Archive for June, 2008

black gold

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 23, 2008
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Food is spiritual, connected to the earth. Think about our soil, created over thousands of years. The earth, the actual, physical earth we live on. Our caring for it, and bringing food forward from it, is an act of stewardship, an expression of the deep responsibility we have to our earth and to the living creatures on it. Michael Pollan talks about the dark rich soil of Iowa in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: 

This part of Iowa has some of the richest soil in the world, a layer of cakey alluvial loam nearly two feet thick. The initial deposit was made by the retreat of the  Wisconsin glacier ten thousand years ago, and then compounded at a rate of another inch or two every decade by prairie grasses . . . . It’s gorgeous stuff, black gold as deep as you can dig, as far as you can see.  

And, unfortunately: 

What you can’t see is all the soil that’s no longer there . . . the two-foot crust of topsoil there probably started out as closer to four.”

I don’t know a lot about farming, but I have been learning that diversity enriches soil. When the season is over, plants leave behind nutrients. What is needed by one vegetable will be furnished by another. At the end of the season, fava beans, for example, add much needed nitrogen to the soil. Both nitrogen and carbon are needed to create fertile soil. So life requires birth, death, and rebirth. There is an integral relationship among all of creation, both living and non-living.

Like raising children, the earth should be interfered with as little as possible. It is best left alone. Its true potential can only emerge if allowed to express its essential nature.

bj @ vineyard picnics to go

“how to” pate a choux

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 22, 2008
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pate-a-choux.jpgThe simple trick to pate a choux is to stir, making a figure eight, for 8 minutes after adding the flour. Do not believe the cookbooks that tell you one minute, or even five! Also, put the eggs in, one at a time, immediately after taking the butter, water & flour mixture off the burner. Do not wait until the mixture cools. Enjoy your cream puffs, eclairs and gougeres! bj @ vineyard picnics to go

were i to teach a course on god, I would begin with a plate of persimmons . . .

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 18, 2008
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While preparing for a sermon on food at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of North Bay, our inspiring, kind, and dedicated minister, Bonnie Dlott, sent me this poem to use in the service. I love it and I hope you do too!

Were I to Teach a Course on God

By Nancy Schaffer, from Instructions on Joy
 
Were I to teach a course on God
I would begin with a plate of persimmons —
The sweet, crisp kind, the ones more
Orange than red: the hard, squat Fuyus
I eat each November morning on hot
Wheat cereal with almonds.
 
I would slice the persimmons gently
Across their fat centers, then hold them out.
See the star shape? I would
Offer them, so all might wonder.
 
I would slice Bosc pears
Straight down their middles
So the threads of each stem
Trace wispily down to that rounded
Place where dark seeds lie, tear-shaped
And wet in white, firm flesh.
I would hold those halves
Silently forward, their bottoms smooth
In the curves of my palms.
 
I would teach God with plates of pomegranates,
Both before they were opened and after.
I would bring wet washcloths.
We would bury our faces and eat:
All that luminescent purple-red,
Those clear-bright kernels fitted in tight rows
On small and tumbling hills—
And all that juice, so easily broken, sweet
And puckery all at once. We would say nothing.
 
I would teach this way:
With plates of fruit, a knife;
Many washcloths. With my eyes
Very large; my mouth mostly silent,
So all might eat.
 
 bj @ vineyard picnics to go

what can we do? use canvas bags instead of plastic!

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 16, 2008
in Green & Sustainable
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plastic-bags.jpgThis post is exerpted from a slide show sent to me by an impassioned friend and colleague, Jill Schwartz, NYC.Data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency shows that somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed world wide each year (National Geographic News, September 2, 2003). Less than 1% of bags are recycled. It costs more to recycle a bag than to produce a new one. There’s a harsh economics behind bag recycling. It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32 (Jared Blumenfeld, Director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment).Plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle near Spitzbergen, and as far south as the Falkland Islands. Plastic bags photodegrade. Over time they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers which eventually contaminate soils and waterways (CNN.com, technology, November 16, 2007). As a consequence, microscopic particles can enter the food chain. The effect on wildlife can be catastropic. Birds become terminally entangled, Nearly 200 different species of sea life including whales, dolphins, seals and turtles die due to plastic bags. They die after ingesting plastic bags which they mistake for food (World Wildlife Fund Report, 2005). What can we do? If we use a cloth bag, we can save 6 bags a week. That 22,176 bags in an average life time. If just 1 out of 5 people in our country did this, we would save 1, 330,560,000,000 bags over our life time.Bangladesh has banned plastic bags. China has banned free plastic bags. Ireland took the lead in Europe, taxing plastic bags and has now reduce plastic bag consumption by 90%. Rwanda banned plastic bags. Israel, Canada, wester Indida, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Taiwan, and Singapore have also banned or are moving toward banning the plastic bag. On March 27th, 2007, San Francisco became the first US city to ban plastic bags. Oakland and Boston are considering a ban.Plastic shopping bags are made from polyethylene, a thermoplastic made from oil. Reducing plastic bags will decrease foreign oil dependency. China will save 37 million barrels of oil each year due to their ban on free plastic bags. It is possible . . .bj @ vineyard picnics to go

the sad truth about cheap food and expensive oil

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 14, 2008
in Green & Sustainable and How I think about...
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In his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan traces number 2 corn, that’s the corn that used to fatten cattle and produce cornstarch, corn oil, and convert the “oses” into fructose and sucrose, from the farm to the supermarket. In the process, he documents just how much oil is needed to convert basically inedible, indigestible food to calories that can be ingested and processed by cows and humans.The sad truth is that it take 1 1/2 calories of oil to generate 1 calorie of corn product for cattle feed. A whopping thirty-five gallons of oil, nearly a barrel, is needed to produce a twelve hundred pound steer. For wet milling, that is, grinding, filtering and using centrifuges to extract extract usable calories from number 2 corn, ten calories of fossil fuel are used to produce one calorie of processed food!We can all expect our food to get a lot more expensive . . . or we can use the sun for energy and eat more nutritious, healthier, and tastier food! Seems like a no brainer. Check out his talk at TED at http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/michael_pollan.php. bj @ vineyard picnics to go

food as transformation

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 11, 2008
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Food transforms, and for me, food is transformational. Mysterious, sensual, wonderous. Think about fennel, acrid until mellowed in a saucepan; the suble yet transformational mystery of a pinch of cayenne in a chocolate mousse; the dramatic flavor, textural, and visual differences in garlic as it is roasted, browned or minced. And then there’s the egg . .  pate a choux, hollandaise, mayonaise . . . and quiche.

Forgive me if I rhapsodize. To quote Thomas Keller who inspired my love of quiche, Bouchon Bakery having the most luscious quiche I have ever tasted. I quote:

Custard is one of the great transformations of the egg. No other preparation, certainly none made from such a common or inexpensive ingredient, achieves such elegant voluptuousness thorugh cooking. Custard is universally appealing because of our emotional response to a texture that in one bite combines both childhood comfort and adult luxury.

And then, about the perfect quiche:

When it arrives hot, it shold tremble as if it were on the verge of collapse. It maintains its form -  just - but you can see what’s going to happen when you take a bite. It collapses on the palate,  molten, spreading out luxuriously.

 Try his Bouchon recipe. Spectacular.

 bj @ vineyard picnics to go

and what, exactly, is a salmon’s personality?

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 9, 2008
in Cooking, Food & Wine and Tips & Recipes
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According to the master, Eric Ripert, “every fish gets treated according to its personality. Salmon, for example, is excellent rare; skate is better well done; tuna is lovely raw.”

The test for doneness . . . insert a metal skewer into the fish. If it goes in too easily, it’s overdone; if you can’t get the skewer in, it’s raw. After you’ve pulled the skewer out, touch it to the bottom of your lower lip. It should be warm. If it’s cold, it’s raw, if it’s hot, it’s overdone.

Le Bernadin, the most acclaimed fish restaurant in the country, maybe in the world, poaches, steams, sautees and roasts their fish. Interestingly, they doen’t smoke, fry or broil their fish, with minor exceptions. Their menu reads: almost raw, barely touched, and lightly cooked.

 bj @ vineyard picnics to go

sweet biscuits for strawberry shortcake, delicious!

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bj @ vineyard picnics to go
on June 6, 2008
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After being introduced to the wonders of spoonbread by northwest food mavin Kevin McKenzie, slow food advocate and former proprietor of Rover’s in Seattle, I came across a sweet little book by Bill Neal entitled “Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie”.

Searching for a recipe for sweet biscuits, that’s biscuits that are sweet, not “sweet biscuits”, I found a lovely little recipe in this book for a biscuit I could use as part of strawberry shortcake. Not too sweet, with that delicate, pillowy and slightly dry biscuit texture, filled with whipped cream and local California strawberries, it was a great hit at the North Bay Unitarian Universalist Fellowship last Sunday!  Here goes:

 3 c             all-purpose flour
3 T              sugar
4 tsp           baking powder
3/4 tsp       salt
3/4 c          butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut in 1/2 inch cubes
1                 egg
3/4 c          milk
1/2 c          heavy cream
1.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Lightly butter baking sheet.
2.  Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.
3.  Work the butter through with the fingertips.
4.  Beat the egg, milk, and cream together and stir into the dough.
5.  Turn out on a lightly floured surface and give the dough a very light kneading, 8-10 quick strokes.
6.  Divide into two portions for a strawberry shortcake; or use a 2″ cutter, or larger, to make individual portions. In either case, shap the dought into rounds about 2/3″ thick.
7.  Transfer gently to the lightly butter baking sheet. Prick with a fork. Bake about 18 minutes until light brown.
8.  When cooled, split each biscuit and spread each layer with butter. Return the biscuits to a 250 degree oven and heat gently. Fill biscuits with strawberries mascerated in sugar and a little lemon juice and, if you wish, whipped cream. Top with whipped cream and strawberries.

Enjoy!

bj @ vineyard picnics to go