"Tart Is Good!": Ode on Rhubarb and A Wild Spin on Rhubarb Chutney

Kim Ode (pron. OH-dee) was in our neighborhood last weekend to present a demo and talk about cooking with rhubarb, which has become her tart, seasonal calling card since she published Rhubarb Renaissance, the first title in the  Northern Plate series from the Minnesota Historical Society Press, in 2012.  Kim charmed a full house with stories about her rhubarb journey, from being gulled by a devious cousin into taking a big bite of a raw, naked stalk in her South Dakota childhood, to discovering the affinities and aversions of culinary rhubarb (ginger and shrimp, yes; beef, not so much).  As someone who has presented a few cooking demos and classes, I was amazed by Kim’s ability to measure and mix ingredients for savory rhubarb and cheese biscuits—a fairly precise formulation—all the while keeping up a calm, conversational patter in front of nearly 30 people.  When I expressed my admiration for her on-stage calm and efficiency, she replied: “Well, there have been incidents…”.

Bide-A-While rhubarb patch

Several people in the audience mentioned that their rhubarb patches had been propagated from divisions gathered from a parent’s patch, or grandma’s garden, the family farmstead, which led me to think that that’s the true sense of an heirloom vegetable, one literally passed down from generation to generation, by hand.  And that may be why so many people have a sentimental attachment to rhubarb, and why they’re so grateful to Kim Ode for showing them how to take rhubarb beyond the typical strawberry-rhubarb concoctions (Kim included one, count it, exactly one rhubarb-strawberry recipe in her book).

 
In addition to the biscuits, which baked up brown and crusty, with the cheese and rhubarb dancing dos-si-dos in an appealingly chewy crumb, Kim mixed up a kale salad with pickled rhubarb.  I prepared a couple of Kim’s recipes to round out a rhubarbish buffet.  I made Gingery Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, and in the course of preparing it, it occurred to me that I had never, ever, in my whole entire life, actually baked a cake from scratch.  How could this be?  And yet I swear it is so.  I sort of freaked out when that realization started to sink in—it was about the time I realized that the butter I was trying to cream with sugar should have been much softer, as it just glommed on to the beater and the sides of the bowl, and went dismally round and round, not becoming creamed and fluffy, at all.  But I forged ahead, and in the end it came out well, delicious, in fact—wh ich is a testament to a well-written recipe, if even a total neophyte bad at following instructions (moi) can have success.

  

And I made a rhubarb chutney that Kim suggests be served on crostini spread with a goat cheese-cream cheese blend and garnished with prosciutto.  I simplified by serving it on crackers and 86ing the ham.  It was fabulous, addictive, I dare say, sweet, tart, and spicy, flavored with ginger, garlic, and jalapeno, and bulked up with dried apricots.
 

It got me to thinking that I could easily substitute wild and local ingredients for some of the chutney components, to make it more Trout Caviar friendly.  So I made a batch back home in which I subbed maple syrup for the brown sugar, chopped ramps in place of garlic; dried apples from our trees took the place of the apricots, and some kick-ass fermented chile paste my friend Melinda gave me brought a throbbing heat.  My palate leans toward the savory more than the sweet, so I upped the tartness with extra rhubarb.  I firmly endorse Kim’s book-signing tagline:  “Tart is good!”

One other wild element:  little bits of peeled wood nettle stem gave some crunch to the chutney’s texture and made a nice color contrast, the pale green nettle nuggets playing against the pink background, reminiscent of the pink and green madras plaid sports jackets and shorts my preppie friends used to favor, back in the day.  Whatever happened to all the preppies (ou sont les preppies d’antan…?)?  Wood nettles are one of my favorite wild greens (I say this every year about this time).  You can use the leaves like any young greens, though they are delicate when young, so be careful not to overcook.  Then there are the stems which, when peeled—and they peel very easily—are crunchy crisp and mildly sweet, haricots verts du bois, if you will, or as I’m also wont to say, my favorite trailside crudité (goodness, I’m quite French-y and rhyme-y this morning!).

Not to overlook the obvious: wood nettles sting at least as vigorously as stinging nettles, and like stinging nettles, they lose their sting when exposed to heat, as in blanching in boiling water for a minute.

The result of my wild alterations to the chutney: quite, quite edible.  And beautiful.  We served it with some farmstead cheese from Cosmic Wheel Creamery, the new venture from Rama Hoffpauir and Josh Bryceson, growers at Turnip Rock Farm.  

Kim noted that in working the rhubarb circuit she has found that very few people are on the fence about rhubarb, that it’s generally love or hate.  But me, I’m still kind of in the middle.  I am by no means a rhubarb lover.  I find I don’t care much for the typical rhubarb desserts (I did enjoy my upside-down cake, but maybe that’s just baker’s vanity!).  My fondest rhubarb memories still center around the patch we had at my childhood home in Eden Prairie, and eating stalks nibble by nibble, each tiny bite equal parts sugar and rhubarb.  But I’m intrigued by its uses in savory applications, like this chutney, and I’ll probably experiment a bit more each spring.  Call me rhubarb-curious.
 

