Out of the Blogosphere and into the World...Now: Back to the Kitchen

It's been over a month since I last posted and my friends are beginning to wonder what I've been eating since there is no trace of activity in my "yellow kitchen"-- no crumbs, no dirty dishes, no recipes, no nothing. As it so happens, life took over, and I've fallen into a new job, launched an e-newsletter, and, well, the trees are in bloom in New York and this dreamer has been gazing out the window, riding her bike, smelling the magnolias and being very caught up in the moment of spring in the city. Forgive me: I'm back now.

Along with the cherry trees and those precious little green leaves (so delicate and new to the world!), yesterday morning I walked up to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and there they were: the asparagus have finally arrived! As I waited in line at Maxwell Farmstand with a small collection of coveted vegetables, the man behind me waxed poetic to the purple-headed stalks of asparagus he was holding before him like a bouquet. A week ago we had welcomed this very farm stand back for the season, two weeks before that I'd celebrated the return of kale, and before that it was still gray all the time and it seemed like we'd be living on apples forever. Just in the knick of time, the season has begun.

At the Greenmarket information stand a farmer was ladling out samples of sprouts doused in a dressing of tahini, miso, and soy sauce. A flock of marketers gathered in close to taste and inquire about protein content in sprouts, and how to make this coleslaw-like concoction in their own kitchens. When someone asked where to buy the sprouts she got a pamphlet in response with directions on how to grow a flat of them in her very own apartment. Vist for more info on growing your own sprouts.

Over the last month while I've been out of touch I embarked on some quiet but significant culinary adventures: I invented (more or less) a recipe for grapefruit sorbet, I cooked clams for the first time (the clam sauce was not of note, but the clams themselves were generous in texture and flavor and I will certainly try, try again), and I happened upon an Argentine barbeque. The barbeque offered no less than six courses of meat starting with chorizo sausages enveloped in crusty French bread buns, then on to sweat breads, blood sausage, short ribs, and strip steak...two courses of strip steak. Even I had to give in and do my share of tasting.

Which brings me to vegetarianism. For a while I was trying to hide the vegetarian factor on this blog, even though I haven't been eating meat since I went on a trip to China in the January of 2004. I grew up eating meat, and I still eat seafood, but my reasoning behind giving it up has been that I don't want to eat beef that has been processed, pumped full of hormones, probably moved by fork lifts, and slaughtered by unfairly treated laborers. So, I don't eat meat, and I don't miss it, but then last fall when I really got interested in writing about food I realized there is a time and a place to break every rule, and when the opportunity presents itself, I dig in to make sure I don't miss out. In a similar way my commitment to eating locally grown food (at least as much as possible) started out with the fact that I had no idea where the wilted lettuce at the grocery store was coming from. I've always loved to shop at the Greenmarkets in New York (and before that the farmers markets in my college town or in Ann Arbor where my parents live) because the scene is so friendly, and nothing really gets me going like piles of beets, carrots, fresh peaches, and buckets of blossoms, flats of perennials and herbs. Plus the food tastes better. But then this winter I read Plenty, a book by two Canadian journalists who took a year to document their conversion to a 100-mile diet. Much of the story is that of anticipating the arrival of the first greens, the trials of figuring out how to can properly, and the quest to find local wheat berries. There are marvelous seasonal recipes between the chapters, but there is a whole other factor that I'd never thought about when trumping the local market: eating locally helps reduce our carbon footprint. When food doesn't have to travel as far between the farm and your plate we are actively choosing to "Take a Bite out of Climate Change." Anna Lappé has just launched a site which addresses this specifically: . I encourage you all to explore the position papers, visit the carbon diet calculator, and read up on the advisers to her revolutionary project.

If you're in the New York City area you can sign up for my weekly e-newsletter Local Gourmands by e-mailing localgourmands@gmail.com. Each Monday I send out a list of events that are taking place in the city ranging from Anne Saxelby's cheese tasting tours, to farm festivals, to Slow Food gatherings, book readings, and urban agriculture events. If you're not in the city but caught by the energy of this local food revolution you can join the Facebook group What I Ate for Supper Last Night and share your own stories from the kitchen. While the food crisis manifests in riots, bread lines, and rice rations, there is no time like now to encourage the conversation about what's for dinner, where it came from, and really examining who you're voting for when you're voting with your fork.

