm: rabbits. High end restaurants have been importing the fury creates, unlucky feet and all, from France of all places. Can you imagine being forced to eat French rabbit? All this talk of rabbits has me recalling this delicious rabbit ragù I made during the pandemic when the grocery stores were pulling all their random meats out of the freezer.

PFAS In Your Berries? It’s More Likely Than You Think

Driscoll’s strawberries are coming up extra chemically with tests showing the fruits have pesticide residue, including PFAS, the compounds used in making pans nonstick and which have been linked to various cancers. Organic berries have come up clean.

Ketchup, Without the Plastic

For a limited time, Heinz is bringing back the iconic glass bottle. The limited run will only be available at Walmart celebrating its 157th Anniversary. Technically, the company still produces glass-bottled ketchup for the restaurant industry.

What the heck is an Heirloom Tomato?

Tomatoes move fast. New varieties are being invented all the time, usually selected for qualities like color and durability rather than flavor. So heirloom tomatoes have become all the rage—but even are they? writing at Bon Appétit, takes a look how the differ from “regular” tomatoes.

Meat Factories To Move Faster

Limits on the speed of meat processing are about to be increased, which can lead to dangerous conditions for workers. And don’t forget, it’s not just workers at risk. Historically, bad meat processing practices aren’t great for consumers.

Gouging the Snack Size

Smaller bags of snacks are about to get more expensive as Pepsi raises prices on their brands. In this economy?

Yemeni Coffee Takes Over

Laila Ibrahim digs deep into the trendy middle eastern coffee houses popping up everywhere. These aren’t your stodgy Starbucks. where there aren’t chairs or bathrooms, but rather missing third spaces where people can hang out, drink coffee, eat sweets, play games, and exist as humans. ANd with Gen Z not drinking alcohol coffee houses make sense.

We had some bacon laying around, so naturally we cooked leeks.

Leeks are an old vegetable, part of the allium family along with garlic and onion. Leeks are technically part of a subgroup, Allium Ampeloprasum, because unlike other members of the genus, the plants rarely bulb. The leek is made instead of tightly woven leaves. Other members of the subgroup include elephant garlic and pearl onions.

The Egyptians were likely eating leeks in the second millennium BCE with carvings, drawings, and even dried specimens indicating its presence in the diet.

Leeks show up in written recipes as early as 1600 BCE, according to Martha Jay’s, Onions and Garlic, A Global History, in tablets from Mesopotamia. The Yale Babylonian Tablets have forty recipes with Alliums generally featuring heavily.

The leek continued to be a popular garden vegetable across Europe, but perhaps no place more so than in Wales. The leek is closely associated with St. David the Patron Saint of the country, who died in 589 AD, but the Welsh love of the plant probably even predates him. Today the Leek is served on his Saint Day on March 1.

You might have noticed it’s not March 1 and also I’m not Welsh. But leeks go well with bacon, which we had a few extra strips lying around. I searched Google for “Leeks and Bacon” and was directed to this Bon Appétit recipe, Skillet Gnocchi With Leeks and Bacon, to which I promptly modified.

The main thing that struck me was that this recipe would be great with some white beans. It would have been best with some Rancho Gordo Royal Corona Beans, those enormous white boulders, but I settled for a can of organic cannellini.

This dish was an easy weeknight meal, but if I was going to change one thing, I would top it with breadcrumbs and broil it for a few minutes to get a little texture. There was plenty of starch from the gnocchi though, and the flavor was spot on.

Leeks with Bacon, Beans, and Gnocchi

INGREDIENTS

• 2 big Leeks

• 6 strips leftover bacon

• 6 - 8 cloves of garlic

• 1 package of potato gnocchi

• 6 - 8 oz of cream

• Dash of lemon juice

• 1 can cannellini beans

• Grated parmesan

INSTRUCTIONS

• Start boiling water

• Finely chop the bacon

• Crisp the bacon

• Cut up the leeks into medallions

• Finely chop the garlic

• Add the garlic and leeks to the pan

• Add dash of lemon juice

• Salt and pepper

• Cook the leeks until tender

• Drain beans and add to the pot

• Simmer for several minutes

• Start the gnocchi in the boiling water

• Add cream to the beans, leeks, and bacon

• Top with grated parmesan

• When the gnocchi are par cooked, add to the pot and stir

• Allow the sauce to thicken, or add a dash more cream if necessary

The Latest

The Steakhouse Revolution

, writing at Gothamist, looks into why New York’s steakhouses are thriving in the current cultural moment. He theorizes its not just about the meat, but “the steakhouse is a known thing — and known things are, in this world of unknowns, ever more appealing.”

Bromate Ban

New York’s bagels, pizza, and other baked bread products are facing state ban on potassium bromate, a chemical used since the 1940s to make dough stretchier. But places as wide and far as the European Union and China have banned the additive, since it causes thyroid and kidney cancers. Bread products can be made just as tasty without the additive, but will require new formulations and may be slightly costlier.

Florida Killed the Citrus Star

Citrus greening has been decimating Florida’s orange groves. The bacterial infection kills trees within five years, and before then causes the fruits to drop off before they ripen. But its not just citrus greening decimating the industry. Sprawl, pesticides, and demand for the sandy soil the trees grow in are all factors, explains Alexander Sammon over at Slate.

Inside The Italian Cheese Bank

Parmigiano Reggiano is serious business in Italy, and there’s a bank that holds the cheese as collateral against loans. CNN takes a look inside the unique bank.

Fancy Boston Pizza

Boston is upping its pizza game with a new sustainable pizza, and apparently its difficult to get. The pies sell out — just 80 get made each week. Nathan Tavares takes a look over at Boston Magazine.

Cento the Fake-O

A lawsuit is accusing Cento of using fake San Marzano tomatoes, since the canned fruits aren’t certified by the Italians. The company says they tomatoes are real, but don’t come with paperwork.

We made some Taiwanese-style Flies Head, so naturally I made tacos.

Flies Head is a classic, but modern Taiwanese dish primarily consisting of garlic chives, fermented black beans, and minced pork. Known as Tsang Ying Tou, Chef Cheng Weng-Chiang is credited with inventing the dish at his Taipei restaurant, Wang Chang Laoma. The Sichuan-style restaurant reportedly had too many garlic chives on hand.

Flies’ head first spread across Taiwan in the 2000s, but arrived in New York City at Win Son, a Taiwanese restaurant that made waves when it opened in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Similarly, the dish is also on Wenwen’s menu, a Greenpoint restaurant that followed a few years later as part of a broader Taiwanese-cuisine trend sweeping across Brooklyn.

A recipe for the dish appears in Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, although the co-owners acknowledge it isn’t the most popular dish on the menu.

The menu description essentially reads as a pile of garlic chives. And some customers apparently are concerned it contains actual flies head, which might explain why 886 has clarified that it does not. Flies head does make a stunning visual on Instagram though, and ends up talked about quite a lot.

Two years ago, I looked up a version of Win Son’s recipe, and adapted it, swapping in scallions, which are cheap and readily found at the supermarket, for the garlic chives. I’m sure I’ve broken a few culinary rules in my adaptation, and I included a disproportionately high amount of minced pork. That’s actually simply because the ground pork came in a larger package than I had realized.

Last week we cooked up the Flies Head for dinner and served it with white rice. It’s generally speaking a fairly easy weeknight meal, provided we have all the ingredients.

But the following day, I was looking for a low impact lunch. That’s when I realized we had tortillas in the refrigerator.

I’m shocked to report that “flies head tacos” reported zero results in Google. Tacos, like pizza, is an ideal medium for serving whatever savory food you have lying around. And what a perfect entry to send out on Cinco de Mayo.

A few minutes later, I gathered up a half-opened block of habanero cheddar, sour cream, and Korean Gochujang chili sauce.

These tacos were so good I surprised even myself.

Flies Head Tacos

INGREDIENTS

• Leftover flies head with white rice

• Tortillas

• Grated Habanero Cheddar

• Sour cream

• Gochujang Korean Chili Sauce

• Chives

INSTRUCTIONS

• Reheat your leftover flies head

• Heat tortillas in a pan

• Fill tortillas with flies head

• Top with cheese, sour cream, gochujang, and diced chives

The Latest

Taco Meat Explainer

Lisa Futterman runs through some of the varieties of traditional taco meats explaining what things like Lengua (tongue) are. This is far from an exhaustive list since chicken Tinga is missing. Also, no surprised, no mention of stuffing your tacos with Flies Head.

Tortilla Presses

Tortillas are made by smashing dough between two heavy plates, but now innovators are finding new things to squeeze. Abe Beame at Taste takes a look at the different dishes chefs are smushing up.

More Than Mini Umbrellas

Have decorative cocktail garnishes gotten out of hand?

Are Good Bagels Endangered?

At the new food publication, Ravenous, Courtney E. Smith looks into the enshittification of bagels thanks to venture capitalists.

Is New England’s Chinese Food Is Too Sweet

Katie Lochart at Salon writes about New England’s Chinese American food, and how its sweeter and saucier than similar dishes elsewhere. Chinese immigrants blame the Irish and Italians in Boston for influencing the dishes, like Peking Ravioli which are meatier than dumplings from other regions.

A New Burrito Just Dropped

At the New Yorker, Helen Rosner explains a northern-Mexican-style burrito is now making its way around the New York City. Is this the new birria taco?

Illegal Cheese

Brett Martin at National Geographic dives into the history of Sardinia’s maggot-filled cheese. Casu marzu, meaning rotten cheese, is made by allowing cheese flies to deposit eggs and then hatch. Sales in Italy were banned in 1962, and in the EU in 2002 (and don’t even think about trying to sneak it in to the United States).

We headed out to Coney Island for an off-season adventure. Obviously, our first stop was Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand.

Coney Island has served as a summer, seaside destination for New York City since the early 19th century. The amusement park rides that have created the neighborhood’s iconic culture first started appearing at the end of that century with places like the Sea Lion Park that opened in 1895, and the original Luna Park opening in 1903. The early parks dazzled with electric lights and mechanical rides. Seasonal visitors arrived by steam trains. But the modern Coney Island was really born in the second and third decade of the 20th century.

The BMT arrived in 1918, and the massive Coney Island Stillwell Avenue station, the gateway to Coney Island, opened in 1920, as did the Wonder Wheel. Other iconic skyline pieces followed like the Boardwalk (1923), Cyclone roller coaster (1927), and Parachute Jump (1941).

In hindsight, Nathan Handwerker’s decision to open a hot dog stand on Surf Avenue in 1916 was a brilliant business play.

An immigrant from Poland, Nathan Handwerker gave up a steady job to operate the new hot dog stand. He secured the corner lot with a loan, and buitl an empire.

His success though was more than just a good location. For instance, unlike other businesses on Coney Island, the Nathan’s stand operated all year long, so even after the summer day trippers left, Nathan was still there selling hot dogs.

Nathan’s also innovated in marketing. He undercut the nearby Feltman’s, which sold 10 cent dogs. Nathan sold his for 5 cents, earning less on the hot dogs but driving business to items like fresh lemonade. He also reduced waste by investing in ice and then refrigeration to prevent the dogs from spoiling.

Another significant choice was to commit to high quality hot dogs. Nathan’s serves an all beef hot dog and created a custom blend of higher quality cuts. Feltman’s, on the other hand, served a pork dog.

Nathan’s hot dogs were also wrapped in natural casings. Meanwhile, in Chicago, hot dogs without casings were introduced in 1922 and were cheaper to produce. The different production methods have remained regionally significant ever since.

And because Nathan’s custom ordered their meat, Handwerker was able to deploy other marketing strategies like serving bigger dogs on Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekend, the opening of the season, and creating the belief that the Nathan’s dogs were larger all summer long.

Perhaps the best known marketing ploy created by Nathan’s Famous is the annual hot dog eating contest, first launched in 1972. The televised eating contest draws contestants from around the world, building brand awareness for the Nathan’s empire.

After the success of Nathan’s Coney Island location, the Handwerker family launched several other restaurants. Nathan’s son, Murray, pushed for a Long Island location in the 1950s following their customers into the suburbs. They opened another location in Yonkers that struggled, in part because it was not a destination for tourists. The company went public in the 1960s, and opened a Times Square flagship store.

The trouble was that by the 1960s, Nathan’s was competing in a fast food market, and even though competitors were relatively new compared to the 50-year-old Nathan’s, they were also more efficient serving cheap, fast food. To address the issue, Nathan’s began offering franchises hoping to capture that fast food market.

The move toward a fast food model was solidified during a merger with Wetson’s, a fast food burger chain. The 1975 stock swap deal saw the Wetson’s stores converted to Nathan’s brand, and Nathan’s locations that were less favorable to the fast food model shuttered. In the years since, Nathan’s franchises have seen ups and downs, particularly as shopping malls where many franchises were located, have closed down.

In January, Smithfield Foods announced a total acquisition of Nathan’s. Smithfield had been manufacturing Nathan’s hot dogs for grocery store customers under license since 2014. While that license was set to expire in a few years, Smithfield’s $450m acquisition ensures brand access in perpetuity.

Ever since the announcement, I’ve worried that the new management team would gut Nathan’s classic store. Whenever new investors buy up a storied brand, they usually want to see changes made that cut costs or increase profits, none of which is ever good for consumers or product enthusiasts.

The Coney Island location has always served up a much larger menu than can be found at Nathan’s franchise locations. The franchise focuses on traditional fast food sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, and the famous crinkle cut fries. But the Coney Island location has much more, including a seafood menu. The addition of seafood was another innovation Nathan Handwerker had made back before his restaurant would have been considered fast food.

The menu on Coney Island still includes clam chowder and lobster bisque and fried seafood platters with flounder fillets, clams, and shrimp, and fish sandwiches. But one of my favorite snacks from Nathan’s are the corn dog nuggets. These tiny corn dogs are bite-sized versions of the carnival treat.

It was too cold and windy to eat at the outside tables leading up to the beach, and despite the chilly afternoon, the inside seating at Nathan’s was nearly full. Later I realized patrons were being bused in as part of a tour, but still, it was surprising to see a full dining room off season.

Believe it or not, there are actually two books about the history of Nathan’s, both co-written by grandsons of the Handwerker family. Lloyd Handwerker’s memoir Famous Nathan and Wiliam Handwerker’s cultural history, Nathan’s Famous, offer two perspectives on the rise and fall and rise again of the restaurant, the offshoots, franchises, and grocery store hot dogs.

The Latest

Vodka Sauce Is Trending, Again

The kids all love vodka sauce. Everyone is abuzz, especially Gen Z, on the creamy, spicy, alcohol infused tomato sauce. Chloe Mac Donnell at the Guardian explores the trend, and I weigh in.

You Say Tomato, I say Potato

If you’ve ever wondered where potatoes come from, you might be surprised to learn they come from tomatoes. Some 9m years ago, a proto-tomato met up with an early tuber like plant and made a hybrid plant baby that evolved into the potatoes we eat today.

There’s No Beating the Bean Man

at Eating Patterns discusses the Rancho Gordo effect — the idea that one company comes to dominate a market segment they become untouchable. Sykes has her own bean business, and looks at how Steve Sando created the category, and has become untouchable by being great.

Twisted Pretzel History

Apparently, earlier this week was National Pretzel Day, a holiday invented to sell soft pretzels. At Salon, Joy Saha goes into history of the salty snacks.

Everyone Loves Thighs

The chicken thigh was one the cheap alternative to white meat, but too many people have caught on to the flavorful meat. , writing over at Slate, takes a look at why we’re suddenly excited about chicken thighs.

CO2 Is Making Food Less Nutritious

Carbon Dioxide isn’t just making the planet warmer. It’s also making crops more sugary and carry less of the critical nutrients we need. Oops.

The Gordon Ramsay cooking competition show Hell’s Kitchen premiered in May of 2005, at the height of turning everything into a reality show. In the opening challenge, Ramsay’s sous chefs task the contestants with cooking their signature dish, “A dish that says something about who you are.” The contestants had 45 minutes.

“This is something that should reflect you,” the second sous chef calls out.

Hell’s Kitchen was powered by personality clashes and interpersonal dramas with the food coming second to the manufactured conflicts. Ramsay’s public persona twenty years ago was built around cruelty in the kitchen, particularly as the loud, abusive chef on the competition show. He held nothing back, spitting out most of the dishes presented to him.

This first challenge is one that is repeated in subsequent seasons. Surprisingly, few, if anyone, seems to have learned a lesson from earlier seasons and repeat the same mistakes, and make new ones, like attempting fresh pasta with too little time (a frequent problem for chefs across competition shows like Chopped and Top Chef as well).

All this is a long way of getting around to saying obviously I’ve fantasized about what kind of dish represents me, and what would I cook with for chef Ramsay in an opening challenge of Hell’s Kitchen.

The conclusion I came to many years ago is that I could make a simple macaroni with chickpeas, pasta e ceci.

Chickpeas are an ancient food, with some suggestions humans have been eating them as far back as 10,000 years. Wild versions of the plant likely originated in southern Turkey and Syria, where it was eventually domesticated. The legume then spread across the Mediterranean and became a staple crop across the region.

