Masher

More Front Yard Harvest

• by Laura, October 22, 2008

Here’s husband pulling some beets from the front yard.  He’s from South Central Pennsylvania, where people love red beets--as I blogged last spring about our courtship there and my early encounters with his family.  I thought it only fitting that I show him here with these gorgeous things.  For that story and a great beets recipe, clink the link below.

see also: Rothe Ruben (Red Beets) from Lancaster

Artist's Notebook

Kitchen Art

• by Nancy, October 18, 2008

Seated at my easel late one night looking at a careful arrangement of beautiful objects I had placed on a counter-top, I had an epiphany. Why am I such a curator in my paintings when real life is so messy and full of movement?  As an exercise, I began taking photos of my subject matter without looking through the view finder in order to force myself out of my conventional way of seeing. This photo of my sugar canister is one of the first. Check in here for more as the work progresses, and in the meantime see the beautiful Cotån mentioned in the quote below by clicking here.

“The kitchen pictures or bodegones of Juan Sånchez Cotån (1561 - 1627) are conceived from the beginning as exercises in the renunciation of normal human priorities . . . It would not be enough simply to record the fruit and vegetables and game as they are; mere realism would not bite deep enough into vision to dislodge the habitual blindnesses and vanities which lurk there . . .The enemy is a mode of seeing which thinks it knows in advance what is worth looking at and what is not; against that the image presents the constant surprise of things seen for the first time.”
From Looking At The Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting by Norman Bryson (Harvard University Press, 1990.)

Masher

Practical Advice:  Filling the Larder

• by Laura, October 14, 2008

Even though I haven’t lived in a city for ten years, I still sort of act like I do--buying in small quantities and shopping almost every
day--perhaps I’m still imagining I’m MFK Fisher in 1940s France.  I don’t know.  I cook enough for the meal at hand and just go the market the next day and begin again. I like things very fresh.  I’ve got a small kitchen and small fridge.

Problem is that I work.  I’m completely busy and overwhelmed with all i have to do in a day.  There are not enough hours to work full time and attend to the kids, husband, house, dog, take care of the people in my life and the mountain of domestica.  bla bla bla.  I’m in the thick of it.  My husband of twenty years says to me “We’re in the grind.” And he means those years of the midlife when we are caring for others and never have enough time.  Bills fall late.  We run out of clean clothes.  We run out of milk. 

And way too often, the cupboard is bare because I’m in a fantasy I think that I’m going to stroll to the market and inspect the fruit and vegetables one by one.  Seems like it’s the way life should be.  But it’s not.  At least not here in suburbia land new jersey.  At least not now. 

I’m coming to think that those old gals had some good ideas about filling the larder.  You know the kinds of women who had cellars filled with hundreds of jars

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Masher

More Front Yard Harvest

• by Laura, October 10, 2008

Masher

Drunk on Peaches

• by Laura, October 10, 2008

It’s over.  I know it is.  No matter about the warm snap of the last few days.  The tomatoes remain stubbornly green.  My cucumber vine is shriveled.  There are a few last beans and peppers.  I keep meaning to plant some cold weather spinach, but it’s not happening.  That’s what happens when it’s over. 

And that’s why I’ve been busy the last month trying to save the last bit of the end-of-season harvest.  These peaches are the last ones of the season from my favorite New Jersey orchard.  I was flummoxed at first about the recipe asking for a cask.  A cask?  I asked Sandra Oliver at Food History News.  After we bemoaned that gosh you just can’t get a cask anywhere--not at William Sonoma or all the other gazillion cook’s stores out there now--Sandy counseled me to use glass.  So I did.

When I told Nancy about my project and sent her this photo of my drunked peaches, she sent me back a link to this Monet painting of . . . peaches in a jar. Amazing resemblance don’t you think?  http://www.monetalia.com/paintings/monet-jar-of-peaches.aspx

In the meantime, my peaches are marinating in brandy for a couple of weeks now.  In about six weeks more, Nancy and I plan to podcast ourselves drinking this stuff--who knows what could happen.  Stay tuned.

