Of Mices and Spices

...Hypocrisy...

It is that time of year when we continually bait the mouse traps and wait for the snap, and then the flip-flop. A mouse, taken by the neck just as it prepares to enjoy an agreeable tidbit – it can’t be pleasant. But they become untenable, with their nibbling and constant leavings in our butter dish until, with growing dread, we finally bait the mousetrap, than which nothing has been found to be more effective if not humane, and find, next morning, the big mouse, the daddy mouse; the next, a smaller one; and finally, a hungry baby. A shame, but how do we live amicably side by side, the mouses and us.

Ironically, I bait the first mousetrap only hours after sitting at my computer and tearing up over the videos on the Humane Society website of the cows being mistreated so horribly by people who have lost their humanity – the videos that prompted the belated recall of 143 million pounds of beef. These are hard to watch, but I encourage everyone to take their sensibilities in hand and just do it, because it’s easy to KNOW what goes on in the big Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, from which we get most of the meat we buy in grocery stores, but we don’t FEEL it until we watch it. If we don’t immediately become vegetarian after watching, we will at least think twice about buying any but free-range meats that our accountable neighbors have raised. Because carnivores eat free animals, they don’t torture them.

The half a pig I had just acquired had been content during his life – his owner had warmed up the neighbor’s milk and fed it to him and his two doomed compatriots, and she had woken in the middle of the coldest nights to warm water to give them to drink. She had fed them the best of food, and scraped their bristly backs until they oinked with pleasure. She adored them, but she was admittedly relieved when it came time to say goodbye. They were a LOT of work.

I thought of the life taken, especially when I was up to my elbows mixing sausage meat, rendering lard, or looking over the butcher’s shoulder to make sure he was cutting it up the way I wanted it done. After watching the videos, and seeing one of his kind trapped in a cage, the size of which exactly conformed to his body, where he would spend his entire short life, raging insanely at the bars in his misery, I was glad that mine was raised kindly, but still I had no appetite for pork for awhile, nor anything else, not even a turnip.

So where is my cruelty line drawn if – even in desperation – I set a mouse trap? Is it okay just because a mouse is smaller than a pig, a cow, or even a chicken? What I’m doing here, of course, is posing the question of whether or not our quibbling decisions about what KINDS of things to eat or kill actually do not all come down to size. Small, indeed infinitesimal, animals eat vegetables, and when we eat vegetables we eat the teensie things, too. Anyone who has ever pondered the limits of time or space perhaps recognizes that universes exist not only outward towards the stars and immensity, but inward to infinitesimally smaller worlds, and there is reason to assume that the inhabitants of each assumes itself to have the right to continue to exist. A pig, a rutabaga, a microorganism, stardust, you, I... The mouse!

But back to my mousing conundrum. Responses from various friends, many of whom live in old houses like mine with inexhaustible crevices and passageways for small critters, recommend keeping a cat. While I admire cats from a distance, I do not admire their litter-filled accoutrement. Furthermore, given a choice between a playful guillotine with claws and a nice crisp trap, I’d head towards the trap any old day. Nor does being glued to a piece of sticky paper for an interminable length of time attract me. Ditto eating poison, no matter how cheese-flavored, becoming desperate for water and smelling up the walls for, as one person told me, “a really very short amount of time.” Considering.

BANG! goes the trap. Using garden gloves and kitchen tongs I toss them off into the snow under the crabapple tree. And I tell you, those little bodies have disappeared within an hour or two, or at least by next morning, because we live in a world of hungry carnivores, all of whom eat to live. At least the mouse does not go to waste. What more could anyone ask?

...appetite redux...

The Wallingford Locker is looking really good these days, from the inviting new sign painted by Donna Wilkins, chief honcho and artist of Foggy Creek Folk Art, and the gracious porch/walkway, to a larger selling floor, and yes, their new local products! “Look! Look what we’ve got!” Donny shouted when I walked in the door the other day, pointing toward the back freezer: Free-range, grass-fed Black Angus beef from Pawlet’s Maple Tree Farm, processed by Locust Grove in Argyll, New York.

Yes! I crowed.

“We’re just trying it out, seeing if there’s a market for it,” he grumbled. “It’s expensive,” he groused.

Way to sell me, Donny! Let’s hear WHY I should buy this expensive beef. Maybe because it’s eaten grass or hay up to the very end of its happy life; it’s not shot full of antibiotics and hormones, opens a pathway to healthy food that will become less expensive as more is sold and infrastructure, such as slaughterhouses, is built to satisfy demand; pays the farmer a living wage, encourages other people to become farmers, keeps farmland open and free of development, improves the health of the soil. Oh, and by the way, it really IS delicious.

