it's all about the chicken

Chicken killing Wednesday on Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, involves family and community, not least
Joel Salatin's grandson pickin' pinfeathers, standing on a five gallon bucket. Go here for more Polyface photos.

Where I come from, killing chickens – we did not call it anything but killing – was just a little something you learned in order to grow up knowing how to take care of yourself with your head screwed on right, akin to having a little mad money knotted into the corner of your handkerchief when you went out with a boy so as not to have to ‘depend’ upon him too much and get yourself locked into unwholesome ‘situations’ you didn’t want to be in.

The process is etched in my bones. Grandma, sorrowfully but matter-of-factly, would go into the chickenyard where they scratched and cooed in the fresh air and under the sun, catch the chickens one at a time, hold it, smooth its wings, while, with a faraway look in her eyes, she decided if this particular chicken’s time had come or not. She loved her chickens, while I did not.

Those who ran from her in their funny two-skinny-legged panic were caught with a chicken snicker – a wooden handle on a long stiff wire with a curve at the other end. It was snaked out to catch a chicken by the ankle and the surprised chicken swiftly pulled into Grandma’s arms. Those chosen were then hung by their feet from a twine loop strung on a line not used for clothes where Grandpa caught each by its downed head and snicked its throat with a razor. That chicken then began its death throes and the blood spattered widely around as it bled out and finally hung still. A big cast-iron cauldron of water had been heated in the chickenyard, and the chicken briefly was plunged into it to loosen the feathers before it was plucked.
That’s where my ‘help’ came in. Though I hated the smell of the hot wet feathers, and the feel of the feathers as they stuck to my hands and my clothing, and even felt as though they clung to my face and made me itch all over, still I did my little part.

Then Grandpa would cut off the head and, now that I think of it, probably enlarge the anus, and Grandma would pull out the innards and separate out the gizzard, the liver, and the heart from the odoriferous pile. Then, when they were all de-feathered and gutted and pretty clean, she’d take them into the kitchen and tip an iron burner on the wood range, shove a newspaper twist into the flames and flash-singe all the remaining pin-feathers on each corpse. That was about it, except of course she had to clean those gizzards by slicing them halfway through, turning them inside out and disposing of the stones and grains from the last meal they’d eaten. But that was worth it – the gizzard was Grandma’s favorite part, and since she shared it with me it became my favorite part, too. We’d also share the liver, and sometimes the heart. We shared in the kitchen, over the counter, before we sat down with the rest of them.

Usually the family would have at least one chicken dinner from the slaughter, while the rest – maybe 7 or 11, were packaged up for her chicken- and egg- customers.

We never had a platter of chicken wings, or chicken breasts. We had the whole chicken either roasted in its altogether or cut into back, wings, breast, neck, thighs and legs, then fried or stewed: chicken soup, chicken and dumplings, chicken and biscuits. Always gravy. Yummm.

Think about this – if you had to raise and kill the birds, yourself, and clean them, how many platters of chicken wings would you put away? Not too very darn many, I’d think, especially as there are only two on each chicken. Nor do you if you are a good boy or girl and buy your chickens pastured from a local farmer at the Farmers’ Market or down the street from you. For that matter, if you had to kill the chicken first you probably wouldn't eat too much chicken period!

Jeff McMurry raises his free-range chickens (selling them and their eggs at the Rutland Farmers' Market)
out in the country between Fort Ann and North Granville, New York.

Most pastured chickens do not come with the gizzards and liver packaged inside of them either, though Jeff and Cathy McMurry, who sell their Sunset Farm chickens and eggs (and rabbits and some beef, etc.) at the Rutland Farmers’ Market, package the livers, gizzards, and hearts and sell them separately to those who want them. Jeff's reasoning is that for those people who don’t want the offal it saves them a little bit of money, and for those who do – there they are. He also sells some chicken ‘parts’ such as breasts and legs separately.

Most of these farmers, if they do their own chicken killing, have invested in a chicken funnel – the chicken is thrust into it quickly so its head sticks out the bottom and its throat quickly snicked – instead of clothesline and twine; and a rolling barrel with rubber fingers which makes plucking easier. These do not make the process joyful, but ease the laboriousness quite a bit.

