Baked Alaska

    The association of certain places and people with certain foods can bring as much favor to the former as to the latter. Take Toll House chocolate chip cookies, which were created by Mrs. Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, bringing enormous interest to the restaurant itself, which sadly burned down due to a kitchen fire in 1984. So,  too, the Delmonico steak, which still to this day the signature item of Delmonico’s in downtown Manhattan.

    But a lot of international food names have nothing really to do with the people or places they are named after. Some were coined on purpose, others by linguistic error. Here are some of both:

 

London broil. This is basically a flank steak that is broiled and cut into slices, seeming to derive from the English city of London, But the term is never used in London and you won’t find it on the menu there.  It is  specifically American in origin and dates in print at least to 1931, appearing in Charles G. Shaw’s Nightlife: Vanity Fair’s Intimate Guide to New York After Dark as a recommended dish at Keens Chophouse in New York City.

 

 

Jerusalem artichoke. This tuber with lumpy branches, reddish-brown skin and a slightly sweet-ish flavor isn’t a true artichoke at all and has  nothing to do with Jerusalem. It is a native American sunflower, which in Italian is girasole––“turn to the sun”––the name given the plant when it was introduced to the garden of Cardinal Farnese in Rome about 1617, where he watched the plant turn to the sun. In 1620 the Italian word had been transformed into the English “Artichocks of Jerusalem,” and, thereafter, “Jerusalem artichokes.” The plant had been noted by Samuel de Champlain in 1605 as a garden vegetable of the Indians on Cape Cod, but the settlers who came after him developed little interest in the tuber. Today it is often marketed under the less foreign-sounding name of “sunchokes.”

 

Turkish taffy. This chewy nougat candy was created in 1912 by Austrian immigrant Herman Herer, who sold the rights to M. Schwarz & Sons of Newark, New Jersey, and then acquired in 1936 by Victor Bonomo, a Sephardic Jew whose father, Albert J. Bonomo, came from Turkey to found the Bonomo Company in Coney Island, New York, in 1897 to produce saltwater taffy and hard candies. At first it was sold at Macy’s department store in large sheets broken into smaller pieces, then in the 1940s, the company sold its own candy bar size in stores. Part of the fun was cracking it on a hard surface to create small pieces. The candy was discontinued commercially in 1989 but made a comeback in 2010.

 

Canadian bacon. To quote the USDA: “In the United States, ‘Canadian’ bacon is plain lean ‘back bacon’ made from the loin, and it is trichina treated but must be cooked before using. It is simply called ‘back bacon’ in Canada, where . . it is traditionally unsmoked back bacon that has been sweet pickle cured and coated in yellow cornmeal. This variation is also known as peameal bacon, because, in times past, a mixture of ground yellow peas was used for coating to improve curing and shelf-life.”

 

Caesar salad. This  salad of romaine lettuce, garlic, olive oil, croutons, Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and, often, though not originally, anchovies, had nothing to do with Roman emperor Julius Caesar, but was created by Caesar Cardini (left), an Italian immigrant who opened a series of restaurants in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego. On Fourth of July weekend in 1924 at Caesar’s Palace, Cardini concocted the salad as a main course, arranging the lettuce leaves on a plate with the intention that they would be eaten with the fingers. Later Cardini shredded the leaves into bite-sized pieces. The salad became particularly popular with Hollywood movie people who visited Tijuana, and it became a featured dish at Chasen’s and Romanoff’s in Los Angeles.  Cardini was adamant in insisting that the salad be subtly flavored and argued against the inclusion of anchovies, whose faint flavor in his creation he believed may have come from the Worcestershire sauce

 

 

 

Genovese sauce. This slow-cooked sauce of onion and meat is a specialty of Naples, not Genoa, where it would be more associated with basil sauce named pesto. It dates back at least to the 16^th century and no one knows the reason for the name. Conjectures suggest it was first brought by Genoese merchants or was named after the surname Genovese. Neither makes much sense.

 

 

French fries. Sliced, deep-fried potatoes have nothing to do with the country of France but to a kitchen process of “Frenching” anything into thin strips. In France they are called pommes frites and were not mentioned in French print until 1858 as a low-class food item. In England they are known as “chips,” first mentioned in a letter by Oscar Wilde dated March 1876.  The Oxford English Dictionary traces “French-fried potatoes” back to 1894 and suggests the usage is American in origin. “French fried onion rings” appears in print in 1939. “Shoestring potatoes,” which are cut in very thin strips, dates in print to 1898.

 

 

Baked Alaska. This dessert of sponge cake covered with ice cream and a meringue that is browned in the oven was known in some form by Thomas Jefferson, and a report in the French journal Liberté for June 1866 indicates that the master cook of the Chinese mission in Paris imparted a technique for baking pastry over ice cream to the French chef Balzac of the Grand Hotel. But baked Alaska as we know it today may be traced to the experiments in heating and cooking conducted by Benjamin Thompson, born in Woburn, Massachusetts, who became a celebrated scientist both at home and in England, where he was awarded the title of Count Rumford for his work. It was Delmonico’s chef Charles Ranhofer who created “Baked Alaska” in 1869 to commemorate the purchase of Alaska by the United States, although in his own cookbook, The Epicurean (1893), Ranhofer calls the dish “Alaska, Florida.”

 

 

Oysters Rockefeller. This was an oyster dish made with watercress, scallions, celery, anise, and other seasonings created in 1899 by Jules Alciatore of Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans. Roy F. Guste, Jr., great-grandson of Alciatore, writes in Antoine’s Restaurant Since 1840 Cookbook (1979), “[In 1899] there was a shortage of snails coming in from Europe to the United States and Jules was looking for a replacement [he wanted] to be local in order to avoid any difficulty in procuring the product. . . . . He created a sauce with available green vegetable products, producing such a richness that be named it after one of the wealthiest men in the United States, John D. Rockefeller, who was indeed one of the country’s richest men, having built a fortune in the oil, steel, railroad, and banking industries.”

Gen. Tso’s Chicken. There are many claimants as to the creation of this honey-sweet, fiery dish of fried chicken chunks named after a famous 19^th century general Zuo Zingtang (left), but for no particular reason why,  especially since Zuo was known as a picky eater and glutton for pork, not chicken. The strongest claim credits Hunan  Chef Peng Chang-kuei, who fled China when Mao Zedong took over and emigrated to New York to open Peng’s near the U.N., where he adapted many Hunan dishes to American tastes, including what he called Gen. Tso’s chicken. 

 

 

 

 

 

          Exhausted, Katie and David slept very well that night. There was no reason to get up early, but David found Katie in her jeans and t-shirt working at the kitchenette table when he woke up at nine, feeling positively connubial.  This is what it might be like to be married to Katie, he thought to himself, tempted to chirp, “Good morning, dear” and kiss her on the cheek but dismissed the idea the next second.

     “Coffee’s ready,” she said.

     “Any calls from Max or Horan?” David poured himself a cup and peered out the window.

   “Not yet. I’m making good progress here, and I want to overnight whatever I have finished by the end of the day, then do the same tomorrow. I’ve made a good dent. I just wish I could really nail the people who tried to kill us. How powerful are they? How widespread? Who’s the guy who ordered the hit?”

         “Max and Horan may find out for you, given time,” then, glancing at the newspaper, “I see the Times got a story on the guys going over the cliff. Say anything about us?”

         “It does. Says it seems to have been an attempted murder of two Americans. I’m sure their reporters are desperately trying to call us for a statement.”

         “How would you get to us if the police refused to give out our whereabouts?”

         “I don’t know,” said Katie, “maybe nuzzle a detective on the neck, promise him a good time.”

         David thought that was wholly unlike Katie to joke about, saying, “No, really, how would you go about it?”

         “Work the magazine’s police contacts. Even cops love to talk to the press.”

         David was well aware of the truth of that statement, having information about dozens of his cases over the years leaked to the press and remembering that one Mafioso the police had put in a safe house managed to get rubbed out after the guy stupidly ordered pizza from a place around the corner without telling his cop guards.

         Around eleven o’clock Max called.

         “You two doin’ fine?” he asked on the speaker phone.

         “Feeling a little housebound,” aid David. “Katie’s working on her story, I’m sitting here watching Irish soccer.”

         “Well, then, the good news is we’re sending you home tomorrow on a ten A.M. flight tomorrow. Sound good?”

         Finger said that further interrogations with Darby/Kearney had turned up nothing—“We’re pretty sure he was just a stooge”— but that Horan had been diligently working some of his contacts among the clergy he trusted, not least gay priests abhorred by the attempt on the Americans’ lives. “We’ll find out somethin’ soon, I hope, but we won’t be needin’ to detain you here any longer.”

         “Max,” said David, “what do you think of the possibility that someone in your office tipped off the perpetrators that we gave you the files? Maybe yesterday’s attempt was really to silence Katie once and for all from writing her story.”

         “We’re aware of that possibility, though I think it’s more probable they didn’t know you gave us the files and just wanted to prevent Katie from leavin’ to go back and write her story. I just wish you could tell us where you got those bloody files, David.”

         “So do I, Max, but I think that person will eventually emerge, maybe on his own.  He doesn’t seem to be a psychopath, and there haven’t been any more mutilations. I’ve got every faith you’ll find him sooner rather than later.”

         “Well, if anythin’ changes, let me or Horan know immediately.”

         “Will do, Max. Hey, will we see you before we leave?”

         “Probably not a good idea. But my boys will see you get off safely. And, I’m happy to say, in Business Class. We’ll also have a cop in the cabin and the sky marshal onboard will be alerted too.”
         After hanging up David said to Katie, “Well, now that we’re leaving, I wish we had one more night to go out and celebrate.”

         “That’d be nice,” said Katie, “but I’ve got to get as much done on this draft as possible and get it into the overnight mail by four o’clock, then work on some more till we leave tomorrow.”

         “So what d’you want to eat tonight?” he asked, stifling an urge to say, “dear.”

         “Whatever you want. You choose.”

         David chose two steaks with the fried potatoes the Irish call chips.

         “Medium rare for you, right?”

         “That’s one thing you should know about me by now,” said Katie. “And I could use a salad.”

         How wonderfully. . . domestic it all sounded to David, even if the two of them were basically imprisoned in their  separate rooms. He turned on the TV. Shelbourne was playing the Shamrock Rovers. Shelbourne wore red jerseys; the Rovers wore green. David slumped in his chair and sighed.

 
                                                                                *         *          *

 

         An unmarked police car picked Katie and David up at six AM the next morning, and, accompanied at a distance before and behind, two other cars kept pace on the drive out to Dublin airport. Traffic was light and it was a Saturday, so it was barely a twenty-minute drive on the M50. 

         Katie and David were sitting low in the backseat, and upon arrival,  the accompanying police cars stopped in front, on the sides and to the rear of theirs. Four Garda, two plainclothes, two in uniform, hurried the Americans through a locked security door into an office on the departures level.

         When departure time was near, after all other passengers were onboard, the Americans were brought to the gate. David used his own police eyes to survey every space, every corner and angle, every level for anything suspicious, but saw nothing. Katie, wearing her beret pulled down and dark sunglasses, kept her head bowed as the police held her by both shoulders.

         Katie and David handed their tickets and passports to the gate attendant and started to move onto the jetway when they heard a man’s voice yelling in the distance, saying, “Hold on, don’t close the door yet! I’m on this flight!”

