The Claremont Salad Lives!

The Claremont Diner, in Clifton, NJ

I grew up in New Jersey, not far from one of the famous "Jersey diners," the Claremont Diner. Called simply The Claremont, it was best known for two things: the courtesy salad that was plunked down on your table as soon as you slipped into your booth — and refilled faster than you could empty the little metal bowl — and the slice of heavenly cheesecake you ordered at the end of the meal. The Claremont is long gone now, both the original diner in Verona (which burned down) and its replacement in Clifton, which is now a car dealership. But the food memories of all its grateful customers live on. And thanks to the Internet, where the original recipes circulate freely, we can now recreate at least some of our culinary past.

Oh, the memories . . .

The Claremont salad is sweet and sour and crunchy and addictive and healthy. I found the recipe online and started making it here in Brazil when I wanted something different to serve to guests for a summer lunch. Reaction to it was so positive that I began making and serving it regularly. I kept copies of the recipe in both English and Portuguese, because no way would a guest leave our house without the recipe in hand. One day, as I was preparing a batch, our cleaning lady, Rosângela, asked what I was making. As we talked about the salad, I knew that the best way to really show her would be to give her a container to take home to her family, along with the recipe in case they liked it. Well, she said they loved it. This was six, maybe seven years ago, and for years nobody said anything more about it.

Not until last week, when Rosângela started talking about her weight loss (which has indeed been considerable). She wanted me to know that she attributes the loss in part to her eating the Claremont salad, which she calls "that salad you showed me how to do years ago." She told me that nowadays, instead of taking dessert when invited to a party, she takes the Claremont salad. She's actually become famous in her neighborhood for it. She told me she's given the recipe out to dozens of friends, who've passed it on to dozens of their friends. She also told me that she gave the recipe to her family doctor, who fell in love with it and serves it every time he has a barbecue. Of course, given how the game of telephone works, I wonder how close to the original these versions are. But even so, it gives me pause to think that the Claremont salad of my childhood lives on in the wilds of Búzios, Brazil. I think the Bauman brothers, Leo and Morris, co-founders of the Claremont Diner, would be pleased. I know I am. 

Here's the original recipe. Be sure to make it in advance so that the salt, sugar and vinegar form a pickling solution that permeates the vegetables and softens the cabbage. You can eat it after an overnight in the refrigerator, but leaving it the fridge for two full days is better.

The Claremont Salad

1 head of cabbage (white or red), shredded 1/2 C sugar

1 green (or red) pepper, sliced                          1/2 C vinegar

1 large onion, sliced                                        1/2 C salad oil

2 carrots, sliced in rounds                                1 tsp salt

1 cucumber, sliced in thin rounds                     1 TBS water

Mix all of the above ingredients together and place in a big bowl or a large plastic food storage bag. Let sit at room temperature for two hours, then place the salad in the refrigerator.

For those who want the full experience, here are the Claremont Diner cheesecakes. Their original recipe can be found on the Carnegie Deli's website.

Jamelão

Jambul - the nickname stuck

The first time I ever heard the huge, piercing voice of a samba singer known as Jamelão (a sweet, dark fruit called jambul in English), I was unpacking in a hotel room in São Paulo. We'd just checked in, Mark had turned on the TV so we could have some background hum. What he found quite accidentally was a program on TV Cultura showcasing this kind of grumpy and unsmiling guy singing with a small back-up band. I stopped unpacking. We were transfixed. It's not every day you hear a voice so different, so compelling, that 1) you spend the rest of your trip trying to find his CDs, 2) you spend the next 15 years trying to track down the DVD of the show you saw on the hotel TV, 3) you become such a fan that you attend every performance you can, including the final show he gave on his 90th birthday, and 4) years after his death you still expect to hear his voice leading Mangueira, his samba school, down Rio's famed Sambadrome at Carnaval.

José Bispo Clementino dos Santos, aka Jamelão, a giant of Brazilian music. Best known for his booming voice (untrained, by the way) with its special timber, he was also infamous for his bad moods, his short temper and his sharp tongue. Identified forever with Mangueira, the samba school he got involved with back in the '40s,  Jamelão was also a crooner of a particular type of samba music known as dor de cotovelo, or "elbow pain." Got it? That's right, the pain you get leaning on your elbows at a bar, pouring your sob story out to the bartender. There was never any mistaking Jamelão for anyone else. He was recognized for the panama hat he always wore, for the ever-present elastic bands wrapped around his fingers, and for a voice that simply soared.

King Momo

The first time we saw Jamelão in person was at the Sambadrome. He was already in his late 80s, moving slowly with the help of a cane, but that didn't stop him from getting up onto Mangueira's sound truck, as he had done for the previous 50 years or more, and repeatedly belting out the samba to which 4,000 or so Mangueirenses danced along nonstop for the next 80 minutes. A few years later we saw him there again, this time up close. Thanks to press credentials Mark and I had pretty free run of the Sambadrome, and found ourselves down at the start of the runway as Mangueira was getting ready to enter. I nearly walked right into Jamelão. Mark was taking a picture of that year's King Momo, the Carnaval King, so he didn't see Jamelão. But Jamelão saw the camera. He immediately shielded his face with his hand, said something choice (I didn't catch it, but I knew it was nasty) and hurried on his way, grousing and grumping about journalists. So instead of a picture of the great Jamelão, we got the one you see here.

    

The last time we saw Jamelão was at the Bar do Tom (Jobim, that is) in Rio. The occasion was his 90th birthday and last solo show. After a long delay, three musicians came onstage and began tuning up. More delay. Finally, out strolled Jamelão, oblivious to the loud applause, with a huge, messy pile of what looked like sheet music. He dropped the pile on a table and — inexplicably — walked back offstage as most of the pages fell to the floor. When he reappeared, it was with a full glass of whiskey. Now he was ready. Jamelão sat down, picked up the microphone and began singing. He never once looked at any of the sheet music. He never forgot a lyric, though he sang for nearly three hours. True to his second nickname, the King of Requests, Jamelão sang all song requests that were sent up to the stage by the audience. The evening was memorable and magical and bittersweet.

   

Of all Jamelão's recordings, in my opinion the best one is Por Força do Hábito. You can download it at http://tomjuranblogcom.blogspot.com/2011/02/jamelao.html

And what the hey, I can never get enough Jamelão. Here's another video of a dor de cotovelo song, Ela Disse-me Assim

It's Raining, It's Pouring

São as águas de março, 
fechando o verão ...

One thing I did know before moving to Brazil was the Tom Jobim song, Aguas de Março, the Waters of March, so I was expecting March to be the rainy month. Not so. Rains don't just mark the end of summer, as the song says. They mark summer's beginning as well. Year in, year out, there are heavy, tropical downpours in December and January, and the new climate phenomenon, La Niña, has, if anything, made matters worse. You'd think that, after last year's disaster, the civil defense authorities would have gotten themselves prepared for this year's rains. But whatever measures they did take have turned out to be totally inadequate.

Last year's rains, which peaked just one year ago, constituted the worst civil disaster in Brazil's history. A total of 918 people died, 30,000 or more lost their homes, and 215 are still considered missing. In other words, their bodies have never been recovered. The worst of the suffering took place not in some remote region of the Amazon but in the gorgeous Rio de Janeiro State mountain towns of Nova Friburgo, Teresópolis and Petrópolis that, if our binoculars were more powerful, we could practically see out our window. By car, you can reach the closest of these towns in an hour and a half, and Mark and I have always enjoyed visiting those towns. We have friends up there in the mountains.

We watched last year's disaster unfold on television, and saw unbelievable acts of courage and heroism as neighbors helped neighbors, such as in the spine-tingling rescue in the video above. (Incredible how everything is filmed nowadays, even a catastrophe that caught everyone off guard.) But as I read today's O Globo I want to strangle someone. I want to scream, enough is enough. Why has so little been accomplished in one entire year? Why are so many people up there in the mountains still struggling to get their lives back in order? The paper today has been reminding us that the mayors, town councilmen and businessmen of these mountain towns stole the government's generous emergency funds in an unprecedented spectacle of fraud and profiteering. Even in Brazil, where corruption is so much a part of governing that people no longer pay attention to it, this disgusting revelation has shocked. The government is demanding the return of its 10 million reais, and I'm delighted to say the government's also been freezing the assets of the sleazeballs involved.

 Last year's disaster, but these pictures were just taken for today's paper. Disgraceful.

We have also been hearing these last days that, in an astounding display of arrogant political piggishness, 90% of the government's emergency anti-flood funds for this year have been diverted to just one state, Pernambuco (a state generally plagued by drought) which also happens to be the home state of the minister charged with distributing the monies. This goes a long way to explaining why state civil defense authorities weren't prepared for the floods and landslides happening right now in southeastern Brazil. The worst of the current catastrophe is in the state of Minas Gerais, where 99 cities are in a state of emergency, and about 12,000 people have lost their homes. The final disposition of the monies sent to Pernambuco is, believe it or not, in limbo. The government wants it back. Pernambuco wants to keep it. If I were President Dilma I'd wring someone's neck.

Nothing bad happened to us personally here in Búzios last year, and nothing bad is happening to us this year either. We're just getting wet. We haven't had much of a taste of summer yet, haven't put away our blue jeans and gotten out our shorts. Since Christmas, all it's done is rain. It's been all rain, all the time, with just a few days of something akin to sun. And the ten-day forecast? It shows more rain. We can't help but think about those people still suffering after one year, and the ones suffering right now.

Stupid Purchases

I've made a lot of stupid purchases in my life. We all have. From a dress I fell in love with in the store's dressing room but which remains in my closet, never worn, to a massaging back pillow that broke after one use. I've bought any number of pairs of shoes that fit beautifully when I tried them on but which gave me blisters every time I wore them. I've bought cosmetics that the salesgirl convinced me were the perfect thing for me but which caused allergies once I started using them regularly. I've bought lampshades that don't fit the lamps for which they were meant, subscriptions to magazines nobody ever read. The list is endless. If you're lucky, you can return some products. If not, well, that's what re-gifting is all about.  

The most serious stupid purchase I ever made was a condominium apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. I bought the apartment just after meeting Mark, the man who I knew I was going to marry. So why did I go through with the purchase? I don't know, I was seemingly on an unstoppable course. I lived in that apartment for only about half a year before marrying and moving to New York City. I sold it at a loss and every time I think of that purchase I groan.

Laundry day, tenement style

Yet another stupid purchase — though not as costly as the apartment — was made together with Mark during our first week in Brazil. Along with other necessary appliances, we bought a clothes washer and its accompanying clothes dryer. A clothes dryer would seem like a normal purchase, no? Didn't think twice about it, even though the salesman questioned our buying the dryer. He tried to tell us we wouldn't need one. He tried to explain how everyone hangs their clothes on clotheslines to dry. "The sun is free," he said, in a last-ditch effort to save us the money. We thought he was out of his mind, we weren't going to have our house look like some tenement out of a Jacob Riis photograph. Of course we needed a dryer. You might say we were on an unstoppable course.

The first time I used the dryer the fuse blew. We bought a new, heavy-duty plug and it worked fine for a while, until we blew another fuse. We brought in an electrician who kicked a few tires and told us we'd have to install a separate, grounded electric line. But because our walls are of masonry, installing a new line would entail an enormous project of breaking walls, embedding new conduits, re-building the walls — my goodness, we had barely walked through the door of our new life and we were going to have to start tearing the house apart? No, we decided to hang the clothes on the line to dry — just as a stopgap measure — until we were ready to install a new electric line.

Rusted and pitted and useless

I wish we'd listened to our appliance salesman. We never installed that separate electric line. The only thing we use the dryer for is to pile things up on. Instead, like everyone else, we use the clothesline, which hangs discreetly alongside the house outside the service area, unseen from any point in the house except the kitchen. I've added a new dexterity with clothespins to my skill sets. And I wait like a pro for the perfect day, the one with a good, strong sun and enough wind to get the jeans flapping. Now if I could only find someone to take this dryer off our hands.

Feijoada

Most every country has a national dish, its culinary pride and joy. What's Hungary without goulash, Austria without wiener schnitzel, Scotland without haggis? Of course, these dishes aren't prepared in an industrial kitchen from one master recipe. Tunisia has its couscous, which differs from Morocco's couscous and Algeria's couscous, and their ingredients change as you travel from region to region and city to city. Bouillabaisse is the pride of France — southern France, that is — and its ingredients have been and still are the subject of heated debate. The natives of bouillabaisse country scorn the Parisians for adding lobster to the stew; the Marseillais disapprove of the Toulonnais habit of adding mussels and potatoes; and purists are horrified by anyone who dares to add pastis. In neighboring Spain there are as many versions of paella as there are cooks. In the Valencia region, preparing paella is quite simply an act of civic pride.

Feijoada on the table

Feijoada on the plate

Brazil has feijoada, a dish as controversial as all of those above. Originally introduced by the Portuguese, this meat-and-bean-stew is prepared with black beans, various "throwaway" salted pork products such as ears, tail and feet, bacon, smoked pork ribs, pork sausage and tongue. It's generally served buffet style, and includes white rice, chopped kale, farofa (toasted manioc flour) and orange slices. In addition (in a real slap at the idea of healthy food) you can add side dishes of fried pork rinds, fried bananas and fried manioc. It's best washed down with lots of beer, cachaça or caipirinhas. A proper feijoada takes hours to cook and hours to eat, and most Brazilians prefer to eat theirs on a Saturday afternoon so as to have the rest of the weekend to recover.

The very first feijoada I ever ate was in New York City at a wannabe-Brazilian restaurant called the Coffee Shop. In retrospect, the feijoada served at the Coffee Shop had very little in common with the real thing. Instead of a bottomless buffet, we were served delicate individual portions of recognizable "noble" meats, with some rice, beans, kale and prettily-arranged orange slices. I think the next one I ate was in Rio, at a place called Casa da Feijoada. Located in the neighborhood of Ipanema and serving mainly tourists and well-heeled Brazilians, this feijoada also had little in common with the real McCoy. The meats were succulent and edible, a sure sign of unreliability. As I started eating more authentic, homemade versions of this national dish I started learning about the controversies surrounding it. Cooks were very competitive. They kept their recipes close to their chests. And I remember one odd night in Salvador, Bahia when a friend of ours explained at great length why he was not serving us feijoada. Something about how the flavor of his bean broth hadn't yet reached the perfection he sought.
 
I've now had my share (and I'm very, very sorry to say, my fill as well) of authentic feijoadas. Before Mark and I moved to Brazil, when we were just frequent visitors, we were constantly served feijoadas by Brazilians who wanted us to have a real Brazilian experience. But please forgive me, my Brazilian friends, I know that what I'm about to say is heresy. I don't want feijoada anymore. I don't really like feijoada. I do not feel good after such a heavy meal. And I can do without the pig's ear. Serve it all to Mark instead. He still likes it. But just so you know that there are no hard feelings on my part, here's Chico Buarque singing his famous samba Feijoada Completa:

New Year's Eve in Brazil

I always romanticized the idea of spending New Year's Eve in Rio. I had only the vaguest notion of how Brazilians celebrated, something about dressing all in white, gathering at the beach and tossing flowers into the ocean in honor of somebody or other. Just thinking about it gave me a feeling of tranquility and peace. I wanted to join those celebrants, and I wanted to join them on Copacabana beach. Then I of course realized how allergic to crowds I am and how two million or more people might be a bit more than I could take. I began to understand that any "tranquility and peace" I might feel would be shattered by the six enormous sound stages that are set up along Copacabana beach, each stage dedicated to a particular musical style, none of them mine. It was without regret that early on I put the idea of "New Year's Eve in Rio" to rest.

So that left New Year's Eve in Búzios which, as it turns out, isn't too shabby. Our house is positioned in such a way that we can watch six or seven different fireworks displays going on all at once around our bay, including a spectacular private show put on by the owner of Cirque du Soleil, whose house is two or three to the right of ours. We wanted to share that remarkable advantage with friends, so Mark and I began a tradition of giving New Year's Eve parties. We've given five in all, with each year's turnout growing exponentially from that of the preceding year. Unfortunately, it's gotten to be too much to handle, so I think we've come to the end of our tradition. Besides the growing number of guests who — in the spirit of good will and holiday cheer — often brought friends, friends of friends and various hangers-on, there's the little problem of electricity. I mentioned in my post of this past Monday that the population of Búzios can swell to as many as 200,000 people during the holidays. Well, in order to prepare for their various celebrations, all of these 200,000 people go to their rooms and turn on their air conditioning and their hair dryers all at the same time. The electric company cannot sustain the surge. It's a rare year that we don't lose electricity, and one year I remember it not returning until the next day. Can't hear the doorbell. Can't play music. Can't turn on the stove. Can't see the way down the stairs. Can't have a party.

We don't yet know what we're going to do this year. People have been calling and feeling us out, but Brazilians like to make their plans at the last minute, so nobody's committing. One option is that we'll try some of the Brazilian traditions we've never tried before all by ourselves. Maybe at midnight we'll go down to our beach and "jump the seven waves" on our right foot, to invoke the powers of Iemanjá, goddess of the sea, so she can give us strength to face the coming year. Or maybe we'll eat the various foods you're supposed to eat at the stroke of midnight. Some say you're supposed to eat 12 grapes, one for each month, and try to internalize health, peace, love, harmony and prosperity. Others say it's pomegranate, cut in seven pieces, which you eat while holding seven seeds in your teeth. After that you wrap the seeds in white paper and keep them in your wallet all year. They say money just pours in if you do that. We've been told to eat pork for prosperity, lentils for money and walnuts to guarantee wealth and prosperity. (I see a theme here.)

Whatever we decide, it will include good food, good drink, and lots of flashlight batteries and candles. We'll probably dress in white, that's a tradition we've come to like. And if we have electricity, we'll get our annual kick from our "Guy Lombardo & his Royal Canadians — Live at the Waldorf Astoria" New Year's Eve CD. Speaking of which, here's Mr. Auld Lang Syne himself, wishing us all his last Happy New Year:

High Season

Leaving Rio in droves...

High Season starts today. From now until Ash Wednesday next year upwards of 200,000 people are expected to swell our normal Búzios population of 28,000, and that doesn't take into account the thousands of tourists that disembark every day from the cruise ships. The hoteliers are rubbing their hands together with glee. They've been waiting for high season on pins and needles. They have already announced nearly 100% occupancy, even with minimum packages of five to seven days. Owners of rental properties are salivating. There are people willing to shell out as much as $8,000 per week for the privilege of luxury private lodgings. Equally energized are the restaurants, the souvenir shops, the tour operators, the taxi drivers and the food markets. Drugstores will turn a steady profit just from sunscreen sales alone. Informal beach peddlers are counting on these two months to make up for the slow sales of low season.

...and squeezing into our one entrance to town

My annual holing-up also starts today, and I will remain holed up until after Carnaval. And I don't think I'm so unusual. High Season is dreaded by almost all the year-round residents here, same as it is dreaded by year-round residents of the south of France, the Hamptons and probably every other seasonal resort in the world. The worst of it here will occur during the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and then again during the week of Carnaval. But even in between those two bookends there will be no escaping the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the long lines in the supermarkets, higher prices on everything everywhere, and the scores of unconscious, noisy, inconsiderate, partying renters spreading what they think of as "good cheer" into the wee, small hours of the morning. There will be a dearth of parking spaces. There will be unbelievable strain on the water and electric services.

Can't see it, but I think it's Geribá Beach

Disliking clamor and hullabaloo as I do, Mark and I decided years ago to try and leave town during this period, and we did manage to get away a few times. One year we spent the Christmas/New Year holiday in the States (I had forgotten about snow). Another year we checked into a hotel in São Paulo for our escape. We figured São Paulo — Brazil's serious, business city — would completely empty out during the holidays, and it did. We figured the hotels would be desperate for customers and would offer super deals, and they did. We had a great (read quiet) time. 

But most years we have stood our ground, and we plan to do the same this year. After all, I used to be a Girl Scout, I know what to do in emergency situations. We shall stock up on rental movies, get out our favorite music and stay in our house. We'll use the car only when absolutely necessary, and be grateful to have nearly everything we need within walking distance. And I have a feeling that — as in past years — I'll complain and rant and expostulate. But this, too, shall pass. In retrospect, I won't think High Season was so bad. Until December 26th of next year. 

[I'm not a total Scrooge. I hope everyone enjoyed a Merry Christmas! I wish everyone a Happy New Year! And to my Brazilian friends, Bom Carnaval!]