Echoes

Hi friends. A move to Maine, a job change, long spells in Asia and undiminished curiosity about food and how we get it and where we get it and prepare it and how we share it and whether we find ways and time to think about systems and processes and the politics that make things possible or point us toward some kind of social political culinary catastrophe, and as we ease into September and the long glory of warm days and a sun that doesn't rise as high, I continue to make stories, cook food, eat it, and think about it. A pasta machine and an outdoor wheelbarrow stove are two pieces of equipment I use with more regularity than I did in Vermont, or Minnesota before that, and my bread baking has all but disappeared. Pork, duck, rabbits and lamb have mostly given way to clams, crabs, mussels, fish, oysters and lobster, most of which are found at the end of our dock or just down the road, and the corresponding stocks and broths have been supplanted in equal proportion.  And, despite a long silence, it's still this life, and we change and grow and our tastes and opinions evolve and some of them we settle into and others we leave behind, and if there's a thread woven through this, it's my continued belief that with hospitality and generosity and a welcoming table we can address most of the important issues of life.

Snap pea and rabbit risotto

My freezer still has a lot of rabbits in it, and I took out two the other day.  After they thawed I rubbed them with salt and put them back in the icebox, where they've been resting for a few days.  I'm slowly figuring out ways to prepare rabbit that keep the meat tender and tasting like rabbit. 

For the risotto last night, I cut the loins on a diagonal, very thin.  In my enameled, cast iron frying pan I added a pretty big pour of olive oil and turned the gas on.  Over high heat I fried the rabbit, adding only pepper.  The thin slices curled up and browned quickly, so I turned off the heat.  The meat was still very tender.

With our cold, rainy spring, my snap peas flourished, and now in the heat of July I'm harvesting the last of them, the tall vines disheveled and rampant.  Chard runs wild and parsley flavors everything.  At the end of the twenty-fives minutes or so of stirring the risotto I steamed the peas for just a moment, and added them to the creamy, plump rice.  The rabbit bits were saved for the top of the dish; I usually mix the meat into the body of the risotto, but I figured I'd let everyone do that as they saw fit.  Some, like my son, just ate it plain from the top, avoiding the chard.

Today I came home during lunch, turned on the oven, and quickly browned a few meaty legs in the dutch oven.  A scant cup of rabbit stock was next and then I put the lid on and put the pot in the oven.  I  changed into shorts and headed to my community garden plot and did some weeding and picked a few young zucchini.   When I got back home I showered and was soon back at work with clean clothes.   I left the meat to cook in the slowly cooling oven that I turned off as I left the house.

When I got home after work I pulled the rabbit meat from the bones it was barely hanging on to, and put it into a bowl.  I heated up the bit of stock in the pot and added a little flour to thicken it, and added a little more stock to make even more gravy.  With this evening's beautiful weather we ate outside.  I served the rabbit over rice with sauteed zucchini on the side, and a big Caesar salad from the garden.

I still have a few legs left; tomorrow it'll be something else.

Spring garlic

I missed a few heads of garlic when I was harvesting them last fall, and as soon as spring came, those forgotten heads burst through the ground, green, leafy, and nearly as pretty as Siberian irises. And, they have the added benefit of being delicious.

Today I dug up one of the heads-gone-wild, and sliced all the whites and added them to a frying pan with a big glug of olive oil. After they simmered and softened I added a few eggs along with a generous portion of pepper. When the omlette-y egg covered the pan I added a heaped mound of arugula, a sprinkle of salt, and covered the pan with a lid. I flipped it once and let the arugula press into the smothering egg. A few corn tortillas with it and I had a most delicious Memorial Day weekend lunch, giving me energy and a happy belly to go back into the semi-soggy garden and plant a few more things.

...and politics (not... A Chicken In Every Pot)

I picked these Brussels sprouts after a good, hard frost - cut them actually, cut each tight bud close to the wrist-thick stalk with a small paring knife. I shocked them in cold water after parboiling them in a scant half-inch of liquid water on the cusp of turning gaseous (the H2O, not the sprouts!) for a mere minute. Into the saucier I added a cut of butter, then slices of piment d'esplette, which I sauteed with all their seeds, adding a little heat to this fall classic. A big nob of leftover sweet potato was next, and finally, with the flame turned up, the Brussels sprouts. Salt, pepper, and a perfect fall dish, the heat of the peppers waking up the living green of this much-loved brassica.

