1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (143 page)

Fruity jams are represented, of course, along with golden floral honey, quilts, secondhand books, and kitchen utensils that may be brand-new, antique, or just plain old. In between are small, open cafeterias and stands where copious, rib-sticking nourishment, such as hot dogs, Philadelphia cheesesteaks, and home-churned ice cream, are dished up.

Most stands are managed by the plainly dressed locals, the bearded men in blue work-shirts, black vests and pants, and wide-brimmed, yellow straw hats, the women in long black dresses and aprons, with kerchiefs or sheer organdy caps on their heads.

All congregate around what may be the market’s most intriguing feature: the weekly feed auction. In a huge parking lot, trucks jam-packed with bales of timothy hay, alfalfa, grass, and clover form a ring around a central clearing where taciturn livestock owners bid for the batches with which they feed their animals. Led by an auctioneer in Amish dress, each bid rapidly progresses in a mystical jargon much like that of tobacco auctioneers. It’s an entertaining and instructive event; a novice might learn that horses prefer timothy hay, while cattle love grass that is bright green, or clover if the blossoms are mauve pink.

Where:
955 North State St., Ephrata, PA, tel 717-738-1117,
greendragonmarket.com
.

It’s a dish with which anyone who has read and reread Dr. Seuss’s bestselling children’s classic will be familiar. As held aloft by that mischievous agent provocateur, Sam-I-Am, it appears as fried eggs with green yolks, plus a whole, vibrantly green ham—a dish so embedded in the American psyche that it is offered on the brunch menus of restaurants all over the country.

Thankfully, interpretations generally eschew dyed ham or yolks, instead leaning to scrambled eggs or omelets verdant with chopped parsley or fines herbes, such as chives, tarragon, and chervil. Alternatively and more substantially, beaten eggs might enfold asparagus, spinach, Swiss chard, scallions, zucchini, or green peppers; or the eggs may be poached and served with a green herb cream sauce. Deviled, their mashed-up yolks do indeed wind up a spring-bright green when minced herbs are added. The ham is left as nature intended, rosy pink and simply sliced, or frizzled to a golden hue.

Not a fan no matter how they’re prepared? In the words of Sam-I-Am, “You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may.”

Where:
In New York
, Mehtaphor, tel 212-542-9440,
mehtaphornyc.com
;
in Nashville
, The Crow’s Nest Restaurant, tel 615-783-0720,
crowsnestnashville.com
;
in Orlando, FL
, Green Eggs and Ham Café at Universal’s Islands of Adventure, tel 407-224-4012,
universalorlando.com
(search green eggs);
in Ferndale, MI
, The Fly Trap, tel 248-399-5150,
theflytrapferndale.com
;
in Yountville, CA
, Bottega, tel 707-945-1050,
botteganapavalley.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Green Eggs and Ham
by Dr. Seuss (1960);
Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook
by Georgeanne Brennan (2006);
allrecipes.com
(search green eggs and ham quiche);
epicurious.com
(search devilish green eggs and ham);
food52.com
(search green eggs and ham for grownups; green eggs and ham kerstin; green eggs and ham shanley);
abcnews.go.com
(search green eggs and ham chiarello).

The French call them
oeufs au plat
—eggs on a plate—while the Italian
uovi fritti
and the Spanish
huevos fritos
simply mean fried eggs, something the Spanish love as an appetizer, broken open over mounds of fried potatoes (see
listing
). The Germans order the more imaginative
spiegeleiern
, meaning “mirror eggs,” which may be fried in butter with a hint of bacon grease. Whatever the name, all the world loves the instant, warm comfort of a fried egg.

To be at their best, they should be gently fried in unsalted butter and served cheerfully as
golden suns, sunny-side up. Eggs fried in olive oil may have more sophisticated appeal and perhaps even win kudos from the cholesterol-conscious, but if you are eating egg yolks, why worry about the butter?

Breakfast cooks should seek out the freshest eggs possible, a condition that is sadly most obviously recognizable only at the moment the egg is broken into the pan: The fresher it is, the higher the yolk and white will stand, and the latter won’t run out into a watery film. A nonstick pan is acceptable, even if it will not produce as tender a white as an uncoated pan—but coated or uncoated, you’ll need that generous pat of butter. Heated until bubbling but not brown, it adds flavor and a haze of pale golden color, and when spooned over white and yolk will help the egg white set.

What constitutes doneness? There are two legitimate schools of thought on the question. One says the egg should show absolutely no brown edges, while the other demands a rim of lacy, golden fringe. Coarse salt should be sprinkled on as soon as the egg is in the pan, but freshly ground black pepper should not be added until the egg is on a warm plate, as it breaks down when heated. For extra zip, dot the yolk with a drop or two of green Tabasco sauce. To waste none of the yolk as it bursts, serve the eggs on lightly buttered toast or English muffins—or as a fried egg sandwich, in which case the egg should be fried over-easy, until the yolk becomes half-runny.

Where:
In New York
, at brunch, Blaue Gans, tel 212-571-8880,
kg-ny.com/blaue-gans
; at breakfast, Café Sabarsky, tel 212-288-0665,
kg-ny.com/cafe-sabarsky
.
Further information and recipes:
The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (2006);
epicurious.com
(search smoky olive oil fried eggs);
saveur.com
(search fried egg cunningham).
Tips:
Because the egg is everything, try to get organic eggs from chickens that ate natural food. For the best fried egg sandwich, use a decent version of good old American white bread, preferably Pepperidge Farm’s Original. No need to butter it.
See also:
Huevos Rancheros
;
Huevos Estrellados
;
Chakchouka
.