Pasta e ceci is a dish with many variations across southern Italy. Some form of pasta and chickpeas have likely been around since the Roman era. Regionally, recipes vary in Italy, but a common version from the Basilicata region is known as the “Brigand’s dish,” a piatto del brigante.

In Calabria, Lagane e ceci is associated with St. Joseph’s Day, and shared among neighbors. Lagane are a broad flat pasta shape like taglietelle. In Puglia, the dish is known as ciceri e tria. Tria derives from the Arabic Itriyah and the Greek Itriom, indicating threads of pasta.

It’s also one of the first dishes I have a memory of eating. My mother would make it with tiny farfalle, little egg noodle bowties that have in recent years become more difficult to find in the grocery store.

I’ve also made = variations of the dish over the years. The base dish begins with garlic, olive oil, and chickpeas cooked with parsley and black pepper before mixing in the pasta. But I’ve versions where I’ve mixed in medallions of carrot, or wilted spinach, or green peas. If you’re desperate for meat, starting off with a bit of pancetta never hurt anyone. Some people turn this into a tomato-y dish too, but I don’t go in that direction.

My preference is cooking down the liquid and mixing in the pasta to absorb all that flavor, but also there’s nothing wrong with adding extra broth and making a soup. One key ingredient though is finishing it off with a bit of parmesan.

I recently cooked up a version for lunch. My wife was skeptical at first, which is unexpected given that she’s a proponent of the mantra, “daily beans!” I must have done a decent job, but because earlier this week when I cooked up another batch at lunch, she wanted in.

Pasta e Ceci (Ian's Version)

INGREDIENTS

• Large can of chickpeas (when did the 32 oz become 19 oz?)

• Two big splashes of olive oil

• 3 to 5 cloves of garlic

• 1 tablespoon butter

• A few tablespoons parmesan

• Dash of dried parsley (or fresh Italian Parsley finely chopped)

• A few shakes of black pepper

• Pinch of crushed red pepper

• ½ lb of Mini egg bowties (mini shells, mini elbows, or ditalini also works)

INSTRUCTIONS

• Boil water for pasta

• Finely dice garlic

• Saute in oil

• Drain chickpeas reserving a tablespoon of x

• Add chickpeas to the garlic and oil

• Add butter

• Add aquafaba

• Add tablespoon or two of water

• Season with salt, pepper, red pepper, and parsley

• Simmer

• Cook chickpeas until tender

• When most but not all of the liquid has evaporated add in the pasta

• Stir in grated parmesan so that it melts into the oil and coats the pasta and chickpeas

• Serve with additional parmesan

The Latest

Searching for the Joy of Cooking

Have you seen the latest food hack? It’s probably an influencer trying to make cooking faster, quicker, simpler. Social media is driving a renewed interest in convenience cooking, a results driving approach that overlooks process. But cooking can be fun, argues Jaya Saxena over at Slate, where she looks at the newest trend of finding joy in the act of making food.

The Sauce That Spies on You

Jarred tomato sauce brand Prego is launching a device to record your dinner conversation. The intent is far less sinister than it sounds. Working in conjunction with StoryCorps, the device is meant to record family stories, presumably while suckling on spaghetti topped with tomato sauce.

What Is A Steakhouse Anyway?

The steakhouse is a truly American creation that defined early restaurant dining in this country. The best ones typically come with a storied history. But now we’re seeing something different, says Bettina Makalintal at Eater, a new kind of American steakhouse, one where there is steak, but also a celebration of other immigrant cuisines. She posits that the new steakhouses are making a comeback generally because of a cultural moment where two competing ideas thrive in their dichotomy. Conservatism likes red meat. But also immigrants have given us delicious foods, and these two ideas can coexist simultaneous in the safety of a meat palace.

Everything Old Is New Again

Fernando’s, the 120-year-old Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that closed last year, is open again thanks to the team behind Cafe Spaghetti. The dishes have been updated, including the signature pane e panelle, a sandwich made of chickpea fritters, but it’s all been done with the blessing of the previous owners.

The Best Artichokes

Food & Wine examined all some of the ways to cook whole artichokes, and decided classic steaming them is the best way. Great news. I have a great version of garlicky steamed artichokes that shows up on the Christmas dinner table. But I’m going to say the best way to cook whole artichokes is actually in fact, deep fried from a pizzeria in Rome.

Sometimes you are just going to eat mediocre pizza. It happens. And while I don’t totally believe the phrase, “there’s no such thing as bad pizza,” if there is one place that holds up, its in New York City.

First, here’s what I didn’t like about this slice:

• Low structural integrity

• Too, too crispy bottom

• Bland tomato sauce

A great slice of pizza must stand up to the fold. This one didn’t. One fold and the whole crust had cracked into pieces making it a sloppy mess to eat. Once it collapsed, the cheese started sliding off.

That brings me to the crust being too crispy. The bottom of the pie was simply too crisp — not burned, but hard and fragile. I suspect this comes from over heating the slice on reheat, especially in an oven that is too hot. Either way, you want a slice to have tension but not shatter into sharp little pieces.

Finally, the sauce here is a bit bland, and lacks much in the way of flavor beyond a general oregano. It wasn’t too sweet, it wasn’t spicy or too salty, it was just kind of bland.

But also it was totally fine, or at least, good enough. I find fault in this slice not because it was bad, but because it was good. There was plenty of cheese, and it melted nicely. Although this cheese made a mess once the crust broke apart, it was still good to eat, but I’m glad I sat down to eat it.

There was a big selection of pizza types available, including a white pie and a ziti slice. Had I the time and appetite to sample these, I would have loved to take a closer look at these, and I suspect overall, I would have been happier with one of these options.

What is interesting to me is just how many pizzerias were on the block, including a Patsy’s franchise and Little Italy Pizzeria. The preponderance of cheap foods might have something to do with the large number of hospitals in the area, which often attract low cost quick foods like pizza. For me, it was a conscious choice stopping here, because I knew what to expect at Little Italy Pizza — its slightly above average. But also if I’m in the area again I’m more likely to grab a snack from Pizza Park, one block down, simply because different might be better than average.

Ultimately this slice is everything that’s great about New York City pizza. It was good enough, at a pizzeria surrounded by other pizzerias. I chose it, more or less at random, and still had a decent slice.

Famous Famiglia Pizzeria

• 1284 1st Ave

• Manhattan, NY

Last week was spring break for NYC school children, so naturally we fled the city for grandma daycare. And then I cooked up some chicken parmigiana.

“Who else is coming for dinner?” my mother-in-law asked. I had two trays of chicken, a bowl of eggplant parm, and a big plate of fried cutlets that simply didn’t fit in any of the stoneware.

Chicken parm is one of those foods Americans ask for in Italy and are disappointed to find out actually comes from America. Chicken parmigiana, or Chicken Parmesan if you prefer, isn’t something that comes out of nowhere though.

In Sicily and the Islands around Naples, eggplant are a big part of the flavor profile, like Spaghetti Syracuse style. Melanzane alla Parmigiana is a historic dish, although the earliest iteration, bianca, was simply layers of eggplant and cheese cooked together. The tomato sauce was a later addition, but both the white and red version arrived with immigrants to the United States.

One common misconception is that the term parmigiana is not a reference to the cheese, Parmigiana-Reggiano. While you might make melanzana alla parmigiana with grated hard cheese, caciocavallo was more commonly used, and fresh cheese like mozzarella or fior di latte. However, the phrase parmigiana is phonetically similar to the word for shutter. The Italian word “persiana,” dates back to the 18th century, and in dialect, allegedly sounds even more like parmigiana. Slice eggplants lengthwise, and they begin to take on the appearance of the heavy wooden shutters used to keep out the hot sun.

Eggplant in the style of the window shutters arrived with Italian immigrants, and in the early 20th century in New York City, the eggplant was switched with veal. There are probably a few reasons for this. First, America was the land of abundance, especially compared to rural southern Italy where many people were starving. Meat was a delicious substitute.

Second, German food, especially schnitzel, fried pork and veal cutlets, had become a trendy food in New York City by teh 1920s. And third, Italian American cooks served up beef braised in tomato sauce, known as steak pizzaiola, which became much less common as veal parmigiana grew in popularity, suggesting it was displaced by the newer dish.

By the 1930s, Pietro’s, an Italian American restaurant in New York City was serving up a simple veal parmigiana. Diane Ashley’s Where to Dine in ‘39 highlights the recipe from the East 45th Street restaurant. In this version, fried cutlets have are topped with parmesan cheese and butter, before baked golden brown.

