................................................................................................................................................
.
In the afternoon we gather at the front counter to examine the three
different lots of
Greek oregano leaves that we have in the house. We bring out
the mortar & pestle
and Kyle and Jesse take turns rubbing; grinding, each of the three
into fine bits. This
is good as it tells them how much stem material is in each. And
also they get an idea
of the fragrance in each of the three. We are going to make a
bread crumb seasoned
mixture with these oregano leaves .... the three lots are: Billy
& Pam's .... Tom & Patty's ... Ruth & Bill's .... Kyle
&
Jesse decide to use Tom & Patty's lot of oregano leaves for our
meal.
We put out bread crumbs ... we take the apothecary jar from the shelf
of
the
30/60 mesh sifted clean dustless Black Tellicherry Pepper; and also
we take the pure
granulated garlic jar ( heavy, dense style 120 bulkl index ) .... and
also Ruth goes in back
to bring some Kosher flake salt out to mix in too. We add each
of these five items one
by one ... to a consensus as we go along .... Ruth sez we should
measure
it out by the
teaspoon, etc. ... but we don't ... instead we make a pattern; a design
.... I show them the
bottom of the Walker's Point Seasoning jar ... how the actual blend
is encoded into a
colored pattern or picture. We do that here too. But here
we do it like circles. The bread
crumbs are the largest circle .... etc. At this point I am going
to ask young Jesse to draw
this particular pattern out from memory .... and to do it in color
... then we'll make a jpeg
file on it so that we can share with you the way we made this seasoned
bread crumb coating up ... that is, it's proportions.
.
image of the bread crumb seasoning colored pattern
.
double thick pork chops, baked potatoes, no, please don't use
Telemachos
fancy
Greek olive oil, use the store bought .... Ruth sears the chops on
each side first, then
fries them ....
.
The meal. Ruth gives thanks that we can all be together here
at this time to eat.
.
The saffron flowers are there next to us as we eat. 7 blossoms
in a large pitcher of cold water. Jessie finishes eating first,
and
then he reads the Elizabeth David article on saffron
to us as we finish eating.
.
post the Elizabeth David saffron article here.
.
For tomorrow: list of our seven Fall spice specials .....
.
.
Saturday, October 14, 2000.
.
place picture here of the twins, Eva & Caity, at the front counter
with Ruth and the fresh
baked bread, the Greek first press olive oil that Telemachos brought
in from the Greek island that his family comes from, and the three
different
Greek oregano leaves that we are sampling by crumbling them onto the
bread
& then drizzling the olive oil over them.
.
FM, flavor meditation. We did it with the three types of Greek
oregano leaves we have in
the house. Eva, Caity, Ruth, & I. First, to bring a
certain respect to the tasting for these
things that the Earth has given us. We have to set like and
dis-like
to the side, as we cannot say " I like this one, or I like that one.
"
We try to make observations; good observations. The amount of
stem
material is one thing we look for, as compared to the
soft leaves themselves. Freshness is a word that Caity birngs
up ... also other words used
were flowery, soft ( as in soft taste ), minty, sweet, spicy, and Eva
brought up the word
exciting. I noticed that one of the batches has an oregano seed
in it. Why was this
exciting to me? But it was. It brought back the dialog
that Billy & I had on what good
oregano was ... and he talked about getting the style with the seeds
in it, as it was the
higher oil bearing seeds that have more flavor. The three batches
we were testing were
from Tom & Patty, and from Billy & Pam, and then ours; Ruth
& Williams. One of the
three batches did have some seeds in it and I found this
exciting.
Later at night I looked
up the oregano listing in Elizabeth David's Spice Book " Spices &
Herbs in the English
Kitchen " and she had an interesting reference to Greek oregano being
different in that it
was picked when flowering; whereas usually it is not picked then, only
when the leaves ...
the lovely tasting herb leaves .... are ready for picking. And
there is this aspect of about
" wild oregano " and that it should be mountain grown; that is from
higher elevations ....
]even that it should be " bee polinated " these things were told to
me by an old Greek cook a few years back at a Greek Restaurant that
Billy
& Mom & I went to once in awhile. More on our oregano FM
flavor meditation when I get time. Caity & Eva as you
all probably know by now are our 11 year old twin grandaughters.
After our oregano
flavor meditation, we quickly went up to the house and picked up black
walnuts laying on the grass underneath our black walnut tree.
This
is at our civil war house near the top
of Kavanaugh Hill. Then we went into the kitchen and peeled off
the pulpy outer layer and took a small wire brush & vigorously
rubbed
clean all the remaining pulp until the
inside nuts then resembled a regular walnut, about that size, altho
the black walnut variety
has a sharply textured outer surface. Ruth will make a black
walnut cake or pie with these, and this recipe will go into the "
Kavanaugh
Hill Spice House Cook Book " that
will be put together for publication when the twins are 21, some ten
years from now.
Also we talked about the event coming up where we will be mixing the
necessary mild
style cinnamon sugar to be given out for all the " Halloween Trick
or Treaters " coming
just two short weeks from now. We are trying to get some of the
young girls in the neigh-
borhood to work with Eva & Caity to make this an annual
tradition.
We talked about what traditions are ... and that Ruth & I think
this
would be a good Spice House tradition
to start ... the annual mixing of the mild kid's style cinnamon sugar
.... by kids in the Kavanaugh Hill neighborhood ... for passing out at
Halloween with a crispy Wissonsin apple and also an aromatic little
reddish
stick of cinnamon.
.
We also talk just a little about how we always add a little nutmeat
from this black walnut tree to each batch of our Kavanaugh Hill
White
Buffalo Spice, and we talk just a little
about how Ruth was allowed to dream the White Buffalo Lady Dream, which
is a special
dream & a high honor for a woman to be given this dream.
We talk more about how special their Grandmother is; and I tell them
ways
I know that she is given to be special.
.
.
Friday, October 13, 2000.
.
Some of the finest spice & herb mixtures we make; we offer; have
a goodly percentage of
shallots in their make up .... especialy the ultra expensive freeze
dried shallots. These are
marvelous blends, and they have often an exquisite flavor, but they
do cake when left out
and become exposed to the humid air that is often in a kitchen.
