Author: John Fladd

Rubber Ducky

On Jan. 10, 1992, the Greek container ship Ever Laurel ran into rough weather in the North Pacific, a couple of days out from Tacoma. At some point a stack of six shipping containers snapped its chains and plunged overboard into the Pacific Ocean.

This kind of accident isn’t common but it’s also not unheard of. On average around 1,500 shipping containers are lost at sea each year. This is a tiny percentage of the estimated 500 million containers in use, but also nothing to shrug at.

What made this particular accident noteworthy is that one of the containers was filled with 28,000 bath toys, including 7,200 yellow rubber duckies.

Over the next several years the toys were carried north by ocean currents, eventually traveling through the Northwest Passage north of Canada, and dispersed by other currents around the world. Even now some of these toys are still washing up in unexpected places. They have been found as far away as the United Kingdom, Australia and Chile. Now that there is less Arctic sea ice than ever, some plastic ducks, turtles and beavers are being released to a new generation of beach-combers.

As I’m sure you’re aware, National Rubber Ducky Day is this weekend. You are probably still in the process of getting rid of other holiday ornaments, and haven’t had time to shop for rubber ducks, but if you’re feeling a little spent, gray and empty with the start of a new year, it’s probably worth raising a glass to our plastic yellow friends and reflecting on the fact that things could always be worse. You could spend 30 years, bobbing and smiling, through Arctic Sea ice.

Rubber Ducky Cocktail

  • 1½ ounces Midori melon liqueur
  • 1½ ounces 99 Peaches peach schnapps
  • 2½ ounces fresh watermelon juice (see below)
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

Open your laptop, and place it on the counter next to you.

Open YouTube, and search for Hampenberg DuckToy Vocal Club Mix.

Turn your volume up to an unconscionable level and press play. This will be the perfect background music for mixing this drink. You’re ready now.

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake enthusiastically.

Pour, including ice, into a rocks glass.

Sip, vibing seamlessly — or, if you are like me, shuffling awkwardly — to the rubber ducky club mix playing on your computer.

This is a shockingly fun cocktail. The melon juice and the melon liqueur obviously go well together. The peach schnapps provides a floral fruitiness. By itself watermelon juice is surprisingly flat, but the acid from a jolt of lime juice brings it to life. This doesn’t exactly taste like bubble gum, but it also doesn’t not taste like gum of some sort. At first glance this might seem flighty and low-octane — and that may be true of the Midori — but the 99 Peaches actually clocks in at 99 proof, so this is not a drink to take for granted. Like a rubber ducky lost at sea, it might take you to unexpected places.

Watermelon Juice

Buy a one-quart container of pre-cubed watermelon at your supermarket. You aren’t going to be laying this out on a fruit plate or pairing with a nice prosciutto, so it’s OK to cut a corner during this process.

Pour the contents of the container into your blender and blend thoroughly. If you notice a seed or two, don’t panic; your blender will take care of things. If you have an over-powered, overly enthusiastic blender like mine, he will probably look on any seeds as a challenge.

Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain off the watermelon pulp. Leave everything in the strainer for half an hour or so, to let the components say goodbye to each other.

This should net you about 12 ounces of juice. If you want to drink it as juice, add the juice of half a lime to de-flatten it (see above).

Featured photo: Rubber Ducky Cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.

Saved by a salad

I have to admit there have been a lot of cookies over the past month or so.

And cake and homemade ice cream as well.

And, of course, beer and wine and cocktails.

And, now that I look back on it, a truly injudicious amount of melted cheese.

In fact, for the past week or so there has been a herd of angry wildebeests rampaging through my digestive tract. If I don’t eat something green soon, I’m not entirely sure I can control them. I’m long overdue for a salad.

Looking for an authoritative expert on salads, I consulted a tragically overlooked seminal treatise on the subject, Thomas J. Murrey’s 1885 classic, 50 Salads (By the author of 50 Soups). Mr. Murrey clearly took his salads seriously.

“Of the many varieties of food daily consumed,” he writes, “none are more important than a salad, rightly compounded. And there is nothing more exasperating than an inferior one. The salad is the Prince of the Menu, and although a dinner be perfect in every other detail except the salad, the affair will be voted a failure if that be poor.”

He continues, “It is therefore necessary for those contemplating dinner-giving, to personally overlook the preparation of the salad if they wish favorable criticism.”

The Prince of the Menu, indeed. At this point I’m with him on Team Salad, although I have to imagine his cook or his wife was not impressed with his personally overlooking their salad-making to make sure there were no salad shenanigans going on.

His actual recipes, however, seem to be of extremely variable quality. There is a Cherry Salad, for instance, which sounds delicious — fresh cherries marinated in three types of alcohol. But others, like Pigeon Salad and Frog Salad, are clearly of a particular moment in history. And yet others really seem to have been phoned in. Eels Mayonnaise calls for two ingredients, eels and mayonnaise. His Mint Salad calls for adding fresh mint to a salad.

I seem to be on my own here. What I want is a proper tossed salad — not a macaroni salad, or a Jell-O salad, or a lobster salad — a simple tossed, green salad.

At the risk of sounding Murreyesque, I also have some strong feelings about salad:

(1) A tossed salad shouldn’t have more than six ingredients, including the dressing. Any more than that, it gets too busy and the flavors get in each other’s way.

(2) A good tossed salad should be exactly that: tossed. Individual bowls of lettuce with dressing poured over the top are clumsy at best, and at worst depressing and a sign of poor moral character. The salad should be made in a large bowl, dressed, then thoroughly tossed with a set of tongs.

(3) Lettuce: There are two tribes in Lettuce Nation: crisp lettuce and tender lettuce. I fall strongly on the side of tender lettuce, but if you are a Romaine enthusiast, could I ask that you chop it reasonably well, so your guests aren’t left gnawing on Romaine stems?

Here is the salad I made tonight:

My six ingredients are Bibb lettuce; canned diced tomatoes (obviously, fresh tomatoes would be better, but there won’t be any good ones for another eight months); a diced avocado; shredded, mixed Italian cheese; sesame sticks, and a maple Dijon vinaigrette.

Maple Dijon Vinaigrette

  • ¼ cup (80 grams) maple syrup
  • 3 Tablespoons (32 grams) finely minced shallot
  • 2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
  • 1 Tablespoon Canola oil
  • 1 Tablespoon whole-grain Dijon mustard
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1 garlic clove, finely minced

Put all ingredients in a bowl and whisk vigorously. If you have a miniature blender — a Magic Bullet, or something similar — that will work even better.

In addition to flavor, the mustard brings lecithin, an emulsifier that ties everything together. The maple syrup brings sweetness, and the vinegar brings acid, but the star of this dressing is the shallot. This is worth making once a week.

Featured photo: West 75th. Photo by John Fladd.

West 75th

New Year’s Eve is supposed to be a romantic holiday. In my experience, it’s a little over-hyped. The best New Year’s Eve I ever had was when I was 8 years old. I was being babysat by an older cousin. At midnight we went outside and honked the horn of my uncle’s car, then went back inside and ate buttered noodles.

I might be jaded about New Year’s, because I’ve never been invited to a swanky party.

Be that as it may, when it comes to romance, nothing holds a candle to NASA.

The Mars rover Opportunity was launched in June 1993 and landed on the surface of Mars seven months later. It was one of a pair of rovers sent on that mission; its twin, Spirit, was sent to the opposite side of the planet. The two rovers took geological samples and surveys, made measurements and took photographs.

The mission was supposed to last 90 days, but through a combination of superb engineering and mind-bogglingly good luck the two probes kept working long past the point anyone had dreamed they could. After five years Spirit got mired in dust and couldn’t move anymore, but Opportunity kept going month after month, for a staggering 14 years.

Eventually, after operating for 57 times its designed lifespan, Opportunity wound down. Before the ground team at NASA ended its mission in 2018, they broadcast one final message to Opportunity.

They played Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording of “I’ll Be Seeing You”.

It’s the most romantic damn thing I’ve ever heard of. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.

Does this have anything to do with New Year’s Eve?

Not particularly, except that much like Opportunity, most of us have lasted much longer than we’ve had any right to expect. And as we look back over the past year and wonder if we’ve accomplished anything or not, the mere fact that we are still here is a little miracle, and if we’re very lucky, some of us have someone to play Billie Holiday for us.

And whether we’re at a swanky party or eating buttered noodles, it’s a good occasion for a fancy New Year’s cocktail.

West 75th Cocktail

  • 1 ounce apple brandy – I like Laird’s Applejack
  • ½ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • ½ ounce Chambord raspberry liqueur
  • 2 dashes orange bitters
  • 3 ounces Lambrusco, chilled – Lambrusco is a sparkling Italian red or blush wine. It’s a little sweet, so many wine enthusiasts can be a bit sniffy about it, but I like it, and it was made for this cocktail

Combine the brandy, Chambord, lemon juice and bitters with ice in a cocktail shaker. Swirl and shake to chill.

Strain into a Champagne flute.

Top with Lambrusco.

If you are alone, sip, while listening to “I’ll Be Seeing You.” It’s OK to cry. If you are at a party, sip, while playing “Tiny Bubbles” by Don Ho. The other guests will be confused but incredibly impressed when you sing the chorus in Hawaiian.

