Bamboo and sardine curry

Naw Mai Dong is typically (and accurately) translated from the Thai as "pickled bamboo," but I think "soured bamboo" is more accurate in terms of its taste; the sour of naw mai dong is more akin to sourdough bread than a dill pickle or another Thai favorite, gratiem dong -- pickled garlic.

Soured bamboo is a pretty intense taste, and I'm somehow reminded of dried porcini mushrooms, even though they taste nothing alike. I'm thinking instead of the powerful fragrance the mushrooms develop when they're softened up in warm water. And, when they're soaking in a covered bowl, the first smell of the porcinis can be quite heady; I feel the same way about naw mai dong. Soured bamboo can be bought in most Asian markets. If you can buy it fresh, do so; it's much better than the canned stuff.

It's been a long time since I lived in Thailand and my curry paste reflects a dozen plus years living in Minnesota; it's milder than it was when I first returned to the states, and I've gotten used to the ingredients available in local Asian markets. Bamboo and sardine curry is a delicious evolution of the first curry I ever made at my home in Trang Province in southern Thailand. Neighborhood kids showed me how to make it and I've got a soft spot for it.

If you haven't eaten canned sardines, give them a try. When I was an avid hiker, I always had them in my pack. They're good for you and because of their small size and feeding habits, they're considered sustainable, too. For curry, I use sardines packed in tomato sauce.

Making curry paste is one of the times a heavy mortar and pestle is essential. A food processor will chop things up but the fibers found in some of the ingredients really need to be pulverized into a paste, and a Thai cloak is unsurpassed for its ability to render a mash of ingredients into a smooth, particle-less paste.

Curry paste
10 dried Thai chili peppers
1 tbsp dried peppercorns
3 tbsp fresh lemongrass - the white ends from two stalks, cut finely
2 tbsp fresh galangal root, cut finely

4 cloves garlic
1-2 shallots
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp tumeric, or about an inch if fresh
2-3 tbsp gapi - shrimp paste

Put first four ingredients into mortar and go to work for a few minutes. After they're pretty smushed up, I add the next four ingredients, adding the gapi only after the paste is the correct texture. The reason I don't add the garlic and shallots at first is that they have a lot of liquid in them and it's harder to really pulverize the other ingredients if they're sloshing around. I like to cook my curry paste a little; I think it intensifies the flavors and I love the smell.

Bamboo and Sardine Curry
Peel and dice two potatoes or a few cups of firm, unripe papaya. In large saucepan or wok, add a few tbsp oil. Heat and add curry paste. NOTE: This curry stinks up your house, so use appropriate ventilation! Fry paste in oil but don't let it burn. Add a little water and mush it around until it's thick like re-fried beans. Cook it a minute or so, adding a little more water if you think it might burn. Add about a half can of coconut milk and about a half cup of water. Stir to mix. Add potatoes and turn heat down. Cover and cook for a few minutes.

If using whole pieces of bamboo, rinse under water and cut into lengths about 3" and then slice lengthwise into thin strips. I like about 3-4 cups worth. When the potatoes are still firm, add the bamboo slices. Stir together. Again, in another nod to an American palate, I now add the remaining lemongrass stems, cut into 3"-4" lengths. If a little more water is needed, add some. The consistency you end up with is one of personal preference. I usually like mine a little on the soupy side because we all like curry sauces on our rice, but some people prefer a much thicker curry. Likewise with the coconut cream -- it's very thick and rich and in a typical curry I'll use between a half and a whole can, depending on my mood.
When the potatoes are just about cooked through, I add a big tin of sardines. The oval cans weigh almost a pound. Add about seven or eight kaffir lime leaves and stir gently; the sardines are fragile and break up quite easily. Heat through. I put the curry into a big bowl and bring it to the table. We scoop spoonfuls of it onto our rice and always serve something cool with it, like leafy green vegetables or an omelette.

Lent and Local or Catholics and Co-ops

As we approach the season of want, the season of hunger, we're reminded of our common agricultural roots, and the closeness of Christianity to the rhythms of time and the seasons. Embedded in the spiritual exercise of fasting is an even older condition: hunger. Whether physical or spiritual, hunger reshapes our sense of normalcy; it sometimes sharpens our awareness and heightens our senses, but left unchecked, it corrodes and can kill. Some religious traditions have made a spiritual discipline out of what used to be a common, shared reality. And while the Church has wandered and strayed as much as any one person, its roots are deep, profoundly deep, and we can still be nourished by its beliefs and traditions that reflect an older understanding of the world.

One thousand years ago, one hundred years ago, all food was local food. And March was difficult. Depleted winter stores collided with cold earth, food not yet grown. For Christians, Lent was the fast before the feast of Easter, with the physical and spiritual reflecting each other, synchronized. A spiritual voyage launched by a seasonal necessity. Today, in our non-seasonal, global appetite for whatever-we-want-we-want-it-now, Cub and the Co-op re-stock their shelves daily, and we expect our desires to be satisfied immediately. Instead of seeing our excess for what it is, we turn our obesity epidemic and fast-food or fancy-food fixation on its head, calling this overgrown appetite our right, our destiny, our blessing.

Are we entitled to eat whatever it is we crave? I don't have an answer for that question, but Lent and Eating Local are both compelling reasons to think deliberately about food and its place in the seasons of growing and eating. If we think about eating local we have to think about what it is we want to eat. Especially at this time of year, eating local is an exercise in long range planning about what we plant, grow, and harvest in the warmer months of the year. What remains of September's abundance that we can now draw upon? The doom of March leads me to think I should be growing and preserving much more food of my own. And that leads to a conversation about gardening and how we use our landscape – particularly us non-rural, grass-growing homeowners.

Even as I begin to think about eating local, I'm not sure I like all the implications. Take oranges, for instance. I can't imagine winter without oranges. The spray of a just-peeled orange in the cold air of winter is an unmatched fragrance. When I eat oranges in the winter I feel as alive and healthy and the first non-scurvied sailing crews! And what would happen to the Florida citrus industry if everyone in the north stopped eating oranges because they weren't local? On the other hand, what if Minnesota farmers were met by crowds of people wanting fresh, locally grown spinach in May? And what if consumers wanted four bushels of apples in September instead of three pecks?

Imposing disciplines on ourselves reminds us that although we are surrounded by an abundance of riches, our needs are few. The rest is manufactured. Eating local and fasting shouldn't be looked at as opportunities to assign blame or assume guilt. Eating local helps us think about our individual habits in relation to larger issues of food production, while fasting is a way to clarify our own needs by experiencing what some people feel each day – hunger.

Shortbread

Shortbread is made with butter, flour, sugar and salt. It's as plain as plain can be. I like to shape the dough between my palms into a small ball and flatten it with the bottom of a glass, one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch thick. When the ball is flattened the edges break open asterisks-like, with stubby rays. These edges bake nicely in the oven, leaving the center a pale, off-white luminescent disk.

My wife and daughter like their shortbread with cornstarch, a new-fangled ingredient that adds lightness to the dough. My feeling is that corn starch flattens the flavor considerably, making an inferior baked good. We decided to have a Valentine's Day bake-off and decide as a family which shortbread we liked best. Luckily, we're an odd-numbered family.

After extensive negotiations to determine fair rules for a blind tasting, my daughter and I set to work. With softened butter at the ready, the dough takes only minutes to make. We both use our hands a lot, and once all the ingredients are in the mixing bowl we use our fingertips and hands to achieve the proper dough consistency, pressing and squeezing it into a manageable form.

We fortunately allowed decimal points into our voting, because fragments of numbers were all that separated our two entries. Had we used whole numbers only in our judging, a tie would have ensued. We learned that we like our preferred styles – we partisans all picked along party lines, even with our eyes closed! The outcome? When I'm baking, no cornstarch will be used, but when my daughter runs the kitchen, she'll do it her way.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups flour
½ cup confectioner's sugar
¼ tsp salt
(Optional – ¼ - ½ tsp vanilla. I like vanilla, but even a small amount darkens the color of the dough and moves the flavor from a traditional shortbread into a different baked good.)

Cream butter and slowly add sugar. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Shape into 1" balls and place on cookie sheet. Flatten with bottom of glass. Bake at 350° F for 20 minutes or so. The edges should just be brown – don't overcook. Cool on a rack.

Rosenblum 2005 Monte Rosso Vineyard zinfandel

This is a beautiful bottle of wine, a conversation starter that puts zinfandel in the age-worthy camp, a big wine with fruit, acid and tannins enough to lay down for a decade, and a perfumed nose so fragrant you don't have to drink it to be satisfied.

We opened this and put a short pour into our glasses and swirled it, dark red and thick, slow legs dripping down the sides like those new Ipod ads. We swirled and smelled and talked. The cleanest, sweetest nose imaginable, not a big, jammy nose so typical of these 15.2% alcohol wines – wow, and breath after breath the nose blew sea-fresh and calm. We circled back to it time and time again, each description closer and further off, no different than the feel of sunshine on our faces on the first sunny day after a snowstorm. We absorb equally the quality of light and the plum blossom perfection of the nose.

A strong trace of tobacco, oily rich and earth, deep berries and a disputation on indulgences, organized religion and the will of God. Such presence for a young bottle of wine! – a clean line of fresh pepper, still clustered and growing on the vine.

