2011 Highlights: Vite, Vite! The Rest

This is it, the ultimate post for 2011, an eventful year indeed for us. Quicky, quickly, the final list of highlights:

I continued refining my method for micro-batch canning and pickling. The basic brine I describe in the book ( and here ) I put into use to preserve a pint here, a half-pint there--green beans, asparagus, snow peas, ramps, shallots, fiddleheads. Whatever I had a surplus of, I'd just pack into a jar (with perhaps a quick blanching first), make up a little brine (seasoned as I saw fit, garlic always, and a bit of chile, maybe some Sichuan peppercorns, allspice, a couple cloves, a point or two of star anise; herbs like tarragon or thyme), pour it over, cap, stick it in the fridge, check on it in a few days, a few weeks, or perhaps even a few months. At Thanksgiving I had a lovely variety of tart and briny things to put out on the relish tray. As martini garnish, a tip of pickled asparagus is delightful.

The specific dishes that really stayed with me were those where I took a deeply local approach. The ceviche above, from last July, combined raw Lake Superior whitefish with green apple juice and our own cider vinegar, green prickly ash berries (related to Sichuan peppercorns), seeds and chopped leaves of honewort (aka "wild chervil"), and brined milkweed flower buds. It tasted amazing, and unlike anything I've eaten before. It's a direction I fully intend to pursue in the coming year.

Another delightful concoction employing the fruits of our land and the market was the caponata-inspired relish shown below , made with eggplant, apple, cider vinegar, maple syrup, a few aromatics, and a sprinkling of those milkweed bud "capers" again.

Mary and I left the dogs at the East River Road Kennel (aka Mary's mom's house), and spent a weekend on the South Shore of Lake Superior at the end of August. The photos from that trip have disappeared. We enjoyed many excellent meals on the trip, from the fried whitefish livers and broiled fresh lake trout and whitefish at the Village Inn in Cornucopia, to fantastic fish tacos post-bike ride at the Beach Club on Madeline Island, to a lakeside brunch of smoked fish, goat cheese, local apples and rye bread, washed down with the delicious water from the Corny artesian well.

And of course we loaded up with fresh fish from Halvorson Fisheries in the Corny marina. Also into the cooler for the trip back to the cities went a package of fresh whitefish livers. Though we always seek out this local delicacy in South Shore restaurants (I think of them as "South Shore sweetbreads"), I had never cooked with them before. I soaked them in milk, seasoned them well with salt and pepper and sambal, gave them a light breading and fried them up with onions. Served them with something I called "apple marmalade"; I have no memory of how I made that, but the combination was fantastic. Again, from humble ingredients, such a feast. We followed that first course with pan-seared lake trout in red wine sauce with a stew of local shell beans, bacon, and leeks.

The possibilities of ground meat are vast and enticing. While I do love a good cheeseburger, the most memorably delicious meat patty meal was this  stew of grilled ground lamb meatballs with beets, eggplants, and subtle middle eastern seasoning:

In late September we roasted a whole lamb over the coals at Bide-A-Wee. Jean-Louis constructed an excellent spit for the occasion, and oversaw the grilling process. The lamb came from our friend Tina, who lives just up the road from Bide-A-Wee (though we joke that she lives in "southern Wisconsin," since she's on the other side of highway 64). It was a much larger animal than I had expected, pretty much filled the cargo compartment of our Jetta wagon when I picked it up at the processor. It easily fed the assembled crowd, and continues giving to this day: I'm simmering some of the leftovers for a lamb, beans, and greens stew that will be our New Year's Day supper.

And just about every day, we realized anew that eating locally and seasonally is not a challenge, but an outright joy. It's a familiar topic in these pages, I know, but one I'm happy to repeat again and again.  And  I'm not planning to stop.

Bar 5 duck confit with pan-seared squash, apples, and cabbage

Lake Superior whitefish, cabbage, leek, chestnut braise, soft polenta with pumpkin seed oil

May your 2012 be filled with great meals, friendship, and fine adventures.


Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

2011 Highlights: Les Oeufs Sauvages

There's still time to get your entries in for the Trout Caviar book giveaway --leave a comment about one of your 2011 LOCAL! food highlights by January 1; be specific, be evocative, regale and entice us!
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Early this year things got pretty intense with the final push to finish the book--well, one of the final pushes; like a Hollywood slasher flick, the work on the Trout Caviar book had a lot of false endings. I had a big deadline at the beginning of February, or was it the end? At some point I took the approach of "Shannon can't read everything all at once," and I started sending things in piecemeal. Shannon is Shannon Pennefeather, whom I certainly hope I have mentioned before, my editor on the book, and managing editor of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Shannon is also a kind and talented person endowed with considerable insight and an even greater gift of patience. I acknowledge her in the book by saying that she "worked very hard to turn an enthusiastic mess into something a good deal less messy, while leaving all the enthusiasm in." Hmmm, and yet somehow she let me end that sentence with a preposition. I suppose she would have found it presumptuous to edit her own acknowledgment. The truth of the matter is that my book would not be the book it is without her thoughtful editing and brilliant organization. And just so as not to leave anyone wondering: I am very, very happy with my book (leaving room for some after-the-fact picky self-criticism; whatever's wrong with the book is pretty much my fault).

Then as long as we're on the topic of highlights, I'd say that working with Shannon was one of the bright spots of 2011 for me. So thanks to that lengthy digression, this post is two-fer.

Back to the supposed "final days" of work on the manuscript: I took several writing retreats out to the cabin in January and February, me and the dogs. In the snowy, silent countryside there were few distractions other than stoking the fire. After hours of editing recipes I could clear my head with a snowshoe walk around the hilltop or a turn on the skis. There were a lot of fun things about working on the book; editing recipes was not one of them.

But in the midst of tweaking and editing existing dishes, I was coming up with new ones at the same time. This one, called "Hens and Eggs and Bacon" in the book, is my take on a delightful bit of Burgundian comfort food, oeufs en meurette--poached eggs in a red wine sauce. I gave it an air of the wild with the addition of hen of the woods mushrooms. I believe I've gone on record as saying that hens are the bacon of mushrooms, so this is a sort of bacon-on-bacon-on-egg dish, and how could that be bad?

Serve one egg per person for a first course; a two-egg portion, along with good crusty bread and a salad, makes a satisfying winter supper. The version pictured here was a Bide-A-Wee lunch during one of those writing retreats, and a better lunch for a snowy day, I can't imagine. It gave me the strength to pick up the editing pen again and tackle the eternal question, "Should that be thinly sliced, or sliced thin?"



Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

2011 Highlights: My Crock

There's still time to get your entries in for the Trout Caviar book giveaway --leave a comment about one of your 2011 LOCAL! food highlights by January 1; be specific, be evocative, regale and entice us!

I'm finding that my 2011 food highlights consist more of things I did than of things I ate--though I'm sure I'll be able to dredge up a memorable taste sensation or two, as well.  Late last winter Mary and I took a drive south from Bide-A-Wee down Wisconsin highway 25 to the river town of Downsville.   There we met potter John Thomas and his wife Kathy Ruggles, shared a cup of tea and talked about the tumultuous political situation engulfing the Badger State (it's worth remembering that the whole occupy phenomenon started with anti-Walker protestors flocking to Madison and the state capitol building).  

We came home with my very first crock, an earthtone beauty that I filled with vegetables mid-summer; it's been fermenting ever since. Now it's filled with cabbage that has become sweet and sour, crunchy and salty--the basis for a wonderful choucroute garni dinner, on the elaborate end, or fabulous hot dog garnish, at its simplest.

Prior to acquiring this gorgeous vessel I'd always done my fermenting in quart jars, and that works just fine. I use the same recipe, either way: for each pound of shredded vegetables--cabbage, kale, beets, turnips, etc.--I add 2 teaspoons of salt. Rub the salt in well, pack the veg in quart jars, or into the crock with a weight on top. Into a cool dark place, and fermentation will start almost immediately. Your vegetables will be nicely sour in a few days, and will continute to gain character as time goes by. After a couple of weeks I usually refrigerate the jars, and there they will keep indefinitely. My crock is sitting on the kitchen counter, which is probably fine in a cool winter kitchen; but I oughta check on it, I guess.

Bonnie Dehn, the "Herb Lady" from the Minneapolis Farmers Market, mentioned the last time I was on the Fresh & Local Show  with her and host Susan Berkson that you can even ferment cabbage in a zip-top bag. Worth a try, though I wouldn't leave the 'kraut in the bag longer than needed to get it sour, for fear of chemicals leaching from the plastic.

Fermenting your own vegetables is one of those age-old means of food preservation that can seem daunting until you try it and see how simple it really is. Trust nature, and your nose. Acquiring a taste for fermented food opens a whole world of gorgeous, pungent variety--some of the most distinctive and delicious foods from around the globe are of the fermented variety.

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

2011 Highlights: Pumpkin Seed Harvest

Get your entries in for the Trout Caviar book giveaway--leave a comment about one of your 2011 LOCAL! food highlights by January 1; be specific, be evocative, regale and entice us!

One of my local food highlights of 2011 didn’t actually involve any food—well, not directly, at least. Last October Mary and I were driving through the western Wisconsin countryside, and came across an intriguing scene. Off to our right was an unremarkable field in which were growing, it appeared, squashes or pumpkins of some sort. The intriguing part was the odd contraption parked near the side road, around which an group of people were gathered, intent on a mysterious task.

In addition, between the county road we were driving on and the contraption and crew, there were piles of what appeared to be smashed-up pumpkins. We peered intently as we drove past, up a hill and around the bend. A couple hundred yards along, I swung to the shoulder and hung a U-ie. We had to go back and see what was going on.

Once we started down the side road and approached the group of people, I knew what we had come upon: it was harvest time in the fields where the pumpkins that produce Hay River Pumpkin Seed Oil are grown. Ken Seguine was the man in charge, and he was working out the kinks in a newly automated form of pumpkin seed extraction—prior to this year, a dedicated group of volunteers performed the task of smashing open pumpkins and sorting out the seeds by hand.

The new pumpkin seed machine consisted of a sort of conveyor belt/elevator that lifted the pumpkins up, to be dropped into a grinder that busted them into pieces. These pieces fell into a rotating, perforated drum. As the drum went round it further agitated the pieces so that the seeds fell out and dropped through the perforations into a bin below.

The rest of the process from there is a bit of a trade secret, but it involves toasting and then pressing, and the result is a fragrant, dark oil that’s popular in Europe (particularly Austria), but nearly unknown in this country—indeed, Hay River is the first pumpkin seed oil produced in America.

I’ve just gotten a fresh bottle of the oil to experiment with, and will write more about the culinary applications of the oil in the next few weeks—a slaw of raw kabocha squash, celery root, and apple tossed with a pumpkin seed oil, cider vinegar, and honey dressing was a winner. I just love that this kind of thing is going on out in the western Wisconsin countryside.

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Free! Free! Free! The Great 2011 Trout Caviar Giveaway and Year-End Round-Up

I've got books, Trout Caviar books, and three of them are looking for a new home among Trout Caviar readers.

What you do, you just leave me a comment on this post relating one of your favorite local food moments of 2011:  a first (like, I would say I made birch syrup for the first time this year); a goal achieved (like, I would say I achieved a goal of serving woodcock glazed with birch syrup), an appreciation of a grower, producer, market vendor, etc.  These are just examples.  Do not let me cramp your style.  Mentioning birch syrup will not improve your chances of winning.

I'll chime in with some of my top 2011 moments in the next week and a half, too (though I think I've said enough about...nuff said).

Come the New Year, I'll just dump the names of all the contributors in a hat, and draw three out.  You may mention as many highlights of the waning year as you like--and I will very much enjoy reading each and every one--but you only get your name in the hat once.

This offer is void where prohibited, and prohibited where void.

Happy solstice, joyous holidays, and best wishes for a marvelous 2012.  Thanks very, very much for reading Trout Caviar.

Brett

The Curious Case of the Wild Asparagus (Foraging with The New Yorker)

The New Yorker magazine recently joined the throng of publications touting foraging as a thrilling throwback activity that connects us to our savage roots even as it lends cachet to the menus at some of the world's most talked-about--and expensive--restaurants. Jane Kramer penned this piece; you can read the full article here. It's an interesting article, very New Yorker-ish, as you might expect.

This passage I've quoted below struck me as odd when I first read it. I read it again, and then I understood why. It's an example, I think, of how the aura of something can fog the reality of it. Any avid forager or gardener will likely see what I saw. I'm eager to hear your reactions. A little puzzle for the weekend.

...we turned onto a quiet road that wound through fields of alfalfa and wheat and soon-to-be-blooming sunflowers, and parked next to a shuttered and, by all evidence, long-abandoned farmhouse that I had passed so often over the years that I thought of it as my house and dreamed of rescuing it.


Foraging places are like houses. Some speak to you, others you ignore. I wasn’t surprised that the land around that tumbledown house spoke to Paterson. He jumped out of the car, peered over a thicket of roadside bush and sloe trees, and disappeared down a steep, very wet slope before I had even unbuckled my seat belt—after which he emerged, upright and waving, in an overgrown copse enclosed by a circle of trees. Cleared, the copse would have provided a shady garden for a farmer’s family. To a forager, it was perfect: a natural rain trap, sheltered against the harsh sun, and virtually hidden from the road. Everywhere we turned, there were plants to gather. Even the wild asparagus, which usually hides from the sun in a profusion of other plants’ leaves and stalks, was so plentiful that you couldn’t miss it. We filled a shopping bag.


Wild asparagus has a tart, ravishing taste—what foragers call a wilderness taste—and a season so short as to be practically nonexistent. It’s as different from farmed asparagus as a morel is from the boxed mushrooms at your corner store.

From A Reporter at Large: The Food at Our Feet: Why is foraging all the rage? by Jane Kramer
The New Yorker magazine, November 21, 2011

Along the Fencelines

The Europeans have their ancient, charming hedgerows, and New Englanders their stone walls to divvy up the countryside, but it's barbed wire that tamed and partitioned the American west--and that includes western Wisconsin.  Those fencelines that follow the town and county roads can be a northern forager's last resort to gather some wild foods before the weather gods realize we're staring hard at the winter solstice, and

let the other shoe drop (this week's damplish thaw even allowed me to harvest more fresh greens from my garden; this won't last).

Ploughs and ditch-cutters both must leave a little leeway along the wavering barbed wire fences, and that small margin gives hope and a chance to a variety of wild food plants--asparagus, plum, grape vines, hazelnuts, jerusalem artichokes, black cherry, elderberry, and nannyberry, to mention a few.  It was an unexpected glut of nannyberries that caught my eye last weekend along a Dunn County road.  Clusters of black fruit still remained on several shrubby trees that I passed on the way back to Bide-A-Wee from picking up a newspaper in town (said paper contained a really nice account of Lily's and my recent hunt with Saint Paul Pioneer Press outdoors writer Dave Orrick).



Nannyberries, with a vine that is probably...


I pulled over and slopped through several inches of dirty snow to have a look, and a taste.  This far into December, I didn't expect that the berries would be good for much, so I was surprised at how sweet and flavorful the flesh was.  There's a reason, I guess, that another common name for them is "wild raisin."  I filled a small sack and took them back to the cabin to see what I could do with them. 

At another spot I was fooled by a nannyberry look-alike:

...a type of smilax; edible but, according to one wild foods expert "probably icky."

I wasn't sure what this was--thought it might be Carolina moonvine (a wild guess), but couldn't find corroborating evidence on that.  That's when it's nice to have a true wild food expert in the address book:  my friend Teresa Marrone wrote back right away, nailing the ID as a type of smilax, or greenbrier .  (If I had had Teresa's excellent Wild Berries and Fruits Field Guide close to hand, I wouldn't have had to bother her, but it's nice to break up the day with a little email banter.)  Teresa described the smilax berries as "edible but rubbery and distasteful when fresh."  Ever the scrupulous researcher, she went on to speculate that in their desscated state they were "Probably icky."  Now my curiosity is piqued, and I'll have to give them a taste if I come across them again.  She also said that in spring the young shoots were edible and enjoyable, and noted that Sam Thayer  writes about smilax in one of his books; I have those books, of course, but everything is in Wisconsin, while I write from Saint Paul.

Each year as the foraging season winds down to its last dribs and drabs, just before everything becomes well and truly frozen or buried in snow, I like to find some unlikely remnant, a little something to see out the

The beak-y protrusion at the ends of nannyberry branches are distinctive.

season on an up note--a few dried prickly ash berries to flavor a fruit sauce for duck; some blackberry leaves or late sprouting nettles to steep into tea; dandelions or sheep sorrel that green up in a December rain, as we're seeing now.  This year the nannyberries were my last best hope, it seemed.

I started by sorting through them and separating berries from stems, discarding especially gnarly looking berries, or ones the birds had pooped on.  I wound up with a generous cup of berries from my small harvest, and those I placed in a small saucepan with water to cover, covered the pan, and set it on the woodstove to simmer.  I didn't really time it.  I checked on it every now and then, added a bit of water as the level cooked down.  As they cooked they gave off a layered aroma, of fruit, of tea, of bramble leaves--reminiscent of haw berries simmering.

When it seemed that they were soft-ish I poured them into a sieve, keeping the water, and mashed at the fruit with the back of a wooden spoon.  I wasn't able to get too much pulp out this way, so back in the pan the mashed nannies went, more water to cover, and back on the Haggis to simmer.  In another 15 to 20 minutes I gave it another go--much better this time.  All that remained in the sieve were the skins and the large flat seeds, much like a watermelon seed, that come one to a berry.

I chopped a few slices of dried apple and added these to the nannyberry...slurry, I guess it was, thicker than juice, thinner than a paste.  I wanted the apple for texture, and also for tartness to balance the nannies' sweet, rather bland taste.  When fresh and just ripened, nannyberries have an appealing date-like texture and a flavor that reminds me of dates and banana.  The dried ones were less subtle, some nuance lost as they dried along the fencelines.  I hoped the apple would perk up and round out the flavor of the concoction as a whole.

I just happened to have a chunk of sweet and salty, dense and crumbly ten-year-old Wisconsin white cheddar in the cooler.  I was thinking of quince paste, or a mild chutney, that would complement but not upstage the cheese.  I considered a bit of spice, or heat, or an allium element, shallot or garlic.  In the end I let it be, just the nannyberries, apple, and a pinch of salt.



The compote did not want to be photographed; something about the glossy sheen confounded the focus every time.


I considered it a quiet triumph.  The cheese and my nanny-apple compote got along very nicely.  The no-name cheese--a "commodity cheese," it might be called, but what a ludicrous misnomer--came from Bolen-Vale, for around $12 a pound.  And now, it's not that I think the $20-plus-per-pound farmstead cheddars are over-priced, it's just that, having tried a few, I find that none please me as much as this modest over-achiever. 

I've said enough.  A slice of grilled sourdough and a glass of wine, raised in a solitary toast to what may have been (or may not be) the end of the foraging season, made a very satisfactory Bide-A-Wee bachelor supper, and pleased me very much.

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw