Year: 2018

Fog Island: a breakfast favorite

Right downtown is one of the best breakfasts you can get: at Fog Island on South Water Street. Popular with both locals and visitors, this reasonably priced restaurant serves breakfast (7 till noon) and lunch (11 to 2) to really delighted customers. They also feature takeout rolls and breakfast sandwiches.

Run by Mark and Anne Dawson since 1993, this fine example simple, but elegant cuisine is a Nantucket landmark.

At this morning’s visit, we went for the French toast and Buttermilk pancakes for a change. The elegant French Toast presentation is featured above. And the pancakes are so capacious you can hardly photograph them! These are plate filling pancakes so large that you don’t need to order the full stack. Really. You don’t. In fact, the sausage was served on a separate plate because there was no room.

We also appreciated the Tazo tea served in an actual teapot. We’re already looking forward to another visit!

Nantucket goes trendy and incoherent

Well, it had to happen. Kale and quinoa have taken over the island’s restaurants.

Some of this is caused by the new “restaurant,” Lemon Press, which has taken “Fresh, organic and healthy” to new sweet and lows. Only one of these three adjectives has an actual meaning! They serve a number of incoherent smoothies, my favorite in incoherence is the TB12, with “blueberries, banana, almond milk, almond butter, flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, vegan protein.” Oy. They also offer acai bowls which have no real benefit and the Vegan Brekky, made up of “lentil veggie cake, greens, avocado, tomato, muhammara,” the point at which we realize they are speaking some other language entirely.

Looking through the Nantucket Restaurant Guide, you will find all sorts of menuish obfuscations such as

Shrimp Shumai : Asian dumpling with ohitashi, scallion and shoyu (at the late, lamented Atlas)
Seared Local Cod: Red quinoa, roasted cauliflower, harissa béarnaise, cucumber raita and cilantro (Black Eyed Susan’s)
Blue corn sopes, ancho chili pork, cotija cheese, avocado, radish sprouts, strained kefir (Galley Beach)
Organic Coffee and Tea: with raw sugar, agave, organic creamers (dairy and non-dairy) (The Green)
Cavendish Quali: Green Freekh Tabbouleh, Aged Balsamic (Le Languedoc)
Cali Power Breakfast: Organic egg, cheddar cheese, spinach, avocado, tomato on a 7-grain bag. (Lemon Press)
Asian Foot Long Wagyu Dog: wasabi aioli, cucumber, pickled carrot, cilantro, jalapeno, nori, fries (Met on Main. Aw, come on!)
Razor Clam Garganeli: choriço and chopped clam Bolognese, sweety drop peppers, stinging nettle pasta, onion cream. (Oran Mor)
Quail “Tikka Masala”: Cous cous, honey, cashews, raita. (Proprietors)
Wood-grilled softshell crab: asparagus mimosa and sauce gribiche. (Straight Wharf)
Caesar: Grilled bread croutons, baby romaines, parmigiano, boquerones. (Summer House)
Carnaroli Risotto “Fruits de Mer”: Red rock crab, Judith Point squid, uni, bottarga, brown butter. (Toppers).
Spaghetti alle vongole: house spaghetti, littleneck clams, braised allium and house made n’duja. (Ventuno)
Acai Bowl: Frozen organic acai puree, fresh mixed berries, banana, granola, coconut flake. (Yummy)

Ok, now all of these are (mostly) credible restaurants serving good to excellent food. But look, people, ”Organic” is a marketing term with no health or nutrition benefits, and there is no evidence that acai berries have any health (or weight loss) benefits. And confusing diners with trendy terms is funny, but not very evocative. And raw sugar is still sugar! And so is agave.

Photos from some of these restaurants

Ocean trout Toppers

Kimchi Proprietors

Ocean trout Toppers Kimchi, Proprietors

Eggs Benedict ..Blackeyed Susans Scallops…Galley Beach

Cod ..Le Languedoc Beet rosace..Oran Mor

Flounder… Summer House Meatballs…Ventuno

We try Nueske’s Premium Bacon

We recently received a catalog offering s number of Nueske’s premium pork products, starting with their 5 types of bacon, and going on to offer sausages, ham, smoke pork chops and other products. The photos and descriptions were so beguiling, we had to try the bacon. We ordered their Gourmet Bacon Assortment, of Applewood Smoked Bacon, Applewood Smoked Peppered Bacon and Cherrywood Smoked Bacon, which is uncured.

