Fall means apples-part 2

Carlita:

The yearning for Apple pie looms large in the American unconscious. This is our dessert, the one that speaks most of home, family, craft and community.   In the spring of 2002, the performance artist Anissa Mack set up a small white cottage on the steps to the Brooklyn Public Library.  She spent all day baking apple pies in the small structure and then set them on the window sill to cool, encouraging passersby to snatch them. Saturday morning cartoons of my era were ripe with such pie theft scenarios: Yogi Bear, Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner … they all coveted that warm pie sitting out on the windowsill to cool.

My earliest memories of apples revolve around a yearly family ritual of going to an orchard where we would pick up apples and cider fresh from the press.   We were living in Michigan at the time and I remember the smells of damp leaves, wood and wool, crisp fall air and the sweet smell of apples as they were pressed for cider.  The taste of that cider was so incredibly good: all natural, pure, sweet and so very fresh.

After we moved to Nebraska the apple rituals were less abundant, since Nebraska prairie land was not designed for apple orchards.   However, Nebraska City, an area along the Missouri river south of Omaha, had an unusual “mini forest” and apple orchards. Following the Homestead Act of 1862, a Nebraska senator named J. Sterling Morton passed the Timber Culture acts of 1873, giving homesteaders an additional quarter section of land if they would plant 40 acres of trees and maintain them for ten years.  There was even a tax deduction if the landowner planted one acre with 100 fruit trees.  The same senator started the Arbor Day celebration in Nebraska City to celebrate tree planting.  Of course the settlers from the east had no idea that trees and prairie land made for strange bedfellows, and many of the trees became diseased and died.  But the ones around Nebraska City took and became an anomaly in an otherwise austere landscape.

I don’t know if Johnny appleseed ever came as far west as Nebraska but we sang the Johnny Appleseed song for grace before meals at girl scout camp in Nebraska City. Johnny Appleseed’s legacy was a perfect Midwest cocktail of religion, conservation and fertility. Appleseed (1774-1845) was a traveling pioneer nursery man who was given seeds from apple mills that were trying to drum up more business.  He went around the Midwest proselytizing for the Swedenborgian church and planting and nurturing apple orchards. I’m sure many of the apples that ended up in mom’s pies were from this region.

Ever since I was eye height to the kitchen table I remember my mother’s pie ritual.  Pie making was an activity revered in my young mind, right up there with playdough, colorforms and fall leaves pressed in wax paper.  When mom got out the rolling pin and cloth sock for the rolling pin, the pie crimper and a vinyl mat with several different circumference diagrams for the top and bottom crust, the party was on.   She must have learned from her mother as each step was automatic and resulted in the same delicious and perfect juicy pies.

Mom used winesap apples for her pies and would peel them in one perfect spiral. We could play with the left over dough and make little pies if there was enough, and I loved forming it into various shapes.  I tasted the ingredients every step of the way: the dough, bland and smooth, then the apples tossed in lemon juice and spices, crisp with an inkling of flavor that would soon be transformed through baking.

Years ago I was visiting a friend on Vashon Island outside of Seattle.  She made a wonderful applesauce by slicing apples from her trees with one orange and one lemon sliced thin. The fruit was laid out on a cookie sheet, baked, and then smashed together.  This is my variation on the recipe.  This uses no sugar, in fact I put a dash of salt on the apples.  Also I zest the lemons as rinds can be tough and I added some chopped ginger.  The skins add a great texture and are very healthy.  Along with Gastronomeg, most of my generation tend to forgo the apple peeling, I guess we are just too busy or into the health factor.  My farmers market carries many heirloom apples. I try different ones each time, usually a combo of sweet and tart baking apples: Rome, Gingergold, Empire, Fuji, Ashmead Kernels.

I serve this sauce with marinated pork chops, pork roast, or chorizo and it’s also great with potato pancakes with crème freiche.   The addition of chopped ginger and citrus really brighten up the sauce.

Roasted Apple Applesauce

6-7 apples, a mixture of sweet and tart baking apples

juice and zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange

2 T. chopped fresh ginger

pinch of sea salt

Quarter, core and cut the quarters of the apples into 3 or 4 slices and cut the slices in half, leave the skin on.  Zest the lemon and orange, chop the zest and put it aside and toss a small amount of lemon juice with the apples and add the chopped ginger.

Take a large baking sheet with sides, rub it with butter, and put the apple slices down. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes

Put into a bowl and mash with the zest, add more lemon and orange juice if needed.  It should be chunky, the consistency of a chutney.

Marinated pork chops

4 pork chops

1 lemon

½ cup olive oil

chopped garlic

thyme

red chili flakes

sea salt

marinate pork chops (using the rest of the ingredients) for 1 hour before cooking

sear in hot pan for 3-4 minutes each depending on thickness, deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine or cider and pour over pork chop, serve  with applesauce.

A perfect fall dinner complemented with sautéed spinach, a bitter green or brussels sprouts paired with an  Alsatisan white, either pinot blanc or riesling.

 

Fall means apples – part 1

 

Gastronomeg:

Fall means apples, of course, but specifically to me it means bright pink applesauce. Every year in recent memory, we’ve made batches of applesauce from the red-veined apples that fall (copiously in good years; in less auspicious ones we have to be quick to beat the deer to the punch) from the tree that grows behind the old barn cellar at my mother’s house. For years we referred to this tree as the “Duchess Apple Tree.” But lately,  with further research, we discovered that it probably isn’t a Duchess, after all.

At any rate, it is a good thing that this tree’s apples make such good sauce, since they aren’t good for much else – they’re too small to eat, have mealy flesh, and are not good keepers. But the apples cook down easily and the sauce is brightly colored from the red veins, with a nice balance of tart and sweet – it doesn’t need more than a touch of sugar (in some years none) and never more than the merest whisper of cinnamon. More seasoning would cover up the great apple flavor, but a tiny bit serves to bring it more sharply into focus, like salt does in baking or with savory food

As I learn more about apple trees, I am increasingly curious about the origin of this and other fortuitous old backyard apple trees. Who knows what variety it really is (if any ‘variety’ at all). We suppose that it was planted deliberately (the placement beside an old barn seems unlikely to be accidental), but whether it was a lucky seed or a carefully grafted cutting, it is now impossible to tell.

The first thing you learn when  you learn anything about apple varieties is that apple trees do not breed true from seed.  Since they (necessarily, as they are not ‘self fertile’) cross-pollinate with other nearby apple trees, an apple seed winds up being a random sampling from a large sea of genetic soup. You never know what exactly you’re going to get from a seed. This explains why apples in the woods are hit or miss, and mainly miss – what in cider making would be called ‘bitters.’ But I recall, from childhood equine rambles, occasionally coming across a tree with sweet, reasonably edible golden-fleshed apples that had resulted from a happy mingling of wild apples with the remnants of old cider orchards that are found near ruined house cellars all over the Vermont woods.

The only way to be sure that an apple variety is going to be what you want it to be is to propagate vegetatively – that is, to take a cutting from the tree you want and graft its living tissue (cambium) onto the cambium of another tree’s rootstock. The tissues will grow into one another and, above the graft, you will have an exact genetic copy of the tree you wanted to propagate. It is possible to graft as many varieties onto a rootstock as it has branches, creating a novelty tree of multiple varieties.

New varieties can be selectively bred, of course, and this is what is done these days (and these days more likely under a microscope than in the field). But in olden times, new apples were more often the result of happy accidents than careful breeding, either when a roadside or hedgerow tree from a dropped seed was found to produce especially good apples or when a batch of seeds (usually planted by settlers for cider-making) turned out a tree that produced something better than the run-of-the mill bitters. A new variety was then declared and reproduced from cuttings. “Heirloom” varieties can be traced back to these chance happenings, although fine trees were often reproduced mainly on a local scale. It is fun to think that when you eat a Baldwin apple today, you are eating an apple that has genetic makeup that is essentially identical to the original tree that was found in Wilmington, Massachusetts.*

These ideas (and more) were rehashed for me at Scott Farm’s annual heirloom apple tasting over Columbus Day weekend. We tasted 15 different apple varieties (out of the 70 that are grown on the farm!) and were regaled with stories of their origin by Zeke, the orchardist, who is a wealth of information (and whose sense of humor is as tart as some of his apples).  The favorites among our group, which included the California contingent of my family, here on a baby-worshipping mission, were the spicy/tart Esopus Spitzenburg, the creamy-fleshed and sweet Roxbury Russet, and the sweet/tart Ashmead’s Kernel. We acquired two bags of  mixed apples and proceeded to churn out apple desserts (pie, and a delicious crumble) for days.  Per Zeke’s urgings, we limited our cinnamon usage to the bare minimum (actually, he advised none at all, but our habits die hard. We used only a dash, we swear!) to enjoy the pure apple flavors of the old varieties.  These desserts were a revelation for the complexity of flavor given by using multiple kinds of apples, and interesting apples at that, in a dish.

Of course none of these fine apples went into something as lowly as applesauce, but my summation of applesauce advice works along the same lines. To get good applesauce (and by that I mean flavorful and interesting), use good, preferably sweet-tart, apples. If you don’t have something wonderful (like my mom’s formerly-known-as-Duchess apples), use a mix of apple varieties. Last year you could get big bags of mixed apples for $2 at Union Square. Sadly, due to an early-summer hail storm, most growers decided not to turn on their coolers for winter storage, so they were selling apples off at fire sale prices. We profited from the loss with many good batches of applesauce. If you go to ‘pick-your-own’ places, you can also ask about getting a crate of seconds or ground-falls (in the country sometimes called ‘deer apples,’ which I thought sounded nice until I saw some rather unsporting hunters loading them in their rifle-bedecked truck).  At any rate, no fancy apples are needed for applesauce; just cut off the bad bits.

When making applesauce, I always leave the skin on since it adds color and a bit of flavor. Plus, who wants to peel 5 pounds or more of apples?  So here’s my applesauce recipe:  Cut the cores out of  at least 5 pounds of apples. Put the cut apples in a deep pot to steam, with a few inches of water in the bottom (if you can keep the apples out of the water, all the better; I find the pasta insert of my pasta/stock pot works well). Cook until the apples are soft (they’ll start to puff up off the skins), turning a couple of times to make sure they’re all evenly cooked.  Then run the cooked apples through a hand-cranked food mill (an indispensable kitchen tool, for me – perfect for applesauce and also potatoes, which can’t go in the Cuisinart); you can use either the coarse or medium screen, if yours is adjustable, depending on how chunky you like your sauce. It’s the food mill that allows you to leave the skins on, since it presses the fruit off the skins for you. Taste for seasoning and add a bit of sugar and a whiff of cinnamon to taste (go easy; it needs less than you think to bring the flavors into focus without covering them up. I’ve been known to stop at 2 TBSP of sugar and a dash of cinnamon for two quarts of applesauce, and often don’t sweeten at all). Applesauce can be easily frozen or canned (pack into sterilized jars and process pints for 20 mins in a boiling-water bath).

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* Or nearly so, depending on how many generations your tree is removed from the first tree. There can be slight mutations as the tree is reproduced from subsequent iterations with different rootstock, etc. But since “heirlooms” have never been widely reproduced for commercial use, they generally tend to be close to the original.

 

RIP GOURMET- THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION!

Carlita:

To quote George Harrison “All things must pass” and so will Gourmet magazine after 68 years of publication.  The “foodie world” has been holding wakes on and off line and wondering what is the future of food journalism.   Surely the emergence of the food network and online food blogs have been stiff competition.  Many years ago as a young sous chef I would pick up back issues of Gourmet for a dollar in a used bookstore for inspiration.  I still have my Saveur and occasionally pick up Art of Eating and will have to re-visit Food and Wine  once again.

These are the things I will miss most about Gourmet:

-                 Great cover art – the last few years the cover design has become more minimal with gorgeous yummy close up photos of food, playing up texture and color with a stunning contrasting background, A+ for design

-                 Letter from the editor – I’m sure we will be hearing a lot more from Ruth Reichl but I will miss her monthly observations and how she brought the fancy pants travel/gourmet magazine back down to earth.

-                 Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood – a couple of former art historian’s who landed the perfect job,  I’m so jealous of you two!

-                 Articles on current issues and politics of food – under Ruth Reichl, Gourmet started to offer articles about food politics.  Anyone who is a food or wine enthusiast knows the origins of food and how it’s grown is the key to great ingredients.

-                 Fantasy dinner party photo shoots-will someone please invite me to one of these shindigs!

-                 The Thanksgiving issue- includes several traditions along with a vegetarian option, they really cover all the bases.

-                 Good Living-Obsessions, recommendations of tools and stuff from various food peeps.

-                 The August harvest issue – coverage on different farms and coops.

-      The special collector’s issues on France and Italy – luckily I’ve saved a few…….

Love letter to Paul, Flatiron Sept. 09

The word love gets tossed around a lot these days.  Outside of familial and romantic love, there are books written and movies made about the love of pets, wine and pork belly.  We simply love to talk about whatever we have elevated to that “love” level.

Which brings me to last weekend, when I had a reunion with my New York restaurant ‘family’ up at the Flatiron Steakhouse in Redhook, New York.  We all worked together at a restaurant in midtown for too many years to count – but even now that we have moved on to bigger and better things, we still share that “love bond” that only people in the dining trenches would understand.

The former chef (Craig Stafford) and bartender (Jessica Stingo) of our clan opened the Flatiron Bistro in Redhook, New York, a little over a year ago.  I  have to say that I love, love, love these people and apparently so does the rest of Hudson Valley. The restaurant is thriving and recently won best new steakhouse in Hudson Valley.

The weekend love-fest was a celebration of a visit from Paul, our former general manager, who left 3 years ago to return home to Australia. There is something about Aussies: it seems they have the hospitality business in their DNA.  Paul could charm a collar off a hungry tiger.   The most difficult customers were putty in his hands.  Paul introduced us to Kylie Minoque and cut crystal vodka shots. His British wit and humor, style and warmth earned him a following and customers were hopelessly devoted to him.  He now runs the private dining room for J.P. Morgan in Sydney.  To celebrate Paul’s visit we all decided to gather for the weekend up in Red Hook at Jess and Craig’s and feast at the Flatiron.

Redhook is just minutes away from the more upscale town of Rhinebeck – but it is recently becoming a hot restaurant scene in its own right.  Flatiron is on the main drag.  The restaurant is  not flashy — decorated with neutral colors with black and white photos adorning the walls. The vegetables and meat are sourced locally when possible and the menu changes seasonally. But at its heart, the menu is centered around steaks (flatiron, flank, filet and rib-eye, with a 5 oz. or  8 oz. portion size) with a variety of sauces and sides to choose from.  Each visit I have a new favorite sauce — chimicurri, homemade steak sauce, pecorino truffle fondue.   There is also an inventive burger menu which offers duck with duck egg and cracklin’s,  merguez spiced lamb,  traditional beef and roasted eggplant with brown rice.  In addition there are several fish and seafood options along with oysters, raw and roasted.  Craig’s roasted oysters are not to be missed! I used to say I prefer raw, but I have been swayed to the other side with these.

The night began at the bar with a cheese plate and some Muscadet before we moved to our table. The bar is in the front of the restaurant and has a great selection of small batch bourbon, local and imported beers, tap and bottle and a great cocktail list.  Chris the bartender is sexy, sassy and knowledgeable.  He went to the CIA and also worked in a local brewery.  It is great to have a bartender who knows food and wine and has an educated opinion.

Wine-wise, we started off the main part of the evening with the Tablas Creek ‘Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc’ 2006.  Produced by the Chateau de Beaucastel’s California property, it is fashioned after a white Chatauneuf-du-pape with Rousanne and Grenache blanc.  It was soft, buttery and honeyed, with a dry mineral finish — a perfect full bodied white that screams ‘it’s autumn!’  At this point the appetizers just streamed out of the kitchen.  First roasted oysters and a crab salad with avocado, garbanzos, radish and frisee – this was a meal in itself, a perfect contrast of textures and flavors.  Then came the  local quail and an amazing steak tartare with fried parsley.

At this point I felt completely sated; every dish was so complete and satisfying I could have stopped here.  And one of the many brilliant details at the Flatiron is the warm roll that comes with a small ramiken of butter with sea salt.   Just one perfect little roll, crusty on the outside and pillowy on the inside.  Bread is a hard sell these low-carb days, but it is so great to have one small round of perfection.  Jessica does all the in house baking, besides the rolls there are English muffins for the burgers and bread sticks for the bar.

We plowed on, opening a bottle of 1999 Malvira Trinita for the entrees.  This was amazing nebbiolo from Roero, a region just north of Barolo which has become more known for its white wines (especially Arneis).  It was the perfect time for this vintage – we enjoyed the clean red fruit that is set off by earth and tar notes, an herbaceous nose, and supple tannins.  By the way, the logo on the bottle is one of the best in Piedmont and would make a fine tattoo. I ordered a filet au poivre with a potato artichoke gratin. If you’re going to go the steak and potatoes route, this is the road to take, in my opinion.  Paul went big with the 16oz. porterhouse which he declared to have a perfect fat/meat ratio.

Wow, this was really a tremendous and memorable meal.  Thanks Jess and Craig, we love Love LOVE the Flatiron, and see you in another three Paul…………..

DOUGLAS CULHANE AT JOHN DAVIS GALLERY, HUDSON, NY

This weekend I headed up to Hudson to see my friend Douglas Culhane’s sculptures at John Davis Gallery on Warren Street. The Gallery has a shell of an old carriage house in back of the gallery building.   Open in the warm months, the carriage house faces the gallery with a garden in between for sculpture exhibits.  I love climbing the narrow staircase from floor to floor investigating the small rooms filled with paintings, sculpture and installations.  Doug’s sculptures were at home in this space with a wood fence and gravel yard.  This work reminds me of old machines given a new life, parts coming together to create a function that has not quite revealed itself.  They also reference carts and wheelbarrels, objects that are meant to ease the transport of other objects.  Teter-tottering between playful and sinister, the forms are scaled for human interaction.  Several pieces such as Wain and Hook-Cage Steel, are set within a rectangle which contain and constrain the

elements inside.  These pieces are suggestive of the drawing process, possessing the lyrical quality of contour lines.   Fran Shalom is showing upstairs and many other artists in the carriage house, check out the website.

When you’re done gallery hopping in Hudson stop by the p.m. wine bar on lower Warren Street.  They have a great selection of wines with a focus on Spain, tapas and a piano for performing.  The storefront’s  design is reminiscent of “old hudson” with some quirky touches.  PM now has a full bar and the very best white sangria I’ve had yet this summer!

the baby, the baby…..

The little gastrome is here, Charlotte Louise, born 9/8/09 at 8:19 am, 6lb. 10 oz.

Welcome Charlotte!

AUGUST 2009-AGIORGITIKO DINNER

AUGUST 2009- AGIORGITIKO DINNER- VERMONT

2006 Notios, Peloponnisos, Agiorgitiko  13.0 alcohol $13.99

2007 Red on Black, Nemea, 13.0 alcohol $14.99

Menu:

Crudities with yogurt herb dip

Bugulama

Grilled Flank Steak marinated in red wine vinegar, garlic and fresh oregano

Coffee ice cream

Carlita:

During the August heat wave I escaped the cement jungle and landed in the green rolling hills of southern Vermont.  Gastronomeg and Jason are settled in their cozy farmhouse awaiting the small gastrome who will be arriving any day now.  The countryside is stunning with big white barns, wildflowers and pristine air.  We grilled most of our meals, shared some refreshing muscadet and rose, and basically caught up on their new rural life.  We listened to the symphony of creatures in the night air and I even got some plein air painting in.

Our August wine Agiorgitiko from Greece was not too difficult to locate.  Most wine stores seem to have just a couple reds and whites from Greece and the red usually includes an Agiorgitiko.  The Notios

“the one that comes from the south”, was our favorite  of the two.  Clear ruby in color with black cherry, jammy fruit, medium tannins with a tar and bitter notes on the finish.  It’s body and finish reminded me of a dolcetto.  The Red on Black was more fruit forward and not as tannic as the Notios.  Meg felt it was more modern in style than the Notios.  Both wines were simple, strait forward, worked well with the flank steak and didn’t break the bank.

Vermont Local “Greek” wine dinner

Gastronomeg:

One of the things we’ve been enjoying the most since our move to Vermont (well, besides the mountain vistas that open up as you travel winding shady roads,

white farmhouses with blazes of black-eyed-susan and bee balm in front, stone walls, cool streams, and swimming in the lake) is the easy availability of fresh and local food.  Our nearby CSA provides most of our vegetables, plus wonderful fresh goat cheese that the farmer, Elizabeth Wood, makes from her adorable dwarf  goats. Whatever we’re lacking from the CSA, we can pick up down the road in Williamsville at the beautiful timber frame building that serves as the self-serve farm stand at Amazing Planet farm. Amazing Planet also happens to have some of the best eggs we’ve ever eaten — their big and beautiful Rhode Island Red hens strut all around the barn and fields munching bugs and nibbling grass and their eggs have the most amazingly orange yolks ever (schoolbus-yellow frittatas and omelettes are a treat these days).  Local meat is easily available from various farms and also at a new butcher shop in Brattleboro that specializes in meat from local producers.  And of course dairy products go without saying in Vermont (which is thankfully enjoying a renaissance of boutique dairy farms). Which also means an amazing variety of local cheese – as my friend Martin Johnson says, if Vermont seceded from the Union it could be considered a fine cheese-making nation in its own right!

We couldn’t wait for Carlita’s visit to be able to indulge in some fine summer feasting. As it turned out, she managed to escape New York City during this summer’s only serious heat wave, which was far more bearable here than it would have been there! It always cools off at night when the breeze comes up…. Vermont summer is just heavenly, however short it may be.

For August’s Agiorgitiko dinner, some simply grilled meat definitely seemed the way to go. Lamb was tempting, given the Greek theme, but pricey. Instead, we settled on a nice big flank steak. Now all we needed was some oregano for a marinade, a side dish, and we’d be set!  One of the things I love most about our CSA this summer is that there are pick-your-own options available every week, and you can go pick on days that aren’t your pick-up day if you are short on ingredients. So we took a scenic detour to Dummerston on the way home from Brattleboro and stopped by for a handful of oregano and other herbs.  On the way there, it occurred to me that a perfect side dish would be Paula Wolfert’s Bugulama (recipe to follow). The Mediterranean flavors and easy preparation were just what was needed with the wine, and for making dinner on a hot day (we’d get our starch and vegetables in one flavorful package that didn’t need long on the stove).  Plus, I already had some collard greens in the fridge from the previous week’s pickup that we could use.

At the farm, Elizabeth was putting together irrigation hoses which she was using for the first time in this strange summer (it was just so wet in June and July). Since there is lots of chard available to pick at New Leaf, we grabbed some of that to supplement the collards, along with oregano for the beef marinade, plus a few more of the irresistible candy-sweet golden cherry tomatoes that have been going nuts for the last few weeks. (Happily for us, New Leaf has been extremely lucky to have avoided Late Blight, which has wiped out almost everyone else’s tomatoes this summer).  We rushed the chard and herbs home so they wouldn’t wilt in the heat, made a marinade for the beef (oregano, garlic, and Carlita’s home-made red wine vinegar), and went about our afternoon business.

This was definitely one of those dinners that provided maximum flavor with minimum effort!  The steak only needed about 3-4 minutes a side, then a short rest to let the juices settle. The marinade gave a nice sharp wine-y flavor to the meat, which was delicious with the fruity wine. And the Bugulama packed a wonderfully rich flavor punch on the side. This is truly a winner of a greens recipe, and I love greens in so many ways!  It is great for summer because you can serve it at room temperature, which allows the flavors to meld wonderfully.  And make extra – my dirty little secret is that it is even better the next day for lunch!

“Best Ever” Bugulama – adapted from Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Greens and Grains

3-4 cloves of good fresh garlic (Wolfert calls for a whole head! I find 3-4 cloves to be plenty, and I love garlic. I’d say start with this much and adjust to your taste.)

1 tsp of salt (plus more to taste)

1 large onion (the fresher and more juicy the better)

1 pound mixed greens (sweet and bitter)

1 cup coarse-grained bulgur

4 TBSP olive oil

1-2 tsp ground mild chilis, or more to taste (I use piment d’espellette, because I have a string of them from last summer’s vacation. Ground anchos would work well too. Here’s a source in case you can’t find them in the supermarket. Do NOT use “chili powder,” which has powdered garlic, oregano, etc. in it.).

¼ tsp red pepper flakes

½ tsp (or more to taste) ground coriander

½ tsp ground black pepper.

½ cup water (you may need slightly more depending on the moisture content of your greens)

Crush the garlic with the side of a knife, peel, and roughly chop. Mash the garlic, 1 tsp of salt, coriander, and the ground chili with a mortar and pestle (or if you don’t have one, sprinkle the salt and chili on the garlic and chop and chop it, crushing to release liquid. Or press through a garlic press, then mash the chili and salt in with the back of a fork).

Peel and finely chop the onion. Wash and chop the greens into fine ribbons.

Here’s where it gets fun!  In a 3-qt. or larger heavy-bottomed pan, mix the crushed garlic mixture, onions, and slivered greens with the chili flakes, black pepper, and more salt if you think it needs (this is to taste – make it without any extra the first time and see what you think). The best way to mix is with your hands. I just love mixing thing with my hands! The greens will start to wilt and reduce a little from the salt, and the crushed garlic will smell heady and divine.  Once the greens have reduced enough to make room in the pot, add the bulgur, olive oil, and water, and continue mixing, kneading it and really squeezing the liquid from the greens and the water into the bulgur until everything is very well combined.

Cover tightly and set pot over medium heat. As soon as it steams (and keep a close eye on it so it won’t burn at this stage!), turn down as low as your burner will go and let cook for 10 minutes. Give it a quick stir after 10 minutes to make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan too much (it always does a little), and add a few drops more water if it already seems dry. Cover again and cook for 5 more minutes, then turn off heat and let it stand for 10 minutes more without uncovering, then stir and re-cover if it needs a little more time.  Can be served right away, or make ahead and let it sit at room temperature until you are ready for dinner.

If only these pots could talk……

If only these pots could talk………….. Gastronomeg has part of her Le Cruset collection prominately displayed on her kitchen cabinet in her new farmhouse kitchen in Vermont.  She refers to them as heirlooms and said that they would most likely not go to her children, as they would have to clutch them out of her dying hands, but instead willed to the grandchildren.  My first enamel cast iron pan, actually a sauce pan I found at a second hand store was a Danish version, bright lemon yellow with the enamel chipping a tiny bit.  At the time I was working as a sous chef in Seattle and had little money for the real thing.  I was thrilled with my find and used it until I could replace it with 2 round red Le Cruset ovens.  Both my ovens were purchased at Broadway Panhandler back in the day when they had a big summer sale at the store in Soho.  With live music, hot dogs and foodies lined up at the door, I shared many a recipe and cooking story while waiting
in line to get past the bouncer.  Ah, those were the days.  My next pot will be an oval oven for leg of lamb.

The new colors are knock-outs, lime green, mustard yellow and Caribbean blue.  My niece loves her new Caribbean round oven I gave her for college graduation.  She spent the last couple of years studying abroad in Spain and Mexico, absorbing the culture, art, food and dance.  The pot will be perfect for the traditional Mexican dishes she loves to cook.
My friends daughter received a lime green Le Cruset  from her godmother at her bridal shower this weekend.  Another generation, hopefully cooking will be around another hundred years or these le cruset pots will just become small sculptures on the kitchen shelves.

JULY 2009- CERDON DU BUGEY – CENTRAL PARK PICNIC

Cerdon du Bugey:

Patrick Bottex “La Cueille” 8.0 alcohol, $17.99

Lingot Martin, 8.0 alcohol, $21.99

Renardat-Fache, 7.5 alcohol $16.99

Menu:

Ancho Deviled Eggs

French radishes with butter and sea salt

Green bean salad with fennel, cherry tomatos, black olives , red onion

Selection of cheeses from Fairway Selection of salumi from Salumaria Rosi

“Strawberries, cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring, my summerwine is really made from all these things…….take off those silver spurs and help me pass the time, and I will give to you summer wine.” Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood, Summer Wine

Carlita: ……….ohhh, oh summer wine.  Ahh,  the seductive pleasures of the perfect wine that screams summer.  A light, clean, refreshing quencher for those hot summer nights.    Usually picnic season in New York City is over by early summer but this year we’ve had seemingly constant torrential rains… except for the day of our vinartculture picnic! After picking up some goodies at Salumeria Rosi, we headed over to Central park and found a picnic table in the Pinetum, between the stables and ball fields.   After one of the first truly hot days of summer, the night turned ideal for dining al fresco with a perfect breeze, great company and temperatures in the lower 70’s.