Last year Leo and I found ourselves in Virginia near the town of Swoope, where Joel Salatin lives -- he who was immortalized by Michael Pollan for his sustainable sun-to-grass-to-flesh Polyface Farm. As soon as we arrived and saw the Rube-Goldberg-like operation going on behind the house, I realized it was Wednesday – chicken killing day.

Joel was out and about on the farm, but his son, Daniel, was heading up the operation, and it was for all the world just like a strawberry packing operation that I’m more familiar with – everyone with their specific job on the ‘line’ all the way down to a small boy, Joel’s grandson, standing on a five gallon pail by his daddy at the end of the line, rather ineffectually picking pinfeathers out of the carcasses with his little fingers. This, of course, is how we meat-eaters are inoculated against the tragedy that human beings are carnivorous. And yes, there was a fiesta feeling in the air, lots of smiles and small talk – things were getting done, communally, that needed to be done.

So, thanks to Joel and Jeff and countless farmers who raise quality foods, we don’t have to kill our own chicken every time we want a chicken dinner, but it’s good to keep in mind that someone has to, and not to be too profligate about our demands for flesh, and to make good use of every bit of it.

***

When I buy a chicken it’s usually whole, and it’s usually frozen. After it’s defrosted I either roast it and make a soup out of the leavings, or, and I think this works best, I cut it up into two breast portions, two legs, and two thighs, with the wings and the back, as well as all the other bones, used to make a stock and then soup.

If you do the cutting up when the chicken still is partially frozen it’s easier because the flesh is firm, and the parts you aren’t using immediately can go back in the freezer. In that case I would use the breast first. Which is what I did the other night when I got a hankering for chicken cutlets from a suggestion by a fellow food-blogger, for Grilled Chicken Paillard with Gremolata. As you probably know, Paillard is American chefspeak for chicken breast, and a gremolata is parsley, garlic, and lemon zest chopped together. And as you can see, I breaded the cutlets instead of grilling them, which I think helps enclose the juices and keeps them moist. Free-range chickens can get a little sinewy, and will benefit by this treatment.
The following yields 2 servings.

Breaded Lemon Chicken Cutlets

1 whole chicken breast (2 halves) boned but including the skin; Zest of 1 lemon (zest the lemon into a small bowl so that it catches the spurting oils as well as the zest); Juice of 1 lemon; 1 egg; Panko bread crumbs – about a cup; 1 clove garlic; several sprigs of parsley; Salt & Pepper.

Peel the skin from the chicken, using your fingers and a small, sharp knife, and lay it out right-side-up in a frying pan. Turn the heat to medium low and render until the skin is crisp and all the fat is liquid in the pan, turning it a couple of times and pressing it down.Turn the heat off, remove the crisp skins, salt them, and eat them. Mmmmm. Chef’s rights! Leave that chicken fat right in the pan.

In the meantime pound each chicken half-breast until not very thin but even – probably about 1/3 inch thick. Place them into a bowl or plastic bag and cover with the lemon juice and a liberal sprinkling of salt. Close the bag, sucking all the air out of it, squish it so the lemon juice covers all the meat, or, if using a bowl do your damnedest to make the same thing happen. Refrigerate for at least ½ hour.

When the skin is rendered and every last bit of it is enjoyed, and you’ve licked your fingers, break the egg into a flat bowl and whisk until not stringy. Pour the panko crumbs into another flat bowl. Drain the chicken cutlets and dredge in the egg and then in the bread crumbs. Set aside to dry a bit while you prepare the pan.

Heat the chicken fat with a bit of additional olive oil and even some butter, if you like. Over a medium high heat brown the cutlets until golden on each side. Salt and pepper to taste. Place the chicken (in the same pan if it is ovenproof) in a 400° oven for about 20 minutes.

In the meantime, make the gremolata – chop the garlic, parsley and lemon zest until fine, put back into the small zest bowl and stir to pick up the lemon oils.

When the cutlets are done, sprinkle with the gremolata and serve.

The first time I did this I added to the lemon juice marinade some salty lemons and juice left over from making a little jar of preserved lemons. Those were the best, so if you have some preserved lemons by all means use a pinch of them.
I served this with a butternut squash pan-sautéed with the usual – garlic, scallion, hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Delish!

***

You can find my Best Chicken Liver Pâté here.

***
and Edward Schneider's Confit of Gizzard here.

***

The truth about industrialized food is becoming mainstream. Even Dear Abby counseled someone the other day that vegetarians were smart not to eat industrial meats, that pastured meats were healthy foods, but it all came down to choice. Which made me realize that truth goes through three steps: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Perhaps we’re coming close to that final step!

and maybe we'll pick on piggies next.

bamboozlement, or naught?

Greg Cox leads the Farmers' Market from the Co-op into the sun in Depot Park last May. For more pictures of the Farmers' Market move go here.

We spring out of the double naughts with a vengeance, some of us, calling it “an era best forgotten,” as Paul Krugman did. He also called 2009 “a year of zero gains.” Frank Rich marveled that we the people could have been so easily “bamboozled” by so many shallow, crooked, greedy powers-that-be over the last decade that came in with Enron and went out with housing foreclosures.

I like that word, bamboozled. It’s the only way to explain how we felt as the ‘big lies’ came at us faster and faster. Fools told them and the fool media reported them without question.

We were stymied, left juddering in place with frustration by the shoddiness of the era.

Bamboozle. Such a comic word. Reminds us of ‘shyster’ and ‘country bumpkin’. But we were not country bumpkins, were we, when we paid the banks to get back on their feet, those shysters, and they continued to pay out billions to their glassy-shod CEOs? We were just people, standing there sputtering, “But... but... but...!”

“Fool me once,” as the fool said!

And on the food front? Oh my goodness! E-coli in schoolchildren’s meat. Salmonella in the widely disparate crops of peanuts and spinach. The death of coral in the Caribbean because of the green-paving of the country’s mid-section and the resultant use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides seeping from field to river to sea.
Meat cattle, raised in bliss for mere months on grass in fields and then sent to huge concentrated animal feeding operations to wade in their own manure and feed on enormous amounts of antibiotic- and hormone-infused grains.
Dairy cows, who love to amble under the sun snatching green-grass for their feed, made to stand on cement floors all day, under roofs, surrounded by green fields, eating genetically modified grain.
Pigs, who love to forage in the forest and roll in the resultant dust, raised all their lives indoors in pig-squeezing grate-crates.
Chickens de-beaked for crowded living instead of scratching in dirt and grass for their bugs and worms. Lagoons of effluent.
Fallen cows prodded, kicked and dragged to the abattoir. Our food animals treated as machines instead of animals sharing the same biological life we super-special humans experience.

And ignorance? I can think of no better example than Garrison Keillor becoming euphoric about the glorious healthiness of ... Cheerios. Why does he do this? Well, he needs a sponsor, for one thing, and I suppose Cheerios is better than Fluff. So he hides his head in the sand.

But hiding one’s head in the sand does give one’s neighbor a broad rear canvas on which to launch any of a myriad of unsavory actions almost guaranteed to be unwelcome. Among those with proboscis most sandy, backsides most prominent, are, for instance, nutritionists who still recommend You-Know-It-Ain’t-Butter and its common tub-companions.

This is no longer a butter substitute, since anyone growing up in the last twenty or thirty years has forgotten, or never knew, that it was supposed to be, or that butter was ever considered to be a food. Tub spread is that kind of chemical sludge that a humongous not-a-food-company made a place for on our table. It is approximating and substituting for real stuff that people have forgotten ever existed. Why do we stand for it? Hmmph! Our noses are more than a little sandy as well.

The question is why don’t nutritionists, or even we, the common people, have enough basic interest in their work (or we in our health) to keep up with those scholars and writers who are checking the backstory of our declining health and the catastrophic fall of our food system? Have we even heard of Marion Nestle? How about Susan Allport? Gary Taubes? Surely we’ve read Michael Pollan?

***

And here is where the story of the decade takes a giant leap towards the light. In 2006, Michael Pollan published The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the backstory to our food plight, a most fascinating and very generous book. It brought the tale of our ravaged food system within reach of everyone. It was a beginning.

And here in Vermont, here in Rutland and in the county, we had Greg Cox and the Rutland County/Vermont Farmers’ Market, one of the most splendiferous in the state; it possibly would not be too much of an overstatement to call it world-class. Yes, we’ve had it for thirty years or more, but during this past decade it came into its majority. It became glorious.

Around Greg, the philosopher/farmer and kingpin, gathered a group of people who reasoned that on the national front we could only do what we could do and cross our fingers, but as for what happens here in Rutland County and in Vermont – well, we could make a great deal happen to improve our quality of life and we began to do that. We began to act locally even while thinking globally.

Now, for the third year, as well as the twice-a-week summer market in Depot Park, we have the Winter Farmers’ Market, accessed through the Co-op on Wales Street. We have been thrilled by that – by the festive Medieval atmosphere, by the year-around availability of fresh local vegetables, meats, cheeses and eggs, and by the web of friendships and loyalty growing up between vendor and customer. Here is food we can trust, that is delicious and fresh and healthy. Here is food that we grew up with, if we are old enough, and that we have been losing ever since.

In this last half decade we have given the Co-op new life, as we recognized that it is a necessary and potentially glorious link in that safe and, as much as possible, local food chain. We have supported RAFFL in its efforts to create a food hub and find land on which to create a learning venue for new farmers. We have participated in the marketing study that showed the Farmers’ Market and the Co-op as key in bringing national status to Rutland as the hub of farm and city. As well, we have supported the Paramount, the Chaffee and Brick Box and numerous other galleries to support our local artists and our hunger for the creative. The Creative Economy has done wonders for Rutland, as has an energetic and plain-speaking new government. Mr. Mayor Louras? Chris and Judy shop at the Farmers’ Market every Saturday and the Co-op in between, and not just because it is a festival – they shop there Very Seriously indeed.

Mayor Louras with radishes ready for the first radish toss to open the summer Farmers' Market

So we have not allowed a perfectly awful decade to go to waste, and we have been lucky in having the raw materials to work with to make it glorious in our own way. When Michael Pollan wrote in In Defense of Food, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he was not taking a vegetarian stance, but working on the assumption that most people in the world, in this country, do not have access to good grass-fed or pastured meat, but must rely on grocery store meat, unlocal meat, meat that has come through the big CAFOs and is therefore unsustainable to our health and our environment. CAFO meat does not only come from grocery stories, it comes from your favorite little butcher shop where the guys are so nice and such good cutters. That’s what it comes down to.

This is also why Susan Allport suggests using an arcane mixture of canola oil and flaxseed to provide Omega-3s. Omega-3s are found most richly and providentially in animal fats, but animal fats from CAFOS are full of very bad things. The author of The Queen of Fats assumes most people do not have access to good animal fat. And she is right.

But WE do. Locally, within forty miles of Rutland, we have access to half a dozen sustainable meat operations. Actually, make that a dozen. And we should buy that meat unless we are already vegetarians, because if we don’t buy it it won’t be there. The farmers will go out of business. It’s that simple. So, lucky us. We should take advantage of that fact.
We can’t become complacent – we still have much to do. We need to support RAFFL – volunteer time or donate money – in putting their Food Hub in place and to find and buy land for the incubator farm.

Talk to your favorite meat cutters and restaurants and entreat them to use, and offer, more local food. There is a tremendous reluctance to do so on their part, usually attributed to their customers not insisting on local food at the cost of a few pennies or dollars more. Let them know that you DO want it.

Get out and enjoy – and buy your food from – the Farmers’ Market (Saturdays 10-2), and the Co-op. Attend the Paramount and the Friday night Art Hops. Laugh a lot. Support the train. Dance. Volunteer. Help out! Do what you CAN do to make this next decade a success, and to assure yourself that in 2020 you don’t look back and say, “I feel so... USED... so... Bamboozled!”

To heck with that! Act Local! Beet the System!

This piece was published originally in the Rutland Herald 01/05/2010

chicken liver pâté

How did I make this really wonderful chicken liver pâté?



Sautéed some shallot and garlic in lots of butter and olive oil, added really good chicken livers from Sunset Farm. Salt, pepper, a scraping of nutmeg. Low low heat. Turned them until they were just getting rid of their red, still slightly pink. Chopped them coarsely in the food processor after they’d cooled, then added a handful of pistachios, corrected the seasonings, a glug Calvados (perhaps half a drop of truffle oil?). Whirred it once or twice.

That's it! No extra cream, nor butter. No rendered chicken fat. No chopped egg. No frills. I did it without really thinking – mindfully but absent-mindedly, and was surprised at how wonderful it was.

Now if you peer at that photo you might see the shadowy outline just behind the pâté dish of what, if you knew, was the remainder of a jar of preserved lemon slices. It is sitting there on the way from cleaning out the fridge to getting its contents dumped into the compost.

I’d made them last early summer of sliced organic lemons sprinkled heavily with sea salt. We'd eaten most of them, sometimes just as a chewy, salty, almost sweet little snack, on the side of an appetizer plate. But they’d been in there too long. No doubt they were spoiled. So into the compost they went, right on top of coffee grounds.

Only then did I notice the gel in the bottom of the jar. I stuck a finger in and licked it. MMmmmm. Salty wonderful lemon gel! But the lemon slices were covered with coffee grounds. Unrescueable! Taste, Sharon, before doing anything rash.

Take Joy

a fishy solstice

Abashed that she is touching what she caught, Zoe is nevertheless proud of her catch. Local fish is probably
a better choice over ocean fish for the fish soup below in this land-locked state.

Dear readers, I suspect most of you would join me in grieving some circumstances in our lives, and in taking joy in others. It’s the winter solstice, you know, when the earth tips over from short days to lengthening ones in her relation to the sun. It is a dangerous time, this solstice season, when the skin of the worlds, it is said, are worn thin, and one must be careful not to glide too near that thin skin for fear of entering another world and leaving this one. Well, that’s as good an explanation as any, to my mind.

Which must be why our ancestors felt the need, so soon after Autumn’s plenty, to light their remaining candle units and begin with a vengeance to consume their hard put-up bounty. “We’ve had it with the darkness,” they seem to’ve said, “and so here is a splurge of light and food to welcome in longer days.” For that IS the irony, isn’t it, that winter only begins with this lengthening light.

Now just tell me if you’d like me to stop right here and if you do I’ll just rerun last year’s Christmas message – cookies, cookies, and more Christmas cookies. And even that column had a grumbling tone. Let’s face it, Christmas is a hard time, a time when you might feel obligated to shop at all the trash stores around just to surround the Christmas tree with presents. Tacky things, wrapped eptly in this dark time can be sources of great joy, whereas unwrapped, under the July sun, they would be subject to unwonted scrutiny and judgment.

But if you don’t mind, I’ll just keep on this tangent of thin places, the yin of things, with a nice brothy dish that is perhaps not soup, but if it is not soup, what is it? I think of it as a composed soup. It is made of a little mound of rice in the bottom of the soup plate, the rice surrounded by steamed vegetables, just a few, and laid over this are filets of steamed white fish, the whole sunk beneath a lake of pungent fish broth, and a scatter of chopped green over it, either parsley or, preferably, cilantro.



Rice is made.
(I cannot believe how many people swear desperately by the rice cooker, but I have never had the desire or need for one.) Two cups of water are brought to a boil. A generous bit of salt is pinched into it. A cup of rice is stirred into it, the pan is covered, a moment of contemplation while it comes again to the boil, then the heat turned down to a bare minimum. The timer set for 20 minutes.

Gently a carrot is scrubbed and then cut into irregular small chunks, turning, turning, sharp knife. A stem of celery is cleaned and sliced into half circles. A shallot is peeled, trimmed, and sliced thinly. An inch of good fishy broth or water is poured or drawn into a smallish sauté pan – if water, a cube of fish bouillon dropped into it. If you have it a bit of Asian fish sauce – Nom Pla – give it a squirt to deepen the flavor.
This is put onto a high flame, the bamboo steamer fitted over that, and the carrot and celery put into the steamer and covered. Five minutes after the boil and the heat turned down a bit the vegetables are becoming tender. Four small filets of cod or other fish are rested on top of the vegetables, cilantro is chopped, and ten minutes later the bell rings for the rice, the vegetables are tender, the cod easily flaked, and all is ready. Heats are turned off, or ever so low. A towel under the cover of the rice will absorb any residual moisture if one is not eating right away.



But no, you are hungry: Into wide shallow bowls are spooned a pile of rice into the center, and around it the vegetables and the fish. The cooking water has been enriched with the vegetable and fish juices and become a broth. It is ladled over all and the dish strewn with cilantro. Perhaps a drop of dark sesame oil.
There’s time enough before and after for those much-heralded long-cooked thick, cold-weather stews of beef and pork and chicken. For now, Soup’s on, and what a gentle and meditative and lovely thing it is no one can deny.

***

That said, I must confess my mixed feelings about that fish when I stood in front of the fish counter and said, “Give me a slab of that cod.” So simple, right? Give me a slab of that cod. How often would I eat cod if I had to catch it myself?

At least it was frozen. I often have a conversation with a very good friend who exults in finding fresh ocean fish here in Vermont. I’ve told her that I want my fish flash frozen as soon as it’s caught, on that big ship out on those deep gray waves. Fish is delicate, and by the time it gets to shore, unloaded, transported, and in my display case... it is NOT fresh. Even if it was caught yesterday, which is unlikely. The only fresh fish I want is the one I buy off the day boat at 4 in the afternoon to be put on the grill at 6. That’s, of course, when I find myself on the coast. That also determines that the fish is not scraped up with the ocean floor with everything else, leaving destruction and mayhem behind, but caught, hopefully, on a line with a hook.

A check at Seafood Watch tells me that I probably made a bad choice, because my cod was probably US Atlantic cod, and it was probably overfished: “Avoid” Atlantic cod from North America,” Seafood Watch tells us. “Decades of severe overfishing has resulted in massive population declines. Scientists agree that we’re now fishing the last 10% of this population and that the population may never fully recover.” The best choice would be the Pacific cod from Alaska. That would have been caught on a longline, with a jig, or trapped.

I avoid any farmed fish except shellfish because they’re fed what I like to call chicken feed. One of the reasons you eat fish is to get the Omega 3s and maybe a little vitamin D. By eating farmed fish you might as well eat chicken or even tofu. And in addition they’re subject to parasites and diseases which they spread to their neighboring free fish.

It's also best to eat small fish, as bigger fish eat smaller fish and on up, and Mercury and other contaminants are consolidated each step of the way, until the large fish is filled with them. But the most sustainable of all fish, and incredibly rich in nutrients, are the shellfish, the oyster, the mussel (even farmed), and the clam.

I was recently at the Hanover Co-op, attracted by some tiny Maine shrimp. They’re a seasonal delicacy, but I’ve seen the big trawlers sitting off Monhegan Island just scouring the ocean floor for them and anything else that gets in their way. We have a whole other world under our oceans that is all but unexplored, and we do great harm to that world without even recognizing it.

But we’re not perfect – certainly I’m not – and when I asked the woman behind the counter why the Co-op offered these unsustainable things she answered, “We can make recommendations to the buyer but we can’t police them. Now, do you want the shrimp or not?” Well, I grimaced, just this one time!!

You can download a pocket-sized Seafood Watch guide from that website.

And have a wildly happy and mindful solstice!

a good pie crust

Let me hasten to assure you that as a rule I am very proud of my pie crusts. The post below was an anomaly, really! And just to prove it here's my latest one, made with a different batch of lard. It rolled out flawlessly. I was in a hurry, so I didn't gussy it up with egg wash or a sugar sprinkle. My main problem with making pies is I almost always almost forget to put some chips of butter on the top of the filling before covering with the top crust... Sure enough, I had to peel this one back and slip them in.




It's an apple pie a la James Beard's American Cookery, to which I added a few shards of rosemary.




When rendering lard do not add water. That first batch of lard was unnecessarily greasy, wet, and not malleable. Cut up the fatback or leaf lard, put into a pot, cover it, and put in a 250 degree oven for a couple of hours. Tip the cover during the latter part of the cooking to let the steam out. Strain into bottles and store in the fridge or the freezer. And don't throw away those cracklings!

Eggs: of course...

...you could bake the egg (from the recipe for creamed spinach in the last post) on top of the spinach in cream as the Wednesday Chef does on top of sauteed leeks, as in...

Egg Baked in Cream

from The Wednesday Chef
Serves 1 with leftover leeks for many uses

• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
  4 leeks, sliced, light green and white parts only
  Salt
  2 sprigs thyme, leaves roughly chopped
  2 sprigs parsley, leaves roughly chopped
  1 large farm-fresh egg
  About 2 tablespoons half-and-half
  Coarsely ground black pepper
  Grilled or toasted bread slices

1. Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees. In a small sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the leeks, a splash of water and a pinch of salt and cook until the leeks are tender, about 2 minutes. Add the herbs and transfer to a 6-inch cazuela, cocotte or other ceramic dish, covering the bottom with the butter, leeks and herbs.

2. Crack the egg into the middle of the dish. Add enough half-and-half to barely cover the white. Sprinkle with salt and coarsely ground pepper. Cook until the white is set, 8 to 12 minutes. Serve with grilled or toasted bread.

I like that idea. Fewer pans!

a jar of dandelion jelly

Here we are again, starting yet another gift-giving season, but thinking it over I find that I have been the happy and grateful recipient of many toothsome gifts all summer and fall, all year, in fact, and I want to talk about some of them. Yes, I realize this is a dangerous subject. Someone is sure to come up to me just slightly irate to say, “So you didn’t consider my gift of genuine Amazonian sperm oil important enough to write about, huh? See if I ever save you a bit of exoticism again!” But I’ll persevere. When was the last time you know me to flinch from confrontation? Canola oil, anyone?

I began to think about this when I was roasting vegetables for Thanksgiving and to that end went through my fridge and pulled out all the root vegetables I could find. There was a very large and beautiful Gilfeather turnip I’d bought at the Middlebury Co-op the week before, a month old rutabaga that I’d bought from Paul Horton’s Foggy Meadow Farm at one of September’s outdoor Farmers’ Markets, and way at the bottom of the crisper a bag of 3 or 4 gigantic parsnips that Paul had given me last spring. They had grown hairy in the intervening months, but were, if anything, and with a little trimming, better than freshly harvested ones. Too, I hauled out a bag of funnily shaped carrots that Paul had sorted into a bag for me last summer as he said, “Here, take these, Sharon. They don’t sell well.” Paul is a very generous person, and I think that’s not all due to the fact that he loves to see his name in print! Of course I'm only kidding about that. Paul is a humble man, though rightfully prideful in his work.

Sally Beckwith, Paul’s partner, has been generous (in absentia) to us all these last couple of weeks at the Winter Farmers’ Market – she’s been making Crispy Kale Chips for sampling at the booth and they’ve been the talk of the town. She even provides recipe cards:

Crispy Kale Chips

Tear a bunch of kale ruffles into a large bowl. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt, maybe sliced garlic if you like. Keeping a light hand, toss so the kale is coated with the oil and salt. Spread the kale on a cookie sheet and bake in a 250 degree oven for 20 minutes. Fluff the kale to distribute the crispier edges with the damper center, return to the oven and bake 20 minutes more. They should be quite dry. Pile into a bowl for appetizers and your guests will rave. I’ve made these twice now and they are the first times I’ve bought kale without a good amount of foreboding.

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Many of us were incredibly disheartened that the Kilpatrick boys had decided not to attend the Winter Market this year. I almost cried to see their big space taken up with other vendors, however excellent they might be. For the Kilpatricks could, these last two years, be counted on not only to have the widest variety of root vegetables all winter, but also spinach and other greens, and early spring vegetables, too. So that when I walked into the big indoor space a couple of weeks ago and stopped to talk to Greg Cox at Boardman Hill for a bit, then turned and caught a glimpse of a great spread of vegetables, and looked up to see one of the regular Kilpatrick vendors, I screamed! I really did. I screamed and then I slavered all over her with thanks and questions about how it had come about, and more thanks. I excitedly bought a bunch of stuff from her to show my appreciation and, perhaps to send me off to slaver on someone else, she stuffed two bags of spinach into my bag as thanks for my thanks.

A few nights later I became hungry for creamed spinach, and I served it with a poached egg on top and some good toast. What a lovely, simple, satisfying little supper:

Creamed Spinach

Take a pound of cleaned spinach, stems and all, and put it into a saucepan in which you have brought a little water to boil, maybe an inch. Sprinkle with half a teaspoon of salt – you can add more later, if needed – cover, and cook until wilted, maybe only 3 minutes. Drain well, take handfuls of it, squeeze gently to get most of the rest of the water out, put on a cutting board and chop coarsely.
In a sauté pan melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. When it is melted, sprinkle in some flour – try 2 tablespoons. Stir, stir, stir, and when it is golden drizzle in a cup to 1 ½ cups whole milk or half and half, stirring all the while, and cook and stir until thickened. Add in the spinach. Add a scraping of nutmeg, to taste. Turn the heat to very low and partially cover while you poach an egg or two, toast some bread, grate some parmesan. Serve by spooning the spinach into a serving dish, nestle a poached egg on top, sprinkle with parmesan and serve with the buttered toast.

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One of the most unique gifts I’ve received was from a neighbor with whom I exchanged some of the tarragon, that happens to’ve survived almost 30 years in my garden under less than optimal conditions, for some of the mammoth dill that grows in her garden, and has year after year. After the trade-off she whipped out a little jar of clear golden jelly. Dandelion! Now who woulda thunk? It is such an oddity that I have not opened it, nor tasted it, but kept it displayed prominently for that slight jolt it gives me each time my eye lights upon it.
More gifts! Annabelle thrust a head of radicchio into my hands straight from her garden, saying, “I knew I’d discover who this belongs to when I saw her. It is you!” Chris showed up on my doorstep one night with a bunch of beets straight from HIS garden, saying, “You wrote about the last sweetness in the garden, and here it is.” Julie handed me a pint of golden honey from the first season of Mark’s bees, and we opened it and dipped fingers into it. Sticky sweetness to our wrists. Bees: One of the wonders of our world. Skiing Fool (he emails a wonderfully scurrilous ski report starting when the snow flies) showed up one Saturday afternoon: “I missed you at the Farmers’ Market but I wanted to give you some of my grape jelly.” He’d made a most marvelous jelly from the grapes that twine up the pergola in his back yard. Somehow he’d left the velvety little skins in the otherwise clear jel and they hit the tongue most softly. And then there’s Janet , who gave me two quarts of lard she’d rendered a couple of years ago and sealed in a boiling water bath. I was just about to beg Monty for some fatback to render my own. Lard is a necessity in my life, but I won’t buy it from the supermarket – it’s full of trash that allows it to sit on a shelf far from the refrigerator case.

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Sometimes you have to look for your gift, search it out, as I did with these little Whole Wheat Walnut Cookies. I found them on October 3rd.



You remember October 3rd! It was drizzly and cold and while we drove to West Haven it began to rain. Oh. Lovely! We were going to a wedding that was being held in the third meadow back of beyond, a half mile walk from the parking area, no house in sight. But once we got there, in the dining tent, I hadn’t seen so many trays of lasagna since the old hippy dippy days. And mac salads, and potato salads, and sauerkraut, and lovely little individual lobster quiches, and at the very end a platter of little rounded cookies, made with whole wheat flour, walnuts, and five spice powder. They were tremendous. I spent much of the rest of the time trying to find out who made them.
Finally I found Leah, who had made them from a recipe in the Tassajara Bread Book, one that I cooked out of with wonderful results back in the ‘70s. But they were in a newer edition, and so I had to haunt Leah again until she most graciously gave me the recipe:

Whole Wheat Walnut Cookies

Heat the oven to 350 degrees

Reserve ¼ cup of the flour and combine all ingredients in the order listed
• 1 cup softened butter
• 2 ¼ cups whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (or rapidura)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon 5-spice powder (optional)
• 2/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
• powdered sugar (or rapidura) for dusting
As you mix the ingredients, add reserved flour as needed until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Form and roll into spheres about the size of walnuts. Place on a greased cookie sheet
Bake for 20 minutes or until firm to the touch.
Dust with powdered sugar.

These are sandy, like shortbread, not too sweet, absolutely delectable, and so fast and easy to make.
It turned out to be a lovely day for a wedding. And the sun came out just as the bride said “I Do!”

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So! To all of you now I say thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Merci. Gracias. Really: Thanks!