1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (224 page)

Nutmeg was so expensive and prized in colonial America that skilled craftsmen turned wood into false nutmegs, a practice so prevalent in Connecticut that it has been known as the Nutmeg State ever since. A warning to the naive was, “Don’t take any wooden nutmegs.”

The evergreen
Myristica fragrans
has now spread throughout the tropics, particularly in Grenada, where its large yellow fruits fall to the ground when ripe, then crack open to reveal the spindly, fire-red aril, which makes mace, literally gripping the nutmeg seed within its yellow-gold, apricotlike fruit. Both nutmeg and mace are exported and used in dishes worldwide.

Sometimes it seems as though hints of nutmeg appear everywhere. It is an ingredient in the expected host of cookies, cakes, and pies (and no cup of eggnog would be complete without it), but it’s also a prevalent flavor in
Coca-Cola, pickles, and savory dishes such as quiche Lorraine (see
listing
) and tortellini. It also does wonders for cooked spinach, plain or creamed (see
listing
).

Sold whole, in dried, lacy pieces called blades, as well as ground, mace is interchangeable with nutmeg in recipes, although mace is decidedly sharper in flavor and a bit sweeter, with hints of citrus and coriander. Its subtlety is most prized in French béchamels and India’s spice mix garam masala, and it is a traditional flavoring in all-American hot dogs and doughnuts. Incidentally, unlike pepper spray—which is made from capsaicin, the compound that gives peppers their fire—the spray called Mace has no relation to the spice. It is a much more benign seasoning, and far from weapons-grade.

Mail order:
For top-quality whole Indonesian nutmeg,
chefshop.com
, tel 800-596-0885; for nutmeg and mace, Kalustyan’s, tel 800-352-3451,
kalustyans.com
; Penzeys Spices, tel 800-741-7787,
penzeys.com
; for a nutmeg grater,
fantes.com
; Sur La Table, tel 800-243-0852,
surlatable.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Caribbean Pot Luck
by Suzanne Rousseau and Michele Rousseau (2014);
Indian Cooking Unfolded
by Raghavan Iyer (2013);
Visions of Sugarplums
by Mimi Sheraton (1968); for quiche Lorraine,
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961);
epicurious.com
(search wilted spinach with nutmeg butter; spice cookies; mace cake; ras el hanout);
saveur.com
(search nutmeg infused eggnog; nutmeg ice cream; nutmeg doughnuts; she-crab soup);
jovinacooksitalian.com
(search tortellini en brodo).
Tip:
Once you’ve grated fresh nutmeg over a dish, you’ll never again be satisfied with the preground type, whose flavor fades fast. Invest in a good small grater.

The golden syrup called treacle is the magic ingredient that imparts sweetly burnished overtones to this crunchy, round oatmeal-and-coconut biscuit (or “cookie” to Americans), a beloved treat in Australia and New Zealand whether freshly baked or purchased in packages. Devised by Australian women in search of delicious but durable biscuits to bake and send to their serviceman husbands, far off in battle during World War I, ANZAC biscuits have become an icon of national pride—especially on April 25, a day of commemoration for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Conceived to recognize those who fought courageously in 1915 during the ill-fated battle of Gallipoli, perhaps one of the worst military defeats in Australia’s history, ANZAC Day now honors servicemen killed in all of the country’s wars.

Makes about 30 cookies

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus butter for greasing the baking sheet

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons treacle (golden syrup)

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 to 3 tablespoons boiling water

¾ cup sifted all-purpose flour

1 cup uncooked rolled oats or old-fashioned oats

¾ cup dried flaked unsweetened coconut

Pinch of salt

1.
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Butter a large baking sheet.

2.
Combine the butter, sugar, treacle, and baking soda in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat. Add just enough boiling water to form a smooth mixture. Increase heat to moderate and let it come to a boil, then remove it from the heat.

3.
Stir in the flour, oats, coconut, and salt. Mix thoroughly. Form large cookies by dropping 1 tablespoon of dough at a time onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing the cookies about 2½ inches apart. Bake the cookies until they are golden brown and crisp, 20 to 30 minutes.