Forager's lunch on black cherry slab

This chutney is great in Kim’s original recipe, a dollop on a crostini or cracker first spread with a 1:1 mix of goat cheese and cream cheese.  It also nicely complements a well-flavored aged cheese, and, for what it’s worth, thinly sliced smoked venison.

Wild and Local Rhubarb Chutney (after Kim Ode & Rhubarb Renaissance)

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 cups rhubarb in 1" pieces

4 ramp bulbs minced

2 tablespoons fresh ginger root minced

1/3 cup dried apples chopped small

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Pinch salt

Chile or sambal to taste, or chopped fresh jalapeno

1/4 cup wood nettle stems, peeled, chopped in 1/4" pieces

Combine all but nettle stems. Bring to a boil and stir until the rhubarb starts to break down and exude its juices (rhubarb is about 90%  water). Then simmer for 8-10 minutes, until it is thick and jammy. Add the nettle stems and cook 1 minute more. Cool thoroughly before serving. Best if made a few hours to a day ahead. Will keep for a couple weeks in the fridge.  Makes about 2 cups.


Text and photos copyright 2015 by Brett Laidlaw

Starting Now

Our local food year starts, appropriately enough, with the first upwellings of sap from the maples.  Cold and clear, only barely sweet, maple sap straight from the tree carries the flavor of a small miracle.  Through it we tap in—literally and figuratively—to a perennial process that encapsulates what it means to live and eat seasonally like nothing else.  In the fall the trees sent all their resources down into their roots, to safeguard them through the long dormant season.  As days grow longer to the equinox’s tipping point, and the thaw-freeze cycle starts and continues, the trees call up that liquid food—it’s used to make leaves that enable to trees to utilize the sun’s energy, to make more leaves, to make seeds that make more trees, all of it cyclical, like the seasons, endless rise and fall and rise again.

We intercept the sap as it travels—simple enough, drill a little hole, stick in a tap, or spile, hang a bucket or a bag, collect sap, and when you have a quantity cook it down until most of the water is gone, all the sweetness remains.  Homemade maple syrup has qualities of terroir (the French term most often applied to wine), I believe; especially when the syrup is infused with traces of smoke from a fire stoked with wood from the same hillside where the maple trees grow.  All maple syrup is good; maple syrup from your own trees is both good and meaningful, and deeply satisfying.

I’ve been pretty slackardly in keeping up Trout Caviar for the last couple of years.  This year I’m going to make an effort to get back on top of it and document a year in local food from where we sit, at Bide-A-While just down the road from Bide-A-Wee in northern Dunn County, township of Wilson just southeast of Ridgeland, Wisconsin.  Starting now.  I tapped three maple trees today; the sap had not yet started to run.  But conditions over the next week and more look perfect--highs near 50, lows in the 20s.  It will be flowing very soon.

Lily found a really nice stick.  So awesome.

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Mary made tartlets today, very local in nature, and appropriate to the early spring theme.  She wanted to test the recipe for the Maple Madness Cook-Off that's part of the Hungry Turtle Weekend program  of classes and cooking demos happening in Amery next weekend, March 13-14.  The tarts use maple syrup, dried apples from our trees, Wisconsin hickory nuts, dried cranberries.

The original recipe was for something called Ecclefechan tarts—it came along with a knitting pattern Mary bought a while back, Ecclefechan being a town in Scotland.  We’ve changed it up enough to make it our own.  We made these for a dinner/class at the Palate kitchen store in Stockholm, WI last spring, and came up with a fancy little accompaniment, the chevre maple cream, as below.  The tartness of the chevre works nicely against the sweetness of the tarts, but regular whipped cream would be great, too.  Or just eat them plain, with a cup o' tea.

Hickory Nut & Maple Tart(let)s with Dried Fruit

Makes 8 four-inch tarts or 24 tartlets

Pastry:

200 grams (1 ½ cups) all-purpose flour

120 grams (1 stick; or 4 ounces) unsalted butter

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 egg yolk

Water if needed (Mary has found that water is usually needed, up to 1/4 cup; start adding 1 tablespoon at a time)

Cut the butter into ½-inch pieces and rub it into the flour until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugars and the salt, mixing well. Stir in the egg yolk and mix well. If the mixture is crumbly, add cold water a tablespoon at a time until you can form a dough that holds together. Knead very briefly, just so all the ingredients are well combined. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Filling:

50 grams (1/4 cup) granulated sugar

50 grams (3 tablespoons) maple syrup

100 grams (7 tablespoons; or a stick minus 1 tablespoon) butter

1 egg

50 grams (1/2 cup) ground almonds

50 grams (1/2 cup) coarsely chopped hickory nuts (or substitute walnuts, pecans, or almonds)

30 grams (1/2 cup, packed) dried apples, chopped

60 grams (generous ½ cup) dried cranberries

1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine the sugar, salt, syrup, and butter in a small saucepan, and place on low heat until the butter melts. Add the fruits and nuts and let this mixture cool for several minutes, then mix in the egg.

Roll the pastry out into a layer about 1/6-inch thick. Cut rounds appropriate to the pans you're using--mini tart pans, muffin tins, etc. Fit the pastry rounds into the pans, fill 1/2 full.

Bake at 375 until the pastry is golden brown and the filling brown and nicely puffed up. Depending on the the size of the tarts, this will take 25 to 30 minutes. Check after 15 minutes, then every 5 minutes until they're done.  Serve with chevre maple cream, plain whipped cream, a slice of sharp aged gouda or cheddar, or just a cup of tea.

Chevre Maple Cream

2 oz fresh chèvre, at room temperature
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 cup unsweetened whipped cream

Combine the chèvre and syrup, and mixing with a fork until well blended. Fold in the whipped cream. Refrigerate until ready to use.

 

Winter Fuel: Porridge of Wheat Berries, Rye Berries, and Steel-Cut Oats with Dried Apple and Toasted Hickory Nuts

It was -26 here this morning, probably the coldest night of this very cold winter.  To get going on mornings like this, you need hearty sustenance, you need fuel.  Our favorite simple winter breakfast this year is this three-grain mush flavored with dried apples and toasted hickory nuts (and of course some excellent local milk, and a splash of our maple syrup).  We prepare it on the woodstove the night before, making a batch to last a couple of days.  In the morning I put a portion for two in a small saucepan, add some water and a pinch of salt, snip in some dried apples, and let it warm while we fix tea.

What I love about this porridge is that it's not just mush--it has bite, a satisfying chew, because the rye and wheat berries never totally succumb, no matter how long you cook them.  They have a natural sweetness, as well, and the apples add more subtle sweetness, along with tartness and yet another texture.  And then the hickory nuts, toasty, rich, lightly crunchy.

I think I'm ready for another bowl....

Steel-cut oats lower left, wheat berries right, rye berries top, hickory nuts, dried apple.

For four ample servings I used:

1/2 cup wheat berries
1/4 cup rye berries
3 cups water

Bring that to a boil and let it simmer a good long while, at least an hour, I'd say.  Check every 15 minutes or so to make sure all the water hasn't cooked away.  When the berries are yielding but still quite al dente, you can add the oats.

1/3 cup steel-cut oats
2/3 cup water

Add the oats and water right into the wheat and rye berries.  Cover and simmer 20 to 30 minutes, then remove from the heat and set aside.

In the morning reheat the porridge with a little added water and a couple pinches of salt, and snip in dried apple or other dried fruit--or, as mentioned above, spoon your desired portions into a small saucepan, and do likewise.  When it's hot, dish it up, add milk, maple, top with toasted nuts.  We are in love with the local hickory nuts we found at the little market in Ridgeland, but walnuts or pecans, toasted pumpkin seeds, what have you, all would add that nice contrasting crunch.

This is the kind of cold weather breakfast that could almost make you wish winter would never end.

Almost.

Text and photos copyright 2014 by Brett Laidlaw

Back With More Sandwiches

Where would this blog be without smorrebrod?  This year, at least, it would be pretty sparse.  Pretty sparser.

The open-face sandwich idea intrigues and delights me for three main reasons:

As a baker, I love pretty much any meal based on bread, and I enjoy the challenge of coming up with breads that work particularly well with this kind of dish.  In this case the bread was a sourdough rye to which I added some part-fermented apple cider and some Wisconsin sorghum syrup.  I used some starter I had sitting around on the kitchen counter for a while, not very well refreshed, so the dough was very, very slow to rise, especially now that the temperature in our kitchen is generally in the low 60s.  I decided to embrace the idea of slow bread.  I let the dough proof for over 24 hours, then put it in loaf pans where it rose at a glacial pace for several hours more.  And then I baked it in quite a slow oven, 350 if I recall correctly, adding steam both in the form of ice cubes tossed in at the beginning and middle of baking, along with a pan of water set on a rack under the stone.  It baked for around an hour, and the end result was a notable success, though I say so myself.  It just begged to be presented in an elegant Nordic fashion, so here we are.

As a cook, I find smorrebrod gratifying because of the way the bread canvas invites creativity in the toppings, which are not hidden as the filling in a regular sandwich would be.  Pretty much anything can serve as smorrebrod topping--vegetable salads, smoked or pickled fish, eggs, cheese, various sorts of charcuterie.  There's really no wrong topping except maybe PB&J, and someone could probably find a clever way to make that work, too.  This versatility makes smorrebrod ideally suited to local, seasonal eating, from early spring's first flush of wild foods through the garden glut of summer, harvest abundance, root cellar and pickle cabinet foraging.  The three sandwiches on the plate here all are based on meat:  a rustic paté of pork with chicken livers, bacon, and hickory nuts; a silky, rich chicken liver mousse; and wonderful venison backstrap roasted to medium rare in a salt dough.

