Meg'sfoodandwinepage

Something Old, Somthing New (or how to make great risotto on a Monday)

One of the things that is most off-putting to someone just learning to cook is a recipe that includes ingredients that have to go through multiple steps (ie onions that need to be caramelized, squash that needs to be roasted, mushrooms that need to be soaked, dough that needs to be chilled, and so on).  It is a true and discouraging fact that much of the real work – or not even the work so much as the time – of great cooking is most often not in the final assembling of ingredients but rather the having to do the initial steps.

 

But it is also true that if you cook all the time a lot of this work happens incidentally, on the side and around the edges.  If you cook on an ongoing basis, there are always leftovers or byproducts or pieces of one dish that can be well used in another.

 

And so it was that the other night, which was a Monday, and a cold day on which I had schlepped seven bottles of wine up and down the length of Manhattan after a night of too-little sleep, I was happily able to assemble a delicious roasted acorn squash risotto with porcini broth.

 

When I arrived home, what was going to make everything good was the fact that despite feeling much like I’d been hit by a truck, I had the better half of a bottle of Dolcetto amongst the pile of bottles that I had been lugging around and trying to sell all day.  Not only that, but a bottle of the Dolcetto that is my current favorite wine for being delightfully fresh, with the balance of tartness and broadness on the palate, brightness and bitterness, that is to me the elusive quintessence of Dolcetto.  (And, at 12.5% alcohol, a deliciously quaffable wine that will make you happy without knocking you out, even on a rough Monday.)

 

So I had it in mind to make a good dinner, though no particular plan for what that dinner would be.  I did some reconnaissance and the contents of my fridge and freezer yielded the following:

• A packet of tin foil containing about half an acorn squash which had been sliced and roasted to go with a roast chicken on Saturday night.
• The bag of amazing limited-production organic Carnaroli risotto I brought back from Alba (lo, the land of Dolcetto) after being served an amazing risotto made from it at the Perrone estate. . .  and which I had yet to use!  Was storing in fridge based on reading something in a Ruth Reichl piece saying the stuff spoils quickly. . . which means it doesn’t come to eye when I’m thinking rice.  But now I was searching through the fridge with Alba on my mind and couldn’t miss it.  . . .
• A container of liquid that had been used to soak porcini mushrooms for another dish, lurking in the freezer for just such an evening.
• The last of my freezer stash of chicken stock (itself a byproduct made from sundry fridge-lurking vegetables and leftover bones from roasted birds.  Needing to make more of which is as good an excuse as I ever need to roast a chicken.)
• A container of my new favorite Prep-Time-Saving Product: Citterio Cubetti (pre-cubed pancetta in a nifty package for $1.99!)  I don’t know why I am so delighted by this. . . something about not having to stand in the deli line at Fairway?  Or not having to hack up frozen pancetta into bits?  But every time they have the pancetta cubetti in stock at Fairway, and it’s a rare occasion, I buy several and lob them into the freezer with delight.
• A near-finished rind of good parmigiano from Buon Italia.
• No white wine (rats, I dropped off all my white wine samples with customers.)  But a bit of Amontillado sherry.  That’d do.

Given these ingredients, Roasted Acorn Squash Risotto with Porcini Broth became inevitable.  With a burst of new energy, I threw Cheikh Lo on the stereo to dispel the mood of exhaustion and poured a glass of Dolcetto. Chopped an onion while the frozen porcini liquid and chicken stock thawed and heated in a saucepan.  Gently browned the onion with the cubetti (and with total glee at having cubetti; I am so easy to please!).  Threw in a cup of Carnaroli and stirred it up real good. The porcini/chicken stock smelled heavenly!  Threw a small hit of sherry into the pan with the rice (a little goes a long way), let it evaporate, and started stirring broth into the rice.  Turned it down to super-low, checked/sent some emails, stirred some more, hummed to Cheikh Lo, repeated.  Cut the skins off the roast acorn squash and cut/mushed it up (it was nicely roasted, caramelized on the bottom but not falling apart on top – not too mushy overall!).  When the risotto was almost done, stirred the squash in with a little dried sage (actually from LAST year’s garden; I never got around to drying any this year) and the last of the broth (I’d added a little water because I needed more liquid and it was quite intense).  Grated a little black pepper and microplaned as much cheese as I could over. . .

