How Green is My Alley

Late April in the alley bed: a bit of this and that

Although far from fully local in my eating, I have cut way back this winter and spring on the purchase of perishable food from far away. (A master’s thesis topic for someone: A writer’s repetitive diet makes for much alliteration.)

That means that I’m paying more attention to my homegrown spring greens, which also means I’m getting a bit tired of mustard greens. I have a lot of them. They were in a mesclun mix I planted last spring, and since I’m not all that crazy about that flavor in salads, a lot of them stayed on in the alley box to reseed.

Right now I have kale, a bit of arugula, some fall-seeded chard that is just getting going, the last of the leeks, beet greens, lots and lots of corn salad, and that mustard. Usually the early lettuce and spinach would be salad-ready by now, but the cold weather has slowed it down. Except for the mustard and corn salad, there isn’t enough of any one thing to make a meal, and I don’t want a full meal’s worth of either of those worthy greens. Also, I’m busy lately, so pretty much anything I cook needs to be either really fast or something I can make in quantity.

So here are some places I’ve stashed quantities of mixed greens lately.
Lentil soup--Like minestrone, lentil soup can absorb huge quantities of greens without overpowering the taste.

Lasagna--My spinach lasagna has become mustard/chard/kale/beet-green lasagna. I haven’t heard any complaints.

Spinach Rice Pie--This version isn’t spinach and it isn’t actually a pie, but it’s still good. The original recipe is from Winter Harvest.
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
3 pounds fresh mixed greens
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup pancetta or bacon, cubed (optional)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 cup rice, preferably Arborio or some other risotto variety
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
4 eggs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon chopped marjoram (use less if you are substituting the strong flavored winter-hardy oregano) or 1 teaspoon dried
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper

Instructions
Simmer broth over low heat. Discard any tough stems from the greens and steam the leaves until soft. Time will vary with the type of greens. I like to cook them in a heavy skillet with a just a splash more than the water they were washed in. Remove from heat, chop, and press excess moisture into the broth. It’s way too good to waste. Heat olive oil in over medium heat and add pancetta or bacon (if used), onion, and garlic. Sauté 5-10 minutes until onion is limp. Mix in rice and cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Reduce heat, return greens to skillet, and bring to a slow simmer. Cook, adding broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring frequently and allowing rice to absorb the broth before adding more. This will take 20 to 25 minutes. The rice should be creamy. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-inch quiche dish or pie pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Shake off excess crumbs and reserve for topping.

Combine eggs, Parmesan, marjoram, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a large mixing bowl and beat will. Stir in rice mixture. Taste and adjust seasoning. Spoon into quiche dish or pie pan, spreading evenly. Sprinkle top with remaining bread crumbs. Bake until firm but not dry, about 45 minutes to an hour. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Roasted Greens and Pasta: Change the heat source; change the flavor.

This is more a procedure than a recipe. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Take a mess of greens, wash them, and tear into bite-size pieces. Put a little olive oil on your hands and rub them through the greens to coat very lightly. Arrange greens on a cookie sheet. For less oil and easier cleanup, put them on baker’s parchment or maybe one of those pricy but very cool silicone mats. (I got mine at Pacific Chef in Fairhaven.) Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and put in the oven. Check after 5 minutes and keep checking frequently. You want the greens to start to get crispy and brown on the edges but not burnt black. Remove from oven when you’ve hit that point.

Meanwhile, boil water for pasta. I like to use whole wheat shells, but any smallish pasta works. Add the pasta and cook until just a bit too al dente. Toss in the greens and cook another minute. Drain, return to saucepan, and add some chopped savory black olives. I like the oil-cured ones from the Food Co-op.

Season to taste with salt, pepper, and a dribble of olive oil. Serve grated Parmesan or Romano on the side. I was surprised how little cheese it took to bring this very simple dish into focus.

All the while I've been writing this, I've had the current crisis in skyrocketing food prices on my mind. Part of me wants to chide every newly affluent Chinese or Indian eater who is devoting disposable income to, say, corn-fed beef, and therefore contributing to desperation in Haiti and $4.50 a loaf bread prices for me. Another part of me is thinking--if I consider it a challenge to stay interested in one type of vegetable for more than a few weeks at a time, how on earth can I judge someone else who wants some new flavors in their kitchen? When something is both a basic necessity and an endlessly refinable pleasure, it's never going to be simple to do the right thing.

A Resurrection

When we lived on the farm, my own version of sunrise service was to go out Easter morning and collect nettles for omelets. It was our way to mark an annual resurrection that seems miraculous in its own way--every spring the nettles come up and the hens go back to laying full force after their winter slowdown. On days I felt even more metaphorical, I could compare the nettles--prickly, aggressive, and hard to control--with certain people I know who may be hard to get along with but are still worth having around.