And last, as an inveterate garnisher, I love the opportunity that smorrebrod provides to come up with finishing touches that complete the dish in both pretty and appetizing ways.  We have a joky saying here, "It's all about the garnish!"  And while plate prettifying can quickly turn precious, I think there's a serious point there.  In some ways it's the care taken in finishing touches that make the difference between a bowl of grub to be scarfed down and a plate of food that delights at many levels.  Garnishing, to me, really is an important part of cooking, and something quite different from slapping a sprig of parsley and a slice of lemon on every plate that leaves the kitchen.

For the venison, I more or less followed this recipe for venison baked in a salt-dough crust.  I didn't bother with searing the meat, and I skipped the sauce--though I did preserve the juices that gathered at the bottom of the crust, which I thinned with a bit of chicken stock to make a little jus in which I bathed my meat prior to placing it on the bread.  Before I wrapped the meat up in the salt dough, I rubbed it with a paste composed of garlic, thyme, parsley, black pepper, some home-ground chile powder, and sunflower oil.  I baked it at 375 for about 25 minutes, let it rest in the crust for 30 minutes or so after baking.  It was superb, and I would definitely do it again.  The salt from the crust permeated the meat without making it overly salty, and seemed to carry the other flavors from the rub deep into the meat.  The garnish here is a pesto of flat leaf parsley from our garden--the last fresh harvest before the brutal cold came down a couple of weeks ago--garlic, of course, lemon, Minnesota sunflower oil, and toasted hickory nuts.

The nuts were a delightful, surprising find, picked up at the little market in Ridgeland, the town nearest to us.  As we were checking out one day I noticed this plastic zip bag on the counter near the cash register and, ever-curious forager that I am, I took a closer look.  Turned out the bag was full of beautiful hickory nut halves, harvested from the market owner's in-laws' tree near Tomah, WI.  The bag held a pound of nuts for the amazing low price of $9.99.  Sold.  We've been enjoying these rich, sweet nuts in lots of different ways.  The flavor is like pecans but better, to my taste.

The chicken liver mousse I prepared following (again, more or less; I almost always stray from a recipe somewhere along the way) a recipe from Madeleine Kamman's In Madeleine's Kitchen.  It's an unctuous concoction of livers, a good bit of butter, shallots, onions, a splash of scotch whisky (my substitute for the called-for brandy), finished with some cream and sour cream that have been whipped together.  For seasoning I added thyme, a pinch of that home-ground chile powder mentioned above, Sichuan pepper (hua jiao), and a pinch or two of cumin.  The garnish here is all about our tree crops:  I combined chopped dried apple with apple cider vinegar and our maple syrup, set it on the warming ledge at the back of our woodstove for the apples to soften and take up the sweet and sour flavors.  Then I added chopped fresh apple and a pinch of two of salt, and a little more of that chile powder (it's so wonderfully sweet and fragrant, with a definite but not overpowering heat, I find myself putting it in everything).  It's a simple sort of relish or chutney, which cuts the richness of the mousse and complements its flavor wonderfully.  Big win.

The pork paté is a variation on this one I made a couple of years ago.  I used more of the hickory nuts in this one, in lieu of the chestnuts.  I skipped the breadcrumbs, used a bit more chicken liver, an additional egg yolk.  I put all the meats through the coarse grinder on my KitchenAid twice, then through the fine blade once; the texture of the paté is excellent, just what I'm looking for, and nothing that anyone would dare to call meatloaf.  The garnish here was a pre-made one, pickled cabbage and peppers from The Joy of Pickling.  It's kind of a sweet and sour pickle, made pretty much the same way as bread & butters.  With the rich and savory paté it was a nice change from the traditional cornichons.

We've been enjoying this little frenzy of charcuterie making for a week or so now, and at lunch today we inaugurated the freshly painted upstairs room where we had skylights installed last summer.  We just recently got trim put on the skylights, everything primed, then painted, including the very rustic floor.  We've done a lot to this house since we moved in, nearly two years ago now, but this room has probably seen the greatest transformation, from a veritable cave of a room to this light-filled space, cheering even on a dull gray day like today.  There's never an end to the projects with an old house like this, but it's gratifying to put on own stamp on our home.  In many ways it's already unrecognizable from the house we bought in early 2012; and yet, so much more to do....  Well, one thing at a time.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Country Lunch

I didn't do any plowing (much less ploughing) this morning, but I did haul a couple of loads of stuff to the sheds (still unpacking and organizing here), set up the compost bin, did some soil mining (digging topsoil from the pasture to fill planters and raised beds), and planted a washbucket full of herbs (chervil, basil, thyme, parsley) on the deck, so I was feeling pretty accomplished, and very hungry.  I felt I had earned a ploughman's lunch.

Some leftover biscuits (Mary's delectable handywork) I set to warm in the solar oven (Mary also made that, at a  Hay River Transition Initiative workshop a couple weeks ago).  Sliced some lovely aged cheddar and threw down a few curds.  Spooned up a newly minted salsa composed of  pickled rhubarb, pickled ramps, and dried apple.  I was thinking of this as a chutney originally, but since it's entirely uncooked, I think salsa, or maybe relish, is the more apt term.  Here's how that came together:

1/2 cup chopped dried apples
3 pickled ramp bulbs and
1/4 cup pickled rhubarb, both chopped small
1 tablespoon of the ramp brine
1/2 tablespoon of the rhubarb brine
1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Mix all let sit and few hours or overnight.

