Category: Food

Rethinking the growing season


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

Eat more barley ( … and sugar cake)


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

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.

One-pot cooking

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.

Fire, smoke, food, and drink


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.

The Duchess of Duke Street

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.

Back from the Dark Ages: Leeks

Leeks, where have you been all my life? As I was making yet another pot of leek and potato soup today, I found myself wondering: When did I first see leeks? Why have I never seen them growing? Just when did they start showing up in grocery stores this time of year? I don’t really recall, but leeks are relatively new to me. As much as I love onions, surely I wouldn’t have wasted much time trying them out. I don’t recall ever seeing them in California, either.

The Wikipedia article has some clues: “Because of their symbolism in Wales … , they have come to be used extensively in that country’s cuisine. Elsewhere in Britain, leeks have come back into favor only in the last 50 years or so, having been overlooked for several centuries.” Nothing is said about leeks in America. So more research is in order.

As for growing them, I probably won’t, for the same reason I decided not to grow garlic. Leeks (and garlic) like to grow for up to 180 days, it seems. That’s too long to take up space in the garden, especially for a plant as large as leeks.

Leek and potato soup is my favorite soup all of a sudden. It’s amazing how a vegetable so green and rich with fiber is so creamy in a soup.

According to the Wikipedia article, leeks were known in ancient Egypt. The Romans ate them. Our word leek, says Wikipedia (and my dictionary confirms it) comes from an Anglo-Saxon word, which makes leeks that much more special to me: “The name ‘leek’ developed from the Old English word lēac, from which the modern English name for garlic also derives.”


Leek and potato soup


The entry for lēac in my Anglo-Saxon dictionary

Wild persimmons — and persimmon pudding


Persimmon pudding and cognac. Click here for high-resolution version.

I had persimmon pudding today for the first time in at least 50 years. If you’ve ever once had persimmon pudding, you’ll never forget it, because there’s nothing else like it. I have my own persimmon trees now at last, so I have done my best to reproduce my mother’s and grandmother’s persimmon pudding, using an authentic old recipe from North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley.

Want to try making some persimmon pudding?

First of all, this post is about Diospyros virginiana. There are many varieties of persimmons in the world. This persimmon is native to the eastern United States. The persimmon tree is very common in the North Carolina Piedmont, where I grew up, and here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I live now. It is most likely to be found on the edges of a stand of woods, where it can get enough sunlight. You won’t find it in woodland interiors. When I lived in California, I often saw Asian persimmons, which are the size of apples, in grocery stores. They clearly are commercially cultivated like apples. However, Diospyros virginiana is a much smaller persimmon. It is a wild tree, but it will happily grow in your yard. One of the photos below includes a couple of coins to show the size of the persimmons.

How I got my persimmon trees: When I bought land here in Stokes County, all of it was wooded. I cleared an acre for a house, yard, garden, and orchard, leaving a few high-value trees standing. That was in 2009. Though I planted a good many trees, such as a bunch of arbor vitaes, many trees volunteered. I let the volunteer trees grow where they suited the landscape. Persimmon trees volunteered very quickly. The wildlife eat the fruit and poop the seeds. I have about ten persimmon trees in the yard now. I started getting the first persimmons in year five or so, but never enough for pudding. This year, for the first time, I had enough to make pudding. Ideally, you want your persimmon trees where you can mow under them, so that you don’t have to go into a thicket looking for persimmons. Maybe they can be transplanted. I don’t really know, since I didn’t have to transplant.

How to harvest persimmons: My recollection from my childhood is that my grandmother just went out and gathered persimmons off the ground from under the tree. Her trees were older and bigger, though, and I think her best persimmon trees grew in the yard. That, however, won’t work for me here. If I waited for the persimmons to fall, they’d vanish overnight, because the wildlife love them — deer, opossums, and raccoons. For today’s pudding, I had no choice but to pick persimmons off the tree as they were starting to ripen. Then I finished ripening them indoors.

How to tell when persimmons are ripe: There is a myth that persimmons don’t ripen until the frost bites them. That is not the case (though frost won’t hurt them, if they last that long). If I waited for frost, I wouldn’t get any persimmons, because the fruit would fall before frost arrives (mid to late October), and the wildlife would get them all. People who aren’t from around here sometimes think that persimmons are poison. That’s probably because they tasted a green one and learned how awful it tasted. There is nothing more astrigent than a green persimmon. It’s not possible to emphasize this too much: Your persimmons must be ripe. When they ripen, they get soft, so soft that they fall off the tree. You can’t possibly cook with persimmons that are not ripe. Not only would unripe persimmons not be soft enough to pulp, they’d also taste terrible. Can they be too ripe? Probably not, as long as they’re not starting to rot. Actually, they’d probably ferment before they rot. You want them right before the point at which they start to ferment.

How to ripen them if you picked them off the tree: If you pick your persimmons off the tree, don’t pick them until they are starting to ripen and are starting to brown. (See the photos below for typical colors.) If you pick a green persimmon, it would never ripen. Bring your persimmons indoors and spread them out on a baking sheet. Cover them with a dish towel or some muslin to keep the fruit flies off. They won’t ripen all at once. Each day, pick out the ones that are ripened and soft and move them to the refrigerator to wait for the others to ripen. It took a week for all mine to ripen. By this time, they also had started drying out some, which I was afraid might be a problem. It was hard work, but they pulped just fine. One of the photos below shows what the ripe persimmons should look like. Notice that all the ripe persimmons are pretty much the same golden brown color.

How to pulp your persimmons: You must use a food mill. You can find them on Amazon. The food mill will mash the persimmons and press out the pulp. If your food mill comes with different size strainers, use the fine one. You don’t want any bits of seeds or skin to get into your pulp. One of the photos below shows what the finished pulp should look like.

How to make pudding: No doubt there are other things that can be done with persimmons. In the rural culture in which I grew up, though, pudding was what persimmons were always used for. If you’ve never had persimmon pudding, that’s a bit of a handicap in trying to make it, because you don’t know what the goal is. But there are several things to keep in mind. First, it’s pudding, not cake. After it has finished baking, it will be dense and heavy and a bit squishy. After it starts to cool, the pudding will weep a dark syrup. That’s exactly what you want. In the recipe below, 2 cups of sugar sounds like a lot. Yet I think it’s necessary for a proper pudding. The crust of the pudding should caramelize, and the caramelization is an important part of the taste of the pudding. Some people may bake the pudding in a single, fairly deep vessel. However, in my opinion the only proper way to do it (that’s how my mother and grandmother did it) is to bake the pudding in three iron skillets of different sizes. (See the photo below.) This increases the amount of crusting and caramelization. And the cast iron, as long as it’s well seasoned, will give the pudding the kind of crust you want. Don’t be misled by the word “crust,” though. The crust is soft and is part of the pudding.

About this recipe: As far as I could determine through family sources, my mother and grandmother did not use a recipe. They “just stirred it up.” However, with the help of my sister, a cousin provided a traditional recipe from the Yadkin Valley that is just like my grandmother’s pudding. The recipe came from the 1988-1989 cookbook of Society Baptist Church in Harmony, North Carolina. I believe the church lady who provided the recipe was Nancy C. Koontz, who I hope won’t mind, if she is still living, if I reproduce the recipe here.

Yadkin Valley persimmon pudding

2 cups persimmon pulp
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour 
1 teaspoon baking powder 
2 eggs
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla 
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
3 tablespoons melted butter

Bake at 350 degrees.

How to mix the batter: The recipe assumes that the cook has the experience to know how to mix a batter, and no instructions are provided. I’d suggest mixing the egg, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and melted butter in bowl 1. In bowl 2, mix together the milk and the persimmon pulp. Add the contents of bowl 1 to bowl 2. Then add the flour, a cup at a time (plus the baking powder) to the mixture. I used a mixer for the final mixing to avoid lumps in the flour.

How to tell when the pudding is done: This is important and requires some skill and experience. Your pudding won’t be edible if it’s underdone. If it’s overdone, it will dry out and the crust will get too dark or blacken. How long you bake it will depend on the kind of pan or pans you use. Use the toothpick test! Even though the finished pudding is soft, the toothpick test will work and the toothpick will come out clean when the pudding is done. With the batter in three iron skillets, my pudding took about 30 minutes. My cousin bakes the pudding in a single a single 9 x 13 baking dish and gives it an hour. But watch the pudding, not the clock!

This was a lot of work, wasn’t it? But you only get persimmons once a year.


Click here for high-resolution version.


Notice the range of colors. These persimmons are not yet ripe!

Falafel

Once you legalize deep-frying in your kitchen (as I recently did), you’re on a slippery slope to — falafel.

I probably thought of falafel as one of those city foods that can be made only after centuries of practice, and only in a commercial kitchen, like bagels. With falafel, it’s not like that at all. They’re dead easy — street food, really. I had never had homemade falafel before. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever had them anywhere before other than San Francisco and New York City. Maybe London.

There’s no need for me to suggest a recipe here. There are many on the web — just Google. I used store-bought parsley as the herb in this batch. If it were high summer, I’d have some homegrown choices of herbs. But who wants to stand over a hot pot of oil in high summer, even if there are fresh herbs?

Most recipes will warn you that you cannot use canned, or precooked, chickpeas. Soak the chickpeas well, then throw them into a food processor with the other ingredients. Shape them into balls, and cook them in hot oil. Easy peasy. And probably addictive.

Deep frying?

For many years, I avoided deep-frying. The first reason was that it’s messy. The second is that it’s not regarded as healthy.

Then again …

When I measure the oil before and after frying, I find that surprisingly little oil is lost — certainly less than a stir-fry, which is regarded as healthy. Also, I have been eating a lot of tofu during the past few months. Tofu loves to be gently browned in a deep pot of oil. I think I have decided to embrace deep-frying.

To manage the mess, some kind of system helps. I use a very deep, very heavy, copper Windsor pot, 9.5 inches wide at the top. A slotted spoon serves to move things in and out. Afterwards, I let the oil cool, then pour it through a funnel and wire-mesh filter into a glass bottle. I re-use the oil, and I keep it in the refrigerator, because I suspect that liquids and particles that remain in the oil even after filtering probably ought to be refrigerated. Recipes for deep-frying suggest a temperature of 340 degrees Fahrenheit or somewhat higher. But I find that 320F is fine, as long as you’re cooking smallish amounts of food from room temperature and thus don’t cool down the oil too much. I use peanut oil.

I want to do more experiments with deep-frying fish — a Southern American favorite. I keep my fish oil separate, also in the refrigerator. I have never had, or even heard of, deep-fried salmon. But I’m going to try that soon.

The tofu in the photo is sauced with a kind of Korean sauce. It’s honey, some ketchup, pepper paste, miso paste, and a touch of vinegar.