new gastronomer

2011-02-20T16:42:00.001-08:00

Seen this afternoon: a pretty Bibimbap at Cho Cho's in Porter Square, Cambridge.

We had intended to eat at the ramen place across the hall, but they were closing up when we arrived.

My other half is just getting over the flu, and it seems I am now coming down with it or something like it. If this proves to be true, the scones I made this morning will have been my last act for a few days.

"The very Solomon among cake tasters!"

2010-04-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

a charming scene from the beloved yorkshire country veterinary story All Creatures Great and Small.

Siegfried Farnon is an outspoken cake appreciator. In this scene his exquisite palate is put to the test unbeknownst to him.

2009-12-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

our fig: the first year

2009-10-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

In spring 2009 we bought a brown turkey fig tree to grow in a pot on our second-floor balcony.

In May, our small tree had been home on our porch for a month or two. One of our mothers was very sick, and the fig's progress became a fond topic during hospital visits.

By August the tree cast a distinctive silhouette. At night, owing to streetlights, the silhouette was cast on our neighbor's house.
August 2009: a fig on the verge of ripening.

citrus overload

2009-04-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

Marmalade

vin de pamplemousse

This past winter, we subscribed to a winter farm share which sourced produce from all over the east coast. The share was very reasonably priced and kept us away from the dreaded supermarket all winter. Perhaps our favorite part of this weekly box was the tree-ripened organic citrus that appeared every week, 3-4 pieces at a time. Sometime in February we got an additional free box of fruit as reward for turning a friend on to the program. Suddenly we had more citrus than we could eat in a normal way. We gave away some of it, but eventually I was forced to research, then make, large quantities of marmalade.

Last week, our fruit bowl was overfilled with grapefruit, and I searched til I found a recipe for vin de pamplemousse in Chez Panisse Fruit. We're practically teetotalers here, but I thought it might be nice to offer a special aperitif to guests, as Marilla Cuthbert might offer raspberry cordial. So I made a hefty purchase of the requisite spirits (7 bottles in all!) and stirred it all up in a big jar. It will be another month until it's ready to sip.

Both of these efforts made only a small dent in our supply, and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed as all these oranges and grapefruit begin a steady march towards the compost. I would make more marmalade, but I am weary of using so much sugar; I'd make more vin de pamplemousse but I don't have another big jar and wine is expensive in those quantities. Besides, both of these are best when the fruit is not already so tired.

Dosa Review

2009-03-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

Dosa are like crepes made from a fermented rice and dal batter instead of flour and eggs. They are cooked to a golden crispiness on an oiled griddle. Typically they are served with a thin stew called sambar, and coconut chutney. There are many variations. Often the dosa are filled with something: spiced potatoes, chutney, sometimes paneer, sometimes meat. But I'm not an expert. My first dosa was in Chicago at a south indian restaurant on Devon St. It was, I believe, a mysore masala dosa, which has potato and something spicy inside. It was huge, impressive looking, but very hot for my palate at the time. It would be years before I considered dosa again. My current dosa fixation was born when I ordered the simplest dosa on the menu at Namaskar, a nearby indian restaurant. The Sada Dosa arrived loosely rolled, measuring perhaps 30" long, nearly overhanging the edge of the table! So crisp, so simple and satisfying, with a bowl of sambar and chutney; I thought of it for days and weeks afterward. Then a friend made masala dosa for us at her home. Homemade, these were just 9" in diameter, but we ate several in a sitting, hot off the tava. I could eat these every day! Then, on a saturday in February we drove 40 minutes to Dosa Temple in Ashland, MA. Yes, Dosa Temple. But our pilgrimage was not rewarded in the way I imagined: I had planned to order multiple dosas at the dosa temple! But Saturday, we now well know, is buffet time, and no menus were offered. We saw no choice but to be swept into the buffet line with everyone else, loading our plates with idlis (dosa's steamed, cake-like cousins, which deserve a separate post), vadas, manchurian gobi and other sticky-handled buffet offerings. Eventually a waiter came by and dropped two small, evenly golden dosa on our table. Complimentary dosa! But only two. We plan to return to Dosa Temple at an off-buffet time.

Inevitably, we made some dosa batter ourselves. There is a good recipe in Wild Fermentation, but we also consulted Yamuna Devi's the Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking.

Here is our batter after several days of fermentation (aided and accelerated by placing the bowl above an electric space heater set on low):

Not perfect, our dosa-- the first one had the proper golden-ness, but was a bit thick; the last one was undercooked, not golden enough, and maybe too lacy! We'll have to try again.

In the meantime, these are one thing I am quite content to eat in restaurants, cooked to perfection on a 30" tava!

Bûche De Noël 2008

2008-12-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

There were a few improvements to this year's yule log cake over last year's. Most notable were the candied orange peel shelf fungus and the pistachio lichen. The orange peels were cut into shelf-shapes before candying, and only the greenest pistachios were chosen for the lichen. I also re-interpreted the recipe and rolled the 11x17" genoise into a longer, slimmer log.

Chole Bhatura

2008-12-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

Chole is a spicy and filling bean stew (a chili, if you will!) I get a hankering for sometimes. Traditionally, I'm told, it is served with Bhatura, a tender fried bread that has yogurt and flour fermented together. Recently we went to the trouble to make the two for dinner. Deep-frying is always a bit of a project and usually seems like too much fuss, but there are times when you simply must.

Once in the hot oil, the bhatura puff up like balloons and are startlingly bouyant in the oil.

Kala Chana Dal (small black chickpeas) soaking before pressure-cooking.

Co-incubation in the morning: the dal was brought to a boil then left to soak in the bottom pot, and now the flour and yogurt starter is warm and starting to act in the bowl set on top. Heat-retaining cast iron and stoneware vessels are essential for this. I could have wrapped the whole up in a blanket, too.

The yogurt-wheat starter fermented and rose slightly.

The chole, bhatura, some chutney and yogurt. A warming winter meal.

taffy

2008-11-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

My great-grandmother Pineau pulling taffy.

Halloween, a favorite holiday of many people I know, does not inspire me as I sometimes feel it should. I have had my share of ridiculous costumes (once, I wore a large papier mache nose around... ) and now I have little patience for uncomfortable costumes or elaborate makeup or masks and generally limit myself to human characters I feel affinity for: for two years running, I went as Laura Ingalls Wilder (last year, happily, accompanied by my Almanzo, his manly hand forever covering my smaller, female one as we rode away in the annual Halloween Bike Ride) and the plan for this year was for us to go as Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe, and we would reinact the schoolhouse scene where Gilbert pulls Anne's braid (carrots!) and she smashes a slate over his head in return. We even reveiwed the PBS miniseries last week to study for these parts. But last night, when it came time to rummage through the closets for suitable clothing, we tried some things on, and then decided not to go. Why? Anne (with beautiful natural red locks) had a headache. I, who was to play Gilbert, was suddenly preoccupied with the notion of making old fashioned molasses taffy and was only too happy to do that instead of bundling up for a late-night bike ride.

For something like fifty years, my grandparents made popcorn balls for all the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Their recipe was surely from the Joy of Cooking, or else one passed down from great-grandmother Pineau. Bound with a molasses flavored sugar syrup and wrapped in plastic sandwich baggies (perhaps once in waxed paper), this was a wholesome treat that I always looked forward to. You really had to gnaw on it.. I would always be sure to find one with more syrup...

And I had a distant memory of making actual pulled taffy --which is all syrup! My mother spoke of taffy often, and we made it just once, with greased up hands.
So last night, on Halloween, happy that I had all the ingredients (and even a marble slab!), we made taffy-- Anne and I, after a nap. The recipe, again, is in the Joy of Cooking. We pulled and pulled for half an hour or more, then snipped the rope with buttered shears. No trick-or-treaters called.

the garden in october

2008-10-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

lacinato kale, celeriac, lettuces, thyme, sage, and raab against a backdrop of hops and bitter melon.

cycle touring

2008-09-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

For our honeymoon, we took our beloved blue Burley Duet tandem bicycle to Nova Scotia via the ferry from Bar Harbor. Upon docking in Yarmouth, we rode to bed and breakfasts and campgrounds, traveling 200 miles overall. We had a grand time and look forward to returning for an extended stay next year.

Here are some of our campsite meals at The Islands Provicial park, one of the wonderful highlights of our trip. We had packed one small pot and some packets of foil. Both supermarkets and farm stands were scarce overall, but near our campground we found both, including a little market that offered spices (as well as brewing and pickling supplies) in bulk.

More pictures of this trip, as well as scenes from our wedding, can be seen here.

rustic

2008-08-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Right on the hearth, a blackberry-blueberry tart with a buttery pastry crust. We had just made several pizzas, so the oven was likely still hotter than 500ºF. I placed this one just a bit close to the fire, so it did blacken slightly on one side, but this could be avoided in the future.

Almond mountain, our wedding cake

2008-08-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

Each of the the three tiers (6", 9", and 12") was made of four layers of almond pound cake filled with rasberry curd-whipped cream and covered with rum buttercream. I decorated with borage and nasturtium flowers and leaves from the gardens of my friends and family. The raspberry curd was made from rasberries my mother picked from my aunt's yard, and the many dozens of eggs (ten or twelve?) that went into each component of the cake were all from hens and ducks (yes, huge duck egg yolks in the buttercream!) which roam in backyards from MA to ME.

I may need to make a separate post about the technical aspects of this cake, but I must mention that one clever idea I had that worked--and I am no fan of shortcuts in foodmaking, normally--I made almond paste using almond flour which I ordered (along with their Queen Guinivere cake flour) from King Arthur. I have become very particular about almond paste, and have found that good almond paste is not something you can buy (it is awful, the stuff I have found in stores, even in the most distinguished specialty shops), but few books I have read suggest making it at home. Fortunately I learned to make almond paste at my grandmother's knee, and tracked down her recipe in the 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking. My old method, when I've made it for marzipan, was to grind the almonds in the blender four times, but using pre-milled almonds saves a heck of a lot of trouble, does not cost more, and as far as I can tell, yields an acceptable result, certainly better than any commercial almond paste I've ever found! I had worried that the pre-ground almond meal would lack oils that freshly ground almonds would have, but the result seemed perfectly acceptable to me.

So worried was I that there would not be enough cake to go around, I made an extra 12" tier as backup! In truth, a cake this size should feed 150. There are still a few chunks of it in fridges around here..

photo courtesy of Drake King

watering the garden after a cycle ride

2008-07-25T21:04:00.001-07:00

an oven in maine

2008-07-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

built by my dad, with help from friends.
more to come...

Rosie's birthday cake

2008-05-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Almond hazelnut cake with mascarpone filling and a vanilla bean-flecked custard buttercream decorated with violets and white wild roses.. I also made --somewhat incongruous but delicious in its own right--mint ice cream flavored with a handful of spearmint poached from a then- uncultivated neighboring garden plot. (After eating the cake and ice cream we walked to the garden to find that at last, our garden neighbor had dug the entire plot, and the mint, thyme, oregano and all other perennials had been purged and were nowhere to be found!)

Root Beer

2008-05-21T21:41:00.001-07:00

Some years ago, we began brewing our own root beer. One of our earliest dates together involved sitting on a park bench, sampling Fentiman's Burdock and Dandelion brew, which led us to contemplate the possibilities of brewing our own soft drinks.

That summer I discovered the restorative properties of a good root beer. If I was frazzled, or suffering from a headache, a bottle of root beer-- which my dear new love seemed always to supply at just the right moment-- would often do the trick. It didn't have to be an exotic variety like Fentiman's, but we soon found that a root beer made from something other than synthetic flavorings was difficult to find.

Eventually we tracked down a book on the subject, amassed a collection of bottles, found an antique bottle capper, and developed a technique to make our own. In spring 2007 we composed the following set of instructions to hand out at the Boston Skillshare.

Root Beer Making at Home
with
Darrah and Rosie

Basic Equipment:
Heavy, unthreaded glass bottles, bottle capper, and bottle caps.
Recycled Sam Adams bottles work well!
You can also use screw-top plastic bottles in lieu of glass.
Brew-pot – at least 6 Qt.
A big stainless stock pot works well.
Strainer – to filter the wort.
Jug, carboy or food-grade plastic pail – a five-gallon bucket is ideal.
Sanitizing tub & unscented chlorine bleach (2 tbsp per gallon)

Time-saving Devices:
Racking cane, filler tube, and siphon tubing.
“Jet” bottle washer.
Kitchen scale/gram balance.

Root Beer:
Measurements are given by weight with approximate volume conversions. This recipe is made dried ingredients, but it may be interesting to you to experiment with fresh foraged plant matter also. Cambridge Naturals is a good source for dried herbs and roots. This recipe makes one gallon, but you can easily scale it up. This recipe adapted from one published by Fleishman’s yeast company in 1912.

½ oz. (3 T) sassafras root
½ oz. (3 T) juniper berries
¼ oz. (½ cup) leaf hops
¼ oz (1 T) dandelion root
a few drops wintergreen oil
1 lb sugar
1 gal. water
1/8 t granulated ale yeast
Boil in half the water the roots, berry, and leaf for 20 minutes. Strain. Add sugar and the remaining water. Allow to cool to lukewarm. Dissolve the yeast in a ¼ cup of the liquid, and stir it into the pot. Proceed with bottling. Begin to check carbonation after 18 hours. Refrigerate as soon as it’s ready! KEEP COLD!

Useful References:
Stephen Cresswell, Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop. Storey Publishing. 1998.
Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Alan Hood & Co. 1988.
Saunders, Charles, Edible and Useful Wild Plants. Dover. 1976.

garden

2008-04-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

At last, just when I had given up hope, our number came up for a community garden plot. 100 square feet of raised bed now ours.

We have already gathered many seeds for favorites that tend not to show up as much as we might like in our CSA share or at the farmer's markets. Broccoli raab, in particular (we have procured a 30-day and a 60-day variety), but also rocket (including a wild, perennial variety), brussels sprouts, bitter melon, fennel, haricot verts... I also have seeds for borage and corn salad which I would like to try again--I had poor luck growing them in containers last year.

We are also going to try growing hops for our root beer. This probably deserves a separate post, but there's not much to tell yet: today I visited the brew store to buy the rhizomes. I chose two noble hops: Mt. Hood and Sterling.

fresh pasta

2008-04-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

Twice now we have made lasagna and made the noodles for it. I have been using the pasta recipe from Alice Waters' the Art of Simple Food, a book I have used and appreciated a great deal recently.

An interesting revelation regarding the grain:

for today's preparations I coached my dear one over the phone on the modifications I make to this recipe, as he was to mix up the pasta dough before I got home. Some weeks ago, I bought a bag of Bob's Red Mill semolina. It is coarse and yellow. In my first batch of pasta I used half of this semolina, half all-purpose flour. This resulted in a stiff dough that was difficult to roll out by hand (though the finished lasagna was quite delicious). In this house, we also have indian semolina, or sooji, and it is lighter though still coarse. In any case, my companion used the sooji (his culinary predisposition is toward indian food) and a different (lower) proportion of semolina to all-purpose flour, and the result was a wonderfully tender noodle. This substitution led me to appreciate that the atta, or chapati flour we use for making indian parathas and roti is also a durum wheat, and semolina comes from the endosperm of durum wheat.

mustard, a re-issue

2008-04-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

The following is a re-issue of an essay first published in May of 2006. That version is no longer available online.

At some point during my middle-elementary school years, I discovered that eating mustard on a cracker was a good way to induce a temporary high. Interestingly, without the cracker or other starchy medium, the mustard had no effect. Many a recess break was spent sitting in the sun with classmates--many of them thrill-seekers I'd otherwise never socialize with--a squeeze bottle of Grey Poupon, and packages of saltines from the cafeteria. A short time later, I was introduced to the fine regional mustards manufactured by Raye's of Eastport, Maine.

One of my few restaurant meals while in the Netherlands last month included a bowl of mosterdsoep. It was made with a whole-grain mustard, and had the wonderful flavor of mustard without being overwhelming. Gelderland is, I have since learned, known for its mustard.

In Paris, one of the shopping destinations suggested in my Lonely Planet guide that I thought I might visit but did not quite make it to was the Maille flagship store. While in France I often thought of mustard but never did find myself in one of its better-known provenences.

Recently on the Boston Natural Areas Network email list, there was sent a bulletin concerning wild garlic mustard--an invasive non-native species that self-seeds aggressively and casts shadows over native wildflowers who would otherwise grow and provide food for wildlife. From a foraging perspective, "wild garlic mustard" is an intriguing name, and it certainly is edible, but the plant really does need to be kept in check. In any case, I did not, until just now, realize what the specimen looked like. All along I assumed it was the more garlicky-looking green shoot that is coming up all over my garden. Turns out it is actually the white-blossomed, toothy-leafed one that I picked the other day to put in a vase in the kitchen.

All this brings me to my present experience wherein I find myself nursing a nasty chemical burn, the result of a remedy involving mustard gone awry. Yes, it was my friend Irina who told me about it to begin with, but I do not hold her in the least bit responsible for the rectangular red welt that now marrs my décolletage. No, I am accustomed to botching naturopathic remedies (some of you may remember my nasty incident with an iron supplement last summer), and if she had not mentioned it to me there is no telling what other trouble I may have found for myself.
In any case, I just googled "mustard burns on the skin" and here is what I found: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/2d_recon/2d_recon_refs/n51en057/chapter4.htm. scroll down for a description of my wounds. According to this document there is still time for a blister to form, though I think I might be out of the woods. Fortunately, it doesn't sound like I will have a scar.

Jars

2008-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

Small jars of thoughtfully made and given preserves have become my most treasured refrigerator-door keepsakes.

-two kinds of hot sauce from Tyler, which I have enjoyed with fried eggs on my days off for over a year now.
-from Danny and Corinne, many things: a rather wondrous rosehip and honey preserve, like nothing else I have tasted--I bring it out for pancakes and popovers; once, a quart-jar of unspiced kimchee, which we ate over the course of many weeks as a rejuvenating snack; a jar of Raye's (my longstanding favorite mustard)!
-from Annette, a jar of apple chutney made with apples from a specific state park.

Last year, I gave out a number of jars of strawberry-mulberry jam, a few jars of sauerkraut, some extra spicy kimchee.

Success at Last, in Sourdough

2008-03-03T08:27:00.001-08:00

still waters no more

2008-02-26T19:34:00.012-08:00

I am pleased to say that tonight my companion made for us our first homemade sparkling water. We have a pressurized tank strapped to the leg of the butcher block work table. He estimates it will yield over a year's worth of sparkling water.

chickpea/garbanzo, socca/panisse...

2008-02-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, in an Elizabeth David book or maybe MFK Fisher, I read about an Italian/Provençal street food that is a chickpea-flour pancake..
I missed out on the real thing in my visits to both those places--back then, I had not known it existed--but I knew from the description that I would love it.

In the Silver Spoon cookbook--the Joy of Cooking-scale Italian food compendium translated and put out by Phaidon a few years ago--I found two recipes involving farinata: one, the pancake. Two, a chickpea flour polenta, cut into strips and fried. I decided to try the pancake. The batter is a lot of water--six cups--and quite a bit of oil, and some chickpea flour and salt.
I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and swished a rosemary bough in it. I poured in as much of the batter as would fit and put it in the oven.

Eventually, it cooked down--the water evaporated--and it became deceptively eggy and custard-like--and, to this omnivore who lives in a vegetarian home, also reminiscent of chicken fat (though it was, of course, just flour and water and oil). Authentic? I have no way of knowing.

It was different, and not bad at all. We ate as much of it as we could--nearly half, I think. I must disclose that later, we both experienced indelicate digestion.

lavender + lime

2008-02-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

Just a month ago, I started some paperwhite narcissus bulbs in two shallow bowls.

Their perfume, which I find mysterious and slightly challenging, is, I believe, responsible for this morning's similarly challenging biscotti flavor: lavender flowers with lime.

For months I have been dreaming of a crisp, dry, not-too-sweet biscuit to have with tea. I imagined that cornmeal would be involved, and bought some to have on hand. An aromatic seed would infuse the morsel.

Eventually, I resolved to try the anise-almond biscotti recipe from Alice Waters' new Simple Food.

I have never been a huge fan of biscotti (the 1997 biscotti I remember from an early adolescent coffee house experience had a squiggle of icing piped on it, I recall...like mustard on a hot dog), but I have enjoyed those dry cellophane-wrapped Stella D'oro cookies from the supermarket. I suppose they remind me of my italian grandmother, whose heritage I did not recognize until years after her death.

This biscotti recipe does not call for cornmeal, or butter...simply eggs and flour and sugar, with almond, aromatic seeds of choice, and a citrus zest. In the first batch, I replaced the anise with fennel, and added currants. Marvelous!

The second batch was conceived of and carried out by sea-faring Benji, and was lightly flavored with coriander and clementine zest.

Today, the third batch: it was a toss-up between anise seed, which I have by now procured, and delicate lavender blossoms, which caught my eye in the bulk spices aisle. Are they truly edible?

The sight and smell of them transport me back to the markets of Aix-en-Provence, where I arrived two years ago next week.

The lime just happened to be the only citrus in the house with a good firm skin.

And so: when I mixed it up, the lavender blossoms remained lavender, and the lime zest was a nice green. By the time they are thrice-baked, these colors fade...but it is initially a striking combination.

sourdough starter

2008-02-04T08:28:00.001-08:00

Some weeks ago, I was initiated into the world of sourdough. I have long been interested in it, and every year when blueberries and plums and grapes are around, I think about mixing up flour and water and those unwashed wild fruit and and allowing it to bubble and rise from the wild yeasts on the skins of the fruit. But I never have.

At last, my sourdough dreams were "jumpstartered" when a friend brought us some already-thriving starter in a jar. It came from far downeast, too, which pleased me...

So far we have used it twice, and we have much to learn about its mysterious ways. The bread we made last week was almost unpalatably sour, and lacked salt. We think we know what went wrong: too much time fermenting, not enough salt.... last night, though, we mixed up the sourdough hotcakes from Sandor Ellix Katz' Wild Fermentation, and they are good.

