End of Winter Root Roast

Winter is everlasting. Those pink buds on the apple tree? Still closed up, tight little buds facing each 30 degree night and saying no way is it time to bloom. The rain has been endless. The farmers describe their days as pacing and restless, they need to plant, want to plant, but in this driving rain it is muddy and impossible to proceed. They tend to the seedlings in the green house and hope they do not become to root bound as the rain pounds on and on.
For the market customer this means...more carrots, more parsnips, more potatoes, more winter fair. Punctuated here and there by tender greenhouse greens, arugula, micro greens, confetti's of baby lettuces. And ramps, wild and plentiful ramps.
And out of no where, Craig invents and new, spectacular dish from the very, very familiar, and loved, parsnip. How does he do it? Is it the fact of spring, however suppressed by this rain and cold, driving him to newness and invention? We ate this one with our fingers, straight from the plate, all of us noticing that in the spring light the parsnips look so white. In the candlelight of winter they appear so golden. Parsley root is new to us. We found it at Wegmans. Craig, ever resourceful, thought parsley, plus root, looked like a better deal than just buying a bunch of parsley. Turns out, it is delicious. We like it grated raw in a carrot salad, or roasted, as it is here. And the scallions, as big and juicy as you can find, are essential to this recipe.

What you'll need:
Some parsnips and parsley root peeled and split into relatively equal pieces.
Some large scallions.
Salt, pepper and olive oil.

Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.
Cut the white part from the scallions and finely sliver the green part.
Put the prepped scallion whites, parsnips and parsley root in a large bowl. Splash in a tiny bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and gently mix with your hands to coat.
Spread out on a heavy baking sheet, roasting pan or a skillet and put in oven and roast until tender and kind of crispy at the edges.
Sprinkle with a little greenery and serve. This photo has ramp greens, the beautiful leaf from above the bulb. Parsley or scallion greens would be great too.

Lemon Pound Cake

Sometimes just making a cake can make a party. The same way a real party dress can make you feel like a beautiful dancer, so to a party cake can make a dinner party into a party party. We had some good friend with whom we had been trying for about six months to have a dinner, and when the time at long last arrived, no spouses traveling, no kids sick with strep, two birthdays had also recently passed. It was time for a cake.
I, however, am not the most confident or experienced baker. In the realm of flour, I am easily intimidated. But love is a supreme motivator for getting over our fears, or getting over ourselves as the case may be.
There is a line in A HOLE IS TO DIG, by Ruth Krauss, pictures by Maurice Sendak, "A party is to make little children happy." Since having kids we do have more parties and I think it is for that poetic observation, it makes them happy.
Turning off the dining room lights and lighting the cake candles, the mood deepened, the kids gleeful, attentive, and beaming their excited smiles at each other. We all sang and were glad. Glad for the sweet, budding friendships among our children. Glad for the smart and compassionate company of our peers. And I was quietly very glad that when I sliced the cake, it was golden and crumbly, and baked all the way through.
We have the brilliant Edna Lewis to thank for this recipe. If you follow her directions it really does absolutely work. And if there is any left, it is delicious in the morning, with coffee or tea.

for cake:
1 cup cold, unsalted butter
1 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 large eggs at room temperature
2 1/4 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

for the glaze:
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
Decorated with lovely, tender Meyer lemons sliced as thin as possible.

To make the cake: Butter and flour the bottom and sides of a 9-inch tube pan. Put the 1 cup of butter into the bowl of an electric mixer and mix on medium-low speed for 5 minutes, until it becomes waxy and shiny. (I do that mixing by hand and it is very laborious but possible.) With mixer running slowly add the sugar and salt, and continue mixing until sugar and butter become light and fluffy, about 5-7 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition, making sure that each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next (very important!). After incorporating the third egg, add 2 tablespoons of flour to keep batter from separating. Add remaining eggs, one at a time. On low speed, add remaining sifted flour in four parts, do not overmix, kind of like with pancake batter, you loose the wonderful texture if you overmix here. Once flour is all gently incorporated, gently blend in the vanilla and lemon juice.
And the baking is the key to this recipe: spoon batter into buttered floured tube pan and gently fop pan on kitchen counter to deflate any large air bubbles. Put cake into COLD oven and turn the temp to 225F. Cook for 20 minutes. Increase temp to 300F and bake another 20 minutes. Finally increase temp to 325F and cook 20-30 min, until your cake tester, inserted into center comes out clean. Start testing after 20 min at 325F.
Remove the cake from the over, and cool for 5 minutes. Remove cake from pan and cool on cooling rack. While cake is cooling, make the glaze: Put lemon juice, sugar and butter and salt in a small nonreactive saucepan and simmer over medium heat for 1 minute. Stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and spoon the warm glaze over cooled cake.
Pound cake will keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

Pink

Pink is emerging from the branches and tips of every bare tree on the landscape. Its soft presence is like a balm, a promise, color is coming soon. As we moved along in the freezing March, I kept straining my eyes for buds, then trying to soften my focus to perceive that fist moment when the blush of new life spreads over every surface. And it came. Then, up close on the apple tree, I could touch them. Little leathery buds, inconspicuous with only the tiniest hint of the softness still hidden within.

It got me thinking about pink. Much maligned by the parents tired of the onslaught of gilrie things direct marketed toward their female children, pink has a bad reputation. The pink polyester princess costumes and scratchy ballerina tutus are like a pink on steroids, it is abrassive and synthetic. But before we, feminist moms and tom boy loving dads, try and hide pink in the back of the closet let us revisit this marvelous color.

Pink. Pink champagne. Pink currants. Pink apple blossoms. Pink cheeks after a nap. Holding hands, pink palm to pink palm. These are some pinks that make your heart soften. Pinks that signal the softest most fleeting moments of a life, of a season.

Here’s to a toast to early, early spring and her first pink blush, her slow, modest arrival, before she belts out with her full clear voice, Here I am. Here is to a pink for our girls if they like it, and our boys, that is lovely and imaginative and of their making. Here is to a pink that is far from the mall and closer to an apple blossom. Here is to pink.

The recipe is an idea I have in my pocket and eagerly await: inviting our friends, opening a bottle of Pinot Noir champagne under the flowering apple tree when it blooms, and pausing from our busy lives under the canopy of flowers. I can already hear the bees droning and the children laughing in the pasture, running, grass between their toes.

Blizzard, then Spring, then Duck

The blizzard on March 6th had neighbors and friends lamenting, “Where is spring?” The day had started out fifty degrees and raining. The snow slowly melted away. The mushy, springy earth was bald mud with patchy bits of green grass. The deers and turkeys were gorging. In a moment, it turned to snow and after fifteen minutes the blanket of white was back, then the temperature started to drop.

Every time I looked out the window another inch had accumulated. Shovel the driveway to go to the store. Shovel the driveway so the babysitter can park. Shovel so she can leave. The snow was steady, wet and heavy. It continued all night. And in the morning, finally the snow stopped falling. The sky was grey and serious, as if glowering, promising it could snow more if it wanted to.

And then spring peeked her head back around the corner: the sky cleared and filled the afternoon with thick black shadows over the eighteen inches of snow. And the light! The light was golden. Gone is the bright, white afternoon light of winter and the long slender shadows of a sun hanging low in the sky.

That is spring in March: a blizzard, and then, when the sky finally clears, a golden light. This too: walking to the back of the land, sinking in deep even with snow shoes on, the creek is a torrent. Between steep banks of snow, the creek has not frozen in the storm, in the night, but has stayed flowing, thawed from the warmth emerging from earth as we angle back toward the sun. The tumbling, churning snow melt, the exuberant gushing creek signal too, the rush of spring has arrived.

A Duck is always an excellent meal, and in this moment of cold, still needing fat, and yearning for warmth and craving more of spring's golden light, a roast duck and golden potatoes is a sumptuously satisfying meal. Craig followed a recipe from the brilliant ladies at Canal House, Canal House Cooking, Volume 2. I won't give away their recipe here, you should get the book, all the books actually. It is basically a good roast duck, good roasted, peeled potatoes, and the magical ingredient: anise seeds.

Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

I served sour tomato soup to my friends. I was trying to be hospitable, thoughtful to their long day of travel to see us by offering a comfort food. Unfortunately, upon first bite of soup, it became immediately clear that I had added too much, way too much citric acid to the tomatoes when I canned them last summer. It was sour, terribly sour. But technically edible, I suppose, if you closed your eyes and thought about lemonade. I am pretty sure it was their actual hunger that made the soup edible. Being hungry can really make a meal feel gracious, even a sour one!

Gabrielle Hamilton's book Blood, Bones and Butter is about hunger. The hunger of a poor, young traveler. The emotional hunger of a child abandoned by parents. The hunger to reconnect with perfect meals and moments from our past. Is there any other reason we really cook? To achieve a comfort we imagine and hunger for, to recreate a moment that sustained us when we were in need. To soothe a growling stomach is obviously why we cook, but what we choose to cook, how we meet that hunger, if we look closely at that, we will discern a long, emotional path, a labyrinth of physical memories and hopes.

I ate Gabrielle's cooking once. The angels were smiling upon Craig and I and we got a free spot in an event at the Italian Wine Merchant's secret back kitchen where Gabrielle was cooking. I fell in love with her when she held up the raw heart of a young cow (yes that is a nice way of saying Veal) and told the story of her butcher, who she said had a crush on her and always saved her the best hearts. She told the whole story with the heart in her hand, gesturing with it while the fancy ladies and gentlemen in the room stared, slack jawed and wide eyed. I thought she looked like a rock star shredding at her guitar, standing there with her swagger, her knowledge and her comfort with this ingredient: a heart.

She holds hearts in her hands, and with her writing and her cooking, she'll have yours in her hands too.

One of the other things she made that day was a perfect, truly perfect!, omelette, over which she put finely chopped young spring onions, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper. Every spring Craig and I make batches of this when the long young onions are in season and we put it on absolutely everything. Eggs, bread with good crust, steak, soft cheeses.

Winter Watermelons

The Watermelon Radish. I love these radishes so much. How much? So much that I feel like they literally help me to thrive in the winter months. They are crunchy and watery, sweetening as the winter months crawl along, but their most astonishing, uplifting quality must be their color. Their bright magenta purple, outlined by bright white, is like a gem. And they are copious! We've had them all winter at the farmers market, a staple along with cabbage, carrots, potatoes and onions.

Color is hard to come by in this climate this time of year. On the landscape, the wild turkeys gleam if you see them in just the right light. Red Cardinals flit through leafless shrubs. White snow, evergreen trees, ice blue creeks, mud. Canned berries and fruits on the morning toast. And in the evening, a plate of shining, crisp, watermelon radishes in vinaigrette, our eyes as hungry as our bodies for their dense ruby color. And their color could be as easy to miss as a darting Cardinal. They are white, they look just like a turnip. I passed them by in the market until a farmer friend placed one in my hand and said, Try it.

I could not believe the color when I sliced it in half at home. And it makes me wonder, as I come to live and know this climate, what other jewels of the earth are waiting to be discovered?

Here is a sublime winter salad using Watermelon Radishes:

First make dressing in bottom of salad bowl:
Shallots, white wine vinegar (Chardonnay), olive oil, salt

Slice red cabbage into ribbons
Slice Watermelon Rasish into matchsticks
Cut Nori seaweed (comes in sheets) into little ribbons
Chop a handful of flat leaf parsley
Stack them in the bowl as pictured. Toss directly before serving and add black pepper. If you want to bring out a little more of an Asian aspect to the salad with the Nori, add a little sesame oil to dressing, and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Rice a 'Roni

This one is directly from Craig, both the writing and, obviously, the recipe. Sadly, there is no picture of this delicious meal. We were too hungry to pause. Instead, a view from out the window earlier the same day.

Improvisation

The windy, winter night was perfect for a risotto but it was too frosty to venture out for a key ingredient...there was not enough arborio! Thinking to make a smaller batch, a stock was made using what was around; left over scraps of beef from trimming beef cheeks and hanger steak, a leek, an onion, a carrot. A duck confit leg added to rice for flavor and to add a bit of heft to so little rice. Then, remembering the Rice-A-Roni that seemed to be a weekly event growing up, the thought to extend the dish with some broken spaghetti. There was a small amount (not enough for a meal on it's own) in an open bag on a shelf. It would cook in less time than the rice, so it was only a matter of timing.
Worked like a charm!

rice a 'roni

1 1/2 cups arborio rice
a small amount of high quality italian spaghetti (semolina or faro) broken into pieces about 1" long
some dried morel mushrooms
a couple of shallots finely chopped
a leg of duck confit
broth (chicken, beef anything!)
about a cup of dry white wine
some chopped fresh parsley
olive oil
Parmesan cheese

Soak the morels in hot water until rehydrated. Brown the confit and shred the meat. Scrape off and save any of the crispy bits on the bottom of the pan! Heat the stock to a slow simmer.
Finely chop the shallots and soften them in a large skillet with a splash of olive oil. Remove the morels from their soaking liquid and slice. Add them to the shallots. Add the rice, stirring to coat them in the oil. Add the wine and continue to stir.
You can use the liquid from the morels (making certain that you do not let the sediment at the bottom get in) followed by the stock, about a cup at a time, stirring occasionally. Keep adding liquid as it becomes absorbed.
When the rice is just losing its hardness, add the spaghetti and continue adding stock. As the rice begins to finish cooking (it should still have some "tooth") toss in the confit.
Before serving let it sit for a few minutes. Toss in the parsley.
Plate, finish by grating a bit of Parmesean on each serving and putting a bit of the crispy confit bits on top.