1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (160 page)

In the 1931 film
The Public Enemy
, James Cagney made cinematic history by angrily smashing a half-grapefruit into Mae Clark’s face while they were seated at the breakfast table. The characters would have had a much better start to their day had they
eaten
the refreshingly sunny and tart, bittersweet citrus fruit—but then they would have robbed generations of film buffs of a disturbing, innovative, and much-discussed scene.

Introduced to Florida via seeds brought from Barbados in 1823 by one Count Odet Philippe, the fruit originally descended from the Jamaican sweet orange and the pomelo. That citrus fruit, the largest known, sailed from the East Indies to the Caribbean in 1696 with the seafaring Captain Shaddock, and may account for grapefruit’s French name,
pamplemousse
and the Italian name,
pompelo.
The English name is a reminder that the fruit tends to grow in grapelike clusters.

Grapefruit’s American story began in Florida along the Indian River, where the salt-infused soil is ideal for citrus trees. That state still grows the best grapefruit in the country and perhaps in the world, easily besting California and Texas, Spain, Cuba, China, Mexico, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Israel. The fruit comes in two distinct color families: the lean, elegant, pale yellow to diamond white, and the pink to ruby red. To a high content of Vitamins A and C, rosy grapefruit adds the antioxidant lycopene (the redder the fruit, the higher the lycopene)—though purists favor the yellow-white grapefruit for being zestier. The elegantly sunny, so-called white grapefruit has a sharper, clearer flavor than the sweeter red, but, perversely, is more difficult to find at greengrocers, perhaps because rose red has greater eye appeal. Interestingly, nature presents a dilemma with this fruit: While it is low in calories and offers beneficial vitamins, it also works against the effects of a certain category of medications, most notably including statins.

Grapefruit can be round or ovoid in shape, the latter awkward to serve, as the top, or pointed half, is difficult to nest in a bowl. Whatever the variety, look for bright and unbruised thin skin, a regular shape, and many tiny pinpoints of rust that indicate ripeness and the development of sugar, ensuring that the fruit will not be too sour. A seedless grapefruit (such as a Marsh) will have less flavor than one with large seeds (such as a Duncan), and the fruits should always be stored in the refrigerator.

Cut your grapefruit as close to serving time as possible, and remember that the bottom half will always be the juicier, a fact that might help you decide who gets which. Cut the fruit in half horizontally, then loosen each section with the small, curved, serrated blade of a grapefruit knife. Very sour grapefruit may need a light sprinkling of sugar, but there is no excuse for the travesty that is hot grapefruit, coated with white or brown sugar or honey, and perhaps cinnamon or sherry, then glazed under the broiler.

If you’re feeling ambitious, save leftover grapefruit shells in the refrigerator until you have enough to make a sublime bitter marmalade, or to candy as you would orange peel.

Mail order:
For Indian River grapefruit, Hale Groves, tel 800-562-4502,
halegroves.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys
by David Tanis (2010);
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
, 13th edition, by Marion Cunningham (1996);
The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (2006);
epicurious.com
(search grapefruit ambrosia; grapefruit tart; avocado and grapefruit salad; grapefruit campari sorbetto).
Tip:
The prime season for Florida grapefruit is from November through March.
See also:
Candied Citrus Peel
.

Chef Puck adding final touches.

The early life of the boyishly charming and wildly charismatic chef Wolfgang Puck hardly suggests a candidate for “guy who’d help invent California cuisine.” The son of a hotel resort chef and a coal miner from Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria, Puck was shipped off to work in a restaurant at the age of fourteen. It was tough-going by all reports, but he worked his way through kitchens of distinction in France and landed in America—to cook in Indianapolis. “I knew about the race so I figured, oh boy, this place must be like Monte Carlo,” he told
The New York Times
in 1992.

Eventually some canny Los Angeles businessmen discovered Puck, and by 1982 he managed to open his own restaurant, Spago (“string” in Italian, and slang for spaghetti), on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. With the décor of a modern, airy beach house, the whitewashed room had a huge open kitchen and an in-the-know vibe, and almost immediately became famous for its chic atmosphere, A-list celebrity clientele, and hip fare.

Puck’s “New American” cuisine blended Italian, French, and German influences and was especially beloved for its inventive salads and pizzas—none more than the smoked salmon version, a favorite of Joan Collins, Oprah, and Brad Pitt. “We got in some great smoked salmon and we didn’t have time to bake bread so we made pizza,” Mr. Puck has said of his creation. “Sometimes you make the best food when you are under pressure and have to improvise. You just have to have great ingredients to work with.” Perhaps that’s modest: You also have to have the ability to craft perfect pizza dough that manages to be both chewy and crisp, and the fortuitous insight to predict how, if you layer the smoked salmon on top of the pizza only
after
it comes out of the brick oven, it will become even more velvety and smooth.

Brushed with good-quality extra virgin olive oil and scattered with red onion slivers, the dough was cooked for three minutes in an impossibly hot wood-fired pizza oven. Taken out crisp and brown, it was slathered in dill crème, and then piled with extra-thin slices of house-smoked salmon, fresh chives, and several generous dollops of caviar.

Since those early days of improvisation, Puck has had an exceedingly well-choreographed career, complete with many more restaurants, brand extensions, and cookbooks. The original Spago was relocated to a new, highly glamorous dining room in Beverly Hills, where it remains something of a mecca for glitzy housewives, agents, and all manner of movie stars. The smoked salmon pizza, which was off the menu for a number of years and available only to regulars and special guests, is now back in rotation—for lunch only.

Where:
In Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Maui, Beaver Creek, CO
, Spago,
wolfgangpuck.com
; some of Puck’s other restaurants, (of which there are more than sixty) including the Wolfgang Puck Bistro in Tulsa, OK, serve the pizza as well (albeit without the caviar).
Further information and recipes:
Wolfgang Puck’s Pizza, Pasta, and More!
by Wolfgang Puck (2004);
The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook
by Wolfgang Puck (1996);
nytimes.com
(search wolfgang puck’s smoked salmon pizza);
yumsugar.com
(search pizza smoked salmon).

Bright, busy, loud, and joyful, Au Pied de Cochon is an essential stop for visitors to Montreal who like their meat luscious, fatty, and abundant—or in short, delicious. That is true whether one opts for anything made with foie gras (most especially the tart) or the bison tongue heady with tarragon. There are nose-to-tail pork cuts, such as a half or a whole head (roasted for two), chops, and feet, or you can opt for the meat in tarts, terrines, and the pigs’ blood sausage, boudin.

To no one’s surprise, the operatic chef-owner, Martin Picard, a TV personality who has shared the screen with Anthony Bourdain, turns out a mean hamburger, but why would you settle for that when more enticing choices, such as tartares and ribs of bison or venison and a rosy carpaccio of duck breast, beckon? Duck and guinea hen are all you will find under the heading “Volaille”; mere chickens need not apply. And along with three versions of poutine (see
listing
), there are sides, including crisp, savory
frites
infused with duck fat.

An open kitchen lends excitement here, as does theatrical tableside service. Don’t miss a signature dish of duck for which the savory bird is steamed along with foie gras and garlic-infused cabbage, all within a tin can set in boiling water for just under half an hour: Picard’s own version of
sous vide
cookery.

Lemon tart, crème brûlée, chocolate fondant, or sugar tart for dessert? Maybe you should have thought of that earlier.

Where:
536 Avenue Duluth East, Montreal, tel 514-281-1114,
restaurantaupieddecochon.ca
.
Further information and recipes:
Au Pied de Cochon
by Martin Picard (2006).

Canada puts its own twist on French cheesemaking.

Given cheese’s key place in both English and French food traditions, it’s surprising that Canada does not have a more vibrant assortment of locally made cheeses. Still, a few deserve the attention of cheese lovers, whether they consider themselves turophiles (from the Greek
tyros
, meaning cheese) or caseophiles (from the Latin
caseus
). Fortunately, all travel well south of the Canadian border.

Oka is the first of these, an all-around snacking cheese that was created by Trappist monks who emigrated to Canada in the mid-nineteenth century and settled in the town of Oka, close to Montreal. They brought with them the method of producing Port Salut, a creamy, ripening, raw cow’s milk cheese from their native province of Brittany. Their version has become a mildly tangy, satisfying, and gently chewy accompaniment to apples, pears, or crackling Scandinavian crisp breads, considered by some fans to be a plausible substitute for the richer, more complex, Burgundian Abbaye de Cîteaux. Although today’s Oka is made of pasteurized cow’s milk by the agricultural cooperative Agropur, the brown-crusted, four-pound wheels of cheese are still aged in the monastery cellars.

Not too surprisingly, Canada turns out a few noteworthy Cheddars, a legacy of the country’s British origins. The best comes from the Forfar Dairy in Ontario, where the cheese matures for as long as nine years. But even younger Forfar cheeses provide the needling bite and slight granular crunch of calcium lactate crystals that delight Cheddar lovers and are usually characteristic of only long-aged cheese. Less distinguished perhaps, but more widely available and affordable, the buttery, smooth Black Diamond Cheddar is among the best of the mass-produced varieties. The older it is, the sharper and firmer, of course, and most of the black-wax-covered pieces in upscale food stores are marked with their age. Like most cheeses, Black Diamond is best cut to order from a large block or wheel. Because it is high in butterfat and only gently sharp, Black Diamond works well as part of the shortening in an apple pie crust (see
listing
).

That English flair for Cheddars meets the French fondness for goat’s milk in providing the inspiration for a series of black-wax-covered Québécois goat’s milk Cheddars. They combine the funky patina and teasing saltiness of goat’s milk cheeses with the firmness and slight chewiness of nicely crumbly Cheddars. The most distinguished is snowy Le Chèvre Noir, aged for a minimum of nine months and produced by Fromagerie Tournevent in the Quebec-province city of Chesterville.

Where:
In New York and environs
, Fairway Markets at multiple locations,
fairwaymarket.com
; Zabar’s, tel 212-787-2000,
zabars.com
.
Mail order:
For Black Diamond Cheddar and Tournevent Chèvre Noir, amazon.com; for Oka,
igourmet.com
; for Forfar Cheddar, Forfar Dairy, tel 613-272-2107,
forfar.com
.