Sunday, July 27, 2008

tea


We are drinking tea. Hot. Iced. Sweet. Not. And because we are drinking it, it seems that we see or hear it everywhere. Friends come to visit on a Sunday morning. They live in Turkey and tell us of a trip to the Black Sea, riding along coastal roads; they talk of the exotic tea plantations in the hills above. On a night with almost a full moon, I find that the quiet, the sound of the wind in the trees, and the cicadas' song drives me to the opening pages of one of my favorite books by Proust and the now-cliched-but-still-evocative scene of the young boy in his Aunt Leonie’s room while she is taking her tea, the lime tree flowered tea in which she dips the iconic Madeleine. A recipe in an old New Orleans cookbook calls for a dish to be served with Russian tea made with fresh oranges. We drink Earl Grey tea in the afternoon for a break from gardening to highlight our fantasies of an English summer, the scent of the Bergamot sending us back to a journey we once took to Calabria in southern Italy, to the Jasmine Coast where they once grew fields of jasmine and groves of bergamot to make perfume, and we drink Lapsang Souchong after dinner, smokey and sweet, because we’ve read of a grand summerhouse in the South of France that serves gunpowder teas after the evening meal. We drink infusions from the garden, and serve them at the restaurant: mint, spearmint, lavender, lemon verbena, letting us know it really is indeed summer and not only can we eat of garden, we can drink from it as well.

--Deirdre

Saturday, July 26, 2008

rooks in the garden


There are rooks in my garden. Big, raven-feathered McCaw-like creatures who waddle and cackle near the old dog roses that I transplanted several years ago, and grow anywhere in any conditions. It’s both disappointing and tremendous that these wild roses only bloom once in the summer, sometime around the 4th of July declaring their own independence from my gardener’s insistent desires. They are fleeting, simple in their design—five pink petals with yellow fringed centers—and they last only for a moment. Now, at the end of July they are nearly all turned to rosehips. But why am I talking about the roses? I meant to be talking about the rooks.

The rooks vie for our attention. They are competitive by nature, surly and sulky like grade school bullies. How can they compete with the pretty sweet-songed yellow finches that pose in the apple trees? Or with the swooping, comedic swallows who line up their children on our roof for daily flying lessons sending our two black-haired cats into gnashing frenzies, their fur shivering in anticipation? We cannot even remember the rooks when confronted with the flashes of color from the orange-breasted oriole who shows off close to where we sit in the morning for tea. Rooks? What rooks?

So the rooks create noise where there is not color, or daintiness, or sonnet-like poetry. They create guffaws of noise, and sometimes draw out emotion by sounding like howling cats, or terrified children. The rooks, unable to dazzle, associate themselves with mystery and portent. I think of the young adult novel by Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising; I think of a long-time ago when my husband and I used to own a bakery and I would deliver bread to a store with a back entry off a thick wood, and the rooks would collect every evening in the bare trees overhead like a gathering storm. The melancholic stockman told me they came every night, it was the rooks’ nature, and he felt in communion with them; I think of the rook who landed once near my brother-in-law who was laying on the soft green of a university lawn, and giddy, or drunk on crab-apples, sauntered over and climbed up onto my brother-in-laws chest, standing there, playing king-of-the-hill and looking my brother-in-law square in the eye.

This morning the rooks have settled near the garden, one on the dark fence calling throatily. I wonder if something has died. I grab my camera to try and catch him lording over those roses. But as if he senses me standing and staring from the kitchen window, he leaps up and is gone from the frame, (maybe I can see a whisper of his wing?), proving that you cannot capture on film messengers from the world of spirits.

--Deirdre

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

“So, what’s in the bag?”


It’s time for that favorite magazine feature, the single-page photo splash and sidebar: the bag of the moment. So-and-so (traveling features editor, or top-ten tennis player, or spelunking archeologist) has a bag which goes with them everywhere, filled with the essentials of the trade-on-the-go. Well, I’ve got a bag too, and in response to the incredible media pressure surrounding the mystery of its contents, I am providing this guided tour. Hold onto your hats!

Clockwise from the top: The Bag Itself, joyfully spilling its contents for the world to see; laminated recipe sheets of top-secret, in-house recipes for things like…vinaigrette (sensitive material!); various transport containers for coffee beans (that’s Armeno Coffee Roasters espresso blend, in case you were wondering, the only coffee we have ever served at Osteria Pane e Salute since Day 1); a list of our product history from one of our vendors (so that I can pretend I’ve actually memorized their products numbers and recite them back when placing an order, so impressive!); sage that I forgot I had picked, getting slowly crushed in the bag (in case a pig roast pops up and they’re short on seasoning) ; a plastic tray on its way back to work; a lid doing likewise (not very useful, those two together though!); an old-school edition of the original pane e salute t-shirt, just to have a fresh shirt around (hey, I bet you sometimes need a fresh shirt yourself, so visit our new t-shirt design at zazzle.com (enter “pane e salute” in the search window)); my shoe with my foot in it, and not really part of this exercise; an Italian table knife for impromptu roadside harvests, or slicing things at a sudden picnic (picnics are practically a hazard in these parts); gum for the drive home (at the end of a long night, I need gum); a small tube of pain-reliever which actually contains hair-goo for those impromptu TV appearances (you know it’s all about preparedness!) (by the way: where the hell is the pain reliever?); graphite oil for lubing up stiff parts (like door catches, OK?); another tote bag for trips to the grocery for last-minute-crisis items (“we’re out of Dagoba chocolate again? Run, man, run!”); a small ziplock bag of Chinese roots and hot-peppers for infusing chicken stock (during a week when we weren’t feeling so hot; thanks Glenn!); stainless steel screws for securing things that might get wet (in a kitchen, everything gets wet sometime. Can also be said of everything in Vermont); plastic shopping bags (for transporting garden harvests to the restaurant, or in case I spy something edible on the side of the road, or in case it rains and Deirdre needs an emergency hat).

There! The secrets are revealed! Now Everyman can see that I am just like him (“Hey, look, he’s got graphite oil too! Just like me!”) Let’s hope this will relieve the media pressure, and give those hyper-active paparazzi a chance to focus on other, more light-hearted fare, or perhaps, even a legit story…

(Missing from photo: the 20 grand I keep on hand, just to have some funny money around when the white-truffle mules show up…You know how it is!)

Sunday, July 20, 2008

little flowers




The rain comes down hard in the village. We can hear it on the roof of the restaurant in the kitchen. The sky is so dark outside, we have the lights on and it looks like early evening. For the past two days, we have had wild weather with high winds, and heavy rain. The electricity even went out the other night for two ours before service. Now, the thunder grumbles overhead.

Earlier this morning, we picked zucchini flowers. Once at the restaurant, we stuff them with mozzarella, or mozzarella and an anchovy, then dredge them in a little flour, and lightly fry them in a pan of oil. While the deluge pounds outside, we eat them while drinking a small glass of Frascati, the classic Roman white wine made from a blend of Roman Malvasia, Trebbiano, and Greco varietals. The flavors burst and collide tasting of heat, and summer at a Mediterranean beach.

--Deirdre

Saturday, July 12, 2008

cima di rapa


As if by magic, suddenly, there is cima di rapa in the garden. Only a week ago, it seemed there was nothing but some unwanted weeds in the raised bed. Then just the other day, the shout came from the lower garden, “There’s rapa!!!” The garden bed is full of slender green stalks and the dainty chartreuse florets.

Cima di rapa, the top of the rapa,(meaning in Italian that this is the part that you eat) also known more commonly here as broccoli rabe. Rapa is a member of the brassica family along with broccolis and cabbages. It’s flavor is delicate and slightly spicy.

We pick the cima di rapa, and assemble garlic, salt and pepper, hot crushed red pepper(a good pinch per person or to taste), extra virgin olive oil, and white wine. (A little water can be used instead of wine.) Caleb chops the rapa into one inch pieces, then gently crushes the garlic cloves(do as many as you’d like, to taste), and heats them in some olive oil. Don’t let the garlic brown. We add the rapa and hot pepper, salt and pepper, and stir well. We add a little splash of the white wine, and we let simmer until tender, maybe ten minutes. In Italy, a cook would remove the garlic cloves, but the cloves can be left in if you want. We toss with orecchiette, but penne works just as well. It’s important to use a short pasta with ridges or cups that the rapa can cling to. We finish with grated parmigiano, and a generous swirl of olive oil.

--Deirdre

Sunday, July 6, 2008

radici


In Italian, the word for radish is ravanello. In Italian the word for roots--as in family roots, putting down roots--is radici. We have a forest of radishes in the garden, flamboyant, a pinkish red with white tips, and candela di ghiaccio, or ice candle, a long white taper. They are both sweet and spicy. We pull them out of the garden bed, the dirt still clinging to their hairy roots, and wash them in a bucket of cool water. We eat them from a platter with a dish of sea salt, or sliced thinly on rye bread with sweet butter. Our neighbor, who is from Germany, has brought us Bavarian white radish seeds to plant for her. Last year's gift are still growing, their leaves bolting into lavender colored flowers reminscent of wild sweet william. When guests come to visit, we harvest and serve the radishes fresh from the earth. The greens are pepper-bright in the mouth and make for a good mix with the cutting lettuces or wilted and finished with a little olive oil.

--Deirdre