Sourdough baking requires at least 8 hours of forethought, and I appreciate this change of pace though it is the thing that keeps me from practicing breadbaking regularly.

The fact remains--good bread is extremely hard to come by.

Years ago, I worked in a wonderful small bakery of the sort that should be in every neighborhood. Incomparable naturally leavened breads were made fresh each morning, and baguettes twice a day, along with buttery pastries. There were no wholesale accounts--it was all foot traffic-- and it was cash only. Prices were not inflated. The owner had trained at Acme Bread Company. It was a wonderful place that succumbed eventually to owner burn-out (in its place today is a bakery producing comparable-quality pastries--though they rather shamelessly use fresh berries and summer fruits in midwinter--but the current owners are not interested in making bread. I miss the old bakery to this day, but I feel certain that one day we will see more of that sort of place, when the bakers' secrets are more widely known and a whole class of dedicated craftsmen find their place.

Pancakes

2008-01-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

We've had a number of nice pancake-mornings recently. My dear companion, coming at it with fresh eyes (never a pancake-maker before this!) produced the fluffiest, softest ones I've ever enjoyed...and they were not made with buttermilk.

When I lived alone, my own method for pancakes was haphazard, improvisational, and concerned with fiber and nutrition and economy of egg. One egg or none at all, a dash of leaven and salt, and a few loose handfuls of oat bran, cornmeal, pulverized nuts or whatever was on hand, just held together with a slurry of milk and a bit of refined flour. For company and special brunches I made proper pancakes with real buttermilk, which still seems like a revelation. My mother introduced me to the wonders of buttermilk pancakes, but long after my childhood was over...when I was growing up we relied on dried buttermilk from a can!

So I was quite surprised when my dear breakfast-maker whipped up the most basic pancakes imaginable: a bit of white flour, a few teaspoons of sugar, a dash of salt, two eggs, some melted butter and the right quantity of milk... we were short some of the flour, as it turned out. These simple pancakes turned out wonderfully fluffy and light, quite indulgent-tasting and unlike the coarse "flapjacks" I used to scarf down alone each morning.

Re-issue: on Oyster Stew

2008-01-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

In December 2004, I published this essay in an early incarnation of New Gastronomer. I came across it just now and find it interesting to review, three long years later. At the time, I was living in an untidy, vermin-infested apartment with other art students, and felt quite unsure of how to proceed. Shortly thereafter, I made the stew as an accompaniment (alongside fruitcake) to my infamous final art school critique, a bitter session which led to my withdrawal from that institution. Everything happens for a reason!

Oyster Stew
I am surprised and a little ashamed that I started this community before ever having read MFK Fisher. Or at least--I am surprised that I had not read MFK fisher before starting this community. Or something. Fascinated though I was by Alice Waters, I confess now that I was scarcely aware of Fisher's legacy until just a month or two ago. So I have been reading up.

Last night I was reading from An Alphabet for Gourmets, beginning with A is for Dining Alone. She states, "There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing, or share my bread and wine." and so, in the absence of those few people--and with her difficulty garnering invitations to dinner due to her reputation as a cook and a person knowledgable about food--she prefers to dine alone.
But it is not easy to cook for oneself always. So for a while she was resigned to "hit-or-miss dinners" of "tinned soups, boxed biscuits amd an occasional egg."
It was this line I was thinking of when I found myself at Stop-N-Shop on the way home this evening. I generally avoid those kinds of places, as I am increasingly unnerved by the shiny, bloated produce and have little use for anything else they sell. But I was on my way home from a visit with G. in our studio during which we ate cheese (a sharp cheddar) and crackers (carr's water crackers) and drank an Ommegang ale I am fond of. We both became pleasantly hazy from the ale and I wanted to doze off in my chair--it was an extremely pleasant evening.

Later, at the supermarket, the aisles of "tinned" goods intrigued me. I got a few cans of tomatoes, because they are occasionally called for. And then...I saw the oysters.

I bought a can of oysters and a quart of milk and two small boiling onions, although the recipe for oyster stew on the back of the can called for celery, not onion--my squeamishness about the produce section prevented me from it, and somehow the dry papery skins of onions make me feel better about them even if I do not trust their provenance. Then I came home and consulted Consider the Oyster for another recipe, to compare the two. I found no mention of tinned oysters, of course, but proceeded in this way:

cook one small onion, minced, in two tablespoons of butter, until the onion is tender. sprinkle in some celery seed if you have it. tip 1 tin of oysters and their liquor into the pot and cook until oysters just begin to curl. Add two cups of milk. when it is hot, season with sherry, salt and pepper. Serve hot.

