Introducing Sweet Pea

Dear Friends,

First let me say, happy fall! And second: it's been far too long. Apologies that I've been so silent here. Our little daughter is keeping us busy — amazingly, mind-blowingly busy. Rich and I work at home and take turns watching her, and we feel completely awed to get to be a part of her everyday. Awed and blessed and exhausted enough, by the end of each day, that we "could sleep standing up, like a horse" — a phrase from Frances Mayes' "Under the Tuscan Sun" that comes to me often. (If you like a good food memoir — a terrible descriptor, but you know what I mean — I can't recommend it enough. The movie was beyond horrendous, but the book is sincerely a thing of beauty.)

Also keeping us busy are some new projects. Rich, among other things, has two novels in the works — different styles, but both with characters so real and idiosyncratic that I now feel they live among us — and I've just started a new blog, Sweet Pea, on the Forbes site.

It's partly about, for now anyway, deciding to feed Emmy a vegetarian diet, and for her sake wanting to become a smarter vegetarian than I ever was on my own. I want our meals to be less about the subtraction of meat than the addition of lots of new protein sources and other delicious and healthy things I've been too complacent to try, discover or find out more about.

The motivation for the blog was kind of a time-saving one. I found myself wondering about things (just how much protein does she actually need each day? are genetically modified foods bad for kids? is honey really any better for her than brown sugar?) and researching things (what exactly is Salba, the trademarked "ancient grain" used by the Happy Baby brand?) and thought that if I'm wondering and reading and asking around, chances are good that other parents have the same questions.

I'm excited for the chance to collect these thoughts all together, along with the pleasures of cooking for Em and, of course, my farmers' market visits. If you've been missing The Market Report, I hope you'll click on Sweet Pea for a fix.

Also, Salba, it turns out, is chia seed — as in Chia Pets, explaining the name change — which is actually a great source of omega 3 fatty acids and ALAs (alpha lipoic acids), nutrients that infant formula is often fortified with. Beyond the baby set, triathletes apparently dig it, too.

Again, take good care, friends. I hope you'll visit me soon and often at the new site.

Love,
Michelle
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New Kid in Town

There's a new little lady at our table these days. Nevermind that she does a Tarzan yell when she's overly hungry and would gnaw the table edge if we let her — she's excellent company.

I was chatting with Pattie at FoodShedPlanet the other day, and she asked how our daughter (Emerson — after the b.s.-ignoring, life-embracing Mr. Emersons in "A Room With a View") has changed the way we eat. The short answer is that we no longer have the luxury of time with which to be overly particular. These days it's less about what we feel like eating than what's in the house, or can be quickly delivered.

The longer answer, though, is that despite being a person who used to think about food more or less constantly, she's caused me to re-examine everything I buy and eat. Changed me to the root. When I was breastfeeding (the well went dry at six months) everything I brought to my mouth triggered the question: Do I really want to feed her this? And now that she's eating "solid" foods — now that I'm responsible for filling the tummy of this squeaky-clean little person who I'm shaping with each spoonful — questions that I vaguely or occasionally considered before are now bold-faced and sharp: Was this sprayed with chemicals? Was its DNA modified in lab? Who made this and with what intentions?

Last week I steamed and pureed some bosc pears for her. I'd made sure they were organic when I bought them, but peeling them I noticed their stickers said they were grown in the USA. Where are pears growing in February, I started to wonder. Have they been in an airless room since November, or were they grown more recently and shipped thousands of miles?

Surely, it's a slippery slope, just how much to geek out about what to feed her. I love this kid ferociously. With a degree of love that six months ago I couldn't have grasped (my mother has always said to my sisters and me, in a playful way, "I love you more," when we tell her we love her, and only now do I know she was right). I guess my point is, I'm still finding my footing on that slope.  

It's hardly all furrowed-brows and soul-searching, though. Choosing, one by one, which new tastes to introduce her to — sweet potato, avocado, peas, banana — has been not only fun but a welcome reminder of how delicious a single, well-chosen ingredient can be. Those pears couldn't cook fast enough. In the kitchen together, Rich and I took turns standing over the pot and inhaling. Their scent wasn't "pear," it was honey, vanilla, coconut. I filled an ice-tray with single-servings for Em, but first Rich and I, a little guiltily (stealing food from a baby!) each had a bowl of the puree for dessert. The best dessert I've had in some time.

The last few days, though, I've started giving her slightly more complex tastes, after dipping into cookbooks and visiting a pediatrician who thinks the one-new-food-every-three-days rule is old-fashioned. (Her daughter's first food, she told me, was white beans cooked in broth with garlic and rosemary, because that's what she was feeding the rest of her family; a jerky part of me thought: show-off.) I went home and made red lentils with cumin, which went over better once I stirred in some prunes, one day, and pears the next. (I don't blame the kid, they totally needed salt — a thing I've read is bad for babies' kidneys. I hope someone tells me soon that that's a lie. It seems a shame, too, to eat avocado without a sprinkle of the coarse stuff.)

On Friday, taking an idea from the Annabel Karmel "First Meals" cookbook a friend lent me, I made a puree of organic leeks, potato and peas — first sautéing the leeks in olive oil, adding the cubed potato, and then a cup of very, very diluted organic mushroom stock (the recipe called for all stock but, again, the salt issue stopped me). Once the potatoes were soft I added a cup of frozen peas, cooked it a few more minutes, and then pureed it with a little water. It's the most trouble I've gone to for her dinner so far, and in the end it was just okay. I wish I'd put the emphasis on the peas instead of the potatoes. Em's been eating it, but she's made clear that she'll take a bowl of the cooked pears over it any day.

That's my girl.

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Zucchini Bars

There's the old song "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better," but when I saw this "zucchini bar" in the Baker's Bounty tent at the Grand Army Plaza farmers' market, my thoughts went instead to the Chorus Line classic (cue jazz hands) "I Can Do That."

My family makes a looser, more moist version of this that we call zucchini quiche (I include the recipe in The Gastronomy of Marriage). But I liked the idea of a firmer version that can be eaten with fingers off a napkin, served room temperature with a cold aperitivo, or in lieu of bread alongside a summer dinner. At first bite, it was even drier than I expected — almost too dry, some might say. But this made it seem even more perfect for pairing with a before-dinner glass of white wine, or a finger of white vermouth over ice. 

I think a fiddled-with version of my zucchini quiche could eventually get one to these bars. What do you think? A bit more flour, grate the zucchini (instead of cubing it) and squeeze it out in a dish towel? Maybe a little extra parmigiana over the top, to ensure that browned, texture top? If you give it a try, please do share the results. I think we've got several weeks yet until the end of zucchini season — or the need for a cold drink headed into dinner.
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Changes

Entirely gratuitous cupcake* photo, my apologies.

Now that I have your attention, however, let me say how nice it is to see you here, and apologies, too, that I've been rather absent lately. I hope I didn't for a moment imply that there wasn't tons going on at the farmers' markets during these last few cold/wet/snowy weeks. (Oh, the delights waiting in those piles of potatoes, shallots and chard!) I've just been a little too busy, too tired and too cold to get myself over there lately.

Mostly because it's been a pummeling winter, we packed up our apartment and moved, and ... I'm having a baby. Which, with a winter coat on, some days already feels like lugging another person around.

On the first front, however, this morning the clocks did their "spring forward," and R. and I spotted a few burst cherry blossoms — like the first kernels to pop — dangling from wet branches, on our walk for some coffee and pastries. On the second front, while we're still close to the Grand Army Plaza market, we're even closer now to a smaller Sunday market that sets up on Park Slope's 5th Ave. (and is favored by the Pickle Man, who once talked us into not one but four tubs of his briny delicacies while we browsed, waiting for Stone Park to open for brunch). It's exciting to have moved only four blocks but to still feel like we have a new neighborhood to explore.

And on the third, I'm excited to set up our new kitchen — a feat that will include growing the counter space beyond a single foot (curses!) and including a way to actually store food in the room — and to get cooking. No one who witnessed the speed with which I put away a slice cannoli-cream-filled cake at my cousin's wedding yesterday would guess it, but my thinking about food has been forced to change a bit — there's a little person on board who requires more nutrients than exist in the foods that R. or I might generally feel like eating, which means it's time for some new habits, and new recipes. Less pasta and more veggies; less bread and rice, more protein and whole grains. And what better time for this new regime than spring, with the baby greens and other young offerings making their returns to the markets.

(Baby daffodils, how the sight of you gives me hope of shedding that damn winter coat soon!)






















It's an exciting time, and an all-around contemplative one. Lately people are also asking me what will follow Gastronomy, and though I have some ideas, I'm not yet certain. But I'm thinking, and trying to figure out the beginnings of my next path, and I'm trying to continue to grow. Although, the growing seems to be a pretty sure thing.












*This Hostess homage was spotted last spring in the window of Betty Bakery on Atlantic Avenue. It was accompanied by a coconut-frosted number that I also photographed and excitedly made my screen saver. For reasons of sanity and waistline, however, the gesture was short-lived.
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Brooklyn's Underground Lobster Roll Scene

First rule of the underground lobster pound is you don’t talk about the underground lobster pound. Not at full volume into your iPhone on the sidewalk of this illegal lobster-roll purveyor, and definitely not with a gaggle of tilting friends swilling beer from plastic party cups.

“It’s cool, people are really coming out of the woodwork,” Ben Sargent* said, with his ever-present, good-natured grin. “But they’ve gotta get smarter about this...”

Sargent, a Boston-area native whose seafood skills were gleaned from his paternal grandfather, was the man behind the old Williamsburg, Brooklyn, dive Hurricane Hopeful (where Bobby Flay once challenged him to a chowder throwdown), is the co-creator of the Brooklyn Fishing Derby and is known to radio and YouTube audiences as The Brooklyn Chowder Surfer. He started serving up lobster rolls in his Greenpoint smidgen of a kitchen — $14 a roll, and he’ll slip one through the mail slot if you call when he’s indisposed — toward the end of January, wanting a new outlet for at least one of the two things he says he does best in this world.

Made with meat pulled from Maine waters less than 24 hours earlier, Sargent’s are the “Old Man and the Sea” of lobster rolls: simplified and perfected until at a glance they appear child’s play, but a sampling reveals the hand of a master.

“You want to see if a chef is any good, ask him to make you a grilled cheese,” Sargent said. “Give him two slices of white bread, two slices of cheddar, some butter and see what he does.”

In the same vein, Sargent culls high kitchen art from a minimum of ingredients: fresh lobster, a salt water brew, melted butter, mayonnaise, a dash of Old Bay Seasoning and his favorite hotdog buns. (“It’s the corn syrup that makes them so good,” he offered sheepishly.)

The buns are brushed with butter on each side before being splayed on an electric skillet, which results in a textural heaven: a crunch, soft, crunch before the teeth hit that sweet, tender meat.

“You stuff it with lettuce and celery, and it tastes like lettuce and celery! Even the temperature is so important. I tell people to call an hour before they come so I can take the meat out the fridge,” he said, tipping a Tupperware container to show a guest the delicate slurry of mingled lobster juice and mayo settled at its bottom. “You don’t want the meat warm, but also not too cold.”

A few feet away, in the glow of Sargent’s fish tank, two guests chewed and moaned and licked their fingers.

“Lobster rolls and chowder. That’s all it’s ever been with me,” he said.

The Underground Lobster Pound of Greenpoint, in the fair borough of Brooklyn, is open from 5 to 10 p.m., seven nights a week. For an appointment and directions, email hurricanehopeful@yahoo.com.














* You may recall that Ben was also the super-duper Special Guest at the "Gastronomy of Marriage" launch party, which was at the fabulous WORD, also in Greenpoint.

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At Table: Cherry Republic Jam

I've been thinking lately of those terrible t-shirts often inflicted on small children not yet in charge of their wardrobes, which say things like: "My grandparents went to Cape May, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!"

No joke, kid.

This is hardly that, though. This is, really, exactly the opposite of that. My husband went to freezing-cold Detroit and somehow I was rewarded with absolutely delicious Northern Michigan cherry jam. (As evidence of said deliciousness, I invite you to notice how embarrassingly low the jam level is currently riding.)

It turns out Michigan has the largest cherry-growing area in the world, according to Cherry Republic, which makes all sorts of cherry delicacies — dried cherries, chocolate-covered cherries, cherry wine, and even cherry hot cocoa.

A lovely customer service woman named Phyllis told me that CR buys cherries from farms across five counties. So, is that dozens of farms? I hazarded. "Oh gosh, I couldn't say — we buy from really so many farms..." she answered.

The 20-year-old Cherry Republic also buys from several organic farmers, Phyllis confirmed, and offers a number of organic products, including cherry salsa, jam, and preserves.

I, for one, am already looking forward to next year's Auto Show. There's no going back to the t-shirts now...



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2009: Goodbye to All That

And so that was Christmas. Or Christmas Eve, rather. It has always been my favorite holiday. When I was growing up, we celebrated it more elaborately than Christmas Day, with literally dozens of relatives packed around tables, an insane amount of food, and eventually a round of caroling in the neighborhood, with one of the littlest cousins very insistently, but with his or her best smile, holding out the UNICEF collection box.

This year promised to be far more low key, however, and my mother — for the first time ever — agreed to let me host it. The plan was to drive to her house that evening, though, so that on Christmas morning we could all wake up together, so my debut run was with a restrained lunch, not a blowout dinner.

Still, I stuck to the Italian tradition of serving seafood, and started with smoked salmon appetizers before moving on to a first course of cioppino, a simple seafood stew. (I followed this recipe, but added a dozen little-neck clams.)

For my non-fish-eating sister's sake, we followed that with a vegetarian shepherd's pie (there's a joke to be worked out in making a Christmas shepherd's pie with seitan in it...), a tart, crisp, radish and pomegranate salad, and then a salad of mixed greens, nuts and dried fruit. After that came a bowl of clementines, my Aunt Teresa's wouldn't-be-a-holiday-without-it chocolate mousse and an Italian cheesecake, or pizza di ricotta.

Also for the first time, my mother climbed the three flights of stairs to my apartment (for 16 months she's been claiming bad knees) and there was pleasant conversation, much clinking of glasses, I was complimented on my apartment, my tree, and my cioppino, and no one fought or cried or talked much junk about anyone else. We also pulled on our coats and headed out the door not feeling like our stomachs may burst. A Christmas miracle.

I hope your holidays were warm and wonderful and filled with small moments you're still marveling over. And even more, I hope that the new year has every blessing in store for you.

Love,
Michelle














Pizza di Ricotta

Filling:
2 lbs of ricotta (organic or non-RBST is ideal)
the zest of half a lemon
1 tbspn vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Pastry for the bottom crust and lattice top:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 stick butter
1 tsp vanilla
the zest of half a lemon

Heat oven to 300. Blend the filling ingredients until smooth, and then set the bowl aside in the refrigerator. To make the pastry, simply combine the pastry ingredients (no need to overwork this), divide the dough in two, and roll each into a circle. Use the first circle as a bottom crust, and then pour in the filling. Slice the second circle into 2-inch strips. (If you have a pastry cutter that makes the edges pretty, even better.) Lay half the strips diagonally and the other half vertically, and then crimp the ends where they meet the bottom crust.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the crust is a light golden color. It will still taste delicious if you take it out when the crust is as white as the filling, but I promise you it won't be as appetizing on the table.

Note: Cold the next morning, this is the greatest breakfast ever (for anyone who obsessively loves ricotta).


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In a word: cold!

Twenty-eight degrees and a bright winter sun that, while it was awfully nice of him to show up, did little to really warm anyone. I was in and out, an abbreviated run: more Brussels sprouts (we're addicted, I'll share the new recipe soon), a semolina loaf, two apple danishes, cider, milk and yogurt, and I was hurrying back home to coffee, my sunny dining table, and The New York Times. (Are those last four words cause for some readers to turn away?)

In this weekend's NYT, Gastronomy is an Editor's Choice (hurrah!). Plus, it's the magazine's Year In Ideas issue. Did you know that cows with names produce more milk? Or that a new type of faucet may help to contain kitchen fires? Or that a prefecture in Japan with high levels of naturally occurring lithium in the water has fewer suicides than other areas? I'm just saying, it's not all bad.














*My mother-in-law sent me home from Thanksgiving with a bouquet of red-berried branches from her holly tree, happy to pass them along before the birds, deer and wild turkeys devoured them. I noticed this morning that our neighbors have a beautiful purple variety. Besides crumbs from the waffle truck parked on our corner, what delectables are so busying the Brooklyn birds? These plump gems looked so luscious, I wanted to nibble them myself.
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December's First Saturday: Grand Army Plaza and The New York Times

Last week's profusion of pies and sweet potatoes and other Thanksgiving-side-dish-bound ingredients were all shrunk back to more customary proportions, at Saturday's greenmarket, and instead all things Christmas-y were on full blast.

I arrived with the drizzle of freezing rain that the forecasters had been promising. Combined with never having been an early-December decorator — not wanting the holiday to feel diluted by the time it finally comes around — the sight of freshly cut trees and holly branches and pine boughs did nothing to warm or sway me. I was cold and increasingly damp, and had exactly four thoughts keeping me busy: To secure two Bread Alone almond-apple danishes before they sold out. To make the $30 in my jacket pocket (why didn't I wear a coat!) also cover milk, cheese, fruit and vegetables for the first half of the week. And to get home and back into my pajama bottoms as quickly as possible.

And then there was The New York Times' review of "The Gastronomy of Marriage" in the Book Review.














































I was told a few weeks ago that it might make it in, and I'd been hoping for maybe a thumbnail and a sentence.

And still, over the last week I'd started bleating out a little prayer: Please don't let them be mean to me. Shampooing my hair, brushing my teeth, making the bed, I'd sent this silent mantra to the heavens: Please don't let them be mean to me. Please don't them be mean. It terrified me to think that all the effort of the last five years could be undone — dismissed — with a few words.

In the end "Gastronomy" shared a full page with Julie Powell's "Cleaved," and Christine Muhlke, the food editor of the NYT Magazine, called me "Doris Day" and made fun of me for using canned corn — in February. (An aside: I told this to my non-NYT-reading mother today, who replied, "There really is such a taste difference between canned corn and frozen...")

There were a few comments and snarky asides I'm still thinking through, but in all: A girl could do far worse than canned corn and Doris Day. Relief.

I picked the smallest Brussels sprouts from a pile, traded in two empty glass milk bottles for a full one, and bought apples, pears, onions, curly lettuce, and a quarter-pound of Cato Corners' stinky Hooligan cheese, and headed home with a single dollar in my pocket.

R. took my bags as I came through the door and ground the last of the Stumptown beans, and back in pajama bottoms I plated the danish and sliced up one of the apples. Then together we sat and ate and talked, and enjoyed the crema on our coffees and the sizzle of sleet on the windows.

Which, of course, is the real measure of my days.


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Where the Birds Are: Turkey Shopping in NYC

Turkey shoppers at New York City’s greenmarkets this week may find themselves cursing the early birds. Violet Hill Farm and Quattro’s Game Farm will only have turkeys for customers who pre-ordered. However, for those busy cooks, and spontaneous souls, who’ve left their turkey buying to last moment, there are still a few options beyond the frozen foods section.

Vermont-based Tamarack Hollow Farms, which sets up at the Union Square market on Wednesdays, still has poulet for the purchasing. Its broad-breasted bronzes are free of antibiotics and forage in the farm’s pasture.

“What that means is, the meat tends to take in fat. Because the muscle is being used, it takes fat into the muscle tissue, as opposed to pooling up on the surface. So they’re very tender, super juicy,” said Mike Betit, owner of Tamarack, when reached in his barn. “Pasturing turkeys does a lot of the same things that brining does, just without having to put a lot of water into them.”

Trace elements from the pasture greens also enhance the meat’s flavor. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had a farm egg, but the yolk’s pumpkin orange, and then you get a supermarket egg and it’s like a blanched yellow,” Betit said. “It’s the same thing with a pastured turkey — it’s just heads and shoulders above what you’re getting in a supermarket. You can’t fake that in a barn.”

Due to certain out-of-state “vagaries,” Betit explained, Tamarack sets up a shingle at several greenmarkets but doesn’t sell the turkeys there. To be assured of a bird, call or email Tamarack (details below) before noon on Wednesday. The farm will make arrangements to deliver the turkeys, or else customers can pick them up. Pricing is on a sliding scale, with a per-pound weight of $6 for a 10-pounder and $5.50 for a 20-pound bird.

Additionally, New York’s Hoosick River Poultry will be toting 10 to 15 extra turkeys, along with its pre-orders, to Tuesday’s St. Mark’s market at E. 10th Street and Second Ave. Pasture raised and $4 a pound, the turkeys are broad-breasted whites — the vastly predominant variety, bred for its quick growth and broader breast, versus the country’s native, slower-growing and naturally reproducing heritage breeds.

And finally, the Di Paola Turkey Farm will also be bringing extra birds to the Union Square and 97th St. and Columbus markets on Wednesday. The birds, according to a worker at the New Jersey facility, are "broad-breasted hybrids" priced at $2.99 a pound.

If a heritage breed is a must — and price and carbon footprint are no object — Heritage Foods USA* will FedEx Standard Overnight a never-frozen turkey from one of its network of farms for a Nov. 24 delivery. Pricing, with shipping, begins at $119 for an 8- to 10-pound bird.

As for the all-important question of preparation, a laugh burst from Betit when he was asked for his method. “Wednesday is kind of a big day for me. [By Thursday,] I’m usually in no condition to cook a bird.” He paused for a moment, and the song of peeping chicks came clearly through the phone.

“I’ll have Thanksgiving turkey,” he added, “but it’s usually with whoever’s good enough to take me in.”


• Tamarack Hollow Farm: Order before Wednesday at 802.535.1515 or tamarackhollowfarm@gmail.com
• Hoosick River Poultry: A limited supply will be available Tuesday at St. Mark’s Church greenmarket; you can also reach the farm at 518.686.5564.
• Di Paola Turkey Farm: A limited supply will be available at the Union Square and 97th St. and Columbus Ave. markets on Wednesday.
• Heritage Foods USA: Order for overnight delivery on Tuesday, www.heritagefoodsusa.com
















Should all the whole turkeys be gone, by the time you find your way to the markets, Di Paola's makes a delicious spicy Italian Turkey Sausage. Toss it with pasta, and only the fools at your table will complain.

*UPDATE: Heritage Foods just called to say they'll accept orders until noon E.T. on Tuesday. Also, the majority of the turkeys are coming from the Good Shepherd Poultry Farm in Kansas, which is run by Frank Reese. Heritage describes Reese as the "godfather of heritage turkeys," though his moustache alone is reason enough to visit the site.
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