         The police and the Americans turned to see the man, dressed in a trench coat and tweed hat running towards the gate. The police whirled around just as the man was ten feet from the Americans.  Katie and David were shoved forward by the police, then turned to see the man grabbed and stopped cold by four Garda, with two others running to help. One of the plainclothes police shouted to Katie and David, “Get moving!  Get on the plane!” while the other pushed them forward through the passageway. At its end Katie and David bolted onto the plane, and the policeman told the flight attendants to shut the door immediately. A man in a gray suit stood up in the Business Class section while another, in jeans and a sweater, rushed forward from the main cabin. Both of them had guns poised at the plane door, though the bulkhead hid them from sight.

         There was a bustling among the passengers until the man in the sweater, who was a sky marshal, told the flight attendants to calm everyone down and said the flight might be delayed for a little while. From the cockpit the crew emerged to see what had happened and if everything was all right.

         Katie and David were not yet seated, kept away from the plane windows behind its impregnable door. The policeman and the sky marshal were speaking with the police outside, who by then had the man subdued.  The man was lifted to his feet and was quickly and efficiently ushered away from the plane, in handcuffs.

         Onboard, with the man well in the distance, Katie and David were asked to take their seats. The crew was discussing what would happen next, and the air marshal said they’d need permission from the Garda and the airport security to take off, even though any threat seemed to have passed. The flight attendant offered everyone in Business Class Champagne, which Katie and David swigged down to calm their nerves.

         David asked the Garda policeman what had happened.

         “He was carrying a gun,” said the plainclothesman. “He apparently got it through security in his carry-on.”

         “Intending to use it on us?” asked Katie, still shaking.

         “We don’t know, mum. He would have been stopped and held just because he was runnin’ to get on the plane. We don’t know why he had the gun with him or if he intended to use it.”

         “That was no coincidence,” said David. “That guy was going to shoot us.”

         “On the plane?” said Katie. “I thought that was suicidal.”

         “No, probably he’d wait till we got back to JFK and wait for an opportunity, and I’m sure as shit someone in the Garda security tipped him off.”

         David’s phone rang. It was Sergeant Horan.

         “Are you two okay?” he asked. “I just heard what happened.”

         “Shaken but okay, yes. What the hell did happen?”

         “We don’t know but we’re reacting as if this man was after you two.”

         “Do people sneak guns on Irish airlines often around here?” asked Katie angrily.

         “No, mum, not often, but it happens at every airport now and again. . It may be unrelated to you but we’ll get to the bottom of, that’s for sure. Meanwhile, call us as soon as you get to JFK, will you?”

         David shut off his phone and breathed in deeply.

         “God almighty, this was a sophisticated job. We were in that safe house for less than thirty-six hours, but they found out we were taking off on this flight today. Somebody inside the Garda had to feed them that information.”

         “You think Horan and Max will find out?” said Katie.

         “If there was a leak, they’ll find it, unless this was all a big freaking coincidence that a guy with a gun runs up to the plane at the last second because he was late.”

         “I’m not going to feel safe till we’re off this damn plane,” said Katie, recalling how in Russia, she and David were terrified that Moscow Security agents would yank them off the plane at the last moment.

         “I can assure you, Katie, when we get to JFK there’ll be both airport and NYPD there to greet us. I’m just glad this happened this side of the Atlantic.”

         “Christ, just thinking that if he’d gotten on, we’d be sitting here for eight hours waiting to be picked off when we got home.”

         “Well, we wouldn’t have known he was onboard. Maybe he would have made some error and get checked out by the sky marshal. Who knows, but it’s over.”

         “How are you so sure it’s over, David?”

         David said, “I can’t honestly tell you it is.”

         As soon as the plane was at cruising altitude, Katie took out her notebook and pad and started writing, but after another glass of Champagne and a mediocre Business Class meal, she could no longer fight the fatigue. She lowered her seat into a sleeping position, pulled a blanket over her and drifted off within minutes. David was fighting the same urge to sink into sleep if only because he wanted to watch Katie drift off. He felt protective, but it was really more paternal, and he knew that’s what it was. But after a while, by the time the plane was two hours out from Dublin, he, too, was fast asleep.