Cape Cod Capers

 fig. a:  geography

Ah, Cape Cod!  Your sandy features and abundant coastline hold so many opportunities, so many pleasures!  And your lobsters are so disproportionately large (and tasty)!

 fig. b:  nostalgia

We're already so nostalgic for you.  It's only been a little over a week since we returned, but it feels like decades.

fig. c:  dunes


We miss your sand dunes and your foliage,

 fig. d:  ark

your quaint little towns and villages with their whimsical sense of style,

 fig. e:  shells

and your abundant beachcombing opportunities.

 fig. f:  lobstah & chowdah

But most of all we miss your seafood stores and markets.  Places like Hatch's, Mac's, the Chatham Fish Pier Market, and George's (motto:  "George's plaice has sole."), with their lobster rolls, their beautiful fresh and smoked fish, their briny, inexpensive Wellfleet oysters, and their luscious littlenecks

 fig. g:  steamahs

and succulent (and sometimes even sandless!) steamers.  Because of you, we ate plentiful seafood each and every day, and in every possible way:  raw, steamed, grilled, pan-fried, etc.

We knew we'd miss your seafood, so we brought some home with us

 fig. h:  sea food

in those lovely lined bags of yours.  We brought back delicious flounder and smoked bluefish, but we were especially excited to be bringing back clams:

 fig. i:  littlenecks

both littlenecks

 fig. j:  steamahs

and steamers.  You see, we had it in mind to make some real clam chowder, so we made sure to pick up the other essentials that are so critical to good, old-fashioned chowder-making:

 fig. k:  bacon

smoky bacon (from New Hampshire),

 fig. l:  potatoes

seasonal potatoes (from Quebec), and milk and cream (from Vermont).

You can find clam chowder all up and down the Cape, of course, but it's a little difficult to find one to our liking.  The regional preference is for starchy, even stodgy, clam chowder that's heavy with thickeners, but we prefer ours thinner and lighter, with any and all starchiness coming strictly from the potatoes and any crackers or pilot biscuits you might choose to top it off with.  The trick is to chop up your potatoes "thick/thin":  in irregular shapes that are narrower at one end and that cook irregularly.  If you chop 'em and cook 'em just right, the potatoes themselves will thicken your chowder just so.

Clam Chowder 

36 littleneck clams*
125 ml high-quality clam juice [like Bar Harbor] (optional)
4 strips smoky bacon
1 sweet onion, finely chopped
water or high-quality clam juice
9-10 small-medium potatoes, cut thick-thin
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup cooking cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
common crackers (optional, but highly recommended) 

If you want a particularly rich clam broth, pour 250 ml of clam juice in a large pot, add the clams, cover the pot, and bring to a boil.  When the liquid comes to a boil, lower the heat, and steam the clams until they've all opened (about 6-10 minutes). 

If you don't have access to a high-quality clam juice, just use the same amount of water instead, and follow the directions above. 

When the clams have opened, use tongs to place them in a bowl.  And when the clams have cooled enough to handle, remove the clam meat from its shell and chop finely. 

Strain the liquid in the pot along with any broth in the bowl through a fine strainer lined with a paper coffee filter, or just pour it off carefully, leaving the grit behind. 

Fry the bacon in a pan until crispy.  Pour the bacon fat into a pot and sauté the onion until translucent.  Meanwhile, dice the bacon.   

Measure the amount of broth and top off with water or clam juice to make a generous 2 cups.  Add this to the pot with the onion, as well as the diced bacon.  Add the potatoes, bring to a simmer, and cook until they are still firm but done.  Stir the milk and cream into the broth and add salt and pepper as necessary.  If your clams are fresh and briny and if you've used clam juice, you shouldn't need much, if any, salt. 

Bring the broth back to a gentle simmer and add the clam meat.  Do not let the chowder boil.  Cook the chowder at the barest simmer for another 2-3 minutes. 

The chowder will be at its best if you age it briefly, keeping it warm, but not hot, for an hour or so.  Afterwards, just bring the chowder bring it back to temperature, adjust the seasoning, and serve, preferably with common crackers (especially common crackers that have been split and toasted in the oven.) 

Serves 4-6 as an opening course. 

