Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
It’s extremely unusual to get a grab-n-growl bargain at Whole Foods. But I think the fresh corn yesterday, three for a dollar, qualifies. I suspect that anything that early and plentiful came from Louisiana or some such other place that has been getting all of our East Coast rain.
And the chickens sure do like to clean the cobs.
I post about bread fairly often. It’s not that I eat a vast amount of bread. I probably eat less bread than most people. But I almost never buy bread, so, unless I bake it myself, there’s no bread in the house.
Hot weather is a challenge. I hate heating up the oven when it’s 90 degrees or more outside. The oven pours heat into the house that the air conditioning system then has to get rid of. So, it’s flatbreads to the rescue. Flatbreads can be baked, quickly, in a skillet. So the overall energy use, and therefore heat production, is lower. If you have an outdoor grill with a griddle, then flatbreads could be made outdoors in the shade. Flatbreads also would make good campsite bread.
Lots of cultures have flatbreads. Rather than calling them by a foreign name, why not just assimilate flatbreads into American culture and call them flatbreads. What defines a flatbread is that it’s not leavened. If it’s made from wheat (as opposed to corn), it will blow up like a balloon in the pan, forming two layers, each half of the starting thickness. I call this process “popping.” To be really good, flatbreads must pop. It will deflate, of course, after you remove it from the heat. But that’s OK, because the bread has split into two layers with a pocket inside.
To get your flatbreads to pop, you need a reasonably soft dough. The skillet must be hot. And you must roll the dough to the right thickness. If it’s too thick or too thin, it won’t pop.
All whole wheat flour makes a tough flatbread that, though good, won’t pop very well. Half whole wheat and half unbleached flour works nicely. The skillet must be hot almost to the smoking stage. There’s no oil in the skillet, or in the dough, so high heat is less risky. As for how thick to roll the dough, experience is the best teacher. The dough is just flour, water, and a little salt.
Flatbreads love to be lightly buttered while they’re hot. They’re great with summer curries and summer stews like ratatouille. If you’re new to flatbreads, practice your flatbread skills now, and you’ll be ready by ratatouille season. Flatbreads are also great with summer favorites like tuna salad or hummus.
We all have carb cravings. For me that equals bread, or sometimes potatoes. The best way I know to mitigate the sin is to make one’s carb dishes at home, from scratch. There are ways of making carb dishes a little less carbie, not to mention keeping the salt much lower than what you get in processed foods.
Potato cakes are a Southern institution — or at least used to be in the days when people still cooked. In our household many years ago, they were generally made with leftover mashed potatoes, with chopped onion, an egg, and cracker crumbs to soak up the egg.
Sometimes when I’m cooking potatoes, I’ll cook a few extra (in the skin) and put them in the refrigerator. They might then become potato salad, but they also can become potato cakes. The potato cakes in the photo were an experiment. Some people, it seems, use flour to soak up the egg. I thought that was worth trying. It was a failure. The flour ruined the potato-y taste and made the cakes too heavy. It’s back to cracker crumbs.
As I’ve written before here, we all should eat as though we’re diabetics, even if we’re not. That means being aware of the glycemic index of carbie foods and knowing some tricks for keeping the glycemic index down. With potatoes, you can lower the glycemic index by chilling the potatoes after they’re cooked. Even if you reheat the potatoes, the glycemic index is still lower. So cooking potatoes in advance and chilling them is a healthy as well as a practical thing to do. I don’t know of any reason why this couldn’t be done even with mashed potatoes. Just heat them up again with the cream and butter.
By the way, when I go to ordinary grocery stores (as opposed to Whole Foods), one of the horrifying things I observe is that it’s a tiny minority of people these days who buy fresh foods. Potatoes are everyone’s favorite vegetable, but only the Whole Foods category of people buys potatoes fresh. Other people buy all sorts of frozen potato concoctions. There is simply no excuse, not least because it’s such a waste of money.
Cooks who teach other cooks how to bake with sourdough often recommend mixing in some ordinary yeast. That serves as a kind of insurance against total bread failure for inexperienced bakers, and it greatly hastens the process. For a long time, I refused to use any yeast. Sourdough was sourdough, and yeast was yeast, and I would not mix the two.
But making sourdough bread is a long process. If you start the night before, you can have bread for supper the next day. But what if you take a notion in the afternoon to have hot bread for supper? Only yeast will get you there. But so will a mixture of sourdough and yeast. To mix the two offended my sense of integrity until I realized that the combination of yeast and sourdough tastes great. It also gives you something to do with sourdough starter that you might otherwise throw out when feeding your starter.
Another factor is that, when I go to the trouble of making sourdough bread, I make a large loaf. Because of the lactic acid, sourdough bread won’t mold the way yeast bread does. A sourdough loaf is good for toast for a week. For sandwiches, it’s good for at least two or three days. But quicker loaves can be smaller loaves. Smaller loaves equal smaller waists, and hot bread for supper.
So, to mix the two, pour two-thirds or more of your sourdough starter into a mixing bowl. Feed the starter and put it away. Then add enough flour and water for a small loaf, plus a teaspoon or so of yeast. In a couple of hours it will be ready to bake.
I’m always experimenting with ways to bake with steam. In the photo below, note that I’ve fitted a Pyrex bowl to an iron skillet. As long as the loaf is not too big, it works nicely to keep the loaf steamed while it’s springing in the oven. Breads that contain very much whole wheat won’t spring very much (at least, not for me), but the steam still improves the quality of the crust and helps give it that texture that shatters when you break it. The loaf in today’s photos contained another experiment — a small potato is mashed into the dough. It made a heavier crumb and didn’t improve the bread in any way. No more potato, at least for everyday bread.
While I’m thinking about wine, here’s another good value, from Trader Joe’s. For at least a couple of months now, Trader Joe’s has carried both a chardonnay and a cabernet from Liberté vineyards. That winemaker is in Paso Robles, which is in San Luis Obispo County in southern California. Both the chardonnay and the cabernet are $9.99.
Truth is, I never cared much for so-called “fine wines.” As the price of a bottle of wine rises, the increased quality either diminishes rapidly in line with the law of diminishing returns, or the value is entirely fictitious and is related to heightened demand, or snob appeal. I’m one of those people who see wine as food. I’d no more pay $40 for a bottle of wine than I’d pay $20 for a cauliflower. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with good country wine. I also don’t mess around much with weird varietals. When I’m shopping for wine, I go always look for honest, basic, fruity chardonnays and cabernets.
Back in the 1990s, when I was living in San Francisco, had a comfortable income, and had access to a deep cellar, I lived in the French mode, bought wine by the case, and fetched it from the cellar. A lot of the wine I bought was from Bonterra Organic Vineyards. Bonterra’s wines aren’t the sort of wines that will knock your socks off, but they’re good wines and a good value.
Now that I’m in North Carolina and now that retirement has suppressed my wine budget, I no longer buy wine by the case (though I probably should — it doesn’t really cost any more that way). I had not even seen a bottle of Bonterra wine in years. Imagine my surprise, then, at seeing several bottles of Bonterra organic chardonnay and cabernet in an ordinary country grocery store in Walnut Cove. I bought all the bottles that were on the shelf. The 2011 chardonnay was about $10 a bottle and the 2011 cabernet about $12.
I find this puzzling. How did organic wine from a not-very-large California vintner end up on a shelf in a country grocery store in North Carolina? I’m afraid that it probably means that the wine was not well reviewed, didn’t sell well, and got remaindered out to free up warehouse space. But I’m speculating.
Still, if you come across Bonterra wine, give it a try. I see from their web site that they have a wine club. I just might sign up. I have not yet opened the cabernet. The chardonnay is slightly watery though strong on alcohol, but it has good color and a nice, fairly soft chardonnay taste. In short, it’s perfectly fine for a $10 wine.
It occurs to me that I’ve not written about wines here often, mainly because retirement has cut into my wine budget. For the record, I am strongly of the opinion that California wines are the best in the world. I prefer wines from Sonoma County, but Napa and Mendocino will do.
The butter is a little brown not because I overheated it but because I had cooked a Trader Joe’s fake sausage before cooking the egg.
Six or seven years ago, I bought some nonstick Calphalon pans from Williams Sonoma. They were on sale, but they were still pricey. They were said to be dishwasher safe. For several years, they worked great. But now they’ve mostly lost their nonstick qualities, and using them is a lot like cooking with cast iron.
I would have guiltily written this off to putting them in the dishwasher and not taking proper care of them, but from doing some reading it appears that all nonstick pans eventually stop working. Good pots and pans should last a lifetime or longer — except, apparently, for nonstick pans. So if a pan is going to last for only five or six or seven years, then why pay Calphalon prices?
While I was on the lookout for replacements, so-called “green” pans with a white ceramic coating caught my eye. They are moderately priced, just above the level of cheap. Some Googling and reading finds that, though they greatly reduce the toxic substances in nonstick coatings, they still may not be entirely free of toxins. These pans generally get pretty good reviews. The small pan I bought is clearly marked as not safe for dishwashers. And clearly it should never be used on high heat. At least while new, it does a fine job of cooking eggs.
The egg in the photo, by the way, was picked up from the chicken house about 10 minutes before I cooked it. I did not feed the chickens yesterday, forcing them to forage in their woods lot and in the grass of the orchard. Chickens eating greens makes for really golden egg yolks. When the girls are first let out in the morning, they immediately go for chickweed and clover. Though it comes back to me indirectly, I do get some nutrition out of that delicious-looking organic grass in the orchard.
When the garden is kaput and stuff in the grocery store starts looking like it’s traveled a long way, it’s time to start sprouting. It’s an old hippy skill that I’ve never abandoned, though often I just forget about the possibility of sprouts.
The best place I know to get sprouting seeds is from the Sprout People in San Francisco. What out for their high shipping costs, though. If you order $60 worth of stuff, shipping is free.
And, of course, don’t forget to add lots of garlic to the dressing. With garlic, sprouts, and lots of tangerine and orange juice, you’ll survive the winter just fine.
P.S. I haven’t yet ordered sprouting seeds or sprouting supplies from Amazon, but they seem to have good stuff and good prices, and much of it is available for free shipping with Prime. I still feel a little guilty ordering stuff from Amazon, but, especially when one lives in the sticks, low prices and fast, free shipping are hard to resist.
November apples at Century Farm Orchards
Fatalities in the orchard during the last year include fig trees killed (above ground, at least) by brutally cold weather last winter, and another pear tree lost to the Black Death. Ken also found room for a couple more apple trees. Today I picked up some replacement trees.
I know I’ve harped on this theme before, but happy is the household with an established orchard. Rearing young apple trees is like rearing children in the Dark Ages — lots of them die, plagued with all sorts of pests, hazards, and diseases. The abbey’s orchard is six years old now, and it’s coming along. There was almost no apple yield this year, though, because last winter all the trees got a major pruning. This was probably the most important pruning of the trees’ lives, because it will pretty much determine the shape of the adult apple trees. Pruners say you should prune so that a bird can fly through the tree. That doesn’t leave a lot of buds for producing fruit the following season. But, during the 2015 season, with luck, the abbey should get its first serious apple harvest. That will be the orchard’s seventh year.
One thing I got right: Avoiding low-quality trees from mass-production nurseries, the kind of trees that are sold at box-store garden departments. I had bought a few such trees as replacements, and they just didn’t do well. Almost all the abbey’s trees came from Century Farm Orchards in Caswell County, North Carolina. They specialize in old Southern varieties of apple trees. These trees are very hardy and well-suited to the local climate, though like all young fruit trees they need a lot of care and attention to reach adulthood. Century Farm Orchards is not really a storefront operation. One orders trees early in the year. You get an invoice in October, and you pick up the trees at open house events in November.
Today’s new trees included two mammoth blacktwig apple trees, two kieffer pear trees, a brown turkey fig, and a celeste fig.
Another nice thing about the abbey’s modest-size orchard is that it’s on a fenced slope, nicely turfed, fed on organic fertilizer and lots of chicken droppings. The grass and clover in the orchard are incredibly lush, and of course all that organic nutrition and earthworm activity works down into the soil and benefits the apple trees. We use only natural pesticides. The poor trees pretty much have to fend for themselves, like 9th Century peasant children.
I picked up two new blacktwig trees today.
I love reading novels set in another time, another place, in which the author describes what the characters are eating. I’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In it, a monk (seemingly a monk, at least) and a knight are sharing a pasty in the monk’s hermitage deep in the forest. That really stuck in my mind, and I resolved that, when cold weather returned, and after election season was over, I’d make some pasties.
Pasties are an ancient food. They go back to the Middle Ages. Now, I love nouvelle cuisine and California cuisine as much as the next person, but I also love archaic cuisine as much as I love archaic language and archaic settings. Note how the word is pronounced, though. It’s like “pass,” not like “paste.” I haven’t had a pasty since I was in Cornwall many years ago, and I had never made pasties until today.
If you want to make pasties, first I suggest that you Google around and study some recipes. Also, for the technique for crimping the crust, there are some good YouTube videos. Pasties are eaten all over the British Isles, but it is chiefly the Cornish who lay claim to the art of pasty-making today. Cornish pasties generally contain beef (skirt steak). I wanted vegetarian pasties. There are certain ingredients that are optional and certain ingredients that are not optional. Among the non-optional ingredients, in my opinion, are potatoes, rutabagas (which the British call “swedes”), peas, onions, and celery. To today’s pasties I also added a bit of grated cheddar cheese with truffles in it, as well as a little cream.
If you did your Googling, you’ll have found many different recipes for the crust. The crust resembles pie crust, except that the crust should have more “structure” than pie crust. OK. I added an egg. I also wickedly used butter in the pie crust, diluted with about 25 percent olive oil. Unlike pie crust, pasty crust can take a little kneading. Be sure to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before you roll it out.
My crimping would not pass muster with the Cornish defenders of traditional pasty-making. Maybe I’ll do better next time. But it held together.
An egg wash or milk wash will give a nice, shiny crust. I used egg wash because the abbey chickens produce more eggs than I can possibly use when Ken is away. For pie crusts, I have terrible luck if I mix any whole wheat flour into the unbleached flour. But with the pasty crush, half whole wheat and half unbleached flour yielded a very tender crust. And by the way, I no longer use any flour that isn’t organic. It makes a huge difference in quality.
The pasty was obscenely good. Have it with wine, and by candlelight and firelight, to enhance the medieval effect.
Speaking of medieval, a reader asked me to comment on the election. I was campaign manager for a candidate for county commissioner, and that job has eaten me alive for more that two months. It was like having a full-time job — meetings, constant phone calls, a heavy load of email, lots of promotional work. We ran an extremely sophisticated campaign that scared the living daylights out of the opposition. But in the end, we went down, hard, in the wave of hatred, ignorance, anger, and apathy that swept across the country on Nov. 4. But we will never give up on dragging Stokes County, North Carolina, kicking and screaming into the 18th Century.
I’ve fled back into the woods, and I hope to stay here for a while.
Just out of the oven
With the egg wash, before going into the oven