cold day: hot soup

It was cold, it was bitter, and it was time for soup. A big soup, a hot soup, a soup that said to winter, “Bring it on,” and said to me, “It’s going to be OK!” Into the big pot would go a large battuto of onions, carrots, celery, garlic, the chopped fat trimmed from a leg of prosciutto (with some meaty bits, too), plenty of olive oil, some butter, salt and pepper, and a little (read: a good sized splash of) white wine to keep things moist.

Outside temperature check: 15 degrees fahrenheit, and dropping. Snow devils are swirling across the field and the red squirrel is pestering at the back door for scraps. The rascal comes around just to torment the cats, who slink from window to window with a expression half threatening, half desperate. The clouds form a ceiling of grey with occassional skylights of perfect blue which open for a moment and slam shut as another gust hits the house.

The battuto has been talking to itself for almost 20 minutes, and is soft and steamy. Two big veal knuckles go in, some pureed tomato, two quarts of homemade chicken stock, six leeks cut to 1-inch lengths, a dozen or so small red potatoes cut up, two quarts of soaked chick peas, about 8 pieces of Parmigiano rind, and then water to cover everything. More salt and pepper. The flame comes up to high for about 20 minutes more, until everything starts to bubble, then I lower it a touch to keep it steady.

Stoke the fire, run out to the barn for another armload of wood, temperature check: 13 degrees. Must address the patch of ice where the roof drips when it’s sunny out. Where’s my book? Prepare for respite on the couch, but first poke the fire, which is showing reluctance. Stir soup, tasting for salt: needs more already, much more. And some pepper, too. That’s better, getting there. Cats have retired to the bedroom for a concerted assault on their nap quota. Point taken! Poke fire again, which is showing signs of life. Where’s my book? (Reading Rick Atkinson’s “The Day of Battle” , and the allies are still mired at Cassino.) Here we are: buried under last week’s paper read this morning under the premise that old news is easier to swallow due to obsolescence. Of course, when I’m building the fire I usually get sidetracked by a year-old paper, curious to see if the same news could have been printed this week, and sadly, it usually could. But here’s the book, a little wine left over from last nights dinner, a sliver of caciotta (insert plug for Dancing Ewe Farm here), a talkative fire. Sitr the soup one more time, taste again. Veal knuckles, potatoes and the parmigiano rind are all strating to give up their goodness to the soup in a rich, silky texture. A little more salt.

Sun starting to dip noticeably. Temperature check: 9! More wood! Time for at least 15 uninterrupted minutes of reading, just as soon as I take this phone call…

-posted by Caleb

barrel tasting: mid-winter

Mid winter. We’re half-way there. The line of days and months in front of us seems long, but the sun has started to shift in the sky, and today it’s warm enough that the ice on the road has begun to melt, and the little stream that edges our property has started to run. We wile away a Sunday morning reading old garden books and marking on our map the Villa Lante and the Villa Gregoriana for field trips when we are away in Italy. We also think about ordering more apple trees for the orchard and grapevines for the vineyard to be planted when we return. Thoughts move to the hedge of peony we want to plant, the rose pergola, the hoop house, the work to be done on the potting shed. We think about when to schedule the bottling of the new wine. We stop ourselves. It’s not time yet to get carried away.

We can taste Spring even though we are still eating winter food. We sit down to a Sunday lunch of buckwheat polenta with a pork and pheasant ragu, rich and spicy, followed by a dish of braised radicchio. This is in keeping with the two feet of snow still sparkling on the ground. We think: We can at least do a barrel tasting of our wine fermenting in the pantry. We can get a hint of what’s to come.

There is a fine layer of whitish scum at the top of the Barbera demi-john, but in the wine glass it looks clear and doesn’t smell off in any way. In fact, it smells strongly of Granny Smith apples and the palate follows suit, surprising given that this is a red wine. This seems strange to me, but maybe this is typical of an old style Barbera: light, rustic, meant as an everyday wine or in a jug at a picnic in a field. The Nebbiolo, on the other hand, has pretentions. Already, its nose exhibits earth, and on the palate there are fresh violets and a lot of spice a the finish. We think this could be a really good wine.

Soon it will be time to inventory our bottles and prepare them. In May, when it is still cool, but warm enough to work easily with the wine outside, we’ll siphen our 60 plus bottles, then let them refine until the end of summer. The end of summer…..the molten gold of August, the heavy herbacious scents in the air, the last hurrah of a heatwave, all seem very far away.

--Deirdre

wish you were here: tribeca park

We are walking the streets of New York on a winter Sunday morning after a late night of dinner and dancing. We are walking Church Street from our little sliver of a hotel, just opened a month, The Duane Street. The sky is gray, threatening snow or rain, but the air is comfortable. Not too brisk, and not too warm for our coats and thick scarves. In Tribeca, the streets are narrow and the neighborhoods still turning from toward chic. The buildings tower above us and these tight, warren-like streets of old New York. We stumble across the beauty of a little park with its elegant trees and clipped box, its green benches. An oasis in a particularly urban pocket. We marvel at the thick branches of the trees that make a strong canopy over the small park, the elegance of the proportions, the siren song of that green bench that beckons for us to sit for awhile.

--Deirdre

pantry no. 1: chocolate

I am rooting through my mother’s china cabinets. This, on a recent visit, and I find myself looking in the cupboards at all the serviceware of my childhood: a bevy of patterns collected over the years by my mother, Royals this and that, a few good French pieces, the Italian porecelain I have added by way of gifts from travels. They all conjure memories. One in particular is brought on by the Royal Chelsea Hunt pattern, the little cups, saucers, butter plates. At my parents' house, we drink our morning coffee out of them at the dining table pretending we are the Bennetts from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (we have been thick into discussions of this book). I’m surprised to notice that my parents’ dining room is very English, and it fulfills our little fantasy quite nicely. The Royal Chelsea dinner plates are another matter. They all have slightly diffent images in the center, and at dinner time when I was small, we used to play a game, guessing who would get the plate with the lady riding sidesaddle, all dressed in black, looking elegant and somehow heroic. We believed getting the lady's plate was somehow a good omen bringing luck and riches the recipient. But that is another story. This story is about chocolate.

It is the collection of Coalport demi-tasse that my mother received as a wedding gift, that my eyes spy. White bone china, straight sides, with gold leaf handles. I can’t help but touch those handles. These cups were used for coffee after holiday dinners, or at the end of the ladies luncheons for my mother’s book club. They would be set out on the sideboard with the silver coffee service: antique urn, cream, sugarer, spoons. This was all from such another time.

My mother also used these particular demi-tasse for serving chocolate mousse. A light, smooth mousse filled three-quarters up the cup, with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream on top at the time of service. My recollection is that my mother made this mousse, but she could have just as easily had help from one of the two women famous in our town for their good cooking—Fanny or Charlie Belle. Women with flawless dark chocolate skin who could make flawless chocolate mousse.

Several weeks later, I am still thinking about those cups filled with that chocolate mousse. We’ve scheduled a small dinner gathering and I think this is the perfect time to make my own. A snowstorm prevents our guests from coming, and ultimately prevents me from going out to provision for the ingredients, but I decide to make the mousse anyway. If I use Julia Child as my guide, I don’t need any ingredients that I don’t have. We always have plenty of chocolate in the pantry, chocolate bars from local makers, or variations on bitter, dark chocolate bars. There are bars that save endangered species, bars named after colors, bars named after estates in Costa Rica. A pantry can never have too much chocolate.

I don’t have white Coalport demi-tasse for my confection, but I do have my own wedding china, a Royal Doulton pattern, and if I’m honest, I no longer really like it. I’ve outgrown its particular fussiness, but somehow I can’t part with it, as if selling my wedding china on e-bay or Craig’s List, might be selling my own marriage down the river. A chocolate mousse seems a good way to appreciate the fine elements of my own stately cups, maybe even appreciate that said marriage as well.

My recipe is a semi-disaster. It’s been a long time since I’ve made dessert which is funny as I was once a self-styled pastry chef in the early days of our bakery so long ago. All goes relatively well, until I reach for the wrong chocolate in the pantry, and instead of the rich dark bitter chocolate I’d been hoping for, I use without thinking a sweet milk chocolate (where did that unlabled rogue milk chocolate bar come from anyway?!). The end result is very sweet, but the addition of espresso in the mix makes it almost toffee-ish, and the unsweetened cream ( a lucky carton found at the back of the refrigerator that is still good, and perhaps left there since the holiday?) provides much needed balance. A little luck goes a long way.

Mousse Au Chocolat (Loosely adapted from The Art of French Cooking….)
For 4-6

2 eggs
3 ounces bitter dark chocolate
¾ stick of soft butter
½ cup sugar
2 Tbs espresso
Sprinkle of sugar
Dark chocolate shavings
Pinch salt
Brandy, Kirsh, or some other liquer to your liking
Whipped cream

Beat for 3-4 minutes in a bowl over warm water (water not yet simmering), or in a bain marie, the two egg yolks, brandy, and the sugar until smooth and making loose ribbons. Then beat another 3-4 minutes over cool water to chill down.

Melt the chocolate, and two tablespoons espresso over the hot water. Add the chocolate and espresso to the egg mixture, along with the butter, a little bit at a time. Beat until smooth.

Add ½ pinch of salt to the eggwhites. Beat until soft peaks form. Sprinkle sugar on top of the peaks, and beat until the whites form stiff peaks. Mix ¼ of the eggwhites into egg-chocolate mixture, then fold in the rest of the eggwhites until whole mixture is streaky. Be careful not to fold in too much, and break the whites.

Pour the mixture into the cups and chill in the refrigerator for at least two hours, or up to 24 hours. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream on top, and shave a little dark chocolate over the top. Serve.

--Deirdre

eat, drink, and be

The wintry mix hails outside the windows, the snow piles up next to the houses, and the roads remain passable, but slushy, icy, wet, by turns. This is a winter of old, they say, those who have been here for longer than ten years. And while this year we have more snow than in quite some time (and, really, we are glad for the snow. If we must have winter, then let us have snow!), we still must find ways to square off with cabin fever, winter doldrums, seasonally affected disorders; we look deep down for interior inspirations to amuse and entertain ourselves.

The other night we had a wine tasting at the restaurant. We have them periodically throughout the year, an opportunity to taste new wines, prepare special dishes, and learn something new. But instead of a sit-down dinner, which is what we usually do, we decided to hold a kind of open house, or cocktail party, only with wine. We moved the dining room around so that we had a long table for glasses, plates, and silverware. We brought in a rustic wood table top that we’d made this summer, reclaimed cedar from our old garage, to make a table for the platters of antipasti. Along the banquette, we positioned smaller tables with chairs for those who wanted to sit and taste. Our friends and colleagues Rafael(of Artisanal Cellars, a local distributor who specializes in organic and biodynamic wines), and Iacopo (of Vignaioli Selections, an importer that specializes in small production, organic, biodynamic wines) presented nine Italian wines, all glass winners of the Italian guide Gambero Rosso. They stood gallantly behind the bar with the bottles of wine, and poured, and discussed grape varieties, soil types, aromas, and flavors. We cooked for three hours, bringing out plate after plate of new tastes to accompany the wines. The guests chatted and made that happy noise of all good parties, the melodies of conversation against the music playing on the sound system. A decent way to shake up the week, change the routine.

And like any get together, a theme of sorts developed through the evening. Because all the wines were organic and biodynamic, a discussion ensued about the two basic ways of making wine: in the vineyard, and in the cellar. We drank all kinds of things: Franciacorta, Fiano d’Avellino, Tocai Friuliano, Nebbiola d’Alba, Barolo, Vino Nobile, Aglianico, and Amarone. But it was the Barolo that brought us to the crux of the evening.

I have been studying wine for eleven years. Over that time, I have developed my nose, and skills in tasting and pairing. I have made it a mission to study the lesser-known varietals in Italian viticulture. There are over 2,000 varietals in Italy, about 300 in production now, so there is much to taste and learn. But I realized as I tasted the lovely Scarzello Barolo ’01 with its notes of tar and roses, burnt toast, hints of anice and cinnamon, that in my time studying and drinking wine, the nature of so many classic noble wines of Italy have changed. The drinking of them has changed. Wines like Barolos and Barbarescos often get made to be drunk sooner; wines like Chianti Classico Riservas acquire more fruit to make them more accessible. Of course, there are wine makers making more traditional styles of wine, but somehow it seems that the nature of the traditional has gotten lost along the way. Tasting the other evening, I realized that I no longer know how to define a Barolo, its classic taste, its classic behaviour--I've tasted too many other expressions. I realize that in this time of waiting-- for sunshine, for that big thaw, that waiting for Spring--I have a way to entertain and distract myself over the next few months: I will dive into those waters known as Barolo, and see what rises to the surface. I know such an endeavor will last me much more than the few months we have left until the lilacs bloom.

--Deirdre

shadows on the teche

A snow and sleet storm and slick icy roads sometimes puts us in the mood for alpine living. Sometimes it pulls us across the snow crusted fields to memories or anticipations for some warmer and sunnier clime. Like this morning. The wind and metal gray skies sends us to Southern Louisiana outside of New Orleans. The sky is blue. The sun is hot. The fields of purple cane bend in the breeze. There are shadows that stretch along the bayou pretending to be something other than what they are, leading the eye to a story, a tale about to be told.

We are in New Iberia. We’ve come here because of a reading jag. We’ve immersed ourselves in the books of James Lee Burke, that particular and poetic voice of Southern Louisiana whose series of novels feature the beautifully flawed leading man Dave Robichaud. The writing and atmosphere of the books are lush and humid, and the characters are rich, complicated. It’s these stories that lead us to Dave Robichaud’s town of New Iberia, and to the flavors of true French Cajun cooking.

We’ve come to New Iberia specifically for the seafood boil. It’s softshell crab season, and we anticipate crab as well as crawfish and shrimp. The town has one of the prettiest main streets in the South featuring the antebellum jewel “The Shadows”, a classic plantation house on the edge of the Bayou Teche. Cajun country is marked by bayou, live oak, bald cypress, and Spanish moss. Burke writes in his novel A Stained White Radiance, "East Main in New Iberia is probably one of the most beautiful streets in the Old South or perhaps in the whole country. It runs parallel with Bayou Teche and begins at the old brick post office and the Shadows, an 1831 plantation home that you often see on calendars and in motion pictures set in the antebellum South, and runs through a long corridor of spreading live oaks, whose trunks and roots systems are so enormous that the city has long given up trying to contain them with cement and brick. The yards are filled with hibiscus and flaming azaleas, hydrangeas, bamboo, blooming myrtle trees, and trellises covered with roses and bugle vine and purple clumps of wisteria. In the twilight, smoke from the crab boils and fish fries drifts across the lawns and through the trees, and across the bayou you can hear a band or kids playing baseball in a city park." Yes, this is why we've come to New Iberia.

We arrive in town a little late for lunch and a little too early for dinner. The boil shacks are closed for the afternoon hiatus. All but one. Bubba’s Seafood Boil also has a bakery, so they are open through the afternoon, and after a little conversation and in true Southern hospitality, they are willing to feed us.

Before the boil arrives, the patroness serves us a little taste: softshell crab legs that have been boiled and then marinated in Italian dressing. They are delicious, the slick dressing on the outside of the shells providing sauce as you suck at the joints to get out the crabmeat. Then the boil arrives, an architectural delight. The boil is also served with a little sausage, potatoes, and hot buttered corn. There are crawfish, shrimp, various hardshell and softshell crab. The elegant long crab legs, like Alaskan King crab, take me back to childhood dinners when Alaskan King was de riguer and my favorite meal to have out at a fancy restaurant. I lived on another sort of bayou, on the muddy banks of the Ohio River in Southern Indiana. There, we have our own humidity, rampant vegetation, and fish fries.

The seafood has been boiled then steamed in a concoction of hot, powdery spices that make the meat so piquant. We’ve read about the big black boil cauldrons you find out on the bayou set up for the fishermen in their pirogues, or in backyards for weekend celebrations. They compliment the bar-b-que. We’ve brought home our own bag of spices for a boil labeled “Slap Ya Mama" Seafood Boil. We contemplate on our snowy day, heat on the tongue if not on the skin and in the air, and we imagine shadows that stretch across the snow driven fields contradicting the flat, gray of the sky and suggesting hidden intrigues and mysteries.

--Deirdre

A Proper Lunch: Shrimp with eggplant

The antidote to winter, the political season, the candidates, democrats and republicans, infotainment, telephone solicitations, bad fashion, the behavior of our fellow humans, is to rebel at the table with a civilised meal. To eat as if you had not a care in the world, except your own happines and that of the people around you, if only for 1hour!

Last week we sat down to lunch on a cold day. Lately, even when the temperature outside gets above freezing, the lack of sunshine has made it feel colder. So hot food was in order, but nothing too heavy, since we had to go to work directly afterward. I had some fried eggplant already prepared with a sweet-and-sour sauce, and some shrimp, which I cooked simply in some white wine and olive oil. Then I tossed the eggplant in the pan with the shrimp and let everything heat through. A revelation! It made for an easy preparation, and one which I will be happy to revisit in the summertime, too, served cold.

Here’s how to do the whole thing for 2 people. Adjust the quantities to suit your taste and appetite. I used 26/30 shrimp (meaning there are 26-30 shrimp per pound), peeled and deveined, with the tail on; probably about 10 shrimp for each of us.

Slice an eggplant into rounds a little less than pencil thick. You’ll need perhaps 6-8 slices per person. Heat some olive oil or vegetable oil in a large skillet (just enough to cover the bottom) toss in the shrimp and season with salt and pepper, and follow with a splash of white wine. Cook briskly and turn the shrimp with a spatula or tongs and remove them as soon as they are cooked through (firm in the fattest part, but not hard!). Add some more oil and fry the eggplant over medium-high heat, seasoning the slices with salt and pepper as they go into the pan, and set the fried slices aside. Into the pan: a few tablespoons of olive oil, 2 Tbsp of sugar, a couple cloves of smashed garlic (or more!), and about a ¼ cup of good red wine vinegar, or whatever vinegar you have on hand, salt and pepper (plenty of pepper!). Stir well and bring to a gentle simmer. If you like, throw in some chopped scallions -- all of it! -- white and greens parts together. Let this cook just enough so that the sauce thickens, then add the shrimp, salt and pepper, and the eggplant and a good dose of chopped parsley, if you have some handy. Stir everything together, taste the sauce for salt and correct as needed. Serve hot today or cold tomorrow, depending on the day.

Variations: Use up the rest of those wrinkly cherry tomatoes by cooking them a few minutes before tossing in the shrimp at the beginning. Need to leave out the sugar? Go ahead! But don’t expect the sauce to thicken the same way in the pan before you add the eggplant and shrimp. Just cook the sauce for a minute or two, then proceed as above. Need some heat? Add hot pepper flakes, or what-have-you, to the sauce. Don’t like eggplant? Use zucchini instead! You can also use striped bass instead of the shrimp, if that’s what looks good at the market. Simply cut the fish into 1-inch cubes, season with salt and pepper, and then treat them just like the shrimp.

-- Caleb