Beer, Supermarket Eavesdropping, and "Little Odessa" in Brooklyn
Beer, Supermarket Eavesdropping, and "Little Odessa" in Brooklyn
Saturday News Scraps Newsletter, V1/E3
Table of Contents:
Food for Thought
Photo of the Week
From the Eavesdropping Office
Road Trip Itinerary
The Parting Glass
Food for Thought
Beer
Food historian Julia Skinner’s newsletter Roots: Historic Food for the Modern World arrives every week jammed with compelling topics that even people who are not that interested in culinary history would love to read about. She recently introduced Unplated, a series of interviews with artists, scholars, and writers whose work delves into important food issues from a culinary outsider perspective. Her latest introduces Tiah Edmunson-Morton, an archivist, oral historian, and faculty member at Oregon State University’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center. In 2013, she established the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives and, in 2018, its off-shoot, the Brewing History Consortium. Beer brewing is a neglected area of research, especially in the lives and labor of women and people of color. Edmunson-Morton’s is now working on a book about the wives of 19th-century brewers and the central role they played in the industry. Her interview with Skinner is a fine introduction to why learning about beer brewing is important to understanding civilization. It may even tempt you to subscribe to Roots so you won’t miss the next Unplated!
Photo of the Week
A great migration of Jews from the Soviet Union to America began in the late 1980s. Ukrainian Jews joined them in the 1990s. It’s been noted that they were likely to settle either in Israel or Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that has since become known as “Little Odessa.”
From the Eavesdropping Office
Cheese Department Diplomacy
Generally speaking, the cheese section is a good place to linger, and not only because of the free samples. First of all, the cheese person always does a great job of attractively arranging all shades of white and orange blocks and triangles across the wide case in such a way as to give shoppers time to look like they know what they’re looking for. This is certainly why one shopper stands staring at the display in yet another befuddled moment in her day. Another woman is more decisive, her cupped hands filled with three little packages. It is an unseasonably warm day and yet she wears a thick white knitted hat with an extravagant fur pompom on top and an equally white down vest, snuggly zippered over her shapely body. She is the kind of exquisitely put-together middle-age woman whose beauty is a mere afterthought and certainly not the source of a presence that commands respect. The befuddled woman, not even close to the woman’s put-together elegance, understands why the cheese man comes to the woman’s rescue instead of hers.
“I don’t know which I want,” she says to him. It’s a plea with a soft playful lilt to it. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell with her accent.
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
“Something nice,” she replies. She holds out one creamy white cheese with a thin blue vein across it. “Maybe this one?”
Her other choices could be a block of cheddar. The third a slightly mushed triangle of brie. She shifts her hands a little up and down in a ‘this one? or this one? or how about this one?’ manner.
“What kind should I get?”
The man gazes at her for a beat. He is young and very tall when he straightens his back. His apron is as white as her clothes. What he says next is a distinct challenge. “You Russian?”
The other customer begins to panic. All she wants is to assuage her current craving for a creamy cheese to spread over sliced apples and pears. The man and woman’s exchange is raising fears of a brewing Constitutional challenge she would have to consider intervening in if only she could remember which amendment line it crosses. A little ectoplasm dialogue bubble materializes over her head: “Ohhhh, crap.”
“I’m from Kyiv,” she says.
He quickly says, “sorry.” Then he nods to the brie. “That’s a nice one.”
“Thank you,” she replies quietly and places it in her basket.
The man returns to arranging his small blocks of cheese. The other customer grabs a random camembert and skedaddles.
Road Trip Itinerary
Travels With an Old Friend
I’m off on Sunday to visit one of my oldest friends who lives down in Jacksonville, FL. The state, with its tendency to make itself very unlovable, is near the bottom of my wish list for places I dreamed about traveling to during the pandemic. My friend, though, is at the top of my list of people the pandemic revealed has been too long gone from my life. A week of hanging out, processing the 40 some years we haven’t seen each other, is all I want to do right now. And there’s the distinct possibility of recreating a long road trip we took together when we were 21, knowing our final destination but getting lost in-between. I’ll try to find time to write about the promising backroads already mapped out.
A few routes for sure:
SR-A1A to the small fishing village of Mayport.
SR-13 to Spuds—just the name calls!—and a stop at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s summer house.
County Road 2002, formerly known as the Old Dixie Highway and considered the most beautiful road in Florida.
US 17 to Crescent City.
The Parting Glass
Many ways to revive a corpse
It’s coming on spring, a season when every wise woman and man knows the body needs a good shaking out of winter’s detritus. We have a few favorites to tell you about in the coming weeks. In the meantime, this one and its offspring hit the appropriate mark to smack the body into shape. Corpse Reviver #2, first mixed in the late 19th century, became a favorite and very effective hangover cure. Its high alcohol content sees to that ailment. The inclusion of medicinal herbs are an equal recommendation for stomach complaints. A Prohibition variation adds citrus fruit to have it considered as a prescription for scurvy. My nephew Eamon recommended the drink, and, egged on by the #2 in the title, I went in search of possible others. There is, indeed, several versions, starting with #1 and continuing into two more specifically noted for stomachaches. Eamon says it’s best served in a coupe glass, which I happily have many of. The tart tasting cocktail should be sipped very slowly, especially if taken for a stomachache, because it packs a wallop. I imagine slurping it down might help with a hangover.
Corpse Reviver #1
Pour into a shaker full of ice 2 parts cognac with 1 part each of apple brandy or calvados and sweet vermouth. Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass.
Corpse Reviver #2 and #2A
Pour into a shaker full of ice 3 parts each of gin, lemon juice, Cointreau, and Lillet Blanc. Shake well and strain into a chilled glass. At this point, there are several ways to add the important absinthe: spritz a little across the top or coat the inside of the glass before you pour the cocktail in. In either case, garnish with orange zest.
The next two proved particularly beneficial to the stomach. The first calls for Fernet-Branca, which is rich in botanicals, and the second is built on Taunus water with its unusually high amounts of calcium, magnesium, and sodium bicarbonate. It’s hard to find these days, and one source recommended substituting it with Gerolsteiner Sparkling mineral water. That’s too expensive for my pocket, so I used Pellegrino and, being ignorant of the original’s taste, it did just fine.
Savoy Corpse Reviver
Pour into a shaker full of ice 1 part brandy, 1 part Fernet-Branca, and 1 part white crème de menthe. Shake ingredients together with ice, and strain into a glass.
Criterion Reviver
Mix together a bottle of Taunus water or the best spring water you can afford with a jigger and a half of your finest whiskey. Add a dash of brandy bitters. Sip slowly.
The 1937 edition of Café Royal Cocktail Book, by W.J. Tarling, lists three recipes in the Corpse Reviver vein, the first being Corpse #1, the other two below. The Stomach Reviver worked wonders.
Café Royal Corpse Reviver
Pour into a shaker 1/3 parts each brandy, orange juice, and lemon juice. Shake and pour into a claret glass, then add enough Champagne to top off the glass.
Godfrey’s Corpse Reviver
Pour into a shaker 2/3 part gin, 1/3 part vodka, a dash of grenadine, and a dash of Angostura bitters. Shake well and strain into a glass.
Stomach Reviver
Mix together 5 dashes of Angostura bitters, 1/5 part Fernet-Branca, 2/5 parts brandy, and 2/5 parts kummel liqueur. Strain into a cocktail glass.