FOOD ON THE FOOD

Got Milkweed?

This is our vacation souvenir.  The 2nd Grader found a tiny monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf outside the New York lake house our friends generously shared with us.  By the end of our stay, the caterpillar, who occupied his own bunk in an empty peanut butter jar, had more than tripled in size, and my oldest was lobbying hard to bring it home.  We agreed.

After the five-hour car ride back, however, it seemed a little lethargic.  Later in the day, it climbed up on the stick propped up inside the jar as if it were ready to spin its cocoon, but Husband noted that it was still way too small.  It needed fattening up and I knew just the person for the job.  However, the caterpillar was completely uninterested in the spread I set out for him: chocolate cake, ice cream, pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, cupcake, and watermelon.  It’s weird because I got the menu from a very reliable source!  They ought to write a non-fiction book entitled The Very Finicky Caterpillar.

Instead, Husband went on an emergency milkweed run.  Husband knows about monarch caterpillars: they like milkweed and that is all.  Now the caterpillar is happily munching away again.  It’s almost big enough to undergo its transformation and the kids are awaiting the event with much anticipation.  (They’ve seen this at school before, but it’s different with your own caterpillar!)

I just hope this particular butterfly doesn’t mind the extra 300 miles he’s going to have to tack on to his 2,000-mile migration to Mexico.  Have an extra tequila on me, Flutterby!

About Ground Cherries

Please bear with me—I’m trying desperately to maintain my vacation glow, and any demands, any demands at all, will restore me to my original pale, matte finish. 

In the interim, you can find me over at Culinate this week with an article on ground cherries (aka husk tomatoes, aka dwarf Cape gooseberries, not to be confused with tomatillos).  If you’ve ever seen them at the farmer's market and wondered what the heck those weirdo fruits are and what to do with them, now’s your chance to find out.  There’s also a recipe for a sweet and spicy relish to serve over grilled fish.  You know, if you like delicious things.

Now go away.  Shoo!!

Peach Ice Cream

According to my mother, the first words I learned to read were ‘ice cream.’  This makes all the sense in the world if you know me at all.  It may also explain the relish with which I learned to read additional words, only to discover that most of them were significantly less delicious than the first.  It was my earliest childhood disappointment, though I suppose literacy is a decent consolation prize.

As a kid, nothing brought me greater pleasure than going to an ice cream parlor and studying the flavors on display in the long, transparent cases, their muted, subtly different hues right there at eye-level.  It was like an edible artist’s palette, seemingly bottomless and filled with sweet promise.  Some had flecks of chocolate or nuts.  Bits of fruit.  Swirls of fudge.  I wanted to take a spoon, dip it into every pot, and paint the world with ice cream.

I loved to watch the people who worked there (the luckiest people on the face of the planet, in my young estimation) scooping out ice cream from the deep cylindrical tubs.  There is something about the texture of ice cream that still thrills me, the way the scoop digs and rolls across the surface.  How the resulting smooth crown and ruffled edges sit precariously atop the cone, defying (or not defying) gravity and clumsy children.  The way the frozen confection is both creamy and crystalline, temporarily suspended in a state somewhere between solid and liquid as you race to devour it before it seeps sloppily from the bottom of the cone.

It all began with strawberry.  What is it with little girls and pink?  But that flavor, to this day, represents all the pleasures and comfort of childhood.  Later I gravitated toward the artificial pale greens of pistachio and mint chocolate chip.  Strawberry ice cream was for babies, you see.  A cone of mint chocolate chip always required jimmies (Massachusetts-talk for chocolate sprinkles).  Brigham’s in the South Shore Plaza was a favorite source.  As I angled for adulthood, the teenage years brought an appreciation for coffee, maple walnut, butter pecan, and mocha in their frosty shades of beige.  I still favor them to this day.

It took years before I realized that the best and most versatile ice cream flavor of all was the white one in the corner with the barely-perceptible flecks of black.  It was hard, though, as a kid to choose Plain Jane vanilla when there were so many flashier options vying for attention, especially once Oreos and cookie dough entered the picture.  To this day, my least favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate.  Chocolate, which is one of my most favoritest things ever!  (Did I forget a superlative in there?)  What can I say, Chocolate Ice Cream, you’re a poor substitute for chocolate.  But the real thing is welcome to be poured, thick and fudge-like, over my vanilla ice cream anytime.

This history is why I’m compelled to make homemade ice cream even though we have about a million sources for quality ice cream in the Boston area, from old-school ice cream shops (J.P. Licks, Cabot’s), to inventive, boutique ice cream bars (Toscanini’s, Christina’s), to farm stands (Bedford Farms, Kimball Farm).  They’re hard to beat and thank goodness we don’t have to.  But for me, there will always be homemade ice cream in my freezer.  Peach ice cream.  Maple ice cream.  And other far more disgusting concoctions of which I have yet to conceive. 

Tammy + Ice Cream 4 Eva.

Peach Ice Cream

There’s nothing like peaches and cream in the summertime.  I kept the skins on this time and I liked it!

2 cups ripe peaches, washed, fuzz rubbed off under water, chopped
½ cup sugar, plus ¾ cup more (1¼ cup total)
Juice of ½ lemon
2 large eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk

Combine peaches with ½ cup of the sugar, and stir in lemon juice.  Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, stirring every half hour.  Pour peaches into a strainer fitted over a bowl and drain, reserving the peach juice.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Whisk in the remaining ¾ cup sugar, a little at a time.  Pour in the cream, milk, and reserved peach juice, and whisk until sugar is dissolved.  Pour mixture into ice cream machine and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions (usually spin for 25 minutes).  Add the peach pieces during the last 5 minutes of processing.  Spoon partially frozen mixture into a container, cover, and place in the freezer until firm. 

I tend to like it on the softer side rather than solid as a rock.  If it freezes too hard, let sit on the counter for five minutes before serving.

Source: Adapted from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book by Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield, and Nancy J. Stevens.

Local Ingredients:
Peaches: Carver Hill Orchard, Stow, MA
Cream: High Lawn Farm, Lee, MA
Milk: Our Family Farms of Massachusetts, Greenfield, MA

Some Things Never Change

Lest you think that all this mushroom-growing and involvement in the school garden has miraculously turned my black thumbs green, I’m here to tell you that it’s business as usual on the plant-killing front.  My sage plant died almost instantly upon transfer of ownership.  My two heirloom tomato plants were dead by August.  The oregano isn’t far behind.  And while the rest of the herbs are hanging on, they’re clearly not thriving.  Even the mint has no intention of trying to outgrow its tiny pot. 

I know you’re going to ask me if I’ve been watering my plants and the answer is no.  Of course I haven’t.  I can barely keep my own self hydrated on a daily basis.  I count on a little rain falling once in a while, but so far this summer I think it’s only rained twice in two months.  Not a good situation when your so-called caretaker will only drag the hose out once a week to soak her mushroom logs.

Luckily, there are eight other families involved in the school garden, so the plants over there have been getting plenty of water and good care.  The proof is in the sungold tomatoes, which did not disappoint again this year.  So sweet and so many!  Everyone was buzzing about the bright orange sun-candy.  I have a feeling there won’t be any trouble getting garden volunteers next year.  I just hope none of them ever bear witness to the secret shame that is my own garden!

The Life Cycle of Flowers

It’s hard to talk about the idea of death with your kids, but lately it seems to come up all the time.  Like when we went to visit the 4YO’s chick and one of the others had recently expired and was lying conspicuously in the wood shavings.  Dinner always has the potential to trigger a morbid line of questioning.  So does absent-mindedly smacking at fruit flies. 

The kids don’t have a lot of personal experience with death, thank goodness, although they do ask about the cats from time to time, wondering if their absence really is a permanent condition. But I feel a responsibility to try to help them understand that death is a natural part of life, even if I barely have a true understanding of that myself. 

Recently, the 4YO was brooding over a flower he had picked that was wilting.  I explained that, although it was dying, it would drop its seeds to make more flowers as a way of living on.  I gathered from the expression on his face that this concept was way too abstract.  Then I told him we would bring the flower outside and lay it in the flowerbed and the stem and the leaves and the petals would turn back into dirt, which would help make a good spot for the new flowers to grow.  Nice try, Tammy, but nope, still not getting through.  He needed more concrete, practical answers.

