Oh, Strawberry Seasons!

Now that it is finally here we find ourselves racing through this season. The flowers click past – bloom, prime, soggy mess – and foods ripen, linger on the tongue, then become memories until next year.

Iris are outgoing, laid prone like dead things by the rain, or, if still upright, having turned soggy all the way down to the last silken cocoon that will not blossom anywhere near as stoutly as that first one that yelled, “I’m HEE errr” a week or so ago.

First peonies yesterday, and they will be even quicker, just at their glory, if all goes as usual, when rain and wind will mangle their pretty sweet carcasses. “Oh, Weep,” they go, drooping their draggled heads, forsaken even by the ants. But mourning is cut short as the loud orange poppies shout out their flamboyant birth. And they, too, will pass.

February hovers in the background, rubbing her hands together and croaking, “Dance, my pretties. Dance!” So. Might as well dance! Gorging ourselves on each sweet seasonal treat as it comes along.

Strawberries last Tuesday.

I was not expecting them, spied that berry sign, my heart quickened. Mmm, they are good. Oh. Juicy, speckled, just the slight crunch of the infinitesimal seeds on the outside. Are they the only fruits with seeds on the outside? Sweet, with a bite almost crisp, while your teeth force the juice down through the cellulars of it. Oh my goodness! They are more than taste, they are primordial season, they are eating exercise, they are experience.

Oh, Strawberry Seasons! Don’t get me started.

Long scorching rows, crouching, kneeling, silent pickers sliding carriers along between rows, knees stained crushed-crimson, islands of chatter under the blasting sun, an occasional guffaw almost lost in the hot infinity, weed patches, older children watching young ones in the shade of the tree line, hillbillies, we called them, migrants, packing shed romances, the check clutched at the end of the season, oh, new refrigerator that we’ve needed so long; oh, engagement ring – “Please be my strawberry partner?” But I told you... don’t let me get started!

But eating them. One by one they’re good, until the quart is gone, and I have to drive down past the farm again, and this time I stop and buy two quarts. I eat them plain, from the green cardboard basket, pinching the cap into a handle and nibbling all around it, berry after berry, all the way to Manchester. They are so clean, but with a fine grit once in awhile, so then I’m home again putting them in a large bowl in mucho cold water, roiling them gently and scooping them in double handfuls into a colander. A surprising amount of dirt stays behind in the bottom of the bowl, all of which would have no doubt done my digestive system a good deed.

Sometimes I dip a finger into roasted cumin seeds and a bit of salt to go with the strawberry bite. There is fantastic fresh chèvre, right now, because the goats are eating fast-growing green grass, and their milk is delicate and healthy, the cheese creamy and fresh as violets. And when you have sliced a strawberry not quite in half from the flower end toward the stem end and tucked a tiny sliver of goat cheese between two halves, with a bit of roasted cumin, and sea salt sprinkled there, too, and you have a plate of those, sprinkled with whole mint leaves, or basil, and maybe just a drop or two of balsamic vinegar or lemon juice, that is not too shabby a treat.

The last berries of that first basket were part of a perfect little scatter that served as dinner that night: First was sautéed a quantity of Swiss chard with lots of fresh green garlic from the garden, and that was mounded on some of Al Sheps’ multi-grain toasts, with his fresh mozzarella (never refrigerated) torn over the whole thing, and some weird little pasta balls called Sa Fregula Sarda boiled up and scattered there, too, and the quartered strawberries, and over all a drizzle of basil vinaigrette.

I seldom go to Manchester without stopping at Al Ducci’s to see Al and Nancy, and to pick up some fresh mozzarella that remains soft and layered and oozing creamy liquids until it’s refrigerated, after which it is used for pizza.

I’m on my fifth quart of berries @ $4.75 apiece, when I remember to ask if they’re organic. No, they are not! The owner would not dream of growing organic berries. They would be too expensive. My expression is downcast. I cannot think of words. I have gorged on these berries. These berries have been my sustenance for a week; their strawberriness must last me for the next year. I’ve even eaten the little bit of tasty dirt that dusted their shoulders. Chemical fertilizers? What is expensive?


Well, Woods Market Garden, in Brandon, is charging $5.50 per nicely rounded, mounded quarts of organically grown but not Certified Organic, strawberries. But when U pick U’r own they will be $2.75 per pound, which translates to about $3.45 per quart.

So, I ask, What’s expensive? New knees are expensive, and I may need some after crouching and kneeling. But, you only live once, right?