And politics? Yes, I ran for city council in this beautiful, small, Minnesota college town on the Cannon River, and on Tuesday I won the election. On January 4th I'll take the oath of office and begin a four-year term as a member of Northfield, Minnesota's city council.

I started this blog with food on my mind. And it was hard to think about food without paying attention to the context in which it ends up on the tip of my fork, so I named this blog Duck Fat and Politics. From the beginning friends and readers have asked me about the politics part of the blog, and for the most part I've referred to politics as the broad set of relations between people and society, thinking less about electoral politics than the way we interact with each other (and our food.)

Electoral politics has long fascinated me, and I've often wondered if I'd be any good at it, making sense of competing, conflicting ideas, and making decisions I can live with, trying to address the complexities of living in a community. With a busy job, young children, and always making a real effort to be fully engaged as a parent and spouse, elected office was something just a little too far away, something that would require me to make sacrifices I wasn't able to make, or something that required qualifications and skills I didn't possess. So, while elected office intrigued me, it wasn't too pragmatic to think about a real run for elected office because of these limitations.

But, time passes (too quickly for the most part,) and a few years ago I renewed my lapsed subscription to The New Yorker, and noticed that my bedside pile of books was regularly growing and shrinking: time had returned! And I had time to think about politics and elected office again.

While I've written about politics only a few times in this blog, I'm surrounded by politics in the same way you are. Watching our economy expand and nearly collapse in recent years, I’ve been startled by the range of responses and reactions of individuals and political parties. So much change occurs on a local level where part-time elected officials grapple with the consequences of rampant partisanship on a national level.

Progress depends on compromise, and I don’t think the partisanship we see accurately reflects our various communities. We’re united by so many commonly shared beliefs yet we’re allowing the disagreements to set the tone of our political life. I’m comfortable with compromise, negotiation, and ambiguity. And at the same time, I know that at times progress occurs only when decisions are made and some possibilities are eliminated. I like arguing my point but I enjoy resolving things, too. I can’t promise a chicken in every pot, but sharing a big pot of stew might be a good place to start.

Rhubarb. Pie.

I talked about rhubarb, arugula, pie (rhubarb) and cilantro chicken on Duck Fat and Politics this evening, but I was behind the control board for the first time, live, and halfway through the show I hit a button that stopped the recording of it, so there's no podcast to listen to.  Whoops.

And big fat stalks of rhubarb mushroom up in our backyard and spread their elephant ears all Christmas-color-like, and I love pulling the stalks firmly; they pop like shoulder sockets must when a batter swings so hard and misses; there's suction, then give, and when they let go they come out cleanly, the whole stalk, emptiness in the ground.
Rhubarb sings its tartness, and I temper it with strawberries, blueberries, and sugar. Pie in May, baking right now in the oven, the house quiet, the kids asleep, the kitchen already cleaned up.  Just smelling the pie, the buttery crust browning nicely.  I make my crust with a combination of lard and butter or duck fat,  but I forgot that I used the last of my lard awhile ago.  I made this crust with butter and a few tablespoons of a several-times-used batch of duck fat, which is getting too salty to use in a non-savory pie crust.

