Last Word on Pears

You seem to love pears. I like the flavor but don’t like their texture; it is like an apple that has been embedded with sand. Am I doing something wrong – eating them unripe, eating the wrong variety? Please help – Pearcene

The reluctant admission of the food-lover; that you don’t love a specific fruit, vegetable or dish. It is easier to admit you like trashy food – A bloomin’ onion or Kraft Mac & cheese. There is less weight saying "I don’t like ketchup" - the only risk I run with that admission is sounding like a snob. That carries fewer consequences than admitting and here it goes…I don’t think truffles are all that, scotch tastes like malted lawn and caviar is really expensive fish flavored salt. There it is said.

You aren’t alone in your belief that there is something untoward about the texture of pears - A quick consultation of the Saucytorium turned up multiple references maligning pears. People’s aversion to pears is almost universally about the texture. It took all of 10 minutes to find 4 different writers who were willing to dismiss pears as ‘Mushy’, ‘stringy’, ‘hard’ and ‘grainy’. Bonus quote: ‘Not worthy of fodder’, really hater, you wouldn’t let pigs eat fallen pears? That is hyper-hyperbolic.

Boscs probably are the most textural, even when ripe. Bartletts are a close 2nd. Because they store well, Barletts are the most prevalent variety you’ll find in stores and Markets. Rather than bite into them, allow the pears to ripen at room temperature for a few days. While certain kinds of pears will undergo a dramatic change in the shade of the skin from green to yellow as they ripen; the Barlett only changes color a little around the stem. The best way to test for ripeness to follow the bumperstickerable advice from USAPear and ‘Check the Neck’ – gently pinch the neck and the pear should give just a little to your touch.

Or maybe you would find more pleasure in a different pear variety, like a D’Anjou or if you really want to like pears look for the varieties with the word ‘beurre’ - It is French for butter and the fruit does have a melt in your mouth quality. Because they are soft and malleable, you are unlikely to find them in a store but if you are interested now is the time to seek this variety out at growers/farmers markets.

Short of tracking down esoteric (and expensive) varieties of a fruit you are kinda ‘meh’ about - your best bet is to poach pears. Peel and core the pears and place them in a cool liquid - bring the water, wine, cider or syrup slowly up to a 160 or so degrees, cook until you can poke the thickest part of the pear easily with a knife. The gentle heat will breakdown the fiber without turning the pears to mush. Usually poaching pears is done for desserts – a whole poached pear filled with mascarpone, or poached in red wine and drizzled with chocolate are good but if you poach pears in water you can serve them savory style as well – cheese, salad, etc.

Or you can just not like pears and be strong in your faith. Even the biggest food lovers have their preferences; Daniel Patterson of San Francisco’s Coi made the bold statement that he didn’t like garlic in the NY Times Magazine. It is a pretty amazing thing for a to state publicly but it is good to know you can love food without loving everything about it.

In Season: Pears

Pyrus Communis, State fruit of Oregon. Here in Oregon, we grow an annual crop valued at $110,000,000 USDs. And despite our can do attitude with pears, we are dwarfed by the production by our neighbors California and Washington - both have superior acreage and dollars dedicated to their crop yet neither have resorted to decreeing as the pear as their state fruit. Methinks we are over-compensating a bit.

Nationally, 75-85% of all pear trees yield the Bartlett pear. The Bartlett is where California hands us our collective pear ass on a platter; 3 counties in Northern California do most of the Bartlett growing for the US and exporting. 

The Barlett, named after Enoch Bartlett the fella who brought them to the US, it is known as the Williams Pear  in most of the world. It is named for the nurseryman who bought them from a Mr. Stair, who discovered the landrace in his Berkshire orchard. It is a fine pear – Musky, grainy in a good way, peartaculiar. It is picked mature but like all pears, it doesn’t ripen on the tree, so it needs to age before it is ready to eat. Modern techniques, such as cold storage and controlled atmosphere, stall the ripening process - extending the pear season well into the winter months. 

Here in Oregon, only 1 in 5 pears grown is a Bartlett, the the mother lode of our orcharding comes from the Bosc, D’Anjou and the Comice used in the US. Pears that coincidentally sound like the names 3 Dumas’s 4 Musketeers, revealing their origin. One Louie after the monarch of Musketeers, came Louis XIV, the Sun King. This Louis, who not only loved the divine rights of kings and intrigues at Versailles – also loved him some pears, which led to the pear being fashionable, in turn leading to new varieties and uses for the pear. Abbe, Glau Morceau, Beurre, Jargonelle and Josephine de Malines are other French/Belg hybrids that stem from the glow of the Sun King’s interest.

In the last episode of Saucyman, I wrote of our collective inability to embrace the pear on the same level we do the apple (15+ lbs. fresh annually) or the imported banana (25 lbs. per person). I’d like to rectify that situation: Now that pears have usurped peaches as the local season fruit, most mornings start with pear and yogurt. In the evenings I find myself cutting a pear into salad, or mashing a really ripe pear with blue cheese for a salad dressing.

Some of the kids like their pears savory – the fruit does have a special affinity for salty - Caramelized Onions and cheese go well. The winner of the Double O Nine Portland Farmers Market’s tweet a pear recipe last year won with her suggestion of rosemary, pasta and pears. To close the circle, sliced pears with pecorino is a popular Italian snack.

Outside of the salad, I like my pears sweet – pastry cream, poached and filled with mascarpone or poached in red wine and topped with chocolate. Sauteed on French Toasted or embedded in bread pudding.

How about you? 

The Trouble with Pears

Pears could be described as the apple’s ugly stepsister. Well, with its wide bottom and long, slender tapering neck, pears are actually pretty hot looking. Maybe a better way to describe a pear is the apple’s unpopular stepsister – In the States we consume over 45 lbs. of apples per person annually: Pears, 5ish. Granted 25 lbs of that apple consumption comes in the form of apple juice, even if you haven’t sat down with a box of juice lately, apple juice is the 'natural' sweetener found in 100s of products.

Apples are readily available year around, usually for cheaper and have a more consistent flavor, still pears should do better. A pome fruit like the apple, originating in roughly the same geographic area, pears have never been as notable as their round counterpart. Eve may have tempted Adam with an apple but pears don’t appear in the bible. Greeks had knowledge of the pear but only wrote of its medicinal values. The Romans liked it plenty, but they esteemed all fresh fruit and veg. Pears survived in Northern Europe orchards for centuries after the collapse of the empire and eventually making the jump across the Atlantic with new world settlers from England.

Different scholars make the argument we should think of the folk hero as Johnny Applecider; pre-revolution US was cider crazy. (And ale and rum and corn whiskey crazy – the oft-cited founding fathers liked to drink; quaffing 5 times more hard alcohol and 20 times more ‘small’ alcohol like beer and cider than their modern counterparts, take that Don Draper). The act of turning pears into an alcoholic beverage is to perry. It wasn’t unheard of to press pears into cider in Colonial times, but while English orchards may have been productive, transplanting seeds and stock to the US with longer, hotter summers and frigid winters in New England created an environment where trees produced less fruit and smaller pears with less juice. For a whole bunch of reasons from preservation, to taxes, to lack of currency – things that could be readily fermented had more value in the early US.

Modernity, with its hard currency, its rules and policies against paying workers with alcohol, cold storage, transportation systems and varieties improved for shelf-life should have leveled the pome playing field but collectively we eat 16 lbs. of fresh apples every year compared to the 3 lbs. of fresh pears we go through annually. A few years ago Washington State (Go Cougars), tested a sample group of self-described pear lovers to get a handle on the future pear market: Demographically - older men with more education than the general population, who don’t plan on purchasing pears before they go to the store are the subgroup most likely to buy pears. Not really a great group to hang your growth on – Marketing options are limited to the slogan "Love your fruit like grandpa does".

The average participant of the survey valued sweetness and juiciness in pears above other attributes – 2 things that are hard to tell before you bite into a piece of fruit. People, and these are self-identified pear lovers, also wanted to their fruit to be ripe within 2 days of purchase. The fruit's most ardent supporters are a bit fickle and aging but pear consumption grows by about 1% a year. Pears are in season, we’ll have more about what to do with them later in the week, but for now do your part and buy some.

By Any Other Name

That which we call a High Fructose Corn Syrup/By any other name would taste as sweet.

The Corn Refiners Association is looking to see how what this era’s Shakespeare, Stephen Colbert might call naminess, is going to play out for them. The trade group recently petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to change the way corn based sweeteners can be labeled on packages of food. Out with the HFCS and in with corn sugar.

Shock, outrage, Michael Pollan went out to his backyard and dug a 6ft hole to practice rolling over in his grave? Not so much. The much esteemed and Saucyendorsed, Marion Nestle was quoted in the NY Times as saying “High-fructose corn syrup is the new trans fat. Everyone thinks it’s poison, and food companies are getting rid of it as fast as they can.”

A quick primer on HFCS

Invented in the US in the 50s, perfected in Japan in the 60s, HFCS is made by breaking down corn with an enzyme. This produces short chains of starch, which are then combined with bacteria; transforming corn sugar into glucose. Additional refining and mixing produces a syrup that is 55% fructose. The sweetener currently known as HFCS, is an inverted sugar. Inverted sugars are pretty neat-o bakewise both for the home and industrial baker/candy-maker; mostly they increase shelf-life and prevent crystallization (the separation of sugar from liquids).

Corn Syrup has the advantage of coming from a crop that receives $9 billion USD in annual subsidies from our government. Tariffs placed on cane sugar keep their price artificially high. So cheaper price, consistent availability (don’t have to worry about a hurricane knocking out the DR’s cane crop or political strife in Columbia ruining exports), plus the bonus of a longer shelf-life for your products makes HFCS a winner for industrial food producers and the home pecan pie baker alike.

Many people are concerned corn syrup is the cause of the recent spike in obesity. This is still a feeling and it is doubtful it will get upgraded to a fact anytime soon. What reasonable people can say is there is a correlation between the consumption of corn syrup and the rise of obesity. If you like to speculate, not even wildly, one could claim, that like dieters whose metabolism is unfooled by the sweetness of zero calorie soda pop, our bodies seemed wired to react to sweetness and HFCS is sweeter than sugar. HFCS may contain fewer calories than sugar but your body might be engaging in complex chemical reactions rather than a simple calorie in/calorie out accounting.

Language matters but other products like beet sugar is legally a sugar. Dr. Nestle thinks the plural ‘corn sugars’ is a more accurate description, my only caution is Corn lobby President Audrae Erickson was quoted as saying “Clearly the name is confusing consumers…”. I don’t wish to call Ms. Erickson disingenuous, but she once blamed the very same consumers for not exercising enough when asked if HFCS had anything to do with societal weight gain. The only time trade groups are ever concerned about consumers is when their subsidies or sales are threatened. Just something to consider before you leave a comment with the FDA.

Tiny Bubbles in the Batter

Tell me more about Baking Powder: Last month I was out and used baking soda making pancakes; not horrible, not great. I know they are different because they have different names, but I don’t know how they are different. Please explain.

Bakings Soda and Powder leaven breads and batters by creating carbon dioxide bubbles which expand when heated then get set in the muffin, pancake, banana bread giving rise, structure and texture to your baked goods.

Baking Soda is a little easier to explain. It is a single chemical – sodium bicarbonate. Because carbonates and the racier, bicarbonates are slightly alkali, they produce carbon dioxide when they come in contact with acidic liquid – In baking this is usually sour cream, yogurt, lemon juice or if you are doing science experiments you can make a mini-rocket with vinegar and baking soda.

Baking Powder is an amalgam of different chemicals - sodium bicarbonate is combined with acid salts to produce baking powder. Single acting baking powders are made with monocalcium phosphate. Double acting baking powders employ sodium aluminum sulfate, which reacts once as the powder comes into contact with liquid, a second time when heated. The ‘recipe’ for baking powder varies with each manufacturer – sodium aluminum pyrophosphate, dimagnesium phosphate or a name that only a chemist could love – dicalcium phosphate dihydrate. The different combinations allow the secondary reaction to happen at very specific temperatures controlling the release of carbon dioxide.  Not so important with a batch of chocolate chip cookies or pancakes but for 1000 cupcakes or 500 muffins, custom mixed baking powders ensure consistent, if not, quality products.

One of the first commercial baking powders was a mixture of cream of tartar and baking soda. This combination had a problem – ambient moisture. It didn’t take a cup of buttermilk to set this combination off. High humidity is enough to get them to react with each other. Although, commercial baking powders are now far more sophisticated; cream of tartar and baking soda are generally listed as an emergency substitution – you know because if you bake a half dozen times a year and you are out of baking powder - of course you will have both soda and tartar on hand.

Premature reactionation is still a problem with baking powder, which is why you will find a ‘best used by’ date on every container of baking powder. The Saucykitchen couldn’t use a carton of baking powder in the 18 months powder lasts, so it is rarely purchased and used. Granted, my home baking runs more on the tart/pie/pudding side of things – I have little use for baking powder centric recipes for cookies, cakes and zucchini bread.

Plus most combinations of baking powders seem more concerned with shelf-life and bubble production than taste, I find most brands leave a strong chemical aftertaste. So, I avoid baking powder whenever possible - rather than use baking powder in pancakes, I whisk egg whites for leavening or make crepes. Instead of baking muffins - I go with yeasted cakes like blini or crumpets and when I see something like the Joy of Cooking calling for baking powder in spätzle, I shake my head and omit it. 