A digression: chili peppers, Capsicum frutescens, those hot little red "Thai chili peppers" aren't indigenous to Thailand; their center of diversity is somewhere near present-day Bolivia. They were one of the first fruits brought back to Europe by C. Columbus. In Thai, they are called prik or "pepper," while pepper, Piper nigrum, the tropical climbing vine, is called prik Thai, or "Thai pepper." Thais and the Thai language recognize the primacy of pepper, and they call it their own pepper, whereas the later introduction of chili peppers, a mere three or four hundred years ago, is given the simple moniker "pepper." I wonder if Thai pepper – our black pepper – had a different name before chili peppers were introduced, and Thais had to differentiate between this new pepper, and their own indigenous "Thai pepper." And, while we typically eat dried, crushed peppercorns, our "black pepper," Thais put whole clusters of fresh peppers in a few different dishes, and the flavor bursts out. – This is the clean, pungent pepper profile that washed over our taste buds halfway through the bottle.

Whenever I drink a good zinfandel I feel a billowy lightness underneath the intense, full expression of deep-colored berry fruit; I think it is the harmonious balance of the grape and a winemaker's skill. All that fruit needs something to keep it afloat, and this bottle has clean lines of tannin that keep the fruit from overflowing. And so we talked and drank into the night, a perfect expression of zinfandel. Go, find this bottle, and drink it! Feeling carnivorous? A thick steak with cracked pepper, dripping red from the inside out.

Tomorrow's dinner

The dutch oven is in the garage now, resting on a shelf and cooling. Still in sub-zero temperatures, I think tomorrow's dinner - chicken paprika - will be a perfect antidote for this weather. And better yet, tomorrow is a busy evening and we'll be ready to eat as soon as I get home from work. We still have plenty of rice from tonight's dinner, and egg noodles take only a few minutes to make, if anyone clamors for them.
We like to cook in advance when it's practical, and some recipes take well to advance preparation and cooking. We make large batches of spaghetti sauce, and soups and stews are usually better when made the day (or two) before they're eaten. But just as often, we start thinking about what we're going to serve as we begin to make it.
I love the combination of butter, oil, and chicken fat that coats everything in chicken paprika. The chopped onions blaze with fragrance as they sputter and sizzle in the mixed fats and generous spoonfuls of sweet paprika. Everything simmers while the kids brush their teeth and bedtime stories are read. Then, in the quietness of a just-cleaned up kitchen and the settled routine of the evening's chores, I come by every so often and use a long wooden spoon to make sure nothing's sticking, and everything's cooking nice and slow.
Tomorrow's dinner is pretty much done. Sometime in the late afternoon my wife will bring it in from the garage and slowly reheat it. Just before serving, I'll mix a little flour into a cup or so of sour cream and add it to the simmering pot, a few minutes more on a low dancing flame. A salad on the side, a few sliced pears on a plate - a cold winter evening sounds pretty good.

Leftovers for lunch

Yesterday I made pancakes for breakfast and corn bread for dinner, and we didn't finish either. I left the pancake batter on the counter overnight, allowing it to develop a little extra flavor. Mondays are busy with meetings, but I came home for lunch and made a quick leftover meal. I crumbled the dry cornbread into the batter, leaving it in small chunks, squished a banana into the batter, and gave everything a quick stir. A little butter in the frying pan and I poured the doctored batter in - there was enough left to fill the 10" pan completely. I turned the burner down and covered the pan with a lid. I flipped it after a few minutes and the edges were nice and brown and crisp and buttery; it rose about ¾". A few more minutes on the other side and I slid it out of the pan and onto a dinner plate, opened a jar of applesauce and spooned it over the pancake.
Most people probably would have thrown out both the old pancake batter and the dried out cornbread; I did neither, and lunch was delicious. A good lunch for another cold Minnesota day.

Wedding cake

My wife and I chose a traditional fruitcake for our wedding twelve years ago. We saved the small top layer and on our anniversary we eat a thin slice. We keep it well wrapped in the freezer and bring it out just once a year. Next year I think I'll bring it out long enough to thaw completely, and give it a bit of brandy. In the old days, fruitcake was stored by submerging it in confectioner's sugar; the fineness of the sugar prevented anything from getting in contact with the fruitcake. I hope we can share a slice on our fiftieth anniversary.

