Trout Stream Buffet

The forager must resist the temptation to think of the forest as a grocery store; however, if one is patient, observant, and a little bit knowledgable, there's a good chance that Nature will provide.

I've only fished one time this year. I loaded all my fishing gear one other time, and drove down to the Whitewater region--a considerable journey--but I forgot to fish. Well, I got distracted, is what. I went to a reliable spot for ramps and dug a few clumps, then I went to another woods where I had found a big patch of ostrich ferns last year, and there I gathered some fiddleheads.

The fiddlehead woods is also a popular spot for mushroom hunters, those seeking morels, specifically. I had run into a local forager at this spot a couple of years ago, and this year I met another local 'shroomer, a young guy who was frantically searching the grass for his lost cell phone. He was sure he'd had it with him in the woods, because he'd actually been talking on it while he was foraging. And now it was lost. I couldn't help thinking there was a lesson in there, somewhere.

But I helped him look for a while, to no avail. Then I went to gather my fiddleheads, and I wasn't going to look for morels, because I can never find them, and there are other ways to spend one's springtime hours in Great Nature's embrace, such as fishing. But on my way out I made the mistake of looking around a likely-looking tree (dead elm, bark just starting to peel), and I found a couple of very small morels. Then of course I had to keep looking, and at length I found a few larger ones. I was happy about that, naturally, but in the course of the hunt I had frittered away the afternoon. Any insect activity on the stream would occur in the heat of the day, this time of year, and it was already starting to cool. I took my foraged vegetables and headed home.

We had to settle for a pan-seared rib-eye from Greg's Meats on Highway 52 near Hampton, MN, instead of fresh-caught stream trout. Everyone has to make sacrifices, sometimes. (Greg's has really nice meat at very fair prices; we love their steaks, and their pork is also very good and cheap.)

The next time out, then, I left home a little earlier, headed for Wisconsin this time. I did gather ramps along the way, but I reckoned it too late already for fiddleheads. From the ramps woods I drove to the river, and stepped into the water a little after noon. Later in the summer, fly fishing for trout in a clear stream at midday would be generally futile. At this time of year the warmth of the day can bring hatches of caddis flies, small moth-like insects which, as they emerge from their immature, larval state, dashing toward the surface in the very midst of their transformation from odd little worms into wingèd beings, cause much excitement among the trout.

This is called a caddis hatch, and is something all fly fishers look forward to all winter. There wasn't a major hatch this day, but there were enough flies about to keep the trout interested, from time to time. I caught a few fish, all too small to keep, until a nine-inch brook trout came to hand and then to creel. I'd been out a couple of hours now. I had fished downstream as far as I intended to go. Where the river curved ahead of me I noticed a lot of dead elms in the woods along the bank. I went to have a look.

The first thing I found was the mushroom at the top of the picture. It's called a "Dryad's Saddle" (which is very poetic, mythological, even), or a "Pheasant Back" mushroom (more descriptively). It's a polypore, polyporous squamosus, to be exact, meaning that instead of the familiar gills of button mushrooms, its underside is covered with tiny holes, or pores. The reproductive spores come out here. Its an edible mushroom, and quite good when young and tender. All the guidebooks note its distinctive aroma--like watermelon rind. As a polypore it's in the same category as the esteemed boletes, what the Italians call porcini and the French know as cèpes. And the texture is very like those mushrooms, though the flavor is less compelling. Nonetheless, it's worth becoming acquainted with. It can be found in quantities in spring and early summer.

So I harvested the Pheasant Back, and then I flushed a grouse, like the bird on the plate above. Then I spotted a dead elm which looked to be in the perfect state of decay to host morels, and I propped my fly rod against a sapling and got down on my knees to peer into the dusky underbrush; the evidence of what I found is in the picture. I was pretty pleased with myself, and continued on the search around numerous other trees, also in that perfect state, and found absolutely nothing.

When I came back to the stream the insect activity had picked up, and trout were rising in response. I caught a few fish on dry flies, and two brown trout went into the creel.

As I walked back upstream toward the car I was thinking of a feeder stream I had passed on the way down, and planning to look for watercress there. But along the trail before I reached that point I saw a small patch of ferns, some still in the fiddlehead stage. That would round out the plate nicely.

This was one of those days that make me love our sometimes fleeting, often reluctant northern spring. It was a day that unfolded with some purpose and a lot of serendipity. You might say that the bounty of wild food I brought back was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and there's some truth in that. But more, to me it's about just being there, with an open mind and open heart and open eyes.

That approach can lead to a day that unveils itself in wonderful and satisfying discoveries, and ends with a meal that is so much more than a meal, more than food on a plate no matter how delicious.

The trout was poached in court bouillon a la truite au bleu. It had been killed a few hours earlier, so it didn't curl in the classic manner. The ramps flavored sautéed potatoes. The fiddleheads blanched, tossed in browned butter. The mushrooms simply sautéed. All very simple, to taste the real flavors of woods and stream.

This is my favorite time of year for eating wild foods...until the next time of year comes along.

Text and photos copyright Brett Laidlaw 2008

Spring Green

Mother Nature is a pretty good gardener. While I'm still sorting through seed-starting supplies and flipping through seed catalogs, setting up lights in the basement, looking for lost tools, trying to remember what was planted where last year and what doesn't like to be where the other what was before, the Mother of Us All has her plan all laid out, and with the first breath of spring warmth is off and running.

So to find the first local vegetables of the spring I don't look to the garden or the farmers' market; I head for the woods.

Wild asparagus is an early crop, and an entirely mythical one to me. I only think of it in the autumn when I see the blown seed stalks and think I ought to make a note of the spot, to check back in the spring. But I don't. It was my friend Lynn Ann who told me what those tall, spidery stalks were, poking up from the sandy roadside ditches. She pointed them out as we drove home from a day of fishing, and she reminisced about asparagus-hunting outings with her parents when she was a kid, how jealously people guarded the locations of their prized asparagus patches. Now I always think of her when I see those very un-asparagus-like plants, those tall spindly weeds. If I never find fresh wild asparagus, that's okay with me.

Much easier to locate, though equally short of season, are fiddlehead ferns, which are simply fern fronds that have yet to unfurl. Many kinds of ferns are edible in this young form, though some should be avoided. The safest and most abundant--and by many accounts most delicious--is the ostrich fern. You may have them in your yard. I do. That's where I picked the fiddleheads pictured here. Ostrich ferns grow in clumps, have smooth stalks (not furry), with a distinct groove on one side of the stalk.

As long as the leafy part is well-coiled, fiddleheads are edible and delicious, even if the stalk is several inches tall. They resemble asparagus somewhat both in texture and flavor. Asparagus would stand in admirably for fiddleheads in recipe offered below. Like most wild edibles, fiddleheads take a lot of washing. There's a papery brown husk over the fiddlehead as it emerges, and that needs to be removed. You can rustle the fiddleheads around in a colander or salad spinner to chafe off some of it, then washing in several changes of clean water will take care of the rest.

While some sources say fiddleheads can be eaten raw, others report digestive problems from undercooked ferns. I play it safe and blanch them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, regardless of how I intend to finish them. Go on over to the Google and search up "fiddlehead ferns ostrich wild edibles" and you'll find more info than you'll ever manage to read on the topic.

A natural companion to fiddleheads, both gastronomically and geographically, is ramps. These are the wild leeks or wild onions (allium tricoccum) that seem to be more and more common in our northern woods. They're a springtime staple in Appalachia, where some towns hold ramp and trout fests. They've become common on fancy restaurant menus, too, as the local-seasonal eating ethic moves up the food chain.

I associate ramps, fiddleheads, and watercress with trout fishing, because I find them all along trout streams. The cress lives in clear cold springs, the others like the damp, shady woods along the stream banks. A plate of grilled or fried trout over a simple cress salad, accompanied by sautéed ramps and fiddleheads, is a ritual meal in our house. It means that spring is really here. It means, as Mary remarked recently, that we can turn away from the sauerkraut, the last of last year's carrots at the bottom of the crisper, the winter squash, the frozen tomatoes, and look to spring green.

Thanks, Ma.

This tart, or pizza, highlights the spring flavors of ramps and fiddleheads in a fun and tasty package. It gets some richness from cream and a sprinkling of cheese--of course use your best local products. We made this tart (which is somewhat inspired by the Alsatian classic tarte flambée, or flammekueche in Alsatian dialect) with Cedar Summit Cream and Roth Kase Wisconsin "gruyere."

Because I think a great pizza depends on great bread, I've gone to some lengths in describing crust options. There are two long-fermented versions, and a shorter one. All will be great. If you're a bread fanatic, of course you'll want to try the long-proofed versions, which you'll find at the bottom of this post. You'll get the very best results baking this on a baking stone ("pizza stone," if you like) at high temperatures, but the lower-temp baking sheet method will make a delicious tart, too. If you have a favorite pizza dough of your own, go ahead and use that.

Ramps & Fiddleheads Tart
serves four as a main course

The dough:

The short version:

1 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

Stir the yeast into the water and let stand for about five minutes.

1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp whole wheat flour (we like Whole Grain Milling's whole wheat bread flour)
Unbleached all-purpose flour, around 2 cups

Stir in the salt, olive oil, whole wheat flour, and one cup all-purpose flour. Then add all-purpose flour to make a soft but workable dough. Knead for a couple of minutes. Leave it alone for 10 or 15 minutes. Then knead again for a couple of minutes, adding flour as needed, till the dough is nice and smooth. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise till doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

The topping:

6 ounces ramps--10 to 20 depending on the size; once chopped, the white bulbs and red stems will measure about 3/4 cup
3 ounces fiddlehead ferns, a generous cup (or like amount of asparagus blanched and sliced into 1 1/2-inch pieces)
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup cream

2 ounces gruyère, parmesan, or other grating cheese (aged gouda, perhaps?), grated medium-coarse

Wash the ramps well, then slice the white bulbs and red stems on the diagonal into 1/4-inch pieces. Slice the greens into 1/2-inch strips. Melt the butter in a sauté pan, add the white and red parts of the ramps and a good pinch of salt. Sauté over medium heat for a couple of minutes, till wilted. Add the ramp greens and cook one minute more. Add the cream. Remove from the heat, let cool.

Wash the fiddleheads well in several changes of water. Bring a pot of water to the boil and blanch the fiddleheads for three minutes, then drain and refresh them under cold running water. Drain and set aside.

If using a baking stone, preheat your oven to 525 or 510 convection.

If you don't have a stone, preheat your oven to 450 or 425 convection.

Shape the dough into a roughly 12 by 14-inch rectangle. If you'll be baking the tart on a stone, place the dough on a cornmeal-dusted wooden peel. If you don't have a stone, place the dough on a cornmeal-dusted baking sheet. Spread the ramps and cream mixture over the dough, to within 1/2-inch of the edge. Distribute the fiddleheads over the top, just like pepperoni!

Let the dough rise for 20 minutes, then bake:

Stone users: Slide the tart onto the stone (make sure it's sliding freely on the peel before you stick your head in the oven!). Bake for three minutes, then sprinkle the cheese over the tart and bake for another three to four minutes, till the cheese is melted and the crust is brown.

Non-stoners: Bake your tart for five minutes, then sprinkle the cheese over the tart and bake for another four to five minutes, till the cheese is melted and the crust is brown.

Everyone, all together now: Remove the tart from the oven when it's nice and brown, let cool on a rack for a few minutes. Grind some fresh pepper over the top if you like. Slice and serve with a salad on the side, and a glass of chilled white wine, an Alsatian riesling or pinot blanc, or a dry vouvray from the Loire. Equally fitting, a light and lightly cooled red, a beaujolais or chinon.



Mixed-leaven dough (if you have a liquid sourdough starter around):

2/3 cup warm water
1 tsp active dry yeast

Mix the yeast into the warm water and let sit five minutes. Add:

1/2 cup liquid sourdough starter
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp whole wheat flour (we like Whole Grain Milling's whole wheat bread flour)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix well, then add additional unbleached flour--up to one cup more--to make a soft but workable dough. Knead for a couple of minutes. Leave it alone for 10 or 15 minutes. Then knead again for a couple of minutes, adding flour as needed, till the dough is nice and smooth. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for several hours, or overnight. Remove the dough from the fridge an hour before you plan to shape it.

"Poolish" Method (a poolish is a yeast sponge which somewhat approximates a sourdough):
1 cup warm water
1 tsp active dry yeast

Stir the yeast into the water and let stand for about five minutes. Add:

3 Tbsp whole wheat flour (we like Whole Grain Milling's whole wheat bread flour)
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix well, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand for several hours or overnight.

1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
Additional unbleached all-purpose flour, around a cup

Stir the salt and olive oil into the poolish. Add unbleached flour a bit at a time to make a soft but workable dough. Knead for a couple of minutes. Leave it alone for 10 or 15 minutes. Then knead again for a couple of minutes, adding flour as needed, till the dough is nice and smooth. Let rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temperature, or refrigerate, then remove from the fridge an hour before you plan to shape it.

Text and photos copyright Brett Laidlaw 2008

Going Coastal

It was in Vancouver, British Columbia, that the 100-Mile Diet concept originated, and if you look at all the great food available in that area--from their fisheries, bakeries, fromageries, wineries, cideries, charcuteries, etc.--you might come to think that 100-Mile regime refers to the girth you'll achieve if you partake too freely of the area's abundance.

But of course the title actually refers to a table graced solely with local products, those found within 100 miles of wherever your gastronomic epicenter may lie. (And as a matter of accuracy, shouldn't that be the 160-Kilometer Diet, 'cause they're like in Canada, eh?)

However you measure your dining circle's radius, if you center it in B.C. you're going to capture some very good eating, year 'round. We always head straight for the sea, land-locked as we are for most of the year. We can find live Dungeness crabs in Minnesota fish markets, and they're always a treat, but there's nothing like getting them straight from the waters where they live.

That's what you're able to do in Tofino, B.C., on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where we spent three nights during our recent visit. You buy the crabs from the folks who fished them, bring a big pot of water to the boil, and plunge the crabs in. Fifteen minutes later you dig in to an exquisitely messy repast. Melted butter is de rigeur. A salad and a piece of bread lend a sham civility to the barbarous proceedings, as does a glass or two of excellent B.C. wine. We like the local whites--pinot blanc, pinot gris, and gewurtztraminer all do well here.

Back on the mainland, from our base in Abbotsford, east of Vancouver, we always make a pilgrimage into the city to visit the marvelous Granville Island Public Market. Now, here in the Twin Cities we have come a long way in the last twenty years or so in terms of our culinary savvy and sophistication, and we have many, many wonderful local products of which we can be justly proud. But when a Minnesota traveler encounters a place like Granville Island, he is forced to conclude: "Man, we are still in the bush leagues...".

I'm not sure where to begin. Maybe with the seafood, since we're talking about going coastal: fabulously fresh local halibut, salmon, tuna, sablefish and rockfish, wonderful spot prawns (as good as langoustines, much cheaper), unbelievably sweet and nutty Qualicum Bay scallops, a dozen or more varieties of local oysters, along with mussels, clams, and crabs.

The prawns, scallops, clams and oysters in this pretty picture all came from local waters:

The market also offers great cheese and charcuterie, bakery goods and fresh meats, chocolates, olives, wild mushrooms, fruits and vegetables, wine, prepared foods to eat in or take out. It's more than a little overwhelming for the gastro-tourist with eyes too big for his stomach and too few meals to shop for before he must leave this Lotus-Land.

And it's not just the big markets like Granville Island that make this area such an eater's Mecca. Vancouver has wonderful farmers' markets in season, and the province's interior, from the beautiful, fertile Fraser River valley on eastward into the semi-arid Okanagan wine region around Penticton, sets an intrepid foodie on an extremely rewarding scavenger hunt from winery to cheese maker to nut orchard to berry farm. The province has realized the worth of gastro- and agri-tourism, and a wealth of brochures and helpful signage make the treasures easy to find.

We just had a partial day to explore a bit of the Fraser Valley east and north of Abbotsford on our last day there. A Circle Farm Tour brochure for the Agassiz and Harrison Mills area led us to The Farm House Natural Cheeses and Limbert Mountain Farm Simply Fine Foods. At The Farm House we were able to sample around a dozen of their farmstead goat- and cow-milk cheeses, which was really unfair, as that made it fiendishly difficult to choose. The young and aged goat cheeses both were superb, as was an alpine-style cow-milk cheese. The Welsh-inspired Caerphilly was delicious in both goat and cow versions. We wound up with a young crottin of chevre, a slice of the cow Caerphilly, and a wedge of a lovely, creamy cow-milk blue, the Castle Blue.

Though it was a bit of a damp and drizzly day we were planning on a picnic, and the young woman who helped us at The Farm House said they had picnic tables at Limbert Mountain Farm. It turned out they hadn't put the picnic area together for the season yet, but we enjoyed a lively conversation at Limbert Mountain Farm with Trudie Bouchard. You know how it is when people with a mutual, fervid interest in local foods get talking....

At Limbert Farm they grow herbs, garlic, salad greens, tomatoes, and more, and they gather the nuts from several magnificent old chestnut trees on the property. They infuse chocolate with herbs they grow, and use their garlic to produce a sauce they call "Barn Burner Garlic Nectar." They recently started bottling their own sauerkraut, and Trudie described with great glee the joy of bashing the living daylights out of shredded cabbage in a big old crock, to get the juices flowing and start the fermentation.

When you bond over fermented cabbage, you know you've met a fellow traveler. Slow Food tours stop at Limbert Mountain, and they offer a class on wild herbs and vegetables. Another course description, on reclaiming the backyard for edible plants, reads:

"We have been growing herbs, fruit, veggies and nuts organically for 30 years and we recognize a renewed interest in people wanting to connect with food that is seasonally available, fresher & more delicious and nutritious."

They're fortunate in B.C. to have a climate that allows them to eat from the garden year-'round. From what Trudie called their "hoop house," they are able to harvest fresh vegetables in every season.

And in pretty spectacular surroundings, as you can see. When you can pull fresh produce from the ground in mid-winter in a setting like this, it surely takes the bitter edge off of eating locally and seasonally....

It was a marvelous trip, and I haven't even mentioned the cider apple orchard we visited, the brick-oven baker we tried to track down in Tofino, the great fish tacos at Go Fish in Vancouver, the spectacular dinner of exquisitely prepared local foods at the Pointe Restaurant at the Wickaninnish Inn, the delightful Middle Beach Lodge where we cooked and ate those crabs while looking out our cabin window at the almighty Pacific Ocean.

And of course, it wasn't all about the food (though, to be honest, we did spend quite a lot of time considering that topic!). I always want to consider the food in context--of where and whom it comes from, of how it's produced and of what that means in the myriad ways that food affects our lives in terms of health, our environment, our economy, and the just plain joy it brings to our lives.

Which is a lot to consider, so I wouldn't try to do it all at once.... I'll end here by considering, very fondly indeed, the fellow travelers I shared this trip with. These three guys sitting on a log on the beach:

Edward Roy Gomm, Grace Ellen Laidlaw, Mary Janine Eckmeier

May you all travel, and dine, in such fine company.

Brett Laidlaw


Limbert Mountain Farm Simply Fine Foods: www.limbertmountainfarm.com

The Farm House Natural Cheeses: www.farmhousecheeses.com

The Pointe Restaurant at the Wickaninnish Inn: http://www.wickinn.com/restaurant.html

Granville Island Public Market: www.granvilleisland.com/en/public_market

Middle Beach Lodge: www.middlebeach.com

Circle Farm Tour Brochures for the "Mighty Fraser Country": http://www.circlefarmtour.ca/

100-Mile Diet, "Local Eating for Global Change": http://100milediet.org/

We Certainly Can

They call it canning, but really it's jarring. Which sounds a bit disturbing, so shall we go with "preserving"? Whatever you want to call it, putting summer's and autumn's produce in jars is satisfying when you do it and extremely rewarding when you come to enjoying the fruits of your forethoughtful efforts.

I am not an expert canner, nor a very experienced one. Over the last few years I've generally put up a few pints of cornichons, some bread & butters, and some ketchup. When I discovered Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber two summers ago I got excited about jams and preserves, particularly from wild fruits, and last fall when I picked up The Joy of Pickling (go ahead and chuckle over the cheesy title; everyone does) by Linda Ziedrich I spent a frenetic week-and-a-half brining, pickling, fermenting and canning everything I could get my hands on.

The other book that has particularly inspired me is Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation. This book has become something of a cult bible among atavistic food preservationists. (The Joy of Pickling also contains recipes for many fermented pickles.)

Canning is another of those traditional methods of preserving food which, like smoking, I once thought of as arcane and daunting. In reality, it's very simple. Excellent ingredients and proper hygiene and process produce nearly foolproof results.

In addition to my basic ignorance about the process, I also had to overcome certain preconceptions. I imagined, for one thing, that canning involved hours and hours of sweltering labor. I had this picture of the Iowa farm wife in mind, I think, her brow damp and fevered in clouds of steam, toiling through the humid August heat to fill the cellar with jar after jar of vegetables which, frankly, probably didn't taste that good. The spectre of all those jars of mushy grayish string beans lined up on the cellar shelves was yet another roadblock. You wondered if any of that produce ever saw the light of day once it went underground, making it seem that canning was not about nourishment, but about penance.

With that image in the back of my mind, I wasn't too eager to rush out and buy a gross of Mason jars and get to work. Thankfully, I found another approach. I don't can vegetables, per se, but jams and pickles, for the most part. Paging through the books mentioned above got me so intrigued, I started making just a jar or two at a time, and I've been delighted with the results.

This sort of canning isn't about subsistence, but about pleasure, though there is an economy to it, preserving what's available and adding flavor and interest as you go. A glut of Anaheim chilies and baby carrots at the end of the season led me to combine the two in a visually appealing and quite tasty pickle based on a basic bread & butter. A few ears of sweet corn a bit past ideal corn-on-the-cob eating went in with leek and red bell peppers for a sweet and tart relish.

The brined cherry tomatoes (Joy of Pickling) have been a delicious revelation. They're fermented like Russian sour dills (something else we make a lot of), they made use of all those end-of-season tomatoes, both green and ripe, and it's hard to imagine a prettier pickle. There's a lot of garlic in there, some hot red chile, along with dill and the leaves of celery root. I will make these every year now, and I'll start earlier to stock up.

Onion and apple (Joy of Pickling) made use of a mess of apples starting to go soft. The apples came from trees which we now happen to own (more on that later). They're pretty tart, but nicely flavored with ginger and cloves. I'll make that again, but add more sugar or maybe some local honey.

The great thing about the these three books is that while they all contain instructions on sound basic principles, none is doctrinaire. They all show a joy in the process and a spirit of imaginative innovation, and they make you want to try out your own variations.

Now, I don't mean this as a tease, and I know it's a good couple of months, at least, before anything suitable for canning will show up in the farmer's market stalls around here--although, I am going to try pickling ramps and fiddleheads this year, and those will be around in less than a month...if the snow ever stops.... But I offer these words and images today because,

1) The canned stuff is about all of local produce we've got these days, and

2) It's never too early to start learning about the process, if you haven't done it before, or to plan for what you'd like to put up in the coming months, if you have.

For other books to check out, a couple of standbys are the Ball Blue Book, a nuts-and-bolts guide which also has a lot of interesting recipes, and Better Homes and Gardens, the good old red-checked standard. My ketchup and bread & butter recipes are adapted from BH&G.

Mary's not a big pickle fan. She's slowly coming around, so she'll try relishes, chutneys, and bread & butters. Me, I love anything brined, vinegared, soured, fermented, pickled in any way. If something like this really is the Ploughman's Lunch, I think I could be a ploughman. At least at lunch time....

The simplest pickles I know are the French sour gherkins called cornichons. I don't process these. Since they're done in straight vinegar, they will keep in the fridge indefinitely. They are the de rigeur accompaniment to patés, terrines, and other types of charcuterie, and find their way, chopped, into many salad dressings and classic sauces from tartare to gribiche. A simple, versatile pickle to start with even if you've never put anything in a can...er...jar, before. You certainly can.

Can can.

Cornichons
French sour gherkins

1 pint fresh gherkin-sized cucumbers, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches long
1 tsp salt
a few sprigs fresh tarragon
four pearl onions, peeled
two cloves garlic, peeled and halved the long way
three whole cloves
2/3 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup white wine or champagne vinegar

Wash the cucumbers and trim the stems quite short. Put them in a glass or ceramic bowl, and toss with the salt. Let them sit overnight, stirring occasionally when you think of it. If it's coolish you can leave them out. In warm weather start them at room temp, them put them in the fridge overnight.

The next day rinse and drain the salted cukes. Put them in a pint Mason jar, alternating with the garlic, pearl onions, tarragon, and cloves. Combine the vinegars in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and pour the vinegar over the cucumbers in the jar. Let sit at room temp overnight.

The next day, pour the vinegar back into the saucepan, bring to a boil, pour it back over the cornichons. Do it one more time the next day--three days, three boilings. The cornichons can be used immediately but will improve with a few more days' curing. Kept refrigerated, they will last indefinitely.

copyright Brett Laidlaw 2008

A la Recherche du Pain Perdu

I got into the local food world through the little home-based bakery that my wife Mary and I run, Real Bread, but so far I haven't said much about bread in these...pages, can we say? The recipe you'll find below, Choucroute Bread Pudding (or Sauerkraut Stuffing, by a humbler name) combines the products of several of my favorite culinary activities: baking, smoking, and fermenting. (Choucroute is the French word for sauerkraut; choucroute garnie is the famous Alsatian dish of braised 'kraut and smoked and cured pork products.)

It's a way of using up what around here we refer to as "dead bread," the heels that were never claimed, the uneaten slices of baguette that dry up on the dinner table overnight, that sort of thing. Specifically, pain perdu, which is French for "lost bread," is what we call French toast. I'm taking the term here in a more general sense (and because I couldn't resist the Proustian allusion; now that I've actually mentioned Proust, is it still an allusion?). Anyway: This savory treatment is another way of effecting a very positive reversal of fortune for crusts that have fallen on hard times.

Although the bread in this dish is "dead," it still has to be good. Just as lousy bread makes a lousy sandwich, mediocre croutons make a soggy, forgettable stuffing. This dish is best when made with a variety of breads. Use some rye, if possible, or other whole grain bread. When you can combine--as I did for this dish most recently--pain de campagne, Danish rye, currant-stout bread, chestnut bread, baguette, Swedish rye, and brioche, the result is excellent, if I do say so myself. Mary agreed. I love this dish, and Mary is even more enthusiastic about it than I am.

Giving credit where credit is due, I've channeled this recipe through two very fine local chefs, Isaac Becker of the 112 Eatery in downtown Minneapolis, and Mike Phillips of The Craftsman restaurant in south Minneapolis. When the 112 Eatery opened a couple of years ago, there was a choucroute bread pudding on the menu, and I recall seeing it described as a "signature dish" in at least one review. For a signature dish, it didn't stick around very long. It was great, but it hasn't been on the menu for a long while now.

Then this past December a version of it resurfaced, having gone south to Lake Street and found suitable wintering grounds nestled up against an amazing double-cut Fisher Farm pork chop and flanked by addictively delicious espresso baked beans on Mike Phillips' comforting cold-weather menu at The Craftsman.

I'm calling this a pudding, though it contains no eggs and no milk or cream. It highlights the flavor and texture of the bread, particularly the savory, toothsome crusts. The tartness of the 'kraut contrasts to those flavors, and lightens what could be a heavy dish. Though it's similar to a classic Thanksgiving dressing, it's more assertive than most side dishes. In fact, I think that if you propped a poached egg or two on top of a serving and piled a bit of salad on the side, it could easily become a main course.

I've even included suggestions for making it a vegetarian dish, because, while my previous post might seem to belie it, I know and like many vegetarians, and I respect everyone's dietary choices. I just don't see how you can get the full joy out of life without bacon, is all....

You'll need to amass a certain amount of bread for this dish. It should be pretty dang dry, and once it is dry, it will keep indefinitely. The perfect environment for drying out bread, as many of you know, is a Minnesota home in winter! That super-dry heated air sucks the moisture out of everything. So if you find that part of a loaf went neglected a couple of days too long, cube it up before it's petrified (even if it's petrified, you can still salvage it with a good strong knife and your bold, but cautious, resolve), leave it out for another day or two, then put it in a plastic bag. In these dry, cool winter conditions there's little chance of it molding. But to be safe you might want to put the croutons in the freezer if you don't plan to use them pretty quickly; in summer the freezer is an excellent way to prevent spoilage.

Of course you can also dry your croutons in a low oven before using or storing them.

We are terrible about eating leftovers. Since we generally have a fair amount of bread around, I have to confess that I've thrown out more stale bread than I care to admit. A further confession: I am not a big fan of sweet bread puddings. But since discovering this savory way of reviving lost bread, we hoard every crust jealously and plan meals around it.

Homemade sauerkraut is almost a different entity altogether from the store-bought stuff, but if you don't have homemade use the 'kraut that comes in plastic bags rather than the canned kind. If you have a deli with a northern or eastern European slant, see what they might have. Here in the Twin Cities I would try Kramarczuk's in northeast Minneapolis, or Kiev Foods in the Sibley Plaza shopping center on West 7th in Saint Paul.
For future reference, there are instructions for making your own 'kraut in quart jars below. It's ridiculously easy. And it's fermented!

Two more brief asides: If you're serving this alongside a fowl that came with giblets, chop them up--gizzard, heart, and liver, all--and sauté them in the bacon fat along with the vegetables till they're nicely browned.

Aside #2, The Vegetarian Option: Leave out the bacon. Duh. Use vegetable stock instead of chicken. Sauté about four ounces of mushrooms, any kind you like, until they are nicely browned and concentrated in flavor. This sort of replaces the bacon. Sort of. Dried mushrooms--shitake, porcini, chanterelles, would also be really good in this. Adding a few more vegetables would fill this out into a veritable bread-veg casserole. Fresh cabbage, carrots, eggplant, kale, celery root--all would be fine additions. Just be sure everything is precooked and well browned for that deep umami flavor.
Choucroute Bread Pudding (Sauerkraut Stuffing)
Serves four to six

5 cups dry bread cubes (3/4" to 1" croutons), 12 to 14 ounces
2 1/2 ounces home-smoked bacon (or 2 or 3 slices thick bacon), cut into 1/4" by 1/4" by 1/2" lardons
1 medium onion, about 6 ounces, roughly chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 tightly packed cup sauerkraut, preferably homemade
1/4 tsp dried thyme
5 or 6 leaves sage, chopped
salt and pepper
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
1/4 cup dry white wine or dry vermouth (optional for deglazing the skillet)
Butter to grease the baking dish

In a skillet, cook the bacon gently over medium heat until most of the fat is rendered and the bacon is lightly browned. Remove the bacon from the skillet and reserve. Add the onion and celery and cook until the onion is translucent, about five minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes.

Put the bread cubes in a large mixing bowl and add the bacon and vegetables. Deglaze the skillet with the wine or vermouth if you like; reduce the wine a bit, then add to the bread mixture and stir well. Add the thyme and sage, a few grinds of pepper and a good pinch of salt.

Rinse the sauerkraut a couple of times, then squeeze it in your hands to remove some of the liquid. Chop it coarsely and stir it into the bread mixture.

Add 1 1/2 cups chicken stock and mix well. Cover the mixture (I invert a plate over the stuffing) and let sit at least 20 minutes to let the bread absorb the stock. After 20 minutes mix again and check a few cubes of bread by pinching them with your fingers. They should be moistened and somewhat softened. Add more stock if needed.

Liberally butter a six-cup baking dish, gratin, etc. Add the bread mixture. Bake at 375 for 30 to 40 minutes, until the top is nicely browned.

Sauerkraut Made in Jars
Adapted from The Country Gourmet
Makes 2 quarts

5 pounds cabbage
3 1/2 Tablespoons canning or sea salt

Remove outer dirty or damaged leaves from cabbage. Quarter, core, and shred the cabbage. I like a range of thicknesses, which I get naturally by shredding with a knife. You may also use a mandolin or 'kraut cutter.

Place the cabbage in a large bowl and toss with the salt. Let it sit a while to express some juice. Pack solidly into quart jars. Fill to within one inch of the top. If there's not enough liquid to cover the cabbage, add a little cold water. Put the lids and bands on, and tighten the bands not quite as much as you possibly can--tight but not super-tight.

Place the jars on a platter to catch any overflow. Place in a coolish spot, around 60 degrees. The basement is fine. In just a day or two you'll notice bubbling and juice running over the top. If you're tempted to unscrew the lid to see how things are going, be careful! Juice can shoot out like from a shook-up Coke can.

In five to seven days the bubbling will die down and no more liquid will be coming out of the jar. Wash the jars and tighten down the lids. Then you can either refrigerate indefinitely, or process the jars in a water bath for 15 minutes, seal, and store in the pantry. It doesn't matter if the kraut isn't submerged in liquid at this point--it's preserved by the souring of fermentation.

I was a little worried that I wouldn't get around to writing about this dish while our wintry weather was still with us. No problem there. Here's what it looks like in Saint Paul today:


That white on the rooftops is not the glare of bright sun. We will certainly see snow into April this year, and I'm reminded of how, when I was a kid, I thought that if the groundhog saw his shadow, promising six more weeks of winter, that was the outcome to be hoped for. As winter drags on, everyone I talk to these days is looking for a little comfort, and this dish provides it. Do a good deed and help some poor lost bread find its way again.



Brett Laidlaw


copyright 2008 Brett Laidlaw

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

I was a vegetarian way back when, believe it or not. For several years back in college, in that magical time between the death of Disco and the rise of New Wave, I eschewed the consumption of animal flesh with a self-righteous fury. Maybe you were content to take food right out of the mouths of children starving in Africa, India, and China, but not me. Do you know how many bushels of grain it takes to make a pound of beef just so you fat Americans can enjoy your disgraceful hamburgers? Well, I don't, either, but I'm going to guess it's about a thousand.

Maybe more. Maybe, a lot more. Whole villages might be starving just so you can wolf down that T-bone. You should be ashamed.

Of course, just because I was insufferably self-righteous about my dietary choices, that doesn't mean I wasn't hypocritical, as well, that I didn't succumb to temtpation more than occasionally. Hey, it happens to evangelists of all sorts, all the time. It wasn't meat, per se, that drew me. I could walk past the 'burgers and the roast chicken in the cafeteria line, the pork chops and the lasagna with meat sauce, en route to my healthful and politically correct zucchini egg puff, or broccoli cheese soufflé, or zucchini broccoli bake, no problem (one really does sacrifice in order to feel superior, sometimes...).

But come Sunday brunch, when the sausages and the bacon hit the grill, it was torture to be within sniffing distance of the dining hall. Likewise if smoked bratwurst or Polish sausage was on the menu.

There's a reason that bacon has come to be known as "the gateway meat." There's something about fatty pork flavored with salt and smoke that is just about irresistible. So now, having chosen the omnivore's path, I say: Why resist?

"We Smoke Our Own," was the motto of Mel's smokehouse in Knife River, MN, on Lake Superior's North Shore. What Mel's smoked was fish--salmon, ciscoes, herring, whitefish, and, above all, lake trout. Mel's was an exceedingly modest establishment, a small square building with an inviting front porch and a gravel parking lot with a capacity of maybe five cars, a herring's-toss from the rocky Knife River on the North Shore Scenic Drive.

I don't know when Mel's opened, but it had been an obligatory stop, both coming and going, for the thirty-some years that I have been visiting the North Shore (old, so old...). I wouldn't put smoked fish in quite the same siren-song category as good bacon, but cure and smoke have much the same effect on fatty fish as they have on pork. If I had to order up one last meal on this earth, it might very well start with an appetizer of Mel's brown sugar-cured lake trout on Ritz crackers spread with cream cheese, and to wash it down a glass or two of a single-malt Scotch (probably the Highland Park or Balvenie Doublewood) on the rocks--that beautiful clear professional ice from a North Shore gas station. Of course this aperitif would have to be enjoyed by a fire ring in a North Shore campground, or from the porch of a rustic cabin looking out over the entrancing waters of Gitchee-Gumee (for fantasy last suppers, you're allowed to make it a progressive dinner through time and space...).

I mean, the world-renowned artichoke soup with black truffles and parmigiano reggiano at Guy Savoy in Paris was good, but come on, we're talking about Mel's brown sugar-cured lake trout, for pete's sake!

Unfortunately, that meal will remain a fantasy, for Mel's is no more. I wrote last fall in a Real Bread email about our shock and grief at pulling into "Mel's" to find the famous "We Smoke Our Own" sign replaced by the "North Woods Candy Kitchen." Pretty much everything else was the same, except that the display cases once filled with chunks of glistening, ruddy trout and salmon, and red-gold whole herrings and whitefish were now displaying truffles and fudge and brittle. Given the rather powerful aura of smoked fish, you wonder if they were ever really able to clean the cases adequately; I know that I found the incongruity of confections where the ciscoes used to live more than a bit surreal, and not at all appetizing.

Our fallback sources for smoked fish are now Lou's in Two Harbors, and the Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais. Both are good; neither is Mel's.

And yet, there is another alternative, and therein an homage to magnificent Mel's: Go ahead and smoke your own! Home smoking is easy, requires no special equipment, and produces incomparable results. You get nitrite- and nitrate-free smoked meat and fish. And it's cheap, and it's delicious.

(On the subject of curing chemicals, I just went on-line and found a site from the "National Center for Home Food Preservation." This group recommends the use of nitrates and nitrites, with this mild caveat: "Extreme Cautions must be exercised in adding nitrate or nitrite to meat, since too much of either of these ingredients can be toxic to humans." Thanks for the heads-up.... To produce very long-keeping smoked meat products, these sort of chemicals may be necessary; for the sort of thing I'm talking about, smoking primarily for flavor and only minimally for preservation, you certainly don't want to use them.)

My smoking odyssey began about a dozen years ago. I was bringing brown trout home from the stream fairly regularly, and I wanted to find something to do with them other than pan-frying or grilling. I have described elsewhere the Aha! moment that led me to overcome my fear of smoking. For some reason I had been thinking it was a complicated process involving specialized equipment and arcane ingredients, beyond the understanding of a home putzer like me. Then one day I had that remarkable epiphany, to wit: Cavemen did this; maybe I can, too!

And it turned out I can, and so can you. Our first experiments were not so successful. The book I looked to for guidance had us curing the fish for 24 hours and then smoking them for nine or ten. That might work with big chunks of salmon or lake trout. This was in my early days of fly fishing for trout, and I was delighted to be putting eight- or nine-inch fish in the creel. A nine-inch brown trout subjected to this kind of treatment becomes...trout jerky would be generous; trout leather is more like it. Just a tad on the dry and saline side. Over time I learned to adjust the curing and smoking times to the size of the fish.

But let's go back to the pork, because home-smoked bacon is a revelation. You are going to need fresh pork belly (sometimes also called "side pork"), preferably with the skin on; salt, pepper, brown sugar; a charcoal grill (and if you can manage it, a second grill to keep extra coals going), natural chunk charcoal, and some kind of hardwood to make the smoke. An instant-read meat thermometer will also come in handy.

Any good butcher will be able to get you pork belly or side pork. I usually buy it at an Asian market, where it's almost always in stock (here in the Twin Cities, United Noodles and Shuang Hur are reliable sources). It usually comes in pieces like what you see here, a little more than a foot long and around two inches wide. I'm going to try it with a bigger chunk, like real slab bacon, sometime, but I've always been happy with cuts like this, too. You can choose beautiful, relatively lean cuts when you smoke your own.

Here's the recipe. It's worth doing a few pounds at once. I keep a chunk in the fridge, and the rest I freeze.

Home-Smoked Bacon
start the morning of the day before you'll be smoking

4 to 5 pounds fresh pork belly, skin on

Brown Sugar/Black Pepper Cure:

2/3 cup salt (I use fine sea salt, but kosher salt would be fine)
2/3 cup brown sugar
freshly ground pepper

Maple Syrup Cure:

1 cup real pure maple syrup
2/3 cup salt

Rinse the pork and pat it dry with paper towels.

For the brown sugar/black pepper cure, grind fresh pepper over the three non-skin sides of the pork, to taste. Place the pork on a large platter or other non-reactive container, like a glass or ceramic baking pan. Mix the salt and sugar well, and add the mixture to the pork, turning the pork over in the cure so it's fairly evenly coated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Turn the pork after a few hours; much of the cure will have liquified.

Next day, remove the pork from the cure and rinse briefly, then place the pieces on a wire rack set over a cookie sheet. Leave it out of the fridge and let it dry thoroughly for an hour or two, turning once or twice for even drying.

For the Maple Syrup Cure: In a small saucepan bring the one cup of syrup to a boil, and simmer briskly until it is reduced by one half. Let cool. Rinse and pat dry the pork. Rub it with the reduced syrup, then toss with the salt and proceed as with the brown sugar cure.

You can certainly add other spices or herbs to your cure, but I prefer the simple versions. That way you can really taste the pork and smoke, which is what I'm after. You also have an extremely versatile product with many uses.

We are now ready to smoke: Fill a chimney starter with natural chunk charcoal (we're going for a natural-tasting product here; using briquettes or, god forbid, lighter fluid, would not do). Light it with newspaper, and when they're blazing away nicely dump them out, just as if you were going to grill 'burgers, chicken, etc. What we're really doing is a very low-temperature, smoky sort of barbequeing with indirect heat. It's referred to as hot-smoking, but it's not very hot. It's called hot-smoking to distinguish it from cold-smoking, such as is often done with salmon, where the temperatures don't rise high enough to cook the fish with heat. Here we're looking for temperatures of around 180 to 200 degrees fahrenheit, ideally.

Once you've dumped the coals into the grill, now you want to take some away. Remove at least half the coals to a second grill. I do my smoking in our Meco grill, and use an old "Smoky Joe" (really old--the legs have fallen off, is why it's sitting on that bucket). Make sure the coals left in your smoking grill are all pushed to one side.

Now we need to add smoke. You don't want to use pine or other softwood, which can be pitchy and give a bitter taste to the meat. I would also avoid birch. Apple is excellent, as is maple. I've used oak and poplar, and hickory chips as well as bark. You can buy mesquite wood for smoking, but that wouldn't be very "locavore," round here. In the Northwest, alder wood is traditionally used to smoke salmon. We have various kinds of alder here, though I haven't smoked with it.

Very simply, if you or your neighbors have an apple or a maple tree in need of a little pruning, clip a few twigs, break them into three- or four-inch pieces, and throw a few pieces on the coals. Put the grill grate on, put the pork on the side away from the coals, making very certain that no meat is directly over the coals. Put the lid on. Open the top vent about two-thirds. Stick the pointy part of an instant-read meat thermometer in the vent hole. Watch as the temperature climbs, and make sure it gets over 200. Add a few fresh coals to the secondary grill, put the lid on that with the vent partway open, and go away for 45 minutes to an hour.

After an hour or so check to see how things are going. The temperature will have dropped quite a bit, so you'll need to add hot coals from the secondary grill. Turn the bacon over (it should now be looking quite baconish). Throw in a few more twigs or wood chips. Refresh the coals in the secondary grill, go away for an hour.

Repeat this process one more time. After three hours the bacon should be cooked, and plenty smoky. At this point I will often add the rest of the coals from the secondary grill, a few more twigs or chips, and just leave it till the coals are pretty much all out.

If you're uncertain about whether the meat is fully cooked, you can place it on a baking sheet and put that in a low oven, 175, say, for another 30 to 40 minutes.

Once you're done smoking, and before you store the bacon, be sure to cut yourself a slice to taste. Fresh, warm, homemade bacon is an amazing delicacy, to me. Every time I make a fresh batch, all I want to eat is bacon, and I find many ways to use it--in a frisée aux lardons salad, on an Alsatian tarte flambée, and, of course, with breakfast eggs and toast. I think it's better than even the priciest super-premium bacon you can buy, like Neuske's, and it's a fraction the price (albeit requiring a little more time and effort to obtain).

Since this bacon is fully cooked, you don't have to cook it further, and it's wonderful sliced very, very thin and added to a charcuterie plate.

You can do leaner cuts of pork this way, as well--country-style spare ribs, pork shoulder. With these cuts I just do a generous salt-and-spice rub a couple of hours before cooking, not the full overnight cure. Then smoke them with a little more heat, and just before serving boost your fire and cook directly over the coals to impart a nice char.

This last time out I did the bacon, then some pieces of ham hock and a couple chunks of lake trout.

I rubbed the two pounds of hocks with two tablespoons of salt, and let them cure overnight, then smoked as for the bacon.

For the trout, I did a wet brine consisting of:

3 cups water
1/3 cup salt
2/3 cup brown sugar

Heat the water in a saucepan and add the salt and sugar, and stir to dissolve. Let cool. Pour over fish (lake trout or salmon in one-pound chunks with skin and bones) in a non-reactive container like a glass bowl. Place some kind of weight--a plate will do--over the fish to push it down into the brine. Refrigerate overnight. Before smoking remove from brine and let drain and dry on a wire rack for an hour to two.

Smoke just as we did with the bacon.

I've gotten a lot better at smoking stream trout since my trout-leather phase many years ago. I like to smoke brown trout no smaller than 12 inches long, and up to 15 or 16 inches. My wet brine for this consists of:

4 cups water
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup brown sugar

Heat the water, dissolve the salt and sugar, let cool. Proceed as in the lake trout recipe.

Sometimes I'll throw herbs like dill, fennel greens, or thyme into the brine, or a couple pinches of peppercorns.

And finally a recipe to exalt all the products of the DIY locavore smoker. We'll call it

(Homage to Mel's) Smoked Lake Trout and Wild Rice Chowder
Serves four as a first course, two as a main course, generously

1/3 cup wild rice

2 1/2 ounces homesmoked bacon, with skin (about a 2-inch square)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot, in small dice
1 rib celery in chopped fine (or 1/2 cup celery root in small dice)
1 medium potato, in 1/2-inch cubes, rinsed
1 Tbs flour
2 cups chicken or fish stock or a combination
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
5 ounces smoked lake trout without skin or bones, separated into flakes (or other smoked fish, such as whitefish or salmon

pinch dried thyme
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
dash Tabasco, or to taste


Rinse the wild rice and add it to a small saucepan with 2/3 cup water. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook over lowest heat for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit 5 minute. Drain any remaining water and set aside. The rice will not be totally cooked at this point.

Remove the the skin from the bacon but don't throw it away. Cut the bacon into 1/4-inch slices and then into 1/4-inch lardons. In a saucepan or tall-sided sauté pan, cook the bacon and skin very gently until the bacon has rendered most of its fat but isn't too brown.

Remove the bacon lardons from pan, leaving the skin. Add the onion, carrot, and celery and cook gently till the onion is translucent, about five minutes. Lower the heat and sprinkle on the flour. Cook for one minute, stirring. Make sure the flour does not get too brown. Add one-half cup of stock, and stir till smooth. Add another one-half cup, mixing well again. Now add the rest of the stock and bring to a simmer.

Combine the milk and cream in a bowl, and ladle into that bowl one cup of the hot stock to "temper" the milk. Now add the milk and cream to the pot. (Tempering the milk and cream this way will reduce the chance of its curdling. The addition of the cream helps with this, too. If the milk does curdle it will affect the appearance but not so much the taste. It will still be quite edible.)

Add the potatoes, thyme, bay leaf, 1/4 tsp salt and a few grinds of pepper, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the drained wild rice and the reserved bacon, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add the smoked trout and a dash or two of Tabasco. Taste for salt and add if needed. Simmer another 10 minutes. Serve.

My father always dropped a dollop of butter on top of creamy chowders and oyster stews, a practice I recommend. And then a grind of pepper or a pinch of paprika or espelette pepper. Bring the Tabasco to the table. I think the perfect bread with this would be toasted slices of Cornmeal Rounds (if you're reading this in Real Bread land), or a country white or levain whole wheat.

And then, with your leftover smoked trout and a loaf of brioche, maybe some chestnut bread, breakfast becomes something to really look forward to.

Smoke on~

Brett Laidlaw

text and photos copyright 2008 Brett Laidlaw

Roots Rock

For dinner last night we had a salad buffet. Why? Because we could.

The wind was rather howling down the plain, and a comforting bowl of hot soup might have been more suited to the weather (in fact I had a pot of sour borscht in reserve, just in case). But I wanted to show that even at the end of February, four months after the last farmers' market of October, you could put together a locally grown salad bar, a meal made up entirely of fresh, local vegetables.

So I took myself down to the root cellar--which is to say, the second fridge we have in our basement--and I pulled out the makings of an assiette de crudités that would make any northern locavore proud. We still had leeks, beets, carrots, and celery root. (We also had cabbage, squash, pumpkins, apples, and various preserved things, but I decided to focus on the roots, for thematic coherence.)

All the root vegetables came from our garden. All had been keeping fairly well in the fridge since last fall. The carrots and celery root hadn't suffered at all from the long cold storage. The beets were a little soft but roasted up just fine. The leeks didn't look awfully appetizing, a bit dried and withered with some black fungal patches, but those outer layers peeled away to reveal a perfectly edible vegetable within.

I wasn't consciously planning to put together a French salad bar, but the ingredients naturally suggested classic bistro treatments: carottes rapées, céleri remoulade, and leeks in vinaigrette. The beets I bathed in a dressing that was an inspiration of the moment based on various dregs we had sitting around--of a few not-quite-empty bottles of red wine, and the last of a jar of buckwheat honey. The result was very good; I've dubbed it "Bloody Beets."

Here's what the finished products looked like:

I don't know about you, but I find that awfully appealing. I just ate all that last night, and looking at it this morning makes me hungry again. I think the picture makes my point, which is the point of this "blog" as a whole, that eating local foods isn't a "challenge," as some would have it, nor should we undertake it in some sort of attempt to achieve salvation through suffering, donning the hairshirt of culinary penance in a misguided epicurean ascetic endeavor to prove that I can do without more than you can, that my table is greener than yours, or hoist a self-righteous banner of provincial gastronomy to shame the supermarket-shopping hoi polloi into genuflecting before an iconic poster of St. Pollan the Pure!

No! That isn't it, at all.

I want you to eat this stuff because, like my "Bloody Beets," it's bloody good. I hope I don't protest too much. Trout Caviar has a philosophy, is a philosophy, and that philosophy is that our stuff is as good as anybody's stuff, and part of reason that it's good is that it's ours. Mary remarked during dinner last night that maybe part of the reason these foods taste so good to us is that they come from our terroir, and that same terroir is in us, just as it is in these foods. And so a sort of sympathetic magic occurs when we consume them, making it all more than the sum of its parts. Could be.

Back to the roots, and a few radical recipes. We all know carrots, and we've all had carrots in salad, but how many of us would think of making a salad entirely of carrots? If you've been to France you would. If there's a traiteur (French deli) in the whole of the republique that doesn't carry this simple carrot salad, I haven't found it. As cole slaw and potato salad are to the American deli counter, carottes rapées and céleri remoulade are to the French traiteur: ubiquitous, in a word. The name simply means grated carrots, which is sure not to impress your guests, so I suggest you use the French name with company, for maximum, you know, pretentiousness.....

Fortunately, the recipe is as simple as "grated carrots" would make it seem:

Carottes Rapées

2 medium carrots, about 8 ounces, peeled

Grate the carrots medium to coarse, or shred them on a mandolin. Mix with:

1 Tbs grapeseed oil (or other light vegetable oil)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
good pinch sugar
pinch or two salt

Let sit at least an hour before serving, if you have time.

Then add.... Nothing. That's it. That's the whole recipe! Bon appetit!

I mentioned a "mandolin" just there, and I don't mean a stringed instument commonly heard in bluegrass music. You probably know I'm referring to a fixed-blade slicing device that will make quick work of tough root vegetables, turning them into paper-thin slices, fine julienne, and perhaps other shapes, depending on the sophistication of the machine (and will do the same to your fingertips and/or knuckles if you're not very careful).
This is one of the lower-end versions, the venerable "Benriner." Note that it counsels you in both English and Japanese to "Watch your fingers"!

These can usually be found at Asian supermarkets. Or you can pay a couple hundred dollars for the stainless-steel European versions that do pretty much the same thing. I'm sure that my Benriner has been serving me well for at least fifteen years. I think I'm due for a new one. It's a tool that gets a lot of use in our kitchen.

Celery root, or celeriac, is slowly becoming more familiar and more available in this country. This knobby, dirty, hairy root presents a most unpromising facade, but once you get through to its crunchy, savory, fragrant heart, you'll find it's worth the work. (That's trimmed celery root pictured with the Benriner above.) It's not the root of the celery we're most familiar with, but a related plant. The celery-root plant does produce stalks and leaves not unlike regular celery, but thinner, darker green, a bit tougher, and much more intensely flavored. You never see the tops of celery root in grocery stores, which is a shame. We've grown celery root in our garden the past couple of years, and have found many uses for all parts of the plant. The stalks we chop fine to mix into egg salad and the like, or to flavor soups, stews, stocks and braised dishes. The leaves lend an intensely green, slightly bitter flavor to salads.

The root can be eaten raw or cooked. It takes a lot of peeling, as the pictures show. Céleri remoulade is the classic salad treatment. You can boil the root along with potatoes to give a twist to mashed potatoes. You can throw chunks of it in to roast along with a chicken. We've enjoyed an oven-fry of mixed sticks of celery root, potato, carrot, and squash. Pretty much anything you would do with other dense root vegetables can be applied to celery root.

This recipe is adapted from Julia Child's and Jacques Pepin's Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.

Céleri Remoulade

1 medium-size celery root, about 12 ounces untrimmed, 8 ounces trimmed
1/8 tsp salt
juice of 1/4 small lemon

Grate the celery root medium to coarse, or shred it with a mandolin. Toss the shreds with the salt and lemon juice, and let sit at least 30 minutes. To the celery root add:

1 1/2 Tbs mayonnaise
1 1/2 Tbs sour cream
1 tsp Dijon mustard
freshly ground peppper to taste

Mix it all in, let sit at least an hour before serving if you have time. Serve with a sprinkling of fresh herbs like chives or parsley, or a dash of paprika or espelette pepper for color.

Leeks are sometimes referred to as "poor man's asparagus" in France. They're a little more common here than celery root, but still under-appreciated. They're useful in many more ways than just the leek-potato soup that springs immediately to mind. They, too, can be cut in chunks and roasted along with other root vegetables. They can be slowly braised in stock and finished under the broiler with a glaze of butter for a first course or side dish with a luxuriousness not usually associated with oniony roots. Blanched and halved and annointed with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, they do very nicely on the grill.

A lot of recipes tell you to use only the white part of the leek. We use the whole thing. You usually have to remove a few of the tough outer layers, and trim off much of the dark green leaves, but the lighter green parts are perfectly edible. Save the trimmings for stock. You can just wad them up and jam them in a plastic bag and bung it in the freezer. At right is what I look for in a trimmed leek. Well, you'll want to trim the root a little more than that, acutally.

Leeks Vinaigrette
four servings

4 small leeks, about 1 pound trimmed

Clean the leeks well--a lot of dirt can hide in the layers of leaves. Trim off the root end, then, using a paring knife and being quite careful, push the tip of the knife through the leek just above the root end. Slice the leek all the way through the top of the green end. Do the same thing again to slice the leek in quarters the long way, with the whole thing held together by the intact root end. Wash thoroughly.

In a saucepan with a lid bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add the leeks, cover, and simmer briskly till the leeks are tender, about 5 minutes. Now that the leeks are soft, I like to take a fork and roll them up, sort of like you were twirling spaghetti. Place them in a serving dish. Save the cooking water. Top the leeks with a vinaigrette made up of:

2 tsp grain mustard
2 tsp white wine vinegar
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs of the leek cooking water
a good pinch salt, several grinds of the pepper mill

This can be made several hours or even a couple of days ahead. Bring to room temp before serving. With a piece of crusty bread this makes a delightful first course, a real bistro classic.

And finally, those

Bloody Beets

1 1/2 pounds beets--an assortment of red, golden, and chioggia makes a beautiful salad

Wash the beets, place in a covered baking dish, and roast at 400 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, till they pierce easily with a paring knife. Beets larger than, say, tennis ball-size will cook faster if you cut them in half. Let cool, then peel and cut into bite-size chunks, like 1/2-inch thick and 1-inch square pieces. Make the bloody dressing:

1/2 cup red wine

In a small saucepan bring the wine to a boil and reduce till there are just two tablespoons left. Watch very carefully as you near the end, or it will all boil away in a flash. Pour the reduced wine into a bowl and add:

2 tsp buckwheat honey (other flavorful honey could be used, but the earthiness of the buckwheat matches that same quality in the beets very well--Talking Oak raw buckwheat honey is available at Farm in the Market in the Midtown Global Market, and from Sandy the honey lady herself at the Saint Paul Farmers' Market)

1 small clove garlic, minced
1 Tbs grapeseed oil
1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
good pinch salt & a few grinds of pepper

Mix well, toss with beets.
A nice dollop of a soft fresh goat cheese, like the Donnay chevre, also available at Farm in the Market, goes really well with beets.

All of these salads can be made well ahead, and indeed benefit from a rest of a few hours or overnight. The carrot salad was even better on the second night. They'll be tastier if you let them come to room temperature before serving.

Now, this isn't the cornucopian abundance of the farmers' market in September, but people!, this is Minnesota at the end of February! (That big, gorgeous pumpkin, by the way, is a Musquée de Provence that we grew, the biggest one ever. A lovely eating pumpkin, too.) Those are Denny Havlicek's apples, Keepsake, and the sea-green pumpkin behind the leeks is from Peter Marshall (Peter's Pumpkins), as is the cabbage. If you didn't lay in enough winter veg to get you through till spring, you might still find some local produce at the co-ops--parsnips, celery root, beets, and squash are often available late into the winter.

I keep saying that we shouldn't say it's a challenge to eat locally and seasonally, that we should really look at it as a celebration. That said, there is a bit of a challenge to keeping things interesting with this rather restrained palate to work with. Nonetheless, it can be done, and out of it comes abundant pleasure and the satisfaction in keeping that connection to the land hereabouts and to the seasons. And then the celebration can begin.

Brett Laidlaw

text and photos copyright 2008 Brett Laidlaw