Dave's Law of Combinant Foods

My 20-something son, Julien, introduced me to something he calls Dave’s Law of Combinant Foods. The law works like this: If you take two solid foods that you really like individually, you should also like the combination. (For some reason—known only to Julien’s friend Dave—liquids are not allowed in the rules of this law.)

So I thought about it, and I could not come up with a combination that didn’t at least have potential. For example, how about roast salmon and chocolate ice cream? I know it sounds awful, but they might actually work. There was a famous French chef who put sweet vanilla sauce on lobster. Can salmon and chocolate ice cream be far behind?

Anyway, think about it, then come back and add your two cents below. See if you can disprove Dave’s Law. And don’t forget, it has to be two foods that you really like. No cheating.

Eggs Dillingham

My father didn't really know how to cook, but he was responsible for two of my fondest childhood food memories. One was for a "recipe" he made for us on Sunday mornings called Tomato Surprise. We weren't allowed in the kitchen while he made it, not that it was all that hard to figure out. It was condensed cream of tomato soup made with heavy cream (may the saints preserve us!) and garnished with homemade, butter-fried croutons (may the saints preserve us again). Mmmmmmm.

The second dish was a breakfast concoction called Eggs Dillingham. To make Eggs Dillingham (named for a college buddy of my father's), you fried up two pieces of bacon, cut a hole in a slice of bread and centered the hole over the bacon in the pan. Then you cracked an egg into the hole and let the thing cook up into a wonderful egg-bacon sandwich glued together by the egg. In the meantime, the piece of bread that was cut out was also frying in the bacon fat. (Wait, where are those saints? I need them.)

We had this dish at home, but we also cooked it over many a campfire. The concept of Eggs Dillingham came in particularly handy when my family used to make an annual canoe pilgrimage to a small island in the middle of a Wisconsin lake. There we built a campfire and put a flat rock in the fire to heat up and serve as our "skillet." Once the rock was hot, we used the bacon to grease the rock, and then the bread with the hole torn out of it served to keep the egg from running off the rock.

I don't think I've ever had food that tasted as good as Eggs Dillingham on Scattering Rice Island.

The map above represents our canoe journey from Otter Lake to the island in Scattering Rice Lake.

Crust puzzlement

Why did our parents and/or grandmothers tell us to eat the crusts of our bread? Was it to not be wasteful? I have this vague recollection that my great-aunties told me it was because the crusts were good for me. And I bought into it.

Just the other day, as my 2-year-old great-niece was asking for the crusts to be cut off her sandwich, I found myself on the verge of saying "Eat the crust. It's good for you." But I stopped myself, because of course that's absurd. The crust is no better for you than any other part of the bread.

Just out of curiosity, I did a search on the term "crustless bread" and discovered that Sara Lee actually makes a crustless bread called IronKids bread. It's a regular loaf of bread that has had the crusts sliced off for you. And there's no waste involved, since these crust fragments get recycled into other products.

My great-aunties might not have approved.

The original ice cream mix-in

There are several national chains of ice cream stores that specialize in ice cream with mix-ins. The way the stores work is the customer first chooses an ice cream flavor and then some number of mix-ins (crushed candy, crumbled cookies, nuts, etc.). The guy behind the counter puts everything on a marble counter, takes two flat scoops and mixes the whole thing together.

It's great news for ice cream lovers that the mix-in idea is so widespread, but I feel bound to mention that I went to college with a guy who I'm pretty sure invented this whole idea of marble slabs and mix-ins. His name is Steve Herrell and he's still in the ice cream business. He has a couple of stores in Massachusetts, including two in the Boston area. So if you're ever in the neighborhood, you should visit the inventor of the mix-in (or Smoosh-in®, as he calls it). Here's the link to his stores and their locations.

Tomato paste rant

How many times have you made a recipe that called for 1 or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste? You scoop out what you need, put some plastic wrap over the can, stick it back in the fridge and then discover it weeks later all covered with a scary black substance. So then you throw the can away.

I once wrote to Hunt's (or maybe it was Contadina) to ask them why they had to sell their product in steel cans. I wanted to know if there wasn't some packaging that would allow the consumer to keep the leftover tomato paste without it turning nasty colors. Well, no surprise, nobody wrote back to me.

There is actually an interesting solution to this: tomato powder. Tomato powder can be reconstituted to tomato paste (or to sauce, if you add more water). You just spoon out what you need, mix it with water and voilà. The downside to tomato powder is that it is more costly than canned tomato paste, but if you factor in all the cans you throw away, it might actually end up a savings.

If you're interested, you can check out a place called Barry Farm Foods. They have a lot of other interesting dried fruits and vegetables, too, like artichoke powder. I wonder what you can do with that?

(P.S. I do know about the trick of freezing tablespoons of leftover tomato paste, but it still annoys me that I have to do it.)