Donny’s wife, Holly, was positively beaming about carrying more local products. Gorgeously decorated cookies, for instance, from the Mt. Holly business, A Dozen Eggs. And from what I gather, the Locker will be the only place to get Burnham Hollow Pies now that the store has closed on Woodstock Avenue. They continue to carry Stonewood Farm Turkey products, and eggs from upstate. But the new product the whole Keeler/ Hagenlocher gang at the Locker is most excited about is one they’ve created – Wallingford Locker Cob-Smoked Cheddar Cheese! Now that should be a big-seller!

...yoo hoo, brunch is on...

Come this Saturday to a Winter Brunch Fundraiser held by Rural Vermont at the Winter Farmers’ Market in the back of the Co-op. We’ll be serving dishes inspired by Rural Vermont’s Local Foods Cookbook including Butternut Squash Soup, Vegetarian or Meat Strata, and Maple Apple Crisp, and of course most of the ingredients will come from market vendors. Full spread, $10 or individual items $3 to $4. All proceeds benefit that wonderfully effective organization, Rural Vermont. 802/223-7222. Brunch 11 to 1; Winter Market 10 to 2.

...nice spices...

The tastes, no matter how minute, of morels, wild leeks or ramps, fiddleheads, dandelion greens, hover in our comparatively near future. It is my considered opinion that even homeopathic amounts of whatever is in these foraged foods are important to our health and well-being, and so I imagine that is true also of some tastes that recently tempted me, and are available year around, dried, at any well-stocked health food store or Co-op to make Five Spice Powder. Measure out 1 oz star anise; 1 oz cassia or cinnamon; 1 oz or 5 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorns (smells like orange peel); 1 oz cumin seeds; ½ oz. cloves; ¼ oz (black)coriander seeds (or seeds from about 5 or 6 pods) and put each, separately, into a flat-bottomed pan over low heat, shaking occasionally, until they give off their aroma. Pour them into a bowl once they’ve reached the odiferous point and let cool. Then grind in a coffee grinder or mortar with pestle. Use on ... well, anything. I made up a new snack of dipping dehydrated banana slices in the spices and eating them with a few roasted peanuts. Yum! Normal people use Five Spice to flavor rice, lentils, yogurt, and other foods to give an eastern or middle-eastern taste. I was reminded of it vis a vis braised pork belly.

...MFK Fisher on cauliflower...

“There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were small and very succulent, grown in that ancient soil. I separated the flowerlets and dropped them in boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I drained them, and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyere, the nice rubbery kind that didn’t come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura. It was called râpé in the market, and was grated while you watched, in a soft cloudy pile, onto your piece of paper.”

This is another instance where it is necessary to read the author’s words in order to make a dish turn out as succulently as it should. I KNOW how to do it, but if I don’t read MFK’s words first it doesn’t work. She continues:

“I put some fresh pepper over the top, and in a way I can’t remember now the little tin oven heated the whole thing and melted the cheese and browned it. As soon as that had happened we ate it. The cream and cheese had come together into a perfect sauce, and the little flowers were tender and fresh.”

Darn Tootin! This is a perfect dish, all we need for supper, with the leftovers for lunch!

...what’s cookin’ rutland...

After months of work, trial and error, lines in the sand, and misfortunes that threatened to bring the project to a standstill, a small group of civilians working with PEG TV has managed to get Rutland’s first cooking show, featuring – what else – local food, on air.

PEG TV built a dream kitchen – that wide granite counter needs to be in MY kitchen – that will be available to anyone who lusts to become the next Julia Child – Whoops! Catch that chicken! – after signing up for a video training session, that is. But What’s Cookin’ Rutland is the name of the regularly scheduled show we’ve all been working on, sponsored by Chaffee Art Center and featuring Whitney Lamy as the host and Greg Cox as the regularly visiting farmer, with guest chefs – both home and restaurant – to be taped before a live audience on the third Monday of each month. Well, usually. May’s taping will be on the 12^th. Our own Randal Smathers, Managing Editor of the Herald, will be cooking with the Localvores on March 17^th. You can get tickets for it by calling the Chaffee at 775-0356. Suggested donation, $10.

Now, besides that first taping, the show will be seen on Channel 15 Saturday evenings at 8PM and intermittently throughout the month. You can also catch it online at pegtv.com through their streaming video service, or download it by clicking video on demand.

The first show, featuring Clarke Congdon, chef at Sabby’s, winner of last summer’s Iron Chef Contest, should be available as we speak!

This column was published in the Rutland (Vt) Herald on03/04/08

Chicken sole for the soup

...take one set of chicken feet...

Walking around Maine’s Common Ground Fair a couple of weeks ago, way up in Unity, I greeted people I had not seen in years including some Vermonters – lots of whom attend this annual late-September gathering – when I came to the end of my day. I always leave the farmers’ market portion for last so I can load up on dried beans and other heavy delicacies and not have to lug them too far. The Common Ground is something like our own Solarfest except about five times bigger and with LOTS of organic farmers.

At one of the several free-range meat stalls, a woman from Boston was trying to procure some chicken feet for Chicken-Feet Soup. Now there was a woman after my own heart – I’ve performed a somewhat desultory search of my own for chicken feet for years, knowing that they add a delicious gelatinous quality and flavor to a good chicken stock. The woman was unsuccessful – she and the farmer were unable to determine how they would be shipped – but I would think that she could find some in her urban and multi-ethnic setting, because chicken feet, in spite of the ugh factor, are used by many Asian and Caribbean and French cooks.

I should have some soon, too, since I‘ve found a free-range chicken farmer who will save them for me at slaughtering time. Otherwise they’d be thrown to the dogs. I can’t believe how much goes to waste during slaughtering. Whatever happened to our ancestors’ need to use every little bit of something they killed? The last time I bought a local, organic chicken there were no giblets in the cavity, though I found out later that the chicken-farmer kept them for himself, figuring no one would miss them. “But I shoulda known YOU would, Sharon,” he said.

So I thought I should check out how to use these things. Does one skin them? How are they cleaned? I checked Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions. She suggests using a whole chicken including the head. I put some thought into that and realized that everyone has an Ugh level, and mine rose just to the top of the neck and below the chicken chin. Though why that should be so, I don’t know.

Fallon advocates simmering bones for stock very slowly for a very long time – up to 24 hours – to release all the good ah, um, electrolytes. “Properly prepared, meat stocks are extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow and vegetables as electrolytes, a form that is easy to assimilate,” she writes, and recommends adding a bit of acidic wine or vinegar to help draw out the calcium, magnesium and potassium into the broth. Of course you’ll use bones from free-range animals that have not been shot full of hormones or antibiotics, or that’s what you’ll be drawing out of the bones and into your stock as well.

Fallon did not tell me how to clean chicken feet or, for that matter, a chicken head, so I went online and found several people talking about chicken feet. One source said, “Wash them chickens feet... scrub between toes... remove ‘toe-jam’. Rinse in clear water.” In fact they all said that, obviously having cribbed from each other. I do remember seeing one recipe that prescribed removing the “toenails”.

On another level, I had assumed that once the stock was made, the feet were given to the dog, but no, most people talked about the pleasures of eating the feet themselves. One said, “chicken feet are a delicacy that many people – not just epicures – are moved to order in many cultures. The prevailing method (order) of consumption, according to the lip smackers, involved the: 1. ‘Fleshy pads’ 2. ‘Toes’ 3. ‘Gelatinized toes’. The verb ‘sucking’ was commonly used.” Another, Caribbean, woman recounted making the soup for herself and finding that her small daughter wanted to chew on those chicken feet: “You could have pushed me over with a feather when my finicky daughter asked for a chicken foot to eat... Sucked the chicken digits and spat out the bones like a real West Indian.”

A Jewish woman wrote: “My mother made chicken foot soup twice that I can recall. She felt guilty about preparing something so outlandish, something my father would never eat – but secretly, she loved it. Sucking the soft pads off the well-cooked toes (something my father would gag at if he caught her), my mother tasted her childhood, comfort, and home.” Apparently this woman grew up in a multi-generational family, and her father made fun of his mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law for boiling up chicken feet – which they had to make a special trip to find – and using stale bread – which they had to specially keep track of – for other dishes. In the daughter’s words, He “rightly pointed out, when you are a peasant living in Russia or Sicily, you have to make do with what you can scrounge, and eating chicken feet and stale bread crusts is understandable. But we were living in middle class America, and not only were chicken feet and stale crusts unnecessary, they were hard to come by.”

I wonder about that word “unnecessary”. It seems to me we’re finding that a reliance on agri-business for our food is a very unhealthy thing. It may be that these basic foods really are very necessary! If you’re going to pay $18 and up for an organic, free-range chicken, you might find you want to suck those toes and eat the gizzard.

So, in a couple of weeks, when I get my chicken feet – how many do you think I should get? Most recipes call for 2 pounds, so maybe I’ll just see how many they have. I wonder, too, what’s attached to the feet... – anyway, when I get my chicken feet, and a couple of chickens, too, I’ll make a stock, and I think I’ll make it this way: In my big cast-iron Dutch oven I’ll make a mirepoix: Sauté some onion, celery and carrots, probably two of each. In the meantime take a chicken (I haven’t decided about the head yet) and chop it up into fairly small pieces, bones and flesh, cleanly, with a big cleaver – this makes the marrow more accessible. Add that to the pot along with the chicken feet scrubbed of toe-jam, ¼ cup of raw cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sea salt, and cover it all with filtered water, or water left out overnight to let the chlorine escape. Put the cover on nice and tight; bring it to a low simmer on the stovetop, then place it in a 200 degree oven, and let it simmer in there for a day or so... well, maybe 6 or 7 hours. Oh yum!! We’re gonna be strong like Bull

...a good butcher...

“A good butcher saves the bones for you. He keeps a running account that you pay off from time to time. He knows how thick you like your steaks. He saves things aside for when you come in. He is pleased that you are a fan of variety meats. A good honest butcher makes life that much better.”.. from Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook at blogspot.com

We had a good butcher here in Wallingford – in fact, we had two: Justin and Paul Courcelle. In addition to most of the qualities one of my favorite bloggers, Lucy Vanel, outlined above, they made me smile; in fact they made me laugh, even on the dourest day. I say most of the qualities, because Justin was not the slightest pleased that I was “a fan of variety meats.” Many are the lectures I got from him for asking for a calves foot on a busy Saturday morning. “It grosses people out!” But really, that was the only variety meat he ever gave me chaff about. They had nothing against liver or kidneys or sweetbreads, even tripe. And they did save the bones for me and others, kept running accounts (we buy more that way), and knew how thick we liked our steaks. They certainly made life better, so much so, in fact, that when we heard they were going to retire last winter, and sell the Wallingford Locker or, lacking a sale, simply close it, we were worried and upset and even a little heartbroken. It was a very scary winter!

But! They did find a buyer, and though we miss Paul (Justin can be found behind the counter still, when he’s not golfing, skiing, traveling, or simply driving his wife crazy), we now have several good butchers!

“The terms ‘butcher’ and ‘meat-cutter’ are synonymous,” Holly Keeler tells me with a grin, “but I like to think of myself as a meat specialist.” She owns the Locker with her brother Will Hagenlocher, whom you may have heard drumming with the groups, Rattlesnake Ridge, Exit Only, and Ziggy Jagger. Take a good gander at him – Will’s about 7 feet tall, a handsome guy with a big smile, just like his sister – and you will immediately realize that drumming and meat-cutting are natural activities for him. Holly’s husband, George Keeler, Jr., runs the smokehouse, and her brother-in-law, Donny Keeler, is the meat manager. Donna Wilkins, who, with dry wit, expertly managed Justin and Paul for many years, has stayed on, much to Holly’s pleasure. She is also, Holly says, making a new sign for the business from her folk-art studio, Foggy Creek.

“We’re going to do things the same way Paul and Justin did,” was their mantra from the beginning, and they really meant it. Well, except for some remodeling – giving the trusty old locker a nice new façade and a little more space in the store to accommodate the crowds, especially on Saturdays. “It was something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” says Justin. Both Paul and Justin spent several weeks to months after the sale to acclimate the new owners to the Courcelle way of doing business and meat cutting.

And, I’ll tell you, that’s just what we wanted to hear, because the way meat is cut has a great deal to do with the taste and the flavor and the texture, and even beauty, of the final product. Wallingford Locker hams are celebrated far and wide, their bacon travels to every destination we go to, and the cut meats are done perfectly, the ground ones the perfect texture.

But, that said, there’s one thing I wish the Keeler/Hagenlochers would do differently. I really, really, really wish Holly and Men would get in some local grass-fed beef, pastured pork, and free-range chickens. I encourage them. Really. It would give local producers a chance to raise more free-range animals, and it would satisfy the growing number of people who do NOT want to buy feedlot meat. So the other day I mentioned it to her again, and she said, conspiratorially, “Down the road we’re going to get a few more refrigerator cases and we’ll be looking at filling them with organic, and we’re going to be looking at Local!”

Yea!! And when they do, dear readers, it’s up to us to give them our business – make it worth their while. You’ll see. Those chicken feet are going to be mighty tasty!

...and the stew, too...

Holly’s Crockpot Cider Beef Stew

· ½ cup flour

· 1 ½ teaspoons salt

· ¼ teaspoons each, pepper, garlic powder and thyme

· 2 pounds “Wallingford Locker Beef Stew meat”

· 3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

· 4 carrots sliced in 1 inch chunks

· 1 medium onion, chunked

· 1 ¼ cup cider

· ¼ cup water

· 1 ½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Mix the dry ingredients. Toss the meat in the dry ingredients to coat, put into the crockpot, add the vegetables and toss, then heat the cider, water, and vinegar and stir into the meat/veggie mixture. Cover, cook on low heat for 10 to 12 hours, or on high for 4 to 6 hours.

...food in a siberian hut...

Everything they could find in the house was on the table: pickled khairuz, a Siberian salmon, sauerkraut, marinated bilberries, fried mushrooms, potatoes with oil and shallots. Even canned pineapple from faraway Mexico was opened for the great occasion. Grisha donated his beer, which was set in a pail of well water...Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Wild Berries

this column was originally published in the Rutland (Vermont) Herald on October 9, 2007