The chowder report

Like everyone else in the Western world, Iris loves that Narnia Rap. She goes around saying things like “pack it up NICE” and “mack on some cupcakes.” Tonight at bedtime…

> **Laurie:** Yo, Iris, what’s crackin’?

> **Iris:** Eggs.

I made a big pot of New England fish chowder. I have got to remember to halve these Jasper recipes, because I think we ate a quarter of the chowder.

The fishmonger was able to hook me up with what I needed, although it wasn’t exactly as I envisioned it. I imagined that maybe I’d buy a few whole cod and the guy would unsheathe his scimitar and fillet them, and I’d get the fillets and some fish carcasses that would look exactly like what cats eat in comic strips: a head and tail fin with a skeleton in between. Oh, and the head would have X’s for eyes.

As it turns out, though, they didn’t have any whole cod around, so I got a bunch of cod fillets and my pick of the scraps bucket. Probably 90% of what they sell at a typical Seattle fish market is salmon and halibut, so the only whitefish scraps they had were halibut. I took a big, fleshy piece that was once behind the fish’s head, and I think they charged me three bucks for it. It was hard to cut up, but it ended up making a pretty good fish stock.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the word I’d use to describe the fish chowder is “mild.” The best part was the salt pork cracklings and the toasted common crackers. Iris ate several crackers and a lot of broth. At one point she spooned some broth onto some fish bites on her plate and said, “Putting some fish stock on those.” Then she ate them.

**A clarification.** In yesterday’s baby food post, when I said:

> I’ll admit that when Iris is eating yogurt, I usually put the tray on to avoid a pants-change right after breakfast.

I meant her pants, not mine. Hope this clears things up.

Gold Niblet Award: Bumkins bibs

NibletLet’s talk about bibs.

First of all, let’s talk about why adults don’t wear bibs. Seriously, why is it only socially acceptable to wear a bib when eating lobster? There are plenty of foods messier than lobster, and all of them have ended up on my shirt. I don’t buy white t-shirts anymore. The last time I bought a white t-shirt, it was a [Pernice Brothers](http://www.pernicebrothers.com/) t-shirt with a picture of a sandwich on it. The first time I wore it, I had spicy Vietnamese beef soup for lunch. That was also the last time I wore it. I guess if I had spilled mayonnaise from a *banh mi* on it, that would have been poetic.

It’s not like I’m a total klutz, although now that I say that, it reminds me that the other day I was getting out of a car and started to slip on something on the grass. I looked down, fearing dog poop, and saw that it was an actual banana peel.

Anyway, there are many makers of baby bibs out there, and one is clearly bald head and tiny shoulders above the rest: Bumkins Waterproof Super Bib. They’re also cheap: here’s one web site selling them for $5 each. Be forewarned that Bumkins makes a dozen models of bib and it’s only the Waterproof Super Bib I’m talking about.

Bumkins are the best because they’re made of thin but nonporous plastic. Lots of bibs are made of cloth or have a terrycloth backing. I guess the idea is that this will absorb spills, but the downside is that it will *absorb spills*. It won’t keep spills off the shirt, but it will keep sending you to the laundry. The Bumkins, on the other hand, wash up in one minute at the sink and–more important–dry fast. They’re also extremely durable: we have three bibs and use two of them in a typical day, and they’ve lasted over a year with no sign of wear.

Bumkins also makes a smock bib. It costs a lot more, but it adds arm protection. (I’m starting to feel like we’re talking about Kevlar vests.) We tried one of these, but the time when Iris most needed it was also the time was most allergic to putting on sleeves of any kind, and the bib had very small wrist holes. Worth a shot, if somehow you’ve drawn a baby who is blasé about sleeves.

Scoop!

Have they nothing better to do at the New York Times Magazine than steal my ideas?

Here’s what I wrote two days ago:

> A baby who is sitting up and starting to be weaned is ready to eat almost anything you eat.

And here’s what a great column in the Times Magazine says today:

> Make them eat what you do, even if you have to purée it. “If we ate butternut squash and carrots, so did they,” Matheson said, “and sometimes with fish. I just really thinned it with cooking water.”

The article is about how chefs feed their young kids. Here are some more choice tidbits:

> Make your children eat at the table from a very young age. Jody Adams, the chef at Rialto in Cambridge, Mass., said that her children–Oliver and Roxanne–never had highchairs.

There’s actually a better way to do this, I think. The value of the highchair is that it puts the baby at eye level with the rest of the family. Put the kid in a regular chair and they’ll disappear faster than a donut hole. So don’t throw away the high chair–throw away the tray, pull the high chair right up to the table, and put the baby’s food on a plate. We did this from day one. Yes, it’s messier, but if you’re after a non-messy baby feeding experience, you’ll have to get the baby laminated.

I’ll admit that when Iris is eating yogurt, I usually put the tray on to avoid a pants-change right after breakfast.

> The fact that chefs’ kids eat better than yours or mine isn’t surprising.

Actually, it is, since a lot of chefs I know subsist entirely on fast food and snacks grabbed while cooking.

> Pack lunches fashioned from leftovers. “If we go for Thai food,” said Naomi Hebberoy, a chef and owner of the Gotham Building Tavern in Portland, Ore., her daughter, August, “takes pad Thai the next day.”

If I’m eating phad thai, Iris will come over and eat all the tofu out of it. They should have mentioned this in the article.

Feeling like a chowderhead

We haven’t made anything from 50 Chowders in too long, so I consulted Iris and we settled on New England Fish Chowder. We haven’t made it yet; it’s planned for Monday, when we’ll all head down to Pike Place Market and get the necessary ingredients at Pure Food Fish.

I do this with a hint of trepidation, because it will mean doing something I’ve never done before, which is to ask for fish frames for making stock. Whenever a cookbook says with confidence that you can ask your butcher to trim a roast or your fishmonger to filet a fish or something, I always convince myself that maybe this was true when the cookbook was written (which is usually in like 2002), or maybe it’s true only on the East Coast. When I ask, surely the fishmonger will say something like, “Kid, you think I keep a bucket of fish bones around waiting for you to come along?”

I’m going to call ahead.

The cakes are back

Several of my favorite topics are back today: cupcakes, lard, and funny things said by Iris.

Today is Laurie’s birthday, and she requested (what else?) cupcakes. This time *I* made them: spice cakes with orange cream cheese frosting. Here’s the recipe on Epicurious. It’s for a layer cake, but I halved the recipe and it made twelve cupcakes (baked 25 minutes at 350°F). Did you know you can determine cake doneness with the Thermapen? When the cake registers 212°F, it’s done. This is an excellent recipe, a little like gingerbread without molasses, so it’s much less brown and chewy.

While I was frosting the cupcakes I had trouble making the frosting go all the way to the edge. I asked Laurie for help, and she said I probably just needed to use more frosting. So for the next cake, as a joke, I scooped up a ludicrous amount of frosting, which of course turned out to be perfect.

Derrick Schneider at An Obsession with Food has a great new post about rendering lard, with photos. His method is a little more complicated than mine but probably results in a purer end product. Schneider renders more than a half-gallon of lard at a time; he means business.

For dinner, since we were too busy eating cupcakes to cook, we got some Indian takeout from a local place. Iris, remembering Vij’s Rangoli, was very excited about this. She kept saying, “Indian food! Iris see the Indian food!” I came home with a sack of potato-chickpea curry, chicken tikka masala, naan, and vegetable pakoras. I set it out on the table and plunked Iris in the high chair.

“That’s not Indian food,” said Iris. “Indian food coming up.”