Thank You for Not Liking Delicata Squash

I got home today to find a squash stuffed in my mailbox.

Some people might be puzzled by this, but I knew exactly what it meant. It meant my neighbors with the Harmony Valley CSA do not care to eat this squash.

"Seriously?!" I asked the mailbox. Mailbox didn't answer. I looked up and down the street. No one. I snatched the squash and hurried inside.

Quickly, now, before they change their minds.

Caramelized Delicata
1 delicata or other thin-skinned winter squash
2 T butter
Salt and pepper
2 T Madeira

Slice the squash into rings. Pare the squash innards out of the middle of each ring.

Heat the butter over medium heat until the foam recedes. Turn the heat down a bit and lay the squash rings in the pan. Cook gently for about five minutes. They should be turning a caramelized brown on the outside.

Turn the rings over. Cook another five minutes.

Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. Shake the pan around a little. Remove the squash rings and deglaze the pan with the Madeira. Pour the sauce over the squash.

Thank you, neighbors. You can kick your undesired squash over here anytime.

Big Goddamn Steak Night!

My favorite holiday of the year is one I made up: Big Goddamn Steak and Bucketful of Whiskey Night—or just Big Goddamn Steak Night for short. It's an annual dinner party of food movie proportions: my own little Big Night.

Originally a thirtieth birthday party for my best friend, this decade-long tradition has become a night of big songs, big toasts, big personalities, and big steaks. Not all the steaks are made of beef; vegetarians and carnivores alike sit down at the big table. Not everyone drinks the whiskey sours that flow like tap water from the big pitcher. Literal adherence to the theme is not as important as the spirit of friendship, epicureanism, and ribald snarkiness. That's the true meaning of Big Goddamn Steak Night.

BGDSN is BYOM—bring your own meat. As guests arrive, they pile their steaks on the kitchen counter. When everyone is present, I grill the steaks to order. People who request their steaks cooked more than medium are teased.

If there's anything more fun than the meal that follows, I don't know what it is. The traditional side dishes are passed around and devoured. We sporadically interrupt our conversation to sing something from the Big Goddamn Steak Night songbook, which tends to grow ever year as new songs are invented or introduced from elsewhere.

Dessert is the time to begin calling friends and family in different time zones. Often these individuals are eating big steaks, too. We sing songs and exchange congratulations. (My parents get a call earlier in the day warning them to turn off their phone before going to bed.)

After dinner, we usually compose haikus or listen to a dramatic reading. That sounds so literary, doesn't it? Except the haikus are all about steak and whiskey, and the readings are from young adult novels of questionable moral value. Or maybe we dance to the cheesy funk music playing on the stereo.

When the last guest has departed and all is quiet except the ringing in my ears, I look at my debauched table and smile. I am so thankful for my friends and for the fun we've had. I am the luckiest big goddamn steak in the world.

Big Goddamn Menu
I invite you to hold your own BGDSN whenever you're up for a big party. Mine is the Saturday closest to November 15.
Bucket of Whiskey Sours
Bring Your Own Meat
Big Goddamn Salad
Five (expletive deleted) Pounds of Mashed Potatoes
A Tiramisú as Big as You



The whiskey sours are made with Canadian whiskey and Sunkist Sparkling Lemonade in a 1:1 ratio. I know. We don't pull any punches on BGDSN.

The salad is always romaine lettuce with balsamic vinaigrette. This year it included sunflower seeds and some red pear slices that had been macerated briefly in lemon juice.

Yes, the potatoes have a crass title that I will not repeat here. They are Yukon Golds scrubbed well, sliced up with their skins on, and boiled. Then I mash them with butter, sour cream, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, olive oil, and two heads of roasted garlic. Mmm-hmm. We save the goofing around for the dinner table.

I make the tiramisú with chocolate cake instead of the conventional ladyfingers. It's so good, makes you want to call your mom. Unless she's sitting right next to you, as mine is some years. Then it makes us both want to call Grandma.

Mangiamo!

Persimmon Teacake

Yesterday I was in my house thinking about cake when I heard a knock on my door. Two neighbors, Gwen and Victoria, had a fruit identification question. In her Harmony Valley fruit share, Gwen had found mysterious pinkish eggs filled with fragrant orange goo. I recognized them as passion fruit.

"Of course the neigborhood foodie would know," Gwen said. And then she persuaded me to take four persimmons, also part of the fruit share. "Blog about these!" she challenged.

The only way I know to eat persimmons is with a spoon. Grandma Rombauer notes in Joy of Cooking that they are good in cake, but she does not go so far as to include a persimmon cake recipe. Hmmph. Thanks for nothing, Granny.

Hey, I don't need her. I can make up my own persimmon cake. I think.

I know from years-ago forays into vegetarian cooking that you can substitute fruit pulp for an egg in almost any cake recipe. So I went digging through different cookbooks looking at applesauce and banana cakes. After reading a few nearly identical entries, I felt about as brave as I was going to get.

I blended up the persimmons in the food processor, and they turned into a fetching orange colloid exactly the consistency of beaten eggs.

"Hey, this is fun!" I exclaimed. Feeling quite the adventurer, I mixed up my recipe. All the applesauce cakes I researched called for a half teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, and mace. I ignored the spices. I wanted to recognize the persimmon taste.


I ended up with a pretty yellow-orange batter flecked with bits of darker orange persimmon skin.







My cake turned out dense and moist. It's like a fine-textured banana bread. That lovely batter turned into a brown cake, but the soft bits of skin held their color and studded my cake like little tangerine-colored jewels.






I cut slices and dusted them with powdered sugar and the tiniest bit of cinnamon. I delivered them to the houses next door. A few minutes later, the young neighbor daughter brought back the finest praise a cook can receive: my empty plate.

I declare a success!

Persimmon Teacake

1½ c flour
¾ t baking soda
½ t salt
1 stick butter
¾ c plus 2 T sugar
1 egg
1 c puréed persimmon (about 2 to 2½ persimmons)

Preaheat your oven to 350°.

Whisk together the flour, soda, and salt. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg. Add the flour mix in three portions, alternating with the persimmon and mixing until just incorporated. Scrape down the bowl as necessary.

Spread the batter in a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, remove from the pan, and cool completely.

Cut slices of cake and lay them on serving plates. Put a tablespoon of powdered sugar and a half teaspoon of cinnamon side by side in a sieve. Tap the sieve gently over the cake slices so they get dusted with the two distinct colors.

Mangiamo!

Mindful Pumpkin Soup

My significant other, Beth Berila, is a feminist scholar and a yogini. Her work is about the commonalities between feminism and yoga, and meditation is one of her tools. Beth studies the mind/body connection and its power to help people—especially young women—live intentional, self-directed lives.

She also loves pumpkin soup. (You were scared I wasn't going to talk about food, weren't you?)

So, to honor Beth's work, her importance in my life, and the deliciousness of pumpkin, here's a cooking meditation to feed body and spirit.