Dried salted pig's liver, radishes, and boiled eggs

I was drawn to this recipe by its extraordinary creativity.  Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast has a handful of recipes that cry out to be made and eaten. In all my cooking I had never seen a dried, salted pig's liver, and I had to try it.
The drying and curing process wasn't very different than that of making pancetta or another cured meat, but its deep red color was a vivid reminder of liver's organ status.  The liver has been hanging in my basement for around a month, and with my brother-in-law visiting from Toronto and tender young arugula in the garden, tonight was a perfect time to make the salad.  Some of my unpicked beets from last fall overwintered well, and their new leaves were also gathered.  I hard boiled eggs from the backyard and sliced the radishes, coating the whole salad with a mild vinaigrette.
The liver, when cut through on the diagonal, was a deep, ruby red, dense, firm, and glossy.  I never expected the texture to be so beautiful.  I sauteed the liver slices in a bit of olive oil and splashed the pan with balsamic vinegar, and as soon as it was reduced  I scooped the slices onto each salad, drizzling the remaining reduction on the greens.
Chewy but with give, meltingly rich, the liver was fantastic; my kids gobbled up slices and asked for more.  Against the snap of radishes, the spare bite of vibrant arugula, and the creaminess of backyard eggs, the liver had such deep flavor that I could barely compare its taste to other dishes.  Unlike a liver pate, the dried liver concentrated its flavor with a wonderfully clean profile; the flavor didn't expand across my palate; rather, it sunk into my taste buds, penetrating the greens of the salad with a shocking earthiness - the meat equivalent of my beloved, earthborn beets.
The cross-cut profile of the liver glistened like chocolate, and I'm wondering how to eat the rest of it.  Fergus Henderson's salad is wonderful, and I'm sure to make it again.  I also think thin shavings of liver could be used to add flavor and body to many dishes.

Ramps

Driving through eastern Tennessee yesterday afternoon I crossed the French Broad River, rounded a bend, and saw a pickup truck, a small table, and a large plastic sign with 'RAMPS' scrawled on it.  I pulled over and walked up to the little table, heaped with bunches of just-picked ramps, a southern harbinger of spring.
A man in his twenties got out of the truck and we started talking.  "Where did you pick them?" I asked, and he replied, "That's confidential," but when I told him I was just passing through he added, "I'll tell you that they were picked in Madison County," and wouldn't say anymore.  The day before he had picked over one hundred bunches and less than a dozen remained.  I asked the man his favorite way to prepare them and he said he ate them raw, almost every day. 
With their sweet leaves that remind me of toothsome garlic chives, ramps taste more like young garlic than leeks.  I kept them simple.  After removing their roots and cleaning them well, I put the bulbs in a frying pan with a generous nob of butter.   A few minutes later I added the green leaves, stirred them for a minute or so, and removed them from the heat.  A generous shake of salt and pepper and they were ready to eat. We gobbled them down with grilled tuna steaks and a pinot grigio to celebrate my sister's birthday, and ended the delightful meal with her just-made carrot cake - mmmmm! 

Headcheese

There’s no avoiding the bad name; maybe Americans should look abroad and consider brawn, souse, or fromage de tête, syltty or huspenina, as it’s known in some of the lands of our parents and grandparents. Headcheese sounds like it’s made with mucus or boogers, and the name has somehow come into American English as a real unknown. What is it and why did people ever make it? Does anyone even care to know what it is, outside of the handful of bloggers who populate the internet and drive the search engines to their sites? You might even think I’ve moved away from my love of food and am searching for food with a shock value.
If you or I walked into a nice restaurant and saw Cheek Medallions from Berkshire Pig with Juniper Berries and Port Wine Cranberry Glaze we wouldn’t think twice about it, except to wonder if we should order it. But say headcheese and most people will cringe, even while admitting they don’t know what it is and don’t care to know; they assume it’s gross.













I made headcheese this weekend because I bought a pig and it had a head. Sure, I asked the guy at the meat locker not to grind it up, and I asked for the feet as well, but only because they’re part of the pig. Unlike restaurant food, which a chef can create from disparate ingredients and sources, headcheese comes from a tradition rooted in seasonality and culture. In cultures where families still raise a pig each year, headcheese is still being made. Look to any of the poorer European countries, from Moldova and Serbia to rural districts of wealthier countries like Italy and France, and you’ll find headcheese and its local variants. And headcheese isn’t eaten as penance, either; it’s a delectable way to get at the flavorful bits of head meat – imagine a concentrated combination of pulled pork and pot roast.
A head, with the brains removed, is soaked in a salt brine overnight, along with the pig’s feet. Next day the brine is dumped and the meat is cooked at a low simmer for several hours, along with bay leaves, peppercorns, juniper berries, and typical soup stock ingredients like carrots, celery, and onions. When the meat is fall-from-the-bone tender, remove it from the heat and let it cool. When you can handle the meat, separate it from the bones and fat. Strain the stock and boil to reduce by about a third to a half. The feet add huge amounts of gelatin to the stock, which makes the traditional aspic of headcheese a breeze to make.
Because headcheese is refrigerated, it’s important to season it heavily, so the flavors come through the cold. I added salt, marjoram, and re-hydrated a quarter-cup of wild mushrooms. Headcheese in many places call for vinegar, bringing to mind hasenfeffer and jugged hare. I used a saucier and kept reducing the already-rich stock, tasting as I went to ensure a strong flavor. I then put the meat into a Pyrex glass loaf and poured the flavored stock until it covered the meat, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the icebox. We ate it yesterday (and today) at lunch with a slice of bread and a gob of mustard.
There’s no reason headcheese couldn’t be warmed up so the aspic melts, and served with egg noodles. In fact, if you’ve eaten rillettes in a French bistro, you’re pretty close to headcheese, except that headcheese doesn’t have as much fat as the rillettes.
My guess is that headcheese is still popular where pigs are butchered on the farm because the process is so well understood. American consumers are suspicious of headcheese because our meat comes from huge factories and we don’t know anything about them. So, while Americans will buy millions of pounds of ground hamburger from unknown sources, few of us will eat headcheese. Is it because of the name or our suspicion of meat factories? If you know where your pig was raised and slaughtered, headcheese is an obvious addition to your repertoire of pork dishes.