4.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool. The cookies can be stored for up to three weeks in an airtight container in a cool place, but not in the refrigerator.

Where:
In Wellington, New Zealand
, Logan Brown, tel 64/480-151-14,
loganbrown.co.nz
;
in New York
, The Musket Room, tel 212-219-0764,
musketroom.com
;
in Brooklyn
, Kiwiana, tel 718-230-3682,
kiwiana-nyc.com
;
in Los Angeles
, Bronzed Aussie, tel 213-243-0770,
bronzedaussie.us
;
in Marietta, GA
, Australian Bakery Café, tel 678-797-6222,
australianbakerycafe.com
;
in Vancouver
, Moose’s Down Under Bar and Grill, tel 604-683-3300,
moosesdownunder.com
.
Mail order:
aussiefoodmart.com
(search anzac); for treacle,
britishfooddepot.com
.

Barramundi is a sweet and buttery fish with a delicate texture.

As the silvery-bronze, red-eyed barramundi feed on small fish and crustaceans, their firm, white flesh develops a complex, pan-oceanic flavor. That is what makes
Lates calcarifer
one of Australia’s most highly prized and most expensive eating fish, especially when they are caught in moving estuary waters, which impart a clean, delicate flavor to the fish. (The spirited fighters are also favorite game fish around northern Australia; they are suckers for live bait, especially crabs and shrimp.)

Named by Australian aborigines, and also known as giant sea perch, barramundi like to hang around rocky ledges and assorted brambles in brackish waters where sea and freshwater meet. Older specimens caught in the muddier waters, especially in winter, sometimes acquire the same sort of musty, earthy overtones common to bottom-feeding catfish and carp, a flavor some connoisseurs value and others loathe.

Barramundi is now imported, fresh and frozen, into the U.S., along with other excellent if slightly less lauded Australian fish, such as Tasmanian ocean trout (a rainbow trout with delicate salmon-pink flesh, farmed in saltwater) and hiramasa kingfish (richly oily fish with pearl-gray flesh that is high in Omega-3s). In some cases, barramundi is raised in Australia from tiny live specimens sent over from Chinese hatcheries in sealed sacks of water.

Barramundi’s flavor is far too subtle to survive breading and frying; the light, smooth flesh is best appreciated by broiling and baking—although even that requires a good deal of basting with melted butter. For an authentic touch, there’s also the cooking method favored by Australian aborigines and described by Alan Davidson in
Seafood: A Connoisseur’s Guide and Cookbook:
wrapping a whole barramundi in fresh ginger leaves and baking it outdoors under white-hot coals.

Where:
In Sydney and environs
, Doyles on the Beach, tel 61/2-9337-2007,
doyles.com.au
;
in Cairns, Australia
, Ochre Restaurant, tel 64/7-4051-0100,
ochrerestaurant.com.au
;
in New York
, The Australian, tel 212-869-8601,
theaustraliannyc.com
.
Mail order:
For frozen barramundi, Anderson Seafoods, tel 855-654-3474,
shopandersonseafoods.com
.
Further information and recipes:
A Multitude of Fishes
by Ann Creber (1987);
Seafood: A Connoisseur’s Guide and Cookbook
by Alan Davidson (1989);
Sydney Seafood School
by Roberta Muir (2014);
goodhousekeeping.com
(search barramundi);
thebetterfish.com
;
epicurious.com
(search roasted barramundi);
www.nativefish.asn.au
(search barramundi);
finecooking.com
(search charmoula barramundi).

Freshly sliced abalone.

If you have any doubts that the snowy, saline, gently chewy meat of the abalone is altogether delicious, consider the hardships gone through to harvest and prepare it and the sky-high prices it commands. A tough mollusk of the
Haliotis
family and really a giant sea snail, it clings to rocks with a long abductor muscle that’s known as a foot and is its edible part. The foot must be pried off the rocks with a special metal tool wielded by deep-sea divers, a dangerous endeavor that results in fatalities each year.