Eggs from a home flock, free-ranging on bugs and greens, have brighter yolks, firmer whites, thicker shells, and a rich flavor unknown those from factory chickens. They go well with the intensely "green" taste of cooked nettles. (The sting goes away in the cooking.)

Northwest nettles have been valued as well as cursed for millennia. Local tribes used the strong stringy fibers of mature plants for fish and duck nets and for the warps of Salish rugs. They also had a variety of medicinal uses. According to reports collected by ethnobotanist Erna Gunther in one of my all-time favorite books, The Ethnobotany of Western Washington, the Squaxins and Lummis gave crushed nettle leaves in water to women during childbirth "to scare the baby out." Less fancifully, many tribes considered nettle tea a muscle relaxant, making it valuable during labor. The prickly sting was also put to use in lieu of caffeine. Hunters would rub themselves with nettles to help stay awake all night.

I know at least one person nowdays who rubs nettle leaves across his knuckles when his arthritis acts up. I've also read on the web about nettle tea curing cancer, which I think may be a stretch. When we were kids, the accepted antidote to nettle stings was the slightly gooey sap of the brake fern, which was reliably found nearby. Aloe works too.
The Sumas property is nettle's paradise, the rich riverbottom loam producing armies of 6-foot specimens. That response to good soil may be one reason that early ethnographers reported Quileute women made their best gardens in soil where nettles had been cleared away. Nettles are also an excellent addition to the compost bin. For the kitchen, though, you want the soft, new growth only. Mature plants are too stringy. I stop collecting when they top 6 inches. Use rubber gloves to pick and clean them.
In general, nettle make a reasonable substitute for chard or spinach in any recipe that requires cooking. They cook very quickly, so adjust the time accordingly. The following basic recipes are from Winter Harvest.
Cream of Nettle Soup
Ingredients
4 cups young nettle leaves
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups milk or light cream (I'm going to try it next with soy milk)
2 tablespoons grated onion
2 tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
grated Parmesan to taste
Instructions
Wash nettles, do not dry, and steam them in the water that clings to them. Puree with their liquid, adding some stock by the tablespoon if necessary. Melt butter in a medium saucepan, add onion, and cook until soft. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until color starts to turn. Add stock, salt, pepper, and nettle puree and heat just to boiling. Lower heat and simmer 10 minutes. Add milk or cream and heat gently. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan to taste.
Serves 4

Nettle Omelet
Ingredients
4 cups nettle young nettle leaves, loosely packed
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
5 tablespoons butter, divided (or any combination of butter and olive oil)
2 shallots, minced, or 2 tablespoons minced onion
5 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper
pinch of fresh tarragon (optional)
Instructions
Steam nettle leaves until limp. Remove from heat, press out moisture, and chop. Mix with ricotta and set aside. Melt 1 tablespoon butter, or heat oil, in a small saucepan, add shallots or onion, and cook gently until they start to turn color. Do not let them brown. Stir them into the nettle mixture. Add salt and pepper to beaten eggs. Melt remaining butter, or pour oil, in an omelet pan or your closest approximation. Add eggs and cook over low heat, loosening edges as they solidify and letting the uncooked egg run under. Spoon ricotta-nettle mixture onto one half of the omelet, leaving a 2-inch margin bare. Slide a spatula gently under the other half and fold omelet under the filling. Cook very gently, about 2 minutes on each side, sprinkle with tarragon, and serve hot.
Serves 2 or 3

Once again--What Makes a Good CSA?

I posted my question about what makes a good CSA on the Local Harvest forum--http://www.localharvest.org/forum--and got a thoughtful reply from Walter Haugen of F.A. Farm near Ferndale. He gave me permission to repost it here:

Since I have a CSA share program and am just up the road from you, outside Ferndale, my views are obviously biased. However, here goes. Even though I use organic practices, I don't market as organic because I think certification is bosh. As Eliot Coleman says, "Your best guarantee of safe food is to know the first name of the farmer who grew it." I also think it is important to do as much by hand and I don't even own a tractor - I have a BCS tiller and two smaller units - lower carbon and calorie footprints.

I give vacation extensions so people don't lose their weekly box when they go on vacation. I don't mind selling vegetables right up to Thanksgiving as I did last year. I only have on-farm pickup at the moment, but if I sell enough Bellingham shares I will do a single dropoff one day a week. The Local Farm Exchange (LFE) stand down on Railroad Ave. is a good dropoff point, but there is a little bit of confusion now as to how it will be run. Hopefully it will be sorted out by June.

I encourage farm drop-in visits, as I am always looking for an excuse to get off my hands and knees in the dirt. Another good idea is to use Farm Bucks - this idea was pioneered around here by Mike from K&M, so I want to give credit to him. Farm Bucks are a good way to involve people who have cashflow problems and only want the equivalent of a half-share. I find that half-shares take more energy than full shares because they break your rhythm on box-filling day. Full shares plus Farm Bucks seems a good compromise to me. I am also defining my niche more narrowly and have more of a political component in my flyer and FAQ's. Those are all things I think are important and I could go ad nauseum, but I won't.

Haugen is also an initiator of the Ferndale Farmers Market, set to open in May. To read a profile of him and his farm, and the long process of getting the farmers market going, check out the Ferndale Record Journal--http://www.ferndalerecordjournal.com/index.php?goto=2008-03-05%2006:22:48&section=news

It's Complicated

"We have to be careful not to rush from denial to despair," says John Elkington, founder of a British sustainability consulting business. The quote is from a fascinating article in the Feb. 25 New Yorker, on the complexities of measuring carbon footprints. Elkington worries that as we pull our heads out of the sand and realize the scope of our task in responding to global warming, we may just throw up our hands and stop trying.

I'll have more to say about the article later, because it made me question some of my own assumptions about sustainable living, but in the meantime it's online and well worth reading:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter


I thought about Elkington's quote Monday night at a meeting for the Whatcom Community Food Assessment Project. That's an ambitious effort to quantify the food situation in the county, in order to "help ensure a local food system that will sustain the land and livelihoods that provide adequate, nutritious food for current and future generations in Whatcom County."

It didn't take long for the folks at our table to zero in on the complexities of that worthy goal. If low-income people in the county are going to eat adequately and nutritiously, fresh healthy food has to be affordable. If future generations are going to farm, fish, and thrive here, our agricultural and fishing practices must be sustainable. If sustainable family farms are to survive in a competitive market, they have to fetch a good price for their products and they need to keep their labor costs under control. "It's a three-legged stool," said Tom Thornton of Cloud Mountain Farm. Sustainability, affordability to consumers, and adequate worker wages/business profit: all three elements are essential. Achieving them all can be a daunting challenge.

For example, I admire Rootabaga Country Farm, home of Samish Bay Cheeses among other organic, sustainably produced, top quality products. But their least expensive cheese retails for $16.99/lb. at the Co-op. Their other varieties sell for $22/lb., which means I can only assume they are delicious as I've never tried them. I trust their commitment to sustainable practices, I hope they are making a decent living, but the third leg of the stool is out of reach for most of their neighbors. (The farm will ship cheese to you via UPS for a lower price per pound, but the minimum order is $24 plus shipping.)

I did learn from Amber Dawn Hallet, the Sustainable Connections staffer who facilitated discussion at our table, that the affordability leg will be addressed in one new way this season at the Bellingham Farmers Market. This year the market vendors can accept food stamps.

Pear-shaped Prose

Pear Trees, Gustav Klimt, 1903

One afternoon in our first year in Sumas, we arrived home from some errands to see a pickup in the driveway and a man’s legs up a ladder in our pasture. The rest of him was obscured by foliage. Completely unabashed when we walked over and introduced ourselves, he said he came every year to pick from “the best Bartlett tree in Whatcom County.” Sumas was like that. Another neighbor made an annual spring visit to harvest the impressive mole hills in our front yard. She said they provided the ideal potting soil--rich loam, brought to the surface and aerated by the work of those little mole feet--and she was right.

Certainly we had pears to spare: two giant Bartletts and a couple of winter Seckels overwhelmed us annually. Pear trees can easily bear for more than a century. Ours had been going strong for more than fifty years. Compared to apples with their pruning demands, and cherries with their proneness to wind damage and disease, pears are one of less troublesome tree fruits in NW Washington.

If there are problems, they are likely to come at the other end. Few people find fresh pears as addictively snackable as cherries, and they are more fragile and keep less well than apples. In the Sumas years we dried them, baked them, canned them, made cider both hard and sweet--and most years also took wheelbarrows full of wasp-munched windfalls to the cows and the hogs. (The chickens didn’t like them much.)

Washington grows more than a third of the pears produced commercially in the U.S., mostly in the Yakima Valley. Western Washington has relatively little commercial pear presence, but lots and lots of backyard trees, including one variety, the Orcas, that was identified on Orcas Island in 1972 and is sold through Cloud Mountain Farm among other specialty nurseries.

A February pear roundup
A couple of weeks ago I bought the Washington-grown varieties available at the Food Co-op that day and took them to my journalism class at Nooksack Valley High School. As a descriptive writing exercise, the students had to describe their impressions without any “opinion words”: no yummy, yucky, gross, tasty, nasty, scrumptious, etc. “But Ms. Morgan,” wailed one sophomore. “That’s my whole vocabulary!” Herewith, a selection of their impressions:

Bosc -- tough inside, encased in thick skin, no juice, hidden flavor, it kind of reminded me of what trees smell like in the summer, crunchy, mild, slightly sweet.

D’Anjou -- bursting juice, smooth skin; dissolves in mouth, very soft, smells like leaves, grainy, very sweet

Red d’Anjou -- rough skin, calm flavor, apple tasting, not a long-lasting taste, slightly bitter, grassy at first, sweet aftertaste, grainy; leaves the tongue evaporated

Concorde -- smooth inside, thick skin, slight juice similar to Red d’anjou, you can smell the sweetness, it’s soft and a little mushy but a little grainy, Smooth and subtle.

A couple of recipes
One way to establish your “longtime local foodie” kitchen cred is to haul out your copy of the Bellingham Farmers Market Cookbook from 1981. That’s back when the market was leading a hardscrabble existence over at the bus terminal, and we decided to compile a cookbook as a fundraiser. Gretchen Hoyt of Alm Hill Gardens was on that committee (as was I), which reminds me how long Ben and Gretchen have worked to promote sustainable local farming. Other familiar names in the local food scene include Lynn Berman, Holmquist Hazelnuts and Binda Colebrook.

Like most of the recipes in that funky comb-bound volume, this one for Stuffed Pears is simple and adaptable:

Ingredients
3 pears
3 tablespoons dried fruit
2 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions
Peel, halve and core pears. Mix nuts, fruit, and lemon juice and fill pear cavity. Make a light sugar syrup with the 1/2 cup of water, or cook down 1/2 cup pear juice to form a light syrup. Place pears gently in syrup. Cover pan and steam pears 10-15 minutes until tender but not mushy. (Better undercooked than overcooked.) Remove pears. Thicken syrup with cornstarch and pour over pears.

My idea of the perfect pear pairing is a Comice with Roquefort. The sweet creaminess of my favorite pear matched with the even creamier texture and pungent bite of the cheese--oh my.

Here’s a different and admittedly weird-sounding pear/cheese combo, which I borrowed from Mediterranean Harvest (with attribution) to use in Winter Harvest. It’s good.

Côte d’Azur Tart
Ingredients
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted (you could substitute local hazelnuts)
1 1/2 cups chopped Swiss chard
2 tablespoons currants or raisins, soaked in 3 tablespoons dark rum (optional) for 20 minutes
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
pinch of black pepper
3 cups peeled, cored, and sliced firm pears, apples or a combination of the two
pastry for a double-crust, 9-inche pie

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375. Toast pine nuts or hazelnuts lightly in an ungreased skillet over medium heat and set aside.

Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a medium saucepan, add chard, and cook, covered, over medium heat for 10 minutes, Drain and squeeze out all excess water once chard is cool enough to handle. (The chardy water is a good start for a vegetable stock.) Combine all remaining ingredients except the pears/apples in a large mixing bowl, then blend in the chard.

Smooth chard mixture evenly across bottom of pie shell and cover with fruit slices. Roll out remaining dough and cover pie, pressing to join edges. Prick top crust to let steam escape. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, until crust is browned and filling firm. Cover top crust with foil if it brown before filling is ready. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves 6

P.S. I’m only talking about European pears in this post. I’m no expert on the Asian varieties, though I find them beautiful, and their light, crunchy flesh refreshing.

Potatoes Cheer Me Up

Maybe because I’m fighting a cold, potatoes sound great to me today. So I’m reprising part of a column I did years ago for the Cascadia Weekly, back when it was still the Bellingham Weekly.

For me potatoes are the ultimate comfort food. Bland predictability is surely a big part of a spud's appeal: baked, mashed or fried, what you see is what you get. Still, I like to branch out, and Bellingham is a good place to do it. Herewith, some of my favorites:

Greek hashbrowns at the Rhodes Cafe. This is our Sunday morning breakfast favorite. They don't even bring us a menu anymore; I know what I like. Perfect hashbrowns of the chunky, not shredded, variety, topped with lots of lightly sautéed green pepper, olives, tomato, and onion, and sprinkled with feta. A half-portion is huge. Little Cheerful and Tony's do credible hashbrowns, but Rhodes's are the best.

Mashed potato chile relleno at Pepper Sisters. Mashed potatoes can be tricky. Since their smooth blandness--and their ability to soak up butter and gravy--is a big part of their appeal, innovations can easily go wrong. Some garlic is great, but too many additions miss the point. This dish deals with this dilemma by keeping the interest on the outside and leaving the mashed potato filling pretty much alone except for a few red pepper flakes. The chile, which too often is covered by a sliding mask of fluffy, tasteless egg batter, at Pepper Sisters gets coated in a thin layer of crispy cornmeal. That’s a big improvement in my opinion. Then the whole concoction rests on a pretty pink ancho chile cream sauce, just hot enough to enliven the proceedings without overwhelming the potato. Pepper Sisters' signature hominy and beans are the perfect foils for this unassuming dish. Potato and garlic enchiladas are another Pepper Sisters standby, but I like the rellenos better.

Casa Que Pasa's potato burritos are also justly famous, both for their sauce, their size, and their value for dollar.

If cold mashed potatoes are your secret guilty pleasure, you may be cheered to know that there's a recipe, from Peru where the potato story began, that dignifies your midnight snack.. I've seen many versions. This one is from the Territorial Seed Company Garden Cookbook.

Papas a la Huancaina
Ingredients
6 to 8 medium potatoes, peeled (Yellow Finns or Purple Peruvians recommended)
1 cup cottage cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup grated firm goat cheese (you could substitute feta)
enough lettuce leaves to cover 4 plates
1/2 cup chopped parsley
4 sliced hard cooked eggs, optional
black or green olives, optional

Instructions
Boil potatoes until soft. Remove from heat, mash immediately and add cottage cheese, cumin, and salt. (Especially with firm varieties like Yellow Finn or Purple Peruvian, if you wait till the potatoes cool your mash will be gooey instead of fluffy.) Arrange lettuce leaves on the plates. When potato mixture has cooled to room temperature, divide onto the lettuce. Sprinkle with goat cheese or feta and parsley and garnish with eggs and olives, if used.
Serves 4

Rhodes Cafe, 1046 Lakeway Drive, next to Cost Cutter, 714-9743
Pepper Sisters, 1055 N. State St., 671-3414
Casa Qué Pasa, 1415 Railroad Ave., 738-8226

Locavore note:
Potatoes, by the way, were probably the earliest introduced crop in this region. Tribes accustomed to maintaining prairies for camas harvest adopted the techniques to the potatoes that arrived with early European explorers. Native Americans were harvesting spuds on Whidbey Island by the early 1800s.

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La Vida Locavore: Finding Farmers

I was excited when "livin la vida locavore" popped into my mind a few days ago. I thought I'd coined a phrase. Sadly for my self-importance, a quick Google came up with hundreds of previous references. So mine is not to innovate, but merely to celebrate.

Anyway, I did find a handy reference, updated to November 2007, of certified organic farms in Washington, with their addresses and crops. If you are sleuthing for, say, Washington-grown wheat for bread flour (most of our wheat is the soft variety used for Asian pastas), Rickman Gulch Farm in Pomeroy grows it. Closer to home for me, Crowfoot Farm on Lopez Island lists wheat as a crop. What type? Enough to sell? If someone checks it out, I hope they will post the answer here.

Winter Wheat traditonal quilt design: www.houseofquilts.com

If you are considering your own backyard wheat harvest, I commend this report from essayist, former math teacher and author of The $64 Tomato, William Alexander: http://64dollartomato.com/inside.cfm?page=journal

Back to the listing:
I counted 33 certified organic growers in Whatcom County. The listing also includes the certified organic producers in Alaska, a hardy crew no doubt. One is for wild birch syrup, an Pacific-side alternative to eastern maple syrup. I had some maybe 20 years ago and didn't like it much, but that was an amateur experiment and probably this is better.

http://agr.wa.gov/FoodAnimal/Organic/Certificate/2006/UpdatedCertifiedLists/CertifiedProducers.pdf

From the Archives: Winter Harvest

Update: Look to the right to see that Winter Harvest, substantially revised, was published in a new edition in Fall 2010.

My first cookbook, published in 1990, was Winter Harvest. It was inspired by the winter gardening charisma of my friend and neighbor, Binda Colebrook, and focused on Northwest cool-season produce that could be grown at home or bought from local suppliers.

Looking back through it recently, I was pleased to realize how many of the vegetables and techniques I wrote about then--and which some reviewers at the time found a bit weird for general consumption--are familiar fare now. When I would show up at the counter with fennel or radicchio back then, often as not the checker would have to ask me what I was buying. Now the conversations tend more to what I plan to do them. Extended farmers market seasons and CSAs also mean that it's easier to find these treats grown locally.

I wrote my rationale for winter produce before global warming, carbon footprints, and genetically engineered food were scary catchphrases, at least at my house. My focus tended toward good taste, good nutrition, and sustainable growing practices.

Now I'm curious whether others think that the ideas expressed in this part of the introduction hold up:

Why Winter Vegetables
Everything tastes best in its season. Whether your produce is from your garden or from the market, the best value for your money, your palate, and your health is in the crops that flourish most naturally. In summer, this is easy advice to follow. Who wouldn't choose fresh raspberries over stored apples in July? In winter, what used to be an inescapable cycle of seasonal food has begun to seem an exercise in self-discipline. It's hard not to be seduced by the ever-increasing array of produce from someone else's summer. But locally grown Brussels sprouts, properly cooked, really will taste better than corn trucked in from Florida.

Furthermore, the more local our food, the better we can assess its real costs and benefits. For example, nearly half the tomatoes sold in the United States between December and May come from the Culiacan Valley in Mexico. Americans want their produce spotless--especially when they are paying top dollar--so the tomatoes (and the workers who harvest them) are repeatedly and heavily sprayed with pesticides and fungicides. Then the tomatoes are picked green, bathed in chlorine, gassed with ethyline to stimulate reddening (but not ripening), and shipped across the continent, losing vitamins every step of the way.

When these tomatoes end up on the shelf in Seattle, they are still legally fresh, but they are neither tasty nor nutritious, and they may not even be safe. Assuming that they actually have been tested for violations of pesticide regulations--and that's not a safe assumption--they will have gone into the salad long before the lab reports are in. If the price tag on those tomatoes included the real costs in health and environmental damage, the product would be a lot less alluring. (Long-distance organic produce, though preferable, is not likely to rate much better nutritionally.)

Fortunately, there is no need to put purity before pleasure at the dinner table. When it comes to winter produce, good sense and good taste go together.


To support the claim about Brussels sprouts, here's a recipe from the book.

Brussels Sprout Salad
This salad needs small, sweet Brussels sprouts. Gardeners have an immense advantage here, for although Brussels sprouts keep fairly well, they hold their peak of flavor only briefly.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided

1 1/2 cups sliced Jerusalem artichoke

*1 large celeriac, peeled and sliced into bite-sized pieces (discard any corky center section)

4 small leeks, white part only, chopped

1 pound fresh Brussels sprouts

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh lemon rind (optional)

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

* If you want to use the more easily available--and cheaper--celery instead of celeriac, go for the more blanched parts at the base. One point of celeriac is that it has a less assertively "green" taste than celery stalks.

Instructions
Combine 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 3 cups of water in a medium bowl. Add Jerusalem artichokes and celeriac slices and let stand, covered, in the refrigerator until it's time to dress the salad.
Cook leeks in an inch of boiling salted water until tender but not slimy, about 5 minutes. Less cooked is way better than overcooked. Drain, saving the water. Bring water back to a boil and steam sprouts until crisp-tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Dress with olive oil, the remaining 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and lemon rind (if used). Add salt and pepper to taste, mix, and check for seasoning.
Cover and refrigerate for an hour before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley.
Serves 4.
Winter Harvest is out of print, but it's usually available used in local bookstores (Hendersons in Bellingham has a terrific cookbook section) and online.

NW Washington Cheese: Paneer Edition

I'm guessing paneer (also spelled panir) is the least-known of the artisanal cheeses made in Northwest Washington. It's definitely one of the least expensive, and it's closely tied to our changing demographics, being a kitchen staple in many South Asian households. Appel Farms near Ferndale, http://www.appel-farms.com/, began making it around the time members of the Sikh community that has long farmed in the lower Fraser Valley began moving south into Whatcom County, where farmland was less expensive, soon to be joined by recent immigrants from India.

Paneer is an uncultured, unaged, quickly made fresh cheese. In the Appel Farms version it's made with milk from their 300-head herd. (That's the basic definition of artisanal cheese, by the way, that it's made on the farm with milk from that farm.) The only other ingredient is vinegar. In India, lemon juice and yogurt generally substitutes for the vinegar.

If you think cottage cheese doesn't have much taste, I have to tell you, paneer has less. It basically looks and tastes like solidified milk. If you already like bland foods, there you have a high-protein, easily digestible, locally produced treat. The Appel Farms website has instructions for sautéing, baking and grilling it with minimal additions. My tastes are less subtle--though I prefer to think more adventurous--and I value paneer for its role as a sponge (and a source of protein) to soak up the complex flavors in dals and curries.

Like the better known Greek Cypriot halloumi, and Mexican panela (which uses the Greek technique), panir doesn't melt when cooked, at least not when cooked properly. That makes it a useful visual and textural contrast in Indian vegetarian dishes, such as the Hindu staple, Palak Paneer.

I'm jumping the gun for Whatcom locavores with this recipe, since overwintered spinach won't get going in our gardens until we get a few warmer days, but here it is anyway. To me this combines creamy comfort with a touch of excitement. Isn't that what we want in life?

Palak Paneer
Ingredients
6 tablespoons vegetable oil (Indian cooking is one of the few times I branch out from olive
oil to a milder flavored type like canola; the absolute best taste is from ghee)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
2 chiles (Adjust the type and firepower to your taste; I like dried serranos, but my Hindu cookbook recommends fresh jalapenos.)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 teaspoons cumin (I grind my own because the whole seeds keep their flavor longer and because I like to.)
1 teaspoon ground coriander (Same as above, plus you can toss surplus seeds in the garden and then you can have your own cilantro/coriander. A caveat, though. The plants grown from kitchen coriander are likely to race to flower and seed in zip time. For a good supply of cilantro leaves, you need the non-bolting types bred for leaf production.)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 cup soy milk*
3 pounds fresh spinach leaves, or 2 pounds frozen, chopped fine (If you are using frozen, thaw it and press out extra moisture before adding to the pan.)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 sprigs fresh cilantro leaves
8 ounces paneer in 1/2-inch cubes
salt to taste

*Traditional recipes use mild yogurt or heavy cream; soy milk provides that same rich taste without loading up the cholesterol, since we're already going with whole milk cheese. I'm an old foodie so I have to watch these things. Take your choice.

Instructions
In a large saucepan heat 3 tablespoons of oil and sauté the garlic, 1/2 tablespoon of ginger, chiles and onion slowly until golden brown. Mix in the cumin, coriander, turmeric, and soy milk. Add the spinach, handfuls at a time until it is cooked down, about 15 minutes total. The mixture should have the consistency of gravy. Cook a little longer if it isn't there yet.

Add the tomato paste, the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of ginger, and cilantro and keep on low while you prepare the cheese. In a medium frying pan, heat the remaining oil over medium heat, and fry the paneer cubes until their surface is browned. Drain and add to spinach. Cook for 10 minutes on low heat. Season with salt to taste. Serve over basmati rice.

Paneer is available at Appel Farm, at the Community Food Co-op, and at the Bellingham Farmers Market.

From the Archives

In 1986 I wrote an essay on homesteading for the 20th anniversary of Pacific Northwest Magazine. PNW is no longer published, and I no longer live on the farm, but I still feel the connection to the cycles of the land that I tried to articulate then.

...What I like about my routine is the unmasked complexity of ordinary life. I like it that the weather is not just an annoyance or pleasure but a real shaper of events. I like leaning on the counter at the feedstore talking about winter rye, even though I buy it by the pound instead of the ton. My days have more drudgery, but they also have more resonance. I sniff the breeze for rain. I check the center of the compost pile, where the alchemy of decomposition can give off enough heat to cook an egg. I look for morels when the alders start to bud.

In a world full of events that seem random at best, and more often so terrifying in their logic that I can hardly bear to face them, I am entranced by the benign intricacies of barn and garden. The cow's surplus milk goes to the chickens. We rotate the chickens between pens each year, and plant corn in the pen that's empty. The cornstalks and overripe ears go to the cow, so she can make more milk for the chickens. Now that we have a young daughter, her mealtime mess is also the poultry's gain, and she likes both the chicken and the egg. Operating along with these homely household cycles are enough more mysterious ones for a lifetime of wonder: hawk and mouse, mushroom and rotten log, caterpillar and cabbage...

The young daughter of the essay now has a young daughter of her own. I hope Hailey, too, will grow up knowing where her milk and chicken and corn on the cob come from.

Why I like February, part 1

It isn't January



Corn salad (mache) was unfazed by the snow
and tall enough to get past the mud, and I've got lots of it.


It's still light when I get home from work.


My new blueberry bush is thriving

The Meyer lemon has set a dozen baby lemons.


Bulbs are up.
I don't remember everything I put here, but I know there's camas,
one of the most beautiful Northwest natives

I recently joined the Birchwood Garden Club and there's a seed swap this month.

What About the Taco Truck? or Carbon vs. Culture?

I was musing happily, perhaps a bit self-righteously, on my recent refocus on local food, when I drove by my favorite taco truck out on Guide Meridian. That got me wondering. Then, further down Meridian near my house I went by the Asia Market. That got me wondering some more.

Let's say foodshed eating goes beyond local produce week and becomes a way of life for thousands. If John Rawlins is right about our future in the upcoming post-oil economy, we'll have no choice. (For a report on his recent speech at WCC by John Stark, go to http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/5/7/104000775.html.) As we savor our cream of nettle soup in spring and our baked pears with blackberry wine sauce (Pasek Cellars, Skagit County), are we really going to lose the chance to eat pan dulce (hard wheat flour and sugar!), or taco de lengua (masa! lime slice!) or Thai gaeng dom yam gai (coconut milk!), or falafel (sesame seeds! garbanzos!).

Can we eat a healthy and delicious diet of local foods? Of course. Would we lose more than just the chance to pamper our palates with new tastes? I think so. Food is such a powerful carrier of culture and memory, a link for thousands of our neighbors between memories of home and the new life in the U.S. For native Northwesterners like me it's a daily reminder of the blessings of diversity. I'll celebrate the day when we don't waste our resources on tasteless mega-strawberries from California and Chilean peaches that should have stayed home. I have high hopes for the baby peach tree that, along with four blueberry bushes, is replacing grass in my front yard (all from Cloud Mountain Farm). But I don't want walls along our borders to keep out people, or flavors.

Cheap, cheerful, local and easy

My daughter and son-in-law stopped by today and Ronny installed my new cat door, which took a lot of doing. I don't know why each manufacturer feels the need to make a slightly different dimension, so the new door doesn't match the old hole.

I thought I'd whip up a bit of lunch in thanks, and the produce selection was slim. Onions, great local carrots (but not in their first youth), a couple of shallot sprouts poking out of the snow on its pot on the deck.

I sauteed half a red onion, the chopped shallot sprouts, and three grated carrots in olive oil for a couple of minutes, and then added a can of chopped clams, a splash of white wine and three dried tomatoes. (If they weren't the oil cured soft kind I would have soaked them first). I kept it all on low in a cast iron skillet until the onion was mostly soft but the carrots still had a bit of crunch. My daughter doesn't like soft cooked carrots, and anyway the extra texture is nice in such a minimalist dish.

We ate it over rigatoni. It was great. I skipped the cheese and didn't miss it a bit. If I had had a handful of Italian parsley I would have used it, but I didn't miss that either.

I used to hate beets

I hated beets because they were sweetly insipid or else harshly pickled. And under that sometimes I could taste that metallic tang that can also happen with chard stems if they aren't properly cooked.

But now I know better, and beets are a local-eating favorite. In the winter especially they brighten the table with their ruby (or golden) glow. The basic secret is to bake them, not boil them. The only problem with that is that it takes so long, especially with the big guys that keep so well. You can microwave them at about 10 minutes per biggish beet, but then you lose the touch of carmelization that makes them so wonderful when baked. If I'm short on time I split the difference. I'll put maybe four beets in the microwave for 10 minutes and then transfer them to a 375 degree oven--whole, unpeeled--on a cookie tray covered with olive-oiled baker's parchment (you can get it unbleached at the Food Co-op, and put it in the food waste toter along with the compost if you have pickup). Sometime a roast a head of garlic at the same time.

I start checking after 45 minutes and bring them out when they are tender but before they get squishy. Let them rest a few minutes, and then peel and cube. They can be served warm, but I prefer a room temperature salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped toasted hazelnuts, and some crumbled salty cheese. I like feta best. For a local option, a crumbly goat cheese is a good choice. It needs to be an assertive flavor, or the beets will just overpower it, even if you don't add some chopped garlic. A bit of overwintered parsley or some corn salad leaves make a nice visual.

January Chard

This time of year I crave fresh greens. I've had all the roasted beets I want for awhile, delicious and versatile though they are. The Co-op has lots of pretty green things, but they mostly come from far away and I'm trying to reactivate my local winter palate.

Local produce can be scarce, and the surviving garden crops tend to be tough and raggedy. In my small city garden the regular lettuce is gone and the corn salad is so hunkered down and so mud-spattered that's it's hard to get excited about it. So, it's pretty much down to kale, leeks, and chard.

Today I'm going for chard. Unlike kale, chard's flavor doesn't improve with a freeze. The surviving leaves tend to be a bit leathery and strong tasting, so a quick stirfry doesn't always do the trick. I like make variations on a traditional Sicilian pizza topping. I use olive oil; butter could work for strict locavores, or the greens can be braised over lower heat with a touch of hazelnut oil from Holmquists Hazelnuts in northern Whatcom County.

Chop up onions and/or leeks and garlic, maybe a cup of the oniony flavors to a large bunch of chard, including stems, and cook until onions are soft and chard is limp. I use a cast-iron skillet. Add two or three dried tomatoes. (Soak them in hot water for 15 minutes first, unless they are already cured in olive oil and therefore soft.) If your Sicilian loyalty outweighs your local foodshed convictions, you may want to add sliced Sicilian olives, a handful of raisins (traditional and weirdly good), and an anchovy that will dissolve into an untraceable and delicious additional flavor. Simmer the combination, covered, for another 10-15 minutes.

The results take the boredom right out of winter meals. Italians bake it on a pizza crust. Cheese isn't really needed, but locally made Cotija tastes great. It also goes well with pasta, and locavores can use it on wonderful Whatcom grown potatoes.