Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
This is Lily’s first catnip bouquet of the 2021 season. I already have huge quantities of catnip. I also have quite a lot of mint coming along.
I’ve mentioned that one of my resolutions for this year is to eat more leaves, including, and especially, raw leaves as pesto. Apparently mint pesto is a thing, so I will soon try that. Catnip pesto is not unheard of. But I think I would like to read and think a little more before trying that.
Pesto with roasted turnip
My belt having given up a notch and warned me of imminent danger, this morning I finally forced myself to go stand on the scales. The time for denial came to an end. I was 10 pounds over my ideal weight. To me, that’s the red-alert stage, meaning that a diet must begin this very day. The previous diet was three years ago. This is my usual pattern, up and down within a 10-pound range.
I had already planned to have pesto for supper. Fine. It would have to be as austere a pesto as I could make.
My usual pesto is anything but austere. I’ve always been generous with the nuts and parmesan, so an indecent amount of olive oil is necessary to liquefy everything. Today’s pesto was about five parts spinach, five parts parsley, and one part basil. The season of all-basil pesto is at least a couple of months away if not longer. I used only a couple of walnuts and a couple of teaspoons of parmesan (as well as a teaspoon of vinegar) to keep the requirement for olive oil low. (Though I had a few walnuts and a sprinkling of parmesan on the side.) I ground the basil in the mortar and pestle, but I used the food processor for everything else.
Roasted turnips are surprising satisfying on a low-carb diet. The pesto wasn’t terrible.
One of my resolutions for this year is to eat more leaves — lots more leaves. Chard, parsley, spinach, kale, and romaine are already under way in the garden. I’ll have more posts this spring about eating more leaves, and why I think that’s so important (hat trip Michael Pollan).
I don’t know enough about German cooking or the history of the Moravian Church to accurately trace the pedigree of these thin lemon cookies, though I can provide some hints. But I need to digress for a few paragraphs before I get back to the lemon cookies.
First of all, the Moravian Church is one of the oldest Protestant denominations, with roots in the 15th Century. In 1753, German-speaking Moravians established a planned — communal, really — community at Bethabara, North Carolina. Their largest community in North Carolina was Salem, established in 1766. In 1913, Salem merged with the town of Winston to become Winston-Salem.
The Moravian levels of education and technology were much higher than that of other settlers in the area. They were well financed and were able to buy prime land for their settlements. Elements of their German culture and traditions persist today in the areas they settled. But at this point, because I don’t know enough to be able to follow the historical thread, I must skip ahead to, say, 1955. I have a clear memory of waiting in the car in front of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts while my father went into the shop to buy a box of doughnuts. This was at the first Krispy Kreme store in North Carolina (1937), on South Main Street in Winston-Salem, in Old Salem. Krispy Kreme has now gone international.
I cannot say to what degree Krispy Kreme might have been influenced by Moravian baking — probably very little, since the recipe for the doughnut dough came from New Orleans, according to Wikipedia. But I do know that the 1937 Krispy Kreme store was only a few doors away from the Moravian Winkler Bakery in Old Salem.
But another bakery got its start in Winston-Salem, in 1930. That’s Dewey’s Bakery. Dewey’s business was largely based on traditional Moravian favorites. Dewey’s certainly has not grown the way Krispy Kreme did, but clearly they’re expanding and shipping their products farther and farther. As far as I can tell, Dewey’s is now shipping nationwide.
Dewey’s makes a wide range of Moravian cookies. There’s a chocolate version of these thin cookies. The most traditional version, though, is a thin ginger cookie. There is a huge demand in this area for Moravian sugar cake and ginger cookies at Christmas.
What I don’t know (though I wish I did) is whether the pedigree of these cookies goes all the way back to the Old World. It’s probably safe to assume that it does. The Moravian homeland, Bohemia and Moravia, is now in the Czech Republic.
Dewey’s products, I’d have to say, don’t necessarily use the best of all possible ingredients. No doubt that’s to keep prices down. I don’t know if it’s still true, but it used to be that they made their Moravian sugar cake in two versions — one with butter and a less expensive version with margarine. The lemon cookies’ list of ingredients include palm oil and “butter flavor.”
I love the concept of small, thin cookies, though. It’s a little easier not to eat too many. Like shortbread, they’re perfect with tea.
A Moravian lovefeast, Bethania, North Carolina. Wikipedia photo by Will and Deni McIntyre.
Amazon calls this a “mini greenhouse.” I’d call it a cold frame. It will be my first experiment in extending the growing season. It’s 95″ x 32″ x 32″ and cost $46.
Some people plant by the stars. I plant with the weather. The 10-day forecast for my location shows highs through March 20 of 73, 73, 61, 63, 51, 60, 65, 62, 59, and 57, and lows of 51, 49, 47, 45, 40, 43, 45, 44, 35, and 33. There are five rainy days ahead, with a total of about 1.5 inches of rain during the five-day rainy spell. That’s planting weather for cool-weather vegetables.
I’m going to sow radishes and some leaf crops from seed and set out some onion sets in the open garden. I’ve also bought a few cabbage plants. In the little greenhouse, I’ll start some things from seed (in peat cups) that should be safe to move into the garden around April 15. I’m also starting parsley and maybe some other herbs in the garden soil inside the little greenhouse. I’ll dismantle and move the greenhouse once the weather is warmer.
Several years ago, I grew an incredible crop of celery from seeds that I had started indoors. Celery is said to be hard to grow in this area, but I’ve never seen more beautiful celery. I plan to start celery in peat cups inside the little greenhouse. The trick is, start early and keep it watered. There’s a limit to how much celery one can use in the kitchen, but if I’m lucky enough to have a good celery crop, I’ll juice it and mix it with herb juices and leaf juices for spring tonics.
Volunteer cabbage
I should have noticed the possibilities for winter gardening long ago. I suppose it was that I was conditioned to think that gardening season ends with the frost or with the first hard freeze. But that’s not true. There are many vegetables that will keep growing, though slowly.
Certainly some winters are milder than others here in the Appalachian foothills. This was a mild winter, with a winter low of about 15F. The brutal cold that hit Texas and much of the northern and central U.S. this winter never got quite this far east. Some winters are cold enough to damage my fig trees. But I’m expecting a fine fig season this year.
There is an upside to warming, in the form of a longer growing season, as long as an increasingly unstable polar vortex doesn’t spill arctic air onto you, as happened in many parts of the northern hemisphere this past winter. So, winter crops are a bit of a gamble, but I can now see that it’s always worth trying.
The evidence was right in front of me this winter. I didn’t plant fall greens and turnips. But the neighbors did, and their garden was green all winter. I had mustard greens from their garden in December. Just two days ago, the neighbors pulled all their turnips before doing their first spring plowing. They brought me a bag full of very fine looking turnips.
All winter long I admired a mustard plant growing behind the step on the side porch. My guess is that, last spring, when Ken was sitting on the porch in the morning sun, sorting seeds, he dropped some mustard seeds. The mustard plant got only morning sun on the eastern side of the house, but it flourished all winter. I also had a winter cabbage plant. I often throw the stalky remnants of cabbages under the rhododenron bush on the north side of the house, because Mrs. Squirrel loves cabbage stalks. My guess is that a cabbage stalk, with plenty of moisture available, put down roots and sent up leaves. I will leave it there and see if it makes a cabbage head this spring.
All of these observations show me that, not only are some things willing to grow in the winter. They’re eager to grow.
To get an earlier start with the garden this year, I’ve bought a cold frame, which I plant to set up around March 15. I’ll have photos of that project when the time comes. My resolutions for better gardening this year include extending the growing season both in the spring and the fall. I get burned out by summer gardening, overwhelmed by heat, humidity, and weeds. But this year, I resolve to get back into the garden in time to start a fall and winter garden.
Another gardening resolution this year is to grow, and use, more fresh herbs, starting them in the cold frame. I plan to focus on herbs that can go into pestos — lots of basil, of course, but also parsley, dill, and cilantro. I could easily become a pesto fanatic. There are many YouTube videos on making pesto in which cooks swear that pestos are better when made the old-fashioned way — with a mortar and pestle rather than a food processor. That’s something I have to try. Certainly garlic is not really garlic unless it’s crushed rather than chopped. I’ve got to discover whether that’s also the case with basil.
The long-range weather forecast here calls for a mild, wet March. That sounds perfect for getting an early start in the garden.
The mortar and pestle, by the way, came from Amazon and is made of granite. It was the biggest mortar I could find on Amazon, 7.1 inches in diameter.
Volunteer mustard
One of the turnips the neighbors gave me
A new mortar and pestle for pesto
Barley risotto
I sometimes hear the voice of Michael Pollan in my head: “Eat more leaves.” To that I might add: Eat more barley.
Wheat, of course, will always be regarded as the monarch of grains, because we can make beautiful breads out of it. But for second place, I would nominate barley — humble, healthy, sustainable, and versatile (after all, you can make ale and whisky out of it.)
Pearled barley is much easier to find, but pearled barley is not really a whole grain. Hulled barley is the real article. If you cook hulled barley thoroughly, it’s just as good as pearled barley, and healthier. I was thinking, as I had this barley risotto, that, even though I like the chewy texture of barley, if barley risotto spent a few seconds in a food processor, you’d almost think it was a hearty form of mashed potatoes. It’s a comfort food, for sure.
Before Covid-19, it was easy to find hulled barley, in bulk, at Whole Foods. At least in the Whole Foods store that I shop, the bulk foods section has been greatly diminished for safety reasons. My last batch of hulled barley was ordered from Amazon. It’s organic, and it was grown in western North Carolina.
This afternoon my nearest neighbor appeared on his ATV bringing a box of Moravian sugar cake from Dewey’s bakery in Winston-Salem, to thank me, he said, for being such a good neighbor. To those who live in or near Winston-Salem, Moravian sugar cake is a holiday treat. It’s made here year round, though. Winkler Bakery in Old Salem, which still bakes in colonial-style wood-fired ovens, makes the best version. (Winkler Bakery is currently closed because of Covid-19.) The recipe and concept, no doubt, were brought here 250 years ago by German settlers. Dewey’s makes a close approximation of the colonial article. Those in this area will know about Old Salem. To those who live elsewhere, Old Salem is a restored colonial town much like Williamsburg in Virginia. (I was shocked to see all the corporate logos on Old Salem’s home page. Times must be hard for them.)
Mincemeat pie is not part of my heritage (Southern American), so I disclaim all expertise and experience having to do with it. Not only did I never have mincemeat pie as a child, I don’t remember ever hearing about it. As an adult, I was not curious about making it, just because the name is so ugly — mincemeat. Both halves of the word are equally unappetizing.
But when you’ve got good organic apples, it seems like a shame and a waste to peel them for pie. And yet, if you leave the peelings on, then you spoil the texture of the pie with little strips of leathery apple skin. To make apple pie and preserve the skin, I reasoned, it would be necessary to chop — or mince — the apples. That sent me to Google looking at recipes for mincemeat pie. Most recipes for mincemeat pie don’t have any meat in them. Minced apples — skins intact — are the main event, plus other fruits such as raisins, currants, and even cherries. Some call for suet; some call for butter. Rum seems de rigeur. Almost all the recipes required making the filling, then leaving the filling in the refrigerator for at least three days, but up to six months. That made me wonder whether, especially in the days before refrigeration, the filling for mincemeat pie was allowed to ferment. Does anyone know?
In any case, it was a very good pie. But I would have to say that my first mincemeat pie would never beat my apple pies in a baking contest.
Note 1: In Erma Rombauer’s 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking, she seems to take the “meat” part seriously in one of the recipes, which calls for ground beef. Gross. Hold the meat. I’ll just have the mince.
Note 2: I thought that, as long as rum was on my mind, I might as well flambé the pie, since it has been a long time since I had set any food on fire. But I couldn’t get the rum to light in the evening breeze out of the deck, so I just had the rum.
I don’t often do one-pot cooking. But, when I do, I wonder why I don’t do more one-pot cooking. I have a certain bias, I suppose, toward at least three things on the plate and lots of dirty dishes.
Earlier today I came across this recipe at the Washington Post. I went downstairs and made it immediately. It’s another way for me to use the little pumpkins I grow each year. I’ve written about these pumpkins many times in the past, for example, here. Their proper name is Long Island Cheese Squash. Not only are they the best pumpkins I’ve ever had, they keep all winter and then some. I save seeds for next year’s crop. Anyone who sees my little pumpkins asks for seeds, and now many of my neighbors grow them. They’re bound to be very nutritious. They’re rich with pumpkin oil, as you will see if you roast them. You can order seeds from Baker Creek, if they haven’t run out. The demand for seeds has been so high that Baker Creek stopped taking orders for a while in January to catch up on shipping.
As always with recipes, substitute, substitute, substitute. I used pinto beans instead of black beans, and brown rice instead of white rice. I didn’t have a ripe avocado for garnish. But undersalting the pot a bit and applying soy sauce and sour cream at the table worked great. Next time I make this, I think I’ll use pearled barley instead of rice.
I’ve written in the past about how good the Washington Post’s food department has become, good enough to rival the New York Times’ food department. The link to the recipe may be behind a paywall if you’ve used up your ration of free articles for the month. But, even if you subscribe to only one newspaper, the Washington Post would be a good choice.
The temperature at noon today was 45F, and, yes, I had lunch on the deck.
Pie from roasted pumpkin, baked in an iron skillet with fire and smoke
Since it was the week before Christmas, I splurged on a Scotch that cost twice as much as what I usually pay. When I first tasted it, I was a bit shocked at how smoky the Scotch was. I usually prefer a less smoky Scotch. But by the third time I got into it (in three evenings, I confess), I found that I liked it, and the smoky flavor no longer seemed to dominate the other tastes of Scotch.
I am by no means a connoisseur of Scotch, though no doubt I’m more experienced with Scotch than most Americans. Having toured the distillery at Oban, I knew about how barley is malted and dried before fermentation. But, after tasting The Balvenie Scotch, I Googled to try to better understand why some Scotches are much smokier than others. I came across this article at Whisky Advocate — Science Can Explain Why You Like Smoky Whisky—Or Not. The article includes this interesting statement:
“… [U]ntil relatively recently in our ancestral timeline—within the last 200 years—all cooked food would have tasted of smoke.”
That got my attention, because it certainly seems to be true. It follows that, particularly for those of us who are interested in what antique cookery — even Iron Age cookery — might have been like, smoke is something that must be kept in mind.
As I looked around the kitchen for a bold experiment with smoke, I settled on one of my little pumpkins. The usual name for the little pumpkins is “Long Island cheese squash.” You can buy seeds from heirloom seed companies such as Baker Creek. A friend gave me my seeds, though, and I have been growing little pumpkins for about five years now, with seeds that I save over to the next year. My first thought was to make pumpkin soup, and I will, later. But I quickly changed my mind to pumpkin pie, because it’s almost Christmas.
One of my dreams is to have an outdoor range and oven, built of brick and fired with wood. For now the best I can do is to use my propane grill, which is on the deck and convenient to the kitchen. I threw in little chips of apple wood to create smoke. (Note to the abbey groundskeeping department: when fruit trees have to be trimmed or cut, save the wood for making smoke.)
One might suppose that a pumpkin pie with so much exposure to smoke and so much brown roastedness might taste like ashes. But that wasn’t true at all. The pumpkin flavor remained dominant, followed by cinnamon (of which I used only half a teaspoon), followed by smoke. It turned out to be an excellent pie, with the smoke acting as a kind of umami. It was no surprise that the pie went well with Scotch.
I hesitate to confess this because it makes me sound like an American bumpkin, but peat smoke to me smells a lot like coal smoke. (In fact, peat would turn into lignite coal if left in the ground.) I’d probably be able to tell the difference in a smoke-smelling test. But the connotations of peat and coal are worlds apart. One speaks of moor and bog, rock and gull, wind, and sea, and water. The other speaks of industry, trains, mines and black dust. I suppose I need to retrain my nose. Lacking access to either peat smoke or coal smoke here in the Appalachian woodlands, I will be obliged to turn to Scotch to train my nose for the scent of peat smoke.
Here in the Appalachian woodlands, we do not lack for smoke. We have many smoke flavors to choose from. If my dream of an outdoor range and oven ever comes true, then I think there ought to be a special woodpile just for flavor — hickory, persimmon, apple, pear, pecan. Even pine might have its uses.
In 1971, when Alistair Cooke began hosting Masterpiece Theater on PBS, the quality of American television went up several notches. Though series such as Upstairs, Downstairs were enormously popular, this wasn’t television for the American masses, who still preferred the networks to PBS. It was an elite sort of thing for liberals and the literati. A new generation of Anglophiles (including me) came on line. And it wasn’t long before reduced-rate airlines flying the new Boeing 747’s started the trend that we now call the democratization of air travel. New York to London was a hot ticket. I made my first crossing in 1984.
The Duchess of Duke Street was created by John Hawkesworth, the producer of Upstairs, Downstairs. But Louisa Leyton, the main character, is not a real duchess. She is a low-born Englishwoman whose great ambition is to become the best cook in England. The story starts in 1900. The character is based on Rosa Lewis, who owned the Cavendish Hotel in London and who died in 1952.
Of the BBC series of that vintage, I still rate the original Poldark (1975) as the best. I’ll never forget how my socially insecure Welsh friend (now deceased), then starting out as a solicitor in London, referred to Winston Graham as a “middle brow” writer. In the U.S., Winston Graham was highbrow. He was unknown in the U.S. until Poldark and Masterpiece Theater. Soon Graham was selling books in America, but I had to buy my first Winston Graham at a bookshop in London.
Amazon Prime now has the full Duchess of Duke Street series for streaming. It’s a fine social drama, but it’s a shame that it isn’t a bit more of a cooking show. There are tantalizing scenes in the kitchen with glimpses of what they’re cooking, with gleaming copper pots and all sorts of hand-powered cooking equipment. They appear to actually be cooking during the show at times.
The Duchess of Duke Street is a kind of period piece within a period piece. It takes us back to 1900, but it also takes us back to 1975.