America Starts Here

First, let me apologize for not posting last week after you received an email saying I would. Second I want to apologise to those of you that have heard my 3 stories.  This is I think, the story I've told to almost everyone I know.  Perhaps you've heard this more than once.  If you haven't already clicked away, there will be a new food related spin to the story.

We moved from New York to the Midwest, Detroit, 20 years ago.  While having lunch with coworkers we got to talking about how things were different between New York and the Midwest. I was telling how in New York we have delis, not "party stores".  And how when you go to a deli the guy there makes you your sandwich fresh.  You don't go to the cooler to pick out a sandwich that was made at a plant across town and shipped to the store in triangular shaped plastic boxes.  And when you go to the deli department at the market, the guy cuts your meats and cheeses to order.  They don't have a tray with 5-pounds of turkey already sliced.  And in New York you...

Just then Lori said "WELL HERE IN AMERICA WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY".  I told Lori I didn't know New York wasn't part of America.  She seemed embarrassed for about a second or two, but then composed herself and insisted that I get used to being an American.

A few weeks later Merri and I (at that time sans kids) drove back to New York for the Holidays to visit the family.  On the way back from New York, after driving through New Jersey, we came upon a sign just like this one:

WELCOME TO PENNSYLVANIA * AMERICA STARTS HERE *

Lori was very happy to hear that New York and New Jersey were not part of America. (Note:Detroit for it's crappy delis, had a considerable number of REALLY GREAT ethnic restaurants of all kinds: Italian, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Korean, etc., etc.)

Back to the beginning: Presliced Cold Cuts.

Increase The Surface Area, Increase The Aging.

About a hundred years ago I was the "Cold Cook" at the North Shore Country Club, on Long Island. I was responsible for salads and sandwiches, cold appetizers and some prep for the hot side. All of our salad dressings were homemade; no bottled dressings. Once in a while, I'd even have to make a gallon of mayo if we ran out.

We used a "crumbled" bleu cheese to make our bleu cheese dressing. It came in a 2 or 3 pound bag. On one occasion, either due to order error, or due to being shorted by our supplier, we ran out of crumbled bleu cheese. To make the dressing that day I pulled a 5 pound piece of bleu cheese out of the walk-in and cut half of it into 1/4" to 1/2" cubes.Every customer that ordered bleu cheese on their salads that night raved! The dressing was already better than anything you could buy in a bottle, but this batch was "outstanding".

The difference: "freshness". The surface of many foods like beef, fish, and cheese, degrade due to exposure to air, or light, or both. With a large cut meat, a whole fish, or a block of cheese, the ratio of surface area to total volume is very small. A cubic foot of cheese has 6 square feet of surface area (6:1). If I cut that cubic foot of cheese into cubic inches I increase my surface area to 72 square feet (72:1). If I cut it into 1/2" cubes, my surface area climbs to 144 square feet.So my crumbled bleu cheese had many times the surface area being exposed to light and to some degree, air, for perhaps a week or two, between the time is was crumbled and bagged at the cheese plant, and when the club members ate their salads.

So did we change our recipe to include only block bleu cheese? No.

You might now ask, "So Bill, why are you telling me this story?

Cutting that bleu cheese into little bitty cubes was very tedious and time consuming. The more I worked with the cheese, the softer it got, which made it more difficult to cut. Our bleu cheese dressing was already great, so the increased value of the "fantastic" dressing was not enough to rationalize the change. I still had to make other dressings, cut veggies, devein shrimp, shuck oysters, etc., etc. But what I learned from this experience is that when there is a holiday, a birthday, an anniversary, or any occasion that might include special guests, sometimes it's worth going the extra mile. If you're putting candles on the table, go buy a small block of Parmesan from the cheese department at your market, and grate it over your guests plate.

Buy and cook whole fish. Buy the whole beef tenderloin and cut it into fillets just before cooking. For my own dinner on Tuesday night, give me the preshucked oysters in the tub. For a special dinner with the boss, it's the oysters in the shells, shipped 24 hours from Nantucket to my fish man.
I know I still have that recipe for bleu cheese dressing somewhere. If I can find it, I'll post it here. And if you want to use crumbled bleu cheese, go ahead; it's still great. But if your not making 2 gallons of dressing, an extra 5 minutes and you'll have a dressing "to die for".

Bill
Head Dishwasher