Frozen food

We use our garage as a big icebox in the winter. It's attached to our house and the door is right off the kitchen. We regularly make soups, sauces, and rice, and there are always more big pots than will fit into our refrigerator. Some years ago I made a stand to hold coats, hats, and boots, but it's never served its original purpose; instead, it serves as an extended refrigerator shelf.
Our garage is semi-insulated, and even when the temperatures are cold, the garage usually stays quite a few degrees warmer than outside. Well, this winter has proved to be no exception -- the garage is still warmer than outside -- but many of the things we've put out there have frozen. It doesn't help that we've had a very cold winter, with temperatures regularly below 0°F, and a few days below -20°F.
Today we made country ribs with sauerkraut in the slow cooker, and my wife was a little disappointed with the result. I think the sauerkraut froze. I put the pot of sauerkraut out there last week; we had eaten from the batch a few times already, and there was still enough left for a good meal. But, the briny tang that usually accompanies our home-cured sauerkraut was absent from tonight's dish. Long, slow cooking always softens the flavors and texture of the cabbage, but this time the taste was even more neutral, though it carried some of the flavors of the fatty pork, onions, and apples with which it simmered all day long.
With it I drank a 2006 Fish label Selbach Riesling Kabinett, a lively wine with a petroleum-like nose, followed by a burst of crisp green apple and nice acidity. This is a second label wine for Selbach-Oster, and is reasonably priced at around $12.00.
I like the room that our garage gives us in the winter, but I have to be careful when the weather is cold enough to hurt sauerkraut.

Wide pasta and pancetta

On Sunday afternoon, my youngest daughter and I made a batch of pasta. I love how her hands already know how to hold the sheets as they're rolled out. She has a light touch and steady hand. We have a good rhythm for putting the dough through the machine and a four-egg batch took only an hour to complete.
When the dough was as thin as we wanted it, we cut it by hand so we could have the width my wife was in the mood for: she likes broad noodles so we cut them an inch or so wide. We let the noodles dry and they curled like wisps of smoke.
Yesterday was just a quick dinner; I sautéed some pancetta, added a bit of butter and a few peas. A good grating of cheese and that was it. The bite of fresh pasta can't be beat, and its silkiness is heightened next to the salty chew of good pancetta.

Home-cured pancetta

Last month we were in an Asian grocery store in St. Paul and when we passed the butcher counter a few guys were cutting up pork bellies. I asked if I could get a five pound slab and one guy walked into the cooler and brought out a whole pork belly. He cut off a big piece and I was on my way to making pancetta for the first time. Pancetta is similar to bacon but it isn't smoked; the seasonings are more aromatic and I think it's a lot more versatile than bacon.
Pancetta begins with a salt cure, a dry rub that includes kosher salt, pink salt (sodium nitrate), garlic, bay leaves, juniper berries, brown sugar, pepper, and a few other herbs and spices. The meat cures in the refrigerator for a week or so, after which the cure is washed off. The meat (not the fat) side is then coated with cracked pepper, and the whole thing is rolled tightly and tied with string. It ages in a cool, dark place for two weeks and it's ready to eat.
We've been slicing it thin, frying it briefly, and pouring a beaten egg over it for breakfast. It's great with pasta and leafy green vegetables, too. After making confit for two decades, I'm really excited to begin curing meats. There are so many traditional sausages and other forms of charcuterie, and I'll be trying my hand at them in the coming year. Happy New Year!

Pasta

Like so many things, making pasta isn't difficult, but familiarity helps. Pasta dough is a stiff dough, hard to work at first, but with firm kneading becomes soft and pliable. If you bake bread you can make pasta. I bake a fair amount, and before I had kids I would happily spend an afternoon rolling pasta dough by hand. I used a thick dowel and could roll it out pretty thin. But, since having kids a decade ago, I've made pasta only twice. I don't know why it took so long, but I received a pasta machine for Christmas, and what a joy it is! I've already used it three times, and my son and seven-year old daughter are almost able to make the pasta themselves.
I make the dough and they can nearly do the rest. Made only with flour and eggs, the dough requires at least ten minutes of vigorous kneading by hand (and that's where my kids need me.) After that, I let it rest before we crank it through the machine. In our very dry winter air I put the dough in a plastic bag so it retains moisture and the flexibility it's gained through kneading.
Then we cut a piece off the dough and start cranking it through the machine, narrowing the space between the steel rollers after every two or three passes. When it's done we lay it on a towel and let it dry a little before putting it through the cutters. When it still has flexibility but has a leather-like feel, we pass it through the cutters and spread it out to dry.
My daughter helped yesterday and by the time we were halfway through she was holding her hands just so, able to guide the dough through the rollers and cutters without bunching or stretching it; she has a light touch! We're looking forward to many, many meals with homemade pasta.

Apples and a sandwich with a name

A busy end to the Christmas weekend. A nearby orchard remains open until December 31 each year, and we're always regular customers right up to the end. Haralson and Keepsake are my favorite late season varieties, and we keep a bag in the garage as long as we can. We all drove over early this afternoon and bought another 60 lbs for a second batch of applesauce. Four varieties remained in the storeroom and we took equally from all of them.
The kitchen was filled with steaming pots all afternoon and into the evening. My oldest wanted to peel apples and mash them with an immersion blender instead of straining them through the chinois. So, we went our separate ways and we'll have a taste-off tomorrow. Her sauce is pale straw and fine; the texture is silky and soft. Mine is usually fresh pink, but today even darker because I let the cooked apples sit in the pot a little longer than usual; when we passed them through the chinois, the color was rosier than our batch a month or two back.
The kitchen was a mess with pots and pans and everyone was hungry for dinner. Meaqhen suggested Croque Monsieur, and I said "What?" I love food and I love that a classic sandwich like this was completely unknown to me before this evening. Now, I grew up with hot ham and cheese sandwiches, wrapped in foil and heated in the oven, but my wife has been eating Croque Monsieur since she was a student in Montreal. Croque Monsieur is a hot ham and cheese sandwich with a name and a sauce.
I cut thin slices of fresh bread and generous slices of our Christmas ham. A little mustard and grated cheese came next: sharp cheddar for the kids and Jarlsberg for the adults. We put the sandwiches, buttered on the outside, in a hot oven oven. I made a béchamel sauce (butter, flour, milk) and added Weber's mustard (a Buffalo, NY horseradish mustard) and almost a cup of cubed Jarlsberg, turning it into a mornay sauce. After the bread crisped up a bit I spooned the mornay sauce on top and put the sandwiches under the broiler until they bubbled and browned. I drank a porter from Bell's Brewery (Kalamazoo, MI) with the sandwich and now have a new favorite ham sandwich.
We'll bring this last batch of applesauce into the basement tomorrow - 12 quarts and 12 pints - and we'll pop the lids one by one as winter wears on. I'm glad we can; it lets us take advantage of an abundance of fruit at a reasonable price ($.40/pound.) And, tomorrow is our applesauce taste-off; I can't imagine anyone losing!

Fast food and poverty

I regularly travel to different cities in the United States. I think about food as I drive through poor neighborhoods because the choices are so stark: fast food and junk food are all that's available in whole stretches of urban poverty. Whether it's Chicago or Baltimore, Philadelphia or Atlanta, what's obvious is that the poorer the neighborhood, the fewer food choices available. I drove through a stretch of urban decay in Philadelphia last week and as I drove I looked and looked for a grocery store. I didn't see one. What I saw were fast food restaurants and corner convenience stores with cigarettes, beer, lottery tickets and junk food. I didn't see a store where you could buy a sack of flour, yeast, lettuce, whole tomatoes, potatoes or cabbage.
Fast food is expensive food, too. Dinner for five at McDonald's costs more than making dinner at home, and the McDonald's food isn't good for us, either. Good, healthy food is the cheapest food.
And what are the public health costs of not eating well? People living in poor neighborhoods with a preponderance of fast food restaurants are also the least insured. Obesity, diabetes, and other health risks associated with a poor diet are exacerbated by insufficient health care. The people with the least access to quality health care are the same people exposed to the worst food choices.

Swedish Tea Log

 

Christmas night after the kids are in bed and the dishes washed, and I feel pulled in different directions by tradition. We make traditions in our family, and follow older ones as well. We've been eating a Swedish Tea Log on Christmas morning since I was born, and I have passed this on to my children. My wife, though, doesn't like coffee cake or pastry for breakfast - it's too sweet, she thinks. So this year I made her an egg bake. I was happy to make it because I just finished curing pancetta for the first time and I thought it would be a perfect addition. I added a lot of bread from a loaf we made for the dish, but my wife thought it tasted too much like bread pudding. However, as I fried the pancetta last night, she went to far as to sop up some of the grease in the frying pan with a crust of bread! (More on the pancetta later.)
The Swedish Tea Log has gotten better over time. I no longer add the raisins called for in the recipe. And I've changed the walnuts to almonds and doubled the amount used. Half of them I chop and the other half I grind into paste and add to the nut/butter/brown sugar mixture that gets spread over the rolled out dough. Here's how I make it:

Soften 1 packet yeast in ¼ c warm water
Sift together:
2¼ c flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
Cut in ½ c butter until particles are fine.
Add ¼ c warm milk or cream, one egg, and yeast. Form into ball, wrap in plastic, and chill several hours.

Cream together:
¼ c butter
½ c brown sugar
¾ tsp cinnamon
1 c almonds: half chopped and half ground into paste

Roll out dough into large rectangle. Spread with filling and roll up. Form into crescent and cut almost to the pan at 1" intervals. Cover with cloth and let rise. Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes.

When cool, glaze with mixture of:
2 tbsp soft butter
1 c confectioners sugar
½ tsp vanilla
enough warm milk to make it spreadable (1-3 tbsp)

Serve warm.

One year anniversary

This is my one year anniversary writing Duck Fat and Politics! Thank you to all of you who have come to this blog a second time! I don't know how you got here the first time, but I appreciate that some of you have returned for another look.

I've thought about food for a long time but it took until last year to start a blog and write for an audience. As I look at a year of posts I'm surprised to see how conservative I seem! So many entries express my fundamental love for food, cooking, and gardening in the context of family, tradition, and God. I thought my entries would be serious pieces about food, but I find that when I start writing I can't separate the food from the context in which I understand it, and that context is my family. As I write about tomatoes or beets or Sunday dinner I find myself pulled into the question of how food fits into a larger picture of life and meaning. Maybe if this blog was called Duck Fat and God I'd find myself writing more about politics. I've found it harder to write about food politics than I thought it would be because if I'm going to write about food politics I want to be informed and add a new perspective to what's already been written. Currently, I find that I don't have the time to do the reading, thinking, writing, and editing needed to write solid pieces on food politics. Maybe I'll begin by asking a few questions aloud.

I'm even more surprised by how little I've written about wine; I thought I'd be doing it much more regularly. But, as I read other blogs I find myself less interested in writing wine reviews. If I can figure out where my love of wine fits into this blog, I'll do more.

As I look ahead, I hope to write longer pieces about certain foods I prepare and things that I grow in my garden. I also want to write more about food's place in a family and, by extension, a community.

For now, thank you for reading Duck Fat and Politics. I love to read your comments and I look forward to another year of writing.

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.

Preparing

It's December and the temperatures are in the single digits and the ground is frozen and Christmas is only a few weeks away and the house is quiet and the light is soft: small white Christmas tree lights throw broken, diffused shadows, pools of difference on the already-organic plaster walls, sagging and settling after eighty years on horizontal lath; dinner is long over and everyone else is asleep and I can still smell the sourdough and mussels we ate after we lit our second Advent candle, all of us holding, barely, hands or fingers, pinkies linked with fragile certainty, giving thanks, remembrance, hope.
All there is to do and I do it and my mother did it and when I was nine or eleven or seven I had big eyes and everything in December had a purpose; we were good so we could put pieces of straw in the manger so baby Jesus would have a soft place to be born when we lay Him in it on Christmas Eve; and for weeks flour and yeast, molasses and ginger and clove and candied fruit filled my nose and eyes; the island in the kitchen always flour-covered, and always a bowl, the beater, nuts to be chopped, a cookie to be rolled in sugar or placed in a foil-lined shoebox, between layers of wax paper, not to be eaten until everything, everything was brought out on Christmas Eve and the dessert plate illuminated all that had been dark, and those moments of awe and wonder and mystery and butter swirled together, and the cookies I made as a boy we still make and when we take the lid off the cardboard box where the tin cutouts lie jumbled for all but once a year, we each claim a shape as the first we'll use - maybe the bell or angel - and when we roll out the butter-rich, anise-scented dough, I know there is no time, that all time is one time and my memories haven't yet started to form; flour covers my hands light as a blessing, and I stop to think about all we have yet to do.

Turkey Soup

All day turkey bones murmuring in water, the molasses-like burps of slow moving stock, gelatin richness drawn from carcass, skin, and cleavered bones, clove-studded onions and bay leaves from Turkey. The slow stovetop burn, stainless steel pot gurgling simmerish, soft, a flicker of flame underneath.
Today begins Advent, the four weeks that precede Christmas, the beginning of the liturgical year in the Catholic tradition, and the beginning of winter's great darkness, cold that overwhelms us unless we walk into it prepared.
A grey cold Sunday with snow flurries, quiet in the house, moisture curling from the stockpot all day long, fragrant wisps of soup-to-be. I walked with a friend late in the afternoon; we finished our walk as night settled on the snow and filled the sky and air with its dark. The kitchen glowed as it only does when you've returned to it from the outdoors in the winter, just past dusk: truly, civilization developed around a kitchen fire.
At dinner, we lit the first of four candles on our Advent wreath and sang "O Come O Come Emmanuel" before finishing our Thanksgiving leftovers. We move now from an American holiday to a season far older and more profound. What a great time to be in the kitchen.

Henry's Sourdough Pumpkin Rolls

 

Henry and I spent Wednesday evening baking and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. After making two pumpkin pies we had a few extra cups of pumpkin and wondered what to do with it. I love yeast rolls and decided to combine the pumpkin with a sourdough starter from the icebox.
Henry and I especially like sourdough breads; our favorite is sour rye. We let starters sit out for long periods of time and they acquire a very sharp tang.
We brought the starter to room temperature and added warm water, flour and a little yeast. About a cup and a half of pumpkin remained, so Henry scooped it into the bowl, along with one-third cup brown sugar and a teaspoon salt. The dough rose twice and we baked them in a 400°F oven for about 20 minutes.
They made a great dinner roll - chewy crust with a tender interior, and a holiday taste that reminded my wife of hot cross buns, although these contained no spices. Last night's turkey sandwich was made even better on one of these rolls, and today's lunch attested to their staying power.
Henry loved inventing a new roll, so it carries his name.

After Thanksgiving

And then, the before-bed turkey sandwich is gone, you've drained the glass of wine, and the house is quiet: everyone is asleep. Only crumbs remain from the sourdough pumpkin rolls, and the pies are covered in tin foil. The candles are snuffed and the tablecloth graces an empty table.
I hope you have someone to curl up with, to toast, to wash the dishes with. Or else, it is just food.

Applesauce

 

We picked a lot of apples last Sunday afternoon. We remembered the time change and were still surprised by the low sun in the grey colding sky, patchy blue with bits of ragged cloud and leaves falling, leaves. Bare limbs and boughs, harbingers of mortality, home before dark.
Apple smell in the garage all week, sweetening. Friday night Meaghen and the girls went out and Henry and I made applesauce and put it in jars and on Christmas we'll pop a lid and all that summer growing will pour out and cover a pork chop or turkey leg and maybe we'll sprinkle a little cinnamon on it and eat it for breakfast, too. Canning all Friday night with Henry is why we don't watch television.
A big bag of apples - an old 50 lb rice sack full - bulging and tipping nearly. We dumped them into the sink and there they bobbed until cored and quartered, tossed into the largest sauce pot - the canning pot already claimed, of course. They cooked and stewed and softened, and when soft enough we put them into the old garage-sale chinois with a solid cherry pestle, Henry pushing round and round, the slow ooze of sauce seeping through, hitting stride as the pot fills and fills, warm apple rising fragrant in the kitchen steam. Then pint by pint and quart after quart, filling, sealing and boiling, pulling them out with tongs and resting hot jars on the dining room tablecloth, a chessboard of pink jars.
I loved canning as a kid, and still do; it's always a slightly monumental task to look at a few bushels of apples and imagine them all in jars. The bulk diminishes slowly, and every window is fogged; the world beyond the kitchen fades, and jar by jar we transform a season of growing - from blossoms to frost - into food, nourishing soul, body, family.

Climate Change

I recently re-connected with a childhood friend and neighbor who's been living in India for years. What a pleasure to discover that we still share common interests and pursuits! I sent her tomato seeds and she just let me know that they've sprouted!
What does it symbolize when simple seeds travel across the globe and are planted in new soil? It's November, and my garden is growing again - Brandywine and 1x6 tomatoes are pushing through the soil of Kolkata, India and Barack Obama is the President-elect of the United States of America. That's climate change I can live with!
My family and I just drove to Chicago (and back) - we were part of the Obama victory rally at Grant Park. It's difficult to capture the real size of the crowd, which was enormous beyond counting!

Community gardening

Saturday was clean up day at the community garden, which is finishing its second season. Thirty families have plots and after two years it's already popular enough that new locations around town are being evaluated for a possible second garden site. At this site there's a small perennial plot, a communal squash plot (which may be given up next year,) a plot whose produce is donated to the food shelf, and a mixture of 10'x10' and 10'x20' plots for families and individual gardeners. We have a few community work days where everyone is expected to participate, and during the summer a few "let's garden together" dates where everyone who can shows up and gardens and socializes.

Except for that, we pretty much garden by ourselves, finding time during the spring, summer, and fall to sow, weed, water, and harvest. I usually come with one or more of my kids, and most of the time we're alone in the garden. Talking with others at the workday this weekend, I wasn't surprised that most of my fellow gardeners experience the same thing.

We had a terrible infestation of Colorado Potato Beetles this summer, and there were times when I squished so many of them my gardening gloves were wet with their orange bodily fluids - nasty! I've never had them in my garden at home and I don't know how they got so bad, but except for this one problem, our garden was a good place to be. We had a few cases of stolen vegetables at the end of the growing season, but at our last meeting we came up with a few ideas that may deter the healthy thieves next year.

Community gardening shows people that gardening is encouraged and supported, and that it deserves to have dedicated space, just as soccer fields, golf courses, and baseball diamonds do. Anyone can garden, and everyone benefits from it. Gardeners gain an appreciation for the challenges that farmers face, and at the same time gardening gives us critical insights that help us ask better questions about how our food is produced.

Perhaps our small garden plots meet 1% - 2% of our annual food needs; I really don't know. Since June, we've bought few vegetables, and in the fruit cellar and freezer we have enough tomatoes to last into the winter. We've canned beets, too, and have frozen swiss chard for use in the dead of winter. We make winter stews and soups with dried beans and peas, and I've saved seeds from my favorite vegetables to ensure that I can plant them next year, too.

Gardening is active and contemplative, and I certainly enjoy the quietude of puttering around as I deadhead flowers or mulch tomatoes, which makes me ask why I think community gardens are a good idea. And my answer is that a shared experience gives us the chance to say yes and nod in agreement rather than find reasons to disagree. There are so many obvious reasons it seems unnecessary to point them out. But think about it. Our lives have become much more sedentary than they were a century ago and despite the fact that we may be several generations removed from active farming, human culture developed around, among other things, farming, and certainly we selected for gardening abilities somewhere in the past six to ten thousand years and I don't think that's all erased from our DNA just because we've worn neckties and white shirts for a few decades. In other words, it's in our bones to garden, and when we dig our hands into the soil and watch a new green plant push its way through the dirt, something happens to us in the same way that staring into a campfire stills the spirit and calms the soul. In practical terms, gardening brings together people who otherwise might not cross paths. It's pretty hard to say if gay or straight gardeners grow better tomatoes, and Democrats and Republicans alike eat arugula. Old women, young men, the boisterous and the shy - gardening doesn't discriminate - anyone can put a seed in the ground and marvel at the miracle of life.

Irrespective of the amount of produce grown in a small community garden plot, gardeners learn to ask questions about how food is produced in this country. One simple question is, why don't we eat more seasonally available vegetables? At home, we're eating potatoes, kale, and swiss chard from the garden, but when we go to the store there is no seasonal variety: the same hard tomatoes, crisp celery, and well-washed broccoli greet us in November and July. What's wrong with eating peas only in the early summer and green beans only when the sun is still high overhead? I think we can get used to the celebratory aspect of greeting the arrival of new seasons and new foods. I don't think we need asparagus in December or apples in March; why do we expect them to be in a supermarket in Minnesota?

For now, most of our gardens are at rest. I have a blanket over a few things to ward off the hard frosts of the past few nights, but one of these mornings the frost will stay and the growing season will be over.

Pecan Pie Plate Tectonics

Meaghen loves pecan pie and I made her one for her birthday recently. I whipped a bit too much air into the eggs and had a hard time getting all the filling into the shell. I added what I could and put it in the oven, but I still had a few cups of filling in my mixing bowl. After a few minutes I used a fork and pulled the sticky and caramelizing egg filling towards the middle of the pan. I poured another cup or so of filling into the shell and let it bake some more. I repeated this three times and eventually all the filling made its way into the pie. Each time I pulled the frothy egg mixture with the fork tines I was delighted to see the surface subducted into the filling, which got thicker as time passed. Certainly I was witnessing a scaled down version of plate tectonics – and thankfully the crust withstood the rigors! By the time the pie was done, it looked unlike any pecan pie I had baked before, but tasted just as good! A delicious butter and duck fat crust, pre-baked about fifteen minutes before I added the pecans and filling. A single candle in the middle and another revolution around the sun.

Foil packet dinners

Late fall, and in these unsettled economic times a camping trip reminds us that seasonal cycles are larger than stock market fluctuations. Southeast Minnesota is the driftless area, where non-glaciated areas were scoured by the melting glaciers long before the first shares of stock were traded. The resulting bluffs tower above valley floors and the mixed hardwoods now shine gold, bronze and yellow in the pale autumn sun.

After a gorgeous hike along the high ridges of Beaver Creek Valley, we started a fire for dinner. On the menu were foil packet dinners, camp food fit for a family. Ground beef, sliced potatoes, corn, butter, tomatoes, and salt and pepper, well wrapped in several layers of tin foil. When the flames died down and an even bed of hot coals pulsed in the fire ring, we laid our foil packets on the embers and waited. After a few minutes we could hear sizzling on the inside, proof that the meat was browning, the butter was melting, and everything was blending together. Ten minutes per side, and we flipped them to ensure uniform cooking.

Camping in the valley, the air cooled quickly, and by the time our packet dinners were ready we were putting on sweatshirts and wool hats. A plastic tablecloth over the park picnic table and we were ready to eat. Sizzling hot, I unpeeled the layers of foil and made a plate with the rolled up edges. We ate with gusto, drinking cold water and cold beer. The steam rose and we breathed like dragons, spuds good for the belly. Sitting around the fire after dinner, blazing stars in the clear sky, arguing politics and the upcoming election. Hiking the next morning we drank straight from springs, the cold clear water racing over rocks; we embraced the fall.