Green Sauce

My current culinary obsession is a simple mix of chopped parsley, minced garlic, olive oil, salt, and a splash of red wine vinegar.  We call it “green sauce.”  To call it salsa verde would give it some exotic flair, but also create confusion between the Italian version which, like mine, is mainly herbs, and the Mexican, which has a tomatillo base.  And anyway, the Italian salsa verde is likely to also include anchovies, capers, and other elaborations that I eschew, so in our house, green sauce it is.  

Odd little digression:  whenever I make green sauce I can’t help thinking of a Waitrose magazine article from years ago about Terence Conran, the British retail magnate and restaurateur.  The article described a typical summer gathering in Conran’s splendidly English garden, where the main course was grilled sliced sirloin with green sauce.  It seemed oh so civilized, and summery, and at once sophisticated and appealingly rustic.  Funny the things that impress you, and stick with you, at different points in your life.  Aside from the green sauce connection, I have no opinion whatsoever about Terence Conran.

As the tidal wave of fresh produce from garden and market begins to build through July and into August, our cooking becomes ever more rudimentary.  It’ a matter of light the fire, throw everything on the grill, bung it on a plate, devour.  Fresh romano beans, tomatoes, corn on the cob, new potatoes and mild sweet beets wrapped in foil and roasted in the coals—these things need little adornment.  But—they do benefit greatly from just the right adornment, and for me, for now, that is green sauce.  A summery herbed mayonnaise is lovely, but sometimes a bit heavy, generally too much work.  Traditional Genovese pesto is something I enjoy a couple times a summer, but basil’s assertive flavor can overpower delicate vegetables and cause palate fatigue.

And then, there’s just something about exalting humble parsley to a starring role that really appeals to me.  It does seem civilized, and grown-up, in a good way, the sign of a mature palate.  Mireille Johnston, in her excellent cookbook Cuisine of the Sun,  opines that the classic French dish pot au feu (boiled supper, in essence) can only really be appreciated by those over the age of 30.  The same can probably be said for green sauce.

While I wouldn’t push aside a plate of Sir Terence’s sirloin, I think fish is the perfect protein with green sauce.  We broiled some Lake Superior whitefish a few nights ago, served it up with oven-roasted potatoes and romano beans, a coal-roasted beet left over from a previous repast, and fresh green sauce—just perfect summer eating.  Cold roast veal with green sauce pops to mind as a dish that would be quite typical of an English summer supper, enjoyed al fresco.  But who ever roasts veal these days?  Pork loin could take its place very nicely.

Just writing about this kind of food makes me think I’ve unconsciously started channeling Elizabeth David….

But here, let’s get back to earth, with our feet firmly planted on mid-American northern turf.  I went out to the garden and gathered a handful of beans, a carrot, a watermelon radish, a few ribs of celery, and parsley, of course.  Flat leaf, “Italian” parsley has the best flavor, I think, but I wound up with some curly parsley in my garden this year, too, by accident, so I used a bit of that.   From the market I had sungold tomatoes (absolute flavor bombs) and sweet corn.  Sliced a levain loaf and walnut bread.  Quickly whipped up a fresh batch of green sauce. A more elaborate lunch than is typical for us, but while the season provides this kind of bounty, I’ll happily skip the tuna fish sandwiches.  Such a light and flavorful lunch, and how colorful!

I’ve never measured the ingredients for green sauce.  It’s a handful of parsley, chopped as fine or coarse as you please, a good clove of garlic, or a couple puny ones, minced very fine though not quite to a paste. Then olive oil, enough to inundate the herbs and make it a sauce rather than a paste (pesto), a splash of good red wine vinegar, just enough to bring an edge of acid, not so much that it becomes vinaigrette.  You could use lemon juice instead of vinegar, that’s the only substitution I’ll approve.  Salt, plenty, gray sea salt if you have it.

Needless to say, but as this sauce is predominantly olive oil, you want to use a good, flavorful oil.  For years I was devoted to Zoe Spanish olive oil, but lately we’ve been buying, and enjoying, the extra virgin kalamata olive oil from Trader Joe’s. 

DO NOT ADD PEPPER! I’m sorry, you just can’t.  Because, that’s why.  Pepper doesn’t go in green sauce, not in mine, anyway.

Now, you could vary the herb component, add a little chervil, maybe some leaves of thyme.  But I wouldn’t let basil anywhere near my green sauce.  Well, maybe the tiniest bit, and only in early summer, when the basil is still mild-mannered, not the bossy, arrogant, anise-scented basil of July and August.  And of course, you could go full-on salsa verde with the anchovies, capers, etc. 

But then, it wouldn’t be green sauce.  It would have lost its innocence, scuttled its essential simplicity.  Why did I even bring that up?  This sauce is perfect.  Enjoy it before our fleeting summer flees....

Text and photos copyright 2015 by Brett Laidlaw

A Few Tastes of Maple

I got a chance today to talk maple syrup cookery with Rob Ferrett on the Food Friday segement of Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time and have compiled here a few of the recipes I mentioned on the show.  I've made this dish a lot lately, while testing the recipe out for the cook-off, at the cook-off, and then as the featured dish I prepared at Kate's Occasional Cafe at the Dairyland Cafe in Ridgeland this past week.  I'm still not tired of it.

Sichuan-Spiced Maple Chicken Wings (This recipe was inspired by Teresa Marrone’s Two-Pepper Maple Chicken Wings from Modern Maple.)

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 to 6 as an appetizer

Serve these spicy-sweet wings over a bowl of rice, accompanied by a stir-fried vegetable, for a main course; or as a zingy appetizer—keep a cold beer close at hand.

2 pounds chicken wings (about 10 wings), tips removed, separated in 2 pieces

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon oil (sunflower, canola, or the like)

2 teaspoons sambal chile paste (or to taste)

¼ cup maple syrup

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan pepper

1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

4 scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

Preheat your oven to 425.  Combine all the ingredients except the scallions in a large bowl and toss to coat the wings with the seasonings.  Place the wings and seasonings in a heavy roasting pan, and bake, stirring every 15 minutes or so, for 45 minutes.  Add the scallions and continue baking, stirring occasionally, until the wings are well browned and the seasonings have become a glaze that coats the wings.  This will probably take another 15 to 25 minutes.

Options:  For really dark and glazy wings, turn on the broiler for the last few minutes of cooking, and turn the wings a couple of times so they brown evenly, being careful that they don’t burn.

            If you have a convection feature on your oven, you can produce excellent results without resorting to the broiler.  Bake at 400 convection and check every 10 minutes, adding the scallions after 30 minutes.  Total cooking time with convection should be 40-45 minutes.

These wings can be made ahead and reheated before serving.  

Maple Spice Grilled Sirloin (original post here)

serves 4--next time I make this I'm going to try it with venison

1 1/2-2 pounds sirloin steak 

Marinade:

½ teaspoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons sunflower or canola oil

1 teaspoon sambal oelek chile paste

1 tablespoon maple syrup

2 teaspoons soy sauce

Pinch salt

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

1 large clove garlic minced

Combine all marinade ingredients and pour over the steak, coating well.  Marinate the steak for a couple of hours at room temp.  Prior to grilling remove the steak to a separate plate, saving the marinade.  Add hte marinade to 1/3 cup chicken stock in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. 

Grill the steak over hot natural wood coals to desired doneness--about 3 minutes per side for rare, 4 for medium rare.  Let the steak rest on a platter for at least 5 minutes; add the juices that the resting steak produces to the stock and marinade mixture.  Serve with grilled vegetables and salad. 

The Thighs Have It

In terms of underappreciated, tasty bargain meats, chicken thighs are right there with pork shoulder steaks, in my opinion.  The thigh is my preferred part of the bird, though I fully appreciate the wing thing, too.  Chicken wings prepared in a Sichuan dry-fried manner are an exquisite treat.  The thighs, though, are more accommodating in a knife-and-fork meal context, and when they are boneless, why, they make positively civilized eating--cooking them over nice smoky hardwood coals keeps them on the rustic side.

Ramps season is starting as the maple season ends, and I often wind up putting the two together, frequently on chicken.  This is a flavorful, simple dish to celebrate the return of grilling weather (well, comfortable grilling weather; we cook over the coals year-round).

A paillard is a flattened out piece of meat.  I wail away at my thighs with the side of a heavy cleaver--a meat mallet, or even a small sauté pan will get the job done.

Maple-Ramp Marinated Chicken Paillards
Serves two to three

4 boneless chicken thighs, skin on
½ cup chopped ramps, whites and greens
Juice of ¼ lemon, and some zest, if you like
2 tablespoons maple syrup
½ teaspoon sambal oelek chili paste (or more, to taste)
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Purchase boneless skin-on chicken thighs, or bone them yourself. Place one thigh at a time on a cutting board, and with a meat mallet, the side of a heavy cleaver, or a small, clean saucepan, pound each thigh vigorously until the meat is about ½ inch thick—the surface area of the thighs should nearly double.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and add the chicken, coating it well on all sides. Let the chicken marinate for at least 60 minutes at room temp, or longer in the fridge. When you’re ready to cook, prepare a fire of natural wood coals, and grill the chicken over medium-hot coals, turning often, for 12 to 15 minutes total. The chicken should be very well browned on both sides.

If you have extra ramps, toss a few in what remains of the marinade, and grill them along with the chicken.

 


Sweet & Sour (Tree Crop) Chard (original post)
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

 

Roast Baby Carrots with Maple-Mustard Glaze (original post)
2 cups baby carrots, scrubbed (mine weighed 9 ounces)
1 1/2 Tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp canola or grapeseed oil
pinch of salt, grind of pepper

Combine all the above in a gratin dish or small baking dish. Roast, uncovered, at 375 for 45 minutes, until they become a little brown and glazy. Stir them every 15 minutes during this time.

Remove from the oven and add:

1 rounded tsp grain mustard
1/8 tsp piment d'espelette, or a good pinch of cayenne (optional)
1 tsp red wine vinegar

Add another grind of pepper, taste for salt. Serve warm or at room temp. 

A Midsummer Night's Smørrebrød

You don’t have to be Danish to appreciate smørrebrød, those open-face sandwiches—knife and fork sandwiches—composed upon dense, buttered rye bread, usually containing appropriately Nordic ingredients like pickled herring, beets, and pork paté. If you like bread, and noshy food in that tapas mode, you’ll like smørrebrød. As a summer evening meal it has the additional virtue that most of the toppings can be prepared ahead—or are themselves commercially prepared foods of the very best sort, like cheese, smoked fish, cured meats, etc. Finally, because finishing preparation is so simple, these mini-canvases beg to be decorated to the full extent of your garnishing imagination.

Bready. Noshy. Easy. Pretty. What, I ask, is not to like in that combination?

It’s usually this time of year, when we’ve just slipped past the solstice, and the gardens are really starting to produce, the market stalls are burgeoning as the plants make the most of that vital sunshine, that my appetite turns to smørrebrød. It’s an elegantly rustic (or is it rustically elegant?) kind of meal to enjoy in those long twilights as the strong sun softens on descent, spreading welcome shadows, and the heat of the day begins to mellow.

That pretty well describes the evening last weekend when we prepared a smørrebrød repast at the house and packed it in a cooler for a picnic on the hill. It was a bit warm and muggy in the valley, but we caught a nice breeze as we headed up the hill. I’d been cleaning up a little impromptu sort of dump at the edge of the woods this spring, hauling down old car batteries, car seats, beer cans and bottles, what have you. Then I ran the lawn tractor up there to mow a small picnic area. Among the detritus I’d found a piece of sheet metal and some cinder blocks, and these we turned to better purpose as a makeshift picnic table (pleasantly, though very rustically, reminiscent of a Parisian zinc bar). It was, I dare say, one of the best picnics ever.

We settled in very comfortably (so did the dogs, eventually) to enjoy the view of the green, green hills, mist-shrouded in the distance. The aspen leaves overhead kept up a  calming kerfuffle. There was even a floor show, of sorts, as the neighbor who rents our hayfield came to bale up the last few rows of the oats and grass they cut last week. Urban al fresco dining has its pleasures, but when was the last time you saw a John Deere tractor and baler on the Nicollet Mall?

As we ate our smørrebrød and sipped our pinot gris and watched the sun pass out of sight behind the western hills—though it would still be light for a couple of hours—I had a thought about terroir—you know, that idea that foods and wines can taste distinctly of the place they came from, express some quality of the soils in which they grow, the waters that sustain them, and the human cultures that have nurtured them through time. My idea had something to do with how a cuisine is shaped by the sense of the seasons experienced by the people who create it. And how, for us specifically and for northern peoples in general, our long annual journey from the abyss of winter’s frigid darkness to midsummer’s almost too abundant light and warmth, and back again, how this must have as great an impact on the savor of our food as the molds in the caves of Roquefort, or the chalky soils of Sancerre.

It profoundly affects what we eat, how we eat it, what we want to eat, and how we experience it in the context of the year. A midsummer picnic at 45 degrees north latitude must taste different from the same meal consumed in Florida or southern California; in those places, their own seasonal context would shape their experience of what they eat.  For me, high summer dining has meant that I’ve hardly wanted to look at a piece of red meat—give me vegetables, salads, simply prepared fish, cheese and bread. Oh, and maybe a glass of wine.

I made a small rye loaf that included a little birch syrup. You want a pretty dense bread, with a close crumb--not something like a baguette that's full of holes.  Then top to your heart's desire.  I don't let myself be constrained by any rules, but rather see the smørrebrød concept as the base for using the best of the local and seasonal.  One of my favorite, oft-repeated mantras--Ninety percent of good cooking is good shopping--is on full display here.  That is not to say, of course, that you should hie thee to a high-end supermarket, but rather that best ingredients make for best results.

The Superior shore was well represented in fresh herring from Cornucopia, smoked whitefish from Port Wing, cheese from Bayfield.  The Menomonie farmers market gave us snap peas, onions, beets, turnips, potatoes, and asparagus, and our garden contributed, too, with radishes, chives, and mustard greens.  There was a bit of home-smoked bacon in the potato and asparagus salad, and the yogurt cheese was home-cultured using wonderful fresh milk from just down the road.  Oh, and the mayo, also homemade, using eggs from our neighbor Tina's chickens, and Minnesota sunflower oil Smude.

On Wisconin! was surely the theme of this meal, especially as the sandwiches were literally presented on Wisconsin.  A more thorough description of the various toppin's below.

Smoked whitefish salad combined about four ounces of flaked smoked whitefish with roughly three tablespoons of peas—we shelled some sugar snaps—two ounces of Wisconsin hickory nuts, chopped and lightly toasted in a dry skillet. (The nuts were a generous gift from my buddy Lucas “The Beard” Madsen; hickory trees grow in his part of southeastern Wisconsin, though they’re scarce here. Other local, wild alternatives would be black walnuts or hazelnuts; a good storebought option would be pecans.) To the fish, peas, and nuts I added some sliced red onion and about three tablespoons of mayonnaise—homemade in this case, and for a dinner like this I think it’s really worth the effort. Garnish with a little more red onion and thin slices of sugar snaps.

I was inordinately pleased with my checkboard composition of roasted baby beets and turnips. The base was fresh yogurt cheese (with just a dollop of chevre added in for body, and flavor) mixed with chopped chives and lots of coarsely ground pepper. Lay down a good bed of the cheese mixture, and decorate to your heart’s content. You can leave the vegetables round and create a fish-scale effect. I really liked the geometrical drama of the squares—just cut straight down around the sides of each little beet or turnip, and then slicing across produces squares.

Asparagus and potato salad was originally going to be oyster mushroom and potato sauté, but the little critters had honeycombed my ‘shrooms, so it was Plan B, which was just delightful. The potatoes were preroasted (along with the beets and turnips). Wash and slice the asparagus bite-size.  Dice up some good bacon fairly coarse, begin to render, then add the asparagus. Then add a couple of generous pinches of caraway seeds, about half as much cumin seed, and…mustard seed! About a teaspoon. Add the cut-up potatoes to warm and brown just a bit, and absorb the other flavors. This I served atop a generous spread of that homemade mayo.

Brie and radishes. A study in simplicity and the wonder of felicitous combinations. This one was just delicious. The cheese was one you probably haven’t heard of, but of which I predict you’ll be hearing quite a bit in the near future. It was Happy Hollow Creamery's “Snowy Spring Brie,” which we picked up at Ehler’s store in Cornucopia on the shore recently. Happy Hollow lists a Bayfield, WI address. This cheese, beautifully ripened, was exquisitely flavorful. Not even terribly expensive. If you happen to come across it, just buy it. Their Lazy Daisy raw milk cheddar is also excellent. As I say, I predict you’ll be hearing more about these cheeses and this creamery. For the sandwich: butter, cheese, radish, pepper, boom.

Last but surely not least, grilled Superior herring atop mustardy mustard greens. I’ve said plenty about this superb fish, which never disappoints—we usually get it hours after it’s been caught, so that’s a good start. I’ll have more to say in a future post about the greens preparation, which combines oil, mustard or other strongly flavored greens, more mustard—a good, strong Dijon style—a bit of honey, some vinegar, salt and pepper. This is going to be a standard greens preparation at our house right through the summer and fall. Butter, mustardy mustard greens, a piece of grilled fish, and a radish flower—yep, radish flower, you knew? They’re a bit sweet and a bit peppery at the same time.

Partly what inspired us to climb the hill for supper was a story we heard on  WPR's new show 45 North .  Last week Anne Strainchamps interviewed the British adventurer and writer Alastair Humphreys , who has bicycled around the world, run a marathon in the Sahara, and rowed the Atlantic, and now (maybe because he's tired...) is promoting the idea of "micro-adventures," mini-excursions in one's own backyard.  He's encouraging people just to get outside, and outside one's usual comfort zone--just grab a sleeping bag, a sandwich, and a bottle of wine, and go sleep on a hill, look at the stars, watch the sun come up.  I think it's just a brilliant idea whose simplicity is at the heart of its brilliance, and while we retired down the hill with the last fading light to all the comforts of home, we did feel as if we'd been away for a while, even if our adventure was, literally, in our own back yard.

And the food, if I need to say it, was good to the last pea.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Poacher's Delight

It’s interesting that “poaching a fish” has those dual meanings. This is the legal, delicious sort of fish poaching, as easy as it is seemingly old-fashioned. It brings to mind whole poached salmon lacquered in aspic on a fancy buffet, silver serving pieces, white linen, and cucumber sandwiches. When you fry or grill, you're adding other flavors to the fish, but poaching gives you pretty much the pure fish flavor, with only a little influence from the seasoning in the poaching liquid. Therefore, I would only recommend poaching when you have utterly fresh, pristine fish. Which in this case was a whitefish fillet from my beloved Halvorson Fisheries in Cornucopia, Wisconsin.

I should like to point out that absolutely fresh doesn't have to mean fresh off the boat.  This fillet was three days old--we picked it up on a trip to the South Shore on Wednesday, and prepared it on Saturday.  But it had not acquired any off or "fishy" odors or flavors in that time.  Freshly caught fish properly cleaned and treated will stay fresh for at least three or four days.  

Makes you wonder how long some of the fish you buy, even from the top-end fish markets, has been sitting around.  You can pay $20+ a pound for Copper River salmon or Pacific halibut, and sometimes I do, but I never wind up with better fish than when we make the trip to the shore and fill a cooler with whitefish, herring, and lake trout for a pittance (might as well carry on with the old-time lingo, since we're talking about a throw-back way of cooking).  Even if you figure in the cost of gas, I think we come out ahead financially, and we absolutely win in terms of taste and pure enjoyment.

A classic sauce is de rigeur with poached fish.  A beurre blanc would be lovely, or a green sauce fragrant with tarragon, parsley, and chervil.  For this midsummer repast we made mayonnaise, and some of it I flavored with garlic--that's aioli--and to the rest I added herbs, tarragon and chives--that's not aioli, but rather herbed mayonnaise.  I sort of have this peeve, you might recall from past rants, about every kind of flavored mayonnaise being called aioli, because while aioli is usually a type of mayonnaise (there are variations that don't use eggs), it is not a synonym for it.  But, as usual, I digress....

The market this past weekend provided a good deal more than radishes and kohlrabi.  Lovely new potatoes, snap peas, asparagus, baby beets and turnips (and strawberries for dessert).

We boiled all the vegetables separately, till just tender--the beets went last, lest our entire meal come dressed in pink.  And for the fish I prepared a court bouillon, which consisted of:

Water, about a quart
White wine--what was left in a bottle of riesling that was hanging around, half a cup, say
The juice of 1/4 lemon, and then I threw the piece of lemon in, too
A couple of bay leaves, broken up
Some cracked black peppercorns

And the secret ingredient, this court-bouillon préparation:

It's mostly gray sea salt, flavored with thyme, bay leaf, dried shallots, fennel seed, and seaweed.  We picked it up in Brittany years ago; it keeps just fine, and it gives the bouillon a decidedly oceanic character.  Whatever sort of thyme is in there is particularly potent, too.  If you don't have something like this, just add the component parts separately.  The seaweed aroma is nice, but not necessary.  Combine everything in a saucepan large enough to hold your fish, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.  Then turn the heat off, add the fish, cover, and set aside.  The fish was probably cooked through within five minutes, but it didn't hurt it to sit in the bouillon as it cooled, absorbing some of the aromatics.

Service goes family style, the fish with a generous herbal garnish, the aioli and mayonnaise, the lovely vegetables prettily arranged by Mary and Melinda, our guest for the weekend, some crusty bread.  Such a civilized meal, poacher's delight, indeed.

Melinda picked and arranged the flowers, wild meadow bouquets.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Quel Fromage! (Warm Rush Creek Reserve with Coal-Roasted Vegetables)

This is one from the "90 percent of good cooking is good shopping" file.  Serving a warm Rush Creek Reserve, the soft, young, raw milk cheese from  Uplands Cheese Company in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, with roasted vegetables wasn't even my original idea--I got it from the Big Cheese himself, Uplands's head cheesemaker Andy Hatch.  I was fortunate to be invited on the Cheese, Spirits, and Brews Tour sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board  last week, and while I wasn't able to join the group for the first couple days of the four-day tour, I lucked out in being able to visit two of my favorite Wisconsin cheesemakers, Uplands and Crave Brothers,  near the town of Waterloo, last Thursday and Friday.  It was a really inspiring--and delicious--couple of days, about which I will have more to say in the near future.  For now, let us simply delight in the wonder that is gooey cheese:

Really my only contribution to this utterly satisfying repast--other than being able to recognize a great idea when I hear it--was to build a fire and roast the vegetables in the coals, giving them some very appealingly rustic char and complex flavors of smoke and caramelization.

The cheese was the star (even if it didn't stand alone...), molten when we started to eat, cooling through a spectrum of flavors and textures as it gradually congealed--and even at the end we were scraping bits off the bottom of the dish.  The roasted vegetables and good bread were the perfect companions--the turnips were especially good, sweet, soft, and just a little bit pungent.  The beets were also lovely.  Cornichons were too tart for this sweet-tempered cheese, although it carries a bit of its own tang.  Apple was also out of place here; I think slices of pear might have gone well.

Produced from raw milk in late summer, Rush Creek Reserve is a seasonal cheese.  Aged for just under the legally required 60 days before being shipped, this washed-rind cheese continues to ripen in the store or in your fridge, and Andy Hatch said it's at its best for the next 30 days.  The interior becomes softer in that time, the aroma stronger--but I've had a Rush Creek Reserve aged past 90 days, and it never became as assertive as something like a Muenster or Epoisses.  The cheese we ate was fresh out of the gate, released on October 17.  I'll be looking to pick up another one in the next couple of weeks to see how it develops over a month's time.

To cook the vegetables--leek, potato, carrot, little onions, squash, beet, and turnip--we just wrapped them in foil and nestled them into the coals.  You don't have to wrap each vegetable individually--we did a couple small potatoes together, three small turnips lined up and foiled together, big beet cut in half and both halves wrapped in one sheet of foil, etc.  Turn every 10 minutes or so, and use your asbestos fingers to give the packets a squeeze for tenderness when you think they're getting done.  And do note that you want a nice bed of glowing coals, not a raging fire, which will burn the outside of the vegetables before the inside is cooked.  Of course you could simply do your vegetables in the oven, tossed with a bit of oil and roasted until nicely brown and tender.

To warm the cheese, we baked it, the bottom wrapped in foil to keep it from all melting away (a precaution which proved unnecessary), at 300 for about 20 minutes.  That gave us quite molten cheese to start with, and if this somewhat Cheez Whiz-like consistency offends any connoisseurs, I make no apologies.  The flavors of the cheese still came through, and the fragrance of roasty vegetables and richly flavorful cheese produced a kind of aroma-therapy of a very delectable sort.

Rush Creek Reserve at the factory, ready to be wrapped; each cheese is bound with a strip of spruce.

I purchased this particular cheese at the Driftless Depot , a delightful market, deli, and café in Spring Green, just a few miles up the road from Uplands.  If you're visiting Wisconsin's enchanting driftless area, this is the place to fill your picnic basket.  (Am I sounding a little like the southern Wisconsin tourist board?  Well, chalk it up to the convert's zeal, and be assured that my enthusiasm is heartfelt and warranted.)

The Uplands website has  a map showing where to buy their cheeses, which seems not very complete or up-to-date, as it shows only three sources in the Twin Cities, and I know it's more widely available than that.  Check with your local cheese store or co-op.  Rush Creek and Pleasant Ridge Reserve are also available on-line direct from Uplands.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

"One Can Dine Very Well on Potatoes"

You travel to France to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, to sip an espresso at a sidewalk café and munch on tangy saucisson sec while you quaff a glass of Beaujolais in view of the vineyard from which it sprung.  You travel for the expected sights and pleasures, but of course it's the unexpected encounters that make a trip truly memorable.

I think of our visit to a tourist office in the town of Villefranche, in Beaujolais.  We came in speaking French, Mary in the lead--or perhaps I went first, to make Mary look good by comparison.  The petite, dark-haired woman working there listened to our request for info on restaurants and wineries in the area, and scurried about the office amassing a pile of brochures and pamphlets.  She and Mary chatted while the woman reached into cabinets and leafed through stacks of materials.  The woman seemed distracted, and was becoming more animated, even agitated, all the time.

When finally it appeared that she might burst with excitement, she overcame that deep-seated Gallic reserve which makes it nearly impossible to ask a direct question of a stranger, and dared to ask us where we were from.  We said we were American.  Not French at all?  Not a bit.  Alors.  What had the woman flustered was that she couldn't place Mary's form of French; her accent was so good, she thought she must be French, but....  The implication was that her grammar didn't quite match the accent.  What she finally concluded, she told us, was that Mary must have been a French woman who had moved to America, and forgotten how to speak French! It was probably the most endearingly backhanded compliment the woman could have offered.  And after that dish of quenelles de brochet has faded in memory, and the Delacroix and David and Géricault we admired in the Louvre start to blur together, that's the sort of landmark of a trip that stays with you for years and years.

The title of today's post comes from another such encounter, during our first trip to France in 2001.  We went in early October, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, and shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.  This was in that honeymoon phase when much of the world drew together in sympathy with America over the shock and horror of those events.  I can't recall how many French people spontaneously mentioned the 9-11 attacks, and expressed their condolences, and incidentally thanked us, retrospectively, for America's role in saving France during World War II.  The French have a longer historical memory than we have (who doesn't?), and it was remarkable to be the recipients of this kind of outpouring of emotion, simply because we were American.

Well, the Frenchman who inspired today's post wasn't quite so sentimental.  We met him about a week into our trip, which started in Brittany and took us down the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Loire, then up that splendid river into the Touraine, the area around the city of Tours.  We wound up staying a few days near Chaumont sur Loire, home to a lesser chateau, which at any rate we were only able to view from behind the locked gates, à cause de la grève--"because of the strike," the public workers' rolling strike over...I don't recall what. A cause de la grève we couldn't visit the chateaux, à cause de la grève we couldn't get into the Rodin museum. etc.  It became the tagline to our trip, not that we were much put out.

But with the chateau in Chaumont closed, we were looking for amusement, so we went to the tourist office in town--which also served as baguette depot on days when the boulangerie was closed.  There we met M. Guérand, in his early 30s I'd guess, longish dirty blonde hair and a three-day beard, cowl-neck sweater--so very French looking.  If he didn't have a Gauloise perched on his lower lip at all times, he should have.  Typical he was, in appearance at least, but not your typical tourist office worker in almost every other respect.  He wasn't from the area and didn't really know it very well.  He was from Paris, a graphic designer, unemployed, and they'd shipped him out here to the boondocks to fill a vacancy at the tourism office.  Waving at the rack of brochures was about as helpful as he could be in helping us find lodging for the night.  And as for sights worth seeing, well, in his view, one thing was as good as another. Merci, bien.

But we got to talking, about...just about everything.  He was pretty bored, so little tourist traffic in the area, since it was the off season, and à cause de la grève.  And probably Mary and I were just a wee bit sick of each other's exclusive company after many days on the road.  We spoke mostly in French, as his English was poor, and we covered 9-11 and its immediate aftermath, the Afghanistan invasion, the American media and its lack of intellectual depth (when we got home I sent him a package of the "better" U.S. current affairs magazines, to show him there was some intelligent life in America, and never got a reply).  It got philosophical at some point, as we pondered together why so many people spent their lives chasing after money, and never stopping to realize that money is just a medium, not an end in itself, and if you thought it was an end in itself, you could never have enough to be satisfied.  Deep stuff.  He also confided to us that he really could see no point to existence itself.  Shrug.  Fire up a Gauloise....

Eventually we came back around to our immediate needs:  a place to sleep that night, somewhere to eat.  By sheer luck we pulled a brochure that led us to a very odd but perfectly wonderful auberge, Chateau de la Haute Borde.  As for dinner, well, there were some restaurants in town, but this was Monday, and most were closed.  Furthermore, he wasn't really supposed to recommend specific restaurants, and anyway, he didn't eat out much.  He didn't care about food, himself, and seemed slightly exasperated with his countrymen and -women for their obsession with this trivial chore, feeding oneself.  To top it off, here in the land of charcuterie, in a sea of rillettes and rillons and foie gras, he was a vegetarian.  It was a healthier and more humane sort of existence.

Pause.

"I find that one can dine very well on potatoes."

He must have said it in French, but I have no idea how to construct that sentence.  We understood, we nodded.  We thanked him and said how much we had enjoyed our conversation, and made our way out into a gorgeous October afternoon in the storied Val de la Loire.  After checking in to La Haute Borde and confirming that their restaurant was closed, we drove into the city of Amboise and enjoyed a splendid dinner at a restaurant called La Comédie, where local young people came for pizza, and we ate sausage, duck, rabbit, as well as gratin dauphinoise--so yes, we dined very well on potatoes, among other regional delights.

Another thing you learn from travel, a cliché perhaps, but not a dreary one, is that sometimes it's the destination that delights, but often it's more about the journey.  An old verity appropriate to this shaggy dog story (histoire drôle sans queue ni tête!) about a dinner inspired by pommes de terre, though not composed exclusively of them.

I dug our potato bed this week, and I knew we must dine on them.  I plucked the first brussels sprouts from the garden, too.  Those things, along with some beautiful cippolini-type onions from the market we wrapped up in foil--a little salt and oil in the sprouts and potatoes--and into the coals of a fading fire they went.

Foraging in the fridge I found a piece of pork belly that I had brined as for bacon, but roasted in the oven instead of smoking.  To add variety to the plate, and for the hell of it, I put a couple of eggs in the coals for ten minutes at the very end.  I've never done eggs this way before, and they came out beautifully--yolk sunny yellow and set, white silky, not a hint of sulfurishness about them.

Then cheese, since we are in Dairyland--Marieke gouda both aged and smoked, Roth-Kase gruyère-style.  Hope butter, a sort of creme fraiche ersatz made by combining Cedar Summit cream and goat yogurt, some minced shallot added to that.  Pickles, since this was a sort of faux raclette meal.

This is how we dine on potatoes around here, and we dined very well, indeed.  Happy travels to all.


Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw