The Food Maven Diary
[Archives]

[Previous Entry] [Diary Home] [Next Entry]

05/18/1999 Archived Entry: "Introducing Iris & Marrow Beans"

Iris Carulli is not my wife. I announce this only because people keep asking, and asking why isn’t she with me when I make personal appearances.

I usually characterize Iris as my life assistant, and indeed she does assist me in almost everything. (I buy my own clothes and some other stuff.) She does research and dog work, like filing, keeping the books, throwing away paper. And she answers your mail. She keeps me organized. She is stern with pests and charmingly fends off public relations people. And she answers your mail. She cooks like an Italian angel. She even does dishes. Within reason. She translates from Italian and to Italian, as necessary. And she answers your mail. She is my greatest friend. I can talk to her about anything from our separate and sometimes tumultuous emotional lives to antique silver (one of my interests) to art patronage in Renaissance Venice (one of her many interests) She is my muse. She is my slave driver. And still, she answers your mail.

Iris is a native New Yorker. Grew up in midtown Manhattan and went to the best schools. Ivy league college. Went to Italy to study art history, met a mad Sicilian, lived in Sicily all through the ‘70 and early ‘80s. She has a 19-year-old son who is off on his own as an artist and musician in New York.

Iris and I found each other about seven years ago at a food conference in a Times Square hotel. Walking in the hall from lunch to a seminar, Joan Nathan (the Washington-based author of many Jewish cookbooks) introduced us. Iris was looking for work, any work, with a food professional. She could cook and was experienced at keeping executives organized. I happened to be in need -- my student intern had quit the day before. She hadn’t been very reliable anyway. One of her problems was that she lived on Staten Island, so the first thing I asked Iris was where she lived. We figured “it was meant to be” when we found out we lived around the corner from each other, and that from my apartment I could look down on to her terrace.

You can find a picture of Iris (with me) on the Food Maven’s Cookbooks page. You should note, too, that I dedicated Naples At Table to her.

Oh yes, and Happy Birthday Iris. Tomorrow she celebrates.


Marrow Beans

I can’t remember who asked me in person about marrow beans last week, but the subject came up again this week on the radio. Some people swear by marrows for their baked beans and, apparently, the beans have become impossible to find through the usual retail sources.

I confess: I know almost nothing about marrow beans. All I know is that they are round and have both a creamy color and texture. If you know more -- like in which region of the country they are most popular and what dishes they are used for, or recipes -- please send an e-mail through my Feedback page.

To know what’s so special, I’m going to order some myself from Indian Harvest, which I was reminded of by Cleta McCormick, who heard the discussion on Food Talk and e-mailed their phone number -- 1-800-294-2433 -- and their internet address -- www.indianharvest.com.

The beans are $4.49 a pound. Indian Harvest has a free quarterly catalog that offers all kinds of rice, grains and beans, including heirloom varieties. It has been a supplier to chefs for 20 years, starting as a source for wild rice.

Indian Harvest, by the way, is in Bemidji, Minnesota, which is the wild rice capitol of the world, so to speak. Wild rice, which is technically not rice but the seed of a grass, is indigenous only to the northern Minnesota and southern Canada, although it is now propagated in other places, including California.

The Indian Harvest website is worth exploring even if you have no interest in marrow beans, and it lead me to another site that is worth looking into: orientalfood.com. As these things go, one site leading to another, I ended up at rhallab.com, which is a retailer of Lebanese sweets and pastries, including often hard-to-find items like rose water and orange flower water for Middle Eastern baking. I haven’t ordered from either orientalfood or the rhallab, so I don’t know about their quality or reliability, but I thought they were worth mentioning.

(Trivia: Bimidji is famous for two things other than wild rice. It’s the birthplace of the mythic giant Paul Bunyan, and the also larger-than-life but very real Jane Russell.)