Reading About Eating
It seems a lot of my sentences start with either- ‘I had this really great meal last night’ or ‘I’m reading this really great book right now’.
I’m reading this really great book right now. There a few things I like to do besides eat food, cook food, ferment food, talk about food, or write about food. I like reading about it. I like reading in general- probably because in my house growing up the two most asked questions were either ‘what are we going to cook for dinner?’ or ‘what are you reading right now?’ I’m reading Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. I found another one of her books awhile ago- Tender at the Bone- and instantly fell deep in love. She was the restaurant critic for the LA and New York Times at one point- a job that it seems both she and I have mixed feelings about. I won’t go into any detail about it because you just have to take my word for it and read everything she’s written. (she is very honest, down-to-earth, passionate, AND a really good writer) In the last few chapters I’ve read her husband tells her that she has lost grip on who she is and she responds by ducking back into her own kitchen and cooking up a storm. For some people this is the best therapy there is and I am pretty sure I fall smack dab into the middle of that category.
Nobody has told me that I am losing my grip on reality (although they probably should every now and then) but I have found myself wanting more than anything to lose myself in my kitchen. I have been canning pickled beets by the gallon, pickling little baby onions from Williams Island, putting away corn relish, and peeling garlic and pulverizing it into batches of pesto that go into the freezer. I was torn this morning between pickling banana peppers from Signal Mountain, making another batch of corn relish (this time adding tomatoes from my own yard), cutting down the cabbage in my yard and making a big batch of sauerkraut, or writing this letter.
I think maybe the summer abundance of food has made me delirious and I can’t think of anything but ‘what should I cook for supper tonight?’ (I am plotting on chile relleno with some poblanos from Sequatchie Cove or maybe some gazpacho with Signal Mountain tomatoes, Williams Island cucumbers and more tomatoes, and Sequatchie Cove peppers- or maybe both).
I bought a half a lamb from Williams Island because there was no way in the world I was going to resist that. I haven’t really bought any amount of meat in my whole life but you can’t turn down lamb. For one thing Katahdin lamb is the best in the whole world and the only I will ever eat. It is tender and mild and has a touch of that familiar lamby taste but is not overpowering. For another, it is perfect for someone like me who either cooks for two or three people at a time or in the other extreme-ten or fifteen. A packet of lamb chops is perfect for two people. Everything about lamb is smaller and more delicate. You can throw all of a half in a home freezer and still have plenty of room for the gallons of basil pesto (that story will come later) and pasta sauce slow cooked with tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. If you have a crowd you can pull out a few packs of stew meat and make a wonderful curry, or maybe the big leg and roast it up with some potatoes, onions, and lemon slices.
Last night we had lamb chops cooked in beer and surrounded by two head-fuls of garlic. With that there were udon (the favorite noodle, beside homemade of course, of my house) tossed in garlicky pesto and chunks of rich purple tomatoes. And a salad of cucumber, sweet pepper (when I say sweet pepper I mean it- I got some orangish long peppers from Sequatchie Cove and they were the crispest, sweetest things), and a splash of vinegar and salt. The best thing about all that was I had already made the pesto so the whole meal took about twenty minutes. Which left me plenty of time to plot what I was going to do with all my OTHER pesto.
I don’t know if you saw the huge bags of basil Crabtree was selling for ten dollars last week but I did. The first thing I did when I saw them was run away really fast as Candice called after me- you KNOW you want it Ann! Of course I did NOT want it. Who wants a garbage bag full of sweet, pungent, the-romantic-essence-of- summer basil? Not I. But I did want a few cayenne and when I ventured back, hoping Candice would be distracted, I ended up with a handful of cayenne and a huge bagful of basil. The ride home was delightful. When we got back we cracked open a couple beers, cranked up some short stories on cd, sliced and salted a few tomatoes, and started plucking basil leaves from their stems. It was like a sewing circle or corn husking party except it turned my thumb nail black and smelled a whole lot better. I turned most of it into pesto and fell asleep dreaming of focaccia slathered in pesto, pesto and ground lamb stuffed tortellini, bagels covered in cream cheese and pesto..
To follow up my Indian dinner the other week I had a Thai dinner. I made a spicy curry of cayenne, a few cilantro plants pulled out of my yard (the recipe called for the root but since my plants we kind of teeny I added what was left of the bolted leaves, some of the green seed, and a few dried seeds as well (that would be coriander- cilantro and coriander are the same thing and most English speaking countries call it all coriander- when it’s cilantro they just call it ‘fresh’), some ginger, garlic, galangal (a cousin of ginger- I buy it dried from the Asian Food store on Hixson Pike but I recently discovered they also have it frozen- along with wild lime leaves and a lot of other roots I needed and didn’t have for this dinner- I guess that only means there will have to be a re-make), lime, and some fish sauce. I had slow-cooked a Sequatchie Cove pork shoulder the day before and put some of it into spring rolls along with sliced Williams Island carrots, kale from my yard, sliced yellow squash from Clover Wreath, and loads of basil. The rest of the pork was chopped and put in the curry along with eggplant from Signal Mountain, and green beans from my own yard. I gave myself a blister cutting carrots into thin matchsticks. I let them sit in rice vinegar, salt, and a touch of honey while I sliced cucumbers and sprinkled them with minced ginger and rice vinegar. I cooked up some sticky brown rice, sliced up some cabbage and sweet peppers, finished off the curry in a hot wok and served it all up (well, we ate the spring rolls first in the living room while we listed to This American Life and THEN migrated out to the big rock in my front yard where we ate. I have discovered that it is very nice to sit on big Indian cushions on the ground in the garden to eat dinner)
And that is all I have to say. I have heard I have a tendency to rant and rave and need to make my letters short and sweet. I can make them sweet but I’m not sure about short.
I just want to say before I end this sweetly but at the same time shortly- I am SO excited about the variety at the market. If you hit up every booth you come home with everything you could possibly need- seriously. There are potatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, eggplant, edamame, okra, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and more tomatoes (I’m a little hysterical about that part), insane yard-long purple beans (check them out at River Ridge- they are awesome), berries, honey, bread, and herbs. You don’t even have to turn on a LIGHT when you eat your supper past dark because you can buy as many candles as you need (what kind of barbarian would eat by the glow of an electric light anyway?) from Lou at Sale Creek Honey.
I have discovered one more thing- this is the first year I have actually legally PAID for my vegetables (somehow I always ended up trading cakes or bagels or time hoeing the green beans for spotty tomatoes or the overflow of squash) and I think the market is only place I should be allowed to shop in town. For thirty-five dollars I can go home with enough to food to get me through at least a large dinner party, my own meals throughout the week, and even a few months this winter via anything I happen to can, freeze, or ferment. And impulse-buying at the market is no more harmful than a ten pound bag of basil that takes up a whole car seat by itself. That just leaves my coffee habit to support and the bags of flour I go through to support my bagel-making habit.
Let me know what you’ve been cooking- I love to hear about it. See you at the market (I’ll be the one that smells like basil- I have this new plan to make perfume with the oil.)
It seems a lot of my sentences start with either — ‘I had this really great meal last night’ or ‘I’m reading this really great book right now’.
I’m reading this really great book right now. There a few things I like to do besides eat food, cook food, ferment food, talk about food, or write about food. I like reading about it. I like reading in general — probably because in my house growing up the two most asked questions were either ‘what are we going to cook for dinner?’ or ‘what are you reading right now?’ I’m reading Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. I found another one of her books awhile ago — Tender at the Bone — and instantly fell deep in love. She was the restaurant critic for the LA and New York Times at one point — a job that it seems both she and I have mixed feelings about. I won’t go into any detail about it because you just have to take my word for it and read everything she’s written. (she is very honest, down-to-earth, passionate, AND a really good writer) In the last few chapters I’ve read her husband tells her that she has lost grip on who she is and she responds by ducking back into her own kitchen and cooking up a storm. For some people this is the best therapy there is and I am pretty sure I fall smack dab into the middle of that category. Read more …
Filed under: Local Food Letter on July 30th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
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