Hope you like jammin' too

I want to talk about jam, but first I want to talk about culinary failure. Reading many food writers can leave you with a sense of unworthiness. Everything they make sounds so good. Everything they eat is beautiful, nutritious, fresh and perfectly cooked. It's irritating.

Food blogs provide a nice corrective to traditional food writing. Regular people who describe the regular cooking in their lives write about overcooked meals, undercooked meals, fallen cakes, undersalted meat, dull soups. I have made all of these and more. Usually, at this point in my life, I can be fairly confident that anything I cook will be pretty good. (My early twenties, on the other hand, were a pretty sketchy time, culinarily speaking.) Sometimes, I achieve excellence. Maybe once a year I achieve transcendence. Sometimes, my food is edible, but not what you would call good. Sometimes, I fail utterly.

Now (deep breath) onto the jam...

I love making jam, and I've had a lot of success with it. Jam isn't hard, just a bit fussy. Lots of prep, lots of time, but the end product is pretty much assured as long as the fruit is good.

This summer I've had a hard time finding good fruit. One week I bought two quart baskets of strawberries from the same vendor who had sold me delicious strawberries the week before. The strawberries were flavorless. I sliced them, sugar them, doused them in Grand Marnier and ate them up. I was not going to waste the time to make jam out of lackluster berries, even if my very best jam of the year before had been strawberry with black pepper and balsamic vinegar, and I was dying for some more.

I've been itching to start making jam, so when I saw tiny red plums at the farmer's market, I figured the time had come.


Plums like this inspire jam sessions.

I bought two baskets, which turned out to be less than the amount required for Christine Ferbinger's plum jam recipe, so I cut it down by a third. Her recipes are for small batches to begin with, so I was really taking on a lot of work for a tiny amount of jam, but I persisted. I cut the plums in half and removed their pits, then combined them with the sugar and lemon juice and let them sit for an hour. Then everything got brought to a boil, taken off the heat immediately, and allowed to sit overnight.

This is a pretty standard method for good jam. The fruit starts to absorb the syrup before the final cooking. You're minimizing the amount of time the fruit is actually cooking.

The next night, I strained the juice into my beautiful, Kitchens Etc.-closing-sale-bargain, wide copper preserving pan, reserving the fruit to the side. I brought the juices to a boil.

And here's where the failure part kicks in.

You see, there are two major methods people use to check whether a syrup has reached the jellying stage. The first is the homey, old-fashioned method: you chill a stack of saucers, remove one, put a bit of the syrup on it, wait a minute for it to cool, and tip it up. If the syrup runs like, well, syrup, it's not done. If it rolls down the saucer sluggishly, thickly, if you can run a finger through it and the line stays clean, then you've got jelly. I have used this method successfully for making jam for about ten years now, at least four or five batches a summer.

Then there's the candy thermometer method. It's easy, just check the temperature with a thermometer.

Gadgets are nice, aren't they? A number seems so much more legitimate than a saucer dripped with syrup. A thermometer seems so scientific, so precise. Also, the saucer method? You have to use a clean, cold saucer for each test. That's a stack of saucers to clean up afterwards. So I was lazy and only used the thermometer.

The syrup had only boiled a minute or two before I figured I would take a baseline temperature measure. The little red line kept rising and rising, until it shot past the aimed-for temp. I panicked. How could it have gotten so hot so fast? The syrup didn't even look thickened yet. Ah, but it was a tiny batch in a big pan - evaporation had clearly happened very quickly. Overcooked jam is worse than undercooked. I added the fruit, let everything return to a boil, boiled five minutes as instructed, then processed.


Cooking the jam, round one.


The processing is the part that makes jam-making a bit of a hassle. You have to wash the jars, then boil the jars, scald the lids, fill the jars, wipe the edges of the jars very carefully, put the lids on, put the jars back in the boiling water, boil ten minutes, then remove them. Your reward is the incredibly satisfying popping noise each jar makes as, cooling on the counter, it seals.

So I processed 5 tiny 4 oz jars and 1 smallish 8 oz jar of jam and went to bed most pleased with myself. I woke up and went immediately to the kitchen, because when you've made jam the night before, you have to inspect your jars first thing, and put the labels on, and hold them up to the light, and admire them endlessly. Except that when I held a jar up, it sloshed.

My jam hadn't jellied.

I had made red plum halves in syrup.

The only other complete failure I've had jam-making was also red plum, so now I'm very suspicious of plum jams and don't intend to be making them in the future. But I still had jars of red plums in syrup, and frankly that's useless. Red raspberry syrup is fine, or blueberries in syrup, but what the heck am I going to do with red plums in syrup? So I screwed up my resolve and when I got home last night, I emptied the jars into the strainer, recooked the syrup, added the fruit back in, and actually ended up with jam.

I was too irritated to go through the whole processing business, though, so I scalded two big jars and just put the jam in the fridge. Instead of cute little jars for giftgiving, I've got my own personal plum jam stash for flavoring yogurt and spreading on toast. Not bad, really, except plum isn't really my favorite jam flavor. Sigh. But at least I saved the fruit.

Frozen Ricotta Cream

I had lunch at Dave's Fresh Pasta in Somerville this weekend (and as an aside, the sandwich with prosciutto and fig spread was amazing), and while I was there I picked up some ricotta for making ice cream. I had come across a ricotta ice cream recipe a few month ago, and I was intrigued. I have a soft spot for all things dairy, especially cold sweet things in which the dairy flavor dominates. I love buttermilk ice cream and sweet cream ice cream and clotted cream ice cream. I love buttermilk sherbet and yogurt sherbet - not the almost-ice-cream-but-not-quite fro-yo that people order to pay lip service to their diets, but a tangy frozen combination of yogurt, lemon juice and sugar. So how could I miss with ricotta ice cream?

I found a couple recipes online, all of which contained ricotta, honey, sugar and a bit of water. Some contained up to a cup of water, some just a couple tablespoons. Those recipes that only used a little water included cream as well.

I had intended to add pieces of candied orange peel and chocolate chips to the ice cream at the end to make a "cannoli" cream, but didn't make it to the store that carries the orange peel. I decided instead to go with a fresh orange flavor, hoping that I would come up wth something that might possibly be described as "sophisticated creamsicle." Really, I love creamsicles beyond reason. I also have a secret shame - I love Hostess cream-filled orange cupcakes. Keep your Twinkies, your Ho-hos, your Devil Dogs and your Moon Pies. I cast aspersions upon Krispy Kreme, Mrs. Frisbie's pies, and all other mass-made, transfat-ridden, overly sweet baked goods. But about once a year, I sneak a delicious, forbidden orange cupcake...mmmm...cupcake....

Anyway, my point is, I like orange and cream. So my recipe was thus:
1 pound ricotta
3 T honey
1/2 cup sugar
Juice and grated peel from 1 large orange (came to 1/3 cup plus 2T juice)
2/3 cup light cream
I mixed the sugar with the 2T juice and peel and heated until the sugar dissolved, then let that mixture cool before throwing it in the blender with the rest of the ingredients. When everything was well-whirred, I froze the mix in my ice-cream maker.

And the results? The flavor was great, the cheese and orange balanced perfectly. But the texture took some getting used to. This was definitely not ice cream in the usual sense. It was dense, a bit grainy, the tiniest bit icy. The texture was, quite frankly, exactly what you would expect frozen ricotta to be, if the words "ice cream" at the top of the recipe hadn't blinded you to the fact that no blender is going to completely liquefy curds.

My boyfriend said it was good if you didn't call it ice cream, and, though at first I disagreed, I'm coming around to his way of thinking. By the second dish, the texture didn't bother me, and by the third, I actually rather liked it. From someone who tends to be narrow-minded about ice-cream-type products texturally (don't like granitas much or icey eggless ice creams), that's actually saying something. So I give the ricotta ice cream a B+ (a real B+ from the old days before grade-inflation), maybe even an A-, and recommend it to those who want to try something different. But definitely give your dessert a chance and call it "Frozen Ricotta Cream."

Book recommendation

I just finished reading Reclaiming the Commons, by Brian Donahue, and I want to recommend it. This book is both a study of a community farm in Weston, Massachusetts and a blueprint for the development of community farms and managed forests for the future. The book would probably appeal most strongly to New Englanders, as he develops his discussion with historical information about agricultural in New England, specifics about the New England ecosystems, and so on. But I think anyone who is interested in local farming could get something from his very practical approach. The section on forestry is particularly well done. Check it out.

Culinarily dull weekend

Proof that the world maintains its own balance - this weekend was a culinary near-washout, which I guess is only fair given the splendors of last weekend. Friday night I made Nigella Lawson's watermelon salad (watermelon, lime juice, black olives, feta, mint, parsley and red onion), which was great, and a fine steak from my stash, which survived my overcooking with some flavor intact. I always screw up great steaks. Sigh. Then I spent to weekend at a friend's house, so lots of pleasant, but not noteworthy, suburban barbecue fare. I returned to a fridge full of limp vegetables.

Now is the time to confess the dark side of the CSA program. A farm share is a commitment. If you go away for the weekend, if you get a hankering for pizza out Friday and Chinese buffet Saturday and someone invites you for dinner Sunday, if you work late every night for a week, the vegetables will still be there, slowly rotting, reproaching you every time you open the door for a beer or some leftover chow mein. Every lunch hour cheese sandwich will feel like a failure when you know there are salad makings slowly turning inedible in your fridge. Be warned.

What is usually needed in the case of produce neglect is a big cook-up, a ratatouille or vegetable soup or something that will enlongate the lifespan of your vegetables, and possibly fill up your freexer. This, of course, also requires a night of cooking. After a weekend of carousing, I would rather rent some episodes of Six Feet Under and collapse on the couch with the cats, so a hefty dose of guilt is needed to force me into the kitchen. Thank the gods I was raised Catholic and have guilt to spare.

So last night I made a great big salad for today's lunch, and I also baked calzones. Calzones are actually a good weekday cooking choice. The Shaw's down the street sells an acceptable pizza dough with ingredients that are readily identifable as the makings of pizza dough (flour, water, salt, yeast, shortening). On the weekend, I would make the dough myself, but we're competing with Ruth, David, Brenda and Claire here, so we're making things easy for ourselves. I made two fillings. First I mixed some grated Parm and black pepper into some ricotta and put it aside. Then I sauteed some onions, put half aside. To the other half I added some steamed spinach and chopped dried-and-reconstituted wild mushrooms, plus thyme, oregano and pepper flakes, cooked a few minutes more. Mixed that with half of the ricotta misture, and that was one filling. Then I sauteed some sliced yellow squash, added that and the rest of the onions to the rest of the ricotta mix, along with a bit of chopped sundried tomato and the rescuable part of a bunch of basil on its last legs. That was filling number two. The dough had come to room temp by this point, so I made the calzones and threw them in the oven, then made a basic tomato sauce with some garlic and a can of tomatoes, a few spices, some olive oil. I ended up with six enormous calzones, enough for dinner and two lunches for both my boyfriend and myself.

Calzones are a great way of using things up, because they will take just about any filling. A bit of ham or sausage would have been nice if I had any hanging around, or some olives. I used up a goodly bunch of vegetables, and so tonight all I have to do is cook some carrots and wax beans and I'm home free.

This farm share stuff can be work.

Culinary windfall weekend

This weekend = Culinary Bonanza!

I had such a great food weekend, I’m not sure where to start. I guess I’ll go with the tried and true chronological order, since it builds to a great finish.

I went camping on the Boston Harbor Islands this weekend, which was a first for me. I highly recommend it. A subway ride, a ferry ride, and you’ve gone from to city to the great outdoors. There are no campfires allowed, however (though beach fires are okay), so we planned an old-fashioned picnic. I made fried organic chicken, following some tips from a discussion on chowhound, and it was pretty fine, although better fresh from the pan in the morning than out of the Tupperware later in the day. From my farm share, I had green beans, simply steamed, then dressed with a little olive oil and chopped sun-dried tomatoes. I used yellow squash in a tart that I thought came out very well. The shell was a ½ wheat pastry crust I happened to have in the freezer. I spread it with goat cheese, then sprinkled the cheese with shredded basil, then arranged half-moons of lightly sautéed yellow squash over top. Half and half was poured over the top, more basil sprinkled on, and then the whole thing baked off. I think this would work well with feta, too. This was one case where I believe the flavor of whole wheat in the crust was an advantage; its earthiness set off the pungency of the goat cheese and the mild flavor of the squash.

I also brought blueberry cobbler, made from a mix of local cultivated blueberries from the Mission Hill farmers’ market and some frozen Wyman’s wild blueberries from Maine. Blueberries freeze marvelously, and Wyman’s product comes from my favorite part of Maine, the beautiful and unspoiled Northern coast. The tiny wild blueberries have so much more flavor than their cultivated counterparts that I always mix in some when baking with fresh berries. The cobbler was good, but a warning to all: do not rely on the plastic lids that come with the foil pans from the supermarket to keep a cobbler in one piece while being hauled through the T, onto a series of boats, and up a trail to a campsite. Fortunately, cobbler is still edible when smushed. Tasty, too.

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I returned from the camping trip on Sunday. Monday I took the day off from work to go with my friend to pick up our half cow. We bought a quarter cow from River Rock Farm back in January, and our supplies were depleted. Since everyone involved in the first beef-buy has essentially been ruined for regular beef (River Rock Farm beef is grass-fed, dense and meaty and flavorful), we decided to go for broke this time with a half cow. Split five ways, that’s over 50 pounds of fantastic meat per person. My freezer is stuffed to the brim with meat. It looks like this:


Freezer of joy.

As an aside, the abattoir was a surprise. The farmer delivered our first purchase, but asked that we pick up this order from the butcher/slaughterhouse. I don’t know what I was expecting - a big ugly building with a stench of death, I guess. Certainly I wasn’t expecting this:


An elegant little slaughterhouse...


Really.

Apparently, there’s more money to be made in the small-slaughterhouse biz than one would expect.

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My friend and I got back to her house a bit later than expected, and our other friends who were coming to pick up their share of the cow were late as well. This turned out to be great for me, because my friend and her husband were planning to attend the Farmers’ Market Tasting Dinner at Bistro 5 in Medford, and since they were running too late to drive me home, they invited me to join them. I have lovely, generous friends with great taste in restaurants, which I greatly appreciate, since the only restaurant I frequent is Bistro Moi.

Here’s the menu:


Bistro 5 has a farmers' market tasting menu available every night in the summer. Go.

(Sorry the scan isn't very clear. This is the best I could do.)

The produce for the meal came from the farmers’ market in Central Square that afternoon, and the whole meal was fresh, organic and local. The quail came from a supplier in Vermont, who sells fresh, not frozen, game birds. The wines were all either completely organic (no sulfur) or from organic grapes.

Now, Vittorio, the chef at Bistro 5, is basically a genius. This was one of the best meals of my life. A true chef can transform even mediocre ingredients into something complex and interesting, but when the best materials are in the hands of a master, every bite is nuanced, complex, yet at the same time strong and clear in flavor. That may sound like restaurant-reviewer speak, but describing truly incredible food is difficult. I can’t explain why Vittorio’s arugula pesto is better than mine, but it is better, much better: there is more flavor, more arugula bite, more tang of cheese. Everything is just bigger.

(Did I mention that the lamb was to die for? And that nasturium leaves have a spicy flavor like horseradish?)

As nice as it is to enjoy the work of someone who relly knows his way around a kitchen, you don’t need to be a genius to make good food at this time of year. My lunch today, in its humble Tupperware, is still pretty fine. Ingredients: cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, salt.



Simple is good.

Corn Alert!

Grilled corn update - fresh corn now available at farmers' markets! Rejoicing over all the land!

So after the family dinner Sunday, my mother was pressing leftovers on her children, as a mother will do, and she asked about the grilled corn. I said I would take some for a salsa or a salad or something. One of my sisters commented that that was the difference between her and me: she just heats up leftovers, and I cook with them.

Now, my sister cooks. She has three kids, and she makes dinner and bakes cookies and all that. But I do think that there is a point in your development as a cook when you start to think, not in terms of meals, but in terms of household food planning. This is a skill that doesn’t come until you’ve been cooking for yourself for a number of years, so that you have the culinary wherewithal to wing it a bit, and you have to be making most of your meals, so that you have ample opportunities to use things up. It takes a while to get there, and I think fewer and fewer people manage it these days, what with all the prepared foods available.

This sort of culinary strategizing really gets my frugal little peasant heart a-beating. Maybe it’s not the sexiest side of cooking, but it has its appeal. There’s a certain thrill in knowing you haven’t let anything go to waste, that all of your sows’ ears have been sewn up into pretty little silk purses.

So here’s a round-up of possibilities for that grilled corn (which by the way, is not quite in season locally yet. Mom jumped the gun. But this summer is hot; maybe we’ll have some soon.):

Salsa – mix with chopped tomatoes, chili, cilantro, black beans if you like, a bit of cumin.

Quesadilla – make a similar mix to the salsa, put inside a quesadilla with cheese.

Cornbread – A local restaurant used to make a specialty cornbread with real corn in it. Frankly, I found it a bit gross. But I had many friends who loved it.

Chowder – Cut the kernels off the cobs. Put the cobs in some chicken broth and simmer ½ hour. (Extra points for use of part of the vegetable normally thrown out). Meanwhile, chop and sauté some onion and red pepper. Add some red pepper flakes, a bit of celery seed. Add the corn-infused broth and a bay leaf, bring to a simmer. Add chopped potato. Cook until potatoes are tender. Add corn kernels and cream (light, heavy – your waistline, your decision). Heat through. Variation: Use sweet potatoes, a chili or two, a touch of cumin, skip the cream, add cilantro at the end.

Pasta – This is what I had for lunch. Cook up some penne. Saute a couple slices Italian sausages. Remove from pan, pour off most of the grease. Add a few cloves of garlic, cook for two minutes, add a bunch of kale, Swiss Chard or other slightly bitter green. Saute until the greens are wilted (if you have a lot of greens, you can lower the heat and cover for a minute or two to let them steam). Sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Add the corn to warm. Mix together sausage, greens/corn, pasta. You could definitely add roasted red peppers, either from a jar or grilled with the corn. A little Parm is nice; a lot of black pepper is necessary. This is a variant of something I used to make back when I had a grill, called “Every-vegetable-you-can-think-of-plus-sausage-over-pasta.”

Salad - Grilled corn, black bean, avocado, arugula salad with cumin-lime dressing.

Corn pudding – Put corn in buttered ramekins, add shredded cheese, pepper. Pour a mix of egg and milk over. Bake in hot-water bath until set in the middle. Again, roasted red peppers would be a nice addition.

There is no need to eat corn on the cob reheated in the microwave. Resist!

Sometimes the leftovers are better than the meal.

It's true. This weekend I had a family get-together at my parents' house, which gave me access to a charcoal grill. I saw this as a golden opportunity to grill-roast the pork shoulder which has been waiting in my freezer.

But family events are tricky, and cooking for family events is trickier. I know my mother doesn't like hot spices and my sister doesn't like much of anything, and I try to please them both. I also have to remember to bring everything I need to cook out there with me, because my mother still has spices that were given to her at her wedding over forty years ago. She still thinks I can use them. (You see, my parents and I don't really see eye to eye on the whole cooking thing.) So I have a law:

Pyewacket's First Law of Cooking for Other People: It is impossible to cook transcendent food for one's family.

You can cook good food for your family, even on rare occasions great food. But transcendent food, no. Even if you start with transcendent pig.

The shoulder was rubbed with garlic, pepper, salt, celery seed and a little allspice, and roasted over a low grill for about three hours. It came out juicy and succulent. But I failed to make any sort of sauce or relish or chutney to go with it, out of a combination of feeling overwhelmed by a hectic schedule this weekend and being worried that my sister would hate anything too elaborate. So it was simple, pork and grilled potatoes and grilled corn. Good, not transcendent.

But I got the leftovers.

The sandwich above is the result. Chewy Italian bread. Pork. Grilled corn. A little of Grandmother's Sweet Pepper Relish. Homemade relish would have been better, but we're talking about a work day lunch here. Besides, I have a soft spot for Grandmother's because they used to be a little family-owned operation in my hometown of Natick, Massachusetts.* Anyway, the sandwich, which I just finished eating for lunch, was smoky, a little sweet, deeply meaty, chewy and satisfying. I might even say "transcendent."


*(They're now owned by Allied Old English, which also owns Ah-So and a few other small brands. Not exactly Coca-Cola, but not the Whipple Company of Natick, either)

The ravishing radish

Radishes: A woodcut

So I had a funny experience regarding radishes.

I'm a regular poster on Chowhound, a discussion board for people who love food in all its forms. A while back, I posted something on Chowhound about the benefits of farm shares (CSAs). A few weeks later I got an email from a Wall Street Journal reporter asking me if I would be willing to talk to her about my experiences.

Now, I'm not very comfortable with the idea of my name being in the paper. Fools' names and fools' faces are often seen in public places, and all that. Also, I get stagefright so badly even a metaphoric stage will set it off. But I believe deeply in supporting local farmers, so I decided that I really should not be such a wimp about something so trivial and should just call the woman and talk to her.

So I called her and talked for a long time about my experiences with the farm share. I stressed the importance of supporting local farming, the value of eating with the seasons. I talked about the sense of comraderie among the people in line to get their weekly boxes, the community that was being built. I talked about the quality of the produce, the heirloom varieties that had been bred for quality of flavor and texture, rather than the ability to be stored and shipped.

She didn't want a quote on any of that. From the article which appeared in the Journal:

And if the farm's strawberry crop is a bust, but there's a bumper crop of kale, you had better like kale. Pyewacket (named withheld for blogging purposes), who joined a CSA in Cambridge MA recalls last year receiving one box that was almost all greens and radishes. "It does push the boundaries of your culinary expertise," she says. "I didn't know you could cook radishes."

There it is, my one moment of fame: "I didn't know you could cook radishes."

Really, I said more interesting things. Honest.

But interestingly enough, every time I tell this story, I get the same response. "You can cook radishes?"

Yes, you can. The best method is a quick saute in butter (of course), preferably finished with a bunch of chopped fresh dill and sprinkle of vinegar. The radishes maintain their crispness and color, but their sharp edge is tempered to something more mellow.

If you roast them, they become mellower still, to the point of tasting a bit dull. But they add some color to a pan of roast vegetables. If you have them around, which I usually do, it's worth throwing a few in.

Ooh, la, la, Canada!

Damned Canadians are spoiled. Really, they’re hopeless. Soft. Like children. For example, a Montreal resident wants to make a nice dinner, what does he do? Wanders down to the Jean Talon market, buys himself any cut of organic meat he desires, picks up organic baby vegetables and fruit, freshly made pasta, maybe a little smoked fish, some local raw milk cheeses, poppy-seed strudel and a few chocolates, made on the premises. Then he goes home, cooks up dinner and enjoys his meal.

Pathetic.

In Boston, you would have to order the meat from the farmer, go fetch it. The meat will be frozen, of course, since you can’t eat a side of beef fresh. Or you could go to Savenor’s and pay through the teeth. Your choice. Then to the farmers’ market – which day is it? Check the schedule, find out which market is open. It’s on the other side of town. Go get your vegetables. If they don’t have what you need, as they well may not, run to Whole Foods and pay, pay, pay. While you’re there, pick up the fish. You would like to run into town to another fish market, but you’re running out of time. Fresh raw milk cheese? Well, that’s impossible, because the government is heavily involved in flavor-censorship. Settle for pasteurized. Fresh pasta – great, just run out to Dave’s or Capone’s! In Somerville. Skip the search for poppyseed strudel, if you’re not a masochist. Chocolates, no trouble. Just a quick trip to the Fenway or maybe Harvard Square.

We Bostonian cooks, we WORK for our results. We become lean and tough. Canada, pftth!

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Okay, so the Jean Talon market was amazing. If you’re not in the know, the center of the market is a tented area filled with vegetable and fruit vendors, the whole about the size of a city block. The perimeter is filled with bakeries, meat and fish markets, cheese shops and so on. There is a great store just as you enter that sells all sorts of Quebec-made foodstuffs, from venison pate to local cheeses to pickled cattails.

My haul included walnut-sized potatoes (the hazelnut-sized ones sold out just before I bought mine), tiny zucchini, radishes, spinach and lettuce; three local cheeses, all excellent (especially the very creamy, mild blue called “Bleubry”); almond-paste and poppyseed-filled strudels; a bag of dried mixed forest mushrooms; ice-cider (like ice wine, but made from frozen apples instead of grapes); assorted fruit liqueurs; fresh lychees; fresh tortellini, both meat and cheese; chocolates; and of course some maple syrup. I thought I was quite restrained, really. I left behind gooseberries, which are impossible to get in the States, and everything in the fish and meat markets, and all sorts of cheeses, and – well, you get the idea. It’s like paradise, or would be if you actually had a real kitchen to cook in, not just your brother’s bachelor pad with the one pan/one pot mojo.

I wanted to take pictures of pretty much everything, but my batteries died the moment I got there. Grr.

It’s not just the quality of the food, or the abundance, or the variety, or the fact that so much is organic. It’s the display. The vendors put a serious effort into making the booths beautiful. You get a sense that they just care more. It was wonderful to see, but at the same time, a bit depressing. Why don’t we have anything like this in Boston?

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A note: I have no idea how to add accent marks. Forgive me.

Cherry, cherry

Got some cherries at the Central Square market on Monday. The sign in front of them clearly read "Sweet Cherries." But apparently there are varying degrees of sweet. These were sweet enough to eat straight, but only just, and had the bright cherry flavor of sours, rather than the winey depth of Bings. I decided to bake with them.

And, surprise, they were really good. Generally, I dislike cooked cherries - the sours have just the one sour note, which is normally overwhelmed by heavy sweetening. The Bings lose all complexity. But these retained their sprightly* cherry flavor, and also kept a nice firm texture while giving off a good bit of juice. I baked them in a simple crumble with a few drops of almond extract and a touch of tapioca to thicken. I was quite happy with the results, which looked nice too, and if I had remembered to bring my camera home from the office, you could have seen that. But I, um, didn't.

I will be sure to ask the farmer about the variety of cherry a week from Monday. But this Monday I will be in Montreal, taking pictures (I promise) at the Jean Talon market.

* Yeah, I said sprightly. You got a problem with that?

This little piggie went to market, part three: Dinner 

My pork chop, my love.

I made a couple chops when we got home from the farm, one each for J. and myself, but (and I hang my head in shame here), I overcooked them. Look, I haven’t cooked a pork chop in years – the nasty dry things that you can get at the supermarket aren’t worth cooking. I followed the method and timing given by The Best Recipe, high heat to sear one minute on each side, then reduce to medium and cover for 4 minutes on the first side, then five minutes on the second. This produced an overcooked chop. Maybe my chops were thinner than theirs? They weren’t completely dried out, but were clearly overdone. Frustrated, Sunday night I decided I had to have another go at it. Salted and peppered the chop, using both white and black peppers. One minute sear per side, then three minutes covered on medium-low, followed by another three minutes covered, then a test. A little underdone. Back on for one minute. Perfection. I took the chop out, poured off all but about a tablespoon of fat, then cooked in the fat about a ¼ cup of finely chopped onions. After a few minutes, I added a mixture of cumin, allspice, and ground chili pepper, and sauteed for another minute. I added about ¼ cup of rum, in which had been soaked about ¼ cup of raisins, and 1 T dark brown sugar, which was satisfying because the pan gave off a tremendous hiss. I let that mixture reduce for a minute or so, then added the juice of half a lemon. This sauce provided a spicy/fruity counterpoint to the chop, which actually tasted like meat instead of cardboard, and was tender and juicy. If you like something a bit more piquant, a tablespoon of vinegar could replace the lemon juice.

This little piggie went to market, part two: The booty

When you tell people that you’re buying a pig, and you’ve gotten over the whole issue of it being a butchered pig, not a pet, then I’ve found they want to know about the logistics. How do you buy meat directly from the farmer, how do you order, how do you split the meat up and so forth. It can be intimidating to go through the buying process for the first time, so I figured I would write up the lowdown for the pig-buying process, in the hopes that I will encourage my imaginary readers to try out buying from farmers for themselves, to serve to their imaginary families.

I contacted the farm about two months ago to inquire about the price and availability of a whole hog and to discuss farming practices. I had talked to quite a few farms about pork. Unlike organic, pastured beef and chicken, organic, pastured pork is hard to come by. But I finally found the Mamashoe organic farm, which has exemplary farming practices (see This little piggie went to market, part one). They also had a few pigs they had overwintered. Usually, pigs are slaughtered in the late fall, so I wasn’t expecting to be able to get pork until then, but I wanted to get my order in early. These small farmers tend to have devoted followings, and many will sell out each year’s pigs, cows or chickens months in advance. Anyway, I lucked into a June pig.

I sent a small deposit, and then we had another call to discuss cuts. I love that part. Basically, you have a few options for each part of the pig – for example, the loin can be left as a single long roast or cut into chops. I told the farmer what I wanted from each part of the pig and then set a date to pick up the meat.

Here’s what we got:

4 Boston butt roasts
2 extremely large fresh hams
2 shoulder roasts
26 packages of chops (2 chops per package)
5 packages of ground pork
2 packages of spare ribs
8 packages of fresh bacon
2 packages of ham hocks
1 package, two kidneys
1 heart
3 packages of liver

We paid $5.50/pound for the above. He also threw in for free:

2 packages, 2 each “trotters” (yeah, that’s the feet)
6 packages of fatback


There were four people splitting the booty. Overall, it was easier to split up than the cow we bought in January, which had more odd pieces of wildly varying quality (a little tenderloin, a little shank, a flank steak, a chuck roast – it’s hard to work out a balanced split). Everyone got a butt roast; the people with bigger families got the hams, the others got the shoulder. The spare ribs were a little problematic, but I made a supreme sacrifice, took the extra ground and an extra chop, and insisted on an invitation to dinner on spare rib night. I kept all the fat to render the lard, which will then be distributed back to all parties who want good pie crusts. The woman with the Italian husband and Fergus Henderson’d book on offal wanted all the odd bits, so she’ll be getting the kidneys, heart, liver and feet. They’ll also be smoking the bacon, an event which will get its own blog entry.

The only really troublesome part was divvying the chops. I had asked for the loin to be gut into chops because I thought it would be easier to split up. It would have, if the loin chops had been labeled as such, but all the chops, the rib chops and loin chops and whatnot, were just labeled “chops.” We did our best to give each person chops that looked like they came from different spots on the hog, but really, we had no idea.

This works out very well if the people you are splitting your pig with are easygoing generous sorts who care more about making sure all is fair than about getting the best for themselves. I can imagine there would be some people who would be very unpleasant to include in an endeavor like this. Fortunately, I don’t know them.

This little piggie went to market, part 1: The Farm

So my boyfriend J.,* friend and co-worker C., C.’s adorable 18-month-old, and I all got in the car and trundled out to Petersham, MA to get our pig.

Petersham is a lovely small New England town, heavy on the quaint, just east of the Quabbin. The center of town is picture-perfect, complete with bandstand, white churches, and a country store that sells ice cream. We got to know it pretty well, seeing as we forgot the directions and so had to drive back and forth down the main road a half-dozen times before we found someone who could point us to Mamashoe Organic Farm.

But we did find it, at last, and pulled up to find the farmer and his adorable daughter waiting for us on a tree stump.

Now, you may have in your mind an image of a small New England farmer, a taciturn Ethan Frome type of character, or maybe something a little more charming, a wrinkled Norman Rockwell gentleman in overalls with a pipe. Your image would be a bit off. Our pig farmer is a loquacious former Cambridge hipster, who used to have a band and almost surely went to Burning Man, and now raises hogs, goats and chickens. I found this deeply inspirational, possibly because I have never managed to be hip enough to be readily identified as a hipster nor have I had the courage to chuck all for the farming life.

And then of course there was the farm.

This family is raising food in the most balanced and environmentally sound way imaginable. They’ve planted paw-paws and other tree. They use goats and pigs to help clear land for planting, and use a moveable chicken coop to spread around the chicken manure while giving the chicken fresh land to range upon. They’re clearing invasive foreign plants like honeysuckle. They’re making raw milk goat cheese and kefir. They do their own smoking of meat. They are homesteading for real, just a little over an hour outside Cambridge.

And then there are the pigs.

The pigs are kept in the woods, just like the Spanish do when raising pigs for their famous ham. The farmer has used electric fencing to mark off three acres of land for the pigs to forage in and supplements their foraging with organic feed. He moves the fencing to different areas over time to give the hogs new land to explore. These were really happy pigs.

And magnificent. There was something amazing about these creatures, so strong and primal. They belonged in the woods – you could see the wild boar in their ancestry. We watched them use their powerful snouts to burrow in the ground, all the time making rough snorts and deep snuffles and grunts. As J. said late, “You know, I could have looked at those pigs all day.” Me, too.

And, um, cough, they make great pork.

So I got home and made pork chops for dinner. And, no, seeing the pigs didn’t make me feel bad about eating the pork chops.** Seeing the pigs living in the woods, with room to roam, eating acorns as well as feed, rolling in good clean mud, made me feel better about eating this pork. What I felt bad about was the bacon that came with my restaurant breakfast the next morning. There’s no excuse for raising those noble beasts in the horrifying conditions of factory farms. But at least there are some people raising pigs conscientiously, and we can support them in a thoroughly pleasant way by buying their excellent pork.

*I’m being all Victorian with the initials and all because using full, real names on the internet weirds me out. So I’m paranoid.

** None of the pigs appeared to be named Wilbur. I am sure this helped.

A tribute to this seaon's asparagus, in woodcut 

CSA - week two. Radishes!

A little color mixed into the green always helps. As you, my imaginary internet readers, can see, this week's box included cilantro, bok choi, arugula, radishes, broccoli rabe, and romaine lettuce. You can't see the English peas, because I forgot to include them in the picture.

This blog was supposed to be about cooking the food, not just buying it, but I'm afraid my cooking lately has been on the simple side. As in: Shake salad dressing. Open bottle. Apply to lettuce. Consume. Repeat. I've also had a lot of fried eggs with greens. I love a nice egg over easy, laid over some sauteed greens or steamed asparagus. A little black pepper, a little salt, then put your fork right through the center of the yolk and let it ooze gently over the greens. Delicious, but not exactly a recipe to share with my imaginary readers. But perhaps this weekend I'll have a chance to do some real cooking.

And tomorrow is pig day.

My first farm share delivery of the season.

I have a half-share at Parker Farms. The first two deliveries were cancelled due to weather - the crops just weren't ready. But this week made up for it, at least in the greens category (not much else ripe in New England in mid-June). I'm always terribly excited to get the first delivery, and then when I get it, I'm overwhelmed at the prospect of using up so many greens in a week. This week's share included arugula, red leaf lettuce, spinach, escarole, two bags of loose leaf lettuce (not shown), mustard greens, and sugar snap peas (thank god, something that's not leafy.) I guess it's salad for dinner. And lunch. And dinner.

The Coolidge Corner farmers' market opened this week. As usual, it's the among the best of the markets. Not all the booths are there yet - the turkey man and his fabulous pot pies didn't make an appearance, for exmple - but there were several vegetable vendors with all those greens (needless to say, I didn't buy any), radishes, leeks and fresh garlic,; several bakers; lots of plants and herbs, and two booths for cheese. I went with a wasabi goat cheese, which sounds like a big fusion error, but is actually really good. The cheese is very creamy and soft, not heavily goaty, and the wasabi provides just a touch of bite.

The last asparagus of the season

The bipolar weather we've been having in New England this spring has wreaked havoc on the early crops. I saw a friend's garden last weekend - the spinach, though only about two inches wide, had already bolted. And the good man at the Central Square farmers' market tells me that we've reached the last asparagus of the season; the heat finished off the crop.

It was good while it lasted. The asparagus I've been getting is from Hadley, Massachusetts, which was once known as the Asparagus Capitol of the World. Asparagus is even called "Hadley grass," or at least it's supposed to be. I can't say as I've ever heard anyone say that, and it would sound very wierd if someone did. But that Hadley asparagus is damned fine, and I would be inconsolable over the shortness of the season if Monday's market had not also broght the first local strawberries of the season. They weren't quite as good as they could be - some seemed to have been picked short of ripe to push the season - but they were still very welcome.

Now that's more like it! 

Harvard Square Market, at last

Last week's Harvard Square market was too dismal to write about, just a few plants and some pottery and leather bags being sold under a dark and dreary sky. But this week felt like summer. The sky was shining, and the vegetables were piled high. At least one farmer was selling radishes, fresh garlic, baby leeks, rhubarb and asparagus. There were two farmers selling plants, one specializing in perennials, the other in herbs and vegetables. River Rock Farm was there with their excellent beef. And there was a pickle purveyor, Moon Shine pickles, offering samples of dill and hot pickles. The two pickles were very distinctive - the hot were quite hot with peppers and horseradish; the dill were assertive dilly. I bought a quart of the hot for five dollars and intend to get the dill on the next round.

The cold, wet weather has definitely delayed the season, though. My farm share was supposed to have started last week, but is postponed until next.