Mindful Pumpkin Soup
This makes a ton of soup. Freeze some, or use a smaller pumpkin and cut the rest of the ingredients in half. The meditation is Daoist, not Buddhist, but I believe it will do the trick.

1 pumpkin, about jack-o'-lantern sized
1 quart mushroom broth
3 cloves garlic
2 4" sprigs of rosemary
5 or 6 leaves of sage
A pinch of summer savory
5-10 black peppercorns
2 T olive oil
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T soy sauce
1 c red wine
1 cayenne pepper
1½ cups orange juice
1 pint cream, milk, or soy milk
Salt to taste

1. Cut up the pumpkin, remove seeds and string, and roast the pieces in a 400° oven until a fork easily pierces the center of each piece (about 40-60 minutes). Reflect on how your jack-o'-lantern's cycle is not exhausted, but is renewed as soup.
2. Peel the pumpkin and place in a heavy stockpot. Add all the rest of the ingredients except the juice and milk. Simmer until the garlic is soft and easy to mash with a spoon, about 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, contemplate the changing seasons: Your pumpkin sprouted in the spring, grew all summer, brought you happiness in the autumn, and now will feed you in winter.
3. When the simmering is done, purée the soup in a blender. You will need to do several batches. Return the purée to the pot over low heat. Stir in the orange juice. As you do, think about how the citrus lightens and brightens the deep, rich winter flavors of the roasted pumpkin. The soup holds lightness and brightness, depth and richness in a dynamic balance of deliciousness.
4. Add the milk and salt to taste. Heat, but do not boil, and serve. Be fully present to the comfort and pleasure of pumpkin soup.

Enjoy!

Pork + Cider BFF

Oh, swoon

Recently I decided to cut back on meat. I started by reducing it to no more than once per day. I am now eating meat no more than once every two days. My eventual goal is to cut down to no more than once a week. Once, long ago, I was a vegetarian; so I know from past experience that soon I will not miss meat anymore.

Soon, but not yet. In the meantime, I am looking forward to meat days the way a little kid looks forward to Halloween. It’s going to be so fun! What am I going to be this time? Last time I went as a hamburger. Should I be ham? Should I be chicken? What about fish? Naaah, that’s not even scary.

Here’s the bottom line. If I’m going to spend all my time slavering in anticipation and fetishizing my dinner, then I’m going to make damn sure the meal is worth the wait. So when foodie friends were coming for dinner this weekend, I intended to show off for myself as much as for them. My lovely consort, Beth, had been to the farmers market and had a refrigerator full of kale, butternut squash, and red peppers. We wanted a deeply-flavored, appropriately autumny main dish to go with them. It was time for a pork shoulder simmered in the juice of its very good friend Apple.

Over hours of slow cooking, the crystal tang of apple cider seeps into every nook and cranny of the pork. A bone-in roast means super-rich flavor. Salt and pepper are the only other things needed to render one of the simplest and best meals you could ever hope to eat on a damp fall night.

Pork Braised in Apple Cider
The two secrets to a good braise are proper browning and a low cooking temperature. Get them right and you have intensely flavorful meat that falls right off the bone.

Serves 6.

2 T butter
A 3.5-lb bone-in pork shoulder roast
3 c apple cider or unfiltered juice
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Melt the butter in a pot just large enough to hold the roast. Brown the meat on all sides. This will take you ten to fifteen minutes if you do it right. You want a good, even, caramelized crust. Watch carefully, and if the butter is getting too hot, turn down the flame.
   
2. Pour half the apple cider or juice over the meat. Bring up to a boil, and then turn the heat to low. Cover the pan, leaving the lid a bit ajar.
   
3. Simmer for an hour. Turn the meat over two or three times during this period.
   
4. At the end of the hour, the juice should be somewhat reduced. Add the rest of the apple cider/juice, bring back up to a boil, and then turn back to low. Simmer another two hours. Keep checking and turning the meat every so often.
   
5. Remove the roast from the pan and let rest while you do the next steps.
   
6. Defat the pan juices. Put them over a high flame and boil them down until reduced to one and a half to two cups. Season to taste.
   
7. Slice the meat, nap with a bit of the sauce, and serve the rest of the sauce at the table. I suggest you serve your pork dish with mashed squash or sweet potatoes. Slather pan juices all over those. Then check back here and tell me how all that worked out for you.

Mmm-hmm. You're welcome.

Yes! You CAN Make Sauerkraut!

Sauerkraut!

If you grew up eating this sour-salty, fermenty, stinky-yummy food, then you had the opportunity to get to know and love it. If you grew up with people who made their own, then I'll bet you jump at the chance to eat fresh, homemade kraut. Not the canned grayish junk from the grocery store. I mean the crisp, golden-colored marvel with a flavor as complex and briny as that of any oyster. Fall time is sauerkraut time. To me, nothing says "ready for winter" like a crock of cabbage fermenting in my basement.

Sauerkraut, like other fermented and/or probiotic foods, may seem intimidating to make at home. Don't you need a bunch of fancy equipment? Don't you need cultures and starters? Don't you need a climate-controlled laboratory in a titanium chamber buried deep in the bedrock miles below your house?

As it turns out, no. Shredders and large crocks make the job go faster if you are preparing lots of kraut. But unless you need to feed a crew of Slavic laborers, then everyday kitchen gear will do. Read on!

Shredding cabbage on the family kraut board

Speaking of Slavic laborers: My maternal grandfather's family came to Minnesota from Croatia about a hundred years ago. They brought with them the tradition of making and eating this economical and easy-to-store food. In a climate where fresh food is scarce for fully half the year, the Vitamin C and fiber in sauerkraut quite literally kept Grandpa's family alive and healthy through the winter.

In the early 1940s, when Grandpa married and set up housekeeping with my grandmother, they bought some Red Wing stoneware crocks in 1, 3, 5, and 10 gallon sizes; oak boards that my grandfather cut to fit inside and press down the cabbage as it works; and a kraut board. A few years ago, my grandmother passed this equipment to me. It is a sacred trust to be the guardian of these artifacts. It is a duty and a privilege to be entrusted to supply the sauerkraut needs of my extended family.

Every fall I buy the freshest cabbage I can get. I weigh it, shred it on the kraut board, salt it, and pack it tightly into the crocks. Within an hour, the cabbage has released enough juice to cover itself with a few inches of brine. It's time to move the crocks to a cool, dark place for the next few weeks. I put the presser boards on top of the cabbage, weigh them down with quart jars full of water, cover the arrangement with a clean cloth, and wait.

The cabbage making its own brine

The top of the brine needs skimming every couple of days. Pressing lightly on the boards will release a few bubbles of the carbon dioxide produced in fermentation. Other than these few tasks, the kraut demands nothing of me.