Borscht recipe

Make stock with the bony parts of two rabbits, cooking it long and slow to extract as much flavor as possible.  Cook overnight, carefully topping off the stock pot with water before you turn out the lights and go to sleep, making sure the flame is as low as possible.  In the morning, remove from heat; the stock should be peat colored.

In an enameled, cast iron pot, saute an onion or two and a carrot.  Add dill and a nice fresh tomato from the garden.  Pull four or five good-sized beets from the garden; wash off the dirt and peel them.  Grate into the pot.   Add stock by the ladleful.  Remove meaty pieces from bones and add to pot.  Simmer gently.  Add a cup or two of uncooked, fermented sauerkraut.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I made the borscht late at night, put it in the fridge, and reheated it for dinner the next evening, adding another two cups of sauerkraut before serving.

My wife also roasted sliced potatoes and onions in the oven and for my second helping I added a scoopful to the bottom of the bowl.  My son likes sour cream; I like the tang of good kraut.

The way things are connected

A pot of stock is cooking on the stove; our beets in the garden are huge, and the weather has turned blustery.  Time for borscht.
But, I've been thinking about bread lately.  I used to make it all the time, but other things have displaced the time I used to use for bread making.  Before school began last year we bought a bread machine, and we've used it constantly; it makes a loaf that's good for the sandwiches my kids bring to school every day, and we haven't had to purchase bread since then.
When I started thinking about a rabbit-stock borscht my thoughts turned to bread again, and I remembered a beautiful recipe given to me a decade ago by a co-worker's mother in Des Moines, Iowa.  Inga's mother, Vija, gave me a jar of starter for her Latvian rye bread, the most wonderful sour rye I've ever tasted.  I made it for awhile, but over the years I lost the starter.  I've continued to make rye bread occasionally,  but nothing has compared to the still-sweet, slightly fermented rye I first tried all those years ago when recruiting for Peace Corps.  It was probably a night like this when I wrote down the recipe in her kitchen as I watched her make it.
So, even though I should be asleep now, I just brought out my big stoneware bowl and added a few cups of rye flour, enough warm water to make it thin like pancake batter, about a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of yeast.  That'll be my new starter.  The recipe uses only rye flour and has no added yeast.  I added a little to start the fermentation, but I won't add any more.
Within a few days I'll have a big pot of borscht and a loaf of Vija's Latvian rye bread.

Apple season

Apple season began around five this afternoon. I spent this beautiful September afternoon listening to baseball and washing storm windows and screens. Around four-thirty I knew we didn't have much time to get to the orchard, so I called to the kids and we hopped in the car. Ten minutes later we were glad to see an 8-6 sign nailed onto a fence post; we'd made it on time.
We walked into the refrigerated storeroom where they keep their apples; we wanted to taste a few before we decided what varieties to buy. Still early in the season, only one variety was available to pick, but there were a half dozen different apples in crates and bags. We tasted Early Blush, a fragrant, early season favorite, McIntosh and Cortland, Honeycrisp, Zestar, and Haralson. After tasting what was there, we bought bags of Zestar and Honeycrisp, both patented apples introduced by the University of Minnesota, and Haralson, a nice tart eating and baking apple, also introduced by the University of Minnesota, but back when land grant universities did work for the greater good of the state and its residents.