The assortment cost $34.99 plus shipping, which made this bacon pretty expensive, probably twice what you pay for supermarket bacon, but this bacon itself was of superior quality and quite delicious. They also have a thick sliced version that you can cook on a grill. We’ll have to try that, too.

Nueske’s is located in Wittenberg, Wisconsin, west of Green Bay, where they have been making their smoked meats since 1933. However, the family has there since 1882, making smoked meats for themselves. Today, they use imported spices and still use the original Nueske recipes. They smoke their bacon for 24 hours over applewood embers, which gives is quite a distinctive, delicious taste. It also is much less fatty than mass-market bacons, although, of course, it does render some fat when you cook it.

Their Applewood Smoked Bacon is cured with water, salt, sugar, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrite, while their Wild Cherrywood smoked bacon is uncured, but treated with sea salt, raw sugar and cultured celery juice (which provides the nitrite preservatives).

We tried all three types, and loved all of them.

The Applewood Smoked bacon has the strongest flavor, but it is in no way objectionable, and the bacon goes very well with traditional bacon and eggs breakfasts. While there is some fat rendered as you cook it, the bacon shrinks much less than commercial bacons, but there is enough fat to fry eggs in.

The Peppered Bacon, is the same type of bacon as the Applewood Smokes, but with coarse pepper along the edges. You might think this would overwhelm the bacon, but it really doesn’t. After cooking, the Peppered Bacon has a mild, peppery taste not unlike what you’d get if you added salt and pepper to your eggs.

Finally, the Wild Cherrywood Smoked Bacon is uncured, and you have to keep it refrigerated (or frozen). The smoky flavor is milder than in the applewood smoked bacon, but it has just as little shrinkage, and we cooked eggs in the fat from 5 slices and had plenty to work with. We really like this one the best.

Yes, it costs more, but this is really excellent bacon, and we’ll probably order some more and try out their smoked pork chops and hams, too.

Roundup verdict in California: nothing to do with science

You have probably read about the verdict in California where a jury awarded the plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson $280 million in damages because he developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma while working as a groundskeeper and using Roundup.

You never know how juries make their decisions, as attorney and farmer, Amanda Zaluckyj explains. But we can be sure, that science had nothing to do with it. Maybe they chose to disregard the science because they sympathized with Mr Johnson’s severe lymphoma. But, as Monsanto pointed out in the trial, Johnson’s lymphoma was diagnosed some 10 years before he began using Roundup.

Maybe they didn’t like Monsanto. The Organic Consumers Association, and US Right To Know have been pushing this anti-biotechnology line for years in order to scare people into using their pricier organic products. Henry Miller has even connected these attacks to the Russian government.

But the science is very clear and has been for years. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup has about the same toxicity as salt or aspirin. It has been in use since 1974 and is incredible effective and incredibly safe. Here’s one review on toxicity and here’s another on carcinogenicity.

Probably the only actual report of Roundup causing cancer was made by the IARC, a small French research unit, who when they lost their budget, joined the WHO as a small research division. The trouble with that group is that they were not scientifically driven, but politically driven, considering only a few cherry-picked papers out of the hundreds of papers available on Roundup. And their conclusion was driven by lobbyist Christopher Portier, who formerly worked for the Environmental Defense Fund. Portier is not, however, a toxicologist. So, when the IARC declared that Roundup was “probably carcinogenic” they were not considering scientific data, but driven by politics. I wrote about this in detail here.

Soon after this, the WHO overrode the IARC, and, along with the UN, declared that Roundup was NOT carcinogenic, based on available scientific data. The EFSA quickly agreed.

Courtrooms are not a good place for science, because juries do not try to understand the scientific method or scientific findings, and instead try to connect with the emotions of the case: poor, sick groundskeeper versus large agricultural company. Who would you predict would prevail?

Fortunately, Monsanto is appealing and we hope will prevail against these preposterous claims. You might also read Cameron English’s excellent analysis of this case here.

Wilton Continuing Ed promotes scams

It’s always fun to look through the Wilton Continuing Ed catalog (Wilton, CT) and see if there might be some classes worth taking. The first entry is one that might be helpful for the gullible: Avoiding Scams. Of course you have to pay $15 for consumer information that should be free. Or $25 for non-residents.

Well, right at the top of the list, about 4 entries down from the scam class is one on Digital Astrology. This is a double scam, because they are just going to teach where on the web you can find astrology information. No mention of the fact that astrology is a set of prescientific superstitions with no scientific backing whatever. Or as Phil Plait says in his Bad Astronomy column, “pure bunkum.”
But there is more hooey, to come, starting with “Ancient Grains Meet Modern Palates,” a class on old grains from which most of our current useful grains were developed. But selling these grains is mainly a marketing technique (are you listening, Whole Foods?): they have no special nutritional value.
The next scam is the Fire Cider Infusion Workshop. If you haven’t heard about Fire Cider, it is apple cider vinegar with garlic, horseradish, cayenne pepper and honey added. Apparently this is suppose to treat colds, but there is absolutely no evidence that it does anything at all. This workshops teaches you how to mix these ingredients and sends you home with a quart of spiced vinegar for $55. You can also buy some on Amazon for about $25, but again, there is no evidence it does anything. We wrote about the underlying apple cider vinegar scam a couple of years ago, It doesn’t work, either. And, if that isn’t enough, you can read “I used to be a Holistic Nutritionist.”
You can’t get through these sorts of catalogs without finding Benefits of Essential Oils, today’s most popular scam. We wrote about these oils in our old Examiner column:

The idea of essential oils simply means the extraction of scented components from plants, and has been criticized on Quackwatch as having no real value. These scented oils, which are not inexpensive, may make your house smell nice, and may even help you relax, but they are regulated by the FDA as cosmetics and have no established medical uses, for the most part.

All of these essential oils are made by doTerra, a multi-level marketing company (anyone can become a dealer) a company that has been severely criticized for both their claims and their marketing in Science Based Medicine. Specifically, they imply a number of health benefits for these oils, but do not offer any evidence nor cite any clinical studies. Prices for these oils range from $20 to over $90 for 15 ml!

And, right under that is a class in Chakradance. Never heard of it? Well, apparently chakras are 7 “energy centers” within your body, and Chakradance is a “holistic, healing and well-being practice.” Apparently, you should “allow Chakradance, through its intimate guided meditation and varying vibrational tones of its carefully composed music, to provoke spontaneous movement, images, and healing as each of your energy chakras are rebalanced.” If you see all those pseudo-science buzzwords in a single sentence, your scam meter should already be pinned! It’s difficult to imagine anyone taking this hokum seriously.

If that’s not enough, the same instructor also teaches similar hokum under the label of Tai Chi.

And, to round out the scam catalog, we can’t help but note they are offering a class in Mindfulness Medtation. “Mindfulness” is the buzzword of last year, and it is difficult to avoid. However, a look at the article in Science-Based Medicine suggests it has little scientific basis, and Newsweek suggested last year that Mindfulness is a meaningless word with shoddy science behind it. Bingo! The scam meter pins again!

Sono Seaport in Norwalk

We haven’t visited Sono Seaport for a while or written about it, but it is as good or better than ever. Located at 100 Water Street in South Norwalk, it is slightly off the beaten track, but well worth a visit. Opened in 1983 as a fish market and soon thereafter as a restaurant as well, Sono Seaport provides delightfully simple waterfront dining year round. But it is at the best, when you can eat outside on their substantial patio and accompanying bar area in warm weather.

While still providing picnic table-style informality, the service is fast and courteous, and the (mostly) seafood very good. It is, however, quite popular. We visited on a recent Tuesday and came early (6 pm) to avoid the crowds. It’s a good thing we did, because they are calling people waiting in the bar area for tables by 7 pm.

The menu features a raw bar, soups, starters, salads, sandwiches and entrees, none terribly expensive. Draft beers were just $5 and chardonnay $6.

We started with their thick and delicious New England Clam Chowder. A cup (shown) is $6 and a bowl, $7. Sono Seaport has come a long way from the early days when they served everything on paper plates with plastic cutlery, and the chowder in a Styrofoam coffee cup. Now, you get real plates and silverware, but the food is every bit as good.

Much of the menus is dominated by seafood, including lobster, clams, tilapia, shrimp and crab, although there is one New York Strip on the menu for $25. We had to have the old standby Fisherman’s Feast ($26), consisting of lightly fried shrimp, crispy scallops, belly clams and flaky Atlantic cod fillet, served with French fries, coleslaw and tartar sauce. It hasn’t changed a bit. We are also planning to return to have their Lobster Pot Pie and their fried Belly Clams sometime soon.

Our other entrée was a special that night: Lobster Ravioli ($19) served with bread and a rich tomatoey sauce. It was spectacular and filling.

We were too full to sample their desserts, one of which was Key Lime Pie that night. Maybe next time!

Sono Seaport is a great Norwalk landmark restaurant that you should be sure to visit. We’ll probably see you there!

Easy buttermilk pancakes

Making buttermilk pancakes is so easy and so quick that I never saw any reason to use pancake mixes. The recipe came down from my grandmother, written down by my Aunt Elsie, who pointed out that you can remember it as 2-2-2-1-1-1/2.

Here are all the ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tb sugar
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
Buttermilk (usually 2-3 cups)
1 Tb butter for the griddle

Note that I reduced the baking soda to ¾ teaspoon, to bring out the buttermilk flavor better. If you don’t think this is an easy recipe, watch this video, where I make the batter and make pancakes in less than 8 minutes. You can too.

You mix the above ingredients to make a “thickish batter,” according to my aunt, and while the amount of buttermilk is up to you, I find that you get taller pancakes from a thicker batter. If you like thinner pancakes that cook a little faster, just add a little more buttermilk. Melt the butter on the griddle at 375 F, and cook the pancakes on the first side until you see a few bubbles. Turn them once and cook another minute or so.

This recipe came from my grandmother, the former Edna Perry, who married John Marshall Neely, M.D. in 1901, when she was 19. She probably brought the recipe with her, making it well over 100 years old. While it isn’t wildly unique, it works perfectly every time.

Sticky Buns: easier and stickier than ever

Sticky buns are a spectacular way to start any morning, and it really isn’t hard to make them if you start with 90 minutes or so free the night before. The result is hot, delicious baked buns in the morning that everyone will love. We usually start making the dough about 9 pm, and put the rolls together around 10:15 pm.

There are three parts to sticky buns: the glaze, the filling and the dough. Some recipes suggest a brioche dough, which is delicious, but quite a bit more work. Our dough is a simple yeast dinner roll dough that you let rise for an hour and then form into buns that rise over night. The overall buns are so rich that the kind of dough doesn’t actually matter much.

To make the dough

1/2 cup warm water
1/2 tsp sugar
1 package regular yeast (avoid the rapid rise variety)
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup shortening
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3 cups flour (about)

Add the 1/2 tsp sugar to the water and stir in the yeast. Allow the solution to stand until the yeast begins to bubble and foam a bit (maybe 4-5 minutes)
Meanwhile, mix the milk, shortening and sugar, and heat in a microwave for one minute.(The shortening does not have to melt.)
Add 1 cup of the flour to the work bowl of a food processor and pour in the warmed milk. Process until blended.
Add the egg and mix in.
Add the yeast mixture and mix in.
Add flour until you have a soft dough.
Allow the dough to rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour.

While the dough is rising, make the glaze and the filling.

To make the glaze

1 cup brown sugar
1 stick (8 oz) unsalted butter, cut up
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 cups pecans

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring the brown sugar, butter and honey to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Pour the glaze into two buttered square 9” pans, or one oblong pan, and sprinkle the pecans over top.

To make the filling

4 Tb butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Melt the butter for 30-40 sec in a microwave, and mix in the sugar and pecans

Assembling the buns

When the dough has risen, punch it down in a floured board, and divide in half.
Roll out each half to a 6 x 18” rectangle and sprinkle with half the filling.
Roll up the dough lengthwise into a roll and cut each roll into 9 slices
Place the slices in the two pans, cover with aluminum foil, and let rise over night in a cool place, such as a basement.

In the morning, heat the oven to 375 º F and bake the buns for about 15 minutes, until the glaze is bubbling.

Loosen the rolls from the sides of the pan with a small spatula, and then place a plate over each pan and invert it quickly. This is best done over the sink as some glaze will probably dribble out. The rolls should drop onto the plate.

Scrape any remaining glaze onto the rolls and allow them to cool a bit before serving,

Makes 18 buns.

Note: The overall flavor of the glaze is influenced by the honey, so be sure to choose a milder flavored honey.

How to scramble 2 dozen eggs

You don’t have to scramble eggs a little batch at a time if you have a large pan. We used a 13-inch All Clad pan to cook ours. The accompanying video shows it in detail.

Start at very low heat, and slowly the stir the eggs. You can go up to low heat if you want, but to make nice, creamy eggs, you want to cook them slowly.

Start with just the eggs, no salt and no milk. You’ll add the butter right away. We used a stick, or 4 oz of unsalted butter in this recipe. Slowly stir the butter into the eggs so it melts. Keep stirring until the eggs begin to thicken. At the end add a hefty pinch of kosher salt, and 3-4 Tb of crème fraiche or sour cream.

Decorate the plates or serving platter with some chopped parsley or chives.

Enjoy your breakfast!

“Flyin’ West” opens at Westport Playhouse

Above: Keona Welch, Michael Chenevert, Brenda Pressley, Brittany Bradford, and Nikiya Mathis in “Flyin’ West,” by Pearl Cleage, Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Pearl Cleage’s 1994 drama Flyin’ West opened Saturday night at the Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Seret Scott. The play deals with a period in the latter 19^th century when freed slaves struck out to create new homes in the West under the Homestead Act. Entire black towns were formed that welcomed new freed slaves for many years. Of these, only Nicodemus, Kansas remains as an historical site.

The story centers around four strong black women who settled in the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas in 1898. The matriarch, Miss Leah, is wonderfully played by Brenda Pressley, and her two interchangeable daughters Fannie Dove and Sophie Washington, well played by Brittany Bradford and Nikiya Mathis. The director has them costumed and made up in a similar fashion, although one lives in Miss Leah’s house, the other apparently lives nearby. And honestly, it is difficult to remember which of the daughters is which. They both speak in exactly the same dialect, pitch and speed.

The love interest, Wil Parish is charmingly played by Edward O’Blenis.

In fact, while the men are easily understood from the balcony, the women’s rapid dialect exchanges are sometimes difficult to understand.
Brittany Bradford and Edward O’Blenis
Photo by Carol Rosegg

All of the action takes place in Miss Leah’s house, which in Marjorie Bradley Kellogg’s conception, is a huge, vaulted ceiling home with at least two implied bedrooms just behind, and dominated by an enormous 2-story stone fireplace. Considering that most freed slaves came to Nicodemus with very little, it appears that Miss Leah has done very well for herself.

While part of the first act is chit-chat among Leah, her two daughters and Wil, the story kicks off when her third daughter Minnie Dove Charles (played with great poise by Keona Welch) arrives from London with her new husband Frank Charles, a sometime poet (played as a terrific villain by Michael Chenevert). Frank is dressed to the nines in an elegant 3-piece suit and seems to be quite light-skinned. You quickly realize that he has been “passing for white” for some time even though his naïve wife doesn’t seem to pick up this. What she does pick up on is several bruises, for it seems that Frank is, in addition to a mediocre poet, a wife-beater.

The central part of the story is that Frank believes that white “speculators” are willing to pay thousands of dollars for Leah’s property and in which his wife holds a part interest and he tries to force her to sell her share. The second act resolves this incredibly by descending to the Arsenic and Old Lace story line, but without Teddy in the basement. Oh, and while Sophie carries a rifle in Act I, it is never fired, violating the Checkhov gun rule.

While “Flyin’ West” is an entertaining enough evening, it isn’t a particularly strong or credible play. Cleage’s dialog lacks any poetry or elegance of language. The one exception is one of Leah’s second act speeches, which is briefly compelling. And from what I have been able to find out, the real Nicodemus was never a target for speculators, since the railroad was never in town as the play indicated, but some six miles away on the other side of the Solomon River.

Flyin’ West runs through June 16 at the Westport Country Playhouse, with performances on Tuesdays at 7, Wednesdays at 2 and 8, Thursday and Friday at 8, Saturday at 3 and 8 and Sunday at 3 pm. Tickets are available on line or by calling 203-227-1477. The show is in two acts, with one 15 minute intermission. The first act is about 75 minutes, and the second about 45 minutes, ending around 10:15.