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Artist's Notebook

Old Fruit, Modern Life

• by Nancy, September 11, 2008

The last peaches of summer. That’s how pastry chefs referred to September peaches when I was in the business. They’re wonderful in a tart with ginger ice cream of course, but more than that they’re a symbol of an ending, of the last warm days of dying summer, the fleeting days of cricket song and cooler nights. When the peaches are fresh picked, they’re glorious, full of juice and intense flavor. Overripe they’re even more impressive, as there’s such beauty in the dying. This is what I’m trying to paint now. Thinking about this a month or so ago, I thought that the young peaches are like children to me with their smooth blushing skin, and all the character of midlife and old age is there in the wrinkled and bruised skin of a peach that is overripe. But there was more than that. My painting professor at graduate school told me that this is a cliché. I must look deeper, she said. So I did.

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Masher

A Hive for the Honeybees

• by Laura, September 08, 2008

Okay, so I already mentioned my love of those gazillions of honey bees and bumblebees in my front yard garden.

But I think I’ve got to say a bit more about honey, which I’ve recently fallen for pretty hard. 

It began a few years ago when I went into one of my favorite bakeries here in town and saw a display of honey jars stacked in a pretty golden pyramid.  Turned out that the bakers—Will and Sally—were raising bees in their backyard.  So I bought a bottle to try and took it home. 

Some hours later, standing in the kitchen counter in my boring life, I tasted it and was blown away by the light color and beautiful minty taste.  I’d never experienced anything like it.  Later a beekeeper explained to me that the minty taste came from

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Artist's Notebook

Paris in New Jersey

• by Nancy, September 01, 2008

I’m in Paris. No I’m not, but I feel like I am. It’s the long holiday weekend, my ex-husband has my son and I am painting by day and going out to cafés by night. It is all so sensual and delicious. In a paint splattered tank top at my easel until the sun sets, and in heels leaving lipstick prints on glasses of pinot at a table for two until I’m sleepy and ready for bed. Kisses and paint and arugula . . . sigh. And tomorrow I will be a single mom again hurrying from my full-time job to child to home and to my easel again, this time at night with my son safely abed as I paint in the kitchen into the wee hours, well beyond the time I would like to put my head on a pillow. Don’t get me wrong, I love my New Jersey life, my son’s angelic face as he sleeps, our spaghetti dinner plates resting in the sink. But oh, as I load them into the dishwasher tomorrow night, I know I will be dreaming of my brief nights in Paris . . . 

Masher

Smoked Blues

• by Laura, August 18, 2008

Lou gives me a call.  It goes something like this.  “Laura.  I’ve got the smoker going and a lot of bluefish.  You want a piece?”

Now, you’ve got to know how I love bluefish.  So what am I gonna do...say no?  A few hours later, I arrive to find Lou standing in his garage with the smoker going, and huge plumes of smoke blowing down the driveway.  “They’ve been on since 8 this morning,” he explains. 

Typical. 

Lou, as many of you know, is a great cook and friend, who busts me mercilessly and offers comic relief to my overly serious self.  I say “Lou, Can I take your picture at your smoker?”

He replies by singing a snippet from a Louie Prima song,

Se ti piglia lu pisciaolo
Tssu vai, issu viene
Sempre lu pesce a manu tiene

Which is basically about a guy who is always holding fish in his hand.  (Get it?) It’s a great song in dialect from the wonderful region of Naples, same as Lou.

Anyway here is Lou at the smoker.  (Sorry Lou for the less than flattering shot with your eyes closed!)

And here are his bluefish inside the smoker. 

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking how can I get a smoker like that?  Well, you can’t.  This is a custom job, built for Lou by a couple of friends, and I don’t remember the whole story either, except that it’s a workhorse.  He’s had whole pigs on the spit in there. 

And what you also need to know is that if you get into this ancient form of preservation, the smoke alone wont do the full job to preserve food safely.  You’ve either got to dry it in addition or salt it.  That’s why Lou first fillets these fish then puts them in a salty brine before smoking.  The result is stong, salty, smokey, and absolutely delicious.

And here’s a better picture.  Can you guess what Lou’s saying? 

“Calda!” Which is not dialect for “Hurry up and take the picture--the fish is hot!”

Lou often catches the fish he smokes, but in this case, a friend brought them by.  For Lou’s smoking services, the fee is simple.  He keeps half.  That’s right.  “I get ten to smoke.  I keep five,” he explains.  Seems fair enough when you consider all the work and time.

Maybe we’ll come back next month to visit Lou’s back yard when it is the scene of much tomato preserving. 

But before you go, click here to brighten up your day with this completely fun Louie Prima song that will have you dancing and wishing you were from Naples, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg3C0nvenro&feature=related

Masher

Front Yard Garden Update

• by Laura, August 18, 2008

Okay, so we're slacking a bit.  Weeds are growing.  Some tomatoes are cascading onto the sidewalk.  And this is no time to slack. It's August!  There's weeding to be done, and harvesting, and then planting some fall crop.  But hey, my kids were away with their aunt and uncle and grandparents in Florida this weekend, and it's the first time in years that my husband and I had a weekend off together. We headed to the city one day, the beach the next.  Sorry garden, but no way was I staying home to tend you.

Still, it's hard not to beam with pride--and we do all the time.  Our beans are very productive growing on the tee-pee in the center.  Biggest success:  cucumbers, which you see on the trellis in foreground, a long prickly skinned variety that is very crunchy.  We eat them every night.  Tomatoes a little slower than we'd hoped, but coming along and lovely.  Hot peppers turning red.  Chard ready to harvest.  Root vegetables slow but coming.  All in all, a great joy.

The biggest surprise for me was the bees.  As I've written earlier, this garden--which mixes flowers, herbs, and vegetables--was inspired by the front yard gardens I saw in Italy.  Now I'm really wondering why in the world we segregate or vegetable patches and flowers here.  Clearly they belong together.  Honeybees are attracted to flowers and then pollinate everything we've got.  All summer long there have been dozens of bees in the garden at any given moment.  They especially liked the cucumbers.  Who knew that our garden would be helping bees--giving them food so they can make honey? 

For those just visiting jellypress for the first time..... you can see how this garden was transformed from a useless patch of grass, by clicking the link below “tomatoes at my front door.”

see also: Tomatoes at my Front Door

Masher

Corn Love

• by Laura, August 13, 2008

Corn.  A kind of grass.  Long ago with tiny cobs smaller than a pinky finger, in Mexico, where it began, 5,000 years ago, maybe more.  First cultivated by natives (probably women). Traded northward to tribes as far as the Great Lakes and Massachusetts.  Stolen by the first Europeans.  Pounded in mortars.  Bred to cloying sweetness.  Shipped all over the world.  Genetically modified. Made dirt cheap with farm subsidies. Turned into cheap sugar syrup. Villified. 

The journey of corn is more than any writer could ever dream up. In the corn mother myths of natives, the perfect mother dies for the sake of her hungry children.  From her body springs the first corn plants that enable life.  In Pueblos, her image blends with the Virgin Mother.

Corn gives us life.  It kills us with diabetes.  It grows in the shape of human likeness, tall with tassles like arms and legs.  Fed to cows that evolved to eat grass.  6.5 pounds of corn feed make 1 pound of beef.  Fuel for a meat eating culture.  Now, as ethanol.  Fuel for a car culture.

Nancy and I talk all the time about the conflict of food in modern life.  You can see the conflict in her painting.  The life and death of corn.  The beauty.  The dead body.  The fallen bird.

We don’t want to dismiss technology and all it has brought our lives. The idea of small local farms that the Slow Food movement loves is very appealing but seems so utterly irrational and expensive when you think of all the hunger in the world and people in developing nations desperate for technology so they can feed themselves.  Anyway, if all the world went to small local farms, wouldn’t a famine ensue?  Could small local farms sustain cities that have little farm land left?

Will we ever really be locavores as Whole Foods markets tell us to?  Is it realistic?  Or are these ideas things we tell ourselves in the hopes of feeling more morally superior about our wealth.  It is hard to know. 

What do you think? 

Not to be Forgotten

Corn Fritters

• by Laura, August 12, 2008

Yes, this is a corn plant from my garden, nearly ready. 

But as to this recipe--it’s a “not to be forgotten” all the way, because not only is it a good thing to make, but also because it clearly bears some African influence, which is typical of the old southern cookbooks.  Dishes like these are a silent legacy of slavery.  Africans brought with them an expertise in frying (and for fritters) and also taste for the piquant, which is obvious in the large amount of black pepper.  So perhaps Mrs. Bryan was documenting the dish from her African cook or someone else’s.  But in any case, she seems to have done a poor job.  This recipe is obviously impossible. She calls for 12 ears of corn and only 4 egg yolks to bind it all together.  Ridiculous.  Ridiculous of course till you realize that this was nearly 200 years ago and corn was surely smaller, but for that matter so were eggs.  (We breed everything so large now.) And how much flour, really is the two spoonfuls?  We’ll never know. 

Don’t get bogged down.  It’s just a concept, and the concept is this:  Shuck your corn, then the take a knife and cut off the kernels.  Mix them together with enough egg yolk, salt and pepper and flour as will hold it together, then fry.  I found the result a little plain, and of course the sweetness of corn today is just sometimes so annoyingly candylike.  So here’s what I did:

2 cups fresh corn kernals (about 4 ears)
1 tablespoon, plus a little more, finely minced onion
2 teaspoons, finely minced flesh of a serrano chile
1/4 cup flour (you might like for half of this to be cornmeal)
1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) salt
black pepper to taste
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons milk or, even better, butter milk
1/4 grated cheddar--optional only if you don’t mind a softer melty fritter

Mix together the first seven ingredients.  Then add milk and cheese if you are using.  Fry on a griddle that is greased with olive oil or butter, until brown on each side.

If I were a chef I’d go to town with this.  I’d hold the cheese and instead, serve a corn fritter as an appetiser with a warm frisee salad and a dollop of goat cheese on top.  Or perhaps I’d serve with a fresh mango salsa.  Or a tomato salsa with cilantro.  Or perhaps some wlted arugula.  My home tasters like them plain.  But not for breakfast.  No way.  Rather, as an “agreeable relish” as Mrs. Bryan suggests.  In any case, corn fritters are an open canvas.  There’s so much fresh corn around now. Try them with left over cobs the next day.  And be sure to eat them fresh off the griddle. 

Masher

We thought the corn plants had souls

• by Laura, August 11, 2008

“We cared for our corn in those days, as we would care for a child; for we Indian people loved our fields as mothers love their children.  We thought the corn plants had souls, as children have souls, and that the growing corn liked to hear us sing, as children like to hear their mothers sing to them.”

Buffalo Bird Woman,
Hidatsa Indian, born 1839 in an earth lodge in present-day North Dakota

Masher

Jersey Girls Love Jersey Tomatoes

• by Laura, July 23, 2008

As a Jersey girl, It’s hard not to give a nod to Julia Moskin today in The New York Times who did some wonderful reporting on the supremacy of the good old Jersey Tomato--make that the Ramapo variety.  She interviewed farmers who described the “horticultural garbage” they encountered when trying to grow heirloom varieties for a market gone “ga ga.” Well guess what, Ramapo tomatoes--hybrids, bred by laboratories--are better.  They resist rot.  They don’t crack on the vine.  And they have a wonderful balance of sweet and acid.  No they don’t have pretty stripes like the Green Zebra.  They are “nondescript red and round,” and this is a good thing--they are powerhouse producers with great taste. They are our heirloom here.  I can’t help but beam with pride. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/dining/23toma.html

Masher

Creative New Uses for Your Kitchen Gear

• by Laura, July 22, 2008

Wouldn’t I like to be a space traveler, too, with my Kitchen Aid bowl as a helmet and measuring spoon as my weapon?  A bell head with a gong?  A little boy rummaging around the kitchen, age 7, age of grace. I sense reality creepng in.  But here, one blessed moment.