first rhubarb pie

could almost eat this just like this, with egg on its face

about as good as it gets in piedom

Rhubarb Custard Pie

(from June 2007)

...the crust...

My grandmother’s crust was pale, never golden, even white. She used lard, and sometimes a bit of butter. It was slightly salty, never sweet, so that it was a flaky foil to any filling. Flaky? When your teeth bit into it they slid off each other, then through with a click, as though biting into a scrumptious, slightly salty, richly greasy, layered shaley stone. It was the queen of pie crusts, the one everyone else aspired to. After Grandma died, Aunt made the pies, for her crusts were closest, even though she would grunt, "Humph, not as good as Ma's, but..."

It took me years to learn to make a good crust, and that was only after I realized I had taken too seriously admonishments not to handle it too much and so it all fell apart when I tried to roll it out. I knew this, but could do nothing about it. Every time I tried to squeeze that dough together the bones in my fingers locked up.

This is the way I make it now: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Into the bowl of a food processor put 2 cups of unbleached flour (8 oz); ½ teaspoon salt; 1/3 cup cold butter cut into small chunks (3 oz); 1/3 cup of lard (3 oz). Pulse until the mixture is the size of coarse meal. Into 1/3 cup of water put two ice cubes, and, holding the ice back with your fingers, add it slowly to the flour mixture as you pulse the machine just until it forms a ball. I seldom use all the water, so go slowly and carefully. It shouldn’t be wet, but neither should it be too dry.

(To do this by hand, whisk together the flour and salt. Cut in the butter and lard until the texture is correct, sprinkle with the water, toss with a fork until the dough comes together in a ball.)

Flour a working surface, scrape the dough onto it, knead it a bit, pat into a smooth ball and divide it in half. Take the slightly larger half (for there will be one) and roll it out and fit it into your pie pan, making sure you have a generous overlap, say about 2 inches. Set aside and roll out the top crust and leave it while you make the filling.

...the filling...

(Adapted from James Beard’s American Cookery)

Whisk 2 large eggs until foamy. Whisk in 1 ½ cups granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, grated rind of ½ lemon or lime, and ¼ teaspoon salt (I do this all in the processor). Pour 4 (generous) cups rhubarb that has been cleaned, trimmed, and cut into 1/3 inch slices (it should be dry) into the bottom crust. Pour the egg mixture over the rhubarb, dot with about 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (don’t forget this step, as I often do: It’s VERY important) and gently position the top crust over the rhubarb. Again, there should be a generous overlap.

At this point I use shears to trim the two crusts evenly. Turn the overlap of the crusts under to seal, and then crimp the edges. They’ll be nice and thick and crispy when you’re done. Vent the top crust with the shears and sprinkle with turbinado sugar if you have it.

Don’t skimp on the sugar in a pie. I use practically no sugar on an everyday basis, but pies are the kind of special occasion on which, even when sugar was valuable and hard to get, it would be used abundantly.

Bake the pie at 450 degrees for fifteen minutes, then lower the heat to 325 degrees and bake for twenty or thirty minutes, or until the top crust is browned, the fruit is fork tender, and the filling is bubbling.

By baking for ten or fifteen minutes at a high heat, the bottom crust has less time to get soggy and the rhubarb gets a jump-start on becoming tender before the filling has time to boil and curdle the eggs. The long low-heat baking then thickens the custard – which will not “set” – while further tenderizing the rhubarb and crisping the crust.

... the topping...

I always serve my pies topped with a dollop of crème fraiche, which is delectably not-sweet, but tangy and unctuous with butterfat. You can buy it ready made, but I usually make mine at home. Because it’s simple.

To a pint of good heavy cream, that has not been ultra-pasteurized (Thomas’s is very good), whisk in 1 tablespoon buttermilk or sour cream just until it’s smooth – you don’t want to whip the cream. Cover loosely and set aside in a warm spot until it thickens, probably for at least six hours. You might want to think about this before you make the pie, as I did not as I wrote this recipe.

Virginia dogwood bloomed profusely this year in our little corner of Vermont

ramps are in

Sorry for my long absence. But a picture is worth a thousand words, isn't that right? I'll be back soon!

how sweet the green spring

How sweet it is, when you have not “had time to cook” in what seems like months, that you are nevertheless certain to make the time to walk into the Farmers’ Market and pick up a dozen eggs all speckled brown perfection in their carton, and some yellow-veined green chard fresh from the field and certainly some spinach; and when you exclaim, as you dig out your last change for a box of blue and yellow and orange carrots, “Oh, I need potatoes, too, but I’m cleaned out,” the farmer says “we have TONS of potatoes. I’m going to give you some” and she dumps a little peck of them in with the carrots. Because that’s just how sweet it is, you remind yourself, when you are among friends and good, earthy food!

And still sweet when you tear yourself away from the conversations and music at the Market and they follow you through the Co-op and out upon the sidewalk, and then you go home to a garden full of sorrel and Egyptian onions, and garlic sprouting greenly up, and nubbins of rhubarb looking like a jigsaw puzzle all brilliant red and black and green – all growing up out of the ground, and it is 82 degrees in Rutland on April third.

Well, that’s pretty sweet, and you must appreciate it NOW, because beautiful weather isn’t free, you know. You’re going to pay for it later...

That’s how I’ve been feeling lately – a life full of hit-the-ground-running mindset interspersed with moments of recognition of what’s really important, as well as the occasional opportunity to really enjoy it.
In that Saturday afternoon lull that I speak of, I decide to make a cup of tea. I open the dishwasher because there are no clean cups hanging under the cupboard. There in that malodorous machine the state of my life is made apparent. The upper level proliferates in dirty glasses and cups and grungy plastic containers and the lower one in forks and soup spoons, and all the tablespoons I own because I use them each day for my dog’s yogurt (he still gets HIS supper), and knives that we use for butter and peanut butter on morning toast. All that while the plate rack remains woefully empty. Not too many sit-down meals have gone on in this house for some time now. Quick short-order is about it.

So I decide to make a quiche. Because I have these lovely fresh ingredients, and because the tools involved in making and eating it will fill up the empty spaces in the dishwasher so it can be guiltlessly run.

But I chide myself for those thoughts – the making of a quiche is a pleasant enough thing in itself; and the eating of it no less so. Especially when you have not been cooking anything with any like degree of preparation time and planning in recent history.

In that recent history I have met many people who do not have time to cook for themselves, let alone their families, and very little inclination, anyway, because they don’t perhaps KNOW how to cook, at least something the thought of which whets their appetite. KFC anyone? Whenever I find myself in these circumstance I think of the young working families who have children at home, whose lives are hectic and short on time. What happens when they need a meal?

I count myself lucky that I can decide to make a quiche and then simply MAKE it, because I know how to do it without having to look up a recipe that calls for so much Swiss chard and so much this and that. I know to prepare the single crust from a cup of flour, some butter or lard, some salt, and enough ice water to bring it together. I know to shred the cheese and put half of it over the crust, prepare the chard and onions, and the formula for the custard. And to put it into a really HOT oven in order to cook the bottom crust and then to turn the heat down so that the custard doesn’t curdle. I wish I could teach the whole world to cook, to take advantage of real food.

Another blessed evening I am again lucky. I have the time and the garden that I can walk out into and pick a stem of lovage and some chives and take them in and drop them on some Trader Joe’s green beans steaming over a pot of simmering water. Whenever I find a TJs I stock up on olive oil and those great frozen green beans – they are small, like French green beans, les haricots vert, I believe, zydeco for short, and tender and flavorful.

And here is my yearly reminder that lovage is a plant that everyone should have in their garden. Its beauty is not in its appearance, which is large and raw and straggly, but in the flavors of tarragon and celery that it adds to soups and vegetables, even potato salad.

Along with the green beans, which will be dropped into a warm bowl and dressed with butter, salt and pepper before we eat them, I have chicken wings from the Farmers’ Market, that I’ve given a long, SLOW roast with garlic and jalapeno, and the first arugula from a booth at the Farmers’ Market – Singing Cedars, I think.
On the plate the arugula, green beans and chicken wings are all dressed with separate drops of a really good sherry vinegar and some shards of gorgonzola that has aged quite magnificently in the cheese drawer in my fridge for at least two months. What a plate full of different and entirely melodious tastes – a rare treat these days!