Usual advice here; gather ingredients before you start cooking, know where to look up substitutions and technique that are realistic for you and the best way to use the can of baking powder up before it goes bad, cook more at home.

Tartar Place

So Cream of Tartar and Tartaric Acid are 2 different things? – Found out the hard way

Yes, no, an answer my award-winning brother would be proud of. Tartaric Acid is an acid that gives foods a notable sour taste. Tartaric Acid, C4 H6 O6, for those who keep score at home, is found naturally in grapes, bananas and for most commercial/industrial purposes the tamarind. Its properties have been known about since 800 AD, and over the last 1200ish years, tartaric acid has been used as an antioxidant, preservative, an emulsifier, as a coagulate in cheese making, a mild laxative and on the other end, an emetic. 

Tartaric Acid is also the central ingredient in Cream of Tartar, which due the presence of salt - or both more vaguely and precisely – salts, forms a different chemical. Instead of whisking table salt - sodium chloride and tartaric acid together, the compound is Potassium Hydrogen Tartrate (KC4 H5 O6), also known as potassium bitartrate, still better known as Cream of tartar. This compound is an acid salt, and it is the acidic nature of Cream of Tartar that causes confusion, it is both rare and rarely called on to need something be both salty and have the ability to lower a foods pH. This ability is especially important in whipping egg whites  - a lower pH helps coagulate and stabilize the proteins. In the most basic form of baking powder, cream of tartar is the mild acid that is combined with a mild alkali (bicarbonate of soda), the two react together producing carbon dioxide, which even at microscopic levels used to leaven chocolate chip cookies, makes Al Gore weep.

Here the tartar has nothing to do with steak tartare or the mayonnaise based sauce and by extension the famous horseback riders of the east. Tartar comes to us from Arabic via Latin from the word durd meaning dregs, the white sediment left behind in wine barrels, which is where early chemists, alchemists and apothecaries found tartaric acid. 

Because tartaric acid could among other things, poison people and mice, it requites more than a trip to the grocery store…usually an internet connection and a valid credit card, not a high barrier, but just enough, to prevent malfeasance . I use tartaric acid to make mascarpone cheese and nothing else. Because of the presence of salt and the lower pH, cream of tartar can’t be substituted in cheese making. Not as subtle and tasty as mascarpone but cream of tartar is an essential ingredient in play-doh and the slightly more edible gingerbread icing.

Like a Virgin (Olive Oil)

What am I looking for when I buy Olive Oil? VOOU - Virgin Olive Oil User

Many years ago when I first started cooking seriously, the issue wasn’t acquiring skill or knowledge as much as it was finding ingredients. To make something that is now as ubiquitous as pesto, and by ubiquitous, I mean available at Applebees/Friday’s – I would have had to locate, in exurban Chicago fresh basil, bulb garlic (as opposed to the powered kind), Italian Cheese that didn’t come in a green cardboard shaker and olive oil. Out of all those 4 simple items, finding non-rancid to good olive oil within 30 miles of the kitchen of my youth would have been the ultimate food challenge.

Visiting my mom's last year, finding olive oil was no longer an issue, deciding which olive oil to use was. Dozens of olive oil of varying quality lined the shelf at the local Jewel - there was light olive oil, ‘Italian’ olive oil, Virgin, Extra Virgin, Kalamata, a grapeseed & olive oil salad mix and Rachael Ray’s own EVOO.

What to choose, what to choose… The US isn't part of the exporting community, olive oil wise. Native Extra Virgin or Virgin Olive Oils aren’t exported to Europe and domestic producers don't have to abide by International standards. Beginning this October, olive oil sold in the States must comply with International grades:

• Extra Virgin is a designation for oil that contains less than .8% acid – other terms like ‘first-pressing’ and ‘cold-pressed’ are often associated with Extra Virgin but have no legal (or practical) standing. 10% of all oil produced meets this standard.

• Virgin Olive Oil is 100% olive oil, less than 2% acidity.

• Pure or Olive oil is 100% olive oil, 1.5% acidity usually virgin olive oil that has been blended with refined olive oil. This will be the least flavorful oil.

• Refined Olive Oil - 50% of all olive oil produced in the Mediterranean needs to be refined in order to be edible. This oil is going to be used at an industrial level more than found in a bottled-to-the-consumer packaging.

Back in my professional cooking days, I used a Pomace olive oil, a lower grade of olive oil obtained from stems, stones and skins – the oil is extracted with heat or solvents (usually hexane) then mixed with virgin oils. I used it for making gallons of Caesar Salad dressing, and this is a very unfoodie admission, I loved it: The stuff was inexpensive, had a great shelf life, possessed a strong olive taste and because it has already endured the harsh industrial extraction – a few more minutes in a food processor didn’t kill the flavor.

U.C. Davis Olive Center at the university's Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science recently tested 14 brands, concluding 2/3’s of the samples did not match the labeling or international standards (including Ms. Ray’s EVOO). So if labels mean little, and endorsements or brands aren’t an assurance of quality or standards. Then considering something as straight-forward as ‘Italian’ on a label doesn't mean the olive oil was grown or pressed in Italy, only that it was bottled there...If all the identifying information is confusing rather than clarifying, the question of what are you looking for in an olive oil is compounded by the fact that what the label says doesn't reflect what is in the bottle.

Like many things in the kitchen you are looking to triangulate price, quality and flavor. I like the ‘Spanish’ olive oil packaged under the 365 label at Whole Foods. It might not actually be from Spain but it is lovely, green tinted, tastes good and is affordable. This oil is so much better than what was available at the start of my cooking days. This is the oil that grills my cheese, gets whizzed with chickpeas, heated with garlic and tomatoes and is occasionally pounded into aioli. But I also keep a bottle of stupidly expensive oil for salads, pesto, and to drizzle on soups. Purchased in small quantities, this is an oil that shall never know heat or whisking or the blades of a machine, not unlike a good whiskey or brandy, it isn’t for everyday use, but it is so very nice to have when you want it.

The best thing to do is just ask: Go to a nicer grocery store or specialty/wine & cheese shop and ask. Tell them what you are looking for and ask for a recommendation – just don’t flinch at the price tag.  

Laboring Away on Labor Day

While I am at my day job, I hope you all enjoy these 2 items. The first is Friend of Saucyman, Matthew Dickman, was quoted extensively in the NY Times Magazine. You can read about goddamn red tomatoes by following this link...

Secondly, a new video in the ever expanding Saucymultimedia empire, as we captured Jonathan Ortiz making his first visit to a Farmers Market ever. Enjoy. Special thanks to the Sister-in-Common-Law for the hand modeling.

The Green Keys

Hey Stankass, How about a "piece" on key lime pie? Where can one find key limes in Portland, anyway?

There wouldn’t be a key lime pie without key limes, so let’s begin with the fruit. Limes are the most acidic citrus fruit; 8% citric acid by weight (lemons are 5%). Key limes, in particular, pack a wallop not because of extra acidity, rather less sweetness. Because of the pucker to sweet ratio, key limes are used in Rose’s Lime Juice and are the preferred fruit for Rickeys and Margaritas, so much so they are thought of as “barman’s” lime.

They are also referred to as “Mexican limes”, which is a bit of a misnomer, since the epicenter of limes is Malaysia. Unlike the Meyer lemon that was transplanted directly from China to California, limes almost universally migrated west. First north & west to India then to Persia, where they followed the Islamic empire to al-Andalus – Muslim controlled Spain. From there they hitched a ride to the New World where limes were grown on plantations in the Caribbean and Mexico; spreading into the natural landscape and reverting back to a more wild form.

Limes had been grown in the Americas for 300 years before they became known as ‘key limes’, so how did that happen? 2 things: First, the bigger, juicier Persian or Tahitian Lime (known as Bearss in California), a cross between the key lime and citron gained enough popularity that grocers and sellers would have needed to distinguish the two fruits. Around the same time, a hurricane destroyed the pineapple industry in the Florida Keys, leaving a 10-year period where limes were ascendant. When another hurricane in 1923 destroyed most of the key lime trees in archipelago Florida, growers replanted and grafted the increasingly popular (bigger, sweeter) Persian limes.

Key lime pie is a dish that evolved in very localized conditions. Before the overland highway connected the Keys to mainland Florida, there were no regular milk deliveries, no dairy industry, sporadic electricity, not a lot of ice or refrigeration – so sweetened, condensed milk would have been about the only affordable option for dairy in the Keys. Likewise, the shelf life of a Graham crackers would have made for a more viable option than a butter or even lard pastry crust. Although some argue sweetened whipped cream is authentic top for key lime pie, that is doubtful for all the reasons listed above. And a meringue topping would have made use of the egg whites left out of the custard base, plus meringue would have the added bonus of lasting more than an hour in tropical conditions. 

As for where to find key limes in Portland, had you waited for my answer, I would have suggested stores that specialize in Mexican or Asian/Indian/Persian goods. My second choice would have been mixing the juice of kaffir limes with Perisan limes. Like a great or horrible manager, I delayed my response and left you to your own industriousness: You found key limes at Fred Meyer, I would have never guessed that.