Show on the Road: Maine Lobster and Steamer Clams

So there’s a pickup truck heading to Maine for five days in July, and the hunky guy in the driver’s seat says ‘Bring ya anything?’ with a twinkle in his eye. My response is quick and decisive, and involves $100 cash, a couple of coolers, and vague instructions to buy as much crustacean as possible.

Summertime is lobster time in Maine, where the famous Maine Lobster (or American Lobster) is pulled in by lobstermen (and women?), cooked in seawater or steamed in seaweed, then dipped in butter and devoured. While I know a fair amount about lobster, I have never been exposed to the briny culture surrounding their cultivation, harvesting, preparation, or marketing. This is my chance to experience fresh lobster and to get some of the lobster lore.

Geoff returns from Maine with eight lobsters wrapped in paper bags and packed on ice in a cooler; the cooler lacks a drainplug, so the cold water drips out (which keeps the lobbies from drowning) but the ice keeps them sluggish and alive. They each weigh between one and 1.5 pounds live, which is deemed by the Mainer to be the perfect size as larger lobbies have heavier shells and meat that is not as tender. When I open the bags for a peek, they seem to be all beady eyes and antennae; I am glad their claws are safely banded. Their combative claw-waving suggests freshness and health, which is confirmed by the vibrant mottled grey-green, blue and strips of red on their exoskeletons.

When I have cooked lobsters in the past (while working at Hamiltons’ at First and Main) I was vegetarian, but my fellow cooks insisted that I ‘take the plunge’ (that is, throw them in the boiling water seasoned with mirepoix and bay, lemon and wine and absorb their death as part of my karma). Anyway, when I cooked them at Hamiltons’ we turned off the radio to hear the high-pitched keening that indicated either death or steam escaping from the shells (depending upon your belief system).

We appetize with lobster rolls, which is claw and leg meat tossed in mayonnaise and lemon juice and seasoned with parsley, black pepper, and salt, then served on toasted white hot dog buns. We season the lobster-water with a lot of salt (to replicate seawater), and Otis and I make a brown-butter and lemon vinaigrette to replace the uber-rich drawn butter that typically accompanies lobster. Geoff grills 15 ears of bicolor corn in the husk (also from Maine - how do they have it ready so soon???), which fills the air with a delicious popcorn perfume. I rinse the steamer clams in water, looking for responsiveness and intact shells as an indication of life. I haven’t worked with steamers before, but they have a distinctive neck or siphon that protrudes from the gray shells and that withdraws a bit when tapped; this neck lolls unappealingly if the clam is dead. ‘They’re pissers!’ Otis exclaims when he squeezes one and it shoots water at him; we wonder if this is the origin of ‘wicked pissah’, which people apparently say in New England? Wicked or no, we pop the steamers in a steamer basket for about 8 minutes, then dip them in warm water to get rid of any grit, shuck the dark grey ’sock’ off of the siphon, and pop them in our mouths.

While the steamers are cooking, I try to get someone else to lob the lobbies in the boiling water; in no uncertain terms I am told to buck up and do it myself, so I drop them in one at a time. When I cooked them at Hamiltons’, I heard the scream; I didn’t hear it this time, but then again I didn’t turn off the radio. When the food is ready, we sit outside on the wooden-door turned table, crack lobsters, dip and eat steamers, and unwrap the sweet summer corn to dredge it in a compound butter of garlic, basil and parsley. The lobster is crimson red and beautiful (in an insect-like sort of way); the steamers taste super nutritious, perhaps like iodine or rich clay mud. I agree with the Mainer - the claw meat is the sweetest and most tender, while the tail is too chewy for my taste (not unlike shrimp). Otis amasses a pile of shells on his plate in moments, sucking the legs and moaning ‘the lobster I can get is NOT like this’; Lydia reaches for the pliers and focuses on cracking claws and legs, admiring the flavor amid bites of meat. We toss shells into the nearby trash can, wondering aloud if the woodland creatures will rouse at the tantalizing smell and disturb the trash in the night.

‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ Summer Luncheon in the Dining Room

As a member of an informal (but long-running!) book club, I was invited out to Bic Kolcum’s house in Buckingham County to discuss our book of the month, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. When I called Bic on the day-of to get firm directions and to ask what we could bring, I was delighted to hear how much the book was affecting her. “I’m taking the author to heart - I’ve been thinking about the book all morning as I get the house cleaned up and ready for guests, and I’ve set the dining room table hoping that we can do what Barbara Kingsolver proposes - to create a culture around the table, a culture around food,” Bic recounted in her steady, low voice. “I thought we could prepare a recipe from the book, prepare it together and talk about the book, and food, and anything while we make it.”

I finished the book a while ago, smiling and crying at the same time. Overall I applaud the effort that Ms. Kingsolver made to chronicle the journey of her family through a year of producing their own food. Her voice is clear and light, seamlessly switching from specific, seasonal tales to macro issues of food policy, quality and supply; I suppose her experience (and success!) as an author probably merit editors, proofreaders, and more than the average amount of support and guidance. More profound is the courage and dedication that she and her family showed in deciding on the venture, then planning it, and then succeeding, and then sharing their trials and tribulations. So I smiled at the end result, beautiful book, a true life’s work (and one that will continue in their family, I’m certain); I cried about the turkeys. Throughout the last part of the book, Barbara wonders if her heritage breed turkeys will remember how to mate, to lay and incubate eggs, to hatch them out and then to take care of them; along the way she realizes that she may own the oldest turkeys in the US because of our poultry industry’s manipulation of their life cycle. Immediately I began to think of us as the turkeys; do we remember how to love, to hope, to nourish ourselves? I look around at the brave souls in this area who are willing to coax life from the soil, the trees, the animals, the ocean AND WHO ARE WILLING TO PRODUCE MORE THAN THEY NEED SO THAT THERE IS ENOUGH FOR THE REST OF US. In the past, many people were farmers; now there are very few. Do we remember how to keep ourselves fed? Have we listened to those people, perhaps natives or perhaps visionaries, who make a positive contribution to the Earth’s ecosystem? If you were in charge of growing and preserving enough food to feed a family, would that family live? I am pleased to report that the turkeys sort it out just fine; I hope we do, too.

My contribution to the book club meal is local purple plums from the farmers’ market, and a bottle of crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Delfosse Winery in Nelson County. Shannon brings local organic greenbeans (on a cue from Bic) and we set about making Frijole Mole (pg. 214, I believe) from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Bic has already mixed up some chilled pasta with whole wheat and white noodles from Mona Lisa Pasta; it is garnished with ricotta, asparagus tips and lemon. The meal comes together quickly, and allows us to chat about the book while we move about the kitchen. We discuss the book, but each of us is framing the discussion in terms of the changes that we want to make in our food lives. One member speaks of the new garden at her house: she longs for more production, variety and planning so as to more closely approximate the family’s needs. We discuss our mutual friend, who is a ‘new’ farmer, and her job as the (unpaid) laborer, manager, marketer, delivery person, and biller on the fledgling farm. I find myself speaking of my work over the past few months, filling in gaps about the tomato recall, USDA and VDACS regulations, and giving backstory on our local system in order to outline the players, the problems, and the potential.

Our next book is  “Hope and Change” by Barack Obama; while I don’t know how food fits into it, I’m certain I’ll find a connection.  Thanks  to Bic, Barbara Kingsolver and to heritage breed turkeys for their instinctive survival.

I can roast a pig? I can roast a pig. I can roast a pig!

After a morning of morel hunting and asparagus planting at Stasia’s house, she and I indulged in some fantasies for the future. I started it by saying something like ‘you have such an amazing place here; let me know if you ever want to have a kick-ass dinner party featuring local food…’. She answered, ‘really? because I’m having a group of my high school friends here over Memorial Day weekend, and I am just starting to wonder how I am going to feed them…’. To her credit, she does a magnificent job of growing food for her family, raising chickens, making yogurt, baking bread, and is entertaining the idea of growing oats ‘…because we eat the hell out of some oatmeal.’. There is a special place in my heart for Brave Mothers; those women who manage to refine their sense of healthy food (and their sense of obligation to find it, make it, provide it) while juggling the unending challenges of family life. Dads are probably brave, too, but maybe they don’t talk to me about it.

Did she say roast a pig, or did I? I think Stasia and Fred had already started talking about it before I entered the picture; I fell in love with the idea. I have been around roasting pigs; I can think of three, the third of which was and is an integral part of my ‘return from vegetarianism’ story. It was a farm-raised and slaughtered pig in northeastern CT; it was roasted whole with the skin on, and was so perfectly cooked and seasoned that there was simply no way I was not going to eat it. Not only did I eat it, I pulled it all off the bone and served it to a large group of hungry people, feeling at once proud of the product and humbled by my own (former) abstinence. Back to the present…

I called a certain farmer named Richard and spoke to him about a pig; size, shape, weight, cooking method, butchering specifics, delivery details. Richard helped me over the hurdles and rubberstamped my proposed cooking method. I later spoke to Fred about the project, figuring that he would be my partner in crime on the actual day of the event. Since they were planning a bonfire the night before, we figured that the pig could be roasted on the site of the bonfire the following day to take advantage of a mature fire. Fred used the tractor (or some sort of farm machine) to clear a spot on a gentle hilltop within view of the house and (conveniently) the kitchen sink window; he also mowed several undulating trails through the tall grass and brought large tree trunks to serve as benches. He dug down into the dirt a couple of feet, and followed my rather vague instructions by building a three-sided brick ‘oven’ to serve as a pit for the pig roasting. I also described a type of double-grill that we could use to sandwich the butterflied pig; reinforced with rebar, I reasoned (can you hear the question marks?) and we could flip the whole thing without actually moving the pig.

The only problem? We had no idea how big the pig would be. I was getting updates from Richard, messages like ‘the little pigs are too little; your pig’s gonna be a little bigger’ and ‘I’ll have to cut his feet off to fit him in the cooler. That OK?’ and ‘I don’t want to stick you on the price, but I have to charge you by the pound’ which I translated to ‘I think the pig is going to be a little bigger than our dogs…but thicker, you know, because it’s a pig and not a dog’ and ‘make the pit 3 by 4 by 3, or 4 by 3 by 4…or just get the grills so that they can rest on the pit…or make the re-bar longer if the grill is littler…I’m sure whatever you will get will be perfect, don’t worry’. I know Fred was worried, but as it turned out everything was perfect.

I picked up the pig on Saturday morning at the market, along with 5# of fresh English peas, cabbage for coleslaw, cucumbers and eggplant and chard and eggs and bacon and sausage and more sausage…Richard helped me load the pig into my car, and when I had parked I casually glanced inside. I had been entertaining irrational fears all morning (since first waking at 4:30), most notably that I would get spooked by the pig and simply feel like I couldn’t do it. I’ll admit that the sight of the pig was a bit jarring as its belly side was up: He had been neatly split up the middle with the backbone cut out and entrails removed (except the kidneys); the snowy white fat lay in alternating layers with the pink flesh to give the ‘bacon effect’; everything about the carcass was symmetrical and tidy with just a little bit of blood, but the skill and the experience were evident at every angle. Indeed, the hind trotters had been lopped off, but the head was intact (although split like a melon) and the ears were still attached. Richard had provided me with a bunch of frozen booze bottles to keep the carcass cold; I wished I had my camera.

After storing the pig in a walk-in cooler overnight, I hauled it out to the scene along with some equipment, most notably tongs, rubber gloves (regular and heavy duty), headlamp, knives, TJ’s delicious apple cider vinegar spiked with red pepper, sugar and salt, and a couple of old towels. It was then that the hero emerged: Not the pig, not Fred, but Stasia’s friend John who I could tell knew what to do; he was wearing heavy pants and boots, and immediately took charge of the situation (to my eternal delight). I had figured that, in a group of fifteen, someone would emerge as a chief helper or (I had dared to hope) I could be the helper and hand over the reigns to someone with more experience. I explained our plan (such as it was) to John, and he approved it with a few adjustments. We loaded the grill onto the back of the Gator, hoisted the pig on to it, pressed the second grill in place and the boys cinched it down with heavy gauge wire. Someone rustled around in the garage and emerged with a prayer flag from Stasia and Fred’s wedding several years before; we craved a spiritual element to this roast, and the combination of prayer flag, processional with photos, and tilting a beer onto the pig seemed to satisfy the group.

John seemed to have the situation well in hand (auxiliary fire behind the pit so new coals could be introduced, several metal rakes and shovels, cold beer, and an umbrella for shade) so I headed inside to prepared the rest of the meal. I made coleslaw from Savoy cabbage, carrots, green onion, Caromont goat cheese, mayonnaise, TJ’s apple cider vinegar, and honey; I built it in a bag so as to knead and mash it thoroughly. Using a base of Grandma’s brand BBQ sauce and ketchup, I made a tangy barbecue sauce to dress the meat with after cooking. Using canned beans and a whole panoply of condiments (including some leftover BBQ sauce that wouldn’t fit back in the jar), I made baked beans and then managed to burn them and save them (all in one afternoon!). Stasia harvested spinach from her garden, and we washed and dried it and dressed it with a fresh Caesar dressing and fresh croutons. The morning before, the crew had gone strawberry picking, and I had sliced a bunch and tossed them with a bit of honey and sugar so as to macerate them; I baked some scones using raw cream and buttermilk, and later made whipped cream to round out the strawberry shortcake. We had discussed making ice cream, but talked ourselves out of it amid feeding the kids, washing the dishes and watching the smoke curl off of the pig pit out the window. The weather was beautiful and sunny, perfect really, and folks were in and out of the pool, the sun, the shade, and the kitchen.

I wondered how interested the children would be in this whole process; as it turns out they were full of questions and didn’t seem at all alarmed by the carcass nor the process. As the afternoon progressed and the time came to pull the pig off the fire and the top grill off the pig, I asked Asher to help me pick the piece that the kids would eat, and I heard him say ‘Yum, I’m gonna eat that pig. The feet look meaty. Mmm.’ Stasia later explained that he is a true meat eater, even asking for raw pieces of venison.

John finished off cooking the pig and pulling it to bits; we sliced the tenderloin pieces and lightly dressed the other chopped and pulled pieces with salt and pepper, leaving the BBQ sauce to be administered by each diner.  Wine was poured, toasts were made, plates assembled, and we ate as dusk fell.  Considering all the variables in the process, and how much I had left to luck and to others, the meal was perfect and a great time was had by all.  Thank you, pig.  Thank you, Richard.  Thank you, John.  Thank you, Stasia and Fred.  Goodnight.

Pierogi Triumph (or Take That, Pittsburg!)

In honor of the Zookeeper’s Wife (our book club selection for April) Jen solicited my help in making pierogi for the book club meeting at her house. Why pierogi? The book is set in Warsaw in the late 1930’s and through WWII - while pierogi did not figure as prominently as horsemeat and even less appetizing animal protein (don’t ask, don’t ask) it is one of the most famous Polish specialties in this country. Of course I agreed to help with the project, and joined her at Chez Op for dinner of fresh pasta, bacon and local chard as a precursor to the hard labor. At dinner we discussed our collective dread of cooking projects that require dough, but Jen had picked a straighforward recipe (see the end of this entry) and I was feeling confident.

We decided to quadruple the recipe, but to make it in two batches. The dough came together easily, and while it was a bit sticky at first it firmed right up and behaved. Jen had selected a recipe with sour cream in it (which is apparently Pittsburg style) which I supported because sour cream tends to cause deliciousness. Apparently, Pittsburg residents eat 11 times more pierogi than the rest of the country - this is our attempt to get Central Virginia on the charts! We let the dough rest in the refrigerator (wrapped in plastic wrap) for about a half hour while we prepared the fillings. We boiled some peeled potatoes, sauteed diced onions in butter, and mixed in some sharp cheddar cheese and plenty of salt and pepper. On the lighter side, we sauteed local chard (along with the crunchy stems) and sprinkled in some queso fresco (like farmer’s cheese or feta). We also prepared a ricotta filling, sweetened with vanilla and sugar. Finally, from some dried plums found in the kitchen we made a pureed paste and planned on pairing that with unsweetened ricotta. Dried plums? Aren’t those prunes? Yes, and we agreed that the Prune People are making a concerted effort to shift to the term ‘dried plum’ on packaging and in recipes. Hmm.

So the dough is rested, the fillings are ready, and it’s time to make the pierogi. We used a 2.5 inch glass to cut circles out of the rolled-out dough. Given my recent experience with pasta making, I suggested we seal the pierogi with an egg wash to avoid blowouts in boiling water. I cut, Jen filled, and we stored the cute little half-moons on a cookie sheet, separated by type and wax paper. We switched jobs and rotated through all the fillings, astonished as the pierogi piled up - how many people are coming to book club? At the end of the project, we tidied up the kitchen and put the pierogi in the refrigerator to rest overnight. Night night.

I arrived at book club a little early to begin the pierogi task; I knew that Jen would have Francesca at her feet, and the boiling and frying seemed a better task for me. I brought my apron in case it got messy. There were several pots of salted water on to boil, and I diced an onion and began to cook it in butter as our finishing sauce. I’ll admit that I felt nervous about the process; there’s nothing more disturbing than unmanageable dumplings for a group. However, the pierogi were nice and firm and lined up like little soldiers to go plop! into the water. I kept them separated by type, and boiled each batch for 8 to 10 minutes. Despite the fact that we made all the pierogi in the same manner and from the same dough, each pot behaved a bit differently, with one pot growing in size and the dough on another batch growing mottled and bumpy; I assume that the filing affects the growth, and that salt content in the water caused bumpy dumpy. However, they all stayed together and bubbled away merrily as the book people arrived, opened beers and wine, and enjoyed the project.

Jen recounted to me a mutual friend who has some experience with pierogi; she cautioned that the pierogi must be dry when they go in the pan to be fried, or else they won’t brown and crisp (and also, if you put a wet item in oil, it causes the oil to spit like a pan of bacon - ouch). Taking great pains to drain, rinse, drain, and pat dry, we began pan frying in a teflon skillet, which seemed to be the failsafe in this case. We served the savory pierogi sauteed in onion and butter with sour cream on the side, and the sweet pierogi sauteed just in butter and with honey on the side. By all accounts they were all delicious, with the dried plum and ricotta being a surprise hit with Jen. My favorite was the swiss chard - somehow the starch in starch of the potato filling seemed like too much, although if I were trying to live through winter in Poland it might be just right.

Sour cream in the dough is a favorite secret of many Pittsburgh pierogi makers.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups flour, plus extra for kneading and rolling dough
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup sour cream, plus extra to serve with the pierogi
• 1/4 cup butter, softened and cut into small pieces
• butter and onions for sauteing
• ingredients for filling of your choice (potato & cheese filling recipe below)

PREPARATION:

Pierogi Dough
To prepare the pierogi dough, mix together the flour and salt. Beat the egg, then add all at once to the flour mixture. Add the 1/2 cup sour cream and the softened butter pieces and work until the dough loses most of its stickiness (about 5-7 minutes).

zSB(3,3)

You can use a food processor with a dough hook for this, but be careful not to overbeat. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes or overnight; the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.Prepare the Pierogies
Roll the pierogi dough on a floured board or countertop until 1/8″ thick. Cut circles of dough (2″ for small pierogies and 3-3 1/2″ for large pierogies) with a cookie cutter or drinking glass. Place a small ball of filling (about a tablespoon) on each dough round and fold the dough over, forming a semi-circle. Press the edges together with the tines of a fork.

Boil the perogies a few at a time in a large pot of water. They are done when they float to the top (about 8-10 minutes). Rinse in cool water and let dry.

Saute chopped onions in butter in a large pan until onions are soft. Then add pierogies and pan fry until lightly crispy. Serve with a side of sour cream for a true Pittsburgh pierogi meal.

Pasta Dream Come True

If you haven’t read about the food adventures in Umbria, Italy please do so now.

OK, ready? After we all came back from Umbria, the group decided to have a reunion dinner so that we could share photos and memories and to provide a narrative about the trip for Marga, who had to stay at home at the last moment. As the schedule reunion dinner approached, I started to dream…

I was overwhelmed with thankfulness - not only that I had been able to go on the trip, but that the trip itself was basically my food dream come true (as in ‘get paid to go to Italy and explore culture and mindfulness through food…’) and that I was fortunate to be part of a terrific, inquisitive, self-regulating group of UVA students. My greatest anxiety before the trip was that I might have to punish or discipline the students for misbehaving; to their credit, the group pretty much took care of itself, which enabled all of us (myself and Leonardo included!) to relax and enjoy the adventure. So with thankfulness in my heart and food dreams in my head, I hatched a plan…

First Step: Assemble the Pasta Dream Team. I called my dear friends Mark and Tim: Mark is a trained chef who happened to work at a catering company in Italy as an intern, and then worked for several months at Palladio (the formal Northern-Italian eatery at Barboursville Vineyards) before becoming the executive chef at Duners in Ivy, VA. Tim is a winemaker and food adventurer who just happens to be a starch-loving Italian. To round out the Dream Team I invited Marga and the students to join us for pasta making before dinner; to my delight Elaine Quick joined us and served both as a skilled set of hands and an audience for Mark’s pasta wisdom.

Pasta begins the evening before at Tim’s house; we make four batches based on the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Lest this sound too simple, we decide to test different types of flour and eggs to see which yields the best results. As we knead the dough, I realize why Lydia Bastianich has those formidable forearms - this is hard work. Fortunately Tim and don Simon ‘el Brujo’ are working shoulder to shoulder with me; Simon has the dubious job of kneading the batch made with durum flour, which will prove to be the toughest in the end. While we don’t know exactly how the different flours will behave, we can select the best one for each type of pasta based on its structure and suppleness; I suspect the durum will become the garbinelli.

After chilling the dough for 30 minutes, we begin rolling it through the pasta machine, taking turns throwing and catching the sheet which grows successively longer and thinner as we adjust the machine. Not for the first time, we are producing ‘twosies’; for some reason the machine is not fully perforating the fettucine, leaving Christa with the laborious task of separating the noodles. Mark and Lydia arrive, and Mark offers constructive criticism of our process; we speak of gluten development, regulating the thickness of each sheet to maximize yield, the ‘mirror’ or the sheen on the pasta sheet. Miracle of all miracles, when we use Mark’s methods, we transition from twosies to (mostly) onesies and realize we are heading in the right direction.

There is goat ragu with Roundabout tomatoes bubbling away in the newly-complete outdoor pizza oven; in a lapse of judgement I put it in a cast iron skillet, which makes it taste ferrous (go figure) and necessitates a quick transfer of pot and some creative seasoning. So that’s why recipes say ‘in a large, non-reactive pan combine tomatoes…’. I suppose the acidity of the tomatoes reacts with the metal.

The pasta with goat ragu is delicious. I pack up the nine remaining balls of pasta dough and the loaner pasta drying rack (which is essentially a folding wooden rack with removable dowels for lifting and carrying the hanging pasta to the pot) along with some larger dowels that we hope to use for garbinelli the following day at the IRC. As usual, dinner and cleanup are completed around midnight, and when I go to sleep I am already looking forward to more fresh pasta the next day.

So Mark and I stop by feast on the way to the IRC to pick up some essential ingredients, most notably Caromont chevre, local asparagus, butter, herbs (I recognize the ‘good dill’ from Manakintowne, a particularly fragrant and sweet blue-green variety) and a bottle of Cassis Lambic as a thank-you to Mark for leading the charge. It is difficult to ask him to cook on his day off, but once the ingredients are arrayed in front of him I can see his creative chef mind clicking through the possibilities. He speaks in a calm, low voice and natural light streams into the room; while he and Elaine make the pasta I unload the rest of the food, make some hot tea, snap a few photos, put potatoes on to boil for gnocchi, and begin to pull the meal together.

First they make garbinelli, which we surmise will benefit from some drying at room temperature so as to make them less likely to unroll. Mark works the pasta through the machine, admiring the way the dough has firmed up overnight and is ready for its starring role. Starting with a sheet, he cuts rectangles for us, which we roll (at an angle) around the dowels and affix with a bit of egg. They slide off the dowels just fine, and we pile them on a cookie sheet and powder them with flour so they won’t stick together. Then we move on to a form of ravioli (perhaps ‘agnolini’ would be the best description) stuffed with Caromont chevre; Mark has been making this pasta at Duners and has a clear idea of the mouth feel he is looking for. “I want it to be tiny, and creamy and toothy, and just explode in your mouth like a fresh pea.” I insist only that we use the crinkly edge of the cutter. He dabs tiny bits of chevre on the pasta sheet, then folds the pasta over and gently pushes the two sides together around the cheese. Elaine cuts the little rectangles apart, clarifying their shapes by trimming a bit with the crinkly-edge of the cutter. Mark occasionally tells us stories about people he has cooked with through the years; often I can’t hear what he is saying from where I stand in the kitchen but Elaine is smiling and clearly enjoying the narrative, so all is well.

Tim breezes in and starts preparing a caramelized onion and white wine sauce with peas and dill. Several students join us and begin making gnocchi based on our gnocchi lesson with Leonardo in Umbria; this dough is easier to handle (not as sticky) but slightly lumpy because I did not think to bring a moulin. Mark and Elaine move on to the final noodle, which is fettucine and very simple in comparison to the first two tasks. They string the noodles on the drying rack, and Mark joins us in the kitchen to whip up some sauces. Everything smells delicious - the pasta is arrayed on baking trays and seems to be radiating sunshine and good cheer; Brad and Carol have arrived and are complimenting this courageous undertaking; the students are sharing stories and laughing and reliving Italy memories.

We all sit at a large table in the common room at the IRC, pouring sparkling water from bottles on the table that are a symbolic representation of wine bottles (UVA simply would not approve of real wine) and passing around a large green salad with bacon dressing. Lydia joins us and I introduce her around as Mark’s handler; meanwhile he and Tim are cooking and draining pasta, and dressing it with herbs and some cheese before I run it out to the table. We have garbinelli with the caramelized onion and pea sauce; gnocchi with local goat ragu and Everona Piedmont (a local pecorino); fettucine with asparagus, lemon and oil; and finally the agnolini dressed very simply in olive oil. Everyone digs in, forgetting to pass the dishes all the way around in their excitement to eat. The Dream Team joins us at the table and we pile their plates high. Finally, I remind everyone that I don’t believe in leftovers. Buon appetito.

things you can do with lard, part 1: Tamales

So the pork loin from Double H Farm weighed in at 13 pounds, and the Organic Butcher charged me for 10 lbs, figuring that giving me 3 pounds of fat would be good for business. I suspect that the butchers have plenty of miscellaneous animal fat lurking in the back of all of their refrigerators…

I cooked the pork loin for a group of students at the International Residential College at UVa, and when cleanup time came I hid away the large roasting pan filled with liquid fat, partially rendered lard, and crisp cracklings.  Of course I wasn’t going to throw it away, but what was I going to do???

I had never rendered lard before, and found scant information about it. I consulted the Joy of Cooking (always my first stop) and then Nourishing Traditions, but neither contained a real ‘how to’. I think there is a description of the process in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book but unfortunately that collection is not part of my reference library; if it were I could be well on my way to tapping sugar maples and cleaning everything on a weekly basis. Lacking a definitive procedure, I simply trim out the tiny bits of leftover meat (perfect for puppy training and old-dog nutritional supplements), set aside the parts that look encouragingly like pork belly, and cut the rest into small snow-white cubes.

My hands are quickly slick with fat, and even when I use scaldingly hot water to wash up, I am left with supple, delicious smelling skin.  As the cubes begin to melt in the pan, my house is filled with a delicious smell - not smoky like bacon, not meaty like chops, but just clean toasted fat - maybe a bit reminiscent of a nut pastry baking?  The experience is intensely sensual - the sense of slick, waterproof oily touch; light toasty delicious smell; the new taste of ‘pork butter’; the sight of a snow white blanket of fat; the soft crackling sound of melting fat. While I handle, cut and render the lard my thoughts wander to Richard and Jean and the Farmily at Double H, their pigs, the guys at the Organic Butcher, the IRC students for whom I prepared the pork loin, and my pork-loving food friends (always eager for leftovers and by-products).  Reflecting on the source of the food and admiring its clean character and clear flavors helps me to be thankful for the bounty of food and for the people who work to produce it and to enjoy it.

Both dogs are in the kitchen, trying to lick my hands and looking longingly at the stove. The lard cubes are slowly melting (with a bubbling sound) and I press on them with the back of a slotted spoon to keep them submerged in their own efflugence. Once the pile of cubes turns brown and seems stalled, I pour the liquid lard through a sieve and into glass jars and old pate containers, already earmarked for households I know will use them.

Marlena calls to invite me to dinner on Thursday night; “…with all this lard you gave me I decided I have to make tamales!” she says on the phone; the other use we can think of is pie crust, although I’m told the best lard for pastry is ‘leaf lard’ or the fat from around the kidneys; I didn’t see any kidneys this time around

Marlena’s great aunt, Tia Magda, taught her that the key to good tamale dough is to add the masa slowly, and to check the readiness of the dough by balling a bit and throwing it in cold water - if it floats, it’s ready. To that end we make smallish batches of dough in the Simon’s bright red Kitchen Aid mixer and try not to overmix the dough. We are using the recipe from the Joy of Cooking, but with some adaptations (of course); home rendered local lard, venison broth (using the leg bone, odd pieces of venison, and the liver as suggested in Nouishing Traditions), MaSeCa (corn flour, or masa, that has calcified limestone already added to it for flavor, preservation, and aid in digestion), and water.

Marlena purchased banana leaves at the IGA around the corner from her house - in her words, not a great store, but lots of ethnic ingredients.  She already prepared two fillings - picadillo with Gail’s ground goat meat (including olives, chile powder, and probably a soffrito of onions and garlic), and slow-roasted pork.  I brought queso fresco, canned jalapeno sauce, and Mexican hot sauce picked up at the Mexican tienda El Paso.   We cut pieces of banana leaf and sections of butcher’s twine, and begin shaping tamales.

This is my first time making tamales (or maybe my second?  it seems vaguely familiar, although I can’t remember doing it before, so it must have been a while ago).  Marlena demonstrates:  She begins with a smallish handful of the masa dough, squeezes it into an oblong ball, puts it on a banana leaf, and hollows out the center.  Then she stuffs the center with filling and closes the masa around it, folding the banana leaf around the tamale and continuing to wrap the leaf around the bundle.  Finally, she uses the twine to tie it like a little present.  I try to mimic her skilled movements, experimenting with different wrapping styles until I realize that it’s not really important.

We stack the tamales by type, pausing only to make new batches of dough.  We chat as we work, talking about lard, venison, raw milk, baby nutrition, mutual friends, and family.  I had always heard that tamales are typically served at celebrations; I had also heard that it is best to have many hands to make them so that it doesn’t take all day.  We move through this task fairly quickly (maybe because we have a lot to talk about?).  Thinking about it now, I wonder if tamales are good for celebrations because the work is done ahead of time, and the steaming is a fairly forgiving process whereby they can be kept warm and stacked in their little leaves until they are eaten, even if the eating takes several hours.  Also, no plates nor cleanup required - the banana leaf serves as biodegradable wrapper and plate, fingers are utensils.  Genius.

When all the dough is used up we pack up the tamales; Marlena keeps half for her dinner party the following evening, and I pack away the other half for a potluck I am attending.  While I am proud to take the tamales to a potluck, I worry that I won’t get to try each different type to compare flavor and moisture…ah well, I’ll have to rely on the honest opinions of the other eaters.  When I serve the tamales at the potluck, there are two vegetarians who are a bit disappointed to learn I have used fresh, local lard; the rest of the folks couldn’t be happier.

Flavor of Umbria - Pizza and sausage lesson

Tonight we make pizza on the large hearth in the Great Hall and handmade link-sausage called salsiccia or salciccia (in the Umbrian dialect). Our sometimes-driver Domenico hauls in the ingredients for salsiccia: one electric grinder/extruder machine; one pork shoulder, trimmed of most (but not all) fat; several rolls of budello di miaile, or pig’s intestine, soaking in shallow water; a head of garlic; and weighed salt and pepper. If the sausage is to be eaten fresh, the ratio is 1 kg meat to 27 g salt to 8 g pepper; if it is to be air-cured, increase the salt by 3 to 4 g per kilo of meat and hang first in a humid environment until some fat begins to seep out, then hang in a dry environment until firm to the touch.

Domenico cubes the pork, trimming off excess fat and stopping to sharpen the knife every few minutes. When all the meat is cubed, he mixes it with the chopped garlic (just a few cloves - he doesn’t want to hurt us) and salt and pepper. Meanwhile, he threads the casing onto the spout of the grinder, speaking all the while in a measured, low voice; Leo translates choice phrases, like ‘reminding’ us that pig intestines were used for contraceptives in the middle ages (wide eyes from the audience, myself included).

Domenico begins to feed the grinder with his right hand while managing the stuffed casing with his left hand; he has obviously done this before and makes the choreography between his hands seem very easy. He plumps, squeezes and twists the casing as it is filled, and then pulls it down the cutting board in one long, unshaped piece. Later he uses twine to tie off links about 3 inches long, and then encourages us to try tying a few. Finally, he sandwiches the links between the useful footed sandwich grill and places it on the hearth above a bed of small, red-hot coals. The room begins to smell delicious immediately; he pierces the sausages with a fork before flipping the grill over to cook the other side.

Meanwhile, Daniela (or Signora Pizza, as we call her) is making and rolling out pizza dough. She uses type ‘O’ flour, again in a hollow volcano shape on a large wooden table leaf. She adds lieuto di birra (yeast) which has instructions for quantity on the package, and then she adds water to the hollow, and finally drizzles in a bit of the extra-virgin olive oil that is made from the olives grown at Acquaviva. She gently incorporates the flour into the water, using a massaging motion very similar to hairwashing. From the ease and speed of her movements, I can tell that she has made this impasto (dough) a million times; indeed, when I try to photograph her all the pictures are blurry in this low-light room.

Daniela lets the dough lievitare (rise) on the side of the hearth, and in 30 minutes it has doubled in size. Using a very long mattarello (rolling pin) she rolls the dough to about 1/2″ thickness, sprinkles some flour in a shallow aluminum pan, adds the frisbee-sized dough to the pan, and then cooks it on a riser about 8 inches above a bed of red-hot coals. She rotates the pan a few times, and pierces any bubbles that appear. She flips the dough once, and in about 10 minutes it is done.

We already learned a tough lesson earlier in the week: Umbrian pizza is really a flatbread, and is not made with any toppings. While everyone did a decent job of hiding their disappointment, I can’t help but think how delicious it would be with the leftover burrata from lunch…

At the end of the meal Leo’s brother Max joins us, and is excited to see that the sausage has been made by hand. “I haven’t had sausage like this in 20 years,” he says, then looks at Leo and corrects himself, “probably 30 years.” I hear murmurs from the group that it is the best sausage they have had, and I agree that it is excellent - full of flavor, perfectly seasoned, and with the satisfying snap to the casing that the Germans call ‘knack’. Max and I start discussing other forcemeat delicacies, and he describes for me (deferring to Domenico at key points) the process of making coppa and recommending a place in Todi to procure the real thing. If I understand properly, coppa consists of lots of slow-cooked cartilage along with the varied trimmings of meat and fat; it is poached and then the water and some fat are forced out of it through cheesecloth. I promise to try to get some.

To round out the meal, we have the ever-present cicoria, this time sourced from a restaurant nearby (along with a couple of bottles of label-less wine portioned from their cask). By now the students are clamoring for the bitter green; several days prior we had cicoria with potato cooked into it, which went a long way toward smoothing out the bitterness. When eaten with the unsalted pizza bread and the highly seasoned sausage, the cicoria is perfectly scrumptious. Leonardo keeps joking that he will make one of our food activities center around hunting and harvesting wild cicoria, which seems like supreme fun until we realize the vast quantity that would be necessary for even a single portion.

Flavor of Umbria - Gnocchi lesson

We are at Acquaviva, in Ficareto, Umbria, Italy. Umbria is known as ‘the green heart of Italy’ and remains very rural and agricultural; it is a land of steep foothills and windy roads, with scores of olive groves and vineyards hugging the curves of the green slopes. We are guests of the Gaiba-Gioffre family, who have lived at Acquaviva for about 40 years. Our accommodations were once a stable with living quarters above; over the years the building has been enlarged and, most recently, totally remodeled to serve as apartments for ‘agriturismo’ visitors.

Our group is composed of 9 UVa students who are completing a seminar class based on mindfulness - that is, cultivating the ability to play, to listen, to reflect and record, and most of all to enjoy culture and food and life at a leisurely pace. I was asked to lead the group at the last minute because my friend and colleague who taught the seminar had a medical situation that required immediate attention. I had 4 days to clear my schedule and leave the country, and fortunately I was able to do just that!

Our guide is Leonardo Gioffre, architect/artist/urban planner/entrepreneur and general inspiration. His love for the region is evidenced by his encyclopedic knowledge of history, architecture, and current events in Umbria. Fortunately for me, Leo has made all the arrangements for our trip, including setting up food-related outings and instructional sessions. Tonight we make gnocchi in the Great Hall near our apartments.

Leonardo’s mother Anna Gaiba brings in a pot of smooth and fragrant tomato sauce that she made earlier in the day. In her timid but respectable English she explains the process she followed for this tomato sauce, ‘sugo clasico‘, and goes on to explain the permutations that form other typical sauces. For the gnocchi sauce, she used carrot, celery, onion, and garlic chopped fine and cooked in a pan with bay leaves and with red wine ‘until the smell of wine fades’. (She uses the Latin name for bay, Laurus Nobilus; later in the week I learn the Italian name, alloro, when we smell bay on the breeze and ask what it is called.) When the vegetables are soft, she added chopped parsley and canned chopped tomatoes ‘because there are no fresh’ and stewed the sauce for the remainder of the day. When I ask about salt she makes a throaty sound between a laugh and a snort and says ‘of course!’. I suppose I was hoping for a quantity.

Leonardo uses a pressure cooker to prepare the potatoes for gnocchi - 1.5 kilos take about a half hour to cook all the way through (in their skins). He recommends using yellow potatoes, as they are starchier and have less of a tendency to disappear in the water during cooking. From his insistence and the tone of his voice, I understand that this has happened to him before. He explains that the pressure cooker is a rare example of faster being better - if the goal is to simply have something cooked through, the pressure cooker uses less time (and therefore less fuel) to do so. After peeling the still-warm potatoes, he puts each one through a ricer and then encourages the students to take over. The ‘riced’ potatoes go in the middle of a volcano-shaped pile of 2 kilos of type ‘O’ flour (equivalent to our All Purpose flour, I suppose). Leo uses his floured hands to gradually incorporate the moist, warm potatoes into the wall of flour, and as the mixture cools he also cracks two eggs into the dough to give it a better chance of surviving the boil. He kneads the dough, talking all the while about gnocchi, sauces ‘im bianco‘ or without tomato, sauces with meat, pasta shapes, and fielding any and all questions directed at him with humor and aplomb. Several in our group have not had gnocchi before, and I explain that it is a dish (like risotto) that is often executed imperfectly in restaurants.

Leo keeps adding more flour to the sticky dough; his mother looks and shakes her head and goes home for another kilo of flour. When she returns, they battle back and forth in rapid Italian and then he verbally chases her from the room. He gives a quick, deft demonstration of rolling the dough into a ’snake’ about the thickness of a finger, then cutting it into small pieces, then pressing each piece into the tines of a fork to create a hollow side and sliding the other side off the fork to create a ridged side. The group dives right in, working the dough inexpertly but with enthusiasm. We pile the finished gnocchi on a large floured board which looks to be a leaf from a huge table; we have a wide variety of shapes and sizes, which doesn’t bode well for cooking but says a lot about individual expression.

While we roll gnocchi we sip some local wines. In the white realm, we drink Grechetto, which (if I understand properly) owes it’s fame to Greek cultivation. It is widely grown on these steep, sunny hillsides and is one of the first grapes harvested in the early fall. This one is bright yellow in color and lightly oaked, which for me makes it reminiscent of chardonnay (probably owing more to the oak than to the flavor of the grape). We also sample a blended red crafted at the cooperative winery down the road - this one is merlot, sangiovese and sagratino from 2004. Somehow it seems both lighter-bodied and more complex than the young, single-varietal Virginia wines I have been drinking. Later in the week Leo provides an overview of the DOC guidelines for wine production, which allow for a certain amount of blending between years but no addition of sugar to boost alcohol content. Hmm.

The gnocchi is cooked briefly in salted water, and then tossed with the sugo clasico that Anna made. To finish, we add an 18 month pecorino romano (sharp, delicious, and unbelievably spicy - one thin sliver is a mouthful of flavor) and parmigiano reggiano. For vegetable we are introduced to cicoria, which appears to be a wild chicory very similar to dandelion, and broccoli, which (from its tender look and taste) seems like it must be broccolini. Both are cooked with garlic and olive oil, and both are a bit bitter but very satisfying in an early spring, liver-tonic sort of way.

We are also introduced to the bread of Umbria, which is made without salt due to a papal tax on salt several hundred years ago. Leo explains that the unseasoned bread is meant to be eaten with highly seasoned foods; indeed, when I swab up the end of the sugo clasico with my scarpetta of bread and wash it down with my last swallow of wine, it all fits together. Goodnight.

Now In - Double H Pork!!!

I met Marga at feast!; over time we developed a rapport, attended a few food events together, and finally set aside a time to meet and discuss working together. She explains her position as the Director of Programs at the International Residential College at UVa, and also her professional and personal advocacy for mindfulness, yoga, and slow food. Over a series of meetings, she and I speak about bringing mindfulness and local food into the IRC in a manner that will be relaxing and educational and that will afford us the opportunity to work together. At the beginning of the process I can’t see where it is going, since I am not a formal educator nor do I consider myself qualified to ‘teach’ at UVa.

Marga’s encouragement and admiration go a long way, and in a few weeks’ time we have a proposal for an 8 week program that is to be funded out of the IRC’s student activity budget. The parallel programs will feature four documentaries, either food or environmentally-focused, complemented by smaller hands-on cooking classes with an emphasis on eating and discussing local food. Hopefully these programs will introduce young, smart, progressive and internationally-minded UVa students to current crises in the food world while providing them with small focused dinners based around local foods; this combination will provide a localized context in which to evaluate global issues, and will also build cooking, eating and discussion skills.

Beginning this course in January leaves me with very little fresh local product to choose from; I have already been making cabbage since November, and nothing else is on the horizon until the asparagus appears (please appear, asparagus!). Typical winter storage crops such as potato, onion, and carrot have not been available to me; I surmise it is difficult to grow these root crops in our red clay soil.

For the first meal I chose grassfed beef and made a local tomato ragout with simmered cabbage; egg noodles from Mona Lisa pasta; poached local apples and apple walnut cake from Breadworks; and roasted turnips and sweet potatoes.

The second meal (and first cooking class) I chose young chickens from the Shenandoah valley, Wade’s Mill polenta (prepared two ways - chilled and firm and spiked with cream, or fresh, soft and gooey with Everona Piedmont cheese); roasted butternut and acorn squash; and mixed greens and tomatoes from Roundabout. I take the time at home to prepare an annotated menu, including sources on the local food and a primer each on cooking chicken and cooking polenta. It becomes clear throughout the class that the students want to be cooking - chopping, washing, chatting - and I resolve to make the next class more hands-on. More work, less Lisa Reeder, although I love to talk about food and am impressed by their questions and their humor. The chicken is delectable; meltingly tender, flavorful, easy to pull apart into its component parts, and the frames go home with me to become delicious chicken broth.

Last night I cooked for 20 students. I called the Organic Butcher and secured a full pork loin and (perhaps most importantly) advice from the meat men. I feel fortunate that I have experts with whom to consult, as I seem to constantly be moving in unfamiliar territory! Robert helps me estimate the weight of the loin, the cooking time and temp, and provides the good-natured off-color comments that I have come to expect from meat men. According to my calculations 10 lbs will be the perfect quantity for 20 portions (8 oz per person, as opposed to the FDA’s recommendation of 4 oz, or the size of a deck of cards) and may even fit into the only roasting pan I have. When I go to retrieve the meat the guys tell me that they left the fat and the skin on it ‘because we thought you would think it was fun’. So true.

The loin is recognizable as a round piece about 3 inches across and 2 inches high; it is separated from a triangular piece of meat by a small ribbon of snow white fat; the whole business is sheathed in a 1 to 2 inch layer of fat and topped with the slightly pinkish skin. Ryan points out that the entire pig was scalded to remove all the hair; most slaughterhouses just have a small scalder (for suckling pigs) and so full sized hogs with fat and skin intact are rarely available. The loin weighs upwards of 13 lbs, but Ryan charges me for 10 lbs and gives me the fat for free. Looks like I’ll be rendering some lard…

I order mixed greens and cabbage (what else?) from Roundabout, and decide to make tangy coleslaw with carrot and red cabbage thrown in for color contrast. I assemble the coleslaw in a trashbag as I don’t have a container that is nearly big enough, nor suited to the divine smashing one can do in a bag. I purchase pistachios and Thompson’s raisins to make a jasmine rice pilaf, cooked on the stove and in the oven along with bay leaves, butter, olive oil and salt. I pick up some heart shaped cookies from Breadworks in honor of Valentine’s Day; the caveat to eating one is you must tell someone you love them (I tell the students). The students devour the rice pilaf and praise the pork; they seem to enjoy the coleslaw and the apple salad, and the cookies are a big hit. I admire all the leftover pork fat and begin to imagine what else I am going to cook in it.

food for thought…

Given our local grape production for wine, why don’t we have local raisins? What is the process? What about grapeseed oil? Huh?

CSA Full Share in Modesto, CA

I’m traveling (via airplane - that’s right, I’m the extra lap!) with younger sister Missy and her nearly-ten month old twins Aidan and Hailey to visit older sister Patti, husband Loel and their son Liam. In anticipation of our arrival in Modesto, CA my older sister Patti had requested that her family receive the full CSA share from Rancho Piccolo farm. Ordinarily they split the share with a friend, but said friend claimed that the holiday food-blitz would keep her well fed and yielded her half to us. Patti also admitted that they usually throw some portion of the vegetables away; my task is to avoid that plight this time around.

Loel, Liam, dog Beqa and I walked to the local health food store, the Carrot, to pick up the share on Thursday, 12/28. When we arrived a reefer truck was parked outside, and a fellow was shuttling boxes into the store on a hand truck. I went inside, examined the stack of labeled boxes, found ours, and signed it out. We shoved the box under the tri-wheeled stroller, brought along specifically for ferrying the produce back; later, when Liam tired and rode for a bit, he said he could feel the veggies ‘under his bum’. (Sona vula vulu was his nickname in Fiji this past year - white bum). On the way back from the pickup we stopped at a local park; I was astonished to observe that the park is planted in olive trees and that this year must be a bumper crop. The olives filled the limbs and littered the ground, all colors ranging from deep reddish purple to brown to black, several inches thick in some places. The olive leaves were light green and attenuated, not unlike the color of sage, and the trees themselves are stately and graceful. While I admired the yield, and the colors, and the smell, I question the wisdom of fruit-bearing trees over and around a playground; carpet tapenade, anyone?

When Patti joined us at home we carefully pulled the newsletter out of the box, and then one by one admired each bunch of vegetables. Our full share included: 1 bunch white turnips, 1 bunch beets (with goodlooking greens attached), 1 bunch multicolored carrots (among the best hand-grown carrots I have seen - the Virginia clay seems to retard their vertical growth!), 1 bunch curly kale and 1 bunch swiss chard (both bunches just gorgeous, composed of smallish, brilliantly colored leaves), 1 bunch baby dill (’dill weed! my favorite! exclaims Missy), 1 stubby leek, 2 small bulbs fennel, 3 fuyu persimmons, and 1/2 head red cabbage.

I fill one side of the sink and wash all of the vegetables for tonight’s meal. I decide to sautee all the greens for dinner, including the beet greens, figuring the fresher the better. We’re also having white bean ragout (using the leek) with dill and kielbasa, and a butter lettuce and citrus salad with braised fennel and slivered almonds. The salad is a reprise of the Lemesis, a salad from New Year’s Eve 2005 - thusly titled due to Lem’s dislike of fennel, which I feel we overcame that night by slowly braising the fennel in blood orange juice. In this incarnation, the grapefruit comes from the backyard and is super-tart and fragrant. Aah, California. The dinner is a hit - even the dark leafy greens, which cook down and provide us with about two bites per person; perhaps that’s just the right amount, because I have never mastered a preparation of dark greens that tastes good the next day.

On various outings around the neighborhood we marvel at the citrus: grapefruit, mandarin, oranges and lemons in the yard; persimmons EVERYWHERE and very easy to spot due to the leafless trees and the distinctive orange color; rumors of pomegranate, but no real examples (Patti claims that all of their poms get stolen from the yard). On a brief road trip with Loel and Liam to Knight’s Ferry we pass miles and miles of nut orchards - almond and walnut, primarily, but certainly other varieties to the discerning eye. The trees are bare and fairly squat due to diligent pruning; they fan out from the road in row upon row, with an occasional fallen soldier to break the pattern. The plantings are mostly just below the level of the road for ease of irrigation; Loel explains that flood irrigation requires a level orchard but very little else in terms of energy to irrigate, while spray irrigation can cover less even ground but requires both equipment (and requisite upkeep) and power to establish water pressure.

I wake one morning having dreamed of persimmons, and later a friend in VA asks that I bring back some citrus as she thinks she may be getting scurvy. When I ask about shipping back a box of citrus, my idea is pooh poohed (’you only brought one bag! let’s pack a box - Loel can make you a handle!’ says Patti. Good ole Loel has been putting handles on boxes for years now, and acquiesces with a grin). Patti calls the elderly neighbor across the street, Bernice, to ask if we can harvest persimmons from her tree, and she consents. The tree is about 30 years old, she remembers. It is laden with fruit, some very ripe and some still firm to the touch. I pick some of both, hoping to tote the less-ripe fruit back to the East Coast.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and in homage to the persimmon we decide to dye my hair red. I covet the color and want it for my own. It doesn’t turn out as red as I expected, but the activity is fun and makes me feel like I have a special outfit for the evening. I also research persimmon recipes before we head to the store to come up with an idea for the small party Patti and Loel are hosting to ring in the new year.

Patti takes me to O’Brien’s (but not the closest store to them - this one is newer, and has a better cheese section). I ask the cheesemonger to introduce me to some local and regional cheeses, letting him know what I have tried on the East Coast. He steers me to a smoked bleu, a local triple cream brie, and then recommends a variation on epoisse under the Berthauld name (which I’m told is a subregion). We also try Fra’mani Gentile, an artisanal salami brand from Seattle that I am familiar with and devoted to; I opt for some Spanish lomo to round out the selection and then we shop for apples, pears, crackers, tapenade, and beautiful black grapes.

When we return home I lay out the cheeses and let them come to room temperature. I begin work on the persimmon creation, which is chopped arugula tossed in fresh citrus vinaigrette with persimmon chunks, macerated red onion, and hazlenuts scooped into endive spears and fanned out on a plate. If I were to make it again I would add a dollop of creme fraiche - it is New Years, after all. I am eager to try the wines made by their winemaking club called Woof Woof Winery; each year they create clever names that marry the varietal or blend name with something doggy. Highlights from this (and past) years are: Forti-Fido, Tempra-neutered, I Shih-Tzu Not…

Next stab at the vegetable share is the ole roasted root vegetables. I prepare the beets separately as Missy expresses her heartfelt disdain; the mix includes kohlrabi, turnips, celery, fennel, red onion, and some dill and fennel fronds. I toss them in olive oil and roast them for about an hour, and we eat them with rice and green salad and overcooked tuna. That’s right, I overcooked the tuna. I reminded Missy that beets can turn your poop and your pee red; however, since she didn’t eat them I really should have reminded Patti instead - apparently she had an early morning colon cancer panic…

It’s Thursday again, and Loel and I have crafted a plan to get some sublime citrus back to Virginia. In addition to the persimmons, we go across the street to harvest navel oranges into a double-wide milk crate; Liam and Loel stand on the ladder and toss them down to me. The smell of the orange peel oil is overwhelming, and the softball size fruit make my palms sting when I catch them. Next we return to their backyard, scale the ladder, and harvest a lesser amount of yellow grapefruit. When I asked Loel if he knows anyone who has pink or ruby red grapefruit he replied ‘no’ without hesitating; I wonder why not? Some wild hybrid that is only available for commercial production? Does somebody own the variety? Ms. Ruby Red, grapefruit magnate? On our way out to run some errands, we stop by a house a few blocks away and I knock on the door to ask if we can harvest the pomegranates we see hanging between their yard and the next. The older couple is as friendly as can be, and assures us that they have had their fill for the year and we are welcome to all the fruit we’d like. They even put a ‘picker’ on the front porch for us to use when we return! The tree is pretty well picked over and the fruit that’s left is mostly split and starting to blacken, but we pick a basketful and return home.

Thursday also means another CSA pickup, which we forget to take care of when we are out, so I strike out in the pickup and zig and zag around the neighborhood until I find the store. While I know I won’t be cooking any of these vegetables, I still unpack them and try to tuck them away in a manner that will keep them fresh. This week’s full share includes: 1 head butter lettuce (so beautiful!), two heads of frisee (not my favorite), three compact radicchio balls, one bunch carrots, several organic Fuji apples (on the small side, but perfect looking).

I’m headed back to the east coast laden with 35 pounds of citrus, and having shipped back a small box of Sciabica’s Oil of the Olive for myself and as gifts for friends. While I was there we ate a lot of local food and talked a lot about their agricultural and food and wine community, and upon reflecting on that (with a baby dozing on my lap) I realize that this is my job - source the food, prepare the food, ask questions, and find a way to share the fleeting harvest with as many people as I can. When the airline attendant asks “what’s in this box?” I respond blithely “Christmas presents” and it feels true.