Author: Walter Thames

Though not all the world’s fine cuisines began as peasant food, many owe some of their most unique creations to the ingenuity of some poor man or woman trying desperately not to starve. Some very hungry man ate the first raw oyster. Another, lacking an oven or a knife, coated a dead chicken in mud and built a fire on top of it. In Louisiana, they boiled shrimp heads and skins so that they’d have something left after the good part was gone.

These Cajuns, bless their poor peasant hearts, created one of the finest stocks in the world. I had the honor of making one the other day, courtesy of Huntsville’s newest, and possibly its only, seafood market that sells shrimp with the heads still on. An aside in case you didn’t know – shrimp heads fall off after three days or so. You can sell shrimp with no heads a lot longer. Think about that when you’re shopping for shrimp.

Back to the stock. Drop the shrimp heads and skins in a pot of hot olive oil and toss with paprika and black pepper. Cook until everything is pink. Add a bottle of white wine and cook till it’s reduced. Add vegetables, spices, water and boil slowly for an hour or so. The result is this rich, red powerful stock. So strong it’s what you’d use to revive a dying man.

And here’s how to put the stock to good use. Make a butter roux – butter and flour stirred until caramel colored – toss in the Cajun trinity – onions, celery, bell peppers – stir in crushed tomatoes and corn and then a generous portion of the shrimp head stock. Let it bubble for a long time and then, just before you serve, dump in the shrimp whose heads you recently removed.

Serve it only to people you really like, or to people who have paid you to make it. Both will be very, very happy.

One of my first blogs was about margarine, a subject about which I have some passion. I wondered how it came to be, why a human being with a choice would eat it, and overall my bewilderment that it exists at all. I really just don’t understand why one would eat something avowedly fake and think it was a good thing.

My love of real butter deepened, though, last week when I made a coq au vin for my regular dieting customers (yes, there is indeed a diet that does allow if not celebrate chicken in wine). This French recipe, courtesy of Julia Child, requires that the chicken, mushrooms and onions, all essentials, be cooked in hot butter. Because I am a simple cook and not Julia Child, I worried that my commercial stove top – which could probably render ore into iron – would burn the butter. So I clarified it – a simple process to remove the milk solids that will burn at low temperatures.

For someone who regularly cooks with either olive oil, canola or grape seed oil, this ghee – as it is known in India – is fascinating stuff. The chicken slides around in the pan and gets the right shade of brown without sticking or burning. Hot spots didn’t seem to affect the browning. Mushrooms retain all their nice moisture while cooking to a light tan all over. I was most pleased, and plan to use it again and again. You should too.

And here’s a nice way to make a morning omelet special. Cook it in whatever oil you like, but serve it atop a pat of butter. It will melt, flow and form a delicious base for you to break your evening fast.

Bon appétit.

In a country that worships the lowest possible price for almost everything, I’m something of a non-conformist. I’ve always reacted badly to cheap. Like Dickens, I don’t care for stingy people. I have trouble understanding penury. I don’t think low cost trumps everything when shopping. That could be why I’m not what one might call a wealthy man.

As a cook, though, cheap makes me crazy. When I see a deal on food that sounds too good to be true, my eyes narrow and I get suspicious. Knowing something about food and how basic ingredients are made into meals, I look at an ad for a taco or a hamburger or a chicken sandwich that costs $1.00 or less and I don’t squeal with delight at all the money I’ll save. I squeal with angst about the godawful things that the food chain must have done to make it so cheap. It’s either a loss leader to get you in the store where they can sell you more profitable stuff – like $2 or $3 for a quart of carbonated sugar water, or they’re actually able to make money on the $1 item. If the latter, then the cost of the ad, the building, the poster on the counter, the packaging, employees etc. all comes out of the dollar, leaving maybe $0.10 to $0.12 for the food, or less. If there’s meat in it, you’re probably not getting the best parts of the beast. And the parts you are getting have likely been processed in ways polite people don’t discuss on the radio.

If I want a burger, I’d much rather get one at a local burger joint – like the one on Whitesburg – where you can see the cooks grab a batch of meat and pat it into a burger, slap it on the grill and cook it. And where you pay more than a dollar for the result.

Let me start this rumination on food and its enjoyment with a quote from William Butler Yeats.

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,

Now, Yeats was not thinking about food when he wrote this. Far from it. He was more concerned with the price one has to pay – what one must give up in exchange for the toil and concentration required to become a great poet.

I have lowlier concerns, and being a cook, when I think about Yeat’s Choice, I do think about food. And making good food seems to dance in the middle here between creating a good life and creating excellent work.

I know, for example, when I prepare a carrot juice and star anise reduction, that I am making the essence of delight. No one, and I’ve presented it to or forced it on many, can taste that without a keen sense that their life is now better than it used to be. Any chef can point to similar dishes. Chocolate-y things. Rubbing your finger around the bowl that used to contain a mousse, or licking the wire whip dripping with hollandaise. Each dish is the product, believe me, of much toil, focused attention to detail, worried tweaking of the seasoning, anxious concern for viscosity, for the right smell. For all that goes into setting high expectations for a dish and fulfilling them.

In fact, I don’t think you can achieve excellence in food – or something close to it – without at the same time giving proper attention to perfection of your life, certainly your enjoyment of your life. Yeats was absolute in his devotion to his work, but if he had been a great cook, instead of a great poet, I have a hard time thinking that the life and the work would have been so at odds.