Now I’m thinking I should quit rhapsodizing and kvetching and give you a recipe, and the one that quickly springs to mind is a Strawberry and Spinach Salad that appears every year at Eldred and Lily’s 4th of July Pig Roast, and it is a battle to get a taste.

Spinach and Strawberry Salad
Caveat: I can’t remember who gave me this recipe, and for that I apologize to her. I give it here to you
only if you promise NOT to take it to Eldred and Lily’s 4th of July party!

Wash and dry about 1 ½ pounds of garden-fresh spinach. Clean, hull and slice 1 pint of strawberries. Toss them together with this dressing:

• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 1 tablespoons poppy seeds
• 1 ½ tablespoon minced onion
• ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ¼ tsp paprika
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• ¼ cup cider vinegar

Shake or whisk all ingredients together and dress the salad.

And since now is the season for the most gorgeous lettuces and spinaches and other gorge-worthy foods, as well as basil and the other herbs, which are all so simple to prepare and arrange on nibbling plates like I described above, perhaps you would like a recipe for the dressing I mentioned, too.

Basil Dressing
From the Gourmet Magazine website

• 1 cup loosely packed fresh basil
• 1 ½ tablespoons chopped shallot
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• ¾ teaspoons salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Enjoy all this. Slow it down. Don’t let it go by without wringing out of it the most awareness possible. We are just now preserving enough food nostalgia to last us for the coming year.

brocc reincarnate

Okay, now that everyone’s greeting me with a grin and a “Sooooooooo, you don’t like Kale either, huh?”, I’ll confess to another character flaw – and that is that broccoli, of all things, had lost its appeal to me.
“Broccoli,” you say, “well then what green vegetable’s LEFT to eat in the winter?”

Exactly!



The situation was dire – DIRE, I say! I used to like broccoli. Had they changed it in some way, as they changed pork? I hear the most well-intentioned people bragging about their pigs being bred for LEAN. Who in god’s name wants a pork chop bred for lean? It’s that old cholesterol scam, punishing the American palate and environment by insisting that cholesterol in one’s food translates directly to plaque build-up in one’s arteries.
But what could they possibly have done to broccoli? And why?

Suddenly, boiling it or steaming it leaves the stems as hard as something you’d chuck into the fireplace to burn all night, and the blossoms mushy. Ick. Stir frying was kind of the same thing – take your choice of well-done or woody. And where’s the taste. I roasted it, because, like Kale, roasted broccoli has lots of adherents fainting with pleasure. Didn’t turn me on. Not one iota – charred at the edges, while everything else remains challenging, unless you char it clean through, and then you’ve got, well, a mouthful of ashes.
But I love, love, love broccoli raab, that slightly bitter green that LOOKS like baby broccoli but tastes so GOOD, and tangy, the bitterness mellowed by olive oil and garlic, then brought back to kingliness by a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes. Just like Al Ducci’s, down in Manchester, does it. I could eat that all day, and sometimes do!

By the way, raab, or rapini, or even rape, is more closely related to the turnip than to broccoli, the stems are thinner than broccoli, it’s leafier, and the heads are small and numerous. You eat them all.

And the way you achieve that flavor and texture is to toss the raab into boiling salted water and bring it just back to boiling, hold it there maybe a second more, then drain it. In the meantime you’ve warmed about a quarter of a cup of olive oil in a sauté pan with a finely chopped clove of garlic. When the raab is drained, and the garlic has had time to flavor the olive oil without turning a bit brown, turn the heat to high under the pan, and when the oil is hot (don’t let that garlic turn) throw in the raab and shake, rattle and roll until the raab is hot, has cooked a couple minutes more and is, my goodness, coated with the oil. Sprinkle with salt to taste, then a teaspoon or so of hot pepper flakes, and there we go! Serve it warm or even cold. Put it in a sandwich. Al Ducci’s makes a raab sandwich on their little flatbreads that are split in half, with Al Sheps’ fresh mozzarella and lots of that garlic olive oil. It is a treat!

So! Why not try that same thing with regular broccoli. I trimmed the stems, peeled them, then split the stems in quarters and pulled them apart without cutting the blossoms, and proceeded. I knew it was good for supper that night, but when I found myself at the counter next day eating it cold, straight from the fridge, for breakfast, I knew I’d got it right.



Now if it was that good by itself, imagine how good it’d be on a pizza.

Pizza Brocc

This is a quick crust that rises usually for no more than an hour. I use half of it for one pizza, and bake off the rest as a fat flatbread. It rises quickly because of the large amount of yeast and the warm water. I sometimes use quite hot water. The unbaked portion can be wrapped securely in plastic and stored for a day and a night in the fridge. I make this with a an electric mixer using a dough hook. The metal bowl of the mixer, when fitted tightly with a plastic bag and placed in a warm place – I place it on top of the pilot light of my range grill – provides the perfect environment for rising.

For the crust:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 rounded teaspoons yeast
• 1 ¾ cups warm to hot water

Whisk the first four ingredients together, then slowly add the water while the mixer is doing its thing. Beat the dough for several minutes to develop the gluten, then place a plastic bag over the bowl and leave it in a warm place to rise.

Prepare the fillings (for one 14-inch pizza):

• ½ onion finely chopped
• 1 or 2 cloves garlic chopped fine or sliced thin
• 2 cups grated cheese (mixture of swiss and parmesan is good)
• broccoli or broccoli raab prepared as noted
• whatever else you must have – sliced black olives, slivered mushrooms, thinly sliced cooked sausage; or nothing more. Remember that too many or too much makes a sloppy pizza with unidentifiable flavors.
• Olive oil

Assemble and bake:

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Place your pizza pan in the oven while it heats. I use a heavy cast-iron platter.
Scrape the dough out onto a well-floured surface. Cut in half, form a little loaf with one half and set aside. Roll out the other half to the size of the pan. Take the pan from the oven, drizzle with olive oil, fit the crust onto it, sprinkle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, sprinkle with ½ of the cheese, sprinkle with the chopped onion and garlic, arrange the brocc over the top, follow with optional additions, then top with the rest of the cheese, slide into the oven, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is browned and bubbling.

Proceed with the second pizza, or remember to wrap that dough securely in plastic (so it doesn’t burst out of loose corners) and refrigerate.



The flatbread

When you’re ready to bake that off, say into a flatbread, take from the fridge, unwrap onto a floured surface, let it come to room temp, heat the oven and pan to 450 degrees, pat the dough into a flattened loaf maybe 8 inches in diameter, take the pan from the oven, sprinkle with olive oil, arrange the loaf on the pan, dimple the top by pressing your fingers in firmly, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with thinly sliced garlic, if you like, and sprinkle with salt. Bake off for 20 minutes or until bread is risen and golden.

...a good practice...

I’ve been trying to get Dennis Duhaime, the Co-op’s produce manager, to stock broccoli raab while it’s the season for it. The problem is that he stocks a specialty item and it languishes, and too often gets tossed. Not good for the Co-op’s sustainability! So make it a practice to show him you appreciate his efforts by buying something out of the ordinary when you see it. I bought escarole for that reason, chopped it, sautéed it briefly with garlic in olive oil, then stirred it into mashed potatoes in a classic preparation. I even told him I’d do a demo of broccoli raab if he’d get it in. He sold out of the raab when people could taste it and get a recipe for it. So try something new when you see it, and gradually the Co-op’s selection will broaden. Better yet, bring in a recipe or two to show people how to prepare your heart’s desire. Want to go all the way with it? Tell Dennis you’ll do a demo. That kitchen is very satisfying to work in.

...the Co-op’s own...

Peter McGann will be the guest chef on the next edition of What’s Cookin’ Rutland, to be taped before a live audience at Peg TV on March 16. Peter is the well-known-around-town instructor of the popular cooking classes in Mexican and World-Cuisine at the Rutland Co-op. He’s studied with major chefs and food people including Elizabeth Andoh (Japanese); Diana Kennedy (Mexican); and Paula Wolfert (Middle Eastern).
Peter will chat with host Whitney Lamy about the idiosyncrasies of Mexican food, as he demonstrates some of his techniques in making Chicken Enchiladas in Red Sauce. The audience will have a chance to taste his creations after the show..

What’s Cookin’ Rutland is taped at PEG TV Studios in Howe Center starting at 6PM. Doors open at 5:30 for the seating of the audience. A $10 donation is suggested, and reservations may be had by dialing 508-813-8114.

...words to end this ballad of olive oil and garlic...

“I am not trying to torture you, I promise. I know it must seem like I sit around all day, cackling evilly, stroking my black cat, scheming up ways to trick you into eating lima beans and kale, but I don’t. Cross my heart. I don’t even have a cat - although I do sometimes cackle, but never at your expense. Everything I do here, I do out of love.” Sound like anybody you know? Well, it’s not me – though I could have said it – it’s Orangette, from her blog .


I still don’t know what they’ve done to broccoli, whether it’s a conspiracy or aging tastebuds, but the right technique and enough olive oil and garlic doesn’t harm much of anything!