Category: Food

Rediscovering the black pot

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I bought the black pot three or four years ago, hoping that it would serve as a substitute for a steam oven for making proper artisan bread. I found it to be worthless for that purpose, so into the pantry closet it went, and it sat there unused. (A Cuisinart steam oven, by the way, was the ultimate solution to the bread-making challenge.)

At least twice in the past six or eight months, a visitor pointed to the pot and commented on what a nice pot it is. “The French call it a ‘fait-tout,'” he said — a make everything.

I resolved to get out the pot and use it for winter cooking. The pot’s first service, last week, was to make a very nice sweet potato and kale curry. Last night, the pot hosted the ultimate black-pot comfort food, beef stew. I believe it had been at least eight years since I’d made beef stew, back during my San Francisco days and the Bush presidency. I almost never bring any kind of meat into the abbey’s kitchen. I used steak, which I bought at Whole Foods (with a good bit of shame, for which I paid dearly at the cash register). It takes a lot of comfort food to survive an election like the one we just had, and no, I’m still not over it, but thanks for asking.

I also had not made artisan bread for a while, because of the carbs. I’m happy to report that, once you’ve learnt the trick of making proper bread, the trick stays with you. Last night’s bread was 85 percent stone-ground whole wheat and 15 percent unbleached white. The crust was perfect — shattery and rustic. Crust like that demands Irish butter from County Kerry, and that’s what it got.

Iron is a surprisingly good metal for stovetop cooking. It conducts heat well, and it’s perfect for things that want long, slow simmering. I wouldn’t mind having a glazed fait-tout, but unglazed iron has a lot of virtue if you’re careful about how you wash it and keep it seasoned.

As the world turns

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It’s an ill hurricane that blows nobody good, I suppose. Hurricane Matthew, for all the damage done elsewhere, brought two days of much-needed steady rain here. It was the first steady rain in many months and put an end to summer’s low-grade drought. Suddenly the weather switched from summer mode to fall mode. Today is, in short, the perfect day for baking.

Though the abbey’s only attempt at growing pumpkins was quickly ruined by raccoons, I’m good at picking choice pumpkins at roadside produce stands. This pumpkin will be pie before dark.

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Tomato sandwiches, all home made

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The garden is producing beautiful tomatoes in generous quantities. Who can resist tomato sandwiches? Though I bought a loaf of bread for the ceremonial first tomato sandwich of the summer, I just couldn’t eat any more bad bread. This is organic sandwich bread made from a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, the best book on breadmaking I’ve ever seen.

Home-grown organic tomatoes, homemade bread, and homemade pickles. You can’t go wrong.

Pickling day

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These are half-gallon jars.

I wanted to make some no-heat, no-cook pickles to be eaten within the next few weeks as opposed to being preserved for the winter. This is an easy process, because the canning process is unnecessary — there is no need to use a water-bath canner or a pressure cooker. I also wanted to ferment some pickles naturally without using vinegar.

The abbey garden is providing cucumbers for the table, but not enough for putting up pickles. So I bought half a bushel of beautiful fresh-picked cucumbers from a farmer who lives just north of here. The cost was $15 for the half bushel.

To further reduce the amount of work, I used half-gallon wide-mouth jars. For about two hours’ work, I ended up with three gallons of pickles.

Two gallons of the pickles involved nothing more than a vinegar solution poured over the packed pickle jars, with some spices. They should be ready to eat in two or three days. The process for the fermented pickles is to fill the jars with brine on top of the packed cucumbers, spices, and a few grape leaves. They’ll take a month or so to ferment before they’re ready to eat. I used airlock caps that I bought from Amazon. The airlock caps allow fermentation gases to escape but keep outside air from getting in, reducing the risk of mold.

Though pickle cucumbers are supposed to be able to take the heat of the canning process, still I like the idea of pickles that have never been heated. They should be nice and crisp.

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Chicken crimes

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I had been watching the first tomato for weeks, ever since it was the first bloom. Just two days ago, it had started turning red. It was to go into the ceremonial first tomato sandwich of the summer. But, this morning, Sophia the chicken followed me into the garden through a gate that I had left open. The chickens are not allowed into the garden during garden season. Her chicken eye immediately spotted the red, and my gardener eye immediately spotted Sophia making for the tomato. Before I could head her off, she had taken a bite.

Tomato number 2 will make the first sandwich, and the remains of tomato number 1 will go into a curry.

The angelic side of those devil blackberries

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For eleven months of the year, blackberries are terrible neighbors. They come up everywhere. If you get anywhere near them, they reach out and grab you with their briars. Their stems are as tough as Kevlar, and it’s very difficult to cut them back.

But for one month of the year, blackberries pay you back with — blackberries. May was a good growing month, so June promises to be an outstandingly good blackberry month.

There will be pies.

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Bush cherries

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I believe it was four years ago that a gardener friend urged me to go to Tractor Supply and get some of the cherry bushes they were selling. The potted bushes were very small — not more than two quarts, as I recall. I have never known a bush that is so hardy and grows so fast. The bushes have been heavily pruned at least twice, and once again they’re starting to block the path from the garden to the orchard.

As for the fruit, I wouldn’t say that it’s the best fruit in the world. But it has the virtue of being very early and very prolific. The pit-to-fruit ratio is not all that great. But who can turn down fresh cherries in May. Bush cherries would make a fine, fast-growing hedge.

The muffins are whole wheat, sweetened with maple syrup and honey.

Watch out for pits!

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The 2016 apple crop is coming along great.

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Someone told me recently that the abbey is looking shaggy. Oh well. Better shaggy than barren.

Publix

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Until today I had never been inside a Publix store. A new store opened last week in Winston-Salem, across the street from Whole Foods. I decided to check it out.

It’s a nice new store and all that. It reminded me of Safeway stores in San Francisco. But it seems to sell pretty much the same generic products that other grocery stores sell, and I couldn’t see any particular reason for shopping there and dealing with the slow-moving, indecisive throngs who also had come to check it out.

So I just left and went to Whole Foods as usual, appreciating Whole Foods’ product line even more.