Case in Point

For a long time I've admitted to flipping first to the Style section of the Sunday Times. Check out "Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat."

They've got their ears perked, those Times reporters.

This Little Veggie Went to Williamsburg

A few weeks ago, in the name of raising funds for The Greenhorns (check out the trailer: http://www.thegreenhorns.net/home.html and give generously!!), I hopped on the M (who ever takes the M?!) and headed to a stop I'd never heard of, over a bridge I could only guess at, and mused about how happy it is to happen upon a new corner of the city-- one that makes the city you feel you know so well, seem like it is in fact another city altogether. I asked strangers for directions, and turned right on the corner. Above me the Williamsburg bridge was cloaked by night, across from me was Peter Luger. Wait, wait. I did a double take-- where was I? Really? Peter Luger, as in The? Indeed, thar she blew, and she's been there since 1887, so I am quite literally the new kid on the block.

I pressed on, a little smile now planted on my face. This would be a night of discovery. The address led me to a graffitied door which was propped open with a broom. A party called from the top floor, and little notes along the way urged me forth: "just a little more!" "follow your sweetie!" En haut a young woman in a wispy dress welcomed me in. There was a coat rack by the door, bouquets of twiggy branches framed the entry way. Where am I? I breathed, taking in the cement floor and the twinkle lights, the old industrial windows that looked out to the bridge and the train that was lit like the Polar Express as it chugged by. "You're in Williamsburg!" she laughed. Ah, yes, my forgotten Brooklyn neighbor...here among the young, the hip, the painfully artsy, ridiculously good-looking, and plasticly bespectacled, I found myself dying be a part of the fun. All I had to do was step inside.

At the bar I took a Bell canning jar from the box and requested a cup of "Le Cousin Rouge," one of three local wines on offer. The notes were fruity and inviting, a nice beginning to the evening-- nothing to knock you over, just a light "hello" in the tone of plain berry goodness. The guy next to me (tall, bearded, plaid shirt, terribly attractive) took a sip and nodded along with my murmurs of approval. "Yeah, you can really taste the earth in it," he said. And with that, the classic nod to the party surf, we stepped away to talk to others we already knew by name.

The crowd was fawning over a center table laden with no less than eight plates of local cheeses which were paired with bowls of strawberry preserves, chutney, and cherries that had been kept in brandy. We spread soft chevre on warm herb scones and dipped sticks of comte in a tangy salsa of peppers and fruit. There were little meat balls in one basket and freshly baked bread on a cutting board next to it. A dish of steamed spinach with curried eggs was polished off before I made my way to that end of the smorgasbord. There were nuts and berries spread out on the table cloth for decoration and for nibbling, carefully written tags by each dish announcing where its ingredients had come from, a blackboard listing the local purveyors who had donated the wine, the cheese, the nuts, the meat. There was a table with brochures-- an Eat Well Guide to Brooklyn, information on CSAs, and copies of The Greenhorns movie trailer. There was a "gift store" set up where you could buy Greenhorns stickers, or homemade packets of kombucha. I mingled with farm hands, the bearded Mast brothers of Mast Brothers chocolate, a cook from Diner who had volunteered to help out on his night off. I was introduced to Tom the Butcher who promised I could come by his place of business any time to watch him work (though Tuesdays are best, he emphasized, because that's when he dissembles the pigs). How could I turn an invitation like that down? Back in the kitchen someone was taking a turn at the pile of dishes, and even though speeches had been made and the purpose of the fundraiser had been officially stated, and the crowd was starting to thin, the appointed cooks were still at work.

In the spring issue of Edible Brooklyn there is an article about supper clubs. A new friend and I bonded over this exciting clue into the edible underworld of our boro. "How do we get invited?" we mused. The clubs are invite-only and very secretive unless you know someone who knows someone. My latest dream-plan is to create a local supper club-- forget waiting to be invited, we'll just start our own. As I shopped this idea around the Greenhorns fundraiser people were more than enthusiastic. They wanted to know when it was happening-- they were ready to write it down in their Moleskin planners. Daniel, the young guy working on development for the documentary, nodded in fast agreement. "I think that's where dining is headed in the next ten years-- back into the home." And as we gazed out at the crowd who had showed up and continued to linger his hypothesis seemed undeniable.

Daniel made his way to the center of the room and rattled off a good soundbite about going out into the community to dig up funds for the film. He then introduced dessert: we had chocolate bars from the Mast Brothers, homemade graham crackers, and there were homemade marshmallows too. "There are sticks in the bouquets by the door, and if you like, you're welcome to toast the marshmallows over the candle flames." Which is exactly what we did. Side by side, in a loft in the middle of the city we were kids at camp around a bon fire. S'mores have never tasted sweeter.

As I was starting to say my goodbyes a plate of garlic toasts smeared with mascarpone and pieces of fatty, fatty prosciutto made their way around the room. I had one arm in my coat already, I haven't eaten prosciutto in I can't count how many years, but I'd just met the butcher who had provided the meat, and he knew exactly where the pig had come from and what it had been fed. I happily took a bite...the gentle saltiness was luxurious with the creamy cheese. This is food you are meant to eat and enjoy, even if it comes after the end of the meal-- two weeks later I am still remembering precisely the way it tasted.

As I retraced my way to the subway stop I spied a discarded take home bag from Peter Luger, lost in a gutter under the bridge. Outside the restaurant itself what had been the 8 o'clock dinner crowd now milled around on the corner straightening their scarves and deciding that next time they would order the steak rare. I on the other hand, felt like I'd just descended from cloud nine. Sated and in awe of what my peers are producing-- both food-wise and art-wise-- I floated past the steak house crowd, and up to the elevated train stop. I wouldn't change a thing about the meal I'd just been served or the or the new friends, all local gourmands like myself, who had gathered together to serve it.

Lemons are for Inspiration

I went on a little shopping spree the other day and treated myself to a bowl full of Meyer Lemons. I knew they were in season just now, but a girl from Maine and Michigan hasn't had much of a chance to delight in these delicacies in her green twenty four years. When I was a kid I ate bodega lemons like oranges, sucking on little wedges, much to the cringing of my mother and babysitters and grandparents-- oh! those precious baby teeth were not long for this world!

My habit has mellowed out with age, but I keep staring at this splendid bowl of California Meyer Lemons, and every now and then I draw one to my nose...the scent is sweet and floral...while we continue to get rain and grey skies, I am dreaming of where these lemons will take me. Untouched just there on the kitchen table they offer a shocking promise, and I haven't even sunk my teeth into one yet.

Curry: the anti-anxiety

On Leonard Lopate's show the other day, author of Trail of Crumbs, Kim Sunée, said you should never cook angry. Leonard asked her if by this she meant that there should always be the ingredient of love detectable in the food. She hesitated for a second and then agreed. Cooking should be a calming and emotionally nourishing practice, she went on, and I couldn't agree more.

At my house this week we've been in the throws of a roommate crisis, yet again. February, the shortest month of the year, is quickly drawing to a close and we need to resign our lease on Saturday! The search for a replacement roommate has dragged on and on, and then the person we thought would take the spot backed out at the last second. To complicate matters even more, one of the existing roommates had a death in the family and had to fly back to Ohio on a moment's notice! Grasping for an answer to our desperate situation I tried to take deep breaths and convince myself it would all work out and be done with in a matter of days. But I love this house and its old molding, the jewel box window where I throw dinner parties, the long hallway, and the way the sun comes in my room each morning. What if no one could take the last room? What if we couldn't resign and I had to move out on two days notice? What if I was about to be homeless? Cooking, quite naturally, was what I needed to do to calm me down. "Don't cook when you're angry." Well, what about when everything in your body is ridden with anxiety? I decided the two states were not exactly the same, and turned to the cupboard to retrieve a can of tomatoes.

I'm not sure if it's the cold or the infrequency of good, fresh fruits and vegetables, but I've been craving tomatoes like nothing else these last few weeks. Oh! for the love of a good tomato! Given the housing crisis, I was in desperate need of comfort food, and I thought pasta and lots of sauce would be just the thing to warm me up and calm me down. But before my hand reached the box of linguine, I spotted chick peas and a potato. Then I remembered the coriander I had in the refrigerator. We would be changing course and making curry instead.

In Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl describes turning to curry to get her through her own love-loaded housing decision. I can always feel the tug at heart strings as I imagine her, young and in deep consternation, sad and stirring a spicy, soupy pot of curry. I channel Ruth when I'm feeling the same way. "[...]I clung to the comfort of my commune. I felt safe on Channing Way, and I cooked a lot of shrimp curry. It was my way of saying thank you."

