New Kitchen Hero

I have a new spatula, and it’s one I have been seeking for several years. It is one of my essential, day-in, day-out kitchen tools. It is so simple and classic a design, you might think it could be found in any old store, but not so, not so. It took me more than 3 years to come across it, and when I finally found it, I was not at all surprised that it was in Brown and Roberts Hardware, in Brattleboro, Vermont, (where I happened to grow up). That is a great store.

This new spatula has been doing hard duty from day one. It is sturdy, great for scraping encrusted pans of old scrambled egg residue, or burnt white beans, or crumby cutting boards. It has a sharp leading edge, so that you can actually slice things in the pan (like a spinach and goat cheese omelette), or separate a drumstick from the thigh, or remove that old paint spill from the floor. And it is small, so that you can sneak under a slender portion of fish for plating-up, without disturbing the other portions. In other words, it does all one could ask of a spatula beyond just turning your potatoes. (My other spatula is bigger, and was inclined to push a few potatoes out of the pan, which was the original impetus for finding the new spatula. Three years, three years, I tell you!)

So I’ve got my new spatula, and I’ll never let it go. Please don’t ask to borrow it. Just knowing it is there makes me happier, even when I am not actually in my kitchen. And next time I go to Brattleboro, I’m going to pick up another one or perhaps two, just in case. Maybe you can borrow one of those. -- Caleb

Garden Resolutions 2013

It is snowing as I write this (Wednesday, February 20th), in front of the fire.  Following my overview of this year’s gardening season, it seems a good idea to make a list of the concrete changes I can make next year in an effort to learn from this year.  So, heart ever hopeful, here are my resolutions.

1. I will try again to not procrastinate: starting seeds, watering, weeding, thinning… I was better organized in 2012 and that made a huge difference over previous years, but I will try to do better.

2. I will add compost to all the raised beds as soon as the snow is gone and the compost accessible.

3. I will start some of the outdoor-bound pole beans in 4” pots in the greenhouse, and also seed directly outside once the soil is really warm, and see what happens.

4. I will plant favas in the field where it will be cooler, not in the hoophouse.

5. I will plant many more: onions (starts and seeds), chicory, radicchio (mid July, for fall harvest and transplants to the hoophouse), out in the field.

6. I will try to grow more basil, some in the beds, some in the hoop house with the tomatoes, and some in pots around the terrace, and see what happens.  Large leaf Napolitano, thai, classic Genovese.  The potted basil on the retaining wall did only fairly.  I think it could have benefitted from a slightly cooler average temperature, hence, I will try the terrace out, where the morning sun is good, but the afternoon is shaded. 

7. I will re-organize in the hoophouse, and devote one bed to arugula.

8. I will try to expand the hoophouse to 40 feet in length.  (A side-effect of this will be the eventual construction of another greenhouse from the current plastic cover, which is so durable.) 

9. And build new cold frames to fill the new space.

10. And not procrastinate.

Fingers crossed!

Photo: Radicchio in the winter greenhouse, by Caleb

 

I grew a carrot: A review of the 2012 season

Here we are, gardeners, on the psychological cusp of a new season in the dirt, and in the spirit of ‘better late than never’, I should wrap up 2012 with a review. I know there are some lessons to be learned in every season, but I can be a slow learner, needing time to see connections.

As you can see from the photograph taken in early October, the carrots did fairly well this season, producing many paradigm examples, with a smattering of knobs, and under-sized specimens wedged in between. All in all, one of the most satisfying crops this year, which says something about the year in general. Some of the carrots are still in the ground, sweetening in the cold. Here’s hoping the voles haven’t found them.

The weather was cool and damp at the start of direct seeding, then things warmed up, but there was no rain until the fall; summer ended late and the fall was long and warmer than normal, great for finishing up the season. So at the cool start, heat-lovers suffered: beans and zucchini I ended up starting in 4” pots and transplanting. Inside the hoophouse I seeded pole beans along the back wall (after forking in some additional compost), and those came up quickly and gave us the bulk of our bean crop this year, most of which now resides happily in the freezer.

My mom and her neighbor, Peter, started the tomatoes in Peter’s seed-starting lab in his basement, under a grow light. We ended up putting 64 plants in the hoop house. I installed the shade cloth on the hoop house in late April, as temperatures in there were already topping out around 90 on warm days. This was just enough to keep the flats of greens from panicking into a heat-induced dormancy, or so it seemed; after they were moved into the raised beds, they never really took off, even though I was much more diligent in general about watering the hoop house and the raised beds this season. That made for a lot of 2a.m. star-gazing while making the rounds with the hose after coming home from the restaurant. I got less sleep, but I don’t begrudge the time outside with my head thrown back, listening to the swish of the water on the leaves, catching the occasional meteor.

Not so good this year were … well, many things. The exceptional surprise was the Natacha Escarole (started by mom back in March), which came in with big, beautiful heads; heat resistant, as advertised. Bush beans: a delicious but very small crop (too cool at seeding time, and beds didn’t get the compost they needed). Peas and favas: too hot, must plan for spring or fall crops. Onions and beets: poor germination, but tasty survivors. Surprises were the Badalucco soldier beans, the cannellini (lots of shelling in store for us this winter while we catch up on movies and TV series), the daikon radishes, the cucumbers that just would not stop, and all the volunteer Delicata squashes and small tomatoes on the old compost. The few solid performers were the hoophouse tomatoes (through until mid October), the arugula Sylvetta, and our 6 varieties of zucchini, which came in at an uncharacteristically relaxed pace (thank goodness) perhaps due to the lack of rain. The radicchio rows in the vineyard were an end-of-season surprise, and provided the bulk of transplants for the winter greenhouse, as my summer-seeded flats did not provide many good specimens; why, I do not know, but I suspect inconsistent watering resulting in more heat-induced dormancy! Yes, Teacher, I will try to do better.

a whole new

  new year.  new vision.  new mode.  new skin.  new shoes.  we have a lot of new going on these days, maybe not new from the ground up, but a shifting, updating, finetuning sensibility that hits us every so often, kind of like a seven-year itch.  it's time to do a change up, sit up, primp up.  so we've started with our blog.  the original name of our blog fuoricitta--an Italian word meaning something that was occurring outside the city, literally outside + the city, but that was still connected to urban roots was both fitting and appealing for these first six years of the blog.  we are definitely outside + the city, doing outside the city kind of things, like farming, and growing wine.  but we also like the city, we like the innovation, style, and energy that the city offers.

outside the city, we do things outside, and we do these things on a small farm in the Chateauguay, this husbanded wilderness about twenty minutes from the nearest big town that's really a village.  but we also do things inside.  like run a restaurant.  set tables.  cook meals.  curate a winelist.  wash dishes.  polish glasses.   we do things in that big town that is really a village.  we like how outside + inside speak to each other, dovetail, correspond.  the things we do outside find their way inside.

but now, we find that there are other elements feeding the farm and the restaurant, and we've gone back to an original inspiration while moving forward in our endeavors.  fuoricitta has given way to a new title: hunger and love.  the phrase hunger and love was the subtitle to our first book together: In Late Winter We Ate Pears, a collection of recipes fashioned around a collection of essays.  the subtitle came from the book itself, "so, this is a book about the food we've eaten in Italy, about a risotto made with saffron and parmigiano, about a biscotto made with anise and almonds and taken with a small glass of sweet wine.  about leaving home, about finding a place to stay, this is a book born out of desire or parts of desire: hunger and love."

this blog is still about all those things, but also about how that hunger and love has led us on a journey both unexpected and anticipated.  a farm has become folded into the restaurant.  a vineyard and winery has been folded into the farm.  long, elegant meals in a field under an apple tree, or in a barn, or on a stone terrace have become an extension of the osteria.  the desire to create an atmosphere conducive to conviviality and style have been woven into how we think about generosity and feeding people; in short, how we set the table.

the table is a landscape we farm just like any other and creates a bond between the vessel out of which we spoon the soup to the root in the soil; from the recipe on the plate or the libation in the glass.  all these things inspire: the rough-hewn wood of the table itself, the old china found in a resale shop, a roll of vintage wallpaper tucked away in a coat closet, an old coffee can full of blooms, a smooth cotton textile that we created ourselves.

so welcome to the first forays into a new era.  raise your glass and stay awhile.

--deirdre and caleb

new adventures. our first short film. champagne sunday lunch with japanese farm food.

syllabub/sillabub

Syllabub.  The dictionary says, "See sillabub".  A classic English dessert of a certain era that graces the country dance tables in the novels of Jane Austen.

Earlier this summer, I re-read the last Jane Austen novel partially written by Ms. Austen and finished by a contemporary author.  Sanditon is a play on all the same social issues that grace the pages of any Austen comedy/tragedy of manners. The heroine is smart, modest and sharp-tongued; the hero dashing, witty, and enigmatic.  The location is the seaside with bracing salt breezes and healing sunshine; the pastime is collecting seaweed or admiring rather hideous boxes made of seashells.  The dessert is sillabub, and there is a large amount of text given over to the picking of the berries, the thorn-pricked and stained hands of the inimitable Charlotte, and the preparation of and delivery of the dessert to the country dance which serves as the game changer in the narrative.  In essence, Sillibub becomes a character.

At the same time I am reading Sanditon, I am reading the beautiful cookbook Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater.  While it is a lousy apple season in our orchard, all the berries are over the top.  The blueberries come in blue-black and almost bursting on the branches of the four bushes next to our greenhouse.  While mining recipes for this blueberry bounty, like the medieval Trout in Cerulean Blue Sauce (with blueberries and rosemary) that we are serving at the restaurant, I come across a blueberry fool in Slater's book.  It's English and I wonder if it's related to sillabub which sends me to the old dictionary on our library table that is always open to some word we don't know.  These days I have to use the extra large magnifying glass to even read an entry.  A sillibub is very much like a fool, and perhaps that is it's intended role in Austen's final saga as well, a dessert of whipped milk or cream flavored with wine or cider.  A little adaptation goes a long way.

A cup of blueberries in a sauce pot.  A tablespoon and a half of sugar.  A little water.  Simmered for five minutes so the fruit may give itself up to additional deliciousness.  1/3 of a cup of Greek-style yogurt, 1/4 and a little of a cup of thick, heavy cream, whipped with a little confectioners sugar and two splashes of a Corsican red wine, or any other light red wine sufficiently fresh and fruity to accompany the other flavors.  Mix the cooled berry sauce and the yogurt.  Fold in the winey whipped cream.  Chill for an hour.  Top with a few fresh blueberries and fresh mint.  It is both witty and enigmatic.  Blackberries or raspberries would suit well.  Serves two or four depending on how hungry you are--

--Deirdre

desk, mid-summer

I cleaned out my office on the Summer Solstice.  It is a primarily a summer office, so somehow that seems appropriate.  Truly comfortable for three seasons, this little structure flanks the rose garden, a little structure that I've written about many times before because it was acquired with our house many years ago and has gone through many phases and many aspects. 

A prefabricated potting shed that was painted barn red with white trim, it started its life here on the edge of a meadow as an outbuilding to house baby lambs, to keep them from the midnight-roaming coyote up here on the edge of the Chateauguay.  And because of its original use it has retained its original name of "the lamb house", the "the" getting dropped somewhere along the way as it shifted from garden shed with one meager window and a plank door painted slate gray, to a studio with old paned windows and French doors to a studio/guest house with a new stronger-than-Zeus roof and sweet-colored shingles and a pale celadon trim.  It is now just known as Lamb House and ought to really have some kind of marker like an historical plaque to give it pride of place.

The Summer Solstice was late to clean off my desk, to hang some pictures, to sweep the floor.  I should have tidied up at the Vernal Equinox, a day and week this very year that sported eighty degree and sunny days.  But a gale had blown out the glass of one of the windows during the winter, splintering window onto the floor, and leaving the little building open to the elements until we realized what had happened and sealed up the opening with heavy clear tarp.  The replacement of the window would herald the cleaning out of the studio, but typical to procrastinating natures, somehow the window replacement kept getting pushed behind the schedule of pruning of the vines and fruit trees, the planting of the new vines, the weeding of the rose garden, the seeding of the starts, the steeping of plant teas, the wards against Japanese beetles.

Until last week when there was a brief lull in the constance of activity that marks our summer season, it was realized that the plastic tarp and new glass did not matter.  Procrastination was set aside and the need to tidy over-ruled.

So here I am a week and a day later, sitting at my currently overly-organized desk (how long will this last?) looking out over garden beds a bit wild with an abundance of June roses, the almost blooming mullein, the too-early blooming tiger lillies, white daisies swaying in what has turned out to be a rather breezy day.  Stacks of wine books edge the end of my desk, this desk really not "mine", something borrowed and something blue from a friend.  Next to the books is a vase of still-blooming bed-straw from the vineyard, bishops weed and wild rose from a forgotten garden.  The rose petals have already started to fall, leaving behind their perfumed confetti.

There are new stories to tell: the planting of rare white beans from the mountains of Liguria smuggled home under the pretense of dried goods, the arrival of a docile hive of bees that now reign at the top of the vineyard, the harvest of the first roses to make the versatile and fragrant rose syrup.  Now there is a desk wide and open, like what used to be the beckoning of a blank, white page.  But blank, white pages can also paralyze all thought and all language.  Instead, rough board surface tinted with the remnants of old paint from another place far away, somewhere in the hot climes of a village in Mexico, the desk welcomes.

-Deirdre