 

And dinner was delicious!   There was the bass note of the porcini in the broth, the slight earthiness of the squash (and its slight sweetness, too, balanced with the nutty/sweet of the sherry), the bitter echo of dried sage, a hint of meatiness from the pancetta.  And the wonderful Carnaroli rice, whose flavor is subtle enough to be drowned out by all that, but whose texture is more perfectly wonderful than any other rice I’ve worked with for this type of dish (it turns out soft and toothsome at the same time no matter how many emails you might read and type in an attempt to overcook!).

 

And alongside the risotto the Dolcetto was of course delicious (how could it not be; it’s a delicious little wine!).  All light on its feet, earthy and sweet and bitter in measure to the dish and so happy to wash it down.

 

And now, at risk of belaboring the worn-out simile “how cooking is like life,” I have to admit that as I cooked and ate this risotto the phrase “something old and something new” kept running through my mind. . . thinking how that old saw for weddings applies not only to marriage but to cooking or really to any proper beginning. And for the first time in a while, my mind was able to go in that direction while specifically not dwelling on failure.  It seems that I’ve finally reached a point, in my life and in this waning year itself, where I am tired of dwelling on endings and am much more interested in beginnings and maybe most especially re-beginnings.  It’s a new phase, an optimistic one where regret and by extension waste have no place.  My mind has at the back of things been mulling over what good and useful things might have been stored or are lurking in the past and how those old things can be carried through to combine nicely with what is new or in the future.  And despite the inherent danger that lies in pressing inanimate objects into the service of an idea, in this case I’ll go on ahead. Because it was by far the best dinner I’ve made in a long time. 

Back from the land of plenty

I’m back from a super-long extended weekend in my dear-and-as-yet-unsold house in Columbia County.  This was supposed to be the last weekend of summer, but since summer had quietly yet quite suddenly disappeared at some point during the last rainy week, it felt more like the first weekend of an alternate Keatsian pre-fall “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

It was a 5-day weekend in which there were cucumbers that were so sweet in their over-ripeness that they tasted faintly of melon.  There was juicy peach pie made from the ripest of peaches.  There was corn and there were tomatoes and there was a tomato-corn gratin that expressed the quintessence of corn and tomatoes (this month Gourmet hit several nails on the head!).  There was grilled lamb that rewardingly became the entirely other dish that is cold grilled lamb the next day.  And with the cold lamb there was the Ultimate Farro Salad to cap my Farro salad season (an adaptation of that linked recipe that used farro, left out the zucchini, and was spicier).  There was a Pissaladiere with a perfectly thin flaky crust to serve to company.  And to use up the rest of the pastry there was a tiny tomato tart I made for myself with mustard and a little crème freche (an idea I got from here, but used the sliced and salted beefsteak tomatoes I use for my usual, less-fancy tomato tart instead of roasting plum tomatoes because the plum tomatoes just don’t want to ripen all at once this year). And despite the season’s desire to leave us with almost nothing but green tomatoes there were a few cans of tomatoes put up, and some sauce with garlic made and frozen for winter.   A few bags of chard and Italian bitter greens blanched and frozen too, waiting for winter soups and frittatas.

There were a couple of long runs in the Columbia County hills, and more than a couple of long afternoon naps.  Some friends thankfully came to share all that food and indulge my completely unfashionable taste in wines (and they brought their delightful dogs!  Who eat cucumbers!).  We had Mondeuse, from Savoie, which tastes like a willowy mountain love-child of Syrah and Gamay; we had the Mondeuse’s companion white, made from Jacquere, which tastes like what perfectly bracing and delicious mountain mineral water might taste like if it could be made from grapes.  We had my favorite Muscadet (the Clos de Briords), always deeply mineral and satisfying.  We had some Donnas, which is not a girl band but another delicious mountain wine from Italy, made (mostly) from Nebbiolo.  We had some bottles of the lip-smackingly delicious Julienas 2005 from Michel Tete (cf Joe’s comments on 2005 Beaujolais, all true). All wines that are a joy to drink:  light and fresh and perfect for washing down good food, conducive to good talk, followed by sweet sleep and pleasant mornings.  (And it is this final test that is the acid test that separates the truly good wines from all others.)

All in all, I ate so much that I skipped an entire meal today and didn’t even notice.  It was a beautiful time from which to emerge in order to plunge into the next 12 weeks, which mark my busiest and most stressful time of year . . . .

From Santa Barbara, the land of Tacos and Big Fish!

A quick post from Vacation. . .

Culinary highlights of this trip to be noted are the two HUGE Bonito my dad caught as we sailed back from our 3-day sailing trip to Santa Cruz Island -- each filet on these beauties weighed about a pound and a half. . . . we threw them on the grill and they were delightful.  We "ate like sea lions" (ie fish only!) two nights in a row, called in reinforcements (who we sent home with a doggie bag) and there's still enough left for the biggest batch of bonito salad of all time.

And, of course, while in Santa Barbara La Super Rica is a mandatory stop.  I've been known to stop there on the way from the airport, without passing go, without dropping off my luggage, etc.  Unfortunately this time I arrived too late at night, but a proper visit was made as soon as possible thereafter.  Freshest tortillas in the entire world -- they press the dough and throw the tortillas directly on the grill for your order.  There's nothing like it!

At any rate, in the midst of my morning run today (along the beach, in the blessedly cool Santa Barbara morning fog) I realized that one more week would just about fill my immediate vacation needs.  Alack, alas, it's back to New York on Sunday.

The Farro Salad Days of Summer

Farro became one of the culinary themes of my summer following last month’s company trip to Italy, which began in Tuscany (the land of farro, as well as of olive oil and the sometimes brilliantly pure examples of Sangiovese that you can find in Chianti). 

But first, a little background is due about these trips.  The whole idea sounds just wonderful, I know – ah, to gallivant about Italy (or France, California, wherever) seeing vineyards, tasting wines. . .  the Romance of it All, and so on.  And if in fact you planned this sort of trip as a vacation, I suppose it could be very like that.

But for us these trips are not vacation.  No sane person would even attempt this sort of density as vacation.  Density of personalities (between the traveling group and the group of winemakers, all of whom are complex and many of whom are eccentric), density of meals, density of experiences, places visited, time in the car, lack of sleep (can there be dense lack of sleep? judging from the numbers of photos that are taken of people sleeping in the van, yes) and so on.  Being a slow processor of experience, it usually takes me about four times as long as the trip is to digest it all when I get home.

For this very reason of density (especially as meals are concerned), our office had the Brilliant Idea of sending a rather stern letter to many of the producers we were visiting this year, instructing them to, for the love of god, NOT go all-out on the meals.  There is nothing worse for everyone than having to bolt a rich multi-course meal double-time to avoid being extremely late to the next appointment . . . this is not only disappointing to the person who prepared the meal, and deleterious to the digestion of those eating it, it’s just plain WRONG.   Everyone is left feeling saddened or a little put out.  Instead, we urged them to prepare food that was simple, light, perhaps what they would eat themselves on a normal day (just, you know, multiplied by 18 or so)?

And the results were quite marvelous (for example the pasta e fagioli served to us in the Dolomites by Elisabetta Foradori whose mere presence is enough to elevate the most humble fare into a meal fit for royalty)!  I for one am always pleased to be served a fine level of home cooking, and there many dishes that I immediately filed away to try and replicate as soon as I got home.

And in Tuscany, at  Fattoria Rodano, (the estate of the wonderfully unassuming Enrico Pozzesi), there was a farro salad.

Here we were taken out of the hot Tuscan sun into the house, where couches had been pushed aside to make room for a couple of big tables.  Lunch was a buffet that included the best fresh mozzarella I’ve ever eaten (incomparably silky and milk-rich) and bowls of local fruit (which we fell upon like a pack of hungry jackals – fresh fruit and raw vegetables are usually a rare commodity on these trips!).  And there was this effortlessly, simply, good Farro salad with tuna, tomatoes, and thinly sliced red onions.  It was a delicious combination – the nuttiness and chewiness of the grain nicely offset by the tuna, in turn nicely refreshed by the sweetness and freshness of the ripe tomato.  As it turned out, in the farro discussion that ensued, this particular farro was grown near Lucca, and was a local specialty.

At any rate, this little farro/tuna salad lodged itself in my mind, and resurfaced immediately upon my return.  A trip to Fairway is usually one of the first things I do after getting off a plane (the obvious need to restock the larders, but also a way reconnect with that most banal of realities –- having to provide one’s own food again -- after a week of being catered to).  This time while staggering around in the daze of jet-lag and dislocation that being back in New York always brings (as I ask myself, a la David Byrne, “How did I get here?), I found myself throwing a can of Italian tuna in the cart and nosing about for farro.  They did have some farro at Fairway, but only pre-soaked, vacuum-packed, and $5 for what looked like a rather small package.  Even jet-lagged this seemed like a bit much for a product that might be disappointing, so I looked on and settled on a bag of American pearl barley which reminded me enough of how the Rodano farro looked that for two bucks I figured it would do the job.

It turns out, in fact that barley did the job pretty nicely – and had the added benefit of cooking in 15 minutes after being soaked overnight.  In a Manhattan apartment in summer, quick cooking times are of the essence!  So I soaked, cooked, and mixed up the barley with my can of tuna, thinly sliced shallot (from the garden!) and the best tomatoes I could find.  Salted, peppered, liberally doused with the olive oil from Felsina I had gladly lugged around for the duration of the trip.  A mere touch of my cheap Trader Joe’s aged balsamic . . .  and it was delicious!  I’m sure that tasted side by side with the Rodano version, mine would have paled.  But a week later in Manhattan, it was more than just fine and brought fine recollections of that lunch (but, oh to find a piece of that mozzarella!)

Getting some actual farro was still in the back of my mind about a week or so later when this month’s issue of Gourmet arrived, including the Totally Wonderful supplement of food writing.  (Get your hands on a copy of it if you haven’t seen it, go here for an account of a roundtable discussion by many of the authors, or ask anyone you know who loves food writing what they loved in it; it seems to have made the rounds deservedly quickly.)  Of course I made a bee-line for the Calvin Trillin piece on farro, which I read on the subway and read again and sighed for the Tuscan landscape (food as much as countryside) once or twice.  An immediate longing to make the farro salad he mentioned  (which I envisioned with fresh tender garden vegetables and fresh garlic and lots of that olive oil) set in.

As it happened, that very subway ride was taking me to the Chelsea Market, where I was pouring wine for a customer.  In my world, Chelsea Market is most notably home to Buon Italia (a place I love to forage in! and, you can order from them online if you don’t live in NYC!).  I snuck out of the tasting for a moment and was able to grab a bag of organic farro, easy as that (and four bucks, which was maybe a little steep but oh so much simpler than a ticket to Tuscany).  I was bound for my house the next weekend, where in my Trillin-style reverie the Tuscan farro salad would be served as part of a perfect summer lunch under the umbrella on the back deck, surrounded by the Columbia County green and the chir of late summer bugs.

There were no cooking instructions for the farro on the bag , and I was a little dismayed by the varying cooking times I found with some Google research (45 minutes, 2 hours, which is it?!).  I soaked the grain overnight and figured I’d just keep an eye on it when I cooked it in the morning.  In fact, as it turned out, 20 minutes seemed to do the trick – some of the grains were splitting at that point and there didn’t seem to be any difference in chewiness between 15 minutes and 20 minutes, so out it came.  I brought from the garden: some fresh beans (which were cut into half-inch pieces and blanched for 3 minutes and set aside); a couple of carrots (which were diced and gently sweated in olive oil); to which I added diced zucchini (and continued to gently sweat them until all was just barely tender); at the last minute added to that a couple of minced cloves of fresh sweet just-pulled-up garlic.  Stirred these into the farro with a liberal dousing of olive oil (I’m ashamed to admit how quickly the treasured Felsina olive oil has disappeared!) and a dash of balsamic vinegar (I’ve learned to tread lightly with balsamic. . . but then again maybe I just need one of higher quality.  I think this will be my next food investment).  Salt, pepper, a sprinkling of chopped herbs (oregano and parsley). . .  and it was delicious. 

The rich nuttiness of the farro, the rich nutty greenness of the just-cooked zucchini, the sweet earthiness of the carrots, the crunch of the fresh beans, and the savory/sweet fresh garlic . . . Lucky me, I had a friend on hand that day for lunch, so we put up the umbrella and assembled a few other things to eat and, in fitting homage to Trillin and the kindness of our Tuscan host, finally realized my farro salad dream.

Post-script – If you can’t find Farro, apparently wheat berries also do the trick.  And in point of fact, I think I might actually prefer the Rodano Tuna/farro salad with the barley I used, given that the variety of farro I bought here was much more assertively flavored than the mild one they used.

Enrico Pozzesi of Rodano

Elisabetta Foradori

The Tomato That Ate Columbia County

Just kidding -- Columbia County is blessedly intact and I, in fact, am writing with a belly full of our Great County-Fair-Prize-Winning Tomato.  One tomato, one dinner for two.  The thing was a two-pounder!  P confirms that I am by no means inflating the weight for effect; we are talking about One Serious Tomato.

So, while it is still happily working its way through our digestive tracts, we must pause for a moment and commemorate the all-too-brief life span of a prize-winning tomato.

In the first picture, witness it is as a little wee green thing.  At this point, we were apparently impressed enough by its size to want to document it (although we hadn't seen nothin' yet!).  In picture 2, we were starting to think we might have a County Fair Winner here.  Note the neighboring tomato, no slouch either.   

After a few tense sleepless nights when we tossed fitfully, wondering whether our beauty would ripen without rodent-munching incident a couple of weeks and some much-needed rain we finally achieved a pickable level of ripeness.  Actually, there was if anything a little too much rain (other tomatoes were cracking and splitting all over the garden.  The CFPW specimen was actually quite ripe and after suffering a few jolts from the Volkswagen's suspension on the way home today, we decided it was really ready to eat for dinner.  Now, not later. 

Here it is in its glory whole, and then ready to eat (sprinkled with pepper, some chopped basil, Brittany sea salt and a fancy olive oil purchased at Fairway expressly in its honor).

The verdict?  Contrary to the "conventional wisdom" that says beefsteak tomatoes sacrifice texture and flavor in favor of sheer impressive size, this was one juicy-delicious tomato.  Good acidity, too.  Quite luscious.  And very, very big <burp>.

One thing that is actually embarassing to admit, however, is that we are slightly unsure of the variety of this tomato.  We purchased seeds from HeirloomSeeds.com.. . . there were both Jeff Davis' and German Golds among the seedlings we planted out.  For a long time we were under the impression that this was a Jeff Davis.  However, the sheer size suggests that it is a German Gold.  However, again, gold?  This looks red to me.  Plus funny-shaped leaves.  But two pounds?  Definitely the German Gold.  Hm.  Next year we put one person in charge of labeling the seedlings from beginning to end and forbid the other to move them without also moving the markers.  And that person better be armed with an indelible-ink Sharpie.  Because ball-point? Washes off.  (Apparently they don't have Sharpies in France. . .  ahem!  ahem!).

Anyhow, we have no less than FOUR brothers of the CFPW tomato to eat this week, each one weighing in at over a pound.  Or?  We could give some to the neighbors.  Not a bad idea, actually!

PS. Marsha is my hero(ine) for suggesting in her August 13th post that one can peel, seed, chop, and then freeze tomatoes for later canning.  Since we decided in favor of gallivanting about the woods this weekend (a walk at Olana and then a great hike in the Catskills with a friend -- we saw the "Rip Van Winkle Rock" complete with initials from the 1800's!) canning was Not Happening.  But  there were so many tomatoes!! In a binge of activity after the weather broke in the afternoon, I at least managed to deal with a bunch of tomatoes and there are 3 quart bags in the freezer for canning next weekend, which has been declared a House Guest Free Zone (has to be done from time to time soas to cope with laundry and canning. . .).

Tomatopalooza!

So the weather pattern has hopefully broken for good -- two whole days of cool after some very violent storms (that brought much-needed rain) this weekend.  After this Very Hot Weekend.  We couldn't even move, truly.

But the "Chernobyl Garden" (so dubbed by friends who visited this weekend and witnessed the size of our basil and our Prize Tomato) has been pumping out produce, encouraged by the heat as much as discouraged by the total lack of water. 

The tomatoes are in full swing, and we have collected some amazing ones so far.  Some of the plants that are planted on the flat area with less soil have suffered more mightily from lack of water -- the plants totally shut down and have started putting their all into the fruit that they put out already.  Can you say "did someone put sugar on my tomato?"  Funny how I've heard this so many times from winemakers and never internalized it. . . until now.  In drought years, the plants shut down and the sugars on the remaing fruit?  They go through the roof!  Yummy for Russian Black tomatoes, for sure.  Not so good for canning, though.  There might not be much canning this year.

We are tracking the progress of one particular tomato (we mixed up the plants somehow and are not sure what is what, but it is either a Jefferson Davis or a German Gold) that is now roughly the size of your head.  Hoping and praying it can attain ripeness for final photo at least.  Seriously, this thing is County Fair Worthy.

When it was cool in the mornings last weekend I cooked the first Ratatouille (although had to buy a pepper, as those have steadfastly refused to do anything at all this year).  And it was very, very good.  I modified my technique a la Lulu this year (vs. Elizabeth David last year) and Lulu rules.  This merits a full post once I make another and prove it was not a fluke.  Also made two summer-variations on Pissaladiere -- once with just tomato (spread slightly pre-baked pastry with mustard, strew sliced tomatoes minus a few seeds soas to be not too wet, plus anchovies, herbs, olives and a bit of olive oil) and once with onions (caramelized with some anchovies, then tomato slices on top with olives, olive oil, herbs).  Both good and consumed without argument by all present.

Life -- still a little testy.  Vacation to Secret Location at the beginning of next month will hopefully help matters.  As will regular trips to the gym come hell or high water to work off angst and (sadly) less time in front of the computer.

But I have many pictures to post -- new fence!  That prize tomato!  My long-promised garlic shots!  If I can only remember to bring the camera back from time to time, these will appear in the near future.  Meanwhile. . .  having the fan on is infinitely better than AC.  Long live cool nights!  Long live the rest of August!

Time to stop the madness. . .

I've finally caved in to the creeping realization that ever since the France trip, my body has been Not Quite Well.  First fought off a halfway cold. Then there were some symptoms that I'll refrain from writing about because Dooce has that covered.  Which, for me, NEVER happens.  Anyhow.  Then some other (mild) symptoms that likewise Mir has covered more amusingly.  And this has not happened to me for YEARS. 

At any rate, these three problems in three weeks were a definite sign from my body that the Madness Has to Stop.  A good cleansing is needed.

So, while I fear I could not safely attempt a fast (spend too much time behind the wheel to risk getting woozy), I am taking advantage of P's dental surgery (wisdom tooth pulled today, poor guy) and subsequent antibiotics to go on a bit of a cleanse myself.  Got the crazy Zand Quick-Cleanse tablets today.  And am taking them at max dosage for until at least Tuesday.  At the same time?  No bread, no refined carbs (actually not really a problem because besides rice we don't eat any, usually, anyhow).  No cheese (sniff!).  Lots of veggies, wasa crackers (no yeast!), peanut butter, more veggies in many forms.  Eggs (all P can eat is scrambled eggs, anyhow, right now -- which are REALLY GOOD with the garlic scape pesto I made a while back and froze), maybe some grilled fish or chicken. . . . lots of water. . . .

Most importantly?  The root cause of all the problems must be eliminated for a while.  No Wine.  Which will be easier right now since as long as P is on the antibiotics he isn't supposed to have any, either.  So it's going to be a boring old household here, this week, I fear.

Hopefully this will all give me boundless energy with which to write up my garlic thoughts (did you see the picture on the header of the garlic drying in our tool room?  It smells good enough in there to eliminate all vampires from Columbia County). 

And, after all, I am still tasting almost every day with customers.  So I can still get the sensory pleasures from the wine while depriving my friends the intestinal yeasts.  Ha, take that!

Chanterelles for free!

I don't read the Friday paper until Saturday at least.  And then I don't get near a computer until Monday at least.  And today I had a little too much work to do to be futzing about with Big Ideas (this looks like it will be a permanent and worsening condition. . . at this point the way my job is heading I'll be lucky to be able to stick with the small ideas this fall.)  At any rate, I am a bit too late to add my two cents into the discussion of the Julie Powell editorial (but there are good posts here at Vt. Diary and Hidden Clapboard).

Instead I will take the opportunity to post about one of my best recent meals, and one which was free, free, free!  The wetness and warmth of this June also conspired to create a legendary crop of mushrooms in my mother's Vermont woods.  We visited about a week ago, P especially excited at the prospect of mushroom hunting (I had my mind on blueberries, but the turkeys like them too and so our haul was not nearly as impressive).

At any rate, warm wet June, piney woods, and a determined Frenchman seem to be the recipe for aquiring a bumper crop of delicious wild mushrooms.  The bag we came home with weighed 5 or six pounds if it weighed an ounce.  We brushed and trimmed them and poised them for their beauty shots (one with bits of P for scale, another with bits of my mother's wonderfully blooming, slightly wild garden):

We cooked them up with a little butter, a little salt and pepper, and a little parsley.  We ate them all at one sitting, all those mushrooms and only four people.  It was a delicious display of delighted greed!  We drank a bottle of Chablis alongside.  And my mother kept the mushroom liquid that we poured off during the cooking (lest the chanterelles get soggy) for a decadent, delightful, free (except for a little butter) soup base.

We had fun speculating about how much that bag of mushrooms would have cost at the Greenmarket.  But in fact there is no price you can put on the happy combination of one very thorough mushroom-hunting Frenchman, one mid-sized swath of Vermont woods, and one summer with perfect mushroom weather. 

It may be years before there is such a mushroom crop again, so we count ourselves very lucky indeed (if a little thicker around the middles, burp.)

Salad Days. . . .

If I ever have to move to the suburbs and have a tiny garden (which may happen sooner than I think, which until lately has been "never"), the only thing I will HAVE TO plant in that garden will be salad.  Tomatoes -- you can buy them from the farmer's market.  Shallots -- okay, so we'll have a few of those. . .

But, seriously, there is nothing on this earth to beat fresh salad.  I love it when it is tender and fresh and the only possible dressing is white balsamic or rice wine vinagre with some olive oil and salt.  And I also love it after the first heat wave when everything starts bolting and the arugula gets a little too spicy and so does some of the romaine (the leafy lettuces just bolt and suffer but stay tender).  I love later in the summer when the only lettuces that will grow are the hearty ones -- frissee (don't believe what they say about it being a cool-weather lettuce; it holds out all summer long if you plant too much and start pulling them up in June) and endive (ditto). 

Hell, I buy endive from Fairway all winter long and insist on eating a salad a night.   But now, when the lettuce etc is fresh-fresh-fresh, and still even fresher than Fairway when I bring it back, rinsed free of slugs and layered with paper towels in Fairway bags, and there are 3 different kinds of vinager in the fridge to accomodate the differing tastes of fresh lettuces. . . . life is GOOD!

Gardening side note:  Why is it that whatever little thing I have my HEART SET ON we cannot grow, every year?? Last year it was chard.  Which, incidentally, is doing fine this year (had my first divine chard fritatta tonight!).  This year's chard is the lemon cucumbers, which prove to be irresistable to short-tailed mice, which happen to be living in the small garden patch where we planted the lemon cukes (it already had a chicken-wire fence, which seemed to be ideal for climbing vines).  Every plant either had leaves munched or was totally uprooted.  Ach, they must know which varietal I ESPECIALLY WANTED. 

Thanks to the valiant P who surrounded the surviving stalks with chickenwire cages and also had a spare seedling still going on the front porch.  Which has been planted down below, in the mouse-free-but-woodchuck-spotted zone.  We'll see if everyone love lemon cucumbers as much as I do <sigh>.   Now if only those rascally rodents would help us out by munching a little salad. . . .

(of course the salad and chard are severely netted to prevent marauders. . . but lemon cucumbers?  who knew?).

Meanwhile, it's salad as many times a day as possible.  Graze, graze, yum!!!

It's Non Ultra!

I have to admit that when purchasing dishwashing liquid, I am drawn to one in particular:  Non-Ultra Joy.  Because, let's face it, there is just something charming about a product that comes right out and declares that it it NOT the tops!  Not super-concentrated, not extra-strong, not to-the-max. 

I'll admit that it isn't the best dishwashing liquid out there.  You have to use a lot to get the job done.  But, hey, it's darned cheap, and at least you know going in that it's non-ultra!

And aren't we all, from time to time?  You hear this from a non-ultra winesalesperson who sometimes makes non-ultra dinners and is definitely a non-ultra housekeeper. . . . .

Except for tonight's dinner, which was an ultra good salad (crabmeat with shredded carrots and cucumbers served over boston lettuce and hothouse beefsteak tomatoes).  Loosely inspired by Clotilde's crab and cucumber salad, which was coincindental because I read her recipe just when we had purchased cucumbers and I am addicted to Trader Joe's canned crabmeat (ultra-cheap, pretty darned good) so there was some of that needing to be creatively used.  Combined that idea with one of our summer classics, which is shredded carrot salad.  I decided that in this salad everything should be shredded, to match the crab texture, so I broke out the Cuisinart and used its beautiful shredding attachment to speedily shred 4 peeled kirby cukes and 3 peeled carrots. Set the cukes over the sink to drain for a bit, chopped some shallot (our shallots are all trying to sprout, which is fine for the ones who have been planted and are thriving in the garden but not as good for the ones we're still eating!), threw in 2 cans of crab, dressed with a "modified remoulade" dressing (one tsp mayonaisse, one tsp french mustard, whisked with wine vinegar and a little walnut oil, a mere dash of curry powder for panache), salted, and let rest in the fridge for a while.  Served over sliced big-giant-semi-tasteless-but-really-ripe hothouse beefsteaks, which were on top of some boston lettuce, which was dressed with more of the same dressing minus curry but with lots of pepper.  It hasn't gotten hot yet (far from!) but, darn-it, we can EAT like it's summer.  Washed this down with a Sylvaner from Alsace that seemed a little neutral on its own but was more than perfectly accomodating with food.  Delicious, in fact.  Yet again proving that sometimes the wines that are most delicious with food are not the ones that are most impressive without it.  Actually, this is almost always the case.

Incidentally, the thunderstorms this past weekend played havoc with our grilling schedule, in that on Friday night in the midst of a particularly impressive one we thought it wouldn't stop raining in time for steaks so I roasted the Cornish Hens inside instead of brining and smoking them.  Cold-smoking will have to wait.  And for a little while, no doubt, because the next two three weekends are AT LEAST half-filled with Work Stuff.

Which I will no doubt go about doing with -- you guessed it -- Non-Ultra joy!