there’s rice in them thar hills

A sheaf of rice from Breezy Meadows Orchard showed up at an autumn farmers' market

It is another glorious November day and in the afternoon the phone finally rings. It is Meadow calling me to say she is “at home” if I would care to come up.

Meadow is Meadow Squire who, with her partner, Josh Brill, is farming land up in Tinmouth on plus or minus 70 acres that Meadow’s parents, Marshall and Melody, bought back-in-the-day and on which they built a log cabin to house a burgeoning family.

I’ll be there in twenty minutes, I told Meadow, and drove up 140, then up to their farm on a rough, two-track one-mile driveway, over boulders and through water-filled ruts in the heavy hard-pan or clay – the same stuff that comprises their growing fields. Given lemons they make lemonade; given clay – which does a good job holding water – they’re making paddies. Rice paddies, that is, right here on the side of a Vermont mountain, with a glorious southwestern view, and that steep mountainside acreage to complicate things. 

They also grow veggies, and  fruit, to feed themselves and sell at the Rutland Farmers’ Market,  on what they have named Breezy Meadows Orchards. And what that means is that they have instituted wildly innovative improvements to their soil. And the soil responds, gradually.

But Josh and Meadow, beginning again, are strong and energetic and young – Meadow is 21 and Josh is 27. He thinks.

But, if he can’t quite remember how old he is, he knows a tremendous amount about permaculture and rice paddies. Permaculture is the idea of nestling under Mother Nature’s ample breast and instituting agricultural practices without her knowing, without making her miserable or angry.  I think of it as cunning non-interference.

For instance, large piles of wood chips, Josh explains to me, are laced with tubing, the stack is soaked, covered, and left to decompose. When water is run through the pipes it is warmed by the heat put off by the decomposing chips and that water will be used to warm the greenhouses in winter and spring. When I ask what the piles of litre plastic bottles are for, he explains that when filled with water in the winter, allowed to freeze, and then stacked to line the mega-insulated walk-in cooler that they built, they will provide cooling well into the summer for the produce they take to the Rutland Farmers’ Market.

The 50’x20’ plastic coated high-tunnel greenhouse? Josh and his father bent the metal poles and coated them with sheet plastic. Its shape is slightly gothic so that the snow doesn’t pile up on it, and it can be moved to cover, in thirds, 150 linear feet of garden space. Another one is in the works for next year. The garden rows in that 150 feet are rounded raised beds – logs, trimmed trees, are laid down, those are covered with brush, the brush with manure and  compost, that with that clayey soil that we spoke off. The rows are planted, then covered with straw, and as the brush and logs begin their decomposition they give off heat to the soil and attract earthworms which continue to lighten the soil. The rows that were constructed first are nicely turning that clay into a wonderful lightened humousy soil.

The traveling high tunnel covers 150' in 50' intervals. Josh and his dad put it together.

Josh Brill: Works well with Mother Nature

It’s rough up there in spite of the solitude and the beautiful day and the view. It’s steep. Every movement seems to be up or down. All the hard work that is called for makes taming the wilderness – combing and whacking and giving it a spit and a polish – seem extraneous. But there’s energy in the air. These two young people are totally at home in their kingdom.

Meadow calls the mother pig to her. She is named Regina, with a hard g. A beautiful spotted white Tamworth/Berkshire cross, she comes running out of the foresty scrub where she’s been rummaging for roots and grubs, and flops herself down to get a stomach scratch. Meadow pets her until she melts down into slothful experience (Regina, I mean), and when another pig comes running he is soon lying as blissfully under Meadow’s hands. Their ears flop down, porcine grins grace their faces. I mean, there’s Meadow with two contented hogs blissfully stretched out as if bacon at her feet. This woman has power! Meadow, I mean.

During her high school career I saw Meadow in many theatrical productions and she was marvelous.
She is just as marvelous as Daisy Mae. And Regina and Bacon are in porcine heaven.

Two beautiful brown Oberhasli goats from Consider Bardwell prance and amuse themselves – as only goats can do – in another paddock. One turned out to be pregnant when they got her. Meadow milks them and looks forward to a small herd of milking goats for yogurt, milk, and cheese. The chickens are “mutts” says Meadow, and they are the most gorgeous assortment of half-wild fowl – they’re roosting in treetops and fencetops – I’ve ever seen. They will be laying “at the end of next week,” the couple agrees. They seem to have everything planned out. Meadow and Josh, I mean.

Including the paddies. This year’s rice paddy is a rich little pocket dug into the clayey soil, about 10 or 12 feet square, the stems of the harvested rice rising in small symmetrical clumps out of a reddish mix of azolla, a water plant similar to duckweed. It’s edible, high protein, and it will not go to waste but will be fed to the animals. It suppresses weeds and forms a physical barrier between the water and mosquitoes so their eggs can’t hatch. Watercress is the third plant, also edible, of course, and can be harvested as a salad green. The waters also attract salamanders and frogs, as well as dragonflys and damselflys, all of whom eat lots of insects, and they are considering adding some fish, such as Tilapia. How about crawfish?  “What,” they wonder, “would happen if farmers planted rice paddies as a riparian buffer along rivers?” Hmmm. Lots of food for thought here.

This is the azolla, and it is that that gives the paddies their reddish hue -- their fall colors. It sets nitrogen in the water,
all the better to provide nutrients to the rice.

Rice seed is very difficult to get. They started this year with a handful of Haruka, a Northern Japanese hybrid. With the seed they produced this year, and money from a Kickstarter project, they will plant nearly an acre of paddies next summer, starting the seeds in late winter, early spring, and transplant them in the paddies in mid-May.


Hooray! There should be Vermont rice at the Farmers’ Market by next fall! Please go to their Kickstarter web page (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/840980225/growing-rice-in-vermont) and look at the cute video they made. And wish them good luck, even send them a buck or two if you can afford it. Check out their web page to get more detail on their projects at http://breezymeadowsorchards.com/

Josh and Meadow at one of the first of this summer's Farmers' Markets -- I don't think they missed a Saturday.
And look how handsome it is.

****

For those of you who don’t know, the Co-op’s own Peter McGann has been selling his wares at the Market. In the summer he started out with hand-chopped salsa and guacamole, which was very nice, but in the Winter Market at the Co-op he’s branched out dramatically. I bought a container of his lovely Red Cascabel Chili Salsa, as well as several potato and chorizo taquitos (small tacos). I mean! What a treat! You can’t get this stuff anywhere else. I spooned that salsa over some Hutterite beans from Yoder Farms – they are firm and flavorful – that I’d cooked up with a couple of beef shanks from Spotted Dog Farm. Sprinkled Breezy Meadow Orchard’s Cilantro over the whole thing. Yum.

****

And on a tragic note, our hearts and best thoughts go out to the family of Gary Miller of Castleton and the Miller Farmstand. He was killed in a tractor accident two weeks ago. He had set up his booth at the Farmers’ Market that very day from which he would have sold fresh herbs and my favorite horseradish. It was a sad day for the Market. We will all miss Gary.

anger and a sandwich... or two

Last Saturday was the Vernal Equinox – the first day of spring – in Culebra as well as in Vermont, and on Equinox Eve my Culebran/Wallingford friends called me from there: “We’re just sitting out on the deck, having just come back from Susie’s, and while we were there another couple came in and sat down near us. We chatted. They told us they had found Susie’s through a column in the Rutland Herald, and just had to try it.”

I love those little synchronistic happenings in life, don’t you? Those little ‘6 degrees’ events? Here are these people – from Brattleboro, I think – who just happened to read my last column and end up 3,000 miles away, meeting the very friends I wrote of, while checking out my suggestions for good eats. Happy plantain mash to them, and a tip of my pina colada!

I laughed and chortled at this news, and perhaps even more heartily because I’d received an angry email about that column from someone who resented my being ‘snarky’ about their precious little Culebra. I guess they didn’t get that Culebra is precious to me, too. People must think in order to show admiration for some place, person, or restaurant, etcetera, that one must ooze adulation all over it and find nothing to improve.

Well. Not me!

Take the Farmers’ Market, for instance. Everyone knows I totally adore/admire the Market and I loves my Farmers! But don’t I admit that they can be cantankerous prigs sometimes? Oh yes, I do. Insensitive to other peoples’ accomplishments? Yes! Full of themselves? Oh my goodness! But better friends and quality food you cannot find!
I do not brag when I tell you that I receive my share of appreciative messages from you, my readers, about my columns. I so appreciate those messages and want to thank you for them, but once in awhile a really angry one knocks me from my comfortable little roost.

I received one from a ‘nutritionist’ (you’ve probably noticed that I usually bracket that word) a while back when I wrote about canola oil vs the lovely Lard. Meh, I blew that one off. I also got a lot of flak from my editor, my dear Randal, which followed down to the fact that the beautiful yellow drifts of rapeseed (Canola) blossoms in his grandparents’ fields made a big impression on him as a little buzzer. Ah, I appreciate that. Much of my food sense stems from the same kind of thing – rosy memories of familial pig-killings, for instance. But the memory of long tight rows of corn with the DeKalb 791 sign in the corners of them, or of my dad kvetching that the blankety blank government was paying him to keep fields fallow did not inculcate me with any respect for the so-called ‘green’ revolution, government subsidies, or GMO crops.

But really – do people need to be so blasted angry at me for something I wrote? I mean, I’m angry, too, but my anger is at big banks, big insurance, big pharm. Etcetera.

On the other hand, if you remain open, something good almost always comes out of such encounters. For the Culebra column it was a link to this blog http://islandwomanculebra.blogspot.com/ . If you go to Culebra, you will meet this woman. She runs a little stand on the corner of the bridge, and when it’s closed the words Open Some Days, Closed Others appear on the doors, in true island time!

The most vicious attack happened a couple of years ago by a friend of a friend for a column about a grass-fed burger and a plug for a restaurant, as I remember. Oh well, who cares! Because you’d best try not to let that kind of misplaced anger cramp your style – it’s the penalty for being a public object for people to see and take umbrage at if they happen to be in a bad mood and don’t have a dog to kick. Honestly? That’s what makes people mean – down deep thinking that everyone else is bigger and more powerful than they are, which gives them the right to blast ‘em!

Still, it DOES put a crimp in your style. I seldom write about restaurants anymore because there are few I can recommend with unremitting adoration – I’m sure I could nitpick with Thomas Keller’s French Laundry for heavens’ sake. My farmers, now, they just grin and bear both my praise and my plaints. There’s hardly anything bad I can say about them anyway, even the Republicans, and the single one I do not favor with my currency or words is so popular he doesn’t need them.

Another crimp is that I don’t have the heart to do those long, fully researched stories that I used to offer you. They’re lots of work and time, and then Whap! Back o’the knees with a 2X4. Still, that’s a doubtful loss, at best – just means you spend less time reading!

But you know what? Three years of writing these Twice Bittens, countless wonderful letters, comments, and even several friendships, and only 3 nastinesses. I guess I can take it.

***

That said, I have discovered two new comparatively hidden places that might or might not be new to you. I’ve been out and about – frenetically so, for me – these last couple of weeks, and I spent many hours driving to and from Vergennes on the bucolic 22A.

On the Vergennes main street there is a little rustic place called 3 Squares Café, and on their blackboard they do have a Boyden Farms grass-fed beef burger! They also have good coffee and bagels and scones and muffins for starting out your day. Lunch is handwritten on said boards, with lots of Mexican shadings and very nice all-American sandwiches with good breads and fillings. The owner, Matt Birong, cooks in a tiny kitchen in almost plain view, with some added help on busy days. It’s a bustling place, with wood floors and tables, even some community ones, and, the first day I walked in, there was Patrick Leahy scarfing down a sandwich with some cohorts.

So, my final word is – excuse me if I don’t gush – If you find yourself in Vergennes (perhaps you’ve driven up to Dead Creek to check out the spring bird migration) around breakfast, lunch, or dinner (although I haven’t had dinner there) give it a try. I like it. A lot.

Another day I was driving through Chester, on my way to Andover (don’t ask) and went by an almost hidden fairyland with a sign out front announcing The Phoenix Café. I screeched to a halt and backed up. The lettering on a large building half-hidden behind some trees gave me to know that I had found the latest home of Baba a Louis bakery, the original one, I mean, which shares a common birth but is now under separate ownership from our own excellent Baba down on the notorious south end of Wales Street.

Entering the shrubby wooden arch and following the curving shallow steps and path to the entrance was indeed like entering a fairyland. Inside, big wooden, high-ceilinged rooms with lots of bakery equipment at one end, and chairs and tables at the other. Again, good sandwiches, soups, and salads, as well as the bakery’s famous rolls and pastries. And of course your choice of breads and crackers. I chose a ham and Swiss on rye for my sandwich, and a loaf of seriously whole-grain bread and some latticework crackers to take home. All were delicious. Note: the café and the bakery are separate businesses, so you will also pay separately. See if you can find it right at the end of Main Street in Chester before the wilds begin.

... Catching up ...

Peter McGann will do another, long-awaited workshop on authentic Mexican Cooking, with all new recipes from diverse regions of Mexico. They will take place on three Wednesdays, April 14, 28, and Cinco de Mayo, from 5 to 7PM in the Rutland Area Food Co-op kitchen at 77 Wales Street. $30 per class or $90 for the whole series. Sign up at the Co-op, or call 773-0737.

Peter will also be providing the food for the Co-op’s annual meeting on Sunday, April 25th at 5PM at the Unitarian Church on West Street. You should attend, why? Well, to become a member ($10 a month); because you ARE a member; to voice your vote on new Co-op Board members; see the new RAFC video; mingle with friends, and, of course, to enjoy Peter’s food. Catch up on the Co-op, come and enjoy!

Rutland is the host of the statewide Farm to Plate local food summit on Saturday, April 10 from 9:30am to 4pm at the Rutland Middle School Complex on Library Avenue. This is a big deal, because the purpose is to bring together people from the whole state to review the goals and provide feedback to guide final drafting of the Farm to Plate strategic plan – what is our farming and food future? How does the Rutland area fit in? Registration is required. Contact Heather Pipino, heather@vsjf.org if you would like to attend. $10 registration fee to cover lunch cost - scholarships available. Send check to: Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, ATTN: Farm to Plate Summit, 3 Pitkin Court, Suite 301E, Montpelier, VT 05602.

And lastly but not leastly, Maya Zelkin has been holding food workshops at Pierce’s store in Shrewsbury. I’ve been out of town for most of them, but am determined to attend the last one on March 28 to celebrate spring foods – making butter, yogurt, and soft cheese from local jersey cow milk, and then an assortment of maple confections and candies. Call (802) 492-3326.

Oh, Beans!

Favas and Chickpeas

If you're like me, you love beans. Almost any kind of bean is just really fulfilling to eat, but my two favorites may be favas and chickpeas.

The latter I loved in their salad-bar reality when I was a kid, and of course in hummus.

Think hummus and be flooded with memories of dun-colored grainy casseroles from the hippy era, hippy-dippy potlucks composed of casseroles and salads, long hair, long skirts, free-love, and.... Mary Jane. Homegrown. To be had by the entire ounce. Rainbow thoughts from so long ago.

Well, I was sitting out front at our lovely little Co-op last Saturday, my bags full of farmers' market shopping, just talking to friends and relaxing. Peter was at the cash register, checking out floods of shoppers.

Peter has developed this lovely practice of offering tastings of some of his specialties every shift he works. You walk into the store and see that Peter is there and your eye immediately flips down to see what he's offering today and that might be Tortilla Espagnol, a thick but light and tasty concoction of potato slices cooked with eggs in omelet style; creamy guacamole; various red or green salsas, either as accompaniments or on their own with chips; Mexican cornbread, which is my favorite; or, as on the day I speak of, hummus. It was the best hummus I'd ever had.
I had to take an appetizer to dinner that night, so in between customers I asked Peter for the ingredients. Like any good cook he was pleased to share them, and I jotted them down.

Peter's Hummus

Okay, let's take these by amounts.

Chick Peas: I'd already cooked a bunch and froze them in quart freezer bags. I defrosted one bag, so that would be 3 to 4 cups, or two smaller cans of chick peas. Drain them, but save juices to moisten the mixture.
Tahini: Two or three heaping tablespoons full.
Garlic: 2 or 3 cloves.
Lemon juice: Use the zest from half a lemon and the juice from the whole lemon.
Cumin: I toasted about... 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds and ground them in a spice grinder.
Tamari: A good glug, say, 2 tablespoons.
Salt: To taste.
Olive Oil: Pure, extra-virgin, about 1/4 cup. Plus more over the finished dish.
Roasted dark sesame oil or really good peanut oil: To taste.



Toss the chick peas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, cumin and tamari into the food processor and process until ground, with some texture left. Add enough bean juice to make the correct texture, not too dry, then finish with the olive oil and flavored sesame oil.

To serve: Spread the hummus on a platter, surround with chopped parsley, drizzle with more olive oil, strew with halved, sliced red onion and olives. Scoop up with tortilla chips.

Fava beans stand alone in their flavor, tasting... well, so hard to define. Do they have a bit of bitterness? Well, maybe not, but they side very well with broccoli raab. Very interesting taste. You can get them fresh in a few weeks, or months, and I buy those in their thick fuzzy skins, but I usually cook the dried ones.

They might be dried with their skins on, in which case soak them overnight and then peel each bean of its leathery skin.



What I find at the Co-op are ones that have been skinned and then dried.



They take about 45 minutes to cook. They'll break up to some extent, but let them cool in their own water/sauce, spread them on a platter, drizzle with lots of good olive oil, sprinkle with finely chopped garlic, chopped cilantro, and then red pepper flakes. Dip up with tortilla chips, or spread on good, dense, thinly sliced bread.

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!

Through a Glass Darkly – Relatives and Holidays

Chicago people used to say to me, when they vacationed on our side of the lake in southwestern Michigan and stopped to buy eggs or dressed chickens from Grandma, “Little Girl, I hope you know how lucky you are to live in such a beautiful place!” I had no idea what they meant, my thumb in my mouth, stretching back to the security of Grandma’s hip, one leg forward to circle a shy big toe in the dust. Their words were meaningless to me, in the way that chickens were mysteriously called “dressed” once they had reached the state of death and undress.

Later I heard their words resentfully – I imagined those Chicagoans all lived in beautiful apartments across the lake, their daughters all slept in pink-canopied beds, and everyone attended smart cultural events every day. THEY didn’t have to risk chicken poop and mulberry juice between their bare toes every time they walked out the door, nor have to laze down the lane to get the cows.

Of course, living in the Hog Butcher for the World was quite a different experience from that my imagination conjured, but anywhere was better to my mind than southwestern Michigan. You can’t keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen the Field Museum, Berghoff’s Restaurant, and Michigan Ave.

We’ve had company from Indiana, from the megalopolis formed from the three small cities of South Bend, Elkhart, and Mishawaka. When we think of this area we think of malls and strip-development, traffic, and fast food joints. I think of deadly trans fats, but that’s just me. But most of all we think of Leo’s younger brother Chris, who died suddenly of stroke just as the Iraq war was beginning in 2003, and we think of Chris’s widow, Ginnie, and their two children, Alex and Cate, who have pretty much grown up in the intervening years – Cate in her first year of college and Alex about to graduate. The three of them flew out for a visit these holidays and we had a blast!

They are plucky, these Southbendians, full of grit and gumption, getting up at the crack of a dismal freezing-rain Vermont dawn, Cate and Alex at least, to go bird counting with Leo, then all of them rounding up later with me at the Co-op and Winter Farmers’ Market. Where else!

Daughter Zoe was here on a nice long visit, and son Spence took quite an interest in these young cousins he barely knew. Over the course of four or five days we took walks and hikes, made shopping forays, played spontaneous charades, and ground down on an absolute mule of a puzzle! And both Alex and Zoe are musicians, so music was a constant. The one segment of their stay where they lacked fortitude was, you guessed it – food!

I have been known for my lectures to picky-eaters – no surprise, that – and some of them have turned around. Another dear nephew, Nate, from over Down-East way, now rhapsodizes about my split pea soup, even as he’s taking yet another wrapped thing out of his microwave, or frying up some industrial food.
But the split pea soup and fresh-from-the-oven bread with which we welcomed these sojourners after their day battling airlines and de-icing, and their packed trip back in a small car from the Albany airport, was met with stiff disbelief. It was as though I was trying to feed them arsenic, or plastic bags boiled up with a hambone. Perhaps in retaliation, we three – Spence wasn’t here that night – had several helpings apiece and stood up from the table with last hunks of bread dripping with olive oil. We were gluttonous.
But maybe our visitors were just tired and frayed from the long day.

The second night, after the bird counting and Farmers’ Market, we took them to Sal’s South. They were into pizza, and when I suggested the small gourmet pizzas, Nephew Alex ordered the Ricotta and Broccoli, I the white shrimp pizza, Leo his favorite dish of Fettucine Alfredo, and Ginnie and Cate a large sausage and pepperoni – pizza again. Alex’s stunned look at the first taste of the delicious ricotta and broccoli turned to pure relief when the large pizza arrived, and they all literally dove into it. It was a moment of spontaneous enthusiasm among the three of them.

The third night was the big dinner night. I’d gotten a big ham from a heritage Brunswick hog from Sunset Farm at the Farmers’ Market, potatoes and squash, too, nice greens... t’would be a big sit-down celebration, and it was – after the toast the ham was celebrated, the squash was tried in tiny spoonfuls, the potatoes were good with good old redbone gravy, and the beets were ignored. “How is it?” I asked in my sprightly, hoping-for-the-best manner. It was “good,” “all right,” and “fine,” from the guests. “Stupendous,” “tremendous,” “terrific,” and “Ummm Ummm Good,” from those I have spent years training.

I had to laugh, which Zoe thought was supremely big of me, considering my past attitude.

But, you have to know by now that we adore these people, and we’re empathetic. A suddenly widowed woman bringing up two children alone, man-o-man, we know how difficult THAT had to’ve been – grief-stricken, all three in shock, just juggling three schedules and going to work or school every day doesn’t leave much time for nor curiosity about food. And it made me realize that when you have grown up in a megalopolis like Southbendelkhartmishewaka, and you eat the foods that, I am finally forced to see, the majority of Americans eat, my Vermont life and habit of listing foods from the farmers that raised them may seem not merely quaint, but perhaps insane, indecipherable, really. And even, perhaps, just a tiny bit pretentious. Not that anyone was so rude as to point that out.

I wooed them with black bean tostadas smothered in Cabot cheddar, because Cate had told me she’d eat anything if it had enough cheese on it. Tiresomely, I asked her how it was. “Fine,” said Cate faintly. “Repeat after me,” I said, “with enthusiasm – It’s wonderful Aunt Sharon!!! – and don’t skimp on the enthusiasm – that’s the most important part.”

There was a chorus around the table of enthusiastic “It’s Wonderful”s.

They loved the fresh kielbasa we served with it, just as they marveled at how substantial Leo’s bacon was – not shriveled up to nothing like their grocery-store bacon.

As I said, it was a lovely visit, and though I don’t believe we got very close to imparting Wendell Barry’s prescient line that “Eating is an agricultural act,” perhaps something rubbed off and at the very least they might begin to notice once in awhile where their food is coming from. I hope so, because I worry about them – the danger inherent in industrial food is becoming more and more apparent, with widespread metabolic syndrome even in children – diabetes, depression, obesity, and heart disease. I want more for them.

At the same time, the whole incident has brought home to me the realization that I am preaching in these columns to the choir – you – people who take the time to cook food that they have taken the time to grow themselves and to collect from others who have grown it; who enjoy thinking about food, and reading about it, and, in general, take great pleasure in it, and know the importance of it.

I hate to sound stereotypically old, but things have changed, and in a dastardly manner. Those city people who visited Grandma to buy eggs and birds weren’t being poisoned by the food they ate from their corner store in the city. There were few trans fats, people still cooked, even in the city, and though they appreciated an egg whose yolk was plump and bright yellow and whose white clung tightly to the yolk, and a chicken that had been scratching around in the sunlight only a few scant hours earlier, and took advantage of them when they could, they were not yet in dire trouble, only on the verge of it. Few(er) people suffered from diabetes or heart disease, much less obesity or depression. Our food chain was on the point of being put in danger, but it hadn’t yet happened.

And for people not in the know, unlike us, Dear Reader, it seems absurd to say that food could be dangerous – even nowadays, even when you’ve been told that you have diabetes or heart disease, especially when so many people are hungry...

Now, since you, the choir, already have your own favorite version of Split Pea Soup, I’ll give you a recipe you might not have, but might like very much. It’s one I had long ago at the Governor’s Inn in Ludlow, from Deedy Marble, when she owned the inn. It is now a 3 star Bed and Breakfast, according to Jim Kubec, who owns it with his wife Cathy, and they no longer serve dinners to the public.

But this is the soup, which I used to take on cross-country skiing expeditions, and my addendums:

Deedy’s Red Wine Sipping Broth

This is the way I got it from Deedy

Have on hand equal parts of red and white wine. Take 1 apple, 1 carrot, 1 tomato, and put them in a food processor with 4 beef bouillon cubes, and 1 tsp. black pepper. Put that mixture into a stockpot with the wines. Boil for 35 minutes. Cool, and strain twice through several thicknesses of cheesecloth. Add 1 cup of V-8 juice. This may be stored for several days in a glass bottle in refrigerator.

Now, if you want to be anal about it:
Chop 1 apple, 1 carrot, and 1 tomato. Put them into a stockpot with 1 quart of good homemade beef stock, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning or oregano, 1 bottle each of red and white wines, and 2 cups of canned tomatoes. Bring to a boil and keep at an actively bubbling simmer for about an hour. Cool and strain, and drink hot or cold.
I’ve never made it with chicken stock but I can’t see why it wouldn’t be wonderful.



...countin da boids...

Say, a little birdie told me that preliminary planning for Peter McGann’s next cooking lesson series at the Co-op is going on – to be held starting at 5 o’clock on the four February Wednesdays and the first Wednesday in March – five in all, as you can see, and they will each one explore a world cuisine. I believe the price is $25 per lesson, or $100 for all five. What a bargain. I said I thought that was bargain-basement prices, and Peter said “it’s a tough economic climate.” So be it. Stop in at the Co-op at 77 Wales, or call 773-0737.

The Thin Place

This season of Halloween is said to be the time when the skin between worlds is thin and sensitive souls just might be segueing and sashaying back and forth over the line. It really is the new year to us northerners, should be thanksgiving, with harvest in and lots of food that needs to be eaten – to fatten up before the long winter fast. That thin place between the worlds lasts for awhile, at least until the winter solstice – there’s no more beautiful and spooky light than that of December when the sun is low over the guts of the universe.

...while the ghouls come...

I may have been testing that thin space between the worlds when I foolishly made tortillas in black bean sauce – or enfrijoladas – on Friday evening, starting them before the small monsters started knocking on the door and finishing them up after the bulk of them had visited and I’d turned out the porch light and blown out the candle in the pumpkin.
There was one perfect little spook who came in and hovered over the candy bowl until suddenly he fell to his knees and then rocked back onto his butt. “Oh no, honey,” I said, “you don’t have to worship it, just stand up and take what you want. Maybe an apple?”
“Got to poop,” the little spook said. In scant moments I had his costume off – thank god his father was standing right there – and said, “there, Daddy will take you right through there to the bathroom.” I’m trying to think then, what’s in the bathroom, loose, waiting to frighten a little guy who was overwhelmed already by the occasion. After a long time, they came out, and I gave him a lollypop that a friend had made. He grabbed it gratefully, took a bite of the soft thing, and spat it out on the hearth.
Halloween can be a trial for some of us.

...local mexican...

The worst thing about Mexican cooking is the scrim of grease that covers everything afterward – of lard if you have your authenticity and taste wits about you, or of canola if you prefer manmade crankcase oil to healthy animal fat. You wonder how the fastidious Dame Diana Kennedy – whose recipe this is – could stand having her beautiful Mexican kitchen all scummed up with grease, but her housemaid probably didn’t mind cleaning it. I don’t have one, though, and Leo was home with every flu symptom possible and touchy as a bear with an ingrown toenail. I felt like slinging the comal through the ventana.

The Tortillas in Bean Sauce – “enfrijoladas means,” says Dame Diana, “that the tortillas are immersed in a puree of beans,” but I say they are actually a kind of enchilada – were worth it, though. I wolfed them down, while Leo was merely satiated. Too bad for him!

You know, I love Mexican food but I guess it was the technique of it that made it so hard for me to follow Dame Diana’s or Rick Bayless’ recipes, as well as the terminology. That’s why Peter McGann’s Mexican cooking classes at the Co-op were invaluable. Once I saw him fry the tortillas lightly, then slide them through the sauce and fold them into enchiladas, my world of Mexican cooking brightened, as though that scrim of lard had been scrubbed off.

In “The Tortilla Book” Dame Diana explains how to make a tortilla, of course, that flat circle of yellow or white, limestone-slaked, ground corn that is the flatbread underpinning of so much of Mexican food, though most of us will buy them frozen. For those of you who are as ignorant as I was of what is meant by the various forms of tortilla, here is a short synthesis. Quotes are Lady Diana’s.

When a tortilla is “fried almost crisp and piled high with lots of shredded meat, lettuce, cheese, or whatever you have around,” it’s called a tostada. It’s like a little plate – you lift it up and eat it, and that’s why you don’t want it too crisp, or you’ll be eating the filling out of your hand. A taco, in Mexico, is a “fresh, hot tortilla rolled around some shredded meat or mashed beans and liberally doused with any one of the endless variety of sauces for which Mexico is justly famed.” Our frozen ones must be defrosted and fried gently and briefly to soften them before rolling. Or steamed.

Tortillas are sometimes cut into strips, fried almost crisp, and put into soups, or ground up when stale and formed into balls to make dumplings, after which you may call them gordas – little fat balls – kind of like my little Halloween guy. Dry soups are made by stacking tortillas and cheese and other fillings in layers in a casserole, covering with broth and baking. Chilaquiles are, in their simplest form, stale tortillas cut into wedges and cooked in a picante sauce. Sometimes served with breakfast eggs (literally, chilaquile means broken-up old sombrero). A Quesadilla is a simple snack made by folding a fresh (or flexible) tortilla around a simple filling – cheddar cheese, for instance – and griddling or frying until golden. Chalupa means “small canoe,” an oval tortilla pinched up to make a boat and filled, then fried. An enchilada is a tortilla wilted in hot fat, dipped into a cooked sauce, filled and rolled – sometimes they’re dipped into the sauce and then fried.
Dame Diana does not extend herself to explain burritos, perhaps because, as WIKI says, they’re made from a flour tortilla, not corn, that is rolled around a filling.”

But that, in a nutshell, is the simple explanation of what these things are.

For these enfrijoladas you may look on page 34 of Dame Diana’s The Art of Mexican Cooking for the original recipe, but here is my version. You’ll need 4 to 6 tortillas per person, the black bean sauce, and for garnish some shredded cheese such as Jack, Cheddar, or Feta, chopped onion, and chopped cilantro.
Take the tortillas out of the freezer and lay them out on a towel or the counter in a single thickness to let them thaw while you make the black bean sauce.

I had already cooked up a vast batch of dried black beans, but you could use canned. Mine were not old beans, and they were Vermont-grown, so I did as Lady Diana suggested, cooked them without soaking, and without any additions except plenty of water to cover. They took about an hour to cook. I added a good amount of salt – to taste – towards the end, then let them cool in the liquid before I packed what I wouldn’t use immediately in quart freezer bags and froze them.

To make the black bean sauce, melt 1/3 cup of lard (or a gasp, gag, tasteless vegetable oil) in a large heavy frying pan, preferably with rather high sides to contain splatters. When that’s hot, add all at once 3 cups of black beans and their cooking liquid. Begin to mash the beans with a potato masher or mallet or any heavy, broad, flat utensil. Think Brick here. If you lack that utensil you may put the beans and liquid into the blender and chop them before adding to the hot fat, but you won’t get the nice bean texture that way. Cook the beans over medium heat, scraping the bottom so they don’t burn, and mashing as you go. In the meantime, chop half a white onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, a handful of cilantro (add a stem or two of epazote if you can get it. I can’t, and dearly want it – hint, hint), and a small hot pepper out of which you’ve scraped the seeds and membrane. I used a dried Serrano from the intense crop I grew this summer, and Dame Diana uses chiles de arbol, which I did not have. Stir this chopped mixture into the beans, and continue to cook, stir, scrape, and mash until the mixture is becoming quite dry. Add enough water, maybe a cup, maybe two, to make the mixture saucy enough to be able to dip the tortillas into it and have it coat them. Taste for salt and remedy. Turn the heat very low while you fry the tortillas.

Bring enough lard or oil to hot but not boiling in another frying pan – a medium heat will do well. If it’s too hot the tortillas will crisp, which doesn’t work, and if it’s not hot enough they’ll get soggy with grease. Fry the tortillas one by one for a few seconds on each side, until cooked but not at all crisp – indeed, they should be as flabby as one of those rubber things you use to take off bottle caps – using a wide slotted spatula to turn them, then let them drain on paper towels or a newspaper while you fry the rest.

One by one, drag the tortillas gently through the hot sauce, or place one on top of the sauce, smudge it around a bit, spoon some sauce on the top side and smear that around, and when the tortilla is nicely coated, fold in half and then half again, and place on a plate or a wide soup bowl, garnish, and serve. With a fork. Delicious. Sumptuous. Earthy. Greasy – I’m still Orange-Plussing my kitchen.

Dame Diana also calls for “a small bunch of tender avocado leaves,” which are not a local delicacy. Good luck. Perhaps if I get to somewhere they DO grow this winter, I’ll try Dame Diana’s original recipe. Loca-Voca-Do! Then I couldn’t resist using slices of avocado in the garnish!


...book party...

My friend Betty Ann Lockhart will be at Annie’s Book Stop on November 15th , at 1PM, to introduce her new book, Sugarin’ in Vermont: A Sweet History. Betty Ann’s a maple sugar sweetie, an excellent story-teller, and no-one but no-one knows what that woman knows about sugaring, its history, its sweet offspring, and its perpetrators. She was one of my sleuthing partners when I wrote about sugaring season in one of my first Twice Bittens, and helped me track down the origin of the concoction known as Maple Syrup Grandfather, or Grandperes au Sirop d’Erable. Looks like an early trip to the Winter Farmers’ Market that day, and then a stop at Annie’s!

...oh, that winter farmers’ market...

Last Saturday was the first day of the indoor market back behind the Co-op, and the place was as medieval-festive as ever. More so, in fact, because the vendors have more confidence that this is a done-deal this year and have really spiffed up their booths. There are a few new vendors – notably, we want to welcome Sarah Seward who offered a potpourri of small quiches and Cinderella pumpkins and apple pies and the absolutely best scones I have ever had the pleasure of putting my tongue to. Flaky, crumbly, handmade Maple/walnut fudge! She was there one Saturday last winter, but she says she’ll be a permanent fixture this year. The Kilpatrick brothers are back with an incredible array of vegetables – they have a fascinating story behind them that I’ll have to delve into to tell you one day. On the Edge Farm is back this winter, with assorted meats and the occasional small batch of, say, a sour cherry jam made with a little almond flavoring, that’s offered for as long as it lasts, maybe only one market day. This week I bought their Chinese spiced sausage. Lovely subtle tastes.

Many of our best summer market vendors are there – Paul Horton with his gorgeous greens and root crops – prettiest carrots I’ve ever seen, and sweet fall parsnips; Greg Cox, the genius behind the winter market, with produce, and chickens, et al – when it comes to spinach Paul and Greg will have to duke it out, or we all just have to buy from both. What a luxury.

Ann Tiplady from Red Houses Farm is there with beef and mutton, some of the best I’ve ever had. The wine guy, Ray Knutsen, is there, offering his delicious tasting-tipples of his Montcalm Reisling, as well as bottles of that and a very nice red, and a new rose. The folks from Consider Bardwell and Blue Ledge Farm segued between worlds with their magnificent goat cheeses.

Dutchess Farm will be joining us with their excellent produce soon (and to join in the spinach joust), as will Charlie Brown with his apples and cider. Pour la nonce – during fine weather, which Saturday was, sunny but chill – they continue to set up at Depot Park with a few other vendors.
The Winter Farmers’ Market. So fabulous it’s almost spooky!

...choice between two worlds...

I’ve been ignoring this fact as well as I can, but the day this column appears is election day – talk about thin places. If we are treated, hopefully not transiently, to a person, or persons who can talk intelligently and get things done and unite us, a smart human person who doesn’t rely on the politics of fear or bullying, but of reason, it will prove to be a thin place between that and the eight years of big lies and raping the American citizenry that preceded it. I have my fingers crossed, and I’m sure you do, too! And of course I know YOU will vote!

I’m indebted for the title to this column to Kathryn Davis who wrote an incredible novel entitled The Thin Place.

Twice Bitten columns are archived at www.thriceshy.blogspot.com Thanks for your comments and questions, emails and calls. They reach me at the Rutland Herald, P.O. Box 668, Rutland, 05702 or by email at snimtz@gmail.com

– 30 –

October Nasturtiums

Yes, I know it’s Friday, the 17th of October as I write this, but Nasturtiums still frolic on while their ancient – gaunt, pale, and sinewy – protector, Hosta, melts back into the earth. Tonight, possibly, they will join him when a sudden jolt of cold wilts them in the active old age of life. And by that they might teach us a lesson: live till you die. Have fun doing it. Give pleasure to others. And, if its in your nature, taste good.

Nasturtiums don’t seem to mind giving up a few of their pretty round leaves to round out a salad, and their piquant, peppery taste adds dimensions to one. As do their flowers, which in texture are a combination of velvet and crunch, with the same peppery taste. Their unripe seedpods have been compared to capers, and I have pickled and bottled them as such, or just eaten them out of hand. Several times this summer past I’ve lined vine and leaf, flower and seedpod between fried green tomatoes or eggplant on the oval black cast-iron griddle to serve as appetizers with cocktails, and perhaps this evening I’ll do that one last time before their night falls.

Dear little things! I thank you – two or three starts – for completely taking over one new flower bed this summer, tumultuously traveling, leafing and flowering, setting off and encouraging two new hosta divisions and Leo’s grandmother’s repotted hibiscus, all superintended by the wooden giraffe pretending to munch the leaves of the taller plants. Perhaps he encouraged you. I wondered if you wouldn’t reclaim the whole garden. But so long for now – knowing you, you’ve probably reseeded yourselves and I’ll see you next spring!

...no doldrums here...

Appreciating the nasturtiums may not be quite the same as smelling the roses, but it takes a welcome moment to do so, thereby escaping the chaos in this season’s kitchen to revel, briefly, in them.
Okay, so here’s what’s going on: yesterday, the 16th, a Thursday, I start thinking seriously about my next column. But I’m totally engrossed in making clotted cream because I’m reading Milk, the new book by Anne Mendelson which is subtitled The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages with 120 Adventurous Recipes that Explore the Riches of Our First Food. (I used an Amazon link there, but please order it through your local bookseller.)
Now this is a wonderful book, a very timely book, so timely, in fact, that I had done some beginning research with the idea of writing it myself. If I had written it, it would have been well-researched, historical, knowledgeable, insightful, elegant, personal, with a few well-placed recipes and techniques and lots of pictures of farmers and barns and cows in fields.
It would have taken me ten years, and then it wouldn’t be timely anymore.

So I am now breathing a sigh of relief and appreciation, for Anne has done a tremendous job of research, and she has written elegantly and personally and knowledgeably, and insightfully of that marvelous substance. As for the brouhaha over unpasteurized vs pasteurized milk – she side-steps it, instead calling for non-ultra-pasteurized milk and cream, but especially unhomogenized milk, cream, and cheese. I applaud her magnificent effort, while regretting the fact that there are no pictures, which was probably the publisher’s decision, not hers.

But why was I making clotted cream?
Wouldn’t you if you had a recipe and four or five hours that you could let half a gallon of rich milk heat on the stove and end up with a cup or so of the unctuously delicious cream you’ve read about for so many years and hardly tasted?
Yes, of course you would – that is, you would if you hadn’t yet remembered that you needed to make spanakopita-for-thirty for the Friends of the Library dinner Saturday night, and that you were going to be out of town all day Saturday for the first meeting of the Vermont Chapter of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association, and that, by the way, you needed to make something to offer for that day’s lunch. And, oh yes, the column.

Not to mention that fat chicken sitting in the fridge waiting to be poached, or the bread dough rising at that moment because you’d made the most luscious yogurt the day before and had strained it overnight and had sweet and tart whey that needed to be used.
And the column?

You open the refrigerator and there are three grilled-whole eggplants that you need to do something with.
That’s the position I found myself in on Thursday. Looking at those eggplants, though, I thought – I’ve just made yogurt, using as a starter the expensive and delicious Greek strained yogurt which is sold at the Co-op under the name of Fage Total, and I have never made yogurt so creamy it tastes almost like the best crème fraiche. The roasted innards of the eggplant combined with some of my yogurt, along with some hot
pepper and garlic, cilantro – hmmm, that sounded good! It would be awfully synergistic, or perhaps incestuous, slathered on that whole grain bread I needed to bake off soon that was made from the whey of the yogurt that will be mixed with the eggplant.


I hardly knew where to start.

I sat down at my computer, but the desk was littered with Mexican cookbooks – one by Rick and Deann Bayless, another by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, and several by the doyenne of Mexican food writing, Dame Diana Kennedy. What were they doing there? Well, I’ll tell you what they were doing there – I’d found a very neat little Tuesday night Mexican bistro and had realized that I didn’t really know much about how the food was made. Seemed everything started with a tortilla... or a poached chicken, so I was doing a little research.

My Tuesday night outings are not really to a bistro, though it seems it. Last Tuesday when I walked into the Co-op’s kitchen, Peter McGann was just frying tacos rolled around chicken and mushrooms and fastened with a toothpick, and Tomas was serving them to about a dozen of us with a side of piquant tomatillo sauce spiked with Serrano peppers, onion, and cilantro.



It was the second installment of Peter’s Mexican cooking class being held on each of this October’s Tuesdays. The tacos would be followed by Arroz Verde – rice with poblano chiles, onion, garlic, all cooked in chicken stock (from that poached chicken that was pulled apart for the tacos). A lovely Sopa De Elote followed that – made from pureed corn and milk, and garnished with roasted and skinned poblano peppers cut into a brunoise, or tiny squares. What a perfect combination! As was the final dish we prepared – Peter doing most of it – that of Tostadas de Tinga Poblano, or shredded savory pork mounded on fried tortillas. Tinga translates as “vulgar” or “disorder” notes the author, but it was a delicious disorder!
By that time, most of the class was involved in pureeing the corn or putting it through the food mill, roasting peppers and rubbing the skins off (works better if you wear those disposable plastic gloves), chopping onions, cleaning up here and there, with lively conversation and questions of Peter and his thoughtful replies. What delicious fun! This series is sold out, but I’m sure he’ll do it again – first come, first served, and this time we didn’t even advertise. Perhaps he’ll start a list of names and telephone numbers of people who want to make sure they get in on the next series of classes. Let him know.

It strikes me, sitting in front of the computer, thinking back on the class, that I will have some really nice cooked milk after I ladle off the clotted cream tomorrow morning, and corn in the freezer. And that’s when I decide the canoers will be tasting Sopa de Elote on Saturday.

But then I realize – this is Thursday, and I’m sitting at my computer looking at the Mexican cookbooks – that I don’t even have the recipe for spanakopita and no doubt I’ll have to shop for it, and that’s the way the rest of that day is spent – shopping for specific ingredients, which is something I seldom do, poaching the chicken, and baking the bread – which turned out fantastic, by the way, with a crisp, crinkly crust and whole-grain goodness, and no kneading!


Today, late afternoon, I’ve made the corn soup – using my cone-shaped chinois instead of a food mill: much easier – and everything’s ready to make the spanakopita. I’ve even written a bit of my column.




Whoops! Forgot about supper. I believe that spanakopita is going to serve only 28 tomorrow after I snitch a couple of squares for Leo and me tonight.



Later I’ll roast the poblanos and dice them, and I have some great Consider Bardwell feta that will make a nice additional garnish for the soup.
Oh, those lucky little nasturtiums frolicking out there with no inkling of the cold ax that is going to fall one of these nights. I, on the other hand, seem to have foreseen (my back hurts) what needed to happen and made it happen. For now.

...it all comes out in the wash...

Sunday afternoon I sit here finishing up the column.
The nasturtiums were frozen in place Saturday morning, caught still bright and beautiful, the frost on them glistening in the rising sun before they melted and turned to mush. The filo dough for the spanakopita was as arduously difficult to handle as I’d suspected, which is why I’d never made it before, but Friday night’s little supper of it was luscious, as was Saturday’s when we attended the dinner.

The canoers seemed to like the corn soup. I have two liters of solid chicken broth in the fridge alongside a quantity of shredded chicken to fold into tortillas tonight. The bread, as I said, was wonderful. And the clotted cream? Well... absolutely disgusting. Waxy. Vile. And when I stirred it to see if I couldn’t disperse some of the wax, it turned to waxy butter. It’s at the bottom of the bowl of chicken skin and sinews I’ve saved for the dog. He’ll love it.
But I shan’t give up. We’ll have delicious clotted cream yet!

...lagniappe...
Try the soup. It’s easy and extremely tasty.
Sopa de Elote (Fresh corn soup)
• 3 tablespoons chile poblano or canned, peeled green chilis, diced
• 4 cups corn (1 ½ pounds frozen corn or kernels from 5 ears)
• 1 cup water
• ¼ cup butter
• 3 ½ cups milk
• ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
• 6 tablespoons crumbled cream cheese or diced feta
• tortilla chips.
If using fresh chiles poblano, impale them on a long-handled fork and roast them over a gas flame until the skin is black and charred, then place them as each is blackened in a paper bag – the steam will help to lift the skin. Then rub all the skin off them, and I think that using those disposable plastic gloves really helps this process. Dice in a tiny dice, or chop them.
Put half the thawed corn into a blender with half the water and process until molten. Pour into a food mill (I like to use a chinois) and process the other half of corn and water. Press through the mill into a bowl. In a soup pan, melt the butter over medium heat then add the corn puree (what’s in the bowl, not in the mill) and let it cook while you stir it for about 5 minutes. Add the milk and the salt and bring it just to a boil, lower the flame and let it simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring from time to time so it doesn’t stick. It will thicken slightly.
To serve, put about ½ tablespoon diced chili and 1 tablespoon of the cheese into each bowl. Pour the hot soup over them and serve with tortilla chips.

This is a twice bitten column published in the Rutland Herald here.

For Governor: A Man with Food and Farm Savvy

For someone who grew up in New Jersey, “in farm country but not on a farm,” Anthony Pollina has certainly been successful in facilitating a voice for Vermont’s farmers in the time that he and his wife, Deb Wolf, have made Vermont their home, some 30 years now.

And on the other end of the food chain he’s not a bad cook, either, though he hastens to say that he and Deb both cook, and she does the bulk of it. But when Deb took their daughters, Maya and Allessandra, skiing on winter Sunday afternoons, Anthony, who says he’s “not really big on downhill skiing,” would stay home and cook for them. On the way home from the slopes, famished, they’d often call to see what he’d made them. “They’d be greeted by the smells of roast chicken as they came through the door,” he told me recently. “Food is culture,” he says, “Comfort. Food has the ability to help us transcend bad moods and problems. While the girls were growing up we always sat down to dinner together. Lots of times when I had meetings or the campaign trail kept me going late, I’d arrive home and they’d be waiting supper for me.” There’s a little wonderment in his voice at that moment. Gratefulness. It’s a good memory.

The girls have grown up and are off on their own now, but they still return home and, taking after the examples of both their parents, esteem the culture of food, often cooking meals for the family on their visits, especially now when both Anthony and Deb are hot on the campaign trail for Governor.

I first met Deb and Anthony a few weeks ago at an open house in Pawlet and found them both sincere, warm people, passionate in their quest, calmly telling stories about consensus – helping farmers get together to work for their own greater good; and telling of the role Anthony played in starting The Vermont Milk Company – a farmer-controlled plant that skips the middleman to produce real Vermont ice cream, cheddar cheese, and yogurt.

Anthony founded Rural Vermont, as well, a statewide farm and rural-advocacy organization that has been a national leader in dairy policy and free trade, working to outlaw GM seeds and bovine growth hormone. Rural Vermont is the reason you can buy a chicken to roast directly from the farmer; the reason that Vermont farmers will be well-situated to grow the valuable crop of hemp as soon as the federal government allows it, if the governor signs the bill. The hemp bill was enthusiastically endorsed by the legislature but is sitting on the present governor’s desk right now. If he doesn’t sign it, it’s just another veto, another of his passive votes against Vermont’s farmers.

Rural Vermont is the reason the excellent Vermont dairy farmer can sell up to 50 quarts of farm fresh milk each day directly to the consumer who wants it.

As we drove down to Pawlet I was happy to be about to meet the person who was so instrumental in working on these important food and agriculture programs, and also remembering an interview in Salon.com with Alice Waters I’d read just a few days before. She was disappointed that none of the presidential candidates were talking about exactly those subjects – food and agriculture. “They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision,” she said, and the reason for that was, “because we have been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that food is not important.” I suspected that Anthony Pollina did not fit into that category, and I wondered what changes he would make in the system if he was elected Governor.

I didn’t have time to talk to him a great deal at the open house, but when I called him a few days ago he was forthcoming in his easy-going, conversational way. He’s the kind of guy you feel like you’ve known all your life. I peppered him with questions.

“I want to work with the dairy farmers to find a way to take some of the milk off the commodity market and keep it in Vermont.” He stressed that this is not something the state would finance, but would facilitate the farmer/entrepreneurs to do themselves. “We’ll find ways to invest in infrastructure so farmers can process their own products and retain more value in what they sell. And not just in dairy. We need regional meat processing plants. We need a distribution network.”

He talks about establishing a Vermont Fair Trade Label for products that people in the big northeast cities would look for, knowing that it appeared on excellent products for which farmers received a fair price. “A market study was done on Fair Trade fluid milk which found there was a significant market in Boston, for which people would pay significantly more because it would be locally identified, free of synthetic hormones, and priced fairly, just as they do for Fair Trade chocolate and coffee,” he told me.

So Monsatan is not your idea of a good company? I asked slyly.

“Monsanto would have no place in our Vermont. They want to bend nature to their liking, and they want to own and control food,” he said. “Bigger is not necessarily better,” he mused. “What we are relearning in Vermont is what worked and came naturally years ago. Nature works, and if we work with nature we will have a food supply that is adequate and healthy.”

The Pollina’s vegetable garden used to be quite substantial. It’s smaller now, and Deb does most of the gardening. But the girls are grown, their lives are busy, and there’s always the farmers’ market. “We go to the farmers market every Saturday if we’re not involved in something else. It’s a cultural thing. Social. We see a lot of our friends there, many of whom are farmers. It’s the thing to do.”

Like many Vermonters I know that it’s essential to move our present governor out from under the golden dome in Montpelier. Vermont stands still while he’s there. I didn’t talk directly to Anthony – Governor Pollina, I trust – about health care, the economy, energy, or anything, really, except farms and food, but the health of our farms and food economy has direct implications for everything else in our little rural state. Which brings me back to Alice Waters: “’The destiny of nations depends on how we feed ourselves’" she quoted Brillat-Savarin, then continued, “That's a really important thing. I want whoever's running for president to say that. The destiny of our nation depends on how we nourish ourselves.”

I want whoever is running for Vermont’s governor to say that, too, and Anthony Pollina obliges, in spades, and with history to back him up.

...plethora...

Most years these first few weeks of the Farmers’ Market in Depot Park are pretty sparse. There used to be a ceremony of one or another city notable throwing out the first radish. I believe it was discontinued because there were never any radishes, but this year it might happen again!

Besides planting fall crops to keep the winter Farmers’ Market going all year, farmers are learning they have a bigger customer base and how to provide for it. Other reasons there’s so much produce at the beginning of the season? Greg Cox tells me “Farmers are pushing the envelope, growing in sealed tunnels, using remay to protect the seedlings, all because there’s a lot more consumer demand. Local food is becoming competitive in price again, as well as being far fresher and better tasting. All because of energy and transportation costs.”

As well as fat red radishes there are baby beets, full-blown lettuces as beautiful as flowers, micro-greens, and all kinds of cheeses, meats, real flowers, bedding plants and breads and baked goods. The Rutland Farmers’ Market is bigger than ever, too, extending another fifty feet north, to accommodate the growing number of vendors. Be there or be square!

... a humble pie for gentler chiders...

It wasn’t with a great deal of excitement that I wrote about fiddleheads several weeks ago, and I’ve been gently chided for that (thank you, Gentle Chiders), but later I did make a fiddlehead quiche and it was extraordinarily good. Of course, I did have some ramps. I sautéed them to put beneath the fiddleheads, and their flavor permeated the pie, making it at once elegant and humble. If you’re not in a microclimate in which you can still get fiddleheads, the Co-op does have them, and they also have copies of this recipe:

Make a single 9 inch crust: (I always make crust in the food processor.)

1 cup (5 oz) all purpose flour
1 scant teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup butter or lard or mixture (3 oz)
2 tablespoons +/- cold water

Whisk the flour and salt together, then cut in the fats until pebbly, and stir in enough water to allow it to come together into a smooth ball. Roll out and fit into a large pie plate (mine is 10" in diameter and 1" deep). Set aside or in the freezer.

To Make the Filling:

The formula for any kind of custard is 1 egg +1 yolk + 1 cup whole milk or mixture of milk and half and half. I used unpasteurized whole milk, and it was very creamy. I also added an extra yolk to help with that extra 1/2 cup of milk. The finished quiche had that wonderful custard that separates into soft rectangles of goodness. That has a lot to do with the egg/milk quality plus the regulation of temperature.
Bring the oven to 450 degrees.
1 dozen ramps OR 1 large shallot or 1 dozen scallions + 2 cloves of garlic
butter and olive oil
2 ½ cups cleaned fiddleheads
1 cup grated cheddar cheese (or more)
¾ cup sliced spicy sausage, or crumbled bulk, cooked rare
1 large egg + 2 yolks
1 ½ cups creamy milk
½ teaspoon sea salt
grating of nutmeg

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

In a sauté pan, over low heat, sauté the ramps or scallions and garlic in butter and olive oil until limp and slightly golden. Add a little water or white wine if they’re browning too fast and aren’t getting soft fast enough. Remove from heat and let cool a bit.

When the pot of water is boiling dump in the fiddleheads, partially cover, bring back to the boil and boil for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander and spray with cold water. Shake the colander to get any excess water off, then let drain over the sink until ready to use.

Whisk the eggs together so they are well combined but not frothy, then whisk in the milk, salt, and nutmeg.

Scatter the cheese over the bottom of the pie crust, spread the ramps or onion mixture evenly over the cheese, scatter the sausage and then the fiddleheads over that, then pour over the milk/egg mixture.

Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes; then turn the oven down to 325 degrees and bake for another 20 minutes to half an hour. A silver knife will slide in and out cleanly when done.

...5 Mondays with Peter in June...

When I walk into the Co-op and see Peter McGann behind the cash register my eyes immediately flash to the counter to see what goodies he’s prepared for his customers today: Will it be his famous potato omelette, Tortilla Espagnola? Jalapeno Cornbread and salsa? Guacamole? Whatever it is you know it’ll be delicious. Peter has studied Japanese cooking with Elizabeth Andoh, Mexican with Diana Kennedy, Far Eastern with Paula Wolfert, and others. Somehow he’s learned all their tricks, and if you’re quick you might learn them from him. He’ll be giving cooking demonstrations and hands-on lessons in the Co-op’s new kitchen on the 5 Mondays of June, Starting with Spanish, and traveling on through Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan, and Italian. There’ll be 8 to 10 lucky students in each 5PM to 8PM class, which are filling up quickly. $25 per session or $100 for the series.

...local or organic...

I love this pin! “Know Your Chicken,” it says. People are puzzled by it, but it means, know where your food comes from.

Joel Salatin, the dynamic speaker at the Rural Vermont Annual Meeting a few weeks ago in South Royalton, the Virginia farmer of Polyface Farm made famous by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, sheds some light on this matter: “We never called ourselves organic – we call ourselves ‘beyond organic.’ Why dumb down to a lesser level than we are? If I said I was organic, people would fuss at me for getting feed corn from a neighbor who might be using atrazine. Well, I would much rather use my money to keep my neighborhood productive and healthy than export my dollars five hundred miles away to get ‘pure product’ that’s really coated in diesel fuel. There are a whole lot more variables in making the right decision than does the chicken feed have chemicals or not. Like what sort of habitat is going to allow that chicken to express its physiological distinctiveness? A ten-thousand-bird shed that stinks to high heaven or a new paddock of fresh green grass every day? Now which chicken shall we call ‘organic’? I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the government, because now they own the word.”