A lady buys two cups of our Jewish Chicken Soup Spice; I wrap her
purchased
in aluminum foil after putting it into
a small ziploc sandiwich bag, and we talk just for a minute about
freeze
dried herbs; why they are so expensive; and why one has to take a
little
extra care with them.
.
Angela phones; it is late in the day ... she tells me she was at
Jolly's
but now she is cooking at a very large kitchen in the outlying lakes
area
.... she is looking for my help
just a little on making breadings ... what are my suggestions.
Angela is one of those who
are special with us. Why? Because she happened, sort of
by accident to buy one of the
clear lucite pyrapmid peppermills ... the ones that are so good for
studying whole
peppercorns in because they magnify the berries just a little.
It is the mill & kit that we first sold some years ago to the late
Catherine Brandel of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone,
California.
A clear lucite peppermill with 8 different peppercorn
berries and with some guidelines on how to study whole peppercorns
for their different
qualities. Lets not let this material languish ... it is very
rich spice material ... and energized into existence, in a sense, by a
very high quality source, the late Catherine Brandel. In Julia
Child's
classic book THE WAY TO COOK, in her introduction,
Julia
Child lists credits to those who helped her; inspired her; to complete
this ( finest? ) of all
,her works ... and Catherine Brandel was listed first. But
anyway,
below I am going to dig
out some material on making bread crumb seasoned coatings, I think
we have some good
material in our Spice House library about this seasoning subject ....
I did say to Angela that the National Restaurant Association in Chicago
has some good spice material to share, and some along these lines, I
thought
... but I said O. K. Angela ... use your black
Tellicherry pepper for sure .... grind it fine ... the also the herbs
.... powder them in your
mortar & pestle into a finer texture: sweet basil or rosemary
or marjoram or ... especially .. thyme leaves ... maybe even spearmint
leaves ....
.
insert here copy of letter from Catherine Brandel about
PaulaWolfert's
Tabil Spices ....
.
Ruth has rushed out to pick up the grandkids from school out in Wales
.... Pam is in Boston looking for locations for another spice house as
per Billys ideas ... Dasvid Carter is with her there in Boston ....
Ruth
had to leave exactly as 2:00 pm, and when I get to the
store just a few minutes later, Telemachos has sort of a full house
... also he tells me that
Ted from Bartolotta's has just phoned in inquiring about spearmint
leaves .... Telemachos & I had been working on; from; a really good
lot of Mediterranean spearmint leaves just a
few days before in preparation for the leg of lamb that we are going
to roast for our monthly Spice House apprentices evening dinner .... I
ask Telemachos to go in back & get
a full quart of this batch of nice spearmint ... run down into the
Village ( of Wauwautosa )
and give this to Teddy ... and I will talk to him about it later ...
he had asked the price ... after he has seen;
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Halloween is coming up again fast. Here is a picture of two of
our " trick or treaters " from last year. We gave out nice juicy
crispy apples with a small shaker of specially mixed mild cinnamon
sugar
... mixed by our grandkids Eva, Caity, & Lucas, with an
appreciation of making it mild & delicate for little kids tasting
it for the very first time ...
and also a little piece of stick cinnamon. Here little Vasilia
is dressed like a princess;
little Nicholas is dressed like ??? a little bull? Also shown
is Nicholas Mom. Vasillia's
Father is a Greek chef here in town; she goes to Wilson. We hope
she helps us mix
cinnamon sugar ... either this year .. or next if Barbara her Mom
thinks
she is too young.
.
We are thinking of having a little " cinnamon sugar mixing party "
for 4 and 5 and 6 year
old kids in our Kavanaugh Hill neighborhood to mix the required
cinnamon
sugar for giving out this Halloween. If you might be interested
in
this, please talk with Ruth. worked with; this sample
of nice Mediterannean spearmint leaves.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888.
So, yes, I tell Angela, even pound up spearmint leaves for your bread
crumb coating .... but in thinking about it more, I should say .....
salt,
fine black Tellichery pepper, garlic
powder, just a little, powdered thyme leaves, maybe just a little sweet
basil or marjoram or/and spearmint ... and you will have the makings of
a very delicious bread crumb coating for chicken or fish ... the great
Dione Lucas said about these mixutres that for
fish especially add the marjoram, as it tends to help maintain the
original fresh fish taste ...
but we will have more on this subject of seasoned bread crumb coatings
here in these writings .....
.
Carol Seidl stops in later in the day ... she is one of our valued
spice customers for some years now ... she has just returned from
a visit to her family; brother's family in Issaquah,
Washington, out side of Seattle, and might we put up a thank you
hostest
spice gift to send to Deby Harvey there in Issaquah .... did you say
Issaquah,
I say? " Yes, Issaquah "... then we walk over to the letter
hanging
on these large board by the Zanzibar cloves sacks ... the area that
John
Thorne hung around in when he & Matt Lewis visited us some
years ago ... post here the letter from Issaquah ...
.
So we talk & since Deby loves peppercorns ... actually has three
separate peppermills ... we build the spice gift around a variety of
whole
peppercorns, especially the Fall
peppercorn spice special that we are offering of ... when you buy a
half cup of our nice
Peppercorns Royale mixture of black Tellicherry with some white hand
picked and some
whole green peppercorns and some whole pink peppercorns ... you get
a one quarter cup
complimentary of the special peppercorn mixture that we made up special
for the event
when the very well known food writer who has lived in Paris for many
years now ... but
came originally from here in Wauwatosa .... Patricia Wells ... visited
and had an event to
promote her book about Italian Tavern cooking called Trattoria
and at this event perhaps
twenty five of Wisconsin's most famous restaurant chefs came &
each cooked a separate
recipe from this book Trattoria .... Patricia Wells
Father
was Italian, I think she lived on
about 90th & Wisconsin .... she went to Pius High School .... but
the one person who was
invited to cook a meal from the book who wasn't a chef was ...??? who?
... yes, Ruth; our
Ruth, and she cooked the Milanese Saffron Risotto recipe from the book
& served it up
there ... but at this event I mixed up a special " just for Patricia
Wells " whole peppercorn
mixture .... we've called it " Trattoria Peppercorns " and it is black
Tellicherry peppercorns ... the Italians love their Tellicherry pepper
.... with small chunks of dried garlic pieces mixed in with the pepper
.... and then some few pretty pink peppercorns ... the one spice that
perhaps
is the French signature in a spice mixture more than any other?
.
So Carol & I put together the peppercorn gift box .... Tellicherry
black peppercorns, Lampong black peppercorns, Peppercorns Royale, and
also
the Trattoria Peppercorns.
.
show picture here of Ruth with Patricia Wells .... also the shot of
Patty & Tom & Patricia Wells too included .....
.
.
.
Thursday, October 12, 2000.
.
.
Ruth with Telemachos on her right, and John B. on her left. Two
good spice workers.
.
What did I taste today? Well, two things, actually three
things.
I have a cold and my
nose is running something awful today, so I stayed away from tasting
things pretty much.
Yet I did taste the " sage salt " that John B. powdered up this
morning.
It is a thing of
beauty. We had three bales of marvelous extra fancy grade
Dalmatian
sage leaves come
in; we broke some off and put it through our Lee Mill and and
did our " rubbed " style; which is rich & potent, yet a coarser
grind
.... then we take 2 oz. of this rubbed sage &
mix it with 6 oz. of top flake Alberger coarse Kosher salt; we grind
this together; and we
are able to acheive a very nice, extremely fine grind, light green
tinted " sage salt ". We
use this in the authentic Southern style Black seasoning we mix up;
our Galena Street
Black BBQ Rib & Chicken Seasoning. We did five
batches
of this yesterday, and today we mixed up five batches of our German
style
central European Old World Third
Street Seasoning, and in this seasoning, which is very
complete
with a bunch of spices
& a bunch of herbs, we do use 8 different herbs that we've powdered
fresh, and the sage
salt is also added in. An old timer came in & purchased
rubbed
sage as we were doing
this mixture ... and I said to John ... " John, please, give the
gentleman
a little of that nice
sage sage you just ground up as a little sample for him to take home.
" You could see
that this was a man who knew the value of things like this.
.
.
The second thing I tasted today was saffron. But not just saffron
... if any saffron could
be referred to like this, as it is such a rare thing from our
Earth.
I was working late,
finishing up the spice mail order for Don & Jean Fisher of Port
Washington, and I looked
to see how our saffron flowers were doing in their cool water
display
bowl on our marble
slab counter in the center of the store. There I saw that one
of the six saffron flowers
there was different .... the tripartite section with the three saffron
orange red thick trumpet like styles had separated from the flower and
had settled to the bottom of the
bowl. I reached in and gently took out this little section with
three saffron threads ...
and I ate it. What a thing. For so many years I've tasted
saffron ... and there is this little
part of its taste that has always been there but I've never separated
it out ... yes, I think
I did notice it, this certain taste ... well, I didn't notice it, but
something in me took account of it; was aware of it ... because now
that
I've engaged it, I realize that I knew it
was there all along ... and that is the deep winey taste of roses;
smell of roses as tasted
like the taste of roses ... and not just any rose, but this special
deep very expensive rose
smell that is such a thing of royal elegant beauty. Yes, there
it is in the saffron, and now
it has come into the front part of my consciousness ... from the rear
.... and now I think
that I will always look for the taste of the rose in every saffron
that I taste; in every dish
that I taste; and I think it will be some sot of criteria as to the
quality ... the beauty ...
of a particular grade of saffron. A little later tonite, about
11, Billy gave me a call,
we talked about cooking a meal together next week ... and I asked if
we might cook
something using the saffron that is currently blooming in his spacious
front lawn there
on N. Menomonee River Parkway.
.
And the third thing I tasted was magnificently delicious. When
we were on Montreal last
month, we celebrated Ruth's birthday at a small French cafe ... the
St. Paul Cafe ... and
we had steak, and with my steak I had a green peppercorn sauce.
It was very good. When we returned home and were working at the
Spice
House, young Telemachos offered to make up a duplicate of this Green
Peppercorn
sauce on the basis of my
description of it ... green peppercorns, white wine, butter, and cream
... that is about
how I recalled it. Ruth agreed too that was about it ...
Telemachos
is a cook in his
day job and helps us out a little as a part time Spice House
helper.
He made a very
nice small batch of Green Peppercorn sauce and it was delicious
too.
For the last few
days we've had the heavy cream that was left over from that green
peppercorn
sauce.
I noticed tonight, and took it with me as I walked home late up the
Hill here. At the
house I happened to have some vanilla bean sugar that I am drying out
as is our original
method of preparing our lovely real vanilla bean sugar .... I scooped
out quite a nice amount and mixed it into the heavy cream .... boy I do
like this simple sweet dessert; just
heavy cream with real vanilla bean sugar added in. I always have
trouble waiting for a
bit, so the vanilla flavor comes out more, but what I do when nobody
is looking is not wait, I have some right away, but then I simply add
more
vanilla sugar.
.
Sage Salt: one half cup jar ... net wt. 3
oz.
$ 2.98
Galena Street Black BBQ Rib & Chicken Rub, half cup jar, net wt.
3 oz. $ 2.98
Old World Third Street Seasoning, half cup jar, net wt. 3 oz.
$ 2.98
Green Peppercorns, half cup jar, net wt. 1 oz. $ 3.95
Real Vanilla Bean Sugar, half cup jar, net wt. 3 oz. $ 4.95
Saffron, finest coupe grade from La Mancha Spain, l gram, $ 5.95
French Marengo Napoleon Chicken Spices w/saffron,
half cup shaker, net wt. 3 oz. $ 3.95
Jewish Chicken Soup Spice w/saffron, net wt. 2 oz. $ 4.95
Maharajah sweet Curry Powder w/saffron, net wt. 2 oz. $ 8.88
.
Double strength pure vanilla extract, 16 oz. bottle ..... $ 29.00
perhaps the finest vanilla available in America today.
.
Earlier this morning we are mixing five batches of our Old World Third
Street
Seasoning, John & Telemachos & myself .... Ruth is taking the
trade out in front.
As we start to mix, I think maybe we should talk about the " principles
of spice
mixing ".
.
Attention. Yes, we have to really pay attention. What is
attention? We have a
good dialaog on the importance of attention. " We live; exist,
within a gridwork
of an invisibly arranged Universal control system of which we are not
usally aware. "
Not a bad sentence to think about. It's from Paul's
writings.
And one of the most
important things in this system is the high priority placed on
attention.
Those that
develop attention continue to exist; those that don't do not
survive.
It appears that
the development of attention has a very high priority in the Universal
scheme of
things ... and not a static priority either. The development
of attention has a
destiny.
.
We talk about flavor enhancers. In this particular spice mixture
we use a little sugar,
as the French do in their cooking, for the flavor enhancing effect
it creates. We also
use a little tomato powder as it, too, is a marvelous flavor
enhancer.
We talk about
protein & those particular proteins that enhance taste; even more
than that ... what is
it that is really being done when things start to taste
beautiful?
We talk about the
Japanese word " umani " which has to do with this phenomena.
Something veryimportant is hidden here ... something is happening &
we don't know why, but it
has somethng to do with the effect that beautiful tastes activate
inside
of us; more
than that even, not only active but educate & elevate.
.
We will have to continue this as tme goes on .... also write down here
about the
three parts of this spice mixture ... Old World Third Street ... the
base part of rich
paprika & top flake salt ... then the middle part of the complex
aromatics that make
up the personality of this particular spice mixture ... then the
garnish
effect with the
pretty, and tasty, little bright green bits of parsley & chives
& dill leaves.
Talk out, explain how each segment is looked at; worked in; separately
mixed together
before adding to the whole. Taste mathematics. About
quality.
What is quality?
What is the function of quality? What is the purpose of
quality?
Is it possible for
everyone to have high quality? Why is it that it doesn't work
that way?
We look at the article once again on Hungarian paprika, as a really
good paprika
is necessary to make this into a good spice mixture. We talk
about Karoly Gundel.
He wrote his book the same year Ruth & I started the Spice
House.
I read out loud
the first page of his introduction, and his words tell us that here
is a man who has
worked in a kitchen for many years.
.
www.spice-work.com/homepage2000.htm
More to come on the principles
of
spice blending & compounding.
.
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
A lady from Stevens Point phones in a mail order to Ruth ... included
in it are two jars of
our pure beef extract @ l4.95 per jar. This is a fine fat free
reduced beef product. Each
half cup jar is actually made from 10 pounds of red meat start up
beef.
I am going to post
some material here on beef extract from the writings of a remarkable
man ... Charles Elme Francatelli ... he was the chef to Queen
Victoria
of England ... and also he was the
chef to the Napoleon Emperor of France. He has some good writing
on making beef tea
from a book he wrote in about 1862 ... also in this section is material
on cooking for
invalids and infants ... where high quality protein rich nutrition
is required ... but where the digestive system is not strong or fully
developed
... so the broths, etc. have to be very easily digestible.
First thing here we'll put up the pretty color
cover of his small phamphlet from 1887 on beef extract uses.
.
The brochure from 1889 is courtesy of Kay Caughrin of Berkeley ...
thank you Kay, and
the other material is from Tessa McKirdy of London, Cooks Books ...
Mr. Francatelli's
1862 book was brought to us from Tessa.
.
A nice letter today from old friends ... Don & Jean Fisher of the
Herb Society of America.
In their mail order are 8 ounces of Tellicherry Peppercorns, and 8
oounces of the smaller
berry Lampong peppercorns. I remember it was some twenty years
ago that Don taught
Ruth & I about " keytones " .... that Tellicherry pepper contains
keytones, and because of
this it is sometimes called " sneezeless black pepper " ... the
complete
ripening of the berry from green to turning red cause keytones to come
into existence, and this makes for
a sneezeless pepper. Also they are ordering some of our hot curry
powder, our sweet
curry powder, our Majarajah curry powder with saffron. They are
also inquiring might we stock the Japanese " wasabi green horseradish
powder
" ???? Well, no, but now I am thinking that maybe I can ask Sarah
Felder
there in Japan to find out about this powder?
She was very interested in the macrobiotic style of eating as taught
by Michio & Aveline Kushi. We'll have to see what we can
learn
here.
.
We have three separate lots of Greek oregano in the house. We're
making it a thing to
do what we call " FM .... flavor meditation " on these three
oreganos.
John will be baking
fresh bread in the morning .... Telemachos is bringing in Greek olive
oil that his folks
brought from Greece on the last visit there ... we'll mix the
oreganao with the olive oil
and with sliced tomatoes .... to spread on the bread ... then we'll
do the taste meditation
to see what the oregano has to tell us about itself. What is
" flavor meditation " anyway?
Well, it is one of the twelve parts of the Spice House apprentice
program.
We've done it for many years .... to sit and become quiet ... just you
and the spice ... and let it tell you about itself. Sometimes
quite
remarkable unusual things come out of this exchange. I
recall when our Gurdjieff teacher, Paul Beidler, told us about his
doing this too ... it was
when he studied with Lu Kwan U ( Charles Luk ) in Hong Kong in the
early sixties ... the
Master would take his small group of Zen students up to the cliffs
surrounding Hong Kong
.... there he would pull from his pocket a piece of fresh ginger root
and a small pen knife ..
he would cut little pieces of ginger off and pass them to his students
... and they would
meditate there high on the cliffs on the ginger. Also another
student with Paul was the
man Houston Smith .... you may have seen his excellent video series
done by Bill Moyer
for Public television ... Houston Smith was a professor of Theology
at M.I.T. and also
at Syracuse and then at Berkely. Paul's son was chosen "
university
teacher of the year " and is listed in Who's Who in America.
Gurdjieff
himself did this, and there is a reference
to it in the book " The Taste for Things that are True " by Henri
Tracol.
the French sculptor.
.
An email to Sarah Marx Feldner in Japan where she is teaching
English.
She did the
" sugaring " of the pure vanilla extract for the year long aging of
it here on Kavanaugh
Hill about 5 years ago. John Sullivan did it two years ago ....
Jesse S. did it just last month. Sarah lived a few blocks away
from
us here ... helped Ruth & I out at the Spice
House here when she worked with Melanie Green .... but Sarah did take
ballet lessons
here on Kavanaugh Hill for something like three straight years ...
every Thursday night
for three straight years she came here to the Esther Moody Ballet
Studio
when they were
at the foot of the hill on Harwood Avenue. We also like to get
someone who actually
lives on Kavanaugh Hill to do the sugaring of the pure vanilla essence
just prior to the
one year long aging before we bottle it up into the amber colored
Boston
round bottles.
.Sarah is after me to get that letter of recommendation in to the
University
where she is
planning on studying for her Masters in Library Science. Yes,
she would be good at
that, for sure. Super intelligent ... a definite ? Mesomorph?
did I get that right ... of the
three basic human types, the one that is the super smart one with that
certain
body structure ... with that certain shape of the head ... she sure
is that one. And
passionate about what she does. And she loves to cook.
She worked at the famous
Eddie's Steak House near here in the kitchen while she worked here
too at the
Spice House. Yes, she would make an excellent student for this
Masters program.
But also she would do well running her own French restaurant, owning
it, after she
got proper seasoning in how to handle the intensity of such an
undertaking.
But she
sure has the basic stuff.
.
Tuesday, October 10, 2000.
.
.
Norwalk, Connecticut at our kids spice house there ... Billy &
Pam ... Carmen is on the left,; she is the manager, and then there is
Ed,
a spice house helper, there with Ruth,
who is reading the chapter on " Internal & External Considering:
part I " from Dr.
Maurice Nicoll's book on how to get along in life. " the secret
to being happy in
life is to internally consider never; and externally consider always
". Pretty good
words. His books are part of the Spice House collection, if you
can call it that.
Dr. Nicoll was a Harley Street psychoanalyst in London fifty years
ago; he had
studied with Carl Jung back in 1918. This is part of the "
Doorstep
Mulling Spices "
ceremony which we'll talk about as time goes on. We had just
spent an hour inside
with Carmen and Ed ... has a little toast with the French Napolean
Brandy we had
just brought back from Montreal; had just mixed up a small batch of
the cumin salt
just like we did for Patty & Tom's opening of their Oldtown Chicago
Spice House.
It is a spice preaparation originally from Morocco, where salt &
freshly ground
cumin seed is mixed together, then freshly boiled eggs are seasoned
with it. We
had brought some just cooked eggs with us; we cracked the egg shells
off there
at the spice counter; even added just a pinch of freshly ground fennel
seed to this
particular batch of cumin salt ( this is a long story which we'll tell
some day ) and
after we shared the story about the fennel seed sack busting there
on Old World
Third Street in Milwaukee, and the million or so fennel seeds spilling
into the
Milwaukee sewerage system underneath the downtown area ... which when
the
following Spring came yielded the most beautiful smell in the center
of the city
that had ever been smelled ... why? Because the fennel seeds
had all sprouted
underneath the streets ... it was lovely and everyone talked about
it. It was
Billy & I who unloaded that sack sack of fennel seeds from India
together that
day ... when the corner of the sack caught on the edge of the delivery
truck
causing it to rip open ... the truck was parked directly over a storm
sewer and
that is how the seeds all spilled into " underground Milwaukee ".
How life
works, eh? The air was never so beautiful as the next
Spring.
Carmen called
this blend of cumin salt with a little ground fennel in it " Touch
'O Billy
Cumin Salt ". Incidentally, we learned of this cumin salt
with eggs custom
from that legendary American food writer ... yes, who else but Paula
Wolfert?
We actually rolled our eggs in the cumin salt this day; and they were
delicious.
Cumin is also a marvelous " anti bad things happening in eggs &
chicken spice "
so it is not only very tasty, but also in centuries past, a functional
spice seed.
Picture below is of daughter Patty, with Spice House apprentice Kim
Moffitt,
and Paula Wolfert at Patty & Tom's Evanston, Illinois Spice House,
when Paula
was there personally copies of her new & very well received "
Mediterranean
Grains &
Greens " ... which we are selling this Christmas season with an
assortment
of fresh
Mediterranean spices & herbs. Paula is smiling as she reads
my note ... in f ront
of her is a round wooden spice box contained just mixed cumin salt,
and eggs which
have been cooked in saffron infused pretty golden water.
.
.
.
A little from a conversation with Don & Jean Fisher of the Herb
Society of America:
seems to know what she's doing. She is buying some
spices;
some herbs too, among which is savory ... we have a little dialogue
about
the two varieties of
savories ... the summer savory and the winter savory. Yes, she
sez, winter growths arn't as full & lush & rich in flavor as
summer
growths ... but with winter savory it is so
" piney " that it appears to be stronger than summer altho it isn't
really. It is the
" piney " quality that causes me to prefer the summer over the
winter.
The pineyness
is just too intense; even medicinal. Did I quote her right
here.
We should get into the
subject of " terpine chemistry " here in these pages as time goes on.
.
Monday, October 9, 2000.
.
A lady from California has phoned in for our Jewish Chicken Soup
Spices.
Shallots, ginger, white pepper, & saffron mixed onto a Kosher salt
base. Works well to make a
" no chicken " basic stock for vegetarian cooking too. She is
buying a 2 cup refill and also
3 half cup jars to give out to friends. The jar is low, so I
am starting to look at my ingredients. I have to go & look at
our saffron stock. Saffron was regarded as the
" vitamin C " of the middle ages ... I have a bit of a cold myself
at the moment & we made a big pot of chicken soup: l-1/2 TB
JCSS
plus one pound of chicken breast cut
up into one inch cubes with one quart water and simmer for one
hour.
When we pack off
saffron into small one gram packets ( about 250 little saffron
filaments
or strands ) then
after packing a one pound saffron tin off, at the end, we have a little
that is broken;
crumbled, due to the jiggling as it was shipped in the tin; in the
carton; flying from Spain
to Kavanaugh Hill here in Wauwatosa ... this " crumbled saffron " is
nice to use in our
Jewish Chicken Soup Spice as it gives an extra amount of lovely yellow
color to the soup.
.
Jewish Chicken Soup Spice. Half cup jar, net wt. 2 oz. .... $
4.95
.
Genuine pure Spanish saffron, one gram amount in jar ..... $ 4.95
.
Fine grade powdered Ginger ( China #1 grade ) Half cup jar, net wt.
2 oz. .. $ 2.98
.
White Pepper; fancy hand picked Muntok; powdered fine ....
half cup jar; net wt. 2-1/2 ounces .......... $ 3.95
.
Kosher Salt; largest size flakes ( top flake salt; Alberger process
)
2 cup container; net wt. 12 ounces ........ $ 2.98
.
.
.
Here is where the Spice House started .... January of 1957. I
was 26; Ruth was only 19.
Yes, still a teenager, and what a young lady she was; filled with life;
filled with laughter.
As one spice customer called her ... " that happy soul ", yes, for
sure. In the second
shot on the right she is wearing very high heels and she was
striking.
My Father is on
my right. His name was Willliam Penzey too, so I was a " Jr.
". His Father was a Scottish engineer sent to help build Csar
Nicholas
railway in Russia towards the end of the Ninteenth Century. He
had
an unusual quality in that he moved with a pattern or rhythm that was
very
beautiful; unique. Once in awhile we see Hollywood actors that
have
this
quality altho even there it is very rare. I wonder if there is
a word for this quality; it
is quite a thing to see in a man. He came to the New World pretty
much on his own
when he was only 11. On Ruth's left are her Mother; Eva, and
her Father, Joseph. Joe. Joe Burns. Ruth was Ruth Ann
Burns when we met ( have you tried Ruth Ann's Seas.?).
Joe was from Irish stock not too far from Frank Lloyd Wright; in
Hollandale
near
Dodgeville. Eva grew up in a sod house in North Dakota,
but rode motorcycles with the boys
when she was a young lady. Good people; leaving behind them also
good people; their children. What an organic thing to leave the
Earth
... good children who are earnest.
.
It was below zero that Saturday at St.Mark's Catholic church on
Milwaukee's
South Side.
January of 1957. We started the Spice House that same month with
$ 350. we had saved.
.
.
.
Sunday, October 8, 2000.
.
.
Our two mullings spices: Doorstep Mulling Spices on the left,
and Jefferson Street Mulling Spices on the right. We're having a
mulling spices special from now until the
end of the year .... buy a half cup of the rich Jefferson Street
Mulling
Spices @ 3.95,
and receive a complimentary one quarter cup amount of the milder, more
delicate,
blended especially for kids ... Doorstep Mulling Spices, a $ 1.49 value
bonus.
This special includes a small muslin mulling sack too at no charge.
.
.
picture here of Ruth with Carmen and Ed at the Penzeys Spices Norwalk
Connecticut
spice house ... the Doorstep Mulling Spices have been sprinkled there
at the doorway,
and now Ruth is reading from the Dr. Maurice Nicoll book about internal
& external
considering ... something all spice house people have to think about
....
.
" The secret to happiness in life is to internally consider
never;
and to externally
consider always ".
.
more on this subject of how & why this " new spice house store
opening " ceremony
came about .... also " how to use " both of the mulling spices.
.
.........................................................
Kyle waits on two lady spice customers ... they each take a half cup
of the Jefferson St.
Mulling Spices .... he sees that we are out of the Doorstep Mulling
Spices and writes out
a " spice raincheck " for each of the ladies.
.
Ruth leaves Kyle and I early to go home to start fixing our Sunday
night dinner .... we decide to do a small beef roast with the Historic
Steinmeyer Building Spices .... but we
can't seem to find the jar ... so Ruth quickly mixes up a fresh batch
... half of the old
Pennsylania Dutch favorite " Schinckel's Cooking Spices " and
half of the very popular
Old World Third Street Spices ... she quickly mixes them then leaves
to start the supper.
More on this and how the seasoning turned out ......
.
After dinner we look through our cook books to learn more about "
Robert
Sauce " ...
a lady customer has asked us to give her some information on the
seasoning
of this
old European sauce. We see that it calls for beef extract and
mustard ... dry mustard,
and a decent amount of dry mustard proportionately. So the type;
the variety of
dry mustard is going to be a consideration here. What is quality
in a dry mustard?
We sell four types of dry mustard .... maybe we should have a little
dialog about dry
mustard ... why one is used here ... why another is used there.
To be continued. Also
post a few receipes here for " Robert Sauce.
.
.
.
Saturday, October 7, 2000.
.
Picture here of a single vanilla bean ... an enlarged shot ... which
shows very clearly
what is being referred to when they talk about " scraping out the
inside
seed mass " of
a vanilla bean. This great shot courtesy of Patricia
Raymond of Aust & Hachmann,
the Hamburg, Germany company with facilities in the growing areas of
Madagascar, and
also a sales office in Monteal. Patricia Raymond is the sales
manager and offered to
take Ruth to lunch when we visited Montreal at the end of September.
.
.
.
A lady buys two Tahitan vanilla beans ... yes, they are expesive, $
3.95 each ... but since
they are so fat & plump & heavy, each Tahiti bean is equal
to two of the normal size beans. Good Mexican and good Bourbon
vanilla
beans run about 100 count to the pound ... and they sell for $ 1.95
each
.... Tahiti beans run about 40 to the pound; very plump.
.
She shares her method of getting the flavor out of the beans for the
" creme brulee " she & her husband make & like so much. She
confides
to Ruth the little game they play. They are hockey fans. At
the start of a game, the wife has to select which of the hockey
players will score the first goal. Are the odds 5 or 6 to one
here? If she does this, then the husband ( it is he who makes the
really delicious creme brulee ) makes her his creme brulee. As
the
lady talks with Ruth, she looks at her husband and says " Dear, we've
just
got to have some creme brulee soon! " " Not unless you
guess the hockey goal scorer! "
.
She prepares the heavy cream by heating it ... but only to the
temperature
of " baby bottle heating " ... like the warmth of when you
sprinkle
the milk onto the inside of your
wrist, your pulse ... also called " blood temperature ". At that
point the vanilla bean is
split open lengthways, like the picture above, then the split bean
is put in with the warm cream, and left there for about 20 minutes,
soaking
in the warm cream. After this the bean is taken out, and then the
inside tiny seeds are thoroughly scaped clean from the inside walls of
the split vanilla bean. The soaking in warm cream makes the
mass
of the tiny vanilla seeds much easier to remove; to scrape out with a
small
knife. As for the vanilla pod that is left after this
scraping
... she uses that in milk to flavor it, or in pudding.
.
Current real vanilla bean prices
Tahiti beans $ 3.95 each .... Papantla Mexican $ 1.95
...
Madagascar Bourbon $ 1.95
.
Pure vanilla extracts also available of each of these three:
4 fl. oz. bottle: Madagascar Bourbon $ 5.95, Papantla
Mexican
$ 5.95, Tahiti $ 9.95
Twofold pure vanillas: Bourbon $ 8.95, Papantla Mexican
$
8.95
.
Friday, October 6, 2000.
.
Expain our way of packing spices in different size containers:
1/2 cup
one cup
two cup
four cup
eight cup
.... also explain the refills packets ... once a spice customer already
has a glass shaker jar
.
explain the way the prices come down by 10% as each new bracket is
reached ...
.
we have an order from a lady from Florida for 8 cups of Washington
Highlands Seasoning
... use this as an example to explain the pricing.
.
A lady asks Ruth about our mulling spices .... she is going camping
with her husband & the kids ... also with other families ... it is
too cold to drink beer, yes, but how does it work
with mulling spices? Are they warming? Can they use brandy
for mulling? Can they use
whiskey? She is talking about a small cup of it with the spices
added ... also for they kids
she is talking about getting cider to add the mulling spices to
....
here is what Ruth explained to her ....
.
show pic here of our two different mulling spices: the Jefferson
St. very richly spiced style, and also our Doorstep Mulling Spices
which
is a milder style ...
.
picture here
.
Mulling Spices Special
Buy a half cup amount of our Jefferson Street Mulling Spices for $
3.95 ... and receive
a complimentary quarter cup amount of our more delicate Doorstep
Mulling
Spices ... a
$ 1.49 value. This spice special will last until the end
of the year ... New Years Eve.
.
Another lady asks us about the spices used to make the famous " Roberts
Sauce " ... can
she buy our Escoffier Spice blend and use that to make a Roberts
Sauce?
And what do we know about Roberts Sauce? She likes it very very
much,
but she was buying it already
prepared in a jar from a fancy grocer, and now it is not available
anymore ... can we help her with this. So she might be able to
make
her own Roberts Sauce?
.
Post here the two styles of Roberts Sauce as listed in the Escoffier
Cook Book.
.
Thursday, October 5, 2000.
.
Kim brings us a new calendar for 2001 which is a Workman Publishing
Co. work. Dig out
the letter to Peter Workman sometime from 10 years ago. The
calendar
is " 365 Days in France ". Photography by Stephen Rothfeld with
appreciations
in writing by Patricia Wells. Patricia Wells is the lady who
originally
came from Wauwatosa ... went to Pius High School ... then moved to
France,
to Paris, years ago. We have a peppercorn special
which concerns her going on for the Fall Spice Season. She become
a food writer in the
very top echelons of status ... top 10? top 5 in the world?
.
show here photograph of Ruth here with Patricia Wells when she was
in town ... when Ruth cooked the risotto Milanese from Patricia Wells
book
Trattoria.
.
Tiny little colorful containers of vanilla sugar which is not really
vanilla sugar but rather
the imitation vanillin sugar ... the white vanillin crystals usually
made from the effulence
coming out of the paper mills ... the waste from the giant paper
mills.
Why is this product
so tasty? Yes, but after awhile it becomes thin, bitter, acrid,
and not nice at all compared
to real vanilla ... but it is very very cheap and very profitable ...
can be made for only a dollar a gallon in liquid form ... brown food
color
is added. Is it fair to be so against this
product? Or is it a " spin " against a modern food flavoring,
synthetic, by the real vanilla
makers? It is generally acknowledged however as having a harsh
taste by most food writers .... but it does allow to have brilliant
white
cake frostings ... cus the crystals are white ... mixed with
sugar.
Usually sold in little paper packets from Germany .... the ones
brought in to us as a gift came from Greece .....
.
What is it to make one's life a manifestation of quality? Bring
out the Popape peppercorns to taste with Telemachos. And bring
out
the writing about the French
artisan guilds who built the gothic Cathedrals. Telemachos talks
about his dreams; his
struggles; his difficulty in clarifying exactly which avenue of food
service he is wanting to do as his life's work.
.
We are running; grinding; today .... rich Saigon cassia cinnamon ....
then Zanzibar cloves ... then Jamaican allspice berries. I am
wanting
to get into the " hu'a tu " where one takes
these into the mouth and tries to separate out the indivvidual
characteristics
of each spice ... it is a good mental clarifying exercise ... the hu'a
tus are old old Chinese Zen exercises to work to strengthen the mind
...
the make the mind less sluggish. Allspice is said to taste
like a combination of cinnamon and cloves and ???? ... so this is good
to attempt to separate out these individual parts of the allspice berry
in the mind as a tasting exercise.
But we don't get into it because we have to do a ten pound batch of
chili powder. We are
all out of chili powder and as we put together the separate spices
for it, we find we are
out of the Caribbean style oregano ... so we have to do about the same
thing as with the
allspice exercise ... we mix two other herbs to replace that style
of oregano ... we attemtp
to reconstruct .... also give an explanation here of our chili powders,
which are quite
well received in the United States. The sweet Ancho chili pepper
base, 130 rated, the
freshly ground cumin seed, the garlic powder, the special stronger
type oregano.
.
White Buffalo Spice. For the first time in some twenty
years we cook outdoors up at the top of the hill here in the backyard
of
our house where the Indians lived a long time ago.
John B. has prepared the old stone fireplace ... brought it back from
the dead so to speak.
It is a rush thing, but we get it done. He has gathered some
very nice wood to cook with from the back yard ... Ruth goes to Sentry
to get the ground chuck and white onions & fresh rolls. They
turn out delicious ... the smoke part is really good; special .... I
take
a
picture of Kim with John B. and Telemachos. Post it here if it
turns out. We use the
White Buffalo Spice to season the hamburgers and it works very very
well.
.
poat picture here, if it turns out, of Kim & John & Telemachos.
...
Wednesday, October 4, 2000.
.
The first saffron flower on Kavanaugh Hill of the season. Ruth
was up at dawn ... went out in front where the fifty of so saffron
flower
bulbs from the meadows of La Mancha in
Spain had been planted ... and plucked this very first flower out of
the patch. It has been
sitting in a shallow bowl of water here in our kitchen all day.
John B. saw it first yesterday, but we waited to pick it until this
morning
at dawn because of the letter from
Mr. Antonio Sosa of La Mancha Spain which talks at this point.
The letter itself is, in a
sense, actually a piece of saffron literature, and we are posting it
entire just below here.
Especially interesting is point 5 ... about plucking each flower at
dawn and if this is done
properly, then each dawn for the next 15 days you might get a freshly
created new saffron
flower. This seems astounding to contemplate. Are we
understanding
this paragraph?
Before the letter though I should say that when I first smelled this
fresh flower for the very first time in my life I realized why they
call
it the " saffron rose " ... the smell of it was very beautiful, intense
but in a " look for it way " ... at first I thought it was the smell of
violets, but as the day went on something in my thoughts kept after
this
smell, no it wasn't violets, then what was it? Later in the day,
when Telemachos had walked up to the
house here from the Spice House, it came to me .... yes, ... it was
the same lovely intense
deep sweet smell of Gram's roses, actually growing just a few feet
away. So now I know why they call it the saffron rose. Telemachos
and John B. and I saw the second saffron flower these, I asked him if
he
might carefully pick this one off at the very top of the chive like
stem,
just as Mr. Sosa explains ... which he did ... then he took this second
flower down to the Spice House where Ruth put it in a little white dish
with cold water and placed it on our marble slab out in front, the one
that came from the kitchen of the
closed St. Francis Monastery that existed for a hundred years just
across from the old Joseph Schlitz Brewery on 3rd & Galena in
downtown
Milwaukee. So our spice customers might share the beauty of this
lovely purple saffron crocus that lived in the meadows of La Mancha
just
a few weeks ago.
.
.
.
Washington Highlands Seasoning is one of our finest
seasonings
for fish; especially
salmon. A little olive oil sprinkled or sprayed on top, maybe
some sliced onions, and then
this zesty herb green mixture sprinkled all over. Maybe marinade
it in the fridge for a couple of hours before cooking.
Yummy.
And the salmon looks so good too when it is
ready because of the nice little bits of the green herbs ... shallots,
dill, chives. Blended from: fine grained salt, shallots,
white
onion powder, garlic powder, green peppercorns,
dill weed, both whole & powdered, & a little pointy ginger
& lemon peel.
.
1/2 cup amt; net wt. 2 oz. runs $ 3.95 in a jar, a little less in a
refill pouch, $ 3.62
.
Telemachos was powdering the tiny feathery green dill weed leaves while
Ruth added the
powdered lemon peel & the powdered ginger. " You know Mr.
Penzey, I really should know just where this spice blend came from ...
just in case someone asks me when I am out there working the floor.
"
We had already done quite a bit of talking just before we started the
actual
mixing ... so I said " O.K. will do. But lets get this done now
first
because the jar is empty out in front. Later on we can get back
to
this. It is a good question. Can you write it down so that
we don't forget to talk about it later? "
.
Later in the afternoon I said " I am thinking Telemachos, that in order
to talk about this
one spice mixture, really we should put it into a larger context.
This is like our work here.
We really should think about putting what we do here also into a larger
context. For instance when we see the sign on our wall that reads
" Love work for work's sake; not for
it;'s gain. " what does that mean? Yes, we want to do good
work & we want to have it
come from the right place in ourselves, as they say. What is that all
about? It is something
to think about, isn't it? Telemachos agreed.
.
" And with the Washington Highlands Seasoning here, well, this is just
one spice blend in
the series of twenty four spice blends that I put together over a long
period, some 15 years. In this case, I remember Washington
Highlands
for a special reason. In 1932, the
year I was born, we lived in a poor immigrant neighborhood just off
of 3rd & Juneau.
Actually it was only a few blocks from the Old World Third Street Spice
House, which Ruth & I & the kids started in 1979, or more
correctly
moved to from our old location on
33rd & Galena. And we were really poor. But alot of
folks were poor too then. We were on relief, on the county as
they
said then, and it was really tuf for my Mother. She
could hardly speak English, and was doing the best she could to make
her way here, thousands of miles away from her home in south Russia in
the Ukraine, near Kiev. She
was with child, yes, that was me, and when I came time for me to come
into the world,
a Yellow Taxi Cab, a model T Ford, had to rush my mother out to the
County Hospital
here on Wauwatosa, some 6 or 7 miles from where we lived. the
cab started up on what
is now Old World Third Street, .... my Uncle Pete had to run over to
the taxi cab stand in
front of Mader's German Restaurant to get a cab at 4 in the morning
... down was starting to break ... and the cab took us past the
Winnebago
Ave. Jewish Kosher Butcher shops, up Vliet Street past Schusters ...
kept
going passed 33rd & Vliet just down from where our
Spice House would be for some 20 years .... then out to Wauwatosa ...
speeding through the old Village area ... up Harwood and actually
whizzing
by this very corner that we are on. But at about 62 & Vliet
we
went by this lovely green neighborhood called Washington
Highlands.
My Mother looked at it for the first time & how elegant it was,
especially compared to the poor area where we lived at the time.
Shortly after that we moved to llth & Reservoir, actually right
next
to the Jewish Synagog, the Anschwie Sect,
which came too from the Kiev Russia area. At that time they were
running an around the
clock soup kitchen, 24 hours a days, as, like I said, it was the world
year of the great
depression and many new immigrants were arriving from the " Old Country
". But my
Mother often talked about how beautiful it was to see the Washington
Highlands for the
first time that Spring morning. Later John B. asked me ... he
was eating lunch & he was
eating red borscht .... " did your Mother make you borscht?
"
" Yes, she did, John. And
I loved her borscht. It was thick & sweet, and she would
fill my soup bowl with warm
mashed potatoes first, then pour the borscht over it. "
Yes, it is quite a thing to remember
something like that... when a Mother cooks for a hungry little
boy.
She was a good cook too. " " I'll make you borscht one of
the
days ", John replied.
.
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