As I heated oil and chopped onions and garlic for my own cure, I hoped that maybe the smell of the food would lure someone new and wonderful into our house. The cumin seeds were added to the shiny oil and spitting garlic. I waited for them to "smell," like my Indian cooking teacher, Shibana, always instructed. When the seeds toasted and indeed started to emit their dusty smell (it recalls markets around the world), I added chopped potatoes. Red chili, curry powder, ground cumin, salt, pepper. The potatoes soaked up all the spices and then I added the tomatoes and the chick peas, some raisins because I love them, and let it stew for close to an hour.

While the curry simmered, a Craigslist miracle descended on our abode. Stephanie showed up soaked through from a February rain. We sat in the kitchen talking over the room that is up for rent, and familiarizing ourselves with one another. While she and I reminisced about childhood dance lessons, time traveling in West Africa, and days in the park, Sarah found a last-minute ticket to Cincinatti for her grandfather's funeral. By the time I offered Stephanie the room and sent her back out into the world with one of our extra umbrellas, the curry was ready. I chopped some cilantro and sprinkled it on top, along with a dollop of yogurt. I settled into the couch and turned on Woody Allen's Manhattan. The raisins were plump with juice, the tomatoes just the tanginess I'd been lusting after, and the potatoes and chickpeas filled a spot in me that had been longing. Everything was going to be just fine.

A Stir Crazy Triumph!

I'm done with February! So, so, done! My stir craziness has started to drive friends away. It's Saturday night and all I wanted to do was stay in and hibernate. But when February gives you ice, I guess you make ice cream...or at least that's what I did.

I've been on a Ronnybrook Farm kick lately. It started with the yogurt, first non-fat, then full fat, then I tried the cream, now I'm hooked on the butter. In between my weekly visits to the Greenmarket I've been dreaming up more and more creative things to cook with the scant resources we're left with in February. (On a side note, I did recently go on a field trip to a Whole Foods and found it boggling that you can in fact buy lemon grass and beautifully ripe red peppers in the middle of the winter in Manhattan. Many people are doing this. The line for the register on a Friday night snaked around the interior of the store. We joined the line. We even bought lemon grass. And then we went home and made a terrific red curry with hake and eggplant and plenty of garlic, ginger, and spice. I love learning to cook Thai food from my friend Rowena just as much as I love the challenge of trying to make something interesting out of what's been kept in the root cellar for the last five months. How many ways can you cook a potato? Everyone seems to be asking this week. We must be getting ready for spring.) This time of year there are Bosc pears at the Greenmarket, and plenty of them. I've cut them up and cooked them with oatmeal, I've eaten them with yogurt, I've poached them in port, I've baked them in tarts. It's like playing a song you can't get enough of-- it fades out and just as soon as it does, you're craving that first chord again. When my yogurt and my pear supply runs out, I go running back to Union Square to stock up on my staples. And then I lug the bounty home and on the train I think of what to make. In my weeks of hibernation there has been much eating of ice cream going on. Favorite flavors include (but are not limited) to: dulce de leche, rum raisin, butter pecan, and of course, coffee. But now that I've got a solid source of heavy cream from a local farm, why not make my own? Then Yonathan loaned me his nifty Cuisine Art ice cream machine and I was left with no more excuses.

First I made a purée of pears adding just a little sugar, a cup of pear juice (admittedly not local, but bought from the lovely and very local shop, D'Vine, a Syrian grocery around the corner), and a quarter cup of water. Then I separated the eggs, saving six yolks for the crème anglaise. Since I didn't have a vanilla bean I ground up some of the cardamom pods I brought back from Morocco and added them to the mix. This is the first time I've made crème anglaise, and I have to say, it went off without a hitch! You heat the cream without bringing it to a boil, pour a little into the yolks (whisking the yolks all the while), then pour your mixture back into the remaining cream. If your heat isn't too high and you continue to stir, you will get a lovely, thick sauce. In the end, the pear purée was added to the crème, and then into the fridge my batter went to chill for a mere four hours.

By midnight the ice cream maker was churning away, transforming my first triumph of the evening into the second: real deal, no two ways about it, nothing fat free in sight, ice cream.

The other day, in a particularly February funk, I decided it was time to take out the last of the raspberries and blackberries I'd frozen in July. The tart and slightly twiggy taste of a raspberry melting in my mouth softened me: I could remember what July feels like-- eventually we'll be there again. For now there are three containers of pear-cardamom bliss in my freezer. I think I'll eat a little bit tomorrow, but when it's too hot to sleep this summer I'll be able to dip into the reserves and recall a chill so fierce outside that it seemed best just to stay in on Saturday night and make ice cream.

Comfort Me With Applesauce

'An apple a day,' 'apples to apples,' 'Eve and the apple.' No doubt, this fruit is 'ripe' with possibility (I can't help myself), and luckily apples remain (relatively) ripe throughout the winter. We used to keep them in the uninsulated mud room in our house in Maine then bring them up to the kitchen when we wanted to make applesauce to go with pork chops-- when stored properly in a root cellar apples keep like champs. I've heard a lot of people complaining about the lack of variety in the Greenmarket lately-- it is February after all, and the the Greenmarket's slim offerings are not the only reminder that we are in the slugging-through-winter phase of the year. Right now, the day before Valentines Day, I am looking out the kitchen window at a street so grey and rainy it makes my heart ache. A week ago it was a balmy 64˚ in Midtown. I was sweating in a black wool dress as I darted between interviews, and at the end of the day felt so disheartened by the suits and ties I'd been bumping elbows with that it was all I could do to drag myself home to Brooklyn. At 42nd St. I pondered my options and chose to take the Q train because the view from the Manhattan Bridge looking back on the maze of buildings and career climbing cradles me when I need it most, and that afternoon I was feeling in need of a little assurance. I was zoning out to my iPod when the car pulled in to 14th St. and then I remembered that it was Wednesday, a market day. I'd almost forgotten! Immediately, things started to look up.

About a month ago I overheard someone say "I went to the market, but all they have now is apples." She said it with a cringe, as though the insult to my beloved farmers wasn't enough. With the complaint ringing annoyingly in my ears I went out one day to prove her wrong, but sadly discovered that she was not too far off the mark. I walked around surveying the produce, taking in the scant collections of squash, the small baskets of mushrooms, the potatoes, and mildly comparing choices and prices of apples--the one thing everyone had in abundance. I bought a few from my apple guy, and then I rounded the corner to find bags of stray apples thrown together with tiny Bosc pears. One five pound bag for $3! Quelle bonne marché! That week I made my first batch of apple sauce along with a variety of poached pear desserts. The next week I went back for more. Now I can't seem to stop myself. I eat warm applesauce alongside greens and squash for dinner, or applesauce with yogurt for breakfast, and once I had the genius idea to use it in a spice cake.

Last week, as I morosely emerged from the subway, there was a pot of hot pear cider calling my name. Then I wandered over to my new favorite apple guy to pick up my now habitual mixed bag of pears and apples. At the Ronnybrook Dairy stand I bought yogurt and splurged on a bottle of heavy cream (either the warm weather or just my quirkiness has brought on cravings for ice cream in February). By the time I was on the Q again, looking back at Manhattan as we traversed the bridge, I was already feeling better. Behind me was another day of job hunting; ahead of me was home, my kitchen, and the solace that comes with diving in to a good cooking project.

In our house growing up, apple sauce was always something of a treat. My dad would make it on Sundays in the winter, maybe because he was a little bored, or a little lonely up there in Maine in the dead of January. He'd call me in to the kitchen and wait for my reaction as he revealed what was under the lid of the stock pot. "Ohhh, applesauce!" Sweet steam clouded around my face, and I could see two cinnamon sticks pocking out of the soft pink pulp. This was, and is, a meeting of happy things-- sweet, cinnamon, and pink-- if that doesn't warm you up, I don't know what will. So now, in the doldrums of winter, in between jobs, pondering days filled with many 'what ifs', I have been going back to the basics and simmering many apples. Sometimes I stand by the stove and watch them cook down. Lately there's time in the day to do this, and I take comfort in savoring the slow simmering process. Even if it is raining when it should be snowing, or it's 64˚ in Midtown when we should be complaining about the city's wind tunnels, it is still winter, and my body knows it is time for hibernation. Applesauce is the perfect companion to hunker down and wait it out with.