A glass of our home-fermented cider was de rigeur.  This was actually cold-fermented cider, which is to say:  it was simply fresh apple cider that hung around in the fridge long enough to ferment, turn slightly fizzy and a bit alcoholic.  That's how simple cider making can be.  If you want to try this yourself, just be sure to check on your fermenting cider occasionally and take off the cap to release excess pressure.  This makes a really refreshing beverage provided you've started with excellent, unpasteurized cider free of preservatives.

I think that pickles fall into roughly two categories, in terms of how they are used:  there are those meant to be eaten as is, such as bread & butters, sour dills, watermelon pickles, etc.; and there are those that are most valuable as ingredients in other dishes.   Some pickles--cornichons, for example--go both ways.  The rhubarb and ramp pickles definitely fall into the second category.  I can't see myself going to the fridge to grab a snack of a ramp bulb or rhubarb stick, but they'll be great to have on hand to add zip and flavor to dressings, potato salads, sauces and relishes.

Right.  That was really good.  Now, where did I put my plough?

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

Mighty Morchella

It is a mighty mushroom indeed that compels the sort of fanatical pursuit that morchella esculenta inspires. It's a rite of spring that sends hordes out into the ticky woods to scour the underbrush for the chance to spy that unique honeycomb cap in the moss or pushing through brown leaves.  A lot of morel hunters don't bother to hit the woods for any other mushroom, or any other wild food.  The spring pursuit is their only foraging interest.  I attribute this to the fact that 1) It is a rite of spring, a ceremony of the season, 2) Morels can be fairly predictable, 3) Morels can be extremely abundant, 4) Morels are easily preserved by drying, and 5) They are easily identified, with no really harmful look-alikes.  I don't think that it's because they are fantastically delicious.  They're good, sure, but on my list they fall below chanterelles, black trumpets, and hen of the woods.  For me, the hunt is the thing, and it is incredibly thrilling to slog over steep terrain, poke under currant bushes, probe beneath peeled bark, and finally be rewarded with the sight of that unique shape.  I keep going back, even though I rarely have much success.

This year is looking like a very good one for morels here in Minne'Sconsin (I may have to edit that moniker somehow, now that I live in Wisconsin full-time--Wis'Sota?).  I know it's a good year, because even I am finding them.  I've brought home a couple of pounds from the Bide-A-Wee woods so far.  My main haul came from a dead elm on a south-facing slope.  I look for trees that have been dead long enough that the bark is starting to peel quite a bit.  If I do spot a morel, then I step very carefully, and scan the ground assiduously, for a morel can seem to disappear from view even as you are looking at it.  From the base of the tree out to the edge of the dripline is where the morels will sprout; this Bide-A-Wee tree was a good example of that.  They were mostly downhill from the tree.  I went back a couple of times after my first find, and continued to find morels.  In fact, I managed to find a couple that I apparently had stepped on without noticing it on a previous foray:

And one that was completely hidden under a slab of bark:

I have always heard that morels are often found near apple trees, which I consider very good news indeed, because there are apple trees all over the Bide-A-Wee land; the bad news was that I had never once found a morel anywhere near an apple tree.  Until yesterday.  I was on my way back to the cabin, sweaty on an unexpectedly hot afternoon, prickly ash- and bramble-scratched, and I turned up that particular hillside just to stay in the shade.  Luckily I was still in ground-scanning mode, and the morels were quite conspicuous.  I wasn't really consciously looking and I stepped right over a couple of large morels, before noticing a couple of nice ones in the moss near the trunk.

Then I went and checked under the other apple trees in the area. Nada. Morels are just that way.

Collateral benefits to the morel hunt include spotting the first showy trilliums blooming on our land:

And a nice stand of wood nettles, one of my favorite greens of the spring.  Delicious and non-stinging at this size, though when mature, they sting worse than stinging nettles, go figure:

The entire young plant, stem and all, is delicious simply steamed  and  tossed with  butter.

One thing we have done with this spring's finds, a rabbit and morel hash on fried polenta:

The recent warm wet weather will add an air of urgency to the hunt.  Conditions for morel emergence are perfect, but in the hot and damp they won't last long out there.  Get 'em while you can.


Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

A Winter Salad by Any Other Name

What shall we call the shreddy salads of winter, the festive haystacks that make the most of root cellar holdings, long-keeping fruits, and the squashes of our season?  Slaw fails the task, too burdened by associations with perfunctory and over-dressed deli/burger/picnic sides.  A celeri remoulade is a lovely dish of shredded root, denizen of every traiteur's cold case, but the remoulade refers more to the dressing than to the shards of celeri-rave.

One thing I've found:  the more I eat with the season, the more I want to eat with the season.  We used to pick up a head of red leaf lettuce on nearly every weekly grocery trip, but eventually our enthusiasm for those often leathery leaves shipped in from warmer climes waned.  Local hydroponic greens are a reasonable choice, but one that doesn't excite my palate much, these days.  I've become more inclined toward broadened ideas of salad, and the shredded type tops my list.  This particular one here, of Benriner-ed squash, celery root, and apple, has become a regular in our shreddy salad rotation.

The squash really is the key, and if you're thinking, "Raw squash...?", well, so was I.  Would it taste too squashy, or gluey.  Let your dubious heart be comforted--neither is the case.  I've made this with kabocha and...something else.  A small hubbard type, I think.  I think any hard winter squash would work.  Butternut, for sure.  The drier types, like buttercup, maybe not so much, but I could be wrong.  The raw squash really has quite a mild flavor, especially in this combination of more assertive tastes.  What it does provide is texture, an al dente quality that is almost more pop than crunch--very intriguing, extremely refreshing.

If you are very, very good with a knife you can do this by hand.  I used the medium blade on my  Benriner mandoline--every kitchen should have one.  But watch your fingers!  I shredded up roughly equal amounts of squash, celery root, and apple.  I mixed up a dressing of cider vinegar, a little honey, oil, salt and a wee bit of pepper.  I've been keeping it really local with my oil choices this winter, too.  This is becoming easier since local sunflower oils from small producers have started showing up, like those from Smude and Driftless Organics  .  I love the Smude oil--it's light in texture, but it has a definite presence, and is excellent in salad dressings.  I haven't tried the Driftless Organics product.

There's another local oil, a more specialized product, which I have

mentioned recently, and which is produced over in beautiful west central Wisconsin by a very cool couple of guys, Ken Seguine and Jay Gilbertson--that's Hay River Pumpkin Seed Oil. The salad pictured here was made using that oil. It has a teasingly nutty aroma, a bit like sesame oil, but less in-your-face. Much more on Ken and Jay and their pumpkin seed saga to come.

I don't really miss the leafy salads that were so delightful in the warmer months. Soon now I'll be starting lettuce seeds in flats, and moving them to a sunny window. In this mild winter March will likely provide the first wild green spriglings of dandelion, sheep sorrel, and cress to fill out a salad of lettuce thinnings, and it will only get better from there. Until then I'm going to enjoy my shreddy salads, my root cellar raw spaghetti, whatever you want to call it. But if you've got a better name for it, please do let me know.


Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

A Rustic Pork Terrine with Chestnuts and Dried Apples

In writing about a stew of grilled lamb meatballs with grilled and coal-roasted vegetables in the 2011 highlights round-up, I rather surprised myself by spontaneously asserting  that "the possibilities of ground meat are vast and enticing."  Right up to the moment I wrote that, I wouldn't have considered myself the biggest fan of decentralized animal flesh, but it didn't take much thought to come up with an impressive list of dishes both down-home and haute-monde that feature that humble ingredient.

My mother made a great meat loaf when I was a kid, nothing fancy (and I shudder to think that it might have involved cream of mushroom soup...), but entirely delectable under its lacquered exterior of well browned ketchup.  Recalling autumn or winter evenings, coming in from the woods, the soccer field, the hockey rink, to a supper of Mom's meat loaf, baked potato, and baked squash--plenty of butter on the last two--still brings me an upwelling of warmth, emotion, and a deep, primal satisfaction.  And then fried meat loaf sandwiches from the leftovers, the edges crisped in the fry pan, on bakery bread with butter and ketchup, my god!, I still can't think of anything I'd rather eat.

The hamburger can be regrettable fast food, or the platform for cheffish excursions into wretched excess, but I think it achieves its ideal form in the homemade burger sculpted from freshly ground chuck, liberally seasoned, cooked medium rare over the coals on in a heavy skillet, parked on a quality bun and garnished to taste.  This is a classic American sandwich, and the French chefs, bless their hearts, just don't get it.  A great burger doesn't require foie gras, truffles, or other "luxury" adulterations.

One of my all-time favorite meals is based on chopped beef, that isn't even cooked:  steak tartare with grilled sourdough, a stack of crisp, salty frites, a glass of bordeaux--excuse me, I'm getting a little drooly....  That's been my birthday dinner the last two years, lest anyone suspect that I overstate my enthusiasm for it.

And now, if the French don't quite comprehend the essence of le hamburger, that's not to say that they're total slackers when it comes to working with cooked ground or chopped meat. You take pretty much anyone who has traveled in France, and say the word paté or terrine, and then just wait for that groan of remembered ecstasy to start, as their eyes roll back in their heads as they recall that slice of paté de campagne from the unassuming traiteur in that little village, unwrapped on a roadside bench beside a vineyard in, let's say, Beaujolais, smeared on a piece of baguette and with the first unctuous, savory, melting taste--sacré bleu! how did they do that?



Cold cut supper: homemade chicken liver mousse, store-bought La Quercia speck, Spanish chorizo

A good paté doesn't seem like it should be so hard to make, but it requires a balance of richness, meatiness, texture, salt, and spice that can be extremely difficult to achieve. I suspect that many home cooks have balked at the amount of fat frequently called for in paté recipes, and so cut back, and regretted it. In addition to the fat mixed in to the forcemeat, the baking dish is often lined with fatback or caul fat--you can practically hear your arteries clanking like rusty heating pipes just reading the recipes. The fortunate corollary (not coronary) to that fact is that you don't need half a pound of paté per person to have a satisfying meal, rounded out with bread, salad, a glass of wine.

I haven't made an exhaustive study of this branch of charcuterie, but I've dabbled in it over the years, and I recently came up with a really nice version, one that I'll use as a template for future patés. This one was based on pork, three kinds: shoulder, belly, and bacon. I added chicken livers for that distinctly paté-like texture. Good bread crumbs soaked in reduced cider also contributed to texture and flavor. Chestnuts and dried apples made up the seasonal garnish. Last time I checked, those excellent Iowa chestnuts were still available at Seward Co-op.

This is best made a couple of days to a week ahead. Weighting the paté after the baking changes the texture in a desirably Gallic way. I made this in a 750 ml (about 3-cup) Pyrex rectangular baking dish; the mixture filled it pretty much to the top, which turned out okay, but you might want to use a slightly larger vessel.

Pork Paté with Chestnuts and Dried Apples

1/4 cup applejack or calvados (apple brandy)

8 rounds of dried apple, about 1/8-inch thick

3/4 cup sweet apple cider reduced to 1/4 cup

1/3 cup dried breadcrumbs from an excellent loaf, sourdough whole wheat or the like

12 chestnuts, roasted and peeled

1 large or 2 small shallots minced, about 1/2 cup

1 large clove garlic, minced

1 ounce bacon, chopped fine

Soak the apples in the brandy, covered, for several hours or overnight. Soak the breadcrumbs in the reduced cider. Cook the bacon in a medium skillet over medium low heat until some fat starts to render; add the shallot and cook gently till translucent; add the garlic, remove the pan from the heat, and add the contents to the soaked breadcrumbs. Add any unabsorbed brandy from the dried apples to the pan, swirl around to rinse, and add this to the bread, etc.

8 ounces pork shoulder
4 ounces pork belly (or very fatty shoulder)
4 ounces chicken livers.

2 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon salt
Ground black pepper
2 pinches quatre-épices

I use the meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer: Grind the shoulder and belly twice through the coarse blade. Then grind one-third of the meat again through the fine blade; also grind the chicken livers with the fine blade. Add the egg yolks, salt and a few grinds of pepper, quatre-épices, along with the bread mixture, to the meat and mix very well.

Let this mixture macerate for 4 to 6 hours, or overnight. Butter a mold. Place a one-inch layer of meat in the bottom, and lay half the apple slices on top. Cover with a thin layer of meat, and add the chestnuts, pressing them into the meat. Add another thin layer of meat, the rest of the apples, then the rest of the meat. Place two bay leaves on top, and a few sprigs of thyme, if you like.

Bake in a bain marie (water bath), covered, at 325 for 45 to 60 minutes, until liquid is bubbling vigorously in the baking dish and the meat is quite firm to the touch. Carefully remove the bain marie from the oven, and let the paté cool in it for about 30 minutes. Placing a weight on the paté will give it a denser texture, like the classic French version. A piece of heavy cardboard cut to fit just inside your baking dish, wrapped in plastic wrap, with a couple cans of soup for weight, will work fine. Refrigerate unde weight for a day or two before serving.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

"90 Percent of Good Cooking..."

"...is good shopping," is a chestnut (pun fully intended, as you'll see) I keep trotting out when I'm talking to people about the book.  I think sometimes people don't believe me.  I get these skeptical looks, as if people are thinking, "Well, yeah, you can say that 'cause you know how to cook...".  I stand behind the sentiment steadfastly.  But please note that I did not say the 90 percent of good cooking is shopping. I said: good shopping.  That means knowing where to get the best stuff; it means anticipating seasonal goodies like, for example, chestnuts.  And it means knowing when to get out of the way as a cook and just let the ingredients shine.

Case in point:  the dinner pictured above, prepared here in Saint Paul last night.  Bison blood sausage from  Seward Co-op; Iowa chestnuts, also from Seward; savoy cabbage, onions, and fingerling potatoes from the Minneapolis Farmers Market; Bide-A-Wee apples.  A splendid autumnal tableau, prepared in one skillet.  What I contributed in the area of cooking skills:  I used duck confit fat to brown the vegetables; I deglazed the pan at the end with a little chicken stock and a splash of red wine, little water.

That's right: I said bison blood sausage.  I imagine that this is the sort of thing that will have a polarizing effect.  On the one side:  blood sausage? Eeewww!  On the other: blood sausage!  (Accompanied by Homer Simpson-esque drooling sounds.)  But really, this is nothing so radical.  The Seward  butcher counter has become well known for its amazing array of sausages and their inventive combinations of flavors.  I prefer the subtler palate, and believe it or not, the bison blood sausage is definitely on that end of the spectrum.  The ingredients are:  bison, beef, pork, bison blood, buckwheat, onion, salt, sage, white pepper, granulated onion, marjoram, cardamon, nutmeg.  The spice profile is distinct and wonderfully appetizing, but not overpowering.  The texture of the sausage is fairly fine, not too rich.  The salt level is just right, letting the other flavors of meat and spice come through (this is surely a matter of personal taste, but I sometimes find Seward's sausage a bit too salty, which is about the only criticism I've ever had).

I don't have a drop of Scandinavian blood in me, but this sausage struck me as very Swedish, in a good way.  I can easily see it as the centerpiece of a Nordic holiday table, resplendent in candlelight that glints off the ruddy cheeks of a tow-headed crowd of hungry Swedes.  Please pass the aquavit.  Tak.

But I digress.  The sausage was excellent, and the chestnuts were lovely, too, sweet and fragrant with spicy, caramel notes.  Cabbage and fingerling potatoes cooked in duck fat--what could be wrong with that?  But the apple, from one of our Bide-A-Wee trees, browned on the outside, almost custardy within--that was the perfect match to the sausage, and a bite of each taken together was sublime.

Best of all, this was incredibly simple to put together.  I did the potatoes first, and moved them to the oven to keep warm.  Then the sausage, cabbage, and apple all cooked together.  I brought the apple and cabbage out of the skillet when they were cooked, and added the onion to brown a bit, then the chestnuts and a little water, covered and cooked five minutes or so.  When everything was done and out of the pan I added two cubes of frozen chicken stock, and maybe a quarter cup each of red wine and water.  Deglaze, reduce, serve it forth.

Peeling the chestnuts was accomplished by cutting an X into the flat side of the shell with the tip of a paring knife, then roasting them in a dry pan in a 375 oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until you see the flaps of shell start to peel back around the cut.  Then remove the pan from the oven, cover with a dish towel for five minutes, and peel while hot--the skin is likely to adhere to the nuts if you let them cool.  You'll be seeing a lot of chestnuts here in the coming weeks.  They're among the seasonal products I anticipate most eagerly.

Here's another great thing about honing one's shopping skills:  This meal was extremely economical, delivering maximum flavor for the dollar.  The chestnuts are a bit pricey, $9.99 a pound, but I probably used less than four ounces.  The sausage was just $6.99 a pound, so our .69 pound package cost $4.82.  So flavorful was the sausage, and really, the whole plate, that we had leftover sausage--bison blood sausage sandwich for lunch!  Everything else cost around a dollar, total.  The delightful bottle of bourgueil we drank with it was by far the most expensive element (what, 13 or 14 bucks?), and well worth it.  I'm not averse to spending money on food or wine.  I just want to be sure I get the good stuff.


Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

The Cheese Course: It's What's for Breakfast (Roth Butterkäse with Cornmeal Crusted Fried Apples)

This was a simple delight, and a bit of a surprising combination.  Not that there's any secret to the simpatico between apples and cheese, but the maple syrup (Bide-A-Wee brand) snuck in there as an unusual and pleasant liaison.  Walnut bread--a favorite (of mine and our customers) during the Real Bread era, and which I've rarely made since we stopped the mass baking--completed a wholly satisfying breakfast plate.

Roth Käse Butterkäse  is a soft, buttery cow's milk cheese from the folks who make award-winning gruyère-type cheeses down in Monroe, Wisconsin.  It is mild and mouth-filling, not a challenging cheese, just an entirely enjoyable one.  It reminds me a bit of havarti.  We pick it up from our friend Renee's Bolen-Vale cheese shop on highway 64.

For the apple:  Peel and quarter a good-sized firm tart apple.  Remove the core and cut each quarter again so you have eight wedges.  Mix a quarter-cup of cornmeal with a bit of salt.  Dip the apple pieces in milk, then toss them with cornmeal to coat.  Fry in butter over medium heat, turning several times, until the cornmeal crust is brown and the apples are tender.  Serve with slices of cheese and maple syrup.

Walnut bread:  Add whole raw walnuts to a sourdough rye or whole wheat dough in a ratio of 1 part walnuts to 4 parts dough (e.g., 4 pounds dough, 1 pound walnuts).  Knead the walnuts into the dough just before you shape and proof the loaves pre-baking.  Adding walnuts to the dough when you first mix it will make the bread go purple in a reaction with the tannins in the nuts.

And I can't go without mentioning the coffee!  Café au lait made with  really strong Café du Monde New Orleans coffee, from a can that one Don Roberts of Otter Creek dropped off at our place some while back, with warmed raw milk from the Bartz's Bolen Vale Farm.  This was the farthest thing from just-roasted arabica beans freshly ground and gently brewed, but it was delicious--tasted just like Paris.

Bide-A-Wee breakfast table--liberally garnished with apples full of charcacter

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw