Lunch à la Dansk

It's heating up here on the first day of July, and the humidity is rising with the temps. And though it's Canada Day today, and our American Independence Day coming up this weekend, I'm thinking about things Danish. I am thinking, specifically, of smørrebrød, those Danish open-face sandwiches that are so appealing this time of year.

To the Danes, smørrebrød is more than a food, it's a keystone of the culture. But I've also read that it's a fading one. While a 1986 New York Times article reported that 90 percent of Copenhagen's restaurants focused on smørrebrød, a Saveur magazine article of a couple years back was tolling its death knell. Younger people considered smørrebrød quant and old-fashioned, Saveur reported. Most of Copenhagen's smørrebrød restaurants were frequented by tourists.



My forays into smørrebrød may not be wholly authentic, but I'm happy to try to keep its spirit alive. Well, any meal based on bread is bound to find a tender spot in a baker's heart, and the wonderful variety of (usually) cold toppings makes this a perfect sort of food for a summer brunch or dinner on a warm evening.

My smørrebrød lunch today was simply an opportunistic omnivore's treat. I had the end of a loaf of caraway rye (I managed to save us a loaf from the market baking last week; I can't tell you how many times I've gotten home from the market, looked around the kitchen, and realized there wasn't a crust of bread to be found...). I had a little pickled ramp mayo in the fridge. Some of our home-smoked bacon just begging to be eaten up. And a jar of pickled turnips--nabo encurtido--from Peter and Carmen. The jar says these are "Peter's Pickles," but I'm guessing that Carmen knows a little more about Peruvian pickled turnips than Peter.... (Sorry blurry photo; the condensation on the jar messes up the camera.)

Smørrebrød frequently features pig and pickles. My use of the ramp mayo in place of butter is a variant, maybe a deviant--the base of good butter spread coast to coast on the rye is de rigeur in an authentic smørrebrød, but as I say, I'm honoring the spirit here.

So: the thin-sliced rye, liberally spread with pickled ramp mayo*, topped with the thin-sliced bacon gently rendered to not-quite-crisp, topped with a couple slices of Carmen's lovely sweet & sour turnip slices. A dab of dill** and a little sweet market onion is all it needs.

I poured a glass of Cuvée Bide-A-Wee 2009, our hard apple cider that is coming along wonderfully. Working at home does have certain advantages.

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* To make pickled ramp mayo, make pickled ramps; make mayo, but use just a little lemon juice in preparing the basic mayo, a squeeze or two. When the mayo is finished, add two pickled ramps, chopped fine, and two tablespoons of the pickled ramp brine. Taste for seasoning, and add a little more lemon juice if needed, to balance the sweetness of the brine. You could substitute another sort of sweet-and-sour pickled onion.

** I threw the dill on there at the end just to give a little green contrast to the white turnip--I don't generally add superfluous cosmetic garnishes to my lunch. But you know, come to eat it, the dill really helped pull everything together, just that little bit. The previous few years my garden has been overtaken by a volunteer dill jungle. This year, there's hardly any out there. Weird, weird gardening year.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Grilling the Market

The carefree joys of summer food, the ease and pleasure of northern cooking in these longest days of the year, cooking straight from the market or the garden, so different from those increasingly anxious trips to the root cellar as the winter drags on--that was to be my theme for today's report.

Until I noticed that I was cooking...carrots...potatoes...onions, and steak. Root cellar fare, during summer solstice week? What gives?



But it's not root cellar fare, far from it. Roots, yes, but the carrots are sweet babies barely thicker than your pinkie, the potatoes are creamy dense nuggets fresh from the ground, the onions are purple-skinned, translucent, crisp and fragrant. And when you can enjoy it out of doors on a gorgeous June afternoon, after the cool front has come through sweeping away a stormy, hot, sticky and anxious (for sensitive dogs) night, so much the better.

And there was basil. We don't have that in February. We shopped the market Saturday, picking up those beautiful carrots from Peter and Carmen , onions from Yia Vang and potatoes from Va Vang, basil from Jennifer, and finally a gorgeous bone-in, grass-fed sirloin steak from Sara.

The preparation was simple--with ingredients this good, you don't have to do much. I did take a couple of extra steps. The potato dish was a grilled version of champ, the Irish potato-and-scallion mash. After boiling the new potatoes until tender, I drained them, tossed them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them on the grill to color. Same with the spring onions, trimmed and split. When those things were done, Mary took them away, chopped up the onions, smashed the potatoes into them with a good chunk of Hope butter and some of that Gardens of Eagan basil.

The carrots I blanched until tender-crisp, and then I glazed them in a mixture of:

1 1/2 tsp blackberry jam
1 1/2 tsp grain mustard (some stuff Mala made using Furthermore beer, fantastic)
1 1/2 tsp butter
salt & pepper
a couple of pinches of piment d'espelette (or use cayenne, or omit)

I was going to use maple syrup for the sweet element, but we'd forgotten to pack it, and in the end I was glad for that. The blackberry jam, from our own berries, was less sweet, which was good, and also brought a complex, brambly savor to the sweet carrots. I just let those brown up over the waning coals while I sliced the steak and set the slices atop a slice of our brioche, browned on the grill and buttered.



The steak I salted and peppered, then grilled to medium rare (about 4 minutes per side) over the coals of apple and oak. I must admit that I'm leery of buying prime cuts for grilling--T-bones, rib-eyes, sirloin, etc.--that are frozen, as all the meat at our farmers market is. I've had frozen steaks from other producers where all the juices run away down the drain when I cut open the plastic. Once cooked, those steaks wind up dry and gray and wan. Such was not the case with this Hilltop Pastures sirloin. It was a superb piece of meat. The pork from Tom and Sara of Hilltop Pastures is always excellent, too; and I've mentioned before, but will mention again, the wonderful lamb that Anne and Charlie Leck of Sheepy Hollow Lamb bring to the market each week.



I love to cook and have spent a long time learning how to do it, and one thing I've learned in that time is that the simplest things can sometimes be the hardest to pull off. There's no rich sauce to hide mistakes, so if the steak is overcooked, or it's just not good steak, what are you going to do? I've also come to realize that the clean dry heat and smoke of a real charcoal fire are seasonings as important as salt and pepper.

So I'm not going to blithely say that anybody could make this meal; but anybody who reads this can. The meal starts at the market and runs through your devoted appreciation of these splendid products of the season and our place, and that colors your thinking as you decide what to do with them, inspires the exceedingly pleasant work of turning them into fare for the table.


If that table is set someplace like the Bide-A-Wee gravel garden, with dogs lolling in the grass and the faithful Grundig tuned to WOJB radio, well, that's just gravy--figuratively speaking, I mean.


Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

When Life Gives You Snap Peas...

...make salsa.

But first I must digress--it's early for that, I know, but what can you do.... "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade," appears to be a harmless, optimistic cliché, with it's implication of turning something bad into something good. But since when, I ask, are lemons the epitome of something bad? Since when are lemons bad, at all? I wish life would give me lemons, lots of them. I'd not only make lemonade (maybe I'd sweeten it with maple syrup, to keep things a little local), but I'd also set a batch of preserved lemons curing, make lemon curd, carve a twist for my martini, spike an aioli (not too much, we're not making lemon mayonnaise), douse some chicken thighs with lemon juice to then rub with thyme and garlic, grate in some lemon zest, ready for the grill. And lots of other things. Bring on the lemons. Although they don't grow here. But we're not dogmatic.

Lemons are sour, but sour isn't bad. If life gave you Twinkies, now that would be bad. I'd like to see what you'd do then. Turning Twinkies into something good, now that would be a culinary miracle to match the loaves and fishes.

Sabayon. Tabouli. Hollandaise. Life would be dull without lemons.

I only mention the lemons-lemonade thing because there hasn't been a great variety of vegetables at the market yet this year. I think everyone's a little puzzled, because spring got off to such a fast start, one of the warmest Aprils on record. But then early May was much colder than normal, with frost as late as we've seen it in many years. The rest of the month moderated, but not so much that we'll be seeing cucumbers or zucchini any time soon, never mind peppers and tomatoes. Although, the corn and apples will be early this year, I hear, so go figure.



What we have had is a long season of lovely lettuces, and pot greens, radishes well past their usual woody and bolting time, and peas, mostly sugar snap peas. Those are the ones, of course, that look like regular "English peas," all plumped up, unlike snow peas, but you can eat the whole thing, shell and all. For a few weeks now snap peas have been the only above-ground vegetable-that's-not-a-leaf available at the market, and we've used them in stir fries and steam sautés, sliced them into salads, cheater's noodle bowl, snacked on them raw (the dogs love them, too). I won't say I'm tired of them, but I will welcome the sight of a summer squash or green bean, some day soon, I hope.

Getting on with it: Last night I was driving home from a market committee meeting, after 7:00, and I knew Mary was making tortillas (duck confit fat for the shortening, freekin' magic...) to have with some carnitas I'd sort of accidentally made out of a smoked pork shoulder, and I was trying to think of something fresh and crunchy to serve with our tacos, but I knew that those usual salsa suspects, the tomatoes, peppers, cukes, were nowhere to be had, locally, and then I thought, Hey, I'll make a snap pea salsa!


And I did. And it was good. I could also see a nice piece of grilled fish resting on a bed of this.

Snap Pea Salsa
Makes a generous cup

1 cup sugar snap peas
2 green onions--use the white and some of the green
juice of 1/4 lemon (or if life has given you a lot of limes, use lime juice)
2 Tbsp sunflower oil*
2 pinches salt
1/2 tsp sambal oelek--chili paste with garlic--or a small chili, chopped fine

String the peas if need be--I find they usually have a pretty tough string on the top--and chop them medium-fine, 1/4- to 1/3-inch pieces. Chop the green onions the same way. Mix everything together. Best if it sits 20 minutes or so. Can be made a day ahead.

You could add some herbs to this, too. Basil, parsley, mint. Cilantro if you like it, but I don't. If life gave me cilantro, I would be challenged.

This blog's theme is not meant to imply that there is anything bad about snap peas. Not a bit.

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* I mentioned in a recent post about mayonnaise that I'd found a local producer of virgin sunflower oil, Smude. We ordered a bottle, and we've really been enjoying it, using it mainly in salads. It has a nice, mild, nutty taste, and a very pleasant viscosity. It matches with the delicate flavors of tender spring greens very well.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

I Went to the Market...

...yesterday, the Midtown Tuesday afternoon market, which runs from 3:00 to 7:00 right through the end of October now. The market had a damp start this day, and was a bit quiet, but it was clearing toward 5:00 when I left, so perhaps things picked up from there. I took home the makings of a simple grilled supper from a couple of vendors new to the market this year: fresh brats from Chuck Thompson of Painted Hill Farm, and lovely sweet onions from Ross and Emily of Laughing Stalk Farmstead .

I put those over moderate coals, the thick-sliced onions slicked with a bit of olive oil, salted & peppered, while atop the stove I made a "steam-sauté" (another great technique picked up from Jacques) of tiny market new potatoes, green garlic, garden kale and turnip greens.* The onions were a treat. The brats were very good, as well, and get a load of the ingredients: pork, water, salt, white pepper, marjoram, nutmeg, celery, cardamon, red pepper. Hey, where's my corn syrup?!? I want my nitrites!

Kidding. Welcome to the market, Chuck, Ross, and Emily. Find them at Midtown on Tuesday afternoon, but not Saturday.



Served with grilled bread, Mala's excellent homemade mustard, and rhubarb ketchup. Yes, rhubarb ketchup. It is a sausage's best friend.



I swiped this...er, adapted it, from a recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The original called for port and orange rind, I think. Using a local product, the orange-and-spice flavored ratafia from Nan Bailly's Alexis Bailly Vineyard, was my inspiration. And I used our own cider vinegar, where the original called for red wine vinegar, so you takes your pick.

Rhubarb Ketchup
makes two pints

2 pounds rhubarb stalks, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 cup Alexis Bailly ratafia
1/4 cup good apple cider (or red wine) vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
Pimente d’espelette or cayenne pepper

In a medium saucepan, combine the rhubarb with the ratafia, vinegar, sugar, and salt and bring to a boil. Cook until the rhubarb pieces wilt into the liquid. Cover, remove the pan from the heat, and let steep for 30 minutes. Then simmer over low heat, stirring often, until the rhubarb falls apart, about 5 minutes. Depending upon the rhubarb's, what shall we call it?--viscosity, perhaps, you may need to add a little water. I've made this where the end result is quite fluid, while the most recent batch was pretty gloppy. But I didn't mind. I just let it be.

Add the espellette or cayenne pepper at the end, to taste. I use espelette, which is milder than cayenne, and about a half teaspoon just imparts a little zing.

You can purée it in a blender or FP for a smoother product, but I don’t.

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* Into a saucepan with a cover place the new potatoes, a bit of butter, a bit of olive oil, good pinch of salt, a cup of water. Bring to a boil, cover, cook five minutes. Add one bulb green garlic sliced, and a couple handfuls of greens, coarsely chopped. If the water has all boiled away, add a little more. Cover and cook 7 or 8 minutes more, until the potatoes are tender. At the end remove the lid so the rest of the moisture can evaporate, and let the vegetables brown a bit. Add a little more butter if you like. Taste for salt, serve.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Concentrate

We're still drying apples from last year's store. Well, to give credit where credit is due, the apples are doing a pretty good job of drying themselves. Some of the apples reside in our spare fridge in the basement, some in an old cooler in a chilly part of the basement. Almost all have softened, and many are basically rotten, but it actually smells really good down there, sweetly fragrant, orchardy; makes you think of hayrides, mulled cider. Apples may be unique in this quality of smelling good even when frankly spoiled.

The ones that are not spoiled are still not all that appetizing in appearance--shriveled, shrunken, they'd be garbage at worst, compost at best, to the too-fastidious eye. No one would put them into the kid's lunchbox, except as a cruel prank. But I don't look at them as halfway gone fresh apples; rather, I see them as being halfway to greatness as dried apples.

We dry them in this gizmo here, our mighty Nesco American Harvester. I started to research food dehydrators last fall, and quickly became bewildered in a maze of sizes, shapes, prices, energy efficiency. I gave up. Then one day at Menard's we came across the Nesco, on sale for around $30, I think. I remembered that Emily and Dan, our young heroes, use one of these babies. We snapped it up. Haven't looked back.

We also bought a corer-peeler device, which works a treat on fresh apples; with these soft, well-aged beauties I left the skin on, just cored and sliced. They only took a couple of hours to finish drying up to tart-sweet, chewy, aromatic morsels.

We use them as: Doggies treats--Annabel and Lily love them. People treats--Mary and I scarf them eagerly, too. In granola, in salads, and as a local (and free) alternative to many dried fruits in recipes. Today I'm going to make a recipe for lamb meatballs with beets that's been calling to me since I saw it in a recent Saveur. I've got the last of our garden beets from 2009, and Anne (Sheepy Hollow) Leck's awesome lamb. The recipe calls for currants; chopped dried apples will take their place.

You'll still find last year's apples at whatever farmers markets are open through the year, and there likely will be some at markets getting set to open in May. I know Denny Havlicek brought some holdovers to our market (Midtown Farmers' Market ) last spring (we hit the Lake Street parking lot May 1 this year, three weeks from Saturday, yikes!).

Remember: It's never too late to dehydrate.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Sweet & Sour (Tree Crop) Chard

A recipe, plain and simple, which takes chard's beetiness and melds it with the sweet and sour flavors that go so well with...beets. We were forced to use alien chard, alas, from California this was. But we dressed it right local, with some of the last market onion, and our own cider vinegar and maple syrup. Our vinegar is quite mellow, not as acidic as most commercial products, so if you think yours is more on the harsh side, you could add one tablespoon, let it cook a bit, and see if you think it needs more. You can get a very nice unpasteurized apple cider vinegar in bulk at many co-ops.

On the sweet side: A tablespoon of syrup made it a little sweet for my taste, but Mary thought it was just right. Again, you can add some of the syrup, taste, see what you think. The stock rounds out the flavors nicely, but if you don't have any, use water and stir a bit of butter in at the end. This dish accompanies rich meats, like duck, pork, or sausage, very well.



Sweet & Sour (Tree Crop) Chard
serves two generously

5-6 good-sized chard leaves (2 cups chopped)
1/2 medium onion, sliced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chicken stock (or 1/2 cup stock, 1/2 cup water)
2 good pinches salt
a few grinds black pepper
2 to 3 tsp maple syrup
1 to 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
options: a bit of thyme, a small knob of butter stirred in at the end

Cut the thick ribs out of the chard leaves, and slice these diagonally into 1/2-inch pieces. Tear or cut each leaf into four or five pieces. Heat a 10-inch skillet or the like, and add the olive oil, then the onion and the chard rib pieces. Add a couple of pinches of salt, the stock (or stock and water, or water). Cover and cook over medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes, until the chard is starting to soften. Then add the chard leaves, and as soon as they wilt into the liquid add the vinegar and maple syrup. Cook uncovered for another three to four minutes, until the chard is tender to taste and the liquid is somewhat reduced. Taste for salt, sweet, and sour. Serve in a dish.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

What Color is Your Le Creuset?

As you can just sort of barely tell from that shot, mine is blue. Cooks become attached to their tools. I have a deep respect for my sauté pans, my go-to All-Clad saucier, a ready-to-hand paring knife, my baking stones. But I find, considering the question here and now, that I have actual affection for only four items:

**My Global Asian chef's knife which, to my utter astonishment, sat my once beloved Sabatier down in the drawer, rarely to emerge, practically the day I got it, probably ten years ago.

**My exceedingly well-seasoned wok, a dumpster dive find from the alley between Harriet and Garfield Avenues just south of 28th Street in south Minneapolis, twenty...two...years...ago--it didn't come well-seasoned, that's what the twenty-two years have been about.

**A magnificent black cast iron skillet, low-sided and about sixteen inches across, a true heirloom that was given to Mary by a friend, Karen, because Karen knew she wouldn't ever use it, and knew we would--what generosity there.

**And my Le Creuset seven-quart dutch oven, a birthday or Christmas present from Mary in a year I do not precisely recall.



Of those four, only one has a name. It's the dutch oven; we call it "Big Blue." There are a lot of reasons that from among all the saucepans, cocottes, terrines, skillets, gratin dishes, knives and cleavers and spatulas of all kinds, from all the drawers and cupboards full of tools, this one vessel has so distinguished itself, become almost more of a family member than a pot. To wit: it is beautiful, it is venerable, it is French. It is versatile in performing many tasks, and it is indispensible in a few.

It is stock pot, confit pot, bean pot, soup pot, stew pot. It is braising vessel, best when tucked into a low oven for some slow hours filled with oxtails in Belgian beer or short ribs simmering in red wine, pork shoulder soaking up cider. It is chicken in vinegar and rabbit in mustard sauce.

Big borscht, white beans and sausage, fish chowder. Choucroute garni, moules marinière, pot au feu, boeuf à la bourguignonne, poule au pot (I did mention that it's French, didn't I?).

It is classic and comfort; the ideal vessel for a precisely calibrated cassoulet or a tossed-off soup of refrigerator miscellany.

Last night it was a variation on garbure, inspired by Sally Vincent's excellent webite Raining Sideways.

(Here I digress, abruptly, to note that I've recently added several great sites to the "We Read These" column at right. El is a former Minnesotan now living la vida local--and how--in southwestern Michigan and writing about it in fast grow the weeds ; Sylvie is "French by birth, Virginian by choice," gardening, cooking, and expressing the joie de vivre of it all at Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener ; Patrick mixes Duck Fat & Politics very appetizingly and literately down in beautiful Northfield, MN; and Amy Thielen, a familiar byline to Star Tribune readers (most recently reporting on Red Lake walleye), writes compellingly of life and food in northern Minnesota at Recipe-Phile. All well worth a bookmark, and the rest of that stuff over there, the old stuff, well that's all good, too. I'll bet they all have Le Creusets; I wonder what color theirs are...?)

Back to garbure, a hearty vegetable, bean, and meat soup that is either Basque, Béarnaise, "French country," or southwestern, depending on how the Google rolls. Ours was Saint Paul, Dunn County, Midtown Farmers' Market , and Seward co-op. It's frequently made with duck, or confit thereof, but we just used a ham hock from Hilltop Pastures Family Farm and a hunk of our own home-smoked bacon. The beans are de rigeur in a true garbure, it would seem; in our variation we subbed some sprouted wheat berries that Renée Bartz grows out in Connorsville, WI (Bolen Vale Cheese ), on the road to Bide-A-Wee.


Then the vegetables were carrots, leeks, and potatoes from our gardens, onion and garlic from the market, turnips, parnips, and cabbage from Seward, all local stuff. Simmer an hour or so. Grate some cheese (Roth Kase Wisconsin "gruyère here), and the soup-filled, cheese-topped oven-proof bowls go in for a melting--or a browning under the broiler, if you prefer.


Mary was kind of stressed yesterday about various life and work issues, and sat down to supper in a bit of a funk. After a few bites of cheesy veg, bacon and deeply delicious broth (and, yes, a couple sips of wine), she looked over at me and sort of sighed, and she said, "You know, it's gonna be all right."

Big Blue has that effect on people.



Little Bide-A-Wee spudlettes, "La Ratte," keeping well in the cellar.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Wee Leeks & Greens

I always feel good when I have the new season's leeks sprouting while there are still a few of last year's crop in the cellar. I didn't take very good care of my leek harvest from last fall, got most of them in at the eleventh hour and just bunged them in a drywall bucket, kicked that to a corner of the basement. And there they have whiled away the winter, drying slowly, layer by layer, retaining the germ of life at their hearts, coming out to flavor a stock, perk up a stew. I reach into the bucket now afraid that my hand will close on nothing but crepitant, papery husks, but so far that fear is unfounded.

I doubt there'll be anything left in that bucket when these new year's leeks go in the ground. For springtime alliums I rely on Great Nature--ramps from the loamy woods near a trout stream--or the market--spring onions from our farmers at Midtown. Those wisps of green are, right now, as much for encouragement as for agriculture. They're a sign that this, too, shall pass--this dismal in-between-time of dreary rain and melting snow, when fading winter seems all slush and grime, and diffident spring consists entirely of mud and potholes. My little green oasis of leeks and salad greens is a mental bridge to those warm and vibrant days ahead when everything is growth and sun and vigor.


I succumbed to extreme cabin fever and bought a "four-shelf greenhouse" for around 30 bucks at Menard's a few weeks ago. It's a cheap and flimsy metal frame with teetery shelves, the whole thing sheathed in a clear zippered cover that looks like a giant garment bag. But you know what, it works: In our sunny front room the atmosphere on the top shelf was registering around 100 degrees. I moved the flat down to the second shelf, and opened the bag a bit. The leeks we won't be harvesting for many weeks, but the greens--two kinds of Burpee mesclun mix that look exactly the same--we'll be eating tonight.

Encouraged by the excellent growth of that first planting, I seeded several more pots yesterday, with kale, radicchio, frisée, fennel, red oak leaf lettuce, basil, green onions, and more leeks. To get things sprouting quickly, I put the pots in one of our ovens with the door just barely ajar and the light on. It will keep a temperature of around 85 degrees, and many of the seeds will germinate in just a couple of days. Ordinarily I would then put the seedlings under lights, but now that I have a "greenhouse," I may see how they do in there, with spring bearing down and the equinox less than two weeks away, good strong sun in that room on clear days.

I have a cold frame outside on the south-facing side of the house. It's under a wide overhang so the ground might not be too wet. I know it's probably utterly foolish, but I suspect you'll soon see a report here of my first outdoor planting of radishes, spinach, rapini....

It has been kind of a long winter, hasn't it?

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Big Borscht

Big Borscht is in the "Grow Your Own" Round-Up hosted by House of Annie.




Here's something a little more seasonal, a root around the root cellar, clean out the crisper, "Eeww, what is that thing?", "Oh, that's okay, I can trim that off..." sort of soup. We're getting down there in terms of vegetables, but March is straight ahead, I've got some green things growing in flats, and a big, robustly flavored soup like this is just the thing to buck up one's spirits for that last push toward warmer days.



This is truly a one-pot meal with no fuss at all involved--as long as you like to chop. Who doesn't like to chop? Bung it all in the pot, simmer until you feel it's done. The key flavor ingredients are some decent stock to bring it all together, some pickled or fermented vegetables to add a sharpness that balances the earthy roots, and maple syrup and cider vinegar, because I love using the products of Bide-A-Wee's tree crops. Tree crops. I love saying tree crops.


For my stock I used a combination of vegetable stock, chicken stock, mushroom soaking water and plain water to reach eight cups for this large amount of vegetables. The mushrooms are optional but my dried chanterelles added a lot of flavor and fragrance. Dried porcini are another good choice, or sometimes you'll see packages of mixed dried "forest mushrooms." If you've got a stash of dried morels, those would more than do the job. Shitakes are a last resort, though the chopped mushrooms would add good texture; shitake broth won't add a lot of flavor here.

Here's a good illustration of why dried wild mushrooms cost so much. The chanterelles in this bowl weighed one ounce:



The vegetables are whatever you have on hand, mostly roots. You need beets to call it borscht, I think, but you don't have to call it borscht. Here's what I had:

From our garden: turnips, carrots, potatoes, beets. From the market: parsnips, onion, garlic. My pickled (fermented) vegetables jar yielded gardens beets, beans, carrots, and snow peas, market cauliflower, snap peas, and onion. And of course I foraged the chanterelles.



If you don't have a big jar of fermented vegetables at your house, perhaps you have some sauerkraut, or a jar of pickled beets, or can manage to purchase some. Check the refrigerated section of your co-op for naturally fermented or pickled products. Be prepared for a little sticker shock; in my experience the "artisan" versions of this sort of thing do not come cheap. The upside of that is that it may encourage you to do more of your own preserving, next fall.



You can make this with or without meat. I put in some roast pork shoulder I had in the freezer. Other meat options: ground beef or leftover roast, smoked sausage, cooked chicken. Sour cream or home-cultured "crème fraiche" really elevates the dish. Fresh herbs should you have them--dill, tarragon, parsley, thyme--would be nice, too.

When I first made this soup I thought it would need more syrup and vinegar to get the slight sweet and sour flavor I wanted, but after it sat overnight, then simmered a bit more, I found that the natural sweetness of the roots, the natural sourness of the fermented vegetables, had filled in the blanks perfectly.

Then a loaf of crusty bread, glass of wine, beer, cider or as you please.

More soup, please!

Big Borscht
serves six generously, or three humans and one wire-haired pointing griffon*

8 cups liquid--a combination of meat and/or vegetable stock, mushroom soaking liquid, and water
6 cups chopped fresh vegetables (beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, turnips, onion)
1 cup chopped fermented vegetables (or ‘kraut, or pickled beets)
12 ounces cooked pork shoulder, or smoked sausage, or ground beef, cooked chicken (optional)
3 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 ounce dried mushrooms, soaked, then chopped (optional)
1 tsp salt or to taste
1 small dried red chili, crumbled (optional)
2 T maple syrup (or to taste)
1 T cider vinegar (or to taste)
Sour cream or crème fraiche
Black pepper to taste
Fresh herbs of choice--dill, tarragon, parsley, thyme (optional)

Combine all except sour cream or crème fraiche in a big soup pot. Simmer a half hour or longer, to desired doneness. Best when it sits a day or two. Adjust sweet/sour balance to taste with additional syrup and vinegar before serving. Serve topped with crème fraiche or sour cream.



* This recipe is griffon tested and approved. As we were getting ready to head to the cabin for the weekend, I placed a warm, open container of borscht in the snow on our deck to cool. Forgetting the disposition of said soup, I let the dogs out before we put them in the car. When Mary went to look for the borscht to put it in the cooler, I heard her call, "Where did you say the soup was..."? We're pretty sure Annabel ate it all. She had a guilty--but satisfied-- look, and Lily's beard was clean.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Baja Minnesota

It's not that we don't enjoy the traditional foods of winter, the braises, the stews, the soul-satisfying soups that simmer a long age on the wood-burning stove--we love that kind of food, we dream of it on sweltering July days, yearn for sweater weather and the steaming stewpot, crusty warm bread to dunk in collagen-rich broth.

But now it is the last week of February, Mardi Gras just past and images of Carnivale dancing in our heads, and while we're not cruise-taking, beachy sort of people, we appreciate a little southern comfort, from time to time. This time around, we took it out in tacos--southern comfort with a northern twist.

I love the idea of fish tacos, but in reality I'm frequently dissappointed by them. Too often they consist of indifferent (even unspecified) fish wrapped in not-so-fresh tortillas deluged with overbearing gloop--sour cream, watery salsa, shredded lettuce, boring pink tomatoes, even cheese!* Like many simple foods, a good taco relies on the quality of its few components, and each must be top-notch. The components of a great fish taco: the tortillas, the fish, the condiments.

First, the tortillas: Ours were freshly made--Mary-made--flour tortillas, which are nothing more than flour, water and fat, but in this case, what wonderful fat: in lieu of the traditional lard (which would be great), a combination of Hope butter and duck confit fat. The tortillas came out supple, silky, tender and incredibly fragrant from the duck fat with its many-times refreshed infusion of the quatre-épices spice mixture that flavors our duck confit. What a loaf of fresh homemade bread is to a plastic-bagged supermarket loaf, that's how these tortillas compared to the usual commercial product (not that there aren't some good ones out there; and, I would still make these tacos even if I had to use store-bought tortillas).

Second: The fish. The perfect fish for fish tacos: walleye. Who knew? Walleye is the "state fish" of Minnesota, of course. As a cherished symbol of our cultural identity as Minnesotans, its culinary qualities are, of course, vastly underrated. Now, this is not to say that the eating qualities of walleye have gone unnoticed here. Heck, everyone knows that they eat way better than northern pike ("slimy jackfish," my Grandpa Leitkie used to call them, but we still ate them), or bass. Neck and neck with perch as fish-fry fare, for sure. But because of its north-woods, cabin life associations, walleye doesn't have much of a gastronomical rep. At your typical supper club you'll get a choice of deep-fried or baked "almondine", if you can get it at all. Also, ordering the "state fish," even in a Minnesota restaurant, can be a bit of a buyer-beware situation, as it was revealed a couple of years ago that many restaurants were actually serving a farmed fish similar to walleye called "zander," imported from Europe. Euro-trash zander dressed as walleye, the shame!



I write the above as a great big mea culpa: Before buying the walleye for these tacos, I can't remember the last time I purchased it. I was always afraid it would pale in comparison to the taste memory of fresh-caught walleye from cold Lake Brereton in eastern Manitoba, where my family had a cabin when I was growing up.

When I decided to make fish tacos, I knew I wanted to make it with local fish. Looking into the counter at Coastal Seafoods, however, the choices were few. Farmed rainbow trout from Star Prairie is always available, and it's a fine product, but I wanted a thicker fillet, and preferably white fish, to work with. That left me with walleye, and here I must admit that "local" must be a relative term--this fish came from Canada, fished through the ice with nets, probably in Manitoba or Saskatchewan (at the store I was originally informed that it was from Lake Superior, but that didn't sound quite right to me, and a little more checking got me a more accurate answer--thanks to Chris at the Minneapolis Coastal store). The company that brings us this fine fish is the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp., and here's a pretty fascinating video showing how we get fresh Canadian fish from under the ice in the dead of winter.

And the quality of this fish, well, it was fantastic--smelled as clean as a northern lake, sliced up into dense, pearly fingers. I used larger chunks of fish than you usually get in a taco. That way the flavor of the fish came through even with the breading and the condiments. The flavor was all you want from walleye--sweet, clean, toothsome, utterly edible.



Finally, "the gloop," that is to say, the condiments: Something tangy-creamy is good; sour cream would be fine, sparingly applied, but I had made some home-cultured "crème fraiche" using Cedar Summit cream. It melted onto the hot battered fish. A fresh crunchy salsa is de rigeur, but we're far from tomato and cucumber season. I used sweet corn, frozen from the market last summer, which I simmered for a couple of minutes in a little water, butter, and salt. To the al dente corn I added some chopped red onion (market), and a small apple (Bide-A-Wee), peeled and diced almost the same size as the corn kernels. Crumbled a dried red chili in there, splashed in some of our own cider vinegar. In spite of the red onion and chili, this salsa was looking very Minnesotan, indeed--quite pallid. I remembered some pickled anaheims I'd put up in 2008. They keep forever, so I chopped a couple into the mix. They looked nice and added a bit of zing.

I put together another little salad of Wisconsin black radish and North Dakota blood orange...lying: the blood orange was from wherever those come from, surely a good distance from our beloved home in Zone 4. I peeled and julienned the radish, tossed it with some salt and let it set awhile. Squeezed it out and rinsed it. Zested the orange on a Microplane into the radish slivers, peeled and sectioned the orange, squeezed the juice out of the remaining membrane and tossed it all together (except the membrane), simple as that.

Now the batter, well, that was an instance of sheer genius. While a couple of inches of oil were heating in the wok I had Mary beat up an egg white to pretty firm peaks. To the beaten white I added a good pinch of salt, then ice water, about half a cup, I'd say, then around a quarter cup of corn starch and maybe a third cup of AP flour. I mixed that up quickly, not to develop any gluten; the batter was like very thin pancake batter. I salted my walleye fingers, tossed them in cornstarch to just barely coat them, then into the batter, lift and drain off excess, into the hot oil (canola). Cook till just lightly brown, turning them around, about three minutes total. I had quite a bit of batter left after cooking the fish, and half an onion just sitting there; these made tempura-battered red onion slices, of which I could have eaten a good many.

Remember the watercress? That added the essential fresh, green, seasonal component to the dish. Way better than shredded iceberg. But I probably didn't need to say that. I had high hopes for the corn and apple combination in the salsa; on its own it wasn't as good as I had hoped, but in combination with the cream, fish, great tortillas and the rest, it more than held up its end.

I know this sounds like a rather elaborate procedure for tacos, but it all came together quite naturally, because I was just working with what was on hand, nor reinventing the wheel in concocting any of the various parts.

The Lake Superior Special Ale we drank with this was in honor of the walleye coming from Superior, so I thought at the time. Since the U.S. and Canada do share Gitchee-Gumee's bounty, and since this meal relied entirely on its union of north-and-south-of-the-border components, we'll just say, "Hands across the water!" and "Cheers!" It went down right nice, eh?

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*Our friend Melinda, aka Nomenclature Tsarina Lulu, has strong opinions about a variety of topics, and we concur with her judgment that the only proper unions of fish and cheese are in a tuna melt and a Filet-O-Fish sandwich.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Chicken Noodle Soup, "Comme Chez Nous"

I guess one knows that one does not approach cooking in the typical American way when one delights in dealing with lamb tongue and kidney, yet is flummoxed in the face of a boneless, skinless chicken breast....

I had bought a whole chicken to make stock. Boned it out, saving the thighs and breasts. The wings and drumsticks were sacrificed to the stock (but the dogs got the meat from those later). The thighs are our favorite part of the bird. We use them to make Nicoise chicken, chicken in vinegar,etc.; bone them out to make "kung pao chicken" (gong bao ji ding), or any other Sichuan stir-fried dish. But what to do with the breasts, devoid of fat and almost all flavor? Anything is good when it's swimming in a spicy, tangy, savory broth. Let's make chicken noodle soup, sort of southeast Asian style.

I don't know if this is from Vietnamese pho, or some Indonesian soup I read about--you start by searing some shallots and ginger (a couple small shallots, halved, four or five slices of ginger, no need to peel) in just a film of oil until they are really quite dark, nearly black. Add a dried red chili or two towards the end, letting them get dark and fragrant, too--ahh-ahh-ahh-choooo! Like that.


You've got some stock simmering. You want a couple cups of stock per person. I soaked four or five dried shitake mushrooms in boiling water for at least 20 minutes. So my stock consisted of: 2 cups chicken stock; 1 cup of shitake soaking water; 1 cup water. You could use more stock for the water if you want it richer, but it's full of flavor this way, too.

Put the seared shallots, ginger, and chili into the simmering broth. Slice the soaked mushrooms, and add those to the broth, too.

The searing continues, though more moderately, through the rest of this dish. That's a large part of the distinctive flavor of the soup--that said, if the vegetables get too dark, it can make the broth bitter, so you have to be a little careful.

Other than the mushrooms and the ginger, everything is local:

--Sweet dumpling squash from our garden, about half a squash, peeled and sliced about 1/3-inch thick.
--Frozen sweet corn from the market, a generous cup of kernels, thawed.
--Red onion (1/2 large) from market, sliced.
--Kadejean chicken breast (one), sliced crosswise, 1/3-inch thick.




Heat a large skillet and add a bit of oil. Lay in the squash slices and cook over medium high heat for a couple of minutes, until the one side is getting a nice charred appearance; turn over, do the same on the other side. Check for doneness, and if the squash isn't done to your taste at this point, add a little water, cover, and steam for a couple of minutes. Remove lid and turn heat to high until all the water is boiled away (this is the "potsticker method" of steam-searing vegetables).

Set the squash aside, add a little more oil to the pan, and add the sliced onions. Cook over high until the onions start to brown, then add the sweet corn and sauté until the corn starts to color, as well.



Remove the corn and onions from the pan. Add a little more oil, and when it's hot lay in the chicken slices. Cook over high heat for about a minute and a half, until the chicken is getting charred on one side. When the hot side is nice and brown, and the top still looks raw, add the chicken to the broth--do not sear the other side. This way the chicken has some slight chance of not being overcooked.

Add all the other vegetables to the broth. Let it simmer together for a couple of minutes.

Now put it together: Cook your noodles; we used thin Chinese noodles, the dry ones that come in plastic packages of eight bundles, and we used three bundles for two people.

Flavor your broth: I added several glugs of fish sauce, a couple teaspoons of soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, a little sugar. Taste for salt and general depth of flavor. Add more of above as desired. Place a portion of noodles in a wide bowl. Divide the meat and veg between the bowls, bathe it all in hot, wonderful broth. Garnish with lime slices, if you like.

Thank the chicken for all its parts, and the great wide world for its splendid spectrum of flavors. Slurping is not only permitted, but encouraged.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb. I had some, too. Tranche de gigot "La Boutarde," pan-fried leg of lamb slices the way they cook it at that Parisian bistro. It looks like Mary and I will be having a little more lamb in future:


That's our half a Sheepy Hollow lamb, dressed weight around 26 pounds. Sheepy Hollow is our Midtown Farmers' Market lamb vendor. Anne Leck is the woman behind Sheepy Hollow, which produces the best lamb around, in my opinion. Our friend Lynne arranged our lamb buy, and took the other half. She kindly let us have the offal: heart, liver, kidneys, and tongue. I am not at all sure what I'm going to do with that stuff. I'm excited about the opportunity to work with offal that's this fresh and lovely. And I am filled with trepidation, at the same time: I want to really like it, but I'm not sure I will; I want to do it justice, but I have almost no experience cooking this sort of thing. I think I'll let Fergus be my guide.

Another part of me, the Joycean part, is inclined to take this passage from Ulysses about Leopold Bloom's gustatory preferences, and just wing it:


"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."


You can be sure I'll give a full report, whatever I do. Forgive me for getting ahead of myself--having all those lamb innards in the fridge has me a little preoccupied.

The lamb leg cutlets were fantastic. The recipe, from Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking, adapted from La Boutarde in Paris, is simplicity itself. That was exactly what I was looking for, because 1) I didn't want to go to a lot of trouble, and 2) I wanted our first taste of this lamb to highlight the flavor of the lamb, rather than showy cooking technique. The accompaniments were equally simple, a mixed mash--potatoes, carrot, celery root, and parsnip--a slice of fresh bread, a glass of red wine (the bargain brouilly we opened was halfway to vinegar; a four-dollar Argentine syrah saved the day).

This meat was simply wonderful. It was dense and a bit chewy, but supremely juicy, with a depth of flavor that's rare to find in meat these days. Mary and I agreed that the flavor was almost more like that of grass-fed beef than run-of-the-mill lamb.

A recipe in pictures:



Take two five-to-six-ounce boneless slices of lamb leg, about 3/4- to 1-inch thick. Salt and pepper the meat (I also added the lightest sprinkle of piment d'espelette, because I just can't help myself).



In two tablespoons of olive oil, soften six to eight cloves of garlic in their jackets over medium low heat. This will take around eight minutes. Do not let the garlic get too brown, or it will be bitter. When the garlic is soft, remove the pan from the heat and set aside.



Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, and spoon in some of the garlic oil. Add the lamb and cook three minutes per side for medium rare. Toss in a few sprigs of thyme halfway through the cooking.



When the lamb is done, remove it to a warm plate to rest while you make the simple pan sauce. Add the garlic to the sauté pan. Pour in about three tablespoons of water, and scrape with a wooden spatula to deglaze. Add one-quarter cup dry white wine (you could use red instead, but the recipe called for white and that's what I used here). Simmer until the sauce thickens a bit.

There should be some juice on the lamb resting plate by now. Pour that back into the sauce, and serve.




For the mash, we peeled two small russet potatoes (about lemon size), one small carrot, one small parsnip, and one-quarter of a small celery root. Quarter the potatoes and cut the other vegetables into 3/4-inch dice. Bring a pot of water to the boil, add the vegetables, and simmer briskly until they are very tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the vegetables and mash them with a fork or potato masher. Add a good tablespoon of butter, salt to taste, and a bit of the cooking liquid, if you like, to achieve your desired texture. In this case, I'd say I added a good half-cup of the cooking liquid.

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw