Postmortem: Murder Mystery Wassail

The Spice Rack (L-R)
Tarragon, Rosemary, Saffron, Sage
Peppercorn, Thyme

All told, the dinner was a success. I was able to get the vast majority of the items prepped in advance, so that little was left to the vagaries of the location's lack of cooking space—however, the one item that could not be prepared in this manner (the Cornish Hens) were, of course, the problematic one. They went from being the first meat course to being the main course, due to spending far longer being cooked than I had anticipated.

Everything ran slower than I'd intended, as well. This was due, partially, to the Cornish Hen issues, but also lay at the feet of some guests being late, the murder mystery show and the servers being (more or less) unable to occupy the spaces between tables at the same time, and not having quite enough staff to efficiently plate one course whilst clearing another. This is not to say that the waitstaff was at all insufficient—I had the easiest time with this dinner because I was able to focus more, and did not have to run around serving, clearing, doing dishes, and cooking all at once.

Tarragon, the Butler, was ably assisted by the twins Rosemary and Sage, and Thyme, the fellow with the bell. Peppercorn was my point man for the Cornish Hens, and Jason (whose nickname has yet to be determined) was an

The Steampunk Chef, and Sous Chef Jason

excellent sous chef, in charge of quenelles, cornish hen fabrication, and piping whipped cream, as well as generally keeping me a sane man.

Apparently, my timing ended up satisfying the guests, who were quoted to me as saying that the slower pace of the food meant that they had time to watch the show, talk, and generally feel that they were not being rushed through the evening. I find that to be a success out of what I would have otherwise considered a failure.

The menu ended up being shifted around, as I said, and finished thus:

Open-Face Tea Sandwiches

Dill Cream Cheese, Cucumber, Hard-Boiled Egg

Chicken Consommé

Winter Squash and Chicken Quenelle

Winter Salad

Greens, Green Onion, Celery, Radish, Hard-Boiled Egg, Beet, Dressing

Braised Beef en Filo

Onion-Leek-Garlic Compote

Roast Cornish Hen, Lemon Cream Sauce

Glazed Carrot, Rice

Winter Spice Trifle

Assorted Fruit and Cheese

It was a lot of food, to be sure, but most every plate came back clean... Recipes forthcoming.

Photos here by Lance, aka Tarragon, aka Blue Dragon Media, LLC.

Excitement!

I've been in a prohibition-era mood lately,
it would seem...

I've often declined to post things here because I don't find them to fit particularly with my little project, for one reason or another. The food doesn't feel "steampunk" enough, I didn't take good pictures, I don't feel like it represents the best cooking I can do, and so on and so forth.

There's no immediate solution to this. I could invent a multi-point criteria system for evaluating my recipes in terms of their quality, interest, and overall steampunk nature—but that would involve work, and for someone as sleep-loving as I am, I feel my time might be better spent napping. (Actually, I just don't know what all my criteria would be...)

I do, however, have some interesting things coming up this month that I'd like to tell you all about, and that will form the basis of the new content for this blog in the coming weeks.

On the Future

I haven't been writing here a lot of late, and I feel rather guilty about that. It's not that I haven't been cooking—I have, in fact, been catering and cooking for friends and family—but I haven't been taking pictures of the things I have made, when they're appropriate for the blog, and a lot of the time the things I'm cooking don't really fit that well into the catalog of Articles for the blog.

HOWEVER! The next month is auspicious. On the 27th of this month, a friend and I are catering an art show. Nothing particularly steampunk about it, but I might write it up just for the fun of it—after all, it's not every day I get to throw down Tapas at a show that bills itself as "An Exhibition of Enlightened Darkness." The next night, exhaustion permitting, I'll be cooking at Up in the Aether again, as I do on a (mostly) regular basis.

Then, in November, I'm presenting twice in the space of one week on Steampunk food! First is to a local ladies' garden club in one of the older portions of Detroit. I'll be cooking three dishes for them: A fall/winter squash soup, curried chicken—a different recipe than the one I've presented here, and a trifle.

Second, and most excitingly for me, I will be hosting a panel at Teslacon II on Steampunk Food.

Hopefully, I will be able to record the panel and post clips (or indeed the full hour-and-a-quarter lecture) here. I will once again be presenting a couple items for the assembled masses, and (though I am still awaiting final permission to do a live-fire cooking demonstration in a hotel conference room,) I plan on doing:

• Chicken Curry (same as at the garden club—it's a cooked chicken dish, which makes it easier to do.)
• A Cold Dish of some kind. Perhaps a salad, perhaps an hors d'oeuvre.

Of course, there will be a bonus to the people attending the panel—because I am a magnanimous host—in the form of five or six as-yet unpublished Steampunk recipes, presented to them in my usual prosaic but useful recipe form.

So if you're coming to Teslacon (and why wouldn't you be?) make sure to come to my panel.

As always, I appreciate your readership and patience, my friends, and hope to return with more Steampunk food again soon.

Feeding An Art Show

Not every weekend is a convention for the Steampunk Chef—though in the future that might change. This past weekend, however, I was at an art show in Farmington, MI, a short drive away from my home in Detroit. I had a table to work with, and was asked to do two items. I ended up deciding to work with the idea of a vegetarian item and a meat item, both of which I could make in one pot or pan.

That pound of curry powder is burning a hole in my cupboard (though it's rather mild in flavor, oddly enough) and so I set upon the idea of doing some kind of meat curry—chicken being inexpensive and rather widely-accepted, I put that atop my list for marketing. Now, a curry is always best served in a traditional manner, atop a bed of rice, so my favorite boiled rice was set to accompany the curry.

As for vegetables, I was a little more free-form. As I wandered through Eastern Market in the morning on Saturday, I spied bunches of fresh asparagus, advertised as having been picked at 10 AM on Friday. The same vendor had some lovely lemons, so I quickly decided on the idea of searing the Asparagus and serving it on a toast point with a vinaigrette of lemon juice and olive oil, and topping that with some shredded Parmesan cheese. Recipes to follow!

A Moment of Reflection

200 Followers.
Almost 27,000 views.
Over 600 fans on Facebook.

I think the irregularly-updated cooking blog of a nerdy fellow from Michigan is going pretty well.

I'm off to the market early this morning to prepare to serve food at an art opening. I'll try to take some pictures...

The soup-feast posts will go up as soon as I get my pictures from that event, which have been held up due to various other issues, such as conventions and life.

Also, what do you think about that building up there? I think it would make a lovely restaurant. If only I could hit the lottery or get some investors or something.

A Little Something for Your Perusal and Amusement

The author over at Great Grandmother's Kitchen tagged me in a little blog-based thing that, back in my day, we used to call a meme. Now, that's not the proper use of the word, so I'll say it's a little chain letter sort of thing in the blogosphere, designed to help you introduce yourself and promote the blogs of folks who might not otherwise be seen.

I definitely appreciate the praise lavished upon me, and so I suppose I can spare a few moments of my time (and take a few of yours) to write up a little something. While I do that, why not head over and read this article:

Great Grandmother's Kitchen: There is Steam in My Kitchen!: "If you are unfamiliar with the concept of Steampunk, Scifipedia explains it rather succinctly as something that, 'is set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of HG Wells and Jules Verne.'"

Passover—The Feast of Unleavened Bread, part 2

Passover is a long holiday—eight days, to be exact—and so I have returned to complete my task. When last we met, I discussed the traditional table items for a passover meal; in this, the second part of my little discussion of Jewish passover tradition, I shall take on the passover meal itself, and elaborate on some of the varieties of food found in the Steampunk era. It will begin, with my apologies, in a somewhat scholarly manner, examining the sources I have used to create this pair of articles; I shall quickly proceed to a lesson on the origins of the dietary restrictions surrounding Passover, and finish with a discussion of dishes typical to a seder in the age of steam. As of this time, I have not prepared many of the dishes in my usual manner, and as such will present recipes from the primary sources without editing; it is a goal, however, to prepare some of them for my more typical posting style shortly. (Kosher for Passover food goes on sale after passover is over...)

Passover—The Feast of Unleavened Bread, part 1

Jews making a Passover sacrifice; represented
in a 15th-century art piece.
(Wikimedia Commons)

Holidays sneak up on you, if you're not careful. In Christian tradition, they're mostly predictable; after all, our modern calendar is a Christian one, and therefore Easter is somewhat more predictable (or at least marked on more calendars.) Being (culturally) a Jew, I am not much on Easter celebrations, but I do celebrate passover with my family every year. Passover has a varying date, much more variable than Easter (though the dates are somewhat linked,) as the Jewish calendar is a lunar cycle-based calendar and doesn't always match up quite so nicely with the Gregorian calendar that most countries use to mark their time.

Passover is  holiday with great cultural significance for Jews. Simply, it is a commemoration of the flight of the Jews from slavery in Egypt sometime between 1550 and 1203 BCE. (These dates are cited on Wikipedia, and represent such a vast time period that most estimates are encompassed.) As a festival celebrating freedom, however, Passover contains much more than just a simple remembrance. Primary amongst these traditions is a meal rich with symbolism, possibly the most symbolic feast of any in Jewish canon; many holidays in Judaism have associated foods—I have previously discussed the use of oil during Hanukkah—but Passover is somewhat unique in that it has foods that are inherently part of the celebration of the holiday. (Think of it thus: Most holidays in Judaism have foods associated with them in the way that a nice big ham is associated with Easter dinner: It's mostly to do with tradition, and less to do with the actual religious aspect of the holiday—though there are notable exceptions—; Passover's foods are more like the wafers and wine involved in communion: they are actively part of the holiday's basic meaning.)

A 19th-century illustration of Ukranian Jews at a seder.
(Wikimedia Commons)

The Torah (the Jewish bible) says in Exodus 12:14-17:

And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the lord, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree.

Biblically, we are commanded about our food choices for the holiday—but the food traditions do not stop with unleavened bread, and the meanings are manifold.

So what are these foods? What are the meanings? Read on.

Colcannon, Champ, and the Potato

Sometimes, the best things in life are the simplest. A delightful meal with friends, a beautiful snowstorm, the sunset at the end of a summer's day, or the potato.

Seriously—the potato is simply wonderful, useful in a variety of manners, able to be prepared into any number of dishes—from appetizer to dessert—in any number of ways. Think of the pervasiveness of the potato: we eat them in myriad manners, from potato breads and biscuits to chips (crisps) and fries (chips.) We bake them, roast them, boil them, cook them sous vide, sauté them, simmer them, and make them into confit; we smash them, eat them whole, peel them, save the skins and serve with bacon and sour cream, and cover them in mayonnaise or hot bacon dressing. I use potatoes to thicken the occasional item, like my garlic sauce, and can put them in soups for a similar effect—not to mention the ever-popular loaded potato soup, and their presence in chowders.

Re-constructed Corned Beef and Cabbage

When St. Patrick's Day rolls around in the US, every food-service establishment with a changeable kitchen breaks out some form of corned beef, often in the "Traditional" construction of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Miss Kagashi over at The Steamer's Trunk has an excellent little write-up of St. Patrick's Day, including a discussion of this dish:

Corned beef and Cabbage is thought of as the staple dish of St. Patrick's Day, and this is true outside of Ireland. Back in the old country, a thick meaty rasher of bacon was the main course to the cabbage and potatoes, not beef. When thousands of Irish immigrated to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they found their usual cuts of pig to be far too expensive—so they took a cue from their Jewish neighbors who were enjoying corned beef.

This doesn't, however, mean that we have to abandon the concept entirely: rather, it is useful as a starting point for new versions of an Irish (-American) classic.

Cooking Under a Deluge

Photograph by Lance Sabbag

February has come and gone, as you are well aware, and with it many plans have not come to fruition.

It is a common adage in kitchens that if you put something on the menu, you should deliver, regardless of how difficult it is to execute. My menu for the month of February included much more than I was able to put forth, and for that I apologize. I do not deign to be so important to all of you that you have been hanging on my every post, but I still do feel that I have shirked a certain amount of responsibility that I promised to you.

The month contained three notable successes on my part, though. One was a test-run of serving food at the Phoenix Café, during their Up in the Aether event—this was the debut of the Baozi, a very, very successful little experiment, and a lesson in making recipes to fit your crowd. I could have served many more than the 16 buns I was able to create.

An Excerpt from the Journals of Graf Georg von Ziger

February 7th, 1874. Ochamchira, Abkhazia, Russia.

Traveling to have the Halcyon refitted in Timbuktu. Departing Archangelsk was an enjoyable experience—the ladies out with handkerchiefs a-waving for us were motivation to redouble our efforts in the destruction of piracy. We have landed today in Ochamchira, a coastal town on the Black Sea.

Captain Thibodeau has granted us 1 day's shore leave, and I have spent it among the lowest of the low. Dockworkers, prostitutes, clockwork pickers... the criminal element seems to like me when I am not in uniform.

Walking the streets with a group of ruffians who called themselves the "zavodnoĭ ubiĭtsy"—they say it means "clockwork killers"—I began to grow hungry. I commented upon this state to my newfound companions and they escorted me to one of the more cosmopolitan corners of the poor quarter, a through-way for the sailors, aviators, and travelers—poor and wealthy alike—going between the Zeppelin docks and the rail depot. A man stood on the corner, a small boiler beside him. It appeared to be powering the machinery of a workhouse, but he had managed to vent some of the steam through pipes to a series of plates in front of him. On each stood a stack of pans with perforated bases, appearing to be some sort of straining device, like a colander, but flat-bottomed, like a fry-pan. These pipes and plates served to direct the steam shunted from the engine up through the perforated pans, providing a steaming apparatus usable for cooking.

Street food is fascinating. The gentleman, having characteristics both of a Chinaman and a Turk, was cooking several items in the various plates. Buns, dumplings, and even meat items were being prepared for sale—at reasonable rates—to the passers-by, rich and poor alike. Simple food, but delicious. I made note of the different foods I ate, and I have endeavored to re-create the recipes in the kitchen of the Halcyon.

Ice Carving

Ice carving is a part of the Culinary Arts, just like fruit carving, cake decorating, and buffet arrangement.

Admittedly, you do not usually eat carved ice—it's had chainsaws and chisels and drills all over it, been torched down with a giant blowtorch—and its purpose is typically aesthetic rather than nutritional.

Yet, the artistry involved in ice carving is something that leaves me in awe. Some of my friends competed this past weekend in the 2011 NICA Collegiate Championships. On the right, you will see a picture of a robotic angler fish, with a propeller for a tail, gears and a lightbulb as a lure, and a clean, beautiful body with big teeth.

This was the team carving done by two of my friends. It took the gold medal for the team carvings.

I'm honored to know these people, and to have the opportunity to marvel at their skills.

A Culinary Commentary: Utilization

The Buffalo Hunt
From Native Americans

There's an old story—perhaps you learned it in grade school—saying that the Native Americans used every part of the buffalo when they killed it. This story is meant to highlight the decadence and wastefulness of Western culture, in contrast to the noble, in-touch-with-nature Natives. Besides its obviously orientalist trappings and its exclusion of non-plains tribes (I don't think the Mi'qmak, Ojibwe, or Potawatomi were hunting buffalo in the woods and northern lakes,) it is also a patently disingenuous statement: Classical Western Cuisine contains hundreds of uses for many parts of pretty much every edible animal.

February Preview

Since February is a month containing St. Valentine's day, and considering that the theme of romance is so popular across the world, I have decided to incline this month towards the steamy.

A Pressure Steamer

The use of steam for cooking purposes is usually seen as a healthful but ultimately limited cooking method in Western cookery—most people who go to cooking school in the United States learn to steam vegetables for service—but only after they're sautéed—, or potatoes to make into mashed potatoes, or to hard-boil eggs; rarely do the giant pressure steamers in American kitchens see anything outside of the vegetable kingdom.

In other cooking traditions, however, steam sees much more widespread use, for a much greater variety of dishes. In Chinese cuisine, for example, meat is frequently steamed over fragrantly spiced water. Fish is steamed in many culinary traditions, and cooking "en papillote"—an item (often fish,) combined with aromatic vegetables and seasonings, wrapped in parchment and baked—steams the items being cooked in their own evaporating juices.

Finally, many traditional English "Puddings" (starch- or dairy-based desserts) are steamed as the preferred cooking method.

I hope you'll enjoy the offerings in the month to come. I've gotten busy again, so sadly my posts will not be as frequent as they have been in January, but I'll try to keep you up with something intriguing every week; and, since eating is about more than just food, I hope to tell you more about wines, spirits, and beers that I enjoy with the foods I cook, as well as blathering on about a few subjects near and dear to my culinary heart (just outside the layer of butter.) I also will hopefully offer some Hungarian items, to tie in with my attempt to learn a bit of Hungarian.

In the meantime, eat well, my friends.

A Linguistic Project

For this coming month, my friend Miss Kagashi (of The Steamer's Trunk,) has laid forth a little challenge. The details are on her blog, but in short—you are challenged to learn a language.

Being as I already know a fair bit of French, though my abilities are on the wane due to lack of usage—rendered now mostly a way to be easily annoyed by culinary professionals pronouncing things like "foie gras" as "fwah gwah"—and a fair bit of Yiddish, my usage of which is regular enough to keep me speaking it convincingly, I've decided to add a third foreign language to my acumen.

I've spoken before about my maternal grandparents, both of whom grew up in Vienna, and both of whom were born around the time of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While learning German—the language of Austria—would certainly be easy, given that Yiddish is very close in structure and vocabulary, I've decided to do something a little more daring, a little more dangerous, and a little more difficult: I'm going to learn some Hungarian, properly called Magyar. It's a Finno-Ugric language, unrelated to German, English, or French. It's got a modified Latin alphabet, but the word forms are going to be rather alien to me.

Oh dear.

Paprikas will be forthcoming, I suspect.

Mystery Spices

Portrait by Mark Moore of Pict Studios.

Every so often—more frequently when cooking in a kitchen with foreign items—you will run into a spice you've never encountered before, a spice for which you have no frame of reference, or a spice whose appearance does not correlate with the name on the label.

When cooking with Oz, we discovered one such spice while preparing the Lentil Soup. Searching for something to give it a little extra zing, we came across the above-pictured jar in Oz's kitchen cabinet. Glancing at the label, the kitchen crew immediately knew it was Turkish in origin (the Turks like their i-with-no-dot letter quite a bit,) but were all uncertain as to what, exactly, it was. Physically, it resembled a slightly finer version of crushed red pepper, but there were almost no seeds in it, and the color was much deeper and richer, almost like Sumac. It smelled fragrant, but didn't have a particularly unique odor. Being the intrepid culinarians that we are, each sampled a small portion (a couple flakes,) and found it to be somewhere between the flavor of paprika and crushed red pepper, but with a marked sweetness.

From what Oz's father (a Turkish fellow) says, and what little English information was found by another researcher, it's a family spice, a sort of "house blend" of ground/crushed peppers used widely in Turkey.

It was quite delicious, and definitely added a certain je ne sais quoi to our soup.

The moral of this story is this: Never be afraid to try something new. Flavors are an experience as powerful as any other, and can catalyze creativity or be the springing-off point for research and new culinary understanding. Sometimes, if you're lucky, a new spice can be just what you're looking for.

A Milestone!

I am... exuberant. Some times. This is one of those times.

Sometime today, ladies and gentlemen, I hit 10,000 views on this humble blog. I appreciate your readership, and hope you have enjoyed the recipes and writings I have posted so far, and that you will enjoy the things to come in the future.

I find it auspicious that on the day I post my favorite production so far—my Mulligatawny Soup—I also hit this milestone. Please take a look at that recipe, it's delicious and a popular dish with everyone who has consumed it.

I'm also flattered to have been featured on the Phoenix New Times in their post, Steampunk: The Past and Future of Cooking? as well as the Steampunk Tribune in the post called "Steampunk Gastronomy." Both are rather rewarding, and it's exciting to get attention for something that I enjoy doing for myself as much as for others.

I have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities for this little endeavor... much more will soon be written.

Mulligatawny Soup

Mulligatawny soup was one of the first things I made at home after I started cooking school. It's an inherently simple recipe if you don't strive to make it difficult, and it's very Victorian in origin. The British had colonies in India (as we all know) and the quite fashionable chaps who subjugated and exploited the native people of that country liked to "go native," or adopt a few customs here and there from their innocent victims. One of the popular items to make its way back to England (along with curry in general) was this soup, the name of which means "Pepper Water" in Tamil.

Almost every period cook book in my collection—encompassing both physical and electronic—contains a recipe for Mulligatawny Soup. Herein is presented a quick sampling of them, and then a recipe combining elements of each.

A Preview of Things to Come

Remember: It's always fun in the kitchen.

This lovely new month of January, I will be bringing to you many things. Most prominently, the recipes and a wrap-up of the State Dinner at the Dolmabahçe will be presented over the next two-and-a-half weeks, along with (as always) some delightful pictures.

If all goes well, I will also have a few little videos to illustrate some of the techniques discussed, and if you find those helpful, I shall endeavor to make that a regular feature when I perform some particularly new or different task.

For the forthcoming month of February, I will be focusing my efforts on steaming things. Now, many of you might think that vegetables are the only thing you can steam, and to you I say—just you wait! I have several treats in the works, and hope to surprise and delight with the things to come.

So read on, my dear and treasured friends! As always, I welcome your comments, whether encouragement, question, or correction. I am no perfect being, and I cannot always check my faults.

Above all, eat well and be well. Cheers.