The Pietro’s version has more in common with the German-style schnitzel, but it’s also similar to the traditional Sicilian dish, melanzane alla Parmigiana bianca, the white version of eggplant parm baked without any tomato.

Veal was initially the most popular protein, and by the 1950s, common at red sauce joints. Other versions include shrimp, chicken, and zucchini. Yet today, chicken parm is far more prevalent as an entree, sandwich, and even pizza topping.

At least one version of chicken parm was invented in 1945 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Pasquale Bamonte, who founded the namesake restaurant in 1900, claimed to have been cooking eggplant parm for high school baseball players one evening when he ran out of the vegetable and swapped in chicken in its place. From there, chicken parm spread. How much truth is in this fairy tale is unproven, but also unprovable. More likely, as happened with Chicken Francese, more than one person developed a similar dish independently and now the recipe is a ubiquitous part of American culture.

Today chicken parm is undergoing a new evolution once again with the substitute of vodka sauce for tomato sauce. One version that has become famous is served on the FDNY hero from Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe. The sandwich is made from vodka sauce, chicken culet, and mozzarella cheese. But just up the street at Carmine and Sons, a pizzeria and red sauce restaurant, you can find chicken parmesan in vodka sauce under their specialty dishes.

When I set out to cook the chicken parm, I debated gathering the ingredients for a vodka sauce base. At one point I even had a bottle of heavy cream in the cart. Was this too much change? Would we survive this unexpected recipe plot twist? At the last minute I decided to error on the side of caution and keep it traditional, or at least traditionally Italian American.

To make the above chicken parm, I pan fried cutlets battered with flour, egg, and panko bread crumbs, and then combined them with a simple tomato sauce and low moisture mozzarella cheese before baking them at 350F for about 20 minutes. It’s important to bake them in stoneware as glass dishes like Pyrex are more likely to burn the underside of the chicken.

There isn’t much to the recipe, though it is labor intensive. If you’re feeling historical, try this vintage recipe adapted from the Diane Ashley book, Where to Dine in ‘39.

Pietro’s 1930s Veal Parmigiana

INGREDIENTS

• Veal cutlets

• Flour

• Egg

• Breadcrumbs

• Parmesan Cheese

• Butter

INSTRUCTIONS

• Pound the veal flat

• Cover in flour

• Coat in egg

• Cover in breadcrumbs

• Fry in olive oil

• Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese

• Add bits of butter

• Bake until brownPound the veal flat

• Cover in flour

• Coat in egg

• Cover in breadcrumbs

• Fry in olive oil

• Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese

• Add butter

• Bake until brown

The Latest

We Had Lunch Sami’s Kabab House

A favorite of Mayor Mamdani, Sami’s Kabab House serves of Afghani cuisine in Astoria. We had appetizers and kababs.

Froyo Is Back, But This One Is Scam

Frozen Yogurt is making a comeback this year with lots of new spots opening. Meanwhile, Cremily, a Froyo company hawking “French frozen yogurt billed as a healthy, lactose-free treat,” was just a scam.

With Good Bread

Caity Weaver dives into finding the best * free * restaurant bread in America, literally asking the question: what is the point of this article? Unsurprisingly, the cheddar biscuit industrial complex doesn’t want her snooping around asking her questions. The Red Lobster publicity team highlights a textbook case of how not to do strategic corporate comms (or was it 4d chess the whole time?). Anyway, Weaver continues fearlessly into the search for the best bread in an epic Odyssey that had me pouring over photos from the dining room of Bone’s, an Atlanta restaurant, that as of this article is best known for having tiny soda cups.

Fancy Cheese

Kraft announced three new flavors of Kraft Macaroni and cheese targeting the upscale market including Parmesan Pesto, Monterey Jack Caramelized Onion, and Romano Cacio e Pepe, and perhaps proving that Cacio e Pepe is the new Alfredo.

I Can Believe It’s Butter

Butter obsessives are traveling the world searching for the best butter.

California Looks to Ban PFAS Spray

Since Americans aren’t ingesting enough forever chemicals from their nonstick pans, the current administration approved spraying PFAS chemicals as pesticide. Now California’s legislature is looking to restrict the chemicals usage, which is good for everyone given how much produce comes from the state.

Space Food

Joy Saha at Salon reports on the space-age menus aboard Artemis II. It’s no tea, earl gray hot, but beef brisket sounds pretty good.