When we got home I put a pot of water for pasta on the stove and got to work making a tarte tatin, a reliable and delicious apple-upside-down tart. It went into the oven while the pasta was cooking and was finished before we were. We'll be eating a lot of these in the coming months. Here's how I do it.

Tarte tatin
Crust:
1 cup flour
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2-4 tbsp ice cold water
3-5 tart apples, cored, peeled, halved lengthwise and cut into thin slices
3 tbsp butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
To make the crust, mix dry ingredients in bowl, add cold butter in chunks and mix with fork until pebbly. Add cold water one tbsp at a time and stir until flour holds together. Roll into crust the size of the pan you're using, using sprinkles of flour to keep from sticking.
Put a heavy, cast iron pan on stovetop and melt butter over medium low heat. Sprinkle brown sugar on top and let melt. I add the apple slices neatly and don't stir them once they're in. The thing to remember is that the apples shrink a lot; add at least four or five layers of them. After you've made it a few times it'll be easier to judge how many apples are needed. Add the apples and the butter-sugar mixture will bubble and sigh a little like a nicely stirred polenta. Keep adding the apples, making sure the whole surface is covered several layers deep. Sprinkle with cinnamon. After a few minutes, when the apples have softened up, remove from heat. Lay crust on top and poke a few holes in it. I fold any extra crust back on itself; it makes for a nice edge.
Bake at 375° F for about 45 minutes or until crust is browned.

When finished, put serving plate on top of pan and flip carefully. Let the upside down pan rest a few minutes before removing. Sometimes a rubber spatula is needed to dislodge a few apples stuck in the frying pan; it's also good for scraping any of the butter-sugar goo that's still in the pan.
Serve warm.

Birthday beans

I first planted these beans in the summer of 2003. We went to Paris the previous fall and bought these beans, Facila is the variety, on our daughter's first birthday. When they grew that first summer, we reminded her that these were her birthday beans, the ones we bought in Paris. She ate them with relish right off the plant. I saved seed from the best plants and the following spring planted them again. And here we are, harvesting birthday beans for the seventh time. And they're still my daughter's favorite.
This, perhaps, is how things get named. When I list these beans in the Seed Savers Yearbook I'll document that the bean was originally named Facila, and that it's a variety sold by Vilmorin, the old French seed house that's taken over a large share of the world's seed trade, but I may call them Birthday Beans instead. It's as good a name as any I've heard for a bean. I love the story we tell each other every year, and how we say Birthday Bean with more enthusiasm than, say, "zucchini." Our daughter was born on 9.12.01, and the moment she was born I saw proof that life is irrepressible, that life itself will bourgeon and blossom and will not fail, even when people do. And as these beans grow and nourish us each year, we, too, are renewed each time we save seed and plant it; we midwife the seed from one generation to the next.
Last night I picked a bowl-full for dinner. I blanched them very briefly - they were in boiling water for less than 30 seconds - because they're so tender and fresh and I just wanted to brighten them up a bit. I quickly doused them in cold water and turned the burner on high. Into the saucier went a teaspoon of duck fat; as soon as it was hot I added the beans, fresh tarragon, and a sprinkling of fine sea salt. Two minutes from the garden to the table, full of green and family lore.

Blueberries

We picked blueberries on Sunday, twenty-three pounds of them. My wife and I said to each other, "Wow, ninety-five dollars is a lot to spend on fruit." I thought about all the pancakes we'll eat, all the pies I'll bake, and thought "Hey, my pies are probably ten-dollar pies, maybe even more when I use a lard/duck fat crust."
We'll get our money's worth. We'll stain our lips and eat pie before bed and then again for breakfast. I'll pour a blueberry compote over roast pork and bake whole berries into muffins; in March we'll still be eating blueberry pancakes on weekend mornings. They're all in the freezer now, two stacks of ziploc bags on the bottom shelf. Cup by overflowing cup and bag by bag, we'll eat July the whole winter long.
We picked on the very first day of the blueberry season because last year our vacation coincided with the season and when we returned it was over. We head to Maine next week and we'll pick wild ones along the mountain trails; the lure of them has turned my youngest into an avid hiker. She'll keep going if there are blueberries ahead, even if the trail is a difficult one.

Anticipating corn

Last year I wrote about corn and wondered why we don't have a deep tradition of corn-based recipes for the month of August. If corn was native to China or France, I feel certain there'd be a whole cuisine that revolved around its seasonal abundance. And while I love corn on the cob, there ought to be richer food traditions that everyone knows and participates in. I know there are people out there who swear by a recipe or dish they know, but my question is, "Why don't all of us know it?" Why haven't we been able to forge a lasting culinary tradition when we're surrounded by mountains of corn for four weeks each year?
Corn season is just around the corner. I'll be making my corn chowder, you can be sure of that. And eating it fresh off the cob. But what else should we be doing with it?

Swiss chard

We eat swiss chard almost daily during the summer and fall. We grow the beautiful variety called Five Color Silverbeet, a variety that was maintained by the Digger’s Garden Club in Australia after it was dropped by commercial seed companies. It was first re-introduced to US gardeners through Seed Savers Exchange, and in the past few years it’s been picked up by many seed companies in the US. The multi-colored ribs and big crinkly leaves are as pretty as anything grown in a Minnesota garden.
Beets and swiss chard are different varieties of the same genus and species, Beta vulgaris. Over time, beets have been bred for their tuberous root while swiss chard’s ribs and leaves are prized by cooks. Marcella Hazan, in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, has a delicious swiss chard torte we’ve been making for years, but our daily standard is a bit simpler, and it’s quick and delicious. Here’s what I do:
Add a hefty pour of olive oil to a saucier or other fry pan;
Mince a few cloves of garlic and add them to the hot oil;
After the garlic cooks, add the diced stems of the swiss chard and sauté it like celery;
When the stalks are soft, add a whole tomato, preferably a paste variety with lots of meat and few seeds;
Mash the tomato a bit and turn the heat up pretty high to cook off the excess moisture;
Add a little salt;
Lay all the chard leaves on top of each other and roll them up like a fat cigar, then cut the fat roll of leaves into thin strips – maybe ½” or so;
Add the leaves to the hot pan, and stir it all around;
I usually cover the pan for a minute or two to let the steam wilt the chard leaves quicker. Cook the leaves for three or four minutes total.
When I come home from work and make this for lunch, I usually serve it with rice, and I always have a little bowl of nahm prick, a homemade, fiery Thai condiment, on the side.

Pork shoulder confit with old fava beans

The fava beans were old and tough and the half-life of the nutrients had probably depleted to a point where it didn't matter if I ate them or not. But today was cold enough to eat shoe leather stew, and I still had a lot of pork shoulder confit to use. We also had a bottle of bad wine in the kitchen and a few other odds and ends that needed to be eaten.
I started by simmering the fava beans in water for an hour or two, trying to soften the skins. The kitchen started to smell good when I sautéed a big onion and a few cloves of garlic in an olive oil/duck fat mixture; a few bay leaves were added when the onions softened and I peeled and cut up a few carrots, too. I turned the flame high and poured almost a cup of inky-dark wine into the pan, and it bubbled and cooked away. For the next half hour I kept adding wine by the pour - a few glug-glugs or so, wanting to keep the reducing liquid at a boil. I softened a handful of dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl of hot water, and added the liquid before the chopped mushrooms.
Next came the drained fava beans with their tough skins; some people like to peel them, and it's easy to do after they've cooked, but I wanted the chewiness of the skins, and their dark color, too. A can of plum tomatoes came next and then a sprinkle of sugar. I covered this and let it cook awhile, adding a pour of water when it appeared to be drying out. I cooked it about an hour, scraping down the sides and giving it a stir when needed. I sliced the pork confit and spread it on the bottom of a dutch oven. I poured the bean mixture over it and was about to put it in the oven, but the dish looked incomplete. I liked the look of the carrots and tomatoes, so I peeled and diced a big sweet potato and a yukon gold, hoping their color and shapes would improve the texture. Finally, I added more pork to the top and poured a little water over the whole thing. I baked it with the lid on for forty-five minutes and removed the lid for the last twenty minutes - it browned up nicely on top.
Results were mixed: my youngest daughter and I liked it a lot, but my cassoulet-loving son was not impressed. My wife thinks most of these stew-type dishes are a homogeneous blend of things that turn purple; it was the attempt to prevent this that prompted me to add the potatoes.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's dinner - more of the same, I hope.

