Tales of Vermont on Gourmet.com

Two great articles by Ben Hewitt on Gourmet.Com, one of them about the Hardwick area, per se, entitled The Town that Food Saved, and another about Jasper Hill entitled A Giant Cheese Cave. Don't miss 'em -- the writer does an excellent job.

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.

good vermont farmer press in the new york times

Marion Burros has written about northern Vermont's vivid food scene in the New York Times today. Datelined Hardwick, Vt, she highlights Pete's Greens, High Mowing, Jasper Hill, Vermont Soy, and various other farmers and organizations dedicated to creating a thriving food economy. Nice to see farmers getting some good press.

And oh yes (added later), here is Michael Pollan's letter to the next president outlining food policy. It is excellent, and answers even more of our questions. It will appear this coming Sunday in the New York Times Magazine.

Considering Bardwell

Four Ears... photo by Isobel Gabel Nimtz

...mother and daughter...

We glissando over glistening roads, the wipers swiping intermittently, the wet green greengreen green of early Vermont summer dense along the roadside. “We” are my daughter and me, Zoe back for a visit, we just hanging out and talking and reading and making cheese, without the stress of talk, talk, talk long-distance telephone calls require. Daughters should be with their mothers, don’t you think?

Reminds me of long ago, when she was little more than a baby, we put on our yellow slickers and went out into the drizzle to find some fiddleheads and found, as well, a whole, habitable, magic green world we would have missed had we viewed it only from inside the window. Today we’re looking for West Pawlet, and Consider Bardwell Farm.

West Pawlet? Whoever knew such a charming village could be so hidden betwixt and between this maze of old roads that even I, in these more than thirty years, had never heard of it much less run across it in my travels. It appears. Mistily like Brigadoon. Look away and it might be gone. A mile or so beyond the village center appear the brick house and out-buildings, and the chocolate-shaded Swiss Oberhasli goats, of Consider Bardwell.

It is the second stop on a little cheese tour we’re devising – our first stop was at Al Ducci’s Italian Pantry in Manchester to watch Al Sheps make his fabulous creamy fresh mozzarella. None better, in my opinion, and perhaps that is because when you buy mozzarella there it has not yet been refrigerated and the cheese remains soft and layered and oozes creamy liquids. How many times over the years had Zoe and I torn into one of those juicy ovoids, the size of a child’s football, right in the car, unable to wait for home, tearing off strandy sheets and stuffing them into our mouths, with an occasional bit for the dog in the back seat.

There’s no one home at Consider Bardwell except for Bob Hahn – “just a darn good helper” is how he bills himself – who tears himself away from a ladder leaned against the red brick house to meet and greet us. Almost as though he knew we were coming, he drops everything and graciously takes us on a tour of the many brick out-buildings – including the old brick granary with ventilating, lacy, brickwork – and shows us where the first dam was located, that, with a waterwheel, fueled what would be Vermont’s first cheesery, and, in 1862, the first cheese co-op.

The farm was owned by a man named Consider Bardwell, whose mother’s name was Experience, for whom the AGED Chèvre has been named. Chèvre, of course, is a fresh goat’s milk cheese, christened Mettowee at Consider Bardwell, after the river that runs through the farm, and, since the goats are only milked in summer, Chèvre can only be made in summer. For winter use it is aged, and called Experience.

We easily spend an hour exploring the state-of-the-art cheesemaking room with its stainless-steel vats, and the climate-controlled ‘caves’ which are rather vast new coolers lined with shelves full of cheese rounds of varying sizes and shades of tan. And on to the other end of this very large barn, where the babies gambol in their spacious pens, where Bob built them a little fort with a hidey-house at the base, and broad steps leading up to the fortress top and the doorway into the pasture at the front of the barn. The goats like to climb. Across the road the young, yet-to-be-bred females who graze in the rock-ribbed pasture love to climb on those rocks.

We traipse a labyrinth of movable electric fencing to the field, in the midst of the 300+ farm acres, where the nannies are grazing. Inquisitive, sleek, bright-eyed, nuzzling our hands, chewing on our shirt-tails, asking us who we think WE are. There are 44 milkers among 90 goats not counting the babies and the two rams. Bob would prefer the Nannies’ munching field to be not quite so flat – their bodies are designed to climb, and upward they wish to go!

Meeting the rams after meeting the kids and nannies is a slightly jarring experience for both Zoe and me. Long-bearded, scraped up, slightly scruffy, twice as big as the nannies, yet their eyes betray a heightened and developed sense of humor, as they greet us gruffly. There are only two of them, so we are not sure if the joke is on us or on them: Was the joke that all those nannies needed only two rams, or that two rams were sufficient to the task?

Finally, back to the cheesemaking room, where Peter Dixon had arrived. Zoe won’t quite be able to get the seductive and strangely personal odors of the cheesemaking room out of her mind for a long time. “Peter,” she says now, “looked like he would be perfectly happy to dive into the cheesemaking vat, where he cuts and then scoops up the custardy mass of curds floating at the top.” Indeed, he seems to have made a home there, among the vats of milk and the temperature gauges, and testing vials.

Angela Miller, the owner of Consider Bardwell, with her husband Russell Glover, had told me a great deal about Peter in the times we’d spoken at the Rutland Winter Farmers’ Market where she is a vendor, and also at the summer market in Depot Park. “Peter is a wonder,” she’d said. “We couldn’t do this without him.”

Peter Dixon learned the art of making Camembert from French visitors in the 1970s, and has worked in-depth with Allison Hooper at Vermont Butter and Cheese, at Shelburne Farms and Taylor Farm in Londonderry, was part owner of the Guilford Cheese Company and of Westminster Dairy, and there may be one or two cheeses in the world that he has not personally perfected, and one or two animals whose milk he has not used to make cheese. Brie, Camembert, Quark, Crème fraîche, Chèvre, Cheddar, Fontina, Fromage Blanc; in the style of Raclette, Reblochon, Toma, Gruyère, and Comté; from cow, goat, and sheep milk. Peter is a partner in the Consider Bardwell business.

At Consider Bardwell Peter makes cheese twice a day, six days a week. From goat’s milk he makes the Metowee/Experience, the Danby, which is a feta, and the aged Tomme called Manchester, which has a nutty flavor. From Jersey cow’s milk that he picks up from Lisa Kaiman’s Jersey Girl Dairy in Chester on the way to West Pawlet from his home in Westminster West, he makes Rupert, a Swiss Alpine cheese reminiscent of Gruyere; Pawlet, an Italian-style, semi-hard Toma with a creamy texture; and Dorset, a washed rind in the style of French Raclette. Using half cow’s milk and half goat’s, he’s experimenting with a Romano, a pungent, hard Italian grating cheese, and has developed one of my favorites, which is called, uncharacteristically, Quarry. Quarry lays claim to a deeply creviced rind, buttery flesh, and intensely pungent flavor with, when chilled, a slightly chalky ending which disappears at room temperature, when it is just meltingly rich. Angela thinks this cheese will be their breakthrough, world-class cheese. As though they didn’t have one or two already.

to the left is Quarry, Consider Bardwell's next "world-class cheese," according to Angela, who is pictured below.

By this time Angela has arrived, but she’s changed into her bright turquoise, rubber, cheese room clogs, is busy scrubbing milk cans and looks to be in her element doing it.

Zoe and I take our leave, deciding on the road that our cheese tour has ended for the day. Next time she visits we’ll drive up to Blue Ledge Farm in Salisbury, from which hail others of my favorite goat cheeses, and to their neighbors in Whiting, the Crawford Family Farm, who make the wonderful Vermont Ayr, but for now it’s begun to rain again and a book in front of the fire sounds just the thing. As we drive away from Consider Bardwell, the mist closes around it, then through West Pawlet as we leave it, too, behind.

...talk with the farmer...

It’s not until the end of summer, when Zoe has long returned down south to do art, make music, and mozzarella, and live too far from her mother, that I am able to sit down with Angela at Consider Bardwell’s kitchen table to tie some ends together. This is one busy, well-traveled lady. Although she spends weeks at a time at the farm during kidding season in early spring, and then also much of July and August, the rest of the time she is back and forth to New York City to tend to her office – she has her own literary agency – from Monday through Thursday, which leaves weekends to attend the Rutland Farmers’ Market, as well as farmers’ markets in Dorset, Manchester and Londonderry. A partner, Chris Gray, attends New York City farmers’ markets.

“I’m the farmer,” Angela tells me. “Peter’s the cheesemaker, Russell’s the infrastructure, and Chris Gray does sales and marketing.” Russell, an architect with his own practice in NYC with much experience in renovation, has left no stone unturned in finding grants and loans and ways of renovating the historic farm, working with Efficiency Vermont to make it energy efficient – just now he’s working on plans to turn the silos into solar collectors – and building the caves.

Angela grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and never got it out of her system. Led to New York City In the ‘70s by her career, she found herself setting out window boxes on the 12^th floor to satisfy a deep-seated need to get her fingers into dirt of some kind. Needing the kind of quiet and privacy that’s hard to find in the city, she and Russell bought an historic fixer-upper on Shelter Island, and renovated it for a getaway from their NYC apartment and for Russell’s office. At the same time, they began to explore Vermont, and, in 2000, Angela decided she needed the rural peace here.

When they came across the group of red brick buildings that would become Consider Bardwell, she fell hard. To take that particular leap the Miller/Glovers consolidated – they sold the Shelter Island house, which Russell, especially, loved, and moved to a smaller NYC apartment. All this was done without knowing the history of cheese making the farm held; all this was done just for the sake of living at least part time in the countryside, in Vermont. But once they began to realize the history of the place the lure of cheese making and of goats took hold. At the time they had an intern who had worked in France with goats and made cheese, who convinced them to invest in the Swiss Oberhasli goats. Angela drove to New Hampshire and brought six goats back in her station wagon.

Then the intern left. Kaput, gone, and Angela, well Angela “had never even seen a goat before I had six of them in the back seat of my station wagon.”

...the wine spectacular...

But oh well, that’s the name of the game. Goats, and cheese making became a passion, and where there’s a passion there’s a way. Today Consider Bardwell makes 60,000 pounds of cheese a year. And today Angela is sitting at the kitchen table, looking pleased, with an issue of Wine Spectator spread out in front of her. 100 GREAT CHEESES, blares its headline. “From around the world,” says Angela. “And 10 of them are from Vermont. And of those 10, three are from the Rutland Farmers’ Market! And one of those three is Consider Bardwell’s Manchester!”

About Manchester, Wine Spectator says, “This aged, raw goat’s-milk cheese has big, bold and rustic flavors beneath its somewhat barnyardy nose. Its nuttiness and earthy bite are offset by its delightful fruity notes. Made in 2-to-3-pound tommes, it has a pleasantly creamy texture.” As for an accompanying wine? “Tame this wild cheese with a complex white, such as a Savennières.” And there you have it. Manchester!

Angela is thrilled with Manchester’s success, but she is hardly less so at Vermont’s other winners, especially those we are familiar with from the farmers’ market. Of Blue Ledge Farm’s Lake’s Edge cheese, Wine Spectator says, “...this 1.5 pound cheese is aged for three weeks and has a clean, fresh taste, with a nice balance of creaminess and acidic tang.” And of Crawford Family Farm’s Vermont Ayr, “The (Ayrshire) cows are noted for producing milk with butterfat globules that result in a smooth, creamy and sweet cheese. That sweetness plays off some spiciness, which, along with that nutty alpine nose, make this a delight.”

Other Vermont cheesemakers noted in the Wine Spectator are Jasper Hill with its Winnemere, and again with its Bayley Hazen Blue, as well as in combination with Cabot for Cloth bound Cheddar, and with Grafton for its Cloth Bound Cheddar. Grafton got another mention for it’s Cheddar One Year, and Shelburne Farms for its Cheddar Two Year. And Thistle Hill for its Tarentaise, One Year.

WOW!

Just a note here, that Jasper Hill has built state-of-the-art caves in order to provide aging for their own and for other cheesemakers. Angela is appreciative of that service, though Russell has built their own caves, and she says, “I don’t want my cheeses four hours away – I want to visit my cheeses every day.”

I think that Angela’s mention of the three OUT OF 100 WORLD cheeses getting their start at the Rutland Farmers’ Market is more than mere pride – if it weren’t for farmers’ markets, how would these cheeses get started? How would these farms make a living with their acreage, with their animals, and with their products? What store would take a chance on a newcomer to the marketplace, what farm just starting out could produce enough to satisfy the needs of a Hannafords?

Farmers’ Markets prove their importance over and over again, maybe especially as regards cheese – that magical, ancient, intuitive endness of milk.

Cheese may be the end result, but more than that, “more than anything else,” Angela says, “I love the animals. I even love milking!”

This Twice Bitten column was published 10/07/08 in the Rutland Herald.

Zen and the Craft of Sofrito

I was working on a column about cheese when I remembered that a conversation about Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was due to be broadcast on VPR at that very moment. Being constitutionally unable to sit mindfully still and listen for an hour, I decided to listen while preparing sofrito for the future.
Why sofrito? you might well ask, as I would have two days ago. But yesterday I had a visit from an old friend from California who stops by once a year. I had thought I’d missed him, or that he had forsaken his annual trip.
I was working on that selfsame article yesterday when I glimpsed a white t-shirt moving past my office window but when I went to the door no-one was there. No ONE, but a voice boomeranged around the corner of the porch and, when I peeked, there was Paul, talking on his cell phone. He continued to talk while we hugged. He continued to talk to this person in California whom he had just left, while I, whom he had not seen for a year, walked out to the garden to see if I would get any okra before the frost. It had simmered in place most of this rainy summer, but now in sunnier weather was shooting out it’s beautiful hibiscus flowers, some of which had given way to a fruiting body whose insides would cunningly echo the flower in shape and form, and please the mouth when dipped into egg and flour and fried in butter and olive oil. In the background Paul’s voice continued to boom. He appeared to be talking about motorcycles.
Paul is a very sweet man, I look forward to seeing him, but he is not a person who asks many questions. He does, however, like to talk, so after he’d clapped his phone off and we’d found a sunny spot on the chilly deck, he described in no uncertain terms where his political sympathies lay – which closely approximated my own – and how the American People seem to mistake the deadly seriousness of the contemporary political scene for the hijinks of a reality show, what the weather had been like in California, what he and his significant other had been doing for the past year, and that a pot-luck dinner was to be held the next evening to initiate the sailing weekend – the annual Fruit Bowl – which was the ostensible reason for his annual trip as it has been for the last twenty or so years. The real one, of course, is seeing old friends.
“And what will be your offering for the potluck dinner?” I asked in a brief pause, thinking that he and our friend, with whom he was staying, would stop by a deli on the way up Route 7 and pick something up.
“I’m going to make my artichoke casserole,” he said. “It’s delicious, a no-brainer, and a couple handfuls of crushed saltines on top,” he rubbed his hands together over an imaginary casserole, “and it’s good to go.”
Surprised, I asked him if he did a lot of cooking, having never guessed it. He’s a retired steel-worker, worked on the Alaska pipeline and tall city buildings. Turns out he does. And had a few, welcome, words of advice for me.
His significant other – “not-married going on twenty-some years, now,” he said – is a vegetarian, while Paul is a dedicated carnivore, so he’s learned to cook both ways. “I do lots of soups,” he said. And he always starts with a sofrito.
“I make up a sofrito when there’s lots of tomatoes, put ‘em in the processor along with hot peppers, cilantro, onions and garlic, smash ‘em up, make up a whole bunch, then put it in little plastic bags and freeze it.”
He heats some oil, adds the sofrito, fries it, adds chicken broth and white beans, then divides it into two portions and adds chunks of ham to his own. He’d just stopped by the Locker and ordered a ham, as well as pounds of bacon to take back to California with him. “Yeah, the whole cabin fills up with the smell of cob smoke,” he laughed.
But I was thinking – I had lots of tomatoes, and my garden produced cilantro and Serrano peppers this year to beat the band. I also had garlic and onions. “What a great idea,” I said, and I clapped my hands. Paul smiled shyly.
As I followed him across the deck on the way to his car, he inspected my Big Green Egg, telling me what a great grill it was, “it’s like one of those middle-eastern things,” he said.
“A tandoori oven,” suggested I.
“Yeah, like a ceramic oven, holds the heat,” he said, “makes a dynamite chicken.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m making a chicken in it tonight.”
“Be sure,” he said, looking very serious, “to prick the skin all over. Let’s the fat bubble out and crisps up the skin.” I considered this. It’s not something I usually do because I’m afraid of losing juices and making the chicken dry, but in the high heat of the tandoori, perhaps it would work.
“Seriously,” he said, nodding his head.

***

The day before, I had spatchcocked that chicken, meaning that I had cut out the backbone with a meat saw and done a little damage to the breast bone. This allows you to open up the chicken so that all the skin is on one side and all the inside is on the other, and lets you place it flat on the grill. Here’s a video of it, being done with kitchen shears.
Then I brined that chicken, this way: Place about two cups of water in a saucepan with a tablespoon of sugar, 6 tablespoons of salt, and a bayleaf. Or you may add whatever seasonings you like. Bring it to a boil to dissolve the sugar and salt, then top off the pan with cold water. Place the chicken in a large bowl and pour the water over it. Add enough cold water to cover the chicken, and place in the fridge for several hours or overnight.
This might seem a lot of work for a chicken, but it took about 15 minutes – maybe 3 minutes to spatchcock it and the rest just time to heat the water. My biggest problem is to remember to do it the day before I want to grill the chicken.
So the evening of Paul’s visit, I placed the spatchcocked and brined chicken on its skin side first on the grill, and let it grill for twenty or so minutes, then turned it over. That’s when I followed Paul’s advice and pricked that skin all over, and I must say it worked beautifully, the skin crisp and succulent, the flesh moist and flavorful. I left that 4 pound chicken on the grill at about 400 degrees for another 40 minutes.

***

Jumping back to where we began, to moments before the Persig program and my thoughts about sofrito, I turned on the radio and surveyed the tomatoes, the onions, the garlic, and the hot peppers, which were already on my counter. Litter. Grace. Whatever. I dashed out to the garden to pick handfuls of cilantro, and back in the kitchen took some deep breaths. Becoming engrossed in the program, I quartered the onions, seeded the peppers, smashed and peeled the garlic, and put them all in the food processor with the cilantro with such intention, mindfulness, that it seemed that Persig or Edward Espe Brown or, indeed, Paul, were at my side.
If you want to do this, probably I should give you some guidance about amounts, ratios, and so on. Except that it’s really a matter of taste: with one rather large onion, and 4 rather small serranos, and 4 or 5 large cloves of garlic, and the couple of handfuls of cilantro, I added perhaps 30 medium-sized tomatoes. And a tablespoon of sea salt. It seemed perfect to me, and it made about 2 ½ quarts.
Another thought – there are all kinds of sofritos. I never think of tomatoes when I think of sofrito, which is, really, only a mixture of aromatics that you sauté in a hot frying pan before you get into the meat of the matter. Like a mirepoix – you know, which is onions, garlic, carrots, maybe celery. This sofrito was very like a salsa; indeed, as I understand it both words mean ‘sauce’ with the added intention of sofrito to mean sautéed sauce.
I clean and chunk up the tomatoes and whir them up in the food processor, too. Okay, I like my salsa chunky, cut individually, but this is faster and perhaps a better texture to flavor that winter soup. Tomatoes into the big bowl with the already chopped vegetables, salt added, and this is not too shabby to dip up with a tortilla. Later, I will reach the conclusion that the sofrito should be added to the soup in the last twenty minutes, in a last-ditch attempt to save some of the perishable cilantro flavor. Later still, I will determine to fry most of it before adding the meat, or the chicken broth – whichever way I’m leaning – at the beginning, and add the remaining a few minutes before serving it.
By the time the radio scholars are talking about Zen as “not a way to change the world, just a way to change your individual space in the world,” I am filling the last freezer bag, and I finish labeling half a dozen of the quart bags with “Paul’s Sofrito 9/08”. Really. It was like that – my wonderful tasks of making sofrito and listening to a discussion of Persig’s Zen and motorcycles coincided exactly – end of program, I’m carrying the sofrito down the steps to the freezer.

Not, as you might think, an advertisement for Ziploc

Next, a small bowl of un-sauteed sofrito – very finely chopped salsa – and some chips accompany me back to my computer and I sink from mindfulness of sofrito into mindfulness of cheese – two ends, if I’m not mistaken, of the spectrum of food, each of the twain meeting here.
I hope to bring that same single-mindedness to the task of finding that old copy of Persig’s book and rereading it.

we have Hen of the Woods!!

This is a Hen-of-the-Woods mushroom, that grows under old and massive elms. I have never found one, but one or another of my mushroom buddies usually brings me one this time of year. They are delicious – crisp and full of that mysterious taste of umami. Meaty. Fungal.

I met this year’s mushroom buddy just as he crossed the green bridge to Tinmouth, and I had just come down the hill with Mo. I noticed an old truck slowing, and when I recognized him I quickly glanced into the back of his truck and onto the cluttered seat beside him. “I left you something beside your door,” he said, nervously keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror. I knew what he meant. He brushed aside my ecstatic thanks. Another car approached the other side of the bridge and he sped creakily away.

I will separate the petals of the mushroom and scrape out the critters – not too many in this kind of mushroom, usually – and rinse off the litter, then fry them up. Only some of them – they keep their shape and don’t loose a lot of volume in cooking.

Maybe I’ll scramble some eggs – mushrooms and eggs go well together.

Then I’ll put the picked-over leavings in a jar and cover them with extra-proof vodka and let them macerate, and then I will have a tincture or a winter aperitif.
Asians prize Maitake – Grifola Frondosa – for its immune-enhancing and cancer-preventing properties, also for its deliciosity.

for all Pratico purposes

In a few weeks, we’ll have apples and winter squash littering our kitchens in bountiful and pleasant ways. But if the latter two descriptives are true, then the word ‘littering’ is not quite correct. Change that to ‘gracing’. But whatever. Today, what litters and at once graces our porches and kitchens is tomatoes. And really, it’s only the lucky ones of us – the ones whose gardens didn’t go into an extended sulk at the unprecedented amount of rain they were required to soak up – who have a litter of tomatoes to at once glory in and feel responsible to do something with.

...The Pratico tomato...

There are, as usual, exceptions to that rule, and I am one. My garden DID sulk, but I was the grateful recipient of a basket of Pratico tomatoes, which I talked about last year in an article called “Sex in the Garden” which dealt with, among other things, the Menduni and Pratico tomatoes.

If you’ll remember, the Pratico came from seeds given to Stephen Chamberlain of Dutchess Farm in Castleton by an elderly person at the Farmers’ Market one summer day, in the hopes that Steve would propagate an old family favorite. S/he said he’d developed them, part beefsteak, part paste tomato. Luckily, Steve did propagate them, thereby saving an incredibly ugly but luscious tomato. It’s a fat, long tomato tapering to a pointed blossom end. It has very little core, the shoulders are as tender and meaty as the rest of it, it has few seeds and jel, and lots of flavorful flesh.

...patsy...

After that article was published Ray Pratico, Jr. called me and offered this conjecture.

He thinks it was his great-uncle, Pasquale (Patsy) Pratico who developed – hybridized – the Pratico tomato. Patsy was the brother of Ray’s grandfather, Anthony Pratico, who started Pratico’s Barber Shop on Strongs Avenue next to Gill’s Delicatessen.

The brothers came from Reggio in Calabria, Italy, Patsy in 1918 and Tony in 1920.

Back in 1918, Pasquale escaped a horrendous depression in Italy and worked hard so that he could send back $35 for his brother’s passage. The depression taught him well. Ray remembers fishing with his Uncle Patsy on Lake Champlain, and when they caught an eel Patsy would bring it home to eat. “Fish that you and I would never consider eating, he would consider a delicacy.” He was a champion skeet shooter – learning when he was in Italy by being charged with taking a shotgun and shooting robins for the family’s dinner, “and he wasn’t to waste a shell by shooting only one robin, he had to shoot six at a time.” We imagined that they’d taste pretty good with a little tomato sauce.

Ray says that Uncle Patsy had a beautiful garden in his back yard at the south corner of Union and Forest in Rutland where he grew, not so much broccoli or cucumbers, but peppers “as big as my head,” and tomatoes – presumably developing, along the way, our precious Pratico – onions, garlic and eggplants, all the ingredients for a great sauce and parmesans. “And you did not want to be caught playing out in that back yard.” I did some exploring, and if what I found was Pasquale’s backyard and it is the same size it was then, I have to say it is truly tiny. But apparently Patsy planted every nook and cranny of it.

Anthony Pratico died in 1999, close to a hundred years old. Pasquale died in 1990.

Do they still have seeds for the Pratico tomato? Still grow it? Ray is uncertain, but he says, “Everyone buys Ragu, it’s cheap and it’s easy.”

I think I know where you could get some seeds, Ray, and continue carrying on a tradition.

...and grandmother menduni...

The Menduni had been saved from extinction by Claire Clarino, whose grandmother Menduni had brought seeds from her town in Italy called Chella, and had grown them until she died, when Claire took them over. “Claire saves seeds each year and grows them in her mother’s garden in Rutland, her ex-husband grows them in Key West where they climb to six feet or more, and a market gardener in Grand Isle grows large crops of them for sale,” I wrote then. They are a large, meaty plum shaped tomato, with excellent taste. Apparently they take a little longer to ripen, for I have not yet got my first taste of them this year.

...spreading the seed...

I saved seeds from the Menduni and the Pratico, and gave some to Paul Horton at Foggy Meadow Farm in Benson – he who was the giver, this year, of the basket of Praticos – and my friend Dana Squire in Virginia – she with a climate which allows her to plant the seeds directly into her – prolific – garden! – and Marilyn Burnham, gardener and cook extraordinaire, in South Wallingford.

Marilyn had no luck with them. They were fine until she put them into her rainy garden, and then they just stood right up and died. Dana, on the other hand, emailed me photos of her “thrilling” crop, saying, “I processed some last night – I don't usually grow plums – and what bliss to not have squirts going off in every direction. Delicious flavor. They will be featured all next month. They are huge – like 6" long!”

Paul Horton had good luck with germination, and planted about 20 plants, from which he and his partner, Sally Beckwith have “probably put up 40 pounds, and maybe we’ll get another 30 pounds.” They will not be widely available at the Foggy Mountain Farm stand at the Farmers’ Market this year, but he hopes for a larger crop next year.

In a couple of serendipitous asides, a friend gave Paul some tomato plants this spring that hailed from Providence, Rhode Island. By the time he got them they were rather sickly looking plants that he’s nursed along until they are producing some fruit that is now almost ready to taste. They are, he thinks, both a red and yellow Sergi Sicilian tomato, the red called Doro Rossi Lunghi, and the yellow P. Lunghi Gialli, and they are in appearance remarkably like the Pratico. Googling does nothing on this subject, but we wonder if they could possibly be from the same town in Italy, Reggio, each brought by different émigrés, a supposition that might hold a little more water if we did not already think that Pasquale Pratico ‘developed’ his tomato from beefsteak and plum tomatoes.

At the same time, a neighbor brought Paul some Jimmy Nardello pepper seeds, a multi-dimensionally sweet and intensely flavored banana-shaped pepper. They came originally from Seeds of Change, a company that was founded to save heirloom seeds that were in danger of dying out.

“This to me is really fascinating,” Paul told me, “because I think it’s really important that we have crops that we can save and share the seeds of, to reproduce these older varieties, because they’re reliable, and delicious, and because we need our own source of seeds without relying on seed companies.” Seeds of ordinary plants, like green beans, for instance, are getting much more expensive and even hard to get, other farmers have told me. Paul elaborated on that thought by saying, “More and more seed companies are being bought by big companies and the seed being hybridized and sold back to farmers.” It’s not good, we agree, when the seeds for our foods are all owned by industry!

That was the thought of Tom Stearns, the founder of High Mowing Seeds in Hardwick. In an article in the 9/03 Seven Days entitled Hungry Hardwick, Suzanne Podhaizer writes, “In 1995, [Stearns] began saving the seeds from his garden. ‘I was interested in having as self-sufficient a home garden as I possibly could,’ he recalls. After moving to Vermont, he realized he had more seeds than he could use, so he put together a miniature catalogue. In 2000, Stearns quit his day job to focus on his seeds full-time, and in 2005, decided to take the business national; with the economy in a slump and more people aiming to grow their own food, the move is paying off. ‘There’s a lot of people gardening who weren’t before,’ Stearns suggests.”

A little aside here – if you don’t follow Suzanne in either the online http://www.7dvt.com/ or the free hard copy of Seven Days, you should! She’s an indefatigable food sleuth, and what she doesn’t write about food from Middlebury to Montreal probably doesn’t merit writing about.

...saving tomato seeds...

Saving seeds, though, is a laborious process, especially if you want to save enough to take the product to market. So far, Sally and Paul are keeping most of the Praticos (the Mendunis aren’t quite ready yet) for their own use. Steve and Julia Chamberlain, too, keep most of their Praticos, though a few show up at the market. “Aren’t they the best tomatoes!” exclaims Julia, adding that it’s lucky for her that the tomatoes aren’t the gorgeous things that buyers expect. Steve adds that they’re poor yielding, too, and he can’t afford the time to train people to buy them for the taste. He mentions, though, that a Pratico relative from the Midwest, after reading the Sex in the Garden article, emailed Steve for some seeds.

Saving tomato seeds is a process of fermentation. Since Pratico tomatoes have very few seeds and little gel, lots of meat, you’ll have to do some digging. Slice the tomato in half lengthwise, maybe even into quarters. With a spoon, scrape the jel and seeds into a small bowl. Add a couple of tablespoons of water to the seeds. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap and then poke a small hole in it to allow for transpiration. Place it in a warm spot for two or three days, removing the plastic wrap each day to stir the mixture, then replace the plastic. There will be a layer of scum on top of the liquid when the fermentation process has separated the jel from the seeds, and destroyed many of the possible tomato diseases that might be harbored there. When this happens, pour the seeds into a fine kitchen sieve and rinse with water several times. Drain well and place on a piece of parchment or waxed paper and spread them into a single layer. Let them dry for maybe a week, stirring often. When they’re dry they do not stick to each other. To store them, wrap them envelope-style in parchment paper and label them with the name and the date.

...mfk symposium...

Lots of readers here seem to like MFK Fisher’s writing, and since this year she would have been 100 years old, the New School in NYC is hosting an MFK symposium on Sept. 22. It’s free for all students, only $8 for others, as I read it. Thought some of you MFK diehards would grab the chance. More details: A panel of distinguished guests celebrate the life of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, master food writer, and discusses her relationships with other American food celebrities, including Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters. Panelists include Amanda Hesser, food writer for the New York Time; Judith Jones, editor and author; Joan Reardon, author; and Kennedy Golden, Fisher’s daughter. Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, moderates. This event is offered in conjunction with a short course, MFK Fisher: Poet of the Appetites, beginning September 15; please visit www.newschool.edu/food studies for more information. Tickets: 212 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu

...didn’t i already mention marilyn...

My friend and neighbor Marilyn Burnham will be the next guest chef on What’s Cookin’ Rutland at Peg TV on Monday, 9/15. Marilyn is the superintendent of the Vermont State Fair’s culinary competitions, among other things, and she will introduce this year’s apple pie winner, Barbara Taraska, of Wallingford and points south, chat with host, Whitney Lamy, about the pleasures and tribulations of baking for, organizing, and judging the fair’s food contests, and show us how she makes her own apple pie. Studio guests will taste apple pies from Marilyn, Barbara, and Whitney.

What’s Cookin’ Rutland is taped from 6:00 – 6:30 PM, doors open at 5:30, and members of the audience must be seated by 5:45. You may bring your own beverages, if you like, a $10 donation is suggested, and for reservations call the Chaffee Art Center at 775-0356.

...hungry bikers wanted...

Got this note from Shelby Hammond of Rural Vermont about the TOUR DE FARMS event that Rural Vermont is hosting with the Addison County localvores and VT Bike-Ped Coalition. Choose a 10, 25, or 30 mile bike tour with stops through Shoreham at various farms and orchards to sample farm fresh goods. It's on Sunday the 21^st at 10:30 a.m. meeting in Shoreham. It’s $15 per adult and $8 for 15-and-unders, and you pre-register by calling (802)223-7222 or email Shelby@ruralvermont.org.

I’ve just done some investigation into Shoreham’s vital farm scene, and hmmm, wonder if my old bike still works...

The article “sex in the garden” can be found at http://thriceshy.blogspot.com/2008/03/sex-in-garden.html

This post was published As Twice Bitten Column in the Rutland Herald here.

...oh me, oh my...

We're just gliding in here, me ready to stop us, Leo backpeddling to slow.
Photo by Lowell Snowdon Klock

I do offer my best apologies about the appearance of the entry below (as of Tuesday the 9th, it will be above). Either blogspot or my computer is acting up, inserting lots of extraneous html and not allowing me to fix it all with my woefully inadequate html skills, though i was pleased pink that i managed to fix the worst of it. So your eye will jump from large typewriter script to teensy stuff. Hope you can read it. Best I can do now. It's been hours of a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I simply must leave it and go down to have a paddle.