The Muffin Man

Back in merry ole England in the 19th century there existed a street peddler known as the Muffin Man.  Forever immortalized in the nursery rhyme of the same name, the Muffin Men plodded the streets of London with a tray of muffins, often carried on their heads.  To alert the public to their presence they rang a bell, much like the neighborhood ice cream trucks of the modern day.

It is estimated that there were as many as 3,000 muffin men clanging their way through the English capitol.  Apparently this caused quite a raucous as the public complained, spurring a Parliamentary interdiction in 1840 limiting the use of the bell.  Supposedly this had little effect and the peal of the undaunted muffin men continued to reverberate through the city.

When I think of muffins I can’t help but recall the episode of Seinfeld entitled “The Muffin Tops.”  Elaine, who only relishes the muffin tops, suggests a harebrained scheme to open a muffin shop that only sells the tops.  Her ex-boss Mr. Lippman decides to run with it and does just that.  However, something goes wrong as the muffin tops are insipid.  He consults Elaine who discovers that he is only baking the tops.

The “secret” to the top’s flavor is baking the entire muffin and then breaking off the stumps.  This succeeds but now Lippman is left with hoards of muffin stumps. They try to donate them to the homeless but they rebuff their measly leftovers.

With no other options they turn to the gluttonous and conniving Newman.  In a spoof of Harvey Keitel’s character in the movie “Pulp Fiction,” (Keitel played a “cleaner,” an underworld figure who repairs botched situations), Newman arrives with a large cache of milk and proceeds to consume the staggering stockpile of muffin stumps.

A muffin is a type of quick bread, i.e., a bread which receives its leavening from a chemical, usually baking powder and/or soda, as opposed to yeast.  Yeast breads must also be kneaded and rested; steps unnecessary with quick breads.

Other classical quick breads include pancakes, cornbread, and biscuits.  The word muffin derives from one or two possible sources:  the French word “moufflet,” which refers to soft bread and the German word “muffe,” meaning cake.

Interestingly, what the Seinfeld clan and most people in the US refer to as a muffin is an American transformation.  The original muffins of England were a yeast-based bread, more analogous to a traditional bread than a cake.  The popular brand Thomas’ English Muffins® are truer to their seminal namesake than what Newman gorged himself on.

American muffins, as stated, are more cake-like.  But unlike a finely textured, standard cake, muffins have a denser consistency.  This results from hand stirring the ingredients as opposed to ardently whipping the butter, sugar, and remaining elements in an electric mixer. This latter, cake-making technique is known as the “creaming method.”

Muffins also tend to be less sweet than a regular cake.  A gazillion variations exist employing a myriad of flavoring agents such as fruits, nuts, grains, chocolate, and combinations thereof.  Homemade muffins, devoid of any chemical preservatives go stale rather quickly so eat’em up and/or give some to the neighbors.

BANANA MUFFINS

For the batter:

1 ¾  cups all purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¾  teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup sugar
2 large or 3 medium very ripe bananas, mashed
¼ cup buttermilk
4 tablespoons butter, melted
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 ¼  teaspoons banana extract
Vegetable spray, as needed

For the topping:

1/3 cup light brown sugar
5-6 tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons cold butter, cubed

How to Prepare Banana Muffins

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg and sugar until it lightens and becomes a little fluffy.  Stir in the mashed bananas, buttermilk, butter, vegetable oil and banana extract.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir.  They do not need to be thoroughly combined; some lumpiness is desirable.

Spray a standard 12-muffin pan with vegetable spray.  Fill the muffin pan with the batter.  Do not fill to the brim.

Mix the ingredients for the topping together with a fork until a crumbly texture is achieved.  A little extra flour may be needed.

Sprinkle one heaping tablespoon of the topping over the top of each muffin.

Bake for 18 minutes, or until the muffins are done, rotating the pan once.  They should be springy to the touch.

Chef Mark R. Vogel
FoodForThought.com

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Here’s a new contribution from Chef Mark Vogel talking discussing how to handle friends who insist on knowing what we think about their cooking. - RG

Tell’em What They Want to Hear

I’m always amused when some public figure is in the limelight and being queried about possible misconduct or impropriety, or is simply avowing the quality of his product or services.  Almost universally, their answer is the one that places them in the most favorable light.

This is because either the image-preserving answer is actually true or they’re lying to eschew aversive consequences.  Yes there are a few rare instances where people actually fess up.  But overwhelmingly their answer will be the one that either exculpates them or exalts them.

Former President Bill Clinton’s promulgation that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” is a classic example.  What else could he have said?  I mean, did anyone REALLY expect him to go on national TV and announce to the country that the married head of state is getting his freak on with an intern?

Or how about the commercial for Saturn automobiles asserting that “we make cars that people want to buy.”  Obviously not, for shortly after this commercial aired GM announced it was shutting down the line.   Again, did anyone think Saturn would actually pay for a commercial outlining the advantages of Japanese cars and admit that this was a last ditch effort to prompt people to buy Saturns?

The point I’m driving at here, (pardon the pun), is that in these situations we can never trust the message, because there’s basically only one message.  Be it truth or mendacity the answer/affirmation is always the one which serves the speaker.  When someone claims they’re innocent, they could be either innocent or guilty.  When someone claims they’re product is superior, it could be superior or inferior.  Only the rare self-incriminating responses have a reliable validity rate.

Do You Like My Blood Pudding?

There’s another scenario where people uniformly dispense the “correct” answer:
At a social gathering when the host questions if you like their food.  In this case we often preserve the other person’s ego to avoid the social/emotional repercussions.

Many years ago I was at a dinner party, hosted by this Bavarian woman fiercely proud of her homemade blood sausages.  Knowing my culinary background she was particularly intent on procuring my approval of her “blood pudding” as blood sausages are also known.

Even before the event she began extolling their virtues and fervently anticipated my sampling of them.  When the moment of truth arrived I will never forget the pressure.  As I placed a forkful of the sausage into my mouth, she sat there, intensely peering at me, bringing all of her senses to bear, hypervigilantly awaiting the first discernible sign from me as to my opinion.

And now ladies and gentlemen, this year’s winner for best actor in a repulsive food situation goes to…………(envelope crackling)………..Chef Mark R. Vogel!   (Audience cheers!)

What else could I do??????  My revulsion for her horrid sausages was only outmatched by her dire need for my approbation of them.  Was I to insult my host and create an air of tension for the rest of the night by opining that her blood sausages tasted like a different part of the pig’s anatomy?  Of course not.

Even a diplomatic appraisal of the food would have painfully smitten her and caused disharmony to the bonhomous atmosphere.  Therefore, I reached into the bowels of my psyche and with all the personal discipline I could muster, ignored the vile sensations erupting from my mouth, and produced one of my best feigned performances of gastronomic pleasure.

Naturally, we all want people to enjoy our food and drink.  We want our guests to be pleased, our efforts appreciated, and our perceived successes validated.  It’s also natural for most people to feel at least a modicum of disappointment when their offerings are rebuffed.  Of course this reaction varies from person to person.  Some of us are more sensitive than others.  But no matter who the host is, and no matter how delicately you put it, expressing your disapproval of their victuals is usually not conducive to a congenial miasma.

So in light of all this allow me to suggest the following.  At your next dinner party, don’t even bother to ask your guests if they like the food.  You might as well ask your local car dealership if they truly perform all those tasks in those heftily priced service packages.  You’re merely going to receive the “correct” answer.

So I’d forgo putting your guests on the spot.  Unless you plan to stare them down, meticulously analyzing their reaction for disingenuousness.  If that’s the case, then I’m afraid you have a bigger problem than you’re cooking.  Ooops.  Sorry.  That wasn’t what you wanted to hear.

Chef Mark R. Vogel
FoodForThought.com

To continue the conversation about remodeling a new kitchen, I would like to talk about appliances and specifically new refrigerators. I wrote a post called How to Choose and Buy a New Refrigerator that looked at features and some of the deciding factors when buying a new refrigerator. Now I’d like to tell you about the very cool brand I decided on for our kitchen renovation.

LG Electronics New  4-Door French Door Refrigerator

One of the coolest innovations in refrigerators these days is the French door refrigerator:  the kind that has side-by-side doors that open up onto one refrigerator compartment as wide as the appliance.  This is great because not only do you need less clearance for the doors to swing, but you can also put large party trays or even pizza boxes in the refrigerator without having to shove them in diagonally.

Right out of the gate, we knew we wanted the French door feature, and so that’s how we focused our search.  And then we saw that very cool commercial on television for the new LG Electronics French four-door model and my kids decided it was the one for us. Check out their commercial at the end of this post if you haven’t already seen it.

Wait a second, did I say four-doors?  Yes!  Two doors for the refrigerator section and two stacked freezer drawers on the bottom.  Let me describe what I like about the new LG refrigerator.

Hands-Free Door Opening

How many times have you come in from shopping, grab a bunch of stuff that has to go into the freezer only to realize you don’t have a free hand to open the door?  It happens to me all the time but with the LG refrigerator you just touch a button with a knee or foot, and the freezer drawers open by themselves.  Very, very cool.  They are also self-closing, so all we need to do is nudge them to start them off, and they close all the way.

No More Playing Tetris in the Freezer

Stocking the freezer is like Tetris in our house, a great game for the iphone, but not for a freezer. Frozen goods seem to get tossed in with no rhyme or reason so it is impossible to find anything. And if you have baskets in your freezer, they always seem to get stuck on some item especially the kid’s ice cream containers.

The LG refrigerator has 2 separate freezer drawers so you can store the items you use every day in one compartment and the longer-term freezer items in the other. Now the kids have a place to keep their ice cream containers without disrupting the rest of the frozen leftovers and vegetables.

Easy Access H2O

We drink a lot of water in our. In fact, I even put in a reverse osmosis water filtering system for our ice and drinking water so I can stop buying bottles of water at the supermarket.

The kids like to drink water out of those refillable plastic sports water bottles but they don’t fit in a standard refrigerator water dispenser. So the folks at LG designed this new refrigerator to accommodate water bottles up to 13 inches tall. This is also great for filling up the nightly pitcher of water for the dinner table.

No More Leaving The Fridge Door Open

Or how many times have you found yourself closing the refrigerator door only to find out next time you go to open it, you didn’t close it all the way the first time and all the cold air is streaming out into the kitchen and the ice cream is melting and soft.

The LG refrigerator has an alarm to let you know if a door is ajar!  Now I can’t blame the kids when I accidently leave the freezer door open.

Big With Space Age Looking Controls

Did I mention how big it is?  It’s 28 cubic feet!  It’s huge.  In the refrigerator, there are three crisper bins, four split shelves (three of which slide in and out), and it has LED lights that make it very bright and easy to see everything inside.  Both freezer drawers are deep, there’s an ice maker and bin, and the freezers have LED lights, too.

On the doors, there are a lot of LED lights that not only look like space ship controls but are really useful.  Just by checking the display, I can see and adjust the temperature in the refrigerator and the freezer.  It even tells me when to change the water filter.

There is also a child lock, a nice safety feature to have.  All the controls—even for ice and water—are smooth.  No buttons sticking out makes it easy to clean and modern.

Good Looking

Aside from all these features, this refrigerator also looks good.  The hidden hinges give it a finished and more “built-in” look, and the contoured doors are more aesthetically pleasing than plain flat doors.  Plus, we like the stainless steel exterior because it matches the rest of the appliances in our new kitchen.

As if all of that weren’t enough, my kids are excited because they think it is cool. Hey, that’s good enough for me.