Lambrusco leans toward the fruity side of sparkling wine, which pairs well with the apple brandy. The apple brandy might make this drink a little too boozy-tasting, but the Chambord pulls it back to berry notes. That might make it a tiny bit too sweet, but the lemon juice and bitters pull everything back into line. This cocktail is a balancing act that succeeds like a pretty girl on a tightrope juggling knives.\

It’s a very small miracle, like Billie Holiday, buttered noodles, or a happy, sleeping space robot.

Featured photo: West 75th. Photo by John Fladd.

Butterscotch Drops

It was 1950. The war was over, the economy was booming New suburbs were springing up all over the country, and with them modern kitchens.

The Betty Crocker Cookbook circa 1950 was a sort of guidebook for America’s new generation of cooks. It taught readers the basics of middle-class cooking and introduced home cooks to new ideas. This is one of them.

Butterscotch Drops with Brown Butter Icing

  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) room-temperature butter
  • 1½ cup (320 grams) dark brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup (227 grams) sour cream
  • 1 Tablespoon Scotch whisky – I used Glenlivet (Betty suggested “vanilla”, but I can read between the lines)
  • 2¾ cups (330 grams) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt

In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients — flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar together. If you have a robust stand mixer, and you forget to leave the butter on your counter to soften, your mixer will have your back; it will power through and cream everything. It will just take a little longer.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time. This should pull the mixture together into a consistent batter. Eggs are what is called an emulsifier: They make it easy for fatty ingredients to mix with everything else.

Add the scotch and sour cream, and mix to combine.

Mix in the dry ingredients. To avoid a cloud of flour poofing up out of the mixer, try spooning it in a couple of tablespoons at a time.

When everything is well-mixed, chill the dough for a couple hours or, ideally, overnight. I just leave it in the mixing bowl, cover it with a dollar store shower cap, and put it in the refrigerator to rest.

Later (imagine a harp-music montage), preheat your oven to 425°F.

Scoop “rounded teaspoonfuls” of batter onto either a lightly oiled baking sheet or one with a silicone mat or a sheet of parchment paper. Leave 2 inches between dough blobs. I found it difficult to make nice little teaspoon-sized dough balls; I used two teaspoons (like you actually use for tea) and used them to scoop up some wet dough and deposit it on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. They will be ready when they are very slightly brown and if you touch one you won’t leave an impression of your finger. When you remove them from the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet.

This makes about four dozen cookies. Apparently in the 1950s they didn’t take a half-hearted approach to baking.

“Burnt Butter” Butterscotch Icing

  • 12 Tablespoons (1½ sticks) butter
  • 3 cups (342 grams) powdered sugar
  • 3 Tablespoons Scotch whisky

In a small saucepan, melt, then brown the butter over low heat. If you haven’t done this before, it is easy-peasy, but you have to watch it like a hawk. Swish the melted butter around in the pan frequently, and pull it from the heat just before it is brown like dark toast.

Combine the butter, powdered sugar and whisky, and stir until it forms an icing. If it is too stiff, add a tablespoon or so of water, but be very conservative about adding it. Use this to ice the cookies.

It might seem weird to use Scotch whisky in a cookie recipe, but butterscotch tastes extra intense and very, very good when you make it with real butter and real scotch. By themselves, the cookies have a delicate brown sugar flavor, a bit like the background flavor of a chocolate chip cookie, but when combined with the scotchy icing they become a flavor powerhouse.

Featured photo: Butterscotch Drops with Brown Butter Icing. Photo by John Fladd.

Raspberry-Rose Rickey

It’s a pretty good party.

There is good jazz playing in the background — Louis Armstrong, and Tony Bennet, and Nina Simone, with a sprinkling of Sinatra. Good stuff, but not distracting, nothing that anyone will have a deep attachment to from high school. Nobody’s going to shout, “Hey! Crank that up!” and derail the vibe.

There’s a nice blend of guests — obligatory family members, and actual friends you want to spend time with. Interestingly, your college roommate has struck up a friendship with your Uncle Charley with the conspiracy theories. They’re both smiling and gesturing wildly, so they seem to have found some common ground.

You don’t have a fireplace, but there’s a Yule log burning on the TV screen, which also keeps your cousin from switching on the game.

Everyone has brought something for the Yankee swap. You’ve got a good feeling about this year. You spent all year combing flea markets and yard sales and finally scored a brass sculpture of an exotic dancer with a clock in her belly. She’s wrapped inconspicuously in plain brown paper with a tag that says, “Open me. Or not. It’s no skin off my nose either way.”

Dinner went well — tacos, so everybody got a little bit of what they wanted. There’s tres leches cake for dessert. It took a couple of years to convince the family to try it, but now it’s become a tradition. A couple of years ago a slightly inebriated cousin spent 15 minutes enthusiastically explaining tres leches to your friend Maria, who grew up in Chiapas.

“It’s like CAKE, but it’s uh, um —,” he said for the third time.

“Wet?” Maria suggested, with a small smile on her face.

“YES! It’s CAKE but it’s WET!” he half-shouted enthusiastically.

“And cold?” Maria suggested again.

“AND COLD!!!” he agreed, beaming at Maria, filled with goodwill and Budweiser, then staggered off to find a couch.

You have three or four children at the party this year and they are so full of tacos and cake that if it weren’t for the promise of presents they’d have fallen asleep by now.

Your mother and her sister are getting along tonight. It’s always a toss-up whether they will get along, or end up looking at old family photos, which will remind them of some half-forgotten grudge from the 1970s, and releasing the Drama Kraken.

All in all, it’s a pretty good evening, as long as you keep topping off everyone’s glass. That’s why it’s a good idea to make batches of drinks ahead of time.

For instance:

  • Raspberry-Rose Rickey
  • 1 12-ounce package frozen raspberries
  • 1 cup floral gin – I used Uncle Van’s and was very pleased
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ½ cup fresh squeezed lime juice – about 4 limes
  • ¼ teaspoon rose water
  • plain seltzer

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir to combine, and leave, covered, for an hour at room temperature.

Mash the contents with a potato masher, re-cover, and leave for another hour.

Stir, then strain with a fine-mesh strainer. You will not believe how many seeds raspberries have in them.

In a rocks glass with ice or crushed ice, fill with the raspberry-gin mixture, then top with seltzer. Stir.

Roses and berries have a natural affinity for each other. In this case, the background flavor of roses should add a woody/floral note that will meld with the floral gin. In turn, gin and lime are a classic combination, as are lime and raspberries. The four main ingredients chase each other around and around, tickling your palate.

This is a fairly low-octane, not-too-sweet drink that even your most suspicious relatives will accept. Your actual friends will probably love it.

It’s like RASPBERRIES, but WET, with ROSES dunked in it!

It’s time to find somewhere to sit.

Featured photo: Raspberry-Rose Rickey. Photo by John Fladd.

Gingerbread

Gingerbread is strange.

Not the actual gingerbread itself but what people do with it. I can’t think of any baked good that people insist on making other things out of. We don’t make little eclair men with mischievous smiles, or build chocolate chip houses or hang brownies on trees as ornaments.

A number of people claim that they don’t like gingerbread when they’ve mostly had it as a flavor of tea, or an ingredient in ice cream, or baked hard and served as a cookie. I won’t say that everybody loves warm, moist gingerbread fresh from the oven, because we all know that there are people in the world with questionable taste, but I do question whether people who don’t like proper gingerbread are entirely trustworthy.

Here is a recipe adapted from King Arthur (kingarthurbaking.com).

Gingerbread

Dry ingredients:

  • 2 cups (240 grams) whole-wheat flour
  • ¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda – this will react with the acidic molasses and buttermilk
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg – it’s much better if you grind your own
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon black or cayenne pepper – Penzeys makes a blend called Black & Red that I like
  • ¾ cup (138 g) diced crystalized ginger

Wet ingredients:

  • 8 Tablespoons (one stick) butter, melted
  • ¾ cup (113 g) molasses
  • ¼ ginger beer – many recipes will call for cold, black coffee, but the extra kick of ginger brings more zing to the party
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup (227) buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 350º. Line either a 9×9” or a 9×13” baking pan with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.

In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients.

Mix the contents of the two bowls together.

Pour into the prepped baking pan, then bake. If you are using a square baking pan, it will probably take 50 minutes or so to bake to the point where a toothpick comes out clean. The larger pan will probably take 30 to 35 minutes.

Let the gingerbread cool for half an hour before cutting and serving. It is excellent with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or butter. If you are adventurous, try it smashed up in a bowl, topped with eggnog; you won’t be sorry.

Gingerbread is a cake that you don’t want to be too sweet. This version gets a little sweetness from the sugar, the crystalized ginger and the ginger beer, but mostly from the molasses. That adds a dark muskiness and a slightly bitter quality that complements the spices. This isn’t a celebration cake. It is a comfort cake to eat late in the afternoon, in the gathering dark, as the snow starts to fall. Eating it will bring a cat to sit in your lap, even if you don’t own a cat.

Featured photo: Gingerbread. Photo by John Fladd.

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