An okra-laced prawn gumbo over steamed rice.

A rich and merrily sustaining mumbo-jumbo of a soup, gumbo includes ingredients as complex and diverse as the cultures represented in each big and welcoming, black-iron potful. It may be a delicately fragrant seafood-and-okra stew blushed with tomatoes, or it may be based on chicken or turkey, strengthened with diced ham or slices of spicy andouille sausage and a finishing flourish of barely poached oysters. Sometimes a wild duck, rabbit, or squirrel will be the featured player, highlighted perhaps by fiery tasso ham. No matter what, the gumbo will always be richly aromatic with thyme, bay leaf, garlic, and onions (and probably celery and tomatoes), its liquid backdrop almost stew-thick. And it will always be ladled into bowls along with mounds of steamed white rice.

A look at the evolution of gumbo makes it easy to understand why the soup is so
frequently invoked as a synonym for the international melting pot. To the French pot-au-feu, thickened with its toasty flour-and-fat roux, West African slaves introduced further thickening via the viscous power of okra, the silky pod they called “gumbo.” When okra was not in season, filé powder, made from crushed dried sassafras leaves and used by native Choctaw Indians, lent viscosity and a burnished outdoorsy flavor.

Whatever its multitude of ingredients, the gumbo must include a roux, and must be further thickened by either okra or filé powder, but never both. Generally, filé is used in more robust gumbos with chicken and sausage, and okra is used in a lighter, more delicate gumbo made with local seafood such as shrimp, crab, and oysters, but excluding finfish or the non-native lobster, clams, or scallops. Okra might also appear in one of the Lenten vegetable gumbos, such as a gumbo z’herbes, whose symbolic seven greens may include green leafy vegetables and herbs such as dill, tarragon, chives, thyme, parsley, and dandelion. Originally introduced to Louisiana by slaves brought from the Congo, like other gumbos it was altered by native Choctaws and Cherokees.

Whether it’s an okra or a filé gumbo, the roux will always be there: a mix of fat and browned flour that adjusts the thickness and modifies the flavor, depending upon the kind of fat it contains. (Once asked if he used butter, bacon, vegetable oil, or rendered poultry fat for his roux, Jan Birnbaum, a Louisiana-born chef known for his monumental gumbos, answered, “All of them together.”) The critical element in producing a fine roux is timing. For a layered complexity that hints of roasted nuts, caramel, and toasted bread, toast the flour slowly over very low heat or in the oven. Depending on the quantity of flour (gumbo chefs always keep a well-browned batch on hand), this step can take an hour or more.

It is fashionable these days to prefer vegetables and other solids, such as shrimp or poultry, firm and almost crunchy. Yet soft-cooked food is a distinctive feature of Southern cooking, probably initially in deference to health safety. Which brings us to yet another commonality in the great wide world of gumbo: All gumbos taste best when held for a day or two and reheated, giving the ingredients a chance to meld into a complex, unctuously flavorful whole.

Where:
In New Orleans
, Gumbo Shop, tel 504-525-1486,
gumboshop.com
; NOLA, tel 504-522-6652,
emerilsrestaurants.com/nola-restaurant
; Delmonico, tel 504-525-4937,
emerilsrestaurants.com/emerils-delmonico
; Emeril’s, tel 504-528-9393,
emerilsrestaurants.com/emerils-neworleans
;
in New Orleans and San Antonio
, Lüke,
lukeneworleans.com
,
lukesanantonio.com
;
in Baton Rouge, LA
, Tony’s Seafood Market & Deli, tel 225-357-9669,
tonyseafood.com
;
in Lafayette LA
, Prejean’s, tel 337-896-3247,
prejeans.com
;
in Houston
, Brennan’s, tel 713-522-9711,
brennanshouston.com
;
in Atlanta
, McKinnon’s Louisiane Restaurant, tel 404-237-1313,
mckinnons.com
;
in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Texas
, The Original Soupman, tel 212-956-0900,
originalsoupman.com
;
in Queens, NY
, Sugar Freak, tel
718-726-5850,
sugarfreak.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Cooking
by Paul Prudhomme (1984);
The Picayune’s Creole Cookbook
by the New Orleans Times-Picayune (1987);
Lafcadio Hearn’s Creole Cookbook
by Lafcadio Hearn (1990);
The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book
by The Times-Picayune Publishing Company (2014);
The American Heritage Cookbook
by the editors of American Heritage Publ. Co. (1964);
epicurious.com
(search gumbo z’herbes; gumbo filé; shrimp and andouille gumbo);
saveur.com
(search mr. b’s gumbo ya-ya; alabama seafood gumbo; a southern gumbo supper).
Special event:
Treme Creole Gumbo Festival, New Orleans, November,
jazzandheritage.org/treme-gumbo
.

Never mind the stereotype of a thick-sliced country ham. True, cured country ham—with a velvety green-white coating of mold developed after a year or two of hanging—offers mahogany-brown meat so bitingly salty it should be sliced razor thin for edibility’s sake, even after soaking. An American specialty far saltier and more ripely potent than the air-and salt-cured
jambón
and prosciutto of Europe, its salt-and-sugar cure gives it a flavor closer to that of China’s Yunnan ham (see
listing
). The most famous of American country hams is produced by Smithfield in Virginia, where hogs are fed local peanuts that impart a nuttiness to the smoke-and-salt overtones.