Cows and Oysters and Bears, Good Lord!

Saturday News Digest 1/E16

Do you notice anything different? America Eats! has a new look! The homepage now has more of a magazine layout that’ll help you noodle around among recent and past stories and quickly find something of interest to read. I’d love to hear what you think about it because, you know, you’re my best critic!

Now enjoy today’s edition!

Table of Contents

• Summering With Cows

• Best Cooking Show Nomination

• Sneaky Sardines

• Happy Birthday, Mr. Porter!

• The Parting Glass With Suffragettes

Summering With Cows
A woman's paradise

Women on their fäbod in Hälsingland, Sweden, 1923

Up until the middle of the 20th century, it was a common practice in summer for women in Sweden to head up into the hills to rural settlements known as fäbodar. They would stay together until October, tending to small herds of cows grazing in the sweet grass of a summer pasture.

It seems idyllic until the reality of what was involved to keep the fäbodar in order sinks in. The long days started with milking the cows, then leading them up through forests and steep inclines to the pastures. The women spent the rest of the day tending to the upkeep of the settlement’s old buildings and participating in various handicrafts and cheese-making to sell in the fall at local markets. Then the cows returned, once more milked and bedded in the barn before the women earned their own rest. But the women in the photograph above look pretty competent and happy so it couldn’t be too arduous.

In recent years, a few women have begun to revive the fäbodar tradition and have found that the hard part isn’t the physical work. Rather, it’s learning how to compose a kulning, a piercing melodic scream that, much like an alarm clock, tells the cows to head on home for dinner. Kulning is the soul of the custom and it requires strong vocal chords and something of a musical imagination to come up with a song unique to a woman and her cows.

If, like this writer, you find yourself fantasizing about joining a fäbodar, you can turn to Karin Kolterud to start composing your own kulning style.

At the very least it’s therapeutic and, as one commentor noted on the following video, it’s useful for herding cats as well. Just ignore your neighbors’ complaints.

Best Cooking Show Nomination
The Bear

The Bear (on Hulu) depicts two horrors. The most obvious one is the absolute torture of working in a restaurant kitchen—highly revered, astronomically expensive restaurants as well as neighborhood sandwich shops. The real fear, though, is the chaotic mix of hate and love and sorrow residing in the middle of most of our family life. These are both so accurately portrayed and written that the show may cause a flair-up of PTDS. The Bear will teach you how to create a perfect piccata sauce, what it takes to produce a rich stock, and the artistry behind donuts. It will make you want to call every relative you’ve ever loved and haven’t seen in a long time, along with the ones who drive you criminally insane, to tell them how much they mean to you, and, if necessary, beg or grant forgiveness.

The Bear is unforgettable.

Sneaky Sardines 
One more fib 

As confessed to in Tuesday's story about grilled sardines, I do, on occasion, trick my husband into eating something that's good for him. This applies especially to fish. He, like a lot of you out there, have a particularly steadfast derogatory opinion of sardines, so I couldn't get him to eat the ones I grilled earlier in the week. However, I reserved a large one, filleted and mashed it into a pasta sauce. The smoky taste and charred bits of skin and tail really nudged the flavor and texture up. None the wiser, he loved it, and he's a lot healthier for it.  

Sardine Pasta Sauce

This is a quick sauce, most appreciated when you’re starving late at night.

1 tablespoon flavorful olive oil
3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes, drained and the juice reserved
Deboned sardines, roughly chopped (It's fine to use thoroughly washed jarred or canned sardines but, as noted above, grilling fresh ones makes the sauce special. Broiling them isn't bad, either. You'll still get crispy burnt parts.)
A pinch of hot pepper flakes (to taste)
About 1 cup of whole fresh basil leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Zest of one lemon

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add garlic and sauté until slightly brown. Stir the whole tomatoes into the garlic. As you stir, mash the tomatoes into rough chunks.

Add sardines and stir. You may want to start adding some of the reserved tomato sauce, but you don't want it to become too thick. Add hot pepper flakes, basil, salt, and pepper.

At this point, there is an ethical choice to make. You can gently stir the sauce in such a way that the sardines remain in chunks. Or you can stir a little more vigorously, which will make the sardines begin to melt into the sauce. This, of course, depends on whether you need to fool someone into thinking they're not eating sardines.

Bring sauce to a low simmer while the pasta is cooking. When the pasta is done, add a tablespoon or two of the water to the sauce before you drain the pot entirely.

Stir the pasta into the skillet, coating it with the sauce. 

Divide the pasta among individual plates and grate lemon zest over it.

Serve with a good crusty bread and a fulsome red wine. 

Happy Birthday Mr. Porter! 
Oysters for all of us!

Today is Cole Porter’s 141st birthday, and, praise be to God, he’s still alive and kicking in a world with great need of his irreverent, tart wit. We’re now all going to celebrate him by singing his rousing song “The Tale of the Oyster.” Ready? And a one, and a two, and ….

The Parting Glass With Suffragettes 
Since we're back to square one on the women's equality front

It seems appropriate that we end with a cocktail after serenading Cole Porter. And a much-needed one at that after the Supreme Court threw women back into the 19th century. A very stiff drink is demanded, one that’s bracing yet so good for you that it’ll give you strength to fight the insanity.

Inspiration comes from Julia Skinner’s recent post, The Foraging Origins of Booze. Her food histories are always fascinating, but this one is particularly timely. She explains how to make your own vermouth infused with various health-boosting herbs that are probably growing wild in your backyard. She also offers a walloping fruity brandy. An added benefit is they’ve been personally proven to be effective treatments for stomachaches, certainly another affliction we can blame on the Court.

The following recipe, known for some reason as a Suffragette Cocktail and a sister of the martini, meets all the marks. There are several 19th- and early 20th-century recipes for it, and it’s extremely unlikely it was imbibed at the Seneca Falls Conference. But it’s the power of the drink that counts. Gin is already heavily botanical and when paired with Skinner’s recipe for vermouth it’ll buck you up for mounting a successful campaign to put punishing men and disharmonious women in their place.

Suffragette Cocktail
A handful of herbs such as elderflower, dill, or chamomile
1 1/2 ounces best botanical-heavy dry gin (look to a local small batch, hipster-favored liquor store)
2/3 ounce Julia Skinner's homemade vermouth

Muddle the herbs in a cocktail shaker.
Add ice and pour in the gin and vermouth. Shake vigorously, then pour into a cocktail glass. 
Olives, lemon peel, or pickled onion are fine but consider adding a bit more herbs, let's say a julienned strip of fennel.
Enjoy coming up with battle plans.