1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (154 page)

Hot-air poppers and electric poppers (now including kettle roasters) and all manner of popping gadgetry aside, the timeless and most delicious way to enjoy popcorn is fresh out of the kettle. It dazzles when drizzled with plenty of melted butter (not the oily, tasteless pseudo-butters slathered on in many movie theaters) and sprinkled with salt, but may be garnished with an endless variety of more interesting toppings, the best of which include freshly grated Parmesan and sweet or hot paprika, or freshly ground black pepper.

Mail order:
For Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn,
orville.com
; for home poppers, vintage cartons, tubs, and other popcorn kitsch,
epopcorn.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
, 13th edition, by Marion Cunningham (1996);
epicurious.com
(search plain popcorn; chili popcorn; togarashi popcorn; parmesan pepper popcorn; popcorn crunch sundae); The Popcorn Board,
popcorn.org
.

True pork rinds, prized in the South from North Carolina to Texas and many places in between, are referred to by natives as “cracklings.” They are special treats wherever seasonal hog butchering is the custom, and represent a frugal attempt to utilize everything but the oink.

The uninitiated believe cracklings to be fried pig skins, and at times that’s accurate; but generally, cracklings result from the rendering of the pig’s fat, with the exact skin-to-fat ratio earnestly debated among aficionados. Cut into pieces and placed in a lard pot, the trimmed fat (sometimes with a little skin attached) is gently fried until the rinds float to the top. Skimmed from the lard and spread out on a counter or platter lined with several layers of paper towels to drain, the cracklings may be seasoned with salt, black pepper, and chile pepper.

For those lucky enough to attend a hog killing, the most immediate spoils are the hot, salty-smoky cracklings, marvelously crisp and greaseless. As pork and its by-products become ever more fashionable, many quality restaurants are featuring homemade cracklings, which are also easily made in a home kitchen. (The crisp bits can be added to salads, mashed potatoes, polenta (and grits, cornbread, or classic Southern cracklin’ bread.)

A far inferior substitute can be found in the potato chip aisle of supermarkets. These commercial pork rinds are made by cooking small pieces of pigskin in fat heated to 400 degrees until they pop up like popcorn, tasting mainly of salt and grease. As a favorite snack food of the forty-first American president, George H. W. Bush, they experienced a surge in sales in the early 1990s—and because they contain no carbohydrates, for a time they were also briefly embraced by protein-only dieters who ignored their high fat and sodium content.

Where:
In New York
, The Breslin, tel 212-679-1939,
thebreslin.com
;
in San Francisco
, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, tel 415-983-8030,
ferrybuildingmarketplace.com
;
in Los Angeles
, Animal, tel 323-782-9225,
animalrestaurant.com
;
in London
, St. John Smithfield Bar & Restaurant, tel 44/20-7251-0848,
stjohngroup.uk.com
.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search lowrey’s microwave pork rinds; el sabroso pork cracklins).
Further information and recipes:
Cast-Iron Cooking: From Johnnycakes to Blackened Redfish
by A. D. Livingston (2010);
Hoppin’ John’s Low Country Cooking
by John Martin Taylor (1992);
epicurious.com
(search pork cracklings; crackling corn bread).
See also:
Schmaltz
.

With a large ham bone adding smoky overtones to this savory, garlic-zapped dish, the hearty, richly satisfying meal of red beans and rice deserves top billing in the annals of the world’s most delectable peasant foods. A staple of all Louisiana cooks, like the hoppin’ John of the Carolinas and Georgia (see
listing
), it is considered a good-luck dish, to be consumed on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

Far more complex in flavor than its humble ingredients suggest, red beans and rice came to New Orleans via the city’s French, Spanish, and African settlers and the Creole culture they developed. Indeed a poor man’s food, sold inexpensively in diners and luncheonettes in the French Quarter, the dish was a customary Monday special—it takes a long time to prepare, and many family cooks got started on Sundays. Incidentally or not, it’s also considered a great hangover cure, and by mid-morning on Monday, the red-beans-and-rice aroma permeates entire blocks of this party-minded city.

The most noteworthy of all red-beans-and-rice joints was called Buster Holmes, after its chef and owner. For nearly fifty years, it stood watch on the corner of Orleans and Burgundy Streets, a down-and-dirty joint with crowded tables and a counter, big pitchers of Dixie beer, and the world’s most delicious red beans and rice. “Smoked ham and hot sausage are nice, and I like a little garlic,” Buster Holmes told
The New York Times.
The real secret of his dish, however, was its texture. The beans were cooked until they were just tender enough to be falling apart and yet still maintained their shape, resulting in a velvety smoothness that a diner could nonetheless sink his teeth into. Buster Holmes retired in the early 1980s and passed away in 1994, but there are still plenty of New Orleans outposts, plain and fancy, where diners can find quality examples of red beans and rice. One of the best is Mother’s, where the dish is a staple at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So reassuring is this dish that after Hurricane Katrina, in 2006, chefs took to the streets and ladled it out to rescue workers and displaced victims as the city was being rebuilt.

Where:
In New Orleans
, Mother’s, tel 504-523-9656,
mothersrestaurant.net
;
in Asheville, NC
, The Oyster House Brewing Co., tel 828-575-9370,
oysterhousebeers.com
.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search zatarain’s new orleans style red bean seasoning mix; bootsie’s Louisiana Cajun red beans; organic kidney beans).
Further information and recipes:
The Buster Holmes Restaurant Cookbook
by Buster Holmes (2010);
The Dooky Chase Cookbook
by Leah Chase (1990);
nytimes.com
(search new orleans buster holmes sheraton).

The Jersey Shore’s trademark souvenir.

Forget Snooki and her band of “guidos and guidettes.” Nothing says Jersey Shore like the wax-paper-wrapped, pastel-hued knobs of smooth, chewy candy known as saltwater taffy. The charmingly retro sweet actually has British origins, its name an Americanized version of “toffee,” the elastic confection of melted sugar and butter that was classically cooked over an open fire. Cooled on marble slabs, it was thrown onto large, wall-mounted hooks and repeatedly pulled by hand until it grew soft.

The seaside phenomenon started in the late nineteenth century, when a glassblower named Joseph Fralinger set up a taffy stand on the newly opened Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1885. Five years earlier, a confectioner named Enoch James, who would turn out to be Fralinger’s lifelong competitor, had opened a brick-and-mortar candy shop in which he, too, sold taffy. The candy was an ideal beach treat; mostly made of flavored sugar, it was relatively easy for seaside vendors to make, and extremely pleasant for beachgoers to eat.

Contrary to its name, while it does traditionally contain a pinch of salt, it does not contain saltwater. How it came to be known as saltwater taffy is the stuff of legends. Several theories circulate, the most oft-repeated claiming that a Boardwalk candy maker had his stock of candies soaked by either an ambitious ocean wave or a nor’easter, and, having no other inventory, tried to sell the candies the following day. When a little girl came by and tasted a piece of the candy, she asked, “Is this saltwater taffy?”

Atlantic City confectioners, canny marketers long before branding was a science, knew that sea air and water were considered prescriptive cure-alls for a host of illnesses, and sought to capitalize on the term with their wares. Soon, both James and Fralinger were packaging their “saltwater taffy” in nifty, colorful metal tins decorated with scenes of the seascape, and in small and neat white paper sampler boxes. By the turn of the century, few tourists left Atlantic City without one of these assortments. And by then, the flavors and colors were part of the thrill, too. Historians say that molasses was the candy’s first flavor, followed by the perennial favorites vanilla and chocolate. Nowadays there are upwards of twenty, including peanut butter (a big seller) and wintergreen (one of the least requested, according to candy makers).

As the world has gotten bigger, and saltwater taffy has spread down the Eastern seaboard, the taffy world has shrunk in some ways. Fralinger’s and James’ merged in 1990, but the parent company, a fifth-generation business run by the Glaser family, still keeps the brands
separate, each with their respective recipes (which the family swears are different), flavors, box decorations, and store locations.

The gold standard of saltwater taffy is its texture and softness, and saltwater taffy sometimes gets a bad name from the old, hard pieces that lurk in candy stores and counters far from the Shore. But freshly made, it is singularly tender and chewy, a junky food that’s easy to love and, once you’re hooked, difficult to forget.

Retail and mail order:
In Atlantic City and on the Jersey Shore
, Fralinger’s and James’ Candy at various locations, tel 800-441-1404,
jamescandy.com
;
in Virginia Beach, VA, and the Outerbanks, NC
, Forbes Candies at various locations, tel 800-626-5898,
forbescandies.com
.

Ideally composed of nothing more than earthy potato, salt, and oil, the intensely crispy potato chip is a fairly humble creation. But the irresistible combination of delicate, light-as-air texture and starchily addictive delectability make the thin, fried slice of potato an inspired innovation.

Although sliced deep-fried potatoes had existed in France since the late eighteenth century, Americans got the credit for inventing the potato chip. Regardless of its origin, the United States is definitely the place where the chip made its name—a case in point being March 14, National Potato Chip Day.

The king of all American snack foods was born (or improved) in the swanky horse-racing spa town of Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1853. A persnickety, well-to-do diner at Moon’s Lake House sent his fried potatoes back to the kitchen for being cut too thick. The irritated cook, George Crum, sliced a new batch of potatoes into paper-thin disks, fried them, and liberally sprinkled them with salt, undoubtedly thinking he had sent a somewhat insulting message—“
These too thick for you, buddy?
” But the crunchy chips, light as air and tinglingly salty, were an instant hit. Crum became so famous for his chips that he opened his own restaurant in 1860, with a clientele that included the likes of the Hiltons and the Vanderbilts. Atop every table, Crum placed his signature “Saratoga chips” in baskets, and also sold boxes of them for takeout.

Sadly for him, he never patented or otherwise protected his invention, and soon the addictively crisp snacks had made their way to New York and then all around the country, becoming known simply as potato chips. In 2009, two entrepreneurs, Dan Jameson and Paul Tator, visited the Saratoga Springs History Museum and discovered an original box of Crum’s chips. Upon further discovering that they had never been trademarked, they wisely bought the brand and now market their wares (actually made in Saratoga) as “The Original Saratoga Chips.” One improvement has been the dark russets: chips cooked longer than usual to achieve an even toastier, more burnished finish.