Saturday, October 08, 2005
Sweet Spagetti
It rains. I sleep. When I am not sleeping, I am walking the house ensuring things are staying polished, dusted and swept because the house is on display for selling. German murmurs from the three investors looking the house over this morning accompanied my pickles and cheese sandwich lunch feast in front of my computer terminal.
The book open on the table-top reading stand that I read as I eat is Inventing New Orleans by Lefcadio Hearn. It is a remarkable book and makes me think about the images and assumptions I carry around about New Orleans.
He said --
The season has come at last when strangers may visit us without fear, and experience with unalloyed pleasure the first delicious impression of the most beautiful and picturesque old city in North America. For in this season is the glamour of New Orleans strongest upon those whom she attracts to her from less hospitable climates, and fascinates by her nights of magical moonlight, and her days of dreamy languors and perfumes. There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and now who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence. To a native of the bleaker Northern clime --- if he have any poetical sense of the beautiful in nature, any love of bright verdure and luxuriance of landscape -- the approach to the city by river must be in itself something indescribably pleasant. The white steamer gliding through an unfamiliar world of blue and green -- blue above and blue below, with a long strip of low green land alone to break the ethereal azure; the waving cane; the evergreen fringe of groves weird with moss; the tepid breezes and the golden sunlight -- all deepening in their charm as the city is neared, making the voyage seem beautiful as though one were sailing to some far-off glimmering Eden, into the garden of Paradise itself....
Sugar Country
Lousiana is called sugar country for the cane crop is supreme. Rice and cotton are lesser overwhelming presences along with the invasive oil industry.
When I think of New Orleans in a personal sort of way, I am reminded of two things that invaded our family life. Hospitality and sugar.
No one walked into my grandmother's house that was not welcomed warmly and gladly, made to feel at home and comfortable, watered and plied with snack treats to push back the tiniest hint of hunger or need. The guest was supreme and invisibly sacrificed for. You may not have them among you again, so cherish them now was her philosophy. Plan for them, tuck away the supplies that may be needed at a moments notice -- mints, sealed boxed fancy cookies and candies, lacy napkins crisp and fresh, silver polished, and the unopened bottles of bourbon, rum and gin.
These things she taught her daughter and she taught me. There is a package of sugar wafers setting on my shelf now in her memory.
The other thing so New Orleans to me is the way that my grandmother cooked. She was straight forward about most things except her salad dressing and her meat spagetti sauce. Her salad dressing was a crab louis sort of thing -- mayonaise, powdered mustard and garlic, chopped pickles and palmentos, and a hint of tabasco sauce. A sort of louis - 1000 island combination. She made the mayonaise from scratch.
The spagetti sauce is almost indescribable. Canned tomatoes, fresh chopped garlic, well-drained cooked ground beef and bread crumbs. Oregano was the main spice. After simmering for an hour or so, a taste test drove the next steps -- a quarter cup of cidar vinegar was added. This simmered for about fifteen minutes and then the next taste test determined if sugar needed to be added in small sprinkles to tone down the vinegar. The next fifteen minutes was a 'watched' pot as it was tasted over and over, spoonfuls of sugar being slipped into the mix until it reached a perfection of balance between meat, tomato and that indescribable spicyness. The first night of spagetti was good. However, the second night, when you were eating reheated spagetti pasta soaked overnight in this sauce you were eating ambrosia -- the food of the gods.
And another family secret is to add some sugar to our fresh mashed potatoes. Sugar seasoning seems to be a flavor inhancement for fruits and vegetables, but few practice it nowadays. Too bad. Yummy.
So it seems our family's hospitality and cooking revolve around sugar in one way or another. I attribute that to New Orleans-style southern customs. Thank you Grandmamma Lester Leona Sinnott.
The book open on the table-top reading stand that I read as I eat is Inventing New Orleans by Lefcadio Hearn. It is a remarkable book and makes me think about the images and assumptions I carry around about New Orleans.
He said --
The season has come at last when strangers may visit us without fear, and experience with unalloyed pleasure the first delicious impression of the most beautiful and picturesque old city in North America. For in this season is the glamour of New Orleans strongest upon those whom she attracts to her from less hospitable climates, and fascinates by her nights of magical moonlight, and her days of dreamy languors and perfumes. There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and now who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence. To a native of the bleaker Northern clime --- if he have any poetical sense of the beautiful in nature, any love of bright verdure and luxuriance of landscape -- the approach to the city by river must be in itself something indescribably pleasant. The white steamer gliding through an unfamiliar world of blue and green -- blue above and blue below, with a long strip of low green land alone to break the ethereal azure; the waving cane; the evergreen fringe of groves weird with moss; the tepid breezes and the golden sunlight -- all deepening in their charm as the city is neared, making the voyage seem beautiful as though one were sailing to some far-off glimmering Eden, into the garden of Paradise itself....
Sugar Country
Lousiana is called sugar country for the cane crop is supreme. Rice and cotton are lesser overwhelming presences along with the invasive oil industry.
When I think of New Orleans in a personal sort of way, I am reminded of two things that invaded our family life. Hospitality and sugar.
No one walked into my grandmother's house that was not welcomed warmly and gladly, made to feel at home and comfortable, watered and plied with snack treats to push back the tiniest hint of hunger or need. The guest was supreme and invisibly sacrificed for. You may not have them among you again, so cherish them now was her philosophy. Plan for them, tuck away the supplies that may be needed at a moments notice -- mints, sealed boxed fancy cookies and candies, lacy napkins crisp and fresh, silver polished, and the unopened bottles of bourbon, rum and gin.
These things she taught her daughter and she taught me. There is a package of sugar wafers setting on my shelf now in her memory.
The other thing so New Orleans to me is the way that my grandmother cooked. She was straight forward about most things except her salad dressing and her meat spagetti sauce. Her salad dressing was a crab louis sort of thing -- mayonaise, powdered mustard and garlic, chopped pickles and palmentos, and a hint of tabasco sauce. A sort of louis - 1000 island combination. She made the mayonaise from scratch.
The spagetti sauce is almost indescribable. Canned tomatoes, fresh chopped garlic, well-drained cooked ground beef and bread crumbs. Oregano was the main spice. After simmering for an hour or so, a taste test drove the next steps -- a quarter cup of cidar vinegar was added. This simmered for about fifteen minutes and then the next taste test determined if sugar needed to be added in small sprinkles to tone down the vinegar. The next fifteen minutes was a 'watched' pot as it was tasted over and over, spoonfuls of sugar being slipped into the mix until it reached a perfection of balance between meat, tomato and that indescribable spicyness. The first night of spagetti was good. However, the second night, when you were eating reheated spagetti pasta soaked overnight in this sauce you were eating ambrosia -- the food of the gods.
And another family secret is to add some sugar to our fresh mashed potatoes. Sugar seasoning seems to be a flavor inhancement for fruits and vegetables, but few practice it nowadays. Too bad. Yummy.
So it seems our family's hospitality and cooking revolve around sugar in one way or another. I attribute that to New Orleans-style southern customs. Thank you Grandmamma Lester Leona Sinnott.
# posted by Dornar @ 4:09 AM 