Him: But…at the end of the world, it will die.

Me: Well, yes.  It will die.

Him: So what will we do?

Me: We will love it very much before it dies.

Him: And then, when it dies, we won’t love it anymore?

Me: No, no.  We will still love it.  We will definitely still love it.

Being a parent is hard.

Shiitakes and Soup

Maybe it’s just the mushrooms talking, but that’s a lot of mushrooms! 

I harvested nearly a pound of shiitakes from one of my logs last week.  There was a little bit of slug damage, but they were remarkably bug-free.  Because the weather has been so dry lately, I had to trick my logs into thinking it was the rainy season by giving them a 24-hour soak in the kiddie pool (after the kids were done using it, of course).  Only one of the logs fell for the ruse with any enthusiasm.  Meanwhile, one of the other logs seems to have developed some kind of green mold on one side.  Which isn’t a good thing unless I’m planning on growing my own penicillin.  Apparently there’s a fine line between fungus and mold, and I’ll keep you posted on where exactly that line is.

Isn’t it weird how mushrooms grow out of logs like that?  They just grow right out of the logs!!

As I was slicing the shiitakes from the log, I accidentally dropped one of them into a pile of rotting leaves.  I quickly picked it up, fretting and wiping it off like an overprotective parent, until I realized my ridiculousness.  Protecting my precious fungal outgrowth, the fruit of boreal decomposition, from a little dirt and detritus?  There were slugs crawling all over it a minute ago!  It’ll be okay.

Speaking of slugs, I’ve never considered myself to be particularly fleet of foot, but I always fancied myself faster than a slug.  Apparently not.  I had to break up a mid-morning, slow-motion feeding frenzy by nudging a group of them off the logs with a stick and slingshotting them across the yard.  They may not be particularly fast, but they’re very determined.  As a secondary line of defense, I tried sprinkling a ring of salt around the log on the paver it was resting on.  That seemed to solve the problem, but maybe there's a more humane way to deal with slugs?

Anyway, these shiitakes went into a nice mushroom barley soup over the weekend. I chopped shallots, carrots, and garlic from Waltham Fields (as well as some limp celery I found) and sautéed them in a few tablespoons of Cabot butter until soft.  Then I added a bit more butter and my sliced shiitake caps, and cooked for five more minutes.  In went 6 cups of beef stock made from bones from Chestnut Farms last winter along with a few extra cups of water (but you could easily substitute vegetable broth and/or the tea left over from soaking dried mushrooms).  When it all came to a boil, I added ½ cup barley from Moraine Farm and let it simmer for about an hour.  I finished it off with a couple of tablespoons of cognac and a tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme.  Not exactly summer food, but think about it for the fall!

Tart Cherry Preserves

In the cookbook Put ‘Em Up that I raffled off last month, there is a recipe for preserved cherries, the intro to which says, “Cherry preserves are to strawberry jam what a red satin gown is to a puffy pink prom dress.”  That’s for sure.  Only the author forgot to mention the red lipstick.  Lipstick and cleavage.  This, my friends, is the Christina Hendricks of jams. 

If you’ve never cooked with sour cherries (and I hadn’t until this year), let’s just say that there’s a reason why everybody swoons over them.  Under no circumstances should you EVER pass them up.  And I know it’s cruel to mention sour cherries when their season is past, but now you have a whole year to nail down a local source and mark your calendars for late June/early July so you don’t miss their fleeting window.  Then you should set some of them aside to make this:

Classic Cherry Preserves

Original recipe was doubled.  I should have stuck with the original recipe.

1½ lbs. sour cherries (sometimes labeled tart cherries)
½ cup sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Stem and pit the cherries (they're so juicy you can just cut them in half and flick out the pit with the tip of a paring knife, no pitter required).  Combine the cherries with a splash of water in a medium nonreactive saucepan.  Bring to a boil, mashing with a potato masher to release the juice.  Add the sugar and lemon juice and stir to dissolve.  Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the preserves reach the desired thickness, 15 to 20 minutes (stick a jam-coated spoon in the freezer for a minute to see if it gels).  Remove from heat and let rest for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Ladle into clean jars.  Cool, cover, label, and refrigerate for up to a month.  (Or, for longer lasting storage, can them using the boiling water method for 10 minutes).  Now just try to keep your hands off them!

Source: Adapted from Put ‘Em Up by Sherri Brooks Vinton.

Do-Over

Sometime last week (or maybe it was the week before), it was my wedding anniversary.  Remembering dates is not my strong suit.  Luckily, Husband’s not so good with them, either.  It is not uncommon for both of us to forget the date of our anniversary until several weeks later.  Perhaps this is why we’re still together.  Or maybe we both keep forgetting to file the divorce papers.  Either way.

But this year was our 10th anniversary.  Clearly this marriage thing is turning into some kind of a habit.  We didn’t forget the date altogether this time, but we were both unprepared for the day gift-wise.  Evidently, the appropriate etiquette gift for 10 years of marriage is something made out of aluminum.  That sounds, um, romantic.  Did we ever establish whether or not aluminum causes cancer?  I hope the gift suggestions get progressively better over time. 

Nevertheless, I did a quick aluminum gift brainstorm.  Aluminum siding?  Nah, I’m quite partial to our wooden shingles.  Aluminum pots?  But that would really be a gift to myself.  Plus, you can’t cook anything acidic in them, which is an annoying limitation in a pot.  Aluminum baseball bat?  But Husband already has one, and how many bats does one man need who isn’t on the Red Sox?  I mean, he thinks he’s on the Red Sox.  That much is clear.  But as far as I can tell, he is not actually on the Red Sox and do we really need to encourage the delusions? 

Instead, I decided to show up on our anniversary with a six-pack of beer and two giant steak bombs from Carl’s.  The steak bombs came wrapped in aluminum foil.  It was the best I could do on short notice.  Husband then presented me with a box of ricotta cannoli from Antoine’s Pastry Shop.  They contained no aluminum and I was very offended.  Then we proceeded to eat and eat and eat and eat until we made ourselves physically uncomfortable and the only sentiment verbalized the whole rest of the night was a wincing “Don’t touch me!”  Our moans were not of a sexual nature. 

Looking back over the evidence, it’s unclear who was trying to kill the other first on our anniversary.  It was almost a tie.  If I could do it all over again, I would have celebrated the event with the more anniversary-worthy meal I cooked three days later: grilled pork chops and peaches with balsamic vinegar. 

The locally raised chops were rubbed with basil, oregano, fennel seed, salt, pepper, and olive oil, and were grilled alongside the peaches.  The peaches are great this year, aren’t they?  Once the fruits were appropriately grill-marked, I splashed them with balsamic vinegar, orange juice, and a sprinkle of purple basil leaves.  Grilled pattypan squash and coleslaw on the side.  Sour cherry cobbler for dessert.

It was probably still too much food, but slightly less masochistic, don’t you think?

Local Sources:
Pork chops: Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA
Peaches: Carver Hill Orchard, Stow, MA
Squash, cabbage, onion, carrots: Waltham Fields, Waltham, MA
Cherries: Orbaker's Fruit Farm, Williamson, NY

Fish Tacos

Why has it taken me so long to embrace the fish taco?  It is nothing short of genius, especially when you’re a member of a local fishermen’s coop.  Basically how it works is this: whatever leftover fish you have, throw it into a taco with whatever vegetables you have.  Seriously.  Not only that, but it tastes fresh and healthy and not even a little bit lazy.  Here’s how we’ve been doing fish tacos lately, though I'd imagine there are about as many variations as there are fish in the sea.

Fish Tacos

1 package corn tortillas
½ lb. leftover fish or pieces for frying
¼ head of cabbage, finely shredded
¼ red onion, thinly sliced
Whole cilantro leaves
½ cup mayo
Juice of ½ lime
½ shallot, chopped
½ jalapeño, minced, seeds removed
1 Tbsp. fresh herbs like dill, oregano, parsley
¼ tsp. dried cumin
Dash cayenne
Salt and pepper to taste

First, I get my vegetables ready—in this case, shredded cabbage, thinly sliced red onion, and cilantro leaves.  I keep the cilantro leaves separate from the herbs in the dressing because people either love cilantro or hate it.  This way, you can either pile it on (yes, yes, yes!) or leave it out at your own discretion.  Then I make the sauce, which is similar to that creamy salad dressing recipe I gave you earlier this summer.  In fact, I’ll often just doctor that if I have some around.  If not, just whisk the mayo with lime juice and add the chopped shallot, jalapeño, herbs, spices, salt, and pepper.  I like it heavy on the dill.  Taste it and once you get the flavor you like, you can thin it with milk or buttermilk, thicken it with more mayo, or just leave it alone.  If you should find yourself with too much sauce, it also makes a great dressing for coleslaw.

Next, the fish.  We really like pollock in our tacos, though we’ve also enjoyed haddock and hake (aka merluza).  Sometimes we use leftover fish and other times I’ll deep fry some for the occasion and let the children have homemade fish sticks while the adults flake theirs into tacos.  (The children have yet to take to the taco, but I’ll break them down eventually.)  For batter, I either coat the fish pieces in buttermilk or plain yogurt thinned with milk and dredge them in cornmeal, or make a beer batter with ¾ cup flour, ¼ cup cornstarch, and enough beer to make a batter of a reasonable consistency.  Then I drink the remaining ¾ bottle of beer to make the frying go faster.  You want the oil hot (375°F) so the fish comes out light and crispy, not sodden.  Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. 

When you’re on your last batch of fish, wrap a stack of corn tortillas in a damp paper towel and heat the whole thing in the microwave on medium-low for a minute.  Flake the fish into bite-sized pieces.  Assembly, to be done individually at the table, is just a matter of taking two tortillas, making a small pile of cabbage, onion, cilantro, and fish down the center, and applying sauce.  Don’t be too stingy with the sauce—you’ll want at least a tablespoon on there.  It’s a pretty healthy meal overall.

By the way, Cape Ann Fresh Catch is accepting new members, so if you’ve been eager to try out local delivery of fresh Gloucester-caught fish, now’s your chance.  They have a fillet option now so you don’t have to lug home a whole fish and fillet it yourself if you don’t want to.  I’ve opted for the pre-filleted share myself since I already have enough fish bones in my freezer to keep us in chowder for five years straight. 

Local Sources:
Cabbage, red onion, cilantro: Waltham Fields Community Farm, Waltham, MA
Dill, parsley, oregano: Neighbor’s garden, Waltham, MA
Fish: Cape Ann Fresh Catch, Gloucester, MA
Buttermilk: Kate’s Homemade Butter, Old Orchard Beach, ME
Corn tortillas: Cinco de Mayo, Lynn, MA (via Russo’s)

Fun Guy

My mushroom garden is coming along.  Slowly.  In addition to the four shiitake logs from last year, I've inoculated three logs with oyster mushroom spawn and three more with maitake spawn (aka hen of the woods).  But then I ran out of logs.  Perhaps I was overly ambitious when I ordered 300 mushroom plugs.  Remind me not to buy my mushroom spawn on an empty stomach.

Since I still had 100 shiitake plugs left and I didn’t want to take down any trees unnecessarily, I’ve been trolling the mean streets of Waltham for additional logs.  I spotted some in the driveway of a house en route to the park.  One of the guys who lives there could often be seen making modifications to what looked to be a souped-up monster-truck-type vehicle.  Frequently, he could be found washing caked-on mud off of it after what I can only imagine was extreme off-roading.  He seemed like a nice enough guy, though, and who am I to judge other people’s hobbies.  I mean, I write stories about my food.  So, I decided to bite the bullet and knock on his door.

Monster Truck Dude answered.  I asked if he, perchance, had any plans for those logs.  He indicated they were slated for firewood.  I scowled as I looked over at the gigantic barricade of firewood he had already amassed between his house and his neighbor’s yard.  I mentioned my penchant for mushrooms and how those logs could probably grow some good ones.  Edible ones, I clarified.  He indicated that he liked mushrooms.  How many did I need?  I low-balled it at three.  Take four, he said, and you can bring mushrooms in exchange.  I explained that it takes a whole year for mushrooms to establish, but he said that was fine.  Then, I happily hauled four logs into my car and promised to return someday. 

Wow, it’s like this bartering thing actually works!  See, this is where having that extra boob comes in handy.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a high-risk, low yield mushroom CSA!  I imagine getting a permit for that is no problem at all!