Our summer wine of choice? Cerdon du Bugey, a semi dry pink sparkling rose made from Gamay and Poulsard with natural fermentation.  This is a strawberry soda of a sparkler, revered by wine geeks, coveted by underage wine stock boys, unpretentious yet sophisticated (it is French after all) and fun!  Bugey is a tiny region between the Savoie and the Jura.  I can only imagine the people living a hard scrabble life in the French alps, then ending their day with a fruity refreshing glass of Cerdon du Bugey.   This is the land of fondue, wild strawberries, chartreuse, cured meats, brook trout and I’m sure a few ski resorts nearby.

Gastronomeg introduced me to Cerdon Bugey several years ago when we were up at her old house in the Hudson Valley.  We arrived in time for lunch, fired up the grill, popped the Bugey, threw on the steaks and made a big salad while surveying her incredible yard and garden.  Gastronomeg was on the crest of a new wine wave then — not that Cerdon du Bugey is new, but there was little imported until a few years ago.  I’m just now starting to see it on more restaurant wine lists and more variety in wine shops.

In the past I’ve used Bugey as a dessert wine, and especially like it with my strawberry shortcake as it is not too sweet and the strawberry notes in the wine play off the shortcake.  But it pairs well with American picnic fare: smoky, salty or spicy flavors, fried or bbq chicken, potato salad etc.  You could also pair Bugey with the sweet, salty, spicy flavors of Chinese or Thai food….  We decided to go a more traditional route, pairing with cured meats.  So we headed to Salumeria Rosi (convenienty close to Central Park!) to pick up some of their incredible Porchetta Toscana, Finocchinona, andSoppressata.  I can’t get enough of this place; if you haven’t been, go immediately!  For a side dish, since the green beans have been amazing this year, I made a bean salad with wax, green and broad beans, baby fennel, cherry tomatoes, black olives and red onion. I made a simple Dijon vinaigrette with red wine vinegar , olive oil and 3 T. mustard.  Every picnic needs deviled eggs and the smoky, spicy flavors played beautifully off the Bugey.

Ancho Deviled Eggs

6 hard boiled eggs

3 T ancho mayo

3 T half and half

3 scallions thin slice

S & P Paprika, chives as garnish

Put the yolks from the eggs in a bowl and mash with mayo and ½ and ½ until smooth.  Add more cream if necessary to get the right consistency.  Add scallions and put back into egg whites and garnish with paprika and chopped chives.  To make the ancho mayo, re-constitute a package of ancho chilis, food process with one jar of mayo (or make your own if you’re up for it). This is also great on cubano sandwiches.

Here are Gastronomeg’s notes on the wines: Gastronomeg: The first Cerdon de Bugey I tasted was the Renardat-Fache, imported by Joe Dressner. This was about 5 years ago; I was working for Polaner (Joe’s NY distributor) at the time, and we all called the Renardat-Fache “pink happiness in a bottle.” I immediately fell in love with this natural, deliciously off-dry, totally down-to-earth wine. Rather than undergoing two fermentations (as with champagne), Cerdon de Bugey is simply bottled before it is totally finished fermenting. It does the final part of its fermentation in the bottle, resulting a lighter sparkle than in “methode traditionelle” bottlings and also a wonderful, slightly volatile, just-made grapey quality (which reminded me of drinking the still-fermenting “Neuer Wein” in Germany during harvest festivals.) Cerdon de Bugey is as close as you can get to drinking fresh wine directly from your neighbor’s cellar.

The Renardat-Fache had, at the time, a small but devoted wine-geek following. But then Bugey started catching on, and another friend introduced me to the Bottex “La Cuielle,” a new import at the time for Kermit Lynch. A group of us managed to polish off at least 6 bottles while sitting on his lovely Park Slope back terrace  one perfect summer night…. “Soda pop for grownups,” we called it.

Then two years ago, on a trip to Paris, I noticed that Cerdon de Bugey (and specifically the Renardat-Fache) had suddenly become all the rage, at least among the natural-wine-conscious, hip ‘gastronomique’ bistros that I was in pursuit of. My then-boyfriend (now husband! Soon to be father of our child!) and I sipped several glasses as an apertif over several romantic days –  the existence of the Renardat-Fache on a wine list became our  validation that indeed this was a restaurant worth dining in. We had it at Le Comptoir, Le Repaire de Cartouche, Le Villaret… All impeccable Parisian addresses on the bistro scene!

Now I’d say that, while it is still far from mainstream, the existence of Cerdon de Bugey is a similar mark of the seriousness of a wine store, at least in New York. If they have it, this is a store where someone knows that one of the secrets to truly enjoying life is not being afraid to drink something pink and a little off dry (as long as it is naturally made, and so delicious!).

This was the first time I’d tasted all three Cerdon de Bugey wines that I know to be imported in New York at the same occasion. The Lingot-Martin is certainly the driest of the bunch. It’s probably the easiest to pair with food (or to serve to those skeptical of the bubbly and pink)  for that reason.  I loved it with the cured meats at our picnic. The Bottex, always a favorite of mine, got a little bit of a thumbs-down from the group for having a nose that slightly smelled of bananas. To me, it smelled more like cherry and certain notes of primary fermentation (a tad bit of acetone, if you know what I mean, but not in a bad way)… I’m sure in isolation it would have been sucked back with no complaints, but we were being picky since we had the easy ability to compare. The Renardat-Fache, rustic bottle that it is, was the sweetest and the most yeasty of the three. Being that it is an old friend of mine, I have no criticism to offer of it at all…. This is a wine that is made to quaff, not to analyse!

On a last, personal note, we were so glad to be able to join in on this Bugey picnic. It was our last weekend in New York before leaving permanently for our new Vermont  home, and we just happened to be on the Upper West Side at precisely the right time of day to meet up with the gang. The day had been sultry, but the evening turned lovely. It was great to sit in Central Park — site of a few memorable picnics over the last nine years, and where I have logged countless running miles in training for long-distance races – one last time, enjoying perfect picnic fare, tasting perfect summer wines, and enjoying a leisurely, easy, yet sophisticated time with friends. As much as we love our beautiful new home, we’ll miss such rare  and serendipitous New York happenings! But as soon as we figure out where to buy Cerdon de Bugey in Southern Vermont, we’ll raise a glass in celebration and thanks for its delicious simplicity.

“I walked in town on silver spurs that jingled to
A song that I had only sang to just a few
She saw my silver spurs and said lets pass some time
And I will give to you summer wine
Ohh-oh-oh summer wine” Lee Hazelwood, Summerwine

VERMENTINO DINNER-JUNE 2009

Wines:

2007 Donnikalia, Ferruccio Deiana, Vermentino di Sardegna, 13%, $12.99

2007 Casamatta, Tuscany, 12.5%, $11.99

2007 Domaine St-Felix, Southern France (60% Vermentino, 40% Savignon blanc) 12.5%, $10.99

2007 Domaine Maestracci, E. Prove, Corse Calvi, Corsica, 13%, $17.99

Menu:

Main: Grilled Whole Branzino stuffed with oregano and lemon

Grilled Asparagus

Salad: Spinach with sheep’s milk feta and toasted almonds

Dessert: Ice Cream, Roasted rhubarb with crystallized ginger

Carlita:

Great architecture can elevate the human spirit to high levels indeed.  The  Big Apple, a heavyweight champion of grand spaces, provides an arena of interiors and passageways that can lift one out of the most serious of funks.  The school of rats that almost ran over your toes waiting for the subway that is now going local due to track work on a 100 degree summer day? The bus that just turned the corner and completely saturated your smart sexy outfit during the June downpours? Luckily there are enough high notes to transcend the dirge.  Climbing the stairs to the Met takes me back to the sublime elegance of this incredible city.  Upon arriving at the top there is the grand hall with super-sized floral arrangements and yet another grand flight up to the European Painting galleries.  Momentarily, all my New York woes are behind me and I feel like a million bucks.   The other space that really shouts “I HEART NYC” is the romanesque aquatine beauty of Grand Central Terminal.   What a great feeling to walk through the buttressed tunnels into the huge main room surrounded by the turquoise cosmos and pick up train tickets to escape the city.  And after a trying day at work my destination was a suburb 30 minutes north on the Hudson: off to Gastronomeg’s Aunt’s condo where she and Jason are housesitting before their move to Vermont.  Track 39 and I’m off in style to the Vermentino June Dinner….

When I arrived Gastronomeg was prepping the rhubarb and Branzino.  Last summer her rhubarb strawberry sauce was blue ribbon quality and this sauce with the cystallized ginger is also superb.  The rhubarb is cooked just enough to release juices but retain its shape and the chewy bites of ginger added a burst of spice.

Branzino with oregano and lemon was the perfect choice for the Vermentino  and played nicely off of the citrus and herbal notes.   Years ago when I was working in an Italian restaurant in Seattle we would occasionally have Italian salesmen come through and request grilled fish and vegetables for lunch.  They would drizzle the whole plate with olive oil and enjoy a glass of wine.  It seemed like a smart way to eat in the middle of the day.

Most of the  Vermentinos we tried were perfect for this menu: light, and crisp, with citrus, salt, green melon, dried herb and wax.  I can almost smell the Mediterranean air when I drink these wines.

Jason arrived a few trains behind me, and we started to  taste through the wines.

The first wine, the Donnikalia from Sardegna, was a hit  with everyone.  Its vibrant fresh citrus/floral nose,  honeydew notes and bitter finish really exemplify  Vermentino at its best for a great price.  We all were thumbs down on the Casamatta from Tuscany, which was not as aromatic. The acids were a bit harsh and it missed the complexity of the Donnikalia. The Domaine St. Felix Cuvee, 60% Vermentino and 40% Sauvignon blanc nicely picked up the herbal qualities of the south of France with a waxy texture and white grapefruit from the Sauvignon Blanc.  Not my favorite but not a bad cuvee for the price.  Domaine Maestracci from Corsica was by far the most complex with more weight on the palate.  The richest of the bunch, it had apricot, white peach and floral notes on the nose with honey, almond and a slightly bitter

finish.  It did seem to change throughout dinner with the bitter notes becoming a little too pronounced.  We were missing the Argiolas Costomolino which I just had the other night and is another perfect example of this grape and a great value.  Vermentino is also grown near the coast in Ligura along with Pigato which has very similar scrubby brush, salty qualities of Vermentino.  If you can find it, Colle Dei Bardellini makes both Pigato and Vermentino (they are a rare find here).  Both are excellent with the local fish, seafood and pesto from the region.  And don’t forget the fritti, calamari, zucchini blossoms etc….

Our big discovery of the night was that grilling and wine tasting need to be done in separate spaces as our wines picked up a petrol smell from the grill.  Jason, a science and engineering nerd among other things came up with a formula for comparing the weight of the wines according to their alchohol content………………

Jason:

Oh, and here are the results of my weighing last night’s St. Felix:

Full 750 mL bottle with screw cap = 2 lbs. 11 oz. = 43 ounces

empty bottle with screw cap = 1 lb. 0 oz. = 16 ounces

wine = 27 ounces = 1.69 pounds

750 mL = 0.20 gallons

1 gallon of wine = 8.45 pounds

A gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds. That makes sense, since I suspected there are things in wine that are denser than water. However, ethyl alcohol’s specific gravity is 0.789, which means it weighs 6.59 pounds per gallon. St. Felix if I recall correctly is 13% alcohol by volume. Therefore, there are definitely things in the wine, besides the alcohol, that are denser than water.

If I were more ambitious — or had more time — I would perhaps use that percentage to figure out the specific gravity of the non-water, non-alcohol components.

Also, the experiment should be controlled for temperature since the figure I used is for water just above freezing. But I don’t think that error amounts to very much.

Gastronomeg:

The latest Vinartculture dinner was a welcome reminder of the restorative power of good simple food, wine, and friends. Things have been a little chaotic of late, Chez Gastronomeg…. In part because there is not really a “Chez” Gastronomeg at the moment. We’re still camped out in style in Westchester, mid-the-Big-Move to Vermont. Given all the little administrative details of moving (as we tend to settling in, unpacking, and setting up house, all long-distance) things are a little akimbo, to the tune of one or two wide-eyed sleepless nights of late.

In face of all our hectic activity, making the June wine dinner at first seemed to me a bit of an indulgence. Instead it turned into a godsend – we were more relieved than we could have anticipated to have a night to just kick back and think about making dinner, to gather and talk about wine, to find and use some amazing spring produce, and through it all to get some perspective on what it is that brings us happiness in the crazy world.

Circumstances demanded a simple meal, but fortunately so did June’s grape (Vermentino). Vermentino said to me grilled fish, served preferably al fresco beside the sunny Mediterranean. We would substitute the lush, rainy banks of the Hudson and a small back deck with a Weber. I had a hearty handful of oregano I’d remembered to cull from my mother’s Vermont garden on Sunday, and what is June for in the Northeast if not for gorging on asparagus and tender greens? So the menu fell naturally into place: Grilled whole Branzino with Vermont oregano, Grilled asparagus (courtesy of Dutton Farm, also from our Vermont weekend), and Spinach Salad (courtesy of Dutton Farm and our wonderful Vermont CSA). Having convinced my mom to finally cut back her towering rhubarb plant over the weekend, dessert would be a simple spring favorite that Carlita and I learned from Gabrielle Hamilton in a class a few years ago: Candied Rhubarb (served over ice cream, or for those of us watching our 3^rd-trimester sugar intake, greek yogurt).

About the first 2 courses, there is little to be said. Light the grill (miraculously, given our soggy June, it stopped raining for several hours!) stuff the fish cavities with coarse salt, pepper, lemon slices, and oregano; brush their outsides with olive oil. Barely blanch the asparagus, then roll it in salt and pepper and olive oil. Wash the greens, toast some slivered almonds and crumble some mild goat feta to go on them.  Throw the fish, then the asparagus, on the grill (we left the fish covered for about 4 minutes on one side, then flipped them and grilled open for another 5 or 6, meanwhile throwing the asparagus on and trying not to lose too many spears   between the grates). As simple as can be.

Dessert can have a little more space, as this is one of the best ways I know to cook rhubarb. I adore rhubarb, which is always the first thing we have to make fresh ‘fruit’ desserts with in Vermont – long before strawberries, which don’t come to our they-say-it’s-zone-5-but-it’s-really-more-like-zone-4 gardening world until late June. My mom’s plant is a large, hale, and hearty one, and she had waited for a while to cut it back. So the stalks we had were nice and tough, which is actually best for this preparation. I had about 1 ½- 2 lbs of rhubarb, which I cut into coarse (about one-inch) chunks. It is important not to chop it too fine or you can end up with rhubarb mush. I sprinkled these with about 2 cups of sugar (no need to measure too closely) and tossed them in a baking pan. The recipe I got from the Gabrielle Hamilton class stops there, but I’ve experimented and found that adding some spices adds interest. So I tossed in about ½ tsp of cinnamon and a sprinkle of ground cloves. On a whim, I also finely chopped a handful (probably 2-3 oz?) of crystallized ginger I had lying around and planned to add it just before the rhubarb went in the oven. I’ve experimented with powdered and fresh ginger for this dish, neither of which was terribly satisfactory. After this try, I can attest that crystallized is by far the best option – it was delicious! Let the rhubarb/sugar mixture sit for at least an hour (it will go faster if you use superfine sugar, but I never have any). This draws some of the juices out of the rhubarb, which also helps it from getting mushy when you cook it. Once you see some nice juices mixing with and dissolving the sugar, you can heat the oven to 300. Mix in the chopped crystallized ginger and throw the rhubarb in for about 40 minutes, checking once or twice and probably stirring once to make sure the rhubarb is not getting mushy. When it is cooked but still intact, you should have a nice sugar syrup in the bottom of the pan. Pull it out and let it cool while you eat dinner….

The wines – I’ll let Carlita do the bulk of the commenting there (and maybe Jason, who is always a delightful wine-experiencing companion, will add his two cents). But suffice to say they were all fresh and lively. At its best Vermentino has an intriguing aromatic spectrum – from honeysuckle to melon to ripe apricots – and a hint of bitterness somewhere about its person, either on the nose (which was the case of the Corsican offering from Maestriacchi; it got quite pungent as it opened up) or at the finish (as with the more delicate and quite lovely Donakalia, from Sardegna).  At its worst, it makes a high-toned and completely forgettable white (as was the case with the Tuscan Casamatta), and somewhere in between it is a nice supporting player (as in many Southern French blends. Definitely true with the St. Felix, where it lent weight and tempered the citrus of Sauvignon Blanc).  Missing from the tasting was a bottle from Antoine Arena, one of the leading lights of the natural wine movement in France, and certainly producer of Corsica’s most interesting Vermentinos. I’ve had them, and can attest that they are complex, intriguing, and powerful…. But at $50 retail, we decided to forego taking our tasting to that level.

As the long almost-solstice evening fell over the backyard trees, we sniffed, sipped, noted, and ate simply and well. We discussed life changes and how we weather them, enjoyed how the wines changed with the food, savored the crunch and flavor of fresh spring asparagus, and basked in the cool evening breeze that washed over.  Dessert, with the tart-sweet-spicy combination of rhubarb, sugar and ginger, refreshed and satisfied our palates (and while all in favor of ice cream, I think it is best with the greek yogurt, which adds a bit of tang).  We appreciated how the grill simplifies life at the end of summer dinners (no dishes!) and toddled off to bed sated and soothed.