Using freezer contents….(saves on groceries)

When we started working on farms in the Hudson Valley a few years ago it became clear we could use a chest freezer to put by all our surplus food. Now we’ve reached a new level with our winter freezer contents, and as spring is coming around the corner we’re trying to use up as much as we can. Here’s the abbreviated list of what we’ve got left: various blends and molds of pesto, whole chickens, salmon, meat, fruits, greens, a few herbs, tomato sauce, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and many other veggies.

So, we roasted a chicken following Julia Child’s instructions, but the picture is a good use of the leftovers: shredded leftover chicken with couscous, peppers, olives, raisins, and a shallot and lime vinaigrette with butter glazed carrots.

We also got a first use out of grandma Celeste’s copy of Marcella Hazan’s classic, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and modified one of her sausage and pasta recipes. The pasta we used was from Mario Batali’s Eataly shop in NYC, and it was called calamari because, maybe I’m stating the obvious, it’s shaped like calamari.

The caveman-like dish was actually a braised lamb shank paired with a great Rosso di Montalcino. In a Dutch oven we braised the shanks in red wine with some aromatic veggies and after a few hours, voila. The Rosso was a great table wine and really paired well with the food. Although Emma sells wine for a living I can at least say this: the wine was well-balanced, smelled of dark fruits, dried cherries or raisins (maybe even a bit of leather), was dry but pleasant to drink with some acidity and a lingering finish. Oh, I almost forgot (probably due to the wine) that the pasta dish was a primi to the lamb, so the Italian wine went well with the Italian dish as well as the lamb. On the side, we roasted parsnips.

And of course we had apple pie for dessert! Emma made the beautiful lattice top, but since it’s hard to level the apples the fruit ended up sinking away from the lattice after baking–ah the details. Nonetheless, we’ve been getting excellent apples at the public market, and for this one we used Matzu/Crispin and Ida Red.

More on peaches and pie

It is true that food can convey a sense of place, geographically and temporally, if made well with regionally-specific ingredients or with a culturally-revelant recipe. I have come to feel this more and more as we choose to cook with fruits and veggies primarily sourced from Western New York State– our food is literally coming from the land/the space surrounding us. Yet, since moving into 99 Clay Ave., I have often felt an additional association to place, one that cuts deep into my most fond memories of eating and cooking as a kid, for the physical space in which I cook every day is the same space where my Grandmother Celeste poured her heart into every meal, pie, or can of peaches that she generously fed to her family day in and out.

Not only did I grow up eating spaghetti and meatballs, Bisquick pancakes, and cherry pie at the same kitchen table as I dine at now with Ben, but I spent much time perched on the corner counter watching Gram peer into a pot of simmering sauce, or elevated to proper working-height on a stool built by my Grandfather, so that I could peel apples and roll out dough for apple pies that Gram and I loved to create together.

Each time I relive these experiences from my past, like baking a pie or sitting down to eat a can of preserved peaches (my absolute favorite treat from Gram’s pantry), the sight, smell, and tastes bring me back to the days when this kitchen was her kingdom, and these meals her loving creations. In this way, food and where it is prepared and enjoyed offers much more than sustenance, it gives each of us a way of remembering and reflecting on our past, and it provides those of us who have shared a meal together before with a collective memory and sense of place and time.

Eating cuts to the core of who we are, to those experiences we have had over food throughout our lives, and by doing so it nourishes our body and spirit, and ties us to a moment or place.Like the way a song can bring you back to the first place you heard it, or a whiff of X cologne brings to mind your first lover, eating in what is now my own kitchen sometimes transports me via time machine to 1995, when eating a bowl of grandma’s peaches after climbing the old oak tree was the most perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And on a Sunday morning baking with Ben, I find myself remembering those days with a grin and a tear, as we together carry on the tradition of creating collective memories over the food we share.

Note: These amazing photos of our Apple-Pear pie were taken by Rob Walsh, who helped us create yet another fond memory in the kitchen. Last week he came equipped with all his photo gear to document our latest efforts at pie baking. And he took all the photos on the same corner counter where Gram rolled out her pie dough and where I sat, legs dangling, as we waited for a chicken to roast or a pie to be pulled steaming from the oven.

simple ain’t easy…but it sure is good

In the introduction to Paul Bertoli’s revelatory book, Cooking By Hand, he unfolds two notions that have stuck with me. First, that good cooking is trouble. Second, that the foundation of being a good chef is based on two basic abilities–observing and responding to ingredients.

Regarding the trouble with good cooking, Bertoli was paraphrasing the iconic food author and cook Elizabeth David who, he explains, was trying to warn us that when taken seriously cooking presents some trouble. The work can be painstaking, and the path to a dish, let alone a cultured cuisine can be serpentine. For example, it can be troubling to develop an ability to recognize the qualities of ripeness. To understand the finicky nature of fruit, say, is to delve into the complexities and elusiveness of nature itself. And so we arrive back to the second point of Bertoli’s I mentioned, observing and responding to ingredients. Sure, it takes skill to cook, but as someone who has a serious interest in growing food I have to say that the depth and subtleties acquired from gardening, the focus it brings on the life of plants, is greatly informative to cooking. Experience does not come quick or easy however, and following ones senses from the garden to the kitchen is trouble indeed.

So, the latest dishes we’ve made have been fairly simple in principle yet found a way to offer something more complex in the end.

I think it’s kind of funny that when it comes to literature I mostly read works by men, and yet when it comes to cooking there are some towering women on top of my lists. The salad came from Martha Rose Shulman’s Recipes for Health, featuring her NYtimes.com work. A simple mix of greens with sweet potato croutons and Stilton cheese certainly deserved to make the cut. The dressing was soured with buttermilk, punched with Dijon, and rounded out from a splash of lime and balsamic. Most of the primary ingredients we picked up locally at the public market, and everything tasted fresh, creamy, crunchy, sweet and pungent.

The soup was butternut squash, compliments of Deborah Madison’s vegetable soups book (another angel of vegetables and cuisine, among the likes of Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Molly Katzen, and Judy Rogers). The secret to this one is adding aromatic vegetables and herbs–onions, carrots, thyme, etc.–to the steaming liquid. So, as the vegetables, in this case squash, steam and release their juices everything melds in the pot to create a broth en route. With a sweet broth and some mascarpone dolloped on top, a couple fried leaves of sage–bliss.

Lastly, we opened our first can of peaches from this past summer. For those of you who don’t get what people fuss about when it comes to things like french wine, or carbon bikes, or high fidelity, it may seem strange to wax poetic about homemade canned goods. But for those of you who read Laura Ingalls Wilder, or grew up slurping down bing cherries and peaches in the middle of winter, prepare to drool. Our peaches, from local growers, preserved with the most gentle of syrups, invoke a sense of peachiness on the pallet that no store-bought version can muster. And once we started eating the soft tissue of peach, a quart was hardly enough.

The soup and salad were not what I’d call hard, but they did demand a certain amount of understanding and attention that we’ve only come to gain over time. Canning, on the other hand always seems to become a big project, and the reaping often comes much later. All in all, I’ll put my foot down any day in favor of simple food, as long as its graceful yet alluring, beautiful but expressive of wonderment and finesse. Too much to ask?