Northwoods Bouillabaisse

I’ve been making my own northwoods bouillabaisse for a few years now, savoring the fish that Minnesota has in abundance, extracting from these fish, almost all of which are the ones most anglers throw back as too small, a rich and flavorful stew that, while not bouillabaisse, is as rich and satisfying as a trip to Marseilles to indulge in the real thing. That’s an advantage, I guess, of having children for whom the sheer excitement of catching a fish surpasses the need for a mountable trophy – we shamelessly keep the small sunnies, crappies, rock bass and smallmouth bass that look like muskie bait, turning them into the stock that is the foundation for my northwoods bouillabaisse.



Like gardening, part of the pleasure of a good fish stew is catching the fish yourself, and the pleasure is heightened when they’re caught on Burntside Lake in northern Minnesota, a ten thousand acre lake that is cold, clear and deep. We fish off a little point and stand with the water lapping our feet and loons swimming by; fir and pine trees line the shore, islands dot the lake and fade into a grey distance that evokes elemental Milton Avery and Chinese ink drawings.


When the fish are biting we put a nightcrawler on a hook and let it fly, a ¼ oz sinker dragging it to the bottom where rocks abound. If we avoid the numerous snags it’s not long before there’s a gentle tug, that thrilling feeling of an imminent strike. And sometimes a good sized bass will inhale the hook and a jolting yank on the line immediately awakens the senses for the beginning of a chance to land a big one.

My stew is a simple one, and I change it as new herbs or ingredients seem good to add. I start by scaling and gutting all the fish. If any of the fish are large enough I also cut out the fillets and put them aside. Usually I have only a few meaty fillets, but when I fry these in butter and bacon fat they add a lot of richness and flavor to the stew.



Cover the fish in water and bring to a boil, skimming off all the scum that surfaces. Usually when I’m up north I have limited ingredients, so I usually add only an onion, carrot, and maybe a bay leaf to the stock. Cook for thirty minutes to an hour and strain. If any obvious chunks of fish are visible and easy to get at, I usually use a fork to pry them from rib cages and other bony areas. In a wide sauté pan, I like the 3 qt size because of the wide surface area for evaporation, I add garlic and onion to olive oil, butter, bacon fat or a combination of those delicious cooking fats. For this stew I almost always sauté the onions over a high flame, usually because I’m hungry and don’t want to wait for lunch. Next, I add a tomato, usually just one to begin with, and I crush it and let it be absorbed into the onions. Keeping the pan really hot I slowly add a few more tomatoes by ones and twos, breaking them apart with my wooden spoon (is there any kitchen tool as wonderful as a wooden spoon? It is primitive and prehistoric and essential) and watching them sizzle, adding another when the now-emerging sauce is reduced to almost no liquid. While I’m sautéing the onions I add basil, thyme, parsley and a few pinches of sea salt, and then I add anise seed and saffron, keeping some semblance of a traditional bouillabaisse. I let this get really thick and fragrant and then I start adding ladlefuls of fish stock, one at a time, keeping the flame hot and adding the next ladleful only when the previous one is almost completely evaporated. The longer I’m willing to cook it the richer it is – on the first night it’s always the thinnest, but as I save some for each subsequent night the resulting stock, when chilled, becomes thick like rubber.



Because I always eat lunch with my wife, I add stock and continue to reduce it until there’s enough for two bowls. As I near the end of the reduction, I sauté the fish fillets in butter over high heat, browning and crisping them with a bit of salt and pepper. A little leftover penne is another good addition at this time, and so are chunks of potato. Pour into a big bowl, place the fried fillets on top, and enjoy.

Corn (Corn Chowder)

Considering that we’ve been eating corn in North America since before recorded history, I’m surprised we don’t have a more robust and rooted culinary tradition of corn. Today, most Americans eat corn on the cob in August, and lots of people eat corn bread throughout the year. A few regions specialize in corn puddings, and roasted ears of corn are a favorite at county fairs around the country. But, considering the ubiquitous role of corn in American agriculture, why aren’t there dozens of corn dishes that every kid in America grows up eating and making? Why, after all these generations, don’t we have a glut of regional recipes that celebrate the season of corn?