After supper I wander through the gardens, the yard, around the house on the corner lot that wants to be a farm, through all the plots, at least three times, noticing and planning, and gathering different specimens of the daffodils that grow there. I wonder what I am doing filling this spring up with so much unspringlike work, that hit-the-ground-running attitude, and then I take the daffs into the house and plop them into a little cream pitcher my grandmother gave me, and then I take a picture of them. One of them is prettier than the others, with a bright orange ruffling out of the center. Bah, I say, I’ll bet that beauty is not the best smelling one. I sniff each of them, from the plainest to the flashiest.

Hah. I was wrong. The prettiest DOES smell the sweetest.

From Blog how sweet the green spring

Sometimes that’s just the way it is!

**

Slow-Roasted Chicken Wings

As some of you know, I buy locally grown, pastured meats, and that includes chicken. Until lately, when the McMurrys at Sunset Farm found a way to sell chicken parts, a meal of chicken wings was a thing of the past. These wings are large and meaty. Find Jeff or Cathy at the Rutland Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.

Preheat the oven to 425°

Smear a large shallow pan –a rimmed pizza pan works well – with butter. Take 3 pounds of chicken wings, dry them with paper towels if necessary, lock the wing tip over the drumstick, place each on the pan, sunny side up, grind salt and pepper over them, sprinkle with finely chopped jalapeno and garlic, drizzle with olive oil, and place in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, or until golden and crispy.

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.

when in Culebra, eat as Culebrians do

Typical lunch -- chicharrones my addition

“When in Rome...,” quoth I the other day when my companion complained that his pre-plane Bloody Mary was rather watery. We weren’t in Rome, but believe me when I tell you that the choice of a Piña Colada couldn’t have been more apt in this instance.

We'd fled Vermont just on the leading edge of that nasty spell a week or so ago, when it was still deep winter, and came back to balmy, sunny skies filled with the steam of maple sap and signs of spring. Since when have I been so lucky? Well, “Lucky is as lucky does,” as Grandma used to say, and we did skedaddle ahead of plan, nevertheless finding ourselves in the Dartmouth Coach (what a great deal) grinding sideways up (or down) 89 in a foot of snow on the way to Boston; but better that than standing in grounded Rutland APO missing our Boston/San Juan flight.

Because, yes, we were on our way to the little island I wrote about last year, where the flock of wild chickens that roams it wakes you at 4:30AM crowing raucously PUERto RIco, PUERto RIco! They scratch and scavenge up and down the island, making a mess of your gardens and planters, meanwhile providing a certain amount of protein for hardened islanders. “Makes wonderful soup,” one of them told Leo, and indeed they are all handsome, feathers glowing, living the good life under that hot hot sun.

Culebra, with the creamy white sands, the long white rollers on the edge of the turquoise sea, the thorny acacia, the rutted roads, and the house of friends high above the bay.

View from the deck. Bougainvillea is rooting. Book? Fortress of Solitude

The drill? Wake and wander through the breezy, bright kitchen to get coffee then out to the deck to observe the sun’s progress up over the end of the bay. Walk. Breakfast. Read. Lunch. Desultory conversation. Read. Beach. Showers. Cocktails. Conversation. Dinner. Discussion. Bed. To be repeated next day. Lovely way of alleviating the sense of existential loneliness caused by residing in one separate body and mind.

Zoni Beach, inaccessible, with a shrouded St. Thomas in the distance

The only decisions needing to be made were which beach, the secluded and lovely Zoni or the more accessible and world-class Flamenco; and what and where is dinner. Oh, and whether or not it’s worth it to break the unspoken agreement to agree to disagree. Diverse opinions there!

Breakfast consisted of eggs (each marked “U.S.” in blocky red-inked letters), bacon, English muffins, and fruit – grapefruit, bananas, mango, pineapple, and papaya, most from local trees. Lunch was usually sandwiches made of the only bread that could be had, which was tan and square with the consistency of Wonder, along with coldcuts – mostly ham and swiss cheese, and whatever salad was left over from dinner the night before. Chips and bottles of pickles and green olives usually accompanied the sandwiches. Some of us eschewed sandwiches and resorted to the gigantic local avocados, drizzled with olive oil and chopped garlic, salt and pepper, or else tucking slices of them into sandwiches.

But dinner was a different story; that was where we shone. At home, grilled tuna, red snapper, pork loin. Potato salad, lentil salad, pineapple and yellow peppers brushed with garlic and olive oil and then grilled. Man, that was good. The pork was marinated in the spicy fish sauce Nuac Cham we’d made the night before as an accompaniment to the tuna.

It was a whole different way of eating, of course – I hadn’t had sandwiches like those since I was there the last time. The fruit and the avocados were local, but nothing else – even the fish had been imported from Boston, I imagine. There you are, surrounded by fishy seas but the fish are... unavailable, though we did see one sign on top of an insulated picnic cooler advertising fresh fish but didn’t have the opportunity to investigate. The pork was very good, so it may have come from the main island. Puerto Rican cuisine is known for its pork, as well as its use of dried cod (bacala).

“But not for its beans,” chided a restaurant owner in Old San Juan, where we spent a few days before taking the small plane to Culebra. “You have us confused with Mexicans,” she spat. In Old San Juan we explored and ate tapas, which were invariably small regularly shaped items, like bacala, coated in that tan granulated cornmeal that makes everything look industrial and pre-formed whether it is or not. Much to my chagrin, time after time these tasted like they were. Our last morning, after the early morning flight from Culebra, we took a cab to El Convento, a fabulous 400 year old Carmelite convent-cum-hotel, for breakfast. I spent the morning within its thick walls and shaded courtyards just wandering around inspecting the original art and tapestries or sitting in a cool corner reading. I heartily recommend it.

In Culebra, we did go back to visit the fabulous Jennifer at Juanita Bananas, the hilltop restaurant I wrote about last year that is owned by the young couple who grew much of their produce hydroponically just outside the restaurant, and set up a system to obtain much of their fish from local fishermen. But no more. Our visit to their full-moon tapas celebration was disappointing, no fresh produce in sight, the little dishes too few and uninspired. Apparently a new baby is taking up their time these days.

Another night we had a superb dinner at the new Susie’s, right by the bay in an old fish house in the small – and only – town of Dewey. In the open air, accompanied by the cats that also roam the island (I’ve seen them lazing about surrounded by baby chicks), we ate our plantain mash, fresh fish, and nice sauces with gusto.

We were back in Vermont by last Saturday’s Winter Farmers’ Market, and I burst in there, too, with lots of gusto! Local food! My friends, the farmers! You’d think I’d been gone a month!

I’m not complaining about the food in Culebra – not a bit! We make our own good times and good food. But how much better to be able to rave about it.

I wonder. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to help make the wonderful little island sustainable again? People growing their own pork, catching their own fish, planting their own gardens and small farms? Hmmm. Six months here, six months there. Doesn’t sound too shabby!

In the meantime I bought those Boardman Hill pork chops and a small pineapple from the Co-op, and that’s what we’ll be having for dinner! And maybe a Piña Colada.
You know, made out of pure Vermont rum, coconut, and pineapple! How local can you get?

Published as Twice Bitten column, Rutland Herald, 09 March, 2010

textures... tree ears & perfect veal

Long, long ago, Leo bartered something he made or designed for a whole busload of veal. Veal? Yes. Did we appreciate it? You bet we did. Except that we were totally unfamiliar with it, all but the pounded and breaded cutlets called Wiener Schnitzel, which we had only eaten in restaurants. It was probably my first experience of pounding any meat, and probably the first hurdle was finding a suitable pounder. Now I have a 9 inch, 3 pound cleaver, found at a yard sale, that only needs to get within sight of a piece of meat to pound it thin as a pancake. You drop it, you don’t swing it!

But there were only so many cutlets in that busload of veal. There was a lot of stew meat, too, and I made up a dish I just called White Stew to showcase it. It’s one of my earliest invented recipes. It should all be pale, I thought, as the young veal that had been sacrificed for it. It involved quickly browning the small veal chunks – not even browning them, just a quick stir fry – and adding other pale ingredients such as mushrooms and cannellini beans, and reconstituted tree ears, which are a form of mushroom that have not much flavor but a wonderful, cartilaginous crunch; then simmering all this for maybe half an hour in chicken broth. At the very end I took it from the heat and swirled in a knob of butter, which thickened it and made it silky. I discovered this on my own, though of course I’ve found out since what the French always knew – that the milk solids and proteins in the butter form an emulsion that creates a thick and shiny sauce. If it was put back on the heat after the butter was added the creaminess would be lost, so immediately I served it in soup bowls over egg noodles. It was delicious.

Then we ran out of that wonderful grass-fed veal, and the stew was so good I continued to make it with pork. Somewhere along the way I forgot the tree ears, and only when I was reading the book I mentioned last time, The Last Chinese Chef, did I remember them. The chef explains, “I think it’s fair to say we control texture more than any other cuisine does. In fact some dishes we cook have nothing at all to do with flavor. Only texture; that is all they attempt. Think of beche-de-mer. Or wood ear.” But where to find tree ears? I asked Becca at the Co-op, and she got some in for me. These are, indeed, called Wood Ears, distributed by FungusAmongUs. I left a few bags, so get them while you can.

As for veal? Many people are not eating veal these days because of the inhumane way it has been raised. But dairy farmers have no use for poor baby boy calves, and some of them are keeping them with their mothers and letting them eat grass until they reach the desired age to be slaughtered for veal. That might seem evil, but it’s better than causing them to be taken away at a very young age to be sent to Campbell’s Soup factories. The pale pink meat of a naturally raised veal is delectable. You might try to find some, and helpful in that search might be issue 11 of Vermont’s Local Banquet, the winter 2010 issue, which is devoted to grass-fed, locally-grown meat issues. It’s free, and can be found at the Co-op or at Book King.

White Veal Stew

serves 3 or 4 and can be doubled or tripled
allow the wide, shallow soup bowls to warm

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound. pork or veal cut in ½ inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons tree ears, reconstituted in hot water for 20 minutes, drained, squeezed, and chopped coarsely
• 6 dried Chinese black mushrooms, treated as above, stemmed, but sliced; or ¼ pounds shiitakes, sliced
• 12 small pearl onions, peeled
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 can cannellini beans (or 1 cup dried beans soaked overnight and cooked)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3 or 4 tablespoons butter
• egg noodles

Get a fairly large sauté or frying pan hot, add the olive oil and when that is hot, scatter in the veal or pork, shake and stir just until the meat whitens, then turn the heat to medium low. Add the tree ears, mushrooms, and onions and stir fry for 5 minutes. Don’t allow them to brown, just cook through. Add the chicken broth and bring to a simmer, cover and let slowly bubble for 20 minutes, until the onions are tender.
In the meantime, bring a large pot of water to the boil for the noodles.

Add the beans to the simmering soup, add salt and pepper to taste, cover again and let it come to a simmer for another 10 minutes or until the noodles are done.

Cook the noodles, and when they are done, drain, reserving a little of the cooking water in the pan, and return the noodles to the water in the pan and cover it to keep them warm. Turn the heat off under the stew and swirl in the butter. Dish out the noodles and ladle the stew over them, and serve ‘em up!

***

It’s the best time of the year, actually, about as far as you can get from next February. There’s the texture of spring in the air, thoughts of wild leeks and morel mushrooms in the mind. The light will only stay longer for another several months, and I intend to enjoy it. Here’s hoping you do, too!

textures... cast iron & perfect pork chops

Sad but true – that you can love something so passionately for so long, and then one day you imagine how they could be better, and it’s hardly a breath before they’re moldering in the cellar and a bright new thing, better than the old, becomes the apple of your eye.

Oh, don’t worry – Leo’s fine – I haven’t found anything better than he yet, but your thoughts and commiseration might light on my flat little cast iron grill pan. Poor thing.

I always really loved that small pan that I got down in Boston’s North End a couple of years ago. Now that I think of it, what’s wrong with that statement? Now that I think about it that pan has resided in my kitchen for 20 years or more, that’s all. That’s what a ‘coup’la’ refers to as you get older. It was a time when several women friends would do weekends in Boston, go to the Faneuil Hall Market on Saturday and slide freshly opened oysters down our gullets, pick up fresh garlic (gasp) shoots in February, and other at-that-time esoteric things, and lug gallons of Italian olive oil back to the hotel. I found the pan in the front of a great little combination Italian ingredient/utensil/eating place where we’d stopped for dessert after a winey dinner elsewhere. We went to Jasper White’s restaurant then, and the food was top-notch and so was the service, and Jasper would always come over to say hi. We went to Lydia Shire’s Biba, wonderful food, extraordinarily expensive. As well, we went to Legal Seafood and other Boston tourist attractions. I lugged that heavy little pan back to the hotel and back to Vermont.

The secret is to get that pan really hot (turn on the exhaust fan), until heat waves are distorting reality and then slap on your perfectly formed hamburger patties (2) or pork chops (2), either rubbed with garlic and sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper, and let’er rip. For the hamburgers I do 4 minutes on one side, flip ‘em, cover them with a deep pan cover and turn the heat off. When the sound of sizzling fat quiets you will take off the cover and find perfectly caramelized and marked meats, the hamburger will be perfectly (medium) done. The pork chops, if thick, the way I like them, are grilled sizzling 4 minutes per side and then will be ready to do 20 minutes in a 375° oven to be juicy and done just right – to me that means the juices run brown, not pink. Sorry, can’t get around pink pork, which some cooks are calling for now that the danger of trichinosis is deemed to be over.

What you’ll also have is spattered grease in a three foot aura around that great little grill pan to clean up.
So after all these years, I had an idea – why not replace the flat grill pan with a larger grill pan with frying-pan sides? Lodge made one that I’d seen, and wouldn’t that do a lot toward containing the mess, especially with a spatter screen. Which wouldn’t work with the flat pan.

Well. Good idea. But I did not act on it, would only think of it when I was cleaning up the mess. Then yesterday I went down to the basement to get a package of hamburger out of the freezer, and what should my eye rest upon? Why, upon a high-sided cast-iron grill pan, part of my daughter’s storage while she’s off conquering the world. It’s been sitting there for three years. My eye must have ignored it several thousand times.

I cleaned it up – it was a little rusty and dusty from the damp and dusty cellar – anointed it with olive oil and let it sit on the pilot light for most of the day, then grilled up some pork chops that very night. It was the BEST pork chop I’ve ever had. I voiced those sentiments, and Leo said, “I believe it might be.” It was tender. Juicy. FULL of healthy pork flavor. I began to think about it. I’d gotten them at the Farmers’ market on Saturday, from Greg Cox at Boardman Hill Farm. “Why do you suppose they’re so good,” asked Leo. Well, Greg is the only pork producer I know of who lets his pigs forage in a forested hillside, which is how pigs like to live, and which means that they don’t have to eat as much grain or slops (sorry about that, but those are the facts), and maybe their bodies make healthier, better-tasting meat when they live and eat as they are made to live and eat. In addition, Greg tells me that his pigs are free-feeders, which means that there’s always organic grain for them to eat when they like, AND his pigs are not pushed to slaughter weight. They grow naturally and are killed later.

I trust that is enough of a recipe for making great pork chops. I like to grill some fruit with them, some halved and cored apples, maybe, a slice or two of pineapple. That’s it.

We and the pigs thank you, Greg!

of birds, bees, & breakfast

Red Bellied Woodpecker, art by Isobel Gabel Nimtz

“Why do bees make so much honey?” I demanded of Leo as I breezed into the kitchen this frigid morning.

“Why do birds fly so high?” he asked in return. Sometimes that man does not skip a beat.

“Don’t they-ay know, it’s the ennnnd of the wo-orrrld?” I trilled interrogatively as I opened the frigid door onto the frigid porch and snatched the frigid paper inside.

Refrains and verses might have been muddled stream-of-consciously, but who cared. The Out was cold, the In was warm. And we – how lucky could we be? – were IN. With the Herald and cups of freshly brewed coffee and no-one had forgotten to get the half-and-half.

Which was probably because it was an Audubon morning – brrrrrrrr – and Leo would join a dozen hardy souls to walk around the West Rutland marsh, counting birds and species and twittering intently when in doubt. And the night before Audubon mornings Leo is likely to soak some flattened oats to prepare his oatmeal in the morning. And one needs light cream for oatmeal as for coffee.

And the bees? Off the top of my head, they were lightly winter-dreaming around the queen in the shape and size of a quivering football (I can see Dave Fretz of Shrewsbury Laurel Hill Honey fame, measuring a football size lovingly with his hands), keeping her warm, protecting her, juddering lightly in their dreams, keeping their ownselves warm, the outer ones moving slowly in, pushing the inner ones out for their turn to cool down. Nipping a little high-energy honey from their stores to keep them going.

I would love to join the birders, but I have a morning meeting and I will wait till Leo’s gone and take his leftover oatmeal and sprinkle it with sea salt, side it with a scoop of plain, whole yogurt, and drizzle it with a spoonful of honey, just getting going a little later than he needs to.

Mmm Mmm Mmm, very good!

Of course I like it the way Grandma made it for me, too – a sliver of butter in the bottom of the bowl, steaming oatmeal on top, a crunch of sugar over that, the whole drowned in cream. Though I never eat it that way now because I am convinced of the evil of sugar and refined flour, though the latter is harder to escape.

And why does he soak it? Well, because I related to him a fact that I gathered from Nourishing Traditions, that soaking grains makes the nutrients in them more available to the body and friendly to the digestion.
Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, is a fascinating treatise on old ways, slow food, and the validity of ‘old wives’ tales’ and time-worn techniques. About grains, they write, “Traditional societies usually soak or ferment their grains before eating them, processes that neutralize phytates and enzyme inhibitors and, in effect, predigest grains so that all their nutrients are more available.”

It’s the same with beans. For years I advised readers that unless your dried beans were old – in which case you should not be using them anyway – they need not be soaked overnight, that they cooked up just fine without it. Which is true, but soaking, again, neutralizes those phytates and enzyme inhibitors, and they are much better for your body as well as the noses and ears of those around you. So, I take it back – soak your beans, People.

There are many more such ‘truks’ of the trade of being an old wife or a cook (not always the same thing) in Nourishing Traditions, and it is well worth the (fascinating) read.

But back to breakfast. In my growing-up house we often had corn meal mush as a cereal, hot, and prepared just the way Grandma made the oatmeal – with butter and sugar and cream. It was a favorite bedtime snack of mine for years until I realized just how much ‘nutrition’ was contained in one bowl of the delicious stuff, and that nutrition was sticking to my hips.

Of course corn meal mush is nothing but polenta under a different and more appetizing name, and sometimes a different preferred grind of the corn. Which brings us to the subject of sweet and savory as regards breakfast cereals.

Polenta is usually served in savory ways, but it can also be cooked, cooled in a flat pan, then fried up in crisp squares in butter and served with a drizzle of maple syrup. Or honey. Or strawberry jam, for that matter. In that case, it’s much like Johnnycake, which is a moist cornbread served with syrup, usually – in my case – for supper. Rice that is leftover from a chicken dinner can be warmed and served with – yup, you guessed it – butter, sugar, cream. Or cook it fresh, in the morning, with plumped raisins, and you won’t have to use a bit of sugar. It takes 20 minutes.

Or there’s congee – a Chinese breakfast wherein rice is cooked with more water than usual – say 3 cups of water to 1 cup of rice – and served with various toppings which might include “tiny squares of crunchy pickle, slivers of greens, velvety cubes of tofu, tiny smoke-dried Hunan fish mounded up in a crispy, silvery tangle.” That was a quote from another fascinating book – a novel this time – called The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. Her chef also has at the ready, “peanuts, shreds of river moss, crunchy soaked fungus, and matchsticks of salty Yunnan ham.” I would add a drizzle of soy sauce, a drop of sesame oil. Young-La sometimes serves this at the Farmers’ Market at her Flavors of Asia booth, although I believe she calls it jook. Most Asian countries have their own version.

Farro is another grain to start experimenting with. It’s ancient, perhaps the earth-mother of our wheats and spelts and barleys. It needs to be soaked overnight, or for a couple of hours during the day if you’re having it for a later meal, and takes only 20 or 30 minutes to cook after soaking. It’s good any time of day, alone, with butter and salt and pepper, or prepared in a sweet way, I imagine, though I haven’t tried it that way. The Killington Ave Market and Deli makes a pureed cannellini bean soup with the chewiness of farro grains in it. I’ve made that and it IS delicious.

Note: This is a little off the subject of grains, but smack-dab ON the subject of KAM&D, and that is the best sandwich I’ve ever had. In my LIFE. It’s Porchetta on Focaccio. In Italy, where Bob and Becky first fell in love with it, a whole, small pig would be stuffed with herbs like sage and fennel and roasted. Bob takes a whole pork shoulder, butterflies it, layers it with caramelized onion and sage, rolls it up and rubs it with roasted and ground fennel and coriander. Next day it’s roasted in a slow oven for many hours. It’s left to rest overnight, then thinly sliced and mounded on a halved, toasted, olive-oil-drizzled flatbread with... nothing else! Sublime. All roast porkiness with a faint anise scent and flavor, on that crisp-tender bread. Man-O-Man, it is a revelation! They roast it on Monday and begin offering it on Tuesday. When it’s gone, it’s gone until the next week. I’ve got a pork shoulder in the fridge just begging to be treated in this multi-stepped way, but when I’ve done it once, I imagine I’ll leave all that work up to them.

Okay, more grains for breakfast. Mark Bittman cooks up some bulgar, adds flax seeds, coconut, sautéed tofu, fish sauce, scallions (click on his name for more great suggestions). How about fried up leftover noodles (which are a kind of value added grain, as is bread) with an egg on top, maybe ginger and scallions over that.

My food-writer friend John Thorne (Simple Cooking Foodletter) likes steaming fresh-cooked spaghetti paired with a fried egg, all mixed together, though, in his case, he craves it as a pre-breakfast, midnight snack. Quinoa is a really neat little grain, but to tell you the truth it doesn’t appeal to me just now as a breakfast grain.

Both quinoa and farro make great side salads or lunch dishes when you combine them with bits of cooked vegetables and bits of fish or fowl and dress them with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

One of my fave breakfasts is multi-grain bread, toasted, buttered, slathered with Vermont peanut butter, topped with really good horseradish, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. I see you grimacing, but I tell you – it’s delicious!

A note on cooking grains. Most need a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part grain. A little more water won’t hurt. Salt will bring out the flavors. If you’re cooking cornmeal, pour the meal into cold water and bring slowly to a simmer. That prevents clumping and lumping you get when you pour it into boiling water.

So do you need a recipe for any of these breakfasts? Nah, I don’t think so. Get on down to the Co-op (Rutland’s is at 77 Wales Street) and walk straight back to the bulk section and fill yourself some plastic bags with whole or flattened grains, and maybe a few smaller bags with spices and seasonings. Best-kept secret in town, that bulk section. You can’t find less expensive, fresher spices and grains in the world, the variety is great, and many of those grains have been grown right here in this little state.

Think Out of the Box; think of those buzzing bee footballs, watch the birds at the feeder.

This morning while Leo’s out traipsing around in the cold, spotting birds, I spoon up my oatmeal with yogurt and Philip’s elderberry/apple jelly and watch the birds at my feeder: the big Red-bellied Woodpecker visits, as do his cousins Mr. and Mrs. Downy and Mr. and Mrs. Hairy. Goldfinchs and White-breasted Nuthatches. Cedar Waxwings. Mr. Bluejay and he legion of raucous brothers. Titmouses. Whoa, Mr. Cardinal’s scarlet blares out of the green cedar and then I spy Mrs. Cardinal, whose browns and mauves I think are, if anything, more beautiful than his one red. We have a new little guy, and Leo tells me it’s a Brown Creeper.

I will not feel guilty at how beautiful life can be! The oatmeal is good. It could feed the world.

Rutland County Audubon Society at a Lake Champlain picnic.
Snow and ice were scraped from the table before sitting down.