"Let no one, however canny, induce you to work your land
When it's bone hard under a north wind.
Then icy winter closes down the countryside ...."

Virgil, the Georgics, Book 2; tr. C. Day Lewis (Anchor Books, 1964)


We daresay no one is going to induce Sir Nicholas Broadbottom (above) to work his land. He might, however, be persuaded to have a cocktail. Here, in keeping with the picture-theme of a breaking dawn, is Charles Schumann's recipe for an Apple Sunrise, from American Bar.

Pour each ingredient one after the other into a collins glass (a tall glass), and stir gently:

• a few dashes fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 ounce (1 and 1/2 teaspoon) creme de cassis -- this gives our drink the flavor of black currant, a taste wine writers are forever recognizing and relishing in glasses of red wine. One would think they had all grown up playing in the shade of their mothers' black currant bushes. Remember how we studied this when we thought about received wisdom in wine?
• 1 and 1/4 ounces (a little less than a jigger) Calvados -- (apple brandy)
• 2 and 3/4 ounces (about two jiggers) fresh orange juice

Drink. Don't get hung up on received wisdom. Stay warm.

A Rioja will give you a light, olive-brine effect that heavier berry-and-caramel California reds, or Australian shirazes let's say, will not. Seriously: be prepared to taste green olives. The country of origin is Spain, the grape, tempranillo.


Retail, about $10.

When you tire of sugary California reds, take refuge in a trim, firm, and shockingly inexpensive Bordeaux.



Retail, about $9.

So I bought a clock radio, and have taken both to falling asleep and waking up to our local classical music station, the world renowned WFMT. This is something I haven't done in perhaps thirty years. It's nice. (Clock radios still have timers! What a revelation!)

The station happens to have stopped playing, may I say faithfully at 6:00 am, a hymn I still remember, and always associate with (my nineteen-year-old self) getting up to catch the bus to a community college on fresh, cold, lavender-swathed winter mornings. I owned a lavender-colored coat and scarf then; and sometimes the winter morning light on hoarfrost and brown branches can look lavender. The lyrics to the hymn were prettily descriptive of all the seasons -- "the lane [or lake?] in its soft summer dew, the stars on a winter night." The chorus ended in something about "the bells in the valley belo-ow." Google the keywords as I may, I can't seem to find the hymn. Perhaps you know it?

In the meantime, why don't we enjoy something else that is nice? Here is a bit of culinary history recovered from the starched-ruff-and-saber era, which might for all I know be the same era as the hymn. Christian Guy, in An Illustrated History of French Cuisine (tr. Elisabeth Abbott, 1962), writes of nice things in the early seventeenth century:

There was one innovation: the guests tied their napkins around their necks; for more than a century before they had flung them over one shoulder or over the left arm. This change -- like the innovation of the fork -- resulted from the fashion for fluted linen collars which the wearers wished to protect. Because of those ruffs, every man also had to let his neighbor help him tie his napkin around his neck (whence the expression 'help make both ends meet').

Curious how the phrase "to make ends meet," to us, means to manage one's finances carefully, to get by. But the full phrase makes more sense in reference to a big cloth napkin. For if it is about money, -- what two ends are meeting? The ends of a dollar bill?

We think not. Below, one more nice thing, in keeping with one of our two new themes for the year. You remember we chose the Baroque and lemons. No kidding. One bright morning this week, my new clock radio and WFMT awakened me to "the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba," from Handel's Solomon.

Never heard of it? Me neither. But now we have.

For my taste it's among the best of cavas -- Spanish sparkling wines -- having an actual nutty and toasty flavor as opposed to just "lightness" or "freshness." I believe Codorníu is the granddaddy of them all, too. Yet in my retail world, people seem to pass it by. Perhaps its marketing department needs to rethink the label.


Retail, about $13

We began our butter making here.


It was all a part of the marvelous three-day weekend, which included the zoo and the conservatory, the fish and the orchids. Did I mention buying my post-Christmas treat, the little bottle of Chanel No. 5, on the Saturday? Show me a gift card from Macy's, and stand back. The more I wear it, the more its warm, rich fragrance (can it be reminiscent of a sort of fruit, and maybe allspice?) seems to grow on me. There's a story at Wikipedia about how the perfumer who presented his creation to Coco Chanel in the 1920s was trying to capture not only jasmine and rose but the "Arctic freshness" he had known while stationed in northernmost Russia interrogating Bolshevik prisoners in the days of the Russian Revolution. That sounds like tremendous hooey to me -- marketing with a capital M. But the scent is lovely. Certain People in my family claimed it reminded them of mosquito repellent and baby powder, but that can't be. Chanel No. 19 is said to be even more wondrous ... we must look about

Anyway, in the midst of all this activity came my first experiment in homemade, cultured butter. We wanted good butter to go with our challah to go with our weekend. An old post of David Leibowitz's got me started. In his list of amusing and useful links re: "real" butter, he includes The Traveler's Lunchbox, whose instructions on the making thereof are very thorough. The Traveler, in turn, credits "fellow blogger Dominic" of The Zen Kitchen for teaching him the art. Alas, after nearly six years the link to that particular post has been lost in the ethernet. It's understandable. The Cloud can't hold everything for all time.

Still. We carry on with what we do know. To make French or cultured butter, you cut the Traveler's recipe in half, and obtain --

2 cups heavy cream
4 Tablespoons plain yogurt ("without added gums or stabilizers" -- I used Chobani, but be careful because the packaging for Chobani's plain yogurt looks a lot like the packaging for their blueberry yogurt)
Ice water

Combine the cream and yogurt. Let the mixture sit, loosely covered at a warm room temperature (ideally about 70 to 75 F), for 12 to 18 hours, until it thickens. My cream developed a sort of skin on top, but that seemed to do no harm. If the cream "bubbles or turns gassy," discard it and start again. "Note that this has never happened to me," writes The Traveler's Lunchbox. It didn't happen to me either.

When ready to make butter, chill the cream down from room temperature to about 60 degrees F. This is not a big change. Placing the bowl in the refrigerator for a few minutes should be enough to effect it. Then, whip the cream with an electric beater, until it -- the cream, not the beater -- "breaks." This means that after forming beautiful, dessert-worthy whipped cream it will churn up into a glop of small soft yellowy beads, and will instantly exude a thin white liquid that pools at the bottom of the bowl. Stop whipping at this point, or the liquid will fly all over the kitchen. This liquid is buttermilk.


Pour off the buttermilk into a clean cup -- in the picture above, it has already been done, so you don't see a pool -- and reserve that in the fridge for another use. A number of chocolate cake recipes happen to call for just a cup of buttermilk, so you might explore that possibility.

Now it is necessary to wash your fresh butter. Pour some ice water, which you have ready to hand in a clean bowl, into the bowl of drained butter. Work and knead it with a fork, and pour off the resulting cloudy water. (The point of washing butter is to remove any remaining buttermilk residues, the presence of which could quickly turn the butter rancid.) Keep on adding ice water, mashing all with a fork, pouring off the clouded water, and then adding fresh water and mashing again. You have finished washing when the water pours off almost completely clear. The cold water, of course, also helps solidify the butter.



If you wish to salt your butter, do so now, to taste. With practice your imagination may run wild here, and lead you off into the fragrant realms -- all rolling grassy hills, sunny valleys, and cows grazing peacefully in the rising mists of a summer dawn -- of flavored butters. Why salt only? Why not garlic, or lemon, or pepper, or clove, why not rum or thyme or vanilla?

All that lies in our future. Now, having salted carefully -- why, we have finished. Our "French" or "cultured" butter is ready to pack into any receptacle, whether a cup, ramekin, specially designed butter mold or what have you. Cover it or wrap it tightly before refrigerating it, as it will readily absorb foreign odors.

And what was the point of it all, besides having fun and learning a new kitchen skill, and savoring something delicious to spread on challah at a winter picnic? The point was to try to recreate what butter used to taste like when it was made on the farm, before pasteurized cream and industrial production made the indispensable yellow sticks cheap, hygienic, plentiful, and bland. Centuries ago, the farm wife skimmed off the cream from her milk over several days, collecting it until she had enough to churn into butter. While it held in pans or pails, benign lactic acid bacteria accosted it, souring it slightly. When the farm wife churned this cultured cream, the result was butter with a savory tang unknown in what we buy today. Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking writes, "Continental Europe still prefers the flavor of this lightly fermented 'cultured' butter to the 'sweet cream' butter made common in the 19th century by the use of ice, the development of refrigeration, and the mechanical cream separator" (p. 33). This explains why we must stumble upon recipes for homemade cultured butter in the blogs of Britons like the Traveler, or Paris-based expatriates like David Leibowitz, who have tasted both and like the one much better.

With good reason. Do try it -- it is delicious.

Splendid. On a cold winter's day it will warm you up no end.


More on Chateau Tanunda, Barossa Valley, Australia, here. You may recall we met the 2008 vintage earlier in 2012. Retail, about $45.

I am still playing with my new camera. Don't worry, at the end of the photo essay you may have a cocktail.



























Now amid the greenery and the orchids, the spilling water and the lovebirds, the klipspringers and the meerkats, we have also seen a lot of fish. (Is there anything prettier than a koi pond? We think not.) So, let us carry on the theme and make a fish-referenced cocktail. Here is Charles Schumann's Red Snapper, from American Bar.

2 ounces (a little more than a jigger) cream
dash grenadine
1/4 ounce (1 and 1/2 teaspoons) Galliano
1 ounce (about half a jigger) white rum

Shake well over ice cubes in a cocktail shaker, strain into a cocktail glass.

Is the lady on the label really Lillie Langtry, famed 19th century actress and treasured friend of princes? (And, briefly yes, vineyard owner and claret maker in Lake County, California. Hence the connection to this Guenoc Victorian Claret.) But is it her? That direct stare, the pulse of life and liveliness in the thin sharp little face, seem at odds with other old images of Lillie, which are all sweet, calm eyes and reposeful bearing.


Below, the lady herself, circa 1875:

Image from wikipedia (in French! -- the article is, however, une ébauche, a stub.)

And the wine is very pleasant, an attractive and fruity medium-bodied red with a hint of bite to it, not just all California sugariness and caramel. Retail damages surprisingly pleasant too, about $10.

We delighted first in the peeking bird. Then, in the wall of fish (plus the cocktail).

After the orchids, perhaps we'll admire some more fish, from the Lincoln Park Conservatory's koi ponds.




Shall we have another cocktail? Let's try the beautiful simplicity of the Orange Blossom.(from the Calvert Party Encyclopedia).

2 ounces (a little more than a jigger) gin
1 ounce (a little less than a jigger) fresh orange juice

Stir well with cracked ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.

There are orange trees in the Conservatory, too.

From Lincoln Park Zoo, where we also saw the peeking bird. It's meant to represent life in the waters of Lake Victoria.


You may have a little drink, too, since it's ages since we tried a new one. Here, from our Calvert Party Encyclopedia (1960), is the Chicago Cocktail.



Chicago Cocktail

1 and 1/2 ounces (1 jigger) brandy
dash curacao
dash bitters
champagne

Stir all ingredients well with ice. "Frost" the rim of a champagne flute by dipping it first in water, then in sugar. Strain the drink ingredients into the flute, then fill with more champagne.

Admire the view.

Oh, there's lots more where this came from. Wait until you see the wall of fish. And the orchids. Three day weekends are a marvel.

The French or "cultured" butter is quite good, too. More later.

Call it French butter, or call it cultured butter; we begin with heavy cream, doctored with either plain yogurt or buttermilk, and we allow it to sit at a warm room temperature for twelve to eighteen hours. Start in the mid-afternoon, so that by the next morning, the kitchen gods willing, you may churn it up and wash it (no kidding -- you wash butter by mashing it repeatedly with ice water and pouring off the watery residue each time), and share it with a friend. Along with a loaf of that delicious challah.

I'll let you know.

One would think At First Glass already had one theme, namely wine and food. True. But you remember how, anticipating my fifth anniversary blogging, I decided to spend this coming year concentrating on a theme. It was lemons. I even took a practice run with it.



That's all very well, but I have developed a new interest, and so have decided to throw caution to the winds and adopt a second, but only a sort of sub-theme, just for fun. It will be: the delights of the eighteenth century, especially music. Won't it be fun to listen to something lovely while we cook?

Now what brought this on? You may well ask. One thing leads to another. I was driving home from the [liquor] store recently, listening to the local classical music station because one can only endure so much politics, traffic, and weather reports on talk radio. On WFMT, then, I happened to catch a short guest lecture, with audio clips, on the once-famed Italian soprano Rosanna Carteri, whom I had never heard of. When it was over, "thank you so much for that wonderful program," the announcer said to his guest, marveling further, "I hadn't thought of her in years." This gentle outburst seemed hardly a compliment to La Carteri, but we shan't dwell.

Anyway I rushed home and looked the lady up on YouTube, and sure enough there she was in an old grainy clip from a 1950s-era television production of La Traviata, uploaded by a fan in South Korea or Japan from the look of it. Yes, she and her voice were bewitching. It made me think. What else don't I know about the great world?

Plenty, naturally. I have tuned in to WFMT a little more often since that afternoon. The station used to be very talky, too, even without occasional good lectures. But I have happened to re-encounter there, among other things, harpsichord music. For some reason programming seems to have focused on the Baroque this past fall, with its fugues and its Bach. Now I like the harpsichord, and fugues and Bach (who doesn't?). And it so happens -- how things fall together! -- there on the table while I listen to WFMT is my Pageant of Georgian England, the book that got me started on porcelain collecting you'll remember, a book that is all eighteenth-century all the time. And there, in the other bookcase, is Harold Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers (1970), which starts out with Monteverdi and Bach and which I have always meant to read since I bought it probably twenty-five years ago.

How things fall together! So many grand people seem to have been born in Bach's natal year, for a start (1685). Handel, and Scarlatti, and wonderful John Gay, the poet. Call me a flibbertigibbet, and call him "minor," but I do love his To a Lady on Her Passion for [and here I interpose, "wait for it"] old China. This is a snippet of it, an example of what people were reading while they listened to Handel, or Scarlatti:

...When I some antique Jar behold,
Or white, or blue, or speck'd with gold,
Vessels so pure, and so refin'd,
Appear the types of womankind;
Are they not valu'd for their beauty,
Too fair, too fine for houshold duty?

Yes, aren't they? Now if you have young people in your household and you want to trowel into your food and wine blog the sub-theme of eighteenth-century music, you might have been told already of the marvelous site Pandora, a constantly streaming radio station where you may log on and type in a request to hear anything, and Pandora will play what you want, or something very like it. Thus "ancora imparo," we go on learning, as Michelangelo (sixteenth century) is supposed to have said. When we carry on our musical explorations there, we'll also meet -- let's just throw off some names -- Purcell (b. 1659), Couperin (b. 1668), Albinoni (b. 1671), Vivaldi (b. 1678) Telemann (b. 1681), and Rameau (b. 1683). Who knew? Of course once you find a bit of music you like, sharing it from Pandora becomes a problem. It's easiest to return to YouTube, where we met La Carteri, and fish about there.



Now I got quite excited by all this activity and was prepared to really launch this theme, plunging entirely into eighteenth century food and drink and cookery books, and history and art and everything. Then I drew back. Shall I bind myself, I asked the mirror, in such a straitjacket? Do my readers really want to know more, even emphemarally, about Hogarth's Gin Lane or Stradivari's five children, or the heroes King Charles XII of Sweden or Prince Eugene of Savoy (supposing I can try to act pertinent by also finding out what they ate and drank), however much these latter might figure in Samuel Johnson's eighteenth century conversation? I decided, perhaps not. Let us not fold ourselves into the straitjacket -- to mix a metaphor, let us not bite off very much more than we can chew.

We won't. This is not to say we also won't still look into wonderful things regarding the Baroque, whether art or history or music or all. Mary Kettilby's Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery (London, 1714 -- Alexander Pope published The Rape of The Lock the same year) comes to mind, or John Evelyn's Acetaria: a Discourse of Sallets (1699). Watteau's paintings are lovely; Hogarth's, ribald and shocking. Perhaps here and there we'll find something to do with lemons. But, we have firmly decided, we will know our limitations. Just a bit of harpsichord while we cook, or a fugue or a sketch now and then.

"The best lemon cream," from Court Cookery; or, the Compleat English Cook (Robert Smith, 1725)

Lemons and roses. Eggs and sugar. That's all. Who knew the Baroque could be so simple?

Take four Lemons, and pare the yellow Rind; then cut them into slices and wring out the Juice, and let the Peel steep in it an hour; then put in a Quarter of a Pint [half a cup] of Water, six spoonfuls of Rose Water, the whites of eight Eggs, and two Yolks beaten very fine; set it over a Charcoal Fire, and keep it stirring till it be ready to boil; then put in half a Pound of double-refin'd Sugar, and strain it before you set it over the Fire, and stir it til cold.