A Harte Appetite (02/21/07)
The late Will Rogers once observed, "the movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself." This Sunday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be doing just that during the 78th annual Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, Calif...

The proof is in the polenta (01/24/07)
On the last Tuesday of Carnival, the people of the hamlet of Tossignano in Emilia-Romagna, Italy's famed gourmet region, will -- as they have for nearly four centuries -- arrive early in the town square to prepare for the annual polenta festival. The centerpiece of this event is 440 pounds of polenta -- the Italian version of cornmeal mush -- cooked in giant copper pots and stirred with oar-sized wooden paddles. ...

Putting the joy back in the Joy of Cooking (12/27/06)
One afternoon in April 1950, the late Mary Blue, former food editor of the Southeast Missourian, was browsing in the book department of the downtown St. Louis Famous-Barr store. She was approached by an elderly lady seeking advice about certain titles...

The fair goes gourmet (09/06/06)
This weekend, the SEMO District Fair begins its 151st year. Whether it's the antique tractor pull, the fireworks, the rooster crowing contest or big-name entertainment in the person of Ronnie Milsap, it has something for everyone. But to me, the biggest attraction is the food...

Salt: The only rock we eat (08/09/06)
On April 5, 1930, after marching nearly a month over 240 miles of dusty roads in blazing heat, he arrived at the sea at Dandi and walked up the beach to where the sun's baking rays had produced a thick salt crust. Bending down, he picked up a chunk and boiled it in seawater...

Promising pomegranates (11/30/05)
The pomegranate, that beautiful fruit with the jewel-like red seeds, has recently exploded onto the culinary scene, which is apropos for a fruit which inspired the name of the hand-tossed explosive known as the grenade. (Grenadiers, 18th century soldiers who specialized in throwing grenades, thought the device's shrapnel pellets reminded them of those seeds.)...

The sweetest battle (11/02/05)
The Hotel Sacher, on the corner of Philharmonikerstrasse and Karntnerstrasse in the heart of Vienna, is so well known for its namesake chocolate dessert, the Sacher torte, that once some years ago a telegram from an American addressed simply to "Hotel Chocolate Cake, Vienna" was dutifully and without delay delivered to the place...

Thinking, cooking outside the jar (10/05/05)
If Daniel Boulud, whose namesake restaurant has been called one of the 10 best in the world, praises a cookbook, you wouldn't be surprised that it contains great recipes. Nor would you be astonished that one of its authors, like Boulud, is an acclaimed chef. But you might be startled to learn that it's a book about baby food...

Vive la revolution (07/13/05)
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." With that oft misquoted suggestion Marie Antoinette ushered in the French Revolution, the 216th anniversary of which the people of France will celebrate tomorrow, Bastille Day. Because of its culinary repercussions, I submit that the French Revolution is an event we should celebrate too...

Many tiers of joy (06/22/05)
"The most dangerous food in the world is wedding cake," maintains an old American proverb. This is the month of the year -- named after Juno, the patroness of marriage -- when lots of people choose to live dangerously...

Setting the gold standard (06/01/05)
A few years ago 50 baboons somehow managed to escape at once from the wildlife preserve at the Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati. Zookeepers, sensing that this development was not good for business at the park, scrambled to lure them back, using a variety of devices. It took four days to get the job done, and though a tranquilizer gun was instrumental in the process, a far more effective tool was the Hostess Twinkie...

Campfire cuisine (04/20/05)
There's nothing like being in the great outdoors," the late Milton Berle used to say, "with the sun beating on your face, the wind rushing through your hair, the trees creaking, and the birds singing without a stop. There's nothing like it. That's why I stay indoors a lot!"...

Cooking through the years (03/09/05)
"Great-grandma had a farm, grandma had a garden, mother had a can-opener." n Jean Anderson's aphorism affirms that a lot has changed in the last 100 years. At the Southeast Missourian we've been given lately to examining the developments of the last century as the newspaper celebrates its centennial. And, as Anderson suggests, nowhere have developments been more consuming than in the field of food...

Dread diets? Follow French tradition - Eat less but enjoy more (01/05/05)
W hat comes to your mind when you hear the words "chocolate cake?" * What's the first thing you think of when you see the words "heavy cream?" * What do the words "fried eggs" mean to you? A few years ago, professor Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues conducted a battery of cross-cultural surveys of food attitudes and discovered that we Americans answer these questions quite differently from those in other countries. ...

Simply shortbread (12/15/04)
A newspaper in Scotland recently carried a story about a shopkeeper who used shortbread to make short work of a would-be robber. * When the hooligan pulled a knife on her, she dispatched him wielding a four pound tin of Walker's shortbread, which she threw at him as he fled the premises...

Turducken offers twist on traditional turkey (11/24/04)
The problem with tradition, Curt George Siffert notes, is that it's always dated. Apparently many feel that way even about the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Thus, the National Turkey Federation (yes, there really is one) reports that non-traditional turkey preparations are the rage this time of year. Desperate to do something different with the holiday bird, people are trying everything from smoking it to grilling it to brining it to deep frying it to stuffing it with blue cornbread dressing...

Authentically Italian (11/03/04)
"It will be for people in the imminent third millennium to decide which countries or cultures have made the greatest contribution, in terms of food, to human happiness," said the Oxford Companion to Food at the turn of this century, "but it seems safe to predict that the Italians will be up there at or near the top of the list."...

KitchenAid's mixer is the iconic silhouette of food preparation (10/13/04)
A few years ago Aaron Betsky, a curator at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, organized an exhibition around a dozen everyday objects which she believes qualify as experience-shaping icons. Among those she included were the BMW 325i and the KitchenAid mixer. Now I can see why she'd select a sexy model with all that power and so many accessories, but, frankly, I can't understand why she picked the car...

Chocolate connoisseurs (09/22/04)
Fruity. Floral bouquet. Full bodied. Nice finish. These are comments you'd expect to hear at a wine tasting. But these days they're just as likely to be uttered by people eating chocolate. It used to be that choosing a chocolate bar was simple. There was dark and there was light. ...

Remembering the French Chef (09/01/04)
It was an ordinary day in 1968. I turned on the little black and white television set to watch my favorite show. n The program's host, in her unmistakable voice ("a voice that could make an aspic shimmy," it's been called), was showing how to make a French chocolate rum and almond cake called Queen of Sheba...

A taste of taquila (08/11/04)
Substitute tequila for the alcoholic ingredients in your recipes for a rich flavor. "Tequila is Mexico." So says Carmelita Roman, proprietor of the San Matias tequila distillery in the state of Jalisco. Ian Chadwick of Tequila Aficionado Magazine agrees. ...

A country built with corn (07/21/04)
"Sex is good," Garrison Keillor has observed, "but not as good as fresh sweet corn." Betty Fussell, author of "The Story of Corn," probably wouldn't disagree. After researching the subject for five years, she concluded, "I can't think of anything sexier than corn."...

Bananas rank among best of fruits (06/30/04)
"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate." Thus begins the biblical account of the fall from grace of Adam and Eve...

Food from the Fair (06/09/04)
It was larger than Disney's Magic Kingdom. It housed over 1,500 buildings, including eleven "palaces," one of which alone required nine miles of walking to see all its displays. Among its 70,000 exhibits were the world's largest pipe organ, a giant bird cage housing every species in the nation, and the Liberty Bell, shipped in from Philadelphia for the occasion...

Special seating (05/19/04)
The best seat at a baseball game is behind home plate. The best seat in a theater is often in the balcony. And the best seat in church, judging by parishioner behavior, is a pew in the back. But where's the best seat in a restaurant? That depends on a number of factors, but until recently everyone agreed that it was one far away from the kitchen...

Gourmet greens - Fancy lettuces showing up in area restaurants (04/28/04)
Fancy lettuces are showing up in area restaurants, replacing the iceberg mainstay. Ever heard of a "honeymoon salad?" It's lettuce alone. While that might be good for newlyweds, it's usually not good for salads, especially if your idea of greens is iceberg lettuce, the kind most of us grew up on...

Marvelous marshmallows (04/07/04)
Last night I dreamed I ate a 10-pound marshmallow," the late Tommy Cooper used to tell his audiences. "And when I woke up, the pillow was gone." The fez-wearing British comedian probably would not have fared very well on the marshmallow test, created by psychologists at Stanford University in the late 1960s and found to be a reliable predictor of academic success. ...

Simple soda bread (03/17/04)
"Eaten bread is forgotten," says an old Irish proverb. Figuratively speaking, there's probably something to that observation, but if you've ever eaten good Irish soda bread, you know that literally it's not true. Irish soda bread, says award-winning cookbook author Jeanne Lemlin, is Ireland's greatest culinary legacy, one of the three things she remembers most from her visits to the country...

Succulent sushi (02/25/04)
Some wag has remarked, "In America we have a word for sushi: bait." Not anymore. Sushi is on a roll in this country, not just on the east and west coasts where patrons stand in line for hours at places like Nobu eagerly awaiting a raw deal, but even in the Midwest and in Southeast Missouri, where, thanks to wrap artists at Saffron Pan-Asian Restaurant in Cape Girardeau, it's holding its own against barbecued ribs and chicken-fried steak...

Whitman's Sampler celebrates 150 years of chocolate goodness (02/04/04)
He was in the business 15 years before Milton Hershey was even born and he virtually invented the concept of prepackaged chocolates. This year marks the 150th anniversary of his first boxed assortment, an elegant pink and gilt affair decorated with rosebuds and curlicues with lettering proclaiming "Sugar Plums from Stephen F. Whitman."...

Good fortune, good food (01/14/04)
A New Year's resolution, it has been observed, often goes in one year and out the other, so perhaps, like me, you've already forgotten or abandoned yours. But don't despair. You'll get a second chance to start anew next week if, like one-quarter of the world's population, you celebrate Chinese New Year...

Couscous makes a comeback (12/03/03)
Once considered an exotic dish, the Moroccan cuisine is turning up in trendy restaurants and on grocery store shelves. "A handful of couscous is better than Mecca and all its dust." So says a famous Moroccan proverb about almsgiving. The maxim cannot be tossed off as mere chauvinism about the tiny balls of dough that are Morocco's national dish. ...

Gung ho for Jell-O (11/12/03)
It is arguably America's most famous dessert, so famous and so typically American, in fact, that it was served to immigrants entering Ellis Island. Ten boxes of it are sold every second. The Smithsonian Institution has even sponsored a conference on it...

Popularity of pizza (10/22/03)
As Burton Anderson, writing in "Treasures of the Italian Table" has observed, "If Naples had managed to patent the pizza it would now be among Italy's wealthiest cities instead of one of its poorest." He is doubtless correct. You can now find pizza anywhere in the world. ...

Jackson native pens recipes for the perfect tailgate party (10/01/03)
Recently Carbondale, Ill., home of Southern Illinois University, was named by Sports Illustrated as the worst college sports town in America. While we here in Cape Girardeau, home of Southeast Missouri State University, a perennial rival of SIUC, might take some satisfaction from such a ranking, I, for one, think our adversaries across the river have been given a bad rap...

Dinner will recreate meal that Lewis and Clark might have eaten (09/10/03)
They ate nine pounds of meat per person per day. Though they took seven tons of foodstuffs with them, they supplemented their larder along the way by hunting and fishing. Thus, over the course of their journey they killed and consumed more than 1,000 deer, 375 elk, 227 bison, 35 bighorned sheep, 62 antelopes, 43 grizzly bears, 113 beavers, 104 geese and brant, 46 grouse, nine turkeys, 48 plovers, and nearly 200 dogs (a "favorite food" with most of the party and judged far superior to horse), not to mention a large assortment of exotic animals such as hawk, coyote, fox, crow, eagle, gopher, muskrat, seal, whale, turtle, mussels, crab, salmon, and trout -- plus all kinds of fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts.. ...

Making mayonnaise (07/30/03)
What do paint and mayonnaise have in common? Preferably not much, except that both are emulsions, combinations of two liquids that do not mix. Emulsions form due to amphiphiles, fundamental structural components of all living systems. Thus, as science writer Harold J. Morowitz points out, the microstructures of both living cells and salad dressings depend on a class of molecules every bit as important as DNA. They are central to the very origin of life...

Picking a perfect peach (07/09/03)
"An apple is an excellent thing," observed George Du Maurier, "until you have tried a peach!" He was hardly the only one to be enamored of what food historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat calls "the typical fruit of summer." For example, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, former proprietors of Manhattan's celebrated Silver Palate gourmet food shop, claim, "A perfectly ripe peach is worth waiting for all summer long." And Alice Waters, California's apostle of utterly fresh, organic produce, goes so far as to assert, "The most perfect fruit has to be a perfect peach." Her rationale is convincing. ...

Each region of U.S. has its own distinct flavor of barbecue (06/18/03)
Isaac Weld, the author of "Travels Through North America During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797" described a barbecue as follows: "It consists in a large party meeting together, either under some trees, or in a house, to partake of a sturgeon or pig roasted in the open air, on a sort of hurdle, over a slow fire; ... it generally ends in intoxication."...

Crazy culinary creations (05/28/03)
Horace Walpole coined the term "serendipity" to refer to the talent for making desirable discoveries by accident possessed by the heroes of a fairy tale called "The Three Princes of Serendip." I don't know if the princes were good cooks, but fortuity often plays a significant role in the culinary world...

Touting toast (05/07/03)
Recently we decided at our house that we needed a new toaster to replace the aging device that, long before Paul Prudhomme adapted the technique for seafood, had been reliably blackening our breads, bagels, and frozen waffles. So we set off to the nearest appliance store to make what we thought would be an easy purchase only to discover there an astonishing array of models, especially for what is essentially a single-function contraption...

Crazy for carrots (04/16/03)
"I never worry about diets," observed Mae West. "The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond." Considering the source, such a view is, perhaps, understandable, but it is certainly shortsighted, as the Easter Bunny would surely tell you. After all, the carrot is among the most multi-faceted of all root vegetables...

Perfect puff pastry (03/26/03)
Use versatile dough to prepare dishes that are both sweet and savory It's the Puff Daddy of pastry. Bake it in little mounds and you have classic cream puffs or profiteroles, ready to be stuffed with whipped cream or ice cream. (They also make the perfect containers for escargots or, if gigantic, a Niçoise salad.) Shape it into long fingers, bake, and fill with custard and you have an éclair. ...

Mystique of the macadamia (03/05/03)
Nuts are the sweetest Mother Nature provides, but toughest to crack. Hawaii, as Michener noted, may be the planet's ultimate melting pot. As such the islands have always been good at taking advantage of the wares of others. Even the ukulele, it turns out, originated in Portugal...

Tracking tasty trends - A look at popular foods of 2002 (02/23/03)
"Change is one thing, progress is another," the philosopher Bertrand Russell observed. As you wade through the Progress edition of the newspaper today, it's well to keep that distinction in mind, especially as we consider the culinary trends that emerged over the last year and contemplate what's in store for the year to come. After all, as food writer Marty Meitus notes, "The main food trend is the same as it's always been: scrambling to figure out what's for dinner."...

Basic principles to consider for Valentine's Day meal (02/12/03)
They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I don't know how true that is, but I do know that if my wife is going to whisper something soft and sweet in my ear, I'd just as soon she say "lemon meringue pie." Food and romance, of course, are inextricably connected and probably have been since the beginning of time. ...

The power of (pasteurized and prepared) cheese (01/22/03)
Velvetta does something few other cheeses can do -- it melts consistently and never needs refrigeration. "This song's about a girl who's soft and warm and cheap. When I held her close to me, she melted right away. Velveeta was her name." So go the lyrics to a tune by a punk band fromCalifornia. ...

Holiday cookies with a German accent (12/18/02)
Lebkuchen cookies are German tradition consumed around the world What do you like most about Christmas? If it's Santa Claus and fir trees and mulled wine you ought to thank the Germans, because these, like most of our holiday customs are Germanic, not English. ...

Turkey terror (11/27/02)
"A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude." That's how Ambrose Bierce defined the turkey. "Incidentally," he added, "it is pretty good eating." Thursday some 45 million turkeys, collectively weighing 535 million pounds, will constitute the ceremonial and culinary focal point at Thanksgiving tables across America. ...

Perfect pasta (11/06/02)
The Pasta Police are coming! Recently the Italian government created a bureau to monitor the quality of pasta around the world and to award a seal of approval to those establishments which have not compromised authenticity. Fed up with inferior imitations of the national cuisine, Italian Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno is spearheading the effort, and he sounds serious. ...

Warm up with wild game (10/16/02)
It happened around 4300 BC or so. As a nighttime thunderstorm approached, lightning struck a tree near a cave creating a fire that spread throughout the woods. The next morning, the occupant of that cave came across a deer carcass blackened by the flames. Cautiously he sampled a piece of the charred meat and grunted his approval. This, according to the Wild Game Cooking Association, was the beginning of wild game cooking...

Perfect pesto (09/25/02)
Sauces can add summer flavor to any meal at any time "If the definition of poetry allowed that it could be composed with the products of the field as well as with words," Marcella Hazen observes, "pesto would be in every anthology." And, to continue the analogy, I could be a poet laureate. That's because at our house these days we're making and freezing prodigious amounts of pesto to keep up with our bumper crop of basil....

Crazy for chocolate (09/04/02)
According to Peter De Vries, the pictures in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums. As a general rule that may be true, but it's not the case at Chicago's Field Museum, at least not while its "Chocolate" exhibit is on display. Recently I toured the exhibit, which is replete with artifacts ranging from pre-Columbian ceramics to 20th-century advertising, and I came away not only visually satisfied but with my chocolate cravings abated as well...

Child's play (08/14/02)
It was an ordinary day in 1968. I turned on the little black-and-white television set to watch my favorite show. The program's host, in her unmistakable voice ("a voice that could make an aspic shimmy," it's been called), was showing how to make a French chocolate, rum, and almond cake called Queen of Sheba...

Summertime salad (07/24/02)
Coleslaw is perfect accompaniment to grilled meats or picnic fare. The comedian Buddy Hackett used to tell the story about a man who didn't know anything about farming but who bought a farm anyway. A friend asked him what he was going to plant. "Razor blades and cabbages," the would-be farmer told him. "What could you possibly get out of that?" his friend asked. The landowner replied, "Coleslaw."...

Frozen treats on the Fourth (07/03/02)
Food played a critical role in the American Revolution. Tomorrow, the Fourth of July, food is as important as fireworks. And why not? After all, the American Revolution had deep culinary connections. Moreover, the chief author of the document we commemorate tomorrow would think Independence Day victuals no trivial matter....

Edible beauty (06/12/02)
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," said Shakespeare. But after a recent visit to Holland's Floriade, the once-in-a-decade event that is a veritable World's Fair of flowers, I got to wondering if it would still taste as good. The Floriade, which runs until mid-October, showcases more than 300 floral exhibits from around the world. ...

Appetizing avocado (05/01/02)
In his classic book, "Eating in America," Waverly Root tells us, "Americans were slow about taking avocados to their hearts, and in its early prudish days their growers dared not advertise the merit which, privately, they considered likely to prove its strongest selling point."...

Caramelized confection (04/10/02)
"The heavy-set son ushered us down a narrow hallway toward a 15-gallon, hammered copper pot (the traditional cazo used for candy making) filled to the brim with today's goat milk. As we moved past it, the passage opened onto a narrow room with a 2-foot-high, bricked-in stove along one side. ...

Cruise self-control (03/20/02)
"You come on as a passenger but you leave as cargo!" So goes a quip uttered at one time or another by every cruise director who has ever sailed. After having taken more than a dozen cruises over the years I can attest that the remark exaggerates things -- but not by much...

The way the cookie crumbles (02/27/02)
Perhaps you've heard the story about the lady who on Thanksgiving Day marched into the dining room with a magnificently prepared turkey and then accidentally dropped it on the floor in full view of her horrified guests. Without missing a beat, she picked up the bird and headed back to the kitchen telling everyone not to worry. In the kitchen she wiped off the turkey, basted it again with pan drippings, and then returned to the dining room with it and announced, "Here's the other turkey!"...

Bond between food and sex has been constant in every culture (02/06/02)
Southeast Missourian/Stephan Frazier "Better Than, Better Than Sex Cake" with Valentine's Day conversation hearts candy. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It's a truth worth contemplating as Valentine's Day approaches. After all, as the poet Turgenev observed, "The genius of love and the genius of hunger... ...

Flavors of Africa - Many Southern dishes have African roots (01/16/02)
P Many beloved Southern dishes actually have African-American roots. Next Monday the nation celebrates the birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a prelude to Black History Month which, fittingly, is observed every February, the month which marks the birth of Frederick Douglass, the passage of the 15th Amendment, and the founding of the NAACP...

The best cookbooks of 2001 (12/26/01)
"Where is human nature so weak," Henry Ward Beecher once asked, "as in the bookstore?" For me that's doubly true when I'm in the cookbook aisle. Though my bookshelves are brimming with cookbooks, I subscribe to four cooking magazines (one published overseas) and I have over 50 Internet cooking sites bookmarked on my computer, somehow this year I nonetheless managed to acquire more than 20 new cookbooks...

Potato pancakes are an essential element of Hanukkah tradition (12/05/01)
As Christmas approaches, the Clement Moore poem tells us, many children, nestled snug in their beds, will have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. But this coming Sunday many other children will dream of potato pancakes instead. That's because at sundown this Sunday, the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, the Jewish holiday Hanukkah begins, and like most holidays it is inextricably linked to food. Moreover, potato pancakes are essential to the celebration...

Beaujolais Nouveau - Young wine is meant to be gulped (11/14/01)