Inside My Table #88 | Excerpt
Digesting Hurricane Ike
Trees fell over, the power went out and life as Houstonians know it changed during the night of Sept. 12. Everyone has a Hurricane Ike story. We put out a call for such stories in our SideDish e-newsletter, asking readers to share a hurricane memory with — what else? — a foodie slant. Here’s what some of our subscribers told us.
“I was in a foul mood the Tuesday following Hurricane Ike. I have earned the moniker ‘Great Depression’ from my children because I don’t like to throw things away. Yet, here I was, discarding some of my beloved treasures from the freezer. In that formerly glacial cavern I stored fruit breads and a delicious holiday fruitcake (this is not an oxymoron) with olives in it. However, the greatest loss was the lefse. If you’ve ever made this Norwegian holiday treat, you understand. It takes two days to cook the potatoes, rice them, add butter and cream, chill the dough, roll small balls into thin tortilla lookalikes, then cook on a lefse grill. I had carefully folded the lefse into quarters, wrapped them in plastic and encased them in a Ziploc freezer bag. There they were, awaiting my next ethnic food craving, which arrived too late to save them. Why did I save the alligator sausage and shrimp bait by taking them to the neighbors who had a generator and not take the lefse? Because I forgot they were in there. Next time, I have promised myself, I will not wait 15 years to clean out the fridge.” — Lisa Kline
“The weirdest thing I found in my freezer were two bags of frozen linen napkins. They were in there — and I must admit, had been in there quite a long time — waiting to be ironed.” — Naomi H. Black
“We are among the luckiest of the Ike survivors. We has a long-planned trip to New York to attend our grandson’s 9th birthday party on Saturday, Sept. 13th. We just stayed and stayed and stayed in Brooklyn, where we have a very small pièd-a-terre. Since neither of us wanted to cook, we ranged around our Park Slope neighborhood and discovered some first-rate restaurants. The first is Applewood (501 11th St., 718-788-1810), known for its seasonal and organic cuisine. The second, Rosewater (787 Union St., 718-783-3800), is remarkable for its clever and original combinations. Third, we found Tempo (256 5th Ave., 718-636-2020), which is Italian, mostly Sicilian, much of which harks back to The Babbo Cookbook of Mario Batali. Delicious. And, finally, we enjoyed Miriam (79 5th Ave., 718-622-2250), where the staff and the cuisine are Israeli. We returned to Houston fat and happy, with new places to test and re-test in the future.” — Maida Asofsky
“I didn’t realize, until I was throwing out the contents of my dripping freezer, how much I used it as an extension of my pantry. The door was lined with re-sealable baggies of fresh rosemary and thyme, sautéed onions in half-cup portions, chopped celery, tablespoon-portions of tomato paste, foccacia bread crumbs, sliced baguettes, crumbled bacon, lemon slices and cup after cup of fresh-picked berries. Sigh. Before Ike, whenever I was improvising or cooking last-minute, all I had to do was just reach into my freezer to grab what I needed to round out the fresh stuff. Not any more. Now, I feel like I live in Europe, because I’m going to the store every three days or so because I forgot some ingredient I need for something. Gone also are the spare servings of homemade bean-and-sausage soup, the barbecue brisket leftovers and the grilled salmon steaks I could fall back on when work deadlines crashed into the family dinner hour. Thank heaven that, as I was throwing everything out, I found a quart of frozen bellinis, pushed into a corner, thawed to slushy perfection. They provided me some comfort as I was bagging up my treasures for the curb.” — Laurel Brubaker Calkins
“Having lived in Albuquerque, I developed a taste for Hatch chile peppers. Here in Houston, late August usually sees Hatch chile festivals at some of the more culinary groceries, and I went out and purchased several pounds of these delicious roasted green chilies. I always freeze them for later use. But once I had to empty the defrosted freezer and had no place to store them, they started rotting in the bags as they sat and thawed. The next time I can get fresh hatch chiles will be August 2009. Bummer.” — Joseph Rapoport
“Well, I hesitate to tell most folks this, but we didn’t lose power here in Katy. However, we had some friends, and friends of friends, who did and who accepted our offer to spend that Saturday with us. We watched movies, had some great conversation and then decided the day was worth a special meal. We pulled filet mignons and chicken out of the freezer, threw baking potatoes in the oven and used all the vegetables in the refrigerator to make an awesome salad. Wine was flowing! All in all we had a great evening with some nice folks we might not have otherwise gotten to know.” — Kathy Gibson
“Like everyone else, we lost power and didn’t want to sit around in the dark. I had a box filled with tapered candles, but had no candlesticks. So I found a bag of dried lentils in the pantry, poured a couple of inches worth into various flower vases and other glass containers, and stuck the candles in that. Voila! Brilliant. Late one night we had all the windows open to catch a breeze, and we were playing games by candlelight. My young daughter suddenly asked me ‘What’s that funny smell?’ One whiff, and I thought someone must be outside smoking marijuana. Nope, it turned out that when hot wax melts on dried lentils, it smells exactly like pot.” — Shelley Ryan
“There were so many things that were hard to throw out when we lost power for almost two weeks with Ike, my father’s homemade eggrolls and my homemade crab rangoons definitely being on that list. But by far the hardest thing to toss in the garbage were the two boxes of mooncakes we had a friend bring back for us from his trip to Singapore. Mooncakes are a delicacy in the Asian world, made and eaten only during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Pastry chefs have to be specially trained to make them, as they are extremely labor-intensive to produce. Since no bakery ships them to the U.S., and no one in the States can make them quite like they do in Singapore, we had our friend bring two boxes from our favorite bakery when he went to Singapore on a business trip. We were looking forward to savoring them for three or four months, taking one out at a time as to make them last. And then Ike hit. No more mooncakes for at least another year. — Meredith Brownlie
