Hurry Up, Spring! | Sequatchie Cove Farm

It has been a slow spring. I say thank goodness sometimes cause it hurts to see everything killed off by early warmth and cruel frost but sometimes I just say Hurry Up Spring! (and hurry up carrots and beets and cabbage)..

Two nights ago we had burritos at my house. It all started with a craving for beans.. I first remembered some refried beans I had made a week or so ago that I froze (they were pinto beans that had been soaking for two days with the High Hopes of turning into pinto beans baked all day with a Sequatchie Cove hog jowl that we bought from Greenlife via the kitchen (I have to pause now to rave about my new boss who thinks it is NORMAL to buy a whole hog and cure the bellies and jowls and use them on the hot bar and in soups. I know that this may sound crazy to some of y’all but for me it is amazingly wonderful (and since he is very sensible and we have a great smoker at work he makes simply gorgeous bacon). I know that all of you don’t have the great connections I have and might have to suffice with simple bacon but if you CAN get your hands on a peppery cured and smoked hog jowl then jump all over it and rejoice…

Anyway. My roommate Ariel and started watching a horrible movie called Antonia that Netflixs told me I would like (sometimes they are right and then sometimes, not so much) and got so wrapped up in it that the beans got cooked far too much for baked beans. So the next day I threw them in a skillet with some of the hog jowl, some diced Williams Island parsnips, an onion, some garlic, a bottle of dark beer, and a chili and cooked and cooked them while I folded laundry and swept the floor. You have to make sure you remember every now and then to stir them or you will have hot bean lava all over the stove..

While the beans were reheating we made a dough of flour and water (it always takes a little less water than you think. I just dump some flour in a bowl and then add water- tossing it with my hand til it comes together) and kneaded it til it was springy and nice. I let that sit long enough to pull some of Padgett’s lettuce out of the fridge, wash it, and spin it in my lettuce spinner I bought at the Bargain Mart for two dollars. Then I rolled the dough into a log and cut it into little sections (maybe small enough to comfortably roll around under your palm?) and rolled them all into balls. If you form a ball with your fingers- pulling from the outsides and bringing them to the middle and then roll it under your palm, pulling and tucking the whole while with the edges of your hand you have a nice cute tight ball. I let those rest on the counter while I started some white rice (I personally like brown rice better but it takes almost and hour to cook so you have to Think Ahead for that) with a bit of cumin seed and a whole Sequatchie cayenne tossed in. Then I grated some cheese (a nice melody of cheeses that had been sitting in the fridge- one was a sheep’s milk with pepper corns and ginger in it, another was a bit of Meadow Creek Mountaineer and the other was just some double cream gouda (very nice for melting)). By then the balls had rested enough that the gluten developed during the kneading and forming had broken down. I heated up my Lodge cast iron griddle til it was smoking then began to roll the ball out into circles and throw them on the griddle. We whomped up some delicious guacamole in the meantime (with some Bacon Avocado- which sounds like some Man had a bet with his Wife that he could name an avocado after Bacon and it would sell and she said ‘O, I bet not honey’ and so the bet was on and it went to the market. Really, if you ask me it is not that GREAT of an avocado and is more like a small Florida avocado BUT it was the only soft ones at Greenlife and it does fluff up very nicely) And then, forty five minutes later there we were with some simple burrito fixins…

Really the best tortillas I’ve ever had were in Oaxaca, Mexico (of course) and they were made with masa (which literally translates as ‘dough’) made from corn soaked in calcium and water til soft and all broken down-ish. It is hard to make corn tortillas here in the states because of a few reasons- most of us don’t have a tortilla press (which you need unless you are a wee gorgeous Mexican woman and have been patting out tortillas since you could clap your hands for Patty Cake) and the masa harina (a very fine corn flour that has been treated with lime (or calcium something-or-other) we can buy here is very hard to work with. If you add too much water you end up with a sticky mess and if you don’t add enough you get crumbles. So the best thing to do is stick to flour until you feel super confident and then go to a nice market that sells masa harina and begin to experiment with that.

And then we actually had the pinto beans. This time I soaked them overnight and cooked them the next day til just soft (I was not watching horrible movies, only doing my morning yoga). Then I threw them in the Dutch oven with some sorghum, a head of crushed garlic, a bit of hog jowl, a half an onion, and a few parsnips. I put that in the oven, turned it to two hundred and fifty and went to work. When I came home the house smelled of sweet beanness. I made a pot of rice (I am finding out that cooking rice is Hard For Some People- all you need to do is add about twice as much water as there is rice, bring it to a boil, turn it down as low as you can and then forget about it until you remember it. Then I take the lid off and release all that sacred steam, and check it. Usually if there is no water left it’s done. If it is not then add a teeny bit more water and cook a bit longer). I made a salad of Padgett’s lettuce with a bit of asparagus from my garden and there was dinner. Fast food at it’s finest. For April. Especially if you have a spring fire in a copper fire pit in the back yard and a batch of brownies topped with last spring’s strawberry jam to follow it up with.

And Easter dinner.. That is a whole ‘nother story.. The food was wonderful-an ‘Asian’ broiled pork belly with sesame oil, soy sauce, and last summer’s hard cider (Bill’s interpretation of sake), a Thanksgiving turkey arisen from the freezer, a fresh lettuce salad with wild sorrel leaves (they look a bit like clover but are purplish underneath and have a surprising sourness), violet leaves, and a few asparagus stalks, some ‘curry puffs’ (wonderful fried goodness) from the neighbor down the street who hails from Taiwan, a few potato Williams Island parsnip galettes topped with caramelized onions, and a rosemary cake.

But really what I breathed and felt was the green creeping up the mountains surrounding us at Sequatchie Cove and the bats zooming in as we fell to Nathan’s dessert mead at the picnic tables in the grass in the midst of blueberry bushes thinking of berries and bumblebees. Franny and Shoogs (the more handout-aggressive dogs) patiently awaited leftovers under the table and the conversation flowed from diagnosis of trichinosis to a two-year old hopping like a bunny. It is hard to remember that life is hard when you are talking about serious food-born illnesses and a two year old is hop!hop!hop!ing though the conversation.

Which brings me back to the reality of the fact that it is so wonderful that yall are all going to the farmer’s market (because that is what I am writing about) and that there are so many people who can hop!hop!hop! into spring like you should with what we have.

Until next week — good cookin and good company..

Ps. I LOVED hearing from everyone last week and I totally forgot to write about my feedback about dumplings and chicken wrecks but hopefully I will remember soon. I really do love hearing from everyone…

Filed under: Local Food Letter, Local Food News on April 16th, 2009 |