It was enjoyable. I was suspicious of the canned oysters themselves--the bellies were hard and a greenish color, sometimes--but the broth was delicious.

Popovers

2008-01-16T06:57:00.001-08:00

Popovers from our new (old) cast-iron pans:

Served with some of last summer's strawberry-mulberry jam:

unlikely origins

2008-01-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

We found our way to Russo's in the afternoon--an agreeable place to shop when the farmer's markets shut down.

We were motivated to go in part because we realized that we use enough olive oil now to warrant buying a large can (I used to be more restrained with it, and was terrified of having a large unused quantity go rancid--I have experienced rancid cooking oils in other people's homes, and am alert to it). In any case, I have been using plenty of EVOO recently, understanding that a time may soon come when it is unavailable or prohibitively expensive to transport here from Italy or California (and when this happens...I suppose we'll start using lard more, right? Or duck fat....)

A side note: I am half-waiting for Eliot Coleman to figure out a way to trick olives and lemons into growing in the Northeast, as he has done with my favorite, the artichoke! (What a revelation it was to find those at the Blue Hill co-op last summer. We enjoyed them on the deck of our friend Ben's home Chamois, in the middle of the bay, whisking up a mayonnaise while underway!)

What did we manage for dinner?

I chopped up part of a napa cabbage, and grated a black radish over it, and dressed it with lemon and oil....

casually hacking up a napa cabbage in this way reminds me of my visit to Suméne, France. I stayed with Sophie, an aerobics and dance instructor. She had part of a napa cabbage on her counter, and a large plastic bowl containing what was left from the last time she had had part of the cabbage, and for our quick dinner before aerobic pour les veilles dammes she just added a little fresh cabbage to the old and tossed it together. I think she may have added some kind of dressing, but I can't remember what it was. The whole scenario struck me as vaguely squalid and possibly depressed, but maybe just French--I could not decide. It didn't matter, as I was prepared to be influenced. And actually the salad was quite refreshing. in any case, it was this experience introduced me to the tender and mild napa!

Remembering the Butternut

2008-01-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

I have fond memories of sitting on the granite steps of my grandparents' house with a hammer and a basket of butternuts, carefully cracking the shells and extracting the tasty nutmeats. I do not remember any rhapsodizing that might have been going on amongst the adults, if any, but I vaguely recall a small expedition during which we had gathered the nuts from a stand of trees on the other side of town with permission of the owner. I imagine now that the owner was a friend or patient of my grandfather, the town doctor and quietly dedicated forager. The husks of these nuts, initially green and sticky, were decomposing, oxidizing brown and slightly slimy. We'd crack open the shell with the hammer and pick out the meat. Our fingers would be stained with the tannins for days, and aromatic....

I remember the flavor of these raw butternuts being sweet and so wonderful that to this day, anytime I find a green-husked windfall under a walnut-looking tree (and I keep my eye out for such things) I usually pause to find a stone or lump of asphalt with which to smash it then and there, to see if it possesses that same fine flavor. Any walnut species is fairly tasty, in my experience, but so far, I have not found one quite as nice as the butternut, which has led me to understand that this nut is rare. I believe that my grandfather was quite a fan of the species, and had propagated trees in his neighborhood (and had given one to my parents, who planted it near our compost pile, where I believe it still stands), but none ever yielded fruit. Having little background in botany I can't be sure of why this is, but I suspect it has to do with fertility and flowers, and lacking a second tree to germinate the first, or something....

Today, I know Butternut to be a valuable lumber, and my father is using quite a bit of it in his fine work. But where are the nuts? Not in the market, as far as I'm aware. I've found this factsheet from the national forest service which describes the fungus that has claimed many trees and made cultivation difficult. They are, as with the Hutterite beans of my previous post, in Slow's Arc of Taste.

hutterite beans and broccoli raab

2007-12-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

While visiting the Maine zipcode I call my hometowns, we often shopped for staples at the "health food store" (which is neither a food co-op nor a dreadful Whole Foods nor a gourmet shop, but an independent, comprehensive but slightly marginal foodshop of another kind we don't seem to have here in boston), we came across a selection of locally grown dry beans. I immediately spotted the French Flageolet, which I'd been reading about and was eager to try, but there were many others, all with intriguing names: Maine Yellow Eye, Jacob's Cattle, and a beautiful pale yellow-green bean with a sweet shape called Hutterite. This one we bought on appearance alone.

Early in the day we put some to soak, and this evening we made short work of them in the pressure cooker. I am impressed by this method of cooking beans, and really pleased by it! It is quick and efficient. However, I am not at all sure of how it works. I leave the operation of that contraption to my companion, and further discussion of the particulars of pressure cooking will have to wait..

Meanwhile, I stewed some onion slices with thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper in olive oil and later some butter, at high and then low heat, until the onions were very soft. When the beans were done I added them to the onions along with a small amount of the beans' cooking liquid, simmering it and adding more liquid as needed. The beans became quite creamy, and finally it seemed done. The onions had really melted into the sauce, which tasted as though it must have been made with a rich chicken stock of the sort I used to make in my bachelorette days!

As it turns out, Hutterite beans are named in Slow Food's Arc of Taste. After reading their description of the bean and its availability, I feel especially pleased to have been presented with the opportunity to purchase them--and in such unassuming packaging (just the usual bulk food bags and generic labels--just think how they'd be marketed at the vulgar Whole Foods Market) I am tempted to wax on about Maine agriculture and beans--beans being such a humble and economical food, yet so delicious-- and Maine farmers enabling us to experience these delicious, endangered varieties. Surely these beans are the best value in the Slow Food movement to date!

Broccoli raab is a green we are extremely fond of. I am discouraged that I have to keep buying it in these pink-baled bunches under the label Andy Boy, rather than from a local farmer (I did not see it once at the farmer's markets all summer), but I will keep trying.

In any case: we had from our final CSA share some shallots (the only ones we saw this season!), and I sliced these fine with garlic, a dried red chile, and more thyme. Into the hot olive oil for a while, joined then by blanched and drained raab (rappini), salt, more oil, black pepper.

Both recipes were sourced from Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques, more or less. The beans were derived from her flageolet recipe (I cut out 2/3 of the steps, I'd say); the raab was followed faithfully. A note on that book: Risking hyperbole, I find that everything I've tried from that book has been unlike anything I've ever tasted before. Way more complex, rich, and flavorful. Even when I do only a few of the things she suggests, good things come of it.

Marzipan

2007-12-27T15:28:00.001-08:00

Here is this year's marzipan. I made around 200 pieces to distribute to friends and family. As you can see, I made pears, apricots, carrots, oranges, onions, garlic. Last year I made some very darling sprouted garlic cloves. The oranges have whole cloves stuck in them to imitate the stem end. I used small twigs and broken cloves for the pear stems. The apricots' stems are made of cardamom seeds.

My marzipan is made entirely from ground almonds, beginning with almond paste: I ground blanched and slivered almonds to a fine powder in our very powerful blender. Then I stirred in a sugar syrup and some kirsch, cured the resulting mass for several weeks, then kneaded it with one egg white and a quantity of confectioner's sugar. The recipe is taken from the Joy of Cooking (1975 ed.), and from all the ones I've tried, seems the best. Last year I did extensive research on flavorings. I tried hard to replicate the flavor of my favorite commercial marzipan, Niederegger. This year I saved stones from nearly every peach, plum, and apricot we had this summer intending to use their noyaux, but when the time came, I elected to add just a few drops of almond extract instead of grinding those kernels of bitter almond flavor.

I typically form the pieces forty at a time, let them dry for an hour or so, then paint them with food coloring diluted with water.

Buche de Noel

2007-12-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

Presenting the Bûche de Noël 2007!

This is the first of what I intend to make an annual holiday tradition, alongside marzipan.

I regret not taking more photos of the process, which I performed late last week before this blog was conceived. However, to summarize: the cake is a light, eggy genoise baked in an 11"x17" jellyroll pan. The filling is coffee-cognac buttercream (yirgacheffe and hennesey, for the record) and the frosting is chocolate (unsweetened ghiradhelli) buttercream. The recipe is from Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts, which I cannot recommend highly enough. The mushrooms are meringue and brushed with cocoa powder; the "sulfur shelf" mushrooms are brushed with turmeric.

I actually made a second log a day later which was actually a little bit tastier (moister, with more mushrooms) but it didn't get documented quite as well.

Welcome to New Gastronomer Record of Food

2007-12-26T18:50:00.000-08:00

This new gastronomer food blog has been established with the hope of avoiding the pitfalls of previous long-standing online journals written by this author wherein the author publishes too much personal information interspersed with pictures of food....

This blog will focus exclusively on food!