[recipe based closely on a recipe from John Thorne's Serious Pig] 

* You can also make a nice clam chowder with steamers, but we saved our steamers for, well..., steaming.

The other revelation of our Cape Cod excursion had to do not with fruits de mer, but with fruits du bord de la mer.

Michelle had read about Cape Cod's legendary beach plums years ago.  When we we got an invitation to vacation there, she tried to find out some more about them and discovered that we'd be there at the height of their season--mid- to late-August.  The thing is, how do you go about finding a fruit that's totally wild and that you can only procure from foragers?  Especially when the foragers in question are known to keep their sources secret--like mushroom hunters and their troves of prized chanterelles and morels.

We had no idea how we'd find beach plums, but we were determined to keep our eyes peeled for them.  And, in the end, it took us less than 24 hours to score both beach plums and another wild coastal fruit we had no idea even existed:  wild apricots.  But we found in them in a most unlikely spot:  at a flea market (!).

We'd been told that the weekend flea market at the Wellfleet Drive-In was a must--and it was!--but we had no idea that there'd be a grizzled old hippie selling foraged fruit along with his carved wood C.R.A.P.**  God bless him!  He had an amazing array of carved driftwood whales and other folk art treasures, and his beach plums and wild apricots were beautiful (much, much smaller than we would have imagined, but beautiful nonetheless).












fig. m:  wild beach plums & apricots

When we got them back to our beach house,











fig. n:  sorting



Michelle set about sorting through them.  And the next morning she made an exceedingly precious

 fig. o:  preserves

small batch of wild apricot and beach plum preserves.  Fresh, both fruit were a little too tart to be pleasant--but sweetened and cooked, they turned into the deepest, most delicious preserves.  The beach plums almost had a wine flavour to them, while the apricots were redolent of almond.

We brought back numerous souvenirs from our trip to Cape Cod,

 fig. p:  souvenirs

 fig. q:  ole no. 69

but there's no question the most highly prized were those two jars of beach house-made preserves.

Of course, there are other, more conventional ways of scoring traditional Cape Cod preserves, like beach plum.  And some of them are quite excellent, indeed.  Take the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop,

 fig. r:  jams & jellies

in (you guessed it!) Chatham, where you can find dozens upon dozens of house-made jam & jellies, including a whole assortment of wild fruit preserves.

We kept the small batch we made at the beach house for ourselves, but we brought back extras to stock our pantry and give to our friends and family.

Ah, Cape Cod!  We miss you so.

aj

** The acronym stands for Cape Recycled Art Project, if memory serves me right.

p.s. TY to R & MA for making this happen--such a great time!

Faire la chaudière

fig. a: flaky pilot

I’ve said it before, but there’s something about those dishes that spark controversy, the ones that people worked up about, the ones that they’ll argue over late into the night. They’re the ones that have the greatest relevance to the greatest cross-section of people, the ones that are at the very heart of a culture, and that serve to define it. In other words, the level of controversy is an indicator of cultural significance. Of course, in the hyper-opinionated world we live in, with its discussion groups, chat rooms, comments sections, "likes" functions, etc., it's sometimes hard to distinguish a true controversy from your standard-issue tempest in a teapot. But there's a reason that people get so agitated about things like barbecue, chili, and pizza. Stakes is high.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the feeling that that moment has passed when it comes to chowder, that chowder is no longer as absolutely central to the culture and the identity of vast numbers of North Americans, especially those hailing from the Mid-Atlantic and points north and east, as it was just a few decades ago. Blame it on America’s continued drift westward and southward, blame it on decades of relentless attacks against New England and its notorious liberal elites, but take a look back and you’ll see that chowder was as hotly contested and divisive a dish as there was in North America. Sure there was that fabled Boston vs. Manhattan split, but, really, it went way, way beyond that. So far, in fact, that when J. George Frederick waxed enthusiastic on the topic of chowder for his Long Island Seafood Cook Book of 1939 (reprinted in a Dover edition in 1971), not only did his chapter span 38 pages and roughly 60 recipes covering seafood chowders of all sorts (clam, fish, oyster, and shrimp included), as well as a host of other related soups and stews (from the prosaic [Fishwife’s Stew] to the exotic [Sea Tang]), but the magnitude of the topic elicited a particularly memorable title from him: “The Great Disputatious Chowder Family.”

Mr. Frederick explained:

If anybody tells you that the American people are “regimented” or “standardized,” just ask quietly, “What about clam chowder?” Your cocksure informer will get very red in the face, for nothing is more notorious that that various sections of Eastern America come to blows over chowder. Tomatoes or milk is the crucial question, also caraway seeds and salt pork. New England is rent and torn over these dissenting practices, but Boston, Maine, and Connecticut are allied against Manhattan or Long Island chowders, while Rhode Island teeters in between.

As Mr. Frederick would have it, and as has become accepted knowledge since, chowder, that most Yankee of dishes, has its roots in Brittany’s tradition of faire la chaudière, where the citizenry of coastal towns would each contribute something to the communal pot, be it fish, vegetable, or spices and herbs, and each would partake of the dish that resulted, a “hodgepodge” (Frederick’s term) consisting of “fish and ship biscuits, vegetables and savory ingredients” (my emphasis).

When French fisherman began settling in Newfoundland to take advantage of the (then) teeming bounty of the Grand Banks, they naturally brought faire la chaudière with them, transplanting it to the New World, where the tradition quickly took root. There it became part of the cultural exchanges (French, British, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.) that defined coastal Newfoundland, and eventually found its way southwest, through the Maritimes to New England, with the assistance of the sailors and fishermen who had made seafood chowder their own, and whose travels often covered vast areas of the Atlantic Seaboard.

Though this was not a part of the original French tradition, Early American chowders were predominantly milk-based chowders--when they became so is unclear. Was this an American invention? Did it have roots in such time-honored Northern European concoctions as Flemish waterzooi? I’m not sure. What is clear is that even though the tomato originated in the Americas, the addition of tomato to American chowder came relatively late in the game, and, most likely, it came by way of Europe. During its early history, authentic American chowder was based on this fab four and this fab four only: seafood, potatoes, pork (usually salt pork), and hardtack/sea biscuit, or some analog, such as pilot biscuits (preferably flaky ones) or common crackers.

fig. b: flaky pilot biscuits

The tomato was a late arrival to the world of chowder, but when it did, its effect rippled out from the New York area where it first came into vogue, throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Some 70 years ago, at the time that Mr. Frederick published his tome, Long Island was a divided island, but his account took pains to indicate the complexity of the matter:

Since Long Island has all this time been the place where New York and New England merge (at the eastern tip) it is not surprising that the chowder controversy rages even today on Long Island, despite the fact that a majority opinion certainly sides with the tomato. But a few old, gnarled eastern island baymen, and hardy old ladies, who learned the cookery arts somewhere around the Civil War period when the tomato was still an outlaw, today continue to cling to the milk basis for chowder, and will not surrender. Canceling this out is the fact that many New Englanders, even up into Maine, and particularly in Rhode Island, have acquired the tomato chowder idea and uphold it against their scandalized neighbors. Connecticut is too close to New York to be pure New England, and also is in part a renegade from the milk chowder. And, in the main, west of the Hudson, as New York goes, so goes the U.S.

If anything, I’d argue that “Boston” or “New England-style” chowder has been the style that's dominated the continent in recent decades, but there’s no question that each tradition has had tremendous reach. Back in the day, my family’s favorite chowder house in Santa Cruz, CA, was just one of many such establishments that handled any possible disputations with the greatest of tact (or was it spinelessness?): they served both.

In any case, for my money, the tomato vs. milk debate is a bit of a non-issue. Properly made, I’d be happy (ecstatic, even) with either. The real issue for me in recent years has been finding a chowder made from scratch, one made from fresh seafood and not from its canned or frozen doppelgänger, and one made without the use of corn starch and other non-traditional thickening agents. The idea is to use the freshest possible seafood (recall the concept behind faire la chaudière), and to achieve thickness from the inclusion of the hardtack/sea biscuit/pilot biscuits/common crackers and, especially, the potatoes. In fact, the traditional Yankee seafood chowder was known to begin with potatoes cut in irregular shapes, one end purposely cut larger than the other. This facilitated one end cooking faster than the other, disintegrating into the broth, and lending the chowder a perfectly thick texture without the need of any additional agents. Few things disappoint me as much as a corn-starch-laden seafood chowder, especially when served at an otherwise reputable establishment; few things are as totally satisfying as a true seafood chowder.

The following is the recipe we’ve been using recently for our New England-style fish chowder. It's an amalgam of a few different recipes. If, however, your preferences are tomato-based and spicy, you might want to check out this recipe, which appeared in “...an endless banquet” way back in 2004. It's a great recipe for Manhattan clam chowder, and it might also give you ideas for a spicy fish chowder.

fig. c: fish chowder

AEB Fish Chowder

1 lb haddock, or cod, fillets
1 bay leaf
1/4 lb bacon ends, or bacon, or salt pork (salt pork being the most traditional option; smoky bacon ends being what we've actually been using of late)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small leek, white part only, thoroughly rinsed, cleaned, and finely chopped
2-3 medium potatoes, chopped into irregular pieces as described above and pictured below (see figs. d & e)
1 tbsp parsley, minced
2-3 sprigs thyme, leaves only, minced
1 1/2 cups milk
salt and freshly ground black pepper
pilot biscuits or common crackers

Bring three cups of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the fish and the bay leaf, lower the heat, and simmer gently for 7-8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the fish to a plate or cutting board, but keep the broth warm on a back burner. Fry the bacon ends (or bacon, or salt pork) in a skillet until they've rendered their fat and have begun to crisp. Add the onion and the leek and sauté until the onion begins to turn translucent and the leek has turned tender. Add the onion/leek mixture and the chopped potatoes to the fish broth. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 12-15 minutes, until the potatoes are nice and tender and the broth has thickened slightly. Meanwhile, gently flake the fish fillets. When the potatoes are ready, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, add the fish, the parsley, the thyme, and the milk to the broth, and let the chowder steep for 5-10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Set your oven to broil. Split your common crackers or pilot biscuits, and if you're using the latter, break them up into smaller pieces. Being careful not to over-toast them (read: burn them), toast your common crackers or pilot biscuits gently, until they're a light golden brown. (Sounds unnecessary, but it will only take a minute and, trust me, toasting them makes a huge difference.)

Serve each bowl of chowder topped with the toasted pilot biscuits or common crackers.

Serves 4.

Note: fish chowder tastes good at any time of year, but it's particularly good on a cold winter day.

fig. f: cold winter day

aj

Back in the Saddle Again, or Late-Summer Chowder

fig. a: corn

Good God, it has been a while, hasn't it?

I'd give you the full story, but there isn't much time. If you're going to make this chowder before Quebec's corn season comes to an end, you're gonna have to hop to it.

fig. b: corn chowder

AEB Corn Chowder

4 ears fresh corn, shucked
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup salt pork (rind removed), diced
1 red onion, peeled and diced
1/2 red bell pepper (or some other mild to medium-hot capsicum), diced
1 stalk celery, diced
4 red potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into 1/2" cubes
2 cups whole milk
ground hot red pepper
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Using a sharp knife, cut the kernels from the cobs of corn, then use the back of the knife to scrape down the sides of the cobs to remove as much pulp and juice as possible. Break the scraped cobs in two and simmer the halves in a pot with three cups of water and the teaspoon of salt for twenty minutes.

Melt the tablespoon of butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the salt pork and sauté until the pieces begin to turn crisp at the edges. Add the onion and sauté until it begins to turn translucent. Add the bell pepper and the celery and sauté until the onions are fully translucent and the bell pepper and celery are firm-tender.

Remove the cobs of corn from the water and discard. Replace them with the potatoes and simmer them for 15 minutes, or until they are just tender. Add the contents of the skillet, the corn kernels and any reserved pulp and/or juice, and the milk. Taste for seasoning, adding salt as needed, and grind in plenty of black pepper. Add a little hot red pepper (we used a combination of smoked hot paprika and our own blend of chili powder) and heat the chowder through, just long enough for the corn to cook, about 5-10 minutes. Serve immediately.

Serves 4-6.

The broth is sweet and delicate, the mingling of flavors sublime. Few dishes do justice to farm-fresh corn the way a real corn chowder does. Few things taste as good at this time of year, when the days are still warm but the evenings are nice and cool.

aj

Revelation 2: Swan Oyster Depot

Oyster platter from Swan Oyster Depot
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

So, we got off on the good foot almost as soon as we arrived in San Francisco, and things never really let up the whole time we were there [as you'll see--ed.]. Case in point: our visit to Swan Oyster Depot on our last day in town.

Swan was right at the top of our list of places to check out while in the Bay Area and when we still hadn't gone there during our first week we decided to make it part of our closing ceremonies. Everything we'd read about Swan--the absolute freshest seafood, its long history, its classic counter service, its reasonable prices--made it sound absolutely amazing. But we really got the bug to go there a few days earlier on a trip to Santa Cruz when Michelle tried Dungeness Crab for the very first time and I re-experienced it for the first time in some 20 years. We had it in the form of a crab sandwich and what looked like the simplest arrangement imaginable--two slices of bread, a pile of crabmeat, some Crab Louie sauce, and some salad fixin's turned out to be the hit of the day. After that, we were determined to have more Dungeness Crab (even if it wasn't exactly the season) and we'd decided Swan was going to be the place.

We showed up just before the lunchtime rush kicked in and got seated at the far end of Swan's counter, near the kitchen. I loved it from the moment I stepped in. What a beautiful space and what a perfect atmosphere, friendly and unpretentious. We'd been eating pretty well on this trip and I didn't have an enormous appetite when we showed up, so I arrived thinking that maybe I'd just have a few oysters and a bowl of clam chowder and leave it at that. I hadn't been expecting the impact of seeing the wide selection of seafood on offer at Swan. Fish, smoked fish, clams, oysters, shrimp, crab--it all looked so tantalizing. We stuck to our plan and ordered a couple of bowls of clam chowder and some oysters, and then we decided we'd sniff around for something else to round out our experience at Swan. That day, Swan had a selection of five different oysters to choose from. We're much better versed in Atlantic oysters and even French oysters than we are in Pacific oysters, so we weren't sure how to begin. Our waiter made things very simple for us by offering us a sampler platter, then serving us eight oysters on the half shell for the price of six (that's just the kind of place Swan is). All four types of oysters were among the best I've ever had, so good you didn't want much dressing on them, just a bit of lemon juice. But the ones that impressed us the most--both in terms of taste and aesthetics--were the Tomales Bay Miyagis, which had a lovely delicate blue hue to them [you can see one towards the upper right corner of the photo above--ed.]. Swan's clam chowder was the real deal, no thickening agent, just a whole lot of clams in a simple, hearty chowder, made with a lightly creamy broth, unlike the typically gloppy clam chowder we'd had just a few days earlier in Santa Cruz. In short: perfect.

real New England Clam Chowder at Swan Oyster Depot
Originally uploaded by michelle1975.

By the time we'd finished our chowder and oysters we still hadn't made up our mind what the next act was going to be. Luckily, we'd struck up a conversation with a Swan regular named "Pat" who was sitting next to us, and she became a consultant of sorts for us. We debated the pros and cons of various dishes and combination dishes then finally settled on an unlikely combo. You see, we don't have any shortage of good smoked salmon back in Montreal (between the in-house smoked salmon at Leméac and the Wolf's Head smoked salmon that comes in from New Brunswick, we're pretty happy), but Swan had the most beautiful whole smoked salmon fillet laid out on their counter when we arrived, and I found it hard to take my eyes off it. When I asked Pat about it she said it was good, really good, "like candy," and that it was made locally by some guy near Point Reyes (if I remember correctly). I asked one of the counterhands how they serve it and he said they serve it as a platter with some bread (sourdough or rye) and whatever additional fixin's we wanted (capers, red onion, etc.). He said they could also do the smoked salmon as part of a combo platter with a shrimp salad. Michelle and I discussed the matter for another minute and then decided to get the combo with an upgrade to a Crab Louie in place of the shrimp salad. That smoked salmon was truly outrageous, and I had absolutely no regrets about ordering it. The Crab Louie was fresh and tangy, with big chunks of that oh-so-flavorful Dungeness Crab meat (it's naturally sweet and a little briny). We couldn't have been happier.

There were still plenty of temptations to be had at Swan when we finished, but we'd eaten well, and we'd been there for about an hour, so, god knows, there was a line-up of people patiently waiting to get in by that time. We paid our bill, paid a couple of fond farewells to Pat and the counter staff, and headed on our way.

Swan Oyster Depot, 1517 Polk St., San Francisco, CA, (415) 673-1101

aj

Manhattan Clam Chowder

I grew up a Manhattan clam chowder kid. Clam chowder was definitely a huge family favorite, and we ate a lot of the New England variety, too, but I remember being especially passionate about Manhattan-style clam chowder. We frequently made daytrips to Santa Cruz back then, and one version of this daytrip involved a stroll out over the Pacific on the main pier, where there was an informal seafood restaurant that served an awfully tasty, awfully peppery, Manhattan clam chowder. The pepper content didn't stop the die-hards from adding Tabasco sauce to it, though. On chilly days when the pier was shrouded in fog and/or a stiff breeze was whipping across the waters their Manhattan clam chowder was a godsend.

As much as I loved New England clam chowder, somehow it always seemed more familiar. I think it had to do with the affinities between the cuisine of New England and the cuisine of Quebec, New Brunswick, and the Maritimes, the first two of which I was well acquainted with. Manhattan clam chowder was more exotic. It was red, and spicy, and it came from New York, or so I thought. (I hadn’t been to New York yet, and the Yankees were my favorite team at the time, so you can just imagine the attraction.) Apparently, the origins of Manhattan clam chowder have very little to do with New York and a lot to do with the New England-based Portuguese community, but at the time I was none the wiser.

Sunday, Michelle made another successful sourdough loaf—this time she proofed it for 24 hours and she used a water bath to give the crust a nice finish—and we were busy trying to decide what we might make for dinner to accompany this brand-new loaf, when Mom suggested a Manhattan clam chowder. Now, the best thing to have with a fresh, hot sourdough loaf straight out of the oven is a cioppino, in my opinion, but cioppino was a bit complicated for us on that particular day (we had canning to do, after all), and Manhattan clam chowder comes in a close second, so that’s what we made. Plus, it was really cold out and there was a wind howling, so it just made sense.

We found a recipe in Gourmet magazine from March of this year, made some adjustments to it, and went out to Nouveau Falero—easily the best local fish store—to get the main ingredients. Later, that evening, I did the prep work on the chowder, and 45 minutes later we were having the best Manhattan clam chowder I’ve had in years—maybe since Santa Cruz.

One of the things that made clam chowder so appealing way back when was its affordability. I still remember when they used to give clams away. Clams, mussels, and oysters used to be a poor man’s food, a food used as a cost-effective substitute for meat [more on this in a later entry—ed]. Times have changed, though, and clams in the shell cost a pretty penny. If you can afford it, though—or if you can rationalize splurging the way we did—it’s definitely worth getting clams in the shell. The whole experience of making the chowder—the way it looks, the way it smells—is more satisfying, and the taste is far superior to one made with pre-shelled clam meat.

6 slices of bacon, cut into squares
1 medium onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 stalks of celery, diced
3 medium red potatoes, chopped into 1/2” cubes
3 8-oz bottles of clam juice
1 large (28 oz) can of diced tomatoes, including the juice
3 dozen smallneck clams, scrubbed well
1/8-1/4 tsp espelette pepper or cayenne pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
salt and (plenty) of black pepper, to taste

Cook the bacon in a large pot over moderate heat, stirring, until golden. Reduce heat to moderately low, then add onion, bell pepper, and celery and cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in potato, bottled clam juice, and tomatoes (with juice) and simmer, covered, 10 minutes. Stir in clams and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until clams open wide, 8-10 minutes. Discard any clams that haven’t opened after 10 minutes. Remove pot from heat.

Remove clamshells with tongs, detach the clam meat and discard the shells, returning the clam meat to the chowder. Stir in the espelette/cayenne pepper, the parsley, and add salt and black pepper to taste. Simmer for another 5 minutes to allow flavors to mingle.

Serve with a crusty loaf of bread, preferably sourdough.

aj