I know I can search the internet for corn recipes and find hundreds, but I’m not talking about recipes; I’m thinking about a culinary understanding of the most widely grown plant in this country. Corn is everywhere and we still approach it like a novelty each year. Perhaps we can’t improve upon boiled corn with butter and salt, but even if that represents the pinnacle of culinary and cultural creativity in the kitchen, I think we should have a few more ideas cooked up by now.

I begin my corn season with corn chowder. If you haven’t made corn chowder with fresh sweet corn, give it a try.

AUGUST CORN CHOWDER

6 ears fresh sweet corn
4-8 tbsp butter
1/2 lb salt pork
2-3 potatoes
1 big onion
a few cloves garlic
1 cup stock or water
1 tomato, seeded
3-4 tbsp tarragon
2 - 3 cups (or so) milk/half & half

I start with a few tablespoons of butter in a nice big saucier. I cut up about a half pound of salt pork into tiny pieces, about ¼” squares and add to it a big onion, also diced finely. A few cloves of garlic? Sure. Add a few more tablespoons of butter about now. Cook until salt pork is browned and onions are soft.

Potatoes are a great addition, and you can add them raw or parboil them first. Use a couple, peel them, and cut them into small pieces. If you add them raw, cook them until they’re almost done before you add the corn. A little liquid is good now. If I have any stock in the icebox I use it, adding a cup or so and letting it cook down a bit. If I don’t have any stock handy, water works well, too.

If you want a little color, a seeded tomato, cut into pieces, works well. So does a diced carrot or a few stems of swiss chard, added like diced celery.

After shucking a half dozen or so ears of corn, I remove the kernels by holding the cob in one hand and using a sharp knife to cut the kernels from the cob into a big colander in the sink. It’s wide and deep enough to catch the stray, flying kernels. Add the kernels to the golden onions and fragrant salt pork. I love tarragon with corn chowder, so I add it now, and a little sweet paprika, too.

Once the corn is cooked, in just a few minutes, I add a combination of milk and half & half, stirring and keeping the heat low so it doesn’t boil. A few cups total will suffice. I like my a bit thin, so I probably add more milk than half & half. Keep it from boiling, and when everything is all mixed together and the liquid is white with swirls of yellowy butter, it’s ready to eat.

Here’s a perfect time to drink a California chardonnay. Chardonnay that’s been oaked and grown in the warm California sun isn’t my daily libation, but with corn chowder it’s a great match.

What other corn dishes belong on every table in August?

Fava bean hash

A former dinner club companion once remarked that food was something that had to be put into our gullets.

I love fava beans because they taste good and they're beautiful. I love them young and raw, before they develop the skin that some people like to remove before they eat them. I like them when they're old and dry and need to be soaked. I picked some fresh the other night and before my wife went out she told me there were also a lot of leftovers in the icebox that needed to be used.

Garlic, an onion, and a few carrots all aswish in a glug or two of olive oil. When I made baked beans for the 4th I soaked more than usual dry beans, so I had a tupperware tub full of cooked but unseasoned beans. Into the pan they went with the favas. I was sparing the with tub of tomatoes on the top shelf, and generous with the confit - two big goose gizzards and a meaty duck leg. Tarragon, parsley, salt and pepper, and after simmering for awhile, dinner was ready.

In the end, our former dining companion is right. Food keeps us alive and when we're dog-tired or in a rush we just need something to nourish us. But shouldn't it be something good, and something good for us? Why shouldn't gullet-filling food be healthy and fresh? Why can't fast food load us with the sun-stored energy processed by a leafy green vegetable?

I live in Minnesota and so little of the food eaten in this state is grown here. Why? Have we dulled our palates and sense of difference to such a degree that a beet seems odd? Why aren't fava beans in everyone's repertoire of early summer dishes? They can be planted early, they thrive despite our snowy spring weather, and by late June their pods are bursting with fresh greenosity.

The spell of summer is on me. I can see green from now until November, when snow-covered kale will grace our spuds.