Over the decades, what was once a melt-in-your-mouth confection has acquired the personality of a cotton ball—but not as soft.

In the early 1950s, Kraft Foods developed a technique to make vast quantities of marshmallows commercially. The process drastically changed the delicate texture of handmade marshmallows, and the use of artificial flavors made the airy delight much less delightful. While mass-produced marshmallows are fun to pop into hot chocolate or toast for s’mores, how many of us enjoy eating them straight from the bag?

So today’s tip is: Seek out handmade gourmet marshmallows from a marshmallow specialist.

Think of gourmet marshmallows as you would fine chocolate. They’re an all-occasion gift with the bonus of being fat-free and gluten-free.

If there’s no artisan confectioner near you (or in your specialty foods store), check out our recommendations for the best gourmet marshmallows.

Brush up on the history of marshmallows.

FOOD TRIVIA

Marshmallows get their name from the marsh mallow plant (Althea officinalis), the root of which contains a sticky, white, almost jelly-like substance. The Egyptians combined it with honey as early as 2000 B.C.E., to make a candy.

Take these purple green beans, known as Royalty Purple Pods. While they were introduced in 1957, have you ever seen them? The trick is to arrive at farmers markets early in the day, before the unusual veggies sell out.

While the skin of the Royalty Purple Pod is purple, there’s a green bean underneath. The purple skin turns green when cooked. To retain the color, you can butter baste them in a pan. If you boil them, a pinch of baking soda in the water will help a bit.

Losing the lovely purple color is no fun. So we like to serve these unusual green beans raw:

But how can you resist a purple green bean? Even people who eschew green beans can be tempted to take a bite.

So today’s tip is: Look for something new and different at your farmers market. Make your goal a weekly fun food discovery. Then tell us what you found, and how you served it.

FOOD TRIVIA: What’s the difference between green beans and string beans?

The French call them haricots vert (green beans), the Brits call them French beans, and Americans call them green beans or string beans. The term “string bean” refers to the string that ran up the seam of the bean. It had to be removed before cooking.

The first “stringless” bean was bred in 1894 by Calvin Keeney, in Le Roy, New York, a town in western New York state that is also the is the birthplace of Jell-O.

Today, just about every bean sold commercially is a stringless bean; but the original name has been passed down through generations and is a legacy.
  

Chocolate panini: breakfast, snack or
dessert. Photo courtesy Vosges Haut
Chocoalt.

*Pain au chocolat is often called a chocolate croissant in the U.S., but this is incorrect; Croissant means crescent, and pain au chocolat is not crescent-shaped.

Katrina Markoff, founder of Vosges Haut Chocolat, was inspired to port the concept to Italian panini. From her large repertoire of chocolate bars, she selected her Oaxaca chocolate bar, 75% cacao bittersweet chocolate with guajillo and pasilla chiles. (Oaxaca [wuh-HAH-kuh] is a state in Southern Mexico thought to be the birthplace of chocolate cultivation.)

Adding raisins evokes Mexicao’s mole sauces. If you want to get even more creative, consider adding other mole sauce ingredients such as cinnamon, peanuts or pepitas.

Ingredients For One Serving

 
†Spiced chocolate bars return to the roots of chocolate, first served as a spicy drink by the Olmec and Maya. Vosges also makes a Red Fire bar: dark chocolate with ancho and chipotle Chiles and cinnamon.

Chop suey was first available to non-Chinese Americans in the mid-19th century, when Chinese restaurants began to appear outside of Chinatown areas. The dish was received with much acclaim [source].
There are several myths about how chop suey was invented in the U.S.

Chop Suey is actually a prominent dish in Taishan, in the Guangdong province of southeast China. It is a city of 95 islands and islets in the Pearl River Delta.

A dish called tsap seui is common in the area, and Guangdong province was the home of many early Chinese immigrants to the U.S. [source]. Thus, when immigrants from that area opened restaurants, it was on the menu.

In a stir-fry recipe, chop suey means “assorted pieces.” These can include beef, chicken, quail eggs or other cooked eggs, fish, pork, and/or shrimp, plus vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, celery, and snow peas. Starch is added to create a thickened sauce from the oil and wok drippings.

What today we’d call a stir-fry, back then Americans called chop suey a stew.

American variations have included vegetables popular that are not in the original Taishan recipe; for example, broccoli, carrots, onions and zucchini. Numerous American recipes also “specialize”: beef chop suey or chicken chop suey, for example, instead of a mixture of proteins.

Chop suey went from exciting to mundane when Chinese immigrants realized the business opportunity of serving chop suey and other Southern Chinese dishes to Americans of all classes.

It was then that the authenticity of the dishes began to decline.

When a Chinese statesman visited New York City in 1903, he was shocked to find hundreds of Chinese restaurants serving substandard Chinese cuisine.

“As for what they call ‘chop suey,’” he fumed, “the cooking skills involved are so subpar that no one in China would ever eat it” [source].

 
 
CHOP SUEY VS. CHOW MEIN

In China, chop suey is typically served with a bowl of rice. Chow mein is chop suey that ditches the rice and adds noodles* to the recipe. In other words, if your “chop suey” contains noodles, it’s chow mein.

For a moment of beauty on National Chop Suey Day, take a look at photo #2, the painting of a chop suey parlor (as some such restaurants were called many years ago) by the American painter Edward Hopper. Here’s more about the painting.

Warning: You can find canned chop suey from La Choy. Caveat emptor: It may be tasty but is far removed from fresh-made chop suey.

> Check out more food histories.
 
 

[2] Edward Hopper, Chop Suey Parlor, 1929 (photo courtesy Wikipedia).

[3] Stir-fry this chicken chop suey. Here’s the recipe (photo © Recipe Tin Eats).

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*There are two styles of chow mein: crispy chow mein, which uses fried, flat noodles; and soft chow mein, which uses spaghetti-style noodles. “Chow mein” means stir-fried noodles. “Subgum” means “numerous and varied,” a chow mein that is a combination of ingredients (see chop suey list above) instead of all vegetable, all chicken, etc.
 
 

[1] A Hurricane cocktail served in the traditional Hurricane glass, fashioned after a hurricane lamp (photo © Alex 9500 | Panther Media).

[2] The Hurricane is so popular that the Hard Rock Cafe in Stockholm has its own printed Hurricane glasses (photo © Bacardi Rum | Facebook).

[3] Gosling’s Black Seal dark rum (photo © Gosling’s).

Everything is now closed, including things that never close, such as the public transit system and the theaters. The subway is not expected to be up and running until later on Monday. Instead of a “snow day,” we have two “hurricane days.”

So last night we threw a hurricane party and invited some friends who live in our apartment building for Hurricane cocktails—an appropriate name even though no hurricane engendered the creation of the drink.

The rum cocktail called a Hurricane was invented by New Orleans tavern owner Pat O’Brien in the early 1940s.

He had too many cases of rum, because the wholesale distributors required the purchase of a large number of cases of rum in order to buy a case of the more popular whiskeys.

Scotch and Irish whiskeys were in limited supply because of World War II.

Stuck with many cases of rum in the basement, O’Brien did what any businessman would do: He concocted a cocktail to use it.

The curvy, footed cocktail glass he used, shaped like a hurricane lamp, was called hurricane glass. That’s how the drink got its name.

The Hurricane became a fixture in the French Quarter, with Pat O’Brien’s bar a tourist destination.

Alas, with the use of cheap mixes to maximize profits, today’s French Quarter Hurricane is likely to be just another sweet, artificially colored drink, even at Pat O’Brien’s.

So if you want a good Hurricane, you’ll have to go to a top venue, or make your own.
 
 
RECIPE: ORIGINAL HURRICANE COCKTAIL

Ingredients Per Cocktail

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the rum, passion fruit syrup and lemon juice in a shaker; shake vigorously until the mixing tin frosts.

2. STRAIN into a hurricane glass over fresh crushed ice.

3. GARNISH with an orange and cherry “flag” (skewer) and serve.
 
 
Check out the variations below.

As with almost every recipe, there are myriad variations on the Hurricane.

 
The choice is yours.

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*Rum is fermented from sugar cane and molasses. Light rum (also called silver rum or white rum) is fermented in steel and filtered and has a clear color. To make dark rum (also called amber rum or gold rum), the clear light rum is aged in charred oak barrels, acquiring a caramel color and rich layers of flavor. Rich, caramel dark rum is made by aging clear rum in charred oak casks, giving it a deep brown color and a full flavor. Spiced rum, often colored dark with caramel, is not a dark rum.