Backland

Punch

I recently read the whole of David Wondrich's new book, Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, and reread quite a bit of it to boot. As a consequence I have been serving punch at some of my poker games. I can't provide a succinct summary of the book, which includes colorful history, recipes, personal anecdotes, tips, jokes, and ingenious wordplay galore; suffice it to say that it evokes a bygone era and instructs us in how to bring it closer to the present day. Food and drink should be prepared and enjoyed with a consciousness of its history, and this book does for the history of distilled alcoholic beverages what Ned Sublette's Cuba and Its Music did for the history of the drum--makes it come alive by focusing on a specific and rather wild instance of its use. Nobody can evoke the taste of liquor like Dave (I use his first name because he's an old friend). Here's his evocation of how rum used to taste:

"Hogo" was a term of art in the rum trade since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century, when John Oldmixon used it in his history of the Americas. Deriving from the term for the "high taste" of rotting meat, it could certainly be used pejoratively. But just as one cultivated the haut goût in pheasants and other game birds by hanging them for days before cooking them, so the hogo in rum came to be appreciated and even, to a degree, encouraged.

Rarely, though, by modern rum-makers. There are exceptions: Brazilian cachaça and the rhum agricoles of Martinique display its characteristic sulfurous "twang" in spades (as does, for that matter, Batavia arrack). But most rum-makers from Britain's former Caribbean colonies have learned to suppress it. That's a shame, since their rums grew up with Punch and were formerly precisely the kind Punch demands. Something that can heave itself up to its feet; shake off all those layers of citrus, spice, and the "element"; and say in a strong, firm voice, "Damn right, I am somebody." Rum.

Sourdough bread

This is how I make my most basic and old-fashioned bread. I bake two to four loaves of it a month.

To make the sourdough starter, mix three tablespoons of flour (rye or wheat) with two tablespoons of water. Cover it loosely, leave it in a warm place, and feed it twice a day with the same amount of flour and water. After the first day, throw out half the mixture before each feeding. The mixture should turn frothy after a day or two. It’s probably best to start with whole grain flour, but after a day you can switch to refined flour; however, avoid bleached flour. If it’s too sour, use more refined flour; if it doesn’t rise enough, use more whole grain--especially rye.

To make the dough, mix three heaping cups of King Arthur organic white bread flour (all-purpose flour doesn't work nearly as well) with one or two heaping tablespoons of wheat germ (raw is best), any amount up to an even cup and a half of wheat bran (optional), a teaspoon and a half or two of salt, about a quarter to a half cup of sourdough starter, and a cup and a half of warm water (less if you have a lot of starter and not much bran, more if you’re adding a lot of wheat bran). Mix this well by hand but don’t knead it: it should, ideally, be just a bit too sticky to knead. If it’s too dry, add more water; if it’s too sticky to handle, add more flour. Put it into a buttered bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for quite a while--I usually let it alone for eighteen hours, but that may not be necessary. Depending on the strength of the culture, the temperature of the room, the amount of bran, etc, it might turn somewhat spongy and rise a lot, or it might just sit there and not rise much at all. Avoid putting it in too warm a place--it’ll rise too fast and you’ll get a flat, sour loaf. If it seems to be rising too much--well over double its original size--go to the next step right away, or else you’ll get a rather sour and flat loaf.

Sprinkle about three tablespoons flour, bran, and/or seeds on a cheesecloth or dishtowel and place the dough on it. Using the cloth, fold the dough in half, then pick it up with your hands and form it gently into a large ball with the seam on the bottom and put it back on the cloth, making sure to place it on a well-floured or -seeded spot. Let that rest in a bowl for another two hours or more.

Put a covered pot (I use a clay one) into an oven and warm it to 425˚. Put the bread in by lifting the whole cloth with the bread in it out of the bowl, placing a hand under it, unfolding the cloth, and turning it gently upside-down into the pot. Bake covered for thirty minutes; by this time the bread should have risen substantially. Then uncover the pot and bake for another twenty-five minutes or so until you’ve developed a golden brown crust. Cool for thirty minutes before serving.

If you use the full amount of wheat germ and bran, you’re entitled to call this a whole wheat sourdough loaf; but it’s best to keep in mind that whole wheat, like pure white flour, is a relatively recent invention--traditional milling methods always sifted out a large proportion of the bran, but retained most of the germ.

Chester Brown

When we describe a character in a novel or film as “comic-book,” we don’t mean that he’s funny (as in the daily comics), or superhuman (as in classic comic books of the 1960s), or has well-defined muscles or speaks in hard-boiled prose or wants to save/destroy the world. No, we mean that he’s two-dimensional, as all comic-book characters quite literally are. And for me, that has always been one of the limitations of so-called graphic novels (a shameful misnomer since so many of the works that fall under this rubric are not novels but instead artistic renderings of true stories): too many of the characters in these books simply don’t seem very real. I recently read four graphic novels--Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #20: Lint, Daniel Clowes’s Ice Haven, Jason’s I Killed Adolf Hitler, and Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, and only Louis Riel came truly alive for me. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the others--Lint, especially, was marvellously rich.

I’ve been reading Chester Brown’s comics for about twenty years now (his first “graphic novel,” Ed the Happy Clown, was published in 1989, and I first read it shortly thereafter, returning to it many times), and he's far-and-away my favorite comic-book artist. Ware, Jason, and Clowes all limit themselves to “types” in some sense; Brown avoids them. Ed the Happy Clown is, in part, the story of a boy whose penis is actually Ronald Reagan’s head. If this sounds grotesque and scatalogical, sophomoric and perverse, it is. But it’s also strangely moving, deeply upsetting, laugh-out-loud funny, and rich in theme and character. Brown’s later work is a bit more adult, and while that’s not necessarily a good thing, it’s no less satisfying. The autobiographical I Never Liked You (whose original title was Fuck) is one of the most exquisite and touching evocations of adolescence I’ve ever come across, and Louis Riel is a true historical epic about a somewhat reluctant revolutionary that, through artful elisions and a rather strict format, becomes both a gripping political history and a kind of fable, full of rich, believable characters.

Brown has also drawn the gospel according to Mark and part of Matthew as well, but those haven’t been published in book form and I haven’t read them yet. His next book, Paying for It, an autobiographical look at prostitutes and johns, will be published in May.