8/ TOMATES/ TOMATOES

It's August and tomato season, finally, and I've been saving this poem to post until now. As the song says, "Only two things that money can't buy, that's true love and home-grown tomatoes."

Oda al Tomate / Ode to Tomatoes

La calle / The street
se llenó de tomates, / filled with tomatoes,
mediodía / midday,
verano, / summer,
la luz / light is
se parte / halved
en dos / like
mitades / a
de tomate, / tomato,
corre / its juice
por las calles / runs
el jugo. / through the streets.
En diciembre, / In December [July],
se desata / unabated,
el tomate / the tomato
invade / invades
las cocinas, / the kitchen,
entra por los almuerzos, / it enters at lunchtime,
se sienta / takes
reposado / its ease
en los aparadores… / on countertops…
Tiene / It sheds
luz propria, / its own light,
majestad benigna. / benign majesty.
Debemos, por desgracia, / Unfortunately, we must
asesinarlo: / murder it:
se hunde / the knife
el cuchillo / sinks
en su pulpa viviente, / into living flesh,
es una roja viscera, / red viscera
un sol fresco, / a cool sun,
profundo, / profound,
inagotable, / inexhaustible,
llena las ensaladas / populates the salads
de Chile, / of Chile,
se casa alegremente / happily it is wed
con la clara cebolla, / to the clear onion,
y para celebrarlo / and to celebrate the union
se deja / we
caer / pour
aceite, / oil,
hijo esencial del olivo, / essential child of the olive,
sobre sus hemisferios entreabiertos, / onto its halved hemispheres,
agrega / pepper
la pimienta / adds
su fragancia, / its fragrance,
la sal su magnetismo; / salt, its magnetism;
son las bodas / it is the wedding
del día, / of the day,
el perejil / parsley
levanta / hoists
banderines, / its flag,
las papas / potatoes
hierven vigorosamente, / bubble vigorously,
el asado / the aroma
golpea / of the roast
con su aroma / knocks
en la puerta, / at the door,
es hora! / it’s time!
vamos! / come on!
y sobre / and, on
la mesa, en la cintura / the table, at the midpoint
del verano, / of summer,
el tomate, / the tomato,
astro de tierra, / star of earth,
estrella / recurrent
repetida / and fertile
y fecunda, / star,
nos muestra / displays
sus circunvoluciones, / its convolutions,
sus canales,/ its canals,
la insigne pelitud / its remarkable amplitude
y la abundancia / and abundance,
sin hueso, / no pit,
sin coraza, / no husk,
sin escamas ni espinas, / no leaves or thorns,
nos entrega / the tomato offers
el regalo / its gift
de su color fogoso / of fiery color
y la totalidad de su frescura. / and cool completeness.

—Pablo Neruda

We'll be back from the Northwest in two weeks to post: HOW TO GROW TOMATOES. In the meantime, enjoy.

—Jane

7/ OLD MEN/ CHANTERELLES/ BABA GHANNOOJ

Last Wednesday night, Michael and I went to hear a Cornell Summer Lecture Series talk by M.H. Abrams, “On Reading Poems Aloud.” Abrams will turn 96 next Wednesday (we share the same birthday, a few decades apart) and has taught literature at Cornell since 1945, along with editing the Norton Anthology of American Literature for about as long. He was energetic, well spoken, gently hilarious, and moving. He gave us seven poems: first, his thoughts on each, then a warm reading. It was delightful to slow down and listen, carefully, to the elements of language and remember how much is communicated in so little: a consonant, a breath, a pause, a broken rhythm, a shortened line ending, a made-up word. The last poem Abrams read, and the only modern one, was written by the late A.R. Ammons, who taught in Cornell’s MFA program. It evokes my father’s request that his ashes be strewn in the New Mexico desert, where he loved to walk and explore.

MANSION

So it came time

for me to cede myself

and I chose

the wind

to be delivered to

The wind was glad

and said it needed all

the body

it could get

to show its motions with

and wanted to know

willingly as I hoped it would

if it could do

something in return

to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones

rises from the skin I said

come and whirlwinding

stroll my dust

around the plain

so I can see

how the ocotillo does

and how saguaro-wren is

and when you fall

with evening

fall with me here

where we can watch

the closing up of day

and think how morning breaks

—A.R. Ammons

As we left the reading, Michael commented, “I hope I don't start moving like an old man until I’m 96.” (A slightly different video version of Abram’s lecture, which also ends with “Mansion,” is available on the web at: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/newsrel2007/prabramsfellowship.htm)

On Thursday night, we watched Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, a film documentary by Jonathan Demme about the 39th president’s controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. What most impressed me was Carter’s ability, at 84, to remain himself and to speak clearly and firmly out of his own beliefs while being criticized, misquoted, harangued, talked down to, and heckled in public. Carter spoke in different voices to different groups. For example, with Palestinians, he spoke primarily about their need to contain violence and take responsibility for their elected government’s actions. With Israelis, he emphasized their need to return lands to the Palestinians and take down the walls. Nobody was happy with him. But he was trying to voice in each situation, I think, what was being left out of that particular conversation. It takes a lot of self to do that. In the final scenes of the film, Jimmy and Rosalynn were biking along a red dirt road in Georgia—not bad for 84 and 81.

There must be lots of these amazing old men around; I want to hear more from them.

Early Friday morning, on a walk out South Hill, Michael and I saw a destroying angel mushroom (Amanita virosa). It's one of the most poisonous mushrooms but pure white and exquisitely beautiful. That cued Michael to check out a secret mushroom spot, and there we found a broad sweep of yellow-orange chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius) under the oaks! Many of them, most of them unfortunately, were already too old and wormy, but we were able to gather a large handful to take home for lunch. What visually distinguishes chanterelles from the mildly poisonous jack-o-lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus illudens) is the branched veins under the cap all the way to the edge (which I think you can see in the photograph) rather than parallel gills. We sautéed the chanterelles in olive oil and ate them on toast with lemon juice and black pepper.

Today, I bought an eggplant at the farmer’s market and made the first baba ghannooj of the season. It was the best either of us can remember. Was it the extra dose of lemon juice? the fresh garlic? the Arrowhead Mills tahini? or maybe just the fact that we haven’t tasted baba ghannooj in nine months? There is nothing else like it: roasty fragrance, airy texture of whipped cream, sharp lemon acidity. Here’s the recipe I use:

BABA GHANNOOJ

1 unblemished eggplant, about 1 lb.
1 large clove garlic, coarsely chopped
¼ c. lemon juice (or half again as much)
¼ c. finely chopped sweet onion
½ t. salt
1 T. good olive oil
2 T. tahini

Pierce the unpeeled eggplant all round with a sharp fork and broil it on the highest oven shelf until thoroughly charred—blackened—on all sides and a fragrance fills the kitchen. While the eggplant broils, about 15-20 minutes, whir the remaining ingredients together in a blender until completely smooth. When the eggplant is done, cool it somewhat, slice it open, and scrape the chunks of pulp into the blender. Blend the entire contents again until smooth.

Pour into a shallow bowl and drizzle another T. of olive oil over the top. Serve the baba ghannnooj as soon as possible with an array of sliced fresh vegetables—cucumber, carrot, radish, pepper—or with fresh French bread or whole-grain pitas or corn chips.

Baba ghannooj is light and airy, effervescent almost, when just made, but it loses taste and texture after refrigeration. So I recommend eating it all up before the end of the day.

Happy summer eating.

—Jane

6/ FARMER'S MARKET NEWS

This morning (Saturday, July 12) we went to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. The variety of fresh fruit and vegetables available this week jumped up a notch from last week. Here's what we bought today. An asterisk means it's new this week.

loaf of bread—a seedy batard
sweet cherries
blueberries *
Napa cabbage *
scallions
snap peas
green beans *
beets
broccoli
fresh garlic *
cucumber
gherkins *
carrots *

Here are some of the fruits and vegetables that we ogled but didn't buy:

spinach
Swiss chard
radishes
baby potatoes
turnips
cabbage
kohlrabi
pie cherries
Queen Anne cherries
gooseberries *
black raspberries
red raspberries
eggplant *
tomatoes
kale
lettuce
currants *
hot peppers *

The middle of July is an expansive time at the Farmer's Market. A new group of longer-season, heat-loving vegetables ripens. It's one of the very best things about summer, something rich to offset the bouts of hot and humid weather that some veggies need to grow and thrive but that I find oppressive. Unless I'm swimming in the lake or eating a fresh carrot just out of the earth.

—Michael

5/ COLE SLAW

For years, I held out hope for cabbage. There had to be something good to do with it, since so many food traditions have depended on it as a staple. I had a college roommate with Eastern European roots who was always looking for “the perfect cole slaw.” I wanted to be interested but just didn’t like it that much.

Old-timers in the Arkansas Ozarks grew and ate a lot of cabbage, mostly steamed or gently boiled in narrow wedges. I ate it a lot there, but again without much delight.

The summer Anna was born, 1977, we grew dozens of green cabbages. They were beautiful, but what to do with them? I made sauerkraut in a crock, which was a lot of fun to make and to watch ferment. The taste, however, was rather ordinary. (It probably takes a few generations to get sauerkraut right.) The fee for Anna’s birth in one of two labor rooms in a nursing home in Jasper, AR, was $100. And we also gave the two doctors (a married couple) a bushel of cabbages. So, I guess Anna can claim to be one of the proverbial children found under a cabbage.

Doug’s Fish Fry in Cortland, NY, makes delicious cole slaw—I used to eat there sometimes when I still worked in Cortland. But they rely on ingredients that I don’t use on a regular basis: cream, for instance. It’s no challenge to make something taste good with cream—anyone can do it. My goal is to work out recipes that use the healthiest, freshest ingredients and still taste flat-out delicious.

Oddly, the germ of this cole slaw recipe was born in Chile, after Lucy’s wedding. Her friend Simnia threw together a simple cole slaw for lunch one day. I can’t now remember what she used for the dressing, except that the base was olive oil. The key, for me, was that she showed me how to salt the thin slivers of cabbage and let them rest a bit to soften before adding the dressing. I liked this cole slaw very much.

Back at home, I wanted to try Simnia’s approach and happened upon a simple mustard vinaigrette that sounded like a good possibility for the dressing. (I don’t remember where I read it—my recipe gathering/stealing skills seem to come together in fragments.) I use Maille Dijon Originale mustard, which is terrific, I’m now addicted to it. Madhur Jaffrey recommends another, Moutarde de Meaux, but I haven’t found it anywhere yet. Probably any good quality Dijon mustard will work fine.

This week a New York Times article lists cabbage as one of “The 11 Best Foods You're Not Eating": http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/the-11-best-foods-you-arent-eating/?em&ex=1215489600&en=3e09bb96503e4f20&ei=5087%0A. Cabbage is listed in the number 2 spot. So, now, if you like this cole slaw, you can easily eat lots of cabbage. (Beets are listed as number 1 on the list; I’ll write about beets another day.)

Here’s the recipe:

COLE SLAW

½ a small, perfect cabbage, green or red, cut into 2 quarters, cored, and very finely sliced
a small section of sweet onion, very finely sliced
3 T. good olive oil
1 t. (or more to taste) good Dijon mustard
salt
freshly ground pepper

Pile the sliced cabbage from one of the quarters and a bit of the sliced onion into a serving bowl. Sprinkle salt over the top. Add the remaining cabbage and onion slices, and salt this layer too. Use about as much salt altogether as you would otherwise add to a salad this size, or a little more than usual, to taste. Then set the cabbage aside for about ½ an hour, until it’s beginning to wilt.

For the dressing, whisk together the oil and mustard (a fork works just as well), using a slow, stirring movement until the dressing emulsifies into a beautiful golden-yellow thickness the texture of whipped cream. Watching the dressing emulsify is very exciting! Note: it sometimes refuses to thicken if you whisk too vigorously. Sometimes, in fact, it just won’t emulsify, no matter what you do. Who knows why? But not a problem; it still tastes fine on those days, too.

When the cabbage has visibly softened, stir the dressing into it and all through.

This is the simplest, best cole slaw I’ve tasted so far; and I’m picky about cabbage. The dressing is also great on steamed green beans and broccoli.

—Jane

4/ PLANT VOLUNTEERS

Today, I found one, large, red-ripe strawberry under the witch hazel shrub in our yard. Jane and I ate it—delicious! Where did it come from? A few strawberry plants appeared under the witch hazel a couple of years ago, although we have never planted any in the yard. They had small leaves; I took them for wild strawberries. Did an animal transport them? Did they come from the compost? Maybe they arrived in the potting soil with the witch hazel when I bought it. In a recent New York Times video [http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=f8dc55859e9ba38bcd609ac8e1e311e29cc73f1e], a geologist working on stream restoration in Pennsylvania says, “native species, who survived centuries under the silt, are now thriving.” Wow, centuries. So, who knows?

We live in an old neighborhood—our house was built around 1915—and many seeds and bulbs and shrubs have come and gone. Last year, I fenced the witch hazel against the deer. Maybe someone planted strawberries here a long time ago, and they had been lying dormant in the yard until, this year, they had enough protection from deer and groundhog predation to reemerge. Welcome back, strawberries.

I am fascinated with volunteer plants and plant migration. We think of plants as stuck in place, but in fact they are constantly traveling. In my LiveJournal blog on May 14, 2007 [http://refwhiz.livejournal.com/], I wrote about two other plants that appeared in our yard:

Three years ago a few common milkweed plants (Asclepias syriaca) appeared in a marginal location, right next to the street curb in the midst of a forsythia. Last year they expanded to the south, downhill, under a Norway spruce. This spring they ring the very edge of the area under the spruce, right up next to the curb and the neighbor's driveway pavement. I counted 26 young plants this morning. The soil in this area is very dry—the spruce sucks up most of the moisture. Somehow the milkweed has found a foothold, right on the very edge. 
I like this because milkweeds have beautiful flowers and seeds; I didn't plant them, they volunteered; they are native plants; they occupy territory where little else will grow; and they are essential food for Monarch butterflies. Another big volunteer this year is gill-over-the-ground (Glechoma hederacea).
It is making a lovely low ground cover in the beds of the backyard and is covered in delicate, tubular blue-violet flowers. These volunteers come when they wish, stay only as long as they want, and leave on their own schedule. May they flourish, both of them.

And flourish they have. In this, the fourth year after the milkweed plants first appeared, we have over 50 milkweeds and more Monarch butterflies. The volunteer gill-over-the-ground continues to spread. We also have two new spruce seedlings (probably white spruce) that we are thinking of transplanting into the side yard as a windbreak. Jane found the first spruce volunteer under the hose outlet in deep shade right next to the house. It was scrawny and about six inches tall. She moved it out into partial sun and, after about seven years of growth, we harvested it for a Christmas tree.

Last year, our first volunteer thistle sprang up from a tiny dribble of soil between the base of the stone wall under the kitchen garden and the driveway asphalt. It grew 64 inches tall, with over 60 flowers, each a spiky mass of saturated pale violet, and attracted a lot of bees. Using Peterson’s Field Guide to Wildflowers, I identified it as a
bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare).
Once it began to go to seed, a pair of goldfinches showed up to eat the seeds for weeks. The thistles are back this year, growing from last year’s seeds, and now there are four. Yes!

Besides feeding the birds, some of the volunteers feed us. We have harvested horse mushrooms (Agaricus arvensis) several times out of the side yards. They fruit sometimes after heavy rains in the spring, summer, or fall. Our other main mushroom volunteer is not so benign: tippler’s bane (Coprinus atramentarius), so called because it causes “alarming symptoms (nausea, palpitations) when consumed with alcohol” (Roger Phillips, Mushrooms of North America). We don’t eat them.

And, there are plant volunteers that I harvest for the compost: plantain, dandelions, the dreaded garlic mustard, and creeping bellflower. We pick and choose which plant volunteers to befriend. But I am always interested to see who will show up next.

—Michael

3/ FAMILY MEALS

I would like to share, this week, an article about food but also about how food is more than “food.” Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22Food-t-001.html?ref=magazine

And here's a recipe:

PUNJABI GREENS

I’ll bet Michael and I have made this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking a hundred times (she calls it “Mustard Greens or Broccoli Rabe, Cooked in the Punjabi Style”). Each mixture of greens tastes slightly different, and they're all wonderful. But you need the spinach to make it smooth. Broccoli rabe is available here through the entire winter, so we can eat fresh, intense greens all year long.

1 lb. broccoli rabe or other bitter greens (mustard, turnip, dandelion)
½ to 1 lb. spinach
½-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled
½-1 fresh hot green chile (a jalapeño is good)
2-3 T. canola oil
2 T. cornmeal (stone ground, if possible)
1 t. salt

Trim leaves and flowers from broccoli rabe stems and wash them. De-stem the spinach and wash. Chop them coarsely and bring to a boil with 1 c. water in a large pot. Cover, lower the heat, and cook for about 15 minutes, or until greens are tender.

Put the ginger, seeded green chile, and ¼ c. water into a blender or food processor and whir them together. Add the drained, cooked greens, though it doesn’t hurt if a little of the cooking water ends up in the blender. Blend the greens until you have a smooth-ish paste. Add more water if necessary or blend in 2 batches.

Meanwhile, in a heavy, shallow pot, heat the oil over a medium-low flame. Add the cornmeal and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring all the time. Do not allow it to turn brown. The cornmeal should thicken the oil, like a kind of mush. Now add ¼ c. water and stir for another ½ minute. Turn the heat to low and add the blended greens a little at a time, to minimize hot splashes, and the salt. Cook just enough to heat everything through, and add more water if necessary to keep the greens from sticking.

Serve with any Indian meal. A simple combination is Punjabi Greens, brown basmati rice, and broiled tofu, with or without a fresh chutney.

—Jane

2/ HARISSA

Harissa is a fiercely hot and just as fiercely addictive chile paste from Morocco. Many cultures have invented their own version of this sauce—Thai sri racha, Vietnamese chile-garlic sauce, Korean hot sauce, Israeli zhug—all nearly interchangeable. It’s the wonder of peppers, I guess, which have evolved into so many regional varieties, all a great aid to taste and nutrition and digestion.

Harissa is delicious dropped in very small amounts onto hummus, on the side of anything potato-ey, next to roasted beets, added to mayo on an avocado sandwich, or just in tiny dollops with corn chips. It’s a real waker-upper. And it’s just as good in hot weather as cold.

Harissa keeps well in a jar in the refrigerator, though, given its ferocity, it is surprisingly not impervious to bacterial contamination. This is perhaps caused by children licking their fingers and dipping them into the harissa for a treat when bored with chocolate bars.

—Alastair Little and Richard Whittington, Food of the Sun: From the Mediterranean to Morocco and the Middle East

Lucy’s friend Simnia’s Tunisian stepmother Tikva makes a very basic harissa from just soaked hot chiles—seeds not removed—and olive oil.

The recipe from Food of the Sun, below, uses so much garlic it could be called hot, spiced garlic! And, even though I'm not wild about caraway seeds, this taste combination is something I start to crave after several weeks. Then I have to make more.

It seems like a kind of mystery to me that a food made “fresh” from “dried” ingredients can taste so good and so fresh. Michael says it’s about the essential oils whose freshness and flavor are retained when the package they’re in (dry pepper pods, garlic cloves, whole spices) remains unbroken. Then, when they’re soaked and whirred up or roasted and ground, the fresh oils are released—thus the marvelous flavor.

HARISSA

4 oz. dried hot red chiles
10 garlic cloves
1 T. coriander seeds
1½ t. caraway seeds
1 T. black peppercorns
½ t. salt
3 T. olive oil
3 T. vinegar

Pour boiling water over the chiles and leave to soak for 20-30 minutes. Don’t throw away this water. Note: I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I pile a ¼ c. measure very high and full with dried chiles—I buy a large bag from India that lasts for ages.

Pull the softened peppers apart, then scrape out the seeds and discard them. Put the flesh into a blender or food processor. (Wash your hands carefully with soap after handling the hot peppers, and try not to touch your eyes for awhile.) Peel and chop the garlic and put in with the chiles. Add the salt, olive oil, and vinegar. Whizz to a thick paste.

Toast the coriander, caraway, and black peppercorns in a dry pan over a low flame. Grind in a spice grinder and add to the blender or processor. If the paste is too thick, add a couple of tablespoons of the pepper soaking water (or just water if you don’t want to add any more heat). And enjoy.

Note: I’ll add a photo the next time I make harissa.

—Jane