Sunday, December 30, 2007

gratin



We have some beautiful lamb from friends who make beautiful cheese. We have chops and shoulder. The chops are gone, but we roast the shoulder, just a little roast perfect for two or four people, with dried figs and apricots, fresh goat cheese, and a little hot pepper. On a cold winter day during the holidays, the kind where the damp gets deep into your bones, we hole up infront of the woodstove with the lamb slow roasting in the little oven above the fire and we think about what to serve alongside.

Whenever I wonder what to cook, I seem to always gravitate to Julia Child and that old classic volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Our two volume set is old, bought at a used bookstore years ago, one with a dust cover sprinkled with a red and blue fleur-de-lis pattern, the other without, the pages yellowed and well-used with notes in someone else’s hand. It is a potatoes-kind-of-evening, and we have some gruyere in the refrigerator. Gratin Dauphinois, a potato dish from the Rhonish Alps looks just the thing. In the Queen’s English, potatoes au gratin.

Gratin are dishes that are French in origin and usually mean a baked casserole covered in Bechamel, or Mornay sauce with bread crumbs, cheese, butter, and the like. I’ve heard there is an Irish recipe that also exists and is called Lucky Charms Potatoes, and apparently potatoes au gratin are as common in Sweden as they are in France.

Gratin is a cooking technique rather than just something one does to potatoes taken from the French gratter, or “to scrape”, meaning the scrapings of bread and cheese involved. Gratin is also used to mean the “upper crust” of Parisian society. You can make a gratin out of just about anything: leeks, celeriac, eggplant, (but stop thinking about that old shoe….). In the US, we’ve come to call a gratin of potatoes scalloped pototoes because of the scallop pattern in which you arrange them. Note: scallop was used to refer to potatoes long before the bi-valve of the same name.

So, a gratin of potatoes it will be to serve with lamb. We’ll also braise some brussel sprouts with chestnuts and season them with nutmeg. I turn to Julia, as I often do in times of need, and as always, she does not disappoint.

Gratin Dauphinois (Adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)
For Two

1 medium potato
A small fireproof baking dish
½ clove of unpeeled garlic
2 Tb butter
2 healthy pinch of salt and pepper
1/3 cup of Gruyere (Tarentaise by Thistle Hill Farm is superb made here in Vermont)
¼ cup boiling milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Peel the potato and slice it about an1/8 of inch thick. Place in a bowl of ice cold water, then drain and pat dry when ready to use. (This keeps your potatoes from turning black.) Rub the baking dish with the garlic, then used the garlic for something else (I like to toss it in with the gratin myself). Smear the inside of the dish with a thin film of the butter. Spread half of the drained and dried potatoes in the bottom of the dish, following that scallop pattern. Divide over the potatoes half the salt and pepper, cheese, and dotted butter. Arrange the remaining pieces of potato over the first layer, and season them again with salt and pepper and cover with the rest of the cheese and butter. Pour over the boiling milk. Set the baking dish in the preheated oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the potatoes or tender, the milk has been absorbed, and the top is nicely browned. Serve it forth.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

holiday




Even though we have passed the winter solstice, it is 5:30 in the evening and still already dark. The snow falls steadily as we make the drive home from the village where we work, making the ride quiet. Lights shine through house windows and I can see people moving around inside setting tables, cooking in kitchens, dressing dining room chandeliers in pine boughs and sparkles. We are not open at the restaurant on Christmas Eve, but we have been in the kitchen all day baking panettone, the yeasty Italian Christmas bread studded with raisins and candied orange peel. Once the bread is out of the oven, we pack up our bounty and deliver to our friends around town the golden loaves, still warm and scented with citrus, while finishing that last bit of our holiday errands.

It reminds us of our Easter in a village outside of Rome this spring. On the day we arrived in Italy, warm with the sun shining, we opened the small cottage we let, then went out provisioning as we had guests arriving the next day for the long holiday weekend. At the bakery in the piazza, we got ourselves in the line winding out the door, knowing that everyone must be waiting for something good. It was the first round of pizza di pasqua, a typical Easter bread similar to panettone but made with anise and pancetta for savory, or bits of chocolate for sweet. We bought ours with chocolate, still warm and fragrant, then went to the macellaio for meat, the alimentari for cheese, and the frutta e verdura for fresh fruit and vegetables. In each store, the perfume rising from our open paper bag caused patrons and owners alike to stop, ask what smelled so delicious, ask where we got it, then dash out the door, shouting over their shoulder, “I’ll be right back!” as they went out to get their own holiday treat.

We hear later that we have somehow channeled the spirit of our Roman Easter’s pizza di pasqua as our own panettone plies the same magic as our friends finish their holiday shopping with their open bags of warm Christmas bread and the air is filled with orange, raisin, and the warmth of good cheer halting everyone for just a moment as they wonder at the change in atmosphere.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

satsumas!






Take the ferry across the Mississippi out of New Orleans. Land in Algiers, (have a bowl of gumbo at the little corner bar across from the ferry terminal and admire the spruced up shotgun houses that line the streets close to the levy before leaving), and drive out into the sugar cane countryside where the land is wide and flat and the sky is violet at dawn and dusk. Out where the cane grows, you'll also find satsuma groves, the local citrus which is small and sweet and usually seedless.

Satsumas grow exceedingly well in southern Louisiana. They like the soil, the light, the air, the humidity, the climate. They say, they being those who write research notes in agricultural journals, that satsumas, also called mikan in Japan, naartjie in South Africa, and mandarin or tangerine in Canada originate from Wenzhou, a city in the Zheijang province in China, a city known for its citrus production. The fruit was listed as a royal offering for Imperial consumption as far back as the Tang Dynasty, and evidence of its cultivation is recorded back some 2400 years. In China, the satsuma is known as Wenshou migan which translated means Wenzhou honey citrus. One of the distinguishing features of the satsuma is the distinctive thin, leathery skin dotted with large and prominent oil glands, which is lightly attached around the fruit, enabling it to be peeled very easily in comparison to other citrus fruits. The satsuma also has particularly delicate flesh. The mikan was introduced to Japan by a Buddhist monk who passed through Wenzhou on his way back to Japan. Mikan is the general word for citrus in Japanese, and satsuma have been grown in Japan since ancient times.

In 1876 during the Meiji Period, mikan were brought to the United States from the Satsuma province in Japan by a U.S. ambassador's wife. I wish I knew her name, and from where she hailed. The records say very little. Did our ambassasdor's wife take her mikan seeds down south with her to where they now thrive, where there are now the towns of Satsuma, Alabama, Satsuma, Florida and Satsuma, Louisiana? Did she plant them in California, or did she cultivate them in a green house in Minnesota or New Hampshire, or even here in Vermont?

Far away from Vermont, back in November, we drove out into the sugar cane fields and passed countless roadside stands selling satsumas and Creole tomatoes. About half-way to New Iberia, we stopped at a small grove a couple of miles down a country road. A small table was set up in front of the garage with bags of satsumas and a price list. A pretty blonde woman came out of the house, the daugher of the grove owner, dressed in jeans and gloves with the fingers cut out, and offered us a bucket and clippers if we'd like to pick fresh. She spoke with a cajun accent which is thick, and flecked with French and is not unlike the Quebecois English outside Montreal. In her jeans pocket was a small silver ladies' pistol. We took our bag all the way to Houston where we shared them with friends after a dinner of sausages and fried vegetables.

Faraway from south Louisiana, on this cold, and snowy night we indulge in the winter season luxury of fresh citrus. We set out two small tangerine in a bowl for after dinner. They look pretty on the table in the candlelight, and taste very fine with eggnog laced with Irish whiskey, a souvenir from other travels. The fruit is sweet at first with a bitter finish and reminds us of a hot wind through the sugar cane, the taste of a seafood boil, and the unblinking alligator seen at dusk in the bayou.


Thursday, December 13, 2007

what to do with sardines



My friends, I sympathize. It is a tough situation to be in when one encounters a fish counter with fish that not only catches your eye, but actually makes you wishyou knew just what to do with some of those beautiful specimens. And sardines can be particularly eye-catching, their silvery skins shining out from their icy bed like fabric on a haute couture evening gown.

And I want to assure you that sardines are as delicious as they look, and very easy to prepare. Here is how to handle them, from start to finish.

If the sardines are 5-6 inches long, choose 2-3 sardines per person, being sure that the fish have good, clear eyes. If they have not been descaled, all the better, as the scales have been protecting the very delicate flesh in the fish’s transit to market, as they will on your way home.

Once home, arrange the fish and a knife next to the sink (which you have washed well). A small, serrated paring knife is perfect for this job. Hold a fish in your palm with the head pointing toward your wrist. Use very light scraping strokes from tail to head to remove the scales from the flesh, then rinse the fish under gently running water and set aside on a plate as you clean the rest.

Now you have to clean out the insides of the sardines, and it could not be easier. Hold a fish in one hand, tail pointing toward your wrist, and simply poke your finger through the belly skin just behind the head and run your finger toward the tail. It’s a little gushy, but all the insides should slide out quite easily. Rinse out the interior gently. Note that the fish still have their heads on. I like to serve them as whole as possible, but if you prefer, go ahead and remove the head now by simply pulling it off. Then open the fish flat in your two hands work your thumbnails under the spine. Once you can grasp the spine between two fingers, carefully pull it out of the body, using your other thumb and forefinger to squeeze the flesh apart from the bones as the come out.

So your sardines are now ready to be seasoned and cooked. There are many ways to prepare sardines, but here’s an easy one I did recently. I made a mixture of parsley, garlic, breadcrumbs and salt and pepper, and smeared some of this inside each fish, and folded them “closed” again. I rolled them then in a mixture of flour and breadcrumbs and fried them in olive oil for about 8 minutes, turning them once and splashing in a little white wine for the last couple of minutes.

It was that simple.

--Caleb

Friday, December 7, 2007

first snow


We play hooky. Responsible hooky. We are in the process of getting the restaurant ready to reopen which requires several days of cleaning, prepping, inventory. We prepare a day in advance of our usual schedule; we go in on Sunday to wax the restaurant floors, the job we had assigned to Monday. Sunday night, at home, we fill water bottles and buckets and set aside candles in case the electricity goes out. On Monday, we are snowed in for the first snow day of the season. We are without guilt.

The snow starts late at night, or early in the morning depending on how you look at it. It falls steadily and heavily so that when we wake up there are already six inches of snow on the ground, the outside world white. It is one of those idyllic snow days in front of the fire reading, or watching movies, or playing cards. Six inches becomes eight becomes ten. We take a walk bundled up in snow boots and hats and go against the wind, the air and flakes sharp on our faces, then with the wind which buffets us back home. The air is full of sparkle and woodsmoke.

At dusk, we go to check on the neighbors' chickens. They are away for the week and we reap the benefits of fresh eggs. The hens and two roosters are huddled together in the coop under their warming light, leaving the eggs for the taking. We feed and water them, and one of the roosters pecks at Caleb's boot incessantly, following him around the cozy coop. I think this would be a good place to bed down for the night if I was a traveler on snowy night in another century. When we leave, the roosters crow good-bye.

For dinner, we make a potato pancake with red onion and Greek-style yogurt served alongside fried pancetta and an omelet made with our fresh harvest.

Fresh Omelet For One
2 eggs
2 pinches salt and pepper
butter
fresh goat cheese

Use your best skillet with a good fitting lid. Beat the eggs with salt and pepper. Pre-heat the skillet over medium heat. Melt enough butter to season the whole pan well. Pour in the egg mixture. Start teasing up the edges of the egg with a rubber spatula as it cooks, so that the raw egg can run underneath. Make sure the skillet does not keep getting hotter and hotter, but stays at an even medium temperature. As soon as there is not enough raw egg to run under the omelet, sprinkle crushed fresh goat cheese under half of the omelet and gently fold over the half with cheese. Lower the heat and cover the pan. Cook until the omelet is done to your liking. (Caleb likes his a little runny.) Slide out onto a warm plate.



Sunday, December 2, 2007

ain't that just like livin'


(originally published on www.thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com/11.26.07

We’re on the road. We do this every November and April, close up our small restaurant in the small village of Woodstock, Vermont and point ourselves North, South, East, or West. In April, we are always East. We land in Italy for a time to eat, to drink, to be inspired. In November, we could be anywhere. We have found ourselves in LA, Buenos Aires, Montreal, New York, Oregon, Paris. This time we are in New Orleans.

We have long wanted to come here. My family lived here years ago, and Caleb’s aunt and uncle still do. We are sad to have missed the New Orleans before The Storm, but we are happy to finally arrive, to see the proud and elegant city as she gets herself back on her pins. The sections of town nearer the river are looking quite fine, houses freshly painted, gardens tended, the remaining live oak looking broad and powerful, thriving. Other sections of town, those farther from the river, especially those in the infamous 9th ward, are still vacant and ghostly. Windows are boarded up or are filled with jagged broken glass, the water lines still exist on the sides of house, the yards are wild with pink oleander, grasses, and the climbing blue plumbago. The stench of rot and mold lingers. Walls still are marked with signs left from the National Guard. 1 Dead in Attic.

We’ve come to New Orleans on a pilgrimmage: to eat, to taste Cajun, Creole, and Soul food renditions. We compile a list, not of all the usual favorites and “must-eats”, but of smaller places, those who opened as little as ten days after Katrina because they couldn’t stand by and stop cooking for their city. They knew they needed to feed their people and all those who came to volunteer their help in those first harrowing months after the hurricane. We’ve heard stories of Paul Prudhomme setting up in a parking lot with propane burners and cooking kettles of gumbo, or Donald Link opening Herbsaint with only 6 people when usually there is a team of 45. We heard that old favorites opened for business even when it was nearly impossible: Upperline, Dooky Chase, then Brigsten’s. These are the places at which we choose to dine on our first visit.

Dining at Dooky Chase is tops on our list. Open since 1941 in Tréme, the first historical section of town to be inhabited by freed slaves, we are eager to eat their classic dishes: fried chicken, red beans and rice, stewed ocra, green beans with dirty onions. Leah Chase, the daughter of the original Dooky, has been cooking at this restaurant since the Fifties. We have always been awed and inspired by those stalwart cooks who keep at it day after day.

But Dooky Chase is currently closed. The message on their answering machine says they hope to re-open at the beginning of November, and in the meantime they are serving take-out Tuesday-Sundays from 11:30-7:00. We grab at the chance after an “early” lunch of fresh oysters and fried softshell crab at Casamentos (some days we have to eat throughout the day in order to hit every one of our destinations), and pick up a “late” lunch from Dooky Chase.

It is a charmed visit, one full of stories and good cheer, though as with many things in New Orleans these days, there is a melancholy note. We walk in the side door and it’s clear they have been under significant construction. No one is about and we yell, “Hello! Anyone here?” Someone shouts back from the kitchen. We are greeted warmly and given a take-out menu. We order. We are offered a seat in the newly painted bar while we wait. A handsome young man brings us water and iced-t served in glasses and with lemon. We tell him this didn’t seem much like take-out service. He smiles genuinely and says, “Well, I’m hoping you will come back again.”

Like so many others, Dooky Chase has fallen on some hard luck since Katrina. Two feet of water flooded the building, and they have been renovating and restoring ever since. The restaurant is home to an extensive African-American art collection, and fortunately they were able to get the work out and into storage up in Baton Rouge before it was lost to the elements or looting. Mr. Chase, Miss Leah Chase’s husband, takes us on a tour of the refurbished dining rooms. Miss Chase is conducting an interview in a pretty, yellow room with French chairs and pale yellow brocade. She holds our hands in her own upon introduction and is enthusiastic about re-opening, but you can also tell she is flat-out. Finding employees seems to be the biggest problem facing the restaurant these days. There are not enough people left in the city. Too many have moved away because they lost everything, and needed to start somewhere fresh instead of waiting, and waiting, and waiting to pick up somewhere far behind where they left off.

Mr. Chase takes us into the red room, and the private green room, again elegant and old world as if it’s still 1955 and New Orleans might still part of New France. The Empire style would have made Napoleon proud. When our fried chicken, and red beans and rice, and stewed vegetables, and fried shrimp sandwich are all ready, Mr. Chase brings us back to the bar with its bright green walls with black and white trim and a terrific painting of Louis Armstrong. He notices that Caleb is wearing a t-shirt from Brazil and begins to scat a little bossanova number. His voice is pure and tremulous and his smile is true. He encourages Caleb to join in, and he does so, tentatively at first, but then gaining momentum. I keep silent and listen as I can’t sing. When they are done, we all clap and Caleb asks, “Now, what would we have sung if I had been wearing my Italy t-shirt?” And they are off again, an old black man, and a younger white one, dipping and reaching for notes from that old classic “Volare”. To fly, says that song in translation, I fear this dream will never return, my hands and my face are colored in blue, suddenly I was pulled away by the wind and soared into the endless sky…”

We take our carefully packed picnic to Audobon Park and sit under a pergola at a table and lay out our treasure. The dishes are beautiful in their simplicity and spicy, savory aromas; they need no translation as they are perfectly understood. The fried chicken melts on the tongue, and the candied yams have sweet and texture. We look out over the green park in evening, at the people jogging, mothers and fathers teaching children to ride their bikes, two friends walking a dog, the man who comes to feed the ducks. Here’s to the New Orleans of old, and all that will be new. Here’s to the return of the people, and their unfailing spirit because all that wind, and rain, and devastation can’t take that away.


Saturday, December 1, 2007

Winter Greens -- So Far, So Good


My parents have these neighbors of long standing who have always grown lots of vegetables. When I was a teenager, I mowed their lawn, and noted the plots the husband, a doctor, had dug into what struck me as a fairly rocky location. Ledge reared up at various points around their property, and I had to be alert while mowing to avoid damaging the mower blade. But the doctor was not only determined to make that rugged property produce, he had a very good hand, good southern exposure, and was diligent and enthusiastic. What made the greatest impression was his late lettuce harvest: he would make the rounds of the neighbors, with bright eyes and a big grin, on Thanksgiving morning, delivering enormous heads of leafy greens.

We are looking ahead to next year’s gardening season, and fantasizing about starting a hoop house -- a greenhouse of plastic stretched over half-circle pipes, or ‘hoops’), so that we could, in theory, harvest hardy greens, spinach, beets, all year.

So this year, I did a test run. I boxed the radicchio bed with 2X8’s and stretched heavy clear plastic over the box and weighted the edges of the plastic down with some old bricks. So here we are at November 29, and I’m still cutting greens for salads: 3 kinds of radicchio, and a mix of escaroles and chicories. I have also used a bale of hay to pack around the outside of the box, and to cover the top at night. But now the weather is really becoming much colder -- 10˚ tonight! – so this will be a real test. If we continue to be blessed with some sun every day, maybe I can squeeze out some fresh greens until Christmas.

-- Caleb

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

home again

We are home again. After three weeks of travel to New Orleans, Houston, the Eastern Townships, and Montreal, we have arrived back in Vermont to the cold, lean days of late November. This is a beautiful time of year here, but you have to look beyond the wash of browns and grays, and embrace the austere lines of the land, the naked branches and knarled trunks of the trees, the atmospheric low-light of the days and evenings. You have to watch for the magic of shooting stars across the November night sky.

Where to begin to write about this past month? New Orleans and her bright hope and blown-down past, slick, sophisticated Houston—no cow-town here folks, and snow-glad Quebec with wine routes and handmade cheeses, fatted ducks, hard cider. We would like to start chronologically, but somehow our rememberances of these places have situated themselves more like a collage with new narrative threads connecting us from point to point. So the next few weeks, and perhaps the next month, will be peppered with tales of the journey, along with the trials of growing winter greens, the barrel tasting and bottling of the wine, the tasting of the Christmas walnut liquer. In the meantime, fore more information on what's happening in New Orleans go visit the valiant
www.neworleansladder.com.





--Deirdre and Caleb

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Dear Reader

Dear Reader: Thank you for coming to the blogsite, and apologies for the hiatus. We have been traveling for the month of November and have had difficulty being able to post. We will return to Vermont at the end of month and be posting in the days after November 27th. In the meantime, you can check out our guest blog at www.thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com. We will be posted on Monday, November 26th!

--Deirdre & Caleb

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Night Gardening

Tomorrow has arrived. Since those first few days of vacation, a slumber has set in, or the need to do something else. Sunny mornings perfectly good for gardening, still warm enough to laugh at a hard frost, have been spent sleeping late, drinking coffee, and reading. Then the afternoons get eaten by the need to straighten the house, cook a meal for friends visiting, or painting the front door, the bathroom, the staircase.

The week speeds by. Strange how that always happens. When you want time to drag, it always chooses to do otherwise. Now, we are confronted with the day before we leave for a trip down to Delta country, New Orleans and Houston. We’ve had that cold, hard frost already two nights in a row, the landscape in the early mornings covered in a film of diamonds. It almost looks like snow. There are still terra cotta pots full of roses and lavender, and winter gem boxwood waiting to be freed from their bound roots and put into the ground.

It is always like this, the mad rush before leaving home. There is always something that needs to be done, that can’t wait because the loss will be too great. If we don’t plant the roses, the lavender, and the boxwood, they will die. The terra cotta pots will crack. So at 3:00 in the afternoon, we fuel up with hot, dark coffee and begin the Herculean, if not Sisyphean task of emptying the pots with their frozen dirt and root balls. We hack at the concrete-like soil with hand shovels and screwdrivers. We are elated when we realize that if we can get past the initial crust, the earth inside the pots is soft and we can pry the plants out.

We work doggedly together, then separately when we see the sun starting to slide past the mountain ridge. We are not cold, even though the temperature now is below freezing, the worst time to try and transplant. I wonder if any of these prized canes and woody stems will even survive the upheaval. We spend several hours bend over digging and pulling. Our backs and forearms, our hamstrings begin to burn with the fever of too much.

When darkness finally descends, we can still see for quite some time because the sky is so clear. We light tikki torches to keep at the work in the perennial garden, and turn the outdoor house lights on that reflect a warm glow over the stone garden. Finally, most of the plants are all in the ground, one way or the other, and most of the pots are clean of dirt. We lay the pots face down near the gardens so they won’t fill with water if it rains while we are away. Caleb takes the last of the boxwood, ten pots in all, the ones we can’t shake loose from the terracotta and puts them inside. They are lined smartly in front of the French doors in our bedroom. I feel a little like the garden has come to haunt me.

There is still packing to do, a hot shower to take, a warm dinner to eat, some unfinished business to attend to. I collect the red and white striped sling chairs and put them away for the season, stripping them of their fabric to be washed and stored until next spring. These chairs have become our symbol of summer, and our reluctance to fold them up is testament to our reluctance to move on past autumn. By doing so, we are finally putting our season to bed.

I look up at the clear, vast sky littered with stars. At this late hour of the evening, the night sky is the inverse of the morning field, covered in a film of diamonds.


-Deirdre

Saturday, November 3, 2007

first days

It always takes a few days for a vacation to kick in. The body and mind continue to race around as if there is something imperative to accomplish, and feels at loose ends because in reality there is nothing pulling you forward. Everyone knows it takes at least a week to unwind, then another week to begin to relax.

On day two of our vacation, a friend leaves a message on the answering machine. “Hi! I hope you have all your projects done now so you can start to enjoy your time off!” We groan and laugh. We haven’t even begun our “projects”, a long list of before-snow-flies duties that hang over our heads like heavy, metal gray snow-clouds. For me, the perennial gardens are at the crux of the list. All month a voice at the back of my mind has been admonishing,“You need to cut down the garden. Dig and divide. Plant. Mulch.” I have been a reluctant listener, avoiding the garden as if it doesn’t even exist.

I love my garden. I have spent nine and half years toiling over the 900 square feet of flower and herb beds, stone paths, and painted gray fence. Those square feet have seen two variations of garden, three tractors to till, and then season after season of hand-tilling, all to keep the grasses at bay. My garden sits in a meadow surrounded on all sides by switch grass, buttercup, madder, and wild chervil. Every year, the grasses threaten to overtake as they thread their roots through the coreopsis and bearded iris. There is also the problem of the mint. Years ago, as a novice gardener impatient for thick borders of vegetation, I planted mint, along with tansy. Now the two run like wildfire through the beds and require constant taming throughout the season. Each season is like starting from scratch.

This summer and fall, I have neglected my garden. Too much time was spent building and planting the new, sunken garden which now has officially become Caleb’s garden. He has taken over all the raised beds for his vegetables, especially his lettuces, chicories, and wild arugula. He still quite can’t believe that he has become a gardener. He always thought it would be my realm. Caleb enjoys looking at gardens, and has often been my help in the structural elements of the garden, but never one to become animated over the winter nursery catalogs that start to arrive in January. His mother is an inveterate gardener, and he used to buck at the gardening chores that he was given as a child. Now, he thinks about his garden all the time, ways in which he can improve the soil, collect more heat, make clever cold frames. Almost as if it is a necessary inverse, I have turned my back on my garden, and the numerous pots of plants requiring my attention before it gets much colder.

Perhaps it’s my reluctance in admitting that it is time for the garden to be put to bed. I am uncomfortable with death. Perhaps it is something I’ve inherited from my mother who wails at autumn. She has always hated the loss of the plants, the onslaught of dead leaves and brown stalks. Her own mother died in the autumn and I am sure that is a large part of her aversion. Just like she hates the scent of lilies because they were the flowers at the funeral.

I look out over the brown stalks in my garden, though the mint is still valiantly green, and the salvia is incredibly still blooming. I look at the stacks of outdoor cushions and red and white striped chairs ready to be put away before the weather really turns. I make a list of all that needs to be planted: 20 roses, 14 box wood, a hedge of black-eyed susan, 4 plum trees, 2 hydrangea, one apple. I have written this all before. I am somehow hopeful that writing it again will help me to actually go in the garden. But, of course, before I can begin planting, there is a host of other things to accomplish: the cutting back, the weeding, the dividing, and amending the soil. Tomorrow.

Monday, October 29, 2007

last night


The last night at the restaurant before November vacation. There is a jittery feeling about us like on the last day of school when you are eight, or twelve, or sixteen. Energy is high, and that has nothing to do with the dark chocolate we have been testing all afternoon.

We close down twice a year, in November and April, a product of the seasonality in this part of Vermont. A product of long hours, small staff, and the need to rejuvenate, give our bodies a rest. Trips have been planned, dinner invitations on weekends accepted, lists made of things we never get to do because of our schedule. The biggest problem with November vacation is there is a tendency to overbook, over do. Like children in a candy shop, we want to do this, and that, and that, and we can't forget to include that, and before we know it we have committed to too much and good-bye to rest and relaxation. Yet, we promise to be vigilant this year in an attempt to do not much of anything. At least for a day. Or two.

In the kitchen, we are making bread to take home for vacation, thinking of how we will divvy up cheeses, taste testing sauces made from the autumn harvest to be put away, and the composta we've made from the black grapes and green tomatoes. We get ready for dinner service just like we always do; we have more reservations than we expected tonight, a Monday night close to November. We are full, a mixture of new and old patrons, those catching us for the first time before we go away, and those filling up in preparation for the month-long hiatus.

The diners arrive, they are watered, specialed, we take their orders, we bring them wine, we bring them dish after dish after dish. We open celebratory bottles, we light birthday candles. The diners leave, and we sit down to our own dinner. A bottle of nice wine, and a friend joins us. We toast to the season. We tell jokes. We try not to think about the stack of dishes and line of glasses awaiting in the kitchen.

Eventually, the kitchen calls, and the last of evening clean-up. Open bottles of wine and left-overs get packed up. We close up shop. It is already tomorrow.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

moonshine

The second fermentation begins. And this depsite all my assiduous notetaking through the first fermention which now is revealed to be quite dodgy. It seems I have been misreading the numbers on the hydrometer, that trusty judge of sugar content, or rather misattributing numbers based on the temperature reading. Everything is not what it seems. When I explain my difficulties with a laugh to a patron at the restaurant who shares an interest in winemaking, she exclaims in shock when she hears I have not kept a "control" for this experiment. I should expect this from a scientist, but I still feel slightly shabby in my efforts. I have mis-written the early numbers also for the first fermentation of the Nebbiolo, only realizing this blunder today after two weeks of "winemaking".

I placate myself with the notion, and Caleb agrees, that people have been making wine without hydrometer readings for centuries, if not millenia. My rather "shoot-from-the-hip" style will certainly not be the end of the world, and most likely not be the end of the wine. Even though the house still smells like as still, nothing smells "off", and after years of smelling wine like a perfumist at her laboratory, I know I can trust my nose.

So, we proceed with syphoning off the Barbera juice into a carboy for the second fermentation. We do this by the light of a Harvest Moon. I am rather pleased with myself on this front as I feel that while my science may be faulty, I have triumphed in biodynamics. At least in what little I know about biodynamics ( a whole world of cultivation that has been practiced for centuries, if not millenia, and finally codified by the rigorous Rudolph Steiner of Waldorf School fame in the '30's). The juice has been syphoned by gravity, and the winemaking began while the moon was on the wax. These are auspicious signs.

We are like magicians on a witchy night, the warm wind whipping about the house, and scuttling spooky clouds across that full moon. We hover and cluck our tongues over our brew, and we improvise a cork when we realize we do not have the right kind of stopper for the carboy. A rolled up, but very clean towel will have to do the trick until the next shipment of winemaking ephembera arrives by post next week. The glass demijohn goes on the pantry floor with a thermometer propped against it to keep track of the temperature. The wine is clearing as it should be and we thank the moon shining on all our alchemy.

Friday, October 26, 2007

what to do with grapes

We see grapes everywhere. Not only in the juice with which we are making the wine, but some still left wild threading through the almost bare trees, or at the farmer's market, or on our produce purveyor's list. We have been cooking with grapes at every available opportunity, while they are still fresh, still in season. We've adapted a schiacciata, or flatbread we used to do at the bakery and that you find in typical places in and around Florence, a crisp foccaccia studded with black grapes, anise seed, rosemary, and finished with a sprinkle of sugar and drizzle of olive oil. Instead, we roll out a pizza crust at the restaurant, thin as music paper, and fleck it with the grapes, rosemary, thinly sliced pancetta, the anise, good olive oil and the sugar, then bake for 8 or 9 minutes at 400 degrees.


Even though the days have mostly been warm with sun as if summer just keeps going and going, the season has given up on our green cherry tomatoes. We cut the green tomatoes up to cook down with black grapes, lemon and orange peel, fresh ginger, and sugar. This makes a Sicilian-style composta for the cheese plate at the restaurant, a good pair with creamy, young fresh cheeses, like a young goat's milk, or a blend of goat, cow, and sheep's milk with a hint of bloom.


On the menu at the restaurant is a classic Tuscan dish that we have been making for years, sweet pork sausages with black grapes and onion, the onions and grapes almost stewed and making a fruity gravy with the cooked sausages. One of the keys to all dishes with black grapes is that they have not been tampered with, no genetic variations, no seedless numbers. The seed is essential to the texture and flavor just as it provides the same in a good red wine.


Excerpted from Pane e Salute: Food and Love in Italy and Vermont


Salsicce con L'Uva/Sausages with Black Grapes


While this dish makes for excellent dinner fare, [we] personally prefer it served on a crusty roll for lunch along with a glass of Chianti Colli Aretini (red wine from the Arezzo hills). That's because we once had such sandwiches in the Piazza del Municipio in Arezzo on a brisk and bright autumn day during the monthly antiques fair. Now that [we] think of it, that sandwich wasn't much more than just grilled sausage and bread with a little rough local wine in a plastic cup, served in an atmosphere of shouting, joking cooks, and centuries-old sideboards, headboards, and dressers surrounded by buildings from the Renaissance--an atmosphere to elevate any meal. If you don't have good crusty bread on hand, make a few mashed potatoes while these sausages are roasting in the oven. Serves 4.

2 large yellow onions, halved and slivered
2 cups black grapes (Concord, Globe, or any other ripe black variety), rinsed well
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
4-8 sweet Italian sausages (1 or 2 sausages per person)


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large roasting pan or skillet mix the slivered onion and grapes together with your hands. Drizzle some oil over them and sprinkle with several generous pinches of salt and pepper. Mix again and spread out the mixture evenly. Nestle the sausages in the onion-grape layer, but don't let them be completely covered. Put the pan in the oven and roast for 30-40 minutes, until the onions have cooked down considerably, the grapes are soft, and the sausages are plump and browned on top, even a little bit crusty. Pierce one of the largest sausages. They ar ready when the juices run clear. Spoon a bed of onions and grapes into a serving platter or individual plates, top with sausages, and serve.