The kraut might be done in two weeks, or it might be done in six. It all depends on how cold it is in the basement. Colder temperatures mean longer fermenting times but also more flavorful kraut. I know I can rely on the sauerkraut to tell me when it's done: it will stop bubbling a few days before fermentation is complete. Then I'll have a look and a taste. The cabbage will have transformed from opaque white to a translucent straw color. Its characteristic flavor is the final test. The finished kraut can stay in its crock in a refrigerator-cold place, or it can be home-canned.

If you don't have a collection of seventy-year-old stoneware crocks, it's not a drama. You can use any glass, ceramic, or food-grade plastic container. A five-quart ice cream pail will work. Perhaps the best and easiest thing of all is a gallon-size Ziploc bag. You can seal all but a corner, press out all the air, and seal completely. Repeat this once a day and there will be no need to worry about skimming anything off. You won't be able to smell the fermentation, either—an advantage in an apartment or small home.

Sauerkraut
Buy the best cabbage you can find. The head should be dense and heavy, the leaves wrapped tightly. When you try to peel back a leaf, the rib should snap rather than bend. If the stem is still bleeding where the farmer cut off the cabbage's head, then you have picked a winner.

For each gallon of container capacity:
5 pounds of trimmed and cored cabbage
3 tablespoons of salt
Optional: 2 teaspoons of caraway seed or 3 tablespoons of juniper berries

1. Work with five pounds of cabbage at a time. It is easiest to trim and core the head, then weigh the pieces before shredding.



2. Shred the cabbage. Do this by hand rather than in a food processor, which will mush up the cabbage too much. A kraut board or other shredding device makes the work go by quickly. For just five pounds, though, a knife is not bad.



3. Using your hands, mix the cabbage well with the salt and optional seasoning.



4. Pack the cabbage into the container. Smack it in there tightly. Don't leave any air space in between pieces.
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

5. If you are making more than 5 pounds in a large crock, repeat steps 1-4 until the crock is full (leave room for brine).

6. Cover the top of the cabbage with a plate, board, cloth, or some whole cabbage leaves. Weigh it down with a well-scrubbed rock or some quart jars filled with water. If you are using a gallon bag, squeeze out all the air and seal. Cover with a clean cloth.

7. Check daily to every other day, skim off any scum, and press out any new bubbles.

8. When fermentation is done, it's sauerkraut! Call me up. I'll be over for dinner.

Roast me a chicken

When the weather turns cool, some people crave soup. But I always want a roast chicken. There's something about it that says fall, home, family, comfort, Sunday afternoon, and someone loves you enough to feed you.

Roast chicken is not hard, either. It's the dish that makes itself. You can spend fifteen minutes getting it ready, throw it in the oven, and spend the next hour lounging around reading. Perfect for a Sunday.

Since it's not quite hopelessly winter, there's still the possibility of using some fresh herbs from the garden (yours or Dehn's). I love the savory perfume that tarragon lends to a chicken. It's also fun to strew a few vegetables in the pan around the bird. Carrots, potatoes, and onions are de rigeur. Fennel ratchets it up from "bases covered" to "dreamy." Seriously, I'm going to swoon.

The really nice thing, though, is that with one more ounce of effort, you can have your soup after all. Pop the bones and trimmings into a stockpot for six hours, strain, and throw in any old vegetables in the house.

Roast Chicken Chez Amy
First off, two words: Kadejan Farms. Because happy chickens are tasty chickens.

1 chicken, about 4 lb
1 bunch tarragon
1 T butter
Salt
2 carrots
2 potatoes
2 onions
1 fennel bulb
2 T olive oil
Fresh ground black pepper
1/2 cup stock

1. Prepare the chicken: Stuff a sprig of tarragon under the skin of each thigh and each side of the chicken breast. Stuff the rest of the tarragon in the cavity. Rub the chicken all over with the butter and salt. Put the chicken breast side down in a wide roasting pan.

Oh, fine. If you will be all sad that you don't get crispy browned breast skin, then put the chicken breast side up. But if you are interested in juicy, perfectly cooked white meat, then try it my way just this once.

2. Peel the carrots and potatoes, or don't. Cut them into 4-8 pieces each. Quarter the onion. Halve/quarter and core the fennel, then separate it into pieces. Toss the vegetable pieces with the olive oil and black pepper. Arrange the vegetables around the chicken in one layer.

3. Roast the chicken at 400°for an hour. Stir the vegetables two or three times during the cooking. You'll know the chicken is done because the juices run clear when you stick a knife in the thickest part of the thigh. The chicken's thigh. Not yours, for G-d's sake!

just-a like-a this

4. Remove the chicken to a carving board and the vegetables to a serving dish, which you can keep warm in the turned-off and left-open oven during the next part. Let the chicken rest about 10 minutes, then carve it into serving pieces. If juice runs off, try to catch it and return it to the pan.

5. Remove as much of the fat from the pan as you can, leaving any pan juices that may remain. Set the pan over the burners of your stove on medium to high heat. Pour in about a half cup of stock. Scrape up all the browned bits of chicken and vegetable yumminess and stir that stock around as it boils. When it has reduced by about half, pour this sauce over the chicken pieces and serve to acclaim.

Bonus! Chicken soup!

1. When you are done with dinner, if there are leftovers, pull the meat off the bones. Don't scrape off every scrap, though. Leave some on there for flavor. Throw all those bones, hard-to-retrieve meat scraps, and skin into a stockpot. Add garlic, an onion, a carrot if you want. Put in the stems of tarragon left over from the roasting. Add some peppercorns. Or don't. You can't do this wrong.

2. Add water just to cover. Bring to a just-barely-simmer and cook, covered, for six hours or more. When the bones have all disconnected and fallen to the bottom of the kettle; when you taste a piece of the meat and it has no flavor; then you are done.

3. Strain out the solids and discard them. Chill the stock until the fat is a hard layer on top. Remove this fat with a spoon.

4. Put the stock back in a pot and simmer it until it is reduced to about five or six cups. Add whatever you want: the leftover chicken meat cut up; noodles; rice; any vegetables. You can add these things alread cooked or simmer them in the stock until they are done.

My new favorite combination is to add two sliced zucchini; two sliced carrots; a cut-up bell pepper; some cut-up hot cherry peppers; the leftover chicken meat; and six torn-up corn tortillas. Simmer this until the vegetables are cooked. The tortillas will disintegrate and add wonderful thick body to your soup. I hesitate to call this a posole, but maybe that's the closest word for it. Let's call it posole-inspired. It is even better the next day.

Enjoy!

Apple Tasting!

Honeycrisp Carries the Day

"I'm thinking about apples," said Kevin.

It's not unusual for my colleague to begin a conversation about food, and he always gets my attention with this gambit. "I'm interested in local apples, but I don't know much about the different kinds," he continued. And then Kevin outlined his idea for an apple tasting event sponsored by our workplace:

• Someone would get lots of different apples.


• Someone would prepare a blind tasting.


• Then someone would provide information on what we had all just eaten.

Instantly I realized two things: 1. This mysterious "someone" was, of course, to be me; and 2. it would mean the opportunity to buy dozens and dozens of apples with the company's money. It would be like Christmas—make that Applemas—at the Apple Pole, and I would get to be Apple Claus.

A committee of coworkers loved Kevin's idea as much as I did. Fully funded, I trundled off to the Minneapolis Farmers Market to buy the goods. I marched straight up to my longtime favorite, Brian Fredericksen of Ames Farm, and bought a bag of everything he had. I swung by Fireside Orchard to pick up some more varieties. In twenty minutes, I had acquired nine kinds of apple: Honeycrisp, Honey Gold, Early Gold, Fireside, Chestnut Crab, Cortland, Haralson, Sweet 16, and Sugar King. My market bags strained under the weight of all those apples. I was the luckiest pack mule in the city.

Back at the office, committee members assigned secret codes to each variety, cut slices, and devised a voting system. Coworkers filed into the lunchroom, filled plates, and started nibbling. Soon the room filled with animated conversation, evaluations, comparisons, and opinions. People tasted, debated, retasted, and voted for their favorites. About 35 people cast ballots.

In the end, and to no one's surprise, Honeycrisp won the vote. Its cheerful red and yellow skin, crisp texture, strong apple flavor, and generous juice make it the universe's best apple. Honey Gold came in a close second. People liked its mellow pearlike taste, good crunch, and lovely greenish-yellow color. Little Chestnut Crab trailed by only a few votes for third, but everyone was charmed with its diminutive size and spicy pear notes.

No, we did not try SweeTango—we couldn't find it! But we're a marketing company. We know that if the buzz is true, then a successful apple will be around for the long haul. We'll catch it on the next sales cycle.

Cutting up a Honeycrisp

Filling up plates

Kevin's logically organized plate

Tasting notes from colleague Kathy (click to enlarge photo)

Parsley Overload? Tabouleh Is the Answer

There's too much parsley!

My garden is full of lush, rich green, glossy Italian flat-leaf parsley. The little sprig from Dehn's Garden that I planted in springtime has erupted into a leafy mound, all but smothering its neighboring plants.

October comes this week, and I'm in a produce panic. If I don't use this parsley, then spiteful frosts will just take it all away from me. I'm madly trying to eat a whole summer's worth of fresh herbs in the dwindling weeks of warm weather that remain. How am I going to manage it?

Tabouleh to the rescue!

If you hunt around, you will find there is no one way to make (or spell) tabouleh. The common elements, though, are finely chopped vegetables, bulgur, oil, lemon juice, and fistful upon fistful of chopped herbs. This is one of the few dishes I know that features parsley instead of relegating it to sideshow status or including it as an also-ran aromatic. In tabouleh, parsley is no mere Miss Congeniality. It gets to stand in the spotlight and sing its own song. Its bracing, clean taste makes this light dish pop with fresh, green flavor and color.

If I were you, I'd march into the garden and scythe down a huge hank of parsley. If you don't, then winter will most assuredly do it soon. Tastes better this way, trust me.

Tabouleh

To measure whole herb leaves, pack as many into the cup as you can make fit. This will be a pretty good measure of how much chopped herb you'll get from them.

2 c boiling water
1 c bulgur
2 ripe tomatoes
1 small onion
2 c parsley leaves (or any giant bunch of parsley you have)
1 c mint leaves
1/3 c olive oil
1/3 c fresh lemon juice
Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Stir the bulgur into the boiling water (off the heat) and cover. Let sit for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile, chop the onion and tomato finely. Chop up the parsley and mint too. Whisk the olive oil and lemon juice together.

When the bulgur is ready, put it in a sieve and press it to drain off the extra water. Put everything together in a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste, and mix it up thoroughly.

You can serve this chilled or room temperature. You can serve it on a bed of romaine if you are feeling particularly freaked out about summer being over.

Circle Salad

“You know, I can still remember when we found this salad,” Beth said, fork poised over our favorite early-autumn meal.

It was on a trip to New York. We wandered around in that city with its thousands of food options—so many you could starve to death trying to choose what to eat. That’s what was happening to us as we stumbled through neighborhoods, just a doubt away from being lost. And creeping up on us was the indecisive fog that comes with having postponed lunch too long.

Pausing smack in the middle of the sidewalk, blinking owlishly, we presented maximum obstruction to the annoyed pedestrians elbowing past us. I looked up and saw a storefront name I knew from a previous visit: Le Pain Quotidien. “Daily Bread.” I grabbed Beth’s arm and pulled her into the familiar restaurant.

The salad they brought us—well, we fell in love with it instantly. A pesto-lime dressing clung to fresh mixed greens piled in a circle of colorful roasted vegetable slices and medallions of chevre. It was a perfect balance of sweet and tangy, soft and crunchy, bright tastes and deep ones. Quite simply, it’s beets, squash, cheese, and greens holding hands and singing.

“We should remember this salad,” I told Beth. “We could make it at home.” And we do, every autumn, when beets and squash come to market and before summer’s basil and lettuces fade away. Whenever I announce that I’m making “the circles,” I’m always greeted with appreciation and approval.

There’s only one problem with circle salad, and it played itself out at the end of the meal tonight. Beth sat scowling at the scrap of lettuce and single bite each of cheese, beet, and squash on her plate. “I can’t decide what I want to taste last.”

Guess I’ll just have to make it again soon.

Circle Salad
I don’t remember what Le Pain Quotidien called this salad. Probably something more French and less prosaic.

1 butternut squash – it should have a 3-4”, narrow neck if possible.
4 golf ball sized beets
Olive oil for brushing on vegetables
4 oz chevre
4-5 c mixed baby field greens

The dressing:
1 c loosely packed fresh basil leaves
2-3 T pine nuts
¼ c grated Parmesan cheese
1 clove garlic
¼ t fresh ground black pepper
¼ - ½ c olive oil
Juice of one lime
Salt to taste

Heat the oven to 400°. Peel the squash and cut the neck into 12 slices, each about ¼” thick. Brush with olive oil and lay them on a cookie sheet. Brush the beets with oil and wrap them individually in aluminum foil. You can put them on a cookie sheet, too, or set them directly on the oven rack. Roast the beets and squash for 25-35 minutes or until they are easily pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and cool.

Slip the skins off the beets, trim off their tops and tails, and cut each beet into three crosswise slices.

Divide the room-temperature chevre into 12 equal pieces. Roll each portion into a ball and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate the disks to firm them up.

Run all the dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor until they are a pourable paste, thinner than pesto but still rough-textured. Add extra oil if necessary to keep things flowing smoothly.

Get out four plates. On each plate, arrange three pieces of chevre as if you are marking off the corners of an equilateral triangle. Follow with three slices of squash, each placed to the left of a chevre circle. Finish with three slices of beet. Do them in this order to decrease the chance of beet juice mishaps.

Reserve two or three teaspoons of the dressing. Toss the greens with the remaining dressing and pile them in the center of each plate. Drizzle a bit of the reserved dressing over each slice of chevre.

Bon appétit!

Five Reasons to Can Your Own Tomatoes

1. You’re in charge. When you can your own, you are in total control of what’s in and what’s out. Salt? Garlic? Basil? You get to dictate how much, if any, go in. Plus there are no worries about what ooky plastic was used to line the tomato can, because your cans will be made of glass.



2. It’s an event. Make a canning date with friends or family, then share the work. You can make one giant day of it and put up a whole winter’s supply for your household. Or you can grab a friend, cut a morning’s work down to just a couple of hours, and each walk away with a few quarts.



3. It’s an economical present. Even if you buy brand-new jars with no expectation of getting them back, you can make a quart of tomatoes for under five bucks. (If you grow your own tomatoes and retrieve/reuse your jars year after year, then it’s almost as cheap as free.) Trust me, people are more than five bucks’ worth of impressed with them at Christmastime.



4. It stretches out summer. Here’s the answer to “How am I supposed to eat local food during the winter?” Just take summer with you. Instead of giving away gluts of garden produce or walking past amazing deals at the farmer’s market, make the season last by sealing it in a jar.



5. It’s tradition. No, wait, it’s trendy. Um… Oh. Well, I’m a fourth-generation American and my family has been preserving food here since arrival. But America is also in the midst of a home-canning revival. Whether you grew up doing it or you learn how online, canning is easy enough to get right the first time.

Tomatoes by the Quart
This recipe comes from a 2002 pamphlet called “The Great Tomato Primer,” reincarnated as a Web site here.

For each quart, you need

2 ½ - 3 ½ lb tomatoes
2 T Lemon juice (not optional—needed for safe levels of acid)
1 t salt (optional)

If you don’t have a canner, you can improvise one from any pot. You need a way to keep the jars from resting on the bottom of the pot. A few standard-sized jar rings work fine. You can use twist-ties to wire them together for added stability. As long as the pot is deep enough to hold your rings, your jars, an inch of water overhead, and another inch of headspace, you’re fine. You should, however, invest in a jar puller—the special tongs used to get hot jars out of boiling water. A canning funnel is also helpful.

1. Wash your jars, lids, and rings in hot soapy water. Rinse and put the jars in the canner, fill the jars and canner with water, and put on to boil. Put the lids and rings in a pan of water over low heat. You’ll want those hot, but not boiling.



2. Wash the tomatoes and drain. Dip tomatoes in boiling water for 1 minute. Peel, core, and halve or quarter.



3. Put the tomatoes in a pot. (There should be some liquid, too, and the tomatoes will make it themselves.) Boil gently for 5 minutes.



4. By now, the canner should be boiling. Pull out the jars and set them, empty, on a clean towel. Put the lemon juice and salt in the jars. Set your canning funnel on the first jar.



5. Fish the tomatoes out of their juice with a slotted spoon and pack the hot jars, leaving ½ inch headspace from the top. You can top off the tomatoes with a little of their juice if you need it to fill the quart.



6. With a clean cloth, wipe off the rim and threads of the jar. The rim must be completely free of food to form a good seal.



7. Fit the hot lid and ring onto the jar. Tighten the ring only until you meet resistance. Do not screw the rings on too tightly because air has to be able to escape the jar as it processes.



8. Immerse the jars in the canner and process for 45 minutes, counting from when the water starts boiling again. You should see it bubbling up between the jars.



9. Remove the jars from the canner and set on a towel in a quiet corner. Cover them with another towel to slow their cooling and protect them from breezes. When you hear a metallic PING, it’s because one of your jars has vacuum-sealed. Give them a little cheer! That encourages the others.

Pickling: the Art and the Science

For the twelfth year running, I opened canning season on the last Saturday in August. My kitchen filled with steam, vinegar fumes, and business as a small group gathered to enact the mechanical and chemical processes--and the acrobatics of slicing and seasoning--that transform fresh cucumbers into pickles. This ancient art is no less magical for our modern understanding of the science behind it.

Pickling is the artful combination of vegetables, seasonings, and timing. Pickles might be made with one or a combination of flavor-adding preservatives: salt, sugar, vinegar, and fermentation. All pickling methods are essentially a time capsule. The spoilage of food is controlled, repurposed, and all but stopped. Families and communities have passed recipes and preserving methods down through the ages as a matter of tradition.



The science of what people are achieving, though, is brilliant in its simplicity. Long before anyone knew about microorganisms, pickling methods effectively arrested bacterial efforts to decompose food.

Let's break it down: pickling is about solutes, acids, and oxygen. Adding heavy amounts of salt or sugar will desiccate your vegetables. It does the same to many microorganisms, upsetting their chemistry and killing them. The fermenting agents that move into, say, a vat of salted cabbage will begin producing acidic byproducts. These eventually pollute the batch until it is uninhabitable for yeasts (but is sauerkraut for us). Jump-start the process by pouring on an acid like vinegar. Now even fermentation is impossible. Beneath the surface of the pickling fluid, oxygen cannot reach. Microbial life, and therefore spoilage, becomes very difficult.



Lately we've added vacuum-sealing to the mix. Pack a jar full of pickles, then cover it tightly enough to keep water out but loosely enough so air won't stay in. Put it underwater and heat it until the contents expand and the air bubbles out. As the jar cools, the vacuum inside it sucks the lid on and you have created a little microcosm of hell. Think about it: Inside the jar is an airless world of burning acid and corroding salt. No one could survive it--not even a bacterium.

As long as one is not a bacterium, though, anyone can make a pickle. It can be done with a minimum of equipment and ingredients. If you are not a canner, you could leave the jars in the refrigerator for a week or more.

Garlic Dills
1/4 bushel cucumbers*
1 bunch dill
2 heads garlic
Fresh cayenne chiles (optional)

The brine:
1 gallon water
1 quart vinegar (5% acidity)
1 cup pickling salt (buy the proper pickling kind - don't use table salt)

* Cukes must go from the vine to the vat in less than 24 hours or they will be soft and disappointing. Buy from a farmers' market and ask the vendor when they were picked!

Put the brine ingredients in a tightly covered pot to boil.

Scrub and halve or quarter the cucumbers lengthwise. Separate the garlic into cloves and peel. Wash the dill and chiles.

Wash and sterilize jars and lids.

Pack the hot jars: 2 cloves of garlic and a sprig or seed head of dill at the bottom, cucumbers and one or two chiles on top, another bit of dill, more cucumbers, and a bit of dill on top.

Slowly pour boiling brine over the cucumbers. Chase out any air bubbles with a table knife. Wipe off jar mouths with a clean cloth, cover with hot two-piece caps, and process in boiling water for 5 minutes. Set the jars on a towel and cover with another towel until cool. Test seals and refrigerate any jars that fail to seal.

Makes around 10 quarts.

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This post originally published 8.23.2009. Photos added 9.20.2009.

[REDACTED: Friend, I’m sorry. I just came home from a weekend out of town, and so I did not cook and photograph this dish for you like usual. But I plan to cook it next Friday—and then you could cook it, too, and it would be like we were having dinner together. Cheers!]

Two or three summers ago, I made it my mission to create the perfect fish taco. After extensive research at restaurants, fish shacks, and taco stands around the Twin Cities, I settled on a few (highly opinionated) fish taco axioms:

• Grilled fish, not breaded and fried. Breading hides the fish; it’s for poseurs. Also, the entire arrangement will be wrapped in a tortilla, which is technically a kind of bread.


• Corn tortillas only. No wheat. Wheat tortillas are the wrong size, texture, and flavor. Plus they are morally bankrupt! Tortillas are made of corn! ¿Entiende?


• There should be vegetables, but you should never put iceberg lettuce in a fish taco. In fact, you should never put iceberg lettuce anywhere. Certainly not in your mouth.


• There should be some sauce. A finely chopped pico de gallo is good. There’s a special fish taco sauce, too. At the very least, there should be a lime to squeeze on the taco.


• Finally, it would be a really nice touch to serve some black beans and queso fresco to go along with the tacos.

I used these rules to develop my own recipe for fish tacos with all the fixings. This would be a good thing to serve to friends for a last summer hurrah on the patio. Maybe throw in some margaritas or Negra Modelo and a nice fruit sorbet for dessert.

Fish Tacos with All the Fixings

This will serve four people. There is a lot going on in here, and this is the order in which I think you should fix things.

Prep List:

• Pickled onions


• Seasoned fish


• The sauce


• The fixings


• Grill the fish


• Heat the tortillas


• Assemble the tacos

The pickled onions:

This excellent pickle comes from Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking.

1 lb red onions, trimmed, peeled, sliced thin
½ c fresh lime juice
1 ½ t sea salt

Put everything in a glass bowl, mix, and allow to macerate for 2 hours. Maybe stir the onions halfway through and press them down into the juice. They will make more liquid as they pickle. They’ll keep, refrigerated, for weeks. (But when you find out how good they are on a sandwich, they will never live as long as a week.)

Back to prep list

The seasoned fish:

2 t thyme
1 t black pepper
¼ t cumin
½ t cayenne pepper (more if you are a chile-head)
½ t salt
1 lb catfish fillets

Mix or grind the seasonings together. Rub them into the fish fillets. Stack the fillets and set aside 1 hour or more.

Back to prep list

The sauce:

Besides the bare minimum of squeezing a lime over the fish, it's fun to dress up your tacos with sauce. You can use a fresh homemade pico de gallo. You can use any kind of good quality bottled salsa. I also serve this one.

8 oz sour cream
Juice of 1 lime
Bufalo chipotle sauce or any hot chile sauce

Mix them all together, adding chile sauce to taste and lime juice until the sauce is like a thin mustard. I use a funnel to pour the sauce into a squeeze bottle.

Back to prep list

The fixings:

• Half a head of red or green cabbage, cut as fine as you can. (I’d use a knife. Food processors tend to mush up the cabbage.)


• One or two jalapeños, cored, seeded, and sliced into thin rings.


• A bunch of cilantro, picked off the stem if you are patient or chopped if you are not. It is acceptable to have some soft stems in your cilantro.


• The pickled onions.


• The sauce(s).


• Tortillas: They must be the small corn kind. You will need four per person, two for each taco.


• Black beans: These go next to the taco, not on it. If you don’t want to make your own, then Bearitos has a nice fat-free refried black bean.


• Queso fresco: Crumble it and put it on the hot beans. Mmmm.

Back to prep list

Grill the fish:
Grill it two or three minutes on a side, then test it with a knife. If it is almost as cooked as you’d like, take it off the heat. The fish will continue to cook a little on the serving plate.

Back to prep list

Heat the tortillas:
You need 16 small corn tortillas to make 8 tacos for 4 people.

I have one of those hateful glass-top electric stoves. Its only saving grace is that I can do this right on the stovetop. You may prefer to heat up a dry skillet.

Put the first tortilla on the hot, dry surface for about three seconds. Flip it over (use your fingers if you are clever or a spatula if you are cautious) and put the second tortilla on top, then wait three seconds. Flip the stack over, then add the third tortilla and wait three seconds. The tortillas should be getting some dark spots on them from this treatment. Even if a bit of charred tortilla gunk accumulates on the hot surface, you’re still good.

Continue flipping the stack and adding a tortilla until all the tortillas are on the stack. Do the final flip, wait the final three seconds, and then transfer to a warm plate and cover with a clean dish towel.

Back to prep list

Assemble the tacos:
For each taco, lay two tortillas on the plate so they overlap. Take a fork to the fish fillets and flake/break off about two ounces of fish per taco; put this on the tortillas. Squeeze on some lime. Dress with fixings as desired, being careful not to overstuff. Top with a wee bit of sauce(s). Put a nice spoonful of black beans on the plate and put some crumbled queso fresco on top of them.

To eat the taco, fold the tortillas over the bottom and then fold the sides over to make a packet. It’s better to make a lot of little tacos than one giant taco.

¡Buen provecho!

Thai Eggplant ‘Salad’

Could I just say that I like Thai food? I like it a lot. Good thing I live in the Twin Cities, where we are blessed with perhaps more than our fair share of great Thai restaurants. (No, New York City, you CANNOT have a single one of them. We need them all, thank you very much.)

Now, there are cuisines that are about complicated nuance. Thai isn’t one of them. Thai food is about FLAVOR and lots of it. Japanese food might be subtle, and French food might be art. But Thai is like the old Batman TV series. There’s a ton of fresh herbs, POW! And fish sauce, SOCK! And blisteringly fresh chiles, WHAM! A Thai dish doesn’t pull any punches. It’s a knock-down, drag-out good time that everyone can understand and enjoy. You better hope your mouth has room for all the deliciousness.

And there’s more to love about Thai than its candor: there’s also its accessibility, its freshness, and its immediacy. If you want to make food crammed with the best produce summer has to offer, then here’s something that will make your friends gasp.

That’s what my friends did this week when I served them this yam. The closest English word for yam is “salad,” but that falls far short. It’s more like a party, or an explosion, or everything you ever wanted to happen to you in terms of food. Serve it with just the lettuce leaves for an attention-getting bar snack. Or add thinly sliced cucumber and zucchini, cook up a pot of jasmine rice, and find some mango sorbet for dessert. Then you’ve got a pretty good meal.

Eggplant Salad
This recipe is adapted from Seductions of Rice: A Cookbook by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

1.5 lb Japanese eggplants (the long thin purple kind)
½ c finely sliced shallots, separated into rings
½ c roughly chopped cilantro
¼ c chopped mint
6 T fresh lime juice
3 T Thai fish sauce
¼ t sugar
1 Thai chile, finely minced (more or less to taste)
1 head of soft lettuce, i.e. Bibb, separated into leaves

Diagonally slice the eggplant ¼ to ½ inch thick. Grill or broil the slices until golden brown on each side. Let them cool a bit, then chop coarsely and put in a large bowl. Add the shallots and herbs.

In a separate bowl, combine the juice, sauce, sugar, and chile. Pour onto the eggplant and toss. Set aside for a half hour or more so the eggplant can absorb the seasonings.

Serve the eggplant yam in a low bowl or on a plate accompanied by a plate of lettuce leaves (add thinly sliced vegetables if you like). Use the greens to scoop up a bite of yam.

Anyone know how to say “mangiamo” in Thai?

Szechuan String Beans

Everybody should have problems like this: I have too much garlic. There’s a bag of fresh string beans in the refrigerator, too. At this time of year, there are string beans everywhere: at farmers markets. In CSA boxes. Spilling out of gardens like a green and yellow tide. But don’t be upset. There’s a solution, and it is Szechuan string beans.

In her Still Life with Menu Cookbook, Mollie Katzen describes her frustration at trying to cook this recipe in a house full of taste-testers. “It’s difficult to accumulate a dinner-sized amount of something when it disappears faster than you can make it,” she writes.

It’s true that if you cook this dish as part of a meal, it will likely have been nibbled away by the time you set the table. The trick, in my opinion, is to make it on a day when you are home alone. Or if you have just fallen in love in the last few minutes, and the object of your affection comes to your house while you are fixing this, then perhaps you will be swept away on a wave of romance and share your string beans with your visitor. The following week, though, things will be back to regular. You’ll be snacking on more than your share by the time your sweetheart rings the doorbell.

I have altered this recipe a tiny bit to include fresh chiles instead of Katzen’s crushed red pepper. The key points are for the wok to be hot and the beans to be dry. It seems like a lot of garlic here, but don’t be scared. High heat knocks the fight out of garlic and leaves it tasting sweet rather than pungent.

Szechuan String Beans

2-3 T sesame oil
2 lb string beans, cleaned
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Thai chile, minced
Oh, use more garlic and chile if you like. It’s fun.
½ teaspoon salt

Heat a wok over medium-high heat. Add the oil. Wait for the oil just to begin smoking, and then throw in the beans. Turn the heat to high and stir-fry—that means constant tossing! Keep this up for five minutes or more, until the beans are seared and blistered.

Add the garlic, salt, and chile. Toss, toss, toss some more! Stay at it for another 2 or 3 minutes until the garlic is cooked. Be sure to toss madly so that the garlic doesn’t burn.

Put the beans in your serving dish. You could serve them hot with rice as a main course. You could serve them warm or at room temperature, too, if any are left by the time they cool down.

Enjoy!

Butter: Why Bother?

(with a note about cherries)

Y’all, this post is about butter, but the picture is not as big a bait and switch as you think. There’s a note at the bottom about cherry jam. Stay with me.

So it’s hardly an original idea to write about making butter. I read in the New York Times about a year ago that hotsy totsy Manhattan chefs were doing it. The Minneapolis Star Tribune plastered it all over the Taste section just weeks ago. If you Google “how to make butter,” you will come up with more than 39 million hits.

Why, Amy Boland, why would you bother to blog about butter?

Because it’s just so fun! It is so easy and so fun and you can’t screw it up. You don’t have to buy anything. Or you can use it as an excuse to buy everything. You could do it with your kids on a rainy day and then make cookies with it. Or you could do it by yourself on a barbecue day and show it off to your friends, who will not know it is easy and fun and will be all impressed.

If you want to do it with few purchases, then you only need heavy whipping cream and a lidded jar that you fish out of the recycling. (Get cream with no other ingredients, i.e. carrageenan.) If you want to use buttermaking as an excuse to buy a KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook, well then you just go on.
I went halvsies. I spent $7 on a bench knife that I secretly wanted to buy anyway. And I used Organic Valley cream and a bowl and my hand mixer.

Just beat or shake cream until it passes through the whipped stage, through the “Rrr! I overwhipped it” stage, and all the way until “What the hell? There’s milk in here!” Pour off the liquid (It’s buttermilk! Drink it! It’s not nasty like the kind in the store!). Rinse the solid in cold water until it runs clear. Shake it dry, or better yet knead it with a spoon against the side of a bowl, or with your new bench knife on the countertop, or on the brand new marble countertops that you had to have installed so that you could make butter. (See what I mean about excuses?) Use a clean kitchen towel to pat off the water as you go.

Mix in salt, or don’t. Mix in flavors, or don’t. Because it’s… easy and fun! You can’t screw it up!

On a total non sequitur, cherry jam! Oh boy! My family recipe for strawberry jam also works on raspberries and, as I just discovered, cherries too.

I used the sour cherries pictured above. I got them from Maple Leaf Orchard. If you get to the downtown St. Paul farmers market early enough on Saturday, August 8, you might be able to score a quart or two. Afton Apple sometimes has an extra flat you could pick up. Or maybe you, or a neighbor, have a North Star cherry tree growing in your yard. Or you could use sweet cherries, too, I guess.

I pitted a generous quart, chopped them very roughly (each cherry into 2-3 pieces), and omitted the lemon juice. I measured 3 cups of very juicy cherries. I boiled them hard for several minutes until they had reduced a bit, then carried on as usual—I had to cook the jam for six minutes before it would gel. The recipe yielded just over a pint. Holy intense cherry flavor!

Open Letter to a Star Prairie Trout

Dear Splashy:

Do you mind if I call you Splashy? It’s a little familiar, I know. But I would like to think of you as someone, and I never knew your name—assuming trout have names.

You don’t know anything about me. Well, you don’t know anything at all—not in the state you’re in. But I know a few things about you. I know that a mere five days ago you were swimming in fresh, cold spring water with thousands of other trout. I know that you were sleek and lovely, well-fed and healthy, and almost certainly happy.

Such is life for a fish. I understand; I have kept your kind as pets for more than ten years. Give you the proper water chemistry and temperature, the proper food, the proper companions, and the proper underwater landscape, and you thrive. That’s what Star Prairie Trout Farm did for you in the time it took you to grow to marketable size.

I can’t say I didn’t feel a little ambivalent bringing you home all filleted and labeled “Smoked 7/30.” Oh, Splashy, I would just as gladly have watched you swim around. To have admired your torpedo body, your untouchable quickness, your translucent and shimmering color—ah! A fish is one of the most beautiful and efficient creatures on earth. In other circumstances, our relationship could have been much different. A little sad, that.

The real tragedy, though, Splashy, is that you will never know how delicious you are. You will never understand how fantastic you taste baked into a tart with a flaky crust and served with some braised greens, roasted potatoes, a salad, and a nice glass of fume blanc. Your firm, smoky richness is why I can just get over it and eat you. You’re absolutely scrumptious, and you’re one of the many reasons I will never become a vegetarian. It’s good to be on top of the food chain.

So, my small friend, perhaps we will meet again in another life. But I hope not. If we do, I hope your memory is short and you don’t hold a grudge.

Smoked Trout Tart

Pastry:

1 ¼ cups flour
½ cup butter or shortening
½ t salt
3-5 T ice water

Mix flour and salt, cut in fat, and sprinkle with water. Stir a few times until it clumps together. Form into a ball and chill for as long as you can—at least an hour but better overnight.

Roll out the pastry and line a tart pan with a removable rim. If you don’t have that, you can use a pie pan. Make sure to patch up any holes in the crust! Chill again for ½ hour.

Now, the tart:

2 smoked fillets of trout, i.e. one fish – Star Prairie is perfect.
4 eggs
1 cup milk or cream
¼ t freshly ground black pepper
A dash of freshly ground nutmeg
Salt to taste

Take the skin off the trout and tear or chop the meat into ½-inch chunks. Scatter across the bottom of the pastry-lined tart pan. Whisk together the eggs, milk, and seasonings. Pour them over the trout. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the center of the tart is just firm. The tart should still be a little quivery. Remove from the oven and let stand 5-10 minutes. Serve to acclaim.

Rolling in Green

This week my friend Judy invited me to pick vegetables. Her partner, Stu, was out of town, and his garden needed to be harvested. "I have to get in, get as much picked as I can, and get out before dark," she said. "Do you want to come with me?"

Well of course I did. We stuffed her dog and a bunch of plastic shopping bags in the back of her car and drove through the dissipating rush-hour traffic to Stu's outer-ring suburban home.

Stu's garden is in the corner of his enormous yard. (I garden on a smaller-than-standard south Minneapolis lot. You could spit a watermelon seed across my yard.) His soil is rich and black. (Mine was sand before I spaded in mountains of compost.) He grows peas, beets, brassicas, 10 kinds of pepper, tomatoes, berries, radishes, and a small ocean of Swiss chard. (No, I'm not at all envious. Whyever would you ask?)

We commenced filling up bags of produce, including a sack of chard as big as a gradeschool child. It hardly seemed to make a dent in the patch.

Judy dropped me off at home well after dark. "Thank you," she said. "If you hadn't come, I'd still be out there. And I'd have to find someone to take some of this food."

"Oh, thank YOU," I replied, hefting the bag of veggies that was my share of the haul. Each of us felt she'd gotten the better end of the deal.

Even though it was late, I decided to cook up a bit of the chard and eat it right on the spot. Chard is fast and easy to fix, after all. And how often does a city dweller get the chance to eat something that was picked less than two hours ago?

Not often enough, I thought, as I munched on my little dish. The vivid green leaves and white stems tasted sweet and fresh. Chard's mild undertone of minerals and barely perceptible bitterness add depth to the flavor of this favorite green. Perfect, and well worth the late bedtime.

Swiss Chard Midnight Snack

A few leaves of chard
Gomasio* (sesame salt)


Wash the chard and cut it up roughly. Throw it in a pan with perhaps a quarter inch of water and cover. Cook on medium until tender--maybe five or seven minutes.

Drain and sprinkle with gomasio. That's it!

* I always have gomasio, or sesame salt, lying around for the very purpose of sprinkling onto freshly cooked vegetables. I can't think of a single veggie that would not be rendered more delicious.

2 T sesame seeds
1 T sea salt (or less. Or none, if you're watching your salt. I guess technically it will not be gomasio anymore. Oh well.)

Toast the seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, shaking often, until they color and pop. The darker you toast them, the more flavorful they get. Have patience, hang in there, and shake them a lot so you toast them evenly--don't let them burn!

Grind them with the salt. I have a mortar and pestle. If you don't, you could use a food processor or even a blender.

Simple! Isn't it disproportionately good, though? That's what we call "high ROI" in the marketing world, folks.

Fennel, once more from the top—with feeling

Even after polishing off a fennel bulb pasta dish, I was still practically cackling with glee over the fennel tops I had left. As the great-grandchild of northern Italian immigrants, I am mindful of the happy marriage among pork, fennel, garlic, and black pepper into porchetta (pronounce it porKETta but don’t let me catch you spelling it that way). I was itching to make this beloved special-occasion dish from my childhood.

I have a recipe (well, it’s more like driving directions) scrawled onto a paper a few years ago while talking to Grandma on the phone. It calls for me to butterfly a Boston butt roast, stuff it with herbs, tie it up with string, and roast it for a few hours. Did I mention it’s July? I’m not roasting. Instead, I’d make the porchetta with a tenderloin, close it up with a kebab skewer, and let it rest overnight. Brilliant! I planned a honey-orange glazed carrot side dish and a small green salad. Then I called my fellow pork-loving Italian-American friend Judy and cajoled her into coming for dinner.

Porchetta tenderloin tasted much like the roasts I remembered: tender, savory pork perfumed with the unmistakable sweet spice of fennel. In absence of long roasting, the garlic was sharp rather than mellow. When it got too intense for me, I scraped the herbs off and let the meat’s flavor sweep me back in time to family gatherings when I was so young my gaze was at tabletop level. I remembered standing eye to eye with plates of cold sliced porchetta to be served in split buttered hard rolls. “This is really good the next day,” I mentioned to Judy around a mouthful. “Next day?!” she said as she speared another slice.

Of course we didn’t get to find out about cold porchetta. I’m afraid we stayed up too late on a work night, drank too much red wine, and ate that whole tenderloin. And I’m not ashamed to suggest that we do it again the very next chance we get.

Buon appetito!


Porchetta Tenderloin

If you’re within driving distance of the Minneapolis Farmers Market, buy from Tollefson’s Family Pork. Best. Pork. EVER.

1 lb pork tenderloin
Fronds from 2 small bulbs of fennel, chopped fine. I guess I had 2/3 cup or more.
3 big cloves of garlic, minced
¼ cup fresh ground black pepper, divided
1 t salt

First, you’re going to butterfly the tenderloin. Well, more like you’re going to caterpillar it. Pretend like you’re going to cut it into medallions about ¾ inch thick. Don’t cut all the way through, though—only about ¾ of the way.

In a small bowl, mix the fennel, garlic, salt, and half the pepper. Stuff some of the mix into each cut. Use it all. Thread a kebab skewer through the tenderloin from end to end, near the top, to hold the butterfly cuts closed. Rub the tenderloin with the remaining black pepper, covering it well. Bundle it up tight in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Unwrap the tenderloin, put in a shallow pan, and cook 20 to 25 minutes. Remove and let stand 5 minutes, pull out the skewer, and cut the slices the rest of the way through. Serve to acclaim.

Should have served 4, but we were being gluttons about it.


Honey-Orange Glazed Carrots

One of my food heroes, Lynne Rosetto Kasper, puts orange zest in her porchetta. I’m not about to mess with my own family’s recipe, but I understood immediately that she’s right. Here's a compromise side dish.

1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced ½ inch thick
2 T butter
2 T honey
½ cup orange juice

Plunk them all in a pan, people. Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Then uncover and simmer about 10 more, stirring often. The sauce will reduce to a glaze. Stir to make sure all the carrots are covered.

If you start this and the pork at the same time, they will be done together, too.