midnight snowshoe

The weather confounds business at the restaurant. It is the holiday season and every night should be packed with patrons: jolly faced benefactors and diplomatic aunts at family gatherings or bright-eyed young lovers with sugarplum dreams of holiday engagements should be gathered round our eight tables. But winter weather advisories are dispatched every other day. Heavy snows, wintry mix and flat-out ice paralyze the roads causing cancellations and missed reservations. We try to look at these early nights as the gift horses that they are, careful to avoid peering into the mouth of any Trojan-style pony. We leave the restaurant well before our usual hour, and on a couple of nights before Christmas we come home to race into our snowshoes for a midnight trek. The snow comes down thick and soft and we carry a globe lantern to light our way, our household flashlight having spent its batteries. We walk across our field to a woodland patch where we’d spied a possible Christmas tree a few days before.

The tree is there, a modest pine crowding another pine. We’ve brought our small saw, and the work is quick. A crunching sound in the snow causes us to stop, a flash of fear that we’ve been caught in what might appear to be an illicit act even though this our own property. At this hour of the night, all seems illicit. Or perhaps a bear or coyote circles us from a short distance? We are afterall on the spine of the wild Chateauguay. It is unnecessary to do so, but we still cannot fight the desire to throw a coat over our lantern. We resist the impulse to run. Our eyes adjust to the dark of the night. Then we, like characters in a blackened Bruegel painting, drag our tree home sweeping the snow over our tracks.

--Deirdre

I, too, can cook

My husband Caleb is away for the weekend. This is unusual as most often we travel together. He’s gone to his brother’s to help build a tree house for our nephew. This is no simple tree-house. There are decks and floors and soon-to-be railings. At the center is an ancient elm. This is the kind of tree-house that requires the delicacy of a Japanese saw.

I have decided to stay home because we have been working and traveling, and during our vacation have not had a weekend at home. I am craving these two days, a Saturday and Sunday, these same two days that the majority of the world has off from work, these two days that are always the middle of my work week, busy days at a restaurant.

I have invited friends to visit and stay overnight. Earlier in the week, I begin to think about my menu, and I come across an old cookbook of ours, a classic Tuscan guide. As I thumb through the pages I come across a fish dish, tonno ubriaco, a classic tuna in onion and red wine sauce. Yes, red wine. I have never been a believer that fish must only be accompanied by white wine. There is a long Mediterranean tradition of fish served and cooked with red wine.

We have a beautiful side of salmon, so I will make salmone ubriaco, drunken salmon. We have turnips and potatoes from the garden. I will make a warm turnip-potato salad served with radicchio and curly endive from the green house. I spy a bag of red lentils in the pantry and think this would be an excellent foil to my salmon. Recently, I have found the Madeleine pan that I bought years ago in Montreal, still wrapped in paper from the kitchen shop. I will christen the pan and make Madeleines for dessert. I’ve also just bought a bag of chestnut flour at Buon Italia in NYC, the Italian food extravaganza in the Chelsea Market. I’ll make a fall sweet that will remind me of when we lived in Italy: castagnaccio, a thin chestnut cake studded with raisins, pinenuts, and rosemary.

I joke with Caleb that our houseguests will be nervous without him here and with me cooking. I often cook with Caleb when we have guests, but it is always assumed that the meal has been prepared by my husband. He has always been known as the cook between us.

I am an organized home cook, my time in our own restaurant kitchen teaching me to check my ingredients and to think ahead about what I can cook before guests arrive. As I cook, I wash dishes and utensils as I go along. I like to have a neat kitchen. If you have a messy kitchen and kitchen counter, you will have a messy dish. It sounds clichéd, but this is right. I have learned this lesson well.

I have guessed correctly that our friends are a little nervous about dinner. When I call them Saturday morning to find out what time they will arrive, Mark says, “Gina and I were just saying that we don’t think we’ve ever seen you with a skillet in your hand.” We joke about the meal they should anticipate tonight, about perhaps eating a sandwich before arriving so they don’t starve. I assure them that there will at least be good cheese and bread served, so there will be something to eat. We finish our conversation with Mark, who is a very good cook, saying, “Anything I can do to help?”

After provisioning for last minute ingredients in the morning, I head out into the gardens and green house to pick greens and bunches of parsley, some rosemary. I dig up a turnip and some little white onions. The wind has whipped up, after a full day of heavy rain. The temperature has dropped significantly and the air is spitting. My hands are so cold, my fingers can barely move.

I have already made the Madeleines, so I put together the castagnaccio. While this is baking, I make the beginnings of my sauce, sautéing garlic and the onions with a lot of parsley, a healthy dose of salt and pepper, all in home-pressed olive oil brought back by friends who are fortunate enough to have a house in Umbria. When the garlic starts to brown a little, I remove it, and let the rest cook down a bit. I cut up the turnip and potato into chunks and submerge in cold water so they don’t blacken while waiting for me to cook them. These will be boiled until tender in well-salted water. After straining, I’ll soak them in white vermouth, then toss them with a vinaigrette made with white wine vinegar, grainy French mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper, served still warm. I’ll add the greens and some parsley. This is one of my favorite recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The lentils I have already made--the day before with onion and garlic, salt and pepper, and lots of water and a little white wine until they are thoroughly tender. What we don’t finish on Saturday night will make a hearty soup.

The salmon sits on the counter coming to room temperature so that it will cook in the right amount of time to the right doneness. I like my salmon still fairly rare. I prepare the hors d’oeuvres: some store bought hummus with added olive oil and salt and pepper to bring out the flavor, mixed nuts, olives with rosemary, bay, and a little lemon zest. Our friends arrive a shade early and still have to make the vinaigrette. Mark and Gina come in, settle into the guest room. Mark wonders around our very tiny kitchen, looking at the stove, surveying the scene. Again, he asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

I put him in charge of drinks. I have a bottle of white port which I hear one drinks over ice and with lemon in the city of Porto. So we start with this. We sit down and relax and talk away a good hour and half like good friends do.

When it comes time for dinner, Mark is still a little nervous when I go into the kitchen, but everything begins to simmer and happen and he jokes, and says, “Look at you! It’s like you work in a restaurant.” Within minutes three plates are ready with our first course, and the next course is set to go.

Dinner is a lovely, long affair, at our long wooden table with candles and glasses of rubied wine and comfortable conversation. We enjoy our food, but focus more on our companionship. Just the way dinner should be.

--Deirdre

early snows

The snow comes in the morning. Soft, big flakes like clusters of weightless coconut. But this is tropical thinking and I should turn my attention from the shift of autumn into winter in Vermont. We are not ready for snow: the days have been too warm and just last night the air was balmy and sixty degrees Farenheit. Some of the roses are still in bloom, and we have not had the courage to put away all the outdoor tables and chairs, or the few remaining clay pots. Somehow I imagine that there will be one last lunch outside made from a harvest of bitters greens, turnips, carrots, little pearl onions along with a glass of our own rough red wine. This is faulty thinking.

The snow is accumulating. A heavy gray sky descends. The air is cold, damp, and wicked. I have a headache, the plunging barometric pressure sending me into a dark mood and in search of relief. Outside, a few valiant rose blooms banish black thoughts about this weather. The dusting of flakes on the petals and still green leaves bring to mind a world made of so many jewels.

--Deirdre

october poppies

Red poppies bloom in the spring in Italy. Fields of poppies blanket the rolling hills of Umbria and Tuscany in April. The bright red fluttering blossoms line road sides in Lazio and Puglia. In the very south of Italy, at the bottom of the heel of the boot, there is an old recipe for a fieldworker’s soup using the paper thin petals, olive oil, and pan-fried bread. I have the recipe written down somewhere in a notebook, transcribed from an old cookbook I found in an old farmhouse outside of the seaport town of Otranto, known as the Gateway to the Orient.

I bring home a packet of Italian poppy seeds bought at a plant nursery not to far from Rome. I smuggle in the thin sealed envelope with the picture of a poppy field that goes on forever packed carefully between my dirty socks and underwear in my suitcase. The little beagle with the big brown eyes is none the wiser. I’m not sure he needs to be.

Our season starts much later than springtime in Italy, so we don’t plant the seeds until late May. We wait all summer for them to grow. Their frilly leaves make a thick carpet at the edge of a messy holding bed filled with plants that haven’t found a proper home yet. Several boxwood recuperate from winter kill, as does a Munstead lavender that looked so poorly that I cut it all the way back, its woody stems down to the quick. That was when I didn’t know that lavender does not thrive under such severe measures. Planted nearby are the two old fashioned tea roses with incredible crimson blooms that wait for their spot in the perennial beds. They smell of cinnamon and bergamot.

By August, the poppies begin to bloom showing their red faces, one here, one there. And now, in October, they are strangely at their most plentiful. I cut a clutch for a vase inside the house. I’m sure the temperate autumn has had a hand in this poppy abundance, these warm days and slightly cool nights that have felt like perennial September. But the bounty can’t last, even though the season has lulled us into feeling like winter will never really come.

--Deirdre

la garagista

On the evening of the Harvest Moon, we held a wine tasting. This was the first of what we hope will be many soirees in our meadow on Mt. Hunger. The few days before the weather had proved difficult, showering us with cold rain, and rather violent winds. That morning, the sky cleared, but the wind still howled and pressed. The bean trellis had been blown down, its old wood covered in a tangle of green leaves and vine. We expected this. We went about our chores as if the evening would come off without a snag. We collected and arranged flowers, set up tables, procured the food, set out wine glasses. Would it rain? Would it be too windy?

The outlook for the day improved. We ate a take-out lunch on the porch, the wind nearly spent. We felt almost confident, and at ease. I looked at the sign on the barn that we had hung yesterday. We had christened this project of growing grapes, making wine, and sharing our gardens and fledgling vineyard la garagista after the rebellious French garage wine makers of the '80's. Yes, I thought, our celebration would happen. People would come. We would open bottles of wine. We would share the harvest together.

I set up the sign-in table in the barn. We had spent months cleaning and organizing this space. One wall was lined with stacked firewood for the winter, next to a wine rack filled with bottles. The floor was dirt, but in the center stood one of our wine tasting tables set with glasses and an old French-style candelabra that is very elegant. Light poured in through the narrow, long windows. Our friend Gina had loaned me a copper wine trough that we filled with ice and water and bottles of a sparkling rosé that would usher in the evening. Iacopo, Rafael, and Winthrop, our friends who would show the ten wines we would be featuring tonight, opened and tasted the bottles, then lined them on the table in the stone garden.

Iacopo, our friend from Italy, would be representing the importer of these wines. Rafael owns the small company that brings them to us here in Vermont. Winthrop had recently started to work with Rafael. Michael, another friend volunteering for the evening, joined Caleb to set up the bruschetteria, and began to tend to the big open fire on which to toast the bread for the myriad toppings they have prepared. Caleb’s mother Carol lit a small fire in a galvanized metal tub, our version of a fire pit, so people could warm themselves in the stone garden as the evening cooled. Claire, and our friends Anthony and Christy, lit all the torches and candles. Conversation and laughter bubbled around the house and barn, and we feel as if we had dodged the wicked weather until 5:25. Five minutes before guests were to arrive, clouds crested the hill above, and it began to rain. Oh, well, I thought, what a shame. We’ll just have to stuff everyone in the barn. No one spoke.

But then, like a tease, the rain stopped, and the clouds thinned out into mare’s tails. There was a collective sigh, and a couple of people laughed away the tension. Guests began to arrive. The energy was high.

It turned out to be a beautiful evening. The wines were sublime and showed themselves off. The tastes that Caleb and Michael offered were lively and married the wines well. Guests walked through the gardens, sitting and contemplating or conversing. We all watched the moon rise, a fantastic harvest moon. No one really noticed the downed bean trellis that never got rebuilt during the course of the day, there not being enough time.

Then, after all the guests left, fifteen of us, a combination of family and friends who helped coordinate the evening, stayed for dinner. We lined four of the tasting tables down the center of the barn. Someone accidently knocked over a bottle of open wine. The wine spilled and puddled on the wood, and I thought how perfectly it christened this table for our first of what I hoped woulde be many dinners in this barn. We set the long table with fine china and silver and the two baroque candelabra. We pulled chairs from around the property and inside the house. We set up a buffet to serve a purea of zucchini and onion soup made from ingredients in the garden, and plates of a silky, sliced pork belly seasoned with wine and sage, served with small, pearl white beans. On the table were plates of oysters to begin, and the last of the bruschetta. Countless bottles of wine had been opened, and everyone tasted and retasted the stars of the evening. Iacopo brought the last of a wine made from a cru selection of grapes that he helped make in Tuscany; and I opened local wine maker Chris Granstrom’s Cove Road made from Marquette, St. Croix and Frontenac. We toasted and congratulated each other for an evening well-done.

It was time to open the first bottle of my own first vintage made from grapes all the way from Italy. A true “garage wine.” The glass was plain, recycled from a bottle of my favorite Aglianico made in Campania. I was hopeful that the bottle, once being the home of a great wine, would elevate my own effort. Iacopo teased me because on the handwritten label I had hung around the neck, I had written La Garagista, Vintage No. 1, 2008. “What do you mean 2008?” he asked. Flustered, I took my pen and crossed out the 8, and wrote in a 7. I wasjumping ahead of myself. I hadn’t even received my juice for this year’s vintage yet. (Patience has never been one of my virtues. Is impatience the vice of any new wine maker?)

I uncorked, and poured. I was nervous that my wine may have turned to vinegar. We tasted. While my first endeavor was simple with a soft finish, it was smooth with the flavors of red currant and warm, sweet spices.

Aloud, I deemed it drinkable.

--Deirdre

bottle neck

We are back from our hiatus. Too many things to do, and not enough time to do them is the cliched mantra of these last thirty days. The weather here in Vermont shifts back and forth between hot and humid, and rainy and wet. The hurricanes traveling across the ocean, whirling dervishes of wind and disturbance from South Africa take aim at the Carribean islands and the Gulf coast, always threatening coastal Texas and New Orleans. We get the run-off of extravagant winds and rain bringing tempestuous unpredictability to our northern reaches.

These wild days remind me that I need to bottle my wine. The end of the season is fast approaching and I think my fledgling wine has had plenty of time to sit and stew. It’s probably a good idea to get the wine transferred to glass bottles so it can settle and relax in the wine rack next to the wood rack in our barn-garage before the cold frost blankets the ground. Frost, that net of shimmering white crystals, so pretty in Harvest moonlight, in the brightness of the next day is revealed as a cruel trickery. It leaves a trail of blackened stalks and vegetation.

I have collected used wine bottles from the restaurant and they sit in boxes waiting to be washed, their old labels scrubbed off. Here are the remains of good wines—bottles emptied of Aglianico from Campania, Ciro from Calabria, Primitivo from Puglia, and Nebbiolo Langhe from the Piemonte. Here’s sturdy dark glass from an old-style Chianti producer. The remains of good wines. I want my wine to be cloaked in respectable, heavy glass. Even though my wine is a small wine, I hope it will rise to the challenge of a good vessel.
On a sunny day, I set up the galvanized metal washtub with water warmed from sitting in the hose. The cases of used bottles get filled with water themselves then packed into the tub, the water inside keeping them from bobbing up. I’m looking for the minimum of work here, imagining the old labels gently sloughed off the glass on their own.

There is no such luck. Some labels are adhered with an industrial substance that is tighter than two coats of paint as they say in these parts. When I think the bottles have had enough time to soak, I see that my job will not be so easy. I must scrub and pick and scrape to get some of these labels off, and still the glue sticks and makes the bottles look pocked and dirty. I start over. I soak the bottles in really hot water in the sink in the kitchen. This works a bit better.
Since I have lost all our Barbera wine to my naïveté, there is only the Nebbiolo to bottle, and that is cleverly contained in the bucket with the spigot in a sterilized solution in the kitchen sink. I soak the bottles once again along with the clear plastic tube that came with my winemaking kit. The bottles and tube get rinsed in cool, clean water, then are set out to air dry. We lift the wine container onto the top of the tall trash can in the kitchen. Previously, the wine has been sitting undisturbed all summer in the pantry with an occasional “barrel” tasting to make sure it would really be worth all this trouble.

I attach one end of the tubing to the spigot, the other goes into the neck of a bottle. I hold on tight and open the spigot. I’ve not chosen the best of places to conduct this procedure as I can’t see how quickly the wine rises in the bottle. Too dark down there on the floor with a dark brown-green glass bottle even thought the lights are turned on. It is after sundown afterall.

Unexpectedly (yet expected all the same) the bottle overflows. There is cursing, more spillage, and hands and fingers that are not fast enough. This happens over and over again as the bottles get filled, a puddle of ruby liquid at my feet. My fingers are saturated with wine, and I lap at my hands (I contemplate licking the floor) because I don’t want to lose one bit. The wine tastes good. Not perfect, but good. I am completely surprised, unbelieving, so I want to keep tasting to be sure. The wine is light and clean. Given the problems I had earlier with the pretty bacteria, I figure this is one of those small tragedies converted into a miracle. The wine bottles, varied in shape, stand tall and look like they are marching across the floor toward to the door and the wine racks in the barn where they will fine and settle for as long as they last.
--Deirdre

dear readers in end of August and September

Dear Readers,

Just a quick note to let you know that we apologize for being so silent these past couple of weeks. We are in the throes of harvesting the gardens for the restaurant, and I am working hard to finish a manuscript on wine and spirits due to the publisher at the beginning of September. Much to our dismay, there are so many hours in the hourglass. After this end of summer push, we expect to be back on-line sending postcards from the garden, the restaurant, and the cantina....

We thank you for your patience. Please